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rina-writes · 3 years

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hello :)) so I was listening to dress (taylor swift) and i couldn't stop thinking about friends to lovers w jack. The lines "pining and desperately waiting // i don't want you like a best friend" and the bridgeeeee omg it will be so perfect😭😭😭 idk if you want to write, I just thought i should share this. Love ur blog sm❤

Thank you for the love ♥ Some of my fave Jack stories on here are friends to lovers. I kinda wrote it in my fic Reunion, but after listening to Dress on loop, I had to write another version. Plus, I have been re-watching Jack’s videos from 2018/2019 when he would talk about his high school years so, I’ve been wanting to write a good flashback. All this to say, I got a little carried away and this is 5k+ words, but at least it’s not 20k this time, right? :D Hope you like it, anon!

Pining in Anticipation

Warnings: Fem!reader, childhoodfriend!reader, light angsty to fluffy, suggestive but no smut, mentions of drug and alcohol use, mutual pinning, long (5k+ words) fic

You bit your lip as you stared at the price tag again, pointing the piece of paper toward the mirror to get a better view. You knew it was a bad idea to try on the dress even though it was out of your price range. You dismissed the chance that you would even like it on. After all, every other dress you tried on didn’t fit the way you liked. You just wanted the experience of trying on a dress 3 times the budget you set for yourself in your mind. Just your luck that it would be the perfect look.

You turned in the dress with a bit of difficulty. It was long dragging on the ground. However, it would give you the excuse to wear the heels that you had been saving for a special occasion. With the added height you would be able to have the dress just kiss the floor. You tried to talk yourself out of other elements of the dress. Strapless wasn’t usually comfortable, but this fit you like a glove. You had taken off your bra to get the full effect and nothing showed through despite the cool temperature in the fitting room. The slit was a little high, starting from the top of your thigh to allow for a full leg moment. You would have to wear pretty small underwear to hide it and walk confidently in order to keep it masqueraded. But, then you imagined Jack’s face when he saw you walking in. The breathless, frozen stare you only elicited from him two or three times in your years of friendship. The one that you strove for more often than you would like to admit. His blue eyes widened, his lips parted slightly as they curve into a smirk, and his cheeks full from when he smiles a real genuine smile.

You felt your heart doing backflips. You took a deep breath and reminded yourself that Jack wasn’t in the room. You were staring at your reflection in a Bloomingdale’s fitting room wearing a dress that was way too expensive. You decided to take the dress off. You couldn’t do this to yourself. Although you calculated the number of cup noodles and granola bars you could consume as meals in the next month in order to afford this dress, it wasn’t worth it. Not for just a starry eyed look from Jack. That was the only thing you were guaranteed, nothing more. You pressed your hand against the ruffled waist, indulging for a moment that it was Jack’s larger pale hand instead. Oh how he would make you feel small and dainty as he enclosed his arms around you and had his way with you.

You reached back for the zipper. You struggled, contorting your body in unnatural positions. This really was a freakum dress. You couldn’t take it off by yourself. Luckily, you weren’t alone.

“Mom!” You yelled for your mother who was waiting just outside the fitting room.

You could hear her feet shuffling into the area, asking the attendant for permission to enter the space. She knocked on the door and gasped when she saw you.

“I think I threw out my back.” You half-joked, trying to ignore the sharp pain in your shoulder blade. “Can you help me?”

“Honey, you look stunning!” Your mother said, closing the door behind her. She held your shoulders turning you to the mirror. “This dress was made for you. Well…it’s a little long, but we could take it to my tailor and take a bit off so that you won’t trip on it. Oh and those heels you got the other day would add some height…”

“It’s too expensive, Mom.” You stopped her, ignoring the flutters of validation in your stomach. “Now, help me get out of it before I sweat on it too much and they make us pay for it.”

“B-But…” Your mom grabbed the tag and you watched her eyebrows fly up. Her lips formed a flat line. You realized you were clinging to hope that the dress wouldn’t seem too expensive to her, but that was a pipe dream.

“Come on, I can find something at like Forever 21 or like H&M or somewhere.” You forced a smile. “This was an indulgence just coming into here. It’s so expensive.”

Your mother looked at you sadly for a second before unzipping the dress. “You’ll look beautiful in anything, sweetheart. But this dress is wow. I mean this is Jack’s big-celebration-party-music-video thing…I figured you’d want to go all out.”

You could feel your skin heating up at the acknowledgement of the situation. No one knew how you felt about Jack. The years of pining and anticipation for something more than just friendship with Jack was hidden behind quick jokes and talks of memory lane from growing up together. Only your mother knew how badly you had it for Jack. One because she was your mother. Two because she was the only person you confided in after the incident.

It was 2017 - one year since you left Louisville to go to college. You were back in the city for a couple of weeks before you started your internship. You had a new air of confidence now. Your college was a big school and you were used to going to parties every weekend with your friends. You weren’t the most popular girl, but you never left a party without making out with some guy who claimed to have “been waiting for this moment forever.” Your campus persona was so different to the girl next door image you had back home.

However, you weren’t the only person who fled the city that had come back in the summer. Jack and the other members of Private Garden were also lurking around. You didn’t expect to see him since he had just moved to Atlanta. But, you figured it would be a good time to test your new attitude. The party, as usual, was in Old Louisville. It was hosted in one of the large Victorian houses that you assumed must permanently smell like beer, weed and teenage regret after years of “bible studies” aka these raging parties that went on until the police showed up in the wee hours of the morning. However, these parties were core memories of your high school years which meant that you were positive Jack was going to be there too.

You wore one of the usual party outfits at the time: sneakers, crop top, and short-shorts. Not what you would wear these days to an event, but it was the uniform for girls in their late teens at the time. You spotted Jack quickly, towering over his friends. His hair was long in the front almost covering his eyes but tapered in the back. He had on thick framed glasses, an oversized sports jersey with a white tee underneath and baggy jeans. Thinking back on it now, it looked wild. You would laugh out loud if you saw him in an outfit like today. At the time, he looked so hot. You casually made your way through the crowd, taking the lead of one of your best friends who was also on the prowl. As you weaved through bodies, you lost sight of Jack, only to find him at your side.

“Y/n,” Jack yelled, but it sounded natural over the loud music. “Long time no see.”

“Jack!” You yelled back, hugging him. He wrapped his arms around, pressing his cheek on the top of your head. Despite it being hot and sticky, you relished in the attention.

“You look good.” Jack remarked, breaking the hug to look you up and down. “College seems to be treating you well.”

“You too. Are you signed yet?” You asked.

Jack tossed his head from side to side. He had that smile that told you he wanted to say more, but couldn’t. “It’s in the works. I can’t speak on it yet. But stuff is cooking, don’t worry.”

“I’m happy for you, Jack.” You grinned at him. “I really am.”

“Do you have a drink?” Jack asked, raising his cup toward you.

You shook your head and he took your hand to lead you to the drink area. You tried to remind yourself not to read much into it. For Jack, this touch was no different from when you were kids playing in his backyard and he would drag you around because your legs wouldn’t keep up. However, you couldn’t deny the tinge of disappointment when his hand left yours to grab you a drink. He picked up a hard seltzer and popped it open for you. You frowned,

“What makes you think I didn’t want a beer?” You questioned.

“This is good, I promise.” Jack confirmed.

You looked at the can. You didn’t recognize the brand as you read it out loud. “White Claw? Is this even good? It looks like adult Arizona.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.” Jack teased.

You sipped it surprised to find it mildly sweet. You didn’t think it would get you drunk, but thanks to the shots you pregamed before coming, this gave you a comfortable buzz. It was enough that you found yourself moving to the dance area with Jack and grinding on him. You reached your free hand back to grab Jack’s neck, winding your hips on his crotch. You couldn’t see his face, but judging from how he dipped his hips to meet your backside, you figured he was game. Soon his free hand pressed on your hip. It was the universal signal that you made the right move. One or two songs in, you felt his hand on your hip, slowly trail up your stomach, up the center of your chest and to your neck. He pressed his hand flesh against your neck to bend your head backward.

Jack’s lips met your instantly, his tongue swiftly following to taste you. He tasted like a mix of alcohols: beer, vodka, tequila…probably from taking shot after shot. You wondered if you tasted like the tequila shots you and your friends did before coming or if it was only the fruity hard seltzer on your tongue. You did your best to keep grinding on him, despite being enraptured by the intensity of the kiss. You played with the hair at the nape of his neck and felt pleased when you heard a moan fall from his lips. This was a moment you would relive forever. After a decade of friendship, you were finally kissing him. He finally wanted you back. You could explode.

After that things get hazy. You remember you and him were being pulled away by your friends. Someone got into a fight and things were only going to get worse from there. There was a new spot that everyone was going to, but it was unclear which was the real place and which was just a lame spot someone was trying to hype up. You remembered going to Qdoba with your friends and throwing it up a couple hours later. But, when you went to bed that night, all you could do was remember Jack’s soft lips and that was all you needed to drift to sleep.

One day passed. Then two. Then three. No text or call from Jack. You knew he was still in the area. Whenever Jack was in town, he was the gossip. Everyone was buzzing about where they saw him and who they saw him with. You were a wreck. You did a good job of pretending in front of friends the first day, but by the second day you couldn’t leave your room. Why didn’t he call? Why didn’t he text? You were practically next door neighbors, he could even come over!

In an attempt to get you out of the house, your mother asked you to go to the pharmacy. You did so begrudgingly, slipping on sweats, a tank top, and a baseball cap for the trip. As you waited in line, you heard someone call your name. A pit developed in your stomach as you looked up to see Urban. His hair was longer than you remembered, but still blonde and majestic as always. He was high, his aquamarine eyes were a tinge red and in his hands were enough snacks to last a week.

“Hey Urban,” You forced a smile, trying to hide your concern of Jack being close behind.

“Y/n, good to see you.” Urban said, his voice the usual slow timber when he was high. “Has, uh, Jack reached out to you yet?”

Your cheeks flushed as you shook your head. Urban sighed, air being blown dramatically through his nose.

“F-cking coward.” He rolled his eyes. “Jack keeps talking about what happened between you two. At the party a couple nights ago?”

Your heart started beating faster. You were hoping the confession would come from Jack himself, but if Urban clued you in on Jack’s feelings you could finally tell Jack how you felt about him. You nodded for him to continue, concealing your smile.

“He’s really sorry, Y/n. He feels so bad for disrespecting you like that. Tossing out years of friendship.” Your face dropped as Urban continued. “Jack really went in this year on trying everything: alcohol, drugs, and any kind of vice really. Yesterday was another day of experimentation and I think he got a little twisted. I’m sure he’ll apologize to you properly, but I think he’s afraid that you’ll hate him. That kills him more than anything.”

As you blinked to keep tears falling from your eyes and made the biggest smile you could muster as you shook your head to confirm you weren’t upset, you realized you did hate him. You hated him for getting all the wrong signals. You hated him for not giving you a chance to be more than a friend. You hated him for being a coward.

You were saved by being the next person on the line. You paid for the items and then went back home. You held up a good front up until you put the items on the kitchen table. Before you could make it to your room, tears were pouring out. Your mother made herself available to listen and that’s how she learned about your feelings for Jack. Of course, she suspected it. You two practically grew up together and used to play “marriage.” Part of her assumed this was just some misunderstanding and she wanted to tell you that you should just tell Jack how you felt. But, she knew that ruining the friendship was much worse than a flighty fling, so she let you cry your heart out without saying a word.

You would’ve hated Jack for longer if he didn’t try to hard to make it up to you. You were one of his posse for the rest of the time you were in Louisville that summer. You traveled around town with him, meeting all the great entertainers in Louisville, and eating at all your favorite spots. Spending time with him every day made it hard to be mad at him. It also made it hard to squash your feelings for him. You decided to store the kiss as one of those memories that you kept tucked in your heart and to enjoy your friendship as is.

At least, until moments like this. As you held the dress to your chest to keep it from falling down, you realized that this was a lot like five years ago. You were still hoping to make Jack stare at you like that one more time. In a way, you felt like this was your last chance for some reason. There was a clock ticking but you weren’t sure who started it.

“Yes!” Your mother yelled excitedly, startling you.

“What?” You turned around.

“There’s a stain.” She pointed to a part of the red fabric that had a dark blue smudge. “Nothing Wendy, our dry cleaner, can’t get out, but it means that we can negotiate a discount.”

Your eyes lit up, but worry was in your voice, “It’s still going to be expensive.”

“True…” Your mom nodded. “...but I don’t actually need a new dress. And your sister is going to wear the suit she wore to prom. And God knows what your brother will wear, we can just hope it’s clean. So, my money plus your budget money should cover it.”

“Thanks, Mom.” You squealed, using one hand to hold the dress up and the other to grip her in a hug.

“Of course, sweetheart.” She pulled back and grinned at you. “I know you’ll never say out loud how much this means to you, but...I just want to help. I know you’re an adult now, but, I couldn’t do anything to help you last time.”

You smiled at her nodding slightly. “I love you, Mom.”

“I love you too, Y/n.”

You entered the venue in awe. You sometimes forgot that outside of the Victorian homes, there were actual mansions in Louisville. The ceilings were so high, you couldn’t help but wonder if they hired Spiderman to put up the decorations. It looked luxurious and exactly like the theme promised: A King’s Ball. It was for Jack’s new music video and he invited a bunch of people to come into be extras. His family was there, so naturally your family was invited too. You and your brother were the same age as Jack and his brother , Clay, respectively. Your brother played on Clay’s soccer team and the two still hung out from time to time. Your sister was really just excited to wear the shiny, gold, rhinestone encrusted suit that she wore to prom to match her girlfriend’s dress. She wasn’t close to the Harlows, but enjoyed treats like this. You could tell her girlfriend was enjoying it too.

You were worried that you were overdressed until you saw the Met Gala level outfits of the other people in attendance. All the parents that had been cordially invited, yours and Jack’s included, seemed out of place in their cruise ship evening attire. You were middle the pack in terms of showy-ness, but you looked damn good. You had done your hair nicely and really took time with your makeup and nails. As you navigated the venue, you realized that the chances of running into Jack were slim. There were the paid video models up front, and most of the invited guests were on the second floor balcony that over looked the first floor. You swallowed, feeling a bit of regret at buying such an expensive dress only to not be seen in it by the person you bought for.

Still, you enjoyed watching Jack at work. He had a swagger in his movements that seemed forced in his younger days that was natural now. He was still a flirt, wrapping his arms around different girls and dancing with them suggestively. This earned disapproving sounds from your mother and you could only smile at her support. Once the video wrapped up, everyone was invited downstairs for food and mingling.

Much like the house party from a few years ago, you spotted Jack a mile away. He was wearing an all-white suit that made him look amazing. In comparison to that night, his curls seemed so much shorter, but it fit his face better. You could really see the sparkle in his blue eyes with this new cut so, you weren’t complaining. Despite your goal of saying hi to Jack, you found yourself running into old classmates and catching up. When you were finally alone, you looked around for him, but couldn’t spot him anywhere. A tiny hope developed that Jack would pop up like he did that first time. When you felt a tap on your shoulder, a grin spread on your face when your wish came true.

“Jack!” You grinned.

“You look f-cking gorgeous, Y/n.” You couldn’t place the emotion in his voice. It wasn’t quite shock or amazement. Much to your dismay, it also wasn’t lust. But, you could tell him meant it.

You hugged him and Jack hugged you back tightly. You realized that the events of that previous night were repeating itself.

“You didn’t experiment with a bunch of drugs tonight, right?” You asked him, teasingly.

Jack blushed softly, glancing away before shaking his head. “I was hoping you wouldn’t bring that up. No, I’ve been letting go of that.”

“Body got rid of ‘em toxins?” You asked with a smile.

“Well, I dabble.” Jack grinned, clearly pleased to hear you quoting his lyrics. “But, for the most part I try to stay clean. And stick to just alcohol when I’m not.”

“Good for you.” You smiled. Something emboldened you and you weren’t quite sure what it was, but you added. “Too bad though. I was hoping to test out if you became a better kisser since then.”

Jack’s eyebrows raised. “Are you saying my skills weren’t satisfactory before?”

“I didn’t say that…” You bit your lip, but that did little to conceal your smile. “I just think we can all improve.”

Jack’s eyes looked you up and down as though he was seeing you the first time. “Is this an invitation?”

Before you could answer, Jack was clapped on the back by someone you didn’t recognize. You could tell Jack wanted to hear your response, but you smiled politely and walked away. You turned back to see if he was watching you and he was. He wasn’t staring per say. They were little glances as he spoke to the other person, clearly trying to see where you would go next. You continued to work the room, trying to stop your heart from beating faster. You worried that you blew your chance. That Jack wouldn’t ask you that question again.

Cursing yourself, you walked to where you assumed the bathroom was. You opened room after room, but couldn’t find a toilet. All this decoration and no one bothered to put up a sign to show you where the bathroom was located.

Frustrated at the last failed attempt, you slumped against the wall.

‘Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t cry…’ You told yourself. There was a part of you that felt a bit classy as you were about to cry in a mansion in expensive dress over a rapstar. How very 2009 Disney Original Movie of you.

“There you are…” You heard someone say as they walked down the hallway.

Jack walked quickly toward you, a mischievous smile on his face. You stood up, frowning at him.

“I escaped.” He explained, his bright smile lighting up his whole face. He was still looking behind him every few moments as if worried he was followed. As he got closer, he saw that you were slumped on the floor, the train of your dress swooped over your exposed your leg. He must have saw the sadness in your eyes despite you trying to mask it. “Y/n, what’s wrong?”

“I-I” Tears welded in your eyes again. “I can’t find the bathroom.”

A soft smile stretched on Jack’s lips. He let out a laugh that sounded like one of relief. He extended his hand to you, helping you up. “You were almost there.” He assured you.

Jack held your hand to pull you further down the corridor turning right to lead into another one. You were once again reminded of that night a few years ago. You wondered how much of that you were going to repeat. A cruel thought also wondered how many times Jack repeated it as well. Were you not special?

Three more doors down and there it was, a massive bathroom with a huge Jacuzzi tub and, the feature of honor, the toilet.

“Thank you…” You said, breathlessly, holding up your dress to sprint into the room. You could hear Jack’s laughter as you ran towards to the toilet, him closing the door for you. Your eyes rolled to the back of your head as you relieved yourself. When you flushed and got up to wash your hands, you heard Jack’s voice speaking to you through the door.

“Some things about you never change, huh?” Jack’s voice was in a low tone, making it deep and rumble. “I remember when we were like seven, you started crying in the pool because you had to pee, but couldn’t move.”

You blushed, turning off the water. You dried your hands and smiled. “Yeah, I remember. It was one of those things where if you move an inch, it’s going to rush out. And there was so much water everywhere and kids kept splashing.” You shuddered before scoffing at another part of the memory. “I remember you told me to just pee right there.”

Jack laughed loudly. “You looked so horrified. I remember your little voice. ‘Is that what y’all were doing this whole time?’ And when all the boys nodded, you started wailing.”

You could feel your face heating up and felt relieved Jack couldn’t see your flustered expression. From Jack’s laugh, you could picture him standing there, bent over, laughing between his words as he wiped tears from his eyes.

“My dad had to pick me up and carry me to the locker room.” You shook your head, chuckling. “But, since he couldn’t get into the woman’s bathroom and I couldn’t walk, he covered my eyes and ran with me hoisted over his head to the nearest stall in the men’s room. We had to do the same thing on the way out.”

Jack could barely speak through laughs. His laugh was high pitched and breathy. Once he started laughing, almost anything you said would keep him going. His laugh was contagious too. You found yourself laughing as well at your own expense. Some things about Jack never changed too.

“Well, thanks for redeeming yourself this time. And not just telling me to pee in the hallway.” You joked.

“Yeah, I’m not really into that.” Jack teased. “No kink shaming though.”

You opened the door, surprised to see Jack inches away from you. You looked up at him, his blue eyes glossy from his tears of laughter and the humor still in his face. Jack’s gaze didn’t waver nor did he say anything. You studied his features: his thick brows, his straight nose, his chestnut beard, his defined jaw…anything to avoid looking at his eyes as you hoped he would break the silence. When he didn’t, you asked a question that had been on your mind for awhile,

“Were you looking for me?”

“Yes,” Jack admitted, almost as if the answer was obvious.

“Why?” You asked him, furrowing your brows.

“Because, you didn’t answer my question.” Jack smiled when you met his eyes again. “Are you inviting me to kiss you?”

A smile twitched at one corner of your lips, but it wasn’t a happy one. It was accompanied by a sinking feeling in your gut. The last time you kissed Jack, he made it sound like it was his biggest regret. What game was he playing? Was he trying to get rid of you once and for all?

“That depends…” You said, dryly. “...what’s the catch?”

The grin on Jack’s lips slowly disappeared. “Catch?”

“Well, last time, I had to hear in a Walgreens that you regretted kissing me from your best friend who was high as a kite.” You hated the bitterness in your voice. “Then get paraded around like a poster for the friendzone for almost two weeks. What new hell are you devising this time?”

It was Jack’s turn to furrow his brows. He was shaking his head slightly as though something you said was untrue. But, as if realizing that those were how the events transpired in your head, he just stared at you blankly.

“Y/n, I didn’t do it to put you through hell. You’re one of my closest friends and I acted out of turn that night. I was just trying to rectify the situation.”

“Why did you get to decide how to rectify the situation? You didn’t even ask me what I wanted.” You felt everything like it was yesterday. The anger, the embarrassment, the feelings you still felt for him.

“You could have said something too.” Jack retorted. “We hung out that whole time and you didn’t even bring up the kiss once. How was I supposed to know that you didn’t regret it?”

You scoffed, looking away for a moment then back at him. “I thought that kiss said enough. That was not a friendly kiss, Jack. It was deep, it was sensual. It practically screamed, I don’t want you like a best friend.”

Jack’s breath hitched in his throat. His hand reached up to let the back of his fingernails ever so lightly drag across your jaw. You realized that despite standing so close, you hadn’t been touching. Just enough distance between, you on one side of the threshold in the bathroom and him on the other side standing in the hallway, to keep you apart, but clearly still so close. He was practically whispering,

“That whole time…that whole time we were together, I was so patient. I kept waiting for you to give me a sign that you liked the kiss…that you liked me like that. There were so many times I got us alone together, wanting nothing more than to kiss you again. My hands were shaking holding back from just taking you. Desperately waiting for you to tell me how you felt…”

“Jesus…Jack…” You shook your head before catapulting into him. You wrapped your arms around his neck and leaned in to kiss him.

Jack’s arms wrapped around you tightly as he deepened the kiss. Like last time, it was feverish and lustful. His tongue entered your mouth immediately to play with yours and it did so with the expertise of an old friend. Unlike before, Jack felt more refined. His body knew how to mold itself to yours, his tongue more controlled in its pressure, his hands more greedy with what they could hold. Jack pushed you further into the bathroom so he could step in, using his foot to slam the door.

Jack broke the kiss, cradling your face in his hands. His expression was unreadable as he looked at you, his eyes lingering on your now swollen lips. He kissed them once before kissing down your jaw and to your neck. There he kissed each spot until he found one that elicited just the right moan from you. He smiled against your skin as though he found treasure before sucking that spot gently. You moaned, trying to keep your legs from buckling. Jack held you close to him to keep you still as he gently licked the spot developing on your skin. You knew it was going to be worse in a couple hours and you were only mildly worried about the explanation to your parents.

“Finally get to make my mark on you…” He whispered into your ear. “You’re mine now, Y/n.”

A chill went up your spine. At the sound of your name, everything just stopped. You looked at him through hooded eyes.

“I want you, Jack. I wanted you then and I want you now.” You smiled when you saw the excitement flicker in his blue eyes.

He kissed you again, moving to pull off your dress. You heard a soft sound fabric tearing and you pulled away quickly. You looked down to see a slight pull of thread by the slit at the top of your thigh. “Jack, this is expensive.”

“I’ll buy you one in every damn color.” Jack’s voice was husky as he looked you up and down before pulling you back into him to resume his movements.

“Very very expensive.” You echoed. Jack groaned, but he could see the seriousness in your eyes.

“Fine take it off then.” He smirked. “I’m more excited by what’s underneath anyway.”

You smiled at him. “I can’t, I need help.” You turned around so that the zipper was facing him. “I only bought this dress so you could take it off.”

You heard Jack swear under his breath. One arm wrapped around you, pressing his hand to your waist and you felt another warm hand wrap around you zipper and pull it down.

You emerged from the bathroom in a panic. There was no way people weren’t going to notice the hickey developing on your skin. Jack wasn’t bothered by it, still on cloud nine from the previous activities.

“My dad is going to kill me…” You groaned.

“Nah, he’s gonna kill me.” Jack grinned at you. He gave a soft kiss to your temple. “But nothing I can’t handle. I do have to go back and mingle. Wanna come with?”

“With this giant thing on my neck, no thank you. Fielding questions from my parents who treat their adult daughter like a child is hard enough. I don’t need this to be everyone’s newest talking point.”

Jack’s grin didn’t seem to fade. “Oh, they will talk, baby girl. I told you, you’re mine now and I’m making sure everybody knows that.”

You blushed, unsure what to say. You didn’t know what that meant in the grand scheme things. You decided not to worry about that for right now. You learned that looking too far ahead was what did you in before. Instead, you leaned toward him for a kiss and he happily obliged.

“If you’re going to head out early, at least meet me at my place.” He dug into his pocket and handed you his keys, holding up the one for his door. Your eyes were wide, assuming he wasn’t serious. Jack smiled.

“Are you sure?” Tentatively, you took the key from his hand, already devising how you would explain to your parents that they should drop you off at Jack’s downtown Louisville apartment instead of going home.

Jack gave you a mischievous smile. “Y/n, you’re going to need help getting out of the dress again. You bought it for me so, I want to be the only one to take it off...”

#jack harlow #jack harlow imagine #jack harlow x reader #r-writes-fic

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poohnotpiku · 2 years

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Chapter5 : Pooh & Singh Jiju

Let us now talk about a sane person who has been sucked into an insane world i.e. Singh Jiju, DeeDee’s better (rather quite better) half!

I know Singh Jiju for more than 6years and I can tell you that in these 6years, I have not left any chance to pester him too (like I pester the entire world)…. (Inner Pooh : “I seriously feel sorry for him…how he handles this mad gang!! Hats-off to him!!)…

Me and Singh Jiju have had many friendly debates on general topics ranging from religion to politics to movies....and every single time, I have had to give-in coz Singh Jiju knows his stuff....whereas I play around with half-baked knowledge...LOL

Let us start with Singh Jiju’s eating habits. He has a very selective palette and he eats very slowly (Inner Pooh : “Tooooo slowwww”). Now, do I need to explicitly compare him with us? Anyways, let me try to give this a shot! So, we three (Pooh, DeeDee, Sonu) are Foodies….we can eat anything and everything….(as long as its vegetarian for me & DeeDee)…There have been incidents when Singh Jiju was appalled at seeing, what me & DeeDee were ‘devouring’!!! ROFL. We three are very ‘fast-eaters’…we don’t eat, we gobble up! In fact, me and Sonu had tracked this formula that our first helping of the dinner (yeahhhh we take multiple helpings when we eat together) completes exactly at 7minutes into an episode (of any series we were watching)….and our dinner is wrapped up somewhere between 15 to 18-minutes of an episode….Now when it comes to Singh Jiju, his food would not complete even after a one hour-long episode ends…I think he seriously loves his food :D

It was Singh Jiju who introduced us to Marvel-verse. It is because of him that we have now watched (Inner Pooh: “And you have forgotten too..!!”) all the Marvel movies. We are now such Marvel experts that we know that we are not to exit the cinema hall immediately after the movie ends….We keep standing and waiting for the ‘Post-Credits’….We do not even leave after that…We wait for the ‘Post Post-Credits’ ….LOL…

Now let us get into few more scenes where Singh Jiju is ‘tortured’ by Pooh….LOL…..

Scene#1

Singh Jiju is a geek when it comes to technology…he loves spending on expensive tech gadgets and then exploring all their features in details…for people like me this is eyes-rolling…I would rather book a ‘fixed-deposit’ than spending on stupid gadgets….for me as long as my mobile phone allows me to make calls, do WhatsApp, access Google search and Gmail, take some out-of-focus pics (that’s my another talent)…I am happy…I do not need it to do anymore!! Anyways, let me take you guys through this particular scene.

I enter DeeDee’s & Singh Jiju’s house, ask DeeDee for sanitizer (#pandemicphobia), liberally spray it all over my hand AND over my mobile phone. Singh Jiju is flabbergasted seeing this. I then roughly wipe the mobile with my kurta/top and throw the phone onto the bed/sofa (Singh Jiju’s heart is in his mouth by now!!!)

Singh Jiju (very ‘saintly’ and ‘faintly’ murmurs): “Di (aka elder sis), you guys are seriously not worthy of gadgets…now I understand why you do not want to spend more than Rs 15-20K on a mobile phone!!”

Me (like a naughty kid being caught): “I just very lightly sprayed the sanitizer and immediately wiped it off…”

Singh Jiju (nodding his head): …..

Inner Pooh: “Silly Lady!! Remember?? You spent Rs 5K on getting the screen repaired….the mobile phone guys said they found water inside the phone…. but poor guys had no idea it was sanitizer killing away Corona germs inside every damn circuit of your phone!!! I wish there was some solution to sanitize your stupid brain!!”

----Scene ends------

Scene#2

Singh Jiju started driving recently, 1-2 years back….and he is very possessive about his car…..Whenever I get into a car (not Uber, of course), I feel as if I am going on a long-drive!!! There have been many incidents with Pooh, DeeDee, Singh Jiju and ‘The Car’….I am just merging them all together to give you a summary….

DeeDee (pulling me aside): “You know Singh Ji has just started to drive…so he needs to concentrate on the road…so please please please shut your chatter-box and stay quiet in the car….”

Me, nodding my head, open the backdoor of the car, get inside and shut the car door….

DeeDee (turning back from her shotgun seat): “Can you not bang the door every time???”

Me (looking at her and back to the door and back to Singh Jiju in the driver’s seat): ………. (sorryyyyyy, ‘The Car’)

Few minutes into the journey, a loud smack on the car window….!!!

DeeDee (turning back from her shotgun seat): “What was that sound???”

Me: “There is a mosquito in the car…I am just trying to kill it…”

DeeDee: “Are you nuts?? Window would crack!!!”

Inner Pooh: “Just like her brain…..”

Me: “Seriously?? They should make these windows unbreakable….”

Singh Jiju (patiently): “Di, suppose there is an accident, if these windows are unbreakable, how would people break open the window and come out??”

Me: “Ohh…that’s a valid point Singh Jiju….”

Inner Pooh: “Lady, Your General-Knowledge is seriously general….”

Few more minutes pass….me fidgeting in the backseat…trying to shoo away the mosquito with my mobile phone….thinking this was supposed to be a long-drive…where is the music??....

Me: “Can we please turn on some music???”

Singh Jiju (carefully maneuvering the car through a crowded place): …………………

DeeDee (glaringly): “Just let him cross this place, will then play something…..for now, let him focus on the road….”

Me: ………………………………………………..

----Scene ends------

Scene#3

DeeDee and Singh Jiju enter our house…and even before they settle down….

Me: “Singh Jiju, some juice? Or Coffee?”

Singh Jiju (politely): “Not now Di, may be later…”

5 minutes later….

Me: “Should I order something to eat???”

Inner Pooh (rolling her eyes): “We know you are not going to cook….”

DeeDee: “Leave him be, he will ask when he wants to have something…why do you keep asking!!!”

Me: …….

Few hours later, after we all are done with food….

Me: “Singh Jiju, would you like to have some laddoo (India’s favourite sweet-dish)?”

DeeDee (from outside the room): “Please come here Madam….Laddoos? You have Laddoos at home?” (Dad being diabetic, me being fatso…we avoid keeping sweets at home….)

Me: ……

DeeDee: “Don’t tell me these are those 4-5 laddoos from the prasad, I Swiggy-ed you few days back…!!!”

Inner Pooh: “Smart DeeDee….I love her!!!!”

Me (gulping): “Yeahhh…they are not spoilt….I kept them in the refrigerator…”

DeeDee: “Are you insaneeeeee??? First, could you guys not finish them off in 4days??? Second, you are offering those stale laddoos to Singh Ji?????”

Me (doing complex calculation in my brain): “Arreee….I gave half to Dad and half to Maya on 2 days…had one half myself…2 or so are left…”

DeeDee (pissed-off all over again): …………………………………..

Singh Jiju, in the other room, was sure listening to all this hullabaloo going on outside….

Me (going back into the room): “Singh Jiju…may I order some ice-cream or pastries?”

Singh Jiju: “No Di, I am fine…I am too full after that double-egg chicken roll…”

Me: “Ohkk…may be some juice? Coffee?”

And the cycle continues………..

Same night, me Netflix-ing and eating the same laddoo..…’It isn’t bad….It is gooddd!! (Inner Poor : “We all know that you can eat anything and everything!!!!”)

----Scene ends------

So now you guys understand the pain and torture Singh Jiju has to suffer at our (ahem my) hands… LOL…

Jokes apart, he is awesome and his family is equally awesome….They may be DeeDee’s In-Laws officially, but they are like my own family….And yes, they also do suffer Pooh from time-to-time..…We will visit that chapter some other day…

Until then, Ciao!

P.S.: This is the last chapter on the main characters of the ‘Pooh Saga’….let’s wait and watch where Pooh (& Inner Pooh) travels next in this journey…<wink>….

#just fun things #going crazy #humour #indianstories #just for shits and giggles #stupid i know #just for fun #poohnotpiku

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fleetingdesires · 2 years

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😈 It's Ephie, your resident degenerate 😈

If you're here, you've had at least a taste of the delicious degeneracy I love to read and write. If I am wrong: I don't know how you got here, truly, but I am very pleased.

Ye olde askbox is open to requests.

Find me on AO3

SELF-RECS by fandom under the cut! (updated 5 Aug 2023)

In which I write fics that should feel squirmy but don't. Trust me on this one. Try a taste of the forbidden fruit. There’s some select fluff in there too. What can I say, I’ve got range.

Harry Potter/Severus Snape

Heartbreak Warfare | 5k | T | Snarry

The Potions master was dosed with heartbreak in a vial, ensuring a perfectly ironic death… Unless someone came along to cure him with true love’s kiss.

The Want of You | 7k | E | Snarry

On his night off, Severus unexpectedly realises that Harry has grown into quite an attractive man. He's just not going to think too hard about it. No, he's not going to think about him at all. It's fine. He's fine. Everything is fine.

Marching On | 10k | E | Snarry, Snucius, minor Teddy Lupin/Harry Potter

Fifteen years into their relationship, the status quo becomes untenable. Harry grapples with the issues he's swept under the carpet, while Severus finally realises that his best might not have been good enough. And Teddy? Well, he's just the catalyst that brought home the hard truths.

HPdom Cest Fics

When a Fire Starts to Burn | 10k | E | Snarry

It's a Severitus to Snarry A/B/O! Severus is stood up by an alpha for his yearly heat. Suppressants can only help so much then, and when his heat comes on with his sixteen-year-old adoptive alpha son around him, well, things happen.

Daddy Dom and the Pureblood Prince | 8k | E | Draco Malfoy/Lucius Malfoy

Draco knows he shouldn’t want his father to pound him into the mattress. But after seeing how very good Daddy is at it, the boy will do anything to get his way — and gets so much more than he ever dreamt of.

The Lover and the Boytoy | 10k | E | Draco Malfoy/Lucius Malfoy/Severus Snape

Draco has been thirsty for his Daddy’s best friend, Severus Snape - and Lucius knows it. Of course he'll indulge his boy, even (or maybe, especially) if it means sharing his lover.

An Inappropriate Use of the Dentist in His Office | 4k | E | Hermione Granger/Mr Granger

Inspired by this scintillating fact: "Dentists can tell if you’ve given a blow job recently. There is very specific bruising that occurs on the roof of the mouth." In which Mr Granger sees something he really would rather not in his own daughter's mouth, and it sends him spiralling. The said daughter provides relief of an unexpected sort. Alternate summary: When Dentist Daddy looks at his daughter's mouth and goes, “Girl, what that mouth do?”

Flesh of the Father, Freely Given | 18k | E | Harry Potter/Lily Luna Potter

Lily Luna has always been Harry's pride and joy. Spoiled and spunky, she was everything he could have ever asked for in a daughter. The day he finds out just what she's been up to online, however, is the day when he realises that he wants nothing more than to go from Dad to Daddy.

For more, check out my HP Cest Fest '22 masterlist!

Sherlock Holmes/Mycroft Holmes (BBC Sherlock)

Home | 9k | E | Sherlock/Mycroft

"Back to Baker Street, Sherlock Holmes," Mycroft had said. But two years away, and he may as well have died in that fall off the roof of St Bart's. Baker Street was no longer synonymous with home. On impulse, Sherlock sends a text to Mycroft. Can I stay with you for a while? SH

Parallel | 20k | E | Sherlock/Mycroft

It happens, again and again. It happens every time Mycroft comes home. Sometimes, all they do is kiss. Most times, they do more than kiss. Mycroft never initiates it, but it doesn't matter when he always gives in, when he hopes for it, when he comes to look forward to the increasingly skilled seductions of his brother.

scales (and what they do) | 13k | E | Sherlock/Mycroft

Sometimes, communicating face-to-face is just too hard. Alternatively: Constantly text your crush for absolutely no reason + Holmescest = this fic.

Say Something Loving (series, on hiatus) | 90k+ | E | Sherlock/Mycroft

One brother held a gun on the other, and years of denial came crashing down around their ears. But reality is always more complex than fantasy, even for the brothers Holmes. The end of the line, but there was only one thing he wanted to know. "Tell me one last thing, brother. In this end, was it worth it to deny us what we wanted?"

Double Trouble | 13k | E | Sherlock/Mycroft/Antony Dimmond (Hannibal x-over)

After the wait of a lifetime, Mycroft finally brings someone home for Christmas. The handsome, suave, and intelligent Antony is genuinely charming, and it is obvious to anyone why he has caught Mycroft's eye. Sherlock could care less, but he is determined not to show it. Until Antony charms him too, and he has to admit that Mycroft may have finally moved on from their past.

Happy reading!

#intro #hp fic rec #snarry #snucius #hp cest fic #weasleycest #malfoycest #grangercest #pottercest #holmescest #...all the cest evidently #bbc sherlock #sherlock fic rec

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getalittleclosey · 4 years

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under 25k larry fic rec

hi! i’m becca and i read...so much fic. these rec lists are an accumulation of fic that i’ve read or reread and extra loved from 2016-now. there’s a wide range of stuff here and i think there’s definitely something for everyone!! i divided them up by length so you can check out all those categories below!

please make sure to read tags and warnings on all these fics!! the only things i think i can guarantee is that these are all larry, there’s no non-con, no age play, no eating disorders, no mentions of bg, they end happy, and they’re mostly aus. oh and they’re all on ao3 and some are locked so you’ll need an account! anyway i hope y’all enjoy!!!

under 5k

under 10k

under 50k

under 100k

100k+

☆ watching the world fall by whoknows 12k

This segment has been going on long enough that Louis knows what’s coming before James starts in on it, trying to sell him on something he knows that Louis wouldn’t normally be buying. But there’s four cameras surrounding him, and an audience watching him expectantly, so if Louis wants to continue convincing people that he’s doing just fine, he’s going to have to go along with it.

“We have a whole host of single men backstage waiting to meet you, Louis,” James tells him. “We want to help you find love tonight, on Late Late Live Tinder. Is this okay? Do you want to play?”

It actually kind of makes sense that his first date after the break-up is going to be just as public as said break-up. Something like coming full circle.

“Alright, James,” Louis agrees, hopping down off his stool.

“Okay, come down to the stage,” James says. Louis can’t even tell whether the excitement in his voice is genuine or not. “Right now, come on down!”

☆ enjoy the ride by 2tiedships2 11k

“Stop sulking and get up. I have a proposition to make.”

“Niall?” Louis questioned. “Do you think I should put glow in the dark stars on my ceiling?”

He looked over and found Niall giving him an unimpressed look.

“So, no?” Louis asked. “No stars?”

“We’re going on a road trip,” Niall stated.

Louis looked back at his starless ceiling and waved farewell to Niall. “Cool. Have fun!”

“No, you idiot.” Niall let out a frustrated sigh. “You, me, Liam, and Harry.”

Louis glanced over to Niall and back to the ceiling. “Who’s Harry?”

Or the one where Louis, an omega more than tired of being treated as lesser than alphas, is forced on a road trip by his beta besties only to meet Harry who might just be the alpha he never knew he wanted.

☆ like to keep you laughing by kikikryslee 13k

Louis gasped. “Are you straight? Oh, I'm sorry, man. You should’ve just told me; I would’ve left you alone.” “No, no, that’s not it," Harry said. "I like guys. I definitely like guys.” “OK…” “Louis, I’m ace.” Louis snorted. “Kind of full of yourself, aren’t you?” --- Or, the one where Louis is a frat boy who likes to hook up and Harry is someone who doesn't hook up ever.

note: ace and aro rep bless

☆ say that you can see me (i’ll speak up i swear) by coffeelouis (streamtpwk) 20k

“Well, it’s not like anyone really RSVPs,” Liam defends when Harry turns back to him, “No one takes Facebook events seriously.” Harry rolls his eyes, still finding it within himself to get annoyed in his moment of panic. Liam has been complaining about the lack of accountability Facebook events have bred in their generation since their freshman year. Harry glances back to the gallery entrance. Yep, still there and moving closer.

“But aren’t you guys friends?” Harry asks, trying to convey the urgency in his tone.

“Well, I mean, I talk to him when he stops by the office for supplies sometimes,” Liam reasons, “But I wouldn’t say we’re friends, exactly. Maybe more like, friendly acquaintances?”

Harry groans. “You’re the fucking worst.”

[or, the liberal arts COLLEGE AU where Harry knows Louis as the best friend of the boy he has been hopelessly in love with for years now and Louis knows Harry as the boy he wished would look away from Zayn long enough to notice him.]

☆ a fire in us by hereforlou 12k

Louis had always thought it wouldn’t catch him off-guard. If he ever got his Time, he would be ready, and he would be calm, and he would make his way to wherever his soulmate waited for him and blow them away with how ready and calm he was.

When he got his Time on that Monday, years after he had stopped fantasizing about meeting his soulmate, Louis was not ready, and he was not calm. What he was was late.

(Or, the one where Harry waits and Louis worries.)

☆ just like the wolf before he bites by whoknows 11k

He’s loud, Louis is, and that’s far from unusual for him, but the volume of it still has Harry pulling back the curtain. There’s a half-formed thought in the back of his brain about telling Louis off, because it’s fucking half three in the morning, but then.

But then Harry’s eyes get stuck on the soft glint of Louis’ stubble in the light, and he’s making his way across the room before he even realizes it.

Louis, for his part, just tips his chin up to give Harry space and keeps talking, waving the joint in his hand around for emphasis. He doesn’t even bother to greet Harry, going on with his story to his semi-rapt audience, just settles a hand in between Harry’s shoulder blades and pushes him down firmly.

Harry just. Relaxes. His eyes slip closed, pushing his entire face into that spot underneath Louis’ chin, where his hair is still growing, neat and prickly. The scent of Louis’ cologne drifts into Harry’s nose, light and fresh, and it’s calming. Comforting. His breathing syncs up with Louis’ quickly, and Harry feels so much better than he had five minutes ago he almost wants to cry.

note: i’m rewatching teen wolf so this hits different

☆ wine not? by multiple authors 21k

Louis’ Wine Dive is a bar run by the people for the people. Wine Styles is a boutique tasting room that caters to a more highbrow clientele. When their worlds clash on a beautiful Charleston street, one of these owners may find that an ounce of pretension doesn’t stand a chance against a pound of perseverance.

☆ ain’t that a kick in the head by multiple authors 22k

“Well.” Niall unlocks his phone. “It wasn’t getting the traction I wanted on Snapchat. So…I tweeted it.”

What.

“You tweeted it,” Harry states, nearing a state of brain dead. “To your ten thousand followers.”

Niall nods, handing Harry the phone. “You’re a meme, Harry.”

“I’m a what?”

“A meme. It’s like an internet—”

“I know what a fucking meme is, Niall! Why did you make me into one?”

Niall has the fucking balls to cackle at that while Harry looks at the mess his former friend created. Videos of him screaming at Tomlinson about Tide Pods and his ass are being quoted and combined with memes to a create a level of memeception Harry has never seen before. That isn’t even including the thousands of tweets of him falling up the stairs remixed with random Top 40 songs.

In which Harry’s a disaster gay who doesn’t know shit about soccer, Liam drinks too many blue raspberry Coolattas, Niall knows everyone, Zayn looks dead, and Louis is Not Happy about sharing his breakout moment with “Drunk Hawaiian Guy.”

☆ tyger! tyger! burning bright by ryanreynolds 12k

They put on the Great British Bake Off, in a house in Donny, in England, that’s maybe inhabited by two ghosts, two lovers, stuck in the house where they used to have a life, so far away from the time they were born in. // A Buzzfeed Unsolved AU in which Harry and Louis died in a fire in the late 1800's, but death isn't the end.

☆ for the first time by mixedfandomfics 22k

The first Harry that Louis met was at his third school in as many years, and had shoved Louis’ head into the toilet when he walked into the mens restroom. Some slurs had been used, but the whole incident was kind of blurry thanks to the concussion he got when his head hit the tile floor.

The second Harry was a TSA agent when Louis was sixteen, returning from a trip abroad. The agent had smirked at Louis passport. “Layla, huh? Should think about dressing a little more feminine, no guy is gonna want you looking like that.”

Louis doesn’t want to see if “third time’s the charm” applies here. He’s finally secure in his life and happy, and he doesn’t want the heartbreak if his soulmate is just another bigot that wanted Layla and not Louis. Sue him for avoiding the pain.

☆ all i need is oxygen (and you) by lululawrence 12k

There are only two ways to navigate Bloomfield High School: become popular or make yourself invisible.

With the help of his best mate Niall, Harry’s introduction to high school hadn’t been half bad. Despite being a “bandie” – the lowest of the low in the ancient hierarchy of high school –Harry had somehow managed to survive freshman year relatively unscathed. So naturally, Harry would have been perfectly happy to resume his position of invisible trombone player number four for the remainder of high school. But one day something drastic happened, something that would change the course of Harry’s entire existence (probably).

It was the last football game of his freshman year, and the band was back in the stands after performing a rousing rendition of Bloomfield’s alma mater during half time. Harry was gracelessly wiping the slobber from the mouthpiece of his trombone when he saw him.

Louis Tomlinson.

Or...a High School AU where Harry is a bandie and Louis is the epitome of cool, so naturally, Harry must find a way to get his attention and win his affections.

☆ come together by bottomlinsons 11k

Harry and Louis slept together three weeks ago, and haven't talked.

Their coming group project is gonna change that.

☆ honey at seven by louiesunshine 11k

He’s in head to toe in khaki, from the oversized shorts showing off his thin and tanned legs to the buttoned-up shirt which is hiding his true form underneath. If his muscular arms have any indication, Louis easily assumes he’s fit and toned. A dark brown leather belt ties around his slim waist. And to top it all off, the man proudly wore a safari hat on his dark wavy hair.

Unfortunately from where Louis is at, he can’t get a clear view of the man’s eyes. But he’s able to see a strong jawline and a simple dimple curving his cheek. God.

Being the impatient guy that he is, he not so kindly pushes both Niall and Liam forward to speed them up.

“Welcome, guys, gals, and non-binary pals! Hop on in and watch your head. If you happen to miss your step and hit your head, then lower your voice and watch your language. This is a family attraction and we’d like to keep it that way.”

Or, where Louis goes to Disneyland for his birthday and finds himself a cute Jungle Cruise skipper.

☆ the switch (love is blind) by writeroffictions 13k

A Model Behavior/Princess Switch AU: Harry Styles is a doppelganger for the new face of Gucci, runway model, Dean Rose. Harry is asked to pose as him one night for an event, because the actual Dean Rose is violently ill. This leads Harry to meeting his celeb crush, Global Superstar Louis Tomlinson. Sparks fly. But are any of them real?

☆ fiction romance by orphan_account 18k

Harry has a type.

He likes older, sophisticated, mature men. Well-educated men. Men with life experience and passion for arts and social causes. Men who are established in their careers, who've sorted their lives out.

Niall knows this.

And so Harry can't understand why he's sat here opposite Louis Tomlinson.

A punk Louis/uni Harry blind date AU.

☆ under me, you by hazzafrazza (colberry) 12k

You Won’t Believe Who Was Spotted Leaving Harry Styles’ Primrose Hill Pad! If Harry was being completely honest, it probably wasn’t the best idea to be a world-renowned popstar and an infamous vigilante.

(Especially when all the comic books said never reveal your secret identity to keep your loved ones safe – which was all well and good, until Louis.)

Or: Harry wants a lot of things – fame, glory, Louis – but that last one is particularly hard to get when everyone thinks you’re dating your secret superhero alter-ego and suddenly you’ve become your own worst cockblock.

☆ superhuman tonight by rearviewdreamer 23k

A group of young offenders doing community service get struck by lightning during a storm, and begin to develop superpowers.

☆ sing you butterflies by objectlesson 23k

Louis stares for a moment before some primal sympathetic force in him activates. He has to help this boy. He can hardly walk, and he seems so young (yet ageless, beyond age, like a sea turtle or a parrot or a tree or something else odd and magical), and on top of all that, he has body glitter clinging to his skin, like that roll-on stuff his sisters used to use as preteens, only pink-gold and twice as thick. It’s, like, professional grade. He’s also wearing grass- and dirt-stained pink silk women’s underwear, so maybe he’s from London. Maybe he’s a drag queen who crawled all the way from a nightclub in Soho just to save Louis from his horribly mundane and woefully heterosexual neighbours out here in the middle of nowhere.

---

or, Harry’s a clumsy unicorn who accidentally stomps on a witch’s garden and is turned into a human as punishment, so he wanders into a nearby village covered in glitter, still figuring out how to walk on two feet, and meets the fairy-tale-fine Louis, who has to teach him how to live as a human and stop him from eating soap.

☆ i’ll be your love tonight by dinosaursmate 20k

“I don’t know how I’m ever going to walk away from you.” “So don’t.” Harry ran a fingertip over Louis’ thigh. “Stay with me.” - It's the summer of 1999 and Louis Tomlinson has been abandoned at a house party. A dispute over Smirnoff Ice and several night buses later, Louis is unsure how he'll ever walk away from this lovely, curly-haired boy.

☆ carried away like butterflies by dinosaursmate 17k

“Actually…” Liam said, scratching his chin absently. “I have a friend who is moving to London soon.” “Without anywhere to live? Who is it? Do I want them living in my home?!” “You met him at my birthday party. Harry, from Cheshire. Remember? Really tight jeans, curly hair down to here?” Realisation dawned on Louis, staring at Liam who was gesturing round about his nipples. Did he remember Harry? Did he remember Harry? He remembered Harry’s square front teeth biting into his collarbone, and he remembered Harry moaning, loud and obscene with no provocation. He remembered Harry dropping to his knees at the edge of the bed and roughly pulling Louis closer. He remembered, vividly, Harry’s lovely plump lips wrapping around his- “Lou?” “Uh- what?” Louis said, startled. “Oh, yeah. Um, I think I remember him.” - It was probably a huge mistake for Louis to let his former One Night Stand move into his spare room, especially when said One Night Stand doesn't seem to remember him.

☆ head head heart by turnyourankle 12k

After Dunkirk has wrapped filming, Harry struggles with his inability to reach subspace. He tries taking the matter in his own hands before Louis intervenes with a plan of his own.

☆ i got my eyes on you (you’re everything that i see) by balanceds 11k

“It’s not a secret, right, Harry? All of his friends seem to know--”

Harry slumps down and starts methodically banging his head against his newsroom desk. “Niall, it is a secret from him because I have spoken a total of ten fucking words to Louis Tomlinson and also he is incredibly out of my league and probably fucking straight as well!”

Or: Harry's a first-year on the school newspaper, assigned to cover the terrible men's first football team. Louis Tomlinson is the team's star defender. Harry pays significantly more attention to Louis's arse than to writing real columns. Pretty soon, everyone notices. It takes Louis the longest.

☆ then we kiss (all i wanna do is have a good time) by orphan_account 24k

Harry shuffles further into the room, timidly taking a seat on one of the chairs set in front of Louis’ table. He keeps his eyes on the floor, fumbling for words. “Sorry, I’m just—it’s just that I’m a bit nervous. And, uh, I wasn’t really expecting for you to look so—” he cuts himself off, just in time to keep himself from saying beautiful.

“Young?” Louis guesses, and Harry just nods, going along with it. “Yeah, don’t worry. I get that a lot, mate. People don’t really expect you to be head writer at twenty-nine. They think to get the job you have to be in your forties, or something.”

So a five-year age gap. Cool.

(harry is a potential new writer for a comedy show. louis is his kind-of boss. they flirt. stuff happens.)

☆ other habits (make your pleasure your pains) by jtsbbsps_dk 19k

Freaky Friday High School AU.

Wherein Harry just wanted to have lunch with his older sister, Cal sells ice cream, Gemma has a test, Anne thinks she knows (she really doesn’t) and Fate plays match maker, because no one puts her ship off course. Louis just tries to help out his best friend's little brother while dealing with a metaphorical butterfly invasion.

☆ the boy in the pikachu pants by mrsstylinson 20k

Louis stars as the bumbling idiot who's only a bumbling idiot around Harry. Harry stars as the charming bastard who steals his heart completely. They meet in the middle of a hallway with Louis in a state of considerable undress, singing Destiny's Child at the top of his lungs. Somehow that seals it for Harry. This is the boy he was always meant to fall in love with. Louis feels the same, only slightly more defeatist. It takes them a while to figure things out.

☆ all the small things by kitundercover 20k

AU. Harry is five inches tall and can't remember how he got that way, but maybe with Louis' help they can work it out. ---

Louis stares. “You’re five inches tall,” he says finally.

“I am about that.” The tiny man agrees.

“You’ve been making strange noises and scaring the shit out of me.”

“I’m sorry.” The tiny man winces.

“You’ve been breaking my things.”

“Not on purpose.”

That voice is disconcertingly deep, and Louis keeps wanting to look up and find the fully grown person that it must surely be coming from. He takes a deep breath and moves onto the next impossible point.

“You’ve been riding my rabbit,” he says.

☆ like two softened shoes by marie24 14k

He sets his laptop on the bed, backing away and running his hands repeatedly through his curls. Okay. This is okay. This is fine. This is not real.

Will peeks his head around the door frame.

“Uh, everything okay in here?”

Harry tries to keep his breathing under control. “Yeah!” he says. “It’s, um, everything’s fine!” He can hear himself talking really loudly. Will looks doubtful.

“Are you sure? Because it really seems like -”

Harry barks out a laugh, cutting him off. “Okay! So this is going to sound really strange. But.” He looks at Will, with the same shiny fringe, blue, blue eyes, and sharp cheekbones he’d been writing about the whole last week. He worries his lip frantically between his teeth. “Um. I think I… I think I… wrote you?”

Or, Harry is a writer who gets through his writer’s block by pouring his feelings for his best friend Louis into a character. A few days later, the character lands in his bed, three dimensional and with no idea how to get back where he came from. He turns out to be very inconvenient for keeping Harry’s feelings to himself.

☆ ready to fall by whoknows 21k

“Ninety and rising,” Nick says triumphantly, as though making Harry’s heartbeat pick up by thrusting an obscenely attractive person in front of his face is any kind of success. “Louis Tomlinson has just walked into our control room and suddenly our dear Harry Styles has lost all ability to speak. Could this be some kind of strange coincidence?”

“I hate you,” Harry hisses, forcing his eyes back into Nick’s direction, uncaring that the mic must have picked it up. “I thought we agreed that you were going to play fair.”

“I’m sure I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Nick denies, except he’s holding up a picture of Louis’ face now, sharp cheekbones prominent, soft lashes nearly sweeping against his cheeks as he looks down, and his fucking mouth –

“A hundred and two!” Nick crows, all but clapping his hands together in glee. “The highest it’s ever been!”

“To be fair, I did bend over the desk on purpose,” Louis’ voice comes crackling in the headphones. Harry practically breaks his neck whipping his head around at the sound of it, gaping at him through the glass panel. “You can’t really blame him for getting a little excited about that, can you?”

☆ gnossienne by pukeandcry 11k

Louis sets a challenge for himself; it gets a bit out of hand.

☆ tonight’s not over (come over and stay) by louistomlinsons 17k

Zayn doesn’t say anything for a moment, pausing and worrying at his bottom lip. Finally, he asks, “Have you heard that Cox guy is coming out with a new song?” Louis freezes, fingers hovering over his keyboard where they had been typing his password. “No, I hadn’t,” Louis says truthfully. “Where did you hear that?” “Tell anyone this and I’ll kill you, but I’d consider myself a big fan,” Zayn says. His face doesn’t change in expression, completely serious as he admits this to Louis. “Big fan? Like run a blog and everything?” or, harry is a famous singer and louis is a student who just wants to write his novel

☆ a love that feels this right by dontlethimgo 14k

As always, the classic high-school rumour mill is never completely reliable. Sure, there are those stories that fly around that turn out to be true—like the one about Niall getting with a model at a party a few months ago (which Louis still struggles to believe)—but this ‘rumour’ has so many versions, and none of them are actually right.

The Sixth Form AU where Louis is the footie team captain, Harry is head boy, and no one at school has any idea that the two of them are in love.

☆ put your head on my shoulder by wayfared 18k

Niall gives Harry until the end of marching season to either a) make a move on Louis Tomlinson or b) get the fuck over him. Either is easier said than done. Basically, your High School AU with a drum beat.

☆ some nights i’m scared you’ll forget me by pukeandcry 15k

Zayn stifles a groan. He’s not terribly surprised -- Harry’d been mooning over Louis since the day they met three years ago when Zayn had moved into the house next to him -- but he’d been hoping that Harry would eventually get over it and redirect his attention to someone else. This development does not bode well for that turn of events, though. (High School AU)

note: this is zayn’s pov and has a decent amount of ziall and a lot of zarry friendship if i remember!

☆ oh how i hate this red string of fate by calamityk 14k

Harry thought being able to see people’s strings die would be the worst thing about his gift, until at twenty-two he finally met the other end of his own. --------- Or that soulmate AU where Harry can see the red strings of fate that tie everyone together.

☆ smoke dreams from smoke rings by objectlesson 18k

“When I get a craving?” Louis says, “You have to help me chase it away. Distract me”

Oh. Harry can think of about one hundred different ways to distract Louis Tomlinson. One hundred better uses for his mouth, for example. “Erm,” he squeaks, well aware of the fact that he's grinning and dimpling and blushing all at once, his whole face a suddenly mortifying warzone of transparent emotion. “How?”

“By hitting my arm as hard as you can,” Louis announces, holding out the arm in question. It bridges the gap between them, stiff and expectant, and Harry stares, not entirely sure if Louis’s being serious, if this is some prank that he isn’t clever enough to understand, or if the promise of touching Louis under any circumstances is so titillating that he just can’t process it. Louis rolls up the sleeve of his hoodie then, revealing his pale inner arm in maddening increments, pushing Harry somewhere between drooling and vomiting, he isn’t sure which. He just knows that his mouth is flooded, and the barely-there ghost of Louis’s veins through his skin is the prettiest thing that he’s ever seen. “Go on, hit me,” Louis orders. “Don’t be shy,”

--- or, Louis enlists Harry to help him with his bad habit.

☆ milkshake by speechless 13k

He's been saying it for years. He doesn't care that it makes Liam roll his eyes and Zayn sigh and Niall crack up. Lots of things he does get that kind of reaction from the boys anyway. Louis won't stop saying it, 'cause it's true. His milkshake does bring all the boys to the yard. It's a fact.

So the day he decides to get into Harry Styles' pants he says it again, when all three of his roommates are there to witness it. "I'll fuck him by the end of the month. You'll see."

☆ you drive me crazy (i just can’t sleep) by objectlesson 19k

The first time Louis ends up in Harry’s bed is a total accident.

☆ happily ever after by theneverending 19k

"It’s the Peter Pan that I work with most days. Harry got placed with us today and it’s really quite funny to watch him make starry eyes at Peter Pan from behind his camera. As if that would hide anything,” Niall claims with an eye roll, causing Harry to blush even harder.

“I didn’t think you’d notice,” Harry responds lamely, suddenly becoming interested in his food again.

“Harry, when you like someone, it’s written all over your face. You just kept staring at him.”

“That’s my job, I have to stare at him to make sure the photos come out nice.”

“You wouldn’t be getting defensive if I wasn’t right,” Niall rebukes, and Harry really can’t argue with that, so he lets Niall have the last word.

or, the one where louis and harry work at walt disney world, louis is a character performer for peter pan, and harry's the photographer that sometimes gets to work with him.

☆ like the stars that shined by butliamwhy 12k

Louis has stars in his eyes. Harry has known it since they were kids. They have their own tree, their own café booth, and so many years to fall in love. Perhaps a lifetime.

☆ green in the morning and blue afternoon by wildestdreams 14k

“Harry,” Louis whispered beside him.

Harry hummed, his hand coming up to stroke Louis’ back. Louis was still on top of him, his body sagging against Harry’s, heavy and warm, and Harry loved it.

“I don’t think it was a one off.”

“Me either, Lou.”

a Friends AU.

#fic rec #one direction #larry stylinson #mine #i feel like theres quite a bit of pwp in this one hahhahaha #40 of these oh lord #fic masterpost

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paradisobound · 5 years

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Writing (And other) Commissions

Hello everyone! Although I normally don’t believe in commissions, I’ve decide to open them up for the time being so I can earn some money to go towards my Grad School GRE Exam (which is $250) and my Grad School applications (which can range in price from $100 to $200). If you don’t know (which I don’t think I’ve said lol) I’m going to Graduate school to get a Library Science and School Media certification so I can be a librarian or a school media teacher! But this costs a ton of money that I do not have so any money for my commissions will go into an account to help me pay off some of the expenses. I’m not able to hold a job and go to school at the same time as the stress and anxiety will just make me collapse in on itself and my job during the summer isn’t doing much to help with the other bills I have to pay for college.

I am also trying to earn money to go towards my trip to Vidcon in June 2020 to not only meet up with Claire for the first time and spend a great week with her for her birthday, but also go to California where I’ve never been. This is just the minor thing, my biggest things I’m freaking out about are above lol

So here are my prices!- All Price Are in USD

Oneshots: *Turn Around time of 1 day to 1 week, depending on word count*

These are fics that are posted all at once and often will be not as plot driven as a chaptered fic.

1- 999 Words (Also known as a Drabble): $2

1k words: $5 for every 1k until 5k (i.e 4k will be $20)

5k words: $20 starting rate and then $2 for every 1k past 5k to 10k (I.e 9k will be $28)

10k and above words: $30 starting rate, then $5 for every 5k past 10k (I.e 20k words is $45)

Chaptered Works: *Turn Around Time of 2-3 Months*

These are fics that will be 25-30k (or more!) with multiple installments/chapters.

Upfront Cost: $75 starting rate and then we’ll negotiate the rest.

Price is higher because chaptered fics take a lot more time than a one shot with the same amount of words. There is a lot more planning and preparation to them.

Each chaptered fic will come with a cover to go with it, made by me to compensate for the wait!

Headers/ Icons / Desktop and Mobile Color Themes: *Turn Around Time of 1 week*

These will be speciality headers and icons that I’ll make for you! I will also do complete color themes for desktop sites and mobile color themes to fit your style! (Desktop themes will have the HTML code sent to you where mobile themes would have a video and instructions to follow on how to get the exact style!)

Header: $5 flat rate

Icon: $2 flat rate

Desktop Color and Theme: $10

Mobile Color and Theme: $5

Combination of Header and Icon: $6

Combination of Desktop and Mobile Color Themes: $12

Combination of all of the above: $20

Extras (for fics):

+$5 if you want a specialized cover art to go with it (I can make headers and covers to go with the fic)

+$10 if the ship is not Phan as I’ll have to do some research about the ship.

If you commission more than one fic, I’ll give you 15% off every other fic you commission from me if you decide to do so! *Offer not valid on fics 5k words or under*

I have the right to refuse any prompt that is given to me if I feel like I cannot write it. All payment will be returned if you feel like my fic did not do what you wanted it to. I will not keep the payment if you request it back but I will need to know your reasonings so I know you’re not just paying me and then trying to get your money back to get a ‘free’ fic. Not saying this will happen but never know.

Fics that I will not write are: major character death, BDSM (but other sexual content is fine), rape/non-con, drug use that stems further than alcohol and cigarettes.

All payment will be made via PayPal but if you have Venmo or another payment form, we can figure something out. If interested, please message me via Tumblr or email me which my email is alexis.yiffandquiff.com (an email just for commissions to keep them separate).

Please remember that you’re not obligated to ever buy anything from me! I’m just doing these to make a bit more money to help me out but if you genuinely don’t want to buy anything or you can’t, don’t worry! :) And if you don’t want a fic or a header or anything but you want to support me, you can always buy me a Ko-Fi!

If you have any questions or concerns, message me off anon and we can clear anything up!

Thanks :) - Alexis

#phan #phanfic #phanfiction #fic commissions #phanfic commissions #commission #princesslexi763fics

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oreramar · 6 years

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Crafting Magic Items in D&D 5e

Okay there’s really not much point to this ramble/rant, but I need to lay all of this out, because I’m mildly annoyed - not enough to be actually frustrated, but enough I need to air my grievances with the rulebook even to an uncaring void.

I was looking through the Dungeon Master’s Guide for D&D 5e and saw some of the potential downtime activities for party members - things to do if you give your party a few days, a week, a month off of campaign matters and battles to do their own things. One activity was Crafting Magic Items, and so of course I thought that looked nifty and took a closer look.

At the base, it’s pretty reasonable. Each rarity tier has a minimum level requirement plus a cost in gold, and the cost jumps exponentially as it goes up the tiers. Makes some sense, you can’t expect a very rare item to be as easy to make as one that’s merely uncommon, even if the cost gets kind of ridiculous by the end (500,000 gold cost to make a legendary item - granted, by the time you’re level 17-20, you’ve probably raided more than one dragon’s hoard, but that’s still a lot).

But then there are rules for how long it takes to craft as well.

See, you can only work on the item in 25 gold increments, one increment per 8 hour workday. So to make a Common level item, you need to be of third level or higher and to set aside four workdays - just a little less than a full 40 hour workweek - and 100 gold. Uncommon items require 500 gold and about 20 workdays, also for a third level character - so if your character takes weekends off to rest and recharge, that’s about a month of downtime.

Not bad, right? You could absolutely have your player character pick up magic item crafting as their downtime hobby!

Only if you plan to stop there, really.

The next tier is Rare: 5k gold, 6th level requirement, and 200 workdays. That’s seven thirty-day months practically without any breaks. Weekends off? I don’t have an exact calculation but my gut says that might push it closer to eight months, maybe nine if the character occasionally takes a little more than just two days a week to recharge a bit. It’s doable if your campaign does a one-year timeskip sometime after you hit level 6, but you still have to have the gold for it and you’re dedicating most of that character’s time to doing this.

Then there’s Very Rare and Legendary, and at that point...well, frankly, why even bother with the pretense that a character could conceivably do this as “downtime?” Once you get to those levels you’ve got a full-time, long-term job, because Very rare costs 50k gold, requires level 11 or higher, and takes 2k workdays, or 5.5 years practically without any breaks - probably something like seven years if the character takes weekends off and nothing else. As for Legendary...500k gold, level 17 or higher, 20k workdays - 55 years without breaks, more like 70 or more with weekends.

That’s...that’s not downtime. That’s not campaign activities. That’s when the final evil has been defeated and sealed away, everybody’s already level 20, each character has insanely vast riches, and in post-campaign wrap-up you say that, yeah, your mage is going to settle down and devote bloody decades and most of their wealth to making the most powerful such-and-such in the entire world, so that maybe if your group returns to this world for a campaign two set a century later they might run across it someday. Hell, if you’ve got a human character (or another race of similar aging), a legendary magic item is their entire life, assuming they were in their twenties when the campaign ended.

Seriously, why did the creators of the game not just stop their chart at Rare and put a note in saying that Very Rare and Legendary items can only be made by powerful master craftsmen over long periods of time and are not downtime activities? Sure, lay out the numbers, but don’t give the base impression that a player could *totally* make their own version of the Holy Avenger to bring to the final battle against the Undead Lich Emperor of Darkness. It’s not happening, and they’re better off either hoping one is dropped in the loot or changing their dream entirely.

Just.

It’s disappointing, is what it is, to see something that looks like a cool mechanic for between adventures (and for personalizing the hell out of a party’s gear) only to discover that, in the most practical terms, that mechanic has a hard cut-off before it gets halfway through.

Maybe the intent is for players to band together for the difficult stuff, but even then it’s unfeasible, because every person working on the item has to have the level required, and must participate every day. So if you use the simplified math of dividing time by party (even if it’s technically incorrect for real-world physics, let’s go with it), a party of, say, four would still take 1-2 years for Very Rare. 10-20 for Legendary.

Still not downtime.

I understand that those last two tiers of items aren’t supposed to be easy to run across, so it does make sense to limit their production in some way or other. The thing is, you’ve already got some pretty hard limits in the level requirement and in the sheer gold cost, neither of which would be easily achieved for most NPCs in most worlds.

And, again, I might not have minded this so much if it weren’t for the fact that it was laid out in the book, in a chart, as if it was possible for in-game purposes when it so clearly is not, and is not meant to be.

Edit

AND ANOTHER THING (I just found out)

The downtime activity section tells you that an adventurer who crafts their own magic item(s) can sell them at regular buy price (usually adventurers find, on average, buyers for half the price for things they find or loot, probably because it’s pre-owned). Anyhow, the implication here is that you can make cool stuff for yourself, or you can make cool stuff and make a profit for yourself.

Sounds good, right?

Wrong.

Standard/suggested purchase price ranges for magic items by tier (found in a different section of the rulebook):

Common: 50-100 gold. Uncommon: 101-500. Rare: 501-5k. Very Rare: 5k-50k. Legendary: 50k and up.

The top - top, not base - suggested price in each category is exactly what it costs an adventurer to make the damn thing. So, if the DM adheres to all the rules and charts as written, if you’re lucky in finding a buyer, you might recoup the gold you spent in making the item, but you won’t get anything more for the time you spent doing so.

How does this economy even work? Is the assumption that adventurers are hobbyists and inefficient with the gold in materials and time spent compared to whoever made the already extant magic items in this world? Does the value of a magic item depreciate that much even during the process of making it? Did someone just throw numbers around without actually thinking them through since it’s not really a necessary game mechanic? Maybe, I suspect.

Yeah, I’d just ignore the crafting rules in the book, or else make my own. By all means, make things difficult to create as they scale in power, but there’s bound to be better ways to do so than just making huge numbers as thresholds. (What’s that? To make a Holy Avenger-esque weapon you need the cooperation of a very powerful celestial being, like a Solar or an out and out God - one which might set you a quest or a test of some sort for instance - but once you have that it doesn’t take years and years and hundreds of thousands of gold to craft? Sounds like an adventure!)

#dungeons and dragons #d&d #magic items #5e #rant #ramble #downtime activity #like hell it is #make your own magic item crafting rules #your players will have more fun

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ahhhsami · 7 years

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So in the past month, this blog has gained around 450 followers. I’m truly speechless. Anyway, I was thinking I should do something to celebrate the huge increase. Here are my ideas so far:

1. Create a giveaway: 1st prize would be a 20k word fic, 2nd prize a 10k fic, and 3rd place a 5k fic. This is a major increase from my usual one shots. They usually range from 500-2500 words.

2. Have writing sessions where I open the google doc and allow people to see me write and chat with me. We can chat about anything and not just the fic. This also allows you as followers to also throw out ideas and influence the fic.

3. I’d offer to take peeps out to dinner, but everyone is from all around the world. So that’s not possible, haha. I’m also broke, or well need to worry about my school loans... (This isn’t a real option, don’t vote for it).

So which options appeal to you? Or do you have other ideas?

#followers #just hit 4500ish followers #in celebration of almost 500 new followers #giveaway?#korrasami #wayhaught #pharmercy #chlodine #bumbleby #tlok #wynonna earp #overwatch #uncharted #rwby #text #guys a 20k word fic is prettttttyyy long lol

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breeeliss · 7 years

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hey breeeliss! Do you have any advice on running a fandom event sort of thing? I think it would be really cool if there was a ML wlw Big Bang/Mini Bang/Zine of some sort, but I have no idea how to even go about it or even if people would be interested in that sort of thing. I know you have experience running/modding fandom events so I just thought I'd ask.

(thanks @agrestenoir for the links and the big bang advice ^.^ and low key hit her up with questions bc i know she’s done big events like this in big fandoms)

Zines

Here are some really good sources filled with tips and advice for creating fandom zines: (x) (x) (x)

if it’s your first zine, i recommend sticking to a free PDF zine. that way you don’t have to deal with fundraising, getting quotes for printers, shipping to people, etc. all you really have to do is track your creators and compile the zine.

get mods!!!! you’ll want help especially when it comes to deciding who you want in your zine and making sure that everyone is staying on deadline. 5-6 mods is a good sweet spot for a zine with around 75 participants.

i usually recommend getting help from at least one person who’s done zines before, just because it can get a little messy if all of your mods are new to the process. i’ve seen zines struggle bc everyone was figuring it out as they went along.

technically optional, but i’d really recommend a discord server for your mods and all your creators. a lot of fandom people use it and it’s easier to communicate with everyone at once through a server, especially if you need to get a quick message out.

Big Bangs

so general format for these: you open up writer sign ups, you open up artist sign ups, you get your writers to provide some summaries for the fics they want to write, you have your artists claim the stories they want to make art for, writers and artists get to work, and you post.

really nail down a timeline before you do anything else. when your blog goes live and you start advertising the big bang, your calendar should be set in stone.

schedule some check-ins in between artists claiming their fics and posting. make people check in with you to tell you they’re working, tell you they’re talking to their partner, and that they’re still on board. you’ll want to know sooner rather than later if someone is dropping or can’t finish on time

make sure you have a set story length. for big bangs, i’ve seen word minimums range anywhere from 10k-20k words. mini bangs, it’s usually anywhere from 5k-7k. it depends on you just make sure the word min is clear.

PLEASE give your writers enough time to write. if your word count minimum is 20k for a fic, you need to give writers 4-6 months to pull that off. 5k-10k fics i’d say give around 2-3 months. if your timeline is too tight, you’re gonna get a lot of writers dropping.

always do writer sign ups first. then do artist sign ups so that you know how many artists you’ll need. if you get a lot of artists signing up, it’s easier to get them to double up with another writer than it is to find a writer who’s willing to write a 20k fic.

please don’t forget pinch hitters!!! sometimes you can get artists to double up if a writer drops or get an artist to draw for two writers if an artist drops. but you might need to get outside help from people in the event of a hasty drop out.

set up claims for artists. easiest way to do this is to put fic summaries from all your writers on a spreadsheet, share it with your artists, and let them sign up the for stories that interests them (offering 1st, 2nd, and 3rd choices is v helpful). include pairings, ratings, and any themes that might be deal breakers so artists know what they’re getting themselves into.

ao3 collections are very cool, and you can imbed the art into the actual story bc ao3 is chill like that.

stagger posting dates. this’ll depend on how many writers you have. let’s say you have 50 writers: posting 3-4 stories per day over a period of about two weeks ensures that you’re giving each fic a decent amount of attention. spamming tumblr/ao3 with 50 20k fics in one day is overwhelming and lessens the change people will read them all.

if anyone wants to add onto this, offer corrections, or post more resources, that’d be cool (i am definitely not an expert). and feel free to message me if you wanna chat more about organizing something :)

#fandom #fandom events #tips #advice #Anonymous #ask

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topicprinter · 8 years

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Hey Entrepreneurs,I'm not sure how this will do but thought I'd take the time this Friday evening to write it up anyway. Maybe it will help 1 or 2 of you.So first off, while it’s been covered a ton around here, I thought I’d share some advice on getting started if you haven’t yet. Secondly, for those of you running marketing companies -- or wanting to -- I wanted to share my two cents on the model I see rising around me and hopefully inspire some of you to start something better, and more lean. This may help others as well -- many of the tenants here likely apply to numerous concepts.A promise: I will not share or link to my own company. I've also deleted any posts pertaining to it for now. If any of you want to talk about marketing (digital or traditional) I welcome you to reach out and my partner and I would be happy to talk. But we'll skip on that for now.The Basics:If you've been playing the 'wantrepreneur' game for a while, there are few basic tenants that I strongly encourage you to follow. These are based on 5+ years of failed endeavors (small successes, inevitable abandonment or dissolution) and a lot of learning.Rule 1:The John Lee Dumas method: F.O.C.U.S. -- Follow One Course Until Success.When I was getting started in the 'break out on your own' journey, I threw a lot of ideas at the wall. These included a dance pole dropshipping company, a medical startup that did fine for a few years but inevitably went out due to regulations, learning to code iOS and releasing a relatively successful app with NO plan to monetize, multiple blogs, info sites, etc. None of which made me rich.What I was ignoring all along were my core competencies. I got started in my 9-5 career doing marketing and rose in the ranks at my agency. I was good with clients, confident in my guidance, honest.... I also didn't see much upside in that field for me.After all those failures above, one thing I hadn't done was try to be a marketer on my own. When I finally did this -- with full focus and an honest swing every day -- I did better than I ever had before. I was able to stack up clients within just a few months and working for myself (ahem... 'freelancing') I was able to create a portfolio that netted me nearly $20k/month by the time things were fully in gear. This was 100% full time me working. While this allowed me to finally start saving and putting some real dollars towards the 'next big thing', it also reminded me of Rule 2.Rule 2:The E Myth. Believe in it.If you haven't read (or in my case, scanned through) The E Myth by Michael Gerber, head down to your local Half Priced Books or Amazon and pick up the paperback. This is invaluable if you're considering starting a business where YOUR OWN SKILLS are the core product.The basic takeaway for me from The E Myth was as follows: Selling your own skills as a business is no business at all.Yes, you can make money, but it becomes incredibly difficult (impossible) to scale such a model. As clients or customers begin to see the sheer quality of your work, if you can't figure out a way to train others and sell that business at an equal pace, you're stuck. Nobody can buy a business from you if you're the only valuable asset -- if you yourself are the product. There are no vacations in that model, there is a cap on income, there is the always lurking dread of burnout.Freelancers can (as I did) do well on their own. And in today's world, businesses are more and more open to hiring skilled freelancers as well. The struggle, then, is when those freelancers begin thinking themselves to be Entrepreneurs. I'm sure I'll get heat for this but personally I don't see freelancing as true entrepreneurship. It's -- at least -- rarely a viable business "model".Which brings us to Rule 3:Rule 3:Visualize a model.Yes, putting a pinup on your wall may help motivate you but of course, I'm speaking about a business model. If you find that you're highly skilled in providing a service, it's crucial that every day you dedicate time to exploring how to remove yourself from that service. This is done with a model.Every component of your successful service -- from onboarding, defining SLAs, establishing KPIs, day by day execution, etc. -- should be replicable. Now, this may still require skilled people to replicate (and that's fine if so) but it should still inevitably be a model that you'd be comfortable handing off if you knew the person following your steps was going to do just that.By having a model, you can begin to scale. Sure, you may be a fantastic PPC specialist, SEO, social marketer, landscaper(?), etc..... and it's okay if you just want to keep doing that -- I'm sure there are always clients you can find -- but to reach that next step of being a bonafide business owner, it's important that you understand how you could bring on ONE MORE CLIENT and go past your own time limitations. This means hiring. And to hire, you need a model.Rule 4:Have a brand.Stop rolling your eyes you successful readers. I know many of you see this one as pretty damn obvious. Even having a personal website listing your services is a start -- but for me it wasn't enough.Taking the time, the days and weeks, to construct a brand including domain, logo, website, pages, contact info, ethos, and most importantly, unique value proposition, is a major step up for establishing trust and it's a sign of your own skill-sets for your future clients.For me, this meant the following to get it done: Namecheap Domain & Hosting, Wordpress (installed via 'cPanel' from that hosting), a theme from ThemeForest (~$60), design using my own chops along with some free tools (Pexels, FlatIcon, etc.), and a hell of a lot of elbow grease. You probably have seen this on here, but you may like this site as well: growthsupply.com.Now, I personally have years of experience in web marketing so none of this was exactly French for me. But I also believe anybody can do this. Much of what you'll do is just a matter of taking a minute to read an FAQ and start. There's no coding involved and you can do this.Final rule.Rule 5:Just start, Jackass. If it takes you a year to get things ready to show somebody, fine. Next year you wont have to think about all that anymore, it'll finally be behind you and you're on your way.Now On to Marketing as a Service.My Personal Thoughts on Agencies, and Why I'm Writing This:Talk to most business owners who have worked with agencies and you’ll find that there is most often (80/20 rule) a bad taste in their mouths. Telling people you run a ‘marketing business’ almost comes out like a dirty word.The issue is this: Most marketing companies – by model – can’t inevitably provide a very high tier of service to clients when utilizing employees. The basic reason is salary caps (and therefor experience caps) by model… Here’s why.Consider that by some estimates, over 50% of small businesses spend less than $300/month on marketing. Not that that means those are your target customers, but it’s worth keeping in mind. In my experience, an average client at an agency who accepts a range of monthly spends ($3k - $50k+/mo.), is still just around $5k.Let’s say a small agency has 20 clients spending $5k/month. That’s $100k/month average. That agency likely has at least 10 employees to manage that $5k/month average client spend so that leaves $10k/month in total per employee revenue. Calculating CEO and other executive salary, costs of doing business, taxes, etc…. there is an obvious cap on how much that company can inevitably pay any individual employee.The problem becomes a bit more clear here… When you consider that the median salary for a marketing specialist today is around $60k ($5k/month), the agency model where employees are utilized to handle most of the lifting (strategy, client management, and execution) becomes untenable. Eventually, those employees become skilled and want a raise that the company just can’t meet – especially in more expensive metros where agencies tend to thrive.The result? High employee churn and entry level employees managing the execution for a client.Yes, many agencies do well but many that are beginning to establish themselves as the next generation of agency rely on technology (like brand mention monitoring for example) instead of traditional service work to make their dollars.Here’s Where I’m Heading:I personally started my freelance career in a WeWork location here in Austin. I met over 100 amazingly skilled and passionate marketers who had left their agency due to career stagnation to run their own business. The future of marketing lies in this workforce.Now, you probably immediately jumped to questioning the quality of oDesk, Fiverr, etc. It’s so easy to claim marketing expertise. There aren’t professional degree requirements here and, often, marketers allow for that ‘magic’ belief on the client end to get by with doing shoddy work.I’m not talking about those people, I’m talking about using the new workforce. My company has been striding forward by using exactly these people to do the work, at a pay that is baked into our model (by not having all of the overhead and being transparent about how we pay the people we bring into our collective) and by leading internally on the client management and goal setting side.Which brings me back to my opening rules. My belief is that the new agency model will rely on internal executive level strategic leadership (essentially consulting and relationship management) and allowing the distributed workforce – under watchful eyes – to bring power to the operation.This means that skilled freelancers can do less client search and client management and more sheer execution. For enterprising companies (and of course, I’m a bit biased) it means a scalable model that relies on a bulletproof methodology for client onboarding, goal-setting, project management, and reporting. More transparency all around, less internal execution necessary.I know that the ‘marketers’ around here are only a fraction of our community but I really hope some of you found this helpful or at least interesting food for thought. I’ll do my best to reply to comments and respect the critical feedback in advance. Thanks for reading.

#/r/entrepreneur #reddit

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farwamustaqeem · 5 years

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How Much Does It Cost to Start a Mobile Coffee Food Truck?

In this blog post, I attempt to cover the main expenses of the cost of starting a profitable mobile coffee truck. I cannot tell you enough, that I have seen countless business owners go out of business because of failure to make their loan payments. I believe the coffee truckers hold true to this a bit more the others, so please, please, please tread lightly. Do your research. Understand what you need vs what you want. Ask yourself, is this purchase going to help sell coffee. I know you want those leopard print seat covers and pink fuzzy dice blinging in the shine of your disco lights, but Is It Going to Help You Sell Coffee? Step 1: Truck vs Trailers Trailer can be found as cheap as $500, but look for rust. Last thing you need is your frame to break en route to an event. Your little cute coffee truck will split so bad, Humpty Dumpty will be jealous. Horse trailers are cute and affordable. So mull that over. I have a whole section on how to pick trailers and trucks in the ebook...expect to pay at least 2k for a decent trailer. Trucks are much more pricey. I price them around 10k, for a decent one. You may be able to shop around and find something cheaper. Right now I have my eye on a Ford Transit. I'm seeing them in my local 500 mile radius sell for about 15k for 50-75k on the engine. I would try to keep this below 20k if you can...Espresso machines have a wide variety of prices. The problem with buying one online is you cannot test it. So that cuts down your options real quick. Used espresso machines go for about $1k-1500. Refurbished $3k and up. New $7k and up. Personally, I get refurbished. You can always buy new and refurbish yourself if your handy... Grinder is $500. Electric, plan on $1k. Conduit, sockets, installation, lights, yada...unless you're an electrician, get this done professionally. Risk vs. Reward. You don't want your truck to burn down.Plumbing $1k material and $1k labor. You can shave some cash off here by getting an apprentice from your local community college to install or you can give it a shot yourself. Flooring, insulation, walls add up to $1k-$1.5k. Check out your local lumbar store to see if they have sales on vinyl floors or laminate. You can get some good deals there. Service windows depending on the code can range from $200 to $1000. Paint jobs can get pricey. A DIY job cost around $500-800. A professional is $1500 to 2k. And a wrap is 3k+. Side note, I'm not a big fan of wraps. At my altitude and humidity I see them fall apart and I'm yet to justify the cost. If you have a design that you cannot part with, consider getting a partial wrap instead. Coffee makers...can range. Pourover and French Press are a cheap way to get started but cannot brew much at a time. Cold brew can serve large audiences when done right (see ebook for recipes). Commercial coffee makers run around $400. Airpots are $40 each and you need 5. So somewhere around $500.Fridge can be bought used. $800+ Check craigslist and such. Make sure the compressor is commercial though...a lot of slick talkers will swap a commercial compressor with a residential compressor and sell it at commercial cost...Supplies will cost you about $400 for your first month. Cups, straws, sugars, syrups. I have a full list of supplies in the ebook. Now, if you are setting up a route or a drive thru, consider adding an extra $500 of free coffee here. In my humble opinion, if you give away your first month coffee, you have a great chance of starting a following. If you can't afford this, consider steeply discounting your first month. Everytime I started a new route, it significantly jump started my business. My 2 cents. Permits, commissary kitchen, licenses are around $400. Give or take... All in all, in my humble opinion, a smart trucker can get a trailer started for less than $10k. If you get a good deal on a trailer and espresso machine, you can probably get started with close to $5k-6k. A truck is a bit more. I think setting aside $20k is about right. My last truck cost me just over $15k to start, but I refurbished my own espresso machine. Hope this helps! If you're starting to get serious, check out the ebook and business plan! They're a big help! For more, Visit Us: https://www.greenjoecoffeetruck.com

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sizzlingcrusadebouquetfan-blog · 6 years

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state farm insurance quote near my location 92069

"state farm insurance quote near my location 92069

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