#linguistics is hard for me to wrap my brain around

[innocet]

Sherman's Gallifreyan is interesting in this regard — because I think it did appear a couple times on the show before? But not on such a prominent prop yet, as far as I remember. And I, too, am so happy that now it has. :) Because I've been doing another thing in personal writings for a while — combining it with Teegarden Gallifreyan, which is a conlang without a documented script, at least not anywhere I can find, to get writing where both layers are not-English. It's fun either way, with one or both layers, though. I've wondered before what the 'this is only a script, not an entire conlang' thing is supposed to mean in-universe. Does the TARDIS translate the language, but not the script? Does the Doctor write some things in English, but in Gallifreyan script for some reason or other? Is Gallifreyan just canonically English with weird letters, like the whole 'you look Time Lord, we came first' thing? Is this all linguistic bubble wrap that represents, theatrical-style, something weirder but less achievable in practice? Fascinating to think about.

Yeah!! I know basically nothing about linguistics; my fluency in Sherman's came from a habit of doodling in it while in high school, so I don't have many coherent or valuable thoughts about it as a diegetic language. As with all translation matrix implications, it's all a bit wibbly. I think what actually might be going on in-universe with this language is Weird, and what we're seeing is a narrative tool to stop episodes from becoming hour long debates about the nature of translation.

[notjustjavierpena]

The Making of Ellie - Part I: Baby-Making

Series Masterpost | Main Masterpost | Support a disabled creator

A/N: This DILF!Joel piece has rotted my brain for 24 hours straight. I have had absolutely no break from thinking about this, and it’s never been easier to write something.

Summary: A look into how you and Joel’s relationship is going two years in. Joel’s POV on his never-ending love for you and his extreme baby fever.

Pairing: Joel Miller x f!reader/you (no y/n)

Tags: +18 Smut (MDNI!), Joel’s POV, domesticated Joel Miller, Sarah makes an appearance!!!, tooth-rotting love and fluff, they’re crazy about each other, talk about birth control and ovulation, pussy eating (joel is a cunning linguist), fingering, bit of praise kink, dirty talk, bit of body worship, breeding kink, daddy kink (if you squint real hard), slow and sensual piv sex, intense orgasms, creampie, God they are in love

Word count: 4k

Link to this work on AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/49183051

Song inspiration(!!!): Too Lost In You by Sugababes

Baby-Making

Joel comes home from work around the same time each day now — and it’s never after dinner time. He has made it his mission to make time for Sarah and you, cut down work since you moved in, because two working adults living in the house means that he can slow things down. 

His health has improved, his mood too, his fatigue has practically gone and Sarah has had more time to just be a kid, started playing soccer again, and has even taken up coaching the little league team now that she’s 16. It’s good for him. You are good for him. For both of them. 

He loves it. He takes the afternoon post-work ritual very seriously. Always texts if he should pick something up from the grocery store. Sometimes brings you flowers too, remembering that one time you’d said that you didn’t actually mind the cheap cellophane-wrapped bouquets. 

It’s interesting to him how natural it feels for him to slip right into domestic bliss with you because he never thought that he would get there again after Sarah’s mother. On top of it, he never considered himself a gentle thing, but after you, it’s like you kiss the calluses of him away. He is nothing but gentle now, even in his roughness. 

He throws the keys onto the side table by the front door after arriving home, shrugs off his jacket, and bends down to take off his boots. The sound makes you appear in the doorway. Joel notices that you’ve changed into gray sweatpants and a tank top with a strawberry on it since arriving home, basically removed anything from you that is professional and uncomfortable. Joel loves you like this because he is the only one who gets to enjoy you like this; relaxed and beautiful, hair in a messy bun on top of your head and fuzzy socks on your always-cold feet. He smiles at your radiance, then pads across the floor to kiss you hello. 

There’s something in your eyes; a flicker of mischief as you grab his wrist to look at his watch. With a grin that nearly sets his heart into overdrive, you hold his hand up so he can look at the time too. 

“It’s five minutes past,” you tut.

“Right, but I got ya something,” he says, reluctantly turning away from you to rummage through his jacket pocket. He fishes out a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup and you immediately snatch it from his hands, holding it close to your chest.

“Gremlin,” he teases and you stick out your tongue at him, “No needa hide it. ‘S too sweet for me anyway.” 

“I shall save it for later then,” you walk to the kitchen and open the top cabinet that holds the mugs. You stand on your toes to reach into the very back, shirt riding up just a little, and stash the chocolate cup for later consumption.  

“Hidden from Sa-rah, the candy thief,” you purposely pronounce her name wrong for dramatic purposes. Then you lower yourself onto the soles of your feet again, not bothering to pull your top down again. Joel watches the slight reveal of the dimples on your back.

“Right,” he chuckles. 

Dear Lord, he loves you so much that it is ridiculous. In a way that makes the future look better than it ever has because it’s no longer filled with uncertainty. He knows what’s going to happen; he’ll build a house for the three of you, he’ll marry you in the Texan spring and he’ll give you as many babies as you want. He’d do it all today if he could. 

“How was work?” You interrupt his thoughts by wrapping your soft hands around the nape of his neck, resting them there. You have rosy cheeks, feel warm against his skin, with love radiating from your fingertips. 

“Good, told Tommy to handle the next few clients. Some hotshot guy comin’ into the office tomorrow,” Joel tells you, wrapping his arms around your waist and tugging you closer. He thinks that you don’t actually care about any of this, but there’s no indication of boredom on your face.

“He building a castle or something?” You ask. 

“Somethin’ like that. Guy’s filthy rich but not from his own doin’, looking at blueprints at the end of the week. Should be interesting,” he continues, “Not that you care about that.”

“I do actually like hearing about your job,” you kiss him on the lips, peck them repeatedly until he cannot help himself and lifts you up to hug you tight. His arms rest along your back and his hands on your sides, fingers sprawled out underneath where your bra had been in the morning. You must’ve taken it off too. He loves you comfortable. 

“You just love my hands,” he retorts, nose against your cheek, “Don’t deny it. I see right through ya.”

“It’s definitely not completely wrong,” you admit when he sets you down again.

You walk back to the kitchen, too tempted by the knowledge of what is in your kitchen cabinet. You only take half, proclaiming some bullshit that you have to watch out for your blood sugar since one can never know when it’s going to get you.

Joel rolls his eyes, following you, “I can give ya some sugar.”

“Joel Miller!” You pretend to look shocked. He tastes the peanut butter in your mouth, pushes you against the counter. 

“Gross,” a teenage girl’s voice says.

“Oh right, Sarah’s home,” you announce sheepishly.

Joel pulls away to look at his daughter, “Hey kiddo. How was school?”

“You don’t care about that,” she smirks, “But if you must know, it was fine. No homework.” 

“That don’t sound like Mrs. uhhh…”

“Green, it’s Ms. Green, Dad,” Sarah says dramatically as she moves across the floor to put on shoes. Her tone turns taunting, “Go ahead and make out with your girlfriend. I’m going to soccer practice.”

“Have fun, Sarah! We’ll have dinner ready,” you chime in. 

“See ya, honey.”

The door closes behind her. The house grows quiet for a moment, but then the mischief is back in your eyes, “She’s seeing a boy.”

Joel nearly gets whiplash, not sure why his pulse spikes. He trusts his daughter to make good decisions and has taught her how since she was just a baby, “Nah, she ain’t. Just said she’s going to soccer practice.”

“Joel,” you sigh loudly, “It’s Tuesday.”

“So?”

“She has practice on Thursdays.” 

“Christ,” he runs a hand over his stubble, tries to keep his composure, and ignores the urge to send her a text. 

“But you know what?” You’re back in his personal space, tugging at his arms to make him hold you close again, “Such a fun coincidence. I’m also seeing a boy.”

Joel can feel the tension seeping out of him in an instant.

“Really? ‘Cause I’m seein’ a girl. She’s real pretty,” he wishes that he could show his past self how tooth-rottingly sweet he is being with you because he’d hate it. Though if past-Joel found out who he was treating like this, he’d instantly become a goner just like present-Joel is now. 

“‘S her sweet tooth, unhinged behavior that I love the most though,” he continues. 

You whine in his arms, lean your head back and it earns you a kiss on your neck, “Don’t be like that. Not when I’m ovulating. I’ll climb you like a tree.”

Oh.

Oh.

It may seem innocent but Joel knows this is how you play dirty. It suddenly explains a lot. The sweatpants, the rosy cheeks, the way you glow, no bra, the cravings, why Joel wants you so bad.

Joel wouldn’t say that he is controlled by biology, and he hates the men trying to argue their way out of acting like cavemen. But looking at you right now in your stupid strawberry tank top, knowing that you’re horny and ready because your body wants to make him a daddy... Joel’s head swims. 

Something shifts in the air. You can see it on him, but Joel assumes that you wait for him to act on whatever is bubbling up in his chest and below his belt.

And act, he does. He distracts you with deep, long kisses until he can snatch you up from the ground and carry you upstairs. You squeak out a giggle but don’t fight back, enjoying the freedom of being alone with him.

“That’s why you’re so fucking sexy,” Joel says after placing you on your shared bed. He is already shedding himself of his shirt, undressing hurriedly to get close to your skin with his own as quickly as possible.

You crawl back on the bed, untying the strings of your sweatpants and yanking them down your legs. You match his urgency, but still decide to tease him, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Shut your mouth,” he yanks the rest of your pants off as soon as he is naked in front of you. He throws them in the pile of his own clothes, “You know exactly what I’m talking about, dirty girl.”

You’re just about to take your top off before Joel stops you with a hand curled around the hem. He knows you’re sensitive at this point in your cycle, but it’s not why he wants to keep it on, “I love how cute you are in this shirt. Keep it on like this.” 

He crawls properly onto the bed to demonstrate and tugs the shirt up over your tits so he can still see the stupid animated fruit on the front. Afterward, he tugs your panties down your legs and off your feet. He will swear to a higher power that he can even smell it on you, sweet like strawberries and honey between your legs and it makes him feel like an animal. 

He has had baby fever for a while now, even told you his plans on giving you a whole bunch of babies and you’ve merely giggled at him, especially when he told you that twins don’t run in his family, but he is sure that nature will give him a whole litter with you. 

“Want me to eat you out?” He asks to which you whimper and nod. He doesn’t give you what you want right then and there, instead climbs up to cradle your head in his hands and gives you a long, slow kiss. He sucks on your tongue, hums into your mouth, and gets you worked up and wet before he’ll treat you right. 

“Tell me,” he says when he breaks the kiss, nosing along the bunched-up fabric of his new favorite top of yours. He sucks at the skin between your breasts, places open-mouthed kisses along the swell of the left whilst cupping the right. 

“I want you to eat my pussy,” you moan softly, running a hand over his hair as he licks a nipple. You slide your fingers into it, but you don’t tug at it unless you feel like you need to hold onto it for dear life. 

“God, you’re the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen,” he growls before going further down your body, his spit leaving a shine where his mouth has been, “Can’t believe I own these tits.”

He goes further down, lets out a satisfied noise when he can see between your legs, “—and this pussy.” 

“Yes, it’s yours, fuck, baby,” you sound delirious already, happy and eager to be touched, on the verge of a giggle even, “Joel, need your mou—“

You gasp loudly into the quiet bedroom. Joel has covered you with his mouth, eyes almost rolling back into his skull at the taste of your ripe cunt. He is too lost in you, a complete idiot with how head over heels he is for you, and he shows it by devouring you like he is starved. 

“Baby!” You cry out, sensitive, “Fuuuck— just like that!”

He watches your thighs twitch in his peripheral, holds you down by placing a strong hand just below your belly button, and uses his thumb on said hand to pull the hood of your clit back. He sucks the little now-hard nub into his mouth, sending you into a state where he is unsure if you can even sense the sheets underneath you. If you had superpowers, he surely would’ve made you lift off the bed as if you were possessed. 

He bobs his head a little, probably looking obscene as he hums against your clit and wiggles his head too. He looks up at you through his lashes, sees the red flush on your chest, and knows that you are close. Christ, he hasn’t been this into someone before. 

“I’m gonna— you’re gonna make me—“ you say like always, announcing your departure from reality. He keeps going, feeling your stomach jump in a stuttering manner underneath his palm with how uneven your breathing has become. 

“Fuck, I’m coming!” You sob with a yank of Joel’s hair and suddenly your thighs are shaking violently without your control. Joel can feel you coming before you announce it, your cunt clenching rapidly against his lips and your clit pulsing in his mouth as he sucks your folds into his mouth. You taste so good as a gush on slick smears his lips and chin even more. He laps it up.

You push him away when he gets too much, and he turns his head to kiss your inner thigh. You finally release the giggle that you’ve been suppressing, drunk on dopamine and Joel falls in love with you a bit more. 

“You’re fucking incredible,” you say. The hand in his hair slides down so you can affectionately run your knuckles over his cheek. He responds by gently rubbing your thighs, soothing you on top of putting such strain on your heart and your breath. You hum, “I love you so much.”

Without warning, he smacks your thigh and you sit up straight. He grins, “Love ya too, sweetheart. Think you can give me one more before I fuck ya?”

“Jesus, what’s gotten into you?” You ask genuinely as you lower onto your back again. 

“Wanna fuck a baby into you,” he replies, voice an octave lower than normal. He senses your shiver without having to look at your face, “Please. Wanna get her red and puffy so it fucking sticks.” 

You let out an involuntary moan at the idea. You want this as much as him, he hopes, and he slides two fingers into your neglected pussy whilst he waits for the green light to fill you up. He crooks them upwards, fingers the spongy spot that only seems to have been discovered by him, “Lemme in. Lemme come in you.”

You’ve been off the pill for a while with the reasoning that it wasn’t doing any good for your body. Joel had stocked up on condoms since then, actually filled the top drawer of his nightstand to the brim because honey, we’re young and healthy, red-blooded Americans. But it had planted the idea in his mind that he could potentially knock you up, and suddenly the stash of condoms was being used rapidly. 

“Okay,” you say with a half-moan, “Fuck, okay.”

Joel immediately sits up on his knees, still fucking you open on his hand. You squirm underneath his touch, trying to get a hold of your breathing this time, holding eye contact with him as he drags another orgasm from you. 

It is much less hurried and a lot more intense, muscles clamping down on his digits rhythmically as you bite your lip and close your eyes with a soft gasp. He can’t decide if he finds this more sexy. 

“Did you mean it?” He asks as he trails kisses up your belly. He kneels between your legs and places an elbow on either side of your chest so he can hold both your breasts in his hands. He squeezes them together, sucks on a nipple until you sigh deeply, and then watches them bounce back into place. 

“Yes,” you say and your voice doesn’t sound unsure at all, “Fuck yes, I want your babies. Wanted them since I saw you. Want you to make me a mommy.”

“The prettiest momma out there,” he says, euphoria evident on his face. He slides his arms underneath you, rests his head on your breasts, and hugs you close to his chest, “Wanna fuck ya.”

“Please,” you say softly, spreading your legs open for him but he has other plans. He releases you from his arms to sit up again, spreading his knees a little. His hands wrap around your ankles to lift your legs up onto his shoulders, your feet behind his ears. He leans over you afterward and bends your flexible legs backward until the front of his thighs are against the back of yours. He can go deep like this, fill you up with his come how he has wanted to for months.

He takes hold of his cock, eases it inside of your spent and warm cunt inch by inch. You feel incredible around his dick without a piece of rubber separating the two of you. He can feel the head of his dick nudge at your cervix, moaning quietly as he is engulfed by your wet, pulsating heat. 

“How are you still so fucking tight?” He groans, resting his forehead against your calf as he gives you a moment to adjust to the stretch. He knows he is big, gets a thrill out of how well you take him each time as if you were made specifically for him. There had been one time where he’d called you a trooper, and you had laughed so hard with his dick inside you that it had made him come. 

“You feel so big like this,” you say as you look down between the two of you, already sounding out of breath. Joel kisses your calf repeatedly and softly, trying to soothe your overwhelmed body. 

“Goddamn. You’re so sexy,” he praises, placing both hands on the sides of your head so he is hovering above you. He finds your hazy eyes, “Look at you.” 

He gives an experimental roll of his hips that makes you whimper, both hands reaching for the backs of his knees. You hold onto him, staring up into his eyes with that siren-like look in them, and then you moan softly.

Joel starts fucking you desperately at that. He doesn’t hurry though, keeps his hips’ movements slow and sensual to have you moaning and gasping ever so slightly at the intensity. He knows he could just give in and fuck you rough and fast, but the heavy-lidded gaze that you are giving him with your mouth hanging open is too good to spoil. 

“Joel,” you cry but it’s barely audible compared to what he sometimes drags from you. He can feel your nails dig into the flexing muscles of his thighs, creating half-moon shapes in the flesh. He switches to a rocking motion, and it sends your eyes rolling into the back of your head. You moan with your bottom lip between your teeth, “Mhm—“

“I know, baby, let it out,” he can see your pulse jumping wildly underneath the sensitive skin of your neck, feeling the heat of his orgasm pool at the base of his spine. He needs to be closer to you. 

“Lift your legs down to the sides,” he tells you gently, thrusts coming to a halt and him realizing that you’ve heard absolutely nothing. He repeats himself, waits for you to follow his instructions, and then hooks his arms underneath your knees. 

Joel gets closer to you by resting his weight on his elbows, his own body on top of your slightly contorted one. You reach for him, grabby hands in the air until he allows himself to be pulled in for a kiss. You cradle his face, make him feel safe in your arms. 

“I love you, baby,” he breathes deeply. The new position gives him an opportunity to reach deeper inside of you, and it’s accompanied by each upward snap of his pelvis causing his cockhead to push into your g-spot. It makes it difficult for you to continue kissing him, eventually simply breathing into his mouth as he has you speared on his dick. Never once do you let go of his face, thumbs on his cheekbones, and tip of your nose against his. 

“I love you,” you whisper, unable to catch your breath. Joel can feel your walls flutter around his dick, threatening to pull his own climax from him too soon. You pant, eyes burning, “You— baby, shit… you’re gonna make me come.”

“Yeah?” He speeds up a little, carding a hand through your hair and gently tugging on the bun. He coaxes you, “Gonna milk my cock into you? Make me a daddy?”

“Yeah,” you whimper wantonly, tightening your legs into his sides as you try moving with him, “Yeah, baby. Gonna make you a daddy! Fuckfuckfuck. Ah— I’m, I—“

Joel doesn’t know if he’s ever made you come like this; without all the muscle and rough touches, without the fast-paced snaps of his hips and the foul taunting from his mouth of how dirty you are. But come you do, with your brows furrowed, gaze on his and a controlled breathing that suddenly becomes erratic and uneven after you let out a high-pitched cry. 

“That’s it,” he admires you, “So good f’me.”

You clamp down on his cock so hard that he sees stars, fucks you through each convulsion of your cunt. His mouth drips with filth as he works himself toward his own pleasure, “You make me so fucking horny, baby. Wanna knock— ngh, wanna knock this pretty pussy up all the time. Give ya a whole fuckin’ litter.”

He tips over the edge not long after, heart pounding in his chest and the sensation in his balls tightening. He releases with a groan, settles deep inside of you to make sure he doesn’t waste a single drop. His orgasm pulses through his cock, swirls in his belly, and warms the small of his back. 

“Fuuuck,” he pants. He carefully removes his arms from underneath your legs before he collapses, allowing you to stretch out underneath him. You look completely fucked out, gasping feebly as he teasingly gives you another thrust before pulling out. 

You wrap your arms around him as he falls onto you, nose against the shell of his ear. He can barely lift his head when you speak, humming into your neck that vibrates as you talk, “You think other people have sex this good?”

“Nah, ‘s why everyone is so fuckin’ miserable, why they gotta build mansions with their parents’ money,” he murmurs. 

“Stop thinking about the hotshot client in bed,” you tease as you cradle his head in your arms, lifting your legs to wrap them around his waist. It seems you cannot get close enough, “You should only think about sticky, sweaty me.”

Joel finds that he doesn’t care about sticky, sweaty skin and you feeling like a furnace after three orgasms. He lays with you like this for a while, sure that you’ve drifted off to sleep at one point, until you push at his shoulder, voice back to your normal pitch as the post-orgasmic bliss has faded slowly, “Gotta pee.” 

“Sure,” he rolls off of you. The sight of your waddle to the bathroom makes him smile, eyes following the way the fleshiest part of your ass and thighs jiggle with each step. 

When you’ve closed the door behind you, Joel finds the strength to rid the bed of the dirty sheets and start dressing again. He’ll have a shower before bed, he decides, ignoring the sensitivity of sliding on boxers and jeans again. 

Hurriedly, he bounces down the stairs to the kitchen. He gets the rest of your peanut butter cup, places it on the nightstand with your clothes right beside it. 

He checks the time. There’s no point in trying to cook something up for dinner if Sarah is home from ‘practice’ soon, so he goes down into the kitchen to order pizza, heart thrumming in his chest as he hears you shout a thank you from upstairs at the discovery of the other half of your favorite snack. He is happy. So so happy.

Especially as he writes ‘pregnancy test’ into his Notes app shopping list.

.

.

If you would like to follow my writing then go follow @notjustjavierpena-fics and turn on notifications 💖❤️

[sarah-denial-cq]

Power In Names

Take a second to think about degrading terms for women. You're here on my Tumblr, so you've probably heard some of them. I thought I would give my thoughts on some of them and what my favorites are. I'm writing this entire post with panties stuffed in my mouth so we'll see how long it goes.

First of all, my favorite, is bitch. When Rose pushed my face down against her clit in her car, pulled over the side of the road on Valentine's day with my ass up in the air and my dress stripped off, and said "suck it, bitch", my mind went so fuzzy. It hit me so good and hard. But why?

"Bitch" drips with gender violence. So many words are generic ("slut", "whore", "slave", etc), or focused on specific body parts ("cunt", etc) or activities ("cocksucker", etc). But "Bitch" cuts through those to my specific identity. And it is unmistakably, unavoidably hierarchical. A bitch is beneath, inferior, contemptible.

I'm so fucking wet and squirmy writing this, sorry.

But that's not all. The actual sound of the word has so much to do with it. "Bitch" starts with a voiced bilabial consonant, a "B" sound. Yes, my university degree including several semesters of linguistics classes, which I'm now using to explain why being called a pathetic fucking bitch is such a good way of being put in my place. I needed to take a break to edge after writing that.

A voiced bilabial consonant means the sound is formed at the very front of the mouth with two lips rubbing against each other and coming apart. Kind of like when you spit on someone. Or kind of like what you hear when someone spits on you, I guess. The word has the most violent "attack" sound at the beginning of it. Compare it to words like "slut" (unvoiced alveolar initial consonant) or "whore" (unvoiced glottal initial consonant) and there's just no comparison.

By the way, "voiced" vs "unvoiced" refers to how the vocal chords are vibrating. You can feel this by wrapping one hand firmly around your throat and using the other to slap your face while you compare the voiced "b" in Bitch with the unvoiced "p" in Pathetic. I can't, of course, because remember I still have my panties stuffed in my mouth right now.

OK, so with "Bitch" dealt with, I need to talk about the elephant in the room, which is the word "cumdump". Now first of all, I haven't had any consensual sexual experiences that have involved being used in that way. But that being said, while I know it's super common on tumblr, "cumdump" really does nothing at all for me. You know what does? You know what word you can use for me that's so, so much more (squirming again) of a hit to my fried out brain?

"Cumtarget".

Again, it's the violence in the word. It's not a passive receptacle. There's no hierarchy, no danger, nothing about "cumdump" makes me prey. I know there's an ethos to a woman as a passive receiver but do you really want Sarah lying in bed like a dead fish? I want to be targeted. Hunted. Claimed. Overpowered. Defeated.

I'm drooling down my front.

In no particular order, here are a few other favorites.

Pathetic (that initial bilabial consonant, yes please)

Rapebait (p, b, targeting, violent)

Stupid (diminishing, disrespectful, "p" sound, obviously purposefully disrespectful since clearly I'm objectively not)

Dyke (complex)

Bimbo (bbbbbbbbbbb and see "stupid")

Backup Fuck (b, p, very explicitly hierarchical.)

Cunt

Weak

And some less violent:

Babygirl (heart emoji heart emoji heart emoji) (not ddlg)

Eye candy

[redacted because it's rooted in ableist language that I'm not comfortable using]

sorry I'm really wet right now this is too hard

And quickly, a few that just aren't that interesting

Slut (so overused it may as well just be "hello")

Whore (I literally was one)

Slave (you're divorced, wear a suit that's too tight, and love black and white gifs)

I hope that was insightful and that reading it improved your day. I'm going to put these panties back on and lick up the wet spot on the chair now.

xo

[samsnerdcorner]

Review: “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain

Rating: ★.5/ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

The first time I read Huckleberry Finn was when I listened to it as a german audiobook in early 2021. If I had known, that I would have to suffer through it again for my english lit class just one and a half years later, I probably would have skipped that first read.

It’s probably not very hard to tell, but I’m not a fan of “the great American novel”. The german version was quite easy to listen to, I even fell asleep during it once or twice, but even back then the story didn’t catch me in the slightest. Nothing about the story of an uneducated, naive, thirteen year old boy who grew up with racism deeply engrained in his brain interests me. He never comes to the conclusion that by helping Jim, his african-american slave, he could do something good. In that way I don’t see how this is an anti-racist book, as many scholars claim. Is the average reader supposed to catch onto the subtle hints? Especially the young ones, the kids? I doubt it. 

In the end, Huckleberry Finn doesn’t even really stand out as the good guy, because as it turns out, Jim was free all along. So what is that telling us? Racism will solve itself, if all the racists die? We can take immense efforts to help the opressed, but in the end, it’s in the mind of the racist if he stops being one or not? (ok, this passage might have been a little passive agressive, but seriously, was that really the best thing Mark twain could come up with? Was it to not upset his white, southern audience?)

As a non-native speaker, I found it insanely hard, to read some of the passages written due to the dialect that is used. However from a linguistic viewpoint it is an interesting detail that I don’t want to criticize. The more educated characters such as Tom Sawyer speaking a variant closer to the American standard is really well-thought through and probably the reason why I didn’t give this book a plain 1 star rating.

I cannot wrap my head around the fact that instead of finally laying the focus on African-American literature in literary studies, we still mostly talk about the same books written by white men over and over again. While remembering which works had an impact on the development of literature is important, getting stuck on them, and especially treating them as something that they simply are not is not the move academics think it is. It is time to let Huckleberry Finn die.

[dinosaurcharcuterie]

This reminds me of something that was part of my 9th grade geography exam, in Europe.

"How do you maximize yield in agriculture?"

Now, this was a course aimed at 15-yos preparing for a linguistic college degree. Very few of us were expected to go into STEM if we had a say in it. So we got the tl;dr version. Which is this:

1. Plant high yield, pest resistant cultivars in a limited cycle (downside: either tasteless or GMO, low variety, not popular on the market)

2. Minimize fallow land through chemical additives (downside: not sustainable, environmentally damaging, illegal in certain countries)

3. Use more land. (Downside: limited commodity; other areas have to be cleared of either nature, industry or people, each generally with negative consequences; hard to maintain large areas efficiently)

4. Micro manage your available land: switch crops based on changing climate and soil composition, use crops and cattle on same land at different times to minimize nutrient loss, inspect everything frequently and only use fertilizers, pesticides or herbicides when and where they are needed (downside: labor and time intensive, requires expert knowledge and often specialist tools, risk of financial losses when switching crops)

I grew up in Belgium, so 3 was out, 2 had just been strictly regulated and 1 was only partially legal. The counter-examples were small scale African farmers being forced to rely heavily on 1 and 2, and 4 being attempted, but generally not financially feasible.

The other one was the US.

You know those online jokes where it's like "we drove through [state] and only saw corn fields for 8 hours"? We got given statistics on a large North American farm vs. a large European farm vs. a large African farm. The latter two had some differences in scale, but generally still numbers you could wrap your head around, and surprisingly similar yield efficiencies.

The US... Nope. Farmers rotating less than 5 crops. Yield efficiency in the toilet when compared to other countries. Farms so big that even our soft, vocab memorizing brains realized you can't respond to a localized outbreak of a pest or a fungus or disease early, because you can't inspect something of that scale. How do you do that?

Our teacher told us, aerial photography. If that's accurate, no idea, but idk what the alternative would be.

Yeah, we hummed. But.. by the time you see that, you've got a bigger area covered. How do you treat that, check the potentially afflicted surrounding area, and make sure you didn't track it into the rest of your fields (with 1 cultivar of 1 crop) so you still had some produce not covered in poison?

Answer: you don't. You nuke every bit of land you own with whatever poison can stop the spread. Some of it will wash off, but even if it doesn't, you'll still be able to sell a harvest to someone, even if it's not the highest bidder (i.e. for unprocessed human consumption).

Same with fertilizer. Easier to overfertilize than to risk some plants not sprouting. It'll make for weak stems and flavorless fruit in some, but at least you'll have fruit. Some farmland in the US isn't the best place to farm the crops that are in demand, but switching its use might be more financially devastating than just chemically making up the difference.

There's too little specialized labor or counsel willing to work for the wages that keep US for prices so low, so even if you didn't have to change machines or storage buildings or processing infrastructure, you probably still can't afford to switch to a more resource efficient or varied model if you want to remain competitive in the market.

American agriculture (according to what I was taught in school, which I realize might be dated or biased information, except recent news of actual American farmers describing their jobs suggests is still fairly relevant) has been forced into a production line model with low priorities for quality control, and will only change if there's a critical shortage of farmers, labor or arable land, which cannot be made up by importing food.

Back then, the estimate was the land would run out first.

Learning about edible plants (and eating them) has given me a lot of insight into the problems with the USAmerican food system

It's incredible how a supermarket gives you the sense of being surrounded by immense variety, but it's just the visual noise of advertising. In reality almost everything around you is just corn, wheat, soy, and milk, repackaged and recombined and concealed and re-flavored using additives, over and over and over again.

[nishigo]

growing. // razor headcanons & writing. // chapter three.

a book titled “growing.”

[ c h a p t e r 3 : simple love. ]

the synopsis reads: razor and the dear reader have gotten themselves into quite the mess. miscommunications and raised voices lead to an argument that was more heated than a flaming flower. although healing takes time, could a wound this large be repaired?

authors note: tada! welcome to the last chapter of this short and sweet book that has been created. this one is more stuffed with more fluff than the last and lots of smooches. razor deserves the best, after all. after you finish, put the book back properly on the shelf, okay, traveler? that way it’s easier for people to find it. (or yourself, if you desire.) i, hao, the librarian and timekeeper, thank you in advance. now, have fun with this last chapter of the book. ╰(*´︶`*)╯♡

word count: 1,564 words.

tw: lots of fluff. so much so it could give you a toothache. and kisses as well. a bit of crying in the beginning, but that is all.

request status at time of posting: open.

[ chapter one. ] [ chapter two. ] [ chapter three. ] 

in which there is reconciliation and a bright future planned out underneath a doorway, the moon and stars being the only witness.

would you like to read?

＞　行｡ ( y e s )

＞　不行 。( n o )

------

it would be about three days before you happened to enter mondstadt again.

frankly, you were only in the area because you were passing by, and you were trying to do it as quickly as possible.

after lisa would get her plants and such, you were off again to the inn and then to take up another mission granted to you in the morning.

though, despite the mission you ended up taking solo, you couldn’t stop thinking about that terrible night with razor.

you couldn’t bear the thought of seeing him again, knowing that most likely, you’d end up in tears again.

you couldn’t have waterfalls pouring out of your eyes in front of someone that meant so much to you.

but fate seemed to be pushing its luck, and the stars were aligning just for the two of you.

you and razor stared at each other for a moment, as if the other was an apparition and they were dreaming. his rough, calloused hands took a hold of one of your own gentle ones.

no, this was real alright.

the two of you were both afraid to make the first move, but once more, razor used his instinct to initiate what he thought was needed.

his strong arms wrapped around your neck, nuzzling into the soft skin.

you felt so warm.

you felt cozy.

you felt like home.

course, you were caught off guard, and as much as your brain told you to pull away, you heard him whisper into your ear.

“i missed you.”

and then the walls came tumbling down.

your previous attitude towards him was diminished, and you were back to where you started.

you were still in love. and now, he knew he was as well.

Razor pulled away, and for the first time, you were able to take in much more detail than what you had initially seen. There were tired bags under his eyes, his face worn out, as if he had not been able to sleep for weeks. His silver hair was a mess under his hood and his voice was much quieter, as if he was stepping on eggshells while determining how to make his next move. You gently reached out, cupping his cheek with that gentle, comforting smile you always wore.

His body shook as he suddenly felt as if his insides were collapsing. He felt his face grow hot with tears that ran down his pale skin, over his scar, and down onto the tiled floor. He felt so guilty for what he had done to you that he was terrified that you would seek vengeance. Or that you would leave. The latter was much more terrifying, as he hated when you were gone for a few days, how could he handle not seeing you for the rest of his life? Seeing your hands raise up, he braced for impact of a harsh hit to the face with his eyes squeezing shut.

“Shhh, Razor...it’s okay.” You murmured softly as he felt two soft hands delicately cup his face. Your thumbs would run along his smooth skin, wiping away the tears that continued to flow down. Your own eyes would water, but by the grace of the stars, you were able to keep somewhat of a composure. He opened his eyes just barely, enough to see you again at least. Confused by the look he was giving you, you began to carefully let go and put your hands down before he grabbed your wrists in a swift motion. Back they went to his face, and back you went to wiping his tears and simply holding his head in the doorway.

“Y/-Y/N. I am s-sorry. I h-hurt you. Didn’t m-mean to, just n-no know what l-love was.” Razor managed to choke out through staggered breaths and hiccups. You kept up your affection, smiling gently as you let one hand go of his cheek.

“Don’t worry about it. I shouldn’t have run off so fast and had more patience with you. I’m sorry myself.`` To calm him down further, you hesitantly lifted a hand and ran it through his silver locks. Razor froze for a moment, but he relaxed further into your touch as he tilted his head more towards the hand, similar to that of what a cat would do. Silence ran its course as you two slowly began to heal from the wounds of that night.

“I love you.” He stated simply. It almost slipped your mind as you continued to play with his hair and cup his cheek, but you did a double take as you stared at him.

“You...you what?”

“I love you.” Razor repeated again, a bit louder this time in case you couldn’t hear him or something of the sort. You were about to ask him if he was joking, but his face held a serious look to them as it dawned on you. He really meant it. Granted, it was the most simple, basic way to confess feelings back towards a person, but you didn’t mind. It was what made him charming and attractive to you anyways.

“Why do you love me?” Razor paused to think about it, deep in thought as he did his best to string the words Lisa recently taught him together into something worth remembering.

“Simple, love. Love is a person, like how mate is a being. Therefore, you are love. Warm, safe, kind. Easy to be vulnerable and be...Razor. Guard down.” He explained to you with a sweet look on his features. Despite his limited vocabulary, you were deeply touched. He took the time to think and make sure his point was clearly mentioned. Razor grinned happily as he tilted his head at you. The air was light again, the heavy feeling replaced with his heart being ecstatic as he didn’t have to even say anything else. He could feel how happy you became from hearing what he said. It was good he could sense your happiness, because you were left speechless.

“Be my love? Please?” Razor asked quietly as you continued your silent streak. Since you were at a loss for words, and because you knew his love language was physical touch, you decided to show rather than tell. Your hand that was on his cheek trailed down his face and found its place wrapped around his hips. Then, with one swoop, you pulled him in closer to you and gently collided your lips with his.

It was if a supernova had exploded inside of his chest. The feeling was forgein, unfamiliar. Perhaps this technique of two lips put together was a human tradition he had yet to learn. He didn’t know what to do, so he mimicked you a bit. He opened his eyes slightly and then watched as you leaned in. He would then mirror the action for a few seconds before you pulled away. He knew that whatever you had just done to him was a way of saying yes. He just knew, and he loved it. The affection and having your full attention was all he could ever ask for. In fact, Razor found himself wanting more as he cutely pouted.

“More please?” You laughed, covering your mouth a bit as you nodded your head and cupped his cheeks again. You peppered your kisses all over his face: on his forehead, nose, temple, chin, the corners of his lips. Razor huffed adorably as he shook his head, pointing at his lips.

“You miss! I want here, love!” Razor whined, though, his complaining was stopped as you kissed his lips again. He melted in your hold, and there was no better feeling in the whole world. The boy would pull away this time, panting softly as he curiously touched his lips with his hands. It was amazing every time he received them, and he knew that he would never grow tired of them. Perhaps you could give him lessons, he thought. Then he would become an expert! Yes, that sounded like a plan. But that would come at a later date.

For now, he wanted to spend the night with you in his arms again.

------

some extra things i’ve thought of:

he would have totally dragged you into the guest bedroom where he was staying and given you a bunch of grass and flowers he had arranged.

(“give her a gift she will appreciate, something from nature!” was what lisa suggested.)

the roots were still there, along with heaps of dirt, but you found it endearing nonetheless as you laughed and accepted them.

he also got you chocolate covered strawberries! he had made them with klee (a mistake on lisa’s part, she will never let those two in the same room unsupervised again, especially not a kitchen.)

he would make it up to you by practicing how to formulate sentences under the bright sun in wolvendom.

you would reward him with kisses or headpats, so he worked extra hard in order to improve his linguistic skills.

because of being a bit traumatized from being seperated from you for so long, he gets a bit of separation anxiety when you leave him for too long. he’ll do missions or even go shopping with you just to ease himself down.

also hold his hand :(((

or any words of affirmation will do , he loves both when they come from you :))

[aubreyprc]

good for you

part five of my sour series

follow up to traitor

request by @emilyprsntiss who wanted a second part to traitor surrounding the lyrics below<3

Well, good for you, you look happy and healthy, not me

If you ever cared to ask

Good for you, you're doin' great out there without me, baby

God, I wish that I could do that

ao3

-

Their lives take different turns the moment she walks away from him on that rainy night in December, watching him walk away, his fiancé wrapped in his arms as their laughs attack her ears.

Emily goes back to Yale, continues down the self destructive path she was on before she even met Aaron, yet this time carries with her memories of what could have been and a broken heart she isn’t sure will ever mend. She spends her days wrapped up in her covers, engulfed in the darkness of her bedroom nursing both a hangover and a shattered heart. She spends her afternoons forcing herself to go to class, just to sit in the back row and let her mind wander back to the summer, to him. Then spends her nights doing her best to forget, a string of drinks she doesn’t pay for and names she won’t remember following behind her. And while Emily struggles to put herself back together in the wake of loving and loosing the only man she tells herself she will ever let herself feel for so strongly for again, Aaron moves in with Haley, into a home she declares their family home and he smiles, kisses her on the doorstep and laughs when she pulls him through the door all while pretends he doesn’t feel as though a part of himself is missing.

While Aaron gets married, his heart so full of love and joy while he and his new wife share their vows, while they have their first dance, his happiness overflowing in his chest as they spend their first night together as husband and wife, Emily is recruited into the CIA, her expertise in linguists catching their eye as they look for someone to take the last place in their plan to catch The Valhalla.

While Aaron gets his job at the FBI, heads out of the city for his first case with a smile on his face, Emily joins a task force, meets her new team and learns of an international terrorist group who they plan to catch.

When Aaron takes over as Unit Chief, shaking the hands of Erin Strauss as she explains the responsibility that comes with the job, Emily smiles as she takes the hand of Ian Doyle, french words falling off her tongue with ease as she introduces herself as Lauren.

While Aaron kisses the happy smile on Haley’s face, his own smiling poking through as he places his hand on her still flat stomach, the words I’m pregnant still ringing in his ears, Emily stands on the balcony of a house in Tuscany, smiling when arms wrap around her waist and lips kiss her neck as she tells herself that she isn’t in love with him and tries to ignore the flashes of a life she once had, when she was just Emily, a summer that feels like a lifetime ago when soft hands were on her body instead of rough ones, when her name was whispered into her ear instead of Lauren in the dead of the night. When she wasn’t in too deep with a terrorist who could and would kill her without a second thought if she makes one mistake. She finds herself missing Emily, the naïve girl who just wanted to love and be loved but was too scared to accept it.

While Jack makes his entrance known with a high pitched cry, while Aaron kisses his wife’s head as they see their son for the first time, when a little hand wraps around his finger and his heart burst with so much love he thinks it could kill him, Emily is pushed into the back of a car and drove out of town, before she is met with Clyde and the words Its over start being said to her repeatedly before she nods, walking straight past them and towards the hotel room, ignoring the calls of her name. The calls of Emily, she doesn’t know it she’s ignoring them because she can’t talk to them or if she’s ignoring them because that name their shouting is foreign to her now, two years of being called Lauren programmed into her brain. It turns out to be the latter when she’s put into mandatory therapy and they call her name four times before Tsia taps her shoulder, signalling that it was her they were calling, the beckons of Emily landing on deaf ears.

While Aaron soothes his son to sleep, whispering soft words as he cradles the new born in his arms, Emily dyes her hair back to black, cuts it short and forces herself to remember Emily, but she’s looking in the mirror and hating the woman staring back, feeling a stranger in her own skin.

While Aaron watches Elle walk out of the BAU for the last time, Emily forces herself to not react when Erin Strauss offers her a job in the unit, trying her best to not make it obvious that she flinches every time the words Agent Hotchner fall from her mouth. She shakes the woman’s hand, accepting the offer to start the following week and heads out of the office, walking straight past Aaron, neither catching the others eyes as they stare at the floor, missing each other completely.

Seeing her again takes the air out of his lungs as he stands up, a whisper of her name leaving his lips as she stands in front of him, he holds out his hand for her to take and as she does his whole body sets on fire, catching her eyes for the first time in ten years as a small smile rests on her face. His heart hammers in his chest as he looks through the paperwork, confusion written all over his face as he realises she was in fact part of the BAU despite the fact he wasn’t made aware of it and yet still, the thought of being around her everyday made it almost hard to breath, so he ignores the hurt look on her face, apologies and leaves the room, the feeling of her eyes on his back making his skin crawl as he clenches his fist, the feeling of her skin burnt into his.

Listening to her profile their latest killer has him beaming with pride, even as he held a stoic face, proud that after all these years she really had made something of herself, just like he knew she always would and he couldn’t help but be more proud of her. He wonders how she got to where she was, how she knows what she knows after being in counter terrorism for so long but he lets it go, accepting her into the unit and watching with hesitation as she heads off with Gideon and Reid.

They don’t talk about their past, they don’t act like they know each other and they certainly don’t act like they were once in love. They act like strangers because they have to. Because it’s easier. Because he’s married and he can’t allow himself to think about her like that again, about their summer ten years ago or about how deep she rests in his heart even though he pretends she doesn’t. She can’t let herself remember how in love with him she once was, scared that she’ll fall right back into it, knowing all too well that she never truly got over him. Over them.

She watches with a heavy heart, swallowing the lump in her throat and exhaling a shaky breath when he walks in, Haley’s hand wrapped in his as she smiles up at him, the two of them laughing at something and she looks away from when just as quick as she sees them, clearing her throat and grabbing her glass, tensing her body when she feel Haley take a seat next to her, fakes a smile when she holds her hand out and shakes it, trying to slow down her heart with slow breathes as the organ beats rapidly against her lungs.

“Haley.” The blonde woman introduces, and it takes all of Emily to smile and not bite I know at her.

“Emily,” She replies, “Nice too meet you.”

“You look familiar….Have we met?” Haley asks her innocently and she sees Aaron clench his fists, can feel his eyes burning into hers as she smiles at Haley. She could easily explain. Easily say yes, we have, Aaron was dating me when he started seeing you. She could, and ten years ago she would have, but instead, she shakes her head.

“No, I don’t think so.” Emily smiles, “I must have one of those faces.”

She sees Aaron visibly react, a sigh of relief falling from his chest as he grabs his drink, placing a hand on the back of Haley’s back before he meets her eyes, a thank you written in them and she nods, looking away and turning to Penelope, laughing as the woman discusses Morgan, grateful for the distraction.

She’s standing at the bar, sipping her wine as she watches Aaron and Haley, glaring at them as they smile, before quickly shifting her eyes from them as he looks in her direction. She feels him walking towards her before she hears him and once she’s stood next to her, she closes her eyes, shaking her head.

“I’m not doing this.” She tells him, “I’ve left you alone, I told Haley what she needed to hear and…I’m not doing this.”

“We need to talk, Emily. We can act like strangers forever.”

“But we are aren’t we?” She questions, looking at him, “Strangers?”

“No.” He tells her, “You could never been a stranger me.”

“Aaron,” She sighs, closing her eyes as she looks to the floor. “I’ve left you alone, I’ve been professional and-”

“I know.” He says, “But sooner or later we are going to have to talk about us. About what happened. You can’t hate me forever. Not if we’re going to work together.”

“I don’t hate you.” She whispers, looking at him sadly, “I hate what you did, but I don’t hate you.”

He’s silent, looking right back at her, before he smiles.

“Please can we talk?"

“What’s there to talk about?” She questions, and he sighs. Emily looks to the floor and shakes her head.

“Us, our past, what happened- We need to talk about this."

“What do you want want me, Aaron?” She asks, “A congratulations? A Good for you?” She laughs, “Good for you, Aaron, you got everything you wanted, but what about me? I don’t want to talk about it. I was the one who got left with nothing and I was the one who got their heart broken so no, we can’t talk.”

“Emily-”

“You got married. You started a family.” She tells him, lifting her head “And that’s great, it’s what you wanted.” She smiles, “You’re happy and that’s all I want for you, but…please. Please don’t ask me to talk about it, or us or about what we had. It was ten years ago, you’ve moved on and I’ve-” She stops, laughing, “I wanted this job, Aaron. I got offered this job and I couldn’t turn it down, but…you were never supposed to be in my life again, you were supposed to be the person I bitch about with friends and continue to hate for what you did to me for the rest of my life, but I don’t get that now. Instead I get to watch you smile at your wife and listen to you talk about your son all day everyday and it’s hell, it’s hell but I do it, I do it because I have to, so, I’m asking, no, I’m begging you to let me be.” She says, tears threatening to fall from her eyes as she looks at him, “I don’t want to talk to you about us or about anything that isn’t work related and I certainly don’t want to sit next to the woman you cheated on me with and I do not want to hear about how great your life is. Okay?” She sighs, a weight lifted of her shoulders as she finally lets out everything she’s held in for the last month.

He clears his throat, holding back his own tears as he nods.

“Okay,” He accepts, “I am sorry, Emily. For everything. If I could change it-”

“Don’t say something you don’t mean, Hotch.” She smiles sadly, the sound of his shorted last name coming from her mouth feeling like a stab to the chest, “I can’t do this with you right now. Do you know how much I wish that this didn’t bother me?” She laughs, “How much I wish I could do what you did and just move on and act like we never happened?”

“I never-”

“Stop.” She tells him, “Just stop.” She looks around the bar, noticing how Haley was watching them before looking away as she caught Emily’s eye.

“It won’t be like this forever. And maybe we can be friends but just not right now. I cant do this with you right now.”

“Okay.” He smiles, “I’ll leave you be.”

“Thank you.” She sighs, “You’re wife is looking at us, maybe you should…”

“Yeah…” He whispers, before smiling at her, before watching her turn and walk off.

With a deep breath, he shakes off his feelings and heads back to his wife, kissing her on the head as she smiles.

“You and Emily seem close.”

“I worked for her mother, back when I first started in the FBI.”

“She’s the woman from the Christmas party?” Haley asks, lacing her fingers through his.

“Hm?” He questions, and she shakes her head, smiling.

“Nothing,” She lies, before turning to look at Emily, her mind flashing back to the young dark haired woman who’d stormed past her all those years ago.

fin

[wodenscild]

i am back from gym with a story!

Soo gym is the worst for me cause ehh well it's cool and all but the changing rooms? Like i know i have to use the girl changing room but i don't wanna >:( transgender problems. Also i got blamed for yeeting wet toilet paper to the walls and like- i didn't do that? I just want to get out of there as soon as possible i don't have time to mess with it

Yeah i probarly will choose art but i hope i can continue my own style since most schools here only teach realism and my art style is more cartoon/anime-ish, but for art we don't only get painting and drawing. We also get pottery (Wich we take a different class for but eh, it's art) thingys with wood and metal, perspective drawing and so much more!

ALSO MATE YOU ARE FRIGGIN WHOLESOME I MIGHT EVEN GET AN EGO IF YOU KEEP GOING LIKE THIS like I'm about to cry /pos

Hold up people are invading my personal space gotta move-

Alrighty so about the lake- the coots are banning the ducks, like what can't they just each take half it's a big lake- I'll try to get frog to send you a picture of the lake it's really pretty. People here don't appreciate nature enough

I ran further over the border but the path stops cuz there's a house and i cant go around it cause well- did you know most of the Netherlands is rivers and swamp? Yeah pretty hard to get around, imma try to climb in a tree next week-

What's also funny about time is that it's different days around the globe, and uhh some countries can't agree on what year it is- some say 2022 others 2021 others 2020... like now even i don't know what year it is why can't people stop making it complicated!

So for me it's Friday Wich means almost weekend Wich means free time and drawing :D what day is it over there is Australia? Ofc i could Google it but it's more fun talking to you.

Mystery anon 2 is coming over today and uhh idk if she is gonna sign ask as mystery anon 2 or a diff name. Or not sign at all that's also possible

For the mystery anon saga here's some info about me to make it a lil' easier since there's now 2 of us hehe >:D

I am transgender boy, i like drawing and uhh I use achohol markers to colour... I do not have a brain according to mystery 2 and my hair is green :D (well actually it's almost brown again but i will dye it blue when it's fully gone, so for now green)

And who knows i might just tell you straight up, but not now i haven't gathered enough confidence.

I'm sending many hugs and cookies from here :D take care <3

-Mystery anon 1

(i will delete the 1 if mystery 2 decides to sign differently)

Oof I relate :(( changing rooms are just- well the worse >.< it is compulsory for us here to learn to swim from Years 3-8, so we go to the local pools & THE CHANGING AREAS IS JUST LIKE A ROOM WITH A BENCH THAT WRAPS AROUND THE WALLS & THERE IS NO PRIVACY & I HATED IT SO MUCH- & for some reason we weren’t allowed to get changed in the cubicals? So I would just put my school uniform over my swimmers before & after the pool Cos like hell I am getting changed in those situations- it is hot here anyway so I’ll be dry eventually anyway XD Being trans can be so fun sometimes ^~^

& :000 I see! You ought to ask Transfrogmer to send some of your work some time! I would love to see!! There is a weird sorta stigma against things that aren’t a “traditional” style in schools? It is really weird & quite sucky cos just imagine all the wacky things schools could output!! But with all of the other mediums to work with I bet you are pretty excited!

I am a bit giddy for the same with my linguistics >.< I am planning on taking most of the units as part of electives. As I have said next trimester I am starting up doing study of orthographies. Next year I taking a study on indigenous Australian languages, sociologistic, language ecology, morphology & syntax! & the year after I am taking studies in communicating in culturally diverse contexts, semantics, pragmatics, phonetics, phonology, something about the evolution of English, & hopefully some work experience at a language centre! Aldfkkskds it is a lot of great fun

By the by- GOOD!! GET AN EGO!! I got one & I have been feeling pretty uppety ever since >:3 you deserve the power of self love. & by Wōden I swear I will give you enough complements to develop a self perpetuating cycle of happiness within yourself!

I did not know that about the Netherlands! Tbh I don’t know much about it before!! Just the general memes about y’all’s hating water & loving bikes ToT but YES GO CLIMB A TREE THAT IS THE BEST!!but please send me a photo of the lake :D it sounds beautiful! But it is upsetting that people take these things for granted :”(

BRUH TIME IS JUST WEIRD BUT I THINK IT IS GREAT!! On one hand it is confusing, but on the other, YES FIGHT GLOBAL NORMS & DO WHAT WORKS BEST FOR YOU DEAR HEARTS!!

& indeed it is now the weekend ^~^ as I am typing this it has just clocked over to Saturday for me! & other than watching Spy x Family with a friend & working on Sunday I have nothing on <33 so I am so !!!

& that is all good! I am excited to get to speak with her! She can sign off in any way she wants!! But :000 green hair!!!!! That is so cool!! Before I went black I was actually considering going green myself but alas work uniform policy 😔 also trans friend <33 I hope you have good friends there that help give you support!

Just take your time, there is no pressure to reveal yourself :] Hugs & cookies received & I am gonna get some sleep now! I hope you have a good one beloved!!

(^You btw /a /pos)

[thelittlebirdthattoldyou]

how iwaoi refer to each other

my brain is dead and if i try to write fic rn i just know it won’t be coherent so have these dumb headcanons instead.

what iwaizumi calls oikawa

oikawa

when they're in front of other people, he just calls oiks by his last name

iwa isn't huge on pda (though he puts up with it from oikawa because he's sOFT for him) so he doesn't feel the need to stake a claim on oikawa in public with cutesy nicknames or whatever

he's not gonna admit it but he already knows oikawa belongs to him & vice versa so,, what's the point?

also he doesn't need to be mocked by hanamaki or matsukawa for being a sap, thanks.

shittykawa/trashykawa/crappykawa/loserkawa/assikawa/dumbass...yeah

ok i feel like iwaizumi doesn't use these insults super often, especially when they get older and more settled in their relationship

it mostly happens when he gets mad that oiks is being negative or self-deprecating or overworking himself again

sometimes he uses them teasingly when oikawa's being a brat on purpose, but he always sounds so affectionate that oikawa can't even bring himself to be offended

doesn't really use them in front of other people just because he'll fight anyone who dares to laugh when he says them. he's the only one who can insult oiks and get away with it!!

tooru

saved for intimate domestic moments, when it's just the two of them

oikawa LOVES it when they're staying home and cooking breakfast or something and iwaizumi calls him tooru without thinking twice about it (”tooru, can you pass me the salt?” or “hey, tooru, wanna go see that new movie that’s in theaters today?”)

he just says it so casually but it feels so right and oikawa melts every time

iwa loves saying it because it sounds so sweet and full on his tongue, and he thinks it suits oikawa so well

((iwaizumi loves oikawa, but he has to share him with the rest of the world. he loves that he gets tooru all to himself.))

babe/baby

similar deal. i like to think that iwa alternates between this & tooru.

happens more often when iwa isn’t fully awake

iwa likes to wrap his arms around oikawa and bury his face into his neck and mumble “g’morning, baby” with his voice still hoarse from sleep

oikawa literally can’t handle it. he combusts. it’s his favorite part of the day even though he refuses to admit it

once it slipped out in the middle of practice (iwa may have been distracted by oikawa’s smile after landing a perfect jump-serve, shut up) and matsuhana would not let it go for DAYS.

every time they saw oikawa they would be like “hey captain - oh wait, i mean babe” until iwa threatened to hurt them if they didn’t stop

pretty boy

shhhhhh let me have this

the first time it happened was on accident because iwa was just trying to make fun of oikawa

he wasn’t expecting oiks to go bright red and speechless when he said it, but it was SO funny

now he says it to tease oikawa whenever he needs to be taken down a peg. he’ll never get tired of seeing his usually polished, in-control boyfriend become a flushed, stuttering mess

oiks has no idea why it has such a big effect on him?? he knows he’s attractive & he hears it all the time from his admirers, but it’s so different to hear iwa-chan, of all people, calling him pretty.

what oikawa calls iwaizumi

iwa-chan

i couldn’t think of as many things for oiks to call iwa because iwa-chan basically covers it all??

no one else is allowed to call iwaizumi “iwa-chan,” just like no one else is allowed to call oikawa “shittykawa.”

tbh iwaizumi isn’t even sure oikawa remembers what his actual last name is at this point

whenever he hears it, iwaizumi is reminded of humid august nights catching fireflies & failed volleyball tosses in the park & sharing futons until they grew too big to fit.

it makes him think of their childhood, of growing up together, of each being the other’s first love, first everything.

they learned to love together & oikawa has changed so much, but at the same time he hasn’t, and when iwaizumi lets himself think about it he gets emotional

so he usually doesn’t think about it and just lobs a ball at oikawa’s head and tells him to shut up LMAO

hajime

oikawa probably uses iwa’s first name less often than iwa uses his

not because he doesn’t want to or because he’s uncomfortable with it, he just thinks it’s special (iwa-chan never let me call him by his first name when we were kids!) and he wants to make it special whenever he says it

iwa makes fun of him for being sentimental, but he adores the thought oiks puts into it, and he falls HARD whenever oikawa does say it.

again, it usually happens in private

oikawa will whisper it into the space between their bodies when they’re curled up together, ready for bed

he’ll say it like a prayer, hushed and reverential, because he can’t believe iwaizumi has stayed by his side, has chosen him and chosen him over and over again, all this time.

and then iwa kisses him, as if to say of course, you idiot, i’ll always choose you, and oikawa murmurs hajime, hajime, hajime into the kiss.

oh also he knows how much iwa likes when he says it & he’ll definitely use that to his advantage when he wants attention

manga spoilers under the cut!

mi cariño/mi corazón/mi amor/etc.

listen, oikawa speaking spanish to iwaizumi makes me hyperventilate

as soon as this boy knew he was moving to argentina, he went and looked up all the spanish pet names he could because he wanted to fluster iwa as much as iwa flustered him

for a solid month he was walking around san juan not knowing how to ask for directions when he got lost, but at least he knew how to say “you’re the light of my life and i love you.”

he’s also 10000000x flirtier in spanish than he is in japanese which was a surprise to everyone, including iwa, because no one really thought he could get any worse.

iwa has no idea what oiks is saying half the time, but he likes the way he says it

oiks, on the other hand, is glad iwa can’t understand him because it gives him an excuse to say as much sappy shit as he wants

picture him,, like,, kissing iwa's hand and putting it over his heart and calling him mi corazón

some linguistic liberties taken <//3 i don't speak japanese

k i'm gonna go cry over them for the next hour or two so that's all for now ♡♡

[simaraknows]

@tauremornalome tagged me in smth so I have risen from the dead.

The rules: List the first lines of your last 20 stories (if you have less than 20, just list them all!). See if there are any patterns. Choose your favorite opening line.

To make this easier I'll go for last 20 published fics rather than overall written stories, otherwise I'd instantly loose track.

Counting backwards:

20. Lesser Passions

The huge fur coat should have looked ridiculous, really, but on Elias, wrapped tightly around his bony shoulder, it regained an almost redeeming, old-fashioned charm.

19. Unfavourable

His leg was almost completely healed when they brought him into Wilde's make-shift office and the muzzle had been removed, for now.

18. Linguistics

Carter wasn't sure how it had started.

17. Kiss and Tell

“He doesn’t kiss me when he’s sober."

16. Not very sensible either

Peter paused in the doorway to his old childhood room.

15. Bedtime Brew

Peter poked his head out from the kitchen.

14. Sky High

Peter was 14 years old when Conrad got married.

13. Sleeping Beauty

Elias had once read an article about a woman with narcolepsy

12. Hurts so good

Martin almost dropped the kettle when Peter materialized before him.

11. Family Values

They made port around 7pm.

10. The Vessel

Martin stared at Peter, waiting for the punch-line.

9. Thee Kisses

“Just ask him out already.”

8. All alone and a-lowly

Peter wasn’t too thrilled at the prospect of having to play messenger.

7. Happy all the Time

His brain had always been a little glitchy and oh that’s just funny, isn’t it?

6. And all is well

“I need some fresh air.

5. Changing Tides

Oswald had been one of the first rogues to take him seriously and they had soon evolved from lucrative business partners to actual friends.

4. Indebted

Christopher Drawlight was not a particularly well liked man.

3. Kindness Repaid

There was something fascinating in watching Jonathan eat.

2. House Call

Don’t you fret

My little pet

We’re off to see the doctor

And if this doctor isn’t in

We’ll have to find another.

1. Arts and Crafts

Edward did not stare at the green crayons and didn’t have the urge to take one of them either.

Observations

Well the pattern certainly is that I apparently have a tendency to start with a characters first name (11/20, damn). I also have a thing for jumping into stories during the middle of a conversation or similar in media res shenanigans, which is less surprising.

Faverouite line... oh this is hard. I suppose it’s from The Vessel aka The Platonic Fear Orgy (“Martin stared at Peter, waiting for the punch-line”). I like the way it throws you right into the conversation without knowing what exactly has been said but understanding fully how exasperated Martin feels. Which is your faverouite, squad? (Also wtf is up with this new tumblr design, I’ve only been gone for a year or so when did this happen? lol)

Anyway, tagging whoever is still following me despite the fact that i’m mostly awol atm. Hit me with those opening lines y’all.

[mintchocohip]

Hi love, would it be alright if I requested an overstimulation oneshot with Joonie? Thanks a lot

➤ pairing: namjoon x reader | wordcount: 2.5k

➤ kink: light overstimulation, vocal!joonie

➤ notes: is namjoon a sub in this fic? possibly. first-time-together pwp and light fluff! 

“Don’t stop,” your gasp hiccups—you can sense that there’s one final pulse filling the hastily rummaged-for condom through Namjoon’s instant, amazed silence—“keep going. Don’t stop.” The man on top of you manages a long, slow, instinctual finishing thrust. “Don’t stop.”

The wait is excruciating.

You slit your eyes open to watch Namjoon’s stupid bliss fade. He’s a silhouette. Night dropped fast. Eyelids shake in the dim light; blue is curving around his face to suggest soft features. His brows lower. Namjoon closes his flushed, parted lips. He’s close enough to pull down into a kiss. You’re too hypnotized by the sparkle on his teeth and the impression that his cheeks must be rosy to try. 

Beams of pink and purple sunset colored your neighbor’s apartment doorway a few hard, fast minutes ago. Namjoon realized he was staring at your lips after conversation about his university linguistics courses petered into silence. He snapped his eyes up. You smiled. Namjoon swallowed nervously, but his breath was heavy with intrigue when he started to lean in before quickly glancing up to check your expression. It’s cute that he got so embarrassed when you showed him you want the same thing.  

Everything in this bedroom full of succulents and laden bookshelves is glowing with slivers of blue hour that have managed to filter in behind light-blocking curtains. It feels like a dream. You fix a tighter grasp onto the back of Namjoon’s neck and brush some of the damp hair off his slicked forehead.  

You aren’t impatient. The hand on the back of his neck is still gripped down firmly. Your legs are wrapped around his hips. You can wait for him to regain his composure.  

“Come on, baby,” you try not to exhale it through grit teeth when you wait, and wait, and nothing is happening—“come on. Keep going. Don’t stop. I'm close. Give me more.” 

Namjoon’s elbow dropped to the side when he started to gasp. You wanted to savor those beautiful noises. He was so quiet up until that precious moment. Despite your attempts to collect yourself enough to speak and tell him to stay inside convincing yourself that it was better to whisper “come for me, baby. Get loud for me—” was instantaneous as soon as you heard the faintest rasp of a moan. 

Luckily, Namjoon isn’t moving. The hand planted on the back of his neck stays firm. Your other hand strokes his temple. You’re curling a devious smile at him and hoping he sees it as his eyes start to open.

“Fuck,” you laugh when an attempt to pet his naked shoulder instantly slicks your hand down onto his bicep, “you sweat a lot.” You pull your knees in to give yourself a cloudy rush of weak-muscled thighs and warmth falling up your body—and to remind Namjoon you’re locked around him.

“Sorry.” Namjoon blinks hard and shakes his head like he just realized where he is. “Yeah. Sorry. If I. Uh. Dripped. On you.” It’s a mild summer night. The A/C in his room is equally tepid.

“I love the sweat. I really love it.”

“Oh.” Namjoon glances down to check out his shimmery chest. “Thanks.” Clarity is spreading over his features. Light shines over his eyes as he searches the darkness. 

“Don’t stop. I’m close.” 

“Don’t stop?”

“You heard me. I must’ve said it ten times, baby.” 

Namjoon’s eyebrows furrow down and he swallows hard like he’s trying to understand what you’re saying.  

“Sorry. I didn’t hear. Okay. One second. Just need to. Um.”

“Want to stop?”

“No.” 

“Thirsty?”

“No.”

“Does it hurt too much for you? Doing it like this? You can use your fingers instead.”

“Um. One second.”

Pressure shifts. A satisfied gasp drops your head back into the mattress.

“Fuck—” The world was already lifted, but as Namjoon lifts himself up and readjusts his position in an awkward shuffle of limbs it rises higher. “Good, baby. Don’t stop,” you claw the nape of his hair when you feel his—shockingly liquid; shockingly skilled—hips angle until thighs press fresh against your ass. “Don’t stop. When I say don’t stop,” short, ragged fingernails dig into the back of Namjoon’s neck as a tepid movement inside of you shivers down to your curling toes, “I mean don’t stop. You were fucking me hard before you came.” A growl in your voice is the side-effect of pleasure. And expectation. “You can fuck me hard after. Can’t you?”

A puff of air hits your cheek. It tickles. You want to laugh; you swallow down the urge. If Namjoon needed to exhale a sound of self-encouragement he has every right to.  

“Okay.” Namjoon nods. “Okay.” Springs creak. Namjoon’s breath is rhythmic again, the way it got right before he came—“Shit.” Skin slaps—you suck in a breath and slide your ankles together. 

“Thank you,” your senses are teetering back into the blurs of color you were tasting before Namjoon needed a moment, “good.” The last word is a faint whisper. “Perfect.”

Momentum builds slowly. A faintness in your muscles and a warmth under your skin was almost forgotten; despite the little gasp he just sucked in Namjoon is doing an amazing job of bringing it back for you. 

“Just like that. Just like that. Why is it so big,” you’re grateful he looked sweet and hot apologizing needlessly about his inability to remember where he put his condoms that it made you ache harder until he was ready and asking if his somewhat unwieldy length was in too deep, “good…” you talk nonsense until you lose the will to say something that isn’t fuck—“...you’re still hard, aren’t you? But, even if you weren’t... big enough to stay inside...”

Your eyes open. Namjoon's whole body just shook. Hard. 

Between your own shudder from your chest down to your cunt and a rush of your throaty moans in your ear that sound like a stranger it’s impossible to notice how hoarse and strained Namjoon’s breathing is. You knew you were close, but it feels like he barely had to try. 

“Is that you, or me?” You can’t let yourself question whether or not you just heard Namjoon whimper. Focusing on anything but shutting off your brain isn’t important right now. Still, your mouth gasps out freeforming thoughts before you can shoo them away. “Was that you, baby? A whimper... It sounded so pretty...”

The things you say when you’re about to come are always some stream-of-conscious praise festival. Namjoon must be appreciating it, because he’s finding a new angle and pushing harder.

“You’re really hot,” praise sounds vaguely like a threat now that you’re this close and frustrated by a tantalizing glimpse, “really hot. Fuck. Baby, really... Whenever I saw you. I couldn’t stop thinking about what you looked like naked and tied... up... uh...” you’re glad you just got bowled over by a wave of breathtaking heat. Pleasure tugs your senses out of your body and leaves you with visions of sparks to keep you entertained until you can conceptualize how amazing that just felt.

Starry curtains flutter away slowly. Darkness behind your eyes reveals itself. An aftershock tries to double you over but all it can do while you’re flat on your back is freeze up midway through squeezing Namjoon down onto your body. Fluttering motionless, you hold him, and wait.   

“That was...” You realize your cunt is sharing some of your body’s resources again because you’re ungripping a handful of Namjoon’s back willingly. Your arms drop and you slide your legs out onto the cool sheets. “Good, baby.” You smile consciously. 

A piece of popcorn at the bottom of the bag just popped. Neon orange, and flaring. That’s what it feels like. Namjoon flies off your body and lands with a dry thwip onto the sheets somewhere to your left.

You listen to your laugh fading into a contented sigh. Muffled heat in your ears is clearing away to reveal layers. Namjoon is sucking in slow breaths. Birds have stopped talking outside. Opening your eyes to a black ceiling slashed with grey is a wave of confusion. The blue hour has faded into pure night. You roll your head and glance at the man on the bed next to you. It gives you a broad view of a bedroom that has abandoned shape and the lines of furniture and electronics into a deeper darkness. The headset Namjoon hung on the back of his chair earlier while rummaging through the desk is staring a pinpoint of green light at you.  

A part of the soothing darkness. That’s what you feel like. You were sitting up formless and weightless to crawl over Namjoon and give his shoulder a kiss. The journey pauses. An arm just slid out towards you. Fingertips are pressing against your forearm.

“I’m tired,” Namjoon states.

“Oh. Okay. Not in the mood for cuddles?”

“Cuddles?” Namjoon’s shadowed body turns towards where you’re half-laying, half-sitting on the sheets next to him.

Everything smells like sex. Sex, and linen sheets that’ve been broken in by a few months of hot, sweaty nights.

“Got a problem with that?”

“No. Uh... oh. Sorry. I thought maybe... you wanted to play with my cock or something."

“What,” you groan, “do you think I’m a succubus? We fucked. It was good. I really like you... I’m not going to ask for more than that, baby.” You add an addendum. “Unless you’re a naughty boy. Who needs to get punished.”

“Are... you being serious right now?”

“I...”

You stop.

It’s a bracing moment. You roll what you want to say around in your head. You don’t want Namjoon to get the wrong idea about how you feel. 

This man wandered into the apartment complex in the springtime and instantly lit up the dreary hallways with his pretty face. You were intrigued. Giving him pointers about how frequently the landlady pops in unannounced, the old lady on the second floor who’ll bake special brownies for friends who sit with her and talk about vintage cars, and where to find good dry cleaning in the area was all it took for him to cling to you. 

Sussing if Namjoon’s kinky is important to you. He gives you vibes, sometimes. Kinky vibes. You’re used to people checking out your thighs. Namjoon looks nervous when he glances at your legs. Not like he’s scared—more like he can’t let himself think too hard about what they could do to him. 

“I’m joking.” It’s the best you can manage. 

“You said... you like me?”

You blink hard. And, you give Namjoon a sudden, keen smile.

“Oh. I wasn’t joking about that. I like you a lot.”

Excitation begs you to move and keep yourself busy. You sit up and lean over Namjoon’s body to delicately stroke down the ring of the condom. Namjoon gasps as your fingers brush over the swollen tip of his cock on the downwards journey to free him.

“I really like you, too.”

“Now I want to punish you for making my heart flutter. But... damn.” Reflected light shimmers wet as you tie the condom off in the air above your tits. “You come a lot. Wow.” Before it gets tossed it into shadows welling around the bed you take a moment to squish the condom’s loaded tip between your fingers.

Namjoon sighs hard.

“Sorry,” you laugh.

“I might have come twice. It happens sometimes.”

“Impressive.”

“Nah. It’s just natural for me.”

“Do you think the Amazon rainforest isn’t impressive? Or Niagara falls? Those things are natural, but they’re still impressive.” 

Sliding your thumb over his hip bone, you gaze at Namjoon’s exhaustion while he pulls a hand up through his hair. Damp from his forehead streaks up the roots and into the mess of wisps. 

“It really is just a joke,” you sigh. “The punishment stuff... I kind of wanted to know if you’re into stuff like that, you know. See how you’d respond. Don’t take it seriously. I really do like you.”

“No. It’s fine.” The sweetness in his hushed voice muffles every word. You’ve never heard Namjoon speak this softly. Even if you’re straining to understand him, you aren’t complaining. “If… you’re bored.”

“Bored?”

“You can...”

“Use your words, Namjoon.”

You can’t see it clearly, but you have a feeling Namjoon is shooting a mild glare in your direction.

“What do I want to say,” Namjoon wonders aloud with an exhale of sarcasm. He pets the mattress with his fingertips and rolls his head to the side. Transitioning into sincerity gives his voice a shy twinge. “So. You. Like stuff like that? Making it hurt a little bit?” 

“Yeah.”

“Me, too.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Have you eaten yet?”  

“Oh...” Namjoon swallows hard. Your eyes have adjusted to the light enough to see his dreamy expression break. “No. I forgot.”

“Let’s order takeout.”

“Oh.” Softness in Namjoon’s relaxing shoulders looks a little bit like disappointment. “Sure.”

“We’ll talk about this thing...” You were swimming circles around the urge. Getting sucked into it is a lovely feeling. It’s a weightless movement; he’s warm; not hot, not yet—you slide Namjoon into your hands and give the underhead of his cock a drag with your thumbnail. “...Later.”

The choke is the cutest thing you’ve ever heard. 

Excitement and intrigue surge through your stomach and into your thighs and clear up the air around your head like Namjoon’s tiny, weak hitch of breath was bubbly refreshment. You did hear snippets of something lovely, earlier. Time was a flash. But, not all of your perceptions are fucking with you tonight.

Visions are swirling through your mind. For a moment, curiosities and desires leave you breathless. 

You only realize what you’re doing when Namjoon’s whole body pulls in. As he makes the movements of sitting up he laughs nervously and twitches a hand down his flat stomach. 

You follow the movement. You stare at where he’s attempting to touch your wrist. At some point, you started stroking Namjoon’s damp slit with your thumb. Out of boredom; out of nature.

“Takeout. Right.” Licking your lips quickly reminds you where you are. Forcibly spreading your fingers out to let go is a monumental effort to not get distracted into spending the whole night discovering what you need to do to pull beautiful moans out of this beautiful man. “Sorry.”    

“Don’t worry about me.” Namjoon is talking slightly too loud. He sits up, reaches for a pillow to wrap his elbow around awkwardly, and attempts a casual sigh. “I know how to say that it’s too much. Like, putting my hand down, I guess. I just want you to know that I like it."

“Good,” you whisper fondly. “Good to know.”

Moments shared with Namjoon always pass quickly. Catching up with each other in the apartment lobby between weekend errands is a breeze. Talking about music, the news, the stress of his school life, and your latest kickboxing match while flirting idly when you catch each other in the convenience store during late-night grocery runs is free from any stuffy ideas of obligation to small-talk with a neighbor. It just feels natural, and right. You’ve been wanting more for a while now. Maybe you were so eager to spend time with him a summer sunset passed instantaneously.

“I know a kebab place that’ll blow your mind. Let me order real quick.” You pet Namjoon’s ankle before sitting up to slide off the bed and fish your phone out of the crumpled ball of fabric that once resembled your sweatpants. “Veggies and meat, veggies and meat... Yeah, you seem good at... telling me when. Let’s talk about this more. It’s good to know, baby. Thanks for telling me,” you ramble mindlessly. “Good to know you can take it. So. Yeah. Until you say when... I won’t stop.”  

[phoenixfell]

∎ - What improvements I think you could make in your writing & ❄ - One of my favorite writing tips, if I may? 👉👈

The Friendly Criticism Meme!

∎ - What improvements I think you could make in your writing

So, what’s super neat about writing is that it’s an art and there’s literally no way to do it right or to do it wrong.  

There is only what is my opinion, and that may or may not be helpful to you.  

So for one I did notice a change in the writing between the characters.  I haven’t been able to distinguish exactly what it is, but something about the canter and the linguistic choices do make each character’s voice stand out.

That being said, compared to my personal writing style, I do find a lot of your writing to be... bland.  Let me reiterate--that’s not a bad thing!  There’s plenty of merits to having a very straightforward writing style, especially when it comes to narration and storytelling.  Clarity is great and you’ve nailed that.

But, personally, I’d argue that one of the biggest points of storytelling is catharsis.  The act of writing to free one’s emotions and the act of invoking those, or similar, or any sort, of emotions in a reader.  

I think you could do good work trying to appeal more to this.

Let me pick out an example from our recent thread:

“His heart sank into the pit of his stomach. Maybe it climbed out of there and ran away, even, saved itself the horrific awkwardness of this situation.”

Let me preface by saying I love these sentences.  They get the point across in a whimsical sort of way, and the image is cutesy, even if the situation itself isn’t.

But.

You’re appealing to the brain, and not the heart.  I read this, I think about it, I grin and shake my head; consciously contemplating the words before me.

And again, that’s fine in many situations.  But, just as an exercise, I’m inviting you to think about how you can convert this sentence into something that makes a brutal lunge for the heart.  

How does it actually feel?

How does it feel to be suddenly slammed with the looming knowledge of his existence in the most unexpected of places; how does it feel to have those words cut so easily through giant skin that might as well be grass; with such brutality and such casualness that he might as well be laid to rest with the rest of his brethren?

How does it feel when those words suffocate you, wrap around your heart like vipers, hissing the denied truth into ears that cannot close; how does the ice of the truth feel as it flows, sluggish, through arms that cannot move, through legs frozen to the ground?

How does it feel to stare into the beady eyes of an innocent baby bird and stare your nightmares in the face?

Something important to note is that it might not make sense.  And the crazy part is that it doesn’t necessarily have to.  The heart is not a logical thing.  The things that can tear a heart asunder aren’t necessarily the things that abide by logic.  Sometimes, breaking logic makes it that much easier to deliver a swift blow to the heart.

And, sure.  If it’s not something you want to do, understandable!  It’s just the process that feeds my writing; that fuels the thinly veiled pulse of emotion that’s hopefully lurking just beneath the surface of what Ozai does.

And, sure.  It’s not always a good idea to do this.  Sometimes, a distant writing style can hit just as hard.  When you focus on the little things, it means just as much when you decide not to focus on something.  

No matter what you decide to do, good luck!

❄ - One of my favorite writing tips

So, the epitome of my advice can be summarized thusly:

Don’t be the Wikipedia article.

This, in my mind, combines the most important aspects of storytelling, specifically, how exactly to appeal to emotion, and how to tell if you are appealing to emotion.

A Wikipedia article is basically the shining example of appealing to the brain.  It’s an encyclopedia; it’s meant to quickly and efficiently summarize a given topic.

Again!  It’s a perfectly valid way of telling a story.

But, it may not be the tone you want your story to have.  

So, I invite you to look at your writing and ask yourself, “Would this look appropriate if it was copy and pasted into Wikipedia?”  If you say yes or even a solid maybe, it’s a pretty good indication you’re appealing to the brain rather than the heart.

Again, you may not necessarily want to change that.  But it’s a good thing to be aware of, nonetheless.  

A Wikipedia article may summarize a story something like this:

“As he stared up at his girlfriend who was unable to reach him, his grip on the rocks was slowly slipping.  He told his girlfriend that he loved her one final time before plunging to his death.”

Once again, it’s perfectly valid.  You know what’s happening.  You can determine the situation and the end result.  But, chances are, you read it, you frown, you might wince, and that’s that.  

You don’t actually feel anything.

So, how do you change it?

Great question.

This advice actually comes from my poetry professor, but it’s advice I find useful in everyday writing.  (Why?  Because poetry is all about appealing to the heart.)

Avoid Big, Vague, Nouns.

What is a big, vague noun?  Basically, Big Vague Nouns encompasses the section of nouns that refer to ideals or otherwise non-physical entities.

What is love?

Uh, it’s a thing you feel when you like someone.

Nope.  Do better.

What is happiness?

Uh, it’s a thing you feel when you are content with life and enjoying the world around you.

Nope.  Do better.  

The point is that once again, these Big Vague Nouns refer to concepts that we logically understand, but can’t really wrap our heart around.  Our heart understands feelings;  Our heart understands the fluttering in the chest; the way a grin appears when you look at someone; the way you want to melt when they smile at you.  The way your troubles seem to disappear when they’re around, the way that the world just seems a few shades brighter when they’re nearby.  

Take Anger, for example.

You can tell me your character is angry.  This is fine.  I’ll nod and accept it, note it down in my brain.

But, what does that actually mean?

Anger appears in many forms.  Is your character the eye bulging, spit splattering angry?  Is your character the fists balled, tiptoes, glaring when they think they’re not being looked at angry?  Is your character the tears barely restrained, high pitched, breathless angry?

All of these refer to anger.

But, you’ll find that they paint a better picture, they appeal more to the heart, and they tell you more about the character in question.  

This isn’t to say that there isn’t a place for Big, Vague Nouns.  They have a place, especially when a character is referring to how they feel.  You don’t need to overcomplicate things; a character can say they’re angry in their internal narration, it’s ok.  

This does correlate heavily into the show, don’t tell rule, but that rule is in general iffy and I find thinking about it in terms of appealing to the heart or brain a lot better and easier to understand.  

Writing is a complicated beast, and rules are rarely enough to restrain it.  Just remember that ‘rules’ are loosely defined and just another tool to use to work the language into doing what you want it to do.

Above all else, have fun.

[seoultraveller]

[A/N: I am kind of writing this for myself (ngl) but I thought it would be interesting to see how something like this plays out. A multi-part AU where the characters are attending university in South Korea. The main female character is black/African-American but that will later become more of a factor as the story goes on. Seonghwa and the MC exchange letters through a book in one of the libraries on campus and without know each other, grow a connection through that. Hongjoong is the classmate and group partner of the MC but has no idea that they are exchanging letters to each other until further on in the story. This part is just a quick introduction to the characters and their overall placements in the story.]

Her Secret Scribe, His Winter Dream (1)

Pairing: Seonghwa x Black Female MC & Hongjoong x Black Female MC

Genre: College!AU

Word Count: 2,885

October 29, 2020 ~4:50am

Waking up at around 4:50am, Seonghwa notices that his textbook, notes, highlighters, and pen are all still neatly placed on his desk. He placed it there with the intent to get some early morning studying in before his shower and a little bit after his shower, just before he left for his first class of the day. He wills himself up from his warm, soft, and comfortable bed to walk to the bathroom to freshen up. On his way to the bathroom, he passes by his roommates partially opened door and takes a peek to see if he made it in last night. Or more like, early this morning. Poking the top of his head through the door opening Seonghwa sees his roommate. There lies Hongjoong, fully clothed, face-first, bag still hanging off of his shoulder, lying on top of his bed, and in the starfish position. All Seonghwa can do is shake his head at his friend, knowing how bad his sleeping habits are and how much is is hardly at the apartment nowadays.

After checking on Hongjoong, Seonghwa goes to the bathroom to brush his teeth and wash his face. Then he strips himself of his pajamas and gets into the shower. Showers have always been a bit of a meditative practice to Seonghwa. His average time is forty minutes but there are occasions where he has spent up to 50 minutes or an hour in the shower. He prides himself on his cleanliness, both in how he physically presents himself and the spaces that he exists in (apartment, bed, desk, etc...).

Once his shower is done, he wraps his towel around his hips and then makes his way to the kitchen. There he takes out four eggs, a container of rice, and some steak that he grilled left over from the night before. Next, Seonghwa fills up a pot with water, sets it on one of the eyes of the stove and puts the fire on 8 (one of the highest settings). After dropping the four eggs in the water he rinses his hands off and proceeds to his bedroom to get changed.

Never one to make to much of a fuss of what he wears, Seonghwa puts on an undershirt, then throws on a grey long-sleeved thermal and a pair of black jeans. Long black socks to warm his feet, and he takes out a sweater and a jacket to keep himself warm on his way to class.

It’s around 6:00am by the time he is finished getting dressed and now, he tends to the food that is set out in the kitchen. Reheating the steak and rice, turning off the fire underneath the pot and taking out two of the hard boiled eggs for himself. He puts it all in a bowl that he takes back to his room, and eats at his desk, while going over his notes.

Seonghwa broke up his study time into two 45-minute sessions, which allows him time to prepare a bowl for Hongjoong for breakfast (if he eats it) and make it down to his bus before it pulls up at 8:30am.

Having followed his schedule to a ‘T’ this morning, he was proud of himself for making it to the library before the morning rush and acquiring a desk, with a view, on the third floor before they were all occupied. Instead of pushing himself to study a bit more, since today’s schedule was not Seonghwa’s usual schedule, he decided to write a letter on the off-chance that he can bring comfort to someone during mid-term season. Instead of writing on bathroom doors, or in the dark corner of a desk, Seonghwa decided to write a letter. Writing a letter and stashing it in a random book. It’s getting a bit chillier in South Korea, so although it was a long shot, perhaps he can create a pen-pal through this and maybe even get close and intimate during this period as well. However, that is a very, very, very long shot.

So with romantic thoughts of meeting someone who shares a like mind or sees life from a different perspective, he writes.

“Dear Student that is Enduring Mid-Terms and an Incoming Winter,

We are nearing the beginning of a new month which could mean a fresh new beginning for some. It could also mean nearing the end of something larger, like the semester. I know that it’s mid-term season but I am unsure if it has ended for you. I could only pray that you stay warm as the winter will be harsh as it usually is, but I am sure you knew that.

I honestly thought I would have more to say... but obviously not. I figured a formal letter would be better to connect with someone during this time, then short, informal, and weird messages written aimlessly. Now, I’m getting embarrassed... Sorry.

No one will probably read this so...

With Care,

The Secret Scribe”

-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

October 29, 2020 ~10:52am

Waiting in a hallway right outside the classroom, she, scrolls through her student email account on her phone and sees an email from her linguistics class. Linguistic Acquisition through Different Ages - LIA 3006. Although she knew, that to pass this class she must complete a project, she totally forgot that it had to be completed with at least one or two other people. A group project... “how despicable” she thought. The email that the professor sent, laid out the regulations of the project and even placed the class in neat groups of two or three. She was lucky enough to get paired with “Mr. Fashionably-Late because Staying Up to Work on My Art is More Important”. As the time got closer and closer to 11:00am, Hongjoong is still nowhere to be seen. She’s just praying that he comes through at least ten minutes into class and not twenty minutes before it’s over. However, she could only pray for such a thing.

At 11:11am on the dot, Hongjoong comes through the door quietly. Chest heaving up and down because he was sprinting through the campus and hallways to make it to class... not too late. She notices him out of the corner of her eye and does a slow eye roll as he tip-toes his way in her direction.

“Was that a look of displeasure on your face? Or are you just containing your excitement to see me?”, he whispers into her ear while trying to quietly slither down into his seat, quickly, while the professor has her back turned.

“You are one minute late past our deal, Hongjoong.” She scolds.

“So you will not share your notes with me from today?”, he asks while giving her a pout.

“There is nothing to share. She is still reviewing the content we learned two days ago before starting a new lesson.” She retorts.

“Why did you roll your eyes then?” He questions again, as if his academics are the last thing he cares about.

“Hongjoong- “, she starts. “If there is something that you two would like to share with the class, please come up to the front.” The professor cuts in.

The look of two deer in the headlights is what can be seen from the professor’s viewpoint. With mouths agape and eyes wide, the two whispering chatterboxes were rendered speechless.

The professor continues on, “Please stop whispering behind my back. Also, I need to speak with the two of you after class.” The two of them shake their heads rapidly affirming their professor’s request.

Their class is currently on the topic of children acquiring their mother tongue and how the brain develops as the children learn how to speak or bring attention to their wants and needs as they grow. A topic such as this excites her all the more because it ties into her study abroad research topic. Learning how to speak amidst all of the culture that one’s language is tied to really fascinates her. Seeing as how her major of study in her home country is Linguistics and she took Korean because of the small intimate nature of the class, she has wanted to do and learn so much more.

As the lecture winds downs to a close for this session, Hongjoong becomes more and more anxious about what the professor wants to talk about before letting them go. Then, he hears the professor harp on,

“As for the email I sent earlier today-“, Hongjoong’s ears perk up. “You will see that for the group project you will have two different options to choose from. It can be turned in as a 10-page research paper, or completed as a presentation. Your groups have been chosen for you, by me. Please consult me if you have any questions on the project or the partners that you will be working with.” After the professor gives her parting words to the class, her eyes fall onto the two little songbirds that had her interrupt her lecture earlier.

With a knowing look, they make their way to the front of the class with a downcast gaze. As if they were to be physically reprimanded. “You know that you two are partners for this group project.” The professor starts. “Hongjoong you must be a reliable partner. I set you two up together because I’ve noticed a great partnership between you two throughout the semester. Your partner is also fairing better than you are this term. You can learn a great deal from her, in fact, you can learn quite a bit from each other. I want you to succeed Hongjoong, and I know you can.” The professor softens her gaze and turns to his partner. “She’ll do everything she can to help, won’t you?” She shakes her head ‘yes’ then looks down again. Then the professor continues to finish, “well, that was all I needed to say. Any questions?” The two students shake their head ‘no’ and bid their professor farewell before leaving the class.

“Buddies until the Christmas break?” Hongjoong says as he winks at her.

“Group partners, more like.” She says back to him.

“Wanna talk about the project over lunch?” He asks.

“Ah- that sounds like a really great idea since we’re both free at this time, but...” she trails off, but then picks up again. “Where are your eating? On campus, or off? Just asking because I figured I should check out a few language and culture books to get some foundation on our project. I’ll meet you wherever you are.

His eyebrows raise at her go-getter attitude. “Sure. Meet me at the small Vietnamese spot two blocks down.”

“Got it.” She winks at him as they break apart.

She has her mind filled with countless ways to approach the project, while his is filled with hunger and images of a big flavorful dish filled with meat and vibrantly colored vegetables.

Before aimlessly searching around the library for what she needed, she looked up the language, literature, and culture and linguistic sections of the library. Literature happens to be in the basement, while language, culture, and linguistics just happen to be on the third floor. So, she sets off for the third floor.

Although quiet, the third floor is warm and the ambiance is calm. Compared to the rest of the library, this is the floor that most people like to be on, and she could tell, because there was not a place to sit. However, her journey to this floor was not for studying but a quick search. So she set off. The part of the library she set off to was a little empty, and not as cramped as the other parts but she liked it that way. The first book she pulled from the shelf had to do with children’s speech patterns and babies recognizing sound. Noticing that there was a folded piece of paper sticking out from the top, she flipped to that spot in the book thinking there might be valuable information on that page right from the start. Nothing out of the ordinary was written on the page. No sticky notes, no annotations or drawings, just words. Next, she took to opening up the folded sheet of paper and to her surprise, it read as a simple greetings letter.

A random letter in a random book. What was the point? Was this fate, or was it meant for someone else? She thought it was cute; with the well wishes to stay warm during harsh Korean winters, and the impending embarrassment of the writer, as well as the writer giving themselves a name. She fell for it. She fell hard. Almost immediately she began having romantic notions of trading love letters to someone in a new environment. However, romantic thoughts quickly left her as she thought it could also be a woman, instead of a man. There is nothing indicating the gender of the writer and she honestly feels a little bad for passing such a judgement so quickly. Her train of thought comes to a halt as she feels the buzzing of her phone indicating a text messsage coming through.

🎧 HJ: should i order ahead for you too?

HER: sure, you’re there already?

🎧 HJ: yeah

what do you want?

HER: something mild. not too spicy.

🎧 HJ: got it

when are you coming down?

HER: actually on my way now. see you in a bit.

🎧 HJ: 😉 😉

She rolls her eyes at his latest text. She puts the letter back in the book, skim a few other book titles, take them off the shelves and makes her way over to the check-out counter.

-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

Now, sitting and eating in the small restaurant they begin talking about why Hongjoong is late all the time, their interests outside of the classroom, and plans for the Christmas break after the project is done.

Hongjoong reaches for one of the books and questions to himself whether she’s started taking notes already because he sees a folded sheet of paper sticking out at the top. While she is busy eating and busying herself with her phone, she doesn’t notice Hongjoong going through the book. Him being as perceptive as he is, notices that it’s a small note signed by a “secret scribe”. Did she know this was here? He asks himself. In fact, taking a closer look at the writing, the tone feels oddly familiar and so does the handwriting. Or maybe he is just thinking too hard about this. Either way, he tucks the note back in its proper place and continues with skimming through the index and other parts of the book.

Hongjoong brings her attention to him by breaking the silence. “Since you have four books, how about I take two to read and you take two?”

“Sounds good.” She responds. After making her choice of books to take, they set up a time to meet, outside of class, to get started on the project.

She makes her way back to the library, while Hongjoong walks through another part of the campus to work on his music. After making it safely to the library, she struggles to find a spot. Settling for the floor in the basement, she sets off to write a letter to the “secret scribe”.

“Dear Secret Scribe (?),

I came upon your letter by chance for a project but for some reason I feel as if I am imposing. As if I was not supposed to read it and respond, but here I am writing to you anyway...

My writing may look odd and the sentence structure may be weird, but it’s because I am a foreign student.

The weather is not too bad so far, however, I am doing my best to stay warm. The change of seasons in South Korea is very beautiful to experience. Not only can you see it and smell it, but you can also sense it. Does that make sense? Anyway, my mid-terms are over, I only had two. Now, I am working towards finals. The final project that I am working on is for my Linguistics class. Actually, I am a Linguistics major. What are you majoring in? Also, are you a man or woman? I am a woman if you were curious.

I truly hope that you are managing to stay warm and stress free as the semester is coming towards an end.

You’ll Be In My Thoughts,

Your... Winter Student... A Winter Dream

P.S. I kind of need to take this book with me for research, but I’ll keep it here for you until we can agree on a place to drop off our letters... Only if you would like to continue this correspondence... Your Choice.”

With that, she leaves her letter in the book and goes up to the third floor and places it back on the shelf that she took it from. Her heart is racing, but she doesn’t know why. He probably will not respond too quickly, she thinks to herself. “You did your part, now let it go”, she tells herself as she makes her way back to her apartment for study and research.

[no6secretsanta]

Those Soft Nights

To: @glorifiedscapegoat

From: @paintedpainting ~ Life in the West Block was cold and harsh, full of deprivation. Since escaping here, Shion had learned that each day was a harsh battle for survival, whether it was against the elements, the persistent hunger, or other people. But recently, there was one new problem to his roster that he did not expect: sleeplessness.

Shion tossed and turned in the bed that he shared with Nezumi. He knew that he ought to fall asleep with ease, especially after a day spent washing Inukashi’s dogs, an unexpectedly exhausting job. His muscles were tired, and his eyes were heavy. But no matter how hard he tried, he just couldn’t fall asleep. He wished he could just turn off his brain.

A couple of things were preventing him from falling asleep. First, he had gotten into an exciting series of novels from Nezumi’s collection. Reading them before bed was a surefire recipe for insomnia, and yet he was so engrossed in those novels that he couldn’t help but read them anyways. Nezumi had actually dragged him into bed tonight, threatening more painful measures if he kept the light on for a second longer. Second, Shion had discovered that Nezumi himself was actually quite a restless sleeper. Usually, Shion was the one to fall asleep first, only to be woken up by Nezumi’s relentless tossing and turning. Could another person’s insomnia be contagious?

Shion opened his eyes and saw through the darkness Nezumi’s long, soft black hair. He wished Nezumi didn’t sleep with his face turned away. Nezumi had such a pretty face, and he would give anything to be able to get just one more look at his elegant features.

Slowly, Shion inched in closer to Nezumi, close enough to breathe in the scent of his hair. It was such a good smell, the kind of scent that made his whole body feel warm and fuzzy. He felt that if he could bury his face into Nezumi’s hair, he would be able to sleep restfully the whole night. Would Nezumi let him do something like that?

Well, why not try it out?

Shion moved until he was close enough that their heads were almost touching. The heat of Nezumi’s body washed over him, providing him an intimate comfort that was pleasant beyond words. As he closed his eyes, he realized he longed for more touch, more warmth. All of a sudden, he felt the urge to wrap his arms around Nezumi’s sleeping figure. Of course, he knew that if he actually did that, he would probably receive a fist to the face. But when their bodies were already so close, he found it hard to resist the temptation.

Damn, he ought to be trying to sleep! Tomorrow was a big day. Winter was near, so he was planning on going to shop for some warm clothes in the city market.

The figure in front of him spun around and opened a pair of cold, steely eyes.

“What.” The eyes seemed to utter, and it took a moment for Shion to be broken out of his trance to realize that the owner of those eyes was, in fact, speaking to him.

“I…I was cold,” Shion said. “I wanted some of your heat.”

“I’m not your personal furnace. Give me some space, or I’m going to kick you out. You want to spend the rest of the night sleeping on the floor?”

“N-No. Sorry. The floor would be even colder.”

“That’s the point. Now, move it.”

Shion hesitantly drew back, his heart penetrated by the coldness of those eyes. Yet, he did not feel direct enmity from their glare. There was another feeling behind those eyes, a feeling that he found hard to put into words, because like the comfort that he felt from being close to Nezumi, from being by Nezumi’s side, it was something that grew out of conflict, out of contradictions, an emotion that flickered to life as bright as a candle and swiftly faded into darkness.

When he escaped from No. 6 to live with Nezumi in the West Block, he had wanted to learn about Nezumi’s world, his way of looking at things and people and all the sensations that made life colourful. He wanted to understand that deep conflict beneath those eyes.

In the quiet darkness that they shared in this bed at night, he wished for a deeper connection, a thread to link their hearts so that a bridge could be formed over the chasm that separated their existences.

“Are you going to go to sleep or what?” Nezumi spoke. “You’re still staring at me.”

“I’m sorry, but I can’t sleep tonight.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t feel sleepy at all right now.”

“Well, you better get to sleep, because you won’t have any energy for tomorrow if you’re going to be up all night.”

“But I can’t sleep.”

A flicker of annoyance. “What do you want me to do, then? I need to sleep. I’m going to kick you out of bed soon if you keep this up.”

“Nezumi, I’m…I’m sorry.” Shion turned his eyes away. “I won’t bother you anymore.”

Shion expected Nezumi to turn away from him, to face him with his back once more. It was just Nezumi’s characteristic coldness. But when seconds, then a minute, passed, and Nezumi was still looking at him, the gaze in his eyes softer than before, he was frankly at a loss for words. Those eyes were too pretty to ignore, so he gazed back at them. A warmth began kindling deep down in his belly.

“You reminded me of how I was when I was younger,” Nezumi said in a gentle voice. “Back then, I couldn’t sleep well either.”

Shion had not expected Nezumi to talk about his past at all. Nezumi had been so secretive about his own life in the months that they’d spent living together. He held his breath, hoping to hear more, even if it was a vain hope.

“It was before I moved to the West Block.”

Nezumi turned to lie on his back and placed his hands behind his head. Shion wanted to keep looking at his eyes, so he inched in closer, hoping that Nezumi wouldn’t notice.

Those deep grey eyes were filled with reminiscence, a quiet glow.

“I remember lying down in a bed of leaves,” Nezumi whispered. “Hunger and cold made my body so weary that I felt I would die if I fell asleep. I’d sink into the ground, disintegrate into the soil, become nutrients for the grass and the worms. But that’s the easy way out. I had to keep fighting. I had to survive.

“Those nights, I remember how my body ached from resting on the cold, uneven ground. Sleep didn’t come easy. Though my body was tired, my mind kept racing. My mind was always alert for danger. I knew that anyone could come and kill me while I was asleep. I had to be vigilant at all times.

"When sleep finally came, it was a dark, dreamless rest, full of nameless anxiety. I don’t think I’ll ever forget those nights. They happened right after…”

Nezumi cut himself off so suddenly that Shion knew he must be delving into some hidden memory filled with unspeakable cruelty. Even though he was naive, even though he didn’t know anything about the world, he knew that Nezumi’s past contained some things that would break his spirit if they were unburied. Memories could sometimes be the most painful things.

“But they weren’t all that bad.” Nezumi’s lips spread into a half smile. “Sleeping outside in the dead of winter has its pleasantries. If the skies were clear, you’d be able to see all the stars. Winter nights have the brightest skies. The stars would gleam like snowflakes about to fall. When I couldn’t sleep, I’d count them.”

Nezumi raised a finger and pointed at the ceiling. “One, two, three, four, five, six.” He circled the air, tracing shapes that Shion knew had to be meaningful, even if he couldn’t visualize what they were. “The stars kept me company. Stars have a voice. They can laugh, they can sing, they can dance. During the coldest nights in winter, when the world was silent, when I was all alone by myself, I’d hear their gentle song.

"It felt like an elegy to me, to humanity, our absurd struggles.” Nezumi pointed at the ceiling again. “A star for each of humanity’s six cities. One, two, three, four, five…six.” His voice became so soft that even up close, Shion could barely hear him.

“The sixth star shone with arrogant brightness.”

Suddenly, Nezumi laughed. A small and quiet laugh, tinged with bittersweet feelings. “Maybe those nights weren’t so bad, those nights where I could see the stars. They’d never felt quite so lonely.”

Shion tensed. “Nezumi, do you feel lonely now?”

The expression on Nezumi’s face grew into tepid annoyance. “What? Why would I feel lonely? I’ve got an airhead taking up space in my bed, keeping me up at night for so long that I’m barely going to get any sleep!”

“No, I mean…before I moved in here with you.”

“I…”

Nezumi did not say anymore. He remained quiet, staring apathetically at the ceiling.

Shion wondered how it must have felt to sleep outside on a winter night. In No. 6, that would have been unthinkable. Nobody would ever sacrifice the warmth and comfort of their own bed for a night out on the cold, hard ground in freezing temperatures. Also, because of the city’s light pollution, there would barely be any stars visible out at night anyways.

Since moving to the outskirts of the West Block, Shion had noticed that the clear skies at night were filled with stars. He couldn’t even count them all. Sometimes, he wished he could sit out on the lonely, lifeless plains and hear their quiet, twinkling songs.

No, he didn’t want to do that by himself. He wanted to stargaze with Nezumi by his side, Nezumi there to guide him to hear the voices of the stars.

“I think the nights here are beautiful,” Shion whispered.

Nezumi gazed at him, that conflicted expression in his eyes again. “Do you mean the night skies outside?”

“Yeah, I do.”

“Why don’t you go outside and gaze at the stars, then? I’d like to get some sleep, thanks.”

“No, it’s okay. I think my nights here with you are beautiful, too.”

Nezumi’s expression grew completely deadpan. “Shion, are you serious?”

“What?”

“Your…linguistic expression still needs vast improvement. I thought you’d be better by now, after reading all those books!”

“I don’t get it.”

A frustrated sigh. “Go to sleep. I’m not talking with you anymore.”

“I…I can’t sleep, though. It’s so cold.”

“Fine. If you really want to, you can move closer to me. Don’t expect hugs or snuggles or anything. But if it’ll help you go to sleep, I’ll offer you some warmth…I guess.”

With a smile, Shion moved in close to Nezumi, close enough to breathe in his comforting scent. He really couldn’t get enough of it.

To his surprise, Nezumi placed an arm around his shoulder, pressing him in. They were close enough now that their faces were almost touching. Shion gazed into Nezumi’s eyes, drinking in their delicate light. Their tender glow suffused his heart with intimate warmth. He felt something blossoming from deep within himself, small silhouettes of things, like threads of starlight. Threads that just slightly bridged the voiceless abyss between their two worlds.

The darkness of the world made the light of those eyes all the brighter.

He gazed into those quiet grey eyes until they closed, until the stars of the winter night - one, two, three, four, five, six - six stars, fell, finishing their song, and the world settled into a quiet, gentle darkness. ~ Merry Christmas glorifiedscapegoat!

[swimmingnewsie]

Of Coffee and Cookies (Chapter 8)

Ryder is not having a good day. At all.

Link to AO3

---

Ryder focused intently on the wood in front of him. Even after work hours, he couldn’t help but come out to the shed he and his dad had built so many years ago and work on things. There was something soothing about carving that managed to silence his brain in ways nothing else could.

It had started as a way to help him focus when he was a kid. He was always rambunctious as a child, far more than most of the other kids. Dad tried to run out his energy with sports, but there was no one sport that he could commit to for too long. Football was too rough. Basketball was too complicated. Soccer was the best contender, but even that only held him for one season.

One spring day, Dad brought him back out to the yard after a particularly rough day at school. He got detention again. He left his homework in the wrong folder again, and he couldn’t focus on what his teacher was saying, and everything was simultaneously too slow and too fast. He was expecting Dad to yell at him, same as the teacher did.

But instead of yelling, Dad handed him a pair of gloves and a hammer. Dad wanted to him to build something. He’d never done anything like that before, and he knew he couldn’t do it nearly as well as Dad did. But Dad didn’t care. They weren’t going inside until he built something. It felt impossible.

Dad worked with him in the yard for hours. He helped him draw out a small table- one just big enough for him and his sister to sit at all to themselves. He took him to the hardware store, helping Ryder pick out wood and materials. He helped Ryder painstakingling hit each and every nail, put each board in place. By the end of the day, Ryder was exhausted, but proud. A small wooden table sat in the bedroom he shared with Maren.

As Dad tucked him into bed that night, he would never forget his words. “Whenever it gets too much or too hard to focus, remember your table. You did that yourself with your hard work and focus. And sometimes I know it takes you a little longer, but I know you always get there. You don’t ever give up, even when it seems hopeless, understand?”

The small table sat in the shed, near his current work bench. The memory made him smile. Things were so much simpler then.

Ryder sighed, moving from one project to another. His stomach tightened, thoughts distracted. He was doing this all wrong. Why couldn’t he just feel the way Kristoff obviously did? Kristoff had been hurt enough already, and he couldn’t bear the thought of adding to it. But that article... It made everything he had ever felt make sense.

A bottle slamming on his table pulled him away.

“A bottle of whiskey as requested.”

Ryder smiled at his sister. It didn’t surprise him that she actually bought them a bottle after their conversation then night before. That’s just how Maren was.

“Relentless as always,” he teased, getting off his bench to grab some cups.

“It’s why you love me,” she said, settling on the other side of the table.

Ryder stood, pouring a generous amount into the homemade shot glasses. It certainly wasn’t the first time they had done this. “How’s Elsa?”

Maren sighed. “Still sick as a dog. She texted me this afternoon after she went to the doctor. Somehow she’s managed to outdo Anna with three infections- the flu, strep, and bronchitis.” She took the shot glass. “Thanks.”

Ryder sipped on his drink. “What are you doing messing around with me rather than making sure she’s actually resting?:

Maren shrugged. “She has her own sister to look after her for a bit. And if they need anything, Kristoff isn’t too far away.” He could feel his face fall at the mention of his boyfriend. He just hoped she hadn’t noticed. Her hand cupped his face. “And I think my big brother needs me more tonight.”

“Thank you.”

He sighed. His heart felt heavy, and it wasn’t from the alcohol. “I- I don’t think I love Kristoff.” There. Now it was out in the open. The thought that had nagged on his brain for weeks on end. Ryder looked up at his sister nervously.

Maren pursed her lips, looking back at her brother.”Okay. That’s not what I thought you were going to say,” she said with a look of concern. “What happened? Did you have a bad fight or something else? Do you have feelings for someone else?”

He nervously ran a hand in his hair. “The- the opposite problem actually. I don’t feel anything for anyone. Not in that way at least.”

Maren raised an eyebrow at her brother. “What do you mean?”

“It’s just when we kiss, I don’t feel anything. At first I thought it was just I wasn’t experienced and it had just been overhyped for me. But then it kept happening. You had always talked about what magic it felt like when you kissed Elsa or the guys at work talk about it when they get back from a good date, but I just- I just don’t feel it,” he rambled, feeling his heart rate speed up.

“And then I went looking online to see if this happened to anyone else and- and- and well one thing kept coming up. Well two things.” Ryder kept his head down. He didn’t want the tears brimming in his eyes to let loose, even it was just him and Maren.

Maren reached out and put a gentle hand over his. “And what was that, Ry?” she asked quietly.

“Aromanticism and asexuality.”

Tears flooded down his face as waves of emotion flowed through his body. He had never said it out loud before. He wasn’t sure how he felt. Maren squeezed his hand. “Does that feel right to you?” she asked with the gentlest of tones.

All Ryder could do was nod, tears falling too hard to speak. “Then that’s okay. I want you to know I love you more than anyone or anything and nothing is going to change that.” It was faintly reminiscent of the last time he had come out to her- only this time it wasn’t followed by Maren coming out herself.

Ryder wrapped his arms around his sister, clinging on to dear life. He was safe. He was okay. “What am I gonna tell, Kris?” he asked quietly.

“The truth,” she replied simply. “The longer you hold this in, the worse it’s going to be for both of you.”

Ryder sighed. He knew it was true, but there was still a problem in timing and linguistics. He finished his shot glass before speaking again. “I need more whiskey and Mario Kart if I’m gonna have to keep thinking about this.”

“Mario Kart: Don’t Drink and Drive?” Maren teased. “Oh absolutely. I’m gonna kick your ass, you lightweight!”

Ryder smiled. He was still nervous as all hell, but he had his sister by his side. He could do this.

--

He couldn’t do this. He absolutely could not do this.

Ryder was going to put a hole in the floor if he kept pacing, but he couldn’t help it. He was about to tell his boyfriend something he knew would hurt him and how could he do that to someone as nice and kind as Kristoff? Kristoff deserved so much better than a man who couldn’t love him the way he loved Ryder.

Kristoff wasn’t even here yet, and he could feel the tears building in his eyes. Nokk nudged his head against Ryder’s hand, clearly sensing his owner’s unease.

“I’m okay, buddy. Sorry,” he said with his voice shaking. He gave the golden retriever a comforting pet. “I’m just really nervous is all.”

“Why, Ryder?” he said in his Nokk voice, the same way Kristoff often spoke for Sven. The voice that made Kristoff smile so bright.

“Because I’m about to tell him something he doesn’t want to hear and I’m scared he’ll hate me forever.”

“What don’t I want to hear?”

Shit.

Ryder had been so distracted by his thoughts he didn’t hear the front door open. He sheepishly ran a hand through his hair, desperate for some attempt at composure. “Hi, Kris,” he eventually said.

Kristoff looked at him with sad concerned eyes. “I’m not going to hate you. Whatever it is, I couldn’t hate you, Ry,” he consoled. “I love you.”

There was that stupid word again. His breathing sped up and tears fell from his eyes. He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t do this. Kristoff loved him, and he couldn’t and he couldn’t break his heart like everyone else had. Oh God, why-

“Ryder, it’s okay. It’s okay,” he said tenderly, wrapping his arms around the other man. “Whatever it is, we can take care of it. I promise. Please, just tell me.”

“I’m- I’m aromantic.”

It was out in the open. There was no going back now. Ryder braced himself, scared to look at the man before him.

“Oh.”

That was all he said. God why couldn’t have pretended and been happy for Kristoff? Why did he have to hurt him yet again?

“I- I need to go.”

“Kristoff, wait! Please!” But it was too late. Kristoff was already out the door.

Ryder fell to his knees and sobbed. Nokk laid beside his owner, trying to comfort but it was to no avail. There was no escaping this pain. He made his bed and now he had to lie in it.

This was all his fault.

[plounce]

do you have any molly or widomauk fic recs? You have good characterization taste & I miss him and need to recover from seeing caleb/nott/molly as a relationship tag

well after that gutpunch of a closing line, here are my offerings:

… under a cut because there are a LOT. rifled through my bookmarks and subscriptions for this. hope you like these! my ultimate personal faves are bolded. newer additions are starred.

massive widomauk indulgence (oneshots & completed fics)

take your kid gloves off - oh this is SUCH a fave!! teacher au. really good mature emotions… still has the pining that makes fic great but it doesn’t feel soap opera-y as some do. read this please.

my only sunshine - soulmate au! i can be very picky about soulmate aus but this one really agreed with me. follows canon where it can. this was great!! very tender and sweet and hurts at the right parts and is so good at the right parts

twisters chasing storms - written in the week between ep 25 and ep 26. beau centric with side wm. the remaining members of the m9 have to deal with doing what they must to get them back. kind of dark but just like. oof. i reread this a bunch. really good character work in this. (violence warning)

Caleb, huddled on the cart over Molly’s books, says what Beau has been thinking all along: “Jester and Fjord and Yasha were not terrible. This—” and he gestures around at all of them, “—is a terrible combination.”

“That’s slander,” says Molly. “I’m a good person. And—you know, you’re—you’re not all great, sure, but you do good things. I like you.”

The rest of them look at him.

“Okay, that was weak,” he admits.

any clever ideas? - molly and caleb make out in the evening nip in order to dissuade cree from talking with molly. it is SO GOOD and just. rules. it hits those trope buttons perfectly. i LOVE this one 

strictly ballroom - UNDERCOVER AT A FANCY DRESS BALL… DANCING… PINING… JEALOUSY… this is SUCH an indulgent fave and i just enjoy it so much. this is a FUN read. THIS is what i enjoy fic for

discover us safely destroyed - an interesting character study from the zadash arc

our early days - pre relationship. figuring each other out and being tender and protective. taking care of each other. (violence warning)

the crossroads - caleb falls in battle and has a conversation in limbo (without knowing he’s in limbo). very bittersweet and so like… OOF

hopscotch - a lot of the m9 body swap. good character stuff. the differences in molly and caleb’s brains in terms of memory capabilities is… ouch! ouch!! it’s really good. “you’re my friends. i trust you.”

let’s dance - this one is an older one one, and cute! dancing!

comfort walks softly on little cat feet - h/c. an older one, and very sweet.

strange light - a good coda to the cali ep, which was hard to find. measured characterizations with some molly details i adore - his love of theatrics, and keeping copies of lucien’s wanted posters that he’s torn down and using them for kindling.

a street cat named frumpkin - a cute little modern au with side wm! hooray for kitties.

familiar comfort - frumpkin pov. implied wm. really super excellent. i LOVE frumpkin pov stuff

until you set your old heart free - modern with magic… established relationship… molly gets rezzed and returns home… ohhhhhhhh. oh my heart 

take me back into your arms - molly gets rezzed! tam lin setup! hell yeah! power of love babey!!

kiss me once, kiss me twice - a series for kiss prompts!! so sweet. this one has some really heartwarming modern au installments that i just adore

something new for me and you - this one recently wrapped up! a good multichapter, probably the peak modern urban au in the tag. very detailed and has some very good themes about like… feeling love and feeling deserving of relationships and having to grapple with being bond to the people you’re close to. ALSO has background claysol which you KNOW i’m a BIG SUCKER for. very charming!

*indelible - modern au! tattoo parlor stuff, which can be very hit or miss for me, but this was such a sweet, lovely au with a lot of like. recovery stuff in it? for both of them. very nice.

*meet me in the woods - OOF this has such such delicious piiiining… yearning! molly Noticing caleb’s hands and the two of them slowly growing closer. it was such a sweet read and i enjoyed the whole thing like a soft blanket.

*boats and birds - i love this! such a great snapshot of molly (swinging from the ropes on the ball eater, and being a bit reckless & unlucky in his circus tricks - that’s my bitch!), and such a lovely, telling interaction between him and caleb. i loved that “did you just tell a joke? well, it was a good one” bit, and i love fics that revisit it with a bit more future tenderness. this is the line that won me completely over to this fic:

Because Molly is an idiot and likes to pretend that he has a chance of breaking through the ten layers of trauma Caleb wears like a second skin to find the person underneath and convince him he’s worth something, he takes a minute to appreciate the view.

*matryoshka - immediate fixit after molly’s death, which rules. molly’s ghost gets to carpool in caleb’s body before they rez him. i think this scenario was written enjoyably but with appropriate weight as well, which could be very hard to find. pre-relationship, which i always enjoy - i love me some people meandering towards feelings. it also has some very interesting lucien theory tidbits sprinkled in, which i enjoy.

*cat magnet - molly gets turned into a cat for a hot minute and cuddles up to caleb. short and fun and not weird (thank goodness).

*devil’s tongue - i’m always a bit bashful/hesitant about reccing explicit stuff, but this one has such excellent and caring characterization that i feel correct in putting it on this list. the best explicit ship fics always have an element of knowing that the characters aren’t losing their personalities once they get in bed, and this one has both characters as like. people. the d/s stuff does not overwhelm the characters or the fic and is very light - you see that these are real people in an equal relationship trying to help each other feel good (and i’m a judgmental bastard about fic, so you can take my word on this). AND it has some linguistic stuff about infernal as the actual plot, which i can be a sucker for.

*a thin line - molly gets injured, caleb sews him up, they dance around a conversation before actually Talking About Stuff and becoming closer. excellently written h/c. this is an early wdmk fic, but actually writes the characters pretty well in hindsight! op rules. it’s interesting to see what the author manages to get right, and the backstory elements they made up are still engaging and consistent for the molly & caleb they have written.

*heartfrost - molly lives au, taking place around ep 72. molly is resistant to fire, so he’s vulnerable to cold. he has a bad time with that, and with grieving for yasha as well. caleb takes care of him. this was just sweet h/c whump, and reading molly getting his feelings validated by caleb was *kisses fingers* very good.

*limerence - caleb accidentally casts a spell that makes everyone who sees him fall in love with him - except the party lesbians and… molly, for some reason. isn’t it strange that a love spell doesn’t alter molly’s behavior towards caleb??? synopsis aside - i really enjoy how this fic took the fact that molly canonically wouldn’t pursue caleb because he sees caleb isn’t in a good place to have that; molly’s respect for consent with regards to relationships shines through here and agh i love him. also, i am beau in this fic.

**VWOOP! (every time a bell rings, a tiefling gets their wings) - a really interesting take on the soulmate au involving true name stuff (the author has some notes at the end about “true names” which made me :) about the concept in terms of identity and meaning, so dw about deadname snarls yk). wings! soulmates! friends with benefits that accidentally evolve into feelings!

**the fool, reversed - i’m a hack who loves to see molly slotted into present canon just for fun. this one has him being abducted with yasha by obann, and in dealing with the trauma afterward accidentally discovering his incorporeality bloodhunter powers. good stuff.

**the skin beneath the facade - this one is so self indulgent and i love it. fake dating at a fancy party! kissing! POISON! A CAT! fun fun fun read.

WIPs that i am subscribed to and really enjoy, and are good reads already: 

the prophet of tortham - LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE THIS ONE… god i just love it. molly scrambling to be the best scammer he can and rolling miracuously well, while trying to solve a mystery! very perceptive caleb and perfectly slow burn widomauk. it’s an au where molly pretends to be an actual fortuneteller to a lord that the rest of the m9 work for. i’ve been adoring this one so far, such a great molly.

there’s a ghost in my lungs - vague future canon! the m9 finds molly again, but the empire put a bunch of stuff in his head and the gang seeks to cure him, all while getting tangled up in a town plot and festivals. very good widomauk pining. side note: the “winter soldier au” tag has nothing to do with marvel at all besides the basic premise of what’s up with molly, but for the vast majority of the fic he is himself (changed somewhat after what he’s gone through, but his wonderful self). i’ve been keeping up with this one for a long time and i’ve been loving it.

Caleb blinks, as if coming out of a Frumpkin trance. Beau knows better, though, she’s seen him staring at Molly like Molly’s a lighthouse in the dark, and he’s a man paddling desperately back to shore.

we circle by night - a far-flung-future caleb travels back in time and accidentally averts molly’s death! and there’s a splintered timeline. slow burn widomauk starts kindling but caleb’s dealing with uh… pretending he’s not an older and higher-level wizard inside a canon age caleb body. VERY good. love it.

fractured moonlight on the sea - molly is a selkie and doesn’t know it!! i looooooove this so far and can’t wait for more, this is such good like… pining for stuff you don’t know, romantically and sealwise.

map to alexandria - modern music au! very good writing of like. human emotions. very good relationship themes. this is my good buddy mauve @phantomsteed‘s fave fic!

the gay and wondrous life of caleb widogast - this is a modern with magic childhood friends road trip au! it is also fjollygast, and i really enjoyed it. extremely good and well-written pining and relationship drama, that luckily has been resolved. from what i’ve detectived, it seems like it’s been put on permanent hiatus after canon has diverged a lot from what the author was working from. but it stopped at a very good point and is a fave. extremely delicious pining.

wilderswans’ 30 day nsfw challenge - this is such a great series with a lot of character work and like… stuff about intimacy and it’s really good and tender! early relationship. really sweet and well-written!

**the names that make us - soulmate au! with twists and turns. starts out as bren/lucien and will become caleb/molly. looking forward to it.

molly focused:

true north - molly and yasha relationship stuff… i love them. platonic soulmates. a grand adventure!

visions in lightning, voices in thunder - yasha and molly again, but this time more of a snapshot. implied wm and by. yasha’s aasimarness interacts with ukatoa’s dreams in a nasty and cool way. this one has a line that alwaaaaaays gets me right in the gut

“I’d keep an eye on him, if I were you. There’s still some sharp edges to him.”

Molly chuckled. “I’m well acquainted with sharp edges.”

Yes, and you cut yourself on them all the time, Yasha thought to herself. If he cuts you, will you bleed for him?

also if you haven’t… you should read my high school au oneshot where beau and molly are siblings ;) if you want some numbers to back my self promotion it is the 9th highest kudos’d wm fic on ao3 atm… AND it’s a oneshot. blue gatorade rights

OH and as an edit: here’s my more serious in tone wdmk fic, canticle. it is very good and self indulgent. molly character study and repressed pining. ep 25/6 divergent au, as one does. inspired by twisters chasing storms, recced above.