#imagine the other scenes in my mind

[julissart]

Day 2: Fairytale

@sanusoweek

Day 1 || Day 2 || Day 3 || Day 4 || Day 5 || Day 6 || Day 7

[fluffyartbl0g]

The one piece reread only makes the hardest moments hit even harder,,,, even when you’re rereading it poorly in portugese

Or AKA, i found out today that HINATA SHOYO reads one piece and I haven’t recovered since

[turtleblogatlast]

“Haven’t You Noticed (I’m a Star)” from Steven Universe works so ridiculously well for Leo

[dykedvonte]

Can you talk about trans!Curly a little bit more? I'm curios if you have any headcanons and the like

-💀

It's just such a thing in my mind because it adds a truthful sadness and differing aspect to mouthwashing.

If Curly was trans it adds the horror of the horribly selfish thought he could have easily been in Anya's situation. It could've been him but it wasn't and he so conflicted on the pit it put in his stomach that brings and the shameful relief it wasn't. In this scenario he is friends with Jimmy for a long time still. Jimmy likely knew him pretransition. Maybe he gave Curly weird looks then, maybe they never stopped after, maybe they seemed meaner. They are guys now, bros, both of them are. He doesn't really have to worry what those looks mean anymore, Jimmy just has that face with him sometimes. It's recontextualizing a lot of things for him that he was in denial about or too ashamed to admit. How naive he was being and how he let that get another person hurt.

Specifically with Anya, it's he knows the dread and fear she's feeling. He can understand it because he had to live with it for a good portion of his life, he knows it cause he still does, just in a slightly different way. It makes him think of all the times he's been alone with Jimmy, all the times he's been way more drunk off his ass and not remember the night, Jimmy was always with him the next day. Makes him think of the comments he would laugh off both because that's what guys do but because that part of being a girl says to laugh so Jimmy doesn't do something. It's the selfish realization that he was never safe and he's uncertain now too. Mad at himself for forgeting that feeling, espcially since for a long time he would've been considered the only woman on a crew (with all that implies) for a long time.

He should've taken those blinders off, step back into that position for just a moment and it's so much more painful that Anya likely came to him because he should've gotten it. Those thoughts don't leave his mind after the crash when he's in an even more vulnerable position than she was...

[lidoshka]

Advisors

"A Vinsmoke, Zoro!" She cries, her fingers curling into agitated claws. "A Vinsmoke." "Mihawk's going to kill you," Usopp adds. "And then he's going to let Perona deal with the remains."

+

More art for the "medieval Zosan au" by hazel_athena, because I apparently cannot let go of an idea, even if my idea is not entirely accurate. :P

+

Also, have another small image of Zoro going on a trip and taking Nami with him, and so he leaves declaring Usopp as the one in charge.

...Then he nods at Robin in the back to signal SHE's the one who's really in charge.

[odo-apologist]

Me enjoying a rewatch of a Red Dwarf episode, having a good time: 🙂

My traitorous brain: Hey, this scene takes place away from Red Dwarf and Starbug, Lister probably doesn't remember it after M-Corp

Me: 😧

[thecrowsart]

👁️🦎🎯

(crops under cut)

[reapersmarch]

tell me lies, and i'll justify them look before you leap, orrr, what happens when it all comes tumbling out start here prev • next

a note from me to u: this is (very slightly) canon divergent in the sense that I wanted to write a very specific confrontation between ricardo and bel and even though I think placing it in the canon "legs broke" ending would have worked just as well, I think the stress would've killed him and would've just been... kinda depressing honestly, so. slight divergence of "they narrowly avoided the semitruck and now have to deal with the fact that bel told him he's entropy", so please be advised and enjoy!

There are no two ways about this, and no sense in mincing words: this fucking sucks.

And that doesn’t even really begin to cover it.

In fact, there probably aren’t enough words in the English, Welsh, or French languages for you to begin to describe what, exactly, you’re feeling here. Awkward. Tense. Edgy. Uncomfortable. But, none of those are enough, either. It’s more like… you’ve been in a dead sprint for so long, your lungs have finally given out, and you know that the only way this ends is in death.

No one to come save you, no way for you to crawl your broken body out of this one.

You condemn yourself to your fate, and stretch your neck across the block.

The executioner, this time, takes the shape of Ricardo’s side profile as he drags a hand down his mouth, turning over and over and over what you’ve just told him.

There’s a saying that you’ve always been particularly fond of—if you smell shit everywhere you walk, check the bottom of your shoe.

Or: you are the lowest common denominator. 

Your strength was never math—it was always science, a natural inclination towards it, which is ironic given how much math there is in astrophysics. You were only ever a casual observer, though; never really one to know the exact application of the first and second laws of thermodynamics, but you knew what they felt like. 

The first law states that energy cannot be created or destroyed; only changed. You suppose that’s true enough. It did hurt, when you fell from the heavens. It hurt when you felt your wings melt, the wax burning skin like molten glass as the ground rose to meet you, kiss you, embrace you like an old lover. When you felt everything in you shatter and shake, stain the concrete, rearrange at the molecular level until you were no longer you, it hurt.

So, maybe you can’t destroy energy. You can fundamentally change it, however. You can destroy a person—ah. But you’re not a person. You never were. Let’s try again.

You can destroy a thing. Push it to the brink of ruination, only to bring it back from that point and say, “See? You were fine. You were just fine.” Do that enough times, and eventually the thing breaks. Machines slow and rust, clothes get holes in them, regenes snap and bend and morph until they do what they’re supposed to. They break.

And then what? The energy changes. Sidestep dies, Entropy is born.

If the first law is the making, then the second law must be the unmaking.

It states that when energy changes from one form to another, entropy in a closed system increases.

Funny how that works out.

But that’s true, too.

When did you start tearing yourself apart? When he entered your life again? When you let him enter your life? When you handed him the scalpel and lay yourself down across the operating table, guided his hand to your chest and said, ‘cut here’?

There is a bitter edge to the very idea that he occupied so many of your thoughts, had you tearing yourself asunder every other night, but you could never tell if you took root in any of his. That the bliss of silence could just as quickly be replaced with the violence of static—you never knew just how violent static could be until you met him, that it was even capable of doing that kind of damage.

Anchors, as you are learning, can be used to sink as readily as they can to secure.

So. Yeah. It’s you. You’re the through line here. And so is he. And you’ve just confirmed that for him.

He was bound to figure it out eventually; you couldn’t hold it together long enough to keep the division separate. The lines of Sidestep and Entropy blurred into one another forever ago, when you decided to stop and do good, be good. You just couldn’t stop being Bel, even if you wanted to—and you desperately wanted to.

In your ardent need for affection, your unholy want for companionship, you lowered the drawbridge, and you took everyone in. You put the crown to his head, made him king of your domain, and couldn’t fathom how you were dethroned.

“Ricardo—”

“Don’t.”

He’s not done processing, it seems.

That’s fair. You might not’ve even foreseen this conversation, but he had an entirely different vision of how this would play out in his head.

(Not that you would know.

This is all just conjecture.)

The smoking wreckage of this barely functional car that you managed to veer into a back alley in an industrial zone is not where he pictured having it, for one. For two, he thought you were related to Hollow Ground, somehow.

Also kind of fair. You did have an uncanny resemblance to one another, one which you are not in a place currently to dissect, and he did spot you exiting his… lair, you guess.

You have a sneaking suspicion that neither of you expected to live through that encounter, and now that you have, it’s like holding on to a lit firecracker and waiting for it to blow your arm off.

“I’m sorry,” he lets you say. You’re not sure why. You don’t know what you’re even apologizing for, and it rings remarkably hollow when the ripple effect of your actions outweighs whatever guilt you could possibly be feeling. He does not acknowledge this though. He can’t even look at you right now.

You’re not sure if it’s better or worse that you told him the truth. Maybe letting him believe his conspiracy theory would have been the safer thing to do, but you have always laughed in the face of safety.

“I think,” he starts after an eon, “the part I hate about this the most is that I still love you.”

There it is, the axe. The blade right at your neck.

He told you this already. In his apartment when you let yourself be convinced to stay the night; let him talk you into his bed, let him hold you and tell you everything you’ve been wanting and waiting to hear, what you foolishly refused to see across all this time—the second time you’ve ever shared a bed. Quite possibly the last.

He told you he loved you, and the weight of that crushed you instantly.

It was fine when it was just you—burying yourself in years of regret, choking back every almost half-muttered declaration, and forcing yourself to be content with whatever you had going on. It wasn’t so much a problem when you were two ships passing in the night; everything you were experiencing was all self-inflicted. Sure, it was miserable. Sure, you thought it would be kinder to drive your car into the ocean. But you had a handle on it. Mostly. It was contained, even if you couldn’t keep it from showing in your face. Even if you couldn’t hide the way you still look for him first in a room, or the way your hand always manages to find his arm when you need it—a steadying point on the horizon.

It was contained. You never let it spill out of you in more than a trickle.

This, though.

Sitting there and being told it’s reciprocal, that he loved you—still loves you, somehow.

This is killing you.

He loves you, and you still can’t unstopper the bottle.

Not because you don’t want to—you would love to. You have been shouting it with your actions for years, you have been howling it, without ever saying a single syllable of the sentence that is piercing through your skull, currently.

You can’t uncork this because the truth has to come out, and when the tell-all gossip column finally spreads the word straight from the devil’s mouth to his ears, he’ll hate you, and you’ll still love him.

“I don’t know what to say,” you tell him, because you don’t, and you can’t stop looking at him but he won’t look at you.

“Were you ever going to say anything?”

“Eventually,” you try to assure him. You can’t really assure him of anything, but you are baring as much of yourself as he’s willing to see. “It was always—I wanted to. Ricardo, I really, really wanted to, but—”

“You couldn’t.” He finishes for you.

You don’t have anything to add, so you purse your lips and fidget with your hands for a while. He doesn’t say anything else, still gazing out the window as though something fascinating will occur there.

“Ricardo, please, just… look at me. For a second. Please.”

He doesn’t.

You reactively reach for his hand, then stop yourself halfway, fingers curling in on themselves. You don’t deserve comfort. You have no right to ask for it.

You betrayed his trust.

You may as well let your head roll.

Your hands find the hem of your sweater and lift until the flesh of your abdomen is exposed, intricate lines of bright orange crisscrossing in every direction.

He finally looks, but you can’t anymore.

“This is why,” you state, as though it’ll answer everything—and in some ways, it does.

This is why: I couldn’t tell you. I couldn’t be honest. I never let you in. I never asked for help. I tried to lock you out. I was afraid of you. I'm sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry.

Take your pick.

“After Heartbreak,” you drone, like you’ve numbed yourself to it, “I didn’t exactly have the best time.” Understatement of the century. “I’m sorry you mourned. I’m sorry you had a funeral, and that, in your eyes, I’m dying a second death currently, but I fucking had a good go of it, Ricardo. When they hauled me back to the Farm, they poked and prodded and so much worse. They fucking—please don’t look at me like that—they put me back together so they could split me apart again, and do whatever else they wanted, because it didn’t matter; I don’t exist. ‘Less than’—isn’t that what you said once?” He flinches.

“I didn’t mean—”

“It doesn’t matter what you meant.”

You let your sweater fall back into place.

“When I was there, they did everything within their power to keep me out.” Two fingers against the temple. “Went so far as to take something they knew had the potential to fuck them up worse than I ever could, they were that afraid of what I would do. You…” With thumb and forefinger, you rub at your eyelids, exhausted. You sort of wish you could gouge them out. “Sometimes, not being able to feel you is nice. It’s nice not hearing everything so loudly, knowing that I don’t have to try to shut you out because you can’t let me in. Knowing that I could relax because it’s just you—it’s Ricardo, it’s Charge, it’s just my shadow. But on my worst days, you fucking… you feel like them, Ric.”

You feel like you’re going to vomit.

“You feel just like them, and then my shadow isn’t comforting anymore, and suddenly, I’m afraid of the dark.”

You pivot before you’ll let him acknowledge any of that. You don’t want it acknowledged. You don’t want to know what he has to say about any of it. Maybe that’s selfish. You don’t care.

“So that’s why… Entropy. The only way I could see how to fix it was by becoming Entropy and giving the public something to rally around. Voice of the fucking people and all of that bullshit,” you chuckle in spite of yourself, dropping your head back against the seat. “Which meant that by default, I couldn’t tell you a thing. Even if you wanted to, there wasn’t a way you could help me that wouldn’t also make you a target,” you say, “and I couldn’t trust myself around you.”

That’s a fairly important distinction.

You didn’t trust him enough to reveal anything, this is true. The Rangers were staunchly in the adversary bucket given the nature of what they are. But you didn’t trust yourself around him.

You couldn’t trust that you wouldn’t unhinge that jaw and speak. You couldn’t trust that you would be able to control yourself.

You were right.

You threw yourself at him, hoping the landing would be softer this time, and it was worse.

“You’re right,” you hear yourself say, head lolling to the side to smile bitterly at him. “The worst part about all this is that I still love you; I can’t make myself stop. In seven years, I couldn’t make myself stop. It’s pretty stupid, actually, because I knew, deep down, that you were just like that. Ricardo Ortega, the flirt. The unfairly handsome, outrageously friendly Marshal Charge. You knew how to make someone feel like the most important person in the room. That was just you, but I couldn’t stop myself from falling for it. No one had ever looked at me the way that you did, and I—”

He kisses you.

He kisses you and kisses you and kisses you, like you’re the oasis in the desert and he hasn’t seen water in weeks. He kisses like a man starved, and you’re the last thing he’ll ever taste. He kisses like he loves you—still, despite—and it knocks the breath from you.

He pulls back enough your lips are just barely grazing, stroking his thumb along your neckline and pressing your foreheads together.

“—I just wanted to feel alive,” you finish. 

And you do. You feel more alive than you ever have in your thirty years, and now he’s looking at you the way he always did, seeing you, intent on you, and you realize—he has always looked at you this way. When his eyes fixed on you, they were waiting for you to notice. Even here, in this barely functional car in the back alley of some industrial zone, where you thought you were going to puke your innards out from the stress of this conversation.

The only thing you did vomit up was words, so that’s incredibly impressive for you. 

You were surprisingly calm about the whole thing. You don’t think you are physically aligned with your body at present, so this is probably the biggest contributing factor, but maybe that therapy session did you some good after all.

“You’re an idiot,” Ricardo tells you gently. “The biggest idiot I’ve ever met. The biggest, prettiest pain in the ass idiot to deal with.” And you laugh, even if you do feel yourself wanting to cry. “You still look like you, Bel, at the end of the day. This is just you on a really bad one.”

“The worst fucking day imaginable, really,” you manage, muffled against his shoulder.

“Yeah. But you’re still you, and that’s all I care about.”

[rin-rin-kururin]

Thinking about bloodless resolution for act 6 fight but still kind of bad for Siffrin? Like a bad ending. I haven't seen anyone making an AU, where Loop is taking back "what belongs to them", but with Siffrin still alive and... in Loop's body instead? They swapped bodies because of the wish and now Siffrin is trying to get the party to recognize them, but they don't believe him... since they no longer look like themself. And Loop is basking in joy from getting their family back.

[runefactorynonsense]

Happy Year of the Dragon!!

[your--isgayrights]

Outside of Lee Seolhwa and Lee Sookyung, do you have plans for any other character outside of Kim Dokja’s primary companions (like Gong Pildu or Han Doonghoon) for your soulmate fanfiction? Constellations like Persephone or Uriel or Sun Wukong probably wouldn’t make sense to exist in real life but maybe characters such as Han Myungoh/Han Dareum or Jang Hayoung could fit? If I recall correctly, Jang Hayoung in particular is the one responsible for the title of the fanfiction, right? I feel like she alongside the Unidentifiable Wall and the Fourth Wall would be so thematically appropriate but I couldn’t imagine how you would do it if at all. I also want to say that I’m impressed how you managed to seamlessly incorporate so many references to the original ORV into your work. It must have required you to reread and recheck the wiki.

Yess, I'm glad you asked this anon bc literally I just threw in a little reference to Han Doonghoon and Lee Sungkook in the 4.4 update and got worried people would think they had to remember the characters well to understand the surrounding plot point better than Kim Dokja does. But I think I should trust the reader a bit more lol.

Unfortunately my inclusion of Aileen and Jang Hayoung isn't going to be as big as the other kdjco members, but they're sort of already set up in the fic and have a role in chap 5. I think JHY doesn't appear directly bc to me the relationship between her and KDJ is harder to make 'real,' though I have some ideas depending on how much I decide to include in chap 5. In my plans 5 will have a gaming tourney featured, so other big 'wos players' may be referenced further there as well.

Of course like you mention the fic title and many of the chapter titles are coming directly from the mouth of Jang Hayoung, so in that way she is constantly being referenced, haha.

Han Myungoh and his daughter are referenced earlier in Chapter 4. It's sort of a drive by.

I do make use of the wiki (bless the editorsn🙏), though mostly just to check dates, numbers, and spellings of names. I like to think of myself as someone with a pretty decent memory tho, so a lot of the more specific story references are definitely just me pulling in stuff I remember from my novel read throughs. Like I might have to look at the wiki to remember Han Dareum's name, but I'll never forget Han Myungoh's entire Male Pregnancy that he had like that was a crazy random W to me on my first ORV read through I was like hello??? Also that being around when JHY was being confirmed trans haha. I think I was only out for like a year or so before reading orv so the little gender fucky moments really stuck out to me.

Sometimes rereading my old work I also remember things I forgot happened in ORV. I think part of the reason I'm struggling so much with chap 4 and onward is that now that the wall fic characters have sort of developed to where they are some of the scenes I had in mind are less 1 to 1 with the OG. For instance, I'm trying to rewrite a scene I have of YJH and KDJ having a rooftop chat that like parallels the one back before the seoul's strongest incarnation arc in the novel, but it's a bit difficult. At first I wanted to include a lot more of KDJ interacting with the rest of YJH's team, but the rooftop Scene makes more sense to put a cap on the themes explored in chap 4. But when I first wrote this scene it was less specifically addressing that theme, because it was in the outline of like right after I wrote chapter 1, so it was kind of just the OG ORV scene with the flavoring of my AU on top. A lot of the little things they do and say in the OG novel would have to be quite finagled to fit anymore, so reworking it is the big task rn.

Anyway I'm really appreciative of people like you who take note of these small details <3. it's kind of helping me remember and appreciate a lot of the parts of me that were behind a lot of Wall fic originally if that makes sense? I am like reintroducing myself to him and giving him a hug instead of running away cringing just because it's me lol.

[neptunesailing]

OH ITS TIME TO FEEL HELLA ILL

midori passing by the bees and noticing that a) himeru is lagging behind a bit, and b) even when hes engaging in the banger, himeru looks really. really fucking lonely

THIS IS MY PLATONIC MIDOHIME AGENDA

i think theyre neat

[swordmaid]

this dialogue path im so 😭😭🤭🤭

[sysig]

Lost my mind thinking about the Vyer Estate (Patreon)

[mxdotpng]

if i had the energy and time to write my orv enchanted au itd be all over. id have fulfilled my lifes goal. thered be nothing left to strive for. which is of course why i cant write it and definitely not because im bad at writing for long projects.

[invinciblerodent]

an issue i'm finding myself (or, my elf, eeyyyy) running into is that as their relationship progresses, Astarion and Iona become progressively harder to write together, because I'm kind of finding that the closer they are, the less they express themselves verbally.

like, for the earlier scenes, there is a lot of semi-clever back-and-forth which I enjoy writing, I love silly banter and teasing/flirting/bonding, and since they don't touch much early on, most of the relationship development happens in dialogue. but act 3?????? a lot of the emotional sludge that is between them feels most natural to, idk, leave unsaid, and have them rely on the understanding that they had been kind of hesitantly fostering since early act 2.

i know this is a stupid fucking thing to be gnawing on, especially considering that nobody has ever read a word of this damn fic, it's just.

it's a lot easier to write fun dialogue, than to somehow communicate, clearly and without headhopping or getting overly flowery/sanctimonious about it,

"aight chucklefucks, in this scene, he's climbing wordlessly under the covers with her both by way of an unwarranted apology that wasn't actually his to give (y'know, for the whole 'attacked in the middle of the night, bit to shit by his sibling while he stood by uselessly' deal that happened the previous night and is making him feel rotten and guilty for some reason), and as an acknowledgement that he's rattled, scared, and feeling vulnerable, which is why him actively seeking comfort in her instead of slinking off to lick his wounds alone is a big fuckin' deal."

"on the flipside, her not saying anything or asking why he's standing at the foot of her bed but just opening her arms to receive that silent request, invite him in (like one would a vampire, geddit), and giving him the affection with no preamble or caveat, is simultaneously an acceptance of that apology, a confirmation that despite all that's been going on during the daytime she still purposefully elects to trust him, and a reassurance that she is there, she's alive, unhurt, and her feelings haven't changed because of all this either."

"this cuddle is emotionally significant, it intentionally mirrors the one from which they were spurned by the vampire attack as a way to show that regardless of what happens, this undercurrent of tenderness still exists, but nobody is going to say a goddamn word about it, because not only would putting any of this into words be far, far beyond both of them in terms of emotional intelligence, acknowledging that he views her as a point of security and that her anxiety is eased by easing his would also feel wrong and like whoever mentions it is speaking fluent therapese. plus, breaking the silence with lengthy internal monologues would also fucking ruin the simplicity and the impact of the whole goddamn thing, even though all that actually bloody happens is 1.) she flips the covers back, 2.) he climbs in and nuzzles her chest, and 3.) she pulls the covers over his shoulder."

meanwhile i'm just looking at the maybe two actual paragraphs that i've written like