#little gay writing snippet or whatever

[cookiethebirdthing]

Sanae wiped her brow, flicking sweat droplets onto the floor. Tsukasa practically melted into the cushions, breathing heavily. The heat outside had been nearly unbearable, but they were back in the cool air conditioned rooms of the Moriya Shrine.

It was quiet for a moment, apart from the gentle hum of central air. Eventually, Sanae gave a proud smile and shot her arm into the air. Tsukasa's ears perked up as she heard the telltale intake of breath, her tail already lightly wagging.

“Alright, Tsukasa!” she cheered, “we managed to sell all of the portable air conditioning units! This will bring faith to the shrine for sure!”

Tsukasa quietly yipped in agreement, finding words far too tiring at a time like this. Though she was once used to suffering through the sweltering Gensokyo summers, that was no longer the case. Thank goodness for that.

Sanae continued, “There really is nothing better than air conditioning! It's a marvel of technology!”

Just then, the shattering of glass sounded through the shrine. A black and white blur shot into the room, nearly colliding with Tsukasa. Rather than crash into any of the furniture, however, it halted its movement fast enough to kill a human.

“Heya, Sanae!” Marisa called from where she floated in the air. Or rather, where she sat on her broom, floating in the air. There was an unusual object hanging off it however. Not a lantern, but a sizable glass jar, with white shapes crammed in seemingly as tight as physically possible.

“Oh hi, Marisa,” Sanae responded with a smile. “What's that on your broom?”

Marisa blinked a few times and tilted forward dangerously. She righted herself with a jolt and gave a laugh. “What? Oh this thingy? I call them phantoms in a jar.” She paused. “It's got phantoms in there. Not sure how many, I kinda lost count when I was collecting them and came to with it all full like this.”

Sanae tilted her head, “Why would you put phantoms in a jar? Is this one of those Gensokyo things?”

“Huh? Nah.” Marisa shook her head. “During the Summer, I collect these little guys so I can do this!” She shook her broom violently, jostling the container. The shapes inside suddenly started pushing their way past each other as if trying to escape.

“What's that supposed to do? Oh, by the way, Tsukasa and I spent all day installing air conditioning units around the Human Village! Being freed from the oppression of Summer heat is sure to bring lots of faith to the—” Sanae’s ramble was cut off as the temperature in the room dropped far below what the air conditioning was capable of. She stuttered out the rest of the sentence, “—shrine… Oh.”

In the end, the air conditioning units they sold became little more than non-functioning trinkets to most of the villagers. With the cooling power of phantoms, why would they need something as silly as that anyway? A few villagers did find some use out of them, and so a bit of faith trickled in. At least it wasn't a complete waste of time.

[alivingfire]

i've finally gotten to the chapter in my secretly-dating-since-s2 big bang where the kids are in high school and interacting with steve and eddie separately, and i am having The Most Fun writing the most ridiculous situations you've ever seen. snippet below.

(also @knitsforthetrail you kicked me into gear today!! chapter's nearly done!!!)

“Yeah, Mike, Steve fucked up this time but he’s still awesome,” Dustin said, hustling the others out to Eddie’s van. Eddie rolled his eyes at the mini-mothering, knocking the doorstopper out of the way so the theater door swung shut behind them. Dustin continued, “You’re just still mad because he dated Nancy.” 

“And, like, everyone else in this town!” Mike said, crossing his arms. “Plus he’s so lame. Like, cool, you’ve got a car, you’ve got hair and, like, lips or whatever. So what!” 

Eddie felt his eyebrow raise at the lips or whatever comment, but the boys were in front of him and so he didn’t have to tamp it down. Maybe Steve was inadvertently mama-bearing a whole little pack of gays. He told Eddie about the types of gum he’d been trying since September to try to find his “signature taste” but he wouldn’t share about his little flock of homosexuals? His priorities were completely out of wack. 

“Listen, it’s fine,” Dustin said, clambering into the van’s passenger seat like he’d never seen a goddamn car before, all shoulders first and feet kicking. Lucas and Mike, stick bug-shaped children that they were, crawled into the back and perched gingerly on the pillows and guitar string packets and other detritus Eddie forgot was back there. “We’ll just have Steve call your date and tell her what happened! Everyone knows him, he’s a reliable guy, and she’ll have to reschedule with you.” 

“You want,” Eddie said, “Steve Harrington to call my date for me and tell them I was late because he had to work?” 

“Yeah,” Dustin said. 

“Steve ‘has dated everyone in town’ Harrington, according to Mike? You think he should call my date and apologize for me?” 

“Yeah,” Dustin said. “He probably already knows her!” 

“There sure are a lot of blankets in here,” Lucas said, looking around the van. Admittedly, Eddie had rolled out all the stops for a smoke date with Steve a few nights ago that had been very successful judging by Steve's enthusiastic reaction, and he cringed a little to think about what Lucas and Mike might be sitting in. He has got to remember to do laundry sometime. 

“Do you have a comment, Sinclair?” Eddie asked. 

“No, just… questions,” Lucas said. 

[ladykailitha]

SECERET TUNNEL

THROUGH THE MOUNTAIN

SECRET SECRET SECRET SECRET

TUNNEL!

Ok fine

Game Show AU

Secret Tunnel is awesome. You may continue to ask it for it, thus!

WIP Wednesday! Make me write!!

Snippet

Steve nearly had a panic attack right there in the car when Chrissy screamed. There wasn’t a crisis. Or at least not one that needed immediate attention. What it was, was their little drunk text about #needsmoregays at A Love Connection went viral. There were actual fucking news articles. Yeah, the first was from Pink News, but the rest? Actual fucking trades. Variety, Dateline, The Hollywood Reporter, for fuck’s sake.

Steve was going to pass out, but he managed to get them to the school safely. Thankfully there was nothing on Chrissy profile that was her real name or where she worked. She had a work Twitter for that. And that one was only on her computer at work. She was very careful not to cross the two. So there weren’t any news people out front of the school. But her DMs were filled with requests for comments or even actual interviews.

He decided she could do whatever the hell she wanted, he wasn’t going to get involved in this. She’s the one that drunk tweeted. Yeah, it was because of something he said when he was also drunk.

He also decided ignore Chrissy and Robin at lunch, choosing instead to have it in his classroom to avoid them. Because, yes, he was avoiding them thank you. He just wanted to see gay people have love, too. Last Saturday was a disaster and he wanted proof that gays like he could find love.

[skibasyndrome]

Finally making a pinned post, hope I do this right

my name is Simon, you can call me that or skibasyndrome or any variation of either that you can think of

25-y/o university student with a passion for literature and languages and everything surrounding that (hmu, I will talk about it for hours)

me and tumblr go way back (like... 2012 way back), but it's only through my very recent discovery of Young Royals (August 2023) that I decided to get back into online fan spaces after a long break (best decision ever btw)

I'm gay and a trans man

I mostly just write fics (or talk about writing)

Feel free to reach out and talk to me about anything and everything, I love talking to people :)

things to note about this blog

I will simp about Omar Rudberg. Sorry, I'm just too gay for whatever it is he is doing 24/7

there's almost always a party in my tags because that's where I go to voice my opinions or just be... emotionally affected by things

hope you like Young Royals, because there's rarely anything else on here these days

personal posts are tagged "simon.out."

should go without saying but fuck right off with any -isms or -phobias

See my Young Royals fics below the cut (or at skibasyndrome on ao3)

It seems a place for us to dream (T, 1.8 k)

Or: The things going through Wilhelm's head during that S3 snippet.

You crave the Applause / Yet hate the Attention (E, chaptered, 4/4, 22.3 k)

Or: How Wilhelm realizes that maybe, if you squint a little, he might have a praise kink.

But I'm a vampire smile, you'll meet a sticky end (E, 4.1 k)

Or: Simon's vampire-esque makeup is really doing things to Wilhelm that he didn't expect. A Halloween fic.

In This Together (T, 3.5 k)

Or: Wilhelm tries — and fails — to surprise Simon with hot chocolate. Simon doesn't mind. Contribution to Wilmon Secret Santa 2023.

It's in the water, baby (E, 4.9 k)

Or: A sweet and spicy story sponsored by the infamous Lake Still (TM) s3 promo pic.

Never Letting You Go (E, 5.7 k)

Or: The infamous Hallway Smut (TM) Scene as briefly seen in the S3 trailer and (re)imagined by me. There's light angst, sex, and so many feelings.

Lavender Haze (E, 13.3 k)

Or: Wilhelm spots the most gorgeous man in a nightclub. He's wearing a lavender shirt that makes Wilhelm's head spin and imagination run wild. And a smile that does things to his heart he's not quite sure what to make of yet.

All this shit is new to me (E, chaptered, 3/?, 24 k)

Or: After meeting and hooking up with Simon at a club, Wille needs to figure out what exactly that means for them (or whether there even is a "them" to figure out). A sequel to Lavender Haze.

Wille's Month 2024:

Day 1 (Sandwich): Vegan butter, two slices of Gouda, a few slices of cucumber (G, 1.6 k) Day 8 (Wedding/Engagement): Roots of Love (T, 1.2 k) Day 9 (Riding): Close, Closer (E, 1.3 k) Day 25 (Hands): Got my Hands all over You (E, 7.1 k)

Simon's Month 2024:

Day 2 (Food): I could eat that boy for lunch (M, 7.9 k) (co-written with @iwouldnevergetintofanfic & @pagegirlintraining) Day 14 (Senses): Kyss mig med dinä röda läppar (or, affectionately: the cherry fic) (T, 3.4 k)

Flash The Camera, You're A Star! (T, 10.1 k) (co-written with @pagegirlintraining)

Or: the one where Wille is an even bigger simp than usual and Simon can’t quite stay mad at him.

(ca.)-5-sentence-ficlets

Or: people send me a sentence, I write 5 or more sentences to turn it into a ficlet. wild variety of stories ranging from dark to fluffy to (slightly) steamy (always open for these types of prompts, "series" ongoing)

YR Kinktober 2024 (Masterpost here)

(ongoing series) Day 1: Sit back and watch (I'm gonna dance for you) (masturbation & spit) Day 2: Sharpen your teeth, sink into me (marks & biting) Day 3: In silence, I'm yours (sound/staying quiet, hands & 69) Day 4: Love the shape of your mouth (and the back of your head) (makeup, praise kink, oral sex, deepthroating and light dacryphilia) Day 5: I've never met arms like yours (cockwarming & spooning) Day 6: And the mirrors gon' fog tonight (mirror, hands, a little bit of praise) Day 7: One, two, three (Not only you and me) (threesome, first time [having a threesome], lapdance) Day 8: Body language say you wanna (semi-public sex, cruising, roleplay) Day 9: On the tip of my tongue, on the top of your thighs (1/2) (wax play, thighs, marks) Day 10: And if I searched a thousand miles I'd be dying to find (2/2) (intercrural sex, thighs, marks, oral sex) Day 11: My skin on your skin, again and again (frottage, cum play, fingers) Day 12: In the back of your car there's a big black mark (where I ripped the seat) (car sex, riding, a little breathplay/choking) Day 13: Find a brand new way of seeing (Your eyes forever glued to mine) (1/2)

Like we're dancing (you and me) (T, 3.1 k)

Or: Wille is nervous to meet her parents for dinner. Simon is there for her.

Birthday Boys (T, 14.1 k) (co-written with @iwouldnevergetintofanfic)

Or: best friends Simon and Wille share a birthday. On their twentieth birthday - their first birthday apart in years - some realizations happen.

Now we're falling like snow (E, 7.8 k) (see header here)

Or: The first heavy snow of the season - what a great opportunity for a slow morning and keeping each other warm

[stargatebarbie]

pls tell me about mcshep sinkhole

Ooooooh thank you this is a favourite of mine! I decided I really wanted Sheppard and Rodney to do the 36 questions to fall in love but like we know how hard it is for Sheppard to talk about his feelings so I kind of had to get their jumper jammed in an unstable sinkhole, sorry boys. features of this one include Sheppard being gay and pining quite pathetically (affectionate), Rodney being clueless as always, and background lesbian scientists who are stranded separately on the planet's surface and very excited about the local flora.

snippet from this, formatted insanely because I often write dialogue first and I haven't filled the rest in, but I love this part so it's the one I'm including. It's quite deep into the list and into being stuck in a fucking hole so our boys have loosened up a little by this point

Question 22: Alternate sharing something you consider a positive characteristic of your partner. Share a total of five items. J: I think if I don’t start with your smarts I’d never hear the end of it R: You’re right, of course. I think that’ll be my first trait of yours - You have a way of managing people, of - of knowing what they need. Not just me, but it is - particularly impressive with me. I have it on good authority I’m not easy to manage J: Oh hey, there’s another one of yours, you’re actually surprisingly self-aware R: Oh ha ha, I thought these were supposed to be compliments J: That is a compliment! R: Sure, whatever, we’ll count it. My next one for you is you’re not actually stupid. You’d think with your whole thing that you would be but you’ve got a brain under that ridiculous hair. And before you say anything, if yours counts, that one does too! J: Yeah, sure, that counts. Next... okay, you’re brave. Don’t get me wrong, it doesn’t come to you naturally, you’re kind of a pussy honestly, but that just makes it all the more impressive how fucking brave you are when you need to be R: Me? What about you! I’m actually hesitant to cite it as a positive characteristic because your bravery borders on self-sacrificing. You’ll put yourself in harm's way to save anyone, it's ridiculous J: Thanks? Right, I don’t think a lot of people know this, because you play it quite close to the chest, but you care. A lot. You reserve it for so few people, though. I’m glad I’m one of them R: Oh. Well. Me too, you know. Obviously you care about everyone to an alarming degree, but you don't let a lot of people… close. I'm glad, for whatever reason, it seems you've let me be one of those people. I suppose that's not really a characteristic, I should say something else- J: Nah Rodney, that's- yeah, it works R: No, I insist, you wanted to do this questionnaire and I'm going to do it right, let's see… oh, you're really ridiculously attractive J: Um. Okay, thanks. My turn again then, okay. You are unapologetically yourself. You refuse to hold back or censor yourself for other people, and what you see is always what you get. You really don't care if people think you're an asshole or hate you for it, and I know that may sound like an insult but honestly, I really respect it. R: Really? because people have said that to me as an insult before and- J: Yes, really Rodney. It's like you said, I don't tend to let a lot of people in, I… admire that you can be entirely yourself, let everyone see you. R: Oh. Well, thank you. I suppose that leads into another of yours then, I can trust you to say what you mean, when it counts. A lot of people use double-speak and backhanded compliments, and I don't always pick up on it. I can always trust that if it's important though, you'll tell me straight, eventually. You'll joke and you're a sarcastic ass but you won't outright lie and you won't let me go on believing something you've said is true if it wasn't.

[gods-favorite-autistic]

Grease ROTPL finale spoilers below

I have thoughts and questions

Jumping for fucking joy when Nancy slapped Mr Daniels and said “she is a child” LIKE YES QUEEN

Nancy this episode slayed so much like from assaulting predators to supporting the gays in the span of less than an hour you go girl

Speaking of supporting the gays the coming out scene was so amazing and it Hurt

Frenchie and Betty Rizzo were so great this episode and the siblings energy with Jane and Gil was unmatched

Watching Gil with another girl hurt but like I get it so much

If they do get another season I am excited to see how the whole Pink Ladies date T-Birds thing comes around cause like rn Hazel and Cynthia are both dating non T-Birds (not to mention Hazel’s dating a soc)

I think we can all agree on one thing and it’s that the girl from Lydia’s summer scout or whatever is gonna catch these hands

Jane Nancy and Cynthia were so real in the first song like yeah get his ass

Susan I was rooting for you we were all rooting for you

Buddy finally made the right choice and now he’s a fucking homeless high school dropout-

Somebody give this poor boy a break

The Zuko name drop at the end fucking floored me

I need to know what happened between Zuko (I’m assuming Danny’s older brother?) and Jane to make her this mad

Also btw the whole writing it down thing for the coming out scene was cute and all but I would really like to know what Nancy wrote on the paper

Also something Nancy said in that scene caught my eye so imma just rant for a bit

In the part where Nancy’s trying to guess what’s making Cynthia upset she’s says something like “did you talk to your mom?” Which brings up two questions for me

What happened with Cynthia’s mom that would make Cynthia upset if they talked (from what we see of the scenes at Cynthia’s place it seems like she’s doesn’t live with them but she’s obviously not dead so something happened there$

How does Nancy know about whatever happened between Cynthia and her mom (basically like did she hear it through town gossip, is it like common knowledge for the town, or did Cynthia tell her in which case I wanna see that scene)

Also another thing that stood out to me (because she is my favorite character) was that in the church Cynthia kept doing the like 🙏 peace be with you thing and yeah it could’ve just been her being nervous and stuff but she also does the like touch cross thing (idk what it’s called) when Jane is talking to Mr. Daniels as almost like a subconscious thing so I’m wondering if that’s possibly a thing or if I’m just grasping at straws for a Cynthia backstory

I’m really hoping if we get a season two that they flesh out Olivia Nancy and Cynthia’s backstories cuz like we know Jane’s pretty much and we get little snippets of the other three but nothing really solid

Idk kinda like the T-Birds episode except with the girls

Anyways sorry for rambling (and spending like half the time talking about Cynthia) but yeah that’s it

[viscerawrites]

wip snippet dec 10 2024 ; meet leonei & fane

me sharing a decent chunk of my actual writing on here for once? hell fuckign yeah

i'm working on taking some old fanfics I never finished and adapting them into an oc fantasy series, and I really wanna share a snippet of this half-done scene I just rewrote haha. still working on a name for the series but hopefully i'll have that info soon.

this snippet is heavily suggestive + leading up to full-blown smut so uh. 18+ only please!

anyway. lil bit of info on the characters so far + snippet below the cut!

[ general taglist: @space-writes ]

---

characters featured:

Leonei Halleau ; 43 yr old human, magical/mystic scholar with a dark past. bisexual king, hopeless romantic. puts his faith in all the wrong places (but also the right places... all the places rlly). 5'6, chubby, white skin, shoulder-length & very wavy strawberry blond hair, bit of facial hair, dark puppy eyes.

Fanetherias / Fane ; 27 yr old dhampir, recovering bandit and certified hater. toxic gay, serious attachment issues. has no faith in anyone ever at any point in time. 5'9, lean, tanned white skin, loosely waved black hair that reaches his mid-back, clean-shaven and likes it that way, reddish-brown eyes with cat-like pupils.

---

snippet:

---

A prickle of irritation runs through Fane. He lifts his brows at Leonei, still stroking his finger along the book's spine, and asks, "Really, darling? That's all?"

Something… odd flashes across Leonei's face. A strange light in his eyes, a slight twist to his mouth — though the pulsing of his blood keeps the same steady rhythm it has all night.

Whatever that look is, it disappears in the blink of an eye, replaced by Leonei's easy smile. Or what's usually his easy smile. At the moment, there's something also brittle about it.

"Yes," Leonei says, with a sort of certainty that Fane can't help but doubt. "That's all. Now, if you please?" He holds his hand out for the book.

This could be simple. All Fane would have to do is place the book in Leonei's hand and carry on, forget all about it, let the man pretend that he's as innocent as he apparently wants to be.

But Fane is curious, admittedly. Almost as curious as he is irritated by Leonei's obvious pretense.

He could very well be risking a blade in the throat, or the whole camp set upon him, if he pushes it any further. But, for some inexplicable reason… well, he doesn't fully believe that Leonei would want anyone to hurt him. He wouldn't go so far as to say he trusts Leonei, but for all his history, the man is oddly averse to seeing people killed or in pain.

So he pushes it anyway.

Fane clicks his tongue and leans forward, further into Leonei's space, ignoring the perplexed look he receives. "Come now, darling." His hand leaves the book's spine and darts forward to grip Leonei's chin.

Leonei freezes. Eyes widening and cheeks flushing a soft pink.

Fane flashes his fangs at him. "Tell me why you're so desperate to hide this wonderful book, hm? Are you afraid that someone will learn all your dirty little secrets?" He pauses, letting his grin spread wider as Leonei just stares back at him. "Or perhaps you want it to be a game? Maybe you hope that if you act ignorant enough, someone will take the opportunity to hold you down and show you exactly what it all means." He slides his thumb along Leonei's jaw. "Is that what you want?"

He expects offense. Bashful embarrassment, maybe.

He doesn't expect Leonei to shiver.

It's not even a miniscule movement, something that one could only see if they were to look close enough. No, it's a full-body thing, and Fane can see its full course, running all the way up Leonei's body. Beneath Fane's fingers, Leonei's jaw tightens.

Leonei clearly doesn't expect it either, considering the way he immediately averts his eyes once it's passed through him. Face bright pink and eyes darker than they were just moments ago. Heartbeat at a rabbit's pace now, breath not yet forceful but still shaking on every exhale.

And he hasn't even tried to pull away.

Fane is seized by the realization that he's just struck gold.

"Oh," he breathes. Tilting his head and drinking in the sight of Leonei's flushed face. "That is what you want."

Leonei's throat bobs in response, and Fane finds himself unable to look away from the glide of Leonei's tongue across his bottom lip.

Does the man even realize he's doing it? He must not, not when he blinks (eyelashes fluttering prettily with it) and smiles thinly at Fane. Meeting his eyes for only a moment, just to say, "Well, if you've come here to have a laugh, I'm sure you've found one." Then his eyes dart away once more. That odd little look overcoming his face again. "Keep the book, if you like. I'll just —"

He tries to pull back, to withdraw from the grip on his chin, and some strange, primal sense of need grips Fane. Leonei looks so pretty like this, after all, and for some reason — well. Fane could certainly be happy with more.

He tightens his hold on Leonei's chin before the man can escape him. Tugs him forward, till they're almost nose to nose. Leonei's eyes meet his again, owlish with shock.

Like this, Fane can feel the warm puff of Leonei's breath against his lips, and he wonders if Leonei can feel the cold of his. All Fane would have to do is press just the slightest bit more, take those pretty lips and inhale Leonei's breath as if it's his own. Claim that mouth with his tongue, dig his fangs into Leonei's bottom lip and suckle blood from the wound. Feel Leonei shiver and quake beneath his hands as he takes him apart.

It's greedy. It's selfish. It makes something burn and itch beneath his skin.

[thompsborn]

howdy, hb2 ch2 this weekend, not tonight bc it’s not done yet but tomorrow or sunday for suresies 🫡

(here’s a snippet from the first scene tho)

"Have you thought about an English degree? Or, like, something similar?"

Peter looks up, nose scrunched up on his face. "Absolutely not."

"You're good at it," Harley tells him, shrugging. "I just thought you might have some interest in it or something. Pretty sure you're the only reason I'm not failing."

The end of Peter's mouth twitches up—he's been odd since the Halloween party, sometimes fully present, able to smile more, laugh easier; sometimes closed off and quiet, completely dazed, like he's sitting here but he's not really here. Right now, he seems to be having a good day judging by the way he's got that small smile pulling at his lips. "You wouldn't be failing," he says, shaking his head.

Harley makes a face. "Sure, yeah. I'd be passing. With a C-, probably."

Peter rolls his eyes and huffs a soft laugh, turning his eyes back to his notebook, jotting down a few notes as he reads through the short story that they've been assigned to write a responding analysis to. Harley doesn't know how Peter's able to focus on the short story—Harley tried reading it, but the words started floating around the page about halfway through. The story itself is good, to be fair, and Harley does enjoy reading, but something about the font and the layout of the textbook makes his brain want to clock out as soon as he's looking at it.

But Peter is scanning over the words, jotting down notes and quotes and whatever else he finds fitting. And Harley doesn't look at his own book. Instead, he continues to watch Peter for a moment and then asks, "Do you like to read?"

"Mm." Peter finishes the sentence he was writing, then looks back up at Harley with a slight frown. "Kind of," he says, words coming out a little bit slow. "I mean, yeah, but, uh… I didn't really appreciate it until one of my best friends in high school and I got closer. She loves to read, and we had our English classes together, so she helped me with them and it kinda opened my eyes a bit, I guess." He shrugs, kind of clunky as his gaze drops back to the table with his frown deepening. "I don't really read for fun," he says. "But I can, like… enjoy it, you know? When I do read stuff."

This is the second time Peter has mentioned a friend that he doesn't seem to have anymore—he'd brought up his Aunt May and an old friend at the Halloween party, when he said that he doesn't like Thanksgiving. Harley's crush makes him want to ask to know more. His curiosity makes him want to dig for the information himself.

He does neither. "I think I forgot how to read," he says instead, looking down at his own textbook with a scowl. "None of these look like words."

Peter snorts. Harley's gay little heart flutters at the sound.

It's definitely a good day.

[shhh-secret-time]

I was going through my drabbles and WIPs and found my first rough draft on Craig’s Soulmate fic. I didn't wanna share it at the time because I was afraid of the backlash I would get with it, but I think part of the "Finding fun in writing" again is to stop caring and just doing it. So here's the snippet! It'll probably stay in WIP hell, but I'm glad I didn't delete it.

Warning: Angst, Strong Language

'Come back to this when you're ready, don't push yourself okay?'

Craig reads the scratchy handwriting over and over again. The ink bled into the napkin long ago, coffee stained the corners. It's lost the scent of whatever brew it was, but he thinks he still remembers the smell.

How could he forget the smell? It was on his shirt almost every day. On his lips when they kissed. Sometimes grounds of the brown powder would be in his hair, Craig would spend hours picking out the little bits.

"You don't have to do that." He'd tell him with a feeble attempt to swat his hand away.

"I want to." Craig would say back.

Now, all is left of the bittersweet memory is the napkin in his hand. Craig presses his thumb into the napkin, grimacing at the texture. He sends a shiver down his spine that's far too uncomfortable, but he doesn't stop. The material is old, likely to tear at any moment. It wasn't designed to be kept this long. Or at all, for that matter. But he can't bring himself to get rid of it. It's the last thing he has of him that he hasn't thrown away or given back.

Tweak Tweek had a soulmate. And it wasn't Craig Tucker.

Craig Tucker did not have a soulmate. Born without one.

Funny how that works.

Except it wasn't. It wasn't fucking funny, it was cruel. That life would determine such a thing for people. What gave life the right to decide who falls in love and who doesn't?! And how come it saw fit to keep him out of the loop? Why didn't he get fancy ink on skin, stupid flowers growing out of his face, or a damn counter that counts away at the moments until you finally meet your so called forever partner?

Tweek had turned sixteen when it happened. A clock on his wrist began to count down, at first he panicked, because of course he did. It was the first time in years he had actually managed to pull his hair out. Of course Craig was there to calm him down, to put his hat over his head so he could pull the strings instead. Did he still have that hat?

After calming the blond down, they worked together to find out what it meant. Mr. Tweak explained it to his son with Craig sitting right there. Right in front of his partner, the man explained that Tweek had a soulmate. That the timer was going to keep ticking away until he found his soulmate. When it hit zero, they were destined to meet.

Four years, eleven months, twenty-two days.

That was how much time he had left. How much time Craig had left before he lost Tweek to destiny. Stupid fucking unfair destiny.

The whole town had made a spectacle about it when they heard the news, of course Richard Tweak couldn't keep his mouth shut. His gay son was going to lose his boyfriend, because Craig didn't have a timer on his wrist. The only other thing he could say about the whole situation was that the breakup was going to be bad for business.

Craig was determined to prove him wrong, that Tweek wouldn't leave him because of some soulmate bullshit. And at first he was right. Four more years went by and they were still going strong, hell Craig would have said it only brought them closer. Then on the twenty second day of the eleventh month, Tweek met a man who swept him away.

It's been almost a year since that day and he can still smell the coffee in his hair, he can still feel the tears on his face. Those angry defiant tears that came with words that shouldn't have been said. Things he could never take back. No matter how many times he drove his fist into the dirty brick wall, it wouldn't bring him back.

Fuck it.

[legolasghosty]

So. About a year ago, the lovely Innytoes created a list of spicy writing prompts. And I, being the dorky ace that I am, decided to take it as a personal challenge to see just how UN-spicy I could do some of said prompts. The actual giving of prompts was kept to a few friends, and it was mostly a silly thing back when I could actually sit down and spin up a one shot in an evening. (A few of said prompts actually made it to ao3 at various points, you can read them here, here, here, and here!)

HOWEVER, I took a couple of the prompts off of the list before I offered it to my friends for prompts. Mostly cause I just had no idea how to make said prompts not sexual. But one of them has continued to haunt me for over a frigging year now! SO, here's some little snippets of how one could de-saucy-ify the prompt, "The lube is what flavor?"

Option 1 -

"Okay so what am I supposed to be getting again?" Alex asked, the phone to his ear as he entered the O'Reillys.

He heard Bobby groan on the other end of the call. "We've been over this at least five times, Lex." Alex could feel his exasperated glare without even seeing him.

"I'm sorry," Alex sighed. "I just know literally nothing about car fluids. Blame the gay in me or whatever."

"You do realize I'm gay too, right?" Bobby pointed out. "But again, you're looking for silicon lubricant. And for the love of God, don't get that Red and Tacky garbage Chad 'recommended'."

"I'm sorry, the lube is what flavor?!" Alex demanded, turning onto the aisle marked 'Fluids'.

"You're not supposed to-whatever-just get the silicon stuff," Bobby said instead of answering. "Valvoline usually works just fine."

Alex glanced around at the overwhelming shelves of bottles and jugs. He drummed out the beat to a song Luke and Julie had shown them the day before on his leg as he narrowed down the options. There, that looked right.

"Okay I found it," he told Bobby. "But you're explaining how car lube can be 'red and tacky' to me later."

"Deal," Bobby responded, sounding relieved.

Option 2 -

"-and the vocal folds need to be kept moist," Julie explained.

Luke nodded, but Julie knew she was losing him. His vocal health notes had dissolved into scribbles and half-finished lyrics. She'd better wrap this up.

"So they're naturally lubricated with a really thin layer of mucus," she continued. "And in order to keep that layer thin and stuff, you have to stay properly hydrated."

She paused to pick up the light blue plastic water bottle from the studio floor. But when she looked back up to whack him with it, the mostly full container seeming like a decent way to make a point, he was already staring at her, eyes full of confusion.

"What?" Julie asked, one hand flying automatically up to her ponytail to see if it had come loose or something.

"The lube is what flavor?" Luke asked, mouth hanging open a bit.

"I-what?" Julie asked again, now feeling almost as confused as her bandmate looked.

"The voice cord lube stuff," Luke responded. "You said it's like mucus. But isn't that just... snot? Your voice is covered in stuff that tastes like snot?!"

Julie tried to hold back. She really did. But she failed. She burst out laughing, dropping Luke's water bottle in a futile attempt to hide it. "Luke, mucus is more than just snot," she tried to explain through her giggles. "But yes, that's what keeps your vocal cords moist."

Luke shook his head. To all the world, he may have looked like a man who'd just been told he was colorblind, that everyone else could see a universe of shades his eyes couldn't comprehend.

But only Julie would know the truth. At least some part of her mini-lecture on vocal health got through.

Option 3 -

"Okay, and then pass me the 205?" Flynn requested, holding out a hand to Reggie, who was sitting on the floor along with most of Flynn's tools.

"Um, the what?" Reggie asked sheepishly, glancing around at the various brushes, screwdrivers, and small tubes surrounding him.

"Oh, the switch lube," Flynn clarified, pointing at a small jar. "It's GPL 205G0, and there's lots of types of keyboard lubricant, so we usually just use the numbers to ID them."

"Oh, right, sure," Reggie responded, passing her the container. "Sorry. Computers aren't really my thing."

"Well that's what you have me for," Flynn pointed out, smirking. "I fix your glitchy keyboard, you keep me from failing math."

Reggie laughed and leaned back against Flynn's bed while she worked. After a minute, she passed him back the jar and started fitting the keys back into place. He entertained himself by inspecting the black lid.

"Wait, so the lube is what flavor?" he asked, looking up at Flynn again. "Da-vinny-key?"

"Divinikey," Flynn corrected easily. "And that's a brand, not a flavor. Please don't eat keyboard lubricant."

"Well I wasn't planning on it..." Reggie said, letting his sentence trail off suggestively.

"Reginald Jacob Peters, you wouldn't dare," Flynn warned, shooting him a glare over her shoulder.

He held her eyes for one moment. Two. Three. Fo-

Reggie burst out laughing, with Flynn only a moment behind.

"I make no promises," Reggie wheezed as he got his breath back.

"I'm not taking you to the hospital when it poisons you," Flynn shot back, her grin betraying her words.

Thank goodness Reggie's keyboard was done already.

Thank you, sorry for wasting your time with my brain worm!

[weirdthoughtsandideas]

Drabble asks but it’s specific things I’ve been thinking of writing but haven’t

These stories are either too short to upload on ao3, or I’d delete them after a while if I uploaded them. Or they’re scenes I’ve been thinking of including in longer fics but haven’t found a good fic to put them in. Or they simply are not too interesting but it can be fun to write down anyway. That’s why I’m gonna post them on Tumblr if I did write them. Some are only like 300 words and others might be up to 1000 or even more, so they’re more of oneshots than drabbles.

Anyway! Send me a number and I might write the thing!

1. If Luna had a little brother: Simbar babysitting scenario

2. Camila and Ludmila being childhood enemies: Camila gets her first period and Ludmila is the only one there

3. The comment section of Ludmila's fanfictions

4. If Luna had a little brother: Sharon is alone with the baby

5. Camila and Ludmila being childhood enemies: Stuck on the school roof

6. Jim and Yam’s daughter is stuck on a roof

7. Violetta babysits Angie’s daughter

8. Camila and Ludmila being childhood enemies: Climbing a tree

9. Ludmila infodumps about a book series online (it’s a made up book series I have decided that she likes)

10. Lunina sapphic sleepover

11. Descendants of DCLA characters 100 years into the future try doing family trees

12. Leonetta’s lesbian daughter comes out to Germán

13. Luty vs Camila compete who is the best grandma

14. Federico and Matteo find out they’re half brothers (they have the same father)

15. Germán babysits Franletta’s kids

16. Germán preparing wedding speech at Franletta’s wedding

17. Everyone is convinced Luna is gay and try to confirm it

18. Everyone knows Jim and Yam are dating except for Ramiro (and no one tells him)

19. Short snippets of a scenario where Michel was a girl named Michelle

20. Sharon dreaming that Ámbar was a very little girl

21. Jim and Nina finding out they were switched at birth

22. Yam coming out to Mora

23. Youmix fans speculating about the love lives of the characters

24. Dr. Dufre meeting random DCLA characters

25. Gregorio takes is granddaughter to Art Rebel

26. Franletta mumble each other’s names in their sleep while Camila has to listen to it

27. The DCLA characters are for whatever reason in my hometown and walk around

I feel like I have a million other ideas, but these are the ones for now. Send me a number on asks, so one of these will be written!

[krismatic]

SORRY I SAW YOURTAG ON THE EMU YOURE WRITING WHAT. HI. HI

HIIIIIII UM. I’m just gonna use this to info dump about my revstar x proseka AU

So this is like. In order for WxS to be better at performing or whatever they decide to visit Seisho Music Academy! And learn from the revstar girlies!

The day goes by normally and they all bond, but then as they’re about to leave. wuh woh.

They fall into the elevator or something. Idk I haven’t decided that yet but somehow they get sent down to the fucking pit of gay fighting and singing

um. And it’s not the giraffe running the auditions this time. It’s a Miku!!! A Miku born from the feelings of all the girls who have failed in the revues over the years. haha.

She’s very mean and wants to see bloodshed!!! good for her but not good for the girlies.

Four of the Revstar girls are in the pit as well and Miku tells WxS that if they don’t fight and win in the revues against Seisho, their SEKAI will be locked off forever. That’s when WxS realize “oh shit we actually can’t access SEKAI anymore.”

And it’s not just WxS, all of the groups have lost access to their SEKAI. So as the story goes on they’re all dragged into the fighting to get their SEKAI back.

The Revstar girls are fighting to save Starlight or something again idk

So that’s the basic premise! I think there’d be a lot of fun interactions between the characters, I’m kinda obsessed with the idea of Rui and Nana interacting. Also Emu and Nana. I think I’m just obsessed with Nana.

You can also make a lot of VA and name jokes lol, Junna and Mizuki have the same VA, Tamao and Kanade have the same VA, there’s two Ruis and two Tsukasas, and I’m just going ahead and headcanoning Michiru Otori and Emu Otori as cousins lol. They’re both tiny with big weapons and are pretty rich

I really only have little snippets actually written rn, but I’d like to continue more of it! I’ve also been playing around with the idea of a visual novel for this? Anyways

That’s all :3

[sarioh]

Hello Tumblr user Rio Sarioh! If you're bored; do you have a favourite book you like to talk about? What is it about, why do you like it? Or perhaps a movie or show of which you enjoy the writing? A fairytale? A poem?

Wow, creative writing. Any thoughts on that? Pretty swell, in my opinion.

Hope you have a nice vague nine hour time window and that your thing arrives in good condition!

HEY tumblr user tt04sty hope u r doing well and thank you for the ask. also my Thing has indeed arrived in good condition so thank god i didnt have to wait all day for it. to be frank questions about my favorite media make me feel like a deer in headlights bc for whatever reason whenever i get asked this i somehow forget every piece of media i've ever consumed or that has had an impact on me in any way and i don't know why. safe answer though is probably everything everywhere all at once which i know might come as an absolute shock to everyone (<- wrote a 16k word fic inspired by it) but generally just any media that is very Wacky and Surreal visual-wise but with a central theme of love and connection gets me really bad because i am very predictable and also a little pathetic. also as a gay asian living in the west with a very stereotypical asian mother you can probably understand why the movie had such an impact on me LOL.

also creative writing... i've only done one work of creative writing in the past few years and that was wind back the clock which i think about genuinely all the time. writing Character Study is the most cathartic and fun experience in the world to me and i prolonged publishing that for SO long because i just wanted to keep working on it forever. my writer's problem is that it takes me about 60 years to come up with an idea that i am captivated enough by to be able to put it into writing and actually stick to it for more than a day and that has only happened one single time in my 2 years in mcytblr. but by god i would kill a whole man to be able to do that all over again because i am regrettably a stem major and have not written an essay or anything else creative in years and while im enjoying it i do feel like im missing out on a crucial part of being a Person. i miss writing so much you have no idea. and i feel like the further i go into this Degree the more my Meta Analysis brain starts to rot and get replaced by Numbers and Formulas and Snippets of code. i'm losing my touch forreal

as far as other media goes... to be perfectly honest i have not been consuming much lately just because i have been very busy irl but i did just finish reading the red rising trilogy for the first time which was cool... also have probably watched about 200 hours of animal documentaries over the past few months LOL. actually on the topic of books i am going on a flight soon and will have a 9 hour stopover so if anyone has any book recommendations of ANY genre i would love to hear them. please tell me all of your favorite books i want to read them all

[aronarchy]

That’s when, somehow, the proprietary logic of our emotion, what Alva Gotby calls our “emotional reproduction” of one another and ourselves, along these propertarian lines, is weakened and loosened. Instead we see outbreaks of Red Love, as Alexandra Kollontai called it. Red Plenty, was Mark Fisher’s term. (I’m not sure Mark Fisher was down for our family abolition at all.) I think the emotional level of “red plenty” is the feeling that we are secure in the very contingency of our caring and cared for-ness. Where we don’t need containers like the family, like marriage, like private property, to reassure us that we will be held tomorrow, as well as today.

Indeed, those containers that I just mentioned, family, and all the mechanisms that come along with it (like inheritance and marriage and so on): they are already quite fallible. They do fulfill certain social reproductive functions adequately from capitalism’s point of view. But everyone knows a husband can walk out on you (or worse, maybe, not walk out on you, in some cases?). It is us that the family is not serving. It’s serving the market and the state pretty well.

I keep noticing that the conversation about the crisis of white masculinity in America doesn’t really refer to the ample evidence, the sociology, that shows that men benefit massively from heterosexual marriage. Even with all their complaints, like: “there’s no male breadwinner household anymore” and “women aren’t respecting men anymore.” Whatever narrative is being peddled by Jordan Peterson, basically. The hard evidence is basically that marriage is a great deal for men. It’s a great labor deal for heterosexual men. That’s why they don’t leave marriages. They cheat, but they don’t leave (unless their wife has a life-threatening disease).

TFSR: One of the things that you said that’s really important that comes in feminist and Gay Liberation texts from the ’70s is this idea that the family gives to the worker this mini hierarchy. You get yelled at by your boss at work, but you come home and you get to lord over your wife and children. And then there’s a chain of hierarchy there too, where the husband has power over the wife, or the wife maybe has power over the children. It’s the little laboratory in learning your place. And then also the violent pleasures of having power over someone, too.

I think that’s really an important thing to pull out. That’s how I tried to explain to myself this current movement of, in a moment of devastation and economic precarity for so many people, why there’s a parental rights movement. Why is that the thing? That’s one place where these people are naturalized into having power over someone where they have no power in any other situation perhaps?

SL: Yeah, yeah. That’s fascinating.

Gosh, there’s something I literally thought just a minute before getting on this podcast with you, Scott. Someone shared a snippet of Hannah Arendt, who is a philosopher I’ve always disliked. She’s very, very conservative, in my opinion, anyway. But there was a section of an essay by her that I’d never read, which was her essay opposing desegregation! I didn’t even know this existed! Anyway, she argues that it is too great of an infringement on parental rights, basically, to demand that children go to desegregated schools if their parents don’t want to create a desegregated family culture. She has this fantastically clear and strong statement in favor of the primacy of family: the supremacy of parental authority over the realm of the public. I don’t know if this is actually useful, you may want to cut this from the recording. But I was just thinking about the social crisis that she was writing from within. The tumult of that moment. She’s writing from this moment of racial justice, upheaval, and movement and she’s saying, “The Family is threatened by this, and I choose to uphold the Family.”

I think we need to get braver. I think we need to be able to say, against the right-wing assault against Critical Race Theory: yeah, fine, this does threaten the family. I think there are so many similarities between that “integration” fight and this moment of organized assault on trans children and trans life more generally. Do people have the guts to understand the structure? The way in which the far right is sometimes onto something when it accuses anticapitalists, feminists, leftists of seeking to undermine the sanctity of the Family? Against Arendt, for example, can we insist that that parental rights can go get fucked, when appropriate?

I think the missing part of left discourse is the willingness to say, “Yeah, we do oppose the Family on x and y fronts.” Or even the willingness to merely criticize the family. I’d like us to be able to say: “We do not consider parental rights a supreme value on this terrain.” But we have to be very clear that at the same we oppose the devaluation, dispossession, expropriation and dehumanization of Black parents. There are many groups whose “parental rights” are always already pretty much null and void within the Child Protective Services industry.

Dorothy Roberts has important scholarship on family policing and the very, very white supremacist structure of parenthood as it is defined in settler-colonial law, and in child protection generally. We can, according to her, and I agree, seek to abolish family policing (and to that extent, basically argue almost for the voices of Black parents to count more), while at the same time fighting for family abolition, as a longer term anticapitalist goal. We can defend disenfranchised parents and at the same time struggle for parental rights to be limited or balanced out (relative to the rights of children).

But family abolitionism is full of these slightly tricky-to-think-through contradictions. Because we live in a world in which family is always already a racially bifurcated technology. Which is not to say that Black, or racialized, or immigrant, or queer, or proletarian working class families aren’t part of the privatization of care into private households. As I said, that privatization is the main thing about the family, so, even these alternative forms of household and social reproduction and kinship (which in many ways have skills and experiences that are going to be super useful for family abolitionism) are part of the family regime. It makes no sense to make exceptions for these sorts of marginalized and underserved and underbenefited families. People who benefit the least from the edifice of family values and the regime of familism (as an economic system) should not be used as a reason to shore up the family!

Saying like, “Oh, we don’t mean those families, we just mean, like, the white bourgeois family!” is much safer. People always want me to say that. They want me to specify that, when I say family abolition, I mean the white bourgeois family. But I think if you define the family—as I think it is correct to do—as a mechanism that really affects everybody and is reproduced, wittingly or not, by everyone, then then you really have to be talking about the privatization of care. It is non-bourgeois, non-white, non-settler people who are going to benefit the most from family abolition. In that sense, they deserve it the most. They should not be exceptionalized, or for that matter, romanticized. Because the private nuclear household is not somehow a wonderful thing, just because it happens to be situated in a racialized, proletarianized community. Unfortunately!

TFSR: Yeah, I want to get to the trans stuff, but where you’re leading me is thinking about the selling out of the radical liberationist movements of the women’s movement and gay movement by taking family abolition off the table. Is that another moment of white supremacist consolidation? I’m thinking about gender abolition, for example, or the word gender itself already includes the power structure. I think family maybe does, too, by thinking that family is related to blood and naturalized relationships, it erases other forms of relating to people that happening, but get called the family maybe, wrongly, and reproduces a kind of racialized logic that our belonging is based on blood.

So, what I’m thinking about here, and what I want to ask you about is on the one hand, why was it taken off the table? Do you think it has to do with this racialized logic? On the positive end of this question, how do we relate family abolition to these other kinds of abolitionist movements? Connecting it back to the abolition of slavery, but also police and prison abolition, which is explicitly Black liberationist and fighting against an anti-Black world? Do you have thought on why that was sacrificed in the vision of the movement and how we can make those connections now?

SL: Yeah, it’s really interesting. The collapse of that imaginary at the height of the struggles that proliferated around 1970 is definitely linked to, simply, our material defeat. It’s literally just the epistemic consequences (epistemicide) of the murder, frankly, and repression, that the state successfully carried out. Our people were stomped into the dust. We can’t really state that enough.

You can look at the beginning of the ’70s and the end of the ’70s and simply compare the texts! I found two things that struck me that were amazingly different. From the early ’70s and, then, in contrast, the early ’80s. A text by Pat Parker, who is a Oakland-based Black liberationist radical nurse and “third world” feminist, who has a speech that she gave at an anti-imperialist convergence, and it is all about how white women on the left need to get with the program of family abolition and stop being scared, because capitalism and the state will not fall until women and children explode the cell of the family (i.e. the private nuclear household).

That text [of Pat Parker’s] is amazing, because it puts Black women really squarely at the forefront of that politics [of family abolition], which I personally kind of imagined, like everybody else imagines, until I looked in the archive, was probably most forcefully articulated by the white, Jewish feminist Shulamith Firestone. It’s just not the case. Actually, Black women were saying it way harder, I discovered.

But then 10 years later (and, again, we have to think of all the successful State repression of Black liberationist struggle in the interim), we have Hazel Carby’s very famous and also very well articulated open letter, White Woman Listen!. I think that’s from 1984. And it’s basically about why white feminists’ excessive emphasis on the family as an oppressive structure is harmful to Black women. And she says, “Black feminists do not deny that the family can be a source of oppression, but it’s also, for us, an important site of survival and resistance to the state.” That’s the text that everybody knows. What people don’t know is the previous one, the one 10 years before that. Because as I said, the memory has been erased.

I find it so interesting that essentially, we’re talking about the defeat of Black feminist abolitionism in the widest sense. The abolitionism of the present state of things in its entirety: family, capital, state, criminal justice system, all of it. That intensity was actually voiced by the Black feminist imaginary. Which makes sense given, for example, Hortense Spillers’ analysis of how it is the Black woman who falls out of the symbolic logics of gendered humaneness in the grammar of American life. And it is the Black female social subject who needs to be made a place for. We don’t know what that place would be. She says she doesn’t know whether that place would be called a family anymore. That’s possible.

Tiffany Lethabo King reads Hortense Spillers’ epochal text, “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe,” as potentially family-abolitionist. Tiffany Lethabo King is one of the Black family abolitionist theorists thinking and working today. And she’s not the only one. I quote in my book from Lola Olufemi and Annie Olaloku-Teriba, who are working on “patriarchal motherhood” from a Black radical perspective in the UK right now. I do think maybe it is the defeat of Black power that we must point to, if we want to explain why family abolitionism was no longer thinkable by the end of the ’70s.

[new-berry]

for the fic writer asks — 7, 9, 14 :)

I did seven but

9. What inspired you to write your first fic?

14. Share a snippet. (WIP? Spain 3 and Conor/Mason if you want to skip to that bit.

My very first fandom was wrestling RPF which is like… it’s already fanfic. Pro wrestling is fandom, I won’t be convinced otherwise.

It had everything, sex, violence, magic, you could ship anyone with anyone… amazing. Although I don’t watch as much I go through stages of watching every week.

So becuase it’s me I think my first ship was probably the Hart family. So yeah, I’ve always skated every line of wrong.

Speaking of skating…The first thing I wrote (like aside from when I was a kid and wrote like thinly veiled barbie fanfic - she was not after men. I think she was with Sindy in one. I totally wrote one where Ken and GI Joe did whatever the ten year olds version of hooking up is. I think they kissed and got married. In a little diary.

And I had a whole saga where barbie got fed up of Ken and went off to be barbie of the jungle and all my stuffed toys were her minions. The jungle had an ocean view because I had a stuffed whale.

If I want something in my fics, I will make it work.

The first thing I posted was, oh god hockey? It doesn’t exist anywhere Mark Messier and Marty Mcsorely, was it the m’s? If you don’t know hockey one was the enforcer who protected the glamour players. If Martinez was a hockey player in that time period (although thinking back they were retired when I wrote them) he would be an enforcer. They met in a gay bar after someone ducked in from the rain.

I’m not joking it is only up since then. I wish I could say it was the second which was two juniors (think like Tino Liverermento and Lewis Hall) their first year in the league finding themselves and their sexuality and where they belonged. I don’t think it exists anywhere.

WIP

Mason / Conor ���low winter sun”

There was an uneven distance between Conor and Mason. Deepening that last spring, when it was whisper upon rumour, and the whispers were as common as the daffodils that sprung up.

Slightly uphill, and a little off course. Getting out of breath walking with him. Shaving in the morning, talking to Mason’s reflection in a mirror. A tape delay, speaking across time zones. Throwing water in your face and looking onto him gone and a towel folded, polite as a hotel room.

Spain 3

It slips up on him, like a rush of cold water when he was expecting hot. Rio laughing and tussling over the ball with John, bright grin stretching his face, dark skin lit up like the light is falling just for him.

A slick greasy longing that he’s always pushed down. Held down by the warnings his father gave him, sniffing out Frank’s weakness as easily as he found him hiding from training.

[simonambroise]

I've been tagged by @palebdot. I intend to talk about my work.

QnA under the cut or whatever.

1)What motivates you to write?

I love reading my writing when its good, because I can write the story I want to read with gay people in it. There is also my dearest friend Sahara Wheatbrick, a tumblrless follower whomst knoweth where I live, so... Fear and joy in equal measure.

2) A line/short snippet of your writing that you are most proud/happy of. If not maybe share a line of someone else's work you love (just please credit them)

Oh there's the scene I wrote from Lara's perspective (Lara is an alien called a Ruquati which is bipedal humanoid, typically red, orange or yellow with four arms) when she is first interacting with Taylor, a human child. Lara's internal processes are so fun to write, because she manages to be a space alien and yet so human. I will admit I took some inspiration from the whole humans are weird thing, but I feel the world building and characterization is the best I've ever done. I want to shove the entire chapter in here... But it isn't really a short snippet, yk? Tho its my post and I can do what I want..... Ill spare you the chapter but you'll get the whole scene.

Sorry for rambling tho haha

Lara had been working on a blanket when the larva stumbled in- a simple repetitive task. A useful task. Not the task she had been born for, but a task. Dip into the last row, grab the yarn, pull through. Dip into the last row, grab the yarn, pull through. Dip, grab, pull. She barely registered the door swinging open, but she did notice when little hands with one too many fingers tugged at her transparent sleeve. Lara looked down at the Terran, and blinked slowly. Such a small larva would not have the instincts that said eye contact was a threat, but it was more for her sake. To her surprise, the little Terran blinked back before clambering up to tuck themselves between her lower shoulders and the couch. Their skin was warm, surprisingly so- every reminder that the species could maintain a perfect temperature so well was like a bucket of cold water. A shocking reminder that Terrans were alien in every sense of the word. Another glance at the Terran larva, wide eyes completely unfamiliar on such a tiny face. Ruquatin larva didn’t have eyes, or legs, or much of anything. They only really began looking like adults as pupa, but even when Terran larva first hatched- or rather, ripped their way out of the adult’s stomach like some sort of parasite- they still resembled Terrans. Even inside the adult’s stomach, which Lara assumed was fairly similar to the egg stage, they had arms and legs and… eyes. Well, most of the time. Mistakes happen when you decide to build your descendants inside of your body. It was just poor decision making. A complete lack of planning. How were you supposed to get them out of there if something went wrong? If there were mites or worms or parasites? It was a miracle they even made it to space, Lara thought as the larva tucked close to her. They were warm, as all Terrans were. Radiating heat like the sun. Why they felt the need to head off into the great dark was a mystery. Terrans were a new species by most standards, never mind ancient Ruquatin standards. Their entrance to the galaxy was the catalyst to the fall of the Empire, and Lara could not bring herself to give a single damn. The Empress got what was coming for her. The colony Lara had been born into was gone, and she had been accepted into another. Greta was the Nurse, the healer who stopped what would have been death in it’s tracks. Gabriel was a Architect, a Peacemaker. A planner and mediator, calm and collected. And Piper was the Builder, the Greenie, the Grub, the Cleaner, and the Queen. The one who grew food, the protector, a Queen that ruled over her little colony the same as she cleaned the kitchen sink. She Built their hive with her own hands and Lara could never understand the complete disregard Terrans had for a caste system. Her hive was everything, and Lara was a Diplomat. The one who went outside and made deals, the one who was shunned so the others may remain safe. The larva at her side had begun making little rhythmic growling noises that Piper had referred to as ‘snoring’. It was a behavior, she explained, that some Terrans did while sleeping. Lara was the Diplomat of her colony, the only one. And by Ragaitor she would do her job. For the Queen. For the colony. For the hive.

3) Which OC makes you smile every time you think/talk about them and what are they like?

I don't believe I've mentioned my all time favorite OC on this, but -surprise- its a character I project onto heavily! He's a blond trans guy who's a little goblin and loves embroidery. He's an absolute piece of shit and the most loveable goofball.

Now, for Captain of the Blue Opal, it has got to be Clive. In theory, he's a bad guy. In practice, he's just some guy. Cherry is bullied relentlessly by his crew members for his name, which I believe is entirely unfair to Clay. I mean, Clyde is trying his best. (Sorry to all the Clowns out there. Your name ie valid)

4) What process of writing do you enjoy the most?

First draft, every time. Once I get into the swing of things, words flow and its easy. Its made easier if I plot things out but I find that duller than getting right to it!

5) What part of writing do you think you are the best at? (Yes stroke your own ego it's okay)

Oh no I need to talk about myself. Uhhhhhh... I'm really bad at that lmao. I think I'm good at dialogue. I've never had the issue where I had to figure out what a character was going to say in a given situation, because they just said that. I suppose that goes hand in hand with characterization but I've exceeded my one self-compliment yearly limit.

6) What is something in the writeblr community is most enjoyable?

Its an excuse to talk about my book to people who might actually listen. What's not to love?

7) A writing tool/device you use that helps you with writing? (It could be speech to text, a writing program etc)

Reedsy, Reedsy, Reedsy. Its a double edged sword, but its the sort of website that works super well with my nurodivergent brain. It lets you set goals and reminds you of said goals- both short term and long term. It's divided up into chapters and lets you put fancy scene breakers in. On the other hand, exporting your book in reedsy format is hell. You just can't do it easily. You want o take your book out so you can send it off to a publisher? Haha, if you're not going through Reedsy they're going to make it difficult.

8) A piece of worldbuilding that you like in your own story? (It could be the magic system, a particular place in the story, a law etc)

My Ruquati space alien culture. Their social structure is similar to hive insects, they have a strict caste system. Typically they are warm colors-- red and orange, though there are two exceptions. Greenies, who are in charge of tending to the plants. Their skin color is green because of a chemical they secrete- sort of a pesticide/sun lotion in one yk. Then of course we have blue Ruquati, which are typically seen as bad luck. Blue Ruquati aren't confined to a specific caste like Greenies. Any level could be born blue, at which point they'd be set at the bottom of their particular caste. Unfortunately for Lara, she got the quadruple middle finger (which is weird since Ruquati don't have a middle finger) from genetics, so she's a diplomat (lowest caste) AND blue.

Im trying to keep this short but then I realized if people got bored they'd have left by now... So here's a brief overview of the Ruquati social structure!!!

At the top is The Empress, the chief of hive minds and supreme ruler of the Ruquatin Empire. Hive minds, you might ask, simon, where did the hive minds come from?

Well, my dear friend, the hive mind is made up entirely by Queens, all controlled remotely by the Empress. They are capable of individual actions, just so the Empress doesn't have to waste thought on day to day matters of the colonies.

Architects are a bit harder to explain. In canon there isn't a lot of information on their behavior, seeing as if you get close enough to catch them, you've killed the hive. Architects die with their hive. Because I am the author, I can tell you they are the strategists, the military commanders. They plan battles and the size of the Ruquati Empire was entirely dependent on them. They are often referred to as the Peacemakers, not in the sense they will solve their problems diplomatically but in the sense they'll order the deaths of anyone who may "disturb the peace".

Beneath the Architects are the Builders, a job that is fairly self-explanatory. These Ruquati expand and repair the colony under orders from their Queen. In a warlike species who's only goals is expansion (gross oversimplification but i won't subject you to politics) the architects of that expansion are valued highly.

Then, of course, the Nurses. Unlike human nurses, who fix injuries, these Ruquati watch over the eggs, larva, and pupa of of the colony. Young Ruquati are entirely dependent upon the Nurses for their survival. Medics aren't so much a thing as it's very difficult to injure a Ruquati. Once an injury occurs, however, they are, for lack of a better term, absolutely screwed.

Next up, we've got Grubs, the soldiers. They can be sorted into three categories.

Queen's Guard

This is the one position a Ruquati is not born into. The strongest of all Grubs (common and others) are pulled aside for extra training to become the Guards for the Queen. The Queen's Guard. The guards that protect the Queen. Highest ranked of all Grubs, though still below everyone above. They eat a special specialized diet that makes them more aggressive, more territorial, and larger than the average Grub.

2. Grubs

These are the soldiers who fight foreign wars, sometimes halfway across the galaxy. They leave the hive so that the hive may remain strong, sacrificing so much for the colony. Least territorial, but incredibly aggressive.

3. Common Grubs

Common Grubs are the soldiers who stay behind to defend the colony. They are less aggressive then their mobile counterparts but much more territorial, bordering on Queen's Guard levels of territorial.

Then we've got "The Green Ones" or Greenies. They are distinguished from their fellow workers by the green tint to their skin. They are farmers growing a bioluminescent mushroom. Once harvested, it is the main food source for the Ruquati people. Before harvesting, however, they release deadly spores that can and will grow in Ruquati lung equivalents. The Greenies are immune to the spores because their bodies secrete a mucus the ensures spores do not enter the lungs. This mucus has a habit of dying Ruquati skin green, hence Greenies.

General Workers, another fairly self explanatory title. These people do the stuff higher ups can't be bothered with.

Cleaners, the ones who do the dirty work. They do the small, annoying tasks that nobody else will. They are respected, but are definitely considered lesser.

Drones are here to fuck and then they die. I can't elaborate beyond that because that's what they are. They are all about instant gratification (since they're going to die soon anyways) so they often make stupid impulsive decisions that endanger or even destroy the hive. Its happened too many times for Drones to be put into positions of power.

Now, for Diplomats. Yet another self-explanatory title Simon, love the creativity. They are considered the lowest of the low, because they are sent in when winning a war is not possible. For the most part, that doesn't happen. As a result, Diplomats have a tendency to be seen as useless cowards in Ruquati society. Ah, culture traumatizing those it deems unnecessary. How original! Diplomats are an evolutionary holdover from Before the Empress' Hivemind. Back then, warring queens often fought dirty, and fought dirty often. This all changed when the Empress created her hive mind, but this is veering dangerously close to political territory and I'd need several hours to properly explain the politics of Pre-Empress Ruquati Empire, Empress' Ruquati Empire, and Post-Empress Ruquati Empire. Which isn't actually relevant to my story haha. It be boring for everyone involved.

NOTES:

-Blue Ruquati are considered cursed and get sent to rock bottom of the caste they're already in. If a Queen is blue, she will be considered lesser than the other queens, though still above Builders. As a diplomat AND a blue Ruquati, Lara got the short end of all the sticks.

-Drones are technically lower than diplomats but Ruquati society at least recognizes them as having a use. Still, they are regarded with much suspicion. They attempt to seduce whatever Queen is nearby, have sex and then die. What a life.

-Castes were ranked in order of importance to Ruquati society. They value expansion, war and consider themselves superior to other species. (once again, gross oversimplification but c'est la vie or whatever)

-Most Ruquati stay in the hive their entire lives, except for diplomats, Queens, Queen's Guards and Grubs.

9) What piece of advice would you say to encourage others to write if they are having a rough patch?

For me, my blocks are mental. I have the time to write. Theoretically I have the ability to focus on the writing. If I just started, I'd be fine.

Sit down with the computer. Just open it up to your word processor of choice and sit in front of it. Listen to music, sit there, and stare at that document. Eventually you'll get bored enough to start writing.

Another tip that helped me: for your first draft, set word count goals. I'm not talking 1,000, 2,000 words every day, because even people with writing as their full time job can't do that. I'm talking sit down with the intent to write one sentence. One word, on bad days.

10) Tag some people whose works you love/have been your biggest

ohhhhhhh uh most of the people who inspire me are irl, but i'll mention them anyways. Pseudonyms obviously.

So, to my dearest Dad-Husband-Son-Family-Dog-And-Unlicensed-Nurse-Practitioner (one person), Sahara Wheatbrick, Luigi, Indigo, Duffin Dagels and of course, @coatlsaviator, thanks for the inspiration and support, as well as putting up with my insane rants.

Now for the Tumblr people, of which there are two (three if you count Mike' N' Ike, which I do.) haha. I'm not rlly integrated into the Tumblr ecosystem yet, but part of that is my unwillingness to talk to anyone and Good Old Fashioned Social Anxiety™

I would @ palebdot again but I think that's bad form on Tumblr and i don't want to sent them two notifs for the same post so... Thrilled to see where they're going.

And the Other Writers I Follow Who Seem Cool And Unapproachable to my Social Anxiety Whomst I Wish To Include In The QnA but Do Not Demand A Response From:

@caxycreations @sithbelle

You are mysterious and unknowable friends, Keep Up The Good Work