#the way most of this is just word vomit and stream of consciousness and just makes absolutely no sense agdjfk

[kiisuuumii]

@kiisuuumii (even lucifer was a star)

[whiskey-tango-matcha]

Chatterbox (M, cold, 'drabble')

A little prompt-based fluff for you guys :) Reed and Greyson go out to dinner, but Reed realizes something is up when Greyson won't shut tf up lol. I'm loving writing this relationship, I can't lie, so sorry if it's too much Reed and Greyson lately - I'll get back to my other guys soon!

1.6K words (just a tiny lil blip of a story haha) CW: Male snz, coughing, fever, contagion mention. Hope you like it :)

Chatterbox

Reed looked down at his phone as he waited on Greyson, rereading the stream-of-consciousness texts his boyfriend had sent throughout the day.

Greyson

1:42PM

sooo pumped for tonight bb :)

1:56PM

should I wear a suit…? I know it’s a new spot but the website definitely reads ‘fine dining’, like fine-er than most of my clothes know how to be...

2:24PM

I think I’ll do dark jeans & a black button up. johnny cash style. cant go wrong w that. hahah.

3:17PM

I know ur working still but im just really excited to see you:):)

It was cute – borderline adorable – how nervous Greyson seemed for their dates, even after almost a year of the two of them being together. Reed had, of course, answered Greyson’s plethora texts throughout the day, but had tried to keep himself subdued so he wouldn’t give away his hand; tonight, he was going to ask Greyson to move in with him.

He knew it was a bit of a long time coming, but Reed was really trying to keep from scaring Greyson off by doing anything too quickly. His boyfriend certainly had a bit of past-relationship trauma that Reed tried valiantly to navigate; it was hard to figure out what the right time to do anything was. Sometimes, he wasn’t sure there was ever going to be a right time to push their relationship to the next level. But things had been good lately; like, really good. Tonight felt… right.

Greyson’s presence was palpable before Reed even saw him blow through the door. He looked up from his phone and clocked his boyfriend, standing out side the restaurant with his elbow locked over his face; Reed cocked his head a bit, confused. Was he… coughing?

The chef, clad in the Johnny-Cash-getup he’d promised, shook himself out before pushing the door to the restaurant open. He pawed at his nose with the back of his hand while asking the hostess to point Reed out – she gestured towards their table, and Greyson smiled when the two of them locked eyes. Reed waved, smiling back. Something was certainly… off.

“Sorry I’m late, baby,” Greyson said, kissing the top of Reed’s head before sitting across from him. “The fuckin’ train was running late again.”

“I’ve told you a million times I’ll come pick you up for dates,” Reed said, squeezing Greyson’s hand across the table. “You don’t always have to take the train.”

Greyson shrugged, smiled a little loopily. “I like the train,” he said, picking up his menu and squinting at the small font. “Lots of time to think. I’ve come up with my best dishes on the subway, I’m pretty sure; you remember that tart I made for the writer’s dinner, the one where we saw each other for the second time? Came up with that on the train. I was sitting next to this girl, probably a student, and she was eating one of those little egg tarts, the ones from the Japanese bakeries? I thought, damn I bet a root vegetable in one of those would fuckin’ slay – spoiler alert, it so did. Where would I have come up with that if not for the train? Plus, it’s one of the most sustainable ways to travel. I get my good karma for not actively killing the environment in. Win-win. What’re we eat – HTSHH! NXTSHH!” Greyson’s explosion of word vomit was very suddenly cut off to stifle two painful-sounding sneezes into the back of his hand.

Reed blinked for what was maybe the first time since his boyfriend sat down. “...bless,” he said after a beat. Greyson nodded, sniffled a little, and picked the menu back up.

“What’s this place’s thing anyway?” Greyson continued, flipping the menu over to look at drinks. “I can’t seem to figure it out; are they Italian? Mediterranean? Fine dining? Just high-end? No tasting menu, but prices are high enough to warrant one. Wine list reads very Italian, but there are like three dishes with hummus on them? I’m half-expecting to be served babaganoush bolognese. Which… maybe would work? Actually, eggplant, tomato sauce… I could see it working. You never know. Can’t judge a book by its menu, right? What’re you drinking? Want to get a bot -?”

This second monologue was cut short when Reed reached across the table to place a gentle hand on Greyson’s face. Just as he expected: hot.

“Babe,” Reed said gently, taking his hand back, “you’re burning up.”

The chef cast his glance down, embarrassed. “You weren’t supposed to figure that out till after dinner,” he muttered. Reed laughed.

“Seriously? You had to know I’d figure something was up. You’ve been monologing since the moment you sat down. Have you been sick all day? You should’ve told me, honey. How much cough medicine did you take before you showed up here?”

Greyson looked up at Reed and gave him a little half-smile. “Pretty sure I downed half a bottle of Robutusssin, not gonna liiii – hh! HhNXTSHH-ue! Huh-TSHH-ue!” Once again, Greyson attempted to stifle, to no avail. He allowed himself two painful little coughs before righting himself again.

“Bless you,” Reed said again. “I wish you would just sneeze normal, that always sounds so painful.”

“We’re in a restaurant,” Greyson said, a huskiness beginning to creep in to his voice. “That’s so gross.”

Reed rolled his eyes. “Oh, please. Who cares? No one’s looking at us. They’re too busy with their many, many hummuses.”

A laugh bubbled out of Greyson, and with it came a flurry of congested coughs he directed into the sleeve of his shirt. “Don’t mbake me laugh,” he muttered, taking a drink of water. “You’re gonna get us kicked out.”

“Good,” Reed said, flagging the waiter. “I’m so sorry,” he said when the young, well-dressed server came to their table, “something’s come up and we’re going to have to go.” He handed the kid a fifty. “Thank you for your help.”

The server nodded, said thank you to Reed, and went to grab the two men’s jackets. Greyson raised an eyebrow, confused. “What’re you doing?”

“Taking you home,” Reed said. “You need tea and soup, not…” he glanced back down at the menu, “fattoush flatbread.” Greyson visibly deflated.

“I wanted to spend the evening with you,” he said, his voice subdued. “I’m sorry. I should’ve called and canceled, I just… I mbiss you when we don’t see each other all week. You’re always busy, I’mb always busy, it just fucking sucks. I don’t even know how I got fucking sick… oh wait, yes I do. Elijah had a cold last week – was that last week? Did I tell you that? I can’t remember. I think the servers gave it to him. Fuckin’ servers, I’ve never met a group of people who get sick mbore than theehh – huh! Fuck – HUHETSHHH-ue! Huh-! HhITSZZZCH-ue!” Greyson folded in half, his torso practically beneath the table in an attempt to keep the entire restaurant from hearing him. It was, of course, at that moment that the server returned with their coats. Reed took them silently, and stood to gather his boyfriend, who slowly unfurled himself from his own lap.

“Bless you,” he said, gently helping Greyson to his feet and slipping his coat over his shoulders. He lead the two of them past the host stand and onto the sidewalk, where he turned Greyson to face him.

“First of all,” he said, sweeping Greyson’s hair out of his eyes and caressing his cheek, “I know a subset of people who get sick more than servers, and it’s chefs. You and all your chef buddies are pestilence incarnate because you work nine hundred hours a week.” This prompted a little laugh from Greyson. Perfect, thought Reed. Break the tension.

“Secondly, yes, you did tell me that Elijah was sick, and I told you, and I quote, ‘Don’t get too close, I know you two love to share a cold’, but I know you don’t like to listen to authority, so not sure what I expected.” Another laugh. Greyson pushed his hair back, rubbed his nose, and pulled Reed in to hug him. Reed continued from this spot, pressed into Greyson’s shoulder.

“And thirdly,” he said, “I miss you too. All the time. Which is why I asked you out tonight.” He pulled away, reached into his pocket, and dropped a key into Greyson’s palm. “I don’t want to miss you anymore. I don’t want you to have to take the train from Brooklyn every single night, I don’t want us to hang out once a week, I don’t want to drop you at your apartment to take care of yourself. I want to see you when I wake up every morning. I want to hear you sneak in at three AM after you and Matt go clubbing. I want to take care of you, at home, when you’re sick.” Reed smiled, a little embarrassed, as Greyson stared at the key. “Move in with me,” Reed said. “Please.”

Greyson’s mouth opened, then shut without words a couple of times before he looked Reed in the eyes. “Yes,” he said, nodding. “Okay. Yes. Yes, please.”

Reed felt a smile bloom on his face, huge, goofy, unashamed. He took Greyson’s face in his hands and planted a kiss on his lips. Greyson held his boyfriend by the waist, then picked him up to spin him around. “I love you,” Greyson muttered into Reed’s mouth.

“I love you more,” Reed said, smiling. Greyson turned away then, suddenly to -

“HRRSHH-ue! HhhITSHZZCH-ue!” he sneezed away from his boyfriend, which prompted a laugh from Reed.

“Probably too late for that nicety,” Reed joked, elbowing Greyson playfully. The chef huffed out a laugh and rolled his eyes.

“I figured sneezing directly into your face would probably kill the moment,” he said, sniffling. “But I’ll go ahead and just do it next time.”

“Oh, shut up,” Reed laughed, kissing Greyson again. “C’mon. Let’s get you home and in bed. Sickie.”

Greyson smiled a little. “Yeah,” he said, looping his arm into Reed’s. “Let’s go home.”

[transhawks]

I know you're writing a fic with Twice is in (and also actually appreciate his character), so do you got ideas, rules whatever, on how to write his dialog? Ll the fics ive read never feels right unless it's straight from the source material 😭

Hey! So, I've definitely played around with this in writing. Let me show some examples and word vomit about Twice. I will say that while I often return to the manga and observe how he talks, I also have developed LOTs of head-canons, so much of this is my own ideas/fanon. When I wrote You in 2020, it was very much an experimental fic, stream of consciousness kind of fic. And I encourage people to play around if they are doing something like solely focusing on Jin. In this case I essentially wrote it in Second person, to emphasize the idea of a fractured mind/depersonalization or the feeling as if "I'm not the real one" that Twice had. Here's how I showcased the split:

This is how I described Jin's initial "split" by the way. Note there's actually THREE different ones - I have a personal theory there's actually three personalities, the dominant Jin who is incredibly traumatized and slightly regressing in maturity, the older, quieter maturer personality who shows up only when we see into his thoughts, who seems pensive and contemplative (most of 115 is his narration) and kind of gives Twice's manga international narration a film-noir like quality, and the vocal "negative" voice that I guess either contradicts voice 1 or functions like an id to the ego.

Before anyone chimes in with "FREUDIAN PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY IS TRASH AND DEBUNK-", yes, I know, but I find the idea of splitting the mind like this useful for literature, specifically, not real life. And I suspect a lot of writers do as well, so the idea of a "split" mind where a voice voices the things no one should want to say or think as Horikoshi has created here works well in that framework. Hence, when I write the split in Jin's mind, I use it as a way for me to figure how what's with his mind.

One of the biggest issues is that Jin's issues are very much pop-culture/fantasy mental illness because no disorder fits him well. For one thing, Jin's trauma is also a neurological one because he clearly had brain damage from the whole experience that cause his scar. And then it's like Horikoshi decided to take elements of schizoaffective psychosis, tourette's, BPD, DID, and OCD and PTSD and throw in "actual force blunt force brain damage" into the loop. That's not to say Twice's struggles aren't realistic/relatable - they totally are, but whatever he has isn't exactly an accurate depiction of anything out there (especially since it's so quirk-based). Personally, tailoring it to fit something neatly, I think, would do a big disservice to his character so I don't strive for that sort of realism and just work with what Horikoshi outlines for us.

Anyway, that is to say that often when I try to depict mental illness in writing, especially from the perspective of the ill person, I try to incorporate elements of disorder into the writing itself stylistically (I sometimes do this with writing Hawks as well). A lot of people just only strictly stick to this past-tense (or present) third person limited way of writing, and I think there's fun in throwing that out and using characters like Twice as reasons to do it. Or just playing around with formatting.

Anyway, this is how I try to depict it from a Third Person Limited perspective in Irreversible.

So first off, I distinguish between the spoken voices Jin has by bolding the contradictory voice. Internally, I depict intrusive thoughts by keeping it bolding, putting in parenthesis, and then justifying the text to the right. It breaks up the paragraph and creates the "element of disorder" I spoke about earlier. Here's what that can look like at it's most disordered, where there's essentially a mental conversation written out.

There's also a clear difference in spoken vs internal because while internally the voice addresses Jin himself to create an element of insecurity (questioning if he even deserves Toga's kindness), it's only in speech that he'll contradict Jin after he says something. This doesn't always happen, and I don't think every sentence needs it. Jin has moments in-manga where he doesn't speak like this and I also think it correlates with emotional state (interestingly a really upset Twice can be more "together").

But it's not as simple as "Jin says something, bold immediately contradicts it." That would make it boring to both read and write. My suggestion to have an actual reaction by a Jin to the bolded words - because it happens in canon (sometimes he tries to stop himself from talking further).

In this sentence, I make Jin immediately refute the previous sentence. It's not a full on back and forth, but it does show that he's aware the other voice is saying things and what it is saying. Lastly, this is more me on how to actually make it matter besides keeping it accurate to canon characterization. First, Jin is funny. Naturally he's funny and very blunt, but his illness is also used by Horikoshi for tension relief and to kill the seriousness or somber mood the LoV scenes can evolve into. Do not be afraid to use this for humor because as a character, Horikoshi DOES do this HOWEVER, this is not all Jin is, and when showing his internal life, there's far more seriousness to it all. But if you just want to write Jin instead of focusing on him, I think acknowledging he has a (wacky, immature and slapstick-y) sense of humor and in turn can be a funny character is not a bad thing. He lends himself well to physical comedy so don't be afraid of writing him doing weird things or making funny gestures.

Two, make the words count. At the end of the day, you're writing a story. You are not only conveying personality through these words, you are hopefully moving plot forward, or using the space you have carefully. Do not be afraid to have the contradictory voice say something poignant, something no one else would say, or ominous that can be used as foreshadowing for later parts of your story. Remember, these are characters that are meant to tell stories so use them.

[ex-textura]

Please word vomit to us about Ilztaufein's complicated relationship dynamics (if you want, no pressure) 💜

HAH! Oh, you've asked for it.

i'm not proof reading any of this stream of consciousness lets goooo

_

Alright soo early in the game Izzy never had any sort of actual interest in the other party members at all, romantic or otherwise. He's a pissy little prince of a man who likes things a certain way and isn't so far removed from his noble upbringing in the underdark that he's unlearned all his negative associations with other races (or even with drow themselves tbh. he'd say he's complicated but he's mostly just a bitch), but he's still a good guy in the most technical sense so he did start to get close to them in spite of himself.

He's also a man who's pretty used to just casually sleeping with other members of his teams whenever the desire arises. So when Astarion propositioned him like...QUITE early on he was like fuck it. Whatever. I could use an orgasm. And Astarion was similar enough to him in personality (and to drow in appearance to be quite honest) that he didn't give it that much thought. Fun romp in the woods, whatever nbd.

Only that Astarion like...didn't seem to get the hint, or something. Because despite Ilztaufein being pretty clear that he was just having fun, Astarion started crossing some lines from one-night stand to fwb and then maybe a little more? Only Izzy still was never really feeling it. I mean, Astarion was fine. The sex was technically well executed and Astarion is handsome and fun so he had no regrets in that regard. But see this sad little human was starting to worm his way into Izzy's mind. He kept showing pieces of himself that Ilztaufein didn't expect from someone like him. Hints and pieces of greater power, greater ambition. And Ilztaufein was intrigued.

Then Izzy learned about Gale's past with Mystra, about the truth of the orb and what he'd done and rather than being worried he was sorta. kinda.... well that was like really really hot??? I mean sure it was foolish and it backfired but the power it had to have taken in the first place to do what Gale did. To catch the eye of a goddess too. And the ambition to aim so damned high. That was the turning point. Gale was no longer just some wizard that claimed to be an archmage and wanted to learn to play sava. Gale WAS an archmage. A chosen. A powerful man with powerful means and powerful desires and Ilztaufein wanted, needed, to be part of that.

So he was still sleeping with Astarion on occasion, the vampire showering him this performative sort of affection that never really did anything for him but Izzy didn't care enough to stop because like. Whatever floats your boat, man. And flirting with Gale in the meantime, spending most nights discussing magical theory over a game of lanceboard or sava as they taught each other their chess game of choice. Falling hard for Gale, and not ever really trying to hide it. He'd never wanted someone like that before, but being such a little princess, he always got what he wanted.

The hiccup is where Astarion comes into this. Cause Astarion's little pet names and affection and all that definitely started as a performance but in spite of himself he'd actually started to fall for Ilztaufein. A sassy little minx who shared a lot of his interests (and mannerisms. and clothes), who even though he was a good person fundamentally, didn't really do anything for the sake of altruism. Who made him laugh, and didn't give a shit about his past, or what he'd done, but was immediately more than happy to help him with whatever - whether that be casting Hold Person on a bandit specifically so Astarion could drink from them without fuss, teaching him how to make drow poisons, or straight up plotting against Cazador.

So Astarion is maybe sorta starting to fall hard. But he's never been free before. He barely knows who he is. He doesn't know how to be alone but he also doesn't know how to be with someone...in the way he might want to be with Izzy. Maybe. If he lets himself think about it long enough. So he's weighing his options.

Talk to Izzy. Tell him how he feels. Tell him that maybe what he wants with him is more than sex (and, honestly, maybe not even sex at all). Maybe they get together, maybe he swipes the drow out from under Gale's nose and they live a long, long life together of hedonistic debauchery. After they kill Cazador together. Maybe Ilztaufein helps him find a cure. Maybe they spend the rest of their lives in the underdark. And Astarion never truly gets to be his own man, shackled forever to love.

Don't talk to Izzy. Keep up the seduction and squash his own growing feelings. Keep Gale's big soft eyes off of his paramour long enough to get the job done, kill Cazador, and be free. Then dump him, and go learn who the fuck he actually is. Take many lovers or none at all. Every choice made from that point on would be his own, at the cost of perhaps breaking his own heart.

Or, the option he's starting to realize might already have been made for him when he wasn't looking: Let whatever is happening between Gale and Ilztaufein happen. Just. Let him go. And hope that they'll still be willing to help him anyway out of..what? the kindness of their hearts?

Or maybe if the old tramp who came by the camp gets his way, Gale will blow himself up and leave Izzy in mourning and Astarion can be there to pick up the pieces and resume their little thing from wherever they left off. Have his cake and eat it too, at the cost of a perfectly good Gale, I suppose.

[astorytotellyourfriends]

would you mind talking briefly about your outlining process? what do you include/exclude and how detailed do you get? (and how much - if at all - does the final draft differ from the outline?) i'm trying to start outlining my own writing and don't even know where to begin lol

also i adore your writing, it's absolutely beautiful and i get so excited every time you post about it

i would be happy to!!! 🥹 i'm so flattered that you asked!!

(the funny thing is, i didn't always use outlines. in high school when i was required to turn in an outline + an essay, i'd just write the essay first and then break it down into an outline and my teachers never said a thing. and when i first started writing fanfic i didn't plan anything out at all, i'd just write for a couple hours and then toss it up on quizilla - yes i'm OLD - and call it a new chapter lol!)

i usually use my outlines as a space to just word vomit my ideas! i treat it almost like i'm explaining my idea to a friend (which i do a lot, my friends are constantly getting the "so i have a new idea..." text), and it can either be a series of bullet points or just a stream of consciousness with bits of dialogue thrown in here and there as i think them up.

the nice thing about having an outline is it holds all of the ideas i have so i no longer have to worry about remembering them (because i have a TERRIBLE memory), and it also gives me something to go back and reread when i'm trying to get back into the headspace of an idea, especially if it's been a while since i last worked on it.

as for the final draft differing from the outline, it sort of varies from project to project. sometimes (a lot of times, actually) when i'm writing the characters sort of just take over and steer me in a completely different direction and then i have to try and figure out if i like this new direction or if i want to try and turn it back around to what i meant to have happen. or, sometimes i think "okay, this didn't work out the way i thought it would but i can take the original idea and tuck it in somewhere else later on and it'll be fine!"

(a great example would be the most recent chapter of onlyfans that i've finished, only it hasn't been posted yet so i'm not going to give away any spoilers and instead i'll use another example!)

so this is an excerpt from my outline for the onlyfans au, specifically for chapter three:

and this is how this scene played out in the actual fic:

for this part in particular, i stayed pretty close to the outline! (now i'm sure you can see why the outline for this fic is over 20k...)

but on the flip side, if you were to read the outline for chapter nine, you'd only read about chrissy and eddie's beach date. i didn't plan to write jeff into that chapter at all but somehow i ended up with an entire scene between him and eddie PLUS a full scene of chrissy and eddie making plans to go to the beach! neither of which were in my original outline!

long story short (sorry if i've gone a bit overboard on this, i just really like talking about my writing and i'm so touched that you wanted to know in the first place 🥹), my advice for outlining is don't be afraid to keep it simple. if you're struggling to outline because you feel like you should be fleshing out the story fully before you start writing and it's just not working, then just jot down whatever ideas you do have and go from there!

sometimes a story will just shape itself as you write it, and even the best outline in the world can't always hold itself up to what the story becomes. nobody's forcing you to stick to your outline! it could be as detailed as the excerpt i shared above, or it could simply be something like this:

what's most important is that your outline should help you. if you want to outline your ideas before you start writing, go for it! if not, don't feel like you have to just because other people do!

i hope this helped (and i didn't ramble too much...) and again thank you so much for asking!!! and thank you so so much for your wonderful compliment about my writing 😭 it really means so much to me that you and so many others enjoy what i've shared, especially because sometimes i let myself get bogged down with self-doubt and that makes writer's block all the more tough to handle.

thank you anon 💛 you're welcome in my inbox anytime!

[freneticfloetry]

fic rec friday fun

So wanted to get some hiatus rec lists going and encourage some self promo in my friends so how about sharing your top fics no matter how big or small - give us the links to your wonderful words with the Most hits/Most kudos/Most comments/Most bookmarks /Most words/Least words

My Works List's answer to everything but Most and Least Words is the same fic, because for whatever reason it is a runaway train, so I'm going to use that for the first and the second spots for everything else. Kisses to @carlos-in-glasses for the tag.

Most Hits: Ashes and Flame (Every You and Every Me) (Hunger Games Trilogy) Peeta comes home, still unsure what the word means. I finished Mockingjay about eleven o'clock one night and stayed up way too late just to write this. It was a fever bunny. I still have no idea how people are still finding and reading this fic, but I have such a fondness for it to this day.

Most Kudos: Lost in Translation (The Losers) Jensen's given a Spanish side mission, and learns more than he thought he would. Sometimes in song. Once upon a time, a friend and I made a pact to write a different NYR fic for unfilled Yuletide prompts every week for a year. That lasted exactly two weeks, because I couldn’t write short to save my life, but I had two of my favorite fic experiences ever as a result. This was the second. I always love getting to play in the brains of characters with the kind of snarky stream-of-consciousness voice Jake Jensen has, and writing this was a blast.

Most Comments: scenes from an unfinished story (told by the lost and found) (The Magicians) The summary is a story on its own, so I'll just say: it's a Queliot Hollywood AU featuring Eliot the Actor and Quentin the Aspiring Writer (who, for the moment, is a PA), based on, of all things, Win a Date with Tad Hamilton. It was my Magicians Happy Ever After Big Bang, and it holds a special place in my heart for a multitude of reasons, but the holy trinity of those is that it was my first real foray into AU territory, it was the proudest I've ever been in my structure and storytelling abilities, and it gave me some of the best friends I'll ever have.

Most Bookmarks: Deck the Halls with Daddy Issues (MCU) Tony Stark doesn't do Christmas. But Steve loves Christmas, and he loves Steve, and he's going to try. (Which still doesn't mean he'll be any good at it.) Third in line here, since the second was already on the list. This was an Avengers movie spec written for the cap_ironman exchange, back in the days before the movie was actually released and squashed every Steve/Tony inkling I've ever had. I also completely forgot about it, in the madness of Yuletide that year, got a reminder email from the mods, said "no no, it's almost done!" when I hadn't written a word, and vomited this onto the page in a six-hour all-nighter. Still, it makes me smile.

Most Words: Past Perfect Future Tense (The Magicians) It happened. That they'd asked themselves how, when it's literally the least important part of this, he can chalk up to shock or shortsightedness or his own sheer stupidity. It's the why that actually matters, and he thinks he knows the answer to that. So the real question… is how to make it happen again. My monster Magicians WIP. I've nicknamed it Cerberus. Plotting this thing just about broke my brain, with all its time travel shenanigans, and the forecasted chapter count has almost doubled since I started, but I still love the idea and get excited just thinking about it. Soon, my precious.

Least Words: So Have I For You (Firefly) Discipline only carries you so far, lies are never good enough to truly fool yourself, and pride goeth before a fall. She's never been trained for this. Y'all, I used to write short fic. Granted this is about fifteen years old, but still. It is a full and complete story in less than 600 words. Where has that girl gone? This is just a little look at Inara, as she prepares to leave Serenity, and all the reasons why she has to.

I think everybody's pretty much been tagged, but just in case: @hoko-onchi-writes, @mixtapestar, @rubickk7, you're it.

[hrefgopuram]

substack overview

In late 2012 I started a writing project I called 1000 word vomits, with the intent of writing one million words in 1,000 sets of 1,000 words. The idea is that they would be mostly unedited, mostly rambling streams-of-consciousness, and yet be at least somewhat mindful of taste and sense. As of June 2023, I’ve written 825/1000 wordvomits. I’ve learned a lot a long the way, become a much better writer, and one of the things I’ve learned as a result is the importance of doing reviews. The word “review” is unfortunately a bit cluttered conceptually. The etymology of the word means simply “to view again”, but it’s come to additionally mean “with a critical lens”, such that we expect book reviews and movie reviews to tell us “whether it’s any good”. Which isn’t necessarily bad, unless it’s all there is.

Still, words are worth messing around with, and I’d prefer to use the word “overview” – in part because I’d like to avoid the judgemental connotations of “review”, and in part because I’m enamoured with the concept of “the overview effect”.

Back to the importance of reviews or overviews – so one of the things that frustrated me with my wordvomits project is how much I repeated myself, kinda “senselessly”. My view on this is itself evolving – I was most recently struck by a quote from Marshall Mcluhan’s Understanding Media where he talked about how oral traditions tend to have very cyclical ‘texts’, where you could get the point pretty quickly, but the meta-point is to go around and around on the subject so that you really get into it from all angles

Even so, I feel like there are smart ways of doing this and not-so-smart ways of doing this, and I’d prefer to do it the smart way. And the smart way in my current view is to not leave things so much up to chance, but to re-visit, re-explore, re-discover. I was in a rush with my early word vomits to write as much as possible, and as a result I found myself… disoriented?

I might explain this more on second passthrough but for now why not let’s just do an overview of all the posts on this substack so far. It’s still small enough and young enough that it’s possible, so let’s do it while we can. (The sub-bullets are for my own future reference – things that I might want to write new essays about and link to.)

The essays:

1. 🔥 We were voyagers – this essay just leapt out of me in one big burst after I had published my second book Introspect. I might say it’s about Nietzschean historical sense, or about Lincoln and Pericles and their ability to contextualize, to situate their people in the world. And I think that’s a very strong clue for what the essence of Voltaic Verses is going to be about.

2. The Essays I Have Not Published – looking back from the current context I would now describe this as a pre-view, a mapping of possibilities from where I stood. Looking at it now, it’s a pretty good mapping! Almost everything I write about here, is something I still want to write about in some shape or form. What’s interesting, I think, is a sense that the tentative shapes I have used, are probably not the ones I will be using. If they were the right ones, I’d already have used them. (mindpalaces, reconceptualization work, get really unblocked, growing pains, crossing of thresholds)

3. I don’t wanna! – in this essay I honor my resistance. I don’t want to fight the guy inside me that doesn’t want to write. I want to understand him.

4. nothing is edgier than earnestness – this essay meanders, and it opens with the Ted Hughes voltage quote that subsequently birthed the name Voltaic Verses. I talk about Ray Bradbury, Calvin & Hobbes… (digressions, inner critic, grief, X-Men: First Class, ATLA, edgelords, artful incompleteness)

5. dancing with constraints, pt 1 (grammar of tweets / constraint of mediums, multiple entities hot-desking the same meatbag, few hours of mental clarity...)

6. Santa is real – this was a seasonal post for Christmas, but it’s also very much about a lot of the things I care about: ritual, ceremony, meaning, belief, truth, process, social reality. Santa is a great, well-understood entry-point for thinking about all manner of beliefs and narratives. I find myself thinking there has to be a similar post to be written about talismans, and maybe I ought to pick the Oscars or the World Cup as a corresponding event. (KWML, ritual initiations)

7. 🔥 Are you serious? – I think this is currently the piece of writing I might be proudest of. Justo, Dashrath, Hokusai. Takes time to discern who’s serious. Not talking about solemnity. Silliness is sacred. Optimize for survival. The divorce mystery. (Advanced Stupid, LinkedIn World...)

8. resonance over coherence – I think this was inspired in part by the talk that I gave in New York, which reminds me I still haven’t published a post about that. Getting unstuck. Possibility space. People-shaped. Oof/crackle-boom surprisingly true. (indescribable mental motions)

9. yeet thyself – Bradbury again. Crackle-boom. Project management is about enabling collaboration. Workaholism. Living gloriously. (funhouse mirror misunderstandings)

10. branching paths – talking about Robert Frost, nominative determinism, information architecture, forgetting aids remembering, desire paths, ant colonies (narrative logic,

11. Breakthrough! in the DMs – helped someone “figure out what they want”, why I wrote Introspect, my dislike of Ikigai, Beyonce-Apple MVP, Meryl Streep inscrutability, Dinesh, the dynamism problem (asking people about movies, cartoon model of reality...)

12. interestingness on demand – the ayylmao tension of being creative for a living, Christopher Alexander, the psychology of tryhards, smart writing, clever little shortcuts, misframed problems, internally conflicted, Jim Carrey Golden Globes quote, (demonstrate interestingness, specialization and trade, perfect imperfection...)

13. witching hour writer patterns – Chrstopher Alexander, existence stack, William Blake’s Auguries of Innocence, Ted Nelson, old emotional meanings, cultural jank, technical debt, Orwell’s Politics, /my-creative-process/...

14. the tavern and the temple – Bradbury’s “you must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you”, Chappelle’s “the guy onstage is the real me”, contemplation. Twitter is many places all at once. Sorkin’s greater fool. untangling knotted perception. wiggle room, patience, cracks.

15. when the vision isn’t manifesting — channelling divine inspiration is the easiest part of being an artist. all serious projects are projects of grief. I don’t have the luxury of going dark for 4 years without anything to show for it publicly. if I can’t write 20 perfect essays I can at least write 200 good sketches. The universe in a glass of water. Meryl Streep being inscrutable to herself. Dave Chappelle on letting the idea drive. Eilish’s “maybe trust me”.

16. stray clippings #01 —

17. maybe buy more waffle irons —the kkh waffles store bottlenecked by # of irons. the doors in junior college. asking statement customers for tshirt ideas.

18. are you having fun, son? — “to continue to have fun is to participate in a dynamic process, to adapt to the situation”

19. a stupid bravery — feel like i could write an essay in 2-3hrs. borges: artist working even when dreaming. mayer: stupid bravery. fran lebowitz: words are easy, books are not. good writers can struggle with professionalism. fantasy of a competent manager domming them. balancing assertiveness and sensitivity. matthew effect, wretchedness problem. wbw’s cooks vs chefs. jobs’ on risking failure. jeremy mann doc: don’t try to perfectly represent reality, but our experience of reality. wooten: if you can make it feel right, any note can work. christopher alexander: improve patterns by testing them against experience, by recognizing how we feel.

20. a matryoskha of possibilities —“Be slightly wary of the whole endeavor. Describe things. Look for interesting trapdoors. Make matryoshkas of meaning. Enjoy good digressions. Say how you feel, and keep going.”

21. facing reality pt1 —

22. if i’m honest with myself —

23. writing a facebook status in 2024 —

24. 7 mini-essays in a trenchcoat

25. ephemeral plaintext —

[ravenelyx]

For the fic writer thing/ 💔⏳✅

Hellooo and thank you for this 🥲🥲

Link to emoji ask game

💔 Is there a fic of yours that broke your heart?

Not any that's published yet (aside from ch 1 of ilyet, which kiiiinda made me very sad, yes 🥲) As of now: the ending of one that I'm working on (that is fr the worst ever) and one that will probably be published this evening if I don't act like a lazy idiot again istg (i was thinking of a sad ending for it but the public doesn't agree - so it's less heartbreaking but still 💔)

⌛ How long does it take you to write a fic, or a chapter?

WELL.

I think everyone and their dog has seen how slow I am, yes.💀 There are days when I go on a tangent and write more than 4k words a day, while there are others in which my brain is just... fried. But what really makes my writing REALLY slow is the editing process: having to check english grammar mistakes and rewriting passages bc I'm never satisfied is really exhausting, not to mention the fact that when I write a long text, the words start feeling "weird" and they stop making sense to me (my brain simply refuses to consider english as a language anymore and it becomes quite literally word vomit - or, in a way, how my first language would sound like if it received special treatment from google translate 🥲)

✅ What's something that appears in your fics over and over and over again, even if you don't mean to?

Boys being pathet- COUGH

A lot of descriptions during dialogues ('She smiled', 'he said', 'she did this', 'he did that'... blah blah blah) to the point they become almost "heavy" to read... and I have to go back and change them.

A lot of dialogues in general: I like to describe things by speaking, so yes, while I add a lot of descriptors as well, I really like seeing my characters speak (and that really strings it out but honestly idc).

Emotions. Emotions everywhere. I like getting into their heads and describe things in the most visceral, stream-of-consciousness type of way. That means paragraphs of characters losing their minds (although I don't do it as well as I wish I could. I'm still learning).

Boys being malewives himb- COUGH

[hot-cocoa-addict]

nanowrimo 2022

hi i just wanted to announce that i wrote a lot of words. i cannot remember if i even mentioned that consequences started as a nano project and was supposed to be just 50k words (that did not happen lmao). more details under the cut as i’m writing this at 12:30 am after an 8k day and so i’m just gonna word vomit about this

okay, so, for starters this is my third nano year ever and in a row. i have actually won both years previously, but always with a very desperate last push to get over the line and usually just barely before midnight. there was a rush to update with 10 minutes left on the clock here in the PNW, but not to hit 50k.

i hit 50k all the way back on the 18th of november, and in the 12 days after that i nearly doubled my word count and my goal. i hit my three highest single day word counts this year, that being: 6,130 words on the 1st; 7,306 on the 28th; and 8,087 words yesterday on the 30th. i went into this year’s nano with three goals in mind. One, and most importantly: get the fucking consequences rewrite started because i did NOT handwrite around 17k words over the month of october for my damn story outline only to not go anywhere. Two: hit 50k this year and continue my winning streak. Three, if possible: get every badge on a project for the first time by writing at least 1667 words every day. i did all three

this was not easy. i was really lucky to a) have the musical i’m in be pushed back from opening in the first week of december to opening the the second weekend of january. if this had not happened i would have been writing through tech week and as a lead in the show i’m in i simply would have not had the time. b) had very light workloads in all of my classes and my creative writing class being dedicated solely to working on nanowrimo. no my teacher does not know i wrote fanfiction and no she does not get to know. c) had a ton of support from the two local regions whose borders i technically straddle. it’s a whole thing i’m not getting into because i am not telling a bunch of internet strangers where i live, sorry guys :( this was a really long post ik but i just needed to vomit it out somewhere because i feel like this is an accomplishment worth sharing? also i’m really sorry to announce that chapter 3 ain’t going up until i finish chapter 4 and although i promise i’m really close to finishing chapter 4 i’m not letting myself touch it for the next few days. actually that brings me to another point i’m sorry this is all stream of consciousness and i cannot be effed to edit it right now but! most surprising thing of overachieving this hard?? i actually really want to write right now and am likely going to have to actively force myself to take a break for at least the next day or so. i’m not proud of everything i wrote this month but i wrote a lot that i am proud of and everything that’s on my doc feels good to me right now. For anyone else who did NaNoWriMo this year and actually read to the end of the post, I have one last heartfelt message to y’all. No matter who you are, no matter where you come from or what you do, no matter what goal you started out the month with and no matter whether it changed or not. No matter if you wrote 1k, 10k, 25k, 50k or even beyond that, you did it. You got through November. You got through NaNoWriMo. You wrote words that no one else could have, You created something else no one could have. Whatever you wrote is uniquely yours, and you took a first step that so many people never took just by writing your story down. Whether you finished your story or, like me, still have a long ways to go from where you are now, you did something beautiful and so very impressive. And if there is no one else in your life who appreciates your accomplishments, then know that I do. The first draft might suck, but that’s okay! Twice now I’ve completely thrown away my previous year’s draft; only now that I am on a third year with a third draft do I feel this that my story is actually close to about as good as it’ll get. It may take you many more drafts than me to find the version of your story you like best, but know that there will always be people out there looking forward to reading what you write. for anyone else who read this far i love you <3 (platonically) and i want you to know that even if you don’t write, if you create anything so much of what i said can apply to you too (the broad points, not the specific stuff about writing). creation of any kind is beautiful and incredible. and for any non-creative types who see this, don’t worry! you’re wonderful and have your own place in this world of ours. i really wish i had more to say to y’all who don’t do nano but im very sleepy and, again, am coming off of an 8k day already so my brain is kinda empty rn ngl. i’m gonna get this tagged and go to bed now as i’m finishing this post at about 1:00 am my time and may or may not have school in the morning if it snows again

[pyresrpgear]

“most writing advice is arbitrary and you should be free to write whatever you want.”

That right there is the heart of the matter.

It's also a variation in wording of the most helpful bit of writing advice that always makes me chuckle at the oxymoronic nature of it applying to everyone.

“No piece of writing advice works for everyone. Find the one(s) that work for you and do it.”

Like I know there are plenty of people who would lose their minds trying to write a draft like this. They need the mess, they need the placeholders, they need to skip around and write the fun parts first then go back and write all the less fun connection parts.

But that's not me. I write like this. The closest I get to an “ugly” first draft wouldn't even be considered a “draft” by most people. It's either a paragraph or 2 summary of an idea or me word vomiting on a friend of mine in DMs as I am having the idea in real time that I then copy/paste into a doc later. And I can only pull of those kind of [and then they go on a bunch of dates] placeholder statements because I know she knows I am going full stream of consciousness on her. When I am the only “audience” for that kind of unfocused rambling I get annoyed with myself after about 3 paragraphs at most because I start thinking “why don't you just start ACTUALLY writing the damn thing instead of wasting time writing about what you want to write.”

Do what works for you and ignore the rest. Don't feel guilty if something that goes around like it is the end all be all of writing tips does you no good. If it helps imagine every post with advice stated as if it were a fact starts with “This is what works for me...” or “This is how I manage to write...” or “This is how I enjoy working...” because that is what they are really saying. It's just that some of them can't imagine that other people don't work the same way so they see it as objectively true that all writers must do it this way because why wouldn't they. And that's on them, not you.

i've been thinking a lot about writing advice, especially after getting back on writeblr, and one of the ones i see the most is the "your first draft doesn't need to be perfect" one. the one that tells writers they shouldn't be afraid to hop around and write their favorite parts first or use placeholders. don't be afraid to be messy. you know.

and like!! this process works wonders for some people! it's perfectly solid advice.

but also. idk if i'm the only one, but for me, the mess takes out the fun. it completely kills my motivation. i look at placeholders in my draft and think "this sucks. it's ugly. it doesn't look like a book. i'm never writing again."

tbh, i think most writing advice is arbitrary and you should be free to write whatever you want. but i'm also just putting this out there as pseudo-advice or really just a green light to writers like me, who want to write the perfect draft simply bc they Literally Won't Finish Their Book If They Don't.

y'all. don't worry about writing the perfect version of your book. write ONE version, from beginning to end. think about your draft as one route in a video game. if you're stuck on a scene, just do it kinda shittily but Cleanly. no placeholders. transition into the next scene. get to the end. you can come back and fix the things you missed or go down paths you didn't see later.

this way, you have a clean draft that reads like a book. it might not be The book you want to write, and it might have some issues here and there, but it won't be messy to you. it'll look and function like a story. if you're like me, your motivation will thank you ;)

[seanettlles]

lex’s hoard of bruno-centric* fic recs!!

*mostly bruno-centric, there are also quite a few that are more centered on other characters or the family as a whole. but they’re still all great!!

so i know people toss around the word “hoard” a lot, and while i love hyperbole prolly more than the average person, uh

well. there's really quite a lot. it somehow got even bigger since last update omg how

i’m starting to slowly update this with new fics as i come across and read them!! since apparently desktop tumblr doesn’t?? seem to??? have a link limit stupid mobile app, this post will keep growing until i physically cannot update it further :)

eventually i hope to make it back through all of those bookmarks and add, ideally, most of them to this list!! i’m trying to update every weekend, so if you’re interested, keep checking back with this post!!

please give all of these fics a chance even if my blurbs do them no justice, i’m terrible at summarizing in a concise way and my thoughts are just pure stream-of-consciousness complimentary word vomit.

i really, deeply appreciate everything these authors do for this and other fandoms with their writing, and hopefully the potential new eyes on their works can help give back in some way!! i hope you find something new here that you can enjoy just as much!!

ANYWAY onto the fics!! 

last updated 05.10.22

currently on hiatus!!

current fic count: 111

It Takes A Village by LastOneOut (T)

Chapters: 1/1

Words: 22,185

this is, quite possibly, my very favorite fic out of every single one i’ve read, if for no other reason (but there are so many other reasons in reality!!!) than it’s the one i find myself coming back to and thinking about the most out of all of them. taking place post-movie, Bruno starts to get reacquainted with the Encanto’s village and the people in it, with a little help from some very pushy determined children who want to know all his secrets. it’s just!! so much fluff and great slice of life moments!!! and it’s long so the fluff just keeps on going!!

We don't talk about Bruno. by Moonybird (G)

Chapters: 83/83

Words:  158,445

a lot of people have prolly at least seen this one, it had an insane update schedule and the author somehow wrote all of this in just over a month?? like, damn!! all the points to them!! it chronicles Bruno’s life from childhood up to post-movie. some parts of it can be a bit silly and exaggerated, but y’know what, it tells a great story!! the parts detailing Bruno’s slow but steady decline mental-health-wise stand out in my mind especially, as it’s just little details here and there that eventually snowball in the best/worst way. the author is not a native English speaker, if some small grammatical anomalies bug anyone; but honestly, the underlying spirit of the story, the sense of how much work was poured into it, and how immersed you can get in the piece negates any of that.

There were Rats in the Palace by Acewithapaintbrush (G)

Chapters: 1/1

Words: 2,652

a lovely piece on firsts: Bruno’s first rats, (one of) Alma’s first big mistakes, Casita’s first crack. a great lil take about when and where the cracks really started in the Madrigal family, and insight into some of Bruno’s feelings towards Alma that would color the rest of his life as he grew up. we love a complex Alma who’s Trying in this house, and this fic does a great job of portraying her as such!!

Series: My Encanto Fics by CakeBeDamned

Five Times Bruno Stole From His Family, and One Time He Didn't Have To (G, Chapters 2/6, Words: 2,956)

Patching the Cracks (G, Chapters 10/?, Words: 26,162)

You Try to Stop it Toppling, but On and On it Goes (G, Chapters: 1/1, Words: 2,954)

The Stars Don't Shine, They Burn (G, Chapters: 2/?, Words: 8,236)

Fractured, Muted, Falling (T, Chapters: 4/?, Words: 3,134)

In the Fullness of Time (G, Chapters: 1/1, Words: 5,545)

okay just. all of these are gold, pure gold, they are amazing, and there’s SO MANY!! go nuts. i don’t have a longer blurb because these are multiple fics and i will be here forever if i talk about each one. my particular favorites are Patching The Cracks and In the Fullness of Time!! just lots and lots of great pieces centered around Bruno and the rest of the family, mostly set in Casita 2.0 after the Gifts have returned.

Power Shuffle Playlist by AtarahDerekh (G)

Chapters: 8/9

Words: 26,039

so some of these aren’t gonna be quite as Bruno-centric, and this is one of them. in fact, Bruno’s a bit of a little shit in this one, but honestly, the man Just Wants Some Goddamn Rest and who can blame him!! i know there are a lot of “power swap” fics out there, but in my opinion (and this list is just a very overly-self-important collection of my opinions, tbh), this is one of the best! very funny and entertaining, and hopefully everyone grows a lil bit by the end.

Reflection by SETI_fan (G)

Chapters: 1/1

Words: 4,141

another one of my very favorites that i always wind up thinking about again!! this was one of the first fics i read when i started looking outside of tumblr for more Bruno content. Camilo helps Bruno set the table and learns a bit more about the kind of guy his formerly-estranged tío really is. some fun emphasis and background on Bruno’s real gift as an actor!!

The Madrigals and the Beast by methylsalicylate (G)

Chapters: 20/20

Words: 56,615

now we’re cookin’ with AUs, baby!!! as you can maybe guess by the title, and, per the author, “Somewhat of a beauty and the beast type of story, but not quite”, which is a pretty good summary! The Encanto is a kingdom, and the Madrigals are a royal family who lost Bruno long, long ago, believing him to have been captured and killed by a giant rat beast, servant of dark forces. turns out, the rat beast is more than it seems, and it’s Mirabel who will solve the mystery of this giant huggable furball!! this fic is whimsical and humorous, while still maintaining a great undertone of trepidation as the characters face the threats to their family and kingdom.

it's a heavy lift by cheetour (G)

Chapters: 1/1

Words: 7,486

Mirabel is still adjusting to life with Bruno being back, and maaaybe not having the easiest time realizing that she’s just gotta let him sort his own shit out as he acclimates to not being a secret behind the walls anymore. there are so many amazing moments and lines of dialogue in this fic, which you will (hopefully, please read this it’ssogood) get to see for yourself!! the ending is especially heartwarming and adorable and oh gosh i could gush about this for days!!!

The Mouse in the Walls by UC_Glue (G)

Chapters: 22/24

Words: 96,631

an AU where Mirabel meets Bruno in the walls before the events of the movie even begin to take place, except, she doesn’t realize who he is, and Bruno’s not exactly volunteering that information right away. they become good friends as they realize they have a lot of feelings in common about being outcasts, and it’s all just!! really cute!!! sort of a “found family” type vibe, but where the found family is just. her actual family. and she doesn’t know it!!

Birthday Wrath by shienne1327 (G)

Chapters: 4/?

Words: 16,698

it’s the first birthday the triplets are going to celebrate since Bruno’s return! unfortunately, he gets a glimpse of the future of the party, and doesn’t like what he sees. a good mix of humor and angst, Bruno confronts a lot of his feelings from the past as he interacts with his family again and tries his best to soften the blow of his vision. his feelings about himself make my heart hurt and i want to just give this guy like twelve hugs!!

A Little Light (To Make Us See) by Wolfsong6913 (G)

Chapters: 9/9

Words: 18,672

Camilo is holding onto some lingering anger and resentment towards Abuela (and prolly towards himself and the rest of the family too, tbh) for how she treated Mirabel all the years before, and the Candle, responding to that, sends him and Mirabel back in time. they wind up meeting Pedro and a young Alma, and get to witness firsthand just what happened leading up to the creation of the Miracle. a little “walk a mile in my shoes” to help Camilo get some perspective!! this one is prolly the least amount of Bruno, but that does not negate it being an amazing piece of writing!!

Change The Fates' Design by Sokkas_First_Fangirl (G)

Chapters: 25/25

Words: 59,726

it’s literally Tangled meets Encanto, the AU fic!! and it’s amazing!!! Bruno is captured 45 years ago by an evil witch and kept isolated in a tower, his prophecies being used for her own selfish gain. Bruno wants to go see the floating lights that appear every year on his birthday, and begins formulating a plan to sneak out while his guardian’s away. little does he know, he’ll gain a traveling companion before he even steps foot outside!! all the wholesome moments you know and love from Tangled, plus EVEN MORE wholesome moments thrown in from Encanto!!! and also some angst, of course :)

The Children of the Madrigals by ExploringEarth (G)

Chapters: 5/?

Words: 13,397 

this is just straight up family fluff and great comedy with some angst sprinkled in, and all of it is great!! shots of Bruno and the family as they adjust to life with the first Madrigal grandchildren. Bruno is officially World’s Best Tío and i will hear no different!! all of the characters interacting with each other in this fic feel so natural, the dialogue is just wonderfully written and will leave you smiling while reading it!!

Series: Encanto TV episodes from another timeline by cheetour

When the Cat's Away (G, Chapters: 3/3, Words: 13,369)

Tail of the Frog (G, Chapters: 2/2, Words: 19,773)

Birds of Paradise (G, Chapters: 3/3, Words: 32,171)

Deleted Scenes from Another Timeline (G, Chapters: 4/?, Words: 4,772)

so i’m starting to think everyone who does series are just great authors, because here, once again, we have a set of fics that are just pure amazing writing and humor and plots (and plot twists!! the plot twists omg), please go read them immediately!!! Tail of the Frog is my favorite of the three, i’m a sucker for a good bit of sickfic (which isn’t the main main plot point of that one, but still important and wholesome and just read them). the last fic, “Deleted Scenes”, is pretty much just that - bits of plot and passages that the author decided not to include in the final drafts of each fic, but still found noteworthy enough to share with readers!!

Extended Family is Still Family by ArcticVulpix (T)

Chapters: 34/34

Words: 52,030

an AU in which Pepa notices some concerning behavior from Mirabel, and is eerily reminded of Bruno before he disappeared. the whole family (sans Alma) sees the error of their ways much earlier in the movie timeline, and come together to make an effort to be there more for Mirabel!! and Bruno is also discovered much earlier!! there’s also a lot of great post-movie content that i felt was missing from the end of the movie itself, a lot of tough conversations and apologies and realizations!! all of the characters are written so amazingly too!! it’s got it all!!

A Lie More Comfortable than Truth by Queen_Mab (T)

Chapters: 14/14

Words: 41,531

piling on the AUs here: Bruno shows his mother the vision he has the night of Mirabel’s ceremony, and he and Alma decide to stay quiet about it. Bruno stays, but falls into worsening mental health as the vision eats away at him. Mirabel becomes his main caretaker, and they’re so close with each other and it’s super cute!! the vision isn’t what it seems, though, and may lead to unintended consequences down the road. perhaps a little darker than the other fics so far, but very, very good and the writing is excellent!!

Cuñado by MDJensen (T)

Chapters: 5/5

Words: 9,569

really cute scenes of Agustín and Bruno getting to know each other better, set shortly after Agustín marries Julieta and moves into Casita!! cute to start, a bit of angst in the middle, but right back to the amazing fluff at the end!! i love all fics that have these two as best friends and this is no exception, nor does it make it any less wonderful!!

hindsight and her perfect agonies by fais_do_do (T)

Chapters: 3/4

Words: 28,964

as we’ve just established, in this house we love Agustín and Bruno friendship fics!!! the beginning of this is the same series of events from both men's perspectives, and then the rest of the adults join in later to have some serious talks after settling into the church for the night now that Casita is gone. there is SO MUCH DEPTH to everyone’s perspectives in this one, so much dialogue and flashback and history!! you can get lost in it in the best way possible

Self Fulfilling Prophecy by Abbytherat (T)

Chapters: 18/?

Words: 50,685

the immediate aftermath of Casita’s fall and the beginnings of rebuilding through Bruno’s POV. i love the way the author writes Bruno and his inner monologues in this fic, it’s one of my favorite characterizations of him!! he and other members of the family also reflect on the ways his time in the walls has changed him, and how to move forward with that information. Bruno also gets a little more depth regarding his magic!!

Coming Home is Easy, Rebuilding is Harder, by eveningstar477 (G)

Chapters: 1/1

Words: 1,646

a nice little fic about Julieta and Bruno!! particularly Julieta caring for Bruno after the family is reunited, and then again after the miracle returns, which seems to have consequences for Bruno’s formerly-improving health. just some cute lil quiet moments between these two, with Bruno voicing his fears about things going back to how they were before he left.

Family Binds Us (But Drives Us Apart) by Wolfsong6913 (G)

Chapters: 7/?

Words: 18,834

a young Bruno is bored, and when Bruno is bored, shenanigans happen. he convinces the Candle to send himself and his sisters into the future for a day, with the stipulation that they won’t remember anything once they go back to their own time. Future Bruno is... less than thrilled about this, to say the least. i love the author’s dialogue, it’s hilarious and also so soft and cute in these wonderful small moments throughout the fic!! (Isa and Bruno in the first chapter is one such moment!! so small but so incredibly sweet!!!)

The world is a stage but we forgot the script by lullabychipper (G)

Chapters: 1/1

Words: 3,561

another short and sweet fic, Bruno is asked to spend some time with Camilo, and thinks it would be a good way to get to know his nephew again. the fic also has Bruno reflecting a lot on his mental health struggles, particularly depression and how it gives him “good” and “bad” days. he’s able to reaffirm to himself that his family still cares for him even with his struggles, and Camilo only aids in that!! the end result of their bonding is very cute!!

A Remedy for Sadness by 4ce_in_sp4ce (G)

Chapters: 1/1

Words: 3,528

more Julieta and Bruno goodness, this one contains snapshots of Julieta finding and comforting Bruno at various points in his life, from their child/teen years, to the time after the reconstruction of Casita!! does a great job of alluding to the things Bruno deals with over the years without diving into too much detail that would make it a much longer and different fic. i just love the dynamic between the two here!!

Set in stone by WhistlingWolf13 (T)

Chapters: 1/1

Words: 9,800

since the rebuilding of Casita, Bruno hasn’t slept in his room once yet; Mirabel notices and questions him. this leads to the pair going into Bruno’s “new” room together, only to find something they weren’t expecting. a really great piece that dives into why Bruno’s room grew so many stairs over the years, how he views his powers, and his own confrontation of the fears he still has about winding up right back to being unneeded and alone. a bit more of a somber tone for the majority of the fic, but with great bits of humor thrown in here and there, and a wonderful ending!!

we see how brave you've been by hearth_goddess (G)

Chapters: 3/3

Words: 4,937

the triplets and Mirabel are the focus of this one!! each chapter is one of the triplets reflecting on their relationship with Mirabel on the night of Antonio’s ceremony, in addition to a small snapshot of them when the magic is returned with Casita 2.0. it’s basically just a really, really sweet and feel-good piece of writing and the perfect bit of fluff one might need to lift the spirits!! (this fic is also part of a larger series, but i haven’t read the other fics in it (yet) so i haven’t included them here. feel free to give them a look if you fancy!!)

Series: The Merry Wagon of Tio Bruno and his Nieces by LoandBehold24

Paper Crown Rebellion (G, Chapters: 1/1, Words: 5,530)

A Real Voyage for the Doña Lucia (Y un Amigo) (G, Chapters: 1/1, Words: 4,042)

The Nuances of Wish Granting (G, Chapters: 1/1, Words: 7,401)

once again, an absolutely amazing series of works here!! each piece focuses on Bruno and one of his nieces before his time in the walls. he helps try to encourage them to be their own people, to do the things they want, not what others expect of them, and is basically just an all-around great tío (World’s Best Tío strikes again!!) to all of them!! there’s a small sub-plot that’s featured in each story, too, to help link them together and provide a bit of an antagonistic element for Bruno that colors his interactions with his nieces and the other characters in the stories. there’s so. much. fluff!!! in this series!!! all of the stories are just super cute, i can’t recommend them enough!!

Series: The Bad Hero by Arachniphobia16

M-Rated fics are for graphic depictions of violence and injury. take care!!

The Council's Damned (T, Chapters: 3/3, Words: 10,864)

The Exiled Sage (Not Rated, Chapters: 1/1, Words: 3,327)

Saving Lives (T, Chapters: 6/6, Words: 7,741)

Out-Foxing the Fox (T, Chapters: 1/1, Words: 2,882)

Easier Said Than Done (M, Chapters: 5/5, Words: 11,396)

Rat Dad (G, Chapters: 1/1, Words: 2,847)

I'm Fine (T, Chapters: 2/2, Words: 7,571)

A Spell Too Far (M, Chapters: 3/3, Words: 8,495)

Rebels and Shamans (M, Chapters: 8/8, Words: 27,158)

The Stranger in the Glass (G, Chapters: 6/6, Words: 20,907)

The Hand of the Betrayed (M, Chapters: 1/1, Words: 4,510)

A Kiss and a Miss (G, Chapters: 2/2, Words: 7,306)

Beneath the Surface (G, Chapters: 4/?, Words: 12,929)

so this series!! this series!!! i will say off the bat, the author definitely writes Bruno in a different direction than the majority of other fics i’ve read. think more... slightly unhinged cartoon character way, rather than just sad rat uncle with mental health struggles way?? though he’s definitely the latter too. i can’t think of a great way to word it HOWEVER!!! it’s super good and holds a special place in my heart for it’s uniqueness. Bruno in these fics also digs deeper into his Gift and unlocks hidden abilities and potential that i think are great and absolutely fit with his character!! 

*the fics are ordered here according to the chronological timeline established by the author (up to Rebels and Shamans, anyway), NOT the order they were written in, just fyi.

New Room, New Beginning by AnimationNut (G)

Chapters: 1/1

Words: 4,193

one for the whole family, y’all!! the morning after the celebratory party marking Casita’s return, the family wakes up to find that Mirabel was given her own room! they all follow her in to explore the new space, and reflect on their changed family dynamic. it’s just super soft and fluffy and i love the author’s take on a room for Mirabel!! absolutely one of my favorite iterations of her potential room.

We Don't Talk About Oscar, Either by SundayZenith (T)

Chapters: 1/1

Words: 8,709

taking place during Casita’s rebuild, Mirabel and Antonio happen to find an old photo of a young Bruno with another teenage guy his age. when they show the photo to Bruno, he promptly panics and does what he does best: gets the hell outta dodge (or the church, in this case)!! Mirabel goes after him, followed by Agustín and Félix later, all of them affirming to Bruno that no one in the family would be shunned for their feelings. many heartwarming revelations at the end, and lots of familial support!!

Bruno, Belonging by redwoodroots (T)

Chapters: 1/1 

Words: 6,530

Bruno gets settled back into being a part of the family again, as well as being a part of the Encanto at large. his nieces and nephews help in the latter task, wanting to show the villagers that their beloved tío isn’t the strange scary spectre they built up in their minds. however, not all of the villagers are so quick to forget, and one in particular decides to take matters into their own hands. lots of funny dialogue and great moments here!!

Futuro by ZenyZootSuit (M)

this is officially rated T, but i would say it might fall more into the M category because of the heavy topics it deals with. 

the author upped the rating to M, see below for a few cws!

relevant warnings include implied/referenced self-harm, implied/referenced past suicide attempts, implied/referenced attempted murder/lynching, referenced instance of burning someone alive, violence, implied/referenced alcohol abuse... there are likely more but these are the most prevalent ones i think!! take care!!

Chapters: 12/13 

Words: 103,421

so if the content warnings didn’t make it clear, this is definitely a darker take on the whole “Bruno coming back to his family post-rebuild” scenario. BUT!!! it is also one of the most gripping fics i’ve read, ever, which is saying something. as it turns out, Bruno’s Gift causes him a lot of chronic pain, something he’s grappled with his entire life and got a brief reprieve from when the Gifts were gone. this, in combination with the fact he spent the last ten years reflecting on his life and choices, leads to him having new resolve to survive his Gift and live to see his nieces and nephews grow up. each chapter focuses on him and a different family member interacting and learning about each other, with a connected timeline threaded throughout as well. it’s just!! really really well written and does an amazing job of giving you a palpable sense of dread about the violence that a poisoned herd mentality can cause!!! but in a really good way!!! there’s also plenty of humorous dialogue and fluff that helps balance it out. definitely worth reading if you’re okay with the content warnings!!

a gift is not a favor by idkimoutofideas (T)

Chapters: 8/?

Words: 30,142

another really great “power swap” fic, this one is a bit less lighthearted than the previous rec (but no less of a great read, of course!!!), more focused on the Gifts getting swapped due to continuing discord in the family, rather than a bit of an accident with the Candle. the whole family learns the struggles each other person faces with their gifts, as they try to still aid the town while navigating their new powers. i really love all of the characterization here, and how they very quickly learn that their perceptions of each other’s Gifts may not be what they thought!!

Grappling With Prophecies by SETI_fan (T)

Chapters: 4/4

Words: 12,298

now that Bruno’s back in the Encanto with his family, a certain villager wants a do-over with a vision he was given many years ago, before Bruno’s disappearance. the family is understandably wary, but Bruno agrees to do the vision again, with unexpected results. i just love everything about how this one is written!! the ending especially has such a nice resolution to it, and really shows off the fact that Bruno is a really wise dude underneath all of his fears and reservations from the past!!

The Walls Have Ears by Angel_KT7 (G)

Chapters: 15/15

Words: 32,215

a re-telling of the story of Encanto, through Bruno’s first-person POV!! i really love the author’s writing structure throughout the fic, it gives everything a really lighthearted tone. the way the opening chapter is narrated is especially great to me, and that same humorous/whimsical undertone is carried on throughout the fic. just a really cute, feel-good piece of writing!!

Convalescence by AnimationNut (G)

Chapters: 2/?

Words: 10,864

short stories with many different family members being involved, but also directly or indirectly involving Bruno!! the first chapter is a stair-climbing contest in Bruno’s tower, and the second focuses on Dolores’ struggles when she loses her gift, and suddenly the world is too quiet. yet again, World’s Best Tío is here to help!!

Yellow by sionnaach (G)

Chapters: 2/2

Words: 2,563

triplet angst and comfort, triplet angst and comfort!!! Bruno tries to share some news with Pepa that he think will help her, but only ends up setting off her temper and having hurtful words thrown at him in anger. the first chapter is Julieta comforting him, the second is the aftermath between him and Pepa. all of the triplets are written so amazingly, and it’s just a really great cozy fic to read!!

We Will Try Again by mistermistyeyed (G)

Chapters: 1/1

Words: 15,438

a really cute fic of Bruno readjusting to life with his Gift back, but he’s not the only one that needs to adjust; his family also need to change their attitudes and reactions towards his Gift, and they do try!! things aren’t going to get better immediately, some mistakes are made that hurt him, but everyone is amazingly written here and you can tell that everyone is beginning to grow throughout the fic!!

maybe this year by Spondylus (G)

Chapters: 1/1

Words: 2,058

another lil slice of life moment fic!! Bruno wakes up to an involuntary vision that results in a migraine, and Mirabel, who came to fetch him for breakfast, questions him and tries to see how she can help. she ends up returning with Agustín, who shares a memory of how they used to help Bruno in the past with the migraines. honestly, i love all the short, sweet, tidbit of life fics like these!! they’re so cute and just a real relaxing thing to read!!

You can have your cake and eat it too. by sleepygirl0305 (not rated, but i’d say G)

Chapters: 1/1

Words: 1,867

more cute triplet time!!! this time it’s the day of their 51st birthday, and, in two separate-but-related plans for how to spend the day, they find themselves running into each other very early in the morning in the kitchen. basically, just more cute family fluff and spoiling Bruno a bit for his first birthday back with the family!!

Cursed by ArcticVulpix (T)

Chapters: 18/?

Words: 46,745

a really great and unique AU done in a way that i haven’t seen in another fic yet!! the night Pedro dies, in addition to receiving the Miracle, Alma and her family are also subjected to a curse, a dark and evil magic trying to smother out the blessing. her children and grandchildren still receive “gifts”, but the powers they were intended to have are warped by the curse. Casita becomes both their home and prison as some curses are so extreme, they leave their subjects bedroom-bound. the dynamics of the whole family in this new scenario are amazingly written!!

damned and divine by heyimflamel (T)

Chapters: 13/?

Words: 41,595

a retrospective look at Bruno’s life growing up, highlighting important, character-shaping moments. honestly, this one’s just a nice long read for when you wanna get cozy and immerse yourself in great slice-of-life writing centered around Bruno!!

My Tío Bruno by GryffindorGyrl1997 (G)

Chapters: 3/3

Words: 5,768

remember what i said about sickfics?? well here’s a good one for you!! 11-year-old Mirabel offers to stay in Casita by herself while the rest of the family must take a trip across the Encanto. things are going fine at first, until she comes down with a bad illness. Bruno, who is 6 years into living in the walls, comes out of hiding in order to take care of her when things get dire. really cute and comforting Bruno here!! 

Tonight Will Be Hard for Us All by pageantry (T)

Chapters: 1/1

Words: 2,857

so i will absolutely say that i love when fics include and/or are about the deleted “Chores” scene, where Félix and Agustín tell Mirabel about when Bruno (then still called Oscar) left the family. this one is no exception, and expands on what was said in the scene in a really great way!! Bruno’s characterization here and concern for his nieces and nephew are just written so well, and his argument with Alma feels so authentic to both of them!! quoting from the author’s summary, which i wholeheartedly agree with, “In this house it's Bruno Madrigal Loves His Niece hours 24/7/365“.

I'll brick by brick rebuilt us (out of how's and why's not when's) by Acewithapaintbrush (not rated, prolly G territory??)

Chapters: 6/6

Words: 29,121

so this fic is just. another phenomenal work that contains so many good things, i could go on for ages about it!!! written as a series of before and afters, each chapter centers on Bruno and one of his nieces and nephews, exploring how he helped each of them before leaving, and how he continues to do so after he comes back. every single chapter is just!! really soft and so great!!! everyone’s written so well in this one, and its a ridiculous amount of wonderful fluff with lil tidbits of angst here and there. another of the ones i always come back to read again!!

Encanto One-Shots by PerrythePlatypusGirl (G)

Chapters: 10/?

Words: 47,189

a really great collection of oneshot stories that include all members of the family!! some are silly, some are heavier, and they all tend to skew towards more fluff, or at least end on some hopeful notes!! they take place across various timelines, so there’s definitely something for everyone here!

Yo Sigo Aquí by sionnaach (G)

Chapters: 1/1

Words: 1,122

just a short and sweet lil fic of Dolores trying to comfort Bruno in her own way when he has a bad day in the walls. the ending is a bit bittersweet (not a bad thing!!), and i just wanna hug the rat tío and so does Dolores!!

A wall away by levi2207 (G)

Chapters: 1/1

Words: 4,471

triplet sister angst time!!! (it’s light angst don’t worry) Julieta and Pepa talk to each other about Bruno, who is still hiding away for the most part as he gets used to reintegrating into the Madrigal family. when they realize he might not have been as far away as they thought for the last ten years, they question Mirabel, and convince her to show them Bruno’s kitchen-adjacent hideaway. the author includes a bit of history for why the little room exists in the first place, a detail that i really really love and haven’t seen in another fic so far yet!!

Series: With The Dawn You Rise (With The Day You Blaze) by Sokkas_First_Fangirl

warning for implied/referenced suicide in Dimming, take care!!

Blazing (G, Chapters: 1/1, Words: 1,261)

Dawning (G, Chapters: 1/1, Words: 1,962)

Glowing (G, Chapters: 1/1, Words: 5,122)

Glittering (T, Chapters: 7/7, Words: 12,917)

Shimmering (G, Chapters: 1/1, Words: 5,604)

Dimming (T, Chapters: 6/6, Words: 15,836)

Shining (G, Chapters: 8/8, Words: 11,476)

Flickering (G, Chapters: 6/?, Words: 12,946)

what can i even say about this series, like??? it’s just so good. really, really amazing!!! every piece is worth a read, and then several more reads, and some more reads on top of that for good measure!! all of the fics are Bruno-centric, but all of the family members make an appearance as well! every character is written phenomenally, but i especially love the author’s characterization of Agustín and Félix (and Bruno ofc but that’s a given at this point)!! the timeline of the fics range from the night of/morning after Mirabel’s failed gift ceremony, to post-rebuild!! i honestly love every single piece in here, but if i had to choose a favorite, it would be Glittering, because i will never not be a sucker for Guy Time(tm) with Agustín, Félix, and Bruno hanging out!!

i didn’t put these ones in chronological order because the author hasn’t specifically set an order for them like the previous series i listed, but i thiiink it would be something like: Dimming, Blazing, Dawning, Glowing, Shimmering, Glittering, and then Shining. Flickering jumps around between times!

The World Doesn't End by Lolapola (G)

Chapters: 7/7

Words: 18,468

a 5-times trope fic!! i’m honestly surprised this is the first one of these (standalone, anyway) this far into the list, but BOY what a great (and painful) one it is!!! honestly, i won’t lie, it’s a lot of angst. like, mostly angst. it made my heart hurt a lot and i wanted to just give Bruno All The Hugs, but the writing is wonderful and the way it encapsulates the slow decline of Bruno and his reputation is just!! so good!!!!

Flowers for Bruno by Bitsy83 (G)

Chapters: 1/1

Words: 2,677

honestly, there are so many Bruno & Camilo fics, or Bruno & Mirabel fics... where are the Bruno & Isabela fics?? well here’s one, a really really good and cute one!!! now that the family is settled in Casita 2.0, Isabela has been gifting each member flowers to help decorate their new rooms. but when it comes time to pick a flower for Bruno, she finds herself stumped. their dialogue is just super cute and really well done here!! especially in the beginning, where things between them seem juuust a bit awkward at first, i feel like that is authentic to how it would go down until they kinda find their footing with each other.

moving day by disastermovie (G)

Chapters: 1/1

Words: 4,670

an AU where Bruno stays after Mirabel’s failed gifting ceremony!! since her birthday went so poorly, Bruno tries to cheer her up by giving her her own bedroom. it may not be magical, but it’ll be hers!! i cannot state enough how much i really love how everyone is written in this one!! also, somehow a group consisting of Bruno, Luisa, and Dolores are also slight agents of chaos?? or at least Luisa is; Bruno almost ends up a victim of that chaos, and Dolores tries to keep her poor, dear tío alive. there’s SO MUCH story somehow packed into a relatively small wordcount for everything that happens?? and it doesn’t feel too full or rushed whatsoever, the pacing and changing story beats flow so naturally!!

A Place for Crows (to rest their feet) by Acewithapaintbrush (G)

Chapters: 13/18

Words: 84,704

guys!!! guys!!!!!! okay i’ve honestly been looking forward to gushing about this one, because holy shit is it absolutely amazing!! this fic is a “Pedro Lives” AU, set post-rebuild in Casita 2.0. i don’t wanna say too much more than that plot-wise, because you really, really!! need to just read this one!!! please!!!! i’m really, really picky about this trope in fics, but this one absolutely does this subject in an amazing way. it’s one of the fics i’m reading currently, and i look forward to each and every new chapter!!! the dialogue, the way the family members interact with each other, the way the interactions with Pedro are handled are all just!!! so good!!! please give this one a read and all your kudos!!

Tiles on the Roof by Avatar_Vyakara (T)

Chapters: 14/?

Words: 112,717

so this one is another fic that is amazingly unique in how their written world handles the magic of not just the Encanto and the characters within it, but the outside world as well. each chapter is a series of oneshots for various family members (multiple oneshots per chapter, these chapters are LONG and i absolutely love that they are!! there’s so much content here!!), with a loosely connected plot in the beginning that really solidifies in later chapters. i especially love Bruno’s bits (shocking, i know) and how his Gift is portrayed here. and i really, REALLY love how the rats and other animals dialogue is written!!! that part will make sense once you read ;) but it’s super good, i promise.

Axolotl by archive_rat (G)

Chapters: 8/8

Words: 14,940

i think this is one of the earliest fics i read when i fell down this never-ending rabbit hole, and boy am i glad that i found it!! and now you’ve found it too, hooray!!! Mirabel, Isabela, and Camilo find themselves thrown into the Encanto of the past, when the triplets were just teenagers. needing to figure out how to get home, who better to ask for the correct path than the Encanto’s very own soothsayer?? the trio is written so well and their dynamic with each other feels so natural and fun!! my heart also aches for young Bruno in this one, and the grandchildren get a glimpse of just what their tío’s home life was like growing up, while also unintentionally leaving their mark on events of the past. 

One Step Away by Breanna (G)

Chapters: 50/50

Words: 83,288

okay, so let me start off this one by pointing to the chapter count there. 50!! 50 whole chapters of amazing short stories!!! each chapter is a different snapshot of life in the Madrigal family; most are Bruno- and Mirabel-centric, often with them together, but the other members of the family get their time to shine too. it’s got it all: fluff, angst, anticipation, dread, even more fluff!!! and honestly, if great writing in large quantities isn’t enough to impress you, i think this had also been updating more or less daily?? or at least often enough that i was so used to seeing it update that it became a fixture in my mind of ongoing fics that i so looked forward to reading. while i believe every single chapter is great, i can say for sure that you’ll find at least one that you’ll greatly enjoy!!

After the Fall by King_Aidan (G)

Chapters: 1/1

Words: 9,351

a lil bit of canon divergence here!! not quite an AU, still quite amazing!! directly after the fall of Casita, Pepa storms to the back of the house to try and collect her thoughts and calm herself. and who does she find, laying in the grass wearing a bucket?? Jorge!! Bruno, who’s not in a great way after his attempt to impersonate a wrecking ball. basically just some early reuniting and cute sickfic(?? not really sick but injured??? idk) fluff with both sisters helping to take care of Bruno before he gives them the slip to go find Mirabel. who doesn’t love even more amazing triplet content!!

Bound By Delicate Dread (Saving No Face) by pasta_stuffed_possums (G)

Chapters: 1/1

Words: 3,788

this fic is just straight up Bruno and Pepa bonding goodness!! wiiith a decent amount of angst thrown in, because of course. various snapshots of Bruno and Pepa commiserating together over the years when their powers fail to live up to expectations, and seem only to cause more harm than good. the last two paragraphs of the 3rd section get me every single time i read this!!! and the ending absolutely also does the same!!

A Shoulder to Cry On by MDJensen (G)

Chapters: 1/1

Words: 1,589

the Agustín and Bruno friendship train is BACK!! a short but super sweet fic of Bruno comforting Agustín when his anxieties of new fatherhood bleed into his dreams. this isn’t the fluffy kind of comforting, it’s more of like... a quiet?? almost somber??? kind of comfort, but it’s a great balm to the initial angst, and i just love how their relationship is written here!!

Annoying, Tiny Brothers by 68stitches (G)

Chapters: 1/1

Words: 1,266

the amount of absolute snark and humor packed, somehow, into just over 1200 words continues to confound and amaze me, but this author absolutely made it happen, and made it happen well!!! this is just a straight-up feel good piece with lots of funny moments as the family all relax outside for the day, and a long-standing argument over Bruno’s weight goes just a bit too far.

Steps to His Healthiest Self by hope170 (G)

Chapters: 1/1

Words: 2,569

a super wholesome piece detailing Bruno’s slow but steady recovery from his ten years of isolation in the walls!! Julieta and Pepa work together to help their little brother readjust and begin to find himself again. Bruno has absolutely no say in this matter whatsoever, of course, not when his sisters are teamed up and on the case. and when Casita 2.0 is finished, and old anxieties around his Gift return, they’ll team up to support him then, too.

Rain or Shine by Highly_Illogical (G)

Chapters: 1/1

Words: 4,060

honestly, i really, really love the author’s writing style!! there’s a lot of dry humor and hilarious sentences that are dropped with no build-up or fanfare preceding them. they just appear!! like a fun lil surprise!! taking place post-movie, Bruno still feels like he should make the whole wedding fiasco up to Pepa in some way, and suggests that she and Félix renew their wedding vows in a new ceremony. of course, this means he gets roped into help planning the ceremony, which means a run-in with a certain hair-challenged priest. lots of great humor and cute fluffy moments await you!!

As I make myself acquainted with the Saint of Never Getting It Right by Acewithapaintbrush (G)

Chapters: 1/1

Words: 3,396

oh boy, this fic. this one hurts!! a lil bit!! but in a good way, of course!!! what can i say, i’m always down for excellent writing that chronicles the slow descent of Bruno becoming Bad Luck to the village. this fic is especially poignant in that sense because it narrates so well that it was a slow, but steady process, a drawn-out burnout over years and years, instead of one life-altering terrible vision that suddenly turned people against him or something. the ending is especially great, and makes you let out a sigh of relief and hope!!!

And Poppy or Charms Can Make Us Sleep as Well by archive_rat (not rated, but i’d say prolly T-ish just for the subject matter)

warning for semi-graphic description of arsenic poisoning in later chapters, the author has the chapter in question labeled in the top notes as well. take care!!

Chapters: 13/13

Words: 12,638

does it count as a sickfic if the sickness is poison?? i don’t have a way to put this delicately, or fun words with gratuitous exclamation points to beat around the bush with the summary of this one; Bruno eats food laced with rat poison by mistake while still living in the walls. but!!! there’s also a very fun sub-plot that winds its way throughout the story, and this author has never ceased to amaze me yet with the way they craft words that is really unique to them and their fics!! the way the author writes gives the impression of a lot of research and thorough planning having been done, mixed in with whimsical elements and humor that create a really fun blend of a fic!! OH i also LOVE how they write dialogue for Hernando and Jorge, i wish more fics used a similar style when they’re included!!! it’s just so fun and the mix of font weights is a really lovely lil visual thing!!

do you feel ashamed, when you hear my name? by shrinkydiinks (G)

Chapters: 1/1

Words: 4,084

this fic is so soft!!! just! so soft!! Bruno and Julieta have a long talk about the state of things in the family and why he left, in the kitchen late at night. they both reflect on the hurt (however unintentional) that Alma caused and the unobtainable expectations she had set over the years. it’s basically just a bunch of Julieta and Bruno goodness!! i love their relationship, and this fic hits that perfect mix of somber yet sweet in its tone.

Lazy Day by ReverseSkyrocketing (G)

Chapters: 1/1

Words: 1,079

short and sweet and adorable right here!! just a cute lil scene of the triplets when they were younger kids, playing outside together. Bruno comes back with some troubling news, and his sisters commiserate with him. i love the dialogue in this one, it feels really natural for the age the triplets are at here. just a lil burst of cute if you need something to lift your spirits and make you smile!!

Bruno from Before by UsedTobeGuest123 (G)

Chapters: 17/17

Words: 50,539

as i get further and further into this list, i prolly sound like i’m repeating myself in several of these lil summaries, but i hope!! that it doesn’t dissuade you from reading any of these, especially this one!!! taking place in Casita 2.0, Mirabel tries to help Bruno deal with the pain of holding back his Gift by encouraging him to use it, before it reaches the level of discomfort he’s used to dealing with. she reflects on what Julieta had said about Bruno being different to how he was before the walls, which sticks with her throughout this entire story. there are honestly so many great little moments in this one, if i were to list even a fraction of them, i’d never finish this post!! i especially love the way Bruno is written here, a little more well-rounded than in other instances, even getting a bit grumpy and snappish at times, which i can definitely see happening with him when he’s more relaxed and not so constantly anxious. honestly, this whole fic in general is well-rounded, a great and entertaining mix of humor, fluff, angst, and comfort!!

home on hollow bones by thisstableground (T)

Chapters: 1/?

Words: 2,176

while there are a good amount of “Dolores hears Bruno in the walls” fics, and even though this only has one chapter (so far?), i was instantly taken by the writing style, and how Dolores’ viewpoint and Gift of hearing were presented. not all of the fics that write in this trope get into the nitty gritty details of just why Bruno and Dolores can be seen as having a close relationship, but this one doesn’t shy away from just how terrible some of the things they see and hear can be, and i think it’s all the better for it!!

The Green Book by DragonOvLeaves (T)

Chapters: 1/1

Words: 2,025

i hope you also like fics of Dolores and Bruno, because apparently i’ve got a decent few in here!! this fic has a really unique style of writing (i’m not sure if there’s a word for it?? someone who knows anything about literary styles, help me out) that is a series of notes, written by Dolores, of all the things she hears but cannot say to others. most of it is focused on Bruno in the walls over the years, and it gives you little tidbits of both fluff and angst that inspire further thought on how he was living, and what his mental state might have been like that whole time.

Favorite Imperfect Tío by silverwolf_fox (G)

Chapters: 1/1

Words: 904

another rare Isabela and Bruno fic!!! a really short and sweet reflection on Bruno from Isa’s point of view, and how their relationship worked before he disappeared. honestly, i completely agree with this characterization of them both!! a lot of fics tend to write Isa as a little more... unsure?? of how to interact with Bruno?? i’ve never read her being standoffish or anything when talking with him, but they’re usually not the two characters fics tend to peg as having a close relationship. but i think it just really really works, and this fic does a wonderful job of highlighting why!!!

Little Talks by Metaphoricaltigers (G)

Chapters: 3/3

Words: 8,129

during the rebuilding of Casita 2.0, Bruno has some conversations with various members of his family about his disappearance, and how it affected each of them. honestly, each of these chapters is a wonderful mix of sad and sweet, but the thing i think i like most about this fic, is that Bruno also acknowledges, without any beating around the bush, that his leaving really hurt his family and maybe wasn’t a great idea in the end. did he do the best he could with his situation?? probably! was it done with good intentions?? of course!! does that make it okay or right??? weeeell no, not necessarily. and i love this fic for diving into that idea a bit, instead of portraying him as a martyr whose actions were entirely without fault!!

Seen with the Eyes, Felt with the Heart by Breanna (G)

Chapters: 1/1

Words: 7,000

the history of Bruno’s life in relation to his Gift; angst, fluff, and hopeful endings, all rolled into one amazing fic!! and with the great writing talents of the author, none of it feels too jam packed; the flow of the years and the shifting tone throughout the piece are done so naturally, it’s really wonderful work!! while the first part focuses on Bruno and his younger years, the latter portion of the fic is focused primarily on him, vision-sick and often bedbound, and his relationship with a 4-year-old Mirabel. most of which involves Mirabel Taking Exactly None Of His Shit and spending time with her poor sick tío, whether he likes it or not. Casita may or may not be in cahoots with her.

Happy Birthday by Innito_Is_Writing (G)

Chapters: 1/1

Words: 1,606

oh boy i hope you like being punched directly in the heart, because this fic right here might just do that to you!!! Bruno is five years into his time in the walls, and today is the day that Antonio is born. he lingers next to Pepa’s room to make sure all goes well, and winds up overhearing things he could’ve gone without, while also reflecting on the fact that he’ll likely never meet his youngest nephew. god this fic just hurts but you still love it!!! the writing is excellent, with little lines that know just how to squeeze your insides. bittersweet, largely bitter, but in the best way!!

Prodigal Son by Natural_Logarhythm (G)

Chapters: 1/1

Words: 7,895

so i know i say this like, every third fic rec or so, but god do i love how Bruno is written here!!!! honestly, the whole fic contains so much good dialogue and humor, that even though the subject matter should feel heavier, it just leaves me with a smile instead!! a couple weeks after the completion of Casita 2.0 and the return of the Gifts, Bruno finds himself reflecting on his own power; the pains that come with it, and the different nature it seems to have this time around. Mirabel muses on the possible explanations behind it with him, and joins him for a vision to see if the future holds any answers for Bruno. the first time around i read this, i honestly wasn’t entirely sure about the ending?? but after thinking about it for a while (and several more rereads later), it’s grown on me, and i really, really like the idea that’s presented, which will let Bruno really find himself again after so many years of distance and isolation and feeling like the odd one out by trying to fit into a mould that’s just not him. it’s slightly bittersweet, but it’s for the best!!!

After the Fall by Bostonian_Girl85 (G)

Chapters: 1/1

Words: 2,758

a great little fic that follows Bruno from the immediate aftermath of Casita’s fall, to his ever-graceful entrance to confront Alma and defend Mirabel, giving some story to that lost in-between period. there’s a lot of fun flashback that happens here, and a lot of inner monologue for Bruno as he reflects on his past in relation to Mirabel and Alma, particularly. also, Bruno scaring some poor farmer and his kid, appearing like a goddamned ghost that rose from the dead and just straight up demanding a horse. a dramatic scene worthy of a telenovella episode!!

Quiet by UsedTobeGuest123 (G)

Chapters: 4/?

Words: 12,859

you know what seems to be even rarer than Bruno and Isa fics?? Bruno and Luisa fics!!! and while this is technically a series of oneshots focusing on quiet moments, that include many different family members, the first two chapters are alllll Bruno and Luisa!! the first deals with Bruno reflecting on a baby Luisa while listening to the birth of Antonio (and also as i type this, i just realized i completely didn’t know i had two fics (kinda) of Bruno doing that?? no idea how common that fic topic is, but apparently enough for at least two fics!!), while the second involves him comforting an older Luisa, post-rebuild, as she tries to adjust to whatever the heck this “relaxation” thing is. this is by the same author as “Bruno From Before”, so if you’ve read that, you know this will be some quality writing!!! 

as of 03/31 there are more chapters now, so i updated the description a bit!! i’m still excited about the Bruno and Luisa chapters tho, so i left those parts in :) the new chapters are just as amazingly written as the previous ones, and the mood set in each one comes across so well!!!

cross your fingers by thisstableground (G)

Chapters: 1/1

Words: 13,059

“’Espera un momento.’ He doubles back on himself like he’s forgotten something and leans behind a mostly-crumbled wall, where he throws up, says ‘huh,’ and then promptly passes out.”

...so i’ve avoided actually quoting any part of the fics in these little rambling blurbs to avoid any spoilers and such (and i want you to be able to have that great feeling of reading something awesome for the very first time!!!), but then i opened this one to skim it again real quick for the summary, saw that line once again, and i just. well. it’s just hilarious??? like the rest of this entire fic!!! taking place in the days following Casita’s collapse, the rest of the family begins to adjust to Bruno being back, while Mirabel tries to get him to address the elephant in the room of telling everyone else just where the heck he’s been for ten years. preferably before they unearth his room and find out in a much less pleasant way. honestly, i’ve said it many times already, and i’ll keep saying it, the writing in this fic is comedic gold!! i hope you read it and enjoy it immensely!!!

Scrubbing Day by pasta_stuffed_possums (G)

Chapters: 1/1

Words: 2,004

guy time guy time GUY TIME!!!!!! the Bros Madrigal are back in business, with the return of Bruno turning the former-duo of Agustín and Félix back into its rightful trio!! with the rest of the family out for the day, Agustín and Félix are in charge of cleaning Casita (2.0), and decide to make it a Scrubbing Day, an age-old tradition of dubious safety. when Bruno wanders in with perfect (or terrible, according to him, prolly) timing, Félix wastes no time in having him join, whether he wants to or not. honestly just!!! i don’t think i’m capable of not loving any fic that is centered around these three hanging out, but it definitely helps that this one features wonderful writing, humor, and all-around good vibes!! a great choice if you just need something to smile and laugh at while picturing these three utter dorks making questionable choices (Bruno’s choice being made for him, of course).

Landscape With the Fall of Icarus by archive_rat (G)

Chapters: 8/8

Words: 7,025

a self-fulfilling prophecy if i’ve ever seen one!! as Bruno is getting settled back into the Madrigal family dynamic, he wakes up one morning after a nightmare, which his family immediately questions him about at breakfast. he’s convinced it was just a dream and nothing more, but he’s the only one, and the family begin following him in a series of hilarious, but well-meaning, efforts to prevent his nightmare-vision from becoming reality. i really, really love the dynamic of all the grandkids in this one!! their banter feels so natural and the adults’ different handling of the situation is also very funny and seems totally in sync with their characters!! honestly everything by this author is great, and i believe there’s a couple more works i didn’t get to list in this initial post, so go check them out if you enjoyed this!!

Series: Welcome to the Family Weirdo Club by PensandPizza

Family Weirdo Club: Simplicity (G, Chapters: 1/1, Words: 3,350)

Family Weirdo Club: Thorns (G, Chapters: 1/1, Words: 2,175) 

Family Weirdo Club: Rehearsal (G, Chapters: 1/1, Words: 2,538)

Family Weirdo Club: Book Club (G, Chapters: 1/1, Words: 936)

Family Weirdo Club: Self Care (G, Chapters: 1/1, Words: 1,586)

Thou Art A Villain (T, Chapters: 1/1, Words: 2,553)

Family Weirdo Club: Rebellion (Not Rated, Chapters: 1/1, Words: 748)

Family Weirdo Club: Princesa (Not Rated, Chapters: 1/1, Words: 2,079)

Family Weirdo Club: A Good Story (Not Rated, Chapters: 1/1, Words: 1,911)

...okay so, technically, this isn’t a series, but only by virtue of the author hasn’t officially put it into a series list just yet. by every other factor (and now by the author making it into a listed series proper!!!), it’s definitely a series, and a really good and cute one!!! each fic is a short story of Bruno, now returned from the walls, interacting with his nieces and nephews, usually in very humorous ways (with a lil angst thrown in too because!! of course). the writing of Bruno and all of the dialogue, for every character, is really really great!! i especially love Bruno’s inner monologue in all of the fics, he’s just got that perfect mix of sarcasm and and anxiety that we all know and love!!

Pancita by WaitingOnAVision (G)

Chapters: 1/1

Words: 3,172

in this house!! we are all about Bruno with a tummy!!! so, naturally, in this list we also are all about Bruno with a tummy, which brings us to this really fucking cute and wholesome fic!!!!! it has all three triplets in it but the main focus is Bruno and Julieta, the latter reflecting on the former’s state of health when he first came out of the walls; which was, basically, awful. jump forward a year that was filled with many ups and downs, steps forward and steps back, and the end result, after so much work and effort, is a healthy Bruno with a bit of a pudgy belly!! a sign of good health, not to mention just real cute!!! all the dialogue in this fic feels so natural and genuine, which only adds to the overall tone of concerned family fluff

This Might As Well Happen by LissyStrata (G)

Chapters: 4/?

Words: 10,655

this is, quite literally, just “Bruno turns into a rat”, the fanfic!! BUT!!! it is really funny and sweet and wonderful??? honestly, it’s just a great, silly, refreshing thing to read!! i know we all enjoy the angst and the diving into Bruno’s tattered and healing relationships here most days, but this fic is a nice reprieve when you just wanna kick back, relax, and read something straight up lighthearted and humorous!!

Tío-Shaped by sionnaach (G)

Chapters: 1/1

Words: 995

everyone all aboard the Bruno tummy train again!!! i cannot tell you how immensely, self-satisfyingly glad i am that more and more fics are popping up that revolve around Bruno and his path to good health again!!! here’s yet another wonderful, sweet, wholesome example of just that!! Antonio’s new favorite pillow is his Tío Bruno, who reflects on Julieta and the rest of the family’s efforts to help him re-adjust to life in the family, especially physically, given the poor state of his health when he first returned to them. Antonio, ever the little ray of sunshine, is happy to note that “Tío Bruno’s not as sharp anymore.” and Bruno can only contently agree to that.

---

more to come, always!! :)

[santanaveralopez]

A few days after adopting Mila, Santana woke up with the immediate feeling that her day was not going to go well. Even before she attempted to open her eyes, she was aware of her body’s sharp ache throughout her muscles, particularly concentrated in her stomach with cramping pains. Something was wrong.

 

She had slept restlessly in the night, tossing and turning and waking up several times, sweaty and yet always grasping out for Brittany, not wanting to let her go no matter how much warmer her body heat against her made her feel. Now as she drifted back into consciousness again, Santana groaned to herself, keeping her eyes tightly shut in an effort to will away her discomfort. She had the feeling that if she allowed one more of her senses to come into play, it would overwhelm her already stressed body into an overdrive.

 

She swallowed, aware of an excess of saliva in her mouth, and tried to burrow further into their blankets, despite her heated skin. The slight movement sent fresh aches through her limbs, and the pain in her stomach became a steady churning that intensified into outright nausea.

 

What the hell? Was this PMS? She wasn’t due to have her period again so soon, and this seemed more extreme than she remembered being used to.

 

Well, fine. She just wasn’t going to move until it went away. She was going to stay right exactly where she was until it went away, because if she willed it strongly enough, then it would just have to, that was all. If she just-

 

But then her stomach gave an especially brutal twist, and Santana bolted up in bed, knowing immediately she had very limited time to get to the bathroom. She staggered to her feet and was barely able to make it onto her knees in front of the toilet before she vomited, her body shaking as she recovered from the effort of it.

 

Her face drained of color, she remained hunched in front of the toilet, tears streaming down her cheeks. She had always hated to throw up, even during the times she had deliberately made herself do it on occasion during the height of her eating disorder in high school. It made her feel small and weak and helpless in all the ways she hated most. And just as much as she hated vomiting, Santana hated being sick- and especially, not knowing what had caused it.

 

What if there was something really wrong with her? Really wrong- so wrong, Santana didn’t even want to let the thought arise as a word in her brain?

[serendipitous-magic]

What is your writing advice for young people who want to write fanfiction and original stories in the near future?

If this is just Way Too Much, skip to the end (#16). My most important piece of advice is there. I also happen to think #5 is pretty good.

-_-_-_-

1) Literally just write. Write whatever you want, and do a lot of it.

_-_

2) You don’t have to post everything. In fact you don’t have to post anything. You can, don’t get me wrong, but it can be intimidating to sit down and think “I will now write something that other people will see and read and judge with their eyeballs.” Because that’s probably gonna lead to nerves and writer's block. Just write down the ideas that you have, the things you want to write, whatever’s in your brain that you want to explore and expand upon and make into something. And then if you want to, share it. Or don’t share it. I have plenty of half-baked ideas and documents and random story chapters and shit hidden away on my Google Drive that will never see the light of day, for a whole number of reasons. I wanted to write it but it wasn’t ~Spicy~ enough to warrant posting, or it’s only like an eighth of a good idea, or it’s like one scene with no story around it, or it’s just something incredibly self-indulgent I just wanted to write for my own enjoyment.

Point being, don’t write for other people. Don’t write so that other people can read it; write what you want, write for yourself, and then if you want to share it, do.

_-_

3) You can pretty much ignore any and all of these for fanfiction. In fact, you can ignore pretty much any rules or guidelines you want for fanfiction. Fanfic is a sandbox. You don’t have to be a “professional writer” to post fic. No one expects you to be Stephen King or Margaret Atwood. Fanfic is just for playing in a fandom and having fun. If you wanna write a 50 chapter slow burn with very little plot aside from the OTP slowly getting to know each other, and no real stakes or central conflict, I guarantee people would read that. Really, fanfiction is the Old West of writing: lawless, wild, unpredictable, and free.

However, here are the rules you must follow:

-Separate your paragraphs. (I’m sure you know this already, but I’m gonna say it anyway just in case.) Do not post one big block of text. Make a paragraph break when someone new is talking, when the characters are in a new place, when a new event occurs that changes the scene, when a chunk of time has passed, and when there’s a major change in subject.

-I know it’s obvious, but... grammar, punctuation, and capitalization. They exist to make writing easy for readers to read, and more people will read your stuff if they don’t have to stop and try to figure out what you meant.

-Use tags and labels, as is possible with whatever site you’re using. Especially if you include possibly triggering content in your story. Again, I know it’s obvious, but it’s common courtesy. Bonus: tagging the themes and content of your story helps readers find it and read it :)

-If possible, limit the use of all-caps and exclamation marks / question marks. 99% of the time, one ! or one ? will do. If you overload the page with a lot of all-caps and long rows of exclamation marks or question marks, it hampers readability.

... That’s literally all I can think of. And, like I said, it’s all pretty basic stuff. You were probably rolling your eyes like, “Uh, yeah, Gwen, I know.” But that’s literally it. You can pretty much do whatever you want in fanfic.

That being said, here’s my advice for both fanfiction and original work...

_-_

4) A quick and dirty rule for coming up with a plot, starting a story, keeping up pacing, or maintaining tension: figure out what dreams, desires, and goals are nearest and dearest to your main character’s heart (see #16). Then set up the main conflict to be directly in opposition to that goal. It doesn’t have to be in a tangible way, though it could be. But, if your main character wants more than anything to reach the ships on the southern coast of your world and sail to a new life, make sure the main conflict immediately prevents them from doing that - in fact, make sure to send them north. If your main character just wants to keep their loved ones safe, kidnap the loved ones. If your main character just wants to date their best-friend-turned-crush, make sure they think they have no chance - or, make them cocky about it, and make sure it makes Person B determined not to ever like them. You get it. Figure out what your character most wants, and then keep them from having that. Boom - your conflict now ties in with your character's motivation. It's like instant yeast for plots.

_-_

5) If you’re anything like me, you want your first draft to be Good, despite all that advice about how the first draft doesn’t have to be good and it’s just to get words on the page, yadda yadda. And if you’re somewhat of a perfectionist (like myself), it’s easy to get stuck looking at a blank page because you don’t have The Perfect Words, and you want what you write to be Good the first time.

Here’s how I cheat that:

Instead of trying to write a Good First Draft from a blank page, hit the enter key a few times, skip a little down on the page, change your ink to red (or blue, or whatever - just something immediately identifiable as Not Black) and just thought vomit. Write whatever the hell you’re thinking, exactly as you think it. Don’t worry about it being readable, don’t worry about narrative flow for now, don’t worry about covering all the details, don’t worry about anything except either a) getting all the details of your idea out onto the page, whether that’s a lot or whether it’s just a sentence or two, or b) if you don’t have an idea yet, finding your way there.

Because this method is also very good for finding your way to ideas when you’re stuck in writer’s block.

Because of how human brains work, getting this stuff out onto the page - in all its messy, stream-of-consciousness glory - will likely spark more thoughts. As you write your original idea about the scene, it’ll likely spark more ideas. Creation begets creation. If you just start thought-vomiting your ideas onto the page, chances are you’ll think of more things as you go, and you’ll start filling out description or dialogue or tone or action or whatever, and pretty soon the scene starts writing itself.

Not sure where you’re going with the scene or which ideas you wanna use? Use a lot of ambivalent language in your “thought-vomit draft.” My pre-writing notes are chock-full of the words “maybe,” “perhaps,” and the phrases, “At some point...” and “...or something like that.” In this way, I don’t tie myself down to one idea; it’s just an idea, and I’m keeping it on the page in case I use it, but I might chuck it in the trash or change it or whatever.

And then, once your ideas for the scene (or story, or chapter, or whatever) are on the page, then go back to the top and start translating them into a “real” first draft. Use black ink, and start copy-pasting chunks of the thought-vomit up into the top part of the document and translating them into Draft 1. Separate out paragraphs where paragraph breaks should be. Add the correct punctuation and whatnot. Change “describe the lobby here - include potted plants, fancy carpet, blood stain, etc.” into an actual description of the lobby. Flesh it out, or condense, or whatever it needs. And if you’re still stuck, change back to red ink and ramble some more until you find a path that feels right, then plug that in. This keeps you from looking at a blank page, and it allows you to generate a kind of Draft 0.5, somewhere between a plan and a first draft.

You don’t have to use every idea. Like I said, jot down whatever comes to mind, put a “maybe” before or after it, and keep working. If the idea grabs you and you wanna keep expanding on it and exploring it, cool. If you just wanna jot it down so you don’t forget it and then move on, also cool. Red-ink draft / “thought-vomit draft” is your time to jump around in the timeline, add or finesse details at whatever point your brain moves to, etc. Don’t try to do it exactly in story order, because you will get tangential thoughts and ideas, and you will not remember to write them down five pages later when you finally get to taking notes on that scene. Trust me. On that note...

_-_

6) Write everything down the moment you think of it. Seriously.

“I’ll remember it when I get around to writing that scene in a couple days / weeks / months (/years).”

You won’t.

Write it down.

Phone, journal, google docs - hell, my family regularly laughs at me for grabbing a napkin during dinner and scribbling thoughts down alongside pasta sauce stains.

And then, once you have it written down somewhere...

_-_

7) Consolidate your writing ideas in one place.

Maybe this isn’t really your style, and that’s totally chill.

Buuuut, if you’re Type-A like me - or if you tend to be somewhat unorganized and you know you’ll lose track of your writing notes if they’re scattered across multiple notebooks, journals, napkins, phone notes, etc. - having one consolidated document of notes is a life saver. I keep mine on Google Docs so I can access it, add to it, and look through it for inspiration anywhere at any time. When I have one of those Shower Thoughts that I jot down on my phone or on a napkin during dinner, I set myself a reminder on my phone to type it up in my Story Ideas document later.

(Or, if the idea I had was for a story of mine that I’ve already started planning / drafting / whatever, I put it in the document for that story instead of the Big Random Story Ideas doc. You get it.)

_-_

8) Have other ways to collect and save writing ideas, besides just writing stuff down. If you like Pinterest, make pinterest boards of your characters or stories or settings or whatever. If you’re big into playlists, make a playlist for your character / setting / story / etc. Or both. Or something else. I’m not good at drawing, but maybe you are, and maybe you like to draw your ideas. Whatever form it takes, having another way to save ideas and think about your stories is invaluable.

_-_

9) Some writers can just start writing with no idea where the story is going, and they just kind of figure it out as they go. I envy those writers. And I do that sometimes for fanfiction, where the stakes are somewhat lower and the audience is reading more for scene-to-scene enjoyment (and to see their OTP kiss) than for a Driving And Compelling Narrative.

But here’s the thing: especially if you’re just kind of starting out, writing without some sort of plan is really, really hard, and will likely lead you into a slow, meandering narrative that will likely frustrate you.

Even if you think you’re someone that just can’t write with a plan (and again, I have the highest respect for pansters out there - I don’t know how you do it, you crazy bastards, but you keep doing you) - even if you think “I can’t work with plans, they’re too prescriptive, I just want to write and see what happens -”

Try at least making the most skeletal of plans.

Even if you have no clue what 90% of the story is, yet. That’s fine. But you need to have some idea of what you’re building to, even if that’s nothing more specific than a feeling, or a turning point for your character. Even if your entire plan for everything beyond Chapter 1 is, “At some point, Charlie needs to realize that Ed was lying to her.”

This is where those Draft 0.5 notes come in handy. Because, more than likely, working on your current scene that way will spark ideas for later scenes, which you can put down at the bottom of the document and save for when they become relevant. In my experience, the line between planning ahead and making a Draft 0.5 is exceptionally thin. One can quickly turn into the other.

If you’re really, really resistant to the idea of planning ahead, that’s okay. It’s not everybody’s style. But for the love of all that is holy, write down your ideas for future scenes, even if you’re a person that doesn’t like to plan and writes only in story order, because you will not remember that idea once you get to that scene.

_-_

10) You don’t have to write in order.

Here’s the thing: I’m a person that can only do my Draft 1 in story order (meaning, chronological order). I just have to be in that flow; I need to write in story order for me to best channel where the character is at from scene to scene, both narratively and emotionally.

But my Thought Vomit Draft is another thing entirely. By using the brain hack of putting my notes in red (or another color, it doesn’t matter) and going down to the bottom of the document / page and taking notes there, and then integrating them into whatever plan I have, and then translating them into Draft 1 once I get there in the story - by doing that, I can get my good ideas onto the page (and expound upon them and let my muse carry me and ride that momentum while I’m in the moment of inspiration) without writing out of order.

Maybe that’s just me. But if you’re a person who really prefers to write in story order, that could be hugely helpful to you. It is to me.

_-_

11) Emotion and motivation will do more for your story than technicalities of plot.

If your characters really care about something, and their journey through the (shaky or weak) plot is emotionally engaging, it will be a much more compelling story than a story with a “perfect” plot and unrelatable or unmotivated characters.

If your characters care about what they’re doing, and it means something to them, and their goals and actions are driven by dreams or fears or emotions that are integral to who they are, your audience will care too. If you have a perfectly crafted plot that hits all the right beats and has high stakes and fast pacing and drama - but your characters don’t connect with what’s happening in a way that’s deeply meaningful or emotional for them? You’re gonna have a hard time engaging readers.

When in doubt, prioritize character emotion and motivation over plot. Emotion is what drives story.

This power is highly exploitable. (Just look at pulp novels and shitty but entertaining movies.) You can even use it to glaze over plot holes or reinvigorate a limp narrative. Use it that way sparingly, though. It’s a band-aid, not a surgery. 

_-_

12) Evil villains are hard to write - mostly because there are very few truly evil people in the world. (There are a few. Billionaires and several big name politicians come to mind.) But by and large, there aren’t that many evil people. There are plenty of bad people, but bad people have some good in them, somewhere in there. Trying to write an evil villain is hard, because they often turn very cartoony.

Here’s a tip: it’s much easier to write antagonists who aren’t evil. Even if they’re bad people. Of course, there’s no reason you can’t write a villain that’s just truly evil - a serial killer, or an abuser, or a billionaire, or someone who legit just wants to hurt people or blow up the earth or stay in control of an oppressed population, or whatever. But chances are, it’s gonna be really hard to make them feel real, and even harder to create a plot around them that doesn’t feel forced or contrived.

Instead, try writing an antagonist / villain whose motivations and goals directly clash with your protagonist’s - but not because they want to take over the world or see people suffer. Write an antagonist who’s chaotic good, but whose perception of the situation is completely opposite from your hero’s. Write an antagonist whose only desire is to save people, and who will do anything to achieve that goal - anything. Write an antagonist who believes in the letter of the law, and will hinder and oppose the hero’s methods even if they agree with the hero’s motivation. Write an antagonist who got in way over their head and did some things they regret, and now they don’t know how to get out, and they’re doing their best but whatever they set in motion is too powerful for them to stop now.

Write villains who are human. Write a killer who thought they were doing the right thing by taking their victim out of the equation, who vomits at the sight of the body and sobs over the grave they dig. Write a government leader who truly believes she’s doing what’s best for her people in the long-term, even if it might hurt them in the short term, and is willing to endure the hatred and belligerence of the masses if it means securing what she thinks is a better future for her people. Write a teenage bully that thinks they’re the one being picked on by the world, and they’re just fighting back, standing their ground. Write a scientist who will break any code of ethics and hurt anyone he needs to - in order to bring back his baby sister from the grave, because he promised her he’d protect her and he failed. Write an antagonist who is selfish and self-centered and capricious - because in order to survive they had to look out for Number One, and that habit ain’t about to break anytime soon.

Write villains who aren’t even villains. Write antagonists who oppose the hero because of moral differences. Write antagonists who are trying to do the right thing. Write antagonists who treat the heroes with kindness and dignity and respect and gentleness.

They don’t have to be good. They don’t have to be Misunderstood Sweethearts who “deserve” a redemption arc. They can be cruel and nasty and dismissive and callous and violent and etc. etc.

Just hesitate before you make them Evil-with-a-capital-E. Because evil is hard to write, and honestly, boring to read. Flawed human beings with goals and motivations that directly oppose the main characters’ are much easier to write and much more interesting to read.

Ask why. Why is your villain trying to take over the world? What does that even mean? Are they trying to create a Star-Trek-like post-capitalism utopia, but they know that won’t happen in a million lifetimes, so they’re trying to do it by force? Are they actually super in favor of human rights, but they got very impatient waiting for the world to do anything about poverty and war, so they decided to take it into their own hands? Are they determined to fix the world - no matter the cost? Are they terrified and overwhelmed, but committed to see it through to the end? Or - maybe they’re just doing it on a dare. Maybe they don’t really give a shit about world domination, they were just a mediocre rich white guy who decided to fuck around and find out, and now he’s kind of curious how far he can take this thing. And now he’s kind of an internationally-wanted criminal, so he’s kind of stuck living on his hidden private island in his multi-billion dollar secret base, strapping lasers to sharks’ heads for the hell of it. Gross, selfish, uncaring, and dangerous? For sure. Evil? Depends on your definition. See, now we’re getting somewhere.

_-_

13) It’s tempting to let the plot control the characters. It’s easy to drop your characters into a situation and see how they react. But here’s the thing: that doesn’t drive plot. In fact, it bogs down pacing. Instead, try to build you plot off of your characters’ actions and decisions. Let your character build their own situation. Not to say it should go they way they wanted it to go; in fact, usually, their grand plans should go to hell very quickly. But having the characters take action and make decisions, and letting the plot develop based on that, is much easier to make compelling than making a rigid series of events and then trying to herd your characters into them.

_-_

14) Having trouble justifying a character’s actions? Consider having them make the opposite decision, or having them approach the situation in a different way. For example: you need your character to go meet the bad guy, for plot reasons, even though there’s no way it’s not a trap. If the character goes, readers are gonna be groaning with their head in their hands, because c’mon man, that was really fucking stupid. But he’s gotta go, because the plot needs that. Two ways you might handle this: a) He knows it’s probably a trap. He decides not to go. The plot conspires to get him near the villain anyway. Or, b) He knows it’s a trap. But he needs to go, for (insert reasons here). So, he approaches it in an unexpected way. He brings backup, recruiting a side character we met earlier in the story. Or he arrives on the back of a dragon, because ain’t nobody gonna fuck with a dude on a dragon. Or he goes - early, and ambushes the villain. It may work, it may not. He may get himself kidnapped anyway. But it moves the plot along without having Stupid Hero Syndrome.

_-_

15) This is a legit piece of advice: if all of this sounds overwhelming, literally just ignore it and write what you want. For real. Writing should be fun, and every single writer operates differently. If you’re sitting here like “I’m getting stressed just reading this,” just flip me a good-natured bird and get on with your life. I promise I won’t take it personally. Same goes for literally any other writing advice you see. Lots of rules and guidelines can very quickly make anything thoroughly un-fun. Just write. If you’re passionate about it and you do it for long enough, you’ll start figuring out the tips and tricks on your own.

_-_

16) Here’s the best piece of advice I can give you: know your characters. More importantly, know what’s important to them. Build their personality and decisions off of that, and build your plot off of their decisions.

I see a lot of character building sheets that ask a shit-ton of questions like “What’s their most prized possession?” “Do they like their family?” “What’s their favorite food?”

And while these are good questions, my problem with this type of character building is that if you start there, with the little stuff, you’re building on nothing. IMO, to make a truly strong character (not strong like Inner Strength, strong like effective), you need a strong foundation.

Here are the things you must know about your character:

a) What are their greatest fears / deepest insecurities? And I don’t mean “wasps” or “heights.” I mean the deep shit. I mean fears like “living a meaningless life,” or “turning out just like their parents,” or “that no one will ever love them,” or “being powerless.” You may say, “But they’re really scared of wasps! They fall into a wasp nest when they were little and got stung so much they almost died!” Great! That’s a fantastic bit of backstory. They should absolutely be afraid of wasps, and that should absolutely be an impediment later in the story. But dig deeper. What about that event actually scarred them? Was it the helplessness? Stumbling around, swatting at the air, not being able to do a single thing to stop what was happening to them? Was it that they were alone, and no matter how loud they screamed, no one was coming? Was it the bodily horror of feeling themself turn into an inhuman creature as they swelled up from the stings, unable to move their fingers or face normally anymore?

And don’t forget insecurities, because those factor in, too. Are they deeply insecure about their identity? Do they believe, deep down, that they’re ugly? Did they grow up poor and they’ve always been really touchy about that? Why? Dig deep. Figure out what really, really bothers them.

b) What are their hopes and dreams? What do they truly want out of life? What do they consider the most valuable to their experience here in this thing called life? Is it the freedom to forge their own path and be independent? Is it the approval of their family or peers? Is it a home? Is it knowledge, or understanding? Spiritual fulfillment? Is it deeply important to them that they contribute to their community, or protect those they love? What do they need in order to feel truly and deeply fulfilled in life?

Figure out those two things (each one encompasses several things, btw, you don’t have to stop at just one for each), and then use that to inform how they behave and the types of decisions they make within the story. 

It also informs character behavior and personality. 

Let’s say we have a character who’s afraid of helplessness. They’re probably gonna be the person that always wants to do something, try something, no matter how hopeless the situation seems. They’d despise just sitting and waiting, probably, because it makes them feel powerless. They might even be the person that makes rash decisions and acts impulsively and puts themself in danger unnecessarily, because in their mind it’s better than being at the mercy of fate. This is one way you could use a character’s personality to inform their decisions, which in turn helps to inform plot.

Or, let’s say we have a character whose greatest fear is being left behind or forgotten. We may have a chatterbox on our hands. They might be obnoxious. They might love the spotlight, constantly vying for attention no matter the situation, because deep down they’re so afraid that they’d be forgotten otherwise. Or, it may go the opposite way. They may be so afraid of people leaving them that they’re terrified of bothering people. They don’t want to do anything that could annoy people, anything that might give people a reason to leave them. They might be exceedingly polite, quiet, accommodating. A push-over, really.

These are two nearly opposite types of personalities, both stemming from the same core fear/insecurity. You can go a lot of different ways with it. But if you build on that strong foundation, you’ll have a strong character, and a stronger plot.

Likewise, the structure of your story can and should inform the design of these character traits. If you need your characters to team up near the end, it may be impactful if you give your main character a deep fear of commitment, an insecurity about being unwanted or left behind, and make them highly value independence and freedom. That could make their team-up for the final battle very meaningful. Conversely, you can use your character’s deepest fears and desires to help design the plot. Is your character deeply insecure about voicing their opinions or taking a stand, because of trauma they faced in the past? Make them face that. Build that into the climactic third act. Give them the big inspirational speech where they stand up and talk about what they believe to be important, what they think the group should do. And then design that character arc to run through the story, giving you more handholds and stepping stones, more pieces of foundation on which to design the plot.

In this way, character should inform story as much as story informs character. It’s a feedback loop.

Bonus: if you build your character and your plot off of each other in this way, it automatically starts to build in the foundations of that emotional investment I mentioned earlier. If your character’s decisions are based on what they most want and do not want in life, you basically have your character motivation and stakes pre-built.

Note: you need to know these things about your villain, too.

-_-_-

I’m genuinely sorry about the length of this, lmao. But you did ask.

Best of luck!

Edit: I forgot an important one:

17) Start when the scene starts and end when the scene ends.

What do I mean by that?

If your notes say “Danny asks Nicole out after school and majorly flubs it,” start the scene when Danny approaches Nicole after school. Better yet, cold-open the scene on “I was wondering if, you know, you’d wanna. You know. Hang out some time?”

Don’t start that morning when Danny goes to school, unless you’re gonna cover the school day in like one or two sentences. Don’t spend whole paragraphs going through the school day, unless it’s to cover other plot points first (in which case apply these same guidelines there), or if the paragraphs are there for a specific reason, like to illustrate how stressed he is and how it seems like every little thing is going wrong. Even then, trim the fat as much as possible. Expounding and describing everything Moment-to-moment is for the meat of the scenes, not the leading-up-to and coming-away-from.

Here’s my rule of thumb: study how and when movies cut from scene to scene. Movies have exceptionally strict, limited time for storytelling; they’re excellent examples of starting a scene when the plot point starts and ending when it’s over. If you can’t picture a movie showing everything you showed, start the scene later and end it earlier.

[ironfoot-mothafocka]

Dwarrowtober: Mining

Khalei Iskbanal often recalled liturgy from the holy texts which spoke to the fleetingness of dwarven mortality. Compared to the steadfastness of mountains, the dwarves were like grains of sand, grinding up into dust over the countless span of years and fading away as the Ages lengthened. Dwarves returned eventually back to the Maker and to be melded again, with bodies strong and carven afresh.

He’d seen it all, working in Erebor’s hospital. The fading of dwarves who were frailer than granules of sand, the agony of slow death, or the agony of those loved ones watching their elder pass into ancestorhood. Each time he saw this he was reminded painfully of his own mother: her lifelong illness and eventual demise once the medication had stopped working. It was this, he assumed, that had made him want to go into the healing arts: if he healed enough dwarves, if he saved them, perhaps that would mean something in the grand scheme of the cosmos. Perhaps his mother would come back in some small way, and time and tragedy would knit itself back together again. That was how it worked, right?

It was a slow day on an October morning. Khalei had quickly grown to become suspicious of slow days: like the trickling of a stream starting high in the mountains, it could steadily become a raging torrent if given enough rainfall, and that could happen in the blink of an eye.

Khalei looked up as the runner came into the ward, the acute ward reserved for the most severely injured or sickest patients they treated in Erebor. Despite his appearance and mannerisms, which many brutish warriors dismissed as fay or flighty, Khalei had never been disgusted by what he called the naturalness of the dwarven form: all dwarves bled, shat, pissed, and vomited, and it was just the way of things. All dwarves had slimy innards, bones that could break and stick out at weird angles, and things that smelled, and Khalei didn’t mind any of it (except eyeballs, he’d always had a thing about eyeballs). His own husband, the Lord General of Erebor, had even become light headed at the sight of Khalei’s finger, sliced open as he’d prepared a meal for them one night. Khalei had just rolled his eyes and tucked a tourniquet around the spliced appendage, before making his way over to his colleagues for a series of stitches.

The announcer rushed in, however, and Khalei knew that the trickle would soon be gone, and he would be dodging foaming rapids. “Miner being brought in now. Fall from height — conscious. Requires all hands, and the surgeons.”

Even at the word ‘miner’, Khalei’s skin had started prickling. Mining injuries were the absolute worst: dwarves with crushed limbs, miners whose brains had been obliterated by falling rocks, or those who had died in their harnesses and had hung there for several days before rescue, slowly bloating as their bodies swelled from the saturation of poisonous gas that had killed them. There were a thousand ways to die in a pit, and Khalei had seen most of them.

Even as Khalei rose to his feet and stood to attention at the bedside, the stretcher was being brought in. The medics were pale-faced and serious, and a blood-sodden sheet was wrapped tightly around the lower half of the dwarf’s head. For all the good it was doing, it might not have been there at all. Around him gathered surgeons, experts in medicines, first-line carers like Khalei, some of which had, like him, experience of battlefield wounds. Gently, the miner was lain in front of them all.

It wasn’t the worst injury Khalei had seen, he decided, as he recoiled slightly, but it was the worst he had seen on a dwarf who still lived. Barely. He stepped closer as others withdrew, heads together and muttering urgently about possible treatment, and took the miner’s hand in his, feeling for a feeble pulse. It was a sign of a still-beating heart. A chance. “Aldvir fell fifty feet onto his face. No break in his neck, no loss of consciousness—” the dwarf medic who had brought him from the mine reeled this off in a well-rehearsed speech. Top-to-toe, that was how they had been taught to list injuries. No head or skull fracture, but broken bones in arms and pelvis.

The chief surgeon turned to Khalei, his brow lowered and a grimness in his clear blue eyes. “Khalei — can you remove the sheet, please?” Khalei peeled away the sheet and held in his groan. The miner’s lower jaw had broken his fall, and it was ripped completely away, his skull concave and the cavity of his upper palate exposed. It was like something out of a cadaver class, except this one had breath in his lungs, and scared, confused eyes staring straight back at him.

Khalei hated this part the most. Being face to face with the ones whom nothing could save. The surgeons crowded around and the healers who administered pain relief took out needles filled with amber liquid, injecting the miner with enough of the stuff to make him forget where he was and the inevitability of his situation. Was there a chance that his face could be reconstructed out of steel rods and bars over hours of work and sedation? There was always a chance. Would he die of infection soon after, if not in the next few minutes? That was almost certain.

How long, wondered Khalei, would it have taken him to fall? A few seconds at most? Life definitely was fast, and death was, too, he thought. With a sigh he retired to the backroom where he kept his death mask and the ceremonial robeskirt, and began to undress. He didn’t have to be told now — being zhani, one who worked in spirits and omens, the teller of tales and the dancer of the sacred dances, he could feel the changes in the air when death was approaching on its wings, the aura fading around dwarves who were near to their Maker, the chittering of faint voices beyond the veil and between the realms, ready to welcome a brother home. To Khalei, death and life were the sides of the same coin, which spun endlessly in Mahal’s fingers.

With careful hands, he buckled the heavy mask onto his face, and the golden beard of it rested in the middle of his bare sternum. He toed his shoes off and took a deep breath. The air throbbed around him, blood rushing in his eardrums, and he listened for the still, small signal, the voice that he knew to hear when nobody else could. Like a sigh in some distant land, another grain of sand was ground up into powder. And when Khalei left the hospital backroom, a sheet was already being drawn over Aldvir’s body.

[giorno-plays-piano]

The Serpent King

Pairing: naga!Bucky Barnes x Reader

Warnings: yandere, kidnapping, allusion to non-con, pretty scary Bucky.

Words: 1044.

Summary: Wandering an ancient castle at night was the most stupid decision you have ever taken.

__________

Trembling at the sight of a monstrous shadow creeping forward, its scaly tail slithering across the floor, you tried remembering why the hell the thought to sneak into Count Alexander’s abandoned castle seemed like a good idea to you. Surely, you hoped to find a couple of spell books, maybe even recipes of some ancient potions, but you heard those rumors about that place being cursed and a terrifying creature living within its walls, ready to punish whoever tried stealing anything from the castle. Of course, you didn’t believe it. Who in the right state of mind thought monsters still existed, less protected secrets of a place that had been abandoned several decades ago?

You were so reckless, thinking of it as something exciting, thrilling, your own little adventure inside an ancient castle; you had been so willing to discover its dark secrets. Oh, if only you stayed home that night! If only you were sane enough to at least take more protective amulets or a charmed sword... not that they would make any difference, though. The creature chasing you had been immune to any charms, ancient like the castle itself, and you knew you stood no chance against it.

Reaching dead end, the room where you ended up having no other doors other than the one leading to the corridor with a monster following you, you bumped into the large wooden table with layers of dust over it, dirtying your fingers. You were shaking badly, trying to think of anything to keep the creature away, refusing to listen to its soft humming. God, would he eat you alive? Tear your apart, slowly breaking your every limb? Would he grant you a quick death or prolong your suffering? You knew he wouldn’t let you go despite your crying and pleading.

“Say the right words, little bird.” The creature hummed with content, and you saw his horrifying form slowly emerging through the open door: he had been some monstrous hybrid between a human and a giant snake, his upper body belonging to a man, his skin pale and bruised, but instead of legs he had a horrendous tail, its scales ashy black as if they were made from some dark metallic materia.

Hiccupping from terror you felt, you pressed your dirty palm against your mouth, tears streaming down your cheeks. The monster was looking right at you, towering above you - he had been at least three meters tall with that tail of his, even his human part twice bigger than normal, his claws long and sharp like razors.

Oh, if only you stayed home tonight.

“Say the right words.” He repeated, getting so close you could feel the scales on his tail rubbing against your legs, almost making you lose consciousness from both fear and disgust.

Yes, the words. Something that would trigger his curse as he was bound to guard this place like a hound loyal to its owner. You didn’t know why he needed those since you were an intruder, anyway, but maybe it was because the creature didn’t see you taking anything that belonged to his master - you didn’t find anything worth taking yet.

Did it mean he would let you go if you didn’t prove you were a thief? As the naga man - he was a naga, one of monsters who were believed to go extinct centuries ago, you were sure - lowered his face closer to yours, inhaling the smell of your hair, you knew he wouldn’t let you go regardless of whether you say the words or not.

“You will kill me, won’t you?” You blubbered like a child, averting your eyes just not to look him into the face, afraid to see the wild expression he wore. “Why would I say the words?”

“I won’t kill you, little thing.” He let out a low chuckle, baring his sharp fangs, and you felt like you were going to vomit any second, your knees trembling so much you barely kept yourself standing. “But you got to say the right words.”

Breaking out into a cold sweat, you felt his chapped lips brushing against your cheeks and going lower as he was softly nipping his way down your skin. Saints, he was almost kissing your neck. He had been so gentle you didn’t even feel his fangs scratching your skin despite your fear he would finish you off in a moment. As the creature leaned closer, you were forced to retreat, bending backwards more and more, but the monster had no trouble moving down with you until his scaly hips were pressed firmly against yours.

“Please, don’t kill me.” You murmured, closing your eyes firmly as the creature put his arms around you like a man would. “I... I wanted to borrow a spell book.”

“Not to borrow, birdie.” The monster grinned at you, baring his teeth again in an attempt to scare you even more.

“No.” You gulped down the saliva that gathered in your mouth, still averting your eyes and looking at the creature’s chest. “I... I wanted to steal it.”

“That’s right. You wanted to steal it.” He repeated, binding your legs with his tail and pinning you to the table while you sobbed, turning your head to the side to avoid looking at him. “You are a thief, and I am the protector of whatever lies within these walls.”

He lied about leaving you be, didn’t he? He would kill you, for sure. How could you trust a snake, anyway? Now he would sink his fangs into your neck and poison you, then devour your flesh till nothing but bones is left. Maybe the poison would kill you instantly, you hoped.

That nasty rubbing of his scales against your hips was making you more and more nauseated as you bit down on your lower lip, hoping it would end soon.

“But if you stay here with the book you wanted to take, you won’t be a thief.” The creature said, flicking its forked tongue, and you felt something pocking at your hip right through the scales of his tail, realizing with horror what these things were. “If you stay here with me, I will be protecting you as much as anything within these castle walls...”

Oh, if only you stayed home tonight.

__________________

Tags: @finleyjayne​​ @alexakeyloveloki​​ @helenaeisenhower​​ @villanellevi​​ @hurricanerin​​ @void-hoechlin @chris-evans-indian-fanfic​​ @navegandoaciegas​​ @rosalynshields​​ @brattycherubwrites​​ @sllooney​​ @angrythingstarlight​​ @lookiamtrying​​ @buckysbunny​​ @soleil-dor​ @stargazingfangirl18​ @dillybuggg​ @literate-lamb​ @cosicas-cuquis​ @sarge-barnes-sir​ @buckybarnesplumwhore​ @jaysayey​ @megzdoodle​ @gotnofucks​ @lux-ravenwolf​ @iheartsebandchris​ @ximebebx​ @jeremyrennerfanxxxx123​ @ninefuckingoneone​

[eternalsimp]

Cursed Fears (pt 2)

Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Smut

Word Count: 3703

Warnings: NSFW 18+, Aged up Megumi, mentions of violence, character death, swearing, use of female pronouns and anatomy, angst, slight praise kink, oral sex (f. receiving) Minors DNI.

Author Note: This is a sequel but it can be read as a stand-alone. pt 1 is up on my blog and pt 3 will be posted soon.

Megumi’s POV

Everything was dark and the smell of blood was overwhelming. I couldn’t tell where I was exactly, I knew I was in the domain of a special grade but I was sure I had gone home to y/n. Nobara, Yuji, and I had exorcised a second-grade curse and had called it a night. So where did this domain come from? How did I get here? I could swear I could hear thunder crack every now and then, but I can’t even remember if there was a storm when I was here with Yuji and Nobara. Where was Gojo when I needed him? I stumbled through the darkness blindly before I was met with a sight that made my heart drop.

Sukuna sat lazily on his throne, his red eyes trained on me in a predatory glare, sharp nails tapping impatiently on his temple. “It's about time you showed up, I thought I was going to have my fun without you. Now that you’re here, we can continue.” Sukuna’s mouth pulled into a sinister grin as I stared at the limp figure at the foot of his throne.

“Y/n…” her name came out as barely a whisper, my throat felt like it was closing up. She was at home studying for her statistics class, I know she was. I shook my head violently before pressing the heels of my hands to my eyes. This isn’t real.

“What’s wrong little sorcerer? Not feeling so tough anymore are you? You were so confident you could take me on earlier, so come on, take her back. Until you do I may have to play with her a little bit more, show her that she was never safe from me.” Sukuna reached down and pulled her unconscious body up into his lap. He held her jaw with one hand and turned her face so I could see. I wanted to scream at him not to touch her, or to hurt me instead, but nothing came out. Every part of my body was frozen in place at the sight of her tortured body. Sukuna could see me struggling in his domain and smirked down at me. He slowly dragged his mouth up her throat and to the shell of her ear. “Time to wake up princess, our guest is here.” Sukuna squeezed her throat at the same time he nipped her ear and her eyes flew open to immediately fall on me.

“No, please let her go.” The words finally came but I still couldn’t move. She looked so scared, the person I love most is in danger and I couldn’t do anything about it. I forced myself forward a single step but it felt like I was sinking into the ground. Why can’t I move? “I’ll do anything you want, but please don’t hurt her.”

“I told you what I wanted, I told you to come and get her. Show me just how strong you are.” Sukuna taunted. With a firm grip on my girlfriend's jaw and his other hand traveling down her body, Sukuna was in complete control. I know I can’t use cursed energy or shikigami here or I would risk her becoming collateral damage, but I couldn’t stand still and do nothing.

“‘Gumi, help me.” Her voice was shaking, her entire body trembling. I wanted nothing more than to whisk her away to safety. Her eyes squeezed shut as Sukunas mouth attacked her neck and left dark bruises in its wake.

“Time’s running out kid, I’m starting to get bored.” Sukuna’s free hand began to snake over her legs, dragging his razor-sharp nails over the soft skin there, leaving angry red scratches behind. Tears began to fall freely from her eyes and I tried to force myself forward again to no avail. Whimpers and cries for help begin to fall from her lips faster, and god I feel like I’m in hell. All I can do is watch as she cries out in fear, heart cracking at every sound she makes. Finally, she says something that makes me feel like my heart has been ripped out of my chest

“You did this to me, this is your fault.” My body felt numb at the sound of her broken words. All I can do is shake my head and beg, beg Sukuna for mercy, and beg her for forgiveness.

“Baby it’ll be okay, you’ll be okay. I’m so sorry.”

“You said you would protect me, why did you do this to me?”

“I’m sorry, I’m gonna get you out of here. Please believe me, my love.” I was on my knees before the king of curses now. So close I could pick up on her perfume that smells sickly sweet of roses, but the smell I adore so much was tainted with something else now.

Sukuna clicked his tongue and shook his head. “You know better than to make promises you can’t keep, right?” My whole body was shaking with fear and rage at the curse, but all I could do was bargain.

“Please, I swear I will do anything, just let her go.” I couldn’t tear my eyes away from her, pleading to just see her leave here alive. Sukuna’s nails dug deeper into her throat, drawing blood as it trickled down her neck and chest in small streams.

“I think I’d rather punish you and the brat for trapping me in this vessel. You get to watch as I kill her, and then I’ll switch out with him so he can see what he’s done.” Sukuna leaned down to face me. “This is what happens when self-righteous sorcerers need to learn their place, so don’t blame me for what happens next.”

Fear shot through my entire body at those words. I couldn’t help but scream loudly as Sukuna jerked her head and a loud, sickening crack filled my ears.

I shot straight up in bed as a crack of thunder rumbled through the apartment. My eyes were unfocused as I dragged myself towards the bathroom and a wave of nausea washed over me. I barely made it to the toilet before I was vomiting into it. My knees burned from where they hit the tile but all I can think about was the sound of her whimpers and begs for help ringing in my ears. I was vaguely aware of the shirt sticking to me with sweat as I tried to control my erratic breathing. Thunder cracked again, sounding eerily like the way her neck snapped in my nightmare and I was retching again.

The cycle continued for what felt like hours until I was left coughing and dry heaving. As the panic started to ebb away I noticed the presence of my girlfriend on the floor behind me, running her hands soothingly over my back, and lightly pressing her thumbs into my spine. She had her knees on either side of my waist and was resting her head between my shoulder blades. I reached up to flush the toilet before gently squeezing her knee to let her know I was okay. She wordlessly pulled my sweaty shirt over my head to let the cool air hit my back before lifting herself off of the floor and out of the bathroom.

I shifted my body so I could press my forehead against the hard plastic of the bathtub. After a couple minutes, she handed me a bottle of water and pressed a cold, damp cloth to the back of my neck. “I’m sorry I woke you up,” voice raspy from coughing and throwing up. This wasn’t the first time I had woken her with my nightmares, and I doubt it would be the last. She reclaims her spot on the floor behind me and continues rubbing my back.

“Don’t be sorry, I prefer to be woken up by you going to the bathroom than you throwing up in the bed anyway.” I can’t help but laugh at her teasing and we could both feel the unease begin to fade.

“Yeah, that's a good point. You’re too good to me, you know that?” I moved so that I was leaning back against her chest and she wrapped her arms around my shoulders protectively.

“Nope, I refuse to accept that statement because we are the perfect amount of goodness to each other.” I tilted my head back to rest it on her shoulder before pressing a quick kiss to her neck. I couldn’t help but wonder how I was lucky enough for Nobara to introduce the two of us. It was in the small, intimate moments like these that I knew I would happily go to my grave protecting her.

Reader’s POV

“Okay you know the drill,” you said to him as you held out your hands expectantly. He smiled as he placed both his hands in yours, palm up. You pressed one of his hands to your chest and the other to his so he could feel both of your heartbeats under his fingertips. The first time you did this he scoffed at how cheesy it was, but over the two years of living together, it became common practice for when he was trying to calm down after a nightmare. You didn’t like to press him about the horrors that plagued his dreams, knowing how reserved he was with his emotions, so you found your own ways to comfort him.

“See, we’re both okay. Do you wanna get up to go lay back down or do you need a second?” He shook his head and pulled himself up to sit in front of you again.

“No, I’m okay, but can we do the other thing too?” he asked sheepishly. He turned pleading eyes towards you, and how could you refuse him when he asked so nicely.

“Of course, whatever you need. You or me?”

He took a shuddering breath before whispering “you” so softly you almost didn’t hear it. Your shoulders slumped as that one word told you everything you needed to know. The other practice that became a common occurrence after his chronic nightmares was kissing the other person's phantom injuries. More often than not it was him kissing you, as you were usually the object of his nightmares, like tonight. He liked being able to physically see and feel that the wounds inflicted on you were in fact not real. This nighttime routine often led to some heavy makeout sessions, which then led to very soft and intimate sex.

“Okay baby,” You stand up and move to sit on the side of the bed while he brushes his teeth quickly to get rid of the gross taste in his mouth. While you wait, you find yourself tugging at the bottom of your shorts self-consciously as you shiver in anticipation. After a moment your boyfriend waltzed out of the bathroom and rested his hands on either side of your waist. He bent his head to capture your lips in a slow kiss. His tongue swipes at your bottom lip, silently asking permission to deepen the kiss and you happily oblige him. Your mouths move in a small fight for dominance but a firm hand on your thigh has him easily winning. Your hands trailed up to rest on his shoulders as he took your bottom lip between his teeth and bit down gently.

You gasp softly into his mouth and he brings one hand up to rest at the nape of your neck as he cradles your head protectively. He draws his lips down the side of your jaw, paying special attention to the spot behind your ear that never fails to have you melting into his hands. You tilt your head to give him better access to your throat, allowing him to deliver individual kisses to the spots where you likely had been hurt.

In a swift, fluid motion, he is pulling your tank top off of you and trailing sloppy kisses down your chest and stomach. You lean back onto your elbows as he runs his hands over your thighs, leaving goosebumps in their wake. You let out a shaky breath as he begins to kiss his way up the inside of your legs. “Just relax baby. I’m gonna take care of you.” He punctuated each word with a kiss or nip to the inside of your thighs, and you could feel the arousal pool at the pit of your stomach.

You forced yourself to make eye contact just in time to see a devious smirk grace his features. Before you could question it he is yanking down your shorts and blowing cool air onto your core. You yelp and instinctively try to snap your knees shut. He chuckles lowly to himself before tossing your shorts somewhere behind him. He brings his face back between your thighs to lick a long, hot stripe up your core. You gasp loudly and let your arms give out behind you. He reaches one hand up to where you are clawing at the sheets to intertwine your fingers together.

“My pretty baby is already so worked up and I’ve barely touched you. What a good girl.” He lowers himself back down to lap up the arousal dripping onto your legs before sucking your clit into his mouth. You arch into him and groan loudly which prompts him to hum triumphantly around the bundle of nerves. He moves his free hand down to expertly curl two fingers into you and starts pumping in and out at a steady pace. After a few pumps of his hand, he curls his fingers to find the spot inside you that has you seeing stars.

The combination of his mouth and fingers working you is dizzying and you can feel it pushing you closer to the edge of your climax. He could feel how close you were and began to move with more purpose, determined to make you cum more than once in the night. With the hand that isn’t intertwined with his, you reach down to tangle in his soft hair. “Wait, I- oh shit- I’m gonna cum.”

He removes the hand that was holding yours from you and brings his thumb down to rub circles into your sensitive clit. “Come on baby, I got you. You can cum for me.” He moves his mouth to rejoin his fingers at your slit to bring you closer to your high. A particularly hard press of his thumb has you crying out in pleasure and grinding desperately against his face. He removes his fingers from you and replaces them with his tongue to help you ride out your high. He greedily drinks up your release until you are weakly nudging him away.

“Do you want me to stop?” He looked up at you innocently, which was contradicting when you remembered the things he was doing mere seconds prior.

“No, I just want to feel more of you.” You could feel a hot blush creep up your body at the realization that he was still halfway clothed, while you laid completely naked in front of him. His brain seemed to process this at the same time because he was quickly ridding himself of his sweatpants and grey boxers.

His hard cock thumps softly against his toned stomach when he stood again and you were having a hard time not staring at the man in front of you. He wasn’t bulky, but the muscles that rippled underneath taut skin were nothing to sneeze at. He glanced up and caught your stare, and returned it with a cocky smirk. “See something you like?”

“I sure do,” you flashed an innocent smile as you sat up and palmed his erection. He gasped at your sudden boldness and leaned onto the bed for support. At this proximity, you were able to tug his earlobe between your teeth and bite down gently. “Please baby, I want you so bad.” Those words snap him back into action and he’s crashing his lips against yours again.

He moves you back up the bed and crawls over your body. He braces his forearms on either side of your head and experimentally grinds his hip against yours. You let out a soft “please” that comes out whinier than you intend. You lean your face up to give him a soft kiss before he reaches down to line himself up with you and slowly presses the tip inside. He shallowly thrusts to slowly work into you, mumbling praises against your skin as he moves deeper.

You can’t help but wince at the stretch his cock always brings you, which would border on outright painful if he didn’t feel so good. Your head falls back against the bed, clawing at his back to try to find something to ground yourself. He glances down to where he is buried deep inside you before pressing his forehead to yours. “I know sweetheart, it's almost there. You’re- fuck- doing so good for me,” he reassures as he presses a soothing kiss to your temple.

When he finally bottoms out he stills his hips to let you get comfortable and adjust to him. He takes this opportunity to pepper your face and chest in kisses and returns one of his hands to your neck where it cradles your head. You bring one of your hands to his hair to tug gently before rolling your hips against him, eliciting a breathy moan from him. “You can move baby, I’m okay.”

He nods and gives a couple of slower thrusts before setting a steady pace. He opted for slower deep strokes which made you feel every inch of him as he thrust into you. His thrusts have his cock brushing all the right spots inside you, and all you can do is gasp and moan for him while clinging to his shoulders. “Megumi, please,” you aren’t even sure what you were asking for. The pleasure has your head spinning and unable to make complete thoughts.

You can tell he is getting closer to his own climax because his thrusts are getting progressively faster and he is getting more vocal. “God, baby you’re taking me so well.” He hooks one of your legs around his waist and the new angle lets him hit your sweet spot with every roll of his hips. Your nails dig into his shoulders as you feel another climax approaching, and Megumi picks up his pace again.

“Is my pretty girl gonna cum for me again?” You bury your face into his shoulder and nod. He moves one of his hands to play with your clit to push you over the edge. You arch into him and let out a strangled moan as your orgasm washes over you. You’re sure you’re leaving deep scratches across his back as you grip him tighter. His hips stutter as you clench around him and he gives a few more sloppy thrusts before he’s cumming too with a loud groan. He unconsciously rocks into you lazily as you both come down from your highs.

“Are you okay baby?” He kisses your forehead and strokes your side to try and bring you back to reality. You nod again, not quite trusting your voice yet. He chuckles and slowly pulls out to not overstimulate you. You squirm at the uncomfortable stickiness between your legs but he’s already moving to the bathroom to grab stuff to clean you up.

When he comes back out he runs a warm cloth along the inside of your thighs and quickly over your center, which has you wincing at the sensitivity. When he's done he pulls out a pair of your pajama shorts and one of his loose shirts for you to wear. He helps you slip the clothes on and tugs his boxers back up before climbing back into bed with you.

You stand up to crack open the window next to the bed before laying with your back against his chest. The cool air from the rain seeps into the room and he mutters a “thank you” into your shoulder, surprised that you remember he runs hot for the rest of the night when he has a nightmare.

The clock on the bedside table shows that it's about 5:30 in the morning, so you estimate that he woke up roughly at 4. “Do you feel okay enough to go back to sleep?” You feel him shrug behind you and you scoot closer to him, pulling one of his arms over your waist to lace your fingers together.

“I don’t know. I should but…” you hear his voice trail off and nod in understanding. He always has a hard time falling back asleep on nights like these. He warned you about his chronic nightmares shortly before moving in together and confessed that he’s had them since he started high school at Jujustu Tech. However, you take small comfort in the knowledge that since living together they’ve gotten less frequent, and his reactions to them have become far less violent.

“Will you feel better if one of your shikigami sleeps in here? Just so you know that nothing will happen.” He considers it for a minute before tugging his hand out of yours, circling his other arm around your waist, and folding his hands to summon his divine dog. Its head pokes out of the shadows under the window. You pat the empty spot on the bed and it jumps up excitedly before laying down and letting you scratch behind its ears.

Megumi chuckles behind you and shakes his head. “You just wanted the dog on the bed didn’t you?” He reaches over to ruffle its soft fur as it dozes off.

“Checkmate,” you crane your head to place a kiss on his cheek before settling back against him. “Now will you please try to go back to sleep? I don’t want to nag you but realistically you can’t function on only two hours of sleep.”

“I’ll try but I can’t make any promises you know.” He tucks his chin on top of your head and relaxes around you. You hum in acknowledgment before slowly drifting back to sleep.