#avoiding writing

[thevoidlookedback]

Young artists

I’m so, so sorry to tell you. The experts are right. The magic is in the editing. I know it’s not fun, AND you have to make the thing before you get to edit it.

When I edit photos I feel kind of “meh” about, I often fall in love with them through editing. When I edit photos I think are really good, I often become obsessed with them. I’m debating submitting some Pride photos to major magazines because I love them so much.

My writing has always been good. I’ve been told that my whole life. I never really felt like it was true, it was just something I did. Recently though, I’ve started to train my editing skill in writing. All of a sudden, I see the art in my work.

Make art. Make as much art that excites you as you can. The worst thing you can do is hold off on doing projects you’re impassioned about because you aren’t happy with your skill level yet. It will eat away at your love for the thing.

Do it badly. Remake it later. Sometimes the true beauty of the peace is the enthusiastic enjoyment apparent of the thing, not the 10,000 hours that went into skill. Skill without passion is no art at all.

New ideas will always come. It is much harder to reignite passion in a place you burned out in shame.

[husker-fictive]

What the Vees are like in "Maybe I'm Just A Vision (maybe I'm not even real)"

Valentino-

he's almost...meeker?

isolated is really more of the term I would use

He's quieter, almost stotic, not as flirtious as he was

he hardly ever shows up at the studio

Velvette-

she's been avoiding meetings

she's been monitoring comatose Vox, making sure he can still breathe and still has brain activity

she's incredibly paranoid now, knowing any injury or germ could kill Vox easily and for good while he's like this

she literally does not leave his side for more than five minutes at a time, and when she does a soul she owns or Valentino looks after him

Vox-

literally comatose lmao

[dionysiaproductions]

Not me avoiding working on any of my WIPs by searching for a new Halloween cardboard cat house since Mr. Darcy ate all the structural support of last year's jack-o-lantern funhouse.

Side note that Target's selection of cardboard cat houses is shameful this halloween.

[arviyya]

Doing this for once: thanks for the tag @shoopsthereitis

Fic authors self rec! When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you've written, then pass on to at least five other writers. Spread the self-love ❤ link to ao3

Song of Serpents

Into the Abyss

A Taste of Sin

Venom Dripping From Your Mouth

Unposted (hehe) Wanna See a Dead Body?

np tag: @transsexualpriest @honeybcj @lilacfiresoul @badhairred

[fireflylitsky]

F

And If I can have more than one 👉👈

L

AHH TY FOR THE ASK PRINCESS (Sorry for delay I needed to wait for AO3 to come back up and have time to pick out a snippet for F)

F: Share a snippet from one of your favourite dialogue scenes you've written and explain why you're proud of it.

Okay, this was stupid hard to pick because once you read your own stuff with this question in mind, literally everything sounds like garbage 😂 So I just went with something recent people seemed to enjoy. (For context: KisaSaku, Canon divergent, Yokai infested post-apocalyptic AU set about a decade out from early Shippuden. Shameless use of one tent and shared body heat tropes.)

With a tired sigh and a shiver, Sakura had begun to absently nod before looking at him with a sudden halt. Her eyes traveled up his barely clothed body, over to the tent, and back. “You’re not going to put on clothes?” she asked. An adorably genuine, but very silly question. “Not even a shirt?”

His brows raised in clear amusement. “You’re wearing it, Kunoichi.”

She rolled her eyes. “I assumed you had another.”

“Oh, I do,” he said, looking highly entertained. “But it got all nasty because someone decided to punch me into the mud.”

Sakura choked on a snort.

“Yeah. Welcome to the consequences to your own actions,” he said with a flourishing, if not arrogant gesture to himself. 

She sighed. As far as consequences went, she’d definitely dealt with worse… not that she’d tell him that. “Fine. Let’s just go to bed,” she said, kicking off her shoes and ducking into the gloom of the tent.

“Fine by me.”

“Kubikirbocho can cuddle with Samehada if she doesn’t mind,” Sakura muttered, already stuffing her sword next to Kisame’s.

“She’s probably cool with it. We’ll find out if not.”

Sakura looked up at him with a weary smile. “What’s she gonna do, eat it?”

He smiled back with a shrug. “Maybe.”

“Ah. Well,” Sakura sighed, shoving her pack into the corner by her head. “Samehada will have a very iron rich diet then.”

“Hey, not bad, Kunoichi,” Kisame pushed his jaw out with an approving nod. “Freezing to death and she’s still got jokes.”

“Yeah,” she yawned, flopping onto her back and rubbing her eyes. “Thanks, I’ll be here all night.”

“Great,” he said, nudging her side with his foot, “now scooch.”

“No. Crawl over me. I want to sleep by the flap.”

“Why, so you can get snatched up by another yokai with the hots for you?”

“I was hardly snatched,” she sneered up at him, most of its impact lost in the darkness.

“It wanted to snatch you,” he asserted, looking down his nose at her like he was some sort of authority on snatching . “You were very snatchable. Snackable even. Neither of which would have been the case if you’d just listened to me from the start.”

She snorted. She didn’t mean to. She really wasn’t in the habit of encouraging him, but that was kind of funny. “I was not snackable,” she grumbled, pulling the blanket up and sighing deeply at the warmth of it.

“You were. I saw the way it was drooling all over you.”

"Oh, gross, stop.” Sakura pretended to gag, curling in on herself and tugging the blanket over her head entirely. “Don't remind me."

Kisame chuckled, “You were like a steamed bun to that bitch.”

"You're just jealous she picked me over you."

"Pfft, no way. You were just an appetizer. She knew who the main dish was."

“Good lord… would you just get in here please?” Sakura flipped the blanket off her in a huff to stare up at him very seriously. “I’m freezing to death, if you’ll recall.”

“Oh, so now you just want to use me for my warmth,” Kisame feigned offense terribly, not even dropping his grin. “I see how it is.”

“That was the plan–your plan–yes.”

“Oh, well if it was my plan then it’s probably a good one.” He promptly tucked inside, awkwardly fumbling over her as he kicked his muddy shoes off. His presence instantly tested the limits of the two person capacity.

As far as tests went, the tent failed.

“Kisame,” Sakura wheezed, squishing against the edge of the tent. “You are large.”

He had a joke for that but opted out. Low hanging fruit and all. He needed to up his game.

“I’m also warm. Get over here, Kunoichi,” he grunted as he rolled onto his side. Freeing up some space, he used it to reach out and loop an arm around her stomach. He tugged her back against him. Curled around her like a shrimp.

Sakura let out a startled squeak, launching into a fit of dissent. “Oh my god , what do you think you’re… what do you…” she found herself stalling, petering out as her base survival instincts began to override her pride. “Oh my god ,” she sighed, lids fluttering as Kisame wrapped the blanket around both of them with a chuckle. “You’re like a human boiler.”

"Human," he echoed, "that's mighty high praise coming from you."

“How are you so warm?” Her fight had all but died and had a eulogy.

Here lies Haruno Sakura’s dignity, backbone and fighting spirit. They were nice while they lasted. She’s warm now though, so that’s something. If it’s any consolation, she will surely regret her decisions later. Something something, it's all very sad, may they rest in peace.

“We’re not sleeping like this,” she decided aloud. Like that would counteract the way she’d shoved her face into his bicep. She was currently using it as a pillow, by the way. Her nose burned cold against him. "This is just until I can feel my limbs again."

“Sure, Kunoichi,” he chuckled, settling in.

A breath scraped out of her throat. “Can you not say it like you’re placating me?"

"Sure, Kunoichi,” he repeated in a mockery of deadly seriousness.

“You’re an ass."

L: How many times do you usually revise your fic/chapter before posting?

More than I care to admit 🙃 the scenes should be better, given the amount of revision tbh. I'd say 5-10 times on average for any given chapter. I'll do separate read throughs with each character's focus in mind, make sure I'm not missing anything. It's a tedious process that I love (this sounds sarcastic. It's not. I actually love editing and much prefer it to writing.)

[lgbtlunaverse]

To me the most fun part about fix-its is placing dominoes.

Tragedies often consist of escalating series of actions and circumstances which, in isolation, were not clearly leading to the tragic end but form a chain of cause-and-effect directly towards it in hindsight. In equal but opposite fashion, I love starting with small inoccuous changes to canon that in themselves do not obviously fix everything but start a new chain that leads to a better ending.

It's kind of impossible for fix-its to feel fully natural– the reader by definition knows what the original ending was and that this ending will be happier because the writer wants it to be– but it is possible for them to not feel contrived. A big deus-ex-machina, or a character breaking with their pre-established tragic flaws to suddenly make all the "correct" decisions almost always feels unsatisfying to me.

But a few carefully placed small domino pieces slowly knocking over bigger and bigger tiles until the entire story has radically changed? That's a lot more fun.

It recquires the author to both correctly identify the original chain of cause-and-effect and understand the characters well enough to know how they'd react to different circumstances. Because if the story feels like it's fixing the wrong problem or the characters don't act like themselves the magic is lost. But when it works? When it clicks and the reader sees the domino chain laid out in front of them? It's beautiful.

[ruvastuon]

I literally just started teaching myself knitting to avoid a project I'm working on...

I could write, or, consider this, I could take a nap

[thevoidlookedback]

It’s post random shit on tumblr hours.

I’d apologize but why would I?

[rynli]

every binary man does this

part 1 part 2

[lizardmonet]

jkr is what the lefties WISH billionaires were like. she is constantly giving away her money, losing billionaire status, but she’s so damn successful and loved that money just keeps pouring into her bank account so girlie pop is back in the billions. and she’s still giving away her money to charities and will probably drop back out of billionaire status ON PURPOSE. but because she doesn’t deny basic biology then she’s evil. fucking jeff bezos with his slave factories gets less hate than her. be serious.

[the-raindeer-king]

Honestly, you should've known better. Soap was never one to take a joke and drop it, and joke like this? You should've know he'd take it and run with it. You just never thought it'd go this far.

Someone had brought cupcakes, the kind that come with those gaudy plastic rings meant for little kids. You and Soap had ended up with the same ring on top of your cupcakes.

"Oh, hey. They're the same. Guess we're married now."

It was a joke. Something you had laughed off, before ducking out of the break room, missing the way Soap's eyes followed you. Missing the way he stared at you, something dark and hungry in those baby blues.

The next morning, Soap's waiting at your desk with flowers and a coffee. He gives you a bright smile, watching you as you take the flowers with a smile.

"Oh, my favorite! How'd you know?"

"I know all yer favorites. Part of bein' a good husband, aye?"

That makes you pause, coffee halfway to your lips. Husband? It takes you a second to realize he's referring to the joke you made yesterday, and you give him a sheepish smile, shaking your head.

"Johnny, that was a joke. I wasn't -"

"I've got to go. But I'll get ye later. Make a proper wife of ye before the day's over," he promises, leaning down to kiss your cheek.

You don't even have a chance to argue. And when he shows up with Ghost at the end of the day, all you can think to ask is why Ghost is there.

"Johnny said you needed a witness," is Ghost's reply.

[fireflylitsky]

M & Y for the fanfic asks!

M: Got any premises on the back burner that you'd care to share?

Pfffft I have too many 😭I've vowed to not publish any new chaptered fics until I finish some of the ones I already have out though 😤 I think the one I've written the most of behind the scenes is for a Kakuzu and Hinata body swap (no, they're not shipped) in which they switch bodies back and forth on a daily basis.

While in Hinata's body, Kakuzu grows protective of the girl (hello, yes, I love Dadkuzu and found family, what of it) when mistreated by her father, and tries to take a stand because he knows she won't. (Naturally there are unexpected consequences to this).

Hinata, while in Kakuzu's body, grows close to the Akatsuki and develops a simmering crush on Itachi Uchiha. The thought of her in Kakuzu's body blushing and tripping over her words because Itachi stepped into the room is just comedy gold in my head. Anyway it should be a funny and angsty time, as is my goal with most fics.

Y: A character you want to protect.

Hidan.

He's my little guy. I've given him everything I can including an OC to shower him with all the affection he never knew he needed. He will never not get a happy ending in any of my fics (cept for the one he died in, but really, that was a mercy killing.)

[dreamsteddie]

Wowza. Part one blew up way more than I thought it would so here! Part two! I do have more thoughts about this so there might be a couple more parts to come. We'll see ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

------

Eddie takes half a second to consider just not answering. Maybe throwing his phone away and never going back to the restaurant they went to last night so he never has to confront whatever it is that's about to happen. Maybe even fleeing the country and living alone on a sheep farm with no friends and go relationships ever again so something like this never happens again.

But then he thinks of Steve. Kind, funny Steve with the bright eyes and soft skin who looked at Eddie like he could fall in love with him and he knows that whatever comes next, Steve deserves for Eddie to see it through with him.

New Message: Steve H.

Hey

Just that one word sends Eddie's heart into his throat. He can see that Steve is still typing, those little ellipses of doom popping on and off the screen. Realistically, Steve probably doesn't know what happened, right? Eddie's pretty sure Steve wasn't in on it and it's been less than an hour since Eddie himself found out, so probably not.

Steve H: Gareth called me

Fuck.

Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck.

If Eddie's heart was in his throat at the first text, the second one has it dropping through his body and out of his goddamned ass. It's not that he doesn't want Steve to know. He was always planning to tell him, he was just hoping he could be the one to do it. Gareth being a little shit and calling Steve first was not part of the plan.

Steve H: He told be about the prank. I'm sorry if I wasn't what you expected and you were just being nice. We can pretend it never happened. No hard feelings.

Eddie slams his head into his pillow. This is such a cluster fuck he can hardly bring himself to look at the text but he needs to come up with some kind of response, like, yesterday if he wants any chance of keeping the man of his dreams from running for the hills because apparently, Eddie's friends are trying to destroy his life. He takes a deep breath and starts typing.

Eddie: Hey, I'm so sorry about that. I just found out about what they did an hour ago at practice. I didn't think they would just call you out of the blue like that, I was just about to text you.

Not completely true, but Eddie was going to text him about it, just after screaming into his pillow and making a couple Vudu dolls first.

Eddie: For what it's worth I really do like you and I would love to still take you out on that second date, but I understand if my friends scared you off and you want nothing to do with me. I know it's fucked up.

It takes a minute for Steve to respond, the typing bubbles ebbing and flowing as Steve types and retypes whatever it is he wants to say. Eddie is about ready to call it a wash and start googling sheep farms for sale in Ireland when a new text comes in, dispelling all thoughts of learning to sheer wool.

Steve H: Are you sure?

And fuck if that doesn't hurt his heart. Eddie has spent all of two and a half hours with Steve, he's a virtual stranger, but Eddie can swear he can feel all of Steve's secondhand insecurity through that one lonely sentence. Before he even registers what he's asking, he send a quick reply.

Eddie: Can I Facetime you?

Before Eddie can try to rethink his decision, his screen lights up with a notification. Steve is calling him.

Eddie scrambles to answer, fumbling his phone a little in his haste and almost missing the call completely. He manages to get it on the last ring, breathing heavily in a way he knows can't be flattering.

All thoughts about his lack of dexterity fly out the window when he looks into his screen. On their date, Steve was perfectly put together. Hair meticulously done, clothes freshly pressed, and a light sheen of lipgloss accentuating the perfect curve of his mouth. While Steve is still beautiful through the lens of his camera, it's clear that he's been crying. His eyes are red and a little puffy, hair out of order in a way Eddie thinks is probably unusual for him, and Eddie can see that he's wearing a well-loved beige hoodie.

"Hi," Steve says, waving a shy hand almost the same way he had last night.

"Hey sweetheart," Eddie says, keeping his voice low and gentle, desperate to soothe Steve however he can through the distance of their phones.

For a minute they just look at each other, neither one knowing what to say in a situation like this. Eddie sees Steve gearing up to say something, but he cuts in before he starts. There's something he needs to say while Steve can see him face to face.

"I'm really sorry about what happened!" He says, much lounder than he intended. "My friends were being dicks. I haven't dated in a while and instead of being normal fucking people they set up this whole stupid prank but I swear I wasn't in on it!"

Something about what he says draws a small smile from the corner of Steve's mouth, so Eddie keeps talking. "Besides, if they wanted to prank me they should have picked someone that isn't a literal fucking model in disguise. There wasn't a chance in hell I wasn't going to beg you for that second date."

At that, Steve gives a little chuckle and it lifts Eddie's heart from where it'd fallen onto the floor and puts in back in his chest 10 times lighter than before.

"Jesus, are you always such a flirt Munson?" he says.

"Only when the boys are especially pretty," Eddie responds.

Steve gives another little laugh at that before sobering up. He gives Eddie a long look through the phone, and Eddie lets him.

"Are you sure you don't want to just call it quits here man? Gareth was pretty adamant that I'm not the kind of guy you usually go for. I don't want you to feel like you have to humor me out of kindness." There's a forced flippancy to Steve's words that Eddie knows well from his own Munson Coping Strategies Handbook. Steve is trying to give him an out, but Eddie can tell that he doesn't want to.

For the first time since this all started, Eddie is well and truly mad. Gareth and Jeff had absolutely no business poking around in his love life in the first place, but now they've reached out to the guy Eddie already told them he liked to what? Tell him never mind actually, we don't think you're the right guy for our friend even though he told us very explicitly how into you he is.

Eddie lets all the frustration, anger, and tenuous hope building up in his chest fuel his reply. This one has to count, he can feel it. It's a charisma saving throw with the whole campaign on the line. He can't miss this one.

"Honestly Steve, if you asked me two days ago what I was looking for in a partner, I probably would have said I wanted to date another alternative metalhead or punk who likes playing DnD and getting high on the weekend." Eddie can see Steve's shoulders slump as his eyes dart away, but he pushes on, determined to make his point.

"But, I haven't had as good a time as we had last night in a really long time." Steve looks back up, eyes alight with the same tentative hope Eddie himself is channeling. "I think you're funny and interesting, and you have the absolute worst takes on ice cream flavors, and you're hot as hell. Like, seriously the hottest guy I've ever seen in real life."

Steve smiles, the edges of his eyes crinkling.

Critical success.

"So, about that second date."

Part Three

-------

Tag List

@wheneverfeasible @the-dark-hearts @sofadofax @wrenisfangirling @whatfinestandsfor @lilpomelito @raisedbylibrarians @ollyxar @mugloversonly @xxbottlecapx @hezaaxdexangelous @kimsnooks @that-one-gay-crow

[artarete]

lambert: some of that was pretty worrying actually narinder: i didn't say they were good reasons

[lilislegacy]

One thing I’ve always found interesting is that Rick never really showed us the bridge between Percabeth being just friends to being in a serious relationship. A few little moments in The Staff of Hermes were the closest we got. Like, we see them say “I love you” to each other a few times throughout Heroes of Olympus, but it’s never implied that those were the first times they said it. Which means before TLH even starts, the two of them have gotten to that point. But In Staff of Hermes (which takes place a month into their relationship), they’re still in that slightly awkward phase of their relationship—you know, where they’re super into each other and obviously enjoying the perks of being a couple (aka making out), but haven’t quite settled into that groove of mature, comfortable romance yet. But by the time Percy gets kidnapped (just three months later), they clearly have found that groove, which is evident the second they reunite in MoA, because they’re totally at ease with each other, affectionate, and intimate in a way that supports the implication that those “I love you’s” I mentioned have already been exchanged. So it just makes me wonder when that shift happened? At what point in those three short months did they go from “I’m just happy we’re still together, honestly” to “I'm in love with you, and this is forever"?

Ugh, what I would give to see how they were right before Percy got kidnapped. Still holding on to a bit of that teenage casualness that disappeared during their 6 month separation, but also hopelessly in love and finally open and comfortable with it. URRGGGHHH!!!!

I love them.

[neo--queen--serenity]

Some readers: darkfic is evil, and should be censored/banned!

My AO3 experience: