#this has been very cathartic to write

[suddencolds]

.

/personal

if i had a quarter every time i read something this year and came away disproportionately attached to a central character named peter, i would have two quarters

[defiledtomb]

( ͡❛ ‿‿ ͡❛)

[bunnyboy-juice]

spent the first hour and change at work deleting some old files and am having a grand ol time laughing at myself for not realizing i was a lesbian sooner

[godsweakestsoldier]

“one scene” 🥺🥺 🤝 one fear 🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠

if you listen really carefully you can hear me shaking like a tiny beetle with a sword facing down a lawnmower 🥺🪲🗡️😭😭😭

Oh my sweet friend, do not be afraid, it's just a *checks word count* 1.2 k little scene. But, you are so brave in the face of the one fear. I hope you enjoy whatever this is. It's got your favorites, love you.

-

“Bea,” Shannon starts. It’s the first time she’s spoken since she settled next to Beatrice. Knee bumping into her shoulder as she adjusts. A whisper breaking the silence that had been filled with hushed supplications.

Beatrice’s fingers ache as rosary beads work themselves through pinched fingers. They’re cool beneath skin, solid beneath callouses, heavy as they drag with each Hail Mary. Lips wrapped around words, praise that she couldn’t remember learning yet mutters all the same. There will be bruises, and she knows that. Blossoming across her knees from where she kneels and knuckles where she clutches the rosary. She doesn’t care.

Polished oak creaks as Shannon shifts her weight. Heat growing prominent from the movement, a constant rolling heat that Beatrice had begun to associate with her from their first moments. A fire capable of consuming.

“Bea,” there’s steel in her voice now, not harsh nor chastising, but it’s there. Her hand warm as it wraps around Beatrice’s clasped hands, “Beatrice, that’s enough.”

It’s the formality that causes her to stop, not the words. The sudden shock of her name, of vocal chords dipped in steel. Shannon’s fingers twitch where they rest against blood-soaked hands. A few flecks of dried blood breaking free, floating to the wood beneath them, disappearing into the darkness. Dried blood cracks as Beatrice finally opens her eyes. Their hands are cascaded in the soft yellow lights, darkening the maroon blood coating her fingers. Deep blue beads catch the soft glow of artificial candlelight.

“I’m sorry,” Shannon whispers, barely audible over the sound of the heater buzzing above them.

“No.”

There’s a sigh of resignation that emerges from her chest, and Beatrice watches her shadow become distorted—passing over pews, stopping just before the steps to the small altar. Feels the weight of Shannon sliding onto the kneeler, air escaping in protest. Watches as she removes her hand, makes the sign of the cross with her precision, and there’s silence.

Familiarity seeps in and sinks beneath cutaneous tissue and tendons and sinew. Settles against her bones, filters into marrow to be circulated through her body again. Kneeling, fingers held high with bowed head. Beatrice couldn’t count the amount of she had done this, with her parents, the bordering school. It had been months since she had stepped foot in a church, taken communion, confessed. Her communion, her refugee, currently lay sprawled out in a hospital bed.

“I’m sorry.”

“Shan, please,” Beatrice breathes, gentle and heavy, and it sits strangely in her mouth. It’s wrong. Wrong to consciously speak after relying on muscle memory, on scriptures and prayers cemented in her head.

Her eyes flicker up, meeting the clock held aloft by a long-forgotten string. 2100, just over two hours.

“Beatrice,” it’s a plea and a command wrapped into one, “look at me.”

Reluctantly, Beatrice turns her attention towards the woman beside her. Takes in the black sweatshirt emblazoned with a small halo in the right corner, the way it sags around the shoulders, clearly made to accommodate border shoulders. Trapezius and deltoids, she reminds herself. It’s Mary’s, of course, it’s Mary’s. The smaller hairs that had escaped her braid framing her head. There’s desperation in her eyes underneath dark circles; it is nothing like the Shannon that Beatrice knows.

“Shan-.”

Shannon’s hands unfold from where they rest against the back of a pew, one gripping onto wood, the other closing the gap between them. Her fingers resting over bone and cartilage.

“No, you don’t get to Shan me, not right now,” Shannon says, the steel sneaking back into her voice, “you only get to listen to me and that’s it, do you understand?”

Beatrice nods, because she is nothing but obedient, and it’s Shannon who sits next to her. Her fingers start to unlace hers, gently unwrapping taunt fingers. Allowing the beads to drop, dangle and reflect golden light across the curve of Shannon’s jaw.

“We didn’t know where you went, didn’t know if you were alive or not. You could’ve been dead or bleeding out somewhere,” she pauses, gently lifting the rosary from Beatrice’s hand. “And, when we found you, you blatantly ignored me,” Shannon’s fingers land on the curve of her jaw, her thumb brushing back one of the fallen strands. “Beatrice, you’re supposed to be the smart one.”

��I know,” Beatrice replies, and it’s smaller than she’d like.

“No, I don’t think you do because if you did, you would’ve stayed with us or at least told one of us where you’d go,” there’s a softness to her voice, a slight uptick of her lips, “you’re lucky I’m patient.”

“Lily?” a silent, desperate prayer manifested finally into words. Beatrice can feel tears well, the sting as one slips across broken skin, shame reaching out across her chest cavity.

“Will be okay,” Shannon answers, gently brushing the pad of her thumb across the curve of a cheekbone. Her eyes soften slightly, a glimpse of gentleness hidden in their depth. “I promise you I would never lie to you,” she mutters, lips warm against Beatrice’s brow.

“Is she awake?”

“No, not yet.”

Something deep within Beatrice cracks, some edifice crumbling underneath the confirmation. The tendrils of shame gradually retreat in the light of relief. Warm fingers move across taunt muscles, sternocleidomastoid, and tuck underneath strands of hair. Shannon’s here and present; she can smell the slight acidity of coffee. She’s not alone anymore. They, Shannon and her, kneeling with foreheads pressed together, remind her of that fact.

“The others?” Beatrice whispers, her eyes fluttering shut.

“Are okay, although I think Cam may have walked a rut into the waiting room’s carpet.”

She smiles then, for the first time in hours since the fight. It’s small, barely noticeable, except for the slight upturn of her lip and dimple, “That sounds about right.”

Shannon chuckles and the sound chases away the shame entirely, at least for now. There’s an easiness to being around her, something Beatrice revels in, “Yeah it does. I love you, you know that right?”

Beatrice hums in acknowledgment.

“I love you, but you look like shit,” Shannon continues, her hand leaving its resting place at the nap of Beatrice’s neck. Warmth fleeting as she moves away. Cartilage cracks as Beatrice hears her stand, opening her eyes. Blue refracting from the rosary dangling from her fingers, coating the kneeling woman in light. “Do you promise not to start praying again if I give you your rosary back?”

“I promise.”

It’s offered then by two fingers held aloft between the two women. A golden crucifix dangling before her face, Beatrice takes it with her right hand.

“If Mary asks, I gave you this,” Shannon says, her hands coming to the collar of the sweatshirt. Beatrice watches her pull the sweatshirt over her head, and traces the plane of abdominal muscles as her shirt rides up, corded muscles flexing with the movement. Until she stands there in a grey tank top, coated in shadow, St. Christopher medallion glinting, her sweatshirt held out in silent offer.

“Shannon,” Beatrice starts.

“Just put it on. I’m not about to be seen escorting a blood-soaked woman through a hospital.”

Beatrice reaches out, taking the slightly worn fabric in her hand. It smells faintly of incense, myrrh and frankincense, and distantly of gunpowder. Sacredness in both senses of the word. It’s surprisingly soft as she pulls it over her head, avoiding the fresh clot on her cheekbone. Lose around the shoulders and waist, yet comforting.

“Come on,” Shannon says, offering her hand at last, which Beatrice takes and is pulled to her feet. Hands come up, placing the hood over her head, “Let’s get you back where you belong, yeah?”

[stinkrascal]

dont think i’ll be able to finish editing n begin posting the vlad/brie backstory reprisal by the 31st like i hoped i would 🤒

[goatsandgangsters]

the good news is that I finished a book and it got me out of my reading slump where I would start things, not finish, switch to something else, not finish

the bad news is that "yes daddy" by jonathan parks-ramage is one of the worst written books I've read in a whiiiile. bland expositiony prose, flat characters, a bunch of weird plot detours. Written like a 200-page Wikipedia summary instead of an actual book

the worst news is that it has such intensely favorable gushing reviews on goodreads, and the people who hated it mostly hated it for a different reason, and so I'm left alone like oKAY BUT THE PROSE WAS SHIT, HOW DO YOU NOT SEE THIS

[bigdumbbambieyes]

sometimes i look at my fic and think about the fact that it took over two years for me to actually start writing again - like i’ve been writing ficlets and prose and poems and whatever but this fic is something i was inspired by one single song lyric over 5 months ago and now it’s become this whole google doc with over 9 chapters detailed out and i still don’t have an end in sight but i’m so excited fjbfkdnf

[pulverulents]

j.t. | 24/10/23 transcription below: 

My mother’s love language is pointing out my flaws. The years between jammy sticky fingers and monthly phone bills were spent auditing the parts of myself that resembled her and hiding away the parts of myself that didn’t, placing pennies in a jar for every cutting word she said, scribing every brittle cadence and bitter splatter. I’m twenty-four now, counting my damage like it’s spare change and wondering what the fuck was I saving up for. I’m twenty-four now, excavating the parts of myself that I denied in response to her derision. Still her words search my body without warning and I can’t help but flinch in anticipation of old wounds bursting open, messily sewn stitches ripped out, tender wine-red bruises blooming beneath my pallid skin. Slowly, painfully, like rubbing alcohol on bloodied knees, she reaches in between my ribs to pull my trauma out and demand that I look at it, ugly and restless and writhing. 

Or did I do that? I’m twenty-four now, trying to distinguish her voice from mine and terrified that I no longer know the difference. This I know: I’ve inherited a lifetime of self-loathing. Still I wonder – am I a masochist for wondering if I'm a narcissist like you?

— twenty-four

[foxmulderautism]

speaking of lover boy im technically not finished with this first chapter because i haven’t written the closing flashback but one thing i’ve learnt about this whole writing as processing something you went through/writing your own trauma/writing as therapy etc is just how much you need to let the process be adaptable…like that flashback is very death focused and also important from a writing from my own experience pov but it was starting to upset me after thinking about it for so long…which i want to post about this at some point next week because whilst my writing philosophy has always been be kind to myself it’s actually taken a lot of intentional awareness to stop and be like. okay i know this is important to you but is it healthy for you to write this particular thing right now? anyway such an interesting thing to navigate that i think a lot of writers are navigating without necessarily being intentionally aware of it because a lot of us do write to process things but i haven’t seen a lot of people actually talk about that and how it can and should impact process!!!! anyway I wrote out this post in a desperate bid for time to go quicker so i can go home

[ofallthingsnasty]

HEY I was wondering abt your thoughts on the dirty old men of OP (affectionate) specifically on their opinions on age gap relationships, who's really damn gross about it with how much they love it and who's no really that into it?

I have an oc ship with Crocodile and my oc has a 24 year age gap with him lol. That man can play the classy bit as much as he wants, to me he's NASTYYY in between 4 walls

Aah, I'm sorry but I'm not really the right address for age gap stuff 🙈 At least not when it's the bread and butter of the dynamic, you know? 'Daddy's best friend' and 'I could be your father' isn't really my jam but I do like power imbalances (authority figure issues who??). It's just very triggering to me after a little stalker situation I had going on at 18 😭👌

[angelicgarnet]

just wrote 3000 words of an angsty fic before realizing that it's probably way too disorganized and niche for me to actually post

[mako-island-moon-pool]

You want to know how bad my memory is?

I was writing last night and I just straight up forgot that Sanji exists. I have been watching this show since 2012, he was my fave Strawhat outside of Luffy pre-TS, and I FORGOT HE EXISTED.

I was like 'hm yes well the ones who would understand are Nami and Robin... W- wasn't there one more I was thinking of a moment ago? Wasn't there another one who'd Get It?????'

'it's not Chopper. Definitely not Usopp. And it's not Zoro. That's all the remaining Strawhats at this point in the story. So... Why am I convinced I'm forgetting someone? Let's go through the arcs in my head agai- OH MY GOD, I FORGOT SANJI'

[inkykeiji]

I’m obsessed with your touya nii and now tomura nii fics, but all i really want is for touya or tomura or even Keigo to have a reader that’s like, A totally angsty metal head type reader similar to them, but is also super innocent and never had sex or a relationship and is just kinda shy when it comes to personal stuff, but still emo yk? Idk it just would be very self indulgent for me and I needed to share these thots with someone

oh hehehe thank you!!! <3 ah yeah that would be a very interesting dichotomy! would reader be one of those angsty types that’s like, angsty and bristly and semi-defensive because they’re inexperienced but then becomes rly shy when they’re finally in that intimate moment, or would those two natures be wholly unrelated? :o

unfortunately the closest i’ll ever come to something like that is like,, an angsty little bitchy brat type—talks tough and acts tough because of their bratty nature—simply because i enjoy writing all of my readers as girlyyy girls hehe c:

[fiapple]

lonely castle in the mirror appealing to my drop-out trauma… rude.

[imwritesometimes]

I check the word count and then I

[scary-senpai]

If I had a villain origin story, it would be that I cannot escape phone/computer/app notifications, so this was the inspiration for my homework assignment.

In this sketch, the main character (John) is pursued by these notifications, which are personified and played by actors.

Anyway, this sketch is dedicated to Saitama-sensei and Fukuzawa-sensei too I guess.