#wrote this on my phone so not under a readmore

[media-sickos-international]

So I wrote a review on Highway Blossoms a while back, but it was kind of. unfinished. a conversation with a friend of mine inspired me to finish it up, though, so here's the results of that. putting under a readmore for obvious reasons.

Highway Blossoms is a yuri visual novel released by Studio Elan in 2016, with a remaster in 2019, and DLC in 2020. The game follows the story of 2 girls, Amber and Marina, as they go on an adventure across the American Southwest in order to discover a long-lost Miner’s Treasure. While it starts off as a goofy adventure story, it slowly morphs into a poignant story about grief, relationships, and letting go. It’s one of my favorite yuri VNs, and its southwestern setting combined with its realistic characters caused me to heavily connect to its story.

Highway Blossoms starts off simply. Amber, a 19 year old woman on her way to a music festival in Palm Springs, ends up picking up a hitchhiker, Marina, whose car has run out of gas. She drives her to the gas station, where she learns of her goal. To find the Miner’s Treasure, the location of which is detailed in a journal. Amber believes it’s a scam, and plans to drop Marina off at her car after hearing about it. However, Marina’s car has been stolen, with her phone and wallet along with it. Amber offers to drive her back to her home of Carlsbad, New Mexico, but she declines, and asks Amber to instead take her to the first site of the treasure. There, they meet the three supporting characters and rivals, Mariah, Joe, and Tess, who are also searching for the treasure. (and who also were the ones to steal and scrap Marina’s car.) After some arguing, Marina and Amber secure equipment and find the first piece of the treasure, starting off an epic road trip across the Southwestern US.

The characters in Highway Blossoms are what make the game, it being a romance novel. The two leads, Marina and Amber, are wonderfully written, with their personalities being explored across the course of the game’s 4-5 hour runtime. Amber is a blunt, sarcastic skeptic, though she quickly grows a soft side for Marina’s antics, though she still has her own problems with being stuck too far in her own head. Marina is a stifled kid looking for freedom from her large family, though it’s clear she isn’t fully mature yet. Together, they make a wonderful duo, bouncing off of each other beautifully, and their developing romance feels incredibly genuine despite the short timeframe. 

The supporting cast is a bit lacking in the original release, but with the release of the Next Exit DLC in 2020, we got a much more in-depth look into their personalities, motivations, and backstories, which made me really care about the lovable goofballs. Joe is an almost impossibly chill man, able to go with the flow no matter what. He has his own reservations, but typically he’s the logic of the group, and sticks with Mariah and Tess despite Mariah’s personality. Mariah is a control freak, an alcoholic, and a generally unpleasant person. However, despite that, she drags her sister and best friend across the country in search of treasure, stealing, lying, and cheating her way out of most situations. Despite all of that, she’s got a good heart, deep down. (and I mean really deep down. Like down to the ocean floor, and keep digging.) Tess is a small girl with emotional issues, through the DLC heavily implied to have autism or a similar mental condition. Despite her lack of personality, she manages to form a sweet friendship with Marina postgame, which is mostly the focus of the Next Exit DLC.

With the characters out of the way, the story itself is also something to focus on. It can feel very unfocused at times, bouncing between irreverent comedy, serious drama, and cheesy romance, but in a way, the erratic nature of the game reflects the erratic nature of life. What’s important most of all is not Highway Blossoms’ tone itself, but the ability to keep its emotional core intact, which it does beautifully. While more cartoonish than most characters, the cast feel like humans as much as they do characters, contrasting their wacky antics with down to earth moments that make you feel for them. 

Overall, the Studio Elan lineup is generally very strong, but their first game is especially one people should keep their eyes on. A heartfelt tale of love and loss, a goofy comedy adventure, and a beautiful story all around, Highway Blossoms is a visual novel I have not stopped thinking about since i played it for the first time all the way back in 2022, and it is one I will continue to think about for a long time.

[rokurookajima]

✍️ Which stat matters most to you (if at all!): subscriptions, kudos/favorites, comments, bookmarks, word count, or hits?

👾 Do you have any "bad" writing habits you want to break?

💥Is there a chapter, scene, or WIP you're most excited to write? Share a snippet or tell us about it!

🛏 Is there a new trope you'd like to write this year?

🪩 Do you have any "good" writing habits you want to cultivate?

🎉 How are you going to be kind to yourself if you don't meet your goals?

THANK U KAT!!!

putting under a readmore bc surprise surprise i’m yapping (also my snippet kinda long)

✍️ Which stat matters most to you (if at all!): subscriptions, kudos/favorites, comments, bookmarks, word count, or hits?

so tbh i am very much used to writing for fandoms / ships no one gives a shit about over the years LMAO + also most of my writing in the last year has been for original stuff, so i’m very used to not getting any feedback hahaha. for some reason, the things i’ve been inclined to write fanfiction for have almost always been stuff that’s not gonna draw much of a crowd anyway. like… in my opinion, one of the best things i’ve ever written (and also most personal, wrote while i was desperately clinging to reality during a psychotic episode and this was incredibly cathartic) was THIS.. full metal jacket fanfiction.. it’s my 2nd favorite movie ever and joker is absolutely a full on blorbo but i know damn well not many people are out here looking for fics about a vietnam war black comedy (tho surprisingly this did get several very lovely reviews)

SO that said it’s been so nice to get input on writing again these days!! i love having my little subfandom gang to share work with 😭

ofc the one that will always feel the most euphoric to me will be comments!! public comments on ao3, comments in tags, personal messages anything!! it is suuuuch a high and i definitely screenshot all of them for a rainy day

but otherwise, probably word count is the main thing i’m rlly keeping track of regularly

👾 Do you have any "bad" writing habits you want to break?

i definitely do A LOT of my writing on my phone .. and it’s killing my thumbs lmaoo have arthritis in my hands and carpal tunnel on top of it just already not being good for u so. very much that 😩 the reason i LIKE writing on my phone tho is it feels much more organic and easy when i can just do it anytime any place, rather than waiting til i can use my laptop when i feel like half the time when i finally open it, everything in my head disappears. OTHERWISE… i feel like everything else that i used to consider to be a bad writing habit, i’ve learned how to work with in positive ways which is so nice

💥Is there a chapter, scene, or WIP you're most excited to write? Share a snippet or tell us about it!

OHHH easiest answer is definitely to finish claw machine, there’s 3 chapters left (the next one has been like one paragraph away from being done for like a month i just keep getting distracted), but i’m rlly excited for the last two ESPECIALLY the final one. i have some random scenes written in both bc i don’t write in order at all, but stillllll

snippet from what will b claw machine ch 7!! what .. could they have possibly been almost caught doing…🙈

“Fuuuuuck,” Wan breathes out finally, dragging both hands back through his hair and laughing nervously. “That could’ve been…”

“So fucking bad,” Raava finishes for him. But then she turns back toward him with her own frayed laugh. The look on her face is closer to exhilaration than embarrassment, which sends his heart rate somehow higher. She rubs her forehead and repeats in awed relief, “that could’ve been so fucking bad.”

“Yeah, so…” he blows out a hard sigh. “That’s your dad, huh?”

“That’s my dad,” she scoffs. “Delightful, isn’t he?”

“Took the words right outta my mouth.”

She grimaces in secondhand embarrassment on her father’s behalf. “I’m sorry for that. I mean him. It’s not that hard to believe you have a fucking job.”

“Nah, it’s cool. I probably wouldn’t wanna see me in my house if I were him either.” He adds dramatically, “some teenage scoundrel alone with my pure, prestigious daughter.”

“That’s a big word for you, Wan.” She gives a small laugh and rolls her eyes, then elaborates, “his pure daughter being defiled by you.”

“Yeah, I am…so sorry,” he says sheepishly. He grins back, but still can’t ease his tense posture. His body is not entirely under his own control at the moment. “I probably shouldn’t have done that.”

Raava’s hands go to the ends of her hair in an unusual show of coy nervousness. “No, um, don’t…” Her eyes dart to the side, then back to him. “Be sorry. I may have...”

He waits in trepidation until she finally finishes bluntly, “I’ve been waiting for you to.”

“Oh.” His eyes practically sparkle at that answer, grinning stupid. “Well…that’s good, because uh…I’ve been wanting to. Obviously. Of course I did.”

She swallows hard and says quickly, “I’d like to do it again. Uninterrupted.” Almost as an afterthought, she finally confirms, “like last time.”

Dazed with shock, he says, “I can…definitely make that happen. Say the word. Whenever you want.”

Raava purses her lips, her eyes darting to the side and back once more, then unexpectedly offers, “do you work on Saturday night?”

Wan is pretty sure his ribs could break with the way his heart pounds. He answers with no attempt to mask his eagerness, “I will trade that shift as soon as I get home. No problem.”

🛏 Is there a new trope you'd like to write this year?

that’s a very good question actually… i’m not sure!! i feel like i’ve actually never rlly considered what tropes i DO write (even tho.. i definitely do write in tropes i mean who doesn’t, and i definitely have a few i’m very loyal to). but hm…. imagine if i said “writing something not horny” … i could never

🪩 Do you have any "good" writing habits you want to cultivate?

i think i’ve gotten better about this, but i’d like to become a bit more consistent over all! i feel like i go in bursts of like… writing very intensely constantly for a few weeks-months, then struggle so much to get anything out the rest of the time. i’d rlly like to find some kind of medium - i mean, i don’t wanna ever lose the months of intense creativity THAT is the best. but if i could smooth it out and manage to have a somewhat steady rhythm on the regular, that would be amazing

🎉 How are you going to be kind to yourself if you don't meet your goals?

i’ll be chill about it!! part of that is because i don’t rlly have a ton of rigid goals around creativity just because i never know what i might end up fixating on and maybe it won’t be writing at all. ofc there’s still some level of frustration when things don’t go how i want, but overall this is probably the one department in all of life where i’m NOT insanely hard on myself

[savventeen]

I JUST BINGED YOUR ENTIRE “THANKS FOR PLAYING” AND I HAD TO STOP MYSELF FROM CRYING IN THE LIVING ROOM AND GODDAMN I GOT SO MANY QUESTIONS/IDEAS so here’s a dump lmao

AND SPOILERS ‼️‼️

and be honest if you honestly don’t have any idea or want to leave it up for interpretation

dino’s friend recommended it to him and he recommended it to mc right? well what happened to that friend/person?? i bet they are alive because they sent that game to 13 people before 3 am so the lady in the closet doesn’t get to them 🤭

if mc didn’t mess around and acted seriously in the game, would the outcome have changed? or was it always the gamemaster’s intention for the player to fall into obscurity?

how come dino remembered the mc? power of love??? or because he knew about the game (im pulling stuff out of my ass)?? or he has an android phone in this au 🧐

what if the pfps for the “AIs” are actually previous victims

so if you actually finish the game against all odds everyone is released (if they aren’t dead) hmmmmm sequel merhaps?? jk

imagine the only clue left about the players existence is the goddamn phone bill for texting 💀

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE MC????? wait that’d be really sad if the mc was actually still alive but dino couldn’t recognize them as “mc” but knows they exist somehow uGH

i know you wrote this story for fun so these don’t need to have answers/comments but please provide any extra tidbits of info about this concept it’s so interesting 🙏🙏

SKLJDFLKSDJF OMG THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR READING????? AND IM SO HONORED HOLY SHIT I WILL DO MY ABSOLUTE BEST TO ANSWER WHAT I CAN 😭💜

also you are not the only one with questions so I'm going to do my best to answer them all here!!!

[for anyone who hasn't read it yet and wants to know wtf we're talking about, you can read the entirety of my .|X| THANKS FOR PLAYING |X|. smau here!]

*cracks knuckles* alrighty buckle up folks time to try and answer some questions and take a deep dive into savv’s personal TFP lore here we gooooooooooooo

[putting it all under a readmore bc it got long af and also i didn't realize how hard it would be to translate the lore in my brain into words??????? i somehow didn't realize how oddly complicated it is??? like writing all of this out in any kind of semi-coherent way was SO HARD sdkjfsdlkjf]

~ Was it all a dream? (this one was asked by @junhui-recs)

Sadly, no. 😭 In the reality of this fictional universe, a tragedy very much did happen and Dino and MC are very much suffering from it 🥲 (I will not stop you from imagining that it was all a dream tho, we all have different ways of coping dklsjfsklj <3)

~ What's the main purpose of the game? Why are they doing this? (this one asked by @diamondyjh)

OKAY SO to start off you need to know that this au was heavily inspired by an episode of a podcast called "The Magnus Archives", specifically the episode “Binary” (transcript here). [If you're a fan of horror, I highly recommend giving the episode a listen/read, it's delightfully creepy — you don't need to have listened to any of the other episodes to understand it (just stop at the ending 'supplemental' part)]

The episode goes into detail about this sort of digital urban legend/creepypasta/copypasta about a guy named Sergey Ushanka who, long story short, tried to upload his brain/consciousness into a computer because he was afraid of death and wanted to try living forever virtually. There are tame versions of how he did it and other much more brutal ones, but basically "Sergey Ushanka" is a prank that various coders/programmers like to pull when making chatboxes in which you could talk with "strangers". It would start out normal and then steadily devolve into something creepy. This paragraph taken directly from the episode transcript sums it up very nicely:

"But then the responses start to break down, become more sinister, and keep referring to how much pain Sergey is in. Eventually, the only response the bot gives you is screaming and pleas to be released. The idea is that the chatbot is Sergey Ushanka’s mind, and he doesn’t like being in a computer nearly as much as he’d hoped."

So the idea that I stole from the episode essentially was: but what if it was real? What would the reality of being turned into cold, unfeeling data feel like? Agony is what the episode posits. Here is a list of phrases that the Sergey in the episode uses:

cw: vague body horror, blood mention "the angles cut me when I try to think" / "it peels my mind like knives" / "it feels like thinking through cheese wire" / "there's no feeling, but the no feeling hurts" / "it's cold without blood" / "the maze is sharp on my mind"

My next thought process was: What happens after? If someone were able to survive this process and were somehow able to keep any kind of agency, how would that person try to get out of the digital hellscape that has now become their existence? After knowing what it feels like to become distinctly inhuman, wouldn't they do anything to feel human again?

And how do we feel human? How do we find connection with each other and our humanity without ever having to come in contact with another person?

Stories. Fiction and non-fiction alike, we are all connected through storytelling, by finding feeling through other people's words. The thing about stories, though, is that they aren't messy in the same way that actually feeling our feelings is. That being human is.

So what does all of this have to do with the purpose of the game?

Essentially, when it's all boiled down, in this universe the story of Sergey Ushanka is real, and in this universe he is trying to gain his humanity back by stealing that of others. He started off with stories, with whatever online libraries and resources and archives he could find across the internet. And while it wasn't even close to enough to satisfy him, to get rid of any of the pain he was constantly experiencing, it was enough for him to learn, to grow, to realize that if he wanted his humanity back, he needed to go to the source.

So he started stealing real people from the real world, with all of their messy feelings and emotions and humanness.

That is the purpose of the game, why "they" are doing this. (pls don't ask the how bc i don't have an answer for that, just -waves hands- you know, insert your supernatural/sci-fi explanation of choice sldkflksj)

~ Did all the other characters from the game also get pulled into it the same way reader did? (asked by @diamondyjh) / What if the pfps for the “AIs” are actually previous victims

Short answer, yes to both! (Longer answer in the next question lol)

~ Who are those other people? (asked by @junhui-recs)

Essentially, the other characters/bots/whatever you want to call them are a kind of amalgamation of all the previous players who got sucked into the game. Once someone's been... let's call it absorbed, whatever parts of themselves are left after the process basically get shoved into whatever "character" they fit best, sometimes different pieces going to different characters.

And while the pictures could just be random ones, I like the idea that they're taken from the most recent players that got absorbed :')

~ Why was Changkyun evil? (asked by @junhui-recs)

Well, the main reason he was "evil" was because he's, y'know, a part of the game and the game is trying to steal people's souls or whatever. As for why he's mean, that's because he's trying to trigger an emotional reaction. The more messy, human feelings that are happening at the time of absorption, the better :').

~ Dino’s friend recommended it to him and he recommended it to mc right? What happened to that friend/person??

"i bet they are alive because they sent that game to 13 people before 3 am so the lady in the closet doesn’t get to them 🤭" SJKDFSKLDJ this made me snort, so thank you 😂

BUT to answer your question, in the story, Dino says that Yeonjun gave it to him and that he got it from "a friend of a friend of a roommate". Because the absorption and the consequent complete erasure is such a big process, not everyone who plays gets sucked in. In fact, most people who play don't get sucked in. Which is why Yeonjun is totally fine! (And why the friend of the friend of the roommate, aka this universe's irl Changkyun, is not 🥲)

~ If mc didn’t mess around and acted seriously in the game, would the outcome have changed? Or was it always the gamemaster’s intention for the player to fall into obscurity?

This one's a little bit complicated. It's kind of a yes and no situation? Generally speaking, the game isn't looking to ensnare every single person who plays because 1) it takes A Lot Of Effort to take/erase a single person, and 2) the game needs to spread to other people somehow, thus it needs people to play it and then tell other people to play it too.

For MC specifically, though, it's hard to say. How they played the game didn't matter so much as how they reacted to the game, specifically the first phase(s) of the Mnemosyne Protocol. The whole point of the game is to get big, messy, emotional responses, so if MC hadn't had such a big reaction, the game probably would have turned out differently. That being said, if MC had played the game as blandly as possible, the game might not have ever decided to test out the Mnemosyne Protocol, so. *shrugs* Do with that what you will lol.

~ So if you actually finish the game against all odds everyone is released (if they aren’t dead) hmmmmm sequel merhaps?? jk

Sadly, nothing special happens if you finish the game 😭 Plenty of people finish the game and pretty much go "huh, that was cool I guess" and then move on with their lives after telling their friends about it. This can be said about all four games mentioned actually, since we only see one of them get played.

As for a sequel... almost certainly not 🥲 I'm not going to give a hard no/no forever, because who knows if I'll end up getting another idea/get suddenly struck with inspiration, but... it is Extremely unlikely. Another story in the same universe??? ...still not likely, but slightly more likely than a sequel lol.

~ Why is Dino the only one who remembers reader? (asked by @diamondyjh) / How come Dino remembered the mc? Power of love??? Or because he knew about the game (im pulling stuff out of my ass)?? Or he has an android phone in this au 🧐

I almost want to make the answer "bc he has an android" because that is So Funny to me like sldkfjsldkjfslkjdf amazing 😂

But no, that's not the case lmao. And while I am a huge sucker for the Power of Love being an unstoppable force (ESPECIALLY when it's non-romantic love!!!), the reason Dino and only Dino remembers is thanks to sheer luck and a glitch.

So, in episode 28, MC drops their phone when meeting their brother and in episode 29 we see the alert ".|| MNEMOSYNE PROTOCOL COMPLETE ||." show up on a cracked screen.

The final phase of the Mnemosyne Protocol is the erasure portion, and the reason players get erased instead of just like, disappearing is because their "essence" is basically being transferred from reality into this digital realm of Sergey's existence. And reality, because it's now lacking an entire person and their history, just kinda... rewrites itself to make sense with the missing gap. Think of it as the universe doing like a sort of reverse autocorrect.

But because MC's phone got broken in the middle of that transfer, there was a slight glitch in the process. A glitch wherein Dino, because he was on the opposite side of the globe when this was happening, got accidentally missed in the autocorrection process. If he had been in Korea (or heck, anywhere within a few thousand miles) when this happened, he would have forgotten MC as well.

So long story short, Dino was just extremely (un?)lucky 🥲

~ Where is reader? (asked by @junhui-recs) / WHAT HAPPENED TO THE MC????? Wait that’d be really sad if the mc was actually still alive but dino couldn’t recognize them as “mc” but knows they exist somehow uGH

Well, sad news here friends. Most of what's left of MC is now stuck inside the game. They got absorbed and are now a part of Sergey's dataset and will be used/distributed into "characters" as needed.

Notice that I said most. Because, thanks to the glitch, the part of them that was connected to Dino didn't get transferred properly, and now that part of them is kinda stuck — it no longer exists in the real world, but it also didn't get fully absorbed into the game.

Which leads me to the next question:

~ Did reader turn evil and try to pull Dino into the game or is it the game itself being evil and impersonating reader to lure Dino in? (asked by @diamondyjh)

When I wrote the original version of this, the answer was a kind of combination of both — MC had gotten absorbed and corrupted by the game, so while it was the MC reaching out, they were doing so because it was what the game wanted.

But in this version... It's actually neither! Which I think would normally be a good thing but I think in this instance actually just makes this sadder oops.

So, the epilogue isn't the game impersonating MC and it isn't an "evil" MC trying to lure Dino in, it's actually just the part of MC that got stuck during the glitchy transfer. This is why the messages show as being from "Unknown" instead of the phone number associated with the game. And the reason what's left of MC asks Dino if he wants to play a game is because that's the only way it knows how to connect with anything anymore.

Basically, this sliver of MC that's left is experiencing what the original Sergey went through when he first "uploaded" himself, but instead of reaching out to anyone through a chatbot for help, it's reaching out to the only thing it "remembers" about humanity — Dino.

...I honestly didn't mean to make this story any sadder than it already is and I'm glad that the epilogue by itself just reads as spooky/freaky as hell instead of, well, this. 🥲

~ If Dino plays the game, will he be reunited with reader? (asked by @diamondyjh)

It pains me to say that there is no longer an MC for Dino to reunite with 😭 The part of them that got absorbed by the game is, well, a part of the game now. And the piece of them that's left and trying to reach out to him? Well, like I said, it's just a piece.

There could potentially be a chance for him to find some closure here, but that's about it I'm afraid :')

And now because I want this to end on a more lighthearted note:

~ Imagine the only clue left about the players existence is the goddamn phone bill for texting 💀

It becomes the next biggest conspiracy, that there's someone (or a group of someones) out there completing the world's next biggest scam by raking up random people's phone bills and somehow finding a way to steal the profit lmao

~ Some last thoughts from savv:

If y'all made it all the way to the end of this... holy shit I applaud you sldkfjsdlkjflksjdf LIKE!!!

thank you for taking the time to read all of this?????? it's not even fic it's just me rambling and making things Even Sadder??????

i also want to say that i'm a believer that 'canon' is whatever was posted in the story itself and that anything else is just headcannon, even if it's from me, the author. so if you don't like/don't agree with anything i've said here, feel free to ignore it!! fill in any gaps/questions you have in the way that makes your reading experience the most enjoyable!!

but yeah tHANK YOU ALL SO MUCH FOR READING AND I HOPE THESE ARE SATISFACTORY ANSWERS TO YOUR QUESTIONS AND IF YOU HAVE ANY MORE/HAVE A RENEWED DESIRE TO FIGHT ME MY INBOX IS OPEN SDKLJFSLKJFLSKFJSLKD

[davepetea]

((just ranting abt writing fanfics you can ignore me lmao. I'm just in a weird place atm but I'm feeling kinda passionate abt writing rn so I'm gonna vent

originally I wrote a lil of this in the tags but then decided to just chuck it under a readmore so people aren't subjected to it against their will. then it got really long.

I'm not actually expecting anyone to read this im just sorta venting to myself. it helps me get my thoughts sorted if I write them down. I can also look back through my #.vat file tag in a few years from now and hopefully be like "wow I'm doing so much better than THAT now", so if that's the case, hi future Vatta! I hope you're having a good day. and if you're not future me, then I still hope you're having a good day, I love you, and this is your chance to turn back bc my rants are boring and LONG

(not turning back yet? ok. your funeral)

so, I haven't been online much bc I've just been in a weird limbo lately and I'm really busy when I'm at home either sorting stuff out or, with my PDA, doing anything I can to avoid my responsibilities lmao

I've been rereading my Tokyo ghoul light novels (I only have Void and Days ? I think they're called), rewatching Zankyou no Terror, and Bungou Stray Dogs (plus the live action Beast film which was? hilarious but I don't think it was supposed to be), and just suffering lmao

(you're still here? wow. you need a hobby. jk. ily)

I've been locked out of the systems at work for a bit, but I still need to be there and wait for the IT ticket to be sorted, so I've gotta be at my desk, cant have my phone or anything, so instead of sitting there doing nothing, I've either been reading, doing codeword puzzles, or I've been writing up 'drafts' for potential fanfics.

in this year of our sufferer 2024. I've been writing up some self indulgent homestuck college AU lmao. I've written over 60 sides of a5, (not inc the inbetween sections where I wrote some stuff on the chromebook at home) some notes, some accidental first draft, bc I wanted something to take up the time. but my handwriting is terrible, I don't write fast enough for my brain, I have a lil dyslexia so the letters and words get jumbled sometimes, and I have this weird thing where I don't do spaces right. but I've been trying to upload it to Google docs with Bixby's photo text extraction. it's pretty good considering how bad my writing is, then I just need to go through and touch it up, the main issues are things like names, there's some letters I do weird like my v turns into an r, or every p it thinks is a capital, but overall. amazing how technology do that.

(see my long ass rambling isn't just confined to venting. I also pretend to write actual things. you can still leave you know. I'm not holding you hostage until you read all this. you have free will)

can't remember how I ended up back in fanfic hell but I read back through like all my old published fics (aside from the cringe ones I orphaned) and the writing isn't terrible. I don't think I actually finished any of them though, which really shows my true nature lmao,,, but I've picked up a few things on my writing style now. and I've got a few things I see other people do that I wanna avoid bc I personally don't like it, and it's mostly about balance, like using names too often/not enough, being too descriptive like All The Time and making the writing really nice, but not much happens in the story so you take like an hour to read each scene, vs not enough description so everything is happening but you don't really get a visual or a breather to appreciate what's happened so far. I've been working on finding my right balance, which is imo easier if you're writing fanfic bc first up you hardly ever have to describe the characters. if someone's reading it they already know who they are. and for scenes you can take some inspo from the source material. does the original work put alot of effort into setting a cool scene? if not, then you don't have to either! if it's 90% scenery then you've gotta do it too I don't make the rules

I'm losing steam now I'm so sleepy and I've gotta go to work in a bit ugh.

(bet you're sleepy reading this too huh. told you it'd be boring)

I've been thinking about trying out writing some BSD fics but on an anonym not linked to my main Ao3, bc the themes are doozys and I kinda just wanna have the freedom of anonymity. also I'm a baby and if someone publicly criticises my stuff without it being a requested critique then it makes me bleh (I've had a few comments in the past of just general negatives, not even constructive feedback, not that I asked for any anyway...), but the abilities are tricky to write for, so it's effort lol

anyway I'm gonna stop now ive gotta get ready for work

(if you actually read this then thanks for going on this emotion deep dive with me. tune in next week when we'll get back to my usual mental breakdown)

[roaringup]

Eventful day yesterday!

I think I want to start trying to use emojis to designate people I’m seeing who aren’t themselves on tumblr, because initials are getting confusing when the letters are the same and I’m increasingly feeling a little odd about full names. So I’ll say I saw both 🐦‍⬛ and 🪐, we’ll see how that works out for me. I didn’t get home until late.

In the morning I left for 🪐’s (beautiful, it turns out) house, which I’ve never been to before; it’s relatively far away and would normally just be a single hourlong train ride, but was complicated by an annoying shuttle bus situation. I met zir husband and a housemate. Zie made me brunch and we walked in the woods nearby.

I’m going to put the rest of this under a readmore because it’s a long diary entry kind of thing and some of it is about BDSM

Then we played. It was only the second time we’d done that, and the first time I saw/used their stuff. 🪐 has a nice big bag of toys, including the same Wartenberg wheel I do—I was so tempted to use one in each hand, but didn’t on this occasion—wooden paddles, which I do not have; and this delightful thin metal cane meant for impact that was great for doing nasty temperature stuff, because it was long and already cold to the touch. I did a little bit more non-pain mindfuckery, first tries with some ideas I want to refine and deepen and try again.

Then I went straight to 🐦‍⬛’s. We walked the dogs (they have one and are sitting one), got pizza, and just talked for a long time. They gave me some needles and two more needle hammers and a gua sha, and taught me how to use the gua sha. It isn’t painful if you do it as you’re meant to, with enough oil, slowly enough to let the sensation subside before the next stroke, etc. I didn’t do it that hard or attempt to use it in painful ways because it was my first try.

The way you hold this tool is that the divot in it sits in the web between your thumb and index finger. You scrape it along the skin, following the lines of the muscles, and it brings blood flow to the areas you scrape, which can feel good and warming if you’re stiff, etc. Done hard enough it causes beautiful and surprisingly intense bruises—that was what interested me!

It was so fun to be taught about the gua sha, and fascinating how all these things 🐦‍⬛ told me about it are things I already know from SM, or things that immediately made sense based on prior experiences. The big one was that if you give intense and not entirely pleasant sensation to a small area, it often feels nice to finish by to massaging that spot plus the broader area around it afterwards, because doing so sort of draws your sensory awareness back into that body part in a way that makes the pain-specificity subside. Some other details about muscles and bones and bloodflow and how people process sensation.

Anyway, that was an enjoyable day overall despite the transit not going well. Today I talked to Robin in bed for a long time, talked to a friend on the phone, had some leftover saag paneer I made, did a bunch of jigsaw puzzling, and wrote this up so I remember. I might bake some cookies later with some weed butter that’s in the fridge.

[swordbreakerz]

Day 15: time is long

I wrote a love letter about my weird timeline listening to friends at the table that is very rambly and doesn't have much of a point and is a little personal and I'm putting it under a readmore because I'm shy and going to throw my phone into the ocean after this posts

This July marks a full year since I got back into friends at the table. I watched the NNAF stream live, the first day at work since it was my last day (what were they gonna do, fire me?), and the second day at home, half dozing through the first three hours because I wasn't used to being up at 9am on a Monday. The Marielda one shot and stretch reward of a Hieron epilogue finally piqued my interest in that campaign, and I started Autumn in Hieron the next day.

It had been probably a year and a half since I'd listened to any day at that point, back in October 2020 (the 23rd, to be exact, according to my discord DMs) a friend of mine got me interested and I started listening to COUNTER/weight. I blew through it in a couple weeks, finishing it on November 17th, and it has the high honor of being one of the only pieces of media to make me cry after finishing it before I was medicated. I jumped straight into Twilight Mirage, but only made it about halfway before I quit the job I'd been working, and fell off of it, because I'd been using my 8hr shifts to burn through episodes. Despite quitting my job Again just as I was getting back on though, last year it stuck and I caught up with the entire backlog of podcast, including Bluff City, in maybe… four or five months if I remember right? It truly caught me by the throat.

Now, I'm fully caught up and staying on top of weekly releases better, being employed helps so I have a dedicated task to do while listening. It's become a regular fixture of my life and I've been thinking about voices defining a time in your life, and how summer 2022 will forever be my summer of friends at the table. The friends were my constant companion, I listened to the least amount of music that year than I maybe ever have, my spotify wrapped minutes on music were dwarfed by the nearly ~700 hours of podcast (spotify is easier to binge with at work, and I like stats).

This podcast reignited my creativity and drive after an art slump and brought me closer with one of my cherished friends, it taught me things about storytelling and political theory, it forced me to process old grief while sobbing for two hours straight after finishing Marielda. I could probably keep going, but being vulnerable makes me want to dig a very deep hole and lie in it forever, and honestly if any of the cast does see this I think I might die if I put anything too personal in it.

I'm not sure where the point I was leading to went. This podcast is like a reliable clock (hah) to me. It's my Friday work treat when seasons are live, Animal Out of Context can lull me to sleep in less than 30 minutes, Orbital made me laugh so hard I nearly cried in front of my coworker. Having something become such a north star in your life, especially something close to the ground like this, is fun and weird and scary all at the same time. I went from barely paying attention to ttrpg news to The PBTA Guy in my friendgroup in a matter of months. I still cry if I think about The Chime or Hella or Maelgwyn or Fero or Lem too hard. I'm getting a tattoo based on C/W at some point for gods sake.

Anyway. It's amazing how time and passion can worm it's way into your heart. Keep telling stories, keep loving eachother, I'm going to go dig a deep hole now, mwah

[ladysophiebeckett]

#[[and what they’re doing for part two…i’m annoyed]]#^i haven't paid attention to it at all what kinda bs are they doing for part two 😭#[[i’m a stage truther]]#^Yeah! Some things work well in adaptation but some things just have to stay in their medium#Wicked the musical is one of them. Works best on the stage and that's where it should stay

@thespianinthebackcorner

schwartz is adding two new songs in part 2 and i was like 'oh maybe theyre finally adding wicked witch of the east and no one mourns the wicked (the one elphaba sang back when the musical was in previews in sanfran)' which was naive of me. its been revealed that glinda (ariana) is getting a new song and erivo and schwartz wrote a new song for elphaba.

so, like why.

i have...thoughts and none are good.

the other thing, and this is speculation based on phone recorded footage fm a convention, idr which one. under a readmore for maybe spoilers\speculation.

in the act 2 of the musical elphaba ambushes the wizard the day of the glinda and fiyero's engagement ball, right?

and then later on when nessa gets the house on her and elphaba and glinda meet when she's trying to get the shoes, elphaba says 'well we cant all come and go by bubble'.

what i saw fm the bad phone video recording, it looks like erivo's elphaba' is saying the 'come and go by bubble' line to glinda on her wedding day. bc she says it very calmly, like she's peeked in to see her friend on her wedding day. (also it's being said inside a room, not outside).

basically, i think they're changing engagement ball to wedding day. i dont have the footage, i didnt save it and i could be wrong. maybe they're just changing the setting and im talking out of my ass. we wont know until November. but its sounds like fucked up shit they would do for drama and to take up 2 and a half hour runtime.

So the wicked movie was WAY overhyped because you're telling me that's supposed to stack to the stage version???? They literally removed some rather important story pieces in the first act and also it's just so, so much better in the stage medium. And yes I'm aware I was very close to the stage when I went to see the stage version but still. HELLO??? IMITATION IS THE SINCEREST FORM OF FLATTERY THAT MEDIOCRITY CAN PAY TO GREATNESS.

[macchiatosdumptruck]

Aside from toys like vibrators and dildos, what kind of implements do Silverusso like to use in the bedroom? Paddles, riding crops, floggers? Ropes, handcuffs? Feathers, hot wax, Wartenberg wheels, nipple clamps? Blindfolds, gags? Do they have kinky furniture like a St Andrew’s cross or a spanking bench? What’s Daniel’s favorite prop to use vs Terry’s?

Depending on how I imagine them, all of those tbh.

But I feel like impact play and sensation play would be recurring themes. Along with a bit of blood play. (Because you can't say Terry doesn't get off on seeing Daniel break his knuckles against that wooden dummy, or bruise his foot against it. )

It's all about pushing Daniel to his limits and seeing what will make him submit, and how beautiful he will be once he does.

Sidenote, bratting is totally a thing for them, even if they don't call it by name. Terry loves how Daniel doesn't immediately give in to everything he wants or says.

The fight makes the reward all the sweeter. Because not only can he make Daniel submit, but he can make Daniel admit that he likes it. He craves it. He just has to be brought out of his own head first, to be reminded that it's okay to want that.

Humiliation kink also plays into this.

I LOVE wax play and I don't know why I haven't written it yet tbh. Terry would drop it slowly over Daniel's thighs to make him jerk and twitch.

Ice cubes have been used, but also Terry has chilled their metal toys before in cold water. (Being very careful that it won't damage his boy's skin)

Terry would love anything that leaves his mark on Daniel. He's a possessive bastard. I waffle over wether or not they would use cock cages. I think sometimes, depending on whether or not Daniel has been misbehaving. (I am reminded of my domestic discipline fic that got shuffled away in my wip folder)

I think toys are something that they wouldn't use incredibly often in the beginning of their relationship.They're fun, but Terry prefers to use his hands. To mark up Daniel and to keep him in place. That being said Terry is always prepared. They get more adventurous with toys the longer they're together.

(just being with Terry to begin with is a lot)

He has specially made rope, only the highest quality, because he doesn't want his Danny boy to chafe. And he has it in his colors. (Red, black, and silver.) Sometimes he will tie his Danny boy up in beautiful knots and rope patterns, and just make him wait. Make him wonder when Terry will touch him. Ropes and scarves also have the added bonus of making Daniel extremely posable, anyway he wants him.

Terry doesn't see the appeal of handcuffs, but a spreader bar is in his collection, considering how often Daniel tries to snap his legs shut from over stimulation. (Again, a lot of the time Terry can just use his shoulders, but sometimes he wants to sit back and relax)

Terry has a Thing about training Daniel and his body, not just in karate. That includes awakening certain erogenous zones, like his nipples. Daniel has beautifully sensitive tits now but they weren't always so sensitive. He got off when Terry played with his nipples but there was a time when Terry would refuse to let Daniel come unless he had nipple clamps on, so now he associates Terry playing with his nipples with orgasms.

Terry also likes to use blind folds, to heighten the sense of tension. To make Daniel extra squirmy and nervous. Ear plugs are good for this too.

He sees no point in gags because, the noises Daniel makes are his favorite thing in the world. Except for maybe those gags that actually work to keep the subs mouth open. He likes to have Daniel's mouth ready for him.

Terry has a little collar for Daniel, a nice sub collar, and also maybe one with a dainty little bell on it for when his kitten is feeling scrappy. There's a matching leash.

Terry definitely buys a fucking machine just to edge Daniel with it. He tries him up and makes him take it until he's begging to come, for Terry to let him touch his cock, or to fuck him himself, because Terry is always better than a machine.

Terry has a breeding bench he uses when he needs to take his Danny boy down a peg, ( he's been getting too haughty and has forgotten who is in charge) he can also strap Daniel into that for spankings.

Terry has a riding crop for more playful spankings, and a paddle for actual punishments.

Wartenberg wheels are always fun, because they tease the pin pricks of pain. It's delicate. It's the opposite of the blunt force of a paddle. Feathers are used for the same reason. (Tickling Daniel all over his cock)

Terry likes to use his toys to tease. To get Daniel excited and wiggly. To make him red faced and open. To make him beg.

So Terry favors things like the wheel, and the clamps. He also favors props that have a more psychological effect, like a cock ring or cage, to humiliate Daniel. Or to scare him. (they roleplay cnc and fear play a lot)

Daniel likes to use toys to get off. (He also likes to tie Terry's hands down occasionally, and show him who's boss. What can he say, their relationship is a constant fight for dominance. It's always a mind game) so Daniel likes vibrators best. There almost too much though. Especially when Terry uses them on his cock. But he gets off so hard every time.

Daniel probably hates anything that keeps how wrists bound. (He hates it because he feels helpless, if he can't move, but that's also what makes it exciting.)

So maybe they use toys more often than Terry would have thought, but that's never a replacement for Terry. They're props in his game. They help him play Daniel. What's important is that he can always get his hands on Daniel.

(unless for some reason he is punishing Daniel by making him get off without Terry's touch)

[splickedylit]

Watching you revisit your Homestuck AUs recently and seeing how much you've grown has given me new life. Definitely riding that nostalgia high, and it made me remember From Under Bridges— it was one of my faves from you and another prime example of how you manage to take clown church and make it into something really unique 👀 if ever you were inspired to revisit FUB with some hastily scribbled doodles or project notes, just know I, an anonymous fan, would be sighing dreamily into the void

Aww, haha! Let's see. If anybody remembers From Under Bridges (the unfinished concept/fic where Karkat is a scout in the ongoing landwar between the human and alternian empires and gets captured by the alphas/betas and culture clash and scheming ensue) here's an enormous post of thoughts. (Possibly art to follow, we'll see).

I have inserted a readmore because I love you all and respect your dash length, and this got...quite long.

needs more recognition of the self through the other. I feel like this is an underlying theme in a lot of culture-clash fic; I think that if I wrote FUB now, rather than being some kind of well-respected noble house or something, the alphas and betas would be the KIDS of well-respected noble houses, who were all scanadalous or inappropriate enough in some way to their society to get half-exiled to a "prestigious" guard post near the border

this gives them a reason to connect with Karkat, when it comes to light that he's also been outcast, because of his own societal rules/standards. It also makes it a secret that they have him, which makes things significantly more dramatic lol.

Maybe for extra backup theme, any ancestor/guardian we meet who IS culturally accepted has managed that by repressing some part of themself, trimming themself down to fit into the place that's been made for them? Primary theme is a good old-fashioned "we're not so different and the things that are different can be Good Actually", secondary themes of how sometimes societal/cultural norms that have been held for generations are cruel actually, and need to be let go of.

Related to the culture clash angle; the cultural dynamics need sprucing up. I'm all for a lot of the stuff I included in my original concepts for the trolls, intricate jewelry and facial markings for blood color, etc--but especially if the humans are presented as a kind of pseudo-european historical pastiche, it gives everything some uncomfortable Noble Savage flavor in retrospect. Chalk another one up to "sheltered white teenager tries to do culture clash", lol.

thoughts for ameliorating that; the trolls are more technologically advanced than the humans. Via magic and weird biotech, trolls are working with devices and forces our human protagonists don't understand, but the reader would understand as like, a rudimentary phone. Humans are feeling great about developing plumbing and gas lighting, but trolls don't bother with shit like that because they can plug weird biotendrils into a psionic and light their whole city electrically. Even though in this universe they cohabitate on one landmass, from a human POV trolls truly do feel like aliens, they do shit the humans have trouble even comprehending.

The field humans ARE more advanced in is automated/mechanical inventions, especially weaponry. They fuck around with elements and rocks and chemicals and shit, they discover gunpowder. The one really magical thing they have going for them is the barrier between them and the trolls, maybe?

Actually, the barrier could easily be a spell the Sufferer somehow leaked to them, and was promised some form of amnesty, and instead got sold out and executed. That would fit nicely into the theme of societal cruelty and also give a good reason for Karkat to be able to break in and get captured.

might help to use more trappings of historical nonwhite cultures with the humans, and vice-versa with the trolls? Sprinkle in some viking-inspired braids and clothing styles, cloaks and layers. Especially for warmbloods, who would necessarily need some protection in cold temperatures (unlike seadwellers who I've always assumed were well-adapted to crushing icy deep-sea conditions). Vary up some human skintones and clothing designs.

Hell I could push anachronism further if it came down to it, especially on the angle of trolls being tech-advanced. This is my boyfriend, he's a psychic nightmare creature from the depths of darkness. He's got bones braided into his hair and elaborate gold earrings and facepaint and he DOES wear a jacket made of leather with bone spiky epaulets. Karkat has sickles and bone armor and ritual quadrant jewelry but also the ritual is Ritual Of Call Boyfriend and it's essentially a very basic cell phone.

Going ahead and making the call that the Church of Mirth in this AU also uses righa forachtae, my conlang from Poor Unfortunate Shoals. Because I make the rules, is why. The church itself probably wears less gold, since my theory in Shoals was that the seadwellers not being around meant the clowns had all the gold they wanted to fuck around with--but the general vibes are probably quite similar, just with more bones in the jewelry instead. Very maximalist body decoration and body mods. Piercings and tattoos encouraged, more aggressive religious self-mutilation thought highly of especially during worship/in a bacchanalian frenzy.

A possible accepted/unacceptable parallel, hm--the Grand Highblood is still in power because he killed the Sufferer, despite Pale Temptations. Later the GHB and the empress fuck with Tavros and Gamzee flips out and confronts his ancestor about it, publicly letting his quadrants come before his duty, which gets him thrown out. It does fit the pattern. HM.

Chewing over the thought of a translation spell that doesn't do any psychic translation or anything, it just forces the person's mouth to speak whatever they want to say in your language instead. Would make a good comparison to the first attempt to get to know each other with a drastic power imbalance as captor/captive. Especially if troll and human languages have some noises that the other group can't make, and it gets increasingly tiring and painful to be magically forced to speak the other person's language for extended periods of time. hmmm.

Oo, oo, late-game concept because I like the Midnight Crew as angry mentor figures and I've been struggling to figure out who the head of the human empire would be if not SS: human kingdom split into derse and prospit courts? Black and white kings+queens each ruling a half but with uneasy peace between the two sides in the face of the troll empire's encroaching border?

oh shit wait okay, I was contemplating the alphas and betas each having their own estranged guard posts but instead; Derse and Prospit split. One house run by Slick and Deuce with John+Jade+Jane+Jake and Karkat, and one house run by Droog and Boxcars with the Strilondes and....a guest of their own? :oUc HMM.

Each of them is trying not to let the troll information they find out get across to the other house because there's a friendly (or not-so-friendly if you ask Derse) rivalry between the two. Narrative tension as we the reader jump back and forth and each group is learning radically different things about their prisoners and also troll society, and the impending moment where they have to come together and Reveal their Tactical Advantage to the other side.

Goddammit I kind of want to go back to the fic just for that part, that would be delicious. Dammit.

It seems like the lesson for the humans to learn from the trolls (mostly indirectly) is "people should interrogate their society, because when you're in the 99% of a society you're discouraged from realizing that the people sitting on your shoulders are just there because they've convinced everybody they should be" and the lesson in response is "advancement doesn't have to be cruel, improvement doesn't have to be exploitative; people will function because of fear but they'll thrive because of freedom and cooperation".

TBH it feels like this storyline culminates in two simultaneous revolutions/coups and I have no IDEA how to write that lmao. It does sound very fun though. The disgraced offspring of the society's power, influential, or infamous people all show up at once but oh damn they've allied with each other, shit. Oh no once they stopped accepting our cultural praxis as law we stopped having authority over them oh shit.

[insomniamamma]

Thank you so much for the tag @agirllovespancakes!!!! I love getting the chance to scream about my stories! I'm going to pop my answers under a readmore, and i will try to include links to stories when necessary!

How many works do you have on ao3? I do not use AO3 to post fic only to read. I’ve considered cross posting but the amount of work involved gives me The Fear. On this hellsite i have about 65 fics. I’ve been lazy about updating my masterlist. So there may be stuff floating around that i have not properly accounted for.

What's your total ao3 word count? I don’t use Ao3, but from what I can tell my fics tend to range from 3 to 6k.

What fandoms do you write for? Mostly the Pedro Pascal Cinematic Universe. And Star Wars.

Top 5 fics by kudos Vanilla, In The Light They Both Look The Same, Over Easy, Safe, About What We Want

Do you respond to comments? Are you shitting me? When people take the time to comment on my fics I vibrate at a frequency that would shatter glass. I tend to write paragraphs long replies to comments which i worry might put people off from commenting. I’m harmless, I swear.

What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? About What We Want.

What is the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? This is a hard question because I don’t really write multi-chapter fics. AUs just kind of happen like dandelions popping up. Most of them don’t really have a clear end or beginning. I just keep adding pages. That being said, I think Seasonal is the most joyous thing I’ve written.

Do you get hate on fics? I have not. My blog is a fart in the air conditioning. Which means I mostly fly beneath the haters’ radar.

Do you write smut? Very occasionally. I have to be the right headspace for it, or else it comes out reading like stereo instructions.

Craziest crossover? I’ve never got more that a couple paragraphs in, but I’ve toyed with the idea of an Ezra x Captain Jack Harkness crossover.

Have you ever had a fic stolen? Not to my knowledge.

Have you ever had a fic translated? Again not to my knowledge.

Have you co-written a fic before? No. The idea both intrigues and scares me.

All time favorite ship? I can’t pick just one so I’m going to give you three. Kara Thrace x Leoben Connoy (Battlestar Galactica) Jack O’Neil x Samantha Carter (Stargate SG1) Chrisjen Avasarala x Bobbie Draper (The Expanse). And there’s so many more. If two characters so much as look at each other some part of me is smashing their faces together like barbie dolls.

What's a WIP you want to finish but doubt you will I started writing a Mandalorian AU based on The Mist by Stephen King. I still really like the idea, but I don’t know if I’ll ever get back to it.

What are your writing strengths? World-building. I can world build so hard that I never end up writing the damn story.

What are your writing weaknesses? Smut. I suck at it. I have to be in such specific place to do it and feel okay about it that it doesn’t happen very often.

Thoughts on dialogue in another language I struggle with this one. Because several of the characters I write for speak Spanish in canon and I took Latin in high school like a dumbass. I usually use google translate but then copy paste and search the result and see if it means what I think it means. So far no one has confronted me about it. Also, I write for Prospect, but I could find absolutely no information about Vayok, which Mikken and Inumon speak. I’ve written Cee cursing in Vayok and I just made up sounds. If Vayok is an actual conlang I haven’t been able to find any real info on it.

First fandom you wrote for I tried to write for Farscape and Torchwood, but none of that ever amounted to anything. Prospect was the first fandom I ever wrote for where I actually shared with the class.

Favorite fic you've written Persistence. The inspiration was a writer Wednesday prompt of a phone booth in the dark, and i thought that is a phone that you get a call from a dead person on. And then the whole story just happened. It was more like excavating something that had always been there than making something new. I don’t know how to explain it, and I’ve never felt that way writing before or since.

Again, thank you so much for the tag, Pancake ❤️

NP tagging @grogusmum @oonajaeadira @writeforfandoms @honestly-shite @artemiseamoon @fromthedeskoftheraven

and anyone else who sees this and wants to scream about their fic!

| 20 questions for fic writers

Thank you for tagging me @made-ofmemories 🫶🏻 I added the questions and answers beneath a readmore otherwise the post becomes so long!

1. How many works do you have on ao3?

35 of which 15 are for the volturi guards. I try to post everything that is over 1K words over on AO3 as well to make sure it doesn’t get lost.

2. What's your total ao3 word count?

112,435. I am secretly hoping to write a novel someday with such a wordcount!

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Currently only for the volturi guards but I might be open to writing for the kings or other characters as well. Just need to be brave :)

4. Top 5 fics by kudos

See you around - 97 A different morning - 96 The pancakes - 42 Sketchbooks - 42 Mångata - 33 I honestly wish to delete a few of these because they are, imo, really badly written. I was much younger and less experienced in writing but I notice people still love them so it's hard to decide what to do with them.

5. Do you respond to comments?

Always! I love getting comments ❤️ They inspire me to write more.

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

I think the creepy season stories I wrote for the guards end most angstiest? I don't really like to write angsty endings.

7. What is the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

All my stories end happy but "Turn me now that I love you" has a special place in my heart because I have written two epilogues about how they live happily together after she was turned.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Never happened so far but sometimes I get strange comments and then I don't know what I should reply.

9. Do you write smut?

Yes and it still intimidates me sometimes haha.

10. Craziest crossover?

I don't want to talk about it...

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

No, I fortunately never had to experience such a horrible situation.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

No, neither am I interested in it I believe.

13. Have you co-written a fic before?

Several times with several people. Most of these fics aren't published anymore or have gotten lost over the years but it was a lot of fun. I hope the people I worked with are happy wherever they may be.

14. All time favorite ship?

I have been in several fandoms so I don't have an all time favorite ship. I do adore the ships in this fandom though!

15. What's a WIP you want to finish but doubt you will

It's called "The Painter". I wrote it for Marcus Pike back in the day but never finished. Then I turned it into an original story with oc's but I have never finished it and most likely never will.

16. What are your writing strengths?

If I go based on what other people tend to comment on it's describing scenery, the surroundings and describing the way people touch each other in my stories. I hope it's true!

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

I tend to describe situations so much sometimes that I forget to add action I think. It's something I challenged myself with, with the creepy season stories and I hope to strengthen this weakness more the coming years. I just have a hard time writing action scenes.

18. Thoughts on dialogue in another language

I tried this for "The Painter" adding dialogue in my own language because the story was based in Holland. I hated it and it made it feel clumsy. It's different when you add pet names or just add a random word in someone's first language. I like it when people do that.

19. First fandom you wrote for

I tried to write a story for Vikings when I was eighteen. I remember presenting it to a very popular writer in that fandom asking her for feedback. She was very kind and told me to work on my writing as much as possible and gave me very good feedback. I had never written a story in english before if I remember correctly. Then I didn't add more stories but I was motivated to practice writing. I started posting stories for Sons of Anarchy/Triple Frontier in 2020.

20. Favorite fic you've written

It used to be mångata when I was younger and wrote that series. Right now it's "Turn me now that I love you". I really feel like I wrote a full story with that one. And it's very dear to my heart, I even printed my moodboard to put it in my journal and such.

Tagging mutuals ❤️

@xxx-wounded-angel-xxx @alecvolturiswifeforever @cregan-starks @volterran-wine @moonlight-prose

@grogusmum @insomniamamma @songsformonkeys

[thelaughingmerman]

I would love to hear your LCA headcanons!

Hi! I wasn't ignoring this ask I'm so sorry I 10000 percent just plain forgot it was in here (I think I opened it first on my phone while out and about and said "Oh fun!! I will answer this at home!" And that was when I forgot.)

I had a couple posts but I can't find them because I don't know what tagging is. Here are some things I do remember. Under a readmore because I wrote too much, spaced them all out with bullet marks:

-Freya is a lesbian, but not currently seeing anyone. She works A LOT. And spends a lot more time at the Station than she really needs to (though she's not Duke levels of bad). She's very dedicated to and loves her job, but it's a very stressful position. It's tiring a lot but she wouldn't give it up for the world.

-Clemmons is bi and lives with his partner. Like most everyone at the station, he works a 24 on, 48* off shift. He spends a lot of time exploring the city on off time. He's great with directions, and people person who usually remembers little details about friends and family they may have mentioned once in passing. This (coupled with his tendency to excel when given a task he's good at) made him the perfect candidate to tackle Freya's unique form of firefighting (it’s part of the reason she chose him for her team, and why she started sending him to get her wild list of firefighting supplies). While sort of bad at managing his own anxiety, he's really good at helping others manage theirs. He likes video games a lot too!

-Bob is questioning his gender and sexuality. He didn't know there were so many labels and now he's very confused. He doesn't have to figure it out right away. While he works the 24/48 schedule as well, he's most likely to give extra hours where necessary. Spends a chunk of his off days at the gym. Loves dogs and would like a dog of his own but with that schedule he knows it wouldn't be fare to the dog even with a sitter.

-Carol is a single mom. Her ex doesn't stay in touch and it's just fine for them really. As of last Christmas their family has grown by 2 (Guinea Pigs). Both Carol and Maddie really consider Mayor Fleck like family to them. Fleck isn't good with words on that sort of thing but he is very fond of them, yes. Fleck is a practical man, and this extends to gifts. The Christmas following the events of 'Small Carol' he gave Maddie her own 'special mayor pen' with her name on it. She loves it and keeps it safe in the box it came in when she's not using it.

-Frankie had a gallery show for his art once! He invited Duke, mostly so he could see his first collaboration piece, a self portrait with tire tracks across it. (Frankie Lupelli and Duke DeTain, Self Portrait with Tire Tracks, Mixed Media Acrylics on Canvas with LEGO Brand Tire)

-Big Betty is very close with her family. She has two young nieces (9 and 6) who she often babysits. Sometimes Hank will come hang out with her and her nieces too. They let the girls paint their nails and do their makeup and hair. The pair also actually go get their nails done together sometimes. Frankie has joined them on occasion. Vinnie came once but he complained.

-Hacksaw is gender-neutral and has no preference of pronouns.

-Wheelie is a gay trans man (and would really like to be called Wheelie like for the love of god why aren't we using this man's name, that's not a headcanon I'm just annoyed).

-Billy's cat (from Billy the Bug, we never see this cat again but Anne says he can keep it I have to assume this thing is still in the house) LOVES Mark. Mark has yet to fully come around but he has been caught once or twice patting the cat's head (like one small, barely even making contact) when it jumps onto the arm rest of his chair. Sanitizer used immediately after, but hey, baby steps.

This got wordy I'm so sorry I'll stop there for now.

I haven't researched what it's like elsewhere but here in America a lot of stations do a 24 on- 48 off schedule. Where teams work a full 24 hour day, then have two days off. I've made this the case for LCA as well?

[tmngoose]

For Old Time’s Sake: a disaster twins story

Rating: GA Characters: Donnie, Leo, and Splinter.  Tags: Wholesome brotherly fluff, brotherly bickering, napping, drooling, (NOT a shipping fic) Word Count: Less than 1k Summary: Leo remembers a time where Donnie used to let him use his shell as a pillow. They’re older now, but Leo sees the perfect opportunity to bring back old customs. A/N: In the stupor of my second vaccine, I wrote this on my phone at 4 in the morning. I remembered this post I made a while back and I decided to write a little somethin’-somethin’ about it. It also reminded me of when I used to lay against my brother when we were younger and we’d play Pokémon on our Gameboys lol. I think it’s just a sibling-thing; to use each other as pillows or somethin’, idk. -- (Also, please, this is not a shipping fic, so don’t treat it as one, thank you).  I probably won’t upload this to Ao3, so you can read it here, under the readmore:

Leo walked into the television room, carrying a stack of comics for some 'light-reading.' There, he found Donnie lying on his stomach in the middle of the floor. The light from his tablet screen bathed his bored features in a soft, blue glow.

The Slider smiled, glad to see Donnie not holed up in his lab for once. He couldn’t help but reminisce of simpler times, when they weren't full-time heroes with their own schedules.

Leo whistled, allowing his presence to be known to his twin as he came up beside him. Then, he plopped down right next to Donnie and propped himself up against his brother's battle-shell.

Donnie grunted at the contact, then shot Leo a look, "Do you mind?"

"No, I'm good, thanks for asking," Leo grinned. He flipped through his stack of comics, humming to himself as he selected the issue off the top.

"Then why are you—," Donnie glared, "— alright, Leo, what did you break?"

"Nothing! Nothing's broken," Leo defended. "What, can I not hang out with my favorite bro~?"

Donnie eyed Leo, only able the detect one lie in the Slider's claim: everyone knew Leo's favorite brother was himself.

"Y'know," Leo continued, "I'd be a little comfier if you took off—"

"No."

"But I didn't even say anything!"

"And you don't need to," Donnie replied curtly. "You know the rules, Nardo: I only remove my battle-shells when I'm going to bed."

"Aw, c'monnn!" Leo nudged Donnie in the ribs. "You're not doing any battling! Relax! Get comfortable!"

"I am comfortable," Donnie huffed, "or I was until you decided to squash me."

Leo whined, his eyes glossy like a kicked-puppy. Donnie knew his brother's determination all too well; Leo wasn't going to stop pestering him unless Donnie left or he got what he wanted.

Donnie groaned, "Why do you want to lounge on me so badly?" He asked, miffed yet curious. "There's a recliner right there that's built for optimal back support."

"It has nothing to do with back-support, smarty-pants," Leo said. His voice grew softer," I just... miss hanging out with you like when we were little, that's all."

Donnie knew precisely what his twin was talking about. When they were Tots — and before Donnie took to wearing protective shells around the lair — Leo used to lean against his back. He liked how soft and leathery Donnie's shell was. Sometimes, Leo would simply rest his head and take a nap while Donnie read to himself.

"Just this once, Dee!" Leo's request brought Donnie out of his memories, "For old time's sake? Please?"

Donnie sighed. He couldn't believe he was doing this. He pushed himself onto his elbows and moved to sit upon his knees. Leo gave him space, watching Donnie fiddle with the release mechanism hidden within the shoulder straps of his battle-shell. He detach the bulky purple piece of equipment and set it aside.

"There. Happy?" Donnie laid back down on his front. He felt weird with his shell exposed in such a public space, even if it was only the living room.

“Very~” Leo draped himself over Donnie's shell, carefully positioning himself, so he wasn't bearing too much weight on his twin's back. He reached for one of his comics and began to read.

Donnie rolled his eyes, leaning against his fist as he continued scrolling his newsfeed.

It had been years since Donnie let anyone, let alone Leo, come into contact with his shell, save for the random medical occasion.

Although Donnie would never admit to it, he did miss the days where he let Leo use him as a cushion. But as he grew older, so did Donnie's disliking for togetherness. He became somewhat reclusive, preferring to allow the mechanical arms from his battle-shells to fulfill his displays of brotherly affections.

"You're so tense," Leo noted. "I’m not hurting you, am I?"

"No, it's just... been a while," Donnie explained. "And you're bigger and heavier than when we were kids."

"Y'want me to get off? I can get off..."

"No, it's fine," Donnie shook his head. "Don't worry about it."

But Leo did worry about it. He altered his position, now leaning on his side as if his twin were a bar at a restaurant.

"Better?" Leo asked as he settled back into his comic.

"... yeah," Donnie nodded. "Thanks."

—x—

"Boys?" Splinter called out as he came into the television room. "It's almost time for dinner! I have been calling you for the past—" Splinter stopped in his tracks. It was a sight he hadn't seen in a long time, nor was he expecting to see it at all!

Leo and Donnie were fast asleep, snoring softly with the occasional twitch. There were comic books strewn about Leo, who lay partially across his brother's back.

Splinter tiptoed over towards them. He noted Donnie using his arms to cradle his head, breathing deep and even, much like Leo. The pair must’ve lulled each other to sleep somehow...

"Oh, my sons," Splinter doted, stroking their heads. "What am I to do with you?"

Splinter covered them with a blanket draped over the back of the recliner. He decided it would be better to let them wake up on their own accord than embarrass them.

As Splinter began to leave the television room, he looked back over his shoulder. For a second, it was almost as if he saw two tiny turtle tots nestled peacefully together...

—x—

"Ugh, you drooled on me," Donnie complained. "Now I remember why I stopped letting you lay against my shell!"

Ten minutes after Splinter went to serve dinner, Leo and Donnie woke up, stirred by the heavenly aroma of beef hot-pot wafting in from the kitchen.

"Oh please, you drool on yourself all the time," Leo stretched, rolling the stiffness out of his neck.

"Do not!"

"Do too!"

"Well, at least it's my drool!"

"Oh yeah? Well, you know what—," Leo paused, "— Hey, wait a second, where'd this blanket come from?"

[elegybeatty]

I almost wrote a fucking essay in the tags of an only tangentally related post before realizing it was entirely unneeded, so I decided to just make it its own post, waw. Also, under readmore because it's kind long and super rambly, lmao.

One of my biggest pet peeves is when youtubers just BEG their viewers to turn on notifications for their channel. Like, most of the channels I'm subscribed to I don't even actively watch, I just subbed because I watched them when I was younger but lost interest or I'm vaguely interested in one specific thing they upload and nothing else. If I want notifications from a channel, I'll turn them on, I know how the website works, I don't need a tutorial every time I want to watch, like, splatoon highlights or a pokemon nuzlocke video. "Ring the bell so you never miss an upload" dude, you upload videos at the same time on the same day every single week, if I miss an upload, that was a deliberate choice. Oh, and don't get me STARTED on channels that do daily uploads doing this, I don't need daily pop-ups on my phone telling me when the next upload of your minecraft LP is out, it's out at the same time all the others were literally every other day for the past 5 months. Anyway, the notification bell is reserved only for indie musicians, video essayists, and weird horror/arg channels that only upload, like, 4 times a year at most, everyone else is on their own.

[basthr0hmnse]

“Do you have to eat it like that?” (Gointothevvater 🖤)

Eeeee! Its been a LONG while since i wrote a drabble, andi had so much fun, idk if its actually long cause i wrote it in my phone so i put it under a readmore just in case. Also cause its a little nsft

"Does... You has to eats it like that?"

Aero glanced over, mid lick, as they were eating a popsicle. They pulled their mouth away, wiping the corners of their mouth with their thumb. "Like what?" They asked, licking their thumb.

"Likes... Yous ams making slurping sounds, it's a littles distractings."

They glanced around, the two had been hanging out in Aero's little studio apartment, trying to beat the heat of the summer by cranking the AC and eating cold treats. Sure they could have gone to Mordhaus, but sometimes Toki prefers the privacy their studio over his home. It's 100% guaranteed that no one will walk in and bother them here, it's a 10%, 20% on a good day, that they won't be bothered there.

Aero had looked around to see what they could be distracting him from but the only thing they were doing was watching some trashy reality TV show that they weren't actually paying too much attention to.

"A distraction from what?"

"Froms the shows." He pointed to the TV on their wall displaying a commercial.

Aero put two and two together, a playful smile on their lips as they licked the popsicle once more, this time without slurping. They could tell it was getting him a little hot and bothered, the way their cheeks were flushing already, the way he was gently biting his bottom lip, the way they tried to casually move where they sat, moving so his legs were crossed and uncrossed. He was very bad at hiding when he was horny.

"Aeros, I means it, you-"

"I didn't slurp it that time, that's what you're complaining about, riiiiight?" They teased.

Toki, cheeks flushed deeper, looked away, eyes straining to look at the TV. "C'mon, Aeros, please just eats the "popscockle" like normals."

A weak laugh exhaled their nose and they rolled their eyes. "I was eating it normal before you said anything, it's hot so its melting faster and- oh fuck." They cursed, licking the base where the frozen treat met the stick, not wanting it to become a mess all over their arm.

Out the corner of their eye, they saw Toki look away, almost violently, his ponytail swishing and smacking their cheek a bit. The popsicle melted enough now that they could just bite the rest off the stick and toss it onto the coffee table in front of them.

Turning their head enough, Toki looked to Aero to see if they truly were done, and he was immediately met with their gaze looking at him over their glasses frames. The flush was steady on his face, assuming Aero was going to tease them. "W-Whats?"

"Nothing, you're just so cute." They said, scooting a little closer. "I like how flustered you get." They cooed, reaching up and twirling a loose strand of his hair around their finger.

Toki practically melted, scooting a bit closer to them rather than away. Having someone not negatively tease and criticize everything he did was such a change to his world, let alone the fact that he was in a steady relationship.

"I likes when yous so nice and sweets to mes. Makes me feels goods."

Aero took the chance to scoot closer and shift their body so they were more facing him and placed a hand on his cheek. They turned his face gently so they were face to face. "Because it's what you deserve."

Toki melted, hearts practically in his eyes, and he quickly closed the space between them, pulling them into a deeper kiss than either was expecting. Aero kissed back with the same level of passion and excitement, their body unable to stop as they climbed onto his lap to keep kissing him, to get closer to him.

Toki's mouth pulled away for a moment, saying their name in the form of a gasp, the slight tent in his boxers not having settled.

Aero gently bucked their hips against him and they bit their bottom lip, trying not to giggle.

Toki looked up at them, embarrassed for a split second before he saw the look on their face. They could tell that weren't suppressing their laughter about him, but something else. "Whats, I knows that looks. Whats goings on in that heads?"

"No, no, I was gonna say something stupid and corny." They shake their head quickly.

"Come ons." He said, his tone enticing as he gently squeezed and poked at their hips.

Aero let loose some more giggles and moved their arms so they were threaded around his neck, Toki's face right in their chest. They moved their hips again, grinding a bit more against the small but growing bulge in his pants. "I want another 'popscockle,' can I have this one?"

Toki immediately started giggling and wrapped his arms around Aero's waist, pulling them flush to him and his face ending up deeper into their chest, a muffled 'I loves yous' leaving his lips.

[lordelmelloi2]

I am :eyesemoji: over iforgor.txt and machine-angel.wip can i know what thats' about :eyesemojiagain:

I'll just post iforgot.txt tbh I don't even think I posted this in the server either 🤔 (iforgor.txt under the cut) iforgor.txt was just a waverose drabble I wrote about candidity and the camera and wanting to preserve the images of someone you love in their natural state. Click the readmore link to see two idiots talking to each other at night in their shared bedroom!!!

"Waver." "Hm?"

Dim light in the bedroom soaks the corners of the room, soft shadows like brush strokes floating down the walls. Rose sits at the desk inside the room and turns around to see Waver undressing, raising his shirt just above his ribcage, visible in the gentle light, while Waver inquisitively holds his pose, waiting for Rose to finish his thought, although he knows that the blonde one enjoys watching him in various states of undress overall.

It is a moment before Rose speaks again, with Waver lowering his shirt back down as Rose begins to talk.

"I have something kind of insane to ask you." "How insane do you mean?" "Well. Um, if I explain it, it'll probably sound less, insane? Maybe? How do I put this…" Rose blinks twice and then looks away, then back at Waver's shirt. "I was thinking about how much I like seeing you in candid situations. I wanted to know if… it's okay if I take pictures of you every so often, just doing random things, just so I can have those pictures to look at?" "…Huh. That's not as weird as I was thinking you were going to say, but I'll have to think about it for a moment. Um, not that I don't trust you or anything. I'm sure you know there are probably times that I won't want you to take pictures, like if I'm crying or on the toile--" "No, and no yeah I wouldn't take pictures of you doing stuff that… you get the idea," Rose gestures with a downward palm swipe then quick flow to the right to indicate his disinterest. "I'm not doing this to push boundaries or anything. I just want to have pictures of you that I can look at, natural pictures. Photos where you aren't prepared to perform. Or even photos where you're performing in a different sense." "I see what you mean. Hmm… And you won't be sharing these pictures?" "Not without your permission. If it's something innocuous and I trust the other person i.e. it's someone like Gray or Flat or Svin or Melvin, is it okay to show the image to them? I don't have intent to send them the data of the image for the sake of your safety." "You mean to pull it up on your phone and to show them, right? I guess that's okay, as long as it's not something too embarrassing." "I'm not going to whip out my phone to take pictures of you doing embarrassing stuff. It's really more like…" Rose looks upwards and leans back in his chair thoughtfully.

"It's more like, the way you look with your hair draping down past your shoulders and dangling when you lean over to read something at the table, or the way you look when you're focused on studying or grading papers or writing, or even something like now when you're just taking off a shirt… little things like this. The way you cross your legs and the way you relax. I love to see you relaxing. When you go out on trips and I don't get to come, I miss you so much, and I miss seeing you just… existing around the house. That's why I was thinking of doing this."

"That's fine. Just let me know afterwards if you've taken a picture or two. It sounds like anything I would complain about you've already considered. Is it okay if …" Waver pauses and also looks to the side for a moment. "Can I do the same with you?"

"Nothing embarrassing, and also, don't show anyone anything, and also tell me after you've taken a picture. I'm a little paranoid about pictures of me being shown to people…"

"Oh, god, I'm sorry, I forgot about-" "Nono, it's okay. If it's just for your eyes, then it's wonderful. I just don't want to be shown off without my consent. If we're together and with friends I might say 'show them that pic where I'm-' but if it's just you then I'd prefer not to be shown."

"That makes sense. Okay, then." "Actually, I have to ask you. Don't you ever feel the same? You're already practically a spectacle figure in the Mage's Association. I thought you'd be more firm with who you do and don't want pictures to be seen by…"

Waver takes a deep breath in and sits on the foot of the bed, looking idly forward.

"It's true. I have experienced a massive breach in my privacy on a constant level because of how I live. There's not much I can do about it. Being a Lord of the Clock Tower means I have to be okay with some degree of lacked privacy. That includes being spied on or recorded."

"Doesn't that bother you?" "Of course it does. But if it's family, like you've described, it doesn't make much of a difference to me. If my family sees it, then it's no different. And," Waver smiles gently. "I really don't mind candid pictures that much. It captures a moment in time. For both of us, because we treasure our memories, photography is an incredibly viable avenue to try to keep these memories close to our hearts. So, given your circumstances and amnesia, I think it's okay if you take pictures of me every so often."

"…I remember you said Camus used to do that, too." "Camus didn't have bad intentions. It's different when the person behind the lense loves you." "I haven't really experienced that a whole lot, yet." "You know," Waver coughs briefly. "If you're really not comfortable with it, I don't have to reciprocate this. It's no bother."

Rose pinches the bridge of his forehead, closing his eyes.

"You know, I'm not sure if it really bothers me all that much. I've had friends and other photographers and cameramen take pictures of me candidly and really enjoyed it. Maybe it just has to do with pictures of me around the home." "I can keep it to just pictures of you in public if that's what you'd like." "But at the same time, it feels like those pictures are also just part of performance. And I …" Rose pauses. "I'm supposed to be trying not to exist in that constant state anymore, I think?"

"It's no shame to not want to be photographed before you can look decent on camera, but… hmmm. To get you out of that mindset… you have to also consider that the person taking pictures of you like this sees you in this state every day and still loves you very much."

Rose petulantly pouts.

"What's wrong?" Waver cocks an eyebrow. "I thought that was the answer you were looking for." "I don't like it." "What. Do you want me to make you get up at 5 AM in the morning to put makeup on before I wake up? Bleary-eyed, rolling over, nudging you, 'Good morning, my love, now get up and go smear foundation all over your face, or else you won't like any of the pictures I take of you later',?" "Why do you have to be so mean to Rose?" Rose complains. Waver laughs. "You're too easy to tease, even for me. Still, I'm not sure what you want. You don't want to be photographed before you're presentable, even though I love you just as you are?" "It's, ugh, I dunno. I don't knowww…" Rose pulls on the sides of his hair, then runs his fingers up through his scalp. "I can't decide what I want. This contradiction is beating my ass up right now." "Why don't you sleep on it?" Waver suggests. "Why don't YOU sleep on it, huh?" Rose bitches again. Waver sighs, laying his back down on the bed, arms spread out, legs dangling over the edge. He looks up at the ceiling, quietly in thought.

"I'm sorry I'm so fickle like this." Rose murmurs, looking apologetic. "It's okay. I don't hate it." Waver tilts his head over to look at Rose, though Rose can't see Waver's mouth over his shoulder and long black hair. "Your fickleness is one of your lovable flaws." "To you, maybe. To everyone else it's frustrating." "It's only frustrating to some people. And, it's only frustrating sometimes. This isn't something we have to decide on tonight. You already know where I stand on this matter." Waver rolls over, stretching, then rolls over again, facing towards Rose, stretching again, then leans on his right elbow and drapes his left arm down past his side, where his shirt has risen just a little, showing off the most dazzling bit of midriff, soft skin, forcing Rose to try to pretend like he wasn't obsessed with it. Which he was. And which Waver knew very, very well, given the way he knew Rose was.

"I still can't get over how beautiful you look," Rose finally admits out loud. Waver smiles wide. "I'm happy to be complimented so frequently by you." "God, do you even know how beautiful you are? Do you even have any inkling of an idea of how beautiful you are, how gorgeous you are?" "I hate to admit this, but I do, given my recurring rank status of a certain underground poll held secretly by the Department of Policies that turned out to be a data collection scheme." "You were fourth right?" "In the future, I rank first." "What happened, did the other guys die or something? Or did your students sabotage the vote perhaps?" "N-No! Or, well, honestly, I don't know. Maybe they did? I didn't look or think too hard about it, so long as my students weren't running an online syndicate." Waver's ears are a little pink. "You're so cute. It's stuff like this I want to see all the time." "Why don't you take a picture?" "You know I'm taking one, though. It defeats the purpose." "I'm asking."

Rose smiles wide and grabs his phone, tilting it sideways, focusing as best as he can on the lounging man in front of him. Waver gives a soft smile, his ears are still slightly pinkish, only noticeable to those who really know him well,

[avenger-hawk]

Why do you like Kakasasu?

I waited to reply to this because I wanted to be sure it wasn’t a troll and it wasn’t a drama starting attempt (like this or this, gems found in the sasuke/KS tag) since it’s a subject I am very interested in.

I replied to Kakashi/Sasuke related asks, shippy or not shippy, here, here and here. More about them here, here and here. Put yourself comfortable cause this is gonna be long. Not putting it under a readmore cause I remember ppl complaining they coulnd’t open it on mobile phones (?). Also, moralists who are lurking: don’t interact, get out of my blog. Youll be blocked on sight.

When I started reading N*ruto I was into Bleach a lot, and the fact that the characters were a little older and looked older made me not get into Nar that much at first, because they looked like kiddies lol. I didn’t care about Nar as a character and his initial rivalry with Sas was cute but not enough to get me interested. Only when Kakashi got closer to Sasuke I started being veery interested in the story and in the characters. What I found intriguing was that Kakashi was older and an authority figure, but also someone to look up and who helped his students, BUT at the same time he wasn’t exactly a father-like figure or a big brother-like figure, because he had his dark side, that back then wasn’t well flashed out but that nevertheless showed a closed-off person who kept everything inside, not letting others get too close to him.

(then I started liking N*rusasu mostly because there were so many cool doujinshi especially Emi10/Rankai and Engawaken, while KS doujinshi were so meh, kinda in old yaoi style like Loveless, with tiny Sas who looked even younger hahaha, not my thing)

As those who know my blog and/or my writing know already, I am not interested in healthy, cute, positive dynamics in fiction. I might enjoy them, I might be happy when there are such moments, but I can’t like a whole relationship/dynamic/story only like this because I like to explore complicated ones in fiction.Because fiction is very useful for this, it makes you explore dark, taboo things, without affecting reality (no matter what idiots say), it’s cathartic, it’s a way to do, see, experience things without doing anything.

Back to topic tho, I found their initial dynamic very intriguing. A broken, traumatized yet extremely driven Sasuke, acting as confident and strong as he can, but showing his trauma in various occasions, otherwise being mostly aloof, lost in his own thoughts, and a differently broken Kakashi, acting chill but at the same time always ready to act when needed, yet always kinda distracted, aloof, lost in his owh thoughts (and later we’ll know he took Obito’s mannerisms because he was a stickler to rules). The way Kakashi takes a special interest for Sasuke, clearly the most driven, the best of the team, with whom he holds back much less (when he trains them, like when in the beginning, during the bell test, he fights with Sas and seeing that he almost took it, he overpowers him) while he is different with the others (Nar will have Jiraiya later). The way he protects Sasuke during the chuunin exams, while he’s in the hospital and Kabuto is trying to kill him.

Mostly, the controversial moments...like I said I live for these kind of things. where he both protects and threatens him...like when he does that seal to Sasuke, for his curse mark, and he tells him that if that curse mark takes over he’ll kill him. Or when he ties Sasuke up so he won’t join Orochimaru.

Before someone says bs like *you’re not Sas fan if you like that scene* (I know there are many like this and I want all of them out of my blog btw) uh, it’s not how it works guys. You can support a character and still be intrigued by scenes where said character is tied up/in a forcibly submitted position and so on. Guess what, some of those scenes are made for fanservice even (and Sas has many of these, so if you don’t see the appeal/refuse to admit that there is appeal, it’s you who have a problem). So even tho I disagree with Kakashi not wanting to listen to Sasuke’s reasons for revenge (and later supporting SHikamaru’s, I replied to this in one of the asks I linked) I do find that scene interesting...I mean Sasuke tied up in a very suggestive way and yet defying him and threatening to kill his loved ones and Kakashi opening up in a very weird way vaguely replying that he lost those ppl already? It shows a lot about them, their personalities, everything.

I am sticking to part 1 because there are more meaningful interactions between them, I wished there were more in part 2 but kishi shifted Kakashi’s ‘interest’ to Nar, making him one of Nar’s followers...even so, the intractions they had were very interesting. Their fight after Sasuke fights Danzo is one of my fave moments in the whole story tbh, much more than the later confrontation with Nar. Kakashi for the first time has an inner only, yet strong, emotional reaction, having to fight and supposedly kill his former student who became a rogue with a death sentence on his head...he realizes this is how Hiruzen felt against Orochimaru. It’s a strong realization from someone like him who was always so closed off and aloof that he totally lacked empathy.

On the other hand Sasuke is in a different mindset. He’s sort of high for having succeeded in eliminating the one who made Itachi suffer so much, he’s thinking about killing the elders and destroy the village, so he’s basically lost in the recent past of Danzo’s death and in the future plans he’s making, he’s not in the present moment almost...but he has to fight anyway, and it’s a cool fight, also because he’s weakened already and Kakashi is strong...and then he gets blind, totally, and it’s an amazingly intriguing moment, the kind of controversial stuff I’m interested in, because that’s when he could be totally overpowered by Kakashi, if the story didn’t have other priorities (putting Nar in the center of attention with their confrontation).

Their later moments, like during the war, are meh cause the interest shifted already completely, but their moments in jail (anime only ofc) and their Shinden interactions (only through messages) are interesting to me. Very much so, because they show power dynamics very well, with Kakashi as THE authority and Sasuke as the one submitted. In jail it’s even more evident with him looking down at the younger tied up and blindfolded...like, wow. It’s like fanfiction material (in fact I wrote one (ff.net/a03) and there was the coolest fanart inspired by it! here..there were more but this came on my dash today so).

You mentioned power dynamics...their dynamics are all power dynamics because Kakashi was never at Sasuke’s same level and he never acted like he was, and when Sasuke was stronger, during the war, they basically didn’t interact, and when the war was over and Sasuke was brainwashed and tamed into submission the power dynamic remained the same.

The difference imo between them and other power dynamics based pairings is that they are closer than what could be defined rare pairings such as Obito (they had a very interesting one tho, if only it was developed), Madara (the story was already developed in a pro Konoha-anti Uchiha way but it would have been so cool to have the 2 Uchiha interact more), or other older and stronger characters, so the dynamic could be written in a cool way in a fanfiction but in canon Kakashi created it already. So, while I can imagine something like Shisui/Sasuke, Obisasu or more, in my head, and I can come up with some AU or canon divergent/canon behind the screen (like when Sas stayed with Obito after the transplant), Kakashi and Sasuke had canon interactions that showed power dynamics already.

(Then there is Itasasu, which is a huge power dynamic based relationship, that also had amazingly strong feelings though, and those who know me know that for me Itachi will always be Sasuke’s most loved person, and that he was the same for Itachi. So ofc imo IS is a much stronger bond compared to KS but still. Also I remember in the beginning how many fics I read where Itachi was abusive to Sas and Kakashi stepped in lol. And it’s not a mystery that even though I think the IS bond is the strongest I find other pairings and character dynamics very interesting, so much that I like to explore them even more than IS, which, imo, is almost a given fact so I don’t always feel the need to explore it)

Another thing I find intriguing is that Kakashi always saw Sas at his ‘worst’...in Konoha’s terms I mean. When he wanted revenge in pt 1, after he killed Danzo and he was weak and so desperate and hysterical that they thought he got crazy, when he was jailed. It’s a big power he has, to be able to see someone like this.

Tbh it’s a pity that there were no post war moments (B*ruto shit doesn’t count) where they interact ‘normally’ cause I would have liked to see them, both as normal interactions where they get closer again, now that Sas is older, where they train and they get physical (and Kakashi has a lot of repressed anger, jealousy and possessiveness to let out on the one who betrayed his sensei and went to another...not my opinion but it could be Kakashi’s pov) because I think power dynamic would come up a lot, even from apparently cute moments.

I’ll end this super long essay hoping that you didn’t fall asleep lol, and adding that Kakasasu was the first Nar pairing I shipped, which it speaks a lot about why I get so irritated when someone mentions it negatively.