#ugh. editing. the bane of my existence

[the-sparkling-diamond-satine]

32. say please for the WIP Ask Game

Send me an ask from my WIP List and I'll post a little snippet or tell you something about it!

This one is slightly nsfw-ish

A present from Christian may be new but the Duke is often bringing Satine all sorts of treats: new hats and gloves, shiny earrings and sparkly bracelets, stick candy and pretty baubles and silly little trinkets. But of course, such things are never freely given. No; they always, always come at a price. Presents have to be earned. Satine drops to her knees, not wanting to wait any longer. She reaches for the zipper on Christian’s pants, fumbling it in her eagerness, delighted for the opportunity to show him that she deserves to be gifted presents, to be treated with affection. That it isn’t wasted on someone like her, that she will make it worth his while.

[compacflt]

hey i just wanted to thank you so much for all of WIP Wednesdays and other insights into your writing process (from tags to answering asks) that you've posted so far. i'm a huge fan of wwgattai and debriefing, and everything new that you post is so wonderful. the amount of work that you've put into this is astounding, and the results (from what i've been able to read and otherwise glean so far) are incredible. all of this to say - i love your writing, i love to hear about the writing process and your thoughts on the characters and the universe. it's really special to be able to read and follow along, so thank you so much

(also i have not ever had a fic alter my brain chemistry the way that this has. the fic has had me in its tractor beam since october - literally cannot stop thinking about it, truly some amazing stuff)

ugh this ask means so much to me, thank you. i could talk about the process for this fic for literal years, mostly because it is the bane of my actual existence!!!!!! i was not supposed to care about this series at all!!! ‘when we get around to talking about it’ was originally just a 10k one-shot bouncing back and forth between charlie & ice’s povs as they try to figure out their equally extremely fraught and difficult relationships with maverick. the “we” in the title was supposed to be mav and charlie! it was originally more about mav’s relationship with women than it was about ice’s relationship with men—obviously that idea didn’t pan out! (it’s why there’s so much residual sexism in the story actually, i was originally trying to highlight the differences between ice & charlie as men and women… mav’s sexism in the original top gun is my least favorite thing about that movie and it really stuck with me) & ‘debriefing�� started out as just extra dumb little one-shots that didn’t make it into wwgattai (specifically just venice & the smoking weed scene) with no connective tissue whatsoever to the original fic. like. both fics were written out of order and without an outline, which… is why trying to fix their gigantic structural issues is such a bitch for me right now.

i can trace back every problem im having with the story back to one (1) day (august 14th) when i wrote both wwgattai chapters 7 and 8 without planning or thinking about the consequences of certain actions. i don’t want to get too deep in the weeds but there are so many mistakes i made that day that ive been paying for for months (for instance, the factual inaccuracy of ice & mav’s fucked-up ranks, the soft squishy landing of pulling roosters papers, CHOOSING TO MAKE ICE RESPONSIBLE FOR THAT [because i hadn’t seen TGM for two months at that point & forgot what happened in the movie], not actually going into what it means for ice to be at the top of the american war machine, not bothering to ask how it’s even possible that one motherfucker can be this far up his own ass for thirty fucking years…) idk. like, when i wrote 90% of this fic i didn’t care about it, but now i… really do. idk why, but i really do. and im paying for the mistakes i made when i didn’t. which is why the edit is taking so long.

but stuff like this keeps me going :’) thank you <3

[specialagentartemis]

5, 10, and 14!

5. have you ever made a playlist about something you were writing as an elaborate means to procrastinate when you could have been actually writing and if yes drop a link, son

Hah, I'm honestly not really a playlist-as-inspiration person. For me, playlists/fanmixes are an independent fanart form that I don't really feel the impulse to make about my own work.

However I definitely listen to my Murderbot synth fanmix a lot now to get in the Zone for writing Murderbot fanfic.

10. at what point in the process do you come up with titles, and how easy or hard is that for you?

TITLES... THE BANE OF MY EXISTENCE...

Most of the time, titles only come at the end, when it's time to share the story, and I go "fuvk fuck fuck what do I call it." I very rarely have a title in mind when I'm writing something; most of my documents are titled things like "Ezri fic 1" "Ezri fic 2" "Ezri fic 3" or "Murderbot - Indah and Gerth" and "Murderbot - Ratthi whump". Even original stories are stuff like "Aro Ace Anxiety Aliens story" and "astrology story". *I* know what I mean!

Which means titles tend to come at the very end.

There are a couple where the titles have come early on and I want to write specifically for that - I have a Metal Gear fic half-outlined that who knows if I will ever write called "This Place Is Not a Place of Honor" about Naomi Hunter's life story, and a Star Trek fic idea that's been floating around my brain for a while called "An Object In Motion" about the Enterprise suffering a Random Engine Failure (as u do) while moving at .25c and if they don't fix the engines real fast they are going to collide with the planet they were travelling to.

But mostly titles are either one word or a short phrase relevant to the story that I have to come up with on the spot when posting/submitting it.

14. what’s your worst writing habit?

Wanting to write and then not writing :') Also not wanting to edit once the words are on the page :'''') Going "ugh I don't want to edit it's Fine" is probably my worst writing habit.

That and awful slouchy posture.

[cranetreegang]

6, 26, 77!

6. What’s the last line you wrote?

“I have to know,” he says in a teasing tone, “did Prewett actually cry?” 😅

26. What’s your least favorite part of the writing process?

Ugh. Editing. Like sometimes it's great and goes super well. Other times it's the bane of my existence when I realize what I have written down makes no sense and now I have to beat the story into submission.

77. Why do you enjoy writing fanfiction?

It's nice not having to worry about World Building as the majority of it is already done for you, and you can just *write*.

And most of these characters I fall in love with and can't help but want to write out different scenarios for them.

Another is the community -> I love being able to gush over our favorite characters together.

-------------------

Thank you for the ask!! These are really getting my mind thinking haha <3

[caffeinated-creepshow]

TRATM I: An Intro to Her Hell

Chapter one of The Raven and the Mockingbird, a T-rated Deadman Wonderland fanfic from 2013-17. Since this an archive, I am not editing the chapters as they are posted. Follows an OC named Tsumetai and her relationship with canon character, Toto Sakigami.

Word count: 507 | Original Quotev post | Summary and masterlist

Full chapter below the cut

“What in the bloody hell is going on?!” she had screamed at the top of her lungs as everything collapsed around her. The earthquake had already claimed the life of Tsumetai’s only living relatives, her twin brother Fuyu and her mother Aki. At age 12, her whole life had been torn apart. But the loss of her family was nothing compared to the fact her entire being was altered by the Nameless Worm.

“Ugh….I hate when memories of my horrible past take over when I sleep….Always makes me jittery and unpredictable…” Tsumetai muttered to herself. Sitting up in bed, she looked around her dark, morbid room and sighed. “Another day in Hell…And another day closer to my Carnival Corpse….I’m so gonna be dead…” Standing up and stretching, she allowed her quilt to fall to the floor. It was a plaid and striped quilt her mother had had…Until she had died. Gritting her teeth, Tsumetai cursed that day. It was the bane of her existence, and had been what had thrown her into the hellhole she resided in. She had just finished buttoning her long trench-like jacket when a knock caused her head to whip around in the direction of the door.

“Tsumetai?” the voice of Chaplin Sukegawa called from the other side. Smiling softly, Tsumetai pulled her boots on and headed to the door, leaving them untied. Opening it slightly, she saw the face of her Sempai beaming back at her. Pulling the door open wider, she stepped into the hallway and greeted her. “Good morning Tsume!” Chaplin chirped cheerily.

“Good morning Sempai!” Tsumetai responded as happily as she could. Noting the fake cheerfulness in Tsumetai’s tone, Chaplin frowned slightly. Reaching over, she poked both of Tsumetai’s cheeks a couple times before sighing and giving up.

“Another memory for a dream, I presume?” Chaplin asked. Tsumetai nodded a yes, sighing to herself. “They’ve gotten worse ever since that boy showed up. That you are in love with.” Giggling slightly, Chaplin poked Tsumetai’s arm lightly. When the blush she was waiting for appeared on Tsumetai’s face, she announced “I have predicted it once again! I am a genius.” Rolling her eyes, Tsumetai just walked past her Sempai, towards where she secretly practiced her Branch of Sin. When she passed Toto’s room, she glanced at the door and smiled slightly. “Oooh! Tsume-chan’s thinkin’ ‘bout her crush again!!!” Chaplin exclaimed dramatically. “Go to him child, and kiss him!”

“Yeah. I’ll do that the day I murder you, meaning never,” Tsumetai muttered quietly, trying excessively to not draw Toto out of his room. Quickening her pace, she tried to put as much distance between her and that door as possible. “He’ll never know that I love him…Anyway, I have to go….Bye Sempai!”

“Bye-bye my child,” Chaplin responded, heading back to her room.

“Well, now’s better than never…” Tsumetai muttered while pulling a copy of the first volume of a yaoi from her messenger bag. Opening it to the first page, she started walking around aimlessly, reading the manga with intense focus.

[starsstuddedsky]

how do i write good fics like you? some tips would be lovely:)

also, all your fics are fantastic!! you are arguably one of the best writer in this platform...

hello!! thank you so much you are truly too kind <3

as for tips, i'm not sure i can really tell you anything new, but the most important thing is to do is write: write write write until you have carpel tunnel

also to read, not just fics but explore a lot of genres and read stuff that challenges you!

under the cut i'll talk about some more me-specific things

as for how i usually write, i have an outline with varying degrees of detail. for example, for Jeonghan Insurance Fraud, it was just eight bullet points and a loose idea of what i wanted to happen and then i just wrote and stuff happened (the laser tag was not in my original plan but i wanted more to happen)

i tend to write chronologically, but a lot of people (like @chocolatemilk139) write the scenes out of order (which i'm actually doing with the current fic i'm working on) — do whatever feels best for you!

i highly recommend having a beta reader, or at least someone you can bounce ideas off. i beg @chocolatemilk139 to read/edit my work bc a second set of eyes is always superior (and she’s so much better at grammar than me), and literally nothing I’ve written would be half as good without her <3

if you don’t have a beta reader still edit!! it is the bane of my existence sometimes, but, especially if you’re stuck and not sure where to go, going back to the beginning and reading what you’ve done so far can be super helpful (and I personally hate finding grammar mistakes in my writing. no matter how well I edit they’re always there. ugh)

my last piece of advice is to never delete anything, ever! i have plenty of docs (fics and non) that i pray will never see the light of day, but never, ever, ever delete! even if you don't come back to it, you want to hold onto it!!

[spacejammie-eimmajecaps]

I wish this fic would just write itself, but noooooo, I have to do it

[khruseosold]

It just dawned on me how many icons I have to make. Granted, I start with small batches and I’m not one to even want a ton of icons, but still.

[terapsina]

Fanfic writer ask game: 4, 8, 15, 16, 18

4. Do you prefer writing multi-chapter or oneshot fanfictions?

It really rather depends. Writing multi-chapter stories is certainly a lot more stressful (the sad line of my old dropped attempts rather showcase that).

But at the same time my longer stories do bring me bigger amounts of joy I guess. I get INVESTED in them.

But I also love writing short little drabbles that are like me baking a cookie, instead of a line of cakes. So I guess I like writing both, it's just about what I'm in the mood for.

8. What kind of document do you use to you write? Microsoft Word? Google Docs? Straight in the AO3 text box?

No, I'm a true savage, I write straight on Tumblr and make frequent use of 'save as draft' (I have an explanation to this, I used to write more TV show meta posts when I joined the hellsite, and I got so used to this particular font, in this particular size, on this particular background that writing anywhere else gets so distracting I might as well give up).

I do last edits in AO3 drafts though 🥺 that makes everything okay, right?

15. Are there words, phrases, mannerisms or scenes you tend to use a lot?

Ugh, the bane of my existence is how when I write and come up with a word that fits, the word somehow gets stuck in my mind and I'll find it used again two paragraphs down. And I don't notice until I do a reread aloud in editing. At which point I tend to google a bunch of synonyms.

Also: 'burst into laughter', 'choked back her tears', 'swallowed past the stone in her throat'. Also also my characters tend to raise their eyebrows and roll their eyes a lot, I think.

16. How long is your longest fic?

31'060 words as of yesterday, She's Come Undone and Set Free. Who knew how invested I'd get into letting Elena be angry; having Caroline dealing with her s1 trauma; making TVD era Rebekah get actual friends; and (most recently) giving Bonnie a properly interesting love interest *cough*Rebekah*cough*. (I already knew I could get invested in Elejah, that one wasn't a surprise).

18. Recommend someone else fic! (And tag them if they have a tumblr!)

This question is confusing but I'll take it to mean I should recommend someone else's fic to everyone who reads this.

Okay. I'm gonna narrow it down to TVD/Legacies fics because that's what I'm recently writing myself and if I don't put some kind of theme limit I'll get a headache.

We Remain by AnonymousObsesser - Elejah, starts during American Gothic and then goes a completely different way (I have read the first three chapters at least 5 times, the Elejah feelings are seriously top-notch).

A Year to Eternity? by @missnmikaelson - Elejah, Klaroline, a bit of Bonnie/Kol, a bit of Handon - Starts out during 5x12 of The Originals. But with TVD had a different ending (Elena isn't married to certain people for example and I love it). Neither Elijah, nor Klaus die because that's stupid (Caroline yells a bunch at Klaus about it, Elena's blood is always the magic cure we should all know this: "To seal the Hollow away we need the willing support of Elena Gilbert." Amusement sparkled in his eyes. "I'm asking about your knees, Nik, because you're about to grovel on them.").

plastic crown by @jennifersminds - Elejah but not as the focus, the focus is Elena runs away from the Salvatores (Rebekah gives her a car, Elena ends up in Vegas, I honestly don't know how to describe it, the story just has a very unique imagery) and tries to build herself back up. Trauma. Vengeance. Female friendship. Strip clubs and slight bit of vampiric serial killing. Oh, just read it, you'll understand.

(I think the three above mentioned fics can probably be blamed for me starting to write She's Come Undone).

tis the season for a kidnapping by @vorpalmuchness - Elejah, Elena gets kidnapped by a couple of idiots whose information is a BIT out of date (they call Elijah and expect gratitude is what I mean, those poor poor morons). And I LOVE it.

being unwanted (and wanting too much); by @natalia-dyer - Post s4 Hizzie, basically Lizzie coming to her great lesbian awakening/acceptance of self as she realizes why none of the guys were ever quite right.

Torn by the hours by @isagrimorie - (if you don't think I absolutely love that fic, you are WRONG, it lives in MY head rent free). Hizzie, with Lizzie waking up in the middle of the battlefield where Hope has pulled a full on massacre because she thought Lizzie was dead? I am RABID for this scene.

(okay, it's possible I overdid it a lil'bit).

[witchygirl99]

finding a photo of your enemy as a toddler, inukag

Ask, and you shall receive.

1800 words under the cut. Not edited. Written at work so it was a shoddy rush job and everything is very vague and you'll just have to accept this.

I'll write a proper, better video gamer AU one day. For now though...

Won't You Say (You Love Me, Too)

The thing is—

The thing is that Inuyasha isn’t meant to be here. Sure, he’s a little drunk. And sure, Koga’s stupid face dared him, because Koga is both stupid, has a face, and that face is stupid. Inuyasha didn’t have to listen, though. Inuyasha could have done a billion other things, like walk away, or laugh the dare off, or – or – could have even gotten himself another drink.

That… That would have been the smarter plan.

Inuyasha hiccups, flinching at the noise. He is so not supposed to be here.

“Inuyasha,” stupid Koga hisses from below. It’s probably supposed to be a whisper. It’s not. It’s like…quieter yelling, but yelling nonetheless.

Haughtily, Inuyasha glares down at his teammate. The window that he’s jimmied open to break into the Priestess House is still open. It’s unseasonably warm for an autumn night, but it’s strangely comforting. At least, Inuyasha thinks so. That could just be the alcohol talking, though.

“Inuyasha,” Koga hisses again, “what do you see?”

He blinks, frowns, and then squints into the dark room. There’s not a ton of illumination from either the moon, or the streetlights. He thinks, dimly, that this is a…bedroom? A bedroom. This is not, in fact, the office that they thought they were breaking into.

[Read the rest below the cut.]

He takes in a deep breath, brain pinging at him worriedly. He knows this scent. It’s familiar. Too familiar. Inuyasha should know whose room he’s in and it’s on the tip of his tongue – his nose? No, that’s not a saying �� when Koga makes another hissing sound.

Ugh.

“What?” Inuyasha snarls, so desperate to glare out the window at his stupid teammate and at said stupid teammate’s face that he nearly stumbles. Bracing himself on the little table underneath, he makes a point to roll his eyes when the wolf demon waves alarmingly at him. “What is so urgent that you need to—”

“I hear them,” Koga whisper-yells, because he’s stupid. “They’re just down the street.”

“What?” he exclaims, but this time it’s desperate rather than irritated. “I thought Miroku said the girls would be gone for at least an hour.”

“Well, his intel is shit,” Koga replies. “Now get out!”

So much for sneaking into their offices to find out if any of their playing strategies would be visible. The regional gaming tournament is only two days away, and every single member of the six-person Priestess team has been dominating the competition. Their battle strategies have taken weaker characters and turned them into something surprisingly efficient. It should be impossible. Character stats don’t lie.

And yet. And yet. The women of the Priestess House have made a mockery of nearly everyone there. And the worst of them?

Kagome Higurashi. The absolute bane of his existence. She came onto the scene about three years ago, rising up the ranks. Inuyasha hadn’t even given her a second thought until The Incident last year.

The Incident, in which she—

“Inuyasha,” Koga hisses again, like an angry cat. A cat. Not a wolf. Inuyasha should tell him this. Inuyasha is desperate to tell him this. “You need to jump out the window, you fuck.”

Right. The Priestess girls were coming back. Kagome would be with them and that would be— That would be bad. Not just because of the breaking and entering, or the trespassing. It would be bad because Inuyasha would have to be around her for likely more than a minute, which would mean that he’d have to stare into those dark eyes and that too-kind smile – like they’re friends, which they are not – and then—

“For fuck’s sake, I’m going to leave you,” Koga states, and that finally drills through Inuyasha’s pretty drunk skull. Can skulls be drunk?

No?

Maybe.

“I’m coming,” Inuyasha replies, pushing upwards, but he’s an idiot. The table underneath him isn’t that sturdy, and so his pressure on it to climb back out the window from which he entered sends a picture frame crashing to the ground.

“Inuyasha!”

“Oh my god, say my name one more time and I will murder you!” Inuyasha snaps. Koga is not helping, that fucking fuck. “Hold the fuck on, we can’t let them know—” And he bends down to grab the frame and put it back. Hopefully whoever’s room this is won’t notice.

And then he sees the picture in the frame, practically mocking him. It’s fucking Kagome Higurashi, no more than four years old and clinging to a small baby who looks distinctly unhappy by the entire experience. It’s undoubtedly her. While there’s more chub to her cheeks, those are the same sparkling eyes and that’s the same beaming smile. He would know that smile anywhere because it always makes him feel off-balance, confused. No one just smiles at people, at strangers. No one just smiles at you while they’re getting destroyed in one-on-one battle, and then shakes your hand with that same happy smile when they’ve lost. They don’t use that exact same smile when they see you again later in the year, at another tournament, and only stop smiling when they beat you so badly—

Oh god.

Oh fucking god.

This is Kagome’s bedroom. This is Kagome’s bedroom and he’s in her room and—

Kagome Higurashi at four years old smiles the exact same way, and she’s clinging to a little boy and that’s a big purple dinosaur right beside her on the couch. A dinosaur. She likes dinosaurs, oh god this is the worst—

“Godspeed, fucker,” Koga whispers-yells. “We hardly knew ye!” There’s the distinct sound of bushes rustling. His own teammate has abandoned him. Inuyasha is going to commit murder.

Firmly putting down the picture frame, Inuyasha starts the careful climb back out the window. He’s got one leg out, half of his body strained to reach the little lip in the brickwork he climbed up earlier. His hands grab at the sill, twisting him, and then he sees it.

It.

The purple dinosaur.

It’s on her bed, perfectly placed and disgustingly cute.

“Oh no,” Inuyasha groans, and then promptly shoves himself out the window. It takes him ten precious seconds to balance, and then another ten seconds to close the window and hide the fact he ever broke in in the first place. At the first sound of voices, Inuyasha freezes against the brick, propped up in a little corner and distinctly not looking down. It’s not a far drop, but the last thing Inuyasha needs is to lose his balance, topple into the garden, and then have the Priestess women come running to see what the fuck happened.

He waits, breath nearly held, until they start opening the door. There’s enough fuss and discussion that Inuyasha feels safe in making his escape, running away like the hounds of hell are chasing him. He doesn’t stop. He doesn’t look back.

When he finds Koga, lounging on the couch and drinking yet another beer at their shared gaming house, it takes a solid ten seconds of very slow counting to remind himself that murder is bad.

Besides, they have a tournament to win on Saturday.

X+X

The next day, Inuyasha finds himself looking for purple dinosaurs on Amazon.

This is, well, not ideal.

“What are you doing?” Hachi asks, eyes narrowed in confusion and then widening in concern when Inuyasha flinches to hide this embarrassing lack of restraint. “Wow, okay.”

“Fuck off,” Inuyasha replies, but he’s too mortified to even make it mean-sounding. He just comes off as pathetic.

There’s a snort in the doorway, and Miroku comes bumbling in with a clipboard. He takes his duties as team manager far too seriously. “What did Hachi do wrong now?”

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” Hachi replies, eyeing Inuyasha again. “He’s the one that went all crazy when I asked him what he was doing.”

“And what was he doing?” Miroku presses. He’s grinning like a fool because he’s the worst. The worst best friend a guy could ask for. Inuyasha doesn’t know why he’s teammates with these idiots. It’s bad enough he’s got to deal with Koga.

“I wasn’t do anything,” he tries, but Hachi’s just shaking his head.

“Looking at his phone. I don’t know.”

Miroku turns to him, a shark that smells blood in the water. “Your phone? Who are you texting?”

“No one,” Inuyasha scoffs. “Fuck off.”

This gets a nod, and he has one moment of hope that Miroku won’t push the issue when his best friend hums. “You’re right. You have no friends outside of this team.”

“I’m not his friend!” Koga yells from somewhere else in the house.

Inuyasha sighs.

“So you must have been watching something.”

“No,” Hachi argues, “he was holding his phone like this. He was reading something, or maybe scrolling?”

“Inuyasha can’t read!” comes Koga’s voice again. They all ignore him.

“You’re not on Instagram,” Miroku hums, playing fucking Sherlock Holmes. “And you’re definitely not on TikTok. Discord is just another form of talking to people, so that’s out.”

Growling, he shoves his phone in the pocket of hoodie and gets up. “I am leaving.”

“Ooh, he’s leaving,” his friend continues, blue eyes alight with something dangerously close to glee. “Fuck, it has to be about Kagome then. That’s the only time you get this pissy.”

“Ha!” Hachi laughs because he, too, is the worst.

“That’s my future wife!” Koga yells from the other room, but that’s just because he’s delusional. As if someone like Koga could fucking rub two braincells together enough to impress her. Inuyasha’s face does a thing at the very thought.

“Oh my god, it is!” Miroku cackles.

“No,” Inuyasha answers, and he thinks he does a pretty good job of remaining calm. “But fuck you, anyways.”

“Are you reading her Wikitubia again?” his friend asks and that is it—

“One time!” Inuyasha yells, storming away from the main room. “That was one time!”

His teammates’ laughter follows him all the way back to his bedroom. Shippo, rubbing at his eyes after his nap – because he acts like a literal child, it’s embarrassing – just stares at him confusedly. “What did I miss?”

Inuyasha doesn’t stop walking. “Absolutely fucking nothing.” He gets into his room, shuts the door with a disturbing amount of care, and then leaps onto his bed to try and suffocate himself with a pillow. The walls of their gaming house aren’t that thick. If he tries hard enough, Inuyasha could hear the shit they’re undoubtedly still talking about him.

One time, Inuyasha pathetically whines in his head. He was only caught staring at her Wikitubia page one time. He was sizing up the enemy. Looking for weaknesses to exploit. That’s the only reason he did it. Just like that’s the only reason he watches her YouTube videos religiously, at least once a day, and always at night once everyone else has fallen asleep.

It’s not because of anything weird. It’s because she’s the enemy. She’s the competition. Inuyasha must figure out a way to destroy her.

Later that night, when he goes back to re-watching an old YouTube video of hers – one Kagome had posted within the first month of her rise to so-called fame – that he sees it.

It.

The purple dinosaur.

Sitting propped up on some pillows, like a prized treasure.

“Motherfucker,” Inuyasha snaps. He doesn’t stop the video, though. There could be secrets. Weaknesses to exploit. Yadda yadda yadda, he’s not in denial, this is only his third time watching it, blah blah—

Kagome smiles in the video and his chest does the thing.

Inuyasha sighs. Miroku can never, ever see his browsing history.

X+X

Tagging: @ideasthatbuildcities​ @wolfcry77​ @alerialblu​ @misspepperpottss​ @sailorbabydoll92​ @willowandfog​ @amethystablaze​ @fawn-eyed-girl​ @noyourenotreal​ @hnn-wnchstr​ @liz8080​ @nsr0716​ @superpixie42​ @itzatakahashi​ @mandirox89​ @inussunflower​ @cstormsinukagblog​ @nartista​ @hopidoodle​ @princessinume​ @lavendertwilight89​ @anxietyaardvark​ @omgitscharlie​ @theinuyashareader​ @ruddcatha​ @umacaking​ @kagometaishostory​ @cammysansstuff​ @sacred-arrow-writes @sacred-arrow @gicu2 @neutronstarchild @kalcia

[demonessryu]

Give yourself a break from the tablecloth and do something else. Preferably something smaller heh. And just come back to the tablecloth when you feel refreshed. :)

I take many breaks to write and edit fics! But then I go back to this and go ugh why won’t it complete itself lol

Not that anyone is asking but here’s the bane of my existence for the past two weeks. I need people to understand my pain

I can’t say it’s hard because it’s actually pretty simple, but it’s definitely exhausting. I’m absolutely trying something smaller after this. Maybe tote bags or coin purses. Are those harder or easier? I guess I’ll find out

[lunarfly]

Honestly, you should check out this Dante Wood fella on Quora. He’s this multi potterhead ship hater who asks many rude and insulting questions on Romione, Harmione, Hinny and Dramione shippers. He’s literally become the bane of their existence. I almost would feel bad for them but then I realize these are the same users/shippers that ask insincere questions to the other ship/shipper. Guess karma is a bitch;)

Hello, thank you for the ask!

Yeah, I checked out his profile and I'm not so impressed. He's hateful and spiteful. But I must admit, he has got a very fair point. Before I talk about that though, I'll just bring up a few things:

Even though he often underlines very important issues with our fandom's "ship wars," his account still shouldn't exist. He's rude and he goes the wrong way about sending his messages. He keeps spitting venom out of his mouth when he should try to be logical and explain his points without any insults and attacks. But when do respectful people ever get anything, it's always the drama and over exaggeration that draws people's attention.

He's hypocritical. He says he hates the fact that shippers constantly generalize the other sides of the fandom but he also generalizes shippers himself. He calls out shippers collectively, as if we were all to blame for a few people's toxic behavior and generalizing tendencies. He generalizes us (the shippers) by saying we all generalize each other (the other shippers).

He hates on Harmione/Romione/Hinny/Dramione and only justifies his hatred by the shippers. But just hating it isn't bad at all, everyone's allowed to hate something. The thing is, he also claims that all of these ships "suck" and are all "garbage." He never presents any arguments or constructive criticism, he just says they're objectively bad ships because they have bad shippers. I'm pretty sure everyone can see the problem with this logic.

Now about his messages. I must say, I agree with him a whole lot. So many people in this fandom tend to generalize everyone. Examples of this?

"Harmione shippers haven't read the books! They only ship it because of the movies!"

"You only ship Hermione with ___ because you use her as a self-insert tool! You ___/Hermione shippers only want to project your own feelings onto her, you don't actually understand her character!"

"All Romione/Hinny shippers are toxic! None of them respect our ship!"

"All Harmione/Dramione shippers hate Ron and Ginny"

And much more.

While many of those claims do apply to many shippers, they don't apply to everyone. And generalizing a group of people while talking about them negatively is obviously wrong and harms both sides of the "war."

The ridiculous argument that "Harmony shippers haven't read the books" started (or gained popularity) in 2005 when J.K. Rowling said this in an interview:

JKR: Well I think anyone who is still shipping Harry/Hermione after this book –

ES: [whispered] Delusional!

JKR: Uh ’ no! But they need to go back and reread, I think.

That one simple comment still affects the H/Hr shipping community to this day, even after JKR admitted the possibility of H/Hr in 2014.. People are still calling us dumb and delusional, people still claim that we haven't read the books - and this argument has been expanded after people started noticing how the movies were sort of pushing a H/Hr narrative - people still make fun of us and many don't take us seriously. But people were shipping Harmione long before the release of the movies and they (including me) have written countless analyses pointing out moments from the books and reasons why Harry and Hermione would make a good couple but this ridiculous generalization, a kind of rumor, is still around and I don't think it's going to leave any time soon.

The Ron and Ginny bashing rumor is more understandable since a huge part of the H/Hr fandom absolutely hate the two gingers and will find anything to tear them down and make them seem as cartoonishly evil as possible. But we still shouldn't apply this to everyone. I, for one, love Ron and Ginny and know many Harmione shippers who feel the same way.

(In the following paragraphs I am talking about the HP fandom generally but obviously these things don't apply to every person individually.)

The majority of the Harry Potter fandom these days only truly accepts book lovers into discussions and their "main" fandom (people who solely make video edits or such are in a different kind of fandom). But everyone who's a book lover and doesn't ship Romione/Hinny or dislikes Ron/Ginny will slowly be forced to either liking these or leaving the fandom. Because, according to most of the fandom, if you don't like these characters/pairings, you haven't read the books, you're toxic and you're stupid. If you like Harmione, you're automatically labeled with "Movie Watcher," "Weasley Basher," "Toxic Garbage." People will start making assumptions about you and your work before they know you. Even if people learn that you're not any of those, these generalizations won't stop. No matter how much you do, no one will take you seriously, no one will care, no one will accept you, no one will explore your work. You will only be acknowledged in the book-loving fandom if you ship Romione and Hinny or if you're an extremely toxic person (that way you'll get mocked for every word that comes out of your mouth, but you'll deserve it if you're really a toxic person). This fandom also tends to misunderstand the words "toxic" and "bashing." Any sort of criticism is labeled with "bashing" and the author of that criticism is labeled with "toxic." Not that there aren't people who are toxic and hateful but our fandom tends to fail to see the difference between constructive criticism and hate.

And there are also those "big" accounts who are praised for every word they say. They can bash any ship or character they want to and the majority of the fandom (the book-loving, canon-ship-loving one that I explained) will agree with it and spread their words around. When they say something about one shipper, it will automatically be applied to everyone who ships that. If they say that any ship with Harry and Hermione that isn't Romione and Harmione suck, the majority of the fandom will accept it as objective truth and since they have most of the fandom supporting them they feel comfortable repeating and accepting these things. As a result of these things being accepted as common knowledge, the people who don't agree feel isolated from the fandom. For example, I do. I follow lots of people who ship Romione and Hinny or love Ron and Ginny because I also feel the same way about these characters and pairings. But I can't go a day without seeing at least one of them degrade Harmione and send hate to the ship + shippers. The more hate my ship gets, the more these rumors, labels and arguments spread around. And Harmione shippers get called stupid for loving a fictional pairing, so I constantly feel invalidated in this fandom, even if no one addresses me specifically. The ideas that Harmione is a horrible ship and its shippers are toxic and so on are so engrained in our fandom that they're seen as almost "rules" of the fandom and no single person can change that. I constantly feel like I'm invalid for liking Harmione and this isn't normal. Our fandom pushes the idea that the only intelligent people are those who support the canon pairings and disapprove of ships like Harmione, Fremione and etc. I understand the hatred against Dramione and every other toxic ship, but I can't for my life figure out why people feel the need to tear down every healthy fanon ship. But they do it anyway. They consider everyone who disagrees with them "stupid" and unintelligent. I feel like I don't belong every time I see comments like "Ugh, how can someone ship Harry and Hermione? They're like siblings, people! You clearly haven't read the books." or "Anyone who ships this doesn't have a brain, they're too strongly influenced by the movies. They clearly don't understand Harry and Hermione." Sometimes I see my own friends calling H/Hr "strange" and such and they clearly don't help me feel any better. I feel the need to go in Harmony-only spaces to recharge myself and regain the confidence and get the validation I need. Otherwise, I feel completely isolated and invalid.

I can't blame only one side of the fandom though. The shippers have been divided for decades now and they have been throwing insults at each other ever since. It's a never-ending war. The bad side of this today is that the book-loving fandom (the "main" fandom) has merged with the canon ships fandom and now these are inseparable. If you like the HP books, you must also like the canon pairings and dislike most of the others, otherwise you're never going to feel like you belong. So now anyone who ships Harmione won't be able to properly interact with the "main" fandom because nobody thinks their opinions that Harry and Hermione are a better match than Ron and Hermione are valid. Same thing with Dramione shippers. Do you see how Dramiones and Harmonians don't really engage in discussions or just don't interact with the "main" fandom in general (unless they're defending their ship)? They have created their own spaces, separated from the "main" fandom and that's where they are most of the time. That's where I go when I need more positivity and validation. I have the discord server and the Harmione subreddit to go to. That's the only place I'm really comfortable in. If I go to a more "general" part of the fandom like the main HP subreddit or some of the biggest HP books fan accounts, it will affect me negatively because I will mostly see Romione and Hinny be glorified and Harmione treated like trash. Not only my ship but also the shippers. Which is probably the main reason I find the fandom toxic. All of this just ties into the stupid generalization and name-calling that causes the rift between OBHWF and Harmione shippers which leads me to seeing both sides of the fandom be attacked and bombarded depending on which space I choose to spend my time in.

I'm not going to pretend that the Harmione fandom is full of angels who are oppressed by Romione shippers. Because whenever I go to a Harmione-oriented space, I will find anti-Ron/Romione/Hinny/Ginny (and their stans) posts. Harmonians will often call Romiones toxic and hateful and will basically do everything in order to insult them. And they return the favor excellently. This happens with the majority of the fandoms so both of the sides just think every shipper is like the toxic shippers they interacted with, causing generalization and all of the problems I talked about above. And that forms a toxic environment.

I generally just talked about my experiences with generalization and insulting but there are many more things wrong with the fandom, so I definitely agree with Dante Wood in that aspect. But again, I don't think every single shipper is toxic and hateful and I most certainly don't think that Romione, Harmione and Hinny are trash (Dramione just might be). I pointed out all of my reasons for disliking his account at the beginning of my post. I just wish he fixed those problems with his account, then he would have such a great one.

I almost would feel bad for them but then I realize these are the same users/shippers that ask insincere questions to the other ship/shipper. Guess karma is a bitch;)

Here's where I get confused. Why did you send me this message? I am not one of those people who go and attack a part of the fandom I disagree with. I don't constantly attack Romione and Hinny, nor their shippers. I actually love those ships. I might criticize Dramione and other toxic ships but I'm not the one at war with them. I know I wrote a post basically calling Dramiones brainless once and I regret that. I think I'm a better person now. No matter how much I hate this ship I won't send hate to its shippers (P*dophilic ships are a different deal though, those ships are even more serious). So how exactly is this a consequence for what I've done when I've done basically nothing? And even if I did, how is Dante Wood's account supposed to affect me? He talks about the toxicity of shippers while being toxic and hateful himself. Am I supposed to take that seriously? He calls us hypocritical and proceeds to do the same himself. That's not the kind of person I take criticism seriously from (ignoring the fact that many of his posts aren't even criticism, it's just hate).

Anyway, thank you for taking your time to send me that message! Sharing my thoughts on Dante Wood's thoughts and account was fun! :)

[tuanhood]

rumor

pairing: kim yugyeom x reader

genre: smut, enemies to lovers au (kind of)

warnings: 18+, public oral sex (female receiving), cursing

word count: 5k+

summary: the bane of your existence, kim yugyeom who has been bothering you consistently for the past 6 months comes to find you in the library, because well... he heard something.

a/n: keeping it going with the smut i GUESS. my russian mother would literally die if she knew i was doing this instead of writing my dissertation. :) this is barely edited but go easy on me OK. 

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Here you were. Another Thursday night in the library, endlessly highlighting the printed-out text in front of you. Your eyes shifted towards the other portion of the table you were sat at. It was filled with papers by students from the course you were TAing for and its placement in front of you was another overwhelming reminder of the work you had to accomplish before the weekend. A thought occurred to you that maybe it was worth it to take a break before you really got into grading, but as you glanced at your phone for the first in what felt like hours, you realized there was no time for a break if you wanted to finish everything on time. 

It wasn’t always like this, you used to have fun, but as time passed and you went on in your collegiate career, there was more time for work and less time for play. You wanted to say a big fuck you to your friend Mark and his “work hard, play hard” motto, because who the hell could do both equally and not ruin their life? 

Just as you were about to text Mark and ask him for 500 words on how his life mantra could be applicable to literally anyone, you heard heavy footsteps coming from somewhere on the floor of the library you occupied and it was almost as if your comfortable atmosphere shifted. As the footsteps grew closer, your body tensed up in preparation for the interruption you felt that you were about to endure. 

“Shove it Yugyeom,” you said without looking up at the tall boy. Kim Yugyeom had bothered you so much in the past 6 months that you practically had a sixth sense for whenever he was within distance. 

“Dude, why are you so mean to me?” 

Sighing, you pinched the bridge of your nose in frustration, “how many times do I have to tell you that just because our moms are friends, doesn’t mean we are.”

He pulled a chair from the table and flipped it with the back facing you, plopping down, his arms folded on the chair’s back. “Okay but the reason I’m here is actually really important.” 

Knowing Yugyeom and judging on his insistent tone, you knew it wasn’t actually going to be important. The two of you had known each other most of your lives because of your respective mother’s being lifelong friends. You had always wondered what it must have been like for them, having such a strong bond of friendship that they would make it a pact to have children at the same time and force them into being friends. Unfortunately for them neither of those things really happened – your mother became pregnant with you and it wasn’t until two years later that Yugyeom’s mother followed. However, despite the small age gap, they still tried to manufacture a friendship between the two of you. By the time you were thirteen, they gave up. 

For months Yugyeom had been finding you on campus and was constantly bothering you with things that he deemed to be paramount, but instead were things such as “what bedding do you think I should get?” or “hey are you going to your mom’s birthday party? Should we carpool?” Obviously, you would be going to your own mother’s party, so why did he have to ask you? All of his questions, comments or concerns, could easily be discussed over text, but for some reason he had to come find you in person. Every. Single. Time. 

At first you blamed it on his age and innocence. He was two years younger than you and his common appearance in your life with things that were “important,” probably had to do with his adjustment to university life. You were the only person he knew, so it was a given that he would come to you with questions or in need of advice. But after 6 months and the large friend group Yugyeom had grown on campus – you knew that had nothing do with it. 

Losing your place in your notes, you groaned and looked up at him, realizing as long as he was in your presence you wouldn’t be able to get any work done, “what is it Yugyeom? What could be so important that you had to come bother me yet again.” 

You noticed Yugyeom cower back a bit at your annoyed tone, clearly striking some kind of nerve within him and it almost made you feel regretful on how you’ve treated him lately. It was certainly much worse than you had been with him in your childhood. 

He clicked his tongue as if signaling that he meant business, “well… I came to ask about a rumor.” 

The order of business that brought Yugyeom into your midst today immediately made you let out a snort from your mouth. He still didn’t understand what “important” meant, even after all this time. You especially didn’t pay any mind to what was or wasn’t going on with Yugyeom’s little friends. Rolling your eyes, you picked up your forgotten highlighter and put it back on the page, you predicted that this visit couldn’t last much longer. “I really don’t care about what’s going on with lower classmen.” 

“It’s not about anyone in my year… It’s about you.” 

You paused, dropping the tool in your hand, once again forgotten, wondering if you had misheard him. Campus was full of hundreds – probably thousands of students more interesting than you. Nothing you’d ever done could be warranted as interesting enough to be circulated throughout campus whether real or not. “Excuse me?” 

“I heard a rumor about you.” And a rumor that was widespread enough that it could somehow make it to Yugyeom? You were certain that he had to be mistaken. 

His eyes looked around the room. You noticed they wandered to the sheets of paper in front of you, your hands and the shelves of books surrounding the table. He licked his lips before speaking to gain confidence before he continued on, “I want to know if it’s true.” 

Usually conversations with Yugyeom contained a lot of back and forth. There was never this much air that left room for thoughtful pauses or awkward silence. It had always been him asking random things or making comments that led to you snapping at him. This time you weren’t really sure what to say. Being so perplexed by the encounter and why he was concerned about a rumor regarding you, left you unsure of how to respond. 

“It’s about you and Park Jinyoung. I want to know if it’s true,” Yugyeom bit his bottom lip so hard, you thought he would draw blood. 

Blankly, you blinked at him, wondering why anyone would be fixated about you and Jinyoung, “first I kind of have to know what the rumor about the two of us is.” 

“Ugh I knew it,” Yugyeom narrowed his eyes at you, and it’s perhaps the first time you’d seen him show any kind of negative emotion. Even after all of your countless ignoring and bitter words towards him in the past, he would always maintain the same bright smile and puppy dog look in his eyes. It was something you actually admired about him. 

“Knew what? I didn’t say anything! I’m asking you what you heard. What the rumor is!” You whisper shouted, in an effort to remind yourself that you were in the library after all. 

“If it wasn’t true you would have just denied it!” Yugyeom insisted. 

Now it was your turn to be angry, through clenched teeth you asked him, “what the fuck is your problem?” 

He stood up briskly and the chair shook from his sudden stance, “you fucking Park Jinyoung, that’s my problem.” You widened your eyes at him, especially since you had hadn’t really ever heard Yugyeom curse, “what?” 

“People are saying you guys slept together.” 

His words caused you to freeze up for a moment, but you felt a need to play it off, to not show your hand. “Yugyeom… Jinyoung and I TA for the same intro Lit class. That’s it. People like to create drama… especially if it’s about their superiors.” The way you defended yourself made the hair on the back of your neck stand up. Ultimately, you had no reason to explain anything to this guy who wasn’t even classified as an acquaintance to you. Kim Yugyeom had no real place in your life. “And why does it matter to you? I can sleep with whoever I want… Not that it’s any of your business or anyone else’s.” 

For some reason you found yourself unable to look up at him. It felt different then the times you simply avoided his gaze as a method of ignoring him in the hopes he would leave. This time you felt just nauseous. First you were being defensive with him and now you felt too nervous to look at him? What was wrong with you? “So, it’s true then, huh?” 

At his words, you sighed, lifting your eyes up slowly to finally look at him again. For a moment, the thought entered your mind to lie and you had to shake the delusion out of your head. Why lie to him? You had nothing to hide, nothing to be ashamed about… and yet why did it cross your mind to be dishonest with Yugyeom, as if to shield him from it? Before you could regretfully change your mind, you responded, “yes, I slept with Jinyoung, but it was literally forever ago. We’re just friends. I don’t understand why it’s even coming up now.” 

It surprised you when you noticed his hands had clenched into fists at his side and you tried to conjure up something in your brain that could explain why he cared about this so much. Your heart pained a little from his aggression and you wondered if you were going to start wondering why you care so much about this. 

“Why do you care?” You asked, rolling your eyes to put on an act of nonchalance. 

“It’s embarrassing!” 

“Why the hell is it embarrassing?” 

His fists finally unclenched and he threw them down in annoyance at your question, as if you were supposed to be able to read his mind. He answered you as if his reasoning was the most obvious thing in the world, “my friends keep teasing me about it!” You couldn’t help but notice the way he whined at the end of his sentence, like a small child being annoyed about finishing their food. 

“Yugyeom… I don’t think I’m following. Why does who I do or don’t sleep with embarrassing for you?” 

“Because…” he took a deep breath in as if contemplating whether he should go on and there was a long pause before he continued, “because it’s embarrassing that this is going around about someone I like.” 

Shock washed over the features on your face. This was it? This was the reason why he had been acting so ridiculous? You certainly weren’t expecting that. “You have feelings for Jinyoung? I-I’m sorry Yugyeom, but I swear it’s in the past… and if it makes you feel any better it wasn’t even that good of-” He cut you off briskly not wanting to hear where you had been going with the thought.

“No, I don’t like Jinyoung.” He rolled his eyes out of frustration at your lack of understanding. 

“Then I don’t know what you’re talk-” this time you cut yourself off when your brain finally caught up to the rest of you. If he didn’t like Jinyoung... that meant he likes the other person in the rumor… and that other person in the rumor was in fact you. Which meant that Yugyeom must like… 

“Me? You like me?” Your voice got higher, a nervous habit that continued to grow whenever you were in a stressful situation. A situation you couldn’t easily see the conclusion of. 

Judging on Yugyeom’s gaze, one could say that the conversation didn’t faze him – that he was confident even, but as you glanced down, you were met with the fidgeting and shuffling of his feet. “Yeah. I do, so what?” 

After all this time and after everything you had said or done to him, he still liked you? 

You looked back up to his face and saw the hard and cold exterior he tried to put up between the two of you. He was attempting to make it seem like he didn’t care. That putting his feelings for you out in the open and holding his heart out in front of you was no big deal. You knew from knowing Yugyeom from all these years that this was no simple feat for him. You knew he was probably shaking inside, nervous and afraid of the rejection that he had expected to come from you. He had put on an act, because he thought that’s what you wanted and because he didn’t want to show you his true feelings when the hurt that he knew was coming finally came. 

You studied his face for a moment, his features and glimpsed into his eyes that you knew would hold how he really felt. 

Yugyeom felt the silence between the two of you get heavier and heavier with every moment that passed. He felt uncomfortable and he just wanted you to tell him what he knew he was probably going to hear from you. “I bet I’m ten times better than Park Jinyoung,” Yugyeom mumbled quietly to himself, clearly not meaning for you to hear it, but hear it you did. 

His words shocked you and you felt a nervous flip in your stomach, but the good kind. For some reason you couldn’t help but think back to Mark’s stupid motto as you looked Yugyeom up and down, checking him out. Before you could process what, you were doing, you began to gather all of your things on the table without a word to Yugyeom. When you were finally done you saw the panic in his face as he wondered if you were just going to leave him without a word. Instead you surprised him, placing your backpack in one hand and you grabbed his hand with the other, “follow me.” 

He didn’t move and you almost fell back against him at his pull, “where are we going?” 

“You’ll see come on,” you rolled your eyes at him and tugged him forward once again towards the stairwell of the library. Both of you climbed the stairs in silence, and you found yourself grateful that he followed you. It was difficult for you to understand what it was about the situation that had you more nervous – that he had come with you or that you were doing this at all. 

When you finally reached the fifth floor you led him through various stacks of books and multiple rows of shelves until you were both in the back corner of the floor. You stopped in between two shelves and he glanced around the books surrounding you, “why are we in medieval literature?” he asked.

“Because no one ever comes up here.” 

He blinked quickly, not understanding your reasoning for bringing him up multiple flights of stairs to be amongst more dusty books. 

“And there are no security cameras up here,” you continued, hoping that something would click for him. If it took him much longer to figure out what you were trying to communicate, you were afraid you might lose your confidence in doing this. You tapped your foot lightly against the ground, “so are you going to show me?” 

“Show you what?” He asked completely oblivious. At this point, he was just grateful that you hadn’t kicked his ass after he had confessed to you. He had to be honest with himself, he hadn’t come to find you expecting to tell you about his feelings for you. He thought they had been clear from the beginning, but after the third or fourth time you had reacted negatively to him appearing in your life during these past 6 months, he figured that you would never see it without him explicitly telling you. And judging on how much you seemed to hate him – he had come to the conclusion that he would never tell you. But after hearing about you and Park Jinyoung from his friend Bambam, he couldn’t stop himself from marching to the one place he knew you would be on Thursday night – the library. 

Yugyeom had always pictured your reaction if he was to tell you about his feelings for you and it always ended with him having a bloody nose, a new bruise or a pain in his foot after you stomped down on it in anger or disgust. The worst part of this situation was that so far you hadn’t done any of these things and for once he didn’t know what to expect when it came to you, somehow that scared him more than being flat out rejected. Wait… maybe you were bringing him up to the isolated section of the library to do your damage and hit him? 

“Jesus fucking Christ Yugyeo-” You cut yourself short when you noticed your hands had involuntarily thrusted towards him, clenching as if you were about to wring his neck and the way your tone shifted to frustration. Exhaling, you relaxed your hands and put them down, rubbing them against your thighs to calm yourself down. You weren’t trying to be your normal self towards Yugyeom, you were trying something… different. Much different. 

It seemed to you that the only way you’d be able to get Yugyeom to well… get it was spelling it out for him. 

“You said you bet you were ten times better than Jinyoung... so show me.”

Nothing leaves Yugyeom’s mouth in response and he stared at you blankly. Had you read this wrong? Were you embarrassing yourself? At his lack of words, you felt your confidence chip away piece by piece and your face grew hot. 

Then everything seemed to fall into place for Yugyeom as his mind begins to compute the words leaving your soft pink lips that he’s wanted to kiss for so long. He noticed the way that your eyes are no longer fixated on him, and instead begin to look over the place nervously, pretending to find the books around the two of you more interesting. 

Due to the lack of response from Yugyeom, you’re surprised when you he takes a step closer towards you and you feel his hot breath near you just as your eyes became glued to a text about women’s literature in the Middle Ages. 

You looked to his brown eyes which stared at you so deeply you felt as though you’re about to suffocate. Although Yugyeom’s always been much taller than you, you’ve always somehow felt bigger than him – older, wiser and more mature. But for the first time ever, under his hypnotic gaze you felt innocent, small and like all you wanted was for him to take care of you. 

As he took another step forward, you took one back until you’re pressed against the bookshelf, unable to take back your decision, but you could feel that deep inside of you that you didn’t want to. Both his hands went to either side above you on the shelf and he looked down at you, a new lustfulness in his eyes that wasn’t there before. “Is this okay?” 

Nodding your head, you bit your lip to stop the smile that dared to spread across your face and Yugyeom caught it immediately. He brought his right hand down to your hair and brushed some of the strands out of your face softly, “you know… you don’t have to pretend to be this cold, mean person all the time… If you want to feel something, you should just… feel it.” At his final words his hand moved to a permanent position on your cheek as he leaned down to connect your lips together. At first you remained frozen, but as his left-hand slides from the bookshelf to land comfortably at your waist as if it was always meant to be there, you melted into the kiss. Your lips parted and his tongue slipped into your waiting mouth softly, without rush or urgency and somehow that gentleness alone made you feel like all that existed was that softness and the mixing of your breaths. 

The slow, sensual pace that you savored soon began to pick up as Yugyeom deepened the kiss, pushing himself closer to you on the shelf. Your hands that had remained mostly stagnant and at your sides soon began to drift up to run through his hair as if they had a mind on their own. When you first heard him let out a small moan from your tugging on his locks, you felt a fire ignite inside of you that told you that you wanted to hear more. With every tug, Yugyeom’s fingers dug into your hips and soon he let out a sigh of content as his hands moved to rest on your ass. Your lips worked seamlessly together as if it was the missing puzzle piece you never knew you needed. 

“Let me show you something else I can do better than Park Jinyoung,” Yugyeom said through a raspy breath, against your lips. His hands squeezed your ass before they moved around to the button on your jeans to undo them. It feels as though he works in slow motion as he pulled down the zipper and moved his hand inside, slipping them over your panties. His lips still on you and his hand in a place where you never thought you would need him; your breath grew heavier and heavier. 

Your knees buckled as Yugyeom’s fingers suddenly brushed your clit through the thin cloth and he grinned into the kiss as he wrapped his arms around your waist to hold you up. You tried to focus on the feeling of Yugyeom’s fingers rubbing your through your underwear, but soon he withdraws them. You whimpered at the loss of his fingers against you and he gave you one last soft peck before he disconnected his mouth from yours as well. You missed the contact, wanting to make your lips even more swollen than they probably already were. 

Yugyeom chuckled at your needy reaction and he caressed your cheek in a reassuring manner, “don’t worry it’ll be worth it.” 

You grew confused, wondering what his next move would be, but as he crouches down onto his knees in front of you, pulling your jeans and underwear down with him it begins to dawn on you. You felt yourself grow more wet at the thought. 

“I need to taste you,” he practically whined, “let me clean up the mess I made between your legs.” If Yugyeom had said anything remotely close to that in the past, you know you would have smacked him across the face, but instead you felt yourself involuntarily moan, turned on by his words. 

Still leant up against the bookshelf, you spread your legs apart, which was proven difficult with the jeans and underwear around your ankles, but Yugyeom grabbed them in an effort to help you. When you were comfortable and well situated, he settled himself between your parted thighs and grew closer. 

First all you felt was his hot breath on your clit and he softly blew to tease you, as if paying you back for all the countless you shrugged him off. When you let out a whimper that sounded a little too desperate, even for your ears, he decided his short-lived teasing was better off short. He took one last look into your eyes before he leaned in without hesitation. His tongue first gave a slow lap as if savoring your taste, and he let out a groan that made you feel more wet than you already were. Soon he began to pick up the pace and he used the way your hips moved against him and the little sighs coming from your mouth to feel what it was that you like and don’t like. When he sealed his mouth around your clit in a soft suck, your hands instinctually went back to his hair to bring him even closer to you. 

“How do you taste so good,” he mumbled mostly to himself, followed by a noisy kiss and delving into you further. 

A sudden and continuous swirl of his tongue against your clit caused you to let out a loud moan that you couldn’t hold back even with all of the strength in your body. With his lips still attached to your clit and continuing his ministrations, he tapped his fingers on your thighs in an effort to remind you to be quiet. You both may have been in a secluded part of the library, but you were still in the library. 

It was when you really looked down at Yugyeom that you felt as though you were going to combust. For some reason to see the younger boy that you had completely written off for most of your life, and especially the last 6 months, with his mouth on your clit with a look of pure satisfaction on his face made you feel closer to your high. 

His sudden harsh sucking as if he was a man eating his last meal, caused you to lift your hips off against the book shelf and into his face further. 

“Yugyeom…” You moaned out with eyes squeezing themselves shut. Hearing his name fall from your lips in bliss – something he had always wanted and dreamed about – edged him to go even harder and faster, wanting nothing more to see you fall apart before him. 

When he slipped two fingers inside of you, pumping them quickly, with his lips still attached to your core, you began to feel dizzy just at the pleasure. He pulled his mouth away for a moment to watch his fingers sink in and out you, pleased to look up and see how overcome you were with the way he was making you feel. You let out another cry when his fingers curled in you, finding your g-spot with ease. When he reattached himself to your clit and his fingers found that spot in you once again, it all became too much and you felt yourself closer to your climax. You tried to push his face away from you, trying to let him know that you were close. 

“Cum on my face. I want it, I want it all,” he said muffled against your core at your effort to move him away from you. 

At his words and the continual, brutal pace of his tongue and fingers, you felt your hips buck into Yugyeom’s face and yourself clench around his fingers, orgasm washing over you hard. You attempted to keep your moans in, but the feeling you get through out your entire body is too much to contain as you let out a load cry from your release. One of your hands left Yugyeom’s hair to aggressively grip the book shelf behind you, causing a book to fall from the shelf and hit part of Yugyeom’s head and his back on the way down. 

“F-Fuck Yugyeom I’m sor-” He shut you up as he continued to lap at your core, letting you ride out your orgasm as if he was in his own world where a book didn’t just fall on him. 

After a few moments in your own blissed out state and deep breaths with your head against the book shelf, you looked to see Yugyeom getting up off of his knees. His mouth and jaw glistened from you and if he minded how wet your release was, he didn’t show any sign of it. On his way up to stand before you, he lifted your underwear and jeans up your legs. 

He smiled smugly, “not bad for a kid, huh?” 

You shyly looked away from him, feeling like the kid. 

“Yeah whatever, Kim Yugyeom,” You said rolling your eyes, and he catches the smile that was written across your face. When your eyes met again, he stared at you so deeply with so much fondness that you felt yourself grow weak for the second time in the last few minutes. 

Bringing your hand up to gently rest on his cheek, you pulled him in for a kiss, wanting to show him the same pleasure he gave you. He let out a loud groan when your hands reached his jeans in an attempt to unbutton them. 

“Um… hello?” 

You both froze at the voice and broke apart to look at each other in panic.

“Shit,” you whispered to him. 

Yugyeom widened his eyes as if asking you what to do, “don’t look at me!” 

“Is uh… someone there? Or… two someones?” The unknown voice called out into the stacks. The sound of the voice made you feel sick. You didn’t know how long they were there or how much they had heard and especially because you were 90% sure you knew the voice. 

When Yugyeom looked at you again with fear in his eyes, you realized the roles had been reversed once again and you were back to being the older, wiser one out of the two of you. This time however, his look to you for guidance didn’t annoy you as it had in the past. Instead, you felt your stomach flip and it go straight to your core. 

Your eyes wandered to the floor, where you see the piece of literature that fell and hit Yugyeom. Reaching down to grab it, you motioned for Yugyeom to crouch down with you, “okay, on the count of three, you’ll grab my backpack and I’m going to throw this the opposite way. They’ll probably hear it and go look where the noise came from. That’s when we’ll run towards the exit.” 

“Why do I have to carry your backpack?” Yugyeom whined. 

Rolling your eyes, you answered him, “because a gentleman always carries a lady’s things.” “You just want to be the one who throws the book.” 

You shrugged, pretending like he didn’t have you figured out already, “now come on,” both standing back up you nodded at him to signal the beginning of your countdown. 

“One…” you whispered, looking back at Yugyeom who licked his lips in anticipation, “two…” 

You paused hearing footsteps, “three!” you scream whispered at him as you threw the book in the opposite direction, in one of the book stacks, praying you don’t get seen. At the end of the countdown, Yugyeom grabbed your backpack and your free hand, both of you running towards the exit. 

You both practically stumbled down the stairs of the library, unable to contain your laughs as soon as you’re free and on the front steps outside. 

When finally caught your breath from the running and laughter, it dawned on you the events that had just taken place and what you actually just did in the library. “Holy shit… I can’t believe we actually did that. That was kinda fucked up wasn’t it? That we did that in there?”

“You said no one goes into the Medieval Lit section!” Yugyeom complained as soon as he’s caught his breath. 

You bit your lip and nervously looked at him, “Well for the most part no one really does! There’s only one person I know of that does…” 

“Who?” 

“Park Jinyoung.” 

He let out a snort, “I can’t believe you.” 

You shoved Yugyeom lightly, “It’s not like I knew he would show up!” At your words he pulled you towards him and close enough until his mouth brushed your ear, “I bet you wanted him to catch us. You dirty girl.” 

With widened eyes and once again turned on by none other than Kim Yugyeom you moved away from him gently and take his hand in yours, “come on.” 

“Where are we going?” He asked for the second time of the night.

“My place. I have something I want to show you,” You answered him, attempting to pull him forward again. “Oh and what’s that?” He had a smug smile on his face, clearly wanting to torture you. 

“Kim Yugyeom, I swear to God,” you wondered if he was really going to do this to you, “you better come with me so we can finish what we started or I’m starting a rumor about you.” 

He pulled your arm until you were back against him, your body flush with his front and you felt his hands go to your ass, “nah I know you wouldn’t do that.”

You pushed your hips against him and he let out a soft groan at the contact against him, his hardness being neglected this entire time, “try me.” 

He smirked at you, “fine… let’s go before I fuck you on the steps of the library. Then there’d be a rumor about both of us.” 

“If that happened that wouldn’t be a rumor. That would just be fact,” you explained to him, grabbing his hand again. 

“So that’s a yes?” 

You rolled your eyes at him and smiled. Kim Yugyeom was doing things to you and making you feel things that you couldn’t deny it any longer, “come on Yugyeom.” 

“Yes ma’am.”

[shaydeoffical]

Bright as a Diamond. Hitoshi Shinsou x Fem Reader: Chapter Two

Summary: When (Y/N)’s co-worker decided to send a picture of her making a diamond to the paper, her life was over. Gemstone based quirks weren’t all that rare, but being able to make a diamond put a target on her back. After years of hiding in the city, it’s time to hide in the countryside with her Uncle Shota Aizawa and his more than ‘roommate’ Hizashi Yamada. With the promise of training her to be self-sufficient, she’s ready to learn.

Edit: Deadass left the “chapter one” in the title for like a week when this is chap two, oops. Also, I had a read more and that didn't work. Sorry Family <3  Also I realized my flashbacks are not in ilatics, but I think you can infer as you read. I’ll try to fix that for next time. 

Chapter One:  https://ambershaydeoffical.tumblr.com/post/190764312269/bright-as-a-diamond-chapter-one-hitoshi-shinsou-x

Chapter Three: 

https://ambershaydeoffical.tumblr.com/post/611141904327983104/bright-as-a-diamond-hitoshi-shinsou-x-fem-reader

Chapter Two

Before You Can Walk

   Uncle Shota had sent off my furniture choices to the store, and now I was to get ready in the outfit he had provided for me. It was in a black case with an intricate white swirl on the top. To most people, I looked like a confident and polished young woman, on her way to the top. In truth, my mother dressed me every morning, and I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror for longer than a few seconds to check my hair.

   My body wasn’t exactly typical, with my weight sitting in the places I hated the most…well, I hated it all. Maybe my thighs were okay, and my ass was great, but my breasts were nearly untamable.

   Inside the case was a camo tracksuit, a white tee, and a pair of tight bike shorts that went under the pants or were interchangeable for summer months. The shoes were red sneakers that went up to my ankle. The red contrasted the camo, but I suppose it was a safety thing, so I didn’t pass out and just blended in.

   Luckily for me, the outfit was made of a poly-cotton blend, and it was stretchy. The shirt clung tighter to my chest then I wanted, but the short sleeve jacket was loose, and the pants fit just right. I pulled the top part of my hair back and made a ponytail. Half up and half down hair was my daily go too, so it didn’t make sense to change that for training.

   When I exited the bathroom, Shota was nowhere to be found. “Hizashi, where is Shota?” I found the blonde pouring over his music player, geeking out.  

   “Oh, he said you had to make it to the road without being caught.” Hizashi paused his music and chuckled. “I know his methods are weird, but he’ll make you’re a master of self-defense.”

   “I’m supposed to run through the forest and get to the road. Without being caught?” I frowned, looking out the door. “How long has he been gone?”

   “Not too long. Look at it like capture the flag, and have some fun.” He handed me a water bottle. “You better get going before he gets bored.”

   “Okay, um, thanks.” I tuck the water into my pocket and start to walk outside.

   I wasn’t really the running type. Even when bad things had come my way, I was more of a hider. Still, Shota knew what he was doing, I had to trust his judgment. Training took two people trusting the other not to go too far.

   Slowly jogging, I made it to the tree line and focused on a steady rhythm of breathing. The natural debris from autumn was causing some issues. I kept curling my ankle on walnuts and kicking limbs up and cutting the opposite ankle. Part of getting stronger was getting hurt. I knew that still, it wasn’t pleasant.

   Keeping my eyes peeled, I knew I could be jumped at any moment. Anxiety chewed through my muscles as I ran faster with longer strides. Of course, I wanted to pass my first test, but I really didn’t want to be at the business end of Shota’s capture weapon.

   A few minutes in, I stumbled forward, landing on my knees. Not taking a moment to rest, I kept going, pushing harder. I just had to get going.

   Parched lips. Unable to keep my head up. The constant hum of the motor.

   Stopping suddenly, I grasped my water and downed half the bottle. Hiding between two trees, I glanced around and took in my surroundings. Something rustled in the distance, and I put the bottle back in my pocket.  I saw Shota running through the trees, and I stayed quiet until he was out of sight.

   Now that he was ahead of me, I took a moment and breathed. Closing my eyes, I contently leaned on the tree and steadied my body. The aches were starting to set in, and I contemplated laying down and just taking a short break.

   Something grasped my love handles. Yelping, I got out of the grip and turned. No one was there. Again I was clutched; this time, I could see the hands holding my midsection and pulling me down. I broke free and swiveled to catch a glimpse of the person responsible.

   “Cut it out!” I demanded, wrapping my hands around my stomach, and spinning around in circles. “Shota, this isn’t cool. I don’t like being-“I screamed again, this time there was a long pull on my jacket, bringing me to the earth. “Stop it.” I shivered.

   Shivering. So cold and sterile. My blood was freezing into ice cubes. I try to pass them off as the real deal.

   Curling into my knees, I grabbed my hair and took even breaths. Someone hovered over top of me, it wasn’t Shota’s shoes. My heart racing, this wasn’t a game. Grabbing my water bottle. I chucked it at the person and ran. Not like I had before but with real purpose this time.

   The chase was on footsteps right behind me. I didn’t have a reason to look back, so I kept going. “Uncle Sho!” I cried for help, reaching a small hill, I skidded down the slope and kept going. “UNCLE SHO HELP!” Even louder then before, I couldn’t breathe and scream at the same time. Pumping my legs faster, I saw the road in the distance. Then a tight rope coiled around my waist. I screamed.

   Airborne in an instant, I was dangling from a tree. Kicking my legs to stop the spinning. It was no use. My hands were bound with my hips, and I was useless. Like always.

   “I thought you’d be better than that.” A boy a little older than me was holding the other end of the scarf. He didn’t look it, but he must have been keen to hoist me into the air so nonchalantly. Obviously, he was arrogant and a prick. Who could do this to someone and not get the ‘screaming for help’ as a sign to stop?  

   “Did Shota put you up to this or do you like to toy with girls in the forest,” I spat, seeing stars the faster I twirled around.

   “I don’t know.” He let go of the scarf and caught it just before I hit the ground.

   “Oh, my God.” I got my feet under me and stood. “That was sadistic. What the hell is wrong with you?” I wobbled but turned to face the ass. “Are you trying to kill me?”

   “I see you met Hitoshi Shinsouu.” Shota appeared from the road, lazily yawing. “Shinsouu is my protegee; I asked him to help with today’s exercise.”    

   “Did you instruct him to kill me?” I barked, only to be lifted off my feet and sent spinning. “Stop! What’s wrong with you?”

   “You look like a pinata,” Shinsouu stated, keeping me from touching the ground. With each spin, I could see his smirk…what a-ugh.

   “That’s enough, Shinsou; she’s learned her lesson.” Shota leaned down to my level, now that I was resting on my knees. “What do you think that was about?”

   “Just because someone’s your protégée doesn’t give them the right to scare me.” I offered meekly, sending a glare at the purple-haired boy, who seemed uncaring at this point.

   “No. He did as I instructed.” Shota sighed, untangling me from the scarf. “Just because you know there is one villain, doesn’t mean there aren’t more. Never let your guard down, and certainly never just sit there as it’s happening.”

   “I thought it was you at first,” I argued, fighting against the ropes.

   “Even me. In these simulations, we need to treat it like the real thing.” He plucked a leaf from my hair and helped me up. “Now, let’s get ready for the run back.”

   “Wait, we’re going again?” I screeched, rubbing my sore sides.

   “You got a three-minute head start. Go.” I didn’t waste a second more, taking off past Shinsouu, sending him a glare.

   It went on like that for hours. It mostly ended with Shinsouu hanging me up by my ankles, waist, or once by my knees. He also pinned me in a tackle a few times, going as far as to snicker. After a while, I knew that Shota had stopped chasing me, and just enjoyed the show. Time after time of me trying to make it back to the road or the house and falling just short. My best attempt was when I hid close to the starting point and walked behind them and hid when they turned around.  It was foiled when I saw a mouse and screamed.

   No longer running, I shuffled my feet towards the house. Dragging my ankles, I reached the small hill that had become the bane of my existence, and I tripped over my own feet. Unable to catch my balance, I fell. My body crashing down the slope, banging with each bump.

   Shinsouu crashed his body with mine, slowing the speed but getting himself into my tumble. Not knowing what to do with his stupid strong arms, he wrapped them around me, probably to cop a feel.

   “You alright?” He asked when we stopped, pressing my head to his chest. He probably got off to being squished being under me like that.

   “Fine, you caught me again. Don’t rub it in.” I sniffled, frustrated with my progress. I couldn’t keep upright, and now everything hurt.

   “That’s enough for today,” Shota jumped down from a limb and helped Shinsouu up than me. I stumbled into his arms and cried tears of relief.

   “Really?” I rubbed my tears into his black shirt.

   “Now, you just need to run back home, we won’t chase you this time.” Shota chuckled, and I pulled away from him in disbelief.

   “You’re sadistic too, no wonder you both get along.” I crossed my arms over my bruised chest. My mother’s image flashed through my mind, and I sighed. “Fine, if I’m going to run home, I should get one more chance to outrun you two.” I squared my shoulders and took off.  

   Instead of heading straight, I zig-zagged through the trees, running at an angle. I had my second and third winds hours earlier, but I managed to keep myself going at a decent speed.  

   After running this drill so many times, I knew what was more successful. Once they caught sight of me, it was over. So I just needed to stay hidden and keep a low profile. The forest was denser the way I was running now, and I could take more small breaks. A few more meters and I would be in the back garden, safe and sound.

   “(y/n),” Hizashi was yelling for me. “You win, come home.” It was off. The voice was in the opposite direction of the house.

   I knew that Present Mic had a booming voice, but why was he using it now. The sun was starting to set, and I had skipped lunch, so my tummy was rumbling…maybe he cooked- “It’s a trick, I know it.” I settled it in my mind and kept running.

   A few minutes passed, and I wasn’t in the back garden. Hizashi had been calling me for a while, but I could no longer hear him. Maybe I was stupid… perhaps I was lost.

   “What to do when lost?” I plopped down and tugged my lower lip. “Sit still. Check. Start a fire?” There wasn’t much sun left, but I gathered a few twigs and focused on my quirk. Making diamonds had got me into trouble, but it was the coals I needed right now.

   Making several fiery coals, I sat them in my fire pit and encouraged the flames to grow by fanning them. Now I had a few diamonds floating my pocket and a warm fire to fend off the autumn chill. I would have killed to still have a little water with me, but I had to toss it at Shinsouu earlier. He deserved it.  

   “There you are,” Shota sighed, pointing a flashing light on my campsite after a few minutes of smoke being in the air. “Great work with the fire. That was smart thinking.” He complimented me, patting my head.

   “Where is Shinsouu and Hizashi?” I asked, putting out the fire.

   “They’re probably headed home now.” He started walking off, and I followed behind him.    

   “Sorry, I did so bad today,” I remembered how lackluster my performance was.

   He stopped before going again. “You did better then I thought you would. I can tell you relay more on your fight response then flight. We can use that to our advantage; today was useful.”

   “Did you have to bring Shinsouu in? He’s so so rude. I hate to be so brash about your friend, but he was also so rough.”

   “I thought you two would hit it off.” He held a thorn-covered branch back so I could pass. “He’ll be useful in your training, and vise versa. Can you manage to get along for me?”

   “I won’t like it, but I can tolerate anything for you, Uncle Sho.” I sounded like a brat but was too tired to care.

   “Let’s get home.”

[eloarei]

About the process of creating a book (the not-writing part)

I was asked recently about if making a book was easy or tedious or whatever, and I realized that was actually something I’d like to talk about. I’d never done it before (and still I only have a little experience), but I’ve been teaching myself and it’s been... fun?  Behind the cut (that’s still a thing, right?), I ramble about formatting, PDFs, fonts, and some other stuff. (Also pictures, though most of them are the same as the ones I posted yesterday.) 

First of all, I had to pick a Print-On-Demand (POD) website. That was easy for me, because finding the website was actually what made me want to make the book. I used Lulu.com, which has worked very well for me the two times I’ve used it. (It has a bunch of bad reviews, but honestly I got just what I paid for both times. They apparently offer editing and marketing services; I can’t vouch for those because I only used the POD service. But personally I wouldn’t trust anyone to edit or market my book, let alone some randos on some website. They’re a POD site. That’s what they’re good at, so that’s what I use.)  It would have been almost too easy if they just let me copy-paste the text to them, but understandably they wanted a PDF. PDFs are kind of the bane of my existence, but I downloaded a template from them (for a 6x9 inch novel, with appropriate margins) and then copy-pasted my fic into it using LibreOffice. (I’m so-so about LibreOffice, but it does create PDFs reasonably well.)  From there... well, then I had to go through the process of reformatting it. I’d copied the text from my AO3, and that meant that it had spaces between every paragraph and no indents, which is how AO3 fics are typically formatted. It was a lot of Tab-Left-Down-Down-Down-Backspace-Backspace-Enter-Repeat. For 140k words, it took a few casual days.  After the bulk of that was done, I realized the indents/tabs looked... weird? They were too big. ^^; Luckily there was a setting in LibreOffice to change them all automatically. I almost cried at the thought of having to do it manually haha.  Adding data to the headers and footers came next. I chose to only add the page number to the footer, and nothing to the header. Normally people will have the author’s name on one side, and the book’s title on the other, but I skipped that for the time being. Not sure if I’ll do it for the ‘official’ release.  (Somehow my footer ended up being too small, so that’s something I need to look into.)  Next I had to pick a font and a font size. I decided to do something a little gimmicky: I have alternating chapters that take place in modern and historical times, so I chose different fonts to represent those chapters. For the historical chapters I chose “Century”, which is a serif font (meaning that it has little embellishments, like “Times New Roman”), while for the modern chapters I chose “Verdana”, a sans-serif font (meaning that it is sans/without the embellishments, like whatever font Tumblr uses).  It’s typically agreed that novels are best in serif fonts, because it’s easier to read them for a long session. The embellishments make the letters blend together into visually recognizable words, which is apparently how we read, as opposed to looking at every letter individually. However, because I wanted to be quirky, more than half of my book is in sans-serif, which I’m just hoping doesn’t annoy people.  I used Verdana size 11 and Century size 12. Even so, the Verdana still looks too large to my eye, so I’ll probably change it again.  After that was mostly aesthetic formatting, which was the actual fun part. I tabbed down I think about 10 spaces at the start of every chapter, then went back up a space or two, increased the font size and changed the font to something slightly fancier and wrote the chapter title (which for me were just “Chapter Five”, etc).  (UPON FURTHER SCRUTINY, apparently not all of my first chapter pages are tabbed down the same amount. ugh. ^^; They’re close but not identical. How messy.)  Under the chapter titles, I simulated “drop caps” on the first phrase of the chapter, because I didn’t have a good drop caps font. I just did this by retyping the whole phrase in caps, and then changing the first letter to a slightly larger font size.  Next were a few easy things: a title page, a few silly “praise for” pages of reviews I got from online readers (these probably won’t be in the “official” version; they just make me smile), a mock-up copyright page (mock-up because I don’t actually have a copyright or anything yet), a short dedications page (mine was just one sentence), and then an empty page so that the story text starts on the right, which is standard. I have bought another self-published book which otherwise looks pretty good, but it starts the story on the left page and it’s just so jarring.  At that point, the PDF was pretty much done. I added a few other little touches, like some little fancy dagger icons during in-chapter scene transitions. I ended up with the “the end” page being on the left, which, again, is really awkward, so I found a chapter that only had like two lines on the last page, and went back in and deleted a handful of words in the chapter so that it would end on the previous page instead.  THEN came the fun but agonizing part, as I’m not as much of a graphic designer as I sometimes wish. I had to make a cover. The other self-published book I bought looks really nice with a beautiful illustration on the front, but the spine and back had just tiny white text, and didn’t even include a synopsis. So I downloaded a template for a 6x9inch wrap-around cover, tossed it up in Photoshop, paint-bucketed it black, and went to work. I pasted in my synopsis in off-white sans-serif font about the same as my internal font, and bolded some of the key words for... ease of skimming and/or funsies? At the top I added a short dialogue exchange from the first chapter that I thought represented the story as a whole, chose a different font that stood out, and gave it a red shadow so it would stand out more. For fun I added some faint red blood-splatters behind the text.  For the front I chose a big bold block-letter font in off-white, then gave it a red and a yellow shadow so it would stand out. I rasterized the font (turning it into a picture), and then used the tool to highlight the letters, and splashed some red blood-splatters on them. I did the same for the spine. (Though really what I should have done was copy the logo from the front and resize it. Silly me. Now the two logos don’t match.)  I used Unsplash.com for a few free photos that I quickly manipulated into a passable cover art. Ultimately, I would like to have something either professionally photographed, edited, or drawn, but what I found was vaguely similar enough to what I wanted that I figured it’d do for now.  Maybe the last thing I had to do (besides uploading it all to Lulu) was decide on a pen-name! I ended up going with L.A.Rayborn, instead of my legal name. I used my legal first two initials, but chose my birth surname (which is twice removed from my legal name, since I was first adopted and then married). To be perfectly honest, the reason I chose not to use my legal name is mostly because I don’t want to associate my in-laws with possibly-sensitive content that they probably wouldn’t like.  SO. Then it was done, and I uploaded it to Lulu, and chose a few options on the site, such as cream pages instead of white, and matte exterior finish instead of gloss. (I highly suggest the cream for novels, but the matte is really just personal preference.) I paid them (I ended up getting it printed and shipped to me for under $20), and then about 2 weeks later I had the 400 page darling in my hands, ready to be eviscerated with a set of neon hi-lighters!  After this current round of edits, I already know there’s a ton of stuff I’m going to have to fix (and this is to say nothing of the story).  1. The font is slightly too large, but could probably use a 1.5 or maybe 1.2 spacing between lines. I’ll have to fiddle with it, and see what others do.  2. The back cover text is too close to the edges to really look good.  3. The page numbering just looks odd for some reason.  4. Figure out how to get the page numbers to stay off the copyright and dedications page, etc.  5. MORE THAN ANYTHING, I need to change the... I’m not even sure what to call it? I need to make the text space out evenly so that it creates a block on each page, rather than creating messy ridges on the right margins. I didn’t even think of this until I got the book and started comparing it to professional books I’ve read and enjoyed. It seems like a very rookie mistake. 

(lol I’m in the process of changing the main character’s name, which is why the crappy MS Paint edits.)  PHEW, that was long. But hopefully my journey was at least a little insightful. Please do let me know if you have any thoughts, questions, or suggestions about how I could better format the book for the “real” printing! 

[senpai-no-lie]

Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon (Prologue & Chapters 1-5)

After months and months of seeing old physical copies of FE games being sold for ridiculous prices online, I discovered Shadow Dragons and Sacred Stones are still for sale on the Wii U eshop. Although I've heard these are some of the "less good" games in the series, for like $10 each, might as well. I have been making my way through Shadow Dragons, and I thought it'd be fun to do a live blog of sorts in 5 chapter bursts. I'm also loosely consulting the kidzworld guide for the heck of it.

Prologue:

Those graphics... oof. I can see why this game helped to run the franchise into the ground lol. My favorite is when the battle animation model doesn't even match the color of the character (such as Navarre wears red in his portrait but his animated self is blue)

I think the Prologue does a fair job of explaining the basics of playing Fire Emblem and the central conflict. No complaints

I chose Jagen as the decoy because I thought an older man dressing convincingly enough like Marth to trick the enemies was fun. Additionally, the peanut gallery said pick between him or Cain, and I couldn't bear to part with Cain-- I was lead astray and should've parted with Gordin.

Chapter 1:

We have more new recruits! Already the army is bloating. I was happy for a healer, though he's now been benched.

Draug is ok, though I wish he wasn't an armor knight and I had the courage to reclass him.

Caeda is great, but man do I forget she is frail to archers. I had to reset for her during chapter four iirc. I'm very nervous about using the wing spear too much, so hopefully I'll get another one.

Chapter 2:

My boi Ogma!!! He's the only one I can count on to double, which is both a boon and a bane (will explain later)

Of the three fighters, I selected Barst as the one I wouldn't bench and he's great. He'll hit and kill even at like 40% chances. The other two were looted for their weapons and promptly never used.

Whoops, killed the other recruitable characters in this chapter lol

Gordin performed poorly and I find myself missing Jagen.

Chapter 3:

Lena has become the new go-to healer, though Wrys is invited along through the next chapter. She's cute; Julian is cute.

Warp staff... very nice. Warp Marth straight to the armory

Originally I was just gonna recruit Navarre for his weapon and bench him, but it turns out he's in Warriors, so I want to keep using him to see if he has an appeal.

I reset at least twice for Ogma during this chapter. It wasn't even his fault, because I made the same hasty decision twice. He's just... too good at killing enemies and it gives them a way to keep chipping him down into 0 HP. Please get a little less good, Ogma. I need you

Chapter 4:

I don't remember this chapter being hard or eventful. I think this was the last time I brought Gordin along, and while he did ok, why bring him when I can have three cavaliers

Merric's so cute; he looked older and like that ghost dude from Hikaru no Go on his wiki page, so I was not prepared for that baby face. He killed the boss no problem and earned a spot on the team.

Recruited Matthis to help keep the bench warm.

Chapter 5:

The chapter of resets because I'd lose 1 character, such as Draug or Caeda. On my successful attempt, no one died, not even the chapter recruits.

The first reset was to get the Firestone for Bantu in the future. He might as well be useful until Tiki comes

Wendell replaced Wrys as my new healer. One old dude for another, though Wendell has thunder. But on attempt #2, he doubled and killed Draug, ugh

Hardin proved himself to be useful for the chapter, but he'll be benched because of aesthetics. Rosehea and Vyland were instantly benched too

Sedgar was really determined to suck, so he'll be benched. I'll see how well Wolf does since Frey's strength stat is falling off compared to Cain&Abel. Edit: Apparently I didn't bench him quite yet in favor of benching Fray, based on what my save file looks like. I guess we'll see what his growths do to his stats..

Overall, Thus Far:

The setting and general gameplay is a bit lackluster/more straightforward than previous titles, but I'm willing to forgive it since it is a remake of the first game. I'm a bit tired of always having to seize things, especially since only Marth can do that. Usually Marth is on the other side of the map, recruiting enemies or visiting the armory. No supports suck. I don't ever play with Permadeath on, so this has been a nice change of pace, but I miss the undo button for when I make arbitrary mistakes that exists in SoV and 3H lol