#i made so many plans for march and most of them didn't work out...

[lost-in-hogwarts]

Drops and leaves again 😅

[thisonehere]

HIM!?!

Cheating! Bi-Han x F!reader

Part 5 Of a Match made in Hell

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A/n: So...this came out a lot later than I had hoped, but a lot of personal stuff came up so it was delayed. I really think I'm getting closer to the end of this series though, maybe 3 more chapters? Idk.

Tags: @maulsgf @sweetpanda18 @thickemadame @posterbunny @strawbisane @fandom-garbage @sleepyfxce @livingdeadgirly

C/w: Mentions of blood and violence

'Was Hell truly that bad?'

Sareena thought as she gazed into the night sky.

Bi-han didn't come back yet. She didn't expect to see him yet anyhow, he was supposed to be gone for at least 2 weeks.

The demoness stood at the balcony in your old bedroom. Below outside the main Temple of the Artika many Lin Kuei were busy getting the last bit of work done before curfew. Some were trying to get to the cafeteria to get one last snack, some were coming back from light training before going to bed, others were busy transporting boxes, inventory from distant allies Bi-Han acquired. She even saw Kuai Liang and Tomas in the distance.

They were going somewhere, marching down the stairs with a suspicious look on their faces. They were up to something, Sareena knew that look well, Ashrah had the same look on her face, they were planning something. They didn't notice her looking down at them. They were too far away too, or they knew but ignored her. It wasn't a secret that they did like her, Kuai especially.

He blamed her. Bi-han defecting from Liu Kang; her fault. The deals he had made with me like Quan Chi and Shang strung and other dark forces; her fault. Bi-han cheating on you with her; her fault. He blamed her for everything. They all do. She's not blind to all the looks she's given as she walks by or the whispering that happens behind her back.

Sareena gripped the rose in her hand tighter. It was from your garden, she saw that Bi-Han as he attempted to take care of it. He failed miserably, so she took over and began to take care of it. It was so beautiful, she could tell that you worked hard on it, it would be a shame to let it die, you obviously worked so hard on it.

The beauty of your garden was a bit of warmth to brighten up the dull her lonely existence. Sareena wasn't close to anyone, she had no one. Usually she would be with her sisters, playing and laughing with them, which would make being in hell less harsh. But she can't, Khia and Jataka were dead, murdered by her own sister, Ashrah. She truly had nothing, only her thoughts. So she stood at the balcony and she thought.

"Was hell as bad as she remembered?"

Maybe she was just so overcome with grief at her sister's death that she couldn't stay in that place anymore. In her grief she found Bi-Han or he found her, right at the moment when she really needed someone. And it all felt okay afterwards, Sareena showed Bi-Han the many wonders of hell, and in return Bi-Han brought her up to Earthrealm, the place Ashrah abandoned everything for.

Sareena had found someone to love, and apparently she hurt someone in process, she hurt you. She didn't mean to, but she had fallen in love. And now the man she loves is somewhere in Earthrealm, trying to barge a deal with the likes of Kano. But she knew it was something a lot deeper, he was trying to win you back, she could just sense it. Bi-han had tried to never talk about you ever since you left, but he accidentally said your name here and there. Even in his sleep he whispers your name.

Sareena gripped the rose even tighter, feeling its thorn sink into her skin. 'Was it all worth it?' She wondered as she turned around to go back inside. Was this...this mess that she got herself into worth it for love?

---

Today was a wonderful day for Bi-Han. He enjoyed a sweet morning Sareena, had a trip journey to Fangjian where he had a lovely dinner at the Tea House, and then saw his wife with another man. What a wonderful day, the most wondrous day indeed. Bi-han thought it was so wonderful in fact that the moment he got to his hotel he began throwing whatever he could get his hands on and punching holes in the walls. He even began to lash out with his powers, throwing ice balls here and there freezing and destroying everything they hit. Wonderful.

The moment he saw you two, you and...him, it took everything in him not to break into your house and kill that damned actor. The image of his hands around Johnny's throat flashed before his eyes. He wanted to kill him, kill him and make you watch as he did it. Maybe even stab him open for extra effect.

Bi-han shook his head as he slammed down onto the bed. He still couldn't wrap his own around it. Him? Of all people, HIM?!?!

He would've anticipated Raiden, he saw the way the farmer looked at you. He knew the man had a crush on you, perhaps if you had gotten with Raiden he wouldn't be so furious. But out of all men you could've chose to do this-this betrayal with, you chose JOHNNY CAGE!?!?

The rage in Bi-Han was horrid, he rocked back and forth. All he was seeing right now was red as he began huffing in and out with harsh breathes, snarling like a rabid dog.

You didn't love him, you couldn't have, he tried to convince himself. No, knew that he'd follow didn't you, didn't you? You knew he'd see you with him. You did all this just to make him jealous, there's no possible way you'd ever love him.

You knew how much Bi-Han loathed the actor. In many ways, Johnny was the straw that broke the camels back. He humiliated him, he humiliated his brother. He's an imbecile! An imbecile that was chosen Liu Kang himself to represent Earthrealm alongside a two farmers and an ex gangster. Over him, or any other Lin Kuei. In putting into perspective just how Liu Kang saw his clan, he refused to suffer under him ever again. He'd make his decision for his clan, he'd lead them to glory, where they are respected and not seen as just lapdogs to be used.

You were supposed to be by his side, share this glorious destiny he was carving out for you. But you left him, and now...now you were-were...by the Elder Gods, it was too hard to bare.

He fell back onto his bed and he tried to catch his breath, tried to calm down. But every time he closes his eyes he sees it. You did nothing lewd, you were not kissing him, embracing him hungrily, you were merely holding his hand. But that's not what upset him what upset him was the way you looked at him. In your eyes there was so much love, and that killed him.

I have to pull myself together, Bi-Han thought as he sat up right in the bed. He will be meeting with Kano in just an hour. Bi-han closes his eyes and takes a deep breath in. The image of you and Johnny appears in his head the moment his eyes closed. "ELDER GODS DAMN IT ALL!!!"

*Knock* *Knock* *Knock*

"Who dares!"

The door slowly cracked open and a young face poked it's way out. The Young Black Dragons eyes explored the room, taking in the destruction with a confused horror.

"Speak, what do you want?" Bi-han snapped as he narrows his eyes. The young man cleared his throat and anxiously pushed open the door to fully reveal himself. His stance was awkward, his build thin, almost frail. Bi-han studied him up and down, he looked about 18, possibly event 16, a child.

"Um, Kano's ready. He sent me up here to tell you that he'll see you now." Bi-han could see how terrified the boy was of him, normally he woud feel some form of sympathy. But he could muster an inch of kindness inside of him. "Then what are you waiting for? Take me to him."

---

"Thank you for showing me that, Johnny. Ninja Mime was...an experience."

You say with a forced smile as you followed Johnny to the door. You always had enjoyed all the movie Johnny had shown, they were all fun and enjoyable. But Ninja Mime was...definitely a movie. The best part was Johnny, he provided great company and the snacks he made were amazing, his dumb smile as he happily told you behind the scene facts. It made the movie almost bearable.

"Don't thank me, babe. Thank yourself for allowing yourself to enjoy the experience." Johnny wears an ignorantly blissful smile as checks his reflection in the shade of his glasses. "Hey, when I come back we can start watching the sequels." Your smile is waned for just a second before you immediately bring it back up. "That would simply be splendid, Johnny. I can't wait." You say, hoping the faux enthusiasm you coated your words with would hide the dread in your eyes.

Thankfully, Johnny was in such a good mood that he didn't even notice. You hug him, his cologne was rich, almost intoxicating. It's like he showered himself in it before he came. "You know, in a few months, after so come back, I have an award show to attend, you should come with me as my plus one."

You tilt your head in surprise. "The monks are letting you go?" You didn't know much about Liu Kang or the training at the Wu Shi of their practices. But from what Raiden and Kung Lao described it as, they could barely leave thanks to this mess with Shang Tsung, Liu Kang seems to be pushing them harder and harder, keeping them at the Academy as long as possible. It's as if he's training them for war. You feel a shiver go down your back at just the thought of it.

Johnny shrugged "Liu Kang wanted me to stay, but I worked the 'ol cage charm on 'em and he had a choice but to let me go." A cocky grin flashed across his face as he bragged. "But seriously, though, you should come with me. We could get a dress, do your hair and makeup, everything. Millions of big people will be there, you could rub shoulders with them, make your big break into the industry."

You bit your lip as you thought about it. The idea of it all, the glitz, the glamour, thousands of cameras in your face, right next to one of the biggest actors, all for the world to see. For Bi-Han to see, oh that would kill the man. "I'll...think about it." You say, struggling to hide the excitement you felt thinking of it.

"Alright," Johnny with an equally excited look in his eyes. "I'll leave you with that, I'll kick a sorcerer's ass." His cocky smile returned as he swaggered out the door and into the cold night outside. He didn't see your smile drop and your body gets tense. "Liu Kang sent you to capture Shang Tsung?" You forgot about all the joy you had been feeling as you are brought back to reality. Johnny, Kung Lao will be fighting Shang Tsung. Raiden will have to stay behind so he'll be safe. And Bi-Han will be getting involved sooner or later, and they still think he's on their side.

"Hey..." Johnny turned and noticed the wary look you wore on your face. He smile softens, becoming a much more sincere look. "There's nothing to worry about, Whatever Tsung got I'm sure I can handle it. Besides, I won't be alone either. Lao'll be there, even Kenhsi'll be there. What could possibly go wrong?"

"I know, but it's about Bi-Han. He's been-"

But before you can finish, before you can reveal what your husband is doing, Johnny talks over you. "Oh, don't you worry about him, or maybe you should. Because the moment I see him I'm gonna knock him through a loop. For you...and also because he still owes for that damn Hichuli." You take a deep breath and rub your eyes. You pause for a moment to think, you couldn't sit on this anymore. You have to tell someone about your husband, what he's doing and who's he's doing it to. And you know who exactly to tell it too.

"Will...Will Liu Kang be there as well?" Your eyes fall down to your hands as you began to fidget with them. "Yeah, he sorta has to, being the' Protector of Earthrealm' you know. Kind of comes with the turf." Air fills your lungs as you take a deep breath. "Alright, could...could you speak to him for me please? I-I seek counsel with him...about me and Bi-Han."

"Y/n, You don't have to do that." By now Johnny had stopped with the smile, now he was truly worried about you. "I know...I know you loved him, probably still love him, whatever your planning on doing. You shouldn't put yourself through this. Things weren't easy dealing from Christie, it was hell." His eyes softened as he remembered it all, he took a slightly shaky breath in and out. "I don't want you to go through that pain. You deserve so much better than that asshole. You deserve-"

"I love you." You say abruptly cutting him off, Johnny quickly shuts up. "I love Raiden, I love Kung Lao, I love this new life I have. But I can't be happy, I can't be free unless I finish this chapter of my life. This is something I have to do." It's obvious that Johnny wants to protest, but he doesn't. He lets a deep breath escape his lips, and a clear defeated look is painted on his face. "Alright, I'll talk to Liu Kang. Get him to meet with you so you can sort out whatever it is you want to sort out with Bi-Han."

You sigh in relief, you feel like your body has finally calmed down. You get close to Johnny, finally smiling again and you lay a kiss on his cheek, much to his surprise. "Now go, Tsung's ass won't kick itself."

Nothing else is said gives you one last smile as he turns and walks over to the back where he parked his car. You stay on the steps for a second. Your eyes close as you take a deep breath. You feel cool night air as it rushes through your lungs, it was colder than usual, but you didn't care to think much more of it. You felt...good, amazing even. You were finally going to put an end to this, and then Bi-Han would out of your life forever.

---

"Well, don't be shy, dig in mate "

Kano lay slouched in his chair, around his lips were covered in a slobbered mix of food and alcohol. Bi-han tried not to scrunch his face in disgust at the sight of such a disgusting being. He hardly even touched the food Kano kindly set out before him nor interacted with the women Kano sent to sit next to him in the hopes of charming Bi-Han.

In his efforts to expand the Lin Kuei, Bi-Han has caused his clan to develop quite name for themselves in the underground scene. And ever the opportunist, Kano wanted a slice of this pie.

So now there he was, in a dark and dingy room, the basement to the nice hotel he was staying at. The place wrecked of beer and blood. The Lin Kuei who Bi-Han brought with him were gagging in disgust under their masks. They stood behind Bi-Han like Kano's black dragon stood behind him. None of them seemed to have noticed the smell or disgusting nature of their setting, they were no doubt used to it.

"Kano, your black dragon clan is most.... impressive," Bi-han had hoped his lie was convincing enough. "I believe there is much we can teach each other. And especially many things we can give each other." Kano seemed to hardly listen, as if he didn't truly care about a single thing Bi-Han said. So Bi-Han decided to get right to the point. "It has come to our attention that your clan seems to be in a moment of trouble. A certain blonde has been adamant about bringing your clan in, and might I add that she's been very successful so far."

Kano gave Bi-Han a glare from the side of his eyes. He stops his pigging out and sits up right in his chair. "Yeah, and what of it?" Bi-han sat upright in his chair as well, he smiled at how he caused Kano's to react. "My Lin are excellent warriors, yes. But they assassins as well, anonymity has always been our strength. I can have my people wipe away any trail you have left, no doubt making it harder for Blade to find you. I can have her "taken care of" even. I imagine that would be quite the relief for you and your men."

Kano narrowed his eyes, it was obvious that he was now intrigued. "Sounds too good to be true." Bi-han silent agreed. His attention went to the plate before him, blood sausage. "It is. Because we don't see the point, you've yet to give us a reason to want to help you." Bi-han slowly began to cut into the sausage.

"So what is it, mate? What'll it take to get you on our team?" Kano leaned forward in his chair, his robotic eyes basically glowing. Bi-Han set the knife down and ate a piece of the sausage, a mad smile on his face.

---

You awake from your sleep with a stir. The sound of knocking at your door was enough to do that to anyone. You try to ignore it, maybe whoever it was would go away. They kept knocking, and knocking, and knocking.

You can't take it anymore, you rub your eyes as you pull yourself into a sitting position. Your vision was too blurry to think straight, your brain was in no better condition. Who could that possibly be? Maybe Johnny left something. You groan as your tired bodies slowly stand up. It's like your still in a sleep state as you make your way down the stairs, one slow step at a time.

Whoever's knocking at your door seems to really want you to know their outside, they keep knocking and knocking. It sounds almost desperate, you would've noted that if it wasn't for the fact that your brain was basically still asleep.

"Who is it?" You say, your words barely more than a muffle. No response, just more knocking. You look through the key hole, nothing. Yet you still hear knocking.

This gets you to wake up just a little bit as your hands hesitently go to open the door. You fumble a few times as you try to undo the locks. Normally you wouldn't open the door this time of night, but something felt wrong, something that compelled you to the open the door.

So you did.

And there at your feet is Bi-Han, his lip busted, his nose broken, his eyes black, cuts all over his body, he clutches at his side. "Bi-han." You gasp as you fall to your knees to look at him. "What happened? Who did this to you?" You reached out to touch his swollen face. "The meeting...it went wrong...so...wrong..." he sputtered out, desperately trying to force out words. His eyes are puffy, you have seen the Grandmaster in a beaten state before. But nothing ever like this. "Y/n...I need you to help me..."

"Please," his voice is weak. His whole body seems weak as his head falls into your lap. "Help me."

[bamsywrites]

Recompense: Prologue

Pairing: Adar x Reader

Words: 1.4k

Summary: There's a fire in your that Adar is not willing to extinguish

Tags: blood, wounds, being dragged by hair, mentions of death, mentions of slavery, orcs doing orc things.

Notes: this is more like a teaser, I guess, than a prologue, I just wanna gauge interest. Another part of And Comes Dawn will be up soon. Let me know what you think.

“Go! Go now with haste,” you hoisted the last of the small ones onto a horse. You tightened the satchel around the horse and made sure it was in place. In it was water and bread and dried food, just enough for a day's ride.

The fire from your village burning and the stars above were all the light that you had. Every horse from the stables had a rider. Most had two. It was the only hope the children had for survival. Child slaves would be no use for the labor the Orcs had planned once the people were marched to Mordor. Already, the ones who resisted were killed.

“Where should we go,” one of the older boys asked you. “What if they…”

“They will not. Dawn comes soon, and they can not travel in sunlight. Chase the sun. As fast as you can. Do not stray from that path. You will come to an elven city in a day's time. Now go!” You insisted, giving him a look that signaled he best not argue. You watched for a moment as they rode away, turning back to your village. You saw your home burning, the cruel laughs of the orcs as they rounded your people up. You had half a mind to run away, but your feet would only take you so far.

As if reading your mind, an enemy arrow sored through the sky and pierced your thigh, causing you to cry out in pain. The searing pain spread through your body like fire, and you could see spots in your vision. In moments, you were being dragged to the others by your arm, the orc grunting something to his companions in a language you didn't understand. Your teeth dug into your lips so hard that blood ran down your chin. The pain was unbearable, but you didn't need them to have the satisfaction of knowing the pain you were in.

You were shackled and chained to the others from your village, your eyes looking around for the familiar faces of your family and friends, feeling relieved that you could account for them all but anxiety gripped your chest as you realized where you would be going and what that meant for your people.

A lifetime of slavery.

For you, it was a death sentence unless you could get care for this wound.

The trek was grueling. Your leg getting weaker and weaker as you walked, you had broken off the long stem of the arrow as it was incredibly painful anytime it brushed against something, the dried blood from the wound caked and cracked on your skin. It would soon be infected if not treated quickly, which was an unlikely scenario.

You were starting to accept your fate. Maybe you'd be able to talk with the people you cared for one more time before dying. Perhaps death was better than slavery.

As you entered Mordor, the smoke filled your nose and choked your lungs. It took your eyes a while to adjust, the ash making them itch. There were pockets of men and women working, but you knew there were many more scattered amongst the southlands. They were just beginning. Soon, you were positive all of the Southlands would be here, toiling away until they were of no use to the orcs.

“Where are the children?” A rough voice bellowed from somewhere in the swarm of orcs. “Where are the fucking children?!”

Some of those around you flinched, and others eyed you, but your eyes stayed focused on the ground. The pain consuming your thoughts only lessened by the knowledge the little ones had got away. If they had not been found by now, they would have made it to safety. You could only hope.

“There were none,” answered one of the orcs.

“No children? I see men, I see women. Are you telling me not a single one of them fucked?”

Before there was an answer, the orc grabbed his brother by the throat and pushed him to the side. “You are useless.”

Red eyes scanned the crowd, a tense silence falling over it. Red eyes landed on the blacksmiths son. He was lanky and notoriously cowardly, altogether unpleasant. “You, where are they?”

Instantly, his eyes darted to you, and there were rough fingers digging into your cheeks and forcing you to look at him. “Tell me and tell me now.”

You looked the orc in his eyes, surely if you were going to die, why not make it fun? Besides, these creatures had stolen your home, your people, your freedom. You were tired of living under boots, tired of having no say, tired of being treated as lesser.

When you didn't speak quickly enough, the orc's fingers dug harder into your cheeks, “Speak, girl.”

“It is quite hard to gather one's thoughts when orcs smell so atrocious.”

In a flurry of movement, the orc had a knife blade pressed into your cheek and twisted it until blood poured down past your lips and onto your chin. “I would watch your words and tell me what I want if you wish to keep your tongue.”

“We take celibacy very seriously,” your voice was hoarse as you spoke. “Ever since the blacksmith had a son that was such an affront to basic decency, we have all sworn off intimacy as to not risk making more like him.”

The orc pressed his blade harder into your cheek until more blood poured, “You think you're so funny now, let us see what Adar has to say.”

He released your face, throwing you to the ground and grabbing your hair as he dragged you away. Your feet desperately tried to find footing underneath your body, but the pain from the arrow made it impossible, along with the muddy ground, causing your feet to slip. Rocks and branches nicked your skin as you were dragged along until your body was covered in bruises and scratches and blood mixed with mud on your skin. The time was achingly slow, filled with agony, but it only fueled the anger in your belly more.

Soon, you were taken into a tent and thrown across the floor. You tried to stand, but your leg gave out, your eyes darting around the tent. Many more orcs stood there and at the center was what looked like an elf but burns and scarring and the tone of his skin made your suspect he was something darker than an elf.

“What is this pathetic little thing?” The not elfs voice was low and deep as he eyed your form.

“A villager, Lord Father, there were no children with them, and she knows where they are. I feel she needs to be taught respect”

You looked up at the orc, “You brought me to your father for him to reprimand me for being unkind to you?”

The orcs darted from you, and then to Adar, you were intrigued by this display of restraint.

“She's got quite a tongue on her,” Adar spoke, his armor clacking as he made his way to you, “Perhaps we should remove it.”

He kneeled down before you, his fingers dancing over what was left off the arrow. Even the small movement caused immense pain to shoot through your body.

“Where are they?” He asked as he twisted the wood, causing you to cry out in pain.

“I will not tell you.”

Twist.

“Go fuck yourself.”

Twist.

You spit at his feet. “I will not allow the children of my village to butchered.”

Adar stopped, “You think us too cruel. Our interest is not for bloodshed. Small fingers make easy work for finding small ores for our armor.”

You stared at him with narrowed eyes, “Slavery is little better than death.”

“Is that why you taunt my children? You fear slavery more than death.”

You didn't speak, simply looking into his eyes with contempt. He looked back, contemplating you. It was as if he was looking into the eyes of someone he knew but had long forgotten, something he knew everything about yet nothing all at once.

“Leave us.” He stood, his attention turning towards his ‘children’, all of whom followed his command.

The room was quiet for a few moments before you broke the silence.”I suppose you are going to kill me now.”

“No, I'm going to heal you now.”

[blueberri-blu]

hello hello!! <3 Might I perhaps ask for some rise don/reader after the events of the movie? I rewatched it recently and woof. comfort fic needed. maybe he's staying with his partner while the lair's being patched up and they're struggling to get him to part with his battle shell for bed time? or something to that effect. -@boybeholding

Squealing, twirling my hair, kicking my feet! Thank you so much for the request! I absolutely love this idea!! ♡⁠(⁠˃͈⁠ ⁠દ⁠ ⁠˂͈⁠ ⁠༶⁠ ⁠)

Of course you may!! I re-watched the movie and, I sobbed, with snot coming out of my nose and everything (⁠っ⁠˘̩⁠╭⁠╮⁠˘̩⁠)⁠っ

Flood after the Storm ｡⁠:ﾟ

As Donnie moved many of his things to your place, you allowed him to set up his lab in the living room/spare bedroom. Most of the day was spent moving and cleaning. Cleaning the lair, seeing how to repair it, and moving things from the lair to their temporary homes.

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The battle left everyone with scars. Raph and Leo beat themselves up over almost not being able to protect their brothers, Mikey seemed to try to cheer everyone up, even though he was the one who needed it. Yet your turtle seemed to act as if nothing happened. You'll admit, he was a bit more emotionally expressive but, other than that, he didn't seem to acknowledge it at all. Due to the lair being... Well not in its best shape, Between you, April, and Cassandra, the turtles split up into y'all's places. Donnie, being your genius boyfriend, obviously stayed with you, and his brothers decided they stay with April or Cassandra, to give you and Donnie alone time.

As you and Donnie finally settled in for the night, you could tell Donnie was in deep thought as he unpacked. You decided to just stay near him, giving him space while still letting him know you're there for him. But as your eyelids felt heavier and heavier, you decided to talk to him. "Hey, don...?" "Yes, my dear?" He said all too quickly. "How are you feeling?" "Well, I must admit, my brothers have yet to give me their opinions on my rescue pods, however I do believe they were extremely satisfied, so I'll be working on them tonight so they're reusable". You knew that gathering data helped him calm down (as he made this very well known during the Krang invasion), so you decided to help him collect data from his brothers and April. Once his spreadsheet of opinions was done, you told him that it would be better if he worked on them tomorrow, as his brain would function much better after a good night's rest. "Grumble... I suppose you are correct" he said with narrow eyes. As you finished your nightly routine, you realized Donnie was in bed... With his battle shell still on. You decided that maybe you'd let him leave it on for a couple days, knowing how vulnerable he felt without it during the battle.

That was 2 months ago. Now, you struggled to get him to bed, he was upgrading the escape pods, making armour for his brothers, and trying to upgrade his battle shell. You also noticed he would randomly check Leo's location, and text or call him to check in. You knew it was going to take a good amount of time for him to settle down, but he was still going to bed with his battle shell on.

You had finally had enough, as much as you tried, you couldn't get him to open up to you. Although he was more open to giving you affection, calling you by pet names such as Love, Dear, Mon Amor, and Mi Amor, he refused to talk about the invasion. So that night, as you laid in bed, waiting for Donnie, you thought of a plan. With a newfound confidence, you marched up to Donnie in his makeshift lab, and started to cry.

Donnie was immediately pulled from his work, and ran to you, frantically asking you what was wrong. And you started to talk to him about how the invasion affected you. How you had night terrors, often waking up just to check in on him and make sure he was alive, how you went into fight mode whenever you heard loud noises, and how you desperately wanted to help him.

After you let your feelings out, and calmed down, you looked at Donnie, and told him that most of all, you were worried about him. That you understood that he was acting this way because of what happened, and that you would wait for him to open up, but most of all, that you wanted to help him get better, you wanted him to get better. After hearing this, Donnie realized that he'd been repressing everything that happened, and, due to you opening up to him, he realized you probably felt alone and scared. So, your show of trust comforted him enough to open up to you.

He told you everything, how he was scared for Raph's life, how he felt helpless and vulnerable without his battle shell, and how he felt like a horrible brother for not being able to save Mikey and him from being crushed, and most importantly, just how soul crushing it was to think Leo had died. In that moment, he opened his heart out to you, and you held him gently, while holding him tightly, rubbing his arms, rocking him, and crying along with him.

By the end of it, you and him were wet with tears, trembling from how vulnerable you two were to each other. Once you two calmed down enough, you hugged each other as you walked to your bedroom. Once you sat on the bed, you gently rubbed Donnie's shoulder, quietly asking if you could take his battle shell off. He was hesitant, but nodded. You took his battle shell off, along with his shoulder and knee pads, and finally his mask.

You both laid on your bed, his head on your chest, your beating heart bringing comfort. You laid like this the entire night. Your newfound trust for each other only strengthened with time, as you both grew, you healed from old scars, and as new ones appeared, you worked through them, together.

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I really hope you liked it! I tried my best to keep it in character! I loved this request!! Was definitely needed after the events of the movie, thank you so much for the ask!! I love it when you guys send them! Anyway, hope you are all doing well, I love y'all <3

[solomon-revisited]

my copy has finally arrived... sixteen old songs from my earnest friends

THE CORONER'S GAMBIT LINER NOTES

TRANSCRIPT:

HE was a guy from California who'd fallen in love with a woman from Iowa. She was working at a water testing lab. They lived in a very small house whose pipes froze every winter. The landlord would come by and put space heaters under the sink. Years later, they retained the memory of the water coming back on - the sudden sound of the shower, the rush from the sink. They slept on a foam mattress in the bedroom in the summer, and on the couch in the living room in the winter, since the house did not have central heating, rendering the bedroom essentially uninhabitable from December through March.

They were not really the kind of people to plan things: they had fun when and where they could on an austere budget. The ice skates they bought used from Play It Again Sports made for fun Christmas mornings on West Indian Creek in Nevada, one town over from where they lived. He learned to cook, and to bake: they didn't go out to eat, because there really wasn't any place to go out and eat, though on occasion they would get a pizza from Casey's, because their town had a Casey's. Under the right circumstances a gas station pizza can be just the thing, and they sometimes found themselves in those circumstances.

He made music which was slowly reaching a wider audience. If he played in New York or Chicago as many as a hundred people might show up. He was idly entertaining the idea of becoming ambitious about it: as a child, he'd been pretty pretentious, and although he was working hard to shake most of that off, a little pretension isn't a bad thing in an artist. Just as a seasoning, as a little extra flavor here or there.

One summer he took a job as a harvest help at the Farmers Cooperative Exchange down the street from the very small house where the pipes froze in winter: getting the corn and soybeans into the grain elevator and into a big Morton building where the beans formed giant mountains, which he sometimes had to climb to knock down the peaks. If you don't knock down the peaks the beans get too hot and might rot. The job didn't pay much, and he wasn't good at it, but during slow stretches he would write song lyrics on scraps of paper or in a small notebook, and when he got home from work and washed off the crop dust, he'd set the lyrics to music. "Elijah" was written like this. So was "The Alphonse Mambo."

He took a Greyhound bus to Omaha to record some of the songs, so that the album would have a nice varied feel to it, but he got very sick, which is not an uncommon thing to have happen after a Greyhound ride, and only a few songs came out the way he wanted. He kept those, and then they got married and moved to Ames because the City of Colo had purchased their home from that landlord and intended to knock it down, which they did do, he affirmed years later: and in Ames he put the album together, and then later they moved to North Carolina and a whole lot of other things happened, too, but the main thing is that this album is a document of a time when two young people in love hadn't yet located the spot on the current that would carry them to their destination, twenty-five years later, parents of two beautiful children, worlds away from Colo, the place where, for better or worse, as the saying goes, all this really began.

Dedicated to my wife, Lalitree, and to the City of Colo, Iowa.

This is the original text of the paper bag that housed the first edition of this album. I am leaving it intact rather than revising it. Stage Bidet's moment comes ever closer: let the people tremble in fear.

Elijah, Baboon, Horseradish Road, Onions, and the Alphonse Mambo recorded in Omaha with Simon Joyner, Chris Deden, Lonnie Methe, Brad Smith, John Kotchen, Steve Micek, and Pat Oakes. All of them are owed money and are to be treated with deference and respect. Five of the remaining songs were recorded at Main St. in Colo, which is a small town in Iowa, and the rest were recorded two blocks north of Emma McCarthy Lee Park in Ames, which is a considerably larger town half and hour west of Colo. Though happy circumstances currently have the Mountain Goats claiming Ames, we continue to straight up represent Colo and will put the slap down on anyone who disrespects it. Transfer and levels by Bob Durkee at FBE in Pomona, California, with Joel Huschle attending. As a result of some regrettable but inevitable conversations that took place during the transfer, Bob, Joel, and the Mountain Goats have formed a new, super-powerful punk rock machine called Stage Bidet, and we urge you to watch for us and clear us a wide berth whenever we're in your town. Instead of thanking all the people I always thank to whom I say, collectively and with no less sincerity: thanks. I am just going to spend the time left us here addressing an absent friend. Rozz: I wish you hadn't've gone and killed yourself. Though I hadn't seen or spoken with you in eight years since that night when, as far as I can tell from the reports I was later able to piece together, you tried, not without reason, to strangle the life out of me out there on the landing of Damien's apartment and I probably never would have ever seen you again anyway, it was still hard to hear that you were gone. All your friends had been predicting your death since the early eighties, and no-one could bear the thought of you growing old, but none of that did anything to soften the blow when I heard. I don't really believe that the dead see or hear what we do out here in the realm of corruptible things and I don't imagine that the anyone reads the scribblings on the backs of album jackets to them, either, so I am really only addressing a memory. To that memory I say: I thought of you now and then when I was writing these songs. I don't suppose they'd do much for you, but I thought of you all the same. All your friends miss you in some way, a little or a lot. The rumors about your final hours are dismal and tawdry: I am sure they would please you immensely. For your sake, I hope that the Christians were wrong and that you were right about whether the faithless are destined for eternal torment. In the event that you are a ghost and are wandering the earth moaning and rattling chains, I moved to Iowa from California four or five years ago, stop by any time. Have a seat on the couch until I get home from work. Help yourself to anything in the refrigerator, or to the whiskey and sake on top of it. Make yourself right at home.

Album cover design by Tom Hart

[auroravictorium]

high infidelity (pt. 3) (k.b.)

you know there's many different ways that you can kill the one you love.

Summary: kaz and the crows arrive at a safehouse after rescuing reader, where kaz is confronted by his past. reader wakes up and starts the long trek to recovery. Pairing(s): kaz x fem!reader (established relationship) Word Count: ~3.1k Warnings: brief allusions to SA (inej expressing concerns about reader), mentions of injuries (head injury, severe wound on reader's arm, bruises, scrapes, etc.), mentions of blood, lots of grappling with trauma, mentions of sibling & parent loss/death Genre: angst? a bit of fluff? Author's Note: hello hello!! i'm so sorry about my long absence. college and life happened, BUT i have a birthday in the near future (libras unite!!) so have the final part of high infidelity as a lil birthday celebration :)) pinky promise next part is already in the works and it should be a lot less heavy!! enjoy <33

part one / part two / masterlist

Kaz gently pulled you back into his arms as Jesper navigated the exhausted horses toward a small, two-story farmhouse tucked away in a remote field a few miles from Lij. In the distance, a few farmhouses stood like faint silhouettes against the night sky. Beyond that, nothing for miles. The perfect place to hide, heal, and plot before their return to Ketterdam.

The air was clean, untainted by manufacturing smoke, and stars glittered above Kaz as he carefully stepped out of the carriage with you in his arms. He thought hard about the stars as he approached the porch of his childhood home; he thought about how much you would love them when you awoke and how your eyes might look as they caught their distant glimmer.

It was easier to ignore the stirring ghosts of his past if he thought about his present, the future he hoped to have. That present and future rested in the sleeping woman in his arms, her head against his shoulder and her weight a strangely comforting presence against him. The comfort was foreign to him, a sensation he could distantly remember if he reached far enough through the fog that had plagued his life since Jordie died.

The stars disappeared from view as Kaz stepped under the porch awning and turned to face Inej, silent as ever behind him. "The key is under the board with a split down the middle," he said quietly, jerking his chin to the end of the porch.

"Whose house is this?" Nina questioned as she arrived, pale and exhausted from working on you for most of the ride. "And do you think they'll mind if I sleep here for an eternity?"

Kaz shot her a glare and answered neither of those questions. He didn't feel like telling any of them about whose house this was, nor about the phantoms waiting inside. He had enough to worry about without fielding their questions, and his concern rested solely with you, unconscious in his arms. "Jesper, remove the furniture covers. Inej, Nina, help get Y/N settled." His eyes flicked between the Wraith and the Heartrender, a troubled face and an exhausted one. "Then rest. All of you. Jesper, on the couch. Nina and Inej, take the large room upstairs."

He didn't plan to sleep until he was sure you wouldn't die on him. He'd had enough of death in his life.

Inej unlocked the door and pocketed the key, moving inside and holding the door out of the way for everyone to trickle inside.

The room was spotless, remarkably untouched by dust. As Jesper started to remove the cloths over the couch, table, chairs, and small kitchen surfaces, not a single speck of dirt puffed into the air. "I was expecting more... dirt," Jes admitted, wadding up the cloths and tossing them in an empty corner. "For a farmhouse."

Kaz didn't respond, turning on his heel and marching up the stairs toward the small bedroom to the right. He nudged open the door to his and Jordie's old room and held his breath as he carried you in and settled you in the made bed. If he didn't breathe, he couldn't let the past settle in his lungs and choke him.

His gaze remained solely on your face as he carefully unlaced your bloodstained, beaten boots and set them aside. But his thoughts were elsewhere, on a presence he could feel breathing down his neck. The hairs there prickled, and Kaz pursed his lips, fighting the growing tremor in his hands as he tucked the blankets around you.

Jordie was there, in that room. Present, though he'd been dead for years. His father sat on the rickety old seat beneath the window, watching Kaz brush your hair from your face before jerking his hand back. His breathing was coming fast now, and though he longed to stay with you, he had to get out. His lungs burned and ached, unable to pull in the oxygen he needed. 

Kaz had to get out of that room, escape the ghosts' eyes on him, their hands reaching toward the exposed skin of his neck, the small gap between his gloves and his sleeves that exposed his wrist. Anywhere there was skin for their cold, bloated, marred, dead hands to grab.

"I'm sorry," he breathed to you, the words barely audible. Kaz stumbled back and then fled like the coward he was. His lungs struggled to expand in his chest, his breathing shallow as he moved down the stairs and back into the living room. He walked past Jesper's unconscious, snoring form on the couch and grabbed a metal bucket from beside the back door with a trembling hand.

Coward, he thought, opening the door and stepping out into the cold winter air. It nipped at his cheeks and neck, but he didn't bother grabbing a coat. He deserved to brave the cold, to have to break the thick layer of ice in the well with his bare hands. He should be brave enough to stay with you until you woke, to hold your hand and think about everything he wanted to say. 

He could kill a man, but he couldn't stay with the woman he loved. It was a cruel trick of the universe, a flaw in the new person the harbor made. Brekker, where there should be Rietveld, two clashing sides of himself with the wrong half winning.

Broken, twisted coward. 

You deserved better than this, than him.

Kaz slammed the door shut, his breath clouding in front of him, and he limped off toward the edge of the Rietveld property to collect water.

The door rattled in the frame behind him, but Kaz paid it no mind. Inside, Jesper's snores seized for a moment before continuing, droning on alongside the eerie, anxious silence of the farmhouse and the cold, windy beginnings of snow.

-

Once Kaz was back from the well, his gloves soaked and cheeks flushed from the cold, Inej took a bowl of water from the bucket and a clean rag and slipped into the room you were asleep in.

She quietly pulled the seat from under the window to the edge of the bed and got to work, carefully wiping away the blood she could see without moving your clothing. As she ran the rag down your forearm, mindful of the deep gash cutting your tattoo in half, the concern that had been heavy on her heart came bubbling to the surface. She blinked away the unexpected tears in her eyes, turning her head toward the window and staring out toward the sky as she tried to collect herself again.

Inej hoped and prayed that this was the worst of what you'd been through. She didn't want to consider the alternative where you'd experienced the same pain and horrors she had. Unwelcome hands, permanent scars on the skin and beneath it, and memories of touches that didn't belong. 

She did what she could to get as much grime from your skin without scrubbing too hard or moving your clothing, and when she was done, she watched the flakes of blood and dirt melt and turn the water reddish brown. Inej shuddered and stood, taking the bowl and leaving your room as silently and quickly as she arrived. She wordlessly moved past Kaz on the steps and through the living room and stepped outside to dump the water into a patch of brown grass.

Inej stood there long after the reddened water ran over the dead blades of grass, a glass bowl dangling from her hand and her face turned toward the night sky. Her eyes were squeezed shut, and two tears slipped down her cheeks.

Please, she thought, her lips silently forming the word. Don't let her suffer what I have.

-

You woke up as the sun started rising, a loud thud and quiet bickering startling you into consciousness. You peeled open your eyes, fighting against the weight of your eyelids, and you blinked to clear your vision. Shivering, you pushed yourself up onto your elbows and then upright.

The room was freezing, your nose and ears numb from the temperature, and you pulled your covers tightly around you. A coat laid over you, smelling of smoke and city. Kaz. As you pulled it around your shoulders, ignoring the bloodstains on the front, you turned up the collar to inhale his scent again.

As you turned your head to investigate the room around you, the world twisted, and you squeezed your eyes shut to steady yourself, your fingers curling into the silky lining of Kaz's coat. Once your head stopped spinning, you opened your eyes again. 

The room was small, sparsely furnished with only the bed, a rickety chair beside it, and a chest in the corner with a thick layer of dust on top. The wallpaper was yellowed from age, and there were rectangular outlines on the walls where paintings had once been. Once, this had been someone's home, and the thought made the hairs on the back of your neck prickle with the sense that you were intruding. Distantly, you heard a quiet conversation from below, and the voices were too soft, the background too quiet for you to be in the city somewhere. 

Where the hell am I?

You slowly swung your legs over the edge of the bed, determined to poke around further and determine where you were. Standing and pulling Kaz's coat tighter around your shoulders, you managed one step. And another. Your legs trembled and threatened to go out from under you, but you took another step. The door was almost within reach, and you stepped forward to place your hand on the doorknob.

A board creaked beneath your weight, and the voices you'd heard below went quiet.

Footsteps thundered against wood, and the floorboards creaked. The sound grew louder, and you took shaky steps back, your head already swiveling in search of a weapon. Your hand made contact with a glass of water left behind on the bench beside your bed, and you lifted it, ignoring the liquid sloshing over the rim and onto your hand. Your grip slipped slightly, but you held on.

The door screeched open, and you raised the glass as if you might throw it. Your heart raced in your ears as you took in the faces of your friends in the doorway, and it took you a moment to process that you were safe and they would not harm you. Your team. Your friends. Your family.

"Y/N," Jesper said, already stepping into the room, and you set the glass back onto the bench as he came toward you and wrapped his arms around you in a tight, bone-crushing hug. 

You let out a quiet sob as unexpected tears sprung to your eyes, and you wrapped your arms around him, too, despite the spasms of pain running up your bandaged arm and throughout your body. You hid your face in Jesper's chest, breathing in his smell of gunpowder and metal, and he held you tightly against him, swaying back and forth a bit. 

Jes pressed a teary kiss to your sweaty, bloodied hair. "Saints, Y/N," he whispered, and he didn't have to say anything else. You understood. I thought you would die, he was thinking. 

You couldn't blame him. For a while, you thought you would too.

You pulled back and looked up at him, brushing away his tears. "Stop crying," you told him, your voice raspy from emotion and disuse. "You'll make me cry too."

Jesper laughed shakily and squeezed you in a hug one more time, and then a small hand landed on his shoulder, pulling him back. Inej was there, her warm, brown eyes alight with concern. There were a million questions, a million worries there, and you knew she was terrified for you. It wasn't hard to guess what she was thinking.

"I'm okay," you said. "They didn't." 

Inej's fear deflated, and she pulled you into a hug. Her grip was gentler than Jesper's, wary of your injuries, and she pulled back to grip your shoulders. "Thank the Saints," she whispered. Her eyes brimmed with tears. "If they had..."

"They didn't," you repeated, knowing she needed to hear it. You could feel the guilt and worry weighing down on her, and you didn't want her to shoulder that. So you pulled her back into a hug, even as the world tipped under your unsteady legs.

Nina didn't say a word as she joined the embrace, wrapping one arm around Inej and the other around you, pressing her fingertips against the nape of your neck. Her touch eased some of the stiffness and the persistent throbbing there, and you sighed, your head drooping onto her shoulder as you let your friends support you for once. 

"I'll pour some hot water and grab some clean clothes," Inej whispered, withdrawing from the embrace before turning to Jesper and nodding, the two of them quietly leaving as Nina started to tend to your wounds without you having to ask.

"How bad is it?" you murmured, letting Nina carefully guide you to sit on the bed. She pulled your injured arm out before you and peered down at the bandages, and you averted your gaze so you didn't have to see the state of your tattoo. 

"It'll scar," Nina said after a few beats, gently undoing the bandages and then running her fingers over the marred flesh. The touch would have caused pain, had it not been for the soothing rush of her magic over your skin. "When we found you, you had a bad head injury. I needed to work on that first."

There was an apology in her voice, and you looked up at her, finding her already staring back at you with so much sadness in her gaze that the tears you were barely holding back almost slipped down your face. But instead of focusing on what you'd lost, you took a deep breath and forced the tiniest of smiles.

"Thank you," you said softly. 

Nina nodded and smiled back. For once, she didn't press. She didn't say what was undoubtedly on her mind, didn't ask about what had happened to you. Instead, she just silently started to work on repairing what she could of your tattoo, healing scrapes and bruises as she went.

And you let her support you as you did fall apart, her hands still tending to your skin as you turned your head into the black coat draped around your shoulders and let your tears mix with the smokey scent of Kaz and the city that lingered on the fabric.

-

The air was bitterly cold when you took your first step outside, and you breathed in as much frosty air as possible. Your lungs ached in protest, but you didn't mind. You couldn't after everything you'd been through.

Wrapping the long black coat tighter around yourself, you took slow steps toward the tall silhouette standing near the tree line. He must have heard you coming, and he turned to face you when you stopped a few feet away.

"Hi," you said, your breath clouding before you before dissipating into the dusk. You took another step toward him, then another, then another, until you stood shoulder-to-shoulder with him. Tucking your hands into the too-big pockets in the coat, you looked up at him. He was still watching you, his expression frustratingly yet understandably unreadable. "How long have you been out here?"

"I don't mind the cold," Kaz answered, his voice even raspier than usual. A typical nonanswer for Kaz, but the redness of his nose and around his eyes was anything but typical. The sight made your heart sink, and you longed to reach out to him and give him some reassurance that you were alright.

"Come inside. There's tea," you said, trying again to get him to thaw toward you. If he would say more than one sentence, you might have a better chance at finally talking with him.

"I'm alright," he said, turning back toward the tree line. His icy gaze flickered over the trees as if they were the most fascinating thing in the world, even as muddled shapes. Maybe they were when he wasn't busy looking everywhere but at you.

You were silent for a few long moments, then let out a slow sigh. "Kaz," you said softly. "Don't do that." The words tasted familiar on your tongue, like a memory shared long ago. You hoped Kaz would recognize them, would recognize what you were trying to say. He was shutting you out; at any other time, you would understand, and wouldn't push him to open up to you. 

But you needed him. Don't pull away from me, you silently pleaded, looking up at him as you waited for him to react to your words, to understand what you were asking of him.

Kaz turned to you, and you saw something sparkling in his eyes. It was the first indication of emotion he'd given you, and it was precisely what you needed: a sign that he would open up to you eventually about what was running through his mind. "Do what?" he said, the words fighting to come up past the lump in his throat, the blockage formed by everything he wanted to say to you.

"The distance." The words were breathless, and you didn't follow them up with anything. You didn't need to, because Kaz let out a shaky exhale of his own and then dropped his hand from the top of his cane to his side. Your throat felt tight with emotion as you freed your hand from your coat pocket and then slipped your hand into his, lacing your fingers with his gloved ones. The leather was cool against your skin, but Kaz's touch alone warmed you up plenty.

Kaz gave your hand the gentlest of squeezes, and you felt his gaze burning into your face. It was heavy with the weight of words unspoken, and you decided that talking could wait until it was easier for both of you to bear.

Instead, you turned your head up toward the sky, taking a futile glance around for stars just as the first snowflakes began to flutter down around you and the earth continued its unaffected rotation on its axis.

taglist: @tonberry-yoda, @b3kk3r-by-br3kk3r, @futurecorps3, @statsvitenskap, @sapphiccloud, @casualladyinternet, @d34drapunzel, @noctemys, @whitejxsmine, @so6, @franzelt, @ell0ra-br3kk3r, @marlene-the-witch, @thestudiouswanderer, @lyjen, @rideacowb0y, @weasleybuns, @dal-light, @mariatpwk, @dreammgc, @elysian-chaos, @breadbrobin, @poppyflower-22, @halfofagayallofaqueer, @battleraven, @amarokofficial, @tenaciousperfectionunknown, @poppyflower-22, @madnessinwrighting, @ponyboys-sunsets, @circus-of-thoughts, @empresspenguin18, @mediocrestuff, @stonksman8, @alanis-altair, @thefandomplace, @alohastitch0626, @the-royal-paintbrush, @just-here-for-ff, @whos6claire, @jodiereedus22, @be-lla-vie, @despoinapav05, @arianyo, @willowpains, @geekmom3, @dark-academia-slut, @aeslenya, @directioner5life, @notjustsomeblonde, @osteopsycho, @travelingmypassion, @tiana76, @angelhxneyy, @princessatoru, @urlocalgeek, @lonelywitchv2, @bookloverfilmoholic, @taerae515

please note that if your username is struck through, i was unable to tag you!

[vettelsvee]

CITY OF STARS UNIVERSE Q&A

⋆ Discover more about City of Stars F1 AU Universe! ⋆ Join City of Stars' as beta reader ⋆ Ask your questions about City of Stars Universe

Hi everyone! It's been two days since the beta reader form for my upcoming F1 AU Universe, City of Stars, was published, so I decided to answer here to the questions/messages you've sent me thought the form! ☺️

Before we get started, let me tell you a bit about City of Stars: ⋆ I've been working on this project in the shadows since March-April 2024, and after thinking about whether making this universe a reality once for all, I finally decided to move forward. I'm starting a new era in my life, and I think I needed a huge change when it comes to my writing as well, so I hope you like it as much as I do! ⋆ City of Stars is an Alternative Universe starring the following Formula 1 drivers: Max Verstappen, Lando Norris, Mick Schumacher, Daniel Ricciardo, Oscar Piastri, Sebastian Vettel, Carlos Sainz, Charles Leclerc, Alex Albon, Yuki Tsunoda, Esteban Ocon, George Russell, Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso (with the possibility of more of them joining). ⋆ Fanfiction announcements, including plots, drivers and titles will be made on May 14th, 2025, and they'll start being released on July 31st, 2025, the day of my 23rd birthday. When City of Stars gets released, it will be my main focus of writing and, occasionally, I'll post individual one shots/fics. ⋆ As for the beta reading process, I thought it might be nice for some of you who might be interested in reading my works (specially before anyone else does it). Important information you'll find on the beta reading form (if you wanna join): -> Tumblr username/contact information -> Drivers fanfictions you'd like to be beta reader of (you can choose as much as you want, there's no limit!) -> What version would you like to read? (Please, choose as many as wanted between Driver x Reader or Driver x OC) -> Any questions you'd like to ask me before the project (or anything related to writing)? I'd happily answer them!

💬: QUESTION ASKED | 🐝: MY ANSWER

💬: do you plan on posting more danny ric fics? 🐝: Yes, I do! As I said, this project is a way to get out of my comfort zone (which is, mostly, writing Sebastian Vettel/Oscar Piastri content most of the times), which means I'll be writing about people I didn't dare to write until now. I've been thinking about a Daniel story for quite a long time after even plotting them for some people, so it's finally the time for him to debut in my writing :)

💬: Just one will all the beta reading be done through google docs? I use that app religiously for my own writing. 🐝: Yes! I write on Google Docs and have all my writing on Google Drive, so it'll be quite easy for me to share the link with all of you beta readers :) Also, I'm planning on doing something else so we all can keep in touch (beta readers or not), but you'll see by May (I'll try my best to not to spoil it even I'm in need to).

💬: love your work, so excited for COS 🐝: Thank you so much! I'm so excited as well for you to read all of them since all plots (or, at least, the vast majority) will be interconnected to each other, so you'll see characters from almost all POVs and fanfictions :)

💬: not a question but i genuinely love your writings, they bring a smile to my face every single time :)) you are literally my fav f1 writer out there HWHEJWHSDS keep it up! 🐝: The moment I read this I starts crying, I'm not going to lie. I have nothing to say except a huge thanks and sending you virtual hugs (if you like them). I'm struggling a lot lately with my writings and, inevitably, comparing myself to other authors from here, so it's been quite a wild ride during these past weeks 🫰🏻

[the-fiction-witch]

Ten Year Anniversary

This is a post, I never dreamed I would be making.

A goal I never thought I would see, let alone reach.

It is no secret I have been here a long time.

Longer than I ever thought I would have.

And I have grown so much, that looking back seem almost like an utterly different person.

For those unaware or anyone else who would simply like to hear the tale,

When I was a young child, I was obsessed with stories. I played pretend for hours, making stories out of supermarket Iles and muggy puddles. Going to bed listening to audiobook tapes.

When I got into school, I was told my reading and writing were well below average for my age. I was held back, I was criticised by educators, I was all but abandoned to the corner unable to do what they said I should. All while at home reading stories and books well above my age range.

It took till I went to secondary school before an educator finally asked the question that had taken so much of my life, a question that it shocks me to know it took so long to ask.

She asked me to read something I had written myself, and asked me how it was that a girl in the lowest set, who had a record stating her inability to read, write or do her work. Was writing poems and stories with such advanced elements.

A few tests later it was found, that I was dyspraxic.

A pair of glasses later and I became part of the average student, years later a keyboard permission came. And I excelled.

That teacher never gave up with me, and I wish I could thank her.

Becuase she inspired me to want to keep writing, making stories even if my class or just myself was the only one ever to be hearing them.

But... years later, as it happens to the best of us.

The weight of the world came down on me as a young teenager,

And I stopped reading.

I stopped writing.

Becuase nothing seemed to bring me the same joy they once did.

What changed?

As mad as it sounds, a good story.

During this time, I couldn't be left alone. My family was told not to leave me alone, for fear of something worse. But plans had already been made, so I was left with extended family during daily plans.

They like most older family members, didn't know how to help me, or even if there was anything that could make me happy again.

Bless their hearts they tried so badly, to help me be happy. And even they began to fear it wasn't possible.

Until, in a last attempt.

They took me to the movies, a rare treat as a child, and they took me to see a movie that was brand new that week.

I think many of us can guess what movie that was.

It was the Maze Runner.

And I fell in love with the story, the characters, and I wanted to learn so much more.

I began to read again, picking up the books only a week later.

Which I finished the first that afternoon,

I began to read and write again, the more I got better.

And I began to write more and more stories until I felt like I just had to do something with them.

So... I made myself a new tumblr account under the name

'What if we could become fiction'

A question I had long asked,

And the first story I ever posted, was a terrible little fic called

'A Girl We Can't Understand'

And that was posted on the 12th Of March 2015.

Ten years ago today.

I never once believed I'd still be here, that I would still love writing this much, I won't lie there have been changes, I've moved accounts, cut and added characters and fanbases old and new. And I have adored all of it so so much. My writing is so much more than I ever thought it could be, and even just my own skill has grown so much. I have met amazing friends and had the best experiences. Even gained a digital daughter. It has been a mad ten years. But I wouldn't have ever changed it.

Now I suppose we must ask, where do we go from here?

Well, I have been thinking for a good long time about this question. And I know in truth I only really have one answer.

I am not going anywhere,

I am so happy here,

I am not going to say there won't be changes,

I'm not saying there won't be chaos.

But I love writing stories as much as I ever have before, and I know one day I will have gathered enough chaos and courage to really do as I've always dreamed,

that's a long way off, even now.

But I'm going to be here, and I'm going to be writing, for as long as you all keep reading.

[perfectlysanexd]

So, what have I been up to...? Since I was in Tumblr's spam-bot prison for more than 5 months, I thought I would create a little ICYMI post. (That's "In-Case-You-Missed-It" for the old folks like myself that have to look up all these new acronyms.) Basically, I'm gonna highlight/link to some of the posts I made this year, and you can check them out if you like. :) I didn't want to necessarily do a bunch of reblogs of my own content and clog up the system or something...

I finished posting up my 100's of edited screenshots from Advent Children Complete! You can view the archive of 53 different posts, separated by character, here. It also includes a fun side post about the Mysterious Case of Sephiroth's Missing Straps. :3

I confess, I haven't made too many wallpapers this year. But it's September now, and I have a thought rolling around in my head. We'll see. The archive of wallpapers is here.

Speaking of, so many cool wallpapers came out for Ever Crisis, and I've posted them all! Find them here, at the bottom of this archive post. I swear I'll eventually beat TFS season 1, but...they sure made it difficult for people who don't purchase their packs.

Did you know that Tumblr is feeding your posts(including reblogs) to theird party AI? Well, they are, and you can set it to be prevented in your settings. I talked about it here.

Rebirth coming out was the biggest thing this year, and I made my first manipulation for it back in March! You can see the post here, as well as a simple tutorial for it using GIMP(GNU Image Manipulation Program, free at gimp.org) here.

I also made a second manipulation for Rebirth! If you want to see the additional dialogue that goes with it, that's here.

When I played the demo for Rebirth, I noticed that they had changed Sephiroth's eyes, and it reminded me of something...

Did you know that in Advent Children, Sephiroth's gloves are not as tight as in Remake and you can see his wrists? 😏Check it out! What? Of course this is important!

I took a look at Sephiroth and all his forms over the years. Then I did the same for Cloud.

My AO3 sefikura work In Death was finished on April 26th, and came with a special manipulation. That was also the first story where I was accused of writing non-con, when it obviously wasn't, so that was fun. If you need to hydrate, you can go drink that tea in the comments of, I think, chapter 16 and after. Several people have asked about a sequel, and I do have eventual plans. Hang in there.

I made my first(of many) Rebirth memes, which also came with a blank template.

A peek under Sephiroth's jacket, courtesy of Rebirth. 😏Yes, this is important, obviously.

Another Rebirth meme, featuring Sephiroth being badass.

I put my design for Lucrecia's locket onto my edited EC Sephiroth artwork! This one actually got a lot of notes thanks to reblogging. 💕I also put the locket on Sephiroth's EC in-game model.

I wrote a long one-shot as a thank you for 400+ followers! It's based on my most popular sefikura manipulation of all time—a very indulgent work, and my first time writing for Rebirth. Thanks, guys!

Another meme, haha...oops, and another one. Damn, another one? AND a Sephiroth/Cloud arms-crossed companion meme set?

I did another Rebirth manipulation, this time of the famous sefikura hug scene. I added a second part to it here. AND a third part to it here! This set has quickly become one of my favorites. I also gave it some Japanese dialogue+translation here.

I did a little PSA because I've seen a lot of awfully suspicious digital paintings lately...

I made an account on Twitter/X, just in case they never fixed my blog, so if you're over there, follow me @ perfectlysane77 and say hi. :)

The FF7 crew have super hearing, confirmed??

Do you play Ever Crisis and want to join a sefikura guild? Check here. All skill levels are welcome, and you don't have to talk to anyone if you don't want to.

My first ever edited Rebirth video: "Fill your hollow heart...with me-ow."

And now I've been released from Tumblr spam-bot prison, so I'm sure you've seen even more silly memes from me. So what now? I hope to release the rewrite of Stranger Inside very soon, maybe by the end of the month if possible? The sequel will follow, for real this time. At that point, we'll be back to voting, so you guys will be able to choose what comes after that. I'm really focused on writing now, which is probably why I'm mostly making memes and silly things. Still, if it makes you laugh, I'm happy. 🥰

If you read this to the end, you're amazing.💕

[tomorrowsgardennc]

chicken update // december 17

awww yeh, operation chicken is a go. hubs and i have a plan of attack, and today i started one of many steps we gotta get through between now and late march. since i know where exactly i'll be sourcing my chicks from, i already know they will be less than a week old when they are delivered to the store, and i hope to have enough spoons to get in line early on delivery day. fr, they have lines out the store door like it was black friday in the 90s on chick delivery day.

so, knowing that, first step is to start prepping the nursery. now typically the chicken nursery is just a plastic tub with a hole cut out of the top for the heat lamp. even though this will be the only batch i'll get for a few years (HAHAHAHAHAHA) i still want a nice nursery for them - one that is easy for me to reach, clean, and check on them, and at the same time cat friendly. i will have this nursery in my craft room with the door closed when i am not there, but i will have it open for cats to come and go with supervision. i want them to get used to having chickens around ASAP - especially parsley. but i also know cats are cats and i need to be extra careful. so, with all of this in mind - here is the plan for the chicken nursery:

my dad has made several of these raised beds for me over the course of 4 years now. they are built with great craftsmanship, of course, but still with some kinks to iron out that we learned along the way. like not to line them with plastic anymore, because that just encourages the wood to rot quicker more than anything. but they are a decent height for me and my needs. i have moved some into the greenhouse to live out the rest of their lives with hopefully less wear and tear from rainfall, but the last one he built has the least amount of wood issues and mold. so that is the one i have chosen for the chicken nursery.

step 1 was to hammer out the bits i don't need - also the bits with the most rot. bottom is gone, and the front is now gone. the idea is to have the bottom, front, and top have the wire mesh. bottom will have the be the 1/4" mesh, but i have leftover 1/2" mesh i'm going to use for either the top or front. bottom will also - eventually - have a very narrow pull out drawer for the poop. the top will be on a hinge with a locking mechanism so i can open it but a cat with the normal amount of thumbs cannot open it (only 1 of 5 cats has an extra thumb, should be fine 👀)

i am leaving the sides and the back wood because this will be against a wall in the craft room, so no need for mesh there. and i am hoping with the sides closed in there will be less accidental intrustions from feline entities.

i went ahead and painted the mesh i already have black. the bottom mesh will not be painted, just in case. or will painting it be ok??? who knows. not me lol.

close ups of the details of how the raised beds was built, in case any of you are also master carpenters out there and are curious. the wood i smacked out and didn't want had been placed with the longest staples i have ever did done see so those were a pain to plyer out... albeit this was built not expecting to take apart. i also found this forbidden toothbrush?? i don't know what it's really for and i also didn't know we owned one, but hey it was perfect for cleaning any residual soil from every nook and cranny! felt like nails on chalkboard when doing it, but i endured.

by the time i ran out of spoons, the basic framework of the chicken nursery was complete! well, most of the work was done by my dad earlier this year... BUT i took apart what needed to be taken apart and did step 1 of cleaning. with parsley's help, as always.

next step is to wait for a very sunny day after i have recharged my spoons and spray bleach on it, and scrub it down real good. like, extra good. then after that will be painting. after after that, the real construction begins on the mesh bits and the drawer.

[mimisempai]

This unavoidable between us - Chapter 1/8

Summary

Aziraphale has known for a long time that if he doesn't find his soulmate before he turns forty, he'll die on his birthday. After years of ignoring this fact, he's forced to face up to reality and plan his last week, calling in an agency that makes dreams come true.

Crowley helps out his best friend, Nina, and takes her place in an escort agency. His mission: to accompany a client and help him realize all his dreams... as his lover.

Notes

Those who read my Mystrade will recognize the concept of this story. I couldn't resist rewriting it for the ineffable husbands. 

On Ao3

Rating G - 2962 words

Masterpost here

Aziraphale set his old alarm clock for eight, turned off the bedside lamp, and closed his eyes, waiting for sleep to come. 

He had tried to read to fall asleep, but he couldn't concentrate, so he waited, his emotions a strange mixture of excitement and resignation.

Tomorrow was the first day of the last week of his life.

Tomorrow was the first day of the week when he would be able to realize all his secret dreams.

To leave without regrets.

He was ready.

In a world where the concept of having a soulmate was a part of everyday life, Aziraphale had known for a long time that it wasn't in the cards for him. Some lucky people found their soul mates when they were young, and most found them in college or graduate school, but Aziraphale hadn't been lucky enough to find his own soulmate. 

Or he hadn't recognized them.

There were many possible signs and rules. It could be a sign that appeared only in the presence of your soulmate, hearing your soulmate's thoughts, the world being only shades of gray until you met your soulmate, and other even more amazing signs.

As for Aziraphale, he knew only one thing about his soulmate.

If he didn't meet his soulmate and if they didn't declare their love for him before he turned forty, he would die on his fortieth birthday.

So for years he had searched every day to see if a mark had appeared on his body, every day he had addressed his thoughts to his unknown soulmate, hoping that they would answer him.

He would have liked to hear something, anything, but after a lifetime of loneliness, Aziraphale had finally come to terms with the idea that there was no other half waiting for him elsewhere.

He stopped talking to them when he reached the age of thirty. He stopped his daily ritual of waking up and whispering good morning to the void. 

He made that decision on his thirtieth birthday. He wasn't going to wait for someone who didn't exist.

So for ten years Aziraphale immersed himself in his work, ignoring the sword of Damocles hanging over his head, reducing his social contacts to a minimum, isolating himself more and more. Living in a bubble where he could ignore reality.

Then, a few months ago, reality came crashing back to him when Mr. Brown handed out the Whickber Street shopkeepers' meeting schedule for the first half of the year. 

One date caught his eye.

March 20, 2023.

The day after his birthday.

The day after the day he was supposed to die. 

Aziraphale had returned home completely broken. He had sat in his old red armchair for several hours, his dull eyes staring into the void around him. Unable to react. The only thought that came to him was the ineluctability of his fate. He'd realized he'd been playing hide-and-seek with death, like a child hiding his eyes, hoping no one would see him.

Then he'd done everything in his power to deny it. He had pushed it to the back of his mind, and refused to dwell on it. Until 8 weeks ago, he had thrown himself into his work, even more than usual, putting his books in one order and then another. Traveling the length and breadth of the region to find the rare pearl to add to his collection.

Refusing to dwell on what lay ahead. 

If he didn't think about it, it wouldn't happen. 

Absurd indeed, but better than facing the truth.

Then came the anger that had surprised him three weeks ago. He had felt it rise up inside him one morning and destroy everything in his room. He tore down the curtains, threw them on the floor, punched at the walls, broke everything he could get his hands on - jewelry, lamps, clothes, picture frames - finally releasing the anger of over twenty years. He destroyed everything in his path until, as his strength waned, he fell straight into the next phase: bargaining. He'd begged God for more time, gone to his grandmother's church, which he'd left years ago, and burned countless candles for a little more time.

Until he found himself at home, distraught and defeated by this fate.

The naked truth.

He was going to die, and nothing could change that. 

So he had finally come to terms with the inevitable and fully accepted his fate.

But Aziraphale was not the type to wait and do nothing until death came.

He would go, of course. But with style. With a bang.

If he left, it would be without regret.

In one week, he would try to fulfill as many of his dreams as possible, and began to write a kind of bucket list, from the most mundane to the most extravagant.

He had hung a small sign on the door of his bookstore, "Closed for vacation," to avoid questions.

Then he'd spent a few hours with his notary to organize his estate; he had no family, not even distant, so he'd left several charities to which the value of everything he owned would be divided after his death.

His way of leaving a small trace of himself in the world.

His bookshop.

He swallowed around the lump that formed in his throat, as it did every time he thought about it. Hopefully the next owner would love it as much as he did.

Aziraphale remembered that one day someone had passed out flyers on the street advertising a special agency that made people's dreams come true. Since Aziraphale kept everything, it wasn't hard to find among his papers. The flyer read "Make your life a dream" in colorful letters and was illustrated with photos of luxurious, paradisiacal landscapes. Without thinking twice, he picked up the phone and made an appointment for the next day. 

He had been greeted with a pleasant smile by a couple to whom he had described in detail what he wanted a few moments later.

Though he'd long since given up hope of finding a soulmate, Aziraphale had always harbored a secret hope of finding someone, if only for a few years. To have a comforting, loving presence in his life. But aside from a few fleeting lovers, he hadn't found THE one. 

Perhaps he was meant to live alone.

But for the last week of his life, Aziraphale was going to change that. He was going to live out his dreams, yes, but not alone, a whole week with a man who was educated, if possible, or at least curious, someone witty, to have all kinds of experiences he'd never been able to have because he'd never had a real, lasting relationship. The agency staff was very understanding and assured him that there would be no problems. They had also reminded him that the only obligation of the man he would choose was to keep him company; anything beyond that was at their discretion and outside of any financial exchange. 

Aziraphale was quite happy with this, as he was looking for pleasant company to spend the last days of his life on earth. 

For the next step, they had asked him for his program of activities for the week, while making it clear that he was free to change his plans up to the last minute. He gave a few guidelines for each day, but left himself some leeway. Once again, the agency complied. Probably his promise of an unlimited budget made them bend over backwards more than usual.

Then came the selection phase.

He had been presented with a catalog based on his criteria, and after passing over three candidates, he had found the person who seemed perfect. 

If only it had been that easy with his soul mate.

There was a close-up of his face and a head-to-toe photo. The man had hair the color red wouldn't be enough to describe, but what Aziraphale noticed first were the amber eyes that sparkled with gold. Then there was his smile, a mixture of sparkle and confidence. As for the rest, if he were honest, Aziraphale would have only one word to describe the red-haired man's slender body: tantalizing.

From the description, he seemed cultured, well-read, with a wide taste in music and movies, and a love of good food and wine. He was also 39, like Aziraphale, and there was no mention of his profession. 

Before Aziraphale told them of his decision, the agency people had pointed out that this was the man's first assignment. 

This had finally convinced Aziraphale to choose this candidate, and it was comforting to know that he wouldn't be the only one who was inexperienced in one way or another. 

Once he'd made up his mind, he was told the name of his future companion for this unusual week, Anthony Crowley. 

After paying a deposit, he had to fill out several forms, as well as a description sheet similar to the one he had just consulted. Then they had called in a photographer who had taken two snapshots of him. When he appeared a little confused, the people from the agency explained that they were going to send these to his future partner so that he could familiarize himself with Aziraphale, to get to know him a little first. 

That's how he was tonight, on the eve of his first meeting with this man.

He was going to live every day to the fullest, no matter how it ended.

Aziraphale visualized Anthony one last time and focused his mind on the days ahead, refusing to think about the inevitability of the seventh day. 

He fell asleep dreaming of tomorrow, of red hair and golden eyes.

**********

"Dear Mr. Crowley,

Enclosed you will find all the information about the week you will spend with the client. There is a sheet about the client so that you can familiarize yourself with his appearance and who he is. Please do not give this information to third parties, as stipulated in the attached contract. You'll also find the terms of the contract and some forms you'll need to return to us regarding insurance."

Crowley sighed and ran a hand over his face, still wondering what had possessed him to offer his help to Nina. He adored his best friend and was truly happy for her happiness, but that didn't stop him from resenting her for involving him in such a venture.

A few weeks ago, Nina had introduced him to Maggie, her girlfriend and soulmate. Seeing them together, Crowley had envied them. It was clear that they were made for each other. That's when Nina had told him about a problem that was a little uncomfortable for her. She had an escort contract with a high-end agency that made people's dreams come true. 

She'd been doing this for years, in addition to her regular job, to make ends meet, and also in the hope of meeting her soul mate there.

Now that she had Maggie in her life, she couldn't contemplate continuing this job, but she was under contract for one last mission, and if she broke the contract, she would lose her bonuses. So she had begged him to take her place just for this mission, insisting that it was just an escort role.

Crowley, who didn't like to see a friend in trouble, let alone Nina, had apparently agreed to help her. Besides, the fact that he was on sabbatical between jobs gave him the free time he needed. 

But even though he had wholeheartedly agreed, that didn't stop him from wondering what had possessed him now that the deadline was approaching.

Though he had no idea how to recognize his soulmate, Crowley had long believed that he would find them. Until a few years ago, when he saw people around him finding their better halves one by one while he remained hopelessly alone, he gave up on the idea of finding his soulmate and settled for casual relationships. 

Oh, he'd done some research, after all, he loved to collect data and now knew a lot about soulmates and the intricacies of the experience. About twenty percent of the English population had a soulmate who shared the same soul sign. About five percent had no visible shared mark, but experienced paranormal signs such as hearing their soulmate think, feeling what they felt, suffering when they suffered, seeing in color when they met, and other such phenomena. About two percent of the English population didn't have a soulmate, hooray for him, lucky he never tried his luck at gambling, he would have ended up broke. 

So, yes, Crowley knew a lot about soulmates, but not about his own, if he had one.

All he knew was that the day he met them, the moment he shook their hands, he'd know it was his soul mate.

In fact, it was as if he knew nothing. 

He'd shaken hands with a lot of people, but none of them had given him the signal: "Hey ho, it's me, your soulmate." 

Not one.

He shrugged. He had a job to do, and he was going to do it as well as he could so as not to get his best friend in trouble or lose her money.

He grabbed a bottle of Talisker from his minibar, poured himself a glass, and then grabbed the bundle of papers the agency had sent over before sitting down on the sofa with his feet up on the coffee table.

First he looked at the photos: the client was a man in his forties. He had adorable, messy blond curls and the brightest blue eyes he'd ever seen. 

Crowley took a sip of his drink and continued reading the file.

The man's name was Aziraphale Fell, a name he'd never heard before, and as he looked at the photo again, Crowley thought how lucky he was to be paid to spend time with such a cute guy. 

According to the agency's description, Aziraphale wanted to spend a week with a man, someone who was preferably well-read, and that he wanted to have all the kinds of experiences that a couple would have together and that he'd never been able to have because he'd never had a lasting relationship. 

Luckily for him, Crowley hadn't done it either, so they were on equal footing in terms of experience. That calmed Crowley down a bit, at least he wouldn't look too stupid.

Knowing the agency's policy on sexual intercourse, Crowley wasn't worried about that aspect of things, but he still wondered what the man wanted them to do together as he continued to scan the list.

When he got to the second page where the various activities were listed, he thought to himself that this job was more like a vacation than any vacation he'd ever planned for himself. In the end, there was a good chance that he wouldn't regret sacrificing his time and part of his budget for a wardrobe befitting the "role" he was about to play. 

Nina had told him he'd get a cut of the payoff for this mission, and that would more than cover his expenses. Crowley wasn't really in need, but it would allow him to spoil his younger sibling, Muriel, who was moving in with their soulmate, Eric. 

As for anonymity, he'd be in the clear a priori. Crowley's acquaintances, whose number could be counted on the fingers of one hand, didn't frequent the places listed in the agency's documents, so the chance of running into one of them was infinitesimally small. 

In short, everything was perfectly in order, and if the customer was pleasant, it might help Crowley forget for a moment the loneliness that weighed on him. This longing to have someone to laugh with, to discuss his thoughts and feelings with, just to share.

He took a sip of his drink, thinking about the irony of the situation. He was being paid to keep someone company, and his loneliness was so great that he welcomed it. 

His phone vibrated on the table in the living room, he grabbed it and saw that Nina had texted him.

Hey! Tomorrow's the big day, I hope you're ready.

Received at 10:30 p.m.

Yes, everything's fine. Don't pressure me, you moron!

Sent at 10:32 pm

Thanks again Crowley! You took a big thorn out of my side

Received 10:34 pm

No problem. I'm off to sleep, gotta look good tomorrow.

Sent 10:35 pm

You already do look good.

Received 10:37 pm

Crowley chuckled before typing his reply.

No need to flatter my ego, I've already signed.

Good night, Nina.

Sent 10:39 pm

Don't forget to tell me all about it.

Good night !

Received 10:40 pm

Crowley put the phone down, went over all the papers and the contract one last time, and signed the necessary forms required by the agency.

He had to meet Aziraphale tomorrow at 2 pm. That would give him time to go to the agency to hand in the signed contracts and pick up the various bookings and tickets for the next seven days.

He was both impatient and anxious because he'd never done this before. Not to mention that his experience with romance was rather thin, as he had never had much luck in his past relationships. 

In any case, he would try to make the most of this week.

Crowley turned off the TV, packed his things and went to bed.

He didn't have much trouble falling asleep.

After all, at worst the client would find him boring and the week would end quickly, and at best he'd have a good time with no consequences. 

Nothing worse than his present life.

Only time would tell.

_________

Still not beta'd

Still not my native language

Still hoping you'll enjoy this story  🥰

Still thanking you for bearing with me 😝

Ineffable fan fictions Masterpost : here

[meichenxi]

Hanzi update (+accidental trauma talk)

tw illness, trauma, vomiting, weight loss, recovery. I didn't plan to write about this but because of what happened in the last year I can't really write about how I studied Chinese without talking about it. so. but it's mainly about hanzi lol

I've been learning how to write traditional characters with the vague idea that I'd go and study in Taiwan, and also that if I want to write Classical Chinese or Japanese they're far more useful - but the program I want to go to Taiwan for requires HSK7, which I DO not think I can achieve and have the results of before March. Who knows! Perhaps within me lies untold brilliance and dedication!!

...well, I wouldn't rely on it. (I am also busy with a job, a partner, studying an A-level course to begin tutoring it in September, and writing the second draft of my novel.)

And even if I ended up going to Taiwan with my absolutely fantastic HSK7, there's no way I could handwrite all of those words within a year. If I learn 10 characters a day, that's like 3650 characters in a year, but realistically that will never happen - and you still have to actually remember them.

I also know from my last experience where I learnt a stupid amount of characters very quickly (about 800 in two weeks) that I can technically do it, I have a very large swollen brain, but then the brain, being very large and very swollen, promptly burns out. And leaves me to not do any Chinese again for like two months. So basically - completely pointless, because after those two months of rest I had forgotten most of them anyway. I will not be doing that again.

This time around I have been slowly, very slowly, learning things on Skritter. I have about 400 characters so far. I'm not doing words but doing characters, which is a bit slower, but I figure it'll be more useful in the long run. After I have the first 1000, I'm planning to then systematically go through the HSK and TOCFL lists and check I know how to put characters together and which 'jing' is used in 'yijing' etc.

This approach is only really going to work because I know a lot of vocabulary and can read a lot of stuff already - otherwise I wouldn't recommend to anybody without that backbone of vocabulary to just learn random isolated characters, unless you're masochistic or much harder-core than I am.

As I have said in a lot of posts before, I had a very difficult experience in China last August and have basically taken an entire year off studying because in all honesty I just couldn't bring myself to face the language again. Every time I tried I had this crazy grief and nightmares and stress response. What I went through was so stressful that during those two months in China that I lost seven kilograms, as I couldn't eat much without vomiting it back up due to stress and fear, didn't sleep, and ended up having to leave for Thailand pretty severely malnutritioned - which then made me susceptible to illnesses there and I spent the next two months after with awful health, vomiting and weak and generally sick. Luckily I was with friends and I gained the weight again and my period and digestive system sorted itself out.

And I never expected that a language itself could carry trauma? Like. Nobody died, it wasn't like that, I wasn't abused or assaulted or anything but still...for just under a year, every time I spoke or heard or read Chinese I couldn't help thinking of those two months. Even now it's still hard. I'm finding my way back to it but, to be honest, I didn't expect how hard it would be. I thought I could just - move past it, because I'd already had so many great experiences in China and Taiwan and with Chinese, that they would cancel each other out or at least be aided by the huge amounts of love that the language has shown me. Alas, it was not the case.

Anyway. All of that to say - I have only managed to do about 400 characters in a year, because I essentially gave up studying completely.

Now I've just finished reviewing and re-remembering those 400 characters on Skritter, so I'm ready to start again! I don't know what's changed, I guess just time - I feel more positive, I feel curious and interested about the language again. I don't know. I'm not going to question it too deeply. But for these past two weeks, I've been having a lot of fun :)

I'll update everyone on my progress as I go! Next post - 500.

[swanimagines]

Hi :)

I just want to say that I love your work and am so sorry about your mental health (I can sympathise❤️). I know it is much, much easier said than done, but please try and give yourself as much grace as you can - with both writing and life.

With writing, it is ok to fail with it, and I know you want to beat yourself up with it - but experimentation is where you can find things about your style you'd never know.

I'm sorry if I come across as preachy at all, but I wish you well and, once again, adore your work ❤️❤️

I'm so sorry it took this long to reply, I was at my mum's and didn't really check Tumblr during staying there.

But thank you for your comforting words, I'm trying not to beat myself up over not being able to write right now. I have a lot going on irl*, so I guess that also affects my mood and why I feel so stressed about this. Usually, writing is my outlet for these situations, when I'm stressed and have my head full of thoughts, writing makes me calm down. But now I just can't get anything out, no matter what or how I try. I got a suggestion to clear out my inbox a while ago when I last made a post about this, but the problem isn't my requests, I have LOADS of ideas for my requests, and I'm excited to write them, but I just can't get it written the way I wanna get it written. I'm advised to write my own ideas. They have the same problem as my requests. I'm advised to write whatever I can think of. The moment I try, my head just empties itself.

"Hmm what to write, can't think of anything, well if I force myself to write: Horses are green and they eat marshmallows. Uh. I don't know, I just can't think of anything sensible. Even writing this is kinda a struggle because I just? Can't write the way I'd want to, these aren't the thoughts I'd want to write but I already forgot what I was going to write, I thought of that like 10 seconds ago and already forgot. And not to mention that writing this is boring af. I'd much rather to clean a bathroom, bleh."

And it goes on and on and on like that.

*Looooong story and I don't have patience to write it all especially when most of it irritates me a lot anyway, let's just say I was promised something a year ago to happen soon after London but I've had to wait til now because of stuff not dependant on me (the person who would grant me a permission was on a sick leave til July and insists on seeing me on 5th of November before giving the permission and I want to strangle her for that, because I've been forced to wait for 6 extra months because of her sick leave), now it's finally happening next week but I'm still kinda furious about it because a lot of things have been ruined/delayed/cancelled because of it being so late, and I'm terrified this will negatively affect next March. It wouldn't affect it if it happened when I was promised it will happen, but unless some stuff will happen instead attached to this thing that's happening, I'm forced to change my plans for March a quite a bit (mainly meaning I wouldn't be able to get many photo OPs and would have to choose the most important people I want to get a photo OP with, and whose autographs I want) and it would crush me because it's my last convention ever with Shadow and Bone cast and I'll be mopey after that anyway, so a possibility that I may not be able to gather as many memories as I intended at first, and it's because THINGS DON'T WORK like they should and I'm forced to pay for shit service like this... yeah. I'm sure you understand why it's extremely annoying and unfair.

About the "some stuff", I'm HIGHLY doubtful about it because basically it'd mean a bunch of extra money for me to spend every month and I just can't believe that's possible before the institute who's paying confirms it. Everyone around me says it's true and my calculations are 100% correct etc, but like? I just can't believe that before they themselves confirm it. If that's indeed true, then everything is fine and I'll forgive them all their sins because I'd be able to buy more than what my initial plans included. But again, I highly HIGHLY doubt that because that just can't be true unless I'm living in some kind of fever dream, not with this government 😅

[gotta-yaps]

into the notes app - crossing your orbit

> a/n: crossing your orbit was my first! ever! written written fic, iykwim. minghao's new release was just too tempting to pass up - it made me realize that 1. i loved writing abstract love stories 2. imagery!!! 3. taking inspiration from mvs made life soo much easier.

spoilers under the cut!

the fic can be found on my main blog: @gotta-winwin

(⭐) i knew i wanted to connect minghao's most notable works together - hai cheng and orbit, into a love story all about longing, space and vivid dreams. it was a weird process: the ending was never planned out. not once did i imagine that the reader would have passed away, it just kind of... wrote itself?

(⭐) the title crossing your orbit, came to me in a dream - believe it or not. although i only vaguely remember the contents, i'm glad i woke up before the sun to pen down the title. it plays on the idea of crossing through worlds - the real world and the afterlife, as minghao seeks out reader through the stars.

(⭐) as i mentioned in author's notes, aesthetics and scenes from both mvs of hai cheng and orbit played a huge part in making crossing your orbit. i had imagined minghao wrote and directed these mvs/songs based on this otherworldly experience - so many scenes from the fic are direct callbacks to the mvs.

minghao orbiting through the galaxy alongside reader

the beach minghao finds himself in once the reader "shows" him their past together

the hug they find themselves in after dancing

dancing at the beach

not part of the fic, but it's canon that this scene was placed into the mv by minghao as a way to connect the past (the beach) with the present (missing her and seeing her in the afterlife/outer space)

(⭐) the english translated lyrics for orbit played a big part in constructing the story.

"I run towards you Once more, once more I ran to you This distance between us I'm feeling a galaxy"

^ this was the lyric that inspired the original idea - two lovers, torn apart by some strange distance in the middle of a galaxy - minghao desperately trying to reach her but failing each time.

"I'll listen like I did before I traveled through space in my dream All sadness was soothed away by your eyes that night"

^ this brought forth the meat of the story: minghao traveling through space in his dreams, the only place he can see her again.

(⭐) answering some frequent questions:

why were they stuck in a galaxy? does it symbolize something? : yes! the galaxy minghao finds himself in is both a symbol for the afterlife and his own mind - depending on how you decide to digest it.

why can't he remember her? : although the fic didn't start out this way, minghao can't remember the reader initially due to the trauma and pain of losing her in the first place. it's a frequent coping mechanism for many people - their mind practicing avoidance on its own to shield them from the pain they can't process at the moment.

why hai cheng? : deciding to pair both the8 releases together was a decision i made in the middle of writing. hai cheng is a song that'll always have a special place in my heart as it carried me through March 2022, when it first released. (it was actually my most repeated song on my spotify wrapped, with 83 consecutive plays. don't ask.)

[kandadze]

Ep 33 loose thoughts

Poor PSJ, this is the *fourth* time now... and the last 😭 I love these star-crossed siblings so much. "Live on well." I sure fucking hope she can, drama!!!

Our guys are also very much Going Through It, and in a way I'm glad that we haven't been forced to see even more of WZY's gloating, I literally feel like flinging things at my screen when it shows his repulsive face.

Looking at ZYC and LL huddled together, ZYC hesitating to go along with the plan because it would mean LL dying, I'm again nearly crying at what could've been and now will never be. (Only in fix-it fics, I guess. At least we have that, right?)

The sound I made when LL wrapped his hand around ZYC's neck (as you do). Like I'm pretty sure that if there are any kinksters in the fandom, at least some of them will agree with me that ZYC and LL's interactions are the most physically charged, whether they fight each other or team up, and from brutal thrashing to this almost sensual neck hold, there's so much going on between them; they tick off so many boxes for me, personally. And the actors are selling it - just look at TJR's face during the power transfer moment, it's perfection. Ahem. (It doesn't hurt that his chemistry with YA is off the charts.)

Holy shit turns out he can just *send* his energy from the distance, he didn't have to touch ZYC at all...

Okay, I'm back on track and crying over him gifting ZYZ the rest of his power, leaving ZYZ in ZYC's care, giving ZYC the Truth Eye (!!!), and just basically marching off to his death, all to protect them and help them win...

Gods, their faces are killing me.

"I hope you can see the world clearly." I immediately flashed back to Ashitaka in Mononoke Hime, whose whole modus operandi is exactly that. I think ZYC has always had that quality, and especially since the nightmare breaking sequence in ep 6, he's never shied away from seeing things as they are (unless it's a shapeshifter demon pretending to be WX, I guess, but he learned really quickly lol).

Awwwww goddamnit ZYZ's faaaace! ZYC supporting him (and preventing him from going after LL)! LL's vow in the voice over! His last call to ZYC! Fuckkkk I hate it here 😭😭😭

(Also LL's true form! Loved it 😭😭😭)

The whole sequence with ZYZ putting wings on ZYC and then adding his attack to ZYC's was something else. Jaw on the floor, stopped breathing, glued to the screen, and did I mentioned stopped breathing? (And the fact that "yì," wing, is a part of ZYC's given name, just adds more meaning and *texture* to the whole thing.)

And that short moment of Li Lun's image superimposed on ZYC, reinforcing the Truth Eye! ::rewatches immediately::

Oh gods, the relief mixed with grief as they're looking at each other. I'll never be over these two.

Oh. Oh no. Something really bad is happening. What's this barrier? Why is ZYC blocked by it at the same time as Bai Jiu, who's in a completely different place? (And where on earth *is* Bai Jiu, did he go back to Chongwu Camp? Shouldn't he and PSJ have run to the Demon Hunting Bureau? We still don't know what happened with WX!) I'm so terrified you guys, what the hellllll

(This is becoming a habit for me, but-) ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME, DRAMA!!!???

(I will never be able to think of phoenixes the same way...) Okay I had every right to be terrified because this is fucking terrifying. If the guy is essentially immortal then they are, essentially, fucked, and not in a good way.

Oh gods, not Bai Jiu forcing his way through the barrier as it's burning him alive 😭😭😭

Oh gods, not ZYC returning the demonic power to ZYZ as WZY is choking him!! (hands off ZYC you creep, only LL can choke him! 😝😭)

ZYZ's face!!! (Seriously, HMH's acting in this drama, he embodied ZYZ so utterly and completely and I believe every emotion and every movement and every look from him. Soooo good.)

His demonic marks are so beautiful.

Huh, he's right. How did the one-word spell that gave ZYC wings actually work? He was supposed to be immune...

They care for each other so much, this fucking hurts. The *look* ZYC gives him to encourage him! (now I need to yell about TJR's acting! AAAAAA 😭)

Bai Jiu clutching ZYC's bells as he continues to slowly, painfully so, move forward (I already said how I feel about Lin Ziye's acting, but for a good measure - AAAAA!)... and then he sees ZYC reaching out to him!!!

....................

....................

😭😭😭

Oh gods, this was agonizing.

ZYZ just kneeling there in the snow as the ashes are swirling in the air around him, looking so broken, thinking he just killed ZYC with his spell.

And then the camera moving back to give us a wider view, just enough for us to see the hem of ZYC's garments, and his hand reaching out to ZYZ - again, always - to support him, to steady him. The way we're guided to look from their hands, shaking, clasping together, to their faces, their tears, hesitant smiles which then turn to relief and just pure exhaustion (but also wonder, because huh, the "break" spell didn't work on ZYC after all) is so, so well done. I'm still trying to calm my breathing.

And then ZYC's face when realization hits him, and cut to Bai Jiu's "goodbye." Fucking hell, of course they stopped here!

Am I gonna even survive the finale at this rate? 😭

[kitty-gray]

hey! as someone who hasn’t thought too much about how tda and tlh were shaped by their respective times (i read them both two years ago at the same time and am still not sure exactly when either were published), i’m so curious to hear your thoughts about this if you’d like to share? :)

First of all, I just woke up, so fair warning: brain doesn't work. That being said, put your seat belts on and go have a drink, this is gonna be a long ride. Thanks for asking.

TDA was published from march 2016 to 2018, which means LoS and QoAaD were written through the first half of Trump's first term. One of the main differences between TMI and TDA, and one of the most applauded aspects of the series, is that TDA turns heavily political. Much of the Cohort's speech mirrors Trump's, and many of its followers are built around the maga agenda. You even have Kit drawing parallels between them, the X-Men and Nazi Germany.

Now, TLH is a little bit more complicated.

Iirc, Cassandra hadn't planned to write about the TID's kids until she wrote James' story for The Bane Chronicles. Then she wrote tftsa and at some point announced she'd published the series alongside TDA (kind of how TID and the second half of TMI were published interspersed), which didn't happen. Right from the gate, the series was supposed to be THE tragic TSC series, that's why we have quotes like "my father was cursed. Whereas I? I'm damned" from back then.

For a reason or another, Cassie had a writer's block and couldn't write TLH. So she postponed it till after TDA was finished. At last, in march 2020, Chain of Gold was published.

And the pandemic hit.

Idk how much you know about Cassie's process, but she's a social writer. She travels, she does readings with her friends, she plans trips with a bunch of other writers so they can help each other out, she has fun with other people. She's talked about it multiple times, but the lockdown really affected her. She specifically talks about how horrifying it was to hear the statistics of casualties and fearing her friends and family were going to die every single day.

So, the tragic plotlines TLH was supposed to have? She couldn't bring herself to do it. The real world was already a blood soaking place, how could she make the fictional world like that too? So she shifted a lot of plotlines, dropped some of the themes ChoG had and wrote not one, but two books with her mental health hanging from a thread.

This is too the reason why we don't have TWP yet. TLH was pushed back a number of times, she took a sabbatical year and now she's back at the trenches. The strongest of our times fr.

So, I find it interesting to see how two different world crises played a completely different tool in her writing process. Where the Trump administration drove Cassie to add heavier politics to her books so she could take the chance to say "y'all this is fucked up. You aren't immune to propaganda and you need to learn history so you don't become the fascist in the story", the pandemic made her take the opposite road, so in TLH what she ends up saying is "look, this was going down. This was really going down. But there's hope, and there's love, and there's still good in the world, and we cannot give up. All of us deserve a happy ending. Let me give you this one at least" which would've fit perfectly in literally any other of her books, except TLH. This was written to be a tragedy, and all of its foundations promised that. So, many people got incredibly upset with her because the series didn't deliver and the plot line ended up feeling a little clumsy.

But I think it reflects how anger and frustration can feed art until a certain point before we need to push back. Art can be a reflection of the time we're living, but it can also be the breathing space we need to keep going. It doesn't matter how bright you are as a creative, you can't stop your humanity from showing up in your art. And I can't really blame Cassie for that.