#things I should just write into a fanfiction

[lavandulawrites]

Wait a fucking minute. So when people watch characters kill each other like say for example, Eren killing the Warhammer titan or scenes of Akutagawa or Dazai just tearing through their opponents, fans can rave about how cool or how badass or how awesome it looked and that's fine,

But when authors write FANFICTION, basically what-if scenarios of characters being yandere while specifying that they do not condone this type of behavior in reality and even leaving tags on their work, idiots will still bypass all of this just to leave hate comments?! Are you fucking kidding me?! So if people write about murder, they don't condone it and it's 'just fiction' but when authors write about yanderes they're suddenly the scum of the earth that are encouraging stalker behavior?

Give me a fucking break. People need to grow and shut the fuck up

It’s quite the double moral if you ask me. I completely agree with you. Most media that people write fan fiction of contains violence and murder. Some of them are even more brutal than the other.

Most yandere writers and enjoyers do not condone yandere tendencies in real life. Yandere is fiction and it should be treated as such. People are allowed to like different things without people hating on them.

(I might add more to this)

[dwellordream]

idk how to put this but i think two things can be true:

writing copious amounts of fanfiction can in fact prepare you to write original fiction, and does not in any dilute or compromise you as an author

if your original published fiction reads almost identically to most of your fanfiction (and i don't mean 'fics with the serial numbers filed off that you got published') i mean, like, your prose is so light and shallow and your characters so half-formed that they don't really feel original and the whole thing just reads like a ripoff of another, superior, original work, then i think that is an issue and something one should want to avoid.

conditional third thing: there is nothing wrong with wanting to write 'fanficy' or 'tropey' fiction, particularly if you want to write lighthearted romantic comedies or something along those lines. there's no shame in it and there's an audience for that. however, i think there are distinctions between that and works that are attempting to be a bit more serious and which want to deal with denser themes or more complicated characters, and it frustrates me when people assume that just because someone writes fanfic, they must want to stick only to quite light genre fiction about meet-cutes and coffee shops.

[maruyaaya]

SO GLAD UR A NEOPTOLEMUS ENJOYER NOW he’s so cutesie just a lil guy really he’s just a little guy who also happens to commit a lot of murder <3 its part of his charm <3

you mentioned his palms being scarred AND THERE IS A SCENE WHERE TELEMACHUS NOTICES AND HE WRAPS NEO’S HANDS FOR HIM and it’s all very soft and sweet

i love my boys sm they make me so upset

YES LMFAO they’re kinda the meme where they’re both looking at each other like “i am the only normal person in this room” they want to study each other they fundamentally don’t understand each other but that’s what makes them work so well!! they see in each other what they can’t see in themselves

talking about my neoptolemus/telemachus wip bc idk how to shut the fuck up!!!

SO the dynamic between neoptolemus and telemachus in my wip is essentially that neoptolemus is in love with telemachus from their first meeting, but he’s convinced that telemachus is too good for him and that he destroys everything he touches so he masks that with cruelty and pretends that he hates telemachus. telemachus is at first, drawn to neo and really likes him, but then neo starts being cruel in his attempts to push telemachus away and that gets telemachus to genuinely hate neo. it’s like a one-sided enemies to lovers. neo wants really badly to hate telemachus, but he can’t find it in him to not love this boy who he thinks shines like the sun. telemachus, on the other hand, just hates neo and he blames neo for ruining this friendship that they could have had.

their relationship basically flips back and forth between neo saying some unintentionally soft shit and when telemachus is like “what” neo just immediately says “but you’re also a weak dumbass so. fuck you.” neo is such a girlfailure in this fic he doesn’t know how to handle emotions AT ALL. he’s grown very special to me in the course of writing this fic which is very funny bc prior to starting this fic, i actually did not care for neo in the slightest before i started writing this fic. i only cared abt him as an extension to achilles bc achilles is my fav greek mythology figure ever. THEN AGAINST ALL ODDS, neo charmed me while writing this fic. like these are some tweets from my priv twt where you can see me progress from not caring at all abt neo to seeing him as my little babygirl son

so yes, i was charmed by my socially awkward son neoptolemus. he’s such a little freak. my favourite headcanon is that maybe in another less angsty fic than the one i’m writing rn, neo wants to flirt with telemachus and bc he’s emotionally inept like his father, he decides the best way to do that is to ask telemachus to spar with him and bc he hates losing, he goes all out and beats telemachus up. it’s like

neo, internally, after punching telemachus in the face: yes, our courtship is progressing magnificently

telemachus, clutching his bloody nose, trying to figure out why neo hates him:

LIKE THEYRE SO FUNNY TO ME!! i love them sm.

but anyways back to the specifics of my fic. they don’t get to be quite as silly in my fic. essentially what happens is that neo hears of odysseus returning to ithaca and decides to visit. there, he meets telemachus and is immediately charmed because he’s such a little loser. telemachus invites neo back to the palace for dinner and neo ends up getting in an argument with odysseus that ends with him going “I WILL TRAIN TELEMACHUS.” and odysseus does not want that to happen so ofc, telemachus says he wants neo to train him.

and the plotline is basically neo and telemachus’ relationship progressing as neo trains telemachus. it’s full of a lot of really sexually charged sparring and angry arguments.

some of you may be wondering why i refer to neoptolemus as neoptolemus always and not pyrrhus even though pyrrhus is his original name. well in my head, pyrrhus is the name that he’s given at birth by deidamia and neoptolemus is the name he takes up when he goes to war because he feels like he’s become a different person. neo struggling between his two names is actually going to be quite a plot point in this fic

because this fic is just as much a character study of neoptolemus as it is a ship fic between neo and telemachus. i spend a lot of time exploring his relationship with his parents and also his relationship with odysseus. it’s neo’s desire to piss off odysseus in the first place that gets him to stay in ithaca with telemachus. i really want to spend a lot of time exploring neo as a character bc so often, people write him as just being needlessly cruel, but i feel like it’s important to remember that he was just a kid when he was brought into war. he has this legacy from achilles that he needs to live up to, but he’s never even met achilles and how are you supposed to live up to the legacy of the greatest of the greeks? how would it ever be possible to make someone like achilles proud? neo’s grappling with his self-worth and identity a lot during this fic.

so far this fic is about 22k words and it’s very special to me. in the vision i’ve created in my head, we’re about 1/4 done but i make no promises because you all know me and how awful i am at sticking to the word counts that i imagine. it could be much shorter, it could be much longer. i don’t make plans. i just sit down in front of my google docs and bleed.

i’ve also been making plans for a little modern au neo/telemachus fic BECAUSEEE i really want to write that little neo and achilles exchange that i mentioned in my last post abt neomachus (teleneo? idk what their ship name is but i like calling them neomachus). my vice is creating wips and never finishing them tho so idk when (or if) i’ll write that modern au.

i guess i’ll end this little infodump off with some fun exchanges between neo and telemachus that i really like in this fic. they’re just so special to me <3

i will absolutely talk abt this fic more in the future as i continue writing bc im so obsessed with it rn. i will do my best to finish it asap but every time i think more about it, it gets longer.

(ALSO the title of the fic is “someday i know you’ll come to your senses” which comes from the song senses by mico who is, yes, the guy who plays telemachus in epic the musical. what can i say? i like it when things come full circle (it’s also a really fucking good song. everyone stream internet hometown hero by mico))

(none of these excerpts are edited or anything btw. if there are any typos please keep that to yourself or i might die of embarrassment)

[97keanu]

꩜ ⋆ ˚｡ ⋆ ✩ ୨୧˚ Since it 'Tis the Season of sharing gifts with one another, I thought it would be wonderful for our community to come together to share our creative works with each other!

꩜ ⋆ ˚｡ ⋆ ✩ ୨୧˚ This event is a Secret Santa styled event for fanfiction writers* in the keanuverse community. What this means is that should you decide to participate, you would be paired with another writer to write a fic for them for the holidays! *(if you are an artist, editor, etc. and you are interested please contact me and we will work something out!)

꩜ ⋆ ˚｡ ⋆ ✩ ୨୧˚ What are the rules and expectations? Your gift must be at least 500 words, you must go off of the prompts and guidelines given to you by your giftee(don't worry! You will be paired with some of similar taste that will suit the style you usually like to write and which keanu character you usually like to write for!). It is expected that you join our community on tumblr to keep up with check ins through out, and your gift must be given by Dec. 25th and no later than Dec. 31st. You must also, under no circumstances, let your recipient know that you are their gifter, that's why its a secret! It is more than fine if people know you are participating, just make sure it's still a surprise to your giftee for who their gifter was!

꩜ ⋆ ˚｡ ⋆ ✩ ୨୧˚ What if I join but need to drop out? No worries! I understand that things happen and life can be overwhelming. Please try to let me know by Dec. 12th that you are deciding to no longer participate, and I will try to find another gift giver and work something out for your giftee. No hard feelings at all and your withdrawal will be kept private!

꩜ ⋆ ˚｡ ⋆ ✩ ୨୧˚ What dates are check ins? Check ins will begin Dec. 1 and go weekly until Dec. 25th. I will post in the community about said check ins and you simply reply letting me know you are all good for finishing your gift in time! If something should go wrong, please contact me and we will work something out. I am making the minimum 500 words so that our gifts are very achievable, but feel free to write more than that! As long as you can get your gift done in time.

꩜ ⋆ ˚｡ ⋆ ✩ ୨୧˚ Where are we putting our gifts? Once our gifts are completed and Dec. 25th rolls around, we are posting our gifts or a link to our gifts on tumblr with your recipient and myself tagged(@97keanu)! Please tag the gift as #Keanuverse Secret Santa so that readers may be able to read the works we have created! You may also send your gift into our community page as a means of sharing as well.

꩜ ⋆ ˚｡ ⋆ ✩ ୨୧˚ How do I enter? Fill out my questionnaire on Google Forms linked and I will contact you with information regarding your Secret Santa reciepent by Dec. 1st. Make sure you put down the blog you are going to be posting your gift on as your @ as well as that I may contact you privately so that your recipient stays a secret!

꩜ ⋆ ˚｡ ⋆ ✩ ୨୧˚ Other questions? Please feel free to contact me privately(@97keanu) or post any comments/questions right here in the tags/comments/reblogs etc and I will get back to you ASAP!

[inkskinned]

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

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

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

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

and i'd still keep writing.

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

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

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

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

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

you create because you're greedy.

[frownyalfred]

today’s fun writing fact: did you know that most writing coaches estimate that it takes around one hour for the average writer to write 1000 words?

I know what you’re thinking — that’s really slow! I can write that in 20 minutes. Right, but that assumes that when you started typing, you knew exactly what you were going to write — every line of dialogue your characters were about to say, every description perfectly pre-planned, etc.

And then you have to go back and edit it. And tag it. And cut out parts that don’t work and add new bits. So by the time you’ve got that “short” fic all ready to go, you’ve probably spent at least two hours on it, maybe more.

So yeah, as an author, I cringe seeing the “this was so short!!” comments on fics, even when they’re well-intentioned. Because someone just took 2+ hours out of their day for something you could read in less than five minutes and be done with.

The next time you see that author put out a 1-2k chapter, remember to do the math! And leave a comment 💜 that’s how you keep those updates coming.

[kittenwriter]

It would be nice if my fandom readership followed me over to my published original fiction. (And in at least one case someone did go buy an anthology I had a story in after discovering me through fanfic.) It's not something I'm allowing to actively shape what I write or I'd actually be writing my wrong-boy-who-lived deconstruction instead of repeatedly alluding to it while getting sidetracked by DS9 and exchanges, and I do see leaning too hard into that mentality as a thing turning fandom into a less community-conversational space, which I don't like. I don't, however, see "let's use fandom popularity for a book deal" as inherently a problem.

But we all draw our lines somewhere and I draw it at pull-to-publish. (And Patreons for fic, but that should go without saying.) It's one thing to achieve an audience that follows you elsewhere; it's quite another to write something in fanfic, get the audience that way, and then take it down and "rewrite" it. Among other things, it's breaking the ethos about others' intellectual property-- I put it in kind of the same category as Patreons for fic, and sooner or later someone's going to notice and we'll wind up with fanfiction's legality in court which no one wants. (Just look at the Omegaverse lawsuit!)

yeah this is the reason i stopped writing for dramione

https://www.tumblr.com/olderthannetfic/767816608125255680/i-may-be-new-to-all-this-but-i-dont-understand?source=share

I'm in my 40s and the last time I was in fandom it was the livejournal era and during pandemic I rediscovered fandom and found ao3 (I didn't know it existed!! when my friend showed it to me my mind was blown!!) and started writing dramione again, but the more I spent time in the community the more I felt that not only the readers were expecting "published book" levels of quality from the fics but also other authors were openly admitting that this is the way for them to gain audience and pull to publish or just use the fandom popularity to land a deal, it was so jarring to me to hear and see this, and the more jarring part was people not calling out this but rather encouraging these authors. And knowing that Manacled will be pulled to publish, Auction and two others I don't remember are being pulled to published and there were big articles from Business Insider and Variety covering this "pull to publish" thing not necessarily as a bad thing. And the people in the ship subreddit and big discords are happy about it and cheering it on really stopped feeling like a fandom to me.

I have moved on to write for rare-pairs in HP and its so much better and chiller there, and interactions are better and the sub communities are much nicer and it doesn't feel like I"m writing for some mass production pipeline or something but for my fun.

--

Ohhh yeah. There are a few big het ships where this culture runs rampant.

If they want to girlboss their way to a book deal, fine. But I'm not hanging out in wannabe influencer space.

[im-totally-not-an-alien-2]

Phantom stared at the monitor with baited breath. He had been alerted by the computers beeping and came to see what was going on.

Could this really be happening? After all this time alone in his lair, waiting, hoping for any sign that his last remaining friend was still out there, his ecto-signature finally showed up on his radar.

This had to be a trap.

But...what if it wasn't? What if Robin was really there? What if he was hurt and waiting for Phantom to come rescue him? The thought made his stomach drop. He knew what his birdy had gone through when he was still alive and he would rather feed himself to a pool of ghost piranhas than let Robin believe for a second that he had been abandoned again.

Grabbing the essentials and shoving them into a bag he rushed out of his lair. It had been years since he had seen his birdy and even longer since he had been in Amity Park or any other variation of the Living Realms. But this was for his best friend. For him he would do anything.

...

Which apparently included fighting his besties adoptive dad in the streets while he was in a full Gothic fursuit-Robin what the heck- Robin himself wasn't helping, he was just cheering Phantom on from the sidelines and giving him tips.

Phantom managed to get away from the bat and his other birds- how many did he have???- and had an emotional reunion with his best friend which included a lot of tears, mostly from him.

Okay, entirely from him. He was worried out of his mind for his birdy, sue him. Robin was mostly confused, saying he didn't remember disappearing, only that he felt more and more strange before he just...blanked. The next this he knew he was standing over this prone figure of a guy with a leather jacket and a full faced red helmet. Batman looked at him odd and Robin didn't hesitate to mock the man he once viewed as a father.

They fought for a bit with the younger vigilante using all the powers Phantom taught him along with his furry training to beat up the man who abandoned him to the mercy of one of his rogues.

Speaking of which. The very next thing Jason did was find the Joker and do everything the deranged clown did to him. Karma. It was on one of his later confrontations that Phantom appeared. Now the darker dynamic duo are running around Gotham being ghostly and more or less doing whatever they want.

Bruce was spiraling mentally. His second son lay in the batcaves infirmary stuck on life support because somehow, some way, his soul was knocked out of his body.

They needed to find some way to put it back in before that other teen "took him home" and Bruce really hoped that didn't mean what he thinks it means.

[eddiegettingshot]

like i do think it is funny that many of the blogs saying insane shit were perfectly fine with first kneejerk defending, and then continuing to be friends with queerbuck, certified racist cunt, for like months. and i am a real person. so isn’t that something

[imtrashraccoon]

I'm feeling down and really tired today so I've been reading some monster x human fanfiction. Anyways, I was suddenly inspired to write something for Nightmare and since my friend @superbfirnacho also seemed to be feeling down lately, I may have indulged in something comfy.

Nacho, I hope you like this, I was tempted to ask first but then I didn't, so... I was really tempted to write more but I didn't plan anything out and just wrote until it ended in a good place. Is it weird that I was also tempted to try and write a crossover that included Aylin meeting Ivy? I'm too tired to try and make that work right now, but I'm not opposed to it!

Cuddles By The Fire: Ivymare

The gentle crackling and occasional popping of the coals could've soothed even the most stubborn person to sleep. However, for a god like Nightmare, he was unaffected by the allure of rest. He could if he wanted to, but often didn't since the time doing so could be used for more productive things.

There was one exception though and she was currently laying asleep next to him.

Her name was Ivy and she was easily the best thing to happen to him in centuries. He wouldn't have thought he could feel any affection for anyone or anything again but lately he was realizing how wrong he had been.

Her bubbly personality and seemingly boundless positivity was mildly irritating, almost like sand between his bones. But it was nothing in comparison to the blazing sunlight of his brother's own aura.

He had pushed her away at first. She was basically the complete opposite to him and yet something about her kept him from leaving entirely.

All beings could experience negative emotions just as they could experience positive ones. He could sense that she was no different, despite how much she tried to hide it behind a bright smile. Maybe that was why he'd persuaded her to join his little crew of misfits.

Or maybe it was because she seemed so familiar... Almost like a long lost friend...

Whatever the reason, he wasn't about to let her leave his side anymore. He wasn't going to let anyone hurt her. He wasn't going to allow her happiness to be snuffed out.

She was a talented healer too. Anyone with even an idiom of mana could sense how powerful her soul was. Some may foolishly suggest that she was a Boss Monster but he knew better. Her strength rivaled that of his own and while he'd never actually inquired, he highly suspected that she was somehow related to a deity. Although, he wasn't sure if she was a god like he considered himself to be or if she had been blessed by one.

Healing wasn't all she could do though. She wasn't afraid to defend herself if anyone was foolish enough to challenge her to a fight. He'd witnessed her put Killer in his place a few times already and likely would again since the skeleton never seemed to learn his lesson.

She was also a skilled botanist and had a way with animals that he'd only ever seen from nature deities the few times he'd ventured into Reapertale. These talents weren't as useful for his work but they occasionally proved handy. It was just one other thing he admired about her since his own corruption didn't mesh well with most animals or plants.

He used one of his tendrils to set aside his journal for the time being and shifted her body a bit closer to him. He lightly ran one of his phalanges over her cheekbones, being mindful not to graze her with his claws and mar her perfect skin.

She stirred and mumbled something unintelligible but he was quick to soothe her back to sleep with a gentle kiss on her forehead. He lived for these rare quiet moments when it was just the two of them.

If his brother ever found about her, he knew that those Star Fools would immediately assume he'd kidnapped her. That wasn't entirely incorrect but it wasn't like she had ever tried to leave either. He probably would've let her, but at the same time, a darker side of him wanted to lock her away and never let anyone even look at her again.

His tendrils unconsciously coiled tighter around her body for a moment before he realized and loosened up his hold so as to not wake her.

She was his.

And he wouldn't let anyone take her away from him. Not again...

[lauronk]

happy birthday to my friend @stillboldlygoing. this once - and only this once - will i participate in your wish fulfillment of fixing my fic there's nothing surgery can do.

so i give you this tumblr exclusive ficlet, just a dream

word count: ~3.4k tags: ellie pov, joel & ellie, nightmares, 'it was all a dream' trope, blood, minor injury, no beta we die like david

“But no matter what, no matter all the time you have spent hating me, I love you, Ellie. Okay? No matter what, I would always have loved you. And I have never, not for a goddamn second, regretted my choice.”

Ellie’s eyes flutter open, Joel’s words still ringing in her ears. Her eyes are crusted with the remnants of her tears, cheeks still damp, and as she sucks in a shallow breath, Ellie realizes she is still crying.

She might never stop, at this point. She doesn’t see how she can, not with Joel gone, not with what feels like her entire life upended. What the fuck is she supposed to do, with his words and the echo of that gunshot reverberating non-stop in her head? That image of him walking off into the trees is forever seared into her mind.

Another ragged sob slips out of her lips, and Ellie pushes herself upright on her bed, chest heaving –

She freezes, hands gripping the edge of her mattress. Her bed. She didn’t – she fell asleep on the floor after getting back, she fell asleep there and she stayed there. She stayed there, on the cold ground, still in her jeans and flannel and boots, and yet…

And yet she’s in her bed, in her pajamas, boots shucked off messily by the door like she always does. The door’s still locked, and Ellie whips her head around to check her window, to look at the curtains she knows she closed, and yet they’re wide fucking open. Joel’s house is framed behind them, trees swaying ever so slightly and Ellie –

Ellie bolts.

Doesn’t bother with her shoes, just twists the lock and yanks the door open, doesn’t shut it behind her. Runs full tilt across the yard without slowing, even when she steps on a rock or a twig or something that has her swearing and her right foot radiating pain, but she doesn’t stop until she’s up the steps to his porch and outside his door. It’s fucking locked - who locks their goddamn doors in a place as safe as Jackson? - and Ellie jiggles the knob fruitlessly.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

She gives up trying to turn the handle in favor of banging on the door with her palm, not stopping even when it starts to sting, when the pain is ricocheting up her arm, not caring that she probably can be heard from around the front of the house, that the sun is barely up, that her foot is hurting something awful, just keeps slamming her hand into the door until she hears a noise from behind it and the handle turns and the door swings open and –

Joel is standing there in front of her. Joel, whose expression morphs rapidly from annoyance to surprise to trepidation to worry. Joel, with his graying hair and increasingly wrinkled face, faded shirt and bare feet, and Ellie can’t help the noise that slips from her and has his eyes going wide.

“Ellie, what –?”

But her hands are scrabbling for his arm, his right arm, rotating it until she can see his forearm, the skin unmarked and unblemished and un-fucking-bitten.

Her oh my god comes out wet and garbled, and she slumps forward until her forehead meets his chest. Joel staggers - steadies - and wraps an arm around her shoulder as she twines her fingers into the sides of his shirt and sobs her relief out against him.

“You’re alright,” she hears faintly above her, his hand rubbing a slow path up and down her spine. “‘S alright.”

They stand there together until Ellie’s sobs subside and she leans back, peering up at him as if she can’t quite believe he’s here. And she can’t, not really - the dream was so vivid, so life-like, she can still smell the dirt, can still hear the echo of the gunshot, can still feel the tightness of Tommy’s arms around her, pulling her away from him permanently.

Joel’s staring back at her almost the same way, uncertainty and confusion and hope all warring visibly across his face. He cups her cheeks, thumbs brushing away stray tears as they still fall, and his brows tug together.

“You wanna tell me what that was about?” He asks softly.

“I –” Ellie’s throat closes, head turning enough to catch sight of his bite-free arm again. “I had a nightmare last night, I guess. But it was one of those nightmares that feels so real, everything about it was so clear, I can still remember every little detail of it, I –” She shifts her weight, a hiss escaping when her right foot flares with pain. “Jesus fuck,” she breathes, looking down.

“What –” Joel follows her gaze down, his hands tensing on her face. “You’re bleedin’.”

Sure enough, there’s a small pool of blood on his back deck, her foot throbbing and tacky with it when she lifts it to examine the damage. It’s a deep gash, right through the middle of her foot, and a glance backwards shows a few bloody footprints across the deck.

“Yeah,” Ellie replies quietly, looking back at him, “I think I stepped on something in the yard when I was coming over here.”

Joel shifts to the side of her, hooking an arm under her shoulders. “C’mon, inside.” He nudges her forward, supporting her weight as she hops awkwardly on one foot.

“No, I can take care of it,” Ellie protests weakly, even as she lets herself be led over to the couch. “I don’t wanna get blood on your floor or anything.” Joel props her foot up on the coffee table before disappearing into the kitchen and reemerging with his first aid kit, a dented white case that had been in the house when he’d moved in.

“Yeah, well, you showed up here freaked the hell out and bleedin’, so humor me for a minute and let me fix you up, alright?”

Ellie sinks a little deeper into the couch, watching as he cracks it open and pulls out a wipe and some gauze. She doesn’t know how there’s even anything left in it at this point, after years of bandaging up her cuts and scrapes, not to mention his own. “Alright.”

She leaves him to work in silence for a moment, eyes skating over the room around them curiously. Not really anything has changed since the last time she was here other than a couple more wood carvings, maybe some new books. The clock on the mantel ticks loudly in the silence, right next to the drawing of him she’d made. She can still see his face, gone all soft and pleased in the way she only ever saw from him rarely, staring down at the drawing with his hand over his mouth. Eyes glassy as he’d immediately gone to get a frame for it.

The drawing he’d done of her in turn had been taken out of its frame and shoved in the middle of one of her books. She hadn’t been able to make herself get rid of it anymore than she could stand to look at it.

“So…” Joel draws the word out, glancing up at her briefly before returning his attention to her foot. It stings as he carefully wipes it clean, a towel resting under her heel and slowly darkening with blood. “You gonna tell me about this nightmare of yours?”

Ellie starts to pull her leg back immediately, but Joel’s too quick - his hand clamps around her ankle to keep it in place like he knew exactly what she was thinking. “I don’t wanna talk about it,” she says sullenly, crossing her arms over her chest and feeling for a moment like the fourteen-year-old she had been when they met.

Joel hesitates, hand squeezing her ankle and then releasing it in favor of pressing a bandage to the sole of her foot. He keeps pressure there for a long moment, shifting her foot to rest on top of his thigh to hold it better. “You don’t gotta tell me about it if you really don’t want to,” he says eventually, eyes still on her foot. “I just know it had to have been pretty bad if it had you runnin’ to me all panicked like that.” His voice fades into something a little more forlorn, like he recognizes how out of the ordinary it is now for a tear-stained Ellie to be showing up on his doorstep. For Ellie to be on his doorstep at all, after a year and a half of careful avoidance.

Ellie tilts her head back to rest on the back of the couch, eyes on the discolored ceiling. It’s easier than looking at Joel and seeing all the layers of him as she’d known him overlapping. The utter asshole of a man she’d first met that had flung her into a wall and pointed a gun in her face; the softer version he’d become after their argument in this very house, teaching her about football and how to shoot; his face as he’d admitted to lying to her, to ruining any hope of a cure; the face from her dream as he’d prepared to go off into the woods and die; and the man now carefully bandaging her foot with his head hung. There were too many versions of him that pulled too many of her heartstrings and had her feeling entirely too many different ways.

But her eyes slip shut and the vision of him walking towards the trees with a trembling arm and two patrolmen swims behind her eyelids, and the words fall out.

“You died.”

Joel’s hand stills on her foot, the gauze half-wrapped around. He doesn’t say anything, and it’s like all the air has been sucked from the room.

“You died,” Ellie repeats quietly, swiping a stray tear from her cheek. “You got bitten out on a patrol, and me and Tommy had to go say goodbye to you, and then I watched you walk off to go kill yourself.”

His hands resume their ministrations, but even without looking at him Ellie can feel them trembling. Fuck, she’s already said this much, so she might as well keep going.

“Tommy came to get me,” she whispers, eyes still shut, “and told me you got bit. And so I went out with him to see you before you – before.” Her throat goes tight, and Ellie forces herself to sit up and look at him again. Even feeling him securing the ends of the bandage isn’t enough - she needs a visual reminder that he’s still here, that it was all just her brain’s idea of a horrendous joke.

Joel finishes bandaging her foot but makes no move to stand or to return her leg to the coffee table. One of his hands stays wrapped loosely around her ankle, his gaze on the ground between his bare feet. He’s still in his pajamas, Ellie realizes for the first time. She must have been banging on the door hard enough to wake him - there’s not even the smell of coffee coming from the kitchen.

“Was there more to it?” Joel asks when she doesn’t continue, and Ellie swallows.

“Yeah, it –” she blows out a breath, fingers knotting together in her lap. “We got there and you’d…you’d gotten bit on your arm. Same place as me.” Joel’s right arm twitches slightly, his eyes finally lifting to meet hers. “And…we –” Ellie clears her throat. “We said goodbye.”

“What did we say?” Joel asks quietly, a note of fear in his voice like he doesn’t really want to know the answer.

“Well,” Ellie takes a deep breath, resituates herself a little but doesn’t pull her foot from Joel’s thigh, “I got really pissed at you. Told you it was all your fault because of…because you –”

“Because of what I did at the hospital,” he fills in for her. There’s no recrimination in his voice, no guilt or anger, just understanding. He’s holding her gaze steadily, encouraging her to keep going, something sad lurking in the depths of his eyes that Ellie doesn’t want to try to name.

So she keeps going, spills out all of it - all the things they’d said, the puns, the way she still hadn’t been able to let go of her anger but the way his death had all but destroyed her from the inside out. By the time she stops talking, her throat is dry and her cheeks are damp again. So are Joel’s, his hand still cradling her ankle.

Silence envelops them, the air in the room leaden and heavy with a grief that still feels too real, too raw and present. Ellie still can’t believe how clear the whole dream was - how clear it still was in her mind even now - and she still half expects to blink and be alone in his house. Blink, and he’ll be gone, out in an unmarked grave beyond Jackson’s walls, and she’ll be here with only grief and resentment and fading memories of his laugh to keep her company.

But Joel remains solid in front of her, tangible, his calloused hand still keeping her tethered.

“D’you want some tea?” He finally asks, looking up at her a little uncertainly. “I’ve got some things I’d like to say about your nightmare, but I think maybe we might need some kinda fortification for that.”

“Yeah. Yeah, sure.”

Joel steadies her as she stands, hands hovering nearby as she limps to the dining room and settles into the chair by the window. It doesn’t hurt quite as bad to walk with the cushion of the bandaging, but she knows she’s gonna have to let Tommy know and probably get herself taken off patrol for a couple weeks.

Ellie sits there, watching as Joel busies himself at the stovetop, pulling down an extra mug to go with his owl mug, digging out a tin of tea that she’s pretty sure she left here after she moved out, pacing back and forth until the kettle whistles and he can pour both of their drinks.

Joel brings both mugs over to the table and sets them down, turning back to dig a small jar of honey out of one of the cabinets and carry it back along with a spoon.

Clearly, he still remembers how she likes her tea.

The smell of his coffee permeates her nostrils as she stirs in the spoonful of honey, and for once she doesn’t recoil from it. She’ll never admit it to him, but the smell had grown on her over the years. Not the taste - never the taste - but the scent of coffee was something Ellie came to associate with Joel, and with safety. Coffee and sawdust and whatever oil it was he used on his wood carvings. She’d forced herself to stop seeking out the smell of it when she’d cut Joel out.

This morning though, Ellie just lets herself take a deep breath and inhale it as Joel settles himself across from her.

“‘M sorry you had that nightmare,” he begins slowly, staring into the depth of his coffee mug like it’ll have all the answers. “And I’m glad that you came here and I could help you out.”

“Like old times,” Ellie can’t help but say, thinking back on bandaged blisters and cut hands, and Joel gives her a brief, wry smile.

“And I don’t expect anything to change, even with how scared and upset you were.” Joel takes a sip of his coffee, setting the owl mug back down with a thunk. “‘Specially once I tell you that I agree with everything the me in your nightmare said.” His voice wavers a bit, but his gaze is steady as it joins with hers. “I don’t regret what I did. I’ll never regret it.”

Ellie’s jaw clenches, but she doesn’t interrupt. This was what her mind had been trying to tell her with that dream, right? Hearing Joel out, letting him say his piece and deciding where to go from there, before it was too late to do anything.

When she stays quiet, Joel’s shoulders lose a little bit of their tension, dropping from around his ears. “I know that’s probably not what you wanna hear. But after I lied to you about what happened at the hospital - what I did,” he clarifies when Ellie’s fingers twitch on her mug, “I told myself that if I ever got the chance to talk to you again I’d be completely upfront about it. So I’ll tell you, I’d do it again. Anything to save your life, kiddo.”

Ellie sits, sips her tea, lets the silence envelop them once more. What he’s saying is nothing new to her - she’s always known he didn’t regret it, wouldn’t change his mind, would kill anyone he deemed a threat to her without a second thought. And it still pisses her the hell off, the way that he’d taken a crucial choice from her, ruined the one thing she was supposed to be good for. It still makes her want to toss her tea in his face and storm out.

But even as she thinks it, she hears the Joel from her dream murmuring I gotta go, baby and sees him vanishing into the woods. Feels the gaping wound left by his death, filled only with her anger and resentment, and Ellie knows - she doesn’t want that. This world they live in now…anything could happen. He could get bit; she could get shot. At his age, he could have a heart attack or a stroke or just fucking die.

And Ellie doesn’t think she’d be able to live with herself if he died thinking she hated him.

“I’m still mad,” she says slowly, and Joel nods, not really looking at her. “I might always be mad. I don’t know how to forgive what you did.”

“Yeah,” Joel says sadly. He rotates his mug between his hands, thumb running over the lip of it almost absently. “Yeah, I know.” He says it like he is already expecting a return to the way things had been, to distant and polite greetings, to separate lives.

“I think I’d like to try though,” Ellie manages, her voice barely a whisper. “Like I think…” The table in front of her blurs slightly and she blinks away the fresh round of tears to look up at Joel. He’s watching her with guarded hope on his face, his own eyes glassy. “I think that if something happened to you, like in my dream, and things were the way they were, I think I’d regret it the rest of my life.”

Joel swallows, hands white-knuckling his owl mug. “I’d like that,” he tells her hoarsely. “I’d really…I’d really like that.”

“Okay,” Ellie says, letting out a breath and feeling like a hundred pound weight has lifted from her chest. “Okay, good, that’s…good.”

They finish their drinks in a quiet that feels less tense and weighted than anything else that’s been between them…all the way back to that ridge overlooking Jackson, if Ellie really thinks about it. Him lying to her there had been the biggest crack in their relationship, made wider and wider by every time he doubled down on it.

But now it felt like maybe it could be fixed, like things between them could start to shift back to how they had been on the road.

Ellie washes their mugs in the sink despite Joel protesting that she oughta stay off her foot. He hovers - nice to know nothing has changed - one hand perpetually outstretched like she’s about to suddenly topple over. He escorts her to the door too, asking only once if she’s sure she’s alright to walk across the yard to her place. He doesn’t ask her to stay - they both know that would be too much, too soon - but he watches from the porch as she hobbles carefully down to her home. She gives the offending rock a wide berth, eyeing the sharp point of it - smeared with her blood - with distaste.

Joel’s still on the porch when Ellie gets to her door and glances back. He gives her a wave and starts to step away like he’s gonna head inside.

“Hey,” Ellie calls impulsively, and Joel pauses. “Wanna watch a movie tonight?”

Even from across the yard, she can see the way his face lights up.

“Yeah,” he’s grinning from ear to ear, “yeah, kiddo, I’d love to.”

love you rocky, hopefully you're having a delightful birthday 💗

[tired-gae]

Prompt #27: "That's not the point"

Fandom: Marvel Cinematic Universe

Rating: Teen (for cursing)

No warnings as of now!! (If there is something that should be put here, let me know!)

(No ships either)

Premise: Post-revival (Died in Infinity War, ambiguously is Alive at present time, between Infinity War and Endgame) Loki and Clint have a conversation.

---

Loki had been in the Avengers Compound for nearly a week. It had been a few days since the revelation that the Invasion of New York was not done voluntarily on Loki’s part (and since he’d last seen Barton.) Thanos was a topic of heavy discussion, of course, given the whole ‘Snap’ business. Loki’s almost glad he was dead at the time, if only because he didn’t have to witness that event. 

He and Barton hadn’t made eye contact since he’d returned. This did not come as a surprise, and Loki expected this pattern to continue.

So imagine his shock when, as Loki is sitting against a wall in an unused training room in an attempt to think uninterrupted, Barton walks into the room and sits down mere feet from him. Loki glances over but chooses not to react. Whatever Barton is trying to accomplish, he’s sure it will make itself clear soon.  

He observes the agent quietly. Barton looks tired. He’s staring, eyes half-lidded, at the floor, and appears older than Loki remembers. (Though, he supposed, it had been a good number of years since New York. Mortals aged quickly, did they not?) He takes note of Barton’s lack of weapons. (Visible ones, anyway. He is a spy.) A display of benevolence, perhaps? He can’t imagine it’s a display of trust, considering it all.  

Loki looks away once again. It continues to be silent.  

The silence is expected. Loki can hear the gentle whine of Barton's hearing aids. (An old pair, presumably worn for comfort reasons. Stark had bought (made?) him a pair recently, after deciding the technology around Clint's ears was subpar at best, and that the archer could do better. Loki had yet to see him wear them.)  

The silence is also fragile. Barton is the first one to break it.  

"You too, huh?" 

Loki hums quietly. "In a different way, but... yes." 

Barton picks at the skin around his fingernails. "I had a feeling." 

Loki's head snaps toward him, stunned. He struggles to find words for a moment, mouth opening and closing stupidly. He settles on, "Pardon?" 

Barton's eyes finally flicker over to Loki's, his eyes still half-lidded, tired. "You do realize I remember a good amount of my time under the mind-control crap, right? I mean, it wasn't that hard to figure out." He looked away again. "I don't actually have pigeon shit for brains."

Loki takes a moment to form his response, choosing only to respond to the last part of the statement. "I'm aware. You were the brains behind the stunt in Germany, and subsequently the entire plan, after all. I could hardly think you were stupid." 'A distraction and an eyeball,' if Loki remembered correctly. 

Barton's face twists into a grimace briefly before he shakes it off. "Anyway—the point was, I remember a lot of those few days. I remember you going into a trance-like thing a few times, and coming back from it all shaky and shit. ...Not that you weren't really shaky the whole time. You were weirdly weak, and despite telling us not to overwork ourselves, you didn't really seem to sleep at any point..." He shrugged. "I dunno. After I more-or-less got over it all, it wasn't exactly a difficult conclusion to come to that there was something fishy going on, that you weren't really the big bad." 

Loki stared at the wall opposite them, fingers digging into the flesh of his arms where he was crossing them. It was silent again for only a moment. 

"Oh, and SHIELD's known since forever." Barton added like an afterthought. "I mean, they combed through basically every piece of footage from the invasion, I've seen the clips. They analyzed the shit out of the footage from the collapsed PEGASUS facility, they couldn't really ignore all the signs that you weren't quite... at your best when you showed up." Understatement of the millennium, Loki thought with very little mirth. Barton looked over lazily again, though this time Loki was the one avoiding eye contact. 

"Anywho." Barton continued, quieter. "This isn't forgiveness or any crap like that." 

"I wouldn't expect it to be," Loki agreed. 

"It is... I dunno. An olive branch I guess." He shrugged, crossing his arms in a mirror to Loki to stop himself from picking more at the skin on his hands. "Part of me still wants to put an arrow through your skull, but, y'know, it's a small part." 

Loki frowned. "You would be completely entitled to do so, if you wished. I would not stop you from taking that revenge." It likely wouldn't even kill him, he mused. Nothing seems to be able to do that these days. 

Barton groaned, reaching up to pinch the bridge of his nose. Loki can't help but wonder what he'd said wrong. "See, you say shit like that, and it makes that part even smaller. I mean, dude. I'm not actually gonna fucking shoot you." 

Loki can't say he understands why not, but he can't say he understands much about Barton. (Despite quite literally being in his mind at one point.) None of these mortals make much sense. 

Barton sighed, letting his hand drop again. “Anyways. That’s not the point. The gist is... we’re OK, all things considered. If you catch me using a printed out picture of your face on a dummy during target practice, mind your business. That’s just how my brain works.” He shifts, standing back up from their position of sitting against the wall. “I’ll see you around, terrorist. Don’t die on us again. Still needja for the whole killing Thanos thing.” 

Loki rolled his eyes at the ‘terrorist’ nickname. “Never losing that epithet, am I?” 

“Not a chance.” 

[tinybubblesyay]

Girl i don't know how fanfic writers do it, this is hard af. Big 'prech to those who do write and create multi chapter fics because I'm struggling with writing 1k words.

Anyway, hopefully I'll have that cringe wolverine fanfiction done by Halloween. I started writing it when first exploring the character so it's pretty ooc ngl 😭. But hey, wolverine fics are no stranger to that kind of thing tbh.

[valiantlyannoyingbread]

good news: i just wrote the best work of my life, with truly some of the funniest and most touching dialogue i've ever written

bad news: it's a high school musical fanfic

[bythehearts]

not to bring tiktok drama on tumblr but like every time a ‘scandal’ comes out with one of these ‘production companies’ that make fan films i always hope we’re finally gonna discuss how they professionalize something that should be an hobbyist endeavor… and yet every single time i’m disappointed.

[silentoathprincess]

Written for KouAo week 2024 Day 1: Crossdressing Koujaku wears a new outfit to tempt his boyfriend. Will likely remain a oneshot due to time constraints.

i miss contributing to the DMMD fandom here you go lovelies