#u best believe i’m going to try to write fanfiction of this universe as soon as possible

[shoot-i-messed-up]

ohhhhhhhh ygs r going to be SICK of me when this comes out. Hal, John, and Jo casually hanging out and being the main trio… they’re literally my faves <333

[fieryanmitsu]

Intertwined Roots | ch. 7 - “hide and seek” | A3! AU

Ahhh, I was completely swamped with work and IRL matters these past two weeks, so I’m just managing to get this chapter out now!! Though, I think I’ve now settled on the best schedule for myself with this series – I’ll likely update it every two weeks moving forward! This gives me some time to work on other stories generally as well and I won’t feel as rushed!

Anyway, this chapter is a direct continuation of the last chapter and is the second meeting between Itaru and Izumi! Also, quick reminder: Akari is the name I gave to Itaru’s sister, since I don’t believe she has a canon name.

Please enjoy!

“Intertwined Roots” is an A3! alternate universe series where Izumi, Itaru, Tsumugi and Tasuku grow up as childhood friends.

For the summary, background and notes about the “Intertwined Roots” universe, along with more chapters, please refer to the “Intertwined Roots” Masterpost.

Masterpost for my other fanfiction: here

AO3: Link in my Blog Menu!

INTERTWINED ROOTS – ch. 7

“hide and seek” | spring | Itaru (age 5) & Izumi (age 4)

“Ugh, Itaru, stop dragging your feet already,” Akari growled as she continued to haul her little brother by his arm down the sidewalk.

“B-But, I don’t wanna go, Sis,” Itaru protested weakly.

“Well, too bad! You promised to go, so you have to go,” she snapped back. “You can’t just leave that girl waiting for you just ‘cause you were too slow to tell her you didn’t wanna come back!”

Itaru closed his mouth, unable to protest. He had honestly been too shocked yesterday to turn Izumi down. He’d only ever played – if you could call being bossed around playing, anyway – with his sister at home, and he’d never gotten along easily with other children. Whenever they had tried to approach him, he’d usually be too shy to respond to them, and they’d eventually walk away, bored with his lack of reaction.

His encounter with Izumi had been the first time where someone had bothered to stick around. And, though one part of him somewhat anticipated meeting her again, the other part was mostly scared to face such an unfamiliar and unpredictable force again.

Lost in his thoughts, Itaru stumbled as his sister came to a sudden halt. In contrast to yesterday, the park was relatively empty, with only a handful of children kicking a ball around on the field and another small group playing on the swing set.

As Akari had predicted, Izumi was waiting for him, rocking by herself on one of the spring toys. Catching sight of the siblings, the young girl immediately jumped off the well-worn, horse-shaped contraption and ran over to them with a big smile on her face.

Panicking, Itaru ducked behind his sister and hid his face, unconsciously clutching at the back of her shirt.

“Um, hello,” Izumi greeted Akari bashfully. “I’m Izumi.”

“Hi, I’m Akari – this guy’s big sister,” Akari responded, reaching behind her to pull at Itaru. With strength belying her slender arms, she wrenched the young boy off her back and shoved him in front of her. “I’m gonna go meet my friends, so I’ll come back later to get him, okay? See ya!”

To Itaru’s alarm, his sister then walked away with a wave of her hand. He wanted to follow her, but he knew she would only get mad at him and that thought was enough for him to, instead, turn his gaze towards the bright-eyed girl in front of him.

“Hi Itaru!” Izumi chirped excitedly. “What do you want to play? Tic-tac-toe, again?”

Itaru knew that he should just greet her back and answer the question, but found himself floundering as he continued to stare at her expectant face. It wasn’t often that he was put on the spot, and, with his mind racing a mile a minute, his fight-or-flight instinct kicked in. And, so, he ran.

Without really understanding what he was doing, he dashed towards the giant elephant slide and hid himself beneath it. If he couldn’t see her, he could think better.

“Wait, are we playing hide and seek?!” Izumi exclaimed as she ran after Itaru and stopped at the other side of the elephant slide. “I’m super duper good at it! I’ll be ‘it’ first! I’m gonna count to one hundred!”

Izumi clapped her hands over her eyes and started counting loudly.

“One… two… three…”

Itaru wasn’t quite sure how she had come to this conclusion, but he wasn’t going to say ‘no’ to hiding. It sounded like a much better option than figuring out how to talk with the girl. Figuring that Izumi would assume that he would run away from her, he quickly stepped out of his hiding spot and purposely stomped his feet as he ran past her in the direction of the field. However, he quickly u-turned and quietly snuck back under the elephant slide again, making sure he was completely hidden in the shadows, before waiting for her to finish counting.

“… Ummm, nineteen… tw-twenty… tw-twenty-one… Tw… Tw… Ummmmm… ONE HUNDRED!” Izumi yelled. “Ready or not, here I come!!”

Though Itaru was alarmed that she had suddenly skipped almost eighty numbers, he kept still as he heard Izumi rush past the elephant slide, as he had predicted.

He carefully peeked out around the slide opening and saw Izumi running around the trees near the field, poking into the bushes every so often. After watching her for several minutes, he could see that the girl was becoming increasingly frustrated as her efforts continued to turn up empty-handed. Then, she began wandering back towards the slide.

Taking care to creep back into the shadows as she approached, he heard her call out his name.

“Itaaarruuuuu, where are you?!” she cried out.

Thinking that she was trying to trick him, he kept quiet. A minute passed in near silence. And then another. Then, he heard a sniffle.

“Itaruuuu, where did you gooooo?!” Izumi yelled again, a wobble in her voice. “Wh-What if I never find him?! He’ll be st-stuck waiting for-forever…”

Feeling an unfamiliar twinge in his chest as he heard another sniffle, Itaru crouched down and stared at the ground. Seeing a small stone near his foot, he stared at it for a moment before grabbing it with his left hand. He then threw it at the back of the slide, and it clanged against the metal noisily before dropping to the ground.

The sound of Izumi’s sniffles suddenly stopped. Then, he heard her footsteps crunch against the gravel and, a moment later, a set of big brown eyes peeked at him from the opening of the slide.

“Itaru!! I found you!” she exclaimed gleefully, though her eyes were red. “Told ya I was good! It’s my turn to hide, now! Count to a hundred, okay?!”

The brown-haired girl then whirled around and ran off, leaving the young boy with only one option – closing his eyes. Itaru quietly counted to twenty-two – his soft voice slightly echoing off the inside of the metal slide – before poking his head out from under the slide.

It took approximately ten seconds for him to find Izumi hiding in a nearby bush with one of her feet sticking out.

I hope you enjoyed this chapter!! Knowing Itaru’s personality, I knew that getting him to hang out with Izumi again would take some external forces, haha (i.e. his sister physically dragging him there). Next chapter, I’m excited to announce that we’ll finally have the entire crew together for the first time~

Unfortunately, I don’t think I’ll be able to get the next chapter up until at least the end of the month. However, this is only because I plan to be writing like a madwoman for the upcoming “A3! Rare Pairs Week”, which is running here on AO3 (and on Twitter) from July 13 to 19! I won’t be able to write each of the seven prompts on time, so I anticipate that I’ll take the entire month to finish them all up! In the meantime, I will be, sadly, putting “Intertwined Roots” on the backburner! But, please do stay tuned for my other works, instead!

Thank you for reading and please do leave a comment if you enjoyed! Any reblogs are always appreciated! I hope to see you all again soon!

-Anmitsu

[llawlietofficial]

What type of characterisation do u like for fics? I do find that fic from back in the day is mostly 1 dimensional but I was curious what ur issues w it where?

I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to answer this but I’m gonna be real my opinions on stuff like this have led to me being labeled toxic to the point where people have literally implied they want me and people who share similar opinions with me to leave the fandom, so I’ve been kind of hesitant to answer something like this bashing some recent characterization again. So if you’re one of those people I’m sorry and you should probably stop reading now.

opinions under the cut with some lawlight characterization stuff I don’t like + some stuff I do like:

Honestly? I try and read at least the first chapter or so of every new lawlight fic in the tag and recently it’s been impossible for me to enjoy a lot of it because when I read it it just doesn’t feel like L and Light to me at all? Like it feels like someone at some point wrote a big fic with strong characterization and interesting characters, except they weren’t much like L and Light and they acted in ways L and Light wouldn’t act. And a lot of fics now are based off that same characterization, which in turn inspires fics with that characterization, rinse and repeat. And that’s just not enjoyable to me when I’m looking to read lawlight fanfiction.

Obviously old lawlight fanfiction wasn’t all 100% perfect and there were a lot of doozies in that mix too but it felt like there were more really solid multichapter fics that might have been messy and toxic in ways but they made sense with the canon characters. And fics that did have a happy ending and some fluff thrown in were still written using circumstances that could be believable, even if it took a long time or a slow burn to get there.

To answer your question more specifically, here’s some common tropes that feel out of character to me (and I’m not calling out any specific author or saying fics that do any of these things are poorly written because they’re not and we have a lot of talented and dedicated people here):

Either one of them changing their principles and switching sides within the first 20k words and without a LOT of persuading. IMO “we’re two sides of the same coin and not that different despite both being hugely stubborn” is shit I love, “actually I’ve sided with you secretly the whole time/your magical dick has cured me of disagreeing with you/I’m willing to sacrifice the principles I literally died for in canon easily because I want to be with you” is shit I don’t love.

“We suddenly agree and work super well together as partners now that we’re in an AU and there’s no death note” doesn’t feel authentic to me because death note or no death note their entire outlook on the world is different. Light would think L’s methods are disgusting. L would think Light’s initial idealism is naive. Light believes mankind is inherently good and once you get rid of the bad that can shine, L…doesn’t seem to share that. That’s not to say they can never work together but the good shit is when it’s a long journey into understanding each other and where they’re coming from and slowly making compromises and falling in love.

L being a naive uwu tries his best baby who’s being taken advantage of by Light. Light being a misguided uwu baby who tries his best and is being taken advantage of the whole time by L. They’re more complex than that and they’re both bad people but they also both have good sides so any sort of simplification of the characters into one being a villain and one being a victim is uninteresting to me. 

They shouldn’t work but somehow despite everything they do, because they’re alone and because despite disagreeing and being enemies by circumstance and by beliefs, they know without the other they’d never really be challenged or fulfilled. That’s neat. I like that. It’s messy. They’re drawn to each other even as they’re disgusted with each other.

It’s more interesting when they are their own conflict rather than the conflict solely coming from outside sources.

The 500000 fics where Light is a rebellious and progressive omega who actually secretly wants to be protected by L and feels grateful that they’ve found each other? don’t love that. I dislike omega fics in general even if there’s a couple I’ve thought were pretty alright so that doesn’t help either. It is kind of interesting that despite their differences this could be an in-universe reason to force them together. It just seems like omegafic is the lawlight default right now. Like even fics where the plot doesn’t revolve around omegaverse stuff is sometimes omegaverse and that’s ? hard for me to wrap my brain around? that’s not just a lawlight problem though that seems to be happening in a lot of fandoms

Similarly to point one, either of them being okay with losing like lol what. 

yotsuba can be difficult to tackle because there’s so much going on there with the characters, but there’s so many interesting layers to explore and dive into that sometimes get ignored in favor of fluffy hijinks and that’s boring to me. from Light’s perspective L took everything from him and has made his life pretty miserable because of this whole Kira thing and catching the real Kira is the only real thing that could totally clear Light’s name and L just sort of….gives up, for a lot of it. mopes about and acts unmotivated and uninterested because Light isn’t Kira. that’s probably very frustrating for light! and fun wacky fluff or hijinks can happen, but I love when it happens in the “we got so distracted being the smartest people in the room we forgot we’re supposed to be enemies” way because that’s juicy to me

sometimes it’s the little things, too, that bother me. stuff that’ll happen and it’ll completely pull me out of the story. like L Lawliet made Naomi Misora destroy her whole damn computer after he slid into her DMs and you really think there’s any way in hell he’d have any sort of google home or siri or alexa? or casual social media, even under fake names? facebook knows everything. or light saying something or making a joke that i could never in a million years see him saying in canon because the author thought it would be funny or cute. 

anytime Light is suddenly some kind of beacon of goodness champion of justice just because he didn’t find the death note. the death note didn’t make him a completely different person, he’s bitter and jaded and thinks some people would be better off dead even before getting the death note. self righteous yeah totally but actually righteous? nah man

or Light just being a fucking awful person who kidnaps and r*pes L because he lusts after him but it’s okay because somehow in the end they end up together ? i’ve seen that trope a few times and i know it existed in 2007 too i just avoided it like the plague then also. 

I see a lot of AUs that are less “what would L and Light legitimately do if this was the situation or universe they were placed in” and more “i want to write this situation happening like this and i want to make it lawlight because that’s my main ship” 

like, the characters that are being written are fine but if you want to write OCs right OCs. I know all of this seems really harsh which is why I put a warning about it at the beginning, and of course I know some of these problems were also prevalent between 2013-2017 and there’s tropes here that have been happening like this since the dawn of lawlight fanfiction, but since it’s happening now and now is when i’m frustrated by it now is what i’m complaining about, it could be the reason i go back to older fanfiction so much is because i had lower standards back then and it was easier for me to wade through the ones i hated to get to ones i liked and now it’s easy for me to find those again. who knows. Also I agree most fanfiction from 2007-2009 were pretty 1 dimensional. 

And like, fuck me I guess but I actually like the canon characters and I joined the fandom to experience more of them and apparently that makes other people feel unsafe.

I’m not saying people aren’t allowed to express opinions that are different than me or that I Know Better Than Everyone Else or that I don’t like people posting their own headcanons or ideas or things they wish were different about the series, it’s just not my cup of tea and it’s a little frustrating that fanon is mostly all I get in fics now and that people are allowed to express opinions but only if those opinions are “people who stick too close to canon are elitist and should die and are sticks in the mud and need to leave the fandom to stop ruining things for everyone else” because like, we’re people too?

Anyway sorry this veered in a bit of a different direction and I hope I don’t lose followers over this because it’s sad to see people go but I’ve been blogging here for over 5 years and I’m not going to stop anytime soon. I also wrote most of this while having bad anxiety at like 3am last night so it’s all over the place and i’m probably going to think of like eight things in the shower later I forgot to mention because i’ve been thinking over this ask for like two weeks now. 

[impracticaldemon]

Tales of Iron & Paper: Gajevy #1 Fiction of the Iron Slayer

Author's Note: The first of my Gajevy (or Gale) drabbles & short stories.  These will be published under the overall title “Tales of Iron & Paper”.

Prompt: [from @eliz1313 / eliz1369]  Gajeel & Levy in college... maybe stuck in an English/creative writing course together? :)

Words: ~ 1600  || Fanfiction Link

Fiction of the Iron Dragon (or, Secret Art of the Iron Dragon)

Levy was undeniably excited about her creative writing course. It was an invitation-only class, and invitations were only issued to students in their second or third year at Magnolia University who had demonstrated a talent for and an interest in writing during a prior year. Levy had always been a shoo-in, along with her best friend Lucy, but she hadn't fully believed she'd get in until the letter from the Chair of the English Department had arrived in the mail over the summer.

Levy and Lucy arrived early for the class and grabbed good spots by the windows not too far from the front. There was only one other student in the room, a guy a little older than they were who looked like he'd probably just stayed after an earlier class. They assumed that he would be heading out as soon as more of their own classmates arrived. Nothing about his multiple piercings, sleeveless navy T-shirt, or elaborate black Mohawk suggested an honours English student. He eyed them as they came in, but then went back to his book.

The rest of the students arrived in twos and threes, and Lucy eventually noticed that she'd lost her friend's attention. Levy kept looking back at Black Mohawk.

"What's up, Levy? I'm sure he'll figure it out once the class starts. Why do you keep staring at him?"

"I'm not staring," Levy replied, frowning. "It's more that… I recognize him now, and I feel kind of weird that I didn't say hi when we walked in."

"Um, he kind of stands out—how come you only remember him now?"

Levy huffed in exasperation. "Maybe because he had fewer piercings and no Mohawk last time? Geez, Luce, give me some credit. The point is, he's actually a local artist; he does amazingly delicate metalwork, real showpieces. Mostly for rich folks, I assume."

"And now he wants to learn how to write novels?"

"This class isn't just about novels," Levy pointed out. "You're just fixated."

"Moving right along, your point is?"

Levy turned a little pink. "Ah, well, he has this really cute—"

"Cat?" asked Lucy, sighing. "Levy, just because a guy has a cat—"

"Says you. You never would've met Natsu if I hadn't noticed Happy, am I right?"

Lucy sighed. "Yeah. But… it's not like he's asked me on a date."

Levy rolled her eyes. "So why don't you ask him? And it's not like you haven't been out to movies and dinner and stuff. He's just kind of… clueless, you know?"

"Yeah," repeated Lucy.

The prof arrived at that point, gave an enthusiastic outline of the course, and then explained that they weren't going to do introductions the usual way.

"Because that's boring, especially for a class full of budding creative geniuses." Lucy and Levy exchanged looks—they honestly couldn't tell from the prof's tone whether he meant it seriously, or in a joking way, or in a bitter, sarcastic way. Then the man grinned and raised his eyebrows. "Not sure how to take that? Well keep that in mind during the first part of today's first exercise: I'm going to assign partners, and you have ten minutes to get to know each other. You can say anything you want, but you both have to keep your eyes closed the whole time. There should be time to meet five or six other students—we'll take an hour—and then everyone will write down everything they can remember about who they met."

Several hands shot into the air, and some students just started calling out questions. The prof waited for the shouters to tail off and then picked up a sheet of paper. He ignored the waving hands just as thoroughly.

"When I call your name, please stand up. Like the animals of Noah's ark, you will get together two by two. I will inform you when time is up and who the next partners are. All set? Excellent."

He read out the first two names, ignoring a final, feebly waving hand. The two students named stood up, smiled a little awkwardly at each other, and walked away to the corner of the room not occupied by Black Mohawk. Speaking of whom…

For some reason, Levy wasn't remotely surprised when she found herself paired up with Black Mohawk, whose real name was Gajeel Redfox. Since he had a back corner of the room to himself, Levy walked over, trying not to stare. She was glad that the prof had read out the names. She could remember the cat's name—Pantherlily—but she wasn't all that good with people names, unless they came out of a book.

"Um, hi Gajeel, I'm Levy. You probably don't remember—"

The man grinned at her. He was big, and rather scary-looking, but Levy kept picturing the tears he'd blinked hastily away when she'd brought him his cat, in answer to a "Lost" ad posted on a tree.

"Ain't ya supposed to close yer eyes or something Levy? I wouldn't want ta mess up my first time in a university class by breakin the rules."

Levy stared at him. How did he even get into this course? What was he doing here?

Gajeel took in Levy's stunned expression. "C'mon, sit down, shorty. We don't want to waste our ten minutes, right?" He indicated a chair with a tilt of his head, and Levy sank into it, still confused.

Gajeel had seemed like a really good guy when they'd met before, but not exactly the Creative Writing course type, even without the mohawk. They'd kind of traded favours, in a way—she'd brought him his cat and he'd beaten the crap out of the guy who'd jumped her a couple of days later on her way back from a late class. She'd been lucky that Gajeel had been in the area. With the clock running now, Levy opted for the direct route.

"So, Gajeel," she said, obediently closing her eyes "how did you get into this class if you weren't attending Magnolia U last year?"

"Bribed the Dean," Gajeel responded immediately.

"You what?!" Levy's eyes flew open. There was an odd expression on her partner's face and a hint of a blush on his cheeks, but he made a big production of looking away until she closed her eyes again.

"Offered him two pieces of my art for the university if I could take this course. It was a good deal for him—my art's pretty pricey these days."

"Um, okay, yeah… I know it's gotten really popular, but why did you want to take this course."

There was the sound of a chair scraping against the floor, and Levy could picture the big artist twisting in his seat.

"Well… seemed like a good way ta meet ya. Under better circumstances, so to speak."

"What?!" This time Levy kept her eyes closed, but she could feel the heat of the blush spreading across her cheeks. "You bribed the Dean of MU to let you take an invite-only class just so that you could meet me?"

"Kind of. I figured that this was the one class I could do okay in—on account of my song-writing, right?—and that way I'd get a chance to see you more often."

"You write songs?!" Levy asked, grasping at facts like a swimmer trying to grab a raft so they don't drown.

"Yeah. The band made me get the stupid Mohawk, but my hair's never been exactly normal anyway."

Gajeel sounded like he was on the verge of laughing. The more flustered Levy became, the more he relaxed. Levy debated asking him why he had gone to so much trouble to take a course with her, but she could only think of one answer and it made her too shy to ask.

"How, um, how much of this did you set up?" Levy squeaked instead.

"Gihi! Most of it, to be honest. It's how I demonstrated my creative ability to construct a viable plot with interesting and moderately rational characters." Gajeel was clearly quoting somebody, and his mimicry was perfect—he sounded exactly like their current prof. Levy wished she could open her eyes to see whether anybody else was paying attention to this bizarre scene out of a cut rate Disney movie.

In an eerie coincidence, their prof called out a two minute warning—although Levy was sure that it had been at least ten minutes already. She could only suppose that the Dean was a fan of Gajeel's artwork.

"Gajeel?"

"Yeah?"

"Aren't you supposed to ask me questions?" Levy asked a little timidly.

"Nah, that's okay. Although, uh… I do have one." He cleared his throat. "Would you go out with me on Thursday night? Just dinner, nothing weird, I promise. I'll, uh, try ta fix the hair, but no guarantees on that."

This time Levy opened her eyes on purpose and fixed Gajeel with her best 'don't mess with me' glare. It was surprisingly good for somebody who only reached five foot two in two-inch heels.

"I barely know you, Mr. Redfox," she said severely.

"But you had ten minutes to ask anything you wanted," he protested. "Not my fault you got stuck on irrelevant details."

"Irrelevant details?!"

"Is that a maybe?"

Levy stood up haughtily, took one look at Gajeel's wistful expression and sat down again.

"Fine. Thursday night?"

"Yes!" Levy turned red and tried not to grin when the artist-songwriter-maybe-boyfriend pumped a fist in the air in a universal expression of victory.

At the front of the class, the prof looked up from whatever he was writing.

"Ah. Very good then. Time to switch partners, class. Two-by-two if you please…"

[END]

A/Note: I have no idea where this came from. I just... I don't know. I hope you enjoyed this! Please leave a note or review if you can. :)

Tag: @shell-senji @pocketwoman7 @sanguine-fairy @sassyhazelowl @miss-zei @unashamed-shipper @faerieshrimp @thesweateristoobig @strawberrysweetlove35