#love how I actually tag something for once and it’s incredibly niche and only vaguely funny

[abigailment-a]

has Lego brought back old colors before? the plans for 2024 include a lot of space stuff so it seems like they’re probably revisiting old themes but Ice Planet 2002 just wouldn’t look right without transparent neon orange. can they bring back transparent neon orange. i like transparent neon orange I think they should bring it back. Lego group please bring back transparent ne

[belethlegwen]

Was there anything out there that inspired you to write the stories you’ve written?

How many story ideas do you have tucked away in hopes of writing once your current stories are “finished”?

Alright, so, this may get very long and kinda real for a moment but nothing too serious, I promise. I'll keep it relatively vague.

I've always kind of bounced in and out of writing throughout my life. Big stints of lots of writing, long stints of not writing basically anything, but I enjoy it in a lot of ways so it's always been AROUND when it comes to me. I've got two short stories published in some local collections, that's pretty neat. I was in a novel writing class for a long while that was being run by my publisher (he eventually got sick of seeing me because he saw I had learned everything I could from the Moderate level class but kept re-enlisting because it was basically a few weeks of access to the in-progress works of other people and I just loved reading and sharing what other people were up to and chatting with them about it. He kicked me out of the class and told me I could only come back for Advanced class-- which would require me to have at least most of a first draft for a full novel already done hahaha) Anyway, I had a pretty bad string of relationships from about ~2016 to January last year, sapped all of the creative energy out of me and despite being in the novel writing class during the 2016-2019 relationship I just... couldn't really sit down and hammer either of those two stories out without the direct motivation of the class. One of them got scrapped completely because my vision for it and what I felt comfortable in being able to pull off, I just couldn't get to mesh. Around early summer last year I hit a pretty bad bout of loneliness, and I had sworn of relationships indefinitely as a result of the last couple of dudes (and because women are scary to talk to ;-;) so I started trying to find SOME kind of outlet for it. Tried to get back into RP the only way I really kind of knew how, which was WoW, and that didn't... go... at all. Struggled through it for a month or two and then just finally got fed up and cracked open Google Docs in August 2021. Told myself I was just going to write for ME, write what I WANTED, and make it SPICY if I wanted to, so I did. That's how Small Date happened, and why it's got missing scenes and chunks and the like, because I was literally just jumping to the good shit that I wanted to write and have to read for myself. I had tried looking for micro/macro writings and art but was finding it very hard (because I wasn't familiar with the G/t tags or terminology or anything, I'm an internet ancient) to find anything that really fit the kind of vibe I was hoping for (not aggressively/violently sexual, no vore, not gory, not furry related, in the preferred size range, etc) so writing something that hit all of the notes I wanted just to have something for ME was great. I kept poking at it and writing it up until the start of the extremely busy Christmas season last year.

By the time things had slowed down again and I could get back to writing, I realized I had been sitting on the concept (and ancient, ancient chapters I had written multiple times and that had been wiped by computer crashes and rewritten etc etc) for The Rescue and The Stranding for over half of my life, so I figured it was time to break out Henry and start writing. I was about 30 pages into Stranding, I believe, by the time I thought about posting it to actually share with people. This was obviously a kind of media I was craving and needed and saw a pretty sizable gap with in my searches, so I figured if maybe I could post it and it could find even one person who was looking for something like it, who now had something to fill those niches, it'd be worth it. It was pretty early on into it being posted that I got an incredibly sweet comment that asked me about how Melanie and Henry originally met, and if there was a companion story, and that inspired me in the moment to both try to scour through my ancient archives and see if ANYTHING had survived the last 15+ years (one did! Woof, ouch) and start writing The Rescue. I started writing The Stranding on February 7th this year, and started writing The Rescue on February 26th. As for when they're finished... I have no idea. I might jump back into the Small Date universe in some way; it's similar in a way to the kind of things going on in the background of Zip's Rose & LaPorte universe and that just seems like a fun space to play in again eventually. But if I'm being extremely honest, I feel like the stories and universe of The Rescue/Stranding could go on basically until my fingers fall off if I want it to. I'm sure by the time I'm anywhere close to down with both stories, I'll have ideas in mind. For now though, this is where my head is firmly at. ...That said though, I've been running around the ConceptSpace with Zip lately discussing "The Rescue but with Miller instead of Henry" and god damn, the gold in that thar hill... ANYWAY! Thank you so so so much for the lovely ask! - Belle

[merryfortune]

An Apology to the Lavender Tea Shop

Written for 100ships on Dreamwidth

Prompt 82: Lavender

Ship: Daruizen/Nodoka

Fandom: Healin’ Good PreCure

Word Count: 1,725

Rating: G

Warnings: No Warnings Apply

Tags: Not Canon Compliant, Post Canon, Established Relationship, Fluff, human!Daruizen

   Daruizen was beginning to suspect that he and Nodoka had vastly different ideas of what constituted a date.

   Daruizen was content to take her out to all the back paddocks, find a nice shady tree and spend some time together doing nothing. Ah, nothing. There was nothing better than doing nothing. Except maybe doing nothing with Nodoka. It was… what’s the word she liked to use? Refreshing, yes, refreshing. To just lay in the grass, feel the wind on their faces, talk about nothing of importance. That’s what Daruizen thought a date was.

   Nodoka, however, had a different idea.

   Nodoka liked to do things. There was nothing worse than doing things - even if they were with Nodoka. She enjoyed going clothes shopping and going to the mall as a date. Dragging Daruizen into every oversized closet that she spotted, making him try to choose between the dresses that she liked, wearing them for both their amusements, supposedly, more hers than his and force Daruizen to give opinions whatever the difference between cerise and puce was. It was far too restless and busy to be a date, in Daruizen’s opinion.

   However, Daruizen would much prefer that over what Nodoka had planned for this date. Daruizen would remember seeing something so ugly, anyone would.

   “Isn’t it cute?” Nodoka prompted him and with a careful glance to his side, Daruizen could see stars in Nodoka’s eyes.

   “No.” Daruizen bluntly replied - and to the doll in question’s face. “You have bad taste.”

   The doll was onion shaped, mostly purple on top with a green bottom. It had a face which was heavily made up, implying excessive make-up such as mascara and lipstick. It sat, prouder than it should, in a glass box embedded in the fence, next to the gate, that threaded around the property of the teahouse it belonged to.

   “I don’t think you should be questioning my taste given that I’m seeing you.” Nodoka scolded him.

   Daruizen shrugged, “Well, you do have bad taste. Especially for seeing me.” he self-deprecated.

   “Well, I think you are plenty cute.” Nodoka asserted.

   That’s half the problem, Daruizen thought to himself but he didn’t say it out loud. They were talking in circles. But then Nodoka’s eyes lit up and she giggled to herself. Daruizen rolled his eyes. He had no doubt that she was about to cue up a very bad joke.

   “And I think you should find this doll plenty cute, too,” Nodoka added, “because you are Daruizen and it is a Daruma.”

   Daruizen rolled his eyes but the muscles in his lips were beyond his control apparently as he did smile. Just a little bit. Nodoka continued to perk up, entirely too proud of her humour which was even worse than her taste in aesthetics, apparently.

   “C’mon, let’s go inside, already. I’m getting thirsty standing out in the sun.” Nodoka said. The back of her head felt very shiny with the warmth of the sun that it was absorbing.

   “Okay, whatever.” Daruizen relented.

   “Yay!” Nodoka smiled.

   She grabbed Daruizen’s hand and tugged him along inside the garden that was on the other side of the fence and encircled the actual location of their date. Nodoka had a skip in her step and Daruizen bobbed along behind her, stumbling over the stone path as she led him along. They went up the steps and Nodoka pushed open the glass door. Above her, bells tinkled to announce their arrival and Daruizen, who preferred to be anonymous, was a little bit embarrassed by that.

   He scanned his surroundings. It was quiet it despite it being mid-morning so he felt vaguely consoled that he and Nodoka would have this place to themselves but there was something about this place. About how the sunlight filtered in from the big, fanciful windows and even in the smell of the air: fruity, milky, even sweet. There was something vaguely familiar about the floral decorations here and the rich coloured wooden floorboards. Daruizen recognised most if not all of it. Thus his budding realisation finally bloomed. He had been here once before. Then the owner of the establishment appeared before him and Nodoka and realisation became certainty.

   “Nodoka!” this man exclaimed, smiling widely. “It is so good to see you again, my sweet!”

   “Mikio!” Nodoka greeted him back excitedly. “It’s always my pleasure to come around. I’ve brought a friend this time.”

   Nodoka put a funny accent on how she spoke the word ‘friend’ to make it seem otherwise. She even cuddled up to Daruizen as she said it, tugging his arm along and coiling his arm into a very possessive, very girlfriend-y embrace that made Daruizen frown. Frown and blush.

   Mikio smiled knowingly, he nodded his head with a sage demeanour, “A friend of Nodoka’s is always welcome here.”

   Nodoka’s expression faltered, “About that, Mikio…” She looked pleadingly at Daruizen.

   Mikio blinked, a little bit confused and Daruizen growled to himself. This was the part of the date that he hadn’t been looking forward to. Otherwise, compared to Nodoka’s hectic shopping dates that had them running around all over the place and through overcrowded buildings, this would have been perfectly peaceful. To just lounge around a cafe, eating and drinking, that was perfectly acceptable to the hedonistic Daruizen but he wasn’t just hedonistic. He was egotistical and even though his pride as a Byougen General was already incredibly busted to due to his current circumstances as a human, or humanlike, Daruizen adhered to Nodoka’s prompting. And so, he bowed his head to Mikio, even if it was only a couple of degrees forward.

   “We’ve met before, sir,” Daruizen said through gritted teeth, “and I would like to apologise for how I behaved and acted back then. I hurt you and your shop. I’m sorry.” He was practically spitting as he spoke but it made Nodoka happy.

   Mikio was still quite stunned but then he realised. He made an odd noise but then smiled. It appeared that he had cottoned on to what Daruizen - and Nodoka - were implying. After all, the Pretty Cures and their not so secret identities were open secrets in the town but the enemies that they had vanquished. That was a bit more tenuous with a lot of questions so it was good that Mikio was clever enough on the uptake.

   “I believe in fresh starts, young man,” Mikio told him, “I accept your apology.”

   “Thanks.” Daruizen muttered as he pulled himself back up.

   Mikio continued to beam kindly, “But that’s enough gum flapping, don’t you think?” he asked. “Why don’t I seat you two and bring over some menus?” he suggested.

   “Fwow, that sounds wonderful.” Nodoka agreed.

   Daruizen didn’t have much to say to that but at least Nodoka had released him from her grip. That was quite relieving. So, he and Nodoka trailed after Mikio who gave them a seat by the window that got entirely too much sunlight in Daruizen’s opinion but it did have a splendid view. He took after Nodoka in that regard. He liked the look of plants more now than he did before, how they basked so peacefully regardless of rain or shine. He would be content enough to trade himself between staring at it and at Nodoka.

   They sat down together and looked over the menu. It had a lot of writing on it and looked quite pretty laminated as it was with pressed flowers adorning it, too. Daruizen let Nodoka order whatever she wanted for them both. So, they ended up with a pot of the signature lavender tea as well as a slice of the devil’s chocolate cake for Daruizen and vanilla angel cake for Nodoka. 

   Both cakes, when they arrived, looked normal enough, per the box mixes that Nodoka’s parents used, but they were both flourished with flower petals which Daruizen found odd. He didn’t think they were edible and yet, Nodoka was heartily tucking into her angel cake - and enjoying it tremendously per the blissed out look on her face. A look which Daruizen had to admit, was very cute. So, not wanting to be left behind by the rapid pace that Nodoka was eating at, Daruizen had a few spoonfuls of his chocolate cake too - and he didn’t even avoid the flower petals. Although, they did crinkle oddly and sugarily on his tongue compared to how thick and moist the case was. Still, it wasn’t bad.

   It was just that pot of tea that Daruizen eyed even more dubiously than the flower petals on his cake. It did not smell even remotely drinkable to Daruizen. He watched with some horror as Nodoka drank it very delicately and with a soothed smile on her face. However, she did notice Daruizen’s hesitance.

   “Please,” she begged him, “just a sip. It's Mikio’s specialty after all.”

   “Ugh, fine.” Daruizen said but not before topping up his glass with the complementary ice water from the table, just in case he had to wash the horrible taste out.

   Nodoka, meanwhile, poured out the tea for Daruizen. She loved the lavender laden smell of it and was gentle with the teacup as she nudged it closer to him. Daruizen, however, had no grace as he picked it up and sampled it with a very haphazard bottom’s up approach.

   And yet, for all his predisposed grouching, Daruizen reacted quite reasonably to the tea. It was warm on his tongue in a way that soup was not warm, it was lighter and infinitely more floral but it didn’t taste bad. He drank a little bit more quite willingly and his expression lightened to Nodoka’s utter delight.

   “Do you like it?” she asked.

   “I, um, do.” Daruizen said, getting embarrassed that he was being so juvenile about liking some niche flavour of tea.

   “That’s good.” Nodoka smiled. “After our morning tea settles, do you want to go out and explore the garden? Everything from the tea leaves to the added flavours are all grown here after all. Isn’t that fascinating?”

   “Er yeah…” Daruizen agreed and he smiled a very small smile. “I would like that.”

   Nodoka smiled brilliantly upon hearing that Daruizen liked that even more than the idea of wandering the garden or even the taste of his chocolate cake and especially more than the lavender flavoured tea, even if it was quite delicious despite his initial reservations.

[ca1e70-deactivated]

a list of my entirely way too niche headcanons ive actually implemented for everyones imagination:

name options ive used and refuse to retire: david elizabeth strider (sometimes i dont feel like being a douche to others and saying thats not his name), harley davidson strider, and david james strider for the sake of simplicity

im not gonna tell yall the like. oc exes ive given him bc thatll take eighteen years. 

i dont rlly have an explanation on the ghost thing besides the fact he just can? ive occasionally pulled from family ghost stories and experiences bc i somehow got landed with family members who lived in a haunted house for a decade and enjoy scaring me with all the stories (including the time my cousin literally died on the kitchen floor from a bronchial spasm and one of the friends that was over asked my aunt later what was up with the old man she saw in the corner of the room that night - my cousin is fine btw shes just a huge bitch and a third grade teacher and i dont like her)

whether or not hes done drugs is based on absolutely nothing besides how im feeling in that moment. either hes the designated driver and sober friend forever or he got fired from his job after doing a line at work during graveyard with some random customers theres no inbetween (this absolutely happened @ waho. if dave works at waho hes a mess of a person and thats on the diner itself.)

ok look i hc dave w/schizophrenia besides when i was 14 i had a hyperfixation with learning about it and then at 16 was prescribed a medication and had side effects so wack my therapist genuinely thought 14 yr old me was onto something and its a weird way to cope with the idea that lady put in my head that i might “develop it in my twenties” which i turn 20 this year and i havent been able to stop obsessing and panicking over the prospect so PLEASE dont come in my inbox calling me ableist im not out here all harley quinn in suicide squad with the voices ok hes medicated, he goes to therapy, the hard fast delusion that lil cal was nearly sentient and informed bro of every single thing dave did no matter how asinine it was is no longer a debilitatingly affecting him ANYWAYS

i actually use the chicken/egg farming family pretty often just because its hilarious to me to give dave like. an actual mom and dad. hes literally an uncle to like three different kids he just never visits because they make fun of his skinny jeans and he hates one of his (incredibly bare-bones ocs all of them) brothers who threatened to bash his head in with a little league bat after dave broke his star wars lego set apart on accident (but not rlly) so their parents were like “why dont you stay with your brother in the big city for a lil while champ” and then they just never picked him back up? and thats on favoritism 

the other one is that his name is actually david reed and hes the middle child of a family of three who literally live the standard golden retriever white middle class life only they went to disney land or something equally as dumb one year when dave was like 6 and he wandered off so bro literally just went “huh free game” because frankly he was an idiot who thought maybe i should take this kid home because its real dangerous in parking lots and then it was too late to NOT have it seem like a kidnapping and thats why daves never had a summer job, seen his birth certificate, or gone to school. but vaguely remembers what kindergarten was like and having a pet dog and calling someone mom as a kid. 

im not making a bullet point about his sex life headcanons just use your imagination and acknowledge the fact bro essentially worked within the sex industry and i enjoy putting dave through trauma as a catharsis 

i stopped doing this one usually but if he did go to school hes been in percussion since fifth grade and played the drums in his high schools jazz band as well as various edgy teenager garage bands he likes to pretend dont have a youtube presence and that hes absolutely never been shirtless in front of plenty of his classmates because he wore a hoodie to a show like an idiot. idk occasionally ill put him in an actual band he doesnt hate but keeps separate from his lil turntechGodhead internet persona (which i will ALSO touch upon in a sec) until they wind up getting looped into a tour with some bigger named band that has a show in *insert beta kid here*’s city and hes gotta come clean solely so he can visit his online friend. sorry derseasterous thats the one time weve ever run into each other and i made him have a crush on one of his bandmates i was in my anti-daverose phase where i made dave a hoe and also didnt want to admit i still loved the ship all these years later 

i hate it so much but you know the whole vr loli trap voice shit that was popular a while ago? hes fucking baller at it for some reason. he did it as a joke while talking to bro and they both about shat their pants. if im feeling real ambitious, hes got a separate soundcloud solely dedicated to doing dumbass rap covers or making his own but in the voice under the pseudonym elizabeth “beth” davids that he will never admit is his. well, he will, but hes gonna be really fucking embarrassed about it. irony or not.

talking abt seperate soundclouds and stuff ive always had it where turntechGodhead was his like. essentially internet fucking persona facade shit he used because we all had that phase where we wanted memorable urls and stuff but also didnt want to totally ignore the nagging fear of people finding you in real life, until it turned into real life ppl finding you on the internet. so he also has basically an adjacent set of social media under the same name but its just a boring username i havent decided on so everyone he knows irl doesnt mix up with what hes made for himself as TG and the people he knows as TG dont know what highschool he goes to. (this occasionally comes with the territory of ppl on parp being pissed that daves “lying” or “hiding things” from his friends as if he was doing it out of spite instead of just keeping embarrassing tagged photos and videos from football games or when he ate shit at the skatepark from fucking with his “rap career”)

every once in a while i get on a kick where hes just german. like, i just replace houston texas with hamburg germany and have him apply to a university in whatever state is applicable for whoever im chatting with and it goes from there? sometimes he moved when he was little and went through the whole visa thing, sometimes he didnt go through the visa thing, sometimes hes a dual citizen because of family and shit, its all dependent on what suits the situation best. 

one that ive been fucking with for a while but hardly break out (until recently with like 5 roses in the span of one day hell yeah) is that he has a neighbor at the end of the hall who is like a thousand year old witch lady that hes basically adopted as his mother figure in lieu of not having one and shes totally cool with it, especially bc when she kicks the bucket she fully plans on giving dave all her occult stuff so her figure-skating coach and realtor daughter doesnt sell it at a garage sale and lets it all go to waste. she also once brought rose up by name in a conversation without any prompting of her existence which dave didnt realize for days, and then one time cryptically stopped and stared at an empty space in the wall, went “she has potential, you know.” then looked at him sitting on her kitchen counter with a smile “lots of it” and hes thought about that weekly ever since. (it is important to note one of the occult items he leaves her is literally her own personal book of shadows shes been filling out for decades its like a 600 page leatherbound book dave has no idea what its used for but the sheer amount of homemade spells and etc in it is like. gonna murder rose the second this chick gets her hands on it i promise you.)

theres the standard strife shit? im not rlly gonna get into those theyre all basically cookie cutter bullshit. its just standard bro and dave abuse talk. i like to inclulde the whole 24hr live cam up in the apartment that definitely watches dave in every room besides his own and the bathroom, but that quickly delves into the prospect of middle-aged men stalking him online and basically sexually harassing him in his own god damn home by talking about how they can see him just trying to take his shoes off in the living room after getting home and frankly? its not one of my best takes! but once you throw it into the headcanon bin, its there forever. 

he actually really does do something with his photography but not enough to warrant anything exciting, but he has his own branding for it and regularly takes pictures of his friends or anything else he thinks is moderately interesting enough to take pictures of, but those are just thrown into shoeboxes under his bed in favor of posting genuine shots because he wants to keep his image intact and blurry photos of jade smiling in the tree they climbed up together while bec paws at the base of it while whining isnt exactly something he wants the whole world to see.

i also pretty often but him into either paleontology OR i put him down as trying to become a mortician because he thinks handing roadkill once he graduated from museum giftshop specimens to doing his own taxidermy on the side has prepared him enough to perform an occasional autopsy and start embalming real human corpses. (sometimes i put my own desires in and make them his bc i have to project at some point and put him through the same EMT course i dropped out of bc it was one semester and he already has pretty decent first aid skills, but he definitely didnt expect it to be as fucking wild at times as it is, but whats he gonna do? get a job back at waffle house? the company hes working for just offered to pay like half his associates in paramedicine tuition and hes already got all his pre-recs done when he started for paleo. at least its a stable job and hes got the ability to be compassionate in the moment) 

im running out of things that ive done to the poor kid. OH 

hes not a virgin he had a girlfriend all four years of high school (shes also one of his optional and designated exes plz keep up) and their relationship ends in one of two ways: she dies in a car accident a week before their high school graduation, or she stops talking to him entirely a week after their high school graduation until a couple years later she gets into (guess what) a car accident with her current wife/girlfriend and dies which leaves behind their daughter. who just so happens to also be daves daughter. her name is hannah and i love her like my own but no one ever likes her and thats on the conditioning of dirk. does dave end up taking her in? yes. shes awesome and the first time he takes her to the park to like run off some fucking steam she disappears for two minutes and dave is moderately terrified until she comes back holding a dead baby squirrel and thats the moment he realizes huh maybe things really do be genetic.

ok at the bottom of the list im gonna add the couple of times hes been a camboy which usually coincides with the live apartment cam thing and the amount of people in his dms calling him hot or whatever, but typically its more of a started the day he turned 18 and basically dipped around 20 in favor of showing up randomly with no warning to complain about a video game dick in hand because it gives him an outlet that wont annoy his friends bc this is the fifteenth time hes had a lot to say this week about a certain boss battle and also the comments fuel his ego and daddy issues.

the last one wasnt the bottom but literally unless its explicitly proven otherwise every time anyone rps with me there is the underlying fact dave strider was a goalie on his high school lacrosse teams all four years and (shocker another one) definitely had the hots for one of his teammates like major hots like first gay experience hots. like it was painfully obvious that teammate also liked him back hots. like one night at a team sleepover one of the other guys was like can yall just makeout and get it over with were fucking tired and dave really had the balls to be offended and ask what the fuck they were talking about while literally sitting halfway in the mans lap bc for some reason they had to share the same chair. 

he is also guilty until proven innocent of being the worlds biggest loner outside of that sports team and even though hes literally a jock he still opts to eat his lunch alone in the hallway or something like that and has a tendency to leave girls on read, but bc hes got an in with the rest of the jocks hes basically drug around to plenty of parties and since hes conventionally attractive enough and popular in the aloof way that he is, hes got plenty of tagged insta posts and twitter directs and snapchat streaks going. 

THESE WERE ALL NO GAME AND DONT INVOLVE SHIPS BC I LIKE TO KEEP MY OPTIONS OPEN AND THEYRE LITERALLY ALL BASED OFF RPS IVE DONE I HOPE YALL JUDGE ME ACCORDINGLY