#The author's currently working on an epilogue for it too which should make for an enjoyable read when it's released~

[fdragon-art]

Day 31 (30 Days | Homestuck - Day 17) - Favourite Sprite (Davesprite Crow Strider, as seen in @meraki-sunset's Crow Strider AU)

"Why don't you just ascend?"

A single statement that would alter the course of this timeline to a previously unimagined haven of possibility.

[bryngmemoney]

✁FASHION FLIRT✃

Megumi Fushiguro x Reader

⭑story masterlist link

tw:none

Writing in between messages!!

🪡Chapter Thirty: Sleepover

“Should we get butter or sea salt?” Megumi asked you, looking at the shelf in front of you. You looked up from your messages, being faced with both options. “One of each?”

“I like salted better.”

“Does everyone else like salted?” you turned to look at him, seeing him shrug before grabbing both boxes and putting them in the cart. Folding his arms he placed them on top of the cart’s handle, beginning to push it forward.

You followed beside him, “I’m excited to see your acting skills by the way.” You nudged his shoulder with yours, causing him to huff out a breath.

“Don’t expect too much,” he mumbled. “C’mon Megs have some confidence!” Your enthusiasm made him a smile.

“Do we have everything?” he asked, deciding to change the topic. You looked at your phone in hand, going back through Yuji’s messages, you had gotten the popcorn, the fruit, sodas, chips, but you were missing the spray. “Yeah, but Yuji wanted febreeze too.”

“Why?”

“Don’t tell him I snitched, but he burnt the popcorn, which is why he also asked us to stop and get more.”

“Of course he did.”

Megumi hid his face in between your shoulder and neck for about the fifth time in last twenty minutes, mumbling something about not wanting to see himself. You just laughed at his reactions, running your hand through his hair. You leaned both of you against the armrest of the couch, readjusting your plate of snacks in your lap. “Megu you can’t just hide away for the whole movie,” you whispered, trying not to disturb the other three who were currently very invested in their work.

He didn’t give you a verbal response, instead just moving his head to be able to see the screen again.

“I think you’re really great in this,” you told him, having your hand rest on his neck.

“Aw, are you feeling shy Megumi?” Yuji interrupted from the other side of the couch. You looked towards him, only to see Megumi kick him, earning an ‘oomph’ out of his friend.

“Megumi don’t be mean.”

“It’s late you know,” Megumi spoke up. He put a bowl on the dish rack, drying his hands with a towel, then turning to face you. You sat at the kitchen counter, folding the game board up and placing it back in the box. After putting everything away on the box you checked the time on your phone, 1:47 am.

“Wasn’t planning on making you drive anyway,” you placed the phone down. Watching Megumi pick up the board games off the kitchen counter and carry them back to the cabinet they were originally stored in.

“So you planned on staying the night?”

“Well when Yuji announced sleepover I just thought so, yeah,” you replied, looking over to the living room where Nobara took up the large couch, Junpei and Yuji wrapped in blankets and pillows on different parts of the floor.

“Okay, but im not sleeping in the floor.” You gave Megumi a light laugh, already having expected that.

“You don’t have to either,” he mumbled, finally making his way next to you on the kitchen island. “What do you mean?” He just looked at you, hoping you couldn’t tell how he was feeling kind of nervous. “Just, I wouldn’t mind if you wanted to share a bed.”

“Do you snore?” you joked.

“Fine sleep on the floor.”

“Megumi wait, I was joking!” You followed him after he had walked away from your spots in the kitchen.

“Sh, you’ll wake them up,” he whispered, although you highly doubt they would as they didn’t even seem to acknowledge the movement and sound of you guys. “Just c’mon, i’m tired,” he grumbled.

Yuji was the first to wake up, rising from his spot on the floor. His original plan was to go and get food from the kitchen, as even seconds into being awake he was already feeling hungry. However he was distracted when he saw Megumi’s room door open, catching a glimpse of his friend basically draped over you.

Author’s Note: guys we have 4 more chapters & and an epilogue left 😦😦😦

also completely unrelated but guess who finally passed the drivers test (it’s me, bryn, i did it)

but yea tysm for the support guys <33 this has been rlly fun!!! i’ll try my best to make these last few chapters bangers

hope you guys enjoyed!!

Taglist below, feel free to comment or dm me to be added!!

TAGLIST

@iridescentrays @gumimegz @maya-maya-56 @mamafly @lunavixia @swissy23 @coltsgf @m00nglad3-mp3 @etsukis @xosren @qtnfer @oengleli @harek89 @y-sabell-a @morgyyyyyyy @getolvr @liliumaraneae @k3lbade @aiieera @dancedancey @get0sfav @chuyasthighs0 @hyssoplampflickers @kpopanimen @sad-darksoul @vivi-loves-penguins @kasumitenbaz @talkingsperm @nymphsdomain @inlovewithlondonn @rzcnlb @enchantingkitty @fuyuzemi @lysaray @ni-ki-ismyluv @renemy @frumira @mixzimi @miralunaela @dreamxiing @p3achiee @anianurst @nishii28 @arguendo @samutoru @hallothankmas @invisible-mori @aiserex @all-in-the-fandoms @milza12 @nyxlai @daintyminho @tokyodarlng @molovs

[ladyswillmart]

Fic authors self rec! When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you've written, then pass on to at least five other writers. Spread the love ❤️

Hey wow, thanks for the message! I actually had to think about this one quite a bit. I'm not always the biggest fan of my own work, but in recent years I have published a few fics that I ended up liking. These... might be in some particular order? Eh, I dunno! Anyway, here goes:

5.) "It's Up To You" (Portal). The one where Doug Rattmann is trying to repair Grady. This is the last Portal fic I did and probably ever will do (though, never say never, right?). I'm not sure why I envisioned Doug as a fan of Ricky Nelson but it kinda works. Like the rest of my Portal stories, I put a lot of heart into this one, but in the end it felt like a bit of a waste. Oh well, I still like how it turned out.

4.) "Fish is Also a Four-Letter Word" (Gensou Suikoden II). It's sort of a screwball comedy where Jillia kind of asks Klaus to use his strategist super-powers to kill her brother. This was one of those magic stories where it all just brilliantly came together in a matter of days, footnotes and all. Rarer still, it's a story I can re-read and go "oh, that was cute", without cringing!

3.) "Malus" (Soul Blazer). The tiny fic in the tiny fandom that could! The first story I've ever done that was narrated by a goat. It's such a sweet and gentle tale, and I still think this setting is really interesting. There are not a lot of fics for this old SNES game, but I guess it is kind of a niche title. I got about halfway through a follow-up (narrated by a dormouse) so maybe I'll finish that one some time too...

2.) "A Difficult Business" (FF14). Originally a shitpost on Tumblr, which should tell you everything you need to know, if you don't want to actually read the fic summary. It's the one where Y'shtola bribes Nero Scaeva to deep fry Nidhogg's eyeballs in the fry vat at the Husting Strip Galleria food court's Ol’ Mistbeard Fish ‘n Chips.

1.) "Mog House" (FF14). In here, there is only Mog. And House. Huh, this one also involves Nero in some manner of bribery (only this time he's the one doing the bribing).

Ironically (?), my actual #1 pick isn't something that I can link to because it hasn't been published anywhere yet! It's called "Ancient History" and it's a 16-chapter work of Ultima VII (Serpent Isle) fanfic that's going up on my Neocities. For whatever reason, I made the boneheaded decision that it would be the FIRST thing to go up on my website, along with a complete (read: way too verbose) timeline and character profiles and little pictures, the works! All of this is still under construction, HOWEVER the bulk of the actual writing/markup of it is DONE and has been for some time. It's really just down to the getting the formatting just right, plus some light revision and last-minute edits.

Oh yeah! I still need to write the epilogue. Hah!

Unfortunately, it looks like Dawntrail got in the way as it's currently taking up my "writing" time slot. 😅 However, I'm also making my way to the end of all that so I expect I can get back into finishing my website pretty soon as well.

It's something I don't really expect people to be interested in so I'm not putting this story on AO3 or anything like that. I'm really proud of the work I put into the website and the story and the little AU world I crafted around it, but in the end, it's something I did just for me. 😛

[not-poignant]

Hi Pia. Not sure if this has been asked before but what makes you decide how long a chapter is going to be? I noticed that the chapters in your stories like FFS and TIP have really long chapters whilst stories like the current UtB have shorter chapters, and I was wondering why that was.

Hi anon,

So... it's mostly down to two things:

First -> Engagement. People just generally comment a lot less on longer chapters. The longer the chapter, the less comments it gets. I don't know if it's reading fatigue or what, but The Ice Plague taught me a lot of hard lessons and longer chapters do not get the engagement to justify that level of effort (I love love love the comments I get, don't get me wrong, but I also make money off this writing to live, I do have to think 'longer chapters mean I eat less and can't see all my medical specialists' - that's not nothing). People might say they love them, but they don't show the authors love for them in the same way, and that's the only way I can justify doing them.

Second -> From a labour perspective, I can release more chapters for different stories if the chapters are shorter. There was a time when the average length of my chapters was around 6-8k per chapter. That works out to maybe five chapters for like, possible one or two stories at once per month. The editing took longer and was harder to do, and it was also more laboursome for my beta as well. Shorter chapters are easier to edit, even if you're doing two and a half in the same amount of time. Stories like Palmarosa, A Stain that Won't Dissolve, probably most of the Underline stories like Gold and Red and Blue would not exist at all if I was still writing longer chapters. Because I could never justify the time it took simply to write a single chapter, and it would be - like so many of my story ideas - just a pipe dream that I sometimes talked about.

So if you like some of those stories, they are literally in existence in part because I went to shorter chapter lengths, which allows me to be more experimental with different story ideas to see what ones I really enjoy, without impacting my monthly wordcount and schedule too severely.

There's other factors too. But engagement was a huge, huge part of it. These days my chapter length ranges from around 2.5-4.5k which seems to be the sweet spot (it's also still about 2-3 times as long as what's recommended in serials, which sadly is like 500 words to 2k, which to me is like, damn, I can't live like that). And a lot of later FFS chapters are actually around this length as well. In fact I think at least one chapter in FFS is 2500 words. So I was already experimenting then with shorter chapters and was already finding that the shorter chapters had more engagement. I think one of the chapters that had the most comments of all of them, was actually one of the shortest chapters.

There's a time and place for really short chapters so I don't like to do them too much, so instead I'm around the 3-4k mark.

There's also the fact that when it really suits, I will write longer chapters. Though I don't ever want to write chapters over 6-7k again outside of epilogues, simply because of the sheer amount of labour that goes into them, and the fact that they seem to fatigue readers a lot more overall.

The other thing is, anon, I used to be very ashamed of how long my stories were, so I used to prefer - out of shame - shorter chapter numbers but longer chapters so it 'felt' like the story was shorter to me even though it wasn't. Realistically, Game Theory should - pacing wise - have 100 shorter chapters. But this embarrassed me so much I shoved a lot of different things into chapters that would have made more sense broken up. When I gave up that shame, I could pace the stories better in a way that made more sense to me. In longer chapters, you'll see a lot more chapter breaks (the asterisks), and some of those are where many writers would logically just have started a new chapter.

[xshimaeraxx]

Chapter One of my fic, feelings, is posted on AO3 now!

so, i haven’t much talked ab my fanfics on here, but uh, yeah! i write fanfic, read it, too, and i recently posted my - well, not my first fic i’ve ever written, but it’s the first one i’ve posted.

it’s a fanfic of one of my favourite fanfictions, the fic my fic is a fic of being Whispers in Corners by esama on AO3. it’s linked as the inspiration/fanfic of on my fic, so make sure to go read it, ye?

but anyways. figured i should prolly link it here, bc, well… why not? so uh, here ya’ll go :D

title: feeling what you feel (always, always, ye shall be mine)

archive warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

category: M/M

rating: Not Rated

fandoms: Harry Potter - J.K. Rowling (ew), Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle

relationships: Mycroft Holmes/Harry Potter, Harry Potter & John Watson, Harry Potter & Molly Hooper

characters: Harry Potter, Mycroft Holmes, John Watson, Molly Hooper, Greg Lestrade, Sherlock Holmes

additional tags: Empath Harry Potter, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fanfiction of Fanfiction, Not Season/Series 02 Compliant, Not Season/Series 03 Compliant, The Deathly Hallows, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Master of Death Harry Potter, no beta we die like the dead, Apathetic Harry Potter, Hurt/Comfort, Traumatized Harry Potter, Hurt Harry Potter, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Spiritual Medium Harry Potter, Heavy Angst, Demisexual Harry Potter, Additional Warnings in Author's Notes, Harry Potter is Bad at Feelings, Other Additional Tags to Be Added

language: English

summary: In this universe, Harry still stumbles; he still makes that mistake (if a bit differently); and the Bastard still gets curious, and he still asks Harry to work for him because of his abilities as a medium – and, quite honestly on Mycroft’s part, because of Mycroft’s own curiosity.

But what if, in this universe, the same but also not as the first, Harry isn’t just a medium? What if he is, at the same time, also… something else? What if there’s a reason for Harry’s oh-so-very apathetic attitude to, well… everything?

-

OR: That one Whispers in Corners AU™ in which Harry’s an empath, and has been since having died and come back when he was seventeen, and how that changes thing – even if by just a little. (Or, well, a lot, really. Quite a lot, in fact.)

link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/54874399

the first chapter has been posted now, and the second one is currently a quarter of the way done/in the process of being written :D it’s a Sherlock BBC/TV crossover with Harry Potter, like the og fic by esama is, and the ship is Mycroft Holmes/Harry Potter - as well as hints of QPR poly!Golden Trio planned for later on, hehe >:]

basically the premise is the same as esama’s fic, except for one thing: Harry’s an empath (he can feel other people’s emotions, basically, if you don’t know what that means), as well as a medium. this, as said in the summary, changes… things. wink wink ;)

[gaeasun]

Fic authors self rec! When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you've written, then pass on to at least five other writers. Let’s spread the self-love❤

Oh thank you! I'll try to mix up some of my more popular ones with my less popular one.

Ok first up is Aayhan, which i had somehow entirely forgot existed somehow until i just looked at my works. This oneshot is about Dogma waking up in a certain kind of time loop, where others are looping too but no one (except for Rex actually but not important) is looping back to back, so sometimes the loops overlap and sometimes they dont. sounds complicated and it is but the important part is that Dogma wakes up after being decommissioned for the whole Umbara mess and proceeds to hide his awareness because he thinks everyone will hate his guts because of Umbara.

My current long-term priority WIP is The Shadow Twins, a what if where Dogma and Tup's Squad (Shadow Squad) starts at the beginning of the war instead of Domino Squad, but their personalities slowly cause the timeline to diverge.

Oh Captain My Captain is another long fic that is finished, and is a bit of a crossover between Star Wars and the Captain America movies. I took the loveable star wars characters we know, mixed it with the general plot of the Captain America movies, threw it in the oven and cooked at the setting of slightly below insanity for 2 weeks before serving. Enjoy! (TLDR: Fives gets to be Star Wars Captain America)

This one says its unfinished but that is (mostly) a lie. the only thing unfinished is the epilogue which i have part of, but the actual plot and story itself is complete I promise. anyways, i took one look at future Kix being all alone and sad and a pirate and i went "i could make this better (eventually)" so now Kix is friends with the sequels trio while running for his life from two mysterious dark siders who seem more familiar with him than anyone from this time should be...

ok last one is something a little more self indulgent but also a two for one. Because if you want context than the first part of the series is a must read, otherwise its probably understandable alone. WHile the first part of the series tells the story of Dogma coming back to the 501st and finding it a little haunted, Can You Hear Your People Cry tells the story of my OC who actually got kind of possessed (sorry :c) anyways his name is Twitch and I love him dearly so uh. read about this story where i put him in a situation i guess.

[curiousemwanders]

FIC REC: Twist Of Fate

Twist of Fate by Oakstone730

Okay I have a lot to say about this fic and I’m going to try and say it in a way that makes sense. (AKA this is a long post!)

I often pick long fics to read at work between appointments with clients, and I read this over the last three days at work and after work because I literally couldn’t put it down. I finished last night and spent a good amount of the night still thinking about it. I’m going to start with the only negative thing I have to say about this fic, which isn’t really even a negative, but it’s that maybe it should be rated Mature, not Teen. There are a few scenes that were just a tad too steamy for me to be reading between appointments with clients. In any other context, I would not call that a downside. 

We choose fics to read for all sorts of reasons; we want to see our favorite characters in different scenarios, we wish they hadn’t died, we feel the author has wronged them, or misunderstood them, we want plot holes to be fixed, we don’t like the jobs chosen for them in that god awful epilogue. In more recent years, I think that many of us who read Harry Potter fan fiction have strayed further from the original source material for some of these reasons. It’s so much easier to read a fic that re-writes their adult lives, that established the characters and their identities in ways that place them in direct opposition to the hateful politics and ideas that J.K. Rowling has begun to espouse. And I think this is right, I think it’s good that fic authors are doing this. However it often leads me to avoid, or ignore works that play more directly in the world that Rowling created. I don’t mean the wizarding world, I mean the canon. It often feels that the works that play in the canon, that build upon them, are however subtly accepting Rowling's ideas, her hatred. I know this to be faulty logic, projection of my fears onto the fic. But I would be lying if I didn’t say it’s stopped me from reading some, many, works. Including the great many works created before we knew just how despicable Rowling really is. 

I preface with that information to say that I don’t often read stories that build in the canon rather than rewrite it or use it as a backdrop that the characters are recovering, evolving from. This fic of course does play in the cannon, it expands it, and at points does use it as a backdrop for character recovery. What I find so interesting about the way Oakstone730 writes this story, is the way they’ve interwoven their plot, their ideas, their character growth, with the canon, with what we already know of the story. And I do mean that they wove the story through the already existing canon. 

I suppose this is the point that a succinct summary of the fic would be useful (I’ll try to keep it as spoiler free as possible, but read at your own risk). In Twist of Fate Oakstone730 begins with a prologue set during the trials after the war Harry learns that he not only lost significant memories, but that he also isn’t a virgin, or as straight, as he currently thinks himself to be. What’s more, that he likely had been having sex with his boyhood nemesis Draco Malfoy, who is currently on trial for war crimes. The story then begins in earnest with the Quidditch world cup where Harry and Cedric talk a bit about sexuality (important to note that Cedric is also gay in this fic). At Hogwarts, after hearing that Harry can resist the Imperius curse, Draco seeks him out, offering to help him in potions if he can help Draco learn how to also throw an Imperius. Harry gets Cedric involved in order to help them, and to protect himself. And slowly, over the course of several chapters, we see them begin to build a friendship, and eventually fall in love. We don’t get any hint of why Draco would erase Harry’s memories of him, at least not until Harry begins Occlumency training with Snape. It then becomes clear, for those of us who remember the books, that Voldemort could use Harry’s memories of Draco against him. This fact isn’t made fully clear to either of them until the summer before 6th year when things become untenable for Draco. 

What I love so much about the writing and storytelling in Twist of Fate is that it takes canon and says ‘yeah, that’s what Harry remembered, let me show you what really happened.’ There were so many parts where I would sit wondering ‘is this where we’re going to break from canon?’ AND ‘how are you going to explain this part of the story?’ Each time the answer was, no, Oakstone730 never broke from canon, and each time I was amazed by how they were able to weave what happened in their story through the canon in ways that not only made sense plot-wise, but made thematic sense to the original canon and to this new version. One of the best examples of this in my reading was how the second task was handled during the Triwizard Tournament. Go back and read it, it’s masterful. 

Along with this reading, we get a much more complex story of our characters, we see Cedric as someone who wasn’t happy-go-lucky perfect, but as someone with texture, with a boyfriend he didn’t get to see often, dreams of being a mindhealer, skills he certainly used with Harry and Draco. We see Draco not only as an ex-Deatheater in a story of redemption (as in many excellent Drarry fics), but as someone who is actively unlearning the cultish and unequal upbringing he was raised in. I find that struggle is often hard to write, and subsequently to find. Further we see him engage in the actions many of us wish he could have taken in the canon, acting as a spy, helping the Order from the inside. And most notably, he does this without even the thought that we would survive. Draco too is a woven character, playing the nemesis when needed, but showing to us, the readers, his true colors. 

Harry’s character in this is another amazing example of both adding delicious complexity and the masterful weaving I discussed above. When we read the canon, we often see Harry as this boy who has experienced so much complex trauma, who can be so observant, but also so obtuse and unable to express himself. This fic takes that and shows us another way to interpret it. Instead of a boy who wasn’t able to express himself, we see him with Cedric and Draco actually processing his trauma, building resilience, and most importantly, being happy. And we see that when those memories are erased from him, his skills for managing stress, for understanding himself and others becomes blunted again. We see him unable to control his magic, unable to let his friends in, to tell others about himself, to the extent that he runs away and goes into hiding. 

All together this fic was amazing to read, and I truly appreciate the ways it built upon the characters and the story. I love it not only for the simple joy of reading it (oh god I didn’t even mention the delicious angst!), but because I can see the depth of skill it took to write this story, and I can't help but be mesmerized by it. 

[inevitably-johnlocked]

I’ve never done this before, and I’m wondering: how do you get your fic on a rec list? Not, like, yours specifically, just in general. Are there tags in general, or is it a matter of it getting popular enough?

Here are the fics I am trying to get recced:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/37946308 https://archiveofourown.org/works/34682623

Hey Lovely!

First, your fics:

Set Fire To A Daydream by Biana_Amberly_Vacker (T, 1,208 w., 1 Ch. || Established Relationship, Sherlock’s Mind Palace, Angst with Happy Ending) – Can you set fire to a daydream?When Sherlock’s mind palace melts to the ground, can he find his John in time, or will it be too late?

Gone Before Your Time by Biana_Amberly_Vacker (T, 12,779 w., 11 Ch. || Supernatural Elements AU || Post-TRF Diversion, Major Character Deaths / Suicides, Afterlife, Love Confessions, Flashbacks, Adventure, Angry John, Moriarty is Dead, Fighting) – AU where Sherlock dies when he jumps and John commits suicide. They both end up in the Gone Before Your Time Department, where people who die before their scheduled death end up. They meet each other there and have to make a plan to make sure that Moriarty, who is also in the Department, goes to hell (quite literally). But it’s not as straightforward as anyone would like. There are lies, plans within plans, and people from the past that Sherlock and John would both rather forget. There will be ten chapters and an epilogue. Tags will be added as the story progresses. Please leave a comment! (Major Character Death is for first chapter only)

-----

Secondly, I can't speak for other people, but for me, my lists themselves either do like I'm doing now and boost the fics with the single post and then add the fics to the "Signal Boosting" section of the following Five Fics Friday post; or the fic gets suggested to me on another post and when I make an MFLs list and the tag was added in the Tags (which is why I always say tags are SO important!), I add them to those lists; OR I've personally read and bookmarked a fic, and after bookmarking I file it onto the various offline lists I have (currently at about 200 if I exclude the ones I need to separate the fics better).

AND because my blog is known for the interactivity and my meticulous pulling of comment threads onto main posts, a lot of recs are just added it to the reblogs or replies of a fic rec list if it's one of mine currently on a reblog cycle; if I see it, I add it eventually, LOL.

The best way to get your stuff known is to promote the poop out of it. Some newer authors feel like a bother if they promote more than once. Truth is though, ya gotta get yourself out there! A lot of people on Tumblr use the lists we make rather than filing through the hundreds of new fics uploaded weekly! It's overwhelming, and a lot of people follow fic-rec blogs like mine for the simple fact that it's a one-stop easier-to-digest place to come to find new and old favourites!

AND YOU DID! This is a great first start, and don't be afraid to go to other fic reccers and ask if they can boost your fics with an ask just like this (but more "hey, I wrote a new fic, can you boost it for me?)! And if they don't, no harm done, it's nothing personal! But I know a lot of my followers do come to my blog for the regular boosts of new fics and authors, and of course my lists of fics I've personally read (unless otherwise noted on the post). It's just as simple as that, really.

Anyway, if you're interested in some more of my thoughts about helping authors get noticed, check out these posts:

My Writing Advice for Focusing on the Work (Goals)

Any Tips to get people to notice your writing?

How Do I Get My Fics to a Wider Audience?

Will Anyone Ever See My Fics?

Should I Continue Writing or Delete my Stories?

I Want To Write a Story… What If Someone Already Wrote it?

Any advice for new authors? (With a big bunch of advice from JBaillier)

How do people remain productive? (Long community discussion with commentary from jbaillier)

I want to start writing fan fiction. What Should I do?

Should I bother writing fics? There’s so many

I hate writing summaries for fics. Advice?

Hopefully those will help answer any lingering questions for anyone reading this :)

[jinjojess]

超高校級の英雄 V3: Danganstuck Classpects V3

Okay, okay. 

Enough waiting around; let’s get this up and ready to go.

These are obviously just my own opinions on things, and as such are very closely tied to my own personal interpretations of both the V3 characters and also of the classpects themselves. For clarity’s sake, I based the aspect rationalizations from the official lore here, and I used the MSPA wiki for direction with the classes.

Just as a quick note, I used some of the FTE info (which is debatable in its veracity) for some of the assignments. Sorry, gotta work with what I have to work with. Also, if anything is expanded on in Homestuck 2, I have no idea, as I haven’t read it (or the epilogues, for that matter).

Akamatsu Kaede Prince(ss) of Time Derse Dreamer The Land of Sharps and Flats

Going off the canon description of Time, it makes perfect sense for Akamatsu. She’s goal-oriented, wants to skip to the credits, and would rather take a leap of faith than wait things out. To say nothing of the strong associations between Time and music. I went with Prince for her as a class since it’s the destroyer class--Akamatsu very literally destroys both Amami and herself (and her goal of getting everyone out alive) thanks to her own impatience in wanting to stop the one responsible for the killing game. I had her sleep on Derse since she’s supposed to be a bit of a protag subversion in that she hatches a literal murder scheme. Her equivalent of the Beat Mesa is a big metronome. 

I also have an alt land name for her in The Land of Ninths and Eighths to reference the time signature of Claire de Lune (which is 9/8). 

Saihara Shuuichi Page of Doom Prospit & Derse Dreamer The Land of Glass and Fingerprints

I considered making Saihara a Rage player at first given how the ultimate conflict is (supposedly going to be) solved in Chapter 6, but the description of Doom players as being commiseraters rather than healers really stuck out to me as appropriate for Saihara. Of all the characters in the game, he’s one of the few that doesn’t actually push anyone to heal, and his ultimate gambit in the 6th trial is to counteract the audience trying to self-medicate with catharsis at their expense. He takes a while to come into his own, which is the signature trait of the Page class, too. As a Doom player, he dreams on both moons, which for reasons I can’t quite articulate just clicks for me. The glass in his land name references not only magnifying glasses but also mirrors, since his is very much a journey of self-reflection.

Amami Rantarou Seer of Breath Prospit Dreamer The Land of Sails and Nail Polish

I really like what I came up with here for Amami. Breath is linked pretty strongly to his FTE reveals about how his desire to explore led his sisters to disappear into the ether (and changed his direction in life), and the angst he feels over wanting to reunite with his sisters hints at his trouble with bonds (the Breath inverse Blood’s territory). I incorporated the boat stuff into the theme with the idea of sailing for his world name, while the nail polish is for his sisters and that extra scene with Akamatsu. I went with Seer as the class since Amami Knows Things, and there’s that bit about Seers “having a strategy guide in their head” that I wanted to be a callback to the special map and the fact that he’s the Shogo Kawada of this operation. Prospit as the dream moon just felt right, so there it is.

Iruma Miu Thief of Space Prospit Dreamer The Land of Caulk and Nuts (and Frogs)

I don’t care if you have to have Frogs somewhere in the Space player’s land name, I will stand by that pun! So Space is all about creation and seeing the bigger picture, and to me that jived with how Iruma is an inventor. While Time is deeply linked to music on a conceptual level, Space is linked to nurturing, including growing plants, raising animals, and parenting. The Space and Motherhood parallels fit well with Iruma’s canon aspirations and goals. I went with Thief because Iruma is very much out for Number One, and wants to hog up all the creation ability for her own ends. Prospit dreamer because she’s the type.

Ouma Kokichi Bard of Heart Derse Dreamer The Land of Kings and Horses

There’s a lot you could do with Ouma, and I’m sure that plenty of people peg him as a Void player because of the lying. For me though, I read Ouma has being primarily concerned with his own identity, and how he’s perceived by others. Fractured senses of self are a Heart concept, after all, and it seems that Ouma likes trying on identities to see which one ultimately fits him best. I made him a Bard because they’re unpredictable and all about helping or hurting a session in random turns, but also because Ouma himself is allowing his own identity to be destroyed thanks to his paranoia and inability to let anyone get close to him. He dreams on Derse with all the other schemers, and I went with a name pun for the planet that can also function as a chess reference (ala his bandana and his 5d chess approach to life).

Kiibo Sylph of Mind Derse Dreamer The Land of Shells and Ghosts

Since Sylphs are healers, I wanted to have Kiibo in that role, since he’s usually trying very hard to smooth things over and fix problems. I went with Mind for him for a few reasons: one is that Kiibo’s self-identity is subsumed by his “inner voice” that later turns out to be audience suggestions, meaning that he’s healing things through the choices of others and doesn’t have as much of a Self as it were. Another reason is because I made Naegi a Mind player and Kiibo is clearly meant to be a bit of a callback to him (up to and including the fact that Naegi very much functions as an audience insert in the first game). I made Kiibo a Derse dreamer because he literally hears the whispers of the audience members telling him what to do. The land name was me having a little fun and poking at his aspect a bit.

Gokuhara Gonta Heir of Light Prospit Dreamer The Land of Pins and Wings

Light is all about knowledge, and Gonta has, while specific, quite a lot of knowledge. He likes learning, and is open to new information to re-evaluate what he knows. I made him an Heir since the speculation is that they are subsumed in their aspect, and Gonta is very passively knowledgable. He often offers helpful suggestions based on things he just happens to know, for instance, and what ultimately undoes him is Ouma showing him the “truth” of things, which Gonta doesn’t even think to question. He’s a Prospit dreamer who’s been awake for awhile, unwittingly watching the clouds for signs, and his land name is a reference to pinning butterflies into a collection.

Shinguuji Korekiyo Mage of Light Derse Dreamer The Land of Scrolls and Masks

Meanwhile, on the other end of knowledge for knowledge’s sake, we have the other scholar, Shinguuji. Unlike Gonta, he’s actively out there seeking knowledge, rather than being drawn to it, and his motives are undeniably selfish in nature, so I wanted him to be an active class (I’m assuming Mage is the active counterpart to Seer, shhh). Shinguuji uses his understanding of his field--humans--to progress his own goals and wants. He’s also smart enough to know what pieces of information to share and which to keep hidden behind a convenient zipper. Made him Derse because shemey as all hell, and I went with some general imagery for folklore for the land name.

Chabashira Tenko Knight of Breath Prospit Dreamer The Land of Sweat and Flipping

I think we can all agree that Chabashira is probably not a Derse dreamer. Meanwhile, I chose her aspect for a couple of reasons: first, because aikido is generally about evading attacks which strikes me as a windy kinda deal, even if Neo Aikido is a bit different; second, because her central conflict in the game is about learning to let go of a bond she desperately wants to forge with Yumeno (which, again, is a Blood-related matter); and third, because flipping somebody would create a gust of air movement and that image made me laugh. I went with Knight for Chabashira, since the most common interpretation of Knight is that it exploits its aspect, and I think that Chabashira is able to exploit the various currents of influence (especially in Chapter 3) to great success. I also think that she exploits The Breeze to nudge Yumeno’s path out of danger by taking her place in the kagonoko ritual. The land name is the sweat of training in martial arts, and the flipping is not just about said martial arts, but also about being flung off a see-saw.

Toujou Kirumi Knight of Life Derse Dreamer The Land of Sticks and Carrots

Life players are generally known to be trying to fix everybody’s problems, whether they want that to happen or not, and if that doesn’t scream Toujou to you, I don’t know what will. I went with Knight again for the exploitation aspect of it, where Toujou uses her position as authority in the group to further what she believes to be the greater good (hedging my bets here since we don’t know if Knight is active or passive). She’s clearly a Derse dreamer, because even if she wasn’t schemey, she’s droll as fuck. Her land references the two main ways to motivate someone: threats and rewards.

Harukawa Maki Knight of Time Prospit Dreamer The Land of Beans and Demons

I know, I know, but really, if you think about it, HaruMaki and Dave do kind of have a lot in common (and not just the fact that they have red eyes). The part about Time that fits well to me is that a Time player’s life is marked by strife and struggle, which HaruMaki has in spades. Like Akamatsu, she’s impatient and often acts rashly, in an attempt to cut out the middle man or advance what she thinks should be happening. She’s the last of our Knight squad, exploiting Time (or more broadly, destruction/entropy) to try and help out, such as trying to off Ouma or attack the Exisals head on. There’s also a bit on the Wiki that’s speculated that Knights often try to conceal their insecurities by acting tough, which is HaruMaki’s M.O. While she doesn’t have the music theme, assassination is very much about timing. I had her dream on Prospit because she’s not really a plans person, deep down, and her land name is a joke about her name/birthday referencing Setsubun.

HaruMaki doesn’t have a Beat Mesa equivalent, but she does have a tool specifically for causing a Scratch: a huge, unwieldy kantana.

Hoshi Ryouma Prince of Blood Prospit Dreamer The Land of Grass and Clay

Here you go, anon, what you were waiting for. I personally peg Hoshi as a Blood player, through and through. He’s stubborn, values bonds with other people, can lead via inspiration rather than direct command, and feels grounded. I think he’s a Prince thanks to the fact that he ended up destroying the very people who meant so much to him, and in the aftermath continued to push people away and pre-emptively destroy any possible future bonds. He’s a Prospit dreamer because he can see flashes of the future, though he often doesn’t read them correctly. His land is a reference to different types of tennis courts.

Momota Kaito Rouge of Hope Prospit Dreamer The Land of Wishes and Stars

The key part of a Hope player is that they can dream up a better world than the one that exists, and that can definitely be said about Momota. Like Jake, he’s a bit in his own head and immersed in his fantasy version of reality, where he plays the hero and is able to save everyone else. He’s somewhat gullible, to a point, and he’s the most superstitious of the bunch, showing how much stock he can put into the thing he believes. The sheer power of Momota’s belief is infectious, hence why I made him a Rogue--he’s out there trying to impart his sense of belief into those around him, for everyone’s benefit. He dreams on Prospit because of course he does, and I made his land name reflect literal space in conjunction with his talent, and to riff on that inspirational poster about shooting for the moon and landing among the stars.

Yumeno Himiko Heir of Doom Prospit & Derse Dreamer The Land of Death and Magic

While most people who played V3 picked up on Saihara being depressed, not everyone has noticed that Yumeno also suffers from the same bleak view of the world. Similarly to Saihara, Yumeno is not a healer, or a doer. She’s here to sigh and complain and tell you that’s rough, buddy. Because of that, I can definitely see her as a Doom player. I made her an Heir, as one who is consumed by their aspect, since Yumeno is very much doom and gloom a lot of the time. She’s also subconsciously drawn to death, as she gets close to both Angie and Chabashira before their untimely demises. It’s through their deaths that she comes more into her own, hence why it’s also part of her land title (I don’t think I have to explain the other part). She dreams on both moons because Doom players are implied to do so.

Yonaga Angie Witch of Hope Derse Dreamer The Land of Prayer and Idols

Like Momota, Angie has intense faith on her side; if Angie thinks it’s true, it’s true. She’s also similarly not looking at the same world as everyone else, instead seeing something slightly different and colored by her own beliefs. However, unlike Momota, Angie is not interested in helping others find their own faith, and would rather use the power of her belief for her own gain. Hence why I made her a Witch, an active class that manipulates its aspect. The other characters may not believe in Angie’s religion, but they sure do believe her when she tells them to sacrifice their autonomy for safety. I put her on Derse since her god could very easily just be a specific horrorterror, and the land name is connected to religion. 

Shirogane Tsumugi Maid of Void Derse Dreamer The Land of Scripts and Swatches

I went through a lot of possible Classpects for Shirogane, including Light, Space, Seer, Heart, etc., but I think that this is what I’m going to settle on. Derse Dreamer because not only is she schemey, she’s listening to whispers of her bosses and the ratings, albeit in a less direct sense than Kiibo (what’s more horrorterror-y than a focus group!). Void as an aspect works well to me, since Shirogane is always going on and on about being plain and forgettable, about how she hides in plain sight, and even her talent is about becoming somebody else rather than herself. She’s also the one who in the end throws the “truth” into question, instead concealing it in favor of ambiguity. I went with Maid since one of the speculated interpretations is one who creates or creates through their aspect: she not only (arguably) erases the casts’ identities and memories, she does this in order to have “blank pages” on which to write the killing game’s drama. Whether Maid is an active or passive class is unknown, but if it’s active it makes sense since she’s using other people for her own gain, and if it’s passive, it could be argued that she’s doing it in service of Team DR or the audience.

Speaking of...

Bonus!

The V3 audience Muse of Space The Land Beyond the 4th Wall

I don’t like assigning Master Classes unless I have a really good reason, and here I think it works. The fans are the epitome of the “wait-and-see” model, and their crime as it were is their general apathy toward the very real subjects of the killing game. They’re all big picture and no important details or nuance. You can’t get much more passive than being an audience member, hence Muse class, yet it’s their desire to recycle the series over and over that leads to the killing game’s very existence (they’re also not too upset about letting the kids’ past lives be sacrificed for this act of creation). The V3 audience is collectively in the real world as opposed to the Medium, hence the “planet” title for them. In the context of an actual Sburb game, they’d likely be Exiles.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Yeah, no Rage players in V3. I couldn’t find my notes the other night when I got home, so I just went ahead and reworked all of the classpects from there.

The Aspects were fairly easy to assign, but the Classes really had me scratching my head for a good long while. Maybe it’s because it can recontextualize the Aspect elements depending on what it is, or maybe it’s because we don’t have as much information about how Classes work. 

Anyway, whew, that’s it! Hope you enjoyed!

[prettywordsyouleft]

To Be Continued - Part 6

Summary: As an author, you had created Brian Kang for your current trilogy series to represent the ultimate man that everyone would love, along with Charli Evers - your female protagonist. What you hadn’t expected was for him to find a way out of the story and begin shaping up your world instead

Pairing: Brian Kang x female writer (ft. Park Sungjin)

Genre: writer au / romance / fantasy

Warnings: fictional characters coming to life / a bit of angst here and there / Sungjin as a cop (or does that only affect me?) >_> 

In this chapter, the jealousy flare up is strong lol. 

Word count: 2307

Preview | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | Epilogue

The warning bells you had been hoping to ring sounded around your home a second time, and you stepped down from the tips of your toes that you hadn’t realised you were standing upon and ducked under Brian’s arm, escaping the almost kiss to see who was here.

You guessed it was your mother, knowing her impromptu visits often occurred at night. Or Lily was back from visiting her family and wanted to check in on you as she usually did. However, nothing prepared you for who was standing there.

“Su-Sungjin.”

“My other rival has arrived,” you heard Brian mumble under his breath as he stopped beside you.

The police officer looked at you and then Brian, suddenly growing reserved. He laughed awkwardly. “Sorry, Y/N. I should have called ahead of visiting you. I just was worried about you and wanted to check if you were okay. It seems like you are.”

“She is,” Brian confirmed, and you glanced at him hopelessly before shunting him in the stomach and opening your door further.

“Please, come inside.”

“Oh, I don’t wish to intrude when you have a guest here already,” Sungjin mentioned, though he stepped over the threshold far too easily, eying Brian carefully before smiling down at you. “Did you find out about the stalker?”

“Stalker is a bit of a far-fetched term, don’t you think, Constable?” Brian answered before you could, and you noticed the hint of annoyance in his eyes.

You knew that Brian, when protective of someone, wasn’t afraid to use his hands if necessary. Jumping in front of him with a light laugh, you then smiled up at Sungjin to try and break their staring war.

Thankfully, it worked. “Have you had dinner at all, Sungjin? I was just about to order in something and can add on another serving for you?”

“I’m sure the busy police officer doesn’t have time to stay for dinner.”

“Interesting that we don’t even know each other and you’re answering for me,” Sungjin rebutted, glowering at the man behind you. “I’m guessing Y/N told you about me?”

“It’s a long story,” you mentioned, wondering just how many more times you’d have to use that line when it came to Brian’s existence. “Dinner?”

“Would love to,” Sungjin agreed.

It was awkward as you waited for the delivery to arrive, glancing between the two men glaring at one another and then at the door hoping for salvation. Whilst you were excited to see Sungjin again, you hadn’t really thought this through.

After all, before he turned up on your doorstep, you were fully committed to kissing the man who firmly placed himself at your side. Then again, you had already day-dreamed about kissing Sungjin multiple times before Brian had even stepped out of your computer.

Your heart and mind were a mess, as was this dinner suggestion. You were relieved when the pizza turned up, diving towards the front door with your purse in hand. Paying the driver a tip, you then returned with the meal, placing it down on the table and spreading it out. “Let’s eat!”

“So, let’s hear about this long story,” Sungjin asked midway through your second piece of pizza, in which you choked upon. Both men thrust their drink towards you, and you looked at their offerings before meekly reaching for your own.

“The story,” Brian repeated, and Sungjin glanced at him curiously. “I guess you want to know who I am.”

“He’s my cousin’s friend!” you blurted out, and Brian gaped at you instantly. “Brian is just staying here because his flat is infested with bugs. You don’t do bugs, right, Brian?”

“Cousin’s friend. Bugs. Uh-huh.” Looking over at Sungjin’s surprised expression, Brian sighed heavily. “That’s me. Brian, the cousin’s friend.”

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear about that,” Sungjin mentioned, a small relieved smile crossing his lips. “Hopefully it gets fixed soon.”

“Actually, I think it’s going to take a really long time. I might just end up moving in here permanently,” Brian commented with a strained smile, and you clamped your eyes shut with frustration before trying to smile politely at Sungjin.

The police officer smiled warmly back at you and began to eat again.

Thankfully, he didn’t stay too long, happy enough to see you were okay and when you confirmed you hadn’t heard from your strange intruder since Brian had arrived, it placated him enough to head for your front door.

“Dinner was lovely,” he mentioned, and you laughed.

“It was an awkward disaster.”

Sungjin nodded, chuckling softly. “Next time, I’ll take you out somewhere, if you like.”

“Re-really?”

“Only if you’re free too.”

“She’s going to be reallyyyy busy writing the next story in her trilogy, right, Miss Writer?” Brian added into the conversation, and your mood dampened again with his arrival at your side. Slinging an arm over your shoulder for effect – which worked – Brian smiled all too happily. “So busy that I wonder if she’ll even have time to eat. You know, when she’s stuck up in her worlds, she often forgets to even feed herself. Lucky I’m here, right?”

“I’ll call you!” you managed to tell Sungjin with a wave, before shutting the front door and spinning around to face the remaining man. “Wow! I never expected you to be like this!”

“Surely, you did! I mean, you created me!” Brian exclaimed, throwing his hands up in the air. “And now I’m your cousin’s friend too?! You’re so good with stories, Miss Writer. Do you know what is real life and what isn’t?”

“You’re impossible when you’re jealous.”

“And you invited your hero in here when you had no need to! What are you going to do? Have a moment with him in the kitchen too? Tell him how he’s the only cop for you?!”

“Your bitterness is unfair!” you warned, stalking over to the table to clean up the takeout containers. Brian joined you, stacking the plates and cups you had used and took them over to the sink. You worked in harmony in clearing up the mess before you realised what you had both done. Stopping to watch as Brian vigorously scrubbed at a cup, you reached over for his hand and ceased his actions altogether.

“I panicked.”

“About what exactly? That the man you’ve been pining over since you met him just recently was on your doorstep or the guy you created in your stories was about to kiss you for the first time?”

So it was about to happen. Gulping back your emotions from his admission of the fact, you nodded. “Of both.”

“What are you going to do about it then, Y/N? You can’t play us both.”

“I wasn’t playing-”

“I guess that hero of yours makes me the villain for turning up, huh?” he muttered before rinsing off the cup and placing it to the side of the sink, turning on his heel for your guest bedroom and shut the door with a bang.

The following morning, you were the first one up. Binks met you in the living room, winding himself around your legs and mewling for his breakfast. Smiling, you picked him up and carried him the rest of the way to the kitchen. Settling him down by his food mat, you then picked up his bowl and filled it with fresh food before placing it back in front of him. You watched as he ate happily, relaxing into the simple nature of your usual routine.

Without Sungjin or Brian, life sure had been just that – simple.

Yet, you knew you wanted to fill the loneliness in your heart also. It had taken you some time to fall asleep last night, staring at the screen of your laptop at the words To Be Continued over and over. Wondering why Brian kept changing it to that instead of The End had plagued your thoughts all night long.

You had been hoping to meet him in the kitchen for breakfast and discuss it with him but you had gotten up before him. Waiting for over twenty minutes, and making as much noise as you could without being too rude, you finally walked down to the room and rapped your knuckles over the door. “Brian, can I come in?”

No answer.

Knocking a little louder this time, you repeated your question to receive, once more, silence in return. Unlatching the door, you stepped inside to find it empty of his presence.

It all hit you then like a tonne of bricks, and you went through your house from room to room in a blind panic, wondering where he had gone. Finding yourself in your office, you opened the lid to your laptop and hurried to turn it on, waiting to sign in to your account before dashing into your files for your latest story. Opening it, you bounced on the spot as your fears got heightened.

What if Brian had gone back into his world without even saying goodbye?!

You had definitely turned off the device last night before bed, but could he have turned it on and headed back into Captivated? Would he even remember you if he had?

After all the thoughts of insanity you had endured with his sudden arrival in your life, you were now equally despairing his departure. You hadn’t even kissed him yet! Let alone shared a day with him doing all the things you wanted to do. How could he just leave you like this –

“Y/N?”

Spinning around to find Brian behind you in exercise clothes and sweating from a morning run, you let go of your laptop and lurched towards him, wrapping your arms firmly around his waist. Whilst he immediately held your distraught body, he chuckled a little also. “I just went for a run. I don’t care what you say about me, even guys like me stink when we sweat.”

“You’re still here!”

“Of course, I am. Where did you think I was?” Brian asked, and when your sniffling turned to sobs, Brian attempted to pull you away from his body but you gripped on tighter. “You thought I had gone back into the story?”

“What else was I meant to think when you weren’t here, and there was no note?! Especially after last night-”

“That’s why I went for a run, to clear my head,” he admitted. “I’m sorry I didn’t leave you a note. I thought you would sleep in like usual.”

“I’m sorry too,” you replied, shaking your head, your tears spreading around the room and landing upon him in the process. “I shouldn’t be like this over you. I mean, I feel like I’ve known you forever yet you’ve only been here a couple of days and you’re right, I should be more clear with Sungjin, but I didn’t know what to do and-”

Your sentence was caught against his mouth, swift as it pressed upon yours, did it leave. Brian, evidently surprised at his attempt to stop your fevered rambling, cleared his throat before staring down at you for your reaction.

It only took you a second to think about it before you stretched up and coveted his mouth with yours. Unlike his quick peck, you moved in with the intention of savouring this one. Slowly, your mouths pressed together, tasting one another. He was slightly salty, due to the way his skin has perspired from his run and yet you didn’t care, pressing into his body further the longer your lips were attached to his. Your mind swirled with desire, and your heart thumped erratically as a result.

You were kissing Brian Kang.

When writing kissing scenes with him and Charli, albeit there had only been three so far, you had struggled. Just how would Brian Kang be as a kisser? No matter how much you had imagined his style or the way he would caress Charli, this moment in time was unlike anything you had penned. This was an entirely new feeling.

There was a hunger driving his lips now, his hands firmly taking purchase of your hips, drawing you in closer, making you his as much as you had made him yours. The taste to him changed, heating up with how his tongue dipped behind your teeth to greet yours, as if this exchange was something you two had done before. Kissing Brian was new, and yet it felt as if you had been doing it all your life. You were certain you could continue to keep kissing him as well, had you no need for air. However, you pulled away then, gasping in deep breaths, your mind and eyes blown from the experience.

Brian appeared just as dishevelled.

“I’m sorry, I-”

“Don’t apologise for kissing me,” Brian murmured, running his thumb over your now swollen lips. He smiled giddily before looking back at you with bright eyes. “Don’t ever apologise for it.”

“You’re sure?”

“That was some kiss,” he told you, cupping your cheek within his hand. Leaning in closer again, you felt your breath heighten, moistening your lips for him to take them hostage again. However, he merely kissed your cheek before letting you go entirely. “I’m going to have to watch myself around you, Miss Writer. Our story’s only just begun, and we’re already kissing one another. You’re more dangerous than I thought you’d be for my heart.”

“Why did I create you to say lines like that?!” you groaned as Brian slipped away from you and headed down the hallway towards your bathroom. Sticking your head around the corner to watch his departure, Brian stopped outside the door and glanced back at you, biting his lip before shaking his head and stepped into the bathroom to shower from his run.

Leaning against the threshold for support, you held your heart again.

It was beating in tune for him now.

_________________

Part 7

All rights reserved © prettywordsyouleft

[DAY6 Masterlist] | [Main Masterlist] | [Request Guidelines]

[the-ghost-king]

what’s your giant wishlist for the nico solo book? like plots, backstories, tropes stuff like that

Anon I was literally writing the Nico solo series myself I just gave up after... 6 years (give or take a bit) due to personal struggles with the quality, and a lack of fandom interest with the piece once I finally took to uploading.

Chaptered fics don't get much interaction anymore in the PJO fandom (with a few exceptions), and especially ones that don't include Solangelo or Percabeth right off the bat... And although interaction isn't the only important aspect of uploading a fic, it's definitely helpful to at least know it's resonating with some people.

I have TTC entirely drafted from Nico's perspective and I have his full childhood in Italy drafted out, as well as most of Maria and Hades relationship. There's honestly too much information I have stored in my head to go through it all, I had the entire storyline from TTC through BoO drafted (in my head) before ToA was even released... Everything I do have is on pen on paper though so I can't copy paste it

Right now I have the works on hiatus because I was working through some mental health stuff at the time, but I've also been considering changing aspects of Nico's childhood that I'm writing and publishing that work eventually... It would be entirely original and the Greek mythology aspect would be removed from it, and it would focus more heavily on an OC I created as from Nico's perspective than on Nico himself.

I'm not entirely sure what I want to do with that idea though, I don't want my Ao3 account attached to me if I ever do become a published author (I wouldn't mind saying I wrote fics but directing people to your specific account is more extreme lol). This means that I would have to modify many aspects of Nico's past or remove it from the story, which is impossible since Nico's story exist solely because of his past.

The big issue I had with quality was getting the characters to be more 3D and avoid mischaracterization... Although I felt I was doing okay with this aspect on Nico, I especially struggled here with Bianca for a multitude of reasons...

However, I was taking this project much more seriously than most when I first began it, I even had my first beta-reader during the original uploads! But as fore mentioned for many reasons both personal and otherwise the project fell short and came to a stop.

I would possibly consider restarting the project if I had help, because I know now how much work it is... I have mixed feelings on receiving this help though as well, and although I'm interested in help if it's available I'm in no current position to begin work right now on the piece because I would have to draft out more stuff to make the plot coherent to someone not in my brain

Anyhow anon, here's a link to the series I had started work on, maybe you'll find some enjoyment there! I originally had more uploaded but I took it down because I was unhappy with the quality, but there's some there to hopefully appease you and anyone else interested!

I know the story also says it's discontinued, this isn't necessarily true, but I would rather say discontinued than get someone's hopes up with the idea of it being a simple hiatus. I also know this probably wasn't what you were looking for as an answer and I do apologize for that, but the way I had been working on this was much bigger than something I could ever fit in a single post.

Although here's a photo of a chart I was making to understand my thoughts better if you're interested:

You'll notice the names of the stories, and the basic arc outline of them... I did realize after making this (over a year ago I made this now) that the "yellow arc" would likely be something that happens around when Percy is dipped in the Styx, although I didn't add that. The weird off shooting lines were to be short stories, detailing Nico's time in Tartarus, his rescue of Hazel, a fic dealing with memory, and a shorter fic (may be 3-5 chapters or so) going through other adventures between the end of Pjo and the time we didn't see him in HoO (excluding Hazel and Tartarus which were to be seperate fics).

I have some aspects of things I was planning to write in the story that can be seen in my quick draft of Will's "origin story" here. Although this does mostly revolve around Will there's some discussion of their meeting, and how they met and grew to know one another. Will was also (in my story) to be an allegory of someone else from Nico's past.

I had also planned out a short one shot of an epilogue as well for Nico's story...

This is all to say though, despite how I may have sounded within this, I am still very much interested in a Nico series, and I think if Rick writes a solo book it should be the story of Nico's childhood- but I do think Rick would fuck it up irreparably, so in an ideal world I would write Nico's story... I would also trust @glassamphibians with the story, and I would trust them with characterization much more than myself too!

This was a lot and not exactly what you asked for so I'm going to stop now 😅

I'd also like to apologize for putting this in the tags without a "read more" although the length of some of the stuff I've seen in the Nico tag lately... I don't feel too bad, although I would like to thank anyone who has read this all!

[magnhild]

A Happy Review (kind of) of Ikenfell

Having ADHD means that I have a lot of trouble getting into new media if I’m hyperfixating on something else. As any follower of mine is no doubt aware, my current one is RWBY, and has been for a while. But with the show’s mid-volume hiatus underway, I ended up left in a void with nothing to fill it.

Two days ago, I had a friend reccomened to me a little indie RPG called Ikenfell. I’d never heard of it, but I was told it has a great number of LGBT+ characters, options to make gameplay easier, content warnings, and music composed by the great  Aivi & Surasshu, who you might know as the composers of Steven Universe. This grabbed my interest, but I found myself sketpical that it could be that good, and that the representation, in particular, was largely exaggerated and probably just mild implication. 

Nevertheless, I started the game the next day, intending to play for an hour or so before putting it down again, warning my friend that I was unlikely to get too invested in it.

Almost exactly 12 hours later, I found myself watching the epilogue play out with misty eyes, having finished the game and having gotten deeply pulled into it.

This game was everything it was promised to me and so much more. Between the representation, the accessibility options, and the overall charm of the game, Ikenfell ended up being laregly enjoyable and something truly special; a hidden gem in the plethora of video games released in 2020.

The game follows Maritte Hildegaard, a non-magical teenage girl, on the search for her yes-magical sister Safina, a witch attending the school of Ikenfell. A basic premise on the surface, but the story itself has a lot of neat little twists and turns that all come together for a satisfying story worthy of being animated someday. It probably won’t be, but hey, I can’t dream, right?

To begin with, I didn’t find myself too fond of the battle system, not because I found it flawed, but simply because I personally struggle with video game battles and they can also cause me a great deal of pain due to my connective tissue disorder and chronic shoulder pain. I was getting way too frustrated, even agaisnt smaller enemies, and was ready to put the game down after yet another failure agaisnt the same single boss. Tied alongside the fact you cannot see your enemy’s HP, making strategixing more difficult, I was ready to say that I wasn’t a huge fan of the game.

That is, until I found out about instant victory, an option in the settings that allows you to be given the chance to instantly skip literally any battle in the game, with no negative conequences and all of the rewards. For more avoid gamers, it might be tempting to mark this as a flaw that makes the game ‘too easy’, but is very much optional, and anyone who wants the challenge can play without it if they wish. But for disabled people like me, who also get easily stressed, it was an absolute Godsend that allowed me to focus more on the story and characters, which was what I really cared about.

On the note of characters, the representaion mentioned earlier is certianly no exxageration, with just about every named character being explicily LGBT+ in a way that I’ve never seen before in officially published media. I’m not just talking wlw and mlm characters, though there were plenty. No, the characters aren’t only diverse in sexuality, but in gender as well. Of the six playable characters, three- an entire half- of them are nonbinary. Several human nonbinary characters. And it goes even further- only one of these characters uses they/them pronouns. Why is that good? Because not all nonbinary people do. And that’s something that is severely overlooked by those with binary genders. One of them uses he/him pronouns, and the other uses ze/zir pronouns. You read that right. A main character in a video game, in media at all, that uses neopronouns. Now, I am fully aware that neopronouns have been used in media before; my own set were coined by a book, in fact. But in all of these cases that I’m aware of, they are used exclusively for non-human characters; aliens, bringing an implcation that neopronouns are nonhuman. This case, as far as I’m aware, is the first case that they are used to reflect and represent real human beings, and it is absolutely incredible. The LGBT+ representation in this game is amazing, but there is something very special and signifigant about a black, human, adult character, using neopronouns.

Even better yet is that this is all in the game completely casually, with no fanfare, no dramatic coming-out plotlines, no treatment as if it is anything but normal. Even the one instance of a character accidentally misgender another comes with a quick apology and correction with no big deal. Better yet is that terms like ‘gay’ and ‘nonbinary’ are explicitly used in-text as well, rather than avoiding the use of them as many other instances of LGBT+ characters in media do.

Aside from individual LGBT+ characters, the game also boasts five LGBT+ couples over the course of the story, though one is only sen in flashbacks and another is only mentioned between scenes. Nevertheless, it’s easy to become invested in the slight romantic aspects of the story.

SPOILERS AHEAD

One of these romances is between Ibn Oxley and Bax Twiford, and it’s the first one we see hinted at in the game. During the stoy’s climax, Bax is fatally wounded and I felt a heavy weight in the pit of my stomach, even tweeting an out-of-context ‘OH NO’ to confused and concerened followers. MLM couples in media are all-too-often doomed to fail, usually by way of having one half of the couple be killed off. I feared this would be the same case here, to the only MLM couple in the game, and resigned to it with a hevay heart.

Except, the game surprised me again, and saved Bax before he died, allowing for both characters to get their happy ending. In fact, all of the characters get at least somewhat of a happy ending, a refreshing detail for a sap like me. I was espeically pleased when I sat through the credits, praying for an epilogue that would confirm soemthing I was hoping for, being sure I wouldn’t get it, and then i got it. Every writing choice made felt like one of my own, albiet excuted better, with far more professionalism. It felt so utterly refreshing to have everything turn out the way I wanted it to.

Even decisons made outside of representaion satisified me, like Safina not being forgiven by Maritte after everything she’d done, including keeping Maritte’s entire existance from her friends. In many instances these days, it’s all-too-common for a character to do terrible things, only to be forgiven by everyone the moment they apologie, and it can be a bit frustrating if you’re someone who knows that nobody should ever feel obligated to forgive someone who hurt them, and that an apology is more than just saying ‘sorry’. It was yet another case of the story going exactly as I’d wanted it to.

END SPOILER WARNING

Ikenfell feels just like a fanfiction, and I mean that in the best possible way. Not because it’s exceedingly trope-y, or because it feels amature in any way, but because it doesn’t feel like something that was written for pleasing the (cishet and white) masses when it comes to its representation. The large majority of creators looking to publish their work will avoid going all-out with representation in fear of the classic ‘it’s not realistic’ critisism, with only fanfiction authors usually having the guts to make all of their characters LGBT+, because they’re writing for themselves and a small audience of people who enjoy the same things as them. Ikenfell has this same feel; it wasn’t created to be a huge, wildly popular, chart-topping game, it was created to be something that the people it represented could enjoy. It is the purest kind of video game, not one made for profit or attention, but simply because the creators wanted to create it. The fanfiction vibe also makes a lot of sense, considering the fact that was inspired by them- which may explain why I, laregly a fanfiction writer, agree with so much of its choices.

The game may not be everyone’s thing, but if you’re disabled, LGBT+, a POC, of even just someone who ejoys cute fantasy RPGs, I implore you to buy and play the game, because even my words can’t fully capture what an incredible game it is. There’s stuff I haven’t even mentioned, like the beuatiful music, the great visuals, and the many, many cats, so please, go and check it out for yourself.

Thank you for reading, and thank you to every single person who worked on Ikenfell for crafting such a lovely and inclusive game.

[quillandink333]

Scarlet Carnations ~ Part III

BotW Link X Zelda ~ Detective AU

Rating: T

Word Count: 2k

WARNINGS: death, murder, loss, trauma, blood and gore, terrorism, organized crime, self-harm

Summary: Inspector Zelda Hyrule, assisted by the faithful Constable Link Fyori, is infamous for cracking the most confounding of cases in a town dominated by crime. Her latest assignment is to solve the murder of her own godmother, Impa Sheikah, the late CEO of Sheikah Tech. Incorporated, while staying under the radar of the dreaded Yiga organization.

Part I • Part II • Part III • Part IV • Part V • Part VI • Part VII • Epilogue • Masterlist

The investigation was still underway a week or so later, still without even a semblance of a lead to go on, or at least not a favourable one. Auntie Purah still had yet to take the Slate into the lab as she’d promised, which was understandable. She was still in deep mourning, after all. I, however, still got up at six o’clock each and every day to make my way to the site, as if the murderer would one day just walk out into the open if I waited long enough.

Truth be told, despite my conscious efforts to suppress it, a part of me deep down was growing weary of one fruitless search after another. Most of the cases I’d led up to this one had been closed within a maximum three days. Admittedly I’d even begun to consider ways to dispose of the fatal evidence I’d been carrying with me since the start of all this. No one but Paya and I knew of its existence, and no one but us would ever have to. Besides, if these egregious felonies truly were the designs of the organization—which they had to be—there was no way I’d ever find any clues leading toward the perpetrator’s true identity, let alone that of their ever elusive boss.

And yet, every morning when I returned to the scene of the crime, with officers bustling about and those who remained of my family sitting quietly in another room, I was reminded of my ultimate purpose. It wasn’t a matter of being able or unable to catch my godmother’s killer. It was one of necessity. Letting them roam the streets as they pleased was not even a part of the equation. I hadn’t spent the better part of the last decade toiling away to reach my current level of authority as a detective investigator simply to throw it all away as soon as my will was tested. That wasn’t what Auntie Impa, nor what Mother, would’ve wanted. I had to uncover the truth, no matter the cost.

What happened next, however, would make my distress up until then seem almost laughable.

I was made aware of it via wire on one muggy afternoon at my office, when I’d decided to work on typewriting up some reports. I picked up the phone only to hear the wails of one distraught Auntie Purah on the other end.

“Zelda, it’s terrible!” she cried. “The Slate—Impa’s Slate—I’ve looked everywhere, and so have Paya and Symin and all the men here on duty, but I—it’s...we can’t—we haven’t...” The poor, old woman was hyperventilating, creating awful static noises through the speaker’s papery membrane.

“Auntie, it’s okay. Calm down,” I urged gently. “Take a few deep breaths.”

“Alright...” A few moments of silence went by before I heard her voice again. “Thank you, dear.”

“Not at all. Now, what were you saying about the Slate?”

“It’s been stolen.”

I froze, breath stagnant and eyes glued to the edge of my desk. “It’s—what?”

“Stolen,” she repeated, only deepening the pit forming in my stomach, from where my heart was now pounding. “Right out from under our noses. We’ve searched high and low for it, but there’s been no sign of it, or the thief.”

I had to reign in my voice before I’d start shouting at her. “H-How can you be sure it was stolen?” The vigilant Link’s eyes now bore into me with intensity from his place by the file cabinets.

“The lock on the safe,” blubbered my auntie, “the one in the study that it’s always kept in. You know the one?”

“Yes?”

“It was broken, and the safe was empty.”

“But...that’s impossible.”

“Precisely!” she cried, giving me a start. “I still haven’t the foggiest how they did it.”

“I’ll be there in twenty.”

With that, I hung up and prepared for immediate departure, my assistant just a few paces behind me. I had to see this for myself.

Surely enough, when we arrived, the safe’s lock was destroyed beyond repair, and there was nothing but dust to be found inside. Unsurprisingly, the thief had been careful to leave no fingerprints behind, just as the killer had been. For now, though, it was too soon to say for certain that the same individual was behind both crimes.

Upon closer inspection, it seemed the lock mechanism had been melted. My eyes widened. “That’s not something you see every day.” Constable Fyori crouched down beside me, then gave a similar reaction when he noticed the cause of my astonishment.

The thief had to have been someone with access to a welding torch or something along those lines. There certainly weren’t many who fit that description, save for the police. In fact, the whole reason they were issued out to a select few officers was for this very purpose, but situations requiring said officers to break locks such as this one using such extreme methods were few and far between. Nevertheless, the possibility stood.

It was for this reason that I finally gave in and decided to take up the case with the chief detective once we’d finished here. As always, Constable Fyori accompanied me thereto.

Chief Bosphoramus’ office was neither too grand nor too modest, not unlike my own, though it still clearly belonged to someone of high rank. It resided on the third floor of the three-storey building where my dear colleague and I made our livelihoods, boasting a broad view of the deceivingly peaceful streets below.

“It seems UC3680G662LL was the only officer on the scene who was equipped with a cutting torch,” relayed the old man, hunched over the records lain across his desk. “Unfortunately, however, he resigned just yesterday.”

I waited a number of seconds for him to follow up with something useful, but to no avail. “So...what? You’re saying we can’t go question him now? Because he ran away?”

He clasped his fingers together in front of him, looking at me like an elementary school principal. “That is what I am saying, yes.”

I wanted to growl like a bear as imitated by a child, but I held it in. “You do realize what this means, don’t you?” I scoffed. “No doubt he was a member of the organization sent to steal the Slate after killing its owner.”

“Now you listen here, Inspector.” The chief’s tone turned serious. I closed my mouth. “You of all people should know that not a single square inch of this town is safe. Not even this precinct.”

“Yes, but Sir, surely you agree that this entire case has ‘Yiga’ written all over—”

“Are you mad?!”

His thundering voice made Link and I jump. The room fell silent, the chief’s eyes flickering between the door and the open window behind him.

Then he rose from his seat to close the shutters. “Have you some sort of death wish?” he continued at an infinitesimal volume in comparison.

I bit my tongue, restraining the urge to retort with, “Whose fault is that?” for I knew I would only be spinning my wheels. There’d once been a saying in this city: “When one sheep leads the way, all the rest follow.” And Chief Detective Bosphoramus was a perfect reflection of this. Every last member of the force was the same. Weak-willed curs. Shirking from their sworn duties and hiding away behind their shields of specious ignorance.

But despite the virus of cowardice festering throughout the bureau, my partner’s lasting air of calm resignation reminded me that no one could truly blame those affected by it.

The power that the Yiga organization possessed over the town was beyond compare. Those on City Council were nothing more than their puppets, and likewise were the police. Fear and massacre were the whips they raised to drive us all into submission and to punish any and all who had the will remaining to fight. But the one group who’d dared to challenge their might, who’d stood tall ever in the face of their tyranny, had been my godmother’s company. Thanks to her intelligent mind and righteous heart, the people had been given access to technology that would keep them safe, to a degree, from crime, and little by little, the company had developed into a beacon of hope for the town and its inhabitants. Until now.

Now, that hope had been snuffed out, like it had never been anything more than a week and vulnerable candle flame, flickering faint against the darkness of obscurity, in the first place.

Later that evening, when my gaze happened upon the knife block sitting on my kitchen counter at home, my steps halted. The scars on my arms left over from my last couple of years in secondary school—the period in my life following the yet unexplained events that had taken away the one I’d cherished most—had only just begun to fade. Even so...

I shook my head, turning my back to the kitchen. But then, I couldn’t help but look over my shoulder once more. I recalled the rush of adrenaline that took hold each time my skin was breached by icy steel. It was true that letting my emotions control me would get me nowhere, but maybe...maybe just this once, I could at least do something to assuage them.

Then the image of the gaping, dark red hole running straight through Auntie Impa’s neck flashed before my eyes. I covered my mouth, quickly swallowing the bile rising up from the bottom of my throat. The idea slipped my mind that very instant.

It wasn’t until the following day’s investigation that a substantial piece of the puzzle finally revealed itself to me.

For it to have taken a whole two days to find wasn’t all that unbelievable. Even I had to admit, although my stepsister was a spineless, tattling suck-up who’d always received far more credit and affection than she was worth, no one could have imagined her ever turning criminal.

Even so, I was certain that what I discovered there in her bedroom went against the expectations of all. Upon my entering, a faint glow of teal and tangerine peaking through the floorboards caught my eye. I went to lift the plank doing such poor work of hiding the thing from sight. There it was, unscratched and in perfect working condition, its screen lighting up and displaying that dastardly riddle I’d been confronted with several days prior and still didn’t know the answer to.

Although the mystery of where it had disappeared to had been solved, its reason for being here of all places was still unclear. Why would Paya have gone to such lengths just to get her hands on the Slate? It was difficult to imagine there being any information contained therein that she would want so direly to be kept secret from the world. She and her grandmother had been close since before I’d become a part of their family as a six-year-old.

Then something hard and marble-sized went flying across the floor when struck by the pointed toe of my shoe. I gave chase, soon realizing what it was when it slowed to a halt just before the south-facing wall of the room:

A bullet.

I didn’t even need to perform a striation comparison; anyone could clearly see that it matched the one I’d pried out of my mother’s memorial shrine. Whatever blood might’ve been here at one point must have simply been wiped up, and she must have stolen Link’s revolver with whatever methods she’d used to steal the Slate. Without a doubt, this room was the true crime scene I’d sought after since day one of the investigation.

But even in the face of this victory, I could hear the voices of those who would oppose me ringing in my ears. “Paya’s the mastermind?” they jeered. “Isn’t that a bit far-fetched?” But at this point, this case had already pushed me far beyond the boundaries of my patience. I didn’t have a single damn left to give about how flawed my logic might or might not have been. All that mattered now was that I had a suspect, and so help me, if I was correct in my line of thinking as suggested by the evidence, this criminal would receive no mercy.

[taeyongdoyoung]

summary: the forest is your only escape from the everyday troubles with your family until you find danger lurking behind the trees. or rather, danger finds you. your fateful encounter with the vampire ravn leaves you wishing for a different life. you strike an unexpected deal with the stranger that will soon turn into something more…

pairing: vampire!ravn x reader

side characters: leedo and seoho

genre: vampire!au, angst, romance, humour

warnings: kidnapping, cleithrophobia, manipulation, lies, human trashnaming, blood mentions, stabbing, swearing (like twice)

word count: 2.5k

author’s note: @mariuscheng i deeply apologize, you’ll see why *mwah*

part one 🌙 part two 🌙 part three 🌙 part four 🌙 part five 🌙 part six  🌙 part seven 🌙 part eight 🌙 part nine 🌙 part ten 🌙 part twelve 🌙epilogue

Minutes turned into hours and hours into days. You began to lose track of time. You had no idea how long you’d spent in this terrifying place where Leedo had taken you to. You just wanted to go back home. Not where your parents were, no. That had never felt like home. You wanted to be back in Ravn’s castle, in the safety of his arms. He was the one…well, not person, but rather being who had treasured you and cared for you like nobody else. 

And no matter how hard you tried to convince Leedo that you would never change your mind and love him the way he wanted you to, he just refused to let you go. Which only frustrated you further. You felt like a bird in a cage and that feeling was the worst in the world. You needed to think of a way to escape. But how? These metal bars were so hard. And Leedo never let you out of sight. True, he never physically harmed you or forced you to do anything. 

But the mere fact he had kidnapped you, taken you away from the place you called home was enough of a red flag to change your friendly feelings for him into something that resembled distrust and annoyance. Since you couldn’t find a way to escape, your only hope was that Ravn wouldn’t give up on you. Maybe he would come for you. 

As more days passed by, you realized you were on your own. Harbouring hopes was foolish and would do you no good. You could either die or make peace with your current situation. Or…you could try something else entirely. Something wicked and a bit cruel, but it could work, nonetheless. And since you weren’t in the mood for dying and you weren’t one to give up so easily, you decided to go for it.

“I changed my mind,” you told Leedo one day, the lie coming out easily. “I’m willing to give you a chance. I can try…to love you like you need me to.”

Leedo eyed you suspiciously. He doubted the sincerity of your words. And for a good reason.

“Do you expect me to let you go, then? Just like that?”

Actually, it wouldn’t be such a bad idea. But of course not. You weren’t that stupid.

“Someday, you will,” you responded, attempting to sound absolutely convinced by the validity of your statement. “Give it time.”

A desperate wish for it to be true appeared in Leedo’s stare. Good. Let him dream.

“Really? You’re willing to try?”

“I am if you are,” you lied once more. What’s another one? You’ve come so far…

“What about the vampire you claim you care about?” Leedo reminded you, which briefly troubled you. But you had to play your cards right if you wanted out of here. You had to deceive Leedo successfully in order to go back to the one you truly loved.

“Well, you were right about him. He’s just a cold-skinned bloodsucker. You could be so much better for me,” the words sent pangs of guilt down your spine as you pronounced them. You didn’t mean any of it, of course. But you had to try your best to convince Leedo you did. If you couldn’t escape on your own, you could manipulate him into letting you go. You only hoped that you were good enough an actress to make this work.

“I’m glad you’re finally beginning to see the error of your ways. We could be so good together, you and I.”

You resisted the urge to vomit. He was delusional. But you had to play along.

“Sure, we could. Now, tell me,” you murmured in what you were wishing sounded like a seductive voice, “What does a girl like me have to do to get some fresh air and a bit of sun around here?”

Leedo laughed. He obviously wasn’t as dumb as you’d hoped he’d turn out to be.

“Not yet. But we’ll get there, I promise. I’ve been very patient with you. What’s a couple more weeks?”

Weeks? If you had to spend another night in this godforsaken place, you would die. You had to get out of here soon or you would lose your mind.

“Right,” you attempted not to sound too crestfallen about it. “Well, until then, we could get to know each other better.”

Leedo smiled.

“What do you want to know?”

🌙🌙🌙

Ravn’s POV

As soon as I found Seoho, I told him everything that had happened and begged him to help me find her. I couldn’t live without her and I had no intention of letting her go. He listened to my pleas calmly, without saying a word. When I was finally done, he spoke:

“Of course, I will help you,” Seoho started. “Even though I don’t trust humans…”

“I’m sensing there’s a big but coming.”

“But I’m afraid we might be too late.”

“Too late?” I whispered, immediately panicking. “Is she dead? Did the werewolf do something to her?”

Seoho shook his head in a composed manner.

“That’s not what I meant. Too late as in…she might have betrayed your secret. You could be in danger, Ravn. You don’t want what almost happened to Xion to happen to you, do you?”

“Y/N’s not like that, I swear. She would never do this to me.”

“Alright, then. Do you have something of hers so that I could cast a locating spell?”

I nodded and handed him one of the books I’d gifted her a while ago. She would read from it every night before sleep. I figured it was her most prized possession.

“Shakespeare, huh?” Seoho chuckled. “Okay, just…go sit in the other room, don’t distract me and I’ll call you when I’m ready.”

I agreed, even though it was impossible for me to sit and stay calm in this current predicament. I was losing my mind. I had to find her soon. What if she was hurt? What if…I never got the chance to see her again? The chance to…tell her everything she meant to me…Tell her…

“She’s near the river in that forest of yours. In some sort of…prison cave,” Seoho informed me a while later.

I wasted no time and stormed out of the room without even bothering to thank my best friend. He’d understand, I told myself. But before I could make it outside of his house, Seoho had teleported next to me and grabbed my hand.

“Where do you think you’re going, lad?” he scolded me. “I’m coming with you.”

“I can’t ask you to…risk exposure. I know how much your secret means to you.”

Seoho obviously disagreed with me.

“You’re not asking. I’ll come on my own free will. You’re my best friend, Ravn. If you care about that foolish human, I feel it is my duty to help you out.”

“Seoho, you really don’t have to…”

“No time for arguing,” he shut me up. “And besides, me teleporting us there would be much faster than your vampire speed.”

I laughed wholeheartedly at his sensible observation.

“Lead the way, powerful wizard.”

Before I could blink, we were standing near the river. Closeby, there was indeed a cave that I had never seen before. I had heard rumours of its existence but never laid eyes upon it. So strange…I rushed ahead, eager to save Y/N from whatever torments that…dog had put her through. But before I could do so, Seoho stopped me once again.

“What now?” I complained because of his apparent eagerness to slow me down.

“Before we go in there, there’s something you should now.”

“Just say it already, the tension is killing me,” I groaned.

“Ravn. You’re already dead,” Seoho reminded me.

“Not helping, Seoho,” I sighed.

“Okay, okay, sorry. Y/N must be nearby so I…heard a fraction of her memories. She had just told that werewolf something very disturbing about you. I’m not sure I can even say it, it’s too vile.”

“Just go ahead,” I rolled my eyes. What could possibly be worse than losing her?

“She said and I quote here, so please, don’t get mad at the messenger ‘He’s just a cold-skinned bloodsucker. You could be so much better for me.’ Listen, man, it’s highly possible that her and the werewolf have been working against you. I told you that humans can’t be trusted!”

I shook my head, refusing to believe him.

“No, that can’t be true. Are you sure you heard it correctly? It must have been the wind or…”

Seoho, however, was determined that she had, in fact said that.

“I’m telling you, it’s best we get out of here. It could be a trap. We don’t know what we’re walking into, Ravn! Humans are such wicked creatures, it’s not safe.”

“No, no,” I repeated helplessly. “I can’t just leave her here. I love her, okay? And even if she doesn’t love me back, even if she did say these things about me, I still can’t let anything happen to her.”

Seoho scoffed in disbelief.

“It’s your funeral, mate.”

I shrugged.

“Like you said earlier. I’m already dead.”

I hurried towards the entrance of the cave.

“Then I’d rather die by your side than just stand outside like a coward!” Seoho yelled right behind me.

“If you’re scared for your life, you don’t have to come in. I won’t blame you, I’ll understand,” I reassured my friend.

“I’m not scared for my life. It’s you I’m worried about,” Seoho replied.

“While I’m sincerely touched,” I squeezed his arm. “I am perfectly capable of taking care of myself.”

“Not against a werewolf, you’re not. Dumbass,” he added that last part affectionately.

“Well, two dumb brains are always better than one,” I joked and the two of us went inside.

🌙🌙🌙

Reader’s POV

This shit wasn’t working. You were being so nice and pliable to Leedo and he still hadn’t let you go! Ugh, men! You wanted out so badly but you couldn’t risk being too forthright about it or it would ruin all the careful planning, all the progress you’d been making so far. Just a few more days, you kept telling myself. Just a few more and he’d believe you. You had to be strong enough to continue with the lies, with the whole acting scheme. They would be successful. Or you didn’t know what you’d do with yourself. You missed everything so badly. You missed holding Ravn’s hand. You missed reading books in his big…library. You missed making flower crowns for him. You even missed him drinking your blood. To think that the one time you’d found a home for yourself…only to have it taken away from you so cruelly. It was really unfair. You had never before been in a situation where you had to deceive someone on purpose. You had never wished ill upon anyone. So, for whatever crimes you were being punished, you couldn’t help but get frustrated by the injustice of it all. Just when you were getting entirely lost in the memories, Leedo interrupted your thoughts.

“You know…I was thinking we could have a walk. I won’t let you out of my sight, so don’t try anything stupid.”

Was this actually happening? Or were you dreaming?

“Of course not. I told you already. I changed my mind.”

“Good,” Leedo gave you an encouraging smile, which you desperately wanted to wipe off his smug face. No sooner had he unlocked the metal door leading to the outside world, to the light, to freedom, than you heard unexpected noises coming from somewhere nearby. Was it possible? Had he really come for you?

Seconds later, you were greeted by a heavenly sight. Ravn and Seoho were only a couple of metres away from you. Never before had you felt so grateful to see such familiar faces! You immediately forgot all about your plan to deceive Leedo and rushed into Ravn’s arms. He let you hold him but didn’t say a word, simply welcoming you silently. But why? You had missed the sound of his voice.

“It was a trick, wasn’t it?” Leedo finally realized. “You never loved me, you just said all these things so I’d let you go, didn’t you?”

You gulped nervously and even though you didn’t want to leave the comfort of Ravn’s arms, you felt like you had to confront Leedo yourself.

“Yes, it was all a lie. I never meant any of it,” you confessed.

Ravn gave Seoho a pointed look, which at the time, you didn’t understand.

“Well, I don’t care. If I can’t have you, then neither can he,” Leedo attacked Ravn before you could register what was happening. You wished you could do something other than beg them to stop, but you were so scared that you could barely move. They were going to kill each other right in front of you and you were too frozen to think. Luckily, Seoho’s reflexes worked faster than yours. He hurriedly got between them, trying to make them stop. However, before he could do so, Leedo accidentally pierced him in the stomach with a blade that had somehow appeared from thin air and Seoho stumbled onto the ground. You ran to his side and knelt down next to the magician.

“Oh, God, are you okay?” you asked.

Seoho nodded weakly.

“I didn’t mean to stab him,” Leedo defended himself. “I meant to kill the bloodsucker!”

“Oh, right, ‘cause that makes us all feel so much better!” you hissed sarcastically.

“Just…stop fighting and ask the girl who she wants to be with, you imbeciles!” Seoho murmured before passing out.

“Shit,” you and Ravn swore simultaneously, desperately trying to help Seoho regain consciousness.

“You didn’t answer the question,” Leedo pointed out.

“Is that really your biggest concern right now?” you snapped at him. “Seoho could literally die because of you!”

Leedo looked away as if it wasn’t any of his concern. That bastard…

“I want to stay with Ravn and help Seoho, in case it wasn’t obvious,” you spelled it out.

Leedo nodded and started walking away wordlessly. In the meantime, you were pressing your hand against Seoho’s wound so that he wouldn’t die from the blood loss.

“If I ever see you again, I will kill you,” Ravn vowed, giving Leedo an icy glare.

“Likewise,” Leedo roared and left you all in that damn cave.

Once he was out of earshot, you noticed Ravn slowly backing away from Seoho.

“There’s so much blood,” he panted weakly.

“Fuck, I almost forgot,” you were worried for a second that Ravn would lose control. Despite the fact that Seoho was his best friend, it was only natural that he was disturbed by the smell and look of it.

“I don’t want to hurt him,” Ravn closed his eyes, pained and ashamed to admit that he was so easily affected.

“You won’t. You should get out of here and bring me supplies from your castle. Herbs, medicine, anything you can find,” you sensibly suggested. “It’s my fault he got hurt in the first place. If it hadn’t been for my friendship with Leedo, none of this would have happened,” you couldn’t help but blame yourself for it all.

“It’s not your fault you see the good in people. And…I’ll do what you asked. We’ll talk more when I return, promise.”

You nodded.

“I’ll stay with Seoho and try to stop the bleeding.”

“Thank you,” Ravn said and ran outside at the speed of light.

To be continued…

[shijiujun]

[ENG] History3: Trapped Manhua - NEW EPILOGUE!

DREAMS DO COME TRUE GUYS MORE CONTENT?! It’s written by the same author as the novel and the chapter is focused on like smut, we all know how that all goes but oh wells I’m just happy to see some new content for now XD

－ Summary: Shao Fei and Zhao Zi get hurt in two separate occasions, their boyfriends find out and drag them home for a discussion (in bed). This is set after Epilogues 1 and 2 from the main novel (i.e. Tang Yi is already out of jail, Shao Fei is Captain etc.)

－ Translated Manhua FOR THIS EPILOGUE (PG13 scenes only): HERE

*Translations for both are mine, don’t own the content or stuff, only the translations!

=======

In which those handcuffs make a cameo for TangFei, and Jack, despite saying that he’s gone all legal now, still has some brothers under him at his command XD

Both couples have already been together for 7-8 years at the point of this epilogue

Highlights: Tang Yi buys underwear for Shao Fei apparently, and Xing Tian Meng is still well and alive (although mostly legal and low profile now), Jack still has a bunch of minions working for him 

Warnings: Firstly, this is written by the same author, who’s really not that good at smut (I see SOME improvement) and she obviously has a formula for the smut, and you’ll get what I mean because translation is one thing, but the smut for TangFei and LiKe are not varied because... it’s a formula XD ⇨ Okay not sure if it’s counted as dub-con because Shao Fei & Zhao Zi do say ‘no’ a few times but I don’t know if their heart was in it and anyway, this is just for safety! ⇨ Also Jack is a tad bit unsanitary and you’ll get what i mean when you venture into the smut, and I don’t how I feel about that smut scene to be honest, just treat it as PWP and don’t think too much into it (advice I should take myself)

Notes: I’ve adjusted some phrases for smoother transitions by personal choice. Also, Jack is referred to as Fang Liang Dian, his birth name throughout the chapter, but I’ve changed it to Jack for easy reading as well.

Full chapter under the cut

===

Ximending

Under a building veranda, a tall and handsome man stands next to a pillar in the pedestrian zone and ignores all the stares full of open admiration and envy coming at him from his surroundings. He looks at the watch on his left wrist and frowns.

“Tang Yi!”

A refreshing, clear voice sounds from afar and the man’s wrinkles from the frown he has on his face finally eases as he stares at the other, reminding someone that he is late.

“Seven minutes.”

Meng Shao Fei grins at him and says, “Sorry, sorry, I was delayed a few minutes by a part-timer’s survey. How about later after dinner I’ll treat you to your ‘elderly’ tea, the one that is expensive and takes a long time to savour.”

“That’s called taste.”

The person who was originally standing in front of Tang Yi suddenly furrows his brows, then takes half a step back to the side, intentionally putting some distance between them both before saying, “Let’s go, I’m starving.”

“Mnn,” Tang Yi does not notice the movement, only nodding his head and making a noise of assent.

“Thief!”

Just as they are heading towards the restaurant where they have a reservation, a woman’s screams sound in the bustling pedestrian walkway. The people who are near her startle and begin to look around them. Just as the thief is about to blend into the crowds, taking the opportunity to escape, two figures from two different directions rush towards him. One of them strikes him in the abdomen, while the other takes out a pair of handcuffs and cuffs him around his right hand, which is holding onto a butterfly knife.

“Police! Don’t move!”

The shorter one with the handcuffs shouts at him, and once the thief hears these words, he goes white with fear immediately. He thought that he could easily get away but who knew he would be caught red-handed by the police?

“Zhao Zi?”

Shao Fei picks up the pink-coloured handbag from the red cobblestone walkway, patting at it a few times to get rid of the dust and looks at the other person who has helped him to restrain the thief, stunned.

“Huh? Shao Fei? What are you doing here?”

Zhao Li An is also looking at Shao Fei in surprise, not expecting to meet the Captain of Investigative Team Three here.

“I should be the one asking that question, what are you doing here?”

Zhao Zi immediately scratches at the back of his head and laughs, “Jack said that there’s a pretty good restaurant around here, so...”

Shao Fei points behind him and replies, “Tang Yi also said that there is a restaurant here that is famous for its Sichuan cuisine, could it be... the same place?”

“Chuan La Zi restaurant?”

“Damn, it really is the same one!”

“...”

The perpetrator who has been cuffed looks at the person on the left, then looks at the person on the right and his heart feels as if thousands of horses are speeding through, thudding hard. Fuck! How is he this unlucky? Not only has he run into the police, it’s two police officers at the same time.

“Shorty, you actually dare to leave me? ... huh? Ex-boss? Officer Meng?”

An eye-catching mop of red hair finally pushes through the crowd as Jack comes up behind Zhao Zi, seeing two familiar faces before he can even protest against his lover’s actions of abandoning him to rush over and arrest a robber.

“...”

Tang Yi stands at the front of the crowd that has gathered, his expression terrible as he glares at Fang Liang Dian, who has actually reserved the same restaurant as he. 

A brief opportunity arises seeing that the two officers are distracted by the sudden situation before them, the thief tightens his grip around the butterfly knife in the hand that is locked in the cuffs, the knife that Zhao Zi has forgotten to disarm from him. He mercilessly slashes at Zhao Zi’s arm and shoves him away hard, before rushing into the crowd and disappearing.

“Uwah!”

“Zhao Zi!”

Shao Fei immediately reacted after being shoved aside, but he is still one step too late and all he can do is watch as the thief disappears into the crowd.

“Shorty! Are you okay?”

Jack holds onto Zhao Zi, who’s pressing a hand over his wound to stop it from bleeding and he cannot be bothered to chase after the culprit, who has already made it a distance away. He has already committed that face to memory anyway, and it’s only a matter of time before he’s caught.

“I’m fine.”

As his supervisor, once Shao Fei has made sure that his stupid junior is alright, he lightly slaps Zhao Zi on the back of his head and angrily says, “Go back and write your reflection essay 50 times! Let’s see if you’ll still dare to not follow protocol and not be prepared to disarm the culprit!”

“50 times? Hey, Ah Fei, how can you be like this? You were also the same the last time-”

“Last. Time?” the Xing Tian Meng leader at the side asks coldly before Zhao Zi has even finished speaking.

“That’s right, the previous supermarket robbery case, Ah Fei was also punched by the robber.”

“Zhao Li An, shut up,”  Shao Fei says in a low voice as he crazily waves at him for a pass, but is still unable to keep his stupid junior from exposing him.

Tang Yi grabs onto Officer Meng’s wrist with a somber expression, “Go back with me.”

“I’m so hungry, can you let me eat my fill first and then I’ll go home and let you scold me, okay?”

“Not okay.”

“It’s so embarrassing for me like this, let me go and I can walk myself, hey, Tang Yi... Tang Yi... Tang...”

The strategy of crying for mercy not effective, Team Three’s Captain is dragged away from the pedestrian zone under the eyes of the audience from the crowd.

“Haha, he deserves it,” Zhao Zi laughs gleefully, but his smile falters once he remembers the punishment he’s about to face and complains under his breath, “50 times... a reflection essay...”

“Shorty.”

“What?”

“I’ve cancelled our reservation at the restaurant.”

“Why?”

Hearing that the delicious feast he was anticipating has now been cancelled, Zhao Zi immediately turns around and glares at the smiling man in anger.

Under Jack’s charming smile, a chill runs down Zhao Li An’s spine as he shudders, and the man says, “I think we too have to go back, and have a really good discussion.”

After so many years, Zhao Li An immediately realizes that something is amiss with the current atmosphere hearing the heavily-stressed response. Just as he’s about to make a run for it, his tall and handsome lover catches him around the waist and lifts him over his shoulder. Under the watchful gazes of the crowd, he walks back to where his bike is parked.

===

Shao Fei’s Home

“Tang Yi, mmm... mm-nn...”

Inside the bedroom, the furious man decides to just use his own lips to block the words continuously coming out of the other man’s mouth. All that comes out of his mouth are excuses anyway and it’s nothing that Tang Yi wants to hear, so Shao Fei might as well shut up and make the noises that Tang Yi likes to hear instead.

“Tang Yi, listen to me...”

⬇⬇⬇⬇⬇⬇⬇⬇⬇

Read the complete chapter in Google Drive - Link in Source

[Do read the warnings above before venturing into this!]

[st-just]

Semi-coherent thoughts on The Way of Kings

So clearly Sanderson improved significantly as an author between series, or possibly I just clicked with this aesthetic more, but either way I liked this book a lot more than Mistborn. (Though I still don’t think any single book really needs to be 1300 pages). More in the back-half than in the front, admittedly, but even the table-setting was interesting. The final climax to the War plotline was really well done, if a bit Hollywood (but then, I suppose that’s not really something you can sit down to a multi-thousand page heroic epic fantasy series and complain about). Though honestly by the end I was nearly as invested in Shallan’s plotline - the final reveal with the parshmen was really well done, though gonna try real hard not to think too deeply about the subtext there. But still, the entire climax just made me grin like a fool, and the epilogue was a legitimate surprise, in a good way.

But, like, so the Parshendi are clearly, self-evidently in the right as far as the war goes, right? Like, there were plenty of humanizing hints through the book and I’m really hoping that they weren’t just a red herring for the leadup to the big reveal. And, semi-related, but I feel like I have to say – ‘docile, perfect slaves who will just sit until they’re killed by the elements without instruction, distinguished from real humans primarily by their bizarre skin, turn out to be the remnants of some ancient evil who, under the right circumstances, will rise up in revolt and slaughter the masters who foolishly let down their guard.’ C’mon man. Really?

Anyway, given the impression I’d gotten of Sanderson – both from people online talking about him and from reading Mistborn, I am really pleasantly surprised how, well, magical the magic felt (well, less so in Szeth’s POV, but even there to an extent). Kaladin’s gradual (via other people repeatedly pointing it out to him) was especially great. Though on that count I probably like soulcasting rather more than binding or whatever it’s called, entirely because of all the weird associated mysticism, and also because it seems to be very nearly FMA-alchemy.

Of the three main POVs, I’ll admit Dalinor’s was the least interesting to me by some margin (and I honestly can’t even remember how to spell his son’s name. But, like, the jock prince even less so). Still, the ending where he launches a coup d’etat and forces the king to declare him Shogun after credibly threatening his death was great. Although, yes, if I was the king I would probably be a bit paranoid in the situation where I have no land or power of my own, my bodyguards are entirely loyal to my uncle – one of the great landed magnates, suffering from messianic delusions/visions, not even hiding his relationship with my mother the queen dowager, just forced me to sign a deeply unpopular order granting him control of other nobles’ armed retainers – and will do absolutely nothing if he beats me half to death to make a point. Seems, uh, less than ideal.

I’ve been repeatedly told that Kaladin is basically the book’s main character, and that me getting more invested in his arc than the others is basically things going as intended. So, well, that pretty much worked. Though I’ll say right not that I do not remember a single name of any of his bridge-buddies. They’re fine as quirky supporting cast, granted, but that’s about it. Syl’s great though, easily in the running for best non-POV character (the spren generally are a really interesting bit of worldbuilding). I’m sure it’s just because I read Mistborn so recently (and, honestly, because both their names start with K), but he remained me of Kelseir to a certain extent. The same arc of ‘embittered cynic learns that not every privileged noble of the horrifying oppressive system he suffers under is evil, merely the vast majority’, anyway. That and the fact that he also seems to have a cult now, though I guess he got his by accident.

Shallan’s arc really grew on me once we got back to it in part three – and I’d always liked it to begin with. Partially because intrigue and conspiracies are generally more interesting than action scenes and this had one without the other, and partially because Jasnah is the other candidate for best supporting character (sorry, I’m obligated to love the insufferably too-smart-for-her-own-good atheist historian, its in my contract). Though I am looking forward to Shallan’s next conversation with her brothers “Bad news, I do not have a soulcaster. Good news, I’m now an apprentice wizard. No, I will not be coming home.”

I am more than a bit confused about the exact timeline of all this mythic prehistory, though I’m sure that’s at least partially intentional. Still, very curious if God’s death (or, well, I suppose Ahura Mazda’s, given the whole dualism thing) is the cause, result, or unrelated to all but one of his immortal hero-saints deciding to say ‘fuck this’ when it was time to go back to being tortured/fight in hell for another few (decades? Centuries? Millennia?).

Also unclear on what sort of timeframe all this is supposed to have happened in. Hundreds of years ago? Thousands? Tens of thousands? It seems like it went ‘mythical dawn kingdoms’ ---> ‘global theocracy’ ---> ‘current setup’, which doesn’t seem like much change. But, like, it’s a thousand page high fantasy book, political situations persisting for thousands of years wouldn’t exactly be surprising.

But yeah, anyway, good book. Will need to grab the sequel sometime soon. Though I should really take a break with some nonfiction first.