#not good for writing

[fanwarriorfictions]

Help Me, Help You - Part Two

Fenrys x F!Reader

Summary- Embarking on their journey, Y/n and Fenrys slowly start to learn a little more about each other, to Y/n’s utter annoyance.

Warnings- none

Series Masterlist

Part Two

Y/n follows the golden male, her own pack strapped to her back. Only the essentials, clothes, weapons, and gold, if she needed anything else she could buy it along the way.

They walked for what felt like eternity, the road was well worn into the forest floor, coated in dry fallen leaves, winter would hit here soon. The wind held that chill, bringing it from the northern point of the continent, a familiar feeling on her skin.

The nearest port city would take them nearly another whole day to walk to, and who knew how long after that to get passage to the southern continent.

Y/n had been half tempted to shift and run to their destination, but she stuck to Fenrys, after all she’d sought him out for a reason. As night soon approached, Y/n found herself walking closer to the male’s side. Her brother had told her many stories of the creatures that lurked in the shadows.

“So,” Fenrys says, breaking the long silence they’d fallen into, “If you don’t mind me asking, where’d the cat form come from? Vaughan is the furthest thing from feline.”

A question she’d heard most of her life, one she dreaded deeply.

“None of your business,” Y/n says, and there’s a bite to her voice that she can’t hide.

“No need to get testy, kitten.” The nickname had stuck long after they’d left that little village to her utter dismay. “Just trying to get to know my new partner in crime.”

She glares at him, “We have different fathers, that’s all you need to know.”

It was the simplest version of the story, the only one she was willing to share.

“See was that so hard?”

The male is grinning at her, the expression pulling uncomfortably on the large scars that adorned the side of his face, from his brow to his jaw, just barely missing the onyx eyes that examined her just as closely as she did him.

“Why’d they send you out to look for him?”

Fenrys raises that scarred brow, “I volunteered.”

She hums, looking back at the path before them. The sun was starting to set, turning the sky a deep orange.

“We’ll set up camp here,” Fenrys says, taking his small pack off his shoulders, “Start the fire and I’ll find us something to eat.”

He didn’t give her any time to respond, shifting in a flash into a brilliant white wolf. Y/n took a step back from the to large creature, her heart leaping in her chest.

Her brother had told her of the Moonbeam twins, of their opposite colored forms that could tear men in two with a simple snap of their jaws. She didn’t want to find out what those teeth would feel like around her throat.

The wolf stared at her, a knowing look in those onyx eyes. He turned, darting into the woods, leaving her alone, leaving her to figure out how to start a damn fire.

It didn’t take him long to hunt down a few rabbits, Fenrys was already on his way back before the sun had turned the sky a deep purple.

He’d expected to find a small fire, not Y/n glaring intently at a bundle of sticks and some dried leaves. She clutches another small stick in her hand, holding it tightly enough that it bends beneath her grip.

“I don’t think you can threaten it into starting,” he says, “Though I’d sure love to see you try.”

She startled, looking up at him with wide eyes, her posture rigid, like she was ready to bolt. It takes her a second to really look at him, to realize he’s not a threat, before she relaxes, turning her glare back on the little pile of sticks.

“I can’t get it to start,” she says, throwing that poor bent stick down on the ground.

“Staring at it isn’t going to help,” Fenrys laughs, “Do you even know how?”

Her glare shoot up to him, snapping, “Yes.”

The way she says it, the harsh tone, the self conscious edge to it, tells him that, no, she doesn’t know how to do it.

“What? No one taught you any survival skills, kitten?” Fenrys asks, “I would’ve thought dear old brother would have at least shown you the basics. He always was the outdoorsman of the group.”

Y/n doesn’t snap back like he thought she would, only glares back down at that little pile, as if she could will the fire into starting.

Fenrys sighs, kneeling down in the dirt beside her, taking one of the larger sticks into his hand, placing the slightly sharp edge against one of small pieces of tree bark. Using both his hands to turn the stick back and forth, pushing down with each turn to create more friction. It only takes a few moments for the bark to start smoking, and then a small flame catches, spreading to the dried leaves packed around it.

Fenrys glances at the female beside him, those keen eyes watch his hands closely, like she was trying to memorize the motions.

She seemingly feels his gaze, her eyes jumping up to meet his own, he sees the embarrassment as soon as it hits.

“I haven’t left home much,” she explains, “No one saw fit to teach me.”

She shifts uncomfortably beneath his gaze, so Fenrys looks away, turning his attention to their dinner. He sees her watching in his peripherals as he prepares the the little creatures to be cooked. Her eyes are intently on his hands, watching each cut of his knife. Fenrys takes his time, slowing the motions down, silently teaching.

Fenrys throws the meat onto the fire, “I don’t know much about your brother if I’m being completely honest.”

“Not many do,” Y/n answers, those eyes still on the roasting rabbit, “He’s always been very private, even at home.”

“And where’s that?” Fenrys asks, “Home?”

Finally, those keen eyes look up, lit up by the fire, they look even more cat like than usual.

“North,” she says, quietly like the information was a secret, “A very small village in the Cambrian Mountains.”

Fenrys wouldn’t ask the name of the village, it’s likely he’s never even heard of it, “How’d you get so far from home?”

He didn’t add the fact that she didn’t know basic survival skills, yet the narrowed eyes tells him she heard the unspoken words.

“I traveled much in my other form,” she explains, “The Oakwald Forrest Cats are well used to the cold.”

With the long thick coat he’d seen, it wasn’t a surprise.

“I knew I’d recognized that cat,” Fenrys says.

He’d seen them near Terrasen, yet he’d never seen a fae shift into one. Though many of the fae of Erilea had been long hunted down, the few that remained, the ones he’d found to help them, there hadn’t been a cat among them.

“A gift from my father,” she says blandly, an edge to her voice like the last time he’d asked about her family. Seems her father was a sore spot for her, he tucked that knowledge away for later.

He hums, turning the stick holding his dinner to roast the other side. She did the same with her own, staring into the flame intently for several long minutes.

There was a familiar look in her eyes, one he’d seen in his own many times, like she was lost in a memory, lost in the emotion it came with.

So Fenrys took his dinner from the fire, nudging her own towards her, “Eat up.”

Without even looking at him, or looking away from that spot in the fire, she took her food and ate silently, methodically.

Once she was done, she shifted in a bright flash, curling into a small ball by the fire, her back to him. A clear statement, I don’t want to talk.

He knew the feeling all too well.

They arrived at the small city just south of the Naval port around midday, far quicker than she expected. Fenrys had gone to the docks to look for passage, leaving Y/n to wander the city by herself.

It wasn’t much, yet it was bigger than what she was used to, louder too. There was many voices, vendors hawking their goods, children playing, musicians singing and dancing to music played on improvised instruments.

Overwhelming, Y/n could only stare at it all in her cat form. Moving through crowds and over high beams, dodging hands that reached to pet her soft coat, hissing at to curious people who tried to grab her.

“Here, kitty kitty kitty,” a voice behind her, familiar and annoying.

Fenrys stood there, the human crowds parting around the obviously fae male. He was smiling devilishly at her, holding out what seemed to be a piece of ham from the wrapped sandwich in his hand.

She hissed at him, swatting the offering.

“Awe, come on,” he coos, “Don’t you want a treat, kitten?”

A man walking beside them fell straight on his ass when Y/n shifted, growling at Fenrys.

“Stop calling me that.”

“What? It suits you,” he leans closer to her, drawling out the word, “Kitten. Hey!”

He yells as Y/n rips the sandwich from his grasp. Turning on her heel to stalk away from him while she took a pointedly large bite.

“That was mine,” Fenrys whines, catching up to her in a few strides.

“And where’s mine?” She asks with a raised brow, taking another bite.

“I asked if you were hungry earlier,” Fenrys sighs, throwing his hands in the air, “You’re the one who said no.”

Y/n shrugs, “What’d you find at the docks, anything?”

Fenrys sighs again, turning his gaze away from his stolen sandwich to glare at the sky. That wasn’t good, Y/n thought, they’d be stuck here for weeks waiting for a ship to take them across the sea. Vaughan could be well on his way to the other side of the vast southern continent, and she’d never find him.

“Nothing?” She asks, lowering her hands from her mouth.

Fenrys moves quickly, snatching the lunch from her, “No, actually we leave in the morning.”

She gapes at him, “That was-“

“Mine actually,” he cuts in, biting directly where her mouth had just been, “Did Vaughan not teach you to always keep your guard up either? That was like taking candy from a baby.”

Y/n snarls at him, and Fenrys just laughs. She tries to grab it from him, but the male just held it high above his head, far far above her own.

“Oh quit with the hissing, kitten,” Fenrys laughs, “I’ll get you your own, we need to stock up for our trip anyways.”

“Quit calling me that, you oaf,” she snaps.

Fenrys smirks, patting her head with his free hand once, snatching the hand back as she went to swipe at him.

“Quit reacting so much and maybe I’ll stop.”

She doesn’t respond, only bearing her teeth at him, to which he only laughs, turning on his heel to saunter through the market. Y/n quickly realizes he wasn’t going to wait for her, assuming she’d just follow.

Swearing under her breath, she did just that. Jogging to catch up to the male, who still had that insufferable smirk on his lips as she settled into step beside him.

“I thought you were going to sit there and pout all day,” Fenrys says.

She was half tempted to claw at his smirking face and give him a matching scar on the other side.

“You owe me a sandwich.”

He laughs, “Someone’s mean when she’s hungry. Good to know, I‘ll pack extra snacks.”

“Shut up.”

They spent a several hours traversing through the vast city markets, stocking up on dried meats and cheeses that would hold well on the trip down to the southern continent. Once their bags were packed to the brim, they made their way to the ship, where they’d spend the next few weeks. It was set to leave first thing in the morning, so they hadn’t bothered to find an inn to stay the night in.

Fenrys had been relieved to find a ship that would take them, let alone one that was headed straight to the continent. And in his time on ships, he could say this was one of the nicer ones he’d been on.

The owner was a merchant, one that traded in silks and thread, he claimed to have tailored for Hasar herself. Knowing the female, Fenrys highly doubted she would let the sniveling man anywhere near her.

Fenrys had more than enough gold to pay for the trip across the sea, and enough to splurge on a private room away from the shared hammocks below deck.

He dropped his heavy pack onto the small desk by the door, falling face first onto the small bunk pressed against the wall with a satisfied groan. Fenrys appreciated the gentle sway of the ship beneath him, mostly because it was about to take him far away from this suffocating continent.

Behind him, Y/n quietly shut their door, carefully arranging her bag onto the opposite bunk, much more refined than his careless approach.

Fenrys turned his head just enough to see her. Either she didn’t notice his gaze or didn’t care, her focus stays on her bag, on the clothes she dug out. She methodically arranged her items, something Fenrys noticed she did a lot, she’d done it that morning when they packed out their little camp, later in the market when she stored away her things. Like there was something soothing about the repetition, like it calmed whatever was happening in her mind.

Fenrys would like to learn something similar, if only to stop the endless thoughts and emotions that, even after several months, still ran constantly through his head.

Her eyes finally turned to him, catching his stare. Suddenly he felt like he wasn’t meant to be watching, and the embarrassment of being caught had his cheeks darkening. There was really no reason for it, it wasn’t like he’d been watching her change.

“I’m going to go freshen up,” she says casually, her eyes not missing the blush, “Don’t miss me to much.”

She moved to the door, and Fenrys found himself tracking the movement, pushing up to rest on his elbows. She moved silently, like she always did, that feline grace that would put the silent assassins of the red desert to shame.

“I miss you already, kitten,” Fenrys sighs dramatically as she opens the door.

A hiss, a slam of the door, and she’s gone. Fenrys smiled to himself, settling back into his bunk. The gentle sway of the ship had him yawning before to long, the somewhat comfortable bunk didn’t help either, compared to the last few sleeping arrangements it was like laying on a cloud

As he drifted off to sleep, he saw keen eyes watching him, directly through his mask of confidence and swagger, staring into his soul, broken and dark, yet not seeming to care. Fenrys could only stare back, wishing he could see past her own shields.

Tag List

@emma-andrea

[sanguinifex]

You gotta read and watch some old books and films that aren’t 100% modern politically correct. I’m not saying you should agree with everything in them but you need to learn where genres came from to understand what those genres are doing today and where media deconstructing old tropes is coming from.

Also, more often than you might think, they’re not actually promoting bigotry so much as “didn’t consider all the implications of something” or just used words that were polite then but considered offensive now.

Kill the censor in your head.

[crookedtines]

I finally took the time to photograph my vintage dip pen nib collection, and I need to share with you all how wonderful and diverse their designs are.

These two are my favorite. Just look at them! One of them is named Gorille and the other Mephisto, but to me they're little pumpkins.

And of course you gotta love the Pinocchio nib. You get to write with the nose of a tiny guy! Just not something you get to do anymore.

[frankierotwinkdeath]

Y’all want Taylor Swift to be gay so bad but you won’t even write femslash about her

[noperopesaredope]

I wish we had more female characters like Eleanor Shellstrop. One of the most unlikable people you've ever met. Read a Buzzfeed article on most rude things you can do on a daily basis and decided to use that as a list of goals. Makes everyone's day worse just by being there. Dropped a margarita mix on the ground and tried to pick it up, only to get hit by a row of shopping carts which pushed her into the road where she was hit by a boner pill delivery truck, killing her instantly. Cannot keep a romantic partner despite being bisexual. Had a terrible childhood but will die before she gets therapy. Best employee at a scam company. Just the worst but also can't help but root for her to improve.

Absolute loser. Girl-failure. Bad at almost everything. Literally perfect female character.

[avaantares]

Yet another AO3 bot situation - please spread the word!

Hi, it's me again, the person who wrote that viral post about fanfiction plagiarism! Today I'm here to warn you about abuse perpetrated by bots who have stolen AO3 usernames.

There's currently an epidemic of bots going around leaving (apparently random) horrible, hateful comments on people's fics. This isn't the first time bots have invaded AO3, but the big problem with this wave is that they're using real AO3 usernames to do it.

I learned about this when another writer contacted me after receiving the following comment on their story:

Now, while that is my username, I DEFINITELY did not leave this comment (and anyone who would leave something like that on a fic should be slapped! What an awful thing to post). This fic is in a completely unrelated fandom that I have never participated in, nor has that author participated in any of my fandoms, so the probability of it being some intentional fandom drama thing to make me look bad is also low.

The writer whose fic the comment was left on enlisted the aid of some friends and tracked down other guest comments with unrelated usernames attached, which is pretty strong evidence that they are being left by bots at random.

The TL;DR: If you receive a cruel comment from a (Guest) with an actual AO3 username attached, it's most likely from a bot. Please do not lash out at or dogpile the AO3 user who owns that name, and who in all likelihood has no idea that their name has been hijacked for evil.

If finding this kind of comment on a fic, even left by a bot, is likely to upset you, I would recommend changing your comment settings so that only users who are logged in can leave comments. To do this, edit your story settings, and under "Privacy," select the radio button that says "Only registered users can comment," as shown below.

Please spread the word to other AO3 users! And if you see mean guest comments on other fics, maybe let the author know that it's probably from a bot and not a real person who thinks their writing is bad.

[lo-fag]

idk man. i just think itd be really cool if sign language classes were mandatory throughout primary school. yeah because it would make communication with deaf kids and autistic/nonverbal kids much easier. and those kids would be accessible to the others so they could make friends and have healthy relationships. yeah. and kids would eat that shit up man. like their own little secret language? they love that.

[sanguinarysanguinity]

Expanding a thought from a conversation this morning:

In general, I think "Is X out-of-character?" is not a terribly useful question for a writer. It shuts down possibility, and interesting directions you could take a character.

A better question, I believe, is "What would it take for Character to do X?" What extremity would she find herself in, where X starts to look like a good idea? What loyalties or fears leave him with X as his only option? THAT'S where a potentially interesting story lies.

In practice, I find that you can often justify much more from a character than you initially dreamed you could: some of my best stories come from "What might drive Character to do [thing he would never do]?" As long as you make it clear to the reader what the hell pushed your character to this point, you've got the seed of a compelling story on your hands.

[inkskinned]

this is just my opinion but i think any good media needs obsession behind it. it needs passion, the kind of passion that's no longer "gentle scented candle" and is now "oh shit the house caught on fire". it needs a creator that's biting the floorboards and gnawing the story off their skin. creators are supposed to be wild animals. they are supposed to want to tell a story with the ferocity of eating a good stone fruit while standing over the sink. the same protective, strange instinct as being 7 and making mud potions in pink teacups: you gotta get weird with it.

good media needs unhinged, googling-at-midnight kind of energy. it needs "what kind of seams are invented on this planet" energy and "im just gonna trust the audience to roll with me about this" energy. it needs one person (at least) screaming into the void with so much drive and energy that it forces the story to be real.

sometimes people are baffled when fanfic has some stunning jaw-dropping tattoo-it-on-you lines. and i'm like - well, i don't go here, but that makes sense to me. of fucking course people who have this amount of passion are going to create something good. they moved from a place of genuine love and enjoyment.

so yeah, duh! saturday cartoons have banger lines. random street art is sometimes the most precious heart-wrenching shit you've ever seen. someone singing on tiktok ends up creating your next favorite song. youtubers are giving us 5 hours of carefully researched content. all of this is the impossible equation to latestage capitalism. like, you can't force something to be good. AI cannot make it good. no amount of focus-group testing or market research. what makes a story worth listening to is that someone cares so much about telling it - through dance, art, music, whatever it takes - that they are just a little unhinged about it.

one time my friend told me he stayed up all night researching how many ways there are to peel an orange. he wrote me a poem that made me cry on public transportation. the love came through it like pith, you know? the words all came apart in my hands. it tasted like breakfast.

[theoldaeroplane]

worried that thing you put in your art or writing or game or music is too self-indulgent, too self-referential, too niche for anyone but yourself? fear not! you can do whatever you want forever. and you should.

[linipikk]

Aziraphale shielding Crowley from water

and Crowley shielding Aziraphale from fire

[prolibytherium]

One of my all time biggest pet peeves with historical(ish) fantasy is when the writer constructs a religion with a clear bias that it's stupid and false and therefore only the Stupid People and/or commoners believe in it and all the smart/elite main characters are like, quasi-atheists or otherwise just routinely flout established religious conventions of orthodoxy and/or orthopraxy because they're Too Smart for it or etc.

It's usually an extension of assumptions that people in the past were just less intelligent than in the contemporary, just being like "I know that the sun is a star millions of miles away that the earth orbits, but this ancient religion describes it as a chariot flying through the sky" and not really bothering to learn the context and just (consciously or subconsciously) settling on 'that's a crazy thing to think and was probably believed in because they were Stupid'.

And that whole attitude pisses me off so much. People were as 'smart' 10,000 years ago as they are today. These beliefs aren't just desperate, random flailing to explain phenomena that could not directly be accounted for either, it's not like people just looked at the sun and went "Uhhh I don't know what the fuck that thing is, actually. I guess it might be a chariot or a boat or something?? Yeah let's go with that." and based entire religious practices on this. Every well-established belief system exists within broader contexts of cultural values/subjective perceptions of reality/knowledge systems/etc, and exist as part of a historical continuum of religious practices that came before. Even when not Materially Correct, they have context and internal logic, they're not always dead literal with zero levels of allegory, and they're never a result of stupidity.

[heywriters]

If you want to write a dumb little story with a dumb little plot and ridiculously silly characters. No one's stopping you. Genuinely, no one should be allowed to stop you. Write that dumb story with your whole heart and don't hold back.

[whetstonefires]

I do have a piece of writing advice, actually.

See, the first time I grew parsnips, I fucked it up good. I hadn't seen parsnips sprouting before, right, and in my eagerness I was keeping a close eye on the row. And every time I saw some intruding grass coming up, I twitched it right out, and went back to anticipating the germination of my parsnips.

But it turns out parsnips take a bit longer than anything else I'd ever grown to distinguish themselves visually. It's just the two little split leaves, almost identical to a newly seeded bit of kentucky bluegrass when they first come up, and they take a good bit to establish themselves and spread out flat before the main stem with its first distinctive scallopy leaf gets going.

I didn't get any parsnips, not that year, because I'd weeded them all out as soon as they showed their faces, with my 'ugh no that's grass' twitchy horticulture finger.

The next year, having in retrospect come to suspect what had happened, I left the row alone and didn't weed anything until all the sprouts coming up had all had a bit to set in and show their colors, and I've grown lots of parsnips since. They're kind of a slow crop, not a huge return, but I like them and watching them grow and digging them up, and their papery little seeds in the second year, if you don't harvest one either on purpose or because you misjudged the frost, so it's worth it.

Anyway, whenever I see someone stuck and struggling with their writing who's gotten into that frustration loop of typing a few words, rejecting them, backspacing, and starting again, I find myself thinking, you gotta stop weeding your parsnips, man.

[smoosie]

(Which arm, Viktor, huh ? Which one ??)

They were not a couple so, Jayce (who had a very bad day and just wanted to hug it out) proceeded to freak out, backed out of the lab and never mentioned it again but, Astral Viktor, that mf ? He'd be delighted to remind Jayce of that moment in time, of that missed call and watch him die from embarrassment and resentment over himself

(I'm glad they've never beaten the gay allegations and never will)