#this is a rewrite of less than 500 words

[seventh-district]

several days and 15 thousand words later, i am relieved to report that the suffocating urge to Write Something has been sated and no longer has me in a chokehold

[fursasaida]

i needed an antonym for “fixity” that clearly came from the same root word, for purposes of making it clear that i was referring back to earlier paragraphs where I talked about things being “fixed” or “unfixed.” it turns out no such word formally exists, so I just made up “infixity” (on the model of like, “infirmity”). if the reviewers ding me for this I will be so annoyed, it is obviously morphologically sound, it is clear what it means, I am doing everyone a favor because it should have existed already

[qqtxt]

[🌸] at ease w/ txt

✿ pairing: ot5 x reader / fluff 🌸 / idol!txt / non.idol!you / minor cursing (none with ill-intention!) / mentions of food and eating / reader is depicted to be a university student ✿ mini-fics with each member for the same situation / less than 500 words for each member / altogether, word count: 2463 words ✿ in the moments of stress, this is what he does to... ✿ a/n: i’ve been a teeny bit mia lately and it’s... this is a small piece that reflects what’s going on in this mind :”) (being told i need to rewrite parts of my dissertation is making me :”) so this is me trying to take my mind off of it a little! ✿ 🎧: ease by troye sivan ft. broods [masterlist 🌸] / other members under the cut! / @kflixnet​ ☁️

[🐰] soobin soobin looks at you for the umpteenth time and decides okay, now’s the time. past the scrunched-up papers, a discarded cup of tea that was once hot that remains lukewarm, swimming in the deepest of sighs and worries that line your forehead, soobin moves from the sofa and down to the floor where you’re hunched over the coffee table. he tries to be discreet but he knows you know he’s right next to you when he brushes his arm by yours and it makes you turn the cheek to see how his face has a look of worry that makes your features soften; not realising how hard you had been squinting at the white screen in front of you. he tests the waters by gently nudging your laptop away and when he sees how you’re partially reluctant, he knows you can’t ever push him away with the way he’s making the effort to reach out to you; as if a hand threads past the deep waves of uncertainty, gripping onto you, unwilling to let you drown in your worries alone. “could we... watch an episode on the television together?” he watches how you’re debating and the way you want to but can’t as the answer clogs your throat as your mouth opens and closes. “s-soobin, i just–”the way he presses his lips to a thin line, dimples showing out of worry more than endearment is what gets you to stop speaking, rephrasing your words. he hates how the breath you let out trembles his bones, pinches his heart distastefully at the amount of worry you’re shouldering. “i... i really need to get this done and i’m just...” your voice trails off the longer you look into soobin’s eyes. it’s like he speaks to you without speaking at all and... maybe it was time for a break after hours of getting a crack on this essay that feels like it’s not going anywhere. “...okay. just an episode or two.” the excitement bubbles in his veins, inflating through his features when you see how his eyes sparkle and he’s tugging you to follow him up on the sofa where he cuddles you in, tucks the blanket around you and doesn’t hesitate to press play. to you, it was a sweet gesture of your partner trying to reassure you and provide you comfort during a tough time of trying to get work done. to soobin, it was a relief having you in his arms and knowing despite the difficult moments, you won’t shut him out completely and instead, allow him to hold you through moments of it. and sometimes, that little distraction in between was more than enough.

[🦊] yeonjun yeonjun’s unable to hold himself back when he hears you sigh for the possible billionth time. each time it happens, it elicits a debate in his mind if he should comfort you now or wait until you’re done. but when it appears like you’re nowhere near done, he decides that now’s the perfect moment the second he hears another sigh echoing into his ears, spiking straight through his chest. you flinch upon feeling arms curling around you from behind. you had built a workstation on the dining table, a couple of steps from the living room where yeonjun was situated on the sofa, peering at you every now and then to remind you to drink some water or do a bit of stretching. he finds it amusing that you’re still sucked into your work, not tearing your eyes from the screen but still obliging to give in to his requests in small sips of water and light movements of standing up from your seat to twist your body here and there before you sink back down to the chair. “at this rate, you’re gonna turn into a turtle with the way you’re curling over this table,” yeonjun murmurs into your ears, nuzzling the side of his head along yours with a smile. you can hear his smile without seeing it and you’ll be honest, it was nice feeling him hug you like this after hours of trying to nail this piece of work. you lean back into his embrace and shake your head, eyes closing shut and feeling that pleasure of being able to rest for a split moment and not strain your vision with lines of words against a white document. “i’d rather be a turtle swimming in a pond than go through this list of bullshit,” you tilt your head back where you feel yeonjun shift back, now hovering his face above yours and you’re proven to be right as you peel your eyes just a bit to catch a glimpse of his frown as he uses an arm to hold you, the other reaching up to cup the side of your head, brushing the hair from your face. “i quit. i’m going to leech off of you for the rest of my life.” he grins, leaning down to brush his nose on yours, “it’ll be my pleasure,” he leans back, tilting his head, "but you might kill me in the process for allowing me to let you drop out when you specifically told me to never let that happen,” he chuckles when you groan loudly and try to push him away, which makes him stand his ground further. “what you need is a food break. let’s go out for some ramen?” he sees you coming down from your mini-outburst, only to debate if you should but he knows you too well when–”c’mon, you have to eat whether you’re studying or not. so just give me an hour to shower you with love and affection and feed you before you go back to your battle. deal?” you look at his outstretched hand lingering above your face. the answer is sealed when you reach up to hold onto his hand, giving it a grip, “deal.”

[🐯] beomgyu to be fair, beomgyu thought he was being “cute” with his advances when he remains on the opposite end of the sofa, having your feet tucked by the side of his hip as he nonchalantly strokes your ankle from time to time despite you having your laptop on your lap as you tried to get work done. when he hears your phone going off in tiny charms of text notifications, he thought you’d be checking it so you could see his adorable (if he does say so himself) ways of trying to coax you to take a break with him. but the reality is that you’re a bit annoyed with the distraction without seeing who it was. even the small prompt of aren’t you going to check that? isn’t a good hint when you shake your head in response, refusing to look up from your screen your eyes have been glued on for hours. he decides it’s better to be more direct with his approaches this time. the small pat he gives your feet only makes you think he wants you to move so you curl your legs back and he groans, now finally capturing your attention when you look up with a raised brow. “sorry, should i move away?” you ask, body turning to look like you’re about to get off and he–”augh, no!” he makes the quick move to get up first before you can and gently (with a tiny bit of force) takes your laptop to put it on the coffee table next to the sofa before he diverts his attention back to you. he grabs your phone and unlocks it with the passcode with ease; as if it was second nature. then, he hands you your phone where he’s pulled up your text thread with him to reveal the string of texts: [🐯 beomie] baby [2:12pm] [🐯 beomie] :(((( [2:12pm] [🐯 beomie] you look tired [2:13pm] [🐯 beomie] should we take a nap together? [2:13pm] [🐯 beomie] just a short one? [2:13pm] [🐯 beomie] ok fine [2:14pm] [🐯 beomie] i just wanna hug you [2:14pm] [🐯 beomie] c’mon pls look at your phone [2:14pm] [🐯 beomie] PLS JUST ONE GLANCE [2:14pm] he sees that at least his efforts can bring a smile to your face when you chuckle at it, shaking your head. when your eyes trail back to him kneeling by your side with a small pout, he spreads his arms out. you lean away from the sofa to put your arms around him, giving him a squeeze as you feel his arms curl around your waist, his face buried in your neck with a sigh. you hate to admit it but it’s working. whatever bitter feeling of spiralling in your mind feels like it’s melting away the longer you sink in his embrace and allow your eyes to rest. this is one of the moments beomgyu doesn’t say anything and instead maintains the silence by stroking your back in small circles and resting a hand by the nape of your neck to keep you close to him.

[🐿] taehyun taehyun tries not to bother you when you’re ‘in the zone’, knowing very well of that feeling himself when he’s trying to get things done. but... the longer he sees you hunched over the table while he’s in bed, book in his hands and you feeling so near yet so far away, it... does things to his heart. this uneasy feeling that sinks within that makes him unable to relax properly when he sees how hard you’re pushing yourself. the second he sees you burying your face in your hands, refusing to look at the screen for a moment, he utilises this opportunity to sneak out of the bedroom to the kitchen. he returns a couple of minutes later and he makes his presence known to you when he places... you look up from your hands to the side where there’s a small steam wafting in the air. the familiar scent of chamomile soothes you, with the hint of sweetness you know taehyun’s put a spoon or two of honey in. it does nothing to replace the sweetness oozing from his eyes as he kneels by your side, gently pushing the cup towards your way with a small smile. he grabs ahold of your hands when you turn to face him, looking down at him slightly due to the height advantage you have of being seated on the chair. “you wouldn’t be able to help me write this damned thing, would you?” he scoffs a laugh and shakes his head almost too quickly, “not a chance. unless you need me to write a song that accompanies your entire essay, maybe we can turn it into a musical,” you laugh, even though you sound tired, taehyun knows you appreciate the light humour he brings without trying. in the silence that engulfs you, taehyun places your hands by the cup of tea as he watches you take a sip. then two, then a third tiny one before you wrap your hands along the cup with a small, contented smile. you still look like you have a lot on your mind, which taehyun would be more than glad to help dissect later but for now, he remains kneeling by your side, one hand rubbing your thigh, the other snaked around your waist to his best ability as he quietly recharges with you. it might not look like much, but the silence and being able to sit in tranquility despite the havoc you know you have to go through was the bit of relieving heaven you get with kang taehyun by your side.

[🐧] kai kai knew he had to do something the minute the third-hour clocks by and you haven’t moved an inch from your spot apart from going to the bathroom and mini water breaks. he knows it’s... it’s tough. it’s not easy. and he doesn’t quite know what he can help with... other than... you hear your name being called from a distance. you look over your shoulder to see kai standing by the bedroom door, peering his head through with a small smile. “oh, come in.” you motion to him, before your eyes go back to the computer screen. he pushes the door a bit wider for him to step through, hands behind his back as he walks in. when he stands behind you, his hands rest on your shoulders, gently pressing his fingers along your shoulder blade. “could you... do me a favour?” he asks carefully, looking down at you to subtly gauge your reaction. “i’m a bit busy now...” you mumble under your breath, eyes scanning through the research article you have pulled up on your screen that kai doesn’t know if he should press on further but... he can’t walk away from you without trying at least a couple more times. “it’ll take less than thirty minutes, promise.” he coaxes you, a gentle nudge to look at him and when you do, you notice the look of anxiety hinting his features that lets you know he’s just worried. you gape upon noticing his expression, tearing your gaze from the computer screen to turn around slightly in your seat as kai steps around your seat. he reaches for your hands and gives you a small sway, so you keep your eyes on him as he asks: “go on a walk with me? it’ll do you some good to clear your mind a bit...” he gets a bit shy when you call him out on: “you know that’s a lie,” you snort, squeezing his hands as you lace your fingers between his, “we’ll both go for ice cream on our way back and then take another thirty minutes and then we’ll have to get those sparkling juice drinks and boom, another hour gone altogether.” he doesn’t deny it but instead doubles down and: “but then we’ll be able to get something in your system and you can continue working for a few more hours when we get back and then we can go for dinner after that. all things considered, i think this is a good idea,” he nods at the end as if he’s persuading himself. you try not to laugh but it’s difficult when kai sounds and is so genuine that you’re unable to reject him. not when you’ve considered the fact you had been cooped up by the computer for hours on end. “do i get to buy a snack with the drinks?” you ask, already rising to your feet as a promise you’ll take a break with him. the smile that grows on his face is what makes your heart swell, along with the cheekiness of his answer: “for today? you get to buy two snacks.” ((”well i’ll be damned, that’s an offer i can’t deny.”))

[written-in-sunshine]

Hello! I’m Key, and this is my commission sheet! All of the necessary information for commissioning me is here, and I’d appreciate it if you could take a look before shooting me a message! Here is my Ao3 For Reference!

GUIDELINES

Please read my Will Not Write section thoroughly. Just because something is on the list doesn’t mean that I dislike or don’t support it, but there are things on that list that I just don’t have enough interest in writing. That said, things on my Will Write list do not inherently mean that I support or like it. 

Currently, the only fandoms listed that I will write for are Resident Evil Biohazard/Village/4 Remake, and Saw (1-8). This is because it is a hyperfixation for me and I am more capable of writing for them without issue.

I will allow up to three edits of less than 300 words before those incur a fee. If I interpreted your prompt wrong entirely, please let me know. If the confusion was on my part, no fee for a total rewrite will be incurred.

Please message me before filling out the form for a commission. I’d like to discuss particulars about certain topics and things and I’d like to approve the commission beforehand.

If given artistic freedom for a prompt, I will write how I naturally write the characters. I am willing to take direction for how you want characters to be written. I would prefer not to go against canon to the point of completely erasing a character’s identity. This does not count for certain kink scenarios (Bimbofication and other mind-altering things).

This is a proship and kink-friendly account. By proship, I mean that I will not harass others over their fictional tastes and I do not support harassing anyone for any reason. I will write things that will make you uncomfortable. I will write things that are dead dove: do not eat. I will write a whole host of things and if that upsets you, please find someone else to commission.

I predominantly write romance, smut, fluff, and angst, but can try my hand at other genres. 

I do not mind aging characters up for smut, and I will write any manner of ship type from m/f, m/m/, f/f, to polyamory. Please keep in mind that a fee will incur for more than 4 characters in a ship per every 1k words. If your ship includes 6 people then I will require at least 1,500 words minimum to write them. Smut for that many will be over 2,000 words easily.

For prompts, I will accept up to five words, two sentences, or a small paragraph of what you would like for me to write. Prompt sheets are also okay to use! Please try to be as concise as possible.

I will not start your commission until the upfront $15 for the first 500 words is paid. Once that is paid, I will begin and you will only be charged for the rest once the fic is completely finished and edited. I tend to add 100+ words to things in the editing process, as a heads-up. Payment can be made via PayPal, Venmo, and CashApp.

Will Write List

Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Most Kinks (PLEASE ask if you’re unsure), Smut, Top/Bottom Dynamics, Omegaverse, AUs, Crossovers, Domestic Fluff, Violence, Age Gap Ships, Any Sexualities, Intersex Characters, Homophobia/Transphobia/Fantasy Racism/Racism (IF THE CONTENT IS RELEVANT TO THE CHARACTER), Your OCs, My OCs, OC-Centric Fics, Hurt/Comfort, Romance, Angst, Headcanon-Based Things, Canon Compliant Fic, Canon Divergent Fic, Most Ships, Sickfics, Whump

Will Not Write List

Defecation of ANY KIND, tickling, gas, eye trauma, OCs without proper information for me to work from

Ships Most Likely To Write - Resident Evil

Leon Kennedy/Ashley Graham

Leon Kennedy/Luis Serra Navarro

Luis Serra Navarro/Ashley Graham

Chris Redfield/Ethan Winters

Jack Baker/Ethan Winters

Lucas Baker/Clancy Jarvis

Lucas Baker/Ethan Winters

Mia Winters/Zoe Baker

Chris Redfield/Ethan Winters

Karl Heisenberg/Ethan Winters

Salvatore Moreau/Donna Beneviento

Ships I Will Not Write - Resident Evil

Leon Kennedy/Ada Wong

Luis Serra Navarro/Ada Wong

Chris Redfield/Mia Winters

Ethan Winters/Mia Winters (Past is Fine)

Ships Most Likely To Write - Saw

Lawrence Gordon/Adam Stanheight-Faulkner

Lawrence Gordon/Scott Tibbs/Adam Stanheight-Faulkner

Logan Nelson/David

Mallick/Brit

Mark Hoffman/Peter Strahm

Scott Tibbs/Adam Stanheight-Faulkner

Scott Tibbs/Lark

Ships I Will Not Write - Saw

Lawrence Gordon/Allison Gordon (Past is Fine)

Adam Stanheight-Faulkner/Amanda Young

Fandoms I Will Write Crossovers With

Assassin's Creed

Catherine

Deadman Wonderland

Devil's Carnival

Dragon Age

The Evil Within

Fallout Universe

Final Fantasy VII

Final Fantasy X/X-2

Inception

Insidious

Invader Zim

IT

Jeepers Creepers

Kick-Ass

Kingdom Hearts

Krampus

Left 4 Dead

Lollipop Chainsaw

Mad Max

Nightmare On Elm Street

The Quarry

Portal

Saw

Silent Hill

South Park

Team Fortress 2

Until Dawn

Feel free to ask about other fandoms, as well!

Please reblog to spread the word!

[fredwkong]

I want to write TF stories, but I don't know how or where to start, do you have any tips or advice?

Just start writing. You're already reading, so you've done the most important part. If you've never written fiction before, it won't look like my writing or another experienced tf writer's. That's okay. You should reread it, cum a few times because you wrote something that gets you super horny, and then figure out what you can do differently next time.

Other than that, here are my top writing tips:

Imitate other people. Try rewriting one of my stories to include your favourite kink. Please don't steal my exact words, but I would be honoured to see your version of The Boxers, for example.

Read a lot. All reading improves your writing, and more variety creates more improvement. Read children's fiction, philosophy, fanfiction, Shakespeare, anything that makes you happy.

Share your writing. You are probably harder on yourself than any reader. The fastest way to improve is to post your work and see how much people love it.

The most important thing is to write. I can't believe how much I've improved in just two months, all because my good boys give me lots of great ideas and encourage me to keep writing. But give yourself grace, too. Most professional writers write about 500 words a day, often less.

I can't wait to read your writing. I hope I can encourage more of my good boys to try writing tf, too. The idea of inspiring a bunch of you to become tf writers gets me very horny. It's pretty hot.

[swaps55]

Chapter 11 has me in tears!

I love how you write EDI and her internal monologue and I really hope we get to hear her stories about the stars

While I know he wouldn’t accept it I want to give Sam a hug so bad he is really going through it. My heart aches for him and Kaidan

I’m sorry you hit a burnout wall and I am glad to hear you are starting to feel better! I hope things continue to look up

Thank you SO MUCH.

I put so much blood, sweat, and hand wringing into that EDI scene. It started as maybe a 300-500 word scene and then went haywire, and I spent literal months rewriting and revising it, because getting EDI's curiosity and Sam's unraveling to line up in parallel and follow the right narrative threads was...very difficult, lol. But worth it. It's probably my favorite scene in the whole fic. EDI is just magic.

I've been more or less writing for 4 years straight at this point, so I was bound to hit a wall at some point. I've been able to recharge my batteries by poking at other hobbies. Thank you so much for the positive thoughts. Feels like we've all just been Going Through It, so there's not much special about me dealing with burnout, other than it's something you just kinda have to deal with.

But I'm excited again and actively chafing at work interfering with my time and energy to write, so that feels like a good sign!!

[merik72-blog]

What if Furina wasn't a girlfailure for 500 years? (Shorteneder Version (still long))

Off the top, I'm not a lore expert. If this doesn't make sense lore-wise, feel free to tell me all about it. Expect it, even. I just wanted to write this down because after experiencing her story, (when it dropped months ago in version 4) this idea just never got out of my head. I process media in a way where I'm constantly thinking on the level of "why did the authors make these specific decisions?", and I couldn't shake the feeling that the authors lacked a bit of imagination when considering just how long 5 centuries is. I have like over a thousand words of why I think this which includes a discussion of historicity and biblical allusion. I cut it all -- nobody wants to read that.

That being said, this is somewhere between a rewrite and like a notes document. In this, Furina is still fundamentally the same character. Her personality and mannerisms should be basically identical, even if she's more competent. This rewrite hopes to preserve the main beats of her arc: The confrontation by Arlecchino, the disaster which causes people to doubt her godliness, the trial, and a backstory which makes you pity her. I'm going to lay these out in chronological order, rather than plot order.

Backstory

Focalors told Furina the prophecy, leaving her terrified and overwhelmed. All the people of Fontaine will drown, and she will be left alone, crying on her throne. Despite her horror, some rebellious gumption rose up in her soul and allows her to steel herself. Much like Focalors before her, despite being handed a doomed situation, Furina decided that there was nothing she couldn't fight back against, even fate. Knowing that there's a flood coming, she put together a plan.

Furina decided that she would hold grand competitions every decade, gathering the greatest tinkerers, engineers, architects, anyone with interesting ideas in her nation to show off their most creative inventions, no matter what those inventions did. She would call these competitions Fontaine's Utopique Rendezvous for Industrie Nouvelleté, et Audacé* (FURINA). As their god, Fontainian culture was her privilege and responsibility to shape, so innovation and technological advancement would be placed at the core. With great patience, she would lead Fontaine from the Medieval age to the Industrial revolution. During FURINAs, as she strolled through the streets of Fontaine, the entrants displayed and described their creations to her to each would be personally judged by her. There is not a maximum or minimum of winners, there are only those who do and do not catch the eye of the Hydro Archon. At the end of the competition, she rewards the winners with her patronage to sponsor them and their ideas. These winners would come to be informally known as FURINA Scholars. She created these patron relationships usually with the goal of creating or improving a public infrastructure project or taking a particularly fascinating or promising invention from an impractical novelty to mass producible technology that anyone could use. FURINA Scholars had a hard time limit of 10 years, being required to present their progress publicly at the next FURINA by the latest. The results of these varied from practical, aesthetic, to insanely niche novelty toys you'd expect a French aristocrat to buy.

A lot of real kings and queens can't dedicate themselves to advancement in this way because their bureaucracy, the power structure beneath them, know that they don't have to be beholden to them forever. Each bureaucrat knows there will be another younger ruler eventually who would could be manipulated into giving more to them and less to the people. Not so with Furina. She would use the royal coffers however she wanted to, and nobody could speak out against her, lest they be hit with the combination blasphemy-treason from the judgement of the Oratrice Mechanique d'Analyse Cardinale.

(*This is intentionally butchered French, in line with the Oratrice Mechanique d'Analyse Cardinale. If you can't read it, it's basically Fontaine's Utopian Conference for Industry, Novelty, and Audacity. It's a funny acronym, and a bit on the nose in multiple ways, but I think it would be something she would come up with. I imagine that Furina would never call it FURINA, but over time people would start calling it "the FURINA" and eventually "the FURINA de Fontaine" in the way that people always start butchering acronyms when they become normal words.)

Every day, Furina's free time between these FURINAs was spent studying, learning, testing, and inventing in her study. If Fontaine was to be flooded by rising waters, she herself would be dedicated to finding a way to allow Fontaine to survive any flood. Out of the public eye, she found ways to spend every spare moment honing her skills and iterating her designs. She quickly learned to dismiss attendants that came to her with some spurious legislative work whenever she left the Opera Epiclese. Go to Neuvillette! She had a duty which so obviously rendered such things spurious. Paperwork? When Fontaine could be drowned any year now?

(Just as in the real story, it's implied that Neuvillette is vaguely aware that she must be working incredibly hard, but she deliberately hides her toil from everyone, including him.)

Obsessively, tirelessly, she toiled single-mindedly towards in designing super-structures capable of diverting, pumping, or otherwise controlling vast amounts of water. As she would sketch mockups of grand designs, she was thinking of public excuses for doing this rather than just using her "archon powers." It would make her seem more benevolent to say something like "I cannot be everywhere at once, and I need to be sure that the people of Fontaine shall not suffer a disaster under my rule, even out from under my watchful gaze." It was even true, in a way. Over the centuries, she carried out plans for every major Fontaine settlement's coastline and the entire capitol city to be protected by works of engineering which were equally intricate and gargantuan. At the same time, they balanced preserving the beauty of coastlines and consistency in aesthetic that is paramount for France. She directed the creations of these superstructures over generations with clarity and consistency in intent. She eventually became capable of concocting ideas that were not possible with currently invented technology, her innovation outdoing the rate of technological advancement. That meant she was not nearly finished. Waiting for technology to catch up with her ideas was always a good opportunity to update the physical build of her superstructures.

Despite her having already gathered vast and unmatched generational knowledge after her first full century of study, she still continued FURINAs to find the best and brightest minds of each generation. (If it must be done for Genshin's thematic consistency or ideology, these can all even be vision holders). These inventors who all grew up in the context of Furina's unparalleled genius had the privilege of standing on the shoulders of a giant. Innovations begot innovations, forming a virtuous loop which drove unprecedented progress in industrialization leading to evolutions in technology especially in civil engineering and hydrodynamics. As Furina's knowledge and mastery over engineering slowly but surely surpassed mortal limits, FURINAs seemed to be more and more judged based on eccentric, incomprehensible whims. With relative frequency, participants would watch seemingly impressive inventions be passed over, meanwhile random toys that just made her giggle and applaud would win. She would say "I just find these trinkets so charming!" but in truth, she saw potential in central conceits in inventions that had the chance to change the underpinnings of Fontaine's infrastructure. Or she just genuinely found them charming.

As time passed, Furina's structures continually improved to a point that they did not just avoid, but very publicly Dominated countless floods and storms that would have been disastrous otherwise. These creations legitimized her godhood and won her adoration in the eyes of the people, who wove countless folktales over the ages telling the tales of Furina's power - herding hurricanes and subjugating tsunamis. At the same time, this made her prodigious skill for the dramatic arts even more impressive through the plurality of her talents. This resulted in many full circle moments, where Furina would play herself in epics about her overcoming disasters, not that she wrote, of course. These would sometimes exaggerate her powers, like giving her omniscience or visions of the future, the perfect designs flowing freely and naturally from her hands, as though they were as effortless as breathing.

Of course, she was not truly invincible. Slowly, she started to fray. As new innovations became more difficult, technology caught up to her designs. After the superstructure renovations commemorating the 4th century of her rule, she was distraught. This was the first time she had updated her superstructures without the plan for the next one at least partially completed. She needed to spend more of her energy pondering, as just her "free" time was insufficient. This led to her to becoming more absentminded during official duties, having forgone sleep or being still caught up ruminating on how to optimize designs, improve existing technology, or apply them in a novel way, but for some reason nothing was coming to her after a few years of different experiments and trials. Even in discussions with her FURINA Scholars, they stopped having new ideas in hydrodynamic engineering projects, being drawn towards other directions where they wouldn't need to compete with god. As she crossed the 450-year mark, she was becoming increasingly aware of the fact that her designs weren't nearly enough to protect the entire country and even further from perfect. For the better part of the last century, any improvement had been like trying to squeeze water from a stone. In the last ten years, she has probably improved her latest flood barriers by less than a liter of water. 30 more years restarting from scratch over and over with her current knowledge, no meaningful improvement.

For the 48th FURINA, she decided out of desperation to hold a hydro-themed FURINA. As she walked the streets of Fontaine, talking to each inventor as they presented their work, she was distraught. A marked decrease meaningful innovation. Worse than this, she noticed that inventors were less interested in creating submissions for this FURINA. The sentiment she was picking up on was that they felt futility in even trying. What was the point of trying to innovate in a field that they can hardly understand? The cutting edge of hydro-related innovation was driven so far by Furina that they felt mortals need not apply. Who could even be given the privilege of becoming the decade's FURINA Scholars from such a lackluster field...? As always, she found a way to get out of a dismaying situation. She crowned herself as the winner, made a grandiose speech about who she was still unmatched in the domain of Hydro, and unveiled her side project of the Aquabus.

At the end of the hydro-FURINA, Furina had never felt so alone. For the first time since her first decade, she had not the faintest idea of what to do from here. Nobody did. She had already pushed to and past limit of her knowledge, of her peoples' knowledge, and the limits of material possibility in Teyvat. All of these centuries had passed her by, all these sleepless nights, all her evolutions in the design of Fontaine to fortify it, for what? A worm, wriggling on a stone, drying out in the sun. If she failed to prevent the flood now, what would any of that time mean?

Furina found herself standing in her study, towering alone above the room crowded with her innovations, blueprints, experiments. Her gaze floated over each page; her life's work surrounded her. Broken mechanisms, meaningless scribbles, trials without results. Countless wasted mines of materials, countless wasted gallons of ink, and countless wasted centuries of labor by her precious hardworking people. Not realizing she was fully sobbing, she slumped to the floor, picking up the blueprint of one of her latest redesigns. She couldn't see anything aside from bodies floating in the water. Her mind replayed the faces of every person whom she's ever worked with or learned from, whose families she met, and every child of Fontaine whom she watched grow. They died all the same. Her vision started to swirl as their faces closed in around her. They rose up all around her from the waters in her blueprints. She grasped at them desperately, begging them to stay with her. On her side, shaking, sobbing, with a bundle of ripped and crumbled papers clutched against her. For the first time since she was told the prophecy, she felt truly helpless. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw her mirror. She scrambled through a carpet of papers, trinkets, and tools to touch her forehead to the glass.

"Mirror me, I-I've been doing everything I can. Our people have been trying, too! They worked so very hard, and they've built my all of designs beautifully."

Silence.

"Please, tell me you know something, anything that I can do now. I need to know. I can't let it end like this."

Silence.

"I never imagined that... that we'd even make it this far, mirror me." Furina was sitting now. With a smile on her face, she still couldn't stop the tears as she leaned against the mirror. "They truly are my pride and joy." Barely more than a whisper, an "I'm sorry" escaped her lips.

She had been doing her best for so long, but she had certainty now. Her best would not be enough.

A real Archon would be able to overcome this. On her own strength.

Furina cursed her inadequacy, mourning the people of Fontaine in her heart. It was torture. Every day, her job was to look at all the wonderful people that she was failing every day, people whom she was dooming through her weakness. During trials, she entirely lost the ability to focus on what's happening in front of her, her comments in the Opera becoming nonsensical and detached. More often, she handed off interpretations directly to Neuvillette, and tears sometimes leaked through when doing her fan meetups. Somehow, she still managed to hide her turmoil with audacious bravado as always. She felt more internally frantic as more years came and went. It was like desperately treading treacherous waters as she needed more and more effort to simply maintain surface appearances. The 49th and 50th FURINAs were brief respites from the gloom. Despite all of the stress in her life, the silly novelties of her people could still bring her joy. But when she returned to her private abode, she found that sometimes, not every time, she didn't want to work anymore. Instead, she would lay in her bed. Stillness without rest.

Her dead eyes blinked slowly, making no tears. She pondered, "How long has it been?" When she stared down at her hands, she could still see the souls of every Fontanian leaking through her fingers. The harder she tried to hold onto them, the further they'd splatter away. If only she had more time. Time, as always, passed anyway.

Plot time

Now, this is when the incident happens. Furina just hit rock bottom as the Traveler comes to town. Everything in the plot that played out in the main story happens mostly the same. This retroactively explains why all of Furina's arguments in the Mysterious Disappearances trials are so weak. Sure, she has a lot of experience presiding over trials, and it may be a top priority for her since this Furina is also excited about the opportunity for a Grand Trial that Focalors told her about, but she is so far from being on the top of her game right now.

Over centuries, Furina built this idea of infallibility, weaving a narrative to reaffirm her godhood. Fontainians believed that because each design was crafted by Furina directly, she made sure that none of them could ever fail using her uniquely intimate knowledge of the Hydro element. When Arlecchino called for an audience with Furina about the impending incident of unprecedented scale in Poisson, Furina was not just small or helpless with no excuse. Furina imposed upon Arlecchino as a god in her own land. There was to be absolute faith in her creations. Her power over hydro would never allow a Fontainian to come to harm.

"What does a puny rat like you think you know? I've thrown out socks that were older than you. Smarter, too."

Like a true god, she gaslit Arlecchino about what information Arlecchino had regarding the flood coming to Poisson. As the Regina of All Waters, not only did she have access to more information through her national information network, she also simply understood Hydro in a way that mortals couldn't comprehend. This is one of the only times that Arlecchino would seem even a little shaken by anything.

Furina didn't refuse to take precautions because she's a depressed NEET; Furina placed herself in this position where she simply could not possibly even suggest taking precautions. That would imply to Arlecchino and by extent the people of Fontaine that there was a weakness in her absolute power over Hydro and, by proxy, her status as archon. In previous centuries, she had only ever commanded upgrades to earlier designs as technology advanced to allow her to better realize her intended designs.

This made it all the more world-shattering for Fontainians when the symbols of their god, their faith in her power, warped and bursted under the immense pressure of more water than seemingly possible in nature (this flood is mega buffed in this plotline). The damage was horrific, but would be much much worse if not for the efforts of Arlecchino and the Spina di Rosula. This was the first time that anyone has doubted her as god, and nobody who doubted even wanted to because they've had faith for so long.

The trial proceeds nearly exactly as in the game, with the additional wrinkle that her centuries of age needs to be a hint as to how she could be such a genius of engineering without being the Hydro Archon.

After the trial

After her liberation, much of Furina's story is the same. She is so incredibly burnt out after finally being free that she has the same despondent attitude as she does in the game. She doesn't really invent in her free time, as she's a bit traumatized by the memory and sensation of using those tools. Even picking up a screwdriver reminds her of hundreds of years of sleepless nights experimenting desperately with the weight of the world on her shoulders.

The only real things that would change after the Archon quest would be -

In her character quest, Furina surprises everyone by proudly declaring her return to the stage on her own, having thoroughly enjoyed her time with the ragtag troupe. After a handful of lifetimes of endless labor with a dash of theatre, having the opportunity to do theatre full time sounds like great fun. The reason that she wouldn't have started before this quest is because of her burnout and exhaustion buildup ofc.

In Roses and Muskets, just take out all the times where Furina's trauma is played for laughs, or times where she's outwardly timid in a public conversation, especially when directing. Furina's reaction to imposing in public situations should be so well trained after playing archon should be instinctual after 500 years that she never gets caught slipping by an unfortunate circumstance. In private, she can still of course be her quirky self.

At the end of Roses and Muskets, she's not awkward about receiving the trophy. She's really happy, overjoyed even, having not been able to participate in any competitions herself in Archon era.

During Lantern Rite, Furina is on Cloud 9, going crazy and stupid finally leaving the country. She is positively giggly being charmed and intrigued by every single little thing in Liyue which is different from Fontaine. She walks around the street asking people about ridiculous and mundane things, like "What wood is this fence made out of?", "Do all your boats really need sails? Where are their engines?", "What techniques were employed to build villages on all these hills?", "Where is the toilet in this establishment?... oh Me... running hydro? DO YOU NOT HAVE ANY PLUMBING-", and various other questions about architecture, technology, and everything else she'd notice as someone otherwise incredibly knowledgeable who'd been stuck in one country for centuries.

Anyway, as a thanks for reading my yap, here are some drawings of tinkerer Furina loving life

[loganwritesprobably]

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[justinewt]

To Choose Who Lives And Who Dies - THE 100 REWRITE Chapter Thirty-One

[THE 100 MASTERLIST]

Previous Chapter / Next Chapter

Summary: Bellamy and Michelle had made a choice that sealed the fate of hundreds of their people, only making possible for 100 of them to survive inside Alpha station, but Clarke chose to keep their people in the dark, doing the exact same thing Jaha had done on the Ark. Everyone worked hard on fixing the ship, unaware that most of them wouldn't survive the radiation coming their way. Raven, Clarke and Bellamy argued over this for days and when they found Jaha trying to leave camp with the rover, they confront him, and he claims he has a lead - a way to ensure the salvation of all 500 of them, but is it another one of his whims that will cost people's lives? As were Mount Weather and Alie?

Words: 5.7k

Warnings: The 100 season 4 spoilers (episode 3 "The Four Horsemen"), title from a quote from the book Storm Siren by Mary Weber, angst, heart to heart, grief

Everyone was working hard to get the ship ready for the radiation, the black rain and everything that was yet to come their way. They made a choice when they decided to free their people from the Azgedan and they were now over 500 people in Arkadia, all while the ship, even fully fixed and prepared, would only sustain a little over a hundred people, as Raven said. Michelle wasn’t the only one to now realize that for the sake of a few, they comdemned 400 of their people and Clarke didn’t tell any of them, to use their hope as fuel for their determination to get the ship ready. Raven was mad about it and Michelle did feel responsible for it because she chose to make this choice, with Bellamy. He wasn’t the only one to blame. When the others had all voted, they looked at each other knowing they would follow whatever choice the other made and Michelle wanted to help them, and he did too. She wondered, if she had chosen the opposite, to bring back the hydrogenator, if he would have followed her call. He most likely would have, to be honest, but she didn’t. And neither did he.

“Two meals a day for people working as hard as ours, we won’t make any friends.” Bellamy said as they walked into the room. Raven was standing on the last step of a ladder, her back to them, blowtorch in hand as she repaired the structure of the ship. Clarke was pushing a full cart in front of her.

“Well, if there’s one thing our people understand, it’s rationing.” Clarke declared. It was true, with what they had to do on the Ark, it would make sense for them to understand the urgency of the situation. Michelle helped as they put away the plastic pockets of vacuum-packed food on the shelves. “Besides, once we close those doors, it’ll be one meal for the next 5 years.”

“Try one meal every other day.” Raven lifted her protective mask and turned towards them. She stepped down from the ladder and took it off. She was very much, and understandably, still bitter regarding their choice about the hydro generator, and the fact Clarke chose to lie to everyone. “Hunting parties are coming back with less and less. Thanks to your friend Niylah, we’re preserving more meat than ever, but it’s still not enough. Without a way to make water, growing our own protein like we did on the ark is not an option.” She stuffed her mask in Bellamy’s hand as she spoke. “Remember that when we’re starving.”

“I won’t be starving because I won’t be inside.” Michelle instantly looked up at him, frowning. Thoughts raced through her head, and she parted her lips, but she said nothing.

“Yes, you will.” Clarke was about as confused and as against it as she was. Michelle subtly shook her head – no, she wouldn’t let him sacrifice himself to make up for the decision he made. She made it with him. If he stayed outside the ship, she would too, and she quickly realized, as she thought about it, that her father would never let her die but if she stayed alive, Bellamy had to stay alive as well, otherwise how was she supposed to just go on with her life after basically letting him kill himself. It would be just like when she almost lost her father. She would never have been able to go on with her life. There were only three people whose deaths would destroy her – her father, Clarke, and Bellamy. When Clarke was away, she survived thanks to her father, and the thought that Clarke was alive.

“Does that mean you made the list?” Raven enquired.

“No. What about drinking water?”

“Clarke, don’t change the subject. We need to know who’s gonna be on the inside of these doors when the radiation comes.” Bellamy and Michelle were both watching them talk from the corner of their eyes as they kept on putting away the food, but she would have a chat with Bellamy later.

“We don’t need to know now.” The conversation was cut short when a voice came over the PA system. Sick people were at the camp’s gate. The four of them rushed outside and at the gate, the guards were holding a bunch of grounders at gunpoint, warning them not to come any closer. Bellamy, Clarke, Michelle and Raven broke through the small crowd and the line of guards to see what this was about. They recognized one of the grounders, Nyko, as he put a little girl on the ground. Two others were bent forward, on their knees, coughing. Michelle squinted her eyes, looking at the woman. Her long, dark red hair reminded her of someone else’s and as Clarke slowly walked up to them, she realized it was Luna.  

“What if it’s a grounder attack like they did with Murphy?” Miller wondered, wary. Michelle shook her head.

“No, that’s not it. Bellamy, look, it’s Luna.” She patted his arm with the back of her fingers and pointed at the woman. He wasn’t sure as they couldn’t see her face, but she recognized her hair and was convinced it was the grounder from the oil rig, though her hair was less voluminous than it was then, and dirtier. She and Bellamy followed Clarke as she walked up to them.

“What happened to them?” She asked.

“The sickness. We lost more than 40 on the way.” The woman she thought was Luna coughed, lifting her head slightly and Bellamy finally saw it was actually her.

“Luna?”

“See? I knew it was her.” Luna looked up at them, weakly. She looked beyond exhausted and drained of all her energy. She exchanged a gaze with Michelle, probably wondering how she recognized her, but she then looked at Clarke.

“Please, don’t turn us away because of what I did to you.” Clarke didn’t say anything, turning to her friends next to her. Abby then arrived, joining them outside the gate. She put a cloth over her mouth and nose, just in case, but quickly took it off and got to her knees to take a close look at the little girl in Nyko’s arms. Clarke kneeled beside her while the others watched.

“Mom, what is this?”

“Fever, lesions, vomiting. It’s ARS.”

“What’s ARS?” Bellamy asked, really speaking for all of them as none, aside from Clarke maybe, knew what she was talking about.

“Acute radiation sickness.” He, Raven and Michelle all exchanged a glance as Clarke stood up.

“When did the symptoms start?”

“I’m not sure. Right before the fish started dying.” Luna said.

“The fishs are dying?” Raven spoke. If animals were dying, this meant less food for everyone.

“Floating on the sea to the horizon in every direction.” Nyko added.

“It’s not contagious. Let’s get them to Medbay. Come on.” Abby helped them up and Raven went with her and the grounders. Clarke went next to Bellamy and Michelle, who had kneeled next to a young woman lying on the ground.

“It’s already here.” Neither of them said anything else to Clarke’s statement. It was grave enough. What Alie had warned them about, the nuclear power plants melting and the radiation and everything coming, was already there. It it had hit the oil rig out on the ocean, it was but a short flight for land. Michelle immidietaly thought of her father still in Polis and pulled her eyebrows closer in worry, staring at the ground, hoping he would come back to Arkadia before it reached the city. 

In Medbay, the sick grounders were getting worse, barely moving from their beds. Clarke was further in the room, with her mother and Jackson, discussing their state and possible treatments. Bellamy and Michelle walked in, looking around. She winced in disgust at the sight of Luna vomiting black blood into a bucket and frowned worriedly as she reached for a cloth and approached to give it to her once she was done. It was quite painful to see her like this. It didn’t matter that they weren’t close to her. Michelle felt Bellamy standing just a few inches behind her and his hand gently finding her shoulder.

“You think I deserve this for refusing the flame?”

“No.” Michelle replied, a mere second after Luna spoke. “No one deserves to suffer.”

“Besides, this would’ve happened anyway.” Bellamy added. Clarke came to see them.

“This is all that’s left of my people. Can you save them?”

“We’ll do everything we can. You have my word.” They took a few steps away when she coughed again, to talk, just the three of them. “Tell me something good.”

“Raven’s looking for us.” He walked back to the door, his hand sliding down as he let go of Michelle’s arm and they left the infirmary to go find Raven. She brought them to the computer screens and one of them showed a map, with dashed lines linking the rig to Arkadia and Polis.

“So, Luna’s rig is here, and if the fish in these waters are dying, well basically we’re screwed.”

“I don’t understand. Alie said we had 6 months.” Hands on his hips, he looked at the screen with a subtle frown.

“We don’t.”

“Well, then how long do we have?” Clarke wondered.

“It’s hard to say. Radiation is dispersed by jet stream and carried by ocean currents, so it’s not an exact science, but the leading indicators are small species die-offs — fish, insects. Based on the new data, I’d say we have… Two months of survivability…” Clarke looked defeated as she turned her head towards Bellamy and Michelle, and they seemed just as stunned. “Maybe less.”

“The ark won’t be ready.” He said quietly, shaking his head.

“It’ll be close. If we triple the man hours and work round the clock, we should be able to achieve a hard seal before the black rain comes. We just have to decide who gets to live here.”

“Raven, we’re not talking about the list again.”

Michelle sighed, “We have to talk about it.”

“Yes. Michelle’s right, Clarke. We are running out of time. We have to make a plan for the day we close the doors, drill for it, make sure only the survivors have guns, agree on protocols for dealing with the people who are pissed off they’re not chosen. You asked me to be in charge of rationing, and I’m doing it, but choosing who gets to live or die is your speciality.” As she was about to respond, the sound of the Rover’s engine reached their ears and she turned around, glancing over her shoulder. As Raven then added, no one was scheduled to take the rover. They walked briskly in the corridors and exited through the hangar’s doors. The SUV was right outside. Jaha was inside. Bellamy knocked on the driver’s side door, ordering the old chancellor to get out of the vehicle and opened the door.

“I need to make a run.”

Raven took a step forward, “All supply go through me, and you shouldn’t be working on the patch to sector 5?” Bellamy gave a nod to the side motioning for him to get out. Jaha stepped out of the rover and the door was slammed behine him.

“A patch for a ship that can only save a hundred people? Why are you surprised? I am an engineer. We have no way to generate water. The harder number is 400. Can you really sentence 400 more of our own people to death?”

“We don’t have a choice.” She exclaimed. They glanced over their shoulders at the people working nearby. They were looking at them after hearing her raise her voice at Jaha and quickly looked away.

“What if you do? What if I told you there might be a fallout shelter less than a day’s drive from here – a fallout shelter built to sustain thousands?”

“What if it’s like Mount weather or your fucking city of light? Both were your ideas, and they were terrible ideas – hundreds died.” Michelle spoke crossing her arms over her chest, glaring at Jaha.

“We’ve been through the chancellor’s file anyway. All the bunkers you considered for the hundred were listed as compromised or unviable, and now Mount Weather is too.” His eyes went from Michelle to Raven.

“Those were government bunkers.” He turned back around and opened the driver’s side door but instead of it being to get back into the vehicle, he handed something to Clarke. A notepad showing an article.

“A doomsday cult?” Bellamy read as Clarke swiped right to look at the other articles on there.

“That’s right – the second dawn.”

“They built a bunker?” She took her eyes off the small screen.

“Their whole theology was based on riding out the end of the world.

“And why didn’t you consider it?” Raven enquired. Michelle listened and looked at the notepad as Clarke read and swiped. There were lots of articles on this.

“We couldn’t prove it existed.”

“So why are you considering it now?” Bellamy wasn’t the only one of them to be doubtful of his intentions with this new plan of his. They were all distrustful of him after all that happened because of him.

“Because before now, we didn’t need it.”

“You found it, didn’t you?” He looked around before answering Clarke.

“We can’t be sure unless we check it out.” And on that he wasn’t wrong, and Michelle looked to the side, annoyed, her arms crossed in the same fashion as Raven’s. Both were reluctant to listen to the man. Michelle even more so. He did put her in solitary confinement when all she ever did ‘wrong’ was being Clarke’s best friend and knowing something she shouldn’t have known and for that she was then as much of a danger as Clarke was. And she was a pretty defiant teenager back on the ark. It was a known fact that she often talked back to her mom and though she wasn’t the kid she used to be anymore, she still heavily disliked Jaha and if he happened to be in a life-or-death kind of situation, she already knew she would let him die. While she was thinking, she heard Raven and Clarke argue. Raven wasn’t about to let Jaha take the rover.

“We need that rover for hauling pieces of a 3-ton patch we’re build—” She was cut off mid-sentence.

“Yeah, but if he’s right, we don’t need a patch.”

“Can I talk to you guys for a second?” They stepped aside to speak in private, out of Jaha’s earshot. “Can you, Michelle, please remind Clarke what happened the last time Jaha went looking for salvation, as you’ve already mentioned, in case Clarke wasn’t listening?”

Michelle sighed through her nose, letting her arms fall to her side, glancing at Jaha from the corner of her eyes, not so sure anymore of what to say, though she perfectly knew what Raven was referring to – what she had said about the city of light killing hundreds of people because of Jaha’s whim. She didn’t say anything this time and Bellamy spoke in her stead.

“Raven, if that bunker is real, we can save a lot more than a hundred people.”

“If it’s not, we’ve lost another day.”

“Hey, look. If it’s not, I’ll make the list… Okay?”

She sighed, glaring at the three of them, “Do what you want. I’ve got a ship to seal.” They watched her leave before turning to Jaha. This time, Michelle was the one glaring while Bellamy took his place in the driver’s seat, and they sat in the back and drove out of camp. Clarke was in the passenger seat at the front with Bellamy and Michelle was especially unhappy to have to sit across from Jaha, her arms crossed as she leaned back. Clarke watched the video linked on an article and the voice of a man doing a presentation on a stage rose from the notepad.

“The end is coming, and it’s coming soon.”

“He gave this speech two weeks before the bombs.” Jaha said. Michelle slightly lifted her head to look over the seat and Clarke’s shoulder at the screen, the man speaking was the founder of this Second dawn thing, shoulder-length hair and a beard, he kind of reminded her of how her father looked with his beard and hair too, but in black.

“The world is dark and getting darker all the time. Everything we once trusted has turned on us — government, religion. Even technology has become a weapon in their hands used to poison our minds. I know you’re in pain. I know you’re afraid, but it doesn’t have to be like this. There is a way out of the darkness. I can show it to you. You can be saved. Join us, and together, when the horsemen come, from the ashes, we will rise.”

Clarke handed it back to him, “Please tell me you have more than this.”

“In the two years before the bombs, Cadogan sold off most of the second dawn’s real estate holdings, generating tens of millions of dollars, but there was one thing he didn’t sell.” Michelle had seen him swipe a couple times across the pad’s screen before giving it back to Clarke to show her something else. Michelle leaned forward, resting her forearms on her thighs. “I found this in his autobiography. His father built a bunker there to save his family. I think Cadogan used the church’s money to expand it.”

“Grew up there. Maybe he kept it for sentimental value.” Bellamy figured.

Jaha quietly chuckled through his nose, “Hmm. His father beat him almost daily in that house. He hated living there.”

“Why keep it if you’re liquidating everything else?” Clarke wondered.

“Because that bunker is there. I can feel it.”

“Yeah, maybe it’s there. Doesn’t mean we can use it. It was a century ago. And we’ve been on the ground for almost half a year – if there were survivors like in Mount weather we would’ve known by now.”

“Maybe not survivors, but the bunker is there.”

She shot up her eyebrows, rolling her eyes, and repeated herself under her breath, “doesn’t mean we can survive there.”

“She’s not wrong. And the guy sounds like a religious fanatic to me.” Bellamy spoke.

“Maybe, or maybe he was just a leader willing to do whatever it took to save his people.”

“Like you, you mean?” Michelle chuckled but she wasn’t smiling, not even a smirk. She was glaring at him, slouching back, in the shadow of Clarke’s seat, arms still crossed, gripping tighly on each other. He locked eyes with her. She wasn’t one to speak much or initiate conflicts, but she couldn’t help but speak her mind and try to get into an argument with him though she knew beforehand that he would keep his composure easily and anger her. She felt as though she was 15 or 16 again and getting back at her mom for something she said or not wanting to tell her about her dad yet again. There were only few people whom she held a grudge against, and Jaha was the only one still alive. She had forgiven her mother months ago, same with her father and Pike was dead and she couldn’t care less about him. But Jaha was still annoying her with his presence. He let out another of his chuckles and she frowned.

“You hate me. I understand.” Her frown went from one of anger to one of confusion and she squinted her eyes, wondering what made him think he could understand her one bit. But his tone of voice aggravated her. He sounded as though she was still the kid he had locked up.

“Don’t patronize me, Jaha.” She gritted her teeth, clenching her jaw. Neither Bellamy nor Clarke said anything for now, looking at them through the rearview mirror. “Your mistake is that you think you understand. But you’re right – I do hate you.”

“I am sorry.”

“Well, you’ve got a lot of things to be sorry for.” She wasn’t buying it and wouldn’t accept his apology even if it were genuine and sincere. She wouldn’t accept any apology from him because she didn’t care about him and his words were of no value to her. She didn’t like him on the Ark, and she despised him on the ground. She never respected him, and he was smart enough to know it.

“I know.” He nodded, glancing at his hands joined at his knees as he leaned forward. “I want to apologize for a lot of things.”

“Save your breath.” She looked away, losing interest in talking to him. He began with apologizing for how the city of light events turned out and she pursed her lips, staring at the car’s back door. “You forced my dad to take the chip.” He was about to say something, and she knew he would find an excuse for himself, so she continued. “It was your choice to do what you did – your choice to take the chip. I saw his hands. You tortured him to make him take the chip.

“I am sorry, Michelle.” She finally crossed his gaze again. Her eyes were shining slightly, gradually getting teary as she spoke through her gritted teeth, trying to contain herself.

“I almost killed my dad, because he was under Alie’s control and almost— almost killed Bellamy. I picked up a fucking metal bar and almost bashed my father’s head in.” Her nostrils flared and she swallowed harshly. “You saw how Octavia stabbed Pike, at the end? If my dad was dead, I would have killed you too. My mother’s gone – I couldn’t have lost him too.” Her voice got quieter as she looked away. “It's not even been 5 months since I found out he’s my father.”

“Callie didn’t want you to know.” She instantly turned her face back to him. Her facial features were no longer so tense.

“You knew?” She asked, almost whispering.

“Most of us – at the council – did. Those close to your mother. But it was her choice not to tell you that Marcus was your father. It was obvious to us.”

“I’m aware that Abby knew but— the whole council?”

“Yes.” He finally admitted and Michelle’s facial expression was now overtaken by the shock. She had no idea that over a dozen people knew that Kane was her father the whole time, and that none of them ever cared enough to tell her when all she had ever wanted, ever since she was a kid, was to know her father. It was the cause of so much tension and so many disputes with her mother when she was a teenager. It could have all been avoided if she hadn’t been lied to her whole life. She wouldn’t have been too mad if Abby had been the only one to know – she was her mother’s best friend after all – but finding out that almost every single adult around her knew. She was so stunned she didn’t even know how to react to this. She shook her head, her arms uncrossing. She asked herself a question she had already asked herself before – if Kane actually knew or not. She didn’t exactly remember what Abby said to this. Maybe he knew but didn’t want to face it, or rather couldn’t face it. Or he really didn’t. Either way, she had forgiven him anything he might have done wrong, and they worked on their relationship and as she thought about this, she realized that their relationship got so good and close-knitted because he was alive, allowing them to talk things through.

And she also came to the realization that she had lied to herself – she hadn’t fully forgiven her mother and she was one of the dead people she still held somewhat of a grudge against, and she hated herself because it would always be this way because her mother was dead and they could never discuss all this face to face, and it was eating at her. She hated herself for not being able to just let it go and forgive her mother, because she loved her so much. She hadn’t realized that as she got lost in her thoughts, the rover had gotten silent. Her lips quivered and she squinted her eyes as tears flooded them. He spoke again and she glared at him through her tears and told him to shut up, eventually raising her voice at him and storming out of the moving car. She heard Bellamy swear and call out to her as she hopped off through the backdoor, almost losing her balance as she landed on the ground and she walked away with a brisk step, wiping the tears that had rolled down her cheeks and trying to keep the rest of them from falling. She could hear that the car had stopped behind her and though she walked quickly, Bellamy reached her even quicker, jogging towards her. He had called her names quite a few times, but she hadn’t responded. It wasn’t that she deliberately wanted to ignore him, but she just couldn’t respond.

“I can walk back.” She insisted. He grabbed her arms and drew her into a tight hug as she broke into tears. She tried to apologize for wasting their time with this, but he dismissed it and she cried, resting her cheek against his shoulder, wrapping her arms around him, her hands gripping onto his jacket like claws. What she had just found out had made her feel like everyone around her had been taking her for a fool for her entire life and she felt disabused. He rubbed her back to comfort her and gently cradled her head, bringing strands of hair behind her ear. In this moment there was only one other thing that she wanted most. Her voice was shaking, broken with sobs, “I want to see my dad.”

“I know.” He felt for her, but unfortunately, he couldn’t really say anything else, because he couldn’t assure her that she would seem him soon. All he could do was support her as he did in this moment. They returned to the rover a minute later. Clarke was standing outside the vehicle, by the passenger’s door and she came up to them, giving a compassionate look to her childhood best friend.

“Ignore Jaha, okay? Take my seat. I’ll go in the back.” She walked around the car while Michelle took her place in the passenger seat, arms crossed as she slumped in the seat, bringing her legs to her chest and letting her knee lean against the door. Bellamy got in as Jaha quietly apologized again and he told him off.

“Shut up, Jaha. You’ve talked enough.” Michelle didn’t even look at him from the corner of her eyes. She stared straight ahead of her through the windshield and Bellamy started the car again. They drove through the thick forest until night fell, a few hours later. Jaha turned on a flashlight and if not for the spotlights at the front of the car, it would be totally pitch-black outside. They could barely see anything anyway. He stopped the rover, and they got out, sweeping the area with their flashligths.

“Cadogan learned how to survive from his father.” Jaha said. “They hunted in these woods.” He held up the tablet, lining up the pitcute of the house and trees with the background. “This is it.”

“Well, if anyone���s entitled to a lucky break, we are.” Bellamy declared.

“You hear that?” They all looked at him, not hearing anything and it was exactly what he wanted them to hear. There were no insects. Except he had no idea what it actually meant and he immidietaly saw the way the three of them looked at each other with worry. “What?”

“Luna said the fish were dying.” Clarke told him.

“What are the things that eat the fish and bugs gonna eat now?” Bellamy wondered.

“What happened to us deserving a lucky break?” They kept on walking. “So, what are we looking for?”

“The bunker would have been at the lowest point.”

“Anything structural. Be careful.” They gave Bellamy a nod and began searching the area. Michelle was following Clarke, and she glanced over her shoulder, stopping in her tracks for a second when she saw Jaha talking to Bellamy. She wondered what he might be telling him now but then Clarke’s voice got her attention and made her turn her head back to her, stepping over the fern’s leaves as she walked over to her. She had found something. Jaha and Bellamy joined them quickly. The latter advised them to stay behind him as they climbed down the stairs. Plants had grown over the entrance, and he cleared the way as he went down. The inside was insalubrious, roots growing all over the walls and spider webs absolutely everywhere – webs so big they were hanging from one wall to another like curtains. Bellamy broke them apart with his hand. At the back, they found a skeleton sat against the wall with thick spider webs covering him. Bellamy kneeled in front of it to take a closer look and grabbed something from its hand. What looked like a sort of large coin with the second dawn symbol and motto written around it.

“From the ashes, we will rise.” He stood up, glancing at the skeleton with a sigh. “Not this guy.”

Jaha turned the coin around and Roman numerals were written on the back. “The 11th seal. Their faith was based on 12 seals. Followers could level up by unlocking them one at a time. Only those who reached level 12 could achieve salvation.

“Huh. Maybe that’s why they didn’t let him in.” Clarke figured as she looked around, seeing a lichen covered bunker door behind them. Jaha was quite happy to see the bunker did exist. “What if they’re still in there?”

Bellamy knocked loudly on the door. “Hey! Is anyone there?”

“It’s still sealed.” Jaha concluded after looking along the door. But there were no locks or handles. There was no way they could unseal the door. The former chancellor than told them why it was – the door was designed to be opened from the inside.

“Or from the outside, by somebody with a rover.” They pulled a cable from the car all the way to the door and Bellamy started the vehicle. The cable tightened and he kept going. They all watched carefully to see if something happened. They heard metal creak, and something came flying out, hitting a tree and falling to the ground, barely avoiding the car. They had no idea if it worked or if something went wrong so they went down there again to see it for themselves. The bunker’s door was in fact open but Michelle was pretty pessimistic. She thought that, now that they forced the door open, it wouldn’t be livable anyway. And that was if the inside wasn’t as insalubrious as the first room. The room was plunged in the dark, and silence. Bellamy lit up a flare and held it high in front of him, the red incandescent light allowing them to see. The bunker was like an immense cave, spreading out before them. Hundreds of bodies were lying there. It wasn’t sealed. They all died from the bombs’ radiation, thinking they would survive.

“This won’t save anyone.” Bellamy concluded gravely. The trio glanced at each other. Michelle wasn’t so surprised, but it was still a great disappointment. They followed Jaha all the way there and again, he had been wrong and on top of that, she found out she had been lied to even more than she already knew. It had gotten her wondering if anyone ever took her seriously before.

When they returned to Arkadia, it was the middle of the night, but people were still up and going, working around the camp. They went to a room to talk privately after this failure of an outing and Bellamy and Michelle fell asleep on the couch, his arms wrapped around her as she lied on side, her face resting on his chest, blotti entre les coussins et le corps de Bellamy. They had gone to sleep, leaving Clarke to think about and work on the list of the 100 people that would have the right to be inside Alpha station when the radiation came. Michelle lifted her head when she felt Bellamy wake up and move. They looked at each other tenderly and sat up, noticing Clarke crying at the desk. She crossed their gazes as they stood up and approached and looked back to the sheet of paper in front of her.

“If we’re on the list, you’re on that list.”

“Bellamy, I can’t.” She cried.

“Write it down.” He insisted, speaking for the both of them. “Write it down, or I will.” He took the matter into his own hands when she shook her head, unable to bring herself to write her own name as the last of the list. He grabbed the pen and wrote it in her stead.  Michelle walked past him, putting a comforting hand on Clarke’s shoulder. She put her hand on top of it.

“So what now?” She asked with a shrug.

“Now we put it away, and hope we never have to use it.”

“You still have hope?”

“We still breathing?” The corner of his lips rose in a faint smirk. His hand joined the two girls’ and Clarke rested her cheeks against them, taking a deep, shaky breath. Michelle then told her to get some sleep, she gave them a nod, and the two left, headed towards their room. It ended up being a quite emotional and tough day for all of them. When she would be reunited with her father, Michelle would ask if whether he really had no idea, she was his child, or if he did, and chose not to say anything, and how he actually felt about her the whole time because she knew how she felt about him – she didn’t like him and she let him know anytime she could. It was immature of her, but she was a child, and she knew her father wouldn’t hold it against her, ever. She really wanted to have this talk with him again. There were still things he had to tell her.

[To be continued…]  

Previous Chapter / Next Chapter

Published (08/13/2024) by Andrea

Taglist:  @mirellef2001

[anniesocsandgeneralstore]

I am so excited for you all to see the rewrite! I haven't worked this hard on something I've written in a really long time, and it's been such an amazing experience so far. I've worked hard, and I hope that it shows. But there are just 14 more days until it posts! Woohoo! To celebrate, and hopefully maybe get people pumped, here are the first 500 words of the first chapter:

Rhett didn’t check to see if there were any holes in the old pair of Wranglers before he chucked them into the box along with everything else. Old shirts from high school that he couldn’t remember the reason for keeping and had been too small for him for quite some time. Sweatshirts and hoodies he bought at rodeos that made him cringe — their airbrushed images of bucking bulls and rearing stallions large. And a few other pairs of jeans that were just on the wearable side of thread-bare. All this he tossed into the cardboard box his mother had given him. Not caring to fold any of it. 

They were just donations, after all. 

Picking up the box from his bed, and plopping his old brown stetson on his head, Rhett made his way downstairs. The stairs creaked under his booted feet like they had since before he was born.

That was the thing about old farmhouses. They were noisy. Groaned and shook against the winds that rolled along the great Wyoming plains. Settled at odd hours of the night. There was no use in trying to sneak around. Wherever you walked, a floorboard wailed. Over the years, growing up in that old farmhouse, Rhett had learned which polished planks were less squeaky than others. Which steps to avoid in the wee hours of the night. Attempts at creeping through the house, smelling like hay and cheap booze, even his mother — who grew up in that same noisy old farmhouse — found valiant. 

But he didn’t care about sneaking now. It was ten in the morning and he had chores to do. One of which was already complete: gather clothes he wouldn’t mind donating to the Amelia County Boys Home.

Rhett stepped into the overcrowded kitchen to the lingering smells of bacon and eggs. He knew he missed breakfast. He slept in late, and everyone else had already been awake for hours. His father and his older brother, Perry, were probably out in the fields counting cattle by now. He hoped he wouldn’t have to see them before he left for town. Rhett set the box down on the small kitchen table in the middle of the room with a sigh. Wondering if there was any coffee left. 

“That you Rhett?” his mother called from her office. 

Once upon a time, that office was the family dining room. But that conversion took place long before Rhett was born. His grandfather turned it into an office space for the family ranch when he inherited it from his father. Hence the crowded kitchen.

“Yeah,” he replied, taking off his hat and setting it beside the box, knowing his mother would give him a look for wearing it inside the house. “There any coffee?” 

“A little, maybe.”

Rhett turned to the coffeemaker, and sure enough, there was enough for one cup. That was all he needed. Getting down a mug from the hooks over the window, he poured what remained in the decanter and took a sip. Nothing fancy, but it did the job in waking him up some.

just tagging a few people: @nerdysuperchick @bobfloydsbabe @crescentwolf @ahopelessromanticwritersworld @onebigfangirlworld @yanna-banana @blue-aconite @gigisimsonmars @laracrofted @a-reader-and-a-writer

[thewordworrier]

July 2024 Writing Wrap Up

Words Written: 24,260 / 21,700 words. A Camp month means a slightly higher total - I was aiming for 700 words a day, which was 21,700 words in total. I hit this count every day, because, naturally. But there were some days where it was really, really hard. And honestly? That's okay. Things I’ve worked on: ~ the Supernatural Beings AU ~ the newest re-write ~ NormalAU thoughts ~ Popstar!Shelly AU thoughts ~ a brief tattoo shop AU thought, for giggles Things Published: Nothing 😬 I am working on things though.

August Plans! ~ back to 500 a day. Ya girl is tired, and it's hot a lot at the moment so I could do with using less brain power. ~ finish up the newest rewrite so I can post it! this is nearly there. I need a title more than anything. And to tweak the chapter breaks.

[bedlamsbard]

500 words written today on rewrite, like, four of this fight scene (I'm so tired).

Snippet from Of Home Near chapter 11.

Peggy slammed forward as soon as Natasha had opened the door, cutting off Natasha’s own entrance.  For a moment the two women tangled in the doorway, which was long enough for the man in the hallway to turn towards them in astonishment, his hand moving to the pistol tucked into the waistband of his trousers. He was close enough that Peggy could have reached out and touched him, so she did just that before he could do more than reach for his gun.  She slammed a foot upwards between his legs, and as he started to collapse she bashed the stock of the Thompson into his head, which made a very satisfying dull crack.  Natasha caught him and lowered him to the floor as Peggy swung her gun back up, covering the hallway in case anyone had heard the noise.  She knelt and removed his pistol, shoes, and belt, using the belt and laces to bind his hands and feet before checking him over hastily for other weapons; she came up with a trench knife and a pair of brass knuckles. Natasha unloaded the pistol and tucked the clip away in a belt pouch, then left the empty gun with the other weapons and the shoes in a neat pile out of the commando’s reach.  Less than thirty seconds had passed by the time she straightened up again, her pistol back in its holster and her hands empty.  Peggy frowned at her, wondering why she didn’t draw her gun again, then shrugged and set the thought aside.

[kittyphoenix12-xx]

>_> you gotta link for that puppy? or is it a WIP.

sadly it's a wip rn because the original file got corrupted and i had to take a break from rewriting before i started crying lmao

but! here are the first 500 words because I'm very excited about it :)

There was something in the woods of Hawkins. It was moving in the shadows, out of the corner of Billy’s eye. As he lay on the floor, neck aching and veins burning, all he could think was the Byers have one creepy ass house.

A cool wind blew in from where the brats had left the door open, hauling Harrington’s fat ass to wherever they were going. He had heard the Camaro’s engine rev and disappear into the night. Billy hoped they crashed and died.

He tried to sit up, but his head hurt like hell. Sure, Harrington got a few good hits in, but the shit Max shot into him fucked him up more than he thought. With a dizzying exertion, Billy finally hauled himself up and slumped against the Byers’ counter.

“Fuck,” he muttered and scrubbed a hand down his face. This couldn’t’ve gone any worse. His mouth ached from where he’d been punched, and he could still taste the blood coating his gums. He ran a tongue over his teeth as if to clean them and looked blearily at the house.

It was a mess, and Billy knew that it hadn’t been him.

Those weird drawings were still on the walls, but the rest of the house looked like a hurricane had sauntered through. Billy had heard some things about Joyce Byers, about the near mental breakdown she’d had the year before. He could see it when he looked around the house.

“Fuck,” he muttered again as he stumbled to the fridge. His head was aching worse than before, and he hoped this creepy family had some ice, at least.

They did not have some ice. They had an alien in the refrigerator.

Billy took a breath and then another.

Max was in a fucking alien cult or some shit. And that was not Billy’s problem.

With shaking hands, he shut the fridge door, rubbed at the ache in his forehead and decided to go home. He could deal with the consequences tomorrow, but part of him (a small part, he wasn’t a pussy) was scared of what would happen if he waited for them to return. No weird cult shit for him, thank you.

But there were monsters in the woods of Hawkins.

The wind was biting when he stepped onto the drive. Gravel crunched underfoot as Billy shivered and stumbled, cursing as he tripped over nothing. The Byers lived fifteen minutes away by car, so it would probably take Billy an hour at this rate. God.

The drugs in his system were doing nothing to help. The shadows walked with him, swirling around his ankles like waves, leading him deeper into Hawkins's open blackness at night. There weren’t any streetlights, and the trees blocked the stars, so Billy was left in darkness.

He wasn’t left for long. He could hear a familiar rumble through the fog, and he almost cried in relief. The bright headlights came over a ridge and slowed down as they approached him. Billy slumped against the nearest tree, body losing to the drugs in his system as he giggled deliriously.

The slamming of a car door jerked his body as it echoed. He forced himself awake and blinked. A man was in front of him, lips twitching in subdued amusement. He was wearing a suit and tie, sunglasses on, and he was holding a card in front of him.

“Good evening.”

“Hey,” Billy replied dryly, squinting at the card. It was kinda difficult to read, but it seemed very official and shit. “You government?”

“Do we need to be?”

Billy shrugged. They may be government, but he always had issues with authority. The man acknowledged his silence with a smile, scanning him up and down. Billy was aware of the bruises around his face, the blood on his teeth and the shaking in his hands.

Another man got out of the car. He wore the same uniform but looked serious and less likely to take bullshit. He leaned down and whispered something to the other man before taking something out of his pocket.

“Have you seen anything like this?”

Billy took the photo and held it to the light. Huh. Guess he hadn’t hallucinated that thing in the fridge. “Yeah,” he said.

They both looked as if they wanted him to say more. Billy bit his lip.

Max had run away to a creepy cabin, drugged him, stolen his car and left him stranded where there were more of those aliens running around… but Billy didn’t want to send these government spies after her.

“I hit it with my car.”

“Did you, now?”

Billy scowled. “Yeah. I hit it and flipped my car. Got out, saw it, thought I had a concussion and was on my way to find a phone or some shit.” He didn’t know how believable it was, his speech sounded slurred, and he was getting dizzy again.

The first guy seemed to notice as he gently put his arm around Billy. “We can take you to the hospital, okay? We appreciate what you told us.”

As he helped Billy stumble to the car, which at a closer look, was one of those big black military vehicles, Billy felt warm. They got him into the back, and something caught his eye as the engine turned back on.

The symbol on the badge, the one that Billy originally thought was the government, looked nothing like it. It looked familiar, though, and Billy was so tired.

There were monsters in Hawkins, and to Billy, they would always be human.

[written-in-sunshine]

Hello! I’m Key, and this is my commission sheet! All of the necessary information for commissioning me is here, and I’d appreciate it if you could take a look before shooting me a message! Here is my Ao3 For Reference!

GUIDELINES

Please read my Will Not Write section thoroughly. Just because something is on the list doesn’t mean that I dislike or don’t support it, but there are things on that list that I just don’t have enough interest in writing. That said, things on my Will Write list do not inherently mean that I support or like it. 

Currently, the only fandom listed that I will write for is the Hellaverse (Hazbin Hotel/Helluva Boss). This is because it is a hyperfixation for me and I am more capable of writing for them without issue.

I will allow up to three edits of less than 300 words before those incur a fee. If I interpreted your prompt wrong entirely, please let me know. If the confusion was on my part, no fee for a total rewrite will be incurred.

Please message me before filling out the form for a commission. I’d like to discuss particulars about certain topics and things and I’d like to approve the commission beforehand.

If given artistic freedom for a prompt, I will write how I naturally write the characters. I am willing to take direction for how you want characters to be written. I would prefer not to go against canon to the point of completely erasing a character’s identity. This does not count for certain kink scenarios (Bimbofication and other mind-altering things).

This is a proship and kink-friendly account. By proship, I mean that I will not harass others over their fictional tastes and I do not support harassing anyone for any reason. I will write things that will make you uncomfortable. I will write things that are dead dove: do not eat. I will write a whole host of things and if that upsets you, please find someone else to commission.

I predominantly write romance, smut, fluff, and angst, but can try my hand at other genres. 

I do not mind aging characters up for smut, and I will write any manner of ship type from m/f, m/m/, f/f, to polyamory. Please keep in mind that a fee will incur for more than 4 characters in a ship per every 1k words. If your ship includes 6 people then I will require at least 1,500 words minimum to write them. Smut for that many will be over 2,000 words easily.

For prompts, I will accept up to five words, two sentences, or a small paragraph of what you would like for me to write. Prompt sheets are also okay to use! Please try to be as concise as possible.

I will not start your commission until the upfront $15 for the first 500 words is paid. Once that is paid, I will begin and you will only be charged for the rest once the fic is completely finished and edited. I tend to add 100+ words to things in the editing process, as a heads-up. Payment can be made via PayPal, Venmo, and CashApp.

Will Write List

Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Most Kinks (PLEASE ask if you’re unsure), Smut, Top/Bottom Dynamics, Omegaverse, AUs, Crossovers, Domestic Fluff, Violence, Age Gap Ships, Any Sexualities, Intersex Characters, Homophobia/Transphobia/Fantasy Racism/Racism (IF THE CONTENT IS RELEVANT TO THE CHARACTER), Your OCs, My OCs, OC-Centric Fics, Hurt/Comfort, Romance, Angst, Headcanon-Based Things, Canon Compliant Fic, Canon Divergent Fic, Most Ships, Sickfics, Whump

Will Not Write List

Defecation of ANY KIND, tickling, gas, eye trauma, OCs without proper information for me to work from

Ships Most Likely To Write - Hellaverse

Adam/Lucifer

Adam/Lute

Alastor/Angel Dust

Alastor/Angel Dust/Valentino

Alastor/Valentino

Alastor/Vox/Angel Dust/Valentino

Alastor/Vox/Valentino

Alessio/Crimson

Beelzebub/Ozzie

Chaz/Barbie

Fizzarolli/Ozzie

Mammon/Ozzie

Striker/Andrealphus

Travis/Angel Dust

Valentino/Angel Dust

Velvette/Chaz

Velvette/Valentino

Vox/Valentino

Vox/Valentino/Angel Dust

Vox/Velvette

Vox/Velvette/Valentino

Zestial/Velvette

Ships I Will Not Write - Hellaverse

Alastor/Charlie

Alastor/Lucifer

Blitzø/Stolas

Blitzø/Verosika

Lute/Vaggie

Moxxie/Millie

Verosika/Barbie (MAY make an exception for this)

Fandoms I Will Write Crossovers With

Assassin's Creed

Catherine

Deadman Wonderland

Devil's Carnival

Dragon Age

The Evil Within

Fallout Universe

Final Fantasy VII

Final Fantasy X/X-2

Inception

Insidious

Invader Zim

IT

Jeepers Creepers

Kick-Ass

Kingdom Hearts

Krampus

Left 4 Dead

Lollipop Chainsaw

Mad Max

Nightmare On Elm Street

The Quarry

Portal

Saw

Silent Hill

South Park

Team Fortress 2

Until Dawn

Feel free to ask about other fandoms, as well!

Please reblog to spread the word!

[helenvader]

23, 27, and 29 for the Get to Know Your Writer ask game, if you are interested in answering those.

Thanks for sharing this game. Love hearing about other writers' approaches.

Thanks for the ask! These were difficult, especially 23.

23.

Best writing advice for other writers?

I’d divide it into two categories. Personal and technical.

Also: I do not consider myself the ultimate authority on writing, so the technical part is to be taken with a grain of salt.

Personal:

PLEASE do not compare yourself to others. Admire other people’s work, but write like you. You are good, cast those doubts into a black hole!

If you are only beginning, do not be discouraged if you feel like your writing is not as good as you’d like. Most of us wrote crap when we started. It will get better! 

Do not be discouraged if you do not have many comments or kudos. My best story has very few, and while it can be frustrating, that is the story I wanted to write, and I wrote it the way I wanted, fully knowing it will never get popular.

Answer the people who commented on your fic. They are to be treasured like diamonds.

Some writers pull off writing a story/chapter in a couple of days, some might take several weeks/months. There is no better or worse. Take all the time you need.

Do not despair if you have a writer’s block. It shall pass!

Technical (this is my personal opinion, not general rules - everybody writes differently, after all):

Avoid exposition if possible.

Show-don't-tell is your friend. It seems like a horrid cliché, but it is true.

Sometimes less is more. There is no causal relationship between quality and word count.

Read your work checking for mistakes (grammar, punctuation, typos) before you post, especially if you do not have a beta reader (and I know good ones are hard to find).

27. What is your most and least favorite part of writing?

Most favourite: when I manage to write something that I feel is really good.

Least favourite: When I have time and mood to write, but whatever I write is not worth anything. Which brings us to writer’s blocks. Not a favourite of anyone! Right now I am in a middle of a huge one. Boo.

29.

What’s your revision or editing process like?

I edit during the writing process, and also mark words/passages that I think might be better expressed (I am not a native speaker of English). Before I give my work to my editor, I thoroughly read the story at least once. My editor does several things: a) checks the grammar, b) tries to give suggestions on passages that are still marked, c) gives me an honest opinion about what needs re-writing (she is always right). Once, with a one-shot, she gave it back and told me, you can do better. I made a complete rewrite and yes, she was right again. The story turned out to be 500% better than the first version. Also, we discuss every story together. This is why I call her an editor rather than beta-reader, because that’s exactly how professional editors work.

She doesn’t edit poetry, though. That one's on me! :-)

[joemuggs]

ESCAPE THE CRINGE

I first wrote this piece for an art mag at the start of the year but they dicked me about over rewrites so much - and I mean really dicking about, like radio silence for three weeks then suddenly demanding changes for the next day - that for the first time in my life I actually pulled a piece. A couple of other outlets were up for it, but needed further alteration to fit house style... With so much going on I let it slide and let it slide, and now it's been so long I just feel like shoving it out there. It still feels relevant (maybe more so now that we're seeing an increasing public collapse of some of the most high profile demagogue scammers, albeit with new hydra heads quickly replacing them), and I'd rather have people see it and maybe feed back, rather than wrangle over it any further. So without further preamble, here's some thoughts about one of the defining reactions of our time and how to get away from it.

👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻

We live in a time when groupthink and echo chambers are everywhere, where ingroup radicalisation, cult-like behaviours and submission to scammers and demagogues seem to be defining patterns of the era. Blame for these things is often laid at the feet of algorithms, of politicians, of capital - in many cases rightly so - but we all individually play the game too. We build the walls of our own cultural gated communities, with tweets and artworks and individual choices about where to go and what to say, and the more we do so the more those spaces that we force ourselves – and others – into become more or less gilded prisons. We all think we’re hip to something, and end up orbiting that something endlessly.

The first rule of hip club is you don’t talk about hip club. That is: if you’re serious about your aesthetic nowadays, you do your very best to not acknowledge that it even is an aesthetic – let alone identify its rules and delineations. Now, of course this doesn’t go for everyone: there are still anime cosplayers, emo kids and others who still gauchely adhere to the overt “style tribe” late 20th century ways of belonging. But these are exceptions that prove the rule. Far more often the things that make us “us”, that hold us together, are still based on taste - but these tastes that provide us with a sense of belonging are signalled covertly. They’re signalled not by discussing, or even necessarily knowing, what preferences make you belong among Your People, but rigidly enforcing the ingroup-outgroup divide with reactions against The Others’ tastes: through a set of real or figurative winces, grimaces and cringes. 

Oh yes, the cringe. That most visceral response, often deployed simply as a single word sentence by the Terminally Online, the argument ender to end all argument enders: just “cringe”. It’s noun, verb and adjective all rolled together into a gut level rejection, and it’s a dead giveaway that so, so many parts of The Discourse - as people solipsistically have it - is based way more on aesthetics than it is on any kind of coherent set of positions. That is, it’s less about showing revulsion at ideas, than about the fact that they’re expressed gauchely or clumsily or simply with the wrong slang. It’s a social cue, a nod to one’s fellows, to acknowledge shared good taste in memes, phrases and cadences, which one’s interlocutor has unforgivably failed to engage properly with. 

This kind of of us-and-them cringe-signalling operates in various ways across society, but perhaps the most fundamental dichotomy is basic vs hip, or normie vs hip. This in itself is framed in a variety of ways, but a super simplified version might run like this: influencer culture, sincere slogans, Will Ferrell and The Office memes, Goop wellness, "Fiat 500 Twitter" on one side - and shitposting, pursuit of the latest zero-caps punctuational microvariant, everything intellectualised but ironised, the moods formerly known as “based” and "dank" on the other. The former sees the latter as smug, pretentious, nonsensical, messy while in the other direction the hip cast the basics as conservative, simplistic, unimaginative, conformist. Each cringes at the other, each considers the other fundamentally in bad taste.

And these dichotomies are held in place firmly by the material interests of vested powers. So to keep with our sample duality, on the basic side, there are the affirmatory or aspirational solution-havers, the Matt Haigs and Johann Haris, Rupi Kaurs and Molly Maes, while on the hip side there’s the Somethingawful-to-Vice-to-Broadsheet ironymonger pipeline and the Politics Podcast Industrial Complex embodied in people called things like “PissPigGrandad”. Each relies on hate and fear of the other to provide a steady stream of attention and income to those who shore up their own self-image, who normalise an way of being, who provide just enough answers to make people feel like they’re on the right track, but not so many that they won’t keep coming back for more. Yet each is, of course, built on a lie. 

The basic think they are commonsensical and unpretentious, but actually adhere to byzantine aesthetic and political codes of belonging. The hip think they are switched on, fast moving and progressive but in fact their gatekeeping is deeply conservative: the solipsism of believing an echo chamber is “The Discourse”, no matter how ironically you try to couch that, is all about normalising enormously limited race, age, nationality and class boundaries around what is acceptable. Both are co-dependent false divisions of ideas and people made to shore up power structures and the interests of the privileged, and both are built on aesthetics above all else. Each is, in its own way, an insistence of good taste.

Once you see this, you see it everywhere. There are so many versions of this mutually exclusionary duality. Sometimes they’ll manifest as ostensible generational, regional or professional divides, sometimes as scene or faction schisms (and note well, political factions have more in common with musical, fashion or social scenes than anyone within them would ever care to admit). Each time, if you look, you’ll find that they are defined more by aesthetics than ethics: by those assemblages of catchphrases, by certain quirks of timing and emphasis. Whether it’s Dawkins and Harris quoting facts-and-reason guys defining themselves against what they think of as a feminised, emotion-driven mushiness in the barbaric masses, or underground music fans against the flash and spectacle of EDM, or vintage specs wearing postgrad ketamine-leftist cliques against “shitlib centrists”, or crypto-bros against anyone who doesn’t have a wallet, all too often the sense of self is generated by what one is NOT. 

And each time if you dig into what is happening in these oppositions, you’ll find someone benefitting in real, material terms: spokespeople, figureheads, demagogues, people whose theories or slogans are rallying points for believers and who rely on those believers for speaking engagements, podcast and newsletter subscriptions, NFT sales, academic tenure, political appointments, newspaper columns. There is a whole egosystem of commentariat and metacommentariat whose job appears to make bogeymen of one another, yet who one all too often finds in the upper echelons are on perfectly friendly terms when they run into one another in green rooms of media recordings, backstage at literary festivals or in the offices of the agents that they share. This last location not picked idly, n.b.: one of the UK’s loudest hip-left commentators of the past decade shares a literary agent with a leading hip-right provocateur and an old-school hard-right rabble rouser: they are very literally all in it together.

All of this, it really bears repeating, is built on lies, and further, is built on consciously or unconsciously deliberate obscuring of the truth, in order to support these power structures. If ever you see an argument that’s built around one of these abstracted dualities - pop vs underground, modernist vs traditional, respectable vs transgressive, health vs pleasure, decadence vs morality, rationalism vs “the blob”, take your pick - you can be sure that not only is there someone making cultural or actual capital out of it, but that they are muddying waters to make it more difficult to make out the connections, genealogies and human realities underlying what is being discussed. An appeal to take a side in one of these, ultimately aesthetic, judgements – an appeal to show good taste – is an appeal to feel the cringe instead of analysing what one is cringing at. It’s an appeal against scholarship.

Which is why we must, with extreme prejudice, abolish the concept of good taste. “In principle,” said the DJ and dance music producer Chrissy in 2020, “I think the idea of good taste is classist and racist! Usually whatever's considered good taste is what the most powerful or most educated or wealthiest people feel comfortable yelling about, and the ones out of them that can yell loudest and most eloquently about it, as a society we call that good taste.” And he is entirely right. No matter how you define “good taste”, you are defining it as a power relation, an exclusionary tool, a way to deride. 

Which is not to say that taste and discernment don’t and shouldn’t exist – but they exist in the sense that scholarship exists. Not ivory tower, status-accrued-by-citations scholarship, but scholarship as in demonstration of knowledge accumulated and the practice of accumulating it. The kind of scholarship that’s as likely – or perhaps more likely – to be exhibited by autodidacts as celebrity professors. You can’t judge scholarship according to winces, grimaces and cringes, you have to take it on according to what it is actually saying about its subjects and objects: and so with taste. Someone’s taste should impress precisely to the degree that they demonstrate that they know and care about the objects of their affection, not for its adherence to a social code imposed by vested interests. 

Maybe there are reasons to hope. The early years of this century were formed by information glut, by seemingly all of cultural history being available all at once. Many thought this would lead to cultural paralysis, a dissipation into undifferentiated “conent”, and a death of innovation – and certainly it can be seen to have driven a retreat into reactive and reactionary positions. When bold statement of preference and belonging is made difficult by the baffling array of choice, covertly coded taste bubbles are an inevitable outcome. But two things abode. 

Firstly, those genuine old-school style tribes, from cosplayers to grime lovers, who grew up together over years, put in the time together, and truly and positively identified with what they do, and the real spatio-temporal existence of what they do, in defiance of the grimaces of others. Second, the rise in value of curation. It’s a word often derided because of its ubiquity in marketing speech, and mocked because “everyone’s a curator” (or “everyone’s a DJ”) nowadays. But curation at its best is precisely the kind of pride in scholarship and individual ability to map connections across the information ocean, that can short circuit the demands of good taste. 

It’s available to all, it can be expressed easily – as punks did with paper fanzines and grime lovers with phone-shot video – and it is by its nature collaborative, sharing, and dependent on positive choices. There ARE glimmers of hope that Generation Z are more able to think in a curatorial way than their predecessors, to cut and paste the always-on data glut of past culture into something more actively expressed than reactively defined – something that can engender a sense of belonging without the need for those gut level micro-rejections of The Other to define itself. And if that is the case, then maybe, just maybe, they can demonstrate new ways to escape the cringe.