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tobiosmilktea · 4 years ago

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umpah umpah! smau

↪︎ bokuto x f!reader x iwaizumi

[021] — like a storm!

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a/n: swear my writing hasn’t been that good recently and i blame it on my lack of freetime 😔 anyway here’s 4.5k words of trashy word dump that i wrote in 2 hours ;)) also peep the tlc reference

in theory, this picnic blanket was much too small for the likes of fitting a webtoon author, an editor, and a beefy volleyball player all at once, and yet, it still managed to fit two more to come join—tightly bunched up in the park at night as the crisp air temperature slowly drops. having a picnic at the cusp of autumn and winter was a definite mistake, but then again, perhaps they were used to it by now.

it wasn’t like the cold was bothering bokuto at this point anyway as his blood simmered with a boiling hot ichor. he had a death grip on his phone as satomi left him on read. all the volleyball player could do was roll his eyes and scoff as he taps your shoulder. akaashi, who sat on the other side of you was in the midst of speaking to you, yet was interrupted by the bright white light from the screen shone across your faces.

your eyes scanned the texts, feeling your lungs desperately yearning for air. her words suffocated you, crushing your airways as you struggled to breathe. perhaps you have forgotten how to at that very moment. they say it takes about three minutes for someone to suffocate from the lack of oxygen and if akaashi didn’t shake you, that probably would have been you. the fact that seeing that damn photo made your heart shatter more times than you could count over a course of the past few days. you couldn’t catch a fucking break, could you?

you had to look away. if you had stared at satomi in iwaizumi’s bed any longer, you would’ve screamed your head off.

“god, these cookies are so fucking good. i would literally marry these if i could,” kaori moaned into another bite of a matcha shortbread cookie. she practically threw herself over yuko’s lap as she reached in her little baggie for more. “these cookies are a godsend, (y/n), where did you get them?”

“this bakery right next to onigiri miya, apparently they make good lemon macarons as well.” you mutter. the semblance of seeing those texts was still evident upon your expression.

yuko doesn’t fail to notice the way the timbre of your voice had changed within a sudden moment. she gives you a look, “what’s wrong?” her words, careful and genuine filled you with something somber as bokuto handed his phone to her.

kaori grunts slightly as she lifts herself off of yuko, yet her body was still leaned over to skim the texts along with her.

it was a nervous habit of yours to fiddle with your fingers, picking and scratching at your chipped nail polish until it was all gone. you don’t remember when this became a habit, but you always did this whilst you waited for something you dreaded to hear the answer to. as if the nerves within you pooled into a wave, crashing back and forth like a tide until you either get dragged along with it or somehow manage to survive.

their expressions contorted into a nasty mixture of disgust and absolute horror. even kaori who has seen the despicable sweet-tongued manipulations of nicotine-stained fingers of incels had to shake her head and push the phone away.

“i never liked that girl from the start,” yuko scoffs. she hands the phone back to bokuto, watching him switch it off and dropping it onto the cushioned picnic blanket in annoyance.

“god, the amount of anger coursing through my body right now...” muttered bokuto, “i can’t believe she would do this.”

“at least she didn’t do anything to iwaizumi,” akaashi tried to reason. things were already so messed up, it was the least he could do.

kaori shakes her head, clearing her throat from the dryness of the shortbread cookie. “doesn’t matter,” her words were venomous and cutthroat, “she’s still a terrible person considering she got him drunk and made him tell her shit that wasn’t any of her business. what a fucking snake.”

you pursed your lips slightly, wanting to close your eyes and make this all disappear the moment you wake up. the chill of the night air had finally struck you. it was that sudden urge to run away as fast as possible, to escape the words you wholeheartedly wanted to leave behind continued to follow you like haunting poltergeists. and as if the tingling phrases of whispered memoirs of your mistakes weren’t enough, your own decisions whether it was right or wrong lingered back to both iwaizumi and bokuto. it’s heavy baggage you so dearly wanted to get rid of, but the solutions seemed so skewed and out of place for you to comprehend properly that even the chill in the air started to burn.

bokuto glanced at you with worry coated the emotions in his eyes. his hand reached for yours, lacing his fingers through your own as his palm—though rough and calloused—was warm against the biting cold of your hand. it comforted you more than you had expected with the way it was hidden from the others, almost melting when bokuto started to rub his thumb in little circles on the back of your hand and over your knuckles.

your hands were so soft, he had forgotten how much he liked holding them. he could memorize each and every detail just by admiring the way your hand looked so tiny next to his, yet they fit together like a glove.

you swore your heart was ready to jump out of your throat then. you weren’t sure if bokuto could even feel the way you squeezed his hand slightly as a silent answer.

“we should do something about it,” you say after a few beats of silence had passed, but it only comes out in a hushed mutter.

bokuto squeezed back, “like what?”

“i don’t really know,” you shrug while you shook your head, “just something that’ll make her learn a lesson or two.”

kaori gasps, “we should sue her!”

you and the others gave her a look.

“like seriously, sexual assault allegations are terrible especially since she’s a famous sports team’s physical therapist!”

“there probably isn’t enough evidence for that to work, kaori, considering they only made out.” yuko says matter-of-factly, “besides, suing someone is expensive and we don’t have that kind of budget right now.”

kaori braids over arms over each other in disappointment, “that’s lame.”

“yuko’s right.” you sighed, “i don’t want things to get out of hand and end up going public either. iwaizumi is already mad at the fact that i used him for a webtoon and surely being part of a lawsuit would only make it worse.”

it had come to a point that you had noticed how far everything has come. you wanted to laugh at how fast everything went downhill within a matter of months. the skeleton of your mistakes was just waiting for its last bits to fall and crush you.

there had to be a way to just make this—whatever this entire thing is to just end already.

akaashi opened his mouth to speak after keeping his thoughts to himself this entire time, “what if we just... get her fired?” he finished the last of his words in a blazing hesitance as if we would absolutely hate the idea. granted, it wasn’t much to work off of just by a simple proposal, but it had potential.

“we could, but how exactly are we going to do that?” bokuto asks curiously.

“didn’t you say that tomas recently got injured?” akaashi starts, earning a nod from bokuto to have him continue, “well if we want to be discrete as possible we could do it the old-fashioned way.”

yuko furrowed her brows as she asked, “which is?”

“if she keeps missing work or arriving late, she could potentially lose her job.”

kaori bursts out laughing, heaving a heavy snort as she mused at akaashi, “seriously? is that really our best option?”

akaashi rolled his eyes as she teases, “since you wanted to go the legal route, technically, it is.”

the girl’s laughter came to a slow cease, cocking her head in interest as she waited for one of them to elaborate.

“no yeah, there’s still a chance for this to actually work.” bokuto starts without a second thought. hell, he even forgot he was still holding your hand. “professional sports teams require their medical team to be at every game whether it’s real or just practice since the players are always at risk of getting injured. satomi’s known to be good at being there every day on time, so if yoji and their boss sees that she’s consistently missing work now for... let’s say—iwaizumi—and tomas isn’t getting treated asap, they’re allowed to replace her. and if you’re replaced, there’s basically no going back even if it is just temporary. and if that happens...” he pauses as he holds back a smirk, “she’s going to be fined legally with negligence—worst-case scenario, she’ll probably be fined for nonfeasance too.”

“whoa there, those are some big words, sir.” says kaori, “someone catch me up here?”

akaashi lets out a sigh, “nonfeasance means failure to do what’s expected.”

the sound of awe left kaori as she nods in understanding.

“is this really necessary? it seems like a lot of work just to get back at her.” yuko has always been a rational person, just like akaashi, but the only difference between them was that she liked to do things the fastest and most easy way.

“if we play our cards right, i think we could do it.” says bokuto.

“then i think we need all the help we can get if we really want this to work out.” akaashi said, craning his neck towards you to ask, “should i tell semi and suga about it?”

it’s not even a question for you to answer considering how obvious the answer was. of course, you had to tell them. they basically knew everything already, and if anything they’re the only ones who could make this plan actually work.

“i can also tell my team about it to help.” bokuto adds in, but you cut him a look, “only atsumu, sakusa, hinata, and tomas of course. i promise i’ll only tell them what they need to know. what do you think?”

“as long as satomi gets what she deserves.”

you hated the way your thoughts were an endless motion of suffering. it had been keeping you awake all night as you tossed and turned. you couldn’t rest now as if a giant cinder block of forbidden serendipities would clash-boom-bang back onto you as it was being held by a teetering string of floss. it was bound to snap at any second. you yearned for even just a few minutes of rest as maybe these suffocating feelings would disappear once you woke up in the early morning.

it was still dark out—three a.m... maybe, but all you knew was that it was late and your flurrying thoughts were giving you so much residual energy that you needed to extrude. it wasn’t a form of adrenaline or a sugar rush, no, it was something else. your body was well beyond fatigued, but rather your mind was running like a brain on drugs.

there were so many things rushing through your head that it morphed into a jungle of tangled vines of plenty. it was a storming blizzard that couldn’t be calmed down as you finally pushed yourself off your bed, forcing your sheets off of you and sitting on the side of the matress. guilt was eating you alive, gnawing at your hollow chest as your semblance withered while the minutes passed. you just wanted for everything to just stop. please just stop.

maybe this is why you never told any of them. the stress, the consequences— you knew damn well that shit would hit the fan if you did, and yet it’s inevitable. the truth would have come out sooner or later.

ugh, why are you like this? you thought to yourself, dragging your fingers through your hair as you sighed out.

the answers were obvious, but it was the tingling of your lips that sent waves of heat to your cheeks as you recalled the kiss... the kiss! holy shit, the kiss. it hit you then when it played back in your head from a few hours ago when bokuto dropped you off at your door. something melted in bokuto’s eyes the moment you looked back at him, heat emanating from every inch of his skin as you tracked the tension in his body. he leaned over with his face just a few centimeters shy from yours and you swore he could probably hear your heart punching against your ribcage. bokuto could feel the warmth of your breath fanning against his chin and for a moment the world and all the problems in it seemed to disappear for a brief moment. before you knew it he kissed you gently as if it was his last. it certainly would be for a while, anyway.

“dammit,” you cursed in a harsh whisper, leaning over to switch on your bedside lamp in a swift flick.

you slapped your cheeks to force the thought out of your head as you made your way to your desk. you turned your desk lamp on with it’s bright yellow hue flickering slightly over your messy work area. it was scattered with paperwork and miscellaneous notes that it was surely beyond your mood to even fix-up.

usually, you tend to be pretty clean and organized with your desk space, and yet with recent events, you’ve been letting the work pile up instead. you’ve always liked the saying, this is something future (y/n) can deal with, but for once you hated yourself for it. besides, look where it got you.

a sigh escaped your lips when you plopped yourself upon your chair. your delicate fingers traced along the edges of the neatly bonded sheets of love cemetery’s storyboard. you started it earlier today with the help of the rest of the ddd team after the director of the project gave you the freedom to do so as usually, he would be in charge of making the storyboard and such. despite being rather chaotic on a daily basis, you were glad to be surrounded by people who always put a smile on your face while still getting work done. those were the best types of people to work with—friends that cared about you.

you guys managed to get the first fifteen pages done and you needed twenty completed panels in less than twenty-four hours. you were used to this type of pressure, especially while you were working on your webtoon. you were surprised how many times you sprained your hand from constantly working that the aching pain between your joints and your wrists were second nature at this point. surely, you would have carpal tunnel by now if akaashi wasn’t there to always nag you to take breaks.

with a few wrist stretches and cracks of your knuckles, you flipped to the next scene—the day you and bokuto met. your heart tugged slightly as you envisioned the scene you drew in your webtoon, slowly converting it into a movie scene in your head.

oh, how things have changed.

your hand ached for mercy by the time seven a.m. struck. the sun had already peeked through the horizon, sending rays of sunlight through the blinds of your bedroom window as a greeting for the new morning. you had been sketching out the storyboard for five nonstop hours (give or take a few minutes in between trying not to let the different events in the story get to you).

you’ve always had a strange habit of ignoring the pain in your wrist, but now it was certainly unbearable. the lead pencil that was hot to the touch from the heat from your hand dropped onto your desk in a clatter. your eyes flicked down to your palm as you could feel the fatigue darkening your eyebags. your hands were practically alabaster from the constant pressure that it took a good moment for the circulation to run back into your hand.

you left your bedroom and made your way to your kitchenette. it was like your body was moving on its own, grabbing a mug, turning on your kettle, and tossing teaspoons of sugar in your cup for your morning tea as if you were on autopilot.

silence had surrounded you for far too long, you needed some form of sound to keep you sane from staying up all night and leaving you alone with your thoughts to just take over. sounds from the television hummed through the quaint air of your apartment in the lowest possible volume, just beneath the whistling of the tea kettle atop your stove.

you poured out the boiling hot water as your eyes followed the way the tea steeped through the liquid like a spreading storm.

the doorbell rang then, causing your head to swirl towards your door with slight confusion filling your expression. who would even come by so early in the morning?

the floorboards of your apartment creaked at your light steps as you trod towards the door, almost flinching at the cold surface of the handle as you unlocked it. you pulled the door open. there was that infamous morning chill in the autumn air that bit at your bare arms and legs. the heat from your apartment escaped at the motion as your breath hitched within your throat.

he looked out of breath and filled with fearful tension as his broad shoulders relaxed a bit at your sight. his usual soft brown locks that are always styled was tangled and woven into each other like a basket weave. hell, he looked as if he rushed immediately here the moment he woke up, all disheveled and almost desperate. poor guy didn’t even think to put on a coat before coming.

what the hell is he doing here?

“iwa—?” you attempted to say out loud in a harsh whisper that could barely leave your body in the first place. and yet, your voice disappeared into his chest as he pulls you into him, warmth engulfing you like burning ember.

you swallowed the lump forming in your throat as you froze. call it shock or just plain confusion but you couldn’t bring yourself to move your arms from the way iwaizumi’s embrace trapped them to your sides. just the plain sensation of the heat rising from his skin was enough to simmer down your awe as you finally managed to wrap your arms around him.

“i’m sorry,” he mutters into your shoulder.

you captured your bottom lip between your teeth. “i’m sorry too,” you say in the same matter, yet your voice almost sounded hoarse from the dryness in your throat. “i should’ve told you the truth.”

“and i shouldn’t have said those things that i said to you...”

a response would usually follow right after, but you couldn’t piece together the correct words and all of the nuanced phrases in your head to say into the air. your thoughts were too far cluttered and chaotic to even say anything more other than, “it’s okay.”

iwaizumi could only pull you in closer, hold you tighter, and leave his arms around you as if he feared that you would disappear out of his reach if he were to let go even in the slightest. he made the mistake of letting you go that one night many years ago and he has learned his lesson since them. he’s not going to take any more chances.

you two have been in each other’s arms for a while now, but you couldn’t find the strength in you to let go. you haven’t felt iwaizumi’s hugs in so long that perhaps you wanted to savor it a bit longer as well. like a little treat—a reward of a few minutes of peace after a thunderstorm of misunderstanding where all that’s left is the aroma of lingering petrichor of bittersweet nothings. you would like to call this a small victory, but something was off.

“iwa,” you say once you finally pulled yourself into your senses, “what’s wrong?”

“i did something bad, (y/n). i fucked up.”

you pull away from him slightly, just enough to be able to look at him in the eye but still be in the comfort of his arms. “what happened?”

“i was so fucking stupid, i shouldn’t have agreed to go with satomi.” oh, you thought as the words left his mouth. you pursed your lips together, forcing yourself to lock your gaze onto him as he spoke. “i ended up getting drunk and telling her everything that happened by accident.”

it’s okay, i already know. i already know, i already know. the words rang inside your head as you fought to say the words, but nothing was coming out. you did nothing wrong, it’s okay, it’s okay. there was so much hurt and betrayal lacing iwaizumi’s copper eyes that you feared anything you say (regardless if it was in his favor) would obliterate everything that just happened into dust. seriously, how bad would it sound telling a person that you were already aware of what they did? iwaizumi already had so many trust issues that you were treading on thin ice right now.

it really all came down to the question: do what’s right or do what’s easy?

right or easy, right or easy?

for years you have been choosing the easy route to undermine your problems. you always thought to yourself, if you had ignored the problem long enough, eventually it’ll all go away. it might have worked for the tiniest of things, but you should’ve known it would never work when you were fucking up other people’s lives from your own selfishness.

you didn’t want to be selfish anymore.

“we ended up sleeping together.”

you scrunched your brows in confusion, “what?”

did satomi lie then? did they actually sleep together?

“i-i don’t even remember how it all happened!” iwaizumi exclaimed in such urgency. he certainly didn’t want to make the gap between you two any bigger, “all i remember was that we kissed but before i knew it, i woke up to her in my bed but she was fully clothed.”

you sigh with a huff, trying to piece together the disarrayed parts together as you recalled bokuto’s words from last night, satomi doesn’t lie when it comes to sleeping around. the sentence wandering your thoughts as the boy before you continue to ramble. so maybe satomi didn’t lie after all, “listen, iwa—”

“you gotta believe me, (y/n), i didn’t mean to do it. when i said that i still love you the last time we texted i meant it—”

“haji, i said listen!” you huffed as you grabbed his arm. the sudden name change was enough to shut him up and possibly cause a surging red tint to his ears. you found it adorable, but you had to cut him some slack since you hadn’t called him that since high school. “last night i was with akaashi and bokuto.”

iwaizumi was already making a face before you could even start. “why were you with them?”

“just hear me out okay?” you pleaded.

he saw the aggression in your eyes and immediately shut up, nodding for you to continue.

“while i was with them, satomi texted us about everything that happened. she said that you guys only made out and didn’t do anything beyond that.” you explain, watching the slight relief softening his expression, “she ended up just sleeping over instead that’s why she was in your bed.”

you didn’t expect him to say anything when you finished your thought. it was a lot to sudden comprehend as you two just stood there waiting, swallowed up in your own thoughts.

“don’t blame yourself, okay?” you attempted to break the silence, “what satomi did was wrong.”

iwaizumi’s wandering gaze flickered back to you, fist curling up into a tight ball until his knuckles turned marble white. but as quickly as he felt the aching of his nail digging into his palm did he let go and let his shoulders drop. he sighs while he ran his hand through his tangled hair. he didn’t know what to say and the silence was punishing.

you parted your lips slightly as the words tickled your tongue. “this, um, might be too much to ask and you don’t have to say yes, but we need your help with something.”

“who’s we?”

“bokuto, akaashi, kaori, and the rest of my team.” you answer truthfully, “we’re trying to get satomi to face the consequences.”

iwaizumi nods, not hesitating for a second. “alright, i’ll do it.”

well that was easier than you thought.

you held back an amused laugh, hiding your smile behind your hand as you pull away from him. you made your way back to your kitchen as you had forgotten about your cup of tea from earlier.

“but...” iwaizumi trailed behind you as you sipped from your mug. “i was the one who made a move on her first.”

“oh,” you say. you definitely didn’t know about that small detail that sent ivy-like jealousy through your veins, “i mean... you were drunk so it makes sense.” you tried to justify without making your envy too obvious.

you turned away from him, fearing that he could see right through you.

“i kissed her thinking it was you,” he states.

your eyes widen then, slapping your cheeks that heated by the second. there was a grip around your swiftly beating heart, aching within your ribcage as you attempted to calm the roaring serendipities that threatened to bloom prematurely.

a composed sigh leaves you as you pull yourself together, turning back around to face iwaizumi with a meek smile. “cool,” you mused awkwardly as your brain search rapidly for a way to change the subject. iwaizumi moved closer to you, sending you into a mild panic, “have you had breakfast yet?” you asked out of the blue.

but before you could even fathom what he was doing, he cups your face between his hands and pulls you in.

your heart flutters and stops when iwaizumi pressed his lips against yours, soft and delicate as if you were the most fragile thing within his grasp. and you were. his touch against your jaw was light as it trailed down your neck. he could feel the raging ichor that soared through your veins like a wildfire while your hand that was splayed against his broad chest could feel the thumping of his heart against your own palm.

you pull away from him as he says, “no, i haven’t.” but it wasn’t to let him answer, rather, it was the thought that iwaizumi came second place again.

fun facts! —

yes. y/n did kiss both bokuto and iwaizumi within a span of a couple hours 💀 queen shit fr

after iwaizumi left, y/n immediately facetimed kaori and akaashi and told them what happened

it was definitely awkward between bokuto and iwaizumi when they saw each other, but it was harder to avoid satomi

(also by saying “iwaizumi came second place” means who was able to kiss y/n first not who won her feelings over)

taglist: (closed!)

@moonlightaangel @elianetsantana @k4tiepie @memorableminds @wheeshllumi @suhkusa @kitsunetea @airybby @noeminemi @truly-a-snitch @keichan @cosmicmermaid25 @bap-kingdom @saturnfarie @kwdflash @ennos-baby @dinablossom @chrisrue15 @seikamuzu @nestlevanilla @chasekudo @yammmers @pixcldust @iwaizluv @h0ngh0ngh0ng @emogril @tiredandkindaoverworked @tsumue @underratedmage @bokutosuwus @kellesvt @unstableye @oh-tapeworm @scrappyfka @alittlebitofrain @mxngy @tpwkatsumu @atsumuwoah @macchiatoast @dicerawr @kageyamasbabygorl @some-random-stranger-007 @vhskenma @wntrmn @little-plants @stargirlara @kissungjae @je11yfishwriter @sbaepsae @apollochjld

#haikyuu!!#haikyuu #haikyuu imagines #haikyuu scenarios #haikyuu x reader #haikyuu smau #bokuto koutarou #bokuto x reader #bokuto scenarios #bokuto imagines #bokuto smau #iwaizumi hajime #iwaizumi x reader #iwaizumi scenarios #iwaizumi imagines #iwaizumi smau

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winterhawk-olympic-bang · 4 years ago

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How To Edit Your Writing

Guest Poster: Chronicwhimsy

Here is our final Writer Workshop post, written by Chronicwhimsy. Have a read and then head over to the Discord Server where we have a channel for you to take part in a discussion based on the post, with chances to share your own ideas too.

Editing: a drive-by guide

Hi, my name is Claire, and I’m an editor.

(Hi Claire)

I’ve been asked to give a quick guide on tips for editing your stories, as I’ve been a beta/editor for various fanfic writers over the years. I’m a professional editor, working for a publishing house in the UK, and I offer independent freelance editing too, via my website. I’ll be on the Discord server answering questions this evening, but I’m also happy to chat to people either through my website or even if you wanted to drop me a line on tumblr.

The key thing to remember about editing is that the end goal is to make your story the best it can be, and make sure your initial idea comes across as clearly and purely as you first imagined it. It’s about ensuring that the lines of communication between you and your reader are 100% open.

To do that, you need to have finished your story, because you can’t fix something that doesn’t exist.

Then you edit.

What now?

So, you’ve finished your Winterhawk Olympic Bang Fic, and you’re wondering what to do next?

The very first, and most important thing you should do? Celebrate. I mean congratulate the hell out of yourself, pat yourself on the back, and have some cake. Finishing stories is hard. Getting through a first draft is one of the trickiest parts of writing, so you should be proud of yourself, and proud of your story.

Because in a short while, editing is going to make you hate both.

I mean that in the nicest possible way of course, but you absolutely are going to be thoroughly sick of this whole thing by the time you’re done, and you’re going to question everything you’ve ever written. You’re going to get a close-up view of all your narrative bad habits which will make you think you’ve never had any skill at all, and you’re going to re-read your work so many times that it’ll feel trite, old, uninspired. This is normal and it is your brain lying to you. If you remember nothing else, remember that!

“The writing itself is no big deal. The editing, and even more than that, the self-doubt, is excruciatingly impossible.” Jonathan Safran Foer

Don’t lose faith! Editors and editing exist for a reason, no first draft is perfect. You’ve done something amazing in finishing, and now you’re going to make it incredible.

Before You Start - Take a Break

You know the phrase “can’t see the wood for the trees”? It could just as easily be “can’t see the story for the words.” It’s never recommended to go straight into editing as soon as you finish writing, and part of the reason for that is because you’re too deep in the story to be able to assess it objectively, or to catch things that are missed out because you know they’re there, but the reader wouldn’t.

“Once it's done, put it away until you can read it with new eyes. When you're ready, pick it up and read it, as if you've never read it before.” Neil Gaiman

Most writers and editors advocate putting a story away for a month or so before returning to edit, so you’re looking at it with fresh eyes. Obviously, with a Big Bang (or other fic event) this sort of time is usually at a premium! Try and make as much space as you can while still leaving yourself time to edit.

If you really don’t have any time, one trick that can help is changing your location. If you write in your room, can you relocate to your kitchen? Or a café (if you can safely)? Could you print it out? (Printing Top Tip: if you do print it, try and do it double-spaced - this makes it easier on the eyes, and gives you room to make notes. Also, serif fonts can often be easier to read than sans serif fonts, as it gives stronger distinctions between different letters.)

The Filter System

I like to think of the editing process as a series of different filters which, when used one after the other, produce a finely-sieved finished product. Each filter stage has slightly smaller holes than the one before it, as you look increasingly closely at your work.

Filter 1: Structural editing

Does the story make sense? Is the pace okay? Do all the scenes work where they are, or would they be better elsewhere? Do some scenes need to be there at all? Is the characterisation consistent? Does anyone change names halfway through? Did you forget what time of year it was set halfway through?

Filter 2: Line editing

Is this phrase as tight as it could be? Have you repeated yourself anywhere? Does this sentence add anything or does it throw the pace off? Have you gone overboard with adjectives and similes? Have you been too sparse with them?

Filter 3: Copy editing

Is your style consistent? Did you start writing in present tense and switch to past tense? Could this scene transition be snappier? Are there any bits that you want to tidy up? Have you left any half-finished sentences because you got distracted before you could end it?

Filter 4: Proofreading

Is everything spelled correctly? Have you caught all the strange grammar mistakes?

Some of these things might be picked up by your beta reader if you have one. Different beta readers have different styles, and also they will work based on their relationship with you and what you prefer. Some may stick to proofreading and consistency-checking, others may be more confident to dive right in and look at structure, pacing and characterisation. Some may work through the process with you as you write, others may only look at the story when it’s complete so they can get a full overview. There is no right or wrong answer, and having a conversation with your beta about your respective styles at the start can help you work better together!

Filter 1 - Structural Editing

For this stage, you want to read your whole story through from start to finish, and resist the urge to tweak anything to begin with! You will want a way of making notes as you go through because as you do, you’ll make yourself a cheat-sheet to help you with your line edit. Things to keep track of:

Character name spellings

Character ages

Character relationships (drawing a relationship web can be very helpful to visualise this!)

The time span of the story - the date it starts, the date it ends.

As a subset of this, I find it can be very helpful to set up a spreadsheet with a timeline of what happens in the story, and who is involved. Doing this both chronologically for the characters and in order of how it happens in the story can help you keep track of what characters know when, and also when the readers find out certain information. You might have one of these from when you were planning your story (as detailed in Sara Holmes’ workshop). If you’ve kept it up to date with changes to the plot and structure as you’ve written, this will be super helpful.

At this stage, you’re looking to see if everything works as a consistent story. You want to check to see if it feels like it’s the right pace, or if there are bits where it drags or rushes through the action. Why is this? Are there scenes which aren’t adding anything to the progress? Could they just be referred to in passing, or removed entirely without impacting the story? Are there other scenes which need to be added to provide more detail and growth? Is there anything that you as a writer know that is essential to the story, but you forgot to actually put in the text?

“Crafty writers...don't allow Exposition to form Lumps. They break up the information, grind it fine, and make it into bricks to build the story with.” Ursula K. Le Guin

You’re also looking to see if the characters feel true to themselves all the way through. Do the relationships spark? Do they sound like themselves? Can you hear them in your head?

Some people recommend doing several structural edits, with a different focus each time. One pass to look at the pacing, one pass to look at the characters, one to look at the story arc. You’ll work out what floats your boat, but you will be re-reading this story a lot of times before you’re done editing - which is why it’s very important to write what you love and want to read! You’ll go through many stages of hating this story before you let it go, and that will be even harder if it wasn’t something you enjoyed in the first place.

Filter 2 - Line Editing

So you remember I told you to make all those notes during your structural edit? Here’s where you’re going to use them. Now’s the time to go through your story line by line and check that the details in your cheat sheet are correct all the way through the story. I’ve written a novel that I initially set in November, but by the time I finished it, I’d decided it was taking place in early May. I had to go back and fix all the dates and weather descriptions to make sure the action hadn’t actually been yeeted forward six months spontaneously in the middle of a conversation.

Arguably, the line edit will be the most painful part of editing. At this stage, you will be taking a fine-tooth comb to everything you have written, examining it to within an inch of its life, and casting judgement. You’re going to find every stylistic tic you have (for me, everyone is constantly quirking their eyebrows and smirking like they’ve got cramp in their facial muscles), and you’re going to get rid of them (a person only has so many eyebrows, and they can only quirk so far). Now is the time to kill your darlings - don’t hang on to anything unless you feel it’s really doing a job to further the story and the characters.

“Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler's heart, kill your darlings.” Stephen King

If you have ever worried about the unbearable sensation of being Known, the line edit is where you will experience that with every word, and you’ll be doing it to yourself. This is when the doubts will really start to creep in and you will maybe feel like everything you write is unoriginal, derivative trash and unfit for human eyes.

Here I’ll reiterate what I said above:

This is a normal feeling, everyone experiences it when editing. E V E R Y O N E.

It’s a lie. No-one else will ever read your story in this state, no-one else will ever read your story this closely. Of course it feels obvious and uninspired to you - you wrote it. It’s your idea, and you’ve read it several times, it holds no surprises for you. (I may be projecting my feelings from every time I’ve edited something here, but…)

You’ll also be catching any ELEPHANTS or whatever your mammal of choice for placeholder text is that you’ve stationed throughout the story as a flag for you to come back and add in a name, or a food, or a song title later. You know, the things you decided were a problem for Future!You. I have bad news, the future is now.

Top Tip: if you have changed someone’s name halfway through, DON’T for the love of Mike, just do a straight find and replace to correct it. Because that’s when you suddenly find out how many other words actually contain names (Mark became Bill? That’s great, until your characters are going to the superBillet to buy groceries). Some word processing programmes have a “whole word” option which is your friend, otherwise ensure to put spaces either side of the word when you search. If you don’t, you’ve just made another horrible job for yourself...

Filter 3 - Copy Editing

Once you’ve made it out the other side of the Line Edit (and given yourself a nice treat to congratulate yourself because that stage is HARD), we get onto copy editing. This is basically the set-dressing stage. You’ve built the house, you’ve decorated the room, and now you’re just making sure every bit of furniture is in the right place for optimal feng shui.

Here’s where you go through and go, do I really need a dash here, or could I just use a comma? Could I use fewer commas? Could I go in and move all of @kangofu_cb’s commas around because I’m the sort of person who will come into your house and change how you hang your toilet paper or where you keep your ketchup.

Now is the time to be as picky as possible, like you’re an interior designer for the most demanding client in the world and the ornament must be exactly equidistant from both ends of the mantlepiece and facing precisely south-west. Things that may have just survived your line edit will be measured again, and if they’re found wanting, then they get binned.

“Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very’; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.” Mark Twain

Another thing you might like to do here is check that all your features and things are correct. Did you make a wild claim about the lifecycle of salamanders, or the average price of corn and then never go back to verify this? Take a second to just do that now. It may be that you decide it’s not a problem (I received one copy edit note saying that an idiom used in a book wasn’t recorded until 200 years later, and I made the editorial decision that no-one would care), but for bigger things you may want to make sure you’re accurate.

If you google it (as I just did, to make sure I was definitely giving you the right information), copy editing is often conflated with line editing, and that’s because in reality a lot of the elements of copy editing actually wouldn’t usually be done by the author, and are probably irrelevant to fanfic. The copy editor is responsible for ensuring the book has a consistent grammatical style in line with the preferences of the publisher (em-dash or en-dash, curly quote marks or straight ones, how you deal with acronyms, what needs to be italicised, etc. etc.), which isn’t necessarily required for fanfic. In reality, for fanfic I’d use this stage as a second, lighter line-edit to see where things can be tightened up in phrasing, as well as perhaps a preliminary proofread where you start to mark up any spelling errors.

Filter 4 - Proofreading

By this stage, you’ll be exhausted, and sick to death of the blasted thing. But the end is in sight! Now you’re onto the proofread. This is another close read, where you go through and check for spelling errors, typos, missing full stops, strange formatting stuff (which probably will be less of an issue as AO3 basically makes everything uniform anyway).

Before you even start this, change your font.

We’ve all been there, thought we’d caught every spelling error, every weird typo, only to spot six immediately after posting. That’s because after a certain point our brain becomes used to the font we’ve written in, and will automatically correct things that aren’t right. AO3 has its own unique formatting - colour, spacing, font - and the minute your fic appears on there in this new format you brain wakes up and is like “oh shit, yeah, that’s not how it should be.”

By changing the font before you proofread, you preempt this step.

Another thing to remember: it’s unlikely you will ever catch every mistake. Published books regularly go out with a smattering of typographical errors throughout the text - how many first editions of books are valuable because of misspellings that slipped through the net? You’re only human.

“Connie's other job was proof-editing which she did very badly. Transferring the author's corrections to a clean sheet of proofs was something Connie was unable to do without missing an average of three corrections a page, or transcribing newly inserted material all wrong... she put angry authors' letters about the mutilation of their books under the cushion of her chair to deal with later.” Muriel Spark, A Far Cry from Kensington

Often, spelling errors and things you would look for in a proofread are things that a beta reader will pick up as they go, as they’re the easiest things to spot, but it’s also worth looking over yourself for anything your beta might have missed.

Whether you decide to follow any or all of these steps, always do the proofread last.There is no point carefully spellchecking a chapter you are then going to delete, or proofreading the whole thing, but adding loads of new paragraphs later that either don’t get looked at or mean you end up having to proofread twice. That’s the only hard and fast rule when it comes to editing, and it will save you a lot of unnecessary work!

FREEDOM

And then, finally, unbelievably - you’re done. Your literary child is ready to leave the nest. Resist the urge to keep re-reading and tweaking. Instead, click “publish” and give yourself a nice little treat. You’ve earned it.

Miscellany and Disclaimers

These editing stages are ones that would be applied to a published novel. An author would probably do this several times - once on their own to get it ready for submission, then perhaps again with their agent, but the really heavy work would be done with their editor. The structural edit would be done under the advice of an agent or editor where the author looks at their comments, rejigs things accordingly, and lather, rinse, repeat until everyone’s happy. The editor would undertake the line edit, and the author would decide what they wanted to keep or change. The copy edit and proofread would be done in-house or sent to freelancers, with queries and changes wafted past the author for clarification or approval.

Self-published authors will often hire freelancers to help at various stages to get feedback and advice.

Very rarely would an author go from draft to final published piece by doing all their editing alone. Because it’s hard fucking work, and because your brain will get exhausted.

In light of that, you need to remember:

You’ve written a fanfic

The editorial standards of fanfic are significantly less stringent than published books

Editing by yourself is really hard work that many people are often paid to do for published books

No-one is paying you for your fanfic

Fanfic is supposed to be fun

Some published authors will edit and rewrite and edit and rewrite again and again. At a panel I attended, Joanne Harris said that if she didn’t rewrite her work at least five times she was being too easy on herself, while Joe Hill said he usually aimed for three rewrites - Joe edited as he went along, going over the previous day’s pages before continuing, where Joanne completed her manuscripts before editing. Elizabeth May has talked about her stages of drafting, starting with her Trash Draft, then her Clean Draft, and then rewriting and editing after that.

These are people who are writing professionally, getting paid for their work, and so the time they put in has monetary results. If you want to write original fiction, their advice is extremely valuable.

For fanfiction, it’s a large time investment for something you’re doing as a hobby for free. If I’m strictly honest, I’m fairly lax with my fanfiction editing. I do structural discussions and tweaks with my beta reader as I write, and then a spell check. I’m also aware that my fanfics aren’t narratively complex, nor do they seem as polished, rich and deep as some of the other works out there. That’s fine by me. You simply need to find the level you’re happy at, where you can still feel proud of your work but you’re enjoying the experience.

In the end - it’s all for fun!

Resources:

Online

Curtis Brown Creative: An Editor’s Guide to Editing Your Novel

Joanne Harris: Ten Tweets About Editing

Joanne Harris: Writing Resources

NerdsLikeMe: Beta Reading vs Proofreading vs Editing

Books

Stephen King - On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

Ursula K. Le Guin - Steering the Craft: Exercises and Discussions on Story Writing for the Lone Navigator or the Mutinous Crew

#winterhawk #winterhawk olympic bang #whob #writer workshops #writer workshop: editing #guest post #chronicwhimsy

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chrisjake-cp · 4 years ago

Text

History 3 Trapped Filming Diary (full English translation) - Days 1-10

Just before you start reading, a little note of explanation: the author of this diary will frequently use the character’s name when they mean the actor. I have added the names of the actors between square brackets sometimes to avoid confusion. Also between square brackets you will find some words that are implied, so I added them in the translation to make the translation a bit smoother, but they aren’t included in the Chinese text.

The book’s author will also talk in the first person POV sometimes, refering to themselves as either “I”, “we” or “this little editor 小编”. So each time you see me write “I”, it is not my own opinion I’m inserting in the text, but the author/editor’s. If I have anything else to add or explain myself, I’ll add it in a note at the end of the text.

I’ll repeat: I don’t own the book so I can’t post my scans of the pictures that came with every day. So I posted some other pictures of the scenes that were being filmed with each day. These pics belong to LINE TV or Choco Media, or I’ve taken screenshots.

Day 1-10 under the cut.

Day 1

The first day of shooting happened to coincide with ‘Li Dong’⁕ but the temperatures of that day soared to 29 degrees. The crew was going sleeveless, but the actors were all wearing sweaters or dress shirts. Tang Yi, who had on the most, was wearing a turtleneck sweater and a suit jacket on top at one point, but he didn’t sweat very much.⁕ Meanwhile A De [Stanley], wearing a shirt and a suit jacket, was [clad] the ‘thinnest’ at the scene. When he got off work and took off his sweaty shirt, the wardrobe department exclaimed: “This shirt is so wet!”

Officer Meng’s scenes for that day consisted of eating from 10 am in the morning until 6pm in the evening. He basically ate from when he got to work until he got off work. All in all he had two large bags of rice and poured 4 liters of coca cola. Junhao [Jake] will start sweating profusely and start flushing when he eats spicy food, so as soon as the director yelled ‘cut’, the crew would immediately pass him a plastic bag so he could spit out the spicy Kung Pao Chicken he was eating.

⁕ Li Dong 立冬 literally means ‘establishing the winter’, so it is some kind of winter solstice in Asian culture. In the Gregorian calendar, it falls on 7 or 8 November. According to the IG stories of some of the cast of Trapped, it was indeed 7 November 2018 when shooting started.

⁕ Chris apparently doesn’t sweat much, no matter how hot he gets. He says as much in his vlog as well. I envy him, because I’d just be sweating buckets like Stanley.

Day 2

The first meeting between Tang Yi and Wenhao is also the second time that Chengyang [Chris] and teacher Jiakui [Chen Jiakui, the actor who plays Chen Wenhao] worked together. They cooperated for the first time on a movie. At that time teacher Jiakui served as the movie’s drama teacher. When Chris had gone through make-up in the early morning, he sat alone in a corner with the script. You could easily see that he was conflicted and upset. [For the other movie] teacher Jiakui was Chris’ mentor, but here Wenhao was the target of Tang Yi’s revenge.

In the process of their scenes where they faced each other, the director hoped that Tang Yi could hate Wenhao even more, but Tang Yi’s personality is subdued and calm. So how could he fly into a raging fit and still keep his calm? In a part that was not captured on camera, teacher Jiakui aggravated some lines to make Chris more infuriated. Afterwards teacher Jiakui also said that the role of Tang Yi is not easy to perform. [Tang Yi] is a young mob boss, The hate in his eyes must therefore also carry a bit of youthfullness, which is difficult to experience for normal people in the course of their lives.

Day 3

Today was the first time that Zhaozi arrived on set, and while he was bored waiting for his scenes, Zhaozi started to act as the shop’s clerk to sell suits. Apart from suits, bowties and regular ties, he even managed to sell shoehorns. By oneself, the words just kept on flying out of his mouth which left Shaofei beside him looking dumbfounded (if you want to see Shaofei’s dumbfounded meme-like look, you have to absolutely watch the behind-the-scenes on the DVDs)⁕. [Shaofei] continued to shout “If you buy a shoehorn you get Zhaozi for free with it, please someone take Zhaozi away, Unit 3 can’t stand it anymore.”

Boss Tang was tired, and took a nap in his own shop. ‘Just a little while will do. Shaofei and A De, you two be on the lookout for me, and if the director is coming, remember to wake me.’

⁕ Excellent advice. Please do watch the behind-the-scenes after finishing this book, because a lot of what is written here is visualized in the bts. The bts are arranged per episode though, and not per filming day, but it’s still amazing to be able to see what went on.

Day 4

The set for the offices of Investigation Unit 3 is actually the office of LINE TV’s Choco Media branch. The contemporary industrial style caused the atmosphere among Unit 3 to be even more lively.

For Unit 3’s first scene together, the director used a one-shot to have everyone appear on the scene, which meant that the first time all the actors were present, they had to have a ‘chemistry’ test. But apart from the actors, chemistry also had to be there for the whole staff, as the directing crew, the camera crew and the sound crew, really everyone, also had to follow [the actors] along⁕. I still remember that by the 20th take, everyone’s lines ran very smoothly, the shot was satisfactory and everyone was where they were supposed to be. The director and the crew were holding their breath in concentration, and just when they thought they’d succeed, A Zhi [character Zhou Guanzhi, played by Kass Tsai] forgot a line in the very last sentence hahahaha. In the end, this round took 27 takes.

⁕ The author uses a metaphor/reference here. They write 乾坤大挪移 which means something like ‘The Great Shift of the Cosmos’ and is apparently a kind of martial art from a martial arts novel. It consists of 7 increasingly difficult skill levels, whereby the 7th level is almost unattainable. In other words, shooting this one-shot scene required the whole cast and crew pulling off this great cosmos shift, and thus was a big, big challenge.

Day 5

After we shot the scene where the two idiots from Unit 3 [Shaofei and Zhaozi] got into trouble and received an explosive scolding by Dapao [Shi Dapao, the name of Unit 3’s Captain]⁕, the director told Shaofei that she wanted to add a scene where he sat next to the window thinking about Sister Lizhen, continuing in the same mood [as the previous scene]...Everyone in Unit 3 felt that Shaofei was continuing to set his teeth into a meaningless old case. If there had only been some progress in the investigation...but [Shaofei] not only didn’t find any new leads, but he also got into trouble everywhere. If Sister Lizhen would still be alive, he wouldn’t be like this now...Shaofei really, really missed sister Lizhen. Rather than say that the director added this scene at the last moment, it’s more like she deliberately didn’t tell Junhao [Jake] that she would add this part.

When they were shooting, the director played the music from the music box through the megaphone and from time to time talked as well, to provoke moody feelings in Jake. In the end Jake grabbed his phone and scrolled through his mother’s Facebook, and to all our surprise Jake started bawling, so much so that even after the ‘cut’ he couldn’t stop, until the director walked over and lightly patted him on the back. To be able to cry like that in a short amount of time, even he himself hadn’t expected that.

⁕ How much fun is it that the name of the Captain of Unit 3 literally means big cannon, when he explodes in anger all the damn time? 😂 I am quite convinced that in the hospital scene where Shaofei tells Tang Yi of his fortune-telling and that only a cannon can strike him down - he uses the exact same wording ‘dapao’ - it’s actually an inside joke and he may not have meant ‘cannon’ literally.

Day 6

Today’s weather couldn’t be called very fine, and when we were shooting until 3 or 4 P.M., the daylight was almost gone, just when the filming location had large windows in every corner that reached the ground. Our funny director said “Why did the production team run out of light after 3 P.M.? Did they forget to send notice⁕ to the sun?” This caused the crew that was present to not know whether to laugh or cry. But in the end, before the sun got off work, everyone else smoothly finished their job as well.

⁕ the term “to send notice” is quite literal, but the word is indeed an entertainment industry term as well, that means to hire someone for a short amount of time or for a specific show, without there having to be a longer-term contractual agreement. So it could also be translated as “did they forget to hire the sun [to star in today’s scenes]?”

Day 7

It was a day with complicated feelings for Shaofei and little Tang Yi, as Shaofei discovered Tang Yi’s past history.

Before going to meet the adoptive father of his lover, of course Shaofei had to straighten himself out first and shave his beard to leave a good impression. In the evening, today’s final scene was shot. Before starting filming, the director hoped that [Tang Yi’s] adoptive father could guide little Tang Yi’s mood, because the intensity of this scene needed to bring out the reason why Tang Yi’s feelings for Tang Guodong ran so deep and make everyone feel the warmth that Tang Guodong brought to Tang Yi even more.

Under the constant conflict of raising [little Tang Yi] through much difficulties, a loud and clear slap came down heavily on little Tang Yi’s face. The silence at the [shooting] site caused the loud sound to be infinitely amplified, and the director and the crew were all shocked. When the ‘cut’ sounded, little Tang Yi instantly started crying, and the director rushed to the room immediately. On every crew member’s face was reluctance and shock. Meanwhile the adoptive father sat with his head down on the sofa, full of remorse.

An extra tidbit from the same scene: the crew’s love for little gadgets

There are always a few conspicuous toys in front of the director’s monitor. She explained that these were toys that members of the crew who are close to her gave her to alleviate stress. I don’t know which toy is the director’s favourite?

Day 8

For the setting of the toilets of Unit 3 we actually used the toilets in a department store. Zhaozi, who arrived at the store very early in the morning, was hit on by an older lady who was just coming into work. The lady said: “Aren’t you Zhao Youting [Mark Chao]? You definitely are Zhao Youting!!” Even though Zhaozi went on to deny it, the lady didn’t listen and believed that this handsome guy in front of her was Zhao Youting himself.

Actually, Zhaozi passed on the above story [to us], and no one actually saw this older lady. Zhaozi often tells bluff stories with a straight face, but I [this little editor] have my reservations about its credibility. But be as it may, after he was told that he looked like Zhao Youting, Zhaozi’s acting skills immediately leveled up. So okay, whether or not the story was real, we thank this lady ‘from the legends’.

Day 9

Can I call you dad after this hug?

I still remember the story of a friend coming out to his mother. He said to his mom: “I’m sorry if this thing disappoints you. I don’t dare to ask for your blessing. I just hope that you can show some understanding.” Through a chat message, his mother could only briefly reply: “If your other half is a good kid, I will give you my blessing.”

Many people in a same-sex relationship don’t dare to confess to the older generation and they don’t dare to ask for their blessings. Their only hope is not to be hated. It’s like that facing this society, and it’s the case when facing your beloved family. When Wenhao and Shaofei met each other, Wenhao gave Shaofei a hug. This hug must have carried [Wenhao’s] unspoken blessing.

No worries, dear father-in-law. I, Officer Meng, will take care of everything (pats on the back).

Wenhao and Guodong together brings its own hint of romance.⁕ The fighting was very intense that day, so much so that the police dispatched a Quick Fight Force team in concern [for the situation].

⁕ The term that the author uses is 腐味 (fuwei, the taste of fu). The first character, ‘fu’ is the same ‘fu’ that is used in terms like fujoshi 腐女子 and fudanshi 腐男子 (which are Japanese) but it’s the same pronunciation for that first character. So the author implies that there might have been something more than friendship going on between Chen Wenhao and Tang Guodong. They imply the same thing later in the book as well (day 60, where the two are called a CP).

Day 10

A Mei [Stanley] who portrays A De, said that he was the expert in getting beaten [in this drama]. I say that Stanley definitely dedicated himself to taking on that role. Many times his head bumped into the wall and the crew told him to take a break, but Stanley couldn’t stop yelling “no no, hurry up, I’m familiar with it now!”

All the way through the end Officer Meng and Vixen⁕ no.1, A De, cheered each other on before ‘Action!’ [was called].

⁕ The word for vixen is ‘fox spirit’ 狐狸精 in Chinese. I love that and I could probably write essays on this subject. In classical Chinese literature, foxes were most of the time portrayed as (mainly female) temptresses who seduced males for sex and then didn’t shy away from sucking the soul out of them, kind of like a succubus. If anyone is ever in the mood for some academic literature about foxes in late imperial China, I've got you covered https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3237790-alien-kind

So A De and Andy are constantly referred to as these foxes who want to seduce Tang Yi and snatch him away in front of Shaofei’s eyes.

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7wanderingpaws · 4 years ago

Text

He Loves Love (3/3)

Pairing: Baekhyun x reader

Genre: solo singer! AU

Word count: 4K+

Warnings: none! just a playful Baek!

--- Please make sure to read the the notes at the end! ---

Masterlist

tags: @iloveagain @buttercupbbh @wooya1224 @baekberrie (sorry if I left out someone? its been ages since i updated and I didnt know if its okay to tag those who commented on chap. 2 :( didnt want to be rude ><)

1 <<< 2 <<< 3

It was the day of the release. The release of his magazine cover.

The PR went… mad.

“Listen, sweetie, editor, I don't think we will have enough pieces. The damn thing is literally going to be sold out in a matter of hours.”

You received this call before lunch time. Lunch time was very early on in the day. So why was Baekhyun's magazine cover about to be sold out in the entirety of Korea on the same day of the release date?

“Erm, yeah about that. I am an editor, just like you said. You need to call the-”

“I know, I know,” she interrupted but there wasn't an inch of impatience in her voice. “What I am trying to say is - congratulations! You did a great job!”

It took you a moment to realize what she was saying, because she was right. Your participation in this issue was big; after all you took care of the props and settings and you were looking over his pictures during the photoshoot. Out of nowhere, your heartbeat sped up. “Oh, thank you! That's very kind of you, but I still need to improve a lot-”

In that moment, the happy ding! that never failed to make you all trembly and nervous, sounded on your desk.

Waiter: miss editor am I seeing correctly????? wowow ihavenowords

Waiter: did you just make me sell out your magazine?????? ihavenowords

Waiter: did you save yourself at least one piece??? huhuuhuhuuu ihavenowords ><

Waiter: i think someone just made themselves a good name in the mag industry ^^ congratulations!!!

Waiter: does that mean i will get to see you? hmmm maybe to give a congratulatory bouquet of flowers???? 🤭🤭🤭 🌹💐🌺

Biting your lip quickly to suppress the happy grin, you quickly attended to the phone call, chatting a bit more with the PR lady. Honestly, you didn't like to talk to them much as they were all over the place, too demanding and didn’t have a great understanding of a creative mind. Thankfully, you didn't have to deal with them too often.

It hadn't been that long since your last meeting with Baekhyun. His kisses on your cheek and one kiss on your forehead seemed to be still burning on your skin, sometimes making you drag the pad of your index finger over the mentioned places, needing some sort of closure from him that you had yet to receive.

Texting now was a full on habit between you, causing you to become sad, disappointed and even anxious if he wouldn’t reply that soon, worried he changed his mind about you, and his feelings towards you. Because even though you admitted to him that you liked him, he was being still very cautious, still very polite with you, as if there was some sort of invisible line between you two that he was scared to cross, for some reason.

Trying to look at it from his point of view, there were many risks of him wanting a relationship with you, and you couldn't not agree. If anything, you were being thankful for his thoughtfulness and carefulness, for if he messed up even the tiniest bit around you and your secret meetings of a blooming start of a relationship, he would not see the end of the hate, and neither would you. Heck, his career was on the line.

You managed to reply to his playful messages that went on and on, before you would have to dive into another cover magazine plan that you had to start thinking through.

Me: I think I should congratulate YOU! the most wanted man in Korea it seems ;)

Me: these days i have some important meetings… an upcoming cover… im definitely doing overtime today :( when is it good for you? I will try to arrange my schedule with yours

Waiter: ohoh the most wanted man you say? i wonder if the one i want wants me just as much…….???

Waiter: i would like to see you more often before my album drops, you know i will get quite busy and not seeing you for too long doesnt seem to work well with me anymore ><

Waiter: sooo… i will come pick you up from work tonight just shoot me a msg *^

Just as his messages could make your heartbeat go into a crazy overdrive, it seemed he could also make it completely stop. Or so you thought. His flirting and now his proposal to pick you up gave you a huge shock. That would be a first for sure.

Me: sure! have your phone with you Mr Korea

Me: I wonder too if that person wants you as much ;)

You decided not to pay him any more attention after that as much as you were tempted. Your belly was levitating along with your body, feeling high on vitamin Baekhyun. Pressing down the urge to tease him, you put your phone away, your hands slightly trembly from the attention you kept receiving from someone like him.

If your predictions were even close to correct, you wanted to tell him: yes, the one that he wanted, wanted him just as much.

…

You were fast to leave your work that day. Excited butterflies were eating your insides away, and the only way to make them calm down was to finally meet the person who always made their wings flutter.

Baekhyun was already parked in the underground parking lot, his car the only one with the motor on - and the only car of his class. You spotted him sitting in his car in his white jersey shirt, his left elbow propped on the windowsill as his index finger was stuck between his teeth, gnawing at it. When he saw you, he took a double-take and quickly changed his posture which made you giggle.

Baekhyun was following you with his eyes, going even to the length of leaning in over the passenger seat so as not to lose sight of you until he reached over and opened the passenger door for you so you could slide in.

“Why, thank you,” you smiled cheerfully as you sat down. You closed the door and put your bag down in between your legs.

“My pleasure,” he said back with a pleasant smile. “Hand me the bag, I'll put it in the backseat.”

You quickly did as he asked and then reached for your seatbelt.

“How was work today? We should celebrate!” he exclaimed as he put the car into drive and made his way out of the parking lot.

You hummed, gnawing on your lip. “That would be wonderful,” you said but hesitated about offering anything further. It was difficult to read the situation; you wouldn't know what you could afford to do with him and what not; what would be stepping over the line and what wouldn't. But Baekhyun said he liked you. In fact, he even told you to look at him like at any other man. That meant you shouldn't doubt all the possible hang-out ideas you had, right?

“I think it is you who deserves a gift,” you murmured and stole a look at his concentrated face. You reached the outside now, the dark evening slowly changing into night, the light of passing cars illuminating your faces.

“Hmm, I think so, too. Something in lines of - I can pick whatever I want, huh?”

Hiding your smile behind your hand, you nodded. “Yes, I can grant something. But don't make it expensive. Even though you sold out our magazine, it doesn't mean I will get a pay rise right away.”

“Oh, it won't include any monetary value,” he promised and turned to look at you when he stopped at the red light, the line in front of you seemingly going on for at least a mile. “It would be something you can and should be able to do freely.”

Despite the darkness of the car, Baekhyun could still spot that gorgeous, astounding blush colouring your cheeks. He really grew to love it; to make you so flustered you couldn't help but grow all red, just for him. “What do you think?” he asked quietly, still observing you with a small lopsided smile.

First you looked at your connected hands in your lap and then looked up at him through your lashes. “Depends what it is, but I owe you, so…” you trailed off.

He chuckled quietly, causing your heart to skip a beat before he started driving again, the line in front slowly moving. “Wonderful.”

Within forty-five minutes, you found yourself seated in a Korean restaurant, both yours and Baekhyun's shoes left at the entrance. Baekhyun, knowing the owner, asked for a separate room where people usually held business dinners, to ensure you would have full privacy and could enjoy each other.

It was a bit mind-blowing how much he could just do. His authority was admirable but at the same time it reminded you how you could hardly compare. If you would have asked the owner to give you a separate room, you might have had to fight for it or give him some money. Baekhyun seemed to walk in like a prince, confidently talking to people as if it was so natural.

“Can you give me a moment?” he asked suddenly, already standing up. “I forgot something in the car. Choose a meal until then.”

You nodded and saw him shuffling towards the door. Quickly going through the menu, you were thankful it was just an ordinary Korean restaurant that specializes in noodle soups and wasn't pricey. Picking the one that seemed the most special, you put the menu away just in time for Baekhyun to return back. His right hand was behind his back, obviously hiding something.

He had a sheepish smile on his face as he stepped towards you and handed you a beautiful bouquet of colourful flowers, the smell of which instantly hit your nose. You felt your mouth stretch into a wide smile as you stood up to your feet.

“Oh my god, what is this for, Baekhyun?” you asked, looking up into his eyes just to find them sparkling with anticipation.

“I know I never asked you out on an official date, so I might not be dressed up to my best potential, but I really wanted to give you something and today, as I said, I wanted to give you a bouquet. Please, accept it,” he added breathily, watching you with bated breath, nudging the flowers out to you.

You giggled and he smiled right away as you took the bouquet in your hand, careful as to not hold his fingers that were still curled around the stems. “Thank you.”

As you wanted to pull back, he leaned in, grabbing your wrist gently that was holding the flowers, bringing you closer. His lips hovered over your cheek and he eventually pressed them there. “Good job on your first cover,” he murmured and leaned away the slightest to watch your surprised reaction. Your eyes were watching his mouth and he had to restrain himself from going any further. He didn't want to cross the line. Not yet.

Unfortunately, you had to separate when the doors opened and the waiter came in. She was taken aback for the slightest of moments when she noticed you and Baekhyun backing away from each other but both of you recovered quickly and sat down, ready to order.

“This Vietnamese noodle soup is my favourite,” mentioned Baekhyun, looking at you. “So that is your gift to me - eating my favorite food with me.”

…

It was late June, the beginning of the most humid weeks of the year with the monsoon season around the corner.

Baekhyun became so busy with the release of his album back in May, that you rarely got to see him afterwards, although he made sure to see you a couple of times per week even if he was on the verge of falling asleep. Besides meeting, you were always chatting on the phone, him updating you about his daily schedules while you would mostly talk and send pictures about the same old stuff - your office, your computer screen or your late lunch. Or a selfie. You were on that basis now, despite a first kiss never happening.

It made you think sometimes if you were the one who was supposed to make the first move. If you grew eager to finally feel him in that way, then he must have also had some similar feelings, right? You had been dying to kiss him since the first time he said he liked you. And it was late June now.

Late June meant that the music awards show was happening just this particular night. Baekhyun had been texting you eager messages to double-check that you would really be attending like you told him you would.

While you quickly looked yourself over in the mirror in your office - you worked even today, a Saturday - you checked your phone's screen, seeing the previews of his messages.

Waiter: finally our schedules overlap ❤️ Waiter: i cant actually believe it Waiter: huhuhuhu missy are you done with preparing? im curious to see.... Waiter: its just that it would be difficult to do so without it…

Hastily checking your earrings, you read the previews with a large smile. It would be an exciting night.

When you arrived at the event along with your colleagues, you couldn't help feeling clammy from the excitement. The possibility of spotting Baekhyun was making you sick with anticipation. It wasn't even the amount of people attending the event, it was just him; just the idea that he was somewhere there and hopefully he was looking for you just like you were looking for him.

Your colleagues hurried to sit down as the ceremony was about to start. Since you were busy in the office, you ended up leaving the headquarters much later than planned, but there was nothing you could do about it anymore.

The lights dimmed just when you made yourself comfortable, making it too difficult to look around and recognize faces. Deciding to quickly check the messages you didn't have time to look at before, you finally saw what Baekhyun was bombarding you so much about.

Waiter: finally our schedules overlap Waiter: i cant actually believe it Waiter: huhuhuhu missy are you done with preparing? im curious to see how you look so you could send me a selfie and so then i can recognize you at the event hm? without having to stare everywhere and become suspicious Waiter: its just that it would be difficult to do so without it sooooo ????? Waiter: yah!! where did you go?? Waiter: ex...excuse me? ehm ehm!!! Waiter: wow okay… Waiter: Y/N … disappeared... Waiter: i guess you are busy >< im arriving at the venue soon update me so i know where you attttttt okiiii??? ㅎㅅㅎ

You hid your smile behind your hand and quickly typed him a message to update him like he demanded. You couldn't send a selfie anymore because of the silly lights and your superiors being at the same table, you couldn't afford to be on your phone all the time. Hyeri, as much as she was kind, didn't like it when the job was not done properly, so you made sure to pay attention to the performances while you felt your phone vibrate with messages most probably from Baekhyun.

You bit your lip to keep in the smile, your heart fluttering. How was he able to be this… gorgeous even through messages? How was he able to make your heart beat frantically even when he was not around you? Unknowingly, your desire for him grew by tenfold, the sudden urge to meet him almost overtaking your actions, but one strict stare from Hyeri and you stopped squirming in your chair as you realized you did with a horrified look. Wow. You had to do something about this, and it had to be very soon.

To your big misfortune, you never spotted Baekhyun until it was his turn to overtake the stage. As much as you expected something huge, it was anything but that. No props, just a simple mic stand and then, a Baekhyun in a ready-to-go-for-a-date look, plus four dancers and he was able to fill the huge stage to the brim with his presence. That was it. Simple as that.

You inhaled his entire performance, the loud screamings of crazy fans not enough to pull you out of your reverie that consisted of Byun Baekhyun and Byun Baekhyun only. His movements, so sharp yet so smooth, his flirting with the camera, his lip bites, and that crazy happy smile; all of it. He was changing images from lethal sexy, through lazily suggestive, then sweetly gorgeous until becoming cute and ready to pet on the head. Without anything more to add, he had each flavor of a candy to offer and you had never been this addicted to candies in your life.

...

You met him accidentally when you were leaving the toilets that were meant for the VIPs. Closing the door behind you, you felt its cold surface press to your bare back when Baekyun appeared in front of you, freezing momentarily when he recognized you.

He smiled instantly, happy to finally see you, before he let his eyes wander. Finally, he let you know that he was looking. Oh he was. Your dress was revealing on the back, which he had yet to witness, but the front was completely covered, hugging your chest and waist, telling Baekhyun that there was something to look at for sure. The long, wavy skirt that stopped just above the floor was bunched up in your hand, showing sparkly high-heeled shoes that were the cause of the pain in your ankles.

None of you said a word as you took a note of his fancy suit, the simple stage outfit now gone. It was fully black, but once again you couldn't comprehend how broad his shoulders and chest were despite his shirt that was tucked into his pants being black, too.

“Good performance,” you broke the silence finally, meeting his somewhat eager gaze. “I have to admit, I was swooning with the other girls, too.”

That got Baekhyun's attention. His eyebrow rose in question and he stepped closer but not before making sure there were no prying eyes in the small corridor. His body covered yours from anyone, were you to be disturbed. “Oh, were you, really?”

You nodded, your smile teasing. “Yeah.”

He smiled gently, his gaze running over your features that were touched up with make-up. “I'm glad. If I wanted to impress someone, it was you.”

“You did that a long time ago,” you admitted shyly, averting your eyes so he wouldn't catch you shyness.

You heard him letting out a laugh through his nose. “So cute,” he muttered, stepping even closer. “I have to run back but let me drive you home tonight.”

His words made your head snap up though you weren't that much smaller from him anymore thanks to the heels. His words ignited something inside of you. “You came with your car?”

“I asked my friend to bring it over to the venue,” he said. “I am not going back to my company after this. I finally found you here and-” he sighed softly, shaking his head as he looked at you, “I want to spend some time with you. Alone.”

Your breath hitched in your throat, his look making you all itchy and needy. Without much thinking, you found yourself nodding a tad too eagerly which made Baekhyun smile. “Alright,” you whispered, “text me. But I can't leave before my superiors do.”

“Can I just steal you?”

Giggling, you shook your head and suppressed the need to hold his hand. “I'm afraid no. But I will try my best to get out of it quickly.”

His smile was so gentle as he nodded slowly, closing his eyes for a second before stepping even closer, his fingertips running over your clothed forearm in the most feather-like way. “Okay. I'll be waiting for you,” sweetheart.

…

The car came to a complete stop in front of your small apartment building. Audi had quite the silent engine anyway, but now with it being turned off, you felt like silence had a physical form and was growing in on you, making the tension between you and Baekhyun the more difficult to withstand.

Given his silence, you knew that you should say something, and you also knew what you were supposed to do. It was now or never. “Would you maybe… like to come in?”

He glanced over, checking your expression to see if you were serious. He parted his lips but hesitation stole the words away from him. You chuckled when he opened his mouth again and smiled abashedly. “'I’d love to.”

Oh my god, you thought as the both of you made your way towards your apartment. In panic, you tried to quickly think over what state you left your flat in exactly, but it seemed that your mind was clogged up, unable to come up with anything that could possibly explain what was happening in that very moment. Byun Baekhyun, the superstar, was coming inside your apartment. And he seemed to be rather quiet.

Was he overthinking this? Maybe he would realise this was all a mistake and that you weren't good enough for him. Maybe you did something off-putting today?

As you were typing in the code to your house, you felt his strong presence behind you, his gaze on your naked back, and you swore the tension just grew even more when you let him enter your little safety den first. Surely, it was no luxury like he must have been used to by then, given the many years of singing career, but you could only hope it would be enough.

You had been far too gone for him. If he were to dump you, you might end up hurt and heartbroken.

Letting the door close behind you, you wanted to follow him only to see him standing just a couple of steps ahead of you, looking into the apartment but not moving further inside. “You can enter, Baekyhun.”

“You look so beautiful tonight,” he said softly out of nowhere, catching you off guard with his honest words. Letting them sink in, you bit your lip, feeling your heartbeat accelerate again. It wasn't possible to get a heart attack, right?

He was standing in front of you while your back was pressed to the front door you just closed behind you. “Thank you,” you whispered, matching his intimate tone and feeling like you were about to combust. “You look really handsome tonight.” And everyday.

He smiled, which you couldn't see as he still had his back on you. Just then, he turned and with that pleasant expression on his face made those separating two steps towards you until he stood right in front of you, causing you to look up. “Thank you.”

You nodded, feeling the terrible blush creeping up into your cheeks. Actually your entire body was suddenly on a heat wave, feeling the prickles of sweat to form under your dress as he stared at you affectionately. God, you wanted him so much it was really becoming unbearable.

“Can I ask you a question?”

“You just asked one,” you replied mischievously, grinning, just to be rewarded with a wide smile from him as he stepped even closer, your heart clenching painfully. Was it the chemistry that was so painful?

“Cheeky,” he whispered, his breath almost hitting your cheek. You kept his eye contact before you nudged him with a go on.

What, do you want to kiss me on the cheek again? you desperately wanted to ask, to tease him. Or would this finally be it? Would he finally just... kiss you?

“May I kiss you, sweetheart. On the lips.” His intonation was far from that of a question. He was so hot, goodness. And your knees were suddenly jelly-like as you couldn’t stop staring into his eyes when you nodded.

He let out a breathy laugh when he almost pressed his body into yours. Almost. “You don’t like to confirm things out loud with me, do you, beauty?”

“Yes, you may kiss me, Baekhyun. Please, just finally kiss me.”

It was almost as if he wouldn't wait for your approval anyway, as he was leaning in before your words even left your mouth, his hands coming to gently rest against the door; caging you in, yet making you feel even more safe. He was carefully watching your features as he pressed his lips to yours, one hand coming to cradle your face gently before he finally captured your upper lip and you melted.

Closing your eyes, you sighed as you let your hands slide up his toned chest and around his neck when he pressed himself into you just a little bit closer, a very much satisfied hum coming out of his throat that sent shock waves down your body. That deadly hum. It could really do anything to you, it was that attractive to you.

You dared to run your fingers through his hair that had gel in it, but still felt so cutely soft under your touch. You played with his pillows, prolonging the gentle sucking as you dragged his lower lip towards you, feeling the wetness of his mouth. He leaned in as you separated for the slightest of moments, tilting his head to the other side, unconsciously making one step closer so you felt him on your chest and the surface of the door on your back.

Smooch after smooch, you soon realized he was a loud kisser that liked the licking sounds and the responses from you as you breathed out softly while his thumb caressed your blushed cheek.

Another loud smooch, and this time he was the one who dragged your lower lip towards him with his teeth, as he bumped his nose with yours, tilting his head to the opposite side again while both of his hands cradled your face with utmost care.

Eventually, he kissed you one last time, ending it with him pressing his forehead to yours, not opening his eyes just yet. You didn’t either, relishing in the lingering feeling of him around your mouth as his warm pants pushed in through your parted lips. Slowly, he nuzzled your nose and you giggled softly which prompted him to open his eyes to meet yours already on him.

“That was better than I could ever imagine,” he whispered and smiled handsomely.

You blushed even more, if that was possible. “Ditto.”

His eyes widened and he leaned away a bit. “Don’t tell me you fantasized about kissing me?”

You shrugged but didn’t meet his eye. “How could I not? I’m a human, aren’t I? And you know I like to be straightforward.”

He smirked, knowingly nodding to himself. “Oh yeah, right. The straightforward business.”

You chuckled. “You’re too good of a kisser.”

“Only the best for you,” he winked and those words made you feel things. Before you could reply, he blurted: “Can I be your boyfriend?”

Smiling widely, you nodded, feeling absolutely elated. This was really happening. “Yes, you can be my boyfriend, Baekhyun.”

He sweeped you in his arms, bringing you in for another kiss. “That means,” he murmured between the kisses, “that I can kiss you just like that. And I can finally call you sweetheart,” he breathed the nickname before opening his mouth and devouring you, showing how passionate of a kisser he could be.

You never doubted him, of course, but in situations like these, reality was always better than your poor imagination, for your brain could never produce the exceptional feeling of having Byun Baekhyun’s lips on yours, feeling the moisture and his playful tongue, his creativity of teasing you with it astonishing. No. Nothing could ever compare.

There was only one Byun Baekhyun and he was a superstar. Off-limits to almost everyone. But not to you. Not anymore.

--- --- --- --- ---

A/N: And that is the end! This is the final part, so with this, I am also saying goodbye to this story that made my heart flutter a wee bit... ^^ Thank you to whomever sent me support via comments/reblogs, dms, I was glad this story could bring something enjoyable to the table! ❤

--- As you know, these 3 chapters were supposed to be about how our characters met and became a couple. So I hope I delivered well! I know I put the M sign in the beginning way back in May, but while plotting, I realized it wasnt suitable for these 3 parts. It would take me more chapters to write to bring it to that point (hint: if you request it as a standalone oneshot later, I am willing to write it but otherwise it would need more relationship building).

I hope this explains it!

Thank you again!

Please let me know what you thought, it would mean a lot and its free!

CuriousCat Ask box is also open! Or comments!💕

#exowritersnet #baekhyun fanfiction #baekhyun fluff #baekhyun canon #baekhyun scenario #baekhyun fic #baekhyun drabble #baekhyun au #baekhyun #byun baekhyun #exo fanfiction #exo au #exo canon #exo imagine #exo fluff #mywritings

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mylivejournalsucks · 3 years ago

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Didion.

Eve and Joan in one week. Wow. No wonder Los Angeles is raining.

Joan Didion is a drug everyone must try once. Some people get hooked. I was fortunate to be one of those people.

I discovered her writing in a class taught by Mark Greif. I forgot what the class was or what we’re studying. I just remember reading a lot of texts by boring old straight white intellectuals and feeling like the biggest bimbo on planet Earth. At 21 and 22, I still believed there was a certain way to be A Writer and Think About Things. Everything I was introduced to in college made me feel out-of-step, like I didn’t get it and never would. Then Slouching Towards Bethlehem entered the chat. The assignment was to read the essay and discuss how Didion felt about her subjects. Did she like them? Did she care about them? How did her writing style inform her feelings?

I read the essay at the Starbucks on Astor Place (lmao) and was immediately like, “Who is this moody rich bitch who hates everyone and everything?” Her prose was electric. It felt like a song I was finally able to hear. I went to class the next day ready to discuss. It was clear Didion did not think much of these hippies who were frying their brains like eggs on the side of a highway on a 110 degree day. Reading Didion, it felt like she had contempt for most people and most things, besides Los Angeles, New York, and Sacramento.

I immediately devoured everything she wrote. Like any young person with feelings in New York, I read “Goodbye To All That” in my studio apartment in the East Village and thought “OMG...it me.”

After Slouching, I flew to LA for Christmas break and read The White Album, Play It As It Lays, and Year of Magical Thinking back-to-back in an underwhelming coffee shop on Beverly called Buzz that has now been replaced with another underwhelming coffee shop called Andante. (See how I’m listing names and locations? It’s impossible to discuss Joan without falling prey to her tics and quickly realizing A.) that’s not your voice and B.) thank God because no one can measure up to Joan.)

Beyond Play It As It Lays, I didn’t dabble in her fiction because, uh, it’s not as good. In fact, I reread Play It As It Lays in the fall and found it to be nihilistic and overdramatic. (How many fucking freeways does this Weekend At Bernie’s lady Maria have to drive on? Also, when she has, like, a plumbing problem in her mansion in Beverly Hills so she just moves to an apartment in Hollywood instead of dealing with it? #goals)

Joan’s power is in the personal. She speaks with a cool authority. Reading her, it feels like she’s driving you in her Stingray Corvette, weaving in and out of traffic effortlessly, telling you How It Is and you’re just in her trance, nodding along.

I love how unapologetically bougie she was, how her and her husband John seemed low-key kind of like insufferable social climbers in Hollywood. By all accounts, you did not want to get stuck next to Joan at a party. She barely spoke, was fragile, had migraines, was terrified of the weather. She was too smart, too fragile. She was bad at doing Life Things. She wanted to either take her speed and sit at the typewriter or take to the bed.

It might sound like I’m roasting her but I’m really not. I sincerely love everything about this woman! Reading her was the first time I felt like there could be a place for me. Here Joan was, eating chopped salads at La Scala and writing about her feelings for Vogue, and it had real value. More than the pages and pages I read of straight white dudes writing about, like, their dog and quarries.

I saw Joan once, in conversation with Griffin Dunne at Symphony Space doing promotion for Blue Nights. I use the words “in conversation” loosely. Griffin talked, Joan Didion grunted and looked like she’d rather be anywhere else. I loved it. I loved how cranky and over it she was.

I wrote about the event for my job and the post caught the attention of an editor at The New Yorker. She wanted to meet me for lunch at Conde Nast (working in media in 2011 could be really random) and so I did and we talked and it was lovely. She gave me “Speedboat” by Renata Adler. “If you love Joan,” she said. “You’ll love Renata Adler.”

I read it. I did love it. But It didn’t make me want to sit down and write, like Joan did. Reading Didion feels like being put under a spell. I read one paragraph and I need to write immediately. Otherwise, I sincerely think I might die. I’ve never had that with anyone else’s work and maybe I never will.

We’re lucky she decided to share her brain with us. And I hope there’s no Santa Ana winds in heaven. Joan was triggered by the Santa Ana winds.

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petewentzisblack1312 · 4 years ago

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hey dils!! was listening to sunshine riptide and thought of u so i wanted to say i hope ur taking care and also ask if u have any favorite fob videos/interviews?? lately i have been obsessed w the promo video patrick did for the honda civic tour where he drove around LA and said the only reason they got the tour was because he already drove a civic ahsjdbd

first of all it is SO flattering that listening to sunshine riptide made you think of me 🥺

secondly i was molded out of clay to answer this question, 100% i have a lot that i think about like way too often

the one where petes giving a tour of his parents house where he lived at the time and was showing off his stuff and was particularly very excited about the fact that his band was turned into action figures and then half way through andy shows up and is like "were best friends forever!" and petes like "yeah andy comes over for sleepovers a lot, we hang out in my basement and make zines and stuff" and then at the end he gets all excited cuz he hears his moms car pull up and he goes out and shes coming out of the car and then patrick gets out of the car carrying groceries and petes like "here mom me and patrick can put the groceries away you finish the interview" and shes like "no- pete i just got home from work im a mess" and hes like "what? no! no mom you look great, you can finish the interview well take in the groceries" and then she did and the camera crew came back to the two of them messing around and putting groceries away.

"pete wentz is honestly the only way to describe pete wentz. hes the most complicated guy i know." [cut to] "if anyone can make a strike without touching the lane i will pay you $300" *throws bowling balls straight into the air* *runs down the lane*

ok but in all seriousness i love that interview not only for that iconic moment but because later the footage is like blaring i dont care and pete goes and grabs a stuffed giraffe out of the prize thingie and hes like "what do you mean :)? we bought this with our tickets!!" and the editors are very much trying to make it a bad boy rebel without a cause moment except if you looked the woman behind the counter had a smile on her face and was laughing and then afterwards he gave it back and said "we werent really gonna steal it" but it really seemed like she knew that already

and then at a different point a couple fans showed up and they were all shy and excited to meet him and he was just like "hey are you guys coming to the show later" and they were like "yeah" and he was like "cool! thanks for coming out :) do you want a picture?" and they took a picture and it seemed like he was still kinda excited that people were excited to meet him. marcus (their bodyguard) was like trailing behind him and smiling and laughing throughout most of these antics and i just think thats sweet.

later in this same interview once again as they were on the ride back to their hotel or whatever theyd brought back a fake moustache and patrick put it on and did a bunch of dumb impressions.

patrick: if i wasnt doing music i think id be like a music critic or music journalist or something

andy:...i thought you said youd work at walmart

theres this one srar era interview thats just joe and patrick riffing for like 15 minutes. like it looks like they just straight up forgot the interviewer was there its so funny theyre such good friends.

this one joe and pete interview where i dont even really remember what they were talking about but theres a moment where joes talking about music with this intense passion and pete just kinda looks at him with this level of brotherly pride that keeps me going

this one andy and pete interview where 1) there were waterfowl chillin behind them which was deeply fascinating to andy and 2) they took a moment to swivel their chairs and hug each other bc theyre besties

band superlatives, specifically the moment where theyre all separately like "technically marcus isnt in the band but like. its marcus." bc that was sweet, unofficial 5th member of fob. and also "whos the most talented" "patrick. patrick. its patrick, hands down." "hm. petes like a really good soccer player" like thats a moment out of a fucking sitcom

halloween asmr with pete wentz. the man cant act but god can he commit to a bit.

there was this like live text chat that they all were in with fans on some radio station website. there were a lot of very fun moments, including joe saying "this is very current technology." as a comment on how very dated the live chat was and andy being like "can we set an icon i wanna change mine to an XVX" and pete and joe being like "oh are you vegan straight edge? we had no idea." and then pete was like "actually i wanna change my icon to andy hurley" and andy was like "no pete im not gonna send you a picture of me" and he was like :( and then a minute later he changed it to andy and he was like, and i swear this is almost a direct quote "BOOM! i love my life haha" and andy was like "goddammit" like i have no idea where to find this but it was so good.

theres this one "this or that" interview with joe and andy wherein the interviewer was a woman and like she seemed pretty at ease around them and got to the last question and imo seemed kinda uncomfortable and kind of established (in a way that seemed like she didnt usually do that) that it was a gross question, which was "would you have sex with a super hot celebrity but shes just died" and both of them were like "hey. what the fuck. absolutely not." and shes like "oh thats a first" and they are both like "do people say yes to that????????" and shes like "youre literally the first people to say no haha" in a way that made it seem that she did not find it funny and i just find that to be an interesting moment and i hope shes doing well and has a better producer now.

theres this one interview w andy on a hardcore podcast where the interviewer asks andy "do you every wish fall out boy were more political?" and he said (paraphrasing) "fall out boy is political, in its own way. we may not be as explicit with our politics as my other stuff, but kids find fall out boy, and through me, with all my other bands, or through joe, since he does a lot of metal, find heavier stuff, and are introduced to this stuff and to being vegan straight edge or anarchist or just more radical politics, and i dont think that just because we arent being super political in our music we arent a political band" which was really something to me bc i had just been thinking about that as a concept i call "gateway punk"

theres this one interview i recently found of a very small chicago music news outlet where a young lady interviewed pete and asked far more interesting questions than any other interviewer id ever seen and one such question was how he felt about the legalization of marijuana in illinois and he said that it was cool that it was legal but everyone locked up for it right now should be released and i like that he got to be political

theres a moment on the badass jew podcast episode joe was on where the interviewer whomst i do not recall was espousing some veiled antiblack sentiments wrt some antisemitic comments some famous black people had made and joe just completely rebutted it immediately and pointed out that black people not only are not a monolith bht are at a greater disadvantage

and also he made a joke that i could never make and cant fully get bc im not jewish but it was very funny and i love hearing people make jokes that arent for me.

this one interview before patrick had kids where he was saying how everyone kept asking him and elisa when theyd have kids and he was like "you cant just make that happen yknow? how do you just do that?" and pete immediately grinned and leaned over and mock whispered "you have sex" and patrick punched the air and was like "i hate you so much"

that one interview about abap where pete was like "we actually got the guy who did the whistles on patience by guns n roses to do it on this" and then he looks over at patrick and patrick shakes his head and petes like "you couldnt let me have this?" and he was like "i was gonna but then you looked at me and i just couldnt."

"whats the most important thing to you right now?"

patrick: star wars

joe: my daughter.

patrick: ...my son?

the puppy interview. everyone involved including the puppies was having the time of their goddamn life.

i have to stop this is too much its been like an hour

#dils declares #theyre so stupid.

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imaginedhaven · 4 years ago

Text

Reluctantly Rooming: Part Six

Link to Masterpost

I am... running low on prompts for this! I have one really good one I think I’m going to explore for part seven, and then a few more that go really well together a ways further into what I think the story here is going to be, but almost nothing to tie them together. I COULD just write out that story, but I have so loved responding to your prompts and they really have driven this story to what it is. Feel free to send more my way!

This chapter uses two prompts:

“You’re on level 176.” / “Can you judge me harder?”

and

“You’ve been replaced.” / “All right, we’ll see how you feel when you need me to kill a spider in the shower.”

Enjoy!

~*~*~

“You’re on… wow, level 176. How have you not gone insane yet?”

Aelin didn’t even turn to look at the speaker, too focused on the puzzle game she was playing on her phone. “Wow, Rowan, can you judge me harder? You know I’m so very into you judging me for the things I do to stay sane when I can’t even walk.”

“Damn, Aelin, you talk that way to every guy who walks through your door?” the voice laughed.

Finally setting her phone aside, she turned and shouted happily when she saw Sam standing there instead. “Gods, I’m sorry, I lost track of the time,” she said as she rushed—or hobbled, she supposed—to hug him.

“And you’ve gotten worse at telling voices apart,” he laughed. “I guess I should be flattered, though, if you really thought I sounded like Tall, Brooding, and Handsome.”

“You’re not even into men,” she protested.

“If anyone could persuade me, it’d be him. But that’s beside the point. You seriously forgot we moved Girls and Sam day over here so you wouldn’t have to get a ride?”

Aelin grimaced. “Uh, it’s been a long week?”

Sam snorted and shook his head. “Nice try. Some of us actually had to work this week.”

“Wow, rude.” Even as she was saying it Aelin tugged him to the couch. “You’re going to have to make that up to me, you know.”

“I know,” he grinned, holding up a small paper bag.

Aelin’s eyes widened and she snatched it from his grasp, tearing it open to reveal several bars of chocolate. “Gods, I love you.”

The sound of someone clearing their throat sounded behind them, and Aelin whirled around to find Rowan coming back from his afternoon run. “You do realize there are more rooms in this house than the living room for that, right? You’ve got options that won’t traumatize your roommate.”

Aelin blinked, and then began to laugh, clutching at the cushions of the couch to keep herself relatively upright. “Oh gods, you thought… you thought we…” She couldn’t even get all of the words out.

Sam decided to take pity on her, grinning over at Rowan. “That’s ancient history. Like, sophomore year of college ancient. We’re better off as friends.”

“Best friends,” Aelin added as she began to recover, holding up the chocolates as some sort of proof of their friendship. “You’ve been replaced, Rowan. You’ll just have to live with it.”

Rowan only shrugged. “All right,” he replied. “We’ll see how you feel about that when you need me to kill a spider in the shower.” Before she could say anything he was walking up the stairs and out of earshot.

When she turned to face Sam again, he was staring at her. “He’s been in your shower?”

“What? No, not like that,” she stammered. “The spider thing was one time.”

“I’m just saying, you never let me in your shower. You like him.”

The door opened again, and Aelin breathed a sigh of relief as Lysandra saved her from having to answer. “Are we feeling wine or whiskey?” she asked. “I brought both.”

Aelin frowned. “I’m feeling like if I say yes to either a hovering overprotective buzzard will come down the stairs and tell me it interacts with my pain medication,” she called pointedly in the direction of the stairs.

Her phone buzzed with a text alert almost immediately, and she read it with a laugh. “See?” she asked, holding the phone so they could read the screen:

Said overprotective buzzard would be absolutely correct and doing you a favor.

“Wow, who texts like that?” Lysandra asked.

“He does, apparently. And he can come say it to my face if he has something to say to me!”

Sam laughed beside her. “You tell him, Aelin.”

But the man upstairs remained remarkably silent in response, and her phone didn’t alert her to any further messages, so instead Aelin hobbled over to the kitchen and brought what was left of her brownies out of their hiding place.

“Wow,” Lysandra said when she saw them. “You actually bothered to cut them?”

“It’s not like I had anything better to do,” she replied. It was true enough; she certainly hadn’t been doing much, mostly because Rowan would glare at her until she was resting again if he felt she was overexerting herself. Feeling a flare of irritation at the memory, she promptly snagged one of the squares for herself and bit into it with a happy little sigh.

“All right, so when are we going to talk about the fact that you let your hot roommate into your shower?” Sam pressed.

“Wait, you what?” Lysandra leaned in, eager for details.

Aelin whined, head dropping into her hands. “For the last time, it’s not like that,” she protested. Still, though, she couldn’t help but remember the way he’d helped her into the bath the other day, how his words had been so rough but his hands so gentle on her as he’d…

Aelin yanked her mind away from that line of thinking, hoping she wasn’t blushing but strongly suspecting she was based on the heat she could feel in her cheeks. “You’re assholes and I hate you both,” she grumbled as they both started laughing.

“Oh, Aelin, we love you too,” Lysandra grinned.

“Besides, I couldn’t think of him that way anyway. Do you want to know why I really cut the brownies? He cut one out of the middle of the pan. And I know he doesn’t eat sweets, so I don’t think he even ate it. He’s a monster.” Aelin took the opportunity while she was venting to remind herself of all the reasons such thoughts were a terrible idea. Perhaps this time it would work.

At the very least, it was enough to convince her friends to drop the subject, and she would take what she could get in that regard.

~*~*~

Rowan didn’t emerge from his room until the others had left, and even then he was even quieter than usual as he took his now-customary seat in the armchair. That in itself was odd, but when she glanced over at him she found him looking back at her with an expression she couldn’t quite place.

“Take a picture; it’ll last longer,” she quipped, knowing the best way to get him to speak would be to try to get a rise out of him.

Sure enough, it worked. “You say that as though the very image of you isn’t seared into my retinas at this point.”

“I can’t tell if that’s rude or flattering.”

“Good.”

Aelin snorted. “Gods, are you one of those people who likes to think they’re all deep and mysterious?”

Rowan laughed in reply. “I am neither deep nor mysterious, trust me. You just haven’t asked.”

“All right,” she said. “Why are you staring at me then?”

“I wouldn’t call it staring, but I was just wondering if I’ll have to deal with any more exes you’re weirdly friendly with dropping by unexpectedly.”

“Oh.” This time, Aelin knew she was blushing. “No, Sam’s… Sam’s different. And we weren’t always friendly.”

“No?”

“Gods, no. We dated years ago, like he said. He was… a different person, then. He was going through a lot, and he didn’t really know how to handle it. We were over well before he broke up with me, I think.” Aelin smiled softly as she reminisced. “After that, I think it was… three years later? We were both working by then, and we happened to get hired by the same company. He tracked me down and told me everything. We both left Rifthold together eventually, and Lysandra came with us.”

Rowan shifted in his seat to look at her properly. “I didn’t know you weren’t always in Orynth. Aedion mentioned you were from here, but not that you’d had to move back home.”

Aelin’s smile turned sad. “You never asked.” After a moment, she realized that her words sounded too close to an accusation and rushed to continue. “I mean, I never asked anything about you either. I’m not trying to blame you or anything.”

“I’m certain I would deserve it if you did,” he replied.

“Hey, that’s enough being weirdly deep for one day.” Aelin paused for a moment, thinking about her next move. “What if I asked you one question about yourself, to make us even? Then we can go back to me watching my movie and you making fun of me like we usually do.”

Rowan shrugged, but looked somewhat wary. “Fine, I suppose.”

“Okay. I’m sure you’ve told me what you actually do for a living, or Aedion has, but I can never remember. So what is it?”

Her question was met with laughter, but his green eyes shone with relief. “That’s seriously what you want to know?”

“It’ll do for now.”

“Fine. I’m an editor. This whole time, and every time you’ve seen me working out here, I’ve been reading someone else’s book—or what will become their book, anyway—and tearing it apart so we can make it better.”

Aelin grinned. “Are you one of those mean editors? Like everyone’s least favorite high school English teacher, who makes everything bleed with red pen?”

“Spelling and grammar are usually taken care of for the most part before it gets to me. I just make notes in the margins about what parts of the story work and what parts don’t.”

“Mean notes?”

“Sometimes.”

Aelin finally smiled. “You know, I don’t know what I thought you did do, but that definitely wasn’t it.”

“I live to surprise,” he replied in the driest tone she’d heard from him all afternoon.

“Fine, then surprise me by not making fun of my movie tonight.”

She was met with only silence, Rowan clearly not finding her challenge worthy of a response. But he didn’t make even one sarcastic comment as the movie began, so she took it as a win regardless.

About halfway through, she glanced over at him to find his eyes once more on her. This time, however, she didn’t say anything. Instead, she only smiled.

~*~*~

Tagging:

@ireallyshouldsleeprn @queen-of-glass @fangirlprincess09 @sassys-world @morganofthewildfire @superspiritfestival @perseusannabeth @sis-it-dont-add-up @jlinez @julemmaes @emilyoftheshadows @thegoddessofyou

#haven writes #reluctantly rooming #rowaelin

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darkficsyouneveraskedfor · 5 years ago

Text

summertime sadness .4.

tgif

Sequel to kiss me in the d-a-r-k

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 (masterlist under construction)

Warnings: dub con sex (oral)

This is dark!(dad)Steve and dark(professor!)Bucky explicit. 18+ only. I know they aren’t super dark, but like questionable so I’m keeping those tags just to be safe.

Summary: You settle into your new job but can’t get too comfortable.

Note: Okey, dokey. Here’s the fun part (for me at least). Still tryna figure out how exactly this one will pan out by part 6 but we’re all having a ride together, eh. Thanks everyone for their support and I love you all! 💋

<3 Let me know what you think in a reblog, reply, or like. I’m loving the feedback from y'all and the enthusiasm! Also as always, memes accepted.

💋💋💋

It had only been a few weeks since your last visit to the university but it felt longer as you walked onto campus. Just as planned, you were due to meet Bucky in his office. He texted you as you rode the subway. He was eager to start his ‘marking’. You smirked and wondered how long he’d last at that.

You entered the English Building, the elevator back in service and empty. Not many instructors were in their offices on a Saturday and most students were hungover or readying for another party. You knocked on Bucky’s door before you entered. He had a stack of essays on his desk as he sat behind them listlessly.

“Finally,” He said.

“I slept in.” You replied. “For the first time in a week.”

“Then you’ll have lots of energy,” He reached below his desk, the sound of his zipper discernible beneath it. “I’ve got about forty papers here.”

“Forty? And how many do you think you’ll get to?”

“Knowing that mouth, maybe one.” He snickered. “Come on, baby, I’m rock hard over here.”

He rolled his chair back as you neared and set your purse down behind his desk. He slapped your ass and you got to your knees. You grinned up at him as you ducked under his desk and gripped his thighs as he pushed closer. You pulled down his briefs and his cock sprung out. He groaned and grabbed his pen.

“Fuck,” He swore under his breath. “I can’t believe you’re actually doing this, baby.”

“You’ve got marking to do,” You reprimanded and stroked him. “Now get to work.”

You stretched your lips over his tip and he groaned. He slid closer and you could hear the clumsy scratching of his pen on paper. As he reached the back of your throat, his leg twitched. You pushed past your gag reflex and he nearly choked. You pulled back and felt the shiver in him.

“Mmm,” He hummed and flipped a page. “Just like that.”

The sloppy sounds of your mouth added to the flutter above, the scribbles of ink. You bobbed your head steadily, every now and then forcing him to your limit and holding him there. And then you stopped as a knock came at the door. You both froze.

“Shit,” He pushed himself against the desk entirely and trapped you underneath it. The front shielded you from view on the other side. “Keep going.”

“Buck---”

“Slowly, quietly.” He grabbed his dick and slapped it against your lips. “Now.” He cleared his throat and shoved your head down as he glided into your mouth again. “Come in.” He called and the door opened.

Your eyes widened as he pulled his hand away. You carefully dragged your tongue along his length.

“Hey,” He greeted in a smooth tone. “Tanya.”

“Sorry to disturb,” His visitor replied. “I was just grabbing some stuff from my office and I just remembered I still had this.”

A thump sounded on the top of the desk as you slobbered down his cock.

“Thanks,” He said and squeezed his legs around you. “I almost forgot myself if I’m being honest.”

“I owe you one,” She said. You recognized her voice. She taught the other section of journalism, though you had her for a social movements class in your first year. “Maybe a drink. I could hang around til you finish with those.”

“Ah, you know, I wish I could,” He lamented. “But I promised a buddy I’d swing around to watch the game.”

You kept from gagging and held your breath, afraid to give yourself away.

“You don’t seem like the sports type,” She countered.

“Not really but a few beers and I am,” He dismissed her easily.

“You sure you’re not avoiding me?” Her toe tapped impatiently just on the other side of the desk.

“Avoiding you?” He chuckled. A slight quaver in his voice as you swirled your tongue around his tip. “Why would I be doing that?”

“Well… Ever since our little… you know…” She hesitated to say it aloud.

“I thought we agreed that it was just a little fun.” He said and you stopped suddenly. He nudged you with his toe and you wrapped your lips around him once more. “A drunken bit of fun.”

“Hmmm…” She sounded disappointed. “You free tomorrow?”

“Sorry, maybe next weekend,” He said. “But I really gotta finish here.”

“Okay, okay,” She accepted with a trill. “We’ll sort out a time then.”

“Sure,” He confirmed unconvincingly. “Next weekend. See ya.”

“Bye,” Her voice was cheerier as her heels clicked back across the floor and the door opened and closed once more.

You tried to pull away but he caught your head and held you down as he emptied himself down your throat. You choked and smacked at his thigh as he cupped his sac with his other hand. He left your mouth salty and sore as he slipped out and rolled back with a sigh.

You spit his cum into your hand and crawled out from under the desk. “What the fuck?”

“Sorry, I had to-- fuck, I almost came with her right there.” He grabbed a tissue and handed it to you.

“You could’ve warned me,” You wiped your hand off with a grimace. “What was that anyway? Did you fuck her?”

“Why? You jealous?” He cleaned himself up and zipped up his pants.

“No,” You rolled your eyes. “But I did just suck you off within two feet of her as she obviously wanted to do the same.”

He laughed and pushed his shoulders back. “It was months ago. Before… us. There was a conference, there was wine, and I regret it.” He sighed. “And she looks back on it fondly but… lots of teeth and she was stiff as a fucking board.”

“Wow,” You said dryly and wiped your mouth. “You know, I’m barely surprised.”

“This… thing between you and I, it’s not--”

“It’s just a bit of fun. Trust me, I get it. I haven’t got time for anything but.” You tossed the kleenex in the small bin beside his desk. “Right? That’s what it is?”

“So much fun,” He assured you. “You wanna hang around till I’m finished?”

“Thought you already were,” You jibed. His brow furrowed and you grinned. “Sure,” You pulled up a chair. “I got nothing better to do.”

“Well, don’t sound so excited,” He said. “Besides, I might need some more help sooner than later.”

💋

You scribbled along the margin of your agenda and dropped the pen. The keys clacked beneath your fingers as you typed up a manic sentence. Your screen glowed back at you as the seconds ticked by with each letter. So enthralled by your task that the speck in your peripheral gave you a start.

You leaned back and turned your chair to face the man watching you. Loki’s lithe fingers swept up your golden pen and he admired the engraved letters beneath the fluorescent light. You watched him nervously as you pushed yourself away from your keyboard.

“Mr. Laufeyson.” You greeted him meekly. “I am just finishing the blurb you wanted.”

“Hard at work, as always,” He mused as he carefully set the pen back on your desk. “A beautiful pen…”

“A gift,” You smiled awkwardly.

“Well, I hate to interrupt you so I will let you finished,” His fingers brushed along your desk and he leaned on it as he casually cross his right leg in front of the other. “But when you have, I would like a moment in my office before you leave for the day.”

“Of course,” You affirmed. “It shouldn’t be more than twenty minutes.”

“As you will,” He stood straight and smoothed his jacket and buttoned it. “Then you are free to enjoy your weekend.”

“Okay,” You nodded and he turned away.

You watched him go, his strides long but lingering as he retreated to his office. The usual crowd had thinned out and Stacey was readying for her own departure. You spun back to your computer and resumed your work. Your second week down and not a stumble yet. You dared to be proud of yourself. Even, to be happy.

Another weekend ahead of you and you weren’t entirely excited. You liked being in the office; liked working with the other journalists, writers, and editors. Enjoyed your chance to shadow one of the most powerful men in New York publishing. And he had achieved it all at such a young age. You could only hope to achieve as much in the next fifteen years.

It was more than a bullet point for your resume, it was your own paradise.

So you finished up your blurb and attached it to an email. You logged out and packed up your agenda and pen beside your laptop. You pushed your chair in as you hooked your bag over your shoulder and trod tentatively to Loki’s office. You knocked on the open door and he looked away from his screen.

“Ah, there you are,” He beckoned you in with a wave. “Close the door behind you, please.”

You glanced back into the main office and did as he said. You stepped inside and sat across from him, your bag set down against the leg of the chair. His green eyes focused on you and he tilted his head as he absently traced his fingers over his phone. You fidgeted as you struggled not to shy away.

“I just wanted to check in,” He said. “And I was recently reviewing your references.”

“My references?” You wondered.

“Mmm,” He hummed. “Your professors speak highly of you. One of the reasons I even considered a second year, let alone one who had so suddenly changed majors, was a certain word on your behalf.”

“Okay?” You were confused and gripped the arms of the chair as you blinked at him dumbly.

“James Barnes has earned his tenure at the university and on occasion, he has written pieces for my own magazine. A respectable writer, admirable in his work both in teaching and otherwise. And when he proposed this workshop, the tours, I thought it was a charming idea. He proved me right so I had no doubt when he spoke to me of you.”

You gulped but said nothing. Your stomach churned and you brought your hands together and wrung them.

“You see,” He lifted his phone and blindly unlocked it. “You have lived up to his reference and your work is commendable…” He smirked as he flicked a finger across the screen. “But I still questions the veracity of his endorsement as I find his integrity has come into doubt.”

He set his phone down and slid it across the desk. He nodded for you to pick it up. You slid forward on your chair and took it. Your lips parted in horror as you stared at the screen. It was you and Bucky in the bookshop, your lips locked and his arms wrapped around you. You looked up, mortified, as the phone shook in your grasp.

“I…” The breath went out of you and you put the phone back on the desk before it could fall. “How did you--”

“It’s a quaint little shop.” He purred. “I venture in every now and then.”

You chewed your lip as your cheeks burned.

“You do realize that this could be… damaging. To you more than him.” He stood slowly and came around the desk to stand before you. “He has tenure, he is established. You, my dear, you’re barely getting started.”

You gaped up at him. The pet name unsettled you and you wiped your sweaty hands on your thighs.

“And aside from the ethical dilemma, I do wonder what a girl your age sees in a man his age. Especially when your work speak so boldly on its own.”

You shook your head, speechless.

“Surely there are boys your own age who would be delighted to offer you… companionship.”

“I never… I would never use him like that.” You insisted. “It’s all… my work. My own work.”

“Oh, I know it, dear,” He said as his lips curled. “But to risk that work on him? On an affair better fit to a dime store erotica?”

“Are you-- Are you going to report him? Me?” You asked. “Am I fired?”

“Well,” He leaned on the desk, his long fingers gripped it’s edge as he leered down at you. “That depends on you, my dear.”

“Me?” You squeaked.

“Oh yes, this is a very powerful secret, don’t you think?” He slithered. “And in our business, well, it would sell.”

“What do you want?” You asked.

He pushed himself away from the desk and reached to tickle your cheek. His fingers crawled along your chin and he brushed his thumb over your bottom lip.

“I haven’t yet made up my mind,” He bent so that his face was only inches from yours. “But when I do, my dear, you will appease me, won’t you?”

You shuddered but didn’t pull away. You were too frightened. A lock of his dark hair fell forward as his pale skin shone sinister in the lamp light. His green eyes bore into yours and you wanted desperately too look away.

“Y-yes,” You stammered weakly. “I--I will.”

“Very good,” He drew away slowly. “Now, darling, go enjoy your weekend.” He scooped up his phone and tucked it in his pocket. “And give the professor my regards.”

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bakug0stw1nk · 4 years ago

Text

Hello, everyone! This is the LONGEST TEXT EVER! I was inspired by the various other "longest texts ever" on the internet, and I wanted to make my own. So here it is! This is going to be a WORLD RECORD! This is actually my third attempt at doing this. The first time, I didn't save it. The second time, the Neocities editor crashed. Now I'm writing this in Notepad, then copying it into the Neocities editor instead of typing it directly in the Neocities editor to avoid crashing. It sucks that my past two attempts are gone now. Those actually got pretty long. Not the longest, but still pretty long. I hope this one won't get lost somehow. Anyways, let's talk about WAFFLES! I like waffles. Waffles are cool. Waffles is a funny word. There's a Teen Titans Go episode called "Waffles" where the word "Waffles" is said a hundred-something times. It's pretty annoying. There's also a Teen Titans Go episode about Pig Latin. Don't know what Pig Latin is? It's a language where you take all the consonants before the first vowel, move them to the end, and add '-ay' to the end. If the word begins with a vowel, you just add '-way' to the end. For example, "Waffles" becomes "Afflesway". I've been speaking Pig Latin fluently since the fourth grade, so it surprised me when I saw the episode for the first time. I speak Pig Latin with my sister sometimes. It's pretty fun. I like speaking it in public so that everyone around us gets confused. That's never actually happened before, but if it ever does, 'twill be pretty funny. By the way, "'twill" is a word I invented recently, and it's a contraction of "it will". I really hope it gains popularity in the near future, because "'twill" is WAY more fun than saying "it'll". "It'll" is too boring. Nobody likes boring. This is nowhere near being the longest text ever, but eventually it will be! I might still be writing this a decade later, who knows? But right now, it's not very long. But I'll just keep writing until it is the longest! Have you ever heard the song "Dau Dau" by Awesome Scampis? It's an amazing song. Look it up on YouTube! I play that song all the time around my sister! It drives her crazy, and I love it. Another way I like driving my sister crazy is by speaking my own made up language to her. She hates the languages I make! The only language that we both speak besides English is Pig Latin. I think you already knew that. Whatever. I think I'm gonna go for now. Bye! Hi, I'm back now. I'm gonna contribute more to this soon-to-be giant wall of text. I just realised I have a giant stuffed frog on my bed. I forgot his name. I'm pretty sure it was something stupid though. I think it was "FROG" in Morse Code or something. Morse Code is cool. I know a bit of it, but I'm not very good at it. I'm also not very good at French. I barely know anything in French, and my pronunciation probably sucks. But I'm learning it, at least. I'm also learning Esperanto. It's this language that was made up by some guy a long time ago to be the "universal language". A lot of people speak it. I am such a language nerd. Half of this text is probably gonna be about languages. But hey, as long as it's long! Ha, get it? As LONG as it's LONG? I'm so funny, right? No, I'm not. I should probably get some sleep. Goodnight! Hello, I'm back again. I basically have only two interests nowadays: languages and furries. What? Oh, sorry, I thought you knew I was a furry. Haha, oops. Anyway, yeah, I'm a furry, but since I'm a young furry, I can't really do as much as I would like to do in the fandom. When I'm older, I would like to have a fursuit, go to furry conventions, all that stuff. But for now I can only dream of that. Sorry you had to deal with me talking about furries, but I'm honestly very desperate for this to be the longest text ever. Last night I was watching nothing but fursuit unboxings. I think I need help. This one time, me and my mom were going to go to a furry Christmas party, but we didn't end up going because of the fact that there was alcohol on the premises, and that she didn't wanna have to be a mom dragging her son through a crowd of furries. Both of those reasons were understandable. Okay, hopefully I won't have to talk about furries anymore. I don't care if you're a furry reading this right now, I just don't wanna have to torture everyone else. I will no longer say the F word throughout the rest of this entire text. Of course, by the F word, I mean the one that I just used six times, not the one that you're probably thinking of which I have not used throughout this entire text. I just realised that next year will be 2020. That's crazy! It just feels so futuristic! It's also crazy that the 2010s decade is almost over. That decade brought be a lot of memories. In fact, it brought be almost all of my memories. It'll be sad to see it go. I'm gonna work on a series of video lessons for Toki Pona. I'll expain what Toki Pona is after I come back. Bye! 'm back now, and I decided not to do it on Toki Pona, since many other people have done Toki Pona video lessons already. I decided to do it on Viesa, my English code. Now, I shall explain what Toki Pona is. Toki Pona is a minimalist constructed language that has only ~120 words! That means you can learn it very quickly. I reccomend you learn it! It's pretty fun and easy! Anyway, yeah, I might finish my video about Viesa later. But for now, I'm gonna add more to this giant wall of text, because I want it to be the longest! It would be pretty cool to have a world record for the longest text ever. Not sure how famous I'll get from it, but it'll be cool nonetheless. Nonetheless. That's an interesting word. It's a combination of three entire words. That's pretty neat. Also, remember when I said that I said the F word six times throughout this text? I actually messed up there. I actually said it ten times (including the plural form). I'm such a liar! I struggled to spell the word "liar" there. I tried spelling it "lyer", then "lier". Then I remembered that it's "liar". At least I'm better at spelling than my sister. She's younger than me, so I guess it's understandable. "Understandable" is a pretty long word. Hey, I wonder what the most common word I've used so far in this text is. I checked, and appearantly it's "I", with 59 uses! The word "I" makes up 5% of the words this text! I would've thought "the" would be the most common, but "the" is only the second most used word, with 43 uses. "It" is the third most common, followed by "a" and "to". Congrats to those five words! If you're wondering what the least common word is, well, it's actually a tie between a bunch of words that are only used once, and I don't wanna have to list them all here. Remember when I talked about waffles near the beginning of this text? Well, I just put some waffles in the toaster, and I got reminded of the very beginnings of this longest text ever. Okay, that was literally yesterday, but I don't care. You can't see me right now, but I'm typing with my nose! Okay, I was not able to type the exclamation point with just my nose. I had to use my finger. But still, I typed all of that sentence with my nose! I'm not typing with my nose right now, because it takes too long, and I wanna get this text as long as possible quickly. I'm gonna take a break for now! Bye! Hi, I'm back again. My sister is beside me, watching me write in this endless wall of text. My sister has a new thing where she just says the word "poop" nonstop. I don't really like it. She also eats her own boogers. I'm not joking. She's gross like that. Also, remember when I said I put waffles in the toaster? Well, I forgot about those and I only ate them just now. Now my sister is just saying random numbers. Now she's saying that they're not random, they're the numbers being displayed on the microwave. Still, I don't know why she's doing that. Now she's making annoying clicking noises. Now she's saying that she's gonna watch Friends on three different devices. Why!?!?! Hi its me his sister. I'd like to say that all of that is not true. Max wants to make his own video but i wont let him because i need my phone for my alarm.POOP POOP POOP POOP LOL IM FUNNY. kjnbhhisdnhidfhdfhjsdjksdnjhdfhdfghdfghdfbhdfbcbhnidjsduhchyduhyduhdhcduhduhdcdhcdhjdnjdnhjsdjxnj Hey, I'm back. Sorry about my sister. I had to seize control of the LTE from her because she was doing keymash. Keymash is just effortless. She just went back to school. She comes home from school for her lunch break. I think I'm gonna go again. Bye! Hello, I'm back. Let's compare LTE's. This one is only 8593 characters long so far. Kenneth Iman's LTE is 21425 characters long. The Flaming-Chicken LTE (the original) is a whopping 203941 characters long! I think I'll be able to surpass Kenneth Iman's not long from now. But my goal is to surpass the Flaming-Chicken LTE. Actually, I just figured out that there's an LTE longer than the Flaming-Chicken LTE. It's Hermnerps LTE, which is only slightly longer than the Flaming-Chicken LTE, at 230634 characters. My goal is to surpass THAT. Then I'll be the world record holder, I think. But I'll still be writing this even after I achieve the world record, of course. One time, I printed an entire copy of the Bee Movie script for no reason. I heard someone else say they had three copies of the Bee Movie script in their backpack, and I got inspired. But I only made one copy because I didn't want to waste THAT much paper. I still wasted quite a bit of paper, though. Now I wanna see how this LTE compares to the Bee Movie script. Okay, I checked, and the Bee Movie script is 50753 characters long. Not as long as some of the LTEs I mentioned, but still longer than mine and Kenneth Iman's combined. This LTE is getting close to 10000 characters! That means it'll be half the length of Kenneth Iman's LTE. That's pretty exciting. Also, going back to the topic of the Bee Movie Script, I tried to write the entire thing out by hand once. But I never finished it, especially since I'm focusing on this thing now. Maybe I should write this LTE out by hand. Nah, I don't think I will. Yay, we're at 10000 characters! Let's celebrate by talking about MUSIC! Music is cool. That concludes our celebratory discussion about music. Thank you, and have a good rest of your day. Hi, I'm back now, and I got a book! It's a dictionary for a language called Elefen. It's like Esperanto, but better. Now I can learn Elefen even without internet! That's pretty cool. I will now write something in Elefen. See if you can understand it! Here goes: Si tu pote leje esta, tu es merveliosa! Elefen es un lingua multe fresca! Did you understand that? Maybe you can't speak Elefen, but you still understood that because of your knowledge of other languages. Elefen is cool because it's an actual language, not an English code like Pig Latin or Viesa. Oh, I forgot to mention that my sister is back from school. She's blasting Rhett and Link songs right now. Have you seen that picture of Rhett and Link standing with a bunch of *******? Sorry, I almost said the F word there. That would've broken my rule of not saying the F word. I wrote something in Elefen, so I will also write something in Toki Pona. See if you can understand it now! sina sona e toki mi la sina pona mute a! I can speak Toki Pona fluently, by the way. It's also a pretty cool language. My sister is still playing annoying songs. It's hindering my focus right now. But it's fiiiiine. Okay, luckily she's run out of songs to play. At least for now. She's trying to think of another annoying song to play. Now she's playing a song by Green Day. Not NEARLY as bad as the other songs she just played. I should go for now. Goodbye! Hello, I'm back once again. I don't know why I feel obligated to say that every time I come back. But I'll keep doing it anyway. My sister stopped blasting annoying songs, so that's good. She's cooking something in the microwave. I'll go check to see what it is right now. Nevermind, it's already done cooking. Right, I remember! It's mac and cheese! Now she just started singing "I have a tongue, you don't, because I cut it off yesterday". I don't know what goes on in her mind when she does stuff like that. I've been messing around with my Elefen dictionary for a while, looking up whatever random words I can think of. By the way, the whole reason I'm doing this longest text ever is because of pointlesssites.com. That's how I found the Flaming-Chicken LTE, which inspired me to start writing this LTE. So thanks, pointlesssites.com! I check that website every day to see what new pointless websites they add. You know, I could double every letter I type so that this text would be twice as long as it normally would be. But nah, that's kinda cheating. So I won't. Also, SUBSCRIBE TO PEWDIEPIE! There, I did my part. Not that anyone will read this, but still. 'Twould be nice if you subscribed to PewDiePie. That's another word I invented. Actually, I looked it up, and I didn't invent it. Someone came up with it before I did. That's pretty sad. Also, LEARN VIESA TODAY! IT WILL CURE YOUR DEPRESSION! Seriously though, learn Viesa. It won't actually cure your depression, but I'm desperate for speakers. I only have one other person to speak it with. I should go now. Goodbye. Hi, I’m back. I just came up with an idea: SIMPLIFIED ENGLISH! Or, in Simplified Engish: Simifid Enis. It’s where every group of consonant letters is reduced to the first consonant in that group of consonants, and same goes with the vowels. If a word ends up being just a single consonant with no vowel, put ‘a’ at the end. So “I like eating my waffles” becomes “I like etin ma wafes”. Isn’t it the most amazing thing ever? Nah, it’s not quite as amazing as Viesa. Actually, Viesa isn’t a real language, so it’s less amazing then Elefen and Toki Pona, both of which are cool languages. I kinda figured that half of this text would be about languages. Oh well. I just really want this to be the longest text ever, without using copy and paste, keymash, etc. If you remember, my sister did a little bit of keymash in this text a while ago. I would’ve deleted it, but nah, I didn’t feel like it. And besides, it’s not like it took up half this text. I have an estimate for how long it’ll take me to be the world record holder: about one month. I think I can manage one month of writing this. You know what? I’m just gonna break my rule of not saying the word “furry”. There, I said it. Now I’m allowing myself to write “furry” whenever I want. So with that out of the way, let’s talk about how I first became a furry. For some reason, I have the exact date when I became a furry memorized. It’s May 4, 2018. At that time, I discovered that I was a furry by watching some furry YouTube videos. I knew about the existence of furries years before this, but I didn’t know much about it until this time. I said to myself, “You know what? I’m a furry now,” and that’s what started it all. And I’ve been slowly learning more about the fandom ever since. I would like to participate more in the fandom when I’m older, but I’m too young for most of it right now. Guess I’ll just have to wait. But in the meantime, I can write about it in this text. I should sleep now. Goodnight. Hello, I'm back once again. Happy Pi Day! I memorized a bunch of digits of Pi once, not sure how many I still remember... I have literally nothing to write about now. I've been trying to come up with something for the past 10 minutes, and I still have no idea. Literally nothing is happening right now. It's pretty boring. My sister is watching Friends, as usual. Okay, since there's nothing for me to write about, I should go now. Bye! Wow, it has been a while since I last added to this. It is now July 10, 2019. Last time I edited this page was Pi Day, which was March 14. Those 4 months of this thing being untouched end today! Wait... 4 months? That means I was supposed to get this past the world record three months ago. Oh well. I have put many things into this text. A lot of them were cringy, like how I keep mentioning furry-related things. You know, I should stop putting things in here when I know I'm gonna cringe at them later. I'll try not to do that from here on out. I just know I'll fail though. I'd hate to be aware of someone reading this entire thing... like, if I had to sit and watch a family member or something read this entire text, I would cringe so hard. I would not want that to happen. I am currently pasting the entirety of the FlamingChicken LTE onto a page on OurWorldOfText. The frustrating thing about pasting stuff there is that it pastes one letter at a time, so it takes forever to paste long text. And when the tab isn't open, I'm pretty sure it just stops pasting, so you have to keep the tab open if you want it to continue. Why am I even doing this? No idea. I might not even paste the whole thing. I probably won't. Hey, I just had a thought. What if, in the future, students are reading this for a class assignment? What if this LTE becomes part of the school curriculum? If so, hi future student! I hope you're enjoying reading my CRINGE. What is my life coming to? That's enough writing for now. Goodbye. Hey again. Might as well continue writing in here for a bit. Hey, have you ever heard of 3D Movie Maker? It's a program from the 90s (that still works on modern computers) where you can make 3D animated movies. It's pretty cool. I've made a few movies with it myself, and many other people use it to make interesting stuff. In case you want to try it for yourself, I'm sure if you google "3dmm download" or something like that, it will take you somewhere where you can download the program. It's kinda aimed at younger children, but hopefully that doesn't stop you from making absolute masterpieces with this program. I have a keyboard in my room (the musical kind, not the one you type words on), and I don't really know how to play it properly, but I do it anyways. I can play a few songs on the piano (albeit with weird fingering because like I just said, I have no idea what I'm doing), including HOME - Resonance and PilotRedSun - Bodybuilder. You might not know one or both of those songs. If you don't know one of them, why not google it? You will have discovered some new music, and it will all be because of me. Why are you reading this, anyways? How did you even find it? Were you like me, and you were browsing pointlesssites.com, eventually finding the FlamingChicken LTE and going down a rabbit hole of discovering random LTEs? Literally the only reason I'm writing this right now is because that happened. I just discovered a new LTE: the RainbowFluffySheep LTE. I'm gonna see how many characters long it is. 75,957 characters. Pretty long, but not as long as the top two LTEs (FlamingChicken and Hermnerps, both with around 200,000 characters). I wanna write as much as possible into this text today. I'm gonna see how much LTE-writing I can do in one day. Hopefully it's a lot, because I wanna hold a world record! Imagine having a world record. Well, would it really be a world record? Because I don't know of any world record books that have "Longest Text Ever" as a record. Oh well, I just hope this LTE passes exactly 230,634 characters. That's all my goal is. I'm not even a tenth of the way there yet, but give it a month and I'm sure I'll get there. Hey, remember last time I said it would only take a month? That was four months ago. I should just stop promising things all together at this point. Forget I said anything about that. Did you know my sister has an LTE? That's right! It's not very long, though, and you can't read it because it's on her phone. She made it while bored at the library. That library was where I used to have web design classes. Those were fun, but I don't do them anymore. Now all I do it sit at home and write stuff in here. Well, I'm exaggerating. I go to the convenience store with my sister sometimes. But that's pretty much it outside of being bored on a computer. I should be a less boring human being. One day, I should translate this entire LTE into Viesa. That would be a big waste of time, even bigger than writing the LTE itself. But I could still do it. I don't think I ever will. This text is simply too long, and it'll be even longer than that by the time I pass 230,634 characters. By the way, if you think I'm gonna stop writing this once I pass 230,634 characters, you're wrong! Because I'll keep writing this even after I pass that point. It'll feel nice to be way ahead the record. My sister's alarm clock has been going off for half an hour and I haven't turned it off. Why? Because LAZYNESS! Actually, I really should turn it off now. There, I turned it off. First when I tried to turn it off, it started playing the radio. Then I tried again, and it turned off completely. Then I hurt myself on the door while walking out. So that was quite the adventure. I'm gonna go sleep now. Goodnight! Hey, I'm back again. My computer BSOD'd while writing this, so I have to start this section over again. That's why you save your work, kids! Before I had to start over again, I was talking about languages. Yes, I decided to bring that topic back after a while. But I no longer want to talk about it. Why? Because it'll probably bore you to death. That is assuming you're reading this at all. Who knows, maybe absolutely zero people will read this within the span of the universe's existence. But I doubt that. There's gotta be someone who'll find this text and dedicate their time to reading it, even if it takes thousands of years for that to happen. What will happen to this LTE in a thousand years? Will the entire internet dissapear within that time? In that case, will this text dissapear with it? Or will it, along with the rest of what used to be the internet, be preserved somewhere? I'm thinking out loud right now. Well, not really "out loud" because I'm typing this, and you can't technically be loud through text. THE CLOSEST THING IS TYPING IN ALL CAPS. Imagine if I typed this entire text like that. That would be painful. I decided to actually save my work this time, in case of another crash. I already had my two past attempts at an LTE vanish from existance. I mean, most of this LTE is already stored on Neocities, so I probably won't need to worry about anything. I think I might change the LTE page a little. I want the actual text area to be larger. I'm gonna make it a very basic HTML page with just a header and text. Maybe with some CSS coloring. I don't know. Screw it, I'm gonna do it. There, now the text area is larger. It really does show how small this LTE is so far compared to FlamingChicken or Hermnerps. But at least I made the background a nice Alice Blue. That's the name of the CSS color I used. It's pretty light. We're getting pretty close to the 1/10 mark! That's the point where we're one tenth of the way to making this the longest text ever, meaning all I have to do is write the equivalent of everything I've already written so far nine more times! Not gonna make any promises, though. How come every time I try to type "though", it comes out as "thought"? Why do I always type the extra T? It's so annoying that I have to delete the T every time. Okay, only mildly annoying. Not as annoying as I previously described. I apologize for my exaggeration of the annoyance level of me typing "thought" instead of "though". I just realized that most of the games I play are games that I've been playing for at least six years. I started playing Garry's Mod in 2013, Minecraft in whatever year version 1.2.3 came out. Now I have to look that up. March 2, 2012. So I started playing Minecraft approximately during that time. Wow, seven years ago! Coincidentally, I was also seven years old then. I remember the days of 2012-13. That was when I still played Roblox and made terrible YouTube videos. I was called "Infinite Budgets" back then. I also remember the days of 2016. A lot of people thought that was a terrible year, but for me personally, it brings me a lot of nostalgia because I talked a lot with my online friend at the time, and I did livestreams on YouTube and stuff. It was fun. 2016 was also when I got the phone that I still have to this day. Yup, my phone is three years old. My life was completely different when I got this phone: I was 11 years old, my YouTube channel actually had activity, and I wasn’t writing this text. I’m currently writing this in the car. We are on out way to the dollar store. And since I’m writing this on my phone, I’m making a lot more typos than usual. Some of them might make it through, so be prepared for that. Anyways, we appear to be getting close to the dollar store. I have a gift card for that place. I think so anyways, it might be for a different store... Yup, this dollar store is different. Oh well. My sister has an obsession with sponges. I’m sure she’s gonna find the sponges and go crazy over them. Why does she like sponges so much? No idea. She just found a bag of tiny baby dolls, and she wants to put them in ice cubes and call it “Ice Ice Baby”. She is truly a strange human being. My sister also has an obsession with stuffies. She has such an addiction, that she’s banned from them. Now she found the wigs and she’s considering buying one. She’s been looking at them for quite a while now. We’re out of the dollar store, and now we’re going to the computer store. I have no idea why we’re here. I guess we just are. Now we’re going home. Welp, that was a fun adventure. Stay tuned for more fun adventures as you read through this LTE. I should go now. Bye! Hello again. I made a private world on OurWorldOfText for my sister and I, but she doesn't want to join it. She doesn't think it'll be fun. Now I'm just editing it alone. How sad. But oh well. Now I’m here adding more to this text. I once made a Discord server specifically for a language called “Bo”, where the only word is “bo”. I made it almost four months ago, and somehow, it’s still going. People are still spamming nothing but “bo” there. It’s great. I also once made a server where you’re not allowed to use any vowels. It was a very strange server. I deleted it after some time though, so all that insanity is no more. I also used to own a Pig Latin server, but it got inactive so I deleted that too. We had some good memories in that server though. Now there’s a new Pig Latin server, but it’s not owned by me. Dang, my YouTube channel has been dead for so long. I haven’t posted a video in a year. I want to revive it, but I don’t know what to post there. I’ll figure it out. I doubt my channel will ever go back to it’s 2016 legacy, but I’m sure I’ll post something eventually. Random fact of the day: there are thirty-nine question marks so far in this text. Am I about to make it forty? Yes, I just did. Now the fact I initially stated is no longer true. Or is it? Because I said “so far” in the fact, that implies that we’re talking about the moment that fact was said, disregarding any future events. Now I’m pretty sure that fact is still technically true. Welp, I guess I should just accept that I’m editing that world of text alone for the rest of my life. I originally put a bunch of complaining in there, but I deleted it all. The thing is, now that world will never be same without all of that complaining about my sister not being here. But that’s fine. Hey, I just had a cool realization. Basically, there’s this conlang (constructed language, for those not in the know) server where we have a Sentence of the Week activity. In this activity, someone posts a text with a maximum of nine sentences, then people translate it into their own conlangs. My realization is this: if we take nine sentences from this LTE every week, there would be a whole year of sentences for people to translate. There are approximantly 523 sentences in this LTE. Divide that by 9 sentences each week, and you get 58 weeks worth of sentences, which is approximantly the number of weeks in a year. Quick maths. I actually suck at math, but that’s besides the point. I should go now. Goodbye! Hello, I’m back again. I really need to come up with different hello and goodbye messages, because I’ve already said “Hello, I’m back again” once before. Same with the “I should go now. Goodbye!” I said at the end of the previous section. I was going to explain what a “section” is, but I’m terrible at explaining things, so I’m not going to anymore. I guess you’ll just have to figure it out yourself. It’s probably not very hard to figure out, anyways. I guess I can just say that a section starts with me saying hello, and ends with me saying goodbye. That should be enough explaination, now that I think about it. Hey, do you ever feel like you never have any idea what you’re talking about? That’s my entire life. I just summarized it all in one sentence. On an unrelated note, I feel like half this LTE is just me talking about the LTE itself. I mean, press CTRL+F on this webpage, then type “LTE”. Look at all the times I use it in this text! Not counting the ‘lte’ in the word ‘multe’, of course. Dang, now the search results will include that, too. Anyways, half of this text is just me talking about how I’m trying to get this text to be the longest. Well, the longest LTE, anyways. I still have a long way to go. I’m only 12.7% of the way there. I mean, minus the four month gap, my estimation is that I’ve only been writing this for not even two weeks. So it makes sense that this LTE isn’t very long yet. Whenever I look at this webpage, it looks long at first glance, but the longer I look at it, the more I realize how short it actually is. It’s something that I can’t explain. For real this time. I just realized that none of this is helping the fact that half this LTE is about the LTE itself. I should bring up a new topic, but I don’t feel comfortable talking about much else. Why? Because, like I said, I never have any idea what I’m talking about. Most of this LTE is just me talking about LTEs or languages. Sometimes furries, but I don’t wanna go back into that territory at this point. But it doesn’t matter, because I’m still gonna write this LTE for as long as possible, even if it means talking about the same things half the time. Also, LEARN VIESA! Haven’t said that in a while, so I might as well bring it back. The documentation for Viesa is on this very website, so go ahead and read it! You might need to know some linguistic knowledge to understand it, though. In fact, you probably won’t understand most of it unless you know some amount about lingusitics, so you have been warned. If Viesa is too much for you, Pig Latin will probably be better for you. If it's so easy that kids can learn it, you can too! It's a language you can learn in probably five minutes, so why not give it a try? You may also enjoy Ubbi Dubbi, where you place 'ub' before every vowel sound. It's also a very easy language to learn, although not quite as popular. The thing is, none of these are even real languages. They're just codes, and very simple codes at that. You could probably crask Pig Latin or Ubbi Dubbi rather easily. Viesa too, actually. But I still enjoy them occasionally, even if Pig Latin and Ubbi Dubbi are inefficient and easy to crack, and Viesa is easy to crack yet unneccesarily difficult. I do make real languages, but I never put in the effort to learn them to fluency. At least I make them at all. Here’s a fun game: I will open up a random page from a book, and tell you the first word I see. English. That’s the word. Stay tuned for more fun games as you read through this LTE. We’re back, and we’re gonna play the same game as before. Ready? Subject. Now we’re gonna do it again. Reading. And again. Itself. Constituent. Grammar. Colloquial. Black. Outline. Add. About four of those words were language related. You’ll never guess why! (Spoiler alert: it’s a conlanging book). I’m running out of ideas now. I’m just gonna generate a random word and try to talk about it. Forbid. That’s the opposite of “allow”, I’m pretty sure. I don’t really know what else to say. Well, I guess I failed at generating a topic I could talk about. You know what's weird? My favorite word hasn't been used once in this entire text. I'm about to change that forever. Epic. Yup, my favorite word is "epic". I use it on a regular basis. I say "That's epic" all the time. It's a word I can't live without. Hey, I've now written more of this text after the 4 month gap than before it! Just thought I'd share that fact. Also, I'm gonna try and write as much as possible in this LTE today. I've already written more today than the day I first said I was gonna write as much as possible, so that's a good sign. The thing is, I don't know what to write about. I need to write about something, otherwise I won't write at all and I won't accomplish my goal. Wait, what goal should I set? How many characters should I write today? I'm gonna try and get 10,000 characters. I've already written almost 5,000 today, so from here I just have to write the equivellant of everything I've already written today. I'm just gonna try it and see if I make it. Maybe sometime in the future I'll do a bigger goal, like 15,000 or even 20,000 in one day. Actually, I don't know if 20,000 would even be possible for me. It might be, but it sounds like somewhat of a stretch for me to write that much in a single day. We'll see how long 10,000 takes, though. I'm already doing a bad job at this. I haven't typed anything here in several minutes. I need a topic. Um, Vabungula, I guess? Basically, it's a conlang created by Bill Price in 1965. It amazes me how one can work on a single conlang for that long. Most of the conlangs I start making die after 15 minutes. Anyways, I really like it because... um, I don't know, actually. There's not really anything about it that's super interesting (other than how long it's existed), it's just his personal conlang. Maybe it's the amount of development that went into it. It has over 5,000 dictionary entries and several texts written in the language. I'm sure most people reading this don't care about my language related talk, but I gotta make this long. I'm desperate to reach my 10,000 character goal. I've got 4,000 to go. I just found a website that generates random art from a seed. I just put this entire text as the seed, and it generated something quite nice. I would put the picture here, but I want this LTE to be nothing but text, so I won't do that. I've been playing with this for a while now. Many of the seeds produce boring pictures, but some of them are nice. For example, I just used "e" as the seed and it produced a nice looking picture. "a" looks nice too, arguably nicer. I've been using nothing but the word "nice" to describe these pictures. Maybe it's time to get a bigger vocabulary? "b" looks, um, good? I don't have the right vocabulary for this. I also don't feel like doing every single letter, because the pictures take some time to generate. But if you want to do it for yourself, just go to random-art.org and try it out! By the way, this is another website I found through pointlesssites.com. You know, the same website that lead me to the FlamingChicken LTE, which lead me to begin writing this whole thing. But what made me discover pointlesssites.com? Vsauce mentioned it. But what made me discover Vsauce? YouTube Reccomendations, probably. But what made me discover YouTube? As far as I remember, my dad showed it to me when I was 6. So I would like to thank my dad for being the reason I started writing this. He's the one who showed me YouTube, which reccomended me Vsauce, which mentioned pointlesssites.com, which brought me to the FlamingChicken LTE, which inspired me to start my own LTE. If he had never shown me YouTube, I wouldn't be here writing this text, and you wouldn't be reading it. Well, that's probably not true, because I probably would have discovered YouTube by other means, thus leading me to Vsauce, leading me to Vsauce, leading me to pointlesssites.com, leading me to the FlamingChicken LTE, leading me to... okay, I really need to stop now. I've gone too far. But you know what I haven't gone too far with? This LTE. I don't think I even can go too far with writing this text. Unless this text gets so long that it surpasses the 1GB storage limit of Neocities. In which case, I'll need to upgrade to Supporter in order to get a 50GB storage limit. But what if the text gets so long that is surpasses that? I don't think I'll ever make it there. I mean, 50GB is about 50 trillion characters. So I think we're good. I still need to get to 10,000 by the end of today. I've got 1,500 to go. Currently watching a livestream. It's reminding me of when I used to livestream back in 2016. I still kinda miss those days. But at the same time, I was quite awkward and had zero social skills, so I'm not sure if I'd want to go back. At this point, everything I've written today is longer than what can fit on the screen at once. At least on my computer screen. It probably changes with different screen resolutions and devices. But anyways, it's pretty unusual for that much of the LTE to be written in a single day. I don't want to pressure myself into writing this much every day, though. Last time I forced myself to complete a certain amount of something every day, it was overwhelming and I ended up losing motivation, thus letting down all my fans who were anticipating the August 30th, 2016 release date. Okay, the amount of eager fans was probably a number you could count on one hand, but still. By the way, if you're wondering what this "something" was, it was GoAnimated Garbage: The Movie, which was supposed to be an hour long episode of a series I made to make fun of random GoAnimate videos. In case you're not the type of person who knows what GoAnimate is... hoo boy. Basically, it's a drag-and-drop animation website infamous for the "grounded videos" that people made with it, among other types of videos. It's this whole community that I neither can explain nor want to explain. But I had somewhat of an association with that community back in the day. On my YouTube channel, I used to make a genre of GoAnimate video known as the "OS video". Typically an OS video is where some sort of hated character within the GoAnimate community forcefully installs their operating system onto a user's computer, and the user has to deal with this OS until they eventually find a way to "destroy" it. I made five of these videos. In chronological order: Caillou OS, Boots OS, Franklin OS, Little Bill OS, and Crap OS X. Caillou OS is the most viewed video on my main channel, which is unsurprising since Caillou is pretty much THE character associated with the GoAnimate community. When I made that video, it was a big transition for my channel. The channel's name was changed from Infinite Budgets, which had been my name since 2013 when I made crappy Roblox videos, to Allisima. All of my old videos were deleted, with the exception of my "Barney Errors", which was yet another genre of GoAnimate video. Basically, a Barney error is when a user's computer/console/whatever session is interrupted by a "Barney Error", a message informing the user that Barney has been killed, and the device must not be turned off because it's an "important message". There's also a bomb that's placed in Barney's "lair", the timer for which is displayed in the error. The user gets some amount of "chances", and every time the device is turned off, the user looses a chance and the time until the bomb explodes decreases. Eventually, the user turns off the computer enough times that there are no more chances left, the bomb explodes, and some sort of punishment happens. These punishments can range from having to downgrade your operating system, to having your computer destroyed, and in extreme cases, even to death. I once made a whole channel for Barney Errors, where I made about twenty of them before quitting. After that, I eventually quit GoAnimate all together, but I still made Crap OS X, an OS video made with Powerpoint. I also made an interactive OS parody called Windows Poop Editon, again with Powerpoint. Before that, I also made one called "Atch OS" using my old Windows XP netbook. I just checked to see if my old Weebly website still exists, since there's an Atch OS download on there and I wanted to see if it dissapeared from existence or not. Appearantly it does! I'm getting so much nostalgia from this website. It's like a window into 2016, when I had fun making these videos on a regular basis. I'm way past my 10,000 character goal now. I'm kinda glad I set this goal, but again, I'm not gonna force myself to do it everyday. I think I'm gonna stop writing for today. Bye! Hey, I'm back. Yes, that hello wasn't original either, since I already said it once. Specifically, after my sister seized the LTE and started spamming. You remember that, right? I hope you read through this whole thing instead of just picking a random part (which just happened to be this part) and reading only a tiny bit. Nah, I'm just kidding. Read this text however you want to, it doesn't matter if you read this entire text from start to finish or not. I mean, I did put some cringy stuff in here, as I keep mentioning. But it's on the Internet, and since recently, on my homepage, so I know people are gonna read it. Really the only reason I'm making this is because I have a weird obsession for writing giant walls of text. Guess what? I just added translations of this LTE into various conlangs on my website! But they're all very incomplete, and I probably won't finish them ever... I mean, if I'm gonna finish any of them, 'twill probably be the Viesa translation since it's the easiest to do. Hey, 'twill's back! I remember the very beginnings of this LTE, when I first mentioned 'twill. That was 40,000 characters ago. Appearantly I'm measuring time with characters now. Hey, what's the average amount of text I write per day in this LTE? The four month gap probably significantly drops that amount. Let's see! The trouble is finding out when I started writing this LTE, because I don't know the exact date. I'm just gonna estimate that it was March 12, based on the amount of times I said goodnight before I said "Happy Pi Day". It's not a very accurate measurement, though, because sometimes I stop writing for the day without saying goodnight. But anyways, from March 12 to today, July 16, is 127 days. As of that previous sentence, there are 42,549 characters in this LTE. 42,549 characters divided by 127 days equals about 335 characters per day. That's not very much at all. To get an idea of how short that is, the first 335 characters of this LTE consist of about 64 words and 8 sentences. As I predicted, the four months of no activity had a big impact on this number. But what if we ignore the 4 month gap, which was from March 15 to July 9, I've only been working on this LTE for ten days. 42,549 characters divided by 10 days is about 4254 characters. That's much better. It might be that big because of the 12,600 characters I wrote yesterday. I said I wouldn't do it every day, but honestly, I'm feeling like doing a goal again today. I think I might even go a bit higher than yesterday. Let's do 15,000 characters! I have zero life outside of this LTE, anyways, so I think I'll make it. As long as I keep typing about random stuff for the entire day, I'll probably get past 15,000 easily. I think I'm insane. Literally all I do anymore is write this LTE. My mom is almost certainly concered for me, because I was in my room pretty much all of yesterday and my sister told her about how I'm trying to write the longest text ever. But enough about my descent into insanity for now. Let's get this LTE to over 55,000 characters today! This is probably the most meta LTE in existence. Like I've said, I talk about the LTE itself as much, if not more than anything else. By the way, if I were to write as much as I did yesterday every day, I would reach my goal in just 15 days. Now I'm tempted to do that, even though I said I wouldn't set a goal like that every day. I think I might end up doing it subconciously. I kinda wanna convince some other people I know online to start their own LTE. Wouldn't it be fun if we all had our own LTEs? They would probably all die within a day, but at least I wouldn't be the only one writing an LTE in 2019... The most recently updated LTE I've seen is the RainbowFluffySheep LTE, which I believe was last updated in late 2018. That wasn't really that long ago, but still, I don't think it's being updated anymore. Now let's do an LTE Timeline! The original FlamingChickens LTE was probably started sometime in 2004, and Hermnerps was started the same year. The FlamingChickens LTE stopped in 2005, while the Hermnerps LTE actually lived on until 2009, although edits after the end of 2004 were rather sparce. The Kenneth Iman LTE was started in 2013 and was last updated in 2015. The RainbowFluffySheep LTE both started and was last updated in March 2018. And of course, the WhileTrue LTE was started in March 2019 and is still being updated today. Wow, 15 years of LTEs! I think my LTE is the only one still being updated. It would be nice if someone else was writing their own LTE along with me. But 'twill be hard to convince other people to waste their lives writing a useless wall of text. You never know, maybe an LTE that stopped being edited years ago will come back from the dead. That seems kind of unlikely though. Very strange fact incoming. A certain word has not been used since the very beginning of this text. Ready to learn what it is? I shouldn't tell you, actually. Of course, that would ruin it. Unless you want me to ruin a really cool fact. Surely you wouldn't want that to happen. Okay, I'll just tell you, because I'm probably gonna end up using it again someday or another. The word is "various". If you search for "various" in this LTE, you'll only find it at the very beginning as well as here. And I was gonna keep this a secret, but just now I did this thing where if you take the first letter of each sentence, it spells out "VARIOUS". Kinda clever... I guess? Anyways, for those who are insane enough to be reading this entire thing from the start Wow, you have quite the dedication. My LTE isn't even the longest yet, but perhaps in the future, when it is the longest, people will be challenging themselves to read the entire thing. And maybe you're one of them! Perhaps you're reading this long after I've passed my goal, in which case you still have quite a bit to go. So I wish you luck on your Longest Text Ever reading adventure! I've been talking about LTEs all day. For the past 6,000 characters, in fact. I need to find something different to talk about. But first, I just had an idea pertaining LTEs. I should compare this LTE to the longest joke in the world! The longest joke in the world is 56,554 characters long, which is about how long I'm trying to get this LTE by the end of today. So if I reach my goal today, this text will be longer than the longest joke in the world! That's pretty cool. I would also be a quarter of the way to my goal. But let's get back to finding something different to talk about. I can't think of anything. My sister is singing a song about wanting Subway. I will never understand her. What goes through her brain that makes her decide "Yeah, I think it would be a good idea to sing about how I really want Subway"? I don't get how her brain works. She also likes eating paper. I asked her and appearantly she was perfectly okay with me writing that in here. She probably thinks nobody's ever gonna read this. But she's gonna be wrong! Eventually. Now she's asking me to write about how she likes yogurt. "Because I didn't used to", she says. She's eating mango yogurt, and she has water in a Gatorade bottle. Now I'm asking her what else I should put in this text. She says I should write about how there's wild sage where we live. Now she's having hot chocolate. She didn't ask me to write that, but I told her I was going to write it and she said okay. My sister might start her own Longest Text Ever, again. She says it will have only one word repeated throughout the entire text. But I told her that it defeats the purpose of an LTE. In the original FlamingChickens LTE, one of the very first things that is written is "I will just type, and type, and never, ever use copy and paste". Okay, I just made a webpage for her LTE (it's gonna be an actual LTE this time). Stay tuned for "The Best Longest Text Ever", as she calls it. I think it should have just been called "KKs Longest Text Ever" or something, but whatever. She types really slow, but I hope her LTE will be successful nonetheless. Warning: if you do go and read her LTE, she spoils Spiderman: Far From Home at the very beginning, so be careful about that. In fact, she's basically typing the entire plot of the movie. Well, that's one way to increase your LTE's length, I guess. My sister is listening to her terrible songs instead of writing her LTE. Well, she has her LTE page open, but she's not writing anything and is singing instead. Actually, she's writing stuff now, so ignore everything I said previously. She's still writing the entire plot. Her LTE is now 2,000 characters, which isn't very long, but she's only been working on it for an hour. Plus she's a slow typer. She types everything with one hand. It might take a while for her LTE to get to this level. But assuming she keeps writing it and doesn't forget about it after today, it'll get pretty long eventually. I still need to write 7,000 characters today. My sister is watching a cringy video made by our old elementary school. They became a French immersion school after I left. She found one of the videos I was in... oh god, I can't stand to look at that video. It hurts me to think about those days. My sister's LTE webpage has text now! Maybe I should create a page linking to all the LTEs I know about. I think I'll do that. Boom, it is done. I think I'm gonna also put a link to it on this page. There, that's done as well. Guys, I'm not sure if I'm gonna make it to 15,000. I still have 5,000 characters to go (I was completely off earlier, I don't have 7,000 left to go), and there's not much left of the day. In retrospect, it was probably a bad idea to make a goal for the day in the first place. After all, LTE writing is supposed to be fun! Sort of. There's zero need to make unneccesary deadlines. I think it just reduces the fun, as well as the part of my life that isn't just writing huge walls of text. From here on out, I declare character-per-day goals abolished. I will no longer make attempts to write a certain amount in a single day. I should have listened to my past self, who said not to do goals every day. But I didn't, and now I regret it. But anyways, here's a fun fact about this LTE: excluding my upcoming usage, the pronoun "he" is only used twice in this LTE, and they both refer to my dad. On the other hand, the pronoun "she" is used forty times! Almost all of these refer to my sister. Only one refers to my mom. I guess I just really like talking about the weird stuff my sister does. But not as much as being meta and talking about my own LTE. Here's another fun fact: "LTE" is the fourteenth most common word in this text! That's insane. It's more common than words you'd expect to be common, like "you", "I'm", "for", "be", "about", "was", and so on. I really need to talk about other things once in a while. But since I have zero creativity, I always resort to talking about the same topics. From what I've seen, most other LTEs are pretty diverse, but mine isn't at all. Honestly, this is likely the most boring LTE to read. But my absolute lack of creativity means it's probably gonna stay that way for a long time. I'm tired, so I'm gonna go to sleep. Maybe I'll be more creative by tomorrow. Probably not. Anyways, goodnight. Hey, I'm back, and I don't feel any more creative. But I did have a dream last night, so I'm gonna talk about that. Last night, I dreamt that I was in one of our old houses, and I saw that someone made a video roasting Viesa. They talked about how you shouldn't say "dog" in Viesa, because appearantly "deeg" is bad or something? I don't know. Then they said the rule where W becomes V is weird, but I don't remember the reason they said it. I didn't really care about how they roasted my language. Then I watched a Minecraft video for whatever reason, and then the dream ended. How do other LTE writers have so many topics to talk about? All I ever talk about is either LTEs themselves, or the fact that all I ever talk about is LTEs. There's no diversity. I very rarely talk about anything else. And when I do, it's usually about languages and lasts only a few sentences. There, I deleted it. Oh, you don't have any context. Basically I wrote a bunch of depressing stuff, then I decided to delete it all. I knew I was going to regret it later, in the same way I regret writing all that stuff about furries. Not that I think there's anything wrong with being a furry, it's just that it personally makes me uncomfortable looking back on it. I'm not even into that stuff as much anymore. I don't watch furry YouTube, and I don't talk about how much I want a fursuit/go to a convention. That's a part of me that's slowly disappearing. Okay, I'm gonna stop talking about that, because I literally just said how I regret talking about it in this text. You know, I've been feeling kind of down about this LTE lately, because as I just mentioned, all I ever talk about is this LTE itself, there's no diversity, blah blah blah. It's especially been like that ever since the four month gap. In fact, I barely talked about LTEs before that gap. It's like I lost all my creativity after four months. You know what? I'm officially gonna say this: If, for some reason, you are reading this before you decide you want to start reading this entire text, READ EVERYTHING FROM "WOW, IT HAS BEEN A WHILE" TO HERE AT YOUR OWN RISK, BECAUSE YOU WILL LIKELY DIE OF BOREDOM DUE TO THE MONOTONOUS TOPICS! There, now I'm gonna try and forget that half this LTE is the same exact boring topic. I will also try to avoid writing about the same exact boring topic for the rest of this text. Let's celebrate the End of Monotonous Topics (EMT) by talking about how we (my sister and I) had lunch and did various other things with our grandpa! So grandpa asked if we wanted to have lunch and spend an afternoon with him, and we said yes. Then he picked us up, and we went to a nearby town where we had lunch, went to a museum which was a house built in 1909 as well as the town's first hospital, and got ice cream from what is appearently one of the best ice cream places in the country, according to grandpa. So today was a fun day. I'm gonna go now. Bye! Hey, I'm back. That's the fifth time I've said that. I need to come up with more original... nah, whatever. Anyways, I had a dream last night which was basically a whole movie I don't remember most of. All I remember is playing a keyboard at the store for some reason, and that the dream ended with a random car horn. Oh, and there was Minecraft involved in the beginning, which I'm pretty sure is becoming a recurring theme in my dreams. I don't know why that happened, because I rarely play Minecraft anymore. Do any of y'all remember the DVD screensaver meme? That was one of my favorite memes. For those who don't know what I'm talking about, many DVD players had this screensaver where it was a DVD logo bouncing around the screen. The big moment that everyone anticipates is when the logo hits the corner of the screen perfectly, because, well, it's just so SATISFYING! I used to watch a livestream that was literally just this screensaver running endlessly. And when it hit the corner, it was a huge celebration for both me and everyone else watching. I got so excited when the logo hit the corner. My computer's screensaver is even still a DVD screensaver. But nowadays when I see it hit the corner, I don't have as much enthusiasm as I used to. I've just seen it too many times for it to be exciting anymore. Plus, the meme isn't even a thing anymore. I doubt that livestream is even still running. But you never know, so I'm gonna check to see if it's still going. Oh wow, it is! That was the last thing I expected to see in July 2019. But only four people are watching it, which makes sense. The title now says "DVD Logo Screensaver For 1 Year", even though it hasn't quite been going on for a year. But when it hits that point, perhaps that's when it will finally end? It should have ended months ago, if you ask me. Yup, I was right. There's a countdown on the livestream to when it ends, and it says 181 days, 9 hours, 12 minutes, and 3 seconds. Wow, the corner hit and wall hit numbers are much bigger now. The most corner hits I'd seen is around 1400 or so, but now it's at 4776! The wall hits used to be in the hundred-thousands, now it's at over two and a half million! Hello, I have returned. There, I came up with something original to say! Anyways, I just combined every single LTE I know of (including this one) and put it onto one single page on a Wikia wiki called "No Rules Wiki". That wiki exactly as you would expect from the title. I found it a while ago, and I thought it was about time I made a contribution, even if pasting over half a million characters into a single article is breaking some rule... I've been wanting to make Viesa an actual conlang for so long now. I think it's long overdue at this point. Hey, I'm back again. These sections are getting shorter and shorter each day. But oh well. I just discovered how much I like the word "number". I don't know why, but it's just so fun to say! I think I've liked that word ever since I was a toddler learning my numbers! I remember thinking it was a fun word even back then. At that time I had two little electronic toys: one was orange and for numbers, and one was purple and for letters. I'm pretty sure those were the colors. I also vaguely remember having a fan that lit up and displayed custom messages. I haven't seen anything like that since then. All I hear right now is Baby Shark being blasted upstairs. You know that song, right? I don't know who doesn't know it at this point. I can't think of a single person I've seen that doesn't know what that song is. Dang, ever since the EMT I haven't been writing as much in this text. Looks like LTEs were all I could talk about. Oh well. How many times have I said "oh well"? Probably a lot. About eight times, in fact. I'm back again. I went a full day without writing anything into this LTE yesterday! There were a lot of things happening that day, so I didn't feel like writing. I could've written at least a little bit, but I didn't. Time for me to use this LTE as my dream journal yet again! I had a dream where my domain was "exin" (or something like that) instead of "whiletrue", so that was a thing. I also had a dream where there was this game that I thought existed in the real world, but it didn't. Dreams do that sometimes. I don't remember much about the game, but it involved the Simpsons, I guess? Also, I was in a weird store where they had an... iCarly laptop? And a bunch of gift cards. That's all I remember. For now, at least. My sister does not like synthwave. She says "it's repetitive", "the sounds they use don't sound like music", and she doesn't like how it doesn't have lyrics. First of all, she's hypocritical because she always listens to the same songs on repeat. And why does it matter that it doesn't have words? Why does she think every single piece of music in existence has to have words? YOU BETTER WATCH YOUR OPINIONS THERE! (That was a reference to a cringy GoAnimator that no one reading this will get, unless you came to this website from my YouTube channel which you subscribed to during my OS video days). Anyways, synthwave is objectively the best genre of music. I remember hearing HOME - Resonance for the first time in a Discord voice chat, and it was magical. I wish I could listen to that song for the first time again. That was how I got into synthwave. You know what my favorite color combination is? Yellow text on a magenta background. Oh, and don't forget the Comic Sans. That is just pure beauty right there. In fact, it's used in the first frame (well, close enough) of "history of the entire world, i guess", which makes me love that video even more. We're at 60,000 characters, 1,000 sentences, and 12,000 words! Weird how all those counts hit such round numbers in one day, huh? I need to stick to the EMT, so I should stop talking about that. My sister is attempting to build a Lego city. Her goal is to have three buildings, since she doesn't have THAT much Lego. Have you noticed how quickly I've been switching topics in this text? That's because I can't talk about anything for a long time. That is, unless that thing is languages or LTEs. I am currently trying to revive a language my sister and I started making a while back. Sometimes my sister has days when she doesn't hate languages for some reason, then she ends up starting one. But of course, she regained her hate and abandoned it. Now I'm the only one working on the language. By the way, the language is called Lazay, which was the successor to Zula, the first language we made together which is now deleted. We started writing the language on paper, but then I started a Google Doc. I'm sure the papers are still here somewhere. I'm just too lazy to find them. I’m back again. I haven’t been ending these sections with goodbyes recently. But whatever. We’re on our way to IKEA to get a dresser for my room. We’re listening to Queens of the Stone Age right now, and I’m just waiting for “Fortress” to come on. I sing that song in Viesa, but I make up half of the lyrics. It goes: Ванавар јак фиртрас кува, ма башег ђара, ја сок. Try and translate that! The song is playing now. I like this song. We’re back from IKEA now. Actually, we’ve been home for hours now, and we’ve already built the dresser. My computer crashed (but don’t worry, I started writing this in Google Docs on my phone), and now Google Chrome won’t open. So I have to use Microsoft Edge for now. I’m gonna sleep now. Goodnight! Hello, I'm back. My sister is brushing my back with a hairbrush, and I don't know why. I asked her what I should write about (because I have zero creativity), and she said I should write about that. I'm gonna type whatever comes to my head now. Hi, I'm a boring human being who has zero creativity whatsoever and still happens to be writing an LTE. Isn't that insane? How could this be? Nobody knows, and nobody will ever know. It is a strange mystery that has yet to be solved. Hmm, I wonder if I should go and eat pancakes now? I'm so random right now. In fact, there's an entire subreddit for that: r/iamsorandom. You should check it out! I mean, you don't really have to, but it would be nice if you did. I use Reddit a lot, but I only use it for language-related stuff. Well, I make posts in language-related subreddits, but the non-language subs that I look at are ones that I don't post anything to, because I know nothing about literally anything that isn't languages. And heck, I don't even know much about languages! I only make English codes and call them "conlangs". Sort of. I usually don't actually call them conlangs, but I use them for such purposes. I speak Viesa as if it were a real language, but it simply is not. Why did I make Viesa in the first place? Well, you see, it all started out as a joke for April Fools' Day. I called it "the new universal language", despite it literally being a cipher of English. What!? A cipher of English being a universal language? How silly! What a funny joke, right? Maybe? Somewhat? Anyways, I then made a SECOND VERSION! DUN DUN DUN! This second version had CLICKY SOUNDS which, spoiler alert, dissapear in the next version of Viesa. Sad, right? RIP CLICKS 2018-2018 NEVER FORGET! I also added WACKY GRAMMAR STUFF and PRONOUNS! WOAH! How crazy! Then I made the next version: VERSION 3.0! This version added CYRILLIC! (you know, that alphabet the Russians use, as well as the Serbs, whose version of the Cyrillic alphabet I stole for Viesa. Hehehe!) And that's the entire history of Viesa, explained in a Zany way! Do you like how I capitalized "Zany" there? Aren't capital letters so cool? They let you YELL AND SCREAM AT THE TOP OF YOUR LUNGS! They add EXCITEMENT! And most of all, they let you capitalize words like This. lowercase letters are also cool. without them, we'd all be yelling and screaming all the time. That would be pretty tiring, wouldn't it? I see two water bottles. One is empty, while the other still has some water in it. The empty one is blue, and the one with the water is pink. I should also mention that the blue one is mine, while the pink one is my sister's. I got that water bottle because I lost my other one at school. But GUESS WHAT? I FOUND IT IN THE LOST AND FOUND! Wow! Now I had two water bottles. How Wacky and Crazy and Zany and Bizzare and all those adjectives that perfectly describe this epic moment! Wow, writing your mind is a great way to increase your LTEs length! Before I was actually THINKING about what I was writing. But now I barely do, and it's greatly improving my LTE! Except the overuse of capital letters might throw the reader off guard a little because of how sparingly I've used them in the past, but oh well. I could fix it, but I don't feel like it. I want to continue writing, but I need to sleep now. Goodnight! Hi, I'm back again. My computer crashed AGAIN, and I was ignorant enough to not save my work, so that means I have to start this part of the text all over again. That's quite unfortunate. But did I mention that my Google Chrome is working again? That's the good news. It's good news because Google Chrome has all my logins, websites, and stuff like that. Hopefully you know what I mean when I say that. Maybe you do, maybe you don't. I don't even know what I mean right now! I'm probably insane right now. Especially since I'm writing this right now, as I have been for about 18 days minus the four month gap... I think. I hope I did that right. As I've said before, I'm bad at math. My sister just read the entirety of what I've written today for some reason. My sister just sang "I want your computer to crash again because I'm evil". She IS evil if she wants my computer to crash. At least I'll have this section saved. In fact, right now I'm pressing Ctrl+S after every sentence! Including this one. And this one. Also this one. I think you get the point now. My sister keeps typing into this LTE without my consent, and I keep having to delete it all. It's pretty annoying. Hey, flashback to when I said that way at the beginning of this text! You know, the part where I talk about the Teen Titans Go episode called "Waffles" where the word "Waffles" is said a hundred-something times. You know what else is said a hundred something times (in this LTE)? The letter J. So far it's been used 115 times in this LTE. That's your Interesting LTE Fact of the Day! Well, not really "daily", but whatever. Here's a story: Once upon a time, people got tired of starting off their stories with "Once upon a time", so they stopped doing that. But one person decided not to stop using "Once upon a time", and used it at the beginning of this story. And that person is ME! The end. Wasn't that a lovely story? You're probably not thinking that. Again, I'm not creative in any way whatsoever. That's why I don't usually write stories and instead write giant walls of text full of meaningless information, like the one and only WhileTrue's Longest Text Ever that you're reading right now. Hopefully nobody died of boredom from reading between "Wow, it has been a while" and the EMT. That's the most boring part of the LTE! 90% of it is just me talking about LTEs themselves. How uninteresting is that? Very uninteresting. Penguins. What are they? I don't know. What am I even writing right now? I haven't a clue. Isn't it weird that I said "haven't a clue" like that? Normally "haven't" isn't used if it's alone as a verb, as in "I haven't my keys". Who says that? Nobody, that's who. And yet "I haven't a clue" is an actual thing I've heard people say. Anyways, AFRICA! That was random, but let's discuss it anyway. Africa is a well-known song by Toto. It's a good song. I can kinda sorta play it on piano? Maybe? I don't know. Another song I can play on the piano is All Star by Smash Mouth. You know, the Shrek song? Anyways, I once made a video called "All Star but it's played on a Sesame Street piano" and it got almost a million views. It's been stuck at 900,000 for what seems like forever now. I'm gonna check to see if it's at a million now. I doubt it, though. Nope, still at 926,000 views. And I doubt it's gonna get any more, to be honest. It had a good run though. My sister is chugging applesauce. She thinks she's epic because of it. I don't know anymore. I seem to keep saying that after everything I type at this point. It's strange. Hello, I have returned after yet another long absence. When was the last time I added to this? I think it was somewhere in July. So yeah, it’s been three months, as it is now October 17, 2019. The end of the decade is approaching fast. I’m a bit excited, because I’ll have significant memories from more than just one decade! My earliest significant memories started in Kindergarden, which was in 2010. This means that I only really remember one decade. But now that an entirely new decade is coming up, I’ll be able to remember another! Part of me feels like I shouldn’t be excited over this, since the boundaries between years is arbitrary, and a decade is 10 years only because we count in base 10, so if we counted in base 12 or something, a decade would be 12 years long. That was kind of a run-on sentence, but I don’t really feel like making this text perfect, anyway. Have you heard of the Library of Babel? libraryofbabel.info is a website containing every possible combination of the lowercase letters a-z, space, comma, and period. The library is divided into hexagonal chambers. Each hex contains four walls. Each wall contains three shelves. Each shelf contains 32 volumes. Each volume contains 410 pages of 3200 characters each. Everything you could ever say or write is on this website. Even this LTE! See for yourself: https://libraryofbabel.info/bookmark.cgi?lte. Okay, that’s only the first bit of it, but every other bit of this LTE is somewhere in the library! In fact, here’s the next bit: https://libraryofbabel.info/bookmark.cgi?lte:1. It’s split up into about 20 different pages. I don’t feel like putting links to all of them here. It also removes punctuation that the library doesn’t use, like the exclamation point, question mark, colon, and so on. But it’s pretty mind-blowing stuff, if you ask me. If you try and browse the library yourself though, you probably won’t find much more than total gibberish. It’s crazy to think that everything we could ever possibly say or write is massively outweighed by meaningless strings of letters and punctuation.

#Lol i tried also im not a furry ignore the furry part #nor am i young

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writtenbyhappynerds · 5 years ago

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Fanfic 102: Unit 3, Diversity

Hello! Welcome back. This week we’re going to talk about Diversity. Beyond how to insert diversity into your writing, the nuances, and the ways you can create a believable character. The Editor and I understand how sensitive of a subject this is, and wanted to take the time to make sure the information we are doling out is inclusive and well-written and quality. There is often a lack of diversity in media and books, and often when it is included it’s shoe-horned in for brownie points. We understand that, and we want the up-and-coming writers to be better than those before them. The two most important things to remember are the following: no diversity beats terribly-done diversity, and, the way that the character is diverse is not and should never be their whole personality. We will be discussing LGBT, ableism, and race.

The LGBT community is a vibrant community with members of all shapes and sizes. The most important part when writing a character who is gay or trans is that this aspect is part of their identity but it is not their whole identity. When we discussed characterization in Fanfiction 101, we talked about not reducing side characters or members of the cast to one-note aspects of their personality. The same applies here, and a character’s sexuality or gender expression should not be at the forefront of every conversation. You shouldn’t create these characters with their sexual or gender identity being at the forefront of your mind, because you wouldn’t do that for a straight or cis character. You wouldn’t sit down to make a character with your first thought being ‘ok but they have to be cis,’ so it’s silly to do the same to a gay or trans or nonbinary character. Make them like you would any other character. What changes would be aspects of their identity, or values they hold near and dear to their heart or motivations. Those may be different than a straight character or a cis-gender character.

If you’re straight or cis and writing a gay or trans character, you need to do your research to accurately portray the character in a realistic and believable way. An example we love is Todd Chavez in Bojack Horseman, who portrayed an asexual character, and Todd’s journey as he came into his own. Bojack Horseman also portrayed polyamory with Hollyhock, who was the adopted daughter of 8 dads. What we enjoyed was that Todd’s sexuality added dimension to his character. It didn’t reduce him to being the token LGBT representative, and it didn’t force him into a box where he could only focus on LGBT issues. Todd was and is so much more than that, and his sexuality is a part of his story, but it’s not the sole story.

Rick Riordan is a master of writing experiences that are not his own, and he cheated the system by basing his characters off of people he knew. This is a method that you can use. You can base your characters off of friends, public figures, etc. If you decide to not do that, googling what transgender men and women have to experience or what top surgery is isn’t enough. I would suggest looking to Youtube, where many transgender and LGBT influencers have talked about their experiences. I would suggest looking to forums, Reddit being one of them. Yahoo Answers is also a really good source. What you want is as many experiences as you can get: ones that are similar, and ones that contrast. The goal is to combine them and make your own character in a melting pot of other experiences. You owe it to not only those who read your story but yourself to do the research. You want your characters to represent the communities you do, and the ones you don’t as best you can.

Let’s move on to people of color (POC). The same rules we’ve discussed prior apply: A poorly written POC is worse than no POC (Looking at you Baljeet). In addition, that POC’s ethnicity should not be their entire personality, and if you are creating a character just to say that you have made a POC, then you have already failed. There are many issues we see when we find people of color in fanfiction. Among them are language barriers, naming, and a misinterpretation of cultural values and experiences.

Putting words in a foreign language in the middle of fanfic is very, very common. You see it everywhere. In Avengers fanfic it’s Russian or Norse. In Batman fanfic, it’s any of the languages that the Batkids speak. The writers put in these conversations that sometimes go on for pages in another language, and then add an author’s note at the bottom with the translation. This is awkward, and when you read books, this is something you never see. If you want your character to speak another language, you don’t need to actually write the other language. Putting a few sentences through Google translate doesn’t make you a better or more dedicated writer than someone who adds the tag: “she was screaming now, all her words coming out in rapid French.” Tags can be used to dictate a change in language, and I encourage you to use them. Now, there are of course exceptions to this rule, and those exceptions usually lie in food, names, and things. Calling someone a name that is in another language is fine. Describing food in another language is fine, and things are generally ok. But that’s just for you. Your characters also have to speak the language.

No one worth their salt or heritage is going to go through a moment where they start out speaking in their fluent tongue and then “forget” to switch back and forth between English and their native language. It is so incredibly unrealistic and awful and it lets the reader know someone who is not actually bilingual wrote this piece of work. When you learn two languages, here’s what really happens: you forget words. You have to stumble through words in your own language before you get to the one you need. You call things, “that thing.” You point. You sometimes say “what’s that called?” you find aspects of the second language, or even your own language stupid and you don’t want to do it. You get words mixed up and you make mistakes. That’s all okay, and that all happens, and should be written as such. One of my teachers never forgot the French word for spider because she got the shit scared out of her by one and didn’t know what to call it when she needed someone to kill it. My aunt took 3 years to learn Turkish by immersion and now can speak it fluently. You don’t even need to be fluent in every language, and many people only know a handful of words in one or a few sentences in another. That’s totally okay! If anything that’s more realistic because it’s super hard to learn a new language and speak it fluently. Don’t force your characters into a box like that. Let them make mistakes.

Culture is a huge thing when writing POC. You have to keep in mind that culture shifts, and what may have been culturally huge for one set of characters won’t be as significant for others. You want your characters to interact with their culture in a way that is realistic, and not reductive. Kelly from the Office is a great example, as she invites the office to celebrate Diwali with her. Lara Jean from To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before is another example. We see her eat Korean food at home, and in the books, she still celebrates Korean holidays. Where the shift comes into play can be seen in Never Have I Ever where Devi is not as Indian as her parents, and we see her struggle with the culture. She still goes to Hindu association things, Ganesh puja, and she wears Indian clothes. However, she’s still a normal teenager out chasing boys and worrying about colleges. In Superstore the Muslim character prays 5 times a day, and still works at the grocery giant. The big takeaway is that these people have lives that include, but aren’t limited to their cultures. They aren’t reduced to stereotypes.

Naming characters is already rough. However, naming characters from a different background than you are even tougher. The Editor has a lot of anger towards Panju Weasley, from Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. Her exact words, as they were texted to me:

>Like Cursed Child where Ron and Padma has a kid named Panju.

>What the fuck is a Panju?

>That’s literally the dumbest name in the world

>All she had to google was Indian names.

>There are so many fucking lists.

>I dont even think it’s an actual name. Like it might be a nickname for some people but I dont think people have actually named their child panju.

As usual, the Editor is very correct. There is a simple solution to getting around what we’ll call the Panju Dilemma- a phrase which we’ll use to describe terrible naming choices of POC. In Fanfiction 101 we had an entire unit centered around naming. Nameberry.com exists, and if they don’t have it all you need to do is Google the country of origin and the sex of the OC. Sometimes you can add in the year the OC was born, to really get a feel for the time period, but that doesn’t always work. For example, in one of our stories we have a cluster of kids from Syria. When it came time to name said kids, we Googled: popular Syrian names 2003. That’s how we got our OCs: Reem, Nour, Nizar, Jano, and Stella. Naming is very important, and you owe it to your readers and your characters to do them justice, and not saddle them with a terrible name.

The final note of diversity we want to talk about is actual ability. Ableism is often overlooked in movies, shows, or books. It is something that is shoehorned in as an extra adversary for the OC or the cast, only *gasp* This time the biggest adversary is themselves. I hate that. I want to eliminate that because as someone with a disability and someone who has worked with kids with disabilities, you can absolutely write and code characters like that in so long as, and say it with me now, it is not their entire personality.

You can totes write a character with anxiety and/or depression, so long as you don’t snub these very real mental disorders that millions face on a daily basis. You also have a duty, especially with anxiety and depression, to not glorify, glamorize, or romanticize either. Do not romanticize self-harm. Do not romanticize anxiety. Do not romanticize depression. They are not cruel tricks of life that befall beautiful intelligent women. It is not “tragically beautiful.” Depression and anxiety and self-harm are not a paragraph for you to lament on while the OC gazes longingly out the window at her lover. Anxiety keeps some people from talking on the phone they’re so nervous. It gives girls panic attacks in mall food courts because they don’t know what’s going on anymore. Depression isn’t your OC watching the rain in a hoodie and sweats, it’s not showering for days on end because you can’t find the motivation to. It’s having insomnia because you can’t sleep. Self-harm is not an OC’s love interest holding their wrists and telling them to stop. It is deep pain and numbness and hurting yourself to try and feel something. It is rubbing Neosporin on your cuts and hoping they go away. It is forcing your friends to keep it a secret because you don’t want anyone to know because what if they take it away from you. These mental disorders are not yours to romanticize. They are yours to show the growth and power and strength of your characters. They are yours to use to show how trauma has affected your character and can represent normality behind mental health and emotion and talking about things like this. Even more so than girls, writing a male OC with anxiety or depression is more empowering because you are allowing a character to talk about their feelings when that isn’t seen as acceptable by their sex. If you feel you are able to take that plunge, and you can do the adequate research to represent the disorder well, go for it.

In addition to mental health, physical disabilities are often overlooked. I have a chronic illness. I have never seen in a book, movie, TV show, or fanfiction anyone with a chronic illness, let alone my chronic illness. That in of itself is a broad term, and I’ll let chronic illness mean anything from lupus and POTS to asthma and anemia. These disabilities make a character have to work harder, but hey, look at Captain America. The boy had every disability under the sun and he got out alright. No one is going to make changes for you. You have to be the change you want to see. If I want OCs with chronic illnesses, I have to write them and do them justice by not only my community but the communities that I don’t represent. Jeremy Scott’s The Ables is a great example of writing disability and using it as part of, but not a character’s entire identity. The main characters all have superpowers but are put in a class that doesn’t allow them to use said powers. This is because they are all disabled. The main character is blind and telekinetic, another can read minds but is in a wheelchair, another is a genius but has cerebral palsy. Their disabilities are a minor obstacle, but not the big bad, and that is a great way to write disability. People who live with physical disabilities or chronic illnesses have to deal with said limitations every day. To us, as time goes on it becomes less of the monster at the end of the story and more of an everyday beast. It becomes normal, and there are bigger things for us to worry about than just our disease. This speaks for every aspect of diversity we have covered in this chapter: The people with said note have to live with it every day. It is a common enemy, not the final boss. To treat it as such is to say that it is our biggest concern in life. I wish my chronic illness was my biggest concern, but I have other fish to fry.

What we have done here is not an all-inclusive list of diversity. This chapter took 2 weeks to write because the Editor and I wanted to do right by our community. Not just the communities we proudly represent but the communities we don’t. There are many more nuances and aspects to diversity that are out there, and what we have presented is our best. Yet it is still incomplete. If there is something important that you feel we have left out, we sincerely apologize. We acknowledge that what we have written here is not all-encompassing for diversity. We wanted to talk about issues that are common occurrences. However, what we have covered is not the end-all of what’s out there. We apologize for the delay, and to make up for it, our next unit Writing Children will be published at the same time as this one. We sincerely apologize for the delay.

Xoxo, Gossip Girl

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