#wrapped writing game

[4thbrighteststar]

a poem written on a bathroom wall

They sit in silence, drinking the view in, drinking each other in. It's insane, Luke thinks sometimes, how it's been thirteen years and he's never once gotten tired of this. Of them. “Thanks,” he whispers, trying not to break the moment. He doesn't specify any further - knows he doesn't need to. a place for all my 5sos prompt fills and drabbles - continually updated!

pairings: ot4, cake, malum (also continually updated)

rating: t (for swearing)

on ao3.

[team-118]

23, 27 & 91 for the spotify wrapped ask! <3

hiiii marthe!! I have 91 - you don't go to parties, 5sos - for you rn let's see when the others float in.

on ao3.

Buck was going to look under the couch, but then he got stuck on it. It’s so late and Eddie’s couch is so comfy, even if it feels a little out of place in Buck’s loft. He’s used to rolling over to be faced with the Diazs’ doorway, not his own window. It’s just strange. The whole thing is strange.

And his mouth tastes really, really bad.

Buck blinks sleep out of his eyes, rubbing his face in an attempt to wake himself up. As awareness fades in, so too do the voices in his living room. He stands up, wobbly, and makes his way back to the 118.

“Oh, there he is,” Chimney hollers. “Man of the hour!”

Buck crashes into him, wrapping him up in his arms. “What’d I do?”

“It’s the fruit tarts you baked,” Maddie tries to whisper conspiratorially. She misses the mark by multiple decibels. “He’s eaten half the tray.”

Buck smiles down at him. “Happy new year, Chim.”

When Chimney grins back, he’s got blueberries in his teeth. Buck doesn't tell him.

“You are all so, so loud,” Hen scolds. She’s halfway down the stairs, having just finished checking on the kids. It’s unfair how put together she is, even when she’s drunk.

“Hen, come on,” Bobby laughs. “It’s like five in the morning, they’ve been knocked out for hours.”

“No thanks to all of you,” Karen snickers.

Buck feels like a fly on the wall, watching his family giggle and bicker into the early hours of the morning. He turns to Eddie, already smiling at the fond expression he knows he���ll find on Eddie’s face.

And then it all comes flooding back.

Eddie isn’t here. Eddie hasn’t been here for weeks. Eddie’s in El Paso, and Buck’s in LA, and Buck had gotten so incredibly drunk in an attempt to forget about the twelve hours between them.

He went to look for Eddie on the couch, before he fell asleep there. If he closed his eyes on that couch, it still kind of felt like Eddie would be there when he opened them.

Buck wonders what Eddie is doing, right now. Five AM in LA is just six in El Paso, which means Eddie’s probably about to wake up, and maybe he’ll have baked muffins from the list of recipes Buck had sent over and it’ll make Chris smile on their way to school. Maybe Eddie will kiss Chris on the forehead before driving to work, and he’ll bring the rest of the muffins for his new coworkers and they’ll all compliment his cooking, but they won’t know that the recipe is actually his- his Buck’s.

Suddenly, he feels vaguely sick.

“I’m just gonna - um,” Buck manages, before bursting onto the balcony. He gasps for breath. LA is waking up underneath him. It’s not fair. That should be Eddie.

“You all good?” Karen’s voice is in his ear.

Buck jumps. “Yeah, I just, y’know,” he gulps. “Needed some air.”

“Hm,” Karen ponders, in that all-knowing way of hers that’s a little scarier when Buck’s inhibitions are lowered. He feels transparent. “What are you thinking about?”

He huffs, cool air making clouds of condensation in front of him. “Family, I guess. Last year, everything we’ve been through.”

“It’s been a tough one,” Karen sympathizes.

“Yeah, but at least we’ve got each other, right?” Buck sighs, and he can only make himself half-believe the platitude. “At least we’re all here together.” He doesn’t meet Karen’s gaze.

She’s silent for a long, long time. The sun won’t be up for another two hours. He looks out at the apartments surrounding him, lights flickering on, and he misses Eddie and Chris so devastatingly that it knocks the wind out of his lungs.

“Buck,” Karen says finally, hushed. “Who are you looking for?”

He swallows. “I don’t know,” he lies.

[vaguely-concerned]

on the one hand I think inner demons could stand to have a bit more romanced rook specific content, but on the other hand the underlying in-built implication that 'yours is the one true voice of comfort and safety in my inner world' is a sentiment and intimacy so way beyond the romantic or the platonic or any secret third thing you could care to name that it makes me lose my entire poor little mind a bit. it's so big and fundamental — near-existential — that in that exact moment at least the distinctions kind of seem irrelevant.

all the people lucanis' mind conjures up along the way are relationships he has that are unavoidably mixed and fraught in some ways even when they're also full of love (they are fraught BECAUSE they're full of love) — the good in them inseparable from things that hurt him at the same time. (it's about: the basic disorganized attachment patterns this poor guy is dragging around with him. careful with those, they're dellamorte heirlooms. what you love also inevitably hurts you and you won't be allowed to have one without the other, you have to surrender parts of your soul to hold on to what little you have left: this is the story up until now.) and the idea that rook isn't that to him — that beneath the fear of wanting them when romanced (which is more its own separate thing because within this psychology, actively wanting something and not just clinging on for dear life to even a meager status quo lest you lose it is in itself dangerous bordering on catastrophic), this is a relationship where there isn't resentment, or guilt, or shame, or dread, or rage, or self-hate, or any of the other emotions that keep him paralyzed, unable to move this way or that. no debts, nothing owed of yourself and your soul's substance except what you can freely and safely and happily give. love and freedom don't coexist — but, I mean, you're almost starting to make me think........... unless...👀👀👀. the unconditional and undramatic 'you are here and I am here with you, you can be exactly how you are right now with me and it's safe for us both even though you're afraid it won't be, I'm not going anywhere' acceptance rook shows him here that he returns to them in the big romance scene, when it's rook who needs it. the way he's just. standing there in the center of it all, like a child desperately helplessly waiting to be found, hiding in the place he hopes you'll know to look first. (rook does know. it's one of the first things they say in there.)

in short the most important room in his little mind palace for the romance is the very first room — the one where rook isn't. where, in fact, rook cannot be, because they disprove the entire structure of the place with their existence and presence in his life. with everyone else he's putting words in their mouths about what they think of him, and rook is the one who actually gets to come in to speak their own words to him — and have him listen. ('he'll listen to you, he always listens to you', 'your voice is a comfort'.) of course rook isn't present anywhere else in there — at the risk of stating the obvious to a tedious degree, they aren't one of the locks, they're bringing the key. in the very finest 'the messenger and the message' sort of way.

[annasofthe11thdimension]

Pictured: Loop being extremely normal as they lay in their shallow (homemade) grave as they meditate on existence and also if they have annoyed the Researcher enough THIS time for her to murder them and bury them alive.

(Spoilers - they did not annoy her even CLOSE to that much.)

And there is the required reverse image of Odile arriving - she's had a LONG day (i.e. previous loop), and due to this it will take ten minutes before she even acknowledges the shallow grave Loop is laying in, as she was distracted complaining about what Siffrin just did to annoy her.

----

I'd say there's context for all of that, because like...there IS context? Here's the link to the series of fics that HAS that context even! But also...even with context...can't say that it's going to make any of this less weird.

Mostly Odile is looping because due to Loop's wish the universe got rewritten to make Siffrin's repression and emotional issues (the ones bad enough to get him stuck in a time loop in the game) 'someone else's' problem...or at least that's Loop's best theory atm!

Regardless, context or not, I'm quite happy with how the pics came out, and figured I might as well post them here too.

[ruby-static]

Dude caught me taking a screenshot, I'm cooked-

[gamerbot-22]

Touchstarved LIs and Cuddling

Two posts in two days? On my account? Someone pinch me!

Also half-spawned from @asexual-abomination, because we’ve had this conversation a thousand times.

TW/CWs: Potential Accidental Canon Divergence (this will probs be a warning on ALL my TS stuff until the game’s released), mentions of sleeping together but it’s purely literal and genuinely not a euphemism for sex, hand-waving the touch curse a bit, Ais is an asshole about personal boundaries, Mhin is meant to be read as combatively shy but willing, partially proofread.

Can be read as platonic or romantic! Same as before! Also I’m gonna be making a lot of references to the “No one asked but I found Mortal Kombat’s best cuddler” video by Brian David Gilbert for Polygon because it’s a good vid and you should watch it if you haven’t already!)

(One day I’ll make a custom sparkle banner for the cut, mark my words! Also rqs are open! Likes and reblogs appreciated!)

🕊️ Kuras

Definitely one of the Emotionally Vulnerable & Safe Cuddler types from BDG’s video.

I don’t think. Kuras needs to sleep? At least I don’t remember there being anything in canon to suggest that. But! I think he enjoys the occasional catnap, and can be persuaded to actually sleep with you if you ask him about it.

Like you hit him with the “isn’t a good night’s sleep supposed to be good for you?” and “shouldn’t you be a good example for your patients?” and he gives you a good-natured—if slightly stiff—chuckle as he guides you over to the cot in his office.

The cot’s kinda narrow since it’s only build for the one patient to sit/lay on it, so by default a lot of spooning/honeymoon hugging(? Spooning when you’re facing each other) is happening.

There’s not really a blanket situation happening, but he’s really warm and his hands are eternally soft so it’s just super pleasant.

And after a while he starts to get his wings involved, too. At first it’s only when you’re asleep, but later on, after you learn about his status as a fallen angel, he’s more open about it, even if he gets all shy when you ask.

And there’s something just so peaceful about how he holds you. His hands never wander, and he keeps his voice soft. The first couple times he asks to pet your hair or touch your face, and soon enough it just becomes a rhythm for the two of you. <3

🪄 Leander

This man wants to hold you SO BAD.

Literally will get on his hands and knees if you ask him to. Touchstarved isn’t just the name of the game, babes!

Brags so much about his big bed at the Wet Wick but the man is so clingy you two end up using like. 20% of it.

He’s tryna be all suave, inviting you to come over and lay your head on his chest but on the inside he is screaming.

For the first dozen times he just stays up, watching you snooze or daydream against his chest. Then after a while he starts to doze off before you do.

Definitely the type to tell you bedtime stories. Most of them are just recounting things that have already happened to/around him, but occasionally he does a little embellishing or a bit of improv for flavor.

He’s doing it to keep things interesting and maybe make himself look cooler to you? But he’s keeping it as low energy as possible so you don’t lose any sleep.

🦊 Vere

If Kuras is in the Emotionally Vulnerable and Safe Cuddler corner, Vere is on the fucking polar opposite side.

Definitely makes a big show of it the first time you ask, joking about his rates and the rules (“no kissing and hands off the tail!” shit like that.)

Also gives zero fucks about your comfort. He’s like a tiny dog taking his half of the bed out of the middle and you’re just gonna have to cope for a while.

Buuuuuut… if you talk nice, let him come to you, and show him you just want proximity and nothing else… maybe he’ll warm up.

And the jokes die down, and he gives you room to settle, and eventually he’s curling up right next to you and draping his tail over your legs.

Congrats! The cute fox boy is sharing a bed with you! Beware his flicking ears and squeak-snoring.

The whole process takes a good while, but I think it’s worth it <3

⛩️ Ais

Definitely kinda coy about sharing a sleeping place at first. It’s not Vere levels of mockery—mostly cause he doesn’t mean it the way Vere does—but Ais has a really annoying habit of getting under your skin.

But yeah, after some “arm-twisting,” he’ll let you lay down and get cozy.

He goes right to sleep more often than not, though, even if that’s not what the cuddling is for. Dude just closes his eyes and drops into dreamland like it’s nothing.

He says he’s just resting his eyes but that’s only the case maybe a third of the time.

I think he probably shares his sleeping space with Soulless, which usually means he’s all cramped up, but now that he’s only sharing the bed with one other body he takes the chance to sprawl.

You will end up flat on your back/face with Ais on top of you, it’s just a matter of when it happens.

He’s an asshole about it, too. He makes this big show of how cozy he is and how it’s been supposedly “forever” since he’s got to curl up like this, but if he gets the feeling you’re being serious he’ll get off.

🪡 Mhin

Inside of Mhin are two sleeping wolves.

One of them wants cuddles really bad but is abysmal at asking for them.

The other sleeps flat on their back like a corpse and startles awake at the slightest sound.

If you’re cuddling to pass the time instead of going to sleep Mhin gets all defensive either way. “Sounds like a waste of time when I could either just sleep or do something else” type shit.

You kinda gotta wrastle them into it, especially if they’ve been staying up for prolonged periods. “Rest isn’t sleep but it’s better than nothing.”

They’re not in the habit of initiating any of the cuddling (again, that wolf would sooner die than ask,) but if you “insist” (ask politely) they’ll let you take a crack at it, “if only to get some peace and quiet.”

If they doze off, like I said, they’ll startle awake at any sound so you’re probably not going to get a lot of sleep by proxy. But! You get to hold them and explain away all the noises, which is fun <3

[marlynnofmany]

Other Uses for Packaging

I waved goodbye to the customers — other humans this time — then sat back and waited for the trash pickup. I didn’t blame them for not wanting to take all the packing material out into the spaceport. They hadn’t brought a hovercart or forklift, and had been unprepared for the huge crate full of bubble wrap and foam.

Other times, our little courier ship had done deliveries where time was short or regulations were tight, and all we would have been able to do was advise them on where to rent a hovercart or buy a crowbar. Luckily for these customers’ convenience and my conscience, today we could stick around and help them unpack the custom end table or whatever that was.

They’d left happy, with something much easier to carry, and Captain Sunlight had headed for the cockpit to call in the station’s trash crew. (Apparently this was a regular feature at this space dock, which was a nice change from the last few where we’d had to move the ship’s garbage over to the trash area under our own power.)

Zhee looked over the crate that he’d just taken great joy in disassembling. “Wood may be valuable here,” he said with a thoughtful click of a pincher arm. “If not to the station at large, then surely to another ship. I wonder if the captain thought of that.”

I glanced back at the open cargo bay. “Probably?”

“Probably,” Zhee agreed.

We were both silent for a moment while the spaceport bustled around us.

“I’m going to check,” he said, tapping his way up the ramp on his many bug feet. “Make sure none of that blows away.”

“Sure thing.” I looked at the piles. The only breeze in here was the faint wafting of ventilation systems and the occasional gentle landing of other ships at a safe distance, but I understood the impulse to be careful. That one package awhile ago, full of styrofoam beads, had been memorable. And terrible. The darn stuff was almost as bad as glitter, what with the way it stuck to things with static electricity. Nobody wanted a repeat of that.

This set of packaging was much better. The boards made a tidy stack, the foam was in rubbery sheets that didn’t leak bits everywhere, and even the bubble wrap was in long rows instead of individual panels. This was no top-of-the-line cryo suspension or force field generator, but it was respectable.

I organized the mess a bit while I waited. The rest of the crew either had stuff to do on the ship or out in the station, so despite all the ambient noise, things were quiet.

I started rolling up the bubble wrap, thinking someone might want to use it again, but found that many of the bubbles had gotten popped in the disassembly, leaving it only good for one thing.

The first bubble popped with a satisfying snap. By the third I’d pinpointed which direction the sounds were echoing from most, and I enjoyed the different noises I could get by tilting my head. None of the pedestrians were close enough to pay much attention, so I happily worked my way down the roll. I’d seen multiple other types of bubble wrap, some made by different cultures and different materials, and most of them didn’t actually pop. What a simple joy to find the regular old Earth kind again.

Mur’s voice from the cargo bay asked, “What’s making that sound?”

I sighed and turned. “Don’t tell me, this is another swear word in your language.”

Mur waved a tentacle. “No, of course not. I just wanted to know what’s breaking out here. It sounded like a problem.”

Before I could answer, Paint appeared behind him in a rush. “Is there a problem??”

“No,” I hurried to say. “Everything’s fine. It’s just bubble wrap. See?” I held up the section I’d been working on and popped another bubble.

Paint winced. “Is there something wrong with it?”

“No, it’s just garbage.” I rolled up the part I’d already flattened, then twisted it to pop the next row all at once.

“Okay, that almost sounded like a swear word,” Mur admitted.

I had to laugh at that. “Of course it did.”

Blip and Blop hurried out to join the growing crowd in the cargo bay. “What keeps breaking?” Blip asked, frills waving anxiously.

“It’s just bubble wrap!” I exclaimed. “See?” I held it up and popped another one.

Instead of nodding and going back to whatever they’d been doing, my alien coworkers remained perplexed. “Why does it keep popping?” Blop asked. “Are you doing that?”

“Yes!” I exclaimed.

“Why?” asked both Frillians at once. Paint and Mur also looked curious.

“Because it’s fun?” I replied, scrambling for an answer. I hadn’t thought this needed explaining. But apparently it did.

Paint asked, “How is that noise fun?”

“Well, it echoes—”

“You don’t need to worry about condensing materials for the trash pickup, if that’s the concern,” Mur said.

“Yes, I know—”

“Are there food items on your planet that you have to open like this?” Blip asked. “Large fish eggs, maybe?”

“No, ew! It’s just—”

A shadow loomed taller than the Frillian twins. “It is violensssss,” Trrili hissed, making them twitch. (I don’t know how she found a shadow in the cargo bay. Sometimes I think she brings them with her.) “Small-scale, sanctioned violence. These can be destroyed without repurcussionssssss.” She was choosing which words to hiss on, for effect.

“Sure,” I said, spreading my arms and lifting the bubble wrap. “Let’s go with that.”

Trrili wasn’t done. “Each tiny section can be crusssshed individually, with precision, or multiples at once for maximum volume.” She glided forward on quieter feet than Zhee’s, and the others made room for her.

I held out the bubble wrap. “You want a turn?” Her pincher arms didn’t seem suited to it, but I was curious to see where she’d go with this.

“Plasssssse it on the floor.”

“Sure.” I flapped the row out in front of her like a red carpet, and she moved like the predator she was to crush one after the other. With precision. And shiny black bug feet.

It gave me an idea. “Hey, wanna see who’s faster?” I grabbed another section and laid it out to one side. “You’ve got more feet, but my shoes are bigger.”

Trrili spread her mandibles in her favorite creepy smile. “Challenge acssssssepted.” She crouched like a spider and waited for me to be ready.

I glanced back at the others. “Anybody else wanna race?”

Mur spun on his tentacles and scooted back into the ship. “No thanks! I’m going back where it’s quieter.”

“Me too,” Paint said. “But thank you!” She scampered off.

Blip and Blop looked at each other in silence for a moment, fins waving. Then they turned to me. “We’ll judge,” Blip announced.

“All right!” I said. I wrangled my own section of bubble wrap, roughly the same length as Trrili’s, and struck my own ready pose. “Say when!”

The twins chorused, “Start!” and we were off. Pops filled the air along with Trrili’s delighted hisses and my laughter. There were probably people staring, but that didn’t matter.

Maybe I could talk Trrili into a dance-off afterward. On whatever was left when one of us was declared the champion of small-scale, sanctioned violence.

~~~

These are the ongoing backstory adventures of the main character from this book.

Shared early on Patreon! There’s even a free tier to get them on the same day as the rest of the world.

The sequel novel is in progress (and will include characters from these stories. I hadn’t thought all of them up when I wrote the first book, but they’re too much fun to leave out of the second).

[highvern]

HighVern's 2024 Wrapped

Thank you for all the tags to do this!! this was the first year i spent writing fics and i wrote a lot more than i thought/gave myself credit for so its good to look back!

~my fics~

my most popular fic of 2024 - endpoint (3235 notes)

my last fic of 2024 - nights like these (12-24-24)

my longest fic of 2024 - steam (~64k words)

my favorite fic of 2024 - between the titles

~my top muses~

most words: wonwoo (118.8k) most individual fics: mingyu (5 fics) most fics in a collection: hoshi (7 installments of houdini)

my top stats:

words written & posted: ~266k words written in wips started this year: dont even make me look at this (it was like ~30k across multiple WIPs) works posted: 49 fics (41 svt, 4 atz, 4 bts)

my favorite fics i read in 2024

im horrible about reading new fics BUT here is a non-extensive list of my absolute favorites

grease (the tragedy) by @gyuswhore rivers and roads by @miniseokminnies hush by @sailorrhansol merger by @shina913 a word from our sponsors by @ugh-yoongi never shall we die by gyuswhore healing comes in small doses by @tomodachiii ex-conomis by ugh-yoongi building blocks by @the-boy-meets-evil

my goals for 2025

write more bts/ateez. i have a lot of wips for them rotting in the dungeon and i want to break them out (ahem camboy wooyoung and anthropologist namjoon)

grow my baby @camandemstudios (if you haven't checked it out yet pls do, there are so many talented writes involved)

lastly, delve into writing original fiction works instead of fanfic (i won't be leaving, just challenging myself with something new)

tagging: anyone who wants to do this! idk who has done it already bc im a procrastinator to my core.

[avaseofpeonies]

🦁🦁Pride of Lines Writing Share🦁🦁

Rules: post a line you are extra proud of having written. One where you surprised yourself, that had you especially satisfied with your writing skills, or got you all up in your own intended feels.

I wrote this one a few days ago and gave myself a little heart ba-dump 🥰

"Gavrekh looked at Kyrzhan’s smiling lips, then at the apple, his eyes filled with unmistakable desire – whether for the lips or the apple Kyrzhan couldn’t bear to guess."

~~A Drink Before Battle, Extra 1: Ancestor Night

ADBB Intro Post

Show off your proudest moments! Gently tagging all my writers (plus OPEN TAG of course, the more the merrier!)

@floofymeow, @gioiaalbanoart, @the-golden-comet, @bafflinghaze

@ladymoonpearl, @wyked-ao3, @dyoniawrites, @topazadine

@moonsbetween, @oliolioxenfreewrites, @inseasofgreen

@starbuds-and-rosedust, @ryns-ramblings, @agirlandherquill

@steadfastmockingbird, @thesorcerersapprentice, @tragicheirs

@drchenquill, +OPEN TAG

[blorbologist]

Spotify Wrapped Writing Game

Send me a character / pair of characters / AU & a number from 1 to 100 & I'll write a little something inspired by that song!

[4thbrighteststar]

oooo interesting i want a lil drabble for song no 27 pls team? 💛

ADI UR INSTINCTS ARE FUCKING CRAZYYYY #27 on my wrapped is you are in love - taylor swift. buckle in bitches.

prompt me here

_________________________

Honestly, it doesn't really feel like anything else Luke has ever felt in his life. His stomach twists painfully, anxious, and his heartbeat echoes in his ears. His forehead is lined with sweat, and he knows he's not getting any sleep tonight. He tries to shift, get comfortable, but nothing really works.

Well, if he had to compare it to something, it feels like a really bad shit.

But that feels disingenuous, and it hurts his pride a little as a lyricist, and also, he's, well, a little offended on Calum's behalf.

Calum.

Fuck.

Luke breathes out carefully, slowly, trying not to make a sound. Now that he knows, he's almost scared that any sudden movements would scare the thought away, as if anything could change the way this feeling is written into his bones.

Calum. He loves Calum. Well, he knew that. But…

He's. In love with Calum.

Luke tastes the words in his mouth, feeling the shape around his lips, tries to imagine saying it out loud.

“Cal,” he mouths. “Calum.”

Calum, in the hotel bed next to him, says nothing. Thank god.

And, like, it's terrible timing, is the thing. They've just barely started tour; Luke has months upon months of nights like this one to look forward to. Waking up next to Calum, getting breakfast with the rest of the band, wandering whatever city they find themselves in. Stumbling into restaurants, and Calum will still order nuggets and fries in all the respectable establishments like he never grew up past fourteen. Playing their show, audience electric, Calum magnetic, Luke's heart bursting to the melody of Calum’s bassline.

And then there's the issue of Calum himself, the things Luke never let himself notice, until he couldn't stop it anymore. Warm, brown eyes, soft curls, the thing that happens to the corner of his mouth when Luke makes him smile, the sound of his fucking laugh.

Calum, his best friend. Calum who takes him seriously, who has his back, who eggs him on and pushes him harder. “Calum,” he tries again, barely a whisper.

Calum who makes him feel like no one else - well, no fucking shit.

“I'm gonna die,” Luke tells himself, miserable. In the bed next to him, Calum shifts.

“Fuck me,” Luke hisses.

Calum rolls over, rubs his eyes blearily. “Fuck you?”

“No,” Luke sighs. “Don't.”

“Oh, okay,” Calum says, and then his face is in his pillow again.

Luke exhales. He glances at his phone, charging on the table next to him: 3:42 AM. He sighs again. They’re supposed to do the Eiffel Tower tomorrow - Calum had wanted to race him to the top. Which, like, absolutely not, Luke doesn't do cardio in public. Still, Luke wants to catch Calum in that light, Paris under him.

Calum’s head pops up again, gopher-like. Luke imagines playing whack-a-mole and has to swallow a hysterical laugh.

“- time is it?” Calum asks through a yawn. Luke tells him.

“Shit,” Calum says, and fuck, he's beautiful, even like this. How has Luke survived this long? “You okay?”

Luke clears his throat. “Yeah.” Because he is, really - terrified, sure, but okay. He's okay with loving Calum whatever way he can.

“Liar,” Calum says, like it's the easiest thing in the world. He pushes his blankets out of the way, crosses the room to get to Luke, flops down next to him. “You don't have to tell me, but try to get some sleep.”

Luke sighs. “Cal-”

“Shh,” Calum whispers, and then Luke is wrapped up in his arms and pushed into his chest. His legs tangle with Calum’s, curling in on himself to fit in his embrace.

Luke waits to say it until Calum's breathing evens out.

“You're my best friend,” he whispers into the corner of Calum's neck.

“Love you too,” Calum whispers back, immediate, sure, steady.

[dipplinduo]

Happy 1 Year Anniversary to Sweet & Sour Dipplins!!! CHAPTER 24 IS HERE ❤️

Fun fact: did you know the anniversary date of this fic is Christmas Day? :) It's true! And as of today, Sweet & Sour Dipplins is officially a year old. 🥳

This fic initially started as a fun little idea - an enemies to lovers romance retelling of the Indigo Disk DLC with a toxic chain theory twist. It was a fanatical whim based on what is now my favorite pokemon game, and it was a blind attempt at creating something bigger than what I could initially picture. I loved romance and writing, but I was no writer - and certainty no fiction writer at that. I fully expected what I was doing to be a phase, where I quietly threw out a couple of half-baked chapters of into an empty void before it inevitably fizzed out with me moving on.

But then you all came along. The love that I have received and felt has been indescribable. I have been completely and utterly blown away by all of it: the number of readers, the playful and thought-provoking comments, the fun back and forth and theorizing in my ask box, the ART and the suggestions and the headcanons and the feedback?! It kept growing, and growing, and growing. And a year later, even as the fandom is a little quieter, it's all still here. You’re all still here.

My little ideas became a whole "au" (see, I've learned! xD). My “writing activity” that I was too modest to claim as a “hobby” became an identity that you all reinforced. I went on to not only write over a book’s worth for this story, but multiple books’ worth for others. In a very demanding, tumultuous, and tiring year in my personal life. Before writing this current chapter, I actually went back and re-read the entirety that is Sweet & Sour Dipplins. As the writer, there were a lot of ups and downs for me, and I don't speak as much about the downs. I could tell which chapters I wrote with pride and which ones felt rushed. Slowly but surely, I worried more and more about it being "interesting enough" as my audience grew. I worried about my motifs becoming “lost” in the inflation. I asked myself: Does it deserve the hits? Do people still care about this story the more the Earth rotates? And then I wondered: What is the true heart that is Sweet & Sour Dipplins? What actually pulls people to read this story?  What compelled ME to write this story?

And as I experienced it all as a reader myself, I think I began to see its soul in yet another light.

I remembered the visions I had as I was writing. I saw some things I didn’t see before, too, and even had moments where I went “Hey, you know what, I could probably write that even better now”, and it’s all thanks to you all for encouraging me to keep going.

But above all: I got the spark back. And I am excited to keep expanding the heart of this story as I share more of it with you.  

So without further ado, here’s Chapter 24 of Sweet & Sour Dipplins.

Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays!

With love,

dipplinduo

[wetcatspellcaster]

2024 fic wrapped

I was tagged by @cursedhaglette to do this tag-game, but I found the focus on stats made me a little uncomfortable! (also, no one needs to know how many words I wrote while having multiple breakdowns last year, truly).

But, I didn't want to ignore Mia's tag! so instead, I'm going to take @cinnamontails-ff wrapped tag-game, just bc I sympathise with the logic and I like this set of questions a lot more!

Thank you Cin for coming up with questions that don't focus so much on productivity. And thank you again, Mia, for including me in the original game :) hopefully this is an acceptable substitute!

What's been your biggest learning point this past year?

I guess, what it feels like to be a 'popular' author - and the answer is, 'both good and bad, in fact, extremely mixed'. Obviously, many parts of it are wonderful: more people interacted with my work in the height of the BG3 fandom than I've ever had before, I felt like my writing mattered and I enjoyed every conversation I had about it. I also felt under a lot more scrutiny, very hyperaware of how I acted in 'public' (ie. on this blog), and aware of the people I'd disappoint with the directions I took my stories and what I chose to include. I also had to watch the baffling half-life of modern fandom! BG3's 6 month peak and 1yr trough was wild to me, as someone who joined dragon age 8yrs after the game was released. But I've decided I actually really like the middle-road of interaction, with much less noise and dedicated, recurring readers who I recognise and who make me smile and laugh every single time they comment or tag my work. I'll probably never experience whatever the fuck Pieces was ever again, and I'm honestly... ok with that, currently? Not to sound awful, but I'm not sure I liked it lmao.

In terms of my writing, my biggest learning point was "you're good at this, actually". Chanting this to myself in the mirror while I white-knuckle the sink.

How has your writing developed this past year?

I'm genuinely not certain. Pieces was certainly my most ambitious story yet, but a lot of the outlining of that took place in 2023 so it feels like the development happened then... though I suppose landing the dismount was something I worked very hard to do. I guess the main development this year was that a lot of what I wrote was extremely, extremely angsty. I wrote Pieces, I wrote This Is Not A Love Story. and I gave Rosalie to Orin :))))) this doesn't necessarily surprise me, given the way my writing often reflects things I'm dealing with in my life, and I've been trying to both recover from - and desparately stave off a relapse into - depression. I think that I can see why I keep making characters into the worst versions of themselves (this goes for Astarion, Rosalie - bc Pieces Rosalie is NOT in a good place, Gale and my Durge) and then watching them claw their way back to happiness in the hope of proving to myself that that's possible.

But jfc, it all got a little heavy. I've decided that 2025 is the Year of the Rom Com™.

Good writing habits?

Committing myself exclusively to what I want to read and sticking to my guns - which means I actually finish the thing, rather than getting into my own head about it.

Stretching my comfort zone a little (writing something vaguely smutty, writing something very different in style, switching genres for a bit) without losing my own voice.

Not falling into any jealousy/existential crises about my own writing, which I guess is much easier when you're experiencing a bout of 'success', but I've managed to keep it up even after the success began tailing off :)

I wrote a lot of words last year. I'm not putting the stat down but god. It was a lot.

Bad writing habits?

Overwriting everything. Everything. All the time. Party Favours was so short!!! I used to write novellas!!! Why are my chapters so fucking long now?????

Having multiple fic wips when I promised myself I'd wind down fanfic and start writing original work again :')

I wrote a lot of words last year. I think I did this bc I was extremely unhappy, and productivity is how I define myself. when I feel bad, I write and post bc it makes me feel good. And I felt very bad this year. So anyway, I think my wordcount is both a good thing and also a wee cry for help :'))))

Favorite thing you wrote?

Chapter Twenty-Three of Pieces (Mephistopheles consultation and my Ascended!Astarion meta-reveal)

Chapter Four of Cooler Than Me (putting the blorbos in a formal-wear situation)

I also liked my sex scene in Pieces :') it was tame but it was written for me specifically x

Favorite reads?

for fic!

long summer days can lead to lazy vices by @pouroverpaloma

eyes like fire by demonsbanebard

only once by @bearhugsandshrugs

and of course stitched into your sleeve by the bestie (@violacae)!!! my first ever gift fic!!!

for literature!

The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door by HG Parry

Long Live Evil by Sarah Rees Brennan

Deeplight by Frances Hardinge

Biggest win?

god. I'm endlessly grateful for my gift fic and for my fanart, but... it's got to be bookbindings. I used to daydream, about somebody ever wanting to have my fic bound, but I thought it was impossible and would never happen! I now know of 3 copies of my work that exist in the world :D and the ones I've seen were fucking gorgeous, like oh my fucking god.

I am also very proud I finished Pieces! It was my most ambitious project, and writing the ending presented even more challenges than I expected - as I discovered how much you write yourself into a corner when you resoul Astarion. I still haven't managed to read the completed work in full yet, but I'm proud it exists :)

Goals for the new year?

finish outstanding wips, and then see where my writing takes me next. I want to write original work, but I also don't want to make it a resolution. As long as I continue to enjoy writing, that's what matters most to me!

Your favorite words of the year, aka the words you check each chapter for, making sure you didn't repeat them 788 times?

I think I use '[x character] froze' a lot, but rather than focusing on my repetitions I want to focus on some of my favourite turns of phrase that I managed to pull from the ether! :)

'before her brief courtship with death threatened to become a commitment' - from the risk and the reward

'We can all still be butchered. We cut away the parts of ourselves to make us fit' - from this is a love story.

"He played an androgynous, morally-grey vampire, of indeterminate gender! In a nice coat! Anyone who had two working eyes and a relevant Kinsey Score read the porn, back in the day!” - from cooler than me

What are you excited for in the new year?

act 3 astarion characterisation for honest lie! the first big romance moment in cooler than me! and then just romcoms! 2025 is the year of the romcom! I want to write exclusively happy things!!!!

tagging: @cursedhaglette (as it's a different set of questions lmao), @imscissorbladez, @violacae, @eraserspiral, @scaryanneee, @sitting-in-the-sink, @pricemarshfield, @pouroverpaloma and anyone else who wants to give this a whirl. anyone is welcome, and if you tag me in it I'll share x

[just-my-latest-hyperfixation]

Spotify wrapped - fic writer edition

🎵 Send me a number between 1 and 100 and I'll tell you what song of my Spotify wrapped it corresponds to and, if applicable, which of my fics I associate it with. 🎵

[strawberry-jan]

Back in late 2022, I started working on a long story about Ishin: a tale of two dummies whose weird one-night stand blossoms into a surprisingly caring relationship even as a (mostly) canon-compliant series of tragedies plays out around them. It’s a now-complete series in approximately 125,000 words and three parts, and you can read the whole thing right now on AO3: The Glorious and Bloody Deeds of Okita Soji, Volume 1: Okita Soji Versus the Scoundrel Saito Hajime; The Secret History of Saito Hajime, Volume 2: The Shiraume Incident; and, finally, Brief Notes on the Domestic Life of one Saito Hajime.

Taken as a whole, it's a story about identity and history and the stories that people tell each other and themselves about those things. And it's a story about one guy getting way too into weird Edo-era egg dishes, and another guy finding himself embroiled in an extended detective sequence, and a third guy composing a series of corny haiku that (almost) nobody wants to read. And, of course, it's also a story about people who are shamelessly and sometimes explicitly in love (so you probably shouldn't read it at work).

This whole big, sprawling thing has been a labour of love on my part: it turns out that I adore writing historical fiction and finding excuses to read books and journal articles in order to write it better. In addition to making not one but four little illustrations to celebrate the fic's completion (and please look at them up-close; I hand-inked all those kimono patterns), I've drawn up a list of some of the sources that I consulted for my writing, and you can find those under the cut.

This is not an absolutely exhaustive list of sources; I don’t think it’s super useful to catalogue the extremely nitty-gritty stuff, like that time that I felt compelled to find out what the state of strawberry cultivation was in 1860s Japan, or when I needed to picture exactly what it looked like when Haruka was repairing Ryoma’s kimono. That being said, I’ve added a couple of things that are really particular to my stories but that I thought were cool enough to share.

Foster, Michael Dylan. The Book of Yokai: Mysterious Creatures of Japanese Folklore. U of California P, 2015. (This one was a really fun read – it combines a short history of yokai in folklore with a little catalogue of yokai.)

Jansen, Marius B. Sakamoto Ryoma and the Meiji Restoration. Stanford UP, 1971. (Super useful as an introduction to the Bakumatsu era and for biographical details about Ryoma and the figures around him.)

“Japanese Wiki Corpus.” https://www.japanesewiki.com/. (This is a machine-translated collection of articles on the Japanese side of Wikipedia related to Kyoto. As with a lot of things on Wikipedia, the citations on these articles tend to be poor or nonexistent, but it’s a useful starting point for information on figures and events that don’t have an English wiki equivalent. Definitely more useful if you can then head over to the original wiki articles and parse them out yourself.)

“Kabuki21” and “The Noh.” https://www.kabuki21.com/section.php, https://www.the-noh.com/en/plays/index.html. (I’m lumping these two together because I tended to consult them in tandem. Without getting too much into my personal details I am – among other things – a non-practicing theatre scholar, so whenever I wanted to have characters in my old-timey fics refer to something cultural, my first stop was old plays. These sites have, respectively, summaries of kabuki plays and full texts of Noh plays available for you to browse. If you’ve read my other fics you will probably have seen that I referred to the kabuki play “Fuwa” in 亀が如く.)

Katsu, Kokichi. Musui’s Story: The Autobiography of a Tokugawa Samurai. Translated by Teruko Craig. U of Arizona P, 1988. (A book that needs to be taken with a grain of salt because it’s an autobiography written by a guy who sounds like a real blowhard, but it’s still a really fascinating look into the daily life of a low-ranking samurai.)

Leupp, Gary P. and Tao, De-min. The Tokugawa World. Routledge, 2022. (Of particular interest is Kimura Sachihiko’s essay, “The Shinsengumi: Shadows and light in the last days of the Tokugawa shogunate” [1104-1124], which gave me a bunch of incidental details about the Roshigumi that I incorporated into the sections of this series that were told from Inoue and Hijikata’s perspectives.)

“Old Photos of Japan.” https://www.oldphotosjapan.com/. (Pretty self-explanatory. Very useful as a resource for picturing scenes!)

“Shinsengumi Archives.” https://shinsengumi-archives.tumblr.com/. (A long-running tumblr dedicated to cataloguing resources about the Shinsengumi. There’s an absolute wealth of information collected here, and best of all, the creator cites their sources and even provides links to the original texts. Although it’s focused on the Shinsengumi, it’s impossible to overstate how useful this site is for prospective Bakumatsu-era fic writers in general. The collection of Hijikata’s poems with links to others’ translations and commentary is here: https://shinsengumi-archives.tumblr.com/post/683071924948058112/hijikata-toshizos-haiku-poems. The creator of the blog also links to a translation of Nagakura’s and Shimada’s diaries, and while the document is machine-translated, it’s still a great source of historical details: https://shinsengumi-archives.tumblr.com/post/678083336614428672/where-can-you-read-the-memoirs.)

Smits, Gregory. “Warding off Calamity in Japan: A Comparison of the 1855 Catfish Prints and the 1862 Measles Prints.” EASTM 30 (2009): 9-31. (Okay, this one is highly specific to my fic – it comes up in Part 2 when Okita tells his story about Kashima and again a couple of chapters later when his pile of remedies includes a crudely-drawn picture meant to ward off indigestion – but I love little details like this so I did want to make a point of sharing it here.)

“Tamago Hyakuchin” and “Tofu Hyakuchin.” http://codh.rois.ac.jp/edo-cooking/tamago-hyakuchin/recipe/, https://toyama-tofu.jp/tofuhyakutin.html. (These are collections of Edo-era egg- and tofu-based recipes. They’re two of the sources cited in Cookpad’s collection of modernized Edo-era recipes: https://cookpad.com/recipe/list/14604664.)

Vaporis, Constantine N. “Linking the Realm: The Gokaido Highway Network in Early Modern Japan (1603-1868).” Highways, Byways and Road Systems in the Pre-Modern World. Ed. Susan E. Alcock, John Bodel, and Richard J. A. Talbert. Wiley-Blackwell, 2012. 90-105. (Some of the works cited in this article also sound interesting, but I didn’t have a chance to dig any deeper as I just wanted to know a bit about the Tokugawa-era roads. Also interesting in this vein is Jilly Traganou’s book The Tokaido Road: Travelling and Representation in Edo and Meiji Japan [2004].)

Wert, Michael. Meiji Restoration Losers. Harvard UP, 2013. (Not directly useful as a source for writing about Ishin – it’s about later events and it mostly tracks the posthumous construction of one specific Tokugawa magistrate’s history – but it was an engaging read and I found it interesting as an exploration of how people continue to look back on the Bakumatsu era and the Meiji Restoration, which is something that the game is, of course, also doing.)

Yamakawa, Kikue. Women of the Mito Domain: Recollections of Samurai Family Life. Translated by Kate Wildman Nakai. U of Tokyo P, 1992. (Another one of those bits of essential reading on everyday life for low-ranking samurai, this time with a focus on women’s lives and households more generally. I didn’t use a lot of from this book in my fic, but it has everything from translations of songs to records of families’ financial transactions, and it’s fascinating to read about all the turmoil in Mito playing out in the background of these families’ lives.)

“Yokai.com.” https://yokai.com/. (The creators of this site make a point of not going into detail about their sources, and they’re very careful to state that they don’t intend for the project to be “the final authority” on yokai, but I enjoyed browsing the site to get some ideas for Okita’s stories – and once you know the name of a particular yokai that you’re interested in, it’s easy enough to go look up other sources on them.)

[diazsdimples]

AO3 Wrapped

Tagged by @wikiangela @theotherbuckley @bigfootsmom

I was genuinely surprised to see that You’ve got me whipped was apparently my most popular fic?? My first ever (and only) dabble into BDSM! In a drought I’ll give you water is the funniest I have ever been in a fic. Getting Karen to tie up Eddie bc he thought him and Buck were having trouble in bed was one of the more unhinged things I’ve written. Big thank you to every single person who has read, commented or left kudos this year! Your support truly means everything to me!

Tags and blank template under the cut

Tagging @hippolotamus @daffi-990 @spotsandsocks @bidisasterevankinard @vanmarkus

@watchyourbuck @actuallyitsellie @perfectlysunny02 @loucifersbitch @exhuastedpigeon

@lonelychicago @monsterrae1 @inell @bekkachaos @cal-daisies-and-briars

@midsummersmorn @imtheiliad @rainbow-nerdss @jesuisici33 @thekristen999 and anyone else who wants to (sorry if I forgot anyone!)