#friday update

[disorganizedkitten]

Bursting Bubbles of Bad Luck Chapter 8

Miraculous Ladybug | 2019 | 1,817 | Ao3 | Prev | Masterlist | Next

November 18th-Frenemies

Dupain-Cheng was watching him again.

 Felix did not know what he had done to get her attention but he wanted to be rid of it. Honestly, it was probably just because he was rich and famous. That was what it tended to be.

 “She doesn’t drool over anyone else in your class,” Plagg pointed out glibly.

 Felix, who had been pretending to read as he tried to spy on her in return, flinched. “Plagg,” he warned.

 “She doesn’t! Maybe she just wants to be friends.”

 Felix scoffed. “I doubt it.” That didn’t happen.

 “Ohh Felix!” Felix shot Plagg a look as though to say ‘this is your fault’. Plagg dove into the bench. Felix looked up at the interloper and smiled like he hated her. He nearly did.

 “Rossi.”

 “I was thinking-” she ran her fingers up his chest, and he shoved them off with contempt. “-maybe we could go get ice cream after class?”

 “Not a chance,” Felix said coldly. Rossi frowned.

 “Are you sure? It could be fun! Or we could go to a museum?”

 “No.”

 “What about-”

 “I’m not going out with you, Rossi.”

 For a moment, she looked like she hated him. Then she smiled and shrugged lightly. “Alright. Let me know if you change your mind.”

 He’s not going to.

 “Girls would bug you less if you had a girlfriend,” Plagg said, poking his head out of the bench. Felix glared.

 “I am fifteen,” he snarled under his breath. “I don’t want a girlfriend.”

 “Just because you’re old-”

 “I am not old!”

 Plagg blinked at him. “Huh. I was sure fourteen was marrying age.” He shrugged and took a bite of cheese. Felix hoped he choked. “Math isn’t my thing.”

 Felix looked over at Lavillant. “Lavillant!”

 She looked up with a smile. “Yes Felix?”

 “Was there a time when people married in their teens?”

 It shouldn’t have been possible, but she lit up. Lavillant’s resting face was The World Is Lovely as an expression instead of a scent, and her smile now was something like The Joy Of Life. It was impressive. Contagious too, as Felix found himself smiling back. “Oh yes! Before medicines and vaccines and hospitals were commonplace, it was very common to marry young. Although in their cases it wasn’t really young- few people would live past their thirties. They’d lived nearly half their life without love!”

 Felix stared. “That sounds terrible.”

 “I know right!” Lavillant squeaked. “Imagine if no one fell in love before they were forty! I’d be so lonely!”

 That wasn’t the part Felix meant, but this conversation was going well so he wasn’t going to clarify.

 “Plus a lot of women died in childbirth, so sometimes men would go through four or more wives before they died,” Dupain-Cheng added.

 “And not all of the babies survived,” Couffaine pointed out quietly. “Labor had a high mortality rate.”

 “I’m so happy we have doctors,” Le Chein said. Felix jumped, having missed him coming in.

 A couple murmurs of assent passed around, and Mme. Bustier walked in.

 Perfect timing.

***

 “What did you get for seven?” Haprele asked.

 “False,” Felix said at the same time as Dupain-Cheng. He glanced at her, and she sent him a cute little smile.

 He hated it.

***

 “Dupain-Cheng, wanna show me that book you were talking about? In the library?”

 Marinette blinked at curseboy. He had never talked to her before, she didn’t think. What was he- oh. His smile was more fixed than usual, and he shot a meaningful glance to the side. Lila was storming up to them.

 “I’d love to, Felix, come on.” She held out her hand and took off, dragging him with her.

 The gloves he wore, that he’d worn the entire semester, were scratchy and worn, like they were trying to fall apart.

 Destruction magic.

***

 “Duck!”

 Dupain-Cheng tackled him. Felix tumbled to the floor under her weight. Above their heads, a beam of terrifying light slammed into the wall. He glanced from it to her face in time to see her blue eyes turn yellow, and then violet when she looked up.

 Just how many sorceressex lived in Paris?

 She climbed off him and offered him a hand up. “You okay?”

 “I’m fine,” he told her shortly. “Thank you. Yourself?”

 She smiled, eyes bleeding back into blue. “I’m fine. But I’m going to go hide now.” She pointed at the hallway. The hallway that had half a wall missing and a rampaging akuma in it. He raised an eyebrow. She flushed.

 Felix rolled his eyes. “I’ll just go hide this way then,” he said lightly. She grinned, a little guilty, but they parted ways. Her odd reaction stayed in his thoughts as he found a corner to transform in. Maybe she was trying to reclaim the akuma? Was that possible?

 “Kid,” Plagg said warningly.

 “Claws out,” Felix murmured. He needed to learn more about magic.

 Something exploded in the courtyard.

 Learning about magic could wait.

***

 “You good, Mari?” Cesaire was asking when Felix entered. He found his eyes drawn to their bench, where Dupain-Cheng was elbow deep in her backpack.

 “Yeah, I’m just trying to find my pen.”

 “Here,” Felix said, dropping one of his onto her desk. She looked up and blushed furiously.

 “Thanks, Felix,” she said. Her eyes didn’t change color.

 “You’re welcome.” Now that he knew it could happen, he was hyperaware of it, and her.

 A part of him hated it, but another part was relieved for the distraction. He was still dusting things, although it didn’t happen for a while after akuma attacks. He probably used up the energy that way- he’d have to ask someone.

***

 Marinette rolled over in her bed, restlessly flicking through her phone. It was late, but she wanted to do something. ADHD was terrible.

The Dead Fandoms Discord - Channel #Magic-Troubles

21:57

Snow Cone King: Can magic… overload?

Coracle Miracle: It can happen but doesn’t often - it’s a repression thing, I think?

 My bedroom is full of little things to transfigure because if I don’t do it on purpose I’ll do it on accident.

 Flutetastic: Blew out someone’s eardrums doing that once.

 Speedster: I crashed into a wall. A lot of walls, actually. Mom says I once broke a window. It’s how they found out I was a sorcerer

 Penny Could Kick Me: How much do you repress your magic?

 That’s terrifying!

 Coracle-Miracle: Ha

Ha

Ha

Haaaaaaaaaaa

 Have you seen Paris? They can’t decide if we’re victims or all working with Hawkmoth

 Snow Cone King: They actually think that?!

 Coracle-Miracle: It’s certainly what people are saying.

 Snow Cone King: That’s reprehensible.

 Coracle-Miracle: Thanks, King.

***

“Oh Felix, there you are!”

 Felix flinched, expecting Rossi to show up again. He’d gotten his parents involved, but she kept at it. The hand that grabbed his was smaller, though, and not followed by an octopus hug for him to shake off. “Hide me,” she hissed into his ear.

 Felix blinked at Marinette. Her eyes were a neon green that looked sickly. He wasn’t sure what that meant but he doubted it was anything good. He forced a smile. “Marinette! I was wondering when you’d get here.”

 “You didn’t say you invited a friend,” Dianora said, sounding betrayed and sad. Felix flinched.

 He knelt down. “I didn’t,” he said softly.

 Marinette let go of his hand. “He’s gone,” she said. “Thank you, Felix. Sorry about the interruption.”

 “Interruption?” Dira asked suspiciously.

 “I don’t have a buddy today,” Marinette admitted, looking straight at Dira. Grudgingly, Felix was impressed. Anyone who could accept children needed talked to as adults had some sense. “So when I noticed someone following me I looked for one instead.”

 Dira squinted, and then looked between them. “Alright. You can stay.”

 Marinette flushed, and jumped. “Oh no! Don’t worry about it, I’ll just wait another few minutes and slip away, I’ll be fine. I just needed to scare him away.”

 “But you’re one of Felix’s friends?”

 “Yes?” Felix wanted to facepalm. Marinette had no idea the trap she was walking into. 

 “So you should stay, and we’ll walk you home after!”

 “What?” Marinette squeaked. “Oh no, no! I’m fine, you obviously already have plans-” 

 Felix rolled his eyes. Could she get any more fidgety? How could anyone stand to be that nice all the time? Someone was going to walk all over her. “Accept it,” Felix said, resigned. “Do you have other plans?”

 “No, I just finished running deliveries for the bakery.”

 “You work at a bakery?”

 “My parents own it,” Marinette said proudly.

 Felix raised an eyebrow. “Interesting. They’re good at it, I assume?”

 “Yes,” Marinette said, a challenge in her gaze. Felix met it evenly.

 “So she’s staying, right?” Dira asked. She tugged on Felix’s hand, and then turned to Marinette. “You are staying?”

 “I- Felix?”

 “We’ll make sure you get home on time. We’re chasing down Andre.”

 Marinette grinned. Her eyes were blue again. “Sounds like a lot of fun. Let me tell my parents where I’ll be.”

 Dira shrieked and bounced.

***

 “Thanks for yesterday,” Marinette said, carefully setting the pen down on Felix’s desk. He looked up at her.

 “You’re welcome.” He said. She could never tell his mood from his tone, it was a bit unsettling. “Just don’t go spreading rumors about us actually dating.”

 Marinette puffed up, offended. “I would never!”

 He scrutinized her for a moment, and Marinette wasn’t sure if her internal tirade on how unjust that would be was happening aloud too. He reached out and pushed the pen back towards her. “I’ll be your distraction, or excuse, whenever you need one, if you’ll do the same.”

 Marinette drew up short. “I- uh, sure?”

 He smirked and nudged the pen in her direction again. “Take it. Then we’ll always have an excuse to talk.”

 She smiled, relaxing. “Thank you, Felix.”

 “Don’t mention it,” he said, picking up his book again. “Seriously, don’t.” He wasn’t even looking at her.

 Marinette prepared to leave, but a gasp and thud drew her attention instead. She spun, and found Felix glaring at his hands. His gloves were gone, and the edges of the book were blackened.

 Marinette reached forward before she was aware of it, changing the ash back to its previous form. “Here. I don’t-” she looked at the pile of dust that had been his gloves and grimaced. “I don’t think I can fix those, I’m sorry.”

 He was looking at her askance. Marinette grimaced, curling in on herself. He’d been cursed- it would make sense if he didn’t like or trust magic and mages. Add in that Hawkmoth showed up soon after and her magic residue was still purple…

 “Don’t worry about it,” Felix said softly, pulling another pair of gloves out of his bag. “Thank you, for the book.”

 Marinette smiled again, although it was a little smaller this time. Softer. “Don’t mention it.”

[dominimoonbeam]

Happy Friday!

I did finally get started on my Don't Touch My Stuff edits! It's not done yet so I can't check it off but it's at least getting there and I really love it.

New Don't Run post later today!

I've been distracted by Yuurivoice this week... I've listened to some random newer stuff but didn't know how to really start so I listened to the Alphonse/Seth compilations.

Got some fic writing and some own writing in this week! And today I was playing with my William/Cam fic a little because I'm scared Erik is going to kill William and I won't be able to write it anymore! I'm soft.

Hope you're doing well and going to do something you like this weekend!

[timidloner]

Friday's progress update (23/12/22)

Hello, I know it's Saturday already but hush, I'm here and giving signals of life.

Anyway, I'm still with my extended family and the XV años were great! I should stop here before getting carried away and sharing everything, haha.

And for the progress, well.

See you all later. And Happy Christmas if you participate in it.

[someoneoncewashere]

Yall the way i was doing the demiurge quest today and donating 500 herbs to that bitch and thought "wouldn't it be nice if we had an herb bundle like the critter one that gave you like, 3-5 random herbs?" And i check back in tonight and they Fucking added it 😭

[tamiveldura]

Friday Update!

This week was disrupted almost immediately with the news that I've been called for Jury Duty. That starts next Monday, and potentially lasts all week, which means I started the week trying to figure out how I'm going to hit deadlines with a lost week I wasn't expecting And potentially several additional days lost to recovery.

I don't have a good answer for that. The bad answer I I decided not to take a break after finishing Fated To The Wolf.

I wrapped up revisions of Fated on Monday and assembled the novella for the editor. That project goes into a multi author anthology and will be on preorder on the 15th. You'll see me chatting about it more as the preorder runs.

While revising, I have been massaging the outline for Rescued By The Dragon Assassin. (Preorder link to my website) On Tuesday I moved directly into the dictation draft of Rescued.

Normally I would give myself the rest of the week to handle admin work (never ending) and poke a bit at the outline to make it more robust. I fill in the time reading good books and generally letting the creative muscles take a rest.

But, see above, jury duty, so instead I started dictating Rescued. I got a few chapters in and made some outline adjustments. I got to the start of chapter 4 (of 10) and while I usually take the weekend off, I'm going to do one dictation session each day to help move the project forward.

Worst case scenario, I have to serve the whole week and I don't have the energy to do anything at all but survive that. Best case, I don't have to serve at all. But a really nice situation would be serving the week and still being able to come home and dictate a bit each day so the week isn't a total loss. Going downward in effort: being able to revise the first few chapters on Rescued, being able to outline the next project, being able to brainstorm the next project, or being able to do admin maintenance tasks like dealing with audio files would all progress things in the business.

Ultimately I don't know what the situation will be until Monday, which is really disruptive Now because I am autistic and rely heavily on Knowing The Plan. It helps that I have several potential plans to pick from given more information, I just hate waiting in limbo.

Rescued (20k) is due at the end of May. Vampire Mated (20k) is due end of June. I do not love how tight those are. In addition, there is a workshop I'm attending in August that will start throwing short stories at me Soon TM and with a single week deadline each, they can't be shuffled around once they arrive.

(if I get my first short assignment on Monday while I'm talking to the Judge I hope it's for a wild genre I don't prefer like the Regency, because if it's for the epic space opera I will burn at both ends to do it. Please cross your fingers it comes the week after.)

This whole situation is why I've stopped accepting group projects and submission projects for now. I want to clear these novellas, get through the anthology Workshop, and start working on some of the sequels of things these projects have spawned.

It's a lot and right now, with next week questionable, it's a lot more than normal.

Thanks for listening to the vent! Go check out Rescued on my webstore and if you'd like to get shit in your inbox instead, my newsletter goes out every Thursday with a small blog, sales alerts, and monthly free books from my friends 💜 Signup gives you a free kinky dragon shifter short story!

[obsidiansworld]

FRIDAY UPDATE!!!: it's been a while, hasn't it? No I didn't forget about it there has just been no progress on getting ghazt lol. I am redecorating the island tho. Let me know what you think!

[velinxi]

Lord of the Rings fanart! I watched for the first time recently and loved it

[EDIT: Thanks for the love on this! Prints of this are also available on my shop for those interested!]

[thedegu]

Idk if anyone here cares but!!! Ch7 of tales from vaistra is up on ao3 :3

[bigfatbreak]

Birds of a Feather Previous / Next

[badolmen]

Five Dollar Fridays!

Can you spare $5 this week? If not, please reblog this post so it reaches someone who can!

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[disorganizedkitten]

Bursting Bubbles of Bad Luck Chapter 3

Miraculous Ladybug | 2019 | 602 | Ao3 | Prev | Masterlist | Next

Marinette’s heart stopped. Something jolted through her, leaving a slimy coating under her skin and on her muscles and up her throat and- she took a breath, heaving air into lungs that didn’t feel right anymore.

 She scrambled to sit up, breaths coming in short gasps that went from pat-pat-pat to pat to nothing for seconds and then another set of heaving because she did need air, and forgetting to breath helped nothing.

 Marinette waited until the pattern died off, even though she still felt wrong. Violated. As her breathing slowly returned to something even, the headache stayed. Something was wrong. Marinette pushed forward, towards the ladder from her bed. In her rush, she knocked it over.

 Another deep breath. She found one of her bedposts and pushed magic to it, intending to reform it for the moment.

 Marinette didn’t get that far.

 As she tried to push magic through her hand, it started stinging heavily, like she had dipped it in a fryer with breading and now the breading was burning her skin while the oil and breading weighed her down.

 She shrieked.

 Something was wrong with her magic. That… that didn’t happen. Not without a very strong curse or-

 Oh no.

 Marinette grit her teeth, reaching in the dark for another bauble she kept near her at all times. She used her other hand to try again, just to turn the gnome into an arrow. It hurt nearly as much. Marinette dropped the object and realized she had stopped breathing again. She started the pattern, fast fast fast, normal, stop, fast fast fast, normal, stop, for the second time that night, tears streaming down her face.

 That hurt. Physically. And worse. Her skin was only getting more slimy and painful, and she hated it.

 She hadn’t done anything yesterday! Or even last week! The only way someone could have cursed her would be if they targeted her, which was a very, very scary notion.

***

Mage inc. Discord chat - Channel #General

  Rough-glamor: Any other @Changlings feeling completely whack tonight? I woke up in a cold sweat and it hurts to use my magic.

  Goldie The Queen Of France: Nope, but my brother is. He’s also had his trail change colors, did that happen to you too?

  Rough-glamor: Lemme check

 Yep.

 WTC?

  Flutetastic: That’s really weird.

 Sometimes it can act up if our physical states need help (I once had such severe sleep deprivation that the ringing in my ears became audible to everyone in the vicinity. Not fun to explain) but it’s p weird to see it happen in multiple cases at once.

  Le Chien adores la chatte: Um, it’s kinda viral? Here in America anyway. People are collapsing and at least one exploded. The entire street turned into a victorian-era clothing store. I don’t know if they’ll play this off, or leave it like they do Pride.

Flutetastic: That’s… not a coincidence.

  Rough-glamor: ‘bout to sound rlly crazy here, but like… does anyone know the state of our heart? I heard that Destruction mages had a really bad week in 2009, and then there was that one guy claiming he’d stolen the heart and cursed it.

  Goldie The Queen Of France: Oh I really hope not. Corrupted hearts have really, really bad side-effects.

***

 Gabriel watched the gem flicker, changing colors. The kwami that came with it was shaking like a leaf, but he didn’t care.

 He finally had a way. He just needed to get enough attention.

 Starting tomorrow, Emilie would be well on her way to healing.

***

 Marinette threw up. She wasn’t the only one.

[dominimoonbeam]

Happy Friday!

Okay. I am at home not at a cafe. I have my first official day at the new job this afternoon. As you can see on my very optimistic sticky note, I have been unfocused this week. But not completely unproductive! I've got about 4k in that Milo/Darlin fic I'll share soon, posted that mini fic about Porter&Vincent, and I'm sitting on EJ's birthday Dasher fic!

Drinking ca phe sua da and trying to decide what to work on until my shift starts...

On the own work front, a steamy update for Don't Run is coming out later today and then we're back into Bite to Bruise for next month!

Hope you're doing well and have a lovely weekend! <3 <3

[timidloner]

Right now I'm in a posada (yay), so I'm just writing this so you guys now everything has been going well. This week I wrote 1k words.

No time for writing a nice announcement, gotta party, I'm afraid.

[fantastic-nonsense]

however bad of a day you're having, know that it's not nearly as bad as whatever the Crowdstrike security team is going through since waking up this morning

[tamiveldura]

Friday Update 11/15/24

This week I've broken ground on my new scifi short story for BSQ magazine. According to my outline I'm looking at about 10k total. Now that words have started, that'll build up quick. I'd love to wrap it up next week.

The Veldura house is moving soonish. We don't have official orders yet, but our expected date is coming up quick, so there are a lot of logistics tasks that have taken up time. That'll be worse next week, I imagine. Thankfully I have some time built into the schedule.

I've made some progress on some Vampires art. I'm trying to find my style of drawing and color, which involves a lot of trying-and-not-liking things, it turns out. I've started collecting art that I love so I can study it. Color is kicking my butt, though.

Vampires 3 is up on the schedule after this scifi, but I don't think I'll get to it before we move, so that will probably be December's only project.

OH! I received a rejection from Writers of the Future this week. My short story was given an honorable mention, which isn't an award, but it does put my name on a list and I was able to to add that mention to the cover letter when I submitted the story to Asimov. Now we wait to see what Asimov says.

until next week!

[obsidiansworld]

No Friday update cause band camp left me E

EXHAUSTED. buuuut have an emo dandidoo