#I need to go back and reread the last like five chapters and finish up the actual dialogue and stuff that’s going on here but THEN

[skyward-floored]

Brethren in a Cradle? 👀

I still have a good chunk of things I need to work on in this chapter but I can TASTE the end of it aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

This ask did get me to work on it a bit more though and I thank you for that XD Here is your wip:

“Five minutes, then we’ll keep moving,” Warriors decided, and several of them sat down, uncaring of the wet ground and mud. They were all beyond soaked by now anyway.

Wild sat down next to a tree with a sigh, resting his head against the damp trunk. Ember squirmed a little in his arms, and Wild looked down at him, small droplets from the heavy mist that was falling beading in his hair.

“Sorry buddy, I can only keep you so dry,” he murmured, holding him closer so he was protected further by his cloak. “Your world is almost as bad as mine when it comes to rain, huh?”

Ember softly whined, and Wild brushed the moisture off his head, reaching into his pouch to retrieve some milk for him. It had been a while since he’d last eaten, or napped actually, and it was a wonder he wasn’t crankier.

Small wonders.

Wild sighed as he pulled out the bottle, guiding the tip to Ember’s mouth and watching him as he drank. The baby nestled up to his chest while he suckled, and Wild watched him in silence, rain pattering lightly above his head.

[iamasaddie]

if I'm still alive, my regrets are few

PIMP!Joel masterlist

paring: Joel Miller x fem!afab!Reader

rating: explicit

word count: 6k

summary: still scared of what's to come your brain comes up with an unexpected escape plan, that forses you to learn things about yourself

warnings (for the chapter): FonF 69 (thank you @milla-frenchy for the inspiration and prompt), oral m receiving, fingering, questionable sex positions but it works in my head; light praise kink; light dirty talk, Tess is a queen

a/n: wow, it's here, isn't it? i can't believe my eyes. un-betaed, finished at midnight, i will come back to edit if there are any magor mistakes i didn't see on my fifth reread. hope you enjoy it, don't forget to leave a comment!

ᴛʜɪꜱ ɪꜱ ᴀ ᴡᴏʀᴋ ᴏꜰ ꜰɪᴄᴛɪᴏɴ. ᴘʟᴇᴀꜱᴇ, ᴅᴏɴ'ᴛ ꜰᴏʀɢᴇᴛ ᴛʜᴀᴛ ᴡʀɪᴛɪɴɢ ᴀɴᴅ ʀᴇᴀᴅɪɴɢ ꜰɪᴄᴛɪᴏɴ ɪꜱ ᴀ ᴡᴀʏ ᴏꜰ ʜᴇᴀʟɪɴɢ ᴀɴᴅ ᴘʀᴏᴄᴇꜱꜱɪɴɢ ᴛʀᴀᴜᴍᴀ ꜰᴏʀ ꜱᴏᴍᴇ ᴘᴇᴏᴘʟᴇ, ᴀɴᴅ ʏᴏᴜ ᴄᴀɴɴᴏᴛ ᴅɪᴄᴛᴀᴛᴇ ᴏʀ ᴘᴏʟɪᴄᴇ ʜᴏᴡ ᴛʜᴇʏ ᴅᴏ ɪᴛ ᴀɴᴅ ᴡʜᴀᴛ ᴛʏᴘᴇ ᴏꜰ ᴡᴏʀᴋꜱ ᴛʜᴇʏ ᴄʜᴏᴏꜱᴇ ᴛᴏ ᴄʀᴇᴀᴛᴇ ᴀɴᴅ ᴄᴏɴꜱᴜᴍᴇ. ꜱᴛᴀʏ ꜱᴀꜰᴇ, ᴘʀᴀᴄᴛɪᴄᴇ ᴄᴏɴꜱᴇɴꜱᴜᴀʟ ꜱᴇx ᴀɴᴅ ꜱᴘʀᴇᴀᴅ ʟᴏᴠᴇ.

“Fuckety fuck, fuck, fuck!” 

The smell of the burning food hit your nose and you ran out of the bathroom, hands covered in soapy foam up to your elbows. When you left Joel last night, it was with the heavy burden of guilt. You knew you shouldn’t have done that, yet you did it anyway and now you faced the consequences. Joel had more than every right to be angry with you, but you felt that nagging pang, that someone was rightfully mad at you, that he was mad at you, and it made you feel sick to your stomach. 

You've been tossing and turning all night, expecting for Joel to show his face like he did the first night, but it looked like sex made him less of a light sleeper. Unable to find calmness in unconsciousness, you got up, making up your mind.  

Obviously, you couldn't take what you did back, and you'd already said you were sorry, but you thought you could go an extra step, do something nice for Joel. If not to mend your relationship, then to at least make sure he wouldn't give you five clients in one day.

You shuddered. 

You made peace with yourself, praying, meditating, and just turning off your brain accepting that the day had finally come. You knew that you learned enough to be a decent birdie, even though your confidence was still lacking. Sometimes you thought that you had some kind of a know-at-all syndrome, like you needed to know everything and maybe more to finally walk with you head up. Shaking your head, you sighed, there was no way Joel would spend any more of his time on you, he made that clear, but at least you could part on good terms.

That was how you ended up flooding his small bathroom with foam caused by using too much detergent, and burning the eggs you decided to make for breakfast at the same time.

You hurried to take the smoking pan off the stove, but the handle was too hot so you ended up dropping it barely escaping your feet.

“What the hell's goin' on?” Joel's groggy voice was not a surprise, yet you hoped you'd have some time to clean up. Plastering the sweetest smile you could manage, you looked up at him.

“Good morning, Joel, I made breakfast!”

He  looked at your feet where the pan was still smoking, eggs burned to a crispy black edge, and raised his eyebrows. “If that's a good mornin', I'm afraid to ask what a bad one looks like.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Yeah, you seem to say that a lot.” He clenched his jaw and brought his hands to his face, rubbing his cheeks and bringing some color to them. “Can you fix that? I'll go wash up. We’ve got a long day.”

You just nodded, squatting to get the pan. The burnt smell made your eyes water, and you hurried to drop it in the sink, throwing away the egg remnants and filling the pan with water.

Water.

“What the fuck happened in the bath?!”

Fuck.

You pushed reheated yesterday’s dinner around your plate, every piece of food sticking to your throat, making it almost impossible to swallow. Joel in front of you didn’t seem to have such a problem. When he finished shoveling down the last bits of breakfast - both of you kept the space around you drenched in silence - he moved the plate away and leaned back on the chair. He tilted his head to the side a little, scratching the spot where the hair was missing on his outgrown stubble.

“Nervous?” His voice startled you, and you dropped the fork on the table creating more irritating noise. 

“Nah,” you tried to brush off, but he looked at you intently, and you gave up. “Yeah, a lot.”

Joel nodded like he wasn’t expecting any other answer, he dropped his hand from his face and placed both of them on the table, hands in fists but not tense. “Don’t be.” He said simply, and you wanted to laugh at his ignorance. Like it was him that was going to sell his body to strangers. “You’re a good girl, have a good cunt. You’ll be just fine.”

You choked on air hearing his compliment but still mumbled thanks, not really convinced by his words. Joel let out a long breath, patting his stomach with one hand with the other still on the table.

“What are you nervous about?”

It was the longest conversation you had in the last three days, and you felt kind of grateful. Even if he didn’t really show it, you knew he’d just leave you wallowing in terror if at least a tiny bit of him didn’t care about you. That made you feel warm inside. Perhaps a burnt breakfast and half washed laundry was a key to a man’s heart.

“I don’t think I know…” you started slowly, trying to find the right words inside your brain. “I don’t know everything I need to know. Like,” a couple dozens of examples ran through your mind but you landed on the least helpful one. “What was the weirdest thing a client asked?”

Joel raised his brows, dark brown pools hidden under them looked at you with wonder. Clearly, he didn’t expect that. He sat up straighter, while still trying to keep his voice nonchalant. 

“We’re not some… fetish club. Everything that happens at ‘Eden’ is pretty classical. Maybe…”

He stopped himself, and that only grabbed your attention more. You leaned on the table, as if moving closer to Joel would make him speak. Your bones were trembling with all the ideas your brain provided. How bad was it? Did they hang people up with hooks? Could clients cut you for the right price? Were they allowed to shove stuff in your? Your pussy clenched in fear.

“What?” You heard your voice tremble, already wound up from your own thoughts. 

“I dunno,” Joel shrugged his shoulders and swiped his thumb over his brow, making the hairs stick out a little. “Sometimes women come and ask for a girl. But I wouldn’t call it weird. It’s still sex.”

For a moment you felt the weight of the world dropping from your shoulders. If woman on woman was the weirdest thing happening in that place, it was far from Sodom and Gomorrah playing out in your head.  But as soon as relief came it was washed away.

“Wait, women?”

Joel nodded simply. “What, you have a problem with that?”

“No, I…” Fuck. You had just learned what sex was like with a man, and here you were, going somewhere where you needed to be Devil’s favorite call girl, who knew the tricks and secrets. And it wasn’t the fact that there could be women in your bed that was making you nervous, it was the fear of being unable to give them pleasure. The thought of an exasperated sigh followed by a condescending ‘it’s okay, sweetie’ in a fake, almost synthetic female voice in your head made you shiver. “I don’t know.”

“You don't know if you’re okay with having sex with a woman?” You kept your silence, not even able to give the answer to yourself, let alone Joel. But he kept giving ideas, followed by bright  even if blurred pictures in your mind. “What if there’s a threesome? A client, you and one of my other girls?”

Now it was just getting scarier and scarier. It was one thing to disappoint just one woman, but to have an audience?

“No, I mean… I think I’m okay with having sex with women, I just never did, so I don’t think I can…” You tried to explain yourself, failing miserably. “It’s easier with men, you’re pretty basic in your pleasure.”

Joel barked out a laugh and you couldn’t ignore the warm twitch of your heart. You liked it when he laughed, he had a very special rasp to it, and he did it so rarely that you learned to treasure it.

“Week ago you couldn’t speak about sex without flustering, and now you’re what, dick whisperer?”

“I don't mean..-”

“I know what you mean. It's okay, I won't send you girls, yet.”

“Or maybe…”

An idea punched you in the head like a bright light early in the morning. Here it was, your salvation. Or, at least, postponement. You didn’t let yourself dwell on it, scared that you’d back up immediately, but as if Joel read your mind he tugged the words out of you with a simple question.

“Yes?”

“If you're fine with that… Maybe you could invite one of your birds over? To… to practice? The more I know the more money you'll get, no?”

You were scared to raise your eyes to meet Joels, instead studying all the ways you could bend your fingers this and that way. That was until you heard Joel’s chair creaking, and he took the similar position as you, with his elbows on the table, his head leaning to you so close that you almost touched.

“What has gotten into you, hm?” He whispered incredulously, you heard amusement in his voice.  “Are you becoming a little nympho?”

“A whompho?” 

You raised your head, your eyes immediately caught in the honey trap of his. He studied you for a while, and then got out the table, the chair legs screeching against the wooden floor. You didn’t move, just followed him with your eyes as he got dressed and prepared to leave the apartment.

“Clean up in here, we're having a guest over tonight.”

Your arms and knees were sore when you finished cleaning up. Taking in the results of your work you smiled proudly, the floors were clean, the blankets were folded, and it even almost stopped smelling like burnt eggs. You wanted to stretch on the couch, but were afraid that you’d fall asleep again, so you opted for sitting at the table, counting the little cracks in the old wood. Time was passing torturously slowly and you jumped at every sound you heard. But amidst the lingering anxiety, you couldn't help but feel a sense of anticipation. You tried to imagine how your evening would go, thinking about who Joel would bring and if he’d participate himself, and instead of being terrified at the idea of another woman in your bed, you felt arousal painting your panties.

A woman, just like you. Soft, gentle, complicated. Beautiful. Your mouth salivated. What would it feel like to kiss lips that are so similar to yours, what would you experience if you dive into the wetness of someone else’s pussy, bringing them pleasure like you learned to bring it to yourself.

You never thought about this aspect of yourself. Never had an opportunity to fully explore your attractions, so you just went with something that was automatically given, but now, you were thrilled. This whole experience became something way more important for you than you expected in the first place, you didn’t know if you were happy or terrified. 

You heard the key turning in the lock, two pairs of boots stepping inside the apartment followed by two voices: one you knew intimately, and the other you didn’t know at all. Your heart raced as you stood up, caught between anticipation and anxiety.

A woman walked in, her eyes landing on you immediately. You tried saying hello, but the words stuck in your throat and you just stared back. She was gorgeous. Easily older than you, her eyes bearing more intellect and experience than you thought you could gather your whole life. She gave you a once over, stopping at your bare legs, covered to the mid-thigh by the t-shirt you borrowed.

Joel followed her into the kitchen and as soon as he stepped inside, you felt like you could breathe. Like everything was under control now.

“So,” the woman in front of you didn’t look very interested in anything besides you, her eyes watching your every twitch and tremor. She was calm, her voice quiet but strong. “You’re the famous rabbit, huh?” 

You saw Joel tense up, the knuckles of his clenched fists became wide, and he looked at the woman with something like warning, which she ignored plopping down on a chair and taking his untouched cup of coffee from the table, the only thing you were afraid to pour out knowing how attached the man was to his caffeine.

You didn’t know you were famous already. Did that mean Joel was advertising you or something? Your cheeks burned. The woman in front of you was intimidating. No more than Joel, but intimidating nonetheless. It sent an unexpected shiver downpour spine and straight to your core. There was something undeniably sexy about her, you didn’t even wonder why Joel chose her for what you were about to do. She was still looking at you like she was expecting an answer, even though it was quite obvious. You nodded your head, coming closer and sitting down next to her.

“Guess I am.” You put your hand on the table, and soon after saw the woman letting go of Joel’s cup and placing her still hot palm on top of your, gently brushing over your knuckles while still looking into your eyes.

“Nice to meet you, I’m Tess.”

Tess, the sound of her name was like a whisper, like a delicious hiss of meat on a hot pan, something that made your heart race, and your cunt clench. 

“It’s nice to meet you too, Tess.” You loved tasting her name on your tongue, her hand soft and warm around yours. You didn’t lie, it really was nice to meet her.

“You seem a little frightened, little rabbit,” she tilted her head, finding your eyes and smiling at you. “Did this big old dog scare you?”

She didn’t need to point at Joel for you to know who she meant. You shook your head, embarrassment heating up your neck.

“Then what is it, baby? You can tell Tess, I swear I won’t bite unless you ask me to.”

“I just never, I…” You looked at Joel, and Tess did the same.

“Joel, can you leave us for a moment?”

You looked at Joel, taking in his form. His brooding form was still as a constipated statue, his jaw tense, you could almost hear his teeth grinding. He didn’t look at you, instead staring Tess in the eyes, as if communicating wordlessly. She handled his look without batting an eye.

“Tess…”

There was warning in his voice. You’ve heard it before once, but you still got the shivers running down your spine. Tess, on the other hand, remained unaffected, waving him off.

“Us girls need to chat. We’ll meet you in the room.” She vaguely pointed towards where his room was, and gave him a little smile before whispering sultry, “get naked, Daddy.”

You furrowed your brows at the nickname she gave him, something pinching your insides, but you shook the feeling off, turning your attention back to Tess. You didn’t know how she did it, but Joel listened to her, barely nodding and retreating to his room.

“Men, right?” She huffed, taking one of your hands in both of hers and squeezing. “So, rabbit, why you tremblin’?”

“I don’t know what I’m doing.” Somehow it was easier to admit that to her. Maybe because she was a woman, or because she looked at you with such warmth that you took a chance trusting her.

“Does anyone?” Tess leaned back on the chair, still keeping one of your hands between hers. The gesture made you at ease, like she was taking all the stress away with a gentle brush of her thumbs.

You smiled, lowering your head a little. She did not look like a stupid woman, but you still decided to elaborate. “No, I mean like in bed, I don’t know what I’m doing in bed.”

“Again, does anyone?” Tess shrugged her shoulders. "Baby, sex ain’t math, you can’t have a perfect algorithm to make every encounter you have a hundred percent success.”

Unbelievable. She was fucking unbelievable. The look in the woman’s eyes didn’t change a bit when you bared your insecurities to her. You were no-one to Tess, maybe you were even a pain in the ass since Joel clearly took her here to ‘work’, and yet there was nothing that gentle care and understanding falling from her lips. Like she was afraid to hurt you, to scare you off. Such a strong-looking, intimidating woman with a confident stride and a sharp wit, and yet she handled you with such delicacy. 

“Look, yes, we obviously have pleasure spots, kinks, fetishes that get us off without a fail, but you can only learn that with a partner. Someone who’s either open and loud about everything, or someone that has been with you for a long time. There’s no shortcut to a perfect sexual experience.”

You admired her ability to effortlessly navigate the sensitive topic with grace and honesty. In that moment she reminded you of Joel. She was telling you everything you were dying to hear, and still the nagging itch of hesitance disturbed your feelings. “But what if I mess up? Men are so much easier, you stroke their dick and they cum, easy peasy.”

“Don’t tell that to Joel,” she laughed quietly as you continued.

“Women are…”

Tess didn’t let you finish, softly slapping one of her hands on top of yours. “You know what, let me take the lead today, okay?”

“What do you mean?” Your eyebrows furrowed, you didn’t exactly know how to take what she was offering. 

“I mean,” Tess leaned into you, your lips almost touching, “I am going to bury my face in your gorgeous pussy and show you all the right moves, and then you can do the same to me, okay?”

“I..” You licked your lips, your breathing speeding up.

“I take that as a yes.”

Tess stood up, not letting your hand out, and tugged you closer to her. You felt the heady, raw smell of her, mixed with something woody, almost like Joel. She dragged you towards Joel’s room, her arm around your waist keeping you close.

You stopped right before she opened the door.

“Can I ask you one more question?”

“Sure, baby.”

“Why are you… doing this?”

“That’s a story for another time, little one.” Her eyes gloomed over with something that contradicted her confident smile. You didn’t need her telling you the who’s and why’s to know that this was not her first choice. For the first time you felt sick from being right. You didn’t want to be right, not with her. Not with this woman that calmed you down with one flirty smile, that looked at you like you were worth something. Like you were worth a lot. She placed her warm palm on your cheek, brushing your cheekbone with her finger and making you look back at her. “But it’s not as bad as it might look. And Joel, he cares. He really does.”

She didn’t wait anymore, opening the door and dragging you with her.

You realized that nerves and anxiety got the best of you when Tess closed the door behind you both, and gently shoved you towards Joel, who was already sitting naked on the made up bed, stroking his half hard cock lazily. The look of his massive hand going up and down the intimately familiar to you shaft was the last thing you could remember before giving your body off to Tess to deal with it how she deemed worthy. 

She was gentle with you, undressing you both piece by piece, and then guiding you on the bed and laying down, completely ignoring Joel with his back to you. You were quiet, both of you, letting your bodies do the work.

“Don’t be shy, baby, let yourself go,” Tess whispered, before claiming you trembling lips with hers, and placing your hands on her soft breasts, her hands on top of yours and squeezing.

Oh, what a new feeling it was. She was all tender flesh and soft moans as your bodies started grinding against each other. At one point she tugged you on top of her, making you straddle her hips as your wetness became one mixture of pleasure and excitement. There was no shame, there was no awkwardness, just raw desire to give. Give more, more, more, hear her moaning louder and sweeter in your ears. Tugging on the long silky strands of her hair as her fingers found your heat without question, letting you know what a woman could do to you. How unique and unforgettable her touch could be.

You felt hers coming up to your eyes, pleasure and gratitude overwhelming you as Tess plunged two of her fingers inside of your drenched pussy, but they couldn’t leave your eyes as she kissed them away.  You swiped your nose along hers, closing your eyes and for the first time initiating the sweet kiss between you.

“It’s all good, but we aren’t making love here, birdies.”

Joel’s voice was loud as a slap in an empty room. With Tess under you, in you, you completely forgot that the man was in the room, and he seemed to notice that. You tried to turn your head and look at him, but Tess grabbed your cheeks, still sealing your lips together even if for a moment. She let you go with a wet swipe of her tongue on your lower lip, “your lips are delicious, baby, but let me taste that beautiful cunt. Turn around and sit on my face.”

"What?” You whispered back in shock, not sure if Joel should hear what you say or not.

"Do as I say, okay? Be a good girl for me.”

You nodded dumbly. At that moment you wanted to be everything Tess could ever want, so if she wanted you to be on her face, who you were to say no.

You fought the awkwardness you felt as you took the position as fast as you could, immediately ending up on the same level with the woman’s pussy. You felt weird, crowding her head with your thighs, not exactly sure what you were supposed to do next, but Tess took the lead, roping your legs with her arms and practically shoving your face in her pussy, making you almost lay on her with your whole weight.

She didn’t wait for a signal, or a command from Joel, diving in your wetness eagerly, like it was her second nature, and - oh fuck - maybe it was her first.

You could barely contain the sweet moans as Tess let her lips wander and nip at your soft folds, swiping her tongue deep inside you before pulling out and gently circling your clit. She was less hungry, but more determined, perfectly aware of every little spot that made you twitch and shake. 

With her tangy smell invading your senses, you didn’t even need to make a decision before tentatively sliding your own tongue through her leaking core. Apparently, what you thought was awkward, felt absolutely different for Tess because you felt her moan deep inside you before you could hear it. “Go on, baby, just like that.” She said, before giving each of your thighs a small bite and returning her attention back on your pussy. You didn’t need to be told twice, as you returned to your caresses, trying to replicate everything Tess did to you. When she plunged her tongue deep in your entrance, you greedily gulped down her arousal, when she sucked on your clit, repeatedly swiping the tip of her tongue up and down over your bud, you made sure that you gave her the same attention.

Either you were less sensitive, or she was more turned on, but as you brought two of your hands beneath her asscheeks, squeezing them and trying to press her glistening cunt harder in your face, what you could swear looked like you were trying to eat her alive, Tess started shaking, her movements on your pussy coming to a halt as her back arched up, lifting you both up. 

Oh, what a beautiful, beautiful sound it was, you thought to yourself, still trying to lick up every drop of her that she left on your lips.

You felt the bed dip, and then someone’s hand lifting your head up by your hair.

“Good job, now you get a treat.”

“What?” Of course it wasn’t just someone, it was Joel, the man of whose existence you completely forgot as every part of your mind and body was dedicated to make a woman beneath you feel as much pleasure as you could. But he was always there, standing as a shadow, leaning on a wall with his hands tight in his fists, and his cock furious with arousal and untouched.

Now that same cock was centimeters away from your puffy lips, still glistening with Tess’ cum.

"You worked Tess beautifully, so let’s play out a scenario when you also have a man in the room. You wanted to learn, right?"

You could barely understand what he was saying, but with the woman’s lips back on your pussy and working you up to your orgasm vigorously, nothing looked more attractive than Joel’s cock in your mouth. The thought of his cum mixing with her in your mouth made you let out another stream of arousal and Tess hummed in your entrance.

You placed your hands on Joel’s hips, changing your position a little, but still straddling the woman’s face as he guided his cock in your waiting mouth.

“Fu-uck,” he exhaled, as you tried to shove as much of him as you could inside your mouth and moaned as his salty taste complemented the one of Tess’. Almost on autopilot, you hollowed your cheeks, saliva and cum that coated your lips made the glide of your mouth easier, and you fell into a perfect dance, as Tess fucked your hole with her tongue, and Joel fucked your mouth with his cock.

It was deliciously heavy and throbbing on your tongue, filling up the limited space of your mouth and inching down to tease the back of your throat with the fat head.

"What a perfect little whore, just fucking - God, you’re so greedy for my cock, just my cock, nothing else matters, baby.” You were delusional, every cell of your body screaming and itching, every pore electrifying as you felt Joel grab your throat with his wide palm and taking all the control from you. His cock relentlessly fucked into your heat, his words slurred and understood only by him, like he was just unable to keep his mouth shut. 

“Fuck, I’m gonna fill you up, baby, feel your little throat real good, I know how bad you want it, saw you salivating over me, fuck, fuck, take it, just take it, baby.” His movements became erratic as his cock burst deep inside your throat. Just as you predicted, his salty, slightly bitter taste was a perfect combination for Tess’ honey still clinging to your palette. You didn’t expect Joel to cum so fast, when you were still on the verge of orgasm yourself, but you couldn’t complain. The man was the solution to your pleasure, the discovery you still tried to ignore, and now it was just one   little lick, one suck from those skillful lips, and you felt you would - -

“That’s enough.” Joel’s voice was barely loud enough to pierce through the moans that continued leaving your opened mouth, and the deafening rush of your blood as Tess continued sloppily slurping on your pussy, shoving her tongue in your sensitive hole just to make you beg and whimper. Joel’s hand grabbed your head that you lowered as soon as he slid his softening dick out, and he yanked it up, making you look at him. His eyes concentrated on a drop of his cum that managed to escape your lips. He swiped his thumb and shoved it inside your open mouth, not reacting when you bit at it with your teeth while also licking the last remnants of him off. “I fucking said stop, Tess.”

Surprisingly to you, she listened. Her mouth unlatched from your puffy, glistening cunt, and you heard her smack her lips, saying nothing.

“No-no-no,” you started whining, Joel’s finger pressing on your tongue made the words slurred. You were so close, you knew, a couple more licks from Tess and you’d spray her face with your cum. You looked at Joel with confusion and anger.

He ignored the daggers from you, released his finger from your mouth furrowing his brows when you grazed his skin with your top teeth too hard, and patted Tess in her thigh. “You can go, birdie.”

“What? But I didn’t get to..-” you were interrupted by Tess gently pushing you off herself and you fell in your ass, body still buzzing with the undelivered orgasm. Tess made a quick work of her clothes, the woman got dressed even faster than undressed, and the look of curiosity that painted her face when she looked at Joel didn’t escape your attention. As she finished buttoning up, she came back to the bed where you were still naked, silent, and confused. Her soft hand caressed your cheek, and she lowered herself to be in the same face level with you. 

“Don’t worry, baby, you’re gonna be fine.” She sealed her words with a gentle kiss, that you could barely feel on your lips. 

As soon as the door behind her closed, you turned to Joel, staring him dead in the eyes. Was it his way of torturing you? “Why didn’t you let me cum?”

“We talked about it already on your first night, sometimes the client won’t be able to make you cum. Most of the time they won’t. But you still need to enjoy the process, you know. At the end of the day what’s more important is that your client comes, and both of yours did.”

“But she could make me come, Joel. You just stopped her!” You felt the boiling frustration overwhelm your senses, your hands twitched with violent intentions. You wanted to slap him right across his smug face.

“Could, couldn’t. It doesn’t matter now. She’s gone.”

He shrugged his shoulders, absolutely comfortable in his nakedness, his dick soft but still impressing and glistening from your saliva.

“Fucking great, just absolutely fuckin’ royal shit.” You shuffled from the bed, ripping the sheets you tugged over yourself to cover your nakedness and stomping on the way out of the room.

“Where are you going?” You turned back to look at Joel, he still didn’t move, but he didn’t smile anymore, instead he looked almost… disappointed? 

“I am going to shove whatever you have in your freezer up my pussy, because this,” you vaguely pointed at your lower region, “is just painful.”

“Don’t you want to come?”

“Are you fucking with me?”

“Not yet.”

Fucking Joel, with his fucking riddles and his fucking confidence and that stupid fucking dimple when he smiles at you like that.

“What’s the point of this lesson if you let me come then?” You still didn’t hide neither anger nor frustration from your voice, but this time they were accompanied by curiosity. 

“The lesson is pretty simple, if you don’t get to come with your client, you can always come to me,” Joel pointed at himself, and it should’ve looked ridiculous with his naked state, but it didn’t, and it pissed you off, but more so it turned you on. “And I’ll help you as soon as you ask.”

“Will you help me?” You took a few steps towards him, already feeling arousal wetting the skin between your thighs. 

“Told ya, just need to ask me that’s all.” 

His eyes were fixed on you, seeing every move, and you already knew the hunger inside them. You didn’t need to ask, he would still give it to you. But you still played his game.

“Please, Joel, ” you placed your hands on his naked chest, letting the sheet you held as a cover drop on the floor, and your thumbs stroked his nipples, “make me cum.”

Joel almost shoved you back to the bed, hovering above you, bracketing you with his arms and thighs. You took one look 

“Just like the first time, baby,” he whispered in your ear, kissing the shell of it with his words, “you’re even more riled up now.” Two of his fingers teased your swollen, almost raw from all the abuse clit, and then slowly sank in your pulsing wet entrance. “Bet it’ll only take a couple of strokes.”

You both hated and loved that he was right. You were right there, and Joel’s thick fingers filling you up more than four of Tess’ could just made you wanton. Mad with desire and pleasure he so freely gave to you, you soon became bouncing on his fingers yourself, trying to shove them deeper, trying to feel that sting that ruined you the first time.

“Come on, baby, I feel her squeezing me, she’s so close, let her go, let her cum, she wants it so bad,” he whispered in your neck, tasting the sweat that already covered your body.

“Please, please, please,” you didn’t know what you were begging for, your mind foggy with pleasure, pain, need, every little thing overwhelming your senses. You felt a sharp, stinging bite on your neck and that served as the last button, pushing you over and soaking Joel’s hand along with his sheets. Your moans overflowed his soft praise, and you didn’t feel the barely-there kiss he let himself leave in the middle of the throbbing bite mark.

“Am I your birdie now?” You felt weird sensations laying in his bed together. The intimacy of staying so close, the mix of sweat from your bodies mixed on your skin, when you’re not actually having sex felt raw and you hurried to sprinkle it with reality. 

“Nah,” Joel lifted himself up on one elbow and leaned over you to grab a dozen cigarettes tied together by a rubber and a pack of matches. He laid back down, tugged one cigarette out and lit it. The smoke came out from his lips in one steady stream, but he made an attempt of twisting his lips to the side, so he didn’t blow it in your face. Joel continued looking at the ceiling, the only contact left between you two were your sticky shoulders glued back together. “How can you be my birdie, if you’re a rabbit? Rabbits can’t fly.” He finally looked at you, grazing you with a proud smirk. 

Something warm spread inside you when you heard him call you by your nickname. Another wave of excitement spread beneath your skin, like when he so brazenly left a kiss on your neck. But then your heart slowed down, remembrance of what’s to come washing over you. Your sad smile didn’t share his joy, so you quietly sighed, it was your turn to stare at the crumbling plaster above your head. 

“So what? It’s not like any of your birds got wings.” You chuckled softly, the sound catching in your throat.

don't forget to leave a comment if you liked the chapter 🐇🤍

[thompsborn]

gonna make little chapter recaps while i reread what's posted of homeward bound so far. and then i am going to bust out chapter seventeen. might not finish it this weekend, but i hope to get a majority of it written. let's get into it.

starting with chapter one - i'm so tired of being afraid

word count: 7,535 (7,515 without the chapter lyrics at the start)

chapter song: six by sleeping at last

chapter lyrics:

what would it feel like to put this baggage down? if i'm being honest i'm not sure i'd know how

recap + lines i felt were important enough to jot down:

peter moves into his new apartment (december 2024)

peter decides that needs to be alone

"when he's alone, there's no one to let down but himself."

peter looks up norman, otto, max, flint, and curt as a precaution now that he knows they turned into villains in the other worlds

norman and otto: started oscorp together during the five year gap between snaps, but have not gotten very far due to the world mourning the half of the population that's gone and also because stark industries is already a powerhouse in all the industries that oscorp is trying to step a foot into. peter deems them not a threat for now but will occasionally check on them just to be safe.

max and flint: peter is unable to find records of anyone with their names when looking them up. that's doesn't guarantee they don't exist in this world, they could have different names or something like that, but peter finds no trace of them and feels like it's safe to assume they don't exist here. he'll still check again occasionally to see if anything pops up down the line.

curt: a professor at empire state university with no signs of any of the things that happened in the other world happening to him here. again, peter will check occasionally to make sure, but overall he thinks that his world is most likely safe from these five people becoming villains like they did in the other peter's worlds.

peter looks into empire state university after looking up curt and thinks about how he'd like to go to college. it's always been part of his life plan. his life is completely different than what it was ever supposed to be and he'd need to get his GED, but he thinks about how he'd like to still go if he can make it work.

peter decides he needs to remake his suit, partially because he other suits can't be used anymore now that karen doesn't recognize him - edith doesn't recognize him anymore, either, which makes peter sad because he feels like he's lost a connection that he had with tony after tony's death - but he also wants to remake his suits because he knows the other peter's made their own from suits from scratch as well, so he thinks it's pretty fitting and thinks that it's kind of like he's building himself up from scratch and starting over for good - "...as both Peter Parker and as Spider-Man"

"and karen not knowing him feels a lot like losing another friend."

he includes peter 2 and peter 3 in his suit design to honor them and remind himself that, even if he is alone in his world, he isn't alone in the universe.

raimi spidey emblem on his chest:

and tasm spidey emblem on his back:

"when peter gets lost, or angry, or overwhelmed... he has reminders of them, interwoven into his suit, for him to brush his fingers against and think to himself, be strong, peter. do it for your brothers."

peter had an uncle ben in his world, but his uncle ben died less than two years after his parents did when he was six and a half years old. peter thinks about how his uncle ben impacted his life in a much different life than the other peter's. his uncle ben's last words shaped his morals and his outlook in life, to the point that, when tony first showed up to recruit peter for germany, he had used his own wording based on what ben said to explain why being spidey is so important to him.

"he remembers ben shrugging, remembers him smiling, remembers him saying, "if i didn't help, it'd be my fault, too." the way he said it had been so simple, so sure - a philosophy he fully and passionately believed in."

actually just this whole section feels very important to me so i'm going to copy and paste it right here:

In a way, Uncle Ben played a significant part in Peter becoming Spider-Man, but not in the same way that the Other Peter’s seemed to be influenced by their Uncle Ben’s. Peter remembers that he didn’t think much of the last words he heard his Ben say for a while, but that they seemed to click in his head around the time he was nine or ten, and suddenly they were words he wanted to live by. Doing good, and getting in the way to stop bad things, no matter how big or how small, because then it’d be his fault, too, if he didn’t.

It’s what he told Mr. Stark, back when he was still fourteen almost fifteen and the man had appeared in his apartment. When you can do the things I can, he had said—not exactly what Ben had said, no, kind of added onto by Peter, altered with the weight of Spider-Man stacked on top of the same philosophy he already lived by—but you don’t, and then the bad things happen… they happen because of you.

It’s not what the Other Peter’s talked about, though—because Ben didn’t tell Peter that great power comes with great responsibility. Aunt May told him that. But, for the Other Peter’s, it had been an Uncle that lived longer than his own did.

Then again, the Other Peter’s didn’t have the Avenger’s, and they never had Mr. Stark. Maybe it’s just different because each world isn’t supposed to be the same, and that’s all there is to it.

also may's line from right before ben died, which peter later tells harley about when telling harley the truth about his life:

“You stupid Parker men,” May had scoffed. “Way too selfless for your own good.”

peter thinks that it feels important that uncle ben had such a huge role in shaping who he is, and how the ben's of the other worlds had such a huge part in the other peter's lives as well, even if it was in vastly different ways. he then thinks about how, out of the very few things that peter was able to get out of his and may's old apartment before it was cleared out, one of them happened to be a box of uncle ben's old stuff - including, at the very top of the box, ben's old camera.

peter learns how to use ben's camera to take pictures properly in order to then take pictures of himself as spidey to sell to the daily bugle. he thinks it's amusing and ironic that the pictures he takes are used for articles that slander spidey, knowing that jjj would probably lose his shit if he knew he bought the pictures from spider-man himself.

"everything seems to be trial and error these days - life was never a certainty before, but now it's pretty clearly up in the air and he's left scrambling to try and figure it out, approaching every corner completely blind to what he'll find when he turns it - but that's alright, because he's got the brain of a scientist and trial and error could just be another term for experiment, so it works out well."

that ^ quote is a nice tie in to the tony flashback that happens in chapter 16, where tony calls peter an observer and says that peter is always gathering information and how peter looks more than most people do because peter likes to be prepared and likes to understand.

peter spends new years eve alone (new years, 2024) and watches the fireworks while thinking about the other peter's not being alone before going back to patrol.

peter gets his first Big Injury since ending up completely on his own. he has no one to call and he has no super pain killers like the ones tony had made for him before tony died. the injury starts at his left hip, goes over his ribs, stops at the center of his chest. it was done with a knife. peter has to stitch himself up. it's the first time he's ever done stitches on himself.

he passes out after finishing the stitches and wakes up almost a full day later. thinks about his healing and how his enhancements are definitely being negatively impacted by his lackluster eating habits - he's broke as fuck and also doesn't have much of an appetite due to being traumatized and depressed.

"part of him wonders how drastic a change it really is - wonders if, maybe, the scars will stop fading away. for some reason, that's the thought that makes him feel sick to his stomach."

fun fact: this injury is the one that peter tells harley about in chapter 15 when harley is asking about some of peter's scars.

and that's the end of chapter one! these little recaps are entirely for my own benefit - the only reason i'm posting them is because giving myself the expectation and responsibility of posting them will make me actually commit to recapping every chapter, which will make working on chapter seventeen a lot fucking easier and will make it so i'm able to finish chapter seventeen a lot fucking faster.

i will be reblogging with the chapter two recap shortly

[winterinhimring]

20 Questions for Writers

Thanks for the tag, @musewrangler! This looks fun.

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

94.

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

852,051. (Holy cow.)

3. What fandoms do you write for?

A lot! Tolkien, Star Wars, Marvel, and Hornblower are the ones I've written most for, but I've also written stories for the 1985 movie Silverado, and for The Three Musketeers, Dune, The Hunt for Red October, and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

Jat'ca'nara, The War of the Ring, Pirunir Sur'haaise, break my bonds and be bound to me (what. the. heck.), and Ba'slan Shev'la.

I will admit, I was not expecting all of those. The Star Wars ones (all the Mando'a titles) make sense, WOTR is my first and longest fic and also in the Tolkien fandom, but break my bonds is one of the RAREST of rare pairs and despite it being in the Star Wars fandom too, it's focussed on some comparatively minor characters, so I am...very surprised by that.

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

Yes! Always. I love receiving comments so the least I can do is respond to them. Also, I nearly always have thoughts to share with my readers in response to their thoughts on my fic.

6. What’s the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Unquestionably Cuyan'e. It's a character study of two very deeply broken men who have both lost everything, one at the hands of the other, and it earns its 'hurt no comfort' tag. The title means "Survivors" because they're both the last survivors of their families. It's very unusual for me to write a fic this painful without putting in a happy ending, but that story pretty much showed up to my brain written the way it is, and when that happens I write what I'm given.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

That's much harder to answer than the last one! A significant majority of my fics have happy endings, or at least happier ones than canon. However, I'll have to go with Tegaanal, the climax of my Star Wars fix-it series, because it's such an earned happy ending and we watched the characters fight for it every step of the way.

8. Do you get hate on your fic?

Nope! I review my comments on the first couple of fics of any series, until I have an idea of what my reader base is like, and that seems to ward off the weirdos.

9. Do you write smut?

Heck no. I don't need that in my head.

10. Do you write crossovers?

On occasion! Usually because the muses show up and start jumping on the table banging pans together until I write them something.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not to the best of my knowledge.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

No, but I HAVE had a piece of music inspired by a fic. I wrote a poem (in Mando'a and in English) for Partaylir, and the absolutely fantastic Siena_Alexandria actually wrote a tune for it and recorded the result. If you like Mandalorians, Mando'a, conlangs, or just good music, listen to it here! (Each chapter is a different version of the poem.)

13. Have you ever co-written a fic?

Yep, several! Mostly with @musewrangler.

14. What‘s your all-time favourite ship?

I don't really have one, as I don't tend to get all that deeply invested in ships. Characters, yes, but not specific ships. I guess I have a soft spot for Walon Vau/Shmi Skywalker, though, since it's a canoe I launched all by myself (see my boggled reaction to break my bonds and be bound to me being one of my most-kudosed fics above).

15. What’s the WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

*grits teeth* I. Will. Finish. All. My. WIPs. (There's only one that is arguably in danger of abandonment, Of the History of the White Tree, and I'm going to come back to it as soon as I've reread the source material.)

16. What’s your writing strengths?

Hmm...I would say it's my character writing, above all else. Once I have a clear mental picture of what someone would or wouldn't do, I can basically drop him into situations and just let them play out and see what happens, pretty much trusting the character to respond the way he should. A lot of my fics consist of this, and the consensus from my readers has been that I do it well.

17. What’s your writing weaknesses?

Strong emotions, and people who are open with their emotions, are difficult for me to write. Whenever I write a scene that involves feelings and vulnerability, I have a holy terror of becoming kitschy. And people who actually show their emotions voluntarily by default are kind of a mystery to me, so I don't really write them because I don't understand them.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

Fun to do when I know the language and/or enough of it to get by! I put in quite a lot of Mando'a for my Star Wars stories and I enjoy working within the constraints of its limited vocabulary because it forces me to pare down my usually verbose writing style into just the core of the meaning I intend to convey.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Tolkien! My first, most lasting, and perhaps dearest fandom.

20. Favourite fic you’ve ever written?

HOW CAN I PICK JUST ONE???? My favourite fic is nearly always the one I'm writing now, though, so right now it's So We Can Learn to Pick Ourselves Up, the latest instalment of what started as post-Endgame MCU fix-it and has now grown into a live-action Spider-man multiverse fix-it.

No-pressure tags for @ramblingsofachristiannerd, @hollers-and-holmes, @lady-merian, @ghosts-and-blue-sweaters, @thatonebasicfan, and anyone who'd like to jump on!

[sepetajmikolikomehoces]

🕯️

🥤

🛼

writers truth & dare

🕯on a scale from 1 to 10 how much do you enjoy editing? why is that?

I'd say... a solid 7? I usually edit a bit as I go, simply because I might come up with something that impacts a situation that happened earlier and I need to go back and change that while I remember it. I also edit once I'm done to try and catch any left behind half-finished sentences. It's good, it meeds to be done, but sometimes I feel like I need to know when to stop before I veer off and edit things into oblivion.

🛼 describe your latest wip with five emojis

🧑🏻‍🤝‍🧑🏼❤️🌃❓️❗️

Make of that what you will...

🥤recommend and author or fanfic that you love

You can't just ask me to rec one. You can't. I refuse. Putting this under a cut because I might get wordy.

Space AU series by kuurama (AO3)

Run, don't walk, SPRINT LIKE USAIN BOLT TO THIS SERIES. Had me from the first sentence of the first part until the very last sentence of the second part, at which point I had cried more times than I care to admit. Gorgeous prose, continuously makes you sit back and have an existential crisis. 10/10 would be destroyed again.

Besane Su Naše Noći by @mitochondriencocktail and @mewnyan

Honestly, anything by these two geniuses, but this one especially. Can't walk past Dumle without having to clutch my chest to make sure my heart won't escape me. So soft, and with the kind of hope that makes you feel tender at the edges.

lovefool by @punanenmarli

The amount of screaming I have done over this. It is hilarious, it is angsty, it is deliciously filthy and Jere's thirst tweeting is a delight. You will want to punch Bojan, though. A little.

mun ainoa oikea satama by @frikatilhi

I don't have words for how much this fic fucked me up when I read it the first time. And the second. And third. I felt like my heart was being pulverized throughout, trying to yell at Bojan, at Jere, at the mere thought that there could be a world where they are not what they are to each other.

Black Treacle by slightlysexualfiction (AO3)

A goddamn MASTERPIECE. Fucking glorious progression that builds and builds and you become so invested in both Jan and Nace and the something that is brewing between them. Whenever I get the update notification I immediately have to go sit down because I know that one way or the other, it will take me out.

The Marks on Our Skin by @electron-road-suspect

I love ERS's Kinktober verse with all my heart and whatever shreds remain of my soul, but soulmate AUs will always own me, and this one is so gorgeous and clever in its concept and execution, and though I thoroughly swoon at the two main constellations, it was the bonus chapter that truly took me out.

Do you think we'll be in love forever? by ate_my_brain (AO3)

An absolutely devastating what if scenario that feels so real I constantly ask myself if we're not looking at a very, very possible future. Heartbreaking, jawdropping, consistently mindblowing prose.

ljubili se (in se igrali) series by xianvar (AO3 + tumblr but tumblr refused to make it a tag)

I have gone back and reread this [redacted] amount of times. Like. I am in constant AWE at the emotional heft in this, it keeps hitting me every damn time, and I think xia may be one of my favourite Jance authors in the fandom.

[quadrupedalpotato]

Odds (all of them) for the fic writing meme

XD I had to remember how to log into tumblr on desktop to do this.

1.          the last sentence you wrote

(Already did it and I don’t have another sentence yet to contribute.)

3.          how you feel about your current WIP

Completely in a pre-draft (if that’s a thing?) phase, but if it gets written up and published, it’s going to be so good.

5.          first sentence of the fifth paragraph of an unpublished WIP

“But here she was, still alive, playing more of a role in everything than she’d ever been prepared to.” and, as a bonus from a different WIP

"The ad he’d found had advertised almost everything but sex."

7.          your preferred writing fonts

I don’t care a lot. I do really like Courier, though, so if pressed to pick, probably that.

(On that note, I just got used to Calibri, which is no longer the default for Microsoft Word and it’s driving me up the wall.)

9.          start to finish, how long did it take you to write the last fic you posted?

I was writing it for a themed week, and I wrote it kind of last minute, so…five days, maybe?

11.        a WIP you’d like to finish someday

I got maybe around ¾ of the way through a really long chaptered post-canon Death Note fic and then didn’t finish it. I know about how it’s supposed to end, so I could theoretically get back to it. I’d just need to reread everything to get back up to speed.

13.        a fandom you’re thinking about writing for

I don’t think I have anything I’m actively planning to write for right now. Banana Fish has been on my list for a while and I don’t think I’ve ever actually published anything for it, so maybe that?

15.        favorite weather for writing

Raaaaaaaain

17.        talk about your writing and editing process

I either edit meticulously as I go, or I word dump basically the whole thing before going back through and editing. There is no in between.

I think I tend to do better if I can avoid editing until after the fact. In that case, I usually get the whole thing out, then give it a day or two before going back in and rereading it over. First pass is usually to fix little things (word choice, spelling errors, etc), second pass is actual content.

19.        the most interesting topic you’ve researched for a fic

That is a great question, and I’m going to cheat. Not for a fic, but for a heavy, long-form, basically chaptered RP thread that should be turned into a fic someday, I did a super intensive deep dive into Manhattan’s Chinatown (plus several others in the US), which included ordering a copy of this guy’s dissertation-later-published from the 1980s on juvenile delinquency and identity in Chinatown.

21.        when did you publish your most recent fic?

December 10, 2023, the last of three fics that week for a themed week.

23.        pick three keywords that describe your writing

(Done earlier.)

25.        besides writing, what are your other hobbies?

Knitting and, more recently, crocheting. Guitar. Video games.

27.        your favorite part of the writing process

Those moments when stuff starts to flow and it’s super easy to write a bunch of good stuff to come back and edit later. Like a runner’s high, but writing.

29.        how easy is it for you to come up with titles?

Ehhhhh…depends? I think I usually end up just poking through the finished fic to pick something that looks vaguely title-ish, and that usually works.

[signiorbenedickofpadua]

20 questions for fic writers!

I was tagged by both @honeyteacakes and @acedragontype. Thank you my dears!

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

7 right now. I think I had three or four up on my first account, but that one was randomly deleted by the site in like 2019? Or something? I never could get it back, and I never republished the fics, because I kind of lost motivation for writing for a while because of that, and now that I'm back in the game, it's been so long since I wrote that stuff that I either don't really like what I wrote then, or figure that I'd rather rewrite the one fic that I do still like. Oh, god. I just remembered that there was ONE fic that I actually orphaned back then, which means that it's still up. Oooh Christ... I'm not going to name drop it, because I orphaned it for a reason - the reason being that it's the crackiest crac!fic imaginable, born out of sleep deprivation and giggly group chats... I'm looking at it now, and it's apparently 10 years old. Oh. Oh no. I reread it. Oh, god. This was the first "attempt" at smut I ever wrote, and it was between a woman and a sentient inanimate edible object. 8d10 psychic damage, do not recommend.

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

At the moment: 296.290 words When I'm finished updating This Dream Is Over (Another Has Begun) it will be around 350.000 words, and I just hit 105k on the Regency fic I'm working on, so by the end of the year we might be close to 500k... written in one year...

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Just Sandman, currently. On my last account I wrote for Merlin, ACD Sherlock Holmes (a school project, believe it or not), and a LotR/HP crossover (yeah, I don't really feel like re-publishing and finishing that in 2023, for obvious reasons). I might go back to writing for Merlin again, some day. I sort of want to rewrite that one fic I did post, because I quite liked the premise...but I feel like I would need to rewatch the entire series before I did that, and who's got the time?

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

1. My Stranger, My Dream - 1507 2. Totus Mundus Agit Histrionem - 818 3. Yours for the Taking - 579 4. Body and Soul, Always and Forever - 565 5. Stay, Just this Once - or - GroundHob Day - 499

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I try to reply to almost every comment, because I want the commenter to know how much I appreciate that they took the time to comment. I crave that validation, perhaps a little too much, but that's robably common with authors... When I'm updating a fic one chapter at a time, I usually manage to reply to all of them, even if it's just with a couple of heart emojis (if I couldn't think of anything else), but once the whole fic is up and I get one reader who is leaving a bunch of comments in rapid succession, I sometimes skip the one's that are just emojis or exclamation marks and focus on the ones I have real replies to - not because I don't appreciate the emojis just as much, but because I worry that I'd be spamming the reader with like five identical heart-emoji replies :P

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

Hm, I tend to end things rather happily, but I suppose Stay, Just this Once could be read a bit angsty, since it ends with Hob in 1889 going "Dream kissed me and then left with an implication of potential future kisses? Oh boy, I can't wait until 1989!" when, you know, Dream won't show in 1989.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Probably This Dream Is Over. I mean, they're all pretty happy, but that one is just so hopeful and soft... You'll see what I mean when I post the last chapter ;)

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Not really. There was one reader who left a couple of comments with very much unasked-for advice (and fairly bad advice, at that) which made me feel a bit meh, but that's hardly hate. Then there was this one comment that went a bit like "Well, that was stupid," and to this day I have no idea if they meant the writing or the characters (who were, to be fair, being very stupid in that chapter). Tone can be very hard to read in text, so I'm trying to give them the benefit of doubt. But no, no real hate, thankfully.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Yup. When I started writing again about a year ago, I decided to give it a try, not really thinking I could make it work, considering the last time I wrote romance I had trouble even describing a kiss (which was almost a decade earlier), but it actually worked (I hope)! Then I just couldn't seem to write something without smut. I tried to deliberately leave things off before the explicit parts in one or two stories (making them "just" mature) for people who aren't into the stuff, and I also try to make all the explicit content skippable for those who want to read the rest of the story. What kind of smut? Idk, I've written M/M and M/F so far, I'll probably write F/F at some point too. I think most of it has been fairly vanilla so far, with some light themes of BDSM maybe, if you squint.

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?

Only that LotR/HP one I mentioned earlier, which I abandonded when my account was deleted. I did start planning a Star Trek AU for Merlin, but I think I only wrote a chapter or so before my motivation died and I never published anything. I think I'm generally more interested in AUs taking place in other franchises than "real" crossover with actual characters from both universes.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not to my knowledge. Let's keep it that way!

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Not yet! I suppose I could do it myself, but as the only language I speak well enough to translate into is Swedish, and Swedes tend to read stuff in English anyway, I don't know that there would be much of a point.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

No, but I'd be open to trying! Could be either super fun or incredibly frustrating, but you never know until you try!

14. What’s your all time favorite ship?

I mean, I think it's a draw between Merthur and Dreamling. If I went back and started reading and writing fic for Merthur again, I'm sure I'd fall right back into it, even if Dreamling is my current obession.

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

Only the couple of WiPs I have from my first AO3 account, I think. I'm trying really hard this time around not to jump between projects too much, but finish what I have before I start something new. If I give myself free reins, my ADD is going to make sure nothing ever gets finished.

16. What are your writing strengths?

Dialogue, for sure, and characterisation - or at least I fervently hope that my readers would agree on that point.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Descriptions, definitely. What does anyone look like? I don't know, I couldn't decide, make it up yourself. I had to go back and make myself add a sentence about Hob's friend Dana being blonde in the last two chapters of This Dream Is Over, since she's an OC and my readers would have no idea at all what she looked like otherwise. It's a struggle, and I do try to practise, but it doesn't come as easy as dialogue and character.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

Fun! I've written a few scenes with some Middle English in them, and I have this vague idea of part of a scene where Hob and Dream are walking in London or something and Hob overhears a couple of Swedish tourists discuss how to get somewhere or something, and him turning to them and giving them directions in hilariously outdated Swedish, and Dream going, "When did you last visit Scandinavia?" And Hob says, "Um, 1745, I think. Why?" and Dream is like, "...Nothing." I just don't know how funny that would be to readers who don't speak Swedish... Might still use it some day.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Technically? The Redwall series. I was like 10 and we had to write a story in school, and I was obsessed with Redwall and wanted to write something with talking animals, and I couldn't come up with a better name for the place, so in the end I straight up copied the world and wrote more or less a self-insert who ended up there, entirely oblivious to the concept of fanfiction, but I suppose it counts anyway. I won a prize for it. I have no idea if the adults who judged it knew it was fanfic or not...

20. Favorite fic you’ve written?

I think it's the Dreamling Regency AU I'm currently working on. If I manage to pull it off as well as I'm hoping to, I think it will be the best thing I've written so far. I'm even considering looking for beta readers for the first time, because I think it has potential and I want it to be the best it can be.

21. CHEEKY EXTRA QUESTION BECAUSE I FELT LIKE GIVING ADVICE - What's the best advice you have for other writers?

If you write longfic, NAME YOUR CHAPTERS! My first couple of fics just had numbered chapters, and whenever I had to go back to double check some detail, or rewrite some sentence I had to retcon, I had to be like "uuuh I think it might be chapter five??" and then waste a bunch of time checking. Now, I have chapter titles which are descriptive enough to remind me of exactly what the chapter is about, and it has made my life so much easier... Also, connected to this, actually using the chapter headers etc. in your word processor so that you get a list of chapters you can pull up to navigate.

Tagging:

@pellaaearien, @arialerendeair, @hardly-an-escape, @ml-nolan

[xxbimbobunnyxx]

20 Questions For Fic Writers:

Thank you for the tags @lokis-army-77 & @onegirlmanytales

1) How many works do you have on AO3? - Honestly only like 3, I don’t usually post my fics on there bc I always forget. I need to sit down and do that. I have 11 on tumblr though.

2) What’s your total AO3 word count?- Like 30k

3) What fandoms do you write for? - Just Stranger Things atm. I have been considering a few other things lately tho.👀

4) What are your top five fics by kudos? - Again I don’t really post my fics on AO3 as much so I only have 5 on there lol but my top fics on tumblr are Beer and Bunny’s, Cat and Mouse, Best Mates, All You Have To Do Is Ask, and See You Again.

5) Do you respond to comments? Why or why not? - ALWAYS!! Sometimes when I’m feeling down about my writing I go back and reread them and it keeps me going/hypes me up.

6) What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? - I do not have a single fic that ends even remotely angsty. I cannot do angsty endings, reading them or writing them. I need my happy ending.

7) What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? - hmmm most of them honestly, but I really like the ending of Beer and Bunny’s. They’re so cute.

8) Do you get hate on fics? - I’ve never gotten hate before. I hope I give off a chill, in my own lane, kinda vibe.

9) Do you write smut? If so, what kinds? - Yesss lol honestly just nasty, pervy, unhinged smut. I don’t think I’ve ever really written any kind of soft smut. Not intentionally I’m just a whore. :)

10) Do you write crossovers? - I never have, no. I do have an AU based off my fav movie coming out soonish but it’ll be all ST characters still.

11) Have you ever had a fic stolen? - Nah lol idk who would take the time to steal MY fics

12) Have you ever had a fic translated? - not that I know of lol

13) Have you ever co-written a fic before? - Yes!! I have a whole AU universe with one of my friends and I’m working on two other collabs w other people. 👀🤭

14) What’s your all time favorite ship? - Listen, I’m fucking basic okay? I will always love Katniss and Peeta. Also Raven and Alexander from Vampire Kisses but no one ever knows that series.😩

15) What’s a WIP that you want to finish, but doubt you ever will? - Sugar and Spice. It was a series I started before I told myself I’m not allowed to write multi chapter fics bc I put too much pressure on myself about it lol

16) What are your writing strengths? - I’ve been told more than once that my dialogue is good. Which feels nice. Also nasty smut.

17) What are your writing weaknesses? - Transitions tbh, I’ll get to a certain point and get stuck esp transitioning into the smut which is usually what I was trying to get to in the first place.

18) Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic? - I legit only speak English so I would not even try

19) First fandom you wrote for? - AVATAR THE LAST AIR BENDER lol zuko was my MANS

20) Favorite fic you’ve written? - See You Again, this one I’m just very proud of, and I love my OC girlfriend I made for myself and I just spent a lot of time on this one. I want to finish the prequel EVENTUALLY.

No pressure tags: @reidsbtch @babygorewhore @battymunson @take-everything-you-can @slutty-thevampireslayer @jamdoughnutmagician @lithium80sblog @bimbobaggins69 & anyone else who wants to🖤

[hamartia-grander]

Hell yeah i got some recs!! Most of mine are going to be more Hank and Connor or Reed900 centric, so keep that in mind.

From it's Own Wreck by Jivvin is my current favorite! It's a ghost au based on the film Just Like Heaven (2005) and it's full of gorgeous writing and has lots of great moments in it. I can't recommend it enough. It is incomplete, but the author regularly updates and it's a few chapters away from being finished.

Deviating and Solving Crime with 100% Human Detective Connor by CaptainKenway. Exactly what it says. You're solving crime with a 100% human detective, nothing else. Nothing suspicious about him. 0_0 It has some good angst and funny moments, and i really enjoyed reading it.

Detroit 07 by Rhinozilla is INCREDIBLE! It's a 38 part series (i know, im stilling working through it) and it's got so much angst, found family, comfort, crack shenanigans, and just as much plot as there is silly oneshots. It's got some OCs in it that are amazing and fit so well into the story, and it does deviate a little bit from the norm (different name for Nines for example, and no reed900) but it's still really good. Since there are so many parts to it and two of the parts are over 400k each, here are some of the smaller oneshots that can be read easily by themselves:

Color Wheel: Connor sustains minor damage to the hardware controlling his appearance. Everybody in the bullpen is united with one singular mission: do not let Connor know that his hair keeps changing colors.

The Breathing Graveyard: The DPD sends Connor to talk down a volatile deviant that's holed up in a trailer near the android scrapyard. It doesn't go the way any of them expect.

Bubbles: Connor gets stuck watching a lost little girl while they wait for her parents to come pick her up at the station.

And then i'd recommend Chapter 51 of Camaraderie if you're up for a wholesome father-son moment.

Through Your Veins by AceEmerson: Nines gets hurt and Gavin takes him back to his apartment to patch them up. There is also an android cat, first kiss, and TENSION

Secret by sv962: Role-reversal Reed900, first kiss. Tis very good. Semi-short at less than 5k and you want a good little role reversal, i recommend it.

The unexpected benefits of having a therapist terminator by texs_sins: Undeviated Nines decides to become Gavin's therapist to help improve their work partnership. 'Surely exposing himself to human emotions won't make a difference, after all nothing has ever made him deviate, right?' it's a fantastic fic and i love their take on Machine Nines and Deviated Nines. (fair warning because it's not listed in the tags, there's a little bit of smut in the last chapter, but easily skippable if you aren't up for it)

Beautifully Unique and Strange by cliffhanging: autistic Connor oneshot because we need more autistic Connor fics

Only Skin Deep by the AsexualofSpades: pre-relationship Reed900, where Nines tries to hide as much of his androidness in response to his anti-android partner five times and the one time he doesn't. It has a nice follow up fic too and i recommend it!

i think that's a fair amount to stop at, oh my god. And thanks again for your recs!! I'm gonna get reading to them tonight!! <3<3<3

Ahhh hell yes! Thank you so much!!

I have read the texs_sins fic (and most of theirs) but I'd definitely reread them bc I love them a lot so thank you for reminding me!

I am ALWAYS DOWN for more father son content with Hank and Connor, thank you SO much. It's so hard for me to find any these days.

Detroit 07... Almost sounds like a kind of Brooklyn 99 AU? In which case idk if I should read it just yet because I am also writing a dbh brooklyn 99 AU and I don't want to accidentally steal ideas or be influenced by someone else, but maybe after I post my own work I'll check it out! (two cakes!)

These all sound super fun thank you for the recommendations!! <333

[mango-jpeg]

st elmo's fire and drop the knife notes

(i wasn't sure at first if i would make these posts again this year (like.. get a new bit bro) but ultimately i do think they're helpful for me so i'll stick w it for now)

i don’t remember much about persona 3 from playing it 15 years ago. basically all i remember is 1) being obsessed with akihiko 2) sobbing like a baby when i finished it @ 2 am 3) the crackly, fuzzy quality of my old tube tv

anyway i also don't remember writing much of st elmo's fire bc i was so inside it the whole time. i did think more about structure for both fics, i think that's something i'm going to focus on more this year

sidenote: i read chuck palahniuk's consider this in jan which was a great read on its own and also gave me lots to think about re: writing, and influenced me/my thinking for both of these fics

additional sidenote: coming to terms w the fact that the style of writing i enjoy most + would like to imitate works best in first person but i do not want to write or read first person fanfiction

for the first time i wrote drafts/outlines of almost every scene in my notes app then wrote them out fully in docs, which it turns out is a good way to do things

past tense? again?? who am i.

st elmo’s fire wrote from feb 6-7? to feb 25

this is maybe the most for me and only me thing i’ve written. i’ve wanted to write an awkward morning after pill scene for so long

looked up their personas bc i was curious about their mythology and obviously seized on the st elmo’s fire thing

(i thought it'd be cool to include a bit of magic in a fic that otherwise ignores all the canon magic)

this fic was my way of reaching back thru time to my horrible teenage self + saying you’re gonna be ok kid

reading:

I Have Some Questions for You, Rebecca Makkai

Me Talk Pretty One Day, David Sedaris

Heartburn, Nora Ephron

listening: st elmo’s fire (approx 40 times a day), hold it in

fav early bit i wrote: the whole paragraph about shinji’s boobs a fav late addition:

Inside the air was dry and charged; Akihiko was sure if he touched Shinji he’d spark. He felt the kind of calm certainty he usually felt only before matches, when he knew the result would be in his favour.

drop the knife wrote from feb 21 to mar 10

i have sequel disease. once i've written the long 'figuring out the characters' fic i neeeed to write another one. i think it's getting worse actually, i think i might have trilogy disease (write one long standalone and immediately want to write 2 related works)

the kind of cooking i do is soup. if i had things my way this is the only food we'd eat. this made writing the recipes a huge pain in the ass bc i do not think shinji is a 'throw everything into a pot and let it figure itself out' kind of cook

took the key lime pie recipe straight out of the last chapter of heartburn. idk if this is really the ‘right’ dessert but it’s the kind of food i’d actually make and i wanted to include one heartburn recipe

i thought writing aki instead of akihiko for the whole fic would be annoying and then switching between the two became a way of reflecting shinji's attempt at putting distance between them ie. thinks 'aki' in the abstract, and when his guard is low. idk how much that comes thru in reading but i made the attempt

reading:

Heartburn, Nora Ephron (i reread chapters for 3 weeks. i loved everything about this book. i’m codependent on it now.)

Wallflower at the Orgy, Nora Ephron

Tokyo Ueno Station, Yu Miri

Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut

listening: sore, knife, i got heaven

fav early bit:

Aki looked at him. He was within arm’s reach and his face was soft in a way it rarely was, his eyes large in the dark. Shinjiro wanted him in ways he’d given up on long ago, wanted him bloody and beneath him, wanted him laughing and leaning in to close the distance.

late addition:

Aki was like one of those dogs bred to rip prey out of their burrows or drag sleds across the tundra; being forced to stay inside was torturous, he needed something he could sink his teeth into.

took me ages to come up with a title, i didn’t even have a working one. found the poem oxygen when i went searching and i liked the phrase drop the knife bc knives are used in cooking (lol) + implies being disarmed + the poem has the sort of half of my soul vibe these guys have goin on

[booksandchainmail]

Pale 9.4

Okay, so it's been a minute. I actually got about halfway through this chapter, took a quick break since I was tired and the next bit seemed like it needed my full attention, and then instead of finishing it I watched all of Yellowjackets. Anyways. Went back and reread both the chapter and my comments, so hopefully this is cohesive

If it was good to have a spare knife as a just-in-case, then by very similar logic, she could and should bring both knives, in addition to the weapon ring. How aggressive did she want to be, this patrol? Or in general?

something we've come back to a couple of times with Lucy is her making a decision not to become a fighter, but getting drawn into anyways. After first meeting John she was shaken and wanted to stay away from violence, but then got the weapon ring and training from Guilherme. And at the school she distanced herself from "Faerie swordfighter" and picked a different style for her implement, but has still wound up here.

She’d last used a dog tag to call John to the Blue Heron conflict.  She’d brought it and she’d used it and she’d known, all of those things in their own desperate, decisive, calculating, and cornered ways.  She’d known what she was doing.

ah. Bringing the knife along feels like it means being prepared to take lethal measures in the same way summoning John does. And now she's seen the end result of that decision.

With her other hand, almost unconsciously, she opened her drawer at the front of the desk.  She let the knife go over the edge and into the desk drawer.  She adjusted it so it lay flat, then closed the drawer.

I'm glad she made this choice, but I don't think it's the last time we'll see it. The issue with choosing to put down a weapon as a practitioner is that there's never going to stop being situations that ask if you want to pick it back up

Verona was great at ideas and great at the point where she could sit down and execute something really well, or create stuff like Avery’s deer mask or the earring, but there was a gap between those two things.  A middle ground where execution and brainstorming got really blurry.

I can see this, Verona struggling with actually making a plan, as opposed to coming up with concepts or carrying out the final plan. Which is why being a team works well: under normal circumstances, Lucy and Avery can workshop Verona's wild ideas into something possible

And it was wearing on her and it was frustrating her and the way it sat with her was making her into someone she didn’t want to be. Someone who was harsh and defensive and fangs-out, as she’d once said to Booker.  Or someone toothless when it counted, who let the Alexanders or Bristows win. There didn’t feel like there was much middle ground.

maybe let the others take this on? Lucy has been shouldering a lot of the emotional burden of making these calls, and particularly in being the person who is the most cautious and ready for conflict. The issue there though is in trusting Avery or Verona to be careful enough, which I think Lucy also struggles with

Burrs and nettles stood out at her left forelimb, along with colorful petals, she noted.  Nothing to be done about that for now.  Better to ignore it.

on the one hand, I hate the idea that this might be permanent. On the other hand, could be a neat aesthetic. I miss Blake and Sveta's tattoos.

When she was shadow or rain or smoke she wasn’t one body, but a collective body.  This was the same. Five foxes that moved in darkness. Through the fence, past the school, across the road, into woodland. Moving faster than a fox ran, splitting apart to take better paths, uniting again.

oh fuck yeah.

I mean, I'm deeply worried about what would happen if one of these foxes got hurt or captured, but this is so incredibly cool

Her trust had been broken and as much as she didn’t want to be the type to dwell on this stuff, Avery had gotten up to something with Pam, and it had been Lucy who’d had to deliver the reality check, and she still resented that. Even if they had been better since.

hmmm. I've talked about the extra work Lucy is doing keeping an eye out for this stuff, and I'm now wondering how much of that is self-inflicted? I know I can fall into a trap of micromanaging something someone else is doing, and then resenting feeling like I have to take over or take extra precautions to make sure things work out, instead of letting them handle it. And mostly the lesson there for me is to relax and step back and trust that other people have things covered, even if it's not the exact same way I would do it. Of course, the issue with applying that lesson here is that the stakes are so much higher, and it's hard to ever see extra precautions as over the top.

Lucy inhaled, smelling her friend with an animal’s nose, relaxing a bit, and letting her guard down.  Making herself let her guard down, some. Another fox of shadow approached Avery, and Avery touched her head, smiling down. She ran muzzle and face along Avery’s hip.

awww

Or these nettles… the colors and barbs wouldn’t cling to you so much if you didn’t secretly like them.

like I said, cool aesthetic

A fourth fox watched everything from a tree branch above, keeping one eye on the surroundings, paranoid, looking for trouble. And the fifth stared at John, a distance between them. He’d put the gun down but she didn’t take her eyes off it.

interesting division of self here: one for each of her friends, one for a fascinating but dangerous ally, one to keep watch, and one looking at the source of her trauma

“I know, and I think Avery does too.  And I’ve got to find my role, I don’t know.  One I can live with.  A way to do stuff that makes a difference that isn’t…”  She looked at John’s back, as he led the way.  “…carrying a weapon-ringed gun and dreading I might actually have to shoot someone that can die.”

I've talked before about having Lucy as the point person, just not in a combat sense. The negotiator, the voice of the group, the planner and leader...

“Want me to carry it instead?” Verona asked.

oh I love that instantaneous offer

“I gotta break it to you, Ronnie, you’d hate it as much or more than I do.  You’re just unaware of what you’re feeling until it kicks you in the head or stomach.”

but this is a fair point. I think we've seen that with Bristow, that once it settled in Verona had a rough time dealing with it. Not processing it in the moment is useful in and of itself, but it's not like Lucy has been freezing up in combat either, so that's not really an advantage for Verona. We haven't seen how Avery would handle killing, but I can't imagine it would be any better for her.

“Part of it is that the end of summer’s a deadline, and who doesn’t think better as a deadline draws nearer?”

big mood

“It’s meant to be casual, just solidifying what we’ve already got,” Avery said, “but I don’t want to be too boring.  I was thinking it’d be neat to perform the ritual on a Path.  You’re invited, of course.”

very sweet that Avery seems to be treating this as a platonic form of marriage

“Heyy!” Verona greeted one of the approaching goblins.  “Little guy!” Lucy had seen the goblin in the meeting. He perked up on seeing her. “What’s that bit of paper?”

does he still have the dick drawing? aww

Lucy reached over, then took the watch.  It was fogged up, to the point the hands didn’t show.  She turned it over, then clipped it around her backpack strap.

And here she's deliberately not picking the knife

Kennet Others had stopped here and carried the Carmine Furs from the Ruins to their vehicle.  They’d taken that vehicle down to the west end of town, nearly hit Clementine, and then fled rather than engage.  Clementine had had the chance to pick it up, declined, and three teenagers had grabbed it instead.  They hadn’t made it far.

Ok, so the red streaks are from moving the Furs back in arc 5? Or are they more recent? Lucy notes they still look wet... Maybe the Others who moved it put it back, or moved it again by the same route?

This didn’t feel like something that extended from that.  This felt like a side effect… because the staining was thick, and it looked like something had painted a heavy streak near the tunnel, slipping off or out of a vehicle sometime tonight, had come to the tunnel, and then headed South, into Kennet.

ah, so the new streaks are unrelated. Though at a guess they've ended up at the same place due to the violence aura from the Furs

“It likes the points where the Carmine staining is thickest,” Lucy said.  “It came from the road to this tunnel, where they moved the furs, and it makes sense it would go to the Arena.”

yeah! I wonder if whatever this is will turn up new areas with heavy staining? Depending on what it is, it's probably wildly unethical to let it roam around first, but that could be useful to find where the Furs were/are hid

“Because there’s this whole thing with local police that happened a few years ago. Kennet had its own police force, and they dropped that for the provincial police instead. I remember my brother talking really seriously about it. That it made them faceless, it meant they didn’t know us, know our town."

not great! I mean, doesn't feel good seeing cops around in general, but state police rather than local feels worse imo.

“You wanted to know if there were any people new to Kennet who didn’t fit in.  With the rising crime rate that we’ve got with the Carmine thing…” “More officers from out of town?” John asked.

we've seen practitioners worming their way into police before, not sure if I remember any Others doing so? And it's a useful cover to come in to Kennet

To Matthew and Edith’s house. Before she’d even landed, her earring gave her an earful.

oooh! something to look forward to reading tomorrow. Hopefully I will be able to build up some momentum this week.

[viharistenno]

Thanks for tagging me @lilolilyr this certainly is a surprise, but well. I am a fic writer, my contribution to fandoms are just... Let's say a bit less than yours :D

1. How many works do you have on ao3? 4 as of now, I do have wips I don't put up, my one wip looks so sad there anyway. You may check them out here if you want.

2. What’s your total ao3 word count? 9541

3. What fandoms do you write for? In order of birth, Bering and Wells (Warehouse 13), Bechloe (Pitch Perfect), Avatrice (Warrior Nun)

4. What are your top five fics by kudos? Ava got 36 kudos! I was quite proud of that :) The others have 25, 18 and 9.

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not? Sure, I love talking in the comment section :)

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? The first one on Ao3, The insecurities of a Warehouse agent - I mean, this is B&W what would you expect? :D

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? Okay, so just to counter myself, the other B&W fic if I ever finished it.

8. Do you get hate on fic? No, although they don't have much hits.

9. Do you write smut? Not in these but the wips are promising, and my old fics that I wrote in my mothertongue have smut so...

10. Do you write crossovers? Not yet, but there are always possibilities for crossovers or AUs :)

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen? Not that I know of.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated? Not by someone else, but I did translate two to English. One is very old, the other is in the wip pack and I had a problem deciding which language I should write it in. Maybe it's part of the problem I never finished it.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before? No, but I might

14. What’s your all-time favourite ship? Why would you ask this? :O Okay, so this is about writing. There is no ship that's all-time, moods for dynamics, characters and well, background. I need the connection and the feeling to write. That is why it's hard for me to finish something longer because once I loose the connection, that's it. Hard to get it back.

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but probably won’t? Never say never ;)

16. What are your writing strengths? I am very good at capturing emotions or an emotional state in quite few words. (I guess that is why I usually write poems.) Short scenes. My longer wips are basically that but with more scenes :D I think I should treat them like this, maybe that would help.

17. What are your writing weaknesses? Longer ones. I just loose the momentum at one point and then it's UGH.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic? 2 parts: 1. English is not my own language, so it's basically another language in itself. I got better at that in the last few years. It's not easy, but you just have to practice. 2. I speak multiple languages enough to understand a lot of times what is going on but I prefer when I don't have to google all the stuff. I'd just put it in the notes at the end of the chapter.

19. First fandom you wrote for? Sailor Moon ;) Jupiter/Mercury, I think it's called Makoamy these days. It was like 15 years ago and that is the one I translated back then.

20. Favourite fic you’ve written? I should reread all of them, but I think overall it's Enough.

Thanks for tagging me, I hope you enjoy this, it was interesting to think about these questions :)

[likes-words-and-shrimp]

Small update on writing projects and other things so I can gather my thoughts and also hopefully feel more organized. Mostly about Symphonia, with small mentions of Adventure Time, Deltarune, Elden Ring and Dragonlance (tell me if you know this book series plz)

Still working on my Lloyd and Mithos fic which I shared a wip of here. It's slow going because it's going to involve some decent amount of dialogue and my brain is too ADHD right now for it. Thank you for those who shared interest in it! I want to finish this god help me.

Want to update my Wolf Bite fic (which is werewolf!Lloyd and Colette as Red Riding Hood) for this Halloween. I've started a chapter to continue the verse and also werewolf Lloyd is too cute. Plz look at this art by @frayed-symphony for my previous chapters that I still go crazy over.

I also want to write something for one of those October prompt events. There's a lot of them! Let me! Choose! One! I just want to make one, preferable spicy.

Speaking of October prompts, I still have this Colette time loop fic made for whumptober last year that I never finished, which was using all 31 prompts. I got over halfway! Then things happened. They always happen. 😔 I want to get to the happy ending already.

Finished Adventure Time with Sky, and now I am obsessed with a mentally-ill lemon guy. Can I write him?? Is there a point to write him?? But I also finished Fionna and Cake and now I have a small idea with the genderswap versions of him and Lumpy Space Princess (new ship). Might try it soon. And yes I will be reblogging a lot of art for this show, let me ride it out.

I am still thinking about that Deltarune Spamton fic I started like two years ago. I did have a plot but again, life happened. I'd need to reread it too. You'd think I had a problem with finishing multichapters!! Haha. 🥲 But I was able to finish my last multichapter fic so I can do it! Just gotta be lucky. I also had another short story idea with him and Jevil, and the main three. Maybe I can get to it when Deltarune finally gets chapter 3 in about five years from now lol.

The Elden Ring zine I was in finally arrived for me! It's cool seeing my fic in print 😭 I'll share later on but it's been fun being on these zine projects lately. My fic was about the Omen brothers because I have a thing for twins apparently.

Not fic but there is a new Dragonlance book by the Weis and Hickman duo?? After nearly a decade?? I saw the ebook for it on sale and immediately picked it up. This series was my gateway into writing so it does feel nostalgic to go back to this world. Only one chapter read so far (with whole new characters this time) but W&H have a knack for being really engaging in their writing. Even for their past stories when I didn't care for a plot, I still tend to finish their books.

Oh yeah, I'm also on bluesky. I use it sometimes maybe.

[spacejammie-eimmajecaps]

For the fanfic writing meme...YOU pick 10 numbers YOU want to answer! I want to see which ones of those most excite your or you have the most to say.

My attention span is horrible right now tbh, I couldn't even read through the whole list. So these are the 10 that stood out to me when I was skimming it over:

Do you prefer writing one-shots or multi-chaptered fics?

One-shots because they are quick and easy (for the most part). Multi-chaps take so much more effort. Although, multi-chaps are more satisfying to finish. Pros and cons with each. I do miss one-shots, though. Been a very long time since I've written one.

Do you plan each chapter ahead or write as you go?

I used to only write as I went, which was honestly so fun. I'd surprise myself with unintended plot twists and stuff like that. But now I plan ahead, and that's very necessary for a story like SGB, which is very long, detailed, and packed with subplots. I will say, though, that while there is a plan, I let the chapter change as needed if the plan isn't working or I think of something better while drafting, and sometimes I add scenes last minute (or cut entire scenes if it just doesn't feel like it's working). Having a plan is good, knowing when to be flexible is also good.

Do you like constructive criticism?

Depends on what that looks like.

If someone wants to point out a typo, I'll be appreciative (and I do actually have a fandom friend who used to message me when she found typos in my posted works, which I am grateful for). And if there is an obvious mistake, I don't mind it being pointed out (for example, I was messing up the serve order in games and someone very kindly pointed that out, so I fixed it, and I'm very happy that they pointed it out so that I didn't keep making that mistake).

But if someone said things like, "I don't like how you wrote that" or "that character would never do that" or "you should write that differently" or anything relating to like, personal preference, I'd be annoyed and not grateful at all.

On average, how much writing do you get done in a day?

I used to be able to bang out 10-12k words in a day, back when my health wasn't so bad. Granted, the quality of those 10-12k words wasn't great at all, and part of why I write slower now is because I'm thinking about a lot more technical aspects that I used to be unaware of. Anyway, these days I can maybe get 3k written on a very good day, but 500-1000 in a day is more realistic for me now.

What do you do when writing becomes difficult? (maybe a lack of inspiration or writers block)

Take a break, read books and watch shows, rest, re-read what I've already written, etc.

What’s your revision or editing process like?

1. Rough draft

2. Fill in details and missing elements

3. Focus setting/sensory details and add last minute details

4. Check that dialogue/body language matches each character (usually end up adding a few more little details as well)

5. Make sure the chapter as a whole makes sense, cut anything unnecessary, check for consistency

6. Proofreading (check line by line for typos and grammar issues)

Do you tend to reread fics or are you a one-and-done kind of person?

There are some fics I like to re-read maybe once a year or so, and sometimes I read a fic twice in a row if I really liked it. I'd probably re-read things much more frequently if I wasn't so busy writing.

Five years from now, where do you see yourself as a writer?

Hopefully not still writing SGB😭😭😭

Why do you continue writing fics?

Because I'm bored and have nothing better to do, and more importantly, because I enjoy it.

What order do you write in? front of book to back? chronological? favorite scenes first? something else?

Chronological. I have to use my favorite scenes as a reward for getting that far in the story, so I don't allow myself to skip ahead.

[sunmoonjune]

OKAY I WENT TO SLEEP WITH A SMILE N WOKE UP WITH A GIGGLE N WNET ABOUT WORK WITH A SKIP AND DROVE HOME W A LIL CHANT ☺️ bug 🥰 bug 🕺 bug 🙌 bug 💃 bug 🤗 KNOWING LTM HAD BEEN UPDATED HEHE

finally managed to wait until i had finished work to snuggle into bed and read and asdfgh ONE WORD INTO THE CHAPTER AND IM ALR SCREAMING OFC BUGS GONNA REQUEST FOR SAN I-

hj using bug's language to thank wy for bringing them both back home safe bestboi!hongjoong 🫶 and the fact that bug made a sign for 'home' but never drew it again after creating it bc she never had a place to call home but now she's signing it again and again for hj to know what a damn good leader he is hNNG

also sry i know it's a rly cute and touching scene when bug appoints yeosang to five taps but im also cackling imagining her fingers tapping rapid fire like eight times if she keeps naming the rest of ateez the same way HAHAHA bug's hand be like: 🫳👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇 not me quadruple checking i had the correct number of finger emojis

peep the results of moonie's ✨research✨ to describe how san smells im kicking my feet uGH sanbug are FINALLY reunited in the softest way possible 'my san' and 'my bug' PLSSSSS

also HONEY ?? LOVE ?? BABY ?? DARLIGN? ? sWEEt GIRL ? moonie really slapping us left right up down front n back with the pet names. but nothing beats yunho calling bug anything related to little or tiny - im so biased for yunho and size differences 🥹

BUG REMOVING HER MASK AND THE TOWEL THE AMOUNT OF TRUST AND VULNERABILITY SHE IS SHOWING TO YUNHO IM SO PROUD OF HER Omg MG and then THE LAST SENTENCE ???????? THAT AINT FEEDING US BREADCRUMBS TO HER PAST THATS MORE LIKE A WHOLE ASS LOAF OMG i cant wait for you to slowly reveal more and more of bug's history

this whole chapter makes me want to punch a wall and sprint a marathon just so i can feel human again bc im a bumbling soft mess of goo and feels rn nobody touch me 🫠🫣🤧

everybody say 📢thank u moonie📢 for blessing us with such a long chapter and for all your hard work!! okay now excuse me whilst i go and reread ch 1-15 again 🫡

FOWFWIMFOENURG I'M CRYING I love messages like this!!! send me your reviews send me every thought you have about the chapter!!! I love love love it!! <333

hehehehe I too chant bug! bug <33 bug<3 (tbh this is san LMAO)

hongjoong used bug's language talking to wooyoung so instinctually I don't even know if he realized :')) it's just so natural to him now <3 bestboi! hongjoong indeed!! also might I add,,, the fact that yunho taught hongjoong the sign for 'home' even though bug had never used it,,, almost as if he knew that one day she might... :'))

also LMAO yeah I see it xD you really have to pay attention like,,, wait do it again I think I miss counted, how many times was that?? I think after yeosang the names will have different touches since after five it's going to get complicated xD I might throw in some other shapes at some point haha

SANBUG REUNION!!! 'my san' -- 'my bug' I was crying screaming throwing up writing that I swear <33 made myself so emotional I could cry

(also totally irrelevant,,, but I made my mom cry when I was explaining the meaning behind all of the boy's symbols earlier :') I was so excited that I just started talking about them to see if they made sense and seonghwa's made her cry :"D she thought it was so freaking sweet what he said about being reborn as a universe <33 like yeah I'm in love with seonghwa too xD )

the nicknames!! I really said ateez loves bug and what about it?? xD gosh san nearly outright admitted it and bug is like,,, he cares about me??? me?? huh?

bug took off her mask!! for the first time without needing to!! she loves yun so much <33 their trust in each other is insurmountable I swear I'm gonna cry -- the last line tho,, there will be more on that soon too D": it truly was a loaf size breadcrumb of her past, our poor bug <3

I'm so so so happy you enjoyed the chapter!!! thank you so so much my dear <33 I adored your commentary hehe thank you again <33

[azikarue]

2022 Fic Recap

At the beginning of 2022 I told myself I wanted to write more and publish less. This was to allot myself time to work on longer projects I had sitting on the back burner.

Fast forward to the end of the year, and I definitely feel proud of what I've accomplished. If I had my way entirely, I would have made more progress on ongoing fics and WIPs, but you can't have everything. I'm super happy to have participated in MayBlade - it makes up about 99% of my content for 2022. 😅 I look forward to working it (and the baby bout of burnout that follows) into my writing plans for next year.

Before I get into that though, here's a super quick recap of fics I updated or published in 2022.

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Bliss

Summary: Life isn't always easy, but there's a certain bliss in tackling it together that makes everything worthwhile. Pairing: Max/Mariam Chapters: 5/15 Words: 28,911 (so far) Rated: T

Chapter 5 (Undecided) is the one addition to Bliss I managed to make this year. I remember spending January and February agonizing over it, only to still need most of March to finish it. Considering it's about 12k words and not the original idea I had for this chapter, I don't feel so silly. I hope to update more this year. 🤞🏻

As a reminder to anyone following it: Bliss is a little jaunt through Max and Mariam's relationship as adults, including plenty of cute domestic moments to make my heart happy and some big conversations/milestones for them to navigate. (Latest chapter is a doozy of a conversation.)

Since starting it, I have mentally had it separated into three loose sections: 1) Boyfriend and Girlfriend, 2) Engaged/Newlyweds, 3) Expanding the Family/Married with Kids. I plan on still following that for the most part, but the sections may not be equal in length. That's mostly because I doubt, in my limited audience, many people have an interest in their children or life past a certain point? Just feel like everyone's headcanons are probably so different for things like that. We'll see how we go lol. This is a very self-indulgent fic, so I'll weigh any feedback I get against that knowledge.

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Just A Moment

Summary: A collection for MayBlade 2022 (and beyond). Pairing: Multiple Chapters: 31/31 Words: 48,864 Rated: Varies (everything from K to M)

This fic is the one that took up all my mental capacity for the year. I loved working out the prompts for this and challenging myself to write without overthinking as much. I'm sure there are some prompts that I could have executed better if I took all the time in the world on them, but when I reread them I don't hate how any of them turned out.

I did struggle to keep up with the intense write, edit, update cycle on a daily basis. I found that if I had anything planned on a weekend, then I didn't get as much writing done as I would have liked and it set me behind. I don't know if that means I need to give myself a SUPER strict word count restraint (I tried, but some prompts got longer than I intended), or if I just need to start earlier next year. One thing I don't want to do is restrict my character usage. I wrote about a lot of characters I've never utilized before in this fic and I enjoyed testing myself, even if it's one of the things that made the event more time consuming for me.

The last five chapters of this took me forever to finish and upload. I feel like I lost so much steam pushing myself so hard throughout the month of May, that I needed time to recoup. I took more time than I strictly needed, and I want to find some way to combat that if MayBlade happens in 2023. Tbh, I also felt some discouragement after the event was over, knowing the last few chapters weren't going to get as much feedback after everyone else was done with MayBlade. But I always knew I was going to finish for myself, and that's what I did and I'm SO HAPPY!

This is also a fic I love to look at the stats for. Different chapters did better on FFN versus tumblr, and I enjoy comparing notes and reviews and seeing what people had to say. I get imposter syndrome really bad, where I think I suck at writing and should quit, but this fic gives me some proof that it depends on what I write about and who happens to see it. It's nice to be seen and have a little validation sometimes.

On another note: I plan on posting an index of sorts for Just A Moment, since each chapter is so different. If anyone is hunting it down in the future (i.e. me) it will be linked HERE when it's finished, as well as on my tags page. ♥

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And that's 2022! This year went by in the blink of an eye! I know they say time goes faster as you get older, but I thought I had at least a few years left before it would go this fast.

All things considered, I'm proud of what I accomplished this year. It may be a little list of two fics, but there's 32 updates between them, so I won't complain.

For 2023, I want to update Bliss (at least once or twice), participate in MayBlade 2023 (without disappearing off the face of the earth for months afterwards), and work on/complete some WIPs (especially a multichaptered one I've had in the works for a while now).

It sounds like a tall order, but I'll do my best to push myself. If 2023 is anything like the last couple years, I'll make myself proud one way or another. I'm excited to see where next year takes me, and forever grateful to have anybody reading this or following my stories along for the ride. ♥