#when I hit like 50k on this shit i need to write a whole thing abt how i approach it and my compassionate creating philosophy | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

adornesibley · 6 months ago

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IT'S GONNA BE MAY: a Newsletter

Reading: The Land of Lost Things by John Connolly, How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix

Finished Reading: Horrorstör, My Best Friend’s Exorcism, and We Sold Our Souls by Grady Hendrix, The Secrets we Keep by Shirley Patton, The Vegetarian by Han Kang

Podcast: Unwell: A Midwestern Gothic Mystery

Playing: God Hand and Nier (Jank is Good, Jank is Life)

Making: Doom levels

Writing: Project E and *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧NEW THING*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧ (which I will talk about below)

Word Count: Word counts are just a way the patriarchy can arbitrarily muffle voices it doesn’t like… but it’s 167338

TLDR: I talk about my new short story anthology project, word counts and the desperation of doe-eyed newbie authors, the insular nature of TTRPGs and nerd culture jargon, glossary provided for her pleasure.

Firstly, new thing! *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ I’m working on a super secret idea which I’m going to keep secret until precisely … now. It can be summed up in five words: TECHNO HORROR ANTHOLOGY FLOPPY DISK. Take yourself back to a bygone era, where the hair was big and often mulleted (wish that trend stayed dead, crimped hair stayed away but mullets came back? WTF humans) to when everyone is reading their Goosebumps or playing with their Tamagotchis. Close your eyes. Can’t you hear the dial-up now. Smell your breakfast cooking in your George Foreman grill. I know I’m talking about a large year range but for most of us millennials the 80s and 90s is just a blob monster of slow computers and corded phones and Scrunchies and listening to the radio, waiting for your fav song to play so you can hit record on your cassette player. I will keep you posted here on the progress and continue to give hints as to the full plan with all the gory details of its taxonomy. For now, this is all you get.

Project E’s progress was not so bad. I’m actually really proud of this word count. I shaved off so much this month. I was productive AF. And yet I feel compelled to continue on. The average scifi novel length is up to 150k words and I’m still well above that. Then you go to the average DEBUT scifi novel length and psht… 120k. If I remove 50k from Project E, that’s a whole book on its own!

I’ll admit that sometimes, a book is really and truly longer than it needs to be, but let’s also admit that plenty of books get published that are CERTAINLY longer than they should be. I’m looking at you, Herman Melville! So to act as though this is an aspect which would make it impossible to publish a novel is disingenuous. The shit reality is simply that more words means more ink and pages, and publishers are scared of losing money, so unless you’re well established or the concept is a “sure thing” then they’re unlikely to give you the time of day.

I have no proof, and this is not a statement I’d backup in any legal capacity, but I’d imagine it’d also be quite easy to find a manuscript which says things you don’t like, and then force the author to gut it to fit your requested word count. Once it barely resembles its initial form, then it’ll be toothless enough to be allowed to get by. New authors are desperate to have their stories accepted. We’ll do anything. ANYTHING. This isn’t to say that Lit Agents and publishers are mustache-twirling villains. I’m saying that shitty people exist in every corner of society, and those folks would likely be happy to abuse their positions of power.

So, a month and a half ago I watched a video about the TTRPG community and its insularity. Well, technically the video was about ShadowDark, but Indestructoboy spent a significant part of the video discussing this problem. I’ve never considered how impossible it would be to understand folks in our community when we’re discussing games. “So I just got to try out a new OSR1 TTRPG2, it’s a Roll Under3 3d64 system with no Death Saves5, or HP6 and it’s entirely GMless7!” Just imagine for a second that you don’t have access to the acronyms or specialized jargon. That sentence would be word salad!

Shit, just TTRPG is useless to anyone not already in the community. Tabletop Roleplaying Games have the power to be an incredible tool for community building and a creative outlet, but by creating so much shorthand, we force folks to learn a tertiary language to even engage with the simplest examples of this style of game! I think that a good stop-gap would be a Glossary of terms in the back of tabletop roleplaying game books, but long term I think it’s pretty important to consider that maybe doing away with the acronyms at LEAST would benefit the community significantly. (Or if you’re gonna use them, consider explaining them somewhere in your post/ book/ video.)

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Support weird. Support indie.

OSR either means Old School Revival or Old School Renaissance. What these means is up for discussion and debate, but the “Revival” side appears to be focused on literally reviving old-school games like Dungeons and Dragons 2nd Edition while the “Renaissance” side takes ideas from these old Tabletop game systems and adapts them to more modern game design sensibilities. OR AT LEAST THOSE ARE MY DEFINITIONS.

TTRPG is simply short for Tabletop Roleplaying Game(s) which generally involves a certain level of imagining the actions (theatre of the mind) of a character whom you embody in that game, where you must take on the role of someone who likely does not think or act like you would.

Roll Under is a type of system where you will be rolling dice to try to get a number lower than your character’s ability scores. (The numbers that represent their Mental and Physical aspects) If you do, you succeed, and if you don’t, you fail to complete whatever task you were attempting.

d6 is shorthand for six-sided dice, which is the cube dice most folks think of when they hear “dice.” In this example, there is a 3 at the beginning which tells you that you would be rolling three six-sided dice and adding them together.

Death Saves are a concept from Dungeons and Dragons. When your character loses all of their health points/ hit points (a number representing how healthy your character is) then they fall unconscious and are forced to roll a twenty-sided dice each time their turn comes around. If they fail to roll a 10 or higher, then they have a “failed” death save. If they roll a 10 or higher then they “succeeded”. Traditionally you need three of either of them to finish being in this unconscious state. If you get three failures, you die, and if you get three successes, your character “stabilizes” but remains unconscious for some time. There are more rules, but those are for someone running a game to explain, this gives the basic understanding, I feel.

HP is short for Health Points or Hit Points. This tells you how much damage a character can receive before they fall unconscious or die.

GMless. So, first, a GM is a “Game Master” and their job is to narrate what happens around your characters and to roleplay pretty much everyone in existence that isn’t your character. In Dungeons and Dragons they’re called “Dungeon Masters” or DMs. So, a game that is GMless simply means that there is no Game Master and instead the players are cooperatively telling the story together, usually by allowing the outcomes of dice to tell them whether they are succeeding or failing at certain tasks.

#A E S T H E T I C #indie ttrpg #ttrpg community #writblr #horror #scifi #osr #floppy disk #tamagotchi #trapper keeper #am writing #authors of tumblr #publishing industry #strawman #Youtube #techno horror #short story anthology

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hxlda-hxlda · 10 months ago

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WHAT DO YOU MEAN A 400K FIC ?

WHTA- WHAT DO YOU MEAN 😭

girl 'that's the idea' gets more out of hand by the day. i swear on sirius black's life (ignore his death) that this fic started out with a 50k end goal. but then i started planning more, and i went 'oh ok maybe 150k'. and then i kept planning and writing, and i went 'oh ok maybe 200k', 'oh ok maybe 300k', and now i have a doc that's at 110k, and i'm not even CLOSE.

based on how i want to pace this thing, and all that i have planned, 400k is looking about right. maybe more. by god it never ends. everyone ignore the lurking sequel i have in the back of my mind as well.

someone comment on this post when i hit like 700k or something stupid. i probably would. someone stop me, i beg.

anyway!! in my other ask i talked a bit more abt the whole fic here, so here have an excerpt from an upcoming chapter!!! one of my favs ever!!! here you go:

“I didn’t know you were a Bowie fan.”

Sirius snapped his head to the left, tearing his mind from the melodramatic crescendo that was screeching from the spinning disk and toward the direction of that familiar Welsh lilt. Sirius did not understand why he was surprised, Lupin was the one Sirius followed into the dingy little shop in the first place. And yet, when his eyes met with those currently assessing him with something akin to amusement—scarred eyebrow raised and all—something in him jolted.

“What?” Even Sirius could admit it was not the best of his comebacks, but he could hardly remember Lupin’s comment after the surprise of him actually being there so you can cut him some slack.

“Didn’t take you as a Bowie fan.”

Sirius blinked; once, twice. “Who?”

“David Bowie?” The amusement on Lupin’s scarred features expanded into something of a sly smile. He tucked his hands into his muggle jeans, which appear to be a size too large (quite the feat for such a tall fucking freak), and had a hole in one of the knees. Lupin nodded at the magazine Sirius was suddenly aware remained in his hands. “Him.”

Sirius glanced down, holding up the cover enough to read, printed in vibrant red, indeed; ‘DAVID BOWIE’. The man between the lettering—Bowie, presumably—peered from between his fingers in an almost predatory gaze. For a picture that, strangely, did not move, those eyes seemed to find more of Sirius than the normal pair might. He did not like it.

Sirius looked back up at Lupin. “Oh, I’m not.”

“Yes, I’ve gathered that now.” Remus was looking at him like Sirius was the stupid one. Like it was something amusing. “He’s very popular with muggles, y’know.”

The song had changed. This one was slower, but it had the same nasally rasp of the voice to it. Judging by the cover set beside the record player—the one with the strange makeup and hair and eyes, those same damn eyes—this was David Bowie singing.

“Sounds shit, makes sense it would appeal to mudbloods.”

Remus hummed a noncommittal response, that small smile still playing on his scarred lips as he regarded Sirius in the not-quite-but-definitely-somewhat uncomfortable lull in the conversation. The song filled the silence.

One day, though it might as well be someday

You and I will rise up all the way

All because of what you are

The prettiest star

“What are you doing here, Sirius?”

Sirius was just wondering the same thing himself. Why exactly had he wanted to come in here? Staring vacantly at Lupin while some muggle lunatic raved on, was not the answer, actually. He did not say that.

“Do I need a reason to be here?” That was what he said.

Lupin scoffed. “You’ve never looked more out of place in your life, Black.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” A lie. He’d never felt more out of place in his life.

#ask it coward #writing tag #wolfstar #sirius black #remus lupin #fic: that's the idea

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radiantlyrey · 1 year ago

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Thinkin' 'Bout NaNoWriMo

It's getting to be that time of year again--that time when writers everywhere sit down and ask themselves important questions. Questions like, "Am I doing NaNoWriMo this year?" and "If I am doing NaNo, what am I even gonna write?"

I am planning to do an abridged NaNo this year--probably not more than 20k words for the whole month. (Part of me always wants to shoot for 50k, but the rest of me knows me better than that, and knows that down that path lies horrific burnout, so.) I am having trouble choosing which story I want to work on.

Which brings me to you, Tumblr.

Here are my current story ideas for NaNoWriMo. There are five of them, and I've listed a little summary for almost all of them, along with some personal pros and cons.

Idea #1: Fantasy Titanic This idea came to me in a dream two years ago (no, really). The basic gist is thus: What if Titanic (1997), but instead of a love story, it's a heist story, and also there are elves and magic and shit? The summary:

The grandest cruise ship of the century is setting off on its maiden voyage. Passengers include young Neela, who is crossing the ocean to meet her fiance before their wedding, and Alice, a sorceress and unwilling conwoman/thief whose mother has chosen Neela as their next mark. The con is nearly done when disaster strikes--the ship hits an iceberg and begins to sink. In the chaos that ensues, Alice must make hard choices, not least of which is who she wants to be if she survives.

Pros and Cons: +I already have the first half of the story plotted out. +I already have extensive profiles of my two main characters written.

-I have to do a lot more research on the actual ship and the disaster. -I feel like some of the plot I do have needs to be reworked.

Idea #2: Beauty and the Beast Retelling This story is a rewrite of a story I wrote about 15 years ago in my online writing group. I've been wanting to retackle it for a while now, and I spent some time this past spring making plans for it. I don't have a formal summary for it yet, but.

The story follows the basic shape of the original fairy tale, but with some modernization and fantasy twists. The story is set in the US, and it's set in a world where magic has been gone from the western world for well over a century. Other than that, things are more or less the same: Penniless father of three daughters gets lost on the way home from a trip, ends up at a mysterious and obviously magical mansion. He accidentally offends his host, a monstrous Beast, who demands the father give up one of his daughters to the Beast, or else return himself. The eldest daughter (rather than the youngest) agrees to go in her father's place.

Pros and Cons: +I have almost three-fourths of the story plotted out. +I am eager to revisit this idea and improve on my first attempt.

-I may need to do some more worldbuilding before drafting can begin. -I’m not sure if I have a good grip on my main character yet.

Idea #3: TRON/Pacific Rim Crossover I have had this idea for about five years now, and it's a basic "what if I mashed these two universes together?" style crossover. My concept is a series of fics that follow TRON character Quorra's point of view of the Kaiju War, and her journey towards eventually becoming a Jaeger pilot with Sam Flynn (another TRON character). I've got about five or six of the stories already plotted out, though I don't have much more of a summary.

Pros and Cons: +I know how the next few stories are meant to go. +I am feeling enthusiastic about the story as a whole, and am eager to continue work on it.

-I am kind of blocked on the second story, and have been for a while. -I’m still worried no one’s going to read this thin, so what's the point.

Idea #4: TRON '82 High Fantasy AU Not much to say about this one except that it's very new, but here's a summary:

Chesst styles himself the God-Emperor of the Seven Realms, and has outlawed worship of the old gods. Those who still cling to the ancient ways are consigned to the empire’s gladiatorial arenas, forced to fight to the death in dangerous games. Tron, a former knight-paladin of the realm of Enqor, has spent nearly a year in the arenas, fighting and surviving and keeping his faith alive. The gods have not forsaken him yet, and he knows they will not let Chesst’s blasphemy stand. When an amnesiac prisoner named Flynn arrives at Tron’s arena, Tron and his friend Ram are tasked with preparing him for the games. As Flynn recovers and trains, it becomes clear that he is much stronger than even Tron expected. He has access to a powerful magic that he cannot fully control, even with Tron mentoring him. As the start of the games approaches, Tron can only hope that Flynn’s true power can be concealed long enough for him to control it, and perhaps long enough for the three of them to escape.

Pros and Cons: +It’s a new idea, which means it could spark a lot of creativity. +I think it could be a fun idea to explore at length.

-I’d have to do a ton of worldbuilding to get ready to write it. -I also need to plot the whole thing (or at least part of it), with the original film as a guide.

Idea #5: The Face in the Mirror This is also a new idea and yet another TRON story. Concept came about a post on here about what might happen if one program's disc was put on another program's body. I've billed this one as a horror story; here's the summary:

Metz is having a little trouble with his memory. He remembers… horrible things, things that don’t make sense. He remembers derezzing, or at least, he thinks he does. His best friend and lover, Starr, says that it’s just a packet of bad code that will purge itself in time. She reassures him that he’s fine, and he wants to believe her, but… Sometimes, it’s like someone or something else is inside his body. And every time he sees his reflection, he’s startled by the face staring back at him…

Pros and Cons: +I know the basic shape of the story already. +The plot will probably fit my lower NaNoWriMo goal of 10-20k.

-I have no idea how to write a horror story. -I’m not sure I have enough enthusiasm for this idea right now.

I do not promise to abide by the results of this poll, but I'm interested to see what y'all think of my conundrum.

#writing #writeblr #nanowrimo #polls #my polls #long post #throwing this into the void and screaming #yo ho yo ho a writer's life for me

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rainwaterapothecary · 3 months ago

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#I AM BUT A FOOL WHO CAN ONLY WRITE ONE SHOTS HOW DO YOU MAKE SUCH COOL EPIC STORIES#YOURE ALL SO TALENTED LIKE WUAGH

I mean SAME but alsdgjhsadflakjd basically for me I like to lay out what I want to cover...in increasingly detailed blurbs.

My first blurb will usually be incredibly bare-bones:

That's the outline of the whole second half of my fic "The Lovers Confidant". (I clearly go back in and cross out ideas that don't work later or copy+paste ideas in as I go. In fact, I don't think I ended up using any of those ideas in the end.)

On my next pass, each chapter gets a little more detail:

Then I'll start digging into dialogue and figuring out what goes where:

I've found that foreshadowing tends to happen organically as I write? Like I'll have written something and at some point when I'm staring at the ceiling three months later I'll be like HOLY SHIT THAT ALL WRAPS AROUND---

And that's the beauty of having such a bare-bones setup, for me. I can write in later additions using highlight or parenthesis:

Every highlighted section was added after the initial pass, each building on the last. (For illustration purposes only, having that much color would drive me bonkers, personally, but everybody's different!)

(I'll also have my sticky notes open in a side tab so I can copy+paste my rough outlines onto it and have it floating nearby - useful for dialogue ideas.)

Then I actually start writing! Long-form helps my stories to unravel themselves as I type, and if something changes in the long-form then it's easy to go back and edit the outline because it was so bare-bones:

For Lovers Confidant I had to have a calendar with all the important dates in it since the game is sort of rigid when it comes to that, so I also had a segment for that.

Here's my calendar for REUnion, actually, since it has so many moving pieces behind-the-scenes:

(It's then followed by a ton of notes and links to wikis and whatnot bc I'm going hard on it.......)

And then it's just editing, editing, EDITING all the long-form over and over again, re-arranging and copy+pasting sentences/paragraphs that don't work into a side document. This is when you can wrench out anything that's slow or not hitting how you want (if it didn't trip you up while writing in the first place).

I also swear by HEADERS!!!!!! They allow your document in Word to make each chapter collapsable and you can easily re-arrange them by just dragging them around on the side pane:

I can make a tutorial if you're interested in that, it's a Microsoft Office thing I picked up at Business College(TM) so idk how many people actually use it. It probably carries over into other word processing programs too.

But honestly? For me it's about jumping into the writing process as quickly as possible. I know I'll psych myself out of writing, or find something to distract me, etc if I don't just fucking write.

The longest fic I've published is only like...30k? But having chapters written down long-form is still more motivating than staring down an idea that could be 130k and just having a few sentences written.

AND ANOTHER THING!

While I'd like for some of my writings to be 50k+ eventually, it's more important to me to have the idea take all the time and space it needs. If that ends up being 800 words? It's 800 words. If it ends up being a oneshot that needs to be broken up into chapters to make it make sense to my readers? Then that's what it needs! I don't know if I'll ever be a writer with 100k+ fics and multiple-work rewritings of entire book series...But dangit my ideas are going to be written to the most authentic they can be. Only I can write my ideas, only I can craft these stories that dance around my head.

And that's fine!! I'm not a huge name in fandoms, I don't have millions of words under my publishing belt... But I'm me, and I'm happy with that. :)

(And yes all my writings are in Bookman Old Style, it helps the ideas flow. If you're ever stuck, try switching fonts. I've heard Comic Sans is useful for some people, while others swear by Helvetica. :) )

To all my so so so so beloved fanfic writer mutuals I’ve gotta know,,,,,,, h o w w w w w w do you write a long multi-chapter fanfic. Like how do you a cohesive and compelling story without it getting boring, how do you write cool plot twists and character motivations that lead up to a defining moment, how do you write things that happen early in the story and then come back later etc etc BASICALLY. HOW DO YOU WRITE. IS WHAT IM ASKING

#one shots aren't a bad thing one shots aren't a bad thing one shots aren't a bad thing i say staring at myself in the mirror #replies #long post #writing shit #as for motivations I go back to the source material #the amount of times I've played or watched a game just to get characterization right #or read fic just to get the feel of the character and the creative juice to write the next chapter #I can write another little writeup on figuring out characterization and motivation if that would help at all #also yes i didn't edit any of the documents before screen shotting them except that one with the highlights #that's really how i write to myself in my drafts

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clarissalance · 3 years ago

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Who has the upper hand?

Pairing: Kaeya x G/N!Reader, mention of Varka and Diluc.

Warning: Slight swearing, Kaeya is a lil shit, reader being stubborn and scheming, immense tension

Summary: You’re so terrible at swordsmanship that you can’t withstand 2 strikes from Kaeya or, are you?

Word count: 3k5

Disclaimer: What is written in here is based on my imagination, nothing from this fic should be taken seriously. Most of the fact I put in this fic does not follow the lore of the game so it should only be taken as a grain of salt. For example: section 8 in Knight of Favonius codebook.

A/N: I struggle so much when I wrote this piece. This was suppose to be angstier but I tone down a little bit (because Kaeya was very OOC in my draft, I think he’s still a bit OOC in this fic but I tried my best ;-;, pls don’t bite me.)

How did author write a 50k+ oneshot? I can’t write something more than 5k properly ;-; Anyhow, please enjoy this fic. I’m going to have a good rest for 2 weeks before release a comeback. Please shower Kaeya and our new MC with a lot of loves!!!!

As a strategist of the knight of Favonius, you don't usually have enough time to finish the towers of reports, the never-ending meetings and dealing with cheap tricks Fatui diplomats. Often, you have to skip your daily sword training session, which results in a rather miserable situation. The whole practice ground is staring holes at your defeated posture. You are sitting on the hard soil ground, and the Calvary captain is towering you, his sharp blade just a few inches away from your throat.

It is not a strange scene for any knights to lose a spar against the Calvary captain, he should be one with the best swordsmanship after Grand Master, and maybe Acting-Grand Master, too. However, as knight, they can usually withstand him at least more than 2 blows.

Whispers and talks start to circulate around as soon as you stepped your foot in the training ground. It’s very uncommon to see people from that department wandering around this area. The strategy department is famous inside the Knight of Favonius to be the weakling-cunning-mouthy-jerks, who always find excuses after excuses to skip the monthly knight evaluation.

So, who gives them the right to be exempt from the test? Of course, it’s from the ultimate high chief of strategy department. Rumours say before the strategy chief works for the Favonius knight, the man was once a legendary attorney. That person can flip words from black to white, turns the defendant from guilty to innocent. With a profound convincing skillset coming from the chief, persuading the Grand Master Varka is easy as a piece of cake. The whole department of 10 people is easily off-hook for 3 years, never participate in the monthly evaluation before the man suddenly dropped the bomb 2 days ago.

“ I’m tired from coming with excuses to cover for your lazy asses.” The man waved his hand, his eyes staring outside the window. His nails scratching the messy shaved chin.“ Varka seems to get used to navigating my thoughts-”

“Maybe time is wearing away your skill-” At the corner, someone accidentally blurted out, and the whole table gave him a sharp look. Did he have a death wish or something? If so, everyone here can happily dig him a hole, free charge for the coffin.

The chief cleared his voice again, blue eyes melancholy drifted to the table. “So, you guys have tried your best on this monthly evaluation. I hope to see you all again next month.”

The meeting was dismissed afterwards, and everything spiralled into chaos. The whole department hasn’t touched anything aside from the parchment papers and the quills in the last 3 years. How are they going to master the swordman-ship in 2 weeks?

But, the worst thing is,

Your well-respected, talented, and tactful chief has run away.

The next morning, you received the news that a foxy old man is on a business trip to Fontaine with the Grand Master. The expedition is 2 weeks long.

You should have known what he meant when the deceitful man ambiguously ended his sentence like that. Nothing goes well when the chief said: ‘Farewell, my comrades’.

For the last 2 days, you have been starting to familiarize yourself again with how to hold a sword and how to swing the sword.

As you trail along with the long-forgotten memories, trying to look through the familiar feeling when swinging the sword, you hear footsteps coming in your direction. It is familiar, with the way the person is walking, the beat, the sudden burst of noise in the air, you can only conclude it’s the Calvary Captain. The practice ground seems livelier as soon as the man steps inside, people rushing to his side to give their greetings. Maybe today is one of his practice days.

“ Never thought I would see you here.” The young man calls out, successfully jostle you up from your thoughts. You give him a complex look and turn away, focusing on the tattered dummies. Your wrist is screaming in protest, legs wobbling. You remember those golden days when you were young when you were flexible, and your bones didn't crack as much. Oh, where the golden days have gone?

“What do I own the honour of seeing you here, captain?” You fold your arm defensively, voice monotonously. Kaeya despites the most when you start talking in an emotionless tone. Oh, how you love riling him up in the middle of the practice ground!

“ I come here for my weekly practice, but-” He shrugs, eyes glinting with mischief. “ look like the rumour about the abolishment of special permission for the strategy department is true.”

So he has heard the rumours. You roll your eyes, face blanks. You know Kaeya has his own way to obtain his information, but you never thought it’d be this fast. Words don’t easily leak from the strategy department.

“What do you need? Make it short, so I can practice for the upcoming evaluation.” Tired of his long introduction, you ask him directly. If you are going to ignore him any longer, the man will continue poking you.

Starting an argument only wastes your time, and asserting dominance in the middle of the training ground won’t boost your ego. You’re a strategist, your weapons are detailed plans and sharp word, not sword and bow. Showing off your strength in front of those ruthless knights don't improve your relationship with them.

“ Straight the point eh?” You give him an impatiently look, tempting to ignore him again before he flashes you a smug grin. “How bout sparing with me?”

The whole training ground falls in silence, and you direct at the captain a confusing look. Is he serious? No one in the knight except the Grand Master can go against him, not to mention someone who hasn’t touched a sword for three years.

“I can help you with your training, and you can help with mine” Kaeya speaks with utmost confidence that you almost nod and agree. That man is really deceitful, he knows how well your skill has gone dull, yet he still wants to practice with you? What is this man plotting?

“ Do you realize how absurd your offer is? ” You give him a complicated gaze, voice unwavering. Everyone takes in a deep breath, tension crackling. It's not everyday scenery you often encounter. A heated argument between the mischievous cavalry captain and the tactful strategist. Nosy people gather around the pair, internally hoping for the war the breaks out.

“ You know well that I can’t properly block your first strike.” Light-hearted, you joke, but there is no hint of amusement in your voice. Sharpe eyes glaring at the blue figure, you notice the man remains unfazed.

" Shouldn't you choose a more competent opponent?"

The sound whispers and talking about the reasons why Kaeya picked such an easy opponent start to circulate, and you can’t help to curl your lips up. Within a few seconds, you have effortlessly turned the gossiping direction toward your desired path. Flashing Kaeya a victorious grin, you tap your foot impatiently, waiting for his reaction.

You should have worked at PR damage control or marketing instead! The diplomat would have been fine too! At least, you wouldn’t need to practice swordman-ship.

As you mulling on your terrible choice of career, a chill runs down your spine. Tilting up, Kaeya is beaming sweetly at you, the frost slowly creeping up and nipping your shoes. Look like you just pressed the wrong button.

The man narrows his eyes, and you gulp nervously, avoiding his calculating gaze. Kaeya chuckles, his voice laced with worry, wavering and hurtful.

“I just want to help you improve as fast as possible. The test is coming in two weeks isn't it?”

The whole table has turned, and people start to say how considerate and thoughtful the cavalry captain is. The crowd starts to criticize you and tell you to be more grateful and stop suspicious of his unconditional help. Oh, you wish he wasting it on you, many knights in this training ground would love getting advice and improvements from him.

Applause for our dear Calvary captain, smoothly seeking empathy from the crowd and turning the favour back to him. No wonder how fast he climbed up the rank.

Bantering and arguing with a person like him is meaningless, so you accept his offer and drag your sword toward his direction. Let finish this within 2 strikes.

Moving to the centre of the field, both of you face each other, his eyes scanning you sceptically. What is this man plotting again? Bowing, you finally give him a warning look before standing at your ready position. Kaeya holds his sword, analyzing your starting posture.

As soon as the whistle blows, you charge at the man, opening the spar with a direct hit. Kaeya quickly raises his word up to block the first blow, the sound of steel clashing loudly. He then forcefully diverts the sword to the left, a classic way to counter the strike.

Knowing your limited strength against him, you take a step back and swiftly angle the blade downward, aiming for a weak spot at his waist. This move would create a noticeable weakness on your right, and only the idiot doesn't use this as his advantage to disarm you.

You’re right, he uses the loophole you planned, successfully disarm you within 2 strikes. The sword slips from your hand clanging loudly behind as your foot slips and fall on the ground.

His sharp blade is just a few inches away from your neck. The calvary captain wears a solemn look, his cerulean eyes imbued with irritation. Seems like he figures out you purposefully planed to end the match in 2 strikes.

Quickly raising your hand in defeat, you shoot him a taunting grin. The referee declares Kaeya is the winner, and people start to clap and cheer loudly, but overall no one is surprised. As the match end, audiences start to disperse, return back to their tasks.

Kaeya put his sword away and offers you his hand. You stare idly at the gloved hand a moment before putting yours on. The man effortlessly pulls you up, your body flush against his. With Kaeya so close to you, your first reaction is to push the man away, but his firm grip says otherwise. He inches closer, dark blue locks brush your cheek, tall figure towering you intimidating.

“Why end it so early?” He leans down and whispers, your body tenses up visibly. “Surely, you could handle more than 2 strikes of mine.” The young man in blue hums, his voice sultry.

“ What are you saying? I haven’t touched the sword more than 3 years.” You remind him, hands pushing his chest away, trying to create some distance. The man doesn’t budge an inch.

“Your strikes doesn’t say so. The first strike was not bad.” Noticing your effort to push him away, Kaeya stands straight, heels dig into the ground. His lips curl up at the helplessness flashing in your eyes. He loves seeing you struggle, seeing how anxiety and desperation rising in your sparkling orbs. “I think you could at least have a decent fight with me.”

“ Quit spouting non-sense Kaeya, let me go. We are in public.” You let out an annoyed hiss, punching his toned chest. He still wears the uniform improperly like that, the exposed tan chest can be under many layers. Sometimes you don't even know the reason why doesn't he just button the shirt up properly. Finger grazing at the bared skin on his chest, you turn your head away, cheeks heat up.

The man loves seeing you squirming in his trap, and you’re not going to let him see that. Anything, but satisfying his masochist hobby.

“You don’t like skin-ship?” The man fakes a gasp, his orb sparkles with mirth. “But you were being touchy with your friend. Why can't we be a bit touchy? ” His tone suggestively, the tall man snickers at your blushing mess. Out of everything, why would he mention that? You give him stinky eyes, brows furrow deeply.

“I’m not touchy with you.” You deny dreadfully. Archon, how long have you wasted your time here with this slithering serpent?

Kaeya arms wrap tightly around you, your body moulds perfectly into his embrace. You hate how perfectly you fit into his hug like this, but you can’t deny how warm he is, despite the fact he wields cryo.

“ When will you let me go?” Your voice starts to grow weak, dragging slightly in discomfort. Kaeya curiously looks down, noticing your pouting. Sensing his gaze, you turn your head away but his fingers have quickly grabbed your cheek, forcing you to look at his deep blue eye.

“Give me a kiss, then I'd let you go.” His voice serious, but what he just said is not. You look at the cryo wielder horrendously, mouth gaping. His face is composed and relax, like what he just ask is like asking about the weather, asking about your health, not for a kiss. Is he being serious? What in the world did he just ask? A kiss? Excuse me, a what?

“You...you are not being serious.” You wriggle your way out, escaping from his fingers, but his embrace tightens, caging you inside. Damn it, Kaeya. He’s messing with you.

When you flash him a furious look, the man shrugs nonchalantly, his cerulean lock fluttering gently in the wind. Suddenly, you have an urge to wipe off that calm demeanour. He can’t be serious. Why does he have to go all the way to annoy the shit out of you?

The smug grin hanging on his face, the mischief in his blue eyes, the arching brows, everything about him screams a flirt, yet you feel so mesmerized. Blinking a few times, you have to constantly remind yourself this man is not trustworthy. From the attitude to the way he looks at you, to the way he acts around you. Nothing from his action is truthful. Like Diluc’s warning, you can only believe half of his word and action.

“ Of course I’m being serious.” His voice solemn, but you can see the amusement in his eyes. If he doesn’t like you, why would he spend so much effort bothering you this much? What reaction is he expecting from you?

“ I really like you, Y/N” Kaeya confesses cheerfully, and you can faintly hear a few gasps around. Not this again...

Archon, you’re going to die early at this rate. You just want to practice for the upcoming evaluation, not becoming a hot topic for all Mondstadt citizen to gossip about.

And this man too, how can he easily slip out those words when you just heard him flirting with another woman the other day? You already told him numerous times that you’re not interested in dating him, or anyone right now!

Hung your head down in exhaustion, you tap his shoulder, mumbling quietly. “ Fine, fine.” You finally open your mouth, too exhausted and bothered by his stubbornness. He only wants a kiss, and you won’t hurt giving him one. Just a kiss then you can get back to your practice.

“Just don’t confess your love to me in a crowd like this again.” Before closing the deal, you weakly add a bargain, nudging him.

The calvary captain looks surprised, his eye widens little, not expecting you to agree. Normally, it takes another argument or two before you comply with his request. Kaeya timidly raises his gloved hand to your face, gently caresses your cheek. This time, you lean into his touch, nuzzling your face into his palm, eyes glimmering softly. Despite a cryo wielder, his hand is surprisingly warm.

The man in blue curiously peeks at you, he feels like a feather tickling the itchy spot. Are you plotting an escape route? Since when did you become so obedient? He has never seen the soft fur under the spiky façade you set up to face with the world, but strangely, he likes this version of you more.

Noticing his relaxed stance, you carefully gently wrap your fingers around his wrist while keeping eye contact with him. Kaeya eye widens, startles at your sudden touching. Trying your best to not break the unspoken connection, you bring his hand away from your cheek. In those cerulean eyes, you see a hint of disappointment, but it quickly dissolves. Slowly, you draw closer toward the hand hanging in the air, lips fluttering on the smooth skin on his wrist.

The calvary captain instinctively moves back, trying to escape from your sudden contact. Ironic, he is the one who innates the hug and demands a kiss from you. Tightening your grip, you press your wet lips on the exposed part of his wrist dedicatedly while maintaining eye contact with him, eyes drown with submission.

Kaeya stares at you in awe, maybe not expecting the passionate look in your eyes. His azure eye fills with mischief, now replaces with confusion and hesitation. You notice how his ears have dusted with pink despite the winds blowing in the practice ground. The man avoids your eyes, flustering.

Whispers and gasps start to remind you of the crushing reality, so you let his hand down while grinning cheekily at the cryo wielder. Poking and breaking Kaeya meticulously façade is always something you want to try. The man is a living devil, so it’s extremely unusual to see him losing his composure.

Sneakily, you untangle his other arm wrapping around your waist, plotting an escape route.

However, Barbatos doesn’t let you slip away that easily. Quickly regaining his composure, Kaeya snakes his hand around your hip again, tightening his hold. Unlike the first time, the sneaky bastard lifts you up and has the audacity to throw your body on his shoulder, carry you like a sack.

“ Yah! What are you doing?” You exclaim, fluster at his sudden antic. Kicking and punching on his shoulder, you try as many as you can, but somehow, Kaeya manages to dodge all of them.

“ You said you will let me go when I give you a kiss!” The crowd uproars, stares and gossips poke pointedly at your back. You don’t want to hear those comments from those knights again. They're not going to let this live down, aren't they? Bury your face in the Kaeya's furry collar, you let out a frustrating sigh, punching his shoulder as hard as you can.

“ You give me a kiss on my wrist. That doesn’t count.” Kaeya nonchalantly strides away from the practice ground, unfazed by your attempt to escape. This man is a beast, how can he not budge an inch with all of your kickings on his shoulder?

“ You didn’t specify the place. A kiss is a kiss!” You emphasize, and you can feel his shoulder shaking. Is he laughing? “You didn’t keep your promise.” Fuels by the rising anger, you kick your leg aggressively, struggling to free yourself from the iron-clad grip. This time, his strong arm wraps around your calves like a chain.

As soon as you raise your head up, the familiar pathway hits your memories. Shit, he is heading toward the headquarter, likely to his office. You can’t let anyone in there see you in this state. Punching his back profusely, you shot back.

“Not fulfilling the contract is breaking the Knight of Favonius's code of cond-.” Before you can finish your sentence, the man smacks your calves loudly, successfully shutting your mouth. Speechless by his sudden punishment, you let out a disbelief breath.

“ There are no such a section states about fulfilling contract inside the code of conduct, so stop making the rule up.” Kaeya smugly grins, and you can already picture his blue eyes glinting with mischief, the signature shit-eating grin on his handsome face.

" There is, it's in section eight-" Before you can finish your sentence, Kaeya cuts in, waving his hand dismissively.

" Section eight is about interaction with your co-worker, there is none about keeping contracts." The calvary captain humming, trying to recalling the content of the book. Speechless by the detailed memories of his, you can only close your mouth, quietly waiting for him to drop you down. If you stay still on his shoulder, will he let you go?

" You know, not everyone reads and memories the knight of Favonius handbook, you are just unlucky that I know the book by heart." Seeing you deflate weakly on his shoulder, Kaeya lets out a chuckle, patting your head comforting.

Before heading inside the HQ, the man doesn't drop your down but leans in closely, his whisper tickling your ear. “But at least I had fun seeing you squirming in my grasp.”

And then it hits you, the bastard purposely falls for of your antic.

#kaeya alberich #genshin kaeya #kaeya x reader #no beta we kayak like tim #genshin impact #clarissalance #who has the upper hand ?#argument #fluff #tension #smart reader #strategist #genshin varka #diluc ragnvindr #genshin diluc

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reitziluz · 2 years ago

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(maybe not so) quick notice about shit-all

essentially, i'm going to do the rewrite that i've been stopping myself from doing for over three years.

"oh no it'll never get done, it'll stop me from actually writing new material, the chapters are already published and you can't edit published material" - fuck all that noise. i've actually been held back from writing new material because i've had to devote so much brain power to stop myself from thinking about all the tweaks i'd like to do to solve the problems that are stopping me from writing rn.

and, writing tip, when you get stuck, the problem is often way farther back than you think it might be. for me, it's mainly chapter 22, "sweet things", because the whole emotional logic and everything collapses and breaks there. so i'll need to edit/rewrite at least chapter 22 anyway, so might as well work on the rest too, right?

a couple key points (spoilers start to drop)

i started writing shit-all when the broccoli arc was not even halfway done, iirc.

i had already built dimple as a key player in the fic so at the time i just called it an au and a day

i absolutely detest writing for ongoing series and never have done it before mp100

the reason for 3 is because once again the canon concluded into a beautiful whole that actually serves some delicious bits that would make the fic stronger and i 100% would have incorporated them into the fic IF I HAD ONLY KNOWN ABOUT THEM BEFORE

i also wish i had realized that no actually, the end of mp100 has a pretty clear timeline

separation arc is around reigen's birthday, 10/10. the culture festival is most likely on november 3th on culture day. the memories in ch 98 are made on new year's eve/morning, but at the start of it winter holidays (dec 25 to jan 7) are starting "soon" and it's stated to be a little over a month since dimple disappeared.

so broccoli arc happened mid to late november.

AS YOU KNOW THERE'S MULTIPLE CHAPTERS OF SHIT-ALL THAT HAPPEN ON CHRISTMAS EVE FAIRLY EARLY ON

the entire focus on christmas was purely a bit i committed to way hard and couldn't back out. i'm not that big on christmas. i just wanted to enjoy how it's more of a romantic couple's holiday in japan than the family holiday in my culture.

the christmas chapters end on ch 12

the best spot with the LEAST adjustments needed for the maximum impact for dimple to beef it is between chapters 15 and 16 and even that necessitates an awkwardly long jump in time during a very tumultuous time in the fic to make the rest of the timeline work too (because the final arc happens in january, because tsubomi moving is one of the announcements the teacher does as they've returend from the winter break, and she's stated to be moving "within the month", and that all happens in ch 21)

the lucky part is that this gives me an excuse to edit out the christmas stuff. or not even edit it out, but to move especially some of the feelsy headcanons for reigen to strenghten some later chapters instead (for example, to bring some oomph to the end of ch 19). chapter 18 would get the biggest hit, but i also could lift the haunted house scene and drop it right into ch 22, and it would practically fix all my problems with that chapter.

i've... honestly already mapped out all this in a spreadsheet. it is a fucking nightmare of 100K to rewrite, but also i already tested out rewriting the first scene of the first chapter, and it's pretty damn fast and easy work. i know that by ch 5 i'll have to start straightening up the timeline, and the fic will lose some of its wintery charm (which already was me projecting the long winters i experience onto a place that has different shit going on), but it feels pretty manageable. again, it's not like i'm making any forward progress anyway without doing this, and when i'm working on my own projects, i have in the past just started again from the beginning when i've gotten stuck at 50K or whatever.

the question remains, how do i want to do this? currenlty i'm thinking about starting out posting the chapters as i finish them (while also redrawing some old art too maybe) until the changes in actual content got too jarring. like, probably would do the christmas chapters as one batch etc.

i probably will just edit the descriptions etc over on ao3 to inform people there about what's going on, until hopefully i'll finally get to post ch 25 and there'll be a giant author's note about holy shit please take this chance to reread the work a lot changed

... honestly, best case scenario, it'll be a fun rereading opportunity on all fronts fhgsdhdfsh

#yea fic talk #spoilers #about my fic and also mp100 #i wrote this because i wanted to write shit-all #but i'm like 33 hours into a really nasty migraine #so yea #i'm also like super down to inquiries about progress etc now that i'm back to writing #just fyi #im a social writer sdgfdsgfd

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spnfanficpond · 4 years ago

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March 2021 Angel Fish Awards

(Angel Fish design by @slytherkins!!)

WELCOME TO THIS MONTH’S ANGEL FISH AWARDS!

Every month all of you fantastic writers work your asses off to post some truly incredible stories. Our Angel Fish Awards are the way for all of us, as a community of writers and readers, to lift each other up and give praise to those who have captured our attention and deserve a few kind words.

The monthly Angel Fish Awards are peer-nominated, meaning ANYONE IN THE POND CAN NOMINATE ANY POND MEMBER’S FIC. Everyone in this community deserves to be showered with love and feedback, and we hope that this fun, thoughtful award will do just that.

Be sure to read through this whole post as people who were nominated more than once only had one tag activated for tumblr tagging purposes!

WITHOUT FURTHER ADO, HERE ARE THIS MONTH’S ANGEL FISH AWARDS!

Nominated by @mrswhozeewhatsis

A Gentlemen’s Agreement (series) by @stusbunker

This is one of those fics that immediately got love from me because it’s a rare pair, Dean x Benny. Then, it got more love from me with every chapter, as Dean worked through coming to terms with wanting Benny and Benny was just so damn patient and sweet and loving throughout. The whole story just makes me want to cuddle them both!

Here’s to Witches by @imagineteamfreewill

This is one of the few cases where I think even Dean would have been okay with witches. (He’s not in the story, it’s a Sam x reader fic, but if he were, I doubt he’d be bitching about bodily fluids.) By the end of this, I was feeling all kinds of warm and fuzzy!

~*~*~

Nominated by @supernatural-jackles

Late Night Talks by @luci-in-trenchcoats

This fic is everything I didn't know I needed. It deals with such a sensitive topic in a positive light. Michelle is very good at dealing with topics that people aren't always comfortable talking about and this only proves that. It's a must read, especially for all of those who are down on themselves because of the way they look.

~*~*~

Nominated by @fictionalabyss

Safe and Sound by @iflostreturntosteverogers

you bitch, how DARE you do me like this with your romeo/juliet level shit. I refuse. I refuuuuuuuuse.

Moose on Ice by @iflostreturntosteverogers

Fluffy goodness and the imagery of a giant trying and failing to skate are exactly what I needed.

Bound to You (Prequel - chapter 4) by @beskaradberoya

Sketchy and filthy goodness so far, and I can’t wait to get to more of this and catch up.

Burnout by @idreamofhazeleyes

When I had a really bad week, I was on the hunt for something fluffy and sweet, and went to the pond. This was sent my way, and damn if it wasn’t EXACTLY what I needed. The tender comfort was perfection and spot on for Dean. 10/10 would recommend.

~*~*~

Nominated by @negans-lucille-tblr

Sleep by @nasabeck

I’ve not been into fluff long, but this was all up in those tingly fluffy feels for me. I absolutely adored it!

Dreams by @little-diable

Please read the warnings, it’s Sister!Reader! But this has become one of my favourite fics I’ve ever read. Chiara nailed it and made me fall in love with her for it! The smut - Jesus, just read it if it’s your type of thing!

Don’t Speak by @hoboal87

Again, please read the warnings. This is a dark fic! I couldn’t believe this was the writer’s first time writing dark. It was absolutely delicious. Never hit a follow button so damn fast!

Dirty Little Secrets (series) by @manawhaat

Wouldn’t have felt right not including this drabble series that I found during founders’ week. As you might have seen if you follow me, my sanity took a sharp decline whilst devouring this fic, and I was not okay. Mana, you freaking hit it out the park dude!! Everyone needs to read this, PLEASE!

~*~*~

Nominated by @tvdspngirl314

Baby Mine by @hoboal87

I was seriously hurt by the finale but this fic actually helped me cope with it.

My review : This fic starts with reader having contractions as she got ready to give birth to her and Sam’s son. How Sam handled the situation was really cute and the way the writer showed the pain of losing Dean was actually really good. I was half expecting myself to cry but I didn’t. Also there’s some hints of dom Sam in it. Love me some dom Sam.

Safe (series) by @negans-lucille-tblr

My views on the fic : It starts with Sam’s girl friend Jess dying and Sam slowly starts to discover a dark side in him. He slowly becomes a serial killer and I liked the way how the dark theme has been handled.

~*~*~

Nominated by @princessmisery666

Always With You by @idreamofplaid

Robin, finally, made a master list and in doing so I’ve been able to find some absolute gems that I may have missed previously. Like this one. I looooove this concept of an Angel looking over Sam. It’s was angsty and heart warming and I would read 50k more words of this relationship 💖💜

~*~*~

Nominated by @deanwinchesterswitch

Whiskey and Scars (series) by @thinkinghardhardlythinking

This is a three part series full of fluff and sexiness, with just a tad bit of angst. Some of Dean’s fun and gentler facets are beautifully detailed. He’s flirty, shy, tender, loving and sexy as hell. I dare you not to sigh while reading it.

~*~*~

Nominated by @agenthellcat

All Hail by @whywhydoyouwantmetosaymyname

This fic pushed all my buttons: dubcon, domination, submission, kneeling, deep throating, begging to cum. The writing is so descriptive. We really feel Y/N’s ambivalence. She is terrified to see Sam turn dark side, but she also wants him. He knows all of her naughty desires, and he uses them to bind her to him forever. He’s completely uninhibited now that he’s dark, and this ultimately conquers her resistance. This fic played into my own dark desires and that’s why I’m nominating it for an Angel Fish Award.

~*~*~

Nominated by @myinconnelly1

When Daddy’s Not Around (series) by @negans-lucille-tblr

I don’t usually read rpf but I needed some hot Jared action and this fic didn’t just deliver that. The angst and overwhelming love in this fic was just amazing.

Murder of the Virgins by @mummybear

This was just so hot!!!!!!! I can’t talk cause I’m panting and trying to catch my breath!

Loving You by @emilyshurley

Emily man... you were trying to hurt me with this fic I just know it. I know cause I can feel the knife in my back, so many tears.

THANK YOU ALL FOR THE AWESOME WORK AND GREAT FEEDBACK!

These are not actual awards! This system is set up so everyone in the Pond has a chance to share the love and promote a fic/author that has grabbed your attention. The more people that participate, and the more everyone remembers to submit their own fics after posting, the better this will be :D

THANK YOU ALL AGAIN, KEEP UP THE AMAZING WORK, AND AS ALWAYS, HAPPY WRITING!

#angel fish awards #angel fish awards masterlist #spnfanficpond #fan fiction #fanfiction #fan fic #fanfic #spn fan fiction #spn fanfiction #spn fan fic #spn fanfic #supernatural fan fiction #supernatural fan fic #supernatural fanfiction #supernatural fanfic #fic rec #spn fic rec #supernatural fic rec

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hawthornewhisperer · 3 years ago

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contractually obligated bedsharing fic is going to make all of us so fkn feral my humblest request to you to start posting asap ✨✨✨ also you have the best story writing skills ever I'm in awe

xoxoxo thank you so much my darling nonny! This made my morning and I'm so glad you're looking forward to it!

As for why I'm not posting it yet (I know you weren't criticizing, this is just a good excuse to explain my process): I'm someone who knows the rough shape of a story when I start writing it, but that's it. I usually have a few major scenes in mind, some dialogue, and the main plot beats planned, but sometimes those beats are just "they have a fight and then eventually resolve it." What's that fight going to be about? Couldn't tell ya, honestly.

So last night, I came to the Big Fight in Contractually Obligated Bedsharing, and while I knew *why* they were having that fight (the impetus for that is a core part of the story) I wasn't quite sure what they were going to fight *about* until I started writing it. Like, I knew that Hermione would be pissed that Draco did [x] and he would be pissed that she refused to see why he did [x], but that can't be the whole story, you know? Fights are never about just one thing, and in cases like this, there has to be some sort of reveal, a moment of clarity for the readers that makes you go "oh, that's why." It has to tell you something about their characters, and it has to be something that isn't easily resolved by one conversation.

And then last night, as I was writing it, I figured out exactly why Hermione was mad, and it's a damn good reason. But I need to make sure I lay the groundwork for it before we hit this point, because otherwise it's going to come out of fucking nowhere for the readers. It makes sense to me, since I'm the one privy to her internal thoughts, even the ones not on the page, but I need to lay more groundwork for it earlier on for the readers. Which honestly isn't too hard to do (there's a few places I can add in a line or two of internal monologue and that should be sufficient) but if I had started posting already, I'd be shit out of luck.

This sort of thing happens a lot as I write-- I discover themes that have developed as I write, and then I can go back and seed the beginnings of the themes earlier on. Or I have an idea for a plot point, but for it to work I need to make sure I mention part of it during the set up. So even though I'm currently 37k into a 50-60k fic (probably closer to 50k than 60k, I think), I can't quite post it because, uh, I haven't finished figuring out where it's going yet, lol.

I don't have to have it completely done (most of the time I haven't gotten to the epilogue when I start posting the first chapters) but I do have to make sure the story has finished cooking. And as of right now, it just isn't quite done yet-- but I'll start posting once it's done simmering, I swear.

#xoxo thank you friend!#hawthornewhisperer writes dramione

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clevercatchphrase · 4 years ago

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2020 Year Review~

2020. Pretty unique year, don’t you think? It’s the first year since 2002 to have only two different digits in it. After 2022, this won’t happen again until 2111. Yep. Absolutely nothing more interesting than that.

Anyway! It’s time I reflect on my 2020, look back on my yearly goals and rant about things that happened to me this year. I made a post like this last year, where I went over my 2019 goals and talked about what I accomplished and what I didn’t, and it’s only fitting I do the same again this year. Read more under the cut for a random stream of consciousness ramble!

So, first things first, let’s look at my 2019 goals;

Finish paying off that last student loan

Put more stuff on my redbubble

Illustrate my own fan fics

Sew at least one stuffed animal

Make an enamel pin

Read one new book a month

Write one page a day/Complete at least one new fan fic

Learn Python or C# for the game I want to make

Finish fully scripting Ghost Switch

Boost my patreon

Paying Off My Last Student Loan: Going down the list, I am proud to say that I FINALLY paid off all my student loans! (and not a moment too soon. The last payment I made was literally days before the first quarantine rolled out). It took me roughly 4 years on my part-time paycheck to pay off all my loans, and once I finished, I had no money to my name (literally; I had less than 1k as emergency money in case of car troubles or health issues). Heck, I’m STILL living at home as a save up for a place of my own. Finally paying off all my student loans DID activate my secret 2020 new year’s resolution, which was to adopt a cat! I did this too, literally a week later! She is the best thing that’s happened to me this entire year and I love her so much and she is the snuggliest cuddle bug I’ve ever met. I’m so happy she’s in my life now~

Put More Stuff On My Redbubble: ah ha ha ha… I thought I did this, but then I went and checked, and it turns out-! I did not. I made art I intended to go on my redbubble, but haven’t put there yet. They are all drawings of some OCs from a game I want to make, but because I haven’t progressed on making the game this year, I never got around to putting more stuff related to it on my redbubble. At the time of writing, there are 7 days left in December, so I guess I could go and put it up on my redbubble right now, but without context on where the characters are from, there wouldn’t be much point, now would there?

Illustrate My Own Fan Fics: Another goal that I was so stoked to actually do… and then just didn’t. Gee, I wonder why I couldn’t find the energy or motivation to do it this year? Truly a conundrum. (Hey, you know what? If Ghost Switch counts as a fan fiction in a visual form, then I am doing GREAT on this goal. 2.5 years in, 1 of ~4 arcs done, and still going steady~)

Sew At Least One Stuffed Animal: Okay, I have a valid excuse for not doing this one. I even knew which stuffed animal I wanted to make, and had the pattern drawn out and everything, but I had no money for materials because I had just paid off my student loans. And then, by the time I did have enough money again, quarantine was in full effect and I couldn’t go out to the fabric store. I’m still trying my best to stay out of public places even if the rules are laxer now, because I don’t want to catch the plague even if everyone in my goddamn city thinks and acts like the problem is over already. Even if they’re all wearing masks, even if they’re staying 6 feet apart, I still don’t want to risk it. I will stay inside until health experts give the all clear, and when that day comes, then I will buy some fleece and make a plush.

Make An Enamel Pin: I ACTUALLY DID THIS ONE. TWICE! Halfway through quarantine, I was feeling anxious and depressed about my job and how they were planning to have me work with the public despite climbing infection rates and positive covid cases. I didn’t quit then, but in a desperate move to try and become self-sufficient, I went to madebycooper and made two enamel pins based on some butterfly dragons I drew last year. They’re on my etsy store now! I even went out of my way to open a P.O. box just to start a small business! I haven’t sold a single pin yet, and I’m actually really nervous to sell my first because I don’t trust the efficiency of the postal system thanks to the actions of the GOP that really screwed them over this year! (If you would like to see my enamel pins, click here!)

Read One Book A Month: I did this! With dragon books I bought a couple years back! In fact, I read FOURTEEN dragon books, and still have more books for next year to read! The 14 books I read this year were:

The Hive Queen

The Poison Jungle

Wings Of Fire Legends: Dragonslayer

Dealing With Dragons

Searching For Dragons

Calling on Dragons

Talking to Dragons

The Bronze Dragon Codex

The Brass Dragon Codex

The Black Dragon Codex

The Red Dragon Codex

The Silver Dragon Codex

Dragon Strike, and

Hatching Magic

To be honest, I had read The Red Dragon Codex years ago when it first came out, but completely forgotten what it was about. I remembered liking it, and I knew the reading level was on the lower side, but the whole dragon codex series was pretty good! So far, the Silver dragon codex was my favorite, and black dragon codex was probably the worst! Hatching Magic was also really slow and bad and had plot points that went nowhere, but the book was written in the 80s, so I don’t know what I expected. The Dealing with Dragons series was very charming and great for the most part, save for one line in the last book that really rubbed me the wrong way, and all the Wings of Fire Books go above and beyond in this third arc. The second legends book could be a little tighter, though (sky and wren are the best duo and I want a book solely about them, but I honest to god do not care about leaf and ivy’s stories.)

Write one Page of any story every day/ complete at least one fic: I… did this? Okay, I kinda cheated near the end of the year. I was keeping up the one page a day thing for the first four months, but then the world went to shit and my schedule and habits got disrupted and I fell off my good track record. I completed 7 out of roughly 12 one-shots I had planned for this year (my goal WAS supposed to be one short a month, but… you know how it happens) I kept trying to catch up on this goal all year, but the days kept piling up…. Until November hit. I managed to write over 250 pages for Nanowrimo, and I consider this goal a win. 365 pages of fiction in total, which averages out to about one a day~. SHUT UP IT COUNTS.

Learn Python or C# for the game I want to make: Another goal I didn’t have the mental energy to commit to this year. Truly a mystery to where all our willpower went in 2020.

Fully Finish Scripting Ghost Switch: still haven’t done this one yet! The Snowdin arc is completely planned, but I just haven’t gotten around to getting the other areas. I’m not worried, though. I know all the major plot points I gotta hit, it’s just weaving them together in a way that flows nice is the final task. I’m not too worried though. I don’t expect to finish the Snowdin arc for another year and a half, at the bare minimum.

And my last goal of 2020, Boost My Patreon. I did this at the beginning of the year, but then very intentionally stopped about a third of the way through. It didn’t sit right with me to tell you guys to donate to me when suddenly EVERYONE was financially strained from layoffs or being furloughed. I told my patrons the same, and if you ever need to stop donating to me to take care of yourself first, then by all means, please do. I would feel much better knowing you’re using your money to see yourself fed and housed instead of given to me (where it is pretty much only used to buy gas for my car, honestly)

Welp! That was all my goals for 2020! I achieved 4 out of 10 goals plus 1 secret goal! Pretty much the same ratio as last year, but now this time I can blame all my failures on the pandemic! I don’t feel so bad about myself anymore~

ON TO 2021!

I have 11 goals for the new year, again some rolled over from this list, and some from even older years. They are, in no particular order;

Read 12 new books (roughly 1 book a month)

Finish the first draft of 2019’s Nanowrimo project and rewrite it

Script TDV

Finish Scripting Ghost Switch

Build A Comic Buffer

Sew 1 Stuffed Animal

Finish 1 Song Comic

Make another Enamel Pin

Finish 2 short original comics (this one counts as 2 goals)

Finish the 5 remaining one-shot fics

Now to go into depth on each one, more for my own sake, really. I want to know exactly what I have planned for each goal this year, and sometimes just looking at a short list doesn’t capture all the smaller details.

1)Read 12 new books. Same as last year! I The only difference is I might not be able to make it all dragon-related books. (I try my hardest not to buy from amazon anymore, but half-price-books doesn’t always have the obscure stuff I’m looking for)

2)Finish 2019’s nanowrimo project. If you read my 2019 year reflection, you’ll notice I said I wanted to do some original writing. And I did! The story I wrote for nanowrimo back then was a story I’ve been toying with since 2017, but it was only last year I finally got pen to paper. Now, you may find it odd that the keyword says “finish”. You may think, “but isn’t that what you’re supposed to do for nanowrimo?” and to that I say, WRONG! I wrote 50k words for nanowrimo, but the draft was only about halfway complete. I was kinda discouraged about what I had written last year, because I didn’t like how it was coming out, but I did manage to get it half done. Now it’s time for me to bite the bullet and just finish the thing so I can finally revise it and make it into something I DO like. (It’s still gonna be hella long, tho. That’s what I get for trying to write an epic fantasy, I guess.)

3)Script TDV. TDV is the abbreviation of the game I want to make. I… still need to do so much for this project OTL… In addition to getting the story solidified, I still need to draw art and game assets, and learn how to code for it, both of which are no small task. I keep having some sort of new year’s goal related to this on my list, and every year I just don’t hit this one. Will 2021 be different?

4)Finish Scripting Ghost Switch. (Or at the very least, get the waterfall arc completely written out). I have a plan to break this down into simpler steps, by focusing on just one arc for a month or two. Every major arc has 2 to 3 parts, broken up by flashbacks, and if I can just finish one section a month, then I should have the entire thing scripted by the end of the year. It’s not a difficult pace, but seeing if I stick with it will be the real challenge, as it is will all my goals it seems.

5)Build a Comic Buffer: I’m actually working on this one right now! Since I paid off my last loan and got a new job this year, my current Patreon goals are kind of out of date. They had all been centered around me paying off that last loan, and working towards full-time employment, but those are both completed now! So instead, I would love to get to a place where my patrons could read pages at least a week ahead, and to do that, I need to build a buffer. And since I’m working 5 full days a week now, I can’t afford to fall behind. But you can’t fall behind if you constantly stay ahead! I would like to have… a 10 to 12 page buffer. That’s roughly 3 months’ worth of pages to always have on hand in case I get swamped with work, or something. Right now I currently have a buffer of 3, which will cover me for half a January, which is better than not having anything at all, but still not the best. (ultimately, I would love to have a buffer so big, I could queue them up for the whole year. Wouldn’t that be something?)

6) Sew one stuffed animal: same as last year. ASSUMING the plague gets under control in 2021, I don’t expect to get to this goal until the summer at the earliest.

7)Finish 1 song comic: I have 7 song comics planned. One is a gift, one possibly for wandersong, one is a collab that’s currently in the works, but I’m waiting on a friend to do their part before I can continue mine, 2 are UT related, and 2 (well, technically 3, but one is the collab) are KH related. It’s one of the UT ones that will probably get finished, if I’m being honest. It’s completely story boarded, and now I just need to ink and color it. I would like to get it done for UT’s 6th birthday, since I made a song comic on the fly for the anniversary this year, and it was fun, and I’d like to do it again! So, look forward to that next september~

8) Make another enamel pin: I have a dolphin design I’d like to make because dolphins are cute, if not little murder machines. (need to save up some expendable income first, tho. THESE THINGS AIN’T CHEAP TO MAKE.)

9 and 10) start and finish 2 original short comics: I’ve got some comic ideas I want to do, but I need to get them written out first. I don’t think either would be too long. Each maybe a couple “episode’s” length, if envisioned on a website like webtoons or tapas. They’d both be heavy in allegory, but not overly drawn out (hopefully)

11)And lastly, Finish the 5 remaining one-shots I had planned for this year but never got around to. I’m going to try to write one every other month. Pure self-indulgent shipping fluff. If I finish these 5, then maybe I’ll ask other people for more prompts and ideas, which I’ve never done before. We’ll see how it goes~

Also, Like last year, I’d like to look at everything that’s happened to me this year, though to be honest, I’m not sure how much I remember/how accurate it’ll be. God, I don’t even remember what January was like. Who was I back then? Who were we all back then? I guess I’ll start my yearly retrospective in march because, heh, god we ALL know what started happening in march.

Firstly, I paid off my last student loan! Then a week later on March 18th, I drove half an hour out of my city to adopt a cat and I love her and it was the best day of this year for me. Spring break is just beginning this weekend, but the attendance at the zoo is shockingly low this year. Apparently, a lot of people watch the news, and they’re all taking precautions about social distancing. I wasn’t too disappointed. Fewer people at the zoo, the easier my job is for me. I was looking forward to getting some free overtime on spring break, since I’m broke after paying off that loan, and I’m a cat parent now and have a furry child to feed. Monday rolls around. My manager calls me and tells me that the zoo is going into lockdown until further notice. I worry for the birds I take care of, but understand it’s for everyone’s safety.

For two months I sleep in and watch way too much YouTube. I join a couple writing discords. I have nightmares about my birds escaping their enclosure and I dreamed one of the security guards I really like at the zoo gets covid and has to go to the ER. I woke up really upset.

I started and finished BBS for the first time. I also replayed and finished KH2 final mix for the first time. It had been about 5 years since I last played KH2 before my PS2 died, and it was like coming home~ I also finished tearaway, and played and beat Ryme for a second time (which I can’t remember if I did that last year, but it was a fun experience regardless)

Mid-June, and I’m allowed to start going back to work, be it on reduced hours. The zoo is still closed to the public, but I’m loving it! I get to work with full-time keepers and do full-time keeper things. It’s so much fun not having to deal with the public. August starts to creep up and there’s a rumor that the zoo will be opening to the public again, which I’m not stoked about. I don’t want to go back to standing in one exhibit all day, talking to guests who don’t listen to the rules or to me. 2 of my younger coworkers (who had both only been there a couple of months) get chosen for full-time positions, while I get passed up which really pisses me off. My other 2 coworkers quit when they think we might be reopening because they cannot risk catching the virus due to at-risk family. I am now the last keeper in the interactive bird exhibit.

I keep working, the zoo slowly opens, but with me as the only interpreter in our interactive bird exhibit, we can’t open because I can’t run the entire exhibit by myself. So my exhibit stays closed. September comes and goes, and then October starts. Now there is more serious talk of opening my exhibit before the end of the year because the zoo expects to bring in larger crowds for the Christmas lights event in November/December. I ask if I get hazard pay or health insurance since I’m doing full-time hours until they hire more staff. They say no.

I immediately start searching for a new job feeling incredibly indignant/hurt/slighted/insulted/used/abused/ALL the negative feelings at my job. I had been there for 4 years, but never got a chance to work full time, while the two newest hires who had only been there 2 months both got moved up. I can’t help but feel they were holding one mistake I made two years ago against me and never wanted to give me a chance. (that, or they knew I was reliable when it came to showing up for work in such a volatile position that sees a lot of new faces, and they didn’t want to bother going through the process of hiring someone new) I don’t want to risk my life working around guests who don’t wash their hands and don’t properly distance. I don’t want to gamble with my health when they won’t offer me health insurance because I’m part time.

Mid October, I get an interview for a full time job and get hired on the spot. I peace out at the zoo 2 weeks later, literally 3 days before they planned to open my exhibit to the public. It was a close call for me to escape before they opened to the public (and pettiness was only partially the reason I dipped out so close to opening). Sorry new hires who are now in charge of the bird feeding exhibit. I taught you the best I could in the short time I had. If the managers are struggling with what to do with one less person, I can’t say I feel bad. I can only hope they delayed opening/closed you down again for your own safety. You are not lightbulbs. I really hope the higher ups stop considering you as replaceable as one. Will I go back to the zoo to visit? Probably. But not for a year at least.

I started my new job the very next day after I quit the zoo, and have been there ever since, (which isn’t that long yet, tbh. Christmas day was my 2 month anniversary). It’s full time, but it’s also a small business, and everyone’s hours this year have been on the short side due to the plague. I understand, though. They don’t want us to work if they can’t afford to pay us. Everyone is nice enough, though some people smoke and it’s hard to avoid them with how frequently we have to go in and out, and I really don’t want to get lung cancer, sorry not sorry, please and thank you. Also, with such a small team, gossip is certainly harder to go undetected, so it’s a relief knowing people don’t talk behind one another’s backs.

I participated and beat my 4th nanowrimo in a row, I made TWO apple crisps on thanksgiving, and made baklava on Christmas and both of these recipes were my first time making them, and they both came out adequately! I voted the first day of early voting, and I did an art trade/collab with two of my friends for my birthday! (normally we would have done monthly “art days” where we get together and do art projects for fun because we’re adults and we can spend our time together however we want, but the plague said otherwise this year) We drew pokemon and it was fun! (hopefully I can show you all the results soon. At the time of writing, I’m still waiting for the last two colored parts to get back to me)

I reached 100 pages on my undertale comic, and finish the first arc out of…! (im not sure. It’s either going to be 4 or 5, I haven’t decided yet)

Over all, I managed to stay healthy as far as I know. I wasn’t as productive as I wanted to be this year, but then again, who was? (don’t answer that. I don’t need that kind of comparison in my life right now)

Will 2021be any better? Honestly? I don’t think so. Not right away, at least. Just because a new year is about to start does not mean the slate is completely wiped clean. The change of the calendar year doesn’t magically make all our current problems disappear. Covid will still be here and cases will still climb when January starts. Small business will still be strained when the month rolls over, police will still go on murdering innocent civilians and getting away scot free, amazon and disney will still be monopolizing all consumer goods and media, and I can’t help but feel like there’s an impending shit show about to go down on inauguration day. I do hope things will get better, though. It’ll be arduous and unpleasant, but I do hope things will improve, because sometimes hoping is all you can do.

Good night.

#long post #new year's resolutions #year review #year retrospective

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sae-what · 4 years ago

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Fanfiction Year in Review - 2020

Yeah I know I’m a week late, but that’s what happens when you ✨procrastinate✨. Thanks for the tag, @ladyofthenoodle <3

1 List of fics completed this year in order they were finished

heart diagnosis (first Ladynoir fic, where LB takes a magazine quiz to see if she has a crush on Chat)

power couple (Love square identity shenanigans, Chat announces his relationship with Adrien - and actually, I posted this fic before the Adrichat fiasco back in April)

the first and last wish (Plagg and Tikki make a sacrifice)

uncharted territory (Ladynoir mutual pining and dates in disguises, LB denying her feelings for Chat )

you’re surprisingly light (my first, but not last, Adrigami fic)

It’s Nice to Have a Friend (Adrienette childhood friends to lovers, based on that TS song)

once upon a dream (Ladrien sleeping beauty AU)

i’d love to go on a date with you (#LetLadybugWearATuxedo2k21)

silly notions (Ladrien would literally die for each other, so this Medieval AU fic happened)

infinite (Ladynoir stargazing, Ladynoir July)

i admire you (Childhood AU for Ladrien)

he’s a little claw-strophobic (an Adrichat November fic)

for every question why (gabemoth was our because) (my Gabemoth fic :)...)

saying something stupid (like i love you) (Ladybug accidentally confesses that she’s in love with Chat, and they both think it’s a joke, fluff and mutual pining)

i’ve got a boy crush (Adrigaminette, unrequited Marigami, a whole lotta unrequited yearning)

drown in your green (Marinette experiences a panic attack and reoccurring flashbacks after the events of Chat Blanc)

In The Name of Adrichat (Love square identity shenanigans, in which Marinette gets Adrien and Chat Noir to go on a date)

2 Number of words written

50k+ published. I’ve definitely written more words than this bc I’ve had fics where I deleted them, and other WIPs that I never got back to.

3 Your most popular fic

power couple has the most kudos

every morning, she’d climb up that sycamore tree (an AU of the book Flipped) has the most hits.

4 Your personal fave

My personal favorite has to be i’d love to go on a date with you, but I also want to put every morning, she’d climb up that sycamore tree up here as well.

I’ll talk about the first fic later (I also talked about why it’s one of my faves in this post), but the second is because it’s based off of a book I used to read as a child called Flipped. This fic has a special place in my heart bc it’s an Adrienette fic, one of my fave ships in ML, in the universe of my favorite book when I was young.

5 Your favorite scene

The scene in uncharted territory when Ladybug realizes that she’s in love with Chat Noir. She’s on a date with him in this one, convincing herself that it isn’t actually a date, but she’s still enjoying the time she has with him. Until Andre the ice cream maker slaps her silly with realization and makes her overcome the truth that she’s in love with him.

The yearning and the pining, Chat respecting her feelings, all of that is just… aaahhh I’m a sucker for it 🥺

6 A fic or scene that challenged you

Starting the fic i’d love to go on a date with you really challenged me. I was really going through a tough time writing it. I explained it on this post, but I got a lot of help, and it’s one of my proudest works bc of how I overcame the struggle to write it. Plus, Ladrien rights, and Ladybug in a tux, so for all these reasons, this one has to be one of my favorites.

7 A line of writing you’re proud of

Okay, I’m picking two because HECK.

This line from silly notions:

Adrien gently shut the double door, bringing with him the moonlight that still rested in his frame, and rested upon his lips was the kiss that could’ve been.

I think this was my first time writing something like this, like.. yearning, but not quite getting there yet, ya know? Ladybug yearning to be with Adrien, despite the fact that she shouldn’t, but she wants it, wants him. Aahh, Ladrien 💞

Also this in my Chat Blanc fic, drown in your green:

Ladybug could soak herself in [the] green [of his eyes] if she could. She would swim in it, would drown it in, beg for it if it meant it could never turn blue. Never turn dull.

When I first wrote that line, I was only just.. writing it to write. But then when I reread it, and saw the word blue, I was like.. “omg. It has a double meaning. Folks, it has ~double meaning~. Ladybug is desperate to go back to the times before she ever fought Chat Blanc, but also desperate to return to the days when she had only witnessed Chat Noir happy.

But overall, I really like the color symbolism in this fic aaahhh, proud of it.

8 A comment that touched you

Ahhh there’s a lot of comments, but I think there’s one comment that wins this one. I received a really touching comment for my Flipped AU from BurnDaBreadGetDaGirl on AO3, when I was really struggling to continue writing it. I asked on the A/N how to overcome the writer’s block, and she wrote by far one of the most inspiring comments I’ve ever read. Ever. She told me to just kind of.. bask myself in the character’s POVs, think how they think, and even go about my daily living just thinking about how the characters would react or think about certain things. I’m only paraphrasing, so my words can’t do justice to her comment, but it was so beautiful. I ended up getting in touch with her on Discord.

Burn, idk if you’re ever going to read this, but your comment really touched me, even to this day, and I want to thank you for your support <3

9 Something that inspired you to write

Music inspires me a lot, I can’t even list all the songs I’ve listened to, but I know Taylor Swift’s songs is up there for sure. I wrote a fic for one of her songs, It’s Nice to Have a Friend. Also folklore and evermore inspired me a lot to write a couple WIPs I have.

Other people’s pieces of writing, fanfics from this fandom, but also fanfics from other fandoms, particularly The Umbrella Academy fanfiction. I read a lot of TUA fics in 2020 as well.

The lack of specific narratives, tropes for specific ships, certain dynamics, and all that. You know, when you have that thought where you go “Welp, if no one will write this, I guess I will!” Yeah, that’s me most of the time 😆 I wrote this fic, Little Red Riding Hood with the Blond Hair, because of that kind of thought. It’s a Misternoire/Adrinoire Folklore AU fic, and I hadn’t read anything like that so I decided, hey, why not. I love Misternoire/Adrinoire because Lady Noire is just a little shit, and I love her. I feel like there needs to be more of her in fanfiction.

And of course, everyone on the Miraculous Fanworks server on Discord really inspired me. They made me feel more confident in my writing. But not only that, they made me feel like I have a place in the ML fandom. Feeling a sense of belonging really made me have more confident with the things I post online for the ML fandom in general. I feel like I had a voice, and since joining, I’m much more eager to express myself and my ideas. I can’t thank this server enough, I’ve grown a lot bc of them <3

10 Your proudest accomplishment

Overall, just realizing that my writing has worth, and that I should write for me. This took a really long time for me to learn bc I felt really insecure about my writing. But then I realized that I write because I have a specific and unique narrative that I want to tell. My works aren’t comparative to other people’s bc each of one us has something amazing and beautiful to share.

11 Do you have any goals for next year

Mmm it would be nice to reach a certain word count? Maybe publish at least 25k words? Idk, I’m not too strict with writing goals. I just like writing whenever I want to.

I’m not tagging anyone but if anyone wants to do this themselves, then go for it!

#long post #saewrites #2020

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matildainmotion · 5 years ago

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What To Do When You Don’t Get Your Arts Council Funding: The Unofficial Guide.

There is an official guide. The ‘Decision Letter’ I got yesterday had a heading, Next Steps which explained how Lizzy and I could re-apply, start a new application for Mothers Who Make. ‘Decision Letter’ means, “It’s a no.” Last time, when it was a ‘yes’ I didn’t get a Decision Letter. I got an ‘Offer Letter’ so I knew it was a ‘no’ the moment I saw the word ‘Decision’ on the application portal that is Grantium. Grantium, the portal with a portentous Latin-sounding name into which, personally, I think every single artist that is courageous enough to enter to apply for funding should receive a reward for bravery. It is an epic quest involving the modern day Herculean labours of performing precise word-counts, particular codes of expression, statistical data gathering, budget-balancing – and at the end of it all there may be riches and glory or there may be this Decision Letter of Doom that coolly, in one curt sentence, acknowledges our efforts and disappointment and then says, ‘Next Steps.’ But before we even think about going through that modern mythic portal again, before we consider reapplying there are some other ‘Next Steps’ that need to be taken. Here they are:

Step 1: Swear

Swear loudly. Hope the children are not nearby. Even if they are this stage must be performed. Do not skip it out. Repeat as necessary. There is not much more to be said about this step. You will know when you have completed it.

Step 2: Wish it Were Different

For weeks I have been holding both possible outcomes in my mind. Unbidden they play out when I shut my eyes at night. The application went in under my name - even though it was a collaborative effort with Lizzy and Improbable- so I will find out about it first. I imagine making the phone call to her: “Hello,” she says. “We got it!” I say. She is delighted. Thrilled. It is incredibly exciting. Breath. It might not happen that way, I have been telling myself. In fact, I am pretty sure it won’t. I don’t think we are going to get this one. I don’t play out the conversation of that other phone call because it’s not fun, but I try to hold this heaviness in my belly to balance out the hope. I concentrate on the heavy feeling. But still, like the summer light that seeps through my children’s curtains at night, I can’t get rid of the hope altogether, and now that the disappointment is here, is incontrovertible, I have to deal with the leftover hope. It hangs around. It is curious how this happens. How even when the waiting is over at last, all those weeks of hoping cannot simply be swept away. They haunt me still. What if I had been able to ring up and declare, “We got it!”? I even have a fantasy that I should have done this. That I could have pretended we had received the longed for outcome and then I could cunningly have drummed up £50k in some other way, just so that I could get the hit of that moment of good news.

There are flickers of other ‘if onlys’ also: if only I had been savvy enough to forsee that we would have been considered weak in such and such particular area on the mythic portal. If only we had put in more or different evidence of need and quality.

This step is longer and more painful than the swearing step, but it must be borne.

Step 3: Despair

That’s it then. We didn’t get it. All that time of Lizzy’s, of others who helped too. All those emails, phone calls, Skypes, late nights. All those times I told the children to wait, I had to get this work done. All that energy, navigating the portal, putting together this project, this amazing dream of a future. Gone. No project. No funding to pay ourselves or anyone else. I think you have to sit in the shit. I think you have to despair. Lie down. Weep. Feel the exhaustion.

I am not good at this step. I hate despairing. I want to leap up and rush to the rescue. I want a fairy godmother. I recognise this from my mother, from my mothering – the longing to make it better now, the difficulty in staying with the difficult. But I think it’s important to hit rock bottom. I remember, not a fairy godmother story, but another folk tale from the Inuit tradition about a grieving mother who fashioned a new child out of her snot. I love this image. It helps me when I am crying, to think of all that stuff running out of my nose and eyes as being regenerative. So cry long and hard. You have to do a hell of a lot of grieving to get to the point where you have enough snot to make something from it. Accept the awfulness. This is where we are now. We have no money left to run Mothers Who Make. Nothing. Nada. None.

Step 4: Remember Your Roots

The good thing about there being nothing left is that it brings me right back round to when there was nothing before – to the origins of the whole movement. This is important. Inside the origin myth of how the whole thing began is the medicine you need to enable you to find a way through. Where did the dream come from? From which genuinely mythical portal did it arrive? What was the need or impulse behind it? What did you say about it back then? I said I was starting a peer support group, a small one, for mothers who are also artists. I said it was about carrying on whilst carrying your children, about acknowledging how hard this can be, how complex, how revolutionary, how fantastic, how exhausting.

Step 5: Name What You Have Now

Once I remember our origins I remember the resources we have available to us. Okay, so we have no money. That resource has run out. But we have some other things. We have a network of support comprised of inspirational and extraordinary creative mothers. We have the invaluable support of Improbable – they have been offering us time, energy and patience all along the way. And we have passion. Those are three incredible resources. If I had loads of money but no support network and no passion I’d be stuffed. Luckily it is the other way around. Along with the passion, born out of it, we have a manifesto. We have principles to which we are deeply committed. We have them written on our website (we have a website – that’s another resource!).

One of the principles that seems key to me right now is that MWM is radically non-hierarchical. Right from the outset leading the movement has meant being part of it. It does not mean knowing more, being ahead, being any more clued up or sorted than anyone else in the network, in the circle of support, be that in a meeting or online. This radical levelling applies across people and activities: one of the other MWM principles is that we value our mothering as much as our making. We value the personal as much as the professional. We value the vulnerable, alongside the slick and successful. We give space for stories about miscarriage, bereavement, abortion, post-natal depression and not getting your funding.

When the going gets rough, and fate, or Grantium, deal you a ‘Decision Letter’ rather than an offer of riches, it feels more important than ever to connect back to our principles and walk the talk. The Arts Council, mythically, are an authority figure – they introduce a hierarchy into the story that in many ways is unhelpful, triggering a feeling of helplessness and dependency. I have to start again from the level ground of where I am. So here I am, letting my son have ipad time so I can finish this blog, breastfeeding my daughter as I type (“It’s taking so long!” she complains) putting off having lunch, admitting that we are in a difficult place right now.

Step 6: Ask for Help

So you have sworn; you’ve wished you had got the funding; you’ve wept; you’ve remembered why you started this whole enterprise in the first place and connected back to what you care about. You are, by now, ready to do something. If you don’t feel this then please go back to Step 1 and repeat as necessary. Grieving – and it is a kind of grieving process, a 12 week wait of hopes that are not fulfilled – is a messy and disorderly business and in order to grow something from your grief it takes time. Be patient as you swear and cry. Eventually you will have done enough crying and be ready to do something with all the snot.

But doing doesn’t have to mean action in the macho sense of picking yourself up, soldiering on. Doing can mean deciding to stop for a while; it can mean connecting to people you trust; it can mean asking for help. These are some of the things Lizzy and I are going to do now.

We are going to stop running MWM activity for a while. Everything that is already underway can continue – hub meetings, online exchanges. All the mothering and the making will carry on because it has to do so. But Lizzy and I need to pause on producing newsletters, answering emails, having skypes, without any money to support this. Instead we will hunker down, write more funding bids, and focus on other kinds of doing like…

….Asking for your help. MWM is a grassroots movement. It comes from us and it is up to us how it grows, what it becomes. Ultimately it has to run on renewable resources. Arts Council funding is seriously useful but it is not a renewable resource – we are the renewable resource. We have to renew ourselves, and none of us can do this on our own.

There is quote that I like and that helps me when I think about renewal. It is from a father who makes, the poet David Whyte: “The antidote to exhaustion is not necessarily rest. The antidote to exhaustion is wholeheartedness.” As a mother rest can be hard to come by so I find this immensely reassuring. Ideally this is how peer-support works: we take it in turns who supports who, but even when you are in the role of the one supporting you come away from the exchange feeling more wholehearted, less exhausted.

This is the spirit in which we want to ask for help. Please help renew us and yourselves by doing whatever of these things you can do with wholeheartedness:

1) Send us encouragement: Via email or on Facebook or Twitter, let us know why MWM matters to you.

2) Send us ideas: fund-raising ideas from cake stalls to lottery jackpots. Can you raise some money for us? Send us your thoughts on how to make MWM sustainable and thriving.

3) Send us some money: anything helps. £5 is wonderful and we would accept £500 too. We need to try to fund our time whilst we apply for further funding. Go here to donate - Improbable have kindly offered for us to use their donate details. Please make sure you put ‘For Mothers Who Make’ in the notes section before pressing donate to ensure it reaches us.

Or buy us a £3 coffee for the late night chats here You can buy a t-shirt or a badge here too. Adult T-shirts £12 including postage (email us your preferred size and address, Children’s T-shirts (18 months & 24 months) are £10 including postage and badges £3 including postage.

4) Keep going to your local meetings and rally round the wonderful 42 mother makers who co-ordinate the MWM hubs

5) Keep sharing, exchanging, supporting on social media. Keep talking about MWM.

6) Come to a UK wide MWM meeting: we will be going camping and holding a day long gathering over the summer for anyone within the MWM network to help us vision how to move forwards from here. Let us know if you would like to host us! We have no money to hold the day, but we hope it will be rich in wholeheartedness. Look out for further details soon.

And, by way of July’s question of the month, you can tell us: what have you grown from your grief? What has come from your failures, losses and f**k ups? Who are your snot children?

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cephalon-artaise · 6 years ago

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I just want to talk about, for a little bit, what exactly Warframe means to me, especially with all the recent updates and the hype for future ones going on right now. Under a ‘read more’ because uhhh it’s long.

I started playing Warframe a little more than two years ago, after seeing quite a bit of fanart for it over a period of a few months. My brother, Cephalon Seginus, downloaded it first on his relatively new gaming laptop. I followed suit, but couldn’t really play at first because my then six year old laptop just wasn’t up to the task. When I finally got a real gaming laptop, Seginus and I started playing together - and we played a lot.

It was the most fun I’d had in a game in ages. The multiplayer games I had played before included Neverwinter and World of Tanks; both games were pretty special to me, but their appeal had run out for the most part, as I found it harder and harder to enjoy them due to many issues each had. I particular, WoT had been the beginning of an important journey of recovery from depression, and it was through that game that I finally found friends I could always depend on, which was something I had long struggled to find.

Yet, it became harder to enjoy, became a game I didn’t recognize, and many of my friends had moved on from it anyway. So, when I started to get into Warframe, I learned something that really made me happy - several of those friends had moved over to playing Warframe, which meant I could continue to play with them, and enjoy their company. I played a lot for the next few months, and never felt bored or frustrated for the most part. I steadily improved, and felt proud of my accomplishments, which were so much more rewarding than anything I’d ever done in other games.

And then The Second Dream came out, and everything changed. Seginus played it first; I was too busy with my writing project (NaNoWriMo) to put aside time for it, as I had a strict schedule to follow (I wanted to hit 50k words in 15 days; there was a lot of toiling away at my computer during that month). However, he finally convinced me to play it, after I compromised with him about the writing stuff. So, I played it.

Unfortunately, some of the content had already been spoiled to me. However, the impact was still there; the cinematography, the soundtrack, the writing; everything - it hit me hard. I had never before played a game with this level of immersion. Neverwinter had an overarching plot, but over time it lost its ‘oomph’. Not Warframe. Every quest that followed gave the world more and more depth, and helped my creativity flourish.

This wasn’t just a game anymore. It was a community of generous and equally as invested people, who I could easily connect with no matter the context. I can’t stress enough how amazed I was by the willingness of other players to help and to give; it was not something I often - if ever - saw in the other two multiplayer games I had played. Yet, many times just speaking up about wants and needs, both in game and out of it, would elicit a positive response. It inspired me to do the same, and I think that’s just the spirit of the community. We’re generous, patient, and willing to help others if and when we can. I love that so much.

Oh, and the lore, the plot; some of my best characters and story building came out of this game. Dozens of operators, multiple characters from other factions, incredible in-universe stories that in turn made each new quest feel that much deeper and more personal. I feel more a part of this game than any other; it’s an intrinsic part of me and my creative side that I couldn’t imagine being without. Again, I don’t think it’s possible to understate how powerful and moving, how influential and constructive, Warframe has been to me and in my life.

July 7th, the day of TennoCon 2018, was undoubtedly the best day of my entire life. I have never been that excited about anything ever in my 21 years of living; close seconds and thirds are likely also Warframe related, if I’m being honest. I was so excited, I almost threw up. That’s never happened to me before. In my Warframe Discord chat, the whole clan was going nuts, losing their shit, and key smashing incoherently. It was amazing. We all decided we were gonna sing the Solarian work song while fighting the Corpus Obelisk, and you can bet I’m gonna cry when we do.

I don’t even know where to end - there are so many things I could go into detail about, so many things I could describe in depth on what it all means to me, but there aren’t enough words in any language to describe the sheer rawness of my emotions, nor could I spend enough time to get it all written down. I just... I love Warframe, and that’s only an understatement. I hope, thought I don’t anticipate, that this game never lets me down, and continues to fill me with joy and fulfillment. Thank you, Digital Extremes, for pulling through your lowest moments and creating this beautiful world; we’re all better for it, but especially I.

Hey thanks for coming to my TED talk; if you’ve made it this far uhhh thanks I guess? Hope it was worth the time haha. Cheers y’all.

#Warframe #Warframe spoilers #Tennocon #Tennocon spoilers #Cephalon Artaise speaks #long post

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battywitch · 6 years ago

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NaNoWriMo, Day 8:

*inhuman screeching*

Guess what?! The pieces of my story are slowly coming together, eeee! This is the most complex thing I’ve ever written. There are like 2-3 different plots that are all tangled together, and I’m still trying to figure out where and how they’re going to start overlapping, but progress is happening!

I ended the day with 15,112 words (I wrote just over 2,600, whoo!), which puts me about a day ahead of the official schedule. Finally, I’ve got some breathing room again. But, that doesn’t mean I’m slowing down. I’m just back to a place of not needing to panic if the words don’t come easily on day 9.

This got kinda long, sooo....

This year, strangely, is going better than last year did. I think. Last year, I “won” (hit 50K+ words) for the first time, ever. Last year, I had a plan. I knew all the major points in my story, my characters, their backgrounds, their favorite freaking colors. It should have been a huge success. And, I guess, it was. Even though I hit 50k, though, the story wasn’t finished. Now, it’s just kind of sitting in my head while I mentally reword a ton of things.

But this one? The one that was not planned, at all? Holy shit. I started off with an idea I had at the very end of October, and I was struggling with it so hard. I was on the brink of ditching it in favor of my original idea, the one that’s been steeping in my brain all year. Then, there was a glorious moment when I realized that I could, in fact, combine the two. I’ve been chugging along, praying that eventually I’ll come across something in these two stories that really help me link them together more solidly, and I’m finally getting there!

This plot is truly a mess, and there’s so much I have to figure out. But omg, it’s actually coming together and I can’t believe it. I’m almost feeling pride, but I’m saving that for when I actually finish this bs :p

I really am excited about this story, now, and I feel like this might actually turn out pretty good, once it’s finished, then seriously edited. Like, I might actually show this to other people at some point! *gasps dramatically*

That’s all for later, though. For now, I’ve still got to figure out how to weave this all together, then actually finish this first rough draft.

(But seriously, omg omg omg! I might actually, honestly, finish writing an whole fucking novel and I am screaming inside right now.)

#batty does nanowrimo #nanowrimo 2018 #nanowrimo #nanowrimo update #writing update

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steelplatedhearts · 7 years ago

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sorcerer’s stone reread

it’s been 20 years, the epilogue just passed, i’m emotional as shit, it’s time for a full reread, one book at a time. these posts are gonna be less recaps and more reactions, tagged ‘madi rereads harry potter’ for your blacklisting needs, here we go!

-i'm reading this in the new fancy illustrated form because my original copy is lost in a box in the garage somewhere because i didn't label my shit properly when we moved, and it's kind of throwing me off because i left it on the lawn overnight when i was six and the sprinklers went off and now the pages are all warped and kind of rainbow-ish from the smeared ink, and i've gotten used to it. the SPINE IS INTACT on this new book, what is that NONSENSE

-there's a little grunnings picture in this that says BORING IS OUR BUSINESS. imagine working at a company where that's your motto.

-"it was a very odd watch. It had twelve hands but no numbers; instead, little planets were moving around the edge" is this like the weasley's clock at all?

-honestly, what the fuck was dumbledore thinking. a LETTER? he couldn't have knocked on the door? did he just not want to give them a chance to refuse? what if they hadn't read the letter? what if they had just turned and dumped harry in a foster home? THERE ARE TOO MANY VARIABLES HERE, DUMBLEDORE. you left a small child outside in november.

-harry potter is cinderella. discuss.

-...you know upon reread i'm kind of...worried about dudley? because, okay, he's been spoiled to shit by his parents, and he's gotten the message directly from them that Harry is an Acceptable Target, and i'm kind of wondering what other messages he internalized? messages like different is bad and this is normal and maybe even if you're different we'll treat you like him. what might the dursleys have done, if dudley showed any signs of being different? if they didn't have someone they considered Obviously Inferior around to hold dudley up next to as a shining example? i think there's an interesting point to be made about the cycle of abuse and how it can be perpetuated even through children but like...fuck, guys, they're eleven years old and i will never stop wanting something where they banded together.

-also, fuck harry's old school instructors who just ignored the signs of neglect. we like to think it got better at hogwarts, but it really didn't, did it?

-damn guys i PROMISE THIS ISN'T GONNA BE A DOWNER THE WHOLE TIME

-i love the fucking snake scene. someone give harry a pet snake.

-come on, mrs. figg, you couldn't even let harry watch TELEVISION? sure, dumbledore didn't want you to make it "fun" or whatever, but you could've at least made it not miserable.

-when i was like, eleven or twelve, i got a harry potter stationery set for christmas and i used the book and a green marker to write myself a hogwarts acceptance letter with the plan of like, going to britain and talking my way in, somehow. I didn't make it out of the neighborhood, but i still think it would've worked.

-what happens if a muggle family doesn't want to send their kid to hogwarts? do they even get a choice??

-"Dudley was sniffling in the back seat; his father had hit him round the head for holding them up while he tried to pack his television, VCR, and computer in his sports bag." does an eleven year old need a television, vcr, and computer? no. does this demonstrate exactly what i was worrying about a few bullet points back? yes

-these illustrations are fucking amazing. hagrid has a TROLL DOLL KEYCHAIN.

-HAGRID IS SO WONDERFUL! he brought cake! he treated harry gently! he listened! i love him!

-so wait, hogwarts knew that harry was living under the stairs but didn't know that the dursleys hadn't told him about magic? or if they did know, they didn't bother to fill in hagrid? WEAK.

-“I know some things,” he said. “I can, you know, do maths and stuff.” my precious son

-i just now realized that this illustrated edition has the british text, and my ancient original copy has all the american changes they made when they first published it.

-i would read a 50k epic about nothing but petunia and lily.

-"Harry, instead of feeling pleased and proud, felt quite sure there had been a horrible mistake" #same

-...okay, hagrid, i adore you beyond reason, but why didn't you give uncle vernon the pig's tail, considering he was the one you were actually mad at, rather than dudley, who was literally just standing there?

-I bought a harry potter knitting pattern book once and there were all these patterns for molly weasley but nothing for hagrid, & that's some bullshit. molly and hagrid should probably be in a knitting circle. god how many sweaters and hats and shit does hagrid knit for harry's kids

-i would also read 50k of quirrell backstory fic

-honestly, the wizarding world needs to get with the paper money program. can you imagine just carrying around PILES OF GOLD every time you go out? my purse barely fits all my shit as it is

-has anyone done any deep-delving goblin stuff? because i would be all over that

-"After all, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named did great things — terrible, yes, but great.” man this line has ALWAYS STUCK WITH ME

-this whole "owl or cat or toad" thing clearly isn't even all that enforced if multiple weasley generations can get away with scabbers

-how does everyone already know about harry's scar? like, who told everyone?

-don't fucking @ me he's my son and i love him

-i honestly kind of wonder about the differences in reading this as an american person vs. someone from the uk? because reading this the whole concept of houses was cool and unusual, but would it have really been that ~magical~ for someone who was used to the concept?

-"mandy brocklehurst" sounds like the mean girl from an early 00s teen movie

-i love that the wizarding world has jello

-ah, the days when taking a single house point was an apocalyptic event

-madam hooch is a Lesbian ™

-parvati patil: the founding member of the neville longbottom defense squad

-parvati patil: ALSO the first person to defend harry to mcgonagall

-parvati patil: severely underrated, y'all

-i love that professor mcgonagall is 100% willing to ignore the rules if quidditch is involved

-as a former lonely smart child, hermione is so relatable

-i absolutely forgot neville was involved the first time they found fluffy. SORRY NEVILLE

-"so I suppose you think that's a reward for breaking rules?" ...hermione is my dad here, RULES ARE RULES GUYS

-they should at least modify the bludgers so they're less dangerous when you've got eleven year olds playing

-do brits really call baked potatoes jacket potatoes that's the funniest goddamn thing i've ever heard

-just let a bunch of live bats loose in the cafeteria, no way that'll cause a problem

-"harry then did something that was both very brave and very stupid" and continued doing so for seven books, i love my son

-oh my god this book stops for two pages for "newt scamander's guide to trolls"

-"Inside a troll's mind: Food, violence, kittens, nose-picking, keep thinking it's tuesday"

-this book's hermione has hair that's almost IDENTICAL to my hair as a child

-hermione may be unwilling to believe that snape is a bad guy but she sure does zero right in on him at the quidditch match

-fred and george repeatedly hit voldemort in the face with snowballs while he couldn't do anything about it

-what's wizard church like? they celebrate christmas, surely some of them go to church. is there a wizard pope?

-i love that ron is good at chess even if he isn't traditionally book smart

-this picture of harry and dumbledore sitting on the floor in their pajamas in front of the mirror of erised is so cute and almost heartbreaking when you consider the future

-i know dumbledore is basically Grey Morality: The Musical, but i really do love him

-"harry found that he had fewer nightmares when he was tired out after training" oh no harry you're too small for this sadness

-look if you're letting literal children play a sport that makes them genuinely worry about dying, then there's a PROBLEM THERE

-"i'm worth twelve of you, malfoy"

-hermione hugs parvati, bless

-let hermione granger have more female friends

-that's, uh, something i'm probably gonna hit on a lot in these

-"wonder what it's like to have a peaceful life" oh, you sweet summer child

-i had to pause to look up how often the illustrated editions will be coming out because they're beautiful and i want them all

-it looks like once a year in october

-"four students out of bed in one night! i've never heard of such a thing before!" sure jan

-it's understandable for people to be pissed at harry for losing all these points the first time, but after five years of him being disliked for some reason and then vindicated in the end, you think they'd learn

-malfoy's got a point, this probably isn't something they should have students doing

-MARS IS BRIGHT TONIGHT

-”If I get caught before I can get to the Stone, well, I'll have to go back to the Dursleys and wait for Voldemort to find me there, it's only dying a bit later than I would have, because I'm never going over to the Dark Side! I'm going through that trapdoor tonight and nothing you two say is going to stop me!” i love him so much i want to cry

-"oh come off it, you don't think we'd let you go alone?"

-and i cry and my tears are golden trio feelings

-"But if we get caught, you two will be expelled, too." "Not if I can help it," said Hermione grimly. "Flitwick told me in secret that I got a hundred and twelve per cent on his exam. They're not throwing me out after that." bless you hermione

-NEVILLE MY DARLING SON

-YOU'RE DOING AMAZING SWEETIE

-ARE YOU A WITCH OR NOT

-also i really like that bit, mostly because, okay, Hermione's been learning about magic for a year, but that's stacked against eleven years of not defaulting to magic, that's probably a difficult instinct to change

-when i was maybe ten or eleven, i had a harry potter birthday, and my mom went full Artist on it, it was the coolest thing ever, but a special shoutout to the old antique keys she bought and glued feathers to and then hung from our ceiling fan

-i'm so proud of you and your chess skills, ron

-but holy shit they didn't even go over to check on him after, they just KEPT GOING

-which like, fair, it's a race against quirrel at this point, but DUDES. U GOTTA WATCH OUT FOR CONCUSSIONS.

-look, there's no way around it. a bunch of magically talented professors got beat by three eleven year olds.

-"it wasn't the snitch at all. it was a pair of glasses. how strange." harry is either way too chill or has no chill at all, there's no middle ground

-hagrid's scrapbook is the most precious thing

-when i was five reading this for the first time i was so pumped about gryffindor winning the house cup. i am less pumped as an adult, he could've awarded those points BEFORE the decorations were up, dude, where's the cutoff?

-ANYWAY this was so good, i remember back when when i first read these i would read a passage, leave the book in my room, run downstairs and recite an entire page at my mother before running back up to finish it

-those were the days

-this is the greatest book

-NEXT UP CHAMBER OF SECRETS, in which i will most likely be reading from my original waterlogged copy

#madi rereads harry potter

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