#super freaking short

[alaydabug2]

Tag list: @sparklenarniawizard @imobsessed123 @nowjumpinthewater @ilikebookssomuch @insert-clever-username-1133

Broken heart/Broken mind

Chapter Seventy-seven

(Human AU)

Sophie and Keefe met in the children's hospital when they were little. Because of how long they were confined to the four walls of the hospital, they became very close during their stay.

As the years pass, they wind up being in the same classroom together due to their physical conditions. This makes their bond deepen.

But are they able to handle when life gets tough, throwing problems and complications their way?

Sophie hurried through the door. Swim practice and gone overtime, and now she was sopping wet trying to get to the Christmas party on time.

She placed her secret Santa gift on the ground and hurried over to her friends. She slid in next to Keefe on the circle on the floor.

He smiled and kissed her forehead. She shuffled closer to him for his warmth. He threw an arm around her shoulders.

The gifts were passed around. Sophie started howling like a hyena when Fitz opened his secret Santa gift. She had drawn his name the week before.

Fitz narrowed his eyes and glanced around the room. "Ok, who thought that they were funny with this."

She raised her hand.

"Oh my gosh!" He exclaimed. "You people are the worst!"

Sophie continued giggling.

A month earlier, Fitz had been trying to change a light bulb in the small chandelier above his family's dining table. The ladder fell and was left dangling by it. Then his sleeve got caught, and he ended up entangled.

Biana, instead of helping her brother who had come home and visited from college, she took it upon herself to get her phone out to record. Sophie thought it was very worth it. They had all teased him relentlessly about it sense.

The gift she had gotten was a screenshot of the video in a heart-shaped picture frame. The words along the frame said, 'True loves forever.'

"Face it," Biana chimed in. "You'll never live this down."

All Fitz responded with was an eye roll.

Once gifts were finished being exchanged, they decided to go outside in the snow. Sophie still wasn't completely dry, so she felt like she was freezing.

She snuggled up next to Keefe. Sophie had a bad feeling when he gave her a smirk. But all he did was wrap his arms around her. She let her guard down and relaxed.

That proved to be a mistake. He ended up shoving her into the snow. She gasped as Keefe cackled.

When she recovered from the shock of cold, she jumped onto his back. It sent him tumbling forward. Sophie's landing was cushioned by him landing face first in the powdery white.

[physcrbwl]

☆

SUPER lazy comic but it’s fine because they are silly geese

[ibenology]

Imagining Mario rolling up to Bowser’s castle to find Luigi lying by his throne in chains and a metal bikini all Princess Leia style, but just like… because he wants to

[wittymumbledon]

we are still on this train! therefore I would like to present - for your entertainment and my torment pleasure: my take on the humanized bill! (+ some shitty sketches from the design process on the side)

be prepared to see this little shit again at some point (and for him to probably change slightly the next time you see him lol)

[modern-inheritance]

Modern Inheritance: Cracked Armor (Short) (Extended War Timeline)

(A/N: This devolved into Saphira and Glen quietly squeeing to each other while Eragon and Arya have a camaraderie moment completely oblivious to the possible deeper meaning of Eragon being so understanding of Arya's connection to Fäolin and Arya being so touched by it. It started out as a touching piece where Arya feels vulnerable about Fäolin and Eragon is, as said before, very understanding of it, but I had to run an errand in the middle and we ended up with this badly toned, no one is consistent with previous characterization slop. So take it with a grain of salt.

Also, if you ask Arya if she's superstitious, she'll say no. However, she finds many things the Varden soldiers do to honor their fallen friends a good way to respect the memory of the dead, so she follows some of their traditions. She also wears Fäolin's dogtags on her belt, muffled by magic ofc so they don't jangle around.)

CRACKED ARMOR

Glen looked over when Arya let out a soft curse. “Ah, damn it all.” The familiar sound of an armor release clip clicked into the still dust laden air as the younger elf undid the fastenings at her right forearm. “Fucking Wardbreakers. I can’t fix this out here.” 

The dismay in her tone was enough that Glen leaned over his battlemate’s shoulder to take a look at the damage. The bracer was dented in significantly, enough that a dark bruise was already blossoming up on Arya’s forearm as she lifted the sleeve of her combat suit to check for any bleeding. Cracks shot out from the divot in the mix of spidersilk and aramid weave, all the way down to the interior layers. The thin sheaf of spongy aerated gel peeked through in places, a shimmering, foamy white among blued steel and matte black.

Mentally mapping out the angle of impact, Glenwing racked his brain. He was sure at some point he had–

“Ah!” The medic looked down. A blob of malformed metal was embedded in the abdominal region of his own armor plates. “Was wondering where that ricochet came from.” 

“Are you alright?” That she had asked him was telling, at least in their odd little language. The round must have stung on impact, enough that she was worried it had not slowed enough to prevent him from being harmed. He would have to look at her arm, but for now he was pleased she was moving it without any wincing or restricted range of motion. 

Having made his own assessment, Glen waved away Arya’s increasingly troubled frown. “Barely felt it. Looks like your armor’s the most damaged of all of us.”

Frown eased, the disappointed air returned to Arya’s face. “Yeah. Better the armor than any of us, but…” She trailed off, fingers tracing the damage. 

“You two okay?” Eragon was tugging off his helmet as he approached. He had caught the concern in the voices of his companions and, leaving Saphira in Blödhgarm’s capable hands to finish up the final nicks and scrapes, went to investigate. “Sounds a bit depressed over here.”

Arya held up the damaged bracer. “We took a casualty.” Eragon took the armor piece and let out a low whistle. “Don’t know who the hell fired it, but it was definitely a Wardbreaker.” Her expression soured further, eyes oddly soft despite the obvious annoyance. “I can’t repair it out here. Rhunön’s the only one who can fix something this broken, and who knows when we’ll go back.” 

Eragon passed the bracer back. “You have spares, don’t you?”

The elf shrugged. “For this one in particular, yeah. I guess it’s lucky in that regard.” 

“Oh.” Glen’s voice was muffled as he slid his chestpiece over his head. Once free he gave his currently wild silver mane a good shake to clear his eyes and tilted his head in condolences. “It’s that one.” 

At Eragon’s raised eyebrow, Arya rubbed the back of her neck. “It’s…a good luck charm. It’s not my original bracer.” Glen rolled his eyes and not-too-subtly kicked the side of his battlemate’s foot. “Fine! Fine. It’s Fäolin’s.” An unexpected blush met Eragon’s gaze when he flicked his eyes from the damaged armor back to Arya’s face. “Some…old tradition a buddy of mine taught me. Even if our dead stay dead, they can protect us in a way. I might have taken that literally.” 

To the elf’s surprise, Eragon was smiling at her when she finally looked up. A genuine, gentle smile that lit his face. Shit, why did he suddenly look so much like Fäolin in that moment? Not really, not his appearance, but the feeling he was giving off, that warmth? 

“That’s a wonderful idea.” The Rider touched Arya’s shoulder. “I know I’m not much on the whole repair side of things, but if Rhunön made it, then perhaps her spells from forging Bris–my sword. From forging it could help?” 

Glen didn’t move. This was a moment. Don’t breathe, don’t move, let them have it. He could feel Saphira’s mind hovering at the edge of his, questioning, and he let her in to explain and show what exactly was going on. The pleased amusement that radiated into his thoughts echoed his own, though far less tense in anticipation. 

…These two dorks were fast becoming a fascination for the dragon and medic alike.

“Thank you.” Arya’s hand covered Eragon’s at her shoulder, genuine appreciation thickening her words with emotion. “That…that you offered means a lot. But Rhunön’s armor spells are different from her weapon spells.” 

Ah! Glen could see another hint of blush on both of them now. He shared his internal excitement with Saphira. The equivalent of a draconic high five buffeted his mental form in equal elation.  

“I see. Well, if you do want some help with it, just let me or Saphira know.” Eragon shifted his grip and gave Arya’s hand a quick squeeze before pulling back. “I think Rhunön did pack me some aramid repair tape when she was going through Saphira’s saddlebags. Would that help?”

“Immensely. Thank you!” The gentle squeeze was returned and just like that, the two separated. 

Glen hastily busied himself with unlatching the hidden clasps at his left bicep, a grunt of dismissal all Eragon got for a goodbye. The difficulty wasn’t entirely false, the armor never having been altered to fit over his prosthetic properly, and it provided the perfect cover to hide his smile.

A bit too tight still. Damn it. Okay, now he actually couldn’t–

“Oh, come here.” Arya reached up and seized a handful of his combat suit, giving the stretchy material a firm yank. Glen hit his knees with a whuff of surprise, eye to eye with his friend and giving her a sheepish grin. “If I get you out of this without taking your arm off, then will you tell me what the hell that weird look you were giving me and Eragon was?”

“What look?” He may have sounded the picture of innocence, but the open handed cuff to the side of his head made clear that his face was betraying him yet again. “It was nothing! I just hadn’t realized that you and Eragon had talked so much about Fäolin.” 

Arya rolled her eyes and, with practiced ease, teased the stubborn clip open with a satisfying clatter. “Uh huh. You looked like you had eaten some fermented mango again.” 

“I did not!” A teasing smile had started at the edge of Arya’s lips, her fingers finding the next clasp in the system out of pure habit. At the positive sign Glen lowered his voice. “Okay. I really didn’t know how you two were getting along. Neither of you mention it, but the Bloodoath is almost two years past now. You both seem…better. Even better than before.” 

A softness flitted across his battlemate’s eyes as she lifted away the medic’s bracer. “He’s really grown up. Saphira too. They’ve both matured a lot.”

“Yeah.” 

The silence between them grew until Arya had finally shimmied the armored glove off Glen’s prosthetic. She regarded the final piece with a thoughtful look before turning back to her bestest of friends and, as gently as gently got with Arya, whapped him on the side of the head with it. 

“Stop being so weird about me and Eragon, weirdo! We’re friends! Stop making it weird!”

[skrunksthatwunk]

BREAKING NEWS i said yeah on the phone and rascal meowed back at me from across the room hehe

[ralaferin]

nothing gets me to put my head down and scurry like a fucking rat as quickly as being in public and seeing someone u went to school with

[isocrime]

Isozyme, your hrpf is so tight and snippy, you pace it all so well. Yoy have the plot so well tied to each scene. My question for you is, how do you do it,? Is it a matter of planning the end to end story before starting to writing? Thank you for your ficts!

Thank you!! This is a good question and very gratifying because one of the things I aim for with my fics is to always be compulsively readable no matter where in the story you’re at.

I don’t actually know the story from end-to-end at a high level of detail when I start out. Usually I know about how long the story will take to tell, the setup, and then the next couple things after that. As I write I sort of build the track ahead of me, so I’ll often have a detailed outline for the next scene, a couple bullet points for a handful of scenes after that, and then a sort of general vibe for anything farther away. (With a few exceptions, like I knew Matthew was going to get a supportive phone call from Sid in LMLAY for ages and ages before I finally got to write it.)

Basically my pacing philosophy is that every scene should have a job to do, and ideally also have some side hustles, and I sort of build it up layer by layer as I come up with each upcoming scene.

Let’s spitball a scene as an example. Hypothetically let’s give me a mcmattdrai wip where they’re all training with Scary Gary and in the scene in question Matthew is trying to figure out if Leon is sleeping with Connor. Maybe they’re waiting for the elevator together after a workout, that’s a good setting for two people who sort of know each other to have a stilted conversation. Matthew can joke that his legs are too tired to take the stairs and Leon can complain that he doesn’t know where the stairs are yet (this establishes their different levels of comfort in the setting in addition to giving some character notes). Leon probably also looks hot and sweaty, Matthew can notice that several times during the scene to amp up the sexual tension while he asks Leon awkward questions. A nice thing about elevators is that they have a timer, so I get to control when the elevator arrives and cuts off their conversation; probably right around when Leon reveals that he’s not sleeping with Connor (one mystery tied up, that’s the big job done by the scene) but now Matthew wants to know why Leon’s not sleeping with Connor (another mystery opened). They could keep talking about that inside the elevator but I don’t like that because I think that mystery should stretch out into the next couple of scenes, so to fix that (and add comedy) just as the elevator door is starting to close Connor can obliviously run up and join them. Now Matthew can’t ask Leon any more questions about Connor but he can observe the two of them together and start making some theories. However now that I have Connor in the scene, I should give him something to do from his plotline as well. Maybe I can make him talk about his struggles with a fundraiser for sick kids he’s trying to organize. Naturally Matthew volunteers Leon to help, which leads to Leon volunteering Matthew to also help as revenge, and that leads me neatly into the next scene (3 idiots struggling at event planning together in between their workouts).

I don’t know anything else about this fake story or where it’s going, but the scene is still dense and feels connected to a plot because all the elements are doing some kind of work on behalf of the story. And that’s pretty much how I do it when I’m actually writing something with a lot of plot — come up with what the main goal of a scene is, and then while achieving that goal try to have the stuff happening in the background work to move along side plots and set up the next thing.

Pacing is like a tricky little puzzle and it’s hard but I think it’s worth it when the work pays off; very glad you’re enjoying my hockey fics!

[nomairuins]

how it feels to want to dress very fancy and accessoried but unfortunately have the autism where i think im supposed to just be lounging in a field naked or in like. a plain linen dress. and any accessory or makeup or nail polish or ehat have you makes me want to rip my skin off

[lux-astrorum]

lying on my bed at 6pm bc it's finally the weekend and the last two weeks have been some bullshit

[talaricula]

Six months into living in the same house, Sornette and Silex's level of friendship has evolved to "hang out on the same surface" levels

[dawnleaf37]

in honor of the tpot short with the failed debuters (assumedly) being announced soon heres my tierlist of all the tpot debuters most favorite to least

tags for longer opinions :3

[someonefantastic]

GIFMAS ❅ Fav Part of the ATW10 BTS ↳ for @avasrhodes

[darkshrimpemotions]

Next chapter of Guillermo's Home is really gonna be a doozy. I'm enjoying the fuck out of writing it!

[laney-rockin]

I think I heard there was a short story where Scotty and McCoy get mistaken for Kirk and Spock but imagine that instead of TOS it was SNW.

Imagine Chapel, Uhura and Spock being bff's and hanging out during shore leave only for some Romulan spy or something mistake them for Pike, Number One and Dr. M'Benga.

So those three have to deal with that nonsense as the rest of the bridge crew subsequently sorta panic and attempt to rescue them without altering the Romulan spy that they're y'know- Starfleet.

I think that the hijinks would be fun- especially the contrast between Uhura, Spock and Chapel trying to barter for their lives and trying to escape through the sheer power of science and badassery and the rest of the bridge crew also being badasses while also landing themselves in hot water accidentally.

It'll never happen but y'know- a human can dream.

(Note: Personally I'd also think it'd be kinda fun if in the cell right next to the three Kirk and Bones were just chilling and hanging out- having been kidnapped from their own ship a week ago. And Bones and Spock immediately hate each other-)

[their-we-go]

You're the Next Contestant: A Short Horror Story

CONGRATULATIONS!

Out of billions of people, you have been chosen to compete on our one-time-only, never-before-seen, chance-of-a-lifetime game show!

That’s right, you.

Yes, you.

Well, I’m sorry, contestant, but you’ve already been chosen, and that decision is final.

Yes, final.

Alright, contestant, are you ready?

Yes, you can play from wherever you are.

Yes, you can play from your bedroom.

Yes, you can play from the couch.

Yes, you can play from your desk. 

The game takes place wherever you are. The game has already started. This is the game.

No, there are no other contestants. There is only you, and there is only me. 

So contestant, are you ready? 

It doesn’t matter.

Question one: which two colours are “complementary” to each other?

A. Yellow and Orange

B. Pink and Blue

C. Blue and Purple

D. Green and Red

So what will it be, A, B, C, or D?

That’s right! The answer is D, green and red. Colour me impressed—someone really knows their stuff! Congratulations, contestant, you earn one point.

Question two: which of the following is classified as a deadly weapon?

A. Spoon

B. Fork

C. Knife

D. Spork

What do you think?

That’s right, the answer is C, a knife! You’re absolutely killing it! But remember, with the right attitude, almost anything can be a deadly weapon!

Yes, anything.

Moving right along here to question three: how sure are you that you locked your front door this morning?

A. Totally sure

B. Pretty sure

C. A little unsure

D. Unsure

Well?

Oh, I’m sorry contestant, that is incorrect. The correct answer was E, totally unsure. 

Of course that was an option.

There are always more options.

Yes, always.

Alright, no points for question three, let’s see if question four is any better. This next one is an open response.

Question four: how many people are in the house with you now?

How many do you think? Count carefully, contestant.

Oh, I’m sorry, that is incorrect! Looks like you missed one.

Yes, I’m sure.

Question five: where am I right now?

A. Under the table. (Yes, that table.)

B. In the other room, crouching. Listening. Waiting.

C. Behind the door. 

D. Behind you.

No, there are no other options.

Yes, I know what I said before. 

Sometimes, people will lie to you. Sometimes, you will believe them. 

Well, contestant, do you have your answer? Why don’t you check, then? I’ll wait.

Are you back? Looks like you didn't pick the correct answer. 

No, I don’t think I will tell you. Not yet.

Question six: suppose there is someone in your house. Suppose this person is either under the table, in the other room, behind the door, or behind you. Suppose this person is very, very fast. If you start running right now, will you be able to reach the front door—the one you forgot to lock this morning—before they do?

A. Yes

B. No

C. I don’t know

D. It doesn’t matter

Do you have your answer?

Aw, I’m sorry, the correct answer was B: no, you won’t.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Question seven: suppose the person, the one in your house, decides to give you a head start. Suppose it’s five seconds. And suppose that is enough to reach the front door before them. Suppose that just seconds after you burst through your front door and into the warm evening air, you see them—me—out of the corner of your eye. Suppose they are gaining on you. Suppose, a second later, you feel a body colliding with your own, and you fall to the ground. Suppose you suddenly feel a blinding, burning, bloody pain in your back. What was that, in your back?

A. Gunshot

B. Dart

C. Knife

D. Spork

Well?

You have to answer.

Answer.

That’s right, the answer is C, a knife!

Question eight: suppose the knife, the one in your back, is deep. Suppose it is too deep. Suppose there is no stopping the bleeding. As you lie there, face buried in the grass of your lawn and knife buried in the meat of your back, what is the last thing that you see?

A. Bright light.

B. Darkness.

C. Your life, flashing before your eyes.

D. Nothing, besides the green of the grass and the red of your blood.

Well, contestant?

That’s right, the answer is D, green and red.

And that’s the end of the game!

Don’t worry, though, we have another game for you coming up right now, starting in:

Five.

Four.

Three.

Two.

One.