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therealvalkyrie · 4 years ago

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Red Cloak, Silver Dagger

Pairing/setting: Levi Ackerman x Female!Reader, canonverse, established relationship, set just prior to the Battle for Trost arc.

Summary: When you’re caught nearly weaponless in the woods, can you talk your way out of a mugging?

Word Count: 2.3k

Warnings: canon typical violence, gun violence, blood, death, knife violence, profanity, angst with a tidbit of fluff at the end

AN: This morning I woke up and chose ~angst~ so that’s what y’all are getting:) I will be the first to admit that I wrote this while soaking in the bath in the notes app of my phone well into the evening. The only editing it’s seen is when I transcribed it to a google doc and then one more pass at 1am. So, there may be errors ahead. Either way, I hope you enjoy, and as always my dms/inbox are open if you have questions/suggestions/fun facts about baluga whales! i’m off to sleeb:) ~valkyrie

The man in front of you is clearly scared shitless: hand trembling, face blotchy with red, mouth set in a grimace meant to be intimidating. It would almost be comical, a caricature of terror, were it not for the shotgun.

He heaves two shallow, shoulder-raising breaths before speaking again.

“I said get down on the ground!”

Just like the first time he said it, you do no such thing. Your hands remain held up in surrender, placating and gentle, and you remain where you are, but your calm eyes never leave his.

“Sir, I’m certain we can work this out without needing to dirty ourselves, don’t you agree?” Your voice is even, if a little breathy, and you do your best to sound agreeable. “Is there something I may help you with?”

Your breath clouds out from your mouth as you speak. It’s the dead of winter (colder than a witch’s left tit, as your grandma would say) and you can feel the frigid air begin to creep its way in between the folds of your scarf and cloak. The snow has melted through the hole in your right boot in a similar fashion, soaking the wool sock and numbing your pinky toe.

You’re not scared of this man, you decide, for all his gun-wielding and yelling. He looks like a farmer type, complete with fur lined coat and sturdy boots. Probably just down on his luck, pushed to robbing people in the woods to make ends meet. You’re not scared of him, you decide, even as the cold air catches in your constricting throat and your heart thuds against your ribs.

He’s probably only targeted you because you look so benign today. It is your day off, after all, and you’re wearing civilian clothing, red wool traveling cloak draped over you. Even your hair is down today rather than in a practical bun. Admittedly, you look downright innocent.

And to a certain extent, you are. Without your ODM gear and swords, your training means nothing. The only weapon you have is a dagger tucked into your boot, but even that is useless if you can’t reach for it without getting shot. You’ll have to talk your way out.

The man snorts, a measure of contempt twisting his expression. “The only way you can help me, girly, is by getting on the ground and handing over your money purse.”

You smile sympathetically. “Oh, then I’m afraid I actually can’t help you, sir. I don’t have any money, and I find myself rather averse to laying in a foot of snow.”

“Ha, what a load of shit. You townies always have valuables on you.” His contemptuous sneer solidifies, and he looks at you down the barrel of the shotgun with slightly more confidence.

“Ah, well I’m not a townie, you see.” You hope this is the right tack to take, implying living at the military base through the other side of the woods. It’s a much more serious crime to murder a Survey Corps soldier than a girl who took the wrong path through the woods home. You just hope he possesses the critical thinking skills to come to that same conclusion.

You can see the gears turning for a moment before a gruff, “What do you mean you don’t live in town? You’re not a farmer’s daughter, I’d’ve recognized you.”

The short laugh bubbles out of your lungs before you can tamp it down. “No, I’m not a farmer’s daughter.” Wish I was, right now. “I’m a soldier on the base.”

At this, he pales and starts shaking again. He readjusts his stance in the snow, tip of the shotgun wavering, as the panic starts to set in again.

“Shit,” he says, almost to himself, and shifts again.

“Shit,” you agree. “But I promise you, I won’t tell if you don’t. If you let me go home right now.”

He considers for a moment, gears seemingly hand-cranked at the rate they’re going, then decides you’re a liar.

“Liar,” he says. “Who’s to say you won’t report this directly to your superiors? Who’s to say you’re tellin’ the truth?”

Sweat begins to gather beneath your scarf despite the cold, beads of it slipping down the back of your neck. This is not going as intended.

“I promise you, I have no quarrel with you. Just let me go.” Your voice thins out, nearly pleading, with the last phrase. I’m not gonna die today, in some shitty forest in the shitty snow. I don’t wanna die today.

What would Levi say about losing your cool like this?

He doesn’t seem to hear you, though, as his lips are moving, eyes narrowed and locked on yours. Occasional phrases register: “...can’t be caught…”; “...stupid girl...?”; “...fuckin’ Marcy askin’ me…”.

You lick your chapped lips and try again.

“Please,” your voice cracks on the dry air this time. “Just let me go. I don’t have anything of value, I won’t tell my superiors, please.” It ends on an unexpected sob and you know that you’ve lost any aura of cool detachment you may have had.

Suddenly you’re talking over each other, voices panicked and raised. Yours threaded with fear, his with near mania.

“Stupid girl, you’ll just report-”

“I promise I won’t, I-”

“-can’t afford a charge-”

“-just want to go home-”

“-Marcy would have my head-”

“Please, won’t you just listen-”

“-CAN’T TRUST A GODDAMNED BITCH-”

“I’M NOT A THREAT TO YOU-”

“WON’T YOU SHUT UP!”

The shot rings off the trees and through your ears, a crack of gunpowder that sends crows flying from a nearby beech tree.

In the next split second, you feel the punching pressure in your abdomen and you double over, clutching hands to your stomach. You try to maintain footing, but the snow has other plans, catching under your heels until you land flat on your back.

Your stomach feels like it’s on fire, searing with white-hot pain. It feels like a brand has been shoved into your intestines and left there to burn away your body.

Not a brand, a bullet, you realize when you stretch blood-drenched fingers up towards the sky. You can’t feel them, but you know they’re yours because the gloves had been a gift from Levi last year. Soft hide leather, lined with fur. At least two months’ salary, now stained with crimson.

A high-pitched keening escapes your mouth, though you don’t know how, because it feels like all the air left your body when you fell. Your chest is tight, breathing ragged, but the sharp air brings clarity with it.

Hands suddenly scramble, gathering as much fabric as possible to press to the wound. A cry punches out of you at the renewed pain the pressure brings, but you grit your teeth through it and push up to sitting. Adrenaline is the only thing keeping you alive at this point, driving you to reach with one hand to grab your dagger from your boot.

You look up, now, towards the farmer. He’s trudging through the snow towards you now, expression half horrified, half determined, still gripping his gun. He seems determined to see your death through to the end, so you make a split-second decision.

It’s only a quick shift of your grip on the dagger, a calculated moment of aim, and a practiced wrist-flicking throw before he stops dead in his tracks. The blade is lodged in his neck, blood spurting from his carotid artery in bursts along with his pulse. One beat, another, and he’s fallen to his knees, gun slipping from his grasp. Finally, decisively, permanently, his body thuds face down in the snow.

“Perfect,” you whisper, and smile serenely, before following suit.

Levi and the rest of his squad watch in horror as your body slumps to the ground. It’s quite the picture: blood staining pristine snow around two bodies in the middle of scenic woods, your red cloak spread around you in perfect drama.

They had only caught the tail end of the altercation, riding around the corner just in time to see your impeccable dagger throw. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Levi is damn impressed with the skill of it.

A horrified sound escapes his lungs, and then he’s urging his horse forward towards you. You look deathly ashen against your cloak, one hand tangled loosely in it on your stomach, the other dropped unceremoniously at your side.

Levi slides smoothly from the saddle in favor of running the last few steps to your side before crashing down on his knees to hover over you. Eld and Petra are directly on his heels, the latter shouting something back to the other two. Her voice sounds tinny and distant to his ears as he puts pressure on your abdomen.

Please don’t be dead, don’t be dead, don’t be dead, is caught on a loop in his mind. He leans his ear over your face and catches the faintest touch of hot breath. Not dead yet, not dead yet, not dead yet.

Eld is on your other side, still as a statue with two fingers pressed to your neck.

“There’s a pulse,” he announces, and Petra, who’s anxiously leaned over the trio on the ground, takes a shuddering breath of relief.

“Gunther’s gone back to tell the surgeon to get ready,” she tells Levi. “We need to get her back.”

Levi nods numbly, then swings his own cloak off of his shoulders to help stem the blood.

“Eld,” he directs in a deceivingly steady voice. “You help me get her on my horse.”

The blond nods, maneuvering to scoop you up in his arms.

“One, two, three.” He lifts you with a grunt, still on his knees, then stands while allowing Levi to keep continuous pressure on the wound.

You groan and shift weakly in Eld’s arms, prompting Levi to lean down and murmur directly in your ear.

“I know, my love, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, it’s only for now. Stay with me, darling, it’ll be over soon,” he practically coos as your lashes flutter and face twists in pain.

Oluo brings forward Levi’s horse and the three men manage to wrangle you up into the saddle. Levi settles behind you, one hand gripping the reins and the other firmly around your middle.

With a whinny, his horse wheels around and he’s riding as fast as he dares back to base.

Not dead yet, not yet, not yet.

The first night after surgery, Levi stations himself in a chair by your infirmary bed. He practically growls at the first nurse who suggests that visiting hours are over, who scuttles away in alarm but nevertheless leaves him in peace. He passes the time by staring at the candle diminishing on your bedside table and mentally berating himself for letting you go to town alone.

Ha, as if she wouldn’t’ve gone anyway.

You look so fragile in the candlelight that Levi is afraid you’ll start melting away like mist if he tries to touch you. Despite this, he finds himself periodically reaching for your wrist, the steady pulse underneath his fingertips assuring him that you’re real.

The first day after surgery, the whole squad comes to visit, bringing tea and pulling up chairs around your bed to keep vigil with their captain. Hardly a word is said between them, but Petra sniffles occasionally and Gunther leans elbows on his knees and stares resolutely at your right hand.

Oluo tries once, “Did you see that knife throw? Fuckin’ impressive.”

They all murmur in assent as Levi feels the side of his mouth quirk up in a sort of melancholy pride.

Fuckin’ impressive indeed.

The second night after your surgery, Levi can feel himself beginning to split at the seams. When the nurse finally blows out all the lamps and leaves him with a sympathetic look over her shoulder, he dares to crawl into bed with you, lying on his side a careful few inches away.

At first he just stares. At the way your lips are parted in sleep, at the curve of your nose, at the delicate way your lashes lie on your cheeks.

After a while, he gently laces his fingers with yours and brings your hand to his lips, leaving soft kisses on the back. His eyes blink shut and he whispers your name against your skin.

“Come back to me. Please. Please, I- I can’t handle losing you, too.”

He falls asleep like this, breath eventually easing to match your own.

It’s in gray dawn light that you finally open your eyes, swallowing thickly against a dry throat. Slowly, you take stock of the sensations in your body. Crisp sheets against your skin, a dull blinding ache in your abdomen, a familiar warm body against your side.

Levi is stretched out beside you, clutching your left hand even in sleep. He’s always beautiful this way, features softer than he ever let them be in waking. You reach to brush his bangs out of his eyes and whisper his name like a secret into the morning.

“Levi.” The second whisper is accompanied by a finger stroking down his delicate nose. He twitches, sneezes once, then opens his eyes to meet your own.

He says your name all lovely with morning grumble, then all of a sudden he’s sitting up, worrying hands everywhere at once.

“Are you okay? Do you need water? Where does it hurt? I’ll get the doctor-”

“Levi,” you rasp, pulling him back in to focus on your face. “Water, please?”

He nods and reaches for a glass on the bedside table. You try to take it from him, but he swats your hand away before carefully tipping the glass against your lips. He only allows a few sips at a time, but lets you drink until it’s all gone and your thirst is sated.

He starts to pull away, saying, “I should go get the doctor, now,” but you gently tug him back before he can escape.

“Stay,” you murmur. “Please?”

And so he stays, curled into your side, arm delicately around your middle, as the sun breaks brightly through the windows.

#levi ackerman x reader #levi x reader #attack on titan fanfic #shingeki no kyoujin fanfic #petra ral #eld gin #gunther schultz #oluo bozado #canon typical violence #gun violence #knife violence #injury #blood #angst #fluff #angst to fluff #profanity #red cloak silver dagger #valkyrie writes

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sashi-ya · 4 years ago

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{+18} - Law x Fem Best Friend ♥ CH.2

♥ Daily living with the Heart pirates crew AU ♥ Spoilers after Dressrosa Arc. Law´s backstory. ♥ Female reader. Little physical description. Everybody is 18+, canon ages. ♥ TW: Nightmares related to PTSD. Little NSFW. no further warnings. If you think I should include some feel free to tell me ♥Thank you for the likes and follows, I appreciate it them so so much! If you wanna know when I’ll be updating the next chapters, you can follow me on Twitter @LawIsMyWaifu, come interact I love to have mutuals that love Law and One Piece as much as I do ♥

Word count: 4.1K

» List of parts: {CH1} {CH2} {CH3} {CH4} {CH5} «

Chapter 2.

The sound of his low, raspy voice resonated all over my head, making my body react instantly. I gasped as I felt a strike of pleasure travelling down my stomach to in between my legs. Closing my eyes, unable to move, I didn’t want to move, I wanted him to keep whispering, to kiss my neck… “Hahahaha, I’m sorry, I’m just fooling around, your face, you look astonished Y/N-ya”, he said while laying back on the bed, laughing. I chuckled as I stood up brushing my clothes as if I was trying to fix them. “Stop it, I’m not into that you ass. Goodnight”, I said trying to dissimulate how agitated and embarrassed I was.

Almost running, I left the room, directly to mine, holding on my hand my underwear. I jumped to my bed resting violently on my back. “WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?” ... a little time passed until I passed out.

Hard knocks on my door woke me up. “Vice-Captain!! wake up! breakfast is ready!!!” Clione shouted from the corridor. “God damn how many times I have to tell this whole crew I fucking hate being awakened with shouting?” I mumbled annoyed, covering my face with the sheets.

I was brushing my hair when I remembered my “memory box” for some reason. Opened my drawer and found the little velvet red box that holds my “treasures”. Inside, there is a photo of my parents with me when I was 7, happy, eating some ice cream with them. It was taken during one of “the white parades”, on Flevance, before everything turned into hell. A little blue bow that my little sister used to wear, some photos of Law, Bepo, Shachi, Penguin and me when we were the only members of our crew. And, a necklace Law made with some seashells as a gift for my 15th birthday, were also inside.

I got watery eyes while looking at it, “I must be getting old”, I thought, “I got emotional over the memories” ... laughed and put everything back to its place.

“Morning..” I said, greeting the whole crew that was already devouring their breakfast. I noticed Law wasn’t there, so I had to ask. Uni told me he was in the control room preparing for the arrival at the next island. I took a few pancakes and some tea and headed to the control room to ask my captain if he needed help.

“Good morning, doc”, I saluted him. Law that was seated facing the controls, turned the chair to look at me nodding. He has more dark circles as always, so I asked him, “Oi, did you sleep last night? are you feeling sick again?”. “I’m ok, I didn’t get much sleep last night. I got caught up with the book I was reading”, he answered with his usual unfriendly tone. “Yeah, right” I answered back, rolling my eyes, and proceeded “Let me know if you need something before we get to the island”. Left the control room and went back to my room.

I knew him well to know he hadn't slept because something was worrying him, and not because he was reading the old comic book of “Sora, the warrior of the sea against the evil Germa 66”. But hey, Law never shows any emotion besides annoyance if he is not sick.

A few hours later, the submarine got to the shore of some winter island, and we all got ready to accomplish our assigned tasks. “Ok everyone, we will meet here at 7 pm, is that clear?” told my crew members, everybody agreed and headed to the island.

The temperature was pretty low, and it was snowing. Law was wearing the long black coat with yellow dots and our Jolly Roger that he used to wear at Punk Hazard, his hat and of course the Kikoku over his shoulder. I love when he wears warm clothing, he looks so cozy, hiding his mouth behind the collar. (He does it so his lips don’t get chapped with the cold breeze, haha). I don't like to wear the boiler-suit when we get to explore islands, so I decided to wear a long yellow coat with a hood, also with our crew's Jolly Roger emblazoned on the left side of the chest.

We asked a few civilians where to find a pharmacy and headed to the destination following their instructions. Law didn’t say much during the walking, as he normally does.

The island seemed a little bit deserted, yet it had picturesque streets, full of colour that stand out from the snow. It has cobbled lanes, some canals of crystallized water, there were wooden houses and shops with little lights that garnished their architecture giving the place a romantic aura. The scenery behind the city center included big snowed mountains and a big castle over one of the highest peaks.

I saw a boutique with some cute sweaters on display that caught my eyes and I wanted to try them on. “Law, would you mind if I enter here? I want to buy a new sweater.”, I said. Law looked at me and made a gesture with his hand as he was saying to go ahead.

While searching for the sweater I like on one of the clothing racks I saw through the shop window that a few kids approached the captain. The seller asked me if I needed some help, so I stopped looking at him and l directed my gaze to the girl in the shop. So, I forget about him.

After buying two cute pullovers, we continued walking through the picturesque streets.

When we finally arrived at the pharmacy shop, it seemed like it was closed, but the door was open, so we entered. I rang the bell over the counter and waited for someone to show up. Law walked in front of me and had his hand over his sword. I knew he was alert and trying to protect me even if he didn’t say a word. I didn’t think we could be in danger, yet he never fully relaxes when we are outside. After all, he is one of the most wanted pirates of our generation, so it's understandable he trusts no stranger.

After a minute or so, an old lady approached the counter from the inside of the store. She seemed a little weak and perhaps a little sick. She coughed, covering her mouth with a handkerchief, and then greeted us. “Good afternoon, how can I help you?”, she asked. Law handed her a list of supplies we needed, and we waited. “Oi, don’t you think she looks bad? I mean, she is probably sick, should I ask if she is ok?”, I told Law who gave me a disapproving sight. I rolled my eyes, and said, “Fiiiine…”, “You know that I hate you rolling your eyes at me, you did it yesterday and now too. Stop it.” I looked at him with an “excuse me?” face and while I was about to spit an insult to him the granny appeared. “I’m sorry, I put on the bag some of the supplies, but I don’t have everything you need. We are short on medicines'', she informed us and started coughing harder. “Excuse me, Mrs. Are you alright? are you sick?”, I asked as she seemed to lose composure from all the nagging coughing. Law, that hated when I don’t give a fuck about what he had just said, gave me the look of death. “Oh young lady, we are pretty much sick, a strange illness is hitting the island. Even the only doctor in town fell ill. The orphanage, though, is getting the worst part. All of the kids are bedridden”, as she said, the memories of Flevance and the amber lead disease hit me.

Law's expression changed to a more compassionate one and asked about the symptoms they were experiencing. He might be serious, he might not want to get involved in a lot of things, but he is a true doctor. And he can't let people die if he can help.

We decided to visit the orphanage in hopes of helping the sick people, so we asked the old lady to give us directions to it. She said it was pretty far from the city center and told us her husband would take us there with his cart.

"Thank you so much for offering your help, young doctors", said the old lady's husband that later told us his name was Gerald. The cart was pulled by two brown percheron horses that opened their way through the white landscape.

We had a small talk during the journey, until Gerald asked, "how long have you been together? Are you already married?". Despite the freezing cold weather, my cheeks turned to fire, and I could sense Law hiding his head even more into his coat and hat. Almost as if clarifying that we were no couple was a life or death situation I said, "WE ARE JUST BEST FRIENDS!". I realized I almost shouted and felt mortified. Gerald looked at us with a little smirk and kind eyes, excusing himself for the mistake.

A few minutes after we arrived at the orphanage. It took us almost 30 minutes to get there and the sun was starting to set on the horizon.

When we entered the place, the situation was worse than we thought. There were kids and adults lying on the ground, some of them shivering, others coughing while others were straight unconscious. A few nurses were working in order to maintain them, but the situation had clearly surpassed them.

Immediately Law and I started working. While I helped the nurses, Law used his ope ope no mi power to scan the bodies of the sick people.

We got to the conclusion that what they were suffering was a type of bacteria that caused the respiratory symptoms and the fever.

During our duty, there were times when our eyes interlocked, and we smiled at each other. I wouldn't say we like people suffering, but, we certainly enjoyed working to save lives together.

A few hours passed since we arrived there, the sun was already set, and outside it seemed as if a snowstorm was beginning. I've lost track of time until my portable Den Den Mushi started to ring. "Oi, y/n, where are you? Is Law with you? Are you alright? We've been waiting for you on the shore! It's 9 pm already and we were supposed to meet at 7!", shouted Shachi from the other side of the line. "Oh my God I'm sorry I forgot to tell you!... you see …" I explained to them what we've been doing and that we were probably not going to return to the submarine in a few more hours.

The kids and the other people began to get better and those who were helping there offered us some food that we accepted happily.

While we were having dinner, Gerald got back from outside, who's been in the forest collecting some firewood. He informed us that the weather was getting really bad so coming back to town would be pretty dangerous.

Law and I agreed that staying there for the night was the safer choice.

One of the nurses, Sister Alley, told us we could spend the night in the cabin next to the orphanage. "I'm really sorry guys, I wished we had a better place for you, we owe you so much. The cabin has a fireplace, Gerald would start a fire to keep you warm”, she said. We both smiled at her and thanked for it.

We walked some meters through the forest until we started to catch sight of a wooden cabin. Despite being a strong pirate, I’m the queen of the clumsy people, so I slipped off with what I assume was an ice patch on the already snowy ground. I was about to hit the ground when Law grabbed me by the waist and saved me from a few bruises. His face in front of mine, the feeling of being safe on his arms, I wished it has been eternal. But the romantic moment was destroyed by Law mocking me. “It must be the devil fruit; how come you are so clumsy? Be careful”, he said, and I told him to shut up, this time I wasn’t embarrassed, but I was almost angry at him.

“Here we are, let me help you with the fire”, Gerald said, opening the wood door that creaked as it moved. The inside felt cozy, there were a few cushions and pillows on the ground next to the fireplace. There were no separate rooms, so in the middle of the lounge there was some kind of mattress with a few blankets over it. Our “host” asked for forgiveness about the lack of separate beds, but Law intercepted him and said, “It’s ok sir, we are grateful to have a warm place to stay until tomorrow. If you need help with any patient during the night, just please tell us”. It might be ok for you, damn Law. Was I supposed to sleep with him? - I mean, I wanted to, but, he was still my best friend, and those thoughts should have been erased.

Gerald wished us a good night and returned to the main building.

I hung my coat and as I love to explore, I started to do so around the little wooden house. The kitchen seemed really equipped, so I grabbed a kettle and some cups. Gerald was kind enough to give us some tea bags, so I thought making some tea was a great idea.

Law was next to the fireplace, wearing only a sweater and his jeans. Apparently he has already hung up his coat and his white spotted hat. I saw him once more with a lost sight that seemed to contemplate the firewood.

Looking at him with my face resting on my arm that was over the breakfast nook, I got lost worshiping his profile. I’ve always adored his upturned nose, his spiky black hair, his facial hair, the contrast between his grey eyes and the tanned skin. How come he has always been so handsome, but I’ve never seemed to fully realize?.

The whistle of the kettle intensified as the water started boiling, but I was so into admiring my best friend's beauty that I didn’t notice. Law turned to me and woke me up from my reverie shouting “Oi, Y/N, the kettle!”. My stupid smile quickly erased from my face, and my whole skin turned red. “Sorry”, I said straight away and turned off the burner.

I served two cups, noticing that the tea has an amazing scent. I believe it was hibiscus mixed with some other spices, perhaps some cardamom and maybe a little hint of clover. The smell of the tea mixed with the slightly one from the logs burning, was wonderful.

I walked to where my captain was, “Here, I think you may like it”, I said and handed him a cup. Our fingers brushed softly when grabbed the tea, he looked at me and said “Thanks”. I sat not so near him over one of the cushions and sipped a little bit of my tea. Law looked at me and stood up from his place. I could sense how awkward he felt when he made a little pause, and then walked away.

Why is he leaving? Did I make him feel uncomfortable?, I asked myself trying to hide little stings of pain on my chest that traveled to my throat. Somehow I felt like crying, and when my eyes started to get slightly watery, Law approached me placing his hand over my right shoulder.

I turned my face to him, looking up with a slightly pouty face. I was about to cry, and I didn’t even know why when I noticed a blue little box on his hand.

He sat next to me and said, "Do you remember when we were 15?, that day when I gave you that necklace I made myself for your birthday? I looked at him confused but I answered, "yes, of course, I got it on my memory box, I'm afraid to wear it outside the polar cause it might get lost and I wouldn't forgive myself if I lose it". He was now looking at the little box moving it around nervously and finally said "I got you a better one". He handed me the little box still not looking at me.

"A present?? OMG Law, thank you very much!" When did you buy it??" I almost shouted in excitement while opening the box. Inside there was a fine rose gold necklace that has a little anatomical heart figure as a pendant. I grabbed it and admired the beauty of the jewelry I had in my hands. The heart had a little red stone crimped on it, that shined with every movement.

"Law, this is too much! It must have cost you a lot of Berries, I don't deserve such a fine jewel!, thank you so much", I expressed with a big smile on my face.

"You do deserve more than this, you know. I'm glad you like it", he said, a little embarrassed. “When you were buying the sweaters, I asked some children there if they knew a jewelry store, turned out it was just around the corner”, he confessed.

“Thank you so much, it is just perfect! You know how I adore hearts; they remind me of you.. “Doctor Heart Stealer”” I almost shouted, realizing I have said too much…

I tried to put it on my neck, but I couldn’t clip it right, so I asked him for help. He stood up, kneel at my back and passed from behind the necklace around my neck.

Some branches hit the window violently as they were suffering the merciless wind of the snowstorm outside.

He struggled a little and finally fastened the collar and when he did, the electric power went off. The fireplace was the only source of light, the dance of the fire created figures with shadows and highlights all around the walls of the cabin. We remained silent, maybe a little scared or even surprised, but enjoying the sound of the weather and the creak of the fire.

He was still behind me, and after a few seconds he placed a soft kiss on my back that sent a shiver through my spine. Once again I was unable to speak, did he�� did he just kiss my back?.. Before I could say or do something Law stood up and headed to one of the windows. “The storm seems to be even worse than earlier; don’t you think?”, he said, trying to device something through the window.

I couldn’t focus on anything else than the kiss he softly planted on my nape, minutes ago. He suddenly yawned and walked to the mattress that was in the center of the room, on the floor. He then took his jeans off and hopped inside the bed, naturally. I remained on my spot, contemplating his actions. “How could he be acting so normal?, I’m right here. He just gave me a necklace, kissed my skin and now he just goes to sleep?” I said to myself, still with a confused expression on my face.

“Oi, aren’t you coming to bed?”, he asked me, freely. “Yes… give me a second”, I said, and ran to the bathroom. The toilet was pretty tiny and basic, but enough for me to hide for a few minutes. “Come on, Y/N you slept with him two nights ago, it’s ok, he is like your brother, it’s ok…” I thought, trying to calm myself down.

I finally left my hiding place and headed to the mattress. Law was lying there, he took off his sweater, probably while I was in the bathroom, so he was only using a white tight undershirt, that molded his torso anatomy. Some blankets were covering the under part of his body from his hips. He had his forearm over his eyes, covering them with his neck stretched back.

I bite my lip, as a reaction for such a tempting scene. I was enjoying it, watching him breathe peacefully. I started feeling hot, so I took off the sweater but not my jeans and approached the “bed”.

I thought Law was already asleep, so I got in bed trying not to wake him up. I muffled myself up with the sheets. I remained still, hearing the snowstorm, fixing my eyes on the wooden ceiling, as the memories of my childhood flooded my mind. It must be the snowstorm, the wind, the cold that triggered these memories. eventually I fell asleep.

“No, stop it, my family, leave us alone!!!!”, I screamed. “Y/n-ya! Y/n-ya!, wake up!” said Law, pulling me out from the terrific oneiric world I was submerged in. I got lost into his eyes, and remained there with tears streaming from my eyes, rolling into my cheeks. Law was holding me close to his body around his arms. “Are you having those nightmares, again? why didn’t you tell me?”, he asked, worried. “This is the first time in ages, I think it must be the storm, perhaps the orphanage, the children…”, I expressed amid tears. My best friend brushed his tattooed fingers through my hair, moving it out of my face, and then wiped the tears from my cheeks.

“Oi, do you remember what happened when I gave you the first necklace?” he asked, trying to distract me. A feeling of warmth invaded my insides, suddenly I felt happy. “I do...” I said, laughing timidly, and continued, “It was my first kiss”. He smiled back at me, and said, “Mine too”.

For a second we both closed our eyes. I was grabbing the pendant with my left hand cherishing it and the memories of our younger days when we kissed for the first time. We haven't had much time to think about love while striving to survive so we forgot about it, letting the days, months and years pass, leaving the experience as a mere child’s play.

Suddenly we started laughing, Law didn't let go of me, and our faces were pretty close. “Everything's better when you laugh, I hate it when you cry, it makes me so sad…” he said, rubbing his thumb over my right cheek. I stopped laughing, as he got even closer. Almost as if the point of our noses were about to touch. I could feel the warmth of his breath over my lips, and he did too. My heart started racing, and the only thing I could hear was the blood pumping on my ears. I wasn’t moving, I wanted him to kiss me, I wanted to kiss him… I just didn’t care that he was my best friend, I just needed him to kiss me. What is taking him so long? Why am I not moving if I wanted this more than anything?. After a good minute, that felt eternal, he exclaimed “Fuck it”, and plant the sweetest kiss over my lips. A feeling of happiness filled my insides, I’ve never been so joyful in ages, it felt the same way as the first time. I was like a teenage girl experimenting love for the first time. Both smiled still with our lips pressed. I doubted for a second if succumbing to my deepest desires was the right thing to do until he decided to turn the cute kiss into a more passionate one. From then on, the desire I’d been accumulating inside of me took control of my body…

We kept on kissing; Law slid a hand under my shirt timidly caressing the skin of my tummy. The kisses migrated from my mouth to my neck, mixed with little bites that surely would turn into hickies tomorrow.

“Law…” I gasped when his hands reached my breasts. “What?” he replied, whispering next to my ear and pinching one of my nipples in between two fingers…

Chapter 3

Ch1: Link

#Trafalgardwaterlaw #one piece law #law x reader #trafalgar d law x reader #Trafalgar law x reader #one piece x reader

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ashintheairlikesnow · 4 years ago

Text

Whumptober Day 25: Disorientation

CW: Sick whumpee, emeto references, infection, medical whump, some references to institutionalized pet whump. Needles, track mark mention, IV placement (vague, non-graphic). Brief misgendering (out of delirium/not being able to see correctly, very brief/accidental). Includes hallucination referencing parental death.

TIMELINE: Immediately post-Infection

“Blood pressure is 100 over 60. That’s lowish, but not the worst it could be.” There’s a voice. He doesn’t know the voice. The words are familiar, though. Like a show on TV. “You got a temp?”

“One hundred three point four degrees,” Another voice says. They’re speaking so quickly he is struggling to follow them.

“Shit. That’s up from when his guardian called.”

“We need to get that fever under control. What did she say about history?”

“Threw up this morning and didn’t stop throwing up. Says he admitted he’s been hurting for two days - classic symptoms, pain started at navel and moved right and down. His fever was probably present from when he woke up, but.” There’s a pause. Chris blinks his eyes and sees, blurry and bleary, a sense of someone shrugging.

“Why didn’t he tell anyone?”

There’s a snort. “Kev. You know why.”

“Yeah, okay. I’m going to get fucking blacklisted from EMT work if we get caught, you know. What we’re doing is illegal.”

“We’re not gonna get caught. I’ve been part of lib life since I was seventeen, just trust me on this.”

Chris tries to speak, to ask them who they are, where he is, but his lips move without sound. He can feel the vibration of an engine, hear it rumbling, and the world around him is shaking minutely, bumping along on a road. With each bump and pothole, the screaming pain in the boy’s abdomen crests like a wave crashing the shore inside him, and he can feel tears running freely, blurring his vision when he tries to blink, to see.

Above him there is white inset with tiny round lights and his breath hitches. He tries to sit but there are straps holding him down, and his eyes widen, staring up in terror.

No. No, no, no, they said I wouldn’t go back, they said-

He breathes in shallow whistles he can’t seem to control. His stomach is churning, flipping with new nausea, the pain throbbing through his abdomen, behind his eyes, all the way to his toes and fingertips. “Wh, where, where, where-where, where am, am I-”

“Sssshhhh.” Chris flinches and twists as best he can to look up and behind him, the person he vaguely saw shrugging before is there wearing a dark blue uniform with letters that hurt to look at across a pocket on the front. A plastic-gloved hand presses to Chris’s shoulder to help push him back down. “Hey no, you gotta stay steady, there, kiddo. Don’t move, you really, really don’t want to strain your muscles right now. We’re about to check and make sure Yoder’s guess is right.”

Chris keeps blinking, but his eyes are blurring with tears so quickly he can’t get a clear look at the person’s face. He can move one of his hands, at least, and he lifts it to lay it over the person’s glove, feels the slip-slide of plastic and the warmth of them underneath. He shivers, then whimpers when the pain worsens in response. “Nat? Where… where is… Please-... please, sir, h-hurts-”

“Not sir,” The person says, gently, a bit of auburn hair falling over their forehead. Their voice is low, soft and soothing. “Can you see?”

Chris rolls his eyes back towards the ceiling. The light coming from the little circles in the roof of the vehicle is slightly yellowed. It isn’t cold. It has weight but isn’t cold. There is padded blue plastic lining the walls, something like a bench on one side and a jump seat, like flight attendants sit in on airplanes…

She holds his hands, so so tightly, as they bump around. He clings to her, breathing fast. She tries to smile at him and her eyes are wet. “Just remember, Tris, even when the flight is kind of bumpy, you don’t have to worry about a thing. The pilots do this all the time.” Her face is pale, though, and he sees her looking ahead, where a woman in a skirt is buckling herself into a special seat.

“Mom? What’s, what’s, what-what-what is, is that, why does does she have a different-”

“It’s called a jump seat, baby,” The woman says, and the plane bumps up and back down, and his mother’s breath comes shaky and uneven.

“I love you, Tris,” His mother says suddenly, and her voice catches. “Baby, I love you so much-... l-love you-... it’s okay, baby, it’s okay-” Her voice is getting weird and thick like she’s speaking through water.

His breath catches at red spreading over the front of her shirt, and the plane stops tumbling through the air because she’s sitting with her back against a wall under a photo of the three of them last Christmas and her blood is on the wall behind her in a spray and Tristan starts to scream and he paints with blood on a cold white wall and the plane is hurtling through the air and his mother is gone and his father is gone and his life is gone-

The headache hits him and the thought he was having dissipates under the pain, one more piece of him throbbing. “K-Kind... kind of… can see... hurts-... Mom, I’m, I’m sorry, Mom, I didn’t stay, stay hidden, I’m sorry-”

“Sssshhhh. You’re okay, you’re okay.” The person squeezes his shoulder, just a little.

“What the fuck was that about?”

“Rescues do this. Don’t ask.”

“That’s fucking eerie, man-”

“I said don’t ask. We don’t ask them, they don’t tell us. It only makes it worse if they try to keep thinking about it, so just… forget he said anything. He probably already has.”

The headache slips back, and the pain in his stomach is stronger again. Chris hears a low voice from somewhere slightly further, relaying information, speaking in a monotone that is just soft enough that Chris can’t understand it.

The person with the nice voice and pretty auburn hair is talking to him again. “Here we go. Tori’s going to help me get you some paperwork going and we’ve kind of got a system to get you in without the docs picking up on anything. Don’t worry, kiddo. You’re not the first we’ve pulled through this.”

“Th’ first…” He can’t keep his thoughts straight. Can’t understand what any of it means.

“Well, one good way to check,” The second voice says, and Chris turns to stare upwards at a man who gives him a tight-lipped smile. “Sorry, kiddo.” He presses both hands down on Chris’s abdomen, on the right side of his navel. Briefly, the sharp pain fades, and Chris’s breaths slow, just for a second. “All right, let’s check his response.” The man pulls his hands back.

Chris, strapped down to the table, arches his back in a nearly perfect arc as best he can, screaming hoarsely as the pain rushes back in, even worse than before. He is buried in it - he drowns in the waves of agony, like and unlike the pain of the shock collar, like and unlike the worst pain he’s ever felt.

His scream ends, and the two people in uniforms look at each other. “Well, that’s a fucking sign, isn’t it?”

“Check the heel. Okay, kiddo, we need to test one more thing to know for sure, okay?” The hand squeezes, one more time, at his shoulder, and then pulls back. “I’m going to prep fentanyl-”

“I don’t know, that pressure’s low for fentanyl.”

“... no, you’re right, it is, but... it’s our best option for controlling pain until we get there. It’s riding a line, but I think 100 over 60 can handle it.”

“You sure?”

“Confirm first, we’ll decide after that.”

“Got it.” Chris has only just settled back into the swaying nausea of hurt when there’s a flat, blunt impact against his bare heel - and he sobs, whimpering at the way pain rockets through him from his abdomen, spiraling like blades beneath his skin down his leg and up his side, gripping his heart. He jerks away but he’s strapped down too tightly to move. He wants to curl up but they just keep hurting him. They’re handlers, and this is fun, and once again Chris is the trainee and they’ve tied him down so he can’t stop them.

He starts to cry, hot tears running down his face, and the man who hit his heel says something to the other person but he can’t hear them over the rushing of his own blood in his ears, the pain inside him has taken him completely. He isn’t being good enough, that must be why they’re hurting him. He wasn’t good, and he is being punished, and the handlers have something they want he’s not giving, but he doesn’t know what, and he can’t… he can’t see…

“Please,” He whispers, groping blindly as much as he can. “Please, please, please, stop, please, I’ll, I’ll, I-I’ll do anything, please make it stop, I’ll b-be good-”

There’s a pause.

“Christ. Give him the fentanyl, Kev.”

The man’s voice is shaken. “... yeah, let’s do it. Uh, yeah, yeah. Right.”

“You handle the IV,” The first person says, the one who seems to know Nat. “Can you get him set up?”

“Dunham, I-”

“Just breathe, Kev. Let’s get his IV in.”

The Drip. No, not the Drip, no no no no-

Chris tries to beg - they have always loved his begging, and these new handlers will, too, he’s sure of it, he will beg them to let him keep Jake, he can be so so so good for them if they’ll only let him have Jake, if they won’t take his memory of Jake away. He can be so good...

He can’t make his mouth work any longer - it hurts too much, he can’t seem to force his brain and mouth to connect. He can’t do anything but cry, heaving wailing childlike sobs, and he is going to lose more people, all over again, he will never stop losing the people who love him-

Please, don’t take them away from me, please-

Mom, I’m sorry-

“Yeah, I’ve got it. You going to-”

“Hold his hand or something. He’s scared. They’re always scared.” The kind face, hazel eyes and auburn hair, slides back into his vision. Their voice softens and they brush a little hair away from his forehead. “Hey, you. We’re going to get you something to settle that pain, okay? Just hang on for me.” They turn away, briefly, voice raising above the rumbling engine, the low vibration, the rocking and swaying that neither of the two back here with him seem to notice like he does. “Amy, what’s our ETA?”

“Seven minutes,” A woman shouts back from the front. “Seven minutes and I’ve already confirmed Tori has a chart prepped to go. Before we stop I’ll make sure she’s ready to get us inside. She’s called in Mandela to do the surgery and you know the nurses wouldn’t tell WRU a fucking thing. Get that wrist bandaged over and we got this. Tori’s got our asses covered.”

“Gotta love that woman,” The person murmurs, turning back to Chris, smiling kindly down at him. “Look, we got you all set. Yoder-... uh, Natalie’s going to be there when you wake up, okay?”

What good does that do if they give him the Drip and he doesn’t know her anymore?

“Pl-please,” Chris whispers, managing to get his hand over the person’s, holding onto their wrist with the tightest grip of his thin fingers he can manage. Their skin feels blistering hot and he shakes, the world spinning around him. “Please, please, n-no, no, no no no, no needles, please-”

“I’m so sorry,” The person answers, soft-voiced and sincere. Handlers never say they’re sorry, Chris thinks. Handlers don’t apologize for hurting you. Handlers tell you you deserved it, or you wanted it, or you need it because you’re just a slut you fucking love this, but they never apologize. His hand is gently uncurled. He stares up into the person’s face, lost in the look of real compassion there. He has never seen someone who wears a uniform look at him like that. Like thy care. “This is just for the pain.”

“Jesus Christ,” The man says from the other side of him, and Chris turns, trying to see him more clearly. “I cut off the sleeve, Finn, it was too tight to roll up-” Chris hadn’t even noticed. “-and he’s-”

“Yeah, he’s a rescue, we talked about this, Kev, they’ll have a barcode-”

“No, he’s got track marks.”

They both go quiet, and Chris doesn’t know what the words mean together, although he knows them both separately. The silence draws out, and then the first person says, “They drug them. Heavily. You should always expect track marks on your rescue patients.”

“I-I’m sorry, I didn’t-... this is the first one for me.”

“No problem. Just keep that in mind. Does he have a usable vein or no?”

“Yeah, these are old. I can get him set. Just… shook me up a little, is all.” There’s a swipe of something cold along the inside of his elbow, sickeningly familiar. Chris is good - he goes very still, waiting for the needle to slide into his skin.

He is a good statue boy.

“I, I’ve lost-... please, please, please don’t make me lose, make me lose them,” He whispers. “Please don’t, don’t take him away from me, please don’t take Jake-”

There’s a sharp pinch, more indistinct voices as they speak to each other, and then his eyes roll up and his body shudders hard, rattling the table.

He feels himself thunk back onto the softly-molded padded plastic, a burst of ache as he bites his tongue. The world goes white around all its edges, he slips and slides inside his mind, breath slowing or going faster and he’s no longer in his body enough to know the difference.

Both of the people in the back of the strange van start cursing low under their breath.

“Shit, shit shit shit, check that blood pressure again-”

“Could be a syncope, Yoder said he’s terrified of needles, could just be a trauma response-”

“It could be, sure, or he could be crashing. Fuck!”

“Don’t be crashing don’t be crashing don’t be crashing, come on kiddo, stay with me, don’t be crashing-”

Kiddo

“Could be the fentanyl, maybe his bp was too low to pull that off, oh shit what if we fucked this up, Finn-”

Little man

“We didn’t fuck this up. Okay? It’ll be okay, he’ll be fine. I’m checking his pressure again. Amy, what’s the hold up, we need to move!”

“Almost there, Dunham, I swear! Just hold him together until we get there.”

“Doing my fucking best, Amy!”

It’s okay, Tris

You’re okay, sweetie

It’s all right, baby, you’re okay, Mommy’s got you.

Chris takes in a breath, and blinks his eyes open one more time as something cool seems to pass through him, the throbbing agony fading, just a little. The world slows around him in its dizzying spin. He looks blearily up at the person, the handler or not-handler, who apologized. “Please… please…”

“I know,” They say, softly. There’s pressure, of some kind, but Chris is drifting now, his eyes moving without focus over the little circles of light. The two people move around him in some kind of strange dance that both of them know but Chris doesn’t, and that’s okay - he wouldn’t be able to dance like this, anyway. He’s dizzy but not sick with it, and that’s kind of funny, but he can’t remember how to laugh or why he thought that was funny at all.

Compression somewhere on his arm. It doesn’t matter.

“70 over 40. God damn it.”

“Okay, let’s get that B.P. stable and check once more time before we get him inside to see if it’s up. Temp check?”

A pause, a sensation Chris can barely understand, and then more swearing. “His fever’s not fucking going down. Jesus fucking Christ-”

“Okay. Keep it calm, Kev.” The voice is even and steady, and Chris feels the barest brush of fingers over his shoulder. “We have got to stabilize this kid. Mandela can’t operate if he doesn’t stabilize. Come on, kiddo, don’t crash on us, come on come on come on-... Amy, confirm with Tori that we’re covered, please?”

“Tori is ready and waiting for us, Finn,” Amy says, a disembodied woman’s voice that swirls in a fog around Chris’s thoughts. “They’re prepping surgery, we can get him straight in. Mandela was close by and she’s already in the O.R. They’ll get him off your hands as soon as we stop, Tori’s got a new team called out to give us a break so you can tell his guardian the plan. Guardians will be in the E.R. waiting room, there’s two of them. They’re wearing-”

“Amy. We saw them when we picked him up, remember? Plus I’ve known Yoder for years.”

“... Right. Sorry.”

“You’re good. Tori really thought of everything, huh?”

“Christ, I love that woman,” The man - Kev - mutters. “Just… love her.”

“Didn’t I tell you? Tori’s on top of it. She’s been doing this longer than I have, she’s actually who got me into it at my last job. I was into the movement young but just, you know, flyers and stuff, little bit of sneaky shit. When I met her was after I got kicked out of the Army-”

“You got kicked out of the Army?”

“It’s a long story. Technically I’m not allowed over the Canadian border anymore, either. Anyway, when Tori got a new job, I just… kind of followed her here.”

“What, you weren’t born elbow-deep in La Resistance?”

“Ha, ha. Oh, here we go. Okay, kiddo, time to fix you up good as new.” The vehicle slows, and slows, and then there’s a hard turn, and Chris’s eyes close.

When the pain fades a little more, he finds he is too tired to open them again. He slips away into a warm and drifting darkness where the pain can’t reach him anymore.

I love you, baby boy.

Hold on.

I’ve got you.

You’re going to be just fine.

He hears something, high-pitched beeping noise that seems to be fading as the world around him fades. It’s all dark now, and warm, and he’s going to be okay.

She brushes fingers over his face, and he can barely hear the voices of the people inside the ambulance with him as he sinks into the darkness.

“Shit shit shit, not again-”

“65 over 35-”

“Fuck, I’m gonna have new gray hair after this-... come on come on come on-”

“Finn!”

“What, Amy?”

“We’re here.”

---

Finn Dunham and Tori (mentioned) belong to @whump-tr0pes and are used with permission. Thanks to Athena as well for her help making this sound remotely realistic!

Tagging: @burtlederp , @finder-of-rings , @endless-whump , @whumpfigure , @slaintetowhump , @astrobly, @newandfiguringitout , @doveotions , @pretty-face-breaker , @boxboysandotherwhump , @oops-its-whump @moose-teeth , @cubeswhump , @cupcakes-and-pain @whump-tr0pes @whumpiary

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ettawritesnstudies · 3 years ago

Note

18 and 19 for get to know the writer asks!

18) were there any works you read that affected you so much that it influenced your writing style? what were they?

Sanderson influenced a lot of my worldbuilding for Laoche! I don't know what specifically sparked my style for epic political conflicts but starting Storge as a high school sophomore readying dystopia in 2016 English class probably had something to do with it. Fairy tales, and A Wrinkle in Time are the biggest inspirations for my most recent short stories!

19) when it comes to more complicated narratives, how do you keep track of outlines, characters, development, timeline, ect.?

ahahaha you found my favorite topic, all my narratives are complicated :D I apologize in advance this is going to be long haha

For my outlining process, I wrote up this post so I wouldn't have to retype it every time I get this question, but a quick overview goes:

Brain dumping/idea chasing

Throwing everything at a whiteboard/conspiracy board with a copious amount of sticky notes. I try to draw connections to fit the misc. plot points and character/worldbuilding details into some semblance of a narrative

Put whiteboard outline into a word doc so I can carry it with me and fill in the holes as I go. I like using the "document outline" feature to put it into a story structure I think is going to work best for the story so I can quickly navigate between parts. This is mostly just focusing on plot holes at this point, figuring out the beginning, middle, end, and figuring out how subplots fit

alongside this process: create side documents of brain dumps/outlines for my character arcs and worldbuilding and filling in holes as needed

Make a NEW word doc outline with EVERYTHING, color coded, probably 15+ pages long

For editing, I wrote up this post, but I've added an extra step in between the Read Through/Developmental Edits and DE part 2. called Spreadsheet Time! (sorry this is so tiny I wanted people to be able to see the whole thing)

The idea with this is similar to making edit lists but to make it color coded and focus on pacing and balance. The edit lists are for the BIGGEST problems: writing out or adding whole characters or subplots & radically changing major plot points to fit a better narrative. This takes place after you've turned your Hot Mess into Respectable Mess, and then realize that you're leaning really heavily on a certain character or lost a subplot along the way.

you can see here that Luca's pov leads for the first 3 chapters, so I need to change that up and give the girls the spotlight. I can also see how many chapters go between checking up on the villain subplots, and how long the chapters are in terms of words/pages. The goal isn't to make their lengths all equal, but to make sure that I'm spending an appropriate amount of time on each type of chapter.

Transitions can be shorter, major plot points can be longer, but this keeps it in perspective and tells me if I should break up or combine anything. It's a little more objective pacing than just "ehhh it feels right" which I like. There's also a column to keep track of timeline, any skips, what events happen overnight, and how much time is left if there's a countdown or plan or something similar.

Then once all the structural stuff is fixed, I'll start filling in the empty columns and evaluating character arcs and worldbuilding to fine tune the details. Now, every scene is accounted for and in the right spot for the story, but maybe some need to be more emotionally impactful or I missed some details.

Those are things to take care of during the 2nd or 3rd draft depending on how clean the manuscript is to begin with and how much you can handle fixing at once. There are some chapters I completely rewrote (hence why this exists now), but I will need to do a reread of the 2nd draft and make sure that all my changes are consistent.

I hope that makes sense! Thank you for the ask!

#storgewip #editing #ask answered #etta rambles

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sailorsunspot · 3 years ago

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I found this reinako drabble i wrote 5 years ago while i was looking back through my old google docs, and i liked it so i finished it up! Not too much, just about 1600 words of fluff.

------------------------

Rei pressed the doorbell to Minako’s house before fishing her phone out of her pocket and glancing over the glowing display. 7:10. She told Minako she would arrive around 7:25, but knowing the vivacious blonde’s precarious relationship with scheduling, she had opted to show up just a little bit earlier. Her disapproving scowl was usually enough to stir up some sense of urgency into the blonde - and if the stars were aligned, they would - somehow - be ready for when Haruka swung over to pick them up.

She wasn’t holding her breath.

After a few minutes had passed, she found herself depressing the doorbell yet again. Her impatience proved fruitful as she heard the faint strains of a voice through the construct that separated them.

“Just a minute!”

Rei’s arms crossed over her chest by their own accord, a scowl settling on her features. But the rustling on the other end of the door was growing louder, and before she could grow impatient enough to test the doorbell once more, the fine white surface swung open to reveal a grinning Minako.

It only took Minako half of a second to drop the grin in favor of unenthusiastic disbelief as blue eyes raked over Rei’s form.

“Uhm, what are you wearing?”

“...What? Clothes.”

Before she could protest further, lithe fingers had wrapped around her wrist, tugging her into the home.

---

The first thing one noticed when they walked into Minako’s room was how reflective it was. There was a mirror on every wall, providing every possible angle a girl could dream of inspecting. And, more specifically, there was a single spot near the middle of the room that allowed one the privilege of looking themselves over without strain.

And it was the exact spot Rei found herself corralled into occupying.

With a scowl and a subtle flush of her cheeks, Rei turned to glower at the blonde. “This is stupid. I look fine.”

Minako was appraising her critically, her hand cupping her chin in an almost academic manner. “Yes, you look like you’re about to give a presentation to the board of directors about the state of finances last quarter. We’re going to a party, Rei - not a corporate merger.” She was so flippant and confident with her dismissal that Rei couldn’t help but peek back to the mirror, half-convinced she had missed something while dressing this afternoon. But the longer she inspected herself, the more convinced she was in her own righteousness.

She wore a rich burgundy turtleneck that clung in a shapely manner to her skin and complimented her naturally pale complexion and raven hair. Her dark skinny jeans were similarly tight, especially when paired with the high heels that did wonders to her already impressively long legs. The silver belt that dangled loosely around her waist offered her an understated flair. She didn’t look prudish or professional - she looked refined. Mature. Elegant. Words that - of course - would mean absolutely nothing to Mina.

“You’re crazy. I look good.”

“Sure Jan.” Minako drawled out, already digging through her rather expansive walk-in closet. Articles of brightly colored clothing flew around as she inspected and vetted each individual item, without a care for the mess that was progressively growing in the previously semi-clean room. “No but really; I get that you’re not into men, but does that mean we all must suffer?”

“Does it look like I care about you suffer- wait, what?” There was abject shock written on Rei’s features as her brain caught up with what Minako had just said, the makings of a blush crowning on the Senshi of Flame’s cheeks.

This was not something Rei was used to - or even comfortable with - thinking about, nevermind discussing. When they were younger, she had been among the leaders of the pack when it came to chasing boys. Her beauty and type-A personality had worked as a shining beacon for the opposite sex, but she found the thrill not in their attention, but in the reflection of her friends who marveled at her master with men. She did not date often - once in a while, and only with those individuals deemed truly impressive and desirable. But every time, the experience was regretfully lacking, until she came to terms with the fact that she simply had no interest in men.

They were an entirely non-sexual, non-appealing entity to her. When they weren’t actively offending her sensibilities, she felt entirely apathetic to their existence, the same way she might feel towards a floor lamp in the corner of the room.

But whereas she had acknowledged and accepted this fact privately, she certainly didn’t make it known to her friends. For this exact reason.

Minako stopped emptying out her closet in favor of poking her head out to look and laugh at Rei. “Hello! Goddess of Love here! You haven’t gone out with anyone in like, three years Reiko-”

“Don’t call me that.”

“- and you don’t even bat an eye when we did that university tour with all those hunky college dudes. That track and field team, with their short short short short-”

“Minako.”

“- short shorts. Hey, it’s okay Rei! Different strokes for different folks, you know? Besides, more for me!” The blonde ducked back into the closet and Rei was left with nothing but the shuffling in the background to occupy her mind. She considered denying what Minako had professed - for she didn’t have to be a psychic to know that no good would come out of Minako knowing this - but what good would that do her in the long run? The blonde dolt rarely let something as trivial as reality get in the way of her fun, so why should she even bother?

The answer came to her as she strode out of the closet, carrying what looked to be a flimsy shirt of a shimmering violet, which she threw triumphantly in Rei’s direction. “Okay, lesbo, try this on!”

Rei didn’t even bother to try and catch it. She had vague suspicions that she had turned as red as her shirt, but she couldn’t tell if it was due to mortification or indignation “WHAT?”

“My sweet summer child, it’s okay! This is a safe place!” She slide up beside Rei, clasping her hands on Rei’s shoulders, an earnest expression on her face that was undercut by shining eyes. “If you’re worried about the coming out process, don’t be - trust me, we all know. I can have Haruka whip you up a handy pamphlet or something, she loves that kind of stuff.”

Rei scowled, wrenching herself from Minako’s grasp and turning so she could focus the full extent of her most formidable glare on her. “What makes you think I’m like her?”

Minako wasn’t at all phased, the smile etched on her features wide and mischievous. She was the very definition of smug, a fact which grated at Rei’s already frayed patience. “I’ve seen the way you look at me, Reiko.”

“Shut up.”

“I mean, who could really blame you. I’m like a ten. I know. Now, c’mon! We don’t have much time!” There was a distinctive whine in Minako’s voice as she ignored the tensed, irritated body language Rei was presenting in favor of moving to tug Rei’s sweater off of her. She had always been an unreasonably brave girl.

Rei reacted the only way she could; with ferocious resistance. “Oh my God, get off of me!” She twisted away, stepping back, only to realize that Mina was particularly determined. As the two struggled over the cotton pull-over the strains of the battle could be heard in the form of growling profanities and high-pitched giggling. They were caught up in their own dance, wildly flailing limbs somehow managing to arc in near-perfect synchronicity.

Until they didn’t.

---

The rich leather upholstery of Haruka’s latest sports car was cold against her skin. The top Minako had picked out for her barely covered her stomach, and left little to the imagination otherwise. Self-consciously, she tugged at the front of it, before deciding on crossing her arms over her chest and scowling out of the window.

“Oh, man. I can’t believe you wore that.”

As the red violently erupted on her cheeks, Rei turned her sharp gaze to Minako, fueled by the righteousness of her fury. Minako grinned back, somehow managing to look cheeky and insufferable even with the wicked black eye she was now sporting. As Rei looked over the swollen purpling that surrounded her left eye, she felt her anger drain from her body in favor of something slightly more amenable.

She let out a half-hearted harrumph, turning her eyes to the front of the vehicle. She did not move when she felt the soft, gentle touch to her thigh.

“You look really nice.”

Rei blushed right to her toes. And this time, even Rei couldn’t keep the smile from creeping onto her face. After a moment, Rei allowed her arms to unravel, doing her best to ignore the steady beating of her heart as she rested her hand atop of the troublesome girl’s tentatively. Minako laced her fingers between Rei’s.

“But I bet you’d look even nicer with all those clothes taken off.”

“Don’t push it.”

#reinako #minako aino #rei hino #sailor mars #sailor venus #sailor moon #fanfiction #ren writes #im trying to get back into the habit of writing and maybe even posting what i write publically #so hopefull this'll encourage me to keep at it!#otp tho

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kasienda · 4 years ago

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Fanfiction Year In Review - 2020

The rest of 2020 was rough, but I sure wrote A LOT! And that feels good.

1 List of fics completed this year in the order they were finished:

Confessions to a Statue (Ladybug) - I’m lowkey shocked that this was finished in 2020. I feel like I wrote this one an eternity ago! It’s honestly not my favorite story, but I’m grateful to it for getting me writing in this fandom!

Stutters (Ladybug Reveal - Marichat)

An Open Secret (Ladybug for Gift Exchange)

Instagram (Ladybug Reveal - Ladrien)

Anything to Protect You (Sailor Moon for Gift Exchange)

Locked in a Closet (Ladybug Reveal - Sequel to MissNoodle’s wonderful work.)

New York (Ladybug Reveal - Ladynoir)

A Craving For Chocolate Milkshakes (Sailor Moon)

Eight fics in total! Four of them multi-chapters! Crazy!

2 Number of words written:

Written: 139k (as tracked by 750words.com)

Published: 105k (according to ff.net).

This is amazing! This is the first year (that I know of anyway - I’ve only been tracking for three years) that I broke 100k in one year!! I wrote every month, and I published at least one thing every month except August (I was moving in August).

I’m thrilled to see the written to published ratio as high as it is! It’s not something I’ve tracked before, but I always feel like I’m writing a ton and publishing very little, but it looks like that impression is fairly inaccurate. I’m publishing a lot more than I realized relative to how much I’m writing.

3 Your most popular fic:

My Miraculous Reveal Series has also gotten the most recognition of all my works this year, but it’s difficult to splice out which short is the most popular because I publish it as one series. Keeps my dashboard neater and gives the old ones a bit of attention whenever I post a new one.

4 Your personal fav:

I think I’m insanely proud of both An Open Secret and Anything to Protect You. As I published each chapter, I often had the thought “This is the best thing I’ve written!” And that feels good.

But right now, I am going to have to say an unfinished fic that I started this year - Restorative Justice - is my favorite. This is a fic that has pulled me out of my usual genre and gotten me closer to my life as a teacher. And it’s powerful and cathartic to turn these experiences into a story. I also really enjoyed exploring Chloé’s headspace. She’s just so angry, and like, this year that has been really easy to channel for some reason, and it all transferred to paper rather well. I’m kinda stuck in this fic at the moment though…

5 Your fav scene:

I literally cannot decide. I could maybe pick a favorite scene in each fic I finished, but just one?! Nope! I can’t do it. So here’s my favorite scene in the three works I’ve spent the most time on this year:

An Open Secret - the scene where Ladybug confesses to Chat Noir in the rain. The moment it all comes together for Adrien. I made myself cry.

Anything to Protect You - Honestly, this one is HARD to pick. I really like the UsaMamo kiss in the first chapter, but I also love the dates. Especially the moment where she tells him she’s Sailor Moon and he thinks she’s joking. And the cattery date.

Restorative Justice - Chapter 3 - Where Chloe and Marinette are screaming at each other. I found it so satisfying.

6 A fic or scene that challenged you:

Writing the festival scene in Anything to Protect you was an absolute slog! I was struggling so hard with trying to somewhat accurately capture a cultural event that I myself have never directly experienced (I did so much research - I read a lot, I listened to music, I watched videos), and at the same time not stall the pacing of the story or emotional anchor of the piece. It was so hard, but I was really happy with how it came out.

7 A line of writing you’re proud of:

From the most recent update of a Craving for Chocolate Milkshakes:

So she dove back into old habits and started drawing chibi-tuxedo masks all over her worksheet.

Go ahead. Do your worst.

He always had some playful or snide critique of her scribbles.

She waited a whole ten seconds before she realized the mental silence would not be filled. Because he wasn’t there. He couldn’t see her doodles.

She burst into tears.

8 A comment that touched you:

Honestly, this year it wasn’t so much what was in a comment, so much as it was when a comment arrived. Like when I was ready to tear my hair out arguing with the bank or insurance company, and then a review would pop up out of nowhere! Or when I was sitting next to my son at the hospital. Sadly, I don’t remember which comments were the ones that did this. But I think LitaKino had especially good timing more than once this year. And jennagrins as well! But there were so many others! I’m tell you all - comments are love!!

9 Something that inspired your writing:

There’s lots of the usual suspects - life, husband, children, students, etc.

But a lot of it this year has actually been reading other people’s stories and wanting them to keep going, or wanting them to have taken a different turn in the story arc. And then I have to open a doc a start a whole new fic! It’s kinda a problem honestly. I have thirteen active stories and another ten that I’m like - I would like to work on that, but it’s not happening at the moment.

10 Your proudest accomplishment (that one scene; finally finishing that one fic; posting your first fic; etc):

That I finished four multi-chapter fics! (Though two of them it was just the last chapter). I think I’m proving to myself that I can be somewhat disciplined about what I’m working on, so that the projects I want to finish, get finished!

And I’m also learning that you can write a lot with just chewing away at it bit by bit. It’s not about the 3k word days. It’s about it being a habit. If you can write 100 words every day that’s 36k words in a year! I wrote an average of 378 words per day! My goal is only ever 200 words, but I try to have an unbroken chain. I did not succeed this year in that due to weekly work deadlines, but I came a lot closer than I ever have before.

11. Do you have any writing goals for the next year?

I read my goals from last year and laughed. (Apparently, I wanted to finish Chocolate Milkshakes by the end of January. Bwahahaha!) But that’s okay. I wrote a ton this year!! It just wasn’t where I expected it to be. So that’s what I want this year to be about. I want to focus on my own personal projects by not making commitments for exchanges or events.

I have three WIPs right now that are just far more personal than anything else I’m working on. And these three stories are the ones I want to focus on this year.

Invisible Wounds - (Ami/Zoi - Sailor Moon)

Restorative Justice - (Chloé POV - Ladybug)

Right Behind You (Unpublished Adrino story - Ladybug)

I imagine though that there will be one-shots that demand to be written in between, or one shots that will work me out of ruts, too. Or one shots that will explode into seven chapter outlines like jerks! Haha!

But overall, my main goal is to just try to write every day!

I tag the following people to tell us about your fic writing accomplishments this year because you’re amazing!! @tinacentury @floraone @starlingsinclair@mikauzoran @chronicallylatetotheparty @ladyofthenoodle @alexseanchai @galahadwilder And anyone else that wants to! And of course, if I tagged you and you don’t want to, there is NO pressure. I’ve just enjoyed doing this over the years, and wanted to share the joy!

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mego42 · 3 years ago

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hi! a song inside the halls of the dark is an absolute masterpiece of plotting and pacing (and prob my fave fic I’ve read for the show so far), so for the ask a writer meme, I’d love to hear about your planning process(es). the idea of even plotting out something like that, let alone actually finishing it, just breaks my brain lol. do you do a lot of outlining? how much does the outcome end up looking like the ideas that sparked it?

adsfghgsj okay well first off, thank you! that is unspeakably flattering and i don’t know how to cope! my weird robot emotions are misfiring! but also, thank you for this question bc this is the kind of nerd shit i LIVE FOR and up until, idk, 5? 6? months ago my answer would’ve more or less been ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ but sometime in between now and then i leveled up how much of a nerd i am.

okay so, the short answer to your (first) question is yes, i do a lot of outlining though the scale of outline varies based on the complexity of the story. in song’s case, how i outline actually evolved significantly over the course of writing it (see that level up) and if i were to outline it today, it would look very different from what i originally started with.

the short answer to your second question is in song’s case, the original idea was a v short, almost fluffy stuck in a hotel room for a night one shot i daydreamed up while listening to a halsey song (is there somewhere, if you were wondering). obvs what it turned into was uh, v different.

digging into how i outline is going to get long, excessively nerdy and borderline terrifying so i’m hiding the rest of this under the cut, read at your own risk.

I preface everything here with a couple of reminders:

1. i am a crazy person who straight up does not know how to have hobbies like a normal person

2. i am actively trying to push myself and grow as a writer including developing new skills and training myself to practice certain habits bc at some point I would like to push myself out of the nest and try my hand at original fiction one day with a vague goal of maybe seeing if i could get it published. idk if i’ll ever actually do that BUT in the meantime, i do stuff like the nightmare that follows to myself

initial outline / what happens next list

okay so the most basic of my outlines (and how i originally outlined song) are p much just lists of what happens next. i do them as bullet lists bc my brain finds them less intimidating and i just start with one and then ask myself what happens next. sometimes the bullets are v vague, sometimes they get so specific i end up writing what becomes dialogue, i try not to think too hard about it, i just keep asking what happens next.

it’s really specifically about what happens next, not asking myself what i want to happen in the story, bc next implies the bullet before informs the one after, so you end up with an overall picture of what you want with a base level of causality built in. it also gives you room to surprise yourself (i think literally every what happens next outline i’ve done has had me going oh, okaaaaaay at some point).

sometimes, this is all you need. for trade my heart for honey, i started and stopped here bc at the end of the day, the skeleton for that fic is super basic: beth and rio attempt to play pool without tripping over their horrendous sexual tension. they fail. the end.

for your monster looks like mine, i did a version of the what happens next list, but i brought in some of my tricks from the pace structuring method i’ve been honing for the multi-chapter i’m currently planning. instead of mapping tentpole beats by story pace, i mapped tentpole beats for what points i wanted beth and rio to be scoring against each other and then mapped out the lead-up and fallout to connect the two and also what they were doing to each other physically at the same time so i could see how it all played together so the conversation supported the smut and vice versa. it was a TOTALLY normal approach to writing pwp. not over the top at all.

song’s original outline was basically a SUPER long what happens next list and if i could go back in time i would slap myself upside the head like bitch you have no idea what you’re getting into and you are WAY TOO COCKY ABOUT IT, but it’s okay i learned.

the spreadsheet method

somewhere around when i was in the middle of i want to say ch 9 of song, @pynkhues posted about her outlining process including a super awesome spreadsheet she uses (i cannot for the life of me find the original post, forgive me but know that it was hers) and i immediately jacked a version of it to use as my own and oh my god it changed my whole life.

iirc hers was a bit more in depth but since i was sort of baby-stepping into it, i stripped it down into the following and did a sheet for each of the remaining chapters (well, ch 10 and ch 11, ch 11 ended up getting wildly out of control so i split it in two and mushed the epilogue i’d been planning onto the end of it as a closing breakout scene:

plot

character

it’s a lot of repetition, tbh BUT once i started using it, i found the repetition was incredibly clarifying and by making myself take the time to go through each column and go through the same stuff over and over, it honed in on the strongest, most relevant bits of what i was planning and helped me see patterns and connections i maybe hadn’t been thinking of on the onset.

when i outlined swear i used this method and added a layer to my chapter overviews where i track the lies and corresponding truths worked into the chapter narratives (bc that’s a key theme of the story), and color-coded the beats that corresponded to the main plot vs individual character arcs vs foreshadowing so i’d have an at a glance visual reference to make sure nothing was getting lost and all of the characters (even minor ones) had stuff happening to them and didn’t just feel like cardboard cutouts coming in and out of the story as i needed them

pace structuring

these are all fine and dandy but one thing they’re missing is pacing! for song’s pacing, i will be real with you, i v much went a lot with my gut. i’ve spent most of my life consuming and paying a lot of attention to stories. i’m fascinated with how they come together and literally cannot shut off the part of my brain that likes to pick them apart to examine the pieces to see how they all fit together. as such, it’s left me with a p instinctive grasp for how a story should feel when it’s working which is fantastic when it is, but really useless when it isn’t bc i struggle to identify where and why sometimes so i can fix it.

for the buffyverse, once i started to realize (with no small amount of horror) the scope of what i wanted to write, i realized p quick i needed some kind of tool kit to help me figure out the arc and pacing bc this was going to be a lot closer to trying to plot a whole novel from the ground up (which is great bc one of the things i want to practice is pacing and plotting out novels from the ground up, hahaha)

i’ve been working with a two main docs (and neither of them are spreadsheets, yet, bc one thing the spreadsheet method taught me it’s that while i find them very soothing, my brain works in bullet lists so i’m starting with bullets and then i’m gonna strain it through a spreadsheet):

1. Thoughts:

just a doc where I word vomit out anything I’m thinking, I don’t worry about keeping it organized, I just throw whatever I’m thinking in there so it’s memorialized and I can sort through it later.

2. Act Timelines / Scene Breakdowns:

basically, i have a basic three-act story structure with tentpole story beats broken out by general ballpark percentages of how far into the story/act they should occur for the pacing to feel right. i use that as the framework i run my plot and character beats through and do it in a couple of passes:

high level: i go through and break out what’s happening in the story for each tentpole beat (what the specific story and plot focus is)

by character: i go through and fill in (at least) one sub-bullet beneath each plot tentpole beat with what’s happening with each main character in their individual subplot, how they got there, what their general feelings and mindset is, if they’re having any revelations, etc (one thing i fucked up with song is not making sure i had stuff going on for all of the characters, the plot was super focused on beth and while i generally knew what rio was doing and why, ruby and annie more or less floated in and out of the story at whim and i hate that, so i’m trying to be better about it going forward)

by relationship: now i go in and fill in a layer of bullllets with how the plot and character beats are shaping relationships and how they’re progressing through each tentpole beat

at this point i’ve got a pretty fleshed out outline hitting on plot, character and relationship development at least in broad, general terms. i can look at it like a map and see how characters are growing and changing throughout the story and look for areas where the plot is pushing the characters vs the other way around and places where it seems weak or poorly connected/supported and i tinker with that for awhile until i feel like it’s in good shape.

next step is applying the what happens next approach to the scene by scene breakdowns. i’m trying an experiment with this one where instead of breaking the fic into chapters first, i’m breaking it into scenes and working out the beats of them so they incorporate all of my outlined stuff and then i’m gonna go back and see where the chapter breaks look like they fall.

I’m like, 75% of the way through my scene breakdown for this particular fic and once I’m done with that, I’m going to take everything and plug it into the spreadsheet I worked with for the last couple of chapters of song and highlight/color code like I did for swear to make sure my chapter breakdowns align with everything I’m trying to do and I’m tracking all of my themes and details and setting things up to pay them off later.

so, you know, an absolutely normal amount of planning for a hobby i do entirely for funsies in my largely nonexistent spare time.

(sorry this was i am assuming WAAY MORE INFORMATION than you ever wanted or needed to know but once i started i couldn’t stop)

(and seriously, thank you, am truly verklempt that you love song like that 💖)

bts fic writing q’s IF YOU DARE hahaha

#welcome to my brain #every time i show people this they either freak out #or expose themselves as giant nerds #which i love bc i too am clearly a giant nerd #idk how to tag this #how i write #meg's mental nightmare menagerie #fic writing q's #ask me stuff #lindybot #shut up meg

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mimicteruyo · 3 years ago

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Ten Random Facts about a Mimic

Just because.

Do you see this post? Congratulations, you've just been recruited into posting ten random facts about yourself as well. Yes, you. Go for it!

1. I'm currently learning Icelandic vocabulary. I hear the grammar's going to be tough, but we'll get to it eventually.

2. I still have an MP3 player. Yes, it's really really old. Yes, I hope it'll survive long enough to become a tsukumogami.

3. I've been watching Northernlion for a ridiculously long time. Sometimes I watch less, sometimes I watch more, but he always manages to reel me back in. I miss the social deduction games arc even though I understand why they put an end to it.

4. I drink excessive amounts of black tea.

5. I love walking around outside and especially like observing the local plants and animals. I go out on most days as long as time and the weather permit it. Duckboards are awesome.

6. I do all my writing on Notepad and keep track of word counts by hand. This may be because I'm secretly a five hundred year old swamp spirit and only pretend to have grown up on the internet. I'm thinking about starting to do my spellcheck on Google Docs since unlike LibreOffice it also points out grammatical issues.

7. I've been a comics nerd since before I could read, but know essentially nothing about superhero comics. I just never read them, I guess? I read a handful of ancient issues of Elfquest when I was twelve and didn't at all understand that the characters boinked just barely off-screen, oops.

8. Besides shmups, I really like roguelites, RPGs, and adventure games. Throw in some VNs (possibly with a stat-raising system) and a couple of turn-based strategy games and you have one happy mimic. I mostly play indie games and generally prefer 2D and isometric graphics.

9. I have a sister who currently lives abroad. I miss her a lot.

10. I'm grateful to a lot of people, and I'm trying to figure out better ways to express it than simply repeating the fact over and over again.

BONUS! 11. I thought I was all shipficced out, but now I keep getting distracted from working on my longer (also shipfic) projects by new ficlet ideas! Curses!

#teruyo talk

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nikkywrites · 4 years ago

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Hello!!! You mentioned a little while ago that Soulwood is Not chronological. So for day 13 of the challenge, how do you do that? Do you write beginning to end? Are there flashbacks? Or dual timelines? How do you keep track of them?

Hey!! I did mention that. It’s indeed A Thing.

Draft 1 was written scene by scene. Some of the early scenes are getting tossed as I was finding my footing, but once I did hopping between times became easy. Draft 2 is... making sure everything is fleshed and pretty, basically. The only docs I have are draft 1, draft 2 and a draft of cut scenes/lines. It’s... a little weird. I’m usually a very chronological person, but Soulwood, I think, benefits from the changing between past and present. And writing it as it is has been pretty natural, so I don’t know how well I can describe how I do it, but I attempted.

Short answer: there are two timelines. I've mentioned a third, maybe, but it's not really there. There's present day and TGWNN time. It's a dual timeline situation where we have two chronological timelines, but they're mixed together. The tones/scenes of both are different enough that I don't get them mixed up. Writing Soulwood as it is has been natural and I could not imagine it being completely chronological as the jump between TGWNN time and present would probably give someone whiplash. They work best weaved together, two halves of the story.

(My original attempt at answering was long and convoluted but I didn't want to delete it so I put it under a cut. Fair warning that it might not make a lot of sense. I got rambly. But it's basically how the different timelines work.)

Long answer:

There are two timelines that are the focus/bulk of Soulwood. In draft 2 we might also visit Keithia pre-TGWNN but we’ll see. As of now, it’s mainly scenes of the time where TGWNN was a thing and present day scenes. They’re very different. TGWNN-time scenes narration is a bit tainted by the present, but Keithia still has a naiveness to her and she’s still in the ‘present’ (with TGWNN). Those scenes are typically soft and fluffy with bits of foreshadowing sprinkled in. Present day scenes are different. The Keithia there is harder, a little less naive. There’s no counterpart for her to bounce off, it’s just her and her forest, like everything started (except for the things that are different).

The tones of the two are different. The pacing of them is different. Keithia is a little (or more than a little) changed between the two. They’re very different but also bounce off each other. In draft 2 I’m going to do a pass just to make sure that the scenes (because it goes time1 scene, time2 scene, time1 scene, etc.) flow together well, even if they’re not at all chronologically close. You know, make sure there’s a reason it’s like this, a reason you see this scene after the last and that scene after that.

The flips between times should probably be jarring or hard to keep with, but it (to me, at least) seems pretty seamless. I couldn’t imagine Soulwood being chronological. It never really was, technically. It’s just what happened and it worked, so that’s what it is and now I’m making it better. Now I know the story so I can do it better justice. It’s also probably worth noting that the scenes are all pretty short (a few hundred words, I don’t think any reach 1000), so that probably helps. The scenes are also fairly contained. Each scene is just... it accomplishes one big thing. It has one purpose and it does it. They're all a single moment. TGWNN arc focuses on the relationship with TGWNN, present day arc has aftermath and consequence (I don’t think I’ve shared the prompt or gone into detail about the present day arc, have I?). Each scene is firmly set in the timeline it’s in — in some cases, the scene/time skip is almost the flashback itself.

Also should probably note that scenes within a timeline directly follow the previous. Each timeline is chronological— no late TGWNN scenes followed by meeting TGWNN or anything. We meet her, know her, the arc ends. Same with present day arc. The two timelines are just mixed together. So it’s. Kind of chronological? Halfway?

It’s one of those things that will be better seen, I think. But have a little trust! I believe it all works well, even if the explanation may have been a little convoluted (sorry). I tried! Maybe got a little off track, but I’m sure your answer is in there somewhere.

#underwing challenge #underwing challenge ask #ask #asks #wip ask #wip soulwood #this makes the timelines sound so convoluted but it’s actually simple I swear #it’s TGWNN time and present and we hop between with each scene #that’s all. it’s simple #I swear #dragon-with-a-pen #dragon with a pen #does this even make sense? idk.#the long answer seemed confusing so i abbreviated but was oddly attached to the long version. so its there.#feel free to ask me to clarify anything!

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cytarabi · 4 years ago

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Hey! I've become a huge fan of your fics on ao3. I wanted to know how do you push out so many beautiful chapters so quickly? What's your writing process like? I'm working on a big JB fic, which I'm trying to finish timely, but high quality. Always like to see how other writers do their thang! Thank you!

Hi! I remember your name!! <3 Thank YOU for the question and praise, that’s so sweet!!

I love seeing how other writers do their thang, too! And I’ve found it can be very, very different for each author.

TLDR I write a lot of my fic ahead of time. I outline the entire fic, chapter by chapter before I start writing. I use several tools to speed the process and/or to make it more artsy fartsy.

I’ve found that I’m a “plotter” and not a “pantser” (two main ways of writing, unless you hate being labeled lol.)

Plotter means that I prefer plotting out most of the story before I write the details. Here’s been my process for my multichapter fics:

1) I come up with an idea and let it brew! I think about key scenes or dialogue I love and I jot them down in my phone on Google notes. Write down your ideas, you’ll probably forget them.

2) During this brewing time, (for As Black As Thunder and my next fic) I take the time to read, read, read. I read works and jot more notes! I have an entire Google doc for Rebecca by Daphne de Maurier where I wrote down her tone usage, figurative language and summary of each chapter. I can’t tell you how much this has helped get me in the write TONE for the work. Tone is SO important. Readers reading a thriller will expect thriller beats! Deep Fried Drinks was a rom com, so the verbs, adjectives etc are very different from creepy Gothic. When I started As Black As Thunder (ABAT), wow, it was hard to nail the tone at first. But by the second half of the fic, I’m fully immersed in it and it’s much easier to create the tone naturally. Without using inspiration, I don’t think it would have turned out as well. For ABAT, I think I took two weeks of no writing, when I’m used to writing every day. It was hard not to write, but wow, was I ready when I started!

3) When I’m ready to outline, I do! I open a google doc for the fic and start throwing everything I can think of in there. My ABAT doc was only like three lines for 6 months... lol! I’ve only just started looking into story structure, so my older fics are all wonky. BUT for ABAT and Deep Fried Drinks, I tried to follow story structure for plots. First act, second act, third act, character arcs, etc. My longest fic, Time Stops, dropped a bunch of readers in the middle and I think it’s because my middle SAGGED majorly. I didn’t try to follow a structure, just sort of plotted it out how I wanted to, and it was probably very repetitive and boring. For ABAT, I plotted a mid point turn to spice things up, chose things to make the character more proactive, etc. I highly recommend Ellen Brock on Youtube for any plotting advice. She’s an editor, and I’ve learned so much!

4) Organize plot into chapters, write key notes for chapters and fill out background info. The first two are self explanatory, but the third is my favorite! One thing that speeds my writing (I have no idea if people do this or not) but I have lists. So many lists! For ABAT, I have lists of common outfits for characters (I usually hate writing about outfits but I’m glad I wrote more for this work). I also write the character arc for each main character. For ABAT, I have the following for Brienne:

Brienne

Symbols: white crocus flower (purity, youthfulness, sensitive to rain), White begonia, Small birch saplings struggling for light

Goal: serve public, be idealistic, honorable

Lie: (hidden for spoilers)

Truth: (hidden for spoilers)

Flaw: stubborn, idealistic, watched her father get fame and respect for his engineering, wants to do the same thing and do it perfectly, doesn’t understand systemic racism

Motivation: serve people, be accepted by the public, belonging, abandonment

Stakes: public rejection, Tarth name on the line, mockery, insanity, failure

So when I think about a curve ball for Brienne at any point of the story, this character section helps me stay true to character. I have a section for Brienne, Jaime, Cersei and Missandei. Cersei has a larger section because she’s a villain... ;)

In addition to this section, I also write down their personalities and strengths. You know, like if they went to an interview lol. For example, I have Missandei have the following strengths:

Missandei

Adaptability: able to adapt

Intellection: introspective and appreciate intellectual discussions

Consistency: all people should be treated the same

Futuristic: fascinated by future

Learner: loves to learn

I ALSO have an emotion worksheet and this is SO USEFUL. They say in writing: show that the character is angry, not tell the reader. WELL, IDK about you but I can’t keep track of all the little quirks characters do and yet, I want them to be consistent. If while writing a scene, I sometimes think, “Hmm what is Jaime doing if he’s in awe right now?” I search for “awe” at the top of my fic, and bam, I have options, more or less. For a lot of emotions, I brainstormed ideas based on character traits, arcs, Gothic tone etc. I fill all of this out before I write the first chapter.

Here’s an example of some emotions I have for ABAT:

Emotion List (remember to have introspection, unique perspective)

Awe:

B: wrinkle deepened between brows, parted lips, fixed gaze, stands still

J: arched brow, open mouth, stare, goes closer

C: lowering chin or raising chin, goes closer

M: adaptable, quick to react

Deceptive:

B: looking away, walking away

J: scratching ear

C: smiling, neatly placed hands

M: long blink

Thoughtfulness:

B: staring off, quiet, daydreaming

J: staring at object important to him, twisting pencil or object in his hand, squeezing his hand

C: squeezing hand, staring at object she wants to get rid of or improve

M: daydreaming, staring off at her own outfit—it’s foreign

5) Now the fun part: writing! I used to write with scene structure outline, but I think I’ve grown off the training wheels. But it really helped me in Deep Fried Drinks to plot out the chapter scenes ahead of time, and I used Ellen Brock’s proactive and reactive videos to help me out with that. I throw on some music to get me in the mood of the story and I write during my kid’s nap, about two hours every day. Sometimes I’ll write at night, but lately I’ve been too tired to do that. My tip for this part is to try and figure out what you want to improve. What are you good at, and what could you improve as a writer? My first fics had like zero figurative language. Awkward. This takes a level of awareness that’s hard to reach but watching or researching creative writing technique really helps me. For example, I used to NEED to write all five senses out for each chapter ahead of time. Now it comes naturally to me! I would say now my main issue is phrasing? Pacing? And I need to tone down the melodrama for my next work....... lol! I write, write, write--and usually, I write 60-90% of the fic before I start editing!

6) Editing. Fun fun fun. I don’t mind editing, I just don’t think I’m that GOOD at it. I try to read through my chapter twice and edit as I go. I look for things I want to take out or add, look for show vs tell, formatting, etc--do things make sense? Did I miss anything? In ABAT, I’ll write something in chap 20 that I need to start in chap 18, so I’ll go back and make a quick note to “add part about document somewhere in this chapter” so I don’t confuse readers. When I edit chap 18, I’ll add that line or paragraph in. It’s all an intricate web! I also have a list of vague words I try to eliminate or replace with stronger words (I have more words if you want them). I found that I have certain words or phrases that echo a lot, like “while”, “turned around”, “turned” or “did not”--now I search for these phrases/words and try to change them:

Get rid of vague words, fix by explaining more:

Some

While

Thing

Stuff

Very

Really

Big/small

Good/bad

Simple verbs: had, was, went

Got/get

Few

Several

What

Do/Did

Like with all writing “rules”, they can be broken, but it helps to know why they are rules. I steered away from adverbs, and I think it improves my writing. Other writers have different prose and adverbs work so well--it all depends on your style! If I find these vague words in dialogue, for example, I almost never change them because dialogue is usually freaking vague lol!

7) Beta reader(s)! I honestly think this work is better than my other stuff because I have a newer beta reader, theunpaidcritic!!! *I bow* She’s literally an expert so it’s SO helpful for me in every way--I can’t fangirl about her enough. If you’re struggling to get a beta reader, I recommend joining a JB discord (transformative werk is my favorite discord, and there is a beta read request thread) or post a request on reddit!

8) Post! Once you’ve edited and gone over beta reader notes, it’s time to post! Congrats!!!!!!!!!!

For time reference, I started this process around mid-May for ABAT, and I will be done by early September. Maybe I’m just a fast writer? Compared to angel-deux, ha, I look slow. Everyone is different! Please let me know if you have any other questions, I am ALL about helping out! :) <3 <3 <3

#cytarabi answers #jaime x brienne #writing #braime

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tuz-on-ao3 · 4 years ago

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Hey, I was reading your fic (I really like it by the way! Sasuke's, my favorite character, and I think you wrote him really well :D), and I was wondering, what's your writing process? I know everyone has something different that works for them, but how do you plan out your chapters, or get ideas, or things like that (very vague, I know, I'm sorry)?

Hiiiiiiiiiiii!!!!!!!!!! Thank you sugar plum for reading Maybe I’m Paying for the Things I’ve Done and liking my characterization of Sasuke, it’s very heartwarming and I appreciate it.

As for my writing process, oof. As you know everyone’s writing process is really different and it has been a joy to learn more about other people’s process to help figure out what works for me. This is something you can absolutely cherry pick with and try things out for the first time.

Timing: some people write better at certain points during the day, some people can start writing at 5am or write till 3am in the morning with a late start. I am a mix of both. I can start writing around 9am because that’s when my internal ticker is like “Let’s go to work now!” It’s just how my school and internship schedule line up. I also just write when I am bored(while in class sometimes) and late at night if I really have the momentum. Which happened for some of the chapters I have written for Maybe I’m Paying for the Things I’ve Done. So figure out what works for you. Also, timing myself sometimes helps, I use Pomodoro as a way to keep track of my work, I don’t necessarily take my short breaks.

Initial phase of writing: I draft first and I backwards outline as I go along and then I hit a wall. The idea circulates in the back of my mind and I either get a sense of a scene or a situation that I want the characters to go into and I start writing. Writing the story informs me where it’s going to go, it comes to me during the process. However, I will hit a wall. The fics I write are rarely short(shoutout to the people who can do short and sweet, your sense of pacing is unreal and I bow to your greatness) so there is a lot of worldbuilding, plot, and character development that needs to happen. Important thing to note, just because you are writing fanfiction doesn’t mean you can skip worldbuilding. It is very important!!!!!! It doesn’t need to be the crazy amount that I do but you need to set your reader up in a place and time so give some context.

Timeline: Things happen at certain places and times, and my characters will be a certain age when it happens, so I need to keep track. One of the walls I’ve hit is that for my current posted fic Sasuke spends time in jail, but how much time was not made clear in my non existent early planning and that changes the way things happen. And how old he is, and how much time should I spend on that prison sentence. If it was a long time then I need to talk about it as a life event that will have consequences throughout the entire fic, or if he was just detained until his lawyers came that changes Sasuke’s character. It also is a good way to talk about the criminal justice system of Konoha that I am making up. So I keep track of everyone’s ages, and birthdays, and sometimes I change them. I mean it is really hard for me to write baby ninja that go out into the battlefield when they are four years old and not make the entire fic about a shitty world like that. I don’t want to do that, it’s too fucking hard, and fluff feeds my soul. Also, seasons!!! That changes the way you set up your environment as well, from what I can tell Fire Country should have a monsoon season since they are so forested and are located near the equator of their world. So when that happens, if I decide to include that, is important for pacing of the story. I mean how long should this go on? Also, romance in the rain *hitn hint wink wink* who knows.

Outlining: I didn’t use to be an outline and to some extent I still am not. I have done a previous post explaining a little bit of it but I backwards outline to keep track of what is happening because it’s a lot of detail and I don’t want to make mistakes. However, spreadsheets are my jam. I didn’t use to be this way but my internship has changed me and now I like spreadsheets as a way to be organized. Huzzah *throws confetti in the air* to being a boring adult person! There are a couple of way to do this but first actual writing notes:

5 commandments of story

Inciting incident

Progressive complications

Crisis

Climax

Resolution

This is something that helped me a lot when it came to structure, because sometimes my plot points are all happening at the same time and I’m like this makes no goddamn sense, what is happening. Story Grid is a podcast, and a book, and a website that can help you talk about structure. They can also talk to you about the Hero's journey. Take or leave whatever works for you because a lot of their stuff doesn’t work for me. But in doing their spreadsheets and exercises I learned what doesn’t work in a story. It’s how I realized pacing was a problem in my writing, and that I needed to take time away.

So they have sample spreadsheets that break down books into scenes, turning points, characters on stage, etc. Take what works and leave what doesn’t.

Back to spreadsheets, I have a story grid one for Maybe I’m Paying for the Things I’ve Done which I will backwards outline for the chapters I have already posted and a weird visual index card thing with the five commandments on my computer to help me figure out what is happening in my story.

It looks kind of like five boxes side by side with the five commandments written on each one.

Sometimes there is more than one box for progressive complication and that is fine, it is also fine if every scene you write doesn’t have a resolution, because by the end of the fic you will have one. I split this up by chapter, expected word count, POV.

Word count: Some people care about this, some people don’t. I don’t write stuff for ‘Maybe’ that is less than 10000 each chapter, there is way too much going on in the fic to do short chapters. For my other works in progress I find that I will be writing shorter, which is both easier and harder because it needs me to be concise and clear. Anyway, I do take notes from Story Grid in this because 50% of my words have to be for my middle build, while 25% each go to the opening hook and to the ending payoff. A scene is about 1200-2000 words.

Wiggle Room: Shit happens, you don’t do as much one day and you do a lot another. It’s okay, your story will evolve at certain points, it will tell you what to do. Don’t worry about it that much.

Struggle/villainy: Protagonists are often defined by their antagonists, and if that is the type of story you are writing make sure you spend just as much time on the villain of your story as you do the hero. They are major actors and deserve the attention. When I talk about the Akatsuki I am thinking that they are an international terrorist organization hellbent on kidnapping people that are systematically treated as weapons. There are a lot of moving parts for this. Also the characters themselves, Pein and Konana are radicalized in my story from peaceful revolutionaries to violent ones because they watched the leader of an institution murder their best friend, that will cause personal and political damage. It informs the way I write them or will.

Sasuke's struggle isn’t necessarily against a person, it is against himself. He wants a home because when he was little the one place where he felt safe was violated by his own brother, that is a hell of a trauma. Then he left his former home to go to Oto. Place has a huge part to play in Sasuke’s characterization and I tag homemaking in my fic because I want to show the process of creating a home for yourself as a process of revival and change and hope and vulnerability. It is a huge emotional labor of love and will be a focal point in the fic. That’s why I spend so much time talking about these goddamn renovations and art deco, it matters. This is a boy who has traveled all over the world and is now trying to put all the pieces of himself into one place, how he does it will be incredibly revealing of his characters.

Character: Emotional arcs are important for everyone. Try to figure out what your character is going to go through. It helps so much. Victoria Schwab asks her characters three questions:

What do they fear?

What do they want?

What are they willing to do to get what they want?

See if this helps. Also, understand that you got to develop your side characters as well, they act as a foil for the main character and add richness to the story, you will notice if they are flat. Understand the dynamics they bring to the story and to the world. Are they a woman in a field that is more socially acceptable for men? How does that affect them? What does gender look like in this world and how does this affect your characterization? Have they gone through physical/emotional trauma? Because that shit will keep coming up in a story, healing takes time. Also this is a fanfic, do whatever you want honey bear.

Vocab: the lovely @slexenskee told me to have a running doc of vocabulary and I am trying to do that.

I also have a running doc for a fic/character where I put all my brainstorming, little scenes, lines, vibes, questions into. And a doc for the synopsis of any new fic ideas I get.

Inspiration: Read, a lot. I read fics, I read fiction and fantasy books, I read non fiction and I read about other people’s writing process. I read the news, I read twitter threads, I read random quotes on Pinterest. I watch tv shows and take note of how they do characterization or pacing or plot. I listen to music, I couldn’t live without it. I am on Pinterest looking for vibes or aesthetics for my fics. When I first started writing, since my fic was inspired by another fic, I was worried it would be too similar, that worry is fading because I am doing more writing, and more reading as well. But you must consume culture in order to produce it. Also take breaks, sometimes you figure stuff out if you leave it alone or talk to friends about it. If you reach out to me about it, I will do my best to help so feel free.

IMPORTANT: DO NOT BE A RACIST/HOMOPHOBIS/TRANSPHOBIC/MISOGYNIST. UNDERSTAND THAT WHEN YOU WRITE A FANFICTION THE CHARACTERS ARE CODED IN A CERTAIN WAY. DON’T GO AROUND MAKING PEOPLE OF COLOR WHITE OR MORE LIGHT SKINNED THAN THEY ARE. WOMEN AND NON BINARY PEOPLE EXIST ALWAYS, IF YOU ARE NOT WRITING THEM INTO YOUR WORLD THAT MEANS YOU ARE MARGINALIZING THEM IN YOUR WORLD AND IN YOUR MIND. IF YOU ARE CISGENDERED BE DAMN CAREFUL ABOUT WRITING TRANS NARRATIVES, PROBABLY DON’T. WHEN I DECIDED TO INCLUDE MY OWN CULTURE INTO SASUKE’S CHARACTER AND PAST I DIDN’T MEAN TO MAKE HIM LESS EAST ASIAN BUT TO ADD PARTS OF MYSELF TO THE WORLD. ACCEPT AND ADAPT TO CRITICISM COMING YOUR WAY IN THIS SENSE. I AM SURE YOU WILL BE FINE, THIS IS JUST A STANDARD DISCLAIMER.

This was really long, and I hope you won't mind. Thanks again for this question, and let me know how your writing goes. Also listen to Deadline City the podcast.

#answers #fic writing #process #naruto

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the-cookie-of-doom · 4 years ago

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Hi! Can I be nosey? I saw your post on outlining Liar, Liar, Foxfire, could you explain your process a little more? Especially the EVEN DUMBER VERSION? Please and thank you and love your blog! Especially the little snippets of what you're working on!

Dear nonny you can always be nosy, I love it <3

I usually put the Title: DUMBEST VERSION at the top of my docs to remind myself that it’s the first draft and it doesn’t have to be perfect. It started out as a joke with Estranged back in the end of 2018 I think, when I started the fic. Then it kind of became a thing between myself and my then beta (she thought it was cute lol) I don’t really use it for its intended purpose, since I heavily edit as I write. You’re not technically supposed to do that, but I can’t write any other way if my work is unsatisfactory; it seriously kills my motivation when I know I can do better.

Which is where the EVEN DUMBER VERSION comes in! I’ve never used that one before this, I was just frustrated because I couldn’t get my plot to work in a way that I liked lol, so I decided to go through and outline literally every scene in season 3b. (Essentially: 3b for Dummies.)

In the case of this fic, I didn’t actually use an outlining method, really, and I usually don’t. I’m notoriously bad at outlines, and any time I’ve had to do them for school, I would write the project first, then write the outline based on that. The few times I do use an outline, I typically end up veering very far off track.

So what I initially ended up doing here was sitting down with a notebook and rewatching 3b, writing down the general ideas of each scene. Mostly I intended to use it just to jog my memory while I wrote the fic. It... did not work out that way.

After struggling for a few days, I decided to type everything up into a document, splitting each section by episode. I didn’t have every scene detailed, since it wasn’t an outline for the show itself, just for the main context I needed for my fic.

Then I used the blue text for the changes I intended to make/scenes I wanted to add. That way I had a visual representation of what was my original work, and what was the canon framework, which is what I was struggling with the most. It’s difficult for me to work within the constraints of canon like that, which I why I don’t write “missing scene” fics. (RIP)

At that point, it was a matter of adding in the scenes I knew I wanted, and then fleshing out some more where I felt like I needed more original content to balance out the canon. My goal is to have only as much canon context as necessary, because I didn’t want to write out episodes we’ve all already scene.

... And that still didn’t really help. I mean it was super useful in giving me somewhere to start but it wasn’t quite what I needed yet. So I started searching around for the scripts. (Fun fact: i used to be a film major, and I still have a thing for collecting scripts). I found the scripts only up to the end of 3a so that was a bust T_T But then I found the Teenwolfwiki which has scene-by-scene synopsis and it’s amazing. Way more effective than my outline in terms of laying everything out clearly for me.

So now I’ve got my outline as a sort of guide for where my missing scenes fit in, but then I’m going through the wiki to work my way through each episode, and decide which scenes I do/don’t want to keep. Since the fic is about Mitch and Stiles, I’m focusing on scenes with a heavy focus on Stiles and Mitch (who’s Allison’s cousin here, and thus follows the Argent’s storyline). I was also unsure how mush of Malia’s storyline to include, since the person who commissioned the fic didn’t want her in, but also there was some important context she gives to the plot... but then I realized I could just... not write her scenes. That leaves it up to the reader whether that part of canon still happened or not xD (For the record, I like to think it did, but her arc ends after they get her back to her dad, He never sends her to Eichen and that’s the end of her involvement.)

Like I said, I don’t outline very often, if at all, and I tend to get off track when I do (LLF has already changed drastically from the original ideas and outline, and a lot of scenes have been cut), the way I prefer to do it is to write essentially a very long summary. I like to jokingly call them “not-fics” because they can easily end up several thousand words long. It lays out the fic in a shorter retelling, but it’s less structured and leaves me more room for deviation. I usually don’t end up with an actual bullet-pointed outline until I’m pretty far into the fic and need to organize the remaining scenes. Estranged didn’t get an outline until I was...40k into it, maybe? It was a long time.

But if you want an ACTUAL outline method, one I’ve found and liked is the 3 ACT, 9 BLOCK, 27 CHAPTER Method, which somewhat follows the Hero’s Journey, but more in depth::

Act 1

Block 1: Introductions/Inciting Incident/Immediate Fallout (Exposition)

Block 2: Reaction/Action/Consequences

Block 3: Plot Twist/Break into Second Act

Act 2

Block 4: New World/Fun & Games/Old World Juxtaposition (Time for worldbuilding, everything is still fun; Harry Potter comes to Hogwarts)

Block 5: Build Up/Midpoint/Reversal (Growing paints. The character is changing for the better, lots of character development, etc. Pivotal moment)

Block 6: Reaction/Trials/Dedication (Character has potential, but still has work to do. Yennefer during the lightning in a bottle scene.)

Act 3

Block 7: Calm Before the Storm/Plot Twist/Darkest Moment (The whump chapter; Character reaches their breaking point.)

Block 8: Power Within/Action/Converge (Stiles in Ch. 16, to plug my own fic xD)

Block 9: Final Battle/Climax/Resolution

This is a super condensed version, but if you look it up, you’ll be able to see the full explanation on byomentor.com. I found it through Kate Cavanaugh on YouTube in one of her outlining methods videos.

I’m thinking of using this outlining method for this year’s NaNo when I finally, finally write Neverland, but we’ll see. It’s pretty flexible since you don’t have to exactly follow all 27 chapters; you can follow the general vibe and idea of each blog and still have a really sound story, which I like.

Another method I used forever ago for my fic Tree of Life (and I can’t remember the name of the method, but it’s pretty basic) was to have 5 points per chapter:

Inciting Incident

Progressive Complication

Crisis

Climax

Resolution

Now it didn’t work exactly that way because ToL is a pretty drawn out fic, even despite the action, but it’s a good thing to consider. If you have an action heavy or fast-paced chapter (or if a chapter feels slow to you but you don’t know why), it’s a good thing to keep in mind to help speed things up.

But yeah, despite my research in many different outline methods, my favorite is still to write my not-fics and then outline later, if I do at all xD

I hope this was informative! Please feel free to come back if you have any thoughts or questions : 3

#cookie speaks #cookie writes #long post #sorry this got so long...#I haven't really talked to anyone in a while #lol #i like to Talk about my writing/process #it makes me v happy when people are interested in how i do htings

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carbootsoul · 4 years ago

Text

i was tagged by @katarahairloopies!!! thank u :mwah:

name: leo! @/zeitgeistofnow on ao3, @lazypigeon & @timetohope on here, altho i’m considering uh switching back to not having an art blog :/ i have to think abt it.

fandom(s): ace attorney is my main one rn bc i’m replaying the games with a friend of mine and it’s reminding me how invested i am in the characters!! a lot of my recent fic is atla stuff, altho i’ve been distancing myself from the fandom bc i’ve kinda exhausted my interest in it. finally i’ve been reading a lot of mp100 fic but i don’t think i’ll ever write for it. i just love how dumb all the characters r (with the dubious exception of ritsu)

where you post: ao3!! tbh i always get suprised when people say they write/read fic on any other platform like i haven’t messed around w wattpad or ff.net since middle school... catch up........

most popular oneshot: going just by “one chapter” as the definition of a oneshot, the firestarters, bc it’s fluffy and modern au :) i wouldn’t necessarily call it a oneshot tho bc to me a oneshot shows like, one scene? so like by my definition and your sweet sweet sun makes me crazy (i wanna lay you down and see how you amaze me is my most popular!! (also @ kit u thought UR fic titles were unnecessarily long??? i’ve hit the ao3 LIMIT for characters in titles. it’s about the aesthetic

most popular multichapter fic: sdkjflakjlkj it’s two crowned kings; and one that stood alone, which is a w359 fic i wrote back in late 2017. it’s literally the last fic i haven’t orphaned from when i actually wrote podcast fic (i have 4 other podcast fics but they were all borne out of nostalgia and written after i stopped participating in the fandom). i rewrote all but the last chapter? the last two? about a year ago and i fucked up halfway through so like chapter 6 and 7 are repeated and there’s something missing but i’m too lazy to fix it. no one’s going to read it now anyway :) it WAS the top minlace fic for a little while tho which i take great pride in.

favorite story you’ve written so far: oh that’s a hard question akfsldkfj i honestly like most of them!! and i write a LOT so there’s a lot to choose from. tonight, we are young is def one of my favorites- it was fun to write and i got to explore the ways zuko and yue r similar, which i LOVE to do outside of a zukka/yukka view. you can lean on my arm as you break my heart is one that i’m really proud of? the whole “cooking as an expression of bato’s love” is definitely some of my favorites. a lot of my ace attorney fics would be categoried as my favorites if i hadn’t improved, too, if that makes sense. like they’re no long my favorites because i can see where my writing is shitty and it bothers me, but if i had written them a month ago they’d be my favorite.

fic you were nervous to post: figures 1-5: killing gods def!! it’s a lot more purple-prose-y than most of my fics and it was also written before i’d kinda like emersed myself in the atla fandom so i didn’t have as good a grasp on the general understanding of zuko’s character as i do now. tbh it’s one i’m rly happy w tho!! i have a few people leave really nice comments on it and rereading them makes me really happy. also it was the start of me hating the position of fire lord and being at least passively anti-it in my fics.

how you choose your titles: they’re almost all song lyrics!! only 14 of my 50 words AREN’T song lyrics and about half of those are from before i started writing ace attorney fic lol. sometimes i go into a fic with a song in mind for the vibes and then i usually go with lyrics from that (like in ‘cuz we’re the greatest /they’ll hang us in the louvre), but otherwise i usually pick an artist i’ve been listening to and go through their songs until i find a lyric that fits. sometimes the lyric doesn’t even really fit the fic and i just chose it at random or because i searching up the word “fly” in my spotify library or whatever. honestly i like coming up with titles? i know a lot of fic writers hate it but being able to just use song lyrics is v soothing for me and while i know that most people won’t search out a song just bc it’s a fic title like.. seeing that the title of a fic is a hozier lyric does affect how i read it and i kinda like that.

do you outline? i outline my long form/multichaptered fics with varying strictness. usually anything over ~8k will have some kind of outline. sometimes i go into it with every single scene planned out, sometimes it’s just notes on the side of the google doc that say “it's about MORE family. about how it's not betraying your existing family to find more” and “scenes i want to include: [...]” and “vampires... ngl kinda hot.” i’m trying to outline super strictly less bc i’ve found it’s less fun? but i do try to keep a plot arc in mind. since most of my fics are more character-driven than plot-driven, that usually just means keeping track of what character development i want to happen or what is motiviating the characters.

complete: um everything posted on ao3 i guess. also the MULTITUDE of orphaned fics out there asksfjldkj i always click ‘leave my pseud on’ so if u look up my username you see all of my fics and then a. lot of other ones.

in progress: - a fic titled ‘dad phoenix’ that is actually just a no DL-6 au with defense attorney miles edgeworth and single dad bartender phoenix where neither of them want to date for A While but phoenix gets wrapped up in one of miles’s cases. it’s about family. it’s about writing teenagers. it’s about the background franmaya which is ALWAYS what i’m here for in wrightworth fics - a franmaya werewolf/vampire au because i’m ~gay~ and love rivals to lovers and also franziska and maya both being angry their older brothers r dating each other. - my secret santa fic!! which i can’t talk about much but it does feature toph and zuko and also piandao and jeong jeong???? idk where they came from but they are Part Of The Fic Now also i forgot iroh existed for half the fic and wrote piandao as zuko’s father figure and now i’m in too deep. - a 5+1 bakoda fic (maybe a bato/hakoda/kay fic??? i need to decide. that’s part of why this fic is still incomplete bc i can’t decide which relationship dynamic i prefer) that’s 5 times bato said he loves hakoda and one time hakoda said it back. possibly i have already written him saying i love u back and i need to change the title a little. - retail au klapollo where klavier works at an overpriced boutique and apollo comes in to buy earrings for nahyuta’s birthday. klavier gives him a punch card (one that the store doesn’t actually offer anymore as a bid to get apollo to come back) and all of apollo’s family come in to use the punch card and also give klavier variations on the shovel talk/find out if he’s actually into apollo. - a LOT of atla fics that i don’t think i’ll ever finish :(

coming soon/not yet started: - i want to write some blackmadhi bc they’re.. cute..... and it’s a good excuse to also write athena and i love her - my stuff for yueki week!!! i have NOT prepped enough but hopefully i’ll remember in time! i wrote the prompts in a way that kinda set up stuff i’ve already wanted to write (don’t look at me lol) so hopefully i’ll get at least two or three fics finished in time. - i want to rewrite the wrightworth fic i have about them not getting married bc it was interesting and i like what i wrote about but i think i could have written it better and made it more interesting. rewriting fics is hard tho bc i’m never sure if it makes sense to just edit in the new work or to repost it? and then if u repost it do u delete the old one? conflicting so i might just not

do you accept prompts? totally!!! a disclaimer tho i’m not super into writing atla stuff anymore (most of the atla stuff i’m still writing is something i made a commitment to finish) so if your prompt is an atla one i probably won’t do it :/ basically anything else is fair game tho!! podcasts/aa/sa/uh i don’t remember anything else but like if you search a fandom on my blog and come up with more than two posts about it chances r i’d be happy to write fic for it!

upcoming work that you’re most excited about: oh huh i mean probably the no dl-6 au!!! it’s the longest ace attorney fic i’ve written already and since it’s wrightworth it’ll get more attention than any franmaya fic i write. my standards r so high now tho after getting to much feedback from atla fans... love u all... obviously i have no choice but to pressure my atla mutuals into playing ace attorney. pls ask abt it bc i WIll Give You A Sales Pitch about why you’d like it in relation to atla

tagging: i’m not rly tagging anyone!!! @deadflora if you still consider urself a fic writer also consider urself tagged! also any of my other mutuals who write fic i just can’t think of anyone rn

#leo.txt #thank u!! i think i wrote a lot for this lol #but literally ive been so bored i don't have anything better to do

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joecial-distancing · 4 years ago

Text

2019 in review in review:

A few years ago I started tracking yearly goals, books read, movies watched etc in a year, along with overview blurbs, in private posts. End of 2019/beginning of 2020 I was really frazzled/burned out about a lot of stuff and just never finished up making the thing. 8 months later, got the urge to read back what I’d got done, then figured I’d maybe go ahead and see about finishing.

Media tracking below the break. thoughts/blurbs written in 2020 italicized, 2019 not.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~_____________________________~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Didn’t do so hot on explicit personal goals, but had a lot of stuff go ok around them this year.

School’s been fine/better than fine.

Job’s probably the biggest failing. Still with same job, haven’t made the firm moves to jump off, dragging my feet too much on exploring stuff w/ Columbia/NASA GISS.

Did not get better with covid, lol

Dating life still non-existent, but I’ve registered on apps, gotten more comfortable with selfies, improved general social life dramatically, been flirted with, updated my wardrobe, and generally started to get comfortable accepting that I’m a hot person.

Somehow got extremely better during covid.

Books

Grant (finished)

We stan a taurus legend

Guy was good at exactly one job, and was fortunate enough to have been in the right place/right time to get to do it.

Mort (discworld)

Definitely best discworld I’ve gotten to so far.

Don Quixote p. II

Really entertaining in a way that part 1 wasn’t; I was shocked how much the meta element landed for me.

Consider the Lobster (DFW collection)

had zero context on who DFW is/was when I read, and still don’t exactly tbh. Wanted to wait for a pause in The Discourse before diving into more of him, but dunno if I’m ever going to get that.

Crime and Punishment (revisited)

Weirdly didn’t get much more out of this than I did the first time I’d read it

Better Than Sex (HST Gonzo papers)

Xerox/widespread fax accessibility opening citizen access to mass media in a manner really reminiscent of what social media would go on to do at a much larger scale. Has a much more deliberate narrative arc than the other gonzo papers collections, also has that excellent HST richard nixon eulogy

The Brothers Karamazov

SPQR

Slouching Towards Bethlehem (Didion collection)

Pet Sematary

Not my favorite King, but not bad

Sourcery (discworld)

still funny/charming, but Mort really made clear/reminded me how much the hapless sadsack Rincewind mold of protagonist wears on me after a while.

The Devil's Teeth

My Year of Rest and Relaxation

Liked it a lot more once I realized it was doing a Fear and Loathing thing.

Homage to Catalonia

This should be the Orwell that gets taught in schools. Make it a followup to All Quiet on the Western Front or something, jeez.

Lyndon Johnson I

Having now finished all of them, this one’s probably the least-interesting but sets up a bunch of important context that the others still then feel the need to retread.

The Razor's Edge

Recommended to me as a “white guy discovers eastern mysticism” book, but also is more interesting in its treatment of that than I’d expected (helps it was written in the 40s).

Cat's Cradle

There’s a part in this where Vonnegut’s making fun of people who try to bond with strangers over being Hoosiers, and my dumbass immediate thought was “ooh, Vonnegut’s a hoosier? Me too!”

Lyndon Johnson II

Robert Caro felt compelled to apologize for spending so much words lionizing Coke Stevens, segregationist opponent to Johnson’s senate run. His goal was pretty clearly to show lbj’s lack of campaign charisma by contrast, definitely definitely overcommitted in his own narrativising.

Libra

I want to go back to this after reading some more De Lillo.

Gravity's Rainbow

This book absolutely kicked my ass

Overstuffed and referential in a specific way that really keeps me hooked in instead of put off. When I learn about some piece of cultural context that I retroactively recognize as being referenced in this, I want to go back and reread the entire thing.

From Caligari to Hitler

Kind of fails both as film criticism and cultural analysis, but absolutely made me want to run for the hills when considering current relationship between mainstream movies and demands of pop culture.

I took a class on Weimar cinema in undergrad that I now realize was probably biting pretty heavily from this and never once referenced it.

Movies

Venom

Movie itself is not as fun as the Tom Hardy hype coverage. PG13 was the absolute worst space to aim for, PG- or R- versions of this could have been a blast.

Harryhauser Argonauts

Was tripping when I put this on, and it was all kinds of fun.

2001: a Space Oddyssey

First time seeing this, all-time classic for a reason!

A Good American (the NSA doc)

Dr. Strangelove

Mel Brooks History of the World p. I

Not my favorite Brooks, best joke was at the beginning.

In Bruges

Had been a while since I saw a proper dark comedy.

Spiderverse

Fukkin awesome!

Visually great, and extremely better than usual superhero stuff for being aimed at PG instead of PG-13.

You Only Live Twice

Highlander (Revisited)

I watched The Old Guard on netflix recently and it mostly just made me wish I was watching Highlander instead, because at least Highlander knows exactly how goofy it is

Moonraker

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

Much like The Shining, I though this would have been 100% spoiled for me by cultural osmosis, but turns out it wasn’t, and even the scenes I had seen *totally landed* in-context still.

Kung Fu Hustle

Ichi the Killer

Really gross, really fun

Matrix Reloaded (watched thru highway scene) (Revisited)

The highway scene was not nearly as cool as I remembered it being.

John Wick 3*

Probably dumbest plot of all of them, best choreography. I like how every single fight had its own distinct flavor. “Knife museum fight” “horse fight” “halle berry dogs fight”

Akira

A classic

Pet Sematary * (ugh, bad)

Why can’t john lithgow be in good movies anymore

The Revenant

MCU Spiderman

Fuck this was awful.

MCU Spiderman 2*

Really weird, complete Rorschach Test of a movie: it’d be totally valid to read into this that global warming is Fake News, for instance.

Lmao this was completely awful

Rites

Dredd (non-stallone)

oh hey Lena Headey’s in this

For All Mankind!

Watched in honor of moon landing anniversary

Lion King *

Watched it way too stoned, was like dark side of the moon + wizard of oz except instead it’s a lion king script reading + nature footage edited for lip syncing.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood *

Many scenes of very long setups for really stupid shaggy dog jokes, which sometimes worked and sometimes didn’t. I do kinda want to rewatch now knowing more about manson, which I knew pretty much nothing about beforehand

Blowout

A good john lithgow movie

also I think I like travolta in things.

Lord of War

A Good cage movie

I like when Eamon Walker shows up in stuff.

Taxi Driver

A classic

Snowpiercer

Watched in a bar with only one speaker working, which is the correct way to watch. Weirder and funnier than I thought it was going to be, which still doesn’t make it good, but,

dbz big green dub

Exorcist III

Brad Dourif just tearing it apart

Deep Red (argento)

Suspiria (1977)

Watched the remake in 2020, which was ok, but nothing tops the Goblin score.

Elf Bowling

Thanks, Gnome

Parasite *

Interesting to me that this one seems poised to hang around people’s good esteem for a while

FMA: B

Rick & Morty

Saw some episodes, generally pretty funny, some misanthropy that’s probably appealing to a certain type of teen al a something like House, but ultimately I don’t totally Get the intensity of discourse about it.

Leterkenny

Mob Psycho 100

One Punch Man

Deadwood

Watchmen

Only watched like half of it. Was playing around with a lot of hefty imagery/thematics, but didn’t really seem ready to rise above playing (tho also I feel like it’s weird on some level to *expect* them to rise above that in the first place)

Music

New Avantasia

HEALTH/ show

lol remember concerts

King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard/ show

Just learned about King Gizz in 2019 and got completely obsessed with them. I don’t tend to expand my music selection very readily, and a lot of what I currently *do* know is old/inactive stuff, so it was/is incredibly exciting to have an active group with good momentum just immediately win me over like that.

Mistimed the edibles and ended up with a really good finale and a really long subway ride home.

New Yeasayer

Sad they split up

Steve Wilson Tull remixes

Aqualung’s a good album and the sound mixing’s kinda bad, so I liked this project.

Stonefield

Opened for Gizzard. Really good as studying music

Video Games

Civ VI: Gathering Storm

Hades

Turns out Supergiant’s design proclivities all work *extremely well* on a roguelike

Baba is You

Untitled Goose Game

Cute, if maybe a bit overhyped

finally fucking finished Pillars of Eternity

Had fun with it, but too long, and really dour for how long it is.

Pillars II

Kinda drifted off it eventually, but I do genuinely like that the flavor of the fantasy is colonial era rather than medieval.

There’s a Balancing Bastard Factions element where it’s like the writers are just being smartasses after a while. Having to go extremely out of their way to make siding with colonizers seem like a competitive option.

Pokemon shield

Cuphead

pisses me off, which was a nice outlet when I was stranded by flight cancellations during thanksgiving

Celeste

Also very difficult, but really easy to stay patient with, which is nice.

Disco Elysium

None of the discourse made me want to play this, but people talking about the mechanical stuff it did got me extremely interested. Mostly Delivered IMO.

Breath of the Wild

You can approach the nodes of the main quest in the order you choose, and the second one I chose made ninjas start fucking spawning everywhere when I’m just trying to explore, and there’s no way to make it stop. May go back to it one day.

Podcasts

Relentless Picnic Patreon feed

The treats really helped me start distinguishing individual personalities, compared to the regular eps.

Picnic Discord!

FatT Counterweight

Fun, but also I think Mechs are not my shit.

FatT Spring in Hieron/ end of that particular world

8 months since I’ve last tuned into FatT. ah well.

Law School

He’s in everythiiiing!

You Must Remember This: Manson family

*There’s* the context

Misc.

Kindle train guy

Times Square sleeping guy + kids taking selfies w/ him

toddler singing along after Psycho killer (a, ya, ya ya, ya)

drunk and dragged to a drag show

Central park football family

Soft Steel Drum Subway Busker

Weird old lady going to grand central for oysters

2018 in review (cards):

MySelf (CC)

Self: Tower

Blocked: 10 Cups

Ethereal/subconscious: 8 Swords

Material: 3 Swords

Past: Justice

Future: Page Wands

Attitude: Sun

External: King Swords

Hopes/Fears: 5 Coins

Trajectory: High Priestess

Also Self:

Hierophant

7 Cups

7 Coins

Blind Spot:

(self & others): 5 cups || (others not self): High Priestess

(self not others): Moon || (nobody): 3 Cups

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