#i love sharing passages from wips so thank you

[primewritessmut]

3, 27, and 29 for ao3 wrapped? thanks for your services in 2023 prime i’m super excited for what you’re cooking in 2024

Hiiiii! Thank you for reading my work (which I assume you do) and begin excited for more things. It's still unreal to me that people read what I write so ❤️❤️

3. What work are you most proud of (regardless of kudos/hits)?

Definitely Songs for the Zombie Apocalypse. There were so many goals I had behind that work outside of whatever the plot turned out to be and to have it finished and to love the way it turned out is just... it's good.

I fully understand why it is (probably) my least read Spideypool work and I know that people are going to be pissed about the ending but it's exactly what I set out to write at the beginning of the year and I'm so so proud of it.

27. What do you listen to while writing?

Oh my god. It is a joke/known truth within my writing circle that I am not a musically motivated neurodivergent. I honestly tend to write in silence (my brain is loud enough, thank you very much) but, when I do listen because there are other, more annoying noises, competing, it's usually something like medieval lofi or white noise.

It can't be songs that I know or recognize (so not orchestral versions of childhood favorites or 90s lofi or the soundtrack of The Nutcracker) otherwise my brain will get snagged on the song and not the writing.

29. Favorite line/passage you wrote this year?

To be honest, I have no idea. I write so much (like too much really) that there's no way for me to remember a particular line or passage that stood out to me. I really should have a side doc to dump in the things I'm really proud of, but then that would get hugely long and unwieldy and, I don't know. I'm usually most enamored by whatever I've written that day because I, of course, think I'm witty and hilarious.

So instead, I'm just going to share some passages I wrote today since... yeah, those are currently my favorite, I guess.

His hands are free, mostly because he’s in a fucking library and doesn’t anticipate having to fight off any irate librarians. There’s no way they could know about how big his late fee is at the Regina Public Library. Right? (Chapter 29 of A Particular Set of Skills)

Usually, he’s so careful about what he says, threading the smallest of needles with his words and using them to sew the world into the shape he wants. But he hadn’t meant to say that. (Chapter 5 of He Speaks Daggers)

The man leans back and gives Mobius a smile, all teeth and charm. He’s always thought there was an implied threat to bite hidden inside that smile, but also the promise that you might just like it. (Lokius AU WIP)

[carlos-in-glasses]

Fic Pride Friday - on a Saturday!

Thank you for the tag @freneticfloetry @lemonlyman-dotcom @bonheur-cafe

@literateowl @ladytessa74 @liminalmemories21 🧡 And for giving me a reason to create a banner for non-WIP tag games.

Rules: Post your favourite line or passage from as many of your published works as you’d like. Let yourself feel proud of your creations! Tag as many people as you post snippets, so your fellow fic friends can be proud, too.

I've opted to share from three fics- Suddenly in the Silence, Where All This Love Comes From, and Wrestling Angels:

Suddenly, in the Silence:

"I think the closet is haunted," TK says, fumbling the buttons of his lapelled pajama shirt. Carlos faces the opposite side of the room. "But it's from Ikea." "Not that one." TK throws an arm towards the white pre-fab nothingy unit that had housed their pajamas. "I mean the old Reyes relic." "My dad's tatarabuelo built that," Carlos says defensively. And occupies it now, TK thinks but does not say. Instead, he opts for, "It might be fun to sleep in your old bedroom like we did that time before. Snuggled up in that creaky twin with your adorable horse comforter over us." "My old room," Carlos breathes a laugh, "Is the most haunted in this house." "With memories, though, not ghosts."

Where All This Love Comes From

A single tear slips from Carlos' eye. Years ago, there was a young man in New York City called TK Strand and he had no idea that in Austin, Texas, a stranger called Carlos Reyes was aching, yearning, pining for exactly him. He had no idea how loved he was going to be by someone he had yet to meet. He had no idea how wonderful he was as a person with or without a partner – but he was about to find out. That's why you have to keep living, Carlos thinks, so you can find out.

Wrestling Angels

But love is going to come into his life, and it won’t be what he’ll expect, because it’s going to be TK Strand, a firefighter who shows up in Austin from Manhattan following a relapse. He’s a little fierce and rough and moody and funny. He’ll bring disorder to the orderly life he’s about to work so hard to create for himself and himself alone. TK will cause him pain, and he’ll push TK’s buttons, and then it’s going to work out, and he’s going to marry him. And TK is going to be the one to ask. Love is going to be powerful, runaway, gutting, enormous – yet weirdly and utterly defined by the small moments as much as the major events. It’s going to feel physical and invisible, like storm winds that take his breath and knock him off his feet. He’s going to have sex. He’ll have it with a few guys before TK, and every time with each of those guys, it will be somewhere on a sliding scale of outright bad, awkward, embarrassing, mediocre, good, better, great, fantastic. With TK it will be different. Supercharged, mind-blowing, right from the start, and it will also be gentle, romantic, connective in a new way. It will always be a deeper experience than with anyone else. It’s going to mean something real every time, even from the beginning when TK insists that it’s not going to, and Carlos will pretend as much as he can that he doesn’t mind.

I know I'm late so might have missed things but open tag and tags below:

@reyesstrand @paperstorm @cold-blooded-jelly-doughnut @heartstringsduet

@vineofroses @theghostofashton @lightningboltreader @chaotictarlos

@goodways @welcometololaland @orchidscript @rmd-writes

@strandnreyes @im-overstimulated-and-im-sad @chicgeekgirl89

@sznofthesticks @nancygillianmvp @safeaswrites @my-little-tilly

@sugdenlovesdingle @carlos-tk @honeybee-taskforce @sanjuwrites

@alrightbuckaroo @never-blooms

@fallout-mars - If you want to share/haven't already! No pressure ever! ❤️🩷🧡💛💚💙🩵💜

[hawkland]

Art Masterpost: The Beginning Story by emmbrancsxx0 (@valleydean) Art by sidewinder (@hawkland)

When I saw an endverse story up for claims in this year's @deancashorrorfest — particularly one exploring the beginnings of how it all came to be — I knew I had to get my grubby, greedy hands on it. When I found out it was written by none other than @valleydean, I may have made some hqppy screeching noises to rival Castiel's true voice. Getting to do art for one of my favorite writers is always exciting, if sometimes anxiety-inducing, but I ended up having an absolute blast working on these with Mallory and am really happy with how they turned out. Thank you for being such an amazing partner to work with, and I'm so excited for everyone else getting to read the story now!

Thank you as well to @kingdumbass for organizing Horrorfest once again, and creating one of my favorite little Destiel communities on the net. It's always a ton of fun and I love how you keep the server going & engaging year round.

Some rambling comments on the art & my process below the cut.

As usual these were all done in watercolor with a little bit of black & white acrylic pen work for fine details and lines. I used rough/cold press paper for all of these to keep a consistent feeling and because it's always my favorite for doing any portraits and where I want a lot of blending control.

The hardest thing for me was deciding which of the many memorable scenes and moments I wanted to illustrate in the time I had available. I had a pretty clear vision for the title art early on: to show Dean & Cas at the beginning of it all, with a collage of elements of destruction behind them and doing the title text in the "Croatoan graffiti" style. There were a bunch of different reference shots combined for that one: screencaps from 5x04, a later-season shot of Dean & Cas walking together to get their positions how I wanted, etc. My Cas "face" reference was actually from Stonehenge Apocalypse as I wanted him looking a little more human/hopeful than standard s4-5 Cas as he's pretty low on grace but still has a little "angel mojo" left.

(As Mallory commented when I shared it as a WIP, "That's a man who's about to be destroyed!" :D D:)

I'm also really glad I was able to get the painting to Mallory at DC-Con! You can see in the pic that it's pretty big (16"x20") to get all that detail in!

For the next piece, there's a small scene of Dean and Cas on the road under smoke-filled skies, past a "God Saves" billboard that just struck me. I'd just driven out to Pittsburgh and back on the PA Turnpike so used some quick reference snaps I took combined with photos of the hazy skies from the Canadian wildfires earlier this year to get the atmosphere I wanted. I tried to keep some of the same washed-out colors and feeling of the title piece for that, save the color of the sky.

For the rest, I wanted to do one piece each of Cas and Dean at critical moments in their journey through the story. Cas facing himself in the shattered glass of a pharmacy cabinet was a moment I knew I had to try to capture. It reminded me of that amazing shot of Misha in Gotham Knights, with Harvey and the smashed mirror, so that was definitely in my mind as a visual reference.

Cas himself is a combination of some Purgatory screencaps and some out-of-character Misha pics from here and there to get his hair the way I wanted it to look (even if I ended up painting over most of it with interference silver watercolor to create the effect of the shattered glass. Here's an in-progress look:

The Dean rooftop piece is one I'd had in my head as soon as I read the passage in the story, but it was the last piece I tackled. The city in flames behind Dean was pretty much done in one shot as a spontaneous wet-in-wet wash...though it was a little eerie and unsettling working on it this past week with current events playing out on the tv while I painted.

Finally, I really wanted to do a piece showing Dean and Cas as they are near the end of the story compared to how they started out. This one came together in a really fast burst of inspiration - I think one day drawing and two days painting because it's smaller than the others (12"x6") and I wanted it to be really close up and intimate. Drawing:

Poor boys have been through a lot. And it's only going to get worse )-:

Anyway, that's more than enough from me. Have you gone to start reading the story yet? If not, go there now! Bookmark! Read! Leave lots of love in the comments! Reblog and check out the rest of this year's Horrorfest collection while you're there!

[joelalorian]

wip wednesday

Thank you for the tag @sizzlingcloudmentality! I actually have something to share after a couple weeks of the crippling inability to write a single word.

I'm about halfway through the rough draft of my Marcus Moreno fic for @perotovar's Offering of Frith challenge, so here's a little peek:

The people of Norway cheered when the Heroics delivered the final blow to the blight that menaced the women of their country for weeks. The skies cleared and birdsong once again echoed through the air as if the Norse Gods themselves expressed their heartfelt thanks.

Marcus Moreno looked up from a knelt position, still catching his breath after the hard-fought battle, to see a weathered old man standing before him with a toothless grin. “Tusen takk,” the old man said in a raspy voice roughened by age. Placing one wrinkled hand on Marcus’ shoulder, the old man reached out with the other and it took Marcus a moment to realize the old man held something in his hand, extending it in offer. Instinctively, Marcus stumbled to his feet, a gloved hand stretching out to meet the old man’s. He stared in wonder as the old man gently placed a metal pendant emblazoned with an intricate Norse knot into his hand. Like the old man himself, the emblem had been weathered by the passage of time, yet remaining ever sturdy, the black leather rope attached to it brand new and tied in a neat knot. Marcus stared at it in wonder, wide brown eyes tracing the never-ending pattern of knotwork as the metal gently vibrated through his glove. His gaze dragged upwards from his hand to meet the milky eyes of the old man; eyebrows raised in question. “A symbol of our gratitude, a thousand thanks, if you will,” the old man said in English. Arthritic fingers grasped the thin strip of knotted leather and reached upwards to place it over Marcus’ head. “Said to be blessed by the Norse goddess Frigg, wife of Odin. May it bring you love and harmony in this life and beyond.” Too stunned to form words, Marcus nodded with a warm and grateful smile as the gift buzzed against his chest, calling to his heart.

No pressure tags to the following lovelies and any others who want to play: @guiltyasdave @lanaispunk, @punkshort @burntheedges. Sorry if you've been tagged already!

[thursdayinspace]

💌✅🤲

Thank you!

for this ask game

💌 How do you feel about comments and feedback?

I love it. A lot. Comments are a big part of what keeps me motivated to share. And sometimes you make friends in comment sections! (And honestly, I think this fandom is good at commenting, so much better than any others I've been in.) I love getting comments and I love commenting.

✅ What's something that appears in your fics over and over and over again, even if you don't mean to?

Ohhh. I feel like there are a lot of things like that I have to watch out for. I've realized that every time I need to add dialogue to break up an introspective passage so it won't get boring, I make them talk about dinner plans. Like there's no other casual conversation topic. Character 1 is looking at character 2 and having thoughts about them until character 2 asks "do you want to order a pizza for dinner?" Some variation of that all the time. I even googled conversation topics once. That did not help, because "name three traits that describe your personality" is actually *worse*.

🤲 Would you please share a snippet of a wip?

Yes! This one is from a fic that's almost finished:

He died once, but that time, it turned out he was alive.

He is alive when he walks away from her, but this time, he thinks, he must actually be dead. He has to be. Life cannot possibly hurt this much.

No contact for so long, the random email now and then for a while, and then nothing. Her absence sits like a black hole in his chest, sucking in every last bit of light. He aches for her, love like poison in his veins, making him lose focus, driving him to insane heights, leaving him light-headed and sick to his stomach. She is his only cure.

And then, it’s over. Then, everything goes to hell.

[the-eclectic-wonderer]

5, 18 & 19 for the fanfic ask!

Hello and thank you for the questions!!

5. first sentence of the fifth paragraph of an unpublished WIP

“I have to say, Blanche,” Rose says, settling back against Blanche’s side, “I know you explained it to me, but I still don’t get it.”

18. if you keep them, share a deleted sentence or paragraph from a published fic

I don't really keep deleted sentences/paragraphs, unless they're full concepts for a scene that I might want to use in another WIP, but I did find a couple of sentences from an early draft of i would have said impossible [...] that got heavily edited by the final cut. I'll bold the parts that got kept in the final work:

"She likes to think she hid it well. She tried to, at least; bit back the most acidic jokes, tried to keep a hold on her sarcasm. It's not her roommates' fault if she's had a bad day, is it? So she tries. She listens, and she's patient, and she's affectionate -- and they seem happy. That must count as a success.

And yet, when she's finally alone in her room and ready to call it a night -- then Rose comes, carrying tea and cookies on a tray.

It's strange. She told Ma earlier that she'd like to be alone tonight, and before the door opened she only wanted to get into bed and forget everything until tomorrow morning. Then Rose came in, and she'd be lying if she said a single hint of her perfume and a single glance at her reassuring smile aren't enough to calm her nerves."

The gist of the passage remained more or less the same, but I hope it counts anyway!

19. the most interesting topic you’ve researched for a fic

I'm not sure I can choose the most interesting one -- I love learning and I've had a lot of fun with every rabbit hole I've found myself in for a fic! The most charming one, though, was definitely the little ornithology detour I went on while I was writing sonata for trio, which was a classic case of 'I only needed to find the right simile to add in this sentence, how the hell did I end up on the Wikipedia page for the American Robin?'. I learned a lot, and birds are so cute -- especially robins!! I had a great time reading about them :)

(I'm not counting my research on karst and sinkholes as a valid answer for this questions, because I already knew the topic well enough, but I did spend a lot of time fact-checking what I wrote. I don't want to spread misinformation!)

[✍️ more fic writer asks!]

[mad-c1oud]

Eating your essays like ten course meals frfr :D

I really want to know the bone things now though 0-0 share the worldbuilding (only if you want to ofc!!) And also, with saltwater vs freshwater slimes, because of the biology difference, would they sort of have it in a we don't like each other/refuse to interact with each other because of it? Or do they just kinda not really run into each other?

Also love the idea of subtypes though!! Diversity among non-human somewhat-humanoid species <3

With the subtypes, would that affect their way of speaking at all? Like accent wise? Or would they pick up whatever they heard most while developing?

If you can't tell, I have. A lot of questions. LMAO

I just love world building and small pieces of it :> hope you don't mind though ._.

I LOVE QUESTIONS!!!!!!!

i am going to get carpal tunnel and i think i shall blame all of you and not myself :)

more ranting under the cut o777

for salt and fresh, they don't hate each other at all! they don't get a chance to really interact often so they are just unfamiliar with each other, however they are all still slimes so they get along just fine when they can (usually at estuaries or other areas where fresh merges into salt). other than that they just never really see the other.

AND AHHHHH YEAH!!!! ACCENTS!!! i didn't even think about that, i was more focused on how the color of their slime might be different based on sub group and their diet/climate/environment but oh my god yeah, there is so very much an accent that only other slimes might notice ily anon thank you. I think some does come from "family", but there's always a chance for it to chnage when you move, just like real life. Like another slime could tell charlie was a cave slime at some point maybe by how he talks or acts

and the bones..... ough the bones............

I have thoughts on the bones. the most significant one is how important a skeletion is to slime hybrids. Slime mobs don't care for that sort of thing, but since hyrbids are just that, a combination of slime and (in my head) human- hybrids like bones. It's the biggest think that sets them apart from their mob counter part.

Salt slimes build their skeletons from drowned, sea life, and literal drownings, giving them slightly abnormal appearances compared to fresh that only pull from skeletons and strays and humans. when desperate, they will make do with what they have and go without bones or fashion something out of what they do have. I hc as charlie having a pretty fucked skeleton during eggxile

also i have. a wip based on the idea of étoiles giving charlie bones to help his bro out and it spirals into the accidental courting ritual cause bones are really important to hybrids. I WANT TO SAY SO MUCB MOOOREEEEEE but im trying to hold back for this wip where i explore it more. ugh

i will say that the idea of giving and sharing bones is also a familial and friendly thing too. There's different meanings and different intentions. I like to think of big slime families having hand-me-down sets of bones as slime hybrids age and grow until they are able to get their own complete skeleton, almost like a rite of passage before they leave if they decide to. they keep a bone from their family and either keep it in their skeleton or on their person. Same goes for offers from friends and more...

charlie was not afforded the same... generosity and kindness as other slimes in other families and he had to build his skeleton by force. I am going to leave that there lest i say too much :) dw you'll learn more soon

i have thoughts and feelins and ideas and things i just *head in fucking hands*

feel free to ask more questions i love talking :3333 you guys are so nice too <333

[maeselc]

I need to know about Duty Has No Sweethearts. That title 😚👌

(For the WIP Ask Game)

Thanks for the ask!!

This is a post-canon Cardassia angst-fluff-smut garashir fic.

The title (which may or may not be the final title) is cribbed from The Living Daylights, a film I saw for the first time recently that is...well, it really is quite a film, I don't even know where to begin with that. But anyway, that line was just SOOO Garak to me, like so Garak that I immediately imagined him imprinting on it when Julian shows him the film.

This fic will be the sixth and final installment of my series Sensation. The fifth and sixth fics in that series are in progress, but it's been slow, probably because I psychologically don't want to let go lol. So, given that, I should say that the passage I'm sharing under the cut implicitly spoils something that is revealed in the first sentence of the not-yet-posted Part 5 of the series. It doesn't really spoil anything beyond that point (even though it's from the 6th part...is this confusing? I think this is confusing haha) but anyway, I want to give people the option of not reading at all if they don't want to on that basis.

This passage is where I use the line from The Living Daylights (322 words). Kelas Parmak is here, but he doesn't play much of a role in this fic except in this scene to tell Garak he's being maudlin and annoying lol.

Garak twists his lips into an ironic little smile. 'Duty has no sweethearts,' he quips.

Kelas looks at him sharply over the rim of his glasses. 'What?'

'Mm. Nothing.'

Kelas continues staring at him for a moment before he turns his attention back to his lunch. 'You are insufferable,' he says to the table.

'Excuse me?'

'You're obviously quoting something. What, and why?'

'Mm. Yes, I believe I recall it from a holovid I once saw.' He sniffs delicately, looking away over the busy cafe. 'It seemed fitting.'

'Something Dr Bashir shared with you, no doubt.'

Garak doesn't appreciate this acknowledgement of the limits of his conversational range, so he doesn't respond to it. He pokes at his food in silence for a while.

'You know better,' Kelas says unexpectedly.

'Pardon?'

'You know what I mean. I don't know what you want me to say. That you're right? That love has no place in the lives of men such as yourself?'

Garak is about to respond, but Kelas raises a hand to quiet him and continues.

'You have never been a noble man, Elim. It's one of your redeeming qualities.'

Garak stares. 'Meaning what?'

'Meaning,' Kelas says, his eyes steady on Garak's, 'your tendency toward self-sacrifice would be unbearable if you were motivated by conviction in your own virtue.'

Garak blinks. 'What does that mean?'

Kelas ignores him in favour of another bite, which he chews slowly before finally swallowing. He presses a napkin to his lips before he speaks again. 'Has he been in touch yet?'

'Who?' Garak asks, blinking. He expects Kelas will be annoyed with this feigned naivety.

Instead, Kelas tilts his head in what looks like genuine surprise. 'Have you really not heard from Dr Bashir yet?'

'"Yet"?'

'I would have thought…well. I have. We have. The hospital administration, anyway, and I was brought in to confer on his request.'

Garak feels frozen in place. 'What request?'

[anneapocalypse]

WIP Wednesday

Thanks to @ammoniteflesh and @crackinglamb for tagging me last week, and @delicatefade for tagging me this week! I'm very happy to be back to writing and have something recent (though rough) to share.

Tagging with no pressure: @ialpiriel @chocochipbiscuit @farfromdaylight @dreadfutures @warpedlegacy @rakshadow @skyeventide @nirikeehan

Current WIP is "Harsh Light," an FFXIV Haurchefant/WoL fic, big Heavensward spoilers so under a cut.

This is right after Haurchefant's death. Ariane is having a Bad Time.

***

She did not know what she had expected, when she at least shut herself within her guest suite at Alphinaud's urging, but it happened all at once. The scent of him still lingered in the room, in the bed they had shared, its clothes still rumpled from the night before, tossed back when they arose, and not remade. The cups from which they had drunk hot chocolate only a night before had been cleared away—the loss itself a violation, an obscenity—but the book they had been reading together lay on the low table between the sofa and the hearth, still marked at the page where they had left off, before a chapter Haurchefant would never hear her read.

A wild sound of grief made its passage up from the very depths of her soul, neither sigh nor scream but something primal, and with it the ice shattered.

Ariane curled herself into a corner of the sofa—the bed was unthinkable—and wept into her knees, and then into a sofa pillow whose brocade cover would need washing later, scream-sobbed uncontrollably and seemingly without end.

When she found herself quieted at last, her throat and her eyes sobbed raw, she thought perhaps she had nothing left in her to weep, and then she saw him again, that bloody smile, and the way his hand had reached for her at the last, and her tears overtook her again.

"I don't want it," she rasped at last, into a silence punctuated only by the ticking of the ornate wooden wall clock. She barely had voice left to pray, but her parched lips formed the words all the same. "Do you hear me?"

There was no answer. No whisper in her mind, no migraine blur of the Echo either. Only the soft ticking, and her ragged breath.

"I don't want it," she scraped out again. "If this is the price of the Blessing of Light—if you're going to take everyone I love, over and over again, then I don't want it! Do you hear me? I don't want it, I don't want it, I don't…"

The staff of House Fortemps, though unprepared for such circumstances, were nonetheless well-versed in the art of discretion, and moved through the manor's corridors as silently as temple mice, pretending they could not hear through closed doors the cries of inconsolable grief for the House’s lost son.

[xx-vergil-xx]

god Verg I love a Structure so much, it’s gonna be “despicite, dei, gaudete” for the WIP game & I would love to hear more about the said structure if you feel like sharing it!

hello!! an excuse to talk about my project? yes please thank you <3

so it’s three “layers” which are entangled (maybe laced is a better word — i’m still ironing out final structural presentation, but the core is there)

1. sopwith, a book published in 1950 about pilots in WWI — aiming for an american modernism style, steinbeck influences (god i love steinbeck) with a dash of the faintly surreal, though i wouldn’t call it experimental. presented in standard book style, not terribly long

2. the life of sopwith’s author, who was himself a pilot in the second war, discharged after a serious plane crash — sopwith is published after his stint in the air force and he spends the last six years of his life in a new york hotel (based on the chelsea) obsessively redrafting a second edition of sopwith and filling a horde of journals, which themselves are published 50 years later as an academic text (though the second edition of sopwith never sees the light of day). told in journal passages

3. the efforts of a lit studies doctorate to piece together what it was sopwith’s revised version (never published) was really trying to say while she struggles with her own psychiatric health and her relationship to literature and the world at large. told in footnotes on sopwith, journals, and letters to her brother.

that’s the simplest sort of breakdown — the lit. studies doctorate ends up living in the same hotel the author lived in while she’s working and enters a psychological spiral where she becomes entangled with those last years of the author’s life and the thing he was trying to excise via his book, so the lines get a little blurry as the whole thing progresses. there are lots of throughlines about doubling/communication/the effort of people to corral the world with the written word/etc — inspired a lot by jorge luis borges and also house of leaves. i’m still in the glorious haze of Throw It All On The Page so i expect there’ll be some. refinements? (please god)

despicite, dei, gaudete is the first thing the author ever wrote and published — it’s a novella about an odd family myth a grandmother is telling her grandson, but taking a borges tact what we read instead of the actual novella is the lit doctorate’s essay about it, an excerpt from the middle of which i shall offer you here :)

thanks much for the ask my friend <3 <3

The seemingly obvious moral is twofold: old gods are infinitely cruel, and splitting up in strange forests is a terrible idea (a fact any B-list horror film will readily remind us of). Little chou hears this story, and when the telling of it is over, we discover that chou is now an old man, telling the tale to his granddaughter, and we have been hearing the telling of a telling, itself impressed upon by dimly-recalled circumstance and the erosion of an old man’s memory. Now we see why the impressions of intermediate narrative — a family dinner, a bedtime, a certain firelit drawing room — are so loosely sketched, so half-filled and yet so elemental. They are the memories of a child.

Most take Despicite as Witten’s first establishment of in loco, absentia on the basis of the fact that the real narrative concealed within is the life of chou, understood to us by the particularity of the details he does remember: his mother’s hand vividly recalled, posed mid-stir over a soup pot, thought by many to imply both her early death and chou’s pursuit of the culinary arts; the flames in the hearth and the strange vision chou has of the stones blackened, suggesting at one time that the house burned down; chou’s exquisite ekphrasis of the ceiling in his childhood bedroom, so vivid one cannot help but think that this is where we find him now, perhaps confined to the same quarters he slept in as a child, an old man at the end of his life. Legion readers have pointed out the obvious Biblical influences, the echoes of Cain and Abel (raised as a Protestant in his hometown of Valentine, Nebraska, it’s no small wonder that Witten’s works tend to touch on Christian themes). The first brother, killed and then dismantled by the second, plays our ready Abel, and the second our more hapless Cain, whose inciting sin is perhaps his abandonment of his brother to the dark wood in pursuit of his own reckless belief. He then attempts to “hide” his sin by rectifying it, collecting his brother in an attempt to reverse his transformation into earth. It’s no great leap. Our Cain, of course, is not condemned to wander, but instead condemned to a miserable stasis, from which he similarly does not escape.

[chromatic-lamina]

AO3 wrapped!: 9, 19, 29, please!

Thank you!

9. Favorite pairing you wrote for this year? I'd love to say it's my initial favourite of Marco/Law and I have been reading a great fanfic about them, but my writing for them was also drabbles/ficlets, and not so well developed, so I'll say LawZo, although that's a WIP and will be in the LawZo zine out next year. I had fun writing the (very) irregular limerick for LawBin for the polls this year, AND there is KidLaw in the works, AND, I tightened it this year, but didn't write it this year, but reuploaded a chapter to an AceLaw fic

Guess my answer is all of them. Also, plenty of platonic Trafalgar Law & the Heart Pirates. One Cora & Law fic for the Corazine too.

19. What’s one pairing you want to explore next year?

Maybe get some LawBin on paper. I've written it romantically a few times, but more often platonically, but usually in longfic. Wouldn't mind getting a one shot or two out.

29. Favorite line/passage you wrote this year? My current fave is in a WIP for the LawZo zine, so I can't share it for a while, so take the following from Bioluminescent Hearts. Not amazing, but I quite like the imagery. Spoilers for chapter 1081 (manga spoilers)

Orange and white striped tentacles rippled past Hakugan—the head of a sea anemone flexing its bright body backwards and forwards through the water. There was so much water, and the pressure. He couldn’t tell if he was cold, if he was uncomfortable. He tried to shake the vegetation from his hands, but to even budge a finger took effort.

Thank you for the ask!

Questions 9, 19, 29 (I like the symmetry) answered! Also 6, 16 and 22. 1, 10 & 27 about to be answered. You can find the asks here!

[squarebracket-trickster]

OC Recipe Tag

Thank you, @touloserlautrec for tagging me way back in November shhhh

In my defense, I was waiting to do this tag until I got to a particular scene in draft 3 and was forced to research medieval English/French recipes.

Rules: Share a recipe your OC would make, either one passed down to them or one they found all by themselves. Bonus if you have an actual recipe to link! Some OCs can't cook to save their lives, but let's talk about the ones who can! :D

I think I am actually going to share a passage from my WIP instead of just a recipe. I don't think just sharing a recipe alone does justice to explaining how these foods were eaten, why these particular foods on a given day, as well as Isolde's relationship with these dishes.

A few other things to note about this passage:

At the time this particular scene takes place Isolde does not know how to cook a few of these dishes but she will learn later in her life, after the events of the story end.

In this particular scene Isolde did not cook the meal. However, much earlier in the novel it is mentioned that she "is not very familiar with cooking meat" but she manages to do it anyway. We can assume from this that she can cook if she has to, albeit very poorly. She is at least familiar with how cooking works.

Isolde is a princess, raised from birth to marry a king. She will not have done a lot of cooking in her life but she will have a very good understanding of what ingredients are needed for what dish, approximately how long a dish takes to prepare, and she will be familiar with enough the materials required for some processes like marination and fermentation.

Lastly, this passage needs trimming. But that's a draft 4 problem. I should shorten some of these ingredient lists but I really don't want to ahhh

Without further ado:

It’s a fast day so our meal is light and without meat. There are few lakes as high in the hills as Aubemote and though the sea is near enough by horse it is still too far for fish. We fill up instead on rique-menger, a Diac recipe of apples and eggs parboiled in butter, and on pickles of white cabbage, parsley root, carrot, radish, turnip, pears, and currants soaked in a juice of honey, vinegar, mustard, and white wine slopped on a bread trencher. Saffron, cinnamon, ginger, black pepper, anise, fennel, white sugar, and salt garnish our foods – the lord and lady of Aubemote spare no expense on food, just as on their tapestries it seems, even on fast days. After our meal a pageboy brings a plate of breney to our table– hard, unleavened bread dipped in a fruit compote of currants, dates, and pine nuts steeped in red wine, vinegar, mace, and sandalwood. Another refills our cups with clarrey – white wine spiced with cinnamon, galingale, and white pepper. We share the brass cups, two ladies to each, though Lord Aubemote’s wife, of course, has her own. I am not sure which part of the meal takes more courage to eat. The rique-menger and pickles are new to me, as lovely as they are, and leave my tongue with a sour, homesick flavour. These are the dishes I should have to grow accustomed to should I have decided to go through with my marriage. I don’t know if I could ever get used to eating apples and eggs like this. But the breney and clarrey are foods like home, and their taste is all the more bitter for it.

I love when the people I tag @ me and/or link back to my post. I love it when you reblog my post with questions, compliments, words of encouragement, about my WIP, or even no comment at all. But please make your own post to complete this tag. Please do not turn my post into a reblog chain.

Ever so delicately tagging: @fayeiswriting, @sleepywriter00, @boundedsea, @writernopal, @scribbling-stardust, @winterandwords

[mareenavee]

WIP Whenever~

So no, I haven't been tagged in this at the moment~ (unless I have and tumblr notifs are being a large pain in the butt by not informing me -- if so! My bad) In that case, I'll start the train (: Share some fun stuff, friends!

Tagging the most esteemed and unparalleled @paraparadigm, @changelingsandothernonsense, @rhiannon1199, @friend-of-giants, @thequeenofthewinter, @snippetsrus, @saltymaplesyrup, @archangelsunited, @tallmatcha, @airiat, @thelightofmorning, @thana-topsy and @the-storytellers-seer! Leaving some amazing TES writers for the others to tag into the game this week, or else I'd just post a huge long list of tags of people whose work I love to see. (: Maybe I ought. But for now, to the words!!

Below the cut, some of my AU one-shot in which Nyenna and her brother, Eris actually make it to Solstheim first, and miss the Helgen nonsense entirely. Oh, but have they? Have they really?

“Ah, so, that’s why Morrowind, then,” Teldryn said. She nodded. “We all have our troubles, outlander. No need to apologize.” He reached out and squeezed her shoulder. She turned her gaze on him then, all the pain she’d tried to keep inside right there in her eyes. She closed them and tilted her head back, as if to prevent the tears from falling. Ash floated lazily down, collecting in the stray strands of her hair like snow.

“Yes. For a second today, I felt free for the first time in years. Every day I’d question if it’d be our last. If we were careful enough. They were everywhere. It felt like such a weight was lifted to cross the border to somewhere safe after such struggle. You’ve no idea, and I likely couldn’t convey it if I tried,” Nyenna said with a small sigh. “And Y'ffre knows I’ve tried.”

“I know a thing or two about trying to keep a low profile,” Teldryn said with a snort. He crossed his arms over his chest.

“Hence the helmet, even indoors?” Nyenna ventured. “Oh, but I’m sorry to say, it’s not very, ehm…inconspicuous, is it?” He chortled and she smiled warmly. “I noticed you right away, for the record.”

“Ah. Well. Hence the helmet, especially indoors, in that case,” Teldryn drawled. She couldn’t see it through his scarf but he was grinning. Astute, this one. She had a point about the chitin. “Can’t do with not drawing the attention of an…interesting outlander.” She laughed then, stress melting from her shoulders like so much ice.

“It’s been quite a long time since I was able to tell anyone anything of my struggles. Thank you for…well, for all of this. I’m just a stranger. You couldn’t have known how much it would mean,” Nyenna said. Her fingers brushed against his hand briefly, probably on purpose. There was another shock, gone again before he could register what the hell it could be. Magicka, maybe. Something strange. Did she even know how loud she was? The sensation wasn’t a sound, exactly, but something beyond. He glanced at her and felt his face flush. Thank Azura for the helmet, then. It was useful, after all. He cleared his throat and scratched under the edge of his scarf.

“As I said, we all have our troubles,” he said carefully. “Think nothing of it.” He shifted a little and faced her again. “Say, if you’re going to Tel Mithryn after all, I wouldn’t mind the company, by the way. I was headed out that way later this week in any case.”

“Oh, so I’m that interesting, am I?” Nyenna said with another laugh. “You would change your plans just to tag along?”

“Well, that and it’s not exactly a safe passage. Reavers and all in the crossing,” Teldryn mumbled. Normally he’d have tried to turn this into some kind of job, but he was finding, inexplicably, that he did not really want to be parted from her after all. Strange. They’d barely exchanged a handful of words.

“It wouldn’t be wise to refuse such a chivalrous offer,” Nyenna said with a small smile. “But I think Eris and I will be just fine. We probably can’t afford the fee, and I wouldn’t want to impose.”

“Oh, but I wasn’t angling to be hired or anything,” Teldryn said, though he wasn’t sure why such words were falling out of his mouth at the moment. Was he ever a s'wit. He held out his palms in a gesture of peace and sighed. “It’s no imposition, outlander. Promise. What do you say?” Nyenna laughed then, which was unexpected.

“Just so you know, we don’t really need protecting. Eris might not look like much, but he’s kept us both alive so far,” she said. “He’s a good mage, actually. Better than a lot of people I’ve seen in my time.” Teldryn crossed his arms over his chest again.

“It’s a difficult trip, I think, for mages on their own. Swords still pierce wherever armor isn’t,” Teldryn observed with distaste. “What about you? Are you a mage, too?” He was grateful for the opening to talk about the Magicka observation without seeming strange or too nosy. She smiled wistfully and shook her head.

“When I was younger, I was strictly forbidden from learning anything of the sort. No fighting, no magic. I accepted it, but lately I’ve been reading over Eris’s shoulder. He pulled a spell out of nowhere this morning,” she said casually. Teldryn knit his eyebrows.

“What does that mean?” he asked before he could caution himself. So much for not seeming nosy.

[darlingpoppet]

WIP Wednesday: Liminal Spaces Ch 4 excerpt #2

I was tagged by the lovely @rowanisawriter, thank you so much! <3 because of timezones I’m doing this a bit late so idk if it’s worth it to tag anyone now, but if anyone else reading this wants to share something they’re working on, please do!! <3

I’ve actually been slacking a bit on the editing of Liminal Spaces chapter 4 compared to the breakneck pace I’d been going at for the first three, but after a bit of a break I finally seem to be back in the swing of things so my goal is to have it up by next week. In the meantime, I managed to find another small passage to share (after sharing the first one last week) so here it is:

The silence is broken by a distant sound: the sound of a key scraping a lock, and then the front door of the apartment opening and closing. Achilles and Patroclus stir back into consciousness. Identifying the source of the noise, Achilles quickly rises, half-heartedly toweling off his lower half before slipping on his sweatpants.

“Be sure to ask her if she would like to join us in here,” Patroclus says.

Achilles swipes at the water’s surface as he strides past, splashing Patroclus in the face. Stepping through the puddles on the floor, he opens the bathroom door and disappears down the hallway.

“Rude man,” Patroclus mumbles, making Zagreus chuckle.

Patroclus stays put. He stretches and adjusts himself, smiling pleasantly at Zagreus watching him. They can hear muffled voices down the hall—Achilles, whose tone is casual, and then a woman’s, lilting and lovely.

“Achilles’ mother?” Zagreus asks.

Until now, she had always seemed like this abstract thing—like a phantom spirit or a deity, rather than a real person. Zagreus had begun to wonder if she actually existed at all.

“Yes,” Patroclus says. “Do you want to go introduce yourself?”

Zagreus shivers, wet and naked in the water, protectively hugging his knees to his chest. He knows it would be the proper, polite thing to do, but he feels unprepared. His eyes dart to the mess on the floor, feeling like a badly behaved house guest, caught red-handed at impropriety. He shakes his head.

“I don’t know. I’m not sure if I should. She won’t be angry, will she?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Patroclus says.

“What if she comes in here, and sees this mess?”

“Don’t worry. She won’t be here for long.”

Sure enough, several minutes later, they hear the sound of goodbyes, parting kisses, and then the front door opening and closing once more. A few moments after that, the sound of Achilles’ footsteps approach. His wet, curly head appears from the doorway; Zagreus can just make out a stain of red—a lipstick mark in the middle of his cheek.

“Dinner is served,” Achilles says. “Everyone out of the tub.”

[this-is-krikkit]

Heeeey!

19 and 23 for the Writer's Ask? XDDD

❤️

hey, you ! thanks for the ask !!

send me some writer's asks

19. Share a snippet from a wip without giving any context for it.

these always make me nervous, because i edit so much that this is probably not going to end up in the actual finished fic. but here we go anyway:

“You know, it's a shame that you two don't get along,” Hange called out from behind him, the sound of their footsteps echoing in the empty room. “You're both freakishly strong and obsessed with cleanliness, I mean... if that isn't a match made in heaven!”

23. Dialogue or description? Why is the other one so hard?

OH MY GOD, DIALOGUE FTW, are you joking?? dialogue is so much easier! it's usually how i get ideas for fics, and no prompt works better on me than the "include this quote in your fic" ones. i can hear and see the characters speak in my head and adjust whenever i realize i wrote something that was ooc or useless, or when i think of a powerful line that i'd like to include that echoes either canon or something else i've put in the same fic/universe... i love dialogue so much, and it's so fun to play with all the different options of it: spoken out loud, in the character's head, adding details about how or why they're saying it or what they're doing as they say it, put an emphasis on howwri it's interpreted by other people when i'm writing from another character's pov... i just. LOVE. IT.

description... sucks. can't people who read my fics just see what i'm picturing in my mind without me having to describe it??? uggggh. i think it's so hard because a) english is not my native language and i'm not as good as i thought i was at it, and as a result i find myself lacking in vocabulary to express stuff i'd be perfectly able to depict in my language (and i know i could just search for translations, but it's tedious and frustrating work and i loathe how it interrupts the flow of my writing and makes it feel like homework, brrr); and b) i usually find it's the most boring part of both writing or reading? like, of course it's necessary, but description feels to me like either a break or a soft way to ease into a scene, and as someone who's very hands-on and likes to jump right into action rather than being gently led to it, i have very high standards for it. it needs to be relevant to the plot or the scene, or to be a necessary break (in a particularly action-packed scene, to mark the passage of time, to put emphasis on a character's feelings, to take a lil break in the middle of smut, to hike up the suspense...), and i don't feel like i'm good enough to write it so it fits those conditions. which is why (and i'm painfully aware of it) it's blatantly lacking in my own writing oops x)

[faith-less-one]

Hey lovely!

For your WIP game (SO glad you joined me in this!) anything you'd like to share about 'So It's You'? <3

Oh, you KNOW I want to share stuff about "So It's You". ♥

For those of you not in the know... this passage was in my very first Brennan/Cassandra fic (Stargazing) - which I wrote over four years ago:

Unconsciously, he wonders what it would be like if they hadn’t met the way they did. If he didn’t have the anchor in his hand and the fate of the whole world on his shoulders. If he wasn’t a mage and she weren’t a seeker. If he’d just been introduced to her at an Ostwick ball, some very minor member of Nevarran royalty who his mother thought would be an excellent match for her second-eldest son. Would they have flirted? Danced? Would he have stolen her away to a deserted corner of the grounds he barely remembers, to lie and stargaze like this?

And I always had in my head that someday, I might write that AU. No Inquisition, no titles, no powers... Not a mage, not a seeker. But the whole rest of my canon universe kept happening, and so it was always just... a thought.

Then, a little over two years ago, I wrote a short modern AU Brennan/Cassandra ficlet on my birthday (Glad You Exist). And it was so much fun, that on my birthday last year, I was like - "I should write that Ostwick ball fic!". So I started it. And... it ballooned.

It ballooned into a Fantasy-meets-Regency, highly Bridgerton-inspired literal novel (over 75,000 words!). Utterly indulgent, probably entirely ridiculous, and so, so much fun.

Technically I finished it last November, and commissioned ART for it, but I had it in my head to write an 'epilogue' in the style of the Bridgerton second epilogues. Except I kept stalling out and rewriting over and over again, and nothing felt as good as the initial fic did. So I dropped it for a few months. And then recently, I decided eh, fuck it, it doesn't need the epilogue.

But how to post it? It's fourteen chapters and (as I said) 75,000 words, so I didn't want to post it on my normal schedule, because it would take half the year, and that's a long time to go between updates of my regular series. Then, the other day, after posting this WIP game, I decided eh, fuck it. I want to share it!! (With more than just @ooachilliaoo !) So... yup, starting next Friday, I will be. And then a chapter every other week (alternating with my regular fic chapters) right up until Christmas. :D

And in case you've read all of this and aren't horrified... A short, highly indulgent snippet under the cut!!

---

He hears some soft grumbling coming from the other side of one of the hedges. Too quiet to make out any words, but it sounds distinctly… grumpy. And feminine.

“Uh… is everything all right?” he calls out, deciding that announcing his presence is better than attempting to continue to eavesdrop and try to figure out who it is. No one he recognises immediately, at any rate.

There’s a surprised, somewhat irritated gasp from the other side of the hedge. “Excuse me?”

She sounds more confused than outraged, thank the Maker.

“Hello!” he responds, trying his best to sound bright and non-threatening. “Do you need any help?”

He waits for a response, but there is none. Perhaps she’s just in a bad mood and he’s disturbed her from a perfectly acceptable bit of alone time before the ball starts. He grew up with three brothers and a sister, he understands how important a little solitude can be when you’re feeling stressed.

“Sorry!” he calls back, after a few long moments. “I’ll just… I didn’t mean to disturb you. Ignore me. I’ll leave you be.”

“No, wait!” The voice sounds a little frantic. With a Nevarran accent, perhaps? One of Great-Aunt Lucille’s guests. A damsel in distress? “You know your way around this blasted thing?”

“I do!” And then, after a beat. “Would you like me to show you the way out?”

He’s careful not to say the word ‘lost’. It seems like she might be the type of person to take such a thing badly.

There’s a short delay to her response, as if she doesn’t want to admit that she needs his help. And then finally, she makes a sort of grumbling noise.

“I’ll take that as a yes, shall I?” he says, and then, because he imagines she’ll probably want to get this encounter over sooner rather than later, he adds, “Just stay where you are. It’s a bit twisty, but I’ll be with you in a minute.”

Then, without waiting for another response, he continues on, deeper into the maze, toward her. Though he’s still a little wary of coming across other people on the way, he decides whatever embarrassment he might cause would be worth the trouble.

Less than his promised minute later, he turns the corner and finds a lady standing with her back to him. Right where his mysterious damsel in distress should be.

“My lady?”

She turns sharply, and he gets his first look at her.

Her.

Oh.

His heart nearly stops.

This is it, he thinks, when he recovers the power of thought a moment later.

This is that spark he’s been waiting his whole life to feel...