#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.

[ruby-static]

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

[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).

[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!

[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.)

[lonelychicago]

ao3 wrapped! 📜

tagged by @thelikesofus

thanks everyone who's read my fics this year, it's been so fun <333

tagging: @spotsandsocks @monsterrae1 @honestlydarkprincess @bi-buckrights @beyourownanchor6 @bigfootsmom @exhuastedpigeon @daffi-990 @maygrantgf @eddiebabygirldiaz @bekkachaos and anyone else who wants to do it <33

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[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.

[eddiebabygirldiaz]

AO3 wrapped 2024

tagged by @shyaudacity @honestlydarkprincess @lonelychicago @thelikesofus

thanks darlins! <3

tagging @spaceprincessem @shitouttabuck @bigfootsmom @queerdiazs @lemonzestywrites @try-set-me-on-fire @spotsandsocks @devirnis @colonoscopys @butchdiaz @absolutelybifurious @bekkachaos @wikiangela @beyourownanchor6 @chronicowboy @hotshotsxyz and anyone else who wants to do it!

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[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

[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!)

[canarydarity]

35

(I’m actually so beyond glad this was the one you landed on, because this is my second favorite rancher song of all time behind strawberry wine. It’s so tango pov dl to me)

The leather Tango had grabbed and hastily stitched into something resembling a pair of gloves was near falling apart by the time he’d gotten even halfway through clearing the smouldering pile of wood that used to be their home. They were so incredibly caked with soot and so thoroughly speckled with splinters that Tango knew he’d throw them out the second he was done here; a day or two ago, he might not have minded, would’ve shouted to Jimmy just toss ‘em if he’d asked—it wasn’t like they were any short on leather.

But that was yesterday and this was today, where the amount of things they had to call their own had suddenly become precious few and far between. They were poorly made, they were pockmarked with holes, and the inside of each was slick with a coating of the sweat coming off of Tango’s hands, and having to throw them away was going to hurt like a bitch.

Tango grabbed at another slab of wood, dry as the Sahara amidst a record-breaking drought and charred to hell and back, and hefted it over his shoulder, tossing it in the pile his brain had labeled unsalvageable—the one growing at an alarmingly fast rate.

He looked towards where he knew Jimmy to be at the exact moment he felt his health get knocked down a tick—not even half a heart, not even a quarter, just one singular oof. Jimmy was trying to wrangle the cows that had gotten out in the chaos—a task that would’ve been less difficult if they weren’t all terrified out of their minds and reluctant to let themselves be penned once more. Most of them had scattered towards the back edge of the property. Jimmy had been coaxing one out of the tree line, walking backwards, speaking quietly; his foot had taken a dip into some uneven ground, not having been watching where he was going.

Etho had stopped by, earlier in the morning, when the unsalvageable pile looked manageable and the damage—not yet inspected—could still be spoken of with a tentatively hopeful maybe it won’t be so bad. He’d watched Tango sort through a pile of ash and come up empty but for a book charred beyond use, a handful of cobble slabs, and three pieces of dried leather.

He’d asked have you thought any more about what you’re gonna do? And Tango had heard I think you need to express yourself physically, Tango. And Tango has, like, proper ‘hold me back’ energy right now. And you’re not really going to let Scar just get away with it?

Of course he wasn’t. But he also heard Jimmy address the crowd of spectators—you just want to see destruction.

Tango had waved Etho off with a half-hearted yeah uh-huh that was more sound than word, too gelatinous to meld into any mold, sliding around in his mouth unable to keep any one form.

How many of them actually cared if the ranch was razed to the ground? How many of them had just wanted to watch something burn? How many had been hoping for something more exciting to happen next—front row seats and eye for an eye for an eye.

Tango pulled another plank from the wreck, and a puff of ash came free with it, making him cough and choke and hack, waving his poorly-gloved hand in front of his face trying to ban the cause. With each wave, he saw the ranch as it was when he’d finished it, as it was lit entirely aflame, as it was now, collapsed in on itself. He saw horns that were being kept away and club meetings with childish signs that said no ranchers allowed. He saw him and Jimmy, the two of them, further and further from a finish line everyone else kept moving out of reach.

The fire may have been put out, but something was still burning, and these people he might’ve once considered allies, friends…Tango was watching them fan the flames. No neighborhood watch to the rescue, this time, but calls of higher, higher!

His eyes watering from the choking and the smoke, Tango pulled off one of his “gloves” and scrubbed at them, which only made it worse. He was squinting and swiping at his wet cheeks when Jimmy called I got another one! Tango turned to watch him fence in another cow—so far, he’d managed to wrangle three—and threw up a hand and a smile that came out more like a grimace, hoping to convey some amount of good job! Jimmy smiled back regardless.

They were an active house fire, dry and piled high with kindling for the winter and ready to be consumed without a trace. What could Tango do but hope—no, beg—for rain?

(Shameless plug, but also, if you want more like this I have this fic here that builds on some of these ideas more in depth^^)

[gregorovitch-adler]

AO3 Wrapped (Writers' Edition).

Thanks for tagging me, @lisbeth-kk and @gaylilsherlock!

1. Biggest surprise while writing this year?

That I developed a genuine hyperfixation over an OT3 (Sherlock x John x Mariana). Enough that I wrote several fics (including a smutty one) about it.

I'm not even that big of a shipper in most fandoms (I tend to be a non-shipper generally), but even when I do start shipping something, it usually just involves 2 characters at a time.

Especially with the case of John Watson and Sherlock Holmes.

A year ago, I never would have imagined shipping either of them with anyone else apart from each other (because I'm generally not a multi-shipper).

It changed this year because the friendship among these three in the canon of the podcast Sherlock & co is just that good.

It was a very pleasant surprise to me. :))

Expanding my usual writing style from writing about strictly monogamous relationships (and that too usually just about Johnlock) to including a third character - and thus a polyam relationship in my fic writing - was a little challenging though.

A very interesting challenge, of course. ;)

2. How many WIP's do you have in your docs for next year?

Just one case fic right now. It's definitely going to increase.

3. Your favorite character to write this year?

Gustavo Fring from Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul!

I know I didn't write a lot of fics about him this year, I'm just featuring him during this December fluff (fluffcember) prompts challenge, but still.

He'll always be my favourite antagonist.

If you've watched these two shows, you'll realise he's not even a villain. All significant characters (especially Walter White) have various degrees of villainy under their belts.

Something about him being such a no-nonsense kinda guy on the surface, never saying a word beyond what's necessary in the source material (especially in Breaking Bad), but all of that just being a façade to cover up his human side (i.e., his feelings for Max, his determination to avenge Max's death, his genuine respect for his employees at Los Pollos Hermanos and everything else) is extremely interesting and delightful to me.

In Tumblr-speak, I want to place Gustavo Fring under my microscope. 🤭

And then there's John Watson, of course. He's my all time favourite. But this year, I just felt the need to write about Gustavo Fring too a bit more.

Also, Irene Adler is my wife. ☺ I loved writing Mollrene ficlets in December this year.

Here's to featuring her in my stories even more.

4. The character that gave you the most trouble writing this year?

I can't think of anyone in particular at the moment, but I did find capturing John's voice in The Veiled Lodger (my first ever Sherlock & co fanfic) a bit challenging in the beginning. Because I was only getting started with my Sherlock & co fic writing journey, and I wanted everything to be perfect.

5. What's one pairing you want to explore next year?

Gus/Max.

I'll continue to write about Sherlock x John x Mariana (and even about just Holmes/Watson), too, obviously, but yeah.

I used to be a bit hesitant about this pairing before, even though I've always loved Gus ever since I first watched Breaking Bad (in 2020).

That's because we don't see Max in canon at all, save for that one (1) flashback scene which lasts for just 5 minutes (and Max dies brutally in that one...)

So, featuring Max in a fic at all would just mean writing an OC from scratch at this point. And making an OC feel like a fleshed out character makes me feel a little nervous sometimes.

But I broke all that hesitation this year, and I hope I continue to do that next year too!

6. Did you receive any gifts this year?

Yes! I received 3 beautiful art pieces (including the one in my header image) from my friend as gifts. It was lovely. 🥰 @jamielovesjam

7. Did you do any collaborative works this year?

I did! @nowiamcoveredinyou and I wrote this fic based on ACD canon this year. We had fun.

8. What do you listen to while writing?

Nothing much, to be honest. I prefer a quiet environment.

9. Favorite line/passage you wrote this year?

Hard to choose, but if I have to, then here you go:

Sherlock stepped forward and took John’s hands in his own.

“Watson, I’ve said this before, and I’ll repeat it now: fear is a sickness. Fear is seemingly ordinary but insidious enough to eventually put one in the shackles of one’s own imagination. Never let it get to you. I can very well face Moriarty alone. He did ask to meet me, anyway. So, this is my battle. I’ll fight it.” Sherlock visibly swallowed. “Please, go now. The lady will never find a doctor as good as you.”

From my Sherlock & co fic Dilemma. It's a modern day re-write of that one scene from The Final Problem (where Watson cannot decide whether to help the old lady or to go with Holmes to meet Moriarty with him).

I wrote it just after the Part- 1 of The Shoscombe Old Place (Sherlock & co) had aired on Spotify and YouTube (and on other platforms).

Moriarty's name had been (not so) casually dropped for the first time in the podcast when John was going through all the shoutouts.

We still don't know where they'll go with that... 👀

Enough with my rambling.

Tags: @helloliriels , @nowiamcoveredinyou , and anyone else who sees this! (No pressure).