#also i was too lazy to post this until now whoops so enjoy the double posts!

[addcests]

you’re beautiful [ao3]

pairing DBrDom

words 913

summary  There were some things Doom Bringer and Dominator couldn’t see eye to eye on. Mundane, ordinary things such as whether cake with frosting was too sweet, or if coffee best served black or with cream and sugar, or even something so simple but personalized as the taste of their clothes. Little trivial differences that Doom Bringer could overlook. Things one would agree to disagree about.

note inspired by dbreater (@ twitter)’s work (link here)! with permission to post! :> thank you for the lovely add comics!

There were some things Doom Bringer and Dominator couldn’t see eye to eye on. Mundane, ordinary things such as whether cake with frosting was too sweet, or if coffee best served black or with cream and sugar, or even something so simple but personalized as the taste of their clothes. Little trivial differences that Doom Bringer could overlook. Things one would agree to disagree about.

But there was always the touchy topic of their scar.

When Doom Bringer ripped his shackles off, a brilliant and defiant show of his unadulterated freedom that he obtained for himself, Dominator had looked at him with such disdain. They had even fought about it, at first. But this was one topic they’d refuse to let go. Both too stubborn to understand the other at the time.

“It’s an eyesore, Psyker. Maybe it looks good on you,” and there was an unsaid brute such as yourself that Dominator did not tack on as he continued, “but I won’t subject myself to something so imperfect. I look in the mirror and—it’s ugly.” And he would tug his turtleneck up, anything to hide the scar.

They’d argue so much after.

But with time, they would come to try to understand one another. They had to, to move forward from this.

But Dominator would of course still do all he could to hide the scar.

And Doom Bringer let him have that. After all, Dominator didn’t force him to change his stance on this and neither would he. Still, he couldn't help himself sometimes…

It was morning, and Doom Bringer was setting up the coffee for everyone, and for one particular caffeine fiend. He blinked the sleepiness from his eyes as he started the machine, opting for a glass of water himself. Leaning back against the counter, he took absentminded little sips and waited. 

Soon, Dominator waltzed in, flashing Doom Bringer a smile and greeting as he took a seat and went back to pouring over data on screens.

“Don’t bring your work to the table,” he muttered. “‘s rude, you know.”

“Yes dear,” Dominator mumbled back, distracted, not once taking his eyes away from the screens before him.

The brawler simply scoffed, shaking his head because he knew the other definitely didn’t hear him, head too wrapped around numbers and formulas as it were. He went about setting up the coffee just as Dominator liked, pulling out their matching mugs and then dumping excessive creamer in Dominator’s, and then followed up by way too much sugar. He made a face as the last sugar cube went in, wondering how Dominator could consume this much sugar and still taste any of the coffee. As he mindlessly counted the amount of sugar the scientist consumed daily, he walked back over, one cup for himself and one for Dominator in hand but stopped mid step to see Dominator was fiddling with the turtleneck.

It was a habit he had formed, Doom Bringer had noticed. He never meant anything by it, but it was subconscious in nature. 

Even so, it still bothered him.

Wordlessly, he resumed his pace to the table and sat the mugs down, eyes fixed on Dominator’s neck still. He quietly nudged Dominator’s mug to him.

“Oh, was it already ready? I could definitely use—hmm?” Dominator stopped, finally feeling Doom Bringer’s eyes on him, “Psyker?”

Upon hearing his name like that, he walked over, one hand on the table for support, and the other tugging Dominator gently by the cuff of his turtleneck, pulling the offending article down just enough so he could reach his goal. Once the scar was free, he laid his lips upon Dominator’s neck, almost reverent in nature with how terribly soft he kissed him there. Doom Bringer pulled back, but only just barely, eyes closed, then fixed Dominator with a look so full of emotion, he could feel it stir in his heart. “My love, you’re beautiful.”

Dominator’s eyebrows shot up and his eyes were wide, face already dusted light pink, blushing. “Psyker… ?” 

Again, Doom Bringer went back in, lips feather light, barely there as he kissed the spot again. 

Dominator gasped audibly, eyes flying shut again, “P-Psyk?”  Dominator was putty, head tipped back so the other man could have all the space he wanted. 

And at that invitation, the brawler didn’t pull back, he kissed all along the scar, from side to side and top to bottom. Then his kisses trailed about aimlessly, kissing wherever his lips deemed fit, any of Dominator’s skin was fair game. Doom Bringer continued worshiping the area, unable to help himself. How dare Dominator ever think any part of him was ugly. He would kiss him again and again and again until he knew just how beautiful he saw him.

“You are beautiful, Dominator” Doom Bringer said again, lips tracing the words this time along his neck. He was unsure of how long he stayed at Dominator’s neck like that. Minutes. Seconds. Finally. he drew back, but hardly space was left between them, and he rested his forehead against Dominator’s, fixing his eyes on Dominator’s heavy lidded ones. 

“Psyk,” Dominator whispered so softly, were it not for how close they were, he certainly would have missed it. He seemed at a loss, unsure of what to say next. So instead he smiled, as tender as Doom Bringer’s kisses across his skin, “Thank you.” And he leaned forward, slotting his lips against his.

And Doom Bringer met him halfway.

[anoceaninthesun]

What do you think of reviewers who post at the last chapter and say, "I usually review only on the last chapter. I like your story blah blah blah" Doesn't this common habit among the fandom readers take away any motivation for writers to update frequently? I feel there are more reviews for people who update once a month, than people who update once in three days.

This is interesting because despite the main way I interact with fandom spaces being from writing fanfics, I generally don’t get asked much about my opinions on reviews, despite having loads of them. Caveat to my response is I speak mainly from my own experience with maybe brief generalizations I feel fanfic writers would more or less agree on.

To the first part of the question, um, well honestly even if infrequent I guess I’d prefer to see people review throughout. This is because my fics tend to be longer. I do often get reviews from people along the lines of “I would’ve stopped to review sooner but I just got so caught up in binging I waited until there was nothing left to read, whoops” I get that sometimes that’s true. If it’s a really thoughtfully constructed longer review than I guess I’m good with that. If it’s 36 chapters published in the span of two years with over 200,000+ words (which is where ASiT currently sits) and you give me maybe two lines....yeah, I can say you likely aren’t exactly my favorite person when I open your review. 🤣

But this is because I spent two years cranking this out piece by piece and the returned investment is already so little I feel two sentences to sum up all that’s been read and processed and hopefully enjoyed, is less than the bare minimum. So in summary on that less is never more for longer works in my opinion. If you’d like to leave shorter comments here and there that are chapter specific as you read it makes a lot more sense for me.

Yes, lazy reviews in short absolutely do drain away motivation. I’ll just bluntly come out and say that. By lazy I mean the specific kind of reviewer often admits they thought it was okay to keep reading and not review, not even at the end, and they tend to pop up only when there hasn’t been an update in a while. That’s....yeah.

Personally I hardly ever do every three day updates. When a story is in its infancy and I’m trying to get a feel for how it’ll take off so I’m cranking out these short chapters consecutively you may see me do that with little regard to how many reviews the chapters are getting as long as it ups the word count, which in turn often makes the story easier to find and generates attention....but on longer works I strongly advise against trying to do updates weekly. Why? Well on systems like FFN (Fanfiction dot net), this will actually not move your work to the top of the system when the page refreshes.

Due to an outdated algorithm they have, one of many, it has to be like 8+ days between chapters before updating will cause your story to float to the top of the fandom’s page of recently updated fics. So for example if you update every three days, people already following and favoriting may be alerted but new readers just scrolling through not using tags won’t see it because it’ll have been buried. So yes people who update monthly absolutely do usually (notice italics) get more traffic than people updating much, much more frequently. Updating that frequently can also give readers a sense of entitlement in my experience and the experiences of other writers I’ve heard from.

Chapters get cranked out soooo steadily and quickly that many people won’t feel it necessary to post feedback. They’re not being made to wait and for some (for sure not all but many!!) readers the wait is all they care about. If they’re not waiting/ “being inconvenienced” then they’re not going to comment. That is their sole reason to want to reach out to you to remind you in some way, sometimes politely and sometimes rudely, that they’re still waiting.

That being said, we are most definitely not machines. I know when I discovered fanfic I was barely in double digits and when I clumsily posted my now long-ago-deleted first work, I could hardly be considered a teenager. Now I am an adult, albeit not a very old one, and my priorities have for sure shifted and the free time I found in abundance even in high school, is a lot more limited. I’ve got a lot going on at any given time. A lot of things require me to devote myself to them pretty thoroughly.

Social lives don’t make themselves; you have to work to keep cultivating those no matter if the relationship is platonic, familial, romantic or otherwise. Animals tend to be less likely to bite the hand that feeds them (not that they have in my case) when you spend time raising and training them and then keeping up that bond—not that anyone asked but right now my whole thing is experimenting with fruit salad combos I made myself to see what my new baby bird likes, and renovating his cage so he’s constantly stimulated enough not to try to figure out the locks😂😂.

I’m gearing up to try to kill myself with school again by going for a D.PH next fall (which means I need to apply now and that in itself is a long and expensive process) because living even remotely close to three decades (which is what I would be when I finally finished it) is overrated anyway. If that doesn’t work I can always shave about the same amount of time off my life with emergency disaster management work. So what I’m saying is, all the stuff that young adult me has been juggling for the last three years or so, ten or fifteen year old me would have no clue about in terms of priorities. She could read fics and write fics, read fics and write fics in a cycle.

People want me and writers who are just as busy as me to update frequently, so make it worth our while. Show us why you, the readers, are worth devoting a probably limited chunk of our free time to keep happy with a craft we’ve honed (in my case professionally with the help of degrees), when we could be doing literally anything else. I don’t advise people slaving away at a keyboard to put free fics out there every three days and then getting discouraged when it’s not received as well as they’d like, when nothing is wrong with updating monthly, or hell, even every six months if that’s all your personal schedule allows for.

Sometimes I do surprise updates sooner than expected when a reader has really made my day with a solid review that encouraged me to jump start my writing process or when something has gone well in life and I turn to my writing or when I myself am sick of not finding what I wanna read and want to see more of what I’ve written admittedly partially from wish fulfillment put down to page. But never count on that a writer will feel generous for nothing, is my advise to readers. And if you, anon, are a writer, or some of my aspiring fellow fanfic writers see this, again, go at your own pace to avoid burnout. It’s a really fun hobby that has undoubtedly brought me endless joy but existential rewards aside it can be thankless. You will feel unmotivated and unappreciated at times.

Especially when reviewers roll in after long absences on their parts to feed you a line about why they hadn’t reviewed for a while until you chased them out of your inbox with a broom for badgering you between updates. Hopefully this wasn’t too rambling to get something from. Thank you for the ask.

[scottyunfamous]

My First (and Last) Fitness Rave

Whaddup fancy face!

Let me start by saying how awesome it is to know that you’re all as awkward as me! I thought my last post was going to make me look strange(er than usual), but then everyone was like ‘Omg bitch, same!’, so now I feel less weird about finding hiding places to work out in, in the gym lol. I have a holiday off of work this week and will be attempting the weights room…and all of its horrors *cough* men *cough*.

Two weeks ago my betch, Delia-Rene (Vexy, for my SDTV heads), hit me up to go to a fitness rave. Yes heaux, a whole rave for fitness! She’s embarked on her own fitness journey and previously attended DJ Melody Kane’s, ‘No Kane, No Gain’. After watching it back on her Snapchat I thought, ‘Rah, that’s actually a dope idea’, so when she presented ‘The Night Shift’ to me I was totally up for it…plus early bird tickets were £5, and heaux, until we upgrade from this pre-rich bank account, frugal is life.

The Night Shift’s tagline was, ‘Don’t get drunk, get pumped!’ If you’ve been following me for a while, you’ll know that getting drunk is one of my favourite pastimes…(as is getting pumped…*wink*), so it didn’t light a fire under me right away. Honestly, I kept wondering how much more fun it would be to work out whilst drunk. I tried working out whilst high once, but a side effect of weed is cotton mouth. I was too thirsty to continue so I ended up eating snacks and watching the rest of my Zumba DVD from the comfort of the sofa. T’was a productive day.

Back to the fitness rave.

If you follow me on Snapchat, you already know I go to the gym looking ruff and tuff like carpet fluff (though since the hot new guy has started working in my gym I’ve made an effort to do my hair, and by do my hair I mean secure my wig) but this was a RAVE, which (in Scotty-land) means that extraness was allowed, so I swapped my mash up house clothes for some mesh panel leggings, a fitted top, boxer braids and my regular dick appointment makeup (5 minute makeup for when you wanna make an effort for bae, but not really).

The event was held in the Camden Centre. There was stage with a DJ playing some big tunes, two male trainers and a room full of women of all shapes, sizes and ethnicities, patiently waiting for the inevitable torture to begin, underneath a domed ceiling with a chandelier/disco ball thing and colourful strobe lights.

The smoke machine billowed cooling smoke across the stage, and all I could think was…what about us? Bitch, it was HOT! There wasn’t a lick of air conditioning in there, just two dibby-dibby windows opened wide enough to do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING FOR ANYBODY, a fan near the front that might as well have been switched off because made no fucking difference, and a bag of bitches with body heat. But I was excited same way, fancy faces. I couldn’t wait to lose this weight in my very first fitness rave.

After doing our obligatory snapping so that Snapchat could see how extra healthy (and generally extra we are), the class began. We placed ourselves towards the back -in the middle so that we’d be less noticeable in the sea of bodies when we skipped the exercises we didn’t want to do, and to make escape easier. These were regular occurrences.

We began with boxercise to soca music. I’m a soca head so I was HERE for it. It’s hard to get tired or fed up when soca music is on (not that it stopped the tiredness altogether, but it helped).  It was like carnival…but not anywhere near as fun. Fun is easily annihilated when you start asking people to do burpees…or any kind of floor work, and bitch, there was floor work galore! Now, I can’t really complain because more time when they asked us to do shit we wasn’t finna do, it either meant that it was time for a fake water break, an option #2 (which is a nice way of saying ‘it looks like that hard ass move you want me to do is working these particular muscles, so I’mma find a lazy ass way to work them without doing what the fuck you told me to do’), or straight up giving each other the ‘seasoned friendship look’ (you know the look, the one that is like you saying 'bitchhhh' without saying it) and not doing it.

At the start, when we didn’t want to do something at all, there were half-assed attempts to make it look like we were trying, just so the trainers wouldn’t notice that much. An example of said attempt was being instructed to do press ups, but instead of actually moving, you just lie on the ground with your hands in position and wait for everyone else to finish so you can reserve the energy you don’t have for the next move.

Stop judging me.

In my defence, for every exercise I did not attempt, I made up for it but dancing inappropriately to the music because carnival is coming and I need to start flexin my ultimate inner heaux. I’m making this sound really bad, like we went there and didn’t do shit lol. We did, I promise lol. By the end of it we were sweating and tired as fuck.

There was a half an hour break before the next section (body conditioning to trap and grime music) began. I’m generally not a huge fan of this kind of music, but even I can admit that it’s actually decent to work out to. It’s mad hype, so in turn, you also get hype. Everything was going well, and by well I mean that there was even more fucking floor work, which I was damn tired of by that point and stopped even trying to make it look like I was attempting it. You know them ones where the trainer walks by and you’re so over it that when they yell out ‘Keep going’ in a general direction (but you know it’s meant for you), you just look them in the face like ‘fight me’?

Two-twos (I’m showing my age…also, why was this ever slang?), one of the girls that was lying on the floor with me while everyone else did push ups earlier, decided to up her viva and attempt the excessive floor work. Next thing you know, the bitch is screaming down the building, laying on the round with a bunch of people around her coz she done fucked around and fucked up her knee. Things were swiftly put on pause as the ambulance was called.

At that point I wondered what any normal person would in that situation… “Does this mean we can go home now?”

Stop judging me.

Bitch, don’t nobody need to work out for 3 mu’uh fuckin’ hours. It is too much. Plus, I was starving. Some (just me, by myself) may even say that I was wasting away to practically nothing!

Naturally, I tried to get Delia’s determined ass to agree to leave, but she was like, “I spent £5 for this shit, bitch. We are staying.” Inside I died a thousand hangry (hungry/angry) deaths, but a part of me was proud and inspired that she was willing to push through and challenge (kill) herself (us), that tenacious slut bucket.

Shit like this is why having a support system on your weight loss  journey is very helpful, because when you wanna give up, there’s always someone nuff enough to force you to keep going.

I’ll admit, her can-do attitude rubbed off on me as the night (regrettably) continued. We were instructed to stand away from the injured girl still lying on the floor (much care, so sensitive), and they moved onto the 90s R&B section to do abs. As we kicked our legs up in the air and squatted down low, I yelled at my friend, with absolutely no shame ‘DO IT FOR THE DICK, BITCH!’ Sometimes you just need to think of how much better in bed exercise will make you. I know this sounds like a joke, but it’s not –penis is part of my motivation, heaux! I’m tryna do some skinny bitch ‘pick me up and fuck me mid-air without your legs shaking’ kinda shit.

I’m struggling in these skreetz so my legs can go all the way back without my stomach doubling up and pressing the air out of my lungs. I’m putting in work with this squat life so I can do 30-day squat challenge on the dick for more than three (two) minutes (seconds) before reverting to that grinding shit we like doing so much.

All in all, it was fine but literally the whole night just felt like the same moves done over and over again to different music. We definitely got a workout but I feel like the next time they do it they should get a female trainer as well. I’ve noticed that male and female trainers train you slightly differently. Men are more focused on strengthening/sculpting whereas women will mix it up with a bit more cardio.

I think part of my disappointment with the event was that I hoped for a different atmosphere, something more light-hearted and fun since it was meant to be a fitness RAVE. I pictured lots of whooping, cheering and upbeat encouragement like I experience in my Zumba class. This felt quite serious. The fun for me only really came at the end when we the DJ flung on Candy by Cameo and sped it up.

I wish that they’d provided yoga mats or at least informed us to bring our own because the floor we were doing all of that godforsaken floor work on was polished and hard as shit to stay stable on. I get very sweaty palms when I get hot, so doing press ups and all that was a myth because I kept slipping and sliding. Also, on the flyer we were promised fresh food and smoothies…we got neither. Instead they were charging £1 for a bottle of water that you could buy for 55p from the corner shop.

Also, this has nothing to do with exercise; more a marketing opportunity missed out on in the name of seriousness, but the instructors were tall, well-formed black men in a room full of women…why did no one take their shirt off, plis?

I think that if I did ever decide to do one of these again, it would probably be aerobics or something. I can do Serious Sally in the gym. If I go to fitness rave, I want fun. I know some of you are probably like, 'Heaux, that’s not the point of it,' and you’d be right, fun is not the point, but bitch, when you are not a gym bunny/fitness freak, fun helps.

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Fancy something a little more daring? Read chapters 1-5 of my sexy, award-winning urban romance, Running Wilde (new chapter posted every Friday)

Until next time, fancy face

Love Scotty x