#i haven't written anything in a while

[dreadsuitsamus]

what's it like to write fanfiction 🫠

[polka-spots]

Why are there no Avatar (blue people, not airbender) and Star Wars crossovers on AO3. Fuck I'm going to have to do this myself aren't I? Fml guess I know what I'm sitting down to plot tomorrow night.

[radiomanique]

hello tumblr : open rants about grieving myself as a twitter user

i joined twitter in november 2019, around the same time i developed agency and autonomous thoughts. a girl from my school had suggested i try it out, and like everyone, i did not understand the concept; and like everyone, i came back to it a few weeks later, and it became an integral part of my life ever since.

i don’t exactly know whether twitter altered my brain chemistry, or if i had a brain chemistry that was initially compatible with twitter and pursued its own path to exhaustion. i have always been a very talkative person; my parents would plan an hour at the end of the day just to listen to me talk about my day in extensive detail. i never, ever, ever shut up. and that simultaneously must’ve been the reason why i joined twitter AND the reason i started writing : if i don’t have friends i can talk to my day in extensive detail about, i can tell the entire world.

i haven’t been able to leave twitter since i started. it wasn’t even that i tried : i defined myself by being a twitter user (by the way, how horribly hilarious to define yourself by being a “user” of something and insist it isn’t a drug). the one time i tried to leave, i came back after a month, not because i experienced withdrawal, but simply because i decided i didn’t like using instagram as my main social media. i told myself, and others, when they asked why i was so inintelligible : 

i am a twitter.

(twitter as in twitter account, or twitter as in ‘one who tweets’ ? i don’t know myself. i’d like to keep that ambiguity. i’ve been intertwined with the accounts i’ve had, my usernames have been enmeshed in me the same way a family name. “hi, i’m Cassandre, known as chi3ur on twitter.com, “oui chieur avec un trois” [originally in French])

i think it would be intellectually dishonest, though, to deny that twitter has changed the way i think. it has given a parasocial flavor to almost all my relationships, including ones with people i know in real life. it has made my humor and sometimes my everyday babbling absolutely incomprehensible to people who didn’t have “the reference”, but it made me feel like i was a part of something. it was an identity marker; something that as someone who has been excluded from most if not all large groups of people, i could brandish and say “look! look! i’m a real person too!”. 

i haven’t always had a good relationship with the people on twitter. i have been harassed, doxxed, threatened, i’ve had to leave my hometown for a few months because of how bad it got. yet, i never had an issue with the platform itself. it always found its way back to me, and i eventually managed to curate an experience that was so euphorizing to me.

as i am writing this, the “twitter ship” is currently sinking. like musicians on the titanic, my most prized followed accounts, and often friends, are providing this one last part of entertainment before the app/site completely shuts down. it is rumoured to give out during the night, and by tomorrow morning, i may wake up and find my tidbits of personal history from the past year or so has been wiped out from existence (yes, i did request an archive, i hope it isn’t too late to do so).

i saw it coming.

i read it in the early signs, like a religious person would try and predict the Apocalypse : i followed software updates as though i knew anything about programming, read stories of the employees upon employees fired, and once i started mourning this website, it got me thinking :

who am i if not a twitter ? 

my brain chemistry that i mentioned being compatible with twitter, moreso than the incessant rambling, was precisely that i felt compelled to share my every thought with the world. over the years, it got to a point where my first, jolt-like reaction, when i experienced a well-worded or articulate thought, was to tweet it. minor event happened during the day ? tweet it. overwhelming realization about who i am as a person ? tweet it. witty play on words, or, as i’d say, “banger”? tweet it. the muscle that required me to think was inextricably intertwined with the routine that went “open twitter, compose tweet, write down thought, tweet”.

over the past few days, i have been finding myself more and more reminiscent of who i was in my past lives, that is to say, any year prior to 2020. i listen to music from when i was in middle school. i dream about dating someone almost exactly like my first ever partner. but what scares me the most is that i’ve started to unravel the layers and layers of irony, sarcasm, rizz, memes, that i’ve coated myself and my feelings in to survive them. and now that all of this is tumbling (lol) down, i find that the thought to tweet instinct is, in fact, not that natural to who i am as a person. i find in me the child who spoke with an unnaturally elaborate language that i’d learnt in books, who used proper punctuation and prided myself on being able to carry long-winded reasonings.

is it that child that is sitting here today, in my very adult apartment that i rent with my very adult money earnt at my very adult job, typing for the first time in a long time a text that is longer than 240 characters ? 

i prided myself for so long in being able to kill my inner child. but i find with both ecstasy and horror that they are very much still alive, that the person i prided myself in inventing from scratch was actually an articulate jumble of pieces i picked from others and from myself, and now the headquarters of twitter are closing and my mask is falling off, the app is slowing down, and i am more and more cringe, but i know that this makes me feel good in a way that is much deeper than the surface-level personality i assembled the past three years, and if i need to know anything about myself, it is this :

i am not a twitter.

[fonulyn]

i think i’m gonna take the whumptober prompts and write a continuous story with a new chapter per day, and just not censor myself at all and go with whatever happens to pop in my mind :’D it’d be nice to write something without overthinking anything for once lol.

[thesummoningdark]

WIP Meme

Tagged by @hellolittleogre

Post the last line you wrote, and tag someone else to do the same!

Everything is raw in this new skin. He might remember every moment of a life lived hard, but his body knows it’s never been touched.

Tagging @thrillingdetectivetales and @villa-kulla

[provokedgoalie]

I think if you're gonna write a ‘x reader’ fic you should make a note whether you're describing certain features or not, because then it wouldn't be inclusive for everyone.

[strangerfreaks]

thinking about just posting my fic and leaving the app for a few days bc im scared of people actually reading it, but i also want people to read it

[moonchild-in-blue]

Okay I know I said I was going to stay offline for a while because headache, but I just had the most horrible thought and have to share.

You know the piano on Drag Me Under? The rhythm at which the keys are pressed? Is it just me, or it sounds eerily like a heartbeat? HEAR ME OUT.

I'm not saying it's supposed to sound like that, and I'm aware the tempo is slightly off from the normal/usual heartbeat rate BUT. What if it is? What if you look at it from that perspective?

In the lyrics, Vessel says that they are lying down together. What if this is his/his lover's heartbeat, like when you rest your head on someone's chest and can feel it echo in you?

If he is indeed being dragged down, maybe this is the final moment before the descent? Into Them or down under, I'm not sure. "To merely behold you" - what if this is him remembering their last encounter before They abandoned him? Before Atlantic took place? Since they can't be together? Since the rhythm bleeds nicely into Blood Sport, their parting song? The one before the Big Sad? Does this make sense or am I crazy??

[aquillwieldingmagpie]

I don't know WHY, but for some reason I've had a vision of a Golden Ratio Slay the Princess AU.

I genuinely don't know why, maybe it's because of Ratio's owl motif and one of 2.1 quests being named A Cat Among Pigeons (in reference to Agatha Christie and possibly Aventurine's role) and then later owning three black cakecats even if he's mostly associated with peacocks? Maybe it's because I somehow associate Aventurine's many masks and personas we see over the time we know him with the Shifting Mound's many perspectives and how both her and him are so confident their respective foil won't kill or betray them at the end of everything (and are even fine with it if it does happen), how both the Princess and Aventurine always, always fight for freedom and are denied it until the very end of their story when they finally are granted a true escape through their own efforts and an outside force be it through being show the way or death? How they're both connected to a being so much larger than them but have no say over it (the Princess being seen as only a part/perspective of the Shifting Mound even if she can be found at her heart, Aventurine was blessed by Gaiathra Triclops and ultimately none of that did them any good).

Or maybe it's because I can practically hear this line from the Princess coming out of Aventurine's mouth to Ratio the more close he is to knowing who the real Aventurine is after I woke up in a cold sweat from a nap to write this out:

"Have you figured out what you want to do yet, or are you going to keep trying to find a center that doesn't exist?"

(The Princess saying this about herself and how she's the heart of the Shifting Mound and hasn't really been herself or stopped playing a role through the entirety of the game, but in this context Aventurine saying that there is no 'Kakavasha' or 'No.35' or even 'Aventurine' anymore, just the many masks he wears even though he admits to himself he hasn't changed)

I have no idea if this is anything though or if it would fit their characters at all though. Maybe it's just a silly vision I'll write out one day, maybe not.

[mycupofrum]

Monday snippet

Nobody tagged me but I just wanted to share a snippet. I originally wrote this fic in 2021 when I came back to the fandom after a long hiatus, and I finally started translating it into English. So, here's James and Sirius in the Quidditch changing room. Includes voyeurism and horny teenage boys. Nsfw-adjacent.

__

At first, it was purely coincidental. James realised he had left his shirt in the Quidditch changing room and returned to retrieve it.

The sound of running water from the adjacent room caught his attention just as he was ready to head back to the castle. Sirius stayed in the shower.

James intended to let Sirius know he was there and would wait for him in the changing room. But when he got to the shower area, he was met with a view that made him completely change his mind of cracking a clever joke.

A normal person would have walked away as quietly as possible and never addressed what happened with the person in question.

Of these two things, James only did the latter.

As time passed, he kept returning to the shower room. He watched and listened, eager to devour more of it with his eyes and ears, his cheeks burning with guilt and satisfaction. If he'd seen himself, he might have been surprised by the hungry stare reflected behind his glasses and perhaps understood what it all meant.

But all he could see was Sirius leaning against the tiles amidst the steam, his back arched, eyes closed, black hair sticking to his scalp under the steady stream of water, his bottom lip disappearing beneath his teeth, and it was too much for James.

Each time, he promised himself he wouldn't return to the shower room anymore. It was just weird, a little perverse.

Get a life, he would tell himself. The kind where he didn’t have to watch his best friend jerk off in the shower and wonder why he couldn’t stop staring.

__

[art-of-the-wild772]

Tiny.

He was so... tiny.

He barely fit in the palm of his hand. Still, he crandled him with both, holding as stiff as ice, his breath shallow and slow. He didn't know what to do, so he didn't dare do anything.

Optimus looked at him, his smile tired but happy. He laid his whole weight on the mesh pillows, sighing deeply. "Breathe," He whispered.

As if a switch clicked, Megatron's chassis expended, and he relaxed his posture, expelling air. His faceplates lost their stiffness finally, as his optics half-lidded. Solvent pooled at the edges of his cheeks, small but visible.

"I have... no words..." He finally spoke.

Optimus gave him a teary smile in return. "Why don't you say hi?"

A breathy chuckle left the flyer. "Hi," His grin stretched from cheek to cheek, the solvent falling down them. "Wow. Look at him," He murmured, awed, besotted, and utterly entranced. "Look at you." He whispered as he brought the sparkling closer to his faceplates, touching their nasal ridges ever so gently.

He pulled back, blinking away the tears. He couldn't look away.

"You," He started, "Are the brightest star in the center of my universe," he laid a gentle kiss to the sparkling's forehelm. "I would raze planets and dim suns for you."

Optimus laughed tiredly at the declarations, though he would not deny that he was above them.

"He is our little Hadeen, hmm?" He said absent-mindedly, slowly stroking his son's hand with his finger.

"Our sun. Our guiding light," Megatron continued, gently cradling their sparkling in one hand as he wrapped his other arm around Optimus. "I will make a better tomorrow for you."

"We will."

"Yes. Your carrier and I."

"He needs a name, our little Hadeen."

"... Solarus. Our brightest star."

"I like it. Solarus. Our precious sun."

[varpusvaras]

Something was going on.

Fox could see it from the moment Breha walked into his room. She was trying too hard to look like nothing was wrong, but the expression on her face looked forced, like her skin had been painted over with hardened wax.

She walked over to his bed and sat down. Fox watched her every movement carefully, just waiting for her to open her mouth and say what it was. He watched as she breathed, laced her fingers together, and then decided otherwise and instead reached for Fox's hand, taking it into her own. Fox watched as she stroked her fingers over the back of his hand, slowly, gently, like she was trying to calm down both herself and him.

Fox couldn't take it anymore.

"What is it?" He asked. "Did something happen?"

He was suddenly very aware of the fact that it was only Breha in the room with him. Bail was still supposed to be on Alderaan. He had said that he didn't need to leave for another week. Why was he not here? Had something happened and-

"Bail is alright", Breha said, like she had just read all of his thoughts. "He is just outside the door, actually. We just thought that it was for the best if I came in first and explained this all a little bit first."

"Explained what?" Fox asked. Breha breathed in deeply again, and squeezed Fox's hand.

"I'm afraid we haven't been entirely truthful with you", she started, "please believe me when I say it wasn't because we didn't trust you, the situation was just very delicate, with your health and what is going on in the Galaxy now."

There were too many questions in Fox's mind now, none of which he knew how to ask out loud.

"But everybody is alright?" He asked. Breha smiled at him a little.

"Of course. We just want you to meet someone", she said. "Someone we haven't yet told you about."

She turned around, to look at the door.

"Bail, love", she called. "Come in."

Fox watched as Bail walked in, his eyes immeadiately finding the little body resting in his arms, and his heart jumped up to his throat.

"Fox", Breha said, as Bail stopped next to the bed. "This is Leia. Our daughter."

Fox stared. Stared at the baby in Bail's arms, tinier than even the smallest of Cadets Fox had ever seen, dark brown hair covering its head and its tiny hands grasping onto the front of Bail's shirt.

"I'm sorry we didn't tell you right away", Bail said, apologetic tone in his voice that Fox barely heard over the rushing of the blood in his ears. "The situation was...difficult. You needed to heal, even a little bit, and we didn't want to lie to you about her."

Fox finally managed to lift his eyes from the baby back to Bail and Breha, who were both looking at him with guarded eyes.

"Lie to me about what?" He asked. "This isn't...you didn't have to tell me anything, I'm just-"

"Fox", Breha interrupted him, before his spiralling thoughts could come rushing out of his mouth. "You are part of our family, just as she is. You deserve to know just as much, but we didn't want to stress you out with all of this, before we knew that you were stable enough. We trust you with this knowledge, just as much as we trust each other with it."

"I don't understand", Fox said. He really didn't. Bail and Breha had always talked about wanting a child, so much so that Fox had started to sometimes give himself a permission to want one too, to imagine what it would be like, with all three of them and a little one who would look up to him and call him buir. What more was there to know about that?

Breha squeezed his hands again.

"She is the daughter of Padmé Amidala and Anakin Skywalker", she said, leaving no room for any more questions in Fox's mind.

Fox looked at her. He looked at Bail and his somber eyes, and he looked back down at the baby, still fast asleep in Bail's arms.

There was still one question left, after all.

"Why did you tell me?" He asked. "I'm a breach in security, now. If they find me, they can make me talk."

"They can make me talk, just as easily", Bail said. "They can make Breha talk as well. You are part of our family. You deserve to know just as much as both of us do."

Fox looked at the baby. Leia. Her name was Leia.

It was-

He swallowed hard. There were still things he wanted to say, but he had lost the trust in his own voice.

There was a moment of silence between them, before Bail moved.

"Do you want to hold her?" He asked softly.

Fox looked up at him, and back to Leia.

She was so small. So very small and soft and delicate and important, and Fox wanted nothing more than to make sure that no one or no thing was ever going to hurt her, including himself.

"I-" He tried to say so, but there was something in his throat. "I, I can't, I-"

Have done some many horrible things. Have hurt so many innocent beings already. Have no idea how you can even ask me that.

"You can", Bail said. "I'm going to just lay her on your lap. You don't need much strength in your arms for that. It's alright."

His body had been the last thing Fox had been thinking about right then. The range of motion of his upper body had gotten a lot better recently, even if he still couldn't hold even his own weight up yet. The realisation of that made him feel better, actually. He was too broken to hurt anybody, even a little baby.

He looked at Leia, then up at Bail, and nodded.

Bail smiled, and carefully leaned over and carefully laid Leia's little body on Fox's lap and arms. She was so light Fox barely even felt her, but weighted more than all the stars in the universe.

Even though Bail had tried to be careful, as soon as he let go of Leia, her face scrunched up and her eyes, already darkened to brown, blinked up at Fox.

Fox expected her to cry. To scream. To want back to the warm safety of Bail's arms.

She didn't. She stayed quiet, staring up at Fox, and Fox could almost swear that he felt something tugging at his mind and heart.

Then her face shifted again, and she smiled at him, reaching her little hands towards Fox, and Fox-

Fox cried.

He didn't try to stop it. He just let the tears fall down his face and to his neck, and he let Breha wipe them away without a word.

"You know we don't expect anything from you", Breha said then. "It's entirely your choice to stay with us. But, if you want...she can be yours as well. She can be ours. If you want."

There was still something in Fox's throat, there were still tears running down his face, but he pushed past them to answer.

"Yes", he said. "Yes."

[soap-ify]

hello (going to pretend that i didn't disappear AGAIN)

[lilyharvord]

RQ Week 2 Flash Fic Friday

... a scene taken from a series of scenes for a fic I wil probably never write.... Bonswa my loves, I have returned (: @nortaeventcouncil. For RQ flash fic fridays (prompt 1 secrets)

“Would you have given them to me?”

            Mare glanced up at him with wary eyes, hearing the way his voice betrayed the nonchalance with which he asked his question. Somehow, she knew he would ask her at some point. It had really just been a matter of when for weeks now. Being at the cabin always seemed to loosen lips, and now was no different. The last thing she wants to do was open this can with him though. She had already suffered his presence from the moment it arrived, and all she wanted to do was stay in the tranquility of this moment for as long as she could.

            “Given you what?”

            His cheek twitched at her avoidance, but his eyes softened at the edges. Glancing away, he stared out the frosted window at the viciously falling snow. On the back of the plush chair, his fingers curled into claws on the blanket draped there. The storm had come violently midday and had stayed well into the night. Travel was impossible, leaving was impossible. She felt like a fish trapped in a tank with a shark.

            “Would you have… given me children?”

            Mare’s hand stilled on Coriane’s curls, and she had to forcibly keep herself from possessively wrapping an arm around her to pull her closer. The question wasn’t directed at Coriane at all, but something about the idea of it made Mare’s hackles rise. He hadn’t made any overt threats toward Coriane yet, at least none that Mare knew of. Maybe her threat had worked that first night, or maybe he had been telling the truth when he told he that he had nothing against her daughter. Given the past, the former had to be true.

            Slowly she returned to stroking Coriane’s damp hair, and considered her as she did so. Fresh from a warm bath, she dozed peacefully. The firelight bathed her in orange and red; the perfect colors for her palette. For half a second, she imagined her with different features, the more angular ones that used to haunt every one of Mare’s nightmares. She imagined her with blue eyes instead of mellow amber. Something in her stomach clenched tightly at the fact that she could not picture her daughter laughing with those blue eyes. She swallowed subtly before saying the only thing she could.

            “They never would have been ours. They would have been your mother’s.”

            His exhales whistles through his teeth, telling her she hit the nerve that has always made him curl in on himself.

            “That’s not true.”

            “Look at me and say that. Look at me and tell me that you really think I would have been allowed to raise them, that she would have let me.” She stared him down across the space, her hand stilling on Coraine’s head again before slowly guiding her closer. She wouldn’t be able to fit in her lap much longer, but it was the only way Mare felt like she could keep her close right this second.  

            He raised his chin at her, those icy blue eyes practically glowing in the low light of the dying fire. His cheek twitched again, and he curled his fingers into a tighter ball on the blanket.

            “I would have made her stay away from them.”

            Mare couldn’t help but laugh. The movement and sound made Coriane shift, and curl tighter against her. Cutting the sound off harshly to avoid waking her, Mare shook her head in exasperation. The least he could have done was say something believable. “You would have tried,” she admitted quietly, when Coriane had sighed and relaxed again. “And you would have failed.”

            His entire being went still as stone, and Mare felt the undulating waves of heat he tried to contain wash over her as softly as the waves on the lake shore. She watched him tear his eyes away from her, and gnaw on the inside of his cheek for a moment. The odd kinetic stillness she remembered settled over him as he began to tap a finger against his knee. Slowly he molded himself back into the blasé image he had been maintaining up until this conversation.

“You think I wouldn’t have loved them.”

            There wasn’t a hint of a question in his words, and Mare pursed her lips at the accusation. A part of her wanted to keep twisting the knife deeper, to inflict the pain she had always been able to with him. The other part, the one that had grown out of the bitter, resentful girl she had been stayed the blow, and ultimately won out.

            “I think, she wouldn’t have let you love them. Or me.” She added the last part quietly, but it still struck home like a blow.

            His finger started tapping again, and even in the low light she could see the nail was bit to the quick. The others were probably no better, so she didn’t bother looking at them. Before it had been easy to just remember the man who had been on the other side of cell bars taunting her and pulling at old wounds. It had been easy to remember the manic energy in his eyes when she had chased him down in Whitefire. Potentially facing the young man he had been underneath all that made her shiver. Her eyes slowly fell, and she dropped her voice to a whisper as she said, “There are no more secrets, not anymore.”

            “No more secrets.” He echoed the words mockingly under his breath before rising and slipping back into the shadows of the house. The fire popped loudly in the grate, the only residue of his emotions, while the wind howled outside and thunder rumbled faintly.

[magical-regical]

I kept my promise and I sang 'Happy Birthday' for Raffy. It made me realize how long it's been since I sang that song. Like I don't sing it at other people's birthdays. I get too embarrassed, I just kinda mumble along with everyone else. But here I can sing louder within the comforts of my own room.

It's kinda cute that he leans in after a bit (5 seconds?) , it's like he knows my voice is almost inaudible most of the time even if I'm trying to speak up.

[holocene-sims]

next // previous

august 16, 2021 11:00 p.m. grandma ong's house

there’s a strangeness to a quiet enclave in a bustling metropolis, unexpected in the same manner as grant and henry’s long, unbroken brotherhood. nothing about the baseline rustle of neighbors carrying in paper grocery sacks and kids kicking a soccer ball resembles the eternal merry-go-round of life–max-capacity subway cars, clueless and loud tourists, and locals who drift through their day–just down the road. and yet above this neighborhood–and the entire sprawling city–hangs a common thread, a bluish hazy night sky.

“that was wild,” henry says, suppressed laughter bursting forth from deep in his chest, “all day everyone’s defaulted to speaking english because, well, look at you, and you even had me fooled. i actually forgot you kind of speak basic korean."

“the inner machinations of my mind are an enigma.”

henry rolls his eyes dramatically but in the same split second, throws an arm around grant’s shoulders.

“i was afraid that soup was going to fly out of your mouth.” grant returns the gesture, though it requires him to lean down so as to not smother henry’s face instead. “too close for comfort.”

“well, in my defense, i was not expecting you to reply to my grandma asking me, “daehyun, i haven’t seen your friend since your wedding. how did you meet again?”

grant shrugs. “we met on a playground twenty-four years ago.”

“on my very first weekend as a resident of the semi-good ol’ US of A. in the opposite situation. i remember being so pissed that my parents made me go out to ‘make friends’ that weekend. not moving, mind you, but making friends. i guess they were psychics, though, because apparently, it didn’t bother you that i didn’t speak your language for at least a couple weeks.”

“people say i could talk to a wall.”

henry laughs again. “you could. you’re very chatty.”

“did it bother you that i wrote you some really, really, really shitty letters in korean in the early days based on online translations i found?”

“no, that was sweet.” no question about it–the joy in henry’s eyes is determined. “they were definitely horrendous, but it’s the thought that counted. you could do better now. oh, and i think i still have all those letters. i should. i did box them up when i moved out of my parents’ house.”

they were, all things considered, never very much alike, beyond the fact they both liked cats but weren’t allowed to have any. henry’s mom was allergic, but grant’s parents despised pets. otherwise, they were polar opposites. grant always liked math and science, wanted to work with airplanes, and preferred to spend his free time with others playing tabletop RPGs and computer games; henry always liked art and history, wanted to be a photographer, and preferred to be left alone to his vintage film camera and pottery. grant’s parents raged when he selected aviation over medicine; henry’s parents and grandparents, all artists, were delighted by his dreams of photography. moreover, grant selectively speaks his mind, while henry rarely minces words.

and still–

the shrill honk of a car off in the distance disturbs grant’s thoughts.

“you really could talk to a wall, but hey, why did you approach me on the swing set that day? you were already busy hanging out with your sisters. and your cousins. why me?”

and still, the two have fused into one. the world turned upside down; grant paints these days, henry has long been a willing dungeons and dragons player, and separation from one another is like losing half your body. if henry walked away now–ended this messy half-hug early–grant would turn to ash.

“well,” grant begins, drawing out the suspense with an exaggerated sigh, “first of all...”