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celeluwhenfics · 21 days ago

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How I got over an epic description block

Okay, so I wanted to write more about how I got over the massive writer’s block that held me back when I was working on chapter 2 of pHORSEuasion - I’m squeezing in this last bit of thoughts about chapter 2 before chapter 3 comes out later this week! I don’t pretend in any way to be in a position to give writing advice, but I struggled so much with this, and had such a satisfying “aha!” moment when it finally came together, that I thought, well, maybe it’s worth a little author note! So here we go. I had long agonized over, and procrastinated, writing the whole moment when Rowena is seeing the Golden Hall in Edoras for the first time. I struggled and made a million notes and outlines and drafts. I’ve probably watched every gif from those scenes in the movies a hundred times, taking note of every detail, and researched all the pictures from the set and fanart I could find. I drew little plans of the hall, tried to visualize walking there, banged my head, wrote bits and pieces, banged my head some more, etc. I also kept going back to Tolkien’s paragraphs describing Meduseld when the Three Hunters and Gandalf arrive. How could I convey the beauty shown in the movie? And how could I wrote what Tolkien already described so masterfully, without just giving up and copy-pasting the paragraphs in question? But also, every single one of my readers knows what it looks like, so why bother, why not just jump right into the action? Furthermore, Austen never describes anything at length, so why torture myself so when there are so many ways to go around it? But I had a gut feeling that there was something to say about that place, and I couldn’t just skip over it. I spent several weeks of agony tweaking over and over all the bits of dialogue that had been ready for months (and the FUCK HE’S HOT passage, let’s be honest), while leaving the whole introduction part blank or just in a state of word-vomit. @emmanuellececchi took a look at it at that point (I’m really sorry about the state of things she had to endure), and basically told me, make sure you don’t just info-dump in that part of the chapter! Which was a very fair critique, and left me scratching my head even more. Description can be so boring and lifeless, and nobody wants to read that.

It turns out that I was thinking about it entirely wrong, in trying to write something artificially “original” and different from Tolkien’s paragraph when describing what we all know Meduseld looks like. The objective looks of the place don’t matter at all.

We have to see the hall through Rowena’s eyes.

Description has to come from an emotion.

🤯

When we get Tolkien’s description, it’s from a very detached, disinterested point of view: Aragorn, Gandalf, Legolas and Gimli. They’re busy, they’re exhausted, they’re in a hurry. Aragorn and Gandalf have been there before and know some of the lore of Rohan. Legolas and Gimli are, uh, more or less clueless tourists. They do notice a tapestry depicting Eorl and Félarof, and Aragorn even takes time to explain who it is.

Therefore we get a paragraph of MAGNIFICENT prose, from the point of view of four people entering a very nice building, but they don’t relate to it on a personal basis. There is a sense of foreigness, of curiosity for a deep history of which they’re just scratching the surface. Which is what it’s supposed to convey! But Rowena is in an entirely different position, therefore even if it were an acceptable thing to do, and even if she enters and sees the exact same thing as the Three Hunters and Gandalf a couple months before them, copying the Tolkien's paragraph wouldn’t have worked.

Although she’s a Rohirrim born in a higher class, Rowena has never been to Edoras. She was raised in Aldburg, travel distances are long, there are troubles in the country, and with her family disgraced just as she was coming of age, she never had the opportunity to visit and be introduced at court. But even though Rowena is also stepping in the hall for the first time, unlike the Three hunters, she already has a rich relationship to the hall: she grew up with songs, tales and legends about it, and many people she knows have been there and told her about it.

Realizing this crucial difference in point of view, I was able to ask myself: what does she see when she walks in the hall? How does she feel? What does she notice? How does she relate to that mythical place? How does it meet her expectations? What surprises her?

I thought of my first visit to Paris at 17, after having read Molière, Victor Hugo, Balzac, Berlioz, Gautier, and heard Trenet, Piaf, Lully, Pérotin, Satie, Debussy, and so many others, for as long as I could remember. What does it feel like to finally see for the first time the very centre of the culture you’ve been soaking in for your entire life? (Although admittedly I was just a gawking tourist in very well preserved historical monuments.)

And that’s how I came to what is her train of thought as she walks in, and looks around. In the tapestries, she sees the glory of the heroes of all her favorite stories yellowing and gathering dust. Dust she also sees in the cracks of the floor, where there has been so many legendary balls. Bottles of medicine cover the famous table of the old kings. She’s looking for reassurance of the standing her family used to have, and she finds none.

Lines of songs are coming back to her in quick succession, and I tried something to that effect in the form of the writing and syntax (you tell me if it worked…) In this sentence at the end of the passage: “The hustle of crowds, the songs and laughter, the hollers of victory, the challenges, the jest, the dances and war cries, the hands on the harpstrings, the great red fires glowing, they all had passed like rain on the mountain.” I’m very closely echoing the famous Lament of the Rohirrim “Where is the hand on the harpstring, and the red fire glowing?/(…)/They have passed like rain on the mountain, like a wind in the meadow”. The goal of this referencing a song that the reader knows, is to make them suspicious that other songs from the deep past of Rohan, which have not made their way into LotR. For example these sentences a bit earlier: “He had called for it to be blessed by the winds of the prairies, the snows of the summits and the rays of the raising sun every morning until the world would sink.” “She had pictured the famed beauty of Lady Léofaen, daughter of Brytta King, dancing on the hall's dais in skirts of gold and green, laughing before her many suitors, until one of them, a humble shepherd blessed by Béma, offered her a horse like the wind, a sword like lighting, a shield like the full moon, and a kiss sweet like the first fruit of summer.” I normally wouldn’t write such long, somewhat choppy and repetitive sentences! Perhaps because Rowena is recalling lines of a song and mixing them vaguely in her thoughts? I’m nowhere learned enough to play incorporating with meter and rhyme into prose like Tolkien did on many occasions, but I would have use that tool if I had it in my toolbox in this case!

As some commenters have noticed, a key idea of the whole scene is the contrast between her memories, imaginations and expectations (a glorious past, heroes, crowds, noise, splendour) and the current reality (silence, dust, emptyness, decay).

Once these simple concepts were clear to me, I literally sat down and wrote the 950 words of her entrance in the hall (including all the queens and ladies discussed here!) in one shot, by hand. What appeared on the page then was just lightly edited to become what you read in chapter 2.

Description had to come from emotion. I had to describe the setting through Rowena’s eyes.

It’s quite simple and perhaps obvious to more experienced writers, but I wish I had understood that earlier, but better late than never!

#lotr fanfic #authors note #pHORSEuasion #Rohan #Rohan culture #writers block #Writing problems #Descriptions my not always beloved

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writerscafehub · 8 months ago

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MEET THE BARISTA: Jen

@jen-with-a-pen

1. From one to five stars, how would you rate your writing? (No downplaying yourself!)

I would honestly rate my writing a solid 3½. I know that I have lots of room for improvement and growth– I've even seen growth from fic to fic or chapter to chapter and it makes me really proud to see how far I've come.

2. What do you think makes your writing stand out from other works?

Personally, I think that my setting/world-building and “set direction” helps me stand out. In college I did screenwriting for a bit and that's how I kinda do my rough drafts, writing them in present tense and making sure I’m showing and not just telling. Also making sure my OCs or characters have special awareness of things and people around them.

3. Are there any writers that inspire you?

SO MANY TO EVEN NAME GOOD LORD. When I was initially invited into discord servers, I was fangirling in my apartment with my cat over basically being in the same room as some of (what I consider to be) the best and biggest writers of the fandom that I had been reading for months prior. There are so many mutuals and people who inspire me, too many to name specifically, but I will say that Hope (aka pilotisms/whirlybirbs) is the one whose works really gave me the courage and motivation to start writing in the fandom for the first time. IWe’ve never talked, but I hope she knows I think about Vacant Mirrors religiously to this day.

4. What’s the fic you’re most proud of?

It’s so hard picking between your children! I think it’s a close tie with FOXHUNT and FILTHY, IMPETUOUS SOULS but the latter probably takes the top spot atm. It’s been so well received, even more so than I could’ve ever imagined. I almost scrapped the entire thing and I’m so glad I decided against it.

5. Which character(s) do you find easiest to write and which do you find most difficult to write?

Bucky and Steve both come easiest to me. Finding a good flow for either of them depends on my mood and muse, but I gravitate towards one or the other 99% of the time. I'm terms of difficulties, trying to write OFCs or minor/background OCs is harder for me since they don’t have a “format” like pre-established characters do.

6. Who or what do you find yourself writing about most?

Bucky. Bucky has always been my muse since Day 1 and most of my little notes or WIPs involve him in some way. Also writing settings in college or around college is a pattern I’ve noticed that, although I will never give up, I have been trying to do different time periods and not involve school since I’ve been out of it for a good two years at this point.

7. Tell us about a WIP you’re excited about!

I've had this specific WIP idea/concept going on 2-3 years now and it's coming together… albeit incredibly fucking slowly. It takes place within the 6-9 months between Endgame and TFATWS and involves a lot of angst, healing, and melancholy. I've been including details from the Falcon and Winter Soldier comics along with Bucky’s healing journey through grief and PTSD, amongst other things. It's been in the works for too long, so who knows if it'll see the light of day?

8. First fandom you ever wrote for?

One Direction. I was 11 and had unrestricted Internet access. I was unstoppable. (If anyone was on Miss Literati you’re a real one.)

9. Any guilty pleasure trope(s)?

Omegaverse, hands down. Also poly fics (stucky x reader, my beloved.)

10. A trope you’ll never, ever write for.

I cannot for the love of God do pregnancies, time travel, or fantasy. Just doesn't appeal to me whatsoever.

11. Wildest fic you’ve ever written?

Probably the first time I wrote smut, which was my Ranch Hand!Bucky fic, Impressions on the Inside of Your Thigh. I wouldn’t necessarily call it wild, but to me it was/is!

12. Favorite pairing to write for? (platonic or romantic!)

Honestly? Stucky. There's something about the endless possibilities of their dynamic that makes lil ol bisexual me’s heart swell with happiness. The best thing is, they’re so versatile; you can have them be platonic or romantic and still bring out their unconditional love for one another.

13. Do you listen to anything while you write?

If I really need to get into the mood of the specific story, then yes. Otherwise, I'll either have a Twitch VOD on for background noise or just put noise-canceling headphones on and zone in on the quiet.

14. One-shots or multi-chaptered works?

One shots!

15. Have you ever daydreamed about side adventures/spin-offs from your fic? Tell us about them!

Literally every time I work on one. I’ve thought about one for Chains Around My Feet where it’s like a prologue leading up to the events in Chains, but it felt more appropriate to leave it as a one shot. FILTH, IMPETUOUS SOULS also gets a daydream sometimes about how their dynamic might be back at home base, the aftermath of the fic’s events, that sort of thing.

16. Is there anything you’ve wanted to write, but you’ve been too scared to try?

Omegaverse. I’m slowly working up the courage, but I just don’t feel like I’m ready yet. There’s also another WIP that I had started for Whumptober 2023, but it was just too intense that I scared myself out of finishing it and posting it. HTP is definitely not for the weak of heart and mind.

17. What’s the nicest comment you’ve ever received?

There are legit so so many lovely ones, but I think one that stands out at the moment was when I wrote the weight and someone said something among the lines of “I don’t really read Stucky a lot but this just convinced me to read more” and that felt like such an accomplishment to me.

18. Have you ever gone outside of your comfort zone for a fic? How did it turn out?

Chains Around My Feet was my first Whumptober work and was definitely something I had never done before. I actually was pretty impressed with myself on how well (in my own opinion) I was able to write horror/whump with a Dead Dove ending. Pretty proud of it still.

19. Tooth-rotting fluff or merciless angst?

Merciless Angst!

20. Do you have any OCs? Tell us about them!

Not that I can really think of. If an OC counts as an x reader? Then the Reader I came up with for my years-long WIP.

21. If you could enter the universe of any one of your fics, which would it be and why?

Honeysuckle, hands down. Living and working in Avengers Tower, adventuring in NYC, enjoying the sunsets, all while doing it with the Bucky Barnes? Yes. Fucking. Please.

22. Is there anything you wish your audience knew about your writing or writing process?

When I write, the scenes play out in my head like a literal movie. I see it as scripting everything out and then running through and editing scenes, and then when everything is done, it plays out like a fully fleshed out film. It’s both a blessing yet a curse, but it’s so integral to my process.

23. Copy and paste an excerpt you’re particularly fond of.

From FILTHY, IMPETUOUS SOULS:

He scoffed a laugh. “You weren’t exactly on my list of things t’do.”

“Well I hope I’m a top priority, now.”

“Number fuckin’ one.”

24. Ramble about any fic-related thing you want!

I wish I could stop time and just sit down for a week and get my WIPs started and edited and DONE. I’m entering my busy travel season for work and don’t have nearly as much time and energy as I did like a month or two ago. I miss it. I miss my muse, I miss being able to sit down and spend time fleshing out all these ideas in my head. The other side of it is lack of engagement (mutuals you’re okay i promise) and lack of feedback. Like yeah, kudos and likes are okay, but whenever I get a reblog– one that isn’t from a minor or bot account– I get so happy. When I get a comment, it’s like striking gold. I just wish that the passive consumption and aggressive demand for our work would die down and readers would take the time to even share our stuff. It’s disheartening to see your favorite authors cease writing because what’s the point anymore, ya know? Anyways, SUPPORT YOUR WRITERS!

#★jen★

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shadow3142 · 2 years ago

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🖊 1 each for adam, jessie, viv, jeb, and 2 for freya and juno . tell me about your ocs

. I FORGOT THIS WAS IN MY DRAFTS OOPSIES anyway u know the drill. under the cut she goes.

Adam has probably been one of my favorite characters to write for a multitude of reasons. He's a very detailed and in-depth character with many flaws, but also many virtues, both of which contribute to his rise and his downfall. One thing in particular I love talking about with him is his passion and his love. Adam's love is an extremely powerful aspect of his personality. When he loves, he loves hard and strong and with unwavering confidence. It drives him to go to impossible lengths for people and do impossible things, and he'll throw away everything for it. It reminds me of Anakin Skywalker in a way; someone who's so hellbent on protecting the ones he cares about he will destroy everything in his path to do it. Adam's passion is what makes him such a loving and compassionate person, but also what makes him so dangerous to both his enemies and the people he surrounds himself with. The moment someone he loves is in danger he will abandon every sense of caution and rationality to save them. He will start wars and finish them, bring down entire systems and empires, he will sacrifice a thousand lives to just to save one and will not stop until he's sure it's saved. That is what makes Adam Moreno so dangerous. Not his skill or his strength, but his love.

Jessie I really have to do more with in many regards. She has so much potential as a character that I just forgot to tap into early on, and much of her dimension only shines in an offshoot timeline I wrote before Splatoon 3 was announced. Something I really haven't talked much about is her relationship with Adam, and though I've gone on several-hour-long tangents about Adam's perspective, I've touched very little upon Jessie's, so I'll take some time do to that now.

When it came to Adam, I think Jessie had a lot of mixed feelings about him for a while. When they had first met, the two were at each others throats and were constantly fighting with each other, and for the longest time she had just assumed he was one of those guys with a stick up his ass for no aparent reason. It's not until she learns about his past with Squidbeak and some of the more traumatizing things he'd endured there that she truly begins to see him in a different light. Up until that point, she hadn't really seen him as much more than somebody she had to bear, and even when Adam's pessimism and temper began to calm down she still couldn’t quite bring herself to trust that he wouldn’t blow up again. And then Adam gets sick and has a breakdown in her arms, spilling every little secret he’s ever had to her, and things start to make sense. The way they are around each other changes after that. Adam is more open and paitent with her, he talks to her about his work no matter how mundane the day was, and his voice is softer and more welcoming, no longer angry and sore from a quick temper. Jessie is more gentle in those moments, and though she keeps her charismatic playful charm, he doesn’t press his buttons anywhere near as much. She talks battle strategies with him, and rather than their ideas clashing they work together to come up with something that works.

I don’t think she really realizes when she falls in love with him. It’s slow and the line between good friends and something more gets blurred. One thing flows into the other, like a creek into a stream into a river, and suddenly theres a desire for something else with him that had been there, but she hadn’t noticed it until now. She’d begun to adore him for some time, but it hadn’t occured to her that wanting to give your friend a kiss isn’t the most platonic feeling. Previously, I’ve defined Freya as “Arecus’s Chosen Champion,” but I haven’t exactly elaborated much on what that means in her story. To make a longer story short, Freya was essentially hand-picked by Arceus to go through time and space, travelling across regions to stop whatever evil forces are there that Arceus cannot deal with itself. In layman’s terms, she’s the guy you play as in the mainline Pokemon games. She goes in, goes through the motions of the story, fights and defeats the big bad, and once her job is done she goes to the Elite 4 of the region and purposefully fails the fight so she doesn't become the regional champion. After that, she's plucked from the region overnight and shipped off to wherever Arceus needs her next.

Juno is one of those characters that has only come about recently, so I don't have too much info on her, but I can give you a bit of a rundown of her character. Juno is the main protagonist of Pokemon Scarlet. She's very socially anxious and, though she tries to make friends and be outgoing, she isn't at all very good at it. She's kind of dropped into the three paths you can take ingame against her will, but she's too polite to back out of it. On the other hand, she's a very talented trainer and she's quickly become a formidable opponent throughout her escapades in Paldea.

As for Koraidon, the pokemon is never actually on her team of 6, but she still holds onto him and treats him more like a companion than anything. Their relationship is a lot like Hiccup and Toothless from HTTYD. They do nothing but enable each other.

#ask #tentatechnologies #OC: Adam #OC: Jessie #OC: Freya #OC: Juno #musings #post #sorry I didnt answer Jeb and Vivian I couldnt think of anything for them :[

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clarissalance · 4 years ago

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Who has the upper hand?

Pairing: Kaeya x G/N!Reader, mention of Varka and Diluc.

Warning: Slight swearing, Kaeya is a lil shit, reader being stubborn and scheming, immense tension

Summary: You’re so terrible at swordsmanship that you can’t withstand 2 strikes from Kaeya or, are you?

Word count: 3k5

Disclaimer: What is written in here is based on my imagination, nothing from this fic should be taken seriously. Most of the fact I put in this fic does not follow the lore of the game so it should only be taken as a grain of salt. For example: section 8 in Knight of Favonius codebook.

A/N: I struggle so much when I wrote this piece. This was suppose to be angstier but I tone down a little bit (because Kaeya was very OOC in my draft, I think he’s still a bit OOC in this fic but I tried my best ;-;, pls don’t bite me.)

How did author write a 50k+ oneshot? I can’t write something more than 5k properly ;-; Anyhow, please enjoy this fic. I’m going to have a good rest for 2 weeks before release a comeback. Please shower Kaeya and our new MC with a lot of loves!!!!

As a strategist of the knight of Favonius, you don't usually have enough time to finish the towers of reports, the never-ending meetings and dealing with cheap tricks Fatui diplomats. Often, you have to skip your daily sword training session, which results in a rather miserable situation. The whole practice ground is staring holes at your defeated posture. You are sitting on the hard soil ground, and the Calvary captain is towering you, his sharp blade just a few inches away from your throat.

It is not a strange scene for any knights to lose a spar against the Calvary captain, he should be one with the best swordsmanship after Grand Master, and maybe Acting-Grand Master, too. However, as knight, they can usually withstand him at least more than 2 blows.

Whispers and talks start to circulate around as soon as you stepped your foot in the training ground. It’s very uncommon to see people from that department wandering around this area. The strategy department is famous inside the Knight of Favonius to be the weakling-cunning-mouthy-jerks, who always find excuses after excuses to skip the monthly knight evaluation.

So, who gives them the right to be exempt from the test? Of course, it’s from the ultimate high chief of strategy department. Rumours say before the strategy chief works for the Favonius knight, the man was once a legendary attorney. That person can flip words from black to white, turns the defendant from guilty to innocent. With a profound convincing skillset coming from the chief, persuading the Grand Master Varka is easy as a piece of cake. The whole department of 10 people is easily off-hook for 3 years, never participate in the monthly evaluation before the man suddenly dropped the bomb 2 days ago.

“ I’m tired from coming with excuses to cover for your lazy asses.” The man waved his hand, his eyes staring outside the window. His nails scratching the messy shaved chin.“ Varka seems to get used to navigating my thoughts-”

“Maybe time is wearing away your skill-” At the corner, someone accidentally blurted out, and the whole table gave him a sharp look. Did he have a death wish or something? If so, everyone here can happily dig him a hole, free charge for the coffin.

The chief cleared his voice again, blue eyes melancholy drifted to the table. “So, you guys have tried your best on this monthly evaluation. I hope to see you all again next month.”

The meeting was dismissed afterwards, and everything spiralled into chaos. The whole department hasn’t touched anything aside from the parchment papers and the quills in the last 3 years. How are they going to master the swordman-ship in 2 weeks?

But, the worst thing is,

Your well-respected, talented, and tactful chief has run away.

The next morning, you received the news that a foxy old man is on a business trip to Fontaine with the Grand Master. The expedition is 2 weeks long.

You should have known what he meant when the deceitful man ambiguously ended his sentence like that. Nothing goes well when the chief said: ‘Farewell, my comrades’.

For the last 2 days, you have been starting to familiarize yourself again with how to hold a sword and how to swing the sword.

As you trail along with the long-forgotten memories, trying to look through the familiar feeling when swinging the sword, you hear footsteps coming in your direction. It is familiar, with the way the person is walking, the beat, the sudden burst of noise in the air, you can only conclude it’s the Calvary Captain. The practice ground seems livelier as soon as the man steps inside, people rushing to his side to give their greetings. Maybe today is one of his practice days.

“ Never thought I would see you here.” The young man calls out, successfully jostle you up from your thoughts. You give him a complex look and turn away, focusing on the tattered dummies. Your wrist is screaming in protest, legs wobbling. You remember those golden days when you were young when you were flexible, and your bones didn't crack as much. Oh, where the golden days have gone?

“What do I own the honour of seeing you here, captain?” You fold your arm defensively, voice monotonously. Kaeya despites the most when you start talking in an emotionless tone. Oh, how you love riling him up in the middle of the practice ground!

“ I come here for my weekly practice, but-” He shrugs, eyes glinting with mischief. “ look like the rumour about the abolishment of special permission for the strategy department is true.”

So he has heard the rumours. You roll your eyes, face blanks. You know Kaeya has his own way to obtain his information, but you never thought it’d be this fast. Words don’t easily leak from the strategy department.

“What do you need? Make it short, so I can practice for the upcoming evaluation.” Tired of his long introduction, you ask him directly. If you are going to ignore him any longer, the man will continue poking you.

Starting an argument only wastes your time, and asserting dominance in the middle of the training ground won’t boost your ego. You’re a strategist, your weapons are detailed plans and sharp word, not sword and bow. Showing off your strength in front of those ruthless knights don't improve your relationship with them.

“ Straight the point eh?” You give him an impatiently look, tempting to ignore him again before he flashes you a smug grin. “How bout sparing with me?”

The whole training ground falls in silence, and you direct at the captain a confusing look. Is he serious? No one in the knight except the Grand Master can go against him, not to mention someone who hasn’t touched a sword for three years.

“I can help you with your training, and you can help with mine” Kaeya speaks with utmost confidence that you almost nod and agree. That man is really deceitful, he knows how well your skill has gone dull, yet he still wants to practice with you? What is this man plotting?

“ Do you realize how absurd your offer is? ” You give him a complicated gaze, voice unwavering. Everyone takes in a deep breath, tension crackling. It's not everyday scenery you often encounter. A heated argument between the mischievous cavalry captain and the tactful strategist. Nosy people gather around the pair, internally hoping for the war the breaks out.

“ You know well that I can’t properly block your first strike.” Light-hearted, you joke, but there is no hint of amusement in your voice. Sharpe eyes glaring at the blue figure, you notice the man remains unfazed.

" Shouldn't you choose a more competent opponent?"

The sound whispers and talking about the reasons why Kaeya picked such an easy opponent start to circulate, and you can’t help to curl your lips up. Within a few seconds, you have effortlessly turned the gossiping direction toward your desired path. Flashing Kaeya a victorious grin, you tap your foot impatiently, waiting for his reaction.

You should have worked at PR damage control or marketing instead! The diplomat would have been fine too! At least, you wouldn’t need to practice swordman-ship.

As you mulling on your terrible choice of career, a chill runs down your spine. Tilting up, Kaeya is beaming sweetly at you, the frost slowly creeping up and nipping your shoes. Look like you just pressed the wrong button.

The man narrows his eyes, and you gulp nervously, avoiding his calculating gaze. Kaeya chuckles, his voice laced with worry, wavering and hurtful.

“I just want to help you improve as fast as possible. The test is coming in two weeks isn't it?”

The whole table has turned, and people start to say how considerate and thoughtful the cavalry captain is. The crowd starts to criticize you and tell you to be more grateful and stop suspicious of his unconditional help. Oh, you wish he wasting it on you, many knights in this training ground would love getting advice and improvements from him.

Applause for our dear Calvary captain, smoothly seeking empathy from the crowd and turning the favour back to him. No wonder how fast he climbed up the rank.

Bantering and arguing with a person like him is meaningless, so you accept his offer and drag your sword toward his direction. Let finish this within 2 strikes.

Moving to the centre of the field, both of you face each other, his eyes scanning you sceptically. What is this man plotting again? Bowing, you finally give him a warning look before standing at your ready position. Kaeya holds his sword, analyzing your starting posture.

As soon as the whistle blows, you charge at the man, opening the spar with a direct hit. Kaeya quickly raises his word up to block the first blow, the sound of steel clashing loudly. He then forcefully diverts the sword to the left, a classic way to counter the strike.

Knowing your limited strength against him, you take a step back and swiftly angle the blade downward, aiming for a weak spot at his waist. This move would create a noticeable weakness on your right, and only the idiot doesn't use this as his advantage to disarm you.

You’re right, he uses the loophole you planned, successfully disarm you within 2 strikes. The sword slips from your hand clanging loudly behind as your foot slips and fall on the ground.

His sharp blade is just a few inches away from your neck. The calvary captain wears a solemn look, his cerulean eyes imbued with irritation. Seems like he figures out you purposefully planed to end the match in 2 strikes.

Quickly raising your hand in defeat, you shoot him a taunting grin. The referee declares Kaeya is the winner, and people start to clap and cheer loudly, but overall no one is surprised. As the match end, audiences start to disperse, return back to their tasks.

Kaeya put his sword away and offers you his hand. You stare idly at the gloved hand a moment before putting yours on. The man effortlessly pulls you up, your body flush against his. With Kaeya so close to you, your first reaction is to push the man away, but his firm grip says otherwise. He inches closer, dark blue locks brush your cheek, tall figure towering you intimidating.

“Why end it so early?” He leans down and whispers, your body tenses up visibly. “Surely, you could handle more than 2 strikes of mine.” The young man in blue hums, his voice sultry.

“ What are you saying? I haven’t touched the sword more than 3 years.” You remind him, hands pushing his chest away, trying to create some distance. The man doesn’t budge an inch.

“Your strikes doesn’t say so. The first strike was not bad.” Noticing your effort to push him away, Kaeya stands straight, heels dig into the ground. His lips curl up at the helplessness flashing in your eyes. He loves seeing you struggle, seeing how anxiety and desperation rising in your sparkling orbs. “I think you could at least have a decent fight with me.”

“ Quit spouting non-sense Kaeya, let me go. We are in public.” You let out an annoyed hiss, punching his toned chest. He still wears the uniform improperly like that, the exposed tan chest can be under many layers. Sometimes you don't even know the reason why doesn't he just button the shirt up properly. Finger grazing at the bared skin on his chest, you turn your head away, cheeks heat up.

The man loves seeing you squirming in his trap, and you’re not going to let him see that. Anything, but satisfying his masochist hobby.

“You don’t like skin-ship?” The man fakes a gasp, his orb sparkles with mirth. “But you were being touchy with your friend. Why can't we be a bit touchy? ” His tone suggestively, the tall man snickers at your blushing mess. Out of everything, why would he mention that? You give him stinky eyes, brows furrow deeply.

“I’m not touchy with you.” You deny dreadfully. Archon, how long have you wasted your time here with this slithering serpent?

Kaeya arms wrap tightly around you, your body moulds perfectly into his embrace. You hate how perfectly you fit into his hug like this, but you can’t deny how warm he is, despite the fact he wields cryo.

“ When will you let me go?” Your voice starts to grow weak, dragging slightly in discomfort. Kaeya curiously looks down, noticing your pouting. Sensing his gaze, you turn your head away but his fingers have quickly grabbed your cheek, forcing you to look at his deep blue eye.

“Give me a kiss, then I'd let you go.” His voice serious, but what he just said is not. You look at the cryo wielder horrendously, mouth gaping. His face is composed and relax, like what he just ask is like asking about the weather, asking about your health, not for a kiss. Is he being serious? What in the world did he just ask? A kiss? Excuse me, a what?

“You...you are not being serious.” You wriggle your way out, escaping from his fingers, but his embrace tightens, caging you inside. Damn it, Kaeya. He’s messing with you.

When you flash him a furious look, the man shrugs nonchalantly, his cerulean lock fluttering gently in the wind. Suddenly, you have an urge to wipe off that calm demeanour. He can’t be serious. Why does he have to go all the way to annoy the shit out of you?

The smug grin hanging on his face, the mischief in his blue eyes, the arching brows, everything about him screams a flirt, yet you feel so mesmerized. Blinking a few times, you have to constantly remind yourself this man is not trustworthy. From the attitude to the way he looks at you, to the way he acts around you. Nothing from his action is truthful. Like Diluc’s warning, you can only believe half of his word and action.

“ Of course I’m being serious.” His voice solemn, but you can see the amusement in his eyes. If he doesn’t like you, why would he spend so much effort bothering you this much? What reaction is he expecting from you?

“ I really like you, Y/N” Kaeya confesses cheerfully, and you can faintly hear a few gasps around. Not this again...

Archon, you’re going to die early at this rate. You just want to practice for the upcoming evaluation, not becoming a hot topic for all Mondstadt citizen to gossip about.

And this man too, how can he easily slip out those words when you just heard him flirting with another woman the other day? You already told him numerous times that you’re not interested in dating him, or anyone right now!

Hung your head down in exhaustion, you tap his shoulder, mumbling quietly. “ Fine, fine.” You finally open your mouth, too exhausted and bothered by his stubbornness. He only wants a kiss, and you won’t hurt giving him one. Just a kiss then you can get back to your practice.

“Just don’t confess your love to me in a crowd like this again.” Before closing the deal, you weakly add a bargain, nudging him.

The calvary captain looks surprised, his eye widens little, not expecting you to agree. Normally, it takes another argument or two before you comply with his request. Kaeya timidly raises his gloved hand to your face, gently caresses your cheek. This time, you lean into his touch, nuzzling your face into his palm, eyes glimmering softly. Despite a cryo wielder, his hand is surprisingly warm.

The man in blue curiously peeks at you, he feels like a feather tickling the itchy spot. Are you plotting an escape route? Since when did you become so obedient? He has never seen the soft fur under the spiky façade you set up to face with the world, but strangely, he likes this version of you more.

Noticing his relaxed stance, you carefully gently wrap your fingers around his wrist while keeping eye contact with him. Kaeya eye widens, startles at your sudden touching. Trying your best to not break the unspoken connection, you bring his hand away from your cheek. In those cerulean eyes, you see a hint of disappointment, but it quickly dissolves. Slowly, you draw closer toward the hand hanging in the air, lips fluttering on the smooth skin on his wrist.

The calvary captain instinctively moves back, trying to escape from your sudden contact. Ironic, he is the one who innates the hug and demands a kiss from you. Tightening your grip, you press your wet lips on the exposed part of his wrist dedicatedly while maintaining eye contact with him, eyes drown with submission.

Kaeya stares at you in awe, maybe not expecting the passionate look in your eyes. His azure eye fills with mischief, now replaces with confusion and hesitation. You notice how his ears have dusted with pink despite the winds blowing in the practice ground. The man avoids your eyes, flustering.

Whispers and gasps start to remind you of the crushing reality, so you let his hand down while grinning cheekily at the cryo wielder. Poking and breaking Kaeya meticulously façade is always something you want to try. The man is a living devil, so it’s extremely unusual to see him losing his composure.

Sneakily, you untangle his other arm wrapping around your waist, plotting an escape route.

However, Barbatos doesn’t let you slip away that easily. Quickly regaining his composure, Kaeya snakes his hand around your hip again, tightening his hold. Unlike the first time, the sneaky bastard lifts you up and has the audacity to throw your body on his shoulder, carry you like a sack.

“ Yah! What are you doing?” You exclaim, fluster at his sudden antic. Kicking and punching on his shoulder, you try as many as you can, but somehow, Kaeya manages to dodge all of them.

“ You said you will let me go when I give you a kiss!” The crowd uproars, stares and gossips poke pointedly at your back. You don’t want to hear those comments from those knights again. They're not going to let this live down, aren't they? Bury your face in the Kaeya's furry collar, you let out a frustrating sigh, punching his shoulder as hard as you can.

“ You give me a kiss on my wrist. That doesn’t count.” Kaeya nonchalantly strides away from the practice ground, unfazed by your attempt to escape. This man is a beast, how can he not budge an inch with all of your kickings on his shoulder?

“ You didn’t specify the place. A kiss is a kiss!” You emphasize, and you can feel his shoulder shaking. Is he laughing? “You didn’t keep your promise.” Fuels by the rising anger, you kick your leg aggressively, struggling to free yourself from the iron-clad grip. This time, his strong arm wraps around your calves like a chain.

As soon as you raise your head up, the familiar pathway hits your memories. Shit, he is heading toward the headquarter, likely to his office. You can’t let anyone in there see you in this state. Punching his back profusely, you shot back.

“Not fulfilling the contract is breaking the Knight of Favonius's code of cond-.” Before you can finish your sentence, the man smacks your calves loudly, successfully shutting your mouth. Speechless by his sudden punishment, you let out a disbelief breath.

“ There are no such a section states about fulfilling contract inside the code of conduct, so stop making the rule up.” Kaeya smugly grins, and you can already picture his blue eyes glinting with mischief, the signature shit-eating grin on his handsome face.

" There is, it's in section eight-" Before you can finish your sentence, Kaeya cuts in, waving his hand dismissively.

" Section eight is about interaction with your co-worker, there is none about keeping contracts." The calvary captain humming, trying to recalling the content of the book. Speechless by the detailed memories of his, you can only close your mouth, quietly waiting for him to drop you down. If you stay still on his shoulder, will he let you go?

" You know, not everyone reads and memories the knight of Favonius handbook, you are just unlucky that I know the book by heart." Seeing you deflate weakly on his shoulder, Kaeya lets out a chuckle, patting your head comforting.

Before heading inside the HQ, the man doesn't drop your down but leans in closely, his whisper tickling your ear. “But at least I had fun seeing you squirming in my grasp.”

And then it hits you, the bastard purposely falls for of your antic.

#kaeya alberich #genshin kaeya #kaeya x reader #no beta we kayak like tim #genshin impact #clarissalance #who has the upper hand ?#argument #fluff #tension #smart reader #strategist #genshin varka #diluc ragnvindr #genshin diluc

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relaxxattack · 3 years ago

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Someone's probably asked you this before but how long did it take you to plan out the plot for knifetrick? What did you do to come up with everything and do you have any tips for other writers who are struggling to put together their own fics?

after checking out my history lol,

it seems i did serious brainstorming and research for about a week before i started writing.

what happened first was that i had in my head the funny idea of ran failing to kill jackie and them getting tax-benefit married (to make ran feel guilty and admit his plot)

and once i realized i wanted to make it into an actual story, i had to change some of it and come up with plot and reasoning.

the first thing i did was ask my followers for song requests, lol. i asked specifically for “songs about futuristic settings or being married to/loving your assassination target”

i listened to a lot of that music to get my brain juices flowing. i had to put together a couple of Reasons for why things happened. i also knew i couldn’t just write the fic on the assassination alone, or else ran would have nothing to distract him and be the overarching plot, lol

the music helped me picture scenes and concepts. i then just jotted down a bunch of stuff i thought would be interesting to happen (possible scenes)

a couple thoughts on this image— for one you can see that i originally wanted to name my fic after a movie. i looked up ones where assassins grow endeared to their targets and fail to kill them. but i realized i didn’t want to name the fic after a movie in case it was controversial or something, so i ended up going for a song instead. ALSO, as you can tell, some of these points got dropped! again, this was just brainstorming for things i wanted to include

the next thing i did was ask for ranjack classpects, lol. for those unfamilliar with classpecting, it’s sort of like personality types for really sad nerds (/lh). aka, hogwarts houses but more complicated.

@dyketubbo wrote some INCREDIBLE classpects for ran and jackie. it was based off what we knew about their personalities (which wasn’t much) but it also helped us infer a lot MORE about their personalities by figuring out where they could go or how they probably think in their minds.

if you don’t know classpects you can probably do this with personality types. or, just, figure out your characters personality some Normal way. i wouldn’t know.

there was a lot more brainstorming i did (where i came up with ms. laramie, scoots, and clementine) and tried to come up with a basic plot of what would happen and what they would do. during this i did some research on a proper three-act story structure so my plot would hit just right.

during all of this, i watched a bunch of spy and futuristic flicks (not too intensely, just had them on in the background to absorb the vibes).

i then made a plot map once i figured i knew what was gonna happen

(the last few chapters are on the other side of the paper, so you don’t get to see them haha)

a lot of this stuff got switched around or dropped completely as i was writing. honestly, the details don’t matter too much— the FLOW of the story is what’s important.

i’m very flexible with my scenes— literally what happens in a chapter is completely up in the air until i FINISH the chapter. sometimes they’re entirely different from my original ideas. it’s not too important to me what exactly happens, as long as it makes sense and i like it and it fits in with the rest.

in my mind, the events themselves are not as impressive as the characters in them. as long as i’m still developing the characters the way i need to throughout the story, and they eventually get to the plot points i need them to, i don’t worry too much about the specifics! as long as they’re fun.

i also didnt write chapter-by-chapter— i mapped the plot first, and then drew little dividing lines where i thought it would be good to end the chapter after. chapters are useful to me as pacing tools, but i didnt want the plot to seem too episodic by Planning it as chapters.

after i wrote the plot map, i did research on deserts, cities, and fantasy politics for DAYS. (i also watched videos on how fantasy militaries should work.) i ended up not using most of that information i came up with, but the parts that do leak through into my current writing do wonders to make the world feel real and alive. each character has a personality and a life, they aren’t just there to be background characters for ran and jackie.

then, i re-read a few books by authors who really inspire me. to get their narration voice fresh in my mind and feel really inspired

eventually we got to where we are now— i write the chapters and i post them!

as i’ve mentioned, i’m very flexible with my plot— so while i’ve foreshadowed certain things since the beginning, some parts of the story have only come perfectly together towards the end. and i have @shrugofgod to thank for that!

my wonderful editor is always willing to chat with me about what scenes and bits work and are most satisfying story-wise. of course lyssie also EDITS my chapters after they’re drafted — to make them more polished, and also ask me questions about things that are going on to clarify them.

many thanks to lyssie shrugofgod for making the story so much better :D

because my chapters have a tendency to get away from me and do whatever they want, if there’s certain plot things i need to hit in a chapter, i’ll outline the chapter before i write it.

also, recently, (after coming up with one too many REALLY COOL scenes and lines in my head while cleaning, but then completely forgetting them later) i’ve implemented a protocol for myself to jot down anything that comes to mind WHEN it happens so i don’t forget.

these are unprofessional and have spelling errors and all that, because i just wrote them really quickly, often while doing the dishes or laundry, lol.

so in conclusion:

um yeah that’s how i write knifetrick! i’ve never done this much work for any other fic though, so don’t feel like YOU have to. i did so much research for knifetrick because it was very out of my wheelhouse.

at most all i think is necessary for a good story is a plot map, and a hell of a lot of inspiration. (i got mine from music, movies, books, and drawing ran and jackie a lot, haha!)

make sure you’re having fun with your plot. writing won’t always be fun, but you should at least like your PLOT. because if you don’t then you won’t be inspired or enjoy it at all!

#knifetrick #writing process #tutorial #og post #sorry for rambling so much this probably wasn’t very understandable ^^;;

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duckprintspress · 4 years ago

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How can I write quickly?

I (hi, I’m @unforth) have been asked frequently over the years how I write a lot quickly. I’m a pretty fast writer - for example, I wrote the 5600 words of my May Trope Mayhem fill from yesterday in under 2.5 hours.

First, a little of my personal history for context. I’ve always written, starting from when I was able to string letters into (very poorly spelled) words and (horrible un-grammatical) sentences. When I started trying my hand at serious, professional-level fiction writing, I joined a community called novel_in_90, which was founded by the author Elizabeth Bear. The purpose of novel_in_90 was “to be NaNoWriMo but more realistic.” Instead of 50,000 words in 31 days, it was 67,500 words in 90 days, or 750 words a day. I participated in multiple rounds of novel_in_90 starting in mid-2005, and in 2007 I completed my first (godawful) novel. When I started, even writing a couple hundred words of day took me forever, but it got easier with time.

During those same years, I also got a job that required I do professional writing on a deadline: I was a grant writer, and I only got paid when the grants won. That often meant working fast under high pressure, culminating in the weekend I wrote and edited an entire 40 pages grant that was due on Monday. I think, if I hadn’t had a solid foundation of “regular daily plodding writing,” I’d not have been able to marathon when the moment came...and it came because I had to, not because I wanted to. However, I learned a valuable lesson: I could. Subsequently, I found that, when I had the time and space and was rested enough to use my brain, I could bust out a huge amount. Like, I wrote an entire 150,000 word novel in 17 days.

My personal record is about 200,000 words in one month (it was the month I wrote that novel; I wasn’t tracking when I did that so I don’t know exactly), 25,000 words in a day, and I’ve topped out around 3,000 words an hour. I do know people who can do more...but not many.

Not everyone will be able to do this. Flat out, I MUST preface the rest of this post by saying that. Some people will find that writing fast fits their brain, and for others, it just won’t, and that’s okay. Fast doesn’t equal better, and it isn’t inherently “good” to write fast. Furthermore, even for those who can write fast, not everyone will find the same strategies helpful. I can share what works for me. Try out one item, some items, or all of these - if writing faster is something you want to be able to do, which it certainly never has to be. Use what works for you, and discard the rest.

Sit in your chair, put your fingers on your keyboard or touch screen, and write. You can’t write 1,000 words in half an hour until you write one word, however long that one word takes. I know saying this is obvious, but I’ve been asked “how can I write fast” by people who struggle to write at all...fast can’t be your priority until you’ve got a foundation of just writing. (Honestly...fast should never be your priority, but it might be helpful to you regardless, which can make it worth learning.)

Start small. Set an achievable goal, and make yourself meet that goal (daily, weekly, whatever) come hell or high water, no matter how long it takes you. Keep the goal small at first; you’re not trying to torture yourself, you’re trying to build a skill. If you set the goal high enough that you consistently fail, you’re not teaching yourself anything. And, if you find the goal IS too high...lower it. There’s no shame in working within your limits. Think of it like starting a new work out regimen: you wouldn’t try to run a 10k at a record time if you can’t run a mile slow. Treat your fingers and your brain the same way you’d treat your legs and joints. Give them time to grow, learn, and improve before you try to push yourself.

Trying to write daily is worthwhile if you want to work on your writing speed, because you’ll be forced to try to fit it in as you’re able - that might be ten minutes in your morning, or an hour in your evening, and it might vary from day to day, but making it daily means you have to fit it in somewhere.

Building skills takes time and isn’t easy. For some people, it will come easier than for others, and even when you’re fast, going from “I can write words fast” to “I can write damn good words fast” takes practice and dedication and accepting constructive criticism - speed alone will never be worth more than writing well.

Having a community can help. Ya’ll will check in on each other, cheer each other on, remind each other that missing a day or a goal isn’t the end of the world, and keep each other’s spirits up. If you don’t know other writerly folks online, I recommend Weekend Writing Marathon ( @weekendwritingmarathon ) as a good place to start (I used to be a mod there). Once you’re trying to work up to larger word counts in a day, remember that even writing fast will take minutes or hours. You can’t write 2,500 words in an hour if you don’t set an hour aside. Make sure you’re giving yourself the room and time you need to succeed.

You will probably never be able to do high, rapid word counts every day, every week, every month. The best runners in the world don’t run marathons every day. Set realistic long term goals.

Work on projects where you have a clear idea of where you’re going. I’m not saying “pantsers” can’t write fast, because of course they can, but if you want to write fast, and well, and coherently, to create a first draft that’s in pretty good shape, you’ll do better if you have a good sense of what you’re trying to accomplish with your story. That doesn’t mean you need to do all your world building up front, or have a complete outline (I never have either). All you really need is what happens next. I tend to plan projects - and write them - one full scene at a time, with only a vague idea what’s going to come after. (I’m personally a “plantser,” and the strategies in this post will likely be most effective to other plantsers.)

Visualize ahead of time what you’d like to write...but don’t get too attached to what you visualize. When I go to bed, I plan the next scene I’m going to compose, often to the least detail. I then forget all of it overnight, at least all the specifics, and I’m left with a general sense and shape of what’s to come. You’ll never be able to replicate the “perfect” dialog you pre-conceive, so give up on trying to. Instead, play through the scene and think about the emotional beats you want to hit and plot points you want to forward. If you keep that in mind, you’ll be able to get the words out faster than if you’re agonizing over every word or regretting the “oh-so-great” idea that you’ve since forgotten.

Practice different work styles. If writing every day doesn’t work for you, try instead saying, “this is my writing day each week,” and aim for a lot that specific day, and write little or nothing other days. Try writing at different times of day and on different days, fitting it into your schedule. If you’re beating yourself up for not writing when you “should,” it’ll be that much harder to succeed, so instead, as I said for point 2 - set a reasonable goal that fits your life and working style, fitting it around your other responsibilities, and push yourself within that framework, instead of trying to shoehorn into a style that you “think you should” use to succeed.

Track your word counts, and take notes on how much you did and what project you were working on. If you’re also experimenting with different times of day and different days, make sure you note that too. I personally use a simple Excel sheet (well, Google Sheets, now) - column one is the date, column 2 is “starting word count,” column 3 is “ending word count,” column 4 is “=column 3 - column 2”, column 5 is notes. Pay attention to when you succeed at writing faster, and when you don’t, and consider what factors might have played into your success...and then try to replicate those factors next time you’re doing a sprint. Control as many variables as you can while you’re “training.”

If you find social media distracting, trying getting a web browser extension that prevents you from connecting to websites for a set period of time.

If you find you tend to dither before starting, I find it helpful to run through everything that I might do to procrastinate (check my social media! grab a snack! make some tea! set up my playlist! check my social media again! finish making the tea! check my social media for what I swear will be the last time!), and when I’m done, it’s like, well, I’ve done all those things, I’ve got no choice left, time to write, no excuses left.

If you find you struggle with picking up a WIP, try leaving off in the middle of a sentence at the end of a session, one where you know exactly how it ends - or, leave off mid-paragraph, or when you are positive you know what happens next (and I mean literally next, as in the very next sentence.) It’s much easier to “pick back up” when your first words are super clear. (Do not do this if you think there’s any chance you’ll forget or end up in a situation where you won’t return to your WIP for months!)

If you find you struggle to maintain continuity across multiple writing sessions, try rereading what you wrote the previous day before you proceed. Resist the urge to edit it!

Avoid stopping when you get stuck, even to do research. Don’t know a fact? Add a comment to your manuscript flagging the relevant text, “LOOK THIS UP LATER.” Can’t think of a word? Put in something you can use the “find” function on easily (I personally use “XX” since there are no words that have a double x in them) and so you can come back later, search for your chosen placeholder, and fill in the blanks. Not sure how a scene ends but know the next scene? Jump ahead.

That said, if you really don’t know what happens next, you don’t do yourself any favors by pressing on. As I’ve said previously, speed alone should never be your writing object. It’s better to slow down, consider your plot, figure out where you’re going, and then write, than to just plow ahead - or at least, that’s better if you want a manuscript you’ll actually be able to use for something at a later point. If you’re truly just practicing, you can also say “screw it, who needs coherence?” and keep going. I’d personally never have finished my first novel if I’d spent a lot of time worrying about making the pieces fit together and yeah, it’s a mess, but it’s a mess I wrote instead of a mess I got stuck on and never completed.

Don’t move the finish line. If you’ve set the goal of 500 words a day, don’t beat yourself up if you get 550 because you think you think you could have done more. If you say you’ll write five days a week, don’t get mad because you DID have time the sixth day but chose to use it on something else. If you make yourself feel like shit when you succeed, what’ll happen when you fail? And when you’re comfortable and really think you’re ready, change the goal - reassess every month, say, and up your goals. While working for speed, trying upping your word count goal without changing the amount of time you allot for working.

Your need to adhere to the above suggestions will change over time. Once, I always had an outline; now I often don’t need one. Once, I wouldn’t let myself stop even to use a thesaurus; now, I find I can look up words without breaking my flow or significantly slowing myself down. This is not an “all or nothing” prospect, nor is it a “do things the same way forever once you’ve found one (1) thing that works” prospect - you’ll experiment, and find strategies that work for you, and then at some point, your needs will change, and you’ll experiment more, and find new strategies that work for you, on and on, as your skills grow.

To reiterate: writing fast should never be your objective in and of itself! Greater writing speed will come with practice and as a general side effect of improving your craft. Simply being able to write fast is useless; being able to write fast and well will enable you to get more of your ideas out there, so if that’s something you’d like to accomplish, focus on building your general skills and training yourself to be able to use those skills rapidly and in tandem with each other to produce decent writing, in a first draft, at a decent speed.

Once you try, you may find none of this works for you! That’s okay. That’s good! You tried, which means you learned something about yourself and your own writing style, and that too will help you to improve. Keep experimenting, keep learning, and find what does work for you - and accept that no two writers will ever be the same, and one of those differences will be writing speed. Some writers will never write fast, and that’s doesn’t make them any less awesome or valid. And some writers will always write fast, and that doesn’t make them inherently awesome or valid. Only with a suite of skills that suit your individual life, personality, work style, writing capabilities, goals, etc., will you succeed as a writer (for various, personalized definitions of the word “success”); speed is only one of those potential skills, and not one that’s particularly important in my opinion...yet I still get asked about it fairly often, so here we are, these are my suggestions

Go forth, and write some words! <3

#duck prints press #writing advice #original content

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chickenscript · 4 years ago

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a sense of solace (rise! Donnie x reader)

Anon: hey! I saw that you do requests and was wondering if you’d write something with rottmnt Donnie and a platonic reader? maybe something where one of hyphen has just had a bad day and they seek out the other in need of cuddles or a shoulder to cry on, thank you!!!

A/N: I always love writing for don (^◇^；) sorry this came so late anon and i do hope you get to see it!

P.S wrote this a while ago and I'm so sorry for my absence! I finished out my spring semester recently and I was all around busy. I'll have some more time now to work more on my art and writing though!

Also, I'm not sure who sent in this request and I'm having a hard time finding it in my inbox T口T I hope whoever did is able to read this sometime! And I hope you all enjoy it too of course.

I'm gonna do some draft digging and revise/post anything that's nearly done! So expect to see those soon (´꒳`) and I'll try to start working on more requests once I'm done!

---

It wasn't the best day for you.

You had an argument with someone close and it left you in emotional shambles with a stubborn soreness deep in your chest. The number of places you could think to go to in this state was countable on just a couple fingers and there was only ever one out of them that you wanted to find yourself at.

So, you got to the lair in record time. You greeted Splinter as you passed through the main section of hideout and didn't yet see any sign of the turtles.

You weaved your way through the repurposed subway tunnel, noting how everyone must be off doing their own thing somewhere, until you found Donnie's room where he seemed to be intently fiddling with Shelldon at his work table.

You announced your arrival with a, "Hey."

To which he responded by echoing the greeting while still intently poking at hardware with his tools.

"So, what brings you in?" he asked without missing a beat as you came to stand behind him, watching him work over his shoulder.

"Well, honestly," you decided to bite the bullet and just be frank with him, "I need to take my mind off some stuff." you said with a sigh in your voice.

Donatello paused, placed down his work utensils, and turned his swivel chair so he could look at you- his goggles still fitted over his eyes.

"What's wrong?"

You pawed at the bend of one of your elbow, feeling a dull ache behind your eyes that you’d been fighting for the better part of the day.

You were still nervous to go into detail, but that's what you were here for and you couldn't just chicken out now. This was one of your best friends and worst case scenario was he wouldn't be able to make you feel better.

Which you doubted would happen.

"I ah, it's just been a rough day." you spoke quietly as you looked down at your shoes.

Donnie gave a hum before getting up and flicking up his goggles so they perched like they typically did on his head. He was clad in only a lavender t shirt today that fit largely on his lean body type. It seemed he'd forgone his tech shell too for a more comfy, home body look today.

"Only one way to solve that." He declared as he purposefully strode over to the busy, gargantuan monitor that he often used to game and pulled up Netflix.

He then turned to you with a slight smile, "Movie night?" he offered.

You nodded. Watching something with him always brightened your mood.

You kicked off your shoes by the door and plopped yourself down on the cushy, extra large bean bag Donnie bought online the other day. It was big enough to easily fit you and two of the turtles. Not to mention it was heaven to just sit back and sink into.

Donatello joined you after grabbing a bag of Japanese brand chips from his stash and putting on some B rated horror movie for the two of you to have a go at more than anything.

As the starting credits kicked on, you found yourself unfortunately thinking of what happened earlier and subconsciously drifting closer to Donnie. Your mind didn't stay in its bubble for long as your friend popped it.

"The movie just started. It isn't already that bad, is it?" his voice had that usual near deadpan to it and you snickered softly.

“No, just- kind of hard to focus.” you leaned against his side.

Donnie munched at the chips and you thought for a moment maybe he didn’t hear you until he nudged you a bit.

“Whoever it was,” you had the feeling he suspected who it was seeing as you let the turtles know a lot about yourself.

“doesn’t deserve to be on your mind if they caused trouble for you.”

You couldn’t deny he had a good point.

“Besides,” he looked at you from the corner of his eye with a small smile, “it seems like you came here to get your mind off things; not to sulk.”

That tugged at the corners of your lips and you nudged him back.

“Yeah.”

Even though you didn’t entirely feel better yet, the moment Donnie wrapped an arm around your shoulders to give you a side hug, you were definitely more at ease.

“It’s their loss and just means there’s more of you for us.”

You laughed and punched Donnie in the arm. He grinned, taking the limb back and still happily crunching at his shrimp flavored snack.

"Stingy are we?" you reached over and stole some of the chips.

Donnie just shrugged and reclined further into his seat, looking like the picturesque image of a couch potato.

“We just value you." He scratched the back of his neck and clicked his jaw, "We always will.” he partly mumbled the last bit.

You felt touched by the sentiment. You had spent a lot of time with the turtles since you first met and you didn't know what things would have turned out like for you if you hadn't. Something you knew April felt the same about. Your mutant friends just had that way about them that changed your life like no one else could.

Your smile turned into something more genuine and less cheeky as you leaned back with Donnie.

“Same here.” and there was no way you could simply express what you felt in words. Which Donatello seemed to perfectly understand as his brows relaxed and he brushed the side of his head against yours.

The space behind your eyes ached for a different reason now.

You really did love these turtle knuckleheads.

#rottmnt #rottmnt x reader #Rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles #oneshot #mywriting #request

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sparkle-hwa · 3 years ago

Text

at your service

summary: patiently waiting for your boyfriend to come home turns out to be quite the treat.

pairing: dom!hongjoong x sub!female reader

genre: smut

TW: none (but please let me know if I need to add any)

CW: dom/sub, name calling, slight degradation, unprotected sex

Word count: 2,366

A/N: aahhhh!! this is my first fanfiction that i wrote for ateez EVER and my first one I’m ever posting! i hope you all like it! please feel free to send any feedback :)

________________________________________________________________

You sat on the couch, headphones in, trying to concentrate on writing your term paper. The semester was almost over and you needed at least a B to keep your solid academic standing. Better grades now meant more scholarship opportunities for graduate school in the future and that’s what mattered most. Rewriting the same sentence over and over again didn’t seem so bad compared to endless loan payments. Pulling the blanket up higher on your chest you snuggled in and decided that thirty more minutes of writing would put you in a good place to finish and edit it tomorrow. Your entire week had been consumed by school and you were not about to let your Friday night get taken up by this. Hongjoong, your sweet, caring boyfriend would be home soon and you wanted a clear head for what you believed to be in store for you.

He had been sending you picture after picture on snapchat almost all of today. To the outsider viewer, it probably looked like he was taking simple selfies; after all, he had been at his internship all day. But the added captions were definitely for your eyes only. He detailed just what he wanted to do with you - to you - tonight and it was enough to make you squirm in your seat during class and turn the brightness all the way down on your phone. Recalling it now, you could feel the heat rise in your body and you subconsciously swallowed hard. Some say you can’t remember pain, but you definitely remembered how difficult it was to get yourself situated in your 8am lecture last week, the welts still red on your backside. Shaking your head and adjusting your earbuds, you got back to work.

—-

Hongjoong parked his car outside of the apartment complex and slumped in the seat once he cut the engine. It had been a long day. His internship had him working twice as hard, copying and filing, delivering reports, and filling coffee cups. He counted his blessings every morning though. He was chosen from hundreds of applications that flooded in from the university and this on his resume was sure to impress future employers. Sighing, he thought about what would have happened if you hadn’t convinced him to apply. You were so good for him.

With a smirk, he sat up, grabbed his laptop case, and opened the car door. He walked briskly to the front door and opened it slowly. Hongjoong first saw you sitting on the couch and then noticed the headphones placed securely in your ears. With a devious smile, he quietly set down his bag next to the end table, loosened his tie, and quietly padded across the foyer to the living room.

—

You were none the wiser to the fact that your boyfriend had just walked in the apartment. Seventeen was blasting loud in your headphones and in retrospect, you probably should have just played it from your laptop, lest someone who wanted to rob you had walked in instead. Bopping your head along to the beat, you felt really accomplished as you saved your final rough draft. Suddenly, you felt something coming down over your head. Before you had a moment to think, Hongjoong’s tie was tightening around your neck and you gasped at the sudden change of events. Leaning your head back, you saw your boyfriend standing over your with a look in his eyes that frightened you but also made you excited.

“Good evening babygirl,” he cooed at your lovingly.

“Good evening sir,” you replied, batting your eyelashes.

“Ooh someone remembered her manners. You must really want something from me.”

“Anything for you…” you trailed off as he stroked your cheek and you shut your eyes. As quickly as he was sweet, he smacked your cheek hard enough to make you gasp. Hongjoong tightened the restraint around your neck more.

“Get on your knees,” he growled at you, dropping the end of his tie and letting it drop down your back. Obliging, you dropped off the couch and sank down. You gazed down at your knees and heard Hongjoong walk around the end of the couch sit down.

“Mmm.. so pretty down there, sunk down just for me,” he purred, palming his cock through his work pants. You continued staring at your knees, feeling the heat pool at the bottom of your underwear. His praise was affirming to hear, even if you couldn’t respond.

“Hands and knees now,” he ordered. You put your palms on the hardwood floor and pushed your body up. The tie slipped down your side and grazed the floor. Hongjoong grabbed it and pulled at it slightly.

“Scoot closer.” You crawled closer as he pulled you by his tie and he pushed on your ass to make you move sideways.

“I’ve been dreaming of this ass all day. Work was so boring and I needed something to stimulate me,” he said, rubbing your ass over your PJs pants.

“I’m here for you, sir,” you dared to say. You were sure he wouldn’t care if you spoke without permission if it meant you were validating the fact that you were his and only his. Using the tie, he jerked your head so close your temple thumped against his knee.

“That’s correct. You are here for me. I’ll make sure you never forget that.” In one swift movement he pulled down your PJ pants and smacked one of your pale asscheeks. He pulled them down farther and you moved just a little so he could remove them completely along with your underwear. Once he rid you of your pants, you dropped back onto your feet and he slipped your sweatshirt off over your head. You obviously didn’t have a bra on since you had been home alone for the past 2 hours and you heard him murmur a curse quietly under his breath. It was cold on the hardwood, yet the more you thought about being completely naked in front of Hongjoong with only his tie around your neck the warmer you got.

“Let’s go slut,” he practically snapped at you and jerked the restraint tightly upward causing your head to jerk forward. Crawling on your hands and knees you followed him back to your bedroom where he told you to remain on all fours. He wasn’t noticing but you silently dared him to look over and make eye contact with you. You bit your lip and did your best to look as sexy as possible. At just the right moment, Hongjoong turned around and looked right at you. His gaze was penetrating, dominating, and you could feel the wetness of your heat spread slightly to your bare thighs.

“Come here baby,” he purred and you crawled slowly over to your lover, arching your back so that your ass stuck up higher and your tits stuck out just a bit more. When you reached him, you kneeled down at his feet and Hongjoong sat on the end of the bed.

“So you’re going to sit there like the good girl you are and you’re going to watch me jack off as I think of your tight wet pussy and then I’m going to pound you so hard you’ll have trouble walking in the morning. Sound like a plan?”

You squirmed on your feet, hoping to find friction somewhere to help relieve the wet aching you felt. “Yes sir, that sounds delightful,” you said, shooting him a glance that was somewhere between sexy and scathing. Hongjoong unzipped his pants and removed them with his undergarments. His cock sprung free. You quietly moaned as you saw his length unclothed. Swiftly he grabbed the end of the tie again and pulled you closer to him.

“Hmm I like this little leash I have on you,” he said with intense eye contact that made you melt. “Makes it easy for you to do what I want you to.” He winked and stuck his thumb in your mouth, pushing down your tongue. You welcomed the intrusion, happy to have some sort of physical touch to focus on. Wrapping his other hand around his cock, he started to stroke it. Hongjoong let out a gravely moan.

“Suck,”he ordered. You happily did as you were told, lifting up a bit so he didn’t have to lean down so much and sucked on his finger. He sped his pace up and pushed around in your mouth. You wanted desperately for him to replace it with his length. You moaned around his finger, hoping he would take pity on you.

“Aw does baby girl want more?” Hongjoong cooed at you. You nodded and he removed his finger. Hopeful, you gazed at him. Instead, he shoved you back down to your feet.

“I wonder what getting what you want is like?” He growled back. “Guess you’ll never know.” Winking he leaned back and continued to rub his dick, completely ignoring your pout. Closing his eyes, Hongjoong let his lips fall open. He heaved a heavy breath. Hongjoong seemed to be genuinely enjoying himself.

You however were not pleased. You were the slickest you had ever been and were fed up. Teasing you was one thing, but neglecting you for his own pleasure made you scrunch up your face. You watched your infuriatingly handsome boyfriend jack off and felt the displeasure rise. Your pussy ached. You slipped a hand down there to give some much needed pressure to your swollen clit. You decided to let out the loudest, sexiest moan you could muster to get his attention. Snapping up, Hongjoong made direct eye contact with you. His cock was still in his hand but he had stopped stroking and was watching you with a penetrating gaze. You continued to rub yourself and made direct eye contact right back at him. He scowled at you and you winked back at him knowing that that was either the best or the worst decisions you had ever made.

“Excuse me,” he growled. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Getting what I want,” you countered. You brought your fingers to your mouth to suck your juices off. “Is this what you want?” You eyed him seductively.

“Damn straight,” he replied. “Get up here?” He said it like a question but you knew it was a thinly veiled order. He was playing it safe. Somehow that turned you on more knowing that you had almost won.

Hongjoong laid on his back and you situated yourself so that you were on all fours beside him. His weeping cock lay flat against his pubic hair. You took it in your hand. Using the precum as a lube, you sped up quickly knowing that he hadn’t been going fast enough earlier.

“Uuuuugh” came a soft moan. You leaned up and bit his lower lip, just enough to lengthen his moan and turn it gravely.

“I love your sweet noises,” you cooed softly. “But I think it’s about damn time I started making those.” Dropping his cock, you rolled to lay on your back. Spreading your legs felt so good as the rush of cold air caressed your wet cunt. Hongjoong rolled onto his side and immediately stuck two fingers into your entrance. No warning. No announcement. Nothing, as he shoved them as deep as he could manage. It was enough to make you yelp out loud and remind you that you were still in trouble for disobeying.

“Fuuuuck,” you moaned.

“Mmm still my little babygirl,” murmured Hongjoong. He started to pump in and out faster. You were left breathless and clawing at the fitted sheet on the bed.

“Is babygirl going to cum?” Inquired Hongjoong as he clearly had no intention of slowing down.

“Y-yes sir. D-do I have permission?” You answered. Desperately hoping he would let you, you arched your back, hoping his fingers would stretch you out more.

“I suppose you could,” he said. “It’ll have to be on my count though.”

“Yes sir,” you moaned out breathlessly.

“One…. two… three…” he began.

“Uuugh,” you began. “You never told me what number I could cum on, sir”

“Good,” was the only response he gave to you. “Now where was I?”

He frustratingly began counting at four again. you felt the pressure building up in your lower abdomen. Either way, you were going to cum. It was either going to be when you were supposed to or you would break the rules. Somehow a dick would end up inside of you and you weren’t mad about it. Choosing the number ten, you achingly waited for his voice to reach the final number.

“Ten…” and everything else faded away as your pussy clenched around his finger. Hongjoong latched onto your nipple and bit down fairly hard. The sensation added to your orgasm and you enjoyed every moment of riding it out. Fucked out, you shivered as he removed his fingers.

“Nasty slut,” Hongjoong said and he wiped his moistened fingers onto your breasts. “Time for you to get properly fucked.”

He centered himself over you. In true fashion, your boyfriend wasted no time bottoming out in your already fucked pussy. His swift movements caused you both to moan at the same time. Hongjoong locked lips with you and shoved his cock in and out of you.

“Lift your arms up,” he moaned. You obliged and he clasped your wrists above your head.

“You look so good under me,” he growled at you. “Stick your tongue out.” Once again you did as you were told and he removed his hand from your wrists just for a moment so you could suck on his fingers again.

“Fuck baby I’m gonna cum,” he murmered in your ear. With one final stroke he spilled inside of you. Your pussy clenched around him again as he pulled out and you sighed as you felt his wetness inside of you.

“Lemme go get something to clean you off babygirl,” Hongjoong said with a quick kiss. He hurried back with a damp washcloth and proceeded to clean you off. Once he discarded it, Hongjoong slid beside you on the bed and snuggled close.

“So…. how was your day?”

#ateez #ateez smut #ateez hongjoong #ateez hongjoong fanfiction #hongjoong smut #ateez fanfiction #ateez hongjoong smut

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a-dorin · 4 years ago

Text

stranger

pairing: the mandalorian x medic!reader

word count: 2.69k

warnings: cursing, canon typical violence, blood, wounds, burns, references to killing/violence, the taste of blood, sewing a wound up, yearning, pining, an idiot who wears only a beskar helmet and takes on more than he can handle 99.99% of the time

a/n: hi i wrote this in like no time at all so i hope you guys like it. (also at like 2:05 in the morning) also, this takes place during season one, and diverts a little bit away from canon because he doesn’t have all of his new beskar armor yet (oops) also, sorry if the ending line is shitty i have a hard time with it sometimes

“i thought this was the last time you were going to pull shit like this on me karga,” you dig your index finger into his chest, your jaw clenched, lips curled in a sneer, “you always say it’s going to be the last time shit like this happens and guess what? it doesn’t ever fucking end does it? i help you one time and--”

the leader hangs his head, raising a hand in defeat, “i am well aware of how you feel about me and the way i do my business. however, this is someone i can’t turn away. and you’re the only person i trust to fix him.”

exhaling, your eyes squeeze shut, “who is it?”

“someone who has been working with me for quite some time,” greef pauses, taking a moment to gauge your reaction, “he’s a skilled bounty hunter, one of the best, actually. typically, he fixes himself right up, but his injuries are far too severe to just ‘sew up’ and go about his business. trust me, i had to do some convincing to even bring him to you.”

through the entryway, a draft rolls in, causing you to shrink into your clothes, “it’s a little too chilly to talk out here. come in, we can discuss my payment, and then i’ll make my decision.”

greef takes a step forward, clearing his throat, “i’ll pay you, and so will he. i am well aware of how you feel about giving my men medical attention. but you do know that i will pay you well for this, right?”

you nod slightly, rubbing your temple with your fingers, “how much are we talking here, karga?”

“i would like for you to assess his injuries first,” he counters, “then we can talk about payment.”

“fine,” you mutter, crossing over to your table, “please, just bring him in. if he bleeds out on my table, it’s your fault karga!”

“hopefully there will be none of that,” karga shakes his head, the words so low that you could barely hear him, “i’ll bring him in. let me know when you’re finished.”

swiftly, you gather up your supplies, your hands gathering as much as you could. from the sound of it, things weren’t looking good. reaching out, you pull your cart towards you, practically tossing the supplies on the metallic surface. cursing under your breath, you search for your gloves, eyes frantically searching your surroundings, yet they’re nowhere to be found.

guess you’d have to get a little messy with this one.

a long-winded groan startles you from your task at hand, and your heart sinks the moment karga brings him in. he’s donned head to toe in battle armor, the hues of the metal a variety of colors. the only distinguishable piece is a beskar helmet, light reflecting off its surface.

not once did karga mention that you would be tending to a mandalorian.

“how bad is it?” you inquire, your voice crisp and cool as you stride over to karga, helping him carry the mandalorian to your table.

blood seeps through his clothes, soaking the garments with a horrid scarlet. in several spots, there is singed fabric, signifying that he took a few good shots. the mandalorian reeks of burnt flesh and the stench of a battle, your nose wrinkling and bile rising in your throat.

this was far worse than karga described, and this was no time to start panicking.

“just a few blaster shots,” the mandalorian cuts in, his voice distorted from a modulator, “nothing that i couldn’t fix myself.”

“ah, ah, ah,” karga interjects, “there’s more to it than that. i believe he has several lacerations, perhaps a few burns from blasters.”

“that beskar couldn’t stop everything huh?” you arch a brow, in an attempt to lighten the mood.

the mandalorian doesn’t respond, anxiety bubbling up within you, “karga, try and keep him awake as long as you can. i have a few healing stems, along with some bacta shots, but depending on how deep the wounds are, i won’t be able to treat him unless we strip him of the armor.”

“i-i can’t take that off,” the mandalorian gurgles, “i-i, m-my cr-creed.”

“what creed?” you shoot karga a curious glance, guilt plastering his features.

“he has a creed he follows,” karga inhales sharply, “it’s his way of life.”

your lips part, forming an o. you want to scold karga for not briefing you on all of the minor details, as he normally does with his men. however, there was no time for banter or bickering.

you had to maintain your composure.

“how much blood has he lost, you think?”

“i can’t give you a definite answer on that,” karga takes a step back, allowing you to survey the mandalorian, “i would say a lot, but i’m not too sure. perhaps his garments stopped some of it, or the pressure of his armor.”

“that’s not enough pressure,” you murmur, plucking a pair of shears off your cart, “hey mando, can you hear me? are you still with us?”

a feeble hand raises from the table, his voice breathy and far away, “i-i’m here. anything but the helmet, please.”

“of course,” your voice is soft and hushed, “the helmet is off limits.”

“now that i’ve got him in here,” karga gestures his head towards the nearly unconscious mandalorian, “he has something back at his ship that i need to tend to. will you need my assistance or can you handle it?”

“i can handle it,” your voice falters, “go do what you need to do. it may be an hour or two before he’s feeling better.”

“you know how to find me if you need me,” karga’s words trail off as he exits your home, the doors sliding shut behind him.

“all right mando,” you take his hand, squeezing it, “i’m going to start by removing your armor okay? let me know if you can’t feel anything. that’s when we have a problem.”

“i can feel everything,” he spits out, “fuck. it hurts. it all hurts.”

“you really took a beating huh?” carefully, you start by removing his boots, hastily yet with caution.

who knew if he took a hit to the spine, paralyzing any point of his body.

“hey,” you place his boots on the floor, “can you wriggle your toes for me mando?”

immediately, relief ripples through you as you watch his toes move, signaling that there was no nerve damage. next, you remove the plates of armor covering his shins and thighs, placing them directly by his boots. the armor was severely damaged, almost beyond repair, as it was littered with dents and holes.

how many run-ins did this mandalorian have in his lifetime? how many of his days had he spent fighting?

“do you have other clothing in your ship?” you press on, slicing the fabric with your shears, “karga mentioned you had a ship.”

“mmmhmmmm,” he hums, “name is the razor crest.”

“ahh,” soaking a rag with bacta spray, you wiped down his exposed legs, assessing his wounds as you did so, “that’s a wonderful name.”

the flesh was only burned, which could be healed almost instantly with the bacta spray. luckily, there wouldn’t be much scar tissue either, only a few minor scars here and there. yet, you wondered if there was an inch of the mandalorian’s body that wasn’t scarred.

“d-don’t worry so much bout my legs,” he stammers, “it’s my shoulder that i’m worried about. i can feel the blood soaking through.”

“i’ll have to remove the rest of your armor and your tunic,” biting your lip, your hands wrap around his chest plate, desperate to find a way to get it off.

“hey,” his voice sounds again, this time a lot clearer, “i can get it off. you don’t have to worry about being hasty about this. i’ll make sure you get your sum.”

“i-i just,” you stutter, the taste of blood hitting your tongue as he sits up, “karga sounded so worried and i want to do a good job because the way he talked, you were his best hunter and i just can’t--”

“you won’t fuck anything up,” a hand reaches out, finding yours, “this isn’t anything i haven’t encountered before. the thing is, you’re a trained medic. i’m not. i would probably make a mistake and make my injuries worse somehow. take. your. time.”

for a moment, your eyes flutter closed, a weary sigh flowing from your lips. you can sense the mandalorian watching you carefully, studying your features through the tinted visor.

“o-okay,” you whisper.

the mandalorian sits up, shedding away the remaining pieces of his armor, “would you like for me to roll over?”

you nod, gnawing at your lower lip once more as you realize that this mandalorian, this stranger, was about to be nearly undressed, half-bleeding, half-conscious, on your table. and he was so patient with you. so much kinder than previous patients in the past.

“wait,” your brow furrows, “your helmet would make it awkward for you to lay on your stomach. how about you move over a little, to the edge of the table?”

“of course.”

he straightens his back, scooting over to give you some space. clambering onto the table, you reach up to adjust your light. taking your rag, you wipe down his back and shoulders, muscles rippling under your touch. every so often, your fingertips graze his heated skin as you lose yourself in your work.

you catch a quiet groan as you continue to work, your heart fluttering.

the sound wasn’t drenched with pain, nor anywhere near the noise you first encountered when he was being brought in by karga.

this was a sound of contentment, a sound of bliss.

“how long has it been since you’ve felt someone’s touch?”

shame burns through you the moment the question tumbles from your lips, nearly consuming you whole as he tenses. maker, did you feel so guilty. he was a stranger to you. how could you just blatantly ask that?

the answer arrives, short and sweet.

“too long.”

leaning over, you press a piece of cloth on his shoulder, a lengthy laceration stretching from his clavicle to his left shoulder blade, “oh, i see.”

“do you usually get this close and personal with your patients?”

“depends,” you shrug, “hey, i’m about to sew you up. it may sting.”

plunging the needle in, you press yourself to his back as you start the suture, your breath fanning against his neck. the mandalorian stiffens as he catches a whiff of your scent, and how it was so heavenly as it wafted into his nostrils.

his jaw clenches as he chokes back a hiss of pain, remaining as still as possible.

“you’re being so good for me,” your voice floods his ear, the praise nearly causing him to crumble completely.

within seconds, you’re all finished, sliding off the table, “i take it that karga is coming back with a change of clothes?”

“i hope so.”

gazing over at your table, you notice the healing stems, “i have some healing stems for your travels. they’ll probably help with that dull pain you’ll have in that area for a while. it won’t be an issue unless you somehow reopen that wound. if it was any closer to any major artery in your neck, you would’ve bled out.”

“i’ll take them.”

“well,” you hand them to him, “take them before you forget them. you seem like the forgetful type.”

a low chuckle erupts from the beskar, “i don’t think i could forget a night like--”

a knock on the doors interrupts the mandalorian’s sentence, cutting it short. as you make your way over, you hear a string of curses flowing from the table. more than likely his native tongue. pressing a button, the doors slide open, revealing greef karga and a strange, little creature, swathed by a bundle of clothing in his arms.

“you were fast,” karga remarks, cradling the creature, “how is he?”

“he’s fine,” your focus is directed away from karga, honing in on the creature, “who is this?”

“this is what i had to retrieve from his ship. he’s a very precious child. extremely important to that mandalorian over there.”

the child coos, its eyes two vast pools of obsidian. he blinks, a tiny hand flailing out. you melt, lips curling into a broad smile, “hello, little one. are you looking for your father?”

“he is,” the mandalorian echoes from across the space.

karga enters, keeping the child against his chest as he strides over, placing the bundle next to the mandalorian. from a distance, you watch fondly as the child teeters towards the bounty hunter, an incoherent blubber sounding as his guardian pats his head, reassuring him that they would no longer be separated.

within minutes, the mandalorian was springing to his feet, with a fresh set of a clothes, the same armor strapped to his frame. the child is in his embrace now, clinging onto his thumb. karga hovers by his side, more than likely filling him in on the next mission. the next victim to hunt.

“how should i pay you?” his voice, one you had grown familiar over the course of the hour, fills your ears.

“oh,” you blink, “um, don’t worry about it. you have far more important things to--”

“no,” his tone is firm, “you deserve some sort of payment.”

“she lives here after all,” karga remarks, folding his arms across his chest, “i could pay her any time.”

“how about you head out so that we can discuss this a little more privately?” he turns to karga, the query almost more of a command than a question.

“of course,” karga dips his head, shifting towards you, “i’ll see you around. hopefully this is the last time i spring a patient on you.”

“i’m sure it won’t be the last,” you roll your eyes playfully, “see you around, karga.”

“tell me, how much do i owe you? name anything in the galaxy and it’s yours.”

“you’re ridiculous,” you snort, “you don’t owe me anything. you could’ve died and you’re worried about paying me.”

“because you deserve it,” he takes a step forward, the space between the two of you dissipating, “from the sound of it, you let this happen quite frequently. you don’t get paid enough for it either.”

“how about you pay me a visit the next time you make a pitstop in nevarro,” your eyes fall to the floor, careful to not meet his gaze, “would that be enough?”

a gloved hand grasps your chin, tilting your head up.

“oh cyar’ika, that would be more than enough.”

the child giggles, bouncing, “maybe you should get a move on. he seems hungry. there’s a cantina not too far away from here. they serve good food, even if the locals get a bit rowdy. i bet it’s nothing you run into, though.”

“it’s probably best if i leave nevarro.”

“be safe out there mando,” you whisper.

“i will.”

just like that, he’s out the door, leaving your knees weak, heart all aflutter.

as the mandalorian made his way to the razor crest, child in tow, his mind was reeling, all of his thoughts honing in one particular thing.

a medic on nevarro, who mentioned briefly that he seemed to the forgetful type. yeah, he traveled near and far, to all rims and edges of the galaxy, but he was one to forget people, nor faces. he encountered so many species: human, twi’leks, wookiees, chiss, you name it.

the moment he stepped foot on the razor crest, he yearned. the desire burning through him, aching and desperate.

stars, how he longed to go back. just for one more glimpse. one more glimpse of that stranger’s face, that beautiful face.

he was determined though, determined to find his way back. perhaps in a few days, even. the mandalorian was relentless, especially when it came to getting what he craved. and oh, how he craved to know the name of the stranger on nevarro.

someone who would no longer be a stranger to the mandalorian.

he just knew it.

#the mandalorian #din djarin #the mandalorian x reader #din djarin x reader #mandalorian #mandalorian x reader #din djarin fluff #star wars #mandalorian fluff #mando

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darklingichor · 3 years ago

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Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir **MAJOR SPOILERS**

So, this is a first, I've never written a revisit this fast.

I do often read or listen to an especially good book, again, right after I finish it. Usually because I can't get into another book until I do.

I did it with Lamb, and I did it with the Martian.

This one is going to be chock full of spoilers, I really want to analyze the main characters in this book, and I can't do that without going into details. This is why I marked the hell out of this.

Project Hail Mary is even better the second time around. This is often the case. Books are like soup. The leftovers from the fridge are often even better than when you had it the first time.

*SPOILERS* *SERIOUSLY SPOILERS TURN BACK NOW IF YOU HAVEN’T READ THIS BOOK* *SPOILERS* *THE REST OF THIS RAMBLE WILL RUIN THE BOOK* *SPOILERS*

Okay, so run down.

The book opens with our main character waking up to an annoying computer asking him basic math questions. This is detecting cognitive function, that's my guess anyway.

Our character quickly discovers a few things. First, he's in a room with robot arms tending to him, including unhooking him from various life support systems as it figures out that he is awake and functioning. He's not alone in the room, there are two others, but they are long dead. And he has no idea, who he is, where he is, or why he's there.

What follows for a little while is what I would call a psychological screwball comedy. It takes him several days to work out that his name is Ryland Grace and he is a microbiologist PhD who had a falling out with the academic community and found his calling as a Jr. High science teacher. Though exploration, experiments, and memory flashes, he works out that he is on a spaceship, the corpses were his crewmates, and he is on a mission to Tau Ceti to save earth from an alien algae like creature, called Astropgage, that is dimming the sun and setting earth on the course to an ice age that will begin to wipe out humanity in 30 years. Tau Ceti, which is 12 light years away from earth, is resistant to this energy sucking algae.

We get all the backstory of how he became a crew member aboard the ship Hail Mary, in flashbacks as his memories return. A big memory that returns? Project Hail Mary is a suicide mission, he will not be going home.

In the meantime, he is slowly trying to figure out how to save earth, while he does this, he sees a very weird spaceship and meets an intelligent alien being. This being (Grace calls him Rocky) comes from a world (Earid) that is in the same situation as Earth. Together, Grace and Rocky have to work out how to save both of their home worlds.

Ryland Grace is a complex character, he’s very very different from Mark Watney (I haven't read Artimis so I can't make comparisons to those characters).

The Martian points out that Astronauts are inherently noble, willing to risk their lives for science and a good cause.

Grace is not an astronaut. That's not to say that he isn't a good person, just that he is an average person. He can be all at once self-sacrificing and selfish.

Early on he is drafted into the research team on what would be called Astropgage as a science expert by Eva Strat, a woman in charge of figuring out what is going on and how to stop it.

Once he was released from his part in this research, he goes back to teaching, only to be struck by the fact that his students would be in their early forties when all hell breaks loose, and that they might die. He then goes back to Strat and demands to be part of the research again.

This back and forth happens a few times in the story. In fact, it becomes a big part of it. See, the crew of the Hail Mary were put into comas to ensure that they would not go nuts and kill each other on the 12 light-year (four years from their perspective) journey, a medical company discovered that 1 in 7000 people have the genes to survive long comas and still function when they wake up. Grace is one of those people, but he is not volunteering for this mission. It's not that he doesn't care, or even that he doesn't want to help, it's that he's scared. And who wouldn't be? But honestly? I think Grace has imposture syndrome and is generally very sensitive. He realized that his kids would suffer, after starting to teach a class, that speed him to become a part of Strat's team again. Events happen that lead him to being the only logical candidate for the science expert aboard the Hail Mary. He refused, Strat basically kidnaps him, sets the computer induce amnesia in only Grace and plunks him on board.

Before she does this, she harshly calls Grace out.

“Do you think I don’t know you, Dr. Grace?!” she yelled. “You’re a coward and you always have been. You abandoned a promising scientific career because people didn’t like a paper you wrote. You retreated to the safety of children who worship you for being the cool teacher. You don’t have a romantic partner in your life because that would mean you might suffer heartbreak. You avoid risk like the plague.” (pg. 392 Kindle Edition)

This all seems to be true, but we don't know Grace's full story. Other than a mention of one girlfriend in college, and brief mentions of friends, There is nothing in the book about his life before he started teaching. This could be because the amnesia has left those things fuzzy, but in my head, it's because he doesn't want to think about it. Maybe he had a bad family life, maybe he had *no* family life, maybe he had an early tragedy. Maybe he realized his short comings and that, no matter his talent, he just didn't have the temperament for acidemia.

He does like being the cool teacher, he does say he likes being looked up to, but this isn't necessarily a bad thing. He's a *good* teacher.

I had cool teachers before I switched to home school. They weren't all good. I had one that would literally just let us mess around during class because they didn't want to actually grade papers. Cool to a kid? Absolutely! Good for education? Not on your life.

Grace isn't like that, he loves science, he loves teaching, and the kids are learning.

He doesn't like animal testing, he's emotional at the fragility of humanity. In short, in his quiet way he loves life.

He leaves his comfort zone to be a part of Strat's team because he knows he's good at what he does and he couldn't look at his students and knowing they could die when he could help prevent it. That doesn't mean he thinks he will be Earth's savior, just that he can help.

He's unwilling to die.

Usually in books and movies, this translates to coward, but really? It's not. Most people wouldn't volunteer for a suicide mission, especially one this pressure filled. "So, we need you to go into a coma, go to a different solar system, save your whole species, and then kill yourselves so you won't starve to death. We good? Cool."

You can't fault a living being for wanting to live. Plus, the other crew members had time to think it through, really decide, make peace with the decision and *then* carry through with the training. Grace? He was given the training, but Strat always said it was for the science of the mission. She was a little like Dumbledore, in that she was training him in case he had to go, but never told him it was a possibility. When it became clear that he was the choice for the vacant spot, he was given less than five hours to decide, and then was told he had no choice.

He makes noble choices throughout the book, but that one choice was not his own, because Strat was given absolute power and used it absolutely.

I can't say that Strat is a villain, either. She was elected to save earth and given the power to cut through any red tape. Handed all this authority, she doesn't become corrupt, she uses this power ruthlessly, but always with the only goal being Save Earth, full stop, that's it. And even as Grace, understandably terrified, yells at her she tells him that she likes him, that she knows that he is a good man, that he will give this his all. She doesn't *want* to send this unwilling and scared man on a suicide mission. She *has* to. Strat is also complex, she is not nonsense and is committed to her role in saving humanity. I like the reason she gives as to why, toward the end of the book. She got her undergrad degree in history. She takes to heart the old saying that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

The climate scientists and their models assumed survival based on the idea that all countries will work together for the common goal. However, Strat points out that history shows that that ideal scenario, is not likely to work. She says that most wars, up until very recently, were fought over food, and resulting in famine. As the sun loses energy and crops fail, there will be wars, and they will be over food. And that is what she is desperately trying to avoid – the horror of history brought to the modern day.

I started as a history major, and history is interwoven into anthropology – I understand this perspective.

I am not going to get into politics, but I’ve experienced the agonizing frustration of watching history repeat itself, more than once in the last couple of years. Guessing at how something will probably go due to how something lines up with a similar event in the past and knowing that if someone in power would just listen it might turn out different, or that the eventual problems could at least be prepared for, and watch it happen anyway and everyone act surprised. It’s enough to make you pull your hair out.

Strat has the knowledge and the authority to act on it, I can’t say, that in her position I wouldn’t act the same way.

That is the major difference between Grace and Strat: viewpoint. By necessity of her position and by virtue of her education, she sees the big picture clearly, Grace, however, doesn’t. He’s a microbiologist, his entire career and education is looking closely at the small things and how they would translate to big things. He studies the universe by studying the smallest things in it. It is no surprise that he would need the smaller things to make the bigger things to snap into focus. When he was forced to start research on astrophage, it wasn’t until he was faced with the small scale (his kids could suffer) to make him see his part in the grand scheme of things. Strat is right, he does avoid risk, because he’s avoiding pain, he doesn’t let things in because he feels too much. Yes, the realization about the kids, puts steel in his spine, but not before he narrowly avoids a break down. For Grace, seeing Strat’s point of view, without being able to work it though to his scale, is like yelling at someone standing too close to a mountain for not being able to see the peak. It just can’t be done from where they are.

It makes me wonder, had Strat been up front with Grace, would he have willingly gone? It takes him a while to come around to the idea of helping the project in the first place. If he were told sooner, given some time, had been able to go home, and think, I feel like he would have gone. Something would have set him on the course. Maybe it would have been one of his former students, telling him about their plans for trying out for high school track, or going to college, maybe he would have gone to his usual cafe for breakfast and found out that one of the waitresses had just gotten engaged, maybe he would be told these things and see the fear and desperate need to keep life as normal as possible in the person's eyes, and then he would decide, if, on the off chance no one else could go, he would. Until he remembers his refusal, nearly at the end of the book, he accepts quickly that he volunteered for the mission. Of course, that could have been simply because he couldn't imagine someone forcing someone into something like that, but even as his memories and sense of self come back to him, he doesn't have a sense of terror or blind panic at the fact that he's not going home. I would think that if his unwillingness were something hard wired into his personality, he would know soon after remembering who he is, that he would have never considered being a part of the voyage.

So, I think, had Strat told Grace early on that he had the coma resistant genes and that there was a small possibility that he may have to be the backup for the backup, and then allowed him to come to terms with it, he would have gone without the drama. Don’t get me wrong, there is the possibility that he would have run off and had to have been hunted down, but I think, just like when he went to his class and saw his students, something would have made his conscious kick in, and he would have come back.

That might have been interesting, him running scared for a little while and then coming back? Might have given a little more background into why he is the way he is. But that’s not really what this book is about, I think it’s a forgone about conclusion that Grace would have helped, but what’s really interesting is how Grace and Rocky work together.

Rocky is cool! I love that Weir didn’t go the easy route with the creation of an alien character. Rocky is no Roswell gray with a humanoid form. No no, for our sympathetic alien, we have a spider like creature with liquid mercury for blood who “sees” with echolocation and speaks in musical notes. And it works!!

Rocky is expressive and funny and is great with Grace. It’s hilarious, other than the Russian scientist on Project Hail Mary, he doesn’t get along with anyone as well as he does with Rocky, out of everyone in the book, Grace connects most with a spider shaped rock being, he has to make a computer program to speak with.

Rocky is a tad steadier than Grace, but that makes sense simply because of the two, Rocky knew what he was getting into, and Eridens not only have more time before their star dims to the point of causing a problem, but also, they live a long long time, so, Rocky knows he is going home. But the steadiness is also built into his personality. He and Grace are both analytical problem solvers, but seeing that Rocky is an engineer, his focus is to fix things. A problem arises, and his first reaction is “I will fix that.” He won’t be dissuaded until he has all avenues exhausted.

Grace has a habit, early on, of moping for a little while before rallying and getting to work. His interaction with Rocky brings that pouting time down a bit, and he even pulls Rocky out of a slump a time or two.

The relationship between these two is interesting because Grace says flat out that he is not a social person, he feels awkward in groups with people. But he easily communicates with his students, and he easily communicates with Rocky. Rocky is not childlike, but he does have something in common with the students, Grace, like any teacher, teaches his students, and learns from them. Grace teaches Rocky and learns from him. Grace is comfortable with this sort of interaction; with his students this is where the relationship stops. With Rocky, it doesn’t have that boundary. By virtue of the fact that both are alone in space and crave interaction, they talk a lot. Also, activities that Grace is use to doing alone, Rocky’s culture requires to be done in pairs. The biggest: Sleeping.

Eridens do not sleep without another person watching them. So, he insists that he watch Grace sleep and that Grace watches him. It is not expressly said what other things Eridens don’t do alone, but it is implied (at least to me) that they work better in pairs or in groups. This is true of humans as well, but Grace in particular is a loner, even as he complains that science doesn’t happen with one scientist doing the work (and he’s right) but he does work alone even when the astrophage project opened up to more people, the feeling I get is that he still does most of his work alone unless asked to teach others, or forced to come along by Strat.

Grace quickly becomes acclimated to Rocky’s way of doing things, in an odd way, Grace is more comfortable being Eriden, than he is being human. And I really think that this is the crux of their relationship.

I read somewhere recently that family isn’t necessarily blood, but who you would bleed for.

I feel that Rocky and Grace would sacrifice themselves for their respective home worlds, but they will bleed for each other. Grace must go to a different star system to find family, which is actually really cool to me, because the story manages to have Grace have a story of growth and even a quiet redemption arc all with the background noise of a potential double Armageddon, and we manage not to lose sight of any of these elements. Add to this that the book will make you laugh, cry and think all at once. I love the Martian, but I honestly think this one is better!

#project hail mary #andy weir #book #books #revisit 21 #spoilers #major spoilers #book blogging 2021

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coffeeandcalligraphy · 4 years ago

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A chatty writing update | novels, short fiction, etc!

Hi folks!

It’s been a while since I last wrote an update on this blog! I thought it’d be fun to go back to basics, and just talk about writing. This post chats about: new plans for Feeding Habits, my newest novel, my short story goals & growing collection, along with process reflections.

(image description: a photo of green leaves with the text “writing update” in a white font written on top. /end image description)

Post starts under the cut!

General taglist (please ask to be added or removed)

@if-one-of-us-falls, @qatarcookie, @chloeswords, @alicewestwater, @laughtracksonata, @shylawrites, @ev–writes, @jaydewritesfiction, @jennawritesstories @eowynandfaramir, @august-iswriting, @aetherwrites, @avakrahn, @maisulli

What have I been up to?

For starters, I finished my second year of my Writing undergrad last week and got two of my final grades back today (A+ baby)! For anyone who has taken online university, y’all already KNOW, but this year was so difficult. Would not recommend! Really proud of myself to have gotten through this absolute rollercoaster of a school term and am excited to get into some writing. That leads us to:

What have I been up to (writing edition)?

2021 started off so fast. By the time January hit, I was so consumed in my new semester that I did not have time to write Feeding Habits (my novel). In the first few days of the term, I managed to write between class, until I could no longer keep up! Essentially, I did not write any of that novel until exam season (last week), where I did manage to get in about 3k words in ~4 days.

Feeding Habits

I’m currently drafting what I believe will be the last chapter of this book (chapter 10: Swan Song). This chapter is so bizarre for a few reasons. It begins the book’s third part and also marks the shift back into Lonan’s head from Harrison’s. I originally thought this part would be much, much longer, with at least another five chapters to go, but quickly realized the book’s content was nearly completed. In my 4 day 3k palooza, I hit 50k in the book (the word count goal), and couldn’t see myself extending past 60k. Since then, I’ve made the loose decision to write this final chapter as a ~novella. Here are a few reasons why:

1. This chapter is structurally very strange.

I unashamedly shift from present to past to present to past past, and so much more every 12 words. I mapped out the timeline on a sheet of paper, and there were over 20 shifts in scenes (the chapter is only about 4400 words at the moment). The fictive past is incredibly important to this chapter, more important than the present, and I thought it would make more sense to not break randomly for a chapter so I could upkeep the consistent inconsistency of the chapter.

2. The chapter is very abstract

This stems from the structural changes, but there are paragraphs in this chapter of the fictive present that are loosely based in reality. They’re more poems than they are factual paragraphs, and keeping them all contained in one place (so a mega chapter/ novella) would reduce the most confusion!

3. There’s not much left to cover

Like I said above, Feeding Habits is on its last leg, lol! I know exactly where the book needs to end up, which is very, very soon from where I’m currently at on the timeline. Swan Song should cover what 2-4 chapters would cover in terms of arcs.

Feeding Habits and I have a really weird relationship, tbh! When I realized a few weeks ago that it’d been over a year since I started the book, I realized I just needed to finish it. Not that I want to rush (because I’ve taken longer than a year to write a book in the past), but that in order to move onto another project, I’d like to put this one behind first. This book has been the hardest thing I’ve ever written, and has reminded me there’s always a time to let go. This sort of scrounges up a conversation about letting this entire series go, which is certainly something I’ve been contemplating doing soon(ish). If this spinoff series gets a third book, that may or may not be the last Fostered book for a very long time (or ever)! There are many complex reasons to move on, but the main one is that I have other projects I’d like to focus on. This is not a definitive decision, but something I’ve certainly been thinking about!

Here are a few excerpts I wrote recently:

(TW: death, gore)

Dying feels like being a trout dangled out of water. Clinging to a hook. Mouth open. Scales iridescent in a final death cry. It’s like blood spurting up the knuckles, drowning out the flesh. It’s that moment on the long fall down when the clouds cup the body. Easy drifting. The sound a skull makes when it cracks is really just the afterthought.

(TW: death, gore)

Kill shot. Death blow. Coup de grace. Right in the heart. He feels it. The blood swelling, slicking his palms. He can do it. Reach into the cavity. Feel for the ribs. Part each bone. Then cup the humming heart. Stay there. Right. It’s never been easier.

Look at this PURE moment of Lonan holding a baby I CANNOT:

The grocery store was a fifteen-minute walk away. With Olivia clinging to his shoulder, Lonan was acutely aware that she could feel his heartbeat. Open valve. Close. Repeat. Hers pulsed right above his, a miniature drumming. The sky had bruised purple, misted with clouds. The evening air nipped his cheeks, so he made sure Olivia was securely fastened between him and his jacket. With wide eyes, she absorbed the drowsy suburbia, all its family cars pulling into driveways, all its couples heading back home after a sunset walk. When Lonan passed a young boy walking two golden retrievers, Olivia giggled, and didn’t stop, even after he’d spent fifty dollars on groceries and nearly the rest on a red Corolla marked with a MUST GO NOW sign outside a convenience store.

Let’s move on!

Mandy and Cora

I said I wouldn’t talk too much about this project, but I just love it so much?? I wanted to share my SUPER early thoughts on drafting a novel, especially one that is SO different from what I’ve been writing recently. I talked about this before in THIS post, but the summary about this project is that it’s a YA contemporary novel! Can’t believe I’m writing YA again, it’s been so long, but I also think it’s going so well. Everything I’ve learned as a literary fiction writer has been a fantastic primer for transferring back to the genre. Admittedly, I have not written much, but I’m having a lot of fun diving back into a lighter project. This is the summary:

Cora and Mandy are identical twins who’ve always done everything together. But when Mandy decides to go to university out of province after graduation and Cora doesn’t, Cora takes this as an opportunity to “test run” life apart from her sister for the first time by spending the summer at her aunt’s house across the country.

I have come up with a few ~things since I last talked about this project, mostly how I’d like to structure it. As of now, I’d like the book to be structured super loosely. I’m really pulling on a lot of inspo from “We Are Okay” by Nina LaCour (which is SO good), particularly how “nothing happens-y” that book is. This project (which I still need a title for!!) will be structured in short chapters that cover something Cora does on her own for the first time (without Mandy). For example, a few ideas are “Flight”, “Lunch”, and “Groceries”. “Flight” is the first “chapter” (they’re really kind of vignettes) where Cora flies to her aunt’s house. I still can’t determine if this book will take place in Canada. On one hand, I feel like there will be a wider audience if it takes place in the US (is that just an assumption??? maybe?? someone let me know!), but also: don’t really care too much about an audience at the moment! It could also take place in Canada (So Ontario and British Columbia). But if it does take place in the US, I think it may take place in NYC and San Francisco. The problem is: I really don’t like researching lol, and while I’ve been to NYC many times, I will definitely write it wrong! Does this really matter on a first draft?? absolutely not lol, but of course I am already overthinking!

But back to structure: I am looking forward to seeing what this looser structure will do. This is a story that is solely around one half of a set of twins learning to be her own person (and ultimately that she doesn’t have to completely forget her sister in order to do that), and as a twin who KNOWS this feeling, I think this structure of her doing things for the first time is SUPER relatable.

I was worried it might sound silly/worrying to others who are not twins that Cora hadn’t done things like “lunch” or “groceries” on her own, but I feel this so much as an identical twin myself! Not that she hasn’t done anything at all by herself, but as a twin, when you do something without your twin for the first few times, at least in my experience, you notice. If any twins are reading this--weigh in!

This story is the most personal thing I’ve ever written. It definitely is an OwnVoices book! Usually, I avoid details that are remotely similar to me because they make me uncomfortable haha, but with this book, it’s all me, lol! The characters are all Guyanese, which is SO fun because I’ve been planning what they eat (my fellow Caribbean peeps know: the FOOD!), which is so fun (yes they have pumpkin and shrimp, yes they have roti, yes they have pera, yes they have mithai). Every time I’ve gone to dabble at this book, or even think about it, I get incredibly emotional for this reason? I don’t exactly know why. I think this is a story I just so want to tell, with the culture I love SO much that I definitely struggled to love as a child. This is reclamation bitchessss!

Not going to lie tho: the prospect of writing ~a book~ is kind of freaky! I’m going to make the minimum word count for this book pretty short (50k) and see where it goes from there. I think I will focus on this project this summer! Originally I was going to write a literary novel this summer, but I think this one’s calling my name!

Here’s a pretty rough excerpt:

Try. I remind myself that’s what I’m doing after the flight attendant fills me a disposable cup of Coca Cola and all I can think of is Mandy and I shoving Mentos into a bottle of the stuff when we were twelve. Just me, wedged in the middle seat between an exchange student heading out for summer break and a middle-aged woman sipping a cocktail, thinking of Mandy and I bursting whole oranges in a blender when we were bored one Winter break as the plane dips through a wave of turbulence. Mandy and I dying our hair neon green with highlighters (didn’t work—our hair is too dark) as the plane lands on the tarmac. Mandy and I arguing so loud last month, we both lost our voices as I lug my carry-on out of the overhead compartment and shuffle off the plane and through the airport, searching for Aunt Vel.

Short Fiction

I’ve written so much short fiction this year! I have a goal to write a short story a month (they can range in length, as long as 1 is “complete”), so my short story brain has seriously been soaking it all up lately. Let’s chat my month to month breakdown so far:

January:

I wrote four stories in January! The first is a flash fiction piece called “Shark Swimming” that follows a young woman who attends a shark swimming class after breaking up with her girlfriend. I wrote this story for a “test” workshop for my fiction class, and it was based off the prompt “think about something you’re afraid to do and make the character do that thing”. I’m not particularly afraid of sharks, but had been wanting to use the title “Shark Swimming” for AGES (literally since 2018).

This story is one of my favourites. It’s only about 900 words, but I think there’s something profound in how mundanely specific it is. The entire story doesn’t even see the narrator swim with sharks once; it actually takes place fully in the sanctuary’s lobby. But I really love this narrator. This is the first story I’ve written in second person in a while, though I felt really connected to the unnamed narrator. She struggles with accepting that she truly is a “boring” person, and there’s something about the final image that really gets me!

I’ve been submitting this around, though it’s been rejected a handful of times. Hoping I can secure it at a magazine one day because I really love it!

The second story is “Joanne, I’ll Pray for You” which is actually a rewrite of one of my very first short stories (the first story I did not write for a class haha), “NYC in Your Apartment”. I LOVE this rewrite a lot, and also learned the original is not a very good short story! Revising this story taught me just how much I’ve learned in the 2 years I’ve been writing short fiction. Seeing the 2019 version versus the 2021 version side by side is fascinating because I essentially “gutted’ the 2019 version of its beginning and end until all that was left was the middle of the story (aka the actual story). AKA: this is the only story I’ve ever written with a hopeful ending and I cut out all the happy bits lol I am SO sorry (that arc is more for a novel or novella). That’s how this went from a 5k word story to an 1800 word story (my Submittable thanks me for this lol). A lot of details and scenes I included were more pertinent to a 3 act structure/novel, which of course short stories don’t often have because of their brevity. I love rambling about writing theory, and seeing that actually pay off is so fascinating!

(TW: trauma)

Like the original, this story follows Joanne, a woman in her early twenties, who spontaneously breaks up with her boyfriend. She claims the poltergeist haunting her drove her to this decision. The original draft focused a lot more on the traumatic events Joanne survives, but this draft really loosens them up. It focuses less so on the events themselves, and more on how Joanne’s life is affected. I found the details of these events were less important, and even sort of contradicted Joanne’s insistence she is being haunted. Instead, the poltergeist really takes more precedence in the new draft as a force Joanne doesn’t understand. That ambiguity, I think, is what the story truly needed.

I also centralized Joanne’s relationship with her boyfriend, Julian, here. Now don’t get me wrong, I really didn’t add anything to this draft. It was a matter of trimming the fat around it to leave the lean “meat” in the centre. But by removing that fat, I was able to emphasize what was most important here, and that was her relationship. Julian always played a really big role in the original draft, but I feel like his role as both a friend and partner to Joanne is much more emphasized since this draft literally is only two scenes now. Because there is less, there is more room for Joanne to reflect, which I’m happy about!

A final change I made was the setting and therefore the title. The original, which was “NYC in Your Apartment,” I couldn’t keep because I shifted the setting to Toronto (this is how I originally saw it, but in 2019 I just?? couldn’t?? write?? canlit??), and “Toronto in Your Apartment” sounded sort of gross LOL. The new title comes from a line in the story which I think is more relevant to the themes!

The next short story I wrote in January was “How to Spell Alpaca.” This one is super fun because I wrote it SO fast (in about 15 minutes or so). THIS is the writing update if you’re interested in learning more. I talked extensively about this one in that update, but some developments are that I dove into an edit a few weeks ago to really understand the core of the story. I’m still not quite there (this is just an intuitive feeling; I know not everything has “clicked), but I am really intrigued by the two mothers in the story, the narrator, and her newfound acquaintance, Violet. Both really struggle to understand their place as mothers (the narrator even declares she isn’t a mother anymore). The narrator, who is in her 50s, sees herself in Violet, who is much younger (~20s), and so she views Violet’s relationship with her daughter in a cautionary, yet mournful way, like she can see it will end up like her own relationship with her daughter, despite wanting the opposite. This is a really subtle story. I feel like if you blink, you’ll miss the message. But I think it’s compelling for that reason. It’s really a portrait of parenting and how to grapple with mistakes you may make that inevitably affect your children. Wow just unlocked the theme writing this lol.

The final story I wrote in January is “The Party,” which may be in my top 3 faves I’ve ever written. This story follows Aida, a recent divorcee in her ~40s. The day her divorce turns official, she moves into a new house and receives a party invitation addressed to the previous homeowner, yet RSVP’s anyway. At this party, she’s hoping to find some sense of noticeability, having struggled with being nondescript her whole life. Things seem quite normal at the party, until it gets bizarre.

I LOVE this story, y’all. Like “How to Spell Alpaca” it really delves into motherhood. Aida, our narrator, is incredibly hurt after her divorce. She now lives farther from her children she struggled to feel connected to in the first place, and doesn’t really know how to reignite her life. This party is a means to do that. This is the first story I’ve written that contains a “twist” which is strange because I really prefer stories that give us as much info as possible upfront, but yes, this one sort of twists.

February

I wrote one story in February, and that was “Protect the Young.” This title is SO changing when I think of a new one because it’s thematically incorrect, haha, but this story follows a woman in her late 40s whose daughter, Lindy, announces she is married the same day all their backyard chickens turn up dead. The discovery of dead chickens prompts our narrator to recall her ex-husband’s murder and the role her daughter may have played in his death.

I love this story so much! I think this would make a great closing for my short story collection. It just has that vibe! I wrote this for my second fiction workshop. I thought I had to hand in the story a week earlier than I had to, so I panicked and wrote this in one sitting! Little did I know, I did not need to do that lol but I’m very happy because this story is so fun. We get to learn more about Arnold (her ex), his relationship with Lindy, and how that translates to Lindy’s relationship with her new husband, Malcolm. I LOVE true crime (I listen to about 3-4 hours of case coverage daily), and this is my first “true crime” story. Because of that, I’m very sus of a few details that probably wouldn’t slide in actual investigatory work, so I’ll also be working on that in a revision. My professor also gave me a great suggestion that may alter the story’s structure a bit, though I look forward to toggling with it in the future.

March

In March, I was really on a Criminal Minds kick lol. I’ve been watching this show since I was seven (oops), and dove into a rewatch since it hit Disney+! This story, “Where to Run When the Lamb Roars,” is very clearly Rachel watching 5 episodes of CM a day. Oops! We follow 14-year-old Astrid as she and her older half brother kidnap a young girl to sacrifice for their yearly ritual.

I knew a few things going into this story, but the main thing was that I did NOT want to show any details of a potential murder (if one even occurs). I really wanted to keep all of those elements off the page because this story is not about those events, but about Astrid’s relationship with her brother. They are a murderous duo, with Astrid actually being the dominant partner. I wanted to explore that. I knew her brother, Fox, was more of a submissive partner in their team, even when he used to do this same thing with his father when he was much younger (chilling!), and so it was a task to explore how this young girl’s desire for violence works. The end actually comes right before the story starts, one could say, but I like it for this reason. It really made me contemplate the story by the time I finished it, and helped me examine what it really was about versus what it appeared to be about.

April

(TW: sexual content, non explicit)

I was so busy this month! Who knows if I’ll write a story last minute, but I did write one story this month called “Five Times Fast.” I wrote this during a “writing sprint” that was being hosted at a flash fiction workshop I recently took with one of my favourite writers ever, K-Ming Chang. I learned so much from this class, and am so happy I came out of it with a draft! This story is just over 300 words, so the shortest flash I’ve ever written, but I’m really happy with it. It was based off the prompt “describe the last time you or your character was naked.” In this case, the narrator has a “friends with benefits” relationship with Ricky who works at a laundromat. This story highlights a moment in this relationship (and also Ricky’s goofy personality lol). I really like it! Hopefully I’ll submit it to some magazines soon.

My short story collection

Very briefly I wanted to touch on my short story collection which I’ve titled “She is Also Dead.” I’ve been meaning to make a blog post on this, so look out for that in the coming months, but this collection is already at around 35k words (about 14 stories so far). The collection also surprisingly has a solid amount of flash fiction which is kind of fun! There’s definitely a range here, which is what I personally love in short story collections.

I feel very professional now that I have a ~collection chart. This is her:

(image description: A chart with the title “She is Also Dead.” It is broken into four columns: Story, Status, Word Count, and Published. Entry 1 - Story: Slaughter the Animal. Status: Revisions, Word Count, 3982, Published: N/A. Entry 2 - Story: Joanne, I’ll Pray for You, Status: Polished, Word Count: 1809, Published: N/A. Entry 3 - Story: Primary Organs, Status: Published, Word Count: 2342, Published: The Malahat Review. Entry 4 - Story: Faberge, Status, Polished, Word Count: 619, Published: N/A. Entry 5 - Story: The Wolf-Antelope Will Not Come for Us, Status, Polished, Word Count: 1556, Published: filling Station (forthcoming). Entry 6 - Story: How to Spell Alpaca, Status: revisions, Word Count: 1327, Published: N/A. Entry 7 - Story: Blink Twice for Final Judgement, Status: Polished, Word Count: 6572, Published: N/A. Entry 8 - Story: The Species is Dead, Status: Published, Word Count: 1208, Published: Minola Review. Entry 9 - Story: Shark Swimming, Status: Polished, Word Count: 907, Published: N/A. Entry 10 - Story: The Party, Status, Polished, Word Count 2339, Published: N/A. Entry 11 - Story: Fig, Status: Polished, Word Counter: 947, Published: N/A. Entry 12 - Story: Protect the Young, Status: Revisions, Word Count: 4128, Published: N/A. Entry 13 - Story: Where to Run When the Lamb Roars, Status: Revisions, Word Count: 2174, Published: N/A. Entry 14 - Story: Phantom Limbs, Status: Revisions, Word Count: 4844, Published: N/A.) /end image description.

This order is DEFINITELY not permanent (at this point whenever I write a story, I just fit it randomly into this chart lol), and some of the info is outdated (for example, Slaughter the Animal is now polished!!! thank god!!!). But just an idea of what I’m thinking of including.

This is the summary so far:

In SHE IS ALSO DEAD, characters are pushed to act on their gravest impulses. A small town turns murderous when their local invasive species, the Janices, begin dying. A child struggles to understand her mother’s suicide. A college dropout who insists she’s being haunted by a poltergeist unexpectedly breaks up with her boyfriend. A mother acknowledges her daughter’s murderous tendencies after her backyard chickens mysteriously die. A young girl caters the funeral of a girl rumored to be killed by a wolf-antelope. A newly-divorced mother RSVP’s to a bizarre party she was not invited to, and a murderous brother and sister upkeep their yearly tradition of abducting a young girl. These stories follow characters who navigate death, violent desires, womanhood, and loss, both self-imposed and otherwise.

This is also so subject to change as I may pull and add stories to the collection!

I think I’m going to leave this update here for now! I’ve written TONS of poetry too, but I honestly ~hate my poetry right now lol, so! Hope you enjoyed this chill rambly update. Hope writing has going well for you all! All the best!

--Rachel

#writing #writeblr #writerblr #amwriting #writingupdates

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mymelodyheart · 4 years ago

Text

Miles Between Us Chapter 1 ~Stories She Wrote~

PICTURE SOURCE

PART 2 OF WONDERWALL SERIES

Hey guys, I'm back and thrilled to give you part 2 of WONDERWALL series, Miles Between Us. It is a continuation from my holiday ficlet, All I Want For Christmas Is You. If you haven't read the first part, I suggest you do if you wish to get an insight into Jamie and Claire’s history (Here is the link) Otherwise, this ficlet can also be read as a stand-alone.

I know All I Want For Christmas Is You ending was bittersweet, but it had to be done. Otherwise, there wouldn't have been a Part 2 in this series. I had to leave the story open to possibilities if it is to have a chance of growing. And besides, making this into a series allows me to take breaks from writing and refresh my brain in-between ficlets. So I hope this next part of the story will make up for leaving you hanging all these weeks.

Anyway, before you continue, I'd like to thank you for reading, commenting and giving feedback to my stories. They're all very appreciated even if I sometimes don't comment back. As a hobby writer, I always look forward to your response, and they spur me to continue writing. Without the readers, I wouldn't be here. So thank you for being part of my writing journey.

If you wish to read this on AO3, here is the link.

So now everything is said, without further ado, I wish you all happy reading. ❤️

Previously ...

Claire Elizabeth Beauchamp and James Fraser met and fell in love during the Holiday Seasons. Unfortunately for their budding relationship, after two weeks of a whirlwind romance, Claire has to return to London to finish some work commitment that could take a year to fulfil. It doesn't help matters that Jamie's PTSD condition prevents him from visiting her as loud city noises can trigger panic attacks. They are both in love with each other and are willing to find out where their relationship will head to. But can they find a compromise to bridge the gap of hundreds of miles to give their love a chance?

After sitting on her bed most of Saturday working on her laptop, Claire Beauchamp rolled her neck and stretched her back, her arms extending above her head. She flinched when her joints cracked.

Over the past few days, her boss, John Grey, forwarded manuscripts and drafts from the author she was working with. She hadn't eaten anything all day, and her stomach was beginning to grumble, and her eyes blurry from reading.

She'd read so much in the past hours, she was practically cross-eyed, and the bridge of her nose hurt where her specs rested. Words upon words had sifted through her brain, but now the lines were beginning to blur together.

She glanced back down on her laptop and opened a file in her document folder, her eyes scanning through lines she knew by heart. She'd been going through her own work lately wondering if she had what it takes to be a writer. Someone who would give her an honest opinion ought to read it before contemplating getting herself a literary agent if she was to start a new chapter of her life and take that leap of faith in her dream career.

A sudden urgency took over, and she needed Annalise to read her work, like right now. Which reminded Claire, her friend was away with Willie, shopping and sight-seeing. He was staying over their place for the weekend for the first time since she and Annalise left Lallybroch. After declining their invitation to join them earlier, the loved-up couple left her to her work with the promise of dinner when they returned.

She was about to reach out for her cold coffee from the bedside table when Raiders of the Lost Ark's theme song blared from her phone. At the same time, a picture of her uncle Lamb appeared on the screen. He was wearing a high-crowned, wide-brimmed, weather-beaten fedora hat and had a lopsided grin plastered to his thickly stubbled face. Rugged, she thought, just like her favourite pair of distressed leather boots, and very Indiana Jones.

Smiling, she tapped the answer button and put the phone on speaker. "Uncle Lamb! Long time no speak!"

"Sweetheart," he started in a deep familiar voice, "how are you?"

She frowned and pushed her laptop aside. Something was off. "Oh you know, same old ...just finishing work and ..."

"On a Saturday?" he asked, cutting her off.

"Look who's talking."

He chuckled. "You're young. You should be out. There are so many things to do in London ...especially on a Saturday. "

Claire rolled her eyes but opted to change the subject instead. She wasn't ready to give her reason for working overtime nor share her future plans nor talk about the handsome Scot she met during her holidays. Not just yet, anyway. "So ...to what do I owe the pleasure of hearing your voice, dear uncle?"

"What?" he said gruffly, pretending to sound offended. "Can't I call my favourite girl in the world and check up on her?"

She mentally sighed. Something must be up since her uncle never called. It was always she who usually phoned, and when he did call on a rare occasion, it was either because something had happened or he was in London. She dismissed the latter since she knew he was in Papua New Guinea. The next conclusion she landed on was his health but thought it absurd. Her uncle was strong as an ox, ate healthily, only smoked the occasional cigar and regularly went for doctor's check-up, a requirement in his job as an archaeologist travelling to remote places.

Unless. "You sound suspiciously chipper. Let me guess ...you met someone. There's a woman in your life."

He coughed like he was choking on a drink. "No! Why would you say that?"

Alright, he sounded repulsed by the idea enough. Or was that denial? "I don't know. You seem so ...how shall I say it ...unlike yourself. You normally skip the niceties and get to the point."

He lets out an impatient breath. "Claire, darling, am I really that awful?"

"No," she replied, ignoring the ache in her throat. She missed their time together but tried not to make it apparent in her tone. He was a busy man, and the last thing she wanted was her uncle worrying. "You don't seem like you're rushing off to anywhere. It's rare you sound this relax."

"It's way past my bedtime already," he sighed. "And besides, work is on stand-by at the moment until we get the license to start digging on site. People here are so damn laid back, and nobody seems to be in a hurry to process the paperwork. I'm not about to hand out cash to speed things along even if bribery is rampant here."

"I see. So you're in Port Moresby then?"

"Yes. As soon as we have the license sorted out, we'll be flying to Lae first thing tomorrow. Hopefully, anyway." He cleared his throat. "Speaking of paperwork, I received an email from my lawyer. Your trust fund has matured, dear. I'll send you the details where to go to and who to contact, and maybe you can start planning your life. Perhaps take a sabbatical and travel with me if you wish."

Ah yes, the trust fund.

After her parents died, everything they had owned was put into her trust fund by her uncle to secure her future. She'd already received a small lump sum when she turned eighteen, and the money had afforded her, though small and cramped, a decent rental two-bedroom apartment in London with high windows, which was premium in this expensive city. And Annalise, her best friend and roommate made enough money to help pay the ridiculous expensive utility bills. Her own wage just about covered the other expenses with almost nought left for savings, but she hadn't worried knowing there was money in place in her name. She was counting on it to support herself when she pursued her dreams of writing.

"About that, I think I'll let that sit in the bank for a while. It's not like I need the money right now, nor do I have the time to spend it."

"As you wish," her uncle replied. "And another thing I need to discuss with you ...South Lodge ..."

"What about South Lodge?" South Lodge should have been her family home if her parents hadn't died, and she knew it was a highly coveted property because of its historical significance. It was never put into the market for sale since her uncle thought it wasn't his place to decide. It was put on a twenty-year lease to a high profile politician, its payments going towards her trust fund.

"The lease is up, and the occupants will be moving out soon. Unfortunately for you, that information made it to the local news and you were mentioned as the legatee. So don't be surprised if you're bombarded with offers now that your name is out. I'm willing to bet, property investors and developers will be itching to get their hands on it."

Claire took off her specs and pinched the bridge of her nose. God, she hated adulting, paperwork and dealings with lawyers. Maybe she should just sell South Lodge and be done with it, so she could concentrate on her future plans. What do I need a five-bedroom house with one acre of garden in Oxford for? "I'll think about it, uncle. I just have a lot of things going on at the moment. I'm quite sure those things can wait."

"Of course dear."

"Thank you for letting me know." She thought of Jamie, and the Highlands and how much life was a lot simpler there. She really needed to double her effort to tie up loose ends in London and have a heart to heart talk with Annalise. Is her relationship with Willie serious? If not, her friend would have to eventually find a new roommate. After quickly glancing at her bedside clock, she realised they would be here soon and hopefully with a takeaway. Annalise did mention something about sorting dinner out tonight.

"And Claire?"

"Yes?"

"Your upbringing hasn't been the most ideal. Enjoy the money and treat yourself. Don't spend your life doing things that don't bring you joy."

She smiled. Her uncle must have had a rude awakening of some sort to sound so philosophical. Or probably, he did meet someone special. Either way, she wasn't going to push for any answers for now. She really needed to get out of bed, do a few stretches and have a shower before Annalise, and Willie arrived. "I'll try," she finally said.

"Good. I'll let you get back to whatever you're doing."

"Sadly, yes." She shut her laptop and got out of bed. "Take care of yourself, alright? And I'll phone you sometime next week after I've figured out our time differences."

"Absolutely, sweetheart. Talk soon."

"Love you, uncle Lamb."

"Love you, too."

She terminated the call with a swipe on her screen and rubbed her eyes. She'd been working for seven hours straight, and her eyeballs felt like they're made of sandpaper. Glancing at the corner table, she smiled when she saw Jamie's gifts. Willie had brought them with him when he arrived last night from Inverness. She knew Jamie was making up for his absence, but it couldn't be helped when there's the danger of his PTSD condition worsening in the city. To her delight and surprise, he'd sent her a leather-bound journal, a framed selfie photo of them together, driftwood bookends he made and a box of her favourite Lindt chocolate.

With a contented sigh, she made a mental note to call Jamie after dinner. And to ask her boss first thing Monday morning if she could take her work to Scotland the following weekend to surprise her boyfriend. After all, she was just taking her uncle's advice, and after the work, she'd put in the last couple of weeks, and the extra hours she planned to do the next few days, she deserved a little joy in her life.

..........

Claire leaned forward, and nervously examined her best friend's face. Annalise was hunched down, scrolling her laptop, tongue darting out as she read the paragraphs on the screen.

What's that look for? Doesn't she like it? She couldn't tell. It was the first time she's showing her work to anyone, one of the stories she had written during her spare time before embarking a career as an editorial assistant for Dreamcatcher Publishing Company. She needed to hear her friend's opinion to know if she even had a small chance of becoming a writer.

Annalise took her sweet time, and Claire wasn't sure if her inscrutable expression was a deliberate act to prolong the suspense, or if she genuinely had no reaction to what she's reading. If it was the latter, Claire would definitely kiss her dream of being a writer goodbye. If it's the former, she's going to strangle her friend for making her suffer.

She heard the door to the apartment open and close, followed by the sound of keys jangling and heavy footfalls, announcing the arrival of Willie. He'd stopped by to order some food at a local Indian takeaway while Annalise headed straight home to prepare the table for dinner. Instead of calling out to him, she held her breath for Annalise's response.

Just when Claire was starting to accept her hope of being a writer would never amount to anything other than a pipe dream, she saw the reaction she impatiently waited for. Annalise's mouth formed a comical O, followed by her eyes' widening and random shallow sighs.

Yessssssss!

This was massive. Despite Annalise having seen works from established authors Claire had edited for, she'd never witnessed her friend looked this excited. Annalise simply couldn't hide her gobsmacked expression, even if she tried.

"Oh, dear Lord," she whispered, her gaze flicking to Claire and then back to the screen. "Why didn't you tell me you had this? I knew you wanted to be a writer, but this ..."

"So?"

Annalise took a massive deep breath, her fingers almost shaking. "Oh my God, Claire."

"Oh my God, wot? Oh my God good or oh my God, bad?" Claire asked, even though she already knew deep in her bones, what the answer was. But she desperately needed to hear the words.

"This is bloody good," she said, as she went back to a previous page, and reread it all over again. After a couple of minutes more, a slow smile started to spread across her face, as she stole a few cheeky glances over at Claire.

Claire knew she could rely on her friend to tell her the truth. If her work had been bad, friend or not, Annalise would have been forthright and told her the hard facts. Nevertheless, she tamped down her own growing excitement. "The question is though ...is it good enough for the mass?"

Without hesitation, Annalise nodded vigorously, her blue eyes big as saucers. "Oh, Claire, are you kidding me? You really have no idea, have you? Of course, it is! I need to read the rest. Please tell me it's finished."

Claire relaxed for the first time and slumped back against the headboard of her bed, relief soothing her wild heartbeat. "It's finished."

Annalise let out a whoop as she gripped the laptop tightly. "Oh my God! Give me everything ...I won't be able to sleep tonight if I don't read at least one more chapter of this story."

"I've got ten more finished materials."

"Oh my God, oh my God! You're killing me. I want it all."

Willie poked his head by the frame of the doorway to her bedroom and eyed them suspiciously. She wasn't sure what he expected to find, but his eyes narrowed when he saw Annalise's flushed face.

"What are ye both up to?" he asked, frowning. "Ye sound like ye're looking at porn on the internet."

Annalise grinned and motioned him over. "Sort of."

Willie hesitantly entered the room. "Sorry?"

"In actual fact, much better than porn ..." Annalise announced, smirking at Claire.

"Annalise!" Claire wheezed when it dawned on her, her friend must have been reading the sex scene part.

Annalise reached out and reassuringly squeezed Claire's hand whilst looking at Willie. "Take a look at this. Claire wrote it."

Annalise handed the laptop to Willie, and both of them earnestly watched his face to gauge his reaction. As he sat down on the edge of the bed and read, Claire knew he would be the real test. Willie being a bloke, she didn't expect him to have the same reaction as Annalise, but she hoped he would appreciate the storyline and plot. Claire already understood, if her story was going to be good enough to be published, its success would be based on women's purchasing power. If he liked her style of writing even a smidgen, then she would be laughing.

Claire held her breath in anxious anticipation, and approximately a minute and a half later, she got her response.

His eyes bulged out, and then the tips of his ears glowed with red. In all sort of ways, he was so similar to Jamie but yet so different. But there's no mistaking how vibrantly their ears always lit up when they're embarrassed. Or moved.

"Kind of explicit," he commented hoarsely, before tucking a tongue into his cheek as if trying to find the right words to say. "But it is an intriguing story with great flow and interesting characters. It's no' the genre I would typically read, but the first few paragraphs of what I've seen so far are riveting. It makes me want to read more."

Annalise, enthusiastically nodded in agreement and waved a hand in the air. "There it is."

"Ye have a gift, Claire," Willie added, eyes still fixed on the screen and working overtime as his focus became more intense. "The dose of mystery ye've woven into the lines is remarkable and intelligent."

She felt herself beaming in vindication. "Thank you."

He briefly glanced up at her. "Now that I remember, Jamie did vaguely mention ye wanted to be a writer."

"That's the plan," she beamed.

"Good. Because if ye can produce something like this, then yer talent is wasted on editing other people's work."

"She's got ten more finished stories," Annalise piped in.

Willie arched an eyebrow at Claire and continued reading, and when he finished, he shook his head and let out a low whistle. "Is Jamie the inspiration for this story?"

Her face heated. "I ...ah ...wrote that years ago. And ...um, I've revised and edited it a million times in the past. I wanted Annalise to read it first and find out if it's good enough to be published."

Annalise grinned at Willie, still looking a little flush like she was having a physical reaction to the few lines she'd read earlier. "So what do you think?"

Willie didn't miss Annalise's excited reaction to the story. "It's verra good but I didnae realised graphic scenes affected ye so much. Ye're beet red!"

"Only when it's very well written," Annalise smirked, taking the laptop from his hands and moving towards him to sit on his lap.

Willie pulled Annalise closer and kissed her, and Claire sighed. It's both beautiful and terrible being in the presence of people, so in love. While she's ecstatic to see her best friend smitten and happy, it made her sad that Jamie couldn't be here with her. She missed him terribly, and it's only been a fortnight since she had last seen him.

After a few seconds of watching them unashamedly snogged in front of her, Claire clapped her hands, and they both immediately pulled away. "Right, that's enough you two. So, where's the dinner I was promised?"

Suddenly looking self-conscious, Willie promptly lifted Annalise from his lap, plonked her down onto the bed and jumped up, and Claire couldn't help but grin at him.

"Right on it," he muttered, before disappearing from her bedroom.

Annalise laughed and playfully shoved her shoulder. "Passion killer."

Claire ignored the jest. "So you really think I should publish my story?"

Her friend nodded excitedly. "Absolutely! You should have let me read it sooner. From what I've seen so far, you have good, solid material, and I'm convinced, when I read the rest, it will not disappoint." She stood up and smiled. "Come on, in as much as I'm all fired up after reading your story, I'm famished." She got up and left the room.

Instead of moving from her position, Claire stared at her work for a few seconds and just breathed. Although Willie and Annalise were sincere with their praises, she couldn't help but still feel nervous. This next step in her life could either turn out to be huge, or it could get her mocked out of a dream career she loved.

Pushing aside her doubts and thinking of Jamie, she quickly compressed a copy of her story's file and sent it to him via email to read, hoping he would like her written work too. Who knew, maybe, after reading it, he would be as fired up as Willie and Annalise.

After hearing the whoosh of the email sent, Claire launched herself off the bed to join her friends, looking forward to Jamie's reaction later and daydreaming of a future in Scotland with her love.

#melodyheart #wonderwall #milesbetweenus #Claire Beauchamp/Jamie Fraser #claire beauchamp #jamie fraser #outlanderfanfic

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daisylovesatla · 4 years ago

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very rough draft of the start of a zutara fan fic

AU where Aang and Katara don't end up together cuz it doesn't make sense that it would be written that way but anyway, I wrote some pages about what would happen if Zuko's lightning bolt actually hurt him a lot more than it did...my ADHD brain can't remember where I saw that AU from but when I do I will tag u I promise...anyway it's Katara by herself at the palace healing Zuko and then the rest of the Gaang arrives from the Earth Kingdom, where Aang and Suki and Toph and Sokka were all fighting against the fire nation's ambush, cuz it would take more than like. a week probably to get to the same place as Zuko and Katara. Anyway I hope it makes sense I'm tentatively posting the first chapter in case everyone hates it but it's only 3,000 words I think.

(eta the ao3 link)

Book 4: Reconstruction...:)

Book 4: Reconstruction

I need some fresh air. She sighs to herself, rubbing her sore wrists and rising up from the cushion she was kneeling on. Keeping her eyes closed, afraid of the emotions that would flood through her if she snuck a glance at him while she wasn’t intensely focused on his injury, pouring all of her energy into that one spot, both emotional and physical.

It has been two weeks since the comet, and she has been doing all that she can to support him, to try to do something that could in some small way, return the favor for his sacrifice. As soon as her back is to Zuko’s bed, she opens her eyes, and is confronted suddenly with the bigness of this place. The tall, melodramatic metal doors that weigh way more than they need to, the beds with far away canopies rustling above them. Just the mattresses here are the size of her entire igloo back home, and even though it isn’t the first time she has been surrounded by superfluous opulence like this, something about this place feels particularly daunting.

She can sense his pulse, slow, but steady, consistent, as his blood flows through his veins and with it, water. Even when it isn’t a full moon, Katara is able to feel the water in everything, including the people she is surrounded by. She has yet to decide if it is an advantage, or only makes it harder to navigate through the world.

Her legs feel like lead, and she struggles to ignore the dryness of the room, the fires lit in their mantles 10 feet above them sucking all of the moisture out of this space, the lack of water, of that familiarity, making her feel like she is choking, as her breaths become more and more shallow and her heart continues to beat faster and faster, only worsening whenever the memories of that fateful, final Agni Kai come rushing back to her, making everything feel so much worse.

No, I can’t think about that right now. Katara closes her eyes again, and takes a deep breath, trying to replicate the breathing technique Aang taught her the first time he saw her meditating. In through my nose, out through my mouth, that’s what Aang taught me. She tries not to think much more about Aang than this. Too much has happened. Aang is expecting an answer, she is sure of it, an answer she can’t give him. Yet there is a hope swimming just below the surface in her, that this now or never attitude leading up to his battle with Ozai would no longer be there in him, that fire gone, the flames put out.

I have no answer right now, she decides, as she finally gets her legs to take the final steps towards the door. Yearning for a sense of coolness against her increasingly warm skin, she presses her hand against the door, and lets it ground her as she pushes it open, nearly jumping as it creaks and struggles to with each inch that she can shove it open. What is it with rich people and big doors? She chuckles to herself as she remembers storming Ba Sing Se, when things were so simple and yet not simple at all.

Running her fingers through her thick, curly hair trailing down her back, she sucks in all the air that she can in this hallway with much better circulation, finding it easier to keep her balance and move forward. The war may be over, but she is anticipating many battles are going to be fought in the coming weeks and months, battles over territory, freedom, the right to the throne. She has to heal Zuko so that he can advocate for himself, she determines, as she envisions Ozai’s loyal courtiers’ unfounded complaints with Zuko taking the role of the fire lord. She worries for him and she worries for herself. A water tribe peasant, Azula called her during the Agni Kai. Despite her strong demeanor, her ability to inspire other people to recognize their own worth, it is still difficult for Katara not to internalize this when she knows she is surrounded by enemies, no matter how much Iroh tries to reassure her and the rest of them that this is not the case. She has spent far too much time being attacked and assaulted by members of the Fire Nation to naively assume that with a change in power, a change in attitude amongst the people will quickly follow.

Many citizens are still loyal to Ozai. They still see her and Sokka and the rest of the Water Tribe as peasants, as savages with too much power. They are still afraid of waterbenders altogether, as gossip and rumors spread around the nation about Hama in the weeks following her imprisonment. She feels a pang of guilt for how it turned out with her. A Southern Waterbender, alive after all these years that she feared she was the last one, the only one, the one expected to carry on this legacy all by herself. Finally, somebody who understood her struggles, intrinsically, who had fought for so many years to be free, suddenly imprisoned again by people from the same nation that had stolen her away from her home, because she could not let go of her anger against them, like Jet.

She does not want to think about the revenge Hama tried to take on that people. How misdirected it was. How she never wants to be as full of rage and anger and resentment that she would start to do something as heinous.

It doesn’t change that that is how many people from the Fire Nation see her people. She can’t blame Hama for that, it would be wrong to expect any one person to be a representative for their tribe, their culture. “This is all so complicated,” Katara mutters under her breath, as she struggles to breathe, to let herself be free of these thoughts. Her anger, always there, ready to burst out from inside her in the form of an uncontrollable explosion.

Katara barely notices how far she has walked from Zuko’s room, until suddenly she hears a familiar voice call out to her. Startled, she looks up from the floor where she was mindlessly staring as she strolled and sees Sokka and Suki waving over to her from the other side of the hallway.

“Sokka! Suki!” She cries out, as she runs over to them, as fast as she can. “You’re here! You made it!” As she gets closer, she notices the crutch Sokka is leaning on, and her stomach feels like it is full of sand. “Are you okay? I can try my best to heal it, but I’m pretty worn out right now…” She glances at his bandages on his leg and starts to think up the best method for healing him after so much time has passed since his injury. “I’m sorry, I wish I had gotten to it sooner…” Katara begins, but she is interrupted by Sokka,

“Hey, it’s okay! For most of my life you haven’t been able to heal me when I get hurt, so it’s not like I’m not used to being in pain,” he teases, and then lets go of Suki who he was leaning on, as he goes to embrace Katara.

She can feel hot, somehow still dry, tears flow down her cheeks as she relaxes into this hug. While news had spread quickly from the Earth Kingdom to the Fire Nation about Toph, Sokka, Suki, and Aang’s victory in Ba Sing Se, her stomach had been twisted with worry the entire time they had been apart. A lot of it could have been hearsay, and until she got to hug her friends and brother in person, she could not let go of her unease. Hell, the talk of Caldera City was Zuko’s honorable triumph, but nobody who knew the truth of the aftermath of this battle had let it slip to the public that Zuko was in critical condition right now. Only Iroh, Katara, and some of the servants who were helping take care of meals and other menial tasks knew. It would throw this world into even more chaos if every day citizens knew there was a chance that Zuko wouldn’t…no. I don’t want to think about that future. I simply can’t. The guilt overwhelms Katara, but she pushes these negative feelings away and struggles to focus on the present. Sokka’s voice brings her back to the present, as she can feel his quickening heartbeat against her chest, and his tears dripping onto her robe. “We were so worried about you and Zuko, Katara. I’m glad you’re okay.”

She stammers, as she realizes it’s time to break the news to a few more people, wishing Sokka hadn’t let go of her as quickly as he did. She desperately missed her brother, and they hadn’t ever been apart for this long before, in all their side journeys in the past year, and hunting trips prior to that.

“Yes, I’m ok,” she lets the words spill out of her before she has a chance to choke on them, “But, well. Zuko...Zuko got really hurt.” Immediately, she can see the blood drain from both of their faces, and she grabs their hands, trying to comfort them despite not having the ability to comfort herself. “I’m healing him, but it’s still going to take a while. We have to just wait for him to recover.” She smiles, weakly, and fears it looks more like a grimace. “I’m glad you guys are back, though. It’s just been me and Iroh watching over him since the fight.”

Suki squeezes her hand, and the sadness and sympathy mix together in the look she gives Katara. “I’m really glad you’re okay. We’re here for you guys,” her smile sweet and boring into the deepest parts of Katara as she finishes speaking. Katara is taken aback, as her skin crawls with the thought that Suki understands, already, what happened at that Agni Kai, even if she doesn’t know the full details.

Sokka furrows his brows, and she can feel his warmth and fear as he nods in agreement with Suki. “Toph and Aang are in the courtyard with the Turtleduck pond, can we go see him with them?”

Of course, a practical response from Sokka. She knows better though. He is close with Zuko in different ways than Katara, but this was crushing for him too. She tries her best to smile reassuringly, as she fights back tears that are full of frustration and fear and anger and a deep, hollow grief that she hasn’t felt since Aang was struck by Azula, what feels like years ago but was only 4 months ago. In these four months, so much has changed, including feeling ready to face Aang. That kiss, just up and leaving, wasn’t ok and Katara wasn’t going to accept any excuses about it, just apologies.

He left everyone to go off on their separate missions, never really knowing whether or not those separation missions would be worth the danger they were putting themselves in, and that blind faith she was able to put in him when they first met was starting to get really old.

“So?” Suki chimes, pulling Katara out of her own thoughts.

“Oh, sorry,” she blushes, “I spaced out for a second. Um…” she tries to come up with an excuse for her sudden zoning out. “I’m worried about leaving Zuko by himself for a long time, and it’s been about twenty minutes so, I better get back, but stop by with everyone, sure.”

Suki gives her a quick squeeze of the arm, as they both walk off a few minutes after listening to Katara’s directions. Her chest feels tight, and she turns in the opposite direction as them, going back to Zuko.

They still don’t know how he got hurt. She doesn’t want to tell them, after so many instances of Toph teasing her about Jet and Haru, and well, she doesn’t want to hear it. Especially when Toph can feel her heartbeat. That damn seismic sense, she chuckles to herself, trying to let herself joke around a little bit.

Suddenly she is back in front of the door. She tries to shake off her anxieties and pulls the door open, the cold handle no longer soothing her but sending chills down her spine. This time, she keeps her eyes open as she walks back in, and all of the feelings she had been able to push down while talking to Sokka and Suki started to bubble up to the surface again, her cheeks feeling hot and dry, too dry. She wished she could bend a cloud of mist around herself, but knew that all of her energy had to be devoted to healing Zuko.

His familiar heartbeat suddenly found itself back on her radar, and she tried to hold back her tears and desire to just collapse and give up. But it was her duty to heal him. Her duty to heal him, the Fire Lord, just like it was hers to heal the Avatar. There was no way that any Northern healer would be willing to come down to heal the Fire Lord, nor would they be able to get there in time. So even if there were people more skilled, more capable, she knew that in order to maintain balance, it was her job to keep his heart beating.

#atla zuko #prince zuko #firelord zuko #zuko and katara deserved better #avatar the last airbender #team avatar #the gaang #zutara #anti kataang #toph beifong #toph #sokka #aang #avatar fanfiction #fanfic #ao3fic #book 4: reconstruction

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phoenixtakaramono · 4 years ago

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Does Bing gē Have Descendants in ‘The Untold Tale?’

This topic has come up a few times since The Untold Tale takes place in the PIDW universe (post-Bingge vs Bingmei extra), I figured I might as well compile and archive my official answer here for me to refer my AO3 readers to in the future for convenience’s sake. I hope everyone doesn’t mind. :) I’m always happy to answer questions!

TL;DR

Q: Will we see Bing gē having fathered children with his harem of 600 or so wives in TUT?

A: For TUT, the answer is a definite “no.” There were a lot of factors which’d contributed to my decision. I’ll try to explain my reasoning down below.

Context

In PIDW, it is canon that Luo Binghe has a bountiful number of descendants with his harem of 600-or-so wives. It is a detail that has been mentioned even in ch1 of SVSSS and in ep1 of the donghua.

(SVSSS Excerpt - ch1)

(SVSSS donghua - ep1)

I like to plan things ahead of time. So from very early on, I knew this would be something I would have to decide on whether or not to address when I’d finally decided to expand TUT from just a prologue into a full-blown story. And after contemplating it, I decided against adding children into the story. It is because 1) it would make the situation more complicated, and 2) it would take TUT in a different direction that wouldn’t be fun for me to write.

I’m a very decisive writer, meaning when I make my mind up about something, chances are I won’t change my mind. This is because I would have already planned it into my plot outline, which means changing a decision would require me to change other details in the other chapters I have planned for that story. (I’m typically not a spontaneous writer; I try not to write spontaneously because when you’re a writer who rotates through multiple WIPs with different characters across different genres or writing styles, you inevitably have writer’s block because you probably won’t remember all the ideas or the direction you had whenever you return back to a different WIP. To reduce this shortcoming, it helps me personally to have a plot outline. This way I can return to any WIP, read my notes and then transcribe them into legible paragraphs, find a way to transition between the story beats I have to hit for that chapter, and then eventually post the final draft to AO3 when I feel it’s ready.)

Having made a decision, I knew I had to set it up in TUT and give a “reasonable explanation in-story.” Hence, in ch2, we see:

(Excerpt I - ch2)

Basically the set-up is TUT takes place post-Bingge vs Bingmei, but between “the third or fourth book” of the hypothetical PIDW webnovel series aka before Airplane wrote the fanservicey chapters where the luckier of LBH’s wives give birth to children during the harem drama plots and the children are probably rarely, if ever, mentioned again in the story as a lot of stallion novels tend to do.

(Excerpt II - ch2)

(Excerpt III - ch2)

Contrarian Tendencies

You know the saying: Monkey see, monkey do? In my case, it’s monkey see, monkey do not do.

A little fun fact about me as a writer: if I have already seen a fanfic where someone has already written a concept or idea into their story, chances are I will just avoid it entirely in my own stories. I don’t know why this aversion exists, but I’m assuming it’s because of my counterculture hipster inclinations and an intrinsic fear of plagiarism which has been beaten into all of our skulls since adolescence. There’s nothing wrong with being inspired by other people’s works. Technically everything’s been done before in writing so, as a writer, a good rule of thumb is to always try to give it your own unique spin on things. So for me, my brain somehow interpreted this a step further. This is a reason why I try to avoid reading stories from whichever fandom my WIP is from during the writing process of updating a fic, because this is how I get influenced. Once I see an idea or interpretation from another fanfiction, it influences me to not want to write it into my own. This is a very strong unconscious impulse for me. I guess this is just the neurons in my brain’s thinking that this way, it won’t be something my readers will have read before and the story idea will come across as different or fresh, and mine. In a way this is also how I show respect for fanfiction writers in the same fandom—by being inspired to not be inspired, ha. I like to think every story in the world serves a niche audience, so seeing a diverse range of originality and interpretations in a fandom is a good thing. This is also how I feel when I am able to identify certain popular tropes or depictions or patterns in a fandom; 99% of the time, it makes me feel a compulsion to “go against the grain” or write the opposite. For example, you have no idea how long it took me to come around the idea of incorporating the fanon “A-Yuan” into TUT. However cute it is, the moment it dominated the fandom (well, “dominated” is an exaggeration; it’s more like I’ve seen enough, especially in the Original LBH/ SY | SQQ tag), my gut reaction was to nope out of using it. But after seeing a lot of comments in my inbox with readers affectionately calling SY “A-Yuan,” I’d contemplated it for a long time and it wasn’t until ch4 that I decisively decided that yes, I can have Bing gē calling SY “A-Yuan” in TUT—but it has to be at the right moment for maximum dramatic and emotional impact. (See this thread that started it all. And this is the small sneak peek I wrote where LBH will call SY that for the first time.) <- This is the rare 1% where I actually conformed to what’s popular.

In this case, when I finally decided to expand the prologue into a full-blown story, coincidentally I had just recently read a good Binggeyuan (Bingyuan) fanfic which featured a kidnapped Shen Yuan interacting with Bing gē’s harem and LBH’s children/descendants. I’d liked their portrayal and even thought the children were cute. <- However, with me having reading this, the problem came up: I felt the familiar stubbornness in me rearing its head. So knowing myself, if I had included children, it is very likely the direction that I would have gone down for TUT would have been the opposite. To further complicate matters, you have to keep in mind the kind of writer I am. I tend to like grounding stories with a semblance of realism, no matter if the genre is pseudohistorical fantasy, romance, sci-fi, etc. And this writer has seen and read quite a few harem and palace intrigue Chinese dramas/ premises.

For further context, in those types of “historical” C-dramas^, in that sort of environment which fosters scheming, competition, jealousy, etc, it is almost expected to see heirs aka children aka descendants harmed along with the women. Innocent parties are often victims in these sorts of cutthroat premises, to underscore the underlying message the show or novel wishes to present. (See Ruyi’s Royal Love in the Palace. See Yanxi Palace. See The Legend of Haolan. See Nirvana in Fire. See The Rebirth of the Malicious Empress of Military Lineage. Etc.) And me being me, this would be the direction I would take. Remember, while TUT is meant to emulate a legitimate danmei C-novel reading experience in a fantasy world, I do drop pseudohistorical and cultural Easter eggs into the story. So trust me when I say you would not like the direction TUT would have gone down in, had I made LBH have children with his harem. I mean, theoretically yes, we could’ve seen endearing children characters from me, but you would have also seen me addressing a lot of the baggage that comes with (see Comment III Excerpt down below).

The situation with dissolving Bing gē’s harem is already complicated enough. As his romance with Shen Yuan develops, I didn’t want to have an additional headache thinking about how to address the issue of LBH having children already. Divorces in a pseudohistorical context is already a heavy topic—even more so when it’s divorces with children in the mix. Naturally I will still have SY and LBH eventually discuss the matter of legitimate heirs since LBH will essentially become the Sacred Ruler of all Three Realms and it’s a traditional precedent for an emperor to bed his empress, noble consort, and imperial concubines until he has his heirs (plural, because the rate of mortality was high in ancient China). In TUT’s case, at that point in the story SY will remind LBH that he’s essentially an immortal sovereign so there isn’t any need for an heir unless he wishes to retire. Furthermore, he will inform LBH that he could set a new precedent since he’s already different from the other emperors from history (with him being of half-Heavenly Demon and half-human cultivator lineage); as long as LBH is fully aware of all perspectives of the situation, he doesn’t necessarily need to conform to all traditions if this is something he really feels strongly about. But this future conversation(s) is likely the extent of it.

But wait, you say, what about a certain someone who’s going to be transmigrated as an imperial crown prince? Isn’t he going to be in that sort of vicious upbringing? <- Yes. But that’s an entirely seperate matter. In a way, since I’ve decided Bing gē will not have had any children or descendants in TUT, with Airplane, this now presents an opportunity for me to show the consequences of being one of the many children of an emperor with a harem of women vying for one man’s attention—and the power struggle that’d ensue in this kind of environment. It’s an interesting What-If parallel, if you think about it.

AO3 Comments

Although these are just small excerpts from replies I’ve written before, it’s nice and orderly to just compile them here for everyone since these will be buried underneath all the comments as TUT updates:

(Comment I- ch3)

(Comment II- ch4)

(Comment III- ch4)

Because of seeing comments that have asked me for my thoughts on whether or not I will include LBH’s children, I’ve had so much fun seeing theories thrown around: from LBH’s blood parasites being able to control conception, to someone’s headcanon about LBH being a hybrid and all that entails scientifically (think: mules). I will say in TUT, it’s more the former since in PIDW he’s supposed to have descendants; we’re pretending Bing gē doesn’t have any yet (and now definitely won’t, especially after having heard SY’s “prophecy”) because he subconsciously does not want children due to certain fears, trauma, etc. And his Heavenly Demon’s “blood parasites” (blood manipulation) is a convenient story device to explain why no wife has gotten pregnant yet.

I hope this explanation makes sense! Mainly I just wanted to have this archived on tumblr so that I have this post to refer to moving forward.

On a side note: especially since ch4 had been posted, quite a few people have actually mentioned they’ve read my replies to other comments and/or I have seen different people having hopped onto other readers’ comment threads (for example, imagine my pleasant surprise when I saw a reader you lovely person, you helpfully jumping in to respond to another reader’s questions about TUT, and their answers were actually aligned with what I would’ve answered!), so it’s always such a thrill whenever I see this level of engagement happening. I can’t explain why, but seeing this happening is just so cute to me. It really makes this writer feel so warm and fuzzy inside!

#svsss #bingyuan #bingqiu #the scum villain's self saving system #luo binghe #the untold tale #phoenixtakaramono #ask #technically not an ask #but i like to categorize it there #I mainly wrote this lengthy explanation on tumblr #bc I wanted to link this as ref #anytime someone asks me in the future regarding LBH’s kids #lol it’s actually not cinnabar pills hidden in a bracelet #it’s some sort of seeds which supposedly stopped concubines from being pregnant #I discovered this when I rewatched Ruyi’s Royal Love in the Palace #Do you all notice you have a unique writing syntax/ style #that’s how I can identify that you’re all diff ppl in the comments #one time an anon guest wrote something for G&G #and in the comment thread as another guest anon they supposedly agreed with the prev anon #in that case it was obvious it was the same person pretending to be another guest anon #and I can tell because their writing syntax/ voice is identical #which is why I’m so pleasantly surprised to see this phenomenon in the SVSSS fandom #you all have diff writing syntaxes #seeing you all interact with each other’s comments or my comments to other comments #is just such a delight ahhhhhh #I love the SVSSS community #you guys are so warm and welcoming

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