#like I’m genuinely approaching novel length for this story

[chaoticbuggybitchboy]

Hyperfixating on my own writing feels so weird and egotistical but also as someone who reads a lot, this is genuinely well written and intricately thought out and really good.

[foxys-fantasy-tales]

A Rival Most Vial - Book Review

Oh gosh, where do I start? I loved it. Let's make that clear. Ok, I'll begin with my one gripe before my overwhelming praise takes over because I cannot wait for more in this series.

R.K. Ashwick's second trilogy begins with this book, as The Stray Spirit began their first trilogy and was their debut novel as an indie author last year. Two books in so little time! I could never be that fast! Both are highly recommended by me so I wanted to mention the other book, now, let's pop open this juicy dumpling of fantasy fiction, shall we?

The one gripe is Ambrose and Eli are at odds for a good third of the book or so, and I mean heavily. As spoiler light as possible, events go from a boiling point that breaks the rules of the street their shops are on, then in the same day a character begins to look at the other with a wholly different kinda boiling point. -tugs collar- Ahem. As I said, the quick change left a bit of whiplash for me personally, but it's my only complaint for this wonderful novel that also captured my heart and made me tear up once or twice.

Ambrose is by far my favorite. I relate to his closed off nature, and boy does he also have good reasons for it. He's intelligent, gifted in his craft even, dedicated, and all mushy inside if you can get past that icy blue exterior of his. Eli, on the other hand, took me a minute to get on board with, though I have to admit the cutest automaton ever, Tom, and her wonderfully depicted stabby feet, mug body, fork arms, and broom head helped warm me to him. Eli has severe wanderlust and gets bored of things easily, though he is also incredibly gifted. He's reckless, but he's charming and bears good intentions.

All the characters are wonderful, really, but I won't name them all here and let you discover them yourself. They make themselves very much known in the first chapter after all. Big personalities and bigger hearts, these shopkeeps all stick together through thick and thin, even though some may make some really rash calls at times. In a magical world with exploding moss, dragons, and venomous moths that shoot deadly spikes the length of your arm, any rash choice could be deadly.

The romance is golden and the details on the kisses and awkwardness being described from both sides of the blooming relationship between Ambrose and Eli is just -mwah-. Ambrose is uncertain of a first relationship and so concerned with timing and averages like any A type personality would be, while Eli is tender with him and doesn't wish to push too far, all the while not knowing Ambrose may want just that. There is a short sex scene, but it's very blurry in depictions of physicality and hones in more on the back and forth and emotions between the two. I thought this was a good choice for this type of story, and it blended well to the emotional beats at the time.

The world-building, just like The Stray Spirit, is so carefully thought out, planned, drawn up in wonderful in book art, and exudes so much of Ashwick's character that you could tell it was an R.K. Ashwick book even without the name on the cover if you read their debut. Each of these worlds is mesmerizing and brings me back to when I would eat through fantasy books by the dozen. It's whimsical, but dangerous enough you have to root for the characters and fear for them at times genuinely. As Ambrose goes over his potion instructions and shortcuts to his partner on the commission, each detail feels like it just came from an actual text on the subject. I can't wait to discover more of this world.

Can we also state how gorgeous that cover is while I still have your attention? The colors pop so well! The details are stunning and I love the little silhouettes of our main duo with those tiny hearts above their heads.

All in all, this is my long-winded approach to saying GO BUY THIS BOOK! I assure you it is worth the time and money spent to travel through this world with these loveable fools.

This is an arc read and I’m leaving a review voluntarily. This review is honest all the same and I jumped at the chance to be an arc reader after reading The Stray Spirit shortly after it's launch. I've followed this project's growth even longer than that, and I am so happy to say I am so satisfied with how this turned out.

[theres-a-goldensky]

30 More The Untamed Fic Recs

Here we go again. Another Wangxian rec list. Are you bored of me yet?

Were these recs helpful to you? If so, you can check out my other Wangxian rec posts:

Part 1 - 40 recs

Part 2 - 23 recs

Part 3 - 23 recs

As ever, feel free to reblog.

You can also head over to my bookmarks on AO3.

(All recs are complete) (I’ve noted pairings, length, and rating, but not any warnings or additional tags.)

** denotes personal favorite

1. say it's here where our pieces fall in place by Lirelyn - ~69,000 words, explicit - Modern AU where Lan Zhan meets Wei Wuxian after he adopts a small A-Yuan, because Wei Wuxian also has a past with him. Lots of adorable family feelings and emotional hurt/comfort.

As often happened, Wei Ying’s voice preceded his entrance, calling to his co-worker through the open door, “Frankie, they forgot to order spoons again, can you hold down the fort a little longer while I —”

Lan Wangji was already looking to his entrance, head turning as if magnetized toward the voice, so he saw the moment when Wei Ying’s eyes landed on A-Yuan and the smile fell from his face. He looked stricken, and Lan Wangji immediately looked to his son in alarm. A-Yuan seemed fine. His small eyebrows were pulled together in a small frown as he looked back at Wei Ying, but that wasn’t surprising, given the expression on Wei Ying’s face. Lan Wangji had seen that face beaming, laughing, whining, wheedling, and occasionally angry, but never like this. He looked blank and hollow and it stirred something fierce in Lan Wangji: he wanted to rise up and obliterate whatever was making him look like that. Then his eyes lifted to Lan Wangji and there was a flash of something almost like betrayal, before he pressed his lips together and turned his back.

“I’m going to run out to the store and get spoons,” he said in a flat voice to his co-worker, and left without looking their way again.

2. the breaking of your soul (upon my lips) by sunsandships - ~41,000 words, mature - This is an AU of the novel where Wei Wuxian puts two and two together when Lan Zhan sneaks that kiss from him. It changes a lot of things.

Against his own will, Wei Wuxian found himself glancing at Lan Wangji’s hands. They were… certainly large enough that one of them could wrap around both of his wrists. And Lan Wangji was certainly strong enough, tall enough, broad-shouldered enough to bodily pin him against the trunk of a tree with no chance of him breaking free. Lan Wangji was the first person he’d come across in his slow comb through the vicinity of where he’d been so headily kissed.

Wei Wuxian drew a sharp breath. There was a connection to be made here. He didn’t think he was crazy enough to make it. Perhaps he truly was going slightly insane with demonic cultivation if he could believe Lan Wangji, the paragon of virtue and respectability, who lived unflinchingly under Gusu Lan’s three thousand edicts, who had at best only tolerated his presence as children, would sneak up to him while he was blindfolded, pin him against a tree, and steal a kiss from him in broad daylight.

3. and his wanting grows teeth by yukla - ~25,000 words, teen - This is a very interesting AU where Lan Zhan is a traveling cultivator and runs into Wei Wuxian and the Jiangs looking for shelter during a snowstorm. No spoilers, but this fic goes to a pretty dark place that genuinely shocked me, but I enjoyed. (Still ends well though.)

Without further ado, they are hustled past the entrance and into a smaller greeting area. Huang-bobo approaches the brazier in the center with his hands outstretched, warming his fingers in the heat, but Lan Wangji hangs back. As he carefully brushes the snow free from his shoulders, he feels the burn of a curious gaze trailing up and down his body, lingering at the guqin still strapped to his back; when the sensation pauses at his face and stays there, he lifts his head.

The boy with the ribbon lights up at the eye contact, flashes another dazzling smile, and gives a little wave.

“You must be new here,” he whispers, something like laughter threaded into his voice, eyes scrunching into winking half-moons. “All dressed up in white like that! You might lose yourself in the snowstorm!”

Something stirs to life in Lan Wangji’s chest. It’s—uncomfortable, he decides, and so he steps away. Teasing should not be encouraged with a response.

4. Ghosts Shouldn't by ShanaStoryteller - ~15,000 words, not rated - After Wei Ying's death, his spirit seems to linger. The story is told from Lan Xichen's point of view. I love an outsider point of view. I also love the way the author fleshes out his character as well.

Lan Xichen means to force his way inside, angry ghost of the Yiling Patriarch or no, but then his brother lets out slow breath, settling, the pain easing from his face as he falls back into a more peaceful sleep.

His hair is moving on its own, so subtly Lan Xichen might not have noticed it if he hadn’t been looking at Wangji so intently. It’s like someone’s running their hand through his hair.

The window frosts over suddenly, thick enough that he can’t see through it. Anxiety spikes through him so quickly he’s nauseous with it, but then the frost melts away and the opening notes of Healing start up again.

He can’t tell if it’s a warning or not. Maybe it’s just an acknowledgement. Wei Wuxian knows he’s there.

5. **leading tone by silencemostofall - ~32,000 words, general - This is a modern AU set in a world where people who love you leave a mark of color on you the first time you touch. Wei Wuxian has no color on him. So much emotional hurt/comfort. So much of Wei Wuxian's terrible self-esteem.

He can cover up his palms with his gloves, so that the blankness does not draw stares. But he has no marks on his fingertips, which he cannot easily hide, and none visible on his face or neck, the blankness of which is even more difficult to hide. People look at him and, with a single glance, understand the single most devastating truth that he knows about himself.

They assume that he does not have very many marks. He may be an eccentric, dramatic person, but the likelihood that an individual has all of their marks on, say, their feet or their torso or other places that are not immediately obvious-- that probability goes down as your number of marks increases. He can laugh as much as he wants about how he loves touching people for the first time with odd places, like the knee or the elbow, but it doesn't quite mask the feeling of other that he knows he exudes.

They assume that he does not have a lot of marks. This, while a heavy weight, is not unbearably so. It is okay that they think he is not much loved. It chafes a bit, and feels occasionally like something he has to furiously push down within himself, but it is not unbearable. What would be unbearable is if they knew the truth: that he does not just have very few marks, but none. That he is simply an individual who is not loved at all.

6. **pastel by antebunny - ~7,000 words, gen - This is a remix work of the above fic. It's from Lan Zhan's point of view and just different enough to be interesting. Still lots of emotional hurt/comfort. I love this concept a whole lot, and both of these fics are great.

It’s a simmering day in May, and Wei Ying is wearing long sleeves, long pants, and gloves.

His choice of dress isn’t unusual for many reasons. For one, there’s plenty of people who don’t like strangers seeing their soulmarks. There’s plenty of people who wish to keep them private by covering them up. For another, Wei Ying spends most of his day in various chilly computer science department rooms, He could just be wearing long sleeves for that.

7. one good thing by Yuu_chi - ~27,000 words, teen - Wei Wuxian has died (or did he??) and is haunting his old home. Lan Zhan moves in. This story has a happy ending! And so much yearning!

To the flowers struggling to grow on the other side of the glass, he says, “We’re getting a new roommate. Well, I’m getting a new roommate - you’re getting somebody who might actually be able to water you for a change.” The flowers outside sway a little in the breeze, and Wei Wuxian nods contemplatively. “He can’t be any worse than the last guy who lived here. Remember when I spooked him while he was cooking and he nearly burnt the house down? Of course you don’t. You’re fucking foliage, your memory is worse than mine. I remember though, so it’s cool.”

There’s the sound of shuffling behind him and Wei Wuxian looks up to see the stranger has entered the kitchen, setting the last of the boxes down on the table. Disgustingly neat handwriting declares the box kitchen - homeware. The stranger carefully brushes his hair back from his face and, without so much as a second of hesitation, cracks open the box and begins unpacking.

“Wow, you really don’t waste any time, do you?” Wei Wuxian marvels. “You literally just got here - who cares about unpacking? Sit down for a moment, breathe, have something to eat. It’s not going anywhere.”

8. with you, I am home by tellthemstories - ~47,000 words, mature - Modern AU where Wei Wuxian is being forced to return home to entertain marriage proposals. So naturally instead he "convinces" Lan Zhan to pretend to date him. I love a good fake dating fic, and this one hits all the right beats.

Lan Zhan does that almost-smile thing that Wei Wuxian takes to mean he’s happy, or at the very least not-mad. “You don’t have any money.”

“Not true. I have the money from our last job, when we settled the vengeful spirit for the flower shop girl.” (He doesn’t. They have Lan Zhan’s money. Wei Wuxian spent his on a pack of loquats and three bottles of Emperor’s Smile wine.)

“Fine,” Wei Wuxian says. “Do it for me.”

Thinking back on it two weeks later, standing alone in the middle of Jin Ling’s graduation banquet and watching Lan Zhan walk away from him, Wei Wuxian realises that this, this was the moment when he should have known. He should have realised in the way Lan Zhan doesn’t hesitate or negotiate and just says with that half-fond, half-exasperated tone he gets sometimes, “Fine.”

9. and in the spring i shed my skin by wvlfqveen - ~11,000 words, teen - Modern AU where Wei Ying can't find Lan Zhan, but hey, there happens to be a rabbit here instead. Features a very slow Wei Ying, emotional hurt/comfort and accidental love confessions.

Immediately, his heart settles and he grins down at his new friend. “Oh, hello there,” he coos, reaching out to pet the fluffy ears. The bunny is very, very still under his hand.

“Did Lan Zhan bring you today?,” he continues cooing. “I’m sorry I missed that, but your Dad didn’t tell me he was bringing you.”

Lan Zhan rarely brings his rabbits to work since they are as tolerant of crowds and unnecessary noise as he is. They were probably relevant to today’s lesson but…

Wei Ying frowns. “Why would he leave you alone? And where is your cage?”

10. how, or when, or from where by sarahyyy - ~10,000 words, gen - Wei Ying wakes up in the hospital with amnesia and can't remember the last few years of his life, including his best friend and the guy he's in love with.

Jiang Cheng rolls his eyes so hard Wei Wuxian is surprised his eyeballs don’t just fall out of his eye sockets. “That’s the worst part. He did. Whatever mating ritual you both have going on is so fucking weird, Wei Wuxian.” He snorts. “If you’d stayed asleep for any longer, I’d have lost my shit and thrown my myself out a window just so I wouldn’t have to talk to Lan Wangji again.”

Wei Wuxian blinks at him. “Is this a good time to ask who Lan Wangji is?”

Jiang Cheng glares at him. “Your Lan Zhan,” he says, annoyed. Wei Wuxian must look as confused as he feels, because Jiang Cheng’s annoyance bleeds out into concern. “Your Lan er-gege? Your soulmate, Lan Wangji?”

Wei Wuxian shakes his head. “No bells are ringing.”

11. ** a shared plate by yukla - ~26,000 words, teen - This is an absolutely gorgeous fic about Wei Wuxian traveling the world post-canon to rediscover himself and restore his faith in humanity and eventually find his way back to Lan Zhan. The whole thing is great, but the last two chapters are just *chef's kiss*

Lan Zhan,

Just as the mountains stand unchanging and the green rivers flow ceaselessly, we will meet again — and between then and now, you cannot hope to avoid my letters, either! Haha! Lan Zhan, I’ve seen so many things and met so many people, and it’s only been a month!

I miss you already

It’s so hot that I find myself missing the wind in Gusu’s mountains. Your poor Wei Ying is I’m melting away, Lan Zhan...

I’m realizing now, sixteen years is a long time to be away — the world is vast, and quite a bit different than I remembered. And in sixteen years, a child can also grow up into a man! It’s your job to catch me up on A-Yuan’s fun childhood stories! I do remember hearing something about a pile of rabbits...

12. with your arms outstretched to me by annemari - ~14,000 words, teen - Lan Zhan finally gets up the nerve to ask Wei Ying on a date, but things don't go as expected. Features emotional hurt/comfort (are we sensing a theme with these recs??) and just regular hurt/comfort.

"Oh, man, I was hoping you had some water with you," Wei Ying says. "I totally forgot to bring any for myself. Stupid of me."

"There is enough for both of us," Lan Wangji says. He has another bigger bottle in the car, as well.

Wei Ying hums but he only takes a few sips. He presses it back into Lan Wangji's hand. "I don't need any more."

Lan Wangji is considering arguing, but then Wei Ying shifts a bit, moving his ankle, and gasps very, very quietly.

13. ** A Lot of Edges Called Perhaps by hansbekhart - ~22,000 words, explicit - Wei Wuxian has finished traveling and returned to the Cloud Recesses and Lan Zhan. But their lives never do run smoothly.

“Lan Jingyi,” Wei Wuxian says, recognizing him after a moment. His heart slams against his rib cage. “Where is Lan Zhan? What’s happened?”

Lan Jingyi flaps a hand at him, gulping air. Wei Wuxian hands him the water, and leans back against Little Apple’s side as he waits impatiently for the boy to get his breath back.

“I’m so glad I found you,” Jingyi gasps, just as Wei Wuxian is about to throttle a proper answer out of him. “Hanguang Jun was in such a state when he woke up, we didn’t know if you’d come and gone already.”

“Where is he, Jingyi,” Wei Wuxian says, as evenly as he can. “What happened?”

14. So Why Not Crack Your Skull When the Mind Swells by greenteafiend - ~14,000 words, explicit - Wei Wuxian is cursed to feel extraordinary pain unless he's touching Lan Zhan. Yet more of Wei Wuxian's self-esteem issues and Lan Zhan's steadfast devotion.

“Are you hurt, Wei Ying?” Lan Wangji asks, pressing his hand to Wei Ying’s forehead to feel his temperature. There is no fever, but that doesn’t do much to mitigate Lan Wangji’s worries.

“No—I’m not hurt,” says Wei Ying, sagging forward to lean his weight into Lan Wangji’s hand like he can’t help himself.

It’s so strange—Lan Wangji can feel what Wei Ying is feeling. Although the relief is still very profound, wisps of other things are making themselves known; happiness; wistfulness; guilt. It’s all so fleeting that Lan Wangji can’t even begin to deduce what has provoked those feelings, but he wishes he knew their source.

15. puzzle pieces by Anonymous - ~6,000 words, teen - Modern AU where Wei Ying and Lan Zhan are roommates, and Wei Ying has started borrowing Lan Zhan's clothes.

“Hm? Oh.” With sleepy eyes that does— things to Lan Zhan’s heart, he blinks and tugs at the lower hem of the shirt, which is riding just above the curve of his thighs. Does Lan Zhan’s mouth water? Maybe. Yes. Absolutely. “Ah, yeah, sorry. Laundry day caught up to me before I could catch up with it. I saw this shirt left in the washer a few days ago, and—“ He blinks up at Lan Zhan through dark eyelashes that Lan Zhan wants to kiss, maybe, and gives him an uncharacteristically hesitant smile. “Do you mind?”

I mind the fact that we are not married, Lan Zhan thinks. But he can’t say that, and his tongue doesn’t know how to say anything else. So he stays silent.

“Oh,” Wei Ying says after a moment. “If you—oh, damn, I should’ve known, this is like real silk, must’ve been super expensive. Fuck. Okay, here, uh, I’ll take it off—“

16. ** Nothing But Trouble by brooklinegirl - ~60,000 words, explicit - Modern AU where Wei Ying is trying to be a good brother and get Jiang Cheng laid. Somehow this plan involves pretending to date Lan Zhan.

"I won't!" Wei Ying insists. "I'll ask out someone...high stakes. I'll find someone. I'll...okay, how's this? I swear that I'll ask someone out and keep at it for at least two dates."

"No."

"Three dates."

"Nope."

"Okay, okay, five. That's fair! That's more than fair! One person, five dates." He points at Jiang Cheng. "You have to do it, too. That's how a pact works."

Jiang Cheng stares at him. "Five dates," he says flatly. "Five. And yours can't be Nie Huaisang."

17. i'm the one for your fire by occultings (microcomets) - ~43,000 words, explicit - This is a Modern AU and a Cherry Magic AU! (Side note: GO WATCH CHERRY MAGIC IF YOU HAVEN'T.) But in short, Wei Ying turns 30 without losing his virginity and gets the power to hear people's thoughts when he touches them. He gets more than he bargained for with Lan Zhan. The author does a good job of translating the story to these characters. Wei Ying is not forced to be like Adachi, the main character of Cherry Magic. He's still himself, and the same goes for Lan Zhan.

Lan Zhan’s voice is so clear, so sudden that it’s as though it’s spoken, the slice of a sharp object through velvet.

He’s touching me.

Wei Ying startles for a moment, wonders if he’d somehow heard his own thoughts instead, but — no, that had definitely been Lan Zhan’s steady, factual baritone, loud and clear.

God, this is still so weird. It still doesn’t seem totally real. But how else can he account for hearing Lan Zhan’s voice in his head, as clearly as if he’d spoken to Wei Ying directly?

18. like blue flame over my fingertips by tangerinechar - ~37,000 words, teen - Modern AU where Lan Zhan and Wei Ying are roommates, and Lan Zhan just finds himself wanting to take care of Wei Ying.

Lan Wangji’s roommate. Is a problem.

He doesn’t get an answer to the roommate problem until the next morning, when Lan Xichen texts him telling him that the apartment he’d suggested (and helped pay rent for) to Lan Wangji said in the small text that it’d be two people per apartment, the second bedroom wasn’t actually a guest bedroom, sorry, Wangji, you can move in with me if you want, I have space —

No. Thank you for your kind offer, Brother, but I will be quite fine, Lan Wangji texts back.

19. ** some impulse of delight by handclaps - ~20,000 words, explicit - College AU where Wei Ying decides he needs to help Lan Zhan get used to touching people. Lan Zhan agrees. Wei Ying is dumb and in love. Lan Zhan is less dumb, but still as in love.

Lan Zhan shakes his head and fumbles, tries to push the cotton wool into Wei Wuxian’s hand.

“Sorry,” Wei Wuxian says, realising. “Touching people, I know.”

He feels dumb. He thought he’d worn Lan Zhan down more than this, that they were friends now and that his whole no touching thing was mostly overcome. He took Wei Wuxian’s hand easily, right? He looks down at his belly full of scratches, dabbing at them moodily.

“Sorry,” he says, again.

Lan Zhan makes some kind of noise, but he is busy packing the first aid kit back, placing everything exactly where it was before.

“Lan Zhan, you’re going to have to do something about this,” Wei Wuxian complains. “I know you don’t like touching people and usually it plays as a kind of gentlemanly thing, but what about emergencies?”

20. And I Will Call You Home by Spodumene - ~43,000 words, explicit - Wei Wuxian returns after a year of traveling and rejoins Lan Zhan in the Cloud Recesses. He's doing a good job of pining and ignoring the obvious. Look, at this point, it shouldn't be a surprise that I'm a sucker for stories where Wei Wuxian deals with his ~*~issues~*~ and Lan Zhan takes care of him, whether he asks for it or not. This story has lots of that. I also enjoyed the case fic aspect of it.

“I do, I think,” Wei Wuxian admits. “Would be nice to see his face again after so long. And at least this time, I’m going to show up draped in finery. What do you think, Lan Zhan? I can’t possibly disgrace him—or you—wearing a cloak like that.”

“You could never disgrace me,” Lan Wangji says gently, that soft, affectionate look back on his face.

Wei Wuxian grins, warmed to the tips of his toes.

“I’ll remind you of that later. The next time I’m three jars deep and feeling especially shameless, you’ll have to remember those words, Lan Er-gege.”

“Of course,” Lan Wangji says simply.

Wei Wuxian smiles some more, overwhelmed by fondness.

21. darling, am i a chore? by martyrsdaughter - ~7,000 words, explicit - Wei Wuxian really, really wants Lan Zhan to call him 'gege'. Lan Zhan knows a trump card when he sees one.

“You know what I want,” Wei Wuxian purrs, reaching up on his tiptoes to throw his arms over Lan Wangji’s shoulders. “Call me gege, won’t you? Call me and I’ll stop.”

Lan Wangji knows he will not stop, regardless of what he calls him. Still, he thinks about it. If there really is a way to make Wei Wuxian stop, should he not consider it? He doesn’t have any real interest in curbing his husband’s insatiable mischievousness, but he does like knowing things about him—everything there is to know.

If there’s something that persuasive in the world, that it can bring Wei Wuxian into submission when no one is under threat, could he stop himself from seeking it?

22. your name, safe in their mouth by astrolesbian - ~11,000 words, gen - Wei Wuxian & Lan Sizhui fic with the Wangxian in the background. Lan Sizhui wants another dad and Wei Wuxian wants a son, they just don't know how to explain that to each other.

“Hush,” Wei Wuxian says, in a low croon, like someone quieting a baby. Then he blinks, and looks away, awkward. “I mean—you shouldn’t speak. You’re tired. Rest if you need to.”

Lan Sizhui tucks his chin into his uncle’s shoulder, and lets his eyes fall closed.

“It doesn’t hurt too much, does it?” Wen Ning whispers to him kindly.

Lan Sizhui takes a deep breath, and takes stock of all his aches, his ringing ear, his hollow chest, the way he had selfishly wanted Wei Wuxian to keep speaking to him in that careful voice, like he was just a child to be soothed and there was no real danger. How dangerous, to pretend. “No,” he lies. “It doesn’t hurt that much at all.”

23. when you're doing all the leaving (then it's never your love lost) by tardigradeschool - ~26,000 words, teen - AU where Lan Zhan with Wei Wuxian to Jin Ling's one-month celebration. Things go down, and it leads to Lan Zhan discovering Wei Wuxian's missing golden core. This obviously will not do, and oh look, the best doctor in the world just happens to be right here.

“How—“ Lan Wangji chokes. “His core —?” He looks at Wen Ning, half accusatory in his shock. “Jin Zixun could not have—“

“No, no!” Wen Ning says, holding out his hands. “He hasn’t had one for years, don’t worry!”

This is not as reassuring as Wen Ning seems to think.

“Please explain,” Lan Wangji says, pained. He feels for Wei Wuxian’s pulse instead; in the absence of a golden core, it will have to do as reassurance that he’s still alive.

Wen Ning is so anxious that the story comes out in a ramble, out of order. Lan Wangji wants him to hurry up, but he’s also not confident in his own ability to speak, so he just keeps quiet and lets him talk. His heart feels as if it’s about to fall from his chest, beating nearly twice as fast as Wei Wuxian’s does under his fingers.

24. A Match in the Making by lareine - ~30,000 words, teen - A Modern AU where Wei Wuxian sees his single and bad ass friend Lan Zhan and his single and bad ass friend Mianmian and gets some very dumb ideas.

To return to the point: Lan Zhan was peak adulting. Mianmian was peak adulting. And if they were both at the peak, then they were on the same level. What level? That mysterious level thing that everyone mentioned when it came to dating.

Whatever level it was, Lan Zhan and Mianmian were on it together. Wei Ying nodded to himself. So, Lan Zhan and Mianmian were allowed to date each other. The next question was: were they compatible? Did they have chemistry or whatever the fuck people called it?

25. Crack me open, pour you out by Tenillypo - ~16,000 words, explicit - Lan Zhan gets cursed to say whatever he's thinking. So his worst nightmare. Mutual pining, first time, all good stuff.

Lan Wangji freezes with his chopsticks halfway to his mouth, lifting his eyes to stare at Wei Ying.

"I know! Just completely paralyzed." Wei Ying mimes being still as a board. "I don't know how long I lay there. It must have been two days at least. Good thing for Little Apple. He wandered back to the village when he got hungry, and eventually a few of them got brave enough to come look for me. When they rolled me over, the figure fell out of my hand and I could move again. Cunning little thing." He shakes his head. "I was weak as a kitten for a little while after they took me back to the village, and by the time I recovered, they'd burned the whole place to the ground. Such a waste."

Lan Wangji slowly lowers his chopsticks, heart racing unpleasantly. In his head, a picture of Wei Ying slowly wasting to death alone in the middle of the woods, with Lan Wangji a hundred miles away and none the wiser.

26. Crazy, Rich Cultivators by ShanaStoryteller - 13,000 words, no rating - Lan Zhan wants to bring his boyfriend home to meet his family. There are some things he definitely didn't realize about Wei Ying.

“He has a life here,” he says down the line. He doesn’t say that he has a life here too, one he likes a lot more than the one he had before. He misses home. He’d miss Wei Ying more. But he doesn’t say that, doesn’t say how vibrant he is and how beautiful and how little interest Lan Zhan has at seeing him among the high society he grew up with.

“Well, your life is here, Wangji,” his brother says. “You can’t stay away from home forever. You’re going to have to see how he does with the rest of us sooner or later. It might as well be sooner.”

It might as well be never, as far as he’s concerned. His family can meet Wei Ying at their wedding.

“I’ll ask,” he says.

Wei Ying has no interest in cultivation politics. They’re horrible, the five clans have an iron tight alliance that’s thirty seconds away from collapsing in on itself the moment someone from one sect steps on another sect’s toes. It’s the worst and he hates it. Surely even just the idea of it will be so horrifying to Wei Ying that Lan Zhan will be able to tell his brother no.

27. just our hands clasped so tight by electrum ~4,000 words, teen - Lan Zhan really, really, really just wants to give Wei Ying everything he wants.

“Despite your best efforts,” Wei Wuxian agrees. He shakes his head in mock-dismay. “How much longer do you think that will last if you keep buying everything I look at?” When this, too, fails to soften Lan Zhan’s resolve, he tries a different tactic. “We couldn’t even afford potatoes,” he says. “Back when I was with the Wens, at the Burial Mounds. Only radishes! If I survived that, I can certainly survive without another pretty comb.”

Lan Zhan’s expression is at once unmoved and yet somehow stricken. “I would have bought Wei Ying potatoes,” he says, like Wei Wuxian doesn’t know, by this point, that Lan Zhan would buy him anything. “If I had known…”

28. ** Rotten Work by ShanaStoryteller - ~64,000 words, no rating - Jin Ling & Wei Wuxian with Wangxian in the background. Jin Ling is the best boy! And as he tries to rehabilitate his sect and his family and keep himself alive at the same time, he realizes, horrifyingly, that he has to be the mature one.

29. ** an act too often neglected by Ariaste - Lan Xichen / Meng Yao, ~61,000 words, explicit - The Wangxian is in the background here, but the main story is about Lan Xichen meeting Meng Yao on a dating app and getting immediately dickmatized. Meanwhile. Meng Yao refuses to be won over by Lan Xichen's charm. It goes as well as you'd expect for him.

The caption below is equally sparse: “5’6. Demanding.”

Lan Xichen feels a low simmer of arousal kindle in the pit of his stomach, and he gazes at that word-- demanding --for nearly as long as he’d stared at the photograph. He swipes right.

A few minutes later, a notification pops up: < Hm, the size of your hands is promising.

This is familiar. This is the flirtation stage. Lan Xichen knows the steps to the dance.

30. My Land Beneath Me by longleggedgit - ~30,000 words, explicit - Modern AU where Wei Wuxian is cast out of his sect and out of China to America. And Lan Zhan just...follows.

Lan Zhan always waited for his tea to cool before drinking, which meant he had nothing to do but give Wei Wuxian a judgmental look. “No more McDonald’s.”

“You’re just bitter because you get indigestion from anything that actually tastes good,” Wei Wuxian grumbled.

Because Lan Zhan was insufferably mature and patient, he didn’t rise to the bait. “We have time to stop somewhere before class,” he said.

“Fine. But you’re paying this time.”

It was a bad joke, and predictably, fell flat; Lan Zhan was, after all, paying for everything, every time. Wei Wuxian frowned into his mug.

“You know,” he said, after another swallow, “you really don’t have to be here. I’m going to figure something out.”

*

Interested in 86 more The Untamed fic recs?

Part 1 - 40 recs Part 2 - 23 recs Part 3 - 23 recs

[ziamhaze]

My Future in Fic

Yeah, so, the 100k fic that I’ve been working on for the past six months?  The one that was going to be uploaded to AO3 last week?  Yeah, it’s accidentally getting published...

Where do I start?

I suppose with a massive thank you to anyone who’s clicked on any of my fics over these past two years.  I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again.  I never ever thought about writing as a career.  I’ve never written anything prior to my Harry Potter AU Compartment 451.  I didn’t even take an English class in undergrad or grad school.  I genuinely just had an idea for a fic I wanted to read and since no one had written it, I had to do so myself.  Since then, I’ve written every single day for 2 years.  I left my job in the entertainment industry, got accepted to one of the best creative writing programs in the world on a scholarship, and now one of my stories is being considered at Harper Collins.  Yes, the Harper Collins.  It’s the longest shot in the world, but for legal reasons I was not allowed to upload the fic version on any website prior to submission.  Even if they don’t pick it up, I’ve been advised to continue to shop it around to agents.

What I can do, however, is share the premise.

If you’ve been following my tumblr and watching my tags - I SEE YOU ALL OUT THERE - then you’ll know that this fic was meant to have Zayn with his signature undercut hairstyle and one more little thing...

Someone sent me an ask a while back about what this fic was supposed to be about.  I believe I said something about it being an adaptation fic, but not from a film/tv show/other piece of literature, from a song.  This next fic was meant to be an adaptation of the song Younger by Ruel.  Later on, it also took shape with the help of Remember by Liam and a few others that you can find here.

The miniature summary is as follows:

When his father suddenly passes, twenty-nine-year-old Liam Payne is brought back to the Sydney suburbs where he grew up.  He doesn’t plan on seeing his childhood best friend, Zayn Malik, at the burial service.  They haven’t spoken since going from brothers to strangers one fateful day fifteen years prior.  But Zayn puts an end to this when he approaches Liam after the burial, offering his condolences and asking if Liam can help his archaeological research team with photographing their newest project.  The unexpected closeness forces each man to wade through uneasy emotions.  For Liam, a mixture of grief, lost identity, and confusion over why he’s willing to interact with the one person he swore he’d never forgive.  And for Zayn, a tidal wave of anxiety that comes from finally facing a part of himself he’s always chosen to deny.  When We Were Younger is a story heavily rooted in blurred identities and exploring what loss can look like in two different scenarios: death and friendship.

For obvious reasons, their names will be changed.  Liam, to Hutton.  Zayn, to Cairo (his ethnicity will also be changed to Egyptian).  As you can see, it was meant to be my big ‘enemies to lovers’ fic.  Technically, it’s ‘best friends to enemies to lovers’, but you know.

Right, so what does this mean for me going forward?

I still have so much inspiration when it comes to writing Zayn and Liam as characters.  I don’t plan on putting a complete stop to writing them, but with my career taking this large of a turn, I do have to prioritise my time.  That said, as of now, I can’t afford to write long-form fic any longer.

Soon, I’ll be starting a PhD program where I’ll be writing another full-length novel for mass publication.  For fun, here’s a little insight on the two ideas that I’ll be pitching:

1.  Underground boxer (loosely based off Liam) falls in love with arms gang leader (loosely based off Zayn).  Throughout their love story, the latter has to outrun the psychological trauma his father (the leader of Zayn’s rival gang) still throws his way. 

2.  Cold War AU.  Paris, circa 1950/51.  Ambassador’s son (loosely based off Liam) befriends new student (loosely based off Zayn) at the international school.  Paris is a ticking time bomb; war is about to break out at literally any second.  The two clearly have feelings for each other, but can’t act on them because homosexuality in the 1950s...yikes.  When war does break out, the two are separated, and as Liam’s character goes out to find Zayn’s, he learns a secret of his that changes everything.

Whichever I don’t write for the PhD will be the novel I write following it.

In the meantime, I’m going to continue to write (and edit) like crazy.  Ever since I randomly wrote C451, there hasn't been a day that’s gone by where I haven't written something.  It may have only been a paragraph or two, but never zero.  This is how you get better.  This is the equivalent of going out and shooting free throws for 30 minutes a day.  You have to put in the work in order to get better.  I'm very lucky that I'm incredibly self-disciplined and I've been able to crank out as many stories as I have over the past 2 years.

That said, I’ll be writing shorter little oneshots.  I have several ideas that I’ve been sitting on, but haven’t ever thought to write because I HATE writing short stories.  Little ideas that don't have huge plotline/climax potential, but that I want to just see on paper, I'll probably end up writing.  If I had to guess, I'd say they'll come out to around 10-15k.  Also, sequels?  Prequels?  Haha, you never know...

I’ve also got a series called “Sleep Drabbles” that are, yes, you guessed it, a series of drabbles based around one theme: sleep.  I also have a few scenes that I want to write which are based on ziam’s kids, not actually ziam themselves.  If there’s enough demand for that, I can upload those too, but they’re quite niche, so I don’t think the general fandom would be very interested.

As far as frequency for all of this, I have no idea.  I’ve always done things at my own pace and written stories that I want to write, for myself.  That won’t ever change, so I don’t want to commit to one drabble a week or one short-length fic per month.  It takes me weeks (months for this last fic) to research and interview the necessary people to get character arcs correct/believable.  I love that part of writing, and so if I have a little story that I want to write that may only be 10k but takes me ages to put together how I want, then so be it.  I will always be around to answer asks/messages and please, continue to tag me in your writing tag posts!  But please, no prompts.

So, that’s my future with fic.

Again, I cannot say thank you enough to every single one of you.  Every single thing that people tag me in (@malik-payne , @zqua1d , @zentiment , @liamisthesun , @redyellowberry I’m looking at you), I appreciate and love!  The recommendation lists that people have put me on, THANK YOU!  It’s wild to think that I used to look to rec lists for years and now I’m on them.  @ziamfanfiction THANK YOU for always having my back with exposure!  @paynefulperiods , my beloved beta reader, THANK YOU for always encouraging me and putting up with shit first drafts.  @march-z5 , THANK YOU for always being on call for ideas and listening to me bang my head against the wall at 4 am.

Now, might fuck around and make a fake picspam for the fic that never was...

Also, all of the behind scenes pages for each of my fics are now public, so feel free to check those out here.

I want to thank you all from the bottom of my heart for making this journey possible. I know people say that a lot when they gain a following of any sort, but I truly truly mean it.  You have to have talent in order to be an author, but you also have to have people who want to read your stuff.  Proof of concept is a real thing.

So thank you a million times over.

Speak soon my friends.

[posthumus]

I saw your post about the Dickie indicent and found it really interesting so I was wondering what your opinions are on Clive's "change" in the book? Like do you think his "turn towards women" was genuine or if he's just lying to himself in an attempt to be "normal," how do you think it came about, do you think he still has feelings for Maurice, etc? That part of the book confuses me and while I have my own opinons on it I'm not confident in them so it'd be nice to hear another perspective

aww thank you for asking!

if i’m being honest i also find the clive heel-turn a little confusing from a character perspective. my first instinct is to go completely doylist with it: clive turns straight because that’s what the story needs to happen. he’s fictional, he doesn’t have an inner life, so just take the story at its word. forster’s work, in my experience at least, contains a lot of these moments where the characters’ actions seem less grounded in their personalities and more based on the needs of the text as a whole; but it almost always makes the story more interesting, so i tend to be very generous toward him.

(i’m rusty on forster’s romantic history, but given that clive was at least semi-inspired by his relationship with hugh owen meredith--who married a woman--i also kind of wonder if the reason clive’s feelings here are so inscrutable is because they were inscrutable to forster as well? maybe he really just couldn’t think of any reason why an apparently gay man would suddenly take up an interest in women. also, as forster himself says, he gets annoyed with clive once he turns straight, so he possibly wasn’t trying very hard to empathize.)

but in the spirit of the question, i suppose i lean toward it being a genuine change on clive’s part, though not strongly. (i actually quite appreciate the movie’s approach, juxtaposing the added risley trial with clive’s change, because it at least gives you something solid to hold onto.) like i said, i’m very inclined to take the story at its word--maybe i’m being naive, but the narration of the book doesn’t feel at all unreliable to me. we get inside clive’s head, but he’s still being held at arms’ length; the effect when i read it is more of a doctor explaining their patient’s psychological change (or, to be blunter, an author summarizing their character’s arc) than an inside exploration of a person’s psyche. (the same is true for maurice’s perspective, in my opinion, which i think i talked about in the dickie post.) the example that stands out to me--and possibly the best argument for the change being genuine--is the passage about trying “to think himself back into the old state.” he’s obviously being cautious, and actually seems to regret that he no longer likes men, if only because it makes things more complicated. that doesn’t sound to me like someone in the throes of comphet.

(tangentially, that paragraph at the end of chapter 24 definitely implies clive and maurice do something sexual, right? i’d completely forgotten it. i forget whether it’s when he “lost his R” but i swear the PN Furbank biography talks about forster and meredith having an... encounter... on a sofa after meredith was already married, and forster regarding the incident with indifference. i also love that criticism of forster’s work is so enhanced by an exact timeline of his sexual experiences. go old man go.)

i really lean away from away from the change being repression, honestly, because to me clive’s whole thing is repression: he’s repressed before, during, and after his relationship with maurice. the fact that he insists on abstinence is why alec, and not clive, is the happy ending. (of course this is only applicable because they’re fictional characters, and in real life clive has every right to abstain, but the point that’s being made throughout the novel is that this intense aversion to sex in the name of decency is severely damaging.) if you wanted to get really spicy with it, you could even make the case that clive’s attraction to men, not women, is insincere. it’s a question of who the “real clive” is: cambridge clive, atheist, homosexual, arguing against censorship; versus penge clive, the politician, who ends the novel planning “to devise some method of concealing the truth from anne.” cambridge was three years of clive’s life, but penge was where he was brought up, and where he lives out the rest of his days; he never seems particularly interested in escaping it. i wouldn’t say that clive just had a “gay phase”--the cambridge part of the book is too earnestly romantic for me to believe that--but i do think he had a rebellious phase, and his natural state is heavily inclined to respectability. (not that he’s ontologically A Normal Guy, but that he’s been socialized in such a way that predisposes him to normalcy; unlike maurice--who grows as a person after getting his heart broken--he never has an experience that causes him to assess these values.) i guess i’m saying that clive isn’t really either gay or straight, or both at separate points: he’s probably essentially bisexual, but his sexuality is so draped in a layer of repression that it kind of doesn’t matter.

but then that doesn’t answer the question of what causes the heel-turn, so i’m stumped.

(thank you again for the question, it was a lot of fun! i hope it made some kind of sense. if any certified clive understanders want to chime in that would be lovely.)

[the-resurrection-3d]

literally am rambling don’t feel like you need to read this lol 

Genuinely resent that I have to write novels to have a real writing career.  It’s not that I’m COMPLETELY uninterested in writing novels, but I feel really comfortable in this short story/essay space and I don’t feel like a lot of my ideas really lend themselves to full novels, you know? I’m trying to let stories take the form and length that best suits them. 

Saying all this because I’ve been turning over the idea of finally writing that Nickberto novel that I’ve been threatening to write and that, if I get into an MFA, I will probably have to write as my thesis. Of course, I have lots of different ideas regarding Nickberto, as you all know, so I’m still thinking about how best to approach it, and I think doing it by way of the tennis team au -- aka The Chocolate War (Abusive Gay Sex Edition) -- is probably the best, since there’s a little more going on in the actual plot than just Alberto being groomed. It’s also been apparent to me really since the beginning that literary fiction is the best space for Nickberto projects and now, with my hit counts falling, there’s less a reason to pretend otherwise. 

(For the record, when I mention falling hit counts, I’m not really bothered by this -- just that I do take audience into account when I think about what pieces should go where. I could post my big Jonah essay onto ao3 right now, but who goes onto ao3 looking for big, fragmented essays about the Bible and Orwell and suicide? When I say the EW fandom was so bad at engaging with fanfic that it drove me to traditional publishing, I’m not exaggerating.)

Sitting down to write this, though, has really led me back to the realization I had a few days ago that I can’t commit to huge revision projects when I can’t believe that what I’m doing is worthwhile. And I cannot truly believe what I’m doing is worthwhile while I’m at grad school. It’s just not gonna happen. Fall semester was the closest I’ve been to killing myself in a very long time. 

And there’s a lot I could say about that semester -- such as how many fics came as the direct result of something terrible happening in my life, like how “saint august” came directly after Noah’s grandmother’s funeral, my brother dropping out of college, and my grandmother showing up out of nowhere to accuse my grandfather of domestic violence, yes that all happened in a single afternoon-- but ultimately it doesn’t matter. Fanfic writer uses fanfic as escapism. Wow. Shocking. 

Building off of this realization, I think my reliance on the short story/essay form is emblematic of my more general inability to visualize the future much. I mean, I DO make plans, but I can’t really plan much when so many factors are far beyond my control and my industry is full of fucking clowns and academia is a nightmare hellscape. And really, this problem with struggling to maintain the faith over long projects has been a key struggle of mine since I had my huge meltdown in 2018/2019. I said this before back when I got the Best of the Net nom, but that time period really just damaged my relationship to writing itself. It’s gotten a lot better! But still. I mean the big Jonah essay I keep talking about is really about me trying to find a reason not to kill myself. 

I hope the MFA will be the reprieve I’m looking for. Gotta get into one first, of course. I just know that unless this upcoming semester is substantially better, I’m literally going to #Jonah myself if I stay here for the PhD. 

[todaydreambelieversfic]

Author Spotlight: Wowbright Day 2

Author: @wowbright​

​Share one of your strengths.

Life experience combined with a genuine love of doing background research.

Share one of your weaknesses.

I don't write stories in the order that readers are intended to read them. I don't think it's a weakness per say, but it's a weakness in terms of building an audience. I’m not a writer who can post Chapter 1 when I haven't yet written chapters 2 through 25, because:

(a) as I write, I'll decide that there's another chapter that should have gone before chapter one, and also that the way I described the room in chapter one needs to be tweaked for plot purposes 

(b) I do not stick to outlines—I write them, but they are the beginning of the road for me, not the road map

Which fic has been the hardest to write?

Hardest emotionally? Probably The Brave Ones https://archiveofourown.org/works/1500119/chapters/3168443 (and Il Maestro https://archiveofourown.org/works/683932 and Slow Dissolve https://archiveofourown.org/works/5099165 and …).

Hardest technically? Probably Fidelity (https://archiveofourown.org/works/823619/chapters/1561602), because it was my first novel length fic and because I knew the audience for it was very small so there wouldn't be a big payout in terms of readership. But I learned so much from writing it, and the readers who love it really love it, so it was definitely worth it.

Which fic has been the easiest to write?

Song of Hope (https://archiveofourown.org/works/3572264) just flowed out. There have been other fics like that, too, but since this was my last episode reaction fic ever, I actually remember what it was like to write it.

And in terms of research, Everything’s Connected, If Only You Can Feel It (https://archiveofourown.org/works/909985) was super easy because I already know a stupid amount of stuff about bicycles.

Is writing your passion or just a fun hobby?

Both? It’s not something I need to do, but it’s something I love. And I can be very passionate about it when I’m in the thick of things.

Is there an episode or character or arc above all others that inspires you just a little bit more?

KURT HUMMEL!!!!!!!!!!

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever come across?

I’m not sure this is the best advice, but it’s the piece of advice that always comes to mind when “writing advice” is mentioned” “Stick a character in a tree. Throw stones and see how they react.”

Though really, that’s less advice and more a description of the western approach to storytelling. Oh well, I’ll stick with it. It might help somebody.

What’s the worst writing advice you’ve ever come across?

Never begin a sentence with “And …”

If you could choose one of your fics to be filmed, which would you choose?

Jonathan Unruh (https://archiveofourown.org/works/7723831/chapters/17603965)

What’s your process? Do you write your story from start to finish, or do you write the scenes out of order? Do you use any tools, like worksheets or outlines? What are the perfect writing conditions for you?

I write out of order. I sometimes use an outline. Mostly I use scrap pieces of paper and the backs of envelopes to write notes that I later incorporate into the story, or simply lose track of. These days, I mostly write by dictation due to hand issues, so the perfect writing conditions involved no one else being around (cats excluded) and weather that is warm enough to keep the windows open so I can hear the birds singing.

***

Check out Wowbright’s Fics

Jonathan Unruh: Jonathan Unruh is a teenager in a conservative Mennonite community that practices plain dress, simple living, separation from the world, and radical pacifism. In a culture that expects him to get baptized and married to a member of the opposite sex after high school, falling in love with a boy named Seth Groening is not part of the plan. When Jonathan’s school choir goes to sing at a glee club competition in Lima, Ohio, he starts exploring the small city and its gay (and gay-friendly) community. For the first time, he has friends he can be out to. But he can't quite leave his Mennonite-i-ness behind. Based on a rough draft also on AO3 that's described as "A Glee WIP about a gay guy from the Mennonite group that competed against the New Directions at the 2012 Sectionals. In which Lima is some people’s Hell and other people’s Salvation."

The Brave Ones:  After a homophobic assault, Kurt tries to make New York City a safer place all on his own. Blaine's left on the sidelines, wondering what's happening to their relationship. Meanwhile, Sam seeks justice in a different way.

Slow Dissolve:  Kurt changes the summer after he graduates. No one fully understands what it means – not even Kurt.

[theoriginalcarnivorousmuffin]

I read a post you made recently and am very curious about who you ship Tom with?

Oh boy.

So, I should first state that while I write and live in this world we call the Harry Potter fandom I am a very strange person who isn’t too ship oriented. At least, I don’t think I am. Despite all appearances, I’m mostly here to write about Tom Riddle and even more Tom Riddle (only one Tom Riddle in a story? ADD A HORCRUX AND HAVE THEM BAR FIGHT!)

It’s always so strange to me that people genuinely go into writing a story with the basis being “I want to write X ship”. That’s not the way I think or start a plot. Now, the plots I come up with may happen to end up a certain ship, which sometimes is indicative of my preferences, but tell me to come up with some random Tomarry slash story and my response is “I have no idea”.

So, that’s the shipper mentality, onto the actual ships.

I’ve written a number of fics that are technically Tomarry but I don’t know if I’d call myself a shipper. I’ve written an explanation of why I’m more of a fake shipper than anything else. It really comes down to that it’s very easy to be flexible with Harry’s character/his position in society, I’m a sucker for redemption and stories about love, and with adjustments here and there to the characters you’re almost guaranteed a very good and creative story.

But if you look at what I write very few line up with traditional Tomarry tropes or even approach the pairing in a standard manner. You can’t really be a Tomarry shipper if you have Harry dump Tom, the pair don’t speak for twenty years, and Tom ends up marrying and falling in love with Harry’s mother. Such things are not done.

Still, of the more mainstream Tom Riddle/X fics, Tomarry to me is the most legitimate (I also have a giant rant on why I think Tomione is garbage). 

I wouldn’t call myself a shipper though, I just wear a Tomarry shirt and have somehow been mistaken for an expert.

Now, that said, I do ship Tom Riddle/Lily Evans.

Yes, you read that right.

In writing October I somehow convinced myself that that is the single greatest pairing since sliced bread. I have gone and actually searched through the entire Ao3 pairing tag (which is only like 30 fics but still) for this goddamn pairing. I have tried to convince others this is the greatest pairing since sliced bread. I could write novels on how this is the greatest pairing since sliced bread. While I don’t necessarily think of plots based on the premise “I want to write X ship today” somehow all of the plots I muse about but never get to writing end up Tom Riddle/Lily Evans.

It’s a disease. There is no cure. I’m sure this very paragraph has caused several readers to vomit in distress.

I could go into why, but that would triple the length of this post, so I won’t.

TL;DR

Tom Riddle/Lily Evans is where it’s at, yo.

[h1kari]

Salutations & Greetings, Love! ✨❤️

I’ve been seeing your personalized ships & I was hoping to have made the mark to have it done - hopefully!

I’d love to have a ship with Haikyuu, please! I use she/they pronouns, I am 5’8, i shoulder length brown hair with dingy highlights, hazel eyes, freckles all over, i also have four tattoos & 5 piercings! I’m also on the more curvier side of the body spectrum.

Personality wise I’m told i’m more of the mom friend / protective friend. I’m usually shy around new people but i can be a goofball! though i can have a bit of a temper i am usually very laid back and easy to get along with!

Personal aesthetic i’m not sure honestly! I suppose a mix of soft girl & e-girl? cause i’ve been lost in aesthetic items already but usually i’m in a hoodie & shorts :)

my interest includes sketching / painting, reading murder mystery/romance books, writing. I’ve been taking up graphic design more. I LOVE watching horror movies, cooking (dancing in the kitchen is a must), trying new foods. I am so certain that i have a sweet tooth addicted, but i love savory food. I used to do boxing and throwing in track & field - definitely helped with muscle haha! If you send me memes, I’ll definitely send some back & then we’ll fall in love 😌

Extra stuff, i am a scorpio, my birthday is Nov. 3rd, favorite color is maroon! I LOVE cuddling - i am a heater - so cuddles & naps are a must please! Dancing and singing are so much fun - especially dancing in my room haha.

I’m not going to lie, I’m addicted to TikTok & reading fanfics so i’m expecting to be teased 😂 I love cute / silly nicknames - honeycakes, pretty girl/baby, baka (oops) - they just make my heart flutter 🥺🥰

I hope this is enough & not too long! And i hope to be matched with someone! Thank you so much in advance! ✨❤️

OKAY HEAR ME OUT- this may’ve been sorta unexpected bUT YEAH i ship you with🥁🥁🥁kyoutani! Aka kyouken/mad dog. Allow me to explain (this would also be kinda like couple shenanigans ig 🤔):

Polar👏opposites👏 YES. You’re all beautiful angelic mom vibes, while he’s all angry rat man, obviously no one expected you both to get together. Let’s say you’re the manager of the vb team yeah? The guys love you in seconds, i mean why wouldn’t day? You spoil them, but you also keep them in check. You’re literally the mom of the group, along with iwaizumi ofc. Kyouken is kind of an ass at first, well- not entirely. He’s honestly just partly shy, and partly “doesn’t wanna get distracted” with certain..people. SO ofc like every angsty love story, he pretty much ignores you at first, so you think he hates you for some time. That is- until iwa and shigeru call him out on his bs talk to him and let him know that hey, you’re being kind of a dick. After that, he starts making more of an effort, actually approaching you, telling you that if you need any help with the sport and managing he’s your guy, asking how you’re doing, giving you snacks when you seem down, etc. All of this, of course, with the usual tsundere looking ass frown on his face, but with a nice shade of red on his cheeks. It’s pretty charming tbh. Since then, you become wayyy closer, you’re vary caring and are always there to help him, but ofc you also keep him grounded and in check, your slight temper helps with that. Kyou teases the shit outta you when you guys get closer, but he’s more the tsundere teaser. All “baka” and slight nose or forehead flicks coming from him. He’s very protective of you, any sight of shady looking ppl will have him at your side, glaring daggers at those who seem untrustworthy. He loves how sweet and patient you are with him, but also how badass, honest, and no bullshit you are, it makes him feel safe? Trusted? Just-...nice. Really nice.

Btw oikawa saw this coming since the day he met you

I feel like the confession would be pretty blunt, but still sweet. He’d talk to oikawa and iwa before, telling them what he felt. But he was super oblivious, all “i just see them and feel suddenly...happy..i guess?? And i wanna keep seeing them. I like their company...and their face” iwa and oikawa are like 👀

Iwa: i think you may be uh-crushing on them, bud

Oikawa: YOU HAVE TO CONFESS OMG😩😩

Kyou’s kinda shy about it at first, very confused too. Dude never thought he’d want to get in a relationship with someone so he’s like???? WHAT THE FUCK 🗿 but you had to come and be all 💞🌸🥰💞✨💘✨💘🥰💞✨💘🥰🥰 >>>>:::((( DAMMIT. But then he’s really accepting of it? Like- he’s all fine then i’ll just go and tell em, seems logical, while iwa is like “really??? 👁👁” and oikawa “Y E S👏” and so he asks you to meet up at a park he knows you like, which is also the place you guys usually hang out at. And. Basically. He just tells you. He’s pretty flustered tho, you just looked so !! A A A A so he had to look down to be able to get actual words out of his mouth. You’re hella touched, and tell him you feel the same. Soft 🥺

✨DATE IDEAS✨cuddle dates are dates ok!! You guys literally just call each other up to hug and snuggle all cute together, i feel like you’d both be pretty warm, so imagine you guys just cuddling up in bed with the a/c on, which makes you both to cuddle closer 🥺pain😍 (also he’d def call you pretty girl and dumbass/baka the most) Other times you just hang out in each other’s presence, you’ll sketch while he watches you, sometimes he even helps woth references, even if he gets a bit embarrassed over being watched so closely. Also hear this- you guys cook together and nice lovely warm meal and THEN you watch your favorite horror films, i feel like he’d be a huge horror fan no cap, so win win. Sometimed he laughs at the gory scenes tho so you either laugh with him or stare like 👁_👁 (but then you laugh cuz some gory scenes are quite hilarious) OH ALSO when you go to sleep or just cuddle, you read your novels to him, which usually ends up w him falling asleep on your tums 🥺🥺🥺💞💞💞 btw something cute i thought just now- you really help him chill tf out, not only do you bring him back to earth and make him humble out more bUT you also help him have proper fun, for example, you know that scene in the end of the fucking world where alyssa puts on a record, closes her eyes and tells james to dance with her (as she starts dancing to the music)? So he starts dancing and he looks so genuinely happy and it’s so!!! Cute!!! YEAH THAT, here’s the scene if you wanna see (ignore the dance naked part lmao) so yeah, you help him actually have fun, and ngl, the first time he’s genuinely smiled since he was a kid, was with you.

Heyoo i hoped you liked it sweetums!! Hope to see you around this blog soon ^^ have a great one, bye bye!! 💞💞

[terramythos]

TerraMythos 2021 Reading Challenge - Book 11 of 26

Title: Fugitive Telemetry (The Murderbot Diaries #6) (2021) 

Author: Martha Wells 

Genre/Tags: Science Fiction, Mystery, Action, Novella, Agender/Nonbinary Protagonist, First-Person

Rating: 9/10

Date Began: 5/1/2021

Date Finished: 5/5/2021

Preservation Station is normally a peaceful place. So when a dead body is discovered in the station mall, Murderbot finds itself involved in the investigation. Much to its chagrin, Murderbot has to team up with the distrustful local security team in order to locate the culprit. But as the mystery deepens, Murderbot realizes that its unique skillset is critical to finding answers-- and saving lives.  

Misdirection, let’s try that, "I would have either disposed of the body so it was never found, or made it look like an accident.” 

Indah frowned, and Aylen’s brow creased, and they exchanged a look. Eyeing me, Indah said, “How would you dispose of a body so it wouldn’t be found?”

I’m not the public library feed, Senior Officer, go do your own research. I said, “If I told you, then you might find all the bodies I’ve already disposed of.” 

“It’s joking.” Ratthi managed to sound like he completely believed that. “That’s how it looks when it’s joking.” He sent to me on the feed, Stop joking. 

Full review, minor spoilers, and content warnings under the cut.

Content warnings for the book:  Murder and death. Semi graphic violence and injury. References to slavery. Brief reference to past torture.

This review is going to be relatively short, since Fugitive Telemetry itself is a short novella.

I love The Murderbot Diaries for a variety of reasons-- the snarky and relatable narration, the memorable characters, the not-so-subtle political commentary, the tense action scenes, and so on. But it all comes down to Murderbot itself; it's one of the most well-written and distinctive protagonists out there right now. As a nonbinary person, I'm also very representation starved. Seeing not just an agender/nonbinary protag in a mainstream novel, but one written with such depth and respect, honestly makes me cry a little if I think about it too hard.

Give me a soapbox and I'll talk about this series for hours, so I'll cut to the chase. While it's technically the sixth book in the series, Fugitive Telemetry takes place before Network Effect, the previous book. Basically, Murderbot finds itself caught up in a murder mystery on Preservation! And gets to use its talents to figure out whodunit, while winning over the humans who are hesitant to trust it.

Fugitive Telemetry, unlike previous books, doesn't have especially high stakes. All the major characters obviously make it to Network Effect. This book is more of a fun side adventure which expands upon Murderbot's time living on Preservation Station (since Network Effect skipped past most of that). A lot of fave humans make their cameos, notably Ratthi, Gurathin, and Dr. Mensah. And it's just fun, ok? Murder mysteries are fun. (I'd also like to state for the record: I'd die for JollyBaby).

Despite technically lowered stakes, I was very engaged in Fugitive Telemetry's story, especially the late rescue mission. Characterization is a strong point of the series, so I predictably enjoyed it here. Wells (as usual) excels at a believable nonhuman perspective; I'm always impressed at her ability to make Murderbot relatable and focus on details it considers important. There's also a great twist at the end of the book. I love murder mystery setups that have a genuinely surprising conclusion.

It wouldn't be a Murderbot book without some kind of sociopolitical commentary; avoiding spoilers, this entry explores generational slavery and civil rights in a corporate environment. While that's a big part of Murderbot's character arc thus far, Fugitive Telemetry offers a more human-centric perspective. Basically, corporations fucking suck, even (especially?) in space.

I enjoyed Fugitive Telemetry, but I'd love another full length novel in this universe. I know we just got one, but the novellas are short I'm always sad when they end. I also hope the next book takes place after Network Effect, since I really want to see ART and Murderbot's adventures together. Network Effect was a tough act to follow.

If you follow me and haven't read this series, get on that now! The Murderbot Diaries are approachable science fiction adventures that juggle humor and serious subject matter well. I cannot recommend them enough.  

[halfway-happyyy]

Just the Same

AN: This was the product of a whole day and half’s worth of rain, and soft feels. Reader and Alexander have (and probably always will have) unfinished business. Fluff and soft feelings ensue. Happy reading loves. 

Little pleasures exist in almost anything, don’t they?

Sometimes they’re found in that first sip of ice-cold water at three in the morning when your throat feels more like sandpaper than normal. Sometimes they’re in that near-scalding shower taken at the tail end of a day you never thought would end, or the first few bites of your favourite pizza. Lately they’ve looked like hours set aside to devour the last few chapters of your current novel; or curled up on a chair in your front window, watching the rain pour down the glass in sheets.

And then you saw his face again after more years than you'd like to admit, and it put every single little pleasure you'd ever experienced, to shame.

He looked just about the same as he had the last time you’d been lucky enough to lay your eyes on him, albeit a little bit older, a little bit more distinguished. Where the creases next to his glassy blue orbs were newly acquired features, the way they glittered when the corners of his lips turned up into a small smile, remained the same. You suspected that aspect of his face would simply never change. “Hi,” He murmured breathlessly and after a beat or two, smiled and shook his head in mild disbelief. “God it’s good to see your face again, kid.”

Your cheeks grew warm at the mere sound of that painfully familiar cadence of his, but oh, hi Alex… seemed a bit too trivial a greeting for someone who once shared your life in every sense of the word. Instead you folded your arms across your chest and nodded your head in greeting. There were so many things you wanted to say to him; things you had years to form questions and answers to you in the wake of his gaping absence. Yet despite that notion, none of them could be vocalized at this particular moment in time.

“What are you doing here?” You asked, finally.

Alexander shrugged and shifted his weight from foot to foot. “Honestly I left the apartment this evening with no real trajectory and found myself here somehow.”

“It’s not exactly close,” You offered up quietly.

Alexander shrugged again. “I needed the fresh air.”

That’s not good enough…

You hugged your jacket tighter to your frame and swallowed hard, gathering the courage for what you were about to ask him next. “What are you really doing here Alex?”

His gaze traveled to a stray pebble on the ground beneath him which he kicked. “Honestly? Work is picking back up again. I’m leaving at the end of this month for an indefinite amount of time and I keep- He cleared his throat. “I keep thinking about you.” He scratched at the back of his head; his gaze still trained on something unseen on the pavement below your stairwell. “I could be doing anything, you know? And somehow it always comes back to you. Always.”

The all too familiar sting of oncoming tears prickled threateningly in the depths of your eyes and you glanced upwards to try and ward them off. You’d been in this position and had this exact conversation with the elder Swede before you, numerous times in the past. “Listen Alex, I'm not really sure what you're looking for-

“Bill and Gustaf are in town right now,” He admitted quietly. You had to strain to hear him above the sounds of the city around you. “I know it’s been a while and far too much space has settled between the pair of us…” He made a point of looking right at you now. “But they miss you. And I know how I feel about you, and if you're up to it, maybe you could meet the three of us for drinks tomorrow night?”

In awe of the audacity with which he possessed, and maybe also in spite of it, you found yourself saying yes. And as you watched the grin bloom slowly across his face in the low evening light of May, you wondered why on earth people left if perhaps they were never meant to in the first place.

*

It never ceased to amaze you how easily Alexander could find his way back into your life again. For a while it was simply enough that you both resided in the same city, both breathed the same smoggy air, both rode the same congested subway. But no matter how hard you had tried to extricate yourself from him, he always found a way back in. Sometimes it was through broken pieces of Swedish you’d glean from passerby on the street, or a favourite song of his on the radio in a taxi, or walking past a restaurant you’d visited with him late one evening ages ago. He never lingered far from your thoughts and it drove you nearly mad.

Nerves had very nearly gotten the better of you as you approached the door of the pub you were meant to meet at. It was only running at half capacity given the current climate; and knowing him like you did, you imagined he and his brothers were holed up at the back of the bar in a tiny corner of their own. You took a deep breath and stepped into the front foyer of the pub, reveling in the sudden warmth that greeted your chilled figure, and the subtle scent of cigarette smoke. You smiled softly to yourself when you noted that the three men were indeed seated at the farther most booth of the pub, and any trepidation you may have had going into this little get together dissipated when Gustaf turned to you and grinned broadly. His smile- the genuine contentedness beneath it, helped to warm you that much more. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it?” He scooted further down the cracked leather booth to make space for you.

“Mm… a little while, yeah.” You smiled back at him and shrugged out of your jacket, hanging it on the hook outside the booth. You could feel Alexander’s gaze on you, practically boring a hole into the side of your face. “Hi Bill,” You smiled widely at his younger brother, who raised his half-full pint glass in greeting. “I hear a congratulations are in order?” You wiggled your eyebrows in amusement. The idea that Alexander’s kid brother was now a father still astounded you somewhat.

Bill’s face split into a wide grin and it caused your heart to ache just the slightest bit. “Who would’ve thought, hey?” He winked.

Gustaf scoffed beside you and took a sip of beer, setting it down with a resounding clank. “Not me, that’s for sure…” This caused the three of you to dissolve into fits of hearty laughter and after that eventually subsided, Alexander caught the eye of a waitress and waved her over. You glanced down at the glossy drink menu beneath you and ordered a pint of Belgian Moon.

The longer you basked in their company, the longer it felt just like old times again. Blissful vacations spent in Sweden with the whole clan, blurry nights out at film festivals and premiers, hungover Sunday brunches at your favourite spot in the city. It astounded you how easy it was to fall back into old memories, how much like breathing it was to be around Alexander and his family even after the dust had settled over everything.

“I’m really glad you decided to come tonight,” Alexander murmured while Bill and Gustav were deep in conversation about something. He was leant towards you across the wooden table, and the urge to ghost a fingertip down the length of his stubbled cheek was overwhelming.

You took a hearty sip of beer and shrugged, eyeing the soft-looking blue t shirt he had on. A worn leather jacket hung from the hook beside him. “Yeah well… I’m a glutton for pain I guess.”

Alexander smirked at you. “Not much has changed then, I see.”

You blamed the blush that had creeped into the apples of your cheeks on the near-empty beer wedged in the grasp of your hand and not at all on the memories of how good the elder man had once made you feel. You cleared you throat and deposited the rest of the golden liquid into your mouth. “You’ve been well?”

Alexander smiled but it never really touched his eyes. “As well as can be, I suppose. Production was halted on a lot of projects I had lined up for last year and this one.”

“Work isn’t everything.” You murmured.

Alexander laughed lightly, the mere sound of it as familiar as hearing an old favourite song. “It is when it’s all you’ve got.”

It did not take you long to appreciate the mild buzz you had acquired thanks to the three beers you had nursed throughout the course of the evening. Gustaf had just finished happily regaling you with stories of his arctic adventures and of his work with Green Peace. You told him of your tentative plans to visit Ireland when it was safe to do so, and by the time his bill was paid, he’d already texted you a wonderfully long list of places he thought you’d love, whenever you got around to going. You got up from the booth so that you could let him out and Alexander did the same for Bill. Gustaf hesitated a beat before pulling you into his arms for a bear hug, the heartfelt gesture leaving you almost breathless. When he pulled away, he was beaming at you again. “It was lovely to see you again, kid. And hey- he gestured to the phone in his pocket. “If there’s anything you want to know about Ireland- feel free to get a hold of me, yeah?”

“Thanks, G.” You smiled and turned your attention to Bill. “Squeeze her tight for me, okay?”

Bill wrapped his arms around you as well and nodded his head. “Be happy to. Hope to see you again soon.”

Alexander hugged each of his brother’s goodbye and watched them snake their way past the half empty tables to the front of the bar. He stood at the head of the booth for a while after they left, hands wedged into the front pockets of his jeans. “You know, it’s almost embarrassing the amount of times they ask about you.”

“G and Bill?” You asked mildly.

He let a small laugh loose. “All of them.”

A pang of something- it felt remarkably close to intense heartache, hit you hard and winded you for a few moments. What could you say to someone you used to know better than yourself? Where did you go from here?

“When do you leave?” You asked after a while.

Alexander scrubbed a hand down the length of his face and sighed. “Uh… in about two weeks give or take but-” He was about to say something else when the waitress returned to your table with the bill, which Alexander paid for wordlessly. You made a mental note to slip him some cash later.

The journey home was a quiet one; the only sounds in the mostly empty subway car were that of the one-sided conversation from a woman a few seats down and the rhythmic chug of the wheels against the track. You were keenly aware of Alexander, though. Of the heat radiating from his body next to yours, and of how badly you wanted to lay your weary head against the crook of his shoulder blade like you had so many times before. If you closed your eyes tight you could almost feel the way his hand used to wrap protectively around the top of your thigh.

Not everyone who leaves wants to. Remember that.

He had sent it roughly a month after the two of you split for good and you had spent a few evenings crying yourself to sleep over that particular combination of words. Now, right in this moment, you understood that statement better than you ever had before. “Can I tell you something?” You asked rather suddenly.

Alexander glanced up from his clasped hands to stare out the window at the passing lights of the city for a few moments and then turned to gaze at you. “Go for it, kid.”

“I- you swallowed hard. “I don’t think I would have given up.” He let the silence settle around you before he said anything. “I think I would have fought for us.”

Alexander shook his head sullenly, his gaze downcast. “I made a mistake. One that I have agonized over for the better part of eight years.” He scratched at the nape of his neck uncomfortably. “I’m not proud of admitting that I took the easy way out in that situation but believe me when I tell you I regret it deeply, nearly every damn day.”

The train trundled to a halt and you got up from your seat wordlessly. You were half expecting him to stay where he was, but he joined you at the doors and waited next to you for them to open. You walked the few blocks in silence and when you were about five minutes away from home, you turned to him. “I just wanted you to know that no matter what happened, no matter what was said, no matter how far away you traveled from me, I would have loved you just the same.”

“I know.” He consented. You sighed heavily and continued walking, trying in vain to blink away the tears brimming in the depths of your eyes. You could just make out the wrought-iron lamppost in the distance signaling the stairwell leading to your foyer. The sound of hurried footsteps on pavement could be heard beneath the buzz of your muddled thoughts and Alexander caught up with you in front of your apartment. “Listen kid,” He murmured. “We fucked it up the first time. Both of us,” His breathing was steady, measured. “We just couldn’t seem to get the distance and timing right. But we could do try it all it again you know.”

We could try it all again.

“Would you like to come upstairs?”

Alexander nodded his head wordlessly.

You fished the keys from the depths of your bag and pushed it into the lock, allowing the elder man to go ahead of you as you held the door open. He knew the way well. Everything had mostly remained the same since he had last seen it, you figured.

“You have a cat?” Alexander asked in genuine surprise.

Except for that.

You glanced back at the orange, Rubenesque tabby cat eyeing Alexander rather suspiciously from her perch on the pain-chipped windowsill. “Oh yeah. That’s Estelle. I got her in the divorce.”

Alexander’s face fell slack, his blue eyes widened in horror. “I beg your pardon?”

“I’m kidding, Alex. I uh… got her a few weeks before everything went to shit with the pandemic.”

He elicited a dry laugh and shrugged his shoulders. “A lot of time has passed. Anything could have happened. I was actually a little surprised to see that you weren’t snapped up yet.”

You pulled a bottle of wine from the wooden rack next to the fridge and uncorked it, setting it on the marble counter top to breathe. “Yeah well, I could say the same about you.” Sometime in the last fifteen minutes it had started to rain, and now you watched the drops race themselves down the length of your kitchen window.

“There was one point about two and half years ago that I thought I may be finally ready to move on,” Alexander offered. You pulled a wine glass from the top cupboard and passed it to him wordlessly. “I bought a ring and everything. And then uh… the night I had set my mind to it, I couldn’t go through with it.”

“You couldn’t?” You asked quietly.

Alexander shook his head slowly, his gaze trained somewhere outside the kitchen window. “Something felt inherently wrong, you know? I couldn’t put my finger on it until last night.” You poured him a glass. He cocked his head to the side and cleared his throat. “What shall we cheer to?”

“To gut feelings and fresh starts.”

He smiled softly at this and lifted his glass in greeting. “To gut feelings and fresh starts.” You were quiet as you savored the slightly jammy flavour on your tongue. Alexander allowed himself a healthy sip and placed it carefully back atop the counter. “Do you have any idea how badly I wanted to touch you this evening?” You had been about to reply, but he stopped you. “I don’t even mean that in an outrightly sexual way. I mean that in a,” He pursed his lips together as if trying to locate the perfect way to express himself. “I mean that in a completely innocent way. I wanted nothing more than to tuck a piece of hair behind your ear, to reach across the table and take your hand in mine,” His tone was hopelessly wistful.

“You could do it now,” You offered almost inaudibly.

Alexander lifted his gaze to yours, smiled at you, and pushed himself from the edge of your counter. He closed the distance to you in seconds, and took your face in his impossibly warm hands. Kissing him for the first time in eight years was like coming home after an unbearably difficult day. No matter how far away either of you roamed, he would always be home to you.

Right now your little pleasures exist in the weight of his lips on your own, the utterly familiar flux and flow of a rhythm that never stopped working. They exist in the notion that no matter what transpired between the pair of you, you would always love him just the same.

[solacefruit]

For the ask meme, 3) and 17), please? And maybe 25) if you're up to it? Irrelevant but I'm the Tormentil- missing/Harrierpaw ruddles from Ailuronymy – I love your writing too, it's amazing! (I'm very excited for a potential Riverclan full-length story, like MAMS, at some point – even if I have to wait quite a while)

Hello there! Thank you so much for saying so, that’s lovely to hear. Please don’t hold your breath for a Riverclan novel, though! It’s not even on my concept list at this point and there’s a lot of other stories, including full-length ones, I’m going to be attempting first. So it’s not impossible for me to write a Riverclan one--it would be pretty neat to have a novel for each clan--but I can’t promise it’ll ever happen at this stage. Maybe! But also maybe not. It’s a mystery for me too.

Now on to your questions!

Send an ask: get to know the author.

3. What order do you write in? Front of book to back? Chronological? Favourite scenes first? Something else?

For all my Warriors work so far, I’ve written from beginning to end. In part that’s just because of the episodic nature of chapters, but also I’d say that’s my default approach for all my writing. When I get into original fiction--and especially big original fiction, novel-length work--I expect I’ll be taking a much more flexible approach, probably jumping around based on the vibe sometimes, but I like linearity because the first draft is really just getting the building blocks on the page. After that point, then you start really sculpting and being clever with it and moving bits around once you have a sense of the whole.

But for me, I think that first stage is more about getting a clarity of purpose and a rough outline--and that can be done pretty well with front-to-back writing. 

17. If you could give your fledgling author self any advice, what would it be?

Don’t sweat it. That stuff you think is important is completely not important at all. You’re doing all this nitty-gritty obsessive researching and “world-building” pointless, mundane aspects of the world because you: 1. are procrastinating actually writing; 2. have been tricked into thinking that’s what the “good” “serious” fantasy writers do, because that’s what a lot of boring old guys you don’t even like to read do and brag about, and you’re still believing can’t be a good fantasy writer without that, because that’s the popular image of a fantasy writer; & 3. are scared if you’re not perfect and exact in every detail, people are going to tear your writing apart for being “inaccurate” or making a mistake. 

That’s no way to live. You don’t like doing it, really. You’re trying to preempt criticism from people who weren’t ever going to like your writing anyway, and I think you know that. You’re trying to imitate authors you don’t even want to write like, because you think what they write is kind of boring and flat and it’s really straight and you sort of hate it, but you feel you should since it’s what’s “right”.

But you’re not being authentic to yourself, or your vision, or your talent, or what you want to write, and you should be. 

It’s really not your fault you feel this way, but you’re going to be so much happier when you realise this version of a fantasy writer is all total hokum and not your style and instead start writing what you want to, the way you want to. People are really going to like what you’re bringing to the table. It’s going to set you apart and you’re going to love writing fantasy that’s a bit weird and kooky and self-indulgent and fun and queer and all the things those old books just aren’t. 

I can’t stress how liberating it will be to put on heart-shaped pink sunglasses and decide that the most important thing your writing has to be is genuine and fun for you. You never wanted to write realist fiction anyway. Secondary worlds forever. 

25. Copy-paste a few sentences or a short paragraph that you’re particularly proud of.

I thought about it for a bit because something I never do here is share any poetry I write, despite writing a decent amount of it. Partly that’s just not this blog’s audience, but also a lot of it I hope one day to put into publication, if only in a little chapbook. That said, I wrote this a while back on commission for someone’s character who was deathly ill and his lovers left behind, so I don’t mind sharing it now. It’s a tanka set (5-7-5-7-7, a bit like a haiku). 

summer has four hands,  he remembers, and twenty  loving fingertips-- and it doesn't end, ever;  it lasts a lifetime--at least, in his heart--even as his own fingertips grew slow and cold, his hands too weak to return a touch, to reach out and hold on, to find comfort in their  warm skin and promise them that he would be okay: each new winter weighed him down with the too-familiar  tiredness of a body with not quite enough life in it, like a garden under the frost, cold and withdrawn at the edges of the leaves, waiting for a sunrise that isn't coming. The ground, he remembers, was solid as stone under the snow that last winter, a final  cruel laugh from the world, as though giving him to the  earth--as though burying a lover--was not hard enough for them already-- but it was a pain that time alone could heal; so he waited, in the place so near and so far away, until the seasons moved once more and time brought them to his open hands, ten fingertips made of light, never to let go again. when he remembers the living world, he thinks of it better than it  was and forgives it for the brevity and falling snow.

[munsons-maiden]

First of all, thank you so much for responding in such detail. You've been extremely helpful so far! I'm also from Germany so everything you just mentioned does apply to me as well – so don't worry. I really hope I am not bothering you with my indecisive, struggling being. I've kind of been pestering a lot of different people regarding their majors, 'cause I'm just absolutely clueless about what to do. All I know for certain is that the current job market does not offer anything I'm interested in – that is why I've been pondering on jumping on this whole "studying" bandwagon. Again, thank you for including and addressing so many aspects in your answer – such as the glorification of going to university. I feel like it's less common here to visit a university than it is elsewhere. And I never felt the need to go, never had a specific interest I wanted to dive into. But now that I have finished my training in a profession I won't be following any longer and am sitting at home unemployed, I feel a greater pull towards it than ever before. It feels like a better option, more appealing than throwing myself into a job just for the sake of it. On top of that, most of my friends that are in university mostly report good things back to me. For example, one found their true passion during their stay there. A passion they never thought of before and only discovered because they chose to be there. That's what makes it even more appealing to me. But I'm still unsure if it's the right thing for me. I do like helping people, but I'd rather do it indirectly. I've always been really introverted, insecure and shy. I would never actively approach someone in order to help them. But I'm highly interested in how the mind operates, what mental illnesses exist and how the brain generally works. Also, my NC is not that high, at least not for a major that's as popular as psychology. Besides, I've heard that this major in particular is pretty hard and I don't know if I'm capable enough. (Genuinely asking myself if I'm smart enough to handle such complex topics) I'm also horrendously bad at maths and sometimes am troubled with understanding specialist texts, which essentially is a big part of it, right? I'm hesitant whether my sole interest is enough for me to blindly jump into studying this major. Or studying at university in general. I'm aware that interest is the basic requirement and enough of a reason to try, but I'm scared that following an interest and diving deeper into it and constantly being confronted with it will ultimately ruin it for me – an experience I had to witness in my training. Oh gosh, this got way out of hand in its length – I'm so sorry. You're under no obligation to read let alone answer this novel-like-ask. I just needed to voice my concerns, and this felt like a safe place to do so. I genuinely hope I don't come across as a whiny child. Thank you again for providing so much input and being such a lovely bean on here! Much love to you! <3

First of all: no worries, my dear! 🖤 It can help so much to voice your thoughts and concerns and I'm happy to be of help wherever I can 🥰

Putting it under a cut because again, it’s long 😅

I really understand your fears, but maybe it helps to think about it like this: people change, and so do interests. Our experiences are in part what determines these factors, and university is the same, in a way. I know so many people who started studying one thing, then ended up doing something completely different (some dropped out of uni, some switched their major). The problem is that many people still see uni/the subject they're majoring in as a set decision when in reality, it's not. You start learning about a kaleidoscope of new things and some of them will pique your interest while others won't - and depending on these experiences, you can find out what interests you most.

A friend of mine started studying psychology with me, but she was so interested in the physical part of psychology, the processes in the human brain, that she applied for med school instead. She would never have found out if she hadn't given psychology a try in the first place.

Uni in itself is a process of learning about yourself, your interests and your strengths - as you said yourself. It's a little bit like a trial-and-error-process. Maybe it would help to ask yourself what's the worst thing that could happen if you try, and what's the worst thing that could happen if you don't?

What I can promise is that the only thing you need, for any major, is determination. As I mentioned, I'm horrible at maths, and I can promise you that every person in my semester sometimes struggles to understand scientific texts. That's where the determination comes in 😅

As for the fear of blindly jumping in, it always is, in a way. So much depends on the professor and other factors you can't know beforehand, but I fully understand the fear that something you're interested in could be ruined for you. You said you were in Germany as well, so: as far as I know, every university offers this (it's just an example) - you can just pick a few courses to visit without applying for them and without having to participate in the tests/exams, so maybe that could be a way to carefully figure out if it is what you're expecting or not 🥰

(Regarding the major you would choose, that's a different story. As I said, there are counsellors at universities who can help with that 🤔)

I know it's a difficult decision, but you seem extremely reflected and careful (way more than I was when I applied for uni, tbh ), which is an advantage in making such a decision, and again: I'm here if you need me 🖤

[cupcakes4747]

Truth Or Dare | one

Word Count: 2K

Warnings: n/a

Pairing: Namjoon x Reader, Jungkook x Reader

Genre: fluff

Laptop. Check. Phone. Check. Supplies. Check. Keys. Where are the keys? You looked around for the keys, trying to quickly find them. After ten minutes of searching, you realized that they were in your hand the entire time. You groaned at yourself and quickly rushed out the door. You didn’t want to be late for your first day at university. You wanted everything to be perfect. Ever since you were in middle school, you have been dreaming of going to this college, and you couldn’t believe you had actually made it. You had all sorts or expectations for college you had been thinking about for years. Studying in aesthetic hipster cafes, getting your own apartment, partying with your friends, and most of all, getting a boyfriend. You were the only person you knew that has never had a boyfriend. All through middle and high school, all of your friends would get a new boyfriend every few months and you would always have to third wheel and watch them make out with each other. They would tell you stories about losing their virginity and how awesome sex was, while you on the other hand had never been asked out, or even kissed. You never understood why; you weren’t unattractive, and there was nothing wrong with your personality, but for some reason, it really hurt your self esteem. You thought that you were undesirable and repelling to boys. But now you were in college. You were older, smarter, and since your awkward phase was over, prettier. And there were a whole bunch of new guys who didn’t know who you were and this was your chance to prove to yourself that you weren’t as undesired as you thought. However, ever since you moved into your dorm three weeks ago, you’ve been having all sorts of bad luck. First, the moving van was two days late, so you had to live in your dorm for two days without any of your stuff. Then, you accidentally clogged the toilet and had to call a plumber who ended up doing a horrible job of fixing it. And then, a few days ago, when you went grocery shopping, you realized at the checkout line that you had forgotten your wallet. You didn’t want to be late for your first day of university on top of all that. You ran as fast as you could to the bus stop and as you checked the time after you sat in the bus, you gave a breath of relief. You were five minutes ahead of schedule.

Making it to class on time, you finally started to calm down. You watched as all the students piled into the lecture hall, looking for someone who seemed friendly enough to introduce yourself to later. Then you made eye contact with the most beautiful boy you have ever seen in your life. He had dark brown hair that fell over his eyes, a tall, muscular build, and that mysterious “bad-boy” look. You couldn’t take your eyes off of him. And just your luck, this attractive man happened to sit right next to you. Oh my god, what am I supposed to do? Do I talk to him, or...? Your thoughts were interrupted when you heard him say:

“Wow, I must be in heaven, because I am looking at an angel.” Is this guy flirting with me? You blushed. Nobody had ever flirted with you before. You didn’t know how to react so you just let out a nervous giggle, even though you later on realized that that was the dumbest pick up line ever. The class started and the cute boy kept making sarcastic and funny retorts to everything the professor would say. You found yourself giggling to everything he was saying and you weren’t sure if it was because you genuinely found it funny or just because you thought he was attractive. After class ended, you both formally introduced yourselves and the cute boy, who said his name was Jungkook, asked you if you wanted to go to a party that weekend. You had never been to an official party before; only small get-togethers with your close friends. Everything you knew about frat parties was from the over-exaggerated scenes in college movies.

“Sure, why not,” you said nonchalantly, as if partying was a regular part of your routine and that getting asked to go to a party by a hot guy was an everyday occurrence. 

“Great, see you in class tomorrow, Y/N,” Jungkook replied. You beamed as you speed walked out of the lecture hall. This was the most interaction you’ve had with a guy your age other than the weird nerdy kids on the math team back in high school.

When you arrived home, you dashed straight to your closet to figure out what you were going to wear to the party, completely ignoring your pending responsibilities as an adult. How did people dress at college parties? Should you wear something trendy? Something stylish and fashionable? Something cute and innocent? Something sexy? You had never thought of yourself as sexy, but as you were looking at your reflection in the full-length mirror, you realized that your body was not that bad. You worked out consistently and ate healthy, which made you look healthy. And plus, a sexy guy like Jungkook would probably be interested in a sexy girl. You didn’t own any sort of sexy dress, but you knew your roommate had plenty, but she was out somewhere so you couldn’t ask her then. You sighed and decided to get started on your homework.

The next day, you walked into your first class, excited to see Jungkook, but he was nowhere to be found. Disappointed, you sat down at your seat and listened to the professor.

“For our very first project of the school year, we will be doing a partner project where each assigned pair will be assigned a piece of classical literature and have a series of mini-assignments to complete about it,” your professor’s voice boomed across the large lecture hall, “It will be due a month from today.” You groaned internally. You hated partner projects. Either the other person would take control of everything and not let you have any input or say of what goes into the project or the other person would completely slack off and not do anything, leaving you to do all the work. The professor started calling out names of the assigned pairs from his list. Please let my partner be Jungkook, please let my partner be Jungkook. “Y/N and Namjoon, you two will be partners. Please raise your hands.” You raised your hand and looked around the lecture hall for another raised hand. A tall man walked up to you with his hand outstretched.

“Hi, I’m Namjoon, your partner.” You shook his hand and introduced yourself to him. He was almost an entire foot taller than you and could be quite handsome if he didn't dress so dorky. He was wearing a plaid sweater vest on top of a shirt and with pants that did not match at all. Along with that he was wearing a paper-bag brown hat which made him look like a journalist from the 1950s. You appreciated cute dorks since you considered yourself to be one. You both had decided to meet at the library later that day to get started on the project, both of you deciding that it was a bad idea to procrastinate and that it was smartest to start as soon as possible. 

Later, in the afternoon, you were walking to the library to meet Namjoon to get started on the project and heard footsteps running up to you.

"Hey, beautiful," Jungkook smirked after he caught up to you. Your heart fluttered.

"What are you doing here? Where were you in class today?" you questioned.

"Oh, I ditched. I was still hungover from a gathering at my friend's place last night. Did I miss anything important?"

"We started a project with assigned partners. I'm meeting him up at the library right now."

"Oh, boring. I'm glad I ditched." You rolled your eyes.

"Anyways, I need to go now. It was nice talking to you, Jungkook."

"Wait, are you still coming to the party on Friday?" Oh my gosh, he remembered! 

"Yes, text me the details, please." You told Jungkook your number as he typed it into his phone.

"Okay, cool. I'll let you know everything. Bring your hot friends." You rolled your eyes at him again.

"Yeah, sure. Bye." You didn't know how you were capable of keeping up a causal conversation with an insanely good-looking guy. Usually, when a good-looking guy would approach you, which they rarely did, you would just panic and freeze, and never be able to come up with anything interesting, witty, or funny to say, causing yourself to reply only with one-word answers, making yourself look unconfident. The problem was that you were kind of unconfident. Other people's opinions mattered way too much to you, causing you to revolve your life around how others will react. You knew it was unhealthy, but had no idea how to stop.

Lost in your thoughts, you had already made it to the library.

“Hey there!” Namjoon said. He had already found a table and was ready to go with his laptop open. “I already got a headstart on the assigment. I came up with multiple points of views to analyze this part of the text.”

“Wow, you are really on top of things,” you replied, impressed.

“I already read this back in high school for fun. Although it was a few years ago, I have a general idea about what happens.” And here you were thinking you were the only person of your age group who read classic literature just for fun, but decided against mentioning that you had also read it for fun in high school. Now that you were in a new location where nobody knew who you were, this was a second chance at a first impression. You did not want to be considered a nerd anymore.

You sat down and began reading and discussing the novel with him. Even though you just met him, you found that you really enjoyed working with him. Namjoon had a different perspective than you which made you see the novel in an entirely different way and vice versa. It was refreshing to have a deep conversation about a topic both people enjoy, as most exchanges you’ve had in the past year were just shallow small talk. As you both reflected and discussed, you had breezily finished the assignment in much less time than you anticipated. Perfect. More time to get ready for the party. 

“Nice work. We got done really fast. Maybe to speed up this project and get this over with, we can finish the next essay question tonight since it will be fresh in our memory,” stated Namjoon.

“Actually I’m going to a party tonight. Tomorrow maybe?” you said trying to hide the proudness in your voice. You never thought that you would be partying instead of doing homework since it was usually the reverse. You thought he would think that you were super cool and adventurous for partying in the first week of school, since it was something you would have never even contemplated doing in high school. Namjoon, however, seemed unfazed by this. 

“All right I’ll just submit mine tonight. You can do yours tomorrow. I’m happy to proofread your work before turning it in if you’d like.” A small part of you was disappointed that he didn’t seem to think anything of it and another small part of you was worried he would think you were irresponsible or a bad student when in reality that couldn’t be further from the truth. It was still nice of him to offer to help you when you knew he was probably busy with other things.

“Thank you, I appreciate it,” you said gratefully as you packed up your things, “When can you meet up next?” 

“How about Sunday evening?”

“Works for me.” You both bid your farewells and went your separate ways, eager to go to your first college party and see Jungkook.

[a-bnha-shoutorealm]

Love letter to the BNHA fandom

I don't know if it is my place to speak. I am new to the fandom and I might have been lucky enough to avoid the most toxic interactions.

It breaks my heart to see the fandom so harsh towards itself though, because I have literally never seen a fandom like this. In a good way. Maybe I stumbled upon bad communities in the past, I don't know, but I've never seen a fandom so welcoming, able to debate and analyze in a healthy way, and so open towards ships (I didn't even know the term multishipper was a thing).

TW : Discourse. I feel like the read more is mostly positive, but I do mention debates, ships, toxicity and analyses. Let me know if I forgot something and I will add it!

Anime-only and manga readers walk side by side. The fandom never made me feel like a fraud for not reading the manga, or not reading vigilantes, or not knowing light novels existed until today. I've never been called a fake fan because of that. Anime-only and manga readers are able to have actual discussions, able to exchange with each other, and share their love for certain characters. Not only that, but regarding the anime, most people don't even look down upon the dub either. This is astounding! The movies and the OVAs receive actual praises, people are genuinely excited about the announcement of the new movie... This is incredible and I sincerely believe this fandom to be welcoming and positive in their approach of new content.

The analyses you can find in this fandom are insanely detailed. When something is wrong, people mention why. They take the time to say why this specific point is invalid, but also that they agree with other parts of the analysis. Even opinions that turn into debate are elaborated with moments from the anime/manga, proofs to back them up whether it is to spread love for a character or mention why you dislike someone. These exchanges are important. It gives you a new perspective on some parts of the story, it makes you see characters in a new light… and people are usually very respectful when they disagree. I've almost never seen someone disagreeing without first stating "I think", "I feel", "I'm not sure", making it clear that /they/ see things differently. That their experiences or values brings them to have a different opinion. This is huge. This is rare, healthy, and this community can be proud of its thoughtfulness and its ability to open discussion.

Ships. This is the most touchy part, ships are usually a pretty heated topic in almost any fandom. I know some ships are called names, even toxic, I'm not that delusional, but there are a lot of things that this fandom does right. I’ve seen actual discussions on both sides of a ship, with full-length analyses of why a ship would work or why it wouldn't. I’ve also seen both sides agreeing on certain aspects : “Of course, this would need to happen for the ship to work”/”But yes this aspect of the ship is very interesting”. It blows my mind everytime. It’s amazing, and rare, and precious. I know some people might disagree with this part because they feel like they shouldn't have to defend their ship or to say why some of them wouldn't work, and I respect that. I know I have a bias there because I love to discuss ship and analyze character dynamics. I still think there are very positive points to how the fandom approaches ships. Like the number of people who understand the reasons behind a ship, even if they don't like it (I feel like it's not the same as defending a ship through analysis, because you can stop at "I don't like X, but I understand what people see in it." - then again, biased in favor of debates and analysis), or how widespread and accepted the concept of multishipping is. Coming back to the first point, I've never seen anyone in the fandom calling someone a fake fan for being a multishipper.

Of course, I should have added a “mostly” to all of these points. The fandom is not perfect. These positive aspects won't make hate anon disappear, ship wars are still a thing, harsh words and name calling can happen, but I do not think the situation is worse than other fandoms.

A lot of good and bad things can come from being the fandom of a popular serie, and BNHA is huge, but considering how large the audience is, I think this fandom is doing pretty damn good.

[coffeeandcalligraphy]

10 things finishing my 10th book taught me

Hey People of Earth!

(I cannot believe I typed the title of this post!)

Today, I’m going to be sharing 10 things finishing my 10th book taught me, which means--as of 2:30 this morning, I have finished writing my tenth novel, aka MOTH WORK. I’ve written posts like this for my 7th, 8th, and 9th novels as well!

Enjoy this note no one asked me to write but that I wrote because I was sad: 

I introduced this project on this blog back in June, but actually started it in the notes app of my iPhone (iconic) sometime in January of 2019. At this time, my mental health was *lackin* as I was stressed and in my final months of high school. I needed something to cheer me up, and so Moth Work became a place where I could dump my “bad writing” and also have fun. For more context, you can read more about Moth Work in my various writing updates HERE. 

I didn’t intend for this project to become a novel, but thought I’d write it as a longer “for fun” story (prospective word count was 5k words). I chipped away at it for a few months, but didn’t really start picking it up as a serious project until around May/June. It was only once summer vacation hit that I, under the advice of my therapist to have a “reach goal” for the summer, decided to say fuck it!! I shall write this as a novel (prospective word count now 50k words). This novel has seen me graduate high school + almost finish my first year of university, and I’m so excited to share all the wonderful things I learned while writing it!

1. It is totally okay to take your “guilty pleasures” seriously. 

I was in a mega dilemma writing this book. I’d wrapped up writing my ninth novel just after starting this project, and felt a need to write something that was more “serious”. Though I’m an advocate for writing what you want, when you want, even I struggled not to feel like I was wasting my time writing a project that didn’t have very much literary/craft merit (in my eyes, this changed eventually). 

I am here to tell you--do NOT let anyone, including yourself, shame you out of writing what you like. Allow yourself to let loose and write “bad” things, and remember you don’t have to feel guilty/ashamed for writing stuff that seems “juvenile” or “bad”.

2. Processes change--embrace this.

I took about 4000 different approaches writing this book, and though I really wanted to stick to one (outlining, pantsing), eventually, I let my process be what it wanted to be. For example, I am a pantser and began this novel pantsing. Very quickly, I realized I needed an outline because I could not keep track of events (this book begins very plot-oriented). But, pre-determining events that would happen eventually stopped working as I began feeling constrained, and so I settled for outlining as I went so I could keep track of plot points. 

I outlined 10 of the 15 chapters like this before I sort of... stopped doing this (though I will go back and fill it in just for future reference)! I went back to full-blown pantsing in the last four or so chapters, as what I’d planned would NOT pan out--and I think it’s so important to let your process be what it wants to be. Sometimes this book needed some planning--sometimes it really didn’t. This flexibility has really allowed me to be in touch with my projects more, and really listen to them/understand what it is they need. 

3. Sometimes plans change. Don’t be afraid to follow your gut.

I did not plan for Moth Work to be a novel. But as the project developed, so did its final form. My gut was telling me what I needed to do (continue writing), and another example of this is when I sporadically made this a dual point of view book! I’ve never written a full-length dual POV manuscript, and haven’t written dual POV since I was 12, but I didn’t let that stop me from doing what I knew in my gut, was what the book needed. 

I want to emphasize here--sometimes the vision you imagine changes. Allow this change to happen if you feel it’s right, even if it’s scary. I feel I’ve grown a lot as a writer by just allowing this of myself! It’s easy to beat yourself up for not following your plan, and I did this a lot. Understanding that sometimes plans turn into other plans turn into other plans etc, is the most freeing thing you can do for your writing!

4. Write what makes you happy!

This project began as a means to increase my serotonin lmaooo and I think sometimes as writers, we forget that yes, art is hard, but writing what you like can make that difficulty just a little more tolerable. This book started toiling toward disaster mode for a few chapters in the middle, and I really was not happy writing it. You can feel the difference in the chapters when I felt comfortable writing, versus when I struggled because I felt I “had to”. And so I took a step back and re-evaluated. Since this was not working/not making me happy, what would? This question solved my problems (not easily, but lead me on the right path). The artist! does not! have to! suffer! 

Sometimes problems occur, and critically thinking through them is vital. I’m not saying just to do whatever every time something doesn't work because this isn’t a shortcut. However, my point is not to be afraid to change things up and write what will make you happier and help you finish the book if you feel that’s what you need. I wanted to write a cheesy romance about two boys who both need to chill, and so though I could’ve written something else, I wrote this because it genuinely made me happier! And I love that about this book!

5. Things can take longer than you expect. You’re not a bad writer because of this.

Y’ALL. I wanted to write 50k words of this book over one summer. One month! One! Month! Lots of folks can do this, but I did not! In fact, I hit 50k this month, which is half a year after I projected. 

I think a lot of us constitute speed to being a good writer, and while speed and being a good writer can coexist, speed is not necessarily a determining factor in whether you can write or not! This book took me just over a year from when I started it (nine months from when I took it on as a full-time project), and while sure, I could’ve written it faster, I let it develop as it needed, and wrote it when I felt I could. I am not a professional writer with deadlines (that’s different)! While you gotta put in the time to improve, I think you also gotta look out for yourself! Use your gut, and take your time if that’s what you need!

6. Craft and play can coexist.

This took me so long to grasp, and I still struggle with this today! Craft and play can coexist. Say it with me y’all: craft and play can coexist!!

My manifesto for Moth Work initially was to have it be my dumping ground for shitty writing. While this took the pressure off initially, I then felt like I was regressing in my craft (which was untrue, I just didn’t realize it at the time). So, I decided to begin taking the craft aspect of this book very seriously, trying to write polished, delicious prose (every! time!) and the fact of the matter is that often, this did not happen. 

I beat myself up over this! I was like: Rachel, 16-year-old you was pumping out better prose than this, what’s up? And I put so much pressure on myself to perfect the writing, even though this was only ever meant to be a “for funsies” project. Eventually, I came to understand that, okay, I really do want this to be a for funsies project, but I also want to enjoy re-reading it and not criticizing every aspect of it. I then began incorporating a few passes of line edits after drafting a chapter, until eventually, I stopped circling back to chapters to line-edit them altogether. You don’t have to be perfect on the first draft!

You also don’t have to sacrifice craft to have fun, just as the opposite is true. This book taught me a lot about finding this balance, something I’ve lacked in my writing process for years!

7. Your writing styles can differ from book-to book!

I couldn’t understand why my prose in this book felt “thin” (aka awful in my eyes), why the only thing I felt capable of describing was literally everything shining in some sort of way (glinting, glimmering, glowing lool) or overzealous descriptions of the moon. It was only about a month ago that I realized, after making a breakthrough with my litfic novel Houses With Teeth, that Moth Work was not sucking the life out of my prose--it was just a different book with a different style of writing.

And this makes sense! I was writing with two different characters, in two different perspectives, in a completely different POV than I’m used to writing in the long-form (third-present). Of course things were going to be different! I felt a bit silly realizing this, lol, because it felt so obvious, but I struggled with this for a long time (you can even see bits of this struggle in my video Problems I’m having with writing + solutions). 

I thought I had regressed to being a bad writer because of this book, when in reality, the fault was on my inability to stop comparing a very different book to my very different past works. Sometimes you don’t even realize you’re working against yourself! Acknowledging this, and then letting it go was the best thing I did for this book and it allowed me to draft it much faster toward the end!

8. Writing is NOT linear.

I spoke about this in my Problems video, and I honestly was nervous to see how this hot take would be received. However, I was surprised to see that some folks thought this hot take was actually not a bad one, so I’m re-iterating it here!

I think, because we writers are often always practicing writing, we assume everything we write will be better than the last. Honestly, I feel like at least for me, this was my goal--to always be working linearly in terms of progress. It wasn’t until this book that I really came to realize that this is just not how writing works. The easiest way for me to compare this, also as a visual artist, is to say that sure, practice does make perfect, but I have sketches from last week that are worse than sketches I drew two years ago. Why is it that we expect writing to always be linearly better from one project to the next? My answer is that this is just not how writing works. I wrote some of my favourite paragraphs years ago, and may be embarrassed of a paragraph I write tomorrow. 

I got caught up in this idealism of “I must be writing better each time I write” because I thought this was the most logical progression of my writing craft, but realizing that actually!! progress jumps around, was so important for me. Some days I’m better at writing description, some days I write dialogue worse than I did when I was fourteen! It’s okay not to always be uphill. 

Y’all, if I step down a wrung on a ladder and then step up four the very next day, that’s how it’s going to be! Practice intrinsically will make you grow as a writer, but it doesn't mean everything you write has to be better than what you wrote before (though this can be the case, which is awesome). I feel like I don’t see this spoken about enough, so I do want to know if this is relevant to any of you or if this point is bologna!!!

9. The story wants what it wants.

This is heavily in line with some previous points, but is something that was driven home for me while writing this novel. If I can give one piece of advice, it would be to let the story be what it wants to be. If my story wants to be a YA fantasy trilogy, but I’m trying to force it to be a standalone pretentious character-driven coming-of-age saga (calling myself out), my writing may suffer! Of course, some writers can take control over their story and execute their initial vision perfectly! I am not! one of those! people!

I’m a firm believer that sometimes the story wants what it wants, and it’s often your best bet to follow this path. Write intuitively--if you know something feels wrong, or contrarily, feels right, follow that path. 

I did not know how to end this book. I’d had an ending planned for a few months, though it eventually fell apart in the last few weeks. I didn’t know what I would do instead, but last night when I was drafting the last two chapters of the book, I felt in my gut that I was heading to the end. I wanted to stop writing for the night--I almost did, but instead, I kept at it because I knew I was on a roll toward the finish line, and I felt compelled to follow my instinct. This is how I landed at the end I wrote in, and it was a completely organic process.

Planning out your story is a great thing to do, and I’m not here to start a debate about whether plotting/pantsing is better because they’re both amazing!! But for me, it’s important to let the story breathe, and let it eventually grow into the shoes it chooses for itself. Taking a step back so I could stop trying to mould this story into a place it didn't want to be is probably the best thing I could’ve done for it because I finished the book. Any process is a good process if it gets you to the end healthily, and for me, allowing the story to be what it wanted to be and allowing it to take the lead helped me get there.

10. It’s okay to love your story.

I’m going to end this post on another hot take because it is probably what I primarily felt early this morning as I typed up the last paragraph of this book. I’m not going to lie--I cried finishing this book lol. I ached finishing this book. It *hurt* to finish this book. I didn’t want to finish this book. What I wanted to do was shut my computer, and pretend the end was not coming, and come back four months from now to finish it, maybe. I wanted to hang onto my story because it’s my story and I love it!

Y’all, this book is cringey. It’s melodramatic, juvenile in some places, comically serious in others. But it’s mine, and I love it. Sometimes I’m ashamed of the writing in this book--sometimes I think I’m getting worse. But it’s my story, and I love! it! 

I think so many of us want to please other people! Or maybe that’s just me lol!! oh boy!! There were so many times I wanted to give up on this project because I thought others would find it cringey in places I too, thought were cringey, but simultaneously loved.

I’ve written for other people a lot in the past, and sometimes those ‘other people’ are just me--many critical versions of me. Don’t forget about how much you love a story (for its quirks maybe, its clichés, its “bad writing”) before you finish it. A first draft only comes once and finishing a first draft is so wonderful, and even more so when you love that story. We got enough hate y’all, lets give our stories some love. 

So that’s it for this post! I still have five chapters to write writing updates for, so the party ain’t over til it’s over!!!

For my obligatory Oscar’s speech! A special thanks to @sarahkelsiwrites​​ for reading about these trash people for five years, and for enthusiastically contributing to their trash decisions (#do it for the tea)! And for reassuring me that the prose in this book is actually not as bad as I believe because I would never have finished this book without that pep talk lol. To @imdisappointed​​ for helping me crack some of the toughest plot problems!! You talk me out of problems and it’s magic! And to my MOM @shaelinwrites​​ (for being my mom) and also for all the kind/insightful things you say! Y’all get me through it!!!

And of course!! I thank all of YOU for following this journey of drafting Moth Work. My community on here never fails to amaze me, and I’m a big stan of you all!! Please tag me in your stuff--I’d love to read about what you’re writing!

Here’s to finishing a book, but more importantly, to hoping I don’t make Moth Work a series lmaoo!!! *pops confetti*

--Rachel