#anyway i wrote this because i'm not having a lot of success writing today

[divine-donna]

hey, can you make Miguel O'Hara X gender neutral reader? Where reader (Miguel lover) accidentally get teleport or glitch in the spider verse where they (the Spidey's) were in the middle of chasing miles? Thank you! <3

hi anon. i'm happy to write this for you.

i wrote this in the form of headcanons rather than a fic. i'm still recuperating from finishing dragon age: inquisition, the succession finale (even if it was like a week ago), my adrenaline high from the across the spiderverse, and the other things i have written already.

some creative additions i made: this is a spidey! reader. i think it naturally made more sense to have a spidey! reader rather than a civilian. i would have to jump through a lot of hoops for a civilian reader to make sense and my brain does not have the capacity to jump through those hoops right now.

you deserved a well needed rest. after all the work you had been pulling to keep the multiverse safe, it was the least you deserved. especially a nap.

what you didn't expect when you went home was to just fall asleep on the couch.

you had gone out with your friends, finally caught up with them, and changing into some comfortable lounging clothes. you had plans to watch the newest 3 hour long ego project the director called a movie. and naturally because it was 3 hours long and an ego project filled with nothing, you ended up falling asleep.

what you forgot to take off was your multiversal band. you always kept it on in case of emergencies.

you also had a habit of rolling around in your sleep a bit. and you don't have the best luck with technology.

naturally your band malfunctions and you're thrown into the portal and transported back to hq.

ideally you didn't want to be falling through the space. but you were. and that woke you up.

"fuck! fuck! fuck!"

you had no web shooters. why would you? who sleeps with web shooters anyways? (actually there are some spider people that might)

and the worst part is, no one seemed to notice that you were falling. because they were busy doing something else.

when you squinted your eyes, you saw what was happening: every single spider-person that was at hq was chasing after one singular spider-person.

you didn't know who it was but from the looks of it, it looked like a young spider-person. someone who was only a kid.

if only you weren't just free falling-

"(y/n)! what are you doing here!" a familiar voice exclaims.

he caught you in midair, swinging safely to the nearest platform that wasn't stampeding with spider people and other variations of spider totems to set you down.

you took in his appearance. his hair was disheveled and his fangs were poking out. you also noticed his talons were out too and his breathing was heavy.

"i...i was teleported here on accident." you explain. "what is going on?"

"i can't talk right now. go back home! it's supposed to be your day off!" he gives you a small kiss on your cheek and prepares himself to jump off the platform.

"miguel, who is that?"

"miles morales. he disrupted a canon event and now the multiverse is at stake! and we're trying to prevent him from causing another one."

"okay well did you try talking to him?"

"of course!" he exclaims, turning to look at you. "it's the first thing i did. but he doesn't want to listen. now i have to catch him before he disappears!"

he doesn't even wait for you to respond before jumping off. as much as miguel loved you and loved talking to you and cherished your presence, he had to catch up to miles. he had to stop him.

he had to save the multiverse.

you were left with a sinking pit in your stomach. something told you that today was not the day to take off.

but first you needed to find lyla or margo to help with your watch so you can grab your suit and equipment and come back.

[mousydentist]

my favorite fics that i wrote and why

So, first I'll explain. I'm gonna being reccing my own fics which I'm not super sure how to do cause I mostly just yeet shit on ao3 and let the fates decide, and I'm never sure what's like, too much? Like I see other people rec their own fics and I'm like (O O) how do i do that. Like idk why I have this resistance to like, telling people that I like my own fics? So today I said fuck that, everyone's gonna know now.

And I've just been doing not so hot recently for a number of reason and I figured like, I've been obsessing over so much, why don't I get to be excited about the good things? So anyway, these are my favorite fics that I've written, not just the ones that have done the best or whatever, just my personal favorites, so without further ado...

(quick fyi, all of these are locked so you need to be logged into ao3 to view)

First up is sorry that i can't believe anybody really starts to fall in love with me , don't ask why the name is so long I just like the song lmao. This one's special to me cause it was my first KPTS fic. Is it the best? No. Does it have a super deep meaning? Nope. But it's cute and it's mine so I love it. Next!

the imperfect art of making it. Very self indulgent. I wrote this for the endorphins fic fest which gave me the motivation to write, but really I just loving transing my characters, and soft KimChay deserves lots of love.

Next up, do you look up to the sky? My first whumptober fic and the first one I wrote bc as soon as I looked at the prompts I was like "oh Kim's getting locked in the fucking basement for sure" and then he did! Success. Also KimChay are a pstd4ptsd couple, I won't be taking questions at this time.

This is getting longer than I thought it was gonna be but fuck it, I told myself I was doing this to remind myself why I like writing and that I do actually enjoy it so the longer the better tbh bc it means I really do love it. It's not a bad thing if all of my fics have a special place in my heart, right?

Ok last of the non dead dove ones is i should have kissed you. I don't exactly have a reason, I just think it's a good fic.

The next ones are dead dove cause I have two modes which are cute fluff and illegal <3

chay and kinn and chay. This thing is my baby. I love him with my whole heart. I wrote him in discord messages on my walk to and from classes. This is one fic that I would not be ashamed to say I've read several times over. This is the fic that I think of when people say "write the fics you want to read." This was also a spite fic which makes all of that even funnier lmao

Willow Dancin' On Air. This one's not dead dove but it is KimVegas so eh. But this is another fic I wrote purely for myself. I just wanted some fluffy lil somethin somethin and now every time I listen to this song I think of this fic

Ok last one, Why minors shouldn’t gamble. This one also started on discord and was written in my notes app at like. 9 am while I was still in bed lmao. Because that's where inspiration peaks. And it's hot idk. omegaverse will never not be be a special interest of mine, hopefully one day we can find out what happens when Kim joins the party, I'm genuinely curious.

OK! So. That was something. Tbh I feel a lot better lmao. My therapist would be so proud of me if I ever told her I write fanfiction pff. Normalize reading your own fics over and over. I'm saying that directly to myself cause I see all these like motivational things about writing and then I don't believe them, what's that about?? Doing this reminded me that I actually like the things I create, highly recommend. Now I'm gonna get myself a glass of water cause for the next maybe 12 hours I'm changing my life!! I'm doing self care!!! Woo hoo!!!!! Now to post this before I remember that other people can see it :) Ok bye ✌️

[charlotterhea]

"Self-rec time! What are your favorite five fics that you've written and why? After replying to this ask, feel free to pass it on to five other writers to spread the love. 💗"

Thank you for the rec, @cissykenway! I love babbling about my fics and now I can even do it by invitation. 😁 (Although, ngl, choosing five stories will be hard! I've just written too much...)

1. "About Magic" The story isn't translated yet but it's the last long fic I completed and it's just so different from everything else I've written. It's detailed, new, and reads more like an actual novel than my other stories. There are so many OCs in this one that grew on me and although some readers were disappointed by the second half, I love this story to bits. It's peak slow burn, like ... you have to be really patient here! *lol* But I love it for the immense plot and the way I managed to keep it completely canon-compliant - yes, including the epilogue. 😏 I'm looking forward to translating it one day.

2. "Medicus"-Series Another not yet translated story but at least this will be my next translation project so stay tuned if you're interested! It's easily one of, if not the hardest story I've ever written, especially Part III. I've written that one coming out of a mentally very challenging time and I needed a place to put everything I've seen, learned, and experienced during the preceding years of my life. So this story ended up being full of trauma, a lot of it about things I never experienced myself, making me extremely nervous about whether I depicted it halfway decently. But ever since I posted the story, so many readers told me that it really hit home for them and that it was healing to read the story so I think I did enough things right. 😅 Anyway, this story is not just full of trauma, it's also a story full of love and there is a lot of healing happening as well although it takes some time to get there. But the end of this series is the end I'm most proud of all my stories. It's just perfect in my eyes, even today.

3. "Our Souls at Full Moon" This story was a pain in the ass! But only because I made it so. 😅 I couldn't get this plot out of my mind but didn't have the time to write such a long project either so I decided to make it a drabble story. And when I was finished with that, I spontaneously decided to try something new with my writing style, so I revised, almost rewrote the whole thing. 🙈 Don't get me wrong, I'm proud of what became of the story, but looking back it might have taken me a similar amount of time to write the long version. ^^ Still, I love it. It has some sentences in it that are unusually poetic for me, is reduced to the bare minimum, and yet brimming with emotions. I made myself cry writing this story and although I'm not entirely sure if I succeeded in translating it adequately, this has earned a place on this list.

4. "Red Passion and Pavlov's Dogs" This is my most successful one-shot, both in German and in English, so of course, this has to be on the list. 😂 Tbh, I didn't expect this story to receive so much love. I wrote it in one sitting, in a tense I wasn't used to and kept agonising over for several days until I decided to just let it go, and half of the ideas aren't mine - but the vibe, the emotions, the rawness... A lot of readers asked for a second part but I'm sure I'd only ruin it. The magic of this story is in its open end and I would never dare touch it again. I couldn't replicate this kind of vibe for a second part anyway. So this plot became the Schroedinger's Cat of my nightly musings as well. Do they get a happy end or will they screw it up? Nobody knows, least of all me, and I won't open that damn box to find out. It's perfect as it is. ^^

5. "Otherside" There are other stories of mine that are more in character, more elaborate, more profound than this for sure - but oh boy, did I have fun writing this! 😂 Putting two Severus ... Severi ... Severussi ...? Well, two of them into one story was just peak-comedy for my brain and I don't care a bit that the younger one is probably more a 21-year-old version than the 39-year-old version he's supposed to be. I had an absolute field day writing them and their banter was worth the action part I whined my way through. I'm actually rather proud of said action part; I normally avoid writing action, it's just not for me, but I'm happy with how I managed this. It was nice to see that I can write action if I have to, even if I don't particularly enjoy it. So this deserved to be on this list as well. ^^

Softly tagging @frenchpresswriter, @dragoon811, @naomijameston, @janacariad and @echoofawind. 💚

[shallowseeker]

okay so, yesterday I found your spn meta by chance and fell in love with them 'cause more than writing they're like images, like they really depict things and I just immediately understand what you mean instantly + I started to rewatch Steve Yockey's episodes 'cause I feel like I like his writing (lots of queer! lots of rom-com references! but it's all done so intellingently, I love it!) but ALSO sometimes it doesn't translate to me + I just saw you wrote about "Optimism"= I GOTTA ASK: what's your take on "Optimism"? I don't understand what the Zombie story and the Musca one should reveal about the characters. Visually, it looks like the Musca = Charlie, so Harper and the zombie are ??? I'm mad at myself 'cause I don't seem to get what the show is telling me so I'm hoping you can share what the show tells YOU and, vicariously, I can get it as well (lol). THANK YOU!

Hi! Hello!

Oh, really? That's so cool. I still have trouble thinking of myself as a "meta writer." I don't mean to be. I just like to ramble. But cool! It's probably mostly that we think alike and are sympatico in some key ways. :-) Always fun to find kindred spirits!

///

O P T I M I S M

I have so many thoughts on Optimism. It's one of my fave episodes! I actually did a re-watch-slash-convo with some friends on Discord and just transcribed the very, very, very LOOONG bulk of it today!

I haven't written much on the Musca. After spending a lot of time of @scoobydoodean's blog, I've just about decided the Musca plot is actually a Sam's emotions-through line more than it is a true dark mirror. Even AU Charlie is cheeky about it:

AU CHARLIE (annoyed at Sam, about the Musca): Your nifty metaphor has holes.

Basically, Charlie is saying that mirrors aren't one-to-one, and that trying to force-fit them into being one-to-one can be super annoying sometimes.

//

CHARLIE - Every two hundred years there is "bad egg". When a male fails to find a mate, he abandons his community and starts using peoples bodies to "nest". Binding them together with a viscous goo. And when the goo fits...

//

The Musca/fly is at face-value:

A) A bodysnatcher plot: In that regard, it could be like all angels, demons, or anyone inhabiting a body. (Cas, Lucifer, Michael, Crowley, etc.) Ergo, it's a dark, uncharitable Cas mirror the way Dave Mathers outlaw wraith was in Tombstone. It could be saying that Cas "failed" among "his own people" and cruelly took up space in a human body. But that would be grossly oversimplifying the whole situation, saying that Cas "should have stayed with his people," which ofc doesn't work.

It, as Charlie says, "has a lot of holes." @ilarual has written a lot about the totalitarian structure of Heaven. And Sam himself wants Cas around. As far as metaphors go, it's a dud for Cas.

B) It's a failure to thrive plot: Because the Musca "failed" in The Real World with its Own People, perhaps failed to live up to The prescriptive Dream of Success (TM), now it's wreaking havoc on others.

Sam himself "failed out" of Harvard. He "choked." Kevin Train and Patience Turner are also Failed Gifted Students. Losers who didn't live up to their potential. This could even apply to Chuck, binding together his characters because he's a Loser with a capital L.

///

ANYWAY, I feel like the Music plot is a "red herring" for a few reasons.

One: The main Harper plot is about breaking narratives, about not relying so much on books. And then Charlie says this:

CHARLIE: Goo. So, yeah. I'd say this is the right place. Now, I'm just trying to figure out what we are dealing with. Thus, books.

Aside: Later Cas says sarcastically in Ouroboros that Sam and Rowena, "Have many, many books."

So, there's this niggling indictment of trying to find too much truth in books...

///

Two: Sam has a tendency to see something and, like, imprint on it. He tends to fall into "It's just like me!" instead of speaking frankly about the present situations and emotions.

*In American Nightmare, he sees Madga Peterson, an abused child* -> "She's just like me!"

*In Somewhere in Between Heaven and Hell, he sees someone lying about something completely unrelated to his current situation* ->"Omg, they're lying to them, like I'm lying to Dean! It's just like me!"

*In Lost & Found, he meets Jack Kline, who is Lucifer's son "OMG, he's just like me!" -> *spoiler alert* Jack is not in fact much like Sam at all. -> Sidenote: instead of speaking frankly about how Dean is grieving, how Lucifer killed Cas and likely killed Mary, he uses complex euphemisms with Jack, ones that actually obscure the reality of the situation! This winds up annoying Jack and making him pull away from Sam.

///

IMHO...Sam isn't...naturally all that great with emotions.

He tries really, really hard, and he loves patterns, but he's always seeming to force-fit situations and scenarios into neat little boxes so he can passively-aggressively use it to indirectly communicate something he feels about himself.

He has a very cognitive empathy style. Bless him.

///

So what's REALLY going on here?

Well. In this episode, he wants Charlie to stay. He wants Charlie to stay and fill a void the other Charlie left behind. He wants Charlie to stay really, really badly. And he beats around the bush about it.

At first, he sidesteps his own emotions by passive-aggressively implying that it's Dean that in fact needs her.

CHARLIE: He'll be fine. Your brother, I mean. He's got other friends, right? SAM: Plenty. Uhm, he used to have a pretty damn good wingman. CHARLIE: So call that guy to check on him. SAM: That guy was you. CHARLIE: No, it wasn't. SAM: Right, I, uh, sorry. I didn't mean that.

And then by trying to make the case fit her.

He's very indirect and weird about it. Because he's Sam. (It's a contrast to the effortless, awkward-but-honest communication style we see from characters like Jack and Dean in this very episode.)

SAM: Charlie, you can't just quit and go live on a mountain somewhere. People need people. CHARLIE: Why? Cause they're the luckiest people in the world? SAM: Look, come on. We just do. We're social animals. CHARLIE: Emphasis on animals. SAM: Yeah, but you're also a hunter. The things that we've seen, it's not so easy to just walk away from it all. Believe me, I've tried. Our Charlie tried. CHARLIE: Yeah, well again, she ain't me. It's my life, Sam. Not hers. And not yours.

Ah, yes. Instead of saying, “I want you here,” it’s, “people need people.”

And Hell, sometimes indirect communication works! Like how Dean and Cas use Felix the snake to indirectly communicate with Jack in Peace of Mind!

But the difference with Sam is...he's not using this indirect communication style to find out how Charlie feels (the way Dean and Cas use the snake to suss out how Jack feels).

No, he's using the whole thing to try to tell Charlie what he thinks is best for her! To tell her things, not find out things.

Eventually, he breaks and says what he actually thinks, but only after AU Charlie is starting to lose her patience with him:

SAM (faux-sadly): Got to say, I do feel kind of bad for the Musca. I mean, he could have been happy if he'd stayed with his people. Didn't have to go off on his own just because... CHARLIE (exasperated): Okay, I get it. I am just like the bug and I shouldn't go out on my own.

OMG, Sammy! It's okay if we want to hit Sam sometimes, right? I too wanted to hit him after he said this to Charlie.

CHALIE: But your nifty metaphor has holes. I wasn't looking for love. I found it and I lost it. And I didn't kill people and literally nest in their body parts so...(Scene cuts to other Musca removing the body of the dead one) SAM: Okay, yeah I know, I know, How about this? Don't leave. 

(Aside// I think this is a cheeky nod to the fact that Cas and Dean weren't looking for love either. In fact, they tried (and keep trying) really, really hard not to love each other. Their real life was faaaar more complicated than some simple "bodysnatcher plot.")

But thank God--Sam finally says outright what he needed to say to Charlie: Don't leave.

Now, it probably would've been better if he's gone a step further: "I don't want you to leave," but for Sam, this is pretty good progress.

SAM: Hear me out. Sure some people can do bad things when they're desperate or scared. But the guy we just saved, he has a wife and children. I'm not saying that all people are good people or even that most people are but if we help people then maybe they'll help people and all that. And that's worth it. Even with all the tears and death. It's worth it. CHARLIE: Just to be super clear, I am not like the fly monster. (Sam chuckles) But, I'll think about staying.

So I think OVERALL the Musca plot is really about highlighting Sam's difficult communication style, and I think it's intentionally being cheeky about it how it's using a "really "dumb metaphor" with gaping holes!

It's about how Sam tries to force-fit the case of the week into saying what he wants it to say...instead of just saying it.

///

I think Sam has a little bit of a "mental main character syndrome." He sees a scenario and moves directly into cognitive empathy, reading the situation and thinking:

How can I apply this to myself? Or make it a stand-in for either something I want to believe about myself or a stand-in for something I want to say indirectly?

Sometimes you'll see ppl insist that Sam is the "MC" because every storyline tells you "something about Sam." But I'm more in the camp that it's Sam's inherent cognitive style of empathy at work, desperately reworking anything and everything to make it apply to himself.

Whereas Cas and Dean (and Jack) have a truer emotional style of empathy, connecting with people for who they actually are, as they are.

That's not to say that both styles can't be manipulative when we want them to be. But Sam really struggles with his style in a way I feel like Dean and Cas do not. Dean and Cas perhaps don't even realize what effective communicators they actually are!

///

My other thoughts on Optimism:

[sweetfirebird]

*boops you gently and respectfully* A Suitable Consort is a massive comfort read for me, it is so gentle and lovely, and people not understanding their worth or position in other people's lives is so personal and beautiful to me. Please never stop writing because I love your work, and ASC is probably in my top five book ever so, you know.

People sometimes get a little cranky about author tropes, how every author has favorites and does them a lot... maybe too much. (Although those people are still reading them, so, there's a real Devil's Sacrament situation happening there but anyway.) But honestly, I really like exploring...not just insecure people in general but people who have insecurities about specific things, like their place in the world or in their families. Like (I know no one read TTC but as an example,) Trevor is not really insecure. He knows his art is good, but he lives in a world where it's never going to pay him enough to be "successful" as his family sees it and that takes a toll. And showing that, and how it affects him, and his place within the family and his confidence... and how he is still loved and can make his own family... idk I just like it. I'm going to keep doing it and oh well too bad so sad for those who are tired of it.

Mattin is, in the grand scheme of things, insignificant, and (in the words of whoever wrote the movie Gigi) does not have a world-famous sort of nature. He got a first hand lesson in how expendable even noble lives can be, and while I do think he is cute, he's not drop dead gorgeous or anything. He's good at his job but also... many people in that library are good at their jobs. He knows all of that. And he is surrounded by fucking *legends.* Like, if you've ever been around someone with all the skills or charisma or brilliance, it is a definite experience even if you're fine with yourself as you are.

He's not wrong when he describes himself as he does. But, like all of us, he can't really see how others view him. (He's loyal. He sticks, like Mil says. He's honest and probably incapable of lying well. He's quite talented and smart and his employees love him--that alone says a lot. And Arden and Mil think he is very fuckable.) And, all the drama and armor and political murder aside, it's a love story. That is, it's not about them falling in love, they're all clearly already in love at the start. It's about them showing their love for each other. You are worth everything to me and I will protect you is being said by all of them to each other all the time, just in differing ways and not out loud.

Anyway. I'm sort of at a loose end today for various reasons and kind of down, so this was a nice ask to get. I was scared it was going to be a spam bot, since they keep sending me barely coherent messages. Thank you for the nice mail and also for not being a bot trying to proposition me. :)

[raflovestuffs]

Blame's on me

Here's the story I'm finally done writing thanks to the help of my friend who helped me a LOT. This fic was a big challenge for me because I never wrote about the Avatar universe. But I felt in love with Jake and Neytiri's kids in ATWOW. Their story and the tragic ending moved me. And I felt the need to write about how Lo'ak finally accept he's not responsible of his brother's death. I need this comfort fic so I wrote it. And I was inspired by so many people in this fandom! I thank them for helping me making this fic the best possible.

Finally, here are two songs that inspired me to describe Lo'ak's emotions: Blame by Graves and Blame's on me by Alexander Stewart which gave the name of this one shot.

Also I did some of the prompts @movietimegirl shared :)

I hope you'll enjoy this story as much as I do. Please give me feedbacks so I can know what you thought of it! See you soon folks!

...

Alone. 

Misunderstood.

As far back as he could remember, Lo'ak had always felt all alone.

But his brother was dead. And now he felt the loneliness more than ever. He realized that, before today, he had never really been alone. Neteyam had always been by his side. And it took his death to realize that.

Neteyam, his lifelong protector, had died protecting him one last time. He would have to go on without him. And it was all his fault, he knew it. If he hadn't forced him to go back for Spider, Neteyam wouldn't have been shot, and he would still be alive.

Although Lo'ak had always felt left out, Neteyam had always been there for him and often made up for his mistakes. His habit of putting himself in danger had killed his brother. He would never forgive himself. 

All the events of the last few months came back to his mind in succession. Lo'ak regularly endangered his brothers and sisters. He had deliberately disobeyed his father to retrieve weapons during the maglev raid, and his brother had almost died in the attack. Then he had endangered his sisters and even Spider by taking them to the old shack where they had met Quaritch... he couldn't help but feel that he was the reason for their escape. At least, taking refuge within the Metkayina clan had allowed him to meet Tsireya and Payakan. But then again, during the battle, Lo'ak had left his sisters in the hands of Quaritch, and they had all nearly drowned... All the mistakes that he didn’t see.

"You've done enough." 

His father was right. 

Neteyam died because of him. He knew it was too late for apologies. It was all his fault. 

"Alien, that’s all they see."

His brother had tried to love him when he hated himself. Lo'ak was an outcast, they were all right to reject him.

He was no good for anyone. His presence only hurt the others. Everyone was probably better off without him anyway. He had seen the pain in his mother's eyes. He knew that his presence alone reminded her that he was the only reason for her immeasurable sadness. And he didn't want to inflict that on her. 

So Lo'ak stayed alone, in a far corner of the village. He took refuge near the mangroves, a place with dense vegetation where he could vanish without trace. But it was at the foot of the mangroves that he came to rest and think. Where natural terraces of rocks overlooking the sea had formed. It was his and Tsireya's secret place. She taught him the way of water here. The rocky bank opened up into a large hole more than ten meters deep. Lo'ak, as a forest boy, had room for improvement but she had taken the time to teach him. To teach them. 

He would balance between the rocks and then sit on the edge, gazing out at the endless ocean for hours, his eyes lost in the horizon. Tsireya had come to see him a few times. She had sat next to him, she had tried to talk to him. But no words could come out of his mouth. So she just sat there, beside him, silent. He knew how lucky he was to have her as her friend. She could see into him. But he felt unworthy. She and Neteyam were also very close, he knew they talked about him behind his back. And he had torn that away from her too.

The only one he could still confide in was Payakan, his spiritual brother, who he was perched on right now.

"Payakan, how am I going to move forward without him?" the teenager breathed, lying on the animal's massive shell.

"Be patient Lo'ak," uttered Payakan. 

"You know what I told him before all of this happened?" He stood up, waving his hands.

"I told him you were my brother... that I would never be him... the perfect son..." 

His eyes darkened.

"Oh Payakan... what have I done..." 

The boy looked down at his hands as if they were still soaked with his brother's blood. 

"It's no use blaming yourself," his friend tried to reassure him.

Lo'ak said nothing. He thought of his brother. He would do whatever he could to make him say "it's okay" again,to make him tell that everything would go back to the way it was. He hated just what it came to. He lost him, now he felt lost. But he couldn't hold it against him, only he was to blame. Just like Payakan, he would have to pay for it the rest of his life. 

Did that make him a killer? 

He sat up, bringing his legs up to him and wrapping his arms around them. He tried to hold back the tears but felt them burning his eyes. Sobbing, the boy buried his head in his lap and let the sadness flow out of him. 

...

"Lo'ak!"

His name had come to him like a distant echo. He thought he recognized a familiar voice. Once he had gathered his wits, he looked up to try to distinguish where the call was coming from. It was Kiri and Spider, he should have known. The darkness was waiting for him.  They were always supposed to be home by eclipse...

When his sister arrived at his level, she simply put her hand on his shoulder and smiled sincerely.

"Lo'ak, it's time to go home."

If Kiri had come all the way here accompanied by Spider, it was because their parents must have been worried about him not coming home. She was playing her big sister role by bringing him back before they got too worried. The young na'vi did not flinch and gladly followed her after saying goodbye to Payakan. 

When they reached the village, Lo'ak was surprised to see Norman's avatar there talking with his father. He approached him with a smile.

"Norm, I didn't expect to see you here!” 

For the first time in a while, Lo'ak had surprised himself with a sense of joy. Seeing Norm again felt so good.

"Hey boy! It's good to see you!" he said, giving him a hug. "Spider needed an oxygen refill so I came to bring it. Without a helicopter this time..."

He realized at that moment that he must have felt responsible for them being spotted by Quaritch before the big fight. 

"I know about Neteyam. I'm sorry," Norm told him sincerely.

He had watched them grow up. It must have been heartbreaking for him too. Norm was part of the family, he was like an uncle to them. Lo'ak hated himself even more. He nodded sadly. Norm patted him affectionately on the back before letting the boy go. The teenager greeted his parents briefly before heading for their marui. 

Turning back to Jake, Norm sighed.

"How’s he doing?"

"He does what he can as we all do. But it's really hard for him. We barely see him anymore."

"Have you two been talking?"

Jake pursed his lips. He knew for a fact that talking with his son would help him accept what had happened, it would help them both. But it was all still too fresh. And the truth is, he didn't even know what to say to him. Lo'ak was young, death was still a complex concept at that age.

"Jake..." Norm breathed, pulling him out of his thoughts.

"I know... but what do you want me to tell him?"

The avatar laid a loving hand on his friend's shoulder. 

"Have you told him about Tom yet?"

Jake sighed. Tommy. 

"Well, maybe you should," Norm continued.

Norm was right, Jake knew. He had hardly mentioned Tom's name in the presence of his sons. 

He watched Lo'ak in the distance, eating his meal away from the rest of the clan. He couldn't help but see himself in him. In fact, Neteyam and Lo'ak reminded him a lot of him and Tom. Neteyam was very wise and quiet by nature, and resembled his twin in every way, while Lo'ak had inherited more of his personality traits, especially his rebellious side. In Neteyam's shadow, Lo'ak was trying to carve out a place for himself, just as his father did when everything his older brother did was a success - the great scientist. Jake had wanted to give meaning to his life and that is why he joined the military. He believed he had found something worth fighting for. Then he lost the use of his legs. And Tom got killed. Nothing made sense anymore. Just like today.

But Neteyam's death was still too recent. When the time was right, he would talk to Lo'ak.

"Not today, Norm."

Jake stood up to come sit next to his son, out of the way.

"Hey son..." he breathed, pausing to make sure he had Lo'ak's attention. "You okay?"

"I'm fine," the interested party replied unconvincingly.

"Your mother is worried about you," his father insisted before adding "...and so am I."

"Like that matters..." the boy then sighed, deliberately avoiding his father's gaze.

"Lo'ak..."

Jake's face broke down. Talking to his youngest son had always been difficult and the current situation wasn't helping. He had lost a son, but Lo'ak had lost a brother. A situation he knew all too well and it reminded him of how similar he and Lo'ak were in their fate. He only hoped that time would allow them to heal their wounds. 

It was time for their family to come together.

…

Tomorrow, it was decided. The Sullys had gathered their belongings to return to their people for a while. They were going back to the Omatikaya clan to replenish their resources and gather supplies, mainly weapons and medicine. 

Straddling her ikran, Neytiri kissed Tuktirey's forehead. 

"Let's go home."

The same rain that had led them to the sea people led them back to the forest people. The eight-hour flight on the back of their ikrans was exhausting. They arrived drained, their limbs weighed down and dehydrated. They suffered in every way possible, but it was worth it. Because Neytiri needed to be reunited with her people, and so did the children. 

The Tree of Souls stood before them with Mo'at at its base. No words were needed. She took her daughter in her arms, sucking in all the pain that was hers. Mo'at knew. And who better than a mother to understand the pain of a grieving mother? They were soon joined by Kiri and Tuk. The latter  threw herself into her grandmother's arms. 

Around them, the Omatikaya people flocked to meet them. There were hugs, there were pats, and words of compassion: "Ngaytxo", "Eywa ngahu", echoes of apologies from the people showing their support. There was this oppressive atmosphere of sadness and grief.

Jake couldn’t breathe.

He hadn't felt such an intense struggle since the time he almost suffocated to death: his lungs emptying of their oxygen. But right now it was worse: he felt like he wasn't alive. It was too heavy, he couldn't stand there and pretend everything was okay. He needed to be alone to take time to process his pain.

In the midst of all this, Lo'ak was also suffering. He looked around at all the people with anxiety, wondering if they blamed him for his brother's death. Did they know what happened or did they only know that Neteyam was gone forever?

His mother drew him out of his thoughts: 

"Where’s your father?" 

"I'm going to look for him," Lo'ak replied, without thinking.

…

The forest of Pandora.

Jake felt as if he had left it years ago when it had only been a few months. It had seemed like an eternity. To find himself there, the place that had made him fall in love, it brought him comfort. He could breathe again. He wandered without thinking of where he was going, he let himself be guided by his steps. Then he stopped dead in his tracks. This place, this light, this greenery, these waterfalls, this lake... it was the place where he used to fish with his oldest son. He crouched down at the water's edge, as if Neteyam was going to show him his latest catch. A big one, without a doubt.

But nothing happened. He was alone here. And the only face he could see in the water’s reflection was his own. He looked miserable with his eyes eaten away by fatigue and his wounds still very apparent. He saw a tear roll down his cheek. He looked away to look in the distance. He saw himself washing the lifeless body of his son beside Neytiri again, this image haunted him. He broke down in tears, letting it all out. Jake mourned the death of his son for the first time.

...

Lo'ak walked deeper into the forest. Following familiar paths, he hoped to run into his father. He couldn't have gone far anyway. It must have been a few minutes since he realized he was gone.

A noise attracted him. He looked up. Sobs. It was a man crying. And that man was none other than his own dad. Lo'ak could not believe it, he had never seen his father cry. It was only when he saw him in the distance, kneeling on the ground, one hand on his forehead, looking down at the water at his feet, that he could believe what he had heard. His father was crying.

Lo'ak approached and without even realizing it, he stood behind him not knowing what to say. Jake hadn't even noticed his presence.

When Neytiri had asked him to go look for his father, Lo'ak had thought he would simply tell him his mom was looking for him and then take him back to the village. But now that he had found him, he understood the reason why his father had slipped away. Asking him to return was the last thing he wanted to do.

And the reason beyond that was that in his dad’s presence, Lo'ak felt the need to justify himself. He felt the need to apologize, to ask his dad to blame him, to put Neteyam's death on his shoulders and not his. 

"I'm sorry he's not here with us," Lo'ak began.

Jake looked up, realizing he was no longer alone. 

"I'm not like him, I wish I was, but I'm just an alien, demon blood. I'm sorry I'm not the son you wanted me to be. I'm sorry I’m not him..."

"Lo'ak..." Jake whispered, trying to stop him.

But the teenager barely took a breath between each sentence, his thoughts moving faster than his speech. He was hyperventilating, spitting out all his words like stones that he wanted to get rid of his heart as soon as possible. 

"I'm sorry, it's all my fault. I should have listened to you, but then again, I wanted to do things my way and it led him to death. It should have been me. I'm sorry I killed him!"

As he said this last sentence, Lo'ak burst into tears. He looked down to avoid his father's gaze, he didn't want him to feel sorry for him, pretty much on the contrary.

"Remember I told you I had a brother?" Jake asked abruptly to his son, breaking the silence. 

"Um... yes. Tom, I think his name was," Lo'ak sniffed.

"That's right, Tom, my twin brother."

"But you never really talk about him."

And there was a good reason for that.

"He's dead. He got shot, too."

Lo'ak looked up at his father.

"Dad... I didn't know. I thought he was on Earth."

"The reason I came to Pandora the reason all of this happened was because he died. I was offered to take over his contract, to pilot his avatar," Jake confessed.

"You mean you could have never come?" asked Lo'ak, clearly surprised.

"Well... Tom was a great scientist, he studied hard to come to Pandora. He was brilliant, he was good at everything. The Avatar mission was his dream."

"Weren't you interested in that?"

"I grew up hearing about it, but I never figured  I’d be going there. Tommy had been preparing for this his whole life, he was the one looking for answers.”

"Did you two get along well?"

"To tell you the truth, he and I were very different. I preferred to go out, to go on adventures, whereas he was very calm by nature, he liked to read a lot. We used to read together, we loved the heroes of Greek mythology..."

Lo'ak didn't understand everything his dad talked about, but he was glad to know that he had a brother and that he could understand him.

"It must have been hard… losing him."

Jake remembered the night his brother died like it was yesterday.

"You know, the night before he died, the two of us met at a bar to talk. It was to tell me he was officially leaving for Pandora in a week. I wanted to celebrate with him, cause I knew we wouldn't see each other again for a long time. It takes  six years to get here, you know. But he didn't want to stay, he had things to do, he wanted to go back and I didn't hold him back. After that, I found out that a guy with a gun shot him, for the paper in his wallet."

Jake left his sentence hanging. He hadn't thought about it in quite a while, but discussing it with his son made him realize that he could help him.

"You don't know how much I blame myself for what happened."

"But it wasn't your fault! It was that guy who killed him! You didn't do it!" Lo'ak became revolted.

And that was exactly the reaction Jake was expecting. He put his hands on his son's shoulders and looked him straight in the eye.

"Just as you are not responsible for your brother's death, Lo'ak." 

The young boy looked away, holding back tears.

"Son, you meant well, it wasn't your fault."

Lo'ak suddenly realized that his father felt as guilty as he did, and despite all this, he had moved on, admitting that the real culprit laid elsewhere. Lo'ak snuggled into his father's arms. Jake held him tightly to his heart.

When he ended their embrace, Jake rubbed the top of his head in the same way Neteyam used to do with Lo'ak, reminding him he was the one who taught him this move in the first place.

"Let's go find your mom." 

…

Utralä (a)Nawm

We are all seeds

ayrina’l(u) ayoeng,

of the great tree

A peyä tìtxur mì hinam awngeyä

whose strength is in our legs

N(a) aysangek afkeu,

like the mighty trunks,

Mì pun

in our arms

N(a) ayvul ahusawnu,

as sheltering branches

M(ì) aynar

in our eyes

Na seze

the blue-flower

A ’ong ne tsawke.

which unfolds the sun

Utralä (a)Nawm

we are all seeds

ayrina’ l(u) ayoeng,

of the great tree

A peyä tìrol m(ì) awnga.

whose song is within us.

The Na’vi say that there is no death, only change. The Sully's life would never be the same again. All the events they faced for several months had changed them. They were forest people, but they were also sea people now: Neteyam rested with their ancestors. Once the Remembrance Ceremony was over, they gathered as a family with Mo'at to honor the memory of their son and brother one last time. 

A few days later, it was already time for them to leave. Staying here too long could put the People in danger and that was the last thing they wanted after all that had happened. Restocked with medical and military supplies, they were ready to return to the place they now called kelku, home, knowing that it was only a “see you soon” not a farewell.

...

When she saw the Sully return, Tsireya felt that Lo'ak's relationship with her father had changed.

That evening, Tsireya sat down beside Lo'ak. Without saying a word, she simply rested her head on his shoulder, affectionately stroking his chest to calm his breathing, as she used to do during their training sessions. She closed her eyes as if lulled by the steady rise of his chest. No words were needed, they were just happy to feel each other's presence again.

"You know, I've talked to my dad," Lo'ak confided to her after a moment.

She had suspected it, but she was so happy that he confided in her that she didn't let him know.

"I'm so glad you finally were able to talk to your dad. Told you he would understand," she breathed before adding, "I'm so proud of you Lo'ak."

"Thank you, Tsireya, for being my friend."

He placed his hand on the one Tsireya had placed over his heart earlier and smiled at her.

She smiled back at him, revealing the dimples that Lo'ak had a secret adoration for. . 

The look on her face, however, changed to a more serious one. She put both hands around his face.

"Lo'ak, I think you’re ready to see your brother now." 

Lo'ak knew she was right. But he wasn't sure he could do it. What if he couldn't connect with him? 

"Tsireya, I don't know if I..." he choked as he placed his hand over hers.

"You have to," she insisted, her eyes moist.

She paused to hold back a sob. It saddened her to see Lo'ak so alone. She was sure that seeing her brother again would allow him to finally accept what had happened and move on. 

"He's waiting for you, Lo'ak," she whispered, like a prayer.

The boy took her in his arms.

"You're right," he whispered in her ear as he tightened his embrace. "I'll go to the Tree of Souls early tomorrow morning.

From their marui, Neytiri watched the scene fondly. 

"I'm glad Lo'ak was able to find a friend in Tsireya, who truly understands him." 

Her gaze turned to Jake, who squeezed her hand in response. They smiled at each other.

…

The light of day was barely palpable when Lo'ak climbed down from the hammock in which he had been sleeping earlier. Without a sound, he unhooked it from the ends of the marui, rolled it up and put it away in a corner. He had finally found the will to go and see his brother, but he did not want to be disturbed in his solemn approach.

The village was surprisingly quiet. Everyone was asleep and he didn't cross paths with panyone on his way. All he had to do was call his ilu who would lead him to the Tree of Souls. 

It was still a big journey and it gave him time to think. A thousand times he had thought of turning back, dreading the moment of reunion too much. But on the other hand, he couldn't help thinking about his dad's confidences, about his past and about his brother. He didn't want to have any regrets.

The Tree of Souls loomed under his feet. He took a deep breath and dived down to find his brother.

...

"Neteyam?" 

Lo'ak looked around for his brother. He couldn't see him anywhere. What if...?

"My baby bro!" a voice came from behind him.

Lo'ak immediately turned around. He smiled as he saw his older brother facing him.

"So the mighty warrior is being grounded. No flying for a month huh?" his older brother teased him, patting his head affectionately.

"I deserved it... You almost got killed because of me..." replied Lo'ak, using a more serious tone.

"Oh that? It was nothing... Grandma treated me well, I should be able to get away with it!" Neteyam joked.

"Come here, I'm not done with you!" 

Kiri had just grabbed him by the shoulders to sit him down to apply more solution to his wounds.

"Ouch!" 

He gritted his teeth.

"Hold still, this should ease your pain."

Seeing his brother in pain, Lo'ak's face darkened.

"Don't make that face, baby brother!" Neteyam reassured him, "What did Dad ask you to do? Taking care of the ikrans I bet..."

He felt the tears come to his eyes. 

"Neteyam... if I had listened to you, none of this would have happened..." he paused, thinking about how recent events had kept coming. "I promise I’ll listen to you from now on..."

Neteyam looked at Lo'ak with seriousness. He placed a loving hand on his brother's shoulders and looked him in the eye.

"Don't blame yourself, baby brother, we couldn't have foreseen what would happen. None of this is your fault Lo'ak. Promise me you'll forgive yourself, okay bro?"

Despite everything that happened, his brother had forgiven him. 

"I promise," he conceded before throwing himself into his arms, finally letting his tears fall.

"I'll always be there for you Lo'ak. Always."

[inkofamethyst]

March 13, 2024

Happy covid-iversary, yay. "Two weeks to stop the spread," is a saying that will haunt me my entire life, I think.

I didn't actually journal on March 13 which is a shame in hindsight, but I remember not doing much. I lounged around my house because classes were cancelled, I picked my sister up from school, and we went to get ice cream. A lot of other people from my/her high school had the same idea, so the line was long, and I was too awkward to say hi to the people I kinda knew (but I always thought they were cooler than me (I genuinely think most people are cooler than me... which might be a problem in some respects, but I'll deal with that later.)).

Anyway I coded for 5 hours straight and got a working encounter system, a working character creator, and a working opponent set generator. There's still a lot to move from my note to the script, but, the game works, and everything I've written runs as intended. Is it fun? Well, right now, it's all the same. Name yourself, fight one-fight two-fight three (each only requiring one or two inputs), game ends. It was exciting the first couple of times, but now I want to add more for more variety, of course.

[edit: wrote the above a couple days ago and after a break it has returned to being kind of fun. I've also learned that instantaneousness kills all tension, so I wrote a few basic functions to delay and separate lines in various ways. Anyway I'm going to hold off on doing much more transcribing/coding from my pseudocode, since I don't want to get too far ahead of the final project timeline, and I don't even really know what the expectations are, so I could be way outside of bounds here and I just wouldn't know.]

[edit 2, next day: New plan. Going to write more detailed pseudo/update poorly-detailed pseudo, do some story planning for the secret ending that I don't intend to get to but hey yaneverknow, and try to balance mechanics/come up with items/do a bunch of the little things that sap a surprising amount of creativity.]

I also binged She-Hulk, and I loved it?! I thought it was going to be awful and cringey the way people online (dudes?) talked about it, but it was genuine, and meta, and actually had me laughing at times. I mean, that last episode? Come on!!! Sure, some of the vfx were just alright, but it's a show, and after six-odd years of AOS, I'm used to it. I'm glad they leaned into the unseriousness. Also,,,, Matt Murdock is such a hottie. The quips, the law banter, the violence, ahhhh. My dnd-friend strongly endorses Daredevil, but I've held off because I was afraid of the violence, honestly. But I'm a big girl, and I'm very good at closing my eyes.

Today I'm thankful for a successful antiquing run!!!! Early last semester I heard about this antique market, and I finally put in the effort to get there today, and it was amazing!!! I was looking for shared housewares (found the specific item I was looking for!) and unique vintagey jewelry. Didn't quite manage to find anything truly vintage, but I got a darling piece of simple costume jewelry and the most fantastic mug that's shaped like a head of lettuce (this description does not do its beauty justice). The necklace will be perfect for when I finally make my way to the opera, and the mug is like something a fairy would drink from. I stayed within my budget which means I have just a little bit left in my allowance to thrift for clothes, maybe on Friday or Saturday (since I'll be in lab all day tomorrow).

By the way, the antique store was amazing. It has at least five floors (I got tired after three and a half) and is filled to the brim with some of the most eclectic stuff you could ever find, with old-timey radios playing music from various eras throughout. Magical. I could waste a lot of money there.

Oh wait, before I go, yesterday was such a busy day that I didn't even journal but I:

Met up with a lab/classmate and their partner for a lunch and a stroll in the city which was fantastic. My original plan was to go see Dune and also to pick up some (red, short, block) heels I'd ordered, but I didn't end up liking the heels on me very much, and I was enjoying the pair's company too much to cut the time short with a three-hour movie.

Went to a paint night through a diversity org I'm in which was also fantastic. I painted a cute little mushroom scene! I don’t really consider myself a visual artist and I’m not a huge fan of acrylic but it was very relaxing so I’d love to try watercolor sometime. Also like,, because this isn’t my "preferred medium" it was SO nice to not be stressed about perfection and just go for it.

[yostresswritinggirl]

You give me a prompt so I must comply and rot my brain with fluff. Friends/strangers to lovers ASDFGHJKL

Since Kazuha was once from a wealthy clan he met you when you when you parents came over to discuss an investment

He took a liking to you as you were more truthful and didn’t try to make friends with him for your parents.

Since then you guys grew up together basically he took a liking to you and you both soon start crushing on each other ( cue mutual pinning )

Once his clan fell apart you both fell out of touch because of the ya know his friend dying passing away.

So then like ten years pass and you soon become more successful. CEO boss life

You definitely took notice of how he changed but his kind attitude didn’t dissolve.

You both instantly reconnected and soon fell in love once again. You both started dating just fluff everywhere because of his charming attitude.

You both go on cute dates like amusement parks, walks in the park, stargazing, visiting an outdoor market, writing poetry together ASDFGHJKL the list goes on and Kazuha insists he pays for all it.

While he’s being all cute and all on the side he’s threatening people, defeating mafia bosses etc. all the mafia gangs is vicinity and beyond are to scared to touch you

Kazuha’s a mence with a blade and everyone knows that. He’s a double edged sword. Calm on the outside, beast on the inside. The rage inside him is only quelled by you.

Eventually you guys move in and you start to get suspicious that he’s out all the time so you confront him. The whole ordeal goes calmer than you expected.

He didn’t deny anything and told you the entire truth. It took you a minute to comprehend it but you eventually got use to it and were very supportive and you guys go back to your fluffy lives.

Once he finally achieved his goals you were very surprised when he told you he wanted to be a househusband. Being your supportive self you said yes and so your fluffy life begins.

He’s very popular around the neighbourhood especially with the children with his calm demeanour that always calms them down. He is. Still popular around adults though! Susan down the road is alway exchanging recipes with him.

He’s very good at cooking especially fish because of his time out in the ocean. So if you love fish this is your man. But don’t worry he can cook other things as well!!

The moment you get home he seems to already have a bath ready for you. Nothing sexual but he’ll wash your hair and just be very fluffy and all you have to do it close your eyes.

He doesn’t like it when you work overtime as it’s strain on you and kazuha doesn’t get to see his favourite hardworking partner!! So expect a clingy Kazuha. ( especially if he’s done a lot of cleaning and shopping today. )

When you guys go shopping together you swear you can see his eyes light up since even though it’s such a normal thing he does almost daily it’s the fact he’s doing with you.

Graveyard visits together

In terms of cleaning, Kazuha can clean good enough but there will be areas forgotten and some dust around but nothing to noticeable.

Overall fluff fluff relationship very cute together.

Oh wow. Some writing god possessed me and wrote that. So I can write that but not update my writing blog for two months. Anyways I didn’t rlly talk about samurai menace blade kazu as much as I’d like but the writing god said peace. Alright good bye <3 don’t fold your clothes incorrectly and try not to get scammed.

- Pela anon

(related post) the whirlwind my mind was when reading this like ah so the reader is also an Inazuma clan - ah wait, they're a ceo - Mafia bosses???? It's like I'm getting slapped left, right and center on what universe is this hahaha

Please I want more Kazuha menace, this is a good foundation for how they got together and now I crave more of him as a househusband. Like that samurai that wanted to challenge Kazuha in his story quest? I want that level of shenanigans, modern or not.

I want people to go to reader and be like "You're dating the Kaedahara Kazuha?! The samurai fugitive?! The lost Isshin art survivor?!" And they nervously chuckle and hold up their hand "Um we're actually married" "What?!"

Him all smiley with his cat Tama, walking around humming with groceries while some tough looking guys cower in fear in alleyways, I love all of it *nod nod* Maybe I'll start writing for Kazuha now, who knows

[quinloki]

What have you wrote

As of Today I have three completed Multi-fic chapters posted to Tumblr, so I'm going to do a What Have You Wrote and What Are you Writing Combo Post.

Somehow there' like 100 of you following me, and maybe this post will help. (I do have a pinned Master Post, but this is gonna go beyond that a little).

This is also a way for me to vent, and you'll see why in a minute.

Anyway - This is gonna get long, so

Posted to Tumblr Items: (these are ALL x Reader/reader insert fics)

A Light Touch - x Eustass - Modern AU (Part of the Grandline Metropolis Series) - a regular paper pusher, you're pushed out into an intersection by a drunk driver and involuntarily meet Eustass Kid. You lose your hand, and gain new friends, new headaches, and new skills. (Part 1 of a series).

Some Direction - x Roronoa - Modern AU - The population is declining, so the World Government decided to step in and arrange marriage for most of its citizens. Lucky you, plucky little librarian, you've been paired with Roronoa Zoro. Good thing for you he's the protective type, because old childhood tragedies are trying to rear their ugly heads again.

Family Ties - x Doflamingo - Modern AU - Mafia style - You're the unofficially adopted daughter of Edward Newgate, and besties with the local clinic doctor. One day you find an injured man in an alleyway and decide to help him out. Dodging people who are trying to kill him, you manage a successful rescue, now if only you could stay out of Trouble >.>

Not On Tumblr Yet, but Done!

Quicksand - x Crocodile - Modern AU (Part of the Grandline Metropolis Series) - Secretary to Buggy the Clown, District boss to the Rain Dinners Casino in the West Blue district, you got over your crush of the CEO ages ago. Recently you've been trying to date via a dating site, and soon you'll meet your match face to face!

Thrice Prophesized - x Roronoa - Modern AU (Part of the Grandline Metropolis Series) - Your first memory was of being chase by marines and practically blasted out of the sky. You wake up after being yanked from the water by a boy made of rubber, but your memories are shaky at best. All you know for sure is, you prophesized the fall of the ruling class, so maybe pirates are the best allies.

Not on tumblr Yet, and not done yet! (all links lead to Wattpad where all my Wips are)

Family Practice - x Law - Set in the same AU as Family Ties, this story dives into a What If? - What if the reader had become more than Besties with Law? Same Reader Same AU - just... an AU of the AU xD 10 chapters

Souled Out - x Eustass - Someone's stolen your soul, and you want it back. You haven't aged in 25 years, and for the last decade you've been studying how to summon demons. Now's the day to see if it's paid off, and if your summoned help can actually help you. 3 Chapters

Unseen - x Killer - set in canon universe with non-canon events. I wanted to write a book where Killer gets smooches, and that's what this is. It kind of got away with me, and I think I have a LOT of chapters ahead of me. 13 chapters

Isn't Enough - x Marco - set in canon universe with canon events. Reader is a doctor on the Moby, and a crew mate of Marco's. But that just Isn't Enough. 5 Chapters

Whew.

Booked, Honeysuckle Red, and Heart of Gold only have two chapters a piece so far. Royal Pains is a bit stalled out, but I haven't given up on it.

None of this is counting two books of one-shots, and the following pending titles I don't even have on active rotation:

A Light Touch 2 - Emperors Bara-teased Family Ties 2 - Gilded Lily Honeysuckle Gold Quicksand 2 - Warlords An Untitled Shanks Mafia AU Song Bird

Look, I guess, what I'm saying is, if you followed me for my writing, I have a lot planned. Unless life punches me in the face, I update 3-5 times a week. I have a day job, and I play some D&D, but otherwise I write.

I even started another title called Mafia Inked - JUST TODAY - and I didn't plan it. I have no idea where it's going to go or anything. But that's what the brain does. I got the idea, meant to write some notes, wrote a first chapter.

ANYWAY - you don't have to go to Wattpad or Ao3 if you don't want (I'm Quinloki on both), everything will get here eventually. Wattpad's just kind of my workspace. So things post there unedited.

Hey hey, if you do something like this, tag me! I want to see what my peeps are working on <;3

[sonwar]

hello!! i would like to first preface that i'm a fan of your writing (ao3 user sonwar) from your kpop works (namely the seokhoon (seventeen) titled 'do you know my heart? (i can't be without you)' in 2020. and if i remembered you wrongly, and you have in fact never heard of this fic or the kpop group before please feel free to delete this ask i apologise deeply aaaaa (whoops ahahaaa im sorry if that's the case)

today. as one does, i was thinking of this fic: its definitely one of the bigger fics the seokhoon tag has seen, and also one of those fics which leave a kind of Impact. even as i ponder seokhoon today as a writer myself, i find so many of the symbols and metaphors i use in my writing to have come from that fic. (if you remember) the ideas of jihoon admiring seokmin's singing & calling him the best singer—i took that and i turned it into a kind of how jihoon's music has been made real vs seokmin's which comes more as instinct—and jihoon, who is in awe of this. and of course seokmin thinking about jihoon all the time—that's something that i genuinely hold so close to my heart. it's so sweet and just soooo seokmin. aaaaaa

your writing there has such a tender and sweet quality to it that ive been striving to achieve—emotion comes across in a way that is. muted (i mean this positively). i feel comfortable reading it because it never feels shocking everything just feels so natural. those 33k words are a source of comfort. i love and value growth in characters/the progression of time in fic, and oh man!!!! you really show the emotional growth of seokhoon so incredibly well in that fic. its so good to me. it feels so alive because of the references you made but also because of how you wrote them. to create life!!! it's so incredible because. its all just so rich and perfect and good and i'm so grateful that ive been able to read this and have it affect me on such a level. my comment on that fic does nothing to live up to what i actually thought of it and now even if i cant convey my appreciation on the fic comments itself, i tried to find another way to reach out to you (hence, this lengthy anon ask)

feel free to ignore this/not reply!!! i understand that you've orphaned the seokhoons for a reason but in a way i just really wanted to let you know that your writing has made me feel so much. and for that! i am so grateful!! thank you again and so much for all of it.

hi anon! you have me right, i am responsible for do you know my heart (as well as "when i'm with you i bloom" and "i'm dying to be taken apart" in case you were looking for me...) i had sort of decided i was going to keep my kpop fandom side off tumblr, since i have found it to be sort of unwelcoming towards kpop, for whatever reason? but your message was so touching i'm throwing that out the window and doing whatever i want anyway! (more under the cut <3)

Letting you know off the bat that your message made me! incredibly emotional and teary eyed! Thank you very much for your kind words, you really can't know how much it means to me, and I'm so glad you reached out to me this way as well! I genuinely got so excited when I read your ask, I'm always happy to talk fics and even more happy to talk seokhoon, as I don't have many people to discuss them with! So thank you! The reason why I orphaned my old fics is...probably a lot more simple than what you might be thinking? The truth is, after posting those three seokhoon fics (which I wrote in pretty quick succession to each other), I went about two years without writing anything at all because I didn't have the bandwidth for it, and then I wrote The Mystery of The Pears in some kind of fugue state over the course of a couple months, and when I read that back to myself I felt that my writing had grown so much, I didn't really want that writing to be associated with my writing of a few years ago. But, to be honest, I re-read my Seokhoon fics again a few weeks ago and found that I enjoyed them much more than I thought I would, and much more than I did when I first wrote them, so I wonder if it's less that my writing has grown and maybe more that I've learned to be kinder towards myself...that'll teach me to orphan fics without completely thinking it through first, I guess. (that being said! i'd like you to know i am still planning on writing more seokhoon! seventeen is very near and dear to my heart, like. i really can't put into words the love i have for those boys, which is to say that i'll probably be a carat for as long as they're seventeen, and maybe even a little longer than that. plus, i feel personally tasked with bringing more seokhoon into the world, so, you know. currently, i'm really trying to finish a seokhoon fic i promised a friend MONTHS ago, even before tmotp was finished, and then i have about...3? seokhoon wips i've started and would like to finish? whether they all get done is to be seen, but hopefully!) Anyway...I have to say, I really love the way you took my little headcanon about Jihoon admiring Seokmin's singing and devolped it further! It's something I think a lot about, too, I think it's so interesting that, objectively, Seokmin has a much wider range and capacity as a singer, but that ever since Jihoon was a trainee he's been told he "already knows how to sing" and "doesn't need singing lessons." It makes me wonder how Jihoon approaches singing, if it's something that he considers more physical, like a muscle that he can control, rather than something emotional, which I think might be closer to how Seokmin approaches singing. I mention this because, considering that Jihoon is also the one making guides for the others to follow and the one directing them in the recording booth, I'm a litte curious about how those different approaches meet together in a more practical way, if that makes sense. I do still think it's something Jihoon would admire and think about a lot if only because it would be so different from his own approach. I also have some theories about certain songs in their discography being written specifically for Seokmin's voice (Same Dream Same Mind Same Night immediately comes to mind, I really think out of all their songs, that's the one that showcases the style Seokmin's voice is suited to the most and he really shines on that song...)

I am of the belief that Seokmin would have been watching Jihoon a lot longer than Jihoon would have been watching him...something about admiration that shifts and changes the closer you get to it...And I don't think Seokmin knows how to not take care of people, it's just who he is, but I also think that feeling is heightened a little bit with Jihoon specifically, who takes on a lot of responsibility without ever complaining about it, and who describes himself as someone who deals with things on his own. I think (and I've seen him) he would try to find ways to make things easier for Jihoon without him having to ask for it first, so that's where that comes from. I think muted is one of the sweetest ways anyone has described the way I write emotions. I like the idea of emotions that come easily and gradually, like. Slow drip love rather than sudden and all-consuming (and, that way, when trying to convey something that is bigger and overwhelming, it's easier to contrast those two emotions against each other), so thank you very much for that. I also think it's very funny you mention the way I wrote the progression of Seokhoon in that fic because, while I find your words incredibly kind and I'm so happy to hear you enjoyed it, and I can still sort of see why I wrote that fic the way I did, I do sometimes consider sort of re-writing a different version of that fic because I'm so sure I could do it better now...nowadays, I think the timeline would be a little different? Idk. Something for future me to consider... Anyway! Thank you, again, for such a lovely ask, I really am so very thankful, and I'm so glad you enjoyed my Seokhoon. Please feel free to message me whenever you'd like! (I'm also on twt! I only use tumblr on browser so I only log on when I'm using my laptop, but I'm a lot more active on twt.) Also, if you ever post your fics or already have, please let me know! I'd love to read them, and I'm always looking for more Seokhoon fics, since there's so very little of them to go around, as I'm sure you know...

[galactic-pirates]

I've seen a lot of posts lately about how hard writing is on my dash. It's true it can be hard - very hard. But there are good days too.

I don't talk specifics about my original writing here, as I kinda want to keep fan/personal!Me, and any potential future professional!Me separate. However, I do vague blog sometimes and here's another one and with a major win.

I finished self-edits of my book today!!

It's been a journey. I got the idea for this series October 2015. I said "I'm going to do that for NaNo" and my friend told me I was nuts, as there was no way I could plan it in time - but I did. I wrote the 50k in November, and then finished the draft over the next few months. I then wrote Book Two, and half of Book Three, and then November 2016... life happened. I will spare you the whole saga but basically fast forward to January this year and I picked it up again.

A complete reboot, rewritten from the ground up. The general plot is still basically the same but everything about the character arcs, to the details of the world, to (hopefully) how well it's written is all new. Applying everything I have learned in the last 8 years to do a better job this time.

258 hours - that's how long it took me to analyse, replot, rewrite, revise and edit. Basically 4 months because I took April off.

Anyway! This is a positive. This is a success. This is a giant step forward and I wish to share that brief shining moment of positivity. It can happen.

I have my beta and editor booked for next month. So the next task is to analyse and replot Book Two!

[3style3]

being creative on the internet as an outlet is a topic that i am passionate about & i have so much to say.. so i'll put it here.. keep reading if you want to, but its just a history of me and my connection to the internet as a whole, may crosspost this later lol ヾ(￣▽￣) \

ever since i was a little girl, i used the internet to express myself.. dress up games to tumblr, all of it, was used as an outlet. my earliest memory was playing dressup doll games on the computer & watching clips of lucky star in 240p quality while listening to vocaloid in my living room as a small small child, of course, my mom was cooking dinner during all of this, so i can smell dinner when i think of that memory.. germany, 8 pm, shes making banana pudding & tuna sandwiches for me and her while my dad is working.. its such a sweet thing to think of now that i come to think about it..♪(´▽｀) way before i discovered the bitterness of the world, the world to me was just schnuffel bunny & vocaloid..

i never had many friends growing up. i had maybe three actual friends IRL, i was severely bullied before going on to become homeschooled from third grade all the way up to highschool, which i went on to do online schooling for that aswell because quite frankly, i was terrified of leaving my house due to my increasing social anxiety along with quarantine happening about ~2 years into my school life. anyways, thats enough backstory, back to my main point.

anywho, i've been expressing myself online for a LONG time as you can tell, i first began uploading my animations and artwork to youtube in 2016..? and i went on to upload my music to soundcloud in 2018. i made a lot of online friends, and even had a partner who i met online which lasted around 4 years. which doesnt sound impressive until i tell you, we began dating in MIDDLE SCHOOL! we dated all the way until.. i was almost 16? lol..

the internet was my refuge and escape from various traumas that had happened to me over the course of the past few years, traumas i was too scared to go to therapy or even open up for, so i'd express my pain on anonymous accounts and abandon them later on. i have countless deviantart accounts that i used purely for vent art and nothing else, that i would later abandon once i realized people could probably tell it was me.

darkness aside, i have many good memories involving uploading my work online aswell, from my various soundcloud aliases to my various artist aliases, one of which would become extremely successful due to my original characters when i was 14, i later abandoned this alias for safety reasons that i won't get into here.. along with all of the fanfiction i read and wrote when i was 12.. so.. much.. fanfiction.. specifically bandom fanfiction, do you all remember bandom?? bandom was a nice time on the internet, we were all just having so much fun on those "___ is ____'s song" and "bandomconfessions" accounts.. no fear of judgement or anything, we could just write stories where we dated our favorite band member and others thought it was the coolest thing to ever grace this planet..

i feel like, without the internet i wouldnt be who i am today, okay, i will admit, i went through some edgy phases to try to fit in with the cishet white kids online since.. being me online was hard! i had to participate in edginess or else run the risk of being called heinous.. heinous things. i was a huge leafyishere fan (now that i think about it.. ew!) and frequented boards of 4chan that i'd never frequent now that i'm older and you know.. have a soul that isnt as dark as the void?

i feel like. . . . if i didnt have the internet at the age i did, i wouldnt had discovered stuff that was lifechanging to me, for example GTBSG was just purely by chance, 10 year old me poking around on soundcloud, youtube, tumblr and twitter, just looking for something, anything new to stimulate my little senses.. and i found it! that group literally and figuratively changed my life in the best sense possible. i feel like i found my calling through their music.

i think that.. no matter how bad and judgemental the internet gets, it'll always be important to me, like yeah, i hate how social media operates nowadays, and all the microtrends that results in so much waste and landfills getting bigger, but if you focus on yourself, delete tiktok, stop doomscrolling, the internet is fun, once you go back to putting in the effort to find new websites, to read peoples personal pages and shrines.. the internet feels a lot more alive again. the internet was taken over by corporations but theres people trying to take it back, even if its a vocal minority, we're still here, and those people who put in the effort mean more to me than they'll ever know.. o(*￣▽￣*)o

i love you internet, even if you suck sometimes.

[smoll-tangerine]

Sicheng + coffee shop au + 18 “I’m not jealous” maybe?

[a/n] hi, anon! thanks so much for requesting! i'm so happy to have received a request with sicheng as the male lead so i had a lot of fun writing this drabble! enjoy!! xoxo

PAIRING. sicheng x female barista!reader GENRES. romance, comedy, coffee shop!au PROMPT. "i'm not jealous." WORDS. 1006

Being a barista was a relatively cool part-time job with lots of perks.

For one, unlimited coffee.

Your boss, Kun, was the sweetest guy ever who allowed you to work as a barista in his café even though you had 0 experience.

Your co-workers, Hendery and Xiaojun, were the funniest guys ever and they always made your shifts so entertaining.

Your regulars, Ten, Lucas, and Yangyang, were the nicest customers you’ve ever met in this line of service (and they gave you nice tips too even though you insisted that they shouldn’t).

And last, but not least, it was thanks to this job that you met your now-boyfriend, Sicheng.

The story of how you got together with Sicheng was actually quite funny. Perhaps not terribly hilarious, but definitely bordering on what people would call “cute” in the cringiest way possible. But you didn’t regret the way you hit on Sicheng, especially not when your method proved to be successful.

“Hey, you,” Sicheng greeted you with a cute smile before leaning over the counter and gave you a small peck on the lips.

“Hi.” You smiled against his lips.

Your boyfriend then proceeded to take the seat and table closest to the counter before setting himself up for a study session in the café. Due to both of your busy schedules, you two made it so that you two would walk back to the university dorms together. Since he was done with his classes early today, he came by to wait for you at the coffee shop.

“What do you feel like drinking today?” you asked him as you picked up a paper cup.

“Kun reminded me to tell you to stop using the paper cups for Sicheng,” Xiaojun piped up as he came back from the bathroom and did a fist-bump with your boyfriend.

“He also wants to tell you to stop giving him free coffee,” Hendery added after serving a drink to the last customer. “He said and I quote, ‘This isn’t a charity, I’m running here, but a business,’ and un-quote.”

You three gave each other a look before bursting out in laughter. When was the last time you three actually listened to your boss, anyway?

(You could already hear Kun crying at your way of thinking, but that was simply the way you three showed your love to him.)

“It’s been almost close to two years since you and Sicheng started dating,” Xiaojun commented. “Isn’t it about time you stop with the pick-up lines on the paper cups?”

You looked at him with scrutiny before turning to your boyfriend. “What do you think? Do you want me to stop?”

Sicheng shrugged nonchalantly with an angelic smile. “I don’t mind, really. I actually look forward to them every time I come by.”

“See,” you said as you motioned to your co-worker, “there you have it.”

“Please,” Hendery scoffed. “You mean to tell me that Sicheng liked it when you wrote, ‘You look so familiar. Didn’t we take a class together? I could’ve sworn we had chemistry.’ or ‘Your hand looks heavy — can I hold it for you?’? Stop lying and just say you want to put your claim on him, or something.”

“Awn,” you cooed and pinched Hendery’s cheek. “Is someone jealous because they don’t have a cute girl writing pick-up lines for them on their coffee cups?”

“No one thinks that you’re cute!”

You pinched him slightly harder before slightly pushing Hendery away. “Sicheng does.” You turned to him. “Right?”

Sicheng only chuckled and nodded. “The cutest!”

Hendery rubbed his cheek, hoping to soothe the pain, before grumbling, “I’m telling you, Sicheng, you better leave this girl soon because she is violent.”

You simply rolled your eyes and proceeded to make a caramel macchiato for Sicheng, one of his favourite drinks, while Hendery was manning the cash, and Xiaojun went to the back to bake some pastries. You pondered on which pick-up line to use on your boyfriend and decided to ask for his opinion, when you saw him talking to another girl who was standing a bit too close for your comfort.

“Oh, would you look at that?” Hendery mused. “She gave her number to him.”

The girl didn’t even give the chance for Sicheng to refuse the piece of paper that probably contained her phone number and then left with her drink in her hands. You thought to yourself that maybe you should have spat in it or something, or give her two pumps of caramel drizzle instead of four.

“Hey,” Sicheng said as he came to the counter, realizing that you were done making his drink. “What did you write for me, this time?”

You narrowed your eyes at your boyfriend before turning away from him and hid the paper cup and pen. “Nothing yet.”

Sicheng seemed puzzled by your sudden change of behaviour, which made sense since you were nothing but loving and sweet not even a couple of minutes ago. The wheels in his head turned and he let out a small ‘ah’ of realization before snorting to himself, his arms crossed on his chest, smug.

“Is someone jealous?”

You spluttered. “Who’s jealous? Me? Psh. I’m not jealous. Hendery, are you jealous?”

Hendery raised both of his hands and backed away from you. “Oh, hell no, you are not bringing me into this.”

You rolled your eyes. “Whatever, I’m not jealous. Why would I be jealous?”

Sicheng shook his head and chuckled deeply. “You’re cute when you’re jealous.”

“Uh, huh,” you replied back distractedly as you wrote your daily pick-up line on his coffee cup. You then handed it to him with a sickenly loving smile. “Here you go, my love.”

He puckered his lips in thanks before taking a sip and returned to his seat. Giddily, he turned his paper cup around to find what you had written for him, to only see you had only written four words this time around.

You can go die♡

Well, those were definitely not the words he was expecting to read.

[sugadaily]

SUGA has this way of talking passionately with a deadpan look on his face. Full of passion about his life and music. How is your shoulder? SUGA: Good. I think it’ll get even better once I take off this brace. Apparently, it takes several months for a full recovery, but I'm trying to get better as fast as possible. How does it feel like to have resolved a problem that has distressed you for long? SUGA: First of all, I'm glad. The pain is one thing, but when my shoulders got worse, I couldn't even raise my arms. But when I heard that this might recur when getting the surgery at a young age, I waited for the right time and had decided to get it done early next year regardless of the COVID-19 situation. I had planned to get the surgery after the year-end stages, but I got it done this year (2020) because my doctors advised me to start preparing early for next year’s promotions and activities. How does it feel like watching the other members doing promotions? SUGA: I can't say it feels great. I could see the emptiness because we've been together as a group of seven for so long. Not necessarily because I'm not there but because something that should be there is missing? Is that what made you join the promotion as much as possible? You shot lots of video footage in advance and you even appeared in the Mnet “2020 MAMA” through VR. SUGA: Fake SUGA (Laughs). There’s this 3D studio where we shot it. I shot, scanned, and acted there, but couldn't see the actual result at the studio. I thought a sense of displacement was unavoidable, and that was exactly the case. (Laughs) I acted normal because it would have been aired anyway even if I hadn’t had the surgery, but it seems a lot because it’s aired after the surgery. You must feel restricted not being able to go on stage. SUGA: The thing is, it's only been a month after I got surgery, but my absence on stage is so apparent. But my doctors keep telling me that I shouldn't be impatient and in fact, many athletes get a resurgery when they return to the field without proper rehabilitation. So I'm working on trying to care less. For the first two weeks after surgery, I felt so frustrated that I tried out new things. I even watched movies I didn't watch.

What movies did you watch? SUGA: I watched ‘Samjin Company English Class’ as it happened to be on IPTV, and now I have ‘Tenet’ on my list. ‘Parasite’ was the last movie I saw at a cinema. As the social distancing measures became stricter, I haven’t been going outside, except going to the hospital. I even eat at home. I'm also watching a lot of TV nowadays. Watching music shows like ‘Sing Again’, ‘Folk Us’, and ‘Show Me The Money 9’ made me think of what I should do in the upcoming days. Could you elaborate on that? SUGA: A lot of candidates on ‘Sing Again’ are very talented but hadn't had the opportunity, and on ‘Folk Us’, I noticed that many took their own guitars on stage. I started playing the guitar lately and I'm having this urge to broaden my scope of music. And since my interest in the music industry in the U.S. grew, I'm getting prepared, studying English and all. What fueled your interest? SUGA: In some ways it’s the most commercially developed market. You could lose the industry attention in a flash if it's not feasible. So in this system, you would try everything and that would be an efficient way. I want to do music for a long time, and to this end, I always want to learn more about the global music industry because I want to do music that’s loved not only in Korea, but also in the U.S., Japan and Europe. Speaking of which, it seems BE was influenced from music of the past rather than today's trends. SUGA: I especially like impromptu music. I love the songs that were made in one take instead of being recorded several times. In this era of crossover genres, the desire to do better in music is growing inside me. As the genres become more blended, the melody you use must be more important. Does starting to play the guitar affect your composing in any way? SUGA: I always liked using guitar sounds. And I have always liked the Eagles. If you play the guitar, it’s way easier to write songs because you can carry it along wherever you go, pluck on the strings to create melody lines. Keyboards are difficult to carry around. (Laughs) I usually work on my laptop but I had this thought that I definitely needed an instrument. It accelerates my work and improves my understanding of chords. It makes me think you could intuitively make melodies. SUGA: It’s easier to write a song because you can intuitively make a progression and try many different things. During my work on ‘Eight’, IU had recorded and sent me a song from her phone. At the time I couldn’t play the guitar, so we tried to make sure we’re working on the same page when keeping track of each other's progress. That made me feel the need to learn an instrument.

This is actually before you started playing the guitar, but I found ‘Telepathy’ in BE very interesting. The varying melodic progressions between hooks for each member made me wonder if you wrote the melody intuitively for each part. SUGA: I tried a melody for the first time this year (2020), and as I started knowing the fun of music, it opened a lot of new doors for me. So it was kind of easy working on it. I just played a beat and wrote from the beginning until the end. Done. I wrote it in just 30 minutes. The song almost wrote itself. The trends of pop and hip-hop these days cross boundaries between vocals and rap. I like this trend. When I listen to your singing, it feels like you’re hitting the beats rather than singing along the notes. So I thought perhaps you're singing as if you're rapping. SUGA: When you're rapping, you just think of the rhythm, so it’s like simply putting on a melody to a rhythm. To define which comes first, I think melody adds to it while writing the rap. In ‘Life Goes On’, the lyrics ‘Thankfully between you and me, nothing’s changed’ are somewhere in between. It's not rap but it’d be mundane to say it's a mere melody. SUGA: There are obviously songs where the rap needs to be highlighted. For example, in ‘Dis-ease’ or ‘Ugh!’, you have to be good at rap. But in songs that should be easy to listen to, impressive raps are not always the way to go. Sometimes, you want smooth transitions without obstacles. In that sense, the rap flow of ‘Blue & Grey’ was impressive. Rather than a dramatic effect that emphasizes each part, you extended the rap just as much as the slowing beat. SUGA: To be honest, this beat is difficult to rap to. The beginning of the song only has a guitar line, which made it even more difficult. I participated when we wrote lyrics for ‘Blue & Grey’ and I've always wanted to work on a song like this. It was because verse 1 talks about the theme of the song.

It seems you achieved almost everything that you wanted in BE. SUGA: I think it took less than a week to make my part in the album. After having written one or two melodies for ‘Life Goes On’, I wrote a version complete with rap, and liked it that I even worked on a separate arrangement and lyrics. Rather than pondering over the ways that might work, I choose to simply play the music and write. Many creators are unsure even after they’ve produced good work. How do you get the conviction to release your work? SUGA: Many musicians are unsure whether they should release their music or not. It was the same for me, but the thing is, you’ll never release anything if you nitpick everything. For example, if we release 10 songs, we have a chance to unveil them in concerts or fan events. And sometimes, as we listen to the song, we think, ‘Why does this part that had bothered me no longer bother me?’ Some things might feel awkward at some point, but in time, it no longer feels awkward. Even I forget about it. So it's more efficient to fine tune, looking at the big picture, rather than thinking too much about the details. On top of that, during promotions, I don’t have the time to pick tracks that others have sent for 10 hours. It would be a success for all of us if each of us play and write a melody in their own time and collaborate with others on the details. So the way of songwriting has evolved in many aspects. What motivated such evolution? SUGA: I think it evolved naturally. I've changed in personality this year (2020), as well as in terms of my interpretation and attitude toward life to the extent that I almost thought I've been rehearsing. How would it feel like if there were no stage to go to or anyone looking out for me? This thought made me realize the value of these things. In ‘Dis-ease’, you sing ‘I don’t know if it’s the world that's sick’. Was it this lifestyle that changed your thoughts about your work? SUGA: Yes. When I was young, I had embraced the belief that ‘It must be my fault’, but as I got older, I realized that this is not always true. Most of what I had thought was my fault was in fact, not my fault. On the other hand, there are things that I did well and times I had been lucky. ‘I NEED U’ came out during a time when you were still thinking, “It must be me”. After the members put on a stage with ‘I NEED U’ in KBS' ‘Song Festival’, you wrote on Weverse, “It’s the same as five years ago.” How would you compare with back then? (This interview was held on December 19, 2020.) SUGA: We've matured quite a bit. And our stage performances have become more natural. I still like ‘I NEED U’. Just listening to the beat makes me sentimental, and above all, the song came out nicely. So as I was watching this and that when I stumbled across old videos. Watching them made me think that we haven’t changed much.

In what aspect haven't you changed much? SUGA: Before the social distancing measures got stricter, I talked with the photographer for BE, whom I had met four years ago. The photographer was surprised that we hadn’t changed much after all the success, even though he had assumed we’d be very different. I'm amazed personally. I’ve had the chance to meet the members before your debut, but from your way of talking with members or others, it seems you haven't changed. SUGA: I think it's because we don’t give it a big deal about success. For example, it's incredible to be ranked first on the Billboards, but there’s also this sense of, “Okay, and?” Even the Grammys? (Laughs) SUGA: When we got nominated for the Grammy Awards, we thought, ‘Is this real?’ (Laughs) Of course we were delighted, but it didn’t make us think, ‘We're singers nominated for the Grammy.’ If you're nominated, you're nominated, and if you get the award, you get the award. You don't get shaken by that. I know it's a great award and would be so grateful if we receive it, but we know that nothing is possible without the tremendous support of our fans. What’s more important is that the fans are more flattered than us when we receive a great award. So everyone's rejoicing, but it’s like, ‘Let's do what we have to do.’ We've been training ourselves to keep finding our places, so no one remains overexcited. In ‘Fly To My Room’, there are lyrics that say, ‘This room is too small to contain my dream’, and ‘Sometimes this room becomes an emotional trash can, but it embraces me.’ I had this feeling that the room had been such a place and that you were accepting that you have changed. Then the essence must have remained the same. SUGA: It wasn’t easy to accept that we eventually change. But I think it's a good thing that we changed. What we did back then was possible only at that time, and we could change because of the things we had accomplished. Then, what new things are you dreaming about? SUGA: I'm eager to continue doing music. Since all performances were canceled due to COVID-19, I had a chance to talk to so many musicians in Korea. I talked with legendary singers as well as people who are my contemporaries. Talking with them once again made me realize that I love music so much. Because music is my profession, I can’t imagine myself not doing it. I'm grateful that there are still unvisited areas in the world of music.

What kind of music do you think you’ll be engaged in in the future? SUGA: I was greatly motivated when I saw the concert of Na Hoon-a last Chuseok . I wondered how many musicians would actually be able perform and write music for so long like he has. At that moment, it occurred to be that ‘I want to be like him’. He has passion and desire, and most of all, he is a superstar. A few years ago, I took my parents to a Na Hoon-a concert, and when they watched the performance last Chuseok, they said it was way less impressive to see him perform through the TV. (Laughs) That must explain your interest in a broader spectrum of music from instruments to composing and musical genres. Because you want to be doing this for a long time. SUGA: My goal is to continue doing music in any shape or form. In that sense, I have this great respect toward Cho Yong-pil. He takes the best sound there is and reinterprets it into his own. I think that’s something I want to emulate and keep changing and evolving so that I can continue doing music for decades to come. The lyrics ‘Thankfully between you and me nothing’s changed’ must sound more meaningful for the fans because they will be listening to your music for a long time. SUGA: A month and a half in the current times must seem like a lifetime for the fans when we're far apart. I feel the same. But I think that's proof that we worked hard for the past seven years and that the fans have been passionately reaching out to us. I'm striving to get to them as fast as I can, and I'm eager to go on stage. I'm going through this because I want to be better on stage in a better condition, so don't be sad, and please hang in there a little longer.

[tomdutch]

i love tom to pieces, i really do, but this man keeps going on about starting a family, which would be cute as hell, but like i already see creepy people trying to inspect whether zendayas body has changed because they think he’s hinting at something and i am simply tired 🧍🏻‍♀️anyways…love you and your writing and your whole blog!!!! ignore these mfs who try to troll you on anon (well aware i am anon but i am late to the tumblr game and have no idea what i am doing quite yet and don’t want people to freak out with my empty blog lmao) lots of love, hope you have the best rest of the week !! 💫🤍

mmmm yeah the first time he talked abt starting a family this year i was like huh this is a lil weird considering he just said in a gq interview for cherry press that he's so not ready to have kids and then as events progressed i was like oh i see what's going 😭 it's so incredibly fucked up that ppl are... idek how to put it, it's so deranged so imma just quote you "inspecting" zendaya's body to see if she's pregnant ????? the insanity naur y'all need to leave this woman the fuck alone. the way she needs to sue all y'all for every cent you own

and thank you!! i wrote 500 words today which i'm counting as a success bc i'm genuinely so tired and sleep deprived that i'm amazed i can even answer asks rn when all i wanna do is lie down on the couch and binge the shrek trilogy. sending lots of love right back at you and i hope you enjoy your week as well <3

[thekillingmoonmoon]

Hello Moon, how’s it going? Hopefully you’re having a good day :)

I’m in the middle of my usual fanfic brainrot - and as I was trying to figure out this steamy Toji fanfic I’ve been wanting to write for ages (with no success, unfortunately) I thought of how its dynamics/tropes could fit well in a mythology AU ..

Saying “Mythology” had me instantly thinking of you, and that’s why I came here - I wanted to ask you: have you ever thought of writing mythology AU fanfics? I’m curious about your view of them, if you want to share it! :)

I personally have always refrained from seriously giving it a try: I don’t want to portray myths & themes in a misleading way, but at the same time I would also like to keep some of the exceptionally crude themes out of my works .. I also don’t want to mess too much with characterisations, so yeah - in fear of making a disaster I simply never wrote a real story down. Nevertheless, I have to admit there are scenarios/parallels that sound very interesting ..

What about you? What do you think of the matter?

I hope to hear from you soon, but meanwhile have a nice day! <3

okay okay, time to crack my knuckles!

I love the idea of mythology AUs. I really really do. I love mythology, and I love seeing what other people do with myths and how they integrate mythology into writing

I think that the joy in an AU is how dynamic and variable the changes can be - An AU can be simple: what if so-so stayed alive? (Toji, my beloved), what if these characters actually got together? (ChosoYuki, my beloved) or you can change the entire universe - you can make a JJK fic in a curse-free world, or Tokyo Revengers as a sports AU (someone please do this, I just don't know enough about sports) and sometimes, you can change a character - like, what if Mikey went to therapy for his "dark impulses"?

Mythology AUs can do all of that. Say I want to write a Greek Mythology AU about JJK - if I cast Gojo as Zeus, I don't necessarily have to make Gojo into a horrible person that does horrible things (Zeus is very much not my favourite god) but I can use some of the aspects of Zeus to re-characterise Gojo. Maybe Gojo won't be as awful to women as Zeus is, but he'll have lightning powers and have many lovers.

I actually really want to write Mythology AUs or Fairy Tale AUs but I'm scared that people won't enjoy it because they know the ending? like they know the prince will save the day or the distressed nymph will become a tree (Apollo, you bastard) and that's why I'm wary of those sort of AUs.

One solution is to just borrow elements from mythology, maybe a power or two, or maybe an aesthetic feel (I try this, sometimes). You can also always turn the myth on its head. Have the princess save the hero, or the monster be the better person. Revisionism is a very strong movement at the moment (especially in my field, my bookshelf is full of retellings of classic novels)

It's a lot of fun, and no interpretation of a character is wrong. If I think Toji enjoys honey whiskey on the rocks and is the human embodiment of regret, then that's correct for my version of Toji, and I'm allowed to write him like that. The rest is confetti. Write the character you want, in the story you want, with the ending you want. forget the rest. if you enjoyed writing your piece, people will enjoy reading your piece.

Why do I feel like I was giving a sermon? I hope it doesn't feel like I was sermonising >_<

Anyway, I had a good day today and i might finish it off by writing or planning for my future fics I might actually add a mythology AU to my list of ideas :]

all of the looooove to yoooou <3

🐰🌙