#honestly im just going to make up my own narrative in my rewrite

[moltensmusings]

I kind of wish we'd get a comic or book of Ren and Nora's story in-between the destruction of Kuroyuri and their acceptance into Beacon. I think the Rwby backstories can be an area where the story telling is often lacking and Ren and Nora are the biggest examples of this.

Rens story is tragic but we don't get to sit with him and his family to develop it, and Nora's appearance within the town before the destruction isn't explained for a while. Not to mention we don't actually know how long she was there for and if she made it to the town on her own following her mother's abandonment or if her mother abandoned her in the town.

I want to see what happened to them afterward, were they rescued by huntsmen? A group of travelers? Did they themselves take a journey to a neighboring town to get help?

What about schooling? Did they go to a school before Beacon or were they one example of students training on their own time and testing in? What were their first few years together like? How did they settle into their eventual dynamic?

Animation needs a budget for sure but I'd at least love some written content explaining things if nothing else.

[evelina18-6-blog]

(this is so long, i am so sorry)

i understand why the artist was offended because your post made some pretty strong if not aggressive arguments, and i'm sure some assholes took the opportunity to send that person anon hate which probably made it feel more like a personal attack than it actually was, but i am honestly so sick and tired of people using their real life trauma as an excuse for every single thing. i may not have some deep, life altering trauma but i have my own issues and experiences and i too use fiction and art to cope but here we're not just talking about fiction and art, hell we're not talking about fiction at all. the ethics of shipping real life people are already questionable enough and i don't think there's a clear cut and dry answer but taking someone so repulsive, so downright dangerous, as Vargs and not only making cute artworks of him a if he's your casual anime boy, but also shipping him with a person who hated him, is inexcusable. just saying that you don't like or support Vargs is not enough when you have practically dedicated an entire account to making fanart of him. the Mayhem community is already messy enough and by doing that, they downplay what a piece of shit Vargs is and the pain he caused. (no matter how unintentional). also can we talk about Pelle for a moment? claiming to like him and pair him with such a horrible person? using him as a prop and completely ignoring his real life relationships and beliefs? how is that fair? people are already infantalizing him enough because of his mental illness and possible autism. how about realizing that Pelle is not a prop? that he was a person who deserves respect and that drawing him in the embrace of his friends murderer, is not being respectful to say the least? what about Oystein? no one seems to want to address were Olystein fits in this situation at all, why? was he not the person affected the most by Vargs? was he not his victim? putting his friend with his murderer feels like a huge fuck you to him. overall, painting someone in a positive light and later going 'lol im just kidding' is not good enough. Vargs (amongst others..) has spend the majority of his time insulting, belittling, even sexualizing Oystein, in an attempt to ruin his legacy and he has mostly succeeded because he's surrounded by cowards like himself who don't have the balls to stand up and speak the truth. the first thing people come across when researching Mayhem is the same bullshit about what a ''terrible'' person Oystein was and how he ''needed to be stopped''. this is the narrative Vargs has created and if you don't care enough to look deeper, you'll end up believing his lies and blaming a dead person. therefore such artwork, that completely rewrites the history and relationships of these people, can be very dangerous because it can actualy help Vargs into better selling his stupid narrative. i'm not saying that this particular artist is a bad person or that they're lying about their trauma or any bullshit like that, but art affects real life and the moment you post sth online you've opened yourself to criticism. do these Vargs/Pelle fics have more depth than initially presented? maybe. maybe they truly are a great psychological analysis of Vargs (although i don't understand why the hell you'd want to touch that with a ten-foot pole) but you can't blame people for not seeing that. whenever i see fanart of a ship, i don't sit wondering what the artist wants to say with their piece, i either like it bc i like the ship or i don't. if this is your copying mechanism, fine. can't criticize someone's copying mechanisms without sounding like an asshole i guess. but my advice is that maybe people need to take a better look at themselves and see how their interests affect others as well. you can do whatever in your own time but when you post it online it contributes to sth bigger whether you like it or not.

Don't worry about the length of your messages. I like that you elaborate. I agree with everything and thank you for your message. I honestly don't understand when this person says that she is NOT a fan of Varg, or that she doesn't like him and makes fun of him. I haven't seen anything mocking. I've only seen a great idealization of the young Varg, who was a horrible person, more violent than the current Varg. And a certain idealization of the "wonderful" intellect of the current Varg. I'm sorry to say that "the mockery" is poorly done. Like when you have to explain a joke, if no one understand it, it's because it's done poorly. About Pelle, I liked this: "claiming to like him and pair him with such a horrible person? using him as a prop and completely ignoring his real life relationships and beliefs?" Yes, that's why I said Pelle is not a ball that goes from here to there. I also agree that no one seems to think what's going on with Euro in this situation. In my case, it is almost the first thing that shocks me, it is a double offense towards him. That's why I wonder if there is something, deep down, against the Euro. Because romanticizing Varg SO MUCH, yes or yes, for me, brings with it some kind of sympathy for his ideologies, therefore, some kind of resentment towards Euro. When people attack Euro, they generally resort to two things: lies about the mistreatment of Pelle, and his political inclinations, painting him as an authoritarian extremist fanatic. And therefore, Varg as a person who was encouraged to go further and do "something that many would want to do." Varg is a failure who does not know how to value the only good thing in him, his musical talent. He did not know how to value the influence of Euro and the environment in which he found himself. Now he is a clown who needs to resort to ridiculing himself on the internet to stay current, so that his morbid followers consume him "as ironic consumption." It's an internet phenomenon. And he is free only because the Norwegian prison regime is very soft. I think he should be under psychiatric treatment because he can't stop being a bad influence, even on his children, or they should send him to hard labor, so that he can channel his anger through physical labor instead of the internet. Perhaps the girls who draw Varg romantically and the people who are big fans of him beyond his music do not specifically have his same ideologies, but they admire him in some way, and it is clear that his systematically offensive attitudes are not enough to stop them and scare them away I sincerely feel that they see him as a master. I see Varg as the typical cult leader, and I feel cringe at the adoration they profess of him. "i'm not saying that this particular artist is a bad person or that they're lying about their trauma or any bullshit like that, but art affects real life and the moment you post sth online you've opened yourself to criticism." What you said sums it up. I don't doubt that this girl could be harmless in real life, and that she has traumas and that her art and fanfics help her in her introspection. I fully believe her when she says it, but the debate does not end with whether something is therapeutic or not. It is up to her to choose what things to express her art on. She don't lack talent, why do you choose Varg? That's what's shocking, I mean, it's shocking that she brings Pelle into this and twists history to support her capricious ship and celebrate that more and more people join her ship. There you can see that she doesn't do it for herself, she wants more people to romanticize Varg and have the vision of Pelle that she has, which, in my opinion, is a bit humiliating and objectifying.

[blorbosondeck]

fic rec masterlist

canon divergent/finale fix its

Anamnesis

THIS! FIC! this fic lives in my head rent FREE it is so good and it makes so much sense in the narrative that the shitty finale concocted, as to why they wouldn't mention cas or anyone else and its just. so good and they write chuck in the most villainous way that i love!!!

"Chuck is depowered, Jack is the new god, and the world is free. Dean and Sam get into the Impala and chase down the miles on an endless highway, and their story is finally, finally their own to follow. At least, that's what Dean tells himself. But the diners and motels and painted interstate lines are blurring together and the smallest details keep catching at his brain like tiny fishhooks and he can't quite shake the feeling that not everything is exactly as it should be. Fix-it/alternate series finale. Canon-compliant through the end of 15.19."

Sunset Sound: Stairway to Heaven by @adhdeancas

GOD FUCKING CHRIST this is so good and sweet and im such a sucker for team ups and reunions!!! its 3:30 am rn and i just finished it and i love it SO much it made me laugh a lot and the last few chapters i had the stupidest grin just plastered to my face

The Closer the Star, the Greater the Parallax by @rocksalts​

repressed bastard dean submits to the mortifying ordeal of being known and receives the rewards of being loved but only after some miscommunication i LOVE this i read it last night and it’s a fast favorite. my interests have overlapped and i am INTO it

“When Dean sits down to watch some bullcrap Discovery Channel episode with Cas, he doesn’t expect to actually learn anything. Except, with Cas explaining, he makes an effort to connect the dots.”

Don't We All Deserve To Be Happy?

VERY sweet and a VERY good pick me up. all around feel good fic!!! 

"Post-canon fix-it, divergent from 15x19 where Jack stays and Dean doesn't die and Cas comes back and everyone is happy. Take a shot every time I'm salty about the finale."

Keep Your Love Alive

okay. okay okay okay this may be my favorite finale fix it just because of how well reasoned it is. like this feels what should have happened i love it SO much

"Dean gets to spend eternity sharing beers with Bobby on the Roadhouse porch and riding around in his Baby with Sam. He’s at peace… or he feels like he should be. But a few things nag at him: Where is Cas, and everybody else Dean had been hoping to see in Heaven? Why does he feel like he’s stuck in a loop, reliving the same memories over and over again? And who are the strangers wearing Sam’s and Bobby’s faces?"

The GoldenRod Revisions by @aethylas​

this is one of the most well written things ive ever read. the script format DID make it feel more real and honestly? this is better writing than this show deserves. the finale that could have been ♥️

“A rewrite of Supernatural’s final two episodes, expanded into a five episode arc - in which Chuck needs to be defeated, Castiel deserves to be saved, and the characters in this story get a very different ending.“

Ascend by @wanderingcas​ 

THEE finale fix it fic!!! written by the AMAZINGLY skilled and talented @wanderingcas !!! it’s 50k of angst and hurt/comfort and pure bliss

“Something in the world is wrong.

Demon activity is rising where mysterious black substance oozes and unusual ecological events are shaking the world. Dean, grief hanging on his shoulders, restlessly searches for answers that might lead him to the Empty… and to Cas.

But what Chuck wrote can’t be undone. The narrative thread pulls Dean along, forcing him to comply. Because once a story already has an ending, it can’t be rewritten.

Or can it?”

Things Happen (They Do, And They Do, And They Do) by THEE @sobsicles

i KNOW everyone has already recommended this and likely you’ve all already read it. but it has to go here bc REPRESSIOOOOOOOOON i LOVE this so much it is one of the most perfect things i’ve read. are you bisexual? did you have a kind of weird relationship with your best friend and not realize that how you felt about them wasn’t necessarily how other people felt about them and you were maybe a little bit in love with them but were too repressed to realize it? you’ll feel seen. maybe a little too seen

Closer (isn't close enough)

are you a sweet and sappy yet horny bastard? do you like cas exploding light bulbs? you will like this.

“the one where they finally talk about what cas said before the empty took him”

You and Your Husband

it is exTRMELY sweet!!! repression dean strikes again <3

"Five times Dean corrects someone about his relationship with Cas, and one time he realizes he doesn't need to."

Tall Grass

miscommunication and a slowburn! despite being written in 2017 and finished in 2018, it feels like a fix it. ft. plant obsessed cas <3 

Invictus

a LOVELY and short (relatively) finale fix it

“They saved the world. They're free. It's done.

Except it's not, and carrying on is the last thing any of them are thinking about.

They still have someone they need to save.”

Unchained Link

post finale- it’s a great case fic and i am compelled i want more!!!

"It's after the end of things. Life continues on while Dean is "livin it up" in heaven. But it's never that simple, is it? A freak occurrence sends Dean into another time stranded back on Earth. And he thought his hunting days were over. But, no worries. His knight in shining armor comes to the rescue. Hijinks, therefore, ensue."

fun and time unspecified

Ladies and Gentlemen, This is Love Potion No. 5

very funny and sweet! miscommunication at its finest ♥️

"Cas gets drenched with a mystery potion from the ‘love spell’ shelf and... Dean has a sneaking suspicion, angel or no— the spell may have taken effect. And Cas might be in love with Sam."

The Way We Were

Y'all. It is so good its a great mix of funny and serious- extremely fun to see dean as like a base bisexual

"Dean and Castiel pose as a couple to gain access to a gated community known as 'The Glen', a pleasant if secretive location that the boys believe might be linked to several dead bodies showing up over the years bearing signs of ritualistic sacrifice. All seems well until Dean's memory is affected from an incident during a solo exploration, leaving Dean convinced that their cover story is true. Castiel is left trying to resolve their case without taking advantage of an increasingly enthusiastic Dean"

While You Were Sleeping

this is basically just the movie but replacing sandra bullock with cas. this is my comfort movie and imo, one of the most perfect rom coms. the fic isn’t finished but i still have the tab open on my phone and i will straight up go back and re read it when i need a pick me up. 

aus/rewrites

The Harvelle Gospels: Offscript

i know everyone ever ( @jewishcharliebradbury ) has recommended this fic. and for good reason go fucking read it

“The Apocalypse is averted, the angels are in Heaven, and Jo is free from the threat of possession. Somehow it couldn't be farther from a happy ending.“

absolute riots

An Ineffably Profound Bond

i honestly would have put this in the finale fix it section! look. i know. i know you've been burned by crossover fics before. but this is Thee good omens/spn fic you want. its funny as hell and immensely satisfying. im weak for everyone working together tropes and that is this

"After Chuck sets 'The End' in motion, the remaining members of TFW make a miraculous escape. Not willing to waste any time, Castiel comes up with a plan to travel to one of the other worlds to try and get help from the angels there, but after a fight with Dean, it's the hunter who gets sent into an alternate universe,with seemingly no hope of return.

When a mysterious human with a heavenly weapon shows up in Aziraphale's shop, he and Crowley learn that their world is not the only one. Now it is up to them to decide whether or not they want to join forces with the human and help him save his world or simply find a way to send him home."

Somebody Up There Likes Me by @lafilleredige

cas is hit with a spell that turns his vessel into a woman, hijinks and sexuality crises ensue etc etc sam is a supportive and bitchy little brother and its all SO fucking funny and also. horny as hell i love it i love it i LOVE it

“’Dean doesn’t want to talk about your breasts, it’s making him uncomfortable because he hasn’t acknowledged the complex fluidity of human sexuality.’“

Stray Cat Strut

a long crack fic that IS one of the funniest things i’ve ever read and i can’t explain why. it’s so ooc but its so funny that i don’t care. if you need a laugh you gotta read this

"Sam and Cas are immediately in love with the adorable kitty they find outside the bunker door, and occupy their time planning how to convince Dean--who they believe is off sulking after a botched hunt--to let them keep their cat. Along the way, Dean learns to use a litter box and hears some confessions he maybe wasn’t supposed to hear, all while realizing just how much he loves Castiel.

Now all Dean has to do is convince Cas and Sam their new pet cat is actually him before they do something crazy--like neuter him!"

canon compliant or slight canon divergence

Give

by @doublestuffedimpala post season 7 episode 7, kind of ambiguous ending but truly a cas is happy to bleed for the winchesters fic

Punch Like Bones 

short, post 5x04 homoerotic moment that i wish we’d gotten

[sparatus]

heyy

💋(or suitable turian alternative)🍦💖💞 (I think I know who but feel free to babble about them I'm all ears)

hell yeah thank u 💍

Fanfic Emoji Asks

💋 First kiss fics. Love em or hate em?

LOVE LOVE LOVE god i need to write more im so weak, especially for when it's two characters who've been friends a long time but haven't been able to bring themselves to admit their feelings until at some point everything comes to a head in an emotional moment and AUGH YES

🍦 What's the sweetest fic you've created so far?

i already answered this one here but let's be honest i've got a lot of soft sweet shit under my belt, lol. Where the Wind Rests definitely gets a shout-out, part of a series and has spoilers for the end of broken mirror but god tender reunions and marriage proposals my beloveds. i went looking through my desabrudas stuff to pick one out but honestly any of the stuff i wrote about them post-shanxi with kids is just pure cavity fodder, i need to write them more everything is oLD

💖 What made you start writing?

i used to be a semi-famous rper in the facebook rp community (back in. 2012. yes it was a thing fb used to be an easy haven for rp) for a. certain anime community i'm not going to mention you must be at least a level 3 friend to learn this fact. but that started it, and then i had a couple friends from that community who helped foster that and got me writing - i have an old twilight spitefic still up on ao3 (do not read it. cannot emphasize enough it's very old and i was mimicking smeyer's writing style and the characters have evolved since then) that was inspired by one of those friends!!

i got started writing mass effect specifically because my partner @lightspeedpowerpunk was writing a fic about our ocs, which eventually grew into Rise & Reign (we're rewriting it soon i prommy plans are in the works i miss my dumb stupid boys) and around chapter. idk, 10?? 12 or so?? i started contributing to writing it myself, and that just kinda kickstarted everything. everybody say thank you to the ogs axilus and thie'haasn for my [checks notes] jesus christ 84 mass effect works on ao3

💞 Who's your comfort character?

m. many,,,,, definitely cnclr sparatus, obviously, and also my oc for his wife, aediteia. the way i've written sparky has taken nearly the full 8 years i've been in this fandom to slowly build, and he's very near and dear to my heart. conversely, teia has also grown along with him, and their narratives both personal and together touch on a lot of things that are somewhat personal to me and my own growth as a person.

in the same vein, the arterius brothers also count - i can look back and see how the way i've written saren has changed over the years as i myself have grown. i write him less depressed now, he has a support system, in yes-reapers yes he's still having a Bad Time because sovereign is fucking him up and the reapers are tied to his brother's death but it's less. idk. gloom and doom emo sadboi 24/7, he's allowed to have moments of peace now. desolas in particular i've kinda realized is also reflecting a lot about myself, ESPECIALLY in no-reapers. his arc in my no-reapers au, and in fact a major theme of the entire series, is all about recovery from trauma and how our choices make us who we are; no-reapers desolas has been through a lot of shit, so much, 89 years of it, from his parents being killed to having to help his baby brother through his own trauma to his career to 314 and everything in-between, and he's been in a really bad place and learned really bad habits and attitudes, but after shanxi he makes the active choice to grow and move on, at first just because valis needs him but with therapy also comes to do it just for himself because he's tired of being sad and hurt and angry. and that's a very personal story for me, even tho i certainly didn't set out intending des of all assholes to be the one carrying most of my weight, lol.

nihlus and (valis) abrudas are also in the same boat, characters who've been through a lot of shit and got mad about it and have their own ways of dealing with it. something that's going to become apparent to shepard in itlog is that saren was nihlus's morality chain, not the other way around - saren played a large part in nihlus learning to heal from his father's death and move on as a person, and now that he's been hurt in this whole thing nihlus is starting to slide back into old habits. valis, on the other hand, is the lone sane man in the whole clan, trying to keep her head on straight and above water while her friends and loved ones are drowning, and i've had to be that friend myself and boy i really do appreciate that kind of character, especially for somebody like desolas who's been drowning so long he's forgotten what the surface looks like.

god i have so many emotions and thoughts about sparkyteia and the desabrudas/kryterius group (i like to call des + valis + saren the evolution trio, personally, as they're all in it, but nihlus makes a proper group name hard :lmfao:) they're all my comfort characters i come back to them every time when i get stuck in my head and start Thinking About Stuff i probably have others but this is already rEALLY LONG,

[siswritesyanderes]

This is a series of asks bc, while I do LIKE all the charas of Fantastic Beasts individually, much of the romantic pairings dont sit well with me. By that mean the messy love polygon w Newt & I think I finally figured out why & I'd like another's opinion on it. For starters, Newt's attraction with Tina is too fast for me considering he was friends w Leta, got expelled out of Hogwarts for Leta, carried Leta's photo in his case, & basically loved her for YEARS. But this is all undone by a [1]

jaunt in NY having met a woman, who he admittedly went on a huge adventure w, over the course of maybe a few weeks. He's so taken w her she replaces Leta's photo w her own &, after refusing to go to Paris for Dumbledore, leaves immediately once he finds out she's there. I just find this unbelievable. I can rationalize it from Newt's perspective where Tina is a fresh breeze sweeping into his life on (percieved) unrequited pining, but this is my conjecture based on my understanding of Newt. [2]

The audience shouldnt be left to rationalize endgame couple of the mc on their own. & the whole thing w Leta is so messily handled I dont think they can save it even if they bring her back in FB3. How she feels for Newt vs Theseus & unresolved lingering affection, etc. She & Newt were SO important to each other & we SEE that & they dont HAVE to get together, but they need proper resolution bc they have actual history between them. God Leta in general deserved so much better. [3]

But my main gripe is that this love polygon serves no purpose to what I believe is the main selling point of FB: the world. HP having love stories makes sense bc we're following the story of a boy as he goes through adolescence & his journey through that via school is part of that, which is why the romance feels fitting. It's a very personal story. FB on the otherhand is the best peak we have at the wider wizarding world beyond school. HP introduces the world of magic, but FB rlly expands it [4]

To that end Jakob & Queenie's relationship is the only one I find myself liking, bc it's deeply tied to the world setting, the series' biggest selling point (in my opinion, should have said this earlier). It underscores the attitudes of the period & the conflict they face feels suitably substantial & not like filler. There's a moral question between them of are they worth it? And how far should they go to be together?

Imma be real hear & say FB2 was rlly Queenie's movie & they should have been ballsy & just make Queenie the mc for FB2, bc her story was actually considerably more important to the overall development of the story than Newt's, which mostly came off as a rushed & a tad clichè soap drama. & making it about Queenie I think builds more room for good conflict & independent narrative for Tina that would serve her chara better. [5? 6?]

If I bad to be REAL ballsy, I'd say my big issue w/ the relationships in the FB series & how it enhances or impedes the main story & what I believe to be it's biggest attracter (the setting) could have been solved if they made Newt's romantic interest a muggle. It attaches a deeper meaning & relevance to them & the story so it felt more deeply that they truly moved WITH the narrative rather than beside it but I guess Im just picky. Thx for putting up w this! [Final]

(My response below the cut.)

Yeah, pretty much all of this is right.

Regarding the Tina thing, it was definitely rushed, especially since there was literally nothing romantic between them in the whole first movie, except maybe the end part where they're stumbling over their words. Despite knowing how movies work and knowing that they were the male and female lead, I still found that completely out of left field, because they don't really share any interests and I didn't feel like they felt anything in particular for each other before that. She really wants to be an auror and feels really intensely about it; he just wants to travel the world and write about magical creatures and take care of them. I don't see a lot of compatibility there, and the movie didn't really do anything to reconcile that gap.

Jacob and Queenie made sense, because they actually sowed some seeds for it. It's not even about the fact that they both like to cook; they showed an interest in each other throughout. They noticeably like each other. Newt and Tina never really had that, to me, so it was bizarre for her to become his primary motivation in the second movie.

Queenie's trajectory in movie 2 overall bothers me, so while I agree it would have been better if they'd centered it more around her, I definitely think they needed to drastically rewrite pretty much everything she did. Enchanting Jacob at the beginning never sat well with me; I usually only have to say this in the Descendants fandom, but if one half of the ship is magical and the other half isn't, we can't have the magical one enchanting the non-magical one for romantic reasons without addressing what a violation of trust that is. Like, Jacob would be justified for never trusting her again, over that. Also, the fact that she apparently holds it against people if they think bad things about her is not something I would expect from someone who has been a Legilimens as long as she has, and not a detail I like, at all. Especially since it was used to give her justification to be mad at Jacob after she enchanted him in the first place. I find it sad, because Queenie was definitely my favorite character in the first movie. (Also, joining Grindelwald was a nonsensical thing to do. I can only assume she's there to spy on him or something, because it makes literally no sense.)

As for Leta, I really don't like how that was approached. First of all, I don't like how their mention of her in the first movie was "She was a taker; you need a giver," because once we actually met the character, that only made me resent Queenie for representing her that way. Leta deserved better in pretty much every way, and they definitely shouldn't have killed her off like that. I find the whole situation really iffy from a racial standpoint. The first black character to be written three-dimensionally in all of HP lore, and they make sure to preemptively tell the audience that she's a "taker", kill her in the same movie we meet her, and manage to trivialize her death by turning it into a little "Who was she saying 'I love you' to?" mystery. I like her relationship with Newt and Theseus, and I'd definitely want to see more of it.

Yes, it definitely would have been better, thematically, if they'd made the love interest a Muggle. (I'd honestly say they should've paired Newt with Jacob, but I know they're unwilling to do that. That would be kind of cool, though, to see the movie shaping up with two male characters and two female characters and have the men end up with each other and the women just live their lives as humans.)

With the story they ended up telling, though, I don't think that is needed; since Queenie is already dealing with the wizard/Muggle storyline, Newt could have a different conflict. Maybe his love interest should be a werewolf or something, to tie in the wizarding world's unresolved dislike for "half-breeds". And if he were in a relationship with someone already regarded as a creature, the wider wizarding world might take a different view to his studies and look down on him a lot more. Idk, a thought.

And then, with Leta/Theseus and Grindelwald/Dumbledore (if they were willing to actually deal with that), they'd pretty much hit every controversial beat they've got: wizard/Muggle, wizard/"half-breed", interracial, homosexual. Credence and Nagini are both creatures, kind of, but I still like them together, so their relationship doesn't have to tie into any theme; it just has to be developed way more.

On the whole, Crimes of Grindelwald felt like they skipped a movie. It feels like they needed a middle installment to make these relationships happen, instead of jumping from "Do Newt and Tina maybe have feelings for each other?" to "Newt loves Tina and Tina is possessive enough of Newt to be outwardly upset with him when she thinks he's engaged to someone else," and creating a whole relationship between Credence and Nagini that we see none of.

The fact that Queenie and Jacob were done well in the first movie gives me a fair amount of goodwill for them, but that goodwill only offers enough cushioning from the botching that movie 2 did that I'm near-indifferent to the ship, now, instead of actively opposed. I'd like to see things improved, but as it currently stands, I'd be just as happy seeing them end up not together as together. The fact that Leta's relationships with Newt and Theseus were more interesting than any of the aforementioned makes it that much more ridiculous that they killed her. What ship am I supposed to care about how? If I can't go into the next movie delusionally hoping Newt and Leta will get some moments, or enjoying the Theseus and Leta content, then I'll just be sitting there waiting for Credence and Nagini to share a screen, and who knows when that'll happen?

[peachcitt]

okay, so style reference you say? I'm 👀

YES STYLE REFERENCE I SAY

this is going to be. a very long post i think with probably a lot of tangents and probably with a lot more thorough explanation than you could ever want but. here we go

because all of my theory/explanation posts end up So Long, i like to organize myself by keeping myself to a structure, and i also like to think if i put stuff in sub categories with bolded titles, people reading can skip ahead to the stuff they want if they're low on time or don't feel like slogging through everything. so here's the structure of the official Peach Style Reference Narrative

1. Early Days - how i started writing, my early inspirations, origins

2. Current Days - discussions of current style references plus examples and comparisons, discussions of original content versus fan content

3. Future Days - where i expect my writing to grow, trajectories i want, conclusory thoughts

without further ado, let's get into it!

1. Early Days

like i mentioned on the discord server, ive been writing creatively for. a very long time. i just turned 20 (like. literally today. we love to see it) and that seems very young, but i remember writing creatively when i was maybe six or seven, and before that i played with dolls a lot, which meant every day i was creating little narratives for myself. in addition to this - and this is probably why i started writing so young - i was (and am!) a very avid reader. i was that little jerk in elementary school reading chapter books and going into the older kids' section in the school library because i'd already mentally surpassed the books in the section meant for kids my age. so, basically, ive been writing for maybe 13 or 14 years at the least.

when i was young, my favorite books that i remember trying to copy in my own stories were: the magic treehouse books, harry potter, and percy jackson.

the magic treehouse

i honestly could not tell you which magic treehouse book it was, but i remember reading a specific magic treehouse book where the magic lady that left the treehouse for the kids sends the kids (jack and annie??) a note in distress, and she didn't get to finish signing her name because whoever had gotten her had interrupted her. it had been printed in the book with the ink on her name running.

i could not tell you anything else that happened in that book, but i can tell you that at some point in time soon after i read that book i started writing a story with an interrupted letter just like that. i loved the drama, the mystery of it all. i wanted to do something that was a little scary like that, a little exciting.

harry potter

harry potter isn't much of a style reference, but it was a huge impact of my childhood. truth be told i kind of hated the books when i was really young because i grew up watching the movies, and when i tried to read the books when i was in elementary school, the teenage angst that hits about book 5 simply Did Not make sense to me. i also find the language of harry potter to be super cumbersome, and sometimes it feels to me like the books are long just for the sake of being long. they have a huge cultural impact, but i feel the same way about harry potter's style as i do about dickens. cool and interesting, but, like, could you get to the point already? (and also my opinion of j.k. rowling has steadily been growing worse and worse over the years, for obvious reasons. harry potter is nostalgic for me, but i can't look at it now without thinking about it critically, which really lowers my opinion of it)

however, you could probably call my first fanfiction a harry potter fanfiction. i started it when i was maybe six or seven, and it was a rewrite of the chamber of secrets with my childhood best friend as the main character (she didn't know about it, i just had her as the main character because i thought she was cool). i of course never finished it, but harry potter probably did a huge part of planting that seed of magic in me. everything i want to write included some form of magic - although my perspective on what can be considered magic has steadily expanded over the years.

percy jackson

of all my childhood "style references" that still influence me to this day, percy jackson has got to be the biggest. for starters, it's magic. second, it's main themes are about friendship and family - things that i like all my stories now to always include. third - and most important - is the narrative voice.

in terms of narrative voice, percy has a huge personality. he's witty and snarky, but also very thoughtful and poignant. a lot of my early writing was in first person, and it's probably because of percy. also, percy jackson was the first fandom i really got into, and it was the first media that i started officially writing and posting fanfiction for. percy's voice is so clear and hooking, and i wanted to be able to write something funny and real like that.

also - chapter titles. the original pjo series is famous for its weird and hilarious chapter titles, and even though i didn't really start writing fics or stories that were long enough to need chapter titles until a while later, i loved the idea of putting in a chapter title that would make a reader laugh, or maybe even make a reader feel a little apprehensive about the events to come.

but back to percy's narrative voice. i loved that style, almost conversational, so much that i started thinking like it. when i wasn't doing anything, like walking home in middle school, i often found myself narrating my life in my head like percy would, trying to find that humor and spark in my every day surroundings. i still find myself doing that very often, but not necessarily in the classic pjo style. now i narrate everything in my head a little differently, but that practice narration in my early days really helped my shape my voice, i think.

other series i read when i was younger include: a a series of unfortunate events and the name of this book is secret. i don't remember seeing a lot of influence in my early writing from those books, but i definitely think the styles of those books hit me a little later, which i will talk about in the next section.

but, yeah. these were the big three of my childhood. i also read a lot of ya romance, children's mystery books, princess stories, and various types of fantasy, which i think you could probably tell from the genres i like to stick to now. except i don't write a ton of mystery because, as much as i admire the complicated plots, im not sure if i'd have the patience to plan all that out.

in terms of the rest of the genres, a ton of my earlier writing included classic ya romance and fantasy tropes - chosen girl, love triangles, angsty overpowered teens, etc etc. even though those kinds of stories are not necessarily the kinds of stories i want to write or read now, i think my early writing of those kinds of things was really valuable. it's kind of a dirty secret with finished or unfinished works generally considered 'cringe' - often that writer is a new writer, or they're trying something new, or they just haven't found their voice yet. all of those things are perfectly okay and normal, and a lot of people in the writing community preach that kind of thing, but i don't necessarily see people cutting new writers slack in actual practice. writing "overrused" tropes isn't cringe, it's normal, and, besides, what trope isn't overrused? people have been writing and telling stories for thousands of years - nothing is really new. what matter is that someone new is telling the story, and that's what makes it valuable.

so, yeah, a lot of my childhood writing is cringe to me now, but i wouldn't be where i am without it.

with that being said, let's actually look at where i am now

2. Current Days

im going to break this section down into two parts, sort of: original fiction and fanfiction. because i think both of these things have become really important to me, and i don't believe i personally could exist as a writer without one or the other. it's a symbiotic relationship.

we'll start with fanfiction.

my relationship with fanfiction is relatively positive in online spaces: i write what i want to see from media that i like, and i have fun doing it. i also get some comments on my fics by lovely people that detail exactly what they like - some even go so far to talk about narrative style, voice, or tone - and that's really helpful. generally, i see fanfiction not only as a fun hobby and vent space for my strong positive feelings about certain media, but also as a place for me to try new things, experiment, and earn positive feedback.

i don't often share my original fiction online (and if i do, never at the same scope as my fanfiction), so i don't get that same opportunity to see what "works" with readers. fanfiction gives me the space to see that, and i apply new knowledge ive learned to my original fiction. that's what i mean by a symbiotic relationship.

in terms of specific style references for specific fics (which is what i know you probably most want to see), i'll try my best to pick them all out and give specific examples.

those benevolent stars and i am the messenger by markus zusak

in my favorite book list, i saw you mention tbs, so i'll start there. to be honest, i had no idea what my style reference for tbs was when i first saw your tags, and i almost didn't think there was anything specific. style references are a bit sneaky like that - if you've been referencing for someone for a long time, it becomes less of an intentional reference and more of just a you think, so it gets harder to tell.

lucky for this post, i just finished doing my yearly reread of zusak's i am the messenger, and as i was reading, i noticed a few spots where i was like wait hey i remember doing that.

for starters, iatm has been my favorite book for about six or seven years now, so i would say that some aspects of my style certainly comes from zusak because of how much i love iatm but also his other books. zusak has this huge talent for writing short, punchy sentences that convey so much in just a few words, and i think i've ended up trying to do that in my own writing. often, in my writing you'll see fragmentary sentences such as "He stopped. Blinked. Looked at her." that's not from anything specific, but i know ive written something like that maybe a million times over. zusak doesn't do the same thing - often his fragments are jam-packed with imagery in a way that mine aren't - but there's a thoughtfulness in his fragments that are in mine, too. a sort of pause. a hint that there's thinking happening in the narrator or a certain character. for example, i did a quick flip through of my copy and we have:

"We stare across the table.

Just briefly.

At each other." (I am the Messenger, p.144)

so you see how my common sentence fragment of "he stopped / blinked / looked at her" tracks with a fragment like this? i like the way zusak broke up sentences to make you dwell on them a little longer, consider the importance of each section, so i started doing that wayy before i wrote tbs i think.

also, at the time i wrote tbs, i think i was in the process of, or had just finished doing my reread of iatm, and, like i said, zusak loves imagery. tbs is a very imagery-heavy fic. tbs was influenced by a lot of music - a lot of the scenes have very specific pieces of music that i wrote imagining the tone and vibe of. iatm also references a lot of outside media sources, mostly music and films.

there are a couple of scenes in tbs that i think i wrote specifically mimicking or accidentally referencing from iatm. for example, we have this scene in tbs:

"It was almost like he could feel Marinette’s eyes on his back, steady and gentle. 'But you still love her.”

'Yeah,' Adrien said quietly, 'I still love her.' His eyes moved along a streak of purple that bled into a dark blue. 'I hate her a little bit, too.'

Marinette was silent.

He turned around, giving her a smile." (Those Benevolent Stars, chapter 3)

and this scene from iatm:

"'Do you hate me, Ed?'

Still stupid with bubbles and vodka in my stomach, I answer. Very seriously.

'Yes,' I whisper. 'I do.'

We both smack the sudden silence with laughter." (I am the Messenger, p. 233)

obviously there are differences, and i don't think i did it on purpose, but the interaction is very similar. i love the gentle intimacy of that scene in iatm, that weird complication relationship between the main character and the person he loves, the hurt, the brushing it off with laughter. so i wrote a scene that incorporated those things

zusak is also really good at writing moments of quiet into his books that aren't necessarily important to the plot, but are still important. if you've ever read that ghibli meta post talking about the 'quiet' between scenes in studio ghibli scenes, meant to give both the audience and the characters space to breath, it's like that. nothing in iatm is not imporant - it all serves a purpose, even the quiet moments, and i try to do the same thing. there's moments like that in tbs i think, like:

"Marinette gave him a small smile before turning back to her ice cream. Adrien tried to eat his ice cream a little faster, licking up where it had dripped onto his hand.

They were quiet for a while longer, and Marinette finished her ice cream. She leaned back on her hands and looked up at the dark sky, littered with stars.

He could see them all in her eyes, too." (Those Benevolent Stars, chapter 3)

and in iatm, you get scenes like:

"Our feet dangle.

I watch them, and I watch the jeans on Audrey's legs.

We only sit there now.

Audrey and me." (I am the Messenger, p.120)

so i definitely think tbs is a very i-am-the-messenger/markuz zusak-inspired fic. there's a lot of zusak's quiet, and there's the pieces of zusak's style that i've picked up along the way that really shine in tbs

tomorrow and this body's not big enough for the both of us by edgar cantero

ive talked about cantero a few times recently, but, as you've probably noticed, in relation to my fic called 'tomorrow.' i wrote tomorrow pretty soon after reading this body's not big enough for the both of us, and i used tomorrow specifically to experiment with cantero's visual writing style. in all the books by cantero ive read, there's this kind of hyper-awareness of a film gaze - how a certain scene would be shot on a camera, dialogue as script writing, and other things like that mixed with prose. i thought it was fascinating, and after finishing this body, i really wanted to play around with that idea. so i wrote tomorrow keeping in mind a "film gaze." for example:

"Two figures sitting on a rooftop, silhouettes. The moon hovers over them carefully, a crescent afraid to break the silence. One of the figures takes a breath, looks up into the sky at the hesitant moon, and he sighs. He closes his mouth again." (tomorrow)

versus in cantero's work, where we get descriptions like:

"And then, like a high-heeled coup de grace, she arrived.

She paused briefly outside the door, her hourglass silhouette cast upon the glass panel with the fresh shiny vinyl letters" (This Body's Not Big Enough for the Both of Us, prologue)

the tone of the two excerpts are very different, but there's a very visual sense to both of them, like they are being described from a shot in a movie rather than a regular work in prose. in tomorrow i also work a lot with specific camera imagery - saying where the camera goes in the scene, what it focuses on - and this body doesn't do this too much, but cantero's meddling kids does at least once that i remember.

regardless, after finishing this body, i wanted to try my hand at the visual structure that cantero uses in his works, so i really leaned in to the idea.

chat noir's white french man hit list for feminist purposes and grasshopper jungle by andrew smith

this is, as of right now, the most recent fic on my ao3, and i started it the literal day i finished grasshopper jungle. i think you might be getting a theme here - i read a really good book, and then immediately after i start writing something. the easiest way to get inspired as a writer is to read.

chat noir's hit list is a fic that is very much aware of the fact that it is a story being told - you don't know by who or for what real reason until the end, but it's a self aware sort of story. it's also very snarky and sarcastic, and it expands past just the confines of its own story; it's about chat noir and his hit list, but it also talks in depth about emilie agreste, chat noir's relationship with ladybug, and his relationship with himself. this is very much the kind of thing that you would find in an andrew smith book - grasshopper jungle is a story being told to you, and it's also about more than just the original pieces of the plot. the narrator tells the story that expands past regular confines of the story he means to tell - he's telling the 'history' of his life and his town, but he also talks about his great-great grandfather, the origins of the ketchup his girlfriend's dad eats, and what's happening in other parts of the country as he and his best friend are hanging out. the line in chat's hit list of "stars exploded, the sun did not, life continued on" was very much a grasshopper jungle and andrew smith-inspired line.

at the end of adrien's narration in chat's hit list, he says:

"It should be mentioned at this point in time that this story is not over, although I’ll stop telling it here.

So that’s the story of Chat Noir, who is also Adrien Agreste, who was very much a normal boy, except for the fact that he wasn’t. It’s a sad story, but it is also a happy story, and it is highly confidential. I’m sure you understand." (Chat Noir's White French Man Hit List for Feminist Purposes)

and at the end of grasshopper jungle, as the main character is closing out his narration, we get:

What I have written here is not the history of Eden. It is the history of the end of the world. All real histories will be about everything, and they will stretch to the end of the world.

The end of the world started when Andrej Szczerba slid into the cold sea as his boy, Krys, watched and wept and drifted closer and closer to the United States of America.

Nobody knew anything about it." (Grasshopper Jungle, p.382-3)

It's not overtly similar, but the structure is the same: recognition of the end, short summary of where we started and left the story, tag phrase that was used prior in the work. when i was writing the end of adrien's narration, i didn't mean to mirror grasshopper jungle so closely, but sometimes things just happen that way - honestly, so many of the things i do in my writing aren't intentional, they're subconscious. when i make a conscious choice, it's related to plot or to a new strategy im applying to style or voice that i'm not used to, but a lot of the things i do fly under the radar in my brain unless im purposefully trying to piece them apart like i am here.

i will say the meta-story of chat's hit list was pretty directly inspired by grasshopper jungle because i love meta stories, and i like using opportunities to put them in. i just love the idea of reading a story of someone telling someone else a story, which is what the two books by andrew smith i've read have been, and i think that's just fascinating, which is why i used it here.

ive gotten a couple of comments on chat's hit list that liken the narrative style to pseudonymous bosch's the name of this book is secret and lemony snicket's a series of unfortunate events, which i thought was really interesting, because i was purposefully trying to make the voice an impression of andrew smith's voice adapted to the tone of ml, but i could definitely see their reasoning.

andrew smith, like i mentioned before, likes specifics - what exactly people were doing at certain times, where a specific bottle of ketchup came from, etc. from what i remember of the name of this book is secret and a series of unfortunate events, i remember the descriptions included in those books chock full of highly specific, snarky details that aren't truly necessary, but do a whole lot in terms of adding a certain flavor to the narration. i won't try and look up examples from unfortunate events and the name of this book, but here are a couple examples:

"See, the thing about Emilie Agreste, formerly Emilie Graham De Vanily, is that she was what could be generously called a ‘radical.’ Born in 1969, like most amazing and world-altering things, Emilie Graham De Vanily grew up in London alongside her twin sister, who is a nice enough woman and who is not really that important to this story, and she was raised with the firm and gentle hands of people who had witnessed war and cruelty and had found that they did not like at all. Emilie Graham De Vanily grew up learning about the true history of England, which is not a very nice history, truly, and she grew up knowing that people with white skin like her were historically not all that great. That, historically, was a very radical thought." (Chat Noir's White French Man Hit List for Feminist Purposes)

from chat's hit list, and this:

"In 1905, being seventeen years old made you a man. In 1969 when hungry Jack fought in Vietnam, seventeen years old was a man. My brother, Eric, who was somewhere in Afghanistan, was twenty-two.

Krzys Szczerba came across the Atlantic with his father. They planned on working and earning enough money so Krzys's mother, brother, and two sisters could come to the United States, too. People who did that were called Bread Polacks. They came here to make money." (Grasshopper Jungle, p. 68)

from grasshopper jungle. once again, obviously very different, but you can tell im playing around with that same feeling of giving a surplus of facts in my narration in the same way that andrew smith does. you can't really tell in the grasshopper jungle excerpt, but oftentimes the surplus of 'facts' serves almost a comedic effect, which is definitely something that you can feel in chat noir's hit list.

[REDACTED] and six of crows by leigh bardugo

as a reward for sticking around through this, i'll give out something fun here. the current long fic that ive been working on recently has proved to be very bardugo-inspired, particularly six of crows-inspired.

in six of crows, bardugo gives us action right off the bat and then integrates flashbacks into lulls of action so that there's never truly a dull moment. i found [REDACTED] to be a fic where i wanted to use flashbacks in a similar way, so that i would get something like:

"She doesn’t stay for the whole parade, but she stays for enough of it. Nothing unusual happens, just like always, but she still makes cursory patrols around the city, ending up at the Eiffel Tower, just like always. She sits on the railing way up at the top, and she crosses her ankles, swinging her legs back and forth and humming softly to herself as she watches the sun set.

'Little kitty on the roof, all alone without his lady,' he used to sing when he’d gotten back to their meeting point from patrolling his half of the city before her. It was just a silly little song, one that he’d clearly made up for himself."

It didn’t hurt until he’d been akumatized, and she’d seen that one version of the future - the one where he’d destroyed the whole world because of Gabriel Agreste. She’d seen him then, a lonely figure in white, humming his little song to himself. Who knows how long he’d been like that before she’d been transported to him, how long he’d been really and truly alone. (REDACTED, chapter 1)

and in comparison, we get a lot of scenes in six of crows like:

"Kaz leaned against the ship's railing. He wished he hadn't said anything about his brother. Even those few words raised the memories, clamoring for attention. What had he said to Geels at the Exchange? I'm the kind of bastard they only manufacture in the Barrel. One more lie, one more piece of the myth he'd built for himself.

After their father died, crushed beneath a plow with his insides strewn across a field like a trail of damp red blossoms, Jordie had sold the farm. Not for much." (Six of Crows, p.205-6)

bardugo uses most of the flashbacks during a time in which the main characters are on a long sea voyage, which means they have a lot of time to reflect on their pasts and what brought them to these situations - it's a smart way to fill the empty space of the sea voyage and to really dwell on how important the voyage is. in a similar way, i chose to use the flashbacks in dull or lulling moments in the events of the story, ones in which marinette lets her mind wander or sees something that makes her remember something specific.

however, here's a situation where you can see me adapt the style into something that makes more sense for me, personally: in my excerpt, the tense changes between the current events and the flashback events, while in bardugo's excerpt, the tense stays the same at a comfortable past tense. when i was writing my fic with the flashbacks, i thought the constant, sometimes abrupt, switching would get confusing, so i made sure to always have a clear line using the past and present tense that readers could consciously or unconsciously take notice of.

so there are a couple of instances within some fairly recent fics i have that have specific callbacks to specific books. there are a whole bunch more, i think, but these are the ones that ive played around with intentionally the most recently or the most often.

3. Future Days

based on my recent rapid experimentation in fics (the most recent four fics on my ao3 have been very experimental in comparison to most of my works), i really anticipate a lot of growth in my overall style. ive been having a lot of fun experimenting and throwing in things that a few years ago i would've never even thought of, so im really excited to see where that might lead me, style wise.

i think as a writer there's always room for growth and learning, and that kind of growth and learning comes from not only practicing writing, but also reading. i cannot stress enough how valuable and impactful reading is on writing. considering ive been trying to read a lot more than i have been in recent years, it makes a lot of sense that ive been making a lot of weird decisions and learning more about what i want to see in my own writing.

honestly, if you ever want to know about any of my other fics, or you want to see how this kind of thing translates to my original works, just shoot me an ask! this post is already long enough, so i think i'll go ahead and end it here, but just know you can always ask questions<3

thank you so much for asking me this question and letting me indulge, and thank you for reading!!!<3<3<3<3

[caswlw]

fic recs bc u guys are incredibly depressing

so i’ve been seeing some fic rec posts going around and some of my dear mutuals are posting about fics i simply do not have the mental capacity to read </3 so instead i decided to make my own list of fics i reread consistently when im looking for that good spn serotonin :) ok to rb 😌

the whole damn roadhouse knows - oh my god,, this fic is the Peak of 2013/2014 destiel fics with the roadhouse gang and everyone just working together.  it’s got a bet, shenanigans, and overall is a really good time i recommend it So Hard it hurts.  very surprised its not more popular honestly.  66k and 18 chapters

4 times they nearly kissed, 1 time they nearly didn't - soft au where cas moves to lawrence and dean owns a cafe.  jack and claire are cas’s twins and its just a fluffy fic where dean and cas go on dates a bunch :) honestly So Soft and its kinda a magic au where cas and the kids are just witches and honestly what more could u want there??  10k and 6 chapters

my three dads - a season 13 sort of rewrite picking up after 13x03.  so much here!  widower arc feels, claire being a larger part of the narrative, making jack and dean’s relationship make more sense, and dean finding a daughter he had 16 years ago on some random hunt with claire!  i’m a sucker for kid fic so i love this one and it feels really organic for the kind of fic it is,, total recommend.  68k and 20 chapters

the six hearts of dean winchester - holy shit this one is my everything.  it’s based on the promo for 14x10 and basically explores sam and cas going to find six shards of dean’s heart that he’s hiding so they can get rid of michael and save dean.  god this one is so good i don’t want to spoil it but it’s a fast read and u will love it!  or money back guaranteed.   9k oneshot

kinda like family, kinda like love - ok so this one is pretty popular but for good reason!!!!!!! this fic is so good and its got friends to marriage of convenience to actual lovers and obvs the marriage is bc of adoption bc im a sucker for kid fic lol.. it also has big angel family and the mess that’s the winchester family AND saileen bc this was made in 2018 god bless.  122k and 35 chapters

caught somewhere in time - ok so ik i said i don’t love fics where it’s setting deancas in the past... but this is a canonverse fic where they get sent into the past accidentally and then stay there for a while building a life while they realize they aren’t coming back to reality any time soon.  so so good i love it a lot (also no war! wow can you believe that!)  29k and 7 chapters

literally anything by GatesKeeper - iykyk this writer is chefs kiss so good!!  i love some good sam knows and supportive sam and oblivious deancas.. amongst everything else they write.  20 total works (and all of them are destiel)

grace and pirouette - both are finale fix its ive already read at least three times and i just. misha was right when he said fic writers could do it better !!!!! grace is a script based fic that’s just. so much better than the finale,, and pirouette is a claire saves the day type finale fix it that we also deserved!  5k and 6k oneshots, respectively 

r/supernatural - new fic thats good for shits and giggles when everything else is too sad to read! lots of canon related references :) very dean and i think thats cool :))) 3k oneshot

youtuber dean married teacher cas - a classic youtuber/teacher series of fics that’s just so damn heartwarming.  also has sam and bobby and claire!!! very cute and an au that isn’t depressing :D how about that!  12 works and 38k, ongoing

i also am a sucker for stanford era dean and destiel fics, and sam knows type fics so if you want a list of those i can try and scrounge one up :) anyway lmk if u read/have read any of these bc i would loveeee to talk about it akshjkafdh

[yoursinfulurges]

Toxin and Venom

Slight Dark!Peter Parker x Dark!Reader

Description:

In which a seemingly loving relationship appears greater than it is...

There was something rather terrible about this young man's naive exterior. Though nobody could pinpoint where exactly the dreadfulness laid. His eyes shined a little too brightly, and his words were coated in thick sugar, enough to appear disingenuous to the skillfully trained ears. But there hidden behind is smile concealed the sinister morals of a true manipulator.

Oh' but she was no better herself, twisting words to favour her narrative. Playing as if she was nothing more than a meek little prey.

Warnings: pure angst with an underlining layer of toxicity.

Disclaimer: This is a REWRITE of one of my old stories dated back to a year ago, so if it sounds familiar that is why. This story was originally written for Jung Jaehyun from NCT but seeing as though I've fallen out of love with kpop at the moment, I wanted to repurpose it for my new followers that I've harbored since The Venom Within, as I'm very proud of the way it was written and concluded that I wanted to share with you all. I did improve and change quite a lot so you won't be reading the exact same story and I decided to add a twist to it.

Note: This is more so a college au so the fact that Peter is Spiderman is insignificant...

Word Count: 4.k

_____________

Your boyfriend, Peter, had always been the most kind and caring person you knew. Ever since you met him, and even after months of dating, he still acted like the bashful, kind Disney prince you took him for. Only treating you with nothing but respect and admiration; you often wondered if this boy was even capable of making an insult, or had a bad bone in his body. Fore he acts way too nice and sweet for his own good. Controlling at times but it was with all good intentions...

Originally, you thought the kind gestures and lovely sweet talking was his way of subtly flirting, but after years of dating him, you came to the realization that it was just simply him. Peter didn't need to pretend to be kind and sweet like other guys; given that it was like second nature for him. You loved the boy to death. He showered you with so much love, spoiled you with affection. Treated you like his queen; His shining jewel. Out of the two years that you'd been together, not once has he wronged you.

    That is, up until this exact moment...

You stand there in the middle of the kitchen, tears streaming down your cheeks. At this point you had stopped listening to what he was saying. In fear that if you continued to listen to his harsh words, more of your love would begin to fleet away, and you couldn't afford to lose any more. Despite of all your excessive yelling, you loved Peter. And he meant so much to you. But seeing him in this state, angry and hostile, attacking you viciously with his words, you began to question your future with him.

You couldn't quite fathom what brought on this newfound aggression in your relationship. Though, you had a slight seeking suspicion that it was from all the post-exam stress you both had to endure. Weeks upon weeks of studying and sleepless nights finally took its toll on the both of you. Thus bringing you to this exact moment in time. The once loving home corrupted by the harsh spoken words that fell from both of your lips. Anger and aggression filling the room, space welcoming the negativity with open arms. You had both tainted it...

That was not the boy you fell in love with, but instead somebody meaner, a-kind to venom...

Then again, you weren't a saint yourself either, words you wouldn't have ever thought of saying spilled out of your mouth like toxin. You needed to do something fast to mend your relationship back together...

The mere thought of breaking up with the man hurts you so dearly. You just wanted your loving boyfriend back from what ever abyss he dissapeared off to. Typically your fights never lasted this long, but this one proved to be quite challenging. You just wanted him to stop yelling. But in fear of the unthinkable outcome of your protest, you kept shut and held onto the remaining pieces of your heart. You knew for a fact that Peter would never dear to lay a hand on you, so you tried very desperately to push those thoughts aside. However, his following statements made both tasks very difficult. It was as if he was challenging your composure. Like he wanted the flood gates broken.

Like he wanted you to cave in to the malicious voice whispering in your ear...

His words could've very well be from all the stress, ..or pent up insults and remarks that he'd been silently keeping in. You had no way of telling. You prayed and hoped that it was the first one rather than the assuming latter. Because maybe then, you would consider forgiving him. Even though the words punctured you like bullets, penetrating your inner layers and hurting you in more ways than one. This was not your Peter... You questioned the morals behind his words, were they intended to hurt you, or was it just in the heat of the moment. Regardless, you knew that his words would be something that lingered on forever in your head.

"I don't even know why I stayed this long with you, honestly! What do I even see in you! Stop being so unreasonable! You're easily replaceable, so i don't see why you're acting so high and mighty. News flash y/n, i could do a lot better!"

         And there it was...

His current state and demeanor rivalled that of which the one you used to know. The soft spoken, kind, sweet, shy Peter. The one that still plays with legos despite being nineteen years old. You'd give anything to have him back...

You always knew that Peter could do better, but hearing this from him was a lot different than you saying it to yourself in your head. Before you had started dating you knew he had a chance with Michelle. She was a very pretty girl that went to your university, she was also Peter's chem partner... Michelle was nice, smart, and talented. You were very aware of the little 'thing' they had going on. So to your surprise, when you heard rumors of a certain Peter Parker, looking to ask you out, you almost didn't believe. Hell, you laughed straight into Brad's face and told him he was delusional. If only a hesitant, blush faced Peter wasn't stood right behind you to prove you wrong.

Ever since that day, you questioned Peter's choice. Why did he choose you, when he could've had a chance with Michelle? Someone he was more compatible with... You figured that he saw something special in you that nobody else did. Though, his previous statement proves you wrong and tells you that he doesn't even know why he gave you a chance. You're at a drift, not knowing where this relationship is headed, or where to stand. Knowing that you were replaceable to Peter weakens you. Were you really that insignificant to him? Were you a chore to be around? If so then why did he stay for two years? All these questions ran through your mind as you're frozen in a state of shock. How do you follow such a thing?

You stand silently, wails threatening to break free from your lips, as you shake. Instantly covering your mouth with your palm. You watch as he screamed at you more, words blocked out by the ringing in your ears. Truthfully, you were glad you couldn't hear his words, not knowing how to reciprocate to any more of his personal attacks.

The familiar feeling of despair began to conjure in the pit of your stomach. The tightness in your chest began to focus on your beating heart, constricting you like a boa preying on its meal. Everything around you became a hazy blur as the non stop ringing became more prominent. The cause being your angry boyfriend and his heart-wrenching words. Jolts of anxiety began to climb up from your figure tips, like a thousand spiders crawling on your skin. A feeling you know all too well crept up from behind you. You were beginning to feel frantic and scared, as your breathing became unstable.

You were becoming erratic, desperate to end the fight and be in his arms again.

"What!? Huh, not gonna clap back with some snarky remark. Admit it, you know im right!"

Peter's face was a striking shade of scarlet while he paced back and forth, hands finding themselves tangled in his hair as he mumbled inaudible words. His hair, you remember running your hands through his curly, brown locks this morning when you woke up. Oh, how happy and blissful you both were twelve hours prior to this moment. You both were so content and hopeful with the prospect of your relationship. Being able to finally spend time with each other after a stressful week. Originally, you had planned a date night with Peter. But things began to make a turn for the worse when he began to insult every little thing you did. Now here you were, an hour and forty-five minutes late for your reservations.

A taste for bitterness began to fill your mouth, as your insides churned. Waves of sadness and despair hit you like a tsunami. You suddenly couldn't stand the thought of staying in the same room as Peter. Let alone sleeping in one. Fore his words had impacted you like an arrow through the heart. You felt sick, disgusted, vulnerable, and above all else, hurt.

"God, you're such a fucking bitch sometimes!" Peter spat, but soon after stopped, noticing your sudden change in demeanor. Your once, fuming and aggressive facade was replaced with a much more subdued, fragile, hurt exterior, mirroring how you felt inside. You had given up. The bandage that held your heart together snapped.

You looked up at him, hurt written all over your face. Instantly, Peter rushed your way. He wanted to wrap his arms around you, apologize for calling you a bitch. But stopped when you held your hand out and shook your head, a sob erupting from your mouth. Suddenly, all the hurtful things Peter said rang through his own head.

Oh...

Shit!

"Baby, I-" He started, not knowing how to follow. His mouth suddenly became dry, letting out a sigh of regret. Voice coming out weak and pained. His chest tightening at the sight of what he has done to you. No no no no no no.... Peter knew you weren't the type to forgive and forget. Even if you both manage to somehow recover from this, he knew that his words would always be in your head. You would constantly doubt yourself and his transparency, thinking if it was all an act.

Regret began to eat away at him once again when he noticed your uneven breathing. Another punch in his gut when he took note of your shaking. Peter's eyes quickly darted to yours, his heart breaking when he saw the amount of fear in them. He was uncertain if you were scared of him or your emotions. He wanted it to be the second one. Peter never wanted you to see him in that light. Yet here you were, having an anxiety attack because of him...

He knew that feeling all too well, having suffered from anxiety of his own, but the fact that he was the one to force you into that state shattered him..

"Don't call me that...." You spat coldy, backing away slowly into your shared bedroom. Making sure he didn't follow and locking the door. Once in the cozy room, you sob like la llorona conveying grief. You couldn't bear to see all the happy pictures of you two, when he said so himself, you're nothing special to him. Without thinking, you began to rip off every Polaroid, framed pictures, and drawings from the walls. Not caring of ripping them. You threw them all on the floor. Your vision becoming clouded by tears as you sob. Ruining the white fabric of your oversized sweater with your makeup contaminated tears.

Your body halts, the last remaining picture was of the both of you on your first date. You always considered that day as the happiest moment of your life. But now knowing that you're just a pit stop in Peter's life, the memory manifests into something much darker than obsidian.

You inhale as you looked at the picture one more time. It was you kissing Peter on the cheek. He donned a beautiful cheshire smile, his freckles displaying proudly under the sunlight. He wore a red, hooded sweatshirt with his hero, Iron man's logo depicted on the top right corner. You always love it when he wore sweaters, especially that one. You remembered every emotion you felt as the picture was being taken. Even if you didn't, your expression held it all. You radiated happiness as the butterflies in your stomach became restless. You were so happy...

You sob lightly, your thumb caressing his face as you looked fondly at the picture. Suddenly, words that fell from his mouth earlier replayed in your head. He had purposely attacked your deepest insecurities. Jabbed and taunted you. The Peter you knew would never result to something so cruel and petty. Without putting much thought into it, you began to take the picture out of its frame.

Your ears perking up when you hear the familiar sound of the lock being picked. The jiggling of the doorknob was something you grew accustomed to. Having locked yourselves out of the bedroom on more than one occasion....

Taking one final breath, you rip the picture in two and retreated into the master bathroom. Once the door was slammed shut and locked, all hell broke loose. As if it couldn't have gotten worse alright. Your wails grew louder and more repetitive that you were being to sound like a banshee, mourning for her decaying heart. Eventually, you found yourself curled up in the bathtub, suppressing your cries into your knees as you lowered your head.

Peter finally succeeds in picking the lock, after what seemed like hours, and once he creaked opened the door of your shared bedroom, his heart broke in two. Parts of him began to deteriorate, he wished he had never said those hurtful things. He felt numb and out of touch with reality, sensing his anxiety looming over his shoulder. Peter knew that one of your biggest insecurities was never meaning much to somebody. And that weren't fond of feeling worthless and neglected. He knew your background and upbringing well enough to know just how much you disliked being treated as such.

All he wanted to do was hold you in his arms and kiss your tears away. A pool of sadness brimmed his eyes as he evaluates the damage. From one corner of the room to the other, pictures were left scattered and discarded. The framed drawings of him that you illustrated, sat on the floor of your bedroom, frame cracked and shattered. The Polaroids he held ever so dearly to his heart, littered the bed and floor. He broke down in tears when he sees the torn picture of you both.

How could you vandalize such a treasured memory. But then again, how could he hurt the most precious thing in his life. Seeing the picture ripped apart like this, he knew that somehow he affected your perspective on this whole relationship. His previous words had tainted such beloved memories, and twisted them to seem like nothing more than a one-sided love. He made you question whether he truly loved you or not. Suddenly the realization kicked in, and it kicked in hard. A tsunami of guilt and regret pierced through is heart. His insides churned and it suddenly became very hard to breathe. He suddenly became really aware of how dire this situation was. His following actions may break your relationship if he didn't act wisely.

Peter bends down to hold your piece of the puzzle, a river flow of heart ache cascading down his cheeks, wetting the captured image of you. Your sobs, which had begun to sound like cries of help, due to lack of air, rang threw Peter's ears. Suddenly he grew extremely concerned and rushed to the door, dropping your image.

Immediately, you stop when you heard soft knocks coming from the other end of the door, which was soon followed by cries and sniffling sounds.

"Baby, open the door!" You don't comply with his words and stayed seated in your place, hugging your knees tighter.

"W-what are you gonna do if i don't? Pick the lock and violate my privacy! Just go away P-peter! W-why don't you go find another girl to replace me, because apparently, i-i mean nothing to you!" Screaming at the inanimate door, or more so the person behind it, as you let out a cut short wail. You hated yourself for how weak and broken you sounded. Wishing, you could drown out his stupid words that had already engraved itself deep in your brain.

"Y-you said s-so yourself! I'm easily replaceable! I-if i had known that this relationship was just gonna be one sided then i would've never wasted my time!" Apparent in your tone and words how truly distraught you were, Peter cried harder, cold sweats engulfing his body. He winced at the thought of how broken you were. It only lead him to wonder, what exactly happened and what brought on this fight. Sounding more so a statement rather than a question in his head.

He parted his lips softly, a small whimpering sigh rolling off his tongue.

"Please y/n, just open the door. I-i just want to see you. Please... I-I need to know that you're okay...." his words laced with mixed emotions, such as sorrow and remorse. Despite his current emotional state, Peter's stature looked anything else but composed. God, he was freaking out..

Incoherently mumbling a soft 'please' as he laid his forehead onto the wood door. His hand resting above his head, fist balled tightly, as if ready to start pounding. He was desperate, eyes screwing shut tightly causing a flow of tears to glide down his cheeks. Peter's jaw clenched tightly in frustration, as he beat himself over and over again for saying such things.

After much hesitance, you stood up and made your way to the door. Peter hears the small shuffle and quickly straightens himself out. After seconds of hovering your hand over the knob, you twist it open, instantly unlocking itself and setting free all the pent up emotions. You crack open the door, almost immediately, Peter rushes in and hugs you.

You don't return the hug, silently stiffening in his arms. At that moment, the last few bits of composure you had built back up snaps loose. You become a crying mess in Peter's arms. Feelings of unmeasurable sadness cascade down your cheeks, onto his black long sleeve shirt. You try and push him away, but fail due to his strength. His muscular arms constricting you as if you would fade away.

"Listen to me please." He says softly, tears lightly streaming down his cheeks, though, not to the caliber of yours.

You sniffle lightly, thrashing in his arms. Though, it was no use, his hold was so secure that no amount of resistance would break you free. So, you could do nothing else but endure what he has to say.

"I'm sorry-

Sorry doesn't fix anything Peter, it's just a word!" The teary-eyed male hissed at your words. The amount of hurt and venom your tone held was enough to make his jaw clench and his hold to tighten.

"I know it doesn't, but it's a start. L-look, i didn't mean to say that. I don't know what came over me, or what caused me to say those things. But what i do know is that they were a hundred percent untrue. And i want you to know that..." He pauses briefly to wipe away your tears with his thumb. Dipping his head into the crook of your neck. He took in your floral scent, hoping it would help him regain composure. You feel a tug on your heart at how utterly hurt and small he sounded.

"I love you with all my heart, and that you are the most unique girl I've ever met... If anything i don't know how i even managed to get a girlfriend as beautiful and amazing as you..... Wanna know why I'm with you?" You nod lightly into his chest. His hold readjust itself as he lays his head above yours. Almost content with your slight gesture, but he needed to be sure you were happy.

"It's because you accept me for who i am. You don't pressure me to be perfect all the time, you welcome my flaws with open arms; don't expect anything from me and shower me with so much love everyday... I want you to know that i could never replace you, not that i would ever want to. How did i ever get so lucky... Please y/n, you are one of the most important people in my life.... I-i can't loose you too..." Peter couldn't fathom a future with out you in it. He grew frantic, thinking that this day could be the last together. And that there would be a slight chance that you didn't want to forgive him again. He couldn't let that happen...

"Please say something...." He sighed whilst tears brimmed his eyes, taking your tightening hold on his shirt to keep moving forward.

"Do you remember when we first started dating, that night i texted you that i was frustrated and my anxiety was acting up... And you came over in a heart beat, even though you lived fifteen minutes away... Y-you told me to let it all out, and i cried in your arms for an hour, complaining about everything. I felt so ashamed for crying in front of you, but you told me that i was so brave for accepting my feelings... I know what i said must've hurt you a lot, but I'll do better... I'm sorry for triggering you like that." Peter's tone was barely above whisper, and if he hadn't have said it directly above your ear, you would've missed it. There he was... your Peter....

You thought back to the said memory and smiled fondly, that was the night you both realized that you wanted a more serious title on your relationship. Finally labeling each other as boyfriend and girlfriend. You thought back to all the happy memories you both shared and confirmed that a silly little fight wouldn't get the best of you. Yes, his words might've hurt, but his actions now out ways all of his petty insults. You give into your flourishing heart and forgive him.

Backing away from his chest lightly, you look up at him, gasping slightly at his blood shot eyes. You hesitatly reach up to cup both of his cheeks. Wiping away the remaining tears that streamed down his face. He smiled lightly and leaned into your touch, taking one of your hands in his and place a soft, delicate kiss on it.

"We'll be okay...." You smiled at his comforting words before planting a passionate, loving kiss on his lips. Peter smiled lightly before taking your wrist on his hold and guiding them to wrap around his neck. He deepens the kiss and pulls you closer by your waist.

It was then that he realized that he wanted you to be the only women in his life. And that he wanted nobody else. Suddenly feeling an overly compelling urge in his heart to make up for his actions overcomes him. He was determined to trap you in his web of love again. He couldn't loose you too...

You smile in content, 

          portraying the victim always worked...

'Indeed, we'll be just fine.....'

Perhaps they were both awful people, fooling each other with the reality they both created. But it was done with the intent of love, sick twisted love... He was possessive and she was insecure. And together they were toxin and venom... God forbid anything that tries to get in between them...

_____________

End Note:

For those that don't understand, take notice in Peter's words and how drastically different they are from when he was mad to when he was apologizing. Sweet at first glance but if you really dig deep you'd notice how sugar coated everything seemed, like he's saying what you want to hear. And as for the Reader, I purposely left out how much she contributed to the fight in the beginning to make it seem as though she was the victim, when in reality she was also at fault. The anxiety aspect of this story was very much 'real' since I described what it felt like for me and I wanted her to suffer from anxiety yet have something be a little off. Now, I'm not claiming that the bedroom part was a whole scene to feed her victim persona, but that's up to how you want to view it. This story is subjective and can be taken however way you want to.

[foulserpent]

adore ur remake of oblivion so i have to ask. how would u remake skyrim.

thats something i havent thought out as extensively so it wont be as good as my oblivion rewrite idea. ill just focus on main questlines rather than all the issues with the world itself

heres a summary bc in spite of what i just said, this is long as fuck:

get rid of or completely rebuild the civil war plot (use new vegas formula a bit here).

create real choices and real consequences for the dragonborn and how their rise to power will influence them.

throw in a little ambiguity and make them have to work for their hero status

rewrite miraak to be a more effective foil to the dragonborn

adjust alduin

adjust the blades

civil war:

i think the biggest thing that needs to just happen IMMEDIaTELY is either just. removing the civil war or rebuilding it from the ground up. if they want to keep the factions the same, literally they should go with a new vegas approach where the conflict is largely between imperialists and fascists, playing the fascist questline is treated as a pretty unquestionably evil option, and theres a separate independent ending. also either way i think the stormcloaks have to be rewritten to be less appealing to white nationalists lol. its okay for Bad People to exist in videogames, but it should not be something irl racists can unite behind.

so if youre going to keep it, add in an independent resolution, maybe even two (a more "no gods no masters" kind, and maybe one where the dragonborn seizes control, which would have to involve the main quest probably)

main quest:

i think the dragonborn should struggle more. it doesnt hve to be like the nerevarine but their “chosen one” status should not just be handed to them. let there be more ambiguity in the prophecy, more question about how predetermined fate is. if theyre really super special, let them earn it.

a major theme should be grappling with power, and questions of the dragonborn's own nature. you should have to make real decisions about the kind of person you want to be and whether you will embrace a powerhungry nature or deny it, and your absorption of souls should have an effect. maybe you dont Need souls to unlock shouts, but it makes the function easier and more powerful or smth. the more souls you absorb, your character should be changed. not enough to ruin the game, but NPCs will be a little scared of you. maybe you even look a little different. you are a mortal body with dozens of godshards inside you and youre extremely powerful, it should be like that.

it would have to be done carefully to not come off as some shitty slapped on moral of "wow youre such a bad person for involuntarily absorbing the souls of dragons who try to kill you", id envision it as like. if your character makes actual powerhungry choices in the plot, its monstrous, if they strive to be a good person but are warped by all the souls, its tragic, and you can find ways to abstain from it entirely. alternate routes to fighting dragons. challenging them to duels etc

on that note, dragons need to be more people and less just monsters. each one of them is a person, and that should be very apparent. you should be able to engage with them in ways other than just killing outside of a few plot relevant ones, and even ones who just fight you should at least like. talk to you.

also alduin needs work, at least have his motivations be more clear. like why exactly is he so determined to enslave mortals rather than fufilling his duties as world eater? also its written really fucking confusingly bc on one hand its like "alduin has abandoned his duties and is just running around being a dragon" but then at a few points its implied that he IS trying to end the kalpa as hes supposed to, which is like...which one is it. im pretty sure its supposed to be the former so lets just pick a narrative and stick with it.

so like honestly i think the basic structure of the main quest can stay, it just needs to Know what its doing rather than just kind of flailing around

dragonborn dlc:

i think it needs work, mostly in the miraak department, since they set him up as like a big intimidating villain but hes kind of nothing . stop trying to make him live up to dagoth ur, and instead really hone in on him being a foil to the dragonborn. he is an example of what the dragonborn could become. from that point, either: make him actually really intimidating, or make the playing field feel very level to play up how this is hermaeus mora ultimately pitting prospective tools against each other.

i would go for the latter approach, though miraak should still have to be a convincing villain. set up miraak as the big bad, but make it become increasingly clear that hes just another chucklefuck ensared in mora's tentacles. which i think they were TRYING to do but werent very successful. like i like that YOU dont get to kill him, mora just decides hes not needed anymore and does it himself. really shows that this is all just kind of a farce. i even like the idea that maybe miraak is like, kind of a hollowed out meatpuppet for mora at that point but idk. 

either way id want the dlc to actually challenge how superspecial and stuff dragonborn are, by making the Legendary Duel Of The First and Last Dragonborn be very clearly be like the equivalent of bugs in a jar being made to fight.

The Blades:

the blades need work, but i actually think their depiction is.. accidentally? good. i think their insistence on killing paarthurnax is good and makes sense, but it needs to be reworked and yeah you do need to be able to talk them out of it or handle it otherwise (even by killing them) bc its such a meaningless quest.

make their motivation more clear like delphine and esbern dont want him dead for just his 10000000 year old war crimes, its really about them being incredibly fucking paranoid individuals and needing the ultimate proof that they can trust you. so beef up the whole blades - you - paarthurnax dynamic. give them all more meaningful and complex interactions. this doesnt mean Make Paarthurnax Bad, but maybe give like more of a legitimate reason for the blades to want him killed (legitimate does not mean Good, like it could be they percieve him as a threat to the empire)

[mr-and-mr-dameron]

Learning to love ALL of Star Wars

I’ve grown a lot the past few years, and with that I’ve came to appreciate a lot more things about what I love. I’ve went from bitter and spiteful about what I don't have to appreciating what I do have, and at the centre of that storm is Star Wars. A franchise I’ve only really been invested in the last year. 

The beginning

So I was always a “fan” of Star Wars, sure. I grew up with the prequels and I was excited when Disney was releasing their new movies. But the past year is where I really got invested and found a whole new love for the franchise. And strangely enough, it was through the simplicity of Lego.  You see, I started watching videos by Brickvault about Lego Star Wars minifigures, and something about seeing the toys I loved as a kid from a modern perspective took me right back to wooshing my Jedi starfighter around my room. From there, I started moving away from Lego and dipped my toe in theories, lore videos and eventually discussion and review videos, the turning point being Cosmonaught Variety Hour.  Now, I have some opinions on the guy now, but Cosmonaught was perfect for me at the time. He was opinionated, entertaining, but most importantly knew his shit, and I liked that. His videos on Star Wars are pretty good, and really helped form my opinions back then... In a bad way... Now I’ll make this clear, this is NOT on Cosmonaught, it was just how impressionable I was as a person back then. I’m just saying how his video affected me on a personal level.  Up to this point I didn’t really understand the hate for the prequels besides the fact they were “bad movies” and “people don’t like them”. Cosmonaughts video on the prequels gave me those reasons, and I finally felt like I got the distaste for those films. However, like they say... A little knowledge can be dangerous, and boy was I about to learn that lesson the hard way... 

The fall

So here I am, knower of all things, the CORRECT things... I’ve watched my fair share of videos from a handful of sources, I know my shit. I’m making my opinions known, and I’ve become that friend.  But whats this! A dissenting opinion!? My boyfriend actually likes the prequels more than the Original Trilogy!? SACRALAGE!! I must prove him wrong! And prove him wrong I...! Did not... In fact, something rather bizarre happened... He convinced me.  I was stubborn at first, but I’ll admit, my wall got broken down at long last. He (bless his soul for dealing with me) managed to get through to me exactly what it was he loved about those films, and it wasn’t just the nostalgia. I had always seen the politics of the Galaxy like most other people did, some boring preachy nonsense that had no place in Star Wars, but I came around to it.  Granted with a little help from the Clone Wars I managed to piece together just what it was there was to like about these films... I wont say they’re perfect, far from it. But internally they have so much more going on compared to the Original Trilogy. The Era has some of the most fun and expandable concepts and ideas in all of Star Wars, and while it may not be as iconic, the visual artstyle of it all is still its own recognizable brand of Star Wars.  And almost like magic (or my phone spying on me) youtube started recommending videos that disagreed with Cosmonaught, and I got my first taste of how his video wasn’t as sound as I thought. Now as a side note: I still like Cosmonaught. He’s a funny guy who like I said knows his shit, but he obviously isnt the be all end all right and wrong which I hadn’t quite learned. I can enjoy his content while disagreeing with it, and I think thats just fine. I find myself disagreeing with a lot of creators I watch now and he’s just joined them.  But hang on, we’re missing something here... A certain... Mouse? Perhaps?

The dark times... The Disney Empire... 

So hop back to modern day for a sec, this timeline pretty much lines up with the end of the Disney movies right? So how do I feel about those? Well... When the first three came out, I liked them. Like everyone else I was loving new Star Wars. As a young art student, I loved Rogue One and TLJ for their stunning visuals, deeper themes and their attempt at something new and fresh. I loved the throne room fight scene, the light speed ram and how Rogue One had such a bitter sweet ending.  But ho ho no one else felt that way! And whether it be peer pressure or my love of dumpster fires my opinions changed like that. I laughed at the Rose Tico and Snoke memes, I hated the Canto Bight subplot and poor Luke being butchered on screen like that, and then there's Rey...  Solo came and passed. I refused to go see it, as I did with TROS which came out around the time I was getting back into Lego, and along with the prequels I was watching video essay upon video essay about why the sequels sucked and how to rewrite them. Some of them coming from a positive place, others... Not so much..  And so my hatred for them grew as I got back into the franchise and came to appreciate the originals for what they done great, and loathing the new films for lacking that same spark. And unlike the prequels, I didn’t really get enough pushback to change my mind. But what I did get was the full brunt of spite and hate the fans had for these new films, and honestly? It was depressing. 

Hate leads to suffering. 

I finally reached my rock bottom. I genuinely reached a point where I debated giving up Star Wars for the sheer amount of negative feelings I had towards the state of the franchise (which might I add is valid if you ever end up feeling that way about something you’re meant to be enjoying). 

I struggled to get past how Disney “ruined” Star Wars, and clearly nothing was going to change. 40 Years of history had been wiped out and the new timeline was a contorted mess, and the amount of discourse and disagreements in the franchise honestly did not help at all. 

Nothing was simple, everything had a catch. You like how Kylo was irredeemable in TLJ? Well he’s redeemed in TROS. TFA is a fun film but it sets up a lot of the things people hated about the sequels so you cant even just head canon that the other two never happened. And then...

Saved by Lego

There was Lego, making the best of a bad situation. It didnt care if you didn’t like that Palpatine was back (somehow), it didn’t care about the clunky prequel dialog, and it didn’t care about the thousands of retcons from the entierety of the franchises existence. 

Whether by contractual force or not: It was pure, distilled Star Wars. 

I loved how a set with Rey could stand beside a set with OT Luke and thats just how it was. It put into context that this was reality, and I could either be bitter about what could have been or accept what was, which wasn’t easy and I’m still not really over it. But I reached a place where I could accept the fun in all of Star Wars, that I liked how some of these characters looked, that these characters all existed in one Galaxy, and it was nice. 

And it led me straight back into... 

Learning to love Star Wars

One of the most important lessons I learned in the past year was trust your gut. Sure, hear out other peoples take on something, and if it changes your opinion all the more power to you. But don’t fight the fact you felt something in that initial reaction. I liked the prequels as a kid, so why don’t I as an adult? Is it because i outgrew them and see them for the disasters they are? Or is it because a someone who watched them as a fully grown adult that grew up with the OT was underwhelmed? 

And to that extent... I rewatched TFA and TLJ with an open mind and an open heart. The result? 

Im indifferent towards TFA. It has fun character moments and has a decent adventure, for what it is its good. But I actually found myself enjoying TLJ after all these years of hating on it. I liked their take on Luke, I liked the mutiny subplot, it didnt push the story forward leaps and bounds but it was a more methodical take on the franchise and for the I liked it. It wasn’t perfect, its biggest flaw is how bleak it can feel and its lack of doing anything interesting with its setting, but it does do a fair amount of decent things and I’ve come to appreciate it for that. 

I’m planning to watch TROS at long last soon, so maybe I’ll update it here. But what I will say is that I hope Lucasfilm don’t give up on the sequel era and characters quite yet. There is still a lot to love here as much as you may not like it, and I hope that they can explore more interesting meaningful themes and narratives in external media that they couldn’t in mainline films cough cough Stormpilot cough cough...

I know not everyone will agree with how I feel now, heck a lot of my problems I had still stand, but I’m at peace with it all now. I just want to sit back and enjoy this franchise for what it is. While I might not forgive Disney for its severe mishandling of... everything (a rant for another time) I’m content just not them supporting to the best of ability.

Star Wars is in such a unique position where each generation has a different stance and appreciation for different parts within the franchise. The prequels were hated until its fans grew up and started defending it, The Clone Wars was hated until its fans grew up and started defending it, and the sequels ended last year, their fans haven’t quite got their voice yet. But I’m interested to hear what they have to say. 

[konaizumi]

Gen Y ep 11 thoughts/reaction

- yeees, make thanuwayu canon!

- i literally just want wayu to be happy

- one of my favorite things about this show is how mature the characters feel, like a majority of the conflicts are caused by the characters being confused or unsure of their feelings and trying to take time to work through them and this unintentionally hurts other characters, but this feels more genuine than a bunch of drama created by stupid misunderstandings and characters being petty, and yes, communication would help a lot of these problems, but it never feels like the writers are just adding things in for no other reason than ‘drama’

- anyways, back to thanuwayu and that beautiful hug and wayu’s precious smile

- that brief flash of thanu’s smile, looking so genuinely happy to have wayu in his arms

- poor phai tho, I don’t want any of my babies getting hurt

- anybody else freak out for a second when he took off his shirt in the mirror and worry that he had gotten the tattoo then were immediately relieved when his back was still bare? just me?

- i tend to prefer college shows rather than high school ones, but my favorite thing about high school thai bls is how accurately they portray high school boys, just boys goofing off, showing their sexy hips

- pls poktong just kiss and make up already, i liked you a lot better when your genre was fluff

- watching pok being all flirty and douchy just seems out of character

- 15 min in and still no markkit

- i’m glad the whole blackmailing plot has now been fully explained, but seeing sandee suddenly smirking and being an asshole is giving me the same feelings as when poktong got weirdly aggressive last ep (by feelings i mean confusion and dislike)

- i wanted phai to end up with sandee bc sandee was so cute and sweet but i don’t know if i want that anymore

- also i forgive tong a little bit for what he did (getting pok beat up not switching the test scores) knowing that he had good(ish) intentions, he still fucked up tho and did a bad thing

- i’m calling it now, either next ep or next season, right when poktong is finally making progress, pok will find out about the switched scores and bam, drama

- pls poktong just kiss and make up already

- i know this scene is supposed to be romantic and all but i can’t stop cringing at the placement of the kisses, like next to the mouth but not quite the cheek? the chin??

- back to my preferred high school babies

- i can’t stop laughing at how they all got the coming of age parted bangs hairstyle to symbolize that they’re in college now

- all the high school babies look good except for pok who now has too much forehead, not that his style before was great but it was better

- thanu is such boyfriend material

- that phaiwayu hug hurts my soul, wayu looks so happy, i just want them both to be happy and not get hurt

- Finally!! 25 min in and finally we get markkit

- i want more of this thanu, thanu with a smile and joking around with his friends

- I really want jiw’s butterfly shirt

- jack and jew kidknapping mark like that was prob my favorite moment of the whole episode, that gif is now my header

- alright, padbok is back, still waiting for their story, but i kinda hope their resolution waits till season 2 bc i want character development for padbok and there’s already so much that needs to happen next ep that i think his story would only be rushed and somewhat glossed over

- i know some people hate padbok, and i also find him annoying, but ever since they dropped the idea of padbok x sab in an earlier ep, all i want is padbok redemption ark

- i guess thanu is somehow going to feature in the poktong story

- i absolutely love sab and klui, they are my favorites of the high school babies

- i guess i can’t call them high school babies anymore

- jackkoh, just admit your feelings for each other already

- aww, markkitwayu choosing custody over the babies, mark wants to be a good senior so badly

- soon as kit said they hadn’t picked a medicine beau, i was like, it’s going to be tong, and i was right, it’s ittpai all over again, but whether it’s better or worse remains to be seen

- kit really does attract the beau’s doesn’t he

- don’t worry mark, you’re much prettier than pok

- pls give me more kitwayu bonding and helping each other heal from pha

- damn kit, you were so close to getting phai to spill

- yes phai, make kit move in with mark

- i absolutely need to know what kit’s test is for phai’s suitors

- i would just like to admire dun’s ability to look so completely lovestruck, like his gaze is just so full of love and it’s so sweet

- that kiss was so cute, i’m sorry i ever doubted you thanuwayu

- that’s pha’s car isn’t it? he’s watching them? I thought he would come back this ep and cause some drama, but he didn’t so he has to come back next ep right?

- i like that they’ve softened poktong bc i like them much better as friends to lovers rather than enemies to lovers

- honestly, their story has a lot of potential but something about it is just really not working well for me and i think its the weird aggression bc they don’t annoy me when their being sweet and smiling. I think if pok had more of a bad boy vibe originally it would’ve been better bc the aggression wouldn’t seem so ooc and the conflict would feel a bit more natural

- their story also has a ton of parallels to ittpai (my gear your gown), so im interested how it’s going to go bc i did like ittpai despite the narrative issues of that show

- poktong: *doing whatever tf they’re doing*

  mark: tf did i just step in

- i really appreciate thanu just saying straight out that he has feelings for wayu, i know he struggled with it, but i like him coming to this point that’s like yes, he feels an attraction to phai, he feels drawn to him and he’s seen their poential future, but right now he has actual, solid feelings for wayu built up from their interactions over months

- what he has with phai isn’t real--it could be real, if he went down that path and choose to get closer to phai, but right now his feelings for wayu are real, so that’s what he’s choosing

- him saying they should never meet again was a little tho, spare my poor baby phai at least a little bit

- i get a dose of serotonin every time i see kit wearing mark’s gear

- the markkit is lacking this ep but they are trying to make up for it with all this good good thanuwayu content

- i’m torn between wanting and not wanting thanu to tell wayu about phai bc it will hurt wayu if he does but it’s gonna hurt more later on when wayu finds out on his own

- I can’t tell if wayu has a suspicion about phai, like he def senses there’s another person but I can’t tell if he knows it’s phai

- okay but thanuwayu are so cute and sweet together

- pls let my babies kiss, i couldn’t appreciate their first kiss bc i didn’t ship them then and wayu thought it was pha so pls let them have a do over

- you know what, i like thanuwayu having visions like thanuphai. I can’t quite tell if that was the writers’ intention, but i hope it is bc that would imply that thanuphai aren’t actually soulmates and that what they see is just a potential future, like they could be happy together, but there are also other people who they can be happy with

- i’m not super crazy about this whole ‘let’s rewrite my memories of pha with memories of you’ bc that doesn’t seem like the healthiest way to move on from pha or to start a new relationship but whatever makes wayu happy i guess

- however i do like how it ties into the whole ‘no predetermined fate’ thing and shows how life is shaped by choices and chance

- pls let my babies kiss tho

- hey so i am not liking this preview of the next ep

- anyways, so i’m liking how their handling the thanuwayuphai thing so far, but it is going to be bad next ep as im assuming the envelope that has phai’s picture is probably phai returning the picture to cut ties but obvi wayu is going to find out about their relationship

- still not sure how i feel about poktong, its better than last ep which i did not like and def shows more potential, but i think we’re gonna have to wait and see, don’t like the direction they’re taking with sandee tho

- also whoops, this got really long but i have a lot of feelings about this show

- fingers crossed for actual markkit content next ep

[clumsyclifford]

bella I would love a directors cut on literally any of the rilex you’ve written, but specifically it’s always her, and you, and me, or for these days you’ve been stuck in my brain 💙

OHHHHHH those are some CHOICESSSSSS lucy. fuck yeah. let’s get into it. ill link them both here but we’ll take em one at a time

it’s always her, and me, you

these days you’ve been stuck in my brain

here’s a cut for convenience cos i KNOW i’m gonna go long here.

okay! let’s start with the rilisex fic.

it’s always her, and me, and you

so like it says in the ao3 notes, this fic came from realizing just how frequently rian and alex kiss each other like, all the time? just? casually? for funsies? this was another one of those situations like i mentioned where the hook aka first line (“Rian's no expert, but he doesn't think normal friends kiss this much.”) just appeared in my head and i was like heyyy that’s a GOOD first line. i have to build from that line. that’s the hook, that’s the summary, that’s the core. 

something i discovered upon searching through the editing history of the doc: i had originally sort of intended to go a direction with this where in some other circumstance, rian would see alex giving jack a super casual friendly kiss and he’d get all sad/jealous and be like sure why SHOULDNT alex kiss jack after all its just a thing he does with his FRIENDS. but the fic ended up going a different way and honestly? im glad. i like this way better.

the role of singin in the rain in this fic actually has a HILARIOUS backstory because the night i originally wrote that conversation in the tour bus kitchen, i went into the club and said the following

and then. the next day. rian streamed with ricky, and i asked if he’d ever seen singin in the rain, and he ANSWERED ME and said he hadn’t. so first of all i had already written the scene and i then had to rewrite it to make it so rian wouldn’t have seen it but also!!! i literally asked rian fucking dawson if he’d seen a movie for the sole reason of using that information for fanfiction!!!! and he provided me with the information i needed!!!! whole thing is just fucking hysterical to me. ANYWAY.

ANYWAY, the other reason why sitr has such a big role in the fic is because megs and i watched the movie together while i was in the middle of working on the fic, so it was extremely fresh in my mind. in fact i can probably show you this: i had this comment left for myself when i was kind of trying to figure out if i could make a real metaphor of sorts with the sitr ot3 and the Big Three of this fic. some of this ended up in rian’s wild musings in the hotel scene but i did conclude that it wouldn’t really have worked and that was definitely true but anyway. fuck it, director’s cut, here’s the kind of shit i leave for myself to refer to

so that’s part of the reason why it became such a puzzle piece of this fic, but real talk, it’s also just because i love singin in the rain it’s one of my favorite movies lmao

briefly gonna also touch on lisa and why she’s in this fic because i realize that rian/alex/lisa is an interesting approach to rilex! first of all, i love lisa. i love alex and lisa. and it occurred to me that there was really no reason to split lisex up just to make rilex happen. plus there’s this tweet that really just pushed me over the edge of being like yeah, rilisex is extremely plausible. so that’s that on that.

as for the scene in the hotel room while they’re watching sitr, there is a small piece of that scene - from when alex starts kissing rian’s shoulders etc to “it would defy the laws of nature not to” - that i actually wrote before anything else in that scene. that small piece got stretched out and edited quite a bit from how it started but it did function as a sort of foundation around which i built the rest of the scene, because that small section sort of ~came to me~ absolutely out of nowhere, and i really liked the Vibe it had and i wanted to include it. i THINK that was the only piece of this fic that i wrote Out Of Order - for the most part this was written chronologically.

ALSO!!! omg this is exciting, this fic actually has a deleted scene!!!!!! i hate cutting scenes but i also hate having scenes that are less than 1k and this one didn’t really contribute much to the fic. i can probably share it here right? sure why not ! hopefully you can read this. it originally took place after the scene where alex and rian call lisa for the first time. the question of “what gets left into interview videos and what gets cut” is also just interesting to me as a (fic) concept in general so...eyes emoji, but here’s my mini-exploration that i cut from the original fic. enjoy lol it’s silly <3

oh! also one more thing!! the very final scene was included for two reasons. the first reason being that when i write getting-together fics, i really prefer to add on a scene After they Get Together because i love to write domestic established relationship stuff and i think that’s a satisfying reward for a reader who’s just slogged through all the mutual pining and bullshit to get the characters together. but the OTHER reason is that i got an anon (here it is!) and i read that ask and was immediately like well shit. now i have to fucking include this. for the anon and for myself. so you can thank that anon for that last scene. (also i wanted to include merrikat especially since i had to cut their little moment in the interview scene above.)

so....................whew. i think i’ve bled that fic dry. holy shit that’s a lot of Stuff. OKAY! let’s move on.

~

these days you’ve been stuck in my brain

so!!! THIS fic was the breakthrough after (what felt like) a long bout of writer’s block. long for me was maybe two weeks, but i am the kind of person who is always writing, and two weeks was a long time to go with little to no inspiration/motivation to write anything. i had also been in a weird narrative headspace because i’d been binge-watching disney shows (jessie > austin and ally > girl meets world) and i don’t know how well i can explain this but the way those shows are written is a lot snappier and cares way less for realistic and consistent character development or plots or relationships, and so i was stuck between caring a lot about including those things in my fics but also being unable to conceptualize them in writing because my brain was in Disney Writing Mode. does that make sense? this is rhetorical so let’s go with yes. so anyway. i was in a slump

actually what i ended up doing was basically googling something like “au prompts tumblr” or something and just scrolling through posts. i saw something about soulmate telepathy and i actually tried to write something totally different before i wrote this one, but the first attempt was a different concept and then the direction i took it was like......it wasn’t quite right and i realized that i was kind of writing dark disney style? there is really no way for me to explain what i mean by that because it seems really obvious to me but that’s just because i’m inside my own head so just take my word. 

anyway. attempt #1 of soulmate telepathy rilex went poorly, and this fic was attempt #2. i kinda took the soulmate telepathy thing and changed it as i saw fit and i also went back to skim helen’s telepathy fic because obviously she’s the pro and then i tried not to steal her ideas. and as i was writing it i kinda realized i was doing the whole quirky funny best friend character with jack and also doing the whole “somehow this not-very-dramatic situation with teenagers is treated as The Most Dramatic Thing Ever and that’s totally normal and nobody finds it strange” disney trope with rian and alex being soulmates and i was like (deep sigh) i have to accept that no matter how much i try to fight this, this fic is going to be tainted with disney. and that’s life

on top of that i will add that the real-life rilex were extremely inspiring during the two-day period during which i wrote this fic, because that was when the once in a lifetime video came out and in the brief pre-video livestream rilex were Beyond Married and that definitely helped in the writing of fic rilex!

hmmmm what can i tell you about this fic itself.................honestly, i don’t think there’s much to tell! rian is a band kid because in real life rian was a band kid and he’s staff manager at rita’s just like he was in real life. there is truthfully not a lot to unpack here that i can think of!

oh here’s something i guess: rian and alex go on a date in this fic! that is because watching So Much Disney made me realize that i often forget the fact that people just. go on dates. sometimes. look i clearly do not have an active romantic life but i also really liked the idea of alex and rian going on a date despite not knowing if they’d be soulmates or not and liking each other organically just by getting to know each other, rather than being victim to the whole soulmate thing. like i wanted them to build a connection so that they would want to be soulmates. and then the audience would want that for them too. stakes!! very important.

i can tell you i had a mild crisis over the title of the fic because i am not a fan of the word brain and i didnt wanna use that sticky lyric for the title when it had a word i hated but it was objectively a much better title option than the other one i had, which was “sticky just like the song in my head” but i obviously decided on the former and it has not upset me nearly as much as i expected it to so that was the right decision imo

so! i think that’s all on that! sorry (?) that it got so long although then again i don’t know what’s to be expected in a director’s cut for two long fics but thank you for asking me about these, i love them both so very much rilex is so supremely underrated but so very important

[mousehole5000]

okay im rewriting tgcf (only in my head im lazy) here are my notes on hua/lian specifically this is long bc fuck it. major spoilers obviously and same trigger warnings as the content of the book

disclaimer disclaimer disclaimer that i dont know anything about the cultural background of anything in tgcf or story tropes etc etc this is just I Think It Would Be Neat If..

there’s not really any reason to keep hc as a kid in the backstory BUT in the story in the intro (which i like narratively) it still says that it was a child who xie lian caught. it’s one of those things that got added to the legend to make xie lian seem even more noble, there are also probably a few other inaccuracies in the intro that get found out as the story progresses. in actuality hc was kind of a known troublemaker to the city guards or whatever or had been in the past. maybe his mother just passed after a long illness and his tumble off the wall was intentional. either way he’s kind of pissed at xie lian for saving him. xie lian is concerned about his health so he has to stay at the palace for a while he recovers and only interacts with xie lian a few times. there is a point where he says out loud all the things about the divide between the rich and the poor that have been illustrated by the scenes with mu qing. feng xin tells him to shut up but mq goes dead silent bc he kind of agrees but can’t say and does have his loyalty to xie lian (its a whole thing) and the resentment begins

also i think young hc’s personality is similar to his personality in the present but a bit more reserved and he’s got like this plucky streak or something. also he is unquestionably gay

anyway hc sneaks out of the palace and xie lian catches him obviously but they have a brief little heart to heart where xie lian is like “look you can go if you want here take this money food” etc and demonstrates that he has actually listened to what hc has to say and hc is like “wow no one other than my mom has ever listened to me in my life so thats what that feels like i kind of like it” and he probably is a bit awestruck by xie lian in different ways and after that is like “okay this kingdom sucks but.. that guys not so bad”

sad ironic sense that if xie lian hadnt ascended until he was older he may have actually be able to do something about the problems in the kindgom but alas we have a cycle to perpetuate

the “take me as the meaning of your life” scene still happens p much the same but xl doesnt recognize hc who is actually now at his lowest point. hc tried to find ways to make things better for people like him but he simply did not succeed (maybe his were efforts quashed by the corrupt authorities? its implied probably) and he’s more disillusioned with the kingdom and life than ever but still is holding on to those memories of xie lian as proof that it doesnt have to be like this but that thread is slipping until!! whose fucking voice is that??? thats right its the one person you ever believed was truly good and went and proved you right by ascending to the heavens at age 17!!! guess its time to stan him forever

anyway hc joins the army but legally or whatever and tbh i would have hated the flower cave scene regardless of anything i just hate any sort of s*x pollen trope or anything so thats gone (they can have a wound tending scene or something tho thats the good shit) and instead we have HL getting overwhelmed by some other demons or something together and xie lian protects hc and they both get injured very badly (maybe hc would lose a limb but im not sure how that would work once hes a ghost so thats on hold for now until i figure it out) and xl is fine but this situation ends up being part of why mq kicks hc out of the army but yes hc still ends up dying on the battlefield anyway </3

the wuming stuff is the same i think but also at some point xl is despairing and says something about that guy he saved from falling and wonders what happened to him and fire ghost wuming is like !!!!! (wait does this happen in canon? honestly it should)

in mount tong’lu i was tempted to actually have hc have a similar moment to the bamboo hat scene with the humans who are trapped in there but im not sure if i just want it to be the same as xie lian’s story... also i like the idea of hc needing to hang onto his devotion to get through his first few centuries of being a ghost so maybe he’s just inspired by xie lian’s sacrifice with the sword and the souls and thats why he claws his own eye out as a sacrifice

so this can go one of two ways from here!!! both are me projecting hardcore so take them with a grain of salt im not saying im right about the way relationships should be these a re just my thoughts <3

1. (the not fun one but it still has a happy ending) the story more or less continues the same as canon. pure and simple devotion is what carries hc through the centuries. we get to see some ghost city antics and its fun but there is nothing complicated about the devotion hc just wants to find xl and protect him. hualian eventually meet. they get along pretty well!! eventually there are cracks. when you hold someone in your mind for so long you have expectations for them that no person can meet consistently. hc thinks that since he’s seen xl during the worst time in his life that he can handle anything but it turns out that as amazing as xl is, he is also just a person and sometimes he is wrong or irrational or annoying. xl is so happy to have someone who will listen to him talk that he kind of neglects to really get to know who hc is as a person and hc is kind of like “huh i didnt expect this but im kind of hurt. i genuinely thought that i just wanted to serve and protect you but actually im my own person and this is weird” but he doesnt say anything he thinks he has to stick to his promise and it gets kind of uncomfortable!! maybe his luck goes haywire bc his faith gets rocked for the first time ever and they end up having to talk it out but their relationship is stronger for it <3

2. (i think this one is fun) hc struggles with waiting. he does it but its hard. he has doubts and when all his efforts to find xl are fruitless he starts to grow bitter and curses the day that xl saved him. his faith burns low but doesnt go out. then ghost city!! hc realizes that he can finally help people like him, even if theyre ghosts now and hes grateful for the chance to do this and grateful to xl and resigns himself to waiting. but its still hard!! he realizes that his luck is tied to his devotion and gets kind of pissed about it!!! he tries to remember all the good things about xl but its hard!!! his search becomes more about repaying a debt so he can be free than anything else, he just wants to help the common people spirits with no strings attached (this actually allows him to keep his luck bc he has the same wish as xl and thats what makes him a true believer!! is this corny? does it make sense? i dont care) and so eventually when he finds xl he’s like okay how quickly can i repay this debt/how can i keep my powers but then xie lian is... so good... and hc actually really likes him he remembers why he swore his devotion in the first place. now hes conflicted!!! dont worry they fall in love tho <3

wow this was really long if you read this hiiiii. anyway when i reread ill try to pay more attention to yin yu and he xuan for hc’s 800 years. hua cheng we’re gonna get you some friends and lore i swear to god

[devourer--of--books]

Remember that one time I wrote a Tangled AU?

Context

During 2016, I submitted a few stories for Tagatha Ship Week. Not my best work, but some of my most known works nonetheless. Amongst those, I had a Tangled AU that was originally meant to be a one shot (which has been deleted because sweet lord that was bad), then turned into a draft for a multichapter story and then turned into this cursed WIP I completely forgot about, which you can find on both Ao3 and FF.net  under the name of ‘blinking in the starlight’.

Every once in a while someone comes across it, as it was the case with ‘if you’re not the bride’ and it would remind me of its existence. But unlike IYNTB, I have no interest in rewriting it or continuing this story. 

A few weeks ago I found the original draft for ‘blinking in the starlight’ in my dad’s old computer, so I thought I might do a post no one asked for (some people did, you guys are great, humoring me like that) on what the plot was supposed to be.

But after sitting with it I wasn’t fully satisfied (as usual, fml). So, like the clown that I am, I decided that since we are already here, might as well make it into an actual AU post, mind my language, I’m frustrated.

Blinking In The Starlight: Tangled AU

Okay, so I’m gonna presume that you read the WIP, so if you didn’t, maybe check that out first and then come back to this post. Or don’t, it’s not like it’s a very complex narrative anyway.

Many, many years before this story starts, there was a cruel sorcerer named Rafal.

He tormented the Endless Woods for centuries, extorting kingdoms and stuff, you know, very much a two-dimensional character whose motivations I definitely did not think through. Being evil I guess?

No one could defeat him, because he always somehow ended up knowing the traps were coming and was two steps ahead. No one knew how, so they just like, presumed it was because he was psychic or something.

Until one day, a young vain prince named Arthur of Camelot decides to order a hunt to the big blue falcons, to get their feathers as a present to the girl he was courting, one Lady Guinevere.

Would you believe those birds were Rafal’s spies? Now that everyone was hunting them, they could no longer listen in as easily.

So when Prince Arthur campaigns against Rafal’s evilness and challenges him to a duel in which he tricks the sorcerer and defeats him, stripping him of most his powers (and therefore his immortality), everyone was shook 

Don’t ask me how he did it, I honestly do not know

But instead of killing Rafal, Arthur agrees to spare his mortal life as long as he gives him a powerful love potion for Guinevere and never shows his face around Camelot ever again.

Rafal is pissed, but says sure why not, because he knew  Arthur would be crushed once the potion effects wore off and Guinevere left him anyway

So yeah, they became King and Queen, everyone thinks Rafal is dead, Camelot became known as the guardian kingdom of the Endless Woods alliance, yada yada.

Meanwhile, Rafal, now mortal and still pissed af, looks for a way to get his immortality back, because he is now old and tired all the time.He goes to one of his oldest allies and they tell him a rumor about a woman named Vanessa who found a way to stay young forever using a bird.

It takes a few years for him to track her down, but when he does, he tries to convince her to show him the bird. Vanessa is like that sounds like a you problem, so he threatens her and she tells him she ate it to save her life during her pregnancy (do not ask me how this works, why she couldn’t have healed herself like usual, I don’t know okay)

Rafal is pissed again, because Vanessa was still looking young, so either she lied or she was omitting something and decides you know what, screw you and murders everyone, trying to find the damned bird.

But then he hears soft singing from the closet. A little girl named Sophie, who apparently had inherited the bird’s ability to restore youth. 

First, he thinks of raising her as his daughter. But then, one day she’d try to leave him for a boy, so he decides to trick her into thinking he was that boy, so she’d never want to leave him.

He sells her this bullshit story about everything being a fairytale like the ones her books, makes himself look like a teenager and tells her he is now going to take care of her because they are true loves and whatnot

Using the money from his previous evilness (why am I like this), he builds a tower and gaslights the hell out of her telling her is was to keep the danger outside, when actually he was caging her in. Her guards are all mercenaries and her maids are kidnaped slaves so, hm, that’s nice

He keeps visiting her to restore his youth, but he needs the macguffin Arthur used to take away his immortality (I didn’t specify what it was in my draft, so let’s say its Excalibur, for the sake of storytelling) to restore his full greatness, so he starts a long-long-plan to overthrow Camelot once he gets him hands on the sword.

However, Sophie is a person of her own, even being manipulated and gaslighted. She wants to go outside and see the world. Obviously Rafal won’t let her, and even gives her a ring to summon him and stuff, so she won’t think about going anywhere out of his sight.

But she ends up doing it anyway because she’s Sophie

Now hold on a minute.

Back in Camelot, Arthur has already died, Guinevere ran off with Lancelot and Tedros is a brat, walking around with Excalibur (not knowing how powerful it actually is) playing glorified police officer for the royal guard as a way to prove he’ll be a good king someday.

Festival season is approaching and prince Teddy is on a man-hunt (woman-hunt?) for the thief that has been ambushing noble carriages.

They have some good banter, but the thief always manages to distract him and get away.

Guess who is the thief

It’s Agatha, leave me alone, I was 15 and loved cliches, shut up

Yes, I know I’m now almost 19 and still love cliches, moving on

Agatha is stealing money from the rich like a robin hood pro, because festival season is expensive and poor people need to eat okay

But prince-holier-than-thou keeps showing up so she decides to be petty and steal directly from him. Girl just wanted some gold, but ends up with Excalibur because Tedros is an idiot

So he chases her through the woods for days on end, hot on her trail, and Aric gets caught on the crossfire between them. Agatha presumes from his uniform that there is a castle near and decides to hide there.

Tagatha ends up in Sophie’s tower, and she hides Excalibur to bargain with them.

She strikes a deal with Tedros to show her the festival in exchange for Excalibur. 

Agatha is just f this shit im out, she didn’t want the sword in the first place and last thing she needs is going to Camelot with a pseudo-police-officer.

But then Tedros realizes he doesn't know how to go back to Camelot and Sophie makes him promise not to turn Agatha in. Agatha is still skeptical, so he promises to lift taxes for the lower classes and she agrees to be their unofficial guide back to Camelot.

Princes can't break promises, don’t ask

The three of them escape the tower. 

Shenanigans ensue.

There’s a scene of Agatha helping people in a tavern and Tedros is like???? she nice????

Sophie finding out that the old wizard from her story was the guy King Arthur supposedly killed and doubting Rafal’s lies.

There’s Tedros explaining his need to be just and abide by the laws all the time due to the pressure of his father’s rep after the three of them nearly die of hypothermia (?)

Sophie telling them about her talent.

Very wholesome really.

Meanwhile tho, Aric finally manages to alert Rafal that Sophie left, and Rafal summons his birds to look for her, figuring out that she had Excalibur (how? Idk)

When the trio reaches Camelot, it’s still a few days before the festival. Agatha says she is done and needs to be on her way, but Tedros (softly, may I add) asks her to stay, at least until the lantern scene/day/tradition/thingy

Their unspoken feelings are all over the place and Sophie decides to play matchmaker.

They stay in an inn (why did Tedros not sneak them into the castle, you ask? I don’t know, don’t ask) and Sophie makes the guy tell them there is only two rooms. She then makes up some balloney about wanting to be by herself, so Agatha and Tedros share a room.

Yeah, you know what I’m doing, don’t you: there’s only one bed.

Some other tropes for a very fluffy chapter equivalent of the score of Kingdom Dance, which is my favorite song in the Tangled Soundtrack, fight me, is such a good ‘falling in love montage’ song

But the fluff doesn’t last long, because the very night of the festival, just as you can almost hear Tagatha singing ‘and at last I see the light’, Rafal’s birds find Sophie and take off her ring by force.

Rafal crashes the festival, stealing Excalibur from Sophie and unleashing his coupe against Camelot, back to being immortal and super over-powered.

He throws Sophie back in her tower, and when she doesn't comply and asks him to stop we have a ‘I never loved you’ ‘you were always just a bird to me, a dumb bird’ moment and Sophie is just destroyed because aside from her new friends (whom she believed were dead) Rafal is all she has.

Back in Camelot, complete mayhem is being wrecked, bloodshed and stuff. Agatha manages to rescue Tedros before his execution and they figure out that they need to rescue Sophie and get Excalibur to kill Rafal for good.

“Insert part one of TLEA here”, bitch, I kid you not, that’s exactly what I wrote wtf even is this draft

Somehow it all leads into this big confrontation, in which Sophie strips Rafal of his immortality using the sword but can’t bring herself to kill him. So she asks Tedros to do it, so he can prove himself to his kingdom.

I do not know where Agatha is during this, but I’m pretty sure she’s like, fatally wounded or something

Rafal reveals to Tedros why Arthur spared his life the first time and offers him a potion to make Agatha return his (already mutual, you idiot) feelings. 

Tedros is like, nah, I’m gonna kill you, and Rafal is like are you sure she won’t just ride off and leave you like your mama?

And Tedros is just, honestly, man, I’m not, but I’m not gonna force her. Then some analogy about caging birds and Rafal is dead.

Yey, happy ending.

So Tedros and Agatha are left in this limbo, because she poor and she a criminal and he a prince. 

Tedros decides to have Agatha take the glory of killing Rafal to redeem her in the public eye, grants her a title, she makes Sophie her lady-in-waiting and they all live happily ever after the end.

[neverlearnedtoread]

King of Scars

⭐⭐⭐; me at any given moment in the second half of the book: leigh.......*sobbing* please........where are we

Oh?? 👌😉😏

incredible set-up! the first half was SO exciting and fun. every set-up was brimming with piping hot takes. court intrigue, power couple vibes, sneaking around / keeping up appearances interspersed with real feelings - bardugo set out a real feast of a story, that’s for sure

non-powered protagonist / POV in a magical setting. it’s one of my favourite tropes (i can pinpoint the origin of this preference back to one specific book in my childhood favourites)

badass women! need i say more

political intrigue (especially with the backdrop of a magical setting!)

No.. ❌🤢🤮

the author lost the thread SO HARD in the second....it really fell so flat after such a fantastic premise. im so disappointed 😭 i wanted so much and i got barely a crumb....please leigh, just another mouthful of that political intrigue....im begging ya......

im not that mad about the [spoilers] at the end of the story, but i am utterly befuddled by how it happened - and that’s not even taking into account how confused i am about the future direction of the story. bardugo, where? are? you? going?? it’s getting to the point i don’t fully trust she knows where she’ll end up either, and that’s dangerous

Nina’s story should have been a novella that came out before KoS. It would have been much more cohesive, and I could concentrate on Nina’s arc more on its own, and probably would’ve hyped up KoS that much more because of how these two stories are supposed to happen concurrently. Honestly, as interesting as Nina’s story was, I don’t have that much to say about it. It was good. I wish it was its own story. That’s about it.

Summary: Three years after the Ravkan Civil War, King Nikolai finds himself wrestling with an interesting problem. While his shrewd political machinations and barefaced charisma have kept Ravka from devolving into yet another conflict with one of its many enemies, he’s been losing ground in a battle with his own body as some uncontrollable curse repeatedly takes over his consciousness, causing him to wreck havoc across the nearby countryside night after night. After he nearly kills a child on one of his fun little jaunts as a giant bird-creature, he decides to take matters into his own hands and travel to a place of cleansing, which he hopes will be strong enough to purge the darkness. Things can only go downhill from there. (Oh yeah! And Nina is doing cool, sexy, creepy, important stuff somewhere else. That’s a thing too.)

Concept: 💭💭💭

I did not expect to pick up this book. I got into Six of Crows quite late, and I didn’t love the duology (it was good! i love inej. and everyone else is there too ig), so when I read the reviews (tbh I just listened to the KoS liveshow by the Papercut trio, but same thing) and they weren’t...that positive? i chalked it up to a cute cover i could admire from a distance whenever i visited a bookstore and moved on. But! Life moves in mysterious ways...and by mysterious I mean my friend listened to the audiobook and got me into it as well so we could share thoughts

Spoilers under the cut~

Execution: 💥💥💥💥 (first half) / 💥💥 (second half)

...And share thoughts we did! The first half of the book was *chef’s kiss* set-up so beautifully. I’ve never read the Grisha Trilogy, but I can feel that bardugo prefers to play fast and loose with her worldbuilding rules anyway, so there wasn’t much I couldn’t pick up using context clues. The characterization for two POVs I’d never read before, let alone even knew the backstory of beyond the vaguest inclination, was masterful! I immediately liked Nikolai and Zoya. Then we got to the second part, and I have never seen anything go downhill quite so effortlessly. More spectacularly? Yes. More quickly? Absolutely! Somehow, this was more like a slow slide into mediocrity, which was....worse. We just kept getting further and further away from the original intrigue, and setting up yet more moving pieces and unanswered questions, and, and - ! The book ended. I am so afraid that this has become a bigger beast than Bardugo can control, and that’s why she’s announcing a Six of Crows continuation - to pull it all together without admitting she may have lost the thread of this narrative.

Favourite Moment: while I loved where nina ended up at the end of the story (and i WISH we had had her story in a separate novella so i could fully appreciate the BDE), I think my favourite scene is when nikolai says to zoya ‘so what about that amplifier of yours that you were highly emotionally attached to’ and zoya not only tells him, but takes off her shirt to show him the scars without being directly asked. like damn! all he had to do was ask an unrelated question! shit! half the population of ravka would die to be as lucky as their king

Personal Enjoyment: ❤❤❤❤❤ (first half) / ❤❤ (second half)

I love it when a story hinges on two characters playing off of the other. There’s the banter, of course, but the real meat of this premise is always the character reveals and parallels you’re privy to, when you match two characters the audience has yet to learn more about against each other. It’s like...shadows and light! The interplay of similarities and differences! The intrigue of these characters reacting to any character reveals alongside the audience themselves in real-time! ‘Two sides of the same coin’-type narratives are always super fun, with or without shipping. And I think that’s the crux of the reason the second half of the book fell apart - despite being two out of three of the only humans stuck in that Other Place, and literally unable to go anywhere, Nikolai and Zoya simply....stopped talking to each other. And trusted two otherworldly god-like figures. Without question. 👀👀 HUH? HUH?? They’ve both been established to trust very few people - it took them three years to build themselves up to trusting each other, and they worked side-by-side to govern an entire country. But when it came down to the wire, you’re telling me they picked some random mythical dudes they had never believed existed? Make it make sense, Bardugo. They’re not even teenagers in-canon anymore, there’s no excuse for that kind of lapse in character consistency.

Favourite Character: i’m going to cheat and say that nikolai and zoya tie - their personalities were so compelling. if only they could have combined their two braincells to give me the fully realised character arc this book truly deserved :(( they could have had intertwined narrative parallels! the foil potential! cmon bardugo, am i gonna have to rewrite this book in my mind myself, or what?

[knoxhq]

► ( rudy pankow & cis male ) according to the school’s records, knox drury is a 22-YEAR-OLD senior studying political science, and he lives over in moriarty. he is a gemini, so that must be why others describe him as dignified, humorous, cowardly and naive. when i see him, i’m reminded of walking into class an hour late with sunglasses on, the feeling of anticipation as you wait for a firework to fully blossom, the sound of party music leaking through the walls of a bathroom. ( gibby, 20, they/them, est. ) ◄

hello everyone !! so i won’t even lie to u guys, i am NERVOUS and it’s literally only bc this is the first group i’ve joined in so long like dfdhkjsfjad the last group i was in was almost a year ago but i ended up having to leave due to personal reasons and didn’t get to write so like !!! idk i’m excited !! anyways w that in mind, pls bARE with me bc i have like one (1) braincell and i forgot how to write intros. anyways enough of me rambling, lemme give you knox !!

also this is a bad intro pls dont judge me im trying 2 like. rewrite what i had b4 the storm took it out n like, i lost the braincell

basics. 

full name: knox hale drury.

nicknames: drury.

age: twenty two.

gender and pronouns: cis male and he/him

sexual & romantic orientations: bisexual, biromantic, femme leaning.

major: political science.

housing: moriarty.

backstory.

triggers: implied bullying, police and incarceration ( dw i didn’t make him jj 2.0 ).

nobody gets to pick their beginnings. it’s something that people tell knox all the time, hell, it’s plastered in every stupid coming of age movie, book, film, everything he’s ever seen. you don’t pick who your born into, you don’t pick who you get to be. and to an extent, he does think that this is true but he can’t help but wonder if maybe, if people could pick, if they’d pick differently. because he knows he certainly would pick differently.

it’s not that he even came from a bad home - hell no, he had the most loving family ever. his mother was a saint, a warm sensation bubbling up in his chest when he thinks about her warm cookies or the way she tried to still tuck him in even as a teenager. his father had his flaws, we all do, but he was a good and honest man. hardworking, he showed knox what that stupid american dream is that everyone likes to preach about. 

no, it had nothing to do with them but rather the overall opinion on him and his family. see, the drury’s weren’t well liked - they were seen as lowlives and as shady, the kind of people who you’d only go to if you wanted to get stabbed in the back. generations of drury’s fit this narrative but no, his father was determined to change that. and so was he, even if nobody around him seemed to want to give him a chance. 

knox would go throughout school with this name attached to him like a dagger to his throat - whisperings in the hallway of, “oh, my mom said the drury boy might be steal things if you let him over,” and other random, rude remarks. of course, the people that get close to him know better - they see him for who he really is.

that person is knox. he’s a golden light, often more selfless than the rich pricks who run that small town. he’d give his jacket or umbrella to people even if they didn’t ask if it just so happened to be raining outside, and despite the fact that his family didn’t have a lot, he’d still go out of his way to try to give when he could. 

he eventually graduated high school - one of the top people in his class due to his father’s encouragement, and after a lot of debate, settled on attending haddon university - miles away from that sweet, small little hometown he knew, but a fresh start where he didn’t have to work for anything. he could just go in being him, with nobody attaching a new narrative to him. it was what he wanted, what he dreamed of.

and he loved it. his first semester there was memorable as he found himself surrounded by new friends and people he even considered family. back home, however, things were slipping.

the drury family was never rich, ever by any means, but business was low. nobody wanted to go there, fearing that his father was just as shady as his grandfather. as things got worse, his father had to resort to other needs - stealing, lying about taxes, and doing everything he could to try to make it by. 

it finally caught up to him when knox came home for spring break - red and blue lights flashing outside as loud noises went on throughout the house, until finally someone swung knox’s door open and briefly blinded him with a flashlight, demanding to know where his father was. by the time knox got a grasp on the situation, his father was being rushed off in the back of a cop car. 

he plead guilty almost immediately and for the next few months, knox did school from home to stay with his mother. it was then that he switched his major from what had initially been just a vague, business degree to political science in hopes of going into law after getting that degree - a way of changing things, of helping people so they never got to that point. 

for now though, he’s gone back to haddon’s campus where he study’s away and occasionally finds himself slipping and partying, glasses always covering his eyes as he slinks back class, getting almost nO sleep every night.

study.

so i need u to know right now... knox is baby, FDSHJDFSHAJK

like he’s not by any means like he’s kinda a gross dude like, absolutely randomly burps n is like lol oops n shit, very little manners, will grab clothes off of the floor to put them on kind of man BUT LIKE as a whole ?? he means very well FDSJFAHJ he’s very gentle and will sit there and admire flowers on a bush and then get mad if u pick one bc ur hurting it like. he’s baby.

he also is very loyal to the ppl he’s friends w tbh like. damn he will never leave ur side

that also makes him kinda... super, actually, naive. you see, while knox is incredibly loyal, he often finds himself ignoring signs of toxicity for the sake of preserving a friendship - he fights for people who won’t fight for him, he lets people back in too easily, he just. he sees the good in everyone, even if there isn’t any good.

regardless, he’s not easy to just... manipulate to an extent. while he’ll fall for you being innocent, you can’t ever try to make him think he’s something he’s not - he knows his intentions and he knows they’re usually pure and he’s not gonna fold for anyone if it comes down to him or them. 

bt like again he’s baby

like i dont think he ever gets mad but damn when he does its probs scary as shit like bc he nEVER gets mad !!! hes like. a golden retriever ig

if u cannot tell im trying really hard not to make him too much like jj bc i realize that might be a big thing ppl do n i dont think jj is baby bt like. knox? knox is baby DSFHJKFDHKJ 

he’s just. idk. he’s very protective and cares about his friends a lot and will walk you home even if you went to HIS place and like is always ready to give you a jacket if it’s raining and he’s just lowkey a big, kinda dumb at times, teddy bear and i think that’s valid tyvm 

wanted connections.

friends. — please. knox will lOVE ur muses just let him be their friend tyvm plus he’s a bit of a social butterfly now and i think he’d honestly have a lot of friends.

best friend. — i’m gonna keep this to one muse bc idk i think it’d be really cute if knox got to have his own like, ride or die where they care abt him as much as he cares about them and they’re always there for each other and like !!! that’s cute !!! also found family trope bc i think that is.. again, kyoot, ty

frienemies. — so these are always like, super fun to plot out and i think there’s a lot to work w here... like give me ppl who are happy that knox is loyal and would defend them but would push knox to the side n not do the same for him... also friendships where knox fucked up ?? where knox, despite his goodness, couldn’t keep his mouth shut and revealed a secret to their friend group bc u see he can kinda be a gossip fsjfdaskj. idk there’s a lot u can do n i’d love to brainstorm!

enemies. — pls. like. we can brainstorm this too so i dont just ramble but pLEASE?? please.

flings. — honestly romantic ships are not the point of rps but romantic flings and stuff can be really fun to plot and i love getting soft about them so like ?? idk dude lets fling it up n have muses date for two weeks n then break up like thats swexi, dramatic, 10/10

exes. — i mean this is kind of like flings but i have an idea... give me an ex of knox’s who really was like. everything knox wanted. hell, the two had a really good relationship - they were in love and etc etc gushy details but they ended up breaking up bc they just. they weren’t meant to be! as sad as it is like it was as simple as that! and then the angst comes in after they break up bc god they still love each other so much but they just aren’t meant to be and they see them with other people and oh it just hurts but like, bonus points if they manage to become good friends even after this !! (sidenote, idk i wouldn’t want this to be a full ship tht gets back together bc idk i think there’s a bittersweetness in stuff like this n its just. like. its ok !!! idk !!! )

roommates. — and they were roomates- fdshjkfdsahjk

other things. — honestly these are half assed plots but i’m down for anything !!! i’m still fleshing out knox a lil too bc i really did make him on the spot so pls bare w me :)