#moving my work from Google docs to a post here makes me feel insane I am not a fan

[untolduttering]

Pleasure

Summary: You edge Sanji :).

Tags: afab!Reader x Sanji, nsfw, smut, some fluff, edging, unprotected sex, piv

Word Count: 1k

There was a little devil inside of you, one that you were helpless to listen to when it whispered it's encouragements inside your ear. It was spurred on by those tears pricking at the corner of Sanji’s eyes, his hiccuping breaths, and his bucking hips. The way that his pleas spilled from his mouth, slurred, hushed, and desperate. The way that Sanji would do anything to be your good boy, even if it meant he suffered.

You’d lost track of time at this point, solely focused on teasing him. Your hand languidly pumping his cock, slower and slower, rubbing his rosy tip between forefinger and thumb, until you sped it up till just how he liked it. His breathing would quicken, feeling himself coming closer and closer to his sweet release. And then he’d do as you told him.

“I—” his voice broke off, and he had to take a deep, shaky breath to say the rest. “I’m gonna come. Please.”

And once again, you’d let go, preventing his orgasm. He threw his head back and let out a choked sobbed, his hands gripping the sheets beneath. You quickly peppered his face with kisses and rubbed soothing circles into his hip.

“Oh, I know. I know,” you cooed. “But you’re just so cute like this.”

Sanji’s bottom lip was red and swollen from his teeth digging into it. You’d pushed back his bangs earlier, and they remained that way, exposing all of his face to you. Little hairs were plastered to his forehead from his sweat, and his cheeks were flushed. He looked up at you with big, wet eyes, and you felt a sharp sting from the crack opening in your heart. Wet and hot, the bloody love that comes pouring out for him is molten in your chest.

You captured his lips in yours, kissing him deeply. A little sigh escapes his mouth and he buries his hands in your hair, loving any bit of contact you’ll give him. You suck his bottom lip into your mouth and gently bite down, wanting to let a more careful set of teeth show it the love it deserves. Your hand has wandered again, fingertips dancing up and down his torso, enjoying the hair and skin they dragged across. When it went too low, Sanji’s hips twitched, and a soft whine emitted from his throat.

Although he’d been turned into an utter mess, it was pure bliss to Sanji. To have someone take the time to unravel him, to want to feel every part of him and drag out his pleasure for as long as possible blinded him with joy. He couldn’t believe that someone as lovely as you could want to shower him in so much affection. You may have thought yourself somewhat demented to enjoy his cries so much, but he thought of you as something divine for it. He could be weak, he could let his guard down and be so vulnerable, and instead of turning away in disgust at his exposure, you became enraptured by it. It made you want to touch him more. He never knew what to do with himself in these moments, the ministrations made him so dizzy with happiness, and so he simply could do nothing but enjoy it. Something he wasn’t always good at doing.

But it didn’t change how needy and desperate he was for you to let him come. His tongue darted into your mouth as he badly needed some part of himself inside you. The wet heat of your mouth reminded him well of the way your pussy wrapped around his cock, tight and welcoming, and he felt himself shiver and his head swim.

He pulled away, but left his lips ghosting yours, to say, “Mon amour, please, I need you.”

“You need me?” you murmured back. “How do you need me?”

“I need to be inside you. I need to feel you wrapped around me, so warm and soft and sweet. I need you.” His nose scrunched even more as he spoke and the way that his pretty eyes glistened with unshed tears, pleading, you couldn’t say no to him any longer.

You threw your leg over his hips, straddling him, and pressed kisses to his face, throat and chest as you moved. “Yes, yes, of course.” With one hand, you grabbed his cock to line it up with you, and the other you used to hold his hand, tangling your fingers together. You dragged his tip along your folds, letting your fluids cover him and to tease him just a little more. Sanji’s breath shuddered, both at the feeling and at the sight before him. He felt he might go insane.

Finally, you sunk down onto him. The wetness, the heat, the tightness, you, you, you, it all overwhelmed him in the most perfect way. It’s all he’s ever wanted and will continue to want. The moment you bottomed out, he came. He cried out, tears rolling down his cheeks, and gripped your hip with his free hand, doing what he could to thrust up into you.

The initial feeling of his cum painting your insides came as a delightful surprise, but once the shock passed, you rocked your hips to help him ride out his high.

“Thank you, thank you, mon cœur. You feel so good. I’m so sorry, I know I was supposed to last longer, but you’re just so—” His sweet babbling is cut off by another kiss from you. It’s long and passionate, and you pull away with a giggle.

“My silly boy, you did perfectly. You’re so good for me, now let me take care of you.” You hopped off to grab a warm washcloth to clean the both of you. When Sanji tried to sit up, to stop you so he could do the work, you pushed him back down with a firm “stay”.

It was his turn to relax. He was always flitting about, doing what he could to satisfy the needs of others. If someone asked for food, he wouldn’t hesitate to stop whatever else he was doing to feed them. Rarely did he ever give himself a break. And although he never voiced it, you could sometimes tell by the look on his face that his mind would wander to dangerous places, and that meant he wasn’t thinking nicely of himself. You could be taken care of later, for now it was to be all about him, like he always deserved.

[howlsofbloodhounds]

hello! i am brand new to everything about undertale au's, by so i mean maybe two months in. it's quickly become one of my favorite things, and while i mostly focus on the apple twins, i've grown to love killer a lot. i thought this might be a good place to ask, can you explain him to me? from backstory to what the the different stages are (this mostly). i know very little about him, and this is an issue, so feel more than free to go into crazy detail if you want, or even throw in personal thoughts. learning about him pleases me

Hello! I will try to answer, but i feel it is first important to state two things.

1. Killer has a lot of lost media, a lot of his canon information and materiel was deleted—including an entire ask blog. So if someone ever claims something about Killer is true, it’s probably best to ask for some sort of proof for this. Such as a link or a screenshot from his creator, rahafwabas.

2. Rahafwabas has also said that every interpretation of Killer can be canon. She was very loose and free with her character, and just wanted people to have fun. So don’t worry too much about sticking close to what little remains of canon.

What we have of Killer’s canon now is basically his Something New comics (origin), a few more scattered comics and drawings here and there, and some fun facts.

I have links to some of Killer’s canon stuff in the top of my pinned post if you want to give it a look, but if not, here is a link to a Google Doc someone made about canon Killer (I didn’t make it.) It’s also no guarantee that every single thing has been found and archived.

That being said! I will give a summary of the first origin, before the updated one that involved the Player and how we altered Sans’ codes to create kill_sans. Undertale: Something New has multiple endings as well, but I won’t get into that just yet. Because this is just about Killer, not how he met Nightmare or Color or any of that.

In Rahafwabas’ own words, Something New was described as something along the lines of how, after going through so many Resets—being constantly killed, fighting, watching everyone die, repeating multiple different days and outcomes over and over—Sans eventually shuts down emotionally and stops caring, loses hope, and becomes like the human.

The human notices, and starts proposing something new. A deal. Sans joins them on a Genocide, and they’ll stop Resetting and let the world move on—Sans wants to continue, or stop (die, erase the world), is what the human says he wants.

Sans spits in their face and refuses. The human brutally and violently murders him in response.

Rinse and repeat for a couple thousand unknown Resets—and something changes one day. Suddenly, Sans is thinking about something new. He’s thinking about how everyone deserves to die anyway—they’re all weak, he can’t save them, Papyrus is so fucking lucky.

Who cares anymore.

The thoughts happen so slow he doesn’t catch it—so focused on trying to tune the kid out, even as their words work their way into his mind and nothing feels real. Sometimes he catches his thoughts, confused and distressed—because it’s not true. He doesn’t hate Papyrus, he doesn’t want to join the kid or kill anyone.

And yet something in his minds insists he does, in his own voice, in his own thoughts. Perhaps it wasn’t uncommon to find Sans arguing to himself with increasing distress and confusion, even. Arguing as if he’s two different people.

His mind starts slipping, he can’t tell what is and isn’t real anymore. Is he going insane? Is he losing his mind? Has the kid done something to him?

Or is this just genuinely what he wants. He didn’t think he was like that. He’s not, surely.

“Am i going insane?” “Heh. Yeah.”

“This isn’t right..” “But we don’t have a choice.”

“I don’t want to do this anymore..” “Yes I do.”

Whatever. Who cares anymore. Not him. Not him.

Eventually it all comes to a head when Sans, all big dead eyes and empty smiles, shakes the devil’s hand and gets to hunting. We don’t get to see all of the first Genocide route, but we see Sans kill Flowey, Grillby, and eventually..Papyrus.

I won’t spoil the entire scene because I personally find it devastating enough to read on your own. The moment where we see how manipulated Sans has become—manipulated into hating and despising his own brother, enough to gleefully reveal he has been dreaming about this moment. Where he gets to make Papyrus experience even half of the pain Sans went through.

It isn’t until a broken, bloody, battered Papyrus opens his arms wide and tearfully declares that he’d happily die if his presence was causing his brother so much pain, that Sans snaps back. He remembers who he is, and more importantly, he remembers who Papyrus is.

It was never an enemy. It was never his tormenter, mocking him with his happiness and safety. He was his little brother, and now he’s dead.

Because of him. And he can never undo that.

We get to see how truly fragmented and disoriented Sans has become after this—too busy arguing with himself to truly notice when Chara skillfully slides in, offering comfort and reassurance to their new partner, their new best friend, as they welcome him to the Genocide run.

From here the Genocide route continues—with some of the dialogue up above happening. We see Sans and Chara having fun with it now—tossing around a monster’s hat, laughing and cheering as they kill Undyne. Sans is confused as he laughs and smiles and giggles—he hates himself. Why is he doing this again.

he doesn’t know. He smiles as he gifts Chara a knife, and their happy surprise is perhaps enough to make him feel.

…They put on Papyrus’ scarf. He can’t help but stare. But they are right—he’s being ridiculous. He has killed his brother before.

…at least they take it off.

He confronts Alphys. But then she confronts him—…Sans, why are you doing this? Is the human making you?

Sans is confused. He’s doing all this of his own free will, right? Of course the human doesn’t have any control of this. Of course not. He’s doing this because he wants to feel something.

…Why is he even explaining himself. None of them will understand. Only Chara does.

Then there’s suddenly a feeling of someone standing behind him, watching him mournfully, when Alphys mentions him. No, he’s not real. He’s not real. He’s not real. He’s not—

Alphys is dead.

there’s no going back now, and Chara insists on just one more route. Just one more. And another and another and another and another and another and another—

He’s having so much fun! So much fun. So much fun. Chara watches on with a smile as Sans just hysterically laughs and cries and laughs and cries and laughs and—

…San is tired. He’s…exhausted. He feels drained, and empty. why is he even still here. how did he get here.

…The two continue on. There’s no more laughing or cheering or crying. It is what it is.

..Sans notices some type of black sludge sliding down his cheek one Reset (how many has it been now?…who cares). He dismisses it. Who cares.

There’s a growing, burning ache somewhere in his chest yet another Reset. The sludge slides down more frequently..

..The pain keeps growing with every single Reset. He can’t take a single step without this black sludge sliding from his eyes, his nose, his teeth. What’s happening to him? What’s happening what’s happening what’s happening—

..It hurts. It hurts so much, make it stop, please. He turns to Chara one Reset. What’s happening to me? What’s happening to me? Please, it hurts.

He can’t see Chara anymore. His vision is so blurry, they look so different. He stumbles and falls to the ground, frozen with pain and fear—unable to realize that he has fallen into a bed of golden flowers.

His SOUL hovers outside his chest, a black spot slowly, painfully growing and expanding in the middle as if a parasite is wiggling its way inside. Curling around, eating everything it can and burning away the rest. Forcing its victim into the desired state.

The only explanation Chara has for him is something along the lines of, “Your soul is becoming like mine. Neither beast nor man, and you will feel nothing. Wait here, and I’ll go deal with that stupid flower.”

Sans is left to ponder those words as he starts fading in and out from life. But then he hears laughter, someone calling his name.

Papyrus.

Sans’ last words—his last thoughts—are of Papyrus.

“Papyrus..I’m sorry. I will miss you all.”

His SOUL is filled with DETERMINATION as it snaps into the target shape. Sans dies with a pathetic mournful whimper, as Killer silently takes his place.

{ @lucid-cups }

[liquorisce]

it’s been so long since i’ve hung out here. i miss my anonymous friends, i hope u guys are well and thriving!

since this is still my writing blog, i figured i would write here about my writing and what i’m working on, and what i’m not working on.

i recently posted boy next door, which i am actually really in love with, and have completed 75% of, so for the first time ever i have SOME confidence in finishing it. i feel like it is the type of story that is so natural that there will never really be a perfect conclusion. But some meaningfully literary conclusion is plausible, lol, so i will attempt it. i am also really floored by the comments I’ve received. they’ve been really encouraging and kind, and some felt like I was being congratulated by a group of peers who have grown with me and seen changes in my writing style that i thought no one apart from me would ever notice or care about. in that way, fandom is kind of amazing because it feels like we are all in some sort of cohort together, and even in this vast space of chaos I have found some friends, and some kind souls who I can chat with in corridors, who peep in occasionally and see what I’m doing and encourage me positively in a personal manner. I am able to return this to others too. That’s pretty cool.

i had a tough situation with my health, or rather my inability to handle my health problems in an adult manner, but after many weeks of deleting social media apps and forceful grass-touching (extensive physiotherapy), i am trying to visit the online areas of my life again in moderate frequencies, because this is where I get to feel like a writer. I do not get to feel like a writer in my 40h a week IT consultancy job LOL. There are no artists for miles, unfortunately and it feels like I’m going insane sometimes, being around normies. (jk, maybe… not)

people have asked if i’m giving up on idily and i’m really not, the next chapter is just a tricky one, so it’s taking a while. We are now moving into a really plot-heavy part of the story, which is definitely new territory for me as far as my skills are concerned, so I’m doing a lot of writing ideas and staring at unmoving pages etc. It’s fine, I’m not despairing, as long as I’m still in love with the general story we’ll get somewhere. I will post chap 10 after I have written Chap 11 as well I’m thinking, so that I can be a bit more certain of how we’re moving with this story. Either way, expect rewrites and detail revisions bc I’m unreliable.

Darling - which is largely just a personal project that I envision in the shape of Ymir and Historia (and Rod Reiss) - will also resume. The way Darling gets updated is like so: it feels like a fever dream of craziness, all tinted red and then I get desperate and open my gdocs and blurt out some melodramatic shit. It’s an interesting process and maybe I can make it work bc the whole point is that the story is told through the form of “love letters” from an unreliable narrator. It’s fun, and kind of crazy, and I hope I can finish it this year.

as the life of a fic writer is constantly burdened by wips, i decided to try @/ betts’s method of triaging wips. (her writing advice is amazing, gospel). so realistically these are the three stories i will update this year (and hope foolishly to complete): Darling, IDILY & Boy Next Door. If I finish even one, I’m throwing a party fr. But I will try my best at all 3, regardless. Oh, and I’m participating in a KV Mini Bang (Trigun), so I will be posting an absolutely filthy one shot by the end of the year. But this means ALL other stories are either Rolled off to next year or abandoned. I will make another post about the specifics once I am done with the diagnosis part of the triage. But I feel kinda happy that I am limiting my scope to this for the year (it’s still a LOT, lol).

In terms of original writing: I have quite some ideas floating around… some have made it onto their own google docs, some are flowing via rewrites (bylb for example) and have made moderate progress, another is vaguely brewing in my mind in a way that makes me want to write a short story of it first and try to submit it somewhere first… or post it on ao3 lol, idk. but the idea is exciting: it is an indian sapphic love story which goes strong on the forbidden love themes (and infidelity). it’ll be the first time i’m writing something that is so close to my experience growing up, so i am curious to see how that turns out.

anyway, i’m going to try to do this more often, i.e, at least once more before the year ends :)

(if anyone is reading) see u next time!

[write-now-ggs]

Thank You!

Thank you guys for over 100 readers! We hit this milestone a little bit ago and I've been trying to figure out how to say thank you to those of you enjoying my writings. I can't believe it's been two years since I started this account on here and Its hard to explain how fulfilling all of your support means to me. As I've stated before all of these stories started off in the brain of young 15 year old me, and that was many many moons ago so I've been in the process of rewriting or just finally finishing them. I still have so many stories to finish so I hope that you can stay along for the journey with me.

I'm not good with my words so enjoy this silly little gif adventure to show just how grateful I am.

As I've gotten older finding the time to sit down and write my silly little stories has gotten harder. Between having a full time job (sometimes more than full time), trying to sorta take care of my physical health, moving around the country and well now across the world, and trying to go back home to visit my family, finding time to myself feels nearly impossible. But the thing is, I love writing. Sometimes it does take a huge toll on my mental health but I can't help it. I love creating silly little fantasies for other people to enjoy. When I write I go through phases and they're always random. There are times where the words are just flowing through me and the inspiration is in abundance. I love those times. Then usually soon after that I sit staring at my ceiling with an empty brain (Then I usually get distracted by tiktok). Those times are usually the hardest to go through because I feel guilty. I finally have the time to write something, but nothing. Words just don't seem like words, nothing brings me inspiration and anything I do write just doesn't make sense. And then there's the days where I find the time to write very late into my day and I end up writing and writing up until I have no time to get sleep for my next shift and the sun is peeking through my window. Writing is a journey and no matter how hard or taxing on me it may be I appreciate all the support from you that I get. It genuinely makes everything worth it. Thank you.

The way I celebrate whenever I finish a story is hard to explain. I go pretty insane (It's honestly probably very worrisome), it typically always ends with me putting my hands on my head and hollering "Finally!" Then I usually celebrate with my one singular brain cell that I have left. The long journey of a new story is finally complete and I can share it with all of you lovely people.

Right after uploading something I've worked on for so long I lay by my phone constantly checking it to see how the reception to my newest upload is. It may seem dumb but any little interaction any of my stories get is a huge bump to my motivation. So thank you. Thank you to everyone who comes across this account, to those of you that like every story, to those of you who leave the nicest of comments and especially to those of you who quietly scroll through my stories. I appreciate every single one of you.

This is genuinely how I picture all of you in my head when I see you left a little heart thing on my post. It's one of the best feelings in the world, to me at least. It makes all those many hours spent stressing out on google docs worth it.

I genuinely admire each and every single one of you amazing people. I never expected all of those years ago to have such an amazing group of people supporting my stories. So once again thank you.

So if you made it all the way to the end of all this rambling thank you. This heart is for you <3 . I've never been someone who's been good with my words when it comes to expressing how I feel so I just hope that this gave you at least some insight in to how important you all are to me. So for the last time, Thank you <3 .

I hope you have a great day/night!!

[girlindelusionn]

first of all, i literally love ur acc. b99? ts? barney and robin? robin pt 2 but hot lesbian stranger things version w insanely cute x reader fics? YES PLS. secondly, i saw that u were taking reqs for robin (buckley) fics and i think a song fic / fic inspired by the song “lover” would make me pee my pants but really. i want it so bad. i would be 1000% honored if u decide to take this req <3

alright so i fucking loved this. first, you were SO sweet, i'm crying, i love you so much. second, taylor swift is probably 91% of my personality so it works perfectly. thank you @leadmetodgarden for such an amazing request!!!

(i hope you meant lover by taylor cause if not this is awkard...)

the thing is, i got a little too exited...

i've written, as of right now, more than 10k, which is way longer than i've ever written, (imma one shot type of gal) and i still have one chapter to go

also before i post this i wanna clarify two things:

english is absolutely not my first language, this was written with the help of google docs and google translator, every mistake is immediately and utterly their fault

i'm not that sure of how christmas actually works there in the united states. i dont think you guys have Christmas Eve dinners that last until midnight, cause you open your gifts the next day (lame!), but for the sake of the fic, let's pretend you do

quick summary:

five christmasses with robin <3 (alternative tittle: almost plotless fluff)

finally, here it is:

i want them all, robin x you (part 1!)

“And there's a dazzling haze, a mysterious way about you dear.

Have I known you 20 seconds or 20 years?”

part 2 here

Christmas sucked. It always did. Too much sugar and alcohol close to families who were a little bit too close to collapse entirely. But this year, on the contrary, it was just too quiet. You and your family were completely new in town, having moved just a couple days ago. Maybe it was the absence of controversial family members, furniture or feeling of home and belonging, but not even your parents were in the mood this year. 

You had dinner at eight, watched half of the worst christmas movie on the tiniest, shittiest tv and they were both already in bed, fast asleep. 

There were still two hours till midnight and you were not going to spend them on your mattress on the floor. It was just too depressing. So you grabbed your bike, a book, a blanket and your walkman and biked until you found a Seven Eleven. 

There isn't a single soul out, but you can feel the festive vibe on the hair. All the houses are carefully decorated and music is going through every single door. It seems like you are the only one who isn't celebrating. 

Well, you, the cashier and the girl outside, who are having a heated argument through the glass door.

"Oh, cmon, Kyle! It's Christmas!" she yells. The dude is on the door, physically stopping the girl from coming in.

"Exactly! My shift ended seven minutes ago! No. More. Customers."

Seeing that you are already on the register waiting for him to charge you, Kyle closes the glass door on her face. She responds with her middle finger, but you didn't think he notices. You hand him your things and he begins to scan them. 

"That'll be all?" he asks. You look to the side. The girl is still there, even with this cold.

"No, actually. Wait a second, please." You hear him complain when he sees what you’re going to do, but you don't care.

You approach the door and get the girl's attention. 

"What do you want?" you ask. The girl, who’s sitting on the floor, right next to the door, looks up with confused eyes. 

"No! Don't worry, he's just being a dick."

"No, c'mon. What do you want??"

"Are you sure it's okay?" 

You nodd repeatedly, as you hear Kyle yell "Hurry up!" from behind. 

"Just a coke and some chocolate?"

"Great!"

You get her stuff and pay for everything. You even give Kyle a five dollar tip, but he keeps the same pissed off expression. You get your bag and hurry out of there, wishing him a Merry Christmas on your way out. 

Out you meet the girl. She’s taller than you, maybe for a couple of inches and has a blue dress that’s now stained with mud and blood? but she doesn't seem to be aware of it. She’s also shivering from the cold, her jacket not being able to put up a fight against the cold of December.  

"Thank you!" she says as soon as you are out the door. "You didn't have to…"

"Well, it’s Christmas after all" you give her the stuff. She gives you five bucks and you don't have the heart to tell her it was more. She looks like she isn't having the best day ever.

"Yeah…" she looks down at the bag with a sigh.

"I hope that chocolate is okay?"

She looks up again, with a smile this time. She has a nice smile. "It's perfect. I'm Robin, by the way."

"I'm Y/N."

"Nice to meet you.” her rebel hairs dance around with the wind and she’s still shivering, but instead of going away she asks “I’ve never seen you around… Are you visiting for the holidays?”

“No.” you shake your head “I actually moved here a couple days ago.”

“Oh…” there’s a weird undertone there, but you can't quite place it “Welcome, then.”

You accept the gesture, giving her a smile. It almost seems like she hates this place as much as you do, which is weird and kinda scary, but also makes you feel a little less alone.

“I, um… I should get back?" You see her hesitate in the last part of the sentence. It’s pretty obvious she does not want to go back to wherever she came from.

You try to find an alternative, a way to make her stay even a second longer, but you couldn't figure out a single reasonable explanation for why you, two complete strangers, should spend the night together. So you agree with her. "Yeah me too." 

"I don't really want to…" she confesses. You’re glad she did. 

"Me too"

"Crappy Christmas at your house too? " she asks, you chuckle and she smiles harder. 

"Yeah"

"I…" she doubts for a second, but your eyes meet hers with kindness and reassurance so she keeps going "I know it's kinda weird for me to suggest this, but I could, maybe, show you around?… I feel like I should pay you back in some way."

She looks embarrassed and absurdly cute, so there's no other chance but to say yes.

"Yeah, I picked up the serial killer vibe, but honestly it has been one of those days. So let's go."

You bike in silence, occasionally making a turn, with the wind hitting your faces like buckets of freezing water. And just as you're about to ask how long is this gonna take you find the building.

It is old, huge and it looks like nobody had painted it for at least sixty years. The fence was closed, obviously, but she didn't mind. You watched amused and impressed how easily she climbed up the fence and trespassed school property.

And if you weren't already sure you liked her this was probably a very clear indicator. 

She guides you through what is going to be your high school the rest of the school year. You had to admit, it was way better inside than outside and had a pretty sweet auditorium. Still, it was smaller than the last one.

“And… here's my favorite place.” she says as she points at the old library door. You wait for her to open it, like she did with all the rooms before it. She notices. “Oh, they actually close this one during the nights. Someone, definitely not me, may have stolen a few, definitely not more than ten, books and manuals.”

You laugh. She was more of a nerd than you had thought. Interesting. She watches through the window on the door with sadness in her features, so pass your hand through your hair till you find the perfect tool. A hair pin. It's a little old and it might break, but it was your only option. 

“More than ten?” you ask as you kneel in front of the lock.

“No way! Does that actually work? I always thought it was movie bullshit…” you hum yes, focused on your task. “It was thirteen books, by the way”

“Thirteen?” you laugh. 

“I know! But I swear I was going to give them back…” you look at her with an eyebrow up and her innocent face falls apart “Eventually.” 

“Aha…” you tease and she wants to protest but you finally get the door to open “There it is!” she squeals with excitement and that's the cutest sound you’ve heard in a while. “Just no more playing book thief” 

She laughs and comes into the room, you follow right behind. You settle your things at the biggest table, Robin does the same, and even though there were still twenty minutes till midnight the two of you kinda set up a fake Christmas table.  

When everything is in order you take the liberty to explore around for a while. They have good stuff, nothing too special. It needs an update, of course, as many things do these days. But, overall, you aren't so mad about the collection. Until, of course, you see the reading list for sophomore year.

“Robin!” you call out to her. She sticks her head out the language alley and looks over, curious. “Have you seen this shit?”

“Wha– oh, you’ve found the reading list. I know.”

“Not a single woman?” she nods in agreement, “What year are we? Fucking 1935?”

“Totally. And! The whole deal this year is, like, horror and science fiction. How do you teach horror and science fiction without Frankenstein?”

You agree with her, still offended. “It 's ridiculous.” You complain as you both go back to the table. You try sitting down, but it feels… odd. “This is weird, right?” She nods, so you settle for a space of floor between bookshelves. “Better”

“Much better.” 

You talk and you share your food and complain a bit more about the educational system. After a while her eyes focus on one of the books behind you. You turn to look too. You’re in the poetry section and the book she’s staring at was a compilation, written by someone called Emily Dickinson. You haven’t heard about her, poetry wasn’t really your deal. But you did enjoy it.

Robin leaves her spot on the floor to grab it, and you’re confused when instead of keeping it for herself she tries to hand it to you.

“What are you doing?” You ask.

“Well, it’s Christmas after all. And you’ve already given me all of these…” She points at the food spread on the floor “So this is your gift.”

You smile “I haven’t even started at this school and I already have stolen something…” You reflect. Robin starts to second guess her decision.

“If you don’t like it it’s totally fine, I–“

“No, I love it. Thank you so much, Robin.”

You fall into a comfortable silence that doesn't last much longer. 

"Can I ask you a question?" she says. 

"Yeah."

"If you could run away…" she starts, and you see how her eyes light up with possibilities from just thinking of making it out of here "No money needed, no strings attached. Where would you go?"

You think for a while. "Italy" She seems to like the answer.

"Can I ask why?"

"My grandma lived in Italy most of her life. I want to see every place she talked about. And you?"

"Everywhere except Hawkins" she sentences. You smile sadly, how terrible her life had to be for her to want to escape so badly from her hometown. "But Europe is the dream, for sure."

You don't want to be disrespectful, but the mystery was eating you up. What is she doing here? What, or who, is she running from?

“Can I ask what are you doing in the school library at eleven forthy two on christmas eve? Or is it too soon?”” you don't want to make her feel uncomfortable, so you ask carefully. 

She lowers her gaze. Fuck, you blew it. 

“Im sorry” you whisper. She shakes her head and looks up with an expression you can't quite read.

“No, it's fine.” she sighs, grabbing another chocolate before starting to talk “Extended family came over. Aunts and uncles and little cousins type of Christmas.”

“Uh, rough.”

“Yes” she chuckles. “And my parents are usually cool, but family approval has always been their achilles heel. So you know, clean house, no swearing and this stupid dress.”

“Honestly, the dress isn't that bad” 

“Cmon…”

“I'm serious!” you say but it's obvious she doesn't believe you. “It’s like… you know when you eat those little candy balls? And how sometimes the colors get mixed up and you eat a red one but it tastes like a blue one. It looks like that. It's not bad, it's just not… sincere? I guess”

As soon as you finish your deep analysis you notice she was staring. Head slightly tilt to the side, confused expression, like she’s trying to figure out how the hell did you come to that conclusion. 

“That's exactly how I feel. Constantly.”

“That makes two of us.” You cheer for your problems with the two cokes you’d bought, which, thanks to the weather of December, were still pretty cold. “So, apart from sexism and really bad taste in books, is there anything more about Hawkins that you need to warn me about?”

Her eyes light up and you don't know if it is from the implicit question of a future together, but you hope so. There’s something special about this girl.

“Oh, there's so many people I need to warn you about! So many assholes” you can't hold the laughter that escapes your lips. She said it with such an innocent smile.

“That's great! So excited to start, then” Your sarcasm makes her laugh too. 

“At least we can shit talk together?”

“Robin Buckley, you're officially the first, and only, person I like in this entire town.”

“Honestly? You too.” You cheer again, just as the clock showes midnight. “Merry Christmas, Y/N.”

“Merry Christmas!”

[isnt-it-pretty]

any advice for someone who never wrote a fanfic before?

Writing is a skill like any other. You wouldn't expect to pick up a flute and know how to play, would you? So no matter what, just keep writing.

Beyond that, here's a few pieces of general writing advice:

- Make sure your dialogue formatting is correct. A new paragraph every time a new person speaks, proper quotation marks, etc.

- Remember your tense. If you're writing in past tense, make sure everything is in past tense. The same applies if you're writing in present tense. It's an easy mistake to make, but people will notice.

- Don't use physical descriptors in place of nouns. Like this:

"Dialogue dialogue," the raven haired man said.

It's one of the quickest ways to turn people off your work. Use pronouns or the character's name unless the reader doesn't know the character's name. Sometimes you can get away with character relationships, ("blah blah," his father said), but use them sparingly.

- In a similar vein, just use 'said.' Words like whispered, shouted, etc., should be used for emphasis, not for regular dialogue.

- Don't learn to write from reading fics. You can tell when somebody does because they use all the tropes common to fanfiction, but honestly, those aren't very good (we've had passionate debates in my discord server about whether "golden orbs" or "the bluette said" is a greater sin. There is still no agreement.)

- Run your work through Grammarly. Copy and paste it into Grammarly's word processor since that works better than their google docs extension. Even the free Grammarly will help you a lot with little grammar things you don't notice. I know it picks up typos and such for me all the time.

- Personally, I suggest checking out some nonfiction writing books too. I'm fond of Stein on Writing by Sol Stein, and The Story Graph by Shawn Coney, but most people never do that, and they write fic just fine.

- Depending on the topic you plan on writing, research. I'm serious; the number of stories I've read that just toss in a deaf character because the author likes the headcanon is insane. If you want to deal with topics like disability or social issues, you need to research.

- If you post on ao3, learn the tagging system and use it properly. For example, "/" is romantic, and "&" is platonic. In general, don't use both for the same two characters.

- This is an excellent master list of writing advice by tumblr user she-who-fights-and-writes. Not all of it will apply to fic writing, but the basics are the same.

None writing but still important things:

- You'll never be happy if you compare your work to others. You can look at your pieces all day and wonder why they don't sound right or feel right or why it isn't like your favourite fic author, and it won't to make a difference.

- Coming off that, jealousy is a natural part of being involved in a skill-based community, but don't let it sour your friendships or make you bitter. I've seen it happen, and it makes everybody involved feel shitty. Meet people with kindness and move on, even if you think they don't deserve their popularity.

- Make friends! Fandom is a community. Authors should make friends with each other and with their readers. They should participate in the community by leaving comments on fics, reblogging art on social media, etc. This is supposed to be fun, so let it be.

- It is illegal to earn money off fan works. Don't mention anything to do with money on ao3. Don't link a kofi, paypal, say a work was a commission, etc. It breaks the terms of service.

- Just be kind and have fun.

[hannie-dul-set]

hello its me again !! yesterday I told you I followed u bc of your love for jaemin and your funny humour but today I want to add something else, and thaTS YOUR AMAZING WRITING SKILLS !!

i just finished reading the masterpiece that is Top of the world and I'm so shaken up by the excellence of the rich vocabulary, the sentence structure and just the way you wrote the various events that happened. I'm such at a lost of words to express what I feel you have no ideas, I will never recover from the high quality of this story. it couldn't have been better than that what you delivered and I'm just so so relieved to have been able to live this amazing experience of reading such an outstanding story. I'm sorry maybe you're thinking im showering you in too much compliments but you deserves to be praised for having written Top of the world.

I will always be amazed with how people who write are able to wrote down their imagination and wow, im still shaking like.. Im so impressed by you you have no ideas 🙈

moving on, this is the first time ever since I'm reading nct fics on tumblr that I came across this characterization of jaemin, and it is a real take of fresh air in the best way possible even tho he's really such an asshole like wow the popularity did go too high in his head I was so scandalized (in a good way lmao it made me amazed) with how an ass he was and like the way he ordered around jisung ???? djjdjffjhf I- I wanted to punch jaemin so hard 😤 I wanted to dive into the story and beat his ass lmaooo im sure you too, like I was rolling around in my bed bc I couldn't stay still and laying down without reacting ㅠㅠ

I dont know at what length of words the ask can tolerate but let me tell you something before I forgot ! I realized that every situations/events you wrote had a purpose, like you didn't wrote basic actions that we would pass over without much attention, and bc of that you held our attention during the 15.6k of words and it was so much overwhelming I couldn't stop reading just to breathe lol, you kept me going for so long and I really liked it im so sad that I lived this experience and I couldn't live it again *sobs* this is so revolting I want to pat your head you did so so well 🥺

alsooooo, when you introduced yn's character in the beginning, I was kinda afraid that he would bully her physically you know, like I couldn't imagining you daring to write him being more than despicable than he was but thanks god that wasn't what I imagined fjdjfj, the way he exercised his 'dominance' towards someone he didn't know just for a seat lmao, wow he got some real balls ?¿ I was scandalized a lot fjjfjffj but I was curious too about jeno's character in the story, he was so chill (I think?) about yn's being involved with jaemin from the start and I was expecting him to be an asshole to her just like jaem, u know ? could we know your motives about jeno's character in the story ? why didn't you wrote him like jaemin?

I will speed up a little fjfjj or else I will write you 6 pages of my thoughts lmao

but yeah !! so, I really liked the contrast between how we perceived yn's outside facade and inside, like when he make her kneels in front of him, you made us look at her from jaemin's view and how she looked not so bothered by his behavior and then you switched the second after into yn's point of view and how she tried to not show her emotions... *mind blowing* 🤯 not gonna lie, I was rotting for her to not let him mess with her head but instead her doing that to him and it kinda worked fjfjfjf and then I knew the moment he was surprised about the non effect he had on her that it was the start of his fall anD I WASN'T A SECOND DISAPPOINTED

I FUCKING LOVED THE BLOSSOMING REALTIONSHIP BETWEEN THE TWO OF THEM anD the slight graduation of jaemin's becoming soft to her oh my god I had hearts in my eyes. I loved every moments of this story (I loved the entire 15.6k words of it, I cherished them), but the pool scene toward the end made me go feral for a lot of minutes like the picture you implanted in my head of him in the water made me post all my thoughts (also blonde jaemin? as in, make a wish jaemin?, god I hope bc fucking damn, he was so so so hot)

I was so emotional at the end, they got together and just, being the witness of jaemin's character development was breathtaking, I couldn't stop thinking about how smooth you made it for his character development during all the story, it wasn't forced or too quick...

It was perfect

omg.... [CLUTCHES HEART]. help oh my god first of all thank you ??? for leaving such a LONG long review omg ???? made my entire day ?? week ??? HQGSBWJ IN SUMMARY THANK U AND I LOVE U FOR THIS AAAA i really appreciate it when people just ramble abt my works it just makes my drive go ⬆⬆⬆ yanno HHHH.

when i was first writing this is was like "oh gosh....is it....okay to turn jaemin this much of a dick?? IS IT??" like i was so SURE people wouldn't like this characterization of him but i literally got the reverse 😭 never expected anyone to jump with me on my asshole richkid jaemin agenda bUT HERE WE ARE....IT BEING MY MOST POPULAR FIC YET HAHSJ. i both hate and love this kind of jaemin and yes i definitely wanted to drag him down from his high horse while writing (at the same time....i will let him drag me around as he pleases too 😳).

i'm very gratified that u think its cohesive and each scene has a purpose because to be honest i didn't fuckin know where to go with this entire fic at first LMAO i was just in a richkid jaem brainrot after talking abt it too much with my friend and this was....the result 🕴.

as for jeno oh mr. jeno lee....HAGSNSK to be honest, as this fic wasn't rlly that deeply planned HAHA, i just wanted a contrast to jaemin's personality LMAO if he had the same personality as jaems....insanely egotistical god complex and all.....i think this would have turned out to be a love triangle AHAHS GM SKW. bUT— but hehe. i have another richkid fic in the dusty corners of my google docs rn. a 00’ line fic in fact HAHA so totw jaemin and jeno will be making a comeback here (ofc this is an entirely different universe but their characterizations are essentially the same HEHEHEHEHEH).

anyway !! thank u so much for sharing ur thoughts on totw ;o; 💞 this rlly made my day no joke HAHA i'm so happy to hear you liked this aaaaa. and yes. maw jaemin was the cause of all of this. something snapped in him during that era and led me to write this very self indulgent fic. thank u HAGHSKA.

[grimelords]

So since the last time I posted one of these the entire world has changed dramatically and hopefully 4 hours of music will tide you over in quarantine for a bit longer. Strangely I’ve been busier than ever, and what started as a personal challenge to listen to a new album every day in February turned into me listening to 116 new albums in March and 124 in April. I’ve got a stacked google doc full of star ratings and dates now and it’s really been a lot of fun, I highly recommend trying it yourself. This is my March playlist, because I accidentally took a month off, and I’m thinking of either switching these playlists to weekly to make them a little more digestible or just dropping them whenever. Who knows. Let me know what you think and drop album recommendations in the comments please.

Listen here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0k1JjT8fXcUFO6VpM3kaez?si=gWSv88vdShKSnHhLJ_80pQ

If you’d like to receive these playlists in a more digestible email format, please subscribe to my tinyletter here: http://tinyletter.com/grimelords

On A Slow Boat To China - Bing Crosby & Peggy Lee: Ok first off it’s amazing this song isn’t more racist. I don't remember now how or why I came across this. I think I was just thinking about crooners and how as a genre it's now existed in common popularity as a nostalgic idyll of a mytholigised past far longer than it was ever actually popular which is interesting. The origin of this song, according to wikipedia, is also one of the most 40s ideas I've ever read: "I'd like to get you on a slow boat to China" was a well-known phrase among poker players, referring to a person who lost steadily and handsomely. The idea being that a "slow boat to China" was the longest trip one could imagine. Loesser moved the phrase to a more romantic setting, yet it eventually entered general parlance to mean anything that takes an extremely long time".

Fight Night - Migos: I saw that Offset had some new show on Quibi the extremely fake sounding streaming service and I thought "how did Migos get so world conqueringly large that they get to make 10 minute shows nobody will watch for a $2 billion venture capital funded app that will never make any money?" They seem to have this massive reputation without having much to back it up. The last thing I remember everyone talking about was how Culure II was two hours long in order to game streaming numbers and was simply not good. They seemed to have sort of settled into making background music for scrolling instagram. But then I remembered Fight Night and I thought: "oh wait, that's right, Migos are fucking great". Where their other big hits like Bad And Boujee and Walk It Talk It have this sort of laid back vibe where they've comfortably nailed the formula and relax onto it, Fight Night commands your attention. StackboyTwan killed the beat - it has this propulsive momentum where it feels like it's constantly ramping up, moving up from the sidesick and bassline in the verse, up to the claps on the beat, and the big gang chants on the offbeat once the full instrumentation kicks in - then it just goes around and around and around with the constant bassline the whole tim. It's a perfect all-rise production because it never actually explodes, it's all building tension held down by an unchanging bassline.

Do It Puritan! - El Hombre Trajeado & Sue Tompkins: I am extremely delighted to announce that Sue Tompkins of one of my all time favourite single album bands Life Without Buildings has broken a nearly 20 year musical hiatus to appear on this song by El Hombre Trajeado. It is so nice to hear how her voice has changed and her approach has stayed the same. Her style is so unique and so good and I don't think I'll ever get tired of it.

5 8 6 - New Order: Before 'the incident' I had tickets to see New Order at the end of March and so I embarked on a big listen through of their discography, which has now unfortunately made it feel even worse that live music is cancelled indefinitely.

Oom Sha La La - Haley Heynderickx: First of all I love songs where they talking about how they're writing a song halfway through. And I love songs that seem like a pretty normal singer songwriter indie thing where someone just starts screaming near the end. I love this song. A great staring at the wall and absolutely losing your mind because you haven't done anything with your whole life anthem.

Elektrobank - The Chemical Brothers: Can you believe I've never listening to a full Chemical Brothers album before this month? Can you believe big beat ever went our of style? It feels insane that we ever swapped this sort of energy for the beige algorithm of EDM. I think there's a real triumph in this album, and in this track especially of replicating the live feeling in studio. Giving it this much space to grow and change and get very hairy near the end is amazing, it feels like it was just recorded live.

My Mind's A Ship (That's Going Down) - Katie Pruitt: It feels very rare to me that this sort of extremely smooth Nashville prduction actually makes a song better. It has a habit of strangling the life out of a song and making it blend into a boring paste of soundalikes, but with Katie Pruitt it works amazingly. Her songwriting is so distinct and clear and her voice, especially near the end where it punches hole in the sky, is so strong and so her own that it doesn't need anything else.

Water - Ohmme: "What if Tegan And Sara were a noise band instead?" is a question I didn't know I needed an answer to. I love any band that has the guts to write songs like this that sound like pop from an alternate history, so off kilter and odd and noisy but with this undeniable pop heart that the duo vocals make sound like schoolyard clapping chants remixed by Lightning Bolt.

Lions, Tigers and Bears - SLIFT: A friend put me on to Slift and described them as French King Gizz and really, I'm inclined to agree. This is the traditional long last song at the end of their new album, and as usual I am advocating that every song should be the long last song at the end of the album. I love this style of jam where everyone else goes to space but the rhythm section just digs in and works hard as fuck for ten minutes. Then the whole last 3 minutes of the song are just fat drone riffs. This song's got everything.

The Pines - 070 Shake: This 070 Shake album is unbeleivably good and it warms my heart to see the dark energy of The Pines live on through another century in yet another permutation. I have more to say about it later in the Jackson C Frank version coming up but it feels like this 070 Shake album kind of came and went but I implore you to listen, it’s an aoty contender for sure.

Standing On The Verge Of Getting It On - Funkadelic: If you can stop thinking about the intro, which I certainly can’t (Hey lady won’t you be my dog and I’ll be your tree and you can pee on me.) there is so much goodness in this song. For a while now I’ve been thinking about how, for lack of a better word, ‘positive’ music is consistently underrated in the critical canon. Dance music, disco and funk especially are derided as empty sugar music, while every cookie cutter metal band absolutely demands to be taken seriously. In dance music this manifests as genres like tech house sucking all the fun and individuality out of music until it’s just an endless parade of producers working to a schematic of the barest essentials. It feels like you can’t have fun and be taken seriously at the same time, which feels like an obvious contradiction but shouldn’t be!

Spoils - Dry Cleaning: Dry Cleaning are my Lock Of The Month Band To Watch In The Future Because They’re Gonna Go Off. They have such a great sound and I’m desperate for an album because I just need more. This song absolutely knocked me down when I first heard it. I love any band where it sounds like the singer has just wandered in while the rest of them were rehearsing. There’s a very good talking-songs movement happening in the UK right now between these guys, Do Nothing and Fontaines D.C and i’m excited to see where it progresses. I might put together a playlist a little later to show you what I mean.

As - Stevie Wonder: I finally listened to Songs In The Key Of Life this month, which is an experience I would recommend to everyone. This shit goes for 21 songs over 105 minutes and absolute bangs the whole way. The original release of this album was a double LP plus a 7", which is yet another reason I am grateful for streaming that I don't have to buy a damn box set to hear this thing.

Sleep Now In The Fire - Rage Against The Machine: I am working on a very niche playlist called Songs Where The Guitar Amp Accidentally Picks Up A Nearby Radio Station For A Couple Of Seconds and it's only 3 songs so far. A Man A Plan A Canal Panama by The Fall Of Troy, Melody 4 by Tera Melos and Sleep Now In The Fire by Rage Against The Machine. In every single one of those songs it feels like a critical component even though it's just an accident that's been left in because it sounds good. Here it's the perfect ending as the rage dies down and the commercial world fades back in. Anyway, my other question about this song is about the great Michael Moore directed video where they famously shut down Wall Street for an afternoon. There's a shot of a guy for a second holding a sign that says Donald Trump For President in 1999. Which is odd but not out of the question, he's been famous for a long time and there's always been freaks. My question is why the fuck did he have that sign that day? Was he amongst the Rage Against The Machine Fans that showed up? A counter protestor? Was he, perhaps most chillingly of all, just walking idly around Wall Street with his Donald Trump For President sign like usual and stumbled upon this whole hoo-haa accidentally?

Applause (Purity Ring Remix) - Lady Gaga: Did you fucking know that Purity Ring did a remix of Applause? If there’s something I’d love to know more about and it’s Purity Ring’s forays into pop production. After their first album they did some production for rappers like Danny Brown in the great track 25 Bucks, which is a good fit really - their sound is witch house with the tempo pushed back up, witch house of course just being chopped and screwed reinvented by tumblr users. So it’s a natural fit to take that new perspective back into the world of hip hop. They also did this fantastic remix of Applause after their first album. Then, after their second album they produced 3 songs for Katy Perry’s Witness album, and one Katy Perry song for a Final Fantasy mobile game soundtrack (?) and feel like the long silence and delay between their second and third albums is because of more behind the scenes pop production work - but if that’s true, where is it? Is it, as I suspect, part of my own personal Pepe Silvia, Katy Perry’s scrapped 2019 album that has vanished into thin air? Or is it part of Chromatica? I think Purity Ring have solidified an interesting place in pop, paving the way for Billie Eilish and Kim Petras’ dark anti-pop and so i’m excited to see where they go after this new album now that they’re the architects of the new wave.

React/Revolt - Drahla: The smartest thing you can do is add a saxophone to your band. The whole first half of this song could go for 20 minutes of growling screaming saxophone post-punk and I wouldn't mind. Then when the second half of the song kicks in it's fantastic in the way this whole Drahla album is: it's tight and sprawling post-punk at the same time with a complicated structure that seems to just pile onto itself instead of ever circling back.

And I Was Like - Porridge Radio: I'm seemingly having a real thing this month for songs that open with a bizzare acapella chant. Between this and the Funkadelic one it's a genre I'm very interested in hearing more of. Isaac Newton was a virgin and it's important to recognise that. The thing I love about this song is how it's in 3 distinc sections: Isaac Newton was a virgin, she's a birthday girl in a birthday world, and mum no please it's grunge, and they all feel like the concentrated energy of a 14 year old's thoughts. She sounds like she's almost crying when she sings 'she's a birthday girl in a birthday world'. The concentrated confusing teenaged energy of this song is just overwhelming.

Dirty Mattresses - Mama's Broke: So much of contemporary 'traditional folk' either exists as pure nostalgia music or as music that's trying too hard to be 'authentic' and evoke a mythology of a bygone time, but Mama's Broke manage to make it feel new and modern but honest and  authentic at the same time. The super close harmonies and modern approach remind me of House And Land who I also love, but the songwriting is in another class entirely.

Building A House - CHOPCHOP: I don't know if you've ever seen Bad Boy Bubby but CHOPCHOP feels a little like the band that he ends up joining at the end. A musical ensemble built to enable the will of a very strange man. I think the band is from the UK and I'm not sure where the singer is from, but he has this incredible deeply accented voice that brings such a gravity to everything he sings in the way that anyone speaking english as a second language accidentally brings new weight to common turns of phrase.

Universal Soldier - Jay Electronica: It feels fitting, looking back, that Jay Electronica finally released his album right before the world ended. It was literally now or never. Some how Jay-Z is the breakout star of this album for me. He's got some of his best verses in years on here and he's a great opposition to Electronica's flow when they trade verses. I would also, as an aside, like to know the origin of the kids cheering sample throughout this, because it's the same one from AM//Radio by Earl Sweatshirt and Wish You Were Gay by Billie Eilish. So what's that about.

Sticky Hulks - Thee Oh Sees: I've been very slowly getting into Oh Sees and I love them a lot so far. Their unweildy, huge discography spread across a lot of variations of the same name makes digging into them very rewarding as well. There's a great line on their wiki detailing all the times they've changed their name that goes: Orinoka Crash Suite (1997–2003), OCS (2003–2005, 2017), Orange County Sound (2005), The Ohsees (2006), The Oh Sees (2006–2008), Thee Oh Sees (2008–2017), Oh Sees (2017–2019) Osees (2019) to give you some idea of what we're working with here. Basically it's just everything you could want from a pychedelic band like this: a history and discography as shaggy as the songs themselves.

Knife On The Platter - BODEGA: In reading about Bodega I learned that they don't have a drummer in the traditional sense. They have someone credited as a 'stand up percussionist', and in listening back I realised that's they key to the groove in their music. He's not playing a kit he's just slamming at a tom and a snare on a rack, while one of the singers plays hi-hat here and there. So all the drumming has this barebones caveman feel to it and I absolutely love it. The band feels a lot like The Fashion, and that whole mid-2000s dance-punk movement that I've been desparate to come back so naturally I love it a lot.

Against Gravity - Horse Lords: Horse Lords are one of the most incredible bands I've heard in a long time. Somewhere between a more analogue Battles and Laddio Bolocko, they make a kind of churning math-jazz that sounds like huge intersecting squares of rhythm slowly overlapping. It feels like there's an infinite depth in these songs, you can listen and focus on a single instrument and see it shifting in and out of place with everyone else, before you lose it again and it retreats back into the swirling mass.

Plain To See Plainsman - Colter Wall: I've been listening to this Colter Wall album a lot, and it's really beginning to rank among my all time favourites. I grew up around the flattest place in the southern hemisphere, so I love the plains and it's very nice to have a cowboy song I can relate to like that.

The Nail - Sarah Shook & The Disarmers: Sarah Shook has so much character in her voice I completely love it. She is also a fantastic songwriter that manages to make outlaw country punk that sounds authentic and doesn't have the rockabilly posturing that a lot of the genre suffers from.

Inner Reaches 慾望的暗角二 - Gong Gong Gong 工工工: The best thing about Gong Gong Gong is you can listen to this whole song before you realise they don't have a drummer. They're a guitar and bass duo that play and sing with such a layered rhythmic intensity between the two of them that they really don't need one. A drummer would just clutter the space already taken up by their ferocious rhythm.

Country Pie - Bob Dylan: I'm a big fan of Bob Dylan's dumb songs. He has a lot where if it's the first song you ever heard from him you would be mad at whoever told you he was the greatest songwriter to ever live for trying to trick you like this. What I especially love about this song is how abruptly it ends, like dad just came home and everyone panicked cause they're know they're not supposed to be staying up that late.

You Did It Yourself - Arthur Russell: It seems hard to believe that I've only just found out about Arthur Russel. He seems to be a mainstay of Music Guy lists and somehow I've only heard of him this month. I've been obsessing over the Iowa Dream album, which is a compilation of a lot of different (mostly extremely high quality) demos from the late 70s to mid 80s and what really shines through other than the singular strength of his songwriting is how readily and easily he bends from country style folk to romantic piano ballads, to groovy post-punk like this. What I love so much about this song is it's a great lesson in songwriting: sometimes a song can just be a vague review of a middling movie and still have emotional resonance. Incredible. There's a great NPR article about Arthur Russel and the process of assembling half-takes and demos into complete recordings that you should read if you're interested. https://www.npr.org/2019/11/20/779721417/which-arthur-russell-are-we-getting-on-iowa-dream

The Dogs Outside Are Barking - Arthur Russell: I love this song because it's such a perfect distillation of a teenaged moment: trying to find a moment alone with someone when you have no freedom at all to create one. The song cycles through potential situations but leaves the problem unresolved, existing in the moment of nervous romantic tension preceding an unasked question and it's just beautiful.

Men For Miles - Ought: I love the vocal melody in the verse here so much. Spiking up unnaturally at the end of the lines like a nervous and strange version of The Strokes. Even the way he cramps his words in in the chorus is so good, switching registers randomly like he's impersonating someone else.

Mister Soweto - Lizzy Mercier Descloux: https://pitchfork.com/features/from-the-pitchfork-review/9828-lizzy-mercier-descloux-behind-the-muse/ Pitchfork has a great article about Lizzy Mercier Descloux detailing how she is continually undervalued and underappreciated. I found her though my Discover Weekly and became immediately obsessed with this album - a perfect mix of off-kilter 80s bass and brass that is so colourful and seems to move in a million directions at once like the songs can't even catch up with themselves sometimes. I'm excited to dig into her discography more and try to understand her more because she has a truly unique approach that I can't get enough of.

Sweden - Marilyn Crispell: I've been looking for a while for other pianists of Cecil Taylor's calibre, rare type that it is and I am so glad to have finally found out about Marilyn Crispell. She plays free jazz like Taylor, but in much less percussive and disonnant style. There's a New York Times quote that seems to follow her that says "Hearing Marilyn Crispell play solo piano is like monitoring an active volcano. She is one of a very few pianists who rise to the challenge of free jazz." and it's really very apt. She will move with seemingly no warning at all from mediative, colourful stokes to a mad descent unto uncertainty and beyond, then back again without a moments hesitation. Her music moves like a dream, linking a stream of unlinked images with an ease that only seems incongruous on reflection.

Twins - Gem Club: I have loved this song for a very long time and I come back to it over and over and appreciate it anew. What I appreciate about on listening to it this time is the strangeness of it's structure, following up the verse with an instrumental break, and then a long instrumental intro to the chorus gives it so much space to spread out and breathe, giving the beautiful gravity of the song even more weight. Then after the chorus it moves straight to a bridge and then the intro and first verse again. It's a fantastic song that makes it's small parts so large, where another songwriter or another producer would pare them down.

Grand Central - Paul Cauthen: Something I've learned in listening to a lot of cowboy music is that the number one thing that cowboys hate and fear is getting hanged. They hate it worse than cats hate getting sprayed with water. I found out about Paul Cauthen combing through Colter Wall's similar artists looking for more of this brand of new old fashioned country and I really found it here. Paul Cauthen comes from four generations of preachers and left the church to pursue country music instead, which feels like an extremely old fashioned position to be in here in 2020 but I guess lots of people in Texas still live like that, and thank god they do or we wouldn't have Paul Cauthen's big mournful Elvis voice to sing us songs about the railway.

Serafina - BAMBARA: I love this sort of spoken word leather jacket rock and roll. It's so extremely Cool in an old fashioned way. Like a more rock and roll version of Enablers.

So 4 Real - The Hecks: I love love love this song that sounds like a sped up Prince demo. The strange thinness of the mix and the way the vocals are buried just makes it sound so strange and great, like it was put together on some ancient 4 track recorder that can't handle the pure energy of the song.

In The Pines (Version 2) - Jackson C. Frank: There's a very good 3 hour compilation of Jackson C. Frank recordings that came out a few years called Remastered And Unreleased that I listened through the other day. It's just magnificent. This version of In The Pines is one of my favourite I've ever heard, the mournful vocals coupled with his churning rhythm guitar really brings out the darkness of it in a way I've never heard.

(Tumble) In The Wind (Version 1) - Jackson C. Frank: Another favourite from this compilation that is slightly hard to listen to. I don't know if there's a date on it but I'd guess this was recorded near the end of his life. It is so beautiful, but you can hear in his voice and breathing that he's unwell. In Horseshoe Crabs by Hopalong she sings a story from his perspective this song really seems to fit in the second half of that. "Woke from the dream and I was old / Staring at the ass crack of dawn / Walked these streets up and down / Looking for Paul Simon / All I found was myself, lost in time / I tried singing my songs / But I lost my mind"

Sludge - Squid: I'm thinking of putting together a playlist of all the great Black Midi-adjacent bands I've found out about recently and Squid is at the top of the list. This new breed of art-punk is so fantastic and goes in a million different directions. I'm just so excited it exists.

Straight Shot - Quelle Chris: I love this song and Guns is a phenomenal album but there’s one thing bothering me. The ‘who are you, what are you’ part at the end sounds so incredibly familiar to me and I can’t figure out why. As far as I can tell it’s not a sample, but googling reveals that the english voice on it is fucking James Acaster the standup comedian. So what’s going on? Quelle Chris himself is less than helpful: “Straight Shot is one of those ideas that reached out to me, we got along and I simply showed it around town. The chorus, poem at the end and basic piano progression literally came to me in two separate dreams”. Who knows. Great song though.

Levitation - Dua Lipa: What I really like about this song is that she says sugarboo. This whole album bangs and Dua is really reaping the benefits of being the only pop star with the guts to release an album while everyone’s in lockdown I also have a half-baked theory about the way this song is almost interpolating Blame It On The Boogie in the ‘moonlight, starlight’ part as a sort of aggressive takeover of Michael Jackson’s cancelled legacy. Which is smart really. The same way Taylor Swift is re-recording her albums, let’s just get The Weeknd in the studio for a couple of days and give the world back it’s bangers.

Another Crashed Car - Nine Inch Nails: I am so glad Trent Reznor put out another two volumes of Ghosts. Ghosts I-IV from 2008 seems to have been the bridge from his Nine Inch Nails work to his film score work, and now that he’s had such success with that it’s nice to hear him writing in this style without telling anyone else’s story again. It’s also interesting for him to go back to this project now that Ghosts I-IV has paid dividends in the form of the sample at the centre of Old Town Road but that’s neither here nor there. It’s hard to pick and individual track from these, because they work so effectively as long form albums and not individual tracks, but I chose this one because I put the album on as background ambient while I was doing some boring data entry at work and this track is the point at which I realised I was going out of my mind with stress from doing the simplest tasks because of Trent’s Damned Chords.

Lilacs - Waxahatchee: This is a perfect song. It makes me want to like, draw charts about it and go through it bar by bar to figure out how she did it. It’s perfectly put together. It feels like she uses every trick in the book and it just comes together flawlessly in 3 minutes. Amazing.

Cool Water - Hank Williams: I decided to properly listen to Hank Williams because his shadow stretches over so much of country music, and while a lot of his music really alienated or bored me, and a lot of his songs feel like they would read as novelty songs today (like Hey Good Looking), this is the song that made me understand why he’s so revered.

In My Bones (feat. Kimbra and Tank And The Bangas) - Jacob Collier: Jacob Collier generally irks me. He makes brain music for redditors that lose their mind when someone shows them chord inversions or odd time signatures. Youtubers whose whole personality is ‘y’all heard Giant Steps?’ But he killed it on this song. It’s great despite him. There’s still a lot of corniness to work through, mostly in the big yuck funky lyrics, but structurally it’s a kaleidoscope and a big chunk of its success I’m putting down to Kimbra and Tank who understand that performance is a bigger part of a song than composition in a way Collier maybe doesn’t yet. He can overload the bassline and stop-start the rhythms as much as he likes but without actual personalities driving it it’ll just sound like a Peter Gabriel midi played at 200%.

Earthquake - Graham Central Station: I learned something wonderful in researching this band. The leader, Larry Graham, who was in Sly And The Family Stone is credited with inventing slap bass. He himself refers to the technique as "thumpin' and pluckin' ".

Quand Les Larmes D’un Ange Font Danser La Neige - Melody’s Echo Chamber: Once again furious that I’ve known of Melody’s Echo Chamber for years but never listened to them until now. I have been missing out. This is a perfect sprawling psychedelic jam punctuated with a bizzare cut-up recording about shitting yourself when you die and being declared brain dead in the vatican. It’s got everything. I had to look up who the drummer was on this song because he’s just nailing it, and it turns out it’s Johan Holmegaard from Dungen which is really a perfect fit.

Murder Most Foul - Bob Dylan: I was thinking the other day about how Bob Dylan is doing in quarantine. The man who hasn’t stopped moving his whole life and who’s been on a never ending tour  since the 70s is now, I assume, just pacing a hole in a hotel carpet somewhere and jabbering to himself. The strangest part of Bob dropping this 17 minute song about JFK out of nowhere is that he hasn’t put out any original music since 2012. So a gigantic song like this is an even bigger surprise. I, already a huge fan of gigantic songs and Bob Dylan, unsurprisingly love it. I love the slow stirring of the instrumentation, like he hired Dirty Three as a backing band and I love that nearly the entire second half is just listing good songs that he knows. It’s a remarkable song and unlike anything i’ve heard before from Dylan or anyone else. It’s interesting to hear Bob Dylan step into being the great chronicler of the 60s like he’s been told he already was his entire life almost 50 years later, finally accepting the fate foisted on him. The other thing I love about this song is the line when he for some reason praises Lee Harvey Oswald’s shooting “Greatest magic trick ever under the sun / Perfectly executed, skillfully done”

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0k1JjT8fXcUFO6VpM3kaez?si=gWSv88vdShKSnHhLJ_80pQ

[georgemackayhey]

Silver Lining: Chapter 2

In which you and George decide to make the most of life after meeting up at the wrong place at just the right time...

w/c: 3k

a/n: Thanks for such lovely feedback, already! This has been so much fun to write and we’re just getting started y’all! Please let me know if I forgot to tag you or if ya want to be added ♡

taglist: @etherealallure @maria-josefin @shelbygirlsclubx @loulouloueh @clarkewithameme​

< Last Chapter  Next Chapter >

───※ ·❆· ※───

Seen yesterday 11:12 am

Of course, he hadn't responded to the shared google doc, you laughed to yourself in the car park of the airport. What were you thinking, inviting a stranger on holiday? You were nearly full of more regret than excitement for your pending adventure. But here you were, double-checking all the things in your handbag.

A pair of sunglasses, your plane tickets, and passport all accounted for, you unplugged the charger from the console and double-checked the time on your phone screen.

Right on time. You locked your phone, sliding it into your bag as a wave of nerves swept through you. Was this even going to be any fun? What was the point of going on some big romantic getaway if-

Your phone buzzed in your hand before you had let go all the way. When you pulled it into view a single notification lit up your screen... from George.

Wait up for me? ;)

Oh. Oh? You found yourself staring between the text message and his name in the corner of the screen. Was he really coming? Or was the cheeky emoji his way of sardonically letting you down easy?

You clutched your phone, trying to read between the lines as you collected your luggage from the back seat. You glanced at the message again as you locked your car and made your way inside the bright airport. Would lingering around the lobby make you look like a loon when you were inevitably left all alone? Would checking into your flight summon George, but all too late?

You glanced down to your phone one last time, decidedly turning it off along with your useless worries. You slid the device into your bag, reaching for your tickets and passports in exchange. And right when you turned your heels, you stopped in your tracks.

"Good morning!"  

It was him. George Mackay was stood there, in some high-end joggers, sporting perfectly messy hair and a smile that made you wonder what he had to be so damn happy about.

"You're here."  You realized, looking him up and down like taking notice of the laces of his shoes would solidify his existence.

"For some reason, I am." George nodded, shifting his weight as you stood staring. You wondered for a beat, what exactly you'd gotten yourself into. But all at once, a family of four rushed by in a hurry to the tune of their father chanting, "We're gonna be late!"

"Shall we?" You decide, remembering you were on a clock. You extended one of the plane tickets to George, whose already pleasant grin grew during the exchange.

You moved together, checking your bags, shifting through security and strolling amongst the slew of fellow travelers.

As you walked through the airport alongside George, crept into a conversation about how you’d both ended up here. About your recent ex’s, how for a dozen different reasons you should have seen it coming. How it was still sort of hilarious the way it all came to an explosive head. As George laughed along with you over the shitty situation, you felt more like you’d been catching up with an old friend than getting to know a new one.

Sure there was an air of elusiveness between the two of you, but it didn’t seem George had anything to hide. He took his time forming most of his responses, knowing there was a certain level of trust being built as you marched toward spending a handful of days together. But even though his quips were quiet and maybe even coy, he spoke in a manner that was confident and sure. You found yourself in a bit of a daze, studying his face as he spoke. He wore a hint of a smile and an almost furrowed brow. His sparkly blue eyes glancing at you every now and again, as if to check you were still listening.

All these factors added up to dampen your worries over if this was a good idea. George hadn’t given you a single reason to feel unsure of his company. He even asked somewhere back at the baggage claim if you were sure about his tagging along. By the time you wound up at the waiting gate, it seemed you’d found fast friends in one another.

“Are you sad about the wedding?” George wondered, sitting on a stool at your side. You rested your purse at a low risen bar, spinning on the stool to face him.

“I guess a little. I’d spent so long planning.” You shrugged. Funny how you really didn’t miss Colin, though. You explained to George how you met Colin in high school, before he got a big fancy job and fell in love with the money and power he gained. How you’d already settled into the role of doting on him, and you stopped feeling anything for the guy a while back, but only realized after it ended. You explained how you were glad for it now, but how it scared you a little to have been so blind.

“What about Chloe? Do you miss her?” You wondered, propping your elbow on the table at your side, and resting your head in your hand.

George gave you a lifeless grin, casting his eyes off in the distance as he explained how she was hardly ever around. How he wasted more breath begging for her to pay attention to him than ever actually spending much time together. How he felt silly for trying to make it work, after realizing all the signs it never would, were there from the beginning.

“I wish her the best, though, I suppose.” George sighed as if he wanted to hate Chole for what she did, but his purely kind soul wouldn’t allow it.

“I found her Instagram last night and scrolled through. I wanted to be mad at her, but I wasn’t. I mean, lots of her posts were pretty annoying, but I digress.” You gave a light chuckle. The girl had thousands of posts and saved stories, most of which were emoji saturated over-filtered bullshit. But she was studying to be a nurse and she had a family and friends who cared for her. She was just a normal girl who fucked up.

George hummed in a sort of agreement but the way his brow drew together made you toss him a look that demanded he speak his mind.

“Social media really isn’t my thing,” George informed matter of factly. Ah, so that explained why you hadn’t been able to find any accounts of his, last night.

“But you’re famous. Isn’t that like the prime place to advertise or whatever?” You chuckled, sitting up a little, stretching to shift positions.

“I’m not famous,” George stated, plain as day, that same perplexing micro expression lacing his features together. You huffed a laugh as his expression remained,

“Well, I recognized you and I'm nobody. We live in different worlds." You pointed out, playing along.

“That’s not true, is it? Look at us now.” George rose a coy brow as if to prove a point. A montage of muddle memories of the past couple days flashed across your brain as you looked to George, realizing this was really truly happening.

“Why’d you decide to come anyway?” You wondered all of a sudden. Shouldn’t he be off charming a few news anchors or something?

George sat up a little from where he’d been slumped against the counter space, giving a small slow nod as if he knew this question was coming sooner or later.

"Well... I've got some time to enjoy myself before I start my next film. The last one I worked on was, well it was intense. Made my head spin a bit, if I'm honest. The next one will probably do the same, so I figured a bit of spontaneous fun was in order."

"How could you possibly enjoy work like that?"

"I like bringing these stories to life, even if they're hard to tell. Besides, not all of my roles are quite so intense." George explained, drumming his fingers on his knee for a beat. "Ah, but you should know, I'm apparently quite famous."

He cast you a blank look, waiting for you to crack a smile before he did. With a shake of your head, you let out a laugh and stopped marveling over how you ended up here long enough to appreciate the fact that this was happening at all.

And then, it was time to board the plane. You found your seats, watching the last of the passengers cram their belongings overhead.

"Why Rome and Barcelona?" George asked as he settled by your side once more.

"Colin wanted Barcelona. I wanted Rome so he booked it first to get it 'out of the way'" You mocked your ex, feeling more grateful by the minute to be rid of him.

"You really scored with that charmer." George snickered, relaxing back against his seat.

"And now I have a masochistic actor taking his place. I'm so lucky."  You shot back withholding a massive grin. You did feel pretty damn fortunate.

"You literally asked for it." George pointed a finger your way.

"You literally offered." You countered. His lips were upturned, and parted as if he wanted to respond but only a defeated breathy laugh escaped. It caused you to wonder if he was regretting making the strange offer. If he'd suddenly realized what he was doing and wished he'd never agreed to it.

That's about the time the plane started to jet down the runway. When the wheels lifted off the ground, the small worry in your stomach spread to your chest and everything seemed so insanely wrong all at once.

"I've never flown before." You admitted quietly, gripping onto either armrest and hoping the feeling of dread would pass if you alluded to it out loud. George glanced to you, sitting up a little straighter, and speaking up in that tone of his that was calm yet demanding all at once.

"It's just like a roller coaster, just at first. Then it's like nothing."

"I threw up on Splash Mountain." You fretted, the one and only ride you ever had the experience to draw from.

"Gives a new meaning to the name aye?" George joked, but you could find it in yourself to laugh along.

You knew George was only trying to keep up the banter you'd picked up somewhere back at the airport, but you were far too freaked out to join in. You hoped the sorry look in your eyes was enough of an apology before you screwed them shut, trying to ignore the invisible vice around your throat.

"Okay, it's alright, you've just gotta breathe." George shifted beside you, leaning in a little closer to gently relay his message.

"My heart's beating so fast I can't even feel it," You admitted. It felt like the buzz from the broken air conditioner vent overhead, with a flap vibrating against cold air. George followed your gaze to the thing but shook his head as your focus remained.

Then, without a word, George gently tore your grasp away from the armrest. He decidedly pressed the back of your hand to his chest, holding it there as he said,

"Focus on that beat and try to match it."

His heartbeat was unmistakable and strong. His concentration was on you, and you were almost lost taking note of the exact color of his eyes. They were sodalite, the color of a world you could have easily lost yourself in.

"Thanks." You mewled, daring to keep your focus on George, forgetting for just a split second, what you were so anxious about.

After you'd gained composure, and there was no reason for your hand to be intertwined with Georges any longer, there was still a nervous flutter in your chest.

George eased into a conversation about his favorite books, asking you to list off yours, joking that you needed to find something in common besides the grim reality of being recently dumped. He made you laugh, and he listened when you spoke. You'd almost forgotten where you were headed, and why, entirely too lost in the fun you were having on the ride there.

By the time the plane landed, it was as if you'd planned for this trip together all along, with George rambling about the things you'd organized in the google doc you shared.

In the blink of an eye, Rome was alive all around you, at long last. You passed through colorful markets and waved to musicians in the streets as you took a short journey to a hotel just outside of the city.

When you ended up in the bustling sunlight saturated lobby, the very kind and tired looking woman behind the front desk let you know that the room you'd reserved wasn't quite ready. She very kindly offered to stow away your bags until then, while you decided to take to the streets.

All the while, George was always somewhere right behind you, charming the lady at the front desk and making a cab driver laugh so hard he cried. You realized you were in the presence of someone very special, George wasn't like anyone you'd ever known. And strange as it was to sit by him in these sudden change of plans, it was oddly familiar. It was as if it was always meant to be this way.

The cab dropped you off in the heart of the city where you pointed out sights and ordered some coffees from a vendor to fuel your stroll through town. You were finally in the place you'd longed to end up, even having only just gotten there, there was so much beauty to spin around and soak up. The sun was low in the sky, peeking through a dusty alley in a quiet part of the city you'd wandered to. When you took to a bench to rest a beat, you checked your notifications and found your phone was full of missed phone calls from your mother. You couldn't help but wonder if you'd made some kind of mistake.

But then there was George, lingering a few feet away, snapping photos of a street sign like a dad on vacation. The golden sun highlighted his charming features as he turned to you with a smile.

"I see why you choose this place. It's like nothing bad can happen here." He spoke, sauntering your way with that same dopey smile he'd been sporting all afternoon.

"What about in the '80s when that girl got kidnapped by the police and the church covered it up?" You spoke up, crossing your arms as he approached you with the shake of his head.

"You're a real ray of sunshine, huh?" George laughed, shifting his weight to stand right in front of you. "There are bright sides to every story too, ya know?"

"Says the guy who keeps auditioning for horrific films." You shrug with a grin. This was what you'd been doing all day, trying to uncover each other's layers between the deepest level of small talk imaginable.

"Okay, first of that's just a lie," George pointed, "And who says I'm not looking for the bright side in those stories? Why not try and make the most of the bad part of life?" So that's why he was here, you figured. But you had to counter him.

"Sometimes life is just shitty ya know?" You shrugged as a breeze blew past.

"Yeah, well not now. Come on, let's go get some dinner." George held out his hand for you to take, pulling you from where you sat on the bench. You couldn't help but chuckle as you followed his lead. Your shared laughter echoed through the empty streets as George directed you to an eatery where tiny tables were packed into a vine-covered stone patio. He'd found his way there without fault, leaving you to wonder if he'd been here before. And if he hadn't, George's assuredness was admirable.

The crowded restaurant was full of smiling faces, yours included. Everyone vendor and passerby you'd interacted with thus far was incredibly kind. Rome was everything you'd imagined and more, and you'd only been for a couple of hours.

As you ordered food and ate, you and George went on slyly getting to know each other. He mentioned his family, comparing the dinner he ordered to his grandmother's best recipes. You admitted your mother had phoned a dozen times throughout the day. George insisted you call her back right away, recalling a time he ran off as a boy, almost giving his mother a heart attack and still felt guilty to this day.

So to cease his pestering, you called her right in the middle of your meal. The conversation with her wasn't very long, as you informed her you'd taken off on the trip you planned for and that you'd call to tell her the rest of the story later, only ringing now to let her know you were safe and fine.

And by the time you finished eating, George refused to let you pay for any of it.

"You've planned and paid for most of this trip. I can't just tag along with nothing to offer" George laughed, but swatted your hand away from the bill all the same. "So it's either I pay for dinner or I force you into some spectacular plan and blow all my savings on it, your choice."

"You're impossible." You nodded, slumping back allowing him to pick up the check, just this once.

Back at the hotel, the lobby was just as full of people as it had been early in the day. You almost reached out to George as you pushed through the crowd, just so you wouldn't lose him, but you didn't.

After collecting your room key and luggage, you were greeted with your first issue. It was inevitable for something to have gone wrong, but the stakes were a little higher now, in the company of a man you just met. You didn't even know his middle name.

But now you were stuck in Rome together, in a teeny tiny hotel room with one small bed and a wooden chair in the corner.

"I'll go see if they can switch rooms." You sleepily sighed, spinning to head back down the couple flights of stairs you'd just trudged up.

The same sweet woman at the front desk looked even more exhausted when you reached her again and you almost felt bad for asking, but you had to.

When the lady regretfully informed you that they were entirely booked, pointing to a walk-in who opted to sleep in the waiting lounge, you wished her a goodnight and worried all the way back upstairs.

"We could take shifts like they did in the war." You shrugged, informing George that your trip down to change things proved unsuccessful.

"I don't think that's a viable option." George chuckled. He was sitting in the rickety wooden chair, thumbing through a paperback that rested on the desk beside him. Before you could speak up again, he shut the book and stood, announcing that he was going to get cleaned up for the night.

You sorted through a few of your belongings as George occupied the bathroom, pacing at the end of the tiny bed. The room was quaint and warm and held all the charms you'd longed to be surrounded by. But what the hell were you supposed to do now?

You kept on trying to brainstorm when it was your turn to clean up, but you'd had far too much to still try and process about today, that your mind went blank.

Back in the room, You found George settled below the paint chipped window, leaning back against the desk. His legs kicked across the floor, that old ratty paperback in his lap.

"George, get up you're not sleeping on the floor." You sat on the edge of the bed, turning back the covers. He twisted to gaze up at you, confused.

"Come on, we're grown-ups and we're only here two nights." You gestured for him to occupy the bed space beside you, easing toward the edge best you could. You could practically hear him thinking from all the way across the very small room.

"Don't make me count to three." You threatened, giving George a look. He let himself smile as he rolled his eyes and stood with a sigh. He turned off the light and somehow after you'd both situated under the covers, there was a miraculous sliver of space between you.

Worn out from all the travel you were nearly asleep when your head hit the pillow. Tomorrow was a tour of the Sistine Chapel and the Vatican. It was the day you'd planned for a million little things you'd always dream of doing, but now, you felt guilty.

"George..." You spoke out, quiet as you could, gazing out of the window you faced.  "If you got to spend a day in Rome what would you want to do most of all?" He offered to tag along on your trip, but you wanted him to have fun, too.

A beat passed in the still of the night and you figured the guy on the opposite side of the small but arguably cozy bed, had fallen asleep. But then in a low gentle whisper, George replied...

"Do as Romans do."

When in Rome, you thought... It was a saying used as an excuse to indulge but you'd forgotten it really meant to adapt to your situation, to roll with the punches and not get hung up in trying to fight or figure out the natural flow of things.

With that, you fell asleep, dreaming of waking up to another adventure

───※ ·❆· ※───

[kitten-keith]

Horrid Self Indulgence

Wrote this long thing and now it’s gone cause I posted it to the wrong account and copy paste didn’t work so /fuck me/ anyway.

The whole following fic is purely self indulgent garbage, thus the name (it’s even called this in my google docs because I HAD A PLAN for what I was doing and it was supposed to be insanity) though as usual things get derailed and Idk. I had wanted to get into the hijinks of this concept but lost steam after starting the second bit. But the first bit can stand alone. ish. I guess.

Idk. It’s all completely ridiculous though so idk have fun.

Klance, slightly intoxicated, sharing a bed, Keith is uncomfortable AF and Lance is trying to be chill about it. Weird head shit and accidental rituals. You’ll see. Seriously. Horrid self indulgence.

-----

It was a pleasant moment between comrades that went horribly, heinously, horrifically wrong. 

And if that’s what bonding with Keith friggin Kogane gets him then absolutely not, never again.

It was such a simple stupid fuck up. How was he supposed to know?!

They were at a dinner, stumbling awkwardly through an alien planets customs, trying unsuccessfully to pretend they were okay with the garbs they’d been forced to wear and that the food didn’t make them nauseous when Lance had made the biggest mistake ever and looked at Keith. 

See, because he was the leader his attire had to display this-this—nobility. And god, Keith was anything but noble. He was sitting to the right of the planet’s leader, Allura across from him, and he looked like they might as well have sat him at the kids table with how his brows furrowed and he looked at the ground like he was trying not to cry.

His face was red enough to match the silk scarf loosely clinging to his shoulders and his thumbs rubbed absently over his ungloved hands. He was bare aside from the scarf and a darker one wrapped around his waist for modesty that he’d had to fight for. Apparently this planet had no concept of an external penis or whatever and needed to be educated on human biology before they gave in to Keith’s demands. 

The whole thing was about respect, leaving yourself bare to show you had nothing to hide, but to remind everyone of his station the locals had him decked out in jewels from head to toe. They were braided into his hair, dangling from thin chains across his chest, Lance was positive there was some sort of jeweled sandal decorating his tiny delicate toes too. 

(And not because he paid attention to that sort of thing. Just. Ya know. Shiny shit.) 

Allura was actually dressed about the same though being a woman with no external penises she was actually way nakeder than Keith. And, as she was a full on princess they’d given her a whole slew of silver that had strategically covered all necessary bits that Lance’s mother might have flinched at. 

Not that Allura seemed to give a fuck in the slightest and even seemed to enjoy it as she spoke animatedly to the world leaders, the jewels on her body making small clinking noises with every movement. 

Lance had spotted perfect (and he means perfect) dark nipples exactly 16 times since they’d all sat down to their meal and absolutely couldn’t take it anymore so that was when he’d turned his attention to Keith. 

And somehow had been unable to turn away from him since.

The other Paladins were stripped some and given a few shiny baubles. Lance himself was wearing flowy pants slit up the sides over the dark boxers he’d thankfully been allowed to continue wearing. A couple gold plated necklaces and an arm band and he was good to go. Lance has no issue being topless and actually kinda liked the style. Hunk was a bit more uncomfortable, same pants, same boxer treatment (his were white with yellow suns on them, Lance clapped him on the back for unintentionally matching.) 

Hunk had the same kind of jewelry too but try all he might he couldn’t drop his hands from where they were wrapped around his chest.

He said he was cold repeatedly but lance figured he was just self conscious and offered him plenty of wolf whistles back in their dressing rooms because “man hunk you wanna bench press me later cause those arms are making me weak~!” 

But sadly it didn’t seem to work. 

Pidge was an interesting sell. Same bottom situation in her signature green but she’d also managed to get away with a pair of socks that she was no longer wearing on her feet.

They were providing just a hint more cover for her chest after she’d wrapped Lance’s, Hunks’s, and her own scarf around herself like a makeshift halter top. The locals hadn’t liked it and Allura had tried to explain that female breasts were nothing to be ashamed of but Pidge’s size and thus assumed age had granted her the “let the child be” excuse. 

And sure, Lance was a grown man who was all for equality and free the nipple and aaallll that jazz but if they had forced his pseudo baby sister to go topless he might have lost his absolute shit and gotten them all sent back to the castle. 

Not that that would have been the worst thing at this point because then he wouldn’t be staring at Keith like this— to avoid staring at Allura! Of course— and then he wouldn’t have gotten elbowed in the side by the Pidgeling and gotten the funny look from Hunk and nah man okay. 

Lance wasn’t ogling the leader of voltron. 

He wasn’t. 

He was just. 

Uh. 

Worried about him. 

Yeah, that’s right. Worried. 

Which was what lead him to follow Keith’s retreating form the second they were allowed to adjourn for the night. 

It’s what compelled him to bump his shoulder and wave a hand in greeting. 

And maybe that pout had something to do with Lance’s laughing, throwing his arm over his shoulders, and ushering him to his room for the night. 

“Come on dude, I've got something for you, stashed from that one planet with the abomination? You know the one… Kell? Krell? It’s good okay, better than what they just tried to feed us. Take the edge off.” 

Take the edge off. 

Famous last words? 

Keith groaned and wrapped his arms around himself tightly but nodded and willingly turned off course from his own room. Lance wondered if this was so easy because he’d been so beaten down by the day or because he actually found solace in Lance’s company. 

He didn’t have the nerve to ask and instead simply sauntered into his room, leaving Keith to stand idly by the newly shut door. 

“It tastes better than nunville but it’s a little stronger so you’re gonna wanna sip at it okay?” 

Keith nodded but his eyes looked glassy, like he wasn’t actually listening. 

Lance moved to his temporary rooms vanity setting and shuffled through his bottles of toiletries. When they’d decided to indulge the locals in their customs and stay a few nights basking in their hospitality Lance had been told to pack quickly but he hadn’t forgotten anything important. This included the little silver pouch that he’d somehow barely touched since keeping it with him all this time. 

He opened the pull top with his teeth to take a small sip before offering it to Keith who was still standing right against the door as if he was afraid to move. Considering how loose the scarf around his waist looked, he might have been. 

He did look… good though. 

Remarkably so. 

Amidst the finery and the sheer and silk fabrics, his hair in a loose braid over one shoulder and that almost permanent flush across his cheeks, he was beautiful and adorable and stunning all at once and it was doing ridiculous things to Lance’s chest. He almost regretted taking the sip that he did because he worried about what he might let slip aloud, looking at Keith like that, but as the alien substance travelled down his throat and warmed his body he kept his wits. He felt the buzzing under his skin but retained his sense. He was here to offer Keith a moment to relax. Nothing more.

He walked over to Keith and instead of handing him the pouch he resealed it and held it softly under one arm as he reached out with both hands for Keith’s waist. 

Keith flinched so hard his back hit the door, “what are you doing?!”

Lance rolled his eyes, pushing closer and grabbing on to the scarf around his waist tugging and tightening it for him. 

“Looked like you were having trouble.”

Keith’s flush was so hot Lance could practically feel it.

Poor thing. 

“Right… thanks…” he stayed against the door but took the pouch when Lance offered it. 

Lance turned to walk over to his bed and make himself comfortable and by the time he turned his attention back to Keith the boy was swallowing.

“You remembered what I said about that stuff being hard hitting… right?”

Keith shrugged.

Took another sip. (This one looked more like a sip at least. Maybe Lance wouldn’t have to carry him back to his room later.)

He sealed the stopper and looked around the room briefly before walking in the straightest line imaginable to sit on the foot of Lance’s bed, holding the pouch out to him again. 

Lance considered it, wondering if it would help or hinder his case to not make a fool of himself with Keith looking like that and decided why not. Besides, he could pace himself, unlike some people. 

When he finished taking his last sip, feeling the warmth and the contentment sitting in his stomach as he leaned back on his elbows on his bed, he hummed to himself and shut the top, putting it to the side. 

Keith shuffled around so his back was to the bed post and he placed his hands over his lap uncomfortably.

“So uh. Was—was that it?”

“Chill Keith. You’ve been looking so tightly wound today I figured you could use a break.” 

Keith visibly paled and moved to curl in on himself but thought better of it. His thumbs started to track back and forth over his fingers though. Bad sign. 

“Relax!” Lance demanded, stretching the vowel sounds to make it more playful. 

Keith neglected to heed this order and instead looked away. 

“Look, I doubt it’ll cause any problems, everyone knows their customs made you uncomfortable. Here, if you want you can go ahead and get under the covers.” Lance reached behind him and pulled up the bed sheets. It would help his own situation too. Cover Keith and that pretty skin of his up. Put that beautiful body away because his own was starting to get ideas he didn’t need. 

He remembered Allura looking just as beautiful if not more so and it helped for a second to feel better mentally but he was still fighting not to be turned on next to half naked (that was being generous) Keith. 

“That might actually be… are you sure? I could just— leave. I could leave.”

Lance rolled his eyes. 

“Would you chill if you left or would you stay up all night worrying about the kinds of impressions you’re leaving?”

Keith was silent. His thumb disappeared behind his pointer to dig his little blunt nail into his middle. 

“Get in the bed. Let me tell you stories.” 

Keith’s eyes lit up at that and for a moment he started forward to crawl across the bed toward where the sheets were up, but he stopped himself again. 

Lance sighed.

“Feeling exposed?”

Keith nodded.

“You know we showered together back at the garrison right? I’ve seen you naked. Completely naked. And lathered.”

Of course, this was before Lance’s full sexual awakening and before Keith had filled out like he did with those abs and thighs for days but uh— that wasn’t a necessary addition to the conversation it just wasn’t. 

Keith still flushed like a tomato and it made Lance’s little traitorous heart do a flip.

“Right right. I forget you didn’t even remember me from the garrison.” Lance offered sardonically, trying to shift the mood. 

Keith bit his lip. Man, even that looked good. Lance wanted to bite that lip. He could just see it. Lip to lip with Keith Kogane groaning out. Lance’s hand on his shoulder pushing him back on the bed, the other reaching beneath him to get a nice big handful of that round perky ass—

Okay. 

Okay maybe Keith shouldn’t get under the covers. 

Maybe he should leave. 

He should leave. 

He should—

Keith started to mumble something when Lance turned away and shut his eyes. 

“Alright you have ten seconds, go on princess.”

It was silent for a moment. 

Lance squeezes his eyes shut tightly because this was the exact opposite of what he was supposed to be doing.

“10.” 

But he was doing it.

“9”

There was the sound of Keith shuffling behind him, pulling up the sheets more and crawling into bed. He was getting comfortable by the time Lance reached 3 and Keith spoke up telling him he could stop. 

Lance nodded and turned around so he could face Keith, continue conversations, see if he could find a relevant story in his brain about his family or something simple back home that would help Keith unwind. 

Instead he was struck a bit dumb by Keith snuggled under his (always color coded) blue bed sheets, his inky black hair splayed out on the pillow. Lance had always thought Keith’s eyes were this remarkable shade of blue but surrounded by all the blue in his bed Lance realized he was wrong. They were clearly more of a violet, wide and staring at him under lashes that were too long and too elegant for a guy who made a living kicking furry alien chinchillas in the face.

And with that thought came the image of Keith kicking ass, those muscle toned legs under skin tight space suits…

Now basically bare and in his bed. 

Naked. 

Naked Keith in his bed. 

Naked Keith in his bed staring at him expectantly like— like—

Right. Right he was waiting for a story. 

Okay. 

Lance flopped onto his side, too close to Keith but in an effort to remain comfortable and casual it had to be done, and went back to racking his mind for an idea that didn’t involve pressing his body as close to Keith’s as physically possible. 

Something jingled as he went down and he remembered the abundance of jewels that had been decorating Keith’s body. 

There were still a few left in his hair that he seemed to not care about but it looked like the little jeweled sandals were there, as were the ones that had decorated his arms.

It took him a second but Lance scooped them up and put them on the bedside table before getting comfortable again. 

“Oh okay so, let me tell you about the time my big sister Veronica brought home the biggest stupidest “boyfriend” she could find…” 

Lance could see Keith smile just beneath the blanket. 

He reached out and started to pick the jewels out of Keith’s hair as he spoke, occasionally running his fingers through it. If Keith had a complaint he didn’t voice it. Besides, just because it was styled stupid didn’t make it any less soft.

By the time Lance got to the big reveal of the story, the part where Veronica had hired the guy to piss off their dad over an argument they’d had about Veronica’s openness to bringing a girlfriend home (maybe, in the future), Keith had completely knocked out.

And for some reason, Lance thought that was alright.

They could totally just. Sleep in the same bed. No problem.

With Keith wearing nothing but a silk scarf.

He thought this was a perfectly good idea as he showered and put on a fresh pair of boxers and crawled under his sheets to the sound of Keith’s light breathing.

He was a little dizzy, but forgot that the biggest after effect of inebriation was poor judgement, and easily curled up next to Keith.

Keith, who was just awake enough to take Lance’s hand.

Lance thought it was adorable.

Because Keith was adorable. 

And Lance wanted to be touching his skin like this (sort of) anyway.

It worked for him. 

He was sleepy too.

So sleepy he lapsed almost instantly into dreams.

Dreams of Allura dancing just out of his reach. Of her nonchalance at his flirting and efforts to be noticed by her. Making him feel useless. Undesirable. Unworthy.

He was so pathetic.

Keith’s voice was in his head. 

Telling him how kind he was. How sweet he was.

“I couldn’t do any of this without you Lance.”

“I need you.”

“I hope you know that. I hope you know that—if you could see yourself how I see you…”

“Lance you’re so…”

“I want…”

“I wish…”

Keith was at his side. Mumbling those nothings into his ear in little breathy sighs. 

It felt nice. 

It was nice to hear. 

Nice to feel Keith pressing in beside him.

“I wish you could see what I see in you… love yourself as much as I do...Lance, I…”

Well this was awfully self indulgent of him. Dreaming of a Keith who would say those kinds of things. As if the real Keith capital L Loved him. 

Like Lance hadn’t spent years trying to get his attention the same way he had with Allura too. 

As if he hadn’t gotten shot down with every attempt to—

“I liked you then too! I was just… afraid to let anyone in…”

“Liar, you didn’t even remember me.”

“That was the lie…”

“That was…?”

“You were so cute… always trying so hard… always going the extra effort to make people smile or laugh… I always thought you were…”

“You liked me back at the garrison? Like... one smoothie two straws, like-like…?”

Keith turned away, rolling onto his side. Face probably flushed a deep crimson again. Man he was so cute…!

“Like write your name in my notebook with a bunch of hearts, like-like… yeah.”

Extremely self indulgent dream. 

But Lance was gonna take it.

He squeezed himself close to Keith’s body, wrapping an arm around his chest as Keith jumped.

“And now you…?”

“Now I…”

It was silent. 

Lance tried to ignore how perfectly Keith’s ass cheeks felt pressed to his crotch.

He felt naked.

Naked Keith in his bed. Saying all these pretty hopeful things...What a perfect dream…

Lance gently bumped his hips. He couldn’t help it, and it was his dream after all right?

Keith was silent, but reached a hand back to slide down Lance’s waist, breathing loud.

Was that how Lance’s mind worked? Show me a love confession followed by an immediate bone. 

Lance’s wet dreams were clearly things of substance.

“Do you love me?”

He bumped his hips again. His dick hardening fast.

Keith’s fingers dug into Lance’s boxers, applying just enough pressure to drive him forward, keep him pressed to his ass.

“I do… do you…?”

“Hmm… never thought about it before.”

Keith made a low unhappy noise.

“I def love your face… your so fucking pretty face…” 

Keith went silent again. Lance ground his hips against him and his hard cock was finding a very comfortable place right between his cheeks. 

“And I love this body...your ass is heaven, Keith, wish you could feel this...” 

Keith was definitely naked. Naked enough that Lance was desperate to get out of his boxers. 

How could his dream provide him perfectly naked love confessing Keith and not leave Lance equally perfectly naked?

Sense, where was it?

“I love how brave you are… stupid and reckless and it drives me insane with worry. But brave.” 

Keith backed into Lance’s lap, rolling his hips and made Lance’s mind stutter.

“I love how—how much you care about things even when you don’t show it… I love your laugh…”

He could feel Keith’s entire body against his front, a single useless silk scarf around his waist, the rest probably lost somewhere in the bed. His hand found one of Keith’s nipples and he started to slowly rub his fingers around the nub causing Keith to raise his chest into the touch a bit more with a small high pitched sound.

“I love how you hum during flight simulations and I always leave coms open so I can hear you…”

With Keith raising his chest for Lance’s hand it gave him a moment to slip his other hand underneath him. He pinched his nipple between his thumb and forefinger once before sliding that first hand down the span of his body. Feather light touches over the ridges of his abs, loving the way Keith twitched and rocked harder back into Lance. 

“I love how unbelievably dense you could be sometimes, you’re such a mess you’re perfect—” Lance moved his head so he was right against Keith’s ear for the word “perfect” but lost his nerve when he dropped his face into the back of Keith’s neck, “What am I saying… of course I love you.”

Did Lance have feelings for Allura? Yes. Did he wish she’d reciprocate? Yeah. 

Did Lance feel guilty about indulging himself in a dream with someone who he also had some very strong (possibly stronger) feelings for? No, not at all. 

Because real talk? If Keith had said half of this in real life Lance’s heart would have combusted and he would have kissed the life out of him by now—

Because that was just what Keith did to him sometimes. 

He just… blew his mind with how much he could make Lance feel. 

Christ.

Good lord.

He hadn’t taken advantage of the opportunity to kiss him yet. 

He reached up with the arm that was beneath Keith, his hand spreading wide over his neck to grab his jaw and tentatively guide him to face him. 

“Can I kiss you?”

Keith’s hips ground back hard as he laughed, “you’re asking that now?”

He was right. 

Besides, kinda stupid to ask permission from a dream right? 

“Stupid stupid me, right?” 

“Stop that.”

“Right let’s get to the smooching.”

“Yeah alright I take it back.”

“If you love me you have to love all of me.”

Lance could practically hear Keith rolling his eyes. 

“Hey it’s my dream—“

And it was absolutely superpowered. Maybe there was something in his drink that had different properties on this planet because when Keith parted his lips and lifted his head they had never looked so inviting in his life. He had to stop himself mid sentence to dive for those lips.

Smashed up his nose a little bit on Keith’s cheek which he was sure he would have felt too if this wasn’t a dream but Lance didn’t care because he was kissing Keith Kogane.

And yes. He’d had plenty of dreams where he’d kissed Keith. Plenty of dreams where they’d made out on the rec room floor or the garrison showers or had sex in reds cockpit. 

But they had never ever felt like this.

His brain practically fizzled out. 

He felt Keith’s tongue against his and then suddenly it was gone.

Felt like he was falling, disoriented. Someone (Keith?) reached out to catch him. Dug little blunt nails into his arm in panic.

“Lance—what—“

The dream shifted. Lance was alone, floating in an empty pool, naked and confused and annoyed.

The water was cold but didn’t make him shiver. 

There was a splash in the distance, and Lance hoped it was Keith but he couldn’t see anything. Time passed and he started to lose sense of where he or the water began. 

He’d have given anything to be back with Keith. 

What a shitty way to end his dream…

When he woke up his throat was dry, like he’d had too much to drink the night before and his head spun a bit. 

He sat up and found he was on the far side of the bed where Keith had gone to sleep. Didn’t even see Keith, so maybe he’d gotten up earlier and Lance had managed to settle into place where his body heat had been. 

Of course that was for mere moments before he glanced to the opposite side of his bed and found… himself?

He also realized very suddenly he was buttnaked with only a silk scarf tied loosely around his hips and his hair was long enough to tickle his shoulders.

He looked down at himself and saw the expanse of absolutely flawless Keith body, down to the little dark hairs just under that useless scarf.

Lance wasn’t sure why he did it, but he reached down to grab himself in his palm (Keith in Keith’s palm??) And was immediately overwhelmed by the sensation of it. He had to bite his lip to keep quiet and fell back on the bed hard as his hand tightened to seek out the feeling. He was partially hard already and from the feeling of it he must have been suffering all night.

But excuse you Lance. This isn’t your body what are you doing? 

Dreaming? Still? Could have sworn he was very much awake now…

He forced himself to stop, noting quietly that he was absolutely not going to forget what it felt like, and looked over at his own body. 

Had to be a dream. 

Had to be.

He shut his eyes, letting his finger tips graze over the inside of Keith’s thighs because dream or no there were so many nice things about that he was gonna keep doing it.

Well until someone shook him awake (again?) 

It was strange seeing an expression that was so clearly Keith, puzzled with furrowed brows and tight lips, on his own face. 

But there it was. 

Staring at him like he was the strangest mystery in the known universe. Which, to be fair, if he was still wearing Keith’s face he kind of was. (And kind of had to be considering he definitely wasn’t the one wearing his own face.) 

Keith (you know, it felt like Keith and acted like Keith, but he really didn’t know if that was Keith) was the first to register the shock of the mornings revelation. Lance actually felt kinda slow and confused. Maybe he’d drank too much— no wait, Keith did. 

Anyway.

So. 

Keith started screaming. And Lance started screaming. 

And maybe that wasn’t a great idea while guests on a diplomatic mission in another world palace with your comrades in arms down the hall while you’re both pretty naked and in bed together. 

But uh. 

Fun morning.

[forestwater87]

Ok this is super embarrassing but you’re one of my favorite writers in this uh.. whatever this blogosphere is so!! I wanna try and take a crack at writing my own fanfic but.. I got no idea where to even start. Any advice?

Oh man, I feel awful about this! I didn’t know my inbox had any new messages, so some of these asks have been sitting here for . . . some time. 

Anyway, first off thank you very much! Secondly, the most obvious advice is just, you know, “do it.” But that’s infinitely easier said than done. I started writing fanfic when I was around 10 years old, so overthinking it wasn’t an issue, since I thought I was the world’s greatest writer. Assuming you’re not 10 years old and as blind to the concept of literary criticism as I was . . . well, the first step is obviously getting an idea. EDIT: Holy shit, this is long. I’m gonna have to break this bad boy up with headers, like it’s a real blog post or something.

Getting Ideas/Inspiration

I don’t know if you already have something you’d like to write about or if you’re still at the “gee that looks like fun” level of fanfic ruminating, but if you’re having trouble coming up with ideas, turning to the existing fandom is a great place to start! 

1: Filling in fandom gaps: I’ve found a lot of my best fic ideas by looking through what already existed and seeing where there was something missing; when I first started writing for Camp Camp, literally only @raenbowsofficial created anything for Gwenvid -- it didn’t even have a ship name yet, and I’m pretty sure the 3 people into it were still throwing “daven” and “gavid” around as well -- so there being zero other fics for it meant that if I wanted it to exist, I’d have to be the one to write it. (That’s also nice if you’re kind of insecure, because when no one else has tried the idea you’re interested in, you have no pressure to compare it to anything else.) 

Also, you could take a popular/already existing concept and write it the way you’d like to see it, if the existing fanfics do something with the story or characters that you’re not thrilled with. That’s handy because it gives you a general blueprint to work off of in terms of tropes and broad story beats, while letting you explore something new. Obviously, don’t rip off someone else’s fic note-for-note, but being inspired by someone else is a great way to kickstart your creativity! If you do have a specific author or story that you’re using as a jumping-off point for your own writing, I would strongly recommend linking them in your author’s notes at the beginning or end of the fic, and maybe gifting the story to them! You don’t have to, since the creation is entirely your own, but it’s still always nice to acknowledge the people who inspire you the most.

2: Fandom inception. If you want to be a little more direct and literal, there’s always the option of writing fanfic of a fanfic or fanart that you really love, if there’s a universe or story idea that you like, and you want more of it. As long as you give credit and notify the original creator, I think you’d have no issues in terms of fanfic etiquette, and I imagine they’d be honored to have inspired your own writing. Fandom is a very collaborative experience, after all, and we’re all in this together! :)

3. For more general “I have a vague idea of what I want to do (the ship, or maybe a tiny plot bunny) but I’m not sure where to go with it,” my biggest recommendation is music. Especially folk indie-rock music, which is 90% angst and 100% haunting. And again, looking at fanfic/art is a great way to get inspired -- I have a tendency to put up a particularly good or emblematic piece of fanart/fic in another window when I’m working on something tricky to write, just for something to stare at when my ideas start running dry (shoutout to @doritofalls, @ellohcee, and the aforementioned RA for being my go-tos when I need to stare at something pretty to feel inspired; there are absolutely others, because this fandom is filled with absurdly talented people, but those 3 are my heroes of inspiration and if you SOMEHOW don’t already know them, fix that immediately). 

Wow, that’s a lot and it’s literally just all about getting an idea . . . which you might already have. Yikes. For the sake of people who have to scroll past this, let’s put the rest under a cut:

Fleshing Out the Idea: An Ode to Outlines

Some people are able to just sit down and write something incredible from a vague idea, and the story just builds on itself without any sort of planning or organization to guide them along the way. These people are named Cipher/Campernetics, and we hate her for being unfairly talented.

For the rest of us, outlines are essential.

My outlines tend to be insanely specific, because I’m very afraid of letting a single idea slip through the cracks, and I build on them over time as I get increasingly sure of where the story’s going. The early outlines tend to be extremely vague, with lots of “and then something happens” connecting major plot points. An example for a current WIP I’m doing right now:

(Seriously, “Julia and everything”? Future Forest is going to be so pissed at current Forest when she reaches that point and realizes she has no idea what she’s doing)

And as the story starts to take shape and a plot eventually forms -- they tend to take at least 10 chapters to materialize, but they do generally show up! One of the great things about fanfiction is that plot is largely optional, though, so no worries if you’re starting without a full story idea -- I find myself writing more and more details down, if for no other reason than that I want to make sure I remember what I was thinking when I finally get to that scene (because I have absolutely gotten to a point in a story and forgotten what I’d had planned. It sucks). Here’s an example from another fic with pretty significant spoilers if you can figure out which one it is oops:

I’d recommend keeping your outlines pretty simple, at least to start with: words and phrases, rather than whole-ass sentences like the above. The complexity will develop as your ideas do, so no need to wrack your brain trying to write out the entire story in bullet form.

I use the bolded ideas as stepping stones, more or less; I’ll write out the piece of the story that each line represents, which can be as little as a sentence or as much as 4 or more chapters (RIP my most recent long-running fic), then delete that line and move on to the next. 

Bolding them isn’t necessary, but it does make it easier to differentiate at a glance what needs to be written. If you keep everything in the same hundred-page Google Doc like I do, this is very important.

Your outline doesn’t have to be well-written, and you can 100% use fillers like “and then something happens here.” I do that all the time -- again, another completely different story:

Now, the vaguer things are, the more annoyed Future You will be when it comes time to write whatever it’s bulleting -- there’s a reason I haven’t updated this fic, and it’s because I have zero idea what the everliving fuck “Pinky-and-the-Brain-ing all over the place” means -- but it’s really good for when you’re first getting started sketching out the vague outline of your fic. The more you panic trying to figure out all the twists and details at the very start, the less likely you’re ever just going to sit down and write the damn thing.

(This might be why I don’t write plot-heavy stories, to be fair. Mystery writers very well might have to have it all planned out from the get-go, and I’d recommend chatting with someone who’s a bit less “coffeeshop AU” and a bit more Agatha Christie for that kind of advice.)

Knowing When to Post

There are people that exist, who have amazing self-control, who can wait until their entire story is written and then release it in sections, at regular intervals, until the story is completed.

I am not one of these people, though I try to be with literally every single fic I’ve ever written.

Personally, I do this until I reach a point where I get stuck and need validation, and then post what I have in a giant chunk and then don’t update it for several months. This is almost universally known as the worst way to write fanfics, both in terms of getting interaction from fans and keeping readers from wanting to kill you, and if you have the ability to write the entire thing and sit on it until it’s ready to be shared, you are a hero.

Alternatively, if you can actually stick to a set schedule of writing it as you go and still update with a new chapter every X days, you are not human and I’m terrified of you, because if you find a way to weaponize this power you will rule the world.

Honestly, a good rule of thumb? Post it when you’re ready for people to read it, whether it’s done or not. Not all works will get done, and it seems mean to deny people the delicious little stub you’ve written even if you’re not going to finish it. When you’re happy with what you have -- or are so tired of looking at it that you need to post it or you’ll throw your computer out the window -- just do it and let out a sigh of relief, then either take a few days before going back to writing or just jump in immediately like a goddamn masochist.

(I have tried to get far enough ahead that I can start posting the already-written stuff on a schedule, figuring by the time I’m caught up I’ll have completed the entire story and won’t have any awkward gaps. Ahahahahahahahahaha that has never once worked.)

If you’re not certain about your writing, get a beta! The fandom is full of talented people who’d be happy to read over your work, and if the person you ask doesn’t have the time or spoons, they probably have a few ideas of other people you could reach out to. You don’t need a beta, but it always makes me feel better to have another set of eyes look over my writing before posting, and my beta always catches things I completely missed. Plus, you get a nice taste of that sweet, sweet validation we all crave.

This . . . is a bad guide. Just in general. The advice is . . . not good, and I think it’s largely useless. But I keep trying to think of useful things to add to it and coming up empty, so I hope something in here helped, and if you’d like to bounce your ideas off of someone, feel free to shoot me a message! Talking ideas over with friends is a great way to flesh them out as well, and I am happy to be anyone’s fandom friend.

[deliriousmagelyrambles]

My Sopor Theory

This was posted on my main blog, which really only consists of reblogs and next to no original content. After checking, I noticed that for some reason, I can't find it on my main blog, otherwise I'd link to it. I don't want to say it's there and link you to my account just for you to not find it. I'd look like even more of an idiot than I already do. Thank Grapefruit I saved it on Google Docs so I can reference my original thoughts, though. This is also posted on Amino and Vent, not that it matters. Just saying for the record.

I wanted to take the time to sit down and actually attempt to make it sound coherent, but don't get your hopes up. Mostly I just wanted to put it on this blog, though, since this is in part my theories blog.

Now, strap your Lemons down and get ready for multiple paragraphs of Delirious Magely Rambles™!

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I think it's possible that the only reason trolls can't sleep without sopor and have horrible nightmares if they do is because they go through something akin to withdrawals without it. They've been conditioned from birth to sleep in it and to need it, and it may not be a natural dependence. It was already made very obvious through Gamzee that sopor is a essentially a really strong drug, and what do drugs cause when you go without them? Withdrawals. The withdrawal symptoms of many drugs are not unlike what the trolls experience without sopor. Keep in mind that sopor also has a soothing effect, almost like that of a drug. I don't think it would be too farfetched to say their dependence on sopor may be more akin to addiction than a natural need, which causes the bad side effects of being without it.

In support of this, I'd first like to compare it to my sleeping medication. Sopor seems to be intended to work the same way my sleeping meds do: it aids me in sleeping. Like trolls need sopor, I need my sleeping meds to sleep, I'm almost completely reliant on it for sleep. And when I don't take it, it's very similar to what the trolls experience without sopor. I can't sleep (obviously), and I have terrible nightmares when/if I somehow manage to. (I also end up with nausea and headaches and whatnot, but I'm not sure if the trolls experience that too.) This is actually what got me thinking about this theory in the first place. I was unable to take my meds for two nights in a row and already I was feeling the pain. My withdrawals come fast, and they hit hard. While staring at the ceiling for five hours, unable to sleep, my Homestuck trash brain started thinking about how the trolls have very similar experiences with sopor.

Now, you may be asking, "But why? Why would they be conditioned from birth to rely so heavily on something they wouldn't naturally need?" The answer is very simple, my dear friend: the Condesce. This like is every tyrannical dictator's wet dream: the masses so easily controlled by their complete and utter dependence on something so critical to survival. As we all know, sleep is in fact critical to survival. Addiction/dependence makes the masses weak and conformable as long as you keep supplying them. Once they rely on you for survival, they won't fight back, especially if they're aware of their dependence on you. It's totalitarianism/tyranny/dictatorship 101.

Now, with this in mind, I'm turning my focus on the rebellion. As we know, there were many rebellions, with varying degrees of success, but none actually succeeding. First, I'm going to ignore the Signless for now and look at Dammek's rebellion in Hiveswap. Obviously, this next paragraph includes Hiveswap spoilers to an extent, so skip it if you don't want spoilers, but keep in mind that you'll miss some of my reasoning/support. With that warning out of the way, let's continue.

In Hiveswap, Xefros tells Joey that sometimes Dammek makes him sleep on the floor, outside of his recuperacoon. Naturally, Joey and the majority of the fanbase took this as Dammek being a dick. However, if I remember correctly, he said it was to eliminate his dependency on his recuperacoon, in case there were ever a worst-case scenario in which he would be unable to use it. Being a rebellion leader and a major conspiracy theorist, it's likely that Dammek either knew or suspected that they don't naturally need sopor, that it's just a ploy by the Condesce to keep them in line, dependent, and subjugated. We must also keep in mind that Dammek most likely slept on the floor many nights as well. He could very well have found out the hard way, conditioning himself to not need his recuperacoon. And it makes sense for a rebellion leader to want to cut off their dependence to their tyrannical leader.

This isn't exactly the only case of trolls not using/needing a recuperacoon or sopor. In cases like Polypa's, a lot of trolls don't have a hive anymore, which cuts off their access to a recuperacoon and sopor. They're lucky to be able to survive without a hive, both because of their Hell sun and because they're prime targets for culling. If they can somehow survive those two factors, the lack of sopor for sleep surely would have gotten them, right? Which leads me to my next, very closely related point and another troll lacking such access.

Now we've finally gotten to maybe my strongest support. The man, the myth, the legend himself: the Signless. As a mutant blood, the Signless had to grow up far from society to avoid culling, likely needing to move around often as well. The Dolorosa, as we all know, was with him as well, raising him from grubhood to adulthood. It's safe to assume that neither of them had access to sopor during that time. In such a long timeframe, they surely would have gone near insane or even died from sleep deprivation. And raging, terrifying nightmares, if I remember right. His followers likely would have been affected as well, since they would likely be on the run too. However, they all seemed to be just fine. You can't have withdrawals if you never take a drug. The Signless can't be affected by sopor withdrawals if he never used it. And with the Dolorosa and the others, withdrawals stop after extended disuse. As time went on, their lack of sopor would stop affecting them so much, little by little.

If I recall correctly, the Signless was one of the biggest threats to the Condesce's rule. He could have sparked the biggest and probably most troubling uprising up to that point in history, and he likely would have had he not been captured and executed. One of the biggest things that may have set him apart, aside from the mutant blood thing, is his lack of sopor. He would be a prime example of how a dictator can't control the masses as easily if they aren't dependent on them for something. In this case, the Condesce can't control her subjects as easily if they aren't dependent on sopor. Considering how debilitating sopor withdrawals seem to be, this conclusion makes sense. Trolls are almost deathly dependent on sopor, and it keeps them right under the Condesce's perfectly manicured thumb.

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This concludes today's Delirious Magely Rambles™! As a parting note, I'd like to say that I haven't seen this theory anywhere before, but I apologize if it has already been said and I'm repeating an old theory. I may think of more points/supporting evidence later, as I tend to do, in which case I'll add it in a reblog because I think that would make it more visible than an edit.

Last thing before I leave this here, please let me know what you think of this theory. Do you agree? Disagree? Have anything to add in support of or against this? Have you seen this somewhere before? Anything you have to say about this is welcome, especially in regard to that last question. Feedback is one of my favorite things, always has been and always will be, even if you're just telling me I'm an idiot. Let me hear it! Thank you for listening, and stay safe, children!

[greivous-bodily-harm]

five years

title: five years

pairing: bellamy blake x clarke griffin

setting: (current) clarke’s pov, somewhere between 6x10 and 6x11

prompt: time travel where the present bellarke comes across future bellarke and madness ensues

notes: ok so posted this and then it deleted itself when i went to add a tag which - first off all, rude - second, is hella annoying bc i didn’t actually save the doc i typed it in buttttt using my superior intellect (which is my nickname for google) i was able to recover the doc and i actually saved it this time but hopefully it doesn’t delete itself again.

 anyway, here it is:

Clarke, frankly, finds it quite hard to believe. I mean, it’s insane right? Sure, they’ve been through hell and back, and they’ve seen some weird shit in their time but… time travel? That’s too far, even for her. And yet, there she is, future her.

“Wait,” Bellamy, who had been sitting on a rock with his head in his hands the whole time, finally stands, “so you’re… us… from the future?”

Future Bellamy and Clarke sigh frustratedly.

“Yes,” she replies, “I know it’s confusing and weird and completely impossible but honestly the quicker you wrap your head around this, the better.”

“Ok,” Clarke scoffs, “no need to get bitchy.”

“Yeah,” both Bellamys agree at once.

“On second thought,” Clarke looks between the two, “I might need another minute to get my head around this too.”

“Come on,” Future Clarke insists, “I don’t how much time we have!”

“She’s right,” Future Bellamy stands next to her and slides his hand into hers, “we need to figure this out. Now.”

Clarke turns to them, “ok, but if you don’t know how this happened, then how can you know that it’s really that dangerous.”

The two time travellers exchange a look. Finally, Future Clarke speaks up, “there are certain things we know that we can’t tell you. All you need to know is that this is a time-sensitive issue and we need to figure out how to get ourselves back home.”

“Ok,” Bellamy walks forward, beginning to pace in that familiar way that means he’s brainstorming, “first of all: where is home for you guys? Second: when is home? Third… I still don’t understand what the fuck is going on.”

They exchange glances again, “home is the Eligius ship, five years from now.”

Clarke coughs, “I’m sorry, did you say the Eligius ship? Again? Mind giving some clarification as to how the fuck we ended up back on there?”

Future Bellamy runs his fingers through his hair, “listen, it’s like Clarke said – Future Clarke, sorry – we don’t know how much time we have before things start… going wrong.”

“Going wrong?” Bellamy’s brows furrow in confusion. Just as he says this, both Clarkes double over in pain. Clarke’s hit with a sharp stabbing pain in her gut, she feels like she’s going to throw up, or spontaneously combust, or both.

“The baby,” Future Clarke whispers as both Bellamys reach for their respective Clarkes.

“Wait,” both Clarke and Bellamy pause, “did you just say baby?”

Future Clarke nods weakly as both Clarkes sit down. And she just can’t help it, Clarke blurts out, “whose baby?”

Future Clarke doesn’t answer, simply looking between the two Bellamys.

Clarke and Bellamy’s eyes widen with shock. She looks up at the same time he looks down at her and their gazes meet and she doesn’t know what to do with this information. In the future, she’s going to be pregnant with Bellamy’s baby?

“Not if we don’t sort this out,” Future Clarke answers her thought. Clarke stares in horror, can you hear me? She nods.

“Why can’t I hear you?” Clarke begins to ask but she’s distracted by the Bellamys apparently locked in a furious head conversation.

“You can if you try hard enough,” Future Clarke assures her, stealing back her attention. Clarke strains her head and manages to pick up the faintest whisper. Soon, the whisper turns into a clear voice. Her voice. But not quite her.

I know he’s ridiculously hot in that Sanctum jacket but can you please stop staring at Bellamy and focus up?

Clarke rolls her eyes.

Oh, fuck off!

“Just saying,” Future Clarke murmurs.

Clarke opens her mouth to retort but both are assaulted with another bout of agony. “Fuck!” both Clarkes groan simultaneously.

Future Clarke turns to her Bellamy, “we need to get home, I don’t know what’s happening but it’s not good for Helene.”

Before Bellamy or Clarke can ask anymore questions, Octavia comes striding into the tent. “Hey guys, Gabriel and I ar- What the fuck?” she drops off, looking up to see the two sets of doppelgangers.

Clarke is about to explain but she realises she doesn’t really have an explanation for what’s happening right now, so she ends up babbling something like, “Octavia, this is me and Bellamy from five years in the future and future me is pregnant and we need to get them home but we don’t know how and also Bellamy’s the father.”

Octavia takes a few moments to clock this and then gives a small nod. “Ok,” she says slowly, “future you and Bellamy. Baby. Get home. Bellamy’s the father.” She stalls, only just realising the last thing she’d said, “Bellamy’s the father?”

“That’s what you’re dwelling on?” Future Bellamy asks incredulously. Clarke’s Bellamy just looks between the three of them looking more lost than Clarke thinks she’s ever seen him look.

Octavia brightens, “what about the anomaly?”

“Yes!” both Clarkes cry.

“That’s brilliant, O,” Future Bellamy smiles. Clark looks to her Bellamy who’s focusing real hard on a little spot in the corner of the floor, still, she can see the guilt hiding behind his outwardly neutral expression.

She reaches out to stroke his arm reassuringly, “come on. The anomaly will work.”

He nods, taking a moment to shove back the emotion that she can see threatening to spill out. “Yeah, it will.”

Totally not thinking about him like that at all

Shut up

I’m just sayin-

Shut. Up.

“You’re grumpy,” Future Clarke whispers as she walks past them.

Clarke doesn’t even deign it with a response. Why was she such a nag in the future? she wondered grumpily.

Heard that

Don’t care

“You coming, Octavia?” Bellamy asks tentatively.

She smiles sympathetically, “I don’t really think this is a journey for me. Gabriel’s out the front, though, he’ll tell you where to go but once you get to a certain point, the anomaly will start to call you itself. Promise you won’t go in there, though, ok? Just your future self.”

Bellamy nods solemnly, “I’ll see you later, Octavia. I promise.”

Clarke knows how hard this is for him, finding a way to forgive his sister whilst also not falling back into toxic patterns. It’s so hard but he’s so strong.

“Let’s go,” she whispers, taking his hand and walking out of the tent. Up ahead, she sees their future selves talking to a very confused looking Gabriel. He points North and Future Clarke and Bellamy look back to check on them.

“Right behind you,” Clarke assures them.

“You sure you know what you’re doing?” Gabriel pulls her aside.

“Nope, but what have we got to lose? Just our future.”

Gabriel gives a small laugh at that, shaking his head, “well, good luck.”

 After walking for about half an hour, the pain in Clarke’s gut is just getting progressively worse and she’s ready to just throw in the towel.

“Can we stop for just a minute?” she pants, bending over and bracing herself against a nearby tree. When she pulls her hand away, it comes back sticky and green. “What the hell is this stuff?”

“The anomaly,” Future Clarke whispers, “we must be close.”

Clarke nods, taking a deep inhale and standing up again, they have to keep moving. Bellamy reaches out to brush her arm.

“How you holding up?”

“Just fantastic,” she sighs. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t think babies are supposed to hurt this much unless you’re actually giving birth.”

“Gotta be honest,” he smiles softly, “I don’t know much about time travelling babies.”

She rolls her eyes, “neither. All I know is that they hurt like a bitch.”

He laughs and she grins up at him.

Kiss him

She shakes her head, averting her gaze and pressing forwards.

Butt out

Listen, I know the only reason you haven’t done it already is because you’re scared

You don’t know anything

She pressed on as if Clarke hadn’t said anything, but I can 100% tell you he wants to kiss you just as much as you want to kiss him – if not more, actually

You don’t know that for sure

Future Clarke rolls her eyes, wanna bet?

She turns to her Bellamy and tilts her head up, without even having to communicate, he leans down to meet her lips and leaves her with a soft but chaste kiss that looks it’s been done a thousand times before. Clarke and Bellamy shift uncomfortably.

“What’s up with them?” Future Bellamy whispers way too loudly.

His Clarke raises her eyebrows expectantly, waiting for him to bridge the gap by himself.

“Oh!” he gasps suddenly, “this is before… Oh! I understand now, this is why they’re being so weird.”

“We’re literally right here,” Clarke huffs.

“Kiss already!” her future self heckles. Clarke turns beet red, coughing. She’s so distracted by the crushing embarrassment she effectively thrust upon herself that she misplaces her foot and stumbles. Before she can hit the ground, two pairs of hands dart out to catch her. One pair quickly withdraws itself and she’s left standing in her Bellamy’s arms.

“Um,” she coughs again, making no attempt to move away from his grasp, “thanks.” She looks up again into those rich, brown eyes.

“No problem,” he whispers hoarsely. He opens his mouth to say something but is cut off by Future Bellamy whistling at them.

“Yoo hoo, lovebirds, we found it!”

Why is he calling us lovebirds? You two are literally the ones having a baby together, she grumbles.

Maybe you should ask your Bellamy, they are almost the same person after all

Clarke figures that’s the end of that conversation and rushes forwards to catch up to the other two, not needing to look back to know Bellamy is right behind her. They burst through a final row of trees into a clearing, ahead of them is a wall of Clarke can only describe as green light mist.

“This is it?” Clarke assumes it is because if it’s not the anomaly then what the fuck is it?

“This is it,” Future Bellamy confirms.

“Well, I guess this is goodbye then,” Clarke states with reluctance.

“I guess so,” the other her replies.

“It was really great to get to meet you – weird, but great,” Bellamy tells them, but he still sounds confused. Clarke doesn’t blame him, she feels the same way.

“I’m glad we got this opportunity,” Future Clarke concurs.

“Is it weird that I’m going to miss you guys?” Clarke asks.

“No, I feel the same.”

For some reason, Clarke feels herself holding back tears. Another sharp hit of pain in her gut cuts the goodbyes short, reminding them of the overwhelming time pressure.

She goes in to hug her other self, Future Clarke whispers in her ear, “remember what I said.” Clarke squeezes her back then pulls away, nodding.

Clarke stands back with Bellamy as the watch the couple who look so much like them, and yet so much different, walk hand-in-hand, disappearing amongst the green.

“How do we know if it worked?” Clarke whispers.

Bellamy grins and turns to face her, “we wait five years.”

Clarke laughs, “yeah. Five years.”

If Clarke has discovered anything from this experience, it’s that a lot can change in five years.

[saturatedcoffee]

How to put Roleplaying on your resume

And other skills you’ve picked up along the way.

I’ve gotten so many discord messages since my last post, both from other rpers who include roleplaying on their resume and others who are hesitant to. So, for those of you who want to be able to use this as a marketable skill, or want to know how you can improve your current resume roleplay listing, I’m here to help.

Please note - I am not a professional resume writer, just a broke ass twenty-something who was written too many resumes. The examples used below are generalizations taken from my personal resumes that have resulted in me getting the job. Use your best judgement, but, if in doubt, feel free to shoot me a message!

Also, I am primarily a forum roleplayer. While this can be used for other forms of roleplaying, you may have to change more of these examples to better fit your experiences.

Tips for your basic roleplay writer

As your basic roleplay writer, you excel at mostly one thing - writing. Perhaps you’ve picked up other skills along the way, like graphics or coding, or you’ve become familiar with software like Google Docs. These are all important skills you use professionally, so be sure to include them in the Skills section of your resume. Employers often refer to these as “soft skills” and it’s extremely difficult to find employees that have those skills and actually demonstrate them, so these can really help you stand out.

But the most important thing is to be able to include some examples. Find your favorite roleplay post and include it in your portfolio. Gather together your best moodboards, signature graphics, or avatars. Link to your resource site galleries or your rp tumblr tag. Demonstrate that you actually have these skills and that they’re more than just words on paper.

Here’s an example of some of the things I list in the skills section of my resume.

Skills

Writing: website content, blog articles, social media, coding markup, collaborative articles, 

Software & Languages: Google Drive, Microsoft Office, WordPress, Invision Power Board, Tumblr, Photoshop, Gimp, Pinterest. CSS, Javascript, HTML, JQuery

I also include three of my favorite roleplay posts I’ve written, and I’m building up a coding tumblr to showcase the things I’ve coded for rp, which I will include on future resumes. While hobbies sections of a resume are very outdated, this is a subtle way you can include this particular hobby. And employers generally like you more for it!

Tips for your roleplay staffer

Staffing a roleplay is, or rather should be, a whole different ballgame from being just a roleplay writer. Because, if you’ve staffed your roleplay the right way, it has now become a well of marketable content you can actually show to your potential employer. You have actual proof of your management skills and abilities you can link a live version to, even if the site has since closed. Don’t take that for granted! That kind of content is very valuable to a potential employer.

And now, aside from listing your abilities in the skills section of your resume, you have the opportunity to list your staffing experience in the list of jobs you’ve had experience with. Because your web forum is, essentially, a brand, and staffing is your job.

Aside from listing basic rp duties, if you do social media for your rp, or even advertise for it, those are marketable skills. If you use particular software to make things for your rp, like maps or timelines, ads or trailers, include that. Each rp is different, and there are many different forms of roleplaying. So tailor the below example to your experiences and include achievements that are relevant to you.

Web Community Administrator - Site Name and link, 2017-Present

Wrote, edited, and maintained all web manuals across web pages

Moderated community engagement & content across platforms to enforce community rules and regulations

Consistently maintained brand voice across publications by creating style guidelines and consistent posting rules

Collaborated with community members on site content to create engaging SEO statistics

Built a successful user and readership base by building advertising strategies across multiple web platforms.

Tips for your roleplay coder

I am partial to the rp coder, specifically of forums, because I am one! Being able to code anything is such a skill these days, and employers like it a lot more if you tell them you do it for fun. Even if you’re not applying for a coding job, it’s another fun fact about you that makes you stand out.

If you’re a coder, I would suggest having a portfolio of your work somewhere. Either on a resource site they can access as a guest (codepen is great for this) or a blog, forum, or website they can see your work on. 

Here are some generic examples of things you can put on your resume, but tailor them to your specialties!

Web Forum Designer - Site or Portfolio name/link, Date-Present

Designed interactive web templates and mobile-first layouts to increase web accessibility

Maintained multiple web forums via back end control panel of Invision Power Board

Increased user engagement by ##% by designing intuitive interfaces

Built brand style guidelines to improve brand recognition, increasing website hits by ##%

Tips - and disclaimers - for everyone

The best tip I can give to anyone about writing a resume is to tailor each resume to the job you are applying for. Use keywords used in the job listing. Use terms like KPI or ROI where necessary. Use specific examples of the things you’ve done in concise sentences. Where you can, avoid being vague. Show your worth. Link examples!

The examples I used above are very generic and are meant to be used as a place to start from for everybody. I cannot stress it enough that you still need to tailor these examples to your experience and skills. For example, if you designed interactive web templates, link to your coding tumblr tag or resource gallery. If you wrote and maintained web manuals (see site rules, plot, member groups, etc.), link to that forum or those pages or put a (see below) and include them in the examples you send along with your resume. Use percentages where appropriate and include trackable data where you can to help illustrate your positive impact on that site.

However, when putting your resume into website instead of uploading it as a .pdf or .doc, this can be difficult. So use your best judgement.

How to tell a potential employer you roleplay while in an interview

So now that you’ve gotten through writing your resume, let’s assume you got the interview! Congratulations! You used your skills to stand out a little bit from the 800 other applicants that put in for the job. But you still have to make an impression out of the 20 other suits coming in for the interview. *Gulp*

I’ve found that the easiest way is to mention it when they ask you the infamous “Tell me about yourself” question. This question is your elevator pitch, so work it in in a way that’s quick and will make them want to ask you more about it later. Don’t make it the focus, just drop in a line and move on. For example:

“I’ve been working in media for the last five years, but I would like to focus on web media in particular. I’ve been writing for websites in my free time for the last decade, and found this is the area I’m most passionate about...” I’ll let you imagine how the rest of that elevator pitch goes.

Now my interviewer will probably ask me about all this experience I have writing for web that’s not exactly spelled out on my resume. But I’ll have those experiences, either listed in my skills section or as a job listing, to refer them back to.

So now you’re probably wondering, when they do ask you about it, how to not be weird about it. Because rp is...actually really weird I mean the amount of sex I write about is unreal, yo. But you really only need get into the basics. Tell them you enjoy writing, and that you enjoy writing collaboratively. And through that passion, you’ve learned how to effectively manage web communities or taught yourself CSS. When you talk about your passions in an interview and how they’ve lead you to pursue professional advancement, you really stand out. You become “that girl who loved writing so much she became this dope ass graphic designer” or “that guy who loved writing so much he became this insane web developer.” It shows not just passion, but a breadth of skills and curiosities and gives you much more potential to grow within a position than other candidates.

While talking about your roleplay experience, offer to send them examples of your work when you get home. The amount of times I’ve mentioned my creative passions in an interview and had the non-creative interviewer want to know more is too damn high. But not only does that give you the opportunity to send a thank you email, but gives them something to click on and remember you by. Which is a make it or break it part of most interviews.

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk

That’s all the advice I’ve got for you, kids. I apologize for it being so vague, but I wanted this to be usable by the largest amount of roleplayers it could be. If you have questions, or want to know how it could be used to highlight your own skills more, feel free to drop me an ask or friend me on discord and shoot me a message! I’m always happy to offer some suggestions to you.

And if you’re already doing all of this, why don’t you share your own experiences? How has using rp on a resume helped you? What other tips do you have? And how can others make the most of their experiences to help them?

[katiebug445]

Cold Coffee

Pairing: Jean/Armin  Fandom: Attack on Titan  Word Count: 5648 A/N: I found this sitting in my google docs. This was the very first Jearmin fic I ever wrote, waaay back from last winter. I never posted it anywhere because I didn’t think it was very good. But after a little bit of editing (see: I did the first half and got tired), I think it’s okay enough to post. It’s self indulgent as all fuck and Jean apparently has a cat named Brad? I don’t know... 

Tick, tick, tick, tick, the steady, easy, rhythm of the clock on the wall behind him was about enough to put him to sleep.

Jean Kirstein leaned against the counter, his chin in his hand, and was itching for something to do. His eyes lazily followed people walking by outside, chatting amongst themselves as they went about their lives, and he longed to be out there with them, instead of stuck in his stuffy, overpriced coffee shop.

He hated days like this, the days when things were so slow, that watching paint dry would be preferable to being here another second. He glanced at the clock, and he was discouraged to find that only a minute and thirty seconds had passed since he checked it the last time. With a sigh, Jean pushed off the counter and scrubbed his hands across his face to wake himself up.

Thanks to Sasha and Connie coming in late Friday night and all day Saturday, they’d caught up on inventory, and he personally had helped them restock everything. Levi made sure everything was spotless when he arrived after lunch. There was nothing left for Jean to do aside from praying to whatever deity that was paying attention for a customer or two.

He didn’t even have homework to occupy him.

Jean could hear Eren and Mikasa in the back, bickering about a math test they had the following day, and only the prospect of losing his job kept him from mouthing off to Eren. He knew from experience that if Levi caught them at each other’s throats again, they’d both be fired on the spot. And Jean needed this job. Bad.

The sky was beginning to darken despite it being just a little after 4:00 in the afternoon, and Jean had a sinking feeling that it would probably be freezing by the time his shift ended. Great. With another glance around to make sure nobody was miraculously going to be heading inside, Jean pulled out his phone, opened up a couple social medias, and began scrolling.

Marco seemed to be having a blast at the convention he’d decided to go to last minute, and Jean wished he was with him. From the pictures he’d been posting, he was making all kinds of friends with cosplayers, and had an entire backpack full of merchandise that Jean was envious of. Sasha was out sick, and her twitter was nothing but a solid stream of tweets and selfies posted from her bathroom floor, and how wonderful a boyfriend Connie was for risking contracting whatever virus she had to keep her company.

With a sigh, Jean shoved his phone back into his arpon and went back to staring aimlessly at the door. He had half a mind to try hacking the speakers and pull up one of his playlists, but Levi had a strict policy about that (thanks to Eren) now, and he knew he’d get his ass handed to him if he tried.

Finally, he heard the bickering coming up from the back and after a moment, Eren emerged, his face red and his eyes murderous. Jean couldn’t help but snort. “What’s wrong? Did mommy and daddy have a fight?”

“Shut up.” Eren growled, leaning against the display case with his arms folded tightly across his chest. “It’s none of your business.”

“I beg to differ. If a fight’s gonna break out, I wanna make sure I get a good seat, and have enough time to put a hundred on Mikasa.”

“Are you looking to start a fight?”

“Not at all. Just wantin’ your girlfriend to know she’s got my support, is all.” Jean snickered.

“Will you shut up?”

“No.”

Eren stalked up to him, shoulders hunched and looking like he was about to punch him right in the face. He probably would have, too, if Mikasa hadn’t chosen that moment to poke her head out and break them up. She looked every bit as angry as Eren, and that cold stare of hers was about enough to make both boys fear for their lives. Instead of egging the hot headed idiot on anymore, Jean turned around and went back to staring at his watch while the lovebirds tried to resolve their issues in low voices at the opposite end of the counter.

It was by complete chance that he noticed him. Jean rolled his eyes at the two and let his gaze fall to the windows, just in time to see a mop of blond, wind-blown hair struggling at the door. Jean straightened up, trying not to look like he was pissed off or desperately looking for something to do, and put on his best customer service smile. “Afternoon,” he greeted.

“A-Afternoon.” The mop mumbled.

“What can I do for ya?”

The kid had just opened his mouth, and suddenly Jean was being shoved out of the way by the full force of Eren Jaeger. He opened his mouth to scream at him, to tell him to stop being a rude ass, but he decided against it last minute. No need to scare off their fist customer in over an hour. Jean swallowed his remark and relaxed his stance just a little.

Figuring that Eren had things under control, he didn’t think he was needed up there anymore. If he happened to bump into Eren on his way out and knock him a little off balance, though, he wouldn’t have complained.

When Jaeger called the drink order, Jean got to work, trying to catch whatever bit of conversation he could between Eren and the customer. It seemed like they knew each other, pretty well from the brunette’s sudden shift in tone. He thought he even caught him smile once or twice. Creepy.

When blondie’s hot chocolate was finished, Jean brought it up with a smile, and a little wink to the guy, who muttered a quick thanks. After that, he was on his way, and off to a table near the back. Once he was out of their eyeline, Jean wheeled on Eren and caught his arm before he could disappear. “Mind tellin’ me what the fuck that shove was about?”

“None of your business.”

“Kinda my business when you almost shove me down, Jeager.”

“Just stay out of it!”

With a roll of his eyes, Jean decided to drop it. He knew if he continued with it, either Mikasa would kill him, or Levi would fire him; neither of which he could afford right now. He did, however, flip Eren off when he wasn’t looking, though, and that brought him a small bit of satisfaction.

~~~

The next time Jean saw the blond was the first day of Christmas break. It was busy as hell, and he and Eren had been at each other’s throats their whole shift. They’d already gotten a warning from Levi, and Mikasa’s look promised horrible things if he said one more rude thing to Eren.

In short, he’d been having a horrible fucking day.

Jean was sulking at the register while he waited on Connie to finish the last round of drink orders, and drummed his fingers impatiently at the counter. The bell above the door jingled, and Jean looked up, recognition flashing across his face as the blond walked in, head half buried under a huge scarf and a hat that walked straight out of the ‘40s.

“Hi again.” Jean said, trying to sound cheerful. “I like the hat.”

The blond gave him a small, startled smile, and went to looking at the menu board. Jean waited patiently while his big, blue eyes scanned quickly over Levi’s handwritten words, and shoved his hands in his pockets to keep from drumming them again. He found himself staring at the boy across from him, watching as his lips moved while he read off the drinks, and decided that he was… kinda cute.

The blond must have noticed him staring, because he lowered his head and mumbled out something Jean didn’t catch.

“Say that again?”

“Can I just get a large hot chocolate?” He said just a bit louder.

“Sure thing. What’s the na--”

“I got it from here.”

Jean had no idea where Eren had come from, but he was suddenly there, shoving him out of the way again, and Jean actually had to bite down on his cheek to keep from yelling. That was twice, now. There was a reason Eren kept getting in the middle of this, and he wanted answers. Now.

The blond was taken care of, and he headed back to the small table in the corner of the store. Jean noticed, as he sat down, that the blond had a book in his hands. He tried to read the cover, but he couldn’t make it out from where he was. It wasn’t insanely important, anyways, he guessed.

Besides, he had bigger things to worry about right now.

Jean grabbed Eren by the arm, and felt as the smaller boy tensed up immediately. “Mind telling me what that was about?” Jean asked, raising his eyebrows.

Eren responded by pulling his arm back and walking away, sneakily flipping him off as he went.

~~~~

He came back the next day, at the same time, and thank God Eren had the day off.

It was near 6:00 in the evening, almost every table in the place was full up, and the heat was about enough to suffocate him. He’d been stuck at the register again, and thankfully, they were busy enough that he didn’t have a lot of time to think. Jean almost didn’t realize it was the blond at the register, and nearly jumped out of his skin when he saw who it was. “You’re back!” He said.

The blond smiled that same shy smile and gently asked for a large hot chocolate, and for the first time, Jean realized how soft of a voice the blond had. He liked it. He wanted him to say more things.

“Is the hot chocolate here really that good?” Jean asked. “I’ve never had it before.”

The blond looked up, and gave a small shrug. “It’s not that bad.”

“Well, what do I have to do to turn that ‘not bad’ into ‘pretty good’?”

“Uh…”

“I’m just kidding.” Jean replied, shooting him a smile. “What’s the name for the order?”

“Armin.” Said the boy.

“Armin.” Jean repeated. “Well, Armin, I’ll be sure to get that out to you soon, if you want to have a seat.”

“T-Thanks.” Armin replied, turning away from the counter and heading off to that same seat as the day before.

“Connie,” Jean called, turning back to his friend. “Go ahead and add a little whipped cream to that hot chocolate before you send it up. Forgot to say it.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out the change enough for the addition, and left it on the counter until he could open the register again.

After a few moments, the drink was brought up, and Jean decided that instead of calling him up, he’d deliver it to Armin himself.

He grabbed the cup in his hand, hurried out from behind the counter, and headed off for Armin’s table. “Sorry about the wait,” Jean said by way of greeting, “We’re a little backed up right now, but it’s still warm.”

Armin jumped, his book falling out of his hands and onto the floor, and started apologizing for being a clutz. “Shoot, I’m sorry, I’ll get it, I’m sorry.” He kept mumbling.

“No, it’s okay.” Jean stopped him from bending down, and set his drink on his table. “I’ll get it.” He reached down and picked up Armin’s book, which was a battered copy of The Hobbit and handed it back to the boy with a gentle smile. “You like Tolkien?”

“Kinda?” Armin replied, gently taking the book back and clutching it close to his chest. “This is for school, though.”

“He’s good.” Jean said, his eyes flickering to the novel in the other boy’s hand again. “What’s your favorite?”

“I-I don’t know, this is the first I’ve read.”

“Well, that’s a good book. I promise. Kinda weird, but good.”

“Cool.” Armin replied.

They stood in an awkward silence for a moment, and, taking the hint that their conversation was over, Jean cleared his throat. “Well, Armin, enjoy your book, and your drink. Have a nice evening.”

“You too.”

Jean kicked himself the whole way back to the counter, wondering when he became such an awkward dweeb. Nobody would ever let him live that down if they found out.

~~~

It was freezing the next afternoon when he arrived at work. It had been raining since he woke up and the temperature was dropping rapidly. He wouldn’t have been surprised if by the end of the night, they’d have snow.

Jean took off his coat and shoved his hat in the breast pocket, hanging it up and rubbing his hands together to get some warmth back into them. “Hey, losers.” He said, getting a small scoff out of Eren. Jean snorted and went to clock in.

Much to his relief, Levi had the day off, which meant Marco was in charge, which meant they could goof off without the fear of being yelled at. Jean took the chance to hack into the bluetooth and put on his own music, which improved his mood even more.

Just as he predicted, by 4:00, the rain had turned to snow, and Marco had gone outside to put salt down on the sidewalk. Jean was busy repeating one of the songs he knew Eren hated for the fifth time when the door opened, and Marco walked back inside with Armin. Jean slid his phone back into his pocket as the opening chords started, and he heard Eren cussing him out from the back.

Jean covered up his laugh with a cough, and gave Armin that same smile. “Hi.” He said. This time, the other boy had a backpack with him, and he looked to be having a little trouble supporting the extra weight. Jean decided to have mercy on him and not chat him up too much right now. “Large hot chocolate, as usual?”

“Y-Yeah, thanks.” Armin said, shooting him a half smile before heading off to that same table again and setting his backpack on the ground. Jean couldn’t help but watch him. He pulled a laptop out of it and set it on the table, firing it up and hunching over when it turned on. He then pulled a pair of headphones out, stuck them on, and began clicking around.

Again, Jean personally took it upon himself to deliver Armin’s drink to him, and set it down on his table. When the smaller boy looked up, he slid his headphones down around his neck, and grabbed his drink. “I didn’t realize you knew Tolkien.” He said. “It surprised me.”

“Well, I’m not just a pretty face.” Jean replied, snorting.

Embarrassment colored Armin’s cheeks and he began to backtrack. “I-I didn’t mean it like that. You just didn’t… you didn’t strike me as the type, is all.”

“Oh?” The taller boy said, taking the seat across from Armin. “And what exactly is my ‘type’, Armin?”

Armin studied his face for a long few seconds, Jean shifting a little under the weight of his gaze, before he finally shook his head in defeat. “I don’t know.”

“Just don’t seem like the typical nerd?”

Armin just blushed and dropped his gaze to his computer, obviously embarrassed. “I don’t know. Forget I said anything.”

Jean wasn’t having it, though. He leaned forward on his side of the table, his arms resting on the pressed wood, and smirked. “Well, if it helps, I don’t know either. If you ask Eren, I’m nothing but an asshole.”

Armin turned back to the counter, finding his friend up at the counter, shooting glances their way every few seconds. The blond quickly turned back around and cast his eyes down again. “Well, Eren’s not always right about everything.” He muttered.

A small chuckle escaped Jean’s lips, and he got back to his feet. “I better get back. But hey, next time, don’t hesitate to talk to me about the book, alright? It’s a good one.”

“Noted.” Armin replied, watching Jean walk away. If he felt his cheeks get a little warm, he wouldn’t admit it.

~~~~

Armin showed up at the same time the next day, 4:00, and had his laptop with him again. Jean made sure he was front and center at the register, and greeted Armin with a flirty smile. “Large hot chocolate and the back table?”

Armin squinted, looking between Jean and the menu board for a few seconds, setting his laptop down on the counter. “How about a coffee this time?”

Jean just chuckled. “You got it.  Anything else?”

“Two sugars and some time on your break?”

The taller boy blinked, not knowing what to say to that. Instead of saying anything, he nodded, and, with a slight blush in his cheeks, Armin took off for his normal table.

Jean just stared after him for a second, trying to process what just happened. Armin had been coming in for the last week, and he was always very shy. What brought on the change so suddenly? Shaking his head, he got started making the other boy’s coffee for him.

After a moment, he took it out, and set it down on the table. “I’ll be out soon, give me about twenty minutes, okay?”

“Okay.” Armin replied, shooting Jean a quick, barely there smile, before turning back to his computer and sliding his headphones up over his ears.   

Jean found himself staring at Armin’s table several times, wondering what the sudden request was about. The most logical assumption was that he wanted to talk books, and Jean, well… he wouldn’t complain if that was it.

He found his eyes flickering up to the clock every few seconds, and was desperately counting down the time until he could tell Connie he was going on break.

“Alright,” Jean said, plopping down in the seat across from the smaller boy, “what’s up?”

Armin studied him for a moment, and slid his headphones down around his neck again. “How’d you get interested in books?” He asked. It sounded a bit dumber coming out of his mouth than it had in his head, but he was genuinely curious.

Jean ran his tongue over the sore spot in his cheek while he thought. “I don’t know… When I was young, my mom would read to me a lot. I guess I just… stuck with it as I got older.”

“That’s cool.”

“Yeah, she’s… pretty cool. Don’t tell her I said that, though, alright?”

That pulled a laugh out of Armin, and the blond took a sip of his drink, lost in thought for a moment. “What are some of your favorite authors?”

Jean shrugged. “Steinbeck, King, Tolkien, obviously.” He chuckled, shooting the smaller boy a grin. “Harry Potter’s not that bad, either.”

Armin’s eyes lit up. “You know Harry Potter? What house are you?”

Jean leaned back in his chair, giving a small roll of his eyes. “Well, I personally thought I was Slytherin when I first got into the series, but according to Pottermore, I’m… I’m Hufflepuff.”

Armin couldn’t hold back a small laugh at hearing that, which he tried to hide behind his cup.

“In my defense, Marco and Sasha are, too.” Jean pouted. “But what about you?”

“Ravenclaw.”

“Wow. Nerd.”

“There wasn’t ever a question.” Armin replied, shrugging. “I knew from day one.”

Jean laughed to himself, watching the smaller boy as he typed away at his keyboard for a second or two. “What about you, Armin? How’d you get into reading?”

“My grandpa.” He said simply. “When I was little, he would show me pictures from when he used to travel. He had lots of pictures of the ocean. I always wanted to know more about it. I can remember we’d go to the library, and I’d always come away with a huge stack of books about the water, or marine life, and everything in between. Eventually, that just gave way to just a love for reading in general.”

“No fair, your story’s more heartwarming than mine!”

That startled a laugh out of Armin. “I’m sorry?”

“You should be!” Jean teased, “I have nothing to compete with!”

“Now that’s not a very Hufflepuff attitude, you should be ashamed.” Armin retorted, laughing again.

Jean snorted. “What about favorite authors?”

Armin thought for a moment, shutting the lid on his computer. It looked to Jean like this was a harder question for him than it should have been, and he couldn’t help but think it was kind of adorable.

“Well…” Armin started, eyes fixed on a photo on the wall. “I really like Rowling, obviously. I like John Green… Neil Gaiman.”

“I’ve read a few of Gaiman’s books. They’re pretty good.”

Armin smiled at that. “What about Terry Prachett?”

Jean shook his head. “Doesn’t sound familiar.”

“Jean!” Armin replied, a little louder than he expected. “You have to read Terry’s books! He and Neil were good friends before he died!”

“Okay, I’ll try to hunt one down.”

“Please!”

Jean opened his mouth to reply, but saw the time, and swore to himself. “I gotta get back or I’m gonna get in trouble. This was… kinda fun, Armin. Maybe we’ll do it again tomorrow?”

“Sure.” The smaller boy shot him a smile, and took a sip of his drink. “Same time?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll see you then.”

“Cool.” Jean smiled, a bit sheepishly.

~~~~

When Jean got to work the next afternoon, Eren was leaning against the counter, waiting for him. His arms were folded, his jaw was set, and it made Jean a bit nervous. He stopped in his tracks just inside the door, waiting for something to happen.

“Can I help you, Jeager?” He asked after a moment.

“Yeah, actually.” Eren replied. “Stay away from Armin.”

Jean walked passed the smaller boy, shrugging out of his coat and shoving it behind the counter. “And why, Jeager, would I do a thing like that?”

“Because.”

“Because…?”

“He’s too good for you.”

Jean stopped for a moment, wondering why in the hell this was becoming such a big deal, and folded his own arms. “Just out of curiosity, why do you care so much who Armin talks to?”

Eren pushed himself off the counter and took two steps towards Jean, eyes murderous. “Because I know how you are. I see you at school, Kirstein; you kinda make yourself hard to miss. All you are is an egoistic, horse-faced bastard, and Armin deserves better.”

Jean had to fight not to touch his face after Eren’s comment, and shoved his hands in the pocket of his hoodie instead. “That stings a bit, I’m not gonna lie.” He retorted. “And what makes you think there’s enough going on between Armin and I that warrants this?”

“Come on, Jean. Everybody sees you two. You don’t interact with anybody the way you do with him. We all know what’s going on. You even have his drink order memorized already!”

“I have it memorized because it’s easy, you moron!”

“That doesn’t explain the flirting!” Eren shouted. “Just back off, okay? Leave Armin alone.”

“What else is there to explain? Just because I know how to talk to people without screaming in their face, you think I’m hitting on him? Are you that dumb?”

Eren didn’t say anything to that, just flipped Jean off before walking away, and left the taller boy there to calm down. Jean braced himself against the counter, taking breath after breath and trying to still his hands, and glared at the spot where Eren disappeared. He couldn’t believe he’d been ambushed like that. 

Who in the hell was Eren Jeager to say who he could and couldn’t talk to, especially when they requested time with him in the first place! Jean didn’t want to stop talking to Armin because he enjoyed their banter, and he enjoyed the blond’s company in general, but now that Eren said to keep away made him even more determined to keep their line of communication open.

Jean shut his eyes and counted to ten, just like his mother had taught him, and took one more breath before letting it go. A small flood of customers came in about that time, and Jean put on his best retail face to deal with it, a small part of him hoping Armin would be among them.

He wasn’t. In fact, Armin didn’t show up at all that day, much to Jean’s disappointment. He couldn’t help but wonder if Eren had gotten him with the same threats that were thrown at him, and he worried. What if Armin wouldn’t be back now? What if Eren had gotten into his head, and told him a bunch of crap about what he was supposedly like?

Armin wasn’t in the next day, either. It was the last day of winter break, and after this, it would be even harder to see him because of school and work, and a million other things that could stand in his way. Jean’s eyes flickered hopefully up to the door every time someone walked by the windows, only to be let down when they went on.

He found himself missing the blond more and more as the hours passed. He longed for another conversation about books, or how he made a pretty terrible Hufflepuff, or anything that made Armin’s eyes light up like they had before. Jean couldn’t help but wonder what happened to him in that short amount of time; how had Armin gone so quickly from just another customer to someone he sought out like this?

What was happening to him?

~~

6:00 AM came along much too early. Jean lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, a mountain of blankets piled around him, and his small, gray tabby cat laying on his chest. With a tired groan, a sleepy hand reached up, scratching the tabby gently behind the ears as it began to purr. “Brad, I have to get up. I know, it’s tragic.” Jean shifted gently, not wanting to disturb the cat too much, and sat up.

With a stretch, the boy got to his feet, got started looking for his school things, and got dressed.

~~

Jean would have been lying if he said he wasn’t looking out for Armin that morning. He thought he’d spotted him at one point in the hall, but it turned out to be another short blonde named Krista or something. Jean wasn’t sure, and it wasn’t really important at the moment.

He kept an eye out for Armin the whole rest of the day, but he didn’t see him. He did spy Eren and Mikasa, though, and part of him wanted to ask about the smaller boy, but he knew it wouldn’t be worth the chewing out he’d get. Instead, Jean went about his day, his heart stopping every time he mistook Historia for Armin.

~~

It was another week before he saw a glimpse of Armin again, just as he was walking to class. Jean had just gotten inside, and he saw those familiar eyes, that smile, and he made to open the door back up, but he was already gone. Jean sighed, taking his seat, and resolved to hunt him down later.

Sooner came later on in the day. Jean was in the library, looking for a couple books to read over the weekend, when he spied that blond hair again. This time, he wasn’t letting him get away. Jean set his books down, and quietly took off after Armin, looking around to see if he was alone or not. He saw an empty row of books, and grabbed the smaller boy’s hand, pulling him into it, and put a finger to his lips.

“Where have you been?” Jean asked in a whisper, his hand still wrapped around Armin’s wrist. “I haven’t seen you in almost two weeks.”

Armin, still getting over his shock, looked up at him sadly. “My grandpa got really sick, and then I caught it trying to take care of him. Today’s the first day I’ve actually felt like a person again.”

Jean released his wrist and pulled back, clearing his throat. “Is your grandpa okay?”

“Yeah! He’s fine now. Healthy as a horse.”

“Good…”

It fell silent between the two for a few seconds, awkwardness filling the space around them, and Armin let out a small laugh to break the tension. “I might have to insist on a large hot chocolate later. It’s been too long since I had one.”

“I… might be able to help with that…” Jean replied, taking another step back. It had only just occurred to him how close they’d been standing, and he felt awkward about it now. “Consider it on the house, though.”

“No, I couldn’t do tha--”

“Yeah, you can.” The taller boy said, quickly adding, “On one condition: You gotta keep me company on my break again.”

Armin pretended to think about it for a moment, and then smiled. “I don’t know, Jean, that’s a lot to ask, but I’ll see what I can do.”

“I know, it’s such a tragedy, but you’ll get a free drink out of the deal.”

The smaller boy giggled, and slipped passed Jean back out into the main hall. “What time do you go in tonight?” he asked in a murmur.

“Right after school.”

“I’ll see you then, then.” And then Armin was gone, back on the hunt for his books, and Jean was left standing there watching him go.

He raised his hand and gave a small little wave to his retreating form, not sure what just happened. “See you then,”

~~~

Armin came through the door at 4:00, same backpack on his shoulders with the top of a laptop sticking out, and waved when he saw Jean. He quickly made his way to the front and spread his arms out to the sides. “I’m here for my hot chocolate.” He told him.

“Your hot chocolate on the house, you mean.”

“Jean, you don’t have to do that, I’m serious.”

The taller boy shrugged. “It’s one hot chocolate, man. You’re a loyal enough customer that you’ve earned it.”

Armin mulled that over in his head for a moment. “As long as it won’t get you in trouble.”

“It’ll be fine, don’t worry.”

With a nod, the smaller boy hurried off to his table, and Jean got back to work.

Armin jumped a little when a cup was sat on the table next to him, and Jean plopped down into one of the vacant seats. The smaller boy looked down, confused, and eyed the cup suspiciously. “Don’t tell me you paid for this one, too?”

“I might have.” Jean muttered, taking a sip of his own drink. “Didn’t think it’d be very fair if I came over sporting my own drink while you didn’t have anything.”

“It’s too much.”

“It really isn’t.”

“Let me pay you back.”

“Armin. It’s a couple drinks. It’s not a huge deal.”

“Please?”

“Fine,” Jean replied, “you can pay me back with your company.”

“Jean.”

“Armin.”

The two stared at each other for a tense few seconds before Armin finally gave in, leaning back in his seat, and sighed. “I actually brought you something.” He said, reaching into his bag and pulling out a small, worn book. “I - I thought you might enjoy a new read, but don’t feel obligated, it’s… well, it’s kinda dumb.”

Jean took the book from Armin and smiled, trying to hide his excitement. “You might want to be careful, Eren already thinks I’m hitting on you. Do things like that, he might think we’re actually dating.”

“Wait a minute, you mean you weren’t hitting on me?” Armin challenged.

That shut the taller boy up for a minute, and he stuttered, floundering for something to say. “I… Maybe a little, but, I - I…”

Armin laughed, a grin spreading wide across his face, and met Jean’s eyes. “Well, I’m flattered, Jean.”

Jean stopped for a moment, waiting for the shoe to drop, waiting for Armin to laugh at him, or tell him to stop, or any other way the smaller boy could have stomped on him. “I sense a ‘but’,” he said eventually.

“No, not a ‘but’, but maybe an ‘and’.”

“What does that mean?” Jean asked.

“Well, how about, ‘and, maybe bringing that book was my way of hitting on you’?”

Jean blinked, taking a moment to process what Armin just said, and a slow grin spread itself across his face. “I - I guess I’ll have to accept that book, then.”

“Cool.” The smaller boy replied, relieved.

Things fell to an awkward silence for a few seconds, the two staring at each other while waiting for the other to say something, and Jean cleared his throat. “So, where does this leave us?”

Armin thought about it for a moment. “How about, on your next day off, we go out for ice cream. I’m kinda burned out on hot chocolate and coffee. My treat, though.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

“Rad.” Jean grinned, unable to fully hide the blush in his cheeks. Things fell silent between the two for another moment before Armin started telling him about the loaned book, and Jean listened with an interested ear. After a little while, they moved onto other books, then music, and Armin walked away with several new bands to listen to when he got home.

They spent all of Jean’s break talking and laughing, and realizing just how special the other was. It was only after Jean had returned to work that Armin tried to take a sip of his hot chocolate, and realized that both it and the other boy’s coffee had gone completely cold.

[fandom-discussions]

I think I asked you (fine, complained to you) about something similar to this earlier, but I'm in the process of writing a fic and as much as I want an editor, I'm sure I'll only be able to edit it myself. Do you have any tips for self-editing? (Personally, after I proofread and whatnot I just run it through google translate)

first, let me apologize for the late reply, nonnie. work has been insane. (floral department in a grocery store during the week of valentines. y i k e s)

second, complain away! that’s what this blog is here for. i definitely complain all the time about various parts of writing, including writing itself. 

third, tips! it depends for me how long the fic is and how much plot is involved. 1k-5k of porn gets read twice over for pacing, flow, spelling, and grammar and then posted. 

anything longer than 5k, i usually do bring in a fresh set of eyes that belongs to my writing partner who i also rp with, so she’s very familiar with my writing and what i want from her as an editor. and with something more plot heavy, i really find that helps. 

however, i do have a process that i go through longer stuff that might help you. i call it reverse jenga because i take the finished fic and open a new, blank document in whatever i’m using to write in (word, notepad, gdocs, etc) and fit them side by side and go through my fic paragraph by paragraph, asking myself is there anything i need to change to make this flow better? does this help move the plot along? is it paced correctly? essentially i’m breaking my fic down and rebuilding it next to it. sometimes a few paragraphs get completely rewritten this way. even whole scenes. other times, the paragraph is the way i want it and it just gets copied and pasted into the new doc. 

it seems like a ton of work to edit, but it’s really not. unless your piece is super long, then it might be a lot of work. 

i hope this makes sense. if not, feel free to ask any questions you have!