#i write a LOT but i publish so little :')

[youchangedmedestiel]

Friend: What are you doing right now?

Me: I have a lot of projects.

Friend: Oh so cool, what are those? New job, new business, new home, new relationship?

Me: Ok, I have a lot of SPN/Destiel projects.

[sherlock-is-ace]

.

[gailynovelry]

[yasmeensh]

Paleolithic Media Catalogue

Hello everyone :) Short story first: When I began brainstorming for my prehistoric story, I started wondering what other prehistoric fiction there is out there. I was not familiar with it and have not seen much. That's when I started my grand literature review and began a search for what fiction exist out there. I wanted to know what kinds of stories are being made with this time period. What are the common themes or recurring ideas (I found lots of humans and dinosaurs works. And time travel). Since I've had a growing collection on my computer, I decided I should keep on enlarging it and put it online. It's nowhere near complete. I'll slowly keep accumulating the collection as I find more. I only have fiction books and comics right now. I still need to work on the film section.

You can access the blog here!

***

As for where I am in my reading, the one's I've finished reading are Earth's Children series (book 1-4. Dropped it afterwards lol. I made a post on with fanart) Dance of the Tiger and it's sequel Singletusk (They were good! I'll upload my review on the blog), and Sisters of the Wolf (It was ok!). I got my hands on The Inheritors and excited to start reading it. I REALLY want to read the Shiva trilogy, but I found no PDF online... and it's out of print :( There is certainly old copies on ebay. And I want to read Chronicles of Ancient Darkness. There seem to be lots of good books out there.

[redrosydiaz]

really fucking sick and tired of people who really fucking love the eddie book jumping on people who don't like or are even remotely critical of it's posts and like crusading their opinions around from the top of their high horses and shoving it down our throats.

if you like the book, great! that's awesome! love that for you! i am genuinely glad that you were able to find good in it and enjoy it!!

but not everyone did, and not everyone is going to agree with you. so, instead of going on some grand crusade where you find every single post that includes anything even remotely negative or negative adjacent or even neutrally critical and spending ALL this time and effort trying to provide unwanted rebuttals to every single thing, maybe you should just stay in your lane and find people who DO like the book and chat about it with them.

because i can PROMISE YOU, none of us appreciate it when you come onto our posts and start accusing us of "hating on" the author or "being rude" about her and her work and RIDICULOUS shit like that.

being critical of something and pointing out it's flaws is NOT inherently hating on it. i, frankly, do not know where people got that notion, but it's not fucking true so can we fucking quit assuming it is? and, critiquing something is also NOT the same as saying this is shit and it sucks and the author is a piece of garbage. again, where the fuck that came from is beyond me. you can be critical of something and still enjoy it. as soooo many of you love to point out, it's not perfect, why should it be perfect? so D U H. of course that means criticism can and should arise???

also. hot take (by which i mean ice fucking cold because it's NOT a fucking hot take), but going around toting FALSE facts as part of your "defense" does not make you or your argument look good. you, like the author, should maybe do a basic fact check first. 🙃

tldr, if you like the book, that's genuinely great, but stay in your fucking lane and stop seeking out posts from people who didn't like it to start shit in the notes.

[thevikingwoman]

FFXIVWrite2024 - Prompt 10

Fandom: Final Fantasy XIV | Words: 227 | Read on Ao3

Meryta Khatin (wol) | ARR patches Rating: Gen. Just chocobo feelings

Stable

Meryta leads Lucida, her chocobo, into the stables in Mor Dhona. The yellow bird chirps, and shakes her head when Meryta untacks her. She finds some gysahl greens and feeds her, then Meryta cleans and hangs the tack.

She goes back to the stall, and rests her forehead against Lucida’s feathers. The bird gently touches her beak against her horn, making her smile. So much is happening. A Royal banquet, a new alliance with the reclusive nation of Ishgard. It’s very much over her head, but she hopes she doesn’t make a fool of herself and the Scions.

Lucida chirps and bonks her again.

“I got it, I got it.”

She finds an apple in her pouch, and a handful gysahl more. She remembers when they first were introduced in Bentbranch Meadows, what now feels so long ago. Meryta was unaccustomed to chocobo, used to the horses of the Steppe and deeply suspicious of the long legged birds. Lucida won her over, though, her demeanor sweet - as long as treats are on the horizon. Meryta checks her legs and claws. Everything looks fine.

“You be good here, while I’m in Ul’dah. We’re travelling by aetheryte.  No need to arrive dusty for the fancy banquet.”

Hopefully everything will go smoothly, and she won’t have to say much. Lucida will be fed and happy here in the meantime.

[bookshelf-in-progress]

Of the long-running ideas I posted about yesterday:

Book I'd Most Like to See on Store Shelves: Lily Between Worlds. It's got a solid character-driven story that could have a wide appeal within the more domestic side of the fantasy genre. It also feels like the most developed of my original ideas. The broad-strokes story is mostly there--I'd just need to develop the setting and culture--and I wouldn't need to do significant research.

Story I'd Write If I Could Only Write One More Story in My Life: Shadowstruck. The worldbuilding conceit is unique and the themes are important to me (though it's so personal that I can't envision it in wide release on bookstore shelves--at most an indie release for a targeted audience). I'd have to develop the characters more so I can make sure the story flows from them rather than from the message, and thus nail down the plot.

Story That Should Be Easiest to Finish: "The Dust That Falls From Passing Stars". It's a short story and I know the whole plot. If only I could find my way through the tricky second act.

[lichenbug]

i love overthinking the mlp universe love and characters. anyway. twilight as a princess that does extensive research. she has books and books that shes written over things abt friendship. this is the prinvess who publishes the work she has and give public lectures. shes a public figure in her field.

when you read twilights work in equestria, she always credits spike. she credits every single source she uses in her research as the princess of friendship of course, but she also extensive credit to spike. she considers him a secondary author. all the work that she’s done has spike on the front. they are a packaged duo. please.

edit: (read tags bc i got carried away in them pls)

[f-imaginings]

Hellooo! I hope you're doing wonderful:)!! Reading KmKy,what are your thoughts if Jhesey didn't get to Ford in time and Bill actually managed to tell Ford the truth about the portal in time before they tested it again?

I read a fic about it (Knowing Infinity) but I think Ford would've needed time to process what Bill has just told him,what are your thoughts ?

I will admit I haven't yet read Knowing Infinity all the way through, despite it being a derivative work. I got through the first chapter when it first posted, and the author contacted me to link the fic to KMKY but I haven't caught up past that point. I'm glad to hear its going well and folks are enjoying it.

I don't know if I should comment on what I think about that plot change if someone has written something built on that premise. It stops being my work at that point and becomes their own creation and I think that's wonderful. I don't want to be the author who tears down or decries someones transformative work based on my own mental canon, because my time reading through Roland Barthes essays in uni really cemented Death of the Author in my mind haha.

If this question is asking if I think within the KMKY fic could this happen, I do think there were multiple moments in chapter 34 for Ford to disregard or pull away from what Jheselbraum was saying, but his curiosity and self sabotaging nature was something I really enjoyed highlighting in KMKY. He said so himself in the scrap vandal chapter, he was waiting for his happiness to fail, and if Jheselbraum hadn't poked holes in it, something else would have, because their happiness was built on quite a bit of deceit. Even without Jheselbraum's interference, Ford would have seen the memory canister and know that way that Bill was planning something with the portal that Ford wasn't on board with.

But that's all within the story of KMKY. A different story may have a different take on things. The main driver of KMKY is that this blissful happy time they spend together is built on denial, on the ticking time bomb of the portal in the basement. There are multiple plotlines in KMKY where the sense of dread about building pressures of things left unsaid propels the plot forward. I'd argue that it's an integral part of the story. A world where they figured out how to communicate and compromise is a different world entirely, haha, but that's what derivative fanworks (and maybe the what if spin off series) is for! To explore those strange new worlds and boldly go where KMKY has never gone before!

[novorehere]

Bite-Sized Tidbits:

A snapshot/character of what life might look like with the seven avatars of sin. Contains a lot of fluff, a little angst, and soft/safe vore with you and the seven Obey Me! brothers themed around their respective sins. I’ve been working on this on and off for quite a while now, so I hope you enjoy.

Written for Vore Day, 2023

—

—

Pride

“I can give you your punishment now, or we can wait until later.”

The edges of the demon’s lips crept up into the beginnings of a smirk. All without breaking his gaze from the stack of documents which he straightened against his desk with a tap tap tap.

“However, I will be leaving for tea with Lord Diavolo as soon as my work is finished. So unless you’d like to spend the evening with Barbatos’ chiffon cake, I’d recommend making up your mind in a timely manner.”

Both of you knew very well that “punishment” wasn’t the right word. Lucifer’s infrequent office calls were less of a punishment and moreso a game, an unspoken routine in which you continuously tested the Avatar of Pride’s patience by indulging his younger brothers’ schemes.

It was a game that toyed with the balance of power, one where you pretended like he couldn’t just shrink you down whenever he wanted and that you couldn’t order him to stop with a single word. It was a game that indulged his pride, one that Lucifer would always win in the end.

It was only a matter of minutes before you were seated in his gloved palm. His ruby eyes lording over you with a gaze that anyone else would find annoyingly high-handed. But after playing his game for so long, to you the affection hiding behind them was obvious.

“Are you ready then, my Lamb?”

He was the morning star, eldest of the seven rulers of the underworld.

Yet despite all of this, Lucifer knew it was you who had him utterly wrapped around your little finger.

—

Greed

Reclining his head against the arm of his couch, the Avatar of Greed kissed his fingertips in mock satisfaction at the burp that rolled up his throat. A barely audible complaint of “gross” only caused him to chuckle and pat his stomach triumphantly.

“Maybe ya shoulda thought about that before bein’ so damn filling.”

A sound like “Guh” escaped the demon’s mouth as a swift kick to his liver interrupted his musings.

“Oi! The Great Mammon’s gonna start chargin’ 10,000 Grimm for damages every time ya do that!” Ya oughta learn some basic respe-”

And there it was, the familiar flutter of tiny fingers rubbing circles into him from inside. Perhaps it was your way of saying sorry… though more likely you just wanted to shut him up. It was annoying how easily you could reduce him to a blushing mess without uttering a single word.

“Hey… ‘s not fair. You’re playin’ dirty…”

Mammon rolled onto his side in an uncharacteristically gentle motion. He couldn’t help sneaking an indulgent glance at the scene reflected in his mirror. There he was, splayed out amongst piles of his belongings with his shirt ridden up and his belly rounded in his lap. If any of his brothers saw him like this, he would never hear the end of their teasing. But luckily for Mammon, not even you could know the way his face became soft as he teased a finger around his navel too gently for you to feel.

“Why’d ya stop? C’mon, now… keep goin’.”

It didn’t matter how much Mammon gambled away or how many centuries it had been since he’d hit the jackpot at the casino. When he was with you, Mammon felt like the luckiest demon in the three realms.

But sometimes it was hard to put it into words. Which is exactly why he treasured moments like these, the moments where his greed got the better of him. The moments where he could steal you away to be his and his alone.

After all, it was much easier to express how madly in love with you he’d become when he didn’t have to meet you face to face.

—

Envy

“You know, this is just like that one scene in ‘My Life as a Shut-In Reincarnated as a Worker in the Shopping Mall Dimension’ where Prince Alfonso goes to the food court kingdom and-”

Leviathan groaned, burying his face into his body pillow as if that could somehow hide him from the voice in his middle.

“You can’t use my own otaku tactics against me, it’s… *hic-* it’s not fair!!”

Your muffled laughter reverberated off the walls of his bathtub, accompanied by the occasional hiccup and the tip of a serpentine tail nervously thumping against porcelain.

He didn’t mean for his horns to sprout from his head when you tried to leave his room that night. He didn’t mean for a serpentine tail to wrap around your ankle, wordlessly begging you to stay. And he certainly didn’t mean for his stomach to loudly vocalize the thoughts that had been plaguing his mind the entire night. What was this, some sort of tropey romance manga?

But here he was, face as red as a bouquet of queen of jealousy and stuffed to the (decidedly metaphorical) gills in his own bathtub. The Grand Admiral of Hell’s Navy, reduced to a blushing, hiccuping mess. And he had nobody but himself to blame.

But really, how could he have resisted? Especially with the visions of what could have happened instead playing through his head on repeat. Asmo whisking you away to some club filled with normies who could actually hold a real conversation, Mammon snatching you up for an unauthorized night drive in his Demonio 666 Lexura, Beel getting a little too peckish and… he couldn’t bear to think about it.

Leviathan knew wanting to be your one and only was unreasonable. He knew that he was a terrible, horrible friend for thinking these thoughts and becoming so troubled at the prospect of anyone else showing you affection. After all, no one would want to be with a gloomy shut-in that wasn’t worth the scum in Henry’s tank-

But as soon as they had come, the negative thoughts washed away like a speck in the ocean as you snuggled closer to his hand, a muffled voice reassuring him that there was no place you’d rather be tonight.

—

Wrath

“With a flourish the detective tipped his hat to the dame, as he disappeared into the evening fog like the curls of smoke which danced from his pipe…”

The demon’s inner monologue was cut short as a violent squirming sensation roused him from his novel. Your ears detected the unmistakable sound of a huff and a book closing, muffled by layers of flesh and fabric.

“Restless as ever, I see…”

Normally, Satan would be more than offended to have his attention ripped from the pages of a good book. But this time the annoyance that swelled in his chest turned not into rage, but affection as the fire settled in his stomach and melted away… You tended to have that effect on him.

It was a relatively new sensation. Having been birthed from wrath in its purest form, emotions such as happiness had to be taught to him by his brothers. And for that Satan was thankful- he had long since accepted them as family. But as a human, you were a better teacher of peace than any demon could be. Though a cat curled in his lap was a close second.

The blonde sighed fondly, gazing down at the bump in his sweater.

“…Would you like me to read aloud to you? Perhaps that will help you settle some.”

Pulling the covers up a bit higher around his navel, he tucked them in snugly around his sides. A rare smile crossed Satan’s face as he admired his handiwork. The man reached over to his nightstand, finding there exactly what he was looking for in the dim light. A paperback atop the haphazard piles of hardcovers strewn about, placed there with care as not to crease the art on the cover he knew you loved so much.

With both of you tucked in for the night, it was easier than ever to melt into the gentle rumble of his voice.

“Our story begins in a world of monsters…”

—

Lust:

Asmodeus knows that true beauty comes from within. How could it not, when the skin of the human that emerges from his lips always feels so much softer and smoother than before? He makes sure to bring it to your attention every time, doting over how the glow of his inner beauty rubs off on you so easily. Despite everything, he thinks you look so gorgeous lying in his palm. Layers of mucus, tired bags under your eyes, and all.

But sometimes it’s hard to feel beautiful inside or out with wings dyed black and pointed horns replacing the light of your halo.

—

A delicate, painted fingertip wipes a stray bead of drool from your face. The other hand is busy at your head, gently combing the tangles from your still-damp hair with the tiniest heart-shaped hairbrush. Asmodeus had been ecstatic the day it arrived, practically bowling over Levi before snatching the Akuzon package from his arms with a squeal.

It was a ritual at this point, the way he pampered you after letting you out. Swaddling you in a soft, lilac-scented hand towel warmed by the gentle breeze of his hairdryer, wiping you clean as he hummed a familiar tune.

“Baby, you want my love


No matter who you are


I want you to show me


I fell in love with someone


Besides myself for the first time”

He didn’t need to be the “Jewel of the Heavens” with you as his jewel, a precious pearl to tuck away beside his heart where all the things he loves live.

And he had so, so much love to give.

—

Gluttony

Beelzebub was on the verge of snapping when you came to him.

He was breathing heavily when you found his monstrous, horned silhouette hunched over the empty refrigerator. Frightened eyes were glazed over with a hunger that threatened to swallow you up with their very gaze. His mouth opened in a silent plea- perhaps an apology for eating your favorite pudding- but it was drowned out by the roar of his stomach.

Sometimes it felt as if no amount of food could put out the fire that raged within him. The burning sensation could only be briefly dulled by each cooling mouthful that slid down his throat. But then it was gone, claimed by the emptiness inside him that demanded “more.”

But you… you were different.

Simply being around you made him feel full, and for that he was ever grateful. But sometimes he needed more than a feeling. He needed to be sure you were there, to know that you were alive. To feel the weight of that missing piece that left him the day that he fell, your warmth reassuring him that his choices were the right one.

But despite what he needed, he still required your explicit permission to take it.

“Can I…?”

“Of course.”

With your words, Beelzebub gave himself over to his gluttony. He didn’t mind the demon he had become, as long as his strength could help protect you. Or perhaps you were the one protecting him? He wasn’t sure. But one thing was for certain.

No demon in hell could devour you as lovingly as he did that night.

—

Sloth

Beneath the attic room comforter, an incoherent mumble could be heard from a demon-sized lump in the sheets.

Belphegor rolled onto his stomach as he nestled deeper into his nest of blankets. It didn’t take long at all for a lazy smile to crawl across the Avatar of Sloth’s face. Even though you were undoubtedly squashed in this position, he could still feel your tiny hands working their magic just like he had asked.

Oh, how you spoiled him rotten.

It was hard not to with the way Belphegor expressed his desires so plainly. To borrow your jacket to use as a pillow, to keep quiet to Lucifer about skipping classes, to stroke his hair while he lay on your lap. The others weren’t too thrilled with your coddling, but Belphie couldn’t care less.

After all, they had gotten so much more time with you than he had. They got to know you, to love you, to taste you… all before you even knew his name.

Belphegor was the Avatar of Sloth, not envy. But there was once a time when the unmistakable tingling warmth of his twin indulging in you left the bitter aftertaste of jealousy on his tongue. It was a strange feeling, his brother’s affection for a human. One that, until recently, he couldn’t quite understand. And at the time, he had no desire to.

Nowadays the sensation was far from unwelcome. But ever since that night at the castle when he gifted you his pact, Belphegor had found that he much preferred having you all to himself in person. All to himself…

A small yawn escaped the youngest’s mouth as mind wandered to his twin. Could he feel it too, he wondered? The phantom weight of your touch?

…Perhaps he’d ask Beel about it later. But for now, he had a very important nap to get to.

—

Neither of you were conscious enough to know it, but that night as Beelzebub carried his brother down to his own bed and tucked him in, he whispered not one, but two good-nights.

[outlying-hyppocrate]

Dear Crispin: (A warning in advance as this will be long)

I write to you now at the edge of my consciousness, my body in a fugue state of transitional absentmindedness. Before long I will likely assume a different state, and as consequence lose my creative drive and passion for a short time. This is to say that I sympathise with your artist’s block, as something not so dissimilar blights me every few days.

Particularly, it centres around roughly a dozen individuals (separated into 3 stories) and their attempts to survive in this world. For the most part, this story and setting differs little from our own Earth, with the key difference of two things: the provable existence of the divine, and the existence of North and South Tasmia islands (existing in the stead of Australia).

These gods interact with the physical plane via two methods, each corresponding to their own methods of feeding. The gods grow in power as they are thought of more, growing in conceptual strength as they take up more space in the collective consciousness of mankind. So when they wish for good, consistent growth, they form contracts, granting mortals a fraction of a piece of a drop in their sea of power in return for a variety of sacrifices or rituals that bolster that god’s place in the common memory of humanity.

And when they are starved, seeking that rapid, growing, violent growth of fear and hatred. They create Saints, living, breathing conduits of their divine fury that render the earth asunder and fell cities in their footsteps. Both are methods of forcing more of humanity to think of them, and by cause grow in power, albeit one through love and the other through fear.

Gods exist for everything, hence their abundance. As Alek, a character in TLS once said,

“There is a god for everything. One for the chair your sitting on, one for the air you breath, one for the right root of your left upper premolar, like I said, for everything. As long as there is an idea for an object, like the idea that fire hurts, there is a god for it that can be worshipped and contracted.”

Furthermore, there exists the Lower Worlds, oft considered the realm of these gods, an infinite realm of infinite floors and no rules, each floor corresponding to a unique “frequency”, not unlike a radio, and each frequency applying to its given god.

But this very feeding method of the gods is the subject matter of my writing to you today, and explaining how it works. One of the many reoccurring concepts of TLS is the variety of explanations for these gods, how they so easily disrupt the laws of physics and why they function as they do.

Some argue that they are manifestations of some dormant force within the mind. Some argue that the Lower Worlds consist of a mirror matter, our minds paying off the entropic debt into this matter. Others that the gods are simply beings of a different dimension, poking their fingers in and spilling their rules into our own.

The issue is found, not in these solutions, but in the fact that each and every one of these interpretations works. They are all completely plausible explanations for every facet of the divine, each and every solution. This raises the question, which is the right one?

The answer, is all of them. You see, it is revealed late into the story that the Lower Worlds behave like quantum particles, their contents and rules existing in a superstate. If you are unfamiliar with the concept, it means that these worlds, and by extent the gods that are formed from them, are multiple things at once until observed, at which point they collapse into one possibility.

In other words, the Lower Worlds have no set rules, logic, or systems, only the ones we apply when we attempt to reconcile it. It is an amorphous sea of possibilities, collapsing into whatever form we grant it.

Like a liquid, it fills the container it is in, morphing to whatever people consider it to be. This is why the Lower Worlds lack the logic and reason of our world, for so many have differing views on its functions and logics, resulting in an ostensible lack of order.

This is why every solution to the gods works. This is why gods are intrinsically linked to concepts and how we apply to objects. This is why gods can so easily ignore our rules.

This dimension is one of undefined energy and possibility, a sea of potential superstates and wavelengths, collapsing in the exact moment a link between idea and thing is formed into one constant state, that state being a god.

When a god, or concept it thought of, it expands the definition and dimensions of that concept, granting it a “larger container” for it to inhabit, and by consequence granting it greater power.

If you link the ideas of fire and pain, as one so often does, a new god is birthed, one of painful flames. As more people grow to fear and love this god, more conceptual “mass” is granted to it, more access to the unending undefined energy within the Lower Worlds, expanding its reach into the infinite, explaining how they feed.

Apologies for both the length and strangeness of this rambling, as I had written this after many a month of conceptualising, and desperately desired some form of sharing this work of mine with a fellow mind.

Kind regards, Valerie

(PS: I truly pray non-religiously to whatever limbo of superstate energies hold power in our world that you may be free from that cursed block, and that the waters of creativity my flow in your fields once more)

dearest valerie,

[idreamofneonsheep]

Being a writer is so fun because every day I wake up and think that I could absolutely write a fourth wing or a lightlark in like 3 months, market it on tiktok, and then not have to worry abt my student loans

And then I remember I don't want to contribute to the shitty state of fantasy and such so I'd actually just spend a billion years making a good book and my debt would continue festering

[passthroughtime]

today i’m thinking about “different first meeting” kuwagami scenario where kuwana is acquainted with kaito beforehand, BUT not as friends, but as fuckbuddies at most. maybe, even just as a one night stand.

yagami comes to kaito’s apartment because he couldn’t reach him or something, and sees another new guy coming out of his shower; this isn’t news for him that kaito occasionally hooked up with random women and men alike, with preference in the former. yagami pays kuwana no mind and actively deflects any advances from him, thinking that kuwana sees him as another fuckbuddy of kaito. yagami doesn’t fuck around that much, and definitely isn’t in the mood to find somebody to stay the night with: they have an urgent case, and there isn’t any other thing on his mind at the moment.

while kuwana falls in love with yagami at the first sight. sure it’s weird to fall for a business partner of the guy he just fucked and isn’t going to remember for long. but, yagami is perfect, in some stupid way. kuwana says something dumb, gets rejected, and his hurting heart tells him he can’t let yagami go. he hasn’t felt this way about anyone in years.

so, he starts to hang around kaito much more frequently, they may even be called friends at some point. yagami thinks they are dating; this is the last thing kuwana wants him to think.

although, they click with each other pretty quickly; with all the annoyance, it’s fun to bicker with him, rarely being serious, picking on him and being picked on in turn. but it also frustrates yagami, because he sees that kuwana doesn’t really care about kaito (the amount he'd expect of the guy kaito is together with). while kuwana sees that yagami worries for kaito, and thinks that it’s in that way. once, he, heartbroken and losing hope, asks what yagami sees in kaito (as a possible romantic partner), but words it badly and is understood even worse. yagami falls out with kuwana, and they stop talking altogether.

yagami sulks and is very upset, because he thought they had something special going there, even if it was just a mutual interest, which wouldn’t turn into anything else. kuwana stops talking to kaito, explaining to him that it was because he couldn’t bear to be with yagami in one room when he hates him so much. his words kind of insinuate of kuwana’s feelings for yagami, but kaito doesn’t catch the hint.

some time passes, and yagami and kaito talk about kuwana. yagami says that he regrets so much cutting kuwana off from his life. kaito remembers what kuwana said, tells it to yagami as word for word as he could remember, and though he doesn’t understand what’s wrong, yagami sees kuwana’s message clearly.

yagami can’t reach him by his number (it’s out of service), so he comes to his house in ijincho. he isn’t home, but yagami waits for him. approaching his house, kuwana sees him sitting on the steps and asks, “did you not cuss me enough?” and everything he says is openly antagonizing. yagami tries to talk to him calmly, but with time kuwana, unyielding, starts to piss him off. yagami says something along, “and here i thought you’d want me to apologize to you” and storms out the house with an intention to drink this anger away and come back.

kuwana isn’t able to stop him (when he tries, yagami punches him in the nose so hard kuwana sees stars, and it starts bleeding), but he finds him leaning on the railing in the nearby parking lot, with cheep beer in his hands. “you didn’t escape far. feeling guilty?”, kuwana asks, meaning his injury. “yes,” yagami answers, meaning the argument that lead them to stop talking with each other.

kuwana asks to share his beer with him, to which yagami complies, and jokes about them having an indirect kiss. “so childish,” yagami says, “we are long past the age of indirect kisses.” “do you want an ‘adult’ kiss?” kuwana jokingly asks, falling into their playful type of talking naturally. “yes,” yagami answers, and kuwana hears no ridicule in turn. he kisses him and tries to say that he wanted to kiss him for as long as they know each other.

“i knew that all this time,” yagami interrupts him, “but i didn’t want a kiss from somebody who isn’t serious about it.” after kuwana’s question of what has changed, yagami answers, “because now i also know you want more from me than this, or sex, or whatever. makes kissing you a lot less disgusting.” kuwana laughs, and yagami steals this sound with another kiss.

[h0neyfreak]

so I’ve discovered a great passion for contemporary romance. unfortunately 90% of them are either written like I’m a complete moron or were edited by someone who lacks all respect for the genre. which means I of course am now 25k words into a manuscript and I keep rereading it and then getting to the part where I have to write more and turning into surprised pikachu.

[finalgirlminamurray]

sawyer sisters loreposting part 3: temperance

Part of my character notes for my TCM AU.

Other posts:

Patience

Chastity

Charity (Lacey)

Full disclosure, she might be my actual favorite. Nubbins Sawyer but a girl: middle child, professional hitcher, amateur occultist, grave robber, vulture culture enthusiast, certified Weird Girl. Temperance/The Queen of Wands, reversed.

Full name: Temperance Nuala Sawyer, named by her mother in an attempt to honor their potential Irish roots, with the drawback that no one knows how to pronounce her middle name. Which is fine by her, since keeping your middle name secret is a good way to protect your true name under certain dealings.

Born: October 22, 1946

Notes:

The younger twin by a good hour or so, and for an hour or so her mother and grandmother were worried she wasn’t going to be born at all, but she made it out. There are all sorts of stories about what happened to her, most told by her mother. This may explain a lot about her.

She did not go to school with her twin sister, because her mother recognized that it wouldn’t be a good environment for her. Homily did her best to teach her at home, but it was slow going, due to Temperance’s short attention span and difficulty retaining certain information. (She did eventually learn to read and write, she just doesn’t do either very often.)

She was on her own a lot as a child, and spent a lot of time outside exploring. She got to know the properties surrounding the house pretty well, but still had an insatiable curiosity about what lay beyond that. (She didn’t get out much – it was hard enough for her mother to keep an eye on her older sisters in public.)

She also spent a fair amount of time with her little sister Charity, making up stories for her and showing her things outside. Charity would follow her around like a loyal puppy, but Temperance never knew how much her sister was really listening.

Chastity’s friends would come by sometimes (never in the house, though) and would even occasionally talk to her. She got the sense they were just trying to be polite, but some of them definitely liked her for her unfiltered honest self. She would have liked to be friends with them, too, but she didn’t see them often enough for that.

She was left with her grandmother a lot, who would mind her and Charity as best she could, and tell them stories that Temperance took to strongly. Most of them seemed to be about what would happen to children who didn’t obey their guardians, but there was plenty in there about fairies and witches, vampires and werewolves, and all sorts of strange magic and mystic forces that she found herself believing had to exist out in the world somewhere, if her grandmother spoke with such conviction.

She developed her own belief system over the years, based on a combination of her grandmother’s stories, generally accepted folk practices, and her own experience in what worked. (She never believed in Chastity’s ideas about astrology and the like, because it was both too structured and too vague; a defined set of rules that could really apply to anything. What she did got results.)

She found a deck of tarot cards in someone’s car once and they let her keep it. She doesn’t really know what most of it means, but she found one card with her name on it, and she keeps it on hand as a sort of good-luck charm.

She started venturing out more as a teenager, when Chastity was going out more often and she was getting particularly restless staying at home. When she expressed her frustration that she couldn’t go out too far or she wouldn’t be able to walk back home in time, Chastity casually suggested that she hitch a ride with someone instead, and she took that to heart.

She never learned how to drive herself. Aside from not having her own car, she just never saw a point to it and her sisters never pushed it, even though Chass did offer to teach her a couple time. Like going to school, and just generally interfacing with people on the regular, driving has always been something that her older sisters did.

She likes getting rides from strangers; she can travel as far as she wants on foot and pretty much always manages to get someone to pick her up and take her back home before it gets dark, and she meets new people every day. She doesn’t mind that she’ll most likely never see them again, at least not usually. Sometimes people are pretty chill with her, and they seem more interested in her eccentricities and social awkwardness than anything. (Or maybe they're taking pity on her, this strange young woman standing by the side of the road clutching a bag of...something that might very well be all she has.) Sometimes they’re less nice and she has to decide whether to stay with them for the ride or get herself kicked out.

(The birthmark does tend to draw stares; it’s a lot more noticeable than Chastity’s, and she’s figured out that a lot of people think it’s a bloodstain at first. She doesn’t think about it often, but sometimes she stares at it in the mirror and traces it with a finger. The fact that Chastity has one on the opposite side of her face but it doesn’t match hers is a source of mild vexation for her.)

She knows how dangerous the whole process can be, which is why she’s always prepared. She really doesn’t want Patience to know what she does all day because she’d never let her do it in the first place, and also she doesn’t want her older sister to worry about her too much. (Chass and Lacey already do enough of that.)

She’s always been a creative type; drawing never came naturally to her the way it seemed to for some people, but she liked making things out of objects she found outside, putting them together in configurations that were interesting to her. She was very interested in photography as a way of capturing interesting sights one might not have a chance to see again, but never could get her hands on a camera until one of her drivers let her have an old Polaroid. She was disappointed when it eventually ran out of film, so Chastity gave her a new one for their next birthday. (She never said where she got it, but Temperance certainly didn’t care.)

She likes working with animal remains a lot. The natural world holds a lot of beauty in it, and it makes her feel connected to it. She doesn’t draw much of a distinction between that and human remains; the family never did like letting anything go to waste.

She worked at the slaughterhouse for a few years once she was old enough and did a pretty good job slitting throats, even if most of her coworkers seemed pretty creeped out by her. She took home a lot of souvenirs and kept coming by after she and Lacey were let go. (Chastity was working with Patience at the station around the same time, and no matter how much she complained about her job, she still said she’d never trade places with her twin. Temperance understood – despite what she could do to humans, some people just aren’t cut out for that kind of work.)

She’s never been bothered by the idea of killing animals outside of work, either, but she tries not to do it in front of other people. Even her sisters don’t seem to like when she kills something “unnecessarily”.

Empathy is something she struggles with…or she would, if she felt any desire to get better at it more often. Since most of the people she meets outside of the family are only with her for a short time, she doesn’t really see the point in considering their feelings on the same level as her own, and when they’re dinner guests, then of course she’s not going to bother seeing them as people. If she happens to find their suffering interesting or even entertaining to watch, she doesn’t see why that should matter.

She started visiting the local cemetery on her own once she could. Her own family never buried their dead as far as she could remember, and there was a certain fascination in a place where bodies were treated very differently than in their house. She didn’t get the idea to dig them up herself until she overheard one of the old men who hung around the place talking about grave robbers, and that night she snuck out with a shovel and no further plans than to see what the corpses looked like down there. After doing this a few more times without getting caught, she figured no one really seemed to care what happened to their relatives’ bodies after they were locked away in a box and buried, so she started getting creative. Nobody’s traced it back to her yet, although she remembers one of the old men, passed out at the gates overnight, suddenly waking up and staring right at her while she was standing in an open grave. She stared back until he laid back down, and he was gone by morning.

She finds the sensation of pain interesting. Her sisters really don’t like it when she does things to herself that draw blood, so she also tries not to do that in front of them, but sometimes she forgets if she happens to be holding something sharp and will start idly running it across her palm. It really seems to freak out people she’s riding with, so she tries not to do it in front of them either, unless she has to. Or unless she thinks their reactions will be interesting, too.

She really does believe that she and Chastity have a psychic connection of some sort, owing to their twin status. Chass never really believed it until their respective near-death experiences in 1973. Temperance is certain that she pulled through because she knew she couldn’t let her sister come home to find her gone; consequently, Chastity pulled through because she couldn’t let her sister deal with her never coming back.

She’s heard some of the jokes about her name, but most people don’t seem to know what it means right away. They also tend to drop it when they realize she’s not on any drugs, she’s just like that. (She’s tried drugs a couple times, usually when Chastity tried to get her to share the experience, but she didn’t like how it made her feel.)

Bisexual but almost certainly doesn’t know the words to describe it, just that she’s been interested in both men and women that way, without considering gender as a factor at all. (Or anything, really – it just happens with some people and she doesn’t bother wondering why.) Chastity tried explaining it to her after she mentioned this once, but she just politely listened without thinking too much about it. She’s had a few sexual encounters on the road, mostly just to see what it was like; sex isn’t really something she feels strongly about either way. She can and will defend herself if anyone tries something she doesn’t like.

Also probably nonbinary and never really got the concept of gender anyway; all she knows is that people tend to assume she’s a “woman”, and she’s generally fine with that, but wishes there weren’t so many assumptions that came along with it. Would probably use she/they pronouns interchangeably if she was aware of that as an option.

She's commandeered the side room of the house as her personal studio, to keep all her animal bones and art projects that she's currently working on or there's no space for in the rest of the house. It's a bit of a mess in there, but to her it's organized chaos. Lacey also uses the same room for some of her own purposes when Temperance isn't around, including her attempts to keep a chicken (just one, there isn't room for more.) Sometimes they'll sit quietly and work on their respective projects in there together.

She’s fairly certain she died on the morning of August 19, 1973 when that truck hit her. Something happened to pull her through, but it didn’t happen on that other plane of reality and she just has to live with that knowledge. She only wishes that she’d done more to save that nice boy (or was it a girl? The planes of reality converge a lot) in the wheelchair who’d traded knives with her, before her sister got to them.

[blondiest]

six sentence sunday monday: all's fair in love and war (and this is both) [chapter 2 coming wednesday]

Mello settles into bed himself and shuts his eyes. He does a few breathing exercises, trying to calm himself enough to drift off. Normally, if he hadn’t been distracted by coming up with a workable offensive strategy to counter Near’s extremely evil-genius attack on his psyche, he would’ve taken a shower after dinner instead of doing schoolwork all night, so normally he would be relaxed by the time he laid down. Today, though, his entire schedule has been disrupted by the brief but horrific debacle in the library; the ripple effect of watching Near lick his spit off his fingers is devastating even eight hours later. Pink lips wrapped around saliva-shiny fingertips, a small tongue carelessly moving over the digits, the whole thing playing and replaying in up-close slow-motion on the backs of his fucking eyelids. Mello wants to die, but God is not that merciful.