#storiesbreathed

[andessence]

@storiesbreathed | starter call (accepting.)

"Stop. No, that's not quite it," comes Armand's voice from the quiet of the house, bringing the noise of the rehearsal to a halt. After a moment of agitated annotation, his eyes follow his voice, up to the stage and to his cast. Foremost among them, the newly-elevated Claudia, still clutching her script and her sense of dignity alike; she has yet to embrace her part, though everyone can see how sincerely she wants to please her new coven. 'Let go of embarrassment. Lulu is unreserved, fully embodied - find her,' chastises the marginalia he leaves in his own copy of the play. But when he approaches the stage and regards the cast, his orders are more obscure, more temperate. "Company, take ten. Claudia, a word?"

[melpomeneprose]

🚢 glinda & elphaba ? ( or any other combos you are interested in! )

Shipping sheet / @storiesbreathed.

You are getting the exceptionally long answer with meta and canonical bisexuality and lesbianism to boot. But I will get the important stuff out of the way firstly…

1. I ship G.elphie and F.iyeraba, but not ours specifically yet. But it is merely a matter of time. I believe in bisexuality (canon), two hands and people who make more room to love in their hearts. Plus, 'M.aguire said both, so it is both.'

2. Always open to new rp partners (time permitting and permitting my social anxiety doesn't act up), so, yes.

3. Types of ship: friends to lovers, "enemies" to lovers, married (not legally but symbolically I feel like E.lphaba has a grudge against marriage and also - justifiably religion, and also poetry but specifically p.ropeganda but I digress, cause of her parents), plus F.iyero and Sarima exist so massive polycule-ism and to some (including E.lphie) that don''t exactly work with the unionist way of O.zian marriage, that said convention can go to hell. Exes to lovers. Fake relationship to lovers, forbidden love (canonical - not cause it is bi4lesbian but cause E.lphaba is an enemy of the state). Surprise pregnancy (as in G.elphie taking care of Liir cause I loathe book! F.iyero erasure / F.iyero erasure in general but especially re: the book), and forced proximity, oh and if book adjacent (my personal favourite) star crossed but then later reincarnation and making amends (cause Rain T.hropp).

4. Jump right in.

5. Write a starter or send memes or vice versa.

Now for the long meta part. Below the cut.

TLDR: W.icked is and always has been deeply p.olitical and E.lphaba is bisexual, if someone can't see that, I must say, congratulations on believing all sorts of things that aren't true and also... inability to read.

1. My most 'controversial' take is the book(s) are better and not just cause of explicit bisexuality and an intersex androgynous (ish) mc. I think M.aguire (it is his IP after all) knew better than everyone else what he was actually writing about. Whilst I enjoy the musical / movie as a separate work I hate how toned down it is. It makes E.lphaba (almost) generic to me, absolutely no hate to anyone who has ever played E.lphaba. It makes E.lphie's story about as friends of mine have said everything and nothing. E.Iphaba and L.estat are why I am not dead, that is why I am mad about it or at least loving but deeply critically.

2. E.lphaba (book) has no soulmate the closest in the novel she gets is the Arjiki Prince F.iyero who actually cares deeply about her and even challenges her intellectually and culturally. If E.lphaba (musical) had a soulmate it would be G.linda (because straightwashing is bad and I am petty and G.linda is a lesbian at least in the M.aguire and B.aum books). Also, regarding: E.lphaba and religion if someone insists that strongly they are a.theist and have no soul, I think they're right and should able to be as areligious as N.essarose the unionist is religious, cause freedom, and just ffs live and let live.

3. I personally (in the book) like F.iyeraba more than G.elphie though I like both. However Rain (E.lphie reincarnation and canonical overt bisexual as though E.lphaba wasn’t a raging a.theist bisexual enough), is another story entirely.

4. Mandatory thanks for sending!

5. if anyone else besides @storiesbreathed has read this far I want to say thanks for listening. El.phaba is my 'problematic' (subjective context matters I condone everything the green girl did in all universes ever, especially in the source material and 1939) "she is me, I am her" character. So, thanks for listening to me pull a 'I know more w.icked lore than I can be bullied or told off about' thing.

[espres0s]

❤️ ❤️ ❤️

i'm gonna hit you with some of my favorite females, so to start off . . . LEIGHTON MURRAY from THE SEX LIVES OF COLLEGE GIRLS! i just think. bitchy lesbian. renee rapp. need i say more. i'd die for her, i'd kill for her. exploring all of her inner intricacies? lemme at her, lemme at her.

next, i've gotta add WYNONNA EARP from . . . well, WYNONNA EARP. i'm not finished with the original series ( wow, shocker ) but i love me a monster slaying, wisecracking, badass woman. i've never actually written her before, so she'd be completely new for me. but i desperately need more characters in the supernatural genre.

lastly, i'm gonna toss APRIL LUDGATE from PARKS AND RECREATION in here! another dearly beloved character, and you can never go wrong with aubrey plaza anyways. another character i haven't officially wrote, but am dying to try my hand at. she gives me slightly kookier wednesday addams vibes.

for every ❤️ i receive, i will reveal a muse i've considered adding.

[storiecraft]

storiesbreathed sent: [ CLOSE ]:          while standing remarkably close to one another, the sender is unable to stop themselves from running their gaze across the receiver’s body, lingering for a moment on their lips, before returning to initiate prolonged, intense eye contact. jenny & paul 👀

getting reacquainted with jenny has been nice. she's like a wave of fresh air settling over an otherwise stale town. paul's been numb to his complacency over the years, but getting to know her again seems to have awoken something in him. he even caught himself humming as he got ready to meet up with her earlier in the evening (though he'll take that bit of trivia to his grave).

"i had fun tonight," paul says.

they stand on her front porch, where he offered to walk her even though it isn't far from his car parked in the driveway. he hugs her goodnight but lingers in the embrace for a few moments longer than usual. he inhales the sweet scent he's gotten used to lately. he doesn't know if it's a shampoo, body wash, or perfume, but he knows it's distinctly jenny.

his heart races. his hands tingle as if he's being poked with a ton of tiny pins and needles. he discreetly shakes his hands, like he's drying them, to rid himself of the feeling as he finally breaks the hug. however, as he takes a small step back, he realizes she hasn't moved. they're still standing very close, and he watches her gaze wander the length of his body before lingering on his lips.

their eyes meet once more, and paul's heartbeat doubles its already quickened pace. he fights to keep his breathing even and normal. he's felt a connection with her since they first went out for coffee, but he's kept it to himself. there's so much history between she and ted from all those years ago, some of which she's covered during their hangouts. paul doesn't want to be another complication in her life. he wants to be a friend. but unless he's gone insane—and that's always a possibility—she's silently telling him that she might want him to be a complication.

paul swallows down the lump that's formed in his throat, and he slowly leans closer. he looks for any sign telling him that she doesn't want this advance, but he sees none. okay. okay. he closes the distance between them before he loses his nerve, and he brushes her hair out of the way.

the world around paul freezes the second their lips meet. the anxiety churning inside of him calms for the briefest moment. everything in his world feels exactly right.

after a few would-be breaths, he pulls back and smiles. his hand lingers on her face.

"we should, um," he swallows, "do this again sometime."

@storiesbreathed / meme

[rthlss]

the green child in front of him plays with her toys. liir scoops her for a moment. shaking at the sounds of monkeys at his window. he already knows the sound of her anywhere. a childhood hidden and running through oz had been something. but the sound startles him to say the least. liir turns to elphaba, his own toddler clutched to his chest. " mother. i wasn't expecting to see you. "

" i'm rain! " the toddler squeaks from his arms. wriggling excitedly. completely missing her father's nerves. and completely unfamiliar with her grandmother as of yet. " like the weather! " / @storiesbreathed gets liir and rain for elphaba.

[avinkusprince]

[ patch ] sender carefully patches one of receiver's wounds from elphaba?

@storiesbreathed | ordinary things that feel intimate [ patch ] sender carefully patches one of receiver's wounds

"Please, I don't want to talk about it, if you—" A sharp, hissing intake of breath as she touches the broken, bruised skin of his ribs. The blue of the trailing diamonds there is marred with blotchy purples and smearing reds. He exhales with what, from the tone of it, can only be an oath in Arjiki. "—If you don't mind!"

Whatever private and completely managed imaginings he might have entertained about Elphaba's touch on his bare skin, he certainly cannot have ever anticipated that he would feel it in a wound-dressing after an after-dark attack on the streets of Shiz. But he'd gotten too comfortable, willing himself to believe that he was getting to be familiar and not a foreigner - choosing not to see the looks nor hear the jeers that sometimes met him when he walked in town alone. Or if he saw, if he heard, he reasoned away that these people must have only be like Avaric: a little dumb, a little mean, but harmless and able to be won over.

This is what happens when someone like him forgets.

He'd come to Elphaba thinking she'd be the most savvy of the few true friends he's made, and the most likely to competently put all his pieces back where they belong, but he hadn't considered that that righteous sensibility of hers might be inflamed. How long can he withhold the ugly truth under her questioning.

"Why talk about it? It would be unpleasant, and isn't this—" Another hiss, a wince. "—isn't this unpleasant enough already?"

[lastblues]

❛ i didn’t want you to see me like this. ❜ tashi to art?

@storiesbreathed / tashi duncan. ★ meme.

          ART FEELS LIKE HE'S FLOATING.  it feels kind of ridiculous, actually, contrasting the way he feels to the way that tashi clearly feels. he woke early in the morning--- much earlier than his 5:30 alarm--- to the sound of her getting sick. if he's being honest, he's never given kids much thought. he and tashi kind of talked about it when they were engaged, but there hadn't ever been a solid yes, we want kids or a no, we don't want kids. they were both people who considered family to be very important (although art's family had never been very close, save for himself and his grandmother), and they were both people who valued their careers deeply. sometimes those two things conflicted, sometimes they didn't. art had never been quite sure if the two could be equally as important to him, and he'd always worried that if he had a child, he wouldn't give them enough attention. he worried that he would do to his kid what his own parents had done to him. they had never been particularly cruel to him, although sometimes he wonders if sending him to mark rebellato's had been to get rid of him, since his grandmother could no longer be a reliable guardian. right now, he can't imagine feeling so disconnected from his own child. he's only even known about the good news for a couple of days, but he's elated.

          he's elated, and tashi is hurling her guts out. when he hears her, he immediately gets out of bed, moves to the bathroom door, and gives it a couple of gentle taps with his knuckle before opening it. he lowers to the floor beside her, pushing her hair away from her face with a touch so gentle it wouldn't hurt a butterfly's wings, and asks, "what can i do?" he wasn't expecting her response of i didn't want you to see me like this, and he can't hide the way that his eyebrows tug together and he frowns, confused. "like what? baby..." his hand rests on her thigh and he scoots a little closer to her. he doesn't seem to notice the crime scene in the toilet beside them at all. his eyes are focused on her, only on her, always on her. "you're beautiful. you're---" his eyes drop to her stomach, just for a moment, then lift back up to her face. "i love you." what else can he say but that? what else so succinctly conveys that there's no way you can look that will put someone off? that there's nothing you can do, nothing you can say, nothing that will make them feel any less complete when they look at you?

          "i'm sorry you're sick." the hand on her thigh flips over to rest palm up, ready for her hand, or to be handed something, or to be pushed away, and art repeats, "what can i do?"

[savingthrcw]

“I’ve got a headache.” francesca to eloise? @storiesbreathed

"You do?" That's enough to make Eloise forget all her complaints about the evening and focus entirely on her younger sister; Francesca isn't one to make up illnesses to get out of trouble, nor one to complain without need. "Shall I fetch mamà? Perhaps it's time we take a fashionably early leave," she suggests, and for no reason whatsoever she uses her fan to try to give her a little more air, "You'd be doing me a favour," she adds, to keep her from feeling guilty.

[amantesmultorum]

@storiesbreathed liked for a starter

“ Do you think the pain will ever go away ? ” There was no need to get into specifics, for the Viscount and Christine had gone through their fair sure of tragedy, pain and torment. They had enough pain to last them lifetimes. Darkness was a well known acquaintance that had danced the lines with them many times.

Blue eyes began to fill with tears. The Viscount was a sensitive fellow. “ I find myself still struggling at times. Things I thought I was over and through, they all come back. ” He had promised her no more darkness but it seems that even in the happiest of moments it could sneak back up on them.

“ Will you still want me beside you if I cannot make the pain and darkness always go away ? ”

[mvndrvke]

@storiesbreathed : dreams make good stories, but everything important happens while we're awake.

Edwina smiles at Francesca. She's glad to have found a friend in the Bridgerton sister. "I think you're quite right," she agrees. "Though I do enjoy a good story, I think the promise of fortune in waking moments is more fulfilling. The promise of a life of my own making.... that's what excites me the most."

[audaciiae]

❛  i'm here, nothing can harm you.  ❜ thomas to ellen?

Ellen breathes shakily as she curls into Thomas' side, her hair sticking to her sweat slicked forehead. The nightmares have been worse lately, growing more and more vivid with each passing day. It's to a point where she fears sleeping, to where she tries to stay awake until she simply can't anymore. If only she didn't need sleep! It would make things so much easier, wouldn't it?

"...O-of course," she mutters, her entire body shaking as she looks up at him. Nothing can harm you. How do you know? How could you possibly know? She wants to scream it, wants to throw herself into her pillow and sob with all her might. How could he protect her from the monster in her dreams? The thing that has haunted her since childhood? She feels the weight of its presence, even now. She has never felt so heavy.

But she doesn't throw herself into hysterics, lest Thomas grow concerned and call for a doctor. Instead, she hides her face in his shoulder, letting out a long, shaky breath. "I'm alright. It was just a bad dream."

[fateblown]

we all have our little problems . glinda to elphaba ?

Elphaba gestures to her appearance. "Does this seem little to you?" Because it isn't to her. It's a big deal. And sadly always has been. At least, for her father. She's long accepted her differences, but knows that not everyone will. Even those who should accept her the most.

[celestialdetected]

It was in that odd space between dreams that Arawn met the Champion of Ravens for the first time. He'd fallen asleep at camp, his new wings -spectral, incorporeal, still a heavy weight on his back. And now he walked in the void, between the stars where it was bitterly cold, and came across -a table.

It's set for tea, with a void-black teapot lacquered with gold and porcelain cups set around it. Unsure of what else to do, Arawn sits himself down and pours a cup.

Blood oozes, thick and sluggish, from the spout instead. And when Arawn averts his gaze, thoroughly disgusted, he locks eyes with the birdlike mask of the Champion.

Now, he's heard...some things about the Champion of Ravens, it's difficult to work either place he does; temple hopping, and picking through the criminal underbelly of Exandria, and to have not heard whispers of him. A nameless rogue turned follower of the Matron, turned something else after the dust settled in the wake of the Whispered One, there are rumors. Nothing concrete. Nothing Arawn put much stock in, until his own goddess began changing him.

'Champion' the Everlight calls him sometimes. And it terrifies Arawn that he has yet to understand what that means.

"....er, hello?" He tries, unsure of what to say. "Did you bring me here then?" He swallows the investigator's questions, the sarcastic comments, anything but deference. This man might not be a god, but he certainly isn't mortal anymore, and Arawn is smart enough to not go picking fights.

"Want some..er, blood tea?"

@storiesbreathed for VAX

[lastblues]

❛ you’re not a very convincing liar. ❜ tashi to art?

@storiesbreathed / tashi duncan. ★ meme.

          ART HAS NEVER BEEN A GOOD LIAR.  he's never really had much need for secrets. he and patrick bonded in such a private way at such a young age that he'd always had someone around that he could tell everything to. if he had something to hide, he would just withdraw himself, stay quiet. at least if he said nothing, he couldn't get himself into trouble. anything you say can and will be held against you rings in his head suddenly in response to tashi's words. it's not like he couldn't have predicted this outcome, that tashi would read his intentions like a book and call him out on it. she knows he's not worried about patrick hurting her; he wants her. knowing that this outcome was a possibility is a huge part of why he didn't try to hide his intentions. it would have been fruitless. it would have made him look weak, cowardly, sneaky. maybe he could be one or two of those things at a time-- maybe he's being one or two of them right now-- but one thing he is not is a liar, and so he doesn't try to be. art plays to his strengths here, as he always does.            one of his biggest strengths is his sincerety. the words that he's using are words that incite doubt to meddle in affairs that are not his own, but the feelings that he's showing are sincere. there's something so genuine in the tone of his voice, in the way that he says, "that's not what i'm trying to say." what he's trying to say, what he wants to say but can't, is that he's loved her since the moment he laid eyes on her and that he just doesn't understand how there could be any way that patrick can feel the same way for her. what he's trying to say is that she deserves someone who feels this way about her, because he would do anything for her. really, truly, genuinely. anything.

          including, but not limited to, going behind his best friend's back to start shit. except that he doesn't plan to only have this talk with tashi--- he plans to have a similar one with patrick, and in the way that he thought tashi could read him here, he knows patrick can read him. patrick will see what he's doing from a mile away. in that way, it feels kind of like a game, a race, a challenge. he doesn't really expect to win this game, either, but that's not the part that he finds fun. what he finds fun is playing. he doesn't like feeling like he never really got the chance to play here.

          "wait, tashi, can we just--- i'm sorry. i didn't mean to upset you. can we finish lunch?" can we talk a little while longer?

[savingthrcw]

@storiesbreathed liked for Pen dealing with Eloise's romantic drama

She had said no. But it was a different no from all other proposals she had rejected; she has let this courtship go on, she has even entertained the idea of saying yes, since it seemed a suitable partnership that would allow her to be as free as a married woman could hope to be, and away from her home where even her own mother had found companionship and she was soon to be left alone as the only spinster. She doesn't doubt Hyacinth will take half a second to find a husband, with how her family has fared in that department. Still, she said no. Because while it's true that she wasn't looking for a love match, she keeps thinking about John and that alone has ruined her.

Instead of taking the carriage back home, Eloise runs. She needs to see the one person who has noticed just how much fun she was having in her banter with her footman, the one best friend who, save a brief window years ago, has always been there for her, and so without a second thought she runs away, has her carriage take her to Colin and Penelope's home, and scares one of the maids to death asking for Penelope and only Penelope when it's nearly dawn and she's clearly distraught enough to make people think someone died. God, she hadn't even thought of what this would look like.

"No one died," is therefore the first thing she tells Penelope, already crying again, "I ju-just needed to see you, Pen... I needed my friend."

[storiecraft]

storiesbreathed sent: ❛  i  feel  so  fucking  stupid .  ❜ and what if i say i will add elle and say elle & emmett?

elle might not have the conventional markers of intelligence that he's gotten used to from his fellow harvard-goers, but he'll be damned if she isn't one of the smartest people he's ever met. it's her unconventional wit and intelligence that makes him confident that she'll succeed at whatever she puts her mind to. it breaks his heart to hear her sound so downtrodden. his sympathy for her is the only thing quelling the rage inside of his chest.

❝ hey... ❞ he reaches towards her but second guesses after what she's just gone through. ❝ what happened wasn't your fault, elle... you couldn't have known he'd try something like that. ❞ his brow wrinkles. ❝ you've come so far, and i— i'm not ready to let you go. ❞

@storiesbreathed / a lost meme