#never wrote this kind of id before but i did my best

[haikcuute]

[ID: fake discord screenshots between the tmnt boys. The chat reads as follows, with their discord nicknames in parentheses:

Mikey (Micheal with a B): If yall don't knock it off right now

Leo (That Bitch): I'd Love to go eat my cold soup in peace, if SOMEONE would stop attacking me for it!!

Donnie (The Funny One): You're killing me you're killing your brother Leon cereal is Not A Soup how many times do we have to go over this

Leo changes his name to "Cold Soup Truther"

Leo (Cold Soup Truther): Mad because you dont have cold soup, arent you? ;]

Raph sends a screenshot from the sonic realtime fandub of Eggman saying "what are you two FUCKING talking about"

Mikey's name changes to "Doctor Delicate Touch"

Mikey (Doctor Delicate Touch): Alright that's it

Leo (Cold Soup Truther): Oops

Raph (Raph): Oh no

Donnie (The Funny One): Wait Mikey we can talk about this

End ID]

Laid awake for several hours thinking about wanting to make this joke the other day

Bonus: the aftermath

[ID: a simplistic drawing of the turtles. Mikey runs at high speed chasing Donnie and Leo, Raph lays behind him flat on the floor with x's for eyes. There are action lines emanating out from where Donnie and Leo are running to. End ID]

[loveshotzz]

pretend i wrote this when you were sick - pretend it's also not this long. also sorry if it looks like there are parts missing.

He's on his third call while he waits at the door in the early spring breeze, unbottoned work shirt billowing with him -- silently chastising himself for not throwing on a sweater since you told him to do it before he left. He presses the bell again, hearing it go off in the house for the second time, anxiety brewing in his chest. He'd never seen you so sick, and even though the doctor said it was just a bad flu, seeing you in bed like this made his heart pound. He wasn't sleeping, had been working from home the past few days. He'd set up shop right outside the hall of the bedroom, ignoring his office so he could hear if you called out to him -- Bandit dutifully keeping watch over you at the end of the bed. It was something he wasn't expecting to affect him like this, his thoughts getting clouded with the sound of hospital monitors and oxygen machines.

You did your best to understand and assure him you're okay -- you're just kind of a baby about being sick. Lucky for Steve, he's been loving a chance to get to baby you - despite the ache it causes to see you like this.

But the babying would start even quicker if the front door of the house he was in front of would open.

"Honey, am I gonna have to file a report? You can't just be showing up to my house -- I got a wife at home," the tease comes from a familiar smoky voice, "Do you really want her to find out about us?"

"I called three times," Steve huffs, "I said I'd only be gone for ten minutes."

"Do you really think she's counting? She's probably asleep. Plus, you're a minute man," Eddie winks, beckoning him into the house, "And if she calls you can run right home, you're around the fuck--effing corner."

"Yeah, you're around the effing corner, Big Guy," Gwen's tiny voice repeats from the island in the kitchen.

"Gwendolyn," Eddie warns. "Sorry," she whispers back, "I won' say id again."

"Thank you, doll," he smiles, "Can you ask mommy to bring the soup and meds we packed up for your aunt so we can give it to Steve?" She patters away with her light up sneakers glinting pink and purple with every step, disappearing into the house only to run back winded a few minutes later. "Mommy said you have two hands that work just fine so you can get it," she smiles, not fully understanding what she means, "And then she said to say please after. Please!"

Steve snorts, "Yeah, loser, go grab my shi--stuff."

Eddie rolls his eyes, "Whatever."

As her father leaves, Gwen climbs back up on the bar stool and looks up at Steve curiously, "So when does she get to come back over?"

"When she feels better, angel," he smiles, "Why?"

She shrugs, "I dunno, I like when she comes over 'cause then it's not just you."

His mouth gapes with a smile, "What do you mean? Am I not enough for you?"

Gwen shrugs in the way four year olds shrug when they're feeling sneaky, "She's juss funner, Big Guy." "Do you hear this?!" Steve gasps as Eddie re-enters, "She doesn't think I'm as fun."

"You haven't been playing 'Cool Barbies' with her, lately," Eddie shrugs, popping the two tote bags filled with sick day amenities on the table, "Ow, ow Lu, don't pull daddy's hair, please." "It's okay Luce, you can do whatever you want," Steve coos to the baby on Eddie's hip, grabbing the bags and putting them over his shoulder. He leans forward to kiss her only for Eddie to step away.

"Dude, not with your potential flu germs -- they're picking up enough sh--stuff at daycare," Eddie says, taking the baby's pudgy hand and waving, "Say byyyyeee Big Guy." "Bah," Lucy gurgles in her post nap haze, head resting heavily on Eddie's shoulder. "Bye, Big Guy," Gwen smiles, hugging him at the knees, "Tell Auntie-I-said-hi-and-I-miss-her-and-love-her-and-that-she-is-so-pretty-and-that-I-have-new-Barbies."

"I will tell her, thank you for the message," Steve nods, chest hammering again at the thought of you sick and bed without him. He flicks his head up at Eddie, "Tell Peach I said hi."

"Yeah, I'll tell her somethin' alright," he half grumbles, hoisting Lucy higher up on his hip. Steve blows Gwen a kiss before making it back to you in the quick trip is takes to get back to your place. He knocks softly before stepping in, hearing your soft 'hm?' that sets his whole body a buzz with affection. "I have..." he starts, opening the bags, "Two quarts of Peach's famous 'sick soup', a shit ton of orange juice, 800mg motrin, a card from Gwen, a drawing from Gwen, three new pairs of fuzzy socks, a toy for Bandit? Okay..." He lists off the rest of the care package before looking at you with a smirk, "And absolutely nothing for me." "I can gib you someding," you murmur out with a stuffed nose, "I can gib you a kiss." "Ooh, how about I give you a kiss tough girl?" he asks, chestnut hair falling into his eyes as he leans down to kiss your forehead. His lips are warms against your clammy skin, enough to soothe you back into a cozy half sleep under the covers, "How're you feelin'?" "Dired," you admit, "Bud I could really use thad soup." "Okay," he nods, "I'll heat it up for you." He gets back to the door looking back with a soft gaze on you, thinking of Lucy's face and how it looks when you hold her on your hip, how you look when you play Barbies with Gwen. How it would look when there's a baby that's the perfect blend of the two of you bouncing on your lap, when there's a baby monitor in the bedroom, when you're both complaining about germs at daycare. He opens his mouth to say something, but closes it before going downstairs. Right now, babying you is just enough.

CAROL!!!! Stop 😩 I physically cannot handle this amount of yearning. What have you done to me?!? I’m still sick (it won’t go away) so this was still perfect. Of course he’s imagining getting me pregnant while taking care of me, ILL GIVE THAT OLD MAN ANYTHING HE WANTS!!

Also shout out to the number one couple here and that’s ocs!eddie and airwiy!steve. I love that the little glimpse we get of them living close to each other now and the little growth of the munson family 🥺

[dullgecko]

expounding more on my ‘fig dances’ headcanon because i fully forgot about ayda (loved what you wrote about it btw! super similar to what i had in mind you Get It)

as shown in sophomore year ayda less dances and does a bit of a rythmic stomping, and we love that for her, but i do think she could really enjoy a very structured dance with specific steps! especially if her paramour is teaching her

i think it would be rather difficult for her because she doesnt exactly have the small lithe elven body type, and it would 100% be impossible for her to follow with fig because girliepop is very tall, but i do think shes the only one fig is willing to let lead and that with enough practice she could get the hang of all the fancy footwork

i also think fig and sandralynne have danced, like, once or twice. not super often, but i do think its some of figs fondest memories of her mom, even if they dont always get along absolutely amazingly they still come from the same place yk?

also why not, lets look at some of the other bad kids and their cultural dances! or just dances they do sometimes or are interested in

i think you may have thoughts about goblin dances lol, id love to hear it if you do, personally i figure they ‘dance’ by basically playfighting to a beat, i also think goblins that have climbing as a big part of their culture see the rythmic nature of climbing as a form of dance

i think kristen has tried break dancing in the past and that it. did Not go well, but she probably has fun watching other people do it

adaine probably doesnt dance often, but i love the idea of her being into a certain type of dance that is very much Not Elven. kind of torn between goblin dances and her sharing kristens fascination with break dancing, hell theyre pretty similar why not both

i dont think orcs dance per say but. some fighting at rhe same time other people bang in some drums? hell yeah! bashing heads together rhythmically? why not! i think ragh and lydia really introduce gorgug more into orc and half-orc culture, and also that the thistlesprings partake every now and then (they have to make specialized helmets so they dont get concussions but they get there eventually)

anyways those are my thoughts on the bad kids and dancing, would love to hear yours

(Glad you liked it darling~ <3 I try my best)

Ayda learns to dance for Fig and thoroughly enjoys it because it is something that she gets to do for her paramour, and it also means she gets to hold her for a long time while she is radiantly happy. As long as it is something with proper steps and movements she can learn it fairly easily but anything more free-flowing or improvised she gets stumped. The rhythmic stomping comes to her more easily simply because its in her nature as a half-pheonix to dance like that.

Fig never danced with her mom before her horns started coming in, but now that she's started to forgive her she's danced with her at a couple elven celebrations they've been to. Her mom is no bard though, and she isnt quite as graceful as Fig, but they had fun the few times they joined in the dances together.

A lot of goblin dances are wild, a little violent and you have to watch your surroundings because you're likely to get clocked in the head by a stray limb or two if you're not careful. Its like being stuck in the middle of a tiny mosh-pit, but with more biting (nature documentaries about goblins LOVE filming these for some reason, because it is chaotic and makes great television especially when you're trying to paint goblins as violent savages). The majority of goblin dancing happens when they are very inebriated and usually celebrating a large hunt or just partying for the fun of it. Riz is particularly good at the wild and crazy dances (mostly because they dont involve much thinking and are more about flailing about randomly) but he spends most of them using his uncanny dodge to keep from getting knocked out.

They do have some dances that are more structured, but they're usually reserved for festivals and ceremonies. Riz tried to show Fabian one once so he could take it to his classes and teach them as part of an assignment involving researching other cultures. It was a bit awkward because of the height difference so Riz asked Ayda to use the enlarge spell to make him closer to Fabians height for a minute at a time so they could practice the steps together. Fabian could not get the steps right for some reason with Riz and they had to rope Fig in to be his stand-in once Ayda ran out of spell slots.

Kristen learned how to do a lot of religious dances when she was still living with her parents but doesnt like doing them any more because they make her feel a little gross. Her dexterity is basically a danger to herself AND everyone around her so breakdancing was an unmitigated disaster when she tried it. Fabian has taught her how to do a basic waltz without causing any damage but she had to heal him once the lessons were over.

Gorgug headbangs, and enjoys mosh pits but doesnt really dance much other than that. He gets pretty into it when Lydia and Rahg start teaching him some orcish dances because he dosesnt have to worry about hurting people if he's with others of his own species. Fabian, in a pattern that he's repeated with MOST of his teammates, has taught Gorgug how to square dance after he learned it in his bard classes.

[raouls-fine-horses]

I went to see From The Rehearsal Room at the Savoy and I compiled notes. Keep in mind I wrote this on the tube on the way back from it so it might be a bit crazy but yk…

- Before the show we went on stage to look round and Hadley and Ramin were there to tune their guitars so they performed Hushabye mountain for us and then the group was taking a picture and Hadley snuck in and photobombed

⁃ They wore matching sockssss and it wasn’t even deliberate

⁃ I cant even remember why he brought it up but once Hadley had a bear on the roof of his apartment and they had to tranquillise it

⁃ He also performed once with a racoon staring at him

⁃ Ramin was singing this really beautiful song and Hadley was in the back with his legs crossed and one elbow resting on the piano and he was chugging water as everyone was crying

⁃ They bashed on people who watched I’m A Celebrity which was kind of funny tbh

⁃ Hadley is a Lord Of The Rings girlie which we love. He’s got that deluxe Lord Of The Rings trilogy swag

⁃ RAMIN SANG TIL I HEAR YOU SING AND THE AUDIENCE SCREAMED THE MINUTE THE CHORDS STARTED

⁃ THEY SANG LILY‘S EYES

⁃ HADLEY FORGOT HIS CHARACTER’S NAME (NEVILLE) AND THEY WENT ON FOR AGES TRYING TO NAME THIS CHARACTER AND THEN HADLEY JUST REFERRED TO THE CHARACTER AS NIGEL

⁃ Hearing Hadley talk about the Pirate Queen was very lovely

⁃ They were talking about the Secret Garden and they asked if it was ‘the’ Secret Garden or just ‘Secret Garden’ then they started using different words instead of ‘the’ and then Hadley started speaking in a northern accent and it was oddly good. I know he’s an actor but have you heard him in the Pirate Queen lmao

⁃ I don’t condone shipping irl people but once you see it live you can’t deny it. My mum literally thought they were husbands

⁃ Ramin sang a song and then afterwards Hadley said how the love just CAME OUT of him for Ramin

⁃ They held handsssss

⁃ After the interval Hadley sang Funny from City Of Angels and oh my golly goodness gracious it was absolutely brilliant. It’s one of my favourite songs ever and aaaaaaaaaa it was so good

⁃ Also Hadley got us to do three part harmony and he started speaking French??? It sounded angelic tho it was so beautiful. I love Just Let Go so so much it was so good with 1000 people singing it in beautiful harmony

⁃ Also the way he taught it: my choir teacher could never

⁃ He’s so patient and dad-like

⁃ Well he is a dad

⁃ A dad I’d like to-

⁃ He didn’t win the dilf awards I can’t finish that sentence

⁃ Just a reminder that I was there for the dilf awards 2022

⁃ Also it’s confirmed that Hadley’s mum calls him Robert which I always wondered about bc his name isn’t actually Hadley

⁃ Also right right right

⁃ Sheytoons turned into Gaytoons bc during the line “this time there’s no way of hiding the way you feel” Ramin got really tense and then he was properly reacting to the song but subtly and I don’t think it was deliberate

⁃ Babygirl this time there’s no way of hiding the way you feel for Hadley Fraser

⁃ RAMIN SINGING WHO ID BE

⁃ AND IT WAS SO GOOD

⁃ AND HADLEY SAID “PETITION FOR RAMIN TO BE THE NEXT SHREK” AND BABYGIRL YOURE SO RIGHT

⁃ Empty chairs at empty tables

⁃ Empty chairs at empty tables

⁃ I am not okie dokie

⁃ It was beautiful

⁃ So so beautiful

⁃ And then when they did the iconic harmonies I started sobbing

⁃ It was too much for my brain to handle

⁃ Then they said they couldn’t leave us on a sad note so they did YOULL BE BACK

⁃ I CANNOT EXPRESS HOW FUCKING BRILLIANT YOULL BE BACK WAS

⁃ So it started with Ramin, all bouncy and funky and stuff

⁃ But then oh my golly goodness gracious Hadley

⁃ He OWNED King George III so so hard

⁃ He did a very posh British accent and acted the living hell out of it

⁃ It was the best thing I’ve ever seen

⁃ And then he stuck one of his legs out in sort of a tango way and was very flamboyant and I’ve seen silly Hadley but I’ve never seen truly campy, flamboyant Hadley and it’s the best kind of Hadley

⁃ Then the whole audience did the da da da da das and it was so neat singing with Ramin and Hadley live

⁃ And they were doing a dancey dance and HADLEY AS KING GEORGE III I BEG, THATS ALL I ASK OF YOU, PLEASE ILL ACTUALLY ENJOY HAMILTON IF HADLEY IS KING GEORGE PLEASEEEEEE

⁃ Then it ended and we did a meet and greet and Hadley asked my name and I said it and Ramin and Hadley both shook my hand and then Hadley recognised me (it’s complicated to explain but basically he once saw a picture of me) and went “oh Maddie!!! It’s so good to see you!” Then he hugged me. Robert Hugh ‘Hadley’ Fraser hugged me. He didn’t do that for anyone else. He opened his arms and said “come here” in a nice way not a creepy way den

⁃ Overall such an insane experience, if you thought either of them were good in recording it’s just even better live. I’ve never heard them sing so well.

If any of you were there watching it please add anything I missed on

[paingoes]

Questions for any/all/however many of your OCs because I'm bored and curious.

How have they changed throughout their development? (I don't mean in-character --- like how do they differ now from the previous versions? How are they different now from the very first time you thought of them?)

How would the story differ if a character/s were in the position (societal, emotional, etc, any or all) of other character/s?

What's something (or multiple things) that they'd never, ever tell anyone?

What's something they'd never tell anyone, but really want to?

What do they think of when they hear the word "home"?

Are they religious? What are their thoughts on religion?

ooooo this is so much fun thank you for sending!!! okay!!!

1.) How have they changed throughout their development?

i wanna say that delta has been pretty watertight since inception. the story was created with him in mind. honestly i didnt always know where the plot was going and a lot of that was improvised, but his character and the way he reacts to things are fundamentally what holds the whole thing together. living weapon-whistle blower dichotomy was always there. thats my boy :)

paris and lorelai were both like. they invited themselves in and havent left basically id say that was their effect on the plot. ive said this a lot but the early paris characterization is kinda weak, he was just meant to be a kind of controlling and cruel whumper. and he was always supposed to be close to delta in age. that was basically it. i feel like the first time i really "got" him was when i wrote him in Moonshine blacked out and sobbing on the floor. and even now when i reread it im like. Oh there he is.

lorelai i guess ive also had her characterization down for a while. she has a good heart and despite her sheltered upbringing she has a very strong revolutionary spirit! shes kind of an idealist and she has a really rigid moral sense which is a good contrast to paris's ability to justify literally anything.

i planned to write rubies before crash out or to have crash out be like. a side story to rubies. but i remember the exact moment i realized when i wanted to do with paris and lorelai and it hit me in the head really hard. i was like. they neeeeeed to do fear and loathing in las vegas.

2.) How would the story differ if a character/s were in the position (societal, emotional, etc, any or all) of other character/s?

gonna hold my tongue on this one because the roleswap/princess delta AU is coming!!!!! no spoilers hehehehe

3.) What's something (or multiple things) that they'd never, ever tell anyone?

hmmmm. i feel like delta would really try to avoid talking about times where he was like. gleefully and proudly complicit in hurting and destroying other people. "glee" is definitely a strong word but he takes pride in his work and he knows hes the fucking best at it. he really enjoys the dopamine rush of hitting targets on a purely mechanical level and he enjoyed being The Favorite at the institute. hes knows its wrong now but at the time? he lived off the validation.

one thing lorelai would never tell anyone is that she thinks the living weapon thing was hot.

lorelai: omg poor delta :(((( thats so sad lorelai: it shouldve been me

while lorelai is pretty morally upright she defintiely has a thing about violence and control CTRL. lorelai is a foil to paris but she is a parallel to delta and i think she also really really wants to feel useful in the same way he can be. this doesnt mean shes okay with what paris did to him AT ALL but she is very. captivated by the concept to say the least.

4.) What's something they'd never tell anyone, but really want to?

i cant think of anything tbh! lorelai is mostly an open book and she says what she's thinking. if delta felt strongly enough about anything to confide in someone, and he felt safe to do so, i think he'd cave to that too. i feel like i should have an answer here for paris because he's definitely in the business of "i can't admit this even to myself" but i think if he really wanted to say something he would just say it. i dont think any of them are really good at keeping secrets.

5.) What do they think of when they hear the word "home"?

paris thinks of thales, which is silly. it's not like he ever spent that much time there.

loreali thinks of absalom! she loves her home and its kind of incredible she ever left. she made a big sacrifice doing it and she doesnt regret it but she does get homesick a lot.

delta has no immediate associations and that is something that definitely eats at him. minor spoilers for rubies i guess but he will eventually come to associate Galatea -- and especially Levon -- with home.

6.) Are they religious? What are their thoughts on religion?

i think it would be funny here to say lorelai's family is southern baptist. delta was raised atheist and in fact i think Martino was probably a total snob about it and made him read Space Richard Dawkins. none of them are particularly spiritual but paris and lorelai are both weirdly superstitious. paris believes in the afterlife.

destroyer does not have good religious lore but i did once canonize Space Catholicism so i could make a dick-sucking joke

[space-writes]

writing questions tag

tagged by @cherrybombfangirlwrites, thank you!

[ID - a rainbow decorative divider]

What is your absolute all-time favorite idea you’ve ever had?

oh god, don’t make me choose between my children, i love them all. if we measure in terms of Percetange of My Brain Rotted, though, it’s Obedience. Rizeth and Ashenivir I just…I love them so much.

Is there a question you’ve been asked in the past that really stands out to you, and you still think about sometimes?

hmm, not really. most of what i get asked is just character or worldbuilding stuff and i love it a lot, but nothing Spectacular that haunts me or anything

What is your favorite part of being a writer? What parts could you take or leave?

i love coming up with new stuff, and i love when things Connect while I’m working. those little flashes of ‘oh damn’ are so satisfying. and i love working over a sentence to get exactly the right words, building the rhythm and the sound of it into the perfect combination.

i could do without the endless imposted syndrome and the transition scenes that don’t want to work and the feeling like nothing will ever be finished TT_TT

What is your greatest motivation to write/create?

Make Reader Go !!!!!

also, Make Blorbo From My Brain Stop Bothering Me So Damn Much

What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever read or been given as a writer?

You can’t edit a blank page/all writing is re-writing. It’s gotta exist before you can make it good, and then you have to put in the work to make it good. What that process looks like is different for everyone, but it’s the fundamental baseline of all writing, imo. Make it exist, then make it good.

What do you wish you knew when you were first starting out writing?

…how to format dialogue. i spent SO MANY YEARS not realising about how to properly do the capitalisation “When you have a dialogue.” And then they do something. “Like this.”

What is your favorite story you’ve written to completion? Link it if you’d like and can!

Currently my favourite is The Perils of Wanting, which is the first full-length Obedience book (and you can read it here! new chapters go out every other week~).

Otherwise it’s still probably body mine, which is an Obsession fic but also just weird and fucked up and i’m still extremely proud of it. i did everything i wanted with it, and everyone who’s read it is like !!! which, as i wrote earlier, is the reaction i always want :p

(heed the tags on that one though, it’s got. Some Stuff. in it)

Which of your characters would you say has the most controversial mindset? Why do you say so, and how do you personally feel about their ideals?

Rainier or Vivien. Rainier I designed to be awful in some very specific ways: cynical, self-obsessed, manipulative, convinced nothing bad can ever happen to him. I don’t know that it’s necessarily controversial, but also he’s the kind of person who, if i knew him in real life, i would never want to get stuck in a conversation with.

Vivien is just a horrid little man who thinks murder is okay if it’s like, your coping mechanism or whatever.

If you, when you first started writing, met you now, what would younger you think?

they’d be confused and also fucking psyched: “what do you mean we finished a book? more than one?? people are READING our stuff and they LIKE it? a LOT?? woah, everything reads like an actual book now this is cool as fuck. wait, you don’t want to get published any more? hey what’s all this gender stuff, why are there so many boys kissing in here—”

[ID - a rainbow decorative divider]

Blank questions & tags under the cut

What is your absolute all-time favorite idea you’ve ever had?

Is there a question you’ve been asked in the past that really stands out to you, and you still think about sometimes?

What is your favorite part of being a writer? What parts could you take or leave?

What is your greatest motivation to write/create?

What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever read or been given as a writer?

What do you wish you knew when you were first starting out writing?

What is your favorite story you’ve written to completion? Link it if you’d like and can!

Which of your characters would you say has the most controversial mindset? Why do you say so, and how do you personally feel about their ideals?

If you, when you first started writing, met you now, what would younger you think?

no-pressure tagging @viscerawrites @winterandwords @thegreatobsesso and @olliexwrites

[thatneoncrisis]

20 questions for 20 writers!

tagged by @waitineedaname thxx

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

21 works, i feel like thats a healthy number

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

i have 439,385 words, a very large chunk of that is from We Have Always Lived in the Apartment

3. What fandoms do you write for?

right now its the locked tomb, used to be homestuck, i have some crossovers with the magnus archives and one with john dies at the end

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

We Have Always Lived in the Apartment -- TLT horror mystery modern au

Insert Jesus Allegory Here -- solkat focused continuation of karkats pesterquest route, i NEED my new fics to get more popular than this oh my god

Gehenna the First -- TLT houseswap au with harrow as god

the gap between a tragedy and comedy (in this life its just you and me) -- TLT coffee shop au.

What's Eating Gideon Nav?  -- TLT catholic boarding school horror au

5. Do you respond to comments?

not typically, theres some weird thing with my head where i kind of hate that it counts my comments in the total comment amount. i cant explain it i just dont like how it looks, plus just repeating variations of "thank you!!" feels hollow after a while. im more likely to answer direct questions about the story rather than general commentary i do love talking about my thought process and intentions

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

ok so i cant actually tell you this because none of those fics are Done yet but all you need to know is that i consider all of my TLT fics tragedies to some extent. take that as you will. i dont even Like the word angst really it portends a level of melodrama id like to avoid

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

I'd say its a dead tie between A Brief Lesson In The Occult and Shit. Let’s Build A Fort. i can barely look at these anymore and if you read them and feel compelled to tell me you like them: dont. i can do better now

8. Do you get hate on fics?

never to my knowledge has anyone ever publicly disliked one of my fics. in fact sometimes i dream about someone posting it in their discord group chat and making fun of it because im so curious about what theyd say

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

yes i have. i do it almost exclusively as satire or character analysis as i find like, the physicality of sex to be inherently kind of goofy. liek the second you have to describe a dick or boobs with words the magic is gone it just becomes weird silly looking flesh. so i like focusing on weird and bad sex, unsatisfying or clumsy sex. sex that changes you in no significant way

10. Do you write crossovers?

yes i have. A Brief Disappearance and Statement of David Wong are both TMA/JDATE crossovers and i DID write a homestuck/TMA crossover but its not on my ao3 i guess? odd

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

no? does that happen?

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

i think once someone asked but i have no clue if it happened

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

@notedchampagne is my co producer in all things forever but ive basically written everything myself and they help polish it up

14. What’s your all-time favorite ship?

shiiiiiiite uh. jade/davepeta still means a lot to me. i think there are a lot of really engaging ships in TLT but i always kind of default to griddlehark i just kind of understand them the best

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

eventually SAM and i would like to circle back to our fanventure Therapystuck but we both got really busy with school, work and a general lull in the HS fandom. also maybe someday ill go back to Insert Jesus Allegory Here i liked the direction of the story i just have to get myself back in that headspace. being into homestuck Does something to you, like psychologically

16. What are your writing strengths?

after asking some friends theyve told me im good at tone, prose, funny metaphors, and dialogue but a caveat for the last thing as "I have yet to see how your Own guys talk and how you'd handle distinct voices from scratch so I'm only giving you about 80%"

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

i hate like. writing Around the important bits of a scene. i love the physicality of characters and what it reveals about them, along with pieces of the scene the narration deems important or interesting enough to mention to the audience. but im always worried im jsut fucking yapping. also i hate like, political scenes theres a rhythm to them that i dont quite understand. people sitting around using specific language that Feels important in a way that doesnt make it clear im bullshitting like 99% of what theyre talking about

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

AHAH. GOD. i actually looked this up the other day because theres an original story i want to write where i want to make it clear theyre basically speaking french the whole time, even though its written in english. i only speak english (i took some french in hs, its left me though i want to pick it up again) so i wouldnt know anything about how it reads to polyglots but i guess theres really only so much you can do outside of literally learning a new language just to write a story for free. ive seen a whole host of tips so i gues sit just matters how you employ them

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Homestuck. my only regret is that i wasnt a better writer

20. Favorite fic you’ve written?

FUCK christ uuuuh. favorite right Now would be The Apartment but EVENTUALLY id like it to be Gehenna the First because its the hardest to write and i need it to pay off. if you havent read it uhhh. hi. hello. you should do that. i think its really cool and fun and junk

CHRIST who to tag i dont follow big writers uuuh @tranquilitybasehotelcasino and @accidentallyadorable sure have fun

[fable7122-writing]

Contracted Personnel:

First Day

So I started writing a new story set in the same universe as the other story here. Here’s the exposition

I should’ve read the fine print. I’m lying down on my company assigned bed in my company assigned room with 5 other people, on the verge of tears. I’ve just gone through my first day at Seventh Heaven Inc. A more fitting name would be Seventh Layer of Hell, but I don’t think the higher ups would like that kind of publicity. 

My name is Rita Coy, and I just signed my death warrant, otherwise known as the contract that gave me this job. I’m basically a door to door salesman, and my shifts are 8 hours long with no breaks. Even worse is that I have to go through very shitty neighborhoods filled with assholes who either want to kill me on sight due to me being a half-animal, or want to fuck me for the same reason.

The company says they’re supportive of us, and they are, they just neglect to mention that they treat us all equally like shit. All they want is to sell their shitty off-blue desk fans. They don’t even work! I took one with me to try out, and the speed settings are all fucked up. Plus it just looks ugly as shit. The kicker though, is that I have to work at this job until I’m either fired or I die. That’s why I needed to read the fine print.

Now getting fired should be pretty easy, right? Well apparently not. They’re so short staffed due to people actually reading and not being desperate for a job that they are willing to hold onto the employees that they have no matter what they do. You could kill a man, or 50 while on company time and they’d brush it off as, “It was self defense” to the public while scolding you and lowering your pay to that of a child during the industrial revolution.

That’s enough backstory for now though. I look at the ID I was given earlier. 

Name: Rita Coy

Gender: Transfeminine

Age: 26

Species: Half-Deer

Height: 5’4”

Extra details:

Long brunette hair, hazel eyes, usually wears the same black flannel, moderate breast size

Next to those descriptions was a photo of me, showing the exact same details… seems a little redundant if you ask me. Plus having the age on their means that they have to replace it once a year. Also, why did they have to put my boob size? And they didn’t even bother putting the cup size either. Whoever the horny fuck is who wrote that must not see very many boobs, because mine are fairly small. But that’s not important.

I force myself to sit up on my bed, hiding my face as best as I can while watching the other people. They look like they’ve been through this countless times before. The girl sitting on the bed across and one to the right of mine is really pretty though… but no. I’ve watched enough romancy shows to know that work relationships are never a good thing. Besides, she’s way too pretty for me. The way her dark pointed wolf ears stick straight up, and her very light brown hair flows down her shoulders. Even the way she’s reading that book is so delicate. I love it so much. Maybe one day I’ll learn her name. That should be enough, right?

Anyways, I should head to bed now. I need as much rest as I can get so I don’t collapse tomorrow. I hope she shows up in my dreams…

[yerbamansa]

Ohhhh my god, so I wrote a novel-length fic over the last five months and I just…need to write down some Thoughts on that, because it hadn’t happened before and I have no idea if it will again, just seemed worthwhile to collect myself a bit. To be clear: I’m…really proud of myself?? Who knew I had it in me! And I think it’s a fun read! I learned a lot! More under a cut if you care to read my ramblings.

The gdoc containing my initial outline of ideas was created on October 29, 2022. I shared it with the group chat from whence the idea came, because I was planning to participate in a daily prompt challenge in November so I wasn’t going to have time for it yet. By late November, quite a bit of work was happening in the doc—a proper outline with a three-act structure I borrowed from various writing tips websites and then wandered off on my own with. I’ve never written something this structured and long before, so I searched for some structure tips.

I found a few different forms (a 9-block, 27-chapter structure; a three-act checklist) that I ended up using almost like a self-survey/brainstorm. A couple passes through that, plus trying to work it out as a character/timeline spreadsheet, gave the whole thing a much clearer shape. I knew I wanted to alternate between Ed’s and Stede’s POVs, but not limit it to theirs. Early on I decided that Oluwande would be a third POV character because (a) I love writing him and (b) the crew’s perspective is REALLY IMPORTANT. Then, because I used Lucius as an outsider, he became the fourth POV, introduced at the beginning of act 2.

[ID: A bar chart showing word count by POV character. Ed has over 34,000 words, Stede about 26,000 words, Oluwande 13,000 words, and Lucius a little under 10,000 words. End ID.]

But it’s not like I had it 100% perfectly mapped out at a chapter level, nor did I know exactly what details would…emerge. Like, I knew the shape of the details, but I kind of worked them out as I got to know this version of the characters better. The outlining process was kind of my draft: I went through it to get to the point that I could sit down and outline each chapter (or two ahead, in some cases) and then write it.

Very few things were written out of order, but the scene where they’re trapped in the storage closet was written well before I finished chapter 1. And I thought it would happen later than it did. I really thought I was gonna enemies-to-lovers these guys! 😂

There were a TON of details/potential plotlines I thought about including, but ultimately decided not to, either because it was totally out of my lane to do it justice (ex.: literally anything to do with Ed’s heritage and food—I read up some and whew, it’d have to be its own story, and not really mine to tell) and/or because it would’ve overcomplicated/distracted from the plot as it unfolded. There was a whole thing where Stede was meant to pull a Christopher Kimball thing and screw over the magazine by starting a rival publication and, you know what, there was more than enough drama to mine from just the Bon Appetit Test Kitchen debacle(s).

The idea came from a group chat, and the same group chat was instrumental in helping me flesh out a bunch of character details. That was fun. That’s also where my main beta reader came from. It’s funny, I’ve written on and off pretty much my whole life, but rarely had an editor like this. It was very collaborative and challenging in the best possible ways, I think; especially with something this long, it really helped to have someone who knew some of what was in my head but wasn’t nose-deep in it.

While it hasn’t been a runaway hit or anything, it’s had by far more eyeballs than anything else I’ve written in this fandom. Definitely a lot more comments than anything else, which is fun. Some folks I really admire have said kind things and if that didn’t make me all 😊 well. (It did, though.) It was because of those commenters that I got a sense of how it was coming off—that it was, and could be, fun and frothy and still touch on subjects that were difficult (labor rights etc.) without making light of them. At least, that’s what I hope I pulled off in the end.

There were so many random little side routes and ideas that came up while thinking about and writing this that I really had to make a series. For the one-shots. For fuck’s sake, I put too much into building out this little world and this version of each character not to.

And if one of those ends up being some kind of E-rated fic involving Mary and Evelyn, like, posing for Doug with fresh fruit still-life and it turning into A Whole Thing, so be it. (It didn’t make the story text, but Mary and Evelyn are married and Doug is Mary’s guy who lives in the guest house out back. Also they make cooking YouTube videos together as a trio. There will probably be one-shots about them because Evelyn was too much fun to write.)

[thebreakfastgenie]

since you asked for more id be so happy to hear literally anything about safe travels cause I reread it again and I just love it with my entire heart and soul -ypq

First of all thank you so much!! I'm really happy you love that fic so much. I loved it, and then I reread it and I was like oh no is it not good? and then a while later I reread it again and I was like oh I love this again!

I have some WIPs that predate safe travels, and actually I think that fic I technically finished and never posted might too. But it was the first thing I really got momentum on. And then the momentum fucking abandoned me!!!! This fic was entirely written except for the last two scenes (and the final "tag" scene but I knew how that was going to go and don't really count it) for l don't even know how many months. I went through so many drafts of that BJ-Charles conversation, even more than the final big conversation between Hawkeye and BJ and that had a bunch of drafts too.

It just wasn't working and I don't know why and I had the damn thing pinned to my dock collecting virtual dust for an eternity. I knew what I had was good and I was so frustrated that I couldn't share it because it was unfinished. Even when I finally finished it, I was mostly just relieved, and it was still kind of pulling teeth. But before that, it was really fun.

One of my favorite bits is so small, but it's this:

“You know you’re on duty in post-op,” BJ reminds him. “Charles is already in a sore mood—” “—because of how thoroughly we whooped him—” Margaret interjects. “—and he’ll be even sorer if you don’t relieve him on time.”

I think this is best job I've ever done of writing an interjection. I was really happy with Mulcahy's dialogue in this scene, too.

This fic was my first time writing BJ. I expected it to be hard. I don't have a lot of feelings about BJ and I'm not very interested in him compared to the others, so I thought I would have no idea how to find his voice. But I had so. much. fun! Of course, now that I'm writing him in my ghost AU WIP, he's fucking impossible, just like I expected. But I had a ball here. I think giving him the mystery to solve and the weird little clues, the dirt under the fingernails and the jeep, probably helped a lot. But it was just fun!

After I wrote the scrub sink scene, I realized by chance my first two scenes ended with dialogue, so I decided to keep it up. I very seldom start with dialogue, but ending with dialogue was a fun experiment. I really like the bit where Hawkeye doesn't pick up the joke BJ is setting up, because he's too tired, and BJ kind of unhappily completes it himself.

I had a ton of fun writing Potter, too. Maybe even more than BJ. It was just a fun challenge! I even changed up the names for his POV, using Sherman and Pierce instead of Potter and Hawkeye, just to try something out. This might be my favorite scene, just because it has so many of my favorite lines. Most notably:

He slides one glass across the desk, where Pierce is draped over the chair like an oilcloth. Sherman’s a surgeon who’s seen more than most, but he thinks Dr. Gray himself would be at a loss to explain that man’s skeleton.

and

“You’re serious.” “You thought I was kidding?” He’s not too old to feel the flush of shame. “I’m sorry.” “People always think I’m kidding,” Pierce shrugs it off. “Of course, most of the time, I am.”

That bit is just mmmmmHawkeye feelings.

Funny story about this sentence:

BJ has never showed much interest in the nitty gritty of his best friend’s many rendezvous—he lets Hawkeye kiss and tell because it makes him happy—but tonight, he knows, he’ll be hanging on every sordid detail, and if Hawkeye doesn’t provide enough of them, he’ll poke and prod until he does.

I liked the way the first half sounded, so I had to come up with an ending that gave me a reason to use it. It took a while.

Rizzo was fun. I'm not sure if he insulted BJ enough. I did my best with that, but I think it could have been a more clear insult.

I love the Charles scene.

“What I fail to understand, is what gives you the impression Pierce works any harder than the rest of us.”

Let me take the opportunity to say this: JUSTICE FOR CHARLES! With the information he has, he has every right to be annoyed! Charles doesn't know Hawkeye was kidnapped and held at gunpoint. I was really worried the reader would forget that, since the audience does know, and judge him unfairly.

The part about Peg's letter came in during the second or third draft and ended up being the best angle into BJ. I had fun writing him before but this scene killed me. It went through several more rewrites, but I knew I wanted to keep the letter.

This final conversation was really, really hard. I'm happy with what I wrote, but I don't think I'll ever be completely satisfied.

I do really like the opening:

Hawkeye crouches on the floor of the swamp, elbow-deep in his footlocker. Beside him, his suitcase is splayed open like first-year anatomy practice; like a cadaver after all the organs have already been removed.

This entire fic came from the vision of this conversation I had in my head and I don't think I can ever truly capture it. Because it was so visual, like a scene from the show, I had the worst time choosing which POV to use. I finally decided on Hawkeye telling from his POV, and BJ reacting from his POV, which also gave me a natural spot to split it down the middle, and I'm happy with that part. Writing a Long Hawkeye Speech about Seoul was fun. I think I did okay, but I'm no Alan Alda and certainly no Larry Gelbart.

I'm not a big one for jealous BJ--I think the level of jealousy he displays in the show is normal--but BJ being pissy that Hawkeye told Potter first felt right. I can't explain why, but it did. BJ is kind of spiraling this entire fic, because he knows something is off but he doesn't know what and Hawkeye uncharacteristically won't talk about it. That would drive me crazy.

“That kid might still be alive if I spoke Korean.” He sounds distant, regretful. BJ’s stomach turns. “Or if his friend with the gun spoke English,” he points out. Hawkeye gives him a sidelong look. “It’s his country, Beej.”

Is one of the first bits I had. The language barrier in The Best of Enemies is so damn tragic and ironic. Hawkeye, of all people, forced to help at gunpoint... he'd help anyway, but that soldier doesn't know that and Hawkeye can't tell him. And I've always loved the bits in early seasons of Hawkeye trying and mostly failing to learn Korean. I've always headcanoned that he did try to learn Korean, but never got very far. I thought he'd feel guilty about that in this situation, or at least think about it a lot. I did have BJ realize he was right, because I didn't want him to come off too badly. BJ isn't Frank, he's just focused on comforting Hawkeye and feeling very protective.

“Hawk, he held a gun to your head!” BJ explodes. “What would you do if it was me?” Hawkeye asks.

This dialogue was the very first thing I had. The entire fic leads to this, really. Hawkeye empathizes with his captor, and BJ can't stand it, because this guy held Hawkeye at gunpoint and that's all he needs to know.

I knew, from the very beginning, that I had to ask the question. I think that's the entire point of the fic, really. I thought quite a bit about the direction I wanted it to go, because both of them have their merits. I didn't ask what would Hawkeye do if it was BJ, although I address it earlier when he wonders what he'd do for any of them, and I think Hawkeye raising it means he's thought about it, while BJ is caught off guard. I asked what would BJ do if it was Hawkeye? I liked it coming naturally from Hawkeye's defense of the North Korean. But I also knew I couldn't answer the question. So BJ dodges with medicine. BJ, bless him, thinks he can find a way out. Of course that doesn't work. It's unanswerable, until you've been there. The Hawkeye Speech here was a late addition, and I'm happy I added it.

I let BJ turn it around on Hawkeye, because I think he has a point. Hawkeye is forgiving of someone kidnapping him, but what if someone kidnapped BJ? And then can he understand why BJ can't be so forgiving? Of course, that's unanswerable too. It's kind of frustrating, because none of the central questions have answers. But that's life!

The dirt is a running thread because I truly cannot ever get over the image of Hawkeye digging that grave.

What stuns BJ is that Hawkeye says it so casually, as if it were the obvious thing to do.

Like... me too, Beej! But, you know, I wonder if BJ would have done that. If any of the others would have. The first time I watched that episode, I knew what Hawkeye was going to do. It was inevitable. So this is BJ's reaction to that.

“This damn war, Beej,” he says softly. “This goddamn, stinking war.”

This was one of the first lines I had, too, before I worked out how they all fit together. The fight just goes out of Hawkeye, here. And underneath it all, that's all it is. The war. None of them wants to be here, not Hawkeye, not BJ, not the North Korean or his dead friend. But this war is happening and they're pointing guns at each other. I think that's a theme in The Best of Enemies, too. I like writing episode tags that stay on theme.

It won’t work, but Hawkeye needs to try, and BJ needs to let him.

This might be my favorite friendship line I've written. Of course BJ wants to keep Hawkeye close, but he knows he needs to let him go. And the futility of it all...

I came up with the idea of doing a tag, almost like it was an episode, somewhere along the way. I really wanted to do Klinger POV, because I love Klinger. And now that BJ and Potter are both in the know, it was nice to bring in someone from the outside. I wrote that tag pretty fast, and it could probably be more polished. I liked the idea of Hawkeye using fake lab results as a cover for his call. I came up with the title and the toast as the last line at the same time, very late in the process, and at that point I just wanted to finish the damn thing.

It's possible Charles and the others find out the truth eventually. I didn't go that far, so who knows, but I wouldn't assume they never do.

Honestly I feel like there is more I could have covered but I can't think of it so if you want to chat about anything specific literally just ask!

[spikeinthepunch]

i have my 2022 art summary queued up and just want to ramble about the last year,... lots of stuff happened, good and bad! been a strange time.

i imagine most followers around have probably been here since late 2020 but 2020-21 i did art quite a bit, but the thing that really stuck for that period was i was super involved in warrior cats RP for some time-- i love RPing and these group also got me motivated to draw too! but i feel like i kind of wasnt around in the typical way due to how consumed i was in it. i dont think i need to go into detail of every month during that time, but it wasnt until early this year where i dropped it, and i didnt really publicize in detail why due to the issues surrounding it, but it was probably the biggest impact on me this year mentally, and in terms of art direction. and i feel like itd feel good to document this in a blog after it has now blown over- and why ive shifted my direction too.

i was very happily running my own RP server for just a year before i had to close it this year and it still makes me sad, as much as i moved on. ARP was like... a very big deal for me and i cant deny that. i dont have a lot of projects i get that into or get even close to setting off with its story figured out. i wrote well over 100 pages of documents for the world and the 6 planned arcs. i drew loads of art i couldnt even share until it closed (tbh im not positive i have shared it anyways bc i didnt wanna post it here). i made a website, i made riddles and code, i developed lore that was far outside of the warrior cats scope to it basically just being original!

truly i have never developed a project as far as i made ARP and to shut it down in order to save my privacy and past trauma from being further exposed in such an inappropriate way really sucked ass. a lot. it was a situation where there was no control given to me, no sense of understanding from the community. im not writing this out now to be pointing fingers and calling out names- just venting how it took a toll on me this year. what had happened with my server was that one of my own mods decided to dig into my profiles and found an old nsfw page, which even more indirectly led to an old flist, which exposed various things i was into around 17-19, reflecting trauma and abuse id been through (in it, voiced wanting to take part in certain kinks; ex. being a victim to violence and dubious consent scenarios). this information was at first presented as a threat to minors viewing my RP page (as in "ppl can see your nsfw profile from the blog!") which wasnt true/accessible as they said it was and required many many clicks to find, and then slowly revealed to me the people exposing this were in fact two of my own mods and was promptly cut off from explaining anything else as it spread in a private mod discord in the RP community. Which was worse to me than everything else that could have happened honestly, and i only learned this second hand from a person who saw it in that discord and thought it was horrible this information was spreading like that behind my back. in some ways things were okay-- i didnt get "called out" openly as i did my best to explain how these pages were not current to those around me, and that they had dug into some deep cutting trauma and a period where i wasnt getting any help to cope properly. it still didnt stop the fact i left every other RP i was in due to connections w those exposing it, and in turn closing my own. i dont want to say im thankful i didnt get called out publicly, but the damage was bad enough in so many other ways because i couldnt continue my server at all, and in the end people's obsession with purity culture in the fandom still made them deem me "bad" because i had nsfw accounts in any capacity. thats not a space i want to be around anyways...

ill forever be thankful for those who stuck it out to the end and witnessed the documents i got to share before closing it for good. but this was a HUGE part of my life for the last years of the pandemic, and i wasnt there for warriors cats- i was there for the people i knew, and the stories i made. i still miss RP a lot, and i want to host projects like that again after moving on mentally from that ordeal.

but my 2022 art summary shows a major shift that was 100% in part to disconnecting from wcrp. humans everywhere! seriously. for a solid few months i couldnt even bare to look at anything related to ARP. i didnt want to think about how i lost this story i developed so hard for so long.

honestly didnt really start drawing properly again until the summer- my art during my HL phase was very very light and very messy. i fell into a hard depression early summer and i only crawled out when i got into mcyt- and even then i was hiding it from this blog. i think i just needed to not feel like i was "online", because August included me joining a onceler RP and again, not saying anything about it. which Weehawken was the first RP thing I had done since i closed ARP too, and it was weird. not the RP itself, it just felt weird to try that again.

and it wasnt my favorite month, i just felt so tired and exhausted- that depression was kinda lingering and drawing a lot for an RP again was something i wasnt really used to anymore.

the past three months have been.... better? or i have at least enjoyed what i am drawing more. i think im far enough removed from what happened with ARP too that it doesnt weigh on me as strongly. i wasnt blaming myself for anything but it doesnt feel good when you know you have to kill something. we talked about recovering it, i had ideas, but i just knew it wouldnt be worth trying to with so much damage caused in my own self, and the impression that whole community left on me knowing people would willingly spread such personal information without question. having trauma exposed after going to therapy and relearning how to use the internet in a way that doesnt lean on trauma dumping and whatever unhealthy bullshit? its quite a blow. i dont make personal blogs like this often because i have good methods to deal with my shit these days.

despite this messy year im doing well. its been ups and downs. overall i know im far more confident in myself, i moved out to live on my own, and im just doing my thing. whatever bull shit happened this year, call out or not, i know im still just gonna keep doing whatever it is im doing. and heres to hoping i can bring a world to life like i did with ARP again, bc i really have a lot i want to tell and show and do.

[inconveniently-discorporated]

My first time going out of the country was an accident, and we were detained. I mean, it must've looked pretty suspicious when an older man and a teenage girl with no ID said, "Sorry, we weren't actually trying to go to Canada, we were trying to go to Texas."

Yeah, I know -- so, what happened was that we were moving to Texas from California.

Yeah. I know.

See, before THAT happened, when I was 9, my dad took me on a cross-country road trip, because he didn't trust planes, and we were all visiting family. My brother and mom flew to the east coast, and my dad and I had the absolute best time. I wrote a lot of poetry (which really impressed my dad and was the beginning of a lifelong passion for writing), I saw a lot of different, amazing things, including an intense lightning storm (that happened as we were passing through the middle of nowhere, nothing in sight, with tornado warnings on the radio -- that was terrifying, but still amazing).

So, when I graduated -- the same summer we were going to move -- I requested another road trip with my dad. I wanted to visit where he grew up, which we did. Amazing memories I still have to this day, going through all the little towns as he talked about his storied past. For the final act, we went to Niagara Falls -- it was beautiful, and also the thing that led to us being detained while our car was completely and totally tossed by Canadian authorities.

Since we were moving to Texas, we wanted to go and take a look at potential places to rent. My mom was going to fly there with my brother (she had bad knees -- car trips were excruciating), and we were going to begin the trip down after visiting the falls.

Now, I couldn't go to the Canadian side, because my parents hadn't actually let me start driving, nor had I gotten any kind of official picture ID. Why? I don't know, I'm actually still bitter about it to this day. I was quite a responsible teenager, the most wild thing I did was skip lunch and spend my lunch money on Lord of the Rings merchandise at the mall instead. And I didn't have my student ID, because I had undiagnosed ADHD at the time (I still have ADHD but it's now diagnosed), and was QUITE ready to be over and done with anything having to do with any academic institute.

So, when my dad and I got our fill of the American side of the falls (I'm told it's not as good as the Canadian side -- oh well, I at least got dippin dots, which by the way have yet to become the ice cream of the future), we climbed into the car, loaded up "Austin, TX" on our GPS, and set off on our next adventure.

It was one of those really old newfangled Garmin things, because my dad never taught me how to use a paper map (remember that), and besides, my dad was freshly retired (they had kids later in life) and he wanted to know what it was like to experience some of the latest advances in modern luxuries.

This thing wasn't Google. It was a dumb smart GPS. There was nothing, apparently, telling it "avoid going outside of the country for this trip". Although, looking back on it, I suppose there could've been a setting for that. We certainly ASSUMED it wouldn't take us out of the country. Maybe we were the dumb smart ones. But, I digress.

We started seeing signs for Canada. But, our GPS kept trucking on. We got a little nervous, but surely it would know? There must've been some other road, another exit? By the time we realized that we were wrong, it was too late. There was nowhere to turn around. There was nowhere to get off. We were in it and we were headed for the border, we would just have to hope that they would let us pull a quick turnaround and let us get out of there.

Well, they didn't.

My dad was immediately very apologetic when we got to the window. "We're really sorry, we didn't mean to come this way," he said, "we were actually trying to get to Texas. This stupid GPS took us this way and we didn't know, could we please just turn around?"

LOL, no. The agent was immediately suspicious. And, I mean -- fair.

He wanted to see my dad's ID (which, if you remember, was from California). He then wanted to see my ID. I didn't have one. Did I have another picture ID? No. Did I even have a student ID? Also no.

"I have a library card," I offered.

"Does it have a picture on it?" the agent asked.

"Oh," I said. "No."

"Okay -- sir -- could you please pull up to that building over there?"

So, that's how that happened.

They were really quite confused, and my dad was increasingly more stressed out by the minute. His go-to coping mechanism was always humor, so the GPS suffered a lot of (polite) abuse and besmirching as we were questioned by a couple agents inside.

Finally, one of the agents had pulled out a map, and had figured out what the GPS was trying to do. You see, there was a road just barely inside of Canada that went around the falls, and that one was apparently much faster than just turning around and going the stupid old American way all the way through. So, the poor little thing was really only trying to help, it just ended up costing us much more time than it was going to save us.

And so, at last, with my dad barely holding back the sweat and the contents of our luggage strewn about the car, we were permitted to leave, so long as we left IMMEDIATELY. And we did, swiftly.

I'm happy to report that the rest of the trip was quite uneventful.

That's not to say that our MOVE was uneventful. No, that was Detained in Canada 2.0, only instead of getting detained in a foreign country, we busted up a bank drive-thru trying to turn around after getting lost in a random Los Angeles neighborhood at night, because my dad didn't pay attention to the clearance sign and wasn't used to driving a box truck.

Why were we lost in a random Los Angeles neighborhood at night? Because my dad didn't trust the GPS anymore, so he decided to only use paper maps. Only, he got impatient with the Los Angeles traffic, and tried to go around it, then making me copilot navigate using a paper map that didn't really show a lot of detail for surface streets, when I had never used a paper map before.

I still remember him yelling at me, "I just need to know if these roads connect! How do I get back on the highway?!"

"I don't know," I yelled back, squinting at the paper held right up to my face, because paper doesn't pinch-zoom. "I think it connects?! It looks like it?! The lines are touching??!!"

Spoiler: it didn't connect.

But we made it through. I lived down south for a whole year, but I barely count it, because I was borderline agoraphobic at the time and went outside maybe ten times.

So, anyway -- that is the story of the first time I technically left the country, and was subsequently detained for an hour.

(PS: I did go back to Canada, properly, about ten years later, with my husband. We royally fucked up though, and thought we could stop at the duty free place to get some Canadian money, because we had NO idea what the hell a duty free store actually was. We were then forced to leave the country and re-enter. We almost didn't, but I was DETERMINED to visit Canada this time, and besides, we had a bunch of Canadian money. The whole time, I was thinking, "Here we go again, we're going to be pulled over and searched. Hopefully they just turn us away."

They didn't. They weren't exactly friendly about it, but they let us through again after explaining. It probably helped that I had sufficient identification that time.)

(PPS: We never ended up having to pay damages for the bank thing, somehow, unless my dad just covered it up out of shame. I was just glad we made it to Texas in one piece with all of our stuff, most of which we ended up throwing away because we didn't want it anymore by the time we got there.)

(PPPS: Canada was lovely. The second time, not the first.)

[plagueislost]

Hii, for the artist ask game: number 4 and 10 is something I'd love to know :3

i wrote A LOT for this ask, sorry! i wanted to do the questions justice, yknow how it is.

4. piece you wish got more love?

Ive found from experience that original art tends to not do very well on social media, which kind of makes me sad. It's not much of a problem for me (because most of the stuff i post is fanart anyways) but i can't help but think that part of the reason i rarely ever draw original pieces or make OCs is because of the lack of feedback i get on social media. I know tumblr is supposed to be the fandom website, and maybe id have a different experience on another site, but it is disappointing when i post something original that I'm very proud of and it barely manages to get more than 20 notes, whereas something i like less easily surpasses 100 just because of the tags i put on it. i think the most recent example of this is this piece, which admittedly did get quite a few notes for an original piece, but definitely would have gotten more had it been fanart of the same caliber. this is also not to blame anyone or make anyone feel bad about not reblogging original art (god knows im guilty of that too, and art piggybacking off the popularity of other works of art are of course gonna get more notes), its just something ive noticed from my time on social media.

10. how do you deal with artblock?

i dont get art block very often, but when i do, its ANNOYING. it mostly manifests in me having a bunch of motivation for a part of my process that i cant get to without doing the stuff i have no desire to do (does that make any sense?). like, ill have a strong urge to render an artwork, but no ongoing WIPs that are at that stage, meaning i would have to sketch and color and shade a whole new piece before i could satiate that urge, or do the steps out of order which could mess up the flow and end look of a project. when i get like this, i find its best to try and translate those desires into different activities and take a step away from art. for example:

if i want to sketch, but nothing comes out right digitally, ill find a scrap piece of paper and a crappy pen and make thumbnails until i cant think of any other iterations of the ideas in my head. if one of them turns out good, ill take a picture and transfer it into my software, but only go over it a day or so later so i can have fresh eyes.

if i want to color, but i have no sketches currently ready for coloring, ill go into my photo editing program, find some random old photos that i never edited, and post-process them until i get something im happy with.

if i want to shade, but have no colored artworks ready for that, ill usually do a study of a photo ive taken, because most of the time me shading is really me wanting to see how light and shadow interact in certain scenarios. i actually did a whole AP portfolio on that because i liked shading and lighting so much!

if i want to render, but ive got no pieces ready for rendering, i find its easiest just to find a tedious activity where i can be a perfectionist but also feel like im the smartest person in the world. this generally turns into me cooking some big meal because its constantly engaging but also not that difficult. i know its probably weird for it to not have anything to do with art but this is just what works best for me, and i get the bonus of a nice meal at the end of it!

if i get the more classic kind of art block where everything sucks and nothing i make is good, i find its best to go back to the media that inspires me to make art, and not worry too much about having made something by the end of it. generally the media that inspires me ends up, well, inspiring me, and i can remind myself that art is a voluntary practice that i do because its fun, not because i want something out of it. if it doesnt manage to inspire me, thats okay, i can just tell myself im taking a break and live life for a bit.

i hope that was helpful, and i really enjoyed answering these questions! if anyone else wants to ask a question, the artist ask game is here.

[capybaraonabicycle]

10, 15, and 18 for the ask game!

Thank you so much, love!

10. Have you tried anything new this year? Any new art forms perhaps?

Hmm, building a TARDIS was kinda new but I worked with paper, scissors and glue which I am familiar with. I very recently did a macrame workshop, too. I had done a little bit of jewellery knotting before, but never produced anything as professional looking. And I loved doing that! So relaxing and fun :) (until I realised I was running short of time to catch my bus 😅.)

I made a necklace :)

[ID: photo of a pendant necklace made from strings with macrame technique. The strings are blue and the pendant is a stone wrapped in string . end ID]

15. Have you created any new OCs this year? Care to introduce us?

No one new, no, I don't think so. But I have fleshed out some old ones a little more, so maybe let's talk about Linnea?

She was very much only a vague concept before this year and now she has a name and there is art! :)

This is her:

[ID: drawing of a white middle-aged woman with reddish hair and a green sweater. She is hugging herself and holding a pencil. end ID]

She's a very clever scaredy cat <3 Does not like to leave her little town and little life and prefers not to take chances. But has a fascination with Iceland, so she speaks fluent Icelandic. And then her sister buys the two of them a cruise to Iceland and since that's done now and was expensive, she has to go. And she is terrified but come on, it's a cruise, limited amount of space and people, what can go wrong?

And then obviously there's aliens and the Doctor shows up and she is thrown exactly into the type of situation she never ever ever wanted to be part of. But she survives and impresses the Doctor and gets offered a trip in the box. And obviously declines.

But the Doctor keeps showing up in her life and while she hates every instance of it, they become friends. So then she's one of their contacts on Earth and they show up for tea every once in a while. She definitely meets Yaz at least once :)

I don't know. I liked the idea of someone who is predestined for a companion - smart, curious, kind - but would hate travelling with the Doctor. To have the Doctor do their usual 'don't you want to see all of time and space' and go 'no, thanks, love, you do you though'. And she's terrified of all the scary Doctor things because I'm very scared of many things so I can relate. She's a little bit like I imagine I would become if I didn't force myself out there all the time and then turned like 40-something. (Just that I would never go on a cruise.)

Maybe a little bit like how Dan left the TARDIS in the end - even though he is a very different person to start with. I really liked that reasoning for his exit, it felt so natural and rational. I like to think more people would decide like him. Just 'this is awesome, but I can't really enjoy being threatened for my life the whole time, you know?'

18. Can you pick a line/image fragment/etc of your work that encapsulates the last year best for you?

I'll give you both a line and an image because this is my game and I make the rules :)

I'm going with this line:

There was still some time to be the Doctor and Mels Zucker, and she would be damned if she didn’t make the most of it.

From Forget Me Not (Or: Stealing a TARDIS and Running Away)

The writing this year was all about Mels, definitely. I may have given up on the year of the otp challenge, but I have continued writing fic for her - a lkh rewrite is in the works and while she isn't actually in the cat fic, her body shows up there at least (and like, obviously, River is in the fic. Who is the same person but you know what I mean, she's not really Mels anymore). And like always, I wrote a lot of happy-sad Doctorriver, so I think the line fits perfectly.

Plus personal developments this year - well. I wish I was as strong as her but I am quite happy I don't have the same burden to carry either

And then the image fragment has to be this:

[ID: closeup of the lower part of the TARDIS in flight. She resembles the 13th Doctor's model. The background are blue-violet watercolours. end ID]

I have drawn, painted and built the TARDIS at least 4 times last year, plus doodling her countless times on the rims of my exercise books. She is the easiest and most satisfying character to draw in all of dw, what can I say - also I love her and I made a lot of propaganda for the doctorTARDIS ship for @drwho-shipbracket 's tournament which included lots of TARDIS art and fic :D (and that was so much fun!! Thank you again for hosting @drwho-shipbracket!)

[valorantmenheadcanons]

Hello!!! May I please ask for confession headcanons of chamber, kay/o and yoru with a fem!reader? Hehehehrh have a lovely day, and thank you ❤❤❤

Have a good day too 💚 also sorry about the spacing getting weird in the middle of Kayo’s. I wrote half of this on my iPad and the other half on my phone so.. :p

Chamber

okok we all know the man is rich and fancy

but when he confesses? he doesn’t wanna go too hard with it so he puts on a usual suit and gets a bouquet of your favourite flowers

and yknow he could use his usual charming persona OR he could opt to let his guard down a little as a display of trust

it’s the latter

he waits until you’re done working for the day to approach you in your room

he gifts the bouquet which is when you know something is up: either he’s just being nice or he fucked up something you don’t know about yet and is preemptively apologising with flowers

either way they smell nice

“there is… something I wanted to talk to you about”

and now you’re even more confused because when chamber messes something up he owns it. You’re not used to a mildly hesitant chamber, especially not one with pink ears

“did someone die or something? You’re scaring me here chamber”

he is so confused lmao

“no???”

he figures now it might be a little awkward so before it gets any more awkward he’s gonna say it

“I quite enjoy being in your company, madam. More than I probably should, but these feelings for you are very persistent. You are always on my mind and it’s driving me crazy.”

you’re baffled because no way in hell is chamber confessing to you right now

“if you would like to, may I take you out to dinner sometime?”

ok so you had feelings for him too- how could you not with his smug charming self showing up to keep you company so often over the past few months?

“are you asking me on a date?”

“was that not clear?”

ahhhhh and there’s that smile, his confident persona slipping back into place

“just making sure. Did you have anything in mind?”

and it’s not a ‘no’ so chambers heart leaps

Kayo

this dude definitely looked at a wikihow article on how to ask someone out

he’s never done this before and he refuses to ask anyone else for advice

so Kayo shows up at the practice range late at night knowing full well you’ll be there

he swiped some cookies and gives them to you first

”I read that humans like sweet foods as gifts”

you thank him and stop shooting bots to eat them next to him

you notice he’s warmer than usual but chalk it up to Robot Things tm

except that he’s less talkative than he usually is

”are you ok kayo?”

”yes, I’m just thinking about what to say”

”about what?”

”about you. And me. I’ve never felt like this about a human before”

And then it hits you, what he’s talking about

”You humans call it a crush”

And you can’t help a “aweeeee kayo! That’s really sweet. Honestly, I’ve kind of had a... crush on you too but I didn’t want to make it weird between us since you’re a robot and all… I wasn’t sure if you…”

He’s a little bit taken aback, he had hopes this would go well but yknow, hope for the best, prepare for the worst

and now you can definitely feel him heating up even more

”don’t blow a fuse thinking too hard there, iron giant”

”ha-ha”

(id like to imagine he can make little emoticon expressions on his face and there’s a little :) now)

Yoru

OK SO

not be cliche but he writes you a note and sticks it under your door

hes horrible at communicating his feelings but he really wants this to go well and doesn’t want his walnut brain screwing it up

in the note he talks about how much he likes spending time with you, the way you make him laugh

of course he’s gonna lightly tease you, even in the note because it’s yoru

and then he writes about how you make him feel, how it’s hard to think straight around you

he feels so stupid writing it but it’s the safest option for his emotionally constipated ass

the morning after you receive the note you head to his room to talk to him about it

he opens the door in his pajamas, sleep tussled hair, morning voice in all it’s glory

he’s half awake but the sight of you in front of him holding his note is like ice cold water to the face

”so… I read your note”

he is so on edge

”I’m really happy you feel the same way I do, yoru”

he can’t help the “really?” That slips out

”I didn’t take you for a love letter kind of guy though” you tease

”it’s not a love letter! I just.. I didn’t wanna mess it up”

he’s got a pout on his face but a tight hug has him smiling into your hair

[oodlyenough]

I agree particularly about Iris. As soon as we got the twin reveal in 3-5 I felt the writing started to veer towards this meme:

And the difference, to me, was that at least Evil Baby Dahlia makes a fun, compelling character, while Iris suffers from being less flashy/funny and from being attached to a romance Capcom drops as abruptly as they introduce it.

In that regard Iris' writing bothered me a lot more from a feminist POV than Dahlia's did. That we never got to see her and Pearl interact, and especially that the only thing we got of them was ... Pearl being jealous on Maya's behalf of Iris/Phoenix lmao.... urgh. I am much more interested in how Iris relates to Dahlia and the rest of the Feys (and how the Feys relate to her) than I am in Iris/Phoenix, especially in the flat way the game presented it.

I definitely agree that it's impossible for me to imagine them sliding into being best friends; there's a lot of baggage there whether the game was prepared to acknowledge it or not, and while I can sort-of buy there might be an initial desire to hash things out and bury the hatchet/etc, I certainly don't see it developing into a healthy romantic relationship long-term and I don't even really imagine it turning into a close friendship, even before you factor in what's coming down the pipe with AA4. Phoenix is basically an honorary Fey, so I'm sure they'd run into each other sometimes, be friendly/polite, have a soft spot for each other, but that's kind of as far as makes sense for me.

...people feeling the need to push female characters into neat little boxes of "completely and utterly evil" or "perfect sweetheart who's never done anything wrong ever" [...] way people treat often the Hawthornes, especially Iris.

That's very much how I feel, too. And unfortunately the twins are really set up by Capcom for fandom to take them in those exact directions. Iris has been kind of an itch I've wanted to scratch since finishing AA3, in that the writing didn't sit very well for me and on one hand I'm not especially inclined to "fix" it (via fic) but on the other hand it ... just bugs me that it wasn't better. 3-5 had so, so much I loved and then dropped the ball on some things in a major way for me and I find it frustrating. One of those things was how it (under)wrote Iris and Iris/Phoenix.

it's pretty much the only scene where it feels like the game is being somewhat pitying to her story. In other scenes she's pretty much always framed as an evil, wolf-in-sheep's-clothing type of character.

On Dahlia, I agree that she's treated in the story as pretty unequivocally Born Evil. I mean she's literally on the stand in 3-5 like "your honour I was born evil and I died evil and I'm still evil posthumously", lmfao. This... actually doesn't really bother me very much, from a feminist pov, because I think it's comparable to how male villains are treated in the trilogy (neither Engarde or MVK are sympathetic and their motivates are equally or more one-dimensional), and also because the trilogy has many other female characters of varying types and development, so Dahlia doesn't come across as representative the way she otherwise could. Also just because Dahlia is such a fun, lively, memorable character, IMO. No other trilogy villain gets to star in 3 cases! So she didn't really feel left behind by the narrative to me the way Iris does. She appeals to me the same way a character like Gone Girl's Amy Dunne appeals to me.

If I were to rewrite anything in particular about Dahlia's story I'd probably tweak the writing around Fawles. Either make them closer in age or draw more attention to the gross discrepancy. My inclination would be to close the gap, because I think it sucks that Capcom chose a gross enough age gap to overshadow the rest of the story when the story itself isn't interested in that element. (Of course. Look at Turnabout Big Top, lol...) So I also get that some fans are seeing that, seeing how gross the idea of "my teen angel" is, and working from there to address it in their meta/fic. But Fawles is far from Dahlia's only kill and we don't even really have many details there, so recasting her as a sort of Jennifer's Body quasifeminist revenge tale doesn't interest me personally.

But there's places in her story where the basic facts of it mean she might have been more sympathetic, for sure, and I take the comparison to Diego. (Incidentally, I was ... not a fan of how the story framed him, lol.) There are some instances in the story where what Dahlia tells us and what another character (usually Bikini or Iris) tells us don't align -- for eg whether it was Mr Hawthorne who decided to get rid of Iris or whether it was, as Dahlia claims, actually her idea. So I think those discrepancies, intentional or not, are interesting and if someone is so inclined you can ask yourself how much of Dahlia's "born evil" persona is genuine and how much is something she's adopted as a self-defense mechanism. How much is Iris right about her just needing love/support and how much is Dahlia just like that? Nature vs nurture is the classic twin story. AA3 only touches it briefly.

I've been thinking a lot about how fandom attitudes towards female characters shift, and how a lot of the outright hatred that was once prevalent now is replaced by "girlboss" "mom friend" "only braincell" type discourse... and also about the Hawthorne twins and what I see of them in fandom vs canon.

It's interesting to me that I see a lot of what feels like a fandom desire to rehabilitate Dahlia as a character from a feminist perspective, sometimes taken as a given that her canon material was bad, when ...tbqh I don't really feel that she needs it. If I think of characters wronged by their canon text, Dahlia wouldn't make the list. Even a surface-level reading of Dahlia is, imo, a compelling character, with clear motivations, consistent behaviour, agency. She's funny and memorable. You can dig deeper into speculation and headcanon territory with Dahlia (and I totally get the impulse, she's great and there's lots of potential there) but I don't think you need to do that to make her a solid character, I think she already is. I don't think she's any less complex than the other trilogy villains, and if anything she's a lot more complex already than someone like Engarde, and on par with Von Karma.

On the other hand, I think Iris got some paper-thin writing as "the good twin" and, let's be honest, a feeble attempt to set up a heterosexual romance for Phoenix which gets dropped in subsequent games anyway. There are interesting possible complexities to tease out of Iris, just as with Dahlia; Iris facilitates or participates in some pretty messed-up things, but Phoenix and the story are very forgiving, which just flattens her out further into Good Twin. I don't think the canon is very interested in Iris outside of her role as plot twist doppelganger and occasional blush sprite... and mostly it seems the fanon Iris gets in response is to quadruple down on those things. She's pure and kind and sweet, besties with Phoenix, their relationship is cast as something wholesome and innocent, despite the uh objective reality of it.

What about the Iris who helps her sister plan harebrained criminal schemes only to back out at last second, the Iris who fell in love with Feenie despite herself and yet continued to lie and place him in danger for eight months, who watched Dahlia get a death sentence without ever coming clean ... Those things are the aspects that would make her a multidimensional character, imo, but they're ignored and/or glossed over in the story and (what I've seen of) fandom. And I don't say this to mean that she's evil or irredeemable or something, she isn't -- just that the basic fact of her actions is a lot messier than is usually acknowledged, by canon or fanon. For the canon I think the reasons are obvious and not flattering; for fandom, I think the intentions are generally positive, trying to correct for the opposite end of the spectrum (and 20 years ago the attitude was probably quite different), but I still wish female characters were given more space to be complicated in ways that include being kind of fucked up actually.