#its not particularly graphic but tagging just in case

[odiousidiot]

swap au wip stuff

childhood friends fight to the death with garden shears <3

[icequeenbae]

Boy Next Door (m) Ch.2 | BBH

Pairing: Baekhyun x Reader

Neighbor AU, slow burn, hurt/comfort, fluff, smut

Warnings: Baek being the neighbor we’re all dreaming of, harassment (nothing graphic), a bit of body image/ insecurity, MC sucks at relationships, explicit content, unprotected sex

Word Count: ~18.5k (total), 5k (pt.2)

Summary: Your neighbor Baekhyun has been a pleasant acquaintance since you moved into your current apartment almost a year ago. Could he also be… a perfect match?

© Please do not copy/ post on other platforms without permission.

Chapter Masterlist [ongoing]: Pt. 1 > Pt. 2 > Pt. 3 > Pt. 4 (fin)

Author’s note: Okay, I am slightly late to throw this party since the follower count has hit 800 a while ago... BUT NOW IT'S HERE!!! 💜💜💜 And be ready for a bumpy ride with this one. All goes under the cut as it starts off with smut hehe

As usual I'd like to remind you that the more active you guys are, the more motivation I have to update frequently. I'm easy to reach through my asks and I check all of your comments and reblogs~ In any case, I hope you like the first half of this story (just 2 parts ahead!) 💫

Network Tags: @bbh-net  @k-vanity  @ksmutsociety

Baekhyun’s grip on your waist was tight.

It felt secure and confident enough, so worries about him having to hold you up were long gone from your head. Your usual shyness seemed to have dissipated, and in its place came utter shamelessness.

‘Fuck, Baekhyun-’

Your high-pitched moan made him grunt. He wasn’t very talkative of a lover, but he was invested in making you come. The two of you barely made it into the apartment, starting out at the front door and only just stumbling into the hallway. Where he had you against the wall now.

‘Please don’t stop…’ You begged, finding his grown-out hair to tug on.

Baekhyun’s hips jerked forward, nailing you into the wall, and he groaned into your neck. Barely able to hold on to his shoulders, you swayed your own pelvis to meet his thrusts. Your breathing was ragged, and the deep, messy thrusts had you both on the brink of orgasm.

‘Ooh, Baekhyun, I’m- Amph!’

Your loud wail broke into reality and woke you up.

~

Later that day you were telling your best friend all about your miserable existence.

‘I hate my life, Yu…’, you whined into the phone.

‘That’s understandable.’

‘Yuki!’

‘Don’t ‘Yuki’ me, I still can’t believe you didn’t drop your panties for that hot neighbor of yours.’ She huffed in the middle of lecturing you. ‘Your subconscious is doing well, showing you what could’ve been.’

‘We barely ever hung out! I couldn’t exactly jump him.’

‘You’re neighbors! Who cares about the ‘three dates’ rule? He’s been to your get-together, you’ve been at his place… eating ice cream.’ You could hear the eye roll.

‘So? That doesn’t mean we’re dating.’

‘Dating-shmating. Didn’t you just mention that you’re horny as fuck for Baekhyun?’

‘So what? I don’t even know what he thinks of me. What if he has a girlfriend?’

Your friend’s laughter filled your ears.

‘He literally cornered you at the door and told you to come back whenever you craved for your favorite ice cream flavor. If that’s not saying, ‘Let’s fuck, Y/N,’ I don’t know what is. I’m actually willing to give him extra points for this. That’s the type of smooth that you need.’

‘I need?’

‘Yep. You’re pretty gentle, you know? He probably got that when he invited you to his house, and you raided his fridge instead of his bedroom.’

She was always in your face about being too slow to open up. You’d had this conversation before, and her stance on it was unyielding – you needed to have a steady male presence in your life to gain confidence for a healthy relationship in the future. But you didn’t think you were made for such arrangements; you were quite conservative about dating.

‘He wasn’t inviting me for sex. There wasn’t anything suggestive of that!’ You countered, not sounding particularly confident.

‘You mean he didn’t make any physical contact all night? Well, that’s not solid-’

‘He did, but it was-’

‘Wait, what?? He did?!’

‘It was nothing!’ You quickly took it back, slapping yourself on the lips.

‘You know what? You don’t even have to tell me. I already know that he wants you, and you want him. I also know you’ll continue dragging it out instead of having sex with the gorgeous boy next door.’

‘That’s actually another reason why I’m reluctant. What if Baekhyun’s not into me? Or in a relationship already? Or what if it ends the usual way? We aren’t just neighbors; we’re the only people on our floor. How awkward would that be?’

Your bestie sighed, probably remembering your past relationships. She, of all people, knew precisely the terms you broke up on and how stressed you were about crossing paths with any of your exes again.

‘It does have the potential to be awkward,’ Yuki pointed out. ‘But also… can you imagine how fun it’s gonna be? You’re always grumpy about having no time for dates and stuff. But you live like 5 seconds away from each other. The universe has outdone itself, you ungrateful woman!’

She fell silent after your huff, and you called out her name to make sure she was still on the line.

‘Sorry,’ she said, not a tiny bit embarrassed. ‘I just imagined having Hoseokie as my neighbor. My body is jealous of you, Y/N. The amount of sex you could be having!’

‘Ugh. I haven’t gotten laid in eternity, yet you keep talking about sex.’

‘Sex is great, you should try it. I can’t even remember what you were like when you had it.’

‘Just as grumpy as now,’ you grumbled. ‘Don’t even count on that making me any more sociable. Once a homebody, always a homebody!’

‘Oh well, at least I’d be happy knowing your body is socializing plenty with your clothes off.’

‘Why would you think about me with my clothes off…’ You gasped.

‘Yah!’

‘I’m hanging up.’ You announced, pressing the red button.

It was your fault for telling your friend about your love struggles. You knew how she was, and you still asked for her opinion.

She texted you immediately after you had one-sidedly ended the call.

Ki-yaah | Rude

Ki-yaah | At least invite the hottie for dinner. Reciprocate his gesture, if you know what I mean

Ki-yaah | But this time don’t wear sweats!! Wear a dress! Something simple

Ki-yaah | And easy to remove;)

You | You are…

Ki-yaah | Helpful?

You | That’s not what I was gonna say, but let’s go with that…

Ki-yaah | So you will??

You | Maybe…

Ki-yaah | Gosh, why are you so resistant!?

You | Idk ㅠㅠ Stop yelling at me ㅠㅠ

Ki-yaah | If you’re really not feeling this guy it’s fine, don’t listen to me~

You | I’m scared of the opposite, Yu… I think I’m starting to ‘feel him’ way too quickly. He’s been friendly once or twice, what if I’m overreacting?

You | It’d look pretty pathetic if I made moves on him, and he didn’t even have any of that in mind…

Ki-yaah | You’re way too hard on yourself, girl. And you still cannot tell when a guy is genuinely interested in you…

Ki-yaah | Remember that party… I was drunk, but even I noticed the way he was looking at you!

You | Exactly, you were drunk! He was probably trying to memorize what I looked like, nothing more

Ki-yaah | Yeah right. Cause when a guy can’t keep his eyes off of you, it’s just him memorizing your features for a composite sketch in case you break the law

You | Stop rolling your eyes

Ki-yaah | I’m glad you noticed!!

Ki-yaah | I wish you noticed men giving you the eyes more often than you notice my eyerolls!

Ki-yaah | Just do it your way. Invite him for a snack, wear something moderately nice, be a tiny bit suggestive and see where he takes this

Ki-yaah | Also keep your counter clear, what if the sparks start flying in the kitchen? Some men get turned on by women cooking, you know? And since you’re a great cook, you might just get your answers quick and efficient~

You | If I could hang up on this chat…

Ki-yaah | Did you write this down?

You | Bye ><

Even if that could be considered decent advice, you still couldn’t muster up the courage to take initiative like this. So all that was left for you was to wait until some random occasion, pleasant or otherwise, brought you together again.

***

It was late.

It was way too late for you to be out, especially grabbing snacks in the supermarket. But you just couldn’t bring yourself to go to bed. You’d been too anxious from overthinking everything in your life recently, from your professional worth to relationships. Getting lost in reflection, you realized you desired someone’s attention and affection. You wanted someone to be close with, not just physically but also emotionally. Intimately. It wasn’t about simply being bored or lonely – any of your friends was a phone call away in cases like that. What you needed was different, and it was something that wasn’t available to you at this time, or, perhaps, ever. So, you decided that a quick run to the nearest store for something to munch on was a great idea.

Spoiler alert – it was not.

‘Damn, why did I buy so many chocolates?’ You puffed into your mask, frustrated with yourself.

Having a sweet tooth came with consequences, and you were really trying to watch your weight since you’d been stress eating for weeks (months?) due to your work-related and other problems. Now was the time to get your diet back to normal, not to maintain the harmful habits.

‘I shall bring those to work if I don’t want to eat all of them myself,’ you thought to yourself, using your code to walk onto the territory of your apartment complex. You were almost home since, thankfully, the supermarket was only a few minutes’ walk away.

The concierge was away, which you noted since you’d usually greet him whenever you came back. You simply headed towards the elevator this time, still consumed by your thoughts. Before you could get close enough to press the button, someone grabbed your wrist, startling you.

‘Excuse me!’

Turning around, you faced the stranger, who decided to stop you in your tracks so unexpectedly.

‘Yes?’

He stared back at you, and you at him. Did you know this guy? Was he new in your building? It was relatively new, so many people were moving in these days. You did, not too long ago. But he didn’t look familiar. Or trustworthy, for that matter.

‘Can I... help you?’

Moving your shoulder back you tried to break free from his hold, but didn’t succeed. This was strange.

‘You’re pretty,’ he suddenly said matter-of-factly. ‘Can I have your number?’

At this point the encounter had become creepy. You went out wearing non-flashy clothes, zero makeup and a mask. How could he even tell whether you were pretty or not? The fact that he was still physically holding you in place escalated the situation.

‘What?’ Dumbfounded, you blinked at him.

‘You’re pretty. Exotic. Give me your number, we can chat.’

Ah, that. You hadn’t been called exotic in a while, and you realized what type of guy that he was.

‘Please let go of me. Kindly.’ You asked, looking around to see if there were any security cameras pointed in your direction.

‘Give me your number first,’ he argued with a strained smile.

The contact became even more unwelcome.

‘Let go,’ you repeated firmly, jerking your arm even though your wrist began to hurt.

‘Oh, come on. I just want your number; I’m not asking for your apartment passcode! Don’t be difficult.’

You were being difficult? This guy would piss you off if he wasn’t getting scarily persistent.

‘I said, let me-’

‘What’s going on?’ A familiar voice, an octave lower than usual, rumbled from behind you.

Turning back, you realized the elevator doors were open, and your neighbor walked through those in long, determined strides.

‘Is there something you want?’ Baekhyun grabbed onto the man’s wrist. ‘Hands off.’

‘Hey, I’m just asking for some contacts, chill.’

The atmosphere seemed to get even thicker with danger. He wasn’t letting go of you, and Baekhyun seemed like he wouldn’t let it fly.

‘You followed her here in the middle of the night, trespassing, by the way, to ask for her number?’

‘What, I can’t be friendly to a nice girl?’

Baekhyun suddenly moved, tapping the intruder on the throat with his palm and using the brief daze of his opponent to unclasp his fingers from you and twist his arm behind his back. Pushing his face to the wall harshly, Baekhyun held him there for a few moments.

‘Let go of me! You’re gonna break my arm, you psycho!’

Your neighbor didn’t seem fazed by the screams.

‘Listen carefully, you fucking punk. I’ll give you ten seconds to make yourself scarce before I alert the police. And if you ever see her again – run the other way. You’ll experience more than a broken arm if you lay a hand on her, you got me?’

The guy only yelped, swearing and begging for mercy at the same time.

‘Do we have an understanding?’ Baekhyun pressed before letting him go.

‘Ye-yes! You’re crazy!’

As soon as he was left alone, your attacker stumbled towards the door and quickly ran out of your building, still holding onto his arm pathetically. Meanwhile, your vision was entirely blurred out, eyes only focused on the broad back in front of you. You were surprised when Baekhyun turned around and slowly walked towards you, looking into your eyes inquisitively.

‘Y/N-ah, are you okay?’ He asked in a much softer voice. ‘Are you hurt?’

His hand touched your reddened wrist gently, and you shuddered.

‘N-no. I’m okay. Th-thank you.’

Baekhyun’s eyes searched your face for clues and seemed to have found some. He took another careful step towards you and cautiously wrapped his arms around you. The action was much needed, and you were glad he did it. His hold made you feel grounded and secure, and you were clinging to him instinctively, searching for comfort.

‘It’s alright. He probably scared you a lot,’ he murmured, voice soothing. ‘But you’re safe now. I’m here.’

Belatedly, you realized that you were sniffling quietly into his chest the entire time, grabbing a handful of his shirt.

‘I’m sorry,’ you whispered, pulling away. ‘I didn’t mean to cause you-’

‘Y/N,’ he instantly cut you off. ‘You didn’t cause anything. But preferably don’t walk around this late all alone.’

Baekhyun cupped your face and wiped your tears with his thumbs.

‘I live just next door. Tell me if you need company, or if anyone bothers you again.’

He paused to look down and bent forward to pick something from the floor. The plastic bag from the store that you dropped during the struggle.

‘Let’s get you home now,’ he hummed, guiding you to the elevator.

‘But-’

‘Don’t worry. I’ll take care of everything.’

Baekhyun delivered you onto your doorstep in silence.

‘Do you have ice to put on your wrist for bruising?’ He inquired, and you nodded timidly.

Not that you weren’t thankful, you were just still a bit shocked, and embarrassed too.

‘Y/N-ie,’ Baekhyun suddenly patted you on the head like a little girl. ‘Are you sure you’re gonna be okay?’

‘Y-yeah. I just need to… I just need a moment.’

He nodded for you to press your passcode in, and held the door for you before giving the bag with your snacks back.

‘Text me if you need anything,’ he stressed. ‘Okay?’

‘Mhm.’ You simply nodded.

You couldn’t exactly say that he was what you needed right now.

‘See you, Y/N-ah.’

***

The incident greatly impacted your (usually) pretty peaceful life. And it actually pushed you towards interacting with Baekhyun much more often – from the occasional small talk whenever you ran into each other, to the actual… hangouts? You swiftly went from acquaintances to friends.

In the span of a few weeks, you became a frequent guest at his home. One could even say that the negative experience turned out to be the catalyst of your relationship. You’d grown much closer afterwards. So comfortable with each other, that you found yourself in his living room in front of the TV every other day.

‘Yah, why didn’t you pause while I was on the phone? I can’t trust you to give me the short version, you take longer than if we actually rewatch it!’

‘What? I can be pretty laconic if I need to!’ You threw a carrot slice at him.

You had so much popcorn lately that a healthier equivalent was more than necessary.

‘What’s this, a bunny attack?’ Baekhyun threw it in his mouth and crunched on it. ‘Get back to where I left off.’

‘Alright, oppa.’

He drove you crazy with his bossiness sometimes.

‘That’s right. Respect your elders,’ he teased.

‘Why do I put up with this…’ Rewinding the episode, you scratched the fluffy head in your lap. ‘Mongryong-ah, I only endure this for you!’

Baekhyun looked down at his corgi.

‘Wah, living your best life, aren’t you, old man?’

‘You didn’t have to mention his age! You’re still adorable, Ryongie,’ you stroked the dog’s back.

‘He likes you too much,’ Baekhyun noted. ‘This grandpa usually isn’t this mellow with strangers.’

‘I’m not a stranger!’

‘With new people,’ he corrected, laughing at your exasperation.

‘I like him too. It’s mutual,’ you hugged the corgi, stretching his long body along yours, and rubbed his belly.

‘Wow. Literally a pile of mush, disgusting.’ Baekhyun said, looking at his happy dog.

‘You’re just jealous ‘cause he’s never this cute with you.’

‘Or I’m jealous ‘cause I want a belly rub too,’ he retorted, finally pressing play.

‘All you have to do is ask,’ you thought.

Unfortunately for you, Mongryong actually lived with Baekhyun’s parents, so you couldn’t use him as an excuse to come over that often. Even though your neighbor was diligently informing you about his pet’s visits. You really should’ve read between the lines, but even if you realized he did like you… It wouldn’t have changed much. You were just not the type to make the first move, so you just went with the flow. And if there was no opening for you to spend time with Baekhyun, you just… didn’t.

But the universe had its own ways of pushing you.

~

‘Why isn’t it working?’ You grumbled, pressing the numbers on your keypad lock. ‘Please, don’t tell me…’

An odd thought had crossed your mind. You hadn’t changed your batteries since you’d moved in, so what if those had completely drained? Today, of all days! When you went out to buy some cereal and ended up running home from the store under pouring rain?

‘No, dammit!’ You cursed under your breath.

‘Trouble with your lock?’ The voice from behind made you jump.

‘Oh god, when did you get here?’

‘Just now,’ Baekhyun hummed. ‘You look stressed. Are you locked out?’

‘Yeah. The battery died… Very timely. What do I do…’

‘You need a 9V.’

‘A what?’

‘A 9V square battery,’ Baekhyun laughed. ‘Which, I assume, you don’t have.’

You stared at him blankly, looking absolutely clueless.

‘Come here,’ he grabbed your wrist and led you to his door. ‘I’ll go to the store and get you one. But you need to change, or you’re bound to get sick.’

It wasn’t like you would say no – you were shivering already.

‘Here, you can wear this for the time being. And a towel,’ he handed you a small pile as soon as he left his bedroom. ‘Use a hairdryer for your hair.’

‘You really don’t need to-’

‘Go, you’re freezing. I’ll make a quick run to the store and back, and you warm up in the shower.’

‘Thank you,’ you managed to say while he was nudging you into the bathroom.

You locked the door behind yourself just to be sure, although you trusted that Baekhyun wouldn’t try anything. Still, taking a shower at his place was kinda intimate… and exciting. Maybe because it was the first time you’d ever done it in another man’s home?

‘Get ahold of yourself, Y/N-ssi,’ you told your reflection in the mirror.

The color in your cheeks seemed too bright. Taking your clothes off was strangely a big deal, so you hurried up and jumped into the shower quickly. Your body welcomed the warmth, so you spent at least ten blissful minutes under the hot water. Baekhyun’s wash smelled nice, and you stood there for a few minutes, thinking about how familiar the scent was. You’d seen him fresh out of the shower, so you knew this smell even though it was less concentrated on him. And now you had it all over yourself.

‘Stop wasting someone else’s water,’ you scolded yourself for your dreaminess and finished your routine quickly.

The thought of you smelling exactly like Baekhyun made you squirm. Were you a pervert? This shouldn’t have been this thrilling. Continuing to scold yourself, you got dressed.

‘Gosh, this shirt is long,’ you mused, trying to see the fit in the mirror. It reached your mid-thigh and was the best Baekhyun could offer of his own oversized clothes. You daydreamed for another minute about how broad and chic his shoulders must look in clothes like these.

‘I really do need to get a grip.’

Another ten minutes later, you finally stepped out of the bathroom. You found Baekhyun in the kitchen, moving stuff around on the counter. Certainly, with how long you’d been in the shower… he was back already.

‘Oh, Y/N, you’re done already?’ He asked as soon as he spotted you. ‘Sit down, I’m making you some mint tea.’

Mint tea was actually something that you brought into his life. Baekhyun wasn’t into tea – like almost any Korean, he preferred coffee. But once you’d introduced some variation into his beverage selection during one of your visits, he grew to appreciate the new flavors.

Instead of taking a seat, you came closer to see how he was brewing his tea. Baekhyun was very focused, and you couldn’t help but smile.

‘You didn’t have to do this,’ you murmured, sounding softer than you expected.

He looked down at you, eyes wandering around your face for a few seconds before reaching your mouth.

‘It’s no problem. I don’t want you to get sick,’ he said, turning away and licking his lips. ‘Here.’

You accepted the cup from his hands and took a sip.

‘Oh, that’s good! Thanks!’

Baekhyun nodded, watching you have more.

‘Did you get the V.. battery thing?’

‘Oh, about that… They didn’t have any. But don’t worry, I ordered express delivery online, should take a couple hours tops.’

Catching your uncertain expression, he suggested moving to the living room.

‘We can watch something or just chill.’

Although you agreed, you knew there was no way to pay attention to anything on the screen. You were acutely aware of the fact that you were in Baekhyun’s home, wearing his clothes, smelling of his shower gel, and sitting on his sofa. And the person responsible for your unstable control over your feelings was slowly catching up.

‘You sure you’re okay, Y/N-ah?’ He asked, leaning in to touch your forehead. ‘You seem a bit distracted and quiet.’

‘No. I mean, yes. I mean- I’m fine,’ you blurted out too quickly.

He stayed close, examining your face in great detail.

‘Your cheeks are red,’ he said, making you hold your breath. ‘And you’re pretty without makeup. As usual.’

You swallowed, afraid that your voice could betray you if you answered. His lips parted as soon as his eyes fell on your mouth again.

‘You’re always pretty,’ he said, distracted by your lips.

Without realizing it, you cocked your head slightly to the side, inviting him to kiss you. He was slowly getting closer, and your mind blacked out for a second.

When the lights in your head turned back on, you were full-on making out. It started slow initially, then it led to you two viciously attacking each other’s lips. Just the sound of your kissing made you shiver, and the pleasant tickle of butterflies in your belly accompanied this madness. You hadn’t experienced it for so long, it seemed new, and strong, and addictive.

Baekhyun didn’t waste any time, hands wrapping around your unsuspecting form to hold you against him. You gasped for air, but that was a short-lived pause. His tongue slid between your lips mischievously, and you could only grunt. You’d be down for anything he suggested right now. It was hard to tell how much time had passed while you were kissing, but you relished every second of it. His warmth, his skill, his gentle touch… He was way too perfect, and there was no way you could stop at your own volition.

But the doorbell disrupted your craze within a second.

Both of you stared into each other’s eyes, breathing heavily before he finally moved to get off of you. Sitting up, you tugged at the hem of your shirt, unable to recall just when he got on top of you. Not that you minded, anyway.

‘Ah, why did I order express delivery…’ Baekhyun muttered frustratedly, closing his eyes. ‘Give me a minute. No, twenty seconds.’

Nodding, you chuckled at his impatience. You felt exactly the same – eager to pick up where you left off. Although you weren’t the type of girl who’d give in to her desires easily, you’d been tiptoeing around your devilishly handsome neighbor for way too long. What happened just moments prior was solid proof of how weak you were for him. It was the first time ever you dove into a makeout session so fanatically that your memory was spotty afterward.

But the worries suddenly replaced your giddiness. What if he thought… that you were into that sort of thing? What if he now believed that you casually came into men’s houses and jumped them like a hungry lioness? Was it too needy of you?

‘What the hell are you doing here?’

The undertone of Baekhyun’s voice instantly got your attention. He wasn’t pleased to see whoever it was at his door. Could there be any trouble with the delivery?

‘Aw, and I was under the impression you’ve been missing me like crazy, babe.’ The flirty female voice answered.

Oh no.

Oh hell no.

Did he… have a girlfriend?!

The thought was like a cold shower to your body. Of course. An attractive young man lives in a fancy apartment complex and drives a luxurious car… How could he ever be single?

You were so naive.

And now you were about to get caught.

Springing up from the sofa, you darted towards the door and then froze. You couldn’t walk out of the living room without being seen. This was a nightmare, your worst nightmare coming to life.

‘I signed off on your delivery for you. Can’t you be grateful for one second, Baekhyunie?’

Her voice seemed closer. She was definitely inside the apartment. Maybe she’d believe your explanation that he was just helping you out? Solely friendly neighbor stuff? Oh gosh, you were totally done for.

‘Just get out.’

‘Why, are you hiding something?’ She asked, a bit less playful this time.

‘No.’

‘Are you sure?’ You could hear her taking a step.

‘Didn’t you hear me? Get out.’

There were a few seconds of silence that made you quiver with anxiety.

‘Is there someone in there, Baekhyun?’ She repeated.

‘Is it any of your business?’ He gritted. ‘Where do you think you’re- yah!’

The noise from the hallway could only mean one thing – she was walking right this way. Your mind couldn’t develop anything slightly useful at that point, so you simply stood there. In front of the sofa where you’d just almost… yeah.

She stormed into the room, pausing when she saw you. She was taller than you and very, very skinny. If you’d ever met her outside, you’d think she was a model. She wore a black ensemble that you could only guess was some hot-ass designer, and her hair was perfectly styled. She didn’t blink her faux eyelashes once while scanning you head to toe.

‘Are you freaking serious?’

The way she scrunched her nose, almost in disgust, made you shift uncomfortably. You’d definitely tell her off for this, if not for the shame you felt for being caught red-handed as ‘the mistress’.

‘Are you serious? Stop walking around like you own the place.’ Baekhyun fired back from behind her.

‘I go to the States for a few months, and then you’re snatched when I return?’ She huffed in disbelief. ‘Or is she paid to come here? Judging by the attire you were saving up. And I wouldn’t wear anything revealing with legs like that.’

Your mouth opened, but before you could even respond, your neighbor grabbed her forearm.

‘You really are delusional. Get out of my house.’

He dragged her back to the door, and she continued to yell at him.

‘Are you kidding me, Baekhyun? I can’t believe you’d kick me out to stay with some hooker!’

He stopped abruptly, turning to face her.

‘My mother taught me not to swear in front of ladies. But I hope you shut your fucking mouth right now. I’m only warning you once.’

He shoved her forward towards the door and cleared his throat.

‘Get your shit and leave. I’ll have a word with our security about how you got in.’

‘Fuck you, Byun. I’ll walk these heels over your balls when you realize you’ve made a huge mistake!’

‘Please, spare me your sick fantasies.’ He rolled his eyes, swinging his door open. ‘Out.’

The door slammed shut as soon as she left, and Baekhyun sighed loudly. He ran his left hand through his hair, still on edge, and pressed a button to turn the display on to see your floor. When she was gone, he sighed again, this time in relief. And you… felt so confused. And ashamed. And humiliated.

When Baekhyun turned around, it struck you on the spot. You couldn’t face him right now. Suddenly you felt small and exposed, and all you wanted was to be alone. So, you rushed back into the room to grab your phone.

‘Y/N-’ He began, walking after you. ‘Wait.’

You avoided his touch as you busted out of the room.

‘Where are you going?’ He asked as you slipped your feet into your wet shoes. ‘Stop.’

His hand caught your elbow, and you shivered as his skin burned yours.

‘Please, don’t follow me. I need to go.’ You asked, facing the door.

‘But-’

‘Baekhyun.’ You pushed.

He didn’t say anything for a moment. You heard shuffling, and then he put something into your palm.

‘You’ll need this.’

The battery.

Masterlist

A/N: Happy (belated) Lunar Year to everyone btw! And also huge thanks to all of you sweethearts who take time to read my stories and leave me long kind messages and comments, I appreciate you so much ❤️❤️❤️

[othrysbulletin]

Welcome!

This is a blog dedicated to streamlining works centered around the Titan Army and its members, particularly the demigods. Here are some guidelines and tips to help you navigate the blog.

General guidelines:

Mod expects everyone who interacts with this blog to be a decent human being and will not hesitate to scrap with rude people.

All content will be TA-centric, meaning fanworks where the TA are side/background characters may not be put on here.

Given the darker/more morally grey nature of the Titan Army and its characters, this blog may include works with more mature themes. Mod will place content labels where necessary. Trigger warnings will be indicated in the tags (appended by "//"), which you can block. That being said, discretion for what fanworks to reblog ultimately lies with the mod.

Blog will run mostly on queue. If you haven't seen your works or submissions on here yet, chances are it's in the queue or it has already been posted (in the case of headcanons and meta, something similar has already been posted). Please do not bug the mod to follow up on anything.

Mod will not boost any fanworks that contain character or ship-bashing to keep this blog generally a positive and wank-free space.

Submissions and asks guidelines below the cut!

Submission guidelines:

How do I get my work plugged onto this blog?

If you want to plug fanworks about the Titan Army, the blog will be accepting submissions for the following: fics/writing, art, meta, and short-form headcanons. You can simply submit the links of the posts to your works; for short-form headcanons, just a plain text submission will do.

Otherwise, mod will be diving into the characters' tags as regularly as they can.

What criteria does my work need to meet in order to be on here?

As per the second general guideline, at least one Titan Army character must be a centric/main character. Including other characters is okay, but they will not be tagged for.

Ships with one (or more) TA characters and one (or more) non-TA character/s are accepted, so long as they are the focus of the work.

For writing and art, only completed works will be reblogged on here, i.e. wip snippets are not allowed. Completed and posted chapters of an ongoing multi-chaptered fic and completed b/w sketches are still allowed.

Do you accept fanworks with non-canon Titan Army characters?

Fanworks with OCs will be accepted.

In light of the incoming second season of PJOTV, the blog will also be accepting fanworks with Alison in them! Until she has a last name, she'll be tagged for with "alison pjotv".

For characters in canon that are headcanon-ed to be in the Titan Army in the context of the fanwork, they will be accepted. Mod will tag such posts with "ta [insert character name] (headcanon)," e.g. "ta percy (headcanon)".

Self-insert/x reader fanworks will not be accepted.

Any other content specifications?

While the blog will accept works of a more mature nature, the mod will not be plugging or accepting submissions of sexual content wherein one or more of the involved characters are underage. Works with extremely graphic violence will also not be accepted. This is done in consideration of the source material's general audience as well as the mod's personal squicks.

Asks guidelines:

Do you accept asks?

Yes! This blog will be accepting asks containing anything that's not covered by the submissions. Do keep in mind, however, that othrysbulletin is not supposed to be an askblog. For non-TA-related things, fanwork ideas or requests, and anything concerning the mod's opinions, you can ask them on their main blog.

What can we ask you?

You can ask the mod for fic recs; for instance, you may want fic recs of specifically a certain character or trope. For personal recommendations (aka "fics you like"), please direct them to the mod's main blog.

You can also ask the mod to promote TA-related events, games, askblogs, or community hubs!

Feel free to also clarify any of the guideline specifications, or to send in suggestions in order to improve this blog—as long as it’s done politely and in good faith.

Tag list guide -> HERE

---

Thanks for reading! Let’s all have fun :) Below is a link to a masterpost of other curation matters for Titan Army fans.

TA fandom curation masterpost -> HERE

[yukidragon]

Sunny Day Jack - Love and Sex Headcanons

You read the title, you know what the topic is about; I’m going to be rambling off my personal headcanons for the romantic and sexual preferences of the main cast of Something’s Wrong with Sunny Day Jack. This is as it applies to my fanfics Sunshine in Hell and Sunshine in Another World, so I’ll be including my version of the MC, Alice King.

Content warnings: This fandom/game/content is for Adults Only. There is talk of sex in this post. A lot of it. I will be going into graphic detail at times, as well as touch on some serious issues on occasion, such as SA, trauma, negative body image, toxic relationships, religious guilt, homophobia, bigotry, past child abuse, sex work, and such.

While I intend to keep things mostly spicy and sweet, sometimes darker topics affect a person’s view about sex and preferences, since sex can be complicated that way. This is especially the case if a character deals with some traumatic experience that relates to their sex life/sexuality. I will try to trod lightly on the heavier topics when I can.

I must emphasize that, while I draw information from the game’s canon as shown in both versions of the demo, Sleepy Time Jack, as well as official information/art and development images/posts, ultimately these are my personal headcanons. They might not completely line up with what’s going to be canon in the final game. These are just what’s currently canon for the Sunshine in Hell continuity and what feels right to me personally when it comes to the characters.

I say currently canon since stuff changes as I develop things and play with the characters more. They’ve definitely evolved since I first played the demo. Heck, they’ve even evolved since I started working on this post due to how long it’s taken me to get this finally finished.

Since this post will be using official/development art to help illustrate my points at times, I want to give my friend Sauce full credit for their awesome art and for creating this game with all its wonderful characters and ideas in the first place.

Please consider supporting them and the rest of the SnaccPop Studios team by signing up for the official patreon. Also, consider buying a full size print of this steamy cropped piece of art with a special toy included. It would help out a lot of lovely hard working people and give you access to the many cool posts on there, as well as juicy lore tidbits. A fair number of these posts influenced my headcanons, which you’ll only be able to see if you join up. Remember, don't share anything privately posted on patreon!

While I’m at it, here’s links to the official twitter, tumblr, itch, steam, and kickstarter pages for Sunny Day Jack, which are also places where I got information and inspiration for these smutty headcanons.

@channydraws @earthgirlaesthetic @sai-of-the-7-stars @cheriihoney @illary-kore @okamiliqueur

Okay, with disclaimers, promotions, and tags out of the way, let’s get down to the spice.

…

This post won’t encompass every single thing that the characters find arousing/attractive, since there’s no way that I can think of everything for one post, but I’ll write as many kinks, desires, and preferences that come to mind.

First, let’s have some general headcanons that apply to all the main characters. None of them have a preference when it comes to gender. It doesn’t matter what’s in someone’s pants or how they identify. What matters to them is what’s in their partner’s heart and usually that’s the most attractive quality a person can have.

Consent is king! All the characters want consent from their partner/love interest, particularly enthusiastic consent. While some might be pushier than others when it comes to wanting sex/romance, at the end of the day, “no” means “NO.” Everyone’s consent matters.

Now onto the specific characters, starting with the star of the show…

Jack(tor)

Jack has two sides to him - that of the character known as Sunny Day Jack that he’s trying to embody, and that of the actor who used to be known as Joseph Cullman. While he polished the rough edges off of the persona that he presents to the world, at the end of the day, he can’t change his likes and dislikes so easily. A lot of his desires as Jack have been influenced by the desires he had as Joseph… as long as they don’t cause him to break character. There’s a level of what’s “expected” and “acceptable” for him to like as the kid friendly Sunny Day Jack, and what this naughty, naughty yandere really desires deep down inside. We can see evidence of this in his BDSM test results.

Overall, Jack is quite dominant when it comes to his sexual desires. Specifically, he’s a service top, focusing on controlling the scene with his partner’s pleasure in mind. He wants to make his partner feel his love in every sense of the word.

Jack is pansexual/panromantic. He doesn’t discriminate, and can find any sort of body type or personality attractive, but that doesn’t mean that he’s indiscriminately able to fall in love or lust with just anyone. His desire to be loved has led him to make poor choices in his past and has led to him growing attached to people who took advantage of how desperate he was to be loved.

Romantic attraction and sexual attraction are linked when it comes to Jack. He’s not going to desire someone sexually unless he’s experiencing romantic feelings towards them, so usually the two things come together at the same time.

Once Jack falls in love with someone, he is very, very loyal. It will take a lot to get him to let go of these feelings. He’s also very much the jealous type, wanting to monopolize the person he’s in love with, which results in him being fairly clingy. Though, he is willing to compromise on just how clingy he is for the sake of his partner’s wants and needs, provided that he’s not at risk of losing them. At the end of the day, he loves sincerely and wants the person he loves to be happy.

While Jack has claimed in an audio drama Q&A posted on patreon that he theoretically might be open to entering a polyamorous relationship, ultimately, what he really wants is a closed monogamous relationship. He might have lots of love in his heart to give to as many people as will accept it and him, but at the end of the day, he can’t stand the idea of losing someone who actually loves him, particularly the person he loves the most. As I’ve mentioned in past headcanon posts about Jack getting into a poly relationship, (which you can read here and here) I don’t think it would be a healthy balanced relationship between all parties if he were to go into a poly relationship, and as such I think he’s better suited to a single partner.

That isn’t to say that I don’t think Jack would refuse to have sex with someone besides his partner… provided that his partner is the one who wants him to do so. He might not want it himself, but he is willing to consent to it provided his partner is there to watch him do it. He’s willing to consent to quite a lot of things for the sake of love, even if he dislikes them or it makes him uncomfortable. After all, if he’s willing to kill for the sake of his love, there’s a lot of other unsavory things that he’ll be willing to do.

As shown in this early development art by Sauce, Jack isn’t exactly happy to encourage his rival to hurt themselves, as we see from his forced smile, but he’ll do what he must for the sake of keeping his sunshine. Even though this is technically not-canon, it has helped shape my idea of how going down this path causes damage to his psyche and isn’t something he would want if he could avoid it.

In a lot of ways, Jack is a sexual chameleon, eager to please his partner. While he is keen to try different things and experiment in the bedroom, he won’t push any kink that his partner doesn’t want or reacts badly to. Sure, he’ll attempt to convince them to give something a try when it comes to a kink that excites him if they express reluctance, and he’ll want to know what’s wrong so he can fix it or otherwise accommodate them if possible, but at the end of the day, he won’t ever force anything onto his partner. Their pleasure is his pleasure.

Jack is addicted to his partner’s love, attention, desire, pleasure, and validation above all else. This is why he thrives on hearing his partner praise him and tell him just how much they love him. Words of affirmation is his primary love language, as we’ve seen with how ready he is to shower his sunshine with words of love, and how much it meant to him that his sunshine verbally confirms that they love him.

Jack also gets excited by the idea of others seeing him being loved so much by his partner, which is where his exhibitionist kink comes in. He’s the one who is special to his sunshine, not anyone else. They can only watch with envious eyes while he shows them exactly what they’re missing out on. It’s quite a turn on to show the world just how much he’s loved, that he’s the only one special enough to be loved by his sunshine like this. Only he deserves his partner’s love, and only he can make his sunshine feel this good and loved. He would have sex in public before an audience with his sunshine if his partner consented to it, provided that it’s made clear to everyone involved that he’s the only one his partner truly loves and needs more than anyone else.

Another factor that plays into his exhibitionism is his desire not to be forgotten. His past as Joseph is full of moments where that left him feeling discarded and unlovable. The more people who focus on him, the less likely he is to be forgotten.

Cuckolding is definitely something Jack hates, at least if he’s the one being forced to watch his partner have sex with someone else. Even if other people are involved during sex, he needs to be his partner’s primary focus. If he’s the most important person to his partner, then he can at least tolerate others’ involvement. He doesn’t want to have sex with someone that he’s not in love with (or at least not strongly emotionally connected to romantically), but if it made his partner happy, he would do it for their sake… though he would need them to shower him with love and encouragement the entire time.

However, if Jack is the one cuckolding someone else, like, say, Ian… now that’s a different story. Tied to the degrader kink, Jack wants to show that he’s more worthy than others of his sunshine’s love. If his rivals are writhing in envy and can see they don’t deserve Alice like he does, well that’s pretty darn exciting. It’s why he’ll be a poor winner and make sure that all his rivals are very much aware who Alice chose instead of them.

Yes, this means that, just like Jack is going to make sure that Shaun overhears him making love to Alice (as I’ve mentioned in previous posts), he’s going to make sure Ian knows that her pretty moans are only for Jack, now and forever. While the incident with Shaun is Jack marking his territory to prevent a possible rival from getting any ideas, with Ian it’s far more personal. Jack wants to make sure Ian feels worthless and inferior to him in every way. I haven’t decided exactly how he’ll go about this, but hopefully he won’t take it too far, hahaha.

Anyway, ultimately, when it comes to involving other people besides his partner, Jack would rather have an audience rather than additional participants: they can look, listen, and envy, but they can’t touch.

At the end of the day though, his partner has a lot of sway in this matter if others are involved in their sex life… for better or for worse.

While love and sex are closely tied in Jack’s mind, he can still perform sexually without romantic attachment, though he would prefer not to. Back before he was an actor, when he was homeless after running away from home, he had to do things that he wasn’t proud of just to survive, which included performing sex acts on a transactional basis. He was used, and he knew full well that he was being used, but he did what he could to survive life on the streets.

This is part of why Jack prefers to be the one dominating. He wants control over his sexuality in a way that he couldn’t have when sex work sometimes was the only thing that kept him from starving to death. Sex workers don’t tend to be treated well by their clients, especially if they’re a homeless drifter without any support network.

Jack did attempt to find love in the past, but oftentimes he was just exploited for his body, which led to toxic relationships similar to the Tragedy of [Redacted] theory in one of my first headcanon posts. His desperate desire to be loved was unfortunately taken advantage of, which led to unpleasant experiences. Sometimes he fell for someone’s charms and actually believed that they actually cared for him, only for that person to just want a quick fuck and not a real relationship, which stomped all over his heart and made him wonder what more he could have done to “deserve” to be loved…

Once Jack became an actor, he went from being ignored to getting too much attention… and all of it shallow, just focused on his body and fame. The interview with Dan was a sore spot for him because he was used in many ways, by people who only saw him as a sex object to use then discard and not as a human who desperately wished to be loved.

This is why Jack’s feelings for Alice are so strong. Due to their connection, he can literally feel that she cares about him in a way that he never could with anyone else. With how much he’s always craved such a connection with someone, their bond has given him reassurance that he never got to experience while alive. He can feel when he pleases her and when he makes her flustered. He can tell when she’s upset and has an easier time spotting when he’s making a mistake with her. There’s security in knowing her feelings for him, and that those feelings are sincere.

The connection also allows Jack to feel what Alice is experiencing physically to some extent, which includes sexual pleasure. For a service top like him who gets off on his partner’s pleasure, it’s addicting to be able to literally feel the pleasure that he’s giving her. He knows when he’s doing well, and he can learn quickly how best to pleasure her. He wants more and more of all of these wonderful feelings this connection with Alice gives to him, so he’ll do whatever it takes to please her so that he can feel more of her love.

While Jack has a huge exhibitionist kink, and the idea of an audience watching him make love to Alice excites him, at the same time he wants to lock her up away from the rest of the world so that they can’t take her away from him. He needs her. He loves her. His very existence depends on her. What she gives him is far too precious to risk losing for any brief moment of pleasure.

As we’ve seen in this development art… Jack would prefer it if it was just him and his sunshine… forever. Between his past and being trapped in the tape, there’s a desperation to him now to not lose Alice and everything she’s given him… and woe be it to anyone who tries to take his sunshine away.

After being trapped in the tape and suffering a hellish fate for 40 years without rest, Jack has become touch starved and clingy. He was love/touch starved even before his death, but the tape made it so much worse. He would be very happy if Alice wanted to hold onto him 24/7. He views having a piece of his soul inside of Alice as similar to getting a hug from her all the time, and vice-versa with the piece of her that she gave to him. Although that piece of her soul is the most precious thing he possesses, he can’t help but be greedy and want more and more of her. He’ll take as much as she’ll give him.

As one might expect, Jack isn’t keen on being separated from Alice for too long. In the past, he could handle giving his partner space for several days if they needed it, but going a full day without his sunshine is unbearable in the present. It was especially rough in the beginning when their relationship was still new, and their connection was fragile.

It just gets so cold without his sunshine…

The sensory deprivation Jack experienced in the tape affects him as well. He’s more sensitive to stimuli than he was before. This makes him so much more aware of the world, especially what he can and can’t interact with. This is especially the case when it comes to his sunshine.

Really, a sunshine that keeps Jack at a distance would just make his neediness worse, as he literally can’t interact with anything else. Sure he can see his surroundings and respond to them, but he needs to be closer to his sunshine to interact with them, including his sunshine. If all he can touch is his sunshine for a long time, it just makes his neediness to be close to them all the worse.

Fortunately, Alice pretty much accepted Jack of being capable of touching and interacting with things right away, so it’s not as bad for him as it could have been... but let’s face it, Jack’s need for sensory stimulation is going to be pretty bad regardless.

Jack is hyper aware of everything about his sunshine - the feeling of her skin, how warm each part of her body is, how soft... All the little folds and curves. He memorizes the sensation of her fingers wrapped around his and just how small she is when he holds her in his arms, completely surrounding her.

Jack is so aware of her scent too, so very, very aware. Most of the time Alice smells of vanilla cupcakes and sugar cookies due to her shampoo and deodorant, but sometimes she puts on perfume or switches things up. He notices it right away when it changes, but most of all he notices how her distinct scent without any perfumes affects it. He’s smelled her products directly - out of curiosity he swears - but it’s not the same. It’s nice... but it’s not her.

Smelling Alice’s pillows and clothes... now there’s where he gets his hit when he can’t be close enough to breathe her in. At the start, she gave him one of her pillows that smelled just like her. She never really gets it back, and when Jack gets sneakier with slipping away to take care of himself, he brings the pillow with him. He buries his face in it as he jerks himself off to thoughts of her, imagining that he’s buried his face in her chest or between her thighs.

When Jack discovers that Alice has a pillow that she props between her legs to sleep more comfortably, he can’t help but imagine her humping that pillow imagining it’s him. She doesn’t, of course, but the fantasy gets to him, and he can’t help but be the one to enact it, imagining that he’s thrusting into where this lucky pillow usually rests. He made sure to clean it up thoroughly afterwards so she doesn’t notice, but seeing her sleep with it after that drives him crazy.

Jack knows using her pillows and clothes like that is wrong, but it’s fine, right? He’s being patient, waiting for the day that Alice is ready to do these things with him. He knows it’ll happen. He can feel how much she cares about him. With every day they get closer... and she’s slowly starting to see just how perfect they are for each other too. One day, he won’t need to settle for a pillow. One day, he’ll be thrusting his cock into all of her holes, listening to her pretty moans that are only for him.

And, well, he’s right, basically. Jack is a very, very happy man when that happens, and he makes sure Alice doesn’t regret choosing him. He’s going to make sure that she enjoys every second of their lovemaking.

Until then, Jack has his fantasies of what it’ll be like. He fantasizes about Alice on a daily basis, often lewd fantasies but sometimes wholesome and sweet like imagining them getting married. He’ll try his best to only imagine what he’s seen of of her so far without assuming what he’ll find underneath her clothes. It doesn’t matter what equipment she has after all, she’s beautiful and perfect to him just as she is. He laser focuses on every new inch of skin he sees, searing it into his mind forever and adding it to his fantasies.

Sometimes it feels to Jack as if Alice is teasing him as well. He would be convinced that she is if he couldn’t pick up on her thoughts. She’s genuinely oblivious how sexy she looks wearing only a too thin t-shirt with no bra, especially when she stretches. She doesn’t notice how her clothes ride up when she stretches or how he drinks her in when she does. He can’t help but notice just how flexible she is and imagine how he might be able to make her body bend around his in various delicious angles. Until that day though, he won’t let anything slip by his notice.

This leads into Jack’s voyeurism kink. This is pretty closely tied to the exhibitionist kink. He loves to show off his sexy body and see the desire in his partner’s eyes. He wants them to know what he has to offer, how good he can make his partner feel, and how good they make him feel. He also enjoys seeing his partner show off their body to him and watching them get off… provided that it’s not with someone else. Watching someone else make his partner moan isn’t his idea of a fun time. Sure his partner is sexy, but… it leaves him feeling insecure. What if they like the other person better? He can’t risk it. They should only be moaning because of him.

So when it comes to voyeurism, Jack would rather watch his partner get themselves off for his pleasure, preferably moaning his name or even begging him to take them. He would even enjoy watching his partner play with themselves in a deliberate effort to tease and entice him. Brat taming is something he enjoys, and making sure his partner knows who’s really in control of their pleasure as he teases them even more than they teased him is quite enticing to him.

Teasing is something that’s all in good fun, as far as Jack is concerned… as long as it remains playful of course. The degrader kink in his case isn’t done with insults like calling his partner a slut or other such degrading insults, unless they explicitly wanted him to do that of course. Rather, it’s the excitement of making his partner feel flustered and overwhelmed, even embarrassed, that’s turning him on. He knows what they’re weak against and uses it against them to leave them a blushing mess, overwhelmed by how he knows them inside and out. No one else could ever be as close to them or know them as well as he can.

An example would be Jack praising Alice for being so wet when he fingers her while she’s standing in the camera’s blind spot at Popov’s, even though she’s worried about being caught doing something so lewd at work. With how flustered she gets in general, and especially when risking getting caught by others, it can be counted as degrading to be praised for doing such a lewd act in a semi-public place. However, he is not making her feel like she’s wrong for being aroused by something she finds embarrassing.

Jack never intends to make his partner feel bad in any way. He only wants to make them feel good. Coaxing them into doing things that get them aroused and overwhelmed in a good way is exciting for him. That’s why he’s also a big fan of overstimulation and orgasm denial. He loves making his partner orgasm repeatedly and watching them come undone. If he can leave his partner a babbling mess, begging him for more or that it’s too much, while clearly enjoying every second of what he’s doing to them, he feels so needed and wanted.

Being teased can be fun as well, though Jack prefers to be teased playfully by a partner who acts a bit bratty, pushing him to work for the prize of satisfying them both. His partner proposing a challenge for him to overcome is thrilling when he can shatter their expectations and leave them totally at his mercy.

Another way Jack enjoys being teased by his partner is if they try to “escape” him, acting as prey to allow him to indulge in his predator kink and chase them down. The idea of hunting his partner, searching for them wherever they run or hide, snatching them up, and getting a good taste of his prey as his prize is delightful. Adding in a bit of bondage as well by tying up his cute little prey adds an extra thrill. Then he can tease them with praise, touch, and affection until he tames them, leaving them begging him for more.

Sure, Jack technically has a cheat mode when it comes to finding Alice due to their connection, since he can sense her wherever she is through it, but that doesn’t mean hide and seek can’t still be fun. He can just pretend that he can’t sense where she’s hiding, really heightening up the tension as he pretends to overlook her hiding spot, coming so close, putting her on edge of being found, only to pass her by. It would be a game in and of itself to tease her with the threat of almost catching her until finally he’s ready to pounce and claim his cute little prey.

Jack isn’t exactly opposed to reversing the game, with him acting as the prey, but he would quickly turn it back around on his partner. With how little control he had in his life while alive, a part of him rebels against being controlled by anyone… though his sunshine is a bit of a unique case.

Alice didn’t have to save him from hell. That was her choice. Jack might have been willing to give her anything if she saved him, but she didn’t actually want anything from him except to save him. It’s for that reason that he’ll do anything for her. He might not want to give up control, but if it was for her sake, he would let her take total control of him as long as she loves him, needs him, and never forgets him.

Really, Jack would find it cute to imagine Alice trying to hunt him down or act dominant with him in the bedroom, especially since he knows that he would soon turn the tables on her and turn her into his adorable prey. It would be more like brat taming for him in that case, teasing and tempting her until she was too flustered to continue trying to keep control, submitting to him and his love~

However, Jack only enjoys predplay if it remains play. It stops being fun if his partner is genuinely scared or in distress from the behavior. It’s the same with any kink really. A good dominant pays attention to the submissive’s comfort and needs, and he’ll be sure to satisfy all of his sunshine’s needs.

Although Jack has been shown in the test to prefer being a sadist, he’s not actually a fan of making his partner feel pain. Back when he was still alive, he could be more comfortable with various forms of mild sadism, such as spanking or hair pulling, but in the present, the idea of hurting his sunshine even in such minor ways is unthinkable. He would only be able to handle dealing out pain to his sunshine if that’s what they sincerely found pleasurable, since he would want to fulfill their needs. Of course, he would be checking in on how they’re doing a bit excessively to make sure that he never gets too tough.

Rather, the form of sadism that Jack enjoys is leaving marks on his partner’s body, particularly kiss and bite marks. It’s physical proof of his love on their skin that shows the world just how much he loves them. It’s not to the point of spilling blood or leaving a permanent scar, just leaving behind evidence of their lovemaking. It’s proof that they’re his. He’s the one who made those marks, and anyone who sees them will know his partner chose him and not them. He won’t bite unless his partner enjoys it of course. If they do, he’s going to get a taste of them and make sure it leaves a mark behind.

I mean look at this screencap. Jack really wants to be nibbling on his sunshine instead of his lip.

This is especially true in the present. Although Jack can’t stand the idea of hurting his sunshine, seeing Alice covered in hickies and bite marks makes him feel more real. He’s left irrefutable evidence of his existence on her skin, and he makes sure to adorn her in as many as she’ll allow, especially in places that she can’t easily cover up. It gives him a thrill to think that anyone who sees her would see those marks and realize that she doesn’t need them. She chose him. She’s his just as much as he’s hers. The world might not be able to see him (yet), but he’s proving that he’s real by showing the world that he’s claimed his sunshine.

Another way that Jack wants to mark his claim on his sunshine is with his cum love. Seeing his partner as a sweaty, overstimulated mess, adorned in a pearl necklace he made for them with a dripping cream pie between their legs just does it for him. He would love to make a mess of his sunshine and admire his handiwork afterwards.

This leads to Jack having a breeding kink. When he was alive, it was more mild than it is in the present. Although being a parent was a bit intimidating for him back then due to his toxic upbringing, he always hoped that he would find a loving partner and be a father someday. Granted, a breeding kink doesn’t necessarily have to lead to procreation, but simply the act of seeding his partner can be just as fun~

With the world being unable to see/hear/touch him, Jack feels more of an urge to leave his mark. Since Alice is the only one that he can interact with, that makes him want to leave his mark on her body in any way that she’ll allow. Getting her pregnant is the ultimate proof that he’s real, and even before she is ready to have kids with him, he’s fantasized about it countless times. In the past, he was thinking of siring or adopting one kid, maybe two, but in the present he wants more kids than that - as many as his sunshine will agree to. The thought of her pregnant, watching her tummy grow larger with his child drives him crazy in the best ways.

Jack is open to experimentation and trying new things, particularly at the request of his partner. He’ll do his best to accommodate his partner’s needs, whatever they might be, even if they’re not to his tastes… provided it doesn’t put them or their relationship at risk. More extreme kinks… he’ll be willing to give them a shot, but if they’re too dangerous or damaging, he’ll try to pump the brakes or at least talk about why his partner is interested in it so that they can reach a compromise that’s healthier for both of them.

As shown in the demo, Jack is very vocal in bed. He showers his partner with praise. He can talk dirty as well, though he could only swear while he was still alive. In the present, his dirty talk is mostly innuendo, as he can’t bring himself to swear anymore. Sunny Day Jack would never swear after all, it would be utterly unthinkable for a kids TV show character. If his partner wants him to degrade them by using specific insults and terms, he’ll indulge them as best as he’s able, but he’ll make sure to dish out extra praise and affection during aftercare so that he can remind them just how much they mean to him. He thinks the world of his sunshine, and he wouldn’t want to risk them actually believing that he really does think such horrible things about them.

Jack is the king of aftercare. If his partner needs anything, he’ll get it even if he’s tired. Need water or a snack? He’s on it. Need cuddles? Oh you bet he’s all over that. Need help getting cleaned up? Don’t worry, he’ll carry his partner to the bath and change the messy bedding for them. Sore? He’ll be sure to gently massage those tense muscles into submission.

Jack’s mouth isn’t just good with words. He has quite the talent for oral play. He loves using his mouth all over his partner’s body, particularly where they’re most sensitive, or where they need extra love. His favorite place to kiss, besides their lips, is their throat, as he can feel his partner’s moans vibrate against his lips, giving him that little bit of extra feedback that he’s doing a good job.

However, the sexiest part of the body for Jack is his partner’s stomach, though he loves every inch of his sunshine. A soft round tummy just does it for the guy, though all stomach shapes are lovely. He just loves having a partner who is soft and perfect for cuddling. He enjoys having a softer partner who he can protect, especially if they’re smaller than him. Caging his soft partner underneath him makes him feel secure, and he’ll keep them trapped in his arms all night long if they let him.

Jack’s favorite positions are ones where he’s facing his partner. He wants to see the expressions they make and kiss them as they make love. He favors the mating press in particular, as it allows him to penetrate his partner as deeply as possible and hit just the right spots to make them scream his name and see stars. He wants to be totally surrounded by his sunshine’s warmth and feel their love all around him.

Jack has a very high libido, so he wants to have sex as often as possible. He would want to do it every day, even multiple times a day if possible, masturbating and fantasizing about his sunshine if not. His stamina was just a bit higher than average when he was alive, but now that he’s a supernatural entity with powers, he can keep going with a very short refractory period. If his sunshine lets him, he could make love to them for hours. Of course, he’ll be considerate about the difference in their sex drives and energy levels.

Being an actor, Jack is excellent at roleplay. In fact, he might be able to get into the part too well at times. In the past, it was easier for him to get carried away with a role (which plays a part in why he’s Jack now instead of Joseph), but in the present, if he goes too far with it, that could lead to him mentally crashing back down when he realizes that he’s acting out of character for Sunny Day Jack. If he can justify Sunny Day Jack playing such a role, he doesn’t have to suffer such dissonance, so any roleplay in the present will have a bit of a primary colored tint to it.

Of course, the more relaxed Jack gets in his relationship with his sunshine, the easier it’ll be for him to slip out of character and be more himself. If these “out of character” moments never result in anything bad and his sunshine enjoys who he is when he’s at his most open and vulnerable… then maybe he’ll be able to be more comfortable acting more like himself instead of the character he wishes he was…

This is the goal for Sunshine in Hell. Although Jack is going to try his best to stay in character as Sunny Day Jack at the start, as he spends time with Alice and the two of them grow closer, he’s able to make himself more vulnerable to her, less guarded. He’s able to experiment more, indulge in the desires he has that Sunny Day Jack would never even think about. Eventually, he’ll be able to be someone who isn’t the character that he portrays, but someone comfortable in his own skin, with someone who loves him as the flawed man that he is and not as the perfect idol that he wishes he was.

I think we’ll wrap things up for Jack on that heartwarming note… especially since his entry has ballooned into 12 14 pages at this point, hahaha. I might have more thoughts in the future, but let’s show the other characters some love too, shall we?

Speaking of love, let’s talk about Jack’s sunshine, specifically my version of the MC for this erotic yandere romance game.

Alice

As I’ve mentioned before in other headcanon rambles, Alice is on the aro/ace spectrum. While she does experience horny thoughts/urges, she doesn’t actually desire someone romantically or sexually unless she’s known them for a while and has developed a bond with them. She can objectively see that someone is attractive and admire them, even feel flustered by the attention that they give to her, but these are platonic feelings. It’s only after she’s been friends with someone and opens up to them that she might develop romantic feelings for them. Even then that’s not always a guarantee. Sexual attraction then follows only after she’s made a deep romantic connection with that person, and only with that person. This would make her orientation demi-romantic, demi-sexual.

Because it takes such deep trust and closeness for Alice to fall in love with someone, when she falls in love, she falls hard… for better and for worse.

Alice is strictly monogamous. She can’t bear the idea of sharing her partner with another person, and she’ll do all she can to serve their needs to the best of her ability. She’s also fairly clingy with her partner, as her love language is primarily physical touch. She loves holding onto her partner as much as possible, playing with their hands or hair, caressing their face, nuzzling into their touch, and in general just cuddling up to them as much as they’ll allow. She can also get silly with her affection, licking or nibbling on her partner playfully if they allow her, and writing words or symbols on their skin with her finger.

Of course, Alice is careful to be gentle when nipping her partner since she has slightly larger fangs than the average person. If she bit down hard, she could draw blood with those fangs… if her partner is into that and convinces her that they really want her to do some damage of course.

Alice is only comfortable with physical touch with someone if she trusts them and has a positive connection with them. If she doesn’t have some level of trust, being touched puts her on edge, even if it’s something as casual as a pat on the back.

The part of her partner’s body that Alice finds most attractive is their chest. Big, small, flat, soft… they’re all beautiful, and she loves to bury her face into her partner’s chest and listen to their heartbeat as often as she can, feeling them breathe as she holds them close. She also enjoys hands, snuggling into them, touching them, lacing their fingers together. It makes her feel so wanted to feel her partner’s hands reaching out to hold her.

Although Alice tends to favor being more submissive in the bedroom, she’s a service bottom, wanting to make sure her partner feels good. She’s not content to be a pillow princess, just lying there and letting things happen to her. She wants to do whatever she can to make her partner feel satisfied and happy… even if that means doing things that she isn’t exactly comfortable with.

Alice struggles to reject anything that her partner suggests, even if it makes her uncomfortable. She wants so badly to be a good partner who is worthy of the person she loves, since she has self-confidence issues. A lifetime of fat shaming from many sources, including society at large, has made her hate how her body looks, and she feels ugly. This is something she struggles with and though she has been called beautiful, she can’t bring herself to really believe it when the majority of people have called her ugly. It didn’t help that she was treated as a weirdo by her peers and isolated or ignored. This has led to Alice feeling a need to “make up” for how “unattractive” she is with acts of service for her partner in the bedroom.

This has led to unfortunate incidents in her sex life. Alice pushed herself to have sex before she was ready, with a partner who didn’t know what he was doing. It was clumsy, even painful, and though she tried not to think about it, she was reminded of the SA she experienced as a teenager. This was not anyone’s fault, but ignoring the warning signs of a trauma trigger can be pretty devastating.

Needless to say, Alice and Ian’s first time was… rough, and full of apologies from both of them, along with a lot of guilt. I touched on how difficult their sex life was in previous posts before, such as this one. Sadly, their sex life played a part in why their relationship turned sour.

Sex with Ian was mostly Alice servicing him with handjobs and blowjobs, with penetrative sex coming infrequently. Unfortunately, Alice didn’t really enjoy the penetrative sex, as Ian tended to go too rough with her, and they both had the misconception that pain was always involved at the start of penetration for the person being penetrated (if not for the whole experience.) Sadly, by this point in their relationship, Alice was having a hard time voicing any complaints that might make Ian feel bad or like he was wrong in some way. She mistakenly believed that she was the problem for not really enjoying or getting off on the experience. After all, there was pleasure along with the pain, and penetrative sex was what all sex led up to, right? Was it even sex without it?

Penetrative sex is so glorified in media, that Alice believes sex is incomplete without it, as if she’s denying that full connection of love with her partner if she doesn’t do it. It might be painful, but she wants that deep connection with the person she loves. Plus, Ian would always be so eager and excited for it. She found him just so cute, and it made her feel good that he desired her so much that he couldn’t hold back. It might have been painful, but it was worth it to be the only person in the world who could drive him so crazy with desire. It was so nice of him to think of her when he wanted to try out a new technique that he was sure would make her feel good, since, ho boy, did the lady in the porn ecchi enjoy it!

Unfortunately, Alice learned over time being with Ian that getting sex techniques from porn really isn’t a good point of reference. That’s why she eventually started reading articles giving advice on sex-friendly websites to get a better sense about real sex, rather than the fictionalized version depicted in porn.

But, hey, at least Ian was happy. Alice took joy in his happiness and satisfaction, and enjoyed the cuddling they did in the afterglow the most. Cuddling, kisses, listening to his satisfied sighs, and hearing how much he loved her were what she enjoyed the most about their lovemaking.

Of course, Alice found that same satisfaction with just cuddling and a nice make out session without sex involved.

Sadly, like a lot of people with little experience, Alice is under the mistaken assumption that penetration hurts at first, but soon goes away. This is an exceedingly common trope in hentai/ecchi where the bottom, regardless of gender, always feels pain at the start of being penetrated but then pleasure makes the pain disappear at some point. It’s treated as expected in this form of media, something unavoidable that must be tolerated for the sake of enjoying sex. Heck, for some people, pain during penetration is a feature of sex, not a bug.

This is why when Alice and Jack eventually have penetrative sex, the fact that it doesn’t hurt even a little bit catches her off-guard. Not that she’ll complain, obviously. This results in making her more enthusiastic about that form of sex than she ever thought that she could be.

Alice does not enjoy pain, at all. It’s not sexy to her to be spanked, choked, insulted, or to be otherwise made uncomfortable and used. She’ll try out something that she might dislike for the sake of her partner’s kinks, and she’ll tolerate things that are painful if her partner feels good, but that doesn’t mean she’ll necessarily get much enjoyment out of the experience.

Inflicting pain or insults on her partner is something that Alice doesn’t care for either. She’s too empathetic, and the idea of doing harm to her partner, whether verbal or physical, even if they take pleasure in it, makes her feel exceedingly anxious. She prefers being gentle, sweet-talking her partner and cuddling with them.

The most Alice would want to do is playful teasing and leaving kiss marks along with gentle love bites. She could be convinced to bite harder, scratch, or spank if her partner was really into that, but she’s far too much of a marshmallow to handle any sort of hard sadism or masochism. Soft, cuddly, vanilla lovemaking full of sweet words and praise is what makes her feel happiest.

Praise is Alice’s biggest weakness. Whether it’s platonic, romantic, or sexual, she gets easily overwhelmed when she’s praised. She loves it, but struggles to accept it due to her low self-esteem. It makes her happy to know she’s doing a good job, and it encourages her to do more when it comes to pleasuring her partner.

Getting positive attention, compliments, gifts, and in general being treated special is something Alice struggles with, even with her partner. It takes her a while to really believe it. Ian actually did a world of good for her self-confidence… before he completely destroyed it when he cheated on her, making it worse than it ever was. Jack has his work cut out for him.

Alice masturbates often, but as a stress relief more than anything else. It’s less about being horny or desiring someone else and more about self-care. An orgasm can be very relaxing after a stressful day. She bought toys to help her do this more efficiently, only rarely taking time out to enjoy masturbation as anything more than a quick stress release. Of course, she finds it more fun to play with toys when she’s sharing them with her partner.

After making the connection to Jack, Alice finds her libido increasing because she is picking up on his horny feelings. It leads to many confusing moments where she wonders why she’s feeling horny out of nowhere far more often than she normally did before, and she does make the connection between those feelings and Jack… but attributes it to him just being that attractive in every sense of the word, which only further confuses her feelings towards him in the beginning.

Once Alice and Jack start having sex, her libido increases substantially due to this connection and how much she enjoys the experience. He’s so attentive to her needs and is so eager to praise her when he pleases her or she pleases him that it’s hard not to get addicted to their lovemaking sessions. While she and Ian would have sex once or twice a week on average, usually to satisfy his desires and not hers, she winds up enthusiastically wanting to have sex with Jack almost daily once they finally reach that point in their relationship.

Being restrained is a complicated kink for Alice. She’s never considered herself one for bondage, and, if anything, she doesn’t think that she’ll like it. Her SA trauma has to do with being restrained against her will, so if she feels trapped during sex, it can cause her to panic. Ian has accidentally triggered this trauma in the past.

Being held down or confined by her partner isn’t so much the issue in and of itself. Alice enjoys the security of being completely engulfed in her partner’s arms, safe and secure. There are times when she would seek it out, loving the feeling of her partner lying on top of her like a weighted blanket. It’s when they won’t let her go even when she indicates she wants them to that the discomfort immediately sets in. Although she tries to power through the feeling and remind herself that she trusts her partner and that they won’t hurt her like the people who committed SA against her, and they care about her… trauma is not always that easy to reason through.

This can be a bit of an issue when you have a partner who has a tendency to lose control of his urges and refuses to let you go or come up for air until he’s satisfied.

Needless to say, this led to moments full of guilt and apologies from both sides between Ian and Alice. This, as you might expect, was one of the big contributors to why they didn’t have sex all that often.

Restraining her partner… now that’s something Alice would be surprised to find that she enjoys. Having her partner tied up and helpless as she lovingly pays attention to their body, maybe even blindfolded so they don’t know where she’s going to touch or kiss next would be exciting.

I think I just had an idea for another short fic to write sometime. Better make a note of this for later.

Ahem, moving on… Alice isn’t one for exhibitionism. She’s a very private person overall, and with her self-esteem issues, she would rather have anything more physical than a kiss or hug be kept private. She doesn’t want to have to think or worry about other people when intimate with her partner, preferring to just focus on her beloved and the intimate moment that they’re sharing. Since she can only get sexual with someone she trusts deeply, she doesn’t want to involve other people, even as an audience.

Sadly, Jack isn’t going to be able to indulge in his exhibitionism kink to the fullest with Alice because of this. Though having sex in risky places where they could get caught is a fair compromise that she winds up enjoying way more than she ever thought she would. She wouldn’t enjoy getting caught though, and it would take a lot of coaxing to get her to try again if that happened, but fortunately Jack is a very sneaky ghost(?) who knows a few tricks to make sure that no one will interrupt when he’s showing love to his sunshine.

Alice’s favorite position is missionary. She loves being held by her partner and looking into their eyes, seeing the love they have for her and how good they’re feeling. She loves the feeling of their body on top of hers like a warm weighted blanket. She loves watching them bite their lip and strain themselves to hold on, or roll their eyes up towards the ceiling from pleasure. Watching her partner’s face and knowing that she’s the one making them feel good makes her feel good in turn. She loves it when they look at her with love and desire, like she’s the only person in the world they could ever feel this way towards.

Face to face positions in general are the ones Alice prefers, though she gets anxious about any position that puts her on top. She’s chubby, and she worries about her weight being too much for her partner. For example, if they tell her to sit on their face and that they want to be crushed by her thighs, she’ll be very skeptical that it’ll end well. It’s something that would take a lot of gentle coaxing to get her to try it, and reassurance that they enjoyed doing it afterwards.

Although Alice’s worries limits her in the amount of positions she’s interested in trying, she’s actually capable of doing a lot of them. Despite being chubby, she’s very flexible, able to do vertical splits and put her ankle around her head, to name a few. This makes yoga the ideal way for her to keep in shape. She isn’t confident enough to work out at a gym, but she doesn’t mind stretching with friends or a partner. She takes pride in her flexibility and her excellent sense of balance, not yet thinking about how this ability could be used to great effect in the bedroom.

Needless to say, those attracted to Alice can be treated to quite a show when watching her do yoga. Jack especially is eager to encourage her to exercise often and is only too happy to help her get into the harder poses. He looks up just how to do them so he knows where he can put his hands just right to help her. Before they’re lovers, it’s always so tempting for him to just “slip” and touch her someplace a bit naughtier... but he respects her consent and boundaries. He won’t touch her someplace unless she wants him to, no matter how badly he wants to put his hands and mouth on every inch of her body.

Naturally, once they become lovers, yoga sessions get a bit spicy. Alice has to wonder if Jack is really eager for her to work out to help her stay fit or if he just wants to experiment with positions. Still, it’s a very pleasurable incentive that encourages her to work out more often. It also encourages her to intentionally tease him with her stretches once she grows more confident in their physical intimacy, going into a playful back and forth that she knows is going to end up with him eventually snapping from the tension, stripping of her workout clothes and taking her against the yoga mat.

Teasing her partner and encouraging them to lose control is something Alice can appreciate. It was a bit risky when it came to Ian since when he lost control it could be painful or even suffocating, so she always had to be cautious about how far to push and be prepared for fallout. With Jack though, he’s always so mindful of her comfort no matter how wild she drives him. That allows her to just cut loose and tease him to her heart’s content, knowing that he’ll never hurt her and it’s only going to feel good.

Driving her lover into losing control over their desire makes Alice feel sexy, beautiful. She wants the person she loves and desires to need her so badly that they can’t think of anyone else. She wants to be irreplaceable. She thought that she found that with Ian, so it was worth the pain, but his cheating proved that she was mistaken. Fortunately, Jack will be all too happy to make sure she knows how special she is and how there’s no one else in the world he could ever want, need, or love more than her.

In general, Alice is very vanilla when it comes to her kinks. She favors the emotional connection between her and her partner, the love and trust they share. That’s why she can only have sex with someone if she feels like she can fully trust that person. After Ian cheated, she couldn’t have sex with him again even when he wanted it, which strained their attempts to repair their relationship and helped her realize that things had gotten too toxic between them to try and go back to the way they were.

Overall, Alice is a very uncertain lover when it comes to her own pleasure or anything that might bring discomfort to her partner. She has an easier time focusing on their pleasure and getting enjoyment out of making them feel good. It’s easy for her to forget about herself in favor of her partner’s pleasure even if she’s uncomfortable, which is why she responds better to a partner who makes sure to stay mindful of her needs during the activities rather than get distracted by their own pleasure.

Speaking of a partner who gets carried away by his own pleasure…

Ian

Ian is someone who was very sheltered by his very strict religious upbringing. In his house, sexual desires were seen as shameful. Even masturbating was treated as a sin. Though he tried not to give in to his urges, he succumbed to his desires more often than not, and it made him feel weird. He loved the pleasure he felt from masturbating and the relief it gave him, but he “knew” that he was being “sinful” by doing so, which would leave him filled with shame and guilt afterwards. This would lead to a lot of repression when it comes to his sexuality. It didn’t help that his peers treated him like a weirdo and made fun of his looks/behavior/tastes, isolating him further.

Because of his upbringing, Ian always had a clear picture of what he was supposed to do to have a successful future. He needed to find one person, get married, have kids, and have a lucrative career. His mother pushed him towards a straight relationship in particular - at least when she wasn’t crushing his spirit that finding a partner was impossible for him at all - but he couldn’t help but find guys and non-binary people attractive as well. He has a lot of crushes, both fictional and not, and he has a secret stash of various media full of many waifus, husbandos, and spousus.

Alice was one such person that Ian crushed on, but with her it was far more serious than anyone else. His feelings for his first and only childhood friend were deeper than surface level. They knew each other better than anyone. She was always there for him, supporting him, and making him feel like he wasn’t such a weirdo after all. Her being a girl had nothing to do with how hard he fell for her, though it did make him feel a little less anxious about his mom finding out about their relationship than he would have if his partner wasn’t a girl.

Ian is someone in heavy denial about his desires due to his upbringing. It’s “sinful” to lust after other people, particularly outside of a straight context according to his mother and the scriptures. It’s “sinful” to have lustful thoughts outside of marriage. Heck, even in the confines of marriage, sex is meant only for the sake of procreation. It made him feel weird about desiring people, so he convinced himself that he simply… didn’t. He went into deep denial, telling himself that people were weird, and since he didn’t know them these feelings weren’t something to think about at all. It was easier that way.

Ian knew Alice though, so she became the exception to this taboo he had been taught all his life when she became his partner. For him, it was okay to lust after his partner… at least as much as it could be with anyone. Though his mother insisted lust, even towards his partner, was only selfishly satisfying his manhood in a sinful way, society often said otherwise. Media and their peers made it seem so normal to have sexual urges and want to explore them. Even Alice insisted his feelings were normal and nothing to be ashamed about. He learned more and more about what was normal once he was out from under his mother’s influence and interacted with other people.

While Ian did learn to accept and even embrace the fact that he’s pansexual/panromantic, it’s not so easy to shake the shame related to his sexuality or sex in general thanks to his mother’s toxic influence.

At his house with his mother, even the internet was restricted. Ian didn’t get access to porn until he moved out to college, and even then, that made him feel awkward. He didn’t know how to handle these weird feelings towards strangers, since he was taught that they were sinful and risked damning him to hell. Lusting after fictional characters seemed okay though. That was just a fantasy, playing pretend. Even his mother had romance books that got pretty smutty, though she wailed into him the one time she caught him going through her stash.

This was what led to Ian having a lot of fictional crushes, anime figures, and, of course, ecchi. While the local library didn’t have straight up porn or hentai, it did have more risque manga stories in the form of ecchi, which is why he insists so hard that it’s not porn. The library would never have anything like porn, so it’s not sinful! This means it’s okay that he has a collection of it. He’s not a sinful pervert!

Ecchi has a tendency to really push the boundaries of what can be constituted as porn though, and Ian absorbed all of the sex in those pages like a sponge. The people in the book always looked to be having fun. Sex was something wild and passionate. The people lost control of their desires and enjoyed themselves in a way that he was always denied. Sex was this all-encompassing force of nature in so many stories, not just in ecchi. He was fascinated by it even as he was afraid of those feelings.

Because of this repression, Ian saw himself in these characters who lost themselves in moments of passion as they claimed their lover. This raw animalistic lust was exciting and really resonated with him. Once he started pleasuring himself and forgot about the guilt of his desires, he would lose control in a similar way. He would keep going until he was satisfied, completely losing himself in the experience… only to be hit with guilt once he came down from the high.

With Alice, Ian had an outlet for his sexual desires. She helped him see that these desires weren’t sinful, and she was eager to help him feel good. She made him feel wanted, beautiful, and sexy. With her help, like many things in his life, he gained more confidence in his sexual urges. He explored his sexuality more, both in fiction and with her, though he was far more hesitant and awkward with the latter.

What didn’t help was the mistakes Ian would make… but, in a way, he was used to making mistakes. He was always making mistakes, always blamed by his mother for just about every reason under the sun even if he didn’t actually do anything. All perceived problems were his fault and so he must apologize. Constantly.

Alice supported Ian when he felt sinful, filthy, and sad. She forgave him for his mistakes and even told him he didn’t have to apologize so much. She loved him and he loved her in return for how strong and supportive she was to him.

Ian would try to make amends for his mistakes with apologies, cuddling, and especially with gifts. His primary love language is gift giving, and thanks to the trust fund his absent dad left him, he could give gifts to those he cared about often. He gives friends and especially his partner presents. He even gives his mother presents to let her know that he still loves her despite everything and that he just wants them to actually have a good relationship… however futile that gesture might be.

Although Ian struggles to be vocal about what he wants when it comes to sex and romance, he can be pretty romantic at times… even if he’s got dirty thoughts in mind to go along with it. He knows how romantic a candle lit bedroom with a bed covered in rose petals while sexy jazz plays in the background really sets the mood. Too bad it didn’t actually work out the first time he tried it.

Sadly, Ian was hoping that if he set the mood just right, he and Alice could finally go all the way and lose their virginity to each other. Too bad the mood died a painful death when Shaun walked in instead, and it was a while before Ian got the guts to try that again… at least while Alice was still rooming with Shaun. Initiating sex with her was much easier after they moved into their own place.

I’ve gone over the reasons why I think Ian cheated in previous posts, here, here, here, and here in detail, so I won’t rehash it too deeply this post.

To sum it up - Ian was on his own for the first time in his life when he moved to the performing arts school, without anyone to support him, particularly his partner. He had grown conventionally attractive as he aged, and he was surrounded by peers who shared his interests, which gave him a taste of popularity for the first time. He was given all sorts of new and exciting experiences, meeting all sorts of people who he found attractive. He grew closer to new people, and without his partner around he grew lonely… which led him to giving in to his desires in the worst way possible.

The experience was exciting. The forbidden nature of it actually made the act more enticing due to how repressed Ian was because of his background. It was all “sinful” after all…

Like a lot of people who grew up heavily repressed by religion, Ian finds arousal in things deemed forbidden and sinful. Despite being bullied as a kid, being degraded sexually is something that turns him on. Though he protests about being teased, he enjoys it, even to the point that being called a beast or a sinful slut makes him feel aroused, though he finds such feelings confusing. He likes being commanded and punished by his partner, completely at their mercy and begging them for more.

While this would suggest Ian is a submissive, he’s actually a switch vers. It doesn’t matter who’s doing the penetrating as long as it feels good. Taking control of his partner and rutting into their holes like an animal feels just as good as being taken. He just needs to learn how to better control his urges so he can pay attention to his partner’s needs and comfort to improve taking the dominant role.

Ian is the type of person who gets lost in the pleasure of sex. Once he gets to a certain point, he starts losing his inhibitions, getting more vocal and needy. He’ll praise his partner and beg for more even when he’s the one dominating, growing increasingly needier as the pleasure grows more intense.

The part of the body Ian finds most attractive is the ass. More than once he’s had thoughts of slapping or squeezing his partner’s ass, but was too shy to give into the urge except when actively engaging in sex. Because of this, his favorite position is doggy style, as we can see in this very NSFW picture by Sauce. He loves the way his partner’s ass bounces with each thrust, and he’ll add to the jiggle with the occasional slap once he loses himself in the moment. As he grows more confident in his desires and represses himself less, he’ll consciously want to explore the kink of spanking.

Bondage, both giving and receiving, is something that Ian would want to try, along with some other kinks, but he doesn’t have the courage to initiate it at this time. In general, he struggles to initiate anything related to sex, as that ties into the guilt and shame that was hammered into his upbringing. However, it’s fairly easy for him to get aroused, which would serve as an unintentional way to initiate sex more often than not.

Being an actor, Ian would thrive with roleplay in the bedroom. It would help him pretend to be someone else, someone more confident and lustful. It could help him lose himself in the moment rather than get caught up in his own doubts and insecurities.

Ian struggles with accepting his own sexual desires, which makes it harder for him to communicate with his partner about his needs. This leads to him taking cues from ecchi on what to do, not checking in with his partner like he should, and getting lost in the moment, letting the urges take him where he wants to go. Once he accepts himself as a sexual being and that it’s healthy to feel these desires, his communication difficulties with his partner should improve.

Having a partner who takes the lead is probably ideal for Ian. Being told what to do is something he’s used to, and he feels more confident with guidance. He worries about making mistakes, but if he’s guided through the scene by his partner, he has less reason to worry. In a way, being so good at taking direction is why he makes an excellent actor.

Speaking of direction, how about we switch over to the next love interest on the list?

Shaun

Shaun has a bit of a wild side when it comes to sex. He loves kitten play, both being the kitten and being the master of a sweet sexy kitten. He’ll put his partner in cat ears, a tail with a butt plug, and a collar with a leash if they let him, and he’ll be open to doing the same in return.

Biting and scratching is another one of his kinks, with some minor sadism and masochism. Spanking, bondage, blindfolds… Shaun is eager to explore unconventional means of having sex.

Shaun’s favorite part of the body is thighs. He’ll happily die suffocated by his partner’s thighs. Lying down with his head in his partner’s lap will make him purr. He’ll wear their thighs as earmuffs and bend them back as he pleases, paying extra attention kissing, licking, biting, and raking his fingernails across them.

Then, of course, there’s thigh-high fishnet stockings. Wear a pair of these, especially when accented with a garter belt, and Shaun turns into a puddle of horny goo, especially if they’re worn by his partner/crush, as shown in this steamy picture by Sauce.

To be fair, this is a very spicy sight. Shaun is a man of taste.

Overall, Shaun is a dominant vers, but he’s willing to submit and be a good kitty… eventually. Cats do what they want after all, and it’s going to take a little more than some ear scritches to get this cat daddy to submit to his partner, which is part of the fun.

Speaking of which, Shaun has a daddy kink. If his partner can be a good little kitten and let daddy pet and play with them as he pleases, he’ll be a very happy cat daddy.

While Shaun leans towards monogamy, he’s actually open to joining a poly relationship if the right people came along. He actually considered what it might be like to enter a relationship with both Alice and Ian, but he found that his vibes just didn’t mesh with Ian at all, and not just because Ian’s taste in anime is trash. He just never felt attracted to Ian like he did with Alice, and they never really connected like he did with her.

Shaun got a crush on Alice while they were taking the same class in college. He met her well before he ever knew Ian. They sat next to each other in class and wound up chatting often. They had stuff in common like horror movies, enjoying goth aesthetic, and being silly goobers who joke around with their friends. They’re also the mom/dad friend types taking care of their friend group. She was just so kind and sweet that he couldn’t help but fall hard for her.

It’s a shame that when Shaun finally gathered up the courage to ask Alice out, she casually mentioned that she was meeting with her boyfriend, breaking the poor guy’s heart.

Poor Shaun. Alice had no idea that he was asking her out on a lunch date instead of just going to grab a bite as friends. She missed all the signals he sent her way.

After that, Shaun tried hard not to think about his crush on Alice. He tried to just be there for her as a friend and move on from his romantic feelings, if only for the sake of their friendship. It was just hard when they had so much in common and had such good chemistry… and he couldn’t help but notice some troubling red flags in her relationship with Ian.

It never really seemed to be the right time for Shaun to try to get together with Alice. First it was because she was already in a relationship. Then she had been cheated on and needed a friend rather than someone who would take advantage of her in her most vulnerable moment. She was still in love with Ian even after the breakup, and wasn’t receptive to anyone else romantically for a long time.

Throughout knowing Alice, Shaun has dated other people. He’s had other crushes and tried to get into relationships, some more serious than others, but none have really worked out so far. He has yet to find someone who clicks with him the way that she does. Hopefully one day that might change. He had hoped that when he went off to another college that the distance would allow him to let go of his romantic feelings.

Sadly, a part of Shaun still couldn’t shake the small hope that maybe someday the stars would align and things could work out between them. Coming back to see Alice again just made all the feelings he thought he got over come rushing back… only for his heart to be crushed again when he finds out that once again she has a boyfriend who isn’t him…

Poor Shaun has it rough. I feel so bad for him. This is why I struggle with writing love triangles, hahaha. Still, I’m going with the headcanon that he does find love with someone eventually, someone who he is glad finally came into his life who he just can’t live without. I don’t have a specific character in mind for that role just yet, but I do have a few possibilities that I’m playing around with…

With that said, let’s move on to the fourth and final love interest.

Nick

I’m still indecisive on Nick’s view on love at this point, beyond his crush on the cute cashier at the circus-themed frozen yogurt shop. I’m tempted to have him be a stalker yandere like I talked about in an earlier theory about all the love interests being yandere, but also I’m tempted to go with the angle of him being a sex worker who just wants someone to love him for himself and not simply see him for what he does online.

I’ll probably get a better idea of which direction I want to go with Nick eventually. After all, the audio drama for him on patreon did influence some of my headcanons for him.

Maybe I’ll go with a combination of the two extremes. It would be hilarious that a yandere stalker dom finds himself tongue-tied in front of his crush despite working as an online influencer, rather than it just being a shy mask to get the object of his affection to lower their guard. Hmm…

Regardless of which direction I choose, Nick flirting with Alice at her job didn’t earn him any favors when it came to winning her heart. If anything it made her more on guard around him and lessened his chances of getting closer with her. It’s nothing personal against him, but being hit on while she’s at work makes her feel like she’s trapped, since she can’t leave, and she has no choice but to be polite to customers no matter what happens.

While I don’t have too many love-based headcanons really solidified in my head yet when it comes to Nick, I do see his primary love language as quality time. He’ll make time for those who he cares for, no matter how packed his schedule is, and he appreciates the same from them in return.

Since we’re shy on the romantic headcanons for Nick, let’s just go right to the spice. As we see in his profile, he’s an influencer by day and a dom by night. The audio drama shows him with a very dominating and flirty personality, at least when it comes to his audience. He runs an online streaming show where he talks sweet and dirty to his viewers live on camera. He also takes requests, which vary on the donation tiers. Those requests usually involve dirty talk, exposing himself, using toys on his body, and such. He has quite a lot of subscribers on lonelyfans, and most popular are his private one-on-one shows with a special lucky viewer on rare occasions.

Nick is big into exhibitionism. He shows off his body without shame and enjoys the attention he gets from his audience. He absolutely loves to talk dirty and see how it affects people. He’s good at painting a picture in his audience’s heads with a lewd description, and he gets off on the idea that he’s driving so many of his viewers crazy with lust.

While Nick does want someone to love him as a person, he also wants to be an object of desire for many people. He enjoys his job as a sex worker and the attention he gets online as a sexy dom with his lonelyfans account. Even if he was in a relationship, he would still do his lewd performances before the camera… and maybe he’ll have a special guest star or two on his show if he’s lucky. He would love to convince his romantic partner to join him on camera and dominate them before his large audience, maybe even take the viewers’ requests to decide what he’ll do to his partner next.

Although Nick is looking to join a relationship with just one person, he’s not against the idea of entering a poly relationship, or even participating in an orgy. After all, the more the merrier, right?

Just like on his live shows, Nick is a dominant in bed. He might be shy in casual settings, but he takes control of the scene when with a partner. He’s the one setting the pace, wanting to make his partner beg him and say what exactly they want. He experiments with the kinkier side of BDSM too, such as bondage, candles, and all sorts of toys that can leave a mark on skin and make his partner scream for him.

Nick is very experienced as a dom. He knows how to practice proper BDSM safety and take care of his partner(s) afterward. He can be soft during aftercare, and he knows the benefits of cuddle time. After all, he has a couple fur babies to take care of, and Pico and Cheese make excellent cuddle companions.

I think I’ll finish up Nick’s headcanons with this final spicy tidbit. As we’ve seen in teaser art, Nick has tongue and nipple piercings. I also headcanon that he has a jacob’s ladder piercing. I won’t describe what that is here, but if you know, you know.

I’ve heard that there are people who enjoy the feeling of piercings on sensitive areas, and Nick is one of them.

Conclusion

That’s about all that I can think of at the moment when it comes to my general love/sex headcanons for the main cast. I hope you all enjoyed my thoughts about what turn these five on and what they look for when it comes to relationships.

Though I suspect that when the full release of the game comes out, we’re going to discover that the male leads are probably going to be a lot kinkier than a vanilla aro/ace like me can headcanon up. Just a hunch. ;)

If you are hungry for more smut involving these characters, then you might be interested in checking out Sunshine in Hell or Sunshine in Another World. Those stories are rated as explicit for a reason, and there’s only going to have more scenes of smut to come. I’ve got plenty of rough drafts in the writing tag that I need to finish polishing and post on AO3 after all.

If you like my stories and ideas, please let me know what you think! I absolutely adore all kinds of feedback. It really helps fuel my creativity. Thank you for reading and I hope that you enjoyed reading this huge collection of sugar and spice!

EDIT: Holy crap the timing. I finished this list at the same time as a new incredibly spicy audio drama for Jack dropped on patreon. Join the $5 tier if you want to give it a listen. It’s so, so good and well worth it.

It did disprove that Jack is incapable or cursing or that he would call his sunshine a slut unprompted... but I’m going to stick with that headcanon for the Sunshine in Hell telling of the story anyway. Though eventually he will be able to get pretty spicy with his language the more he loosens up.

The drama also reminded me of a couple things that I left out. I’ve added a few more headcanons to Jack and Alice’s entries since the initial post, and it’s possible I might go back and add even more if more ideas hit me, hahaha. Sorry for any inconvenience.

[occasionallyprosie]

"A Song On Repeat"

Chapter 1

Legend loved music, goddesses, half his adventures revolved around music and he loved it. Was he surprised that Time turned to him, the veteran who also knew music, and confided in him his musical back-up plan? A little, but he understood taking precautions. He was more surprised when that precaution paid off, but its a good thing Nayru owed him one.

Febuwhump 2024 | Prompt 11: Time Loop

Event Masterlist | Next>>

Read On AO3 Warnings: Major Character Death (temporary, its a time loop guys, do I need to tag that?), graphic violence

Legend liked music. His earliest memory was of a lullaby, sung by his grandmother in the ancient Sheikah language that was also his mother tongue. He was raised on folk songs, marching cadences, and work tunes.

And as soon as he began his adventures, music just became more important.

On his eighth adventure, if he included the dream and counted Holodrum and Labyrnna separately, he found himself humming more often than not. He didn't have much opportunity to dance but he was always humming or quietly singing. Oftentimes Wind joined him, or Twilight, but they were really the only singing inclined ones of the group. At the campfire, when spirits were low, high, or just mediocre, and he wasn't locked in conversation, Legend found himself pulling out one of his instruments--the few he brought with him, his flute, his harp, his ocarina, his violin--and playing something to help the atmosphere.

It was a late night after a particularly bad battle. They only barely scraped by with injuries that they could stand with afterwards, and only thanks to Time suddenly pulling Wild out of the way of a particularly huge axe.

Legend was quietly humming a song of healing he was taught when he was young.

He was on watch, as one of the few with minimal injuries--as usual--and he had been paired with Time, who seemed particularly unsteady.

"Veteran," Time spoke up and Legend looked over, "you mentioned having encountered time travel before."

Legend could recognize that Time was asking about his past experience. He hummed an affirmative, looking up at the stars.

"It was my third adventure," he explained, "I was in Labyrnna, and Impa and I were looking for the Oracle of Ages, Nayru."

Time was listening closely.

"Nayru had this harp, and it focused her magic into time travel. I ended up 400 years into the past, and had to jump between then and now to save Labyrnna, save Nayru, and try to keep Ganon from rising again. It sort of worked, he was only partially revived, he came back as a mindless beast, and I killed him again. Anyways yeah, number three involved a lot of time travel."

"I see..." Time looked thoughtful, he was holding his ocarina and seemed unsure.

Legend didn't prod, he didn't need to know what was bothering Time and it wasn't his place to provide comfort or assurances. He wasn't close to their resident pessimist.

"I would like to teach you a song," Time finally said, "it's a magic song and only works with this ocarina, but... I think I can trust you the most with it."

Legend took out his own ocarina. "If you want me to. What does it do?"

"It can turn back time."

A few pieces fell into place, how Time had practically ran from one side of the battlefield to the other for no obvious reason yet he saved Wild from a possibly lethal wound, how he had been holding that blue ocarina now that Legend thought about it.

He met Time's eyes. "We're all going home after this, right?"

"So long as I breathe, I will make sure of it."

Maybe that's all Legend needed to know, after all this little lesson was little more than a precaution. In case Time couldn't do it himself.

"Alright," Legend raised his ocarina near his lips, "how's it go, old man?"

Someone screamed.

They were ambushed in the middle of the night, Sky and Warriors had been on watch and had caught the ambush with only enough time to alert the group so they could grab their weapons before the monsters were on top of them.

Legend learned who was most accustomed to late night, sudden battles. He was as he took down the charging lynel. Wild was as he charged a trio of lizalfos. And Hyrule was as he dodged a daira's axe and decapitated it in his next move.

Wind was not, and neither was Twilight surprisingly.

Legend heard the scream and it made his blood go cold. Nobody here screamed, he had heard a couple yelps, gasps, even a cry for help, but never a scream.

"SAILOR!"

"TUNE!"

Time and Warriors converged to Wind's side, the youngest the source of the scream and Legend hadn't quite seen him.

He turned to the nearest monster and moved faster.

"TRAVELER LOOK--"

The Smithy's voice was cut out by a choking sound. Legend whirled around and he saw an arrow digging into the side of Four's throat. He dodged a boko and caught the Smithy as he fell, eyes already dulling as he choked on his own blood. Across the field, Hyrule had managed to dodge whatever attack Four had warned him about. Legend frantically released his fairy before he ran to defend the distracted Hyrule from another daira. If the fairy couldn't help, Legend wouldn't be able to.

The fairy left Four and went to hover by Hyrule, they both knew what that meant.

Another cry pierced the air and Legend cut apart a lizalfos. He turned to see Sky standing over both Four and Wild, the Chosen Hero was radiating power but even he was being overwhelmed.

A clear note pierced the air. Unconsciously, he identified it.

A D F A D--

The song was cut off; Warriors cried out.

Legend met Hyrule's eyes and they turned to have their backs pressed against each other.

"I need you to buy me some time," Legend told him. "Not long, not even a minute, no matter what it takes."

Hyrule nodded, he took a breath and Legend watched him cut his hand.

Monsters heads snapped toward them, Legend could feel Hyrule's magic grow thick in the air, the scent of his blood with it.

"Come and get me!" His successor screamed to the horde that promptly rushed them.

Legend was running. He ran to Time and Warriors and Wind. He ignored Twilight's body with his torso torn by a huge claw, he ignored Sky's trembling form above Four's cold and Wild's cooling one. He dove over Wind's limp body, and ignored Warriors' startled noise as he grabbed Time's ocarina from his cooling hand.

He rolled back to his feet and ran further, bringing it to his lips and letting a few clear notes sound.

A D F A D F

Before he could shift his fingers to the next note, the world twisted.

Legend found himself sitting in camp, ocarina at his lips, during watch. Considering that Wild was across the camp and scanning their surroundings, it was the night before the ambush.

He continued playing the ocarina, the song of healing playing over the campsite. Wild glanced over and smiled, shaking his head fondly.

Legend flipped him off best he could, and Wild laughed.

He had seen their bodies plenty of times before, and that brief and distant moment didn't compare to most of his nightmares.

In a few hours, Wild got up.

Legend took a whole minute to remember who he was meant to wake up, and to his relief, it was Time.

He moved over to the old man and shook him awake easily. A part of him feared he wouldn't wake, but as usual, Time woke up. Legend met his eyes as he gave him his ocarina back.

Time went still, not quite horrified but clearly unsettled.

"Tomorrow night," Legend murmured as he heard Wild waking Four. "Ambush during second watch. Probably being followed."

Time nodded silently, his grip tightening on his ocarina and Legend went to his bedroll to crash.

Despite the anxiety cursing him, Legend fell asleep, his body well trained to do what he needed it to, when he wanted it to.

At dawn, nothing was odd, it was a perfect repeat of the day prior for Legend except Time was a bit different, he was tense and constantly on edge. Legend went through the motions, teasing and laughing as necessary while they walked. He did, however, convince most of them to run ahead in a bit of a childish activity, stealing Warriors' scarf or getting Wind to grab Sky's woodcarving knife. They got farther down the path much quicker than last and even found a cave to make camp in.

Legend put his bedroll by the entrance, Time organized the watch rotation and it didn't even involve him. A shared glance and Legend knew he was staying up the whole night. Time took vigil on the opposite side of the cave, blocking the interior tunnels from the others.

Every watch, someone would try to tell Legend he needed to sleep, not noticing Time was awake too since Time was hiding it and Legend outright was not.

"Vet, you need to sleep. Sailor and I are on watch," Twilight tried.

"I'm fine Rancher, just a bad feeling," he assured.

Twilight scowled but after several more failed attempts, he went to sleep.

Sky and Warriors were second watch, Legend found himself with Sky at his side by the entrance to the cave. Neither spoke, but he could feel the worry from the other hero. Legend just listened cautiously, ears pricked for the slightest sound out of place. He  didn't dare make a noise of his own to overlap with it all.

Nothing came.

Four and Wild had third watch and Legend saw the sun come up. He overheard Twilight question Wild about Legend staying up and hearing them also confer with Sky.

The following night, Legend couldn't do anything to get them to a decent campsite, and that was just how it was sometimes.

Except during second watch, which Time had let Legend take despite both resident big brothers (Twilight and Warriors) and the mother hen (Sky) speaking to Time separately about Legend not sleeping the night prior, but Time had looked at Legend and his quiet nod, and he told the others that their veteran could handle himself.

When watch came, Legend was on it with Time. He had all his senses on overdrive, too aware that their current campsite was a very ambush-able location and just like last time they had been traveling for days on end, and therefore were high-strung.

Unsurprisingly, the ambush came.

Legend met the first wave with a viciousness he himself hadn't expected. Time had woken the others and by all means, they held their own for far longer than last time. Legend saw every single monster enter the battlefield and he realized it was an exact repeat of (for him) two nights prior.

Warriors fell first. Legend couldn't see what had happened.

"Captain!" Time exclaimed, Biggoron Sword decapitating the monster that had harmed the knight before dropping to his knees and calling out for the traveler.

Legend fought his way to Wild and Twilight, barely arriving in time to use his mirror shield on the huge ball of fire that rocketed at them from a lynel. Wild quickly charged the lynel, and Legend was turning when he heard another scream.

It wasn't Wind this time. Hyrule's feet wasn't touching the ground as a stalfos had gutted him and lifted him off the ground. Legend felt himself freeze.

Hyrule was supposed to be with Time and Warriors. He wasn't supposed to be alone but--last time, Legend had been fighting with him and he'd left--

The stalfos was a mess of bones on the ground and Legend was catching his body.

"No, no--Rulie, stay with me," blood soaked his shoulder as Hyrule coughed.

"I'm sorry," he rasped. "I'm sorry--fire, please. B-Burn--Please, Vet, burn me."

"It won't come to that," Legend released his fairy, "just hold on."

"No--I'm sorry, I'm sorry, please--I don’t want to die--"

Someone yelled to look out. Legend supported Hyrule with one arm and blocked the swing of a bokoblin's sword with his own. Hyrule's weak begging, his pleas, slowly silenced. More monsters flooded and the fairy whispered an apology to Legend just as he realized he couldn't feel Hyrule's breath on his shoulder.

Goddesses no.

A D--

During that second note, another cry broke out. Legend knew what he had to do.

A prayed apology to Hyrule for the mistreatment, a swing of his fire rod that was empowered by his own magic, and monsters near him screeched. He heard Sky call his name.

Hyrule's body was burning. Legend reminded himself to focus, to never lose himself to his emotions during a battle. That got Din captured in his fourth adventure.

Time had warned him about timelines left behind, Wind's was the timeline left behind and Legend was almost certain his own timeline was the combined timeline of all the instances where Time outright failed, after all there were far too many instances of how the Fallen Hero had died.

"Veteran!" Sky carved his way to his side, and Legend let him. "Everyone is--"

"I can go back and fix it," Legend told him, flames burning a protective shield around them both. "I just need to get to the old man."

"Go back--Why am I not surprised?" Sky huffed. He cut down a moblin that forced its way past the fire wall.

Unlike last time, Legend gave a warning to the so-far survivor. "This timeline might remain, I may be leaving you alone to fight this, I don’t know how this works, and the old man isn't here to explain."

Sky just nodded, eyes burning colder than Legend had ever seen them. "Go. If there's at least one timeline where things end well, I'll be happy. I trust you."

Legend nodded.

"I'll get you to the old man. Just make sure we all live," Sky told him and suddenly Legend felt his hair stand on end, the scent of ozone filling the air. "Drop the fire."

He did as told and flinched violently, barely not crying out as lightning struck Sky's raised sword and the crackling energy was shot in a slice at the monsters.

Shoving the shaken fear from his mind, Legend ran forward and with Sky a step behind him, they carved their way to Time's body. He heard Sky gasp in pain and didn't dare look back.

He dove over Time, dropping beside him and found his throat closing up as he looked at the gruesome scene, an arrow driven through his throat, blood covering the ground and the ocarina held in equally bloodied hands, one eye dull while the other was outright blank. He could see a tear stain falling from his blind eye, the colorful markings were much duller than Legend remembered and almost faded.

He took the instrument and ran. He heard Sky let out a yell as lightning flashed and thunder boomed louder than Legend preferred to hear.

With puffing exhales, Legend played the slick instrument.

A D F A D F

"Vet? Are you crying?"

Legend had switched songs once he felt the world settle and his body suddenly change positions from him running to him sitting. He kept his eyes closed. A song of mourning his grandmother sang when his uncle passed the second time had come to mind. He opened his eyes, unsurprised that the blood was gone from his hands and the ocarina. It was still wet and slick, but that was from his tears.

Wild looked concerned, and clearly felt awkward.

"I'm fine," he assured the Champion, voice steady. "Just... memories."

"Oh... uh, isn't that Time's ocarina?" He asked, almost visibly searching for something else to talk about.

Legend hummed. "He loaned it to me, don’t worry, I'll give it back once I don't need it."

"You have your own though?"

"It's pink."

Wild shrugged. "You know what? Sometimes a new color is nice, that's fair. Promise you’re okay?"

Legend laughed softly. "I'm fine, don’t worry about it Champion."

He was still worrying about it, but he left Legend alone to his music.

He switched his song to the song of healing his aunt taught him, closing his eyes again.

The image of Hyrule dead, the scent of burning flesh still on his tongue, the way Sky had stood and fought, the viciousness Legend had never seen from him before, the tears that stained Time's pale face. All of that ran through his mind as he let go of reality for just a moment.

Next thing he knew, a hand was on his shoulder and then he was standing with his blade at Time's throat.

He dropped his sword before anyone could say a thing, not even Fi.

"You alright, vet?" Time asked, seemingly unfazed. His eyes flicked to the ocarina that Legend had in his other hand.

"Yeah, fine," he said tersely. He held the ocarina out. "Thanks for letting me borrow it."

Time just nodded silently, clearly wanting to have words with him but both Wild and Four were there. Legend used that to his advantage as he went and laid down in his bedroll, forcing himself to fall asleep.

Again at dawn, Legend was repeating his day. Again, he pushed them to go further than that first time, again they stayed the night in a cave, and again he couldn't find a safe place the second night. The whole time, he searched for a sign they were being followed and found nothing.

This time he warned the others, saying he was sure they were being followed and to rest but be wary.

He didn't sleep again, either night, Warriors called him paranoid, Time said to trust him and listen.

The attack came and it was worse.

More monsters in the first wave, stronger monsters in the second.

Hyrule took an arrow to the head beside Legend and he didn't even get to beg to be burned this time, a fairy didn't have to shake its head to tell him the boy was dead. His successor was gone, bleeding out on the ground, and Legend had been right there.

"TRAVELER'S DOWN!" Someone cried. Legend hadn't said it. He saw the archer, just as another arrow flew and barely missed Wind, who had seen its arrow incoming.

The world bent and Legend cut through the archer. A second later he heard someone scream for the Rancher.

He ran and found himself tearing apart a lizalfos, Wild not ten feet from him in a blinded fury. An electrical current exploded off him as he tore through monsters. Twilight was behind him, a spear in his chest. The fact that it pierced his chain mail...

Legend already knew the monsters had to of been sent, the Shadow had to of organized this. The ambush being during second watch? When those on watch would be a bit bleary eyed and those who weren't were asleep.  But these monsters were also armed, armed with more than the usual haphazard, makeshift weapons.

He had to save at least one person. Please, Farore, Nayru, Din--just one.

Legend let down every single restraint he had as he worked through the eternal horde, an arrow digging into his back, his front, a deep gash in his side, but he kept moving because no matter the injury he avoided it being an instantly fatal one.

Sky was the next body he found, Fi lodged in his chest with half his torso cut open.

Then it was Four, his shadow seemingly cradling his body as he coughed up blood. Legend dove to release his fairy, but she just shook her head and stayed in the jar, eyes filled with sadness.

He took another slash to the arm. Any cries of pain, screams to alert someone, was tuned from his mind. He didn't get to Warriors fast enough, only sliding to his side after his eyes turned glassy and distant. He didn't reach Wild soon enough, the champion taking a sword to the throat and then he kept fighting until an axe lodged into his chest. Legend didn't know how that had happened.

He protected Wind from an arrow with his body, it lodged into his lower back, the third arrow he took and fifth bad injury.

Next thing he knew, the ground was soaked with blood and he was panting as he stared at the massacre.

The clearing was filled with bodies, monster and hero alike, but beside him was Wind.

"Ya know, Apple," Wind panted, blood covering his body, "I... I think we lost."

A hysterical laugh fell from the younger hero's lips and Legend wanted to collapse, his legs threatened to give out and his vision was fading.

He staggered over to Time's body, shoving a monster off it and rummaging in his bag.

"A--Vet?" Wind called, limping toward him.

"I... I'm not..." his fairy could save him, but he pushed the bottle to Wind's chest. "I'm going to go back, this is... This was the... third time," he told him. "I'll try again, until I fix it."

Wind stared, but then his eyes widened. "Vet you’re got to--"

A D F

"--heal first! You'll--"

A D F

He felt the world settle and promptly put the ocarina away. He sighed softly, sliding down and sitting back.

He needed to actually make a plan this time, a proper plan and not just "find a safe camp" and "fight better".

He also needed to sleep, he hadn't slept in days and he felt it, but his body had the energy.

First of all, they had to be being followed or watched somehow. Otherwise they wouldn't have not been ambushed in the caves. He couldn't talk to anyone about it in case it found out and made it worse, or worse, killed him before he could go back again. He had the most information right now, he had to make it count.

Nayru, you still owe me one. Mind giving me a bit of wisdom for this problem?

He sighed softly. He needed to first of all figure out who and what is following them, second he needed to talk to Time to get details on time travel with the ocarina. Thirdly, he would have to tell Time that, under no uncertain circumstances, were they to stop and make camp anywhere but a cave tomorrow night.

He did the third during watch change, giving Time his ocarina as he did so. Time had just nodded.

He actually slept the next four hours away before getting up at the crack of dawn. He met Time's eyes before he packed up his stuff--ignoring Four and Warriors, the only other two awake--and left the camp.

It wasn't hard to make his presence--magical, physical, metaphysical--fade from all senses. He had been trained to hide in the shadows since he could walk, and how to walk through the shadows since then as well.

So he searched and he searched. Then he heard a battle.

No.

Time already had a sword dug through his chest when Legend arrived, and the ensuing slaughter was exactly like the past few times.

"You don’t need to know the details of my time traveling adventures, veteran," Time had said when Legend got him to walk with him alone during watch change.

Legend gave him his ocarina back. "I really do."

Time's expression grew horrified and then closed off. "How many?"

"Eh, only once," he lied. "But I want more details in case it continues."

"What happens?"

"A fight gone wrong, you got stabbed through the chest. I couldn't even use my fairy."

Time nodded slowly. "I see... I suppose you have a right to hear it, to some extent."

Legend learned about Majora, a pair of masks that sounded scarily familiar, and an eternal repeat of three days until Time finally defeated Majora.

"Thank you," he said after a long pause, "for telling me. I'm sorry to bring up memories."

Time shook his head. "Don’t worry about it, veteran. I knew I may have to do this when I taught you that song. Now you know the two possibilities with it, an eternal loop until you reach a conclusion you consider success, or a much more specific leap through time that leaves the timeline you left behind."

Legend nodded. He wondered how many more times he had to travel back before it became a time loop.

Monsters leapt out at them in that moment, and Legend couldn't think "it's too soon," before Time shoved him to the ground, his body heavy on Legend's and pinning him.

He heard Time gasp in pain, his body grow limp slowly, and felt blood soak through his shirt and something sharp piercing the skin over his collarbone but not sinking.

He didn't move, didn't breathe.

Time's arm moved sluggishly, he coughed blood above Legend's head.

"I'm sorry," he rasped as the sound of their camp being attacked hit Legend's ears. The scream for Sky and the certainty he was dead.

Time was dead weight on Legend, but despite it all he pushed the other man off him and begged a fairy to save him.

She tried, but when his wounds were healed, his eyes did not regain awareness.

Someone screamed for Wind.

A D F

He was never going to tell anyone that he was repeating again.

A D F

One time Wild survived to the end but revealed to Legend that the arrow he had seen him take to the chest had killed him, just that the ghost of his dead girlfriend saved him.

Another time, Four split into four people and his shadow solidified into a fifth, only the blue one survived that time and had told Legend he better make it right.

Another time, the red one survived and asked if Legend could save his brothers next time.

Wind survived again and this time wasn't frozen by shock, instead sobbing over Warriors and begging him to get back up. Legend had seen the captain take a hit meant for the sailor that time.

After the tenth, Legend stopped returning the ocarina.

He started a journal on the twelfth and filled it with the last words he heard. Like the rest of his items--somehow, the time travel applied to his items but not his wounds--it traveled with him.

Warriors had told him to take care of himself and to show that Shadow the true power of a hero.

Hyrule asked him to burn his body again (and he asked him again, and again, and again, and--) and Legend did it every time.

Wild whispered out a request to take his slate to Flora. Legend handed Wild his slate back when he was on watch with him the first night, saying he left it by Legend's bedroll on accident.

Time reached for his ocarina as he bled out, but as he saw Legend take it out himself he cried and apologized. Told him he was sorry he had cursed him with this terrible fate.

Twilight had asked Legend to watch out for Wild while he was gone, he had died first that time and Legend somehow kept Wild alive that loop.

He also asked Legend to kill the thing responsible for all this.

Four told him they still had to make that unbreakable sword for Wild, so he better finish that project for them both.

The journal slowly filled with a thousand requests. People to tell they loved them, people to tell they thought of them in their last moments, people to give their items to, people to protect while he was in their eras, people to give their final goodbyes too. There was a thousand indirect ways of telling Legend to survive where they did not, a thousand direct ways they told him to survive. There were a thousand orders to take care of himself, to kill the Shadow, to save the whole of Hyrule again.

Every damned time he survived. He found himself asking Fi before he left how many he killed, she never remembered the loops when he got back and she was telling him higher numbers each time.

He found himself getting better at disappearing from notice, at searching the dark corners around and near them for unwanted listeners. He found himself always playing a song on his own ocarina or Time's. Only ever the time travel song on Time's, but mourning and grief and a few songs of courage on his own.

The feeling of blood in his clothes, on his skin, under his nails, became more familiar than it had on any other quest before.

The caress of time became far more familiar than ever. It remembered him.

The darkness of the shadows was slowly re-becoming home as he searched them for their stalker.

The secrets of his comrades filled a second journal, one sectioned off very clearly that he would--when it was all over--share with the group so they were aware of what he knew.

The colors and their past, the reason why they were so short, Shadow, their father and grandfather.

The blood curse, his heritage, how much he already knew about Legend's past, the Triforce remaining on him, the fact that he didn't know he could use it and it would fade back to the Sacred Realm.

Demise's curse, the lightning abilities, the chandelier (he had said that in an attempt to raise Legend's spirits, it had worked to an extent), Sun's identity.

Malon was pregnant, he had traveled through time more times than he could count due to having to prevent a specific outcome (Legend could relate at this point), the whole story of Majora and his masks, never finding Navi and wishing he had, he was the little boy in the War of Eras and Warriors hadn't recognized him yet though Wind had, he still didn't quite feel like an adult because of Fi putting him to sleep for seven years.

Being able to transform into a wolf, the Twilight Realm, Midna and being unsure if he'd loved her but knowing he loved Ilia now, knowing Time would die on this quest because he met Time's ghost during his quest and Time had died without being able to pass down his knowledge, and that Time had died in the armor he wore now.

Cia's motivations, knowing companions of basically all of their brothers, having a wife to return home to, adopting two little boys during the war and fearing one was dead because he wasn't on this adventure.

The champions spirits following him, their gifts remaining in him for him to use, dying and sleeping for 100 years.

Being able to see ghosts, knowing his Grandma was getting closer to death every day and every time he saw her because she was slowly feeling more like a spirit than a person... and having a crush on Tetra.

Legend wrote it down during the first night, he searched in the days, he knew these forests as well as he knew his own bag at this point. He could slaughter half the horde himself but one of his brothers would still die and he was playing that song.

He kept trying.

He stopped sleeping, his body reset each loop anyways and that was precious time lost.

At some point, he altered their pathing enough that on the second night they were able to camp in a defendable grove.

They weren't attacked until the third night, but they were all slaughtered and Legend was still fighting when he found himself back in camp, on watch with Wild.

"...an eternal loop until you reach a conclusion you consider success..."

How long did he have then? Three days from... it was midnight now, then...

He had seventy-two hours. He just had to make certain that their path would reach the cave tomorrow night, and the grove the next night. He could work with this.

He had to find the source. Where was the monsters coming from? Where was the one who sent them? That was his goal, find the cause and save his brothers, and nobody was going to stop him.

He was the goddesses Hero of Legend, he would save his brothers if it was the last thing he did.

"The forest to the south is clear," Legend muttered to himself as he mapped out the forest, another one of his spare journals being used.

He learned that unless he reset on purpose, it would reset after exactly 72 hours. He was slowly getting a pretty good internal countdown for that.

"East is just mountains and ravines, we go west and the area between us and there is completely clear the whole time."

Nobody was acknowledging his muttering at the moment, just chattering happily as they walked and he was speed walking ahead, leading them to keep up. It was his way of ensuring their established safe path.

"North is also clear..."

He'd taken a dozen loops to search the whole surrounding area. It left west.

He'd have to leave them alone for good ahead.

"Hey," he called back as he shoved his journaled map into his pouch. "I'm going to patrol ahead."

"Alright, just be careful," Time told him.

"I'll be back before time's up," Legend assured and jogged ahead.

"Before time's up? What does that even mean?" He heard Wind grumble.

"Damnit!" Legend punched a tree after sneaking away from camp and Wild. He punched again and again until blood covered his knuckles.

Then he dropped to his knees, holding his head in his bloodied hands.

The whole region was devoid of monsters for the entire seventy-two hour period until the ambush took place. Which meant they were being watched magically and he couldn't fix that! He couldn't change that! He couldn't cut this problem off at the source!

"I can't do it," he whispered. "I can't. I can't--"

Master? What is wrong?

Fi, bless her, she didn't remember and she always did just want to help.

He choked on something of a sob. "I can't, Fi. I can't--I'm tired."

This is sudden, Master. I'm afraid I do not know what has caused this train of thought. What has caused this?

"It doesn't--I don’t--I can't--I can't tell you," he forced out. "I'm sorry. "I just need to--Give me a bit, I'll be fine."

He has to be. He can't give up. Damnit Link, you’re a hero, you can't just give up because it's hard! You've killed Ganon four times, you can fix this.

Wind begged Four not to die and said they still needed to talk about their matching shields, that they might be family.

Legend made another note in his journal.

Another ambush, more of his brothers deaths.

He could feel his ability to care slip away as every time he cradled one of his dying brothers, he felt it less and less. He wondered if he was becoming desensitized to it, but he also stopped caring as much when they survived and that used to hit him with an unparalleled relief.

Another fight but this one had Warriors and Sky dead in the first ten minutes, Hyrule begging the latter to survive and Wind having screamed when the former took the axe to the chest.

Time fell next to a spear through the head. Twilight quickly after with his chest caved in. Wild, Hyrule, Four--

Dead. Dead. Dead. DE--

Legend found himself activating the Quake medallion, the earth itself trembling and tearing apart, the bodies of monsters and heroes alike falling into the crevices, some were screaming, none of those cries came from the heroes.

They were dead after all.

Legend realized then that it still hurt, he still felt it. Goddesses he felt it far too much.

But then even when he ceased the earthquake, the ground decided to tremble and break open.

A moldrum screeched as it emerged, jaws clamping on nothing. It was huge, far larger than any moldrum Legend had ever seen, maybe even as big as Jabu Jabu.

From its mouth outpoured monsters and it occurred to Legend that, one, this moldrum was too much like Jabu Jabu, and two, he hadn't looked down.

He quickly switched his Pegasus boots for his hover boots, pulling on a Pegasus anklet in replacement. Then he ran forward, unhindered by the destroyed ground, and launched himself at the horde.

He had forty-three--forty-two minutes until his seventy-two hours were up. How many monsters could he kill in that time?

According to Fi, the answer was all of them.

His magic was drained completely when he returned to the first day.

He spent that loop resting and he reset before the ambush could take place on night three.

With his magic... mostly back, three days of rest did him enough. He looked down at the ground, and then his Quake medallion.

He wondered if he could focus the power of the medallion, he hadn't tried before, but... it couldn't hurt.

"Vet, what are you--"

"Everyone get back, I want to try something."

"Oh great," someone--Warriors--muttered. But Legend had been one of the responsible ones so they did as told. He held the medallion in one hand and his sword in the other. He had a huge open area ahead of him and the heroes behind him...

Time to be stupid.

His sword plunged into the ground and with all his magic constricting yet empowering the quake medallion, the ground ripped open in a single concentrated circle. He heard screams but the ground continued to rumble even as he let his magic cease.

He grinned. "There you are. Stay here!" He called back and promptly jumped down the hole despite the screams from the others.

The giant red eyes of the moldrum was in full view, it turned its giant maw up toward him as he fell rapidly down the deep pit. He fell for far too long, but it had been plenty of time to put on his roc's cape, switch a ring or two for magical replenishment, and take a potion.

Then he fell right into the moldrum's open mouth. He could hear someone screaming his name.

This whole thing was far too much like Jabu Jabu in Legend's opinion, leading him to declare the Shadow unoriginal and stupid.

He rolled along the mushy ground and popped up, grinning wickedly as his eyes quickly adjusted to the darkness--an inherited trait--and he set his gaze on the horde of monsters waiting to escape the belly of the beast so they could slaughter Legend's brothers.

He spun the Golden Sword in one hand and his fire rod in the other.

"Who's first?"

The monsters attacked.

A slaughter ensued.

Legend tore his way through the belly of the beast, sliding along the cylindrical walls as the moldrum must've moved up and down and side to side. He didn't know what was going on with the others, how they were, where they were, or anything. He just tore his way through monsters, fighting freely with nobody to worry about.

The Bombos medallion ripped apart the monsters nearby, the Ether medallion froze the ground and let him slip and slide as he liked. He pulled out his switch hook and jumped around, his hook shot, his various rods, cast a spell or two--

The moldrum at some point stopped moving completely. Another explosion ripped its side open and the light of day entered Legend's battlefield.

He dodged a fireball from a lynel and directed it into a hinox with a swing of his mirror shield, landing neatly in front of the new escape route and not letting a single one escape.

Another explosion ripped the hole bigger as Legend gutted a daira and activated the Bombos medallion one last time, exhausting the last of his magical stores.

It tore apart the last of the monsters. He looked around for more enemies before running toward the hole.

He had to make sure the others were alright. He had to--

Daylight blinded him for only a brief moment, he rolled out onto soft grass and was back on his feet, sword held backwards and his ice rod brandished to immediately go onto the attack.

"Vet! You’re alright!"

"Are you insane?!"

"What did you just do?!"

Eight voices overlapped, all yelling at him and demanding an explanation for his actions. A gentle wind breezed past him, one that felt like a secret shared, a promise that it was over.

He just grinned, feeling a weight fall from his shoulders as the caress of time released him, promising a favor paid and a fate avoided. His body began to sway, the magical exhaustion of using his medallions four times setting in.

"Whoa!"

"Oh goddesses."

"What's wrong?"

"Are you hurt?!"

He was covered in blood, a lot of which was his own, so a laugh escaped him.

"Yeah," he leaned against Sky. "Took... a couple hits... used a few too many spells..." he grinned at them, counting heads, they looked like they'd just ended a fight and the giant dead moldrum explained why, but they were all alive and the horde of monsters were dead too and... "You..." He pulled out the ocarina with blood slick hands. "You can have your ocarina back, Old Man."

Several voices yelped and told him to stay awake, but his body gave out.

He was done. He did it.

Next>>

[reel-fear]

Happy Disability Pride Month! Please don't support SCAVENGER ON THE WIND

CW for body horror, disturbing imagery and paranoia triggers below!

I know a lot of people are probably excited about this MAP

It's one that came out recently and got a lot of views fairly quickly. However, as you can see it features body horror and disturbing imagery in its thumbnail.

This is dangerous and not okay for multiple reasons. For one. Warrior Cats is a series for children, children are not good at handling disturbing imagery nor body horror. It could give them nightmares, stress, or even trauma in the worst cases. See stuff like Smile HD and other shock horror using children's media that is luckily now commonly frowned upon.

That's not to say all horror using children's media is unethical just that it 1. Should come with a prominent warning that it is not for kids and 2. Shouldn't feature shocking content in the thumbnail as anyone who could be triggered or disturbed by that content can't prevent YouTube from showing it to them. This video breaks both rules.

This is the only warning the MAP has. It mentions nothing specific that could actually trigger someone and doesn't even bother to label itself as not something kids should consume. This warning has all the usefulness of opening a game that tells you "This Game Contains Scenes". I'm sure many of you are thinking it could just be a simple and easy-to-fix mistake...

However, the host is not interested in fixing any of this despite people politely pointing out these exact problems. Which I will show soon.

Another important thing is that generally making horror content should always be done with caution. You shouldn't include anything too graphic or disturbing in your thumbnail and oftentimes it's preferred you keep it very tame. Doing otherwise could cause people with particular triggers to have a horrible reaction to them.

Sadly disabled people are already really ignored and stepped over in a lot of horror communities, analogue horror is sadly a very prominent one. People with physical disabilities are often tagged as "Body Horror" with no consideration to how hurtful that label could be to them and sometimes even used as disturbing images to jumpscare you in stuff like games inspired by Mandela Catalogue.

the mentally ill are only treated worse both by fans of horror and by horror content itself. This treatment actively contributes to their discrimination in real life, which is why it's so important to listen to them on topics like this. Sadly it doesn't seem like this host cares for them at all.

This extremely defensive and immature post was made in response to these incredibly polite and kind comments.

These people were:

Super polite

Offered solutions to this problem.

Were just trying to prevent harm coming from people who might find the content in this MAP disturbing.

The replies they received were none of the above. Funky and Erlkremling [A prominent horror WC artist] both dismissed these concerns with Erlkremling being particularly rude to them.

This is dangerous but most of all shows an extreme lack of care or regard to those who suffer from mental disorders.

I myself tried to point this out, only to get even crueler comments from the host and Erlkremling.

This is to put bluntly, fucking cruel to those who suffer from these problems. Why is it that when Cheetah Z has flashing lights that could harm people it's a problem but saying 'don't put disturbing imagery in your THUMBNAILS which nobody can prevent from being shoved into their dash' it's too far to compare them?? This is so blatantly treating mentally ill folks like their issues, their struggles, THEIR SAFETY FOR FUCKS SAKE, is less important than their 'actually disabled' counterparts.

They are literally admitting this is a problem, that other popular horror medias in this fandom suffer this problem. But instead of seeing that and saying "oh my god, I'm contributing to a running problem of ableism in this fandom I should stop." They're saying "Well if those other people ALSO think a png is more important than disabled people's safety surely I'm in the right!"

The absolutely apathy towards the suffering of disabled people has genuinely brought me to tears just thinking of the way they replied to me. THIS IS OVER A PNG, A THUMBNAIL THEY COULD TAKE JUST A FEW HOURS TO REDRAW, that fucking image to them is more important than the safety of disabled folks. Happy fucking disability pride month to you too btw.

To put it bluntly, if you see this situation for the upsetting awful mess it is I would highly suggest not supporting this MAP and letting the participants know what kind of behavior they are associating themselves with.

Here's a link with all the map parts, tell the participants what kind of behavior they are encouraging by taking part in this project.

Here's the og map call, tell the host how unacceptable and cruel this treatment of the mentally ill is.

Sadly unless there is a big backlash, it's very unlikely any of these creators will care about those they have affected. I honestly can't even describe how horrible all the things they have implied in these comments is.

To try and argue some people are just 'too mentally ill' to belong in internet spaces is HORRIBLE, they want people they deem 'too disabled' to simply NOT EXIST in online spaces. This is literally them fully admitting some disabled people simply don't belong in public spaces, don't deserve to be heard in online discussions and are simply not as important as other disabled folks when it comes to making things accessible for them.

I've been genuinely losing sleep over this at times, neurotypical people just have no idea how stressful, how upsetting and how hurtful it can be to know you're considered 'lesser' than other 'actually disabled' folks. To be trampled and spoken over, spoken to like you're NOTHING on these issues. So please from the pleas of a disabled artist in this space.

Please, Please reblog and spread this, on this month above all else we should be focused on stopping this kind of behavior.

Just because it's a consistent issue in this fandom doesn't make it okay to spread it even more. In fact I am inviting anyone reading this, if you see gore, body horror and general disturbing imagery in a thumbnail please inform the uploader of the real damage it can do to the mentally ill. Sadly, I put off posting this for a long time, because I didn't think anyone would listen or care unless I did it this month.

That's just a sad reality for a lot of mentally ill folks, in online spaces we're silenced. We just have to live with that a lot of the time, but I'm not gonna let this slide on a month dedicated to people like me and those who behavior like this hurts. Neither should you.

[daybreakrising]

HEADCANONS - WHO IS G.ALLAGHER?

this should go without saying, but just in case: SPOILERS FOR 2.2 STORY AHEAD. this will be tagged but not under a cut, so proceed with caution if you're not caught up yet.

so, since 2.2 refuted one of my favourite theories for g.allagher's identity, much to my disappointment, i've opted to keep my hcs as is and make my portrayal CANON DIVERGENT. this is also in part because i've already developed (or started developing) certain dynamics that rely on him following this particular identity and i don't want to throw that out / limit it to an AU verse, especially given interactions with "g.allagher" are now pretty restricted for anything post 2.2.

MINOR CANON COMPLIANCE

there are certain aspects i will keep, of course. namely, that he is a pathstrider of the enigmata, and that "g.allagher" is a created form specifically designed for p.enacony. he does deliberately "borrow" traits from the Family members as s.unday describes to create this image.

and, to an extent, "g.allagher" as we know him has ceased to exist following the events of the story. however, a different form was created in its place that shares some of the traits of the previous one - a new g.allagher, if you will.

THE TRUE "G.ALLAGHER"

prior to 2.2, i ascribed to the theory that g.allagher was a potential "human form" for the memory zone meme Death, that he was Death itself (saying he was Thirteen played a lot into this, obviously) - and i took this and ran wild with it. and, so:

he does not control Something Unto Death/Dormancy. he is Something Unto Death/Dormancy.

"g.allagher" does not have a singular true form - at least, not one that is known or has ever been seen. instead, he creates various 'characters' that he can shift between at will. for p.enacony, these were the human guise of g.allagher and the memetic entity itself. whilst in either of these forms, he can also alter individual aspects of his appearance at will - though these are usually temporary and used as a means of unsettling or intimidating enemies.

quick note: this portrayal of g.allagher will occasionally involve minor descriptions of body horror for this reason. i can and will leave these out for people who are uncomfortable with that, so if that applies to you, please let me know during discussion/plotting prior to interactions! these descriptions will never be graphic/too horrific, but i still don't want to make anyone uncomfortable unknowingly.

the primary form is the memetic entity, and as such, there is a certain bleed through into the human 'g.allagher'. these include the elements of g.allagher's attacks and the glow that shines through his scars and forms his claws. there's also occasionally an unsettling presence about him that certain others can pick up on, particularly those who are also possibly not quite human.

despite being the same entity, he is able to split himself into multiple forms at once. as such, both the human guise of 'g.allagher' and the memetic form 'dormancy' are able to be encountered separately - this is mostly to further conceal the truth, avoiding an observant eye coming to the realisation that they are never seen together, despite dormancy being 'controlled' by g.allagher. when separated like this, all forms share senses and can even 'take over' certain senses of another form - for example, g.allagher could 'take over' dormancy's vision to see through its eyes.

KEY INFORMATION

his role in the story is unchanged. his involvement with the w.atchmaker remains the same, etc. he's still a history fictionologist. given there's so little information available for this faction, i don't see a reason to tweak this (yet).

very few people know he and the memetic entity are the same. canon characters that could fall into this category include m.isha (obviously), sunday, robin, and s.amfly. for sunday and robin, this will largely be post-story (as in, after he fckn stabs them-). s,amfly i would accept prior knowledge of due to script reasons. as an additional note, i hc that siobhan knows something is weird about g.allagher (as one of the few who seems to know him & interacts with him in a way that implies a history between them - and as someone who regularly deals with & has experience with inhuman creatures) but she simply doesn't ask questions.

g.allagher and "dormancy" can be encountered as separate entities at the same time, and share senses. to avoid the risk of questions, g.allagher makes a point to be seen with "dormancy" on occasion.

g.allagher and "dormancy" have different personalities - g.allagher has been carefully crafted a certain way to fit the role he needs to play. when g.allagher breaks this character, that is "dormancy" bleeding through. g.allagher's personality is a blend of borrowed traits from the Family and hints, perhaps, of the fictionologist who created him...

post-2.2 story, "g.allagher" is recreated but with altered traits from the original. the new form is in a similar age range appearance-wise, has a similar colouring (though his hair is longer), and also has visible scarring though the scars themselves are different.

he can still be found around p.enacony in both forms, though the human g.allagher (2.0) is more likely to be found in reality whilst the memetic entity remains in the dreamscape.

[halorocks1214]

okay so i just steamrolled thru detective pikachu returns over the past 2 days because i was sick and had nothing else better to do and right after finishing it i went into the tags and WOWIE the negative reception is very large!! i do understand and even agree with some of it but i just felt the need to get my own thoughts down (again. sick with nothing better to do) so take a peek under readmore for very typical elongated halo ramblings about his fave video game series

for the record i never played the first game (only watched a few clips of it on youtube even) but i did go see the movie in theaters. just figured i'd mention this ahead of time so my favoritism is known and to prevent myself from coming off as a perfectly unbiased reviewer

BEWARE THE SPOILERS BTW

(post-editing note: it be long under here, you have been warned)

to start off YEAG this game is not worth 50 bucks! the story's pacing is all over the place and is very basic, the graphics are not particularly well refined, the characters' expressions do not fluctuate as much as they should (professor gordon in particular ;-; i felt so bad for him), and the voice acting outside of merloch and detective pikachu himself are kinda phoned in! it felt like an early 2000s 4kids dub for real. even the gameplay aspects themselves were rather meh in presentation; the button hitboxes were annoying to deal with and as cool as i thought the "main" mechanics were they were incredibly clunky and the tension they tried to build up in the "solving the case" climaxes was just Not It. there was absolutely no reason for the loading/pauses to take that long

(the pokemon gimmicks were okay tho. i would die for growlithe)

however, this isn't a problem specific to this game. while i enjoyed scarlet it was definitely not 60 bucks material (and when i went back to it for the teal mask i even went "good lord, did it always run this badly?"). i gotta give credit to detective pikachu, at least this game ran properly for the most part and never crashed on me lmao

while that doesn't negate the criticisms i previously mentioned i simply wanted to say that this is going to be a problem for as long as pokemon keeps making money. this isn't me finger-wagging at anyone in particular (i certainly have no room to talk, i did say i liked scarlet), i just wanted to say: yeah, pokemon has been A Mess

"but halo!" you cry. "you talked like the negative reception was overblown! what gives the giant negative paragraph??"

because much like scarlet, i still really enjoyed this game sdfjnsdk. how can i say that with confidence, though, when i largely agree that there were many, many issues to be had with its performance?

the word of the day: expectations

and perhaps this is where my bias comes into it. whenever i play a spinoff game (like snap or pokepark for instance), i don't really go into it for mindblowing gameplay and stories, i do it for the same reason this series has kept me enraptured for over a decade of my life:

the pokemon themselves!!

there are SO MANY little things that the regular games don't go into, and while i have my own headcanons and OCs i can play off of, it is so much fun to see actual canon material acknowledge certain things you've only ever theorized about!!

the whimsicott were so fun to watch float around, the article asking where a furret's tail began and ended made me laugh out loud, the fact that they went hard into the "slowpoke tails are eaten as food" thing, and the "let's not get into that right now" jokes about venonat hunting other pokemon and dusknoir eating souls LIKE. i LOVE when pokemon goes into its more "serious" aspects. i know main series games do it too occasionally but outside of offhanded mentions or pokedex entries, do they go this hard into them? if they do and i'm just stupid pls tell me about it i'll eat that shit up

being reminded of less-talked-about pokemon is always a plus and how can you not pop off when you see one of your faves included in the story? (INTELEON AND WOOPER I'LL KICK THEIR ASSES 4 U) it's simply fun immersing yourself into the world of pokemon and getting a glimpse of what it would be like to have pokemon walking down the street and how that affects everyday life! maybe the story is basic, but it served its purpose and i had fun going along with it!

perhaps it's just my mental illness talking, but walking around and seeing all the pokemon and THEN doing the quiz girl's quizzes was actually kinda nice! even if the puzzles weren't that hard, i can't lie and say i didn't pump my fist when i guessed where the mystery was going like with cramorant swallowing the jewel or how the passimian statues needed to hold different berries. overall, i just enjoyed being reminded of how much i know and what i love about this series

also, the ways they incorporated the movie were pretty baller. i liked how they didn't just do a repeat of the mewtwo plot from the movie and let me tell you, even tho i called it early on, i liked that my suspicions about the aurora drop being deoxys were confirmed!! (i suppose it's not that hard to guess bcs what other pokemon comes from space, but i just recently finished playing omega ruby again and i normally don't think about deoxys a lot so LET ME HAVE THIS)

plus "i heard they made a movie about the R case" MADE ME SCREAM. i thought they were just going to ignore the movie and do their own thing but then they DID THAT. incredible. you can call my expectations low (which is valid) but holy fuck

so the TLDR for those who want this: if you want a sweet but cliche game exploring the world of pokemon with a lot of funny moments + worldbuilding, then this game is perfect for you. if you want a game with a groundbreaking story with graphics to boot, then yeah, you're not gonna find it here. i've even seen people say their own nostalgia of the original spinoff wasn't enough to get them to enjoy this game, so take my words with a grain of salt

i would say just watch compilations of the game on youtube, but not every youtuber is gonna go fully exploring the game for all of its little details, so if you care about that kind of stuff, buying the game is your best bet. also if you don't care about that kind of stuff then you should just ignore the game altogether etc etc anYwAY

as for a TLDR for the TLDR: new pokemon snap is goated and i would say a more enjoyable experience than this game esp if you didn't like it so PLEASE buy it the game's only 30 bucks and you can throw treats at pokemon PLEASE it has so many sidequests and interactions you can partake in PLEASE i prommy i won't bite PLEASE stick your fingers in my enclosure PLEASE PLEASE PLE

[tiger-moran]

TW: references to murder, aphobia, acephobia

I was reading a review which, rightfully, was basically ripping apart the decision to make a documentary in which the asshole who brutally murdered 17 year old Bianca Devins and posted pictures of her dead body online was interviewed, and to air this on channel 4 (fuck him. Let him die and rot in obscurity).

Which kind of gave me flashbacks to the horrific shitstorm of aphobia that her murder stirred up on here back then, something which I'm sure plenty of people who are still on here and were at least a party to even if they didn't directly participate in it themselves have never acknowledged was disgusting and they probably have just tried to quietly sweep the fact that they had any part in that under the rug and don't care how many people they harmed in the process.

I mean these people cared more about trying to """"prove""" Bianca couldn't possibly be asexual, despite the fact that she had essentially said she was not that long before she died, than they did about the fact that she was a 17 year old girl who was violently murdered and that countless people including her family and friends were traumatised by being forcibly shown graphic images of her dead body. Even some people claiming to be her friends apparently cared more about insisting she couldn't possibly be asexual than they did about condemning the bastard who killed her or the other assholes glorifying him and her murder. People were literally acting like being asexual is worse than being a violently misogynistic 'incel' or a child murderer. It was absolutely sickening.

And a lot of those ~exclusionists~ who ran ~ace discourse~ blogs (as if endlessly invalidating and shit-talking about a marginalised sexual orientation was just the same as liking a TV show or a book or something) kept going on and on about "aphobia doesn't exist" even while people were posting those really graphic images of Bianca's murdered body in not just the asexual tags but the fucking ace positivity tags to ~own the aceys who dare to think they're oppressed~; while they were actively sending those pictures to people just for being asexual; while they were denying there was the slightest chance Bianca could have possibly been asexual as if being asexual is somehow the most horrific thing a person could ever be; while they were denying anyone who has ever had sex or even had a sexual thought in their entire life could be asexual thus invalidating and denying the sexuality of many, many thousands of asexual people; while they were attacking asexual people who were understandably upset about a girl who many of us only knew about because she had said she was asexual being brutally killed, and claiming asexual people were "using her murder for discourse points" while it was them posting the most vile things about asexual people and using her murder as a weapon to try to traumatise and silence us, and while most of the asexual people who said anything about Bianca's murder were not even saying anything about it being related to the possibility she was asexual. And also people were upset too because in a group that is pretty much guaranteed to have a much higher level of sex repulsion amongst its members, that group is very likely to be disproportionately affected by the issue of being assaulted or possibly even killed for rejecting someone's sexual advances compared to various other groups, so a lot of asexual people were, in addition to being upset about a girl being murdered and in many cases having to see graphic images of her murder, also terrified of something similar happening to them. But apparently being afraid in addition to grieving for a murdered child also made asexuals terrible people who deserved to be attacked.

I don't know and I don't even particularly care whether Bianca was really asexual or whether she was, like many other people, just trying out a different label for one of various possible reasons. She was murdered while she was still a minor so no, none of us have a clue what she would have said about her sexual orientation a day later or a week later or a year later or whatever. But it's still a fact that for whatever reason she did it that she had a connection to asexual people and that connection made her death even more personal and more traumatic and yes, more frightening too, for many asexual people. So you had these people, people of a marginalised, minority sexuality and many of whom were minors or still young themselves, who were firstly terribly upset that a 17 year old girl had been violently killed anyway, a girl who many of us only had any awareness of already because she had essentially said she was asexual, and secondly that these disgusting images of her death were being forced upon us including in some asexual people's inboxes and in our 'positivity' tags, and thirdly that whatever the reasoning behind her murder was it raised (yet again) the stark fact that people can be attacked and sometimes even murdered just for turning down someone's sexual advances, a possibility which is of course not unique to asexual people and overall we never tried to claim it was but it is very likely to disproportionately affect us compared to certain other groups. And we were being attacked for this even by people who claimed they were the ~good guys protecting the LGBT community from the evil cishet invaders~, attacked for being devastated about a girl being horribly killed, for being upset and in some cases actively traumatised by having those images of her murdered body forced upon us, for being afraid that something similar could happen to us, for being angry that people were going out of their way to not just attack asexuals but also to use poor Bianca's horrific death to try to invalidate, erase and silence us. All of this while we were being yelled at that "aphobia doesn't exist" by people who in many cases literally just saw themselves as nothing more than ~exclusionists~.

No I will not forget what those people did and I will never forgive them, for that or everything else they did to us because they thought attacking and invalidating us was just ~haha so much fun~ and a great hobby before many of them apparently decided attacking asexuals and aromantics was boring and moved on to attacking and invalidating and denying the oppression of the next 'hot target'.

And fuck that documentary.

I am still so sorry Bianca. I hope you're at peace.

[bihet-dragonize]

I posted 18,870 times in 2022

693 posts created (4%)

18,177 posts reblogged (96%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@nbblacksheep

@sawasawako

@venus-macabre

@lovedlovingly

I tagged 4,242 of my posts in 2022

#my answers - 439 posts

#kia's answers - 439 posts

#kia's post - 271 posts

#kia's og posts - 266 posts

#art reference - 79 posts

#johnny depp tw - 47 posts

#signal boost - 43 posts

#direct action - 42 posts

#prev tags - 40 posts

#mutual aid - 40 posts

Longest Tag: 140 characters

#no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

The way bi women have been talking about this for fucking years. Been yelling and screaming that we don't magically escape homophobia or misogyny just because we're dating, married to or fucking men and it was met with the vilest shit on this very fucking site. The way we provided study after fucking study. They way we said we deserve and need lgbt resources in case our cishet partners are abusive and it was treated as us being liars and invaders. The way we've spoken about how common biphobic beliefs (which inform why people refuse to even associate with the term "bisexual") has led to our high rates of ipv.

And we were ignored. People called us bihets (peep the url). People made it seem like were were just sluts that performed lesbianism for men (so much to unpack there). We were continually called liars and selfish and self centered and told that we were just trying to center our cishet relationships in lgbt spaces. People genuinely harassed bi bloggers for simply stating that bi m/f relationships were not cishet.

And now a bisexual woman who was abused for years because of her ex-husband's biphobic, misogynistic, jealousy, and she's just been told "Yes you were abused. No, you're not allowed to talk about it."

The fact that the biphobia is merely a footnote in most of the conversations surrounding the abuse (as if it can be neatly separated from JD's motivations behind his violence) is not lost on me either.

1,101 notes - Posted June 1, 2022

#4

Staff working FAST to remove those images meanwhile bloggers of color get slurs in our inboxes and calls for genocide against us, lgbt bloggers get literal harassment and graphic descriptions of violence, trans women getting just the vilest shit you could think of and its crickets. I think it's safe to say that that staff member and the rest of staff are just white supremacists. I never trusted them, but I hope for anyone that did this shows you just how ain't shit they've truly been.

1,445 notes - Posted May 28, 2022

#3

Anyways Imma complain about that author that just gets her ideas from her fucking agent like some 9th grade student.

I genuinely get so fucking annoyed with most of the booktok shit with the boring stock minimalist covers and the fucking fanfic-to-published pipeline but the idea that an author is 1. Getting their ideas from their agent in the form of like....suggested writing prompts and 2. Is being given tropes as the prompt with nothing else to consider, is mind boggling. Why do these people write? Why do these people do this if they don't want to create something as organically as possible? It's definitely a lack of respect for the craft cuz like if you respected writing and storytelling for the art that it is you wouldn't be reducing it down to tropes so you can start playing Situation Simulator 9000 with the most recent white cishet abled characters shown on your feed. It's just insane to me.

1,556 notes - Posted August 31, 2022

#2

I think you have to be particularly ignorant to see the treatment of lgbt people (regardless of whether we're sexually explicit or not) and of sex workers, and women who are confident in their sexual interests, and poc who are simultaneously hypersexualized and desexualized by racism, and disabled/fat people who are desexualized and fetishized by virtue of ableist/fatphobic dehumanization and think that the world has a net positive view of sex.

4,065 notes - Posted April 25, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

The fact that I reported a puppet account for saying Black people deserved slavery and was given a bullshit "that's their opinion" response yet staff has deleted 3 of my Black mutuals on the same fucking day tells my that @staff is racist and that Black Excellence banner is only for fucking show. Y'all will let Black bloggers be harassed, but God forbid one of them says fucking white women. With fucking full blown pedos and white supremacists on your fucking site too. Hope your building blows up

15,741 notes - Posted February 4, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[kuh-boose]

I kind of agree, if you're just flaggin stuff you happen to not like. But if you're not properly tagging your shit I'm 100% flagging it. I don't give a shit about boobs or whatever, its a body, but I'm tired of seeing graphic smut featuring real people, a kids shows characters, etc in the main tag (or on my feed, or reccommended to me), untagged for what it is. Post what you want, I don't give a shit, but if you're gonna be a dick and not tag it so other people don't have to be bombarded by sex or whatever constantly, particularly in the cases mentioned above, then I'm gonna flag it.

Also...this probably sounds condescending, but I mean it. Is there a reason this bothers people? You can opt to not have mature flagged content filtered out. Its a nice feature to have so that I can scroll in public without nsfw content coming up on my phone. Why is it such a problem for this stuff to be flagged? How does it affect anything? It doesnt get taken down, far as I know

if you as a normal tumblr user go around flagging posts for mature labels you are A Fucking Cop

[silversweetpea]

Where It Starts

Word Count:3976

Pairing: Steven Grant x Reader

Summary: You can’t tell if it takes you a day a week or a month to fall in love with Steven. You just know that you do. 

Warnings: There’s a Super Super Super brief description of bandaged wounds in the Friday section. there’s nothing graphic but just in case you should know that’s there.

Author’s Note: Hi I’m still obsessed with him your honor. It is once again, not beta read because somehow the idea of roping one of my friends into proofreading my unhinged softness is too embaressing for me ajlkfjdslfjdlksajflkdjas

❀✿❀✿ ❀✿❀✿ ❀✿❀✿ ❀✿❀✿ ❀✿❀✿ ❀✿❀✿ ❀✿❀✿ ❀✿❀

It starts on a Tuesday at noon. 

You hate Tuesdays of course, you’ve always had an issue with them since you were little, the first one to throw them under the bus in defense of Mondays. This Tuesday was particularly bad though, as if the whole of the universe had ganged up on you to make you regret ever learning the name for the worst day of the week. 

Some of your boxes were still missing in the mail meaning that the outfit you had picked out weeks ago for your very important interview for museum archivist that had been one of the main reasons for moving this far away from home was also still missing in the mail somewhere, your hair refused to do what you wanted it to despite doing an extensive amount of pampering towards it last night and your alarm clock had decided not to go off at all so you were left with the bare minimum amount of time thanks to your ‘get your ass out the door’ alarm you had set on your phone just in case.

Your outfit wasn’t bad per say, there was a reason it had made it through the purge for the move but it wasn’t the outfit. You couldn’t stop trying to press it flat under your palms as you stood on the cramped bus that you were still anxiously double checking on your phone was the correct one to take when you saw him the first time.

He was tall, for sure, but not in an abnormal way that stood out amongst the variety of the crowd and although the mops of dark curls on his head kept falling into his eyes you were struck by just how exhausted his gaze seemed. His head kept resting on his chest, body swaying where it stood ever so slightly. 

The majority of your brain worried for him, for the way that he seemed to shrink himself down where he stood. The minority, was kinda glad that someone else was having a shitty day too. 

The minority segment that quickly fell quiet when he also stepped off at the museum. 

Not that you thought he was following you, there was also a tourist couple with polaroid cameras around their necks that stepped off behind you and an elderly woman that was first out. No, it was just that as he stepped out he stumbled and the majority brain won out as you walked closer to him. You may not know quite what to say to him, but you could at least catch him if he went to topple over.

You don’t see him when you split off towards the information desk to ask where you should wait for your interview, nor do you see him on the way to the curator’s office. It isn’t until you’re being led out that you catch sight of him again and you catch a clear sight of his name tag. Steven.

Or maybe it starts on a Wednesday. It’s late and your head feels like its swimming after having hours of information crammed into it, some useful and some...less so. You were fairly certain you could have gone without the in depth tour of the museum floors that Donna, your quite abrupt guide, had insisted on. 

But then again, it had meant that you were able to see Steven again. You were certain about his name this time.

You heard him before you saw him, his soothing voice excited as he walked a visitor through the story of Isis and Osiris. His whole body seems awake for the first time since you’d seen him, his hands were moving wildly, gesturing to the art around him, moving through the motions to further emphasize his point, directing the gaze of the young boy to the sarcophagus and then ensnaring him back into the story just as quickly. He was in the middle of detailing their plan of decoy temples, eyes sparkling like a night sky with how dark they were, how full of potential. Donna sighed and it made your stomah roll over, like the second of hesitation before the rollercoaster goes flying downwards and you barely have time to open your mouth, a feeble attempt to distract her, before she’s speaking. 

“Oi, Stevie, back to the shop and stop harassing the visitors,” The light dies and his hands drop to his side within seconds. The shoulders that had just been so broad, so expressive, now small and curled inwards like a puppy who’s nose had been whacked with a newspaper roll. 

“It’s Steven, actually, with a v,” His voice is quiet, so much more reserved and so much more disappointed but lacking in surprise. Donna doesn’t even slow her steps as Steven disegages from the visitor he had been talking to, and you can’t help but let yourself fall a few steps behind her. You know exactly what awaits you in the next wing of the museum, but here, at the gift shop counter, is a brand new exhibit to learn about. 

You cast a single glance ahead of yourself to make sure that you’re not being too terribly missed before taking a deep breathe and moving decidedly off course. 

“You said it’s Steven?” His head whips up, fast enough that his dark curls are still in motion after it stops and you can’t fight the smile that tugs at your lips. The gift shopist’s eyes are dark and wide, you’re certain if you took just few steps closer you’d be able to see yourself in their reflection, but you’re still looking for that sparkle to come back into them from a few minutes ago. 

“I’m sorry?” It’s quiet still, not as disappointed, and half an octave higher from surprise, but you like the way his voice sounds. You wonder for just a second what your name would sound like, or if he sings. 

“Your name? Donna called you Stevie but I want to make sure I get it right now instead of a year from now, you know?” The man blinks, eyes comically wide, mouth opening ever so slightly, and you think about whether all of his expressions are so easily read. 

“Y-Yeah. Uhm, Steven, Steven Grant.” His hands jump about in front of him, as if he can’t decide what to do with them and the idea of the handsome stranger in front of you unsure whether or not he should shake you hand somehow just endears him more to you. You decide after just a second to stick out your own hand and take his with a small shake. 

“Nice to meet you Steven, I’m-”

“(Y/N)! We’re on a schedule here!” Donna’s voice is curt and you wince, but even through that you smile. It’s hard not to when Steven is still looking at you like you’ve just told him he’s won a million dollars purely by asking his name and shaking his hand.  

“Apparently in trouble. I’ll see you around, yeah?” 

“Yeah,” It’s more of a breath than an answer but you smile anyways and when you drop his hand you miss its warmth immediately. Donna doesn’t tear into you, she can’t since you’re technically above her on the food chain, but the rest of the tour is tense and annoyed. Maybe if you were in a more people pleasing mood you’d care. Hell if you thought that she was someone worth getting to know maybe you would care. Instead, you were busy thinking about the way that you could feel his eyes lingering on you as you walked away. 

Or maybe, It starts on a Thursday, when the sun is bright and the bus is emptier than normal and Steven, beautiful Steven, is about to miss the bus. It’s a split second decision, but really, wasn’t your move? 

“Excuse me! I’m sorry but can I ask you something real quick?” The bus driver pauses in her process of closing the door and looks at you. She’s annoyed but but she stops nonetheless and as you putter out a question about what route this bus goes on. You aren’t entirely sure she believes your doe eyed act of confusion, especially since you’re about fifty percent sure that she’s the same driver as yesterday, but the momentary pause allows Steven to get to the door just fine and that’s worth the potential embarrassment. 

“Hello? I’m really sorry but can you, maybe, open the door? I slept through my alarm and-” the sound of the door opening cuts Steven off and he all but slinks into his seat, head down, shoulders up, black messenger bag glued to his chest. You don’t think he even looks up to see why the bus stopped, and when you say thank you to the driver who’s now eyeing the pair of you its a quick few steps to where he’s collapsed.

“Bad morning?” There’s the whiplash again, and if its possible, Steven looks more nervous to see you standing there.

“You could say that.” His response comes out sounding like an awkward laugh and you do your best to nod sympathetically without getting too lost in the wave of embarrassment that comes with your own memories of mornings such as those. 

“Sorry, I know what thats like.” Steven is laughs again, eyes not looking at you and you’re not sure if he’s uncomfortable or just not. “Is it okay if I sit?”

“Oh, Oh! Yes, of course. Sorry, I just you’re, I’m, sit. Please.” He looks like he’s going to jump out of his skin but it’s cute. So far everything he’s done is cute to you, not that you would dare tell anyone else that yet. Gods, barely three weeks in and you’re hopelessly infatuated with a coworker that probably thinks you’re stalking him considering you share a route.

“Sorry I didn’t get a chance to come back yesterday. I was down in the records room and when I came back up everyone had already gone. I figured you had too.” There’s the shock again, honestly you’d wonder if he had any other expressions if it weren’t for the way his smile lingered in your thoughts even now. 

“Oh, it’s alright-” You’re already shaking your head fondly as he tries to brush off your apology but your hands are already in your bag digging out a prop. 

“No, really, I wanted to say thank you for this. I mean, I’m assuming it’s from you after all,” Its a beautiful journal and its one Steven recognizes if the way that he sputters to a stop is any indication. The cover is a deep brown with lotus designs etched into the spine, minimal and soft and on the inside had been just a simple sticky note. 

I hope this works okay, it reminded me of you. 

You still had the sticky note in the front cover, afraid to move it in case you lost if somewhere. 

“Well, I mean, you said that you needed a new journal last week when you brought your notes to lunch so I just figured you might like one that’s a bit more decorative than one from the pound shop.” Steven’s eyes immediately move away and out the window, hands coming up in front of him as he begins to babble nervously. “Not that there’s anything wrong with those of course! I almost always use those since I end up misplacing them in my flat ever few days. I keep meaning to clean up my shelves but I never quite get around to it.”

“Steven, it’s beautiful. Thank you. Although for the record, next time you’re in the mood to get me a present I’m more than happy with just a card from the pound shop. It’s more about who’s giving the gift than what it is.” There’s another passing of smiles, and you make a note to slip your own gift of a new pair of headphone (more of a gag gift really, considering that they were shapped like goldfish) into his locker. 

Or maybe It comes on a Friday when there’s been months of shared commutes and stored away tidbits about his life. You know he lives alone and that he has a fish named gus and that he definetly, absolutely, beyond a shadow of a doubt, belonged in a tour guide position instead of stuck behind a gift shop counter. 

You know that he leaves sometimes and never seems to remember where he’s been. You thought he was lying the first few times he left but then you’d seen him try to lie about something and, well, he wasn’t very good at it. 

You know that Steven Grant is an enigma that doesn’t even seem aware of his own contradictories. 

“And of course, at that point, he just decides that he’s tired of the shenanigans so he goes to report to the temple and-” You don’t mean to cut him off. Not really, you like to hear his stories of myths and legends, you like to see how excited he gets over the retellings of tales centuries past. But your eyes won’t leave his wrist, won’t leave the rusty colored stains that your gut won’t stop turning over and over at the sight of. 

“Are you okay?” It’s abrupt, you know it is, and you almost feel bad given that something in his face changes when you glance upwards to it. Your gaze doesn’t linger, it can’t. Not when there’s still that injury that Steven hasn’t even acknowledged yet.

“Oh, sure, just got a bit cut up...picking up some glass! Right, yes, I was moving Gus to a new tank and I dropped the old one and I wasn’t as careful as I should have been I guess.” Steven tugs at the end of his sleeve self consciously and you swallow hard. You know that he’s lying though before your eyes move away from the wrap.

“You picked up glass...with your wrist?” You almost feel bad for pressing when he shifts in his seat, silence dragging on for just a second too long as he tried to find a story to tell you.

“I dropped it on my wrist.” It’s phrased like a statment but Steven’s voice lifts at the end which makes it sound like even he’s not sure of what he’s saying. 

“Right. You made sure to disinfect it, right? And you’re keeping an eye out for infection?” Now it’s Steven that swallows hard, looking utterly uncomfortable at your worry, but it only seems to fan the flame in your chest. “Did it cut very deep? That’s a lot of wrapping for a surface wound.”

“I’m fine, promise (y/n).” It’s 

“My definition of fine or yours?” Steven can’t seem to decide whether or not to look away. He stares at you like you’re blinding, his eyes watering at the edges like he’s fighting the urge to blink or cry and you’re not sure which makes more sense. Which is easier for your brain to hold onto. 

You move slowly, scared to spook him worse than you already have but desperate to get through to him. It’s only when your hand wraps ever so gently around his wrist, when you hear his breath stick in his throat but he doesn’t pull away that you speak again. 

“You need to take care of yourself, okay? You have my number, if nothing else call me so I can make sure it’s clean and you’re not making it worse by ignoring it.” Your mother had always said you were a worrier and yeah, you probably were, but the thought of Steven sitting alone in his apartment wrapping his own wound made your heart ache.

“Okay.” He whispered and you shook your head, holiding ever so slightly tighter to his hand.

“I mean it. Promise me you’ll call next time Steven.” You were right, all those weeks ago when you thought about seeing your own reflection, you can. It should be humbling to see yourself so worked up over a hypothetical situation but you can only see the same eyes that you always loose yourself in, like Alice falling down the rabbit hole. 

“I promise.” It’s spoken like an oath, and for the first time, he squeezes your hand back. It’s barely more than the ghost of a pressure but it’s enough that you know he’s trying, that he’s reciprocating in the way that he knows how to in that moment and the fear begins to slip away bit by bit. 

“Thank you.” You don’t let go of his hand, but you do give him a weak smile. “You were telling me about the robber? He was about to turn himself in?”

“Right, right,” Steven’s gaze falls to your hands, still connected, but he doesn’t pull away and you don’t either. Just gently hold his hand in yours as he begins his story again and by the time you reach the museum you’re certain that your hand will never feel right without it there ever again.

Maybe it starts on a Saturday when he's gone and you're not sure where. He hadn’t been to work the past few days and he wasn’t answering your texts, but Steven was always a big hard to get ahold of. You had learned that if he went more than a few minutes without answering you likely weren’t bound to get one for a day or two at least.

You still texted him, and called, of course. He had let slip once that he sometimes had problems telling what day of the week it was so even if you didn’t do anything else you tried to work that into your voicemails and texts so that when he did get them he could trace the days back to the present. And if you were able to give him a little bit of a reminder that someone was out there that carred about him, even when he wasn’t around for them to say it to him directly, in the process all the better. 

“Anyways Love, I hope you’re having a great day and that you’re remembering to rest! Donna can mind her business when you come in, I’ll help you forge a hospital note if needs be. Call me when you get a chance, and in the meantime, drink some water! Love you!” The phone is signed off, tucked away in your purse, and your groceries that you had been carrying fully brought into your apartment across the street from his when it sinks in what you said. 

You don’t regret it, even as you feel the earth opening up to swallow you whole, body burning with embaressment that you’re eternally grateful no one lives with you to witness. You hadn’t meant to say it, not like that, but you won’t take it back. You do love him after all, and if he asks about it you can always tell him the truth of the matter that you sign off most of your calls with your friends and family the same way, its force of habit nothing more. You’re a much better liar than he is after all.

Still, as you stare at your phone and wait for him to call, wait for him to text, wait for a knock at the door, you wonder if you have it in you to lie about the way he makes you feel. The way that his enthusiasm for what he loves makes you feel giddy yourself, the way that you’ve taken to packing an extra thermos of tea along with a drink for yourself in the morning, because he’s always running late or forgetting his, the way that he remembers what you tell him, even if it’s a throw away comment, and remembers to ask about it later on down the line. It’s like coming home in a sense, he makes you feel like everything will be okay even as you’re struggling to adapt to such a new environment all at once.

When you see him next he doesn’t ask about the call and you don’t offer him an answer, just watch him smile a little bit more than normal and fidget ever so slightly with your coat sleeves as you say good morning. 

Or maybe, just maybe, it starts on a Sunday, when it’s the middle of the night. You can’t sleep, your brain turning over the past few days, the prolonged absences of Steven and the way he’d been more and more cagey, startled by every noise and movement. He’d been better about calling when he was hurt, it wasn’t a failsafe situation and more often than not he didn’t have an answer for how he got hurt when you did get over to his flat, but it helped to soothe your own anxiety about him not taking care of himself. 

Maybe it starts with a quiet ask for help, for comfort, to come visit you because he feels like he’s loosing his mind and you say yes because it’s Steven and he’s scared and you love him. You’d never say it, don’t think your heart could take the shatter that would be his refusal. You weren’t sure when it started, this love, this all encompassing worry and warmth cocktail you carried in your chest like a martini glass two sizes too small. It was constantly on the brim, ready to spill if you moved ever so slightly too fast. You just know that one day Steven was someone you watched on the bus and the next he was your best friend. number one confidant, and biggest crush wrapped into one.

Maybe it starts when Steven opens the door, panicked and on the verge of collapsing and you don’t think, don’t hesitate, just gently pull him inside and open your arms to him. A move that he hesitates against accepting for just a moment before melting into you.

Maybe it starts with consoling, with comfort, with the promise that no matter where he goes, no matter what he does or doesn’t know about himself you’re going to be there for him. You don’t tell him that you would rather follow him into a nightmare than live a dream without him. You don’t know if you have the strength you’d need if he rejected you. 

Maybe it starts with Steven, looking up at you, eyes watery and heart rapid and hands shaky, in a quiet voice telling you that he doesn’t know what he would do without you. 

Maybe it starts with inviting him to spend the night, to take the bed while you take the couch, or when Steven rebuts that and says that he’ll stay but only if he takes the couch and you take the bed or when you, with a sleepy smile, offer to just share the bed with him, that way he can wake you easier if he needs you - and not just because you’ve been looking for an excuse to get closer to him all night. To smell his shampoo and wrap your arms around him and have his arms wrapped around you.

Maybe it starts when he agrees and you’re laying in bed, talking quietly about anything and everything and nothing at all and the conversation fizzles out as you look at him, and the words leave you at 11:59 pm before you can stop them. Your heart took advantage of the way your brain was swaddled in softness, rode the high that came with this casual intimacy of falling asleep next to each other.

“Steven, would it be okay if I kissed you?”

Or maybe it starts at 12:00 am when his hand reaches for yours under the cover and his response comes shaky and slow as he leans in towards you. 

“Are you sure you want to?” His voice drips with caution, but there's something under it, something that sounds needy in the same way you feel. Even as he cranes towards you, even as you all but feel the way his breathing picks up, your hear swells with affection that he waits for you to be so careful with your heart.

Or maybe it starts when you answer him with a kiss.

[eiirisworkshop]

The Fanfic Author's Guide to Metatext

(As Used on Ao3) by Eiiri

Also available as a PDF here. This thing is 13,000 words.  The PDF is recommended.

Intro: What is Metatext?

Metatext is everything we fanfic authors post along with our story that is not the story itself: title, tags, summary, author's notes, even the rating.

It is how we communicate to potential readers what they're signing themselves up for if they choose to read our story, how we let them make informed decisions regarding which fics they want to read, how we get their interest and, frequently, how they find our story in the first place. A lot of metatext acts as a consent mechanism for readers, it's the informed part of informed consent.

Since most of us who write fanfic also read it, we understand how important this is! But, for the most part, no one ever teaches us how to use metatext; we have to pick it up by osmosis. That makes it hard to learn how to use it well, we all suck at it when we first start out, and some of us may go years without learning particular conventions that seem obvious to others in our community. This creates frustration for everybody.

Enter this guide!

This is meant to be a sort of handbook for fic writers, particularly those of us who post on Archive of Our Own, laying out and explaining the established metatext conventions already in use in our community so we (and our readers!) are all on the same page. It will also provide some best-practices tips.

The point is to give all of us the tools to communicate with our audience as clearly and effectively as possible, so the people who want to read a story like ours can find it and recognize it as what they're looking for, those who don't want to read a story like ours can easily tell it's not their cup of tea and avoid it, nobody gets hurt, and everybody has fun—including us!

Now that we know what we're talking about, let's get on with the guide! The following content sections appear in the order one is expected to provide each kind of metatext when posting a fic on Ao3, but first….

Warning!

This is a guide for all authors on Ao3. As such, it mentions subject matter and kinds of fic that you personally might hate or find disgusting, but which are allowed under the Archive's terms of use. There are no graphic descriptions or harsh language in the guide itself, but it does acknowledge the existence of fic you may find distasteful and explains how to approach metatext for such fics.

Some sexual terminology is used in an academic context.

A note from the author:

This guide reflects the conventions of the English-language fanfiction community circa 2021. Conventions may differ in other language communities, and although many of our conventions have been in place for decades (praise be to our Star Trek loving foremothers) fanfiction now exists primarily in the realm of internet fandom where things tend to change rather quickly, so some conventions in this guide may die out while other new conventions, not covered in this guide, arise.

This is not official or in any way produced by the Archive of Our Own (Ao3), and though some actual site rules are mentioned, it is not a rulebook. Primarily, it is a descriptivist take on how the userbase uses metatext to communicate amongst ourselves, provided in the interest of making that communication easier and more transparent for everyone, especially newer users.

Contents

How To Use This Guide Ratings Archive Warnings Fandom Tags Category Relationship Tags Character Tags Additional Tags Titles Summaries Author's Notes Series and Chapters Parting Thoughts

How To Use This Guide

Well, read it.  Or have it read to you.

This isn't a glossary, it's a handbook, and it's structured more like an academic paper or report, but there's lots and lots of examples in it!

Many of these examples are titles of real media and the names of characters from published media, or tags quoted directly from Ao3 complete with punctuation and formatting.

Some examples are more generic and use the names Alex, Max, Sam, Chris, Jamie, and Tori for demonstration purposes. In other generic examples, part of an example tag or phrase may be sectioned off with square brackets to show where in that tag or phrase you would put the appropriate information to complete it.  This will look something like “Top [Character A]” where you would fill in a character's name.

This guide presumes that you know the basics of how to use Ao3, at least from the perspective of reading fic. If you don't, much of this guide may be difficult to understand and will be much less helpful to you, though not entirely useless.

Ratings

Most fanfic hosting sites provide ratings systems that work a lot like the ratings on movies and videogames.

Ao3's system has four ratings:

General

Teen

Mature

Explicit

These seem like they should be pretty self-explanatory, and the site's own official info pop-up (accessible by clicking the question mark next to the section prompt) gives brief, straightforward descriptions for each of them.

Even so, many writers have found ourselves staring at that dropdown list, thinking about what we've written, and wondering what's the right freaking rating for this?  How do I know if it's appropriate for “general audiences” or if it needs to be teen and up? What's the difference between Mature and Explicit?

The best way to figure it out is often to think about your fic in comparison to mainstream media.

General is your average Disney or Dreamworks movie, Cartoon Network or Nickelodeon shows, video games like Mario, Kirby, and Pokemon.

There may be romance, but no sexual content or discussion. Scary things might happen and people might get hurt, but violence is non-graphic and usually mild. Adults may be shown drinking alcohol or smoking tobacco, and some degree of intoxication may be shown (usually played for laughs and not focused on), but hard drug use is generally not shown or discussed.  There is little to no foul language written out and what language there may be is mild, though harsher swears may be implied by narration. There are no explicit F-bombs or slurs.

Teen is more like a Marvel movie, most network television shows (things like The Office, Supernatural, or Grey's Anatomy), video games like Final Fantasy, Five Nights at Freddie's, and The Sims.

There might be some sex and sexual discussion, but nothing explicit is shown—things usually fade to black or are leftimplied. More intense danger, more severe injuries described in greater detail, and a higher level of violence may be present.  Substance use may be discussed and intoxication shown, but main characters are unlikely to be shown doing hard drugs. Some swearing and other harsh language may be present, possibly including an F-bomb or two.  In longer works, that might mean an F-bomb every few chapters.

Mature is, in American terms, an R-rated movie* like Deadpool, Fifty Shades of Grey, The Exorcist, and Schindler's List; certain shows from premium cable networks or streaming services like Game of Thrones, Shameless, Breaking Bad, and Black Sails; videogames like Bioshock, Assassin's Creed, Grand Theft Auto, and The Witcher.

Sex may be shown and it might be fairly explicit, but it's not as detailed or graphic or as much the focus of the work as it would be if it were porn. Violence, danger, and bodily harm may be significant and fairly graphic. Most drug use is fair game. Swearing and harsh language may be extensive.

Explicit is, well, extremely explicit. This is full on porn, the hardcore horror movies, and snuff films.

Sex is highly detailed and graphic. Violence and injury is highly detailed and graphic. Drug use and its effects may be highly detailed and graphic. Swearing and harsh language may be extreme, including extensive use of violent slurs.

Please note that both Mature and Explicit fics are intended for adult audiences only, but that does not mean a teenaged writer isn't going to produce fics that should be rated M or E.  Ratings should reflect the content of the fic, not the age of the author.

Strictly speaking, you don't have to choose any of these ratings; Ao3 has a “Not Rated” option, but for purposes of search results and some other functions, Not Rated fics are treated by the site as Explicit, just in case, which means they end up hidden from a significant portion of potential readers. It really is in your best interest as a writer who presumably wants people to see their stories, to select a rating. It helps readers judge if yours is the kind of story they want right now, too.

Rating a fic is a subjective decision, there is some grey area in between each level. If you're not quite sure where your fic falls, best practice is to go with the more restrictive rating.

*(Equivalent to an Australian M15+ or R18+, Canadian 14A, 18A or 18+, UK 15 or 18, German FSK 16 or FSK 18.)

Warnings

Ao3 uses a set of standard site-wide Archive Warnings to indicate that a work contains subject matter that falls into one or more of a few categories that some readers are likely to want to avoid.  Even when posting elsewhere, it's courteous to include warnings of this sort.

These warnings are:

Graphic Depictions Of Violence

Major Character Death

Rape/Non-Con

Underage

Just like with the ratings, the site provides an info-pop up that explains what each warning is for. They're really exactly what it says on the tin: detailed descriptions of violence, injury, and gore; the death of a character central to canon or tothe story being told; non-consensual sex i.e. rape; and depictions of underage sex, which the site defines as under the age of 18 for humans—Ao3 doesn't care if your local age of consent or majority is lower than that.

In addition to the four standard warnings above, the warnings section has two other choices:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Choose Not To Use Archive Warnings

These do not mean the same thing and cannot be used interchangeably. “No Archive Warnings Apply” means that absolutely nothing in your fic falls into any of the four standard warning categories. “Choose Not To Use Archive Warnings” means that you the author are opting out of the warning system; your fic could potentially contain things that fall into any and all of the four standard warning categories.

There's nothing wrong with selecting Choose Not To Use Archive Warnings! It may mean that some readers will avoid your fic because they're not sure it's safe for them, and you might need to use more courtesy tags than you otherwise would (we'll talk about courtesy tags later), but that's okay! Opting out of the warning system can be a way to avoid spoilers,* and is also good for when you're just not sure if what you've written deserves one of the Archive warnings. In that case, the best practice is to select either the warning it might deserve or Choose Not To Use Archive Warnings, then provide additional information in other tags, the summary, or an initial author's note.

Unless you're opting out of using the warning system, select all the warnings that apply to your fic, if any of them do. So if a sixteen year old main character has consensual sex then gets killed in an accident that you've written out in excruciating detail, that fic gets three out of the four standard warnings: Underage, Major Character Death, and Graphic Depictions Of Violence.

*(Fandom etiquette generally favors thorough tagging and warning over avoiding spoilers. It doesn't ruin the experience of a story to have a general sense of what's going to happen. If it did, we wouldn't all keep reading so many “there was only one bed” fics.)

Fandom Tags

What fandom or fandoms is your fic for?  You definitely know what you wrote it for, but that doesn't mean it's obvious what to tag it as.

Sometimes, it is obvious! You watched a movie that isn't based on anything, isn't part of a series, and doesn't have any spinoffs, tie-ins or anything else based on it. You wrote a fic set entirely within the world of this movie. You put this movie as the fandom for your fic. Or maybe you read a book and wrote a fic for it, and there is a movie based on the book, but the movie is really different and you definitely didn't use anything that's only in the movie. You put the book as the fandom for your fic.

All too often, though, it's not that clear.

What if you wrote a fic for something where there's a movie based on a book, but the movie's really different, and you've used both things that are only in the movie and things that are only in the book?  In that case you either tag your fic as both the movie and the book, or see if the fandom has an “all media types” tag and use that instead of the separate tags.  If the fandom doesn't have an “all media types” tag yet, you can make one! Just type it in.

“All media types” fandom tags are also useful for cases where there are lots of inter-related series, like Star Wars; there are several tellings of the story in different media but they're interchangeable or overlap significantly, like The Witcher; or the fandom has about a zillion different versions so it's very hard, even impossible, to say which ones your fic does and doesn't fit, like Batman. Use your best judgement as to whether you need to include a more specific fandom tag such as “Batman (Movies 1989-1997)” alongside the “all media types” fandom tag, but try to avoid including very many. The point of the “all media types” tag is to let you leave off the specific tags for every version.

In a situation where one piece of media has a spinoff, maybe several spinoffs, and you wrote a fic that includes things from more than one of them, you might want use the central work's “& related fandoms” tag. For example, the “Doctor Who & Related Fandoms” tag gets used for fics that include things from a combination of any era of Doctor Who, Torchwood, and The Sarah Jane Adventures.

And don't worry, from the reader-side of the site the broadest fandom tags are prioritized. The results page for an “all media types” or “& related fandoms” search includes works tagged with the more specific sub-tags for that fandom, the browse-by-fandom pages show the broadest tag for each fandom included, and putting a fandom into the search bar presumes the broadest tag for that fandom.  A search for “Star Wars - All Media Types” will pull up work that only has a subtag for that fandom, like “The Mandalorian (TV).” You don't have to put every specific fandom subtag for people to find your fic.

If you wrote a fic for something that's an adaptation of an older work—especially an older work that's been adapted a lot, like Sherlock Holmes or The Three Musketeers—it can be hard to know how you should tag it. The best choice is to put the adaptation as the fandom, for instance “Sherlock (TV),” then, if you're also using aspects of the older source work that aren't in the adaptation, also put a broad fandom tag such as “Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms.” Do not tag it as being fic for the source work—in our Sherlock example that would be tagging it “Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle”—unless you are crossing over the source work and the adaptation. Otherwise, the specific fandom subtag for the source work ends up clogged with fic for the adaptation, which really is a different thing.

By the same token, fic for the source work shouldn't be tagged as being for the adaptation, or the adaptation's subtag will get clogged.

The same principle applies to fandoms that have been rebooted. Don't tag fic for the reboot as being for the original, or fic for the original as being for the reboot. Don't tag a fic as being for both unless the reboot and original are actually interacting. Use an “& related fandoms” tag for the original if your fic for the reboot includes some aspects of the original that weren't carried over but you haven't quite written a crossover between the two. Good examples of these situations can be seen with “Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)” vs. “Star Trek: The Original Series,” and “She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)” vs. “She-Ra: Princess Of Power (1985).”

Usually, this kind of mistagging as a related fandom happens when someone writes a fic for something that is or has a reboot, spinoff, or adaptation, but they're only familiar with one of the related pieces of media, and they mistakenly presume the fandoms are the same or interchangeable because they just don't know the difference.  It's an honest mistake and it doesn't make you a bad or fake fan to not know, but it can be frustrating for readers who want fic for one thing and find the fandom tag full of fic for something else.

In order to avoid those kinds of issues, best practice is to assume fandoms are not interchangeable no matter how closely related they are, and to default to using a tag pair of the most-specific-possible sub-fandom tag + the broadest possible fandom tag when posting a fic you're not entirely sure about, for instance “Star Trek” and “Star Trek: Enterprise.”

The Marvel megafandom has its own particular tagging hell going on. Really digging into and trying to make sense of that entire situation would require its own guide, but we can go through some general tips.

There is a general “Marvel” fandom tag and tags for both “The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom” and “The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types.” Most of us who write Marvel fic are working with a cherry picked combination of canons from the MCU, various comics runs, both timelines of X-Men movies, and possibly several decades worth of cartoons. That's what these tags are for.

If your cherry picked Marvel fic is more X-Men than Avengers, go for the “X-Men - All Media Types” tag.

If you are primarily working with MCU canon, use the MCU specific tags rather than “all media types” and add specific tags for individual comics runs—like Earth 616 or the Fraction Hawkeye comics—if you know you're lifting particular details from the comics.  If you're just filling in gaps in MCU canon with things that are nebulously “from the comics” don't worry about tagging for that, it's accepted standard practice in the fandom at this point, use a broader tag along with your MCU-specific tag if you want to.

Same general idea for primarily movie-verse X-Men fics. Use the movie-specific tags.

If your fic mostly draws from the comics, use the comics tags. If you're focusing on an individual run, show, or movie series rather than an ensemble or large swath of the megafranchise, tag for that and leave off the broader fandom tags.

Try your best to minimize the number of fandom tags on your Marvel work. Ideally, you can get it down to two or three. Even paring it down as much as you can you might still end up with about five.  If you're in the double digits, take another look to see if all the fandom tags you've included are really necessary, or if some of them are redundant or only there to represent characters who are in the fic but that the fic doesn't focus on. Many readers tend to search Marvel fics by character or pairing tags, it's more important that you're thorough there. For the fandom tags it's more important that you're clear.

If you write real person fiction, you need to tag it as an RPF fandom. Fic about actors who are in a show together does not belong on the fandom tag for that show. There are separate RPF fandom tags for most shows and film franchises. Much like the adaptation/source and reboot/original situations discussed earlier, a fic should really only be tagged with both a franchise's RPF tag and its main tag if something happens like the actors—or director or writer!—falling into the fictional world or meeting their characters.

Of course, not all RPF is about actors. Most sports have RPF tags, there are RPF tags for politics from around the world and for various historical settings, the fandom tags for bands are generally presumed to be RPF tags, and there is a general Real Person Fiction tag.

In order to simplify things for readers, it's best practice to use the general Real Person Fiction tag in addition to your fandom-specific tag. You may even want to put “RPF” as a courtesy tag in the Additional Tags section, too. This is because Ao3 isn't currently set up to recognize RPF as the special flavor of fic that it is in the same way that the site recognizes crossovers as special, so it can be very difficult to either seek out or avoid RPF since it's scattered across hundreds of different fandom tags.

On the subject of crossovers—they can make fandom tagging even more daunting. Even for a crossover with lots of fandoms involved, though, you just have to follow the same guidelines as to tag a single-fandom work for each fandom in the crossover. The tricky part is figuring out if what you wrote is really a crossover, or just an AU informed by another fandom—we'll talk about that later.

There are some cases where it's really hard to figure out what fandom something belongs to, like if you wrote a fanfic of someone else's fanfic, theirs is an AU and yours is about their OC, not any of the characters from canon. What do you do?! Well, you do not tag it as being a fanfic for the same thing theirs was. Put the title of their fic (or name of their series) as the fandom for your fic, attributed to their Ao3 handle just like any other fandom is attributed to its author. Explain the situation in either the summary or the initial author's note. Also, ask the author's permission before posting something like this.

What if you wrote a story about your totally original D&D character? The fandom is still D&D, you want the “Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game)” tag.

What if there's not a fandom tag on the Archive yet for what you wrote? Not a problem! You can type in a new one if you're the first person to post something for a particular fandom. Do make sure, though, that the fandom isn't just listed by a different name than you expect. Many works that aren't originally in English—including anime—are listed by their original language title or a direct translation first, and sometimes a franchise or series's official name might not be what you personally call it, for instance many people think of Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials series as The Golden Compass series, so it's best to double check.

What if you wrote an entirely new original story that's not based on anything?  Excellent job, that takes a lot of work, but that probably doesn't belong on Ao3!  The Archive is primarily meant as a repository for fannish content, but in a few particular circumstances things we'd consider Original Work may be appropriate content for the Archive as well. Double check the Archive's Terms of Service FAQ and gauge if what you wrote falls under the scope of what is allowed. If what you wrote really doesn't fit here, post it somewhere else or try to get it published if you feel like giving it a shot.

Category

What Ao3 means by category is “does this fic focus on sex or romance, and if so what combination of genders are involved in that sex or romance?”

The category options are:

F/F

F/M

Gen

M/M

Multi

Other

The F/F, F/M, and M/M categories are for stories focused on pairings of two women, a woman and a man, and two men, respectively.  These refer to sexual and/or romantic pairings.

The Other category is for stories focused on (sexual and/or romantic) pairings where one or both partners are not strictly male or female, such as nonbinary individuals, people from cultures with gender systems that don't match to the Western man-woman system, and nonhuman characters for whom biological sex works differently or is nonexistent, including aliens, robots, and inanimate objects or abstract concepts. There are some problems with treating nonbinary humans, eldritch tentacle monsters, sexless androids, and wayward container ships as all the same category, but it's the system we currently have to work with. Use Additional Tags to clarify the situation.

Multi is for stories in which several (sexual and/or romantic) relationships are focused on or which focus on relationships with multiple partners, including cases of polyamory, serial monogamy, strings of hookups with different people, and orgies.  A fic will also show as “Multi” if you, the author, have selected more than one category for the fic, even if none of those are the Multi category. Realistically, the Archive needs separate “Multiple Categories” and “Poly” options, but for now we have to work with this system in which the two are combined.  Use Additional Tags to clarify the situation.

Gen is for stories that do not contain or are not focused on sex or romance. Romance may be present in a gen fic but it's going to be in the background.  While rare, there is such a thing as a sexually explicit gen fic—solo masturbation which does not feature fantasizing about another character is explicit gen fic; a doctor character seeing a series of patients with sex-related medical needs following an orgy may qualify if the orgy is not shown and the doctor is being strictly professional—but such fic needs to be rated, otherwise tagged, and explained carefully in the summary and/or author's note.

Much like the warnings section, category is a “select all that apply” situation. Use your best judgement. For a fic about a polyamorous relationship among a group of women, it's entirely appropriate to tag it as both F/F and Multi.  A poly fic with a combination of men and women in the relationship could be shown as both M/M and F/M, Multi, or all three. A fic that focuses equally on one brother and his husband and the other brother and his wife should be tagged both M/M and F/M, and could be tagged as Multi but you might decided not to just to be clear that there's no polyamory going on. If you wrote a fic about two characters who are both men in canon, but you wrote one of them as nonbinary, you could tag it M/M, Other, or both depending on what you feel is representative and respectful.

When dealing with trans characters, whether they're trans in canon or you're writing them as such, the category selection should match the character's gender.  If there's a character who is a cis woman in canon, but who you're writing as a trans man, you categorize the fic based on his being a man. If there's a character who is a cis man in canon, but whom you're writing as a trans man, he is still a man and the fic should be categorized accordingly. When dealing with nonbinary characters the fic should really be classed as Other though, by convention, fics about characters who are not nonbinary in canon may be classed based on the character's canon gender as well or instead. When dealing with gender swapped characters—i.e. a canonically cis male superhero who you're writing as a cis woman—class the fic using the gender you wrote her with, not the gender he is in canon.

Most of the time, gen fics should not be categorized jointly with anything else because a fic should only be categorized based on the ships it focuses on, and a gen fic should not be focusing on a ship in the first place.*

*(One of the few circumstances in which it might make sense to class a fic as both gen and something else is when writing about Queerplatonic Relationships, but that is a judgement call and depends on the fic.)

Relationship Tags

The thing about relationship tagging that people most frequently misunderstand or just don't know is the difference between “Character A/Character B” and “Character A & Character B.”

Use a “/” for romantic or sexual relationships, such as spouses, people who are dating, hookups, and friends with benefits. Use “&” for platonic or familial relationships, such as friends, siblings, parents with their kids, coworkers, and deeply connected mortal enemies who are not tragically in love.

This is where we get the phrase “slash fic.” Originally, that meant any fic focused on a romantic paring, but since so much of the romantic fic being produced was about pairs of men, “slash fic” came to mean same-sex pairings, especially male same-sex pairings. Back in earlier days of fandom, pre-Ao3 and even pre-internet, there was a convention that when writing out a different-sex pairing, you did so in man/woman order, while same-sex pairings were done top/bottom. Some authors, especially those who have been in the fic community a long time, may still do this, but the convention has not been in consistent, active use for many years, so you don't have to worry about putting the names in the “correct” order. Part of why that died out is we, as a community, have gotten less strict and more nuanced in our understandings of sex and relationships, we're writing non-penetrative sex more than we used to, and we're writing multi-partner relationships and sex more than we used to, so strictly delineating “tops” and “bottoms” has gotten less important and less useful.

The convention currently in use on Ao3 is that the names go in alphabetical order for both “/” and “&” relationships. In most cases, the Archive uses the character's full name instead of a nickname or just a given name, like James "Bucky" Barnes instead of just Bucky or James. We'll talk more about conventions for how to input character names in the Characters section. The Archive will give you suggestions as you type—if one of them fits what you mean but is slightly different from how you were typing it, for instance it's in a different order, please use the tag suggested! Consistency in tags across users helps the site work more smoothly for everybody.

This is really not the place for ship nicknames like Puckleberry, Wolfstar, or Ineffable Wives. Use the characters' names.

Now that you know how to format the relationship tag to say what you mean, you have to figure out what relationships in your fic to tag for.

The answer is you tag the relationships that are important to the story you're telling, the ones you spend time and attention following, building up, and maybe even breaking down. Tagging for a ship is not a promise of a happy ending for that pair; you don't have to limit yourself to tagging only the end-game ships if you're telling a story that's more complicated than “they get together and live happily ever after.” That said, you should generally list the main ship—the one you focus on the most—first on the list, and that will usually be the end-game ship. You should also use Additional Tags, the summary, and author's notes to make it clear to readers if your fic does not end happily for a ship you've tagged. Otherwise readers will assume that a fic tagged as being about a ship will end well for that ship, because that's what usually happens, and they'll end up disappointed and hurt, possibly feeling tricked or lied to, when your fic doesn't end well for that ship

You don't have to, and honestly shouldn't, tag for every single relationship that shows up in your fic at all. A character's brief side fling mentioned in passing, or a relationship between two background characters should not be listed under the Relationship tag section. You can list them in the format “minor Character A/Character C” or “Character C/Character D – mentions of” in the Additional Tags section if you want to, or just tag “Minor or Background Relationship(s)” under either the Relationship tag section or in the Additional Tags section.

There are two main reasons to not tag all those minor relationships. The first is to streamline your tags, which makes them clearer and more readable, and therefore more useful. The second reason is because certain ships are far more common as minor or background relationships than as the focus of a work, so tagging all your non-focus focus ships leads to the tags for these less popular ships getting clogged with stories they appear in, but that are not about them. That is, of course, very frustrating for readers who really want to read stories that focus on these ships.

If your fic contains a major relationship between a canon character and an OC, reader-insert, or self-insert, tag it as such. The archive already has /Original Character, /Reader, /You, and /Me tags for most characters in most fandoms. If such a relationship tag isn't already in use, type it in yourself. There are OC/OC tags, too, some of which specify gender, some of which do not.  All the relationship tags that include OCs stack the gender-specific versions of the tags under the nongendered ones. Use these tags as appropriate.

For group relationships, both polycules and multi-person friendships, you “/” or “&” all the names involved in alphabetical order, so Alex/Max/Sam are dating while Chris & Jamie & Tori are best friends. For a poly situation where not everyone is dating each other you should tag it something like “Alex/Max, Alex/Sam” because Alex is dating both Max and Sam, but Max and Sam are not romantically or sexually involved with each other. Use your judgement as to whether you still want to include the Alex/Max/Sam trio tag, and whether you should also use a “Sam & Max” friendship tag.

Generally, romantic “/” type relationships are emphasized over “&” type relationships in fic. It is more important that you tag your “/”s thoroughly and accurately than that you tag your “&”s at all. This is because readers are far more likely to either be looking for or be squicked by particular “/” relationships than they are “&” relationships. You can tag the same pair of characters as both / and & if both their romance and their friendship is important to the story, but a lot of people see this as redundant. If you're writing incest fic, use the / tag for the pair not the & tag and put a courtesy tag for “incest” in the Additional Tags section; this is how readers who do not want to see incestuous relationships avoid that material.

Queerplatonic Relationships, Ambiguous Relationships, Pre-Slash, and “Slash If You Squint” are all frequently listed with both the “/” and “&” forms of the pairing; use your best judgement as to whether one or the other or both is most appropriate for what you've written and clarify the nature of the relationship in your Additional Tags.

Overall, list your “/” tags first, then your “&” tags.

Character Tags

Tagging your characters is a lot like tagging your relationships. Who is your fic about? That's who you put in your character tags.

You don't have to and really should not tag every single background character who shows up for just a moment in the story, for pretty much the same reasons you shouldn't tag background relationships.  We don't want to clog less commonly focused on characters' tags with stories they don't feature prominently in.

You do need to tag the characters included in your Relationship tags.

A character study type of fic might only have one character you need to tag for. Romantic one shots frequently only have two. Longfics and fics with big ensemble casts can easily end up with a dozen characters or more who really do deserve to be tagged for.

Put them in order of importance. This doesn't have to be strict hierarchal ranking, you can just arrange them into groups of “main characters,” “major supporting characters,” and “minor supporting characters.” Nobody less than a minor supporting character should be tagged. Even minor supporting characters show up for more than one line.

If everyone in the fic is genuinely at the same level of importance (which does happen, especially with small cast fics), then order doesn't really matter. You can arrange them by order of appearance or alphabetically by name if you want to be particularly neat about it.

Do tag your OCs! Some people love reading about OCs and want to be able to find them; some people can't stand OCs and want to avoid them at all costs; most people are fine with OCs sometimes, but might have to be in the mood for an OC-centric story or only be comfortable with OCs in certain contexts. Regardless, though, Character tags are here to tell readers who the story is about, and that includes new faces. Original Characters are characters and if they're important to the story, they deserve to be tagged for just like canon characters do.

There are tags for “Original Character(s),” “Original Male Character(s),” and “Original Female Character(s).” Use these tags!  If you have OCs you're going to be using frequently in different stories, type up a character tag in the form “[OC's Name] – Original Character” and use that in addition to the generic OC tags.

Also tag “Reader,” “You,” or “Me” as a character if you've written a reader- or self-insert.

You can use the “Minor Characters” tag to wrap up everybody, both OC and canon, who doesn't warrant their own character tag. Remember, though, that this tag is also used to refer to minor canon characters who may not have their own official names.

Just like when tagging for relationships, the convention when tagging for characters is to use their full name. The suggestions the Archive gives you as you type will help you use the established way of referring to a given character.

Characters who go by more than one name usually have their two most used names listed together as one tag with the two names separated by a vertical bar like “Andy | Andromache of Scythia.” This also gets used sometimes for characters who have different names in an adaptation than in the source text, or a different name in the English-language localization of a work than in the original language. For character names from both real-world and fictional languages and cultures that put family or surname before the given name—like the real Japanese name Takeuchi Naoko or the made up Bajoran name Kira Nerys—that order is used when tagging, even if you wrote your fic putting the given name first.

Some characters' tags include the fandom they're from in parentheses after their name like “Connor (Detroit: Become Human).” This is mostly characters with ordinary given names like Connor and no canon surname, characters who have the same full name as a character in another fandom, such as Billy Flynn the lawyer from the musical Chicago and Billy Flynn the serial killer played by Tim Curry in Criminal Minds, and characters based on mythological, religious, or historical figures or named for common concepts such as Lucifer, Loki, Amethyst, Death, and Zero that make appearances in multiple fandoms.

Additional Tags

Additional Tags is one of the most complicated, and often the longest, section of metatext we find ourselves providing when we post fic. It's also the one that gives our readers the greatest volume of information.

That, of course, is what makes it so hard for us to do well.

It can help to break down Additional Tags into three main functions of tag: courtesy tags, descriptive tags, and personal tags.

Courtesy tags serve as extensions of the rating and warning systems. They can help clarify the rating, provide more information about the Archive Warnings you've used or chosen not to use, and give additional warnings to tell readers there are things in this fic that may be distasteful, upsetting, or triggering but that the Archive doesn't have a standard warning for.

Descriptive tags give the reader information about who's in this fic, what kind of things happen, what tropes are in play, and what the vibe is, as well as practical information about things like format and tense.

Personal tags tell the readers things about us, the author, our process, our relationship to our fic, and our thoughts at the time of posting.

It doesn't really matter what order you put these tags in, but it is best practice to try to clump them: courtesy tags all together so it's harder for a reader to miss an important one, ship-related info tags together, character-related info tags together, etc.

There are tons and tons of established tags on Ao3, and while it's totally fine, fun, and often necessary to make up your own tags, it's also important to use established tags that fit your fic.  For one thing, using established tags makes life easier for the tag wranglers behind the scenes. Using a new tag you just made up that means the same thing as an established tag makes more work for the tag wranglers. We like the tag wranglers, they're all volunteers, and they're largely responsible for the search and sorting features being functional. Be kind to the tag wranglers.

For basically the same reasons, using established tags makes it easier for readers to find your fic. If a reader either searches by a tag or uses filters on another search to “Include” that tag, and you didn't use that tag, your fic will not show up for them even if what you wrote is exactly what they're looking for.  Established tags can be searched by exactly the same way as you search by fandom or pairing, your off the cuff tags cannot.

Let's talk about some well-known established tags and common tag types, divvied up by main function.

Courtesy

A lot of courtesy tags are specific warnings like “Dubious Consent,” “Incest,” “Drug Use,” “Extremely Underage,” “Toxic Relationship,” and “Abuse.” Many of these have even more specific versions such as “Recreational Drug Use” and “Nonconsensual Drug Use,” or “Mildly Dubious Consent” and “Extremely Dubious Consent.”

Giving details about what, if any, drugs are used or mentioned, specifying what kinds of violence or bodily harm are discussed or depicted, details about age differences or power-imbalanced relationships between characters who date or have sex, discussion or depictions of suicide, severe or terminal illness, or mental health struggles is useful. It helps give readers a clear sense of what they'll encounter in your fic and decide if they're up for it.

One the most useful courtesy warning tags is “Dead Dove: Do Not Eat” which basically means “there are things in this fic which are really screwed up and may be disturbing, read at your own risk, steer clear if you're not sure.” This tag—like all courtesy warnings, really—is a show of good faith, by using it you are being a responsible, and thoughtful member of the fanfic community by giving readers the power and necessary information to make their own informed decisions about what they are and are not comfortable reading.

Saying to “Heed the tags” is quite self-explanatory and, if used, should be the last or second to last tag so it's easy to spot.  Remember, though, that “Heed the tags” isn't useful if your tags aren't thorough and clear.

“Additional Warnings In Author's Note” is one of only things that should ever go after “Heed the tags.”  If you use this, your additional warnings need to go in the author's note at the very beginning of the fic, not the one at the end of the first chapter.  If your additional warnings write up is going to be very long because it's highly detailed, then it can go at the bottom of the chapter with a note at the beginning indicating that the warnings are at the bottom. Some authors give an abbreviated or vague set of warnings in the initial note, then longer, highly detailed, spoilery warnings in the end note. It's best to make it as simple and straightforward as possible for readers to access warnings.

Tagging with “Dead Dove: Do Not Eat,” “Heed the tags,” or “Additional Warnings In Author's Note” is not a substitute for thorough and appropriate courtesy tagging. These are extra reminders to readers to look closely at the other warnings you've given.

While most courtesy tags are warnings, some are assurances like “No Lesbians Die” or “It's Not As Bad As It Sounds.”  A fic tagged for rape or dub-con may get a tag assuring that the consent issues are not between the characters in the main ship; or a fic with a premise that sounds likely to involve lack of consent but actually doesn't may get a tag that it's “NOT rape/non-con.” A tag like “Animal Death” may be immediately followed by a freeform tag assuring that the animal that dies is not the protagonist's beloved horse.

Descriptive

There are a few general kinds of descriptive tags including character-related, ship-related, temporal, relation-to-canon, trope-related, smut details, and technical specifications.

Many character- and ship-related tags simply expand on the Character and Relationship tags we've already talked about.  This is usually the place to specify details about OCs and inserts, such as how a reader-insert is gendered.

When it comes to character-related tags, one of the most common types in use on Ao3 and in fandom at large is the bang-path. This is things like werewolf!Alex, trans!Max, top!Sam, kid!Jamie, and captain!Tori. Basically, a bang-path is a way of specifying a version of a character. We've been using this format for decades; it comes from the very first email systems used by universities in the earliest days of internet before the World Wide Web existed. It's especially useful for quickly and concisely explaining the roles of characters in an AU. Nowadays this is also one of the primary conventions for indicating who's top and who's bottom in a ship if that's information you feel the need to establish.  The other current convention for indicating top/bottom is as non-bang-path character-related tags in the form “Top [Character A], Bottom [Character B].”

Other common sorts of character tags are things like “[Character A] Needs a Hug,” “Emotionally Constipated [Character B],” and “[Character C] is a Good Dad.”

Some character-related tags don't refer to a particular character by name, but tell readers something about what kinds of characters are in the fic. Usually, this indicates the minority status of characters and may indicate whether or not that minority status is canon, as in “Nonbinary Character,” “Canon Muslim Character,” “Deaf Character,” and “Canon Disabled Character.”

Down here in the tags is the place to put ship nicknames!  This is also where to say things like “They're idiots your honor” or indicate that they're “Idiots in Love,” maybe both since “Idiots in Love” is an established searchable tag but “They're idiots your honor” isn't yet. If your fandom has catchphrases related to your ship, put that here if you want to.

If relevant, specify some things about the nature of relationships in your fic such as “Ambiguous Relationship,” “Queerplatonic Relationships,” “Polyamory,” “Friends With Benefits,” “Teacher-Student Relationship,” and so on. Not all fics need tags like these. Use your best judgement whether your current fic does.

Temporal tags indicate when your fic takes place. That can be things like “Pre-Canon” and “Post-Canon,” “Pre-War,” “Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier,” “1996-1997 NHL season,” “Future Fic,” and so on.  These tags may be in reference to temporal landmarks in canon, in the real world, or both depending on what's appropriate.

Some temporal tags do double duty by also being tags about the fic's relationship to canon. The Pre- and Post-Canon tags are like that.

Other relation-to-canon type tags are “Canon Compliant” for fics that fit completely inside the framework of canon without changing or contradicting anything, “Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence” for fics that are compliant up to a certain point in canon, then veer off (maybe because you started writing the fic when the show was on season two but now it's at season four and you're not incorporating everything from the newer seasons, maybe a character died and you refuse to acknowledge that, maybe you just want to explore what might have happened if a particular scene had gone differently), and the various other Alternate Universe tags for everything from coffee shop AUs and updates to modern settings, to realities where everyone is a dragon or no one has their canon superpowers.

The established format for these tags is “Alternate Universe – [type],” but a few have irregular names as well, such as “Wingfic” for AUs in which characters who don't ordinarily have wings are written as having wings.

If you have written an AU, please tag clearly what it is! Make things easy on both the readers who are in the mood to read twenty royalty AUs in a row, the readers who are in the middle of finals week and the thought of their favorite characters suffering through exams in a college AU would destroy the last shred of their sanity but would enjoy watching those characters teach high school, and the readers who really just want to stick to the world of canon right now.

Admittedly, it can get a little confusing what AU tag or tags you need to describe what you've written since most of us have never had a fandom elder sit us down and explain what the AU tags mean. One common mix up is tagging things “Alternate Universe - Modern Setting” when what's meant is “Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence.”  The misunderstanding here is usually reading “Alternate Universe - Modern Setting” and thinking it means an alternate version of the canon universe that is set at the same time as the canon universe, but is different in some way. That's not how the tag is meant to be used, though.

The Modern Setting AU tag is specifically for fic set now (at approximately the same time period it was written), for media that's canonically set somewhere that is very much not the present of the real world. This can mean things set in the past (like Jane Austen), the future (like Star Trek), or a fantasy world entirely different from our own (like Lord of the Rings or Avatar: the Last Airbender). Fic for a canon that's set more or less “now” doesn't need the Modern Setting AU tag, even if the world of canon is different from our own. If you're removing those differences by putting fantasy or superhero characters in a world without magic or supersoldier serum, you might want the “Alternate Universe - No Powers” tag instead.

Some of the most fun descriptive tags are trope tags. This includes things like “Mutual Pining,” “Bed Sharing” for when your OTP gets to their hotel room to find There Was Only One Bed, “Fake Dating,” “Angst,” Fluff,” “Hurt/Comfort” and all its variants.  Readers love tropes at least as much as we love writing them and want to be able to find their favorites. Everyone also has tropes they don't like and would rather avoid. Tagging them allows your fic to be filtered in and out by what major tropes you've used.

Explicit fics, and sometimes fics with less restrictive ratings, that contain sex usually have tags indicating details about the nature of the sexual encounter(s) portrayed and what sex acts are depicted. These are descriptive tags, but they also do double duty as courtesy tags. This is very much a situation in which tags are a consent mechanism; by thoroughly and clearly tagging your smut you are giving readers the chance to knowingly opt in or out of the experience you've written.

Most of the time, it's pretty easy to do basic tagging for sex acts—you know whether what you wrote shows Vaginal Sex, Anal Sex, or Non-penetrative Sex.  You probably know the names for different kinds of Oral Sex you may have included. You might not know what to call Frottage or Intercrural Sex, though, even if you understand the concept and included the act in your fic. Sometimes there are tags with rectangle-square type relationships (all Blow Jobs are Oral Sex, but not all Oral Sex is a Blow Job) and you're not sure if you should tag for both—you probably should. Sometimes there are tags for overlapping, closely related, or very similar acts or kinks and you're not sure which to tag—that one's more of judgement call; do your best to use the tags that most closely describe what you wrote.

Tag for the kinks at play, if any, so readers can find what they're into and avoid what they're not. Tag for what genitalia characters have if it's nonobvious, including if there's Non-Human Genitalia involved. Tag your A/B/O, your Pon Farr, and your Tentacles, including whether it's Consentacles or Tentacle Rape.

Technical specification tags give information about aspects of the fic other than its narrative content.  Most things on Ao3 are prose fiction so that's assumed to be the default, so anything else needs to be specified in tags. That includes Poetry, Podfics, things in Script Format, and Art. If it is a podfic, you should tag with the approximate length in minutes (or hours). If a fic is Illustrated (it has both words and visual art) tag for that.

Tag if your fic is a crossover or fusion.  The difference, if you're not sure, is that in a crossover, two (or more) entire worlds from different media meet, whereas in a fusion, some aspects of one world, like the cast of characters, are combined with aspects of another, like the setting or magic system.

If the team of paranormal investigators from one show get in contact with the cast of aliens from another show, that's a crossover and you need to have all the media you're drawing from up in the Fandom tags. If you've given the cast of Hamlet physical manifestations of their souls in the form of animal companions like the daemons from His Dark Materials but nothing else from His Dark Materials shows up, that's a fusion, the Fandom tag should be “Hamlet - Shakespeare,” and you need the “Alternate Universe - Daemons” tag. If you've given the members of a boy band elemental magic powers like in Avatar: the Last Airbender, that can be more of a judgement call depending how much from Avatar you've incorporated into your story. If absolutely no characters or specific settings from Avatar show up, it's probably a fusion.  Either way, if the boyband exists in real life, it needs to be tagged as RPF.

Tag if your fic is a Reader-Insert or Self-Insert.

You might want to tag for whether your fic is written with POV First, Second, or Third Person, and if it's Past Tense or Present Tense (or Future Tense, though that's extremely uncommon).  For POV First Person fics that are not self-inserts, or POV Third Person fics that are written in third person limited, you may want to tag which character's POV is being shown. Almost all POV Second Person fics are reader-insert, so if you've written one that isn't, you should tag for who the “you” is.

A fic is “POV Outsider” if the character through whom the story is being conveyed is outside the situation or not familiar with the characters and context a reader would generally know from canon. The waitress who doesn't know the guy who just sat down in her diner is a monster hunter, and the guy stuck in spaceport because some hotshot captain accidentally locked down the entire space station, are both potential narrators for POV Outsider stories.

Other technical specifications can be tags for things like OCtober and Kinktober or fic bingo games.  Tagging something as a Ficlet, One Shot, or Drabble is a technical specification (we're not going to argue right now over what counts as a drabble). Tagging for genre, like Horror or Fantasy, is too.

It's also good to tag accessibility considerations like “Sreenreader Friendly,” but make sure your fic definitely meets the needs of a given kind of accessibility before tagging it.

Personal

Even among personal tags there are established tags!  Things like “I'm Sorry,” “The Author Regrets Nothing,” “The Author Regrets Everything,” and “I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping” are common ones.  Tags about us and our relationship to the fic, such as “My First Work In This Fandom,” “Author is Not Religious,” and “Trans Porn By A Trans Author,” can help readers gauge what to expect from our fic. Of course, you are not at all obligated to disclose any personal information for any reason when posting your fic.

The “I'm Bad At Tagging” tag is common, but probably overused. Tagging is hard; very few of us have a natural feel for it even with lots of practice.  It's not a completely useless tag because it can indicate to readers that you've probably missed some things you should have tagged for, so they should be extra careful; but it can also turn into a crutch, an excuse to not try, and therefore a sign to readers they can't trust your tagging job. Just do your best, and leave off the self depreciation. If you're really concerned about the quality of your tagging, consider putting in an author's note asking readers to let you know if there are any tags you should add.

You might want to let readers know your fic is “Not Beta Read” or, if you're feeling a little cheekier than that, say “No Beta We Die Like Men” or its many fandom-specific variants like the “No Beta We Die Like Robins” frequently found among Batman fics and “No beta we die like Sunset Curve” among Julie and The Phantoms fic. Don't worry, the Archive recognizes all of these as meaning “Not Beta Read.”

The Archive can be inconsistent about whether it stacks specific variants of Additional Tags under the broadest version of the tag like it does with Fandom tags, so best practice is usually to use both.  You can double check by trying to search by a variant tag (or clicking on someone else's use of the variant); if the results page says the broader or more common form of the tag, those stack.

There's no such thing as the right number of tags. Some people prefer more tags and more detail, while other people prefer fewer more streamlined tags, and different fics have different things that need to be tagged for.  There is, however, such a thing as too many tags.  A tagblock that takes up the entire screen, or more, can be unreadable, at which point they are no longer useful. Focus on the main points and don't try to tag for absolutely everything.  Use the “Additional Warnings In Author's Note” strategy if your courtesy tags are what's getting out of hand.

Tag for as much as you feel is necessary for readers to find your fic and understand what they're getting into if they decide to open it up.

A little bit of redundancy in tags is not a sin.  In fact, slight redundancy is usually preferable to vagueness. Clear communication in tags is a cardinal virtue. Remember that tags serve a purpose, they're primarily a tool for sorting and filtering, and (unlike on some other sites like tumblr) they work, so it's best to keep them informative and try to limit rambling in the tags. Ramble at length in your author's notes instead!

Titles

Picking a title can be one of the most daunting and frustrating parts of posting a fic. Sometimes we just know what to call our fics and it's a beautiful moment. Other times we stare at that little input box for what feels like an eternity.

The good news is there's really no wrong way to select a title. Titles can be long or short, poetic or straight to the point. Song lyrics, idioms, quotes from literature or from the fic itself can be good ways to go.

Single words or phrases with meanings that are representative of the fic can be great. A lot of times these are well known terms or are easy enough to figure out like Midnight or Morning Glow, but if you find yourself using something that not a lot of people know what it means, like Chiaroscuro (an art style that uses heavy shadow and strong contrast between light and dark), Kintsukuroi (the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold), or Clusivity (the grammatical term for differences in who is or isn't included in a group pronoun), you should define the term in either a subtitle, i.e. “Chiaroscuro: A Study In Contrast,” or at the beginning of the summary.

As a courtesy to other writers, especially in small fandoms, you may want to check to make sure there's not already another fic with the same title in the same fandom, but this is not required. In large fandoms, there's no point in even trying. After all, there are only so many puns to be made about the full moon and only so many verses to Hallelujah.

It may be common practice on other platforms to include information such as fandom or ship in the title of a fic, but on Ao3 nothing that is specified by tags belongs in the title unless your title happens to be the same as a tag because, for instance, you've straightforwardly titled your character study of Dean Winchester “Dean Winchester Character Study” and also responsibly tagged it as such.

Summaries

Yes, you really do need to put something down for the summary. It might only need to be a single sentence, but give the readers something to go off of.

The summary is there to serve two purposes: one, to catch the interest of potential readers, give them a taste of what's inside, and make them want to know more; and two, to give you a space to provide information or make comments that don't really fit in the tags but that you want readers to see before they open the fic.

We've already talked some about that second function. When you put an explanation of the title or clarification about tags in the summary, that's the purpose it's serving. You can also put notes to “Heed the tags” or instruct readers that there are additional warnings in the author's note here in the summary, rather than doing so in the tags.

The first function, the actual summarizing, can be very hard for some of us.  It's basically the movie trailer for your fic, butwhat are you even supposed to say?

There are two main strategies as to how to approach this: the blurb, and the excerpt. Blurbs are like the synopses you at least used to see on the backs of published books, or the “Storyline” section on an IMDb page. Writing one is a matter of telling your readers who does what, under what circumstances.

Depending on the fic, one sentence can capture the whole thing: “Sam and Alex have sex on a train.” “Tori tries to rob a bank.” “If anybody had mentioned Max's new house was haunted, Jamie wouldn't have agreed to help with the move.”

Sometimes a blurb can be a question! “What happens when you lock a nuclear engineer in a closet with a sewing kit, a tennis ball, and half a bottle of Sprite?”

Of course, plenty of blurbs are more than one sentence. Their length can vary pretty significantly depending on the type and length of fic you're working with and how much detail you're trying to convey, but it shouldn't get to be more than a few short paragraphs. You're not retelling the entire fic here.

An excerpt is a portion of the fic copied out to serve as the summary. This, too, can vary in length from a line or two to several paragraphs, but shouldn't get too long. It should not be an entire scene unless that scene happens to be uncommonly short. It's important to select a portion of the fic that both indicates the who, what, and under what circumstances of the fic and is representative of the overall tone. Excerpts that are nothing but dialogue with no indication of who's talking are almost never a good choice. Portions that are sexually explicit or extremely violent are never ever a good choice—if it deserves content warnings, it belongs inside the fic, not on the results page.

Counterintuitively, some of the best excerpts won't even look like an excerpt to the reader if they don't contain dialogue. They seem like particularly literary blurbs until the reader reaches that part in the fic and realizes they recognize a section of narration.

Some of us have very strong preferences as to whether we write blurbs or use excerpts for our summaries. Some readers have very strong preferences as to which they find useful. Ultimately, there's no accounting for taste, but there are things we can do to limit the frustration for readers who prefer summaries of the opposite kind than we prefer to write, without increasing our own frustration or work load very much. Part of that is understanding what readers dislike about each type so we know what to mitigate.

Blurbs can seem dry, academic, and overly simplified. They don't automatically give the reader a sense of your writing style the way an excerpt does. They can also seem redundant, like they're just rehashing information already given in the tags, so the reader feels like they're being denied any more information without opening the fic.

Excerpts can seem lazy, like you, the author, don't care enough to bother writing a blurb, or pushy like you're telling the reader “just read the fic; I'm not going to give you the information you need to decide if you want to read or not, I'm shoving it in front of you and you just have to read it.” That effect gets worse if your tags aren't very informative or clear about what the plot is, if the excerpt is obviously just the first few lines or paragraphs of the fic, if the except is particularly long, or, worst of all, if all three are true at once.

A lot of the potential problems with blurbs can be minimized by having fun writing them! Make it punchy, give it some character, treat it like part of the story, not just a book report. A fic for a serialized show or podcast, for instance, could have a blurb written in the style of the show's “previously on” or the podcast's intro.  Make sure the blurb gives the reader something they can't just get from the tags—like the personality of your writing, important context or characterization, or a sense of the shape of the story—but don't try to skimp on the tags to do it!

Really, the only way to minimize the potential problems with excerpts is to be very mindful in selecting them. Make sure the portion you've chosen conveys the who, what, and under what circumstances and isn't too long.  You know the story; what seems clear and obvious from the excerpt to you might not be apparent to someone who doesn't already know what happens, so you might need to ask a friend to double check you.

The absolute best way to provide a summary that works for everybody is to combine both methods. It really isn't that hard to stick a brief excerpt before your blurb, or tack a couple lines of blurb after your excerpt, but it can make a world of difference for how useful and inviting your summary is to a particular reader. The convention for summaries that use both is excerpt first, then blurb.

If you're struggling to figure out a summary, or have been in the habit of not providing one, try not to stress over it. Anything is better than nothing.  As long as you've written something for a summary, you've given the reader a little more to help them make their decision. What really isn't helpful, though, is saying “I'm bad at summaries” in your summary. It's a lot like the “I'm Bad At Tagging” tag in that it's unnecessarily self depreciating, frequently comes across as an excuse not to try, and sometimes really is just an excuse. Unlike the “I'm Bad At Tagging” tag, which has the tiny saving grace of warning readers you've probably missed something, saying you're bad at summaries has no utility at all, and may drive away a reader who thought your summary was quite good, but is uncomfortable with the negative attitude reflected by that statement. Summaries are hard. It's okay if you don't like your summary, but it's important for it to be there, and it's important to be kind to yourself about it. You're trying, that's what matters.

Author's Notes

Author's notes are the one place where we, the writers, directly address and initiate contact with our readers. We may also talk to them in the comments section, but that's different because they initiate that interaction while we reply, and comments are mostly one-on-one while in author's notes we're addressing everyone who ever reads our fic.

The very first note on a fic should contain any information, such as warnings or explanations, that a reader needs to see before they get to the body of the story, as well as anything like thanks to your beta, birthday wishes to a character, or general hellos and announcements you want readers to see before they get to the body of the story. On multi-chapter fics, notes at the beginning of chapters serve the same function for that chapter as the initial note on the fic does for the whole story, so you can do things like warn for Self-Harm on the two chapters out of thirty where it comes up, let everyone know your update schedule will be changing, or wish your readers a merry Christmas, if they celebrate it, on the chapter you posted on December 23rd but is set in mid-March.

Notes at the end of a fic or chapter are for things that don't need to be said or are not useful to a reader until after they've read the preceding content, such as translations for that handful of dialogue that's in Vulcan or Portuguese, or any parting greetings or announcements you want to give, like a thanks for reading or a reminder school is starting back so you won't be able to write as much. End notes are the best place to plug your social media to readers if you're inclined to do so, but remember that cannot include payment platforms like Patreon or Ko-fi.

As previously mentioned, warnings can go in end notes but that really should only be done when the warnings are particularly long, such that the length might cause a problem for readers who are already confident in their comfort level and would just want to scroll past the warning description. In that case, the additional warnings need to go in the note at the end of the first chapter, rather than at the end of the fic, if it's a multi-chapter fic; and you need to include an initial note telling readers that warnings/explanations of tags are at the bottom so they know to follow where the Archive tells them to see the end of the chapter/work for “more notes.”

When posting a new work, where the Preface section gives you the option to add notes “at the beginning” or “at the end” or both, if you check both boxes, it means notes at the beginning and end of the entire fic, not the beginning and end of the first chapter. For single-chapter fics this difference doesn't really matter, but for multi-chapter fics it matters a lot. In order to add notes to the beginning or end of the first chapter of a multi-chapter fic you have to first go through the entire process to post the new fic, then go in to Edit, Edit Chapter, and add the notes there.

Series and Chapters

Dealing with Series and Chapters is actually two different issues, but they're closely related and cause some of us mixups, especially when we're new to the site and its systems, so we're going to cover them together.

Series on Ao3 are for collecting up different stories that you've written that are associated with each other in some way. Chapters are for dividing up one story into parts, usually for pacing and to give yourself and your readers a chance to take breaks and breathe, rather than trying to get through the entire thing in a single marathon sitting (not that we won't still do that voluntarily, but it's nice to have rest points built in if we need them).

If your story would be one book if it was officially published, then it should be posted as a single fic—with multiple chapters if it's long or has more than one distinct part, like separate vignettes that all go together. If you later write a sequel to that fic, post it as a new fic and put them together in a series. It's exactly like chapters in a book and books in a series. Another way to think of this structure is like a TV show: different fics in the series are like different seasons of the show, with individual chapters being like episodes.

If you have several fics that all take place in the same AU but really aren't the same story those should go together as a series.  If you wrote a story about a superhero team re-cast as school teachers, then wrote another story about different characters in the same school, that's this situation.

Series are also the best way to handle things like prompt games, bingos, or Kinktober, or collect up one shots and drabbles especially if your various fills, entries, and drabbles are for more than one fandom. If you put everything for a prompt game or bingo, or all your drabbles, together as one fic with a different chapter for each story, what ends up happening is that fic gets recognized by the Archive as a crossover when it isn't, so it gets excluded from the results pages for everyone who told the filters to Exclude Crossovers even though one of the stories you wrote is exactly what they're looking for; and that fic ends up with tons and tons of wildly varying and self-contradictory tags because it's actually carrying the tags for several entirely different, possibly unrelated stories, which also means it ends up getting excluded from results pages because, for instance, one out of your thirty-one Kinktober entries is about someone's NoTP.

Dividing these kinds of things up into multiple fic in a series makes it so much easier for readers to find what of your work they actually want to read.

If you've previously posted such things as a single fic, don't worry, it's a really common misunderstanding and there is absolutely nothing stopping you from reposting them separately. You may see traffic on them go up if you do!

Parting Thoughts

Metatext is ultimately all about communication, and in this context effective communication is a matter of responsibility and balance.

Ao3 is our archive. It's designed for us, the writers, to have the freedom to write and share whatever stories we want without having to worry that we'll wake up one day and find our writing has been deleted overnight without warning.  That has happened too many times to so many in our community as other fanfic sites have died, been shut down, or caved to threats of legal action. Ao3 is dedicated to defending our legal right to create and share our stories. Part of the deal is that, in exchange for that freedom and protection, we take up the responsibility to communicate to readers what we're writing and who it's appropriate for.

We are each other's readers, and readers who don't write are still part of our community. We have a responsibility as members of this community to be respectful of others in our shared spaces.  Ao3 is a shared space. The best way we have to show each other respect is to give one another the information needed to decide if a given fic is something we want to engage with or not, and then, in turn, to not engage with fic that isn't our cup of tea. As long as our fellow writer has been clear about what their fic is, they've done their part of the job. If we decided to look at the fic despite the information given and didn't like what we found, then that's on us.

Because metatext is how we put that vital information about our fics out in the community, it's important that our metatext is clear and easy to parse. The key to that is balance. Striking the balance between putting enough tags to give a complete picture and not putting too many tags that become an unreadable wall; the balance between the urge to be thorough and tag every character and the need to be restrained so those looking for fics actually about a certain character can find them; the balance between using established tags for clarity and ease and making up our own tags for specificity and fun.

Do your best, act in good faith, remember you're communicating with other people behind those usernames and kudos, and, most importantly, have fun with your writing!

[comfy-whumpee]

Whumping Safely 101

Many people in this community have mental health problems, face various types of discrimination, and have complicated relationships with some parts or types of whump. In particular, I aim this at people who care about the experience of survivors and others with triggers – partially because I am an abuse survivor who often flirts with triggering content as part of my love of whump.

Keeping your blog safe is difficult, takes effort, and is never a perfect process. But as the community grows and grows, it’s really important that we hold ourselves to a high standard. I would argue that this is a responsibility of all content creators, but especially those of us in the messy playground of whump.

I’ve got three sections in here: content warnings, writing with care, and community interaction. I’ve tried to make it navigable. It’s about 1.8k words. Shorter than a lot of drabbles! I welcome good-faith criticism on this topic and further questions on my own views.

Content Warnings

The biggest responsibility, in my opinion, is empowering your reader to make their own decision on whether they want to expose themselves to your writing. This also happens to be by far the easiest way to help people whump safely.

What to warn

This is a big and ever-changing topic. Some things you should warn for as a rule of thumb are anything NSFW, pet whump and box boy whump, drugs and alcohol, medical and hospital content, graphic gore, intimate partner violence, and animal harm. It can be tricky to draw the line of what counts – what needs a warning? If you’re in doubt, just warn it anyway. It doesn’t hurt.

If someone requests a trigger be warned for, even if it’s something that feels obscure or tame, show compassion and agree to the request. This is someone who cares enough about being able to read your writing that they wrote in! They want to be able to read it and enjoy it. You’re being complimented.

Otherwise, look at what other blogs tag for. You’ll see some variation in styles and levels of detail, but it’s a good way to gauge what people think is warn-worthy, when we’re often writing stuff that would already be R-rated in mainstream media.

Read Mores

The easiest way to make sure people don’t see your triggering content is to use a cut. Tumblr is not a very functional website and likes to delete cuts, but a cursory check of your posted content will usually tell you whether it’s worked. With asks, cuts are very spotty, so don’t be afraid to post an ask response separately with a screengrab of the original question. People often then respond to the ask itself with a link to the post, especially if it’s a whole drabble. Tumblr is weird and bad so just do your best.

Content notices

I.e., a quick summary before the drabble, usually in bold, to state what will be coming. I like to distinguish between using content notes (CN) and trigger warnings (TW) to indicate severity. Others might use the old phrase ‘dead dove do not eat’ to indicate this is a heavy piece, and often you will see qualifiers like ‘intense’, ‘mild’, ‘mention’, ‘referenced’ (i.e. it is discussed but not actively happening), and ‘implied’ (as the opposite of ‘explicit’). I’ve also seen a couple of people use ‘vibes’, which is a really nice way of demonstrating that it’s there, but not the focus. A quick paragraph like this, or just a line, lets people make a quick risk assessment on their reading.

This is also important if you’re sending in asks or requests to people. If you want to ask about something triggering, send an inquiry first about whether the blog is okay to hear it.

Tagging

Tagging is a chore, but it’s your primary way of warning people about your content. The main benefit of tagging is that you can be as detailed as you want, because can be tagging for content in general, not just triggers.

In a best case scenario, you’d tag the kind of whump you’re doing, tag triggers, tag characters, and even your ‘verses, because tagging is your index for your blog. If you tag reliably, you help your future self and your readers find stuff, and you also make your blog really dang safe. People who have unusual triggers can blacklist tags, and will pick up on your content tags to help them.

Don’t just tag your own writing. Tag your reblogs, tag your prompts, tag your asks. Yes, edit your asks to add the tags. Tag your images and gifs. Tag your images as images and your gifs as gifs.

If you aren’t up for detailed tagging for whatever reason, just tag for triggering content, and add stuff to that list if you’re asked to. My usual technique is to make a mental note of tags while I’m formatting and editing before posting.

Be aware that your first five tags will be used in search results. If you’re using tags that are associated with kink too, such as ‘shibari’, you might want to rethink your tag order if you don’t want interaction from those blogs. Also think about what tags might come up in non-whump contexts, such as ‘collar’ or ‘PTSD’. Some tactics for getting around this I’ve seen are adding ‘whump’ after the content or writing the tags in past tense (i.e., ‘collared’).

It is also a good idea to watch out for when you might be reblogging something whumpy that is intended as kink / porn / fetish, especially in images. Tagging these as spicy / nsfw / kink is a sensible move.

Writing with Care

Okay, now for the harder stuff.

I mean here to lay out some guidelines for how to write in a way that helps your reader build good faith. This is a much more nuanced topic, and it’s different for everyone. There will always be differing opinions on what should and shouldn’t be written about, what a good depiction of a sensitive topic is, and how to discuss that topic. I tried to strip this back into absolute basics that I hope we can all agree on.

Maybe your whump involves abuse. Maybe it’s gaslighting. Maybe it’s severe mental health problems, or addiction, or slavery, or you write about or analogise real-world issues. Whump deals with the dark stuff, and that’s a big part of its appeal. But don’t ever forget you’re writing the dark stuff.

(Try to) Know what you’re doing

Some of us play fast and loose with plots, medical accuracy, worldbuilding, and other things that get in the way of the pain we crave. This is all well and good, but when we start using whump that speaks true to people’s lived experiences, we shouldn’t be careless with it. I’m particularly talking about things that get represented poorly in mainstream media, such as abusive relationships, issues around marginalisation, mental illness and disability.

Be critical of media that you’ve consumed. Think about how its depicted things that you want to depict in turn. Look for opinions on fictional representations of those issues. Be aware that you might be more ignorant of things than you realise.

Look at how others are writing these issues, particularly if they’re writing from a perspective different to yours. If you haven’t personally experienced what you’re writing about, e.g., if you don’t have PTSD and you want to depict a character who does, seek out stuff written from or with experience. Listen to the experts.

If you’re looking for stuff about representation specifically, I recommend this collection of posts about ‘Braving Diversity’ cultivated by Writing With Colour, who are in themselves a fantastic resource for this topic, and have recommendations for other blogs that deal with intersecting issues.

Listen to others

Missteps are inevitable. Nobody is perfect. If constructive criticism is offered, that’s also a compliment to your writing. Someone read your work and thought about it, and thought you’d care about improving it. They’re offering themselves as a resource for helping you see your work in a new light.

Criticism is hard and sometimes hurtful, but even if we don’t think it’s accurate, there’s often a grain of truth in it. If someone tells you that your writing is harmful, think about why they’ve said that, not whether or not they’re correct. This is an opinion! Opinions are subjective! But what drove someone to send that in?

You don’t have to respond to all your criticism and definitely don’t respond straight away. Being respectful to those who are trying to help you means taking the time to consider it properly. Sometimes, they don’t need a response. Others, you might want to learn more about what they think before deciding. You might have already discussed the topic, in which case, you might just want to reblog your previous posts.

If it’s sent in bad faith or is outright hateful, you’re well within your rights to just delete it and move on. You might get the same criticism over and over again, and that’s exhausting, and you don’t have to retrace your steps for everyone.

But if it’s new, even if it puts your hackles up, you can always stop and wonder why someone felt that strongly about your work.

Take a step back

One of my better-known characters is a pet whumper who conditioned his victim to adore and depend on him. It’s not always easy to represent how deeply messed up that is within the text – though I think that’s part of the challenge – but in meta-commentary, I am always describing him as a creeptastic bastard lacking compassion and self-reflection. I hope to always give the reader the confidence that I know just how wrong it is.

This is a really simple thing you can do just to give readers good faith in you. Show that you know what you’re writing is dark and messed up. Show your understanding for the issues you’re handling and that they’re complicated. It might seem self-evident, but when you’re writing the really dark stuff, or unhealthy relationships, or institutionalised whump, you can inadvertently create the impression that you just think it’s fun. The fact that it’s fiction does not automatically absolve you. Show that you care about doing it right.

Community Interaction

I’m going to keep this one short and sweet because I will almost entirely be preaching to the choir here.

Be polite to others. Imagine saying what you’re saying to their face.

Don’t send anon hate. Just don’t. If you can send criticism off anon, do so.

Nobody is obligated to interact with you.

Nobody is obligated to monitor their own reader base.

If someone says do not interact, do not interact.

If someone says do not interact, why they’ve said that is none of your business.

You don’t need to spread the word about someone’s bad politics.

Ask yourself if your input is needed, or if what you’ve said has already been said.

You don’t have to take a side.

Take care of yourself. Take breaks. Remind yourself that whump is a small part of the world.

That’s all from me, folks. Stay safe.

[miskatonicaquarium]

Weird Fiction/Cosmic Horror Recommends

In a time of general uncertainty and anxiety, one thing that is certain is that weird fiction/cosmic horror has got your back. If you like to combat your growing sense of existential dread by reading about other people’s growing sense of existential dread, this is a list for you. Where texts and shows are available online, I have included links. Where they are not, I have included links to where they are available to buy.

Books

Agents of Dreamland – Caitlin R Kiernan

Government agents, ritual murders, a doomsday cult and a glitch in NASA’s interplanetary probe all feature in this deeply frightening and deftly written novella that takes classic Lovecraftian tropes and expands on them with mesmerising skill.

Wanderers – Chuck Wendig

When a sleepwalking epidemic hits America, those affected head towards a destination known only to themselves. Desperate to keep their loved ones safe, ‘shepherds’ follow the growing group to protect them on their journey. This is an incredibly rewarding read stuffed full of complex characters, apocalyptic horror and a long hard look at human nature.

Winter Tide – Ruthanna Emrys

After the government raid on Innsmouth, Aphra and Caleb Marsh are the only inhabitants of the town to survive the desert internment camps. When confidential, dangerous magic is stolen from Miskatonic University, the FBI are forced to turn to the last of the Marsh’s for help. An evocative and sympathetic novel that takes the antagonists of Lovecraft’s works and paints them in a new light.

The Fisherman – John Langan

This is considered to be a modern classic of the genre and for good reason. It’s best to go into this one as blind as possible so I’ll just leave you with this little quote: "I know Dutchman's Creek runs deep, much deeper than it could or should, and I don't like to think what it's full of."

Carter and Lovecraft – Jonathan L. Howard

A homicide detective turned Private Investigator finds himself embroiled with the last known descendant of H.P Lovecraft, Emily Lovecraft. When deaths that have an eerie resemblance to the writing of Emily’s ancestor begin to plague the area, the investigator finds himself drawn into a world he thought didn’t exist beyond fiction.

Rosewater – Tade Thompson

The first in an award-winning trilogy that blends science fiction into the weird in near future Nigeria. When an alien biodome manifests in the landscape, a select group of people in the surrounding area begin developing psychic abilities. A winding, disturbing tale with an original setting, voice and characters; this is the perfect read for those looking for a fresh take on the genre.  

North American Lake Monsters: Stories – Nathan Ballingrud

I am hugely obsessed with this – Ballingrud uses tropes and characters we are all familiar with and uses them to tell stories that shed light on the plight of rural, poverty-stricken America. He is a masterful author with a true gift for atmospheric writing (‘Late summer pressed onto this small Mississippi coastal town like the heel of a boot. The heat was an act of violence.’) and this collection will appeal to fans of Ligotti and Barron as well as those who are unfamiliar with the genre.

The Ballad of Black Tom – Victor LaValle

This is essentially a retelling of Lovecraft’s The Horror at Red Hook (but without the blatant racism, hooray!). A slow burn, cosmic horror noir featuring a who’s who of the Cthulhu Mythos, for those interested in the genre who do not get on with Lovecraft’s writing or the man himself, this is an excellent way to get all the good stuff without the bad.

Anthologies

A Lonely and Curious Country: Tales from the land of Lovecraft

Seventeen stories about Lovecraftian horrors in the most unusual of places. Lots of these work as mini-sequels to Lovecraft’s original stories so this is a good companion for those familiar with his work.

Lovecraft Unbound

As I’ve said before, Ellen Datlow is a powerhouse of anthology editing. Featuring a great spread of familiar mythos faces and more thematic takes on the genre, Lovecraft Unbound is one of the best collections out there.

Book of Cthulhu

There are a couple of these! All feature some of the best contemporary authors writing weird fiction. Quality of individual stories sometimes varies in Lovecraftian anthologies but that is not the case here. The first is particularly good as it also contains stories from older, more obscure writers who are hard to get in print.

Shadows of Carcosa

Twelve short stories that feature everything from the land of carcosa to the traditionally Lovecraftian setting of the cursed hills of New England. All of these are shorts written by classic writers such as Poe, Stoker, Bierce, Chambers and Blackwood.

Lovecraft’s Monsters

Another collection edited by Datlow. This one is particularly fun as it features illustrations, as well as a story by Neil Gaiman. Lovecraft’s Monsters is amongst my favourite of the anthologies as it is based solely around the creatures that crawl and squirm through the mythos. It’s also available as an audiobook!

Children of Lovecraft

Fourteen short stories including authors like Stephen Graham Jones, Orrin Grey, Caitlin R. Kiernan and Livia Llewellyn. Full of body horror, dread, surrealism and one of the best opening sentences to any short story.

She Walks in Shadows

A monumental, fascinating collection comprised of exclusively female authors. Offering a long overdue look at and development of the female aspects of the mythos, this collection gives a voice to the previously unheard. For those looking for a diverse, original and often deeply disturbing reading experience, this is your anthology.

Available online for free

The Lovecraft Ezine has a great archive here of all its previous issues

Weird Fiction Review is an excellent resource for online fiction – both excerpts from books and stand-alone short stories.

The Online Books page has direct links to the issues of Weird Tales magazine published between 1923 – 192. 

TOR.COM is an amazing resource for all kinds of science fiction and fantasy shorts. This is a link specifically to Lovecraftian fiction. There’s also lots of interesting things to read under the tag cosmic horror here.

Graphic Novels

Fatale - Sex, violence, cults, cosmic horror, imaginative period settings and gorgeous artwork. Fatale is one of the best comics set in the mythos out there.

Locke and Key - Many of you will be familiar with Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez’s hugely popular (and now televised) series focused on a house above a portal to the plains of Leng.

Harrow County - Creepy, rural-based, folk horror series centred on a young woman who finds herself to be joined to the forest and the land in ways she could never have imagined.

The Squidder - A postapocalyptic Lovecraftian mess, I have included this because it is worth buying for the artwork alone. Ben Templesmith is an acquired taste but an incredibly talented illustrator whose work is uniquely suited to the mythos.

I have talked about these several times before but it is always worth checking out I.N.J Culbard’s graphic novel adaptations of Lovecraft’s stories, as well as the two anthologies that were released several years ago.

*** 

Films – Cosmic Horror

I have linked to the trailers for each of these, some are classics you will know, some are new. 

The Colour out of Space 

Die Fabre

The Dunwich Horror

The Endless

Event Horizon

The Void

Europa Report

Black Mountain Side 

Films – Folk Horror

The Ritual

They Remain

The White Reindeer

Night of the Demon 

Apostle

More generally, some good online resources for old/weird/out of print books are

Project Gutenberg – an online library of over 60,000 books in the public domain

Internet Archive – a great resource for obscure books (particularly historical)

Europeana – items from Europe’s galleries, museums, libraries and archives

Digital Public Library of America – similar to Europeana, but for America

Classic Literature – lots of 19th century gothic goodness in particular, but great for all the classics too!

And when it all gets too much and you feel like being your own creeping dread,  Here is a link to a fun game where you can be the rats in the walls. 

[csnews]

One of world's rarest dolphins is rebounding in Pakistan

Iman Sultan - June 18, 2020

In a secluded pocket of Pakistan’s Lab-e-Mehran park, the smooth waters of the Indus River break into circular ripples, and the head of a pale gray dolphin appears. The animal lingers briefly before diving back into the water, its dorsal fin gleaming in the sun. This quiet riverside park in the southern city of Sukkur, popular with families out for a stroll, is also home to the endangered Indus River dolphin, one of only four freshwater dolphin species left on Earth.

But a dam at the western end of the park restricts their ability to travel freely during the monsoon season, a crucial part of their life cycle.

It’s a similar story throughout Pakistan: Widespread construction of diversion dams called barrages have effectively destroyed the species’ habitat. The barrages were built in the mid-20th century to control flooding and provide irrigation, and in some cases have been repurposed for power plants. Now, they’ve not only cut off the dolphins’ ability to migrate; their diversions also can lead to dangerously low water levels. (Explore our beautiful graphic of the Indus River, a lifeline for millions.)

Once, the Indus dolphin swam across the Indus River and all of its tributaries, from the Indus delta near the Arabian Sea to the snowcapped Himalaya. Today, the 200-pound cetacean only occupies 20 percent of its original range. The remaining Indus dolphins are concentrated mostly in the Pakistani province of Sindh, in a 410-mile stretch of river between the Guddu and Kotri dams. Engro, an energy company that works with the thermal power plant connected to Guddu dam, did not respond to requests for comment about the dam’s impacts on the species.

Beyond dams, water pollution and industrial waste dumped into the Indus pose the gravest long-term threat to the dolphins. Studies have found DDT and other pesticides in the animals’ tissue, according to Uzma Khan, Asia coordinator for WWF’s River Dolphins Initiative. However, a rigorous government conservation program has educated local communities, rescued stranded dolphins, and is steadily increasing their numbers, Khan says. There are now 1,987 Indus dolphins in Pakistan, according to the most recent WWF survey, up from 132 animals in 1972. Another small population of at least seven animals live in India’s Beas River, an Indus tributary.

“If you go downstream from the Guddu [barrage], and you keep sailing, there comes a point where you see dolphins everywhere around you,” Khan says. “It’s overwhelming because they’re everywhere.”

At the same time, she says, “it’s a situation which can be challenging, because all these dolphins are just in one stretch of the Indus River.”

“A friend of humans”

Locally known as bhulan in the Urdu and Sindhi languages, the Indus dolphin “has been in the Indus for thousands of years, and is a mark of the Harappa civilisation,” says Mir Akhtar Talpur, a field officer for Sindh Wildlife Department, a government agency.

The Bronze Age civilisation, which blossomed in the Indus River valley, is known for its urban planning and advanced drainage systems. Modern peoples of the Sindh and Punjab Provinces are considered the Harappa’s direct descendants, and value the dolphin as part of their heritage.

Fishermen in these provinces tell an origin story for the species. In the legend, when a woman offers butter and milk to a mystic patron of the river, the waters part and she safely crosses to the other side. But once, she fails to make an acceptable offering—and the river spirit transforms her into a dolphin.

For fisherman Gul Mohammed Mirbar, the dolphin is a lifelong companion; he was 10 years old when he first saw one. On a sunny afternoon in February, he rows his wooden boat across the river at Lab-e-Mehran park, where he earns money giving boat rides to tourists and park visitors hoping to catch a glimpse of the rare dolphin.

As the water softly laps against the rocky riverbank, a pink dolphin surfaces with a splash, then disappears beneath the water.

Though Mirbar considers dolphins part of the environment, he and fellow fishermen also regard the dolphins as competitors that eat the very fish that are the men’s livelihood.

“You have to really put in effort [in fishing], or else you can’t catch up with the dolphin. That’s how fast she is,” Mirbar says, adding that the dolphins target large and small fish alike.

Until hunting was banned in the 1970s, some fishing communities hunted the dolphin for food or for blubber that they mixed with oil to coat their boats. The WWF reports that each year in the area, at least one dolphin dies when it’s accidentally trapped in fishing nets.

In general, “the dolphin is a friend of humans,” says Khadim Hussain, a representative of a fishermen advocacy organisation in Taunsa, a city in Punjab Province. “And it doesn’t pose any harm to fisherfolk. When the dolphin hears the sound of fishermen’s engines on their small boats, it approaches and swims with them.” (Read about dolphins in Brazil who help fishermen make their catch.)

An animal suited for the river

The dolphin has evolved to thrive in the Indus. Its colors—brown, a range of grays, or rarely, a dusky pink—help the animal blend into the sediment-laden river. And it’s nearly blind, as sight is unnecessary in the river’s murky waters. (Read about the first new species of river dolphin found in a century.)

The animal relies largely on an internal sonar system that bounces sound waves off objects to find prey, navigate the river, and communicate with other dolphins. The sonar is so advanced that it can sense the difference between a dead or living fish.

The dolphin’s long beak easily snaps up fish and other prey. On its sturdy body, a small dorsal fin maintains stability as it swims.

The Indus River dolphin is one of just two species known to lie on its side and flap its tail, a behavior called side-swimming. The maneuver allows the dolphin to move between shallow pools of water in the dry season—but it can’t help the animal cope with the Indus River’s dams.

Before dams fragmented the species’ habitat, the dolphins would swim upstream to tributaries during the monsoon and return to the Indus in the dry season.

Some dolphins can still move through dams if its gates are open—particularly if the animal is young or small—but then they often get trapped in irrigation canals, shallow pools, deep ponds, and sometimes even fields, where they can starve and overheat to death. (See videos revealing the power of dams—and dam removal.)

To the rescue

The Sindh Wildlife Department has spread the word to local communities to call a hotline if they spot a trapped dolphin in a pond or canal. Adnan Hamid Khan, the deputy conservator in Sukkur for the Sindh Wildlife Department, has participated in several rescues, perhaps the most notable in December 2019.

A dolphin calf had swum out of the river and beached in a field in Faiz Ganj Wah, more than 120 miles from Sukkur. Hamid Khan and his team placed the animal in his car, spraying it with water to keep it hydrated as they sped through traffic to release it back into the river. While the rescue was successful, it's unknown whether the animal survived.

The rescue process isn’t easy. For one, these marine mammals are very sensitive to loud noises and human presence, and can suffer from health problems such as high blood pressure when being evacuated. (Learn about the difficulties involved in rescuing wild animals.)

What’s more, faced with limited funding and outdated equipment, the small rescue team must get creative in saving dolphins—which often means investing their own resources, says Hamid Khan.

“In wildlife conservation, problems arise very suddenly. You have to give instant relief and make a decision in that moment on how you’ll resolve things,” he says.

What the rescuers lack in resources, they make up for in dedication.

Nazir Mirani, the son of a fisherman, has worked with Sindh Wildlife for 30 years; he has bite marks on his hands from past rescues. Mirani is the third generation in his family to help in conserving dolphins, offering the agency advice and knowledge from his years on the water.

“For generations, we’ve been living near the river and sailing in boats. We fish, and we take care of the dolphin,” says Mirani, as he sits in the shade of a tree and looks out at the sun-streaked river.

“In the past, some people used to eat the dolphin. My father told them, Don’t eat the dolphin, because this is an innocent animal, and it’s the beauty of the river.”

Finding solutions

Much about the Indus dolphin remains shrouded in mystery, including this: What happens to rescued dolphins once they’re set free in the river? Do calves find their mothers, for instance? (See beautiful underwater photos of freshwater animals.)

WWF has proposed putting satellite tags on dolphins to track their movements, learn more about their biology, and inform conservation efforts. “Every rescued animal needs to be tagged,” Uzma Khan says. “And we need to know, how many dolphins are dying?”

Another technology that could help conserve dolphins is planting “pingers” near the openings to canals. The devices make a ting ting sound, inaudible to humans, that dolphins avoid.

Pingers usually are used to warn dolphins away from fishing nets, says Uzma Khan, “but we want to test them near canals to see if they stop dolphins from swimming into them.”

For rescuers like Mirani, saving the Indus River dolphin is a civic responsibility. He remembers the gharial, a crocodile that once lived in the Indus but is now locally extinct. He doesn’t want the dolphin to suffer the same fate.

If that happens, he asks, “What will our children see?”