#this is an excerpt from the really long first chapter that isn't even finished

[acescorazon]

Title: Changes

Chapter: 13

Rating: M

Word count: 3614

Warnings: Crocodile and Mihawk are being dicks, ANOTHER damn flashback, language, minor violence.

Chapter Excerpt:

It's been blatantly obvious from the start that Mihawk and Crocodile want nothing to do with him. He doesn't know why he even tried fixing their relationship, they were never going to be three people who got along.

This isn't the Oro Jackson and he's not dealing with someone like Shanks, nor is he dealing with a random stranger or even a member of his own crew. He should have realized all his efforts would go in vain and that Crocodile and Mihawk came to the island with a deep-seated hatred and lack of respect for him embedded in them already. Whatever, it's fine. Buggy's not mad or upset or even disappointed. He's completely fine.

|Ch1|Ch2|Ch3|Ch4|Ch5|Ch6|Ch7|Ch8|Ch9|Ch10|Ch11|Ch12||

At this point, Buggy is unsure of what he can do to improve his relationship with Mihawk and Crocodile. He's tried throwing them a dinner, but that didn't work. He's also tried giving them gifts, but that was another failure and it turns out they're a lot more difficult to please than Buggy thought they'd be. He's at a loss and is unsure what to do at this point to make his two new 'subordinates' like him.

Perhaps his best option is to just be direct and try to talk to them, even though every time Buggy tries to speak to them or do something nice for them, they just push him away or reject him. He can't just leave his relationship with Crocodile and Mihawk as it is though, that'd never work and surely it'd grow tiresome sooner or later.

Buggy decides to make his move the next time Cross Guild has a meeting. He waits patiently for Crocodile to finish going over all his plans as well as announce any progress the newly formed group has already made, remaining silent the entire time so he doesn't annoy Crocodile any. After Crocodile wraps everything up, Buggy quickly clears his throat and speaks up before Mihawk or Crocodile can leave, "Uh," he mutters, his voice trembling slightly, "Can I talk to you guys about something?"

At the sound of his request, Mihawk and Crocodile turn towards Buggy and narrow their eyes at him, giving him a judgmental look. Neither of the two say anything but the look they have on their faces says it all: 'What now, clown?'

Buggy chuckles and finds himself growing uneasy by the other two's hardened glares. He shifts in his spot slightly before continuing,  "So, uh... look, guys. I'm just going to come out and say it. I know you're probably thinking I'm being so annoying by constantly trying to be you guy's friend but I want you to know I'm really trying my best here!" He states and afterwards he tries to read Mihawk and Crocodile’s expressions, but there's not much he can decipher about their mood.

They look as irritated as usual.

"I don't want to fight with you guys all the time or have you guys hate me or anything like that!" Buggy explains, "Look, everything has pretty much been out of my control. I don't know why everyone thinks I'm the boss or whatever, but I never wanted that spotlight and I still don't. What I really want is for us all to get along and for Cross Guild to be successful!"

Mihawk and Crocodile continue to stare Buggy down, but they're silent. No bitter insults, no rejections, no fighting. Just silence. The two don't even leave the room immediately or tell Buggy to go away. Perhaps this is them willing to finally give Buggy a chance?  "I'll just go ahead and say I'm sorry if I've made you two mad or offended you in the past. I promise I can change and that I can be someone useful to you, so... Uh, can we maybe give being friends a chance?" He asks, giving them both a sheepish grin.

There's a long pause after Buggy finishes speaking, and with every passing second, he can feel his anxiety growing in his body.  This is the first time that he's actually been listened to by either men, and this really feels like his one and only chance to make things right.

The three of them don't even have to be best friends, Buggy just doesn't want to be constantly threatened or beaten up, but if they could develop a close relationship that would be perfect because Buggy realizes with his newfound status as emperor of the sea he needs all the allies he can get. "Uh, what do you guys think?" Buggy asks when Mihawk and Crocodile fail to answer him.

"You're serious about this, aren't you?" Crocodile asks and then afterwards he begins to laugh. His loud, mocking laughter booms throughout the meeting room and Buggy's ears, "I already told you this, but I guess you forgot. I don't need no friends, especially useless ones like you." He tells Buggy, and it's like a stab to the chest. "How would being friends with you benefit me? You're penniless and weak, and you can't do even the simplest task. The only thing that you have going for you is your status as an emperor, but to tell you the truth, I don't care about that."  

Buggy's face begins to heat up and he wants to argue. He wants to tell Crocodile that he definitely isn't a useless clown like he's always saying he is. Buggy has done so much in his lifetime and yet everyone always underestimates and belittles him. Buggy isn't weak and useless, there are people out there who actually fear and or admire him. 

"Your title really is just for show," Crocodile chuckles, "You're nothing compared to Red-Haired Shanks or Blackbeard. Hell, you're not even on the same level as that brat with the straw hat."

Being compared to the other emperors of the sea makes Buggy want to scream. Okay, but... He's at a loss for words. His pride is telling him to fight back and not let Crocodile put him down like this, but another part of him is saying that Crocodile’s right.

No, no, that's not right. Buggy's accomplished too. He traveled the Grandline as a child, he studied under dark king Rayleigh... He took over Orange Town... he... he almost executed Monkey D. Luffy, the same Monkey D. Luffy Crocodile is comparing him to, in Loguetown... He.... He was in the war...(not that he fought in it.)... He started Buggy's delivery service... He...

Maybe he didn't defeat a previous emperor for their spot and maybe he's not always causing a stir like the other three are, but... Buggy’s done things too, and it's not fair to compare him to the other three...even if his status does seem more or less like a fluke sometimes.

Buggy bites his bottom lip, "You haven't given me a chance to prove myself," he says, but for some reason, he doesn't deny Crocodile’s previous statements...maybe he is right. "I've purposely been lying low and doing my own thing. I-"

Crocodile cuts him off, "Bullshit. You haven't been lying low, you just can't do anything. You're useless both as a leader and as a potential friend. In fact, the only reason why I haven't snapped your neck is because Hawkeye here thinks you're a good little distraction." He snorts, "But the government hasn't tried to attack us yet, so who knows? Maybe you can't even keep a few measly Marines distracted."

Buggy takes a deep breath and tries to remain calm. He should have realized trying to be Crocodile's friend was pointless. He’s such a cruel, foul mouthed man who cares about nobody but himself. He doesn't want a loving supportive friend, he wants someone he can boss around and use for his schemes. If you don't prove your worth to him, you're useless...

Crocodile’s thought process goes against everything Gol D. Roger taught Buggy to believe in. Buggy’s former captain always told him that a friend is someone you should love, appreciate, and support unconditionally. Our friends may not be related to us by blood, but they’re just as important as family and should be cherished as such because life is so short. A friend is someone who you can depend on and won’t judge you or leave you behind during your toughest battles. It doesn’t matter how rich, smart, or powerful your friends are, what’s important is their heart and character.

Eh… Now that he thinks about it, his beloved former captain was always a bit cheesy and sentimental, but that’s besides the point. Buggy wouldn’t treat Crocodile as if he were just some pawn in a scheme or some glorified bodyguard. He doesn’t need Crocodile to prove his worth (but it certainly isn’t bad that he’s a well-known and very powerful pirate), and Crocodile shouldn’t need Buggy to prove his worth either, that’s not how a genuine friendship works. Whatever, though. Buggy’s over trying to be friends with that self centered prick.

Buggy forces himself to look away from Crocodile and turns to Mihawk. He swallows hard, "...Hawkeye," he calls out in a small voice, and, oh, how he hates how vulnerable he sounds right now. "You don't feel the same way, do you?" He asks, clinging onto hope that Mihawk really is the lesser of two evils.

Mihawk remains quiet for another painfully long moment before finally speaking up for the first time since their meeting ended, "More or less." He says in a cold, blunt voice. Oh, of course he feels the same way as Crocodile, Buggy thinks bitterly. "I won't waste my breath belittling you, but I don't need any friends either." Ah, that's Dracule Mihawk for you, he's always so cruel and direct.

"Okay, we don't have to be friends." Buggy states, looking between both of his fellow members of Cross Guild, "But could we at least treat each other with respect?!" He begs, more than willing to settle at this point.

The laugh that Crocodile lets out when Buggy asks him to do something as simple as give him a little respect is disheartening to say the least. "You actually think I'd respect a gutless coward like you?" He mocks.

"I..."

"Get fucking real!"

"I...I…" is all Buggy manages to stammer out because he feels more embarrassed than before. Crocodile treats him like he's nothing but a tacky, piece of gum here for him to chew up and spit out when he's ready. 

Somehow Mihawk's reaction is the same as Crocodile’s but different. He raises an eyebrow at Buggy, and if Buggy had to guess he'd say Mihawk's probably thinking something along the lines of: 'ME? Respect you? Respect is something you earn, and you definitely haven't earned my respect.'

"Forget it." Buggy mutters, "I'm just going to get back to work." He tells the other two men before lowering his head and rushing out of the meeting room. As he leaves he can hear Crocodile continue to mock him: "Did you hear that shit, Hawkeye?!"

Okay, Fuck them. Fuck Cross Guild. Fuck Buggy too for being so stupid and for even trying to be on good terms with Mihawk and Crocodile. It's been blatantly obvious from the start that Mihawk and Crocodile want nothing to do with him. He doesn't know why he even tried fixing their relationship, they were never going to be three people who got along.

This isn't the Oro Jackson and he's not dealing with someone like Shanks, nor is he dealing with a random stranger or even a member of his own crew. He should have realized all his efforts would go in vain and that Crocodile and Mihawk came to the island with a deep-seated hatred and lack of respect for Buggy embedded in them already. Whatever, it's fine. Buggy's not mad or upset or even disappointed. He's completely fine.

Why would the great and mighty Captain Buggy The Clown let two assholes like Mihawk and Crocodile determine his worth? Why would he let them get to him? He hasn't, he's fine. He's totally fine and he doesn't care what happens moving on. He'll just try his best to coexist with Mihawk and Crocodile and try not to get on their bad sides or whatever.

He says that he wants to live peacefully among Crocodile and Mihawk, and yet he does the one thing he probably shouldn't. He finds someone to angrily vent to, Cabaji and Mohji always listen to him without judging him and they always offer up the upmost support and advice, but Buggy doesn't need advice. He just needs to rant, and so maybe that's why as soon as he sees his two most trusted crew-mates, he disregards his current location and begins to air all of his grievances about both Mihawk and Crocodile.  

Buggy's mouth runs a mile a minute as insults, complaints, and anything you can think of come flying from between his painted lips. He tells the two other men how frustrated he is that Crocodile and Mihawk just can't play nice, and how they think they're the boss of him and can push him around. He tells them that they're both so stuck up and rude that it's unbelievable and that he's never met two people as insufferable as Mihawk and Crocodile. "I really tried!" He complains, throwing his hands up.

At this point his face is beet red and he's more furious than he'd like to be. "But nothing I do makes them happy!" He tells Mohji and Cabaji for what has to be the hundredth time. The two try and calm Buggy down but at this point he's a lost cause. "Can you believe they're acting this way? And for what reason? Because the world government made me an emperor and not them? Because they're stuck in some shitty organization with me? I didn't ask for any of this!" He tells them as his voice continues to steadily rise.

"But whatever. I don't care." Buggy laughs bitterly.

"Capt-"

"No, seriously I don't give a fuck anymore! I'm done trying to be nice to those two assholes. They said they don’t do friends, but is that the real truth? Do they not have friends because they don’t trust anyone and they’re too stuck up, or is it because they're both two insufferable assholes who no one wants to be friends with in the first place? I mean, really, who’d want to be their fucking friend? They’re two extremely bitter old men who can’t hold a conversation let al-"

"Captain Buggy..." Mohji calls out in a shaky voice, but Buggy continues to rant and rave about how much he hates the situation he's in. He hates that the world government takes him seriously and considers him to be a big enough threat to be an emperor of the sea, but that Mihawk and Crocodile think he's some weak, small time pirate. He was fine being just an errand boy before but now he's genuinely frustrated that Mihawk and Crocodile see him as beneath them and won’t treat him as an equal. "What gives those assholes the right?!"

"C..Captain..." Cabaji and Mohji stammer out at the same time. There's an intense look of fear on both of their faces that Buggy failed to realize before. He stops his rant long enough to give them both a confused look, "...What?" He asks, and when his two crew-mates gesture to something behind him with their heads, Buggy realizes just how badly he fucked up in an instant.

Buggy inhales a deep, shaky breath. Please tell me they aren't standing behind me. He thinks, about ten seconds away from pleading with the universe to just cut him some slack for once in his miserable life. Of course, though, Buggy has nothing but worst luck. In fact if he didn't have the most vile, atrocious luck imaginable, he probably wouldn't have any luck at all.

Buggy slowly looks over his shoulder and his stomach drops. He really has no luck at all, but perhaps this has nothing to do with luck and everything to do with the fact that Buggy foolishly trash talked Mihawk and Crocodile as soon as he got the chance to and in public.

Mihawk is the first to speak, "No, don't let us interrupt you. We want to hear more of what you have to say, Buggy The Clown." He tells him in an eerily calm voice, "By all means. Please elaborate why you think that we're insufferable and stuck up some more."

Buggy doesn't even know what he should say at this point. He laughs nervously, "Hawkeye....Crocodile...when did you two get here?" He asks, feeling like he's seconds away from hurling. Actually now that he thinks about it, maybe it's better if he doesn't know when Crocodile and Mihawk came and how much they heard.

Buggy realizes he's in deep shit, but he still takes a step back and raises his arms up in the air, "Oh, you know I didn't mean any of that stuff, you guys. I'm a clown, remember?" He laughs but no one laughs with him, "I like to joke around! I didn't really mean all those things, I was just joking..." he lies, feeling trapped.

"I for one didn't find your little joke amusing." Mihawk says and Buggy can notice the subtle shift in his expression and how irate he looks with him right now. "Did you, Crocodile?" He asks.

Crocodile's expression isn't any better, in fact it's ten times worse because Crocodile never hides his emotions, especially not ones like anger. "Of course i didn't." He replies with another mocking laugh, and it's at this point that Buggy realizes that he probably shouldn't try to talk to them anymore and that he should instead just run away.

So that's what he does, he takes off in a sprint, trying to put as much distance between him and Mihawk and Crocodile as possible even though he knows that it's pointless. He can't outrun Mihawk, the world’s strongest swordsman is too fast, but even if he could, he still has another man after him. Crocodile may not be as fast as Hawkeye, but he’s good at cornering Buggy and trapping him in a cloud of sand, and Buggy knows that he’s no match for either of them no matter how much he runs, ducks, and hides.

 

They catch Buggy with ease and once they do, they unleash all their anger, frustration, and pure hatred on Buggy. Their assault isn't just physical, it's verbal as well, of course it is. Crocodile and Mihawk’s cold, cruel words hurt a lot more than their fists do sometimes, depending on what’s being said, and Buggy finds himself quickly feeling overwhelmed as tears pour from his eyes.

"I knew you were just spouting a bunch of bullshit in the meeting room."  Crocodile hisses as he punches him for what has to be the tenth time, and Buggy wishes he were exaggerating when he says that. Crocodile’s wrong, though, Buggy was being one hundred percent genuine when he said he wanted them all to get along and treat each other with respect, it's just that he grew frustrated with Mihawk and Crocodile’s constant rejection and coldness towards him.

What else was he supposed to do? How else was he supposed to feel? He’s hurt and frustrated, can’t they see that? Buggy tries several times to explain himself, but it’s no use, Mihawk and Crocodile just continue to beat his face in and mock his every cry and scream until they finally get tired and storm away, leaving Buggy to lie on the ground a clobbered mess. 

Buggy’s entire soul feels shattered into pieces as he lie there, crying his eyes out. Mohji and Cabaji rush over to his side just as soon as Crocodile and Mihawk leave (He never expected them to intervene and if they did, it’d only cause more pain for him.) “Oh my god, captain, are you okay?” Cabaji asks.

No. 

Buggy doesn’t have the heart to respond to the question and the moment he realizes that Cabaji and Mohji are be his side, he tries to hold back all his pain and suffering. They sit him up gently and tell him that they’re going to get him all patched up and softly mutter how much they hate Crocodile and Mihawk just as much as Buggy does, and how Buggy is so brave and strong for putting up with them.

…Is he, though?

Buggy doesn’t feel very brave and strong, he feels like a loser who has no control over his life, but he doesn’t tell Cabaji and Mohji that, how the hell could he?

Things become more hostile between Buggy and Crocodile and Mihawk after that. It seems that his one little slip-up was enough to make Mihawk and Crocodile’s disdain for him grow ten times worse, but then again, maybe it doesn’t matter what Buggy said or did. Maybe things would have always ended up like this, after all Mihawk and Crocodile have absolutely no respect or sympathy for Buggy.

[jccatstudios]

I have been following your soc comic adaptation and it just so good!!! I love how you draw them!

I have just one question: Why did you not include Inej's opening musings about Kaz on the first page? (Kaz Brekker didn't need a reason etc) I actually really like how there is not text on the first two pages, it's really atmospheric and moody so this really is not a criticism, I don't want to insult you. I guess I was just wondering what the thought process behind that was?

Oh, I've been wanting to talk about this for a while! Buckle up, this is gonna be one of my long comic rants. (Also, no offense taken at all! Anyone's welcome to question my artistic choices and I'm always happy to take critique, even though that isn't your intention.)

So, the thing is I actually planned on including that first paragraph into the comic! Here's when I first shared the thumbnails on here. Just for the sake of this post, I'll insert them here too.

The boxes are meant to be where excerpts of that introduction would go. When I was creating the thumbnails, I was thinking about how iconic these lines were and how well they introduce the world and characters. I even finished the pages with the intention to include those lines. This is from my original csp file.

When I lettered it all out, I felt like something wasn't right...? Hard to explain. I wanted silence for the opening and the narration took that away. I then thought about the reader who'd go into this without reading the novel first, wondering if they'd be thinking, Who's this Kaz Brekker guy? Is it this character on the page? It's clearer in the book, but I didn't think it paired well with what I drew. I didn't want any confusion. It's also Inej's chapter, and while Kaz's parts take up most of it, I still wanted it to feel like her POV and her story. We can hold off officially meeting Kaz until page four.

But the main reason I took it out comes down to my philosophy when it comes to comic adaptations. I believe that an adaptation should use the original story in the best way for the secondary medium. A comic adaptation should play to the strength of comics, not the original source material.

Time and time again, I see a lot of comic adaptations of books try to use a book's strength instead of a comic's. When that happens, you get pages upon pages of narration boxes and exposition that could've easily been told in a single panel's image. If you want to read excerpts from the original novel, go do that! They're beautiful and well-crafted and you should be reading the original anyway! If you're making a comic adaptation, make a comic, not an illustrated version of the novel (that's a whole field of its own).

This whole thing really ties well into what I'm doing for Chapter 3. Kaz is such an internal character, his chapters have a lot more exposition that isn't setting description or character actions. I've had to do a lot more of my own writing for this chapter than the last just to turn that exposition into his own voice as an internal monologue. Sometimes, it's just a change from "he" to "I," but there are other times I've had to write new dialogue and find ways to naturally flow between thoughts. If I didn't do the work to adapt the expository text and instead just put in narration boxes of text from the book, there would be a greater disconnect between the reader and Kaz. Third-person limited works great in books and doesn't separate the readers from the story, but in comics, first-person internal dialogue keeps the readers inside the scene better.

If I were to redo Chapter 2, I think I would try to find a way to incorporate the information from the chapter intro better. I think by losing the intro I initially planned to include, I didn't establish certain ideas very well. Ketterdam and Kerch are established later on pages 4 and 5, but I don't think I ever go back and mention The Barrel. Also, the idea that Kaz is deliberate, even if his reputation says otherwise, is important too. I've made sure to fix this kind of issue in Chapter 3 and keep record of what kind of information I'm losing as I adapt it.

[dcficrecs]

I'm A Good Pretender - Chapter 2: I Got Lots Of Problems

By shipNslash on AO3

My last post was an excerpt from the first chapter of this fic. I've finished it now and I like most of it, but there's something in Chapter 2 that I just have to talk about. This whole fic is a Robin origin story. It has seven chapters, so it drawfs in comparison to the 'Firework' fic by paganpunk2 on fanfiction.net (I posted about that too, maybe my favorite fanfic ever). Still, I really like it. It's written with excerpts from days. It starts with day zero, where Dick's parents are killed and Bruce comforts him. Day one is him meeting Alfred at the orphanage, and it goes all the way to day 262, where Commissioner Gordon meets Robin.

Anyway, in this particular excerpt, Dick is scheming to sneak out of Wayne Manor and kill Tony Zucco himself, and has to guilt trip Bruce in order to be alone long enough to escape even though he feels bad about it. He likes Bruce, but he isn't quite a father figure to him, yet. Dick has inherited Bruce's old bedroom, something very sentimental to Bruce. The excerpt starts with Bruce giving a tour of his old room. Bruce also gave Dick a note, saying to ring the service bell when he wakes up. He does, and it calls Bruce to his room. Dick keeps the note in his pocket. Also, a slight trigger warning for mentions of sexual abuse against a child.

So Bruce awkwardly shows Dick around the cavernous bedroom. The dresser is full of generic clothes in his size and Bruce promises they can get his stuff from their trailer later today and go shopping soon for anything he's missing. He shows him how to work the computer at the desk and the TV on the wall, and even points towards the staff lift at the end of the hallway that will take him directly to the kitchen. The bathroom is in the bedroom and almost as huge, with a sink and toilet and a big shower/bathtub combo already filled with a bunch of different soaps.

"I wasn't sure what you'd need," Bruce mumbles when Dick comments on the variety. "We have different hair types."

That's…surprisingly thoughtful, Dick thinks, and Bruce's folded note feels like it's burning a hole in his pocket.

He ignores the guilt and smiles. "Thanks, Bruce. I appreciate it."

"I want you to be comfortable here," Bruce whispers back, even quieter than normal.

Dick pushes the guilt down, down, down. Now is as good a time as any and Bruce is already uncomfortable. Now if Dick can just get him to leave…

(Never talk about sex, Mama always says, grown ups hate when kids even mention sex.)

"What about rules?" Dick asks, pitching his voice a little higher and widening his already big eyes just a little bit bigger. "One of the older boys at the detention center said rich people only foster kids to warm their beds. I don't know what that means, but I'll try, if you teach me."

And bingo.

Bruce's pale skin goes practically gray and he flinches back until he's outside of the bathroom. "That- No, I- You won't ever-"

"Did I say something wrong?" Dick asks, adding in a small sniffle and not letting up on the eye contact. (He's already learned that Bruce Wayne hates eye contact.)

The man is still backpedaling, now well to the hallway. "No! No. I'll… see you at breakfast." When he steps out of the room, his shoulders sag. "Kitchen. Eight." And then he's gone, latching the door shut behind him.

Dick sighs and flops against the bed. That was almost too easy. He feels… kinda bad.

Still. Eight o’clock. That's just over three hours, according to the clock on the wall.

"Alright," he mumbles to himself and carefully rocks to his feet. "Like Mama says, make a list."

So, he does.

Stretch my poor, atrophying muscles

Shower off the scent of the detention center

Find out where Haly's went

Sneak out

Catch and murder Tony Zucco

Run away to (re)join the circus 

There, that doesn't seem hard now that he's made a list- Mama's always right.

Something about "I don't know what that means, but I'll try if you teach me," is literally so well written. Obviously, gross, but Dick using something that makes Bruce obviously uncomfortable to his advantage against Bruce is so Dick coded. Dick absolutely knew what it meant and purposefully used it to horrify Bruce. Guilt tripping Bruce Wayne is so easy, as long as you're Dick Grayson. He's a little gremlin and I love it. Also, the list he makes is adorable, literally went from zero to a hundred real quick.

[linaket]

Monthly Update (Feb 6, 2024)

It has definitely been... a January. This year, I had a lot of plans and goals relating to my writing, but a lot of them are already not going through. One was to do weekly or monthly updates, kind of like when I did weekly updates while working on TS. But, it's still early in the year, so I figure its better late than never. Also still early in the month even if I didn't manage to get this out there at the end of January...

My personal life has been a bit hectic. First thing was that some major projects in the house I planned to have completed last year were finally finished this month--I have all new windows installed in my house now, and a new door, and while I didn't personally do the windows (I did install the door, though) it takes a lot of time to prep before and clean up after reno projects and get the house back in order, so I've spent the last two weeks on this. Additionally, I'd applied for a promotion at work, and then was coated in stress waiting for the results... (which I received a few days ago... and I got it! Been a long time coming, really.)

So this is the first one of these... just gonna throw things out here and decide on a format as they go.

Books Read

Finally completed The Fifth Season trilogy by N. K. Jemison. I wanted to finish this one last year, but the last book lingered into the new year.

All the Hidden Paths by Foz Meadows

The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw

The Dead Take The A Train by Cassandra Khaw & Richard Kadrey

Important Posts

I shared a summary of my 2024 writing goals/wips on instagram. I meant to bring this over to tumblr and do a bit more on it but... didn't. Maybe this month?

Shadow's Prey: Act 1 wip intro here on tumblr

Writing

30k on Mortal Teeth. 15 chapters done of.. ?? a lot probably. 40 something, at least, if not 50-60 range. This completed the second major arc/goalpost (there are about 5 of these at the moment)

Shadow's Prey: Act 1 formatting is moving along well, and so it's still on time for a March release. I may aim more for mid March, depends on how quickly I'm able to finish up the extras and get some promo in. I really wish I could figure out exactly what size image it takes to make a full-page image in ebooks, but I think I'm going to have to settle for the title page not being... perfect. Which. Does not make me happy. But there really isn't a way to appease every e-reader, as they are all different sizes, so I am finding there is only so much I can control here.

Favorite Excerpt

I wrote a lot of things in Mortal Teeth that I was proud of this past month, but one of my favorite things I ran across when writing was realizing that my writing has improved... massively. It's been a while since I've had a leap of growth that I can easily pinpoint, but the extra I planned for SP Act 1 was partially written, and I needed to work on it. I kept getting stuck on continuing because something about it felt off/forced when I tried, so I did the classic open a new doc and retype/rework as I go... and quickly realized why I was having trouble working on it. My style had shifted dramatically....

This isn't a major point in the short, but I wrote the beginning of this around the middle of last year and it went from this:

Whereas Kanna actively ignored Masao’s approach, Ira glared at him in challenge. “Here,” Kanna said, drawing Ira’s attention by offering Amon’s reins as a lead. “Find someone to tend him, and get me a count of the survivors.” Masao’s voice at her back carried a smirk she could feel between her shoulder blades. “What about the casualties?”

to this:

While Ira glared at Masao in challenge, Kanna actively ignored him. Though she was coated with the blood of those she’d killed, her hands to her wrists to her elbows with it, Masao delighted in his stain. Even here, with the smell of death in the air and the unholy silence that followed battle, he smiled. The joy he radiated amidst destruction unsettled her, something deep inside of her flinching from it. Kanna gathered Amon’s reins, drawing Ira’s attention by offering them. “Find someone to tend him, and get me a count of the survivors.” Masao’s voice at her back carried a smirk she could feel between her shoulder blades. “What about the casualties?”

Final Thoughts

I was excited to get through another phase of MT in writing, but I don't think the time I've allotted to finish the draft is going to be enough. This stresses me out a bit, because I gave myself a pretty tight schedule for the year with all the releases (there are 4 ebooks, and I was considering restarting Act 4 in the serial which would be 5 releases total....)

I'm actually... thinking once again that I won't go back to serial posting for SP. Tapas was/is my primary platform for it, and I am simply... no longer a fan of the platform, and not really interested in others, either. So that might be one of the things in the "coming this year" that ends up pushed to next year or later this year, depending, as it will likely be an ebook release instead of serial and... I'm still working on drafting the teeth wip and I don't see it taking a backseat for a while, until I'm truly stuck.

I've been trying not to beat myself up about not doing the things I said I'd do at the start of the year (daily journaling, more updates here and other platforms, etc) because it's simply... not great for me. And really, I'm not sure I would have had the aforementioned improvement in my writing if I'd continued to stress myself out about writing itself, on top of doing all these other things that I'm supposed to do. I took it pretty easy last year after a massive disappointment, shutting down a lot of my online presence and focusing on reading and writing for myself, and I think that's what allowed me to become comfortable again and led to growth. I don't want to feel as defeated as I had that time, because its the kind of thing that would have led to me completely giving up in my younger years, and I also don't want to get stagnant because I'm trying to do too much that isn't... the actual writing. So... I guess we'll see how this goes?

[prettylittlelyres]

Ladies Don't Write Music - 15th November 2023 - update

I'm on track for NaNoWriMo because I hit 25,000 words for the month today! I'm so pleased. Attempting NaNoWriMo at all this year was a huge gamble because I haven't written over 25,000 words since February 2023, and even then I only managed just over 37k... but I've written 25k in the last two weeks and a day!

I also finished writing Chapter Twelve today, and brought it in at 5,000 words exactly. That's both immensely satisfying, and a point of pride; it's the fastest I've finished a chapter on this manuscript since I started drafting it at the end of July. The full manuscript is now just over 60,000 words long, and I want to do some more writing before I go to bed.

Below the cut: a celebratory excerpt, my NaNoWriMo 25k badge, and the cover I designed at the start of November, because I'm proud of that, too.

I clapped the right tempo, and counted Fräulein Schneider in.

She began, halting here and there, but, in general, playing very well.

“I’m not sure if you need a teacher,” I said, as she came to the end of the first page, “You sight-read just fine, and your sense of rhythm is strong.”

Fräulein Schneider beamed at me. “Thank you!” she said, “But it’s… it’s the pitch that I struggle with. Did I really…” She looked down at her hands. “Did I really play that correctly? I keep thinking I was pressing the wrong keys, but I don’t like to look at my hands when I’m sight-reading, or I lose my place in the music.”

I shook my head. “There was nothing wrong with the notes you played,” I said, “Considering it was your first time with the piece, actually, it was excellent.”

Louisa raised her eyebrows, and looked from me to the sheet music, and then back again. “That’s… That’s a surprise,” she said, “I’ve always thought I was, well… quite bad at the harpsichord. I practise, but the music never makes any more sense than it does when I start learning a piece. My last two teachers gave up on me, but I keep playing anyway because Papa and Mama said it would be a good way to entertain my husband one day.”

“Doesn’t it sound good to you, at least?” I asked, “I mean, do you like the way it sounds, even if it’s a little confusing?”

She smiled. “Yes, very much… but I worry that it doesn’t sound so good to other people. Full of wrong notes… Who would enjoy hearing a piece they recognise mangled out of shape?”

I tapped the page she had just played. “You certainly didn’t mangle this,” I said.

“Oh,” she said, covering her face with her hands, “That’s a relief!” Then her eyes widened as she dropped her hands to her lap. “Goodness me, how embarrassing it would have been if I’d played it badly in front of its composer.”

“Badly, not at all,” I assured her, sitting down next to her at the bench, “A little slowly, perhaps, but…” I played the first few bars as they should have been played. “That’s what it’s meant to sound like. And what you played was close enough. Honestly, Louisa, if you practise for even half an hour every day, I think you’ll have the first page fluent in less than a week. Your hands will learn it, even if your ears don’t.”

I decided a while ago that Johann Schneider's character would be tone-deaf, and would enjoy watching music performed for the movement. He has a younger sister and I thought it would be interesting to explore her having the same difficulties. Johann isn't a musician (yet), but Louisa plays the harpsichord and has a lot of trouble feeling confident in what she's playing because she's never sure she's got the right pitch. Luckily, her proprioception is excellent (as is Johann's, which is why he can dance so well), so she can put her fingers on the right keys without needing to see them. This is what Katharina's trying to help her see here, in this ad-hoc music lesson; she doesn't need to hear what she's playing to be able to play it well.

I'm quite enjoying playing around with parallels between Johann & Louisa Schneider and Katharina & Hans Schmidt. In both pairs of siblings, you have the older, more serious one having trouble meeting people's expectations, in contrast with the younger, more humourous one having very little trouble at all. The pairs also mirror each other in their strengths and weaknesses: Katharina and Hans have audiovisual projective synaesthesia and perfect pitch, so can hear and see the music they're making; Johann and Louisa are literally tone-deaf (Johann completely, Louisa almost completely) and music for them is a much more visual thing than it is for most people. Then there's Katharina, whose coordination is so bad it causes problems, being the opposite of Johann, whose coordination makes him an excellent dancer who then has problems because he finds constant poorly-veiled requests to dance at parties very tiring.

[nixotinix]

fic update!!!

alright you little rascals!! i've mentioned a couple times here that I'm working on a new Jackson Jekyll/Holt Hyde centric fanfiction. Well, it isn't done, not by a long shot. But I am proud to report that it is my longest by FAR. Just chapter 3 is longer than Mortify Curiosity (my prev fic). So, to hold you fiends over, I'm posting a little bit of info about the fic here so y'all can decide if it's a good read for you before it even comes out!!! Said info will be below the cut ^^

Starting off with the basics!! Here's a screenshot from the AO3 draft with the title, tags, and summary.

Like with Mortify Curiosity, my other chaptered fic, I'm finishing this fic COMPLETELY before posting. I know the sting of an unfinished fic, and I wouldn't do that to you.

For some other info: chapter count and chapter titles, plus word count if the chapters are finished! -- -Chapter 1: What is sought is most often found, if it is truly sought -- Word count: 5,141 -Chapter 2: You know all the right moves; use them -- Word count: 7,411 -Chapter 3: Keep in mind the deadline is closing in -- Word count: 12,968 -Chapter 4: His affections, like ivy, were the growth of time -- Word count: ??? -Chapter 5: Confront what frightens or offends you -- Word count: ??? -Chapter 6: That child of Hell had nothing human -- Word count: ??? -Current total word count: 27,739 Just warning y'all, do not expect the other chapters to be as long as chapter 3. I literally do not know what possessed me to write an almost 13k word chapter it just. kinda happened. Chapter 4 is currently sitting at a cool 2,220 words, and I haven't really gotten into the nitty gritty. So it'll probably be a long one too.

Finally, just for you guys, I'll give you a little excerpt from the opening. You'll probably have to click to read, but this is the first 550-ish words. Enjoy ur little snack hehe

i'll reblog this post when the fic comes out so yall can find it huehue

[gravitywonagain]

If you're still doing the WIP game I'd like to hear about Under Streetlights

i am! i will always be doing this game! i love this game! sorry it took a month to get back to it! thank you for the ask <3<3<3

Under Streetlights is one of my babies :) it is a strange vibes, modern, magical-realism story in which lwj and wwx match on grindr while trying to pass the time in florida, thirteen years after wwx died. it is very loosely based on the song "3 Nights" by Dominic Fike -- like, super loosely. the name might change, i'm not sure yet, but if it does, it'll probably be to another lyric in that song.

it was actually my first attempt at writing from lwj's pov, and my first attempt at writing a story that swaps povs. it'll be 5 chapters long, the first 4 are fully drafted, the fifth is started, but i've been writing it for several years at this point, so that means almost nothing. i want it to be completely finished (at least drafted) before i post it.

the vibe of it is really fun for me, because it's this weird, off-kilter feeling, like being caught on the back foot in a daydream kind of thing. the first ch -- and the second one, too, actually -- have it, but the rest of it will need some editing to make it feel wrong in the right way. this lwj did not have the coping mechanism of dangerous and chaotic nighthunts, so he went with other things, namely anonymous sex and smoking tobacco. lwj smoking is a big part of this story, so be aware of that if it's a problem for you. it's okay, wwx doesn't like it either.

there's mentions of magic, but it's not a modern cultivation thing. it's a magic is real but rare and we all just kind of deal with that thing. still, full resurrection is pretty weird. it also gives almost no answers in terms of how or why wwx came back, but it does have some gruesome details of wwx waking up in his coffin.

i also have 9-box moodboards made for each chapter (except the last one because it's not even really plotted out yet, except for very major beats) which i started doing when i needed a break from words (meaning both wagbfm and just writing in general). so those will at least be posted here, if not embedded in the ao3 chapters when they go up!

okay, enough rambling. here's an excerpt!

His jaw is tight, sore from another night of clenching his teeth through the same nightmare. (Headlights. Shattered glass. Twisted metal. Blood. So much blood, and not enough. His chest heaves against the airbag that isn't there.)  The cigarette paper is thin against his lips as he takes another drag. He rolls them himself, buying tobacco and papers rather than red and white cartons full of convenience and plastic. He tells himself he likes the ritual of it. Mostly he just likes the flavor better.  When he lets himself -- when he can’t help himself -- he imagines--  Smoke rushes out with his breath and he squeezes his eyes shut. Skin pulls tight over his cheekbones until he relaxes, opens his eyes again. Inhales.  He imagines-- Wei Ying would have thought this was cooler. He can picture it so clearly: Wei Ying with his leather jacket and his roguish smile, hanging off Lan Zhan’s arm, watching the easy motions of Lan Zhan’s fingers, closing his lips around the filter, leaning in with flame flickering in his stormcloud-grey eyes as Lan Zhan cups the lighter and the paper begins to burn…  It’s an indulgence. One that makes his hands tremble.  Lan Zhan had always wanted to be cool to Wei Ying.

WIP Ask Game

[ravingrovebeetle]

fanfiction excerpt (ghost on ao3)

this is a shameless self-plug, sorry y'all

here's the link to my actual fic: https://archiveofourown.org/works/47626291/chapters/120038833

(it's a miritama fic because everything i do is miritama)

Tamaki's passed from hero to hero, and yet he still hasn't seen Lemillion for more than those few seconds when the heroes first arrived. The last one he's left with is Fat Gum, who takes him outside for the first time—and oh. It's been months. The few trees that are actually in the city have grown a kaleidoscope of red and orange and yellow, their leaves slowly beginning to fall from their branches. 

"Wh... How long has it been?" Tamaki breathes, looking over at Fat Gum from the corner of his eye.

Fat Gum isn't in good shape, Tamaki can tell. For one, he's lost his roundness, but that can be chalked up to the fact that he's been fighting to save Tamaki for far longer than he should have. That doesn't explain the dark circles that run under his eyes, though, or the way that his crow's feet don't appear the way they used to when he smiles at Tamaki. 

"You should wish the boys a happy birthday," is what Fat Gum says, far too cheerfully for the situation they're in now or his horrible physical state. 

"...October?" Tamaki blinks. Two months. Two months he's been gone. Two months without properly eating or sleeping or talking to anyone that he actually cares about. 

When you're a hero, you learn that anything can happen in the blink of in eye, within the span of a single second. And if Tamaki's been out of the scene for two months... How much has he missed? 

"The 16th, exactly. I told the kiddos they could take the day off, but they both insisted they'd rather come help save you. They really care about you, Suneater."

Tamaki feels like curling in on himself. He wants to get back in there, to help all of the people that are working so hard to save him despite all of the better things they could be doing. But he can't, because if he uses his quirk... No. 

"They're too..." Selfless? Optimistic? Caring? Altruistic? Chivalrous? Spirited? "Manly?" "They're so much like Mirio," Tamaki settles with. 

"Lemillion led this mission," Fat Gum tells him. "He hasn't been the same since you were..." Kidnapped, Tamaki finishes mentally. It's telling that not even Fat Gum, one of the most "grin-and-bear-it" type-heroes Tamaki's ever met is faltering at even the thought of his sidekick being abducted. 

"His first one?" Tamaki guesses. It's true, unless Mirio has been up to other things in the two months that Tamaki hasn't been around. Fat Gum nods, confirming Tamaki's theory. 

"I saw him for a second," Tamaki says. "But not since then. I... I don't know if I can face him, after everything that's happened. Hado, either." 

"Lemillion and Nejire-Chan will be okay," Fat Gum responds. Tamaki's not so sure. So much has happened, for all three of them. 

Tamaki sighs, taking in the view of the city. There aren't many people out at this time of night, for which Tamaki is grateful. Even with his hero costume looking like it's been buried for years and just finally brought back to the surface, even with Tamaki's greasy hair that has grown longer, reaching his shoulders, Tamaki is still recognizable as Suneater. 

Fat Gum takes the hint, and instead reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small box. "I brought some food. I wasn't sure how much you'd be eating there, if..." Right. To the rest of the world, Tamaki's probably dead. He remembers, some time ago, Heart coming in with an obituary and a smug smile. Tamaki's obituary. His mother had written it... Oh my god. His mom. He's alive, and his parents are probably still grieving. 

Tamaki takes the food and tries his best to eat it without wincing. There are two pieces of takoyaki—not nearly enough to satiate Tamaki, but enough for him to at least use his quirk without... He shakes his head. He's not going to think about it—he's not. "I have to call my parents," Tamaki says, standing up once he's finished eating. "Do you have your phone on you?" 

Fat Gum grimaces. "You... you can't talk to them yet. Not until the police get here and we get you to the hospital." 

Red-hot fire shoots through Tamaki—metaphorically, thank god. But he's angry. He's furious, because he's finally made it out of that place alive and he has to deal with the fact that his parents still think he's dead and he can't even offer the slightest bit of help or comfort to anyone, not even the people he loves most. 

"Taishiro," Tamaki says, using Fat Gum's given name. "Give me your phone. I did not get kidnapped for two entire goddamn months to not be able to talk to my parents." 

Fat Gum doesn't argue, instead taking out his simple flip-phone used exclusively for hero missions. Tamaki takes it, desperately typing in his mom's number. He can feel his heart pounding in his ears, a drum beat to the ringing of the phone. 

The phone rings once, twice, three times—and his mom picks up. 

"Mr. Toyomitsu." Her voice is exhausted, but not the kind of sleepiness from just waking up—she sounds like she hasn't slept in days. "Is there anything I can help you with? Fumihiko and I were just getting ready to head to bed."

"Mom," Tamaki whispers, then repeats himself, louder this time. "Mom. It's me. Tamaki. I'm okay. I... You're not supposed to know I'm alive yet, so act surprised when the police or the hospital or whoever calls you, I don't know, I... I just needed to hear your voice."

"...Tamaki?" Softspoken, as always, his mom calls to his dad and suddenly they're both at the phone. "You're okay, oh my god? Where are you? We'll be there as soon as possible, okay?"

"...I don't know. A city, somewhere. Someone will call you, okay? I'm still going to be here in an hour. I just need you to be okay and I need you to know that I'm okay. I love you, Mom, Dad. I'll talk to you later, okay? I love you. Okay."

The two of them talk over each other for several entire minutes, fussing over Tamaki's health and wellbeing and how he sounds so sick and tired and how he must not be okay at all and how does he sound so calm? Tamaki hangs up through one of his mom's tangents about good food for mental health and hands the phone back to Fat Gum.

"I'm never talking to anyone ever again," Tamaki decides stubbornly. Fat Gum just laughs, wrapping Tamaki into a suffocating hug. 

"I missed you, Suneater," he says, and Tamaki would cry if his eyes weren't so painfully dry from dehydration. 

Tamaki laughs sardonically. "I missed you until about thirty seconds ago. Now I wish I'd never seen you. I'm leaving your agency, never being your sidekick again."

"You wound me." 

"You missed it."

[themildestofwriters]

Ao3 Ask Game

Ah, it has been so long since I've participated in a tag game! Thank you, @highlordofkrypton for this! It's been fun doing these again!

On to the questions~

1. How Many works do you have on Archive of Our Own?

According to my page, I have eight works. The most recent is "Songs of Spring," an A Court of Thorns and Roses short story exploring the idea that Rhysand lied about who sent Feyre the music Under the Mountain. My earliest was a (not very good) short story I wrote for University that I can't summarise because that would require re-reading it and there's no force on Heaven or on Earth that could make me do that (I'm lying; you could literally just buy me a happy meal for me to read it, and I would).

2. What's your total Archive of Our Own Word Count?

77,575 words in total, but this doesn't include all the stories I've published online. If we were to take those into consideration, add another 381,360 words. If we were to include all the stories I've written, that's a lot more that I can't be bothered looking into.

3. What fandoms do you write for?

The Familiar of Zero, Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, Vampire: The Masquerade, Star Wars, the Dresden Files, Naruto. I don't really have major fandoms I work in. I have major works, instead.

4. What are your top five fanfictions by kudos?

Chrysalid Hidden in the Leaf, a Naruto multi-chapter fanfiction exploring the idea of a transgender Naruto during his childhood. It is in progress, but I've nearly finished the first book.

Henrietta Potter and the Secrets of the Horcrux, an old (i.e. before J. K. Rowling went mask off) Harry Potter fanfiction exploring a young female Harry Potter uncovering Salazar Slytherin's secret base in the forest of England. Unfinished and discontinued.

Sinclair, Daughter of Chaos, a Buffy: The Vampire Slayer / Dresden Files multi-chapter crossover fanfiction exploring an OC wizard (Kaitlyn Sinclair) first discovering their magical powers in Sunnydale, California, during the course of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer season two.

"Songs of Spring," which I discussed above.

"Louise and the House of the Rising Sun," a Familiar of Zero short story fanfiction which is, in itself, a excerpt from my greater Saga of Zero project. Lodwijke "Louise" Orandeel is practicing a song for an upcoming school performance, sharing her thoughts on her classmates and her situation, featuring a cover of "House of the Rising Sun" but in (supposedly) Old French.

5. Do you respond to comments?

Most of the time. Some comments, there's nothing to reply to. Other comments, I just don't know how to reply to. Regardless, I do desperately try to reply to comments, I just miss a few.

6. What is the fanfiction you wrote with the angstiest ending?

I can't be sure. Most of my works aren't finished, so there isn't really any ending to be angsty. I guess I could say "Songs of Spring," which is technically complete, or "Louise and the House of the Rising Sun" for the brief bullying depicted at the end, but I wouldn't really say they're all too angsty.

If I could discuss what I've planned, however...

Chrysalid Hidden in the Leaf will have an angsty ending (for the first book), as

[SPOILERS]

Naruto (aged 8) decides to disappear and live life as someone else (a girl named Marika Konohako) as he realises that living as himself is a miserable existence as nobody likes him, a fact he was aware off but didn't care about until someone he befriended while disguised as an older woman ended up treating Naruto like shit when they finally met Naruto as Naruto.

[SPOILER END].

7. What's the fanfiction you wrote with the happiest ending?

Again, not many of them are finished. If I were to talk about future endings, I would say the first book of Sinclair, Daughter of Chaos has the happiest ending, even though, well... it's not so much happy as it is the happiest ending of most of the works I've written.

[SPOILERS]

The events of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer season two ends much the same way as it did in canon, as Kaitlyn only gets involved at the tail end of the overarching meta-plot (Kaitlyn has her own story running parallel to Buffy's story, briefly intersecting but otherwise separate until Angelus attacks her, which prompts her involvement in the final few episodes of the season, which doesn't give her much room to change much). Angelus is still resouled into Angel and is sent to the Hell dimension. Buffy still runs away. Kaitlyn, however, has zero emotional connection to the situation, only involved because a vampire tried eating her and he had a connection to Buffy, and ends the story off to have a fun holiday with her wizard mentor to learn magic, while everyone else is rather depressed about this and that.

[SPOILER END]

8. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Yeah. I've written some, though I haven't published them. Would if I was happy with them, but the ones I've written are in varying stages of editing hell.

Most of the smut I've written follows an OC of mine, Elisabeth "Beth / Babette" Abrams, who is probably the horniest bugger in my portfolio. In fact, one of the bigger smut projects I'm working on is an anthology series of smut that follows her sexual awakening and journey, starting with her buying her first sex toy, her first time with her long-term partner, Josephine, and ending with a lot of kinky sex.

For more fanfiction related shit, I've got plans for smut taking place during the second or third year of Lodwijke's time at the Sith Academy, and I've also got a few drafts of fics I intended to write for Kinktober last year. Elisabeth "Lisa" Strahd (I don't know why I have two OCs with the name Elisabeth; it just kind of happened), my Vampire: the Masquerade OC gets mistaken for a street hooker and, as her original plans for the night fell through, she decides to grab a bite to eat while getting paid for it at the same time. Another has Lodwijke having some steamy shower sex with a bounty hunter in his shower.

9. Do you write crossovers?

Evidently. Crossovers are one of my favourite kinds of fanfiction, to both read and write. The first fanfiction I've ever written was a crossover, and many of my unwritten, unplotted fanfiction ideas are almost exclusively crossovers. Mostly just OCs being sent into other worlds, like Kaitlyn being sent to Westeros or Lisa to Prythian.

10. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Maybe? I vaguely remember seeing my fic on a Russian website, and I think someone sent me a message about it awhile ago, but I don't have a very good memory and have forgotten. Let’s say “no” for now, but it’s said in a rising tone to suggest uncertainty.

11. Have you ever co-written a fanfiction before?

Tried to. It didn’t pan out. We didn’t get past the planning stages, really. Would love to try again, some day.

12. What is your all-time favourite ship?

I have shipped in the past, but it’s not something I particularly engage with. Shipping tends to be one of the last things I care about when it comes to stories. Romance in general, really. If the story is good, the story is good, but outside of that? Eh? I’m trying to think of things I’ve shipped, because I don’t want to leave you hanging, but the only ship I can even remember being involved in is an OC x Canon Character ship—that being Lisa Strahd x Robert Baratheon (and Beth Abrams x Robert Baratheon), which is odd because I don’t necessarily like Robert Baratheon. I just find the idea that he’s really into powerful women who can match his crassness while kicking his ass kind of funny.

13. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

None of them. Oh, sure, there’s some doubts, some fears, but I refuse to give in to these doubts. I will finish them or I will die trying.

14. What are your writing strengths?

I... have no idea. Genuinely. Self-reflection is difficult at the best of times, and figuring out what I'm good with is just pulling teeth. I had to source this question out to others to answer it in satisfactorily.

The answers I was given are thus:

I am good with characters. I can get inside their head with very little work, can describe their feelings vividly, give them distinct voices, and establish realistic relationships between them and others.

I can (apparently) write very concisely in general, getting a lot of complexities done in a small amount of words. I'm also good with detail work. One person said that I managed to make describing the weather engaging. Furthermore, many have expressed a like for how fluid my prose is.

Oh, and amusingly enough, I'm capable of writing characters whose books I've never read (in their entirety)!

15. What are your writing weaknesses?

Short stories are the bane of my existence. It was actually really hard during my University course because they’d always ask for short stories some 1,000 words long, with only 10% leeway either way. Sometimes they’d be kind and boost it up to 2,000 words, but, even then, I struggled. I’ve always preferred longer stories, multi-chapter works.

Finishing my projects is the troubling part, too. Things just seem to go on and on and on, and I’ve never been able to just put a finite ending onto something. In this, I will blame my University education because we never really looked at how to properly start and finish stories, and mostly focused on other elements. It was a common critique among my cohort, actually.

My sister says I write very "pretentiously."

16. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

It depends on how it’s done, honestly. I think it can work great, but it has to be sparing, specific, and (if only I could find another ‘s’ word), understandable.

Honestly, I’d be a hypocrite if I said anything else. Not just in dialogue, I use languages other than English in my works all the time, the Saga of Zero being the worst offender. In the first chapter of the first book alone (prologue excluded), we have Old Norse, proto-Germanic, and Dutch appearing throughout.

I use Old Norse as the Latin analogue, being the academic (and religious) language of this region, which means instead of the Arcanology House, we have the Seiðvísindi House (Seiðr “magic” + -vísindi “science; -ology”). The names of gods will use the Old Norse spellings (Odin becomes Óðinn), and many books are transcribed with the Old Norse name. The Odyssy appears as the Ódysseifskviða, and we have other books such as Skýrsla Fylgannan Konungsfjölskyldunnar Heilagaríkinu Gallíu, translated into English as “Record of the Familiars of the Royal Family of the Holy Kingdom of Gallia,” (though I am no polyglot and probably fucked up here; at least I can boast that I didn’t rely on Google Translate, though!).

I also replace Latin phrases we use in English with Norse analogues. Et cetera becomes ok svá viðara, magna cum laude becomes með œðsta lofi.

Proto-Germanic is the language of magical incantations in this story, specific to this culture, so spell incantations will be written sentences in proto-Germanic. In the first chapter, we have “Aiz Tawjó,” which means “I make ore,” a spell which, as the name suggests, transmutes other materials into metal.

Dutch is the protagonist’s mother tongue and the primary language of her kingdom, so it’ll appear here and there for one reason or another. For example, Lodwijke often curses in Dutch—“Oh, jij stomme klootzak!”—and the like. The days of the week are Dutch (Vijfddag "Fifth-day"), and the units of measurement are Dutch, too (roede, specifically referring to one of its historical usages of a length about 3.5 to 5.75 metres).

I know this is a lot, but I do try and keep things coherent—and that’s key with any story that uses a language other than the language the story is written in within the story itself. Some of the times, I translate directly.

In Chapter 3, there’s a plaque Louise reads which is written in Old Norse, saying, “Menntan es kveikja logans, ekki fyllanda bikars.” I outright translated this in the following line, “Education is the kindling of the flame, not the filling of a cup.”

Other times, I paraphrase the translation. In the case of the whole Arcanology v. Seiðvísindi situation, I outright state, “Of the four courts that dominated the Academy’s campus, one for each of the cardinal directions, Suðri was the most crowded. It was where most of the classes were held, all segregated into different buildings depending on the subject taught. The largest was Seiðvísindi House, which specialised in magic of all sorts…” You might not know what “Seiðvísindi” means, but you understand that the “Seiðvísidni House” refers to the building where magic is taught.

There are a few times where I don’t supply any translation, but I do let the context speak for itself. To introduce the concept of et cetera becoming ok svá viðara, I wrote: “The lecture had been the same as it everwas. Be careful with your magic. You have expectations as a witch and as highborn. Think about how your actions reflect on your family. Ok svá viðara. Ok svá viðara. Ok svá viðara.” It isn’t outright stated, but it’s a common phrasing to repeat “et cetera” three times to express exasperation. For some, this would be enough to connect the dots. For the others, it’s not something important enough for any confusion to matter. The rest, who want to know, can just… google it (or not, because I do plan on using footnotes in this fic, lol). Another example is when Louise curses in Dutch. Like, I don’t give the reader a translation (outside of footnotes), but you don’t need to know what she’s saying to know she’s insulting someone, or expressing frustration.

17. First fandom you wrote for?

The Familiar of Zero. Technically Star Wars, too (a crossover between the two), but it was the Familiar of Zero which got me into writing and so I will put this first and foremost. I owe my entire love for fanfiction to the Familiar of Zero, to anime in general which got me up to that point, to my friend who happened to be watching Sword Art Online one day and happened to get me hooked.Favourite fanfiction you’ve written?The Saga of Zero is probably the one I am the most invested in, and therefore my favourite by default.

18. Favourite fanfiction you’ve written?

The Saga of Zero is probably the one I am the most invested in, and therefore my favourite by default.

[crazy-void]

Important update

(sorry for my english, it’s not my native language)

Hello everyone, I'm not usually the type to make these posts, but I think this time it's really necessary.

First of all, about the Bots and Pizza fanfic, for all the fans and especially that anonymous fan who once asked me how the chapter was going, I have to say that yes, I said that December I would release the chapter starting part 2, but I haven't managed to finish it. I only have half of it, and I'm currently having a creative block finishing a particular scene, which I've already changed several times. As I still have to finish it, correct it, translate it into English, correct it again, send it to the person who does the final English correction, it may not even be finished in time this month. I can provide you with some poorly translated excerpts if you're curious, without too many spoilers. The chapter will come out, I just can't promise dates anymore. 

Now, this is the hardest part for me to tell you, but I have to be honest:

I need to slow down.

"Wait, didn't you used to say that you were slow at drawing?" "Don't you already post once a month, without a schedule?" Yes, I have a slow pace for posting, but with this change, it may take me a lot longer to post.

In 2023 a lot of things happened in my life, from graduating, reconciling study and work, increasing the pace of drawing and writing, increasing livestreams, having several long leaves from home that unfortunately prevented me from continuing my projects, and adding all the fatigue of reconciling all this, this year was one of the worst for my mental and physical health.

I don't like to talk too much about my private life, I didn't want to write a long text explaining it, but I think that for those of you who follow me I need to explain why I'm disappearing so much and not being on schedule.

Since the last chapter of Bots was posted, I've had the worst months. I got sick, my cat had an emergency and underwent surgery which meant I had to keep an eye on him for 24 hours, combining that with work, spending Christmas with a horrible cold and pain from falling down the stairs.

And after spending New Year's away from my cat, who had to stay in a hotel because I wasn't going to bring him to the beach, going through all the stress of him trying to attack the cat they brought and thus making his wound worse, which was finally closing up, spending almost all my vacation on the beach, and every day worrying about what the next complaint would be about me for simply trying to do something for everyone, I'm just tired and exhausted.

The problem itself isn't my family, they're amazing, I wouldn't swap them for anyone, but sometimes I can't make myself understood and I can't express myself.

It doesn't help that I'm already a person who for 20 years hasn't known what it's like to relax, I've always done everything as if I were holding a weight on my back, even more so when, even though I'm in pain, I keep pushing myself, going beyond the limit and thus getting worse and worse.

I was doing that a lot throughout 2023, and it just wrecked me. In terms of mental health, I'm very passive, I try to impose myself, but I always lose the argument and do what they want, and I just accept it and swallow it, until at some point it all explodes and I'm left with a mess of emotions.

Little by little, I was getting more and more discouraged, just living each day according to routine, trying to find some happiness in anything at the moment. Drawing, writing, reading, doing anything involving subjects I love was helping, but I was having more and more obstacles, interruptions, I was forcing myself to do things, and not being able to do what I wanted during the day was frustrating me more and more, combined with my increasingly frequent pains.

I had a plan to post more than 6 drawings in the month of December, showing more OCs, as well as finally continuing Not so Superstar. There was going to be a special Christmas drawing. Did I achieve that? No, I didn't even come close. Of course, it's my fault for having imposed this on myself, but each day was more frustrating than the next, and this only added to all the frustrations of the whole year that I don't even feel genuine happiness anymore. I smile because I have to, but I don't fully feel that good happiness. And that frustrates me. 

I've also started to have problems with my body, I don't feel comfortable with certain parts of it. It sounds silly, but it's only helped to increase my discouragement.

With all this, I'm tired.

And I want to change that.

I'm already looking for help to improve, even by 1%, so that next New Year, I can really smile.

I'm not the best example, but if you're reading this and you feel something similar, try to seek help, whether through psychologists, through your faith, or even through friends. Sometimes all you need to hear is that someone cares about you and that everything is going to be okay. And if you're that friend someone has chosen to open up to, reach out, sometimes a simple "I'm here, you can count on me" is all they need.

Anyway, I know it's a huge text, but I needed to explain at least a little to those who care, and that me slowing down doesn't mean I'm going to stop everything, I may even become more productive, who knows? But I won't be promising dates. I'm not going to disappear from the socials, I intend to look at them more often, so you can interact with me just fine.

I hope that by the end of the year, I'll be able to return to this post and see that I've improved, that I no longer feel disappointed and tired, that all the help I'm getting has made me smile for real at the turn of 2025.

Thank you for listening, you are one of the reasons I keep going.

[a-yarn-of-purple-prose]

Seeing that print I remember my own squeal at that scene. Yes, yes. I should probably print things for posterity as well.

Childe's 2nd story is the reason I decided he's actually decent at acting and hung a whole plot in that. But I'm from a culture where acting isn't the same as singing and dancing, so I'd never get "he can dance" from that sentence.

And here is the excerpt, since you asked. For context: Diluc is the POV, he's heartbroken about Lumine and has gotten into a really strange relationship with Childe that is neither a friendship nor not a friendship. They had been mostly meeting for sparring until this chapter (yes it was very homoerotic sparring, I like to have fun) and, more importantly, at this point Childe is 100% blackboxed. There is no scene in his POV, the objective was always to leave the reader guessing.

*

He paid no attention where he was walking besides the usual polite avoidance of other's paths. There seemed to be a quiet, dark corner, where some gentleman lingered alone, so there he went. Diluc was already standing before him when he noticed it was Tartaglia.

There had been some attempt at taming his hair, only mildly successful. The ginger locks curled fetchingly away from his eyes. It made him look older and more serious, especially with what he was wearing. Diluc supposed was his dress uniform, it had that feel about it. White and red like blood on snow, sharply creased and covered in badges of distinction. He wore it well.

Diluc stared too long. Tartaglia drained the glass he had been holding and deposited it into a nearby side table before greeting him with a smile, “Master Diluc, what an unexpected pleasure.”

“Childe Tartaglia. I did not expect to find a Harbinger in a Liyue society mix-up.” Especially because he knew the man to have been sent away on a mission not long ago. He also knew not to inquire of it.

He shrugged, nonchalant, and said, “Well, Xiangling-xiaojie is catering tonight—” his hand went to muss over his hair, then he stopped himself, as if remembering it was styled, and added, "and I also happen to be the Northland Bank representative in Liyue for the time being. So, regardless of my other obligations, I have to show up every once in a while. Keep them on their toes.” He finished it with one of his fake smiles, a sure tell that he had some objective in this place.

Not Diluc's problem. Let the Qixing worry about the Fatui at their shores. He made a show of looking around, no one dared make eye contact with him. “It seems to have worked,” he said, not really hiding his amusement. “One could say there is not a soul in this party that isn't aware of your presence.”

Tartaglia's smile lingered, turning into a far more real upturn of his lips as he noticed Diluc did not intend to walk away. “And all of them keep well away.” He put a hand to his chest, a mock frown on his brow, and said, “I don't understand why, personable as I am.”

Around them, the ballroom was being prepared for actual dancing. A servant approached, careful and polite, and stared for a moment as he found the lamp he was supposed to douse already dark. He did not direct any word at them, just bowed lightly and moved away.

Soon enough, the first notes of music started. Diluc moved to stand beside Tartaglia, watching the initial couples dance.

There she was, with her Inazuman friend. The sight of her smiling as she danced with him twisted something inside Diluc, he looked away.

“Oh, it's the poet. You know he's also a pirate, a swordsman, and the heir to a disgraced clan? Exactly the sort of person she likes.”

Diluc did not say anything to that blatant attempt to get a raise out of him, but he did harrumph lightly, staring at his empty cup. He set it down on the side table and considered just leaving, but his eyes once again found Lumine twirling on the dance floor.

He's not even a good dancer, that pair of hers. Not good enough by far.

Since he lingered, it stood that his next action would be foolish.

He gave Tartaglia a sidelong look, then actually turned to face him fully, saying, “Would you like to?”

Tartaglia blinked at him, tilted his head.

Diluc offered him his right hand, palm up. “Dance.”

“You're asking me to dance with you?” He let some incredulity bleed into his voice.

“It's better than holding the wall, though I wouldn't begrudge you if you were just waiting for the moment the lights went down to leave discreetly. That's generally my plan in these functions.”

“But not tonight, hm?” His eyes flicked to the dance floor and Lumine, then back at him. “Such a daring invitation, Master Diluc! Aren't you worried about what people are gonna think when they see you dancing with a Fatui?”

“I prefer bold and I'm told half Liyue Harbor already thinks we have an affair.”

There was nothing he could do over that specific bit of gossip, as it had been spread with intent. Avoiding Tartaglia would make it politically suspicious. Dancing with him? That would paint it as romantic or at least racy. Much better. There were many ways to play a reputation.

“Then let's give them something to gossip about,” Tartaglia said, as he took his hand.

Diluc led him to the dance floor and they fell into the rhythm with ease. As expected from a martial artist, Tartaglia was an excellent dancer. He told him so.

“Surprised? Like the old man would allow me to go into diplomatic service without several rounds of tutoring.”

“Old man? Your father?”

“Ha, no.” He looked away. Clearly, his father was not dear. “I mean Pulcinnella,” he said, lips turning up at the mention of the fellow Harbinger. “My father is not exactly a polished person. Also, not someone I'd like to discuss in such a pleasant evening.”

“Sorry to mention,” Diluc said, gaze moving through the sea of people, looking for that diamond spark among them, then back at him.

“Oh, so you care about my feelings?” Tartaglia's eyes flicked in the direction Diluc had been looking, and he said, “Aren't you using me right now to make a certain Traveler jealous?”

The song winded down, and they separated, waiting. Diluc couldn't quite look at Tartaglia, because he was very right and it made him feel like an idiot. A jealous idiot with an idiot plan.

Lumine's arms were around her companion's neck. He was flushed red, she had that glint of mischief in her eyes.

Then Tartaglia reached for him, long fingers taking his chin and forcing Diluc's head toward him, bright eyes focused on his. “Seems to be working, by the way. Oh, wait, she was the one supposed to feel jealous? My bad.” He stepped around Diluc, circling him on the new song's beat. Something faster-paced than the previous waltz, with a bit more drama to the string section. When the song picked up again he took his hand, switching the lead, and said, “But allow me to do my best.”

His hand on Diluc's back was firm as he led him into an outside position, the smile on his face as fierce as when he was in battle. It sent an incongruous thrill down Diluc's spine. Before he noticed, he wasn't really watching Lumine anymore.

It was not the complex footwork. He could keep up with Tartaglia's footwork while gliding tree from tree, sliding on slippery river stones. He had done so. No, it was the deliberate choice Tartaglia made to pull him a bit too close after a twirl, his warmth burning where their bodies touched, to step aside and reach out a hand with the haughty look of one that knows his pair will turn back to his arms. To, basically, manhandle him.

It was seductive.

Looked seductive, that is. For an outsider. And Diluc's resistance probably added to the mystique. Perhaps if he had submitted and just followed his lead, their dancing would look as nothing more than a brutish man imposing his will. But he resisted, then relented, so it was a dance.

And every time he looked away from that soul-piercing gaze and Tartaglia pulled his chin back, there seemed to be fewer dancers around them.

For every defiant step, he took, chin up and falling away, only to be lured back into his arms and match footwork like a shadow, more space seemed to be allotted to their movements.

As the last notes of the song resounded, strings crying bitterly, Tartaglia held him firmly in pose, their gazes locked with what probably looked like tenderness from afar.

“Show off,” Diluc whispered.

Tartaglia smiled. “It worked.”

Diluc stepped away, heart hammering from the exertion, then looked around discreetly to see if Lumine was part of their impromptu audience. He couldn't spot her, so he turned a raised eyebrow at Tartaglia.

“You smiled,” he said, “Still are, in fact. Beautifully so.”

I find it so interesting how Tartaglia is an amazing dancer in canon but there's literally no fics where he dances with his s/o

[danditcher]

what’s on dogwood lane

The field at the front of the house was, like mentioned before, well taken care of; well mowed. But Micah was standing all alone half way on the grass and half way on the gravel, looking out over the rolling fields, and it appeared to be never ending. You’re standing in front of a graveyard, and maybe even on top of one. A voice in his head rasped, making him feel a sense of discomfort. What a thought to have when you’re all alone, and so frightening. His heart skipped a beat, but not in the puppy love sort of way, in the way that told Micah something was going to happen to him if he weren’t careful. Scared. You’re scared. The voice said to him again. And normally Micah would have already known such a thing, but the feeling was so powerful that it felt foreign. Nonexistent. And he was alone. Very much alone.

 He began to ask himself of all the things he had been told by McCall earlier that day, but he was unable to recall his warnings. He knew of the warning against Micah going up to Dogwood in the first place, but he didn’t remember what he said on the topic of if Micah did decide if he was going to do it anyway. Maybe they didn’t even discuss that. Even though Thomas McCall was not someone Micah would consider much of a friend, both boys knew that Micah was not a kid to defy orders. He was coachable in baseball and in school, and he hardly ever got into trouble. All things everyone knew. So, the possibility of McCall not even figuring Micah would go against his pleas not to cross that border was really high. So high that Micah began to feel like a liar.

One of his feet crunched away in the gravel. The noise was penetratingly loud, his ears sensitive to it. His eyes began to burn because he’d refused to blink for longer than he would have ever thought humanly possible, the crisp air of old October stinging his eyes to boot. His legs, he felt, were beginning to drag through the wet grass like a ball and chain was attached to them. His throat became scratchy. His heart kept racing. And racing. And racing. Beating faster and faster. But he continued on towards the Monroe House because he had to prove something. That McCall wasn’t bullshitting him.

Upon approaching the house, he told himself that there wasn’t anything he should be worrying about because it wasn’t like the houses he’d seen from horror films or read about in those Stephen King books he loved so dearly, this was a real house. Not something envisaged by a horror writer, it was all real. Maybe too real. The windows were a little dusty, and the gutters were a little over stuffed with fall leaves and debris that storms had blown around, but the front pillars were nicely upkept, and the outer walls were free of any visible cracks. Micah envied the place for a moment before remembering what he was told he was bound to encounter. The front door had a notice on it about it being up for sale, and Micah took a moment to read it, laughing to himself because he knew that if any of what McCall had said was true, no one was going to buy this house and it would go to waste. Deteriorate and rot. Die. And at the realization, Micah shuttered again. His body felt cold, but his hands were hot with sweat.

He couldn’t be sure how long he stood on the front porch of the house before deciding he didn’t want to go inside, but it was a good while of being indecisive. The result of those moments was him remembering that it would have been very illegal to go into the house and look around while it was under a bank’s custody. He was already in knowledge of how illegal it was for him to even be up on the property in the first place.

“You’re not scared of what Thomas told you, it’s because you know you’re doing something illegal you fucking wet rag.” He told himself. And he couldn’t counter his own statement because he was asking himself of the consequences of his actions, and he was afraid of his answers, but deep down he knew that wasn’t all true. For the moment, though, it seemed to satisfy his churning stomach and beating heart. He decided that no, no cop would be making his rounds up on the property, and not a single soul would know of his presence. And he ate the voice that began telling him that a few souls knew he was here. A few did.

But he pretended to not have let that try to cross the threshold of his mind, he pushed it back and shut the door on its face. He shuddered against the chilly autumn wind and set his jacket soundly on his shoulders with a snap and jingle of the zipper, puffing his cheeks and breathing outward. His attention directed entirely back to the house, but this time he was focused on getting off of that front porch.

For a moment he felt like he could hear everything for an unprompted reason, and it made his body jolt backward and off of the front porch step. He heard the birds screaming from in the trees, crows, robins, cardinals, birds of all types making the horrifying noise at him. He could hear the wind blowing around him and the house, he could hear the deer tromping between the pine needles and over the creek that ran into town. He could hear the breathing of resting coyotes that were saving their energy for a night’s hunt. He could hear rustling, steps on a rock, the pshk of said rock being shoved aside through the dead pine needles and dirt. He could hear a snap.

Then silence.

Then the birds screamed again, but they were distant this time. He wasn’t hearing them next to his ears. This time he felt they were screaming for him and not to him. And for one of the worst moments of his life, he thought of screaming humans instead of birds.

It took him a moment to recover from the thought and it took him a moment to realize that his ass was on the concrete of the paved way a step off from the porch. He blinked his head free of the terrifying thoughts and pushed himself up, a pain shooting through his ankle. He figured he clipped it on the edge of the step as he fell backward. His heart had began racing again, this time in such a hurry that it pained him to breathe, which he knew was not normal (he figured he knew a lot of things about his current being that day, but he didn’t). He brushed the strips of grass and shiny dust off of his jacket and jeans, not thinking about anything other than those screams. The almost human screams that stretched out further than any bird call would ever reach. The screams were almost agonizing to listen to, even from so far from the tree line. That’s what Micah’s mind averted to when he listened to the cry of those birds. Pain staking and morose, jamming death into his eyes without a second thought. The snap he heard was not one of a tree limb, Micah knew. And the thought intensified the chill in his spine. The fear in his heart. His eyes closed for a quick moment before reopening. He figured he had all the proof he needed that this place was not the same as the rest of Socser, but his mind told him to find out what that scream had been. You already know what it was. You know. But he didn’t know. You do, though, Micah. He stepped off of the walk way and in front of the stark white garage door that had sat closed for undoubtedly a few years and went around the house to inspect the tree line.

A window was placed at exactly Micah’s waist height, dusty but accessible to be seen through. And that’s exactly what he did. He took a second to peer through the window and inside what looked like the kitchen. It wasn’t set up like a model home Micah had seen around town from time to time, it was stripped of any furniture or wall paper or tiles. It looked like the inside of Justin McCall’s car repair shop, gray, blank and devoid of life (which it was). Micah stared inside, his eyes scanning slowly so not to miss anything, but he found there was nothing worth missing. Other than a painting on the wall, one rather out of place as well. He squinted inside, trying to see past the layer of dust caked onto the window because he wanted to see what that painting had to tell him. Art had a voice, and he wanted to hear this one. But as he strained his eyes more and more to get a gander at the painting, he slowly began to piece together how out of place it actually was. The walls were stripped bare and free of any paper or nails or holes, save for the one painting on the wall that was in an antique frame. The frame was gold, the color chipping off, but as far as Micah could tell, there were no flakes of gold on the floor. The painting itself was of a large dog next to a man in a suit that resembled an 1880’s frontier man style. The dog was of a breed Micah had likely seen before, big, hairy and lifeless, maybe a Saint Bernard, or a Bernese Mountain Dog. The man standing next to the dog was stout, fat and had a handlebar mustache that complimented his lifeless eyes better than the grayness of his suit or the resolution of the painting.

His tongue lifted to the roof of his mouth as he backed away from the window and continued towards the forest. His teeth grinded together noisily before he was ten feet from the window and his body was able to ease down. Unravel. He wanted to fall over. He egged his legs on to collapse, to keep him from travelling any further towards the tree line, but they wouldn’t listen. They wouldn’t cave from underneath him even though they wobbled and wavered like jelly.

And before he knew it he was standing at the foot of the giant, gazing up at trees that never seemed to stop. They didn’t move out of the way to pardon the sky, they rose above it, into it. They were the sky.  And Micah was the idiot who was about to stand under it while it fell. It was at this moment that common sense hit him like a freight train. What was he about to do? He had no rope, no tape, no way of marking his way out of that forest. He wouldn’t be so quick to think people haven’t gone missing in those trees, and he wasn’t about to put another tally up on a detective board in the Socser police station. He wasn’t going to be the one on a milk carton. But instead of leaving, he sat down at the mouth of the beast, staring almost longingly up at the tree tops. It seemed accurate. To call this place a beast and label Micah as its post meal snack. Micah wondered what it ate before him. What was big enough to satisfy its hunger? And why did Micah have to be the next victim? Because you’re dumb enough to succumb to its beauty, Mike. The voice told him. It was his own voice, but from a different him. Like it was his future self warning him of what’s to unfold if he were to cross into those pine trees. Maybe he’ll never be heard from again, or maybe he’ll be just fine.

Sitting down in the cool grass, dew soaking into the seat of his pants, he found that he’d like to come back alive from the property, and the only way to assure that would to be leaving it all together. He had nothing to prove to Thomas McCall anymore, and certainly no reason to stick up on the hill. His long fingers began to drum on the roof of his thigh in an unestablished rhythm, pairing with the anxiety to actually move along somewhere. Whether that be into the forest and possibly come into contact with whatever screamed for him, or his home, waiting for his mother to arrive and then go to sleep in his warm bed. He had choices.

He chose the former.

  When he pushed himself up off the ground, once more patting himself free of the grass and dirt from his seat, he knew the forest was calling to him. And maybe it wasn’t Thomas McCall he was going to refute, but the forest itself. The beast. Because Thomas had told him not to cross the gate. Not because of the possibility of him not emerging from those trees, but because he’d go insane. If Micah were to leave now, he’d come back in well mental health, while maybe paranoid, but good all around. So, he’d proved Thomas wrong in that sense. But this forest was beckoning him inside, telling him that he won’t come back alive. Micah wasn’t too sure if he would or not, but he did know that if he did, he would have beaten the giant. The beast itself.

 His legs began moving ahead of his body, everything above his waist being forced to catch up. He felt like he was on autopilot though he knew this was a perfectly conscious decision of his. The trees seemed to move aside for him, their arms lifting and granting him access into their world, a different world than what he lived in. He could hear them chanting a ritualistic poem as he passed by them, whispering under their breath to him, telling him which way to the scream. His body became clammy again, and as he turned his head over his shoulder to get a last peek at the house (the gold frame of the painting barely visible) he became suddenly aware that this may be the very last time he entered a place alive.

  Just as he expected, all there was to the forest was trees. They had lost their magical appearance about five minutes into his walk and he figured that was because he had no idea of where he was going. Being forced to calm himself down on his way in led him to realize that he held no knowledge of where he was going, and he decided to focus on the things that could happen just from him getting lost in the woods and not the things that would happen if an apparition jumped at him from behind a tree.

 There was a sneaking serenity to the forest now that he was deeper in. He kept his eyes all over the terrain, knowing that he had no way of defending himself if an animal decided to make him its next meal. He had learned some things from the “WORST CASE SCENARIO” guide book his grandma got him for Christmas a year prior because he was going on a camping trip with a few friends that January. If coyotes got to him, he could make a few loud noises, throw some things. Deer are often spooked easily. He wasn’t sure how many bears there were in Texas, but he did know how to get away from both a black bear and a grizzly bear. The grizzly is to play dead while the black bear is to fight and scream, and to never climb a tree. Because as he remembers in a nature documentary, black bears are excellent climbers. 

[...]

 One thing that stuck with him after that story was that cougars don’t make the noise of a tiger or lion, instead they yowl; scream as Mr. Milo had put it. They scream at you until you’re dead, or until you put a bullet through their thick skull, they scream. And they scream like dying humans.

 Suddenly Micah’s body ran cold like it had back on the front porch step of the house, and he stopped walking. His head directed upward, and his green eyes scanned the trees cautiously to be sure no cat was up there spying on him and waiting for a perfect time to pounce. His heart started up again, running the marathon of anxiety and fear as he continued to walk. He had gone far enough. He stopped in a place where the trees moved aside for him, contained him in one spot for eternity. Or until another tree grew where he stood, throwing him to the sky and away from the property. A rock was stuck in the ground under a sixty-foot pine tree, calling for Micah to sit down. His legs were calling to him as well, telling him that sitting down for a little bit would be the optimal choice. He obeyed the pleas and sat down on the rock, pulling his knees close to his chest. It made a comfortable seat. His eyes stayed on the ground in front of him, but his mind began to wander.

 He figured he had come far enough into the forest. He could hear cars whizzing by, and he knew he was close to the I-26 rural highway, the one that led into Socser if you went far enough. But if you went through Socser and continued on to reach I-30, you’d eventually reach Dallas, and then Fort Worth stood behind it. But if you took a left onto McCathy before reaching Socser’s city limits and kept straight, you’d go through Paris and eventually reach Sulphur Springs. That is if you never took any turns. For a moment, Micah sat and listened to the cars buzzing by him in short bursts. At least he knew which way he could go if he needed an escape. That thought made his body subconsciously lean toward the direction of the noise, hopeful that it will comfort him even in the slightest bit.

He became comfortable in his spot on the rock, looking out into the trees to see if he could see anything in them. Part of him felt he saw movement behind the trees, and part of him felt like he could hear the crackle and crunch of the dirt and fallen needles. Part of him felt like there was something deeper in those woods. He shifted again, his lips parting with his piqued interest. He wasn’t sure what he was hearing or seeing, but he began thinking that it was okay because it wasn’t anything that could hurt him. If it wanted to hurt him it would have already. And he knew that.

 He licked his lips with anticipation as his legs healed from their walk. The wind was quick to pick up. Micah looked up at the sky and saw it was growing dark with clouds. He could hardly see the sky past the towering trees and spread pine branches that expanded across the width of the sky. He stood, figuring evening was upon him and if he didn’t leave now, rain would be too.

 “Such cliché bullshit.” Micah murmured to himself as he pushed his body off of the rock. He stood in wait for a moment to let a car pass by on the highway, and he followed the noise, hoping the fence would lead him back to the front of the property. As he does so, a crisp bite of air nips at his ears and fingertips for a moment. He doesn’t find it much out of the ordinary seeing as winter is closing in, but it’s what followed that truly frightened him. Micah, go, they’re coming for you. . . go! The same voice from before said to him. Except it wasn’t the same voice, and the only way he knew that was because before the voice was in his head. Now, it was being whispered horrifyingly into his ear. His head whipped around to meet open air. Air that he felt was getting thinner and thinner the longer he remained in place. Air that he became reluctant to breathe in. He licked his lips again and began walking towards the sounds of cars faster than before. Because if he knew anything, he didn’t want to be caught here when the rain hit. And he didn’t want to be here any longer than he needed to be.

The cars got closer and closer as he walked, but no high way was visible from where he was walking. Leaves behind him began to crackle. A stick snapped somewhere from behind him, making his whole being leap from his skin. He turned around to inspect what may have caused the noise, but there was nothing. He examined the ground for anything that could have made the noise and lying in the dirt there was a stick snapped in half, wood crumbs surrounding it. Micah’s stomach fluttered with intense fear, his face growing hot. Another snap at his left side and he turned. Vacant area of grass and dirt. He decided now that it was probably a cougar, just like the one Mr. Milo had been attacked by, and if he didn’t get out of there fast, he wouldn’t be getting out of there at all.

He swallowed the saliva building in his throat, because he’d begun to believe that he may actually hurl. As he began picking up his speed to get away from the area, he felt his jaw tighten. He couldn’t stop to puke. He just couldn’t. You better hurry, Micah. She’s just behind you! The voice rasped in his ear. Cue the heart pounding, and Micah felt like he was about to die. And what an odd thought to have while on a property that was known for killing people. Or multiple deaths. Run!

 And he didn’t hesitate to follow the orders of a voice with no body. The latter voice had been different from the rest, in turmoil. While the rest had been aggressive or monotonous, this one was begging him to run, begging him to get out of there before She came, whoever She was. Micah would consider himself a fairly quick runner, being in all sports his small town school could offer, but he didn’t feel like he was running fast enough to beat whoever it was he was running from, he felt it was hot on his heels, and he didn’t dare turn around. The cars on I-26 were rumbling right in front of him, but he couldn’t see the highway itself and the closer he got the closer the sound became. But he never saw the cars.

 He took one stupid moment to stop in his tracks and whip his head from side to side to find if the street could be seen from his place. His chest was heaving, his lungs were burning, his heart was beating out of his rib cage. He couldn’t find the damn highway. If you stop running she’ll catch you, you have to move, man. He told himself, thankful he could control his own inner thoughts. He wasn’t even sure what he was running from, but that desperate voice in his ear was all he had needed to get his ass moving along and away from the danger. Man, we just defined fight or flight. He told himself. He didn’t suppose he was wrong.

The moment he decided to begin moving along again, he felt fingers wrap around his thin neck, the tips pressing into his flesh. He blinked and threw his hands behind him to ward off whoever it was with their filthy hands around his throat. The more he struggled, the tighter their grip became, and he was soon left struggling for air, hitting the arm of what he presumed was a woman from the previous encounters with the voice, and staring up at the dark sky. There was no voice this time, no one telling him he shouldn’t have come up here, no god extending a hand towards him to take him to the afterlife, and certainly no one to die with him. He was alone. And he was petrified. The emotion he had felt in that convenience store while McCall was telling him the way the property fucks with the minds of its inhabitants, it was an 80 mg dose of fear, and he was the idiot who didn’t read the back of the bottle to gauge how much he was supposed to take. And he’s now overdosed.

There were no breaths escaping from his throat. Only wheezing.

McCall said it’s all a mental thing. It’s not real! Micah’s eyes closed, tears streaming down his cheeks. He couldn’t coherently speak, but he gripped onto the frail arm in which the hands were connected to, and he dug his nails into it. His body shivered as his fingernails punctured the skin and went into the flesh, and he couldn’t help but wonder if it would’ve been that easy to do with anyone else’s skin. His heart sank when his vision began fading. You’re not fucking real! He screamed, but not aloud. Not real, bitch! But nothing happened. He was really looking towards a pass to purgatory, probably. More tears. More noises of a dying rabbit (or boy, whatever). More fear.

Right before he felt himself slipping into unconsciousness, the fingers slipped from his throat, and he gasped so loudly, he was sure it frightened the animals in the surrounding area. As he drew his hands from his throat, he examined his nails, which had punctured through the attacker’s skin. His nails had no signs of blood on them and when he whipped his head around, there weren’t even signs of an attacker. And when he took another glance down at his own hands for the last time that day, he watched the pads of his fingers go from white to olive, his heart fell from his chest down to the floor. His air loss was real. The woman had not been.

He had been strangling himself.

He took off running once more, watching but not really seeing where he was going. He heard cars right in his ear. But instead of them getting closer and never arriving, he comes to the high way almost immediately, automobiles rushing by seemingly not paying Micah any attention. There was a white picket fence shielding the property from the rest of the world, and he forced his body to fly over it with momentum he’s never built up in his life. He felt like he hung in the air for ages, gasping onto a breath he never even had. He didn’t land quite the way he preferred, his ankle clipping a rock or ledge and rolling out from under him. Then he found himself lying in the dirt and leaves, breathless and afraid. Thomas McCall had been right. And Micah had been a fool.

 It took him two hours to get around to the opposite end of the property and it would have taken him a significantly less amount of time if he would have been going the correct direction the first thirty minutes of his painful trip. It also would’ve taken him less time if his body had been in working order. His ankle was swollen to the size of a golf ball, throbbing excruciatingly so that he could hardly make his way to his bike. He was pretty sure it was bleeding because he had managed to trip down and onto the road, catching one of the most sensitive hits on a thorn bush and had to yank it free from the tangles of points in the stems. Pulling his ankle free had been a task in its own accord, but attempting to stand back up on that ankle was worse

Once he got back to his bike, he sat down in front of the gate. I’m safe here. Nothing will reach me here. He was tired, in pain and unable to move his body any more than a few inches to the right or left, and even then it was a spotty chance of him falling to the ground, wheezing like a dying French Bulldog. He’d had no chance to calm himself down after being strangled on the hill, he’d left before he got the chance because he couldn’t waste another second of his too precious life up on that hill without feeling like it was going to be thrown on the line and stomped on.

 He was wheezing heavily by his bike. His ankle was wheezing along with him, or maybe it was weeping from the pain, he wasn’t sure. Micah was on the brink of tears from how horrible the pain was. He knew pain like this didn’t just ameliorate after some ice, a hot bath and good sleep, this was going to stick with him for a long while. He had been right about the bleeding. Thick, bright red blood trickled from his ankle slowly, but it wasn’t enough to concern Micah. He pressed his right forefinger to the bruised and bloodied appendage and stared at it for a good while. It was really what he was concerned about. He had already pushed Her away. But he hadn’t forgotten about how it was his own hands choking him, closing in around his throat, pressing their tips into his cords. He hadn’t forgotten about the voice whispering in his ear telling him to “Run!” while he was still trapped up by that rock. He hadn’t forgotten how the cars were buzzing in his ear, but no highway was to be found. Micah didn’t forget.

 He gave a few tender rubs to his ankle while he sat in thought on the gravel in front of the pipe gate on Dogwood. No rain had fallen from the heavy clouds above him, but it had gotten darker than when he emerged from the trees. Too much darker. He had been too wrapped up in his ankle beforehand that he didn’t realize how cold the air was growing around him and how close night fall was. He’d have to stand up soon if he wanted to be home by his curfew without his mom asking questions. He couldn’t see that happening, though.  

[ramonadecember]

Because my brain saw this and wouldn't let go of the painful implications--“Hasn’t this addiction done enough damage already?” for Cullrian?

I told you I would eventually get to this and here we are lmaooo. this prompt as well as the first one from this ask have become chapter two of You've Got a Second Chance. like the other ask, the prompt isn't actually in the below excerpt because it's right in the middle of the ~drama~.

READ FULL ON AO3

The end of the semester drew up faster than anyone cared for, thrusting deadlines and finals and heaps of stress upon them. For a week leading up to the start of finals, no classes were held, giving the students time to finish papers, make outlines, and cram for upcoming exams. Or, in more cases than not, students were given a week to blow off steam with a little bit of studying mixed in.

Which is why on the Friday of the last day of classes, Dorian received a text from Sera demanding that he come out with her and a few others to a house party she knew about. She even said that he could bring ‘that sourpuss roommate of yours’ as long as Cullen ‘promises not to be a drag.’

Dorian huffed out a laugh to himself, unsure whether it was over Sera’s assessment of his roommate, or imagining trying to drag Cullen out anywhere, let alone during study week, despite the fact it hadn’t technically started yet. With it being a rarity to even see Cullen anymore, hanging out with him had become entirely obsolete. If Cullen wasn’t spending all hours at the library, he was shut away behind a closed bedroom door. Dorian didn’t bother mentioning the party to him.

So imagine his surprise when he saw Cullen there anyway. To say it was unexpected was an understatement. Not that he really fit the scene either, but Dorian had been promised free alcohol and a chance to forget about studying for a night, so it didn’t matter it was only some friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend’s party or that the crowd wasn’t his usual or that the house was a little too crowded for his tastes, Dorian wasn’t going to pass it up.

Weirdly, Cullen seemed to fit in more than he did. He was posted up with a group of guys Dorian didn’t recognize but that Cullen seemed chummy with, standing there as part of their conversation, occasionally tipping back his head in a laugh or raising the cheap beer in his hand to his lips. Cullen looked like he was having fun, which wasn’t a word Dorian had associated with his roommate in some time now.

Occasionally, Cullen would make a slow sweep of the room with his eyes, which is how they came to fall on Dorian as he approached. Dorian had been admittedly curious about what or who had managed to drag Cullen away from studying long enough to attend a party—and a little offended that something or someone could when he had failed countless times in his own efforts—and his feet had taken him in Cullen’s direction without putting much thought to it, keen on getting to the bottom of it. There was a quick flash of surprise on Cullen’s face, eyebrows shooting up, but then he grinned at Dorian.

“He lives!” Dorian teased in greeting. For all Dorian knew, with how little he’d seen of Cullen lately, Cullen could’ve been face down in a puddle of his own drool for days without him realizing.

“You’re here?” Cullen responded, as if Dorian at this particular party was more shocking than seeing Cullen at any. He wrapped an arm around Dorian and as he gave a squeeze, it forced a sudden, short laugh out of Dorian.

An affectionate day, then, Dorian determined. He wasn’t sure when the last time was they’d had one of those. But as he studied Cullen a little further, Dorian knew the cause of it. Cullen was well on his way to being drunk, if not there already. That tended to be the only time Dorian ever saw Cullen look so relaxed, placid, with an easy smile on his lips and a glazed look in his eyes. The last time Dorian had seen him like this had been the night—

No, Dorian couldn’t think about that. He couldn’t think about strong hands pawing at him or hot breath against his skin or how if Cullen was like this, maybe they could find themselves in the same situation again. As if all the same complications didn’t exist solely because they’d put another semester between them and The Hallway Incident.

Dorian’s thoughts were quickly getting away from him despite telling himself not to let his mind drift that way. “You know Sera,” he quickly explained, needing to distract himself and realizing he’d yet to say anything in response to Cullen yet. “She’s hard to say no to.” He went on to say how one of the people throwing the party was apparently Sera’s girlfriend’s friend, some connection like that, but he stopped himself from rambling too much when he noticed that Cullen wasn’t really listening, instead scanning the rest of the party over Dorian’s shoulder.

“I only just got here,” Dorian droned. “Am I really boring you that much already?”

Cullen at least had the decency to look sheepish as his eyes snapped back to Dorian. He gave another squeeze with the arm that Dorian very much noticed Cullen had left draped over his shoulders. “Sorry… I’m actually supposed to be meeting someone here.” It’s why he was distracted, and really, the only reason he’d come out in the first place, and Cullen wanted to make sure that ‘someone’ didn’t slip by. That part Cullen told to Dorian, but what Cullen didn’t say was that he was hoping to spot his friend before his friend spotted the two of them. There’d be less questions, less prying if Cullen excused himself from Dorian’s company beforehand.

He could see the questions coming too, Dorian nosey by nature and looking for all the world like he was just barely holding back, but Dorian never got the chance to ask a single one. Sera came barreling over, saying she’d been looking all over for where Dorian had buzzed off to, and declaring that she needed him for something while taking Dorian by the wrist and tugging him along with her, leaving Dorian to cast an apologetic look over his shoulder at Cullen who just shrugged and smiled back at him.

[rataltouille]

HOUSE PLANTS, UPDATE 7

[novel intro can be found here]

HEY ACTUALLY I FINISHED THIS BOOK!

i don't want to get too sentimental [watch me proceed to get sentimental] but this book means a lot to me and i really could NOT have done it without the support of the wonderful folks on writeblr. the writing community is kind of the reason i even started this novel so it means a lot to me that i’ve met so many of y’all here. this is my first ever novel and i’m so glad i was able to make it so far! here are the final stats:

TOTAL WORD COUNT: 81,049 words.

STARTED: april 17, 2020

FINISHED: january 28, 2021

AVERAGE CHAPTERWISE WC: 3242

NUMBER OF CHAPTERS: 25

NUMBER OF TIMES LILITH SNAPS: 2

NUMBER OF TIMES LILITH SUFFERS: you know it’s too much to count.

the last month of writing this novel was so mixed. like before i hit the 70k mark i’d just been slogging through the novel, feeling uninspired and bored of the story. and then january hit and i was like. wait a minute. my deadline to finish it was the 31st of january. and so i basically startled myself into drafting again and then hit another wc milestone and that motivated me?? so much??? like i remember that drafting the penultimate chapter took me a pretty long time but it was so enjoyable because i was genuinely liking what i was writing and that hadn't been happening for the past few months. and then i wrote the entirety of the last chapter [it’s a vignette so it’s pretty short] for an hour until 1 am in my bed with the lights off and boom. it was such an experience. what makes it even more fun is that i’d drafted 75% of the book in my bed with the lights off at 1 am so this was such a nice full circle moment.

i’m also a little insane from all that lack of sleep but it’s okay we don't talk about that.

excerpts:

chapter twenty-one

this one’s a mix of the weirdest and most broad emotions. there’s a funeral in town, willow’s acting shadier than usual, lilith and juniper finally kiss, etc. etc. literally a rollercoaster. also it’s important that you guys know they kissed in a graveyard. nothing’s more romantic than that amirite.

Residual— that’s how we all felt. Just shells that wash away right before they touch land. We lingered like sleep at dawn, like medicine rimming the lip of cough syrup bottles, like fingerprints on fresh glass. There wasn't a permanence in the way we persisted, because eventually, one leaves their nest. They untether from the source in pursuit of the world. How would a dead girl do that? She won’t reside on the fringes of life like a bad dream.

god this prose is so depressing. even i’m getting sad over it and i’m literally an emotionless husk of a person. hey but the description slaps so enjoy.

also if you’ve noticed i’ve been sharing excerpts less and less in the updates despite the chapters being longer on length [these chapters average at like. 5k words] and that’s because i’m finding it harder to share stuff that doesn’t need context / isn't spoilery.

chapter twenty-two

ah yes the angstiest chapter, probably. something happens to willow that lilith blames herself for and this kicks off the final cluster of events that lead to the climax. i love this chapter because lilith gets angry [but at the wrong person aka herself] and we get to see this side of her she always tries to hide!! another thing that happens is that her garden withers so that’s a fun trip

My garden could have been a fallen kingdom. The ferns were rotting from under the flap, their spores gone. Gardenia blooms had split with their petals discarded like an evening gown all around the pots. The mint had binary fissioned and lay in shreds, the jasmine wilted and spread. All of them like war dolls, casualties of my ignorance, beyond saving.

poor garden :/

chapter twenty-three

this chapter. exists i guess. ISDNJSDUH i sound so disillusioned but essentially this chapter was supposed to end on a the ✨big reveal✨ that the book has been leading up to but then something. happened. and i had to move that into the next chapter and so nothing actually happens in this one! like it’s all important things and we’re setting up tension but overall it’s the least eventful of the final story arc.

We stepped together into our house; it had been abandoned for a day but was the exact same. Dust hadn't suddenly piled up in the threshold, sticking to our soles. The air hadn't musted over in the house’s grieving for its sole occupants. The bathtub was still filled. The water skimmed the floor, and I’d decided. I’d stay with you for the whole week, the fortnight, the month, the year. I’d stay inside with you, because me leaving the house, me choosing to spend any second of my life without caring for you, was a mistake. I’d always seen you as fragile, quiet like moth wings and just as delicate. Maybe I’d needed to feel I was protector just as much as I thought you needed me.

i really like this excerpt because it’s very simple and light in terms of prose but also the implications and that purposeful telling at the end really stick with me. exposing lilith since 2k20.

As morning rose the next day, like a curtain lifting, the sun picked itself up from the horizon, shattering cloudlines in a bright, orange glow. The skies got clearer by the hour as summer sauntered in again. Already the habits of my grounding were kicking in; my circadian rhythm bounded to my outside, too, as I instinctively scheduled and compartmentalized my daily life. First, wake up, check on you. Finish chores while making sure you’re alright. School, eaten with worry, but you're capable and you’ll call if you need help. Home, count your pulse as you inevitably slumped in plush sleep— at the coffee table, at the bathtub, in Aunt Hailey’s chair (rare), in your bedroom (rarer). You’d wake for dinner and read until the lights begin to dim and your eyesight tripped. You’d doze off for the rest of the night. Your internal clock was more functional, more efficient, than mine.

obligatory rhythmic everyday life excerpt that's reminiscent of 2020.

chapter twenty-four

THE PENULTIMATE CHAPTER! THE LONGEST CHAPTER!! THE ONE WHERE SHIT GOES DOWN!!! [can you tell it’s my fave chapter]

this took me two whole weeks to draft [it’s around 7.2k words] but it was so enjoyable the whole time!! there’s something so satisfying about making the quiet character, the one who never express anger, finally snap. so satisfying. lilith is actually pretty feral in this and we all stan. it also has a lot of simpler yet more sharp prose? if you know me you know that repetition is literally my favourite device ever. i overuse repetition it’s actually insane. and this one has a lot of that, but in a way that isn't annoying, and i really enjoyed writing it!!

I’d never been in your bathtub before. You haunted the room and it was always yours; I didn’t consider running the tap for myself. Maybe your going out prompted me this time. The water was so high it sloshed over the lip of the tub. The floor was slick like eels’ skin. My skin was blue with cold; the chill gummed my cheeks and ears and I shivered. My reflection stared at me in hatred, the features warped and pulled like taffy. I half-floated, a ghost in liminal space, and the walls were choked with water lines and flower patterns. With my body invaded by alien frost, with the ceiling low and cruel and ready to crush, I cowered. How did you do this every day? Did the clothes make the difference?

lilith’s going through it again ft. willow’s bathtub.

after this it’s a lot of incredibly spoilery stuff!! like the prose slaps but it’s too many spoilers to share. but have another description of the heaviness of midnight because i’m obsessed with that aesthetic

The lock clicked behind me. Silence descended like birdsong and I was paralysed, stuck at the two half-stairs that led to the outer path, stuck at the threshold of no return. My body shook. All around me was nighttime, gooey and heavy. I was unfurling, like a rose, step after step, pushing past the gate and onto the road. The wind was so cold it frosted my tears.

btw the chapter does not end on lilith crying she kind of has a girlboss moment and snaps massively [i mean after all she’s been through she deserves it] and then the main story aka the fictive past ends.

chapter twenty-five

the final chapter, which also happens to be a vignette chapter and is thus set in the fictive present! it’s very short and is only one tiny scene but it really ends on the perfect tonal quality for the novel. i can't share any excerpts because it really is very short so! have this iconic screenshot i took as soon as i finished the draft instead:

[also if you were wondering yes i did type the entire novel [and basically everything i write] on my ipad because i don't own a laptop]

and that really is it! this was such an incredible journey and i’m so excited to share more of my newer writing and upcoming projects with y’all. it feels so weird that this really is the last time i’ll be making official posts about this novel. truly the end of an era.

house plants taglist: @discreet-writer @mp-golfin @jaydewritesfiction @writer-in-monochrome @magnus-s-writes @firesidefantasy @sugarlessbubblegum @theoldcity @n1ghth4wkz @remi-writes-sometimes @suninks @dreamybellatrixanvm @camusbf @fablemancy @isherwoodj @svpphicwrites @spillme @sunwornpages @bijouxs @asadlitficwriter @bookphobe @sirius-xthem @carlyiswriting @hekat-ie

general taglist: @lovingyou-is @haldimilks @andiwriteunderthemoon @coffeeandcalligraphy @shaelinwrites @tuoyu @charles-joseph-writes @eklavvya @wolf-oak @bitterwitchwrites @laughtracksonata @whatwordsdidnttouch @indeliblewrites @thenataliawrites @illimani-gibberish @sienna-writes @jennawritesstories @chloeswords @aelenko @keira-is-writing @cherylinanika @infinitely-empty-pages @jmtwrites @august-iswriting @sarahkelsiwrites @freedelusionbanana

tumblr is being. really really annoying and wont let me edit on the browser so i’ve got the 50 mentions per post mobile thing to deal with. the rest of the taglist will be tagged in a reblog!

[roxygobyebye]

2, 18, 25

2. What work of yours, if any, are you the most embarrassed about existing?

Oh, god. Well. That would probably be Armoured Cradles dbdbdbdbdn

I love that story dearly, seeing as it was the first fic I ever posted, and I love what I want to do with it and what I've written so far—but I'm embarrassed because I haven't updated it since like February! 😖 It's only on chapter six and I started it last year! And the chapters aren't that long!

*sigh*

I do have the start of chapter seven—but I've just had a really shit year. 2021 has been worse for me personally than 2020. I have had neither the brain power or the time to keep up with AC, which has disappointed me and anyone who's actually following the fic.

But I'm going to finish it! I promise!!!

18. Were there any works that you read that affected you so much that it influenced your writing style? What were they?

Oooooh.

When I was about fifteen or sixteen, I read a lot of Katekyo Hitman Reborn! fanfics. Absolutely fascinating stuff. I don't remember the title of the fic, and I don't remember much of the contents either, but....

It was wonderful.

The style was a sort of dreamy 2nd and 1st person present tense, which is how I write these days. Now, present tense writing isn't hard to come by, but the prose.... This style of writing is something I've only ever seen in fanfiction. KHR fanfics, my own DOOM fic and Destiny 2 fics, and most recently I've seen the style in DSMP fics. But I've never ever seen it in published books, or in other fandoms (probably because I haven't been in the other fandoms that use that style in fics lol).

It was very poetic, I think is how I could describe it? Dreamy, like I said before. Wistful. Like waving your hand through smoke and seeing it pass through your fingers, or like listening to gentle piano. It was... Instinctual, almost. There were a lot of brackets (like this, telling you things, giving you an extra level of detail) and it was like they were second thoughts. And by second thoughts I mean by the way we have second thoughts in our head, not as in they were added in as a poor attempt at more content—they were there, purposefully, and it just gave everything an extra little zing. Sometimes they had character's thoughts in them, sometimes they were repeating a phrase or word several times to highlight it's importance and or add impact, or a rhetorical question, or, or, or.... Anything, really.

Example:

He smiles at her. "I love you."

(Fake, fake, fake, you're lying—)

She smiles back. "I know," she whispers.

Do you see what I mean?

It's a style that just clicked with me as soon as I saw it. I understood it perfectly. When we had creative writing in English class, I wrote in that style, and my teacher was confused about the brackets and said I shouldn't add them because the examiner reading my work wouldn't get it. I was like "what do you mean??? It's so obvious that it's an extra level of detail and thoughts????" and even though I explained it to her she didn't get it and told me to stop doing it because people wouldn't get it.

I have been happily cultivating that writing style ever since :)

25. copy/paste a few a few sentences or a short paragraph that you're particularly proud of

OHOHOHO *rubs hands together*

This is an excerpt from a WIP of mine that I hope to publish someday. Not soon—it isn't nearly ready yet—but someday.

The Kell of Kells chitters, grandfatherly in the squinting of his six eyes and hunching of his great shoulders to lean on his staff. The poor thing looks like it should snap like a twig from the weight of his massive bulk bearing down on it; but it is a faithful load-bearer even after its millennia of service.

;)

Thank you for the ask!

[spicycreativity]

Soft-Shoe Shuffle - Ch 9

Chapter: 9/12 Additional Notes: See Ch 1 for more information. Read on AO3 under "WizardGlick." Any formatting/italics errors are holdovers from AO3 that I was too lazy to fix. Chapter Content Warnings: N/A; ask to tag Excerpt: "You don't think he's in love with you, do you?" Roman asked in a strained tone. Silence. "Do you?" Roman demanded. "Oh my god," Virgil said through gritted teeth. Janus could practically hear his jaw creaking. "Virgil!" Roman whisper-shouted.

That's my story and I'm stickin' to it

That's my life and all that I've got

Call me a liar, call me a writer

Believe me or not, believe me or not

The sound of a door open and closing startled Janus out of his dreams so violently that he jerked and gasped before falling still again.

Silence followed, but he kept his eyes closed and tried to orient himself. He felt like Remus had used him as a training dummy and remembered very little of the reason why .

Roman's voice broke the silence. "It's not your shift yet, Smoke on the Water."

"I thought you could use the company," Virgil said. "And maybe I missed you."

"Oh, don't lie." Roman sighed and his breath ghosted over Janus' cheek. He was close, then. "That's his job."

Virgil scoffed. "Not anymore, apparently."

Janus focused on keeping his breathing even. It wouldn't do to get caught now of all times.

"You don't buy it?" Roman asked.

"I don't know!" Virgil exclaimed, loud enough to make Janus flinch. In a softer voice, he continued, "I guess people can change. I mean, I did. But it was gradual, and this seems… It seems awfully sudden for a change of heart, especially for someone as stubborn as him."

"You don't think he's in love with you, do you?" Roman asked in a strained tone.

Silence.

"Do you?" Roman demanded.

"Oh my god," Virgil said through gritted teeth. Janus could practically hear his jaw creaking.

"Virgil!" Roman whisper-shouted.

"Have you noticed Patton calling him 'honey'?" Virgil whispered back.

"Wait… You don't think--"

"I don't know!"

"But Patton wouldn't--" Roman tripped over the end of his sentence. "Not him-- "

"You don't just fall in love overnight. What if this some… some campaign for Patton's love?"

"Like a quest?" Roman asked.

Janus nearly laughed. Leave it to Virgil to land three steps to the left of the correct conclusion. And leave it to Roman to spur him on.

Despite the ache in his joints and desperate dryness of his mouth, Janus could feel his mind sliding back toward sleep. There would be no fighting it unless he moved, and he couldn't move without giving up the game.

Oh, well.

"It makes sense, doesn't it?" Virgil asked. "Janus doesn't apologize. Janus doesn't do anything unless it serves some sort of end."

"And where does collapsing in my room factor into this master plan?"

"I don't know," Virgil said. "Maybe this part was just bad luck." He sighed and pulled the covers higher up Janus' chest. "It's weird seeing him like this?"

"...Asleep?"

"No, genius. Vulnerable. He doesn't show weakness either."

"Ah, Virgil," Roman said delicately, after a moment's silence. "Not that I'm the best at math, mind you, but something isn't adding up."

"What do you mean?"

"According to Logan, Janus knew he was sick when he came to visit me. Nearly fainted in the kitchen, from what he said. If he's so averse to showing weakness, as you say, why wouldn't he just, you know, wait?"

"...Huh."

"And why would he apologize to me in private? If he wanted to look good in front of Patton, surely he would have found some way to confront me in front of Patton. Janus is still a part of Thomas; he likes an audience. "

Virgil let out a short puff of air through his nose and said nothing for a few moments. "Well… Maybe I shouldn't jump to conclusions like that."

"It's good that you want to be careful," Roman said with undisguised fondness in his voice. Janus almost frowned. Roman and Virgil, really?

"I guess I'll have to wait and see. I really want to know why he keeps calling my name. Rem-- Uh. Okay. Remus said he did it a bunch yesterday."

"He's not Voldemort; you can say his name around me."

"I don't want to make you upset, that's all."

Virgil's words spun lazy circles in Janus' mind, and whatever Roman replied was lost in the rolling fog.

He had expected Virgil to be mistrustful of him; he had every right to be. Janus had expected him to make conspiracies out of nothing and it didn't hurt his feelings.

It also didn't make him happy, not at all, that Roman had defended him with nothing to gain from it.

Sleep came languid and slow, and for once not accompanied by tongues of fire.

--

Maybe it was luck or maybe it was Virgil's sense of duty, but the next time Janus opened his eyes, it was Virgil that he saw.

Virgil's eyes widened almost comically and he froze.

For a moment, they just stared at each other. Then Janus regained his wits and said, in a tone like they were coworkers who had just passed each other in the hall, "Good morning, Virgil."

Virgil opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again. "It's afternoon."

"Well. Forgive me for not counting the hours when I was unconscious," Janus said with venom. Because he was scared.

Virgil scowled at him. "Whatever. Glad you're not dead. I'll go get Patton now."

"No, wait." Janus tried to sit up, hating how his arms shook. He brought out another set to assist, as Virgil seemed disinclined to help, or do anything other than just stare at him. "Force of habit."

"Yeah," Virgil said. "I heard you were on an honesty campaign." The disdain in his voice was almost painful. "Let me guess: You're so sorry for how you treated me in the past. You were jealous because I got what you always wanted and you didn't know how to handle it so you lashed out like the snake you are. And then you couldn't apologize because you were trapped in the image you'd created for yourself, only now, now it's falling down around you and you don't even have your precious pride to stand on, and now there's only one thing left to do." Virgil broke off, a little out of breath. "So you come crawling on your belly to me. The last item on your little 'good person' checklist."

Janus shook , and no amount of blankets could melt the ice that crawled down his veins. Virgil's image blurred, cold tears threatening to spill over. And really, what did Janus have left to lose? Hadn't he earned this? At the end of the day, he was the architect of his own demise.

"For what's it's worth, Virgil," he said, his voice so cracked and rasping he barely even recognized it, "I am sorry. I was jealous. And… I tied my own hands. I see that now."

"So you're saying…" Virgil straightened a little. "You were wrong?"

"Yes, Virgil. I was wrong."

Virgil laughed.

He doubled over, shoulders spasming, and laughed until his face turned red and tears ran down his cheeks. "I can't-- I can't believe this…"

"Um, Virgil?" Janus' humiliation gave way to concern as Virgil's breaths became more and more erratic.

"You have no idea how long I've been waiting to hear you say," Virgil said. "I had so many ideas for how I was going to throw it back in your stupid, smug snake face." He wiped his eyes even as more tears fell.

Janus just stared at him.

"Here's what's funny," Virgil continued. "Now… Now that it finally happened and I have you right where I want you, I don't want to do it ."

"You--" Janus' heart leapt. "You believe me?"

"I believe you." Virgil looked at him, eyes still shining. "But only because you look so sweet holding that teddy bear."

"What?" Janus looked down and realized with a jolt that he did indeed have a stuffed bear tucked under his arm. It was pale brown with white felt on the paws and ears, and was wearing a little T-shirt with 'get well beary soon!' printed on it. "Patton."

"Patton," Virgil said with a nod.

Janus looked around properly for the first time and he realized that Patton was not the only one who had left a gift.

A magnificent bouquet of white roses dominated his nightstand, nearly overshadowing a smaller bouquet of baby's breath and hydrangeas in a Mason jar. Behind the vases stood a 6-pack of blue Gatorade, and balanced on the lids was a small, handmade book.

Virgil noticed him staring and passed over one of the Gatorades, breaking the seal on the lid so Janus wouldn't have to struggle with it.

"Um, Virgil," Janus said, taking a shaky sip and realizing he wasn't wearing his gloves. He grit his teeth and tried not to mind. "I do understand if you don't want to be around me right away."

Virgil shook his head. "I'm done being mad."

"...Just like that?"

"I…" Virgil bit down hard on his lip. "I'm making the choice to forgive you. And maybe I'm being naïve and maybe you'll sink your fangs into my neck the second my guard is down, but… Well, you know, maybe for once the best-case scenario will happen and we'll all be best friends and Thomas will never have problems again."

Janus smiled. "You've changed, Virgil. A lot."

"Yeah, well." Virgil shrugged. "So have you, I think."

Janus raised an eyebrow. "Oh?"

Virgil leaned in, his grin wolfish and wide. "You're still holding the teddy bear."

Janus' face burned, but he for once made no effort to hide it. "It was a gift, Virgil, it would be rude to--"

"Stop snuggling it and put it with your other gifts?"

Janus closed his eyes and let his head rest against his headboard. "Yes."

"Airtight argument," Virgil said, but the laughter was gone from his voice. "I should get Logan. And you should finish your Gatorade. You probably feel pretty shitty, huh?"

"No, Virgil, I feel fantastic."

"I'm gonna let that slide because you're half-dead."

"Mm." Janus slid further down, gently aware of the Gatorade bottle tipping in his hand.

"Okay." Virgil grabbed the bottle. "No spilling. I'm gonna leave this here with a straw in it. You'd better drink some."

"Okay," Janus said, though he had no intention of doing so. Exhaustion washed over him, a rising tide promising to drag him under.

"You know, once word gets out that you're… not, like, delirious anymore, everybody's going to come running."

"Then don't tell," Janus mumbled, rolling over and pulling the covers up over his head.

"Are you really going back to sleep? You just woke up!"

"Just readjusting."

"Sure."

Janus sighed and wriggled so just his face was poking out from underneath the covers. "Happy?"

"I just don't think you should go back to sleep without drinking something. And no, one tiny sip of Gatorade doesn't count."

"You want to talk to me." Janus was too tired to properly revel in his information, so he settled for a smirk. It was difficult to do with half his face smushed into the mattress, but he was well-practiced.

"Keep pushing and I'm gonna start reading to you from Remus' book of dirty limericks. He hand-wrote that for you, by the way."

"What?" Janus fought to keep the nervous edge out of his voice.

"He said it was an inside joke."

With a concentrated effort, Janus sent the booklet to the top shelf of his closet. He doubted even Remus was reckless enough to expose Janus'... total lack of romantic feelings for Patton in such a careless manner, but still. Better safe than sorry. "Virgil?"

"Hm?"

"What did you get me? I assume the roses are from Roman and the Gatorade is from Logan."

"And the blue flowers are from Patton also."

"Surely they guilt-tripped you into livening up my deathbed as well?"

"My gift was more... abstract."

"Not smothering me to death with Patton's teddy bear does not count as a gift."

"Oh, no." Virgil smirked. "I told Patton how you really take your coffee."

The uncomfortable feeling of being not only seen, but known made Janus hide his face under the comforter again. "You didn't."

"Oh, I did. He knows all about your whipped cream addiction."

" Virgil."

"You're welcome, honey."

Janus went completely still. Half-formed memories of Roman and Virgil conversing in his room swam around his head and oh. Virgil had guessed it. Part of it, anyway. Janus had thought he'd let it go with the rest of his little conspiracy theory, but… And now he'd just completely missed his chance to bluff. He tried anyway. "If this is your way of calling me sweet--"

"Busted," Virgil interrupted.

"Go back to being scared of me," Janus muttered into the blankets.

"Look," Virgil said, voice deadly serious. "I can't tell you what to do, but I swear to all things dark and stormy, if you break Patton's heart, I'll break you ."

"I don't--" Janus tried. "I-- We're not…" He made an exaggerated, high-pitched coughing sound. "I'm going to tell Logan that you antagonized me while I was trying to sleep."

"Oh, please."

"And Patton and I aren't-- He doesn't-- He doesn't feel that way about me."

"That fever must have evaporated some of your brain cells," Virgil said.

Janus was inclined to agree, although for different reasons-- He couldn't think of a single way to change the subject. He settled for a long, drawn-out hiss.

"Just talk to him, okay?" Virgil said. "Or don't. Actually, don't."

"I don't need your permission to start dating Patton," Janus spat, forgetting himself.

"So you do want to date him."

"...No."

"I believe you."

"I'm going back to sleep now."

"Gatorade first." Virgil drew the covers back and held the bottle up to Janus. There was a straw in it now, a purple bendy straw that poked Janus in the lip. He fixed Virgil with a death glare and was privately relieved to see Virgil shrink back under its intensity. Like a river changing course, the parts of Janus that made him who he was were still there, even if his direction had altered.

That was good enough for him.

But he still wasn't going to let Virgil nurse him like he was some kind of helpless baby animal.

Careful not to drop the teddy bear, Janus sat up and took the bottle from Virgil. He drank half of it before his shaking hands gave up on him.

"Go to sleep," Virgil said, setting the bottle on the nightstand. "I'll tell the others not to crowd you." He turned to leave.

Janus almost let him. "Thank you, Virgil. And…" He'd had quite enough of showing his belly, and yet…. "I really am sorry. For everything."

"I know, Janus. Get some rest."