#trying out a different format for this one

[the-modern-typewriter]

I absolutely love your writing. Any advice on how to get as good as you?

Practice! (I've been writing pretty regularly for at least 15 years, not to discourage you, just to highlight that it's a learned and very much practiced skill). It doesn't matter what format this practice takes - fanfiction, tumblr snippets, boldly jumping into your first novel, trying to write out a short story idea. Just sit down and actually write. That's the single most important thing in my opinion.

Figure out what you like writing about. This doesn't have to be one thing. But you're going to be spending a lot of time with your writing projects, so while you will inevitably go through periods of not feeling it, it's important that it excited you once. Be a little bit obsessed by your niche, or your love of enemies to lovers, or whatever. Be self-indulgent.

Remember that 80% of great writing is actually good editing skills. Your ability to come up with ideas and a good story or lovable characters is a different skill to beautiful prose and execution. It's okay to get the story/idea down and then work on perfecting it with study/second opinions whatever. If you are editing, leave at least a 2 week period or something so you can see the piece with fresh eyes.

Read books and learn about writing. Figure out what you like in the books you like and why. Or, what you don't like. Equally important. You will find, as you drill down to different stories, that they often have a similar structure that you can draw from in your own work, etc. However, don't necessarily feel tied to this. It's useful as a jumping point to know craft, but it's ultimately a creative medium. If you're doing what you're doing for a reason and it feels right for your story, then it's probably valid.

I hope this helps!

[biancasaidstfu]

I don’t get that style of dancing but it’s not like she’s pulling it out of her a**. It’s a style that exists today for a lot of dancers.

I'll give my opinion here as someone who used to do ballroom, folk, and modern dance. I agree, the styles of some dances I see now are absolute shit. It exists but it's a disservice to dancers. I don't hate her but I don't think she's being taught properly.

A lot of what we see passing as "dancing" is really poor choreography and clothing illusion.

1. The clothing illusion. Unlike Ballet, ballroom, etc, a lot of the dancers wear joggers or baggy clothes like Antonia. The idea is to have loose clothing so movement is not restricted but the loose clothing hides flaws in technique. True dance teachers will not allow certain types of clothing because if they cannot see the techniques they can't help dancers fix it. Poor technique does not help the dancer improve and it can also cause injury. For example, sometimes when her steps look a bit off, to and untrained eye it might not be noticed but dancers can see if it's a missed beat or if she did not extend hand or leg with the correct posture and formation or if she's trying too hard to count the steps rather than just let the movement guide her.

2. Bad choreography. A lot of those dances she does is amplified by tiktok shit choreography. Ballroom dance, Ballet and other types have strict movements more so than interpretive/modern/contemporary dance but the one principle with all of them is you dance on the beat. What I see passing off as dancing is doing it on the words of the song and not the beat/melody/instrumental of the song. They should be able to dance the same song with words or without words and still keep the beat, pace and fluidity of movement. So it looks sometimes like they fight the beat instead of move with it. They also dance like they are trying to keep count of steps rather than dance listening to the beat/melody of the song and dancing on that, letting the songs or instruments guide the movement so it is more natural and fluid. They also force the emotions. Sometimes a dance does not need all the face expressions, focusing on one thing too much can sacrifice the technique and way the dance is supposed to be.

Bad choreography is also when they do the Britney Spears type of 1, 2 lock steps for everything, looking like a scarecrow running behind chickens, flailing body parts all over, rather than feel the song and then do choreography appropriately. They do a lot of repeated stiff steps with lack of fluidity and a lot of popping body parts to look edgy or like they have control of the dance but they actually look like they can't control the movement. Also they learn by watching someone else dance a move or two, sometimes that works but sometimes the explanation behind the dance is needed. You need to understand the dance, feel the dance, to emote the dance, to actually dance it naturally. Even freestyle dance looks stiff because they focus on using repeated motions and TikTok viral moves.

This among other things is why she looks like she forces to dance. They aren't being taught proper techniques and dance is also a lot of listening to your body and the song you are dancing to. It won't look natural the more the choreography looks forced. A side by side of professional dancers vs dance class in a studio dancers posing as professionals will show you the difference. The teacher has to want to make sure it's done correct and the dancers have to also try to get better rather than try to be the most edgy or exaggerated.

This was a very interesting read!!

I love to hear perspectives of people with experience in these types of careers/industries/hobbies. It’s very enlightening!

[anemone-ships]

˚✧₊⁎ imagine you and your f/o going to a good old fashioned roller disco!! which one of you is the more confident skater, while the other hangs onto the side of the rink for dear life? perhaps you're both a little nervous, holding one another's hand to keep stable! or maybe the two of you are naturals, turning heads as you spin together in the middle of the floor!

pro.ship dni

[arcane-gold]

hello rookanis nation. can i present rel and lucanis’s dynamic. sun and moon trope, one with boundless energy and one who gets 2 hours of sleep a night, guy i pulled by being an idiot, etc. they’re special to me

[s0fter-sin]

one of my favourite aspects of supernatural that you very rarely see in paranormal shows is that sam and dean are already versed in the world they live in. there’s no sudden discovery of ghosts and demons and now they have to learn about them along with the audience; they are born into it and already know all about it. it allows the audience to follow their personal story instead of also trying to figure out this new world and its rules

the first season is full of knowledge we never see them learn; “w*ndigoes are in the minnesota woods or- or northern michigan. i’ve never even heard of one this far west.” […] “great. well then this [his gun] is useless.” (1x02), “you don’t break a curse. you get the hell out of its way.” (1x08), d: “it’s a god. a pagan god, anyway.” […] “the annual cycle of its killings? and the fact that the victims are always a man and a woman. like some kind of fertility right.” […] s: “the last meal. given to sacrificial victims. d: “yeah, i’m thinking a ritual sacrifice to appease some pagan god.” (1x11)

almost every episode in the first season is a monster they’ve faced before that they then explain to the audience in a way that should feel patronising; like it’s the same speech given over and over again but instead, the audience almost feels included in the knowledge. it’s stated with such an innate confidence and comfort in said knowledge that it feels like we already knew it too; “spirits and demons don't have to unlock doors. if they want inside, they just go through the walls.” […] “the claws, the speed that it moves; could be a skinwalker, maybe a black dog.” (1x02), “it's biblical numerology. you know noah's ark, it rained for forty days. the number means death.” (1x04), “no no no, not the reaper, a reaper. there's reaper lore in pretty much every culture on earth, it goes by 100 different names.” […] “you said it yourself that the clock stopped, right? reapers stop time. and you can only see 'em when they're coming at you which is why i could see it and you couldn't.” (1x12)

they already know and, at least in the first season, already have what they need to kill whatever they’re hunting; already know to salt and burn bones for spirits, fire for a w*ndigo, exorcisms for demons, a silver bullet to the heart for shapeshifters. there’s only three times in the entire first season that they run into something new to them; 1x14 when sam gets his first vision that leads him to another psychic, 1x16 when dean calls caleb for help on the sigil he put together and he tells him about daevas, and 1x20 when they find out vampires are real- and they only don’t know that bc john thought they were hunted to extinction and not worth mentioning

(there’s also technically two half instances if you count one of them knowing something the other doesn’t - sam figuring out the tulpa in 1x17 and dean already knowing about the shtriga in 1x18 - but those still rely on sam and dean having prior knowledge)

even when they’re uncertain about facing something, it’s not bc they don’t know what it is; it’s precisely bc they know what it is and acknowledge that it’ll be a difficult hunt (“i don't know, man. this isn't our normal gig. i mean, demons, they don't want anything, just death and destruction for its own sake. this is big. and i wish dad was here.” 1x04)

so much of the tension in paranormal shows typically comes from the main character(s) not knowing what is happening to them/the people around them and having to find out how to resolve it. supernatural is unique in that it operates more like a police procedural. the tension comes from solving the clues and identifying patterns to figure out who (what) the killer is and intercepting before they can take another victim

it’s such a different tone to go for when compared to other shows that came both before, during, and after its run. it sets sam and dean on even footing with each other since they both have the same knowledge going in, and it puts them in a place of authority usually reserved for an outside character

the shows i compare spn to most is charmed, buffy and teen wolf; every main character in those shows are brought into the paranormal world knowing nothing, putting them on the same level as the audience, and they have their mc interact with others already knowledgeable about that world in order to overcome their problem/monster of the week. the audience organically learns about this new world as the characters learn about it. it’s a sound writing strategy that prevents “as we already know”-style exposition but something that complicates it is if your world building isn’t unique or intriguing enough, this slow introduction can become boring

we’ve seen shows like these before; sitting through the same tropes of characters learning to use their powers, struggling with no longer feeling normal/relating to the regular world around them, and not knowing how much they can trust the people already involved in this new world gets repetitive. all three shows eventually reach the same level of comfort with their new world that spn starts with but if the characters aren’t enough to draw you in, you can end up dropping it before they reach that point (and often, before the overarching plot can really kick in and evolve the show beyond the villain of the week format)

it’s the superhero origin movie in tv format; dragged out and overplayed. dropping the audience into an established world of course comes with its own problems but you also have the benefit of pre-existing established character dynamics that let the audience slot in like they’ve always been there instead of just getting to know all the characters while the characters also get to know each other

sam and dean already knowing about the supernatural lets the audience immediately get to the core of the story; the conflict between sam and dean, the search for their father, and the mystery of what killed their mother

[ribbononline]

I love how much culture is built from your design motifs for Pokémon fusions. I feel like every Diancie fusion live in the same country. It would be a fun challenge to world build with your designs~

Ahh, thank you! Im glad you think so :] When designing fusions I tend to use the body as- well, the body (and sometimes personality), and then the head for the 'aesthetics'. For Diancie heads, that's really leaning into it's royalty theming- be it by leaning into the classic regal pretty princess elements, the cute wedding ones, or even a more armored knight look using it's golden parts. That way, even when they're not necessarily designed to resemble one another they all still look properly like they came from the same 'family'.

Same way I tend to really lean Ho-oh into a very 'elegant' theme, colorful, but something commanding respect too- even stuff like a Carbink body should still look like it has something legendary in there, even if its just a silly baby!

I dont necessarily have lore for most of my fusions, but I always do make an attempt to make them look at least somewhat grounded and connected to both the established Pokémon world and eachother, so I'm super happy to hear they're working in that way.

[mt07131]

On the best day of his life, Solas wouldn't see you coming, Rook

[tenderwatches]

Being on the other side of this confession has a quality of… not lightness, exactly, but relief. ‘Sometimes, you need to get through the pain to heal.’ He’s beginning to understand what Vi was getting at. He takes a deep breath, holds it, and exhales slowly. As painful as Viktor’s scorn is, it’s now truth, not misunderstanding, that lies between them. He’s ready, he thinks, to own his mistakes and whatever consequences they bring. “J-Jayce—” The tone in Viktor’s voice isn’t one of anger, bitterness, or even tentative forgiveness. It sounds like panic, like pain. He hasn’t heard this in years. “Viktor?”

Chapter 16: Inescapable Entropy

When Jayce was seventeen, they’d buried his father. He still remembers the procession of mourners. Workers from the forge, business partners, friends, and family darting in and out of his memories like midges buzzing over the brackish pools of water that formed after a storm.

In that time, he’d been so painfully young, unequal to the task of being without his father so suddenly. But, after a while, reality had set in; you grow around the absence, like vines covering an abandoned house. The person you would have been with the person you lost still in your life is buried with them. Instead, you are the person you have to be in the aftermath.

He’d felt something similar when he’d settled into the after of losing Viktor in his life. He’d patched up the wound best that he could and trudged forward. Even in the months since his return, it’s felt like he’s been carrying this emptiness in him, this place that Viktor used to occupy. The facsimile of almost having it back has driven him mad.

But as he stares at the glowing, reconstructed Hexcore floating in front of him, he feels the anticipatory sense he may finally bring them together again. His adjustments to the original plans had taken him almost a week to finalise, but now, staring at the new version, he can feel the flutter of restless anxiety in his gut.

He’s not let himself think too hard about this moment. Failure in his efforts to recreate the prototype was just as likely as success. A good scientist doesn’t get ahead of themselves in assuming their work will always bear fruit—but that hasn’t stopped a burgeoning hope from coming to life in his chest.

Viktor doesn’t have the time needed for Jayce to flounder in scientific drudgery. He needs to be here, well enough to pursue new breakthroughs. He needs to be here, whole again with his work restored and Jayce at his side. The time in which these brilliant visions might be possible is growing short—Jayce can count Viktor’s recent number of good days on one hand. He’ll have to slow down soon.

It’s been a long evening of work, painstakingly setting each of his reforged pyramids into the proper location; the inspiration rune shines on the pieces now, and they undulate gently, shimmering with magic. He’s excited by the implications. What will be possible with this new version of Viktor’s original work? How will he feel to have it back in his hands?

Jayce squints out the window; it’s late, but it seems the blue light of dawn is still far off. He stands, stretching to pop the aches from his spine as he crosses to pour himself some tea from the now tepid pot. Mug clutched in his hand, he settles back onto the couch in the far corner of the lab space that occupies the upper floor. It’s cosy up here; it’s always felt personal, more like his and Viktor’s original lab.

He wonders if it will ever feel as familiar as that space had. He thinks of Viktor’s smile, wry and clever, as he tosses a joke in Jayce’s direction. They’ve been so much easier with each other as of late; it feels like that might be a possibility for them again. A future where warmth is between them always, without the subtle danger of devolving back into miserable anger.

Unbidden, the thought of his hand on Viktor’s shoulder flutters into his mind, the subtle pressure of him settling back into Jayce’s palm all those nights ago in the carriage back from the Ferros’ gathering. God, he’s agonised over that soft motion of Viktor acquiescing to the comfort of his touch so often he’s beginning to wonder if he dreamt or imagined it in his inebriation. He tosses the rest of his cup of tea back and sets the mug aside on the floor by his ankle.

There is a torch in his gut for each of the cherished memories of their hard-won closeness. He unbuttons his lab coat, feeling the cool on his chest like a kiss of relief. He tips his head back, eyes drifting softly closed. The night comes back to him in a flood—champagne and darkness, air hazy with desire. Viktor’s presence beside him, enclosed, intimate. His fingers tremble with possibility; what if he’d let his touch linger? What if he’d worked the tension from Viktor’s leg until his winces of pain turned into soft sighs? What if those brief points of contact had been allowed to multiply, to grow into something more?

Something that might be guilt or shame licks at the edges of his consciousness, but his sleepless hours weigh him back down into the world of blended imaginings and memory. In it, he lets his hand run from Viktor’s knee to his thigh, pressing between the brackets of his brace to feel the tender skin jump under the ghosting of his touch.

His blood races through his veins at the possibility, the thought—if he could have moved to settle down between Viktor’s parted thighs, pressing them wider to accommodate the span of his shoulders, he would have slid a palm up his chest to rest over the rapid beating of his heart. He’d have lifted himself up onto his knees to allow his hand to move up Viktor’s body, higher and higher, fingers gliding up the delicate column of his throat. His touch would shift behind him to curl at the fragile bones making up the apex of his spine.

He would let his fingers dip low beneath Viktor’s collar, ghost over the metalwork of his spinal fusion. He’s only seen it once before, long before it was well-healed, but he knows he’d be fascinated by the conflicting sensation of slick metal and soft skin. These are signs of Viktor still fighting, an indomitable core in him that never gives in to the creep of his disease, steel in flesh and spirit.

He’d let his touch linger there just a moment, tracing the edges of the top bolt with reverence before letting himself move his hand up, his broad palm cradling the back of Viktor’s skull. He’s sure he’d find an ache of tension there that his fingers could knead out, attending to it until the tight creases of pain leave his partner’s face.

Viktor might breathe his name like a sigh, even reach a hand out in return. A sharp pang of desire shoots through his body at the imagined pressure of fingers under his jaw, reeling him in closer. It should be a nervous moment, a new closeness between them that crosses lines they never have dared to before. But in his mind it’s easy, as everything between them always should be. Viktor’s hands on his face are firm and certain, in the way he is when he’s working on machinery. Viktor wouldn’t hesitate; he never does.

There is a strength in him that Jayce wants to curl inside of and make himself a home within it. He wants to be that for Viktor as well, something solid to crash into when everything becomes too much. He can imagine how his grip might tighten in the unruly auburn mess of Viktor’s hair, every finger conveying the weight of his longing.

Their movements would brim with chaotic inevitability, an inescapable entropy. He’d enfold his partner into his arms, pulling Viktor against him, chest pressed tightly to his partner’s abdomen. He imagines feeling the ridges of Viktor’s brace beneath his clothes. He’d be caught somewhere between awe and urgency at the mesmerising pressure of Viktor’s hand on his skin. They would be so close by then—so close that when he’d tighten his grip on his partner’s body, Jayce would be able to drink in the subtle hitch of Viktor’s breathing and the way the other man would melt against him.

That clever hand would slide down the length of Jayce’s jaw, answering his furious need for closeness. Now, alone, Jayce lifts his own hand to his throat, pressing against the tender skin above his pulse—imagining where he would let Viktor’s touch linger, hot as a brand against him. He presses the pad of his thumb against his lower lip, pulling hard against it, feeling the demand of his vivid mental creation of Viktor.

Jayce can’t imagine any response but to submit with the gentle parting of his lips. His own hand moves in concert with his fantasy, his fingers too broad and calloused from the forge to pass for his partner’s elegant hands, but enough to ease his desperation to feel something real.

He pictures the pleased smile it sparks in Viktor’s gold eyes as he traces the thumb back and forth against his slack mouth in a gesture that feels like ownership. A shudder moves through Jayce’s body at the image—an unspoken question in the heat of that touch.

Yes, he thinks to himself, blurry with the heat of the fantasy. Yes, kiss me.

He falls asleep to the imagined pressure of lips on his own, and nothing has ever felt so perfect.

—·—

“Jayce?”

The voice that wakes him from his sleep is Viktor’s.

Afterimages of Viktor in his arms, hands on his face, and lips on his own hold him down. As he blinks slowly into awareness, he almost expects to crack his eyes open to find them still tight against one another.

Instead, the glare of early sunlight greets him, revealing Viktor across the room. He’s far from Jayce, but only steps away from the still softly undulating Hexcore prototype. He leans heavily on his crutch, but his free hand clutches copies of the notes Jayce has been referencing.

“What… is this?”

Jayce opens his mouth to speak, but his throat is parched; he closes it again to try and compose himself so he might produce a sound that isn’t the pathetic dry click he makes as he swallows, but nothing happens.

“These are my notes.” Viktor’s eyes tear across the pages. He’s breathing heavily, panting almost, from just the trip to the lab and up the stairs. His breaths are ragged pulls of air. When he turns his head to cough slightly, it’s a wet sound, like a man shaking off a near-drowning. “This is the Hexcore,” he concludes, looking at the assembled prototype for a few moments. His tone isn’t awe or even malice, but the oddly detached note in it opens a pit in Jayce’s stomach. Something in this moment isn’t right; there is a discordant quality to them that feels like the beginning of another disaster.

Jayce stands quickly; his jacket is still unbuttoned, he’s unshaven and aching from sleeping slumped on a sofa. There’s a storm brewing in Viktor, too far away to stop but too close to run from. He grapples for words that might offer him harbour in composure, but Viktor continues, “This is what you’ve been working on.” The words are quiet. His heart sinks. With Viktor, quiet means dangerous; quiet is an outrage hot enough to boil water out of the air. “Of course,” the other man murmurs, closing his eyes and turning away, as if he can’t stand the sight of Jayce’s face.

Jayce is desperate to break through to him but can only manage a disjointed response. “Yes—yes, this is what I’ve been—I am working on.” The moment is all wrong. The confession feels incomplete, like he’s admitting something shameful instead of sharing the result of two years of his dedication to Viktor’s vision. The discordance in their interactions that has been fading in recent weeks is springing back to life. He’s terrified of what that might mean.

Viktor still doesn’t seem capable of looking at Jayce as he confirms this fact. He drags in ragged breaths as he stands there, processing, a slight sway to his frame. “After everything, Jayce, everything you took from me. You would take this too,” he spits out in a voice that’s broken with cold rage.

“I—what? Viktor, no,” he begins, stepping towards him only to have Viktor turn back and throw his old notebook to the floor. It lands between them with a resounding thwack, lying there like an issued challenge.

“Take it, then. Since there is nothing of mine apparently that does not belong to you—my work, the years of my life I spent here, my—” He breaks off to cough, the force of it violent now, and Jayce longs to go to him but knows proximity will only make this worse. Instead, he holds his hands out, palms up in appeasement, and wills himself to be calm.

“If you would just let me speak, I swear I can explain.” He keeps his tone gentle, invoking sense rather than pleading.

Viktor’s hands tremble violently, his weight sagging against the crutch. Painful spasms wrack his thin chest, and Jayce can see how the hours of coughing have worn him down—he’s haggard and lethargic. Yet Viktor presses on, dragging in several wheezing breaths as he fixes Jayce with a steely glare.

“I’m sure you can. But why should I let you? So you can—” He breaks off, winded for a second before he can continue. “What? Tell me more lies? Spin me more poetry about how you’ve changed?”

The argument is spiralling out of control, each passing statement pushing them further from reason. “I swear to you, Viktor, I have.”

“And why should I believe you?” Viktor’s words leap out with a bitter, cold hiss. Jayce realises too late that defensiveness won’t help him here. Viktor’s eyes cut over to the window, brimming with fury as he traces each glittering rooftop of the skyline outside. “What makes you different from everyone else up here?” This second inquiry has a dazed quality, as if he might be musing to himself more than addressing Jayce. His focus wavers and his anger slips as another fit of coughing overtakes him. Scrambling fingers pull a handkerchief from his vest pocket, and he presses it against his lips before Jayce takes another tentative step towards him. This snaps Viktor back to alertness. He eyes Jayce as one might prepare for the charge of an angry bull.

“You need to listen to me, please.” Jayce is begging now. He’ll get down on his knees if it means Viktor will hear him out.

“I need to stop listening,” Viktor retorts, and his hand balls into a fist, crushing the linen of his handkerchief within. “I need to stop hearing you out, stop questioning myself when I know—I know what the people up here think of me.” There’s a quiver in his voice.

To those who don’t know him well, the break in his fury would be imperceptible—but Jayce does know him. Jayce knows him well enough to see a crack that might break open with the right gentle encouragement. Jayce knows him well enough to see he’s hurting, something old and agonising that Jayce is prising open.

“I am an idiot.” Viktor discards both the words and his handkerchief with equal disdain. The kerchief falls limply to the desk beside the glowing Hexcore, and Jayce fights the urge to retrieve it, to fold it carefully in both hands as a peace offering. “I keep falling for this, falling for you.” Viktor pinches the bridge of his nose between shaking fingers, struggling to focus. He sways on his feet, and Jayce notices the sheen of sweat glistening on his skin.

“Please, just sit down.” Jayce takes a half step forward, hands raised. “Let me explain—”

“Explain? No.” Viktor’s derisive laugh fractures into a wet cough that he fails to suppress. It tears Jayce apart to see his partner so obviously struggling. “No more of your apologies or logic about progress and necessity. That you had to have me thrown out—”

“It’s not about any of that!” Jayce can’t take it. The accusation hurts more than he thought it might. He cuts across the building tirade with desperate urgency. “When have I ever tried to take credit for your work?”

“What about the 200th Progress Day?” Viktor’s voice drops to something dangerous as he takes an unsteady step forward before he stops. His knuckles whiten on his crutch. “Our Hexgate blueprints, printed on every pamphlet. Your name alone, emblazoned across our work.”

Jayce’s blood runs cold. That whole day remains a blur—the rush of being asked to give the big speech, his deliberations over Heimerdinger’s cautionary advice. He can’t even recall what the pamphlets looked like.

“Where was my name then, Jayce?” Viktor’s words come slower now, each one deliberate despite his laboured breathing. “Where were you, the great defender of our legacy?”

“I didn’t—” Jayce’s throat closes around the words. He feels terribly small. These angry revelations are painful, but he recognises them as the price of his ignorance come to collect. “I didn’t know.”

“No, you wouldn’t, would you?” Viktor says with a cruel approximation of humour. “Always a friend, a confidant, always concerned—and oh so guilty when you know you’ve done wrong.” His face has grown so pale it appears almost blue in the lab’s overhead light. “Is that why you did it? Brought me up to Piltover after I collapsed? You couldn’t stomach the outcome of what you did?” The accusation ends in another series of shuddering coughs and ragged, wheezing breaths.

“I did that because I cared about you; I still do, Viktor.” The response is feeble, but it’s all he can summon. Guilt had been a part of it, but not as Viktor means—not as some way to hide from his own shame. He simply couldn’t bear the thought of Viktor suffering alone in the Undercity, lungs ravaged, perhaps collapsed in some dim alley where no one would find him. The image had haunted him: Viktor’s laboured breathing growing weaker, his brilliant mind fading into delirium while the acrid smoke of the chemical fog crept ever closer. Even now, the mere thought of it makes Jayce’s chest constrict with a phantom pain.

“Keep it,” Viktor says viciously, and Jayce clenches his fists at his sides. He stares at his boots, teeth gritted against his surging frustration. He hates this—hates the mess he’s made of everything. The hope of their work together, the possibility of reconciliation—it all feels impossible again. “Your concern is better off serving the people up here.”

He hears the clack of Viktor’s cane and glances up to find him walking back towards the workstation, his gold eyes fixed on the spinning Hexcore. Turned away, all Jayce can see is the desperate rise and fall of Viktor’s shoulders trying to drag in deeper breaths.

“I should have stayed down there, choked to death in the gutter; at least it was a death that would have granted me more dignity than falling for more of your promises.” Viktor speaks quietly, more to himself than Jayce, but the words cut keen and sharp as a scalpel.

“Stop, please.” Jayce’s voice comes out wretched, tangled with guilt and shame and the awful hurt rising in his chest at Viktor’s bitter words. “Stop saying things like that. I didn’t lie to you; I’m not making excuses.”

Over the last month, when they were making progress, making what felt like amends—what else could he have done to prove this? Could he have made it more clear how much he admired Viktor’s mind and respected his work? Should he have spoken more firmly to acknowledge his mistakes so Viktor wouldn’t think him this selfish? That this moment stands so far from the reconciliation he’d dreamed of feels like punishment—like he hasn’t done everything possible to make this right.

“I do care,” he pleads, nearly surrendering to the urge to go to the floor before Viktor and beseech him. “I always have.”

Viktor shakes his head with a scoff. Jayce wants to lay bare everything he’s been thinking—all the questions this disaster has raised about the things he’s been taught, the systems he’s perpetuated by being stupidly unaware. Perhaps if he had seen the breadth between their experiences sooner, he could have done something to evolve his mindset, and Viktor would see his actions for what they are—desperate attempts to atone. “I’m not without reason for shame or guilt. I made mistakes, Viktor. I’m sorry that I wasn’t better. That I didn’t do more for you.” All he has are thin, insufficient words.

“Stop apologising.” Viktor wrenches himself around, the motion making him veer dangerously to one side. He lands hard on his bad leg, and the resulting wince ripples through his entire body. He takes a shaking hand from his crutch to dig into the muscle of his thigh, brow furrowed with the pain he’s trying to convince away. “Stop telling me about all these things you do so you can sleep at night, Jayce.”

“Then stop ignoring what’s staring at you in the face, Viktor!”

Jayce is trying and failing to keep his voice level. He draws a deep, calming breath and continues in a tone he hopes will broker peace. “I did this for you. This work, the Hexcore, all of it! I recovered it for you—because you’re right, I made everything a mess. I was a fool who trusted people like the damn ethics committee or the council to be honest and fair.”

“Oh, so you did it for my benefit then? My hero?” Viktor’s bitterness might be justified, but the frustration of it burns in Jayce’s gut. The slight shake of his shoulders from earlier has morphed to full-body tremors, and Jayce wishes he would heed the advice to sit down.

Don’t be defensive, he reminds himself. “Fine, yes, mock me; I deserve it,” he concedes, forcing down his irritation. Viktor has every right to feel wronged; what matters is finally giving him the truth he’s deserved. Jayce steels himself with a deep breath, fortifying himself to accomplish at least this, if nothing else. “I get it—I’m stupidly naive—but I couldn’t watch you keep working yourself into a grave even when I begged you to slow down. So, yes, I went to them. I thought it would be a few weeks of some bureaucratic review, and then you’d be back at our lab, no worse than bitter about being forced into a break.

“What—” Viktor tries to interject, but Jayce barrels onwards, rushing to get this all out now that he’s started. If there has to be a fight, let them fight about the truth.

“I didn’t know—I didn’t know what they were doing.” The admission offers no absolution; it’s a paltry reason, but at least it’s an alternative to the malice Viktor ascribed to him. “I’d stepped down from the council by then, so I didn’t even have a warning it was coming. I’d been planning to focus more on work in the lab, so you could get better without feeling like things were falling behind.” Viktor is ghost-pale now, his gold eyes wide and searching. “By the time I figured it out, you were gone.”

“You… what? What are you talking—” Viktor begins drowsily, but another brutal series of coughs cuts him off. He scrambles for the discarded handkerchief, then, realising it’s out of reach, stoops forward to cover the coughs in the crook of his arm. When he looks back up at Jayce, blinking tears from his eyes from the sheer force of his coughing, his expression is one of utter shock.

“I tried, Viktor.” Jayce presses his advantage. “I tried from the second I realised what happened, but they wouldn’t listen to me.” He grips the open front of his lab coat, crushing the fabric in his fists like he can stifle his desire to cross the divide between them and put his hands on Viktor’s skin. “I begged them every day for months to overturn it, but they ran me in circles to avoid dealing with it.”

“I—Jayce—”

Viktor’s voice has lost its edge. He presses a hand to his shuddering chest, blinking slowly as if struggling to process the words. It’s nearly all in the open now, and Jayce can’t force himself to slow down. “So it’s fine; it’s fine if you hate me for being a fool,” he asserts, words tumbling on top of each other as he pleads with his partner to understand. “You have to see it—I didn’t make the right choices, but I never intended to push you out or steal your work.” His eyes drop to the journal still lying abandoned between them, spine turned upwards, pages bent like broken limbs. “Maybe that’s not enough of a distinction for you.” He hears nothing but Viktor’s ragged, wet breaths in the space between them; he’s too afraid to even look up. Too afraid that what he sees will stop him. “But I need you to know the truth. If you hate me still afterwards, then at least it will be for the right reasons.”

Being on the other side of this confession has a quality of… not lightness, exactly, but relief. ‘Sometimes, you need to get through the pain to heal.’ He’s beginning to understand what Vi was getting at. He takes a deep breath, holds it, and exhales slowly. As painful as Viktor’s scorn is, it’s now truth, not misunderstanding, that lies between them. He’s ready, he thinks, to own his mistakes and whatever consequences they bring.

“J-Jayce—”

The tone in Viktor’s voice isn’t one of anger, bitterness, or even tentative forgiveness.

It sounds like panic, like pain.

He hasn’t heard this in years.

“Viktor?”

The scene unfolds before him like a distant waking terror. Viktor stands still as the grave, other than the tremors that now audibly chatter his teeth. Something about the way he can see Viktor’s throat working, the way his chest seems to hollow out with each shallow breath, sets off sirens in Jayce’s head. This isn’t like his usual fits—as much as they have been worsening lately, this is something different—something bad. “V? What’s wrong?”

Jayce steps forward, but as he moves, Viktor’s coughing kicks up again, violent enough that his crutch slides from under his arm. It hits the ground with a sharp crack that echoes through the lab. His body slams hard against the workstation as he staggers rather than catching himself on it. The Hexcore shudders behind him, illuminating him in a pulsing halo of magic.

The coughs tear through Viktor, wet and brutal, his muscles taut with pain. Blood sputters from his mouth and nose, past the trembling hand at his lips. His palm slips on the tabletop, leaving a stark slash of scarlet. Above it, the Hexcore glimmers, tendrils of light reaching like curious fingers toward the bloodied mark—but Jayce barely registers this as Viktor’s eyes meet his, wide with primal fear.

“I… I can’t breathe—”

Jayce’s attention snaps back—his partner’s face has gone chalk-white, making it apparent that his earlier impression of Viktor going a bit blue was not just the light. Jayce can’t move. He only just glimpses a fleeting plea in Viktor’s expression as his eyes roll back and his legs give out from beneath him. By the time Jayce breaks free of the horror rooting him to the spot, Viktor is falling.

“Viktor!” Jayce shouts, or thinks he does. It’s hard to say if he manages words or if what’s ripped from him is just raw emotion. He drops to his knees, gathering Viktor from the floor as if he can fix this by touch alone.

That’s how it’s always been when they come together—bringing the impossible to life, building impossible futures—but nothing comes to him as he pulls Viktor close. “Hey, hey, Viktor—” Just having Viktor in his arms feels better, but his impotence mocks him. He can do nothing but shift Viktor’s frame to rest across his thighs where he kneels on the floor. He cups a palm at the base of Viktor’s skull, keeping his head from lolling back. It’s a cruel reality that it mirrors last night’s fantasy of his hand in Viktor’s hair.

Viktor’s eyes are closed, his face slack, blood under his nose and frothing at the corners of his lips. His breaths rasp and spasm like wet sandpaper dragging across rough stones. Jayce shatters at the suffering, but at least it signals that there’s still time. There has to be. “Please, V—”

Viktor doesn’t respond—can’t—his lips are cyanotic, blue petals parting silently to draw breath, but there’s nothing. His fingers are feeble where they seek purchase against Jayce’s coat as he fights for oxygen. Acid burns in Jayce’s chest, a bubble of panic and terror expanding. He hefts Viktor upright, soothing a hand down his spine, trying to clear whatever blocks his airways, but to no avail.

“Please, please—” He guides Viktor’s face up to look into his eyes, but the astute clarity he usually finds there is gone, gaze unfocused as weak eyelids flutter. “No, no, no—don’t do this to me!”

Jayce is overwrought with the need to take this horror into his own body and weather it instead. The urge to scream and beg threatens to ruin him, break him down until he’s nothing but bedding for Viktor to lie in. But that won’t do them any good.

Viktor needs Jayce to act, not fall apart.

Jayce lifts him from the floor, the movement triggering another series of coughs that wrack Viktor’s frail skeleton. His partner groans, more blood bubbling at his lips until it sluggishly drips onto the white fabric of Jayce’s lab coat. He bolts into the hallway, clutching the other man’s form tight to his chest as he takes the stairs two at a time. Viktor is so still.

Gleaming in his peripheral vision, the Hexcore’s tendrils of light seem to wave farewell as they flee. A single drop of blood hangs before it, suspended like a tiny planet.

None of it matters now. Jayce only hears echoes on echoes of the same thought: Viktor is still alive—Viktor is still alive, and there is nothing he won’t do to keep it that way.

[first chapter | previous chapter | next chapter on AO3]

[infiniteseriesofhalfways]

Im going to hunt google docs for sport

[fictionadventurer]

Potential December Reads

Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope

Last Christmas in Paris by Hazel Gaynor and Heather Webb

The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion: Volume 8 by Beth Brower

Prudence and the Romantic Poet by Nina Clare

A Christmas-related book

The Cricket on the Hearth and/or The Haunted Man by Charles Dickens

The Christmas Blossoms by Priscilla Smith McCaffrey

One of the American Girl books

A religious book

Church Fathers: From Clement of Rome to Augustine by Pope Benedict XVI

Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis

St. Francis of Assisi by G.K. Chesterton

Arriving at Amen: Seven Catholic Prayers Even I Can Pray by Leah Libresco

A middle-grade book

Impossible Creatures by Katherine Rundell

Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus by Dusti Bowling

The Happy Prince and Other Stories Oscar Wilde

The Wanderer by Sharon Creech

Mandy by Julie Andrews

[planet4546b]

i wish wolf was a salvageable oc. i have mostly rehomed june though i often miss her original form but poor wolf is so entrenched in her own worldbuilding it’s difficult to seperate that out. like for her arc to be compelling she NEEDS that ten year lead up and i can’t give her that and i miss her so badly. WOLFFFFF

[bookshelf-in-progress]

To prove that I am trying to write a retelling, here's a failed opening paragraph to a "King Thrushbeard" retelling that I'm never going to write.

Our first year of marriage, my husband and I lived in a hovel. It was a tiny, damp, dim little room, with a dirt floor, a straw roof, and a chimney that always smoked. It sat a mile from the nearest village, abandoned by a farmer who had failed. It sat on the banks of a tiny creek, and at sunrise I would leave the dim confines of the house to wade in the shallows and watch the water ripple over stones, watch the sun flash on the water, watch the birds dive for bugs and sing their praises to the living God who'd given them another day. Sometimes I dream of returning there—the creek would be the same, I think, even so many years later. Of course, at the time, I was miserable.

[r0semultiverse]

I hope Jorge keeps the streams up until the next live stream like he did with the last Saga.

I had trouble getting into Epic: The Musical without the visual aid of the animatics as visuals help me absorb the material. I kinda wish he would upload each song with the lyrics and animatics in them instead of just the animatics by themselves without the full song, but maybe that’s just me. I’m an audio and visual gal otherwise I have trouble absorbing information. Besides the streams there’s no current way to watch the musical seamlessly with actual visuals and yet it is called a musical. A medium I’ve kinda expected to have visuals by this point, that was my one big criticism going into this series was “so it’s just songs? And I have to watch the script as I listen to know what’s happening? That’s hard to keep up with.”

Though if this is a consistent change going forward of having the full musical with visuals until the next iteration premiers, then great & honestly my only criticisms are a lack of trans voice actors (seemingly but I could be wrong) and a lack of fat characters in the animatics because Aphrodite was fat in her depictions throughout history in the very least. Which I’m not even sure if this counts as a criticism so much as an observation and something that gives me a bit of pause? Again, not series ruining, but just more an observation I guess?

That being said, I’m super excited for the Vengeance Saga tonight! Probably gonna stay up just to watch it! Sleep be damned I wanna see it as it comes out! 💜

Edit: Okay actually not risking tummy issues by napping and can’t stay awake any longer. If I have tummy issues I couldn’t even watch it as it premieres anyway because I’d be fighting for my life in the bathroom. ANYWAY DON’T GO ATTACKING ANYONE INVOLVED WITH THE PROJECT, I WAS JUST MAKING AN OBSERVATION.

[spacefolk-culture]

17776 satellite culture is feeling really emotional about telling people goodnight.

a goodnight is goodbye, however long this takes you. maybe i'll see you in a few months, maybe it'll be millennia. it's weird for a goodnight to go back to being such a little thing. it's still the same, though. goodbye, however long this takes you. stay safe, however long this takes you.

17776 satellite culture is...

[gaydogmarriage]

alhaitham is such a lying liar who lies dude. acting like he and the sumeru boys gang have always been besties since forever. "that's how it's always been with the four of us" - man who has barely spoken to most of these people before he decided to team up with them to overthrow the government and regularly skips social gatherings with them. yeah right buddy ok

[im-an-anthusiast]

Flower in Bloom

RESEARCH NOTES – Dr. Lendärr

ENTRY 93 – SUBJECT 5 

[sounds of the clearing of the THROAT] Subject 5 is the first living specimen I have received. It is gaunt and pale – clearly hasn’t fed for a while. I am considering watching for further... effects... of  starvation – as it seems to exhibit dulled senses and a certain tolerance of – or resistance to both mental and physical effects of Magic. However, I am far too excited to see a Flower in Bloom. 

ENTRY 94 – SUBJECT 5 

[muted SNARLING, sounds of SCRATCHING] Merely sensing it whipped it into a frenzy – I- [muffled CHATTER] -yes, yes, WE hadn’t even brought it into the room with the subject. It seems that, in a Bloom, a Hexstarved is most dull of mind yet sharp of senses, with suddenly... supple and brawny...-er musculature almost leaving me worried – even with me behind plated glass and it behind iron bars. Interesting. 

Entry 101 – SUBJECT 5 

[very FAINT sounds of SQUELCHING] It tears into the flesh like you simply wouldn’t believe. I have seen actual animals less ferocious and ravenous than Subject 5. Perhaps it is one, despite what it calls itself. Consumption of either flesh or blood seems to progress the Bloom. [muffled CHATTER] Yes, perhaps towards... something. Though it grows less ravenous, it is clear that is is not soon returning to its gaunt, weak... meek state. On the contrary, truly robust, powerful-seeming muscles form in tight knots across its crooked back in real time, snapping its posture upright, even as it hunches over the corpse, its teeth and nails digging in. I worry not about anything happening. [muffled, yet seemingly LIGHTHEARTED and TENSE CHATTER of MULTIPLE VOICES overlapping] See, the urge with which it devours easily derails any semblance of thought it might have been able to otherwise form. 

Entry 104 – SUBJECT 5 

It seems to have... completely stopped feeding. It is not Blooming anymore, I don’t think. W-what words is it mouthing? I do not know what to call this state. I should open its cage. What did we feed it again? [muffled CHATTER] A Verbal Magus? Whatever. I should open its cage. [muffled CHATTER] Oh! How about a Blossom? The very apex of the Flower, at which it has consumed the most Magic. Now THAT is a good name! I should open its cage. Wait, if it consumes Magic, what if- I should open its cage. 

Entry 105  

I am NOT an it.