#i'm now at 8k

[lit-in-thy-heart]

if i ever give an estimated word count for a fic that i haven’t finished yet, please add at least 5k to that estimation for a more accurate result.

[duckprintspress]

Urgent: Help Us Not Get Screwed

Anyone who follows us has seen us screaming from the hill-tops about our current crowdfunding campaign for Aether Beyond the Binary (17 aetherpunk stories! Outside the gender binary main characters!). We've only got 50 hours left...and we just got screwed.

Our Anthology Kickstarter is being scammed.

About two hours ago, with us still roughly $1,500 from our goal, we got a junk pledge for almost $2,000. This pushed us into being marked as "funded" but there is zero chance it's a real pledge, it's from a shell account marked as being in Turkey. This kind of money doesn't just fall like a miracle into the laps of small business like ours.

The timing on this attack is devastating. The final 48 hours of a campaign are absolutely critical, especially for one as close to meeting our goal as we are. We were very likely to hit our target, but doing so was going to require appeals to y'all that started with "hey, we're so close, please help spread the word." Further, the campaign has hundreds of followers who will get a notification at the 48 hour mark, and many who might have backed to help get us to the finish line will now think "oh, they're there, they don't need me," and not back. Meanwhile, one of two things will happen with the spam pledge: either it will get removed by Kickstarter, which could take hours or a day+, totally nuking us during this crucial window, or it won't get removed until the payment bounces post-campaign, at which point we won't actually have enough money to do fulfillment.

Either way, we are fucked.

Please, please don't let these dipshits ruin the love and passion that 30+ people have poured into this project for over a year.

Our campaign IS NOT FUNDED, and it won't be without help. I'm begging, help spread the word about how we're getting screwed, and help spread the word about Aether Beyond the Binary (visit the link for so much info!) so that we can get enough real pledges to fund this project we've poured our hearts and souls into.

SUPPORT THE QUEER ANTHOLOGY KICKSTARTER FOR AETHER BEYOND THE BINARY (with your pledges or with signal boosts!)

[flowercrowngods]

Kas!Eddie where Steve uses positive reinforcement to help him feel like less of a monster. As Eddie becomes more human, the rewards get steamier. cw: explicit (ish??)

"Oh, baby," Steve coos, cradling Eddie's cheek and tilting up his chin to meet those beautiful eyes. Blown and black, the red glow beneath them pulsating in time with his heavy breathing.

This magnificent creature, more Kas than Eddie now, is strong enough to tear into the world and rip it to shreds. But always so docile for him. Always so lovely. Steve licks his lips as he trails his gaze down from wide eyes to plush lips, a trickle of blood drying on his pale skin that always seems to gleam in when Steve touches him like this. Tenderly. Lovingly. And with promise in his fingertips.

"You're no monster," he promises, daring him to disagree. He watches with fascination as a pointed tongue slowly, carefully licks up the remnants of Steve's blood. "No, you're no monster," Steve coos again, tilting Kas's face up higher to trail his lips along his jaw, kissing his way towards his chin and up the trail of wetness left behind.

Has whimpers, ducking his head just a fraction to chase Steve's lips and ask for a kiss, but Steve pulls back with a chuckle low in his throat, his grip on Kas shifting down to his throat as he moves in, hovering above him.

It shouldn't be possible, because his physical form has several inches on Steve, but something about him is always so small in Steve's hold. Like he's molding himself to Steve's figure to be so, so perfect for him.

He hums as he almost lets their lips touch, aware that he's driving Kas wild with it, and thrilled to have him like this. To hold him, hand around his throat, and tell him, "You're my good boy, hm? You're my good, good boy, isn't that right?"

Another whimper, and Kas shifts against him. Not to move in for a kiss, but to grind against him, rubbing his half hard cock into Steve's leg.

Steve chuckles again, a wave of fondness overcoming him as Kas takes what he wants. What he needs. Rubbing off against him were weeks and months ago, he would stand still until the shaking started, and Steve would have to bring him from the edge with gentle touch and loving words.

He trails one hand down to his ass to help him, to take control and give him a better angle. The effect is immediate as Kas lets out a guttural groan and pants, moaning around the syllables of his name.

"Yeah, you're doing so good, baby, taking what you need. You're so good. So good for me."

Kas nods, leaning their foreheads together as he loses himself in the delicate friction, and Steve finally relents. He ducks his head and claims those lips, moaning as Kas's sharp fangs catch his lip, drawing more blood and adding to the mess on their lips.

His resolve breaks when Kas's moans rise in pitch and frequency, knowing this is not enough for him. Knowing he wants to give him more. Steve reaches down, past the thin fabric of sweats Kas is wearing, and finds his magnificent cock, hard and leaking for him.

Always, always for him. They moan in unison as Steve begins stroking him, sucking on his tongue in time with the movement of his hands, rendering Kas almost motionless as he loses himself in the pleasure.

One day, Steve things, he'll have him writhing on his bed, hand fisted in his sheets, tearing them to shreds as Steve fucks into him with slow deliberation. Fucking the monster out of his memory and leaving only human remains, cock dumb and high on it. His name falling from those lips, blood-smeared and plump, the only thing these walls will hear aside from Good boy, and You're so good for me, and Fuck yourself on my cock, baby.

He'll take his time.

Soon.

Tonight, he doesn't get the luxury of taking his time as Kas grows desperate against him, coming with a keen as Steve bites down on his bottom lip and pulls.

"So good, baby," Steve pants as he strokes him through it, milking from him every last drop before bringing his hand up to those lips, kiss-swollen and blood red as they close around his fingers, gratefully licking up the come Steve feeds him.

That sight alone is almost enough for him to come in his pants, too, especially when Kas looks at him like that, pulling off his fingers with a slurping sound. Looking at him with hungry, hungry eyes that were made to destroy the world and rewrite history.

And yet all they do is give. And build. And smile, as he falls to his knees and pulls open Steve's belt, swallowing his cock to the hilt, massaging him with his fingers, his tongue, and vibrations that run through Steve's whole body until he, too, comes with a drawn-out groan.

He pulls Kas to his feet, combing his hair out of his sweat-slick forehead and having him meet his eyes with a gentler hold on his chin this time. "Say it."

Kas hesitates for just two seconds before a smile blooms on his face and he ducks his chin a little. "Good," he says. "I'm a good boy."

Steve hums around a smile himself, drawing a nonsensical pattern into the overheated skin of his cheek. "Whose?"

"Yours."

nonnie asked, i felt inspired. might turn this into a Thing.

[eddiestightywhities]

love is stored in eddie diaz's kitchen

[the-valiant-valkyrie]

okay well. one thing that i absolutely adore abt ieytd3 specifically is their dedication to The Bit. The Bit, in this instance, being the telekinesis.

i first heard of ieytd pretty much the year it came out- although i wavered in and out of the community until a few months before the sequel was announced. within that time, there was this trend in what few ieytd fics were published that they would reject the telekinesis mechanic entirely. they would pretend it didn't exist. they brushed it off as a mandatory game mechanic for a VR title, but obviously it doesn't actually matter in canon. it's unnecessary.

but seeing schell games literally go "nuh uh". and take what's a pretty significant step in a unique direction from their source material. and say "actually, not only is telekinesis canon, but we are going to make it's existence critical to the plot of our entire third installation" was so much fun. i respect them so much for that.

a lot of times i find the best sort of games are those that take their silliness seriously. they don't feel ashamed of doing their own thing- breaking the mold a little bit, if it means developing a deeper sense of identity. they took this mandatory mechanic- essentially the only obstacle between them and an untarnished james bond-esque experience- and said "we can roll with this". and just did.

i love a game that's not ashamed to be what it is.

[emyn-arnens]

Tidbit Tuesday

Thanks for tagging me @runawaymun! I'm still working on my now very belated Silmarillion Epistolary Week piece, which has grown into an unwieldy monstrosity with a mind of its own. Here's a bit of it:

I wish that you, too, might have experienced this joy that I do. I cannot tell you of the emotion that swells in my heart when Celebrían takes my finger into her curled fist and holds tightly, or when she falls asleep upon my breast, and I can feel the little patter of her heart beating against my skin. But perhaps you experienced an emotion akin to it when you held the hands of Bëor’s folk as they came squalling into the world and took their first breaths. But how strange it must have been for you to hold a small hand in yours and know that you would once hold that same hand—but larger and gnarled with age—when they took their last breath. Outside, the frost stiffens the grass into silver blades that glimmer in the starlight, and the hush of winter lies over the slumbering hills. It is easy to think that beyond the shores of this lake where the stars glow from its dark waters, beyond this hushed room where Celeborn rocks Celebrían to sleep so that I may rest—for labor is a wearying thing, even for one such as I—that the rest of the world is as it is here: peaceful and content, untroubled by any evil. Perhaps it is, for peace has ruled for three centuries, and no whispers of evil have travelled here from the wide lands to the east and south. But as I watch Celebrían sleep in Celeborn’s arms—how small she is in the cradle of his arms, how fragile and beautiful!—I fear. Celeborn and I deemed now to be the best time for the rearing of a child, for we wanted to be certain of Morgoth’s defeat, and to be certain that some new power would not rise in the immediate wake of his defeat, seeking to fashion itself after him and gain foothold as we regrouped and healed our wounded. No such power has arisen thus far, and yet still I fear, for it is one thing to plan and wholly another to look upon the smallness of my daughter and think of all that might harm her, if it could.

Tagging @hobbitwrangler @dreamingthroughthenoise @thescrapwitch @melestasflight @polutrope if you have a WIP you want to share!

[zhongrin]

me, posting oc content for a day and watching the followers numbers go shwoop 📉 like ebg period: 👁️

me, planning my 8k milestone event: .... man, yall are gonna hate this lol

[leupagus]

Title: Sailing By Writer: leupagus Fandom: Broadchurch Wordcount: 7,695 Rating: T Summary: Six months pass without a word from anyone in Broadchurch. Not that he's bothering to stay in touch himself; he's busy.

~

His only constant is Thursday afternoons, when he skives off early and picks Daisy up from school. They see a film or walk in the park or, when she gets insistent, go to the local where she drinks a lemonade and decimates him at darts. "Did you practice at all while you were in that horrible place?" she asks, landing a beauty of a triple-17. She'll need thirty two to double-out on the next visit; he suspects she stretched out this one to give him another chance.

"Oh aye, made loads of friends down the pub for a friendly match," he says, instead of admitting that it hadn't been that horrible. He takes his stance and just manages an outer bull. "In between my weekly quilting circle and pottery class." He gets a proper bullseye on the second try, but muffs it completely trying for the double-19. "Fuck me running," he mutters, and gathers his darts while his own daughter gasps theatrically, her hand over her mouth.

"Language," she says, and he bides his time until she's up at the line before he pokes her in the side with the flight of a dart. She shrieks and almost takes his eye out, and it's a good afternoon. A good day — maybe on its way to being a good life, again.

[mariyekos]

One day I want to write an AU where Dante and Vergil were actually born a few hundred/thousand years pre-story, which is something Dante tries to hide while Vergil doesn't. I have 2 main ideas for it- DMC1/3 Fusion AU and DMC4 AU. These got long, so I'm putting them under the cut!

In the DMC1 AU, it'd be sort of like a combination of the anime, DMC3, and what you see in DMC1. Dante'd look like he's in his late 20s for this one. He and Lady would meet because they've both been hired for the same job, then encounter each other on some odd jobs before they end up working together on a big one. Maybe Arkham killed Kalina Ann when Lady was a teenager, but didn't manage to enact the rest of his plans right away so Lady's been chasing him for a decade, hunting demons in hopes of finding a lead. Dante meanwhile just likes the human world, so he goes from place to place hunting demons until it gets too suspicious he's not aging and he has to leave. This AU'd have branching paths at the big job they take take together: the Temen-ni-gru or Mallet Island. In both cases Dante and Vergil haven't spoken for a while. Vergil's gone silent for years or even a decade or two in the past, but he'll have a bad feeling about this particular silence (for good reason).

The main difference between the two would be who Arkham allies with. In both cases, Lady isn't aware of how old Dante is, or just *who* he is until partway through. She knows he's part demon, but with the way he acts she assumes he's actually in his late twenties and the kid of a demon that was probably fairly powerful, but unknown. But the truth would come out partway through, which...would maybe change things, maybe not. It would be a shock regardless.

Back to the branches though, in Mallet you could go with the plot where Arkham is trying to revive Mundus, so Dante intervenes. This one would have a Nelo Angelo bit (making Dante feel terrible because he'd just allowed Mundus to do whatever he wanted with Vergil for who knows how long, all because he hadn't bofhered to check up on his unusually silent brother). I might have a sort of B-plot involving Lady, Arkham, and Trish to accompany the Dante, Mundus, and Vergil angle.

With the Temen-ni-gru, it would be your classic Arkham+Vergil relationship, but with a much older Vergil he wouldn't be tricked by Arkham this time. Arkham would think he has Vergil in the palm of his hand until he clearly doesn't and Vergil deals a fatal blow as soon as Arkham pulls off his betrayal. I think Lady would be pissed Vergil stole her kill, but ultimately have to back down for the Dante vs Vergil fight because with that many extra years under their belts, she'd be no match. Seeing them would be an interesting contrast though, because Vergil so clearly clings to the past (he'd be in a more Renaissance style than Dante) while Dante's all about the present and human world. This one...I think would be harder to resolve than the other one, because I'm not sure how Dante would convince someone so set in his ways (again, hundreds of years old at a minimum) to change, but it could be fun to play with.

As for the DMC4 AU, this one would be a case where Nero is still a teenager, and Dante's really surprised because oh boy, who in the *world* managed to convince Vergil to sleep with them when he'd been so uptight for centuries? And Dante's excited to have a family member and can't help but mess with them.

I think in this one it might also be fun if Fortuna was aware that Sparda had children because then you'd have a case where people potentially worship said children, whether or not they realize it's Dante. Maybe Vergil ruled Fortuna for a little while after Sparda left and that meant people knew he existed. Dante hadn't been aware he'd apparently come back, but Nero's proof enough so he's really going to have to have a talk with Vergil the next time he returns from his travels. I'm not set on whether the people of Fortuna would know that Sparda had twins, or if they'd just know about Vergil and thus be in denial that Dante could possibly be the son of Sparda because he's *so* different. In either case eventually people (or at least Nero and Kyrie) would have to reconcile Dante with the figure they'd been worshipping and that would be hard (and for Dante, hilarious). I think in this one I might make Lady part of a bloodline that has fought alongside Sparda since he split the Human and Demon worlds, sort of like the Castlevania series with Alucard and the Belmonts, while Trish would be someone Dante recruited a few decades to centuries ago (importantly, she's younger than him).

In this one I think part of the driving force would be that Dante wants humanity to be able to protect itself/prove its worth, or for Nero to protect them/prove his worth, because if they/Nero don't then Dante's worried Vergil might instead deem humanity a scourge and do something bad.

The plot of DMC4 revolves around humans using demons to fuel their own power, and in this case I think Dante will have found out about what Fortuna was doing too late to erase what they've done, so it's a case where humans need to prove that there are more good humans than bad humans so Vergil doesn't slam down the hammer. Dante can encourage them in the right direction, but he can't carry them the whole way. If he does then Vergil will deem his interference proof of humanity's weakness and do...Dante isn't totally sure what, but he doesn't like how Vergil's been the past few decades and he's increasingly been feeling like Vergil might decide he's had enough of the human world and side with the members of the demon world Dante *knows* have been slipping through the border to speak to Vergil. And while Dante doesn't think he'd *lose* to Vergil, the battle would lead to immense destruction and would weaken them enough that Dante's fairly sure Mundus or some other demon would take advantage of the chance to invade the human world while they're in no state to defend it.

...Anyway! That's two/three ideas for first that I will...maybe get to, one day, once I finish the million other fic ideas I have. I just really like the concept of "totally goofy guy is actually super old" or "frustratingly unserious guy is actually one of the guys you grew up worshipping, somehow." I think there's a lot of room for fun there.

[salparadiselost]

I often get asked how I worldbuild my fanfictions and honestly it goes something like this:

Me: I should put this three word phrase somewhere towards the beginning to help with lore building. Also me: then writes 800 words that are tangentally related to that phrase

[hecatesbroom]

You know how you sometimes say "I could write an essay on this" and you know you could, but could you really (and moreover: do you actually want to?) so you never end up doing it? Yeah. I said that and might have ended up taking myself a little bit too seriously. (Many many thanks to everyone who encouraged me <3)

Summary

Vulnerability and emotional moments: themes left far from underexplored in The Golden Girls. But how exactly do our four Girls handle these feelings -- and how do the show's writing and genre play into their individual relationships towards vulnerability? In this essay I will-

[hussseinelbadry]

[chenziee]

Get more info and/or play the Twine game hosted by @/truffyfest here!

The Devil card is the worst ending by the way; set during the Blackbeard vs Heart Pirates fight, it's gore and death and just overall no one is having a good time out there (except me). Very much Dead Dove; Do Not Eat (and it would be worse than it is in the Twine). Just so you know before casting your vote ahaha

The Devil Reversed is the good ending of the same scenario. No gore no death, complete with a cute bonus time-skip.

(Also by reworking I mean editing it so that it can be read as standalone and without the context of the Twine)

[dragonleighs]

So... the first two chapters have somehow become the first six? I'm not sure what happened. This was not the plan.

[beatcroc]

listen. i love pizza tower with my whole heart & mind. you know this. you Know. but first and foremost i am a character design bitch, and the pizzas are, frankly, very bland. this is not a critique or a complaint, because obviously That's Not The Point and more importantly i would be horrified if anyone tried doing that much animation with anything more complex than what's there. but also it means when i get a taste of some truly whack ass insane design work again it is like fuuuucking catnip

[transsexualutopia]

Trying to not have an episode but my friends who still live with their families rent free are acting like the world is falling down because of homework