#atmospheric description

[lynxindisguise]

ten lines, ten people

thank you for the tag @spindrifters <333

rules: share the first lines of ten of your most recent fanfics and tag ten people. if you have written less than ten, don’t be shy and share anyway. 

ahhh this is literally all of my fics, except the very first one 😅

shorn and scarred and yours - slytherin sirius AU

Blacks do not cry. Or, at least, they’re not supposed to.

Please Don’t See Me - modern w/ magic AU

“86 Jameson!” Lily calls, tossing yet another bottle into the already overfilled glass bin. 

A Series of Unlucky Events - Love and Other Potions one-shot, fix-it

Lily has never really believed in luck. When she won the vial of Felix Felicis in Slughorn’s class, the pride of winning (and narrowly beating Severus) meant more to her than the prize itself. So she hid it away and barely thought of it over the next three years. 

Pride and Prejudice and Werewolves - enemies to lovers (canon-divergent AU)

Beige corduroy, tawny tweed, and sandy hair, Remus very much hoped he’d be the least interesting sight in the Great Hall.

The Wolf and the Jester - Robin Hobb inspired fantasy AU

A forest is basically a library, Remus thinks. Just as a gruff, unkempt woodsman is merely another version of a shy, studious palace scribe. Except simpler. Everything is so much simpler now. He hunts, gardens, tracks the moon and charts the stars--he's content. And so is the wolf. It's the human part of himself, it turns out, that was restless and temperamental, always itching for change and conflict. 

exes, horcruxes, and other reasons to panic - exes to lovers (oh look, another canon-divergent AU)

Remus stares, mesmerized at the pale lavender smoke emanating from the goblet, definitely not avoiding the intent gaze of those laser green eyes.

Uncanny Moony Effect - Love and Other Potions, one-shot

Sirius wakes up on a scratchy beige carpet he doesn’t recognize on the floor of a bedroom he’s never seen. It’s small, neat, cozy, and eerily familiar in an itch-in-the-back-of-his-head type of way. Well at least he’s not naked. Or in the bed.

Sarcastic Truths and Lies By Omission - Love and Other Potions, one-shot

“Lupin!” A firm hand claps Remus on the back. Startled—he’s always been jumpy, but he’s especially on edge these days—he nearly drops the glass he’s been clutching with white-knuckled fingers.

Of Monsters and Cowards - slytherin sirius, First War Au

The Death Eater raises his chin and surveys the pack haughtily from behind his mask. Most of them are taller than him—maybe it’s a wolf thing, maybe it’s that he’s not particularly tall. But they feel small—all awkward angles folded in on themselves.

A Dog in Stag’s Clothing - Love and Other Potions, one-shot

“Prongs! Mate! Brother! Light of my life! Stop drooling over Evans and pay attention to me,” Sirius whines, tugging on James’s sleeve.

WHEW okay we’re done, no pressure tags to some old mutuals and some new for this one @colgatebluemintygel @fruity-individual @mostlyoptimisticdinosaur @moongays @wanderingdonut @msalexwp @demidreamer @achilleslikespeas @impishtubist @crushofdoves

[lureofthegallowsgame]

Demo Update(?) 7/4/24

This probably deserves its own special post, but I've been meaning to post it all week and I keep forgetting! So behold, the original TLOTG demo up to chapter six, which was originally posted to Patreon and now serves as special little extra content.

Key things to note: this demo is obsolete because the Naturalist is not in it. This demo is also important because it still has the Seer's storyline, even though I'm adding things in as I go. I'm picking apart both their stories in my free time and it's going really well!

Also, I'm no longer posting on Ich.io, and will return to my roots on CSIDE because the language is easier for me to just shut up and write without fussing over code. I'm not publishing through CoG, but I am playing in their sandbox. TLOTG will be free when it's finished.

Anything else? I don't remember. My job is all-consuming at the moment and it's been hard for me to write more than a few sentences a night. My brain is mush. I just wanted to give you all something new because you all deserve it! Thank you for being patient and kind and supportive. I am always thinking about this game, and I'm excited to update soon.

[koerinz]

“Her green eyes pierced through him like a bullet…. No, she can’t be here--” Chapter 1 ; Penitence : Hidden Hands by @north-noire

[yea-baiyi]

i just posted but i feel INSANE hua cheng’s entire appearance in the ghost groom arc is just symbolism.

when xie lian is alone (having sent everyone away, in danger but perfectly capable of fighting his way out), hua cheng steps in front of xie lian, offers his hand, and guides xie lian through the woods to where he needs to be. monsters cower before him, magical barriers don’t stop him, he steps on the skulls of enemies and crushes them so thoroughly that xie lian behind him feels like he is walking on flat ground. he doesn’t just swoop in without asking — he offers his hand, and waits, and xie lian willingly reaches out and lets himself be guided. and his grip is featherlight, even as he steers xie lian through danger and darkness. his blood rain warns away all who would dare harm them, but xie lian doesn’t get hit by a drop. and hua cheng does this all in his true form, not in disguise, because he’s not playing a character or trying to achieve anything, this is just him. despite not being confident enough to face xie lian directly, hua cheng has already shown him exactly who he is.

(now excuse me while i gnaw through an entire wall because how was this not glaringly obvious to me all along)

[orangeshipper]

Outside, the dancing had stopped. For a while, the voices scratched the night air, coalescing, thinning, joining again in wine-eased laughter. Then they dispersed, and you heard only the pad of servants’ feet, aching for bed, the chink of cup on tray, the pang of moved lutes and the hiss of brushes, and finally, in the dark Château Neuf and Château Vieux, only the harp-fall of the fountains, and silence. Behind more than one window the satins lay strewn in the moonlight, and the night passed sleepless, playing at love. For one person only the music stayed all night long, losing no magnificence, demanding more sometimes than she could support.

Queens Play, Dorothy Dunnett

[myriad-rainbows]

so I know we talk a lot on here about Tamsyn Muir's plotting and characterization (which is 1000% justified) but another thing that GETS me is her descriptions. Like,

[T]hrough the glorious wreck of the smeared and vaulted ceiling light streamed down in such quantities it made Gideon halfway blind again. There were deep couches and seating benches, with cracked covers and the stuffing coming out, with broken armguards and backs. Embroidered throws that clung to the seats like the skins of mummies, piebald where the light had touched them and dank where it hadn’t. Everything in that room was beautiful, and all had gone to seed. It wasn’t like back in the Ninth where unbeautiful things were now old and ruined to boot—the Ninth must have always been a corpse, and corpses putrefied. The House of the First had been abandoned, and breathlessly waited to be used by someone other than time. The floors were of wood—where they weren’t of gold-shot marble, or a rainbow mosaic of tiles gone leprous with age and disrepair—and enormous twin staircases jutted up to the floor above, spread with narrow, moth-eaten rugs. Vines peeked through in number where the glass of the ceiling had cracked, spreading tendrils that had since gone grey and dry. The pillars that reached up to support the shining glass were carpeted thickly with moss, still alive, still radiant, all orange and green and brown. It obscured old portraits on the walls in spatters of black and tan. It hung atop an old, dry fountain made of marble and glass, three tiers deep, a little bit of standing water still skulking in the bottom bowl.

!!!

[ruvviks]

Of course Aubrey had heard of the Council before. I mean– who hadn’t? They didn’t necessarily rule the streets, or Night City’s underworld for that matter, but they sure as hell loved to rub their asses all over it at any given opportunity and never in his years of being a fixer himself had he felt the need to associate himself with any of them. He understood why it was necessary, sure– the agreements they made and the city-wide gang activity they monitored and reported to one another were a vital part of ensuring business stability as well as their own survival– but he knew the biz well enough to not trust the feigned kindness and so-called sense of community they supposedly aimed for. Everyone always had their own agenda. None of it was simply out of the kindness of their hearts, to ensure the safety of the innocent citizens of Night City– it would be naive of him to think so and by then he knew better than to let wishful thinking cloud his judgment.

taglist (opt in/out): @shellibisshe, @florbelles, @ncytiri, @hibernationsuit, @stars-of-the-heart, @vvanessaives, @katsigian, @radioactiveshitstorm, @estevnys, @adelaidedrubman, @celticwoman, @rindemption, @carlosoliveiraa, @noirapocalypto, @dickytwister, @dameaylin, @killerspinal, @euryalex, @ri-a-rose

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

A Dark and Drowning Tide

gothic fantasy romance

a folklorist is chosen as the co-leader of an expedition to find a fabled magical spring for the king, along with 6 nobles

when her mentor, the other leader, is found dead on their boat in the middle of the night, she has to figure out who did it; while continuing the mission through the wilderness and navigating the potential political fallout

and the only one she can probably trust is her academic rival, a naturalist, who she hates

dark folktales & creatures

Jewish lesbian MC

arc from netgalley! out sep 17

putting both covers here because they’re both so beautiful!! (artists: Audrey Benjaminsen, & Erica Williams)

[sailor-cerise]

It's none of my employer's business what my medical issues are

But sometimes I just want to go

"My brain is literally squished into the top of my spine and the only real treatment is literal brain surgery where they cut a hole in my skull to relieve the pressure and sometimes that makes things worse because then the brain slumps down and that's also bad."

And see how they react.

[marzipanandminutiae]

continuing to read The London Seance Society, and there's one thing that irks me

namely, this weird tendency to spoon-feed the readers everything in the narration

so, okay, for example: progatonist finds a weirdly heavy but seemingly empty drawer. she taps on the bottom and it's hollow. she presses one corner of the bottom panel, it pops up, and she pulls it out

the narration is like: "she gasped- the drawer had a false bottom! it was fake, and there was a secret compartment underneath!"

not only does the character gasp after seemingly suspecting a false bottom enough to go hunting for the trigger mechanism to open it- so she was already expecting this, right? -but. I don't know. it seems sort of "yeah, duh?"

this is a book for adults who have presumably read any sort of "looking for lost secret documents" story, ever. we have an "empty" drawer that's nonetheless heavy. we have a hollow sound. we have a panel with give, that pops up when one section is pressed

who wouldn't assume Secret False-Bottom Compartment at this point? you don't have to tell us, author- we're already there. it just seems like not trusting the readers to understand basic "show, don't tell" and genre tropes

that's not the only example, but it's the most illustrative IMO

[vonkarma2]

reading hill house + enjoying it for the yuri

[welcometoteyvat]

happy 4.4 release day in 8 ish hours to all who celebrate. read this ga-ming and xiao fic rn

edit: im a clown and got the update time wrong. happy 4.4 release in 24 hrs go read the fic

[dathen]

I just think my good friend Doctor Watson and my good friend Jonathan Harker should meet up and describe the landscape together.

[tamaharu]

oh please share your thoughts on titans curse percabeth.... we'd love to hear them

okay one thing about the titans curse is that it is the thematic turning point of the entire series. prior to the titans curse, pjo treated its topics seriously, but tlt and som both have a.. lightness to them. more comedic. just dipping our toes in. no one dies.

but ttc is remarkably different from the previous two. darker. set in winter to function as a true middle-point. characters begin to die. percy declares himself the child of the prophecy. this is when things begin to actually happen.

and one of the things that start happening is: annabeth and percys relationship starts tipping into one more overtly romantic.

while i enjoy established relationships, in stories, i really enjoy that bit beforehand. the implication it brings. annabeth is gone for the majority of the titans curse, but the whole book is defined by percys love for her, both platonically and in a way that even he only begins to realize is romantic. the new seriousness of the book also leads to moments that are more charged.

i love botl/tlo percabeth and their messy love triangle yuri and broiling hate and loyalty they think cant be acted on because someones going to end up dead, and i love they do get together! i had their underwater kiss as my phone background for like a year!

but their relationship in the titans curse - especially after they meet again, having both held up the world - just has such a new, melancholy feel to it. one of my favorite pjo quotes comes from the titans curse, and it really encapsulates why i like their dynamic in it so much better than i did here:

"So I took her hand, and I don't know what everybody else heard, but to me it sounded like a slow dance: a little sad but maybe a little hopeful, too."

[howifeltabouthim]

She couldn't believe she'd said this. She might have blamed it on the three drinks, or on the fact that she'd had nothing to eat all day, or on the way the wind was whipping her hair, and the sea was shimmering like diamonds, and the sand was blinding her eyes.

Anna Biller, from Bluebeard's Castle

[encrucijada]

unfortunately i am thinking about haze dogs again. nothing concrete. just vague shapes. connor in the iron dog mask. the dogs themselves stalking the town. that party scene that eludes me. connor drunkenly falling into the fountain pool.