#your goal even deleting a sentence counts its all work its all working and i hit such a massive road block w this one scene

[crunchycrystals]

sometimes writing is lying on the floor listening to taylor swift to get into a character's mindset

[savemesomenachos]

Repost: Tags not working

Request: Okay now I kinda want a part 3, where Stucky are feeling better and they ruin the reader completely. And at the end the reader sneezes and they're all like oh no we dead now, with slight protective stucky jumping into action and babying the reader. Is that something you could write? Idk if you do smut, but Yee💕

I love how this had become a three part fic *cue squeal*✨

Previous

Enfin !

AN: I couldn’t get the damn tags to work the first time, so I had to delete and post all over again. ENJOY!!!

Pairing: Stucky x Reader

Warnings: Soft SMUT (Heavy making out, oral – F receiving, double penetration, anal sex)

Word Count: 1628

18+, DNI

Y/n’s POV:

“Baby, wake up!” a voice, distinctly Bucky sounded in my ear. A groan escapes my mouth and I roll over to cuddle farther into the sheets.

“Come on!” he whines, pulling the sheets off me completely. My eyes squint against the light and blearily open to reveal Bucky and Steve sitting on either side of me with a thermometer in hand.

“The fever’s gone,” Steve says as he leans in to kiss my forehead.

“What he really means is,” Bucky says while throwing a mock glare in Steve’s direction “that we can have sex!”

“You told me you’ll wait till I tell her Buck.”

“But you were taking so fucking long punk. I couldn’t wait.”

“Boys!” my raspy voice makes the both of them turn their heads to look at me. “I’m gonna go brush my teeth. Until then, I want you to warm each other up for me, ok?” I ask as I slip of the bed with a sultry look in my eyes. Their jaws drop while I giggle and race to the bathroom.

When I’m done, I tiptoe out and catch them ridding each other of their clothes. As I make my way to the bed, I strip my pyjamas and bra off. When I reach the foot of the bed, I stand and stare at them waiting for them to realize that I’m there.

Steve extends an arm in invitation and impatiently, like it’s gonna disappear, I grasp it and he pulls me in between them both.

My head falls back against Steve’s chest as Bucky peppers kisses on my neck. My chest rises and falls heavily with every breath I draw and Bucky seems to love how breathless he seems to make me. His smirk widens when Steve’s fingers graze my throbbing clit through my soaked underwear.

“Already soaked, peaches?” Bucky coos as he sits on his legs and leans forward to lap at my hard nipple while tweaking the other with metal digits.

Steve chuckles against my ear at Bucky’s question before slipping my panties off completely, kissing a path down my spine with a hand firmly supporting the small of my back.

“Lie down baby,” Steve orders as he nudges me to lay my head on the pillow. I comply and immediately the both of them pulls my knees up to opposite shoulders.

They start to kiss and bite their way down my legs beginning at my ankle. As they approach the crux of my legs, they become more impatient.

They both lie down with their chest against the bed, their head between my legs and an arm across my waist, pinning me to the bed.

“You took such good care of us doll,” Steve whispers as he props himself on his elbows and presses his lips against my hipbone in a firm kiss.

“Our turn now peaches,” Bucky completes his sentence before he dives in to slurp greedily at my drenched pussy. His plump lips wrap around my clit and begin to suck while his cold knuckles graze my pussy lips.

Steve makes his way to my breasts, leaving a burning trail of bites in his wake. A large, warm palm cups my left breast as he wraps and arm around my waist to keep me steady against his continuous but not unwelcomed assault on my breast.

My hand shoots out to clutch the sheets in anticipation of the building orgasm as my eyes flit between both of them. Bucky chuckles at the sight and it sends a zap down my spine all the way to my clit.

I gasp and shift my hand to his hair instead. He moans at my white knuckled grip and his lips begin to suck even harder on my clit before he shifts his attention further south and his tongue enters my pussy.

My back arches and my breast is pushed further into Steve’s mouth. He bites at my nipple in retaliation and angles his head to catch my lips in a sloppy kiss. His tongue makes its way into my mouth and a moan gets caught in my throat.

My hand wraps around his neck to pull him closer into me but he only laughs in amusement. A whine bubbles at my throat when I feel Bucky’s fingers caressing the opening of my pussy. After only a moment of teasing, his fingers finally slot themselves inside me.

I brace myself on my elbows so I can catch a glimpse of Bucky devouring me. Steve slots behind me and his cock grazes my back with each miniscule movement.

My grasp on Bucky’s hair tightens to the point where I think I might’ve pulled some out but in the heat of the moment, neither of us seemed to care.

Nothing but the impending orgasm seemed to matter. Bucky’s fingers scissor faster and harder, his lips suck harder and faster. My back arches and my thighs tremble as my orgasm washes over me in waves. I would’ve been swept away if not for Bucky and Steve’s grounding presences.

“Come here,” I command as I pull Bucky’s smirking face closer to my heated and flushed one. I crush our lips together in a heated kiss as Steve’s lines kisses on the column of my neck. It’s all tongue and teeth with no signs of stopping until Bucky shifts on one side of me and Steve, the other.

Their hands run all over my body and mine all over theirs. Bucky pulls away with a smug little smile and runs his cock through my folds while Steve runs his all over my ass.

I groan as rock against the both of them. My fist wraps around Bucky’s member first and I sink his cock into my waiting pussy. We both sigh at the feeling before I feel Steve’s cock twitch at the lack of attention. His saliva coated fingers prod at my hole and he enters one with the greatest care. Bucky’s impatient whine pulls a raspy chuckle from me.

“Patience baby, Steve has to catch up,” I whisper as I lean forward to distract Bucky and flutter my walls around his throbbing member.

“Fuck!” he growls but stops moving anyway. Steve has already got to three fingers and is now spitting all over his cock.

I throw a pleading glance over my shoulder and Steve immediately relents. His cock presses into my tight opening and I gasp at the pressure. His arm wraps around my waist and his head rests between my shoulder blade in silent support.

Slowly but steadily, he presses in further while my eyes shut against the intense pleasure and only open when he’s flush with my back.

Bucky takes that as his cue to move and he slowly begins to rock against my front. “Bucky!” I moan as his cock immediately and punishingly starts to ram into my g-spot.

As I start to relax into the movements, Steve moves. Slowly at first but then to a point where his goal is clear. They both move with purpose and precision, their thrusts never faltering, knowing what to expect every time we have this dance. They know my body, in and out. They know it like no other and they know exactly which string controls which movement and which sound.

We’ve had this dance too many times for them to not know. They could do it blindfolded now. Their thrusts now sharper, graze against the spot that makes me cry and I tumble into bliss. Supernovas burst against my eyelids as they release their seed inside of me.

Suddenly, I feel another sensation build, different this time. It tickles my eyes and my nose and my stomach clenches. Almost instantaneously, I sneeze.

The movements around me freeze while I only process in shock. A laugh makes its way into my mouth and I fall face first into Bucky’s chest. With the both of them still wrapped around me, I feel their laughs reverberate through my chest and my heart warms.

“I think we gave you the bug honey,” Bucky says as he mouth at my neck.

“Guess you did,” I say, nuzzling my suddenly red nose in Steve’s neck.

“I’m gonna go run a hot bath,” Bucky declares, half out of bed already.

“Come on,” Steve says as he tucks an arm under my knees and one around my shoulders. My arms wrap around his own for support, as he carries me into the adjoining bathroom where Bucky throws a bath bomb into the tub.

Steve deposits me on the counter as the water fills the tub and the sweet scent of lavender envelops us. I walk over to Bucky and with his support, climb into the warm, lavender scented water. Steve undertakes the responsibility of lighting some candles before joining us.

“I’ll make some soup for you later on,” Steve whispers as he scrubs the loofah over my shoulders.

“Mhmm,” I hum in content as my muscles relax against his diligent hands.

“We tire you out?” Bucky asks with a smirk pulled across his lips.

“Yeah, somethin’ like that,” I whisper, pulling him into my chest and pressing a kiss to his wet hair.

“I love you,” I breathe in the silence of the room. Steve’s arms tighten around me and Bucky presses a soft kiss to the top of my breast.

“We love you too honey,” Steve says as he pulls the both of us into either crook of his arms.

“Round 2?” Bucky mumbles questioningly as me and Steve share an amused look.

“Sure Buck,” Steve says which makes Bucky’s head snap up.

“Really?”

“No!”

“At this rate, I’m gonna die with the lack of sex”

“Nobody dies from lack of sex, jerk.”

“I might.”

‘Bucky, I love you but shut up.”

TAGLIST:-

Permanent: @julyvegan @tenaciousperfectionunknown@mysweetlittledesire @bbl32 @noshame-bb @cece5 @white-wolf1940 @marvelfansworld @jassiejj2118 @sohosteve @sia2raw@amelia-song-pond @lovewolfspirit @iwannabekilledtwice@mollyscoffe45 @sohoseb @honeymarvel @hart-failure @Clints-worldavengers

Love & Other Desires: @fallenoutofrose @edityourwishingwell@lolipop9090

Stucky: @spookyparadisesheep @marvelatthisone@eviegall@lolipop9090

*if your username is in italics and with a strikethrough, it means I couldn’t tag you for some reason*

If you wanna be tagged in my works, lemme know here

You can find my other works on my Main Masterlist.

[alexseanchai]

Fanfic 2020 in Review

I got tagged by @kasienda @noirshitsuji and @marvelousmsmol and I am tagging whoever wants to play!

1) List of fics completed this year in the order they were finished:

*filters own works to complete and updated in 2020*

1 - 20 of 57 Works by AlexSeanchai

nope. *adds filter to include only works of at least 1000 words*

unless otherwise indicated, these are all Miraculous Ladybug:

“don’t bake it lying down”, post-reveal Marichat vs Felix Graham de Vanily

“veracity”, canon divergence from “Ladybug” featuring Mister Bug and Verity Queen (so also Marichat, I guess)

“(no request is too extreme, if) your heart is in your dream”, in which Hawkmoth wins, for the thirty seconds or so before Emilie saves Ladybug and Chat Noir’s lives

“tell me you love me and make me believe it”, in which trans girl Chatonne Noire ropes Ladybug into helping plan her civilian self’s escape slash social transition

“kingmaker, oathbreaker”, in which Hawkmoth wins and Emilie watches her son remove himself from the family

“stay and let me watch you break it down” (Twelve Dancing Princesses), a modern setting

“set a course for winds of fortune”, in which trans girl Chatonne Noire has already escaped and Gabriel and Nathalie are trying to bring Gabriel’s son home

“we ground love in a hopeless place”, in which post-reveal Marinette’s attempt to remain resolutely not in love with her partner dissolves like sugar in coffee when they start a pun war

“ring the bells that still can ring”, in which Alya is deeply confused about why Adrien and Marinette are planning a wedding when last night both were single

“burning wishes at both ends (the cold wind and long loud wail remix)”, in which Gabriel made a monkey’s paw wish and Emilie makes another

“words cannot espresso”, in which Marinette’s OC roommate is justifiably worried for Marinette’s safety, and meanwhile Adrien takes care of Marinette

“the compromise of truth” (the chronologically second-earliest part posted to date of nine lives, snake’s eyes), in which Adrien tells his friends how he won some freedom and respect from his father

“At The Present Time”, the Ladrien/Ladynoir marriage proposal follow-up to @art-deco-shrimp‘s  “Your Presents Required”

“j'ai rêvé (so I don't have to dream alone)”, in which the events of canon must just have been a series of dream sequences, Marinette and Adrien both think, until they both arrive at Chloe’s Halloween masquerade dressed as themselves from the dreams

2) Number of words written:

ahahaha no. I am not counting all my scattered fic drafts and trying to figure out what I did and didn’t write in 2020. I refuse.

AO3 says I posted 162K in 2020. it is counting all of keeps you guessing (like any real love), which (a) I started posting in 2019 (b) is co-written by @galahadwilder​; it is counting all of my meta snippets collection, much of which was written in 2019; it is counting the Vimeo passwords for my vids. but I probably cleared 150K by a safe margin.

3) Your most popular fic:

“veracity” has a four-digit kudos count, wow, when’d that happen? this is also the 2020 work with the most hits and the most bookmarks, but “tell me you love me” has four-thirds as many comments as its nearest competitor.

4) Your personal fav:

“cannot break us, not with a thousand swords”, no question about it. this is the one in which Ladybug proposes marriage to Chat Noir via Princess Bride meme on Tumblr. (if you intend to download the work or otherwise to consume it with creator style off, you want the accessible version instead of the primary version.)

5) Your fav scene:

aaaaaaaaa

—okay so this is cheating and I know it, since Uncertain Humors (the one where Marinette/Adrien is both Orpheus/Eurydice and Theseus/Ariadne) is nowhere near finished, never mind posted (maybe I'll get “Sanguine” done to post on my birthday?)

but it is still my favorite of the year. as you might guess from that description of the story, this scene has content notes for character death:

Hell is a maze. Marinette walks.

This acrid passage has little to see but damp stone, seeming blood-stained in the dim carmine light. At about the height of her heart, the faintly glowing thread cuts through the not-clammy air; it ought to be pulsing at the same rate as the heart it's bound to. She might be able to see her own reflection if she looked down at the open sewage pipe, or at one of the puddles that now and again she splashes through, dampening the canvas of her shoes. She might see reflected what's behind her.

She remembers Mme. Mendeleiev lecturing on human physiology. In healthy humans old enough to have learned how, urination is a voluntary action: one may not know which muscles one tenses and relaxes in order to do so, and probably isn't paying attention to those details when one is doing, but one has conscious control over whether one does. Usually. Stress and anxiety mean some people are unable to relax the relevant sphincter muscle and others are unable to stop themselves. It's voluntary for cats, too: it's one way they mark their territories. Cat-boys have other ways.

There is a moment in every human life when all one's muscles relax at once. Some Parisians have had several such moments.

The thread is braided with itself around her left fourth finger, rows of tiny red half-hitch knots, and falls loosely over the back of her hand to loop twice around her wrist. She holds it wrapped between the fingers of her right hand to keep it at a constant tension, as though knitting with this insubstantial thread, so fragile for something two (two dozen, two million) lives hang from—too thin to sew with, no thicker than one strand of his hair. As she walks, she winds it around and around and around her wrist.

Between her ring finger and her right hand, it loops twice.

Marinette's shoe lands in a puddle she didn't see. The rainwater splashes soundlessly onto her bare ankle and on the stone.

(With cat-like tread, upon our prey we steal— It's a very loud song.)

She walks on.

6) A fic or scene that challenged you:

where the firelight fades, no contest. this is the second story I’ve ever been able to stick with more than a couple hundred words past the 20K mark, but it’s easily the twentieth novel-length I’ve begun. (though also, you know that kedreeva post? well, 90K later, I’m less than 15K from completing this 10K fic! I think.) and I have been learning so much about long-form fiction.

there has also been a lot of weeping and tearing my hair. case in point: I just trashed the chapter 15 draft because I figured out the reason it wasn’t going anywhere! I can probably keep the first few hundred words of that draft without any editing, and another few hundred with some revision...

7) A line of writing you’re proud of:

from “j'ai rêvé (so I don't have to dream alone)”:

Everything about their partnership is fragments of sentences in the dream diary Adrien writes in ultraviolet pen. Disjointed flickers of thought even when examined under the black light he hides in the snack cabinet under packets of Super Yoyo sandwich cookies and bags of cheesy Monster Munch potato chips and boxes of petit écolier butter cookies (chocolat noir)—none of which explains the gym-socks smell. All fleeting incoherent flashes, invisible between the mundane lines of La Modification shelved at his bedside between Leroux and Dumas. None of it is solid. Adrien has more proof his room's haunted.

okay let me break this down for you!

* Adrien started a dream diary to make sense of the memories

* in invisible ink, in a book that (according to Wikipedia) is thematically appropriate and won’t (if Gabriel sees it) look like anything other than Adrien developing an interest in French literature

* shelved between Phantom of the Opera and The Three Musketeers

* look I didn’t come up with the name “black light”

* or “chocolat noir” for what English speakers call “dark chocolate”, or “petit écolier” (that is, “little schoolboy”) for that sort of butter cookie

* also not my fault that “chocolat noir” sounds remarkably like “Chat Noir”, which, attentive readers may have noticed, is not a name that appears in the story after the header and before Miraculous Cure

* I found the website of a store in Boston, Massachusetts that caters to French expats, and the yo-yo cookies and the monster chips were right there in the photos, y’all

* the snack stash and the black light live in the cabinet where, in canon, the Camembert lives; yes, that cheese smells in the real world like gym socks

* this story’s akuma was not able to affect anything but squishy human memory: nobody affected remembers anything about Ladybug or Chat Noir or Hawkmoth, not in any solid way, not even when they read news articles about the subject, and this includes Marinette and Adrien not being able to see or hear or remember their own kwamis—but you know what Adrien’s Insta post about his poltergeist and Adrien’s Insta post with the floating sock don’t show and don’t explicitly refer to?

* I love this paragraph so much (my housemates may have been lovingly mocking me over it)

8) A comment that touched you:

there are people (y’all know who you are) who said y’all are studying my style. I ded of blush.

9) Something that inspired your writing:

by volume of fic drafts that can be blamed on any particular person, the winner is probably @norakwami​

10) Your proudest accomplishment (that one scene; finally finishing that one fic; posting your first fic; etc):

so that longest-story-ever-written record I set in 2007 with the 89.5K story that, till where the firelight fades, was the only story I’d gotten much past 20K?

I broke that fucking record!

and then I deleted the draft of firelight chapter 15 😭

11) Do you have any writing goals for the next year?

I’m starting work on a fantasy novel, a Sleeping Beauty retelling in which I explore (among other things) the economic consequences of the king’s ordering all the spinning wheels burned, and I want to make significant progress on that. and I want to not make my hands any worse; I kind of need those!

(breaking news alert: bodies fucking suck. so does giving yourself repetitive stress injuries in doing one and a half to two people’s worth of work for an organization that was never ever going to pay you more than one person’s worth of pay.)

[cancerbiophd]

Hi, I need some advice please. When I was an undergrad, I did research with a professor who is now my master's thesis advisor. My advisor is literally one of the nicest people I know, and I would even consider us to be friends. However she is super "hands off" when it comes to her students' research; she generally expects us to be very independent and rarely checks in with us. This was fine when I was an undergrad, but I feel lost as a grad student. Since our uni shut down... (1/2)

Since our uni shutdown, my advisor started doing one-on-one meetings with me and my lab mates. During the last meeting, she asked how my thesis writing was going. I panicked and lied and said that I'll have a draft ready by the end of July. The truth is I haven't even started writing it because I don't know how to start, and I think that it's going to turn out horrible. And ofc I feel awful that I felt I had to lie to someone who has only shown me kindness. Should I come clean? (2/2)

Hello there! it’s ok, you’re going to be ok. let’s take this one step at a time and see what the best, most doable plan is moving forward, yeah?

Let’s first start by talking about what a “Draft” is and is not. It’s not a final completed polished work of art and it’s not something that’s made perfect in a day; it’s not the 3-tier photograph-ready wedding cake you will eventually be making. 

A draft is basically: a vision to bake a cake and what kind of cake you want, a collection of ingredients for said cake, knowledge of your kitchen equipment, and maybe a few specific steps here and there (eg. what temperature to set the oven at). And with each version of the draft you’ll slowly build that cake, step by step. 

So for your thesis, it is absolutely acceptable for your first draft to be that pile of ingredients and a vision, aka an outline. Outlines are a great (and necessary, really) place to start. Because it’s a casual collection of words and phrases, you don’t have to deal with the overwhelming task of putting together sentences and paragraph and all that nonsense. Here’s a great resource about making an outline.

And once you start making your outline, you may find yourself putting in more and more detail, until you basically have some parts almost completely written! Here’s more about that. 

Turning in a detailed outline first is also a great way to make sure you’re on track for what your PI envisions your thesis to look like. And be sure to put that in the email when you send over the outline: “Can you let me know if I’m on the right track with the direction of the sections in my thesis?” and/or “Please let me know if you have any suggestions for additional sections”--stuff like that. 

Now, as to how to make sure you have that outline done by the end of July (or sooner! Wouldn’t that be a pleasant surprise for you and your PI):

Don’t wait for inspiration to strike--instead, treat your writing time like a regularly-scheduled class. “Habit has written far more books than inspiration has”. Set aside a block of time each day (and/or a few times each week) to write. And writing isn’t always typing on a word processor; looking up source material, editing, brainstorming--that all counts as writing!

Break your task into doable chunks. Staring at a huge task is overwhelming, so let’s break it down into less overwhelming tasks that are perfect for the block of time you have set aside for writing. How about let’s outline the Introduction tomorrow, and then do Section 1 the next time, etc. 

And plan out all these tasks on a calendar starting today until your July due date, so you can plan ahead and see how much you have to work (eg. do you need only 1 hour a week to write in order to meet your goal? or 5 hours a week?). I prefer doing it on an electronic calendar, in case I need to make changes as time goes on. 

Other tips:

Have a reference manager. EndNote is a popular program, but it costs $$ so I use Mendeley and its Word plug-in to do my in-text citations and references. (It will save you a lot of time if you already have in-text citations ready to go when you’re making your outline--plus your PI can also see what sources you have, and can make suggestions for ones you’re missing)

Save everything you delete onto another document, and save each manuscript version as its own document. That way, if you change your mind about a section, you won’t have to rewrite it. Before I do any major work on my manuscript, I save it as a new doc with that day’s date in the file name.

Seek other mentors. If your PI truly is very hands-off and wants to stay that way, but you need more help, you can seek out the advice of others. This includes, but is not limited to: other grad students in your lab, cohort, or program; other members in your lab like post-docs or other researchers; your committee (if applicable); other professors you’re familiar with. Even if it’s just to have a second pair of eyes to look over a section because you’ve been staring at it for too long. 

If you do want to talk with your PI about your predicament, then go for it. It sounds like your PI will absolutely be understanding. You don’t have to say you lied, just that you’re experiencing some challenges with your writing and would like some help. I would suggest making a few points as to what you can both do to change moving forward, like: maybe dedicate a few minutes during your regular meetings to talk about your writing goals and process (or maybe even have more regular meetings), turn in more regular drafts for your PI to check, and get suggestions for writing resources or potentially other sources of writing mentors. 

How’s that plan? I hope that’s something that find doable, or gives you a few ideas on how you can best move forward :) Good luck! You got this hun!

[writingquestionsanswered]

Hiya! I'm a new writer, aside from an odd bit of fanfiction here and there. I'd like to finally begin an original story. What are your initial actions when beginning a new work? Aside from that, do you have any more tips for me to adhere to? I'm not looking to publish or anything, this is purely for fun.

Guide: Starting a New (Long Fiction) Story

Whether you’re writing for practice, publication, or fun, the process for writing a new original story is different for everyone and often depends on the project itself. Here are some things to consider as you start to prepare and get started on your new story.

1. To plot or not to plot?

The first thing you’ll want to do is decide how much you want to plot out the story before you start writing. Some writers are avid plotters, planning out every detail of their story before they begin. Other writers prefer to take an idea and wing it, and some people plot as they go. At the very least, it’s a good idea to make sure you know the following before you start writing:

Who is your protagonist? What do they want, why do they want it, and how are they going to get it?

When and where is the story set? What parts of this setting will play the biggest role in the story and how?

Who or what is the antagonistic force? Every protagonist needs an antagonist to work against them, creating obstacles they must overcome as they try to reach their goal. An antagonistic force is anyone or anything that creates those obstacles, whether a super villain, overbearing but well-meaning parents, a disease, a natural disaster, or a plague of zombies.

Know your beginning, middle, and end. Before you start writing, it’s a good idea to have a mental picture of how the story starts (your character’s normal life before everything turns upside down), what’s happening at the midpoint (what happens to raise the stakes and give the protagonist a big push toward the “final showdown” with the antagonist), and how the story ends (does your character defeat/survive the antagonistic force? Do they reach their goal? How does your character or their world change as a result?) 

2. Research and Inspiration...

Whether or not you decide to plot, you will probably want to spend a little time doing some research and looking for information. If you are choosing to plot, you may want to do this afterward or during your plotting phase. Ultimately, you’ll want to consider whether there are any elements in your story that you need to know more about before writing them. This might include things like learning what it’s like to be deaf, how castles are laid out, or what kinds of plants and flowers typically grow in forests. If you’re setting your story in a real place, or are using a real place as inspiration, you may want to learn more about that place. If your story takes place in a particular era or involves a particular event or type of event, you will want to research those. For inspiration, you may want to look for pictures of everything from characters and clothing to buildings and places. Some writers enjoy putting together pinterest or tumblr galleries to house inspiring pictures. You may also want to put together character, setting, and story aesthetics (collages), put together a writing playlist that has the right feel for your story, or even travel to places or do activities that are related to your story.

3. Planning, preparation, and organization.

If you’re going to wing it, you’re pretty much ready to get started with writing now. However, if you’re going to plot your story, this is the point where you might want to do a little more planning and preparation before you start writing, and depending on how much stuff you accumulate through these early stages, you’ll probably want to do a little organization, too.

When I start a new story, I always do three things:

-- purchase a three-ring binder and dividers for keeping track of my story plans-- set up a story specific folder on my desktop with necessary subfolders-- set up a story specific folder in my browser with necessary subfolders

I like to decorate my binder with a printed out aesthetic picture and a pretty title on the side. The divider tabs for my binders usually contain sections like: characters, setting, outline/scene list, notes, rough draft, etc. If there is more than one major setting, sometimes I’ll give each setting their own divider. It really just depends on the needs of my story, and sometimes I re-organize my dividers as the story progresses and my needs evolve.

My desktop folder usually contains the following subfolders: drafts, storage, notes-ideas, character stuff, setting stuff, inspiration, and then sometimes I do additional subfolders... like my “character stuff” subfolder might have subfolders for each character or characters in each specific setting.

My browser folder is usually kind of a mess. I will sometimes do subject-specfic subfolders, but usually I just bookmark whatever I need to and make sure the bookmarks I access the most are at the top of the list.

Again, you will probably add to all of this as you actually get into the plotting phase. I consider this phase and the plotting phase to go hand-in-hand. This is really just about getting everything set up and ready to go.

This is also a good time to figure out things like a writing schedule (if you need to set one), daily or weekly word count goals, and get your writing space organized if you have one.

4. Plotting...

There are many different ways you can plot your story, all depending on what works best for you and the needs of your story. Some writers simply like to come up with an exhaustive summary of events from beginning to end. Others like to do some sort of outline. You may want to do a timeline and a scene list as well. My post how to outline a plot will walk you through some of the different options, and my plot and structure master list has lots of other posts that may be useful to you during this time.

5. Start writing!

Once you’ve gotten your story plotted out (or not, if you’re choosing not to plot), it’s time to sit down and start writing. Here are some things to keep in mind:

-- This is the very first draft of your story and it’s going to be ROUGH, which is why it’s often referred to as the “rough draft” or “zero draft.” This draft isn’t going to be perfect. It’s going to be messy, ugly, meandering, and kind of awful, and THAT’S FINE!!! This is just the rough sketch or mockup. You’re going to improve upon it later.

-- Because this is the first draft, now is not the time to worry about word choice, sentence structure, word play, grammar and punctuation, flawless story structure, etc. Just get the story down to the best of your ability. You’re going to make it pretty in the later drafts.

-- Also, because this is the first draft, don’t be afraid to go a little hog wild. You don’t have to worry about word count and having a tight story now. Feel free to go off on tangents, delve into fluffy scenes, and follow weird threads. Dive in and explore your world and its characters. This exploratory process allows you to kind of throw everything at the wall and see what sticks. A lot of the time you’ll end up discovering gems you hadn’t considered initially. Again, you can figure out what to cut out later on.

-- AGAIN... DO NOT EDIT AS YOU GO. I mean, look... sometimes, more experienced writers develop a process where they do edit as they go, and that’s fine. But until you’ve written enough stories from beginning to end to know what works for you, don’t trouble yourself with editing as you go. The most important thing right now is to write this story from beginning to end. Once you get to the end, you can go back and make it pretty.

-- It’s okay to feel frustrated and have days where you need to take a break. You may have days where you just want to delete the story and move on, but don’t do that. If you need to, walk away from it for a few days or a week and come back to it later. If the story still isn’t working for you, save everything and start on a new project, but never delete what you have no matter how much you feel like you hate it now. You never know when inspiration will strike and you’ll decide to go back to an old project.

Good luck with your story!

[koiyyo]

DR1 “modern” MC server HCS!

thx for the ask anon :) this is (one of) the most chaotic things we’ve written but thanks for the prompt because the universe needs more chaos u know (and more minecraft) - mod irusu

ALSO ILL POST THE OTHER GAMES IN LIKE .3 SECONDSD I DONT LIKE BIG BOY POSTS (this is DR1) AND TO THE ANON I PROMISE WERE PROFESSIONAL THE ASK GOT DELETED BY ACCIDENT - mod corn

-by mod irusu, mod cass, mod dragon, mod corn, mod chie and mod kiwi

makoto - “guys we have to go vegan” - started an alliance with kyoko, byakuya, toko and komaru - they don’t kill people they just leave gifts uwu - is to scared to go mining - when he does go mining he finds diamonds within 10 minutes it’s terrifying   - just vibes and decorates the house - named a dog byakuya and gave it to toko to make her happy - toko appreciates

komaru - accidentally hits her dog - cries - has made it her goal to get every flower - so close!! - settles in a flower forest and sees gonta frequently   - they vibe together and find bees - baby talks to her animals

kyoko - tries to strategize ways to get diamonds faster - makoto and nagito ruin that whole idea - found the end portal like 30 minutes in with shuichi - has a whole villager dungeon - results in really good enchantment books - when peoples items get stolen, she pulls a sherlock holmes - has gotten tons of good items as payment

byakuya - literally sucks at minecraft - renews the server monthly cause makoto begged him to - pays others to get him stuff - has literally bought a whole set of diamond armor from nagito with real money - is a nomad because toko hunts him down - steals gold from celeste and makes gold pictures of himself - has a diamond throne - forces toko to fucking throw herself into lava

hiro - “welcome to my how to get high in minecraft tutorial” - claims minecarts go to fast - even if they’re not moving - lives his life as a hermit in the mountain - tho he likes to go around like a merchant giving fortunes - gets paid an emerald, “in the future.. i see u being broke…”

hina - has multiple autofarms   - will eat even if her hunger bar is down only one (1) - convinced sakura to build a martial arts stadium - likes sailing the ocean - attempted to swim across the mc world - gave up midway through cause her hands got tired

toko - antagonizes byakuya daily - leaves him books in all of his chests - when she’s not horny on main she likes hunting flowers with komaru - had to help komaru after she tried making friends with an enderman - has built a library - fills it with chests of her own books - the back has NSFW books,,, komaru will never know - forcefully puts cakes infront of byakuya’s house

sayaka - has pixel art maps of herself all over her house - they have karaoke night on calls - tries to do choreography   - it’s just her walking side to side bless - prob has skins made after her,, uses them - shift unshift shift unshift shift unshift - always goes to ibuki's music venue

leon - has 50 bows for some reason? where’d he get them? nobody knows. - god at snowball fights - lots of papers that are renamed to “autograph by leon” - throws them at people - makes a mansion in mc cause he cant afford one irl

chihiro - co-owns the server with chiaki - has admin commands - probably abuses them - doesn't cheat things in, just uses /smite on kokichi - probably tps people if they ask - has to assist kaede in helping new players cause hes a pro   - in his freetime he makes mods for mc,, server doesn’t know this

mondo - probably a koser - taka stops him from kosing most of the time - has a minecart that he calls his motorcycle   - denies it, but he thinks the cockatiels are cute - has a gang of them now dedicated to his biker group - lives with taka and chihiro

taka - his lifelong goal is to find kokichi and put him in jail for breaking the laws of minecraft by burning down people’s houses - tried to enforce rules on the server - tried to make being horny a crime because of miu - cries cause he can’t catch them all - made a funky jail doe - “STOP! you violated the law. pay the court a fine or serve your sentence. your  stolen goods are now forfeit” - people just leave as he types this out

hifumi - tried to make a build of a vagina but taka stopped him - copies pixel art and puts big titty anime gfs in the world, scattered around randomly, taka had to convince chihiro to ban him, but he refused - does celeste’s dirty work, like getting materials - works out more in mc than irl tbh - has an anime girl skin o god o fuck - tried to add his fanfictions to toko’s library once, got his ass beat - probably uses x-ray texture pack

celeste - honestly just vibes - has a bucket of lava on her incase hifumi tries to interact with her - lives in the nether - has like 3 sets of netherite armour, will beat your ass - “its my aesthetic” - double wields two enchanted netherite swords - shares her tools with kyoko - has made pixel art of victorian paintings - maps them, hangs them around the house

sakura - hina’s bodyguard - sails with her across the sea - has one of the highest kill counts - owner of the martial arts stadium - everyone fights with sticks - sakura is still somehow on top,, - “i don’t need armor im buff” - tried to fight the ender dragon head on,, nearly won - enjoys spending time in her backyard garden

mukuro - tried to convince chiaki and chihiro to put a gun mod on - they refused, almost shot a bitch - unironically listens to hunger games by bajan canadian - “if i can’t have my guns chiaki can't have her house” - got arrested by taka for arson - opts for a crossbow instead - people have to tell her no, it’s not battle royale, just thrive - ‘mukuro is using aimbot’ ‘no im NOT WHAT THE FUCK DO Y-’

junko - spends 20 minutes getting a minecraft skin just to go find another one - changes her skins as fast as her personalities - barely on the server because of this - house is trapped constantly because nobody likes her - therefore she traps other people’s houses - always has a sign saying “it’s punishment time” in front of said traps - constantly stealing so they “feel despair” - always on instagram live streaming her antics - the only person’s house she hasn’t trapped is kokichi’s because she honestly has no fucking clue where he lives i hope these are to ur liking!!! literally all the mods went feral AJKGJKA also ty for taking the time to send a request it made all our hearts uwu - mod corn

[m0etenchandon]

Revenge (Reader x Ben Hardy)

Summary: After Y/N tied her boyfriend Ben to the bed last week, he gets his revenge. Part two of “I think you need to be punished, Ben”

Pairing: Reader x Ben Hardy

Authors note: I deleted this because it literally got no notes (because I hate myself and my thoughts got the better of me) and I worked really hard on it, but I decided I was being dumb so here it is again. Quite a few of you requested this, so hope you guys enjoy it xx

Warnings: SMUT (18+!), dom!Ben, spanking, language, oral, overstimulation, multiple orgasms, unprotected sex

Word count: 3.8 K

Masterlist

Ben walked through the door of your shared apartment. He had just finished at the gym, and you could smell his scent as he came to stand in the doorway of the kitchen. You were dancing around trying to finish a cake for Joes birthday.

“Hi baby, how was your workout?”

His arms came to sneak around your waist, giving you a quick kiss on the lips followed by a shit-eating grin. “It was good, beat my bench-press goal and all”, he said. He leant down trying to kiss you again, but you turned your head avoiding his lips.

“Uhm-no, not until you shower. You stink”. In reply, his arms tightened around you as you were pressed to his sweaty chest.

“Ew, get off of me, Ben”, you giggled.

“As you wish princess”. His arms loosened the grip around your waist before he leant against the kitchen counter, admiring you. He loved the way you moved around the kitchen, completely in your element. You looked beautiful he thought, hair in a messy bun and no makeup. Your body only covered by one of his t-shirts, which was way too big on you.

“What are you looking at there, Jones?”

“Oh nothing, just my beautiful girlfriend that’s all”. He pulled you in for another kiss, which you had to concentrate on not completely melting into. His lips were so soft, and you loved how they fit perfectly against you own.

“Why don’t you make yourself useful and taste this frosting”, you said. Ben dipped his fingers into the smooth mix before putting them between his lips. Damn those lips. He sucked at them while keeping eye contact, and you had to grab onto the counter to steady yourself at the sight before you. You hoped he didn’t notice, but the smirk on his face told otherwise.

You coughed. “Well, how is it? Does it need more sugar?”

“Taste for yourself”, he said before gathering some more frosting with his fingers, bringing them to your lips. You opened your mouth and let his index and middle finger into the warmth. As he did moments ago, you kept eye contact while lightly sucking on them. His eyes had gone a darker shade of green, clearly enjoying the sensation. You took turn sucking each of his fingers before licking them from base to tip, tongue swirling around the very tip of them, making sure they were completely clean. Ben muttered a “fuck” under his breath.

His fingers left your mouth with a pop. “I think it’s perfect, don’t you”, you said placing your hand on his chest. He immediately pulled you flush against your body and crashed his lips against yours. The kiss was desperate, needy. His tongue slipped into your mouth as you moaned, hands traveling to your ass. He turned you around and pressed his hips against yours, effectively trapping you against the counter, a slight bulge detectable against your lower stomach.

“I need you, Ben”, you whined against his lips, hands pulling at his shirt.

“Hmm, you still haven’t got your punishment for tying me to the bed you know”. His lips left your mouth and moved to the spot just below your ear making you whimper. It had been a week since you had tied him up and had your way with him. Things had gone back to normal, and he hadn’t even mentioned it. Not until now. The thought made your panties dampen. You knew he loved making you whimper underneath him, and he thrived on the sounds you made as you came completely undone in front of him.

His hand slowly inched its way down your body, dropping to one of your nipples. You hadn’t bothered with a bra, and he hummed approvingly as he circled one of your nipples over your (his) shirt with his fingers. As his mouth sucked marks onto your neck, you rutted your hips against his desperately trying to get some much-needed friction on your aching core. Your hands pulling on his hair.

“Patience, princess, need you to be a good girl for me”. His fingers dragged down your stomach, circling your hips before ghosting over your clit. You moaned, fingers clawing at his back. He pulled back, looking at you like at predator would look at his prey, leaving you heaving for air against the counter.

“Did I say you could touch me? It’s my time to be in control you know. After what you put me through last week, who knows what I have planned for you, princess. If I were you, I would obey, or you might have to be punished”, he growled, his voice impossibly deep. You nodded, unable to form coherent sentences at this point. The wet patch on your panties growing with his every word.

“Use your words, princess”

“Y-yes, Be-en, I´ll b-behave”

“Good. I’m going to go have a smoke, and when I get back I expect to find you in bed for me. Naked. No touching” he whispered the last part into your ear. You whimpered in response, nodding your head.

“Oh and Y/N, leave these on”. He played with the waistline of your panties before turning on his heel and leaving you alone in your kitchen, a panting mess. You took a few seconds to compose yourself before heading for the bedroom. Your legs were jelly, and when you finally reached the bed you were completely out of breath. The effect he had on you was ridiculous, and he hadn’t even touched you properly yet.

You hastily pulled off your shirt, goosebumps forming on your arms as the cold air hit your hardened nipples. It took all your will power not to touch your aching clit as you laid back on the bed. Ben certainly took his time, normally he would use just a minute or two on a cigarette, but now he was clearly teasing you. He knew how desperate you were at this point.

Taking the risk, your hand slowly inching its way down to your clit, thinking you could rub one out before he came back. You slid two fingers underneath your damp panties, quickly finding the aching nub. Applying a light pressure, you started rubbing small circles onto your clit. A moan left your mouth, which Ben heard as he walked through the door. You pulled your hand out, looking at him innocently. Shit. His eyes bored into yours, as he strode over to the bed. He had a devilish smirk on his face.

“I said no touching, princess”

“I know, but it was just a few seconds I..”. He cut you off, having none of it.

“I don’t care. I said no touching, you slut. Kneel at the end of the bed. Now”. He growled the last part. Your eyes went wide, having never seen this side of him before. As you did like he said, he sat down on the bed next to you before pulling you onto his lap. Your stomach was over his strong thighs, and he put a leg over your knees, effectively keeping you in place. His cock was hard against your stomach, warm and pulsating.

“I said you were going to be punished if you didn’t listen, princess. I´m going to spank you, show you what happens when you don’t behave”, he said. His voice was impossibly deep, sending electric bolts straight to your curve. His hand was caressing your but.

“I think 10 will do for now, don’t you?”

You nodded in response, earning a hard smack on your left cheek. A yelp left your mouth at the unexpected action.

“Use your words princess”

“Y-yes”

He hummed before his hand met your cheek again. Fire spread over your entire body, feeling a slight sting on your bare bottom. Before you could say anything, another smack hit you. You moaned, becoming wetter with each spank. Smack. Smack. Smack. Three quick ones in a row. He took turns hitting each of your cheeks.

“You´re enjoying this, aren’t you, princess? Such a filthy slut for me”

“Y-yes, fuck, Ben”

A moan left his lips at the sight of your red cheeks as four quick smacks hit your body. His own hand stung at this point, rubbing over your cheeks as he let you have a little break.

“Can you do one more for me, princess?”

“Yes”. You didn’t dare not answering. Your cheeks were burning at this point, tears almost leaving your eyes. His hand left your cheek and you screwed your eyes shut, waiting for the last smack. He took his time, wanting to spank you when you least expected it. You had finally started to relax against his thighs when his hand finally hit your cheek again. You yelped, a tear falling down your cheek.

His lifted you off his lap, a thumb coming to your face, collecting the tear you had let slip. He placed a kiss on your lips, before tugging a piece of hair behind your ear. Your bottom stung, but at the same time you felt a delicious warmth spreading all over your body.

“Did so good for me, princess”, he cooed before sitting you next to him.

“Lay down on the bed for me, I´m not done with you yet”. You gulped but did as he said.

He immediately removed his shirt and gym-shorts, leaving just his boxers to cover his very hard cock. Not a word was said before collecting the very same box you had pulled out just a week before. Just like you had, he pulled out the handcuffs along with the vibrator. He decided against the robes.

“I´m not going to tie your feet, but like I said, you need to be a good girl and follow my instructions”

You nodded, keeping eye contact with him as he strode over to the bed. He secured your wrists against the headpost of the bed, just like you had to him. Your but was sore against the bed sheets. He smelled like cigarettes, the scent alone turning you on. His lips left small, wet, kisses all the way down from your wrists, your elbow, armpit, before stopping at your neck. He sucked harshly on the spot just below your ear, earning a loud moan. Ben smirked against your skin, loving the effect he had on you.

“Ben, we are seeing the boys later today, I c-can’t have hickeys, omg.. all over my neck”, you whined, back arching off the bed, desperate for his touch.

“I don’t care, let´s show them who you belong to, princess”. He started moving down your body, stopping at your exposed breasts. Taking one of your nipples into your mouth without warning, you yelped and tugged at the cuffs. You wanted nothing more than to run your hands through his hair. He looked up at you with a grin.

“What’s the matter, princess, having trouble getting to me?”

“Fu-uck you Ben, just p-please touch me”, you moaned. He laughed against your nipple.

“So desperate for my touch, aren’t you? Use your words, princess. What do you need?”

“I-I need you, fuck, p-please, anything! Your finger, oh god, your mo-outh, please, baby”

Ben continued his journey down your stomach, leaving sloppy kisses just above your belly button before moving on to your hips. His kisses were dangerously close to where you wanted him the most, just never quite going there. He left one final kiss just over your clit, earning a whimper.

“Well the thing is, you made me cum in my fucking pants like a horny teenager with no self-control. That was embarrassing you know, so why shouldn’t you be treated the same?”. He reached for the vibrator on the nightstand. You gulped, gaze focused on the purple device which had brought on hours of pleasure.

“Look at me”, Ben said before grabbing your chin, forcing you to do so. His pupils were dilated, hair wet against his forehead from his workout. He turned the vibrator on, letting it fall against your nipples first. He circled them both, making them even harder, before going the same road his kisses had just gone down towards your center. You were a moaning mess underneath him, hips thrusting into the air, desperate for friction. One of his hands came down on your hip, effectively stilling you in the process.

“Ple-ease baby, I need it” you whined. You were so wet for him; your clit was pulsating even though he hadn’t properly touched it yet. He smirked, before moving the vibrator to the very apex of your inner thigh, so close to where you desperately needed him. You pulled at the restraints, still keeping eye contact with him. Without warning, he pressed it directly against your clit, making you scream out his name.

“You like that, princess? Like when the vibrator is, fuck, pressed hard against your little cunt? Gonna cum for me, aren’t you? Gonna cum like the slut you are?”. Afraid of what might actually come out of your mouth at this point, you desperately nodded, moans filling the air. He pressed the vibrator harder against your clit, driving you towards the edge. You were so turned on from his teasing that you found yourself moaning his name in no time. Ben continued to press the vibrator against your clit, letting you ride out your orgasm, a smug grin painted on his face. He didn’t stop though. You were so sensitive from your high that he had to press down hard on your hip to keep you from moving around too much. He started moving the vibrator, drawing little circles onto your clit. You were close again. The pressure was too much, yet so good. Your eyes rolled back into your bead as a second wave of pleasure hit you like a brick wall. You were literally screaming his name at this point, not even caring if the people next door heard. He threw the device onto the bed next to you before ripping your underwear off of you.

“That was so fucking hot Y/N. Taking that vibrator so well, but I´m not done with you yet, princess”

“Oh my god, Ben! I need you, please I need to cum a-again”

“What do you need, use your words, princess”. He caressed your cheek, leaning down to place a soft kiss onto your lips. You desperately wanted more, but he pulled away way too quickly.

“Shit, give me your mouth, please, baby”, you whined. Ben smirked in return, before settling himself between your thighs, spreading them in the process. He wasted no time, tongue immediately lapping at the juices from your last orgasm. He licked from your entrance all the way up to your clit a few times, making you whimper. Bringing his fingers to your entrance, he circled them around a few times before driving them into you. You clenched around him, loving the way his fingers filled you. Pumping them at a fast pace. His lips moved towards your neglected clit, taking it into his mouth. You were at a loss for words as he simultaneously curled his fingers to hit your g-spot as his lips sucked at your clit. He was driving you mad, and he knew it very well. Lips every so often leaving your clit to press kisses to the apex of your thighs, before going back to where you needed him the most. You stared down at him, lips between your teeth as you tried to keep yourself from moaning. You were so close, the knot in your stomach growing tighter and tighter. His eyes met yours which drove you over the edge. Your walls clenched around his fingers, thighs pressing together. A clear liquid shot from your cunt, but you didn’t even notice, too preoccupied trying not to pass out. He continued sucking on your clit, prolonging the duration of the orgasm. It was the hardest you’ve ever cum, feeling the pleasure all the way to your fingertips. Ben hummed against your clit, before moving up towards your face. His entire upper body was soaked. You looked at him with wide eyes.

“Did- did I just?”

“Yeah, princess, you just squirted all over my fingers”

“Oh my god I´m so so-“ he cut you off mid-sentence by pressing a kiss to your lips. You could feel your taste on his tongue as it moved against yours.

“No need to apologize, love. That was so hot”, he whispered into the kiss. He leant up to open your handcuffs, your hands falling down to grab at the hair at the nape of his neck. You were exhausted.

“You did so good, princess. Think you can do one more for me? Watching you cum all over me has gotten me so hard for you”. He pressed his clothed erection against your still sensitive heat, earning a whimper. You didn’t even know how much you needed him inside you until now.

“Yes, please, Ben. I need you to fill me up”. He didn’t need to be asked twice as he removed his boxers. His cock was red and swollen from being neglected when Ben worked on pleasuring you. Pre-cum was dripping from his impossibly hard tip. He dragged his cock through your folds, earning a whimper when it touched your sensitive clit. Looking into your eyes, he slowly pushed in, letting you adjust to his size. He dropped down to kiss you, lips dancing together. There was still lust in the air, but it was less desperate, pure need lingering between the two of you.

You pressed the heels of your feet into his bum, silently begging him to start moving. He did just that. Pulling out slowly, before pushing in all the way. Hard. His cock hit your g-spot with every precise thrust, moans filling the room. You clawed at his back, leaving red stripes. Neither he nor you cared, too caught up in pleasure. His lips left yours, starting to kiss your neck instead. He was probably marking you further, but you didn’t care.

“Ple-ease baby, faster”, you whined into his ear. He picked up his pace, still going hard. His pubic bone has dragging against your clit, creating a delicious friction against the still sensitive bundle of nerves. You were close, and by the way his breathing was becoming ragged, you could tell he was too. He pulled away from your neck, locking his eyes with yours, mouth gaping.

“Fuck, I’m not going to last, princess”

“Me neither, b-baby”, you moaned. You started moving your hips to meet his thrusts, edging him towards the edge. With one particularly hard thrust right against that sweet spot, you clenched around him. It was like the world stood still, the only thing in your mind was him and you. You came hard, your nail drawing blood on his back. Ben followed quickly, your walls clenching around him sending him over the edge, grunting your name in the process. You could feel the hot spurts of cum deep within as you came down from your high. A few sloppy thrusts later, and he pulled out of you. You were left with a sudden feeling of emptiness, making you whine.

He got a tissue from the box beside the bed and gently cleaned you up, making sure to be careful against your sensitive clit. Satisfied with his job, he went to throw it in the bin. You laid in bed completely spent, just watching your boyfriend fondly.

“What?”, he laughed.

“Oh nothing, just admiring my handsome boyfriend, that’s all”, you teased back, using his own words against him.

“Very funny, love”. He laid next to you and pulled you onto his chest before giving your head a kiss.

“That wasn’t that bad, was it? Did I push you too far?”

“No, I enjoyed it. I mean I don’t think I can walk properly later and my bum stings, but all things considered, I deserved that”

“Hmm, so you’re happy you didn’t abstain from sex to avoid this then”, he asked smugly.

“Geez, Ben. Yes, I am. Is that what you want to hear?”

“I have to have my daily dose of ego boost, love”

“For fucks sake” you laughed, leaning up to kiss him, which he gladly returned.

“Mmm, as much as I’m enjoying this, we have to get ready. The gang will be over in an hour, and I have to finish that cake that someone so rudely interrupted me doing”, you said. You pushed off of Ben and went to stand next to the bed. You winced at the soreness in your nether regions as you moved.

“Ugh, fine, but let’s shower together”

“You´re so needy today, Benny. But yes, we can do that, but absolutely no touching”.

He grinned and held his hands up in defense. Walking over to the bathroom, you stopped dead in your tracks when you caught a glimpse of yourself in the mirror. Deep purple hickies were all over the side of your neck. That was going to be a bitch to cover up.

Later that day

You had just placed Joes cake on the table, grinning from ear to ear. He bent down to blow out the candles, and you, deciding to mess with him, pretended to do the same. As you bent down however, you had pushed your hair over your shoulder to keep it from catching fire. He blew out the candles and everyone yelled “Happy birthday” to Joe, but you could hear a loud gasp coming from Lucy.

“Y/N, what happened to your neck!?”.

Shit. You blushed a bright pink color as everyone put two and two together, and looked between you and Ben. He looked proud though, the little prick. Well, at least until Gwil went to pat his back in a ´well done mate´ kind of way, and a hiss left his mouth. Gwils eyes went wide as he lifted Bens shirt to reveal deep red scratch marks down his entire back. You wanted to melt into the couch and disappear.

“Oh come on guys, on my birthday! That’s gross!”, Joe yelled, forgetting all about his cake.

“Get it girl”, Lucy said. She gave you a look, before going to high-five you, which you reluctantly reciprocated.

After the fuss had died down, and the boys had had their turn making fun of you and Ben, he went to pull you into his side. You lent your head on his shoulder, mortified.

“You´re never going to do that again, Benny”. He flinched at the nickname you normally only used in bed, but a smirk fell upon his lips quickly.

“You didn’t seem to mind it a couple of hours ago, love. I seem to remember you moaning my name at the top of your lungs, begging me to fuck you”, he whispered into your ear.

“I swear to god I’m going to chop your balls off, Jones”. You tried to act strict, but you quickly started giggling at the whole situation, hiding the blush on your cheeks as you leant into him further.

Masterlist

[hegglespeggles]

How to write an essay you could not care less about in 10 steps

Hello. I have an essay to write.

I am also, (unfortunately) the kind of lazy, apathetic burnout who will only do my FUCKING work if I get really worked up. Usually that ends up meaning all of my papers are spite-fuelled tirades but my profs seem to like them so fine. I hope you find this particular raging tirade useful.

Today, I would like to educate the 4 of you that will actually see this on a fine art I have perfected over the years. Writing a paper, about which, you do not give a single, solitary, crumb of a fuck about. This is (you may have guessed) and excellent way for me to procrastinate doing a paper that *I* do not give a single solitary crumb of a fuck about. For best results, I recommend doing this NIGHT-BEFORE-PANIC like, a week in advance so you can fix all the NONSENSE that your more reasonable brain will undoubtedly find. But if it’s the night before and you are shit outta luck, this will get ‘er done. And with practice, you can even pull good grades outta these bitches.

 Dissociating? I gotchu. Woke up the day of the deadline to feel like absolute utter garbage? Search no more friends.  

  FAILING GRADES ARE BETTER THAN ZEROS JUST FUCKIN DOOOOOO ITTTT

1.    Go get the prompt.

I fucking mean it. Even if you are like 1000% sure you know what the prompt is asking, go to the FUCKING assignment, and copy that shit into your word document. Got the assignment on paper? TYPE THAT SHIT UP MOTHERFUCKER.

(Do you see what I fucking have to deal with)

Boom?

BOOM.

Congratulations, you now have a document, and whats more, there are WORDS in it!! You aren’t starting from scratch anymore kiddo. Fringe benefit, you always know EXACTLY what the assignment wants because its fucking Staring You Down. Not saying you have to do exactly as it says, mama didn’t raise no BITCH and I aint scared of fuckin CALLING PROFS OUT but if you wanna break the rules you gotta know what they are first

(Disclaimer: I have also been kicked out of class on numerous occasions for fighting with the prof and had full classes where the lecture WAS me arguing so maybe take my opinions of conformity with a grain of salt.)

2.    Math THE FIRST

I know, this is an essay and not a fucking calculus test. But some of this shit is USEFUL OKAY

Take the paper in question. How long does it have to be? Mine is 5 pages. A page is generally accepted to be 250 words (double spaced because we FUCKING LOVE OURSELVES) so 5 x 250 = 1250 wds. That’s the goal. That’s the pinnacle. That’s your new holy grail.

Time to split this bitch up

  3.    Yarrrrrr, CONTENT

And finally, we get to the part that is the reason why you are being an absolute bitch baby about this essay (maybe. I might be projecting. Your life is your life and im sure youre doing your best.) I Hate this part, but now with our magic number we don’t need to pull 5 pages out of the ether.

This part really requires you to know your vibe. Is this something that you have a lot of little opinions (read: evidence) about or like, only 2 or 3 big bois? Look deep into your soul and figure out which is the easiest for you to shit out, a rant or a list. a  great way to do this is to WRITE ANYTHING YOU GOT OUT

Here you can see I’ve put all of the thoughts I have about the question into a list, slapped some standard “opening” and “closing” shit around it so I can FUCKING FIND IT AGAIN and given it a good hard look. Whats the common thread in all of my opinions? That the prompt is fucking stupid and makes no sense is asking 2 different questions. Congratulations: you found your thesis. This essay, like many of my essays, bears the thesis “this is a weird question to be asking” (which falls under my broader category of “bitches aint shit” essays.)

Congratulations you have the bare bones of your skeleton.

  4.    MATH THE SECOND

 The magic number returns. All hail our glorious leader. 1250 right?

So heres how I break this down. Break off a small chunk at the beginning. For this essay im gonna split off the 250. Split that baby in half. Congratulations, now you have a word count on your opening and closing. Personally, I know I like a lil extra space at the end to get all ranty, so Imma split this puppy up 100 for my opening and 150 for the closing. WARNING: You will think that you will be able to write enough in your opening and closing to take up lots of space. You will feel the urge to give them both the same amount of words that you give your points. This is misguided and foolish. Not only will you 1) not be able to do it but 2) even if you did, that’s like getting a sandwich which is all bread. No one wants that. Don’t be that dude. Fight the urge.

 RIGHT SO. We’re still left on the other 1000 words.

If you have an idea that like, is bigger than the others, go ahead and give that puppy more of the word count than the others, fractions are your friend here and you wanna think about how much of your final product each of these babies will be. If you, like me, are an utter buffoon with no clue what youre doing, open your calculator up. Divide the remaining word count by the number of points you have. Congratulations. Youre doing the essaying.

If this is enough to get you started, GREAT! See you at step seven. BEFORE YOU GO I would like to give you this tip

5.    CITE YOUR INFORMATION AS YOU ADD IT IN.

It doesn’t need to be a full citation, just literally a footnote with something that will help you remember where its from and for the love of god WHAT PAGE IT IS ON. The you of 3 hours from now will thank you.

  6.    Filling in the skeleton

 I don’t know about you, but I cant exactly riff off of a single sentence. Like, I know what the VIBE of my point is, but like, I cant pull it out of a hat. The name of the game here is whittling down your arguments into thinner and thinner chunks that are easier and easier to bullshit. This is how you avoid that “burning building found in flames during Brooklyn fire” bullshit that memes. You don’t wanna meme. You wanna pass. So, figure out what the things you are gonna say and in each bit, keep track of how many words you are gonna write. EITHER

a)      You put how many words you think you can write on any point beside the point as you go and just keep developing points and shuffling word counts around until it matches the total for that section

or

b)     You evenly breakup the word count between all the points and keep breaking them down until you look at a subject and a word count and go “yeah that’s doable. I can do that.”

I prefer the second so LEGGO.

Ta-Da!

7.    Write ‘er up

Ahhh glad to see we’re all back together again. Try-hards who can ACTUALLY bullshit papers, glad to see you’ve rejoined us! This is the part where you take all that shit you’ve broken up into nice little chunks and you turn it into something worth reading. You can do it. I believe in you. Try and keep your citations in place.

I like to do this as a question answer thingy, like an exam, so halfway through writing mine is gonna look like this

 The handy part about the numbers is that it gives you a frame of reference for how your bullshit is going. Realized you had a lot more to say here than you thought? Dope! Less bullshit somewhere else, take it out of a weaker point. This point didn’t give as much as you thought it would? Split the difference elsewhere! This way you have checkpoints and you can see how your essay is going

And then you can go ahead and delete your skeleton work. Its time. Its served you well. For extra drama, whisper menacing nothings to it as you send it into the darkness. Personal favourites include “no one will mourn you,” “your fate belongs to me,” and “so this is what you have come to”

  8.    Citations

Theres like a million ways out there to find out how to do your citations and its gonna depend on what kind of a paper you are writing. I use Chicago most of the time, including here. My advice? Use a site like, bib.me or something to do your bibliography, and then plaster that in the bottom of your document. Use that as the building blocks to do your footnotes. Let Purdue Owl be your guide. Purdue Owl Style Guide Is A Mighty Friend Indeed.

 Also your welcome for that, “putting the page numbers in as you put the info in” shit. That took me alarmingly long to figure out. It’s a wonder theyre giving me a degree.

  9.    Proofread that shit, ya bougie bitch.

If you wanna be time effective, getting a friend to proofread while you do your citations is a great way to go. If you have a few days, put your paper away and come back to it. If you are out of friends and time then https://www.paperrater.com/ is your last hope.

  10.       Slap a title page on that shit and GET IT SUBMITTED

 No joke, I have been using the same template for a coverpage all through highschool and my undergrad. There is only one title page and every time I write an essay I take the title page from the last paper I wrote. There is no beginning. Only title page. Title? Topic of paper: point of paper. For example, If I had to title this screed I’d call it Essay Writing: An exploration of mediocrity. slap the date and your name and the course and instructor on there and BAM. YA DONE.

 Anyway submit that shit an go to bed youre done goodnight

EPILOGUE

I’ve gotten this essay back, and when I wrote it, I was barely a human being. Barely capable of human speech let alone a coherent argument. I would forget the end of the sentence by the time I typed out the beginning. But I still for a 70%! is it the best mark I’ve ever gotten? no! but it is a hell of a lot better than the 0% I would have gotten if i hadnt done this. I get it. And i hope this helps. 

[dendrite-blues]

The Pace Gremlin

My writing pace is something of a personal gremlin.

Most days it doesn't bother me. I'm proud of the work I do. I put deep thought into every line.

When I hand it off I have zero anxiety about the feedback, because no one could ever pick it apart as thoroughly as I have.

I beta for opinions, not quality. To have someone else check my character's logic (they have a tendency to make snap decisions without explaining themselves adequately) and to find my infamous typos. By the time others read it, my prose is already at my current personal best. If it wasn't, I would still be writing it.

But when something brings me down emotionally, the pace gremlin is always right behind. Vulnerability has a pheromone that insecurity can't resist. It smells your self doubt and comes running.

I'm sure everyone has their own personal wounds. I'm sure lots of people struggle with the "I'm not creative" demon, the "I never finish anything" demon, the "someone else already did it better" demon. All valid. But not what I struggle with in writing. (Art is different but that's another post.)

The trouble with the pace gremlin is, everybody has a magic trick to "fix" slowness. I've read them all. Good advice, if speed is beneficial to you. I'm sure some people feel very good about a fat word count, and for them such advice is probably a life saver. A few common points in these advice posts:

1) Stop procrastinating. Make a schedule and stick to it. Write everyday.

I'm sure this works if you happen to have fully developed ideas on a schedule. I don't. I need time to gather my thoughts. I burnout, I get stuck, I mope because I'm a bit melodramatic about being stuck. But if you do have endless ideas and energy that never end up on the page, it's solid advice.

2) Stop editing while you write. Force yourself to write without stopping. Time yourself. Don't ever stop to research. Don't ever stop, period, until you've reached your word count.

Because a word count is the end all be all, right? Never mind prose, diction, attempts at originality and style.

People love to blog about this point because there are so many apps to cure it. It makes for good top ten lists, which always get more hits than actual content.

Advise blogs will tell you to turn your monitor off so you can't see what you wrote. They will tell you to put a coin under your backspace so you can't even press it. They will recommend you apps that track your output, apps that mimic typewriters, apps that block your internet usage, apps that punish you for failing. (shudder)

I don't see how any of this promotes quality writing, personally. I don't agree that all writing is good writing. I think of you input half baked crap you get out half baked crap. Who cares if you cover it in buttercream, it's still got raw eggs in it.

I don't buy that it's a bad thing to stop and rearrange the structure of a sentence, to find the exact right word, to question if there's a better way to reveal this plot point. I don't think word counts should be the goal.

3) Let go of perfectionism, "all first drafts are shitty."

Again, I understand that this is important advice for people who are paralyzed by self doubt. The compulsion to rewrite continuously and never progess is strong for some. But there's a difference between finessing and fixating. This advise shouldn't be taken as gospel.

Perfectionism is not an addiction, and it's not something I can quit. It is ingrained in how I evaluate myself. In preschool I arranged my Legos by color. I was literally born this way. Its not going away now.

If I make crap, I feel like a crappy writer. Which makes me hate the crap I made, which discourages me from writing more. Rushing to write crap is the fastest way to sabotage myself, I have learned. (Painfully.)

If someone is genuinely struggling with perfectionism, this is THE WORST advise you could possibly give them. Perfectionists need to feel confident in what they do. They need to produce good results. No, the first draft is never going to be perfect. But it can be good. It can even be great. And the feeling of writing something great can fuel my motivation for weeks.

Which is not to say that it's okay to indulge in endless editing loops. There's a limit. But it's also not okay for me to "write crap and fix it in revision."

I can't polish an paragraph if the paragraph is incoherent, if it has no unique qualities, if its just a meandering line of words I regurgitated to meet a quota. When I come back to edit I will just delete it and rewrite... In which case I'm actually spending more time than if I just wrote it slowly to begin with.

Which brings me to my real point:

There's nothing wrong with slow.

When people talk about slow, all of these other accusations are automatically made. Because it must be that there is something wrong, we are capable of zooming if only we weren't stunted by some hidden inefficiency that prevents us from joining the fast fiction master race.

Nonsense. I'm not slow because I edit too much, or because I don't know what my story is about, or because I lack discipline. I am capable, if given something to copy, of typing 60 words per minute. But I can't think at 60 words per minute.

(In fact, according to my sprinting stats, I think at about 10 words per minute...14 if I'm rushing. Please, hold your applause. Haha)

I'm a slow writer...because I'm a slow thinker. I don't "waste" time spinning my wheels on stuff that doesn't matter. I don't need an app to trick me into being productive. I just need time to think.

When I don't give that to myself... When the pace gremlin catches me unable to defend my insecurities...I make crap. I feel crappy. I convince myself I am the problem and I would already be published if only I let myself write "crappy drafts." If I wasn't held back by my toxic "perfectionism."

Enough. I'll always be slow. Its not a condition, it's the way my brain works. As far as I know, there's no cure for being a tortoise.

And that's fine. In my right mind I am proud of my pace. I take pride in considering every word in every line. I care about craft.

I find drafting sentences at a snail's pace satisfying. It's deliberate. It has gravitas. It's laced with complexities I hope others will detect and appreciate. And when I place my pages in stranger's hands, I know I have raised them with the ability to defend themselves. I have no fear.

I know I will still feel bad about it at some point. That's the nature of creative life. But now I have a post to remind myself why slow is okay. And I guess if anyone else had the same problems, then this post is here for you too. Don't get discouraged. Do it your way and make stories with meaning.

[j-k-notrowling]

Untitled

Hi there! Spoilers up front: this is a gratuitously long-winded “thank you,” not an Ask (also I’m 31 and don’t know how to Social Media so apologies if this is the wrong page/tab/link/widget).

--(oh actually it’s a blog post now because of course I can’t send an “Ask” this stupidly long see? wasn’t kidding about that Social Media thing...)--

I started writing my first book in the Fall of 2016. Before that I’d only written songs. One day I got an idea which didn’t fit within the usual rhymes or rhythms. I tried and tried, but kept on hitting a wall. In addition, I was fed up with the whole “business” of music—the fragile egos, the politics of being in a band, all that. One morning I sat down at my HP desktop computer (again...31) and opened up a blank Word document. I stared at it with murderous intent for a long time, but nothing happened. So I grabbed the nearest book off the shelf (Crash by J.G. Ballard), opened it, and began to type out the first paragraph, copying the sentences line by line. I wanted to see what it felt like — my clumsy fingers pecking at the keyboard, observing how the words fell into place with a musical cadence and tempo almost prophetic, as though the ink were destined to dry in this exact form upon the page, the machinery of its tumultuous birth and impeccable design skillfully concealed. I paused and looked out the window. There was a squirrel on the deck, I remember. And then I saw it. Not outside but inside my own head, behind my eyelids. The song, the one I’d been struggling to write, I saw that it could be a story. I saw it had a clear beginning, middle, and end. I saw a world of characters opening doors to other worlds, other stories, other characters. This was life-changing shit. Suddenly I was a little boy at my first baseball game, drinking my first ice-cold Coke, surrounded by old men chain-smoking Marlboro Reds and muttering dirty words I’d never heard before about the [EXPLETIVES DELETED] on the opposing team. I’d discovered a fire fueled by the psychic anarchy of its own discovery, a Moebius-strip of dramatic invention, a repository for all the pop-cultural turds floating around inside the cracked porcelain toilet bowl of my skull. I wrote prose every night after work. I never thought about what I was doing. I never once stopped to check word counts or page counts. I never thought about sticking to an outline, making sure my story adhered to a specific plot structure, none of that. I wrote like a man in love. Delirious, overheated teenage love. Wear-my-ill-fitting-letterman’s-jacket love (is this also A Thing™️ in Canada?). Stupid stupid stupid love, naive and hormonal and precious and retrospectively mortifying. I’d turn off the world, turn on the music, sit back and watch the words sashay straight into my lap. It took 2-3 months before the ruthless scourge known as Self Doubt farted in my private elevator. Am I doing this right? How many words are in a book, anyway? How many pages? How long is this going to take? Is this an effective way to impress women and/or get laid? Am I writing a novel or a novella? The fuck is “flash fiction”? Are you allowed to write actual books in Microsoft Word? Does it matter that my free trial version of Microsoft Word expires in 30 days? They’re bluffing, right? And so on. I compared my own writing with that of authors I admired; subsequently, I couldn’t get out of bed for a week. I watched 40+ hours of “Kitchen Nightmares” reruns (it’s. the. same. fucking. formula. every. single. episode.) and nursed my shame with bowl after bowl of strawberry ice cream. To think — I’d TOLD people about this fool’s errand, and sooner or later I’d have to show them precisely how awful a writer I was... I turned to the Internet for advice. At first, it seemed like a godsend. There was such a litany of knowledge, so many pro-tips and life hacks and proven formulas for success. This was how I stumbled across your channel. I found other channels which offered more straightforward “DO IT LIKE THIS YOU FUCKING IDIOT” instructions, but I still enjoyed yours the most. I lol-ed at your jokes. I remember a few videos where you spoke highly about All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, which remains among the most achingly beautiful books I’ve ever read. Also you’re Canadian, and you guys just generally Human better than we (Americans) Human. ...and here my troubles began. See, the more I tried to adhere to word count goals, the more I tried to properly organize the scenes on my Scrivener™️ virtual cork board, the less I enjoyed the actual process of writing. So I tried other things, based upon other writers’ suggestions: cut the adverbs, write in the morning, write at night, write during your lunch break, write an outline, stick to the outline, write x amount of pages per day, write x number of hours per day, spend x amount of hours drafting and x amount of hours editing, etc. But nothing I tried made me feel confident in my writing. I started actively hating it, to be honest. I dreaded the cursor and the infinite white void. Then I would watch more writing videos and feel guilty about my lack of ambition, my inability to accomplish simple tasks. It’s only a few thousand words, dude — just get in there and do it. Eventually I would. I’d grumble and feel miserable and stay locked in my little writing dungeon all night, ignoring my friends’ texts and phone calls, and the next day I’d hate everything I wrote, trash it, and start over. Then, when I had no more writing left to hate, I started hating myself. The words in my head turned malignant, putrefied into spongy, black tumors. I’d spend all day at work consumed by thoughts and ideas and goals! goals! goals! for my book, then I’d come home and stare at a blinking cursor and wonder why I was such a worthless failure. I couldn’t write the way these other writers did, no matter what I tried. But I still wanted to write. Needed to, in that yearning, terrible way I suspect you understand. I don’t know why The Internet subconsciously invites us to flay ourselves before total strangers, but it does. So I will. Shit got Dark™️, Shaelin. I gained 50 pounds, started living like a hoarder, stopped hanging out with my friends, stopped leaving the house altogether. I kept the curtains closed so my neighbors wouldn’t see the piles of empty take-out boxes stacked up on the kitchen table. I traded the pleasures and contradictions and beguiling enigmas of women for the 24-hour neon distraction of cheap porno. My cat Maggie, basically the only friend I had during this time, got cancer. I watched her suffer and waste away because I couldn’t bear the thought of putting her to sleep and coming home alone to an empty, filthy house. Eventually she died and I hated myself even more for not being able to save her. I wore the same pair of pants for six months. I’d go to work and sit at my desk all day and do absolutely nothing (I was the accounting manager at a small company, technically my own “boss,” so I got away with this for a shocking, frankly heroic amount of time). Then I simply stopped going to work. And I kept torturing myself with those stupid goals and word counts, never happy with the end result, resigned to feel like a failure every day. I remember watching your “Spill the Tea” video back when it was initially posted. Watching it now is eerie, because you describe exactly what I was going through, what I was feeling. Like, to the “T” (see what I did there? #WordPlay #LitPuns101). I’d never experienced anxiety/depression before, so I didn’t really understand what was happening to me. Not that it mattered, because by that point the damage was done. I couldn’t recognize and isolate the real problem. I’d given up. Even though you said a lot of things in that video I desperately, desperately needed to hear, I didn’t listen. I didn’t want to listen to you, because you were one of Them™️. Your eyes were bright and your voice sounded friendly and encouraging, but your name wasn’t McCarthy or Pynchon or DeLillo or Nabokov. You were just a kid. What could you possibly know that I didn’t? In January of this year I called a local psychiatric hospital and told them I was planning to kill myself. I never harbored any true intentions of doing that, but I figured they’d offer me a nice three-week vacation in a padded cell. Considering the circumstances, it honestly seemed like a relief. I ended up quitting my job, selling my house, and moving back in with my parents 300 miles away. I started seeing a therapist once a week (still do, for the record). So far I’ve lost 30 pounds of the 50 pound surplus I acquired. I kept watching your videos, even though I was no longer in the market for writing advice (#JustHereForTheSnark). You kept me lol-ing through some bad days and weeks and months. I’d listen to you talk about problems with the writing community and nod my head like an old woman in church (#ShaelinSermons™️ #SheTeachesANDShePreaches), but I still hadn’t made the connection with my own issues. I swore off writing completely, went back to playing music. Cover songs in coffee shops and family restaurants. It was fun for awhile. I genuinely felt happier. But my story was still an old pebble poking around in my shoe...calling out, issuing playground taunts, drawing hairy cartoon dicks on my forehead while I slept. About a month ago I stared down another blank page, my first since experiencing that fun-sized nervous breakdown earlier this year. I closed my eyes and heard your voice in my head. “You can do whatever you want.” I had no goals, no arbitrary quotas to meet. I wrote a few lines, stopped, fixed a couple things I wasn’t satisfied with, and then went on with my day. I thought about what I’d written, sure, but I didn’t worry or spend the whole day stressing out. The next morning I read over what I’d done, and I didn’t hate it. I thought it was actually pretty good, funny and off-kilter and a little/lotta fucked up. So I sat down and wrote some more. Took some things out, re-worded stuff, dressed up the bones in silver and pearls. Addition and subtraction. Before I knew it, I’d finished a whole page. Then another. And then the hair on the back of my neck stood up, because I remembered: This is how it felt at the beginning. Back when I was young and love-struck and writing only to catch those moments of pure levitation, that devilish tickle, that rush of blood propelled by my own wild heart. It’s been a rough road, but I finally found what I’d lost. I figured out how to write again and enjoy it. And ultimately, the best writing advice I received didn’t come from McCarthy or Pynchon or DeLillo or Nabokov. It came from a young woman in another country with a camera and a nose ring and a big tapestry and bigger dreams which run parallel to my own. So thank you. Thank you for taking time out of your busy life and braving the Steaming Pile™️ that is The Internet to offer words of empathy and encouragement to complete strangers. Thank you for the wisdom you share. Thank you for being who you are. Know that tonight the stars shine brighter as a result. They do for me, at least. (Also I’m sincerely sorry about the absurd length of this “Ask” wherein no actual questions were posed and nothing substantial was communicated beyond a simple yet torturously delayed “thank you” kthxbye #longlivethenewtapestry 

—Justin)

[shidiand]

How do you imagine Tenco's Story ending in your head?

that is a GREAT but UNEXPECTED QUESTION freshlybaked "spider" bread and i'm really happy to have the opportunity to try and answer this ageless question that has burned within all of us in the tenco's story iv waiting room community since 2013. it is an incredible coincidence (or is it? 👀) that i was just talking to Risa about tenco's this (edit: yesterday) morning so i am extra double super in the mood to talk about Tenco's Story today. so excellent of a coincidence is this that i am tempted to refer you to them in case you wanted to hear their thoughts on the matter that would probably turn out super cool, but that is neither here nor there; let us talk Tenco's Story.

i of course must mention my unadvertised and modestly detailed commentary on tenco's i-iii at https://shidiand.tumblr.com/tencos, presenting slightly interesting facts in an unwieldy and difficult-to-use format, but as it dates back to june 2017, i want to take some time to understand my feelings about the series once more.

tenco's story is a series that has a lot of meaning to me.

i took on my current name of shidiand in november of 2013. i was still in 11th grade at the time, 4th year of high school, and a very socially isolated person. i should say i was introduced to touhou in 7th grade, 2010, so i was still working through a 3 years-strong phase of trying to simultaneously both find an outlet for and bottle up an endless wellspring of awkward weeaboo-gamer nerd energy at the time.

i had my first real foray onto the internet in 2010, tried out twitter, followed some RPers and other people who had Cool Touhou Usernames. didn't really go anywhere. i had maybe 50 followers, i dont really know the count but it was definitely a) double digits and b) pretty low. didn't know what to tweet about. didn't know how to hit it off with others. i think there was basically maybe only 3 other people i ever properly interacted with. oh shit i was playing league of legends at the time. oh my god. i really did play league of .. oh my god. let's move on.

aw shit im super digressing amn't i. well.

this is just how it goes when i write essays on tumblr.com.

i'm afraid you're just along for the ride at this point so please do your best to enjoy it.

i got kind of tired of twitter at the time because i didnt know what to do with it. didnt know how to interact with people and didnt find the people i was following interesting, so i ghosted on out of there by the end of 2012. didnt deactivate it until like 2015 but at that point that was just burning away my dark history. anyways. november 2013.

--im taking a lot of time here trawling through old files on my computer, my tumblr blog, notification emails still lying around in my gmail inbox from twitter, the dropbox i didn't actually use but it had several tenco's story pictures on it but i deleted them so this was useless, ... to trace the timeline of this story and im really seeing a lot of remnants of dark history here you know? did you know i wrote a letter to a girl i had a crush on valentine's day 2014, slipped it into her locker, and anxiously hung around nearby at lunchtime to see how she reacted at lunchtime? i certainly didn't, or at least i made darn ass sure to forget about this incredible virgin incident and not remember it, ever, until i came across the records of it that i thoughtfully preserved for the me of 5 years later today. ok well now i have to read the letter to see if it was as bad as it just sounded there brb

ok so the good news is that it was actually very focused on being positive and full of admiration for the cool things she did instead of being a confession letter so i am very glad i was able to be a respectful chad 5 years ago, but the bad news is that the jokes, the actual sentences i put together. oh my god. but i mean. well. at least i got the spirit. its certainly a step up from this other person in my grade, WEEABOO ANDREW, YOU MAY RECALL THIS STORY AND HIS NAME FROM PREVIOUS STORYTIMES, THE MAN THE MYTH THE LEGEND who came to school on halloween once cosplaying kirito from sword art online and got very possessive about people asking if they could hold his black replica plastic sword, and probably worse, dropped a "will you be my girlfriend" letter into the locker of my homie and fellow trombonist samantha, who was a little bit nerdy, hung out with the anime-likers who were actually sociable and fun to be around so you can imagine why weeaboo andrew was into her, which had i) a direct quotation from SAO chapter 16.5 (origin of the famous "glopping noise" line), and ii) a condom. jesus christ. i dont want to talk about this any more. next topic.

i also put this drawing of iku nagae and her skarmory (actually an albinoss from 18 DRAGONS) on the other side of the letter because it was the coolest thing i could think of drawing at the time. and i completely agree with 2014 me because it IS super fucking cool. hell fuckin yeah

https://shidiand.tumblr.com/post/76301993387/iku-nagae-ft-that-thing-that-supposedly-is-a

alright that was a fun little trip down memory lane but lets get back on track. november 2013. i started anew as shidiand. still awkward, still learning how to express myself and looking for my place among others. i followed some touhou bloggers, hung around r/touhou a lot as well. in december i got my first tablet for christmas, a wacom bamboo splash. i still use this thing! the usb cable disconnects if you bump it so i have to find just the perfect position to sit in whenever i want to draw, but its served me well. anyways. i was just starting to play around with digital art but i remember, probably just before new years, for some reason i wanted to find out more about tenshi hinanawi (i don't remember why. tenshi wasn't even one of my favourite characters at the time) so i went googling and right there on zerochan i found this:

https://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=23525572

this was during my dark souls phase so i just went BANANAS at the sight of this. this was literally the coolest image i had ever seen in my internet life. That image alone made me want to draw in hopes that I could make something as cool as that someday.

it wasn't immediately after but i soon discovered tenco's story, and it was love. kannnu was my very first artistic inspiration, and for a long time, my only one. i absolutely idolized them at the time. since then, ive found other artists to look up to, in a more healthy manner, but to this day i still look up to kannnu, still admire their work a lot.

i played around with drawing, followed the lives of people on tumblr, started reading touhou fanfiction, made a new twitter. i met a lot of new people along the way. some people i havent stuck with, some i cut ties with, and some people i still keep in contact with today. over those long 5 years of being shidiand, i found a name (i used to use shidian and then shid, but someone called me shidi once and i realized that was a lot better), how to reach out to others, how to express myself, places that i could feel included in. this is why i owe a blood debt to evelyn, who permitted me to kneel at her throne and was like "yea ok you can join my discord server u seem cool". evelyn, if you were confused by me ominously mentioning this blood debt/blood oath in a tumblr reply 1-2 years ago, this is the context. those 5 years were like a coming of age of sorts, that i never had when i was in high school.

and my love for tenco's story, that inspired me to draw that day, has been with me since almost the very beginning of my time as shidiand. from the beginning, i have always encouraged people to READ TENCO'S STORY, like the kin of those who cry PLAY MELTY or WATCH SYMPHOGEAR. i think my very first sidebar description was something akin to a prayer, written in very choral language, hoping for the day tenco's story iv was completed, ..., "meanwhile, furious shitposting". kannnu's work, finding delight in whatever they chose to draw, has been at my side, all along. my true mentor, my guiding moonlight...

so that's why i still to this day love tenco's story so much.

let's talk about tenco's story.

tenco's story is a story told through single pictures. the plot is vague, and details are sparse. dialogue is rare. we only know what has happened; we seldom know why. furthermore, there are many gaps between scenes that the reader is left to fill in for themselves; we see only snapshots that form an hazy outline of the events that occurred, and must imagine the rest. motivations and explanations fail me. but even with a barebones plot, tenco's story has themes, and if nothing else, those have to be carried through.

the main theme, of course, is journey and travel, but there are also other ideas, too. i actually think they start to change as the series goes on:

book i, where tenshi runs away from home, is about striking out on your own. it's a very fun and unpredictable journey, together with a friend.

book ii, where tenshi and iku are separated, forces tenshi to find and rely on companions of her own even more. but they do so, and they are able overcome hardships, and there is food and festival.

book iii marks a climax, reasserting tenshi's goal of finding the sword of hisou. i feel like the journey shifts from a travel (visiting) to a path forwards (making your way through). perhaps this is just something i get from knowing the locations from dark souls (Anor Londo, New Londo Ruins, the Great Hollow), but the locations start to give more of a sense of verticality, like they're emphasizing tenshi's climb to the summit. the hardships and enemies are the greatest they've been yet, and right when they near the top, tenshi and iku start to bleed. the book ends on an uncertain note.

if i had to describe the type of journey and travel that tenshi and iku undertake, there's this sense of wonder at discovering new places, wandering from vista to vista in delight, but also a sense of conquering, making it through a difficult patch. the sequence from pages 2-44 to 2-51, taken together, convey this sense of overcoming the best. it's one of my favourite parts. again, although the tone definitely starts to lean towards struggle in book iii, i think tenco's sense of wonder really is the heart of the series. there's no map of the world, no predicting where tenshi and iku will end up next. and through their travels, though they come across many enemies, they also find friends -- places of refuge, places full of life, people who will look after them for a few days, companions who will stay with them for the rest of the journey. at the end of book iii, we see a long haired tenshi with purple hair being impaled by the sword of hisou (3-33, see also this extra illustration that risa pointed out to me http://sinnnkai.blog.fc2.com/blog-entry-195.html), and regular short haired tenshi continuing on her journey (3-42). if we ignore the out-of-story images where tenshi has the sword of hisou, tenshi has actually only ever used her sunlight blade (2-24, 3-26, etc), so i think that the long haired tenshi on 3-33 is a different person altogether. (if i had to guess, she might be the purple haired woman in the top left of https://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=35443328 as we have never seen that woman appear anywhere.) she probably has something to do with the flashbacks at the end of book ii and she might somehow be short-haired tenshi at the same time, but this is just speculation.

however, in 3-43, tenshi's hair is rather blue, so i don't know if this is the purple haired woman or not. if it is, tenshi is probably still fine and closing in on the summit, but if it isn't, then it's very worrying to see a picture of tenshi without any of her companions. it's very ominous.

meanwhile, iku, while climbing the red carpeted corridor, is stabbed, and disappears for a few pages. there's a black page, a shot of a shrine that strongly resembles the hakurei shrine, and a picture of iku standing behind someone in a tux, with the line "In the past, I was saved by the lady I was serving, you see?". and then iku wakes up in a field of flowers.

i think what this scene makes clear is a theme that has continued to appear and reappear throughout every book of "being saved, being aided by someone's kindness".

i think another theme that is implied and has to be addressed by this story of running away from home is "return". something im imagining is that the reason tenshi makes finding the sword of hisou her goal is because she wants to have something to prove herself with, to vindicate her when she comes home. but i don't think she needs to prove anything, and i ultimately think that she would be happier spending the rest of her life exploring.

so i think this should be what happens in the ending.

open on iku's journey, and give her a long sequence of travel without seeing tenshi. underline her newfound resolve. she climbs to the summit with albinoss, and finds the rest of tenshi's companions fallen. and in the last room is sword of hisou tenshi, who has lost herself, and it comes down to iku to bring her back. after a difficult battle, when both of them are on their last legs, iku is unable to stand any longer. but at this moment tenshi sees her companions struggling to get back up and reach her, and that's what brings her to her senses. and iku gets to see how many friends tenshi's been able to make on her own, and they finally and properly reunite. together, tenshi and iku carry each other out of the last room.

i don't think it's necessary to return to heaven. as a conclusion, dedicate some time to tenshi and iku travelling together. they're on their way back, revisiting old friends who helped them along the way, enjoying the journey. their last stop is the house of the elderly nawis (1-42). tenshi shows off the sword of hisou; she decided to keep it not as a trophy to show her family but as proof of the bonds of her companions. surrounded by friends, tenshi and iku decide to part ways with each other, knowing that the other will be alright. iku drifts among the clouds once more, and tenshi sets off for the horizon.

that's the plot that i'd write/just wrote. i don't really expect tenco's story iv to ever come out, though. i mentioned my first sidebar description earlier in this essay, but of course, you can see that it's been changed. 2 years ago, i read my hopeful prayer once more and was struck with a terrible melancholy, so now it reads this: "having come to terms with the fact that tenco's story iv will never be released, i can still live, knowing that the spirit of the journey will live on through kannnu's original works [...] meanwhile, furious shitposting".

on one level, tenco's story is a story, but in the process of following it, i came to think of the work itself as a journey too. you can constantly see kannnu's improvement between and even within each book. they have always drawn whatever they liked; what plot matters in the face of "I wanted to draw a beautiful sky." "I wanted to draw a fantastic battle." "I wanted to draw Dark Souls and Monster Hunter and Pokemon and Brave Fencer Musashi and Bokura no Taiyou and Touhou."

its not really kannnu's style to go back and tie up old ends. they just draw whatever makes them happy. so as i watch them continue to draw beautiful places and fantastic creatures, new characters heading out on journeys of their own or just enjoying their everyday lives, it's as if tenco's story never ended. the limits and consistency of that world ignored, and a new one springs up; in a way, the world of tenco's, which had such thin boundaries, just gets bigger.

but even so, having said all that, i still see them draw that short-haired tenshi from time to time. it makes me happy to see them remember tenco's story with such fondness. often crossing over with orion or roar or elweiss, you can see tenshi on another journey.

[drizzitwrites]

(More Than) Six Sentence Sunday

Six sentences??? Not today!

I’m still in the midst of editing (which at this point is basically the word document equivalent of pushing food around on your plate and pretending that means you ate it), so here. Have something that’s ALREADY DONE and is posted as a draft scene to AO3 just waiting for me to finish up the rest of this mess so I can hit publish. 

I have until 23 February and the draft deletes itself. It’s my horrible way of making myself try to work to a deadline. I predict I will regret this decision.

Anyway... a while ago I posted the (short) opening scene to my fic, so today, have the very much longer second scene, which is a flashback and is basically Vincent acting as the mouthpiece for my emotions during a certain World Cup penalty shoot-out.

Sunday, 1 July 2018 — Nizhny Novgorod, Russia

Vincent stood nestled among the mass of Denmark supporters, every single one of them on their feet and cheering as the teams lined up for the penalty kicks that would decide their World Cup future.

Earlier, while the captains were negotiating the terms of the penalties, Christian had glanced in his direction. Vincent’s heart caught in a vice grip. He knew there was no way Christian could pick him out of the sea of faces staring down from the stands, but he’d flashed a wide, encouraging grin and held out his hands, fingers pressed together in the shape of a heart. He hadn’t bothered to make sure no one was watching. At that moment, he didn’t care if the entire world knew he loved Christian Eriksen. Vincent believed in him and would be his strength through anything, even if it all came crashing down around them.

‘If I could take this kick for you, I would do it without hesitation.’

Vincent thought the words in Christian’s direction as hard as he was able, but it wouldn’t matter, even if they did reach him somehow.

Christian’s whole country was looking to him, and although the weight of that could be crushing at the best of times, he would step up, head high, and lead his team forward, no matter the consequences.

As if on cue, Christian was the first to the penalty spot.

Vincent had watched him move through these motions more times than he could count--in stadiums across England, on the Enfield practice pitch, on screen as he lay in bed in a tiny Rotterdam flat long after his roommates were asleep.

Today, Vincent took every step along with him, his body perched at the edge of his chair, hands gripping its overheated plastic until his fingertips burned.

Christian placed the ball, stepped backwards, and stared at the goal.

The crowd settled into a muted apprehension, their tension radiating out to fill the entire stadium as they held their collective breaths.

Vincent whispered a silent plea to whichever gods might be listening to ‘please let him have this, please let it go in, please let them win.’

He counted the steps as Christian ran to the ball, his head up, eyes straight ahead.

Right foot back. Laces into the seam.

*Thwack* of Christian’s boot against the ball, echoing out into the arena.

Vincent’s whole body tensed at the sound—ready to spring forward, in triumph or in agony.

The keeper dove the correct direction, but Christian had struck it with pace, and Vincent willed it to move faster, to curl the slightest bit more, to rise upward and away into the net.

A resounding *clang* as the ball parried off the goalpost.

An instant later, the crowd exploded as one—agonised groans and screams of displeasure from all around Vincent; echoed by the delighted roar of the Croatian fans.

The ball rested in the grass a few metres from the goal, knocked to safety by the goalkeeper.

Christian turned away from the goal, his eyes downcast as he tugged the hem of his shirt up to cover his face.

Before Vincent’s mind caught up with his movements, he surged forward, struggling to push through the crowd and towards the pitch to—what, exactly? Leap over the wall and sprint to Christian’s side?

No. This wasn’t Vincent’s fight. He was powerless to help. All he could do was keep believing Christian’s miss wouldn’t matter and Denmark would still come out on top.

He whispered another prayer into the wind, begging anyone who might listen to let Schmeichel save this one. It wouldn’t take away the sting of Christian’s miss, but it would soothe the wounds a bit.

This time, the gods listened.

Schmeichel made the save.

Vincent leapt into the air, fist held high, and shouted along with the surrounding crowd. Everyone jumping and hugging and waving their arms. A shower spray of beer and water and whatever else anyone happened to be holding rained down to cover them all in a sticky film, but he barely noticed, attention focused only on Christian.

He now stood in line with his teammates, their arms linked or slung around shoulders or waists. All of them leaned together in solidarity as their captain, Simon Kjær, stepped forward and buried his kick past a diving Croatian goalkeeper.

The teams remained even through four rounds, Schmeichel stepping up and producing another massive save to hold his team level after another Denmark miss.

Nicolai Jørgensen stepped to the spot, the fifth player to take for Denmark.

Vincent had only met Jørgensen a few times in passing, but his Oranje teammates spoke highly of him. Two seasons ago, he’d led Feyenoord—Vincent’s very much former club—to their first Eredivisie title in fifteen years, and was lauded as the club’s hero and their best hope for the future. He’d been the league’s top scorer that year, an honour Vincent had once held. It hadn’t made much difference for Vincent, at least in terms of his goal scoring form in subsequent seasons, but hopefully Jørgensen wore the mantle differently.

Vincent needed to believe that, unlike himself, Jørgensen would score when it mattered.

In the stands, Vincent plastered his hands over his eyes. Heart slamming in his chest, he couldn’t watch, couldn’t speak, couldn’t even breathe.

Around him, the rustle of clothing and the squeak of shoes on damp concrete as everyone shifted and stirred.

Shrill blast of a whistle and a hollow *thud* as boot struck ball, followed by a roar from the crowd.

A beat, and as one, the Danish fans collapsed into their seats, heads back as they groaned or shouted curses up at the sky.

Vincent lowered his hands, slowly, already knowing the outcome, but needing to see it for himself.

On the field, the line of Danish players stood together, faces buried in their hands.

Jørgensen bent double, forehead pressed to the ground as he slammed his fists into the turf.

He’d missed.

The pressure was on Kasper Schmeichel to come up with one more amazing save.

Once more, Vincent willed the football gods to take notice. He wasn’t asking this for himself; he was asking it for Christian, who was everything good about football. Who deserved to leave Russia with a medal around his neck. Who worked harder than anyone Vincent had ever met and loved this game more than anything else in his entire life.

The crowd around Vincent settled into an uneasy hush, the low murmurs joined with the squeak of seat hinges and the swish of fabric to fill up the space into an unsettling, hanging silence that spread into every centimetre of space.

Vincent held in his breath, not daring to move until he heard the smack of gloves parrying the ball away to safety.

Schmeichel was an excellent goalkeeper, one of the strongest he’d faced, and he knew how to step up in pressure situations.

Instead, the swish of the net and an uproar from the fans and all eleven representatives of Landsholdet crashed, deflated and dejected, to the ground.

They’d poured themselves into a match for two hours, and it had all unravelled with one kick.

That was football, but it didn’t make things hurt any less.

Vincent understood. He’d experienced such defeat too many times in his life—standing on a pitch that a few moments ago had carried such potential but now held only disappointment. The crush of it mixing with the exhaustion you’d kept at bay through adrenaline and sheer force of will until you collapsed, spent and boneless, to the ground.

One by one, the Danish players climbed to their feet, led by Kjær, who had managed to drag himself out of his emotions long enough to get up, walk to each of his teammates, and offer them a hand. He gathered them together—Jørgensen and Schmeichel first, then Christian—wrapping each of them into enormous hugs.

Christian, when he’d found his feet, wiped once at the corners of his eyes with the collar of his shirt, then joined Kjær in rounding up their teammates.

All around Vincent, the supporters, many still with tears in their eyes and anguish in their voices, sang down at their beloved team, who had come so far and had deserved to go farther. Vincent wanted to lend his voice to the chorus, but although the melody was familiar, he couldn’t understand the words.

He might be clad in the red and white of Denmark, wrapped up in the colours of the man he loved with all his heart, but he still wasn’t one of them.

Instead, he waved a hand and let out a whistle of encouragement.

Vincent lingered there, staring down at the scene playing out before him—Danish players slowly gathering together and lining up to offer their applause and thanks to the huddle of supporters, Croatian team doing the same, albeit with a different sort of tears wetting the corners of their eyes.

It wasn’t until the pitch was cleared and the stands began to empty that Vincent turned, allowing the stadium stewards to usher him back into the masses. He wanted nothing more than to find Christian, to beg and scream and generally make a scene until someone let him down into the tunnels beneath the stadium so he could wrap Christian up in his love and make him believe that everything would be okay. Instead, he flowed along with the crowd once more, finding his way into a taxi and back to his hotel.

When he crashed into his bed an hour later, damp and sticky and exhausted, he grabbed his phone and sent off a string of messages to Christian—routine commiserations and the offer of a listening ear. Vincent knew the way of these things. He’d give comfort and love, because it was all he could do. Whenever Christian was ready to talk, Vincent would lend support.

‘I’m proud of you.’ ‘Call me if you need. Any time.’

He hesitated a moment, then banged out a follow-up message.

‘I love you. Always.’ ‘Remember. Whatever happens, we will get through it together.’

Christian hadn’t returned his messages until well past two in the morning; a straightforward ‘Thanks for being there. Sorry we didn’t win.’

Vincent had taken a moment to respond, despite the hour. He’d been lying awake in his own bed, unable to sleep despite his bone deep weariness and the lead weights over his eyelids.

‘I will see you when you get home.’

He’d heard nothing from Christian since.

[blueraith]

Some folks still need to learn how to constructively comment

Wish I could say that I’ve been writing Chapter... 12(? Legit, I don’t often remember the chapter numbers outside of the Google doc) since posting Chapter 11 (we’re just gonna assume I know where the fuck I’m at in my own story, okay? Give me this).

But that would be a bald faced lie.

(Mostly because of my sister’s graduation and all the family visiting and the concurrent back injury I was suffering. Really kills the writing mood when you can’t sit up properly to type.)

This is going under a read more, because this incident Vexed Me To The Max(TM) and triggered a Rant of Epic Proportions(TM).

But graduation has been over, and my back has been feeling great. What really kept me a bit down since all that was over and done with is that very morning I’m feeling better, I see that I have two comments on the 100 fic I’ve put on indefinite hiatus. Yeah, it’s not an active story, but I still care about it, and I’ve been thinking about it recently. So, in short. I still care about it a hell of a lot. Hell, I care about everything that I write. I’ve written fanfiction at what’s nearing 10 years now, but nothing has erased the fact that putting yourself out there in the public eye takes a hell of a lot of effort and, sure, a smidgen of courage and confidence.

Well, this lovely commenter told me that my word count was way too high, that I was slowing my story down, and that they skipped to the last chapter (from Chapter 2, they skipped 6 chapters of ongoing character development, an ensemble cast, Ark politics, and canon fix-its) “40k words and [Clarke’s] still not on the ground yet??”

This is me paraphrasing both comments. I deleted them with extreme prejudice from the fic because I wasn’t leaving that kind of useless bullshit on my work after it effectively ruined my mood for, like, four days.

Why was it bullshit? Well, for one thing taking the average word count per chapter, it’s only a little over 5k words per chapter. Look. I balance out my word counts very carefully for each story that I write. This fic has a longer than average word count compared to my more recent stuff (which is around 4k per chapter) because of all the fuckin shit I was pulling off in this particular fic. Reworking canon to better explain why the Arkers were resistent to the radiation on the ground while having the superior blood that the Mountain Men wanted without putting them up in their shitty space station for thousand of years that evolution would have actually required them to have gone through to be remotely realistic.

Jake’s alive in this fic because I don’t like dead characters shaping character development on a pre-canon basis. Personally, I dislike orphan/parental loss storylines before the specific original work has even started. I get that orphans exist in real life. But YA media has a disproportionate amount of dead parents. Eh. I wanted to do something different. So, this means there’s an entire extra character in the story that I have to write and develop.

Diana Allers actually matters in day to day Ark life instead of just showing up and nearly murdering everyone because she’s a selfish bitch for little to no reason other than to make Abby’s already pretty damn full storyline even more packed than it already was. (Seriously, why didn’t they develop Allers more? She’s lazily implemented in canon, and I hate it. Lord only knows I enjoyed Abby and Raven’s plotlines far more in several places of Season 1 rather than Bellamy’s Manpain Adventures Lite Before He Turns Into A Complete And Utter Psychopath Later On In The Series).

Jaha is far more competent and slimey than he is in the show, rather than being a foolish man who is barely toddering along in the plot towards something useful.

Abby and Jake are at odds because Jake technically betrays Clarke and allows her to get arrested in the beginning of the story. They adopt Raven in the interim and they’re all awkwardly trying to free Clarke while pretending that Jake and Abby aren’t having marital problems. Well, Jake and Abby are pretending, Raven is as blunt as she usually is and just calls shit like she sees it.

Ensemble cast. There’s literally a tag on this story that tells you all that “This Story Is Literally About Everyone.”

So.

Yeah.

Clarke’s not on the fucking ground yet. But you wouldn’t know that, would you? Having skipped past 6 chapters.

Is 5k really that long? I wouldn’t know, personally when I read a longfic, I go into it knowing that the chapters might be long as fuck because I know that I’m reading a fic that could literally take me through several days and I read pretty damn fast. Not that 40k words is really all that much when you’re rewriting a TV show using all the characters who already exist in canon and then getting into their thoughts and motivations because that is literally what books do, this isn’t a screenplay, I wouldn’t be caught dead writing one because I despise them. Sorry, but you’re getting the full range of thoughts and emotions of everyone involved. I know, that’s just awful, getting hours and hours of content for free, but god forbid the plot doesn’t run on your timetable.

But that’s really the crux of this rant, isn’t it? NEVER complain about word counts, people. Too short? Who the fuck cares? The author could be just beginning their writing careers, so to speak. Word counts of any significance takes practice, first of all. So, not only could they might or might not have the required experience to write longer chapters, they may not even want to. And that’s fine. Because they do this FOR FREE.

Same thing with longer chapters. Are you really going to come at me, nearly a year after I’ve written and posted this work, complaining about word count, as though there’s even a remote chance that I’m going to go back and edit down all of that time and effort I put into that work to satisfy your fragile reading stamina?

Pfffffffffft.

I mean, this is funny to me in some regard because I’m over here wondering just what would be a good length for this person. Part of the reason my chapters tend to be at least 4k words long is because that’s generally where I can get a comfortable amount of character interaction, introspective thought, and plot moving forward. All three of those things matter to me when writing chapters. I hate reading too short works (and no, I don’t tell these authors this. I read what they give me and just deal with it because they’re entertaining me for free) and it’s little more than characters just trading dialogue with each other. I want to know what they are thinking about as well. I want a bit of narration. I’m reading something from a specific character’s point of view, and I want that chapter to ooze the personality of that character.

These are all the things I keep in mind when I write to my word count goals, personally. Doing it in less than 3k words might be possible, but it would sure as hell be annoying.

But most of all, it just irritated the fuck out of me. Like I’ve said multiple times in this rant. I do this for free. I don’t expect you guys to know this, but in order to get these substantial updates when I can manage to actually feel well enough to write and get them published, it takes me EIGHT TO TWELVE HOURS of sitting in front of a computer screen to have a chapter finished. On a good day. Yes. Most of the chapters I put out are done in one day, in one block, and I’m often up until 5 AM finishing something up. I have severe ADHD. Sometimes it is a chore to get shit put on a page because I can’t sit down and focus my thoughts enough to sound even coherent. Sometimes I have issues keeping up with what the beginning of a long sentence was about and I have to constantly keep up with what the fuck I’m even talking about in any given thought.

So, you have an author with a severe executive function disorder attempting to concentrate hard enough to get her own thoughts in character for each and every character that is featured in any given story while attempting to resist even the most mundane distractions while desperately hoping she’s going to hit a period of hyperfocus long enough to get substantial work down, but if that happens she’ll probably forget to eat because she’s on a writing binge that goes on with actual significant work for a period of several hours.

I love writing, despite the challenges I have to deal with in order just to get it done. I love most of the comments that I receive. I’m coming off a period of extreme depression from some family issues I was dealing with. My skin is rather thin at the moment and that irritated the fuck out of me, but those two comments knocked more wind out of my sails that I really wanted them to, and that bugs me even more.

But I am more experienced in fic writing than probably your average person. This commenter pissed me the fuck off, but I’ve moved past this, it’s hardly shattered my motivation to write forever.

But a careless commenter could easily do that to someone just getting into fanfiction. And it makes me wonder just how often this happens everyday, every hour, when entitled, spoiled people who think their needs are more important than the author doing this FOR FREE decide to voice their terrible opinions on their works. I love my readers, I don’t hold myself beholden to them, but they are extraordinarily important to me. Plot, pacing, and character development are all my own when I write because first and foremost, I write for myself. It’s a hobby that I clearly have to work very hard at to even be remotely successful at, and taking anyone else’s standards into account is never going to happen when I have to live up to my own already very high expectations. But I do keep y’all in mind when I’m devoting my time, energy, and effort in. The chapter lengths I have partly exist to make up for the wait times I inevitably have between each release. I very much know that I am sporadic and inconsistent when updating. So, when I do, I want to have something that isn’t just a whisper in the wind when it finally cycles to the top of the AO3 listing.

I know there are inevitably readers who didn’t like my content, or do think my stuff is too long. That’s fine. But don’t come into my space and give me two comments that were effectively “TL;DR” and expect that not to be a slap in the face. Because it is. I have wonder if the fandom kids today even know the kind of slap backs this sort of thing would have gotten in LiveJournal.

But, never mind that. I’m a big girl, I took some petty revenge in deleting that bullshit from my boards and then setting the fic to moderated mode, but what I would like anyone who decides to read through what is actually a long winded post (all my rants are, admittedly) to learn is that you are not reading professional work. You are not reading work that has been paid for. You are not reading work that has been professionally edited. I’m not saying that you can’t have standards for fic, lord knows I have many, but I don’t go into an author’s work and leave shitty comments. Never. Constructive criticism on fanfiction keeps the author’s time in mind, their skill level over what they’re actually capable of, and whether or not they’re even open to criticism. Some authors don’t even want your advice. They just want to know that you liked it. And if you don’t, just don’t say anything. I’m not quite that fragile personally, when someone is giving me useful criticism that can be used to actually improve my quality of writing, but I will freely admit that clearly I have a sore spot about comments addressing word counts.

Get out of here with that shit.

In short. If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.

[yaidenpart-blog]

Handwriting Vs Typing

In this day and age, it’s common practice to write your stories on the computer. Some eccentrics let their 19. century author self-run free by using a typewriter for the Aesthetic, but, in general, most people toe the line. And then, well, we have the rare breed of writers who handwrite. Rumor has it they’re extinct, but daring folks have been known to spot one or two in the wild, building shelters from old notepaper and gnawing at ink cartridges to survive.

….and I used to be one of them.

For years, I swore to handwriting and honestly, I still kind of do. In spite of having switched over to typing, I feel handwriting at one stage in your drafting can be very beneficial to your process. But whether to go through with it completely is a more difficult decision.

And seeing as I’m familiar with both sides of the coin, I’ll aid you in making a personally beneficial choice.

So let’s figure out if handwriting is for you.

Pro’s of Handwriting

Imagine, you’re at your desk and need to write an idea down quickly. You could turn your laptop on, or grab a napkin and scribble in two seconds flat without having to open an app first. Physically move things around when outlining, quickly add arrow and colors, and easily look at several pieces of paper at the same time while writing. It’s simply said a more organic and immediate affair.

And so is revising by hand. There is a reason why many editors still demand printed copies of your manuscripts, I’ve noticed a certain screen blindness overcomes you when you’ve stared at a document for ten hours straight, blurring every paragraph into mush. The distance between the keyboard and the letters appearing on the screen leaves an artificial aftertaste like fake grape juice sticking to the roof of your mouth.

Handwriting not only strikes a more natural connection to your brain but also motivates extremely. Once you filled a notebook up you can hold milestones in your fingers, trace every physical accomplishment you’ve made. Even if the notebook fills up to the brim when you’re only at the half point mark of your story – kind of turning the victory stale as you grope for the next notebook to continue – it still serves as a way to keep track of your project that’s more physical and satisfying than a digital word count.

Speaking of word counts, this brings us to our most crucial point: deleting.

Or more, compulsive deleting and ‘editing’ while in the trenches of writing your first draft, the unspoken bane of all writers. Editing as you go is a terrible life choice for most people, and I thank past me every day for choosing to write by hand so I didn’t have to deal with that burden as a newbie on top of everything else. Basically, editing as you go will prevent you from achieving the peak of your productiveness by trapping you in a vicious cycle of editing and deleting which at the end of the day won’t have gotten you any further along the path of completing your story. However, writing by hand makes it more difficult for this cycle to lure you into its clutches. The only way for you to delete sections in by scratching them out or by drawing crazy mind maps with arrows along the page borders. And this forces you to silence your perfectionist urges and get the draft on paper in one go instead of editing every single line to death and never finishing anything.

Another viable reason to consider switching to handwriting could be your health, many people suffer from carpal tunnel or other issues like eye strain through working on a computer. And there is absolutely no shame in putting your health first.

Cons

Now after waxing poetic about writing by hand for 400 words, it’s time to reveal the big con which prompted me to jump ship after years of dedicated handwriting. It is-

-Dramatic Pause-

Having to write your draft two times when you want it as a digital file.

Which turned into a problem because redoing things unnecessarily like this grew to too much of a strain on my hands, even if it was just writing the story twice. Though I’m aware most people probably won’t encounter this particular problem. So the only thing left to take into consideration for you, my friendo, is the time extensiveness inherited to becoming an ink cartridge gnawer. If you’re especially inpatient having to spend time on retyping your story might not be a compromise you’re willing to make.

One of the pros previously mentioned is actually a con in disguise. The limited line editing capability of handwriting turns into a disadvantage when your issues don’t lie with perfectionism but with underwriting. I like to go back and forth on the page, adding content to paragraphs I’ve written before while simultaneously slapping on new sentences. This method is less accomplishable on paper and leads to underwritten stories being, well, extremely underwritten. At least until they’re through a few edit rounds on the computer, sweat lining your brow as revision evolves into a Herculean effort without your consent.

If you’re an underwriter typing is a blessing preventing you from having to go through hell later on in revision. But does typing have actual cons as well? Probably. Hopefully. Or this post will end on a pretty weak note.

Typing and all that Jazz

The pros of typing are obvious, modern world wouldn’t get by without someone happily tipping away on a keyboard or screen.

I personally changed my process from manual to working on a tablet for several reasons, including the flat screen being the closest to paper I could find while keeping the advantage of not having to transcribe my writing to a digital format.

But for you handwriting might be very well worth it. It does have many benefits, and typing could just annoy you enough to try.

The cons of typing include but are not limited to Enablement of Perfectionism™, as we talked about before in the pros of handwriting. Typing enables by tempting us into editing and editing, backspacing and deleting whole chunks of our work instead of continuing to actually write, giving off the illusion of productivity which later on reveals itself to be hollow when it turns out you only managed to write 50 words in five hours.

So if you struggle with that syndrome, I seriously recommend handwriting, it might sound painful at first not to edit, but constant perfectionism while drafting will be the true fatal foe that’ll stop you from attaining your goals.

Otherwise, pros of typing are the instant gratification of showing someone your work per google docs or other means, as well as the high working speed you’re able to reach. As well as the fact that computers are an all constant, making it easy to sneak a bit of writing in while at work without being forced into rewriting it at home to add it to your original project file. The cons and pros of both methods kind of tangle and interplay with each other, at the end it’s a purely personal decision which you choose, but I hope this post gave you some thought chew about which way is actually best suited to your workflow.

Pretty unsatisfying conclusion, huh? No straightforward answer saying what’s best for everyone. But that’s life folks, everything is all confusing subjectivity and grey areas and then you die.

[brazenlotus]

Patch Today...and it’s HUGE!

from EA.com 

Version # PC 1.36.99.1020 / Mac 1.36.99.1220

Hello Simmers!

You better sit down for this one. Sit! Stay. Good.

There’s a bit here, a bit new, a bit old, a bit no longer busted. And it might take a bit of time to bite through it. So, let’s roll over, try not to get dogged down, and dig on in.

What’s New?

Four new roofs are available in Build Mode: Pentagonal, Hexagonal, Octagonal, and Round Roofs!

All four can be found in the Roofs category.

Advanced Curvature Mode!

When you have a roof selected, hit SHIFT+C to expand your roof curvature edit options.

Gabled and Hipped roofs have additional manipulation points so their eaves can be adjusted on all 4 sides.

Photography has been made available to all players.

The Barely Better Digital Camera, Appreciably Average Digital Camera, and Crystal Clear Digital Camera objects are now available in Build Mode.

The Cell Phone interactions: Take Selfie, Take Photo With, Take Photo Of, and Take Photo, are available under from the cell phone entertainment menu

Photography Skill can be learned by your Sims up to a skill level of 5.Photos taken with the camera can have frames added to them.

Place the photo in the world, click on it, and select Add Frame.

My Households

The “My Households” panel in the Manage Household screen allows easier management of which households are considered important. Households placed in this panel are protected from being… deleted.

The “Maximum Sim Count” option specifies the number of protected Sims allowed. If the limit is reached, existing households need to be unprotected before new ones can be added.

The limit can be changed and does include an “Unlimited” option, although this setting is not recommended as it may cause performance issues or other undesirable behavior.

Shrink Objects, you can now shrink objects in your game using the Size Down cheat!

Similar to the Size Up cheat, which uses the Close Bracket, the Size Down cheat uses the Open Bracket.

This only changes the visual appearance of the object, and not the behavior.

Using it alongside MOO can allow you to create some great decorative configurations - like shelves full of MySim collectibles, or a Gulliver land to explore!Be wary however, not all objects shrink or enlarge as expected. It is a cheat after all.

Grim’s Ghoulish Guitar is now optionally available at the Main Menu, click on the button, and follow the instructions for how you can download the guitar.

Alright, stop playing dead. Time to heel in. Get through the final stretch, and really let our tongues wag.

General Issues

Now when hovering over the rotate options for blocks and walls in Build Mode, objects that will be impacted by the rotate will highlight yellow.

Teen Sims will now autonomously place their homework back into their inventory when finished.

Homework that does end up in public spaces will be cleaned up after the active Sims have left the lot.

Children will no longer float while drinking the essence from a Cow Plant… because they are not allowed to do so.

The Write Cookbook interaction will now always be available when reaching level 8 or higher in the Culinary Career.

Sims will once again receive a playful buff while taking a bubble bath.

We addressed an issue that could prevent Sims from spinning into outfits after purchasing from a retail mannequin.

The game clock should no longer skip forward and back when changing from 3x or ultra speeds back to speed 1.

Playing your old saves should no longer result in a mad rush for the restrooms.

Build Mode music should no longer indefinitely loop as a result of loading directly to Build Mode from the map screen.

Sims should no longer weed chess tables near their garden, when attempting to weed their garden.

Feminine framed male Sims with facial hair should no longer see chin distortions.

The cowplant is now safer! And by safer we mean, Grim will no longer fail to resurrect those eaten by the cowplant that were successfully pleaded, or flower bribed.

Deleting a household via the Manage Household dialog will no longer remove the option for a new family to move in to the lot and keep the old families furnishings.

The Angled Roof Trim now includes a red trim color, similar to the other roof trims.

Sims path will no longer be blocked by the Gathering of Garden Stones.

The inspired child will no longer see all available interactions as Draw, but instead will see the appropriately titled actions of Draw Shapes, Draw Vehicle, and so on, and so forth.

‘Sploit fix! Child and toddler Sims will no longer speed gain relationship with others in their toy playing relationship grind circles.

Non played adult Sims will no longer attempt to purchase child clothing, as it was preventing them from completing the checkout process.

Childish Sims are once again able to Play in Puddles.

Angry Sims with appropriate mischief skill levels, and Evil or Mean child Sims can once again stomp on puddles.

Angry writers will no longer only have the option to Write Furiously when choosing to Write Genre Book.

Safety Seal Holiday Fireplace, Fiery Façade Fireplace, and Firewalkers Training Ground fireplaces now all provide environment scores.

Attempting to complete the Smash Dollhouse whim by smashing a dollhouse will now award satisfaction points upon said smashing.

Sims should now sit when attending a wedding…

The microphone will no longer lose all detail when a Sim chooses to use the microphone.

When learning that another Sim is a Regional Manager, you shall no longer learn they are a Business at Dewey, Cheatem & Howe Incorporated, but instead, you will learn that they are a Regional Manager.

Children born to a parent with the Beloved aspiration reward trait are now born with a parent-child relationship to that parent, rather than relationship unknown.

Planter boxes now have a burned state.

We fixed an issue where yfBottom_SP08Jeggings and ymBottom_SP08Jeggings were showing through the fyTop_BlouseCollarUp, yfTop_Ep02Blazer, fyTop_JacketTweedClassic, and ymTop_GP03Vest incorrectly.

The Load option from the Main Menu will no longer go missing after creating a household in a new save, and exiting the game before placing them on a lot.

The Ornate Victorian Roof Line will now properly place on Flat Round rooms.

The pizza delivery Sim will now leave after an appropriate amount of time after the delivered takes the delivery from the deliverer.

Toddlers can once again nap on chairs.

Lazy Sims can once again Nap Lazily upon Living Chairs.

We fixed an issue that sometimes prevented Sims from planting their seeds.

The Contains New Items identifier for the Clutter category will now properly clear as expected.

Instructing a Sim to eat from their inventory, while they are seated with a glass of water, will no longer cause adult Sims to pop up and down, and child Sims to float.

Eat Leftovers and Put In Inventory will now have the correct text in Russian, rather than two versions of Eat Leftovers.

Attempting to continue the Microscope upgrade for Improve Lens Quality will no longer require "2 drink."

Moving lots and keeping your furnishings will no longer prevent you from live dragging food into the fridge once it has been replaced on the lot.

Sims not on their home lots will no longer disappear to the unknown after merging their household with another.

We have addressed some issues with the outfit combinations of festival goers, and have lessened the bizarre combinations.

Children in the family tree will now remember their parents, even if the parent is deleted. Which means, they will no longer be considered half-siblings to their brothers or sisters if they did indeed share the same two parents.

Using undo to change the age of a Sim from a toddler to another age will no longer cause the Swimwear and Athletic outfit types to disappear.

Relationship status will now properly reflect its current state without the need of traveling.

Now if you are taking a selfie you will be holding a phone.

Sims with the Connections reward trait will now receive the lower level career rewards as expected, when joining a new career and getting a career level boost.

Troll teh Forums will no longer take a long time to cancel.

Addressed an issue with the walls of the Landgraab lot that were incorrectly set and were preventing the placement of other objects.

Socializing with your adopted child will now properly satisfy the Socialize with your child 10 times goal of the Big Happy Family aspiration.

Using the Salvage into Parts interaction will now salvage the salvage into parts as expected.

Fixed an issue that was preventing male Sims from receiving the Widower buff when their spouse dies.

Lot traits are now in alphabetical order.

Using the Set as Head cheat on an object, routing off lot, and then using the Reset Sim cheat will now properly clean up the duplicated object, rather than leave it in an unreachable location off lot.

Downloading a lot from the Gallery will no longer cause wall placed items on half walls to sometimes be placed on the floor.

Social events such as Birthday, Wedding, Dinner, Costume, House parties, or Dates, can now be hosted on Generic Lots.

The Brazilian Portuguese Sims, Morgana and Silvana, shall no longer be known as Marcio and Siobhan.

On page one of the Lot Traits lesson under the Build Mode category, we have added a period at the end of the last sentence

When randomizing your female Sims jaw in Create a Sim, randomization will now choose from all Jaws… duunnn dunnn, duuuunnnn duun.

The science career interaction Tinker will now properly show a focused emotion interaction option when the Sim is focused.

The Killer Queen Double Bed now says, as well as gives, 4 Energy, rather than saying 1 and giving 4.

The Square Confection, Campanulate, Photopollution, and Round Confection Ceiling Lights will now all fade appropriately when viewed in Live Mode.

We have added some more words to the profanity filter; among the words added are plum, plum, plum, and plum.

Get to Work

We have increased the chance of alien abduction, slightly.

Planted plants are no longer allowed to be put up for sale.

Baking skill gain is now boosted when inspired.

Placing a mannequin in a room will no longer trigger auto lights to turn on.

We have removed an odd shadow that appeared along the neckline of the Adult Male Mannequin – Abstract mannequin.

We addressed some issues that were causing retail employees to stop ringing up customers; employees should more consistently ring up customers now.

The Corporate Fridge Raider Revenue Generating Cooler now states that it provides a Food Quality: 6.

Out of This World Desktop can now have its focused emotional aura disabled.

We fixed an issue that could prevent the cloning machine from properly functioning if it was upgraded prior to initiating an attempt to clone a Sim.

THE Front Desk now believes itself to be a desk.

Get Together

Radio music played at event lots will no longer continue to play when visiting that lot after the event ceases.

City Living

Repair-Sims will now stay up to 10 hours on your lot fixing your busted and broken.

The interaction to Scrap Unfinished Mix is now present on DJ Booth mix-tapes.

Fixing a broken electric box while the power is out will now fix the broken electric box, rather than permanently leave you without power.

Solent Sink now properly gives (and states), Hygiene 4 and Reliability 5.

The Public Throne now provides Hygiene 3.

Vendors will no longer leave a stall unattended when joining in on group activities, but will instead close their stall before joining.

The In the Know reward trait discount, from the City Native aspiration, is now properly applied to all festival swag including festival t-shirts.

A Sims age information in their hover-tip will no longer disappear after interacting with an object socially.

Cancelling a Practice Singing interaction will now also cancel the audio.

Cream color for the yfTop_EP03JacketTie will now properly apply the cream, and not pink, version of the top.

We addressed an issue that could cause festivals to overlap one another due to the previous festival not properly cleaning itself up.

Sims' career outfits are no longer permanently altered when buying a Festival T-Shirt. However, this may still be an issue with the Curry Challenge tee.

Yum Cooker will no longer revert to the yellow swatch color when it gets dirty, but remain the color initially chosen by you.

Sims with the Instant Upgrade interaction, can now instant upgrade the garbage chute.

Toddlers can now talk to a Sim painting a mural, but are no longer allowed to Kick Off the Sim from the mural.

The ceilings of some apartments were inconsistently painted. We've gone in and touched them up to appear consistently painted.

Sims living in apartments can now initiate the jog action and expect that their Sim will start jogging.

Giving another Sim your apartment key will no longer cause social events without goals to spontaneously occur.

The Location aspiration is now properly sorted in its location within the Live Mode Aspirations location… alphabetically.

Played, but inactive households, will no longer moonlight as buskers.

Sleeping Sims should no longer sink into the ground when directed to Dream Big on a basketball hoop.

Sims will no longer fly away with a spin when choosing to Dream Big from a seated position.

Festival T-Shirts can now be found under Tops -> T-Shirts in Create a Sim.

Also belly buttons.

Sims in City Life careers now receive promotion raises when achieving levels greater than the listed maximum level.

Right AND left handed Sims can now hold a sparkler when given one.

Birds will no longer fly through the Jasmine Suite Apartments.

Romance festival harvestable flowers are now properly named. Lily flowers are no longer called snapdragons, but now lilies. And dragonfruit are no longer called lilies, but now snapdragons.

Mannequin heads should no longer distort when wearing the various hats found in City Living!

Paint Mural interaction will now stay in queue until the action completes or the player cancels it, and will no longer remove itself from the queue but continue to play the action, preventing the player from cancelling.

We fixed an issue that could result in object ownership issues when moving objects out of the household inventory onto a new lot after moving or merging in with a new family.

Outdoor Retreat

When selecting to play a Sim that is currently on a vacation lot, you will no longer load into their home lot.

Dine Out

We closed a hole in the world near the end of a sidewalk outside of Vlad’s home.

In other news, farmer Merrel has accused Vlad of pumpkin sabotage.

Vampires

Babies will no longer become invisible in a mirror when picked up by a vampire.

Floating babies are adorable.

Movie Hangout

Child Sims will no longer stretch when watching TV without any available chairs.

Romantic Garden

The Sette from the Park Place bench and Marbleized Chesterfield bench now count as benches when creating a venue that requires a bench.

Ok, that was a lot. Let’s just close this out simply, with a handshake… shake. Good. Here’s a treat, now out you go. Go on, time to pee. I’m off to cat nap.

-SimGuruGnome

[wannawrite]

limits

who?: Hotshot’s Yoonsan, Hojung genre: 🌸 type: drabble word count: 1.6K blog navigator. • Yoonsan seems to have caught feelings for you • the only person in the way is Hojung, your protective brother I’m so happy Hotshot is working now, even though they are all split up :”) I’m just extremely proud. Thank you for requesting @huis-totally-innocent-smirk, apologies for the late post and so sorry for only completing one. Played with the format a bit, I hope it’s still readable aha, imagine it’s from a third-party perspective, maybe even like a game. - Admin L 

disclaimer: pictures used do not belong to me and credit goes to their original owners 

2 February 2018 7.26pm CONVERSATION between YOONSAN and HOJUNG “You’re kidding,” Hojung scoffed, turning to look away from his best friend, eyes rolling. “Hyung, you can’t date my sister. No. She’s off limits.” Yoonsan’s lips curved into an irritated pout, he sighed and sprawled his form out on the dance room floor. “I just wanted to tell you. Help me put in a good word will ya?” Hojung rarely got mad at his rather quiet and bashful best friend, Yoonsan was not the kind of guy to lash out at other about petty problems he faced. He could be grumpy and a tad bit less understanding at times but that was all there was to his tantrums. However, this was a different story, this time he was actually contemplating starting a feud. “How could you even like her? You don’t even talk to her privately? All you do is get that 3 seconds of talk time whenever she brings me lunch or something. Please don’t call it love, please don’t break her heart like this. It isn’t genuine,” Hojung pointed out, his brain frantically analysing the situation, trying to find a loophole in Yoonsan’s confession. Yoonsan only knew you from those moments that lasted no longer than a minute, he couldn’t possibly be attached to a fleeting silhouette. Again, his friend shrugged it off casually, like he wasn’t being fiercely interrogated. Yoonsan avoided eye contact, shutting his eyes as if he was completely serene. “Maybe those 3 seconds was all she needed to steal my heart.”

31 December 2017 11.53pm TEXT MESSAGES between YOU and YOONSAN San: hey San: idw to come off as creepy or anything but I’m gonna try to forge better friendships with my acquaintances San: now, you’re only Hojung’s little sister but I hope we’ll be friends in the new year San: lol haven’t I known you since you were 8? HAHAHAHAHA 11.55pm You: oh gosh hi hdksijssb You: awww that’s so nice of you, it’s great to make more friends and OH GOSH YES YOU HAVE AND I WAS STILL SHY AROUND HOJUNG’S FRIENDS DHJSKSJDND IT WAS SO AWKWARD NO San: I still have pictures of all of us from that era, courtesy of Junhyuk hyung’s mum You:... You: WHAT NO You: NO NO NO NO NO DELETE THEM YOU UGLY You: DISGUSTING San: *PICTURE* San: *PICTURE* The sender has attached more than 10 files. Click here to open files. You: ARE THOSE PICTURES OF MY BRO You: GOOD TEA FOR FAMILY NEW YEAR’S REUNION HAHA THANKS San: is this how we’re bonding? San: nice to know, I have a meme folder just for Hojung You: SEND San: *PICTURE* The sender has reached attachment limit. Please wait for received files to finish loading before more can be received. 12am San: HAPPY NEW YEAR San: with this coming new year, I hope to only grow closer to my new friend and that we’ll make more enjoyable and happy memories together San: friendship? You: HAPPY NEW YEAR🎊🎉💓 You: awww :”) You: of course! We should hang out sometime lol idk if my bro will be 100% happy abt this tho San: aha why wouldn’t he be 12.02am You: I think you already know why

3 January 2018 1.42pm MEETING and CONVERSATION between YOONSAN and YOU She’s pretty, he thinks. Especially with that cold winter blush painted across her cheeks. He’s cute, you think. I think it’s adorable he has sweater paws in a turtleneck. Neither of you says that out loud, but they say someone’s genuine thoughts can be seen through their eyes. Eyes are like the mirrors of your soul. Instead, you clink tea cups and sip on hot chocolate, admiring the last few snowflakes dotting on the large window on your right. This cafe was your idea but the outing was San’s. He appeared awfully mismatched with the whole cheerful fairyland aesthetic but you found it even more attractive. It was not an awkward mismatch but a surprisingly pleasant one like purple and yellow. This isn’t a date, you reminded yourself, taking a cookie from the platter and putting it to your lips as your mind worked to come up with a conversation starter other than ‘what memes have you got of my bro,’. Just talk to him like he’s a friend. “What song’s are you working on right now?” you blurted out then wondered if it was too peculiar or personal of a question. San liked the fact that you took interest in his passion for music. Honestly, he could never hold a face-to-face conversation for long but talking about his music was a different story. He could go on about it for ages. Ugh, he’s so cute when he talks about his passion for music. Oh wow, the small smiles his lips pull into are really charming. Just a friend. Just a friend, Yoonsan. Pull yourself together and calm down. Isn’t this what you wanted? Girls can sense when you’re nervous around them. He’s the forbidden fruit. She’s my forbidden fruit. Both of you remained in Eden, drinking mugs of hot chocolate with extra marshmallows floating inside and biting into butter cookies, wishing all fruits were edible.

8 January 2018 8.18pm MEETING with YOU and HOTSHOT “Uhh San said he’s at Sungwoon’s house playing Fifa or something,” you replied to your parents’ question on where your older brother was. “Oh good,” your father commented. “I need to drop by their house to ask Sungwoon’s grandfather about the new fertiliser I bought. I was wondering if he had tested it yet. Want to get your brother back together?” If I go, I would see San for a bit...I MEAN, see my brother more and see Sungwoon and see Grandfather Ha. It isn’t all about San! “Uh, sure! Just let me...change!” The sentence had not been finished before your form disappeared up the staircase. The drive to Sungwoon’s place made you anticipated yet nervous for no apparent reason. After all, it was just your big brother and some of his close friends. Nothing else to it. For some reason, your hands shook as you closed the car door and walked into the house. “Go and get your brother.” Breathe. At first, San didn’t even look up from his phone when the door of Sungwoon’s bedroom opened but his head snapped up when he heard your melodious voice calling a greeting. A silly smile slipped onto his face as he bashfully waved back, trying not to garner Hojung’s attention. However, Hojung had already gotten a hunch on the interaction but he tried to brush it off. “Ahh, you know Dad won’t be leaving anytime soon. Join me, I’m winning anyway,” Hojung offered, holding up a game controller. He quickly went back to the game, yelling excitedly when you scored a goal against Taehyun and Sungwoon. San’s admiration for you only grew.

2 February 2018 11.28pm TEXT MESSAGES between HOJUNG and SUNGWOON Hojung: like what...do they think I’m blind or something...I get that this was bound to happen but idk how to feel Hojung: I know hyung is a good guy and all but I’m just unsure Hojung: am I being paranoid or mean? Sungwoon: Nah I don’t think so, you’re just looking out for your friends. It doesn’t hurt to be a nice guy like that Sungwoon: san is a nice guy and I’ll be honest and say I never saw it coming Sungwoon: I just need to know if it is genuine or if he’s just doing this for fun or something Hojung: I think they have been texting and meeting up privately bc she’s been quite shady and quiet about her ‘outings’ lately Hojung: idkkkk I’m just...kind of annoyed? Yet relieved that its hyung and not some creep Hojung: idw to lose any of my close friends bc of something like this you know? Sungwoon: I’d say maybe you should talk to them first! After all, it isn’t official right? They just have feelings but they haven’t said anything to each other Sungwoon: tbh it’s cute haha Sungwoon: I think they need to bond more before putting a label on anything. Feels that way. I don’t want anyone to make dumb mistakes with dating Hojung: I feel you. I think I just need time to absorb it. This feels like a pesky annoyance I can’t help it. I just want what is best for everyone Hojung: thanks, hyung, go and rest now. I’ll talk to them Sungwoon: sleep early as well, don’t stress about it 1.15am TEXT MESSAGES between HOJUNG and YOU Hojung: hey sis Hojung: hate to scare you and break it to you but I know about you and Yoonsan, he kind of told me personally today Hojung: don’t freak I know you guys aren’t dating but you can’t exactly hide anything from your big bro Hojung: ...honestly, I’m not sure how to react...knowing how close you both are to me. I’m glad to like a decent guy I suppose Hojung: talk to me about it okay? I just don’t want you to get hurt. Get to know each other a bit more. Hojung: good night, although you’re already sleeping. See you tomorrow 2.21am TEXT MESSAGES between HOJUNG and YOONSAN Hojung: hyung, sorry to text late but abt what you told me...I know how I feel about it Hojung: it’s so annoying Hojung: but I’m willing to accept it if you talk it out with me and her. You’re not a bad guy....hopefully. Please still be the same hyung I’ve known for most of my life. Hojung: I want you two to be real about it. No point dating if feelings are merely fabricated. I don’t need broken hearts and I can’t see my family get hurt, hear me? Hojung: ....just...talk to me and talk to her okay? See you tomorrow