#fun fact this snippet is my first paragraph of this draft

[starscribes]

NaNo Update Day 2

Backtracking a little since I started a bit late with NaNo this year, so far the only day I've been able to write was November 2nd, so here is my update for November 2nd!

Words Written Today: 3912

Words Written Total: 3912

Overall Feeling: Very good! I did two days of progress in one!

Snippet: (TW: mentions of blood) I will admit, I don’t study enough. Never have, and probably never will, even when it lands me in a spot where I’m at a severe disadvantage because of my lack of information. Like laying on my back in the middle of a dark, abandoned building with my left arm going numb. My arm was bleeding, not a lot, but it showed that the skin had been broken. Maybe I shouldn’t have worn a short-sleeved Bulls jersey to go monster hunting, but it was Derrick Rose, it was a lucky jersey! 

[copperbadge]

I know you mentioned in writing Fete for a King you had to remove a few scenes for pacing and other issues. I'm wondering what you do with them? Just delete them entirely, leave them in a separate draft, or something else?

I've started writing fanfic again (for the first time in a decade) and I reached the first snippet that I knew, almost immediately, wouldn't work. But I loved the commentary it had, and I'm loathe to just *get rid of it* completely. I really wish I could use it, despite the fact it doesn't fit the rest of the story, and I can't make it merge cohesively.

Hey, congrats on writing again! Good luck with it!

Almost always, stuff I remove gets reused elsewhere -- usually it gets chopped up and scattered around, like a paragraph here or a sentence there. If I'm cutting it, it's almost always because it's good material but not a whole sheet of good material at once, if that makes sense. But I do like to save good content, even if it's not relevant content!

Back when I was editing what would become Nameless, my first novel, I really struggled to change or delete anything because I was worried I'd want it later. And then I thought, well, okay, this isn't the 1950s, I don't have just the one copy of this. I can just...save a copy.

So I did -- I took what I currently had, saved a copy, and hid the copy in an archive on my desktop. Knowing that my Potentially Deathless Prose was safely copied off somewhere gave me complete freedom to just go apeshit on the first draft and make whatever changes I needed to even if I thought they might be dumb ones. I could always resurrect what I needed from the backup.

I don't do that as much these days. Mainly because I edited three or four novels like that and never once needed the backup. I came to the intellectual understanding after Nameless that I didn't need a backup, but it took another few books to internalize that emotionally. Now, if there's a whole-ass scene that needs to be cut, I just cut it out and put it at the end of the document, but I don’t save a whole document away. Sometimes those end-of-file scenes get reused, sometimes even in completely different stories. Sometimes they get deleted, but at least now I feel okay with that.

The point of writing is to have fun with it, so it's good to do anything that helps you emotionally to keep writing. But writing can also be about learning a form of emotional maturity that allows you to let go of stuff when you know it's not going to work. That takes time and process! 

And hell, sometimes it's satisfying just to post junk. If you like the snippet, save it and throw it in an AO3 post at the end of the year like I used to do with my Works No Longer In Progress. No reason people can't read and enjoy it just because it's not what you wanted to make!

[bitletsanddrabbles]

WIP Whatevaaaaaaaaaargh!

Awhile ago I decided that i wasn’t going to post any more Island of the Gays snippets, no matter how much inspiration I got from @alex51324 ‘s work, simply because my brain has been having too damn much fun lately going “OOO! Inspiration for a SHORT piece!” then, as soon as I have three paragraphs, insisting that the short balloon out to twice the length and then wandering off to play with dandelions rather than write it.

It’s frustrating and pointless.

HOWEVER. I have just reached my 50k goal for NANO and let me tell you, 50k has never felt less satisfying. I don’t know what it is this year, but everything just feels flat as a road kill flatworm. So since this thing, which has been pestering me off and on for I don’t know how long to be written, and was, in fact, what got me over the finish line, I’mma post a bit.

Is it good? Not really. It’s a rough draft, so it needs editing. I need to reread the entire story to get people right. Rouse in particular is probably all kinds of off kilter. But it’s a THING, damnit, and I can, so I’m going to. So there.

As if he didn’t have one himself, Thomas thought, but none-the-less produced his own lighter. Once he’d lit the other man’s fag for him, he decided he’d better get one for himself. Something told him that whatever this was about, he wasn’t going to particularly like it. When he’d taken a lungful of smoke and breathed it out without the other man starting an actual conversation, Thomas decided that he’d better take the initiative or else Gordon really was going to wind up doing the entire paper himself. “Look, Rouse, what is this about?”

The other man was leaning against the stone wall that went along the edge of the road, helping to keep the bluff in place during high storms. He tilted his head back, staring up at the sky, and said, calm as you please, “According to certain people we’ve talked to, you have a bit of a past with the Duke of Crowborough.”

Thomas was suddenly very happy for the cigarette. Warily he answered, “Yes.”

“What would you say to his coming here?”

The question caught Thomas like a blow to the gut. If he’d had smoke in his mouth, he’d have choked like a novice. “Here?” he demanded. “I’d say no, absolutely not. Not if I have anything to say about it.”

“You don’t,” the other man informed him, blowing out a plume of smoke.

Thomas stared. Two years and he’d started to feel settled. To feel safe. Now the doctors were going to drop Phillip into his life? “Damn it, Rouse, I am not leaving this island, I was here first!”

Rouse chuckled, although there wasn’t any humour to it. “Well, glad to hear that, and not just because you’d take our tobacconist with you.”

“You’re serious.” Thomas wasn’t sure he’d ever hated anyone so much as he hated Rouse right then, except maybe Phillip himself. Even Carson hadn’t left him wanting to punch something this badly. Then something hit him. “Oh God. The VIP. He’s going to be here next week?”

“Calm down,” the other man replied, still studying the sky, and Thomas was vaguely aware he’d shouted that last bit. “It won’t be next week, it’ll be the week after. Maybe the week after that. There are things to attend to on the mainland. We gave told you at the paper now so there’d be lots of time for people to get used to the idea.”

The words coming out of the other man’s mouth refused to make any form of coherent sense. “What, you mean you’re giving us his name for the paper?” he half spat.

“Yes.”

“Why? You never do that!” Everything about the situation was so irregular that Thomas half expected the other man to say it was a joke, except this was Rouse. He’d never be that sadistic.

“Look, Thomas,” Rouse sighed, finally looking down and meeting Thomas’s gaze. “You’re hardly the only man on this island who’s going to be less than pleased to see His Grace. Hell, I’m none too happy about it, and I’ve only heard about the man. I think Lord Hexham’s the only one who knows him hasn’t reached for a proverbial pitch fork when we told him about it. We’re giving everyone as much time to come to terms with it as possible.”

“But there’s nothing you can do to stop it?” Thomas asked, feeling deeply betrayed. After all, Rouse had fought the idea of Lord Hexham coming here, and he was one of the nicest toffs Thomas had ever run across! Still a toff, of course, but at least willing to chip in where needed, and he didn’t look down his nose at you. And the other man had still insisted that if they were going to take him, they had to take Gordon. Now though… Thomas couldn’t see behind the scenes, but it seemed like he was giving up without a whimper. From what they’d been told, there wasn’t even another working class bloke coming to balance things.

To his utter shock, the other man replied, “I’m not trying to stop it. Not this time. He maybe a toff and an utter ass, but…” Rouse paused, taking a smoke, then shook his head. “I’m a psychologist, Thomas. I can’t just say no this go around. There’s more to it.”

“What more could there be?” Letting go of his temper and his volume both, Thomas flat out started screaming, his fists balling at his side. “Damn it all, Rouse, do not tell me you’re letting bloody Phillip out here without telling me why!”

His protest earned him a worn out look. “Do you want me to start telling details of your life to anyone who asks?” Rouse countered. “All I can tell you is that he’s not coming willingly.”

Thomas didn’t buy it for a second. “And how do you force a Duke?”

Rouse shook his head, still not divulging any further information. “Look, I’m not asking you to be happy with it. I’m not asking anyone to be happy with it. I’m just giving you warning and asking that you not punch him the second he arrives, all right?” His expression became very pointed. “If you do, there will be consequences.”

Consequences. For punching fucking Phillip. No man on earth deserved punching more, but naturally Thomas would get in trouble if he did. There was proof that even on the Island, some things never changed. “Right,” he spat, eyes narrowing. He forced his fists to unclench. “Noted. May I go now, Doctor?” He threw the title like an insult.

Rouse eyed him for a moment, then sighed and shrugged. “Yeah, you may go.”

“Thank you.” Thomas spun on his heel and stalked away from the other man. The entire trip back to the print shop he kept remembering things. Phillip’s laugh. Phillip’s smile. The way Phillip kissed him.

The sight of his letter’s going up in smoke.

The look on Phillip’s face when he asked if Thomas wanted to stay.

Why?

Why after all of these years was fucking Phillip being brought back into his life?

Dr. L. would do it for the money, Thomas knew, except Phillip didn’t have money. Not unless he’d gotten married and his wife died and left all of her millions to him. Assuming there was something of her millions left and it hadn’t all been spent on the estate.

But why Rouse? Why the fucking hell would the island’s representative of the working class welcome Phillip with open fucking arms? And why would they tell everyone it was happening, but not why it was happening?

Thomas slammed the door of the press open hard enough to rattle the hinges, stalking through the front room and giving the inner door the same treatment. Gordon must have heard the first slam, because he was already half way through the room when Thomas made his entrance.

The younger man took a quick step back. “Here now, wot the hell are you het up about? We’ve got a paper to finish.”

“Fuck the paper,” Thomas spat, earning himself a gobsmacked look. “Fuck the paper and while we’re at it, fuck Rouse! Come on, leave that. We’re going to the pub.” He didn’t even check the time to make certain they’d be open. For this, Tully would let him in as a friend, and probably give him as much whiskey as he wanted.

[marinesocks]

Find the Word Game!

yup... another find the word game, courtesy of @space-cadead . sorry for flooding your dashes but im obsessed with this so i lowkey dont care, sorry!!

My words were: HOPE, FEVER, CLOUD, & CRAWL

i'm actually switching up the source material for these next few tag games!! for this post i'll be taking snippets from in the ataraxis of aftermath („• ֊ •„)

hope

Naoko didn’t have very many surprises, but she had saved certain places, just in case. She tried not to let her emotions get the best of her, forcing herself to squash the vague hope that rose up inside. It probably wasn’t a big deal. Another day, another place, that was just how it went for them. And yet. And yet. - suizokukan station

fever

i do not have this word so here is a fun fact!! i actually gave both girls backstories but i never really found a way to work those into the first draft. i plan on adding them into the second draft, though, and i've even written a short peice with naoko's backstory that i'm fairly proud of!

cloud

The whale in the distance rolled itself forward, crossing who knew how many miles in just a single stroke. The clouds curled off of its fins and glanced off of its back. It let out another call, notes bellowing through the sky. - sukaikujira station

crawl

She flipped through the pages. Naoko remembered, vaguely, where the paragraph about hallucinations had been. Somewhere top right, she thought, with a bullet point list that went only a quarter down the page. There! Visual, auditory, tactile, yes, yes, yes, this was it, yes, okay, just slow down now, just read, just think. -> Feeling sensations in the body (such as a crawling feeling on the skin or movement) The first one was a no. Naoko had just felt normal. Maybe a bit overheated and sweaty? That didn’t count, did it? - moru station

i'm going to formally tag @westcountrygothic , @snazzy-fangs , @j-1173 , & @its-actually-withered , as well as keeping it an open tag as always!

Your words are: GONE, FAVOR, BETTER, & PRACTICE

and as always i’m adding my own rule that if you can’t find a word in your work then you have to tell me a fun fact about either your WIP, your writing process, or one of your characters ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ

have fun, writers!! drink some water!!

[duchesschameleon]

what if - chapter 9

summary: a long lost letter leads to an adventure in Italy for three people who find love and healing along the way. a letters to juliet au

pairing: Aaron Hotchner x GN!Reader words: 3.9k a/n: the last chapter. thank you so much for your patience everyone, this has been a labor of love and just so much fun to write! thank you for sticking with me as I wrote and finished my first multi-chapter fic and thank you for reading it. the comments and excitement helped so much and all the cheerleading. a special thank you thank you thank you as always to @qvid-pro-qvo​ for being my beta and holding my hand so often throughout this series. I love you so much you wonderful human. so here it is! 

what if masterlist

You land back in New York two days after leaving the Bartolini house. Pushing all thoughts of Aaron aside, you focus on finishing the story. When you aren’t writing or editing it, you talk to your old boss, Paul, about coming back to work. When you tell him you’re working on a story, a rough draft really, he asks to see a snippet of it. And when he reads the first few paragraphs, he’s hooked and offers you a job.

Settling back into the routine of work helps you forget about Aaron, put the whole thing behind you. You focus on writing new stories and finishing up the edits on Dave and Carolyn’s story. When you hit a point that feels good, you send it on to Paul before you second guess yourself.

If you hear Aaron’s voice calling you scared when you hesitate on hitting send, well no one has to know.

It takes a few weeks after that for Paul to call you into his office and discuss the piece. At this point, you’ve been back in New York for almost six weeks and while Aaron still worms his way into your thoughts, your heart no longer squeezes every time he does.

You sit in one of the chairs opposite Paul’s desk. He’s silent as he reads, focused on the paper in his hand. Your hands are fidgeting, picking at invisible pieces of lint. When he finishes he leans back in his chair and twists to look at you.

“So that’s it?” he asks, eyebrows raised.

“Do you not like the ending?” you ask slowly. Immediately, he’s shaking his head and placing the papers on his desk.

“No, the ending’s fine. I just want to know what happened to the people. Are they still together, and what about the friend, Aaron?” Paul asks. There’s a flash of heat in your chest at the mention of Aaron, but you ignore it.

“I don’t know,” you answer slowly, “I didn’t really keep in touch.” You shrug and look down at your lap. You don’t elaborate that it was your choice to not keep in touch, a choice made to protect your heart and feelings. Right now, you aren’t certain how smart a choice that was though.

Paul hums and looks back at the papers, a silence falling between you two.

“Do you have any advice?” you ask tentatively.

“I think you should buy stock in Al Italia,” Paul snorts, “because all the ladies are gonna be flocking to Verona after they read this.”

You blink your eyes, his words swirling through your head. “You’re going to publish it?”

“Yeah I’m gonna publish it, it’s a good story,” Paul says matter of factly. “Do you got anything else for me?”

“No, not at the moment,” you laugh out, “but I’m working on a few things. I’ll send them to you when they’re done.”

Paul nods, dismissing you back to your desk and working on the next piece. Your mind is reeling, overwhelmed by the fact that you’re going to be published. There’s an excitement bubbling in your chest and you’re bursting to tell someone the good news. You pick up the desk phone, fingers dialing the familiar number on autopilot. The phone is ringing when your brain catches up to your actions and you slam the phone back into the receiver, tears immediately welling in your eyes.

You’d dialed your partner’s work number. The partner who’s buried six feet under and isn’t here to share in these successes with you. Who will never know that you are going to be published, that you’re fulfilling your dream.

The realization that you don’t have someone to share this news with overwhelms you. You push your chair back and rush out of the office, needing fresh air and a walk to clear your head.

As you walk, couples pass you by. Young, old, all holding hands and bending their heads towards one another as they talk over the general noise of the city. Everywhere you look, you see couples smiling at each other, sharing news. 

You’d had that once. 

Looking around at the couples - the ones who have clearly grown old together, the ones who are just starting out on their journey, the ones who found each other later in life - you wonder if you’ll ever have it again. If you’ll ever have someone you want to share your news with, revel in successes together, hold you when things don’t go according to plan. A voice in the back of your head whispers Aaron. 

You almost had it with Aaron. 

He was so excited when you shared your writing with him, he wanted you to publish it. He’d been incredibly supportive and kind the entire time you spent with him. You remember the lightness you felt in his presence, how comfortable the two of you were. 

And yet you’d run scared from it. You were too afraid that it was too soon, too soon to jump into something like this, to feel this way about someone. So you ran back to New York without a word. 

In hindsight, it’s not the smartest decision you’ve ever made. Running away from your emotions, not saying a word to Aaron, leaving Italy alone, it’s left you with a hole in your heart. If possible, an even bigger one than what was there before. Your happy ending had been in reach and yet you’d left it behind. 

As you walk back into work, you’re left with one stark realization - the only other person you can think to call with your good news is Aaron.

You love Aaron Hotchner. In fact, you’re in love with Aaron Hotchner and you want to call him and tell him that you finished the story, that you weren’t too chicken to show it to someone, and it’s going to be published.

But you can’t do it. You can’t bring yourself to call him, to admit that you were wrong to leave. So you just sigh and tuck into your work for the rest of the day.

A week after Paul agrees to publish your piece, the receptionist calls your name as you walk into the office, beckoning you over to her desk.

“I’ve got these messages for you,” she says handing you a piece of paper, “oh and this came too.” She hands you a white envelope and you turn it over, looking for the return address.

Siena, Italy. Dave and Carolyn.

You thank the receptionist and hurry to your desk, putting the envelope away for now. You focus on writing, looking over some edits for your finished piece, and push all thoughts of Dave and Carolyn aside. You don’t touch the envelope, don’t look at it, until it’s time for your lunch. You walk to the small park across from your office building and sit at a table, placing the letter and your lunch down.

You stare at them for a minute, trying to decide which to open first. Eventually, your curiosity wins out and you open the letter. There’s a piece of cardstock inside, written on with beautiful calligraphy, inviting you to Dave and Carolyn’s wedding. The letter must have taken some time to get to you, the wedding is this upcoming weekend. You push logistics to the back of your mind and look at what else is in the envelope.

It’s a folded piece of paper, old and stained. You recognize it from when you pulled it out of the wall in Verona. Dave’s letter to Juliet. You read it again, hearing Dave’s voice in your head. The longing, the uncertainty of if he was making the right choice comes through just like it had the first time you read it. You sigh and look up when you finish it, your eyes landing on an elderly couple walking hand in hand through the park.

It hits you all of a sudden, why Dave sent you his letter. You’re repeating history, leaving Italy without saying anything to Aaron and cutting off all contact. Dave has known the entire time that there was something more to your hard-won friendship with Aaron.

He knew you kissed Aaron that night. He told you as much when he saw you the next morning.

And now he wants to make sure it doesn’t take you 50 years to tell Aaron you love him, to get your own happily ever after. And for once, you’re going to listen.

You book your ticket when you get back to the office, tell Paul you’re going to be out of the country for the weekend, and then you walk out. 

You haven’t been to the cemetery since the funeral, but you feel drawn to it. You don’t have anyone to actually talk to about your plans, but something about this feels right. So you walk the path to their grave and sit on the ground, silence and grief hanging over you for a moment before the story spills out. All of it. 

When you finish, you feel lighter almost. It was good to talk about your plan out loud, even if the conversation was one-sided. That lightness gets you through your haphazard packing and airport security and then, you’re back in Italy, driving from Rome to Siena.

It’s different this time, in the driver’s seat, but you find the house pretty easily. Your suitcase is in the trunk and you have no idea where you’re staying tonight, but that’s a secondary worry to finding Aaron. You plan out what you want to tell him - that you were scared, uncertain, and you regret walking away. You want this with him, you love him.

Carolyn’s house comes into view and a smile tugs at the corner of your lips. You park the car out of the way and see the crowd of people near the small building that’s being used as the church for the wedding. Your eyes dart around the unfamiliar faces, looking for a certain pair of brown eyes.

Aaron sees you first and calls your name, surprise coloring his voice. “I, I didn’t know you were going to make it.”

“Yeah, I got the invitation earlier this week and just knew I had to come,” you say, smiling at him. His suit is a stark difference from the polos and t-shirts you were used to seeing him in, but he fills it out well.

“Where are your bags? Do you know where you’re staying?” he asks, catching your attention again.

You shake your head, “No not yet.”

Aaron’s brow furrows as he thinks for a minute. “Well, you’ll stay here then. Carolyn wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“And how is the great Carolyn?” you ask.

“Even better than advertised,” Aaron answers, shooting you a small smile. He opens his mouth to speak again but is interrupted by a blonde woman coming up behind him,

“Aaron, you have to get inside, it’s almost time,” she says, placing a hand on his arm.

He starts, checking his watch. “Oh, shoot yes. Okay,” he says, fumbling to check something in his pockets.

“Everything okay?” you ask and Aaron’s head shoots up, looking at you and then back at the blonde woman.

“Oh, yes,” he says and then straightens, placing an arm around the woman. He introduces her to you as Jess and then he’s saying your name but you can hardly hear him through the rushing sound in your ears.

Jess. His ex Jess. The one who broke up with him a year prior. You ran away, and Aaron ran back to Jess. You force a smile on your face, shaking her hand, trying to match her enthusiasm.

“Oh, Aaron’s told me so much about you!” she exclaims, smile blindingly bright. You nod and take a step back, looking around and trying to find some excuse. Jess turns back to Aaron and whispers something to him and then they’re both heading into the church. You take a steadying breath, willing the tears pricking at the corner of your eyes to not fall.

When you feel more steady, in control of your emotions, you walk into the church. You find the secretaries of Juliet quickly and greet them, happily accepting hugs and kisses on the cheek. When you look to the altar, you see Dave standing in front of the priest with Aaron behind him as his best man. Dave catches your eye and smiles at you, winking. You return his smile, though you know it doesn’t reach your eyes. Aaron’s looking at someone in the front row and you can see Jess’ hair, so you look away. No need to look in on their happy moment. You sigh and push your emotions down. It’s Dave and Carolyn’s day, you’re here for them.

Everyone shifts, looking at the back of the church and you see Carolyn walking up the steps, holding her son’s hand. Your smile grows wider as she walks down the aisle and finds you, reaching out to pat your hand.

It’s a simple ceremony, short and sweet. And then you’re in Carolyn’s backyard at a table with the secretaries. Everyone’s exchanging stories and drinking wine and soaking in the afternoon sun, the company, and the happiness of the day.

There’s a small band playing some music while you all eat and you look up to the head table to see Dave, Carolyn, Carolyn’s son, his wife, Aaron, Jess, and a young boy. Based on how he’s seated between Aaron and Jess and leans on Aaron, you assume that’s Jack. You smile, seeing how easily the three of them get along, like a proper little family. Jack is so comfortable with both of them and Aaron has his arm across both their chairs, his smile wider than you’ve ever seen it.

Your gaze gets pulled away from Aaron and Jess as Carolyn stands up and stops the music. Everyone’s conversations quiet as they shift in their seats, looking up at the head table.

“Mi famiglia, grazie a tutti per essere qui oggi,” she says, “thank you all for being here today, for all your love and support for my husband and I.” She smiles and raises a glass, an action mirrored by others, before sitting.

Dave stands up and clears his throat, taking a piece of paper from his jacket pocket. “Nearly fifty years ago, I left Carolyn and ended up in Verona, uncertain if I’d made the right choice. I wrote a letter to Juliet before I went back to the States.” He takes a deep breath, playing with the edges of the paper. “And two months ago, I got a response. If it’s alright,” he says, finding you in the crowd, “I would like to read that response now.” You nod at him and he gives you a smile, unfolding the letter. “Dear Dave, ‘what’ and ‘if’ are two words as non-threatening as words can be. But put them together side-by-side and they have the power to haunt you for the rest of your life: What if? What if? What if? I don’t know how your story ended but if what you felt then was true love, then it’s never too late.”

Your mind wanders as Dave reads the rest of the letter. Just as you believed two months ago, “what if” is the scariest phrase in the world. And with Aaron sitting in your line of sight looking happy with Jess, it haunts you. It overwhelms you.

As Dave sits back down and kisses Carolyn, you stand and slip away from the reception. It’s too much to see Aaron with Jess, to see him happy with someone else.

You're gathering your belongings from where they’d been placed in an upstairs room when you hear your name. Aaron’s calling it out, and you walk to the balcony to find him. He’s on the ground, head whipping around. You walk towards the end of the balcony and lean on the railing, calling out to him.

“A balcony. Of course,” he laughs, looking up at you. “What are you doing up there?”

“I’m. Um. I’m gonna go.” Aaron frowns up at you and you take a steadying breath. “I thought I could do this, could be here, but it’s really painful.” You catch a glimpse of his frown deepening before you look up at the sky, trying to hold back tears and keep yourself together. “I realized when Dave sent me the invitation that, well, that I’d been lying to myself. I didn’t think it would happen so fast but,” you pause and take a breath, trying to make sense of the words jumbling around in your head, “Aaron, I love you.” Aaron’s face relaxes at your words, his eyebrows lifting and raising, a small smile tugging at the corner of his lips.  You return the smile before sharply inhaling and continuing to speak, “And I guess I thought that there was a chance you feel the same but it’s obvious you don’t so, I’m just going to go. I have to leave.”

“Wait, what do you -”

“You should go back to Jess, be with her, Aaron,” you say, biting the inside of your cheek. “You two look happy together.”

Aaron’s eyebrows fly towards his hairline, eyes open wide. “Jess?” he asks. “Why would I want to go back to Jess? She’s Jack’s aunt, Haley’s sister!”

“You dated your dead wife’s sister?” you exclaim, a little shocked and horrified.

“What? Oh! God, no,” he says, running a hand through his hair. “No, there are two Jess’, there’s Haley’s sister Jess who’s helped me out with Jack ever since Haley died and there’s the Jess I dated last year who I’d completely forgotten about,” he explains, walking closer to the balcony. You duck your head, cheeks heating up with embarrassment. “More importantly, there’s only one of you.” He smiles at you, a true genuine one and it pulls another smile out of you. Aaron takes a step back and looks around fervently. After a minute you hear a small grumble as he takes off his suit jacket and starts climbing the vines snaking up the house.

“Aaron, what are you doing?”

“I told you before, I don’t mind a little dirty work to get what I want,” he says as he climbs the last bit of the vines, head now almost level with you. You let out a small laugh, remembering your conversation about Romeo and Juliet at that bar in Siena. “Now. I also told you that I believe in making your intentions clear and not leaving any room for error, right?” You nod, biting your lower lip. “I haven’t exactly done that so far, so to clear the air, the Jess who is here in Italy is Haley’s sister. I have not been nor have I ever wanted to be involved with her. She helps me look after Jack and is family. She’s basically my sister at this point. Okay?” You nod again, holding back a smile as Aaron focuses on holding himself up, arms clearly working hard. “Now, you live in New York City, a fine city -”

“Hey!”

“Just let me speak,” Aaron bites out, breath becoming more labored. “And I live in DC, with Jack. A three and a half hour train ride is a lot to ask whenever I want to see you, and I can’t uproot Jack at his age. So tell me what I can do to help you move to DC.”

“Aaron,” you whisper, “what are you saying?”

“I’m saying,” he says, arms starting to shake with exertion, “that I want this to work between us. Because the truth is, I am absolutely, truly, madly, in love with you.”

The tears spilling from your eyes are happy ones, a smile splitting your face as you look at Aaron. “You are?”

“I love you. And I’m gonna -”

Aaron’s cut off by a vine snapping, and his arms giving out. He shouts, falling to the ground and landing on his back. You hear his groan and spin around, running downstairs and outside, flinging yourself onto the grass beside him.

“Aaron! Aaron, are you okay?” you ask frantically, looking over him for any obvious injuries.

“I - I’m okay,” he coughs out. “Just winded.” He blinks a few times and you sit on your knees by him, hands hovering over him. “Did, did anyone see that?” You look around and see that Dave and Carolyn are walking towards the house but you bite your lip and look back towards Aaron, shaking your head to save his pride. “Good, good.” He closes his eyes again and lets out a groan.

“Are you sure you’re okay? Can you move?” you ask again.

Aaron opens his eyes and surges up, his hand cupping your cheek as he kisses you. “Does that answer your question?” he asks, leaning back slightly. You nod and move in to kiss him again. This kiss is urgent, Aaron immediately drawing his tongue across your lips, deepening the kiss. You open your mouth and kiss him hungrily, desperate to feel him close to you.

“Dad, Dad!” you hear and Aaron pulls back from you.

“Jack?” he asks. “Jack!” he says as the young boy in question crashes to the ground by Aaron.

“Why are you on the ground?” he asks, hands planted on Aaron’s chest.

“Well buddy,” Aaron says, sitting up a bit and moving Jack to sit by his side, “I fell. But I’m okay.” Jack nods and rests his head on his dad’s shoulder. You smile and shift to give them a little space. Aaron’s hand falls to yours, stopping you. He tugs on it a little and you settle next to Aaron, legs stretched out beside his. “Jack, there’s someone I want you to meet.” Jack looks up at you and then back towards his dad. Aaron introduces you, and you smile at Jack. He waves, a little shy. “This is my friend I was telling you about, the one who writes and who helped Uncle Dave and I find Carolyn,” Aaron explains.

Jack’s face lights up with a smile, excitement overtaking his whole face. “Did you finish the story? Can I read it? Dad said you’re a really good writer,” Jack reports rapidly.

You laugh and nod your head. “I did finish the story Jack, and you will be able to read it because it’s going to be published.” Aaron’s head whips up to yours and you nod, reassuring him it’s the truth. “But I might be able to get you an early copy if you want.”

“Oh, I think we’d all love early copies,” you hear Dave say. You look up to see him and Carolyn arm in arm. They both smile at you and your cheeks heat up again.

“I’ll make sure to get those for you.”

“Good, good. Now, how about we rejoin the party? I think we can pull an extra chair up to the head table,” Dave says. You nod and stand, reaching back to help Aaron up. “And we can probably get ice for your back, Aaron.”

Aaron huffs out a laugh and pats Dave on the shoulder. “So there were witnesses. Maybe I have to hand it to Romeo. Just talking saves you the embarrassment of falling from the balcony.”

You all laugh as you walk back towards the party, Aaron with one arm wrapped around you and the other on Jack’s shoulder. You lean against him, feeling a lightness in your chest and hope for the future once more.

taglist: @qvid-pro-qvo @averyhotchner @kelstark @hurricanejjareau​ @oreogutz​ @whentheautumnleavesfall​ (message me to be on future fic taglists, I will probably be writing more romcom aus and I have fic for a few other fandoms!)

[septiembrre]

5! 6! 8! 9! for the fic q’s pls! 💕💕

5: Share a snippet that you’re proud of from an upcoming fic/chapter.

I don't have anything polished that I've been sitting on. For the past month, I focused on the most recent chapter of Get to be Mine, and now that I finished it last week, I'm running through the first draft of Chapter 6 on paper. There's nothing ready from that yet, just lots of rough, delightful dialogue. I... would share but I think it'll be more fun if it comes as a surprise.

I've also been letting my other wips rest for a bit to focus on Get To Be Mine.

6: What are some topics you will never write about?

Lmao, a crime plot? Jajajaja, it's so not my forte. Maybe one day I'll challenge myself to do it.

When it comes to GG, not anything heavily violent.

8: How do you develop your OCs?

I haven't had a lot of need for OCs outside of Get To Be Mine. For Marjorie and Miriam, I did a somewhat unstructured character outline for them. I thought about who I would like to write about, someone I could empathize with and would genuinely like, and sketched their details (schooling, family history, relationship to their mom, professions, other family, foils to Beth and Annie). And those details were great and helpful... but when I first tried to write them after deciding on The Details and The Backstory, I ended up with a lot of chunky paragraphs that relayed these facts, but ultimately weren't very engaging.

So, then, I really focused on what I really emotionally related to about their arcs, and what real conversations between family members would look like. And ultimately, that's what's given me a lot of joy about engaging with their scenes and made them -- especially Marjorie -- matter to me. I'm so fond of her and hold a lot of care for M.

9: Are there any fics you’d love to see but don’t want to write yourself? What are they?

I generally want more of what we already have: I want so much more ~pining and figuring things out and long term partnership. I want a greater variety of sexy fics.

I also want a fic where Beth and Rio more explicitly talk things out for my own personal catharsis. I know why folks have so seldomly touched it -- it's so hard. But, I selfishly want other people to make sense of the ugliness of Season 4 Beth and Rio for me.

Thanks for the ask, friend!!!

[magicofthepen]

💡☀️⭐ for knock the ice from my bones? (haven't read anything else you've written unfortunately)

send me questions about my fic! 

thank you for sending these!!

💡- What was the motivation behind the story?

ooh Backstory Time: so this is my first Gallifrey fic! (okay, All These Restless Ghosts is also my first Gallifrey fic, because that was the first one I finished and posted, but the first Gallifrey writing I ever did was for the fic that ended up becoming knock the ice from my bones.) 

I wanted to write a character study about Romana and relationships post-Etra Prime, continuing through the Gallifrey audios, but I hadn’t written fic in years and didn’t have a good understanding of the scope of such a project. so I ended up with about 3k of a post-TAE, pre-Gallifrey audios Romana character study before stopping. plus maybe an additional 15k of headcanons and notes and ramblings about Romana and her personal relationships. (fun fact: the og Romana Headcanon Doc ended up being the basis of a lot of my other fics, although many of the headcanons evolved over time.)

this was in summer 2019, for reference. so I set that fic idea aside to work on All These Restless Ghosts/Eye of the Storm/So Cold It Burns/the original Echoes Between Us. but I liked the idea of reworking the Apocalypse Element/Neverland/Zagreus stuff that I’d written into a character study just focusing on that time period. so that idea ended up on my long list of Stuff To Write Eventually.

skip ahead to summer 2020, when it landed on my list of Active Projects. but while the original idea was to focus on Romana’s struggles with forming relationships, I realized that identity should really be the main theme of this fic. (aka Romana struggling to figure out who she is after Etra Prime, as she’s constantly having who she’s not thrown in her face.) I re-outlined it and drafted the new version - which meant lots of new scenes, but also lots of fleshing out scenes that I’d already written, which were pretty sketch-like in the 3k version. (actually, if anyone’s interested, it might be fun to post a “before and after” comparison of a scene?)

that draft is pretty close to the final version - although the “italics” bits were the big thing I added later. I felt like it needed something to better tie the individual scenes into one cohesive character analysis…hence the “there was once” refrain, which shifts as Romana’s sense of identity is destabilized more and more, and shifts again to “there is” when she manages to claim a sense of identity at last. (one of the tricky bits of this fic for me was wanting to tell a story that had some sort of conclusion, while also knowing that the effect of Etra Prime on Romana’s sense of self lasts far longer than the scope of this fic. so I basically asked myself ‘how does she get from where’s she at post-TAE to where she’s at in Weapon of Choice?’ and went from there.)

☀️ - Was there symbolism/motifs you worked in?

the “there was once” sections (the storytelling motif)! these snippets of stories Romana tells herself about who she is, the story changing each time, until all of these contradictory, not right ideas are racing together in her head and is she any of these people? who even is she anymore? 

the “there was once” language is meant to evoke parables with simple characters and themes because Romana’s trying so hard to tell herself this nice, neat story…..but the effects of trauma are so much more complicated than that, and so the simple story never sticks. 

leaning on the language of storytelling was also important to me because telling herself a story about herself is something we actually hear Romana doing in the aftermath of Etra Prime. and I know the fanfic is a Fun Joke thing, but I also wanted to explore it (indirectly, the fic never explicitly references it, but the implications are there) as a kind of coping mechanism. 

If the Daleks never existed, who would she be? A young student who took to the stars and decided the whole universe was worth knowing? An experienced traveler who said that staying behind was worthwhile, too? A bold politician who believed that where you're from might be just as important as where you’re going? What would people mean, when they said Madam President, daughter of Heartshaven, Romana?

If she is destined to be the villain of this story, would she be the hero in a different one?

The walls of the presidential suite trap sound. If she screams, no one can hear. If she paces into the hours of the morning, feet wearing the same tired tracks on her rugs, no one will know.

If she tells herself a story, one where she made the right choices, where she didn’t fail, wasn’t trapped, never disappointed anyone who believed in her — if she tells herself a pretty lie because sometimes it’s the only thing keeping her breathing, who will ever care?

⭐ - What’s a scene/paragraph you’re proud of?

whoops I already posted an excerpt…and this is already so long so I’m going to go with a short-ish moment - the one time I let Romana have the catharsis of an emotional breakdown (and also the tragedy of the only person she can let herself cry around is her robot dog). 

A metallic whirring cuts through her thoughts, and she flinches, eyes darting to exits and potential weapons before a part of her remembers that sound.

“Mistress?”

“K9?”

Twenty years. He’s still here.

K9 rolls out onto the carpets of her sitting room and cheerfully explains how the interim president had his circuits maintained and found his databanks of knowledge useful at times for dealing with a minor crisis. She doesn’t speak for a full microspan.

Then she lets herself stumble, fall to her knees to reach out one hand to the robot dog who was her only companion for so many years. There is something bubbling in her throat that she can’t name, something she hasn’t let herself feel in so long. She presses a hand to his cool metal exterior and blinks and blinks.

“Mistress? Is something wrong?”

She shakes her head, but her eyes are burning and her chest is tight and she buries her face in her arms.

“I missed you,” she whispers, her voice breaking at last, “I missed you.” And here in her old rooms, next to the only old friend she has left, she cries for the first time since Etra Prime.

[bellesque]

welcome, gather round my lovelies, it’s time for our first trivia tuesday!

i saw this post from @ao3commentoftheday and thought it would be a fun thing to do every week. essentially, i’ll be sharing random “behind the scenes” stuff—thought processes, fun facts, draft snippets, anything really. and hopefully you guys like this little segment on my little corner of the internet. ask questions if you’d like, or let me know what you want to see next trivia!

ready ready LET’S GO

Trivia Tuesday #1: Kneel

oh boy was i FLOORED by the response to this fic request when i posted it! if you haven’t read it, here it is.

fun fact: below is my favorite paragraph. the paragraphs that follow—him seeing into your mind, actually saying the word kneel—those are a close second, but this one right here is my favorite.

why do i love this so much? easy. tom’s behind the scenes video. i posted a clip of it right here after a few minutes after it went up, and my mind was churning. i’d originally planned to name this fic vanilla, or a safe word, OR safe word altogether, but as soon as i saw the video and heard tom’s soft “kneel,” i knew what had to be done.

and so—kneel was born.

so there’s that little fun fact. go watch tom’s instagram video again! i sure will. i’m never going to get enough of it that man is ADDICTIVE and watching him fight is- i’ll stop right there.

see you lovelies for next week’s trivia tuesday! 💛

[sevdrag]

Old Vines Outtakes (1/31)

So combine the facts that

it’s Good Omens Celebration month #goc2020 and anniversaries of both the book and the show

There are daily prompt lists (prompts and anniversaries) for May

I’m quarantined, angry, and feral

There have been a ton of comments on Old Vines asking about wine tasting, about my history with it, about how to get into it...

So I’m going to try to do a little collection here, a little supplemental info, some little snippets in and around the structure of the fic. Some will just be ficlets; some of it will focus on how to have fun with wine tasting yourself!  (As always I’m unlikely to keep up with it daily, but it’s worth a try -- I do have lunch breaks.)

------

In the beginning, Aziraphale’s blog had been a wreck.

He’d been employed part-time at a bookshop then, slowly working his way through a culinary arts program, and one of the class assignments had been to build the draft of a website to advertise one’s work. (It was a silly class, in Aziraphale’s opinion: about marketing one’s-self, and building an image and a brand. Perhaps it was more meaningful for students who intended to become chefs themselves? Aziraphale, a writer, was there for the words. Well, and the food.)

So he’d sat in the bookshop with his co-workers and painstakingly constructed the very rough draft of Temptations, his very first food and wine blog. It had been horrible -- not what Warlock would eventually call Geocities Horrible, but it had been rather plain, a stock image that Oliver had found of some grapes mashed together with another stock image of a cheese making up the fairly pathetic header.

Aziraphale had only made it worse by trying to post photos of the notes he made about local restaurants - pictures of the paper, yes, Warlock - because he thought it was charming. He did manage to pass the class, and determined to stick to his normal system, tucked the blog away in the corner of his mind.

Three weeks later found him writing in it nearly daily. There was something so freeing about typing words into it - slowly, for sure - and posting them where anyone could read it. Rather than transcribing his paper notes onto the screen, he took the time to build a couple paragraphs around them, make a nice story of it. It became a soothing before-bedtime habit, letting those words flow out into the vast network-cloud-thing of the internet.

Then Temptations had been featured on some Wordpress random advertiser... and three weeks after that, Aziraphale had found himself overwhelmed and frantic and excited, and looking for assistance. When Will had mentioned he knew a friend of a kid of a friend who was good at that kind of thing and was looking for pocket cash, Aziraphale had looked up Warlock Dowling, and then never looked back.

He’d initially planned to -- well. He hadn’t really known what he wanted to do beneath the vast umbrella of “write about wine and food for a living and somehow get paid.” Aziraphale had been perhaps thinking books, or long articles sold to magazines. He’d barely known what a blog was. But when that first check came in from the advertisements Warlock had cleverly selected, he’d spent a good hour staring at the entry in his back accounting ledger, and thought, I could do this.

And while his blog grew more popular and his articles eventually developed their own style, and taste, and brand, Aziraphale - to his disappointment - never really improved all that much at the actual typing.

[firesign23]

Any/all of 6, 9 and 10 for Yonder?

6. Which scenes did you cut, and which were added in yonder?

Even in the chapter I scrapped and restarted three times, I haven’t really cut scenes. I’ve restructured them, and the Jaime POV after the bad sex was new in the third draft–he was too passive in earlier versions where the chapter opens with Brienne reaching through the dark to touch him–but I haven’t cut anything. Of course, I tend to edit as I go and this fic is also the least planned fic I’ve written in literally years, and my planning is limited at the best of times, so this isn’t unusual. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever cut a full scene: by the time I get to that level, each scene serves a purpose even if I have to tease it out, so I’ve never had to. Major rewrites a few times, but if a scene makes it to the writing stage it is there to stay.

9. Which idea came to you first in yonder?

A lot of things kind of came at once? Or possibly not a lot of the plot, but… okay, the earliest notes on Gdocs (aside from some snippets of text, some of which became the first chapter) are basically how the story came to me in one go:

Sansa and Tyrion are the closest to competent leaders the show has left, at least for another week, so they can deal with that. Jaime killed his sister. Brienne’s like “Cool motive, still levels of dumbassery I don’t have to deal with. Bye fuckboi” 😂😂 Which goes really well until Tyrion and Sansa are like “So, you two are getting married. It’s Politics (and also get your dumb heads out of your dumb asses)” and they have to be all “I trust your nobility, blahblah, let’s be honest about our time together being post-battle trauma fucking and make the best of it”. There is pining, and Brienne being the centre of the story, and no incest 😂 It’s so much fucking fun–it’s like fake dating only BETTER, and they are all “Must keep our oaths, blahblah, seriously we were both SHAT on by the showrunners”. Fucking GOLD

SELF OATH

*There needs to be a bruised ribs scene from an overzealous recruit, complete with touching-not-touching*“Ser wife”/”I’d rather be called wench”*There is at least one sparring session that turns dirty. And I don’t mean smutty, I mean she kicks his ass and he ends up with an inappropriate boner*A moment of comfort–Brienne’s father is ill, she’s conflicted, but like she does not want to say shit to people because family is complicated. Sansa’s dad was killed in front of her, etc. Maybe dad is sick and it will be over–dead or better–before she could get there, so she has a conflict of duties. [[This could be a cut scene? It’s really more a replaced-fairly-early-by-the-Adalys-subplot]]*There’s also an element here of “I’m not a fucking moron, I know why you went, what the FUCK did you think I was talking about. The issue is that if you’re so bullshit noble and I’m so genuinely noble, what happens the next time our oaths don’t align?”*Ends in a meadow on Tarth with all the options in the world before them, leave their choice open because THEY HAVE A FUCKING CHOICE

10. What are some facts readers may not know about yonder?

IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A ONE-SHOT. I mean, I’ve been so quiet about this I presume nobody knows. 😂😂😂 I guess what’s not known about that is that when I thought it was a one-shot, after the little meadow snippet (because it was supposed to be a series of short snippet scenes as they rebuild their relationship over the course of a year), it concludes by circling back to that introductory paragraph and altering it only slightly.

It’s very stylistically different than my usual writing, though I’ve been working on it for so long it is leaking into my general style. The themes are consistent though--complex adult relationships, love as a choice and a strength, female relationships, etc.The longer the fic goes on, the less that poetical stream-of-conscious appears because there’s too much plot. I have a feeling rereading it as a complete story will bug me for that reason, but it stood up on a recent reread so maybe not. 

I’m trying to think of anything interesting, but I’ve basically blathered about most things in this fic for months. It’s a miracle people are still reading. 😂 (Actually, god, it’s a complete miracle anybody is reading this in the first place because I am bullshitting my way through the entire experience)

10 Questions Every Fic Writer Secretly Wants to be Asked

[someobscurereference]

unfinished fic meme

I got tagged by @kimium in a writing meme!

“Rules: post your favorite parts of 3-5 fics that have been sitting abandoned in your drafts for ages. (for extra shame, throw in when you last worked on each thing.) tag 5 other writers to reflect on their life choices.”

I don’t think I have anyone else to tag, lol. So if you want to participate, just say I tagged you!

Most of my unfinished work here are things I haven’t looked at in a long, long time. I don’t even recall where I intended for some of them to go. Here are some brief previews of that unfinished work (under the cut because they’re long):

1. The one where I basically wanted to write that scene from Finding Nemo except with Leo and Odin instead (blood tw)

Leo’s heart stopped. He froze.

Odin.

Leo only had a split-second to register the sight before him, but that was unmistakably Odin, slung over the ruffian’s shoulder like a sack of potatoes, horribly limp. Parts of his blond hair had been dyed shockingly red with blood, and though Leo couldn’t see his face, Odin looked awfully pale. Fat drops of crimson dripped from Odin’s hair to the floor, trailing behind him.

Dead, Leo thought before anything else. He’d dead.

He didn’t know that, not for sure, but Leo was already raising his arm again on instinct. He yelled something intelligible as he fired off the shot, some words he didn’t even recognize himself, too focused on the sudden overwhelming flood of grief and anger in his chest for self-awareness.

At the sound of his voice, Odin’s head jerked up, his eyes wide. In that same moment, Leo fire his spell.

Shocked, Leo froze.

Odin did not.

With the element of surprise apparently on his side as well, Odin twisted out of his captor’s grasp, landing flat on the floor just before Leo’s spell made contact with the ruffian’s back. With a strangled cry, the ruffian hit the floor and didn’t get up. Odin pushed himself to all fours, surprised written all over his features.

“My lord!” Odin cried, sitting up. “I hadn’t expected you so soon! It must be fate’s will that we have crossed paths like this. Are you all right?”

Leo’s mouth opened and closed like a fish. Blood sluggishly trickled from a thin cut on Odin’s forehead. There was a bruise on his cheek and another just above his eyebrow. He looked dirty and worse for wear, but unmistakably, he was alive. His wounds were much more superficial than Leo had initially registered.

Still, Leo’s hands shook. He breathed in and steadied himself.

“Lord Leo?” Odin said, a little more hesitantly.

Instinctively, Leo said, “I’m fine.” He looked at Odin, who was still very much alive. “Are you all right? Can you fight?”

“Of course!” Odin was all energy and focus, same as always. He leaped to his feet and barely wobbled. “I was merely looking for a proper opportunity before I staged my surprise attack! It seems you took care of that before me though.” He flashed a smile. “As expected of my lord.”

Leo barely resisted the urge to sigh.

(Notes: I wrote 3K of this like a year ago and could probably finish it with a handful of paragraphs. I just didn’t love it, I guess. There was something about it that made me not finish. Maybe the tone or the plot not feeling as strong as I wanted it to be? I’m not sure. I still really like the concept though, lol.)

2. The Modern Trio travel between Nohr and Ylisse via water all the time (like Inuyasha) and Inigo and Owain have a fight about going out and acting their age sometimes (maybe have shown some of this before?) (alcohol/getting drunk mention)

(snippet 1)

“You just want to go out without me,” Inigo said tearfully. “You even got Severa to go with you! You both lied to me!”

Owain bit the inside of his cheek. “Sometimes we don’t want to have to play rock-paper-scissors over who has to take your drunk self home that night.”

“Excuse me,” Inigo squawked, indignant. “I don’t get drunk every time.”

“You do,” Owain told him matter-of-factly. “And that’s fine. Have fun. But you get smashed, and then one of us has to take you home and…”

He felt his face grow warm.

“Oh, I saw,” Inigo said knowingly. “Sometimes you want other people to take you home.”

Owain looked determinedly toward the castle. They were crossing the bridge.

When Owain didn’t say anything else, Inigo said, “I’m not a child, you know. Even if I’m a bit tipsy, you don’t have to fight over who takes me home. You don’t have to take me home at all. I’m an adult.”

For all of Inigo’s whining all afternoon, this was the first time he’d sounded truly serious. He might have meant his complaints before, but he clearly meant this way more.

Owain’s frown deepened. They neared the end of the bridge. The two guards stationed at the castle gate nodded solemnly at their approach, and Owain and Inigo nodded back. They didn’t speak again until they passed the gate.

“You are an adult,” Owain agreed. “But I would feel like a bad friend if I didn’t make sure you got home safe, especially when I know that if we go out, you’re going to get drunk—"

“Not every time!”

“It is every time, and sometimes—”

“You make me sound like the worst version of myself.”

“It’s not bad! It can just be—”

Inigo scoffed.

Owain spotted a flash of blond hair in the distance. He got ready.

After a beat, Inigo started, “Am I really—”

But Owain was already jumping into action. He pointed the other way.

“Ah!” he said loudly. “Lord Xander! I didn’t see you there!”

Inigo instantly straightened and looked around wildly. Owain booked it in the other direction.

(snippet 2)

“So,” Niles said, suddenly slinking out from around the corner like a cat, “men who look like they could snap you over their knees are ‘the dream,’ are they?”

For the second time that day, Owain choked on air. Under Niles’s even gaze, Owain cursed Inigo’s big mouth and recovered as quickly as he could. It was a bit of a struggle.

“An eavesdropper, eh?” he hedged. He tried to gauge Niles’s reaction, but he was a hard man to read. “You didn’t have anything else to do but listen in on private conversations then, I see.”

“Given the volume with which Inigo likes to shout from the rooftops,” Niles said, “I wouldn’t particularly call it eavesdropping.”

(This one I like the concept for but I guess didn’t finish because it’s a version of the Trio I don’t think I’ve ever written before. Or at least rarely dabble into outside of the privacy of my own head/a close friend. I don’t like going out or getting drunk or anything, but a lot of people my age do and I kind of wanted to show that side of modern life where you go to clubs and maybe have a casual hookup sometimes. I often write the Trio as people who don’t have many (or any) romantic relationships before meeting Whoever I Ship Them With In X Fic, but part of me wants to change that default sometimes. I do think about modern Odin who has no problem meeting dudes in bars and having a brief fling or doing other, wilder stuff that his friends (especially in Nohr) maybe don’t always know about. I thought it would be a neat exercise, and I still think about it. The Modern Trio having their own lives that the Nohrians aren’t privy to and are maybe curious/romantically jealous over when they find out? Also I like the idea of characters having “types” (just like real life people do sometimes) and other characters who are romantically interested in them do hear about it (as seen above, lol.). This fic was leaning to be leo/odin/niles or at least niles/odin, I think. It’s been on my computer for at least 5 months. I just really like this concept in general but I guess I’m a little embarrassed because it’s so different from what I normally write. Maybe I’ll go back to it, one way or another, someday? Also Inigo and Odin do make up, yes.)

3. The college AU Severa/Owain fic where Severa propositions Owain about getting it on (Nothing actually happens, it’s all talking)

“I can get your character sheet drawn up in no time,” Owain continued. “In fact, I think I have some extras—"

“We should have sex,” Severa said.

Owain, suddenly red-faced and wide-eyed, choked on his never-ending list of nerdy suggestions about why he thought Severa had appeared outside his window. He looked at her in disbelief. Severa took the opportunity to roughly shove Owain’s upper body back through the window and crawled in after him.

He stumbled back, too surprised to protest, and Severa fell to the floor in an ungraceful heap. She plucked a leaf from her hair with a pout, grateful to finally be on solid ground again and hoping Owain’s mother hadn’t noticed Severa sitting in the tree outside her son’s room for the past several minutes.

“Uh, I don’t,” Owain stuttered as Severa climbed to her feet. “I mean, you—”

“Seriously?” Severa said, cocking her hip in a way she hoped was sexy.

What was she talking about? She was definitely sexy, childishly climbing trees or not. So what if she’d been too embarrassed to knock on Owain’s front door and risk the chance of one of his parents answering when Severa had come with a request like this? Nobody else knew that.

She continued, “That’s all you have to say?”

Owain sputtered out several more unintelligible phrases until he finally said, “You don’t… feel obligated or something, right?”

The tips of his ears were very, very red.  

Severa crossed her arms, scowling. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing!” Owain held up his hands defensively, looking like he was regretting his words already. “I just meant—You don’t. Like. This isn’t a peer pressure thing, right?”

“What are we, fifteen?”

Owain stared. Severa’s scowl deepened.

“No,” she said. “It’s not a ‘peer-pressure’ thing or whatever.”

She used air quotes.

“Okay,” Owain said slowly. “Then… why do you want to…”

He couldn’t even say the words have sex. Severa was suddenly very doubtful she had come to the right person at all. But who else was she supposed to go to about this? Lucina? Kjelle? Inigo?

Absolutely not. Owain would have to do.

He’d always put up with her enough that she’d thought… Well, maybe he wouldn’t say no outright.

Not that things were off to a great start already.

Feigning indifference, Severa shrugged and looked at the wall beside Owain’s head. “Do I need a reason?”

“Yes,” Owain said bluntly. His hands were still raised. As though just realizing this, they fell to his side.

Severa couldn’t help but make a face. She didn’t want to explain herself. She didn’t want to say anything about what she was thinking or why she wanted to have sex, as sudden as it must have seemed to Owain. But she knew it wouldn’t have exactly have been fair of her to ask without him at least knowing something.

Because the thing of it was—

Embarrassing, she mentally chided herself with a grimace.

The thing of it was that at twenty-one years old, Severa was still a virgin.

There was nothing wrong with being a virgin. Severa knew that. Logically, she knew that.

But it was hard to convince herself that it was true.

(This one is also a modern au exploring a lot of pressures that young adults might feel when comparing their own experiences to people around them.Severa goes on to explain a lot of her reasoning to the reader about why she’s propositioning Owain, but it was getting really long so I didn’t include that here. Mostly it was about controlling the experience of your first time and when you want to have it. I never got to the actual sex part, lol. It would definitely be awkward and slow if I did. Purposely, of course. Also Severa has always lowkey liked Owain like that.)

4. The AU where royals and their retainers have a telepathic link

Niles stands at his side, impassive as any proper retainer should be at public events, and Leo does his best to appear the same when Odin’s voice rings through his mind, laughing and giddy with the exhilaration of a fight.

That was so cool! That explosion was like BOOM! And that fire! Like pfft! I wish somebody else was around to see that. Oh well, I can describe it for everyone later.

Odin’s inner voice never sounds the same as his speaking voice. Not unless he knows Leo is listening and wants to put on a show. Odin’s inner voice lacks the extravagant dressings he layers upon his words aloud. Occasionally, Odin still narrates in his mind, still writes long novels with every adjective and made up noun under the sun. But more often than not Leo finds Odin’s inner voice to be much freer and more easily understandable than he would have first expected before he’d experienced Odin’s thoughts firsthand.  

Odin, Leo projects, pretending he is paying more attention to Xander’s speech than he really is. Some of us are trying to focus on our own missions.

Not that attending a meeting is a mission, per say, but it’s an important duty nonetheless. It gets the point across, anyway.

Oops! Odin accidentally projects more than Niles ever did, even after having years to get used to it. Now that he knows Leo can hear him, Odin makes it a point to use his narrative speech instead. My sincerest apologies, my lord! I’m afraid I was overcome for a moment, my mental barrier weakened through some villain’s curse. But fret not! My mental shield—

Odin, Leo projects, aiming for serious and fearing his true feelings may betray him. He knows there is no curse or attack, though there may have been minutes ago. Odin is simply too excited and eager to share, just as he always is. Leo is trying very hard not to be distracted right now, but it’s difficult when Odin’s bluff and bravado are still somehow more interesting than running the same tactical drills Leo has run a hundred times over already, necessary as they may be.

Leo also knows Niles should be hearing their exchange as well. Niles’ face betrays nothing. If Leo didn’t know any better, he could have mistaken Nile’s tiny exhale of breath as one not so amused at all. But Leo always knows.

(Note: I’d definitely rewrite this now if I ever started it again, but the core concept is still a little neat, I think.)

I have a few other fics, but they’re not that old just yet. These are all about 6 months or more old. Maybe one day I’ll finish them? Or at least use their core concepts again, lol. I hope you enjoyed these snippets anyway! 

[blood-red-pomegranate]

for me personally, most of my writers block comes from this subconscious need for perfection—in essence, i want to create the final version on the first draft. i spend hours reworking a single sentence because it is quite right, never moving past that paragraph despite the fact that i have dozens of ideas for the scene after this one just waiting to spill onto the page.

do you want to know what made me realize both the source of my writers block and how to circumvent it most of the time? i started writing things completely self-indulgent which i never intended and indeed likely never will share. i basically started writing fanfiction for my dnd character, and the only person i share most of these works with is my dm, who is also a writer so i know they won’t judge whatever quality i give them. we have an understanding that i’m not writing for quality, it’s purely for fun.

and let me tell you, freeing myself from the pressure of having to be Good at writing, and actually letting myself be bad and cliche and cringey because i don’t have to let anyone else in the entire world see this, has been the most fun and relieving experience i’ve ever had. i shit you not, ive written over 30k words in various one shots for my character and this campaign over the span of about two months. that’s unheard of for me. on the FIRST DAY, when i started the very first of so many works, i wrote 7k words in less than 24 hours.

and it was GOOD.

that’s right, by giving myself permission to write whatever i wanted, i actually produced something i didn’t hate in the end. possibly this was because i didn’t agonize over every single goddamn word, so it just sort of flowed out of me and i could work on making it better in the second draft if i wanted (you know, like how you’re Supposed to write haha). after that, i wrote whatever came to me, and if i got stuck or didn’t like where a piece was going or just got bored of the premise, i would stop. i would leave it unfinished and be okay with not returning to it. or in other cases, i would write little snippets or single conversations but provide no context for them, because i already have the context, and no one else needs it if they aren’t going to see it.

i know this has gotten long and anecdotal, but i promise i had a point when i started this reply. basically, to link back to the original post, writers block is your brain telling you to write about something trivial. in the same way op says artists should go back to the basics, so too should writers step back from all the complexities of whatever work in progress we have going on. stop working on the plot, stop trying to figure out that particular character terms arc, stop thinking about how to make your prose beautiful and powerful and moving.

let yourself write something stupid. something so completely inane you think, “why am i doing this?” as you write. describe what you had for breakfast, or write a guide on how to open a jar of peanut butter, or record all your thoughts about your special interest stream of consciousness style. the important thing is to write something with no expectations for how it will turn out. be at peace with the fact that it might be complete garbage, but at least it will exist. it might never see the light of day, but anything you put down will be getting your brain juices flowing, and that’s what matters. do this until you can get rid of the restrictions you’ve put on your writing, consciously or unconsciously.

the ultimate goal will not be to get to a point where the writers block is gone and you can create a masterpiece. rather, the goal is to let yourself write a possibly terrible version of this thing you care a lot about, so that you can edit it and make it better later. i know it sounds so hard, but i promise, it’s so much easier to edit in post instead of as you go.

anyway, this was way longer than i intended but i hope it helps someone :)

just so yall know

art block is your brain telling you to do studies.

draw a still life. practice some poses. sketch some naked people. do a color study. try out a different technique on a basic shape.

art block doesnt stop you from drawing, it stops you from making your drawings look the way you want them to. and thats because you need to push your skills to the next level so you can preform at that standard

think of it as level grinding for your next work.

[thaumatological]

so, this didn’t start as a rambly essay about eyes give in by lusine, but that’s what it turned into, because it turns out that despite shifting the echo title over to fuzzyverse echo (who is very far from leaf3 echo in a lot of ways) i still have a lot of feelings about leaf3 echo. i meant to also discuss its potential with fuzzyverse echo (because it’s still his theme song there) but then i got started on where were you (the leaf3 echo playlist) and i got distracted.

i really want to talk about A Song at length again but i got nothing. maybe ill finally write something about eyes give in by lusine to go with my 3 paragraphs of incoherent sputtering about freaky eyes by oneohtrix point never but ? i have nothing to say about it except.

1. the lyrics. hard to understand, but it’s either “you’ll die, you’ll die again” or “you died, you died again” and “you’ll see, you’ll see me again” and that was very fitting for leaf3 echo because he spent [indeterminate length of time] being killed by a “friend” of his + respawning over and over again (the concept of immortality like that is one i’ve been fixated on for a long time, but that’s a post for another day, or at least another paragraph) and either way you interpret it its like “ah shit. dead again? more likely than you think”

and then “you’ll see me again” is flowers, of course, because echo is actually riot from hexxit buried under 4058 layers of traumatic brain injury, and he knew flowers from that time period. 

2. the Feel of it. this is a little hard to explain, but when i first started echo’s first playlist, i had a very specific feeling in mind best exemplified by, i think fin by daedelus was really where it started, that kind of, “this song was assembled from parts” feeling. a musical ransom note, if you will. also fun fact idk if ive mentioned but the first first draft of the playlist, before it had a single song on it, was titled “who, me?” and then that Was a line in fin and i was like “aw fuck i cant do that.” and changed it to “where were you?” AND THEN THAT WAS A LINE IN MISSING BY DAEDELUS WHICH IS ALSO VERY FITTING. guh. maybe i should be talking about the whole playlist, because it is my favorite one i’ve ever done, ever, no exaggeration. BUT ANYWAY, eyes give in is the best example on the playlist of that feeling. 

me: i have nothing to say about it [proceeds to write an essay about it]

OH AND ACTUALLY im not done lets talk fuzzyverse.

its pretty much the same on the first lyrics (yay, immortality?) but the other set is more of a metaphor than literal, cause, he cant ever see again, and there is no way im letting the comic book Magically, You Are ~~Cured~~ trope happen. but he kind of gets to see in a different way because 1. other senses 2. “the goggles do something unusual” is back! for the unaware, my original original explanation for a lot of riot’s weirdness was the goggles. specifically, as stated by riot himself in the 2013 epic “xy and n writing” “my goggles let me see the fourth wall!”

this trait was lost (read: forgotten) in the following years as solstice consumed my free time, soul, and will to live, and the goggles went back to being a useless accessory (aside from the short time in which riot actually flew airships, and they became rather practical) UNTIL NOW! whether it’s actually the goggles or just echo himself is up to interpretation, because echo hasn’t taken them off since he got them. (leading to situations like the snippet i started writing and never finished about phoenix trying to catch him with the goggles off)

in mc college (a leaf3 verse, technically) he also has a sort of alternate sight which is more like a sixth sense and it’s for magic. like permanent goggles of revealing from thaumcraft, only better, and not goggles. he can’t read any of the books to learn magic stuff, but his innate abilities let him sort of... stumble through it anyway, because it’s my world and i said so.

i think im done now. i have no idea if this is coherent to anyone outside of my head because i can never remember what ive said out loud vs what ive just thought about for 17 hours straight. coming soon: where were you, in playmoss format, Maybe, sometime, in the next 7 months.

[shadowmaat]

7, 9, 10, 34, 37, 38, 39 and an alternate ending to Me and You and You and Me. XD

7. Share a snippet from one of your favorite pieces of prose you’ve written and explain why you’re proud of it.

I feel like I should go for something poignant or filled with meaning, but I’m going with this bit of silliness instead:

While he was babbling, however, the one-eyed cat sauntered into the hall and began stropping against his legs, purring.

“BB-9E, you stop that!” The woman demanded.

The cat ignored her, weaving between his legs and forcing him to stop so he wouldn’t trip. His mind noted that the cat’s owner had an English accent, but his mouth, unfortunately, got stuck on the name.

“BB-9E?” His eyes widened. “Uh, not that there’s anything wrong with that! Great name! I should be going...”

“It’s the muffler part of a Tangent Motorcycle that makes it purr,” she said.

I’ve seen people come up with some goofy ways to justify BB-8 as the name of a pet in modern AUs, so it was fun to come up with my own justification/rationalization for BB-9E. And I absolutely believe that Rey would be the type to name pets after engine parts. The fact that this particular part happens to purr like a cat shows her quirky sentimentality.

9. Which fic has been the hardest to write?

I’ve gotten stalled on a few fics, but the one that springs to mind is Vos Encounter. It started off as a funny idea and just snowballed into an avalanche of angst and misunderstanding and finding the right way through it without causing too much lasting damage was trickier than I imagined when I started it.

10. Which fic has been the easiest to write?

That’s a tossup between the Great Cake Caper (with Issa and her squad) and Personal Space, which is an angsty Finnpoe fic that pretty much dropped into my head fully formed once I saw the prompt.

34. What are your thoughts on non-con and dub-con?

Not a fan of non-con. I know a lot of people are into it and I try to leave them be, but it’s one of the things I have blacklisted on Ao3. Dub-con depends a lot on circumstances. Drunken sexytimes between people who’ve been pining for each other is one thing, but someone being afraid to say “no” or not being aware that they can say it is a lot iffier for me. I tend to be very very vanilla when it comes to smut and consent is a pretty important thing to me. Though I’m far more likely to be OK with dub-con than rape.

37. Talk about your current wips

Of the ones I’m actively working on there’s the Save Boba AU with Surge Squad. I’ve developed some insecurities about five being too small even for a squad, but overall it’s fun trying to flesh out and individualize the clones and to find ways to work in Boba. Plus of course the added challenge of a grownup AU Issa. With Clone Week coming up I should be able to start posting some of what I’ve been writing. And at some point, yeah, I need an Issa POV to follow up the Plo one.

I also want to do more with Surge Squad and the Blackbirds. I have a mission in mind for them that hopefully doesn’t get too ambitious in scope. But it explains more about why the clones have to attend a fancy party. The Blackbirds may get the idea that Surge is a bit soft, but I’ll cook up a disaster that’ll really let each group show off their best.

I have an expansion on a previous fic that I have stewing on the back burner for now. Maul and Bail’s first kiss, from Bail’s POV. The first draft worked well but I want to give it some more thought and see if there are ways to tweak it.

There’s more on indefinite hiatus. The Runaways of the Force short got some progress on it before I froze up again. And I got another paragraph or two on the Han/Boba fic before losing direction again. 

I’m flat-out giving up on the Finn time travel fic, mostly because I can’t come up with a coherent plot for it. Same for the one about my other Nautolan OC, Tem Seriss. I know she’s a diplomatic aide and utilizes her native ability to sense the emotions in the room to help the diplomat she’s assigned to, but other than that I have no idea what to do with her. And my Mandalorian Wayfarers AU is out, too, though I’ll always be wistful for it.

38. Talk about a review that made your day.

A while back I got a comment on some fluff fic I wrote from someone who said they’d been having a terrible day but that reading my fic made things a lot better. That right there is one of the reasons I like to write: to make people happy. Or, y’know, angsty and tortured, but eventually happy, too. ;)

39. Do you ever get rude reviews and how do you deal with them?

I’ve only gotten a couple of rude reviews so far and I don’t think they were intentionally rude so much as it was a case of having a very different sense of humor than my own. On the advice of friends I gently corrected one person on their “just a joke” style comment. The other one I haven’t decided what to do yet, though I may go the same route. Or just ignore it. Outdated attitudes/humor is absolutely exhausting. And I say that as someone who is probably a good chunk older than most of my audience. 

[sunsounds]

Hello^^ For the writer thingie :1. / 2. / 3. / 5. / 7. / 9. / 10 / 11. / 21. / 23. / 25 - and 18 if you'd like to. I hope it's not too much just do what you feel comfortable with. PS: I love your writing. Have a great day n night <3

thank you??? so much??? and it’s definitely not too much, this is pretty fun. i’m still shocked that ppl are actually sending me asks.

1. my name that i use here and in writing is Kavi, though it’s not my real one bc i don’t feel comfortable sharing that online?? i do prefer this one actually, it means “poetry” and we all know i have like two interests

2. oooh, i’m not sure if you mean poetry books or prose ones, so i’m going to do both and say bloodsport by yves olade is phenomenal and i’d die for crush by richard siken and also night sky with exit wounds by ocean vuong killed me (i have like a billion amazing and less famous chapbooks that i’d rec too, so anyone who wants that list is free to ask but i felt like i shouldn’t barrage y’all with that unless you ask). i’d say that all of them have fairly influenced my writing in that i aspire to write like that. for prose, which hasn’t really influenced me much in my own writing: at the moment i’d say the aftg series and trc series are my faves, although i suppose that the night circus by erin morgenstern did actually influence my prose writing a bit and it’s one of my all-time faves. i’m sorry, you didn’t sign up for this long paragraph of text abt books, i’ll shut up now.

3. that’s actually a difficult one to answer bc i don’t watch many movies and don’t really feel they’ve affected my writing much??? the dead poet’s society would be one of my favorites, i guess

5. i definitely do not need a certain atmosphere to write, i tend to block out everything while writing. nonetheless, i like being on my bed with my computer and music playing while writing best.

7. i generally begin with a small snippet that keeps floating through my mind and work from there, whether that line becomes the first line or ends up as the ending. speaking of endings: how do i end??? i don’t even know??? i write until it feels like an ending and then i’m done, or something like that

9. probably the night?? i get odd bursts of inspiration then

10. um, this is more what it is ideally and probably not very accurate bc the accurate thing is “horrible” but i’d say my writing is … visceral. an assault of imagery. tugs into your heart and makes it almost bleed, makes it feel bc poetry should be, out of everything else, something that makes ppl feel. 

11. i generally ignore everyone and everything. i listen to music and let it fade into a vague hum in the background and give into the words, don’t care abt really anything except for the fact that writing exists. i twist myself into what the words are casting me into. i zone out a lot and just give into it and actually am really terrible if interrupted bc i can’t tear myself away until i feel like i can’t wrench out anymore out of myself.

21. a self-doubt would probably be that i’m actually really terrible at poetry and fake-deep and everyone saying otherwise is just being nice?? like, of course i’ll always be able to grow and change and be better but what if i can’t?? what if i’m writing terrible poetry and it’s just that other ppl are being nice and i’ll never be able to change my terrible poetry??? one that’s probably pretty common that i don’t really feel is the worry abt what other ppl feel, i’m way too self-absorbed to do that

23. i have no clue how to write soft poetry, HOW DO PPL DO IT??? but yeah, i think i like capturing dangerous ppl best. and i like dysfunctional relationships, by which i mean that what i write is usually just abt ppl who make each other worse and maybe aren’t even terrible (dangerous, though, always dangerous) but are terrible to and for each other and that’s the dynamic i like best???

25. despite me being totally unqualified to give advice, the advice i’d give to any aspiring writer is to write. it doesn’t matter if it’s a stupid, self-indulgent fanfiction that you’re convinced is a failure or if it’s that depressing poem you think you probably shouldn’t write bc it’s so emo and stupid. write it anyways. writing is abt making the readers feel, of course, but first it’s abt you. it’s abt you being a person and growing and not being able to get something out of your head till it’s on a page and it doesn’t matter how terrible it is bc the second draft will be better. or maybe it isn’t, but still?? in an year if you keep writing your stupid poems then your poems will be better, you’ll keep reading and you’ll learn what it takes to make something good and writing is always evolving and just??? i’ve seen so many ppl that are convinced their work is terrible and i sorta want to throw things at them bc it doesn’t matter, as long as you like it then it doesn’t matter. growth comes after the terrible, emo twelve-year-old poetry and not before. this probs isn’t very coherent and i’m still unqualified to give advice and you definitely didn’t sign up for this long paragraph of text, i’m sorry, but just write okay?? regardless of how bad it is or how bad you think it is

[a-wondering-wandering-brain]

We’ll be right back after this short break

A Ghost’s Story

The Untold Story of a Ghost First Draft by Aaron Landersburg

I was on the verge of scooting out of town that night. The night I started to do more than just see the world. Earlier that day, I had said my goodbyes to my most recent bunch of sights-swallowing sidekicks. My first sights-swallowing sidekick I’ll call Jim, since we don’t really have or need names, and he is most like Aaron’s friend Jim. So, that seems like a reasonable name. If you ever managed to see Jim, you would know him by the fact that is left eye is rotated forty-five degrees to the left. That’s how I describe him to others. My second, I’ll call Tina, once again pulled from Aaron’s friends. Tina has an abnormally elevated right eye. Finally, there is Harry. Harry is the most distinctive. He actually has the outline of a face: nose, mouth, cheeks, even ears. If you hadn’t already guessed by my previous lack of originality, Harry is also the name of one of Aaron’s friends

I should probably back up a little bit first, I’ve realized that I have forgotten to include some important details. Like the fact that you won’t ever see me, Jim, Tina, or Harry, unless you are talking about Aaron’s friends. And not because we are in a different location, or just unlikely to run into each other, I mean you will never see us, ever. Aaron thinks I’m beating around the bush, and that I should have him move these important details to be before the first paragraph. But, I’m not going to do that.

Aaron here. I think I’ll save you all the beating around the bush since it is silly and just makes everything confusing. Long story short: although I’m listed as the author, it is actually my friend writing through me, so to speak. Not literally, which will be a distinction that makes more sense later. I said I would only write what Aaron G (AG) wants me to*, Aaron G was his choice of name, not mine. But, I really don’t think you want to listen to the two pages of beating around the bush AG concocted to circle the fact that he is writing through me because he is closest to what we would think of as a ghost.

Well, now that Aaron has forced my hand, I guess I’ll get on with the story. Although, I will point out that he could have easily turned that paragraph into “My friend Aaron G is a ghost and having me write this for him, and if I interject any of my own thoughts I will put them in italics.” Aaron, notice how your mud dragging of my beautiful two pages, and your mention of saying you won’t jump in was not included? That’s because those two pages were filled with suspense to keep the readers hooked and because it only took two short paragraphs for you to interject. Yes, you may interject.

The two pages were boring.

Nuh-uh

Yeah-huh

Nuh-uh

Tell you what reader, I’ll include those two pages at the end of the book like how authors that write series will include snippets of their next book. Then, you can decide if you think I did you a favor or a disservice.

Works for me (that’s why I had him include the snippet, even though he wanted it in italics because “it was my idea.”)  Well, that’s enough of having fun making him write out what I want because he promised and I can.

About damn time you got on with the story, you made it one paragraph before getting derailed

Ha, since that was “your idea” too, you get stuck having it in italics. Stuck having all the world know that you got impatient, and even said the word “damn”. Gasp in surprise and astonishment. Heaven forbid your father ever get a hold of this and find out that you swore. Oh wait, he’s dead.

He is not dead. he is perfectly health at fifty-five-years-old.

He works as a night guard at a retirement village.

Why that was relevant, but he wouldn’t just say that he is a ghost, I don’t understand, but what I was trying to say is that my dad isn’t dead, it is an inside joke/terror. Apparently, there is a ghost we refer to as peeper, not named by me.

What do you mean apparently? Are we still on the whole “this is just some elaborate prank isn’t it” train?

Tell me it isn’t something you would do.

No comment

So… peeper is this ghost that AG says does nothing but watch my mom. Well, nothing except watching my mom and try to catch up to my mom, ghosts as it turns out are incredibly slow moving, like nine-month-old baby trying to walk but falling every two steps kind of slow.

My joke is that what if peeper had managed to impregnate her somehow, and is secretly Aaron’s dad. Aaron seems to think this is a purely absurd notion

That’s right, I do.

And… although it is absurd, given that I can’t even push a single key on a well-greased keyboard, what Aaron seems to miss is how the value of the humor of the idea could outweigh the absurdity.

I recognize how humor could outweigh absurdity and give it value. The problem is that requires the thing to be humorous. But, what I want to know is why my mom. I think she is beautiful, most would agree she is pretty, but I’m under no illusions that she is some kind of super model. Plus, what really sets her apart is her voice. And peeper can’t even know how beautiful her voice is.

He’s not wrong about that. When I first heard her sing, it was better than a thousand sunsets framed below by distant mountains and above by the arching limbs of trees.

You know what inside joke is funny?

Good lord

Peeper makes eyes at mom.

There it is, you damn pun-like joke about how ghosts are pretty much just eyes, except for Harry. Not that is does him any good, he can’t touch, smell, hear, or taste, just like the other ghosts. Plus, some of the other ghosts seem to stay away from Harry for no reason except she looks different.

If you’re confused by the whole Harry + she thing, don’t feel bad. It got me at first too. Ghosts somehow just think with each other instead of talking like we do, which is good given that 96% of them don’t have mouths. And I guess, along with this comes the feeling of what gender the other ghost is, in the same way that we know our own. So, AG doesn’t make connections between gender and names or actions. I think it’s because he doesn’t ever have to determine what gender a ghost is by things like that, he just has a “conversation” with them, and knows.

Also, as I established earlier, I’m not good at coming up with names on account of not even knowing of the concept PA.

I can attest to this. Also, PA is how Arron G refers to the time before we got “Hoinked” as we have dubbed it. PA stands for pre-Aaron. Hoinked was a group effort. I pitched in linked. Tina, that’s one of the ghost friends that are in the story we somehow still haven’t gotten to, pitched in jerked, an homage to the first effect of our connection.

I can take the oh so subtly placed hint. As I was saying in the first paragraph.

We should get started with the actual story… But, can I just finish explaining about the origin of Hoinked first? I mean this is all because of the Hoinking, and I like the origin. So, it seems like something that should be told, for context.

See, it’s easy to get distracted… but yeah, I’m fine with you finishing about “Hoinked.” We can always go back over things and clean up/re-organize things to make it cleaner after we get our first draft done.**

Okay. So, we’ve got linked and jerked. We also had joined.

That was Jim.

Thanks, that’s right. Because, Harry put “counsulockflusted” into the running.

I think he must have been high on something. How he managed that as a ghost, I still have no clue. My best theory is that he somehow got temporarily Hoinked to your Harry, his namesake, without realizing it. Somehow.

Either way, he had some explanation involving providing counsel, locking us together, and being flustered. I think, it was just putting those things together into one thing, but I was having trouble following him.

I don’t know, after I heard “counsulockflusted” I had to expend all of my focus and willpower on not letting my thoughts of how entertainingly absurd it was project to him (The equivalent of trying to stifle laughter). See, I can explain things to the reader.

Very good. Now, we were explaining Hoinked, and had linked, jerked, joined, and “counsulockflusted.” Would you like to say what you contributed?

Hoodwinked

And if that doesn’t summarize how you treated it in the beginning, I don’t know what is. You were so stuck in doing things your way. Correction, you are stuck in doing things your way. Case and point, how I’m writing this thing. We better go back and run thousand tine metal comb through this thing later if we want to actually have a story for readers instead of what is more like an improvisational written radio show.***

Wow, way to call me out. That hurts. Or does it? Because I want to be happy and you said yourself I’m stuck in my way.

You think you’re so clever.

Most assuredly. But, back to hoodwinked, and by the way, you weren’t so thrilled by it either when it first happened.

Maybe that had something to do with you yelling in my head

“let me fucking go! I’ve already seen what I can from this room! Why can’t I go away from you? Why do you just lay there?” At 3am.How was I supposed to know about sleeping? We don’t have to sleep.

Let’s get back to Hoinked so we can get back to the story.

Right, Hoinked. Needless to say, our first move was to toss out “counsulockflusted.” Harry didn’t seem to mind much. We liked how jerked summoned up our first experience, but we didn’t like the negative connotation (Hoinked was created after we had worked through our issues with the ordeal, if that wasn’t apparent and explicitly obvious by the context).

No need to be patronizing about explaining things AG.

… So, we put that one to the side, leaving us with hoodwinked (the best choice), joined, and linked. We decided we liked the concept of joined and linked. But, also liked hoodwinked. So, we decided to take a page from Harry’s book and smush them together, to much better results than he had. Since joined and linked were synonyms, we decided to use the one we thought sounded the best in the mashup with hoodwinked.

We liked the “oin” sound in joined. But, somehow, we didn’t do “Hoined.” the expected merging of those two.

Yeah, somehow, we ended up merging hoodwinked and linked instead.

Yeah, somehow. Somehow that had nothing to do with the fact that you could get Hoinked from smushing hood and winked together. We definitely didn’t get it from you just taking your word and smushing it, then passing it off as hood and linked smushed together.

I don’t know what your insinuating. I can tell you must be, but it is just sooo subtle that I can’t figure it out. What’s important is that we got “Hoinked” from smushing together hoodwinked and linked, definitely not just smushing up hoodwinked, the best word.

What’s important is that we came up with it together and it represents our connection, but also the mystery and surprise of it.

Yup. That is definitely the most important part.

Nope, I’m not going to get hooked and left to flounder on the deck, I’m going to stay nicely in the calm waters of my lake, and see if the story we dropped is somewhere at the bottom.

Nice segue… But, I thought of something we should explain to readers before we start the story.

Is it really important for the story?

I think so. I realized that we never actually provided the reader with an information packed instructional video of words about what being Hoinked entails.

That’s true. But, then again, we have to give them a little bit of suspense.

That is true indeed.

And it would be so much better if they experienced it for themselves.

That really is the point of the story isn’t it, to let them experience what we experienced.

Yeah.

They should just go find their own ghost then, there’s no way we could convey that experience to them. We aren’t Pulitzer prize winning writers.

How about we just don’t revise what we have, and see if we can publish this instead?

Works for me. Less work for us. Crap! We were supposed to call Mom today!