#i'm probably gonna post quite a few lol sorry

[angelofnihil]

[kingofbodyrolls]

For this rainbow, I finally picked up my professional camera again. The last images stored there tells me that the last time I used it was the 1st of December 2023. Wild. But I picked it up thanks to this pretty rainbow, which was actually a double rainbow. So pretty. This image is made up of three into a panorama shot, and Lightroom was a bit funky with putting them together, so please don't mind the badly processed house in the middle; no, we're not looking at that 😂

For people who want a wall of text status update, it's under the cut.

How are you all doing? I'm hanging in there. Not active much, but I still haven't gotten myself into deleting my tumblr app. So I still see and get all your notifs, even if I don't reply right away! I'm still taking time off, trying to figure out what I want to do with the blog for the future... I have not written a fanfic in some time now, but I have two finished stories that are ready to be published, but I'm not sure. I'm not sure about a lot of things these days... I've had dark days, written a lot of sad and dark poems (that will go on my sub blog some time in the future), and I've begun to write an original story. It's really fun; about magic, witches and mages; about good and evil and all the gray in between. It will probably bore you, but it's fun to write, even though I don't think anyone would read it except for a few friends (even though this thing might be the longest thing I'll write, turning into either two or three books lol).

Serotonin boost I get happy when I get notifs with comments and/or reblogs of my stories; it really touches my heart. To be honest, this is why I left/taking time off. I've always felt that interaction was low, and my stupid brain will not let me stop comparing myself to others, so it slowly killed my drive for writing and posting. If no one interacts, what's the point of posting? If no one interacts, what's the point of writing? But I love writing, and it's one of my creative outlets, so I couldn't let that go completely, hence I started writing original stories instead; no ones gonna read them anyway, but I can still play with characters, world building and storytelling. Those are the things I loved about fanfics---and I still do, don't get me wrong. But I feel so discouraged being on here. But I'm happy to know that a few people still care.

The Downfall This also made it quite hard for me to read; because I felt so unmotivated... I haven't read much this month at all. I tried to read a fanfic this Monday, didn't finish it and haven't picked it up since. Honestly, I've just been watching documentaries because I'm in a (tumblr) slump. I feel drained though; I feel like I've given so much, and I love it. I love making people happy, leaving lovely reviews, and it's as much for myself as it is for making another person happy---but to be honest, it has drained me. I know I shouldn't ask for anything in return, but I feel imbalanced. Like I'm not being filled with much love, if that makes sense? I don't really feel appreciated, but don't get me wrong, I don't feel hated (yeah, I'm so good at being black and white), sorry---I know I sound very pessimistic. But you guess have always been so kind to me, and I love you a lot, and I have a few super lovely mutuals and friends that are lovely internet friends that I adore, so I wanted to be real with all of you. You can hate me for it if you want to. Go ahead.

I don't think I'm going to make a recommend list this month. I haven't really read anything, so it'll be really small. And I don't like the pressure of it anymore... which is why for a long time I've thought about not doing them anymore. Maybe some day I will again in the future. But I'd still love to make rec list on the member's birthdays! And I think this will help me, take some pressure off myself (that I've created myself), so I'll still read and rec, it will just be slower---whenever I feel like it, and not because I have to read to make a monthly rec list. This isn't my job, I'm not getting paid doing all of this, and the amount of time I've been spending on both reading and writing is more than 37+ hours a week, sooo. I have to slow down.

A part of me thinks that I flew too fast, too high and too close to the sun, lol. I'm still gonna be here, you can still send in asks for rec list or whatever you want, all is welcome (except hate, because then I'll simply just delete my blog, my mental health can't take that).

To post, or not to post? Should I post the two stories that I have? Both of them are for the series Friendcation.

And for the unfinished mermaid stories I still have left, I hope I'll finish them in the future; when, I don't know. Maybe one day I'll feel love for them again, to finish them. I have them all planned out, but like I mentioned before, with low interaction, I'm really not motivated to finish them, even though part of me really want to for the like five people that are so sweet and invested, and always comments and reblogs (you guys know who you are, and I love you so fucking much 🥰).

To all the stories I'll probably never write...

I still have some other unfinished but planned stories, and I'm gonna list them here, just for the hell of it. Don't know if people would have found them interesting anyway, but here goes:

Words on a Page (a Namjoon x reader, idol!au where reader is a fanfiction writer and interviewer for a magazine and has to interview BTS). Author's comment: probably never gonna write it. It has been done before, and it was just a very very silly dream I had.

Songs of The Heart (a Jimin x reader, musician!au where Jimin is a single father and reader moves into the house next to his, hear his lonely songs etc, they meet, talk, very angsty, sad and nostalgic and 'Who' coded). Author's comment: this idea came to me after listening to 'who' and then thinking about Jimin being my next door neighbor, yeah, that's it. Don't know if this will ever get written.

IT Support (a Jimin x reader, office!au where Jimin is your nerdy coworker, but a freak in the sheets, lol). Author's comment: this has honestly been on my list for years, but I never written anything for it, and I probably never will, even though I've made the banner and all.

I do have a few more, but I've already scraped those, and then there's the four mermaid stories to add to the list. I'm probably mostly excited about the mermaid stories, and those would be my priority if I ever get back into writing fanfiction again.

I swear, I'm almost finished... Okay, this whole thing has gotten incredibly long. Sorry. Before I end this post, I just want to say how happy and grateful I am to each and everyone of you. I've met some incredible nice people on here, some really caring ones. I'll never forget that. And I'll never forget each wonderful and lovely comment, some people have really helped me, motivated me when I felt low, and when I wanted to stop writing a few months back. Thank you. I kept going, and I wish I could keep going for you, making something special, for the special people I met here. I actually really wanted to do requests for you guys in hopes that it would motivate me into writing, but I just don't know. I still want to give so much back to the people who have hyped me up, so I'm going to tag a few of you lovely people--- if you have a request for a story, you're welcome to message me or send me an ask. I don't know if or when I'll write it, but in case I get a bit of motivation, I have some things I could write from, so if you want to, you can send me a request (just keep in mind the story will probably be a one-shot from 10-20k max or maybe shorter, lol, you never know with me). You don't have to send me a request, I simply want to give back to some lovely people. I wish I could hug you.

@letjungcoook7 @honeybloomyyyy @babystarcandyjk97 @minpdrecs @bobathi @allie-is-a-panda @back2bluesidex @gimeow @antisocial-mochi267

These are but just a few of the people that have supported me on there, either by commenting, reblogging, ask, messaging--you name it. I could list many others, and one day I might make a post celebrating all mt lovely mutuals, that means a lot to me. Thank you for interacting; you've (as long with others) helped me when times were tough. Thank you.

I had actually planned to open a "recommend a fic" section/box, but I'm not sure about that. I still have so many fics on my to read list, and right now I don't want to pile more onto it. Might do it in the future, when I've finally made it through my own lists.

Okay, I have to end this post for real now.

I'm still on tumblr, I still have my app. I deleted my discord app on my phone, but I'm still part of the servers I was before, I'm just not active. It's better for me that way right now, because it all got to be too much. I was just reminded of how much of a failure I feel like (no, we're not getting into that not, store it away). But you can always contact me here. I'm lurking sometimes. I look forward to reading in a more leisurely pace and hopefully not feeling pressured to make the rec lists as I did before (even though just for the completionist in me I want to finish them for just this year, lol).

Okay. If you read this far---thank you, I adore you, I love you, you're nice, keep going 💜

[deecotan]

transformers one thots

Watched this movie last week since it premiered early in my country, so now that it already premiered in the US I decided to post my thoughts. Spoilers below

Brian Tyree Henry and Chris Hemsworth did a great job as D-16/Megatron and Orion/Optimus respectively. But I'm especially biased towards Henry because his performance is SO good. When D-16/Megatron gets emotional/passionate, I really felt that

The portrayal of D-16 and Orion's friendship is really great, which makes their divorce even more painful

Speaking of divorce, their divorce scene is so much WORSE than I thought it would be. Literally clutched my chest watching the whole scene because it was so good and so god damn devastating. D-16 in the brink of tears desperately holding Orion... and then turning into Megatron and letting him fall. I felt that pain in my CHEST

The parallel between D-16 turning into Megatron by taking Megatronus's T-Cog and Orion Pax turning into Optimus Prime by taking the Matrix of Leadership… absolute cinema. The soundtrack fucking slaps. Top ten divorce scene of all time

Sentinel is a fucking dick. I'm sure we all knew that already but they really nailed his assholery in this one

I didn't expect Shockwave to be so FUNNY. He only had a few lines but I laughed at almost every single one of them. The scene where Elita threatened him is my favorite oh my god he's so GOOFY

Speaking of Shocky, the fact that the Wavehusbands are together for like 80% of their screentime made me so happy like I don't care if they rarely interact with each other they're standing together and that's ENOUGH for me they're in LOVE (delulu)

JAZZ MY BOY. He and Bumblebee are going to be besties I just know it

Malewife Optimus and girlhusband Elita is canon sorry I don't make the rules

One ick that I have for the movie is that IMO the High Guard aka soon-to-be Decepticons aren't established quite enough. I guess I get it since there are time constraints and all but I wish they had more scenes that really explained who they are and how they arrived at their predicament at the moment of their first appearance, especially since their backstory as Sentinel's (and the original Primes!) allies is really interesting

So no cassette? (smashes phone)

I'm sure there's an analysis on how D-16/Megatron is portrayed here and how his origin stands compared to other incarnations of Megatron… One thing I note about his characterization is that, unlike Orion who already had his doubts about Sentinel, D-16 starts off blindly trusting and glorifying him like any other citizens. The one thing that sets him apart is probably his idolization of Megatronus & his friendship with Orion… with the latter subsequently becoming the indirect cause of him learning about Sentinel's lies. I think it's an interesting take of Megatron's character, being someone who started off as almost naive in a way instead of the one who had doubts in the first place (esp compared to IDW Megatron), and I'm sure there's someone out there who can comment on this better than me LOL so I'm just gonna wait for that

[tikiki05]

I be reading your anti gwen/miles posts. 🫡

Btw I'm neutral on the ship just because. I don't care about it. Also I hate ships in general so I know that must suck. Also you are making very valid points.

Do you like any character/dynamic in spiderverse?? (Preferably not ships)

Because I feel like you'd make intresting points there too

Good morning and thank you so much for the ask! Not gonna lie, this one made me burst out laughing 😭

Undoubtedly my favorite dynamic in Spider-Verse and where I think the absolute best of the writers talents lies is Jeff and Miles dynamic. As well as the general motif across the movies about father figures, the relationships between father figures and sons, the love between father figures and sons, like ahh its so freaking good!! They so did not need to shove a romance in alongside that!!

I’ll be honest right now, I’ve been sick for the past few days and I’ve been quite tired from that. So as happy as I am to have this ask that touches on this topic that I’ve been wanting to talk about, I have few well-formed thoughts on it at the moment 💀 many other people have analyzed this aspect of it though, so unlike the poorly written romance, this is something people fortunately pickup on lol

I’m having trouble forming the sentence properly but like with patriarchy telling men to suppress their emotions I love that we have the spider-verse movies for guys and teen boys showing these emotional loving moments between men

And also for characters I relatively like them all, probably all of the Morales family including Aaron are my top favorites. The only ones who I largely dislike are Gwen as I’m sure you likely know, and lowkey Jess a little too. Miguel also objectively sucks as a person but annoyingly enough my love for him outweighs the dislike skjdjshdk

This post is kind of a mess, I’m so sorry, maybe I’ll reblog sometime with better points later on? Or maybe people can comment theirs, that’s always hugely appreciated too!!

Thank you so much for reading my posts and I hope you have a splendid day!

[altraviolet]

Out of curiosity, do you have any tips for writing a long multichapter fic?? I have recently come up with a fic idea that I realize is going to take... multiple chapters. How do you stay motivated/what's your process for planning? Tysm for answering and if you've answered before sorry! Do you have a tag for your writing advice?

Hi!

I have a lot of tips :)

I do have a tag for writing advice. It's "writing advice." My writing advice is on my pinned post and I just double checked and made sure all the posts under "Writing Advice" are properly tagged. There's a post there that talks about my organization, which is something you've asked about, but you may find other helpful info there as well. If, after you read the answer to your ask and all the writing advice posts, you still have questions, feel free to hit up the ask box again :)

Cut for length!

>How do you stay motivated?

Sometimes I don't, honestly. People who read TEG while it was being updated know this xD There were a few times when 6 months passed between chapters, and then 3 chapters would be updated within a week. Since it's fanfic - it doesn't have due dates or deadlines and you're not getting paid - all that motivation really does need to come from inside. And if it's too draining? Then maybe fic doesn't get written that day.

I can honestly tell you that motivation on TEG waxed and waned quite a bit. It didn't help that right as I started posting it, the pandemic hit. Seeing as how we in the US are about to embark on a newly destructive four years, I say: if you don't have have the motivation, if you're really drained, don't push yourself. Fic is supposed to be fun. There were a lot of times TEG really wasn't fun, but I pushed through it because I felt a lot of pressure to do so.

That might not be helpful, lol. But I'm giving you permission to go easy on yourself.

But, let's say you don't want to go easy. Here are ways you can stay motivated:

the story won't get completed unless you complete it. so if you want to see it done, you HAVE to do it. logical and sound reasoning. there is no escape. get to work. call this the Shockwave Motivation Method, lol

excitement. oooh if you're excited about your fic, that will help a lot. getting to write out the scenes you're most looking forward to may help you get through the boring scenes [note: if you the writer find a scene boring, the reader probably will, too. consider changing or removing that scene]. this is probably the most healthy and enjoyable way to keep yourself motivated while writing fanfic

watch videos/read books about writing. or podcasts, or whatever kinda thing you like. absorbing information about writing will help you feel more knowledgeable and confident, even if just a teeny tiny bit

related to 3: go back and read/watch the canon that you adore. rekindle your love for it. remember why you want to write the fic that you're writing

spite? let's be brutally honest, here: if you read something popular that you think sucks, and you think you can do a way better job at it, prove it >D write that thing. show everyone that Premise X can actually be done well, and you're the one who's gonna do it well

schedules? some people do well with scheduling. actually this is what pro novelists do: they have word count goals they meet extremely regularly. if you write 500 words a day, you'll have ~2 novels a year done. make some goals and stick to them. self-imposed deadlines will stick as much as you can make them stick, which is why they don't work for everyone, but the people who can use this method WILL get results

There are tons of videos out there about any/all of these methods (especially scheduling/word goal/sprints related topics). I highly recommend you check some out. It comes down to this: you gotta write in order for the thing to be written. Anything you need to do to get that done is what needs to be done. Barring, like, you know. Illegal stuff. lol

Oftentimes for me, starting is the hardest part. If I can get my damn brain to start, then things will usually flow.

One thing I've found recently that helped jumpstart brainstorming (which isn't the exact same thing as Motivation To Do The Entire Writing Process, but bear with me) was changing the way I usually get my thoughts down. I always type at my desktop into a word processor. That way everything is digital: easy to move around, delete, duplicate, etc etc. For the new fic I'm working on, idk, I just felt like writing on paper with lots of different colored pens. It was soooo fun. I got these pens. Paper Mate Ink Joy Gel 0.7. I'm heckin' not sponsored but I LOVE these pens. They're super vibrant and actually dry pretty quick, and they're pretty. I love them so much I got another 10 pack of just the purple color xD [Note: the pens are thicker than normal gel/ballpoint pens. If you have arthritis or other hand issues, they might be too big to be comfy.] What I enjoyed was being able to write "Rodimus" in red pen and then writing a bunch of stuff about him, then drawing a line, writing "Soundwave" in blue pen and writing a bunch of stuff about him. Which sounds incredibly trite but the colors made me happy, and the full effect on the page lends itself to another layer of organization. I found I couldn't get myself to sit at the computer and write, so I wrote in a notebook. I'd show you some pics of how nice it all looks, but it's spoilers for the next fic.

tl;dr if the current literal method of writing isn't working, try another one. One of my good fic writing buddies goes for walks and takes her phone and records snippets and thoughts as they come to her. Maybe there's a method that will spark your motivation out there :)

Okay hopefully that helped with the motivation question. I didn't get super personal about it - I don't mind, and can, if asked - but let's keep moving.

>what's your process for planning?

Oh boy. Okay. My process will probably not work for you, because it is a MESS. I can describe it for you: maybe something in it will help.

First, please read this post: I've been curious what program(s) you write with and how you manage the organizational part of writing such long works.

That post explains how I organize medium and long length fics. It answers your question from the organizational aspect. There are screenshots xD Here's the tl;dr from the top of that post:

tl;dr I currently write in a free word processor called OpenOffice. I use Headings to generate an index and use that to navigate around a single document. I have multiple documents that each serve a different purpose- at the minimum, there's a doc for the story, Notes, and Graveyard.

And here is the broad summary from the bottom of that post:

To be really honest with you, I enjoy this system because it keeps things broadly organized, but within the docs there is a lot of messy stuff happening. I think of things, jot them down. Forget them. Rethink of them again later, jot them down. Now I have 2 scattered, slightly differently phrased similar ideas. If I think of things while at work, I scribble them madly onto scraps of paper and take them home, then try to fit them into the Notes somewhere. (Then I tape all the little papers into a notebook like a weirdo, lol, but I can't let them go!) I also have a ton of notes in my phone for when I think of stuff while in bed. I move it into Notes or write it into scenes as needed.

I write scenes out of order. I try to make timelines. I write more scenes: the timeline is no longer correct. I try to make a new timeline. I write more scenes. There are words everywhere and I just do my best :'D

The way I wrote TEG partially included keeping everything in it in my head. Obviously not every single sentence verbatim, but, when I was writing it, I knew exact phrases (the phrases are starting to fade, nearly a year later now). So if I was writing a future chapter and wanted to go back and double check what an earlier chapter said, I would do a search for the phrases I knew were in that scene. Towards the end of writing TEG my brain literally hurt. This isn't a method I advise, lol, but it works for me. I've tried to be more organized in the approach for my next fic, but it's already spiraling words over various docs and journals and I even have an ornate diagram going on in Photoshop right now.

You may already know the terms "planner vs pantser" or "gardener" or... whatever the other terms are. There's a spectrum of approaches to planning for writing, with "planner" on one end and "pantser" on the other. Planners do what you think they do: write intricate timelines, write chapters in the order they occur in, stick very strictly to the plan. Pantsers (from "fly by the seat of your pants") just start writing. Haphazardly. Pantsers tend to have to do a lot more editing at the end.

Most people fall within this spectrum somewhere, and many are towards one end for one story, then maybe flop on down to the other end for another story. There are a zillion videos about "planners vs pantsers," so that's another subject you could look into watching. If you know you're definitely on the planning side, you can search for videos by people who are also planners, and may have hints for you.

I'm definitely a pantser that tries really really hard to plan and stay organized. And, interestingly, as a fic goes on, it becomes way easier to plan for me. So maybe it would be more accurate to say: the brainstorming stage and writing the beginning and middle are more pantsy, and writing the end is more planny, for me. It could be any kinda thing for you :) once you know, you'll be able to work to your own strengths.

Hopefully you found something helpful in all the above. Check out the links, find some videos, relax, and dive in. If you have more specific questions, feel free to send 'em.

Happy writing! :)

[the1975attheirverybest]

(Cabin) Pressure

A/N: This is probably unnecessary and super indulgent, lmao. I just have this impossible urge to baby him, OKAY? he's so....UGH!! anywaysssss!!! As requested by quite a few of you, here's part 2 of the flight one-shot. on a scale from 1 to absolute dumpster fire, lmk how bad it is, lol. Honestly I’m so conflicted about posting it, I might end up deleting later. AND YES SMUT COMING TONIGHT, I PROMISE. Just can't be writing smut at work in case one of my students comes to my office.

Read Part 1 here.

Warnings: mentions of anxiety, depiction of panic attack.

----

The guys hurried ahead to give her and Matty some privacy. She felt Matty's hand stiffen in hers as soon as he watched the automatic doors of the Departures Terminal open and his bandmates walk right in. He swallowed the lump in his throat, his breathing quickened.

She squeezed his hand, drawing his attention back to his body. "Hey," she looked up at him. "You're gonna be alright, yeah?"

Matty gave her a weak smile, nodding slowly. He wasn't sure he believed her. He wanted to. Desperately. But he couldn't control it. It was like his body reflexively reacted to his surroundings before his mind could step in and control how he felt. He could physically sense the tension seeping into his body, right on cue.

"Well, shall we?" he turned to her.

"No pressure. Take as long as you need. We've got time. We'll go in whenever you're ready."

"But the lads-"

"Matty, look at me...there you are. We'll catch up with them at the gate, yes? It's okay." Her free hand moved to touch his face, the sensation grounding him.

"Right, sorry, I'm being silly." he smiled timidly. "Okay, think I'm read. Let's do this."

"Lead the way."

She kept her eye on him as they made their way through the airport, watching his body for any signs of stress.

Matty stopped dead in his tracks as soon as he saw the airline counters at the end of the hall.

"Fuck! My passport! Don't think it's in my bag! I don't remember seeing it-"

"Oh, god, sorry! I- I took it." she winced and looked apologetically up at him. "Sorry, I- uh, I thought if I kept track of the tickets, paperwork, and passports it...would give you some wiggle room so you didn't have to worry about sorting that stuff out...It's all with me! I have them here..."

To her surprise, and relief, Matty burst out laughing. "I think by thinking so hard about not panicking, I'm startin' to stress myself out. Alright, deep breaths."

She watched Matty close his eyes and take two deep breaths. Inhaling slowly, then opening his eyes as he exhaled.

"Okay, I'm all good now." He smiled, genuine this time. "And, thank you, baby, that was really kind of you to do." He dipped his head down to give her a quick kiss.

She rummaged through her bag, pulling out their documents as they approached the counter. "I can do it if you'd like..."

"No, it's okay. Think I can handle this. But, umm, keep holdin' my hand?" He blushed as he heard his own words leave his lips.

"Of course. I'm right here. All the way until security physically separates us."

***

With check-in and security now behind them, they wandered the airport in search of their gate, and the rest of their group. Matty seemed to relax a little, so she took the chance to suggest breakfast.

"Hey, wanna go over there and get something to eat?" she point towards the express version of some chain restaurant.

"Too anxious to eat. Afraid I won't be able to keep anything down."

"Please, baby? the nausea's probably worse when you're operating on an empty stomach. Let me buy you a little snack? you don't have to eat it right away..." She noticed Matty's attention shift from her gentle pleading to something else, something right behind her. "What're you looking at?" she frowned at the faint smile on his face. Turning around to check what was behind her, she saw a pair of young women, roughly in their early 20s, eyeing him hesitantly and struggling to contain their excitement.

"do you mind waitin' a bit? Think I'll go over there."

"Matty, are you sure? You know you don't have to do that if you're not feeling it."

He rolled his eyes. "C'mon, my love. Put yourself in their shoes...you're tellin' me that if we bumped into, I don't know, Harry Styles, right now, you wouldn't go up to him to say hello?"

She giggled and shook her head. "I- I wouldn't expect HIM to be the one to come to ME."

"Oh, so now you're telling me that, if Harry Styles were right here, right now, you'd actually have the courage to go up to him yourself?"

She couldn't help but smile. At least, the fact that he took the opportunity to tease her about her celebrity crush was an indicator that he was in a good enough mood. "Alright, let's go say hi." She relented.

"I appreciate you watching out of me." He placed his hands on her cheeks, kissing her, and giggling against her lips bit at the sound of the girls squealing behind him before he went over to greet them.

He sweetly introduced himself as Matty and gave each woman a hug, whispering "nice to meet you, Darlin'" as he pulled them in. He signed the backs of their itineraries, agreed to FaceTime a friend, and stood for pictures with them.

"Do you wanna take it or do you want me to take it? Actually, you know what? My girlfriend, here, can take it...Babe?" He gestured for her to come closer, "do you mind?" handing her the girls' phones.

"See? That wasn't so bad, was it?" he wrapped his arm around her, pulling her closer and whispering in her ear as they walked away, waving the girls goodbye and wishing them a safe trip.

"I never said it would be bad! I was-"

"Just trying to take care of me, I know." He kissed her cheek. "But I'm okay. Really. Cuz I've got you."

***

The flight seemed off to a good start, with her and the guys taking turns at sitting with, and distracting, Matty from his thought spiral. Take off was a bit rough for a moment; he visibly broke a sweat and almost crushed her hand in his while the plane settled into altitude. She quickly brought him back the a calm enough state after that, though. They argued over which film to watch, eventually agreed to each watch their own choice, before Matty petulantly abandoned his screen and begged to watch whatever she was watching instead. This, of course, meant that she had to pause and explain the plot to him, bring him up to speed. She pretended to be annoyed with him, but secretly, she was glad for it because, the more that she actively participated in distracting him, the less likely it was that he'd let his mind wander and start overthinking.

Her plan seemed to be working, until it wasn't. 7 hours into the flight, Matty's senses were overwhelmed. He could no longer block the anxious thoughts away by steering his attention towards her, his friends, or whatever forms of entertainment were available to him. He even got out his laptop, tried to do some work to keep his mind occupied, but as time went on, his anxiety sucked more and more of his energy, until his will inevitably weakened, and he succumbed to the catastrophic thinking...

His eardrums pounded with the sound of his own heartbeat, the sounds of his surroundings being reduced to a faint, persistent whisper. He felt the air get sucked out of his lungs, panting and sweating as his eyes scanned the tight quarters. The voice inside his head screamed for him to leave the airplane, but he was aware enough to know that it was physically impossible to escape. Both sides of his brain locked in an impossible battle, the result was a near-complete paralysis. He lost the feeling in his limbs, his vision going blurry. Even breathing became a consuming conscious task. He felt like he was drowning underwater.

"M-matty? my love, what's the matter?" She was immediately alarmed when she'd glanced away from her book to check in with him. "You look like you're gonna be sick...Do you need me to call for someone?"

With great effort, Matty shook his head, looking helplessly at her.

"Talk to me, honey..."

"P-panic attack." he stuttered, short-winded and struggling to breathe.

The words brought instant tears to her eyes, and for a moment, she was overwhelmed by how quickly his pain had crushed her heart, but she wasn't about to make this about herself.

Delicately, she reached around his neck, loosing his tie. "I'm gonna take this off, okay?" explaining each of her movements as she did them so as not to startle him with anything unexpected. Matty's scattered brain was, of course, much too overwhelmed to process anything that she was saying to him, but the softness of her tone somehow made him nod anyway. She stood up, looking a few rows behind her, for George. They'd made an agreement that she would signal to him if she needed his help. Unfortunately, though, George was sound asleep, from what she could tell.

Shifting her attention back to Matty. "I'm gonna undress you, okay?"

She unbuttoned his button-down. "Honey, are you with me? need you to take off your undershirt, okay? it's much too tight."

When he made no effort to follow her instructions, she reached over and took it off for him. “Okay, I’ve got a better shirt for you in my bag. I just need to get it from the overhead bin, alright? I’ll be right back, okay?” 

Matty might as well have been asleep; he made no movement or attempt to acknowledge her, which broke her heart to a million pieces. 

She hurried over to George’s seat kicking it roughly to wake him up. 

“He needs you.” She simply stated as soon as she saw George’s eyes flutter open. 

George cleared his throat several times. “R-right. I’m up; I’m up. I promise.” He stood up, peaking ahead of him to wear Matty was seated. “He’s…naked?” 

She rolled her eyes. “Obviously, I’m getting him clothes. But I need you, you gentle giant. Help me get my bag before you sit with him? Just need to get his stuff…”

George sprung into action, following her commands swiftly while she went through her bag to find a 1975 crew neck that was two sizes too big on Matty, and a pair of his joggers. She’d packed them when he insisted on wearing his shirt and tie to the airport, hoping she’d use them under happier circumstances, but right now, she was just glad she’d thought ahead. She went over to the flight attendant and grabbed him some water to go along with the sleeping pills. 

By the time that she’d made it back to their seats George, had somehow talked Matty into reclining his seat, closing his eyes, and apparently leant  him some headphones. “What- how-“

George, ever the wizard, just shrugged. “It’s all I could think of, alright?”

She broke into a smile, kissing her friend’s balding head. “You’re an Angel, George.”

“Hmm.” George hummed, smirking. “Listen, I’ll go get a coffee to wake myself up. Give me a shout if you need me, yeah?”

***

Matty got through the reminder of the flight relatively alright. While he didn't manage to fall asleep, despite the sleeping pills she'd given him, nor did he manage to eat any real meals, the first class reclining chairs were comfortable enough for him to close his eyes and focus on an audio book for a couple of hours, and he did nibble on a piece of buttered toast while wrapped himself up in the blanket she'd bought him and shuffling through her especially curated playlist. The anxiety never completely left him, but he was happy to endure a lower-level persistent anxiousness instead of the sudden panic attack that had gripped him earlier.

At long last, they'd touched down and began their journey out of the airport. Matty always wondered if the arrivals terminal is universally more difficult to get through, or if his impatience to finally be done with the travel part always made it seem so, regardless of where in the world he'd found himself.

At baggage claim, the stress of the journey seemed to catch up to him. He wrapped his armed around her waist, burying his face into the side of her neck and breathing in her scent. Just when he'd closed his eyes, hoping to catch a breath while they waited for the couple of items that they could neither ship ahead of time, nor bring in their carry-ons, to appear on the carousel, he became aware of a couple of people catching on to his presence.

"No, Matty, please." her hand grabbed onto his arm around her waist when she felt him slip away from her, getting ready to greet the fans.

"It's fine, Darlin'" his voice was heavy with sleep, as were his eyes.

She sighed, this time, she couldn't be supportive of his decision. As she spotted his guitar and got ready to retrieve it, she overheard him apologize to a few people for "looking sweaty" and mumbling something about jet lag. Ross stepped in to help her with the bag, listening silently and nodding in agreement as she whispered her complaints about Matty's lack of boundaries. If she'd let him get a word in edgewise, he'd have said "you should've seen him when our career first started, he was acting like he was every fan's best mate." George joined Matty for a moment, saying a quick hello to everyone before politely excusing himself and pulling his friend away. "We've gotta go, Matty, c'mon."

Though George had succeeded in extracting Matty away, his victory was short-lived. At the airport gates, the guys were surprised to find a group of more than just a handful of fans waiting for them. Phone cameras flashed as soon as the gates opened, the crowd calling out and vying for the band's attention.

Adam was the first to jump into their designated car as it pulled up by the side of the building. Ross and George followed shortly behind him. Matty, on the other hand, was quickly separated from them when he paused momentarily, slightly thrown off, by the presence of people on both sides of the gates.

She rushed over to him, taking his hand and pulling him towards the car. For a moment, Matty let her lead the way, trailing behind her with a hand on her hip to keep from losing her. He kept his head down, but closer he got to the crowd, the louder they were, and the faster his heart beat. His palms were beginning to sweat and breathing was getting difficult again. A voice in the back of his head told him to stop, to take a look around and stop staring at his feet, and when he did, he saw the faces of the people looking at him and he couldn't help it. He let go of her hand, walking over to one group, while the other screamed out his name.

She attempted to call out his name, but her voice was drowned out by the phones beeping, cameras flashing, and excited chatter. She stood there, astounded as he smiled and hugged a few people, apologizing that he couldn't sign someone's phone case because he didn't have a pen on him.

He turned around to the second group, "I promise, I'll get to all of you if we don't cause too much trouble and security doesn't get involved. could we...maybe just move away from the gates?"

She sighed, exasperated by the lengths he was going to. He was practically behaving like a event organizer, ushering people away from the rest of the public.

As well intentioned as his plan was, it did not work out quite as he’d imagined. the moment that he moved people away from the airport gates, everyone naturally formed a circle around him, a few people elbowing their way to the front. He was trapped.

Matty froze in place, fighting to keep his expression straight and suppress the fight or flight response that had kicked in. What had he done? The illusion that he had any control at all over the situation was quickly blown away. She could see his hands shaking by the sides of his body as he struggled to regulate his breathing. She couldn’t take it anymore.

She squeezed her way past an appreciable number of people, trying to get to Matty. “Excuse me, yeah, could I just- get through. Thanks.” She grabbed his hand. “Hey, you,” and leaned into his ear “Matty, whatever you think you’re doing, it’s not smart. Let’s leave.”

“Just a second. Almost done.” He whispered, fully aware that there was no way people weren’t listening to their conversation.

“You’re not feeling well, let’s get in the car, please?”

“A few more people-“ she pulled him by the arm dragging him away from people and towards the car. Matty waved apologetically at groaning people who were mumbling how unfair this was, dipping his head low and rushing to keep up with  her. 

The chatter between the guys in the car fell silent as she and Matty climbed in. They settled into the backseat with Matty instantly clinging to her and resting his head on her chest as the car drove away. Her hands reflexively found his hair, running her fingers through it and kissing his forehead.

“Baby? Could I just say something?” Matty spoke, finally breaking the dead silence, once they’d made it onto the highway. 

“I don’t wanna hear it.” She said firmly.

Ross and Adam exchanged a look of surprise. Clearly impressed with, and in support of, her new tone.

Matty lifted his head halfway off of her looking up at her. “But I’d just like to explain-“

“I said I don’t wanna hear it. Can we not talk about it right now?”

He replaced his head back on her body, her hands resuming their soothing motions through his hair. “Can tell you’re angry.” He mumbled. 

“No shit! Of course I’m angry.” He heard her heartbeat rise as she spoke. Her hands still comforting him though her tone was definitely sharp. 

“I just wanna-“

“I said I don’t want to have this conversation right now, and yet, you keep fuckin’ pushing. Look, I know you love your fans. You’re grateful. And, honestly, it is one of the greatest joys of my life watching you interact with them. The knowledge that you can be so tender and compassionate- not just with me me, not with your family, the boys, your friends- but with complete strangers as well…that’s what makes you a man in my eyes. So, trust me, Matty, I don’t say this lightly, but you have absolutely no boundaries. You’re a pushover!”

Matty was quiet for a moment, taking in the gravity of her words. “Okay, I can see why you’d think that.” he opened his eyes, looking up her through his hair. “But could I just explain my side of things?”

“There is no ‘your side’! You are mentally and physically exhausted. Matty- you were literally shaking. And, this wasn’t a professional event! This wasn’t a signing or a meet-and-greet!”

“That’s exactly why l-“

“My point is, it wasn’t safe! What if someone’d gotten hurt? What if you’d gotten hurt? There was no security to control the situation. Nobody to help or be held accountable! There’s a reason everyone else was sitting in this car, and not out there with you.”

“I get it.” Matty conceded.

“We were all bending over backwards to make sure you’re okay, then you go and willingly put yourself in a stressful situation that would trigger you. I mean,” she shook her head, speechless. 

“I just- I’m sorry.”

“I know. Let’s just not talk about it anymore. Alright?”

Matty’s arms squeezed around her waist as he nuzzled his face deeper into her chest, kissing her skin in a silent apology.

The car fell into another silent lull, until, several minutes later, George peaked his head from the passengers seat and told her and Matty not to check Twitter. 

“Oh, god. What’d you have to say that for? You know Matty’s gonna wanna see it now!” Adam groaned, chastising George. 

“What?” George shrugged. “I said ‘whatever you do, don’t check Twitter,’ I didn’t say to hurry up and check it.”

“I’ve literally been biting my tongue this whole ride.”

Matty, who’d been  half asleep in her arms, pulled out his phone, blinking rapidly to adjust to the light of the screen. 

Just as he’d suspected, photos of him being dragged away from adoring fans were already circulating the internet. All captioned with dramatic out of context narratives. 

“Matty Healy and gf argue in the middle of airport parking lot”

“1975 front man  physically dragged away from fans by possessive gf.”

Comments embellished the description using every colorful name in the book. From “jealous” and “immature” to “frigid witch.”

Matty set his phone down, neither one of them said anything. They spent the remainder of their ride to the hotel in silence. 

***

“How’re you feeling?” She emerged out of the bathroom, walking over to Matty’s slumped over figure on the bed. 

“I’m sleepy, and hungry, and tired, and I smell like airplane.” He mumbled. “I’m also sad.”

“Why’re you sad?” She bent down to kiss his nose. 

“Cuz you’re mad at me. You don’t seem to understand- the fans…they’re like the most important thing. Unless I’m physically tied down, I will always go out there and meet them. Never gonna be dismissive. Never gonna make them feel like they don’t matter to me.” Matty sat up in bed, taking her hands in his, and pulling her closer to him. “You can’t put out the kind of music that I put out, and then pretend not to want anything to do with the people who listen to it.” She nodded, attempting to signal that she was on his side. “There are ways of saying ‘sorry, not today guys.’ Without being dismissive or rude.”

“I hope you know, that’s never gonna be me. I’d never say that to them. It’s just not who I am.”

“I know. I don’t expect you to suddenly change. I just hope you don’t expect me to either. Cuz I’m still gonna worry about you and try to protect you when you’re in over your head.”

Matty smiled at her with droopy eyes. “Deal.” He kissed her lips. 

“Sorry they’re saying mean shit online.”

“Are you kidding me? I’ve wanted to be a witch since I was a little girl!” She giggled. “Now, c’mon. I ran us a bath.”

“Wait…us? Like you AND me?”

***

“You had a really rough day today, huh?” She whispered as she snuggled into him, getting comfortable in their hotel bed. 

Matty turned on his side to face her, the smell of her freshly washed hair calming his mind. “Couldn’t have gotten through it without you.” He kissed her cheek. “Thank you.”

“Of course, baby.”

“Could we just…stay here, in this bed, for ever. Just you and me. Where it’s safe, soft, quiet.”

“Sounds like a great idea. Yeah, let’s do that.”

[snakepitgunner]

I am considering it, I have tickets to the London and Manchester shows but they’re not until April so I might send something his way in a few days just to see what’s going on.

A little of everything, I honestly couldn’t concentrate on what he was doing the whole time, he definitely pushed his tongue deep inside me a few times and that made me lose it. When he knew I was gonna cum he’d kinda suck and gently bite and bury his face in me.

His fingers were incredible, he just knew exactly where to go and how fast to go, and he liked to watch his fingers slide in and out, he sucked them and then let me suck them.

When I was on top, and when he took me from behind he asked me to tell him if he was hurting because I’d already told him how big he was. Mostly the whole time he was just really loving and intimate about it, I remember at one point when my ankles were over his shoulders and I was shaking with how good it felt, and he said ‘Yeah? You like that?’ And went even deeper/faster. It was a lot of praise mainly, telling me I was beautiful, and so sexy. (I hate writing this because I sound like I’m blowing my own trumpet).

We talked a little before and I asked him if he wanted me to tie him down like I’d seen him before in his music video and he just laughed and told me he wasn’t really into that stuff.

Once he was comfortable taking me from behind and knew he wasn’t hurting me he did smack my ass a little.

I’m around 5’2, brown hair past my shoulders & brown eyes, pale white- like textbook English doesn’t see the sun😅. I’d say I’m a small pear shape? I don’t know if that type is universal but I have a little tummy that I’m quite self conscious about but Slash loved it, I told him I hated it and he kept squeezing me and even kissed/bit me there. I’m 34B which by his standards id say was small because I know he prefers bigger boobs, but I think his obsession is just boobs in general.

I hope this is okay, sorry the reply took a while, I had to get up early for work.

Did you already have tickets to the shows when you were with him? Was that why he gave you the email to get in touch around that time or did you get them after?

Don't feel weird about talking about how he was praising you. We are all living through you right now. When I say we all want every detail, I'm being serious. My inbox is full of people asking me to get more information out of you. We all love this stuff.

I always imagined him being a dirty talker so the praise thing is really interesting to hear. He has such a gentle voice so that probably made it even better.

You have a little belly doesn't surprise me though. He's been into women who weren't stick thin quite a bit. It's another reason Meegan was such a shock. She is very thin and his history doesn't support that body type.

Feel free to take as much time as you need to reply to these questions. I'm on at random times but also, we'll all wait as long as we have to. Every single one of us is pretending to be you right now, lol.

[Originally posted on February 7, 2024]

[pitter-patt-art]

Ace Attorney AU August oops-august-has-been-over-for-a-week Update!!

Hiiiii well okay first and most importantly of all! Happy investigations collection day everyone!!!! My copy is supposed to arrive by 10pm although I'm not sure I'll be playing it right away, but, hey, once it arrives I'll have in my possession at least one physical copy of every game in the series (2 for aai1, woohoo)!!! *Coughs* uh except all of the OG Trilogy which instead I own like 2 times over digitally (3 in T&T's case, thanks Wii) lmao. Ah well.

NOW the actual post. Yeah it's not August anymore but I've been recuperating or w/e so shhh, better late than never!

Overall I wrote over 50k words (actually in August itself) and posted 5 fics (with many more in progress), which is honestly just, wild???? That is so cool. Apparently the way to overcome writer's block is just overcommit to a month-long prompt list, who knew!

Here is my post about the first 17 days/AUs! And over here's my Ao3 series for these! Below the cut I'll wrap up the last 14 days of AUs, some thoughts, etc!

I am setting the goal for myself to actually finish writing these before the end of the year even if they're not technically "AU-gust" qualified anymore by the time I get to them sooo ...wish me luck!! In the meantime I am proud of myself for (tbh completely unnecessarily and to my detriment lmao) coming up with actually a full 31 solid AUs based on the prompts that I feel inspired by.

This post is gonna be a bit more rambly than the last one because I definitely did more of my writing last month the first 2 weeks rather than the last 2, but nevertheless--

Onto the remaining AUs!

18 - Space Travel

So, I actually started a draft at the airport before my vacation where I got wayyyy too sidetracked getting detailed about this one and thus ended up not being able to finish the post before takeoff lmao. I'm not sure whether it's annoying or interesting to include all of that here, but it's my post so fuck it, here's August 21st patt to tell you aaall about it so I don't have to: The Martian AU (I've only seen the movie and not read the book but i *did* literally just re-watch it because this thought crossed my mind lol. (Hello! It's future me popping in to say: fun fact, rewatching this movie literally ended up being the reason I knew a bar trivia answer last week lmao. Huzzah for the powers of Ace Attorney refreshing my movie quote knowledge.) Be glad this one occurred to me because my first inclination was to lean into the dark past of my vld phase (I'm super joking I had a lot of fun with it before the last few seasons haha sorry idk what to tell you friends) and see how much I'd retained if i tried to make that work but the martian sounded more fun in the end). Apparently my Thing™ is a) poisoning Phoenix and b) putting Apollo in an insane situation in which he's completely on his own--which all things considered is probably far meaner lol. I think Phoenix is to blame for creating his own problem here for choosing to eat the stupid necklace but I fully blame Capcom for all the BS Apollo has gone through after AA4 (bc...the stuff IN that game is. coincidentally also Phoenix's blame to claim. lol). That said I'm part of the problem teehee. Apollo can be Some Guy from the real world who gets isekai'ed and he can also be Mark Watney :P (sorry bud I love you but you have just the Worst case of unavoidable main character syndrome). ((Which is QUITE funny actually because I'll never get over Capcom calling 4,5,6 the """"Apollo Justice Trilogy"""" (it's really not and it's frankly insulting they're trying to say it is.) Like he's. Y’know. The main character in exactly one of those games...... so.)) What was I talking about? Lmao oh yeah so Apollo is left on Mars (not sure he actually has much in the way of Botanist™ vibes but the indomitable, never-say-die, highly sarcastic vibes.... ye haha that's my boy right there). Omg wait sorry I'm writing this and realizing this whole thing actually fits the 18th AND yesterday's (the 20th) prompt as well. Whoops.

Clay as the captain (let him do something, says I)

Trucy as I think the pilot ONLY because I am literally constantly on the lookout to make a Wright Flying Brothers joke, sorry

Klavier aaaas. Uh. So the German astronaut in the film is the chemist and navigator and I know Klav's not necessarily supposed to be actually German canonically but there IS something funny about it

Athena as the flight surgeon and EVA specialist (for a couple reasons but mostly so she can be a doctor lol. I imagine she also can be there for psych stuff too, like, it's a long ass space voyage, that does shit to your brain)

Kay as the SysOp and reactor tech, tbh mostly because for some reason i really have a thing for hacker/programmer Kay, i guess?

Ema I want to be there also lol so that would be exceeding the actual number of OG astronauts but eh it's my AU. The rest of these I'm just directly comparing to a crew member from the martian but I think some of the titles and tasks could be redistributed a little to allow an extra person as a treat for me.

Originally i kind of wanted Sebastian (....SIGH. or...Eustace. (I fear even though it's AAIC release day today, I truly may die on this hill forever, falling on my sword of devotion and gratitude to the fan translation team... That said, while I think Eustace is, like, a Deeply Fine name, I have to say that Excelsius is a fucking knockout name lmfao, that one took me out. Anyway, ahem: "I wanted Seb/Eustace...")) to be there too but I think that's getting into too many cooks territory just specifically bc I'd have too many voices to play with lmfao. So instead I think he's the operator who works the satellite and realizes Apollo is alive, I think he'd fit that well. NOT THAT that needs to be. Included. In the AU. I have...so much self control.

Anyway I have too many thoughts about it, it's a problem, ironically I think I would prefer to focus on the crew and not Apollo himself, so that would at least make it more than just a rehashing of the movie/book. (Or, the movie at least. Does the book spend more time with them? I should read the book.) ...I did, Of Course, also came up with a funny, pseudo-future-science-y way to do a Sibling Reveal in this one, so there's that, too, haha. OKAY AND, SCENE. Snatching my mic back from myself. I'm actually so devoted to the Martian AU now hahaha, I really didn't think I'd let that happen to myself but here we are... You'll see in a bit, but I for-better-or-worse do truly have an extended universe going on for it now, eheh... (Help.)

19 - Spies

Franmaya?? Franziska POV??? Here's the deal: I cannot BELIEVE I got this many days into the month and STILL hadn't come up with a franmaya-centric AU, it's terrible. Also I need a Maya POV if I want to hit my self-set, self-indulgent goal of having POV of every "main" character I can (did I exactly accomplish this no but that's perfectly fine obviously haha it was just a side achievement I had my eye on). So to that end, I ended up with something here that I'm not COMPLETELY sure I won't end up changing when I sit down to actually work on it, but in short: semi The Princess Bride vibes but with spies instead of pirates! Or uh! So um okay full disclosure lol I got all excited about an AU of this kind and then like an hour into daydreaming it into existence I realized I was heavily relying on / leaning into ASSASSIN territory rather than SPY. Which are notably different things. (Wait lol should I blame Spy x Family?? Totally Endo-sensei's fault and not at all mine, boom, take that.) ...And not to go even harder into sxf territory, whoops, but my idea was something along the lines of like, since Kurain School Channeling changes spirit mediums' appearance entirely, I was going to have Maya be something of an expert in disguise, and Franziska I was almost more or less going to let retain her actual position of international prosecutor with Interpol, although perhaps I'd lean more into a James Bond-esque intelligence agency sort of thing than what we see them do in-game, I'm not sure. Maya gets "killed" for real in 2-4 except she actually just becomes an international assassin(?) apprentice. Does this make sense? Probably not lol. But is it a little funny and a little sad? Yes, yes it is, and that's always my sweet spot as a writer. The only problem with this premise is I can't stop myself from considering what Phoenix would do / be doing in the background, because the problem with Maya "dying"-only-being-secretly-alive leaves at least twofold problems in justifying why Nick hasn't gone full conspiracy theory board stop-at-nothing-to-find-her, in that a) If she's not dead, Pearl can't channel her, and knowing Pearl I have to imagine that would be her first move to try tbh, and b) even if that weren't an issue, if the police were never able to track down Maya's body at all, I fully believe Nick would still throw himself at the problem until he's able to find answers irregardless, so. This ain't about him though!! So we'll just all have to deal with knowing he's taking reaaally really bad care of himself while he single-mindedly tries to figure out what's going on ahaha...ha. He's most absolutely the drowning child in the facebook post meme. Don't worry about him.

20 - Crossover/Fusion

Soooo. Okay. First may I say, I'm not the most crossover-fic-y person in the world neither as a reader nor writer. HOWEVER. Unfortunately. My one undying weakness has proven to be Ace Attorney x Legally Blonde (and more specifically Legally Blonde the Musical, the best version, though I do love Reese Witherspoon's performance ofc it's iconic but the musical is just MWAH ugh. One of my all-time favorite musicals and definitely the one I've listened to the most esp the past couple years hahaha.) The problem is, I've joked about so many slight variations / one very Long Intensive specific AA/LBtM crossover AU ideas, that trying to limit myself to a one-shot I could conceivably finish within a day proved too much for my decision paralysis and I didn't end up writing any of them lmao. Alas. Mostly, I just think it would be funny to see the characters interact in something of a vacuum just for fun, the problem is just that I happen to be uniquely terrible at not thinking through a Crack AU until I can, ahem, "crack" it, so to speak, to make it actually justifiably function. So in theory all I want to write for this day is some combination of like, Elle and Phoenix interacting and Miles and Emmett interacting, or the four of them having a conversation that goes something like "omg wait me too!! i also went from a creative undergrad degree directly into law to chase after some guy!! what are the odds teehee" while Emmett and Miles watch in horror, and also alternatively Emmett and Phoenix mostly bemusedly watching Elle and Miles geek out over like, fancy ass high class (pink) clothing like "uh yeah i have no idea what any of those words mean. she bought me this suit and i honestly wouldn't even be able to find the store again. oh no way he bought you yours too?? man, wild." Etc. (If anyone's interested in really watching me suffer and spiral: my longer and more intensive idea for an AU with them is to have them be tackling parallel cases where either of them (Elle and Phoenix) has specific knowledge that is helpful to defending the others' client, and they get like place-swapped through dimensional shenanigans somehow also related to the cases. And Phoenix has to abide by, like, nominally-accurate US trial law (I know he wouldn't really be licensed shhhh) -- by which I mean Emmett is sitting as his co-council and exercising the most restraint possible to keep from bashing his head into the table every two seconds. And Elle has to abide by guilty-until-proven-innocent Japanifornia trial law ("wait WHAT omg what do you MEAN the prosecution can just, like, not submit their evidence before the trial???? wait what do you MEAN we should just TAKE THAT that is EVIDENCE AT A CRIME SCENE--"). On the bright side, Elle gets to experience being one of the most normally-dressed people in a courtroom and not at all being looked down upon for her general vibes and wardrobe (like tell me she wouldn't fit right in in the ace attorney universe and seem completely ordinary), and Phoenix gets to experience a real jury (take that jurist system trial that Capcom would like to never ever talk about again) and also the judge going "so, Prospective Juror No. 103, do you understand that the defense in this criminal trial does not need to say a single word in order to be doing their job? the burden of proof lies entirely on the prosecution the entire time and the defense and defendant could choose to remain silent every day of trial and that would be completely within their rights, do you understand that? are you okay with that?" etc etc, shout out to my jury service a couple month ago and the kinds of questions a real life California judge asks jurors that would seriously blow the minds of every single character in Ace Attorney lmfao can you imagine? Anyway.) So yeah idk. Also something something, spirit mediums and the whole Greek Chorus bit from the musical... "School Spirit"... much to think about in crack AU land hahaha.)

21 - Absurd Tragedy

To be honest with you, this is the entire series lmao, so much so that I had trouble even thinking of an AU to be "alternate" in any way here, hahaha. What I sort-of landed on and have vague outline notes about in my doc is (not to make another excellent-musical-adaptation-of-an-already-top-tier-movie-which-is-itself-a-highly-unfaithful-adaptation-of-a-fairly-obscure-book reference) a Shrek the Musical "I Think I Got You Beat"-style debate about whose canonical absurd tragic circumstances are the worst, lmfao. Granted, this then turned into a "wait what if I use said argument as an absurd way in which to make Apollo and Trucy have a siblings realization completely on their own, which both compounds the fact they've both already lived such tragedy to begin with but also could touch on Phoenix knowing about it and not telling them about it", and uhhhhh lmfao a debate specifically between them is OBVIOUSLY not the romantic flirting banter of the song between Shrek and Fiona lmfao but like still, the general premise, just in a sibling bickering coat of paint instead. Also was toying with it being an Athena POV just to sell home / for the additional absurdity of the experience of "you've gone over to your friend's house to hang out and suddenly they're obnoxiously arguing with their sibling and their parents are nowhere to be seen and you're not exactly sure what you're supposed to do with yourself except awkwardly wait for them to be done" lmfao. Which I've most absolutely experienced from both ends multiple times hahaha. The alternative option for this prompt is just for me to write an excessively long essay debating and attempting to personally rank the main cast's level of absurd tragedy compared to each other, lol.

22 - Orphan

I wrote 324 words (slash one physical lined page in my actual notebook) of this while I was on vacation, lol. AU where Miles invites Phoenix to go watch one of Gregory's trials (or Phoenix invites himself, or Gregory invites him while Miles tries to hold the landline phone away from him, lol) and I mean of course the trial he goes to is The Trial (like, Jeffre... AW CRAP wait I don't actually know what Jeff Master's or Kate Hall's official names are lmfao uhhh. Well you know what don't worry about that. Happy AAIC day once again..? Lol. Anyway, the concluding day of Gregory's last trial, obviously, ignore the defendant's name.) Like, basically, here's my thought. AU where Phoenix is also there, and not only does that mean he knows what happened to Miles and Gregory but also, like, it's Phoenix. Tell me even at 9 he wouldn't be insisting on taking care of the poor kid who just lost everything and has nowhere in the world to go. Tell me he's not like, begging his parents they need to help him, lol. I think really this is just sort of an AU to explore one of my several personal headcanons for what Phoenix's parents are like, because I've spent a lot of time on a different version of them (coughs for the last AU on this list...coughs) but I also have a version of them which I find fun / funny where they're like, kinda hippy-dippy and like very hands-off (tbh almost all of my hc's about the Greater Wrights is they're very hands off, just in different ways) but in more of a "we want our child to experience the beauty and wonder of the world on his own time and not influence him or set rigid standards to conform to" kind of philosophy. Anyway my point is they like adopt/foster Miles somehow before Manfred can actually get his hands on him (he's still too busy dealing with the fresh bullet wound I guess?) This is just a gen au of course, not only because they're 9 lol but also the logistics of being adoptive/foster siblings gets weird quick lmao, but mostly I just find it interesting to think about what might have happened if Miles was in an environment where people paid more attention and cared more (and weren't explicitly influencing and manipulating him to exasperate the problem on purpose), because I have to imagine examining his nightmares a little more closely a little more quickly might have led someone (say, Phoenix who was also there in this AU) to find something slightly off about it or like start putting pieces together quicker, idk. I, uh, I'm not gonna lie to you, I don't actually remember how I intended to end this one hahaha ;; I started it but I was on vacation and neglected to outline / summarize the rest of my ideas the day of, so I guess I'll just have to see where my mind takes me when I get back to it.

23 - Musician

So my FIRST thought for this day was to use it as an excuse to finish my First Ever Ace Attorney Fic, which has been in WIP stasis for...uh.... 6. Years. i--SIX????? Shit. lmfao. yeah uh. I guess I created the first version of the doc (on my OneNote, god) back in 2018. So. Yeah. Hm. Omfg. This fic has partially existed since before Phoenix Disbarment Day. That is so. Wow. Damn. Y'all we're so close to aa4 time (2026) what the hell??? Ahem. Pianist Phoenix. That's. My point lmao. I know the original thing that sparked me loving this concept was actually some tumblr post I saw apparently a LONG long time ago, hahaha, and I know there's no way I'll find it with tumblr's abysmal search function, but just know it was not a completely original idea of mine when I say i fucking LOVE the headcanon that, you know what actually Phoenix CAN play the piano, he just chooses to do it as shittily as possible because that's kind of what he's like post-disbarment and he'd absolutely get a kick out of fucking with people like that even if they have no way to know they're being fucked with. It's like, he's no virtuoso or anything, but he can passably play the piano! He's just being an ass on purpose! It kills me every time lol. I won't say I think that's necessarily true in canon so ofc it's not like an end-all-be-all hc for me or anything but it's just sooooo funny to me that I like to break it out any time I possibly can. Look me in the eyes and tell me he wouldn't. Honestly, look me in the eyes and tell me if he actually put his mind to it in any meaningful way he wouldn't be able to get decent quickly regardless, considering the fact he became an accomplished lawyer on more-or-less a total whim. This to say: that was my intention, to finish this fic I've had brewing that was about Phoenix actually being able to play the piano and hiding it for a really long time but eventually being found out by Miles by chance. Except then I sat down on the plane and started writing a Pearl POV instead? In which she finds out about more or less the same exact concept but from Iris--also by chance, but less actually catching him playing and more being asked, "Oh, does he still play? He was always good at that." And then bc it's Pearl (Pearl I love you), of COURSE she goes and confronts him about it. Pearl might be the single most confrontational character in these games tbh which is SO FUNNY to me. Like I'm kind of exaggerating obviously but also am I? I know she has psyche-locks you have to break through multiple times throughout the series but stiiiill. Everyone else is so repressed and weird about anything remotely vulnerable, I stg. Props to Maya for making sure Pearl turned out pretty okay I guess, lmao. Anyhow yeah that's sort of the AU I ended up with. Pearl POV where she and Iris know they're sisters (don't get me started on this I have so many thoughts about the amount of information I'm positive Maya and Pearl are NEVER given skjflj) and Pearl visits Iris in prison regularly and on one such visit maybe she mentions Nick's job at Borscht and Iris makes a totally innocuous comment to the effect that Pearl learns he actually knows how to play the piano and she goes to get mad at him about it because he's definitely been pretending he can't and Pearl's pretty sure he's told neither Maya nor Trucy the truth and that cannot be left to stand.

24 - Pretend Hate

Okay, this exists in a similar realm to the Orphan prompt, except instead of Phoenix being there for the trial or the Wrights taking Miles in before Manfred can, it's more just AU where Miles doesn't actually cut all contact and he and Phoenix successfully end up exchanging correspondence (in semi-secret) during the time they're separated (i.e. they remain friends and close during the 15 years they're separated in canon). "Semi-secret" because they--esp Miles--somehow hide who exactly it is they're talking / writing to all the time but don't necessarily hide the fact they are doing that. Like, a fake cultural / language exchange program or something? I feel like there could be a world where Manfred really doesn't give a shit what Miles is up to as long as he's being molded into "someone Gregory Edgeworth would hate" (I don't think he would lol but that's another AU) and becoming a model von Karma protege prosecutor and such. He obviously goes to lengths to cut Miles off from everything he's familiar with in that he takes him to Germany, but I've always thought it's way more on Miles feeling guilty and blaming himself and thinking he's unworthy / pushing people away being the reason why they never talked before aa1 despite Phoenix's "attempts to contact him," whatever those may be specifically. And, yeah, I've watched that one episode of the anime but tbh I don't really use anime canon for almost anything besides maybe some of the fun visuals, haha, so I'm kind of disregarding that anyway. ANYWAY. My point is. The "pretend hate" part is that--sometime over the course of exchanging correspondence, Phoenix starts thinking something's weird and gets it in his head to "investigate" himself, since he's still in LA / has access to the scene of the crime and stuff, and then as a combo of him just plugging away at it until he has enough (circumstantial) evidence to be like "Miles I think you're wrong about this" and also a younger, slightly less repressed, slightly less in Manfred's pocket Miles actually being somehow willing to consider alternatives a little--they're able to put their heads together and eventually come to the (correct) conclusion ahead of time, before the 15-year statute of limitations, that it was almost certainly Manfred who did it. And then they work together to figure out how they can possibly PROVE that but they haven't thought of anything foolproof by the time aa1 events start rolling around (or at the very least, the 5-years-ago sections of aa3? It might make more sense if it's as soon as Miles returns to Japanifornia, and also I think Phoenix has way less reason to fall for Dahlia/Iris so hard if Miles is around and *coughs* available lmfao. Anyhow). So, in the hopes it'll keep Manfred from getting suspicious of Miles, they publicly pretend to hate each other, putting on a show of more of the canon attitude Miles esp. has before 1-4, but behind the scenes they're actually working together trying to think of a way they can definitely get a conviction to stick that Manfred won't be able to worm out of. And that's the AU! Idk, in terms of additional thoughts, I couldn't decide what to do / what would happen to Mia in this AU either, which doesn't super matter but did give me pause. So she might live, idk, depends the exact timeline. I do also think a scene where--Dahlia still hits on Phoenix in the reading room/courthouse library but he's like, actively there waiting for one of Miles' trials to conclude for a covert meeting, so when Miles gets there and is like "What are you messing with over there?" Phoenix is like "Oh, hey, check out this weird bottle some girl just gave me because apparently she fell in love at first sight, haha, isn't that so funny--" and then Miles recognizes it from the Fawles trial and they catch Dahlia earlier or something, idk. Or alternatively Phoenix was AT that trial so HE recognizes it. Or maybe it's funniest if he was there but doesn't recognize it until Miles does lmao, this is not the point of this AU but I can't stop myself from considering this part of it.

25 - Scientists

So THIS is the day I sort of alluded to earlier, many many words of post ago, where I got so invested in my The Martian AU that I started accidentally worldbuilding about it. What I've started and have about 400 words of (slash one notebook page, again from the plane after my vacation), is like, AU where it's NASA instead of law and I can make Phoenix go "What, like it's hard?" only it's about literally rocket science this time hahaha. Basically for this fic I just thought, well what if Phoenix just shows up as a flight tech or engineer or something (idk I don't really know that much about real life astronautics) as Miles is preparing for some space mission or something and he's just like WHAT are YOU doing HERE. I know I know I made Apollo literally be the titular martian and yes he ALSO has a (or tbh probably has a WORSE) canonical debilitating fear of heights, so, shhh, but I do like the idea that Phoenix is like, oh, who, me? In the flying metal death trap? No fucking thank you, I will be down here watching and talking directly to you through a headset or something. You cannot escape me however i can at least escape the building I'm in. No interest in seeing the Earth from above, thanks. Actually iirc Miles also doesn't love heights but meh whatever I'm fairly certain Phoenix talks about it the earliest in the series so there you go. Anyway, this would all be a mission prior to whatever mission it is that Apollo & Co. go on to Mars for the first part of the AU, so I guess you could consider it a prequel? And probably a fairly shippy one. I have other reasons for which it's fun for me if wrightworth is at least together if not outright married before the events of the "The Martian" part of the AU, so this one would be, like, about how exactly that went down.

26 - Victorian Era

Okay, once again, this just. IS. Literally. Dai Gyakuten Saiban / The Great Ace Attorney. Lol. That said, I've always loved the fanart I've seen of like Ryuunosuke and Phoenix (and respective Co.'s) interacting, or like, one or the other ending up in the other time period somehow, so I thought it'd probably be fun to try my hat at that. I feel like I've neglected the tgaa characters anyway, considering I actually somehow managed to reference PLvPW already, which is obviously significantly more of a spinoff and also just largely non-canonical, lmao. Also tgaa is just SO GOOD, augh. I'd love to have the multi-witness cross examinations from both of those games back sometime again, and I had so much fun with the jury in tgaa too, excellent mechanic. What was I talking about? So, I never completely decided on a concrete direction to take this, but even before AU-gust had started I'd already been toying with the idea of an AU where maybe Maya or Pearl channels a character from tgaa specifically because some documentary or special or something comes out talking about the real-life Herlock Sholmes (as opposed to the Totally Fictional "Sherlock Holmes" who Phoenix references in that one trilogy line, because I really think that's the funniest possible explanation for the discrepancy) and they're arguing over how that cannot possibly be a real person and no one was named that and etc etc and then to prove once and for all one way or the other Hurley is channeled and also for bonus joke content "recognizes" Phoenix at first (idk pretend his eyesight got worse in his older age, I know Phoenix and Ryuunosuke look, tbh, less alike than Ryuu and Apollo do, lmao, but again that's another AU) and then I get to play with Phoenix's mom's maiden name is Naruhodou and his middle name is Ryuuichi or such to that effect, because that is also a favorite headcanon of mine (not in small part because I can project my own life onto him by making him half-Japanese from SoCal, lol). So that's an idea I'd had that was already decently fleshed out and the ONLY problem is that if I'm having characters actually be channeled then there's a very real limiting factor of how many spirit mediums exist, and also that means Maya and/or Pearl don't get to interact with them, which for the sake of not overwriting would be good but for the sake of my love of a chaotic group conversation would be bad. But, uh, hopefully I do manage to hold myself to a less broad cast of characters, ideally, instead of bringing a bunch of them over to the other time period to see how they'd deal with that and interact en masse. Ha. Haha.

27. Younger / De-Aged

So here's another AU I'd already had idle thoughts about before AU-gust had even started! I...will get into this later, TRUST I will, lmfao, but I do have an extremely involved AU already in which Time Travel of the "regression" type is involved, i.e., they have their memories of the "future" but are thrown back into the past including their own younger bodies however-many-years-ago. So I've got that type of thing covered, I promise I do, haha. And additionally, I've actually already written them "younger" for my colorless AU way back on day 2, so I did think perhaps I'd just continue that one and say it was for this prompt (a smart person thing to do. this is the objectively correct option). On the other hand. I find pre-DL6 Phoenix and Miles reacting to how their lives actually turned out in the end HILARIOUS. Tell me it's not funny. And tell me it's not, like, some sort of depressing-yet-ultimately-hopeful for the older/current them to look at their child selves and be like Kid, Oh, You're Going To Go Through Some Shit, but also reflect on how they did make it and things turned out okay and life goes on etc etc. My problem with this kind of thing is that it's hard to come up with a justification for and that's not a problem in itself but it is a problem in me not knowing how i'm going to end a fic, which often gets me decision-paralysis-ed into not being able to start it in the first place, which did in fact happen to me here, haha. I think ideally I'd just do a quick "wait, was that a dream?" kind of thing where they (Miles and Nick) have a short conversation with themselves, but... Uh-oh, what, did you think that was all I had? You clearly don't know me at all. OTHER au option where young Phoenix is in the future/present and rather than himself and Miles it's the Wright Anything Agency who like, idk, find him roaming the streets of LA (fun fact! I actually came up with this AU one day while I was quite literally roaming the streets of LA myself at like 3am-ish. Do with that what you will). He is of course wearing a hat or beanie or something at first because come on, that's way more fun, and no matter how much Trucy, Apollo, and Athena are like "hm idk something about this kid seems familiar" I just don't think my first thought upon seeing some vaguely familiar kid alone on the street would be, like, "Oh, that's obviously a child version of my father/coworker/boss!" So. I'm not really sure that one has an end point either, though, so the same problem still stands, haha. The bad, someone get a spray bottle to spritz me, option of this is, obviously, to combine the two, so it's like the WAA find him first and then are like UHHHHH we need an adult (never mind actual adult-age-ness between them) and somehow end up getting Miles there too, but idk. I... should not. Overcomplicate. I shouldn't. Even, even if...august is over...so theoretically there's no longer any sort of On-Time component since it's late either way........ definitely not.

28 - Caretaker

Here are my exact notes / entire doc for this day. Ahem. And I quote: i brought up the lighthouse keeper thing but i dont know where that would be going exactly maybe this is a thing i could do franmaya for??? since i still havent gotten there? actually lol that as a lighthouse thing is funny. ghost romance? my three tropes rattle End quote. Anyway, shout-out to my friend hailstorm for being the one there to brainstorm "lighthouse keeper" with at the self-same bar trivia that I mentioned previously, lmao. I actually think that was even the same exact day as the The Martian quote was a relevant answer to a question. So yeah, even though I already kind of have franmaya planned for the spies day, that's both kind of sort of a darker AU overall and--WELP well, okay, so, i do, you know, recognize maybe a ghost romance isn't, uh, necessarily the fluffiest kind of AU lmao. Don't mind that. My point is, I love the vibes of a lighthouse keeper AU, and I generally like ghost romance as a trope, so that does feel like a viable option. Honestly, I kind of separately wanted an excuse to practice writing miego also, so maybe the Feys are just all chillin' in this lighthouse for...Some Reason, and that's side-plot relevant somehow, idk. I know Franziska and Godot exist in the same place for a minute in 3-5, but I honestly can't really remember them interacting? I think she'd fucking HATE him though lmfao. He'd think she's funny but I actually think she'd be too reactive for his most preferred teasing/fucking-with-people dynamics, haha. Regardless, if he is there at all, it's a very minor B plot, I think, 'cause this ain't about him, lol.

29 - Forced into Hiding

Achtung, baby, 2566 words of this are written! Lol. So uh, yeah. In short, AU where Klavier gets hounded by fans on the street while he's also having just a bad personal day, and the closest and best place he can think to hide from them is at the WAA. I, um, actually hadn't realized I'd written quite this much of this, haha, it was supposed to be short and fairly silly but then it turned into Klavier having a little bit of a panic attack maybe and getting consoled by Apollo, sure, of course, but then also having to deal with and experience some amount of closure / reach some kind of understanding with the Wrights, also. It's kind of part Klav character study, kind of part complaint against freaking Capcom for neglecting him (boo, I love him, stop ignoring him, or, yknow, worse, whatever the heck turnabout academy was supposed to do for him, which honestly almost felt like a step back to be quite honest). Okay, also, taking a slightly closer look at what I've already written, the REASON I'd thought I'd written way less than this is definitely because he hasn't even GOTTEN to the Agency yet, never mind spoken with any of its members, lmao. That would do it. In any case, I like the idea of Klavier having a bit of a vulnerable moment, and I also like the idea of him and Phoenix actually, like, talking for real, instead of, once again, whatever Turnabout Academy and DD was meant to tell me, which seems to be less than nothing. I kind of like the fact that it gave him a law mentor? I mean, she was very dead, but I have a very meaningful Use for her in later-to-be-announced-AUs-I-keep-teasing, haha. I of course considered other people and times when people in AA might be forced into hiding, but this felt like a silly but also meaningful way to do that without it just being an exploration of Miles and his not-suicide note (which wasn't exactly "forced" anyhow, he did that all on his own) or like, Zak Gramarye (who also completely did that to himself but w/e). Making it about Klavier completely escapes the bounds of canon, because canon is a weenie about talking about any of his actual feelings EVER, so screw you Capcom, I'm doing it for you. Don't worry about it. Trucy commiserating with him about still Loving someone, perhaps the very closest person biologically related to you you've ever known and depended on in your life, who not only did you very big harm personally but explicitly used you in a very real and participatory way to perpetuate the harm elsewhere and all the complexities about Feelings For And About Them Therein, and Phoenix somehow having enough self-awareness to recognize that shutting down completely and isolating yourself away doesn't actually do you any good even when you're at your lowest, and recognizing that Klavier doesn't exactly have a "Trucy" to be a focal point to draw him out of that, and that therefore he needs to be a bit more open to his peers. (Insert joke about "Well, I'm really definitely not suggesting you go adopt an entire child, that's really probably, uh, not the way to go, actually, but, you know. Everyone needs people, that just makes us human." Etc.)

30 - The Beginning of the World

So, hm, as it turns out, I got extremely sidetracked this day thinking about the next day on the docket. Whoops! Unfortunately this ultimately means my ideas for this day as of now are relatively uninspired: I had the thought that I could explore the beginning of Troupe Gramarye, which is its own sort of world, or else, maybe something about the beginning of the series itself but from the somewhat unconventional POV of a one Mr. Larry Butz. Yes, that's a bit self-serving in that it lends toward trying to complete a list of "main, recurring characters' POVs" that I've had as a sidequest all month, but, still. That said, just exploring actual canon through Larry's POV isn't exactly what I'd classify as an "AU" necessarily, so I feel like something would need to be different here. Okay, wait--not to draw inspiration a dang week late to the party, BUT. Now that I'm typing this up, I'm thinking, okay, maybe, what if. The "Beginning" of the series, technically speaking, is basically the fact that Phoenix gets put on (class) trial for stealing Miles' lunch money--which notably only happened because Larry himself picked it up when it fell on the floor. So, perhaps, what about an AU where he doesn't do that? I mean, I guess it would just turn the entire world of AA into something of a terrible series of tragedies with no real closure about them, lol, rip, but it could possibly be interesting? I dunno! (And, yes, I know DL-6 itself is more or less the basis of the series, if we're being ticky-tacky, but Phoenix wouldn't have been involved without meeting Miles, and that somewhat necessitates the class trial, and without him none of canon would get resolved, so. I will say, I do love going back to the earliest points to see how and how much you can make canon deviate or stay the same--reasonably speaking--via minor tweaks and butterfly effect and all that, so this could be interesting, although I once again must say I think it really just means a bunch of innocent people, Miles included, are going to be put away and possibly executed over murders that weren't their faults, lol. Hm. Much to consider.)

31 - Two(+) of the Above:

Beginning of the World + Younger/De-Aged + Canon Divergence (+ Feat. Jokers: Guardian, Everybody Lives)

With all of this, the ONLY prompts I've actually missed on this list become Animagus which I swapped for the Wings joker, and the last joker of the four, Thriller, which was never exactly a priority of mine because I'm not sure I'd write that sort of thing particularly well, so! Wild! Completionists everywhere almost rejoice, haha. SOOOOO. For the eagle-eyed readers out there, I'll bet you're just dying to know what this one AU I've been teasing all post could Possibly be to warrant such a build-up, right? (...Right?) The answer is the at-ow! (Phonetically, lol. I've been calling it that instead of out loud saying all the letters in AATTAU out loud every time.) My friend Ben can attest to the fact that this behemoth AU (her word which I'm stealing) has been in the works for, uhhhh... months?

MONTHS. AHAHA. Ha. That. Sure says March! It sure does! And it is not lying. Lmfao. (Ignore the time, I was working overnight then--my beloved work schedule whomst I miss dearly--so that's a perfectly reasonable discord-ing hour for March-me.) Also, once again, I'm choosing to blame Ben for my extensive AU problems, she sent me a very cute time loop AA fic that utterly destroyed my entire mind because it got the mere idea of "Time-based AU" caught in my endless void-idea-hole. So. Here's the real rub. The literal reason I started doing this AU-gust challenge in the freaking first place was that I was absolutely Desperate to find a way to overcome my writer's block. And one of the (admittedly many) reasons I wanted to do this was because I have been ITCHING to write this stupid behemoth AU for real. I have a massive outline doc already, I have a whole slew of scenes planned, I have lots of character archage, I have sooo many things I want to say and explore about them all you have No Idea. It's extremely self-indulgent and absolutely my personal magnum opus for all my very specific favorite AA headcanons and ideas and thoughts. And obviously, it worked! I did indeed overcome my writer's block! And I had so much fun doing it!! And I'll admit, from the very beginning, I had been eyeing that "Everybody Lives" joker prompt, because...that's it! That's basically the point of the AATTAU (Ace Attorney Time Travel Alternate Universe, if that wasn't clear, haha). I don't want to let myself get TOO into it, because Oh Boy, I sure will! If you let me! Haha. But basically the premise is EXACTLY what I stated in that very first discord message I could find about it. Maybe not so much "time travel" technically speaking than it is "gaining memories of everything that happened in canon right as the DL-6 earthquake happens", so it's more regression than actual time travel since they're in their own younger bodies and everything, but still. It's basically my excuse to treat canon like it did happen and YET allow for everybody to survive and for the very fun cocktail of traumas and joys that come from remembering what happened but having the chance for something different (and all the effort that goes into making something different happen in the first place).

Now, as far as AU-gust goes. I was obviously not about to even pretend I could remotely start this during August itself or justify connecting any of it to the series and the prompts I'd already written for it, lol, but I also couldn't get the idea out of my head, so I got it in my head I really wanted to end the month with SOMETHING that somehow tied into my AATTAU, if only to motivate myself to actually get on it and start writing out instead of solely outlining everything that's been in the works all these months. So to that end, I saw the "Everybody Lives" and the "Beginning of the World" prompts, and an idea came to me. I'd been dancing around the justification aspect of this AU for most of the time I've had it because let's be honest, it's just a very self-indulgent idea and it does not NEED "justification" to serve the purpose I want it to serve and be what I want it to be. But the AU-gust prompts gave me some actual inspiration and an Idea as to a way to solidify my unnecessary "justification" but in a way that it doesn't need to be directly part of the final product of the AATTAU (like, I could make it a separate one-shot and either just link it to and from the AATTAU fic itself, or if it all ends up being a series, then I could just include it in the series but it wouldn't be necessary to read to understand what's going on. And so, I present! The Ami Fey one-shot special I came up with just to fit these prompts :3 ...And by "i present" i mean, uh, I wrote 4k words of it on the 31st and didn't even come close to what I wanted to cover, because I suck at being concise. Lmfao. (Shocker.) Basically, I used Ami Fey as a semi-self-insert kind of godlike figure to reason out a semi-plausible way to make the concept I want to explore happen, happen. And I had a lot of fun, but I do still have a bunch to finish, but either way, I'm very pleased to have a (somewhat silly but ultimately fun for me) reasoning as to the gears ticking behind the scenes of my idea! To be somewhat less vague, the whole AU is predicated on the idea that, Phoenix and/or Miles (who remember from the beginning / from December 28th, 2001) meeting the other characters at-or-after the time they originally met in canon are able to recall their memories of the "original" (i.e. canon) timeline. I've used some magatama shenanigans to have some fun with this, and I'm now using Ami Fey and magatama shenanigans to explain how and why this is A Thing, even if it isn't necessarily the objectively most logically sound argument I've ever made. It's still a good one, in my book, and more importantly I like it, so that's all that really matters.

To briefly explain the "two" (by which I mean 5?) of the "above" I'm using here:

Beginning of the World: This fic specifically would show the beginning of the "world" of this AU specifically! Woohoo! Go Ami Fey, creating a whole new set of problems for our beloved little Guys to go through, hahaha. I think I may have based her character a little too much on Maya mischievousness, but, oh well. Let's just say that's where she gets it from.

Younger/De-Aged: As I've already kind of expressed, the premise of this AU is mostly just them being their own younger selves except they also have the memories of all of canon (and maybe a year or two after the fact, I need to confirm a couple dates).

Canon Divergence: I feel like this is decently self-explanatory, but then again maybe it's a bit cheesy to include this here, since it basically diverges from nearly the first major event of canon (DL-6), but that's not the only time things go almost-canonically but diverge a bit in some way, so I think it really does fit here.

Guardian: This one is a bit multi-fold. It somewhat refers to the way I'm making Gregory Edgeworth the de facto guardian (as in, legal guardian) of mostly everyone I possibly can because I love him and he would be great at it. But also, guardian in that, Mr. Savior Complex Phoenix Wright himself has literally all of the information at his disposal to try to "save" the potential Happy Lives of literally every person he loves, and, well. He does a pretty good job about it; not without cost, haha, but I feel like I can definitely call him a "guardian" of others in this AU. And, as for specifically the one-shot Ami fic, she is essentially the guardian of the entire Fey lineage, in this AU at least, so that also totally fits and is most immediately relevant.

Everybody Lives: I think this one is pretty self-explanatory at this point, lol. But for the one-shot: Ami is essentially trying to secure an "everybody lives" scenario, even if it hasn't been achieved yet, so it's more an aspiration at that point, but ultimately it is indeed successful. Now, "living" does not mean, like, "totally healthy" (mentally or physically), so there's lots more to it, but in short, yes, they live.

And......that's basically a wrap on that!

I mean, it isn't actually at all, since I still have to finish 26/31 fics, lmfao, but as far as the idea generation stage goes, and the use of the AU-gust prompts, that's what's up in my world! Somewhere out there maybe there's an AU of my actual real life where i finished more of these on time, but i'm still pretty pumped by all the work that's already been made on making so many AA fics a reality for me. I've come a long way since starting that first AA fic in 2018...!!

I still have all the aforementioned 26 fics to finish obviously, and I also have AU continuations planned for at the very least, day 2's colorless prompt and day 3's dark academia prompt (let alone day 31's, lol, but that's its own monster entirely), but I'm optimistic!

Thankfully I actually finished using nano to word track for me before they, you know, doubled down on AI and called everyone "abelist" (???) for not supporting it, which, uh. Well. But for my own posterity and if anyone's curious, here's what my word counts looked like throughout the month of AU-gust--admittedly including some planning and outlining:

It ended up being 51,377 words total in August on these AU prompts alone!

I feel like I wanted to say something poignant and meaningful at the end here, but it's almost 9:30 and I work at 4am tomorrow, so I'm going to go ahead and wrap this post up here, haha. If you read all of this, thank you very much for joining me on my little journey!

Once again, here is the Ao3 series where I'll post anything more that gets done, so if you'd like to see how any of these AUs turn out, feel free to keep an eye on that!

And here is the previous post with the 1st half+ of the AUs if you missed it and are interested now!

My copy arrived literally as I was writing this up so I've spent the last several prompts of this post listening to the AAIC soundtrack in the music collection, and, oh man, it's seriously so surreal this exists??? I might be an old fogey who has and will for an indeterminate amount of time continue to have trouble letting go of the fan translation names I've lived with for the past decade or whatever, but it's seriously so awesome the entire series is finally available internationally!! Let's hope for my sake AA7 doesn't come out before I finish any of my AATTAU, because that would really throw a bit of a wrench in my decision-making process, lol.

Bye for now!

[themistressdomme]

Oh wow, you replied. I wasn't quite expecting it so soon since you are still so behind lol. I thought you were clearing them first in first out since you started putting the dates.

I'm doing ok, had a couple of bad daysssss previously, but wayyyy better now. Time makes everything better I guess. Though I should probably be taking my own advice and getting more sleep. I'm kinda near to Lia's timezone so I definitely shouldn't be awake now. But what can I say, I'm just learning from your (bad) example. 🤷

And, 🙄🙄🙄. What are you gonna do to do anyway 😛.

Actually, did you just post and then delete something like a few minutes ago? I thought I saw that...

- 🍒

I meant to! And then I got distracted when I was answering them, so I just thought I'd do what I can and date them all 🤗 My plan is to answer all of the day's asks, as well as a couple older ones, so I don't fall further behind! 😘

Aw, I'm so sorry to hear that you had a couple bad days, angel! Those definitely suck, and I'm so glad to hear that things are much better! And yes, you should most definitely be taking your own advice and be sleeping soundly, especially if you're near dearest Lia's timezone!

Tsk. I always tell my prettiest babes... do as I say, and not as I do ����

And also... silly little things that roll their eyes don't have a fun time with me 😈 Unless... they're into that sort of thing 😉

I did! I privated an ask that I answered because I have to run my response through someone first as I mention them! 😘 You're fast, hm?

🍒

[snugglesquiggle]

in case anyone's been wondering where i've been, the short version is that at the end of last month, i had a single thought:

i had been struggling to get anything productive done for a few weeks at that point. my solution? if doing one thing is too hard, why not do all the things?

sounds stupid but it kinda worked? i was going to call it my 'slop era', where i just get things done even if the output was low effort nonsense. the first two days, i wrote a few pages of a new story (which turned out kind of interesting), got a few sketches done, and composed two simple tracks.

oh, and i started working on a little game. it's what the majority of my time those first two days was spent doing; once i'd knocked out that creative hat trick, i dug into the programming mines for several hours, because i don't know how to quit and i wanted to come out with something semi-substantial even if it was supposed to be slop

and i liked working on the game. i liked working on it so much that on the third day, i only found it in me to focus on it. i liked it so much that for a few days in the row i was staying up late working on it, and then waking up on five or six hours of sleep and getting out of bed anyway because i couldn't stop thinking of things to add. i liked it enough hunger doesn't stop me from working and on at least one day, i ate nothing but four hashbrowns i tossed in the oven lol

and of course, i liked it enough that i've fofund it hard to step away and check tumblr or discord, or read new chapters of things. sorry about that.

but yeah, this was just a lil status update before i hop back in the mines.

that said i'm probably gonna need to figure out how to use to queue i dont overload people with a hundred posts in a row once i burn out and need to catch up on a week of backlog here lol

[namtanlovesfilm]

GMMTV randomized shipping wheel pt.2

here we go again, I had too much fun with part one & a few of you wanted a part 2! so like last time, I put the current gmmtv cast on a virtual spinning wheel, spun it 20 times to create 10 random couples & rated them!

OFF X FLUKE GAWIN

I SWEAR I DIDN'T FAKE THIS LMAO 😭 so um... I did write a seandan not me fic & simply adore both of these babes, so... yeah of course I'm into this lol. I think they did have great enemies to lovers chemistry in not me, and them being work out buddies irl was adorable! they're also kings of having chemistry with literally anyone so I know given the opportunity they would absolutely SLAY 😌 also they would be such an attractive couple lol, sorry I need to mention that since both of them are two of my absolute ultimate celebrity crushes 🥰 and lastly since I've always wanted to see off in a ship with a guy who's taller than him this would be *chef's kiss* 9/10

FORCE X POND

hmmmmm... I don't really see it but to be fair, I didn't see force & neo either and that didn't keep them from absolutely eating each other's faces in the only friends mock trailer 😂 and I ABSOLUTELY didn't see pond & nanon together and that didn't stop pond from being so good at flirting with him in dirty laundry! so all of that to say that both force & pond have very flirty energies and are good actors so while I wouldn't pair them together out of my own volition, if it were to happen, I'm certain they would 100% make it work! 6.5/10

LOOKJUN X ARM

so I love both of these babes individually and they're both the king & queen of ig imo, but together on-screen? I'm gonna be honest, I can't really see it :( I do think if it were to happen they'd make it work bc they're both great actors, but idk why I feel like their chemistry wouldn't be great. 3/10

JJ X AYE

I... ain't mad at this in concept, but also can't see it at all?? I think it might be bc I've literally never seen these two interact before & they feel like they are just part of two very different worlds, but as a side ship?? maybe. I mean jj was really cute paired with neen in my gear & your gown and that was pretty random, and aye literally has chemistry with everyone, so... 4/10

OHM PAWAT X WIN

lmaooooooo I know this is probably some people's wet dream, but for me I'm like 😶���😶 the nepo baby & the homophobic bully together?? to be fair, the visuals, acting & chemistry would probably be great, and honestly these two do have a common point: they both disappointed me on different levels lol 😬 4/10

KHAOTUNG X BRIGHT

so fun fact I am posting these pairings in the order they were chosen lmaoooo, this timing truly reminds me of that one very good fanfic that put sarawat, tine and fong together :'))) so anyways, I love khaotung & think he's an excellent actor who has chemistry with everyone, but... I think even him couldn't pull it out of bright lol. like bless bright's soul but even in 2gether it was a struggle trying to see him portray a queer character, and imo he's just one of these straight actors who is just too straight... 3/10

PLUEM PUSIT X DUNK

girllllllll 💀 be fucking for real lmao, I love pluem a fucking lot, bless his heart, but it's clear he struggles to portray good chemistry with another guy, and even dunk's good chemistry couldn't save it 💀 also physically they would look a bit weird together, idk I don't see it at all, 1/10

LOVE X CIIZE

NOW we're getting somewhere!!! so love & ciize would be amazing together imo, even though obviously I love milklove more. first of all, both of them have had queer roles before, love in bb and the upcoming 23.5 & ciize in my tee and waterboyy, so I know they'd do great! and also physically I think they'd be an adorable couple bc they're both pocket sized but look quite different which is great for on-screen couples imo! overall I will give it an 8/10!

KRIST X FLUKE PUSIT

lmaooooo, krist be collecting the fluke's of gmmtv at this point 😭 so as many know I love fluke pusit so fucking much & think he's an excellent actor who has amazing chemistry with everyone, but... even he can't save this trainwreck 💀 2/10

PODD X FAH

now THIS??? random yet interesting 😌 love them both, think they're both way too underrated & deserve a lot more, and I seriously think they could do a good job together! I also think physically they complete each other well & would look good together, and I could see them in a push & pull, enemies to lovers type of show. I'm sold! 7/10

NEO X MARK PAKIN

this one is obviously a bonus pairing bc they're gonna be a ship in both cooking crush & only friends haha, atp the wheel is getting too smart 😭 I'll give them an 7.5/10 bc I liked them from the trailers but I also do deffo still prefer neolouis

part 1

[chayscribbles]

chayscribbles’ monthly writing update ☆ february 2024

yes, i know, february has an extra day this year, but i'm posting this today bc i won't have time tomorrow lol

☆ STATISTICS.

projects worked on: The Gemini Heist

proudest accomplishment: i... wrote?... i guess??? *can't remember a single thing i did this month for some reason*

books read: Witch King by Martha Wells. i'm ngl, i was lost like 80% of the time, but that might just be a skill issue on my part (it's the kind of book that throws you into the thick of it without holding your hand and listening to the audiobook with the attention span that i have was... probably not the wisest idea lol)

(alhough funnily enough, it's while having this audiobook on in the background that i came up with a lot of my plot thoughts for gemini heist LMAO. either that or while playing zelda.)

☆ GENERAL COMMENTS.

although i did get writing done this month, this update's gonna be short. i don't really have much to say lol

more specific wip-related comments + featured excerpt below.

☆ COMMENTS: THE GEMINI HEIST (draft 0.5)

it's very weird to not be using word count to track my progress anymore. freeing, but weird. i have no concept of how much i've actually done for this wip this month.

i do know i've figured out a bit more stuff about the heist and the lore. i had a big plot brainstorming session and untangled a few scenes. while i know what direction i want the story to head, i still don't know how any of this gets resolved, tho.

and i wrote out a few important scenes. that's progress, right?

☆ FEATURED EXCERPT.

i've been writing so chaotically out of order based on whatever scene i feel most inspired for in the moment that i,,, honestly can't remember what i've written this month vs what i had already written before 🥲 here's a scene that i THINK i wrote in february. Leo and Illiana might be my new favourite dynamic. (for context, Illiana is posing as her identical twin at a party, and Leo is posing as a guest. they came in separately.)

With the bodyguards tailing her the entire way, Illiana slowly made her way towards [Leo]. She tolerated a few brief exchanges with other guests she crossed paths with to appear natural, then, once she was close enough, she slipped the extra comm out of the pocket concealed in her skirt. She made a show of bending down to pick up something, then strode towards Leo. “Excuse me,” she said as she approached. “I believe you dropped your earring.” Leo turned to her, smile strained underneath her veil. “Oh, thank you,” she said, holding out her hand. Illiana placed the comm into her palm, taking care to hide it from the guards. As Leo angled her head away to slip it into her ear, she added, “I must say, your Holiness, this is quite a lovely party.” “Why, thank you, Miss…” She faltered, realizing she didn’t know Leo’s alias. “I’m sorry, I don’t believe I’m familiar with you.” “I’m a business leader from Tharekkan,” Leo said, pressing her palms together and giving Illiana a slight bow with her head. “It’s an honour to be here.” Illiana was surprised that Leo, with all her meticulous planning, didn’t have a fake name ready, and now she was curious. “How may I address you?” Leo’s already tense smile tightened even more. “‘Miss’ is fine,” she replied, practically through clenched teeth.  “No, I meant, your na—” “I’ve been told much about how lovely Fiolsby is, right before the winter,” Leo cut off, an unnatural segue back to the script they had practiced. “But I haven’t had the time to properly see the city.” Now Illiana just had to pry Leo's fake name out of her. “Really? That’s a shame. You know, the gardens offer a wonderful view of the city. Would you like to see, Miss…?” She let her sentence trail off, watching Leo expectantly. “If it’s not too much trouble, I would love that,” Leo replied, to Illiana’s annoyance.

☆ TAGLISTS. let me know if you want to be added/removed to any of them.

general taglist:

@dgwriteblr @the-orangeauthor @onomatopiya @quilloftheclouds @ashen-crest @writeblrfantasy @celestepens @stardustspiral @pepperdee @extra-magichours @avi-why @lefttigerobservation @chazzawrites @bardolatrycore @innocentlymacabre @subtlefires

gemini heist taglist:

@florraisons @akindofmagictoo @cream-and-tea @memento-morri-writes @antique-symbolism @rose-bookblood @afoolandathief @pepperdee @avi-why @zonnemaagd @chazzawrites @analogued @enchanted-lightning-aes @innocentlymacabre @kahvilahuhut @celestepens @cilly-the-writer @extra-magichours @onomatopiya @outpost51 @planets-and-prose

[mybedroomceilingsbored]

I have MORE things I want to know actually (in reference to the tag game) 5, 11, 12, 18, 24, 28 im just gonna keep going I’m curious 31, 33, 39

aw thanks!!!

5 (what made you start your blog) - i first joined tumblr in late '21 i think? (i'd just had a rlly bad rehearsal and needed to blow off some steam lol) I didn't post anything or interact with anyone, i just lurked for quite a while. In early '23 i think, i started posting stuff and put up a bunch of my (truly terrible) observations/photos/poetry/whatnot, and then deleted it all in that summer. i tentatively started posting again that fall, and here i am!

11 (what do you consider to be romance) - huh idrk! i don't crush much, so i feel like my own definition might be a little looser than others'.

12 (advice you want to share) - hmm, get outside as much as possible (it's done wonders for me), pick up as many hobbies as possible while you have the time, if you get periods (or just are tired) then heat up milk and add sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and vanilla extract (super relaxing and good for cramps WITHOUT the caffeine and super high sugar)

18 (do you believe in ghosts/aliens) - DEFINITELY ghosts, i've had a lot of family members have personal encounters. With aliens, it's more of a scientific probability, it'd be a lot more unlikely for them not to exist

24 (something you're proud of yourself for) - Earlier this year, i started trying to make a point of spending time with this girl who never seemed to have someone to talk to (she's homeschooled and shy, comes from a super conservative fundamentalist family, is tall with a blue mullet, stims a lot, and will happily talk about transformers for hours). Turns out she's super sweet and warm, once she gets comfortable! Now she's rlly happy to have someone to hang out with, we're gonna go get smoothies soon :)

28 (do you collect anything) - not really lol!

31 (are you messy or organized) - i'm organized when i really want to be. The rest of the time, i'm usually kind of a slob :)

33 (hobbies) - quite a few haha! I'm a dancer (ballet, pointe, modern, jazz, tap, and hip-hop), i play the piano, the flute, and the ukulele, i crochet/knit/sew/embroider/sketch/paint, i read a LOT and do a ton of jigsaw puzzles, and i bake and cook! i also like biking, swimming, and jogging, and my brother's trying to get me into weightlifting :)

39 (youtuber you've been obsessed with/why) - i don't really watch youtube, sorry! i like watching cavetown's stuff ig, and i've been enjoying a comedy improv group called shoot from the hip???

thanks for asking, this was a lot of fun! i'd love to hear any of your answers if you wanted to share!!

[yxstxrdrxxm-a]

Hiiii I’d like to say good job on the match-ups!! They’re fun to read, and it makes me more excited for my turn (assuming my form was properly sent). And Cupid + Eros’s lore?? Very interesting, given their shady Boss and the yandere consequences of their services :0

Also, my apologies if my form was quite extensive. I rarely participate in matchups, so I figured I’d go all out for my first (and probably last) one for Genshin ^^;

At any rate, I honestly don’t know who I’ll get so the results will be interesting. Sending lots of chocolates to Cupid and Eros ^o^

"Afternoon, Cupid," Eros greeted them, watching them enter the room while they worked on the matchups. Cupid yawned and sipped on the boba drink they bought while they were out.

"Afternoon, Eros... What are you doing?"

"Clearing your three page worth of messages."

"... Now?"

"Yes. Now. Seriously, you never do it."

Pausing at a certain message, the duo began to read through what it means, and Eros seems surprised. Blinking a few times, they turned their gaze to a stunned Cupid.

"Hey, Cupid. Look who came after Ana."

"..."

"Cupid?"

"Oh my God— that's Jessamine!" They exclaimed, placing down their drink to grab Eros by the shoulders and shook her. "It's Jessamine Rose! It's Jessamine! She came to see our work at MixMatch!"

"Woah, woah there— you're excited to see her, huh?" Eros teased, seeing that the guest left them something nice.

"Well, let's greet our guest properly, Cupid."

"Yes, let's!"

Putting this on a readmore to rant BAHAHAHAHAHA IM SORRY I SAW THIS AND I WENT "no way."

And this happened (ooc)

(I lost it on a server with my friends and Ansy is like "lol you're more scared of Jessamine than the literal face of Yan content" like YES HELLO???)

HELP I WANTED TO DO MORE BUTHWIDHDIDH I AM SITTING HERE LIKE. OH MY GOD??? YOU JOINED????

I'm having a fangirl moment. Pls. That's so.

I apologize for what I have become but I am also not sorry because this made me SO happy yesterday. I had to do this justice HSIDHDIDJDN

Just. AAAAAAAAAA

IM SO SO HAPPY YOU'RE ENJOYING THE ENTRIES IM 😭 /pos

Cupid + Eros's lore?? Very interesting, given their shady Boss and the yandere consequences of their services :0

Tbh the lore rn is at like the beginning because haha. First week. Not even valentine's. But fr their boss is shady but MAN things are gonna go wild thats uh. That's for sure HAISHEJBS (< thought about putting a deadline at the end of Jan but went "nahhh let's go February"... I'm a dumbass but dw abt it)

And no need to apologize if your form is extensive!! I love reading long answers and it makes me so giddy seeing what people say abt themselves + who they like. I'm happy you joined mine though, and I'm looking forward to see your reaction to your own matchup when I get to it!

Sending lots of chocolates to Cupid and Eros ^o^

Dear God this is why Cupid is on a sugar high and crashed hard (/exag but fr, both enjoyed them HAISBSJEN)

Anyways, so sorry for the long post but!!! Thank you for the ask ;v; I hope you enjoy how badly this matchup can crash and burn with the establishment being SHADY as hell BAHAHAHAHAHA

[yooniesim]

I REALLY don't want to come off as mean because I understand what it's like to struggle financially and the stress that puts you under, but I really really think it'd be for the best if you stopped using curseforge, Ceci.

Please do early access if you must! We get that it's not a matter of greed but rather a matter of survival, but please please use the means less damaging to others while keeping yourself healthy. Sims politics is nothing compared to a genocide. I hope you think about it, and I hope you can meditate on this choice. My thoughts are with you and your family 💜

Thank you for this kind comment, nonny! 💜

Honestly, I have considered it. Having a paywall is the last thing I want to do, but after living under this much financial strain for around a year now... well, it's weighing on me. As is using curseforge in the first place. I'll be honest- this month, I'll get $50 from cf. For the whole month. Sometimes it's more if I have points leftover from the previous month (so like $100 in one month), but usually that's the average. Having to use it for such (relatively) little money and dealing with the guilt of using it and the hate that results is pretty damn tough, I'll tell you that much. Like, curseforge fucking sucks and even beyond the boycott I resent the hell out of it at this point. I literally hate it and want to delete it so bad but it's the reason I was even able to even buy my meds this month. I've been working on making my patreon have better benefits without having an actual paywall, and some amazing people have kindly donated, but the amount per month varies so much it's tough to rely on. I'm really getting to be at a loss of what to do at this point. I've been exploring every other possible avenue of extra money I can that fits with my current job schedule, I do other freelance work online on top of that and cc making, and sell any stuff I have left from my collecting days. But I'm still in the red every month and it fucking sucks man. And then to come on here and have people say you love/support genocide, while researching and finding out even more about how Overwolf fucking sucks and trying to figure out how to help the boycott, then people just straight up lie about what you said so others will gossip about you publicly like middle schoolers- it's seriously awful all around. Sorry to vent at you nonny, but it's honestly depressing.

I'm on the verge of just saying fuck it, but the truth is, I'm scared to. The bottom line is that I can't function without my meds, and no one here on tumblr is gonna be with me irl to help me or pick my ass up, you know what I mean? When I log off here, simblr doesn't matter, I'm the one that deals with my own life and any negatives of that. And no matter what I do online or irl activism wise, I have this shit haunting me in the back of my mind. It feels like selling your damn soul for 50 fucking dollars, man. And how pathetic is that, you know? I guess it probably sounds like a simple choice to everyone else, but it isn't. I'm still deciding what to do and hoping, praying, that a few opportunities I'm trying to get irl yield some results. Cos like, even with CF, I'm kinda screwed either way at this point lol. I don't know. What does it even matter, right? I'll consider the early access option, but it's more probable I just quit CF and not do any paywall/CC making in general before that happens. I think if I did early access all my want to be a cc creator would suck out of my body even more than it is now. And boy has it fucking waned ever since I started posting on CF. I don't know. It's literally midnight and I think I need to sleep on it- I was supposed to already be asleep, but I saw your ask and had to answer it, oops. Sorry to ramble, nonny. Thanks again for the ask and being understanding 💜

[ladysternchen]

End of Year Fic Recs

Thanks @polutrope for tagging me 😁!

Recommend up to 5 series or multi-chapter fics from 2023 that everyone should read (multi-year WIPs count, if the last update was in 2023)

Recommend up to 5 single fics/one-shots (long or short) from 2023 that everyone should read.

Recommend up to 5 fics NOT from 2023 that everyone should read (oldies but goodies)

Recommend up to 5 of your own fics (completed or WIP) from 2023 that everyone should read. (oooohhhh damn. I'm gonna SO fail at this, because I actually read so little myself- I tend to re-read the same stories over and over and over again, but I'll see what I can do)

Multi-Chapter

'Tis the Season (To Be Tea-la-la-lally) by polutropos (Teen And Up, WIP, AU) I'm not one for modern AUs normally, not at all, and I honestly didn't want to read it at the start, but then I did (here on Tumblr) and got sucked in LOL. It's just great, and I love the Holiday Spirit! (I won't tag you here again, as you're tagged in the entire post anyway 😄 brilliant story)

Rising as if Weightless by StarSpray (Gen) The story of Elwing suddenly becoming the big sister/foster mom of her older brothers. This is so tender and beautiful and has so much character growth and so many bitter-sweet reunions, and above all so much depth.

A Pair of Stars by Magicfeather205 (Teen And Up) Pre-historic Elves, and the birth of future kings. That was honestly the most interesting story I read this year, with wonderful and very accurate world-building and a beautiful story (and thank you, author, I now can't get the 'Elwë and Olwë were indeed the first set of twin-boys in that family' out of my head where it fights a raging battle with my own headcanon) Also, I want this fic to be read by every single midwife (and, more importantly, other obstetrician). THAT is how you treat a birthing mom. That's how you handle unforeseen events. I loved this so so so much. It would have felt perfectly natural to have Trixie and Nurse Crane walk in there- sorry about that fandom-mixup)

As Flowers From the Sky by Beleriand Death Trip (E) Fingolfin/Elu Thingol... this is honestly a ship I would never ever have thought of myself, or seen a way in which this could work, but this story DOES work within canon, and beautifully so. It has it all, from very interesting world-building ideas to mild- (and VERY funny) horror-elements, and from foreshadowing and tensions to being wonderfully wholesome. You'll feel better after reading this, I promise!

The Unforsaken by @ceescedasticity (M, WIP) Last but definitely not least. I'll again link the first part of the series in the before-2023-part, and probably say more about it there. But yeah, absolutely a must-read! Go! Go, destroy the Orc-bank! (But don't blow yourselves up!)

One-Shots

Bloodied by ohboromir (Gen) Just a little First-Battle-story. I love to see Elu and Beleg and Mablung together so so so much (who would have thought, ey?).

Unstoppable Winds by LadyBrooke (Teen And Up) The destruction of Númenor as viewed by a few of their ancestors. I really loved this because I have never actually seen a story about the Fall of Númenor written from that POV and it did (or rather does) inspire me quite a lot in my own WIP. (I have to apologise here for not having more, I read so many great one-shots here on Tumblr that I just failed to save in some way. I may add to this list if I find the time to scroll through my timeline and see which of those I reblogged)

Before 2023

elves, once (M) by @ceescedasticity The part one of the series The Unforsaken belongs to as well. And for me the most recommendable story there is (though I would guess most who see this post will know the story already). The name says it all, really, as it is the story of all those canon-characters who ended up as Orcs. This is the sort of fic I really enjoy because it actually gives an answer to a question canon rises. The Orc-bank has since so much passed into my own headcanon that I sometimes forget that it is not actually canon (which leads to very awkward situations sometimes at our monthly discussing-Tolkien-gatherings, I tell you that)

across so wide a sea (Gen, WIP) by Adwen Unfinished, but one of the most hilarious stories I've ever read. I hope so much that author continues writing it one day, but even if they don't, it's a great laugh to read what is written, and ah, the possibilities!

The Carriage held but just Ourselves (Teen and Up) by StarSpray The story of how Melian and her descendants deal with death when they finally come to face it. I don't know when I last cried so much when reading a fic. It's not just that it's so so so sad (because yeah, go kill us all even in the one chapter that should be somewhat 'happy' 😭), but also incredibly beautiful and written perfectly in-character. It's looking into those women's minds. One of my bed-time-stories. (hmpf. All the others are multi-chapters form this year. ah well...)

My own

Yet Were Its Making Good, For This (not rated, but mature:ish; WIP) Ah, my problematic WIP. I wanted that story so so so so so badly written that I forced it, and it cost me MANY nerves. Mablung of Doriath/Elu Thingol. (How is it that nobody ever wrote that ship before?????????????) Works within canon if one squints one's eyes a bit. I'm currently working on the Epilogue ind Valinor, which might, MIGHT, for once give one of my stories a truly happy ending.

Into Oblivion (M) The smut-part of Yet Were Its Making Good, For This. Elwë/Mablung/Beleg. (Well, what do you all think they got up to during the journey?) Doesn't interfere with later canon.

Why, It Asks (Gen) It's a very short read, but one that is super dear to me for some reason. Elmo's thoughts as he stands by and watches his brother's grave being dug.

Moving On-series (Gen) Is this cheating, now? As it's really three one-shots? If it is, pick the last one to read. I'm just so fond of what my imagination spat out there world-building-wise LOL. It's the story of the time Elwë was missing to his and Melian's coronation, as mostly told from Elmo's POV.

Eyes In The Dark (Gen) I just had to put it here, as it's quite sweet to read, but given the hardly-mentioned-in-canon-characters it's hardly read by anyone. Give it a try, though. I bet you like it. Little Denethor is frightened by eyes in the dark, and runs for Lenwë for help. And Lenwë is being just about the best Dad ever.

And now we come to the bit I always dread. I suck at tagging people, because I always forget who enjoys such things and who doesn't, and because everyone's probably been already tagged. So let's do this differently, then- all writers who read this and want to share their recs, please do! (Cheating again, I know)