#but now I have so many new fics to read on top of the extensive marked for later list I already had going

[thisiswhereikeepdcthings]

Just reading my bedtime stories, as you do, when I came across this one that I have to share because it’s absolutely perfect and I love it so much.

[warabidakihime]

Rules and Roses Chapter 2

★ characters: kibutsuji muzan x reader x akaza

★ plot summary: Kibutsuji Muzan has finally decided to expand his empire, and the way he intends to do so is by running for the highest political position. With you, his darling wife, at his side, he believes he can achieve and have everything the world has to offer. He is, after all, the Phoenix of Phario.

★ fic playlist: sometimes, same day, as time stops, wolf’s song (this is also the vision board for the fic). 

★ content warnings : implied violence and abuse, profanities, toxic relationships, smut.

★ Previous Chapter

a/n:

hello!!!

first of all, i am so sorry for taking so long to update this story. ٩(ˊᗜˋ*)و ♡

life happened and i got sooo busy. the time i uploaded this fic was when i just started at my new workplace and shortly after a few weeks, i was already preoccupied with work. at first, i was laser-focused on getting used to my new work and the culture. then later on, i found myself playing a more important role in the office that required my undivided attention lol. besides that, so many things happened in my personal life as well that i didn't have the time and energy to write.

btw i'm now a writer by profession as well so oftentimes i would feel drained af after writing corporate write-ups. tbh, i also got hit by writer's block, especially for this fic because the plot i have in mind for it is lowkey intricate, and for the most part, i haven't decided on what route i should take story-wise. so during those 2 years, i was constantly trying to reconstruct the story in my head, and here we are!

i'm back but i'm not so sure about updating regularly as i'm still incredibly busy, but i will do my best! the latest kny seasons inspired me to write again (aka my crush for muzan lol).

hopefully, everyone is still here to read this. ٩(ˊᗜˋ*)و ♡

as always, comments and kudos are highly appreciated!

happy reading!

-

"Can you outline your key policy platforms should you be elected President of Phario? Given your extensive background in the human resource industry as well as your rich connections owing to your business ventures in Obelisk Kibutsuji, do you first plan to address the pressing issue of the national unemployment rate?"

"Indeed, that's correct. As President, one of my top priorities will be to strengthen our nation's workforce, which is crucial for advancing our economy. I have a comprehensive plan focused on job creation, vocational training, and support for small businesses. These initiatives will not only reduce unemployment but also stimulate innovation and competitiveness within our economy.

I also aim to implement policies that ensure equal access to education, equipping our citizens with the skills needed for the evolving job market. Healthcare reform is high on my agenda. I'll ensure healthcare assistance is accessible to everyone, public hospitals are well-maintained, and healthcare workers are fairly compensated and protected by the state in any dire situations. Additionally, I'll push for technological advancements and infrastructure development to attract both local and foreign investments.

Addressing social issues is equally important, and as a devoted ally of these communities, I'm committed to fighting all forms of discrimination, especially against women and the LGBTQ+ community. We must ensure everyone, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, or identity, has equal opportunities and protections under the law.

Moreover, I'll advocate for the rights and welfare of people with disabilities, ensuring they have access to the necessary resources and support to lead fulfilling lives. This includes improving accessibility in public spaces and promoting inclusive employment practices.

Animal welfare will also be a significant focus. We need to enact and enforce laws that protect animals from abuse and ensure humane treatment.

Lastly, I'll champion the rights of minorities and immigrants. Our nation is built on the strength of its diversity, and it's imperative we create an inclusive society where everyone feels valued and respected. This includes reforming immigration policies to be fair and humane and implementing programs that support the integration and empowerment of minority communities.

In essence, my administration will be dedicated to creating a sustainable and inclusive economic environment where every Pharian has the opportunity to thrive and contribute to our nation's progress."

Muzan stood confidently at the podium, a modest yet proud smile gracing his face after addressing a journalist's question amidst a room bustling with media personnel.

Today was the day where presidential candidates shared their platforms, which also served as an open forum for engaging with the press and fielding inquiries on a wide array of topics—from current events to personal matters.

With his seasoned composure before cameras and crowds, Muzan navigated the spotlight effortlessly. His articulate delivery drew admiration from all corners as he outlined his plans for the presidency, filling you with pride as you watched from the audience.

Among the attendees, your smile beamed with pride and unconditional support for him. Akaza, who is sitting right beside you, maintained a stoic demeanor outwardly, though inwardly, he couldn't deny a hint of impressed regard. Muzan's comprehensive platform and commanding presence left an undeniable impact on him.

Eloquence had always been Muzan's forte, a skill honed through years of being a businessman and somewhat of a public figure, as among his peers and in the business landscape in general, he is well-revered and widely celebrated.

Beyond his ability to articulate ideas, he possessed a magnetic charisma—an invaluable trait for navigating the intricate world of politics and public service.

Several hours later, the policy speech slash press conference finally ended, and now you were on your way to meet up with Muzan at the lobby of the hotel where the gathering was held when a few journalists spotted you among the sea of people who were also exiting the function room.

Akaza was right behind you and is also on full alert, an important instruction your husband told him when he appointed him as your personal bodyguard a few years back. Committed to his duty, he stood there in a stance where he is ready to take action should anything happen that is out of the ordinary.

Mics were stretched out and placed within just a few inches of your face, and one of them took the liberty to ask you a question: "What are your thoughts on Kibutsuji Muzan's campaign platforms?” 

Very much like your husband, you also wore a modest yet confident smile on your face as you held eye contact with the journalist who asked you that question before displaying your own version of eloquence as you answered,

"To say that I am proud while listening to him share and advocate for the causes he wholeheartedly believed in would be the biggest understatement of the decade," you said with a fond chuckle before continuing, "even before he filed for his candidacy and even way before he became the man we all know now, he has always been outspoken about these things. He would always share with me his desire of making significant changes in the world, hoping no more children would have to endure what he did. As many of you know, Muzan, my dear husband, came from very humble beginnings, and unlike me, he has faced challenges far beyond my own. His vision and intuition surpass that of most, and so, as cliché as it may sound, his words and strong convictions carry a weight and authenticity that are strong enough to enable him in doing the impossible and inspire others to believe that a better future is within our grasp."

Akaza listened intently to your answer, finding himself captivated by your words. The way you addressed the press made you sound like a candidate yourself who's also sharing her platform. In that moment, he couldn't help but feel an overwhelming surge of pride as he continued to absorb your statements.

The journalists surrounding you mirrored his sentiment, clearly impressed by your response—no surprise from the esteemed Ballerina Queen of Phario.

It had been quite some time since you last entertained interviews, having retired and chosen to stay away from public engagements.

"Among the plethora of initiatives he wishes to take action on once he's elected, what resonated with you the most?"

You paused, contemplating the list of campaigns your husband had presented earlier. Just as you were about to respond, an arm encircled your waist and gave it a tender squeeze.

It was Muzan.

"Knowing my wife's love for animals, I'm certain she's most excited about what I have planned for animal welfare," Muzan interjected warmly.

You playfully rolled your eyes, eliciting amusement from not only your husband and your respective bodyguards but also the press. "You say that as if it's a bad thing," you quipped.

Muzan chuckled fondly. "Not at all, my love. Your passion for animals is one of the many reasons I fell for you."

The same journalist who had asked you the second question now directed his attention to Muzan, eager for his response. "Based on the most recent public survey, you're likely the most favored candidate to win the elections. What can you say about that, Sir Kibutsuji?"

Muzan smiled bashfully at the reporter, his eyes reflecting a mix of humility and determination. "I'm incredibly honored and thankful that our fellow countrymen have placed such faith and confidence in me. It's a humbling reminder of the trust they have in our vision for a brighter future. This campaign has always been about bringing real change to Phario, addressing the pressing issues our nation faces with innovative solutions and inclusive policies. The support we're seeing reflects not just my efforts, but the collective desire of our people for progress and unity."

He paused briefly, his gaze sweeping across the room, before continuing with renewed conviction, "Though I would like to emphasize that I don't take this trust lightly, it actually fuels my commitment to serve with integrity and purpose, to listen to the voices of every Pharian, and to lead with compassion and foresight."

By now, the press was highly satisfied with the answers both of you had given, granting you the freedom to depart. Clearly spent after the eventful day, you exchanged farewells and well-wishes before going your separate ways.

With Muzan's arm still draped around your waist, he guided you towards the grand entrance of the hotel. Meanwhile, Akaza made his way to the basement parking lot to retrieve your car, preparing to drive you both home. Kokushibo remained close to Muzan, ensuring your security as you awaited the car's arrival.

Turning to Muzan, unfazed by the bustling activity around you, you placed a tender kiss on his lips, smiling warmly. "Great job out there, my love. You did so well today. I'm incredibly proud of you."

Clearly elated, Muzan mirrored your smile and returned your affection with a gentle kiss on your forehead. "Thank you, darling. Your support means everything to me."

"Truly, I was beaming throughout your speech. You were absolutely amazing. Phario is fortunate to have such an admirable leader like you," you praised sincerely.

Right there and then, Muzan couldn't help but raise his eyebrow and playfully smile at you, prompting a confused raise of your own eyebrow.

"What's that look for?" you asked.

Muzan shook his head with a playful smirk before replying, "You're not showing favoritism now, are you, my love? I know you adore me, but let's keep it fair, hmm?" he teased, his tone light-hearted and affectionate.

You rolled your eyes at his playful accusation. "Ha-ha. Very funny, Muzan. I'll take it back, then."

Muzan laughed wholeheartedly, drawing attention once again. "I was just joking!" He then smiled warmly at you, his eyes reflecting pride. "Thank you," he said sincerely. "Hearing that from you means more than any applause, you know?"

You reached out to pinch his cheeks. "You play too much sometimes, you know?" you said with a chuckle before continuing, "But like I said, hearing you speak today—and in all those times you shared your aspirations with me from when we were students up to now, as you finally have the opportunity to make all come true—it's evident how deeply committed you are. Beyond your skills and capabilities, your passion is what makes you so compelling, Muzan. It's what makes me believe in you, too."

Minutes later, while waiting by the entrance, Akaza finally pulled up with the car. You and Muzan bid farewell to those around you before stepping into the comfort of your vehicle.

As the city lights blurred past the windows, you reflected on the day's events.

"You know," you began, glancing at Muzan beside you, "I have a feeling your speech today touched more hearts than just mine."

Muzan smiled softly, intertwining his fingers with yours. 

"I hope so. Though the election is still months away, and who knows how things might shift, that's why I don't want to take any of this for granted. I'm in this for the long haul. You'll be there with me, won't you?"

He looked over to you, and in that moment, despite his big words, he looked absolutely adorable, with his ruby eyes shining at you and his lips slightly pouty as he waited for your response, which you gladly provided through the means of placing yet another sweet and passionate kiss on his lips and squeezing his hand reassuringly. 

"I'll always be here for you, Muzan, through every challenge and triumph."

"I love you," he whispered lovingly, his expression sincere and heartfelt.

"And I love you," you replied with equal affection.

With a comforting squeeze of your hand, you nestled against Muzan's shoulder, feeling a sense of contentment as the car navigated through familiar streets towards home.

Meanwhile, in the driver's seat, Akaza's face remained unreadable. He was outwardly indifferent to the tender exchange between you and Muzan, but inwardly, he was seething with rage.

You think you're so clever, spouting all those promises and pretty words, playing the saint for the public eye. But I see through you. You're nothing but a manipulative snake, a liar wrapped in a facade of righteousness.

His gaze hardened and his grip on the wheel tightened as he stared ahead, the streetlights casting shadows on his determined expression.

One day, your mask will slip. 

I will fucking rip it off your face, even if it's the last thing I do.

[toomanystoriessolittletime]

How did it end?

Summary: A flashback to the night that changed your lives forever.

Pairing: past Joel Miller x fem. reader

Wordcount: 2.4k

Rating: T

Warnings: angst (so much angst), flashbacks, some really hurtful words, cursing, crying, pregnancy tests, Joel being a dick, Calvin being the best supportive brother

A/N: somehow I feel in my mind like this should have been worse, but I am sure you all do not feel like that at all so I'm sorry lol

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part three of invisible string

Even before the outbreak you dealt with your anxiety or with big life decisions the same way.

You were stress cleaning. 

After walking out from Joel you made your way into the town centre, picking up your kids and then got back home where your brother Calvin was already trying to cook something but you mutually made the decision that you were gonna cook while he bathed the kids. 

You both did not want him to burn the house down.

He wanted to ask you how it went, having run into Maria on his way home from the Patrol meeting, who had told her that you had been at the clinic to see Joel. 

But this wasn’t the time or the place. 

It ended up being a nice evening all things considered. 

You had dinner, played some boardgames, read a good night stories to your kids and watched them sleep in their little beds until the nervous energy in your body left you walking back downstairs.

Once the house got quiet after the kids and you brother were asleep (he had an early morning with his first big day on Patrol the next day) you were alone with your thoughts. 

And your thoughts were loud, and demanded to be heard. 

So you went into the kitchen, took a look at all the cleaning supplies that were still stocked under the kitchen sink and got to work. 

You started with the top of the kitchen cabinets, standing on the counter as you scrubbed what felt like centuries of dust off of them until you were satisfied and moved to inside the cabinets. 

What a picture it would be if one of your new neighbours caught the crazy lady next door deep cleaning the kitchen at 2 am during the literal apocalypse.

Cleaning usually had the power to make the thoughts inside your head shut up. 

But as you emptied the cabinets so you could clean them inside, your mind drifted to the last time you had tried to deal with whatever was going on in your life by extensively deep cleaning every surface around you. 

The Outbreak might have been an excuse for many people to let things like cleaning the place where they lived become unimportant. 

Which deep down it was of course.

Why have a clean kitchen when just down the street, behind the fences and walls the so called new government had pulled up, there were people and what once were people dying or fighting (or eating) each other?

But you always lived by the mindset of clean home, clean mind. 

And what you desperately needed right now was a clean mind. 

Two ten year old positive pregnancy tests you took this morning after feeling off for the last couple of weeks and missing you period were enough reason to freak out. 

But you couldn’t freak out. 

Joel would do that for you, you were sure. 

That was, if he ever decided to come home to you again after being on a run with Tess for the last four days. 

He hadn’t even told you or kissed you goodbye this time. 

You had woken up to a note on the kitchen table telling you that he’d be gone on a run with Tess and he didn’t know how long.

Something about your husband had changed in the last few months. 

It changed ever since Tommy left and Tess was his only influence outside of you. Not that you had much influence on anything he did nowadays. 

It wasn’t like he was the most attentive men to begin with. 

But you fell for him. 

You fell for the complicated, traumatised and closed off man who to this day was the most handsome man you had ever met. 

And deep down you knew he fell for you, mumbling his confessions of love into your skin when he thought you were asleep. 

It was the way he looked at you. 

The way he brought home a new book to read whenever he went out of the QZ. 

The way he made you forget about the fucked up word outside of the walls you made your home whenever he gave you his full attention. 

He wouldn’t have put a ring on your finger years earlier as you laid in his arms, asking you to be his until the day you both died, if he did not love you, would he?

You loved him, you loved him even when he seemed to make it his personal goal to make you hate him. 

He used to be home every night in the beginning. 

He used to love to spend time with you and you with him. Staying up just talking for hours if he wasn’t making love to you. 

Because even when he was fucking you, it felt different. More… intense. More passionate.  

He used to smile at you. 

By now you couldn’t remember the last time he smiled at you now. 

And by the time you had practically polished the whole shitty apartment you and Joel lived in it was dark outside and he still wasn’t home. 

In hopes he would be home and it would lift his mood you had made dinner that now sat cold on the stove.

It was after 11pm and you were tired, having been in the bathroom brushing your teeth when you heard the door unlock and open. 

A nervous flutter in your stomach made the dinner you had earlier almost come up but you took a deep breath, looking at yourself in the small mirror over the sink. 

You were wearing one of Joel’s old worn flannels, his familiar scent in your nose. 

What was the worst that could happen?

It was not like you could just turn back time?

You were pregnant and he just would have to deal with it. 

Right?

You would never forget the way his eyes hardened once you said the words

„I am pregnant.“

He had been in a relatively good mood when you joined him in the small kitchen, having already taken his shoes and coat off, his hair damp from the rain outside. 

It made you reconsider telling him for a tiny moment, wanting to just enjoy this with him. But maybe he would not react like you thought he would? Maybe he would be happy?

You wanted to ask a million question about how it went but you were too nervous, having instead kissed his cheek with a whispered „I miss you“ and then offered to warm up some food for him. 

He had put his hand on your waist, his fingers brushing over your stomach as he went into the bathroom, his lips against your temple telling you that he would just take a quick shower. 

It was after he ate, the table cleaned that you told him. 

Sitting across from him at the tiny shitty table you had, your hands flat on the surface, the silence after you told him the news sickening.

His whole face had changed, expression hard, by the time he opened his mouth to speak. 

„Is it mine?“ He asked and you just blinked at him, speechless, your head falling back as if he had slapped you, before you answered. 

„What do you mean? Who else would it be? We’re married,“ you said and he scoffed. 

„Doesn’t mean you don’t open your legs for anyone else while I’m gone,“ he sneered and you flinched at the accusation and the tone he used. 

Sucking your bottom lip in you looked at your hands, still on the table, nodding your head slowly. 

„Good to know what you think of me after all these years,“ you whispered, still trying to process his words. 

„What did you think would happen? That I’ll be happy? Newsflash darlin’, this isn’t one of your dumb romance novels you keep reading,“ he said, before he brought his fist down on the table, making you jump. He got up from where he was sitting, walking over to the cabinet that held all the liquor he scavenged, opening the one bottle of original Jack Daniel’s and taking a long sip. 

„You gonna get rid of it,“ he said and you looked at him. 

„Excuse me?“ You asked. 

„Don’t want no kids of mine in this fucked up world. And especially not with you,“ he said and you felt slapped again. One blow after the next coming from him. You crossed your arms in front of your stomach protectively. 

You had imagined his reaction would be bad, but this wasn’t bad. This was destroying you.

„So that’s it, you don’t want a kid, and I have to just comply?“

„That’s exactly how it is, sweetheart,“ he grinned darkly at you, shaking his head and leaning against the wall and you desperately tried to find the tiniest part of the person you had fallen in love with as you looked at him. 

But there was nothing left. 

Maybe you just had been too blind to see it until now.

„I thought you loved me,“ you whispered, tears in your eyes. 

„How can someone love you? You thought because I put a ring on your finger everything would be okay? We’d be a happy little family and live in this shitty apartment in this shitty QZ while the world around us is fucking dying? How did you think this would go?“ He asked. 

„You made it sound like I planned this. Do you think I like this? Do you think I like being pregnant by a man who even though treated me like the fucking dirt beneath his shoes for the last months, was still the man I thought I would spend the rest of my life with?“ 

„Then get rid of it and we can get back to it,“ he said and you scoffed.

„You really think things are gonna get back to how they were after you said all that?“ You asked. 

He shrugged. 

„Where would you go? You have no family. No friends. All you have is me,“ he said. 

„And you’re so different? Who do you have? Tommy left because…“

„Do not talk about my brother,“ he threatened and glared at you. 

You shook your head, taking a deep breath. 

He was drunk. 

This was not going anywhere. 

This would never go anywhere.

„Things are not going to go back. I can find someone better than you on every corner,“ he said and you could not stop the sob that shook your body and you were pretty sure you could hear your heart breaking. 

„I don’t love you. I never did,“ he said and the tears you had tried to hold in finally fell. 

„Get rid of this, before I take care of it,“ he said, and a chill ran down your spine at his tone. 

„And then get the fuck out of my life.“

You were in the last touches of finishing cleaning the kitchen when you heard footsteps coming down the stairs. 

You hadn’t even noticed the tears until Calvin pulled against his chest, his hand running soothingly up and down your back. 

„You wanna talk about it?“ He asked and you shook your head. 

„Not yet. Not ever if I’m honest,“ you mumbled and he chuckled. 

„Need to talk to him though,“ you said and leaned back, turning around to turn on the stove to heat up some water and make some tea for the both of you. Looking at the clock hanging on the wall you noticed that it was just before 5 am. 

„Don’t need to do anything,“ he said and opened the fridge, getting the lunch he had prepared the day before for his day out and grabbing some stuff to make himself a sandwich. 

„I can’t ignore him forever. As much as I would like to. He’s…. He’s here and he won’t go anywhere. Neither will we. So we have to…. Co-exist somehow.“

You both get to your tasks before you both sat down at the table, you with two mugs of tea, one for him, him with two sandwiches, one which he pushed towards you. 

„You still love him,“ your brother said after a while and you sighed, looking up at him. 

„Yeah. But it doesn’t matter. I don’t think I’l ever be able to forgive him for everything that happened,“ you smiled sadly. 

„Well,“ your brother said before he got up and put his plate in the sink.

„Then you should talk to him and tell him that so you can both move on with your lives.“

You followed him towards the front of the house where he put his shoes on and checked if he had everything in his little backpack for this first patrol. 

„What if he wants to be in their lives?“ You asked, nodding upstairs to where both your children were still sleeping. 

„Do you think he wants to? He made himself pretty clear from what you’ve told me,“ Calvin said. 

„I don’t know. It’s been a long time and he seemed…. He seemed really sorry? I just….“ You took a deep breath, shaking your head.

„Nope. I am not gonna spend any more time thinking about Joel Miller. I’m gonna go upstairs and take a two hour nap and then I’m gonna go and explore our new home while my children are learning stuff in an actual school,“ you said. 

„There you go!“ Calvin grinned.

„Be safe today!“ You said, grinning back and hugged him quickly. 

„You too,“ he smiled, before he opened the door, your face falling as you saw Joel stand on the porch, his hand held up in a fist as if he was about to knock. 

„I’m here to pick you up for patrol? Tommy’s gotta stay home today,“ Joel said as he looked between you and your brother. 

„Well that is gonna be fun,“ Calvin said, winking at you, before he stepped out and pulled the door shut behind him, giving Joel no chance to try to say anything more if he wanted to.

You watched them through the window next to the door as they walked down the porch and then down the street until they were out of sight. 

Letting your shoulders fall while you exhaled with a sigh you shook your head before you made your way upstairs. 

This was gonna be a long day. 

[blackhairedjjun]

flowers of every color | 10. red roses

overall summary: when your father is assigned as the new head gardener to the royal family, you are also tasked with helping him maintain the castle's many gardens and extensive floral arrangements. by chance you find yourself crossing paths with the "ice-cold" crown prince, choi yeonjun... who turns out to be not as ice-cold as everyone says he is.

chapter summary: yeonjun bumps into someone unexpectedly. amends are made.

word count: 2.7k

warnings: brief mentions of death (assassination) but in a trivial way

author's note: here we go 🙂 my friend introduced me to the queen charlotte soundtrack and it sets the perfect mood for writing this fic! recommended music while listening, esp. for the second half of the fic: if i ain't got you, i will always love you

prev | masterlist good ending | bad ending

it’s ten minutes to midnight when yeonjun gets out of bed, throws a robe over his nightclothes, and steps out of his room to visit you. he brings with him only the card and a few of the hyacinths you gave him, placed in the pocket of his robe; he considered bringing a lamp to light the way, but he figured that the light would also make it easier to spot him and arouse suspicion. besides, he thinks he knows the way from his bedroom to the gazebo well enough since he’s lived in this castle his entire life.

he moves from his bedroom to the long staircase at the end of the hallway, the thick carpeting thankfully muffling his footsteps, and he descends to the first floor of the castle with no problems. he starts heading down the main hallway towards the front entrance, the one closest to the gazebo, until he remembers that there are guards stationed nearby and he has no way to sneak past them. c’mon, choi, use your head. he exhales and turns around towards the kitchen side entrance, which is small and inconspicuous enough to be unguarded.

as he nears the kitchen his nerves start to get the better of him as he starts to wonder what on earth he would say to you. have you really suspected his true feelings? would you reject him if you knew? did you think that he and princess ajin are actually in a happy match? he’s so caught up in the swirl of nervous thoughts in his head that he doesn’t notice a small decorative table topped with a bowl of wax fruits in his way, and he walks right into it.

so much for being able to navigate without a lamp.

“aagh!”

he bumps his shin against the side of the table and yowls in pain. the table wobbles and the bowl of fruits starts to topple, and yeonjun dives to keep the bowl from falling and breaking. “no!”

he manages to catch the bowl with only a single wax apple falling off, but not without making a lot of noise. in his mind he starts praying, begging, that no one was around to hear him.

his prayers are unanswered.

“who’s there?!”

princess ajin, of all people, is standing in front of him and flashing a lamp in his direction. yeonjun’s heart thuds in his ears.

she narrows her eyes at him. “what on earth are you doing...”

“y-your majesty!” he straightens himself up and places the fruit bowl back on the table. “i... i could ask the same for you.”

“my room is too hot. this is the coldest part of the castle so i went here to cool off.”

“oh.” yeonjun runs a hand through his hair. “we can get you a cooler room if you want一”

“you didn’t answer my question. what on earth are you doing here?”

he starts to fidget, tugging at the sleeves of his robe. “the... the same as you...”

princess ajin coughs. “you’re a terrible liar, your majesty.”

“no, i mean一”

“are you planning to assassinate me?”

“what?! no!”

“are you planning to assassinate my mother?”

“no!” yeonjun stares at her, now offended that his future bride seems to have such a low opinion of him and his royal house. “c’mon, do you really think we’re a court of backstabbers?!”

the princess crosses her arms. yeonjun tries to read her face, but her expression is even more unreadable with only the dim light of her lamp illuminating her. his heart thuds even faster at the thought of what questions might come next. all she had to do was prod him a few more times and his secret rendezvous would be revealed.

finally, she sighs. “you know what? i don’t care.”

he blinks. “you... don’t?”

“i really don’t, your majesty.” at that moment the impenetrable facade she has put up finally fades, and all yeonjun sees is exasperation. princess ajin, more than anything, is tired.

she coughs again. “look, this... engagement between you and i, it’s all just politics. you know that, i know that, every damn member of your court and mine know that. why do we have to pretend to like each other and say nice things and have tea? it’s all a game. so if you want to do something that isn’t part of that game, go right ahead! good for you, actually.”

yeonjun’s mouth falls open. “do you... really mean that?”

“as long as you aren’t threatening me or my court, i don’t care at all.”

“what if... what if we are planning to assassinate someone?”

the princess laughs. “you? you and your family are too earnest, i doubt you’d do that. we did our research on your house, remember? no history of shady dealings whatsoever.”

“that’s true.” he looks away from her and tilts his head, trying to hide the embarrassed smile now forming on his face. somehow this encounter has gone from nerve-wracking to mortifying… and relieving.

“i mean it, choi yeonjun.” princess ajin catches his attention with his full name. “if you’re off doing something that isn’t politics, do it. i envy you. i’ve spent my entire life being my mother’s pawn. don’t… end up like me.”

he never thought of the princess as anything more than an extension of her mother’s will, and a twinge of guilt pierces him.

“i’m sorry, your majesty.”

“don’t be. now whatever it is you were doing, go.”

“is there—”

“don’t pity me! i said go!”

“okay, okay! sheesh…”

yeonjun starts to walk past princess ajin, and as he spares one more glance at her, he swears to himself that he sees a hint of sadness forming on her face.

he wishes that he could help her too, but right now he doesn’t have the time to help everyone. it’s nearly midnight, and his first priority is you.

—

at five minutes past midnight, you pace around the gazebo. you tried to get a bit of sleep in your quarters before your rendezvous, but you were filled with so much nervous energy that you couldn’t even close your eyes. your mind swam with all sorts of worries about how your meeting might go, and now that you were at the meeting place itself, the nervousness swirls around even more in your stomach and the worries nip at you even more.

you aren’t expecting yeonjun to arrive on the dot, not with how labyrinthine the castle can be, yet your mind can’t help but dream up worst-case scenarios. what if he was caught sneaking out and ordered back into his room? what if someone found out about your rendezvous and locked him in? or worse, what if he changed his mind and decided not to accept your apology after all?

just when it seems that the nervousness will consume you whole, he arrives.

he’s hastily dressed in only a robe over his nightclothes, but it doesn’t matter. relief washes over you as he runs toward you and wraps you in an embrace, and for the first time in weeks you bask in his warmth and breathe in the floral scent clinging to his clothes. his arms wrap around your waist and he rests his chin on your head, and at last your worries fall away and the tension in you breaks. 

you start to sob against his chest. he holds you as you let out every single regret and fear you’ve held in your heart out through your tears. even as you cry, you still take in the feeling of him around you, the rhythm of his breathing, the touch of his hands on your back, and it’s enough to soothe you and ground you despite all your worries. you calm down eventually, bringing your own arms around his neck as you lift your head up to look at him.

“i’m sorry,” you say, your voice hoarse. “i didn’t mean it when i said we shouldn’t be friends. i was so stupid…”

you feel the tears start to form and yeonjun only embraces you again, this time with a tighter hold. “shh, it’s okay. i know you didn’t mean it.”

even with a thousand apologies left to say, you say nothing. you don’t need to, not when yeonjun is holding you so close, his hands rubbing circles into your back, swaying the two of you ever so slightly. a part of your heart starts to mend and you start to feel that, just maybe, everything will be okay.

“i should’ve done more to protect you,” he murmurs into your ear. “i got you into all that trouble, and i heard how the staff didn’t trust you and all... of course people were going to be suspicious, i should’ve been more careful...”

this was not what you wanted to hear. his words snap you out of your regrets and you pull away from him. 

“y/n一”

your voice finds its steadiness. “yeonjun, please don’t blame yourself. you didn’t do anything wrong, okay? all you wanted was someone to be there for you and see you for who you are and there is nothing wrong with that. i said i would be that person and then i wasn’t there for you. i’m the one who failed.”

“then you can’t put all the blame on yourself either! i put you in a hard position. i’m the prince here, i’m the one who could’ve changed things, and i didn’t do that for you.”

“you don’t need to change anything for me! you already have enough on your plate! you’re engaged, that’s enough to worry about!”

“i know that!” yeonjun’s voice is desperate as he grabs your hands. “i don’t need to worry about you, but i still do. i want to worry about you. i want to care for you, even though there’s a million other things i should care about. when you pushed me away, when i was off getting engaged, it was still you i thought about. it’s always been you.”

you tremble at his words. you move towards him and this time you initiate the embrace, wrapping your arms around his waist and pulling him towards you. he buries his face in the crook of your neck and you feel his breaths become more uneven and a few tears brush against your skin.

your hand comes up to stroke his hair as you come to terms with what he just told you. your heart fills with an odd ache, one that somehow feels both relieving and painful at the same time. you want to take the care he has for you and hold it in your heart, but something has to budge first.

the wall of emotions looms over you once again, taller than ever, but yeonjun’s words fill you with a new bravery. you don’t just climb over the wall — you vault over it.

“yeonjun, look at me, please.”

he lifts his head and gazes at you with slightly parted lips. he is so close to you and it fills you with that familiar warmth.

“i care about you too, so much, and i can’t stand not being around you. but i heard that you were getting engaged to someone else and i hated it! i hate that you have to look at someone else and call her yours! and i felt like i couldn’t do anything about it, so i pushed you away because i was so damn scared that i’d lose you to her anyway. but it wasn’t your fault and all i did was make it hurt more for both of us, and i... i just...” your voice cracks but you keep going. “all i want is to be yours, yeonjun. not any princess 一 me. i’m in love with you, and maybe i shouldn’t be, but i can’t hold it in anymore.”

by the time you finish your whole body is trembling. there are so many emotions coursing through you that you can’t even name them, but all you register is yeonjun gazing back at you. one of his arms pulls you close as his free hand cups your cheek. his face softens and his voice is so low that you barely catch his words:

“you don’t have to hold it in.”

the world stops. he leans forward, his face mere inches from yours, and in his eyes you see more than just the fondness you’ve always seen. this time, you see love.

you give in.

he kisses you and you lose yourself completely in him. all you feel is how soft his lips are, how gently they move against yours, how his arms bring you close until the warmth of his body collides with your own. he kisses you tenderly, slowly, and in the safety of his arms your inhibitions melt away. your wall of emotions crumbles to reveal the yearning you’ve always held.

you kiss him back more fervently, pressing against him and tangling your fingers in his hair, and you never want to let go. he meets your intensity and deepens the kiss and you let him, sighing into his mouth and sinking more and more into him until he fills your senses completely. you’ve wanted him for so long that you can’t hold yourself back.

even when you break apart for air you keep your hold on each other. he presses chaste kisses on your lips in between breaths and you lean toward him, your forehead touching his.

he smiles at you, and you’ve never seen him look so beautiful. “i really wanted to do that,” he says.

your face starts to warm. “me too.”

for a few moments you simply hold each other. yeonjun buries his face into your neck again and you can still feel his smile; you run your hands through his hair while his hands rub up and down your back. you wish that you could freeze this moment and never leave it.

then a sobering thought interrupts you and you break the silence. “what’s going to happen to us?”

yeonjun lifts his head and holds your face in both his hands, stroking your cheek with his thumb. he says nothing but his eyes lock with yours, and that alone speaks volumes. you can tell that he wishes he could say the right words that would somehow end his engagement and free him to be yours.

“we’ll figure something out, together. i promise,” he says at last.

“please don’t promise me anything you can’t keep.” 

“y/n, i swear, we will solve this! for both of us. please.”

he falls silent but his eyes plead with you to believe him. despite his promise both he and you know that he cannot guarantee a stop to the engagement, and your heart starts to feel heavy again as the doubt and fear settle in.

but you take one look at yeonjun and think that you can’t let those feelings win just yet — not when you have him, not when you fought to give yourself even a scrap of hope. “can you promise me something else too?”

“anything.”

“come to the greenhouse with me first.”

you take him by the hand as you lead him out of the gazebo, through the gardens, and into the greenhouse. the feel of your hand in his has never felt so warm before, and you miss the warmth immediately when you let go to push the greenhouse door open.

you light a spare lamp inside and, with only the dim light, you make your way to a row of roses. they’re neatly arranged by color with the thorns already trimmed off for delivery, so it doesn’t take you long to find what you need. yeonjun’s eyes widen as you head past the yellow ones, past the pink ones, over to the red roses, and you take three of them.

i love you.

you head back to him and he meets you halfway. he takes your hands as you still hold the roses.

when you speak, your voice is surprisingly stable. “no matter what happens… promise me you’ll keep these, okay?”

his fingertips brush your knuckles. he doesn’t need an explanation to understand what the flowers mean and what you’re really asking of him; he can see it in the way you look at him. promise me that you’ll always love me.

yeonjun pries the roses from your hands, then closes the space between the two of you to brush his lips against yours. 

“i promise.”

notes: 🥰🥰🥰

as of this writing the good ending has more votes in my poll, so i will be posting the good ending first! note that both endings take place after a time skip of several months to nearly a year.

taglist (CLOSED) @seosalad @lilplilplilp @yeonboy @pyuae @hyuneyeon @strawbrinkofdeath @yushiu @mazeinthemoon @banggyu0308 @shytubatu @kyaneosprincess @agustdiv1ne @whippedforbeomgyu @justineasian @skywithf1 @wrongbathroom @choizzn @bangchansbae @huskyhunny @catsyoon @flowerbe0m

[monbons]

Ten Questions for Writers

Thank you @artsyunderstudy, @roomwithanopenfire, @emeryhall, and @run-for-chamo-miles for the tags! I am a wee baby, so I wasn't sure I should answer. But I've loved all the asks going around (the Top 5 fics posts were great and my TBR is so long now!), so I figured why not?

How many works do you have on AO3? 3

What’s your total AO3 word count? 53,184 (I posted my first fic ever for EGF just this past February, so I guess that's good?)

What fandoms do you write for? Carry On always and forever

Do you respond to comments? Why or why not? Yes! As everyone has already stated, responding to comments is how you build community. If I hadn't gone back and forth in comments, I would never have found the Discord or made so many amazing fandom friends. BUT ALSO! I had no idea how AMAZING comments were when all I did was binge fic and kudos. Then, I posted Kill Em With Kindness, got overwhelmingly nice responses, and now I make a point of ALWAYS replying and--more importantly---commenting on fics written by others. (This is a blanket apology to all the lovely writers whose fics I read and did not comment on before. But hopefully I've gushed at you since then in my responses to YOUR comments on my fics, or in person, or on tumblr, or on Discord...I hope to someday go back and comment on a re-read to make up for it!)

Have you ever had a fic stolen? No?

Have you ever co-written a fic before? Also no, but I'd love to! My first three fics were 100% me. With "Baz in a Bubble," I've bounced ideas around with anyone who will listen, including outlining help from @hushed-chorus and plot brainstorming with @thewholelemon and @talentpiper11. Since it is a full AU not based on an existing work, the drafting has moved MUCH SLOWER than my previous three fics combined and figuring out "what's next" has been harder, so collaboration has significantly helped! The story went from one where Simon was more of a plot mechanism for Baz's growth to having a fully developed Simon with his own subplot and meaningful relationships that complement the SnowBaz of it all. That wouldn't have happened without collaboration, so I imagine co-writing is an even better experience---especially because I second guess every word I write. I'm sure having a partner would help with that!

What’s your all-time favorite ship? SnowBaz owns my soul

What are your writing strengths? I've been told my dialogue and pacing are good. Maybe also writing sweet moments? Literally the #1 word people use to describe my plots/characters in comments is "adorable." Not sure how to feel about that one... In any case, I am still so new I am only just developing strengths.

What are your writing weaknesses? I want to be able to write with a punch, if that makes sense? I think there are so many gifted writers in this fandom who have such a beautiful way with words that they can create a whole moment in a single four word sentence. I am verbose, which waters down a moment and makes me feel like my stories are narration heavy. I also have trouble describing things precisely with new or different words so I am not constantly repeating myself. Precision of language and an extensive vocabulary are sort of required to pack a linguistic punch. Finally, smut. Love to read it, physically hurts to write it. (I blame the residual Catholic guilt...) But I am committed to learning so my next EGF is not described as "adorable."

First fandom you wrote for? Carry On. Why write anything else?

Not sure who else may have already done this, but here are some no pressure tags: @hushed-chorus, @bookish-bogwitch, @thewholelemon, @cutestkilla,

@shrekgogurt, @you-remind-me-of-the-babe

[ofduskanddreams]

a not-so-brief announcement:

I have a lot of unfinished WiPs. Having so many WiPs (entirely my fault: too many ideas + not enough time) has been a large source of anxiety for me in recent weeks, to the point where it's been difficult for me to write at all.

Logically, I know that I'm doing this for free in my free time—I am under no obligation to create other than the one I set for myself. Realistically, I often feel like I'm letting you all down when I don't post/write enough. I know it isn't true, but it often feels like my value to this fandom is measured by how much content I can contribute to it. I've only been here for a little over a year, and I still often feel like a new kid trying to prove their worth.

Thinking this way sends me down a very unproductive spiral of putting pressure on myself to write/create and feeling guilty when I can't do as much as I want (my self-imposed expectations are also too high.) Instead of being a fun creative outlet, writing fic hasn't been enjoyable recently. That saddens me.

I hate feeling this way, honestly, because I love writing, I love storytelling, I love this fandom and these characters and the community I've gained here. I want to be here and I want to be writing because I have so many ideas and I love the stories I've already told/started to tell. But I also need it to be fun for me.

My list of WiPs, combined with all of my tangled feelings about writing, currently have me feeling like Sisyphus standing at the bottom of the hill trying and failing to catch a glimpse of the top around the massive boulder in front of him. I don't know how to find the joy that I've lost, but I do know that taking some of the pressure off of myself is a good place to start. This brings me to the reason I started writing this post.

The modern AU fic I started writing for Elucien Week has, in that classic turn of events, turned out to be far more extensive of a story than I intended. I estimate a total of 7-8 thick chapters. I have 10k words already written but that's only the first 1.25 chapters.

For the sake of my mental health, I will not be posting what I've written so far tomorrow as I originally had planned. I just can't deal with another WiP hanging over my head right now, I'm sorry.

I'm also going to give myself a break from writing/posting writing for the next few weeks because I think that my being burnt out is likely a major contributor to why writing fic hasn't been fun. I'll still be around, don't worry. Hopefully, this break will give me time to catch up on reading everyone else's fics.

Wow, it turns out I really needed to get that off my chest. I know this was long, thank you for listening <3

[amethystina]

Hi! I just read your fic, who holds the devil, and I've been wondering if you have a schedule of when to update a new chapter. like, do you update one chapter once a month or does it depend on whether you have time and energy to write? Also, how many chapters do you plan for who holds the devil?

Hi there. No, I don't have a schedule or can give any guarantees when or how often I will post, especially now that I'm struggling with burnout on top of my long Covid. There are also some other projects that deserve my attention right now, so Who Holds the Devil isn't currently at the top of my list of priorities, I'm afraid. Basically, it depends on when I have time and energy to write, yes. But rest assured that I will update it as soon as I can :)

As for how many chapters it will be, I can't say for sure. Not because I don't know what will happen — I do, and have pretty extensive notes on future plot points — it's just that it's difficult to gauge how long each chapter will be and, therefore, how many I'll have to write. So I've just stopped guessing at this point. It'll be as many chapters as is required, I guess?

Sorry I can't be more specific.

[mischievouschan4]

Fic Tag Game

Thanks for tagging me, @starwalkertales!!! I've had my eye on this one for a while, and now I have the push to do it haha

Here we go~

How many works do you have on ao3?

For both my handles: 19, but technically 20 if you count the one I abandoned............oopsie 😅 Specifically for Star Wars: 17

2. What's your ao3 word count?

Amazingly, it's a nice even number right now?! 126,000 😲

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Main fandom: Star Wars (Obikin, QuiObiAni) Previous fandoms: Hocky RPF, MDZS, Promare

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

1) WorldBigFlameUp with 620 kudos; this is for the Promare movie, GaloxLio with (dirty) domestic fluff post canon 2) Transference with 471 kudos; my current QuiObiAni golden child; Obi-Wan time travels to save the galaxy and receive aaalllll the love he should have gotten the first time around 3) Wisdom Teeth Woes with 260 kudos; really really cute SFW Obikin, the obligatory post wisdom teeth removal amnesia fic 4) How Anakin Got his Groove Back with 161 kudos; switch Obikin, I fondly refer to this one as "BDSM fic" 😌 she's filfthy, she's fun(ny) - maybe?, she's got BSE (big switch energy) from Obi-Wan LOL 5) I Know You Love Me with 150 kudos; HockeyRPF, my Toews/Kane (bottom Jonny) fic from the Chicago Blackhawks glory days *big sigh* **tears up** And the honorable mention abandoned fic (Thorki) at 718 kudos LOL (no judgment, okay?? I was a practically a bebe when I wrote it 😅)

5. Do you respond to comments?

................................I need to be better about this. I definitely do for Transference every time I update with a new chapter, but I find it hard to keep up for some of my other fics (EVEN THOUGH I CHERISH EVERY SINGLE ONE!!!!)

6. What's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

nOnE oF mY fIcS hAvE aNgStY eNdInGs 👀 (like actually)

7. What's the fic your write with the happiest ending?

I swear they're all happy! But I think the sugary-est fic overall has to be How to Fall in Love with a Lawyer, you can't say no to Obikin engagement! But also, I think The Kenobi-Skywalker Family Goes Viral is also quite adorable (not that I'm biased or anything ha)

8. Do you get hate on fics?

I have been lucky! No hate so far, just some very astute fans of canon that have pointed out inconsistencies haha (which is 100% acceptable)

9. Do you write smut? What kind?

HA... YES! I do lots and lots and lots of smut! But almost all of it is MxM I think!

10. Do you write cross-overs?

Historically, no. Would I be open to it? ...I think I could be convinced...

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

I don't think so!

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Yesssss!!!! And it is such an honor?!?! My QuiObi fic Seasons of Love was translated by the amazing @cakushi into Russian😭💓💓💓

13. Have you ever cowritten a fic before?

NOT YET!!! BUT SOON!!! I'm looking at you, @dark--whisperings 💖

14. What's your all time favourite ship?

QuiObi probably? 🥰 It's definitely my comfort ship.

15. What's your WIP you like to finish, but doubt you ever will?

Oh goodness, welp, I have a WIP called Love and Devotion (MDZS/The Untamed fandom) which is a pseudo-Regency AU for Lan Zhan/Wei Ying that's just sitting there 3/maybe 6 ish chapters in........... I really do want to finish it, but I need to get my head out of Star Wars first....

16. What are your writing strengths?

Visualizing situations to translate them into words

CUTE FLUFF

Writing in a way that's comfortable for me to read out loud

Extensive research (both for smut and non-smut content hehe 😼)

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

GRAMMAR (I switch between present and past depending on the fic and it screws with my brain so much)

Pacing 😠 (How much detail is too much detail?? IDK)

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

Select lines yes, I have for Love and Devotion since the original content is in Chinese and that's my second language, but entire chunks? Definitely not. I usually just do italics to signify another language haha.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

I'm honestly not super sure LMAO back in my fanfiction.net days I wrote for both Death Note and Alex Rider hahaha

20. Favourite fic you've ever written?

Probably Transference haha when you put that much effort into a long-fic, it's hard to not put it on a pedestal.

Thank you so much for tagging me!!! Had lots of fun thinking about these.

Apologies if you've been tagged already, and apologies if I missed you! Anyone can pick this up if you find it interesting!!

@dark--whisperings @thesilverqueenlady @dreaminghour @briliantlymad @anakinsthot @cakushi @to-proudly-go (Omg I’m sorry I left you off!)

[butcherlarry]

Exercise Fic Recs 19

Happy Pride!  Have some fanfic recs ✨🌈🦄🏳‍🌈✨🌈👽💖🦇

bloodletting by TheResurrectionist   (Superbat, wip.  Star Wars/Mandalorain cross over)

Sweat it Out by supermanstoddlerleash  (Superbat, complete.  Short fic about Clark being fascinated by Bruce’s body as he works out)

Save fae-ce by oliviaandersonisntmyrealnamelol  (Batfam, wip.  Continuation of fae Bruce and his fae children, Tim edition)

Cigarettes and Hypocrites by minnow_doodle_doo  (Batfam, complete.  Outsider prospective.  Bruce and smoking and dealing with grief)

Roadtrip Vigilantes series by Beabasball (beabaseball)  (Batfam, wip.  Bruce stays with the League of Shadows, but then decides to leave after meeting Dick.)

All Roads by ChrisLeon  (Superbat, complete.  Kal-el comes to Earth as an adult, becomes a superhero, and befriends Batman.  Then become more than friends (if you know what I mean *wiggles eyebrows*)).  

Sham-pagne by ChrisLeon  (Superbat, complete.  Superman and Bruce Wayne start “dating” after Superman was photographed flying to Wayne manor after being injured.  Shenanigans ensue.)

Fear Needs Hope by ChrisLeon  (Superbat, complete.  Identity porn shenanigans!)

Unreasonable Love by elizabethgee  (Superbat, wip.  ALIEN CLARK DEALING WITH ALIEN FEEEEEELINGS TOWARD BRUCE.  I was SO PUMPED when I saw this fic update, and the latest chapter is SO GOOD.  GO READ IT.  NOW.)

Dad’s New Boyfriend by TheClamBeforetheStorm  (Bruharvey/Twobats, wip.  The batkids are not happy about Bruce’s new boyfriend, but they each come to accept it after seeing how they make each other happy)

Croissant and latte (mudslide!)

This big guy was perched on top of my work’s roof when I got there.  I had to take a picture!

I love the green heron’s neck, it looks like a weird extension out of his body:

TORTLE ON TORTLE ROCK

A robin!  With his breakfast!

Babieessssss!  They’re getting so big!

Red-winged black bird:

House finch!

The blue heron decided to come down from the roof:

I think this is a northern rough-winged swallow:

Got to the arboretum and took some pictures of pretty flowers:

Butterfly!!!

I tried to get a picture of a cardinal in flight.  It kinda worked?  It looks like he’s zooming around like Superman!

An eastern phoebe?  I think?  Or some kind of flycatcher:

LOOK AT THIS COOL DRAGONFLY!  I GASPED WHEN I SAW THE PICTURE!

LOOK AT THIS BARRED OWL!!!  YOU CAN SEE AN INDIGO BUNTING TOOOOOOOO!!!!!

A white-tailed deer!  She was hongry:

white-breasted nuthatch!  

indigo bunting again:

I don’t know why, but this picture of a cardinal cracks me up!  It looks like he’s questioning all his life decisions:

The plant had so many butterflies on it!

MORE TORTS:

ngl, this guy looks pretty chill:

This is the second time in a row I’ve seen a ruby-throated hummingbird on the top of this tree!  Maybe they like the vantage point?

waterfalls!

TORTLE DETECTED.  He just poked his head out and then hid under the water:

More waterfalls!  This one is a new one!  I can’t wait for the construction to be done so I can see all the new areas:

a flycatcher (?) checking out the new area:

Bluejay!  He was a bit shy and didn’t want to show his face :(

More pretty flowers and scenery:

[sharkinlovewithadolphin]

top 5 rinharu fics? ❤️💙

Thank you!! &lt;3 put “top 5” anything in my ask and i will answer Okay so here’s a shameful fact about me: I rarely read rinharu fanfics anymore. This is not because I don’t want to or that there’s not any good ones I haven’t read already out there (there is!! so many!!), but I simply don’t have time to read that much fanfiction in general anymore. :/ If I have time for fanfiction, I either write or read through my own WIPs. I try my best to read other people’s RH fics, not just for the pleasure of reading, but also to engage with other writers and write comments for them, and discover and appreciate other ways of writing the characters, but there's only so much time in a day. ;-; That being said, I also never really kept tabs on the fics I used to read/still read. I never wrote them down or saved them in any way, not even with an ao3 bookmark (i regret this so much), and so it would require extensive amount of time to go through my giant ao3 history to try to rank them properly. However! I do want to answer this ask with some recs (that aren't my own fics lol) in some way, so here goes the ones that sticks out the most in my current memory: 1) Family (3577 words) by NamelessPastel. An absolutely adorable fic in which Rin is babysitting his cousin and Haru comes around and ends up helping him. 2) Chicken Scratch (Ongoing, 88.754 words) by MatsuokasPonytail (@matsuokas-ponytail). Lovely and captivating fic with gardener!Rin and rich kid!Haru. It was wild to follow from its origin in @tomakehimfree's wonderful and sexy art and all the anons in her askbox, to the fic's first chapter and all the exciting chapter updates that followed. Sadly it’s on hiatus (and likely stays that way), but 1) what's there is still 100% worth reading! 2) I still naively hope to get that new chapter mail notification any day now lol. You can read all the individual chapters here on tumblr too. 3) The Long Engagement (25/25 chapters, 175,128 words) by RubyEliz. It's an arranged marriage fic with tons of angst and miscommunication that'll have you at the edge of your seat, then leave you with a warm little hug of a happy ending. This is the last longfic I've read of RH. It grabbed a hold of my attention SO hard and made me pull an all-nighter just to finish it. I couldn't put it down at all. 4) AO3@Misila (@misila / @nenufair) has written SO many RH fics, way more than I’ll ever get the chance to read (i think. Might dare myself one day jkfdk). She writes extremely well, so I can recommend checking her extensive list of works out! She definitely has at least one fic for any rinharu shipper’s taste. 5) I own physical copies of the fanfics Inked (tattoo artist x biker au), Dinner For One (angst with a happy ending) and Fluid Like Water (Olympic setting) by AO3@ellerean/@ellereanwrites (formerly tumblr@letsswimtogethernanase. I love them all a lot. The fanfics were the first RH "fan-made" merch pieces I ever bought (I think?), so they mean a lot to me and I feel privileged that I can have them displayed on my RH alter. <3

[forabeatofadrum]

20 questions for fic writers

Thank you @wellbelesbian for the tag! Here goes:

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

... 162. what the FUCK.

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

1,323,028. WHAT THE FUCK

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Well, almost half of those 162 fics are Glee fics. My other two bigger fandoms are Check, Please! and the Simon Snow Series.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Everything will be alright, the only Brooklyn Nine-Nine fic I have ever written.

All shall know the wonder, probably my favourite Check, Please! fic that I've written, so hooray!

The last to know, which was a reaction fic for the end of year 3 of Check, Please!

How lucky we are to be alive right now, which is my first ever Carry On fic and I don't even like it that much anymore, but I guess it's the origin story yada, yada.

The 2020 Young America New Year’s Eve Gala, my sole Red, White & Royal Blue fic. I wrote it in 2020, but thanks to the movie, it got a lot more views and kudos.

I am actually surprised (but also not, I think I have seen this before) that there is no Glee fic in this list. My Glee/Klaine fic with most kudos is the 15th on the list!!! (It's Myosotis sylvatica, by the way.) (My goddamn Love, Victor fic is higher on the list WACK!!)

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

No. I do read all of them, but I always feel super awkward responding. Idk. It's a me problem, I guess. So I only respond when I have something specific to say or if a comment totally blows me away and I want to at least acknowledge that. Although... I am behind on that as well.

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Hmmm. Does Your heart is in your chest again, not hanging from your sleeve count? It's a Next to Normal AU Klaine story, and if you know the musical, you know.

There's also My rose-coloured boy, a pre-Wayward Son Snowbaz fic that shows that Simon is not dealing with shit and it has an unhappy ending, I suppose, but it also fits in canon so does it count, because in canon, the entire Snowbaz story does have a happy end.

OH WAIT A HOT MINUTE THERE IS ALSO MY WIP Dalton 8 Days of Wrath. That fic is supposed to be Sad Shit Only!!!

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

I love writing happy endings, so I am not sure which one is the happiest.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Nope, luckily.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Nope. I uhhhh have a whole ass essay on why I don't.

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?

Yes, I am one of those "how can I Klaine-ify" bitches. The craziest is probably my Glee/Animal Crossing fic Wandering. I don't like it THAT much, but it was fun. I also had a very extensive, not-published Glee/Barbie Mariposa and the Fairy Princess crossover (yeah) once.

And I've been talking for ages about how I will one day write a Glee/Winx Club crossover.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

I unfortunately assume that it's happened, since ya know, AO3 scrapers.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

I know someone wanted to translate Charms & Pearls into Italian, but I don't know it's happened. @klaineship2 also translated one of my Hearing verse fics into German: Musik nur, wenn sie laut ist. I once read this translation out loud and sent it to my German friend @vreniii and I may have hurt her ears.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Yes! Call Me Maybe, my aroace Agatha fic with @captain-aralias and Stage Fright, a Halloween Klaine fic with @spookyklaine, @esperantoauthor, @justgleekout, @snarkyhag, sopheadraws, MissFlurry and keyiqiang.

14. What’s your all time favourite ship?

(Yes, Alex, I still say OTP.)

Klaine. Look, I will be a Klainer 12 till the day I die. You will catch me crying over Teenage Dream (gcv) at the nursing home.

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

I have... so many WIPs. So. Many. WIPs. I don't want to give up on them yet.

16. What are your writing strengths?

I like to think I can write dialogue and that I can be pretty funny.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Alex, I so feel you on the second hand embarrasment thing with sappy stuff. I also bitch a lot about not being able to write romantic endings. I also have struggles with describing movement.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

I mean. I have done it before, most noteably Paradiso, aap noot mies and Ik was meteen ondersteboven., so I am down for it.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Published? Glee.

When I was a wee child writing stories about other media, Winx Club and Harry Potter, although I never published those.

20. Favorite fic you’ve written?

OH. Oof. In no order, split by my 3 main fandoms (because I cannot narrow it down!):

For Klaine: Myosotis series (especially part 1 and 5), Mendacious, I’d cry a river just for you, All the pretty things that we could be and Ljubim te.

For Snowbaz: Paradiso series (especially part 1 and 3, rip part 2), Time After Time and make a fire out of this flame.

For Zimbits: All shall know the wonder and Center Ice.

Forgive me for not tagging anyone. I am taking the lazy "everyone is free to do it!" approach because I am tired!!!

[booksandabeer]

*Obi Wan voice* Hello there! I found myself wondering just now, since clearly you have an extensive list of stucky fics that you read and rec, if you have a favourite fic? I see you mention so many, so I assume your reading a lot of them all the time, sooooo is there *the one* that you found for yourselves? That is all, have a nice day (◕‿◕✿)

Hello there, mysterious person speaking in Obi Wan voice! 😊

Thanks for the ask! To my equally great joy and despair I do indeed read A LOT of fanfic…and yes, I have spreadsheets, folders, lists…it’s a whole (slightly insane) thing. So my first reaction to your question was hysterical laughter. One? I’m allowed to pick only one? *makes big sad eyes at you*

Ok, well. Hm, let’s narrow it down. I kind of consider my AO3 bookmarks my unofficial faves collection (but I haven’t updated that in quite some time, and I almost never put WIPs on there and I can think of at least 2 very strong contenders in that category right now that I should definitely list, so take that with a grain of salt.) In my bookmarks I use the tag ‘All Time Favorites - Top 10 - Best of the Best’, and scrolling through those I just noticed that not only have I used this tag for 11 fics (go figure) but I’m also not even sure about my selection anymore. Ask me again in 3 months what my top 10 are and you’ll probably get a different answer again. Ok, I realize I’ve been waffling on and on in a desperate attempt to not have to make a choice, but I cannot pick just one. Have three instead (even that is painful). And since I’m a cheating cheater who cheats, all three are actually series… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

Notebook No. 6 by magdaliny | 2 parts | 56K | M to E rating

Author's summary: There's a story and it goes like this.

I have already talked about my absolutely deranged love for this series (the first part at least) here, so I'll quote myself:

Come for the spectacular Bucky-voice and his exquisite descriptions of the transcendent love he feels for one Steven Grant Rogers, and stay for his musings on travel, science, religion (Bucky is Jewish in this and the way he confronts, explores and lives his Jewishness is one of my favorite aspects of this fic), history, philosophy and just humanity in general.

This is a story that is at once full of despair and pain, but also brimming with hope and life and love. Yes, it gets very dark at some points, and it will destroy you multiple times before the end. But it will also help you pick yourself up off the floor, gently take you by the hand and say: But look at all the beauty in the world—don’t you forget about the beauty.  

The Hundred Year Playlist by @girlbookwrm | 6 regular parts + 1 collection of “B-sides” | 300K | T to M rating

Author's summary: Steve and Bucky, start to finish.

What it says on the tin. I call this the "Canon-Compliant Stucky Bible" (it ends before IW, and some parts have been shafted by newer canon, but still) or alternatively "The Stucky Sample Platter" because it's got it all: Pre-War Stucky! Wartime Stucky! Bucky: The Winter Soldier Years! Steve: Man out of Time! Bucky Recovery Fic! Wakanda Stucky (aka these ding dongs finally get together)! And every single part is brilliant. Tbh, I never know if it's a good idea to rec this to people who are fairly new to Stucky because I fear it will ruin them for everything else (at least the canon compliant/adjacent stuff). But then again, that's stupid because there are so many wonderful stories in this fandom, I have yet to run out of them!

Welcome Home, Son by @beaarthurpendragon | 2 parts | 50K | M to E rating

Author's summary: Fuck IW/EG. This is how it should have gone. Featuring Bucky & Ayo friendship, a million and one Stucky feels and a soft slice-of-life epilogue.

I have also talked about this series before, so I'll quote myself again:

A Bucky-centric character study set during his time in Wakanda, about the rediscovering/rebuilding of his identity, his friendship with Ayo (her characterization is wonderful in this), coming to terms with his past and his potential future(s), and his complicated feelings about and for Steve Rogers.

I would love to quote some lines here just to showcase how well-written and thought-out, how beautiful and poignant this story is, but I don't want to lessen the impact during the actual reading experience. So, please read this. And then read the sequel. You won't regret it.

--

Ok, dear mysterious person, i hope you got something out of this very long reply. I have to quickly post this now, otherwise I will start to rethink my choices (again).

If anybody else wants a rec or just to talk fanfic, my ask box is always open!

[someidiotwithalaptop]

The has() selector

Okay so—I've been playing around with CSS code for site skins on Ao3 for a while now, and it turns out they let you do some pretty bonkers specific things, including: 

1. hiding all fics with a particular tag   1a. (unless it has a particular other tag)   1b. (or all fics with a specific combination of tags) 2. blocking everything except for a certain whitelist of tags 3. hiding crossovers with too many fandoms 4. hiding fics with any ship containing a specific character (romantic only, platonic only, or both) 5. blocking tags specifically for fics with certain ratings, categories, or completeness 6. putting fun highlights on specific tags

Some of which can't be done with Ao3's built-in filtering system, and all of which can be done without any external programs or browser extensions! It's literally just the site skins. I'm planning to post everything I've found so far and link them together on their own page, though that might take me a minute.

This first post going to start with just the has() selector, which is how most of the filtering I've figured out works, and is pulling heavily from Permablocking Specific Tags - Site Skin by Eli0t, which goes into a lot of great detail about the has() selector and how to use it. I want to give a brief description of that stuff here first, because almost everything else I talk about with site skins and filtering is going to use that selector.

First off: for most desktop browsers, plus Chrome and Safari on mobile, as far as I know the latest versions support the has() selector.

(Two exceptions to this are Internet Explorer and Firefox—though Firefox has a way to enable it, you just have to poke around in your settings. Go to "about:config" and put "layout.css.has-selector.enabled" into the search bar. With this set to true, the has() selector should work.)

To test that, I recommend creating a new site skin and copying this code into the CSS tab, through the "Write Custom CSS" button near the top when you're editing your skin:

.blurb:has(a) {   background: yellow; }

If the has() selector is working, it should add a yellow background to every fic blurb. (This highlighter code is also a great way to test new filters. Other ways to highlight include "font-weight: bold;" which makes a bunch of the text bold, and "color: blue;" which turns a bunch of it blue.)

To actually use the has() selector to block tags, we just add in the url of that tag. To grab the exact url, you can right-click on a tag on Ao3 and hit "Copy Link". The result of that should look something like this: "https://archiveofourown.org/tags/MyTag/works"

Now, we remove the "https://archiveofourown.org" bit to get this: "/tags/MyTag/works"

And we put it into a has() selector like so:

.blurb:has(a[href$="/tags/MyTag/works"]) {   display: none !important; }

The "display: none !important;" will tell your browser to hide anything with a link to the tag you want to block.

Unfortunately, this does not respect canonical tags. If you have a misspelling, like "MyyTag", then the filter won't be able to see it. The most common problem with this is in relationship tags, where order doesn't matter to Ao3 but will matter to the site skin—"Blorbo Baggins/Steve" and "Steve/Blorbo Baggins" are the exact same ship, but to catch both tags you'll have to add a second filter.

One way to catch more tags with just one filter is to use "*=" instead of "$=", like so:

.blurb:has(a[href*="MyTag"]) {   display: none !important; }

In this case, the filter will catch any tag with a url that contains the phrase "MyTag", including "MyTag is a very good tag", which the first filter would have missed.

Now, it's arguably better to use the built-in Ao3 filtering system for this, since it understands what a canonical tag is—but if you have tags where you'd want to avoid reading even a summary of a fic containing them, particularly trigger tags, this is a great way to avoid seeing them if one happens to be the most recently updated when you go into the filter. It's also extra effective for Archive Warnings, since those have to be the correctly spelled canonical version—so with a couple of these filters you can remove everything containing those warnings from your Ao3 experience, permanently.

An important thing to keep in mind if you're trying to filter a tag—the name of the tag that you see in Ao3 isn't exactly the same as the url attached to it. One big difference is that slashes "/" turn into "*s*", and the "&" symbol becomes "*a*", which affects almost all relationship tags. Another is that spaces become "%20". Also, if you're in a fandom that uses non-latin characters, or one where many characters have multiple names separated by " | ", those are going to use code representations with % signs and a bunch of letters and numbers. It's usually necessary to copy those, so that you know how the url is representing the tag.

The selectors are also case sensitive—a filter blocking anything containing the phrase "MyTag" will ignore the tag "mytag".

If you have a list of tags you'd like to block, there are two slightly different ways to go about it. For situations where you want to block only fics that have every tag in a list, you'll want to chain the has() selectors together like this:

.blurb:has(a[href*="Tag1"]):has(a[href*="Tag2"]):has(a[href*="Tag3"]) {   display: none !important; }

This will hide a fic tagged with all three, but won't touch one that has Tag1 and Tag2, but not Tag3.

On the other hand, you can also put a list of tags into the has() selector like this:

.blurb:has(a[href*="Tag1"], a[href*="Tag2"], a[href*="Tag3"]) {   display: none !important; }

This will block a fic tagged with any of the three tags, regardless of whether or not the other two are present. The same thing can be achieved by adding multiple filters, which is how I've been doing it—I actually only found out you can put multiple elements in the has() selector like an hour ago as I'm writing this.

To do that, simply separate them with commas like so:

blurb:has(a[href*="Tag1"]), blurb:has(a[href*="Tag2"]) {   display: none !important; }

In theory, you can have as many of these as you want. In practice, I've run into issues with my filters failing if I put too many of them in the same site skin. Fortunately, in the "Advanced" tab, which you can get to by hitting "Show" at the very bottom of the edit window of a site skin, there's a section called "Parent Skins", also at the very bottom. Hit "Add Parent Skin", and you can add a  skin as the parent to another skin. This means that the "child" skin will have all the CSS code that any of its parents do.

You can add many parents, so you can have one main skin with a parent skin for each small batch of your filters (around nine or ten usually works for me). And the parent skins can have parent skins of their own as well! So the amount of filters you can have is still functionally unlimited.

[arcanistvysoren]

kudos to u for writing THE kaffee/ross fic! im surprised there's not a ton for them; like you go across the river to top gun and there's oodles lol. i love your danny, but i especially love your jack; with how little we really see in the movie, you really managed to kind of flesh him out more and make him this guy who's falling in love despite himself, who's melancholy and sweet in his own kind of way. i wanted to ask -- how do u think the two of them end up?

Hi! :3 Thank you so much for your message.

First of all, let me apologize for not responding sooner. me: links my tumblr on all my AO3 fics also me: stops checking tumblr for 6 months Blog was just collecting cobwebs since December.

And then I logged in and had three whole messages, so of course I curled in on myself like a mollusk and had to think about how to answer them for a good long while.

Gonna put my answer under cut because, truthfully, this is something I’ve thought about before, thought about extensively, and since I made you wait for a reply for so long, might as well make it a good and long one.

First of all. Again: really appreciated this message. <3 Like you said — there are barely any fics out there for this movie — so it always makes me happy to know that mine is satisfying enough to have scratched the itch for someone out there who also wanted something lgbt to happen. :3

Especially because I certainly took a lot of artistic liberties, expanding Jack’s character like did.

There are characters out there in many fandoms that really do scream “closeted.” Like, you brought up Top Gun, and Iceman is exactly one such character, as far as fandom’s very reasonable reading is concerned. But I don’t think Jack’s like that at all. Nothing about him really suggested it. And still, on a whim, I decided: yeah I’m gonna make this man experience institutionalized homophobia. Which is a topic that, emphatically, does NOT have universal appeal.

But people continue to react very positively to it, so I’m always happy to know it landed well. <3

=======

Now, to the question at hand: I actually have thought about this even way back when I was writing the original fic. I planned things much further than where the fic ends, I even toyed with the idea of writing a sequel fic immediately after. That, obviously, never happened, but you can reap the benefits of whatever unfulfilled plans I did have.

1. First of all, it has to be said that “you inspired a fire”, in both iterations, is very much a getting-them-together fic. And fics like that, by design, leave off at a fairly early stage in a relationship. And I always try to write fics like that with the implication and the vibe that everything works out in the long run. Like appending a flashforward coda scene at the end that has a more settled “ER” vibe.

But, by virtue of how these types of fics are usually written, you have a lot of pining and then a sudden and tumultuous and happy resolution. But that leaves a very strong sense of “wait there should be more”. Because you know they are now on the same page but they still have so much ground to cover, all these unresolved emotions and growing pains of a new relationship.

And that’s one of the reasons why I was toying with the idea of an immediate sequel. Because it finishes way too early, and I wanted to write further steps of how the relationship actually progresses.

Now, this part is a little difficult for me to sum up in a tumblr post, because emotional beats of a romance to me are always more vibe than substance when I plan them. I know the trajectory, but the actual meat on the bones gets written as it gets written.

But, just talking through the intentions behind it: one of the cornerstones, (and a major appeal,) of Jack and Danny’s relationship for me was always the juxtaposition of their worldviews and expectations.

Jack has known that he’s gay for a very long time, and he’s lived with this knowledge, and internalized it to kind of accept a certain level of permanent unhappiness in his life. Versus Danny — who has gone through life thinking one thing about himself, and who then realizes that he’s queer quite abruptly, takes a moment to come to terms with it, and then there’s no additional turmoil for him in that. He doesn’t flinch from the realization, he just accepts it as the new status quo, and then he’s all in. He doesn’t have any of Jack’s hang-ups, he doesn’t have his cynicism, he doesn’t have his years of fear and anxiety over homophobia and, like you said, his melancholy.

And much of their relationship propels itself (and will continue to propel itself) exactly because Danny isn’t preemptively afraid that the relationship will fail, or will have tragic consequences on their social or professional lives. But just because it’s easy on him, doesn’t make it any easier on Jack.

Now, if we’re just talking romance: I think the romantic intimacy portion of their relationship never suffers any hurdles. (I, in general, do not subscribe to the “soap opera” variety of romance-writing where you get two people together, but then you have to maintain drama for the next season, the next book, the next something, so you create a profound interpersonal problem for them. If a relationship has problems that arise from a lack of communication, that’s already pretty bad. If a problem arises even with communication, then people are not on the same page at all, and that’s even worse.)

Either way, I think both Jack and Danny are committed to being very good at love. To putting themselves out there. Jack — for all that he’s a very tightly-wound individual who is not exactly highly emotive — thought that he would never, not in a million years, get to have this. So now that he does, a relationship is something that he cherishes and would never take for granted. He is extremely attentive, he has like an internal calendar of their personal milestones. Whereas Danny is good at it in a spontaneous way. He doesn’t spend time agonizing over each and any gesture of affection. His brand is more “I saw this and I thought of you,” which happens without rhyme or reason, but it happens all the time, and that’s something that Jack, for all his fastidiousness and rigorous schedules, deeply loves about him. Because it means Danny is thinking about him, that he always thinks about him, that Jack is always part of Danny’s considerations about anything going forward, just effortlessly, and that is a sort of attention that he never had in his life.

2. The difficulty, as I imagine it, at the beginning of their relationship, comes from everything else. Everything in their life outside of the actual romance.

The JAG Corps has a lot of military pride and lawyer pride about appearing a certain way, having this pristine career, immaculate resume, and all that. And Jack is a consummate professional, and for years he clocked in every morning to do his job and left everything else outside those walls. And then Danny comes along and just demolishes his neat routine.

The title of the fic itself — you know, nobody ever asked me about it, and I never really commented on it before, and it’s kind of silly. ‘Coz it’s a line from a song that really has NOTHING to do with anything in the fic whatsoever. I almost didn’t use it as the title because of how incongruous it was. In the end, I guess, in my head it made enough sense, regardless of the source, that I left it as is. But the song in question was What Kind of Man by Florence + the Machine — which is a song that is about an upsettingly toxic relationship between the narrator and somebody who doesn’t commit to her but emotionally strings her along. Which: like I said, not at all relevant. But the refrain in that song is: ‘And with one kiss — you inspired a fire that lasted for twenty years. What kind of man loves like this?’ And when I was writing the fic originally, that song (which was pretty fresh at that time) did pop into my head, entirely removed from the context of the song. Because, just in a vacuum, without the rest of it, I thought it did fit how I saw their relationship from Jack’s perspective. Because Jack was just fully encrusted within his way of life. Emotionally shut down. And then Danny completely wrecked him out of his equilibrium in a kind of… irrecoverable way. And if it ended up that Danny didn’t feel the same way about him, Jack would really never fully get over the experience of falling for him.

Here you have Jack, who is all about his job and nothing but, and suddenly he catches these really intense feelings, in a way he has never had before. Sure, he had some misguided attractions in the past, but that was always a very subdued longing that he has always managed to successfully bury and ignore. And then Danny just burrows under his skin, in this maddening fashion, and Jack tries to fight against it, and he finds that he can’t. And the intensity of how much he feels for Danny is really difficult for him to grapple with. He thinks of romance as something he can control and even ignore, and to find himself in a situation where he can’t do either is very disrupting for him. And even when he knows that Danny returns his interest, for Jack, this is the first time that he has experienced this level of intensity. And he doesn’t think Danny can match that. He thinks that Danny is less entangled in it, that Danny would be capable of moving on from their romance. And he recognizes that he himself will never be able to. That he will be in love with Danny for the rest of his life. And Danny, unknowingly, has a lot of power over him, has the power to inflict just careless thoughtless damage.

So that’s kind of issue number one that I foresee. Is that these fears carry over for Jack into the initial beginning of the relationship, before he is fully 100% convinced that Danny is, really, on the same page about it as him.

And then, also, Jack doesn’t trust that Danny can tone it down and actually be considerate enough to be low-key about their relationship. Danny is very antithetical to the idea of anything low-key. Like, he is the type of a guy to loudly call out a stranger on their homophobia — because he doesn’t really think it has anything to do with him, personally, he doesn’t think that it will make people think he’s gay, or that it will have social repercussions for him. Because, previously, it never has been about him. And he likes to make himself a bother. And that is mortifying to Jack who doesn’t want any attention to be attracted to the concept of queerness in relation to him or any of his circle of friends.

And, finally, Jack feels that he’s been on this road for a long time. The road of being closeted in the military. He knows all the road signs, he’s paid every toll on that road. And he doesn’t think that Danny understands how many tolls there will be. And, on one hand, he doesn’t want Danny to be burnt by the same experiences that he himself has been hurt by. But, on the other hand, circling back to the commitment of it all: he also fears that it may become too much. And that Danny won’t be able to handle the social pressure.

All of that is already sort of implied in the main fic, I guess, and sort of contributes to the ambivalent tone of the ending — because all these issues remain unresolved. And I don’t exactly have a script ready here for how each of these points do get resolved. Like I said, I typically don’t think about writing things like that, it just happens naturally over the course of the rest of the plot unfolding, and the multitude of slice-of-life moments through which I typically craft fics like that. Plus, with some of these, you really do need the narrative feeling behind it. Because you can’t really prove commitment to somebody who has trust issues in that department. It just something that heals over time.

3. And then, of course, you have to contend with the political landscape of it all. Typically, unless otherwise specified, I take it to mean that movies of this type and genre take place in the year they were released. Or when the screenplay got written. So, we have 1992, the Jessup case happens, and then, going off of the chronology of the fic, 1993 is when Jack and Danny hook up and begin their relationship.

And that is literally immediately before DADT happens.

This time period has a lot of historical milestones for queer rights. But, specifically, the conversation about gays and lesbians in the military was a not-insignificant and often talked-about political issue at that point. It was part of Clinton’s presidential campaign. 1993 is when Washington Post publishes a fairly famous quote from a retired Major General: “You don’t have to be straight to shoot straight.” A lot of people are wanting a change. And Clinton plans to repeal any laws that would prohibit gays and lesbians from serving.

But, of course, a lot of right-wing people are against the change. Clinton faces a lot of opposition, and the Congress outmaneuvers him and enacts the ban on gays in the military into federal law. Clinton tries to overturn it but is unsuccessful. And, as a compromise, his administration issues a Directive which says that you cannot ask military applicants about their sexual orientation. And then the phrase “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” is later coined and affixed to it.

DADT was like the beginning of Sleeping Beauty where the curse was already laid by the evil witch and the best thing that one fairy can do is provide the most miserable little loophole that can barely prevent anything. The directive itself may have helped matters a tiny bit, it certainly allowed queer people to still serve. But it offered no protection from harassment and bias, which led to a lot of abuse and discrimination and even cases of murder.

And DADT will only be repealed in 2011. Same-sex marriage will become legal in all fifty states in 2015. I was in my 20s when that happened, so, unlike with the beginning of DADT, I actually have my own personal feelings about witnessing all that. But, the point is, from 1992 that’s about 20 years of extreme bullshit that they will have to live with.

I have it somewhere in my notes that Danny was born in 1964. I think the age is given when Jo recounts his resume? Which makes him 28 in 1992, and will make him 48 in 2012. Jack is described as two years older in the Sorkin script, so 30 and 50 respectively. That’s a hell of a long time to wait until you can be fully socially open about anything. You become used to it. A lot of people came out publicly and cheerfully in those years — but a lot of people remained as closeted as they ever were. Just because it’s been made legal, doesn’t mean you will not be ostracized professionally or socially by those who didn’t think it should have been. That’s a battle not everybody wants to fight.

And the military? Especially rancid about that.

By that point in time, Jack and Danny’s personal views would have bled into one another’s, I think.

Jack has never wanted to take part in this fight at all. By the time he’s 30, he’s already nearly fully insulated against it. Not to accidentally project personal experiences on a character, but — living where I am, in a hugely homophobic country — I can’t leave my house without encountering three separate instances of casual homophobia daily. It’s just part of the parlance. On TV, from strangers in the general store, from colleagues at work — colleagues that might even be friendly with you, but who will emphatically not see you the same way if they knew you were queer. And you smile, and you’re polite, but there is a wall, and you don’t really make connections with people, you don’t really allow anyone to get close. Because the baseline assumption is that everyone around you is a conservative bigot.

I remember freaking a friend of mine out. We went to college together, she was there for my coming out. We were close. Still are. But I made a friendly connection through local fandom with a new person. And like, we would talk nearly every day, we’re having fun, I mention her a lot... And then 2 years later I tell my friend from college: you know, I think it’s time to see if I can actually be friends with her. And my college friend instantly went through 5 stages of grief wondering: does Cyril also not think WE’RE friends yet?? But of course I did. And the issue on the table was queerness. Was me coming out to that other person as all my labels, and also making sure she’s normal about labels that I don’t have. Spoiler alert: she wasn’t, and it was one of the more difficult friendship divorces of my life. But that’s the sort of living that I’m talking about. We were close, we talked every day, we worked on fandom projects together, we skyped, we played video games, we had been to each other’s houses…. And then I came out to her, and it all just imploded. She wasn’t outwardly homophobic, but she was still hella conservative, but thought she was being liberal-minded. Just oodles of really offensive opinions. That I couldn't possibly dig her out of. And I just had to say sorry but no dice.

And I think Jack lives pretty much exactly like that. Whatever relationship he builds — and, again, I don’t mean exclusively in the romantic sense, I mean making friends at work, and anywhere else — everything is removed. People around him largely assume that he’s exactly like them, a boring peg, and that he’s polite, and likable, and that his anti-social tendencies are a personal flaw that he should maybe work on. They have no reason to understand that him being distant is a deliberate choice and a defense mechanism. Yes, he has a polite and amiable relationship with a lot of people at work. ‘Smiling Jack Ross’, and all that. But he isn’t actually friends with anybody. There is no deep intimacy in any of these relationships. Friendship requires honesty, and he knows he cannot be honest with these people. Criminality of being gay in the military aside, some people do form friendships, discover allies, and admit the truth to their friends. Not everybody he works with is incredibly right-wing. People can keep secrets, people can be normal about it. But that’s not Jack’s experience, and it is not his expectation, so he doesn’t do that at all.

And so, early on in their relationship, whenever the two of them encounter homophobia in the wild together, Jack just ignores it, completely blots it out. It doesn’t even register for him. Whenever he hears somebody spout insane backwards backwater bullshit, it’s a total disconnect for him. It just has so little basis in reality, it has so little to do with him, that it becomes like white noise that he doesn’t even hear.

And then, Danny is very much opposite of that. He wants to verbally spar. He wants to be loud and sarcastic and a nuisance. And when he sees people behaving horribly, he needles them, he antagonizes them. And, to him, that is also impersonal. For him, arguing is almost like a sport, and he doesn’t argue because the topic got to him, but because someone is wrong and Danny will see that person humiliated. The topic itself, arguing about being gay, also doesn’t feel to him like that’s about him.

Which is a part of a larger conversation, because even being in a queer relationship, I think he doesn’t really categorize himself as queer. Which is an issue with a lot of bisexual people who come into bisexuality later, and the language doesn’t feel like it applies to them, and also they don’t have any leg to stand on when it comes to the actual social politics of it. They didn’t live through homophobia, they just instantly fell into a good and healthy relationship. So when he starts debating bigots and calling them out on homophobia — it doesn’t really even feel to him like that’s about him. It’s just about fairness. It’s way more about Jack to him than it’s in any way about himself.

My point is, ultimately — when you flashforward twenty years into the future, they will both have learned from one other. Jack will have learned to be more ready to defend queerness, because it doesn’t leave him vulnerable anymore, and because, before, it was just bullshit he could ignore. But now it’s not just somebody shitting on him, it’s somebody shitting on Danny also, and their relationship, their family. And Danny is not going to take that lying down, he will stand alone against the whole world if he has to. And Jack isn’t about to let him do any of it alone.

Whereas Danny is having the opposite trajectory of: yes, he is ready to fight every bigot and just verbally destroy them. He has the energy of an angry jack russell terrier about most things. And it doesn’t take up any negative emotional space for him, even. It doesn’t bother him, it doesn’t stay with him, like I said: it’s almost like a sport to him — to shoot verbal pellets at fools. But he has to recognize pretty fast that his behavior is making things difficult for Jack. And so Danny will have to learn to appreciate his self-control and why it’s important to Jack, and learn to exercise the same level of restraint.

And there’s a golden mean there somewhere where they are able to meet and understand each other and assume each other’s point of view. And then, by the time 2011 and so forth roll up… they would have lived a content but emphatically closeted life for almost 20 years. They would have gone through the majority of their adulthood in hiding. And, like I said, just because the law changes to say something is legal — doesn’t mean it flips the switch in everybody around them. They are still surrounded by people who would make their lives miserable upon finding out. As well as left-wing people who would want to make someone like them poster children for success in the military and the JAG. And… at 50? I don’t think even Danny who is effortlessly extraverted would want that.

This is not to say that participating in queer politics is a young people’s fight. By and large, it has never been so. But their situation is severely constricted by them being in the military.

=======

Moving on from that. The DADT spiral got away from me a little. But. Like I said. Those were just general concepts and vibes of how I would have approached tackling the overarching themes in their relationship. Hypothetical plot points.

I do, however, also have some stuff that is more “thetical.” Back when I did think I would have enough time, and momentum, and spark, to write the sequel. I did pen some stuff down.

(This ask, in itself, is now the length of a decent short fic, but I’m on a roll here. Too late to turn back, I am committing.)

I had assorted notes with intermittently written scenes spanning almost the entire two decades from the end of the original fic to the repeal. Among them, these look the most readable:

A. I was incredibly invested in the “coming out” process. Because, yes, they need to hide their relationship, socially and professionally. But Danny has two very close personal friendships in his life that are extremely important to him and that he is not prepared to toss over for his romantic relationship. Jack has his bad experiences, he is used to people turning on you, treating you like a pariah after finding out. But Danny neither has that experience, nor thinks that Jo and Sam would react that way. Because, unlike Jack, when he builds a friendship, he really fucking builds it. Whereas I was talking about Jack keeping everyone at the same polite distance, Danny actually takes care to get to know people in his life, and to figure out which of them he meshes well with, and then he doesn’t let them go. He trusts that he knows Jo and Sam well enough to assert that they wouldn’t react like assholes.

So, after the first couple of months, Danny goes: I wanna tell them. And Jack is… the opposite of thrilled about it.

(It goes, roughly, something like that.)

Danny: I don’t want to lie to them. And yes, I know I said I would be okay with the lying — and I am. To the military. Hell, to the whole world. But they’re my friends. They will be in my life hopefully for as long as you will be — so you can’t really expect me to not tell them. I mean, they’re bound to notice we’re living together eventually, you know? Sam’s wife keeps trying to set me up with her girlfriends, and I am running out of excuses, and, damn it, yeah, I just want them to know, okay? Jack: [quiet-like] …I don’t think it’s a good idea. Danny: [earnestly] Jack, I trust them. You know them. They’re good people. Jack: That’s… not, precisely, my concern. I do not think either of them would get us thrown out. But I think the friendship you are trying to preserve here will not survive the revelation. They will not look at you the same. And that’s… a discomfort I am used to, and I know how to handle. But you do not. And I’d rather you didn’t have to find out.

Once again, Jack has a lot of unhappy experiences that he himself lived through about being gay, and people finding out, and how isolated it made him.

But Danny, after pondering it for a bit, still thinks he’s right. And, lbr, in this instance, he is. He’s a people person in a way that Jack isn’t. And his read on people is better, and his relationships that are really truly intimate are also so much more emotionally close than anything Jack has ever personally had, due to how he has always distanced himself from relationships out of self-preservation. But, for a while, Danny defers to Jack’s experience with this and he keeps putting it off. It’s not like he’s not nervous about it. He just doesn’t see any other way than to tell them.

In the meantime, they are practically living together, as Danny said. They’re going through the growing pains I outlined above and also just learning that quiet personal intimacy of living with another person. I’m sure they have very different housing habits. Danny certainly has his own military training drilled into him, I don’t think he’s exactly a messy person, but he’s not fastidious either. But Jack struggles with issues of control and lack of it in his life, so I think he exerts whatever control he can over any aspect of his day-to-day, which includes his schedule, and wardrobe, and immaculate living space.

Anyway, as they keep migrating back and forth between both of their places: Danny pretty much lives in his old family house, full of old memories, the long shadow cast by his father’s ghost, which is something that he is trying to get away from. While Jack, I imagine, being a frugal man, got himself a bachelor pad intended for one person, because he never imagined he would be sharing his life with anybody else. So, inevitably, Danny starts to think that they should probably move. Find a place that is big enough for the both of them and makes them both comfortable. Except, of course, two men — even men in uniform, or, maybe, especially in uniform — cannot exactly go house-hunting together.

Which is the moment he finally elects to come out to Jo.

They go out to their favorite spot in the park. It’s January 1994, so, like I said, DADT is about to go into effect, it is being discussed in most military journals. Some tagline about it is on the cover of whatever magazine Jo brought with her. Danny’s eyes get drawn to it unhappily in spite of himself. It’s been Christmas/Hannukah season, they haven’t really seen much of each other, and Sam’s wife has a moratorium on work talk during holiday season, so they haven’t actively discussed any of this stuff, except in a few throwaway sentences that really didn’t tell Danny anything about what either of them actually thought. Ultimately, though: he’s only known Jo for about two years now. Less than. And — aside from his really crass attempts at flirting initially — they do work very well together, and she’s a very moral person, and a straight-shooter, and he thinks she will probably not react badly if he brings it up. And it’s much easier to bring up to her first, because they have known each other the shortest. And she notices him staring at the cover, and rolls her eyes and says: It’s a stupid law. Because she’s probably highly politically involved, a Clinton supporter, who had expectations about the kind of forward-thinking changes his administration may bring. She has opinions about this legislation, and she also tends to back up her opinions with a lot of citations, because she is used to be challenged and disregarded by a certain cadre of men. She is well-read on the issue. Danny looks at her and asks: Why? To which she rolls her eyes again and just says: Don’t be such a guy, Danny. Because, let’s be fair, they’re friends now, and she knows he’s a decent guy, but he’s also been kind of vulgar with her enough times in a way that is very not politically correct. He says some chauvinistic things to her in the movie, and iirc I wrote that into the fic too, when he takes her out to whine about his crisis without actually telling her why he’s having a crisis? So she just assumes he might hold some bigoted views here. Not that she says so, and not that Danny realizes it from her dismissive answer — the turmoil currently in his head is so far away from what she assumes, that it doesn’t even occur to him that she might be expecting this from him. Anyway, he changes topics abruptly and says: Hey, so I’ve been meaning to ask you for a favor. [Jo politely raises her eyebrows.] Danny: I wanna buy a house. Jo: [deadpan] Oh. Right. And I am notorious for my degree in real estate. Danny: [giving her one of his patented charming smiles] I need you to go house-shopping with me. Jo: [perplexed] What’s wrong with your current place? Danny: I – uh – I’m gonna sell it. Too many memories, too many ghosts. And I need – whaddaya call them – like, a family house? Somewhere you move into with your wife, and your kids, and your dog. Jo: You don’t have a wife, or kids, or a dog. Danny: That’s why I want you come with me. To play pretend. :) [Jo continues to just stare at him, not making this request easy on him in the slightest.] Jo: Danny… aren’t you… seeing someone? [Danny looks away ruefully. Seeing someone. That’s not what he’d call it. He doesn’t think of it as dating. Just living. Loving. Just life.] Danny: Maybe. Jo: So why are you asking me? Why aren’t you taking your mystery paramour that you’ve been hiding from Sam and myself? [And Danny swallows, and every cautionary protest that Jack has ever raised to him rears up all of its insecure hydra heads in his mind. And for a long moment he doesn’t say anything, and Jo just waits him out patiently.] [And then he looks at the magazine that she still has in her lap and he says…] Danny: Because. Because it’s a stupid law. [And Jo squares her back, startled, and looks at him all wide-eyed and then says, sounding kind of insulting tragic about it: Oh, Danny…]

But, yes. Of course, of course, she is fine with it.

And he doesn’t tell her it’s Jack — not that day, at least; not immediately. It’s one thing that he wants her to know about him and what’s going on with him, and that he’s actually sorta kinda queer, but he promised to never betray Jack’s confidence, and he will not unless Jack okays it.

Jo, of course, is not an idiot, and will draw the correct conclusion herself. Because who else could it possibly be, when Danny and Jack have been practically inseparable for months now. Not that she says so. She waits until he’s ready to tell her.

But, yes, they do go house-shopping. And yes, it does go smoother when the real estate person thinks it’s just a nice military couple in love, isn’t this nice, isn’t this proper.

Sam is… a different matter, I think, because they’ve been friends for much longer. And also because it’s an avuncular sort of friendship. Sam is older, and he took Danny under his wing when Danny was just this green snotty boy fresh out of law school. And it is kind of terrifying for Danny to fracture this closeness, and lose his respect, and ruin their friendship. In exactly the kind of way that Jack has been warning him against.

And, obviously, I don’t think that it will. But I do think Sam won’t know how to talk to Danny about it. Like, this is very much outside of his ballpark, and just because he doesn’t have any negative bias, doesn’t mean he knows how to be encouraging and overtly okay about it either. So I think for a while after Danny tells him they will just not talk about it at all. Which is not ideal. Because it makes Danny feel like maybe he isn’t okay about it. He doesn’t want it ignored. But Sam is finding it awkward. So it becomes this thing where: yeah / he knows / he’s okay with it / everything else is exactly the same, they work cases the same, they meet up the same, Danny is invited to their house the same, but they just never talk about It. And Sam is just avoiding the topic because he doesn’t want to say the wrong thing and he doesn’t think he has a right thing to say, but it will weigh on Danny a little bit — up until he has something like a minor tiff with Jack, over some of the things I mentioned above. The growing pains of the stuff they disagree about and have to work through. And Danny will be just stewing in it, and Sam will ask him what’s wrong, and Danny will reluctantly say that it’s about Jack, implying: maybe you don’t wanna hear it. And Sam will steel himself inwardly and say: okay maybe you can tell me about it. And Danny does, hesitantly at first, and then getting more and more into it, and it’s just, you know, very minor, very day-to-day, very human problems. And Sam will go, in his head: oh, actually, I do know how to talk about it, because it’s literally just relationship advice that is NO different from any type of marriage advice I would have given regardless of gender, because I myself am married; and also, bonus, I do know Jack personally, and understand his point of view as an unbiased observer in a way Danny cannot because he’s too close to it; so, actually, it turns out that talking about this doesn’t have any extra rules just because it’s two guys. And, as part of this conversation, they will just mend this little fracture in their relationship. Not that there was ever an actual argument to begin with, but things were a little strained in this area, and this finally solves it for them. And they don’t actually verbally acknowledge it in any way, but they both come away from that conversation knowing that things are more fine now than they were before.

B. I would actually very much like to revisit Jack’s backstory. Like, I wrote about him having NSA relationships before. Most of his encounters were very brief and mostly one-night-stands. But he had that relationship with his Drill Instructor, which Jack registers as a positive relationship, because he was a nice guy, and it was a continuous affair that lasted for some months. But that DI was also convinced that this is like the best that men like them can have in the military. That they don’t get to be in love, they can just form these transitory arrangements with people that they like, fuck around, and that’s it. And that’s how he chose to live his life, and that was enough for him — but it wasn’t for Jack, but he still internalized it as a true lesson about life, which contributed to his pitiful expectations for how life can and cannot be.

And then, present day, this same DI is accused of conduct unbecoming with a fellow female soldier. And there’s like an underlying political bullshit reason for it. Everything’s staged for reasons I did not determine, but some kind of a detective plot unraveling in the background, the internal politics of the place where the DI is stationed at the time. The charges are obviously bogus, but the guy can’t exactly say that it’s all bullshit since he’s gay, because that’s not a defense, that’s an immediate discharge for a completely different reason. And the case comes across their desk, it isn’t even intended for them, but Jack notices the name and he requests it from the Judge Advocate General.

And Jack is well-liked in the Corps because of his work ethic. And, you know how it is. Technically, you cannot investigate someone you may have a pre-existing knowledge of, like someone that you served with. It’s a conflict of interest. But in reality there’s enough personal feelings inside any organization that people are willing to kind of bend the rules. Nepotism has existed since the dawn of time. So the JAG agrees, but doesn’t give the case to Jack, he gives it to Kaffee — to avoid the immediate perception of any actual favoritism. But Jack is allowed to go with him as his secondary.

And Danny doesn’t understand at first why Jack wants this case, because the charge is kind of severe, and Jack disclosed to the JAG that he knew the defendant, so Danny just assumes it’s a case of “I know the man and he is incapable” vs. the reality of “maybe you didn’t know him as well as you thought”. Danny is prepared to investigate with zero bias. And Jack is notoriously impartial, so Danny’s not exactly worried. He might not want to believe that a friend of his is capable, but if he is presented with enough evidence, he will pursue justice fully. Except then, of course, once they are alone and can talk freely and are riding out to their investigation, and Danny asks: how can you possibly know he didn’t do what they are saying he did? Jack comes out and says: ‘cause he’s gay. And Danny goes: oh. And realizes he has to brace himself for a very different kind of encounter.

I think, by that time, they are in a very good and stable place in their relationship. But it’s still always emotionally difficult to meet your current partner’s ex, especially if the parting was pretty amicable, so there aren’t any negative feelings there. Like, he’s not exactly threatened, he’s not exactly jealous, but it is a very palpable person he gets to measure himself against, with regards to Jack’s past choice of partner. And he doesn’t fully realize that he comes off very well in that comparison, because this is a relationship that set a very very low bar for Jack as far as expectations go. And for this DI to see Jack, and then eventually realize that the guy he came here with is not just a colleague, and not even just a guy he sleeps with, but that they have an actual committed relationship. It’s kind of a very tragic thing to see. That it was always possible, and he just never was brave enough to try. And for Jack it is also kind of cathartic to see this part of his life in retrospect and to see how far he’s come. I think it really crystallizes for him the difference from how he’s been at the beginning of his relationship with Danny, when he was more insecure about where they were going, as opposed to now, like a year plus down the line, where he knows that they are it. They’re practically married, in all ways that matter. That he is so secure in this relationship, and that the old anxieties and hurts no longer pain him.

=======

There were a couple of other things I’d written down, but I think this paints a clear enough picture and I should stop.

This is answer is now 7,000 words long. I am so good at social media.

This is why tumblr is the only website I am on. Shortform? Not in this house.

Thank you for coming to the Director’s Cut of AFGM. I hope the exhaustiveness of my answer made up for the wait. 🤍

[haruka-teno]

2023 Reading Wrap-Up

01. How many books did you read this year?

I read 72, with about 12 of those being graphic novels/manga/something fairly short, BUT I read easily 2,000 pages of fic (probably much more lol) so I figure that counts as like 5 or 6 books too!

02. Did you reread anything? What?

I think I did a full re-read of Saga? I didn't log it, but I think I did lol. If not I at least reread the equivalent of the last few volumes to refresh my memory. I reread all of Captive Prince and the short stories because that's an absolute must. I reread Dark Rise to prepare for Dark Heir. And then I also kind of "reconnected" with a book from college that I had previously thought lost to time. It's called Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives and I had never read the whole thing but my friends and I always remembered a couple of the stories we'd read from it 15 years ago. Sadly those stories we remembered were actually pretty much the only memorable ones.

03. What were your top five books of the year?

It's hard to narrow it down to just five because I would say there were at least 10 to 12 that I really loved, but if I had to make a list I would say:

1) The Secret History - a polarizing book to say the least but it was exactly my brand

2) Six of Crows - by far the best Grishaverse book and probably one of the best YA books of all time in general

3) The Fifth Season - the way that people's minds work is just incredible. Like I think to have written this is such an achievement

4) Dark Heir - this series should have been adult and I don't think I'll ever feel NOT robbed by that, but this so far exceeded book 1 that I can't be too mad. Had me losing my mind

5) A Power Unbound - Ross on top 🫡

04. Did you discover any new authors that you love this year?

Technically Leigh Bardugo was new to me this year lmao so obviously I plan to read basically all of her books going forward. And Mother Donna Tartt. We will as always continue being loyal to Freya Marske, CS Pacat, and Mona Awad as well.

05. What genre did you read the most of?

Fantasy, romance, and literary with LGBT and YA as overlapping subgenres. No one is surprised.

06. Was there anything you meant to read, but never got to?

lol.

07. What was your average Goodreads rating? Does it seem accurate?

I have no idea how to find this on goodreads but my average on storygraph is 3.74 which is probably accurate. I rarely give books 5 stars, but I give plenty of 3s and 4s. I kind of want to have a higher score next year though because it'll mean I'll have been more discerning with what I choose and finish.

08. Did you meet any of your reading goals? Which ones?

I did and I didn't haha. I wanted to get to 75 and that didn't happen, and I also went through multiple slumps where I read next to nothing. The number doesn't matter so much as consistency so I want to try to work on that more. Pushing myself to read more and scroll less.

09. Did you get into any new genres?

I guess kind of? I read some non-fiction and a weird amount of short story collections, but none of it really stood out as being more enjoyable to me than just... the typical fiction that I like to read. I do have a few more short story collections I want to read this year as well as maybe trying to do a bit more non-fiction but I'm not going to be that pressed if I mainly stick with novels.

10. What was your favorite new release of the year?

Unlike certain among us I liked Hell Bent by Leigh Bardugo!! But the obvious answer is Dark Heir, followed closely by A Power Unbound.

11. What was your favorite book that has been out for a while, but you just now read?

Definitely The Secret History which has been out for like 30 years haha. To me this is the absolute peak and definition of "dark academia." Don't start calling some book """"dark academia"""" if some TSH shit isn't happening! But anyway, yeah, it's just so good: gorgeous prose, mostly vibes, characters who need to be studied extensively in a laboratory. I related too much to Richard Papen, it's actually sad!

12. Any books that disappointed you?

I genuinely hate to say this but the first book that came to mind as being disappointing while also not being actively disliked is Good Omens. I like the show a lot! And I know we like to jape and jest about British people. But my god, this was too British for me. It was so frustrating because the core idea is SO GOOD and so wildly imaginative, and at times it's really funny, and obviously Crowley and Aziraphale are the gems of it all, but so much of it WASN'T funny, like to the point of being aggressively UNfunny, even, and those sections would drag and drag. Way too little Crowley and Aziraphale, WAY too much of the little boy and his friends who I absolutely hated. I guess call me a rube or whatever but I vastly prefer the TV show 😔 Unrelated, but I was also wildly disappointed in the last Simon Snow book! I was also underwhelmed by Holly Black's The Stolen Heir and Tomie by Junji Ito.

13. What were your least favorite books of the year?

Grab a snack because I'm about to go off.

1) The Vegetarian by Han Kang - translated fiction is hit or miss with me. This is the year I realized I mostly do NOT fuck with Korean fiction, sadly. This book is touted as one of those kind of sad girl feminist novels but omggg from what I remember it was just really boring (I only finished because it was like 200 pages), repetitive, weird but not delightfully weird just like weird where the actions of the main character are nonsensical as is the behavior of the people around them, ZERO payoff at the end where one might feel a salient point had been made... If this is one of those "the girls that get it get it and the girls that don't don't" books then mark me down as not getting it

2) The Westing Game - genuinely why did I read this

3) Cursed Bunny - more translated Korean fiction, this time short stories. Again, just so gross at times but not Sayaka Murata gross, just like WHY?? gross. And when it wasn't gross it was boring and pointless!

4) Any Way the Wind Blows - I literally deserve financial compensation for completing this book. What the fuck was that ending? Why is Agatha tending goats after one of the worst lesbian romances ever put on paper. Why did Simon and Baz almost have sex 14 times and then stop all 14 times for the same reason and make virtually no progress with their relationship because of Simon's immaturity. Why was the Penelope plotline even happening. I'm kind of astounded by this one actually

5) My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness - this is an autobiographical manga and my reaction was all the worse because I thought this was going to be a total banger. It's a bestseller, I've been hearing about it for like 10 years, I've seen some relatable screencaps, it sounds perfect..... And then I read it and the writing itself kind of lost me/bored me at times, and it's actually not relatable in the slightest because the MC/author (I guess?) is sooo off-putting and the bulk of the book is about her visiting prostitutes. Color me naive but I thought this would be about like, meeting another woman and the tentative first steps taken with her, not GENUINELY diving into the sex industry, which I am absolutely repulsed by. Woof!

Honorable mention to A Strange and Stubborn Endurance for being Like That and having one of the most annoying protags I can remember in recent history.

14. What books do you want to finish before the year is over?

Well this ship has sailed and my goal was to finish all the books I had started so I could begin 2024 with a clean slate and it didn't happen 😔 But time is also an illusion.

15. Did you read any books that were nominated for or won awards this year (Booker, Women’s Prize, National Book Award, Pulitzer, Hugo, etc.)? What did you think of them?

None that I actively sought out. I believe The Fifth Season won the Hugo which is well-deserved but I don't know anything else off the top of my head.

16. What is the most over-hyped book you read this year?

Oh man, I can actually kind of go off on this one too lol. I read all of Heartstopper this year, and I'm sorry, it's just okay. I think if it had been on the shelves for me to read in like 2005 I would think more highly of it, both because I would have been reading it as a young teen and because then it might have been revolutionary for the time. In 2023 though it's far, far from the best piece of gay teen media (that would be Skam) and it's WILDLY overhyped. Legendborn by Tracy Deonn was so massively hyped up on booktok as being like THE BEST YA NOVEL EVER PUBLISHED and I'm kind of mystified, honestly. It was alright! And I could say even more but I'll leave off with Yellowface by R.F. Kuang. She constantly has her ass licked by basically everyone and I genuinely, genuinely don't get it. Yellowface is miles above Babel as far as enjoyability and I even thought it was quite funny at times, and got through it quickly, but this author writes flattttttt-ass characters and can't see past her own nose. Absolutely obsessed with the audience knowing how smart she is and hand-holding them to the very obvious points she's making. She's another one like Otessa Moshfegh where I kind of just hate read her stuff at this point lol.

17. Did any books surprise you with how good they were?

I think most of the books that I thought were good I had expected to be good, but two things come to mind. Early in the year I read a duology called Heated Rivalry and The Long Game and it's literally just highly sexual gay hockey fiction but it genuinely surprised me by how sweet it was and how much I loved the story. I actually bought physical copies even though they have horrible covers with Sexy Shirtless Guys on them lol. The other book is called A Touch of Jen which I was drawn to only because of the cover, I thought the description seemed kind of lame, and it doesn't have a very good goodreads rating either, but I loved reading it and thought it was hilarious.

18. How many books did you buy?

I couldn't even venture a guess to be honest. I have been much better of late about book buying (because now my money is going to dolls 😭), but I'd say during the year I probably accumulated at least 40.

19. Did you use your library?

Yes. I don't physically go into the library even though I'd like to, but in this house we do stan Libby, Hoopla, CloudLibrary etc.

20. What was your most anticipated release? Did it meet your expectations?

The usual suspects: Dark Heir and A Power Unbound, both of which met/exceeded expectations. I was begging for more Will/James, and it delivered, and I was hoping for more sexiness from Freya Marske as well as some good Edwin/Robin content and I was also very pleased with that :)

21. Did you participate in or watch any booklr, booktube, or book twitter drama?

I don't participate in drama but I definitely watch drama unfold, predominantly on tiktok. There were definitely plenty of stupid takes and notable events!

22. What’s the longest book you read?

Technically the longest page count was the complete Tomie comics at 742 pages but as far as regular books, it was Rule of Wolves by Leigh Bardugo at 608 pages.

23. What’s the fastest time it took you to read a book?

Technically I'm sure my shortest book was a volume of comics in like 20 minutes or whatever, but I'm going to say my record is reading Captive Prince, Prince's Gambit, Kings Rising, and the short story collection back to back over the course of about 3 or 4 days.

24. Did you DNF anything? Why?

I DNF'd one piece of nonfiction (Killers of the Flower Moon) and one novel (The Atlas Six) that I just wasn't in the mood to read when I started them but I'm going to give them both another chance at some point, or at least I'm planning to so far. There were definitely other books I sort-of started and then the library hold lapsed and they'll ostensibly be gotten to at some point, but I don't really count those as DNFs. The only notable DNF was this essay collection about horror movies from a queer perspective called It Came From the Closet. I was expecting this to be good even though I'm not a big fan of essay collections as a general rule, but omg....... Ahhhhhhhh!!!! Unsurprisingly Carmen Maria Machado's essay about Jennifer's Body was well-written (even if I personally love a lesbian Jennifer interpretation more than a bi one), but hers is the only one I really remember other than the Horrible One. I read about half of this book and a lot of the essays were just very mid (I know it's these people's real lives they were writing about! But yeah!) and almost all seemed only tangentially related to the specific horror movie they'd picked. There were also plenty of movies I'd never seen so even if there'd been appropriate context I wouldn't know it. The absolute last straw though was the essay that was supposedly about Hereditary. I could not tell you how the author connected all of this shit to Hereditary because AGAIN, none of the authors did a good job actually fitting their life within the context of the movies, but the story of his personal life was bad enough. He had married a girl I think while knowing he was gay? Which was definitely more acceptable historically than it is in like, a world where Hereditary exists?? I'm pretty sure this dude kissed a guy on his wedding day! and then proceeded to write about how he was secretly talking to men online SPECIFICALLY in the context of like fat fetish/weight gaining fetish communities, he himself was purposefully gaining weight because of this fetish and became enmeshed in online communities about it, I think was making fetish videos of himself and uploading them???? And then in the end he meets up with some guy he met online and I think we were supposed to think it was cute but I was 10000% on the wife's side, and as a fat woman and lesbian, I hope that guy kills himself. Anyway lol.

25. What reading goals do you have for next year?

I think my officially set goal is 75 books/25k pages. I'd like to meet that or exceed it. I very recently got into audiobooks after being a staunch hater (I still think they're very much a cheat code, and different from ACTUALLY reading!) so I think the goal is easily attainable, and my lowkeyyy goal is 100 books. My main goal though is to read every day and to not get into so many slumps: like just make reading a habit that I keep up with. More reading, less mindless scrolling and tiktok. And maybe DNFing more instead of forcing myself to finish a book I'm not liking just because it's short or I want "credit" for my time spent with it. Like reading more quality books. I'd also vaguely like to read some classics and more nonfiction.

[mo0n-water]

hi :)

i’m sorry to hear that you had a bad day yesterday. i hope that you were able to give yourself some time to feel and then to recover because you deserve it! sending you lots of love and i hope that today was/is bit better.

what time zone are you in, btw?

my tbr is basically just any fic that i’ve seen someone like so it’s extensive and spans many ships and tropes so there’s something for any mood i happen to be in. i mark things for later on ao3 and it’s about 5/6 pages of fics… i can’t remember many off the top of my head but i want to read everything that eyra has ever written because i loved ‘a brief history of dragons’ so much and i’ve been putting off reading choices for forever but i’ll eventually get round to that. and of course black mass, i started it before exams but then i stopped so i’m going to go back and start it again.

i’ll have to give noah kahan a listen, everyone i know has been talking about him recently.

i love love love that you’re asking me questions back, you are genuinely making my day <33

good things recently… one of my friends, who i’m not particularly close to, bought me flowers for my birthday a few months ago after a conversation we had about how people don’t give flowers to each other enough, especially between friends. it was her birthday a few days ago and so i bought her some beautiful flowers and she was so happy with them. it feels so innocent and intimate to give flowers, i love it and i definitely will be doing it more often and without reason.

a lovely thing about my life at the moment is my friendship group. for a long time i’ve felt out of place with other people or not settled but now i feel so safe and comfortable with my close friends. it’s like i’ve suddenly matured and found my place. there are no arguments and no tension and it’s nice to relax into a group that is calm and loving and still exciting. i’ve finally got to the point where i’d have them over to my house just to do nothing with them and that’s saying something because i think domesticity is the highest form of flattery.

i’m looking forward to many things. i’m going to see a performance of the great gatsby tomorrow, i’m going to a harry styles show on friday, next wednesday i’m going to the bfi premier of asteroid city, the new wes anderson film and then next friday i’m going to a music festival, which i can’t wait for! after that it’s about a week or so until me and my best friend leave for our month long holiday through france and italy which i still can’t believe is happening!

sorry, i’ve been waffling for ages but questions:

- what’s your favourite picture on your phone and why?

- what’s your love language?

- what’s your favourite trope?

- what’s your favourite lyric of all time? do you write songs? if you have, what about of the ones you have written?

- if you could time travel, would you go backwards or forwards and what year for both would you go to?

again, sending you lots of love and hoping you feel better soon xx

ps. 264 HOURS

i ended up being a total bitch for a few days & concerning everyone around me, but i’m doing a lot better today! cried it out to the new noah kahan songs, reread looking for alaska, & the intersection of those two artistic experiences happened to help me realize why i was feeling the way i was. isn’t it lovely how art can offer you that? i’m thankful for that today. also thankful for your kind words!

i like your answers, especially in regards to giving flowers to friends. i’ve been thinking a lot about flowers, lately, both as gifts & as a symbol of finding love within grief. that’s a tad melancholic, but i think flowers are so beautiful as a sign of love (to anyone) because they imply a sort of commitment. a flower is going to wilt, so are you going to be there to replace it? rhetorical question. but anyway it makes me think of something john green likes to say about how love is not a feeling, but a choice we make again & again (loosely paraphrased!)

it sounds like you’ve got a wonderfully busy time ahead of you! have fun! lots of experiences. so jealous in regards to the harry show, omg, & the music festival? that sounds like a blast. (actually thinking of going to a music festival on thursday, so i wonder if it’s the same one haha!)

to answer your questions!!

i’m in est! same timezone as nyc. i’m pretty close to cst though. i feel a conflicting sense of loyalty to each timezone. i hope that tells you something about how bonkers i am in personifying things that have no business being that personified. but yeah it’s currently 3:30 am here. (4 now)

i don’t know if i have a favorite picture on my phone? there are a lot that represent really important memories, so it’s hard to choose a favorite. everything means so much to me in the moment. so i have a lot of favorites, but i’ll tell you about one. it’s a somewhat blurry selfie of me & my best friend sitting at a restaurant in savannah, georgia. i like that picture so much because that was one of the best nights of my life - and the best trips tbh, so iconic - and to me it represents a lot of things that bring me joy. (that friend is like the only person who reads these posts, so hello to her <3!!)

everything i do is done in an effort to express love. all of it. one thing that i find underrated is giving someone your time. what says ‘i love you’ more clearly than choosing to spend the day with someone? & what spells indifference more clearly than not making time for someone?

ooh, favorite trope! i think someone asked me this recently, & i can’t remember what i said? hm. well, if you’ve learned one thing about me from this, it’s that i hate picking favorites. but if i had to, i’d say enemies to lovers! i like reading about people learning to look at familiar things in startlingly new ways. i’m a sucker for a good road trip au as well, & stories about going back to a familiar place once you’ve changed quite a bit.

OH I LOVE YHIS. i love this so much. favorite song lyric!! okay omg i adore you for asking this.

all-time favorite: “i was cleopatra / i was taller than the rafters / but that’s all in the past now / gone with the wind” from cleopatra by the lumineers - i know that one’s technically like half a verse but UGHHH i can’t explain how much it means to me. and that whole song just means everything to me.

current favorite: “if i could leave, i would’ve already left” from paul revere by noah kahan. OUCH. this motherfucker from vermont captured my small town appalachian pain so succinctly.

favorite of mine: “i like to say i can’t get homesick for tennessee, ‘cause i’m always thinking of kentucky.” i love that line but it also haunts me because whenever i sing it, i get overwhelmed with this deep sense that the people listening Know Too Much lmaooo

time travel question! fun. okay so i have no interest in spending the rest of my life in the future or in the past, but i would like to spend a yom kippur in jerusalem in the time of the first temple. so that’s what i’d do if i could time travel. i don’t want to travel to the future at all, because that sounds like a lot of responsibility & i am a coward haha.

for your questions… there is a lot i want to ask you that wouldn’t sit well with your interest in continued anonymity, like what your name is, & how old you are, & where you’re from. also lots of other things that i’m not even gonna write here because they’re just embarrassing. i am giving you these instead!

- what is something kind that you wish someone would do for you?

- what is it that you like about anonymity? you could just as easily send asks with your name attached, so i’m curious what makes anon preferable to you

- and, of course, favorite song lyric? (also, favorite harry song? gotta ask)

sending good vibes & flowers 💐