#it's so LONG I'm so sorry

[iamthecomet]

The Day Dissolved

Rating: E Pairing(s): Dew/Cumulus. Dew/Rain. (Implied Dew/Copia, Dew/Imperator and Dew/Sibling(s) of Sin. Really it's just Dew/Everyone but most of it is just implied.) Featuring: A day in Dew's life. Some angst. lots of Dew's internal monologue. Closet frottage (ish). Stoned ghouls. Gamer Rain. Dew being a stoic little shit. Everyone makes an appearence. Cook Dew. Dew's love language is acts of service. So much lore. Semi-public groping. Cumming in pants. Smoking. Memories. Word Count: 8.1k.

Edit to add: Many many thanks to @miasmaghoul for giving me ideas about things Dew could do during his day. This fic would not be what it is without your help. ♥

This feels like church service. Pinning Rain up against the old door. Wood so worn beneath his hands it feels like velvet. Licking into his mouth, over the sharp points of his fangs. Tongues twined together as Rain arches closer to him. Grinds against Dew’s thigh just enough to tell Dew how hard he is. He’ll end up with a wet spot on his pants if he’s not careful, not that he particularly cares.

They’ll emerge in five minutes smelling like cum and each other. Masks back in place, uniforms straightened. Ready for forty five minutes of agonozing mingling with the clergy.

But right now? Right now Dew needs to crawl inside of Rain’s skin with him. Needs to grab him by the horns and hold him where he wants him. Needs a hundred things he can’t have, but settling for kissing him until his lips sting feels like it’ll suffice.

Read it on AO3.

[gourmet-trash]

As others have pointed out, I too reject "token straight friend Rose Walker" and instead give you "bad taste in women Rose Walker"

The first time it happens, Hob doesn't say anything. He doesn't even acknowledge, outwardly, that he noticed it at all. Between the Inn and his teaching job and, oh you know, just several hundreds of years of being around children and young adults, he can confidently say he has at least some modicum of knowledge on how to interact with them.

So, the first time, he doesn't say anything. He's cool like that.

He also doesn't say anything the second time.

But the third time he watches Rose Walker making figurative heart eyes at Johanna Constantine, of all people, he can't help himself. He also can't really pretend he doesn't see Rose so busy gawking that she misses the rim of her glass and splashes cider onto her jumper. She's sitting right in front of him at the bar, after all.

"Doing all right there?" he teases, passing a few napkins across the bar.

Rose grabs the proffered napkins quickly, visibly flustered while she dabs at the damp spot on her chest. "Just, uh, clumsy, I guess."

Hob snorts softly. "Or distracted," he says, lifting his eyebrows when she jerks her head up.

"...I don't know what you're talking about!"

Hob makes a little "sure you don't" humming sound and picks Rose's glass up to wipe it down for her while she deals with her jumper. "It's cute," he insists, even though he knows from experience that most young adults don't like to hear it. And judging from the face Rose makes, she's no exception.

It almost makes Hob laugh -- Dream makes a very similar expression when someone tells him he's cute.

For Rose's sake, he swallows down that particular amusement and sets the cider back in front of her. "It is! But you might want to work on being a smidge less obvious with the staring."

Rose clears her throat, passing the damp napkins back across the bar when he motions for them. "...It's that obvious?" she asks slowly.

"Little bit, I'm afraid," he says, smiling apologetically.

Rose groans at that and drops her face into her hands. Hob only just makes out the muffled, "Do you think she noticed?" that follows.

Hob glances to the corner of the Inn where Jo has roped some sorry sap into a game of darts. It's not going well for the lad if the jeering of his friends is anything to go by. "Mmm...she's a little distracted, so probably not this time."

"This time?!" Rose repeats, lifting her head out of her hands to balk at him.

"You've been very obvious about it, poppet."

"And you didn't tell me!? I can't ever come back here!" Rose hisses.

Hob bites back his amusement -- poorly, judging by Rose's narrow expression. "I promise it isn't that big of a deal."

"What is not that big of a deal?"

The next few seconds are spent by Hob and Rose startling, someone bumping the glass between them in the process, and then both of them frantically trying to catch said glass before it spills more cider over the bar. When the glass is upright again and they turn accusatory stares on the King of Dreams, sitting at the previously empty barstool at Rose's side, his expression is nonplussed if not vaguely amused.

"You know, one of these days you're actually going to give me a heart attack or something. And then you're gonna have to explain to Auntie Death why she's here," Rose points out.

"I will take that under advisement," Dream drawls, more obviously amused by then. And when Hob leans over the bar, he obligingly tips his head a bit to accept the kiss dropped against his temple.

"Hello, love. Please don't give any of my patrons heart attacks at the bar."

"I will endeavor not to," Dream assures him. But the scuffle over the cider has not distracted him, and he repeats, "What is not that big of a deal?"

"Nothing!' Rose says quickly -- too quickly -- before Hob has a chance to deflect with a bit more tact. "Hence, not a big deal," she adds, snatching the glass off the bar and taking a long drink.

Dream watches her for a moment, no doubt taking stock of the damp spot on her jumper and the blustering, before turning to Hob, expectant.

But Hob has not been a snitch for many, many years, and he is not looking to revive that particular character trait this century. He flashes Dream a smile and leans back from the bar, already grabbing a cocktail glass. "How about we try a French 75 today?"

Dream purses his lips, though Hob suspects it has more to do with his question being very obviously ignored and less to do with their ongoing game of "make Dream try a new cocktail every time he comes in until Hob finds one he actually likes."

"Hob." 

He hums to acknowledge he heard him, considering the gin he has on hand.

"What are you not telling me?"

Hob grabs one of the bottles. "That I don't think you're going to like the French 75."

He turns his back to fetch the champagne and to hide a grin when he hears an annoyed little huff from the other side of the bar. Dream would deny huffing, of course, so undignified. But he huffed. He was huffy.

"Rose Walker."

"No," Rose says shortly, setting her nearly empty glass back down. "Look, no offense Uncle Morpheus, but it's seriously not a big deal, and it's also not something I wanna talk about. Okay?"

It is not, apparently, okay. Hob can tell the second he turns back around, spots the telltale sheen of emotion in Dream's eyes. Rose probably did too, which is why she's very pointedly looking down at the last of her cider rather than at her Uncle. Because they have come a long way since the rocky start of their relationship, but Hob knows better than most how fiercely Dream wants to nurture this relationship with his niece and nephew, almost despite himself. 

And bless him, but jumping straight into teenagers and young adults, nevermind the complications of a crush, is a tall order for anyone, much less the anthropomorphic personification of dreams. He definitely hasn’t had as much hands on time with young humans as Hob. Or if he has, he’s…rusty, to say the least. 

"You were comfortable to discuss these things with Hob, but not with me?"

Rose groans outright and turns on her stool, however reluctantly, to face Lord Shaper. "No, actually, I didn't want to be talking about it with Professor Gadling, either. So if we could all stop talking about it and pretend this never happened, that would be great!" she said, shooting a pointed frown in Hob's direction for good measure.

He holds his hands up in as placating a gesture as he can manage with a lemon twist between his fingers, and Dream glances between them for a moment before, with obvious reluctance, inclining his head.

"Very well," he says. "It is not my intention to make you uncomfortable."

"Thank you," Rose says, less terse, and Hob sets another cider in front of her at the same time he passes Dream the French 75. Dream eyes the cocktail with no small amount of distrust and Hob can’t help but laugh.

"Oh, come on, don't make that face before you've even tried it."

"Yeah, they're not bad. If you don't like it, we can switch," Rose offers, and while Dream does not look anymore convinced that he'll enjoy the beverage, or that he'd prefer Rose's cider, Hob can tell some of his proverbial feathers (well, currently proverbial, but sometimes more literal?) have settled. 

Heaven help him, but he does so adore this impossible, mercurial creature.

At their encouragement, Dream does eventually take a sip of the cocktail. And while his reaction is not quite as strong as it had been to the martini from last week or the Alabama slammer which, admittedly, Hob had only made as a means of getting Dream to say Alabama slammer, he is clearly not impressed.

"What do you think?" Rose asks, amused.

"It is...palatable," Dream says after a moment, and Rose laughs when he lifts it for another reluctant sip.

"Don't drink it if you don't like it!" she protests, waving for him to put the glass back down, which Dream does with something not unlike relief.

"Starting to think gin might not be your thing," Hob says, glancing over when the bell over the door jingles. He smiles and waves a hand that way. "See? Cor can use the door."

"Didn't you say he broke into your apartment through a window last month?" Rose asks, smirking when Hob shushes her.

But, by that point, Corinthian is close enough to hear. And to reach around Dream to pluck the French 75 off the bar. "And guess who finally got the damn locks on his windows repaired after that?"

"That is not a good reason for breaking into my flat!" Hob protests.

"It's a perfect reason for breaking in! I could've stabbed you in your sleep!" Corinthian argues.

"You have stabbed me in my sleep!"

Corinthian chuckles over the cocktail, half draped against Dream's side, who shifts subtle to make room for him there. "I have done that," he agrees.

"You've what?" Dream says, turning a frown on Corinthian who waves a dismissive hand.

"Metaphorically," he lies, before sidestepping out of the conversation by leaning around Dream again to flash a smile down the bar. "Well, hey there, Rosebud."

Rose, whose attention had drifted back in the direction of the darts game -- new bloke trying his hand now and losing just as spectacularly -- turns quickly back around. "Hey! Where's Jed?"

"Dropped him off at the movies with a couple friends."

Rose frowns. "...What movie?"

"One that I'm certain Jed and his friends were able to buy tickets to themselves, of course," Corinthian says breezily. Rose narrows her eyes a little further.

"If Jed has nightmares all week, it's gonna be your fault."

Corinthian makes a little noise of disagreement over his drink, and Hob starts wiping down the bar to keep himself useful while they bicker. And to avoid letting Dream pull him into any further interrogation about the whole stabbing thing.

"Technically, that would be My Lord's fault, wouldn't it?" Corinthian says, motioning at Dream between them, whose suspicious expression has not wavered.

Rose rolls her eyes. "You know what I mean!"

"Uh huh. Didn't know you were so into darts, Rose."

Hob pauses his cleaning to glance up between them, Rose visibly flustered and Corinthian's eyebrows lifted high above his sunglasses while he sips Dream's drink.

"What?" Rose eventually says, and Hob doesn't wince but it's a near miss. Poor thing, she's usually better toe to toe with Cor in one of his more meddling moods.

"You know what I mean," he drawls, and Rose snatches her cider up to chug. Again.

Rose knows what he means. And Hob knows what he means, even if he's not entirely sure how Corinthian himself knows. But Dream, sitting between the three of them, clearly does not, and he misunderstands rather wildly.

"Would you care to play darts, Rose Walker?" 

"That's a great idea!" Corinthian insists while Rose coughs around her drink. "That gal in the corner seems like she's pretty good, I bet she could talk you through the rules."

And then Dream turns his head and his attention alights on the darts game already happening. "Johanna Constantine is here?" he asks, looking back to Hob for confirmation.

"She's a regular these days, yeah," Hob says, and he'd argue that Dream doesn't stand from the stool so much as he pours himself from it, too liquid in his movements for the human shape he wears.

"Then I shall have to introduce you, Rose," he insists, and Rose only manages a token, squeaked protest before Dream is ushering her towards the darts game.

Hob swats Corinthian with the towel he'd been wiping the counter with. "That wasn't necessary," he points out, trying very hard to tap down on his own amusement.

"Sure it was! This way Dream can figure it out himself, and then he can be the one to tell her there's no way in hell we're gonna approve her trying to date Johanna fucking Constantine."

Hob laughs despite himself and leans against the bar, smiling when Corinthian takes up Dream's abandoned stool to meet him halfway. "She is a grown woman, you know. We can't stop her from trying to date who she likes."

"We can sure as hell try."

"We can do that," he agrees, leaning in to return the quick, sharp kiss Corinthian dips in for. "Does he know how to play darts?" Hob asks, glancing towards the corner when Corinthian leans back.

"I have absolutely no idea." [ ← prev ] [ next → ]

[breitweisergallery]

hi, so i want to ask how you study your characters when ur writing about them. How you think of niche little details to add depth to your characters? Bcs I've read your Gahan fics and the absolute way you ADD so many little things to Yohan, WHO btw is already such a fleshed out character but you manage to manage to make him even MORE thought out & im just curious how u think of them?

The first part of it is that I have a degree in writing and spent a LOT of time in college doing exercises that involved looking at the weirdest details of your life and figuring out how to build that outwards.

But when it comes to specific stories, a lot of it is looking at themes and building on what already exists. Yohan is a book-lover, we know this from canon. Building outwards for his books (since I always go to literature), I do spend a lot of time for nearly every fic figuring out what his top 5 or top 10 books are for that specific fic. Because Yohan will be very different if he's a cut-throat lawyer in prison for a murder he may or may not have committed than if he's a YA fantasy novelist.

Some of it comes from acting. I have a very extensive background in acting and it's the little things that build a character - nervous habits, body language, conscious or otherwise, it very much builds a person. I mimic a lot of what I write as I write (which is why I don't love writing in public), but I will sit there and move my hands and feet until I figure out what body language makes the most sense for what they're trying to convey.

And then some of it is just practice. Examples below the cut.

To give an example of the sort of thing I do, I'll start by describing the things on my desk currently.

A coffee mug. Several bowls of food finished to varying degrees. My to-do list. A candle. A thing full of pens that are nearly identical. My wallet.

Then, expanding out on that in a little more detail. Why are things there? When were they last used?

The desk is a mess of things used often. Various bowls are lined up on the side of the desk, with snacks finished to varying degrees. Most notably is the bowl of cereal barely touched, closest to the occupied chair. Though the mug of coffee next to it, labeled Boston, seems to be mostly full, the stain at the lip of the mug suggests a full cup of coffee has already been drank, that perhaps it is the second cup of the day. The to-do list, pink in color, has eight things on it, four of which are crossed off and finished. It does not escape notice that the academic work is all that remains.

That goes from just a list to building out a character (me) and gives you a lot of information from what started as just a list.

I do that with characters, a lot. For example, pulling from a fic I never published in which Yohan grew up with his mother:

Kang Yohan is unlike anyone Gaon has met in his life. 

Kang Yohan smiles easily and warmly; lines in his face, creases worn deep, indicate he has always been this way. There’s a lightness in his step, a drama in his movements, that only further indicates a playful nature. His clothes, though not expensive, are never creased, a carefulness about his appearance contrasted by his hair, ruffled and not-quite-messy with tints of red in the dark brown that are only visible in the sunlight. 

Kang Yohan lives in an apartment. The apartment is small and homey and reminds Gaon of his own home. Chosen, not for any special reason beyond a simple reminder of what home once was, and what home will continue to be. A tiny kitchen because “eomma could barely cook and she taught me absolutely nothing.” A full-sized mattress without a frame on the floor of the loft overlooking countless bookcases and two desks, one of which is covered in books and papers, the other so despairingly empty that Gaon can feel the ache in his chest before Yohan glances at it and says, offhandedly, “that’s my mother's.” 

Kang Yohan speaks with a bit of dialect in his voice, inherited from years of echoing his mother. It thickens when he echoes things she once said, and he’s never quite able to fully get rid of it when he speaks, the cadence familiar and comfortable to him. 

All of this was the opening to the fic in question, because it immediately built such a different character from the Yohan we know, but you're still able to see the similarities and to mark the differences. It establishes a person pretty quickly.

Pulling from a fic I have published, let's look at voices stolen and people borrowed.

The customer always comes in with messy hair, in a hoodie and ripped jeans and boots that Gaon only places as brand name after the fourth time he sees the man. He buys an energy drink, a packaged meal, and whatever the brand of fruit snacks in the far left corner of the store are called, as many of the fruit snacks as he can fit into his pocket. He pays in cash and never speaks. Gaon notices, the same time he recognizes the brand of shoe that he wears, that the man has earbuds in, hidden underneath the shagginess of his hair. It takes another week before Gaon catches a glimpse of the man’s phone- the newest model Android- and he realises that the man isn’t listening to music, but rather, an audiobook.

Right off the bat, I had known I wanted Yohan to be a bit of an emo kid. I knew he had studied abroad, America in the early 00s, and I knew that I was going to establish him as a fan of Green Day. So that played a lot into his appearance. He wears comfortable stuff in a punk-esque fashion, but he's still rich. He still wears brand name things.

He works overnight in this au, so he comes in getting off of his shift at about 2am, and he buys an energy drink ( to fuel him for his drive home), a packaged meal (because he's hungry), and fruit snacks (because this Yohan is childish and fruit snacks are delicious). He buys a lot of them because it gives Gaon a reason to remember him, and Yohan is nursing a bit of a crush. He pays in cash because his name is on his card.

He doesn't wear wired headphones because he always breaks them - a fact that was cut from the story but was in a scene at one point - and he uses an Android because I feel like Yohan is the type of guy to die on the hill that he won't ever use Apple. And he's listening to an audiobook instead of listening to music - another detail that was cut, is that he's listening to his own book.

This is the introduction you get to Yohan in this story, and it immediately sets up this base layer for who Yohan is going to be. You can make assumptions already, and it gives me, the author, something to build off of with the assumptions as well.

[climbingthefloors]

obsessed with this baby hippo from thailand's khao khew zoo.. she has been so utterly betrayed by the world

[thorinds]

1000 Books You May Have Actually Read

[kensatou]

studio trigger understood the assignment. i would let her wreck me.

[overseer-picard]

TNG text posts part 5 feat. DS9 era O'Brien

[cirrus-grey]

[drac0line1nn1t]

Part 1 | Part 2

[aymmidumps]

Andrew doodles

[egophiliac]

bring your son to work day

[fishofthewoods]

I see a lot of people clowning on the people of Pelican Town for not repairing the community center themselves or clowning on Lewis for embezzling and. like. Those criticisms aren't entirely unfair. But I think instead of coming at it from a perspective of "why can't the townspeople do this" we should be asking "why and how can the farmer do this?"

Like. Think about it. The farmer arrives in Stardew Valley on the first day of spring. By the first day they're obviously different. By day five the spirits of the forest who haven't been seen by the townsfolk in years or generations are speaking to them. By the second week they've developed a rapport with the wizard that lives outside town.

In the spring they go foraging and find more than even Linus, who's spent so many years learning the ways of the valley. Maybe he knows, when he sees them walking back home. Maybe he looks at them and understands that they're different, chosen somehow.

In the summer they fish in the lakes and the ocean for hours on end, catching fish that even Willy's only ever heard of, fish that he thought were the stuff of legend. They pull up giants from the deep and mutated monstrosities from the sewers.

In the fall, their crops grow incredibly immense; pumpkins twice as tall as a person, big enough that someone could live inside. The farmer cuts it down with an axe without even batting an eye. Does Lewis wonder, when he checks the collection bin that night and finds it full to the brim with pumpkin flesh? What does he think? Does he even leave the money? Does he have the funds to pay the farmer millions of dollars for the massive amounts of wine they sell? Or is it someone--something--else entirely?

In the winter, the farmer delves into the mines. No one in Pelican Town has been down there in decades. No one in living memory has been to the bottom. The farmer gets there within the season. They return to the surface with stories of dwarven ruins and shadow people, stories they only tell to Vincent and Jas, whose retellings will be dismissed by the adults as flights of fancy. People walking by the entrance to the mines sometimes hear the farmer in there, speaking in a language no one can understand. Something speaks back.

The farmer speaks to the the wizard. They speak to the spirit of a bear inside a centuries-old stone. They speak to the shadow people and the dwarves, ancient enemies, and they try to mend the rift. They speak to the Junimos, ancient spirits of the forest and the river and the mountain. They taste the nectar of the stardrops and speak to the valley itself. They change Pelican Town, and they change the valley. Things are waking up.

And what does Evelyn think? She's the oldest person in the valley; she was here when the farmer's grandfather was young. (How old *is* she, anyway? She never seems to age. She doesn't remember the year she was born.) Does she see the farmer and think of their grandfather? Does she try to remember if he was like this too, strange and wild and given the gifts of the forest?

And does their grandfather haunt the valley? He haunts the farm, still there even after his death; his body died somewhere else, but his spirit could never stay away for long. Does Abigail, using her ouija board on a stormy night, almost drop the planchette when she realizes it's moving on its own? Does Shane, walking to work long before anyone else leaves their house, catch glimpses of a wispy figure floating through the town? Does the farmer know their grandfather came back to the place they both love so much?

Mr. Qi takes interest in the farmer. He's different, too; in a different way, maybe, but the principles are the same. They're both exceptional, and no matter what Qi says about it being hard work and dedication, they both know the truth: the world bends around the both of them, changing to fit their needs. Most people aren't visited by fairies or witches. Most people don't have meteorites crash in their yard. Most people couldn't chop down trees all day without a break or speak to bears and mice and frogs.

The farmer is different. The rules of the world don't work for them the way they work for everyone else. The farmer goes fishing and finds the stuff of fairy tales. The farmer goes mining and fights shadow beasts and flying snakes. The farmer looks at paths the townspeople walk every day and finds buried in the dirt relics of lost civilizations.

The farmer is a violent, irrepressible miracle, chosen by the valley and destined to return to it someday. Even if they'd never received the letter, they would've come home.

They always come home eventually.

[space-bowl]

Unconditional love.

Based on this meme, shoutout to whoever made it (I saved it a while ago so if you see this and it's you, please let me know!):

[mintysammys]

Go white boy go

[forgettable-au]

FORGETTABLE-AU (Page 48-52)

FOUND.

[BEGINNING] [PREVIOUS] [CONTINUE]

[hychlorions]

you were a fleeting, transient love