#which i’m trying to pick up again! ���i actually want to reread this chapter - it’s about the rothko chapel

[baravaggio]

i’m serious i need to go to the museum and stand 18 inches from a rothko…..

[moonshynecybin]

Hey! Just wanted to say I’m in awe of how your writing it’s just so GOOD and FUN and TORUROUS. It’s rly hard to nail the voices and dialogue of characters (especially when writing them speaking in english!) but you always make it so believable. Ur Vale especially is sooo charismatic which like hats off bc a more mercurial man has not been made. 

Re ur charged-airport-conversation fic, I’m intrigued to find out how Marc will handle his sexuality crisis. Will he be in denial? does he very seriously study gay culture like telemetry data? is he getting Grindr? is he seeing it as something to incorporate into his PT routine & somehow translate this to a competitive edge? how did he feel about the pope saying frociaggine????

Also I loved the goofy brother shenanigans, Alex strongest most patient and silliest man alive truly. Extremely funny to think of Alex “please get a girlfriend you’re 30 and annoying me” Marquez having to cope with Marc coming back like “I found one! :3” holding hands with Cervera’s enemy #1 undisputed champ 2015-2024

Anyways, would love to hear any thoughts u had but no pressure! I just wanted to thank u for ur brilliant mind & forget about whatever fresh hell that sprint was 

this one. is one that i plan to maybe actually and fr write out so i shant answer in full because i hope that you'll find out eventually. um. i CAN give you chapter two! of THIS fic where Marc and Vale get stuck in an airport and have a somewhat fraught little bonding session. i have not proofread this OR reread the original so if there's inconsistencies just chill out. theres also a lot of liberties taken with the amount of privacy these guys have on a given race weekend again just chill out. please. they live in different countries and are bitter rivals its hard to get them alone into fictional scenarios. its about 1.4k.

(Part ONE !)

The next time he sees Vale is in the paddock.

It's not unusual to see him— the paddock is small and Vale is always a presence, felt even when he’s gone, indelible—but it’s on the television more often than not these days. Maybe a glimpse of him zooming around on his scooter, ignoring the swing of the camera phones tracking him in his wake. But it’s not like this, never this close up. Vale maintains distance, and Marc has adapted to take his cues from that same distance. He’s not going to be the first to engage, not anymore. 

All that being said, Marc is trying to grab some alone time in between sessions, communing with his lunch and contemplating ways to improve his breaking into Turn 11. He’s tucked into a shady place out of the way, generally out of the range of any stray cameras, when Vale catches him, sliding next to him on the table and leaning forwards on his elbows.

He starts picking at Marc’s food.

Marc reacts reflexively, not even processing that it's Vale who’s at his elbow who is reaching over to snag a bit of his chicken. He lifts his bowl out of reach like he would with Alex. “Hey— that's mine,”

Vale’s game, apparently, shooting him one of those dangerous grins, eyes crinkling at the sides towards Marc like he hasn’t seen in years. He’s brimming with the confidence of someone used to getting away with breaking rules. Marc puts down his food. Lifts a hand, adjusts the cap at the top of his head, and tucks his hair behind his ear. 

This means something. He doesn’t know what.

“Allora, you were not eating it.”

And Marc has always been easy for it—the simple skill he has in spinning a situation into the brightest version of itself, mood turning on a dime. Even when he was destroying Marc, he would do it with a smile. 

It’s that same silverbright thread that makes Marc laugh, disbelieving, a shock of delight. He shoves at the edge of Vale’s arm, jockeying with his elbow. He bites his lip, shakes his head. Would you look at that?

“Presumptuous,” Marc scolds, and tucks back into his lunch, forking another bite into his mouth. Vale grins and leans closer, conspiratorial. That same hot, embarrassed feeling from the airport rears its head, giddy. Marc glances around. There’s no one here. He feels like there is. LIke there’s eyes on them, even though he’d chosen a place where there shouldn't be.

It feels like crossing a line, teetering on the edge of some cliff, one toe over the edge. Hot and anticipatory in the pit of his stomach. There’s a breeze going, and he shivers. Vale leans closer.

He likes it. 

He also knows that he shouldn't like it. He’s gone through this song and dance before. This feeling, this hero worship that he has with Vale never leads him down any good road. He thought– six premier class titles and nearly ten years of vitriol had been an effective cure. Not so, he’s finding out.

Vale corrects, “I see what I see. This I cannot help.”

“Oh yeah? You’ve been watching me?

Vale shrugs, steals another bite. “You do manage to put on a good, ah, show.” He finds the words in Spanish. Marc can’t remember the last time they spoke in Spanish.

Marc takes a breath in. Settles himself. He doesn’t know what the end goal is here. Curiosity wins out— it’s better than wondering why Vale’s here in the first place. What game he’s trying to play. What he thinks he’ll get out of being nice to Marc, aside from that shivery feeling clawing its way up the base of his spine. He should really at least find out if he’s doing this because he plans on not being nice to Marc. 

“How did you find me?” Is what he goes with. Neutral enough. 

“You are not hard to find.” The answer is vague, but frank. Vale loves to speak around things.

Marc raises an eyebrow, decides to just keep looking at him. They both know he’s bullshitting. Vale breaks, and makes a face, shrugging.

“I have been racing here longer than you. I know the hiding spots.”

Marc gives him a minute roll of the eyes. It's still not an answer. “You know, they remodeled not too long ago. The entire layout changed.” Vale would’ve had to work to find him. 

“Not too much!” Vale spreads his palms cheerfully, seizing on a diversion. “The bones are still the same. The stands are over there,” he juts a thumb, “The pits are here. The bathrooms change, but bah. It’s a facelift.”

Marc wrangles down a smile. Vale’s not being serious— he’s being fun. Maybe he’s trying to get him comfortable for some reason. “A lot changes, I think.” He says frankly, and he means it. 

Vale’s eyes flash. He sees Marc’s conviction, catches the double meaning. Another one of their conversations centering around two different issues on the surface, but coming back to their history all the same. The elephant in the room butting into other topics. History, division, and rivalry, all sneaking its way into the cracks in their words. 

Vale keeps going, the lead in their little play.

“Maybe. But it’s not— like, aerodynamics, new regulations, new tires— all that changes. Small stuff.  Opinions, riders. But it is still a paddock. I’ve been in paddocks my entire life. You can’t change much.”

Things change a lot, in Marc’s experience. People. Teams. Bodies. 

Friendships.

And Marc is brave usually, has made a career out of it, so he feels like he has to ask. No use avoiding it and feeling half out of his skin for the rest of the day. Vale’s knee bumps into his own and he closes his eyes briefly. When he opens them Vale is already looking at him

“Why are you here?” He levels.

Vale throws him a soft smile. It comforts exactly no part of Marc.

“Maybe I was looking for a hiding place.”

Marc hesitates, choosing his words carefully. It’s always a spar with Valentino; even when they were friendly, they were still competing.

“Am I the hiding place?”

“Well, I am still more famous than you, is true. Less photographers on you than me. It’s peaceful.”

“What do you want from me?”

“Now there’s a good question.” Vale says, stealing something else off of Marc’s plate. “Today? I was hungry. I thought I’d stop by and eat with an old friend.” The words jolt through Marc like a highside. He’s in the air— lost, flying, falling. 

Vale stands, towering. He claps Marc on the shoulder. It burns white hot. Marc keeps his eyes on him, trying to catch a hint, a clue as to how this all happened. 

An old friend.

“Is that what we are?” He asks, more earnest than he should be. Vale can be such a bastard.

“Well, what would you call it?” He responds, turning the question on Marc, voice quiet. Serious, like he knows whatever hangs between them is as thin as a spiderweb. Marc swallows.

“I don’t know,” Marc answers. still too honest, even now. Something flickers on Vale’s face, too quick and complex for him to read. 

“Think about it.” Vale prompts, and walks away.

Marc finds out that they weren’t alone, in that section of the paddock the next day. The pictures hit the news after the race, headlines rolling in thankfully after Marc has left for home. Valentino Rossi and Marc Marquez sharing lunch, alone on a race weekend ten years after their falling out. What could it mean? 

But Marc’s eyes look at the photo and just catch on Vale’s shoulders, leaning towards Marc, the palm of his hand, arcing through the air as he gestures, frozen on the screen of his phone, and himself, eyes crinkled at the corners. He was wrong. He didn’t manage to reign in that smile after all. 

FRIENDS AGAIN?, the headline asks, and Marc wonders.

[briar-rolfes-research-oubliette]

your writing is phenomenal. i write a little bit, but i think one of the biggest struggles i have is with pacing and structuring for anything longer than a couple thousand words. gonna hit you with a ton of questions, no pressure to answer all of them: how do you structure your longer-form writing? what considerations do you keep in mind as you do? are you more of a pantser or do you start with a solid outline and story beats first? what is your 'process' - and how do you approach editing as well?

Okay, I’m ready! Took me a bit.

Thank you, first of all! This is humbling, since in industry terms I’m a debut author. (Or not even. My book isn’t even out yet. It takes ages to make a graphic novel if you have to hold down a day job at true same time. Fingers crossed 2026?) And, since structure has been the hardest thing for me to learn, it’s rewarding to know that it’s paying off!

I’m in the middle of a few planning-stage projects right now, so I’ve been asking these questions myself. Because each story is different (in length, in genre, in terms of what I want it to achieve, and also, because I’m a cartoonist as well as a writer, also in format!) I have to reinvent at least part of the wheel with each project. I’ve learned some constants, though. I’ll try to outline some of them, and rather than just tell you what I do I’ll try to explain what purpose it serves when I do it.

I do think starting small and working up is the right way of learning, because that’s what worked for me, a chronic not-finisher. I sat down and said “okay, what is the shortest thing I can make that I am guaranteed to finish?” and once I had finished that, said “okay, what’s the next longest thing?” and worked my way up. It’s easier to structure a zine than a graphic novel, it’s easier to structure a short story than something with multiple chapters, etc etc… but this isn’t because a longer story has more structure in it so much as that each structural element has to work harder.

HOWEVER, I don’t look at structure until I know what I’m building my structure on. This was the missing piece in my structure learning! So, the things I have in mind when I’m starting a new project are:

What is my genre?

What are my themes?

What is my tone?

Genre is where I get the payoff that I’m working towards. Why do people pick up this kind of story? What’s the most basic appeal of it? I try to keep this as simple as I can, eg:

In romance, the couple have to get together by the end.

In sci-fi, a new discovery poses a new question, which is then resolved

In mystery, the detective has to figure out who committed the crime so that they don’t do it again.

In erotica, the protagonist is liberated from a social norm by a new sexual encounter

In horror, an outside force threatens irrevocable change to everyone who encounters it.

This narrative payoff is (in my opinion) the bumpers on the bowling lane of fiction. If you read a romance where they never got together, an erotica where nobody fucked, a detective story where justice wasn’t done, a horror story where it was no biggie and everyone just walked it off… you’d feel ripped off, right? You’ll see that I’m not saying “in horror there is always a jumpscare” or “in a mystery there is always a red herring,” because I never actually notice if those were missing. Many stories are worse because the author has said to themself “a story like this always has this element.” RIP to all those minor characters who die in fantasy novels during the fight scene at the end of the second act just because Boromir did.

Sticking the landing on that genre promise is what makes a story “feel” complete, and the success of the buildup to that promise is what makes a story feel satisfying in that worth-a-reread way. The overall genre payoff helps me keep my eye on the prize as I’m writing. If I get writer’s block, 99% of the time it’s because I’ve written something that conflicts with it. That’s helpful to keep in mind for editing (awkward scenes/characters/sentences etc are usually also conflicting with the payoff, or at least not helping me get there) and is also helpful to know when I’m doing back of mind narrative debugging while zoning out over the dishes. If I have a character and I want them to end up at that final point in a way that feels natural, what do I have to do to them to make it happen? If they feel stagnant, what beliefs do they have to have at the start that will jar against that end point?

(I believe the Literary phrase for the narrative payoff is the climax, or the catharsis. Catharsis is usually the concept used for horror or for tragedies. But I’m a cartoonist, so it’s easier for me to think of everything as setup for the final payoff of the punchline.)

Also—and this is more my individual philosophy rather than actual advice, but: delivering the payoff matters because it develops my readers’ trust. I’m not owed anyone’s time or attention. In a big world full of competing demands, it’s important to me that my readers know that I appreciate them choosing my work over putting the recycling bin out. And the great thing about reader trust is: it stacks. Trust means a reader is willing to go a bit further out of their comfort zone with me. When someone says “I don’t usually read stories like this, but I gave this a shot because you wrote it,” that’s what I’m talking about. I’m a trans writer who tells silly jokes and tackles weird topics, so I really do appreciate the readers who invest time and attention in me. They’re my 30 sickos, you know, from the tweet?

Anyway. If genre tells me where I’m landing the plane, theme tells me what the jet fuel is. The reason a particular concept is making me insane, aka, my motivation to tell the story at all, is my theme. It’s the question I’m trying to answer. It doesn’t have to be pithy or well articulated—I just have to know the general gist of it. It might just be “it pisses me off when authors do X, so I am going to prove it’s not actually hard to write Y.” What matters is that it’s something I won’t become bored of. My graphic novel, which has been the longest and most involved project of my life, hasn’t bored me once. That’s pretty spectacular seeing as I have ADHD out my ears! I’ve been frustrated, tired, had bad wrists and general creative ennui at points, but “can you have a happy ending if your family doesn’t accept you?” Is a question that hasn’t run out of juice, even though I’ve been answering it for six years now. The theme is often the most powerful if it’s something you don’t know the answer to. When we were talking about whether or not to tackle the marriage equality debate in Australia in my book, my agent told me “you’ll know it’s a good story if writing about it feels like pressing on a bruise.” I think this is what keeps your themes honest. It stops them being preachy and stops them from becoming The Moral Of The Story.

Terry Pratchett said that the first draft is him telling the story to himself, and the subsequent drafts are him figuring out how to tell it to other people. That’s been very helpful to me. Each successive edit will make the themes clearer until I can say “oh, so this is what the story is about.” What I said before about longer stories doing more with each structural element is because of this. Longer stories tend to accrue more themes, usually one per subplot and/or per character relationship. Shorter stories usually address just one. Themes are handy to think about here because if a story looks like it might get too bloated (“no way I can explore this AND this AND this and still stay under 20k words”) you can cut em out and address them somewhere else.

The themes in your fiction are the bit that makes it uniquely yours, like fingerprints in a clay pot. They stop the structure feeling formulaic and make it feel personal. A thousand authors could (and do) write the same premise over and over again, but in their hands each story means something different. If you’ve ever read a story that rings hollow even though it hits all the same notes as other stories you like, I’d say that it’s by an author who hasn’t figured out what interests them in the story they’re telling. Like… there’s a reason Twilight was successful and its many copycats were not. It’s because Meyer had this theme of insane repressed Mormon horniness running through her work, and everyone else just said “ah, so readers like boys who are barely restraining their murder instinct.” No! The murder instinct was juicy because it was thematically complex.

Genre and theme give me an idea of what the tone is, aka what mood I am building. I guess if genre is my destination and theme is my fuel, then tone is my plane. It’s about how the journey feels. Taking a first class flight from A to B is different from taking the same trip in a crop duster. The people on each plane will observe different things throughout the journey. The same events could happen on both flights, but a reader will feel way more anxious about the crop duster encountering turbulence.

Outside my increasingly elaborate metaphor, this is questions like… Is this setting fun and friendly? Are the characters mistrustful of each other? Is the world fundamentally evil? Can anyone die? Am I using colloquial language? Are swears allowed? How hard should the protagonist’s failures hit them, and how sharp should the consequences for their actions be? Is it realistic, or a bit surreal? Is my narrator (or narrative perspective if I’m in second or third person) sincere? Cynical? Trustworthy? Biased? Can they crack jokes?

Once I have an idea of these things, structure usually slots in pretty easily. As I’m in the thinking stage, if I have an idea for a scene (or a joke, more often than not) that I want to include, I’ll put it in a dot point list. Later on, I will look at these dot points and the structure and say “what goes where?” or “what needs to happen before this thing I want to include to make it make sense?”

Short things I use a three act structure, aka Beginning Middle End, where “middle” is whatever events need to happen to shift my character from their opening position to their concluding one. For longer things, I just whack on a seven act structure for whatever genre I’m working in. I often come back to Jami Gold’s romance structure because I write romances a lot, but also because it’s the only structure I’ve ever really seen that maps internal character arcs along with external events—one of the things I found absolutely the hardest to get my head around when I was structuring my graphic novel. If it’s a genre I know less about, I’ll find a structure that specifies examples for the pinch points, because those are ones I usually have trouble brainstorming. The mystery outline I used for my Disco Elysium fanfiction gave me the suggestions that a suspect should escape, which got me out of a huge block.

So: before I write, I’ve thought very hard about genre and tone and theme, and how my characters need to get from their starting positions to one where if bondage doesn’t happen the story will feel narratively incomplete. I’ve pondered my place in the world, I have developed beef with a handful of authors who I’ve decided have Done It Wrong, and I have image searched “mystery structure seven act”. I have probably gone on four or five research sprees where I learn a bunch about medieval demonology and insect genitalia and radio antennae or whatever.

(I should say a lot of that is just what do for fun anyway. I do think writers tend to forget that we do this because it’s fun. If you’re not having fun doing this stuff, then your reader is probably not having fun either. It’s important to figure out what is fun to you and to find a way to make your process mostly the fun stuff.)

Materially, what I have is a maybe a couple of test scenes I’ve written while working out character dynamics and refining my idea of tone, and a list of dot points that reads like:

Wrap up the subplot with that other guy

Heart to heart

Protagonist gets a boner

Exposition about early printing press

Fight scene (to show they care about each other)

Phone call from side character 12

MIDPOINT: Guy goes missing (or is killed with weapon from earlier? Suspected killed, but actually just escaped?)

JOKE

Bring back printing press thing

Bondage obviously

Catch the bad guy

Resolution (come back to this).

The trap for structure for me for YEARS has been assuming that I should be able to sit down and write out the perfect plan. “I’ll be able to write well so long as I know exactly what I’m doing every step of the way.” But… most of the fun of writing for me is figuring out how to address those missing plot elements as I go. I don’t think I’ve ever said this, but I never intended for my Disco Elysium fanfic to end with an explosion. I figured it out once I wrote the interview scene with Felicity, and then I said “okay, so that’s the resolution. Now, what do I need to do to blow this building up?“

The groundwork I’ve laid is helpful because I know what I can’t compromise on. As I’m heading towards my payoff and hitting these beats along the way, I have the wriggle room for flashes of discovery where I go “wait, fuck, you know what’d be cool as?”

Editing is where I get to make sure that everything lines up without contradictions. I’m very irresponsible; I don’t have the patience to wait until the story is finished before I start editing it, so I often go back and make tweaks on a sentence level. This is often how I get myself out of writer’s block. “What did I say back here, and why does it make me feel like I can’t get to the next point on my structure?”

I also tend to write on my phone in notes app documents or in Scrivener, so I can actually make use of the dead times in my day. I pick up my phone all the time to keep my hands busy, but I rarely sit down at a computer without something more important coming up. Only once the document gets long enough to be unwieldy, or once it’s actually finished, will I sit down with the text on a bigger screen. This really helps me stop myself getting overwhelmed by the idea of The Blank Page, too. I can’t see how much I’ve written or look at much text at a time when I’m writing on my phone.

Other favourite structural things, which I add on in successive edits:

Bookending! For when you have a scene displaying the relationship between your protagonist and a secondary character at the start, then bring ‘em back together at the end to show how things have changed. My graphic novel has something like two… wait no now I’m counting it’s more like four bookend scenes, whoops. I guess I really like these! They’re good for when someone reads your draft and says “I don’t know why this character showed up, they didn’t seem that important.” If the character really IS important, they need to come back. This is handy for me specifically because I love big world with lots of secondary characters.

Callbacks: jokes strike again! But you can use this to achieve other moods. In my Silent Hill fic the words “Empty, bleeding, and different in every way” get used first to describe the town, and then again at the end to describe the protagonist. It’s unsettling both times, but the second time I feel as though it is a little bit reassuring, too. Maybe sometimes it’s good to be reinvented.

Foreshadowing: Lay the breadcrumbs! Make that one character stare at the table in the scene where everyone is speculating on the identity of the traitor, draw our attention to the ceramic statue on the mantelpiece. I love to use the rule of three for this, often describing the significant thing last—or to describe two significant things and diffuse any audience suspicion with a joke as the third thing 😈🙏

Well, this has been a very long post! I wonder what my rules for writing are. UM. I know I have them. I’m nothing if not wildly opinionated!

1. Don’t hang out with writers who think that they’re better than their readers. Storytelling is about sharing humanity, not transcending it. Writing is not a divine gift. There is no muse! Not only hang out with people who do not write, but hang out with people who do not read. It keeps you humble.

2. Don’t break format just for the helluvit, but—if you have an idea about how to pull something off and say, scandalised, “oh my god, but is that allowed?” you have to do it.

3. If you’re having fun, your reader is having fun. If you’re bored, your reader is EXTRA bored. So… don’t write the boring bits. If you don’t know what to say in the scene where the character gets the bus between two locations, just cut it and start the next scene with “When she got off the bus.” Christopher Paolini is an example of someone who has never learned this. On one hand he has a lot more money than I do, but on the other hand, I’ve had a lot more gay sex.

4. Hot take: bad books are just as educational as good ones. I love a formulaic or poorly told story because they give me a chance to engage my structure brain. I like to figure out what went wrong and how. It’s never cinema sins bullshit like “WOW! GAPING PLOT HOLE!!!” but more like “weird, the tone of the climax is jarring compared to the rest of the story” or “well that’s the obligatory breakup at the end of the second act, but why did it happen?” I’ve also learned a whole lot about how to write sex scenes by reading ones that made me say “well, certainly not like that.”

5. Learn to recognise ways you make your own writing noncommittal. “He felt,” “she realised,” “they discovered,” “she thought.” Almost, very, really, nearly. These are all things I do way too much. Don’t say he felt it was, say it was.

☀️🌱☀️

Lastly: If you’re hitting a brick wall, if you’re blocked, if writing isn’t fun… stop.

Read something outside your genre. Dig up weeds in the garden. Watch a friend play a game that is too scary for you. Put a weird doll in the corner of your bathroom, go look through second hand shops for cheap treasures, get an outlandish food on your grocery run. Have a nice chat with a guy who is eighty something, make faces at a baby when mum isn’t looking. Learn to tie a useful knot. Badly paint some furniture. Sit out under the stars with a cuppa, listen to the night sounds, enjoy the feeling of being small. What I’m saying is, you should actively distract yourself with the interesting parts of Being Alive. Whatever feels like a waste of time is worth your time. Internet does NOT count! Do not watch a video, do not read a post! Do things that engage your senses. Do things where you use your hands. Make yourself laugh! Be clumsy, be silly, be messy on purpose. Writing is never more important than being alive, and your brain is never more important than your body. You need to fall in love with being alive. You need to be in the world. One day the gears will click into place and you’ll need to start writing again, furiously, like there’s a fire lit inside of you—but you can’t rush it. You need to take the time to be an animal, and animals play.

Here is a photo of Flea, who is a sixteen year old cat. She has no teeth. Here she is having a great time rolling around in the sun.

Sometimes my zine friends and I joke about things that are zines. Can my tomato plants be a zine? Poets joke about what is a poem. Is my cat rolling on the lawn a poem? Well, in that line of thinking… being an animal isn’t not a kind of writing. You’re making a mark on the world either way.

[igbylicious]

hiii ☺️ 10 & 25 for the meta asks

because you writing is always so interesting to me! and it's always feels so well thought out and just like satisfying(?) not sure if that's the word i'm looking for, but the point still stands 💗

omg hi pls that is really sweet thankyou!!! (´▽`ʃ♡ƪ)

25) What part of writing is the most fun?

oohhhh that’s a tough pick! there’s a lot i love abt writing, but i think i have the most fun when i find a creative flow & everything clicks into place, and i just get hit w/ this giddy feeling of like ‘ah yes, this is why i'm writing this story :3’

10) How would you describe your writing process?

short answer: controlled chaos xD

i put a longer answer under the cut, i hope the explanation makes sense asdkjasdjk

meta asks for writers

my process varies from fic to fic, esp if they’re shorter, but for many of them it kinda looks like this:

plotbunny attacks

i wordvomit as many of my thoughts & ideas into a doc as i can

even if those thoughts & ideas contradict each other or don’t connect smoothly

no thinking just get all the frenzied ‘ohgodineedtowritethisthing’ energy out of my system

lots of all-caps yelling

using all-caps is my main brainhack to turn off the thinking lol

end up w/ messy collection of unhinged notes

(i usually give it some time to marinate at this point, esp since i’ve been so focused on finishing whichever way. a lot of my ‘wips’ are roughly in this stage)

then:

read through the mess

sort things into the right order

add new ideas that get sparked by rereading the first ‘wave’

set aside the things i end up not liking

just kinda refine the mess into a semi-coherent storyline

at this point, sometimes i have an extremely detailed outline, even w/ entire conversations scripted out; but sometimes i only have a vague idea of what’s going on and how i’m getting from A to B to C lol

-> if the outline is detailed, i can dive straight into the writing and it’s usually pretty easy and straightforward (unless i change my mind abt smth lol)

-> but if i hit a part of the story for which i only have a very vague outline, then i first take a closer look at the scene i need to write;

what do i want to happen in this scene?

what does it need to achieve?

does it have to lead into a specific ending for smooth transition into the next part?

etc etc

in that case, i kinda try to do the same thing as at the start; just mindlessly blarf out all my thoughts/ideas, sort them out, then get writing!

(i also use that all-caps trick whenever i get stuck during the actual writing lol; it just really helps to turn off the perfectionist in my brain. like leave me alone i’m yelling here!!!)

…i feel like this makes me sound waaayyyy more organised than i am ^^;; i usually start w/ an outline, yes, but i’ll also just change the entire plot on a whim if i think that makes for a better story lol

(example; in my original 9-chapter outline for whichever way, the qpr throuple becoming official was planned as the ending. then i changed my mind within like 2-3 chapters bc the trio just instantly felt so good together and i couldn’t justify why they wouldn’t just, youknow, talk abt that sooner!!! esp once i added all those extra chapters, which would’ve dragged it out even longer! so i pushed those storybeats forward, decided on a different milestone to end on, and adjusted the rest accordingly lol. really, really happy i did that :’) )

i hope this was what you’re looking for & that it made any sort of sense??? again thankyou for the ask! (〃＾▽＾〃)

[butterflydm]

wot reread: the gathering storm (prologue - chapter 6)

spoilers through the gathering storm.

Okay, here we go. Ready to head into the last three books. My own memory of reading these books should not necessarily be trusted, lol, as I have learned with my reread as a whole and how different many of my opinions & beliefs are from what they were before. Some things were confirmed for me (yep, Tuon was a huge waste of potential) but other things were contradicted (nope, Mat is not a Bad Friend like he gets represented by much of fandom, but has been incredibly loyal throughout the series, even after Rand kinda starts being an asshole to him). So this will be interesting for me, to see how much I may have remembered or forgotten.

1. So this first section of the prologue seems mostly about setting up the Bad Vibes that are coming with the Last Battle. A farmer in the Borderlands sees strange clouds, has a vision, and decides it’s time to turn his scythe into a weapon (along with other people around him). I assume this is Rand being unwittingly ta’veren at people en masse, inspiring them to head north to help with the Last Battle (though that begs... several questions).

2. *sigh* Once again, we are all about being inside the slavers’ heads and not caring about the slaves. Next PoV section is a sul’dam. I am just... tired of sul’dam at this point. Okay, anyway, they’re freaking out because their damane have been shielded by Rand. This is apparently an extension of Rand’s ending scene in KoD, from the PoV of one of the sul’dam of that battle, because she talks about Rand losing his hand and then “picking it up like a glove”. I’m gonna try to get past my now-instinctive annoyance with all things Seanchan and see if I can figure out the purpose of this scene.

3. “The promise of freedom might be part of some scheme” seems like such a twisted line to put into the mouth of a slaver, just saying. “Freedom” for her but not for the women that she views as tools and pets.

4. Again it is so frustrating that Nynaeve doesn’t spill the sul’dam secret here, just like it was frustrating at the end of Knife of Dreams! She wants to heal the injured damane, she hates that Rand is sending them back into slavery, so why is she giving a helping hand to the Seanchan Empire by not spilling the damn sul’dam secret to the Dragon Reborn? And the sul’dam likely wouldn’t even believe her, at least not now, so it’s not like the actual scene would change that much! (but Rand would believe her and then maybe he would have some options) Jordan was stacking the deck as hard in favor of the Seanchan as possible and he also just HATED anyone sharing useful information with Rand ever, at any time.

5. Yeah, this scene was definitely written by Jordan because I’m getting just as pissed off about Rand’s storyline as I was at the end of Knife of Dreams, lol. I feel like I could have guessed this scene was by Jordan even if I didn’t already know, because I am so annoyed at Nynaeve carrying around the Idiot Ball of protesting against Rand’s decision but not giving him any reasons to make a different one, even though SHE KNOWS THINGS that he doesn’t know. This is definitely Jordan’s CoT/KoD energy. Just. Talk to Rand. About the actionable information that you have! Rather than refusing because Women Only Talk About Important Things To Women and Men Only Talk About Important Things To Men. I am hitting you with a pillow in my head, Nynaeve. Please know that.

6. ...what the actual fuck. Rand is completely letting the Seanchan off the hook for being terrible and blaming everything on Semirhage (”I rest more easily, now”). What the fuck? They are still SLAVERS, Rand. Anyway, he talks here about how he MUST have peace which... I’ve talked about this before but giving Rand this attitude kinda completely nullifies any plot need for Mat to marry Tuon. Rand is already prepared to roll over for the Seanchan, with no need for a marriage tie to convince him. The Mat-Tuon marriage is just so completely pointless in every possible way, because Rand was willing to bend regardless and ready to hand Tuon the keys to the kingdom, essentially.

7. ...have I mentioned recently that I really hate the direction that Jordan decided to go with the Seanchan in CoT & KoD? Man, it was such an intense and interesting storyline with fascinating (though horrific) throughlines all the way through Winter’s Heart, and then Jordan salted the cake instead of using sugar and now the whole storyline is just... inedible and deserves nothing but being tossed in the trash.

8. On the plus side, the sul’dam doesn’t think about the male a’dam even once, so it’s possible that Semirhage actually DID duplicate them herself and Rand was able to confiscate her entire stash, leaving none for Slaver Overlord back in Ebou Dar. On the minus side... everything else in this scene.

9. Oh, it’s Tylee. Perrin’s slaver BFF and the person that he sold 200+ women to. If you’ll recall from Knife of Dreams, he’s chill that she’s a slaver because she was nice to him personally and helped him out, so he didn’t care about what she might be doing to anyone else because slavery is just too hard to fight, y’all. Perrin Aybara: moral integrity of swiss cheese. Anyway, it’s been two weeks, Tylee’s missing her BFF and hoping she doesn’t have to face him across a battlefield later on; echoes of Mat & Tuon lol. Oh, yeah, and the hauntings that Elayne & her people were experiencing in Knife of Dreams (I think) are affecting the Seanchan now too. It is a little funny that, because of when they landed, Tylee & lots of the Seanchan just think that the Westlands is a place where food rots really really quickly, not knowing that it’s the Dark One’s touch.

10. Oh, nice the Seanchan army gets attacked by Trollocs! Sweet move by the Dark One. I approve. This is like when the gholam killed Tylin. I can’t imagine why I would possibly be upset that the invading slaver army is getting killed off by the ‘bad guys’. Theory time: before Jordan decided to go all-in on alliances, turning the Seanchan army into chaos makes sense as to where he was potentially planning to go with them, at least for me? We’ve seen the results of a complete breakdown of society among the Aiel, and seeing that begin among the Seanchan as a result of the sul’dam secret being openly revealed would have a great deal of sense as a plotline, and it would have taken them out of the equation so that Rand wasn’t fighting battles on two fronts. There’s not really any need for the Seanchan troops to bolster the Westland troops in the Last Battle -- the Dark One literally only has as many people/Shadowspawn fighting on its side as the author decides. That’s a completely flexible number.

idk idk, it’s hard to say where Jordan was planning to go with the plotline originally except it feels like he radically changed his mind between Winter’s Heart and Crossroads of Twilight.

11. Checking in with Graendal. Let’s see... her deal was that she was sowing chaos by sending very bad orders to Ituralde by pretending they were from his king, and then Moridin snatched her up and said she had to work for him now. This section essentially works as a catch-up on the Plot Thus Far from the Forsaken’s point of view. Okay, the purpose of the Forsaken gathering is that Mesaana and Demandred want to rescue Semirhage from Rand. Demandred seems to care more about getting to Lews Therin/Rand than actually saving Semirhage, though. Anyway, Moridin is pissed off (his hand hurts lol) and tells them that they are absolutely NOT to rescue Semirhage under any circumstances. After Mesaana and Demandred leave, he lets Graendal know that Rand is going to Arad Doman and that she must make certain that he does not establish peace there (but don’t hurt him or kill him).

12. Oh, nice, Ituralde pulled a reverse Trojan Horse on the Seanchan army that was going after him. (this is the... northern front of the Seanchan? The northwestern front?) Though, honestly, it’s almost frustrating to see him still doing so well when I know his PASSIONATE AND SINCERE DEFENSE OF HIS HOME ends up getting cut off at the knees because We Must Ally With The Slavers At All Costs. I bet if someone told Ituralde about the sul’dam secret, he’d have been able to do something useful with it.

13. Sanderson gets rid of the first of many dangling plot threads by having Faile unceremoniously kill Masema rather than dragging that story out any longer. Good for her, etc. Done and dusted. I do have to laugh a little bit about Faile telling everyone not to tell Perrin, because Perrin can sell two hundred women into slavery but isn’t willing to kill a man who has created a murderous cult (despite being fully willing to kill people at other times). I mean, that does track with how he behaved in the last few books.

14. And now we are out of the prologue and into the main story, starting with a Rand PoV. We pick up with him in Arad Doman, where he can feel that Aviendha is getting closer. I find it... somewhat sad that this section here is the first time we’ve really gotten Rand thinking in depth on the bonding, at least from what I recall. Elayne bonded Rand with the three of them back in Winter’s Heart and we NEVER got Rand’s emotional reaction to that (or his emotional reaction to sleeping with Elayne!). He notes their worry and thinks that he can’t regret letting them bond him, even though he should. And he thinks about how he’s ‘using’ Min here, which is a very interesting tie-in (for me) to his regrets about ‘using’ Mat back in The Fires of Heaven (Min has sometimes superficially felt like “a Mat that Rand is allowed to sleep with” at times, in terms of how she’s been treated in the story -- lots of knives, has protested they aren’t a hero, treated as an emotional connection to Rand’s past, though that feels a lot more honest for Mat than Min). In terms of the “Min forcing herself into a pleasing mold for Rand” watch, we learn that she’s recently taken to bathing with lavender soaps. Rand notes that he finds it somewhat odd that Min dresses up her trousers & shirts with lace... which is hilarious, because she’s literally only doing it for him and his internal thought on it is “???”. Hey, Min. Maybe if you. Maybe if you had a conversation with Rand about your relationship, you’d find out that he liked you just fine the way you were, before you started making yourself miserable and dolling yourself up for him every day. Just a thought.

15. It’s so hilarious that Min manages to sound jealous when talking about how Rand is thinking about Semirhage, the Forsaken who is currently his prisoner. She’s got a gift. “You’re thinking about her again.” I would have respected Min so much more as a character if she’d just shanked Semirhage herself and then dealt with the fallout of how that affected her relationship with Rand. Honestly, what is the point of all her hidden knives if NOT to kill someone unexpectedly. But Min is very much a reactive/passive character when it comes to plot beats, so she just worries uselessly instead and damsels around the place.

16. He takes a moment to think about Elayne and what he can sense of her emotions from this far away -- he thinks that she’s relieved, which makes him hope that she’s won the throne, or closer to it. Okay, at this point in time, Rand is thinking about how he needs to make a truce with the Seanchan for the Last Battle but “after that, the Light could burn them all”. So Rand isn’t currently operating under any kind of belief at this point that the Seanchan aren’t worth fighting. He actually.. and I’m curious if this is from Jordan’s notes or if this bit was pre-written or if it’s all Sanderson, because I don’t think Jordan ever has Rand think about this clearly in the earlier books, but here it’s clear that the reason Rand believes full-bore that he MUST have peace with the Seanchan is because of what the ‘Finn told him (honestly, between this and Mat’s marriage prophecy, the ‘Finn carried a lot of water for the Seanchan -- I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that 'Finn, some of whom wear human skin, are fans of slavers, lol). That does make his choice here more understandable -- Rand has been prophecy-obsessed for books -- but it still means that Mat’s marriage is completely pointless from a narrative or tactical standpoint, lol. I wonder if that’s why Jordan decided to go for a ~romance~ angle for Mat? Because he realized that he’d voided out the narrative and tactical reasons, but the prophecy was already out there in the text, so he kinda had to figure out a new angle?

17. Hey. Hey, Min. You also know the sul’dam secret. You’ve been hanging out with Rand since Lord of Chaos and banging him since A Crown of Swords, and are really the one person who has most intimately witnessed how incredibly difficult this entire war against the Seanchan has been for him and how he’s failed at trying to stop them... could you maybe give him some useful information between all the sex? Maybe take a break from telling Rand’s secrets to Cadsuane and tell the Seanchan’s secrets to Rand instead. Just a thought.

18. Next up is Egwene, and serving Elaida this night at dinner. Ah, the first sentence is a reminder of all the corporal punishment that happens at the White Tower. And we can’t even blame this on Elaida, because the White Tower was like this before, and back twenty years ago in New Spring. And the Wise Ones are like this too. This was very much a Jordan thing (likely carried over from how he ‘learned’ at the Citadel). Note that even Egwene doesn’t think that beating your students is actually a bad thing in any way. She sees herself still crying when she gets beaten as a personal weakness that she needs to train out of herself, but thinks that Silviana is just ~doing her duty~ when she beats people to the point of tears.

19. Egwene is doing her best to point out the dissent and cracks that already exist in the Tower as a result of Elaida’s leadership, and feels like she’s getting through to people. Egwene is still getting forkroot every day, and almost always has two Red Ajah Sisters as ~guards~, specifically Katerine and Barasine, it sounds like, who are part of the group who captured her originally. Egwene has also been doing what she can to remind the Tower of Elaida’s ‘failures’ (like not successfully capturing Rand, and the failure of her force that was sent to subdue to the Black Tower). We also learn that the Dark One’s touch is increasing here too, with hallways shifting locations and now an actual tapestry changing to be more violent and bloody. Egwene has learned the wisdom of not stretching herself too thin - “ You scrubbed a floor clean by first picking a single spot and getting to work”.

20. As Egwene is arriving Elaida’s quarters, a ‘haunted’ Gray Sister is leaving. Is this the ‘ferret’ sent from Salidar who got commandered by the Black Ajah hunters and blackmailed into honeytrapping Elaida?

21. lol, the Amrylin’s quarters that Egwene imagines that Siuan must have had sound way more ~spy-focused~ than I remember Siuan’s quarters actually being. She had the one box that was set to destroy important papers if anyone else opened it, I think, and then just simple furnishings for the rest.

22. Egwene being certain that she would have taken Green (which is also the Ajah she pretended to be in Cairhien) -- honestly, would not pick that Ajah for her and it really feels like it’s left-over from Jordan basically deciding that Green is the Liking Men Ajah and Red is the Hating Men Ajah and everyone else is chopped liver, lol. Egwene just does not vibe Green for me at all! Brown for love of learning, White for finding legal loopholes, or Blue for ~vibes~ and dedicating herself to a cause all seem like they would suit her better. But she wants to marry the man she’d like to take as a Warder so... Green it is.

23. Oh, yeah, the Gray sister is Meidani, and Egwene recognizes her name as belonging to one of the ‘ferrets’, and Egwene is here to be Elaida’s server at her dinner date with poor Meidani, who deserved better than being blackmailed into spending time with Elaida. Egwene notes that Meidani looks terrified! (does Elaida not notice Meidani’s fear because she’s self-centered or does she enjoy it because she’s sadistic? the question of the hour. Ah, soon answered. She’s enjoying Meidani’s fear).

24. When Meidani mentions that some Sisters are worrying over the Seanchan (a worry that Elaida dismisses), we get a vivid reminder from Egwene’s memories of how hellish her experience with the Seanchan was and how monstrous they are to women who can channel -- she STILL gets PTSD flashbacks from her time in the collar and has not-too-deeply-buried trauma from it. I genuinely wish I could go back in time and get Jordan to answer some pointed questions about what the POINT of all this was? It’s so weird to me that the ‘boys’ and the ‘girls’ are being given such RADICALLY different vibes in their respective Seanchan-related interactions, starting in Crossroads of Twilight (Mat’s vibes with them are pretty horror-based in Winter’s Heart). Was it meant to be a critique on how so-called ‘good’ people are actually sometimes willing to support evil as long as the evil doesn’t hit close enough to home? But the evil SHOULD have been hitting close enough to home, at least for Rand and Mat, because Mat and Rand both care deeply about specific women who can channel! Mat grew up with Egwene & Nynaeve; he had a whole book about becoming friends with Elayne; he knows that his little sister can channel! Rand is literally IN LOVE with two women who can channel! Just... ???

25. Egwene blames Elaida here for everything that’s gone wrong and... eh. Elaida IS a bad leader but she was put into place as an unwitting puppet by the Black Ajah (so she foils/mirrors both Egwene and Rand -- Rand worries a lot in the early books that he will be turned into a puppet, and Egwene was raised to Amyrlin Seat with the intention of being used as a puppet), so removing Elaida might help a bit, but removing the Black Ajah would help more.

26. I like Egwene’s moment with Meidani here a lot -- she reassures her, gives her something solid to stand on to give her a bit of courage, validates the trauma that Meidani has undergone during her time back in the White Tower. This is a really good little moment here, that shows Egwene as a genuinely good leader. And I also like Egwene using deep breathing to help herself calm her own anger.

27. Serving Elaida at dinner has changed Egwene’s focus -- it’s more important (in her PoV) to keep her attention on holding the Tower together rather than removing Elaida from power, as she believes that Elaida will overreach and remove herself from power. I mean, again... I kinda gotta give Egwene an “eh” on this analysis too. Elaida has been able to force a LOT of things into being that go against Tower custom, so I’m not so sure as Egwene is that she would eventually just go ‘too far’ and get pulled down by the Hall.

28. It’s interesting to me that Rand laughing in the box during Lord of Chaos was meant to mark an internal ‘breaking’ point for him & LTT but Egwene laughing while being beaten is meant to mark an internal ‘breakthrough’ (in a positive way). Honestly not sure what it means in the narrative tbh. It’s positioned here as Egwene finally understanding what embracing pain means (as the Aiel say to do).

29. We go from Egwene Thinking Like An Aiel (TM) to an Aviendha chapter. Aw, it’s sweet that Aviendha is trying to see the Domani refugees from Elayne’s perspective and not just her own. We also once again here have the vibe of Rand-Elayne-Aviendha being one complete relationship (with Rand-Min being a completely separate relationship). That’s really the vibe that Rafe needs to break down in order to make the four-person relationship not feel like a harem. Because here, Aviendha thinks about how she plans to marry Rand with Elayne and doesn’t spare a single thought for Min (and why would she, tbh? she’s met Min ONCE). But it’s just so weird that there’s a narrative expectation that Aviendha and Elayne need to be close and be first-sisters in order to both be with Rand, but Min can do whatever and is never touched by the limits or cultural rules that bind other people or even by Rand’s own protectiveness. Min doesn’t need to be Aviendha’s first-sister; Min doesn’t fall under the category of “avoid her to protect her”. That contributes both to the harem vibes of Min being a completely separate relationship, and also to the vibes of Min being a plot device instead of a character that other people might actually interact with and have expectations about.

30. Honestly, this whole song-and-dance about how Aviendha can’t approach Rand until she ~earns honor~ just feels kinda silly. Rand, Aviendha, Elayne, and Min all CONFESSED THEIR LOVE and BONDED. She is INSIDE HIS HEAD. It’s just plain silly that she’s been moved into Rand’s plotline and proceeds to completely avoid him (and equally silly that Rand just passively allows Aviendha to avoid him while having sex with Min every night... sadly, it’s completely in character for Min to jealously hoard Rand. So far, Min has had one moment of selflessness in this entire relationship and, even then, she ended up being the person who has benefited the most from bonding Rand). This is a place where I do think that Jordan might have written things differently, simply because it makes zero sense to send Rand, Aviendha, & Min all to Arad Doman if it’s not to actually forge together that specific neglected side of the relationship. Aviendha and Min should be bonding! Rand and Aviendha should be spending time together (including sex! Aviendha doesn’t have hang-ups about sex before marriage and now things are good with Elayne, so it should be go time). Aviendha going to the place where Rand is only to not hang out with Rand at all is... just a bizarre narrative choice (especially when we get to The Event later on; at that point it’s ridiculous that Aviendha wouldn’t come running).

31. Okay, as the Aiel approach the place where Rand is, Amys... sort of grills Aviendha, and we get this weird “Min will be easy to work with/we will reach accommodation” conversation where they feel more like they’re going to be business partners than sharing in a romantic relationship with the same person. Again, yeah, it’s just so weird that Min exists in this odd bubble all on her own. Aviendha believed that she and Elayne NEEDED to be first-sisters in order to share Rand, but Min is just... idk, going to be over there somewhere, I guess. I do like Aviendha’s semi-annoyed thoughts that she loves Rand because of HER choice, not because of Min’s viewing. This is a major reason why I like Aviendha’s relationship with Rand more than Min’s with Rand. Min-Rand (and, of course, Mat-Tuon) is very much “prophecy first and then force the love to happen by brainwashing yourself into it because you don’t think you have a choice” and I’m... not into that vibe, essentially.

32. I like the actual tone and vibe of Aviendha’s PoV here -- I just feel like it should have been followed up with actual Rand-Aviendha interactions in this book. This PoV itself actually vibes really well with Egwene’s last PoV and I definitely see why they decided to place them next to each other.

33. Oh, hey, @markantonys - I’m at your boy’s first PoV chapter in this book! lol, anyway, Gawyn is watching some of the... rebels’ army? It sounds like. I’m pretty sure he has zero clue that Egwene has been captured by the White Tower. Pretty sure he’s on an information diet. Gawyn does know that the general he’s faced against here is Gareth Bryne. Gawyn is struggling with his duty. Gawyn really is... he kinda is one of the purest examples of someone who is actually faced with what we’re constantly told Rand is bringing to everyone everywhere -- the emotional turmoil and chaos amid breaking old ties and forging new ones. Because Gawyn thinks here that Bryne ‘should’ be with Elayne in Caemlyn, then immediately asks himself, well, where should I be?

34. This actually continues the theme from Egwene through Aviendha and now to Gawyn -- so far, we’ve had a series of characters considering themselves, their duty, their honor, and their strengths. Questioning the foundations of what they know about themselves. Egwene ‘finds’ herself through embracing pain and dedicating herself to her duty; Aviendha wonders why the Wise Ones treat her as if she has no honor; Gawyn thinks here -- he wasn’t certain he had duty, or honor, left to him.

35. Anyway, I’m glad that Gawyn has slowed down enough to give himself a chance to actually, um. Think. His duty is to Elayne and Egwene, he thinks here, so why is he on the side that is opposed to them? SUCH a good question, Gawyn. He’s thinking through why Elaida might have put him here, outside the city, when his Younglings can’t possibly actually make a dent in the rebels’ army. The gears in his head are turning! Genuinely, I am very pleased, lol. Will of the Amrylin or not, this was a deathtrap. Argh, no, after all that thinking and questioning, he rides back to his camp. GAWYN. YOU WERE SO CLOSE.

36. Rand next. “What he wanted no longer mattered.” Hmm. Rand is thinking about this in the context of how he is constantly surrounded by Aes Sedai these days but. Hmm. Rand thinks about Mat, as you do, and is given a vision of Mat dicing. Rand hopes that they will be reunited soon. I am stabbing the narrative with shearing scissors.

37. So, Rand is currently hanging out with Bashere. Whose wife was almost killed recently. And who then agreed to talk to a mysterious person because his wife almost died. I’m just putting that out there.

38. I genuinely loved Rand’s conversation with Harine here. It felt like it had give-and-take, though we can see how Rand is definitely on the edge of exhaustion and impatient, and it’s nice to have a Sea Folk character who is actually having a conversation with someone instead of just trying to browbeat them. He asks her how the Atha’an Miere handle men who can channel and then (when he finds out that, unsurprisingly, it’s a death sentence, either immediate or somewhat lingering) tries to talk to her about saidin being clean now and how that means that the way people treat male channelers needs to be changed. Literally! Why did it take so long for any conversations about this to happen in the books? Why was Rand just lazing around for two books post-cleansing when he could have been doing PR like this? Again, yeah, I really like this conversation! He believes he’s going to die at Shayol Ghul, so he’s not doing this for himself. He’s doing this for the other men who are like him, and all the ones who will follow. This is a really good moment. And we can see the turmoil (and the LTT memories!) in Rand in this moment, as he tries to convince her that saidin is clean and that more men don’t need to die to protect the world (just him). And it feels like we’re really getting into his head so far, re: LTT’s memories and him thinking about the bonding earlier.

39. Literally this chapter of Rand’s PoV has been TUGGING at my HEARTSTRINGS. Rand worrying that his death will lead to destruction and turmoil among the nations because he’s strung them so tightly together! Regretting that he didn’t help the world during the last breaking because he was so consumed by what he’d done and his grief and guilt over Ilyena! Rand worried about men who can channel still facing hatred and death sentences! Rand talking with Elza (lol) and Corele about the taint being gone and yet people not acting as if it is and Corele being frank and honest but also KIND with him. And we ARE still on theme from the previous three chapters -- duty is heavier than a mountain. Rand thinks here about how duty binds him as tightly as prophecy does. And Rand’s thoughts here on wanting to leave the world a better place very much echo Egwene’s thoughts on how she wants to focus on holding the White Tower together and rebuilding it rather than being arrow-focused on bringing down Elaida. Your duty is to the future and not the past.

40. I don’t care about Semirhage’s interrogation by Cadsuane because Semirhage should have just been killed at the end of Knife of Dreams. Things in the section that I DO care about -- how is Merise and Narishma’s relationship as Aes Sedai & bonded Asha’man going? Oooh, Cadsuane feels like Merise is ~flaunting~ having an Asha’man Warder. Going well, then? Seems to be going well enough.

41. See, I do like Ituralde’s PoV sections but... they should have been Mat’s. MAT should be the main general/soldier PoV that we see. Mat should never have been yeeted off into the Seanchan storyline; it’s just been so ill-fitting and annoying, and Jordan had to introduce a new PoV character just to give us the “war sucks” kind of storyline that Mat’s memories and situation were literally invented to give us. Mat just... every time he leaves a storyline, he leaves such big holes that require MULTIPLE people to try to patch up and fill. When he left Rand, he needed to be replaced by both Bashere and Min. When he left Elayne, there was a whole completely random army and ~dashing commander~ who showed up who had never been mentioned before to fill the spot in her plotline that would have been better suited to Mat & the Band. And Mat should have been the general fighting AGAINST the Seanchan and coming up with clever tactics against them, not the court jester capering for the slaver overlord’s disdainful amusement. Endless, ENDLESS sighs over the direction that Jordan decided to go with Mat’s plotline.

42. “Abandoning ones’ homeland to invaders... well, Ituralde couldn’t do that. Not even if the fight was impossible to win.” Honor and duty, even onto death. The theme continues. The note here, “the ravens had begun” (their work of eating the carrion of the battlefield) - perhaps is the reason that Jordan decided to make the Seanchan’s main symbol the same as the Shadow’s - the Prince of Ravens is the prince of the butcher’s bill after a battle (which possibly also leads into another name). 

(to borrow the question Gawyn asked himself -- where is YOUR honor, Mat? where is your duty? It’s not in the arms of the woman who invaded your homeland, despises your friends, would enslave your family. Cords of duty and prophecy but, while in Rand’s case, both prophecy and duty drag him towards Shayol Ghul, in Mat’s case, they each pull in opposite directions. Duty, loyalty, and honor say that he should be by Rand’s side during the Last Battle. Prophecy demands he abandon his homeland to allow it to be ripped apart by the ravens. So, Mat, why does your prophecy ask that you abandon duty, loyalty and honor... and why do you allow yourself to follow that prophecy when it tells you to sacrifice everything to the blood-soaked avatar of war and death? where is your duty, Mat Cauthon?)

43. lol, I feel like this bit here with Leane and Egwene is Sanderson poking at one of Jordan’s oddities/kinks -- “Odd, how a novice to be instructed could be beaten but a prisoner to be interrogated could not.” IT REALLY IS, Sanderson. It really is. (I mean, it could be Jordan poking fun at himself but. It kinda vibes like someone else) Anyway, the Weird Relocations caused by the Dark One are increasing. That’s the main thing in this section.

Notes for this section: it’s confirmed in Sanderson’s retrospective that the first two parts of the prologue -- the farmer and the sul’dam -- were written by Jordan.

[hey-there-ghouls]

For the ask game,

🥺✨🧐🎨🧠🤲✅

Yeah i know they’re a lot but I’m curious and love your work! Have a great day!

Never apologise for asking! Sorry this has taken me a bit, my kiddo was sick and wanted to be attached to me constantly. Putting it under a cut because it got a little long:

🥺 Is there a certain type of moment or common interaction between your characters that never fails to put you in your feels?

I'm always a sucker for when two characters are having a very emotionally charged moment, usually talking about something very heavy, and one reaches out to just gently touch the other. Bonus points if it's the first time that person has had a friendly touch in a while and slumps at the contact.

✨ Give you and your writing a compliment. Go on now. You know you deserve it. 😉

I want you to know that I agonised over this because I'm super critical of my own stuff. I can't even go back to reread it without wanting to change everything or roll my eyes at something.

I think I'm good at getting the voice of characters right; even if they're saying something that's OOC, I think I can phrase it in such a way or concoct a scenario where it's authentic for them to be saying that particular thing.

🧐 Do you spend much time researching for your stories?

I spend so much time researching my stories! I come from a background in journalism and that's an industry that puts a lot of emphasis on citing sources and having the facts straight, so it's really hard for me to write something that doesn't have even the vaguest basis in fact.

Everything in my fic is somewhat based in reality and I usually try to link whatever research I've done at the end of the chapter. I really like coming up with tricky situations (like the church being awash with blood) and then trying to find ways that could actually happen.

🎨 How do you feel about fan art of your stories?

I've never had fan art of my fics, but I'd love it if it ever happened. I only ever ask that people credit the fic where approrpriate.

🧠 Pick a character, and I'll tell you my favorite headcanon for them.

I don't know if I was meant to pick one or you were, but I'll go with the (fictional) Shane Madej:

He's an exceptionally weird dude. Lots of niche interests and random facts rattling around that big ol' brain of his which he chooses to share in seemingly strange moments. I have this little idea that he endeared himself to Quinta by sharing stories about Ten Cent Beer Night and other historical oddities during tubulant flights to cases.

🤲 Would you please share a snippet of a wip?

Everything is really in fragments at the moment as I've had to write most of this chapter either on my phone during bouts of morning sickness or through voice to text lol but here you go:

“Special Agent Madej?” Ray asks, his voice still in the faux friendly tone he uses when he’s waiting for one of his agents to realise they’ve drawn a particularly stupid conclusion – and for one confusing moment Shane thinks Ray knows he’s awake and waiting for a response – but then he adds, “What possible reason could you have for wanting to handcuff a federal agent?”  “Because he is now my main lead on six murders after Ryan Bergara shot through thanks to him being tipped off by your agent,” Cooper growls.  “How,” Ray says, and it’s supposed to be the start of a question, but it comes out with so much force that he gets stuck there for a second. “How did you come to that conclusion?” he finally manages.

✅ What's something that appears in your fics over and over and over again, even if you don't mean to?

There's always someone dealing with loads of anxiety whilst being in deep denial that they need to reach out for support...no idea where that's come from.

Also humour, I really can't write anything without trying to make it even a little funny to myself.

[ashlingiswriting]

the nations favorite writer - offer us any advice? going through a writers block rn

oh god i’m so sorry this took me so long, things got crazy for a second and i forgot 😭 thoughts below!

here (1, 2) are a couple posts that seem pretty helpful, but now i’m just gonna talk about what helped me with my last bout of writer’s block because i can still remember it in detail

again this is all just my own observations about myself because that’s kinda all i have—i’m no expert

i had too many other things going on and i did need to cut down on other hobbies a bit (in this case, i had to cut down on rp) because those other things all were...relatively small tasks and they took less time, so my brain would often go “hey what about this short and rewarding task vs this long and intimidating task?”

which goes hand in hand with training your focus—i think my phone really does impact that in a bad way. reading books helps with training focus, as does muscling through. i know muscling through goes contrary to a lot of advice, but it helped me. because a lot of times, i would start writing a scene and go, ‘wow, i hate this!’ but knowing that i didn’t have another idea of what to do, i just kept going until i realized why it felt wrong. and there were like...four or five different breakthroughs like that when i was writing my latest chapter. just ‘OHHHHHHHHH’ moments that i got to only after writing like a thousand or more words that i would not end up putting in the fic. it is NOT always like this but if you’re really blocked, sometimes it’s just cause you’re writing a genuinely emotionally complicated and crucial bit and your brain has to go down the wrong path a few times before it figures out the right one

part of that is figuring out what you feel about your current scene? like, sitting down and writing a certain scene, i would go, ‘no, this feels wrong, i don’t like it, i hate it’ and sure enough my instincts were right. it WAS bad. it was bad because it focused too much on the logistics and details of a side plot when i didn’t want to waste all that precious real estate and audience attention on something that was not connected to the core of my story. but i didn’t fully realize that till i was done. it was still good that i’d written out the long version, because it laid out all the information i needed (plus a bunch i didn’t, but still). idk. i love editing more than writing on a blank page. i love cutting more than i love creating. this may be a me thing.

could also be something went wrong earlier on, like your actual scene idea is quite good but you didn’t lay enough emotional or plot foundation for it to hit as hard as you want it to? reread your previous bits of fic and see if you can find the problem there?

i think peer pressure and/or friendship are huge for this—i don’t mean peer pressure as in ‘silly anti-drug advertisements where all the cool kids try to make you do weed’ i mean ‘hanging out in a community of writers & artists and/or with friends where there’s an atmosphere of people lowkey always working on their craft, whatever that may be’. because truly i think it helps keep writing top of mind & sort of normalizes the emotional struggles. plus the camaraderie is really nice! 

my current home of choice is the narcos fandom discord (which is only about 25% about narcos fandom at this point lbr) but i know there’s a ton of different places out there to be a fic writer in community with other fic writers, so take your pick. i will say that not every community is perfect and i think the ideal community strikes a balance between participation & low stress—that is, people support each other but they don’t feel like they have homework-reading they have to do that they’ll get penalized for not doing? yk? i’m rambling whoops

plus, getting a friend that is willing and HAPPY to talk through the fic with you—an editor, a beta reader, something like that—is a godsend. truly without bellinitini/narcolini i would literally not have even published chapter one of my current longfic. but the key is to find someone who genuinely is interested or who is willing to do a bit of a swap; you help them with theirs, they help you with yours.

and then there’s the audience for longfics, which may or may not apply to you. cannot lie, rereading comments, even for previous fics that are unconnected, is extremely motivating! maybe that’s just me! (i don’t think that’s just me) on that note, if you’re feeling real desperate you can always reblog ask games about your WIPs so that you can interact with your audience a bit?

you could always try to take in more art—that’s usually pretty refreshing for me. canon review is great, but taking in other stuff (fictional books especially) can make your brain start thinking in different ways, especially if your brain is a bit spongy like mine and tends to absorb little bits of other writer’s styles if you chug a lot of them. you could try to find books that deal with the same setting, the same themes, or the same relationship dynamics.

so for example, i read colorless tsukuru tazaki and his years of pilgrimage by haruki murakami in prepping for my next chapter of richiefic because richie references it in season 2. and genuinely, reading it made me understand his character a bit better. but i also have a character going to prison, so i have read some of the works of george pelecanos (the novel drama city and several short stories), because pelecanos deals with the justice system in a way that i think is admirably clearsighted, not melodramatic, very honest. i’m fixing to reread some of the parade’s end series because ford madox ford is, to me, one of the greatest of all time when it comes to complicated conversations where two characters are completely legible to the audience—completely understandable—while struggling through emotionally complicated conversations with each other. and i am about to try and get some more books set in women’s prisons + books set in modern day chicago. reading stuff with the context of “i’m about to write something related to this” is such a good way to read stuff, too. just feels really good and sometimes you need a positive feeling when you’re struggling through the depths of depair i mean writer’s block.

movies and tv are good too, though imo they’re not as helpful. i...personally avoid reading other people’s fanfic like the plague if they’re dealing with a specific pairing whose longfic i’m struggling to finish.

just putting it down and coming back in two-three weeks sometimes helps. couldn’t tell you why.

and finally. you could always drop the fic. it feels shitty for a while, but if the muse has genuinely left you for good, you deserve to enjoy the freedom instead of just like...struggling onwards indefinitely. this has happened to me with longfics before and it always makes me sad. but sometimes there is genuinely nothing you can do, and in those cases, forgive yourself <3 this is a hobby, after all

my top three recommended tactics, without knowing details of your situation, are: talk with a friend/editor, take in more art, muscle through. in that order.

i hope that helped??? i’m very sorry about your writer’s block, it’s the worst thing in the world. and i’m sorry that it took me so long, i need to be more organized

[dyradoodles]

Fic authors self rec! When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you've written, then pass on to at least five other writers. Spread the self-love ❤

ONLY FIVE oh no LMAO To be honest I really love rereading my own stuff (it’s tailored to all my hyper-specific interests, after all! 🤣), so just picking 5 is hard, but I’ll try.

Redux Hero (FF7, Zack & Sephiroth, M) for sure! It’s a rewrite of the first fic I ever published online, and this time I finished it lmao FF7 has been such a big part of my life, so getting to be super indulgent with my headcanons in a big adventure story with my all-time favorite characters was such a joy to write. Plus I ended up with absolutely wonderful people hyping me up while I was working on it! And it helped me with processing some of my own personal shit. I could write a whole other book about how happy writing this one made me lol

Poster Boy (FF7, Zack/Seph or Zack & Seph, G) - This was my first Seph & Zack fic where I really felt like they matched my headcanon versions of them, to the point that if I’m having a bit of trouble with new fics, I like to reread this one to kinda get back into the right mindset. Like a voice actor having a key phrase to get into character, I guess lol Plus it’s just short and cute, so it’s a nice, quick, pick me up if I’m having a rough time writing.

What Lies Beyond the Lily of the Valley (FF7, Zack & Seph, T) - this one is close to my heart, since it acts as somewhat of an homage to the old FF7 fics I used to read as a kid Namely, “Lily Valley” by LuckyLadybug. That fic (and a lot of her other fics tbh!) really inspired a huge, huge love of Sephiroth and Zack just going on missions together. No big catastrophic, world-ending threat; just the job. Being friends. Uncovering horrible secrets and organizations that aren't Shinra. Or, as is the case with my fic, the two of them uncovering a whole undiscovered realm that, by the end of, they want absolutely nothing to do with LOL I had so much fun with the fae shenanigans. 

FFS, I Believe in You (Breath of the Wild, Sidlink, T) - MY FIRST FINISHED FANFIC LOL and also just the goofiest thing from start to finish (minus the Angst, there is definitely also Angst). I feel like this one really helped me learn how to make notes and actually construct a whole multichapter. It also forced me to learn how to write in iambic pentameter, which. Is that useful? Idk. Is it funny to me personally? Extremely so, yes. I didn’t really participate much in fandom before this fic, so it also ended up being an amazing opportunity to meet some incredible people, and coaxed me out of my lurker shell a bit lol (Also I don’t think I’ll ever beat this one in kudos, with any other story, which is just gonna make me laugh forever because SHAKESPEAREAN LIZALFOS??? THAT’S the most popular one I’ve written?? Understandable, I wouldn’t have it any other way LMAO)

Out of My Head (Venom (Marvel Comics), SymbiOT3, M) - I really let loose with this one and ended up using a lot of writing techniques that I still use in my writing today. Most especially, not feeling guilty about shorter chapters lol It’s at the top of my list for revisiting if I can ever get my brain to fixate on Venom again, because dammit I had two other arcs planned aaaaaaaaAAAAA— hopefully someday. RH did get a rewrite after uh, 9 years, after all;;;;;;;

This was fun, thank you Holly!! 

(also meant to add: my favorite thing about All the fics I've written to date is all the awesome friends I've made through them 💖 it's so cool to me how writing silly stories about my blorbos has helped me meet some of my favorite people ever)

[sflow-er]

🎁 💛 🎨 for the writers asks if you’re still doing them.

(If you’ve already answered any of these, replace with one you were hoping someone would ask!)

Hi! Yeah, I'm still doing them!

🎁 Have a piece of a WIP you want to share?

Well...sure! Here's an angsty snippet from the next chapter of my WIP, The real deal. I was actually hoping to get the chapter out this week, but I've been kind of swamped with other stuff, so I guess any readers hoping for an update may appreciate this.

[Context: Henry has just joined the Society. Walter is not happy about it.]

Walter has to stop there to quell the desperation that has not so much crept as it has rushed into his voice. He screws his eyes shut and hugs himself for comfort, trying to make it look like he’s just crossing his arms in frustration. The true meaning of the gesture isn’t lost on Henry, who soon reaches out to put his hand on Walter’s upper arm. “Hey. Are you okay?” Walter opens his mouth to say yes. What comes out is, “No. I’m really not.” Henry rubs Walter’s arm through the sleeve and hesitates a little before asking, “Would you like a hug?” “I’m not…in a hugging kind of place right now.”

💛 What is the most impactful lesson you’ve learned about writing?

Man, this is a tough one! There's always more to learn, and also so many things I have "learned" but not really taken to heart (such as "use a placeholder when you get stuck" haha).

I'd say maybe 'think of your readers as people, not numbers'. The writing itself has to be for me, because the worth of the story or my worth as a writer should not be determined by what anyone else makes of my writing. But I still think it's okay to acknowledge that I wouldn't be posting the stories anywhere if I didn't want to connect with people through them. The important part is not to think about it in terms of hits or even the number of kudos or comments, because that just leads to all kinds of self-doubt if the fic/chapter doesn't reach that many people (I am a niche writer in a small fandom, after all). I find it much more useful and joyful to think about it in terms of the actual human beings on the other side of the screen who have taken an interest in the story and let me share it with them.

🎨 - I already answered this one here. But since you suggested picking another one, let's do this (I tried to pick one of the yellow ones to at least match the colour):

🌻 How often do you read your own fics?

I write what I want to read, so I do reread my fics every now and then. Some more than others, but a couple of months ago I actually reread one that I had not revisited in ages, and I'm glad I did because it was better than I remembered.

Sometimes I reread for no particular reason, other times after a nice comment on an older fic. Or when I need to check something - just the other day, I went to check a minor detail in my magnum opus for my WIP (which is a prequel), and I ended up rereading the last five chapters... Oops.

(Sadly, rereading does often reveal typos or other little errors and fixing those does take me out of the story a bit, but I still enjoy it!)

Thank you again, @gulliblelemon! These were fun 💜

[Ask list for reference]

[campbyler]

just finished ch 7 and it’s 3am so my thoughts may not be intelligible But i just have to mention that with every new chapter (especially as things are picking up), i am just more and more amazed and impressed by the fact that all three of you are writing this story.

it was really clear to me from the beginning that you guys were super great with being cohesive, seamless, etc. between chapters despite having multiple authors. nothing’s ever felt disjointed or drastically different which is a feat in itself.

but i think what’s really been on my mind recently, especially with chapter six and chapter seven in mind, is that there’s actually SO much depth added from this being a collaboration.

i don’t want to assume anything of course, (all my knowledge comes from a little over a year and for one fandom so it’s small in scope) but the more i think about it, the more i’m just beyond impressed at how the events of each chapter seem to pair so well with their respective authors.

i don’t know if this makes any sense at all so i’m sorry if it doesn’t but. i guess i just mean that the range of emotions and experiences are just broadened so much by the “dividing and conquering” aspect. maybe i’m going insane i don’t know but?? there’s something about the stargazing, makeshift-sleeping-bag-cuddling, practical introspection at war with yearning, vibes of chapter seven that just has suni written all over it. and then to go back to chapter six with the excitement of the camp games, the thrill of the competition, the type of bright summer day that’s so visceral you might as well be there yourself just from reading about it?? andi 100%.

(and the same could be said for every chapter with all three of you it’s just that the most recent two have been set during very specific events haha)

again i am sorry if this does not make sense but i’m just trying to say that i can’t think of a more effective way to execute a collaboration; it’s cohesive and unified but you guys are all playing to your strengths so well. common girldummy w

hello!!!!! sorry for taking One Million Years to get to this ask but i wanted to answer this when i fully had the energy to respond to the whole thing bc it’s soooooooo thoughtful HELLO.

first of all i’m so happy you enjoyed! the response to ch07 has been amazing and seeing how much everyone has been loving wilderness week has been so nice, especially because it was such a change from the usual camp setting!!

SECOND, and the part of this ask that i have been rereading and fawning over ever since it came in, i loveeeee that observation so much 😭 i definitely definitely agree, and i hadn’t specifically thought of it this way before but you’re so right! i think it’s partially because we ended up with chapters that each of us had come up with a key idea/central scene for, so it makes sense that they would slowly start to incorporate tropes that each one of us is partial to! there’s a chapter coming up that has andi written allllllll over it lol and not to spoil ch09 (thea’s baby, as we all know) but from start to finish it is the epitome of Thea Wiseatom fr. collaborating is super cool because between three people, there’s usually always a fresh perspective/new way to write something so that it doesn’t get repetitive like it might with just the singular author’s pov, and i’m giggling and twirling my hair thinking about how our styles have been distinct enough for you to notice! genuinely one of my favorite type of comments to get so thank you!!

[imaginaryfriendcomic]

What I genuinely love about "Imaginary Friend" is the rather simple concept. With UT there are often deep and sometimes bloated themes and theories along with it since there is so much room for stuff in between the layers of the game (sometimes even layers when there aren’t any). They’re fine but sometimes I feel like less is more and better… (not to mention you don’t have to see and read any or too many credible sources for the theories to be on topic…) you need to know who Gaster is, his fate and his possible relationship with the Skeletons. The rest is explained in the fic itself.

I found the fic shortly after I finished my first play through (pacifist) and delving a little into the Gaster lore. Your fic really touched on the subjects I really enjoyed and it’s simple premise of Frisk befriending Gaster as they did with all the monsters was executed so well. The characters and topics in this flow rather naturally and the climax is interesting as it is rewarding!

It’s been a while since I read the fic but parts of it are still in my memory and I’m gonna reread the fic again soon.

To me, it’s natural for many people to be drawn into the fic and comic and I'm sure your dedication to see the comic through as long as you have definitely fills me (and so many others) with determination! ((Sorry I had to))

Thank you for your input! Yeah, it was a simple idea, after I wrote my first Undertale fic, which had a rather bittersweet ending, I really wanted Gaster to be saved. Originally, Imaginary Friend was going to be way shorter and his friendship with Frisk wouldn't have lasted so many chapters. But thanks to some other stories, I just really liked the idea of Gaster being Frisk's "imaginary friend", and then the characters slowly pick up the pieces.

And honestly I think this was one of the few long stories I actually finished. I gave up on many of them in the past. But Imaginary Friend made me feel so satisfied when it was over. Not only because of the positive reception, but it was a story I never wrote before. A story about a beautiful, platonic relationship that develops over time. It's a story about forgiveness and past trauma - which is also present in Sans' arc, as you'll see later in the comic.

I would say the comic adaptation is a love letter, really. I do try to improve a few things I didn't explore in the original story, mainly Frisk and Papyrus, the latter not receiving a lot of focus in comparison to Sans, but it's not to say the comic is "better". It's just me revisiting the original fic. And while I wish the updates weren't so slow, I think they also help me take some time to develop the changes I want to make.

Anyway, thanks again for your support! And yeah, knowing how much you guys love this story and how much it means to me certainly fills me with determination. I've been having a hard time lately so reading these kind words are like a hug to me. <3

[drkoestersmithrpg]

FREE TIME

I've determined, MANY times, that I am NOT DOING SUMMER SCHOOL THIS YEAR.  I did not do myself a favor by getting 0 rest over the break.  Which means I have a LOT of free time coming up (maybe even a whole month!) and I'm already thinking of a project - something FUN - to do during that time. And I think I want to publish Thing someplace else - like Wattpad or some other places that I've heard of.  CutePandaPrincess reads Snape/Reader fic on some platform where people not only comment chapter by chapter, but comment line by line.  

during the last awful, awful weeks, when I CONSTANTLY felt like I had No Idea What Was Going On - constantly trying to pick out facts from multiple Unreliable Narrators, trying to figure out if I was Just Hearing What I Wanted To Hear and being in denial, while CONSTANTLY noticing that these unreliable narrators weren’t giving me actual facts and OBVIOUSLY had their own adjendas - and THEN there was the terrible moment when I realized I AM WAITING FOR AN ADULT TO COME AND TELL ME WHAT TO DO and everyone around me, my Stepmother’s grandkids and my brother and his wife, are all looking at ME, the 53 year old woman, to step up and be the adult that says “This Is What We’re Going To Do.”

During all that, I would take breaks, get on my phone, and open up Ao3 and either reread my own fic or reread the comments.

It was a GOOD break - a time to stop and say “There ARE some things I am GOOD at, and this is one of them.”

But I’ve reread those comments 100 times, and if I ever want to generate more, I have to start publishing again.

If I republish Thing on ANOTHER platform I will 

(a) get to work on it and polish it more and

(b) enjoy the feedback again from all the new readers and

(c) inevitably get inspired on NEW projects and start writing again.

This is what I’m looking forward to doing when all the dust settles.  My Play Webkinz When The Work Is Done reward for surviving this year.

[eponymousfics]

Just some personal anecdotal rambling while I take a break from cleaning about homesickness and writing:

(Under a cut bc it’s basically a personal essay lol)

I started writing Alola Again back in late 2021 (I think?) because the pandemic meant that my yearly visits back home had been on hold, and the yearning to go home was even stronger because of the general fear and anxiety of the whole situation.

I mean, it actually started because I decided to finally 100% my Alola ‘dex, since I’d sunk 1000+ hours into Animal Crossing: New Horizons at that point and needed a different game. Then Guzma suddenly hit a blorbo sweet spot in my head that had previously not existed (or had been entirely occupied by Nanu. I am a ‘cynical old man with a heart of gold he does his best to hide’ enjoyer).

I haven’t done a full reread of AA since fully uploading it, but I’ve gone back to some of the earlier chapters and listened back to a lot of my writing process voice memos, where I rambled to myself for collective hours trying to hash out plot details or pacing and character development etc.

I think looking back on it, I can safely say that fic would not have happened without the pandemic. That type of deep, concentrated homesickness that was the root and driving force behind its inception and execution was uniquely a result of quarantine isolation and the fact that I knew it wasn’t safe to travel home, and possibly wouldn’t be for a long time.

I already kind of knew this, because I wound up with the chance to go home in spring of 2022, when I had almost finished the fic but had a few more chapters left of the final draft to work out.

The INSTANT I was home, the tensed up spring of energy and need that had been pushing me along to make NaNoWriMo numbers every month for six months just…evaporated. And it was hard picking the fic back up again afterward. I couldn’t work on it much at all while I was home, which you’d think would be the opposite, since I could do ‘on location’ research, so to speak.

But AA is honestly so much more of the romanticized and idealized memory of my childhood and what I wish it could have been (much in the same way Alola itself is a very clean and idealized version of Hawaii, honestly almost pure tourist vision. Backed by real elements and actual research in places, yes, but also so carefully not mentioning/keeping out of frame the colonization and genocide of native culture while still presenting the polished version of the current state, which is entirely the result of those historical atrocities. Which, I can see why and how that happened, but I still have complicated mixed feelings over it and how much I enjoy the game despite that, and frankly in some ways because of it) that it became almost impossible to hold onto the dream that it was when sitting squarely in the middle of the reality it was based on.

As messy as things got because narratives need conflict, Mahina’s homecoming to Alola was everything I desperately wished my own could be. It’s simpler and easier because I have control over every element of it. All the emotional conflict happens on my terms because I’m the writer, I get to choose which emotional complications I want to examine and which I want to quietly pretend don’t exist.

And I get to see them all resolved, and have love and joy and humor thrown in to make it all palatable and worth it. It is baked with my baggage, it’s possibly more revealing than I should let anything put on the Internet be.

But I think a lot of fanfic is like that, and while there are a lotttt of technical flaws that I see now even just skimming over it in passing, the core of the story and the characters, the core of what it became, is still something I’m proud of.

And the fact that it’s finished, of course. Whatever else, it’s the first piece of long form writing that I’ve stuck to through multiple drafts to bring to completion. Is it perfect? No. Is it popular? No. Is it finished? Yes, and that’s important. For me, anyway.

Anyway, I’ve just had a lot of this on my mind because I’m home again, and slowly warming up to the idea of finally getting started on a sequel, which was always in the drafts but I needed space from it to even consider making a start. And because that deep down, bottom-of-the-soul homesickness is no longer gnawing at my every fiber. Whatever fuels the sequel, it won’t be that. I’ll have to attach a new anxiety onto it, I guess.

I think it did help me understand how to make these visits back home, though. Every time before had been fraught with tension between family members and an unnamed dissatisfaction because the reality of home couldn’t live up to the idealized yearning in my heart, but this trip…it’s been much easier.

I think the impromptu nature of it is helping. Originally, I wasn’t supposed to be here for three more weeks, but Circumstances(tm) dictated otherwise and I last-minute moved up my flight. Maybe I just didn’t have time to build up unrealistic expectations for it. Maybe I was just so depressed that the change of scenery has boosted me enough so I can just chill.

I don’t know what it is, probably a combination. But considering how I use fic as a big bandaid solution to not being able to afford therapy, well, I’ll probably wind up exploring it more in future writing. Whether that’ll be in the sequel to Alola Again or something else, we’ll see.

[martsonmars]

Hiiiieee, you're brain is a wonder, Marta!! I'm dying to know more about Stupid Smut 😆, Gelato in Rome and Catdoor😂 ❤️

Hello hello, thank you!

I talked about cat door here.

WIP 39 — stupid smut.

I started this one to fight a writer's block, but quickly abandoned it because the writer's block did end, and I could pick up my real WIPs again.

Basically, I found this list of smut dialogue prompts, and my goal was to write a fic where I used ALL of them.

In it, Baz would be a really sexy singer/guitarist in a punk rock band, and Simon a hardcore fan. They hook up. Then, who knows.

I started it like this:

“I’m not wearing any underwear. I thought you might want to know.”

He groans against my neck.

Baz is talking. He's wearing really tight leather trousers.

WIP 24 — gelato in rome.

I wanted to write this one for Carry On Countdown, too. I think the prompt was Holiday. It was also my way to take part in a Draw This In Your Style @letraspal started, where Simon and Baz are eating ice cream. I wanted to... write it in my style.

I actually wrote and finished the first scene of this, but when I got to the second scene (where the gelato eating in Rome happens) I was feeling antsy about the whole fic, I hated it and I would've hated to write more.

It would be easy enough to continue and finish, I guess. But then I had another idea: since technically they're on honeymoon in this fic, I wanted to make it longer and make them visit all my favourite places in Italy. So I didn't try to finish, because I want to write more. But at the same time, I guess I could publish it as a series of drabbles, or as a chaptered work, as I write it. We'll see.

A snippet:

“Why is this city built on fucking hills?”

I stop walking and turn back to see Simon doubled over, his hands clasping his bent knees as he pants as if I’ve made him run a marathon and not walk two hundred meters uphill.

“Come on, you big baby.” I reach him and press my knuckles between his shoulder blades. He moans softly, and it takes all the self-restraint I’ve barely managed to build after ten years of being with Simon not to set my eight-page itinerary on fire and drag him back to our hotel room. (Which is on another hill, much to Simon’s dismay.) “We’re almost there.”

(Now that I've reread it, I can say that it very much does not suck. Maybe I'll put this one back on my current WIP list and finish it. I can always add more as a second chapter/another work in a series.)

[artist-tae]

fate (jungkook x fem!reader)

Summary: You and your tattoo ex Jeon Jungkook have been broken up for the past 2 years. But what happens he enters your life again when you just have gotten over him?

Pairing: jungkook x reader, reader x jimin

Genre: angsty af, tattoo artist Jungkook, eventual smut (?), break up!au

Words: 3.4k

Chapter 4/6 (1) (2) (3) (5)

WARNING: This chapter does mention sexual harassment. If this affects you, I advise you please not to read. Viewer’s discretion is advised.

The next morning, you lay in bed as the sunlight dripped into your room. Your head was pounding from last night, and you felt a heavy weight in the pit of your stomach. Why did Jungkook still have so much influence over you? You groaned on the pillow, covering yourself in the blankets. 

A knock on the door filled the room. You heard the door creak open to see Jimin holding a plate of pancakes. He gave you a sympathetic look as you were buried in your little cocoon.

"Are you planning to get up today?" He laughed at you, placing the plate on the edge of the bed. 

You shook your head, the smell of the pancakes hit your nose and suddenly your stomach was rumbling with hunger. You sat up in bed and reached over for the pancakes. You gave Jimin a thank you as he plopped himself beside you on the bed. You took a bite out of your pancake, fluffy as always. Not as tasty as Jungkook’s a voice shot from your thoughts. You immediately felt guilt rush through your body. Jimin had been nothing but good to you. 

"Do you want to talk about last night?" Jimin said calmly, bringing up the elephant in the room. 

You broke eye-contact with him as visions of last night flashed before you. Jungkook kissing you and Jimin confessing to you. It all seemed too much for you to handle. 

"I don’t think it would help me if I’m honest," you replied. 

Jimin nodded with understanding. You were grateful for him not pushing you. What was there not to like about Jimin? He was a gentleman, had a good job, was funny and patient. Why couldn’t you reciprocate his love for you? 

Jimin dropped his head to rest on your shoulder. A simple gesture that you used to think nothing about, but now your mind was running with thoughts. 

"How did you even meet a guy like him?"

Your eyes widen at his question. You couldn’t even remember the last time you thought about how your relationship with Jungkook started. It just seemed so long ago. 

The noise of your friend’s car honking signalling that they were outside your house. You gave yourself one last look in the mirror while grabbing your school bag. You rushed outside your house to see all your friends in the car. Jumping in, you greeted all of them as you all made your way to school.

You and your friends were all gossiping and texting, catching up with the school drama you all missed. During high school, you were in the popular group of girls. Looks and reputation were most important to you during this time. You were always put together, was in the cheerleading group and studied hard in your classes.

"Hey, _______" your friend piped up, looking away from her phone, "I heard that jock guy you’ve been hanging around with wants to take you to prom!"

Your face immediately turned red at her words. Prom was coming up and you had your eyes on one guy. Yet he still hadn’t worked up the courage to ask you even though you were declining offers from other boys at your school. Your body was filled with a rush of adrenaline. Maybe today was the day he would finally ask you.

When you and your friends pulled up into the school’s car park, you all sat for a bit longer before the bell rang for classes to officially start. Suddenly, you heard the sound of an engine revving behind you. All your friends turned their heads to see a motorbike pulling up in the space beside you. With the driver having a helmet on, you couldn’t see the man's face, but you already knew who it was. 

Your friend scoffed, "Jeon Jungkook", as she watched the man get off his motorbike. 

"I heard he got arrested for drugs", another friend piped up, "He’s such a freak."

You nodded in agreement. "He's in my chemistry class," you said.

While you and he did not sit together in chemistry class, it didn’t stop you two both sharing glances at each other. You both were in opposite worlds. He was covered in tattoos and you worried about your hair and grades.  You never actually had a conversation with him. Besides, the occasionally sorry if you bumped into him or if you had to pair up with him for an experiment. He seemed quiet and reserved and didn’t want anything to do with the other students. His mysteriousness fascinated you, but you knew your friends would make fun of you if you ever confessed it to them. 

You sat in chemistry class bored. Your friend was not in class today, so you were sitting by yourself staring into space while the teacher talked away. Your mind went to the idea of your crush asking you to prom. The butterflies in your stomach fluttered away at the idea. You knew you were seeing him at lunch, so you were quite nervous as time passed.

"________ and Jungkook, you two can pair up as both your partners are absent today."

 You were pulled away from your thoughts by your teacher’s words. Hearing the sound of a chair moving and footsteps coming up behind you. You looked up to see Jungkook staring down at you. His face was expressionless as he sat down in the chair beside you. You gave a quick glance across his neck tattoos and silver rings on his long fingers.

As the teacher passed out the experiment sheet, you had the urge to actually have a conversation with him. You thought it was very irritating that Jungkook seemed to think he was above the rest of the students at school. Before you knew it, you turned your entire body to face him. 

"Hey"

Why are you talking to him? Nobody ever talks to him. Especially not the popular goody two shoes. 

"Hi", he responded dryly, raising his eyebrow at you. 

So enthusiastic you thought to yourself sarcastically.  He obviously had no intention of talking to you. 

"So, what part of the experiment do you want to do?" You suggested to him. 

Jungkook glanced down at the paper and shrugged. 

"It’s up to you."

You give him a glare and told him which parts of the experiments you two were doing. As you were preparing the chemical liquid, you made another attempt at making chat. 

"Are you going to the prom next month?"

"I don’t know, are you planning on asking me?" he shoot back at you. 

Your jaw almost dropped at his sly words. You looked away from his face and back to the experiment, reading the instructions so he couldn’t see the red in your face.

"You wish. Are you too cool to go to your school’s prom? " You sneered back at him.

Jungkook’s eyes turned to yours as his posture straightened up.

"Maybe I am too cool," he replied, "Or that prom is only fun for the popular group and everyone else just sits and watches, bored out of their mind."

"That isn’t true. What would you know about school? You hardly ever show up and when you do you never talk to anyone. "

"Well, I’m sorry I’m not in the popular group where the only thing I do is gossip and worry about my looks." Jungkook spat back at you.

You were frustrated that your attempt at a talk had now turned into an argument.

"You’re such a jerk Jungkook. I just wanted to have a conversation while we did this boring experiment. " You scoffed at him. You rested your chin on your palm, trying to breathe at a normal rate.

"It was a nice try, princess. But you and I are not the same and have nothing in common. Let us do this experiment and leave class so we never have to speak again. " He explained.

His word dug a sharp pain in your heart. He had no interest in talking to you at all. It was the first time you felt a sense of embarrassment for even trying. Why did he have to be so honest and blunt with you? You decided to take his words and you both carried on with the experiment in silence.

Near the end of class, you both finished up with the experiment and were now taking notes on it. You bit your lip and sneaked a glance over at Jungkook. He had finished writing the notes and was now staring at you.

"Why do you never talk to anyone?" You mumbled.

Jungkook gave you another look. He thought the conversation was over. His eyes darted around your perfect face and saw that his words hit you. He didn’t expect you to have such a strong reaction, he didn’t think you cared about what he thought.

"I would just rather be alone," he answered.

"But don’t you ever get lonely?"

Yes.

"No. Not at all. " He said blankly.

You opened your mouth to speak but the bell rang indicating it was lunch time. Your mind immediately turned to your crush. You shot up off your chair and quickly threw your stuff in your bag. You gave Jungkook one last look and said goodbye, quickly hurrying out of the class.

Jungkook rolled his eyes at how fast your emotions changed. He thought about how you genuinely wanted to talk to him and get to know him. He did not know why he was so defensive, maybe because no one had ever made an effort to talk to him. He threw his bag around his shoulder, ready to leave when he spotted something on the ground. His gaze landed on a pair of house keys. Assuming it must have been yours due to how quickly you left the room; it must have dropped out of your bag. He reached down and picked the metal key up, slipping it into his pockets. He better return it to you before lunch is finished.

Meet me behind the school building.

You reread the text over and over again. You felt like you couldn’t breathe because of how excited you were. You quickly pulled out your pocket mirror and checked your makeup and hair. He was finally going to ask you to prom after dropping so many hints to him. You rushed to the back of the school building. It was always deserted and hidden, so it would just be you and him there.

You turned the corner and saw him standing there. You thought your heart was going to burst from joy. You walked over to him, fiddling with your fingers in nervousness.

"________!" The tall jock yelled at you as he saw you coming.

A wide grin spread across your face hearing him say your name. You gave a greeting to him and stood in front of him. He asked you how chemistry was, and you just said it was boring as usual. You wanted him to pop the question to you.

"So we have been talking for a while now," he began.

Your back immediately straightened up at his words. You buzzed with excitement. You nodded at his words.

"And I feel like we have been giving each other signals recently."

You nodded again in agreement. The tension was now building up in your stomach.

"So that's why I wanted to ask you…"

"Yes?" You spoke a little too quickly.

"Would you want to hook up with me after school in my car?"

Your face and heart immediately dropped.

"What?" was all you could say.

"Come on baby, I know you have been begging for it."

Your heart was shattering, and you couldn’t help but cringe at yourself. You turned your feet and walked away. You were so upset you couldn’t say anything to him.

“Where are you going?” He said catching up to you.

“Leave me alone now” You spat at him.

Suddenly, a hand grabbed your arm, pushing you into a wall. You flinched at the pain of the rough brick wall hitting your back and the man’s huge body pressing up against you.

"Stop playing so hard to get _______." The boy whispered into your ear. "I promise I’ll make you feel so good."

His hands moved to your hips to hold you in place. All you could do was shake your head.

"No. Please. No "

As you felt his hand move under your shirt, the weight of his body was suddenly gone. Jungkook was throwing blunt punches at the boy's face before you could even comprehend what was going on. You stood in shock for a moment, watching blood come out of the man’s nose as Jungkook kept beating him with all his strength.

"I swear on my life, if you touch her again you are dead!" Jungkook bellowed in the man’s face.

Before Jungkook could land another punch on the man, you quickly grabbed his shoulders and pulled him away.

"Leave him Jungkook, it is not worth it." You exclaimed at him.

Jungkook's gaze landed on yours, his chest was still heaving up and down in rage. He suddenly grabbed your hand and took you towards his motorcycle. He passed you the helmet and lifted you onto the seat. He still hadn’t spoken a word to you. He climbed on after you and started up the engine.  Your natural instinct was to wrap your hands around his waist as the bike started to move.

Jungkook drove out of the school. He kept driving straight until he came to a stop next to a fast-food restaurant's parking lot. As soon as he parked the motorbike, you took off your helmet and he climbed off the motorbike.

Before you could even say anything to him, Jungkook grabbed both your shoulders and stared into your eyes.

"Are you okay _____?" He asked, finally saying something.

"Jungkook I-"

"Are you okay?" he repeated more sternly.

"Yes." You nodded, answering him.

"Did he touch you?" he continued to ask. His face was covered in concern for you.

"No, he didn’t." You spoke.

You saw Jungkook breathe a sigh of relief. Who knows what Jungkook would have done to the guy if he actually had touched you. Jungkook let go of your shoulders and leaned on his bike. He stared down at the ground, his hair covering his face.

"I’m sorry that happened to you."

You gave a weak smile at his sincere words.

"And I am sorry I was such a dick to you this morning. I don’t know why I was. I was just so confused. " He explained.

Seeing this new side of Jungkook was unexpected to you. You didn’t know he could be so gentle and worried.

"It’s okay," you assured him.

"Do you mind if we start over again? Please? " Jungkook questioned, facing you.

"Sure thing, Jungkook" you said, giving a small laugh.

You both sat in silence for a while, staring into nothingness. Then a thought popped into your head.

"Why were you even going behind the school building in the first place?" You asked.

Jungkook’s smile appeared as he dug a hand into his pockets.

"I believe you dropped your keys," he said as he held up your house keys.

You both laughed as you shook your head with embarrassment.

"Then I guess I better owe you something." You said to him.

Your eyes landed on the fast-food place beside you.

"I’ll treat us to lunch!" You responded by tilting your head towards the burger joint.

You and Jungkook sat in the restaurant booth and talked until late in the day. Never before had you felt such a strong connection with someone as you did with Jungkook. You got to learn everything about him. His tattoos, his parents, his ambitions, and his opinions. You told him everything about yourself and your family, your college plans, and your future goals. He was paying close attention to you as you spoke. He admired the way your eyes sparkled, and your hands moved as you rambled on about school or your hobbies. Jungkook could sit and listen to you talk all day and never get sick of it.

When the fast-food restaurant finally closed for the night, Jungkook offered to drive you home, which you gladly accepted. You noticed the soft wind on your face and your hands around Jungkook as he and you drove home. It was comforting to be able to simply hold him. Jungkook wished the night could go on forever.

His bike pulled up beside your house, signalling the end of his journey. The only thing that made things visible to you were the streetlights. Jungkook helped you in getting off the bike by holding your hand. Your heart thumped a little faster than usual as a result of the gesture. You both stood silently facing each other. You were both adjusting to the fact that the night had come to an end. “Well, thanks for driving me home.” You said gratefully.

"No worries" Jungkook responded, tracing his tattoo on his arm.

"Are you going to be okay?" He asked.

You nodded, "I’ll be fine. Don’t worry. "

Jungkook smiled with understanding.

"I guess I will see you tomorrow in chemistry." He spoke up.

He knew that this night would never happen again. Things will return to normal, and you will never speak to him again. He said so himself, you two were two very different people. You were thinking about it too.

"Okay, see you tomorrow." You uttered to him.

Jungkook climbed back on to the bike as you turned to walk away. However, you could only take one step forward as your body froze into place. You couldn’t just leave Jungkook without saying something to him, but what?

Suddenly, you spun around and marched back up to face Jungkook. Before he could open his mouth, you cupped his jaw with your hands and placed a soft kiss on his lips. It lasted for a second before you pulled away. Jungkook stood with his eyes wide and expressionless. You blushed in embarrassment and turned away again. Not until his hands grabbed your hips and made you face him.

"No, you don’t" he whispered before pressing his lips back onto yours. It was pure ecstasy, and your heart was pounding with happiness as he pulled you into him.

All of your high school days were spent with him after that. When your friend group began to disapprove of Jungkook, you gradually distanced yourself from them. You and he spent the majority of your time together studying, eating, and sleeping. Jungkook enjoyed taking you out to eat or surprising you with a trip to the amusement park on special occasions. Jungkook finally confessed his feelings for you and officially asked you to be his after your second date. He was so ecstatic that you had accepted that he spun you around in his arms, nearly making you dizzy.

Jungkook asked you to prom later in the year. Even if he didn't like the idea, he understood how much it meant to you. He was also fascinated by the prospect of seeing you in a breathtaking dress. He even dressed up and put on a black suit and tie. He was a gentleman, bringing you flowers and reminding you throughout the night how beautiful you were. It was during the slow dance that he finally told you he loved you. He was madly in love with you. There was no one else who was more suited to him. That night, you gave him your virginity, and he swore he'd never leave you.

The love you two shared was indescribable. Jungkook was yours, and you would be his for  forever.

Jungkook sat in bed, reminiscing about you and him. He let you go despite the fact that you were his soulmate. As he remembered how you looked at Jimin, a small tear rolled down his cheek. He was all too familiar with the expression on your face.

He knew you would be happier without him. It was a thought that crushed him.

Perhaps it was time to let you go.

(Next Chapter) 

[deathvsthemaiden]

Do you have any advice for ppl who’ve been in a reading slump since... 5 ever ? i love reading somehow it’s just harder to get into it these days :(

Omg for sure!! Here is a scrambled little list, I hope at least some of it helps:

📖 read in any format (ebook, physical book, audiobook) bc they’re all valid and make reading more accessible for people which is I think part of why ppl get hoity toity abt it. Ignore them. Also, I assume that if you wanna read, at least a large chunk of why is because you wanna have fun and consume stories yes? 😳 you can do that w/ any form of book, and any other reasons you might have to want to read, like expanding vocab or broadening ur horizons or learning to analyze books should be secondary. Focus on making it a fun and near-effortless/painless thing again and then u can graduate to those (I think that’ll come naturally tbh as long as you read semi-consistently) Fun comes First and I say that as a terrible English major 😗

📖 And with that in mind, read whatever you want, even if it’s simple or cringe or a reread or whatever because after completing the first few impulsive reads that you find engaging enough to finish completely, you can worry about reading what you think you “should” or what would benefit you specifically if that makes sense. Like I’m completely pro reading new things and not limiting urself to 1 genre but there’s no harm in taking your time moving onto things that don’t immediately pique ur interest. Get into the groove of things first, the criticism of ppl who are well past the target age market for YA but still exclusively consume it doesn’t apply to people who are trying to rediscover their love of reading imo.

📖 keep books nearby all the time! (All!!! The time!!!!) You might not actually read them 45/50 times that you bring them with you to places/keep them near you wherever u spend time at your house, but those 5 times will be bliss and you’ll thank yourself! Do it! Especially if ur open to ebooks and can read them on ur phone!

📖 put your phone somewhere far away on mute and force yourself to read for a specific chunk of pages or time. Very old person-ish advice but like. They’re onto smth when they tell us to do stuff like that, but they’re also way too smug and holier-than-thou about it so no need to tell any of them that! 🤫 but seriously be honest w/ urself if u have a compulsive notification checking problem and challenge yourself to overcome it long enough to meet a very small teensy tiny goal 🥅

📖 I juggle a lot of books at once and I’m constantly planning ahead in my brain when I do it, without consciously meaning to (library deadlines for digitized books are so strict 💔) And often I don’t end up following these plans perfectly, because following them perfectly isn’t the point, especially since life happens all the time and isn’t often very receptive when we wish we could forget everything and read for several straight hours. Reading shouldn’t be a burden, but the vague guidelines help. I think stuff like “tomorrow I’ll finish this poetry collection before bed” or “I’m gonna study and then read 2 chapters of this novel I’m rlly digging as a treat before continuing,” “I’m gonna listen to 4 chapters of this audiobook while I take a walk or do chores” etc etc. and usually I end up reading at least a little! And the best thing is when I read more than intended because the book is just that fun. I don’t write these plans down, but if it helps you to do so I urge you to anon :0 !! Just remember ur writing them on paper/a screen and not in stone, so you can always be flexible and change things around and you’re not by any means a failure for doing so. To be flexible w/ urself is most likely to ensure long term progress imo!

📖 speaking of juggling it’s absolutely fine to cycle through a ton of books and sometimes abandon them for months and come back when the whim strikes! If your memory is good enough and you prefer having a bunch of variety at all times, jump from book to book with reckless abandon! It legit doesn’t matter. Also don’t ever hesitate to drop a book if you’re not vibing it’s not worth it. Time is precious life is precious you’re doing this for fun, yes? Drop the book if you can’t bring yourself to care theres sooooo many more where it came from! Be merciless and picky!! It will pay off I promise, and to be that way is not antithetical to challenging yourself or stepping outside of your comfort zone unless you make it that way.

📖 buddy read/have an impromptu book club w/ someone. It doesn’t have to be official, and I’ve done this multiple times with people and sometimes we just don’t finish the book/meet our set goals and that’s a-okay! It’s still worth it to have someone to talk abt the book w/ and you guys can always pick up where you left off or try another book. Literally no stakes at all as long as everyone involved is chill and understanding <3

📖 set a reading goal you think you can manage by the end of the year! You might surprise yourself 😳 and if you don’t oh well! You’ll still have read at least a page in pursuit of said goal 🔎

📖 read short stories! The internet is full of them, and short story collections by multiple and singular authors are everywhere 📚

📖 do some searching and make a list of books that you’re extremely excited to read or really wanna revisit. And then pick your next reads from there! If you want recs for books or short stories you can always shoot me another ask or look at my goodreads (or goodreads in general)