#writing re-set

[amsomerville]

A Monday Morning Re-set

To be honest, I am starting to write this post on Friday evening, to give myself a head start. I have heard it said that if you are starting a new practice, discipline or tradition, like a diet, or quitting smoking, that you should not tell people that you are doing it, at least not for several weeks. The reason behind that is if you fail you are less likely to be embarrassed. At least I think…

[lucky-fy]

For the Laicion nation (aka, me and three other people)

I had this illustration commissioned (a big thank you to @lunehowls) for my werewolf AU Laicion fic (still a WIP).

The general pitch is as follows :

AU in which Laios never got to meet his sister again, putting his life on a whole other path, a more desperate one. A military deserter with barely a coin to his name, Laios hitches a ride on a boat to one of the elven continents, where he learns about magical tattoos that binds one’s soul to a wolf’s, effectively making them artificial werewolves. Illegal magic be damned, this feels like the answer to… everything.

In the process, he learns about the existence of an illegal fighting ring in one of the elven cities, where beastmen gladiators gather. Freshly tattooed and without anywhere else to go to, Laios decides to head there, where he meets Lycion, an elf and artificial werewolf gladiator. If they first bond over a simple shared meal, by spending time together (sharing the same room in the barracks, maybe the same bed? gasp) they find that they have a lot in common, notably a shared distaste for the body they were born in, a dysphoria partially remedied by becoming a werewolf.

They bond :)

NB: I commissioned another piece, go take a look :D

[landwriter]

Talk about sandman WIPs you say? 👀 Your porn AU and San Francisco gays still live in my head rent freeeeeee ❤️

Pella! I'm glad Professional Fuckers lives rent free in your head because I definitely forgot it existed. In spite of this, I am somehow still confident I'll actually finish and post it one day. It's just so easy and refreshing to write a setting purely from experience. Still needs several more scenes but I know the whole shape of it.

I think there's a lot of really fun potential to be mined from indie porn in a rom-com sort of story: you have this professional physical intimacy that can mean absolutely nothing, an intimacy that is itself altered and shaped by the demands of performing for a camera, by the visual and literal language of any given shoot genre; but separately to that, there's this variable of the chemistry you have with them, as colleagues, as co-performers, and of course, though somehow least significantly, as people fucking. The chemistry that plays out on screen does not always track onto the chemistry you feel with someone. So there's this, I think, super funny territory you can get into, where you've just fucked someone, and the prescient question of did we make something good and the vain little one of was I good, did you like that are entirely separate. But imagine the urge to ask when you're doing something you've never done before.

Imagine, too, nursing a crush on somebody and still not being sure if they like you like you in spite of fucking them in shoots all afternoon and pretending to be in a relationship for half of those. Imagine doing all this demanding, intimate work with a near-stranger, and then making friendly small talk after because outside of this work you hardly know each other. Imagine feeling like there's something there, beneath all the performance, and the commingled horror of crossing professional boundaries--of finding out your co-performer is just so good that they sold the story you were telling together to you too, without meaning any of it--and the desire to find out how good it could be with the cameras off. No awkward blocking, no performing, no story, nothing: an entirely novel, unprofessional, and maybe even more intimidating kind of fucking altogether.

That's what this setting is all about. In the spirit of that, have a mildly NSFT scene ft. Dream sucking cock for the first time while on a shoot, and Hob making a suggestion after.

[ask me anything]

“Dream,” says Hob. “Dream, please, I’m gonna cum, oh, fuck.”

He looks up at Hob, jaw afire, and Hob swears and twitches and comes in his mouth. Dream swallows it without thinking of making a show of it, just swallows and swallows and pulls off, panting. He doesn’t realize how swollen his lips are until Hob traces them with a warm thumb, and murmurs, wow, so low it’s surely not for the cameras, more a breath than a word.

“Was I good?” he asks. His voice is fucked out and low and Hob laughs breathlessly as he tucks himself in.

“Yeah. Yeah, shit, you were good, baby. So good for me.” He looks down at Dream with undisguised lust. “M’gonna want this all the time now.”

Dream doesn’t know what to say, so he just stares up at Hob, until Hob smiles and shifts to sit up. “Great,” he says, in a normal tone, the scene sloughing off him. “Happy with that?”

“Was it enough time?” Dream asks.

“Oh, yeah. We’re probably at thirteen, fourteen minutes. I know you only wanted ten but I didn’t want to tread on perfectly good footage and say something.”

Dream can’t conceal his surprise that it’s been so long already. Hob takes it as skepticism and laughs. “No, you can check, but I’m like a fucking egg timer. It’s my party trick on shoots.” He stands and goes over to his camera, squinting at the display. “Yes! Thirteen twenty-nine,” he announces triumphantly, and turns it off. “Right,” he says, all business when he turns back to Dream. “Water and onto the next?”

Dream, still kneeling, awkwardly stands. “Yes,” he says, and clears his throat when it comes out rough. “Yeah, sure.”

Was I good? Truly? Hob is so good at inhabiting someone else that Dream isn’t sure. He would cover it up well if it was bad. “That’ll sell well,” he says, as neutrally as he can.

Hob takes the bait and grins at him. “Oh, definitely. That was perfect. You were great.” Then he takes in Dream and frowns. “Hey, do you want to, ah?”

Dream realizes he’s still painfully hard. Hob is grimacing down at his tented jeans. The moment of satisfaction is popped like a soap bubble. He adjusts himself, feeling his face heat. “Sorry,” he mutters.

“Oh, fuck, don’t be sorry. Always good to know I’m not repulsive. I meant, do you want to deal with it now since you didn’t come?”

Dream glances toward the guest bedroom, unable to believe Hob is actually propositioning him. Unable to believe the yes that offers itself at once. Hob continues. “My facial shoot, later? Could just switch things around and get it done now if you’re ready to go.”

“Of course,” says Dream, magnanimously. Of course that’s what Hob meant.

[kilgarraghforever]

I am genuinely really enjoying seeing people who have clearly never read the Odyssey before reacting to EPIC's Ithaca saga. I haven't listened to EPIC myself (yet) but people keep saying stuff like "Odyseeus built their palace around an olive tree he carved into his and Penelope's marriage bed that's so symbolic" and "He really just murdered all the suitors wouldn't that piss off their parents?" Which are observations and questions that the Odyssey makes incredibly blatantly clear as to the symbolism or the answer because it's a really old poem and subtlety wasn't really Homer's strong suit.

There's something really endearing about seeing people interact with the Odyssey through the same way the Ancient Greeks did - a bard singing the story of Odyseus' nostos.

(I gather the details have changed a little, but that's what happens with oral storytelling, and that's how the Odyssey got created in the first place)

Also as congratulations have my favourite ancient depiction of Odysseus surfing with two amphemorae having stolen Poseidon's trident, being sped along by Boreas, stark naked except for a cloak he's holding onto.

[marggri]

[elizabethrobertajones]

I'm whooshing through the Romana-era Doctor Who, where I found myself enjoying an episode immensely, narrowed my eyes suspiciously, went to wikipedia and found that Douglas Adams had a stint writing for Who. This made me realise 2 things: I'm now at the era of Who my dad was approached to write for, before they opted not to use him and left him with a lifelong grudge that prevented me from being allowed to get into Doctor Who until I was away from home at university with unobserved access to iplayer, and also: I had never known Douglas Adams wrote for Who, but now I do, I've put together 2 puzzle pieces about why my dad, who otherwise introduced me to both super popular sf & fantasy comedy and satire, and the super niche stuff That His Mates Wrote, I'd never been given a Douglas Adams book and in fact when we all got into them as teens, I borrowed my friends' copies...

I am learning things* every day that make me feel closer to him in his absence :')

*petty lifelong grudges

btw his papers got vetted by a Whovian archivist after his death (normal job for someone who comes to get a writer's papers and stuff, but this one was a guy who had apparently been in the job trembling waiting for my dad to die to leap up and yell "SEND ME TO HIS HOUSE SO I MAY RIFFLE THROUGH HIS PRIVATE PAPERS DON'T SEND ANYONE WHO DOESN'T KNOW ABOUT THIS SECRET FANDOM LORE" and since my dad's last wife is a whovian she fully engaged with and supported this vast betrayal of his wishes, as I would have had I still been living in the house with said papers and been the adult in charge when the archivist arrived :'))...

So that episode has been found and I assume will be accessible somewhere and Whovians of the nerdy old school are finally finding out if it's good or not and I should really go exploring the internet and see if I can find out the verdict just so I REALLY know all sides of this epic grudge :') I hope it wasn't terrible, because he WAS a good writer even if I don't know if he remotely suited Doctor Who, but also at a personal level it would be EXTREMELY funny if the fandom verdict after all this time is, oh, no this is unfilmable.

[spookygibberish]

Dogstock are typical of what are often deemed the ‘evil’ races in many other fantasy works. They were created by some higher force to be slaves, they are carnivorous by nature, they resemble animals other than human in dentition and build. They growl and bite and walk behind.

The Uhasr (a dogstock culture) are descendants of such slave-infantry that was abandoned when the empire that used them to capture the steppes decided the land wasn’t so profitable after all, and more pressing matters drew their attention elsewhere. Like tools left spent on the ground, the unneeded, excess dogstock were left to survive on their own in Hochkiskuph. The native peoples, of course, did not welcome them any more, or see them any less as oppressors when the hand released the lead. To the Hochkiskuph peoples, the Uhasr are a predatory ghost, an echo that consumes them even in absentia. To the Uhasr, one human is much like another, differing in number and equipment, but never in essence. Uhasr are a species of wild animal with a human face. Humans are prey on two legs. Humans smoke and poison uncovered dens on principle, Uhasr abduct and consume men and women and children all the same.

A common trend I have noticed in media which aims to humanize monsters, is that it often relies on passivity. Humanity is contingent upon kindness. The monster that is A Person only so long as they are a harmless thing at heart, something which can be understood and befriended. Their violence is reluctant, their hearts noble. Grace is a concession to the dominated. Only the toothless beast, declawed and pinioned and caged, is one which has earned its personhood. The ontological enemy supersedes the ontological man.

[mamawasatesttube]

hmm.... gotta admit i don't think i'm a fan of the connor amnesia plot in green arrow/black canary so far. i did like the design they gave sandra hawke in the flashbacks at least but hmmm...

[leon-stupid-kennedy]

RE4 ➸ Ada & Ashley (part 4)

[velvet-vox]

And here it is, coming for you all, the ultimate master guide to all the things that Doll lost!

1: She lost her life. Better get this out of the way as soon as possible.

2: She lost her parents. Да.

3: She lost her sense of humour.

4: She lost her sanity.

5: She lost her youthful innocence.

6: She lost her position in the cheerleading team.

7: She lost all of her friends.

8: She lost Lizzie.

9: She lost all emotional support.

10: She lost against Uzi and N. Her plan failed. Got shot in the back of her head.

11: She lost all of the respect given to her.

12: She lost her home. Probably lived in the cold after the prom.

13: She lost her pu**y.

14: She lost her personality.

15: She lost herself.

16: She lost all allies.

17: She lost relevance in the plot and had to force herself back into it, which led to her demise.

18: She lost her eye.

19: She lost all chances at healing.

20: She lost all chances at redemption.

21: She lost the opportunity of personally getting revenge on V. V is probably coming back for the season finale making her trap in episode 6 whortless in the long run.

22: She lost her coolness factor.

23: She lost the fight against Cyn.

24: She lost the chance at future character development.

25: She lost the chance at making up for her mistakes.

26: She lost the opportunity of making her parents sacrifice worth it and couldn't honour their memory.

27: She lost the possibility of going to robo heaven. (Spoiler: it doesn't exist).

28: She lost the opportunity of dying a hero. Probably helped the main antagonist to destroy the planet without knowing it.

29: She lost the possibility of a happy ending.

30: She lost everything.

Want more?

[setmeatopthepyre]

Devoted for the wip thing?

it's a match! from a very rough draft (aka it's Basically Just Dialogue) of an as-of-yet unattached scene in what can ail thee, knight-at-arms? aka sweetmeats aka knight au:

“Experience has taught that youth and beauty rarely come with wisdom.” “So you think me beautiful?” the young knight’s eyes flash with mirth. “Every creature with eyes would think you beautiful, even the men whose wives’ heads you turn. Is that why you ran?” “I did not run!” “Yet you are here, while countless devoted maidens no doubt wait in cold beds for you at home.”

-> send me a word, if it’s in my wip document I’ll answer your ask with the sentence that it appears in

[antoncrane]

Okay so -- I'm half way through The Midnight Walk, and I can say with absolute certainty that it's now one of my top ten favourite games ever.

[shouyuus]

‘Kay..I woke up at 6 and my first instinct was to check tumblr..amazing. But it was also what directed me to your much appreciated response, I don’t mind if it’s long honestly, I asked for it as well so a long response is always welcomed lol. And for your eleventh bullet point YES PLEASEE, I’d actually love to know what books have caught your interest. Also do you like dystopian books? I adoreeee them

hi doll! yes of course! actually i found the post from my old blog that lists some of my favorite books right here

and also to add to that list:

babel by rf kuang:

"Betrayal. Translation means doing violence upon the original, means warping and distorting it for foreign, unintended eyes. So then where does that leave us? How can we conclude, except by acknowledging that an act of translation is then necessarily always an act of betrayal?"

“She learned revolution is, in fact, always unimaginable. It shatters the world you know. The future is unwritten, brimming with potential. The colonizers have no idea what is coming, and that makes them panic. It terrifies them."

your blood, my bones by kelly andrews

"Peter had gone as still as stone. A marble boy, mired in his own personal mausoleum."

“I wanted you to love me,” she admitted. “But I don’t think you know what that is.”

juniper and thorn by ava reid

"He only let his fury unfold from him like a mist, until it dampened our brows and snuck into our veins and made us freeze there, as still as graveyard statues."

"Oblya gasped and panted like a woman in a too-small corset. Artisan schools and almshouses burst from between its ivory boning."

this is how you lose the time war by amal el-mohtar & max gladstone

"I want flowers from Cephalus and diamonds from Neptune, and I want to scorch the thousand earths between us to see what blooms from the ash, so we can discover it hand in hand, content in context, intelligible only to each other. I want to meet you in every place I have loved."

“Brinks,” says Garden, with casual fondness, “are traditionally stepped back from.”

the palace of illusions by chitra banerjee divakaruni

"Kings always take other wives. And men always break the promises they make before marriage."

“He believes it to be so. Isn't that what truth is? The force of a person's believing seeps into those around him— into the very earth and air and water—until there's nothing else.”

[total-drama-brainrot]

i just posted a silly impulsive headcanon in the discord off the top of my head, but now that i'm thinking about it...

let's say, during their stay in jamaica (or maybe in a later season/different show altogether?) the contestants are staying in hotel rooms for simplicities' sake. and due to the number of them, they're paired up. not an issue, right?

noah goes to join owen in his room, but he's already partnered up with tyler (or whomever), so noah's left with only alejandro as an option. great. again, it's whatever, it's only temporary. at least they'll be able to sleep in proper beds, so things are still looking up!

oh, they've been given the last available room? it's got the queen bed? oh sweet! so they've got bigger beds than the others? no?

wait. what do you mean "only one bed?"

oh shit oh fuck he's totally doomed.

well, they'll just have to make do. noah isn't about to cause a fuss about his sleeping arrangements, he's already tired enough from the plane crash itself and the challenges they competed in. what's the worst that could happen?

(he steadfastly ignores the Very Possible Outcome of his unfortunate sleeping habit, even when various headlines pertaining to a certain awake-a-thon incident race across his vision like spectres. because it's NOT going to happen again.)

alejandro also takes the news with his usual levels of grace and poise- all of that social training as the son of a diplomat has done him well- though noah can just tell by the tenseness in his shoulders and the stiffness of his posture that he's not as calm about the situation as he'd like the others to believe.

whatever. it's just a bed, who cares?

when they're getting ready to sleep- in an actual bed, what a luxury!- noah and alejandro gingerly climb into their respective sleep wears, both facing the opposite direction. this is the first time the whole season that they've been allowed the opportunity to sleep in their actual pyjamas. you know, since they haven't exactly had beds.

alejandro, dressed in his tank top and sleep shorts (he'd usually sleep in just the shorts, but the thought of doing so whilst sharing a sleep space seemed inappropriate), turns to climb into their queen bed only to see noah, who is already dressed in his own loose t-shirt and shorts, stepping into a pair of sweatpants and pulling a thick looking sweater over his sleepwear. what the fuck?

the room they're in isn't even cold, they're in jamaica?

even worse, noah's actively putting on a pair of fluffy socks. who wears socks to bed?

and then, then, the absolute mad lad reaches into his luggage and pulls out an equally fluffy dressing gown (or bathrobe/housecoat, same thing tbf), wrapping it around himself like a winter coat as if he's somehow cold in his two- now three- layers. it's almost 26°c out there! (80°f)

and the psycho smiles to himself, breathing out a sigh of contented air (and, alejandro notices, uncurling from his slightly hunched over posture, as if he'd been trying to conserve heat), as if he's not sweating his ass off under his three weather inappropriate layers!

so, as a concerned team leader, alejandro points out the obvious; he shouldn't be wearing so many layers to bed, he's going to get heat stroke.

but noah argues back; he naturally runs cold, especially when he's asleep.

and alejandro briefly recalls the amount of times he's noticed a napping noah shivering in his sleep despite wearing his usual three layers of clothing and the jet itself being kept a consistent room temperature for all it's faults, but his logic reasons that even so noah still doesn't need to wear socks to bed (it's immoral).

eventually noah gives up defending his (objectively wrong) decision to wear thick layered clothing and socks to bed and just climbs under the covers (discarding the dressing gown on the way, he's not completely insane), huffing in annoyance as he curls up at the edge of the mattress and makes a point of ignoring his company.

alejandro also sighs to himself, though whether it's in defeat or exasperation he isn't entirely sure, and carefully slots himself onto the opposite edge of the bed.

the two fall asleep in a tense silence with almost a meter of space between them.

which is why it's surprising when alejandro wakes up a few hours later, absolutely boiling under the heated weight practically glued to his side.

noah's iconic hair, softer in texture that it's usually neat waves would imply, tickles at his neck whilst the cynic's face is pressed firmly into his chest. his sweater-clad arms and wrapped almost possessively around his shoulders and his legs and tangled between the latino's own. whilst the added pressure is nice bearable, alejandro is sweating his life out beneath the warmth of another body.

when he tries to unpeel his clingy companion from his side, a sleeping noah seems to take that as a challenge and digs his hands into the taller's shoulders, which is when alejandro realises that despite everything noah's hands are freezing to the touch. how?! the two of them end up even further entwined than before, as his escape efforts only lead to noah wrapping his body even tighter around alejandro like a particularly stubborn boa constrictor until he had the shorter practically sleeping on top of him- as if alejandro himself was the mattress, or some oversized teddy bear.

it's... not an ideal situation.

alejandro kicks the duvet off of the pair, prompting a shiver from the wannabe koala attached to him, but the freedom from the oppressive heat outweighs any remorse he would've felt for depriving his companion from potential heat stroke. without the oven-like heat of the duvet, having the warmth of another curled up against him is actually pretty nice, and alejandro soon finds unconsciousness washing over him like the (comparatively) cool air of their room.

noah wakes up as sunlight filters into their suite, his face tucked firmly into alejandro's neck as the taller cradles him between his arms, deep slumbering breaths making his chest periodically rise and fall against noah's own. his arms are wrapped around the spaniard's waist, cold hands gripping loosely at the fabric of his tank top, and their legs are to tangled together that it takes the bookworm a few moments to figure out which ones are his.

he's warm, for once, and it's wonderful. he barely spares a thought at how awkward the situation is going to be when they're both awake and just presses himself further into alejandro's inviting warmth, mouth twitching into a smile, as he drifts back to sleep.

[doctorweebmd]

today was the first edit of the 'atsushi mourns akutagawa' fic that didn't leave me wanting to rip my hair and stick a fork into an electric socket. so. progress.

[call-me-copycat]

Hello everyone! This week and the first few days of next week are going to be particularly hellish for me ( ⌯᷄ ·̫ ⌯᷅ก )

I promise you that after next week, things will slow down once again and I'll be able to message everyone I've been putting off (⁠｡⁠ŏ⁠﹏⁠ŏ⁠)