#she's a romance novelist who kind of sucks

[lulivalu]

oc art dump 💭🌕

[taegularities]

Rid, this maybe a small rant so bear w me pls >:(

I was having a conversation with my roommate in college yesterday about books and reading in general. She is picky when it comes to reading, mostly inclining towards romance and sub genres within the umbrella. While I believe that reading anything is a good practice, she is radical in her opinion. In the sense that she believes books which are officially published in a hardcover are credible enough to be called books or novels for the matter. Recently i revealed to her that I’ve been reading fan fiction for 3 years now and her reaction was… quirky? She thinks that fanfiction writers are still amateurs in writing, have no experience with editors and they only write as a hobby so they don’t put in as much effort as a novel writer would, so their stories are dumb when compared to novelists and best selling authors. I argued that fan fiction is not something to be looked down upon cause some people have put out excellent things to read and they do work hard on their plots and characters. Even if they are not accustomed to working with publishers and all but that doesn’t work as an authentic judgement that fanfic writers can’t be placed as the same level of some authors. Just putting out a book in hardcover doesn’t equate quality of a story, it only means you had access with some publishing house. The argument kinda took a sour turn cause she was unwilling to take in my pov so I asked her if you think fanfic writers suck then tell me which stories you have read in your entire lifetime which you consider masterpieces then i might recommend you some stories from my end to change your perspective. She texted me sometime ago and most of her list includes Colleen Hoover 😐 it kinda made me realize that in fact we as readers must have a fanfic phase in life otherwise we would place authors like CoHo with incredibly poor taste in writing on the pedestal and look down on underrated talents in the field of literature. I still can’t comprehend what does CoHo write in her books that attracts mass attention from people cause all she does is glorify toxic relationships and normalize it with her weak happy endings. I’ve read around 3 books from her and lemme tell you some of the bts fics on ao3 & tumblr deserved way better audience than she does. In my opinion, the only reasons books like these blow up is due to people who have a first time experience in reading and don’t really take much interest in reading, it’s disgraceful to way better writers who are overlooked cause they don’t suit the usual trend due to certain criteria they don’t fit in, the criteria being easy choice of vocabulary, some aesthetic corny words, incredible smut and bland character development. Maybe the lack of quality romance novels in bookstores has me caving into fanfics because I feel in some measures I’d rather spend a week completing works of a fanfic writer with amazing plots for free over spending dollars and wasting time on books I end up disliking because of their stuff characters having absolutely no growth or a potential plot going to waste.

rant anytime, love <3

oof, i don't know much about colleen hoover, so i can't judge.. but honestly, any kind of creative work should be appreciated. like, i used to be young adult girly myself, and got into writing like that, so i feel like none of us should drag down someone's effort (not talking about you, just in general!!). and like, as a fanfic author myself i do feel a bit bleh about your friend saying we are amateurs bc we don't work with publishers lol :') i've actually thought about this before. editors have so much work to do, like they need to perfect a story, right? i know it's different for us, but most beta readers i know do the same.. literally sit down and spend hours reading a fic to help a writer improve it (shoutout to you ily @missgeniality). tbh, i'd say agree to disagree with your friend and enjoy whatever you enjoy!! sometimes it's hard to explain a pov to someone. but tysm for standing up for fanfic authors, like i'm so happy you cherish them the way you do <3

[halalgirlmeg]

Me doing a lot of incoherent rambling under the cut, something something Grey's and Bridgerton sucks

They should've let me write the series and tell Julia Quinn that her material is garbage and we're changing everything and she's lucky our first choice Ms. Beverly Jenkins was unavailable:

And you know not to defend Owen or anything (although this is more about writing i guess) but I remember I saw a Grey's clip and it was about that one episode where like there was a gas explosion and this kid his Mom had passed and his Dad was in a coma and basically Owen became close with him but obviously bc it Grey's they pulled the bait and switch the Dad wakes up and all is well yay happy ending but then I saw people saying 'this is why Owen is horrible, he wanted the kids Dad to die so he could take him' like do me a favor and please take a step back because I've noticed more than when shows do things write there's like an overarching message that's tends to be built up from little things whether we're talking like in one episode or over the arc of a season.

And that is a way too simple of a way of looking at the plot right because this is season 9 so cristina is leaving in season 10 so I think they needed to really hint at them breaking up for good. And wanting and not wanting kids is like this dark cloud that hangs over Cristina and Owen and really brings out the ugliest parts of Owen imo. But that whole thing with like Ethan its like now Owen realizes he can't just sacrifice wanting kids for Cristina, like obviously Cristina is worthy of every single good thing however irl, which is like what this is trying to mimic. Having kids is not something you compromise on, not if you aren't willing to accept a major change of how you wanted things to go. That's why I love the Do You Know? episode because it shows what each character will sacrifice and jts not am easy one and either way, it ends up ending badly for them.

And I say all that to say like it kind of makes me think of Bridgerton because I hate Season 1 and The Book its based off of (ironically enough I stopped at the same parts in both mediums because I was digusted) because Simon lies about shooting blanks and not being able to have kids because he doesn't want to, because it's very clear in the show and book that his father is a vile man who treated him like shit and he refuses to give that man the satisfaction of having an heir, and Daphne ol evil ass was like omg he lied let's (redacted cause you already know) like WHAT??? Again was worse enough in the book, 10x worse in the show because now they added the racial implications cause you got dumbasses who think colorblind casting fixes every problem (but I digress, cause that's another point in a different post). And it also makes me mad cause why must he have a baby in either genre cause naive white woman wants it WHY? And it really makes me mad too because obviously someone thought bridgerton was good enough to get a TV adaption and people eat it up every season because it's such good romance but bitch no tf its not. Romance is about the journey, it is about the people within. Daphne couldn't have sat down and talked to Simon maybe learn more about his Dad? No, she just needed to have her way and because white women girl boss feminism, she right even when she's dead ass mf wrong. Julia Quinn is hailed as a romance novelist to be liked when she fucking sucks (and she didn't write Black people until it was money in it for her) but because bridgerton has plenty of sex in it its so revolutionary (omg shall throw a party?). Like where am I going with this??? IDK I'm just talking but I keep thinking about how Bridgerton fumbled so bad, even worse than the book series that already sucked, and how like TV Simon (who i care about first) was subjected to assault because he lied about being infertile (???) and book Simon too?? And so called writers want to like, just make it his fault, and then make us be on Daphne's side (bullshit) like where was the actual romance? No we just get no thought into what actually makes these characters who they are and have them be real actual adults and I keep seeing people act like bridgerton is the best romance ever when its vilely antiblack because almost all the Black male characters are vilified as partners (except for the one guy, but they're not main characters so) but even when Simon is vilified he's good enough to get the white women's rocks off so like they can stare at him while also shit talking rege jean page.

Again lost my point but TLDR:

Was rewatching Grey's s9 and s10 and was thinking

Bridgerton sucks as a romance series all around as a show and literature

White women suck as a whole

I hate Owen hunt always but that one episode made sense and the writing hits me each time very ah ha moment

[drarrily-we-row-along]

Day 138: Books

(Back by popular demand: featuring Harry as a trashy romance novelist! This one can be read as a continuation Day 132: Tinder Date Gone Wrong or you can read it as a stand alone.)

Harry was just finishing putting away the dishes when there was a knock at his door. "It's open," he called as he put the last plate in the cupboard.

The door flew open and before Harry had even turned around fully, Draco was grabbing him. Leaning in and kissing him as he shoved him back against the counter and pressed their bodies together.

A surprised moan slipped from his mouth and Harry pulled him in closer, heedless of the way he was gripping Draco's shirt with wet hands.

Draco's thigh slid between his and their bodies slotted even closer as Draco broke away to kiss, nip, and suck at Harry's neck.

"Huhh," Harry breathed as Draco sucked hard at his pulse point, "Not that I'm complaining," he managed, "but what brought this on?"

"Chapter thirteen of The Den of Thieves," Draco replied as he slid his hands under Harry's shirt.

And Harry was almost distracted enough by Draco's hands on him that he let the statement slide past him but after a heartbeat, his brain processed what Draco had just said and he froze. "You-" he started before breaking off, "You read my books?"

"Yeah," Draco said, nodding into his neck as he pulled Harry's collar to the side.

"Wait," Harry said, pushing him back a little so he could see his face. "How did you even find them?" he wrote under a pen name for a reason. Literally to avoid this situation.

(Read more below the cut)

Draco seemed to realize what he'd just admitted and he took a little step back, nodding without quite meeting Harry's eye. "Stella told me-"

"Stella," Harry groaned, "I-" he took a breath, trying to get his bearings. "Can I have a little space?" he asked, his chest feeling a bit too tight, breathing a bit too difficult.

Draco immediately stepped back, "Sorry," he said quickly. "Harry, I'm sorry. I was just so curious and-"

"Wait," he said, leaning forward slightly. "I can't-"

There was a moment's hesitation before either of them started speaking again. "It's okay," Draco said calmly, obviously slipping into healer mode, "Come sit," he said, grasping Harry's elbow and guiding him to the sofa. "Can I cast a spell that helps to regulate cortisol levels?" he asked. "It helps curb the fight or flight response so we can have a productive conversation."

Harry nodded and Draco drew his wand and cast the spell. His brain immediately cleared a bit, it didn't change the level of fear but it did help his think more clearly, "Thanks."

Draco sat down next to him, "I'm sorry," he said softly.

"No one I know reads them," he blurted.

"What do you mean?" Draco asked, befuddled. "Elixir of Lavere is literally a best seller, you've sold thousands and thousands of books."

He sighed, "I don't let people I know read them," he clarified.

"But Stella was the one who told me about your terrible pen name," Draco said. "Harvey Porter, honestly," he tsked.

"I'm just saying," he replied, "Stella doesn't really know me. I go work at her coffee shop but she thinks my name is Daniel Evans, she knows nothing about me."

"You never let anyone read your novels?" he asked, brow furrowed.

Harry shook his head, "It's too-" he broke off searching for the right way to say it. "Personal, I guess."

"I didn't mean to cross a boundary," Draco said, eyebrows still furrowed as he thought, "but you don't have anything to worry about. Your books are really good, Harry."

He exhaled shakily, "Thanks."

"It's just me," Draco added, reaching over to take his hand.

Harry huffed, "Honestly, you're the most terrifying person to have reading my books."

"Why?"

He looked down at his hands to avoid Draco's gaze, "I want you to like me," he muttered. "And it's just a lot. I'm a lot. And-"

"You're not a lot," he interrupted. "Circe, Harry, what kind of arseholes have you dated? You're the easiest person in the world to love."

Harry blinked in surprise, "You love me?"

"What?" Draco asked, his cheeks flushing beet red, "I don't mean I-" he shook his head, "You're reading into it," he added, "You're missing the point!" he finished.

"What's the point then?" Harry asked, feeling calmer now that Draco was flushed and a little wrong footed too.

"The point," he replied haughtily, sticking his nose up, "Is that you are a fantastic writer and you are an even better human being."

Harry leaned over and kissed him softly, "I might love you too."

Draco smiled and leaned into the kiss. "So, serious question," Draco said once they'd pulled back from one another.

Harry nodded.

"Have you ever tried that position in chapter six of Burnt Leaves?"

Harry frowned, "is that the chapter before house fire?"

He flushed and Harry couldn't quite tell if it was from arousal or embarrassment, "Yeah, the one with the scarves."

Licking his lower lip, he nodded once, slowly, as images of Draco splayed out and tied to the headboard danced through his head.

"Could we maybe give that a go?" Draco asked and Harry nodded before the words were even out, standing up and dragging Draco back to the bedroom.

"I'd also enjoy chapter 8," he said as Harry peeled off his shirt. "And 13 of Endless Winter, and-"

Harry kissed him, "One at a time, yes?"

"One at a time," Draco repeated.

And that's how they approached the rest of their lives together: one adventure at a time.

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

You can read Cliche as a continuation of this story if you'd like.

Day 137: Symmetry | Day 139: Expectations

[aion-rsa]

Best Queer Anime

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Diverse storytelling is one of anime’s most appealing qualities. Want a show about superheroes? There’s a series for you. Ninja? You, too. Demon slayers? Yup. Not interested in action or horror? Don’t worry. You can find series about high school volleyball teams, people who transmigrate to another world, and workplace romance. It’s not an exaggeration to say that there’s an anime for everyone, no matter their tastes or preferences.

Given the wide variety of stories, there’s a lot of anime about LBGTQ people and the queer experience. To be clear, anime has more than its fair share of problematic portrayals such as uninterrogated crossdressing tropes, unchallenged homophobia and transphobia, and comedy at the expense of a queer character. But these things are hardly unique to anime, unfortunately. Despite these shortcomings, the format does have great series exploring the LGBTQ experience in different contexts and genres so here are some of the best queer anime to watch.

Yuri on Ice

One of the series that launched Studio MAPPA into its present-day prominence, Yuri on Ice takes us into the world of championship-level figure skating. It revolves around struggling Japanese figure skater, Yuri Katsuki, and bored Russian figure skater Victor Nikiforov, who audaciously agrees to be Yuri’s coach. While the sport and respective cultures of its leads are infamously known for their real life homophobia, Yuri on Ice deliberately presents a story where none of that is present. And with a film expected to drop at some point in the future, now’s the time to watch this gorgeous series if you haven’t already.

Bloom into You

In this high school romance, two girls unexpectedly connect when they each turn down romantic confessions from male classmates. Their new friendship takes a surprising turn when the older girl, Touko, reveals to the other girl, Yuu, that she’s in love with her. Despite Yuu not yet returning her feelings, their relationship continues to evolve when Touko asks Yuu to manage her campaign to become student council president and then later when they help put on a school play. While the original manga is more explicit about the girls’ eventual happy ending, the anime still brings to life a realistic portrayal of self-acceptance and changing feelings during the teen years.

No. 6

When No. 6 opens, we meet Shion, a privileged boy with a bright and promising future. But because this is a dystopian story, that doesn’t last for long. One night, Shion helps another boy named Nezumi. Unfortunately Nezumi is an enemy of the state and for his kindness, Shion is punished by being stripped of his elite social status. Fast forward a few years, the boys meet again, and their reunion leads to the uncovering of a vast government conspiracy. If you like wild sci-fi plots to go with your queer themes, No. 6 is the show for you.

Wandering Son

While there aren’t yet many anime series that explore the trans experience, Wandering Son does a stellar job making up for that lack. The show focuses on two kids, Shuichi and Yoshino, who meet in fifth grade. Shuichi is a trans girl and Yoshino is a trans boy, and Wandering Son follows the two friends from elementary school into high school, chronicling their respective journeys with their evolving gender identities.

Revolutionary Girl Utena

One of the biggest anime of the 1990s, Revolutionary Girl Utena was a trippy rollercoaster ride. It explored self-identity and gender roles against the backdrop of underground duels at an elite academy. Revolutionary Girl Utena was the anime for many queer feminist girls and for good reason: the idea of a princess who’d rather be a prince and save herself instead of being saved is one that resonated then and still resonates today. For this reason, and many others, Utena would go on to influence some of today’s biggest animated series like Steven Universe and the new She-ra: Princess of Power.

Doukyuusei: Classmates

Casual anime fans may want a break from the intense stories and long-running series that pervade the format. Some hardcore anime fans may too! Doukyuusei is a film that portrays the sincere and heartfelt relationship between two high school boys who fall in love. That’s it. That’s the story. And it’s a good one.

Given

Given takes a different approach to high school romance. Ritsuka aspires to become a musician, but he’s lost his passion for playing the guitar. And as any creative person can attest, losing that fire for the thing you love most can make life seem mundane and dull. Lucky for him, he meets the quiet Mafuyu and hears the other boy’s golden singing voice. The series is one that music enthusiasts everywhere should watch—even if only to peep at the episode titles and the songs they reference. A follow-up film explores the complicated relationship between the two other band members, Haruki and Akihiko.

Land of the Lustrous

Set in the distant future, Land of the Lustrous introduces us to the Lustrous, a race of crystalline lifeforms. They wage a constant war against the Lunarians, a hostile race that likes harvesting the Lustrous’ bodies. They’re actual gemstones, remember? It kind of sucks. The anime preserves the intentions of the original manga and makes the deliberate choice to refer to the Lustrous with they/them pronouns. After all, what would gender look like in a crystalline lifeform? They certainly wouldn’t resemble conventional, Western concepts of gender, that’s for sure.

Princess Knight

A series for the classic anime fans, Princess Knight is based on a manga by the legendary Osamu Tezuka. It follows Sapphire, a girl who has both “the blue heart of a boy and the pink heart of a girl.” Considering the manga was first published in the 1950s, this genderbending premise was groundbreaking, even though some aspects are now dated. Without Princess Knight, we wouldn’t have later iconic series like The Rose of Versailles and Revolutionary Girl Utena.

And one final bonus…

The Stranger by the Shore

While this film doesn’t hit FUNimation until next month, the premise is unabashedly queer and familiar to many LGBTQ folks. Shun is a novelist who was cut off by his family after he came out as gay. When he meets the recently orphaned Mio, he must grapple with the past to move on and embrace his future.

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What are some of your favorite queer anime? Let us know in the comments!

The post Best Queer Anime appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[writingandmore]

Hi!!! May I get a HP, Star Wars, Voltron, and Disney matchup?

𝗕𝗔𝗦𝗜𝗖𝗦 + 𝗔𝗣𝗣𝗘𝗔𝗥𝗔𝗡𝗖𝗘

19, Libra, Neutral Good, enneagram is 4w5, muggleborn Ravenclaw (with Gryffindor tendencies), and my patronus spirit is Hummingbird. Biromantic Pansexual Genderfluid woman using pronouns of She/Her or He/Him. Cherubic-like face, with short height (5'1") plus sized Southeast Asian woman with Spanish descent that has chic messy/wavy brunette medium hair that reaches to my shoulder, oriental skin, slightly upturned eyes, small lashes, chocolate brown irises, cute flat nose, heart shaped face, full cheeks, cupid's bow lips, a small beauty mark on the forehead, and naturally straight teeth with tiny gap in front (just imagine that it's a mixture of Marinette from 𝗠𝗶𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘂𝗹𝗼𝘂𝘀 𝗟𝗮𝗱𝘆𝗯𝘂𝗴, Musa from 𝗪𝗶𝗻𝘅 𝗖𝗹𝘂𝗯, and Alexandra Trese from 𝗧𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗲---cause' my friend told me that I kinda look like them). My sense of fashion is in between emo and boyish plus korean glam, I sometimes let my hair down or styled like Lara Croft reboot.

𝗣𝗘𝗥𝗦𝗢𝗡𝗔𝗟𝗜𝗧𝗬

Distant, quiet, and timid at first making people thought I'm a demure, modest, and self-effacing that looks "immaculate" or "one of a kind" (due to my protective mom, a reason why I've never been in a relationship) but the truth is, dunno how to initiate a conversation, but a total opposite if I open up---friendly, ambivert, witty, laughing loudly on a daily basis---like my happiness is too shallow, super talkative, eats a lot (yeah I can finish a huge slice of cake or a meal in one sitting), awkward, daydreamer (I got embarrassed from knocking at the door even I'm inside the classroom 😂), EXTREMELY CLUMSY (mostly gets bruises from hitting, bumping my head somewhere, walking into something on my way, and being careless to my belongings), secretly likes affection, easily overwhelmed, prone to melt over wholesomeness, flusters on compliments, lightly blushes on cheesy banters, eager to share what I know (especially about Catholic Church---my past teacher joked that I'll become a saint because of it 🤣), oftenly speaks full of sarcasm with a lowkey crackhead energy citing meme references, and talented girl who can be your no.1 supporter and unashamed to be true to myself but can be awkward to strangers. In terms of leadership, I only educate and guide than being a prefect (I might take the role seriously), will lift my group when there's lacking/incompleteness. About doing projects in school, I become too extra and prepared for efforts, but I'll forget the process in the end.

The extent, I'm expressive, warm-hearted, willig to help, kind, intelligent, supportive, nice, creative, enthusiastic, laid-back, determined, tough, competitive, and feisty outside, but a real softie that can be childish and dramatic that cries so easily (but will enlightened real quick by smallest things that makes me smile) filled with doubts, frustrations, and insecurities with fear of failure that pushes off the limits to to please everyone because they might get dissappointed from expectations---I simply can't stop proving myself too much because I'm a survivor of bullying. But I still managed to be stronger than ever after I stumbled, even it's a slow burn process. I can be blunt, intimidating, harsh, and a douchebag if I receive ends or I got interrupted while doing something. Immature, headstrong, perfectionist, demanding, hesitant, jumpy, forgetful, overthinker, quick-tempered, sensitive, and anxious (no joke, my nervousness makes me think worse scenario will arrive). Though can be procrastinator and arrogant, I raised as a religious 𝖺𝗇𝖽 diplomatic youth, willing to fight what I believe (including my dreams and what's important to me) and what is right. In addition, I have a habit of staying up late and doing sign of the cross to ease nervousness.

Rowdy and feeling-brokenhearted and bitter friend in the group who fangirl a lot, swears like sailor, will call out on people that we loathe, will make fun of your stupidity (in a good way) before helping, and bring gossips, but a hopeless romantic and cheeky (makes banter with sarcasms or pick up lines as an endearment, but gets annoyed if I received sappy or offensive one), Still generous and concerned person in a subtle and different way.

𝗛𝗢𝗕𝗕𝗜𝗘𝗦

My hobbies are singing, drawing, roleplaying, listening to music, chatting/browsing on social media, conceptualizing, writing, and reading some stuffs. I'll include making corniest jokes/puns, sleeping, and dancing when nobody's around or walking like a model if I feel so bold (even I'm terrible at both xD). I also used to learn Italian language a bit.

𝗟𝗜𝗞𝗘𝗦

Loves kittens, milk tea, singing at the karaoke, cartoons, iced coffee, memes, cute things, watching YouTube videos (mostly pageants, ASMR, edit audios, and mukbangs), also enjoys playing games on my sister's PSP. Sucker for arts, choir, poetry, night sky, makeup, fun/deep/dumb conversations, Christianity, documentaries (about saints, real crime stories, and inspirational people), reading interesting stuffs, talking about social issues, and creative writing, chilling both indoors and outdoors. Beside that, my music taste are like late 90s-2000s songs (mostly rock, pop, and country) sometimes Catholic songs, kpop and ppop, chocoholic, and a sweetooth as well.

𝗗𝗜𝗦𝗟𝗜𝗞𝗘𝗦

Things that I hate are stereotyping, HUGE creepy crawlies (spiders, toads, snakes, and cockroaches), firecracker sounds, thunder and lightning, being left out, loneliness, heart break, blackout, and judgemental people. If I found out that someone hates or backstabbing or being rude to me, I won't hesitate to throw offensive criticisms, leaving them with a "I don't give a f" attitude. One random fact about me is, I 𝗐𝗂𝗅𝗅 vent out EVERYTHING I despise in my entire existence---from bad soap operas to toxicity, worse scenarios in real life, and how terrible is my love life from unrequited feelings that I got, because it's a big deal for me, and I consider forcing me to do what I'm not into and manipulating me as my major pet peeves.

𝗧𝗥𝗜𝗚𝗚𝗘𝗥𝗦

In terms of triggers...I only have two which are ta𝖨king about divorce/annullment/separation because I came from a generational broken family (it sucks that some people I knew assumed that the reason why I'm overly unaware that someone is interested in me in secret, is I have "high standards" looking for a partner, but the truth is I'm strict and I have a personal preferences...I know my worth and I don't want settle for less!) and religion/beliefs discrimination, cause' there are reasonings that doesn't makes sense because some, sounds too hypocritical, like as if you're a morally good person.

𝗥𝗢𝗠𝗔𝗡𝗖𝗘 + 𝗟𝗢𝗩𝗘 𝗟𝗔𝗡𝗚𝗨𝗔𝗚𝗘𝗦

My love languages are quality time and gift giving, but I actually swoon over physical touch (especially cuddles and cute kisses) and words of affirmation when it comes to having a partner, though I get attracted so easily, matured but can be a goofy person who's nice, friendly, kind-hearted, loving, faithful, and excels in academics is my cup of tea. Whenever I have a real life crush (which is rare), I act the same but deep inside, my heart is about to explode and will eventually share to my trustful friends how I highly admire that person, however if they spilled the beans out, I'll obviously deny it and will cry if they like someone else, it will take some time for me to move on, now I don't care for them anymore.

Best Friends to Lovers is my ideal trope because I find it very cute since you already knew each other before dating (which happened to my 2nd cousin, she married her best friend!)---perfect balance for romance, laughters, comfort, and tears when it comes to sharing your vibes, being there through thick and thin, safe with embraces, and helping each other to grow.

𝗧𝗥𝗜𝗩𝗜𝗔𝗦

My best assets are smile, eyes, personality, singing voice, artistic skills, writings, intelligence, oratorical skills and I have potential in hosting...so I can consider myself as a singer, artist, orator, speaker, and a top student who's a former active campus ministry member with three roles (choir leader, psalm singer, and reader).

May sounds different but I'm passionate for helping people through my talents and sharing my story to inspire everyone. I may look selfish, but I have a different way on how I show that I actually care also I have a biased sentimental value

Currently a college freshman, learning how to cook. I have so many interests, to the point I don't know what I'm into because of my dreams to become a popular Filipino YouTuber, a novelist, and being part of a successful chorale competing internationally...I also consider joining pageants at school too once the pandemic ends, but maybe.

HP: Remus!

- Remus is also quiet and a bit reserved when he's not in a familiar situation, so your own first impression on him would be a good one, as you'd seem similar to his own personality. He's sweet and is able to start up a conversation if he notices the other person is having a hard time doing so, so hopefully he'd be able to bring out your more extroverted and friendly self after a while so he can be around the more open you. He wouldn't mind you being a bit awkward-he's very much the same way-honestly, the comradery that would come from that would be more positive than anything else. He loves sharing knowledge and learning about new things, so your eagerness to talk about what you know would work really well also! He does a lot better when he knows someone has his back too, so your extra supportive nature would endear him to you as well.

SW: Han!

- Your nicer and more helpful personality would balance out Han's more standoffish vibes when first meeting. You might get on his nerves a bit first, but you'd quickly grown on him and, in turn, make him a bit of a better person. Your ability to be blunt and a bit harsh would serve you well if you ever needed to stand your ground on an issue that two of you have, as he can be quite stubborn.

VLD: Lance!

- Lance can be a bit immature from time to time as well, especially when it comes to trying to be funny or cheering up those around him-he's also headstrong and typically firm in what he wants to do, so your own determined personality would attract him to you a lot as well. He often puts off things he needs to do if they make him anxious too, but if you both recognize that you share that problem, helping each other might be a good solution!

Disney: Flynn!

- Flynn is quite a sarcastic and teasing person, so your own humor would match well with his. He's also quite a hopeless romantic as well, even though he's certainly not one to admit that right off the bat. He enjoys singing, and as he gets closer to someone he feels more comfortable doing so in front of them, so a partner he's been with for a long time would get to see him be more and more open with it. That also applies to activities like dancing.

[ghostmartyr]

how a life can move from the darkness [5/?]

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Summary:  Two drug addicts (Eren and Historia) meet in group and decide to be roommates to make their  living situation slightly less weird. From there we do the slow burn  found family dance mixed in with the struggles and agonies of recovery.  Heavy on friendship feels, especially EMA. Eventual yumikuri.

Eren had lunch plans for the weekend. An appointment. Specific time and everything. It took a lot of debate, stress, one meeting and several more confirmations from Historia that it was fine, but there was a plan, and Mikasa and Armin had agreed to it. Sunday lunch. Dinner reminded Eren too much of his mother watching every twitch of his hands at the table. Lunch’s only association was with forgetting it.

He couldn’t forget this one.

Of course! the happy letters from Armin’s latest text spelled out. Mikasa had been more formal, which was easier. He could tell she didn’t really believe the offer either. He should have felt like crap over that, but it was too nice being back on the same wavelength.

He was going to see his friends again. And try like hell not to screw it all up this time.

Petra had said, many times, that one of the best things they could do to aid their recovery was keeping their minds engaged in something besides sitting around wanting drugs. It was important to keep life going instead of hiding in its cracks.

The first time she’d said it to him, directly, had been when he’d gone off on a rant about Zeke’s damn baseball games. He couldn’t even remember why it came up, except that Petra thought maybe going to a few would be good for him, and he’d still been in the yelling stage of everything.

Now locked in the stage where he took people’s advice and did something with it, he was doing what he could to distract himself. Benjamin was accepting food that wasn’t wriggling now. His tank still needed regular checks and cleaning. Several bouldering groups were lined up for the week.

He’d mentioned it to Reiner, since Reiner knew more about keeping busy than anyone he knew.

What he got was a copy of one of Ymir’s books.

“This one’s not about the porn,” Reiner had assured him, like that was a mark of quality.

Ymir had rolled her eyes loudly when he said it, snagging Eren’s toast off his plate. “Great review, Reiner. You should be my new marketing team.”

Eren was fifty pages in, and except for the very disconcerting moments spent realizing that Ymir’s insights about human emotion could translate to something painfully earnest when they had nothing to do with an actual person, it was okay. Mostly.

The two characters who were the focus of the romance were starting to spend a lot of time together. On purpose, instead of being forced into it. The narrator kept denying that part, but the narrator was also starting to spend an uncomfortable number of paragraphs being distracted by the other character’s physical appearance.

It was a lot of hunger. Wanting. Not being allowed to have.

“Historia?” Eren called out, flipping a few pages ahead. He’d forced her to the couch with her homework by stealing her usual spot under Benjamin’s tank.

“Yes?”

“You’ve been in love, right?”

The vibrations of a very heavy textbook hitting the floor were followed by a hiss of pain. Eren’s head swiveled around to catch Historia sucking a paper cut. Her face was an uncomfortable red.

“I—why?” she asked.

He brandished the book into the air. “One of Reiner’s friends is a romance novelist, and he gave me this to read.” Historia knew one or two things about Reiner thanks to awkward questions about whether or not it was okay to mention his roommate was a drug addict to other addicts. “And I was wondering if it’s normal for it to all sound like…”

Historia picked up her textbook, continuing to look at him with the kind of paralyzed horror he would have reserved for one of their talks about dead people. Eren cut to the chase.

“Is it supposed to sound like addiction?” he asked. “Is that what it feels like?”

Because every single page was taking him further and further away from the kind of want he knew Ymir had been intending and tossing him back into the hazy memory of needing a fix so badly that he talked to the man behind Zeke’s batting cage and staggered into Armin’s granddad’s bathroom and—

He didn’t know how Reiner had gotten through the full book. Eren didn’t think he could.

Petra read romance novels. She enjoyed them. Was it just him?

“No.” Historia stopped rubbing at her finger. “It—they’re not the same. Whatever I…” Her eyebrows knitted together. Carefully, with a precision that was at odds with the panic that had somehow been unleashed, she placed her book on the other side of the couch. “I don’t know if it was love, but it was nothing like… that.” She looked at the offending manuscript like it was one of Petra’s cookies. “Why are you still reading it?”

Eren shrugged, flipping through more pages. “Trying to keep busy.”

Trying not to think of what Ymir would say if she found out he couldn’t stomach the tamest book from her shelf. He could picture it pretty easily. He had no interest in living it out.

Hell, though. Did this character ever bother doing anything about all the wanting? Fifty more pages, and the obvious conclusion was that this was the only one Ymir wrote that wasn’t pornographic because she’d picked out a main character who couldn’t figure out how to communicate her feelings to her love interest, so there was nothing to be explicit about. No wonder the project had stuck out to Reiner. Someone like Ymir writing someone with a sense of embarrassment or insecurity was jarring.

“’Crystal Wick’?”

Historia had left the couch, and was investigating the book’s cover. She looked halfway alive, which was about as good as Eren had come to hope for lately. The shadows under her eyes had stopped darkening each morning.

“It’s a penname,” he said. “Bertolt says she mostly writes porn.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Reiner gave you porn to read?”

“He specifically said this one wasn’t.”

She peered closer at the cover, reading the quotes on the back. “Reiner gave you a romance novel that ‘Speaks to the truest soul of melancholic love’?”

Eren turned it over. “It says that?”

“Yes,” Historia said. “Crystal’s a ‘genius.’”

It did say that. Eren looked at the innocuous bits of text with a growing nausea the came from the book’s content, but felt appropriate for the glowing praise Ymir of all people had somehow earned. “If you ever meet her, you can’t say things like that,” he said. “Her head’s big enough already.”

Reading her reviews had probably paved the way on that. Ymir seemed like she came by most of it naturally, though. The reviews probably just confirmed what she already thought about herself.

“You don’t think she lives up to her accolades?” Historia asked. “She isn’t the—Eren your thumb’s blocking that one.”

Eren rolled his eyes and opened the book back up, pretending to read more about addictive, repressed lust with more of a smile than he’d managed all day. “Do you want to trade books?”

Historia stepped over his feet and grabbed the hardback Frieda had left on Benjamin’s table, pausing to give their fish a moment to say hello to her. She dangled his namesake’s volume over Eren’s head. He took it before he ended up with another black eye, handing over Ymir’s paperback.

“Frieda screens everything she reads around me,” she said. “She’s—protective.” Concernedly so, if it were over anyone besides Historia, but Historia didn’t need Eren voicing that. “You’ll probably have better luck with one of hers. It’s longer, too.”

Along with heavier. Eren rolled onto his stomach. “Thanks.”

Historia shrugged, returning to her couch vigil. Eren cracked open his Frieda-approved reading. Sci-fi, based on the cover. Armin had probably read it. He liked going through the bestseller’s lists. He liked sci-fi. They’d have something to talk about at lunch.

“It’s going to be fine, Eren,” Historia said, a minute into the author’s foreword.

“Yeah,” he said.

----

Not sleeping was marginally better than nightmares. He was supposed to look at the positives of his life, not focus on the negatives. Tossing back and forth between walls before settling for a few minutes at a time on the ceiling meant he wasn’t waking up in a cold sweat.

Frieda would be around soon, if she was having a sleepless night. He could make himself useful and start the hot chocolate early.

Mikasa and Armin would be showing up in a few hours. Their first time in an apartment he hadn’t shared with either of them.

Rivaille was coming with Mikasa. A neighbor hadn’t been watching their dog, Rivaille had no tolerance for non-human mammals breathing in his presence, and Mikasa didn’t trust him not to tear off his bandage if she left him alone. Armin and Mikasa had coordinated letting Eren know. They didn’t say that outright, but Armin had told Eren Rivaille was coming instead of Mikasa asking. They hadn’t wanted to give him the option of taking back his invitation.

He could see that conversation happening. It played out in his head until his worry about how things would go was smothered by how much he missed being there for those conversations.

He wouldn’t have taken back the invitation. He wondered how weird starting out with that point would be.

Eren swapped over to his side again. The streetlights several stories down barely winked at him through the blinds. He pulled the edge of his pillow up to block it out. He lowered it.

He snatched the blanket by his feet and swung off the bed. He’d make hot chocolate and keep a sleeping Benjamin company. If Frieda showed up, he’d keep her company too. That was better than lying awake all night wondering how he was going to screw everything up again.

He stepped out into the hallway, blanket over his shoulder, and there was no sign of anything but him being wrong.

He was thinking about hot chocolate and kitchen pans.

Down the hall, a thump sounded from Historia’s room.

Eren used to beat up his mother’s walls. And people. He’d heard worse.

It was just a noise. It was just a dark apartment.

It was just the sound of something hitting the floor in his suicidal friend’s room in the middle of the night where no one would be around to—

Eren’s blanket dropped to the floor, and Historia’s door appeared in front of him with a snap of motion he knew best from Armin’s toy magnets he’d got for his seventh birthday. The juxtaposition didn’t do anything to settle his nerves.

“Historia?” he asked the door. His voice came out loud and distant. One of his fists found the wood and knocked. “Is everything okay?”

Several more heartbeats of silence confirmed that to be the stupid question it was. Eren cleared his throat and tried to think of something besides how Frieda, who didn’t even have the full story, couldn’t sleep some nights until she saw her little sister breathing.

That was supposed to be weird. Kind of creepy.

“Historia, I’m opening the door,” he said.

He pushed it open more roughly than intended, and there wasn’t really a noise that came with it, but the door’s swing had some definite resistance that put his head in all the wrong places, and the random thought hit that he’d never been in her room before, and he was three steps in before his eyes even tried to pick anything out of the shadows, and for an insane moment he was so sure that this was the start of another nightmare, just in time to break Armin and Mikasa’s hearts all over again, and Historia was on the floor next to her bed.

Eren’s hand snapped out and hit the light switch.

The searing brightness hurt, but relief made up for it when it illuminated Historia’s tearstained face.

Eren almost fell to the floor. “You’re okay,” he said.

Historia, in a state of much less alarm over the last thirty seconds, stared at him with tears still actively falling, listless shock and a force that threw tennis balls taking in Eren’s presence under the spotlight that lit up her room.

“I don’t think so.”

Eren shook his head. “I meant you aren’t dead,” was the only thing he could think to say. He slid down into a more comfortable position on the hard floor. “What was that noise?”

Historia continued staring at him. She was in her pajamas, holding her flannel top tightly around her nightshirt. Like she’d tried to hide herself in it, and realized somewhere in the middle that there wasn’t enough room, so just left her hands frozen stiff.

One moved. Rigidly. She pointed at the floor behind him.

Somewhat wedged between the door and the floor was a book.

Ymir’s.

So he wasn’t the only one.

The comprehension wasn’t the gentlest place to land, but it was tinged with enough relief to pass.

“Too real?”

Historia nodded.

Eren smiled. Shooting for comforting. “Yeah, it didn’t work for me either.” There was a review to take back to Ymir. ‘Two out of three drug addicts agree your main character reads like a junkie.’ Maybe Reiner just read enough of her stuff to be inoculated.

But Historia was shaking her head. Not in a definitive motion, just back and forth. She whispered something Eren didn’t catch.

“Sorry?”

Historia swallowed. Visibly. “She left.”

Eren’s eyes drifted back to the book. It was the only thing on the floor. The only spot of color in the entire room, really. The furniture was all bare, left staged and sterile. One book, hurled at the door, was the only indication that someone lived in the space. The romance novel Historia should have had more of an interest in anyway, that the words on the back cover and that he’d skimmed near the end dubbed a tragedy.

“She doesn’t say anything,” Historia said. “She spends—she spends half the book wanting this girl, loving her so much it sounds like—” one of her sleeves pulled up, and the scars popped. “She spends all that time, but then she never says it. She leaves and never says it.” A new fount of tears started, and Historia whipped them away with the back of her hand.

Her voice broke. “If she doesn’t say it, how’s she supposed to know?”

Eren moved to the bed, sitting next to Historia on the floor. After a moment’s hesitation, he carefully put his arm around her shoulders. She curled inward, but not away.

“If she doesn’t know, she won’t know to…” The sleeve pulled further up, drawn by Historia’s hand raking through her hair. “She left,” she repeated. “She loves her, and she leaves anyway, over some stupid, idiotic, self-righteous—”

More tears. Eren had never been great with them. When Armin cried, it was usually after someone had hit him. Eren’s job was to go hit them back so Armin wouldn’t have to anymore. Mikasa had been better at that. She’d also been better at making Armin feel better. She was better at just about everything.

Eren wished Historia had one of the better ones in her corner. But she was stuck with him.

“I left too,” he said, the truth of many, many hours of guilt and hatred clawing its way into words that sounded halfway human, and like maybe forgiveness was okay to want. “People don’t always—”

“But you’re getting them back!”

The shout was hoarse and broken, and much louder than the rest of the conversation.

Historia continued on, savagely tearing through the words. “You never reached out, and never said anything, and you needed them. More than anything.” Her voice caught. “I… She was so… I always thought she didn’t need anyone. Even…”

Eren was five and Armin was the coolest kid on the playground. He mouthed off to everyone he disagreed with, even after he took a beating, because it was right.

Eren was seventeen and hearing for the first time how little Armin had thought of himself back then.

Eren was ten and Mikasa was winning all the fights he started.

Eren was nine and Mikasa would not let go of his hand.

“She left,” Historia said, “and all this time… but I’m the one who…” She stopped, and Eren could see the cords in her wrist tighten before she started again.

When she did, the words were slow and agonized. “I’m not like Armin and Mikasa,” she said. “I didn’t wait. I didn’t keep trying. I took it for granted that she didn’t want me and gave up. She left. I never chased her. I want her but I never—”

Eren was probably holding her shoulder too tightly. He knew his jaw was too tight. He could hear Armin tutting at him, flicking a spilled cheerio from the kitchen counter at his forehead. “You were stuck in juvie,” Eren said. “You’d have to be an idiot to expect someone to chase you from there.”

“She is!” Historia shouted at the floor.

Eren kept the half-hug stable through the laugh that choked out a sob. He thought he heard the click of their front door unlocking. Hot chocolate felt very far away. Historia was shivering. She could use some.

He hoped her girlfriend felt half as bad about everything as he had when he’d flamed out and abandoned everyone who loved him. Whatever had happened, there was no way this didn’t earn her at least that.

“I don’t know what went on between you two,” he said, not adding that he didn’t think Historia did, either, “but I never wanted Armin and Mikasa to stick this through. I’m—” hell “glad they did, but I was a jerk. They deserved better. I wouldn’t have blamed them if they never talked to me again.”

“But you would have wanted them to.”

And hated himself all the way through his bedroom wall for it. “Yeah.”

“Because you love them.”

“…Yeah.”

Those were definitely footsteps. Eren didn’t want to listen for the moment they spotted the extra light in the hallway, or his blanket on the floor. Historia’s eyes were peeking out from behind her hair again. They were trained on Ymir’s book.

“I don’t even know if she loved me back,” she said.

Eren couldn’t give an answer to that. All he really knew about Historia’s girlfriend was that all the flashbacks in the world wouldn’t be reason enough to shrug off a chance to punch her in the face, and if that needed to happen, Historia had first claim.

The footsteps stopped. Eren winced when they started again, slapping the floor, and he caught the second when Historia’s confusion at the noise turned into horror.

Frieda appeared as a breathless shadow in the doorway, and Eren didn’t even have a chance to spot the panic her body was screaming on her face before she swooped in. A blur of older sister dove on both of them, and shock and a welcoming thud of a heartbeat stole the breath from Eren’s lungs. Frieda’s fingers caught his head and pulled him over her shoulder while Historia was simply dragged bodily into her side with a surprised croak.

“You’re both okay?” Frieda asked, squeezing more air out of them. She sounded faint. Fear bled through her grip, and Historia had gone suspiciously still.

Eren had wanted her around for these late-night encounters, once. Right now it felt cruel to both of them.

“I’m good,” Eren said.

Frieda nodded, and Eren felt her pull away just enough to look down properly at her sister, who was still clutched to her like a limpet.

“Historia?”

Both of her sleeves had rolled up. Her fingernails were digging matching imprints into her scars, and every person in the hug could feel the flinch Frieda tried to hide. Historia buried herself closer. Shaking like it was her first night off the hard stuff.

“I—” she started through a new sob. “I’m sorry.”

Eren disentangled himself before Frieda’s hand decapitated him on its way to hold her sister more tightly, soft words and reassurances brushing by his ears as Frieda told Historia not to apologize, she had nothing to apologize for, and Historia dissolved further into tears.

“I’m going to go get started on the hot chocolate,” he said.

Frieda’s gaze shot over him, and Eren almost stopped in the middle of standing at the unadulterated terror dampening her eyes, but she only mouthed her thanks, pulling Historia fully into her arms in the midst of another litany of sorrys, one after another.

The one thing Historia had never wanted was for Frieda to know how bad things were. Eren doubted any of them wanted to think about how long she had guessed at it.

“Does it ever help? Talking?”

Eren patted Historia firmly on the head on his way out.

He also grabbed the book off the floor.

----

Eren was cleaning the apartment, which was stupid. They had maid service. They did a superhuman job of cleaning. Short of making a deal with the devil, Eren wasn’t going to be able to match their work. He was leaving streaks on the counter. It didn’t matter how many times he dragged the washcloth over the spots. The streaks just moved.

Armin had shared an apartment with him. He knew how Eren lived.

Right, and his last memory of what that was like was forever linked to digging through Eren’s bedroom and finding all of his drugs.

The streak moved from the edge of the counter to the center. Eren was chasing it around the way Benjamin swam after their hands when they were over his tank. With about as much success.

Lunch was takeout. Takeout plus a few mangled apples.

Historia had been nice enough not to say anything. Her face had handled that.

A night of no sleep and hysterics had peeled off some of the darkness in her eyes. She looked almost human again. By their standards, but their standards had improved lately. She’d stopped Eren’s jittery hands from costing him a finger and spun her phone over the marble at him, several restaurant tabs already opened.

Eren had texted Armin and Mikasa. Everyone had ordered. It was all fine. They had enough chairs. Frieda had double-checked before she left. She’d spent the night.

“You don’t want to stay?” Eren and Historia had asked in perfect, frantic unison when she announced her departure over breakfast. A breakfast she’d cooked for them, smiling through her yawns the whole time.

For a moment he’d thought Frieda might cave, with both of them asking. Instead, she’d given them both a perfunctory pat on the head. “You two are all grown up. You don’t need me to supervise your play dates.”

Frieda was the only one with that confidence. Historia had come back from feeding Benjamin dripping dread, and Eren was left wondering if sleep deprivation and drug addiction looked anything alike and how much it would worry Mikasa and Armin that he could barely walk in a straight line.

“Sorry,” Historia said, joining him with a washcloth of her own. She didn’t leave streaks.

“Stop saying that,” Eren said. He wiped down a dried spot of water he’d left earlier. “I was only up because I couldn’t sleep.”

“Still.”

Eren yawned into his hand. “If you’re sorry about that, I’m sorry for giving you the book.”

Historia’s mouth thinned.

They worked in silence for several minutes, contributing very little to the overall cleanliness of the apartment. Eren could hear a clock ticking. None of the ones either of them owned ticked.

“What are they like?” Historia asked in a blurt.

“Huh?”

“Armin and Mikasa.”

Eren stopped scrubbing. “They’re… Armin and Mikasa.”

“Your friends,” Historia said. She made the term sound alien.

Eren glanced at her. She was frowning at her rag. Tiny, blond, and maybe looking for the words instead of being too stubborn to share them, but the blast of nostalgia wasn’t pulling its punches. Eren slowly renewed his swipes at the counter.

His friends. The two people who made him get it a little when clients chattered on about their other halves. The foundation of everything he was that he’d bombed halfway to hell when everything he was turned out to be pain.

Armin and Mikasa.

“Mikasa’s good at everything,” Eren started. He remembered jogging to one of Zeke’s baseball practices, skipping over the cracks in the sidewalk and trying to keep up, whining those same words because his big brother would never tell anyone. “She’s strong. I—not just in things like sports, or fighting. I could never win against her when we sparred, and she has better times than I do on all the mountains nearby, but that’s not it.” His reflection blinked emptily from the shining counter. “She’s reliable. The responsible one. Always there, even when you don’t want her to be, because she knows more about when you need her than you do.

“It’s annoying,” he didn’t say. It used to be. It would have his head full of steam and his feet stomping cross the sidewalk. It had leaked into the things he’d said when withdrawal hit and he hated everyone.

“Armin’s… an optimist. He doesn’t think he is, because he’s always thinking about the most depressing stuff, but it’s always about… ways to make them better. To fix them. He doesn’t lose it when it’s hard or looks too difficult. He just does it. Like it’s nothing. He’s tough. The toughest person I know. And the smartest. He—I don’t know how many things he’s tutoring by now, but he picked up as many jobs as he could to pay for every college course he could stay awake for.” And then some. Eren had seven different alarms set for each day of the week to go and collect Armin for his classes. There were days he ended up carrying Armin to class. That was what finally got him to change up his schedule. “He’d be an expert in all of them after a semester. Sometimes less. He got a free ride to several places, but—he stayed behind. He cared more about staying with us.

“He lied about that,” Eren added. “He’s not usually good at it, but he was then. We wouldn’t have let him lose out on something like that. We both tried to get him to go when it all came out, but he wouldn’t. He—we kept trying, but he just wouldn’t. He staged—” The flash of the kitchen lights flashed against the counter, hiding the reflection he knew was smiling. “He staged an intervention for us. A whole PowerPoint on why we had to stop, because the only one who knew what was best for his education was him.”

Historia walked over to the sink, squeezing her rag dry. “Did it work?”

“Of course it worked,” Eren said, grabbing a fresh towel. “You can’t argue with the smartest person you know.” That was why people always tried beating him up; that was the only thing they could come up with.

For a while, that was the only thing Eren could come up with for dealing with himself. Mikasa would have thrown him over her shoulder and told him to stop hitting things. Armin would have devised his own twelve-step program, devoted to all facts about Eren he’d picked up throughout their years of friendship, and handed him a copy.

Historia took the paper towel roll off the counter, watching him with the subterfuge of someone who’d maybe read a summary of the concept in a book.

Eren balled up his washcloth and landed it in the sink, giving up the pretense for a moment. “What do you think I should say?”

Historia’s gaze took a small detour to Benjamin’s tank. “You’re the one who knows them.”

“You’re the one here who knows what it’s like to be screwed over.”

The storm cloud darkening her countenance was very specifically aimed at him, but it cleared fast. Historia sent her rag into the sink after his, frowning. She waited on the words for a few moments. “They still love you,” she said, “so… love them back?”

It sounded like a nicer version of what Ymir said, and he was about to say so when it struck him that comparisons to Crystal Wick were the last thing that would be helpful today. Or any other time.

“Would that be enough for you?” he asked.

Laughter barked out of Historia, surprising both of them. She shook her head and leaned against the island. “Eren, seeing her again would be enough for me.” She reached out and tapped his shoulder in an odd, noncommittal pat. “Just be you.”

Eren watched Benjamin’s lazy circles. “I’m not sure he’s around.”

“Oh,” Historia said.

“Oh,” Eren echoed.

Historia turned around to lean bodily over the sparkly clean marble, nudging Eren’s elbows with hers. Benjamin reacted to the extra viewership with a flourish as he rounded the rock he had decided was this week’s favorite.

“…You could try smiling more?”

Eren looked over at Historia’s unsmiling face. “You think?”

“Maybe?”

It was the sleep deprivation, maybe, that made him smile.

They both still sucked at this.

----

When Eren was little, there were few things in his life he enjoyed as much as sci-fi B movies. Zeke would let him and Armin watch the worst, implausible action adventures, all about mutated sharks that were part dinosaur and sludge beasts that lived in the Arctic. Horror movies were bundled in, but Armin wasn’t allowed to watch those because he’d keep his parents up with existential life questions about good and evil that they hadn’t wanted to discuss with their seven-year-old.

Eren didn’t have that problem with his parents. He would sit in Zeke’s lap while they went out wherever, chattering loudly about all the things the monster’s victims were doing wrong, and how he’d do it better. He’d be a good monster slayer, he told Zeke. He wouldn’t die first.

Zeke had always said if the scientists hadn’t been so careless, and the other humans hadn’t bothered the monster so much, none of them would have had to die.

He was the worst person to watch movies with. He’d also been the only babysitter Eren had who would let him watch those ones.

Some of Eren’s chief complaints about the screaming people in the movies had been how they handled doorways. They’d run into places and open doors without a second thought about where it would land them.

There was a knock on the door.

Eren dropped the plate he was fussing with and almost tripped over Historia bolting for the doorknob. He threw it open before any sort of sense had a chance of reestablishing itself, and met the alarmed eyes of the delivery girl with heavy breathing and

Historia pulled him back by his shirt. He stumbled back into the apartment, socks sliding on the wood.

“Sorry,” Historia said, plastered, rigid fake smile in place. “We’re expecting—”

Mikasa.

Armin.

Sound fell away to only Eren’s heartbeat. Historia pulling out her wallet and overpaying the delivery girl was barely a blip.

They were standing in the hallway. Behind the bright uniform. Standing there. Outside the door, like they’d never been anywhere else. Like he’d never left. Like Armin had forgotten his key when he brought Mikasa over for game night.

Ten steps away. Nine. Five.

“Ah,” Historia said, loud and echoey, “you must be Mikasa and Armin?”

A hiss came from the space below Mikasa’s elbow.

“And Rivaille,” Historia said. “Hello.”

No one said hello back. The cat’s perturbed mreow could have counted in another life full of hallucinogens. This one had Mikasa and Armin, standing in a doorway as the heavy apartment door heaved itself shut in their faces. Historia hurriedly blocked it with her foot, attention darting between the human statues she was surrounded by.

Eren wasn’t even sure which one he was staring at. Armin, caution and hope bursting like a newborn star all over his face. Mikasa. Mikasa. Somehow still standing and still there despite every horrible thing he’d thought and shouted and thrown.

“Mreow,” Rivaille said again.

Historia, having abandoned the bags carrying their lunch to the floor, pushed the door open more properly. “I could—take him, if you would like?”

Mikasa’s eyes snapped to Historia with such mechanic efficiency that Eren’s blink missed it. Her iron stare added one more statue to the scene as Rivaille continued to prowl about his enclosure. For an eternity, she and Armin were both staring at Historia. Slowly, that stare turned, very directly, back to Eren. Eren felt halfway to blitzed. Being all the way there might have been the only thing that could help to decipher the new looks they were giving them.

“Thank you,” Mikasa said at last. Talking like a Mikasa who hadn’t lived through the last year. She handed Rivaille’s carrier off to Historia. “He’s very well behaved. It should be safe to let him out. As long as you watch him around—Benjamin?”

Eren nodded. His head felt like it was on a string.

She nodded back, and addressed Historia. “I don’t know how he is around fish. He also shouldn’t be jumping, but I can… I will take care of supervising him.”

Historia held the carrier gingerly, and miraculously, Rivaille wasn’t screaming at the loss of his stable pedestal that was Mikasa’s arms of steel. “He hurt his paw?”

Armin interrupted before the storm cloud on Mikasa’s face could start thundering. “The neighbor’s dog did,” he said.

“Right.”

“Rivaille prefers his space.”

“Okay.”

Mikasa and Armin still hadn’t stepped inside. Their food was going to get cold if they left it on the floor. Rivaille was only a moment’s distraction as long as he was in his carrier. Eren felt like he was in the center ring of that circus Armin’s parents had taken them to when they were small enough to need to climb up on their shoulders to see anything.

He didn’t have a script or any pies to throw in his face. Just him and whatever that meant.

He was reminded, and he didn’t want to be, of another family meal. Back when his father had been alive, and there was a family. Mikasa, Armin, and Eren, all sitting around the table with his parents, candles lit, fancy tablecloth set out.

Someone had knocked on the door.

Zeke. Uninvited, unaware that anything was going on, and wondering if Eren would like to go see a movie.

Eren found himself echoing their father.

“Do you—want to come in, maybe?”

He hoped he sounded more like he wanted his guests to say yes.

Mikasa and Armin both relaxed their shoulders so much, for a moment, it looked like they were melting. Armin’s instant smile was so heartfelt and earnest that Eren wanted to scream, and he didn’t know how he was going to exist with Mikasa one step closer when all he could think was how many apologies he owed and how many they’d never let him finish because his friends were too damn kind and too damn perfect and he had missed them so much.

They hadn’t been here five minutes and he already felt like crying. He was fucking this up right out of the gate.

But everyone else knew that, too, so they were going to keep talking around him. Door collapsing shut, closing off the one path of retreat, Mikasa briefly stopped dissecting him with her eyes and turned her focus squarely on Historia. “You are Eren’s new roommate.”

Not really new, anymore. Just not Armin. Eren reached to the floor and picked up the food bags. At the same moment Armin stepped forward to reach for one. Their hands bumped and snapped apart.

“Yes,” Historia said. “Hi. I’m Historia Reiss.”

There was a pregnant pause of evaluation and judgment before Historia seemed to think to stick out her hand. It shot out from its place on Rivaille’s carrier like one of Zeke’s pitches.

Mikasa took it. “How is it you two know each other?”

Fussing with the food was suddenly a really convenient way to not be looking at any of them, but Armin had never been great about hiding his sharp draws of breath when he thought one of them was throwing a first punch. “Mikasa, that might not be the—”

“NA,” Historia blurted. “I’m a heroin addict.”

Eren didn’t know why he looked at Armin, but Armin was already looking back, dismayed panic as clear in his face as all his emotions always were. No one really wanted the door to drug-addled pasts thrown open. Not today, not now, not ever until they were all sure they were sticking around and not running off again to live with strangers.

“…You have a lovely apartment,” Mikasa said.

Historia was nodding in his peripheral. “Inheritance. From murdering my father. Self-defense,” she clarified in a hurry. “Maybe. I’m not—I am a murderer, but it was only that one time. I’m not going to do it again.”

Frieda should not have left the apartment.

Eren froze in the middle of setting the boxes out on plates. Armin, gathering the bags and folding them into a neat pile, mimicked him, and they both silently waited for the next thundering shoe to drop.

“I moved in because we had that in common,” would have been an honest response, and saved them all some of the silence, and it was at the tip of his tongue, but he didn’t want to start that. He didn’t want the shock or the tears, or the long argument that would all be kicked off with, “You didn’t kill Dr. Yeager.”

Maybe. Like Historia had maybe killed her dad in self-defense. Eren had still felt his heart stop. Eren’s hands had helped that along, and no one ever wanted to hear it.

Mikasa saved the moment. Calmly, like a modern day superhero whose qualities were eternally called out to balance Eren’s failures. “I have a cousin who went through something similar,” she said. Smiling. With her eyes, but that was where her best smiles were. “He’s less reluctant about repeat offenses.”

Armin coughed a chuckle, catching Eren’s eye. Another knot in his chest loosened.

“We should eat before it gets cold,” he said.

“We should,” Armin agreed, handing Eren one of the napkins set out.

Eren took it quickly and gratefully, swiping away his tears before anyone else could see.

----

“He’s gorgeous, Eren,” Armin said softly, peering so closely at the aquarium that with his old haircut, he would have already been drenched. Benjamin wasn’t swimming as close as he did with Historia, and not used to people saying hello from up above unless they had food, but he wasn’t hiding away in one of his caves, either. “Have you thought about adding to the tank at all?”

“Some. There are a few eels that might be a good fit, but he should have some more time to settle and grow before we give that a try. The tank could also use a sturdier hood first.”

“I’ve read they can be escape artists.”

“Yeah. I told Historia nothing that can get out and crawl around, but—” he wasn’t going to relapse, and Armin didn’t need to hear about how recently he’d doubted that—“it’s a big tank. Benjamin could use some company.”

“A predator tank suits you,” Armin said. He floated his fingers above the water, clearly tempted to give petting Benjamin a shot.

Eren shrugged, leaning his hip on Benjamin’s table. “If you say so. I can’t handle the live feeding. Too squeamish. I’ve got tank duty on the chore wheel while Historia does the heavy lifting.”

Armin was quiet. A thinking sort of quiet where he was about to say something that made more boring people want to hit him. He glanced at the kitchen counter. Mikasa was sitting on a stool. Historia, with Rivaille’s prompting, had been encouraged to sit on top of the counter.

The cat hadn’t left her lap.

He’d hissed when Eren had tried to say hello.

With Historia, he nuzzled her cheek and purred like a chainsaw. Only less literally than what Eren had seen from those claws. Even Mikasa was taken aback by how gently Rivaille was behaving.

They were getting along. They’d all survived lunch past Eren asking who had won Levi’s MMA tournament this year (Annie, and Armin had immediately switched the topic to movies while Mikasa stabbed the floor with her eyes), Eren had a few lines on his hands from where he’d grabbed his knife and fork too hard, but none of him or the silverware was broken.

“Moving out helped after all, didn’t it?”

Eren’s hands gripped the edge of the table. “Armin…”

“I’m happy,” Armin interrupted. “I’m really glad, Eren.”

“Don’t.”

The low hum of conversation from the kitchen stopped. Rivaille’s warning meow was quickly stifled by Mikasa getting up from her stool. Historia grabbed her arm before she could take a full step. It was a surprise to everyone that Mikasa let that be enough, but Eren couldn’t think about that right now.

He wanted Armin to be hurt. Betrayed. Upset.

Not relieved that the person who caused all of that was better. Not putting some piece of disloyal garbage over—

“Don’t act like it’s all okay now,” Eren growled. Speaking to the floor because the floor did the right thing when he fell on it and gave him a damn bruise. “I—” he wasn’t supposed to do this Petra had told him to take it easy it didn’t need to come out all at once to be progress—“You can’t just be happy I’m not breaking everything I touch anymore and act like that’s the end of it.”

Armin was the weak one, in kindergarten. That’s what everyone thought. Lied to about themselves so they didn’t have to think about why this one kid made them all want to beat him silly instead of listening to him.

He was the bravest person Eren had ever met. “Well, why not?”

“Why—what?”

Armin pulled away from Benjamin’s tank. He patted his hands with the towel Historia had started leaving out. “If you think you messed up that badly,” he said with a forced, careful steadiness, “why do you think it’s up to you to say how we feel about it? Isn’t it more important for us to get a say?”

Eren had fallen back into looking at him. Armin looked back earnestly, months upon months of frown lines meeting his words and promising that this wasn’t someone who said things he didn’t mean. Someone who didn’t think for hours on end before he worked up the nerve to blow everyone’s mind with his confidence.

He’d had months of Eren not being ready to be his audience.

“Eren I don’t think—” Armin shook his head, his shorter hair not flurrying the way it used to when he did that. “I don’t think anyone here would say things went well. It was awful.” Understatement. “As happy I am that you’re doing better, I think I’m even happier none of us are back in that place.” Nothing gave Armin the right to say things Eren agreed with even when he was so angry he could barely see straight. “But if you’re going to be angry over us wanting you back—you should understand, shouldn’t you? How painful it is that you don’t blame us for missing everything you went through?”

“That’s ridiculous,” Eren said. “Those are still my mistakes, Armin. You can’t take on the blame for that.”

Armin kept shaking his head. “You’re my—you’re our best friend, Eren. That should mean you never have to go through anything alone, but you did,” he said softly. “We were right there. We saw you every day. And we missed… everything.”

He smiled his crooked, unhinged smile that their middle school D&D club had voted to ban. “You’re so busy being angry at us for being happy we didn’t ruin you that you’re letting us get away with being really selfish. Of course we want things to be fixed. We’re the ones who let them break.”

Eren could feel more tears waiting and burning under the pressure of his own heartbeat building up behind his skull. He’d heard that kind of blame in his head, once. Right before he screamed it at Mikasa. Hateful and full of everything he never wanted to be while he threw up his organs.

They were crap. “You didn’t do anything wrong,” he said.

“We wanted to do more right,” Armin said. “Didn’t you?”

“You can’t argue with the smartest person you know.”

Hell. Oh hell.

Historia had said just seeing that girl of hers would be enough. Even after she broke her heart. She still thought about her all the time. They couldn’t have known each other that long if they met in juvie. Not anywhere near as long as Eren had known Armin and Mikasa. They had years of friendship backing up one really, really inexcusably awful year.

They wanted him back.

He’d known that. That was why he was so pissed. They deserved so much better.

Armin was standing right in front of him, earnest, brilliant eyes telling him that all over again. Staring at his idiot friend who’d ruined their lives and hoping, more than anything, the idiot would take him back.

He had known that’s how they felt, right?

This whole time?

Eren didn’t want to start sobbing in front of Mikasa. Not again. He thought that every single time it happened. It was maybe the one thing about him that none of this had changed.

Armin, his first friend, the guy who’d taught him all about why dinosaurs were the best and how to stick to a study plan, took pity on him, and moved in to grab him before the crying could really start, catching his shoulders and head in his hands and not feeling, or not caring, that this was closer than they’d dared to be for over a year.

And Eren hated crying, hated that he spent so much of his life now doing it, but Armin’s tears rolling down his neck felt too much like home to hate anything properly. He grabbed Armin right back and held him as tightly as he’d never let himself after the funeral.

He had missed him too. So much.

----

Lunch had technically been over for hours by the time Mikasa and Armin left.

None of them wanted it to be. That was why Armin had finally said they should get going.

“It won’t change just because we head out the door,” he said. “We’re doing better than that, now.”

None of them wanted to talk about how that was still a hope, not a fact, either. Eren felt more clingy than he ever had in his life. For maybe the first time, he fully understood why Mikasa had to be talked down from looking after him all the time. Some hurts didn’t ever let you think things could go back to being okay.

Armin was still the smart one.

Historia was helping to coax Rivaille back in his cage. Eren didn’t make the repeated mistake of trying to be friendly with the cat. His hand still hurt from earlier. Armin was standing out in the hall. Ready to go.

Mikasa was lingering in the threshold. Halfway between helping Historia with her cat and not leaving Eren.

Eren had only had half the talk that needed to happen so far today. Drilling Armin on his studies and Mikasa on her judo students and Historia on anything that wasn’t her family or drug habit had soaked up the time. Maybe too much. Armin and Mikasa’s questions about school had sounded very sincere and gentle, but Eren wouldn’t be surprised if Armin already had another PowerPoint project playing out in his head about what they now knew about Eren’s new friend.

Armin caught his eye as Historia finally, without a mark on her, convinced the devil cat that he wanted to be back in a box.

Eren couldn’t help one last scowl at the golden eyes leering at him. Rivaille returned the expression with interest. “He’s never done that for me.”

“You’re too rough with him,” Mikasa said.

“You used to pick me up like that all the time.”

“You are not a cat, Eren.”

Armin laughed and even the appearance of a grudge had to fall away. Mikasa smiled softly at him. Eren doubted his expression looked much different. “We should take him back downstairs while he’s still settled. Historia, would you like to carry him?”

Eren did his best to roll his eyes at Armin. The attempt wasn’t great. Ymir or Annie would have laughed themselves silly at him. …Ymir would have. Annie probably would have kicked him and told him to work on it.

Historia followed the leading question and flicked her eyes between Eren and Mikasa, catching on way too fast. “Of course,” she said. “I’ll… follow you down, then.”

To her credit, she raised her eyebrows questioningly at Eren before she actually followed Armin. Eren shrugged a shoulder, which she took to be good enough reason to abandon him to be an adult on his own. Petra would probably hug both of them if she ever got the full story out about today.

He and Mikasa watched their friends trot off.

The renewed silence wasn’t that awkward, but Eren was starting to feel it. Armin was the talker of the three of them. He took all of the twists and turns of Eren’s temper and made sense of it.

Mikasa didn’t talk as much.

They’d had a long time of not talking. Even the old kind didn’t feel right. He wanted to say something. Anything. As long as it included an apology.

“She’s very pretty.”

Eren’s readied words stopped short. “Huh?”

Mikasa had her scarf pulled up over her mouth. It didn’t quite cover the red in her cheeks. She wasn’t looking at him. Her gaze was still on the now empty hallway.

Comprehension, hitting Eren over the head like a loud, embarrassed gong, rang out in his mind. The expected start would have been bad enough.This was different. This was Mikasa confiding in him, and he’d had too many talks about his and other people’s feelings to miss a cue like that. It wasn’t a year ago where he could be confused and move on with his life while Armin came back home five hours later and told him that his people skills needed work.

They did still need work. But Mikasa was his friend, and deserved the effort.

“I could get you her number,” he said hesitantly, “but she’s pretty hung up on this girl she knows.”

Mikasa’s face went so red that he knew for a fact that they both wanted anything else to be happening.

“I—see.”

He had to try. For Mikasa, he could do that much. “You two got along really well.” Or Historia got on well with her cat, which was like the same thing. No wonder Mikasa was asking. “I don’t know—she’s not… she’s really not available, but you could probably be good friends. Or hang out at Zeke’s games; he conned her into subbing for a few, and she could use someone besides me to practice with.”

He couldn’t tell if he was helping. He and Mikasa didn’t do this, and the unfamiliarity alone would probably be enough to make her face that color, because she knew as much as he did that this was not how they were them.

“Zeke stopped asking for my help,” Mikasa said, picking the closest side of normal to engage with.

Normal wasn’t safe. Pins and needles ran all up Eren’s spine before he went for it and took the damn plunge. “He was trying to be considerate, I guess. His version,” Eren added, more than aware what Mikasa thought about Zeke’s considerations. They were about what he thought, after all. “I… I’ll tell him he doesn’t need to do that anymore. It’s… better with you around.”

“…Thank you.”

The oppressive quiet came back. Eren’s fingernails were fighting to dig into his palms. The door was propped open by his back. He could imagine hearing Benjamin’s water filter if he just gave himself a second.

He didn’t want to put something this important off for any more seconds.

“Mikasa,” he said, “I’m sorry.”

Mikasa didn’t move. “I know.”

“The things I said…”

“Eren.”

“No one should ever talk to you that way,” Eren said. “I shouldn’t have—” He stopped short. His problems could stay with a different step. One that mattered less than his friends. Only one piece of it all really belonged here, and he said it again.

“I’m sorry.”

Mikasa had one hand buried in her scarf. Her blush had faded, as well as the gentle smile Armin had won out of her. There were tired lines in her forehead that only Eren could claim complete responsibility for.

“You wanted Armin to be angry at you,” she said.

Then cried all over him for sparing him that. “Yeah.”

Mikasa adjusted her scarf, pulling it tighter, but lowering it from keeping her mouth hidden. “It hurt,” she said. “You never say things you don’t mean, even if you only mean them for a moment.”

His mom had yelled at him for that. Many, many times.

He’d yelled back that moments were important.

That was another thing he and Mikasa agreed on.

“None of it was your fault,” Eren said.

“But you were right. We didn’t see it.”

“You were trying to give me space.”

“We didn’t.”

Mikasa had moved in for several weeks under the guise of helping Eren since his leg was broken.

“Your version of space.”

Another life would have seen that as a very strong complaint. Silent hovering was annoying and if Eren had been on a lower dose of painkillers or been less insane, it would have driven him nuts. But it stayed at silence. It stayed at a quiet hand helping him through the day and never asking how he was feeling because how he was feeling was so obvious.

“That still should have put us close enough to notice,” Mikasa said.

How she was feeling during all of that was pretty obvious, too. Even through the drugs. Eren just hadn’t been able to care. “My dad died,” Eren said, like it really was the accident Mikasa had never had any trouble seeing it for. “You knew something was wrong. You didn’t know I was making it worse.”

Mikasa wasn’t looking at him.

That should have made it easier than facing Armin, but he’d had too many years of getting annoyed over Mikasa always looking at him to finish the comparison just inside his head.

“It hurt,” she repeated, softly. “But what hurt most was thinking you might stay that way, and there was nothing I could do to help. Armin was right. We wanted to do more.” She frowned, a touch of irritation through the melancholy. “Zeke did more for you than we ever could.”

“Zeke didn’t stick around long enough for me to shout at him to leave,” Eren couldn’t help pointing out.

It almost got her to smile. The shadow of it faded too fast.

She did look up, and extensive cardio training as a way of life kept him breathing.

“No matter what happened, what matters to me now is that you’re okay. As long as that’s true, the rest is easy to forgive.” She closed her eyes and pulled her scarf tight. When she opened them again, they were the same eyes he’d seen when he woke up in the hospital.

“Are you okay, Eren?” she asked.

“Are you really?”

He’d gotten sick of that question long before he’d been anything close to the angry yes he kept snapping at his family. His mom had kept asking. Petra had always known better than to ask, but only because she’d been there. She had almost bit her lip through when he and Historia showed up with his black eye.

Who wanted okay, anyway? What kind of life was an okay one? Why would that be worth anything? He’d always been just okay. Armin was brilliant, Mikasa was perfect, and Eren was okay enough to lag behind them.

Until Eren wasn’t.

Until he couldn’t remember what okay or being a person even felt like, and someone had decided that the worst thing about him made him the best choice for a roommate. For a friend.

Armin had hugged him today.

Eren looked Mikasa straight in the eye, the weight of all their baggage nothing next to her being a few steps away and still caring. “I’m getting there,” he said.

She did smile, then. One of her real ones, with too much warmth to be anything but embarrassing when they were young. The step between them almost vanished, all of her starting to move forward before she remembered how many times Eren had actually called her embarrassing.

Armin had moved first with him. Fair was fair.

Eren took the step and wrapped Mikasa in the best hug he knew how. His chin bumped her forehead and their shoes snagged together, but he tried to hug her like he was never going to let her go again, and she hugged him back so tightly that his ribs creaked.

“I’m glad,” she whispered into his shoulder. “That you aren’t alone.”

He was not going to cry again. He squeezed her tightly. “Me too.”

----

Hours later, Eren was on the couch. Breathing into a cushion. Not on purpose, that was just where his face had landed after everything wound down.

“Thanks,” Historia said at some point.

“What for?”

“Letting me meet your family.”

Eren flopped his cheek against the side of the pillow. Historia had done her collapse under Benjamin’s tank. She looked as exhausted as he felt, drooped against the table. Benjamin blubbed away over her head.

Frieda had offered to drop some of her dinner off on them. She said she made too much for just her, and she had no room in her fridge. They’d have to help with the leftovers. One last visitor for the day.

“Yeah,” he said. “No problem.”

[next]

[mermaidsirennikita]

how do you think 365 dni compares to movies like 50 shades and after?

Why thank you for asking--

I would say that there is a single similarity, which is that they do stem, if not directly, then tangentially from the general fanfiction-turned-romance novel tradition that has existed for a while but really took off after Twilight.  While you can point to Harry Potter inspiring YA fanfic-turned-novels like The Mortal Instruments, Twilight’s impact has really been a lot greater because I think it gave aspiring romance novelists a place to play.  And since romance is one of the biggest (if not the biggest) publishing categories in terms of $$$, it makes sense that publishers saw an opportunity to make money off of popular fanfic.  This is where 50 got popular, as we all know, and other romance novelists like Christina Lauren, to name a bestseller, cut their teeth on Twilight fanfic.

Then, that gave way to Wattpad and 1D, which is where After came in.  I’m not sure exactly where 365 drew from, but it’s definitely at the minimum taking from a lot of mafioso fanfic AUs.  And ultimately, fanfic, and in turn crystallized romance novels, are at their heart wish fulfillment scenarios.  In romance, that’s usually wish fulfillment not just for the characters you like (as with fanfic) but for yourself.  

I think that the biggest issues with After and 50, before we even get into the heroes, are the heroines?  Because there is nothing fun about Ana; Tessa in After is MILDLY better, especially in After We Collided wherein she has a bit more fun... but she still sucks.  Both Ana and Tessa are excessively passive and accepting of not only poor treatment, but frankly mediocre sex?  Lol.  I mean, 50 suffers a lot from Jamie Dornan and Dakota Johnson hating each other in a not good way, but After suffers from both a lack of chemistry and like... not even a sexual gimmick lol.  Am I really supposed to buy this 19 year old boy as a sexual dynamo?  Sure.  But I digress.  Ana and Tessa are quite dull, and I cannot find any way to relate to them.  

Laura?  Laura is FUCKING AMAZING.  She’s introduced to as us this Business Bitch, and sure, there’s nothing substantive there, but it makes a lot more sense to me than Ana being given a job by her boyfriend and then being treated like she earned it.  Laura comes off as older, more mature--you’re really given a reason to believe that she’s bored with life.  Her boyfriend sucks.  She’s sexually unsatisfied, but certainly takes matters into her own hands (I don’t think Ana or Tessa ever masturbated onscreen lol, which seems a bit?  Odd?  In “erotic dramas”).  And she’s FUNNY.  That’s one of the main reasons I love Laura.  She’s kinda ridiculous.  She wanders about in her sequin caftan, clearly hoping to get kidnapped (which really sets the tone for the movie.... if you were taking this seriously after that, I don’t know what’s wrong with you and your ability to have fun).  She takes control of her Beauty and the Beast inspired dinner with Massimo.  She gives him shit all the time, trots off the tarmac like she’s going to walk to Rome, jumps in a fountain just to give him shit.  In the final 50 Shades movie, Christian tells Ana that she’s topping from the bottom.  But you never see that.  I see it in Laura pressing Massimo’s buttons, in her scoffing at him whenever he tries to throw his weight around.  She’s never afraid of this guy for real, lol, and it’s very clear in her face.

She’s also a much more sexually engaged heroine.  There’s a lot of.........  Like, I won’t say that 365 is nearly as kinky as it could get, OBVIOUSLY lol.  But it’s definitely kinkier than the supposed kinkfest that is 50, just in terms of its dynamic.  And I love that Laura is allowed to be kinky, in particular.  She clearly enjoys sex that isn’t always incredibly tender; she enjoys watching Massimo get a blow job from another woman.  Both 50 Shades and After are remarkably straightforward and traditional in their depictions of what “healthy” sex looks like.

But of course, the point of 365 is not to depict a healthy and normal relationships lol.  It’s to fulfill a specific type of fantasy.  Sometimes, you kind of want to get kidnapped.  Not literally kidnapped, obviously.  But the idea of giving up control and having decisions made for you and being pampered by some rich hot guy who fucks you all over his boat is not bad.  And this is where 365 succeeds so well compared to 50 and After.  The latter two movies just have this constant stream of boring drama, inauthentic drama, just this guy and his bullshit problems that are, in both films might I add, CONNECTED TO HIS POOR MOTHER.  Whereas Massimo literally has to bend to Laura’s will and “become gentle for her”, while also maintaining his position as an archetype.  Honestly, aside from the general conceit and the ending, 365 is pretty much angst-free.  Laura goes on shopping trips.  Laura has great sex.  Laura eats and naps whenever she wants and has someone hang onto her every word and need and desire.

The thing is, too, lol--even when Laura does have some angst, she easily has a superior friend to any meager cardboard stand-in seen in 50 and After.  Olga is FUN!  They have a legitimate spa day montage after Laura has spent hours bitching about her stupid boyfriend.  Olga is also the only character who’s like, this shit is INSANE.  Olga is fabulous.

Finally, 365 is a movie focused on the female gaze to the nth degree, and we need more of that.  The camera worships Michele’s body; it zeroes in on his ass, his abs, his sexual pleasure.  Even when Laura is chained to the bed and wearing a spreader bar, she’s less naked than he is.  Compare this to 50 in particular, where we saw so little of Jamie and so much of Dakota, in a movie supposedly targeting people who are into men.

It’s just a FUN movie.  So much fun.  And that’s where After and 50 fail so hard, imo; they’re just kind of agonizing and the female protagonist really doesn’t even get cookies for her time in either of them.

[threeletterslife]

Chana! What are some stories that have stayed with you through the years, and writing that has impacted your own?

ooh nice question! i wasn’t sure if you meant some of mY stories or others’ stories, so i’ll answer it both ways! (this post is crazily long i’m so so sorry)

some of my own stories that have stayed with me through the years: you & me both, over the moon and insurrection/the exam

y&mb was the first full-on angst story i’ve ever published. (before publishing that, i was actually known for being a fluff writer 🤡 i know, crazy, right??) but y&mb sits in a very special place in my heart. when i was writing it, i was happy with where my life was going (i’d finally gotten out of the slumps) and the topics showcased in the story actually really hit close to home so i was also seriously invested in the characters too. overall, it was my best work for a while. but looking back, i feel like i could’ve written it so much better. it was only like what? less than a year ago? but idk i love it but hate it at the same time. the kind of thing where i laugh and cry at the memories from it, but also would HATE to read it again. still, the plot of y&mb was something i developed for YEARS before i even attempted to write it, so yes, it did stay with me through the years. and i know for a fact it’ll stay with me for longer in the future

otm is an interesting one. i finished the series this year i think (which sounds so crazy,, it feels so long ago). but the plot i planned for years! i always save my *special* plots until i think i’m capable of writing them. i still think i should’ve waited a lil longer when i wrote otm because i’m not 100% sure that was my best work ever. but otm just makes me reflect back on the crazy times. like the characters in the story, i also felt so confused and unsure and NUMB when i was writing otm—mostly because the pandemic had just gotten serious in my country and things had started to become like a mf SHITSHOW :(( i connect so much with the characters in otm... (i mean, who doesn’t love an intj mc qUEEN??) so yeah. i also LOVE oc and yoongi’s relationship in otm. their romance is actually something i want with my future s.o. LOL (something subtle, something steadfast and most importantly—STEADY). i wish i could rewrite it now fsjfjj but that goes for all of my stories

insurrection/the exam kinda go together. i’ve had the idea for insurrection the longest out of ALL of these stories lol. i think i mentioned it before but i always felt so intrigued by a ‘school revolt’ kind of idea. so i always kinda wanted to write a lowkey satirical(?) story full of morally ambiguous characters and questionable academic organizations. that turned out to be insurrection, which i waited for (i think? three to four years?) before i finally wrote it. AGAIN, it could’ve been better, but at this point, let’s just accept the fact that i’ll never be satisfied LOL. insurrection’s welton high school is based on my own high school,,, so you can tell how shitty my experience with education was in my high school years 🥳anyways, that’s why insurrection is so important to me. i feel like, in a way, it tells my story (and my friends’ stories too). the exam is a less optimistic (more satirical) view on the education system. while insurrection focused more on the students (their passions, their will to rebel and ‘cheat’ the shitty system), the exam focused more on the unfairness that students’ intelligence could be scored with fucking TESTS. one test that determines your whole future. utopia and dystopia respectively represented privileged children (who were more likely to succeed in the exam) and the lesser privileged children (who would inevitably fail the exam because they were never given the resources). yeah, i think the exam could’ve been executed better, but i think the overarching theme was there, which i’m pretty satisfied with. i’m passionate about screaming that the american education system sucks (as you can tell by this painfully long paragraph) lol i’m thinking of writing a fic in the future about an education system that actually works!!

ANYWAYS I’M SO SORRY I WROTE SO MUCH FUCK. BUT THERE’S MORE,,, HANG ON

others’ stories and writings that have impacted my own!!

starting with published authors! i’m a huge HUGEJFLKDJFLSDJ fan of louis sachar (i’m convinced this man is a genius lol). i LOVED holes, i LOVED small steps, i LOVED fuzzy mud, i LOVEDDD the whole wayside school series. he’s so witty? and creative??? like i owe all my outrageous ideas to him because he probably single-handedly taught me creativity when i was a kid LOL another author i LOVE is fredrik backman. he writes the best slice of life/coming of age stories. i’m particularly fond of a man called ove and my grandmother asked me to tell you she’s sorry (which inspired nothing a lil green can’t fix!!). honorable mentions go to ishiguro’s never let me go, faulkner’s as i lay dying, juster’s the phantom tollbooth. omfg i also had a HUGE shannon hale phase (the goose girl, enna burning, rapunzel’s revenge)—very fairy tale-esque but so magical and charming and CAPTIVATING!! i owe all of these authors a huge motherfucking THANK YOU. because they built me up this far 😭😭😭i love authors who are able to fully develop their characters or have the most amazing world-building ever. i think that’s why i put so much emphasis on my characters too. i rlly learned from the best 😭😭

as for internet authors!! i actually IDOLIZED this one author from wattpad (she was SERIOUSLY underrated). and i know there’s a stigma around wattpad authors (lowkey rightfully so; there’s some nasty stuff on there) but chloe was so SO talented. she wrote like a poet. it was insane. i never saw anyone who had a way with words like her. we were actually pretty close for a while but lost touch over the years. anyways, she wrote this beautiful, heartbreaking story called chrysanthemum,,, she deleted her account though so it’s not there anymore. (i know. i agonized over this for hours). she also wrote a horror fic (creatures) that STILL chills me to the bones. she inspired me to try writing horror too (in the future, i will!) 

other than that, i love all of @inktae​’s fics! she’s also an AMAZING writer. (her writing style is so eloquent and elegant and ugh! perfection!) her stories will make you feel nostalgic and lowkey heartbroken. she also writes a lot about nature/being around nature—it’s such a nice, beautiful, serene feeling. (she’s also the master of bittersweet endings!) i think i became obsessed with bittersweet endings because of her LOL some of her works that literally breathed LIFE into me: the blue notebooks, below thunder showers, written on the sky, first light (all of them are worth reading. her fics make you want to become a novelist—the inspiration i get from them is amazing!)

another legend is @jimlingss​!! i still keep up with literally all of her works because istg she never disappoints. she has such a simple but fluent writing style, which i LOVE! it’s engaging through and through. and man, she has a talent for storytelling! but the one thing no other internet author can top is kina’s characters. some published authors can’t even develop a single protagonist in the 456 book pages they wrote yikes. (but just saying, kina can do it in like 9k words.) i have no idea how she does it but her characters just feel human—even if they're not, they STILL FEEL REAL??? (sorry i’m just fangirling) but like i’m serious, she really did inspire me to start putting more depth to my characters. after all, why would the reader be invested in a story if they don’t give two shits about the bland-ass characters?? her pivotal works that made ME wanna pIVOT my whole writing career: tears of a villain, flames and floe, game of temptation, head over heels to hell, a voyage to liberation, ghost in the machine, the weekend massacre, love pages, moirai, a piece of the moonlight

i mean look, i’d put down way more fics of kina’s that inspired me to become the writer that i am now,,, but i don’t wanna make this long ass ask even longer so ummm i’ll have to stop 😭😭but i am literally in love with all of these published and internet authors. i just don’t understand how they are so talented. i really DO learn from the best. and i learned different things from each author too!! 

all of these stories (mine and others) have impacted my writing in some way or another. from my own, i learned from my mistakes lol. from others, i learned how to be a better writer. you can only write as much as you read. i stand by that fact to this day

anyways i’m so sorry you had to read this whole fucking essay 😭😭😭😭

[darlingpetao3]

Seducing the Gem (Nash Wells x Reader, Chapter 2/9)

Rating: M (Smut in Chapter 6 only)

Summary: When a mysterious package shows up at your front door, you (a famous Romance novelist) are hurtled from your virtually uneventful life and into one of danger and adventure. In a quest to save your captured friend Caitlin from impending harm, you run into a suave adventurer named Nash who helps you along the way. Or is the charming Nash simply after something in your possession…?

Chapter 1

You never want to travel by air again after this.

So many cumulative hours on a plane, layovers, and don’t forget that brutal time change. Jet lag is the real bitch, hands down.

You weren’t supposed to tell anyone about what’s happening with Caitlin (and even you don’t know the full extent of it, other than she’s being held for ransom and you have to deliver a weird piece of tech to these criminals?), but you felt an obligation to tell Iris. You were all friends, after all, and she should know. Plus, you figured you should tell your boss before she quite possibly never heard from you again.

Needless to say, she freaked out when you told her the gist.

“What do you mean Cailtin’s in trouble? And you’re going where?!”

“I can’t tell you any more than that, Iris, just please keep this all to yourself!”

Iris had promised you as much and even saw you to the airport in a flash.

And yes, you may be reaching your final landing, and it may have to do with your def-con one anxiety flaring up, but you’ve had this nagging little feeling that you have constantly been watched throughout your neverending travels. But of course, who wouldn’t feel a certain level of delusion after losing track of how many hours you’ve been awake?

Wearily, you grab your luggage and attempt to follow the signs to where you might find transportation to the hotel. It’s almost like you need to gain your “land-legs” again after flying for so long. And why is there so much yelling from one man? He sounds American, angry and gruff to boot, so you try to stay clear of him and avoid eye contact.

Now, where are the-?

“Oof.” You walk directly into a towering brick of a man who looks like a real-life G.I. Joe action figure.

“Excuse me, ma’am,” he apologizes in a familiar accent. Another American. “Are you alright?”

“Oh yes, yes, I’m sorry, I’m not fully with it right now,” you reply awkwardly. “Do you happen to know where the buses or cabs pull up? I need to get to Pullman Kinshasa Grand Hotel. It’s urgent.”

“Ah, the Pullman!” the silver-haired man exclaims happily. “I’m headed there as well. My wife is here on business and I’ve flown in to surprise her. I rented a vehicle, would you be interested in hitching a ride?”

Honestly, it would save your brain and legs a whole lot of trouble otherwise.

“If you don’t mind? That would be absolutely wonderful,” you exhale in relief. “Thank you so much… I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name?” You offer yours first.

“You can call me Wade,” he tells you with a smile, “now, let’s get you safely out of here.”

***

You don’t remember falling asleep.

Surely, it couldn’t have been for very long. After all, the hotel wasn’t supposed to be too far from the airport. But why did it seem like you were on a jungle road when you should see more buildings…?

Stretching, you yawn and ask, “I wasn’t out long, was I?”

“No, no, not long at all,” Wade replies while keeping his eyes on the road. You continue to look around, feeling the kindling of nerves starting to surface.

“So, uh… how much further until we reach the hotel?”

“Not much longer now.”

A few minutes later and you’re still travelling through the jungle and now the bad feelings are flooding you even though you’re trying your damnedest not to let it show. Where are we going? Who the hell did I get in a car with? Like hell were you going to get taken to a secondary location. You’ve written plenty of those stories before.

“Hey, do you mind pulling over for a minute?” you ask casually. “I didn’t go to the bathroom after landing. It’s pretty urgent.”

“Can’t hold it?” Wade questions you. “Otherwise, you’ll have to just go behind a tree.”

“I’m afraid I can’t wait,” you fake grimace. God, you hope you can get out of whatever this frightening situation is.

“Alright then, be quick,” he says gruffly, but adds overenthusiastically, “luxury awaits!”

You laugh while getting out of the car, and hope it passes for a genuine one.

“You need your backpack with you for this?” Wade comments. Your heart races in fear.

“Oh yeah, well, you know… feminine products.”

After shutting the car door, you plan to make a run for it in five seconds, but the sound of another slammed door echoes along with one of a cocked gun. It’s aimed directly at you.

You’re frozen in place - alone, with an armed man in a jungle with no one else in sight.

Well, fuck.

“Hand over the bag, Miss (Y/L/N),” Wade orders you. “You have no idea what you have in there.”

Yes, you do. It’s the key to saving Caitlin. You hug your purse closer to your chest.

Also, you don’t recall giving him your last name…

Who is this man?

“Hand. It. Over.” Wade takes a step closer, and just when you think you’re about to meet your end, you hear a little beep beep noise. A man on a motorbike approaches and thank the universe there will at least be a witness to your death.

“What’s going on here?” the mystery man asks after stepping off his bike and removing his full-face helmet. You don’t even have time to register the attractive face appear into your vision because a gunshot rings out amongst the trees. The next thing you knew, the tire on Mystery Man’s motorbike lets out a long hiss. The man raises his hands in surrender, but in the blink of an eye, he pulls out his own gun that he must have hidden on his hip under his jacket. He shoots at Wade in retaliation and you hit the ground, crawling to get behind the closest tree or bush.

Why did a freaking shootout have to happen right in front of me? Why?!

As one might expect, you were more awake than you’d ever been.

Mystery Man reloads and takes another shot at Wade, who makes a mad dash behind the hood of his car, then manages to hop into the driver’s side. He peels away, barrelling down the jungle road. Only once the sound of the vehicle disappears can you hear the sound of your heart pounding in your ears.

It gets even louder when you hear footsteps grow closer to where you’re crouched behind a bush. A face pops around.

“Hi, there,” Mystery Man greets you.

“Hi,” you peep.

“You doing alright?” he asks.

“I’d be better if you put your gun away.” He makes an understanding noise and does so, then offers a hand to help you up. “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it. The name’s Nash.”

Whoa, his eyes are insane. You feel the need to avert your own eyes with the speed in which this Nash guy drew his gun earlier. They’re the soul-piercing kind.

“I’m (Y/N),” you reply, rustling in your pocket for your phone when he starts to talk again.

“So, I have to ask, what in the hell brings you out here with that guy?”

You check your phone and naturally, there’s no signal. You need to call the hotel, get ahold of Caitlin, something.

“Listen,” you say, “I’d rather just try to forget all that. I need you to tell me how to get to Kinshasa. It’s a matter of life and death.”

“Darling,” Nash laughs, “you are hell and gone from Kinshasa! It’s over that way, on the coast.”

Wait, what?

“But that man,” you say, unable to comprehend, “Wade, he said…”

“Yeah, I bet he did.” Something on Nash’s arm - a gauntlet or something - beeps and lights up when he takes a step closer to you.

“What was that?” you ask.

“Don’t worry about it. ...What else did he tell you?”

You leave out the weirdness about Wade seeming to know who you were and you having that GPS device Ronnie sent you in your purse.

“Please,” you beg, “I need your help.”

“I don’t know h-”

“I will pay you!” you add in desperation.

“It’s just that-”

“Everything I have on me, you’ll get!”

Nash raises an eyebrow in curiosity, then laughs. “Relax, okay?” He rests his hands on your shoulders. You feel the weight and size of them on you. You’re happy Nash is on your side and not Wade’s. “The only issue is that my bike is flat,” he explains. “We’ll have to walk.”

You sigh. “Okay.”

“But I can tell you this: you’re going to regret carrying that backpack through this humid heat for miles. You’ll have to ditch it.”

“But I-!” you protest but stop. Sometimes it really sucks being a material girl. Thanks, Madonna. You leave your luggage behind, but you make sure to take your purse and strap it over your shoulder.

“I look forward to getting my hands all over everything on you,” Nash says playfully with a wink.

How dare he! You are having a crisis! You were just held at gunpoint - now is not the time for trying anything!

“Listen, buddy,” you tell him, “I don’t know who you think you are but don’t even think about it.” You start walking away from him, but he calls after you.

“Uh, Princess? Kinshasa’s this way.”

You spin around and shoot him a death glare. That treacherous eyebrow makes a reappearance.

“You know what you are? You’re a cocky bastard!” you exclaim before walking past him on the correct path to Kinshasa.

He laughs again. Damn him having a beautiful laugh, too.

[alleiradayne]

There’s Something Strange A Reader/Sam Winchester Series

When Y/N Y/L/N escapes to the upper Midwest for a weekend of inspiration to begin her tenth paranormal thriller novel, she never imagined the source of that inspiration to be her own life. Between the old mansion, two peculiar men posing as antiquers, and the mysterious death of the heiress of Hill Manor one-hundred and fifty years ago, Y/N learns the truth about far more than the paranormal.

Part III - The Inspiration

Summary: Sleep can’t shake her writer’s block, and so Y/N goes wandering for inspiration. Warnings/Tags: Even more fluffy flirting, kissing, sort of dirty thoughts Square filled: Author AU Characters/Pairings: Reader/Sam Winchester, Dean Winchester Word Count: 2,021 A/N: For @spnfluffbingo2019, this entire series fills the Author AU square. Super giant huge thank you to @atc74 who beta’d this giant thing for me.

All was decidedly not well again.

Far from it, the moment Y/N had fallen asleep, everything had gone terribly wrong. Nightmare after nightmare kept any rest from her. Worse was waking up unable to recall any of those dreams. If only she has managed to hold on to one of them, her book would write itself.

Instead, she ate breakfast as she stared at the blank page in her notebook lying open on her desk. The longer she stared, the fewer coherent thoughts formed. And the longer she struggled against that impenetrable barrier, the more she returned to the single constant figure in her mind, with his long hair, broad shoulders, and killer smile.

Fuck.

The notebook snapped shut as she flicked the cover, then it thumped into the draw of the desk where she shoved it. A large bite consumed the last of her toast as she stood from her desk, strode to her door, and headed down the hallway.

If the mansion had managed to inspire her earlier, maybe it could do so again. The heavily furnished hallway to her right loomed strangely empty despite its copious décor. The end of her eastern wing of the house lay that way, so instead, she turned to her left and headed for the main staircase.

Something about the house had gripped her imagination upon arrival yesterday. That much had been evident the moment she had attempted to start her novel that afternoon. And while the people had interested her at dinner, only one of them continued to permeate the cloudy suffuse that comprised her rambling thoughts: Sam Winchester.

Instead of fighting her instincts, she submitted to her wandering mind and followed her feet. Through various hallways she traipsed, no clear path determined, and her thoughts trailed in tow. Off its leash, her subconscious found its way back to the events of the previous night. Dinner, while pleasant, had served up little besides food. Her educated guesses as to the pasts of the other guests had all been spot-on. Even Sam and Dean’s antiquer disguise had been a narrow miss. That had been their intent, after all.

But what had surprised her was Sam's warning on the heels of his apparent admiration. As she strolled through another gaudy corridor of the mansion, her fingers itched, suddenly eager to touch. Why the warning? With five other guests, how would any detective single out her fingerprints? And for what crime?

Y/N found herself on a sunny patio after several minutes of traipsing. Golden rays of warm sunlight angled across a wrought iron table painted white to match the pale stone upon which it stood. Myriad of planters and pots bearing lush autumnal flowers revealed the source of the previous night’s centerpiece at dinner. And in the far corner stood a tall sculpture of a robed woman bearing a pot from which water flowed.

Detectives. The worst kind, Sam had said. While he had initially seemed irritated by Dean's drunken admission, Sam had not evaded her when she had prodded further. Homicide then? Special Victims? Cold case?

A derisive snort echoed off the glass of the patio walls as Y/N turned on her heel and stomped from the room. How had he managed to distract her so? Sure, he was easy on the eyes. But a romance novelist she was not. Perish the thought, she had never entertained the idea of writing such a book. She wouldn't even know where to start.

Not that she knew where to start yet another paranormal thriller either.

As she traced her steps back through the mansion, a gnawing worry crawled up her spine and settled at the base of her head, fine hairs on the back of her neck standing on end. His warning, while subtle enough, set off all sorts of alarms. She could use that. It may not be a bad place to start. Foreboding warnings typically hooked readers. The curiosity to see how it all played out motivated the human mind like little else. The possibility of danger looming around every corner thrilled. But that road, that winding wandering path with its ominous tone and obfuscated truth demanded the reader’s attention.

If Sam's warning started the story, then what would end it? Don't touch anything. What if a protagonist did touch something? The final piece to their puzzle. It needed work. But at the very least, it was the start to and possibly the plot of a proper story.

A familiar baritone dragged her up from the depths of her thoughts, his curse permeating the fog. Y/N found herself outside of the library, two large dark oak doors framing the wide entrance. She leaned over the threshold with a careful look to either side, then entered when she found it empty but for copious books in a vast array of shelves.

She heard it again, another curse hissed under his breath. A part of her wondered what anger might look like on his too pretty face. Probably no less attractive. Maybe even more so. Something about that thought, about the library and finding him there, broke a fine sheen of sweat out across the back of her neck, and so when she rounded the last set of shelves baring the weight of old writing supplies to find Sam sitting at a table laden with books, she hesitated.

That single beat of uncertainty allowed Sam the time he needed to drag his eyes from his book and up her entire form, drinking her in from heeled feet to coiffed hair. That look, the wide-eyed gaze and gaping lips sucked the breath right from her lungs. Christ, how had anyone ever survived his stare? Or that squirm in his seat as he openly ogled her? How she had ever resisted the urge to shove his books aside, pin him to the table, and ride him until she passed out, she’d never know.

A thick swallow preceded his greeting. “Y/N,” he breathed. “Sleep well?”

Ruined. All her plans for the weekend had been ruined by that one little question. It was then that she gave up on writing about her beloved protagonist inheriting a haunted house. Darling Natalie would instead be meeting Sam Winchester in said house and together they would solve a mystery while they fell in love.

Romance novel stigma be damned.

“I ah… yeah, I did,” she stammered. “Slept alright. Do you… mind?” she asked as she pointed at the table.

Sam glanced at his books, then shut several as he gathered them up and placed them on the chair to his left. “Please,” he added as he motioned to the chair in front of him.

Measured steps bared her to the chair where she sat, her eyes never leaving his. “How’s your… research? Investigation? What are you doing?”

Either Sam played everything close to the chest, or his detective’s nature forced him to behave that way. He slid the open book in his hands to the side, just far enough where Y/N couldn’t make out the text. “Investigation. And it’s… slow. But we’re making progress.”

“Where’s Dean?”

He smirked at that. “I could give you his number if you’re interested.”

“Only if I get yours, too,” she retorted. “You know. In case I find anything.”

His chair slid closer with a rough pull at the seat as Sam leaned near her, one forearm propped on his thigh. “I thought you said you were writing a novel?”

As much as she wanted to bite back, Y/N held her tongue. “I am. But that doesn’t mean I’m not looking for things to write about.”

“Find anything interesting so far?” he asked with a coy smile.

“Maybe,” she said as she crossed her legs and dropped her heel to dangle from her toe. “Plenty of inspiration. All those fascinating people at dinner gave me plenty to work with.”

His eyes snapped to her bobbing foot, and before she could move, he pointed and asked, “Would you… do you wear heels all the time?”

Strangely attractive men in stranger mansions investigating murders and offering foot massages. That had to make it into the book somehow. She slipped her shoe from her toe and it thumped to the floor. Deft fingers enveloped her foot as Sam set it on his thigh and rolled his thumbs through the knots in her sole.

“I usually wear heels, yes,” she replied.

“That’s pretty rough on your feet,” he started, “compromises bone structure. Invites fractures.”

She laughed at that. “And women are the weaker sex.”

“Men that don’t wear heels are the weaker sex,” Sam stated. “I could never wear shoes like that. Not in my line of work.”

There. A crack in the foundation. “Have you chased many monsters, Sam?”

His thumbs faltered as his mouth gaped. “Who said I chase monsters?”

That had not been the reaction she expected. “You’re a detective, right? Cold cases? The guys they call when nobody else can figure it out?” She flexed her foot when he continued to stare. “Sam?”

He shook his head as though confused. “Uh yeah, sorry. But no, I haven't chased many…” he paused with an averted glance, “… many criminals. You sound like you know a bit about investigations. What sort of books do you write?”

She ignored his casual shift in topics. “Paranormal thrillers.”

His hands froze as all the color drained from his face. “What?”

“You know. Like haunted houses,” she started as she casually gestured. “Vengeful spirits, cursed objects, demons, angels, religion, the occult. All of it,” she rattled. “I’ve got nine books on the market and I started the tenth this morning. For the most part. I think I’ve got plenty of inspiration with this house and the guests to come up with some sort of plot.”

She had rattled on so intently that Y/N missed his gaping mouth and green complexion. He remained that way, still as stone and staring until she slipped her foot from his hands. “I… think I should leave you to your research.”

With her foot returned to her shoe, Y/N stood and turned for the door, but only took half a step before the warmth of Sam’s massive hand slipped into her palm. He hadn’t grabbed her, hadn’t said anything. He hadn’t even stood. When she turned over her shoulder, she found him seated and gazing up at her as if seeing her for the first time all over again.

“Help me?”

Her eyes snapped back to the table where she found his book shut. In the dark leather of the cover, gold inlay emblazoned the titled across the top in a curling script.

The Haunting of Hill Manor: A History.

“You’re not a detective.”

Sam shook his head but said nothing as her eyes flicked from the book to him and back.

“And this is Hill Manor.”

Sam nodded.

“And it’s haunted.”

He scowled as he glanced at the book. “The simplest answer is yes.”

Did he expect her to take him seriously? She smiled a crooked smirk as she asked, “So, does that make you Egon in this operation?”

His laughter burst from his lips in a rush of air as Sam clutched his stomach and stood. “Only if that makes Dean Dr. Venkmen.”

Y/N neared him, leaving little space between them. “He seems like the type,” she started. “But you don’t seem as… oblivious as Egon.”

“If you ask me to fix your computer, I'm gonna spend a little extra time under your desk,” he teased.

“I expected no less,” she said.

“But only if you agree to help me,” he added.

He wasn't joking. His tone, his intense hazel stare, his towering frame did all the dirty work his courtesies avoided. “It's all real, then? Ghosts, curses, dark magic?” she asked.

“That's just the tip of the iceberg,” Sam started. “I wouldn't ask for a civilian’s help if we weren't desperate, but if anyone finds this thing we're looking for before we do…”

Y/N considered herself an expert on expressions and emotions. Describing both required a deft hand and intimate knowledge of the human psyche. Though she had described the sorrow in another’s eyes time and time again, she had never seen such pain first-hand. Not quite like how Sam harbored guilt and despair. That look alone told her more than anything he might ever say to her; he had seen things he would never forget, had experienced traumas that had broken him over and over. Those eyes and their desperation said more than she ever could in any of her books.

“I'll help you, Sam,” she started. “If it means we have a chance to save these people, and I don't ever have to see that look on your face ever again, I'll help you for the rest of my life.”

A familiar, yet long-forgotten warmth blossomed deep in her center and spread like wildfire through her entire body as Sam hauled her into him and enveloped her in his massive arms. Her lips found his in her haste to soothe her own sorrow, and at first, he hesitated. But then the smooth heat of his hand cupped her jaw, fingers delving into her hair and Y/N melted into him as he returned her kiss.

“Hey!”

As though struck, Sam tore from her and leaped back a step. Y/N whipped about and found the source of their interruption at the corner of a bookshelf where Dean loomed out of the shadows. Heavy boots thumped across the hardwood floor as he strode up to them both, and then he growled, “Find anything yet?”

Sam regarded Y/N before stuttering his response. “I might have a lead… from this.” He grabbed the history text from the table and handed it to Dean.

When he took it from Sam, Dean glared at Y/N, his brow furrowed and eyes narrowed. When she returned his glare, she planted her feet and folded her arms across her chest. No, there would be no scaring her off. Not with that pitiful excuse for intimidation.

“Not a civilian?” he asked her.

She looked at her watch. “As of five minutes ago, no.”

“Great,” Dean spat as he flipped his hand at Sam. “What were you—”

“She writes paranormal thrillers,” he interrupted. “She might be able to help. We need all the help we can get.”

Dean looked from Sam to her, then back to Sam. “Does she—”

“Iron, salt, and cleansing rituals for your everyday spirits that are stuck in between,” she interjected. “Might need a little Latin to force out a vengeful spirit. That’s what you’re dealing with here, right? A haunted mansion?”

Dean opened the book to Sam’s marker and scanned the page. “Not really.”

Y/N shook her head as she asked, “What do you mean? The house is either haunted or it’s not.”

He shoved the book into her hands and pointed at an artist's portrait of a woman at a writing table holding a pen to a piece of parchment.

“It’s not haunted yet,” Dean started, “but if we don’t figure out what item that woman attached herself to before she shows up, someone else will find it, and everyone in this fucking house is gonna die.”

Y/N took the book from him and stared as Dean turned to walk away. Sam remained by her side as he shuffled a step closer and placed a gentle hand on the small of her back.

The portrait was that of a woman in her thirties sitting at an ornately carved writing desk. She held a distinctly detailed fountain pen in her right hand, and a line of her neat script curled along the top of the parchment.

But that mattered least of all. The writing desk at which the woman sat stood beside a window in an all too familiar room.

“Oh fuck.”

Dean’s boots thudded to a halt. As he turned around, Sam leaned over her shoulder for a closer look at the page as he asked, “What is it?”

She pointed at the window, its gleaming rays of sunshine angled across the desk, and spoke.

“That’s my room.”

If you want to be tagged for this series specifically, send me an ask or a DM! If you want in on any of my tags (Sam/Jared, Dean/Jensen), you can ask for that, too!

THERE’S SOMETHING STRANGE MASTER LIST

ALLEIRADAYNE’S SPN FLUFF BINGO MASTERLIST

ALLEIRADAYNE’S SPN MASTER LIST

The Whole Thang:

@atc74  @hannahindie @bevans87  @meganwinchester1999  @plaided-ani-on-hiatus  @oneshoeshort @jonogueira @andkatiethings @elfinmox @wonderfulworldofwinchester @princessofthefandomrealm  @just-another-busyfangirl @jmekitchens @81mysteriouslyme @dolphincliffs  @seenashwrite  @canadianspnhunter  @meowmeow-motherfucker @depressed-moose-78 @staycejo1 @hobby27  @pretty-fortune @mypopculturediva @fanfictionjunkie1112 @sandlee44 @4llmywr1tings @claitynroberts @maddiepants @scarletluvscas @donnaintx @blackeyedangel9805 @rainflowermoon @winchesterprincessbride  @lazinessisalliknow @the-is13 @waywardafgrandma @keymology @sister-winchesters99

Sam’s Sasstresses:

@morganas-pendragons @karouwinchester

There’s Something Strange:

@peridottea91 @amanda-teaches

[spectraloats]

[fic] telltale hearts (snippet)

hello @lovegood-and-boswell and I have been talking about a romance novelist!Caleb AU (with widomauk endgame) so... here’s a super rough snippet

“So what do you write?” Beau asks, crossing her arms over her chest and leaning against Marion’s beautiful granite-topped kitchen counter as she looks over at him.

Caleb has the distinct impression of being sized up, evaluated in some way. He’s not sure what the criteria are. That makes him a little nervous. He wraps both hands around his mug of tea. “I, ah-- novels, generally.”

“He writes romance novels, Beau, didn’t I tell you that?” Jester interjects. “That’s why he’s here in the first place, you know. He works for my mama!”

Although Caleb is used to a certain amount of derision that comes from being a novelist in this genre, Beau seems more impressed than anything. Her eyebrows go up and her tough guy posture relaxes a little when Jester speaks up for him. “Oh, right! That’s cool. Marion’s pretty cool, huh?”

It’s still so strange for Caleb to think of her as anything but Ms. Lavorre or, really, Ruby C. That was the pen name that made her famous, and it’s now the name of her independent publishing house, Ruby C. Press. “She is very cool,” Caleb says and means it. She is one of his heroes.

“She’s the best,” Jester says dreamily. “Oh! And she has some of Caleb’s books around here somewhere, maybe in the study--”

“Please, Jester.” Caleb’s already not certain why he’s here in Marion Lavorre’s house with Jester and her gym buddy or... whatever Beau is to her. He’s not certain how he feels about hanging out with his employers’ daughter. Though, in all fairness, he’s not certain about how he feels ‘hanging out’ in general. Tea and cakes were nice. Revealing his novels to an acquaintance is... less nice. “She can find those on her own.”

The last thing he wants is for the girls to decide it’s time for a dramatic reading of Tangled Hearts. At least not while he’s still in the house.

Jester makes a face at him. “How will she find them if she doesn’t know your name?” she points out.

“Your name is Caleb Widoga... Wido...” Beau begins, starting out with confidence and trailing off.

“Widogast,” Caleb fills in.

“His pen name! Everyone who works for my mama has one. It’s kind of cool, like they’re spies or something! Sometimes my mama let’s me come up with the names, even.”

Beau laughs. “That is kind of cool, yeah. Okay-- Caleb. What’s yours?”

There is definitely a dramatic reading of Tangled Hearts -- or worse, Twisted Hearts -- in the future. Caleb is a little flattered to imagine that, actually. He knows that at least Jester, who was raised on romance novels, takes his work very seriously.

“Ah-- it is N., just the initial, and then Flame. N. Flame.” He’s fairly proud of the pen name. It’s genderless, first of all, and if you say it aloud it sounds like enflame. Their hearts were enflamed with desire. The kiss enflamed his heart. Et cetera.

Beau gives a slow nod. “What’s the N stand for?”

“Nothing,” Caleb says honestly, at the same time Jester shouts, “Nasty!”

That is an old joke that still makes Caleb smile, even as he says, “Nein.”

Beau seems a little confused. “Nine what?”

“Nine INCHES! Just like his dick!” Jester says and claps, thrilled at the opportunity to share that joke.

It is very adorable, how Jester tells jokes with her whole body, and Caleb would appreciate that more if his face wasn’t flaming hot right now. He drops his head into his hands for a moment. “Jester.”

“Or just like Edrik’s dick!” Jester crows. She turns to Beau. “Edrik is the villain from one of Caleb’s books, and he is very sexy and has a very big dick and eventually the main character falls for him, obviously, and they have tons and tons of sex.” Through his embarrassment Caleb is pleased and honestly quite touched that she remembers the love interest’s name from the Tangled Hearts series. He dares to look up. “Except that in the second book they broke up again and now he’s kind of the good guy, and the main character is kind of the bad guy? I was really sad about that. And Caleb still hasn’t finished the third book, even though my mama wanted it like, a month ago.”

The blush is back, but for a less funny reason. “Ja, Jester, thank you for that reminder,” Caleb says. Which is yet another reason he feels awkward at this hang out.

Beau laughs. Caleb isn’t sure if the laughter is directed at Jester’s teasing or his own embarrassment, or if there’s a difference at this point. “Writer’s block?” she asks.

Caleb takes a big gulp of his tea, even though it’s gone cold. “Something like that,” he said. ‘Writer’s block’ doesn’t quite encompass the thirty-three thousand word manuscript on his computer, or the look on Marion’s face when she said that his plot was, as always, impeccable, but that his books lacked heart. It didn’t cover the hours Caleb has already spent staring helplessly at the words in front of him, or his agonized pacing at 2 a.m. wondering what exactly Marion meant.

“Sucks,” Beau says sympathetically.

That... about covers it.

[fairest]

DIDN’T GO TO TWITTER YESTERDAY - September 12, 2018

Find your country. 

In the American food court of O’Hare’s Terminal 3, eating my bean & whole egg burrito from Burrito Beach, I thought, the Viet Cong were the Dirt Bag left of their time.

Except the Viet Cong knew how to kill red state Americans.

(At that time red states were blue, weird.)

The only thing the Dirt Bag left knows how to do is put two pictures side by side on a timeline.

But there is hope.

Maybe once, in the past, all the Viet Cong could do was tweet, too.

Maybe it’s only the beginning for the Dirt Bag Left and at the beginning there is only talking, organizing.

Right now it’s still the Truman years.

Dewey defeats Truman, Clinton defeats Trump.

Right now it’s still the French colonizing the American mind (all these poems hurt my feelings and all the Marx bullshit) and in 50 years we will find the right American words and we will remember how to die.

Project for an extremely online leftist: Google Image Viet Cong & Google Image Dirt Bag Left and place the images side by side on Twitter.

I have this note here: On the airplane, the milf reads her thriller.

I have this note here from long ago: a male pilot who misses his flight reading a romance novel.

Find your country.

Today, my wife’s 34th birthday, I saw a young man sitting on the curb, coming to the end of a novel.

The streets smelled of a rain that had passed over.

The farmer’s market band was singing: find. your. country. find your. country.

My wife was holding our son.

We were warmed by the cool sun, my honesty.

What my honesty has done to my perception, how it has allowed me to see things which I could never look at, because someone else was looking.

I asked my wife, is that The Corrections or The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay? And my wife said, it’s The Corrections.

Writers always look at the books people are reading.

In fact it’s one of the only things a writer can do.

It is hard for me to edit my novel during this outpouring because the characters in my third person omniscient novel live to deceive themselves, but here, for this waterworks, I am admitting myself (admit one) in the first person.

I was watching the farmer’s market band and thinking to myself, musician is the only honorable profession, everyone else is a scab.

How can you face yourself, sitting there looking at Visio and TweetDeck, when you could just as easily pick up that guitar and strum.

I can still see the couch where I finished The Corrections, a cheap college couch, I cried on the last page.

I only remember one sentence, it’s the only sentence I almost remember from a Franzen novel: ‘she was going to make some changes in her life’.

It comes at the very end. It’s about the character Enid Franzen. Chip Franzen’s mommy. 

The novel ends on a note of supreme, mainstream hope, an almost Bellovian hope.

Nothing says hope more than making changes.

Hope: One day Mr. Sammler goes to bed with the right papers.

Who was the Tolstoy of the Jews? 

Franzen the Great. Our last great male Jewish novelist.

It was also the couch where AbercrombieAnnie1983 (the best screw[s]of my life) told me she had herpes, and I said so I can’t see you anymore (I can’t fuck you anymore) I can’t love you anymore (I won’t fuck you with a disease). 

I can still smell Annie’s pussy and now you can too. It wasn’t odorless like Kardashian pussy, it had a focused smell.

I used to write things like that in MFA school and people would look at me with hatred, disgust, like they were my grandmother, so I tried to stop doing it.

Style is what you are trying to stop doing?

All of that was in my head for different periods of time and different amounts of headspace, standing in the cool sun listening to the farmer’s market band run through the changes for Find Your Country, on my wife’s birthday.

My wife is a the one. 

That’s not a typo, my wife is a ‘the one’.

It took Karl Ove 240 or so pages to leave his wife, go back to his MFA school, propose love to his mistress or some girl he used to know in college…. 

It would take me eleven million words to leave my wife.

It’s just hard to imagine.

When I see my wife’s friends I think, you gals have aged. When I see my wife she looks the same as she did the day before I met her.

As a good man (I am a good man, my father is a great man, my grandfather was an OK man, his father was a bad, bad man) I searched long and hard for a the one and when I find a the one my memory was erased.

Even AbercrombieAnnie1983 (in 2001) is gone.

It takes 5-7 generations for the badness of man to reach full flavor.

For best results, drink 3 to 4 generations per day.

I read a clearly engaging essay yesterday by Charles Finch … who I know in real life … hi Charles ... but he is not the Charles I mentioned yesterday ... who said ... critics are bitter people … about Karl Ove and it reminded me how part of Karl Ove’s Q&A … like when an indie bookstore talks to Karl Ove … what they Q&A about … is that he “gave up” on art.

Like he “gave up” on art the way Henry Miller gave up on art when he broke the sound barrier of the autobiographical novel, but like Andy told me that time in Vilnius, nobody reads Henry Miller anymore, Stuart, and I added in my own head, not even me.

Miller once said it got to the point of madness where no matter what I said about the man I could have easily have said the exact opposite.

Although I’m back in New York … that’s why I was at the airport this morning thinking about the Viet Cong … and I always bring Aller Retour New York in my bag when I come back, although I haven’t opened it for 12 years or so, and I didn’t bring it this time, I brought Eros the Bittersweet instead, which got Burrito Beach red salsa sauce on it and now is kind of fucked up.

Karl Ove fits easily into Algren’s criticism of Henry Miller: the problem with Karl Ove is that he thinks he thinks.

Much more than Miller himself does.

That’s my problem. I think I think.

This reminds me a lot of David Frum.

I feel like I made fun of David Frum the last few days but I don’t know David Frum.

Making fun of people you don’t know is for people who go to Twitter. 

I didn’t go to Twitter yesterday.

Sorry David Frum.

Thought about tweeting yesterday: 

At the Tribeca Target, my wife said even the mannequins are fat now, and I told her she should tweet that. I’m not going to tweet it’s insane that Tribeca has a Target.

I came to this sentence in Charles’ essay, which gave me a painful pang of recognition: writers who leave more questions than they answer.

I thought to myself, am I a desperate amateur who thinks he thinks and leaves more questions than I answer?

I wrote a humor piece … the only literary criticism possible for me … since literature is hilarious … about Karl Ove … this was like five years ago … I wrote it in Managua … because Dario is boring in English … it was about why Karl Ove is famous … because people like to say ‘Karl Ove’ … you know … like the Seinfeld joke about salsa … that people only like salsa because they like to say salsa … you know I’d been to parties … and people said Karl Ove … but when they said Karl Ove they didn’t mean Karl Ove … they meant themselves … like when they say David Foster Wallace they don’t mean David Foster Wallace … they mean themselves … I did a search for the unpublished article a few moments ago … I was going to send it to HTMLGiant or The Awl at the time … I must’ve erased it … if you’re interested, I’ll leave a broken link to it in show notes.

Giving up is something only men can do.

I have this note here: something only men can do.

I have this note here: A list of verbs from mammals before humans that humans can also do but it’s just the kind of “good writing” with “strong, interesting verbs”: crawl, pounce, slither, wag, others? Use them during editing process.

Women are not allowed to give up.

Men are allowed to give up when they want to harness creativity.

That Picasso line … it took me a lifetime to learn how to paint like a child … if a woman said that she would be laughed out of the salon.

Don’t paint like a child, grow up, paint like a man.

Sometimes I wonder if female writers are burning up, they have ten thousand words to go, and they look over at their husband, and he’s fast asleep. 

I don’t give up.

I am trying pretty hard right now.

I detest creativity.

I am uninterested in the expanding of my mind I want a long, drawn out compression that lasts longer they I could with AbercrombieAnnie1983.

Creativity takes me always from behind. 

It’s weird my president is mad at Nike, they make a shoe called Air Force One, then again he likes his own plane.

Creativity takes a step back for a moment, long after I am miles ahead.  

I am scared of creativity. 

American writers spend a long time being afraid of advertising.

It takes an American writer 900,000 private words before they can say to themselves: fuck advertising.

The Charles Mingus composition Myself When I Am Real, how does it go again, is it a vamp or a romp? Is it a song, or a book? 

For the longest time as a child I would think to myself, I am not creative enough.

I believe in God, saints, angles—the triune stumbling block to creativity. But I don’t believe in fairies, goblins, witches, Batman, the ruling class, late capitalism, planets with more than one moon … Luke Skywalker’s farming planet … I never believed that shit.

If a woman gave up on art man would say, cool have a kid.

I have a note here about men’s bodies that make my cock move: the young falafeltarian waiters wear tight white polos. Does a man still starch a polo these days? My fantasy: their nails clipped in half-moons.

I wrote my wife a card for her birthday.

Happy birthday my love. The wine was dark. The food clean. The service sucked. The conversation spoke to us. There will never be another you.

I wrote her a card from our son, too.

I am scared to die for my country. 

My son might not be. 

I wrote it out with my right hand to be cute (editor’s note: the desperate amateur who thinks he thinks asking more questions than he can answer is, IRL, a lefty). 

Writing the card backward was a notable experience.

I fucked up cute all words except the word Mommy. 

I write mommy almost if not equally well with my right hand as with my left. 

Maybe it’s because I have so much hope.

I have so much hope for the world, my son, my wife, my mommy even though she is old.

My mama’s got cancer in her breast, don’t ask me why I’m motherfucking stressed, things done changed.

I hug my wife, between us our son.

Find Your Country.

Hold your influences close.

Hold your closest influence closer.

[onyxbird]

Shortly after the job's over, Hardison comes racing in to demand "Quinn, did you kidnap someone at your convention?! What did you do with them before you left?"

Everybody stares at him, baffled. "Huh?" says Quinn, inelegantly.

"I was checking up on the news and web chatter around the convention, in case I needed to clean up any traces to keep us under the radar, as usual, and apparently someone at the convention just vanished and there's rumors of evidence they were abducted."

"Ohhhhh. That was me."

"...Quinn." Hardison sucks his breath in. "What did you do with them?"

"Quinn didn't kidnap anyone," interjects Eliot. "He's the one who was kidnapped."

"...What?"

"Roberta thinks I'm 'making a mockery of the genre.' Can you believe that? But absolute kudos for her attempted resolution to that. It was amateurish, obviously, but one has to learn somehow."

Silence falls.

"Are you saying," says Nate, "that an actual romance novelist kidnapped you? And then...what?"

"Well, Eliot showed up, of course. What are you implying by 'actual romance novelist,' Nathan?"

"I just meant that this was actually a novelist from the convention, not some kind of incognito hitman or something?"

"Of course she's an actual novelist! She writes the 'Little Love on the Prairie' series."

Nate looks like he's at a loss for words. "The...Never mind. So a romance novelist doesn't like your writing, decided the way to solve this was to kidnap you, and...what? You just let her?"

"Well, I was going to escape eventually, of course, but I wanted to see where she was going with it. She was doing rather well for her first kidnapping--the woman does her research. Of course, then Eliot showed up and made her give up the handcuff keys and derailed whatever she had planned." Quinn's forehead furrows thoughtfully. "I hope she's not too discouraged by that. Eliot hustled us out so fast I didn't even get to ask her to sign my copy of When the Cock Crows."

In the QWAT AU, the Last Dam Job goes roughly the way it did in canon, because (against all odds) Quinn so consistently stays out of the action and sticks to reading/writing his books that Dubenich and Latimer are both genuinely unaware of his existence.

However, Eliot still has to fly to Kiev to track Quinn down and rescue him from where he's been handcuffed to a chair. There was a romance novel convention, you see, and, uh, apparently at least one author of more classic romance novels is not amused by Quinn's "mockery" of the genre. ("Eliot, did you have any idea romance novelists would get this cutthroat? If I'd known I would have brought my garrote! I should have started coming to these conventions years ago! Eliot, wait! I want to ask if she'll sign my book--she writes some of my favorites! Oh, and I want to ask if she'd like to do a murder with me sometime. What? You said I should make friends!")

[charbear177]

10 Chick Flick Movies To Watch When Feeling Heartbroken

Whether you are nursing a broken heart, feeling sad and lonely, or just needing a good chick flick to remind you that you can make it through, I have the list for you. Although all of these movies, and the women in the movies, are very different, they are all experiencing the love struggle.

We all go through it at some point in our lives. Breakups are hard, divorce is devastating, and unrequited love feels like torture. When you are feeling down, or sad, and just need a little something to get you out of your funk, I recommend the below list of chick flicks.

10 Chick Flick Movies To Watch

Under The Tuscan Sun - A writer impulsively buys a villa in Tuscany in order to change her life.

Based on the life experience of the author Frances Mayes, this movie will take you from the heartbreak and despair of divorce, to love and romance, and all the in betweens that come with moving on and finding yourself. 

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Take away from Under The Tuscan Sun is that sometimes what seems like the worst thing to ever happen to you, can turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to you. Breakups are hard, but necessary at times to shed our old selves and find our happy.

Waiting To Exhale - Based on Terry McMillan's novel, this film follows four very different African-American women and their relationships with the male gender.

The single life can be sad and lonely, and so can married life. What I love about this movie is that it shows you that there is no formula, or one way to find happiness. Married life in rich suburbia can turn out to be just as painful and unfulfilling as a life of sleeping around with lots of men hoping someone will love you.

Take away from Waiting To Exhale is to never give up, and know that it is never too late to start over. As scary as the thought is that you may be alone, or that you may not find the "one", you will never know if you do not put yourself out there.

Bridget Jones’s Diary - A British woman is determined to improve herself while she looks for love in a year in which she keeps a personal diary.

Bridget is a bit of a flake, who struggles with her weight, and has body issues. I think many of us can relate to her. She unfortunately falls for the wrong guy, essentially choosing the bad boy over a really good man, only to potentially lose everything.

Take away from Bridget Jones's Diary is to look inward, not outward for happiness and validation. Once Bridget worked on her self and started to feel confident in who she was, she was able to make better life decisions, and find real love.

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How Stella Got Her Grove Back - Stella Payne is a very successful 40-year-old stockbroker raising her son, Quincy, and living in Marin County, California, who is persuaded by her best friend from college, Delilah Abraham, to take a well-deserved, first-class vacation to Montego Bay, Jamaica. As she soaks in the beauty of the island, she encounters a handsome young islander, Winston Shakespeare, who is twenty years younger.  Wikipedia

Stella is an uptight professional who takes a chance on a romance with a much younger man, who seems to be her soulmate. With problems at work, and her son spending time with his father, a getaway is just what Stella needed to destress, but falling in love was not on her itinerary. 

Take away from How Stella Got Her Groove Back is to be open and willing to take chances. Of course it is possible things will not work out, but you will never know if you do not try.

Bridesmaids - Competition between the maid of honor and a bridesmaid, over who is the bride's best friend, threatens to upend the life of an out-of-work pastry chef. IMDB

Forever the bridesmaid never the bride is a fear that many women have. Not everyone wants to get married, but most of us do not want to be alone, or feel like we will never experience that special kind of love.

Take away from Bridesmaids is that things change, life can be unfair, you cannot force things, and sometimes everything goes wrong at the same time. You cannot force friendships, and you cannot force relationships. And more importantly, don't be afraid to ask for help when you are going through it, and remember you will come out of it on the other side better and stronger.

Girls Trip - When four lifelong friends travel to New Orleans for the annual Essence Festival, sisterhoods are rekindled, wild sides are rediscovered, and there's enough dancing, drinking, brawling, and romancing to make the Big Easy blush. IMDB

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Life happens and many of us long for the simpler times before there was divorce, cheating spouses, and debt collectors calling. This movie is great comic relief, with some real life stuff we can all relate to on some level.

Take away from Girls Trip is that while we are all entitled to our privacy, and to discuss our woes in our own time, hiding truths and lying to yourself and your loved ones is not the answer. All truths are eventually revealed, but you may find relief in sharing your heartaches, sadness, and struggles with others sooner rather than later.

Romancing The Stone - A mousy romance novelist sets off for Colombia to ransom her kidnapped sister, and soon finds herself in the middle of a dangerous adventure hunting for treasure with a mercenary rogue. IMDB

Romancing The Stone is one my favorite movies because it really is like a romance novel come to life. Joan Wilder initially seems really passive and weak, but it is not long before you see that she is wild, and spirited, and longing for adventure.

Take away from Romancing The Stone is step out of your comfort zone, and just go with what feels right. You might be surprised, and might even surprise yourself.

Dirty Dancing - Spending the summer at a Catskills resort with her family, Frances "Baby" Houseman falls in love with the camp's dance instructor, Johnny Castle. IMDB

Dirty Dancing is one of those movies I could watch all of the time. I love seeing the romance and feelings grow between Baby and Johnny. They are so different in many ways, but Baby is tough and a fighter, so you can see some possibilities. For me, one take away from this movie is that you can have something lovely and wonderful, but not all things are meant to last.

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If I am being completely honest, Johnny and Penny seemed to be in love and just didn’t realize it. I know no one wants to hear that, but Penny and Johnny had off the charts chemistry. Another take away is that sometimes we are looking in the wrong direction, and can miss someone right in front of us.

Pretty Woman - A man in a legal but hurtful business needs an escort for some social events, and hires a beautiful prostitute he meets... only to fall in love. IMDB

Pretty Woman is most certainly not your typical fairytale, but still swoon worthy in many ways. Julia Roberts’ character Vivian is very sweet despite her occupation, and Richard Gere is rich and handsome, but somewhat emotionally unavailable.

Take away from watching Pretty Woman is that no matter how much you are hurting or how bad you think life sucks at the moment, it could be worse, you could be “tuting” to make a living.

Never Been Kissed - A newspaper reporter enrolls in high school as part of research for a story.

Never Been Kissed is a sweet, teeny, somewhat mean girl movie with Drew Barrymore. Josie is now an adult, but in high school she was smart, socially awkward, and horribly bullied. Returning to high school gives her an opportunity for a do over, but also brings up painful memories.

Take away from Never Been Kissed is to be brave, stand up for yourself, and go after what you want. We all have fears of failure, and fears of rejection, but isn't it better to take a chance than to live with regrets?

These movies are really great to watch anytime actually, but they are also great reminders that sometimes you have to go through it, to get through it.Life and relationships do not always turn out as we hoped or even imagined, but the great thing is that sometimes they turn out better.

Photo by JESHOOTS.com from Pexels

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[fanfics-bts]

Hi! Could you recommend me some of your favourite fanfictions? The ship doesn't matter, I like all!

Helloo~! ^_^ omg there’s so many of ‘em but here ya go :

(This isn’t in order since I can’t rank them)

 Freesia by mintsoda [ Taekook ]

- Vampire!AU , Soulmate!AU , (kind of) Smut, Fluff,  Angst with a Happy Ending, Enemies to Lovers. 

“‘You should have just let me die!’ he yells again and starts walking away, tears now flowing down his face. He can’t believe that he of all people got soulmated by a vampire.Why him of all people? ‘Wait,’ the vampire shouts, ‘I don’t even know your name!’ ‘You should have thought about that before you gave me your blood to drink!’ Taehyung yells back and keeps walking through the rain.” Taehyung and Jeongguk become soulmates – more or less – by accident.

{ My review : I honestly love Enemies to Lovers too much for it to be healthy XD , and this fanfic just gave me all da feels)

Thirst by pinkmonnie [ Jikook ]

- Vampire!AU , Angst, Happy Ending, Friends to Lovers, Implied Sexual Content

“Nobody knew that the reason why Bangtan Sonyeondan’s Golden Maknae was so Golden was because he wasn’t exactly human.“ Jungkook has successfully kept his condition under control for many years, until a certain someone’s scent suddenly becomes too overwhelming for him to ignore.As he begins to lose the firm grip he has on his instincts, the safe and happy world he has built for himself with Bangtan begins to crumble, and he doesn’t know if he has what it takes to keep it together.

{ My review : I know I know, I have a thing for Vampire AUs :P but tbh who doesn’t? This fanfic is a bit long so ya gotta grab your popcorns and cuddle up :3 This was real good, definitely one on da list~} 

The Dutiful Brother and His Sister’s Way Too Handsome Boyfriend by TangoMcGrand [ Yoonmin ]

- FakeDating!AU, Friends to Lovers, Slight Angst, Fluff.

Yoongi’s sister Hani is fake-dating Jimin to hide from her mother that she’s gay, but Yoongi doesn’t know this. All Yoongi knows is that he has had a not-so-little crush on Jimin for over a year and that its kinda hard to be a supportive dutiful brother when Jimin is just too blindingly beautiful.

{ My review : I’ve seen this fanfic around a lot, but I was a bit hesitant to read this, cos I usually don’t read fics like these, but goddamn this was soo good I even cried :’) }

Yoongi and The Real Boy by sugamins [ Yoonmin ]

- Cyborg!AU, Android!AU, Smut, Implied Homophobia, Slight Angst, Slight Fluff

Yoongi is a struggling novelist with four cats, an obsession with coffee and an unhealthy relationship with his parents.

And Jimin is…a cyborg.

{ My review : And again..this fic was totally out of my comfort zone but omg this was soo fxckin good I died inside, definitely at the top for me}

Training Wheels by jeonify [ Jikook ]

-Angst With a Happy Ending, Mutual Pining, Childhood Friends to Lovers, 

everything starts when jeongguk moves over, and jimin teaches him to ride a bike.everything ends when kim taehyung moves over, and jeongguk abandons his bicycle.+ “they say that if you watch the sunset on that hill for 31 consecutive days, your unrequited love will be reciprocated.”

{ My review : I..wow…I just ;-; 1000/10 would recommend. It’s so good omg)

I’ll give you the sun by inkingbrushes [ Yoonmin ]

- Angst with a Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Metaphors

Jimin takes the sun with him when he leaves Yoongi on a snowy Thursday morning.

{ My review : This was was absolutely amazing, so amazing that I recommended it twice here on my blog! This is definitely a tear-jerker)

Experto Crede by Error401 [ Jikook ]

- Heavy Angst, Sort of a Happy Ending, Violence, Assasins!AU

“I-I don’t understand…” Jimin said, eyes watering as he focused on Yoongi. “I thought…you were going to kill me…in the bathroom.” “Yeah, well so did I,” Yoongi said wryly, and Jimin flinched, trying to make himself impossibly smaller. AKA It is a truth universally acknowledged, that Min Yoongi in possession of a heart will be in want of sleep.

{ My review : While the ones above were soft and heartfelt, this one is pretty brutal yet with a kind of romance that could get you to feel a tug at heart :’) }

Can you feel my heart? by euphoriae [ Vhope ]

- Soulmate!AU, Tattoist!Taehyung, Heavy Angst

"You’re so beautiful, Hoseok-ah, I would have loved you forever.” Hoseok never wanted to meet his soulmate. So he has his soul tattoo removed, only to find Taehyung, his soulmate, and also the tattoo artist to remove the bond.

{ My review : This one was real angsty, so if you don’t like sad(but not really)endings, don’t read it, or else you’ll be bawling your eyes out like me T_T I know I mainly read Yoonmin or Jikook but this one was too good }

Look Here by bazooka [ Minjoon ]

- Blind!Namjoon , Medic!Jimin, Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Slice of Life, Smut

From a prompt: au where jimin is a medic and namjoon is a lieutenant who becomes blind after a bombing.Rating bumped to M for mild smut in second chapter.

{ My review : This melted my heart, I keep saying this so much but just trust me when I say that this is so so good :’) }

Upside Down, Inside out by bazooka [ Namjin ]

-A/B/O AU! , Angst, Humor, Eventual Smut 

First heats suck. First heats especially suck when you were never ever ever ever supposed to be an omega.

{ My review : This fic is from the same writer as Look Here, yes, but it’s cos his/her fics are always so good. :’) }

Check out this and this too!

Check out my fics if you want as well ^_^

I have so so much more to recommend~ But these are some of my favorites