#so i could still write it

[rockitmans]

Send me a Ship and a Number and I will Write a Kiss

…on a scar.

Love the list and tempted to send ore than one number in one go . . but I won't be greedy . . 😊

from the kiss list / see the rest

Notes: Mentions of the fact that Blaine has scars caused by his Sadie Hawkins experience but no details about it.

~~~~~

"So I can't help but notice," Kurt says. "That no one else is home." 

He smiles mischievously and pulls Blaine down next to him on the bed. Blaine feels the affection unfold in his stomach. He loves Kurt like this. Cheeks flushed and eyes bright and so obviously interested that it soothes some of Blaine's constant insecurities. 

"Hmm," Blaine hums like this fact had completely escaped him and the thought hadn't been thrumming under his skin for the whole car ride here. "Yeah. I guess my parents are both out tonight."

Kurt doesn't bother to act coy. His arms slide over Blaine's shoulders and then their mouths meet, soft and warm. 

It still feels so new. Kissing Kurt. Even though it's been a few months now. Months of sweet, shy kisses that have melted into heated making out. They've learned how to turn their heads to perfectly fit together. Blaine knows that Kurt's nose fits in the groove of his cheek. He knows that Kurt makes a gorgeous, needy little noise if Blaine's teeth catch on his bottom lip. He knows that his hand always finds Kurt's cheek or jaw, eager to keep him close. 

It's unusual for them to get any real privacy and Blaine doesn't fully know what he expected from suddenly getting some, but he loves how it’s turned out. Just the opportunity to kiss slowly and lazily, a constant catch and release of mouths and shared breaths until his ears are flushed and his lips feel swollen and Kurt's eyes are dark and heavy. 

Blaine can't believe how good kissing feels. He could happily never stop kissing Kurt. 

"Can I…?" Kurt breaths, trailing off. He toys with the buttons on Blaine's shirt. 

"Hmm?" Blaine can't stop staring at Kurt's mouth. Slightly red and damp. Completely kissable. 

"Can we take our shirts off?"

Blaine freezes, breath catching nervously. He wants to see Kurt so badly and trail his fingers across Kurt's perfect skin. Map out the shape of him without clothes in the way. But. That would also mean exposing himself. And he doesn’t know whether to warn Kurt about the scars. The ones that spider from his hips and up across his ribs. But the warning will just invite more questions. He doesn’t want to talk about Sadie Hawkins right now. Not because he doesn’t trust Kurt. But because he just wants to be with him in the moment and not invite his past into this bubble they’ve created.

Of course, not telling him means that Blaine might have to watch his face turn to shock or disgust. Blaine is not ashamed of the scars. And he doesn’t think that Kurt is the sort of person to care about them either. But there’s always that small level of doubt. 

"Blaine?" Kurt prompts gently. "Sorry. It's too soon. Forget I-"

“No,�� Blaine interrupts. He cups Kurt’s face. “It’s not that. I want to. Just… do mine first.”  He doesn’t want to talk about the scars. But he does want to get the reveal over with.

Kurt catches Blaine’s eye as he reaches for Blaine’s buttons again. He makes quick work of them, hand sliding warmly over Blaine’s collarbone as the sliver of skin is exposed. Blaine shrugs out of the shirt before he can change his mind, letting Kurt pull it away eagerly like a kid tearing wrapping off a gift. 

He hears the way Kurt’s breath catches. “Wow,” Kurt murmurs. He sounds reverent rather than appalled so Blaine chances a glance at his face. His eyes are soft with open adoration. It makes Blaine’s own breath stutter. He thinks Kurt must not have noticed the scars somehow, as impossible as that would be. But Kurt places his hands directly over the worst of them in a gentle caress. 

“Does this hurt?” he asks. 

“No. They’re old scars.”

Kurt gives him a knowing look. Like he knows as well as Blaine that some scars never truly heal. “Can we lie down?” 

Blaine wants to protest that Kurt still has his shirt on but if Kurt looked at him the way he is now whilst half naked, he might just combust on the spot. So he just nods. He lets Kurt push him down. Kurt doesn’t quite straddle him but he does hover over him, pressing another lush kiss to his waiting lips before turning his attention to Blaine’s chest again. 

It’s startling when he puts his lips directly on Blaine’s bare hip. Blaine’s breath punches out of him. For all the kissing they’ve done, it couldn’t prepare him for Kurt’s lips on the more untouched parts of his body. It feels so intimate, the way Kurt’s lips softly press the path of the most obvious scar. Blaine shivers, hand fisting uselessly in the sheets. 

“Is this OK?” Kurt checks, voice low. “You’re trembling.”

“It’s OK. Better than OK. Good even,” Blaine babbles and Kurt grins down at him, head slightly cocked. 

“God, you’re gorgeous. I’m kind of feeling insane that I get to see you like this.”  

Blaine would agree but Kurt’s mouth is back on his body and all he manages is a groan. He throws a hand over his face. Heat spreads from every point of Kurt’s lips on him. His hips shift helplessly against nothing. The simmering arousal from making out, slightly quelled by his anxiety, roars back into life. Blaine reaches for Kurt, finds his hair, wraps his fingers through it. 

“So gorgeous,” Kurt repeats half like an assurance and  half like he just can't help himself. 

By the time he's finished mapping Blaine's scar and is making his way up Blaine's throat instead, Blaine barely knows what to do with himself. He's hard and aching. He's breathless and flushed and incoherent. He wants Kurt's body on him, wants to get at his bare skin, wants to devour him. 

Kurt's face meets him back at eye level and looks down at him. He looks flushed too, bright eyed with arousal and looking at Blaine's lips. He nuzzles their noses together and Blaine melts. He hooks an arm over Kurt's shoulders and pulls him close so Kurt is half on top of him and their foreheads are pressed together. 

"You're perfect," Kurt says, quiet into the space between them and Blaine didn't know how much he needed to hear it. 

"So are you." Blaine slides a hand under Kurt's shirt, trailing over warm skin. He wants to make Kurt feel the same as he does. Adored and content and stupidly horny. "Let me show you."

[letmetellyouaboutmyfeels]

I am incredibly serious right now when I beg you all, please, and if you have Twitter or Tiktok or whatever to please spread the word: click on an author's profile on Ao3.

You want to know if an author has written more? Want to know if they're still writing? Want to see more from them? Want to know if they've written a trope or kink or sex scenario you enjoy?

Click on their name. And look at their profile.

I cannot tell you how many times in the last six months someone has read a new or newer fic of mine and said they (a new reader who has read nothing else I've done) "can't wait to see what you do next!" I've written 50+ fics and over a million words already.

"I don't know if you're still writing..." click on my profile. I am. I literally wrote a 128k+ fic for that ship last month.

"Would you ever do X?" "Please do Y!" I already did. Click on my name and look at my works.

Archive of our Own is a library. It's an archive. Not social media. It is your responsibility to fight back against the laziness that corporate algorithms have trained into you.

Click my author name. Just click it. Just click it.

Before you demand more, or ask if a writer will do XYZ, or wonder if the author still writing, or anything - click on their profile. Click on the author's profile.

I'm not trying to be mean or condescending or anything like that. I'm just exhausted. It's disheartening and frustrating to repeat myself ad nauseam, because someone couldn't take thirty seconds to do the tiniest bit of work to see if I've written lately, if I've written more for their ship, or scan my works to see if I've written what they're asking for. Please. Please. I'm begging.

Click the author's name, and explore before you ask.

[stealingpotatoes]

this is a real canon scene that happened they just forgot to put it in the movie (real) (my toaster told me)

[inkskinned]

at some point it's just like. do they even fucking like the thing they're asking AI to make? "oh we'll just use AI for all the scripts" "we'll just use AI for art" "no worries AI can write this book" "oh, AI could easily design this"

like... it's so clear they've never stood in the middle of an art museum and felt like crying, looking at a piece that somehow cuts into your marrow even though the artist and you are separated by space and time. they've never looked at a poem - once, twice, three times - just because the words feel like a fired gun, something too-close, clanging behind your eyes. they've never gotten to the end of the movie and had to arrive, blinking, back into their body, laughing a little because they were holding their breath without realizing.

"oh AI can mimic style" "AI can mimic emotion" "AI can mimic you and your job is almost gone, kid."

... how do i explain to you - you can make AI that does a perfect job of imitating me. you could disseminate it through the entire world and make so much money, using my works and my ideas and my everything.

and i'd still keep writing.

i don't know there's a word for it. in high school, we become aware that the way we feel about our artform is a cliche - it's like breathing. over and over, artists all feel the same thing. "i write because i need to" and "my music is how i speak" and "i make art because it's either that or i stop existing." it is such a common experience, the violence and immediacy we mean behind it is like breathing to me - comes out like a useless understatement. it's a cliche because we all feel it, not because the experience isn't actually persistent. so many of us have this ... fluttering urgency behind our ribs.

i'm not doing it for the money. for a star on the ground in some city i've never visited. i am doing it because when i was seven i started taking notebooks with me on walks. i am doing it because in second grade i wrote a poem and stood up in front of my whole class to read it out while i shook with nerves. i am doing it because i spent high school scribbling all my feelings down. i am doing it for the 16 year old me and the 18 year old me and the today-me, how we can never put the pen down. you can take me down to a subatomic layer, eviscerate me - and never find the source of it; it is of me. when i was 19 i named this blog inkskinned because i was dramatic and lonely and it felt like the only thing that was actually permanently-true about me was that this is what is inside of me, that the words come up over everything, coat everything, bloom their little twilight arias into every nook and corner and alley

"we're gonna replace you". that is okay. you think that i am writing to fill a space. that someone said JOB OPENING: Writer Needed, and i wrote to answer. you think one raindrop replaces another, and i think they're both just falling. you think art has a place, that is simply arrives on walls when it is needed, that is only ever on demand, perfect, easily requested. you see "audience spending" and "marketability" and "multi-line merch opportunity"

and i see a kid drowning. i am writing to make her a boat. i am writing because what used to be a river raft has long become a fully-rigged ship. i am writing because you can fucking rip this out of my cold dead clammy hands and i will still come back as a ghost and i will still be penning poems about it.

it isn't even love. the word we use the most i think is "passion". devotion, obsession, necessity. my favorite little fact about the magic of artists - "abracadabra" means i create as i speak. we make because it sluices out of us. because we look down and our hands are somehow already busy. because it was the first thing we knew and it is our backbone and heartbreak and everything. because we have given up well-paying jobs and a "real life" and the approval of our parents. we create because - the cliche again. it's like breathing. we create because we must.

you create because you're greedy.

[cairafea]

my favourite genre of seventeen is when they're straight up lying

ref:

[choccy-milky]

sometimes you gotta lure your overly-studious ravenclaw gf into spending time with you 🥰 📚 ( from 'Every Teardrop is a Waterfall' by Kat_12739 on ao3, GO READ IT!!! the first story is about seb falling sick and still pushing himself/not admitting he's sick until he ends up in the hospital, the second story is about the birth of seb and clora's daughter and seb's reaction to clora almost dying in childbirth, and the third is about dealing with a fussy newborn lewis😭🥹THEY'RE SO GOOD AND SWEET AND SOMEWHAT SAD (not to mention beautifully written) so go check it out!!💖💖 )

[somnimagus]

My page for @sheikahzine; about Impaz's duty to her village, empty of people and full of memories.

[id in alt text]

[revvetha]

[shows up at your door at 2AM] hey can we go through that last D&D session scene by scene and discuss the symbolism and the narrative themes and their implications, and how each character has grown and evolved? But in a normal way?

[markscherz]

Bad Newts: Amphibians are in Serious Trouble

My colleagues and I have just had a paper published in Nature, based on our efforts to assess almost all amphibian species for the IUCN Red Lists. The major takeaway messages:

It is a bad time to be an amphibian

Two fifths of all amphibians are threatened with extinction.

Salamanders are the most threatened group; three fifths of all salamanders are threatened with extinction!

Climate change is a major driver of amphibian declines globally

Habitat loss, especially due to agriculture, is a problem for the vast majority of amphibians

Chytrid pandemics have caused and continue to cause catastrophic declines of both salamanders and frogs

Protected areas and careful management are working as strategies! They are actively improving the outlook of some species

As many as 222 amphibian species may have gone extinct in recent times; of those, 185 are suspected extinct but not yet confirmed.

Our paper is Open Access, you can read it here!

Photo of Atelopus hoogmoedi by Jaime Culebras, used with permission

[jomeimei421]

Felt a bit nostalgic watching RT shut down…Here are the og faves again for old times sake 💙

[bluerosefox]

Little Danny's Big Adventure

New idea.

Okay now hear me out.

-Pulls out AU idea cauldron and tosses stuff into it-

Let's put in some Ghost King/Prince Danny.... But also some deaged to toddlerhood Danny that gets yeeted into the DCverse!

Like imagine, tiny baby Danny with his tiny crown of ice floating above his head and his galaxy cape wrapped around him and uses it like a baby blanket. He didn't mean to fall into a different universe, a natural portal opened up and he was being a curious little thing! He didn't mean to trip and fall in during his nap time.

Nor was he expecting to fall into this realm during a rogue attack and knock out said rogue cause they were being a meanie and harming people and now Danny just wants his nap time cause he spent a lot of his tiny engery and he wants to find a nice spot.

Danny finds a place to crash, snuggling himself into his cape and the astronaut bear Danielle got him during her last visit that he takes everywhere since.

He's out like a light as the door to this safe house that belongs to one of the Bats opens up.

Meanwhile. In the Infinite Realms, Queen Regent Jazz is going into Mama Bear Jazz Mode trying to find her deaged brother, keeping the Realms in check, and is resisting the urge to put CW in time out Soup Time because he's being cyptided again about Danny whereabouts!!! UGH!

[tea-cat-arts]

Shen Yuan getting transported into pidw isn't "the system punishing him for being a lazy internet hater," but instead representative of "step 1 of the creative process: getting so mad at something you decide to go write your own fucking book" in this essay I will

[k1tty5]

mezalean smalletho won’t leave my brain

closeups

and also extra doodles because i’m going to goinsane

[kamaluhkhan]

anti-curse

pairing: percy jackson x daughter of apollo!reader

summary: whether he knew it or not, percy jackson made the world a better, brighter place — and you intend to protect him, no matter what path the fates leads you down. fuck prophetic dreams. the future wasn't written in stone.

warnings/disclaimers: mentions of typical demigod things (battles, weapons, etc.); this is set during the heroes of olympus series so roughly follows that plot + features the seven demigods; mainly inspired by book!percy (dark hair, sea green eyes) bc that's the one i fell in love w growing up; characters are aged up from the book (reader + percy are meant to be 21-22 y/o) bc i imagine there was more time between prophecies/series....anyways, please enjoy <3

when you first met percy jackson, he almost shot you through the chest with an arrow.

given that apollo is your godly parent, you often found yourself at the archery field, which happened to be one of the first stops on percy’s tour of camp half-blood. after that first mishap, your other half-siblings were, understandably, too scared to let percy try again — frankly chiron seemed a bit hesitant as well — and you could sense that percy felt disheartened. so, you flashed the boy a reassuring smile before giving him a few pointers and a second chance. when he smiled back at you, you felt a fluttering in your stomach that told you percy jackson would be more than a little important in your life.

archery still wasn't percy's strong suit, but your gut feeling turned out to be true. you and percy had dealt with a lot since then — a handful of quests, several prophecies, more than a few near-death experiences, a titan war, and, maybe worst of all, high school. you couldn't imagine getting through any of it without him by your side, and you knew the feeling was mutual.

so, you were entirely anticipating that percy would be hurt by your announcement during dinner. 

“no way that’s happening.” percy laughs, as if he can’t believe you’d suggest something as ridiculous as not having him accompany you on your quest. he remains unfazed, takes a sip of his electric blue coke before gesturing to the empty seat next to him. “come on, sunshine. have something to eat.”

the nickname sends your heart into a frenzy as you sit next to him. you and percy had never been anything other than friends, but sometimes....sometimes you look at his dangerous ocean eyes and wind-swept dark hair and it makes you blush. sometimes you consider the way his laughter fills you with warmth and his smile holds a thousand memories, the way he teases and winks at you and you decide that he makes your world so much brighter. sometimes you remember how sarcastic and thoughtful and loyal and reckless he is, his heart of gold and unpredictability of the sea. and you start to think that maybe possibly you'd fallen in love with your best friend.

that was not the issue at hand, though. you summon your favourite food and drink, but don't particularly feel like having either. percy returns to his conversation with hazel about how the two of you would drive up to montauk after you finally got your license, any time either of you needed to escape your reality, even just for a night. you'd sit on the beach, stargazing and roasting stale marshmallows and wishing to stay there forever. hazel seems to think that sounds like a nice escape, and percy promises that once the eight of you fulfill this prophecy, you'll all go to the beach house together, which makes hazel break out into a grin.

you can't help but smile at percy who loves his friends, who has loved you for so long. that feeling is quickly replaced by a pang in your chest that reminds you what's at stake. from the corner of your eye, you notice annabeth across from you, who looks at you like you’re a puzzle she can’t quite solve. you're trying to hide it, but if anyone can read you better than percy, it's annabeth. she knows something is weighing on your mind. you briefly lock eyes with jason, who you had gone to earlier for help, from the other side of the room, where he sits between piper and frank. 

if you weren’t so distracted, you would have been able to enjoy dinner. the eight of you — all demigods of the current great prophecy — hadn’t been all together in a while, and it was nice to share a meal aboard the argo ii despite the reality of why you’d all been traveling together. leo had equipped the ship with magic plates and cups, and with the lively jokes and stories filling the air, you could almost imagine it was an ordinary summer evening at camp. you could almost forget that tomorrow, you had to go on a quest to rescue apollo and artemis from python, a monster so powerful your father barely defeated him thousands of years ago. you could almost ignore the impending war with gaea and the giants, and the doomed fate of the world if you were to fail. the one thing you could no longer ignore, however, is the gut feeling you have about the fate of the boy sitting next to you if your quest is to unfold the way you had first planned it. 

you clear your throat, an attempt to interrupt the group's conversations. 

“i was serious earlier,” you declare. “you’re not coming with me, percy. jason is.”

the smile percy had on his face fades. his eyes are filled with concern and disbelief, as he glances at you. “i – i don’t understand.”

"percy,” jason jumps in carefully, aware that he’s treading through dangerous waters like you had warned him. “y/n and i were strategizing earlier and it seems to make the most sense, given our powers combined." 

percy shakes his head. “but — but you can’t just make last minute changes. we’ve already got everything set. right, valdez?”

leo shrugs, swallowing a mouthful of chicken before responding. “i don’t know, man. i’m no expert in quests, but it seems like i’m not the one who should be deciding this.” leo looks at you, and you nod gratefully.

you've been on edge since last night, and to calm your nerves you fiddle with the gold chain around your neck. it was a gift from your father: a necklace with a music note charm that can transform into an electric guitar or a bow and quiver. thankfully, you hadn't had to need both at the same time.

“it's up to me. and i want leo and jason to come with me.”

“then i’ll come too,” percy's voice remains calm, but insistant.

“isn’t there that thing about quests usually being done in threes?”

“that is true, piper,” percy agrees. he tilts his head towards you, like he's calling on you to remember. "exceptions have been made, though. like that one time with zoe." that had been years ago, when demigods from camp half-blood and hunters of artemis joined forces. five had been sent out on a quest, but only three came back. you shiver at the thought.

"or my quest through the labyrinth," annabeth recalls.

"but won't that also change our other plans, though?" hazel asks.

"not necessarily," you pipe in, your voice more assertive. "if jason and percy just switch. no harm done."

"we're not interchangeable," percy grumbles.

"hera sure seemed to think so!" leo searches the room for positive responses to his joke, but the most he gets is a half-hearted laugh from frank. "too soon?"

you take a deep breath. "it's not a big deal, really."

"it kind of is," percy counters. "you've never gone on a quest without me."

"you've gone on quests without me," you point out.

"that's...that's different."

"why? because i'm so weak that i need the son of the sea god to protect me at all times?"

you're giving percy the coldest stare you ever have. he hesitates to hold your gaze.

"you know that's not what i meant," he sighs.

"then what did you mean?"

percy looks at you, his eyes and tone softer. “look, sunshine, let's just stick with the plan, alright? we can just —”

“gods, you never listen, do you?" you finally snap. "you're not coming! i don’t want you there, percy!”

percy stares at you, stunned. you look around the table, and everyone looks back at you, wide-eyed. they weren’t used to this side of you, your sudden outburst not fitting in with your usually sunny disposition. 

“well, someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed,” leo jokes in an attempt to lighten the mood, with less than ideal results.

“you saw something in your dreams, didn’t you?” annabeth realizes. 

her conclusion makes you freeze.

demigod dreams are always significant, carrying vivid images of monsters, messages from friends or enemies. some children of apollo like you had visions of the future — pseudo prophecies that are supposedly set to unfold given the path you’re on. technically, you weren’t supposed to share your visions, something about messing with fate or destiny, but that didn’t mean you had to accept the way things were. 

what you saw in your dreams last night, what might happen to percy, made your blood run cold.

you would defy all the laws of the universe and divine rules if it meant you could protect him. so fuck the path the fates are attempting to lead you down, and fuck prophetic dreams. you refuse to let percy die. no matter how frustrated you’re acting towards him in this moment, you know he would still do the same for you.

you figure that the future isn't written in stone, right?

either way, you're willing to challenge destiny for percy jackson.

without answering annabeth, you get up from the table and take a deep breath, carefully avoiding percy’s gaze. 

“i go with leo and jason, or i go alone.” your voice is steady, fighting the heavy beating of your heart and tears caught in your throat. “either way, i leave in the morning.” you exit the mess hall before anyone — before percy — can protest.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Thank you all for an incredible 500 days of love and support. I offer you: answers to questions that no one has asked.

(As always, more can be found in the tags <3)

[littlecrittereli]

Wk doodles go brr......

*Spends 3 days on a full illustration that I don't even like that much and then proceeds to whip out a doodle that's better than anything I've ever drawn in my life on a low-resolution drawpile*