#i really need to copy paste all of these posts onto one document and try to organize it properly hmm

[kijosakka]

dramaturgy; celebrity manhunt, pre-london -- im going to make it easy on myself and skim through pre-london first, as the most divergence in this AU happens during and after the fact. part of pre-london is the pre-season itself, the celebrity manhunt special.

so action comes and goes, noah gets out of the season and remains as chris’ PA for the year break. in that time, months before it actually happens, chris finds out about the new season (with producer word both pushing for ‘more drama/engagement’ or smth along those lines, and *noahs actual involvement this time).

while something something contracts might prevent him from just outright telling noah, i’d imagine that he’d all but say there’s going to be a new season and heavily imply that noah wont be able to get out of it this time. not only that but he also implies that maybe noah should give opening up to people on the show a chance,, cause, yk, hes about to be stuck on a jet with them,, for weeks,,

of course, noah is pissed at first. but in so many weeks or whatever he begrudgingly accepts it and just resolves to throw it like usual. as for the ‘opening up to people’, he lands on owen.

owen was nice enough, genuine to a fault and the person least likely to use any of noahs bare slivers of vulnerability against him. hes safe.

[*noahs involvement within the show as something that the viewers are very interested in. he could be ratings gold and they know it.]

now im a little bit torn over the whole ‘chris’ assistant’ bit; similar to the awakeathon i would imagine it might just be missing entirely and he would be fired before the fact. or it could happen, as a way to give his on-screen character some information. as a ‘look everyone, i have Depth. stop prying into my life please’

either way, whatever. *total drama dirtbags show up, chris locks them out of the venue, they dont win any awards, bus chase etc.

^ note here, per usual noah comes off as his usual uncanny self around the cast. sierra is there as well, im sure thats Something for her. however he does take notice of one (1) alejandro burromuerto, recognizing him and focusing on him. < this comes back during introductions, where he notes his behavior towards the cast.

[*total drama dirtbags existed as the original ‘new TD season’ that noah found out about and worked on for a little bit before he finds out that it was not in fact a real show and a coverup for something else (a grab for an extra contestant for WT) < hence, he knows josé from interviews/auditions he helped with, but doesn’t know alejandro since he decided one brother was Enough]

^ and just for extra clarity on the TDD thing bc ive kind of muddled it, say noah finds out about dirtbags, helps out whatever. and then the news breaks that its a fake phish for a new contestant for an actual show — fine enough, he’s already behind the cameras, so he can just stay there, right?

no, actually. its kinda just slung at him that he has to be part of the cast (smth smth his job is threatened under ‘contractual obligation’ like its not wildly unconscionable). and he is soooo pissed off, so incredibly angry at the circumstances he’s landed himself in somehow.

< but he is aware that he cant just bottle everything up because it will spill over; chris said he needs something to his character, so maybe he can funnel his anger into playing the game a little more. as the most outlet he’ll get before he can throw it and just be done with the show entirely.

^ and then,,, alejandro.

while the actual events of pre-london remain largely unchanged, his dynamics are changed with the presence of four different variables: alejandro, izzy, owen, and sierra.

alejandro i’ll get into more later with a longer post detailing what they think of each other mutually, but im gna touch on alejandro a little; with picking off team victory and believing heather is the only person who’s noticed his facade, he just,, doesnt really distinguish noah as a threat worthy of focusing on.

^ throughout the game and the events of, he does single noah out as the most tolerable of all his teammates but doesnt offer much intrigue beyond that until *new york. (to note, he’s a lot more comfortable with [oblivious to??] noahs detachedness than the rest of the cast since that empty demeanor is p common among whatever diplomatic events hes been a part of)

izzy is someone who’s character i established mostly in the long post i had about her?? but it is worth mentioning now though that she does stick very close by to noah throughout her time on the show, and routinely interacts with him where most of the cast had given up trying altogether.

^ it builds,, a kind of rapport between her and noah?? in some way after the fact he’d recognize it as a nice, ‘i-want-to-know-more-about-you-and-also-befriend-you’ thing, but during he reacts more like a yowling cat tbh. he’s built up this reputation and facade that make people stay away from him, and now izzy wants to stick around him and threaten his defense mechanism? no thanks. (< further reasoning for why he belays insults towards her during WT under the guise of his own facade)

owen is a special case — in the bus chase before the season, noah took the time to sit by him and build up the proper beginnings of a friendship, which owen is thrilled about < during his time on island, owen was really fond of noahs quips and ‘just wished he would open up a bit more!!’,, he thinks some friends would b good for him and hes right

^ and again, owen is noahs safest option to 'endear' himself to the audience with a friend. hes so genuine and understanding of where noahs projected character falls flat, and like izzy keeps interacting and wants to interact with him where the rest of the cast gave up (and noah the person becomes very fond of owen and the reprieve their friendship offers him very quickly)

and finally,,, sierra. i actually want to talk more about the Audience as an entity in this AU in a later post and sierra ties into that heavily. as established, noah is the one cast member she just doesn't know anything about. of each blog she runs dedicated to each member of the show, his is the emptiest; the most baseless. being in proximity with the man of mystery is exciting!

^ noah still comes off as very uncanny valley to sierra and his detachedness is immediately clear. but the key difference to her and and cast is that she has the Audience perspective --- he's intriguing moreso than offputting. (and also theres definitely Something there about the meta-analysis of panopticon as an in-universe topic and how sierra would relate/connect that once it becomes clear to the cast why noah acts as he does)

[*new york (same time space as the aftermath?) as the moment when sierra prattles off information about the cast but comes up with nothing on noah that his own interest is piqued just a liitle bit, and he starts building a proper relationship up with noah as the straightmen to the cast. < also come after london is something he looks back on as a Hmm. moment wondering what noah knows about himself.

^ alejandro does believe their rapport is one-sided bc of his own facade, which i want to mention simply bc he's wrong. it is no-sided. both of them r faking.]

now getting to the episodes themselves -- minor changes/additions:

in the yukon, he doesn't try to cuddle bridgette

^ also in the yukon, he shivers less visibly than the cast (think when in cold weather you get those microtremors that really fucking hurt after a few seconds). this is only because it feeds into the android joke-turned-conspiracy for the folks watching on the aftermath set

in new york, he was not actually asleep in the carriage nor did he explicitly pretend to be. he just Kept Quiet when heather did her thing

in germany, he doesn't go up to alejandro when he falls off the platform, but he does prompt owen to ask something along a similar line [to his canon ones]

in the amazon, he's the one to point out owens absence

in paris, the line of 'this totally works on my dog' he changes to smth like 'totally works on dogs',, for his own exercise of privacy really

in the space of the jamaica aftermath, he again disappears from the rest of the cast à la playa des losers save for owen. owen gets a hello during mealtimes and hes the only one.

and finally, the episodes of 'significant' development with noahs intrigue in alejandro:

beginning before any real events of the show during introductions

^ kicked off in germany similarly to canon, emphasized by newfoundland and the grab for DJ's alliance

and cemented completely [his interest in unmasking him] in jamaica, continuing onward with london around when he discovers that alejandro is acting skittery towards him because of his own suspicions

[critterfloozy]

Rec Blog Template Creator (For General Use)

A lot of the appeal of hosting a rec blog with other people is sharing the work. I don’t have to spend more than five to ten minutes a week writing anything up, and I automated the formatting, so that’s another five to ten minutes.

But it occurred to me that I could just, like, fill out a single-user version of the google form and just publish it when I got enough responses, or once a month, or something else. And if I filled it out at the same time I wrote a comment, I wouldn’t really have to spend much time thinking about what to write.

So, I modified the google docs I created for @aeor-is-for-reccing​ to be suitable for one person (taking out the themes randomizer, removing some of the duplication work, and adding a pairing field), and I thought I’d share it with everyone else. You can see the original explanation here (or just go to aeor is for reccing, you can see it).

Short version remains: google form -> google sheet -> mail merge to now-html format -> copy and paste to tumblr

We still need four documents for this:

1. The Google Form. This is a copy of the form I use, you can create something that looks like it.  Just go to google drive and create a new form.

2. A Google Sheet with all the responses. The easiest way to create this is to make a copy of this sheet into your own directory, then under google form, select Responses.  There should be an option at the top right to connect or link to a sheet, and then select an already existing sheet - the copy of this sheet you made onto your own drive. You’ll have to reconnect all of the formulas onto your own responses sheet, but there’s an explanation of all of the formulas in the explanation tab to make this easier.

3. A google doc with whatever formatting you want to use. Here's a copy of what I'm using. If you're doing mail merge a different way, you might not need this one. 

4. A second google doc that's going to hold the output from the mail merge. It's a blank google doc. Just open up a new one and save it something you'll remember in the future. (used for mail merge, might not be needed if you do it a different way). 

The Scariest Part - Formatting

I’m formatting these using mail merge, and I wrote my own code to make it work. You can use extensions that do the same thing! I just don’t know which google office suite mail merge extensions are actually designed for creating formatting and not sending mail, and it was faster for me to code than figure that out.

You can find the script under the script for mail merge tab in the google sheet. Copy your forms’ ID where appropriate (it’d be the part after /d/ in the URL - for example the sample google sheet’s ID starts with a 1 and ends with an 8), make any other changes you need to, and then copy the script into the pop up window that shows up with Extensions -> apps script.

The first time you try to run it, google will send you a warning that this is an unverified script - go under advanced options and then read the fine print at the bottom.  If it makes you feel any better, here's a youtube video that explains the entire script from start to finish.

Once it’s set up, how to use:

1. Set a category - doesn’t matter what, into both Question 1 of the google form and Formatting!B2 2. Fill out the form for a while, just when you comment or bookmark on something, whenever you think about it. 3. When ready to post, open up the google sheet and run the mail merge script 4. Open a tumblr post, click the gear in the top right and change the formatting type to html 5. Paste what’s in the output google doc (doc #4) into tumblr 6. Add tags, any graphics you want, a cut, ect, and post! 7. Repeat step 1 with a new category

And that’s it!

[java-dragon]

Bookbinding for Beginners by a Beginner Part 3

*braces self on a door frame* Right there's a lot of information I still need to cover so lets get into it.

I don't recall if I told everyone to set up the document to be booklet type or not but here's how to do that (I'm not re-reading what I wrote my brain stopped working at some point)

But Layout Tab, Page Layout, hit the little arrow pointing towards the document:

I have the sheets per booklet set to 32, but this site is helpful for helping you get the exact number of signatures (a portion of the fic you are printing it is one section of the book, whereas a text block is the whole thing together)

That's if you want to print through the program you're type facing (the text within the pages all of the formatting and indents and everything we started covering in part 2 is type facing). I have totally done printing through the word processor but there is a different option that I will cover later down this post.

For now I'm going to try and remember all of the extra stuff I need to cover. A lot of this is trial an error and fiddling, farting, and sometimes sobbing your way through this.

OH! Right if the fic you're type facing has a fake email. Like.... I don't know "lighthousekeeper@email.com" Word will sensor it automatically when you paste it onto the document. The only work around I have is to have the OG link to the fic you're working on, and try your best to locate the email copy it, and find it within the text of the document using the headers to skip to the chapter in question and scan for the brackets with [Email redacted] or some such, it's usually blue text with "[ ]" going on.

I can't truly think of anything else at this time pertaining to my tips and tricks for Word. There is more I may know but my mind is fizzling out I may circle back to this but I think I'll move on towards downloading and uploading fonts to use in your bookbinding adventures and some Canva stuff.

DaFont and 1001 Free Fonts work

Dafont:

1001:

I'll be using these two Fonts as my examples cause... well I actually quite like them.

Hit "Download"

This will pop up on your screen hit "OK"

Go to your Downloads or where you put your downloads,

Right click on the file in question and hit "Extract All"

Hit Extract.

Click on the folder post extraction. The file type you're looking for is "Open Type Font File" Right Click, "Install" or "Install for all Users" works as well and the font will be available to anyone that has a User key for the computer you're on.

Sometimes the file will look like this:

The Greyed out one? That's the type file.

There will be a pop up that says "Installing Font" give it a few seconds and it will disappear.

You will now be able to open up your word processor and go to the font section and be able to find your newly downloaded font

Enjoy your new found power in getting fancy pants fonts on your word documents!

Now... Canva...

You can download it for free like I said. I have it on my phone and on my computer as a software application:

So I don't accidentally doxx myself this is all you really need to see- you can do much much more than bookcovers, I've done bookmarks, and logos and a few other things.

but for our purposes we'll open up a document and make a few pages:

At the very tippy top that I did not show there's "create Design" I usually hit either "Bookcover" or "ebook cover".

There will be a document with some template examples and you can scroll and see if you like any of those. OR You can just go down to "Elements" and start playing and toying around with that.

You can also grab screen captures of decorative lines to replace the "***" on your document.

How to do this- in elements there should be a search bar type in "decorative lines" and you can refine it "Decorative Rainbow" "brush stroke" "ornate" then open up the application on your computer that allows for screen shots Snip and Sketch for Windows, I don't know for Mac. Sorry.

Select something you like and when it appears on the document click outside of it.

open up your screen grab and grab the line in question

Here's my example.

Now in your word document feel free to go into the Pages tab of the Navigation bar and find whatever the author has used to break up the text. Highlight, right click, hit "search" There will be a pop up on the right hand of word hit the tab that says "Search this document/file" you can see how many times "***" or the equivalent has been used. I would suggest opening this link and reading all of the other tips and tricks since they break it down better than I ever could.

Edit as of November 18th 2023: But the root gist of it all is to highlight the "***" or equivalent divider on the document. Right click, "Search" there will be a prompt that opens on the right hand side of Word hit the "In this Document" and it will bring up every instance of what you have highlighted.

Have the image you intend to replace "***" with right click "Copy". Back in Word, hit "Replace" there will be a box that pops up with "Replace with" Type: ^C . What this does is take the image you've just copied and will override the highlighted "***" Hit "Replace all". You may have to scrub through the document to center it properly but thankfully it's easier to find especially with the Navigation Bar on the "Pages" tab open.

End Edit

Though you can just scroll and find the breaks highlight and drag and drop the image to break up the text if you so choose. Do what works for you.

Now you can also do the same thing with decorative chapter headers, just choose or fiddle and make something that works for the fic in question. Remember when I made you do all of those "Next Page" breaks for the fic? Well on the top of that page with the chapter, double click the header insert an image and "warp image" to "Behind text" and you are free to resize and move the image around.

Just so you know whatever is next to the image will repeat with this example it's the author's name, it will appear no matter the page number odd or even. I don't know the work around and it doesn't bother me much at the end of the day. At this point I'm just trying to pull all of the tips and tricks I've learned over time out of my ass to help people out.

Back to Canva. You can make your Covers if you'd like in this and you can do decorative cover pages. Just go to the page that you want the title page on, insert an image, and warp image to "In front of text" You will be free to stretch and fill the page as much as you please. I do the same thing with my logo placement for the logo page.

Now... if you're still with me... Congratulations I'm not sure I'm still with me or not.

So I'll move on to the "OK I like how this all looks and I've saved everything I've done"

GREAT you can calculate the right number of signatures and print from here OR you can take a few extra steps.

Hit File, Export, hit Create PDF/XPS. I hope you have at least a free Acrobat or PDF reader. Wait. Don't panic if it looks like the processor is freezing up on you. there should be a pop up of a PDF after that minor heart attack.

Now. With your new PDF you're going to go to Bookbinder JS

Upload the pdf file you've created and I'll walk you through the steps.

Letter 612 x 792 is your standard 8.5 x 11 paper.

Printer type- Duplex I hope you have a duplex printer. You'll need it or else you will be manually flipping the pages to make this book bind.

Folio- That is just 8.5 x 11 paper folded in half to make 8.5 x 5.5 booklets. Keep these numbers in mind.

Signature format- there you can select "Perfect bound" AKA Paperback. Or Standard signature. Here I select 20 page signatures. Keep in mind that there will be four pages per one sheet of paper.

Preview output ALWAYS preview output because it will tell you how many signatures will be with the upload. For example:

What this means: Total pages of the file uploaded, since the fic I'm type facing is 300+k words I divided the chapters up.

so you know what a 100+k word fic looks like printed folded and the air compressed (I will cover this as well) Keep this in mind this was Celestial Navigation now add similarly stacked pages atop of what's here. 100+k fics it's wisest and best to split this in half. Keep in mind your wrists. 500-600 pages is comfortable holding. You can get to around 800 pages but if it's 900+ pages I would think about dividing the document up.

After you are happy with the number of everything. Hit "Generate Output" wait for the popup for the save file to appear and hit "Save" this will be in a zip file as well. Head over to your Downloads and hit extract, open up the file and some terminology that will help with this:

Aggregate book means "the whole damn thing" Signature 0 is the first signature.

To spare the wrath and protest of my printer- I print one signature at a time and fold it since I don't have to worry about getting the page numbers to line up.

Take however much time you please. Next post. Folding signatures, pressing signatures, stitching, gluing end bands and ribbons.

aka- welcome to the world little fic. We hope you enjoy your stay. You're going to be a real book soon.

If I wasn't running out of steam I would cover Quartos. But if you wanted to print a smaller fic know this- increase the text size through out the whole document, these things are SMALL. 4.5x5.5 all said and done. I would go to TikTok and Youtube and look up "Quarto Book bind" if you want to see the smallest, cutest most pain in your ass book you've ever wanted to try and make.

I've done those as experiments as well... they can be fun but my god I'm bad at mathing at times.

[edwardpinestar]

whats your writing process like?

Hi! Sorry for taking a bit to get to your ask, I've been taking my time to make the most comprehensive answer I can, and that takes a bit of thinking on my end to figure out what my process really even is.

My process can be divided into 6 (and a half) steps, which greatly blend and blur together, but that'll I'll separate out for an easier time telling you.

I will be using the 'A Guide To Becoming A God's Consort' AU (Also known as Cult of the Cat AU) and all its works as examples throughout this list.

Step 1 - Base Idea

The base idea is where it all begins. It's the gimmick of the story. What is the main focus of the story? What is this about? For CotC, that was it being a Cult of the Lamb adaption, with the Puss x Death ship. Strip away everything, and that's what this story is.

Step 2 - Rough Plot Ideas

Once I have the base idea, I start figuring out more. What ships will there be? How do I want this to feel? Do I want it to end happy, or sad? What are some of the things I want to happen? This isn't anywhere near complete, and is rather just a general idea about what I'll want. CotC actually started a bit unusually to most of my AUs. Rather than start writing with any proper ideas, I started with 'What To Do If Your God Propositions You (A Guide)', and that did not have a whole lot of thought put in it besides 'tentacle smuttiness and CotL crossover'. The planning of the plot of 'What to do when you fall in love with your god (A Guide)' came later, when I made the decision to take this beyond a smutty oneshot.

Step 3 - Peer Review

And then, I send the ideas over on Discord to some friends. This is only a recent thing for me, though putting this much time and thought into planning works is also quite new too. I used to wing it a lot, but I don't like doing that now. So, I send the ideas on over, and get criticism, as well as more ideas to add to it and further flesh out. We bounce ideas off of each other, building the ideas into more well rounded points, and fill in gaps. We also roleplay scenes, which I will later along the line adapt into the work.

Step 3 1/2 - Stew Time!

This one both is an isn't a joke, haha. More often than not, when an idea reaches the peer review point, and we've discussed it for a day or so, depending on how captivating it is, the idea then goes on the shelf. Or, it will go on the shelf during or right after Step 4. I have 8 work-in-progresses posted. I have 49 single, multichapter works, six series', and 26 oneshots in various draft states, but all in documents. All for Puss in Boots alone. I have more ideas that have gone through the first three steps that are just sitting in Discord, not put in documents. As much as I wish I could, I just can't write all the ideas I get, and it's only the ones that truly catch my attention that make it to Step 4 and beyond.

Step 4 - Transferring

Once I'm happy with an idea, and I transfer it over to a Google Document. I do this by copy-pasting all relevant Discord messages into an empty document. Then, I go through and tidy everything up to make it comprehensive, putting points together if they need to be, rewriting things to not be addressing other people, cutting out anything I decided against using, ect. I add to it as I see fit, further fleshing things out. Once its all ready and tidied, it either gets shelfed, or it goes onto the next stage.

Step 5 - Writing

This is the hardest step for me to explain. I just pull up a new document, and get to it. I try and keep my chapters around 3k words now, while my oneshots vary, some being 10k+, and others being split to have multiple chapters depending on how I feel about splitting. I will also, more often than not, listen to music, sometimes instrumentals, sometimes with lyrics depending on if I want the music to match the mood of what I'm writing, or if I am able to focus on writing if I have lyrics. If I have roleplays I want to add to the work, then I copy-paste them over, and rewrite them to fluff them up and make all the responses blend together seamlessly. I write until I reach my minimum word goal and feel I am at a good stopping point. I don't write drafts. What I post is what I wrote the first go around. If I don't like something, I will amend what I don't like, but other than that I don't do drafts.

Step 6 - Editing and Posting

These happen near simultaneously, so I'll just put these together. I do two rounds of reading and editing. I read it in the document, correcting any spelling, grammar and HTML tags. Then, I put it all into AO3, and go to see the work preview so I can check its all formatted correctly and see if I can pick out anymore mistakes. Once everything is ready, I post.

So that's my writing process! Titling and summary writing always varies as to when I do them. Sometimes they're the first things I come up with, other times its more around the middle, most of the time its the last. It depends on when the idea for a title comes to me, and when I can figure out a nice way to summaries the work.

Other authors, feel free to hop in and share your processes!

[the-pen-is-mighty-and-so-are-you]

A petit cup of tea - from wp blog, 17/11/2019

Now, let's return to the (relatively) real world for a moment; I know I probably left you with a few questions with my last post. Why is a famous writer going to meet up with a child? What exactly are the worlds of the first and second section? Where is Busan? And I did say I would explain. So, I'll sprinkle that somewhere in here, like a little bit of ketchup on your sandwich to spice up a café review - which, indeed, this shall be!

The café in question again happens to be in my hometown which, considering I've technically moved on to pursue the high-end city life of a student, I've been returning to quite a bit. My visit took place on yet another productive-seeming Friday: I'd been flitting up and down the high street between charity shops, desperately searching for a job interview outfit, trying to find one that struck a balance between a neutral-yet-trendy and mature-yet-youthful look, one that really shouted, "Hello! I'm energetic and fashionable and perfect to work behind your ultra sleek bar in your ultra sleek club!" It was not easy - by the time the feat was achieved, it was past three o'clock, and I hadn't yet had lunch.

Usually I would be in a barely-contained foul mood, slouching and suffering from an empty stomach. However, I had also purchased A Very Nice Coat (although some pesky folk might insist it's a jacket), and so I made my way down the high street slope with the confidence of someone wearing something that actually fits them. In fact, after such a wondrous experience with the coat, I've considered that perhaps I just need to buy everything I have in my wardrobe but a couple of sizes smaller. I don't need more expressive clothes, I need clothes that express my actual size. It's a small, but hugely important aspect that can help you live in your skin a bit better.

Huh. Maybe I'll turn into a 'beauty blogger'.

Wardrobe revelations aside, by the time I'd made the march down to the foot of the high street hill, I was yearning for a wholesome lunch - and Le Petit Café certainly did not disappoint. I remember visiting the place when it was still fresh and new around a year ago, and since then it's clearly only improved. With an upside down bicycle in the window and artwork for sale on the walls, it's a nice, quietly hipster venue with a tasty menu: speaking of which I had a delicious cheddar and cauliflower soup, the likes of which I've never had so creamy. Of course I had the mandatory hot drink with it, a chai latte (pictured) which matched in creaminess. I enjoyed both too much to focus on the laptop I'd put with good intent in front of me, and after I'd consumed both the friendly staff seemed eager for me to move onto my second course - I got the sense that it wasn't a place intended for lone reflection. The fact that I wasn't with someone seemed to compel the staff into making up for it by frequently approaching me, urging me onto the next course. I thus enjoyed a 'caramelita' for pudding: spiced caramel with white chocolate chips and an oat base, and so sweet that I had to hide half of it in a napkin to finish later.

But, let's pretend I did in fact get something productive done on my laptop that afternoon - that I tapped away and worked on writing the explanation I said I would provide for my last piece of writing. Well, here is what I wrote then, definitely copy-and-pasted from a separate document, and definitely not written at the same time as the rest of this post.

When considering how best to 'explain' the context in my life within which My Dream Korea was written, I am faced by two paths - the Dream and the Korea. The latter is perhaps more deserving of its own post another day, so I will focus on the former.

Writers are all full of dreams, I think. Well, all people are, to an extent. Mine have proven particularly strong, propelled by a continuous imagination and occasional inspiration. This has formed a sort of 'dream world' in my mind. It's different from the worlds I create for my stories, because this world is entirely selfish - it's main purpose is for me to explore possibility in alternate realities, and virtually satisfy my deepest desires. Flying, for example. Leaping off a tall city building in slow motion, stretching my arms out as large black wings grow and feather and flex their muscles on my back, swooping down to a bridge and then nosediving into the water only to break through, as I pierce the surface of the water, into the sky of another location. Things like that - anything is possible, and I can zoom in on and replay any detail I like, like designing, directing and acting in my own film, except it's a form of life.

I am fully aware of the deep-rooted psychological facts about myself this can reflect. I know that it is probably a defense mechanism, given as it is most used when I need to restore hope for myself. It's also constantly changing, and sometimes when I'm going through a period of extreme change, it can take me a while to find what thrills me. Recently I've been in a kind of limbo, unable to create and settle on a new idea - which is why I wrote some of the world down, to try and focus my brain enough so that it can enjoy that side of non-reality again.

My Dream Korea opens with a version of myself that represents some of my darkest moments, suffering through feelings of desperation and frustration, and yearning so much for hope and happiness that I would intoxicate myself to try and reach the 'other side'. It is a hyperbole that serves to contrast with the warmth of the dream world I then describe. And then, what I write is really just trying to convey the blissful experience I had in the real world, when I visited South Korea - when I felt like I was living so contently that it became a dream while I stayed there. This version of my dream world is trying to preserve and maintain those ultimate feelings of happiness from my memories, while exploring what my future could have been if I had stayed there a bit longer. In a sort of loose, fanfiction-style, 'if I was already a famous author' kind of way.

So I'm exploring this world along with you, visitor. The next chapter isn't written - I don't know what will happen next. In this way, my dream world, and My Dream Korea, is a form of life. I hope you will join me on its journey.

Speaking of journeys, the trip I made to Le Petit Café certainly paid off. It felt far warmer and more personal than the previous chain cafés, as I expected, although the downside of that was they didn't leave me in peace to get any writing done. It would have been perfect, however, if I had gone there with the intent of socialising - so it would be a good place for you and me to catch up over a cup of chai someday. We can always sneak a bourbon in when they're not looking, or convene in the toilet to have a biscuit break. Sound good? Yeah, I think it's a plan. Anyway, overall, I give it:

8/10 petit croissants

[serendipitous-magic]

What is your writing advice for young people who want to write fanfiction and original stories in the near future?

If this is just Way Too Much, skip to the end (#16). My most important piece of advice is there. I also happen to think #5 is pretty good.

-_-_-_-

1) Literally just write. Write whatever you want, and do a lot of it.

_-_

2) You don’t have to post everything. In fact you don’t have to post anything. You can, don’t get me wrong, but it can be intimidating to sit down and think “I will now write something that other people will see and read and judge with their eyeballs.” Because that’s probably gonna lead to nerves and writer's block. Just write down the ideas that you have, the things you want to write, whatever’s in your brain that you want to explore and expand upon and make into something. And then if you want to, share it. Or don’t share it. I have plenty of half-baked ideas and documents and random story chapters and shit hidden away on my Google Drive that will never see the light of day, for a whole number of reasons. I wanted to write it but it wasn’t ~Spicy~ enough to warrant posting, or it’s only like an eighth of a good idea, or it’s like one scene with no story around it, or it’s just something incredibly self-indulgent I just wanted to write for my own enjoyment.

Point being, don’t write for other people. Don’t write so that other people can read it; write what you want, write for yourself, and then if you want to share it, do.

_-_

3) You can pretty much ignore any and all of these for fanfiction. In fact, you can ignore pretty much any rules or guidelines you want for fanfiction. Fanfic is a sandbox. You don’t have to be a “professional writer” to post fic. No one expects you to be Stephen King or Margaret Atwood. Fanfic is just for playing in a fandom and having fun. If you wanna write a 50 chapter slow burn with very little plot aside from the OTP slowly getting to know each other, and no real stakes or central conflict, I guarantee people would read that. Really, fanfiction is the Old West of writing: lawless, wild, unpredictable, and free.

However, here are the rules you must follow:

-Separate your paragraphs. (I’m sure you know this already, but I’m gonna say it anyway just in case.) Do not post one big block of text. Make a paragraph break when someone new is talking, when the characters are in a new place, when a new event occurs that changes the scene, when a chunk of time has passed, and when there’s a major change in subject.

-I know it’s obvious, but... grammar, punctuation, and capitalization. They exist to make writing easy for readers to read, and more people will read your stuff if they don’t have to stop and try to figure out what you meant.

-Use tags and labels, as is possible with whatever site you’re using. Especially if you include possibly triggering content in your story. Again, I know it’s obvious, but it’s common courtesy. Bonus: tagging the themes and content of your story helps readers find it and read it :)

-If possible, limit the use of all-caps and exclamation marks / question marks. 99% of the time, one ! or one ? will do. If you overload the page with a lot of all-caps and long rows of exclamation marks or question marks, it hampers readability.

... That’s literally all I can think of. And, like I said, it’s all pretty basic stuff. You were probably rolling your eyes like, “Uh, yeah, Gwen, I know.” But that’s literally it. You can pretty much do whatever you want in fanfic.

That being said, here’s my advice for both fanfiction and original work...

_-_

4) A quick and dirty rule for coming up with a plot, starting a story, keeping up pacing, or maintaining tension: figure out what dreams, desires, and goals are nearest and dearest to your main character’s heart (see #16). Then set up the main conflict to be directly in opposition to that goal. It doesn’t have to be in a tangible way, though it could be. But, if your main character wants more than anything to reach the ships on the southern coast of your world and sail to a new life, make sure the main conflict immediately prevents them from doing that - in fact, make sure to send them north. If your main character just wants to keep their loved ones safe, kidnap the loved ones. If your main character just wants to date their best-friend-turned-crush, make sure they think they have no chance - or, make them cocky about it, and make sure it makes Person B determined not to ever like them. You get it. Figure out what your character most wants, and then keep them from having that. Boom - your conflict now ties in with your character's motivation. It's like instant yeast for plots.

_-_

5) If you’re anything like me, you want your first draft to be Good, despite all that advice about how the first draft doesn’t have to be good and it’s just to get words on the page, yadda yadda. And if you’re somewhat of a perfectionist (like myself), it’s easy to get stuck looking at a blank page because you don’t have The Perfect Words, and you want what you write to be Good the first time.

Here’s how I cheat that:

Instead of trying to write a Good First Draft from a blank page, hit the enter key a few times, skip a little down on the page, change your ink to red (or blue, or whatever - just something immediately identifiable as Not Black) and just thought vomit. Write whatever the hell you’re thinking, exactly as you think it. Don’t worry about it being readable, don’t worry about narrative flow for now, don’t worry about covering all the details, don’t worry about anything except either a) getting all the details of your idea out onto the page, whether that’s a lot or whether it’s just a sentence or two, or b) if you don’t have an idea yet, finding your way there.

Because this method is also very good for finding your way to ideas when you’re stuck in writer’s block.

Because of how human brains work, getting this stuff out onto the page - in all its messy, stream-of-consciousness glory - will likely spark more thoughts. As you write your original idea about the scene, it’ll likely spark more ideas. Creation begets creation. If you just start thought-vomiting your ideas onto the page, chances are you’ll think of more things as you go, and you’ll start filling out description or dialogue or tone or action or whatever, and pretty soon the scene starts writing itself.

Not sure where you’re going with the scene or which ideas you wanna use? Use a lot of ambivalent language in your “thought-vomit draft.” My pre-writing notes are chock-full of the words “maybe,” “perhaps,” and the phrases, “At some point...” and “...or something like that.” In this way, I don’t tie myself down to one idea; it’s just an idea, and I’m keeping it on the page in case I use it, but I might chuck it in the trash or change it or whatever.

And then, once your ideas for the scene (or story, or chapter, or whatever) are on the page, then go back to the top and start translating them into a “real” first draft. Use black ink, and start copy-pasting chunks of the thought-vomit up into the top part of the document and translating them into Draft 1. Separate out paragraphs where paragraph breaks should be. Add the correct punctuation and whatnot. Change “describe the lobby here - include potted plants, fancy carpet, blood stain, etc.” into an actual description of the lobby. Flesh it out, or condense, or whatever it needs. And if you’re still stuck, change back to red ink and ramble some more until you find a path that feels right, then plug that in. This keeps you from looking at a blank page, and it allows you to generate a kind of Draft 0.5, somewhere between a plan and a first draft.

You don’t have to use every idea. Like I said, jot down whatever comes to mind, put a “maybe” before or after it, and keep working. If the idea grabs you and you wanna keep expanding on it and exploring it, cool. If you just wanna jot it down so you don’t forget it and then move on, also cool. Red-ink draft / “thought-vomit draft” is your time to jump around in the timeline, add or finesse details at whatever point your brain moves to, etc. Don’t try to do it exactly in story order, because you will get tangential thoughts and ideas, and you will not remember to write them down five pages later when you finally get to taking notes on that scene. Trust me. On that note...

_-_

6) Write everything down the moment you think of it. Seriously.

“I’ll remember it when I get around to writing that scene in a couple days / weeks / months (/years).”

You won’t.

Write it down.

Phone, journal, google docs - hell, my family regularly laughs at me for grabbing a napkin during dinner and scribbling thoughts down alongside pasta sauce stains.

And then, once you have it written down somewhere...

_-_

7) Consolidate your writing ideas in one place.

Maybe this isn’t really your style, and that’s totally chill.

Buuuut, if you’re Type-A like me - or if you tend to be somewhat unorganized and you know you’ll lose track of your writing notes if they’re scattered across multiple notebooks, journals, napkins, phone notes, etc. - having one consolidated document of notes is a life saver. I keep mine on Google Docs so I can access it, add to it, and look through it for inspiration anywhere at any time. When I have one of those Shower Thoughts that I jot down on my phone or on a napkin during dinner, I set myself a reminder on my phone to type it up in my Story Ideas document later.

(Or, if the idea I had was for a story of mine that I’ve already started planning / drafting / whatever, I put it in the document for that story instead of the Big Random Story Ideas doc. You get it.)

_-_

8) Have other ways to collect and save writing ideas, besides just writing stuff down. If you like Pinterest, make pinterest boards of your characters or stories or settings or whatever. If you’re big into playlists, make a playlist for your character / setting / story / etc. Or both. Or something else. I’m not good at drawing, but maybe you are, and maybe you like to draw your ideas. Whatever form it takes, having another way to save ideas and think about your stories is invaluable.

_-_

9) Some writers can just start writing with no idea where the story is going, and they just kind of figure it out as they go. I envy those writers. And I do that sometimes for fanfiction, where the stakes are somewhat lower and the audience is reading more for scene-to-scene enjoyment (and to see their OTP kiss) than for a Driving And Compelling Narrative.

But here’s the thing: especially if you’re just kind of starting out, writing without some sort of plan is really, really hard, and will likely lead you into a slow, meandering narrative that will likely frustrate you.

Even if you think you’re someone that just can’t write with a plan (and again, I have the highest respect for pansters out there - I don’t know how you do it, you crazy bastards, but you keep doing you) - even if you think “I can’t work with plans, they’re too prescriptive, I just want to write and see what happens -”

Try at least making the most skeletal of plans.

Even if you have no clue what 90% of the story is, yet. That’s fine. But you need to have some idea of what you’re building to, even if that’s nothing more specific than a feeling, or a turning point for your character. Even if your entire plan for everything beyond Chapter 1 is, “At some point, Charlie needs to realize that Ed was lying to her.”

This is where those Draft 0.5 notes come in handy. Because, more than likely, working on your current scene that way will spark ideas for later scenes, which you can put down at the bottom of the document and save for when they become relevant. In my experience, the line between planning ahead and making a Draft 0.5 is exceptionally thin. One can quickly turn into the other.

If you’re really, really resistant to the idea of planning ahead, that’s okay. It’s not everybody’s style. But for the love of all that is holy, write down your ideas for future scenes, even if you’re a person that doesn’t like to plan and writes only in story order, because you will not remember that idea once you get to that scene.

_-_

10) You don’t have to write in order.

Here’s the thing: I’m a person that can only do my Draft 1 in story order (meaning, chronological order). I just have to be in that flow; I need to write in story order for me to best channel where the character is at from scene to scene, both narratively and emotionally.

But my Thought Vomit Draft is another thing entirely. By using the brain hack of putting my notes in red (or another color, it doesn’t matter) and going down to the bottom of the document / page and taking notes there, and then integrating them into whatever plan I have, and then translating them into Draft 1 once I get there in the story - by doing that, I can get my good ideas onto the page (and expound upon them and let my muse carry me and ride that momentum while I’m in the moment of inspiration) without writing out of order.

Maybe that’s just me. But if you’re a person who really prefers to write in story order, that could be hugely helpful to you. It is to me.

_-_

11) Emotion and motivation will do more for your story than technicalities of plot.

If your characters really care about something, and their journey through the (shaky or weak) plot is emotionally engaging, it will be a much more compelling story than a story with a “perfect” plot and unrelatable or unmotivated characters.

If your characters care about what they’re doing, and it means something to them, and their goals and actions are driven by dreams or fears or emotions that are integral to who they are, your audience will care too. If you have a perfectly crafted plot that hits all the right beats and has high stakes and fast pacing and drama - but your characters don’t connect with what’s happening in a way that’s deeply meaningful or emotional for them? You’re gonna have a hard time engaging readers.

When in doubt, prioritize character emotion and motivation over plot. Emotion is what drives story.

This power is highly exploitable. (Just look at pulp novels and shitty but entertaining movies.) You can even use it to glaze over plot holes or reinvigorate a limp narrative. Use it that way sparingly, though. It’s a band-aid, not a surgery. 

_-_

12) Evil villains are hard to write - mostly because there are very few truly evil people in the world. (There are a few. Billionaires and several big name politicians come to mind.) But by and large, there aren’t that many evil people. There are plenty of bad people, but bad people have some good in them, somewhere in there. Trying to write an evil villain is hard, because they often turn very cartoony.

Here’s a tip: it’s much easier to write antagonists who aren’t evil. Even if they’re bad people. Of course, there’s no reason you can’t write a villain that’s just truly evil - a serial killer, or an abuser, or a billionaire, or someone who legit just wants to hurt people or blow up the earth or stay in control of an oppressed population, or whatever. But chances are, it’s gonna be really hard to make them feel real, and even harder to create a plot around them that doesn’t feel forced or contrived.

Instead, try writing an antagonist / villain whose motivations and goals directly clash with your protagonist’s - but not because they want to take over the world or see people suffer. Write an antagonist who’s chaotic good, but whose perception of the situation is completely opposite from your hero’s. Write an antagonist whose only desire is to save people, and who will do anything to achieve that goal - anything. Write an antagonist who believes in the letter of the law, and will hinder and oppose the hero’s methods even if they agree with the hero’s motivation. Write an antagonist who got in way over their head and did some things they regret, and now they don’t know how to get out, and they’re doing their best but whatever they set in motion is too powerful for them to stop now.

Write villains who are human. Write a killer who thought they were doing the right thing by taking their victim out of the equation, who vomits at the sight of the body and sobs over the grave they dig. Write a government leader who truly believes she’s doing what’s best for her people in the long-term, even if it might hurt them in the short term, and is willing to endure the hatred and belligerence of the masses if it means securing what she thinks is a better future for her people. Write a teenage bully that thinks they’re the one being picked on by the world, and they’re just fighting back, standing their ground. Write a scientist who will break any code of ethics and hurt anyone he needs to - in order to bring back his baby sister from the grave, because he promised her he’d protect her and he failed. Write an antagonist who is selfish and self-centered and capricious - because in order to survive they had to look out for Number One, and that habit ain’t about to break anytime soon.

Write villains who aren’t even villains. Write antagonists who oppose the hero because of moral differences. Write antagonists who are trying to do the right thing. Write antagonists who treat the heroes with kindness and dignity and respect and gentleness.

They don’t have to be good. They don’t have to be Misunderstood Sweethearts who “deserve” a redemption arc. They can be cruel and nasty and dismissive and callous and violent and etc. etc.

Just hesitate before you make them Evil-with-a-capital-E. Because evil is hard to write, and honestly, boring to read. Flawed human beings with goals and motivations that directly oppose the main characters’ are much easier to write and much more interesting to read.

Ask why. Why is your villain trying to take over the world? What does that even mean? Are they trying to create a Star-Trek-like post-capitalism utopia, but they know that won’t happen in a million lifetimes, so they’re trying to do it by force? Are they actually super in favor of human rights, but they got very impatient waiting for the world to do anything about poverty and war, so they decided to take it into their own hands? Are they determined to fix the world - no matter the cost? Are they terrified and overwhelmed, but committed to see it through to the end? Or - maybe they’re just doing it on a dare. Maybe they don’t really give a shit about world domination, they were just a mediocre rich white guy who decided to fuck around and find out, and now he’s kind of curious how far he can take this thing. And now he’s kind of an internationally-wanted criminal, so he’s kind of stuck living on his hidden private island in his multi-billion dollar secret base, strapping lasers to sharks’ heads for the hell of it. Gross, selfish, uncaring, and dangerous? For sure. Evil? Depends on your definition. See, now we’re getting somewhere.

_-_

13) It’s tempting to let the plot control the characters. It’s easy to drop your characters into a situation and see how they react. But here’s the thing: that doesn’t drive plot. In fact, it bogs down pacing. Instead, try to build you plot off of your characters’ actions and decisions. Let your character build their own situation. Not to say it should go they way they wanted it to go; in fact, usually, their grand plans should go to hell very quickly. But having the characters take action and make decisions, and letting the plot develop based on that, is much easier to make compelling than making a rigid series of events and then trying to herd your characters into them.

_-_

14) Having trouble justifying a character’s actions? Consider having them make the opposite decision, or having them approach the situation in a different way. For example: you need your character to go meet the bad guy, for plot reasons, even though there’s no way it’s not a trap. If the character goes, readers are gonna be groaning with their head in their hands, because c’mon man, that was really fucking stupid. But he’s gotta go, because the plot needs that. Two ways you might handle this: a) He knows it’s probably a trap. He decides not to go. The plot conspires to get him near the villain anyway. Or, b) He knows it’s a trap. But he needs to go, for (insert reasons here). So, he approaches it in an unexpected way. He brings backup, recruiting a side character we met earlier in the story. Or he arrives on the back of a dragon, because ain’t nobody gonna fuck with a dude on a dragon. Or he goes - early, and ambushes the villain. It may work, it may not. He may get himself kidnapped anyway. But it moves the plot along without having Stupid Hero Syndrome.

_-_

15) This is a legit piece of advice: if all of this sounds overwhelming, literally just ignore it and write what you want. For real. Writing should be fun, and every single writer operates differently. If you’re sitting here like “I’m getting stressed just reading this,” just flip me a good-natured bird and get on with your life. I promise I won’t take it personally. Same goes for literally any other writing advice you see. Lots of rules and guidelines can very quickly make anything thoroughly un-fun. Just write. If you’re passionate about it and you do it for long enough, you’ll start figuring out the tips and tricks on your own.

_-_

16) Here’s the best piece of advice I can give you: know your characters. More importantly, know what’s important to them. Build their personality and decisions off of that, and build your plot off of their decisions.

I see a lot of character building sheets that ask a shit-ton of questions like “What’s their most prized possession?” “Do they like their family?” “What’s their favorite food?”

And while these are good questions, my problem with this type of character building is that if you start there, with the little stuff, you’re building on nothing. IMO, to make a truly strong character (not strong like Inner Strength, strong like effective), you need a strong foundation.

Here are the things you must know about your character:

a) What are their greatest fears / deepest insecurities? And I don’t mean “wasps” or “heights.” I mean the deep shit. I mean fears like “living a meaningless life,” or “turning out just like their parents,” or “that no one will ever love them,” or “being powerless.” You may say, “But they’re really scared of wasps! They fall into a wasp nest when they were little and got stung so much they almost died!” Great! That’s a fantastic bit of backstory. They should absolutely be afraid of wasps, and that should absolutely be an impediment later in the story. But dig deeper. What about that event actually scarred them? Was it the helplessness? Stumbling around, swatting at the air, not being able to do a single thing to stop what was happening to them? Was it that they were alone, and no matter how loud they screamed, no one was coming? Was it the bodily horror of feeling themself turn into an inhuman creature as they swelled up from the stings, unable to move their fingers or face normally anymore?

And don’t forget insecurities, because those factor in, too. Are they deeply insecure about their identity? Do they believe, deep down, that they’re ugly? Did they grow up poor and they’ve always been really touchy about that? Why? Dig deep. Figure out what really, really bothers them.

b) What are their hopes and dreams? What do they truly want out of life? What do they consider the most valuable to their experience here in this thing called life? Is it the freedom to forge their own path and be independent? Is it the approval of their family or peers? Is it a home? Is it knowledge, or understanding? Spiritual fulfillment? Is it deeply important to them that they contribute to their community, or protect those they love? What do they need in order to feel truly and deeply fulfilled in life?

Figure out those two things (each one encompasses several things, btw, you don’t have to stop at just one for each), and then use that to inform how they behave and the types of decisions they make within the story. 

It also informs character behavior and personality. 

Let’s say we have a character who’s afraid of helplessness. They’re probably gonna be the person that always wants to do something, try something, no matter how hopeless the situation seems. They’d despise just sitting and waiting, probably, because it makes them feel powerless. They might even be the person that makes rash decisions and acts impulsively and puts themself in danger unnecessarily, because in their mind it’s better than being at the mercy of fate. This is one way you could use a character’s personality to inform their decisions, which in turn helps to inform plot.

Or, let’s say we have a character whose greatest fear is being left behind or forgotten. We may have a chatterbox on our hands. They might be obnoxious. They might love the spotlight, constantly vying for attention no matter the situation, because deep down they’re so afraid that they’d be forgotten otherwise. Or, it may go the opposite way. They may be so afraid of people leaving them that they’re terrified of bothering people. They don’t want to do anything that could annoy people, anything that might give people a reason to leave them. They might be exceedingly polite, quiet, accommodating. A push-over, really.

These are two nearly opposite types of personalities, both stemming from the same core fear/insecurity. You can go a lot of different ways with it. But if you build on that strong foundation, you’ll have a strong character, and a stronger plot.

Likewise, the structure of your story can and should inform the design of these character traits. If you need your characters to team up near the end, it may be impactful if you give your main character a deep fear of commitment, an insecurity about being unwanted or left behind, and make them highly value independence and freedom. That could make their team-up for the final battle very meaningful. Conversely, you can use your character’s deepest fears and desires to help design the plot. Is your character deeply insecure about voicing their opinions or taking a stand, because of trauma they faced in the past? Make them face that. Build that into the climactic third act. Give them the big inspirational speech where they stand up and talk about what they believe to be important, what they think the group should do. And then design that character arc to run through the story, giving you more handholds and stepping stones, more pieces of foundation on which to design the plot.

In this way, character should inform story as much as story informs character. It’s a feedback loop.

Bonus: if you build your character and your plot off of each other in this way, it automatically starts to build in the foundations of that emotional investment I mentioned earlier. If your character’s decisions are based on what they most want and do not want in life, you basically have your character motivation and stakes pre-built.

Note: you need to know these things about your villain, too.

-_-_-

I’m genuinely sorry about the length of this, lmao. But you did ask.

Best of luck!

Edit: I forgot an important one:

17) Start when the scene starts and end when the scene ends.

What do I mean by that?

If your notes say “Danny asks Nicole out after school and majorly flubs it,” start the scene when Danny approaches Nicole after school. Better yet, cold-open the scene on “I was wondering if, you know, you’d wanna. You know. Hang out some time?”

Don’t start that morning when Danny goes to school, unless you’re gonna cover the school day in like one or two sentences. Don’t spend whole paragraphs going through the school day, unless it’s to cover other plot points first (in which case apply these same guidelines there), or if the paragraphs are there for a specific reason, like to illustrate how stressed he is and how it seems like every little thing is going wrong. Even then, trim the fat as much as possible. Expounding and describing everything Moment-to-moment is for the meat of the scenes, not the leading-up-to and coming-away-from.

Here’s my rule of thumb: study how and when movies cut from scene to scene. Movies have exceptionally strict, limited time for storytelling; they’re excellent examples of starting a scene when the plot point starts and ending when it’s over. If you can’t picture a movie showing everything you showed, start the scene later and end it earlier.

[justkending]

Moral of the Story. Chapter Four.

Summary: Marrying too young out of highschool leads to a naive and failed marriage. Now 10 years later, word comes that the divorce was never actually completed. Bucky and Y/N have to come back together after all this time to settle what wasn’t all those years back. Passive attitudes, miscommunicated endings, and reminiscing of old loves and lives all comes back for the two.

Pairing: Bucky x Y/N

Word Count:

A/N: 

Chapter Four:

Bucky groaned as the alarm blared throughout the room. Rolling over to his side, he threw his head into the pillow. That didn’t stop the beeping like he had hoped, so with a groan he pushed up, smacking the red numbers that screamed at him. He rolled back onto his back and blinked up at the bare ceiling.

Today was the day…

_________________

Y/N couldn’t seem to sleep at all, so she woke up early at 6:30 jumping into the shower. Having the extra time, she took it to have a nice long soak in the hot water. The schedule of the day running through her mind.

The chance of them running into each other was practically at 100%. They had a time frame of 9-10 to get in and sign what they needed. Mr. Murdock said something along the lines that it would take about 30-45 minutes to get everything finalized and copied. 

So yeah… Within an hour frame of needed 30-45 minutes of signing shit and getting multiple copies made, meant Bucky and her would most likely be sitting next to the other as it was done. 

She let out a tired and irritated moan as she finally decided to turn off the water. She had it running for so long, her hands were prunes and the water was becoming lukewarm. The world was telling her to suck it up and move on with the day. 

____________

The car ride there was dreadful. Every stop light just elongated the inevitable meeting. Every turn brought him closer to the terrifying reunion. 

He was running early to begin with, but after hitting traffic from a wreck, he was now running just a few minutes behind. So weaving through the people who didn’t understand New York traffic was his specialty in showing up in time. 

____________

She stopped at the coffee shop by her house before really heading to the attorneys office. The car ride to the place was easy and smooth on her end. From coming from the outskirts of Brooklyn, the inner city traffic was avoided for the most part. So she was there early. She even had a second to sit in her car and drink the latte she had bought. Something about Brooklyn latte’s was 10x better than anything California had.

Maybe it had something to do with the fact they actually had cold weather to pair the hot drink with, whereas where she now lived, the lowest low in temperatures was 70 degrees. 

________________

Getting there with just 3 minutes to spare, Bucky rushed out of the car and walked with a hint of speed to the door that read Nelson and Murdock Law Firm. 

No sign of Y/N yet, but as he walked in, he heard a shout from the street that caused him to turn as soon as he walked in. He didn’t have a second to register what the shout was about as he took two steps in and ran straight into someone’s back. 

“Whoa!” he said, using his hands to brace himself on the mystery person's shoulders, and the other person making the same exclamation. “Oh God, I’m so sor-”

Before he could finish the apology, the women turned showing the face of his matured high-school-sweetheart. 

“Oh,” he let out in a breathy turn. He could tell just from past experience with her, she had a snarky comment on her tongue at the run in, but upon seeing him, the words died on her lips. “Hey.”

She looked great. Like, really great after all these years. Not that she wasn’t a beautiful gal to begin with, but you never know how someone’s going to age. However, she looked almost the same. 

Sure, she had aged some, but just like a nice bottle of the finest wine in all the vineyards of California. Maybe that was her secret given her new home. 

Her Y/H/C hair was styled in loose curls. It was voluminous with a healthy shine to it. She had on an off white, canvas dress that cinched at the waist with buttons going down it. And she had a layered gold necklace going down her chest where the buttons were undone. She looked both professional yet casual at the same time. 

Bucky realized he had been staring when she awkwardly looked around her trying to not pay attention to his analyzing eyes. 

“Hey,” she said, letting out a deep breath. 

She didn’t miss how good he looked either. Even in those facebook pictures that she had found the night before, the ones she found him just as attractive, they didn’t do the real man justice. His hair was just as long as the most recent picture his mother had posted, and he looked more muscular than she ever remembered. The scrubs didn't do his build justice. 

He was wearing a navy blue v-neck tight fitting t-shirt. A brown leather jacket that looked as though it was tailored specifically for him and him alone. And lastly, he had on a pair of jeans that of course, fit in him all the right places. 

There was a very awkward silence as they stood there not knowing what else to say. Neither now looking at the other, but instead looking at every little inanimate object item in the office. 

After what felt like eons of the most tense silence to exist, Bucky was about to speak up again, but was cut off from another person running in late.

“Oh, gosh. I’m so sorry guys,” the voice sighed, out of breath from what they presumed was running to get there on time. “Foggy was supposed to pick me up and we were going to ride together, but he got food poisoning last night, so I had to take the train last minute.”

The man had dark brown hair, a nice suit, and a pair of sunglasses on even though it was overcast today and the sun was barely peeking through the heavy clouds. 

“Foggy?” Y/N asked with a tilt of her head. 

Bucky turned back looking at her with the same question on his mind, but watching the small action of confusion brought him back 10 years. God, it had been so long he had almost forgotten the little mannerisms she had that he found adorable. And damn her for still having that adorable action. 

“Oh, right. Franklin Nelson. My co-attorney,” he nodded. “We’ve been friends since we were in college. Friends call him Foggy.”

“Oh, I see,” Y/N nodded with a kind smile. 

“Anyway, I won’t bore you with my morning chaos. I’m sure you two are ready to get this over with and go on about your day,” he smiled, and pulled a walking stick out from around him as he closed the door. One that neither had realized he had been holding until now. “You two much be James and Y/N. It’s nice to meet you, I’m Matthew Murdock.

“It’s nice to meet you Matthew,” Y/N replied sweetly.

“Yes, thank you for helping us out,” Bucky nodded, placing his hands nervously in his pockets. 

“It’s my pleasure. I’m so sorry about everything that you guys are having to fix,” he said apologetically. But I’m sure you guys want to go about your day, so please, right this way,” he motioned to the door that was across from them. 

Bucky and Y/N both shared an impressed look on their faces as they watched him maneuver through the office gracefully. 

They followed close behind him and once they were seated in the chairs in front of the desk, Bucky began to fidget in his spot. Sure the office had been redone and really didn’t look much like it had all those years ago, but the layout was the same. And all it was doing to him was bringing back memories he hated trudging back to the surface. 

He subtly looked over at Y/N and saw her sitting in perfect posture watching Matthew as if if she were to look at him and only him, then she wouldn’t have to face Bucky. 

Why did he expect anything less? Of course she hated him just as much as she had all those years. She was probably dreading this meeting just as much as him. That small speck of hope that maybe they could be somewhat normal and civil upon meeting again after all this time, completely faded at that point. 

“Ok, this really shouldn’t take all that much time since Foggy and I went ahead and wrote up all the things that needed signed and double checked. So we should be able to breeze through all this,” Matthew nodded, bringing up a thick file that looked as though it had tabs on the side organizing them. 

Y/N looked over wondering just how he knew the difference between documents and noticed on each tab, there were bariel markings along them. 

“If you don’t mind me asking, out of all places to live, why New York? It’s got to be hard getting around such a crazy busy city given.. ” Bucky asked, but didn’t finish not sure how to word it. Y/N snapped her head in his direction and smacked his arm. “Ow!” Bucky jumped, sending her raised eyebrows. “What the hell?”

“I’m assuming you’re asking because of this,” Matthew laughed casually as he pointed to his glasses. “Don’t worry. You would be surprised just how often I get asked that.”

“Yeah, it was just a question,” Bucky pouted toward Y/N while rubbing his assaulted arm. The two falling back into their old behaviors rather fast. 

“I wasn’t always blind. I mean I have been for a good chunk of my life, but I’ve lived in New York my whole life as well,” Matthew went on to explain as he moved papers around. “If anything it would be harder for me to get around if I moved any place else. I know this place like the back of my hand.”

“That’s impressive,” Bucky nodded, getting comfortable in his seat. 

“Eh, it’s either learn or get bumped around the sidewalk of a place full of people who don’t give a second glance to anyone who’s in their way,” Matthew shrugged. “Oh, I need to go grab something before we start.”

He maneuvered through the room leaving the door open as he went across the office. Tension filled the air as they were left alone for a second time in the past 5 minutes. 

Y/N was sitting straight forward, her eyes wandering here and there around the meeting room, but careful not to go over to Bucky’s side of the room. He looked down seeing her hands were fiddling in her lap. She was tapping her thumbs together while his leg bounced up and down.

Bucky had opened his mouth to start to say something, but even he wasn’t sure what was about to come out. Lucky for him, Matthew came back in and went back to his seat. 

“Sorry about that. I thought I had it all, but needed to get some pens and one last paper I left on the printer last night.”

“You’re fine,” Y/N said professionally, but kindly. “I have one quick question, if you don’t mind.” Matthew nodded her on with a soft smile. “What exactly happened to Hammer after all this chaos was discovered?”

“Oh, yes. He, uh, he will not be an issue to anyone else to put it lightly. His license was revoked and terminated and he is currently on trial for money laundering and malpractice,” he answered. 

“Serves him right,” Bucky mumbled, and instead of getting a smack to the arm, Y/N nodded in agreement. 

“Ok, if you two are ready, let’s begin,” Matthew smiled before grabbing the first set of papers. 

The two straightened in their seats and the process began.

After a few minutes of just signing, Matthew started to make notes of updated information for the two. 

“Ok, Mrs. Barnes, sorry, Y/N,” he corrected quickly. “What is your line of profession at the moment?”

“I work at Horizon Labs in L.A. It’s a company a friend and I from college started up. I’m a Sustainable-Conscious Financial Advisor for a lot of smaller businesses as well as some bigger ones we recently just became partners with,” she answered. 

“Horizon Labs, huh?” Matthew said with an impressed look. Bucky turned to look at her as she lightly blushed. “I think I listened to a podcast about them. You guys help companies use recycled goods and find energy efficient technology, right?”

“We just redirect them to people who can help them get those resources. It’s practically just connecting the companies that would work great together in helping the environment,” she nodded humbly. 

“That’s amazing,” Matthew smiled. “We need more people and companies like that.”

“Thank you.”

He made note of that on a computer. “I’m assuming with all that, you have to be a little too busy for a second job, right? I don’t need to make note of another?”

“Uh, actually,” she added, Bucky’s already focused eyes on her quirked at her response. “I just invested in a Woman’s shelter with another friend of mine. I haven’t really got to do much with it, but it is a second job as of lately.”

“Wait? Nat?” Bucky caught on.

“Uh, yeah,” she nodded almost shyly. Probably the second time out of this whole meeting that she actually made eye contact with him. “My company works with them in getting some of the resources and items they need for the shelter. I talked with Nat and I invested into it some to help with some with their financial advisements.” 

“Wow, th-that’s,” Bucky faltered. “That sounds like you,” he said with a breathy laugh thinking about how maybe she really hadn’t changed all these years. That being one of the ‘reasons’ they had broken it off, how people change and all. But that’s a story for another time.

Y/N didn’t show a response to his words, but she did take them in. 

“So you run a woman’s home and you run a well-off business that promotes eco-friendly resources for the environment?”

“Well, I don’t run the woman’s home. That’s all my friends doing. I just help where help is asked if I can,” she answered once again humbly. No sense of egotistical pride hinted in her explanations or answers. 

“That’s extremely impressive Y/N,” Matthew gushed some, and Bucky noticed the smallest form of attraction come off the lawyer. He straightened at that. “I’ll make a note of it. And you Mr. Barnes. What is your occupation?”

Bucky relaxed his shoulders and focused back at the issue at hand. Trying to not get jealous of something that wasn’t even his to be jealous of. 

“I’m one of the head occupational therapist at Stark Theracorp,” he answered. Now it was Y/N’s turn to look at him intrigued. “I run the geriatric occupational therapy floor and manage our equipment and employees. ”

“Two very impressive people in the work field from what I’m getting,” Matthew chuckled some as he made the notes. “Now, if you don’t mind, I have to ask about income from the both of you for the record. If you want to write it on a paper and hand it to me you can or if you are comfortable saying it outloud that works too. Either way, I’ll have Foggy add it in later to the finalized papers.”

“Wait, so we aren’t finalizing it today?” Y/N asked, somewhat shocked. 

“Did Foggy not tell you?” Matthew asked. “I thought he reached out to you before this meeting.”

“I don’t believe so,” Y/N shook her head. 

“Well, the reason this one is so quick is because I just need a few signatures and updated notes on you two. After that, I’ll make the altercations for the official papers and I’ll send those to you both on their own to get the final signature. You can either bring them to me here, fax them, or have them sent via mail after you signed off on them.”

“Oh, I see,” Y/N nodded. The look of defeat in her posture and facial expressions.

It hurt Bucky a little seeing her reaction to it. Did she really want to get away from him that bad? Was he that much of a nuisance in her life? I mean, yeah, they were supposed to be divorced 9 years ago, but he didn’t want it then and it still hurt seeing just how much she wanted it now. 

“That’s not an issue is it? I’m terribly sorry for the inconvenience,” Matthew apologized. 

“No, no. It’s ok,” she said in reassurance to him. But she let out an almost bitter laugh before she spoke again. “We’ve been married for the past 9 years apparently. What’s a few more days?”

“I guess that’s true,” Matthew laughed with her. 

Bucky rolled his eyes discreetly. He really hated how she was reacting with all this. It wasn’t surprising, but doesn’t mean it hurts any less seeing how badly she wanted out of the situation.  

“Mr. Barnes, are you ok with that?” 

“I’ll survive a few more days, I guess,” he returned just as bitterly as Y/N. The two looked at each other one more time, but this time, anger and annoyance was clear on both of their faces.

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[lady-merian]

From this post by @awesomebutunpractical (thank you!)

The OC narrative questionnaire thing.

INSTRUCTIONS. (Not rules, this is just as it was designed to work.)

- Copy and paste this list into a new post or document. (Please don’t stick the answers in a reblog, this is weirdly important to me. You can, however, share your answers where ever you like.)

- List five characters.

- Search and replace the bracketed numbers with the assigned name. (ex. “1. Tom.” Search and Replace [1] with Tom.) 

(I did not do this part, instructions not rules, etc. still, I recommend seeing the original post for the questions and copying from there if any of you want to try)

- Fill out. 

- Don’t worry about reading the questions beforehand. I wrote the dang thing and it surprises me every time. You can scramble the list if you really want to.

My list:

Wynn

Caliam

Merian

Raya

Erandir

  1.  [1] and [3] are both are in a hurry and practically bump into each other when they get to the door. What happens?

Both apologize at exactly the same time, Wynn will open the door for her, and manage to put Merian at ease because he can see she feels worse than she should about it. It was an accident. 

  2.  [2] and [5] are in an argument. What could it be about? Just to smooth things out, Raya walks in on them.

Hoo boy. If Caliam and Erandir are arguing, it could get heated even if it’s over something really, really dumb. Raya might not be able to do anything. She likely wouldn’t want to, and would just walk out again. But she *might* go get Arric, as he’s the most likely besides Wynn to be a good mediator. 

  3.  [2] needs a confidant and the options are [1] and [3]. Who’s it gonna be? What circumstances would cause this to switch?  

AHAHAA Caliam would always, always choose Wynn. Unlessss… he was injured because of something stupid he did and for whatever reason he didn’t want him to know. Even then, he’d only go to Merian if he had absolutely no. other. choice. 

  4.  [3] and [4] are stuck in a body swap and now they need to impersonate each other. What are the traits they’d overplay to sell it? Who’d do the better job?

Ooh, one big difference is in how expressive they are. Merian would have a hard time letting all her emotions show at first, but if she knew she wouldn’t have to deal with the consequences she might be able to have fun telling people exactly what she wants to. Raya, by contrast, would try so hard and probably overdo it on the reserve. Both would have a hard time completely switching their speech patterns, but Raya might have an easier time with it than Merian. Conclusion: it’s a tie

  5.  [5] has lost something precious. There’s a pile of circumstantial evidence that [2] is the thief. Does [5] decide to trust [2] anyway?  Jump on the evidence and start the blame game? Is there enough trust there to label this a betrayal? Is [2] actually responsible?

As long as Caliam denies it, Erandir would probably completely believe him and they’d team up to discover who framed Caliam because that must be the case. Only one scenario lends itself to Caliam actually takes something from Erandir, and it’s still not theft, just moving it without telling him. 

  6.  [4], [2], and [1] are all out in the middle of nowhere and they stumble onto a very suspicious bag of money. What does each of them think of the situation?  Can they agree on what to do?  

Caliam jumps straight to the most dramatic possibility of why it’s there (one that conveniently allows for them to keep the money? Maybe?), Raya is the opposite (finds the most mundane possibility and wants to take it to one of the town watchmen for safekeeping and let *them* track down the rightful owner. While they’re squabbling, Wynn half-listens to them while he looks for anything around that might explain why it’s here. He’s the one most likely to figure out the truth, which is probably something in between Caliam’s and Raya’s ideas. 

  7.  [3] and [5] are, for the sake of this question, arch-enemies.  For  reasons they care about, they have to play nice with each other for a dinner. How well does each pull it off? Does [1] pick up on the  tension in the room?

D y i n g this is almost canon for that one chapter. 

Okay, let’s say for a sec that Erandir distrusts Merian as much as she currently distrusts him, but they don’t think Wynn knows: Merian absolutely hides this better than Erandir does, but regardless Wynn would see that something is off and would spend his evening alternating between playing peacemaker and pulling out his hair.

  8.   There is a bug! A particularly big, spiny, potentially venom filled  specimen.  [1], and [2] are in the room with the little guy, and [3], [4], and [5] are in the next room over. What happens?  

Caliam: DIE BEAST! (Exaggerated purposefully to let Raya know not to come in)

Wynn: ach, ye might’ve let me see it first.

Raya: shudders

Merian: mostly shudders but is mildly curious

Erandir: has gone to the doorway to see 

  9.   Let’s cast [3] as a detective and [4] as the assistant. What could this look like? How effective would they be?

Merian would be all right (not as good as Wynn at finding evidence but almost as good at questioning people) Raya would be less interested in the proceedings unless the crime they’re investigating is her missing pie. In which case the criminal is almost certainly Caliam 

  10. [2] is jealous of [1]. What’s causing this? How is this expressed?  How honest is [2] about these feelings?  

Hm. Caliam might be jealous of how calm and collected Wynn can be, I suppose. How is it expresses? It isn’t, really, other than attempts at emulation. 

  11. Say [5] really has to hype up [1] to [3]. Is this going to be easy?  Sincere? How convincing would this all be for [3]? What if [1] overheard the hype session?

Ehehehe Erandir almost does try to hype Wynn up to Merian. He ends up just wanting her to see for herself, because Wynn defies his powers of description. If for some reason he had to try or else Merian wouldn’t agree to meet him, he could probably be convincing but it might sound too exaggerated for Wynn to agree about any of it if he was to overhear.  

  12. [2] and [4] are now trapped in the Cave of ‘You’re Stuck Here Until You Resolve Some Character Conflict’. What would they need to talk about? What would they need to hear? How long will  this take?

Caliam and Raya. This will happen. It may not take long to resolve, but until I get there I’m not sure. Spoilers. 

  13. Gift Exchange! [5] got [3] in the Secret Santa. How easy will this  be? How much effort is [5] going to put into this? What will [3] think of the gift?  

Depends on which point of their relationship they’re at! Erandir almost always *tries* to be thoughtful but that doesn’t succeed at first…

Let’s say right now: Erandir would put a little less effort into finding out what she’d like, getting something more generic 

(Rabbit trail: Modern AU time, where Merian is a stressed nursing student and she keeps running into this guy who she doesn’t know very well and doesn’t know what his goals are but one day she finds a Starbucks gift card with her name on the envelope and a note telling her to take care of herself. End rabbit trail I don’t have time to think this through)

  14. Neither [3] nor [2] believe in ghosts, but they happen to be in a very haunted house anyway. Who would figure out what’s going on first? Who would handle it better?

AHAHAA trap Merian and Caliam together??? Merian would absolutely think Caliam is behind it somehow, (when it can’t be him she still would think he put someone up to it) but Caliam’s instincts lead him to not suspect Merian in return. If (for the purposes of this story) we say the house really is haunted (another AU), Caliam would be the first to believe it even if he didn’t previously believe in ghosts. If we say it’s not and someone is trying to trick them he’d still figure that out first. Sorry, Merian. In this case your prejudice would blind you 

  15. Well! It looks like a couple of no good bad guys are trying to snatch [5].  Why on earth would they do that? How much trouble would they have? What if [1] got involved?

(Nooo! Not more future ideas!)

Anyone would have a lot of trouble catching Erandir (and there would be  reason..) unless [redacted for spoilers]

If Wynn caught wind of something like this there’d be no hope for the bad guys. 

  16.  [4] and [5] have been assigned the Those Two Guys role.  Whatever part of the story they play, the other tends to be around too. Would this be a voluntary arrangement?  

Interestingly, Raya and Erandir could get along without too much trouble but they don’t tend to seek each other out. They might be nervous about giving anyone the wrong impression about the two of them (depending on which point in the stories they’re at) but they’re not going to necessarily object to being together either. I can think of a potential for them to trade recipes and various kitchen skills

  17. What kind of age gap is there between [2] and [3]? What if this was  exaggerated? Switched around? What kind of dynamic would you get  with an old [2] and a young [3]?

Caliam is like. 6 years older than Merian but my sisters don’t believe this. Still, it’s important to me. If we significantly aged Caliam up, Merian wouldn’t automatically think better of him, because it’s his personality/seeming immaturity she’s not fond of.

practically nothing would change if Merian was older, (except she’d be more likely to assume he would grow out of it,) but it doesn’t ring true for me

  18. What’s something both [1] and [4] find hilarious? Would they enjoy sharing it? What would [2] think of it?

Wynn and Raya both find certain aspects of Caliam being Caliam hilarious, but I’m drawing a blank on what. Whatever it is, Caliam doesn’t know what to think of it

  19. [5] and [4] are in an on-going disaster together. Who’s handling it better? Is there a clear leader between them? Are they working together or cracking under the stress?  

Erandir is the clear leader and Raya is more than happy to let him. Erandir definitely handles disaster better, but neither of them would crack under the stress unless there’s a personal stake in it and then it depends on how personal…They’d make a good duo for the most part, depending on the nature of the disaster. 

  20.  Let’s say [3] was leading a team built from [2], [5], and [1]. Would this position be more likely to be earned, elected, granted by a higher authority, or self-proclaimed? How would you rank [3]’s leadership skills? Is there anyone in the underling trio who objects? Anyone whose particularly loyal? How functional would the team be overall?

The only way Merian would voluntarily lead Wynn is if it’s related to something she knows about and Wynn doesn’t: first aid (and Wynn does know some but he would still defer to her knowledge) 

Caliam wouldn’t openly object but he would grumble. Erandir would vie with Wynn for the title of Most Loyal, but Wynn would ultimately keep that title. Merian would be stressed, but would handle it with outward calm until it was over with.

  21.  [4]’s been left out of the day’s shenanigans. Is this taken personally? What level of solo shenanigans will they get into if left on their own?

Raya would generally be thrilled to be left out of the shenanigans, but especially if there’s first aid to be administered. Keep her away from the sight of blood please and thank you (this will go fiiiine in the story don’t worrryyyy). 

She will happily make soup for anyone who needs it after whatever ordeal they’ve been through

  22. If you had to choose a babysitter between [2] and [3], who would it be? Who would [4] choose?

Raya and I would both choose Merian, without a doubt.

Much (much) later, Raya would choose Caliam to watch her children, but not alone while they’re babies and limited while they’re very young.

  23. Alright, let’s swap [4] and [1]’s stories for a moment. Would  they get along with the other’s supporting cast? What’s one big way the stories would change?  

Wynn’s story is too much of a spoiler to do much with this, and the age and gender difference is making it hard to imagine even for myself. Raya would not thrive in a military environment, for example.

  24. [4], [2], and [5] have all been taken to a mysterious location, and  separated. They have not seen their “hosts” yet, but have had time to think about the situation. When they are reunited, [5] has been replaced with a slightly too friendly, but otherwise identical, impostor. Do the other two notice? Does the discussion turn to  escape? If they realize [5] is missing, what would the others do?  

Ohh, this would be weird. Erandir is already friendly with them, but how long would it take for Caliam and Raya to notice somethings… off with him? Could get freaky. Caliam would naturally pick up on something being wrong soonest, but figuring out *what* is wrong would be harder. He’d quickly decide not to trust “Erandir” with any escape plans and probably find a way to test him. For a long time Raya would think Caliam was just being dramatic as usual, but assuming he could prove it to her they’d plot together to uncover the truth..

  25. What’s one goal that [3] and [1] could share? What would they think of each other’s methods of getting said goal?

Ahh, both of them want Erandir to do something? Wynn knows him better, and in the end his method is more likely to succeed if anything does.

this was fun!

[why-bless-your-heart]

The OC narrative questionnaire thing.

INSTRUCTIONS. (Not rules, this is just as it was designed to work.)

- Copy and paste this list into a new post or document. (Please don’t stick the answers in a reblog, this is weirdly important to me. You can, however, share your answers where ever you like.)

- List five characters.

- Search and replace the bracketed numbers with the assigned name. (ex. “1. Tom.” Search and Replace [1] with Tom.)

- Fill out.

- Don’t worry about reading the questions beforehand. I wrote the dang thing and it surprises me every time. You can scramble the list if you really want to.

1. Kendrick Jackson

2. Mat Ketzch

3. Azi Ketzch

4. Dekart

5. Greor Pastor

1. Kendrick Jackson and Azi Ketzch both are in a hurry and practically bump into each other when they get to the door. What happens?

Kendrick is very polite and will let Azi through first. Azi is used to people being very polite to her and will go through first. The sole exception would be if the hurry was related to an actual genuine fix-it-right-now-or-everyone-dies emergency: then Kendrick would send Azi flying on his way through the door and apologize profusely after the emergency was resolved.

2. Mat Ketzch and Greor Pastor are in an argument. What could it be about? Just to smooth things out, Dekart walks in on them.

Hm. Mat’s not much of an arguer, so I can only assume that Greor’s insisting on something so ludicrously, patently, demonstrably, one-hundred-and-twelve percent wrong that Mat just can’t let it go. Like that outer space doesn’t exist. Dekart would take Greor’s side precisely to the extent that he thought it was funny.

3. Mat Ketzch needs a confidant and the options are Kendrick Jackson and Azi Ketzch. Who’s it gonna be? What circumstances would cause this to switch?

On the one hand there are things that you really only share with an immediate family member. On the other, there are also things that you don’t really share with your kid sister. It would depend on what needed to be confided, and then everything else would be pushed down deep inside to fester.

4. Azi Ketzch and Dekart are stuck in a body swap and now they need to impersonate each other. What are the traits they’d overplay to sell it? Who’d do the better job?

Azi would try to be the Strong And Silent type. Dekart is not the Strong And Silent type, he’s just built that way. She’d also probably cut off a finger trying to make a sandwich. Dekart would actually do a pretty good job of imitating Azi’s mannerisms, but he’d be busted the minute he did a responsible thing.

5. Greor Pastor has lost something precious. There’s a pile of circumstantial evidence that Mat Ketzch is the thief. Does Greor Pastor decide to trust Mat Ketzch anyway? Jump on the evidence and start the blame game? Is there enough trust there to label this a betrayal? Is Mat Ketzch actually responsible?

Greor would absolutely jump on the evidence immediately and start blaming Mat. It would definitely count as a betrayal, but not a devastatingly deep one. Mostly just a jerk move. Greor doesn’t have a lot, so stealing from him is a pretty low move. Nobody would believe him, though. Which is fine, because Mat wouldn’t actually steal anything from Greor. His vices lie in other directions.

6. Dekart, Mat Ketzch, and Kendrick Jackson are all out in the middle of nowhere and they stumble onto a very suspicious bag of money. What does each of them think of the situation?  Can they agree on what to do?

Look: they’re young, they’re each trying to make a living, and it’s obviously money that was not obtained legitimately. Kendrick might have some qualms, but they’re dividing the bag three ways and then high-tailing it out of there.

7. Azi Ketzch and Greor Pastor are, for the sake of this question, arch-enemies.  For reasons they care about, they have to play nice with each other for a dinner. How well does each pull it off? Does Kendrick Jackson pick up on the tension in the room?

Oh good heavens. These are the two of the group with the absolute least impulse control. They manage not to throw any food at each other for the first two minutes. As he dives for cover, Kendrick begins to suspect that they might not like each other. Call it intuition.

8. There is a bug! A particularly big, spiny, potentially venom-filled specimen.  Kendrick Jackson, and Mat Ketzch are in the room with the little guy, and Azi Ketzch, Dekart, and Greor Pastor are in the next room over. What happens?

First, lots of very loud, very high-pitched screaming that neither Kendrick nor Mat will ever be allowed to live down. Mat’s not scared of bugs, he was just startled by that bug. Kendrick’s not scared of bugs, he was just screaming because Mat was screaming. By the time Dekart’s through the door the bug has been dispatched. When Azi and Greor start teasing them, Mat throws the carcass at them and there is more loud, very high-pitched screaming.

9. Let’s cast Azi Ketzch as a detective and Dekart as the assistant. What could this look like? How effective would they be?

Azi would be too busy flirting with her assistant to actually do any detecting. Dekart would be too busy laboring under the delusion that his detective was the most brilliant person ever to wear a hat to realize that she wasn’t doing any detecting. Five dead, twelve wounded.

10. Mat Ketzch is jealous of Kendrick Jackson. What’s causing this? How is this expressed? How honest is Mat Ketzch about these feelings?

Jealous as in jealousy or as in envy? If the first, then definitely in that whole “I’m not my best friend’s best friend” light. It’s just being caused by the fact that Kendrick’s a friendly, generous person with a massive friends & family network, and there’s not really a place for it to be expressed. If the second, then probably just a touch of resentment that Kendrick seems to live in a much kinder world than everyone else operates in. Again, it’s just being caused by who Kendrick is, and there isn’t a good way to express it. Mat’s not very honest with his feelings, regardless.

11. Say Greor Pastor really has to hype up Kendrick Jackson to Azi Ketzch. Is this going to be easy? Sincere? How convincing would this all be for Azi Ketzch? What if Kendrick Jackson overheard the hype session?

Kendrick Jackson is the single easiest person for anyone to hype up to anyone. He’s genuinely a nice and generous guy who’s good at his job. The least convincing thing would be that he needs the hype. His reputation precedes him and is well-earned. Kendrick would be absolutely mortified if he heard all the nice stuff that people say about him, but also very gratified.

12. Mat Ketzch and Dekart are now trapped in the Cave of ‘You’re Stuck Here Until You Resolve Some Character Conflict’. What would they need to talk about? What would they need to hear? How long will this take?

Pre-story-events: Azi, just the basics, and one good heart-to-heart and two promises. Post-story events: Azi, a lot, and one shouting match, one knock-down-drag-out fight, and a real, genuine apology.

13. Gift Exchange! Greor Pastor got Azi Ketzch in the Secret Santa. How easy will this be? How much effort is Greor Pastor going to put into this? What will Azi Ketzch think of the gift?

Greor is going to put a lot of thought and effort into it and will either come up with a crumpled paper cup that he thought had a good shape or a one-of-a-kind objet d’art worth a lot more than he should have been able to afford that he thought had a good shape. Either way, Azi will be very touched and put it in a very special place in a very messy room that it will soon be buried in.

14. Neither Azi Ketzch nor Mat Ketzch believe in ghosts, but they happen to be in a very haunted house anyway. Who would figure out what’s going on first? Who would handle it better?

Azi’s halfway up the chimney at the first rattle of chains. Maybe it’s not ghosts, but she’s not waiting around to see what it is. Mat is very brave until the exact second he’s confident Azi’s not around to give him grief. It definitely ends with the house being burnt to the ground.

15. Well! It looks like a couple of no good bad guys are trying to snatch Greor Pastor.  Why on earth would they do that? How much trouble would they have? What if Kendrick Jackson got involved?

It’s Greor, okay, the guy cannot catch a break. Criminal trespass, public nuisance, general vagrancy, there are plenty of legitimate and illegitimate reasons for somebody to try to snatch him. They’d definitely have more trouble than they expected though, Greor bites. Kendrick would very firmly stand up for him, and he’s armed as a rule, so things would end up working out okay for Greor. Relatively speaking.

16. Dekart and Greor Pastor have been assigned the Those Two Guys role. Whatever part of the story they play, the other tends to be around too. Would this be a voluntary arrangement?

Honestly, this kind of sums up their relationship as it is. Their personalities mesh well, they’re basically neighbors, Dekart likes to make food and Greor likes to eat it. They’re friends.

17. What kind of age gap is there between Mat Ketzch and Azi Ketzch? What if this was exaggerated? Switched around? What kind of dynamic would you get with an old Mat Ketzch and a young Azi Ketzch?

Mat is just about four years older than Azi. A lot of their dynamic comes from that, as well as the circumstances of their early childhood: Mat can remember when things were a lot rougher for them than Azi can. Exaggerating the age difference would just exaggerate their respective traits: Mat would be even more cautious, and Azi would be even more carefree. Switching it would be interesting. I think Azi would be a lot more ruthless dealing with other people, and I honestly don’t think she’d be willing to take Mat along with her. Mat would definitely lean more into his adventurous side, and would probably wear his emotions on his sleeve. If (hypothetically), Mat were to age a couple decades and then be brought back in time to a current-age Azi, I think he’d first be shocked by how very young she is and then very upset at past-him for not doing a better job at things. His priorities would still be essentially the same, but he’d be much better at how he goes about serving them. Azi would think it’s weird and a little scary seeing her brother as an old guy.

18. What’s something both Kendrick Jackson and Dekart find hilarious? Would they enjoy sharing it? What would Mat Ketzch think of it?

Jokes along the lines of “what’s the difference between an oral and a rectal thermometer?” and “what’s worse than biting into an apple and finding a worm?” Mat has more than his share of oldies. They’re guys, what can I say.

19. Greor Pastor and Dekart are in an on-going disaster together. Who’s handling it better? Is there a clear leader between them? Are they working together or cracking under the stress?

Dekart shines in a crisis. Greor’s in a perpetual state of crisis. They make a good team. Dekart’s the clear leader, but Greor has a lot of canny know-how that’s absolutely indespensible. They’ll make it.

20. Let’s say Azi Ketzch was leading a team built from Mat Ketzch, Greor Pastor, and Kendrick Jackson. Would this position be more likely to be earned, elected, granted by a higher authority, or self-proclaimed? How would you rank Azi Ketzch’s leadership skills? Is there anyone in the underling trio who objects? Anyone whose particularly loyal? How functional would the team be overall?

They don’t stand a chance. It would have to be granted by somebody who’d never met a one of them, Azi couldn’t lead a fish to water with a net, everyone would object (with varying degrees of politeness,) and they wouldn’t last three yards.

21. Dekart’s been left out of the day’s shenanigans. Is this taken personally? What level of solo shenanigans will they get into if left on their own?

It gives him a chance to catch up on some paperwork. Running a small business is actually impeded by shenanigans, he’d appreciate the break.

22. If you had to choose a babysitter between Mat Ketzch and Azi Ketzch, who would it be? Who would Dekart choose?

Mat. Anyone who’d known them for five minutes would choose Mat. Mat’s the responsible one, Azi’s the fun one. Mat is capable and mature and safety-conscious. Azi would be voted ‘most likely to misplace an infant while she goes to get a pretzel.’ Dekart would choose Azi. Love blinds a guy.

23. Alright, let’s swap Dekart's and Kendrick Jackson’s stories for a moment. Would they get along with the other’s supporting cast? What’s one big way the stories would change?

Kendrick has a large number of siblings and Dekart would get along with all of them. Kendrick already gets along with all of Dekart’s supporting cast. Kendrick’s story is fundamentally about trust vs naivety while Dekart’s story is about loyalty vs justice: switching the stories would honestly take out a lot of the conflict.

24. Dekart, Mat Ketzch, and Greor Pastor have all been taken to a mysterious location, and separated. They have not seen their “hosts” yet, but have had time to think about the situation. When they are reunited, Greor Pastor has been replaced with a slightly too friendly, but otherwise identical, impostor. Do the other two notice? Does the discussion turn to escape? If they realize Greor Pastor is missing, what would the others do?

They wouldn’t notice. Greor can be pretty unpredictable even on some of his good days, erratic behavior, personality changes, and even lapses of memory wouldn’t be enough to trigger any alarm bells. Kendrick and Mat would both be planning for multiple contingencies, anything from “our hosts are potential employers,” to “dinner’s in fifteen minutes and we’re the appetizer course,” but would want more information before committing to any of their plans. Flying blind gets you killed. If they did realize that Greor was missing then of course they’d try to get him back if possible, but Kendrick would be willing to go a lot further to get him back than Mat would be.

25. What’s one goal that Azi Ketzch and Kendrick Jackson could share? What would they think of each other’s methods of getting said goal?

I can’t think of any concrete goals at the moment, just general ones like financial security, health & well-being, etc. In general though, Kendrick thinks of rules as things that exist for a reason and should only be violated in pursuit of a goal if the underlying reason can still be served or if the rule is unjust. Azi thinks of rules as suggestions that should be ignored if they don’t aid in the pursuit of a goal. Azi thinks Kendrick’s too idealistic, and Kendrick thinks Azi’s too short-sighted.

[sephhaa]

How to Customize Your AO3 Writing HTML Format & More!

Okay! So you want to know how to customize your AO3 HTML writing format/how to navigate AO3 in general—well you’ve come to the right place! 

Here I’ll be addressing common errors that happen when navigating AO3 as both a reader and primarily as a writer. I’ll also be giving out some great tips and tricks on navigating AO3—especially when it comes to customizing your AO3 writing. I’m mainly making this because when I was trying to simply publish my stories on AO3 with indentation on my writing format; it was such a HASSLE. Especially going through countless blogs that were really freakin’ old and youtube videos that weren’t at all helpful and/or very confusing. Hopefully today I’ll be able to help you try and alleviate that confusion. 

I’m also going to make a youtube video on this in the near future as well as my tumblr guide( if you want to learn how to customize your Tumblr blog(theme, linking things on your bio, navigating certain functions) go ahead click here.

Alright! So let’s say you already have your chapter ready and prepped to be pasted onto the HTML writing format. Here are a few things you need to know before pasting that long written chapter onto the HTML format.

If you have a bunch of indentation on your chapter and go ahead and paste that onto AO3 HTML format—it’d immediately remove all that indentation.

Indentation:

No Indentation:

This is going to happen no matter how much spacing you put in that text on HTML. It’s primarily because HTML is meant to be a bunch of code in between text. There is no code suggesting to create indentations on your text. So you might be asking yourself, well how do I create indentions Seph? Here is how:

^ here is my secret weapon hehe~

Now, before I came across this holy grail of a website(after going through long hours of searching through youtube videos and articles etc) I was manually typing out all of my code onto my stories. It was literal hell(especially because I write very LONG chapters(20k-60k) so I had to physically scroll through my own writing to put code in between text that sometimes didn’t even work when I finally published my story/chapter. The website I’m going to link to you—it’s a website where you paste your work onto the google doc and it’d put the code in FOR YOU. So you don’t have to sit there for hours implementing your own code for indentations, bold text, etc. Here’s how to use the website:

Website link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/19eZnBQ4989Dr17v2ODFgE8QWAo9Oahi4USDNS3hOSvM/copy (as far as I know this website doesn’t have a name but imma just call it the HTML holy grail lolll)

* You’re going to click, “make copy.”

Make sure before you’re clicking, “make copy,” that the gmail you’re signed into is the same one your browser is signed into. So when you go through the process of selecting a google account to sign into—you don’t select a different gmail. If you don’t write your stuff on google docs and for example—use Word—just copy your writing from your Word document and paste it into the website’s google doc. You’d just have to sign into an email anyway lol.

Now when you click, “Make copy,” it’d open to this page. This page has a bunch of instruction you don’t need to read. What you’re going to do is delete all of this text and paste your writing on it. To select all the text:

SHIFT+CMD+A (MAC)

SHIFT+ALT+A (Windows)

Then hit:

Delete (Mac)

Backspace (Windows)

Now that it’s empty, you’re going to go ahead and copy your story:

 SHIFT+CMD+A  & then CMD + C  (MAC)

 SHIFT+ALT+A  & then ALT + C (Windows)

and paste it to this document.

Now it’s going to look very similar to your own google docs page where you copied your writing from. What you’re going to do next, is click/look for the text that says, “Post to AO3″ which can be found on taskbar above the writing functions next to, “Help.” 

When you click this, it’d ask you two things:

and:

Obviously, we want to select, “Prepare for pasting into HTML Editor.” Click that and it’d immediately start running. It will ask you to sign into a google account as well:

Click continue (this is where it’d ask you to sign into a google account):

Here choose your gmail account (for obvious reasons I won’t be showing my email lol):

It’d ask for permission, select— “Allow” below.

It’d immediately run the script and it should look like this:

Everything highlighted in blue is your code. This coding will make your indentations for you as well as make the coding for bold text, italic text, so on and so forth. 

Now, you’re going to copy all of this text:

SHIFT+CMD+A :then: CMD + C (MAC)

SHIFT+ALT+A :then: ALT + C (Windows)

and paste it into your HTML editor on AO3 (ofc, delete all the text already on your ao3 editor):

Now all of your writing should look like this—all code and text. 

Keep in mind, when you click, “Preview” your indentations/italics/bold text won’t appear. Idk why it doesn’t (ao3 is just wack like that) but when you publish your indentations/bold text/italics, text WILL appear. I guarantee it.

Alright so adding tags/editing your work is very simple:

Here is where you’re going to tag all of your work. As you can see, you have a lot of options:

Here is where you start rating your fic. It runs from Not Rated to Explicit. This is primarily to let readers know what type of fic they’re reading before actually clicking on it. It lets younger audiences know not to click it if it’s too mature or too explicit. This also makes it easier for readers to search up stories under whichever rating you choose.

Now the Archive warnings are just extra EXTRA warnings that are more specific. So if your story falls under any of these specific warning tags go ahead and put them—you can also choose not to use the warnings.

The fandom tag is pretty self-explanatory. If you’re confused then you clearly don’t know what AO3 is LOLL. Ao3 is commonly known as a fanfiction site where people will upload fanfics in relation to the fandom they’re writing for. So let’s say I made a fanfic for the anime Death Note, I would type, “Death Note” onto the fandom tag:

Now the categories tag is very self-explanatory as well, choose the tag pertaining to the relationship of your main characters. For example:

I’m going to use Death Note as my example: both of my main characters and/or ship is L/Light Yagami depending on how both characters identify their genders, in this case both characters identify as male in my fanfic. I would choose the “M/M,” tag. Another example:

If I wrote a BTS fanfic and it’s a x-reader X Park Jimin fic, the x-reader for my fic identifies as female, while Park Jimin identifies as a male in my fanfic so I would choose the “F/M” tag. 

If the fanfic you wrote has characters that are nonbinary for example, you can choose the “other” tag. 

The trend here is knowing what your characters identify as in your fanfic and applying that tag here.

The relationships tag is where you’d put the main ship tag. So again:

If I wrote a Death Note fanfic, and my main romantic pairing or sexual pairing was L/Light Yagami I’ll type that pairing onto the bar and depending on how popular that ship is, it’d pop up for you.

The characters tag is where you’d put all of your characters by name onto the bar. So going back to the Death Note example, I would put L, Light Yagami, and Misa Aname as my characters. You also have the option to add OC characters as a tag (OC—Original characters.)

Additional tags is just that—additional tags. Here is where you’d list specific tags/concepts pertaining to your fanfic. So my tag list will look something like this:

*Gore

*Violence

*Explicit Sexual Content

*Fluff

etc.

Here is where authors commonly put a bunch of random thoughts/writing. You have to keep in mind—if you want to write your thoughts, for example, “L totally rims Light cuz we all know Light is king of the bottoms” you can’t make your thoughts EXTREMELY long. If your thoughts end up being very long—ao3 won’t let you publish your fanfic unless you fix the tags. 

Onwards!

Now, here is where you’re going to put your story title, summary, add any co-creators, beginning notes and end notes. All very self-explanatory. Though, I will come back to beginning notes/endnotes later.

Here is all the extra stuff that I don’t really find a lot of authors using. The only one that has a lot of relevance is the “Language” tag which is very important for obvious reasons. Though the small list of tags/buttons to click on—hold some value. If you have a fanfic that is a series, as an example, you can select this box. If you have a fanfic that has multiple chapters, you’d check off the mark that says “this work has multiple chapters.” When you click this, it’d ask you how many chapters. If you don’t know how long your fic will be, you can simply put a question mark. If you selected the option where your fanfic is part of a series, it’d ask you from what series in your works and/or let you make a new series (if your first work is the first book to said series.) The last option, “Set a different publication date,” is an interesting feature on ao3. This feature lets you prep your works in advance and if you know what exact date you plan on publishing your fanfic, you can put an exact date on that fic for when you want to publish it. 

Now work skins, or, “Skins,” is a feature I don’t find a whole lot of people using. I had ended up using it because again—I wanted to create indentations to my work on a HTML format and upon some research I found that someone recommended to use skins and apply them to your work to create those indentations. 

You may be asking yourself, “What is a skin/work skin?” 

A work skin/skin is a body of code you can customize in a separate window. I don’t know the exact details on how to successfully make this code since I forgot how to properly do it (also I mainly don’t want to go into extreme detail how to make a work skin lol) this work skin can be applied to your writing and modify it in a way where you don’t have to manually add certain features. For example:

I wanted to make indentations for my fanfic on the HTML format. At first I used a work skin with code to do the indentation for me:

Here’s a link where you could learn how to do that: work skin indentation

The issue I found when creating this work skin and applying it to my writing, it made it look really wonky. Now I’m sure you can go ahead and change the settings to the work skin in terms of sizing/spacing etc. But to be honest, that sounds like a lot of work I don’t wanna be doing. If you find yourself successfully using work skins (and you know your way around advance coding) by all means, use work skins to your advantage. As far as I know, work skins also have different functions but I do not know those exact functions. I have the holy grail google docs to make indentations/coding for me lol. Moving on!

Last but not least, we have the privacy section where you’d obviously make your selections based on your preferences. Registered users are users who have actual ao3 accounts. Guests are users who don’t have ao3 accounts. Pretty self-explanatory. You can choose where you want a specific audience to read your fics, register users or guests. Or choose both. Or none at all. 

START NOTES/ENDNOTES:

Remember how I mentioned that I would be coming back to beginning notes/endnotes? Here’s why:

Let’s say you successfully publish your fanfic and it’s a multi chapter fic. A common problem I found myself having and A LOT of other people, when you have multiple chapters and you add endnotes to a specific chapter, your first chapter endnotes appear on that latest chapter you’ve created different endnotes for.

Let me make this clearer:

Let’s say my fic is 10 chapters. In the very first chapter, I added specific endnotes that look like this:

The text: “Leave a comment if you enjoyed the first chapter! Chat with me on my <a href="https://sephhaa.tumblr.com/" rel="nofollow">tumblr</a> Chat with me on my <a href="https://twitter.com/Sephhaa" rel="nofollow">Twitter!</a>” <— this is my endnotes I put for my first chapter.

Now if I go ahead to check my chapters outside of the editor page and then check my latest chapter (in this case is chapter 10):

Both my endnotes for that chapter (chapter 10) and my endnotes for the very first chapter appear on my 10th chapter when only my endnotes for, specifically, chapter 10—should be the only one that readers SHOULD see. My readers should only be seeing chapter 10 endnotes. NOT chapter 10 endnotes AND chapter 1′s notes. 

Now you may be asking yourself, “Well, how do I get rid of my first chapter notes on my chapter 10 endnotes? When I go to the editor page, to chapter 10, my endnotes look fine and I don’t see my first chapter endnotes there?” Here is how you get rid of them:

Now, I want you to pay attention to this screenshot. This is a screenshot of my ao3 editor page for my latest fic, “IMPOSTERS.” The reason why I want you to pay attention to this screenshot because I want you to notice a very alarming detail we all gloss over.

We are in the, “Edit Work” page. We are NOT on chapter 1. 

Let me break this down:

You know how your first chapter’s endnotes keep appearing on your latest chapters? Yeah, that’s because they’re appearing on every other chapter because you’ve pasted your first chapter’s endnotes on the, “Edit Work” editor page instead of putting your endnotes to chapter 1 and ONLY chapter one. 

What you’re going to do is scroll down to your endnotes

*Copy them if you want

*DELETE! the endnotes on the, “Edit Work” page by selecting this little window:

*Make sure to un-click the little blue check mark so it deletes the endnotes.

Go over to your first chapter by selecting the chapter number on the above taskbar:

*Scroll down to your endnotes

*Paste those endnotes you copied in the endnotes box (now these notes will only appear on chapter 1)

And BOOM! No more first chapter endnotes to your latest chapter endnotes:

Keep in mind: what commonly happens is if you see your first chapter endnotes and then you go and publish chapter 6, just know that if you had written notes in the editor page instead of the chapter, will now naturally move on to the next chapter until another update —it’s because your first chapter endnotes will move onto the latest chapter you post. Those first chapter endnotes won’t be applied to every single chapter of yours. 

HITS/KUDOS/COMMENTS:

Now, Hits, Kudos and especially comments are very self-explanatory but here are some things I really do love about each feature:

HITS:

Hits are something I really do enjoy about ao3. Main reason being it’s so different compared to every other writing platform for example—Wattpad.

Now I’ve been, up until recently, on Wattpad for 8 years, I started as an original novel writer and then transferred into fic writing (which is hilarious cuz a lot of writers start as the very opposite.) 

In saying that, Wattpad is famously known for clicking and rising the amount of views/reads on a story based on the amount of clicks you give that story. What I didn’t like, even as the writer to my own work, if I click my own stories—Wattpad would count those clicks and mark them as reads. So whenever I edit or check my own work, my reads would go up simply by me—as the author— clicking my own story/chapters. It would be extremely hard to know who was actually reading my story and how many of those reads were actually me just clicking my story. 

AO3 doesn’t do this. Since you are the author of that fanfic, it doesn’t count you as a reader when clicking your own story. 

This is super great and it just gives me an idea of how many people actually went to give my fic a hit.

KUDOS:

Kudos is a great function and I like it a lot because ao3 doesn’t have the option where people can dislike a fic. Ao3 and many writing sites don’t have a “liking” system like Instagram and Facebook. And that’s mainly because ao3 is NOT a social platform. You cannot make social posts on ao3 and while it’d be nice to notify my readers about x, y and z you can just link your social platforms in your end notes. Which is something I’ll get into in a second.

COMMENTS:

Comments are just that, comments. A good feature on ao3 tho is, you as the author can filter comments. I see authors, unfortunately get a lot of hate for x and y ship and/or concept. It happens a lot and it’s complete BS—especially when authors end up orphaning said story so they can get a little peace of mind. 

Ao3 has a pretty good filtering system where you can choose to allow certain comments underneath the story/chapters. The only downside to this, you as the author have to manually read through all these comments (which are commonly hate comments) and it can put a mental toll on you. Ao3 has yet to figure out a way where we can block certain users so they won’t be able to comment/read your fic. So if you are someone who has recently came out with a fic and you are receiving some kind of hate—maybe get a friend or close family member to log into your account and filter your comments for you. Otherwise, you’d have to grow a backbone and can take the hate and filter through your own comments. 

In saying that, please please be aware to not take every comment personally and surround yourself with good people. What people say doesn’t matter as long as you were happy writing that chapter/pairing/concept. If it means you’d need a minute away from the internet or not check your inbox at all—both options are available to you and you as the writer don’t have an obligation to respond to hate if you don’t want to.  

LINKING YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA IN NOTES:

If you had came from my tumblr guide (which I highly recommend if you’re trying to navigate your tumblr) the coding used for adding links to your tumblr bio in that guide is extremely similar to the coding we will be using today in the AO3 beginning notes/endnotes:

Now here is my social media links in my endnotes. You can add social media links to both beginning notes and endnotes (I find they’re placed more commonly in the endnotes) the coding we will be focusing on is:

<a href=“

that is:

<a SPACE href= QUOTATION MARK ( “ ) 

(really familiar yeah? lollll shoutout to y’all who came from my tumblr guide)

Now, you’re going to want to type this out in your notes window, and then go grab a social link (I’ll just go ahead and use my Twitter social link) simply copy whichever social platform link you want to copy and paste it right after the quotation mark. It’d look a little something like this:

<a href=“https://twitter.com/Sephhaa” 

and end it with a quotation mark( “ ) again. 

Right after that we need to write more coding and that coding is:

ref=“no follow”

that is:

SPACE ref=QUOTATION MARK( “ ) no SPACE follow QUOTATION( “ )

So your link will now look a little something like this:

<a href=“https://twitter.com/Sephhaa” ref=“no follow”

Now more coding, but this time, we need some type of text so it just doesn’t look like some long ass link in your notes. Here is the code we’re going to use:

>  - beginning

</a> - end

that is:

(start) > TEXT </a> (end)

(my text in this case is going to be “>Twitter!</a>”)

(together ofc, for the sake of the example I’m spacing it) Your link should look something like this:

<a href=“https://twitter.com/Sephhaa” ref=“no follow”>Twitter!</a>

Now you can do this with every social media you have to convert it into a link inside your notes/endnotes. 

You can tell whether it worked or not if it’s underlined and highlighted. 

ADDING IMAGES TO YOUR HTML FORMAT:

Alright! Adding images to your fic is great! Especially if you want to feature some fanart and you want everyone to see it etc. I personally use this feature to add text dividers. Text dividers is what separates my text, for example, if I’m going from one POV to another—I can add a text divider. I’m going to teach you how to add images to your HTML format since it’s a bit complex and takes a little trial and error—especially when it comes to sizing.

 Alright so the coding you’re going to use here is this:

<img src="

that is:

<img SPACE src= QUOTATION MARK ( “ )

After that we’re going to use a website that can convert our images into a link:

Postimages.org!: Website Link.

Here is where you can choose an image, the website will convert it and then you can copy the link of your image and paste it to your code:

After converting your image of choice—you’re going to copy the direct link.

Now, once you have copied the direct link you will go back to your coding and paste it after the quotation mark. It should look like this:

<img src=“https://i.postimg.cc/kGfmV3hQ/C6-CF33-E3-8-D9-E-4-E92-B63-F-1-EE2-B5-FA00-AF.jpg" alt="

and make sure you end it with another quotation mark. 

Here is the next set of coding:

alt=“

that is:

alt= QUOTATION MARK ( “ )

Then:

width=“100%” (or whatever number you want to put, here I will just put 100)

that is:

width= QUOTATION ( “ ) 100% QUOTATION MARK ( “ )

height=“50%” (or whatever number you want to put, here I will just put 50%)

that is: 

height= QUOTATION MARK ( “ ) 50% QUOTATION MARK ( “ )

Your code should now look like this:

<img src=“https://i.postimg.cc/kGfmV3hQ/C6-CF33-E3-8-D9-E-4-E92-B63-F-1-EE2-B5-FA00-AF.jpg"alt=“”width=“100%”height=“50%”

Now you’re going to end the code like this:

/> </p>

that is:

/> SPACE </p>

Now your official image link should look like this:

<img src=“https://i.postimg.cc/kGfmV3hQ/C6-CF33-E3-8-D9-E-4-E92-B63-F-1-EE2-B5-FA00-AF.jpg"alt=“width=“100%”height=“50%”/> </p> 

If you select “Preview,” in your HTML editor you can see your image in that window and you can adjust the sizing of the image as much as you like. My image looks something like this when I go to preview:

This sizing is pretty great for fanart sizes. You can use this to also make text dividers but in smaller sizes. Like this:

(I have to fix the spacing but you know what I’m trying to get at lollll)

my text dividers look like that and I use a sizing of 30% for both my width and height. You’d simply use the same steps as the first image. Just change the sizings on width and height and adjust it to a much smaller image so it can appear as a text divider. These images are also set to “center” immediately. I don’t know the the coding to make images not centered(if you want your image on the right/left sides) but if I find them all add them to this guide. 

Now I don’t really have a whole lot of tips and tricks but some tips I can give you if you are someone trying to gain some attention to your story.

1). Within your fandom pay attention to which fanfic gets the most hits and look at their concepts/tags. Now I pride myself on originality and you should too but sometimes just seeing what tags/concepts ppl use can give you an idea of what readers are trying to read. 

I find that in the VLD fandom, the top grossing ship is Klance therefore if I make a fic with them as my main ship, I know I can except some hits. Ships alone can make readers click on your stories. If you write an uncommon ship, it’s likely you won’t really get a lot of hits but honestly you should write for your own enjoyment and not for the hits. This is coming from a person who makes fanfics that I MYSELF want to read and anyone else reading it is reading my own indulgence lmaoooo. 

2). Look at concepts. 

Think of yourself as a reader and not a writer when looking at concepts. What are concepts YOU seek out. This could be anything from smut to explicit content. To enemies to lovers, to murder and violence. Fantasy AUs and Touch of Life AUs. Me personally—I always seek out stories that have explicit content, primarily smut cuz I know if the story has smut sometimes the story is written to my unhealthy standards of mature content/explicit content. I also look for uncommon concepts, violence, and my favorite concept is anything with crime.

Those are my preferences as a reader and if you are a writer and writing content that you yourself would like to see in a fanfic, there’s a chance other people like those same concepts too. If you don’t know what concepts you’d like to write or what concepts are out there—look at your favorite fic writers and what concepts they write as a reference. You can also just sit yourself down, in front of a google doc, and think about a fanfic you would like to scroll by and think, “OOO That’s def something I wanna read/add to my bookmarks.” 

3). Now, I don’t use this tip/trick that often (cuz again, I don’t really care THAT much about hits/kudos etc.) but it is daunting when you put so much time in a fic and it’s not getting as much hits/kudos as you thought it would. If you think it’s a fic worthy of some attention and you’d like to get your name out there more than use this tip/trick:

AO3 functions in a way where if you publish a fanfic to your designated fandom, it’d appear on the front page of that fandom tag. This is where readers will scroll through and find fanfics they want to read. Since there is so many people who publish their fics daily everywhere in the world—your fic won’t stay on the front page for a long time. Unless it’s a fic with A LOT of hits (I only really see this in the BTS fandom tag, all stories with thousands of hits are on that front page lol) So here is a little secret way to keep your fic on the front page for a much longer time:

Go to your latest chapter on any of your stories or any story in general. 

In order to get your story on the front page again, you’d need to copy everything in this chapter. I’m talking about summary, notes, and the entire written chapter. I suggest separating your chapter summary/notes in one google doc and the chapter text in the work section in a different google doc. Mainly cuz it’s easier to use the

SHIFT+CMD+A (MAC)

SHIFT+ALT+A (Windows)

keys. So go ahead and copy everything, paste them to their separate google docs and delete that entire chapter.

Yes. You heard me. Delete the chapter.

It physically hurts me to do this, especially if something goes wrong. Good thing I keep a copy of all my work—AND YOU SHOULD TOO WTH. 

Anyway, go ahead and delete the chapter and then go ahead to your story Edit Work and add a new chapter where you’d be re-publishing that specific chapter.

Step 1: Saving Chap Summary/Notes

Step Two: Saving Chapter 10:

Step 3: Deleting Chapter/Latest Chapter on AO3:

(As you can see above, I only have 9 chapters when originally I had 10)

Step 4: Re-Publication:

Step 5: Publication/Post: 

You can also take your time and preview it to see if everything looks good.

As you can see my chapter is posted and it looks good! Now if you click on your fandom tag underneath your fic title—it’d take you to the front page of the list of fics posted. You should be able to see your fic on the front page.

As you can see, my fic is the very first one on the list of fics and on the front page of my fandom fic tag. 

Some things to keep in mind: 

1). While this is extremely helpful in getting people to click on your fic since your fic is on the front page, the downside of using this tip/trick is the fact that the original date you published this chapter will change. So let’s say you published your fic in the summer of 2020 and have long since finished the story and decide to use this trick and republish your work again in order to get on the front page—the date will instead be 2021 on whatever season or month you decide to republish. It feels kind of weird to republish a chapter and/or story when you’ve finished it a long time ago and it will give an impression to readers that you have only JUST finished the book. Now, if the readers decide to follow your social media and know that you had actually finished the series a long ass time ago—then it’d be written off as you editing/revamping the chapter.

In a lot of cases, it’s just you editing/revamping a chapter in the case that the chapter didn’t upload right etc.

2). Depending on your fandom: this tip/trick might not entirely work. While I’m in the VLD fandom and it’s fairly easy to appear on the front page again—I’m also in the BTS fandom and I find that the process is extremely different. While re-publishing my story in the VLD fandom tag I can easily get my story back on the front page—I cannot say the same for my BTS fandom tag primarily because BTS fics are not sought after by how recent fics have been published but by the amount of hits your fic has. The larger amount of hits you have on your BTS fics—the greater your chances are staying on the front page of the BTS fandom tag list. Since my BTS fic has a good amount of hits (499-500) I appeared on the front page but for a very short period of time. Sometimes that’s enough to garner the attention of 1 or 2 readers. And that’s enough for me.

3). Again, I don’t use this tip/trick often (mostly a trick honestly lol it kinda feels like cheating the system a bit) and you should use this sparingly. Not so much to NOT give your fics the attention you want them to have but on your mental health. Numbers are numbers at the end of the day and it matters more to actually like the stories you write and reach out to a few people instead of thousands upon thousands who probably don’t even interact with you as an author. Start small and build your way up. It’s more genuine that way and you can learn how to maneuver things smoothly when you start off small. That and you have more room to make mistakes and get the chance to learn from them instead of receiving hate for them early on.

Welp! That is all for my AO3 guide. I’m sure I’ll come across another tip or trick or SOMETHING and add it here lolll. I’m still fairly new on ao3 (in terms of publishing my own work) and I’m bound to run into errors etc. But I hope this was helpful for you. I really wish there was a guide like this one (updated to at least 2019 or something cuz LORD all the articles/blogs I came across were old as shit and I didn’t even know if their tips/information were still relevant to the new ao3 format etc) So at least I did a service to younger Seph a year or two ago trying to navigate ao3. 

If you found this helpful, I also have a tumblr guide on how to customize/navigate tumblr and all things tumblr (in terms of adding links to your bio, how to make a masterlist etc) so if you’d like to see/read that, head on over here. I’ll also be making youtube videos on both these guides in the near future, just for the peeps that need that extra visual and who don’t want to read through this VERY long guide. 

If you like this or me, check out some of my work! I am a fanfic writer—I write both anime and BTS content ( primarily VLD(Voltron) fics but I do plan on writing something for Death Note & Inuyasha (cuz there isn’t enough SangoXMiroku content and that’s a crime in of itself) I also plan to write for the MHA fandom soon too! If that’s something you’re interested in head on over to my Masterlist.

Until my next guide!

[yanderecandystore]

Can we get some content for how the Android darling and Ms. Bright would meet?

In this [🍰🍑🤖] we get a glimpse of what their relationship is like and a lil mention of how things have worked out- But let's see how it played out from the a.is perspective.

Hi boo, I hope you're doing great, I'm very sorry for the long ass waiting- Sadly I may warn y'all that I have gone through many stages while writing this: h 0 r ny, corny, and angsty. This is actually pretty heavy, as I tried pulling some of the loose threads that I left all over Ingrid's posts (I still need to give her an bio ;-; I'm sorry y'all-)

So this is all over the place, since this is a fic I've been writing for a long time.

Also I know jackshit about robotics, and I think this fic shows how much I don't know anything XD

TW: Family issues related to: LGBTQ identity // very angsty // Ingrid is very rude, but she also struggles a lot during this- // socially distant // socially awkward // being misinterpreted/having a hard time socializing //

Tags: angy sad lady // ownership dynamic // this is basically the reader reminiscing about the past (continuing it from where Happy Lies left off) // the reader is low-key a simp at times- // master x servant dynamic, possessive behavior and a lot of yelling // just angsty really, I'm so sorry //

🍭꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖♡🍮꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖♡🍰꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖♡🍮꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖🍭

Happy birthday, mistress [Yandere!CEO OC x A.I!Reader - Short Fanfiction]

3,763 words

Whenever you remember your first day of activation, or more accurately your first day of actually being able to be activated for more than five seconds (you can't remember it fully, but you're aware that because of your complex design, you had passed through a lot of prototype phases before you could properly function-), you almost feel an odd sense of nostalgia, maybe due to the fact it was indeed the most important day of your existence as an android.

It was Ms.Bright's nineteenth birthday, when she would be handed the corporation that has been passed down by generations. And not only would she inherit the company, but also a beautifully designed a.i assistant made to help Ms.Bright's every need. You were made to be an easy communication center from Ms.Bright to the employees, as Ms.Bright's had a hard time communicating with people and expressing herself.

At first, she didn't seem to enjoy the idea very much- It was clear that she considered you to be quite annoying and useless. And- Well- It did hurt at first, after all, you were built to help her and be her friend no matter what.

So hearing her be mean towards you was… Very tough at first. Your first day as her assistant wasn't easy, you ended up getting in her way most of the time- And since she also didn't know exactly what she was doing, she got overwhelmed by so many things going down in one single day.

Ingrid has always dreamed of being in power of the company- Actually, now that you know her a little more- You can positively say she was probably just stressed at having to deal with so many responsibilities so suddenly, even if it has been her lifelong wish to inherit the company.

And even if it seems impossible at times, she would still come back strong and find a way to deal with it. That's something you really admire about her.

Your first week on the job was basically just trying to get accustomed and trying to learn everything you needed to do- While also trying to understand Ms.Bright as best as you could. Now… You weren't built to say this- And- And of course you don't think like this anymore, but…. You used to think she was really mean.

Frightening, even.

Now that you're all alone waiting for her to get back from work, you can't help but feel like replaying those moments inside your head.

"{... Replaying recorded conversation n°000050: "My second day at work"...}"

" Oh, what are you doing here?"

" Morning Ms.Bright! I-I was rechecking the files from yesterday and I was trying my best to reorganize them, a-after the incident-"

" The "incident" that you caused yesterday?"

" Well, yes, of course! I wanted to fix things up before you came back, I'm really sorry for being so reckless, I promise I won't do it again, I was just-"

"It 's fine. You don't need to worry about it."

" But… But I thought-"

" The files you had messed with weren't really all that important, and besides I'm sure there are copies all around the place. Sigh, who am I kidding- In reality, I should be the one apologizing for my behavior yesterday."

"...."

" I recognize that I shouldn't have treated you the way that I did, in a sense it's my fault you lost those files in the first place."

" … Well, it's nothing really mistress, I'm the one who should-"

" No, don't even finish it. You shouldn't have to apologize and shouldn't have spent the night wasting your battery on this-"

"...."

".... You know what, do whatever- I sometimes forget that you are… Nevermind, come back to my office as soon as you can."

"{... End of recorded conversation n°000.000.050… }"

You never knew what she was going to say, but you remember not being able to ask her that- As you were afraid of her potentially getting mad at you for asking too many questions. She always seemed so ruthless at times.

You remember the time you went to a family event with her, a family party, where an incident happened and she was absolutely livid. Your relationship with her wasn't so pretty at the time, you don't know why but- Your mistress didn't seem to trust you as much as you wish she did at the time.

"{... Replaying recorded conversation n°000.001.588: "First party ever- And it was very unpleasant" ...}"

" What's the matter with you?! Why can't you follow simple instructions- I told you to stay here and not mess around."

" I'm. So. Sorry. Mistress-"

" Even your vocal module is broken- Who told you to enter that pool in the first place?? You can't tell me you did something so stupid all on your own."

" I. Slipped.-"

" Am I a joke to you? I've said tell me who gave you the order to jump in the goddamn pool while everyone else was inside- Don't you dare start lying to me."

" … One of the. Party guests. Lost something. Inside the water. I tried helping them. But I started to. Malfunction."

" … Sigh, okay. Continue."

" It wasn't. Their fault. I did it. On my own. I was just- Trying. To help."

" By throwing yourself inside a pool when you're well aware of the damage the water can cause to your inner systems?!"

" I'm sorry!"

" You could have- No, you SHOULD have called someone else to help you, I can't believe it- You could have drowned in there and I wouldn't even be aware of that since I was inside the house, [Y/n]!"

" …. But Ms.Bright. I can't drown-"

" Yeah, yeah- I know you-... I know you can't drown."

" … Listen, you could have still gotten yourself hurt okay? You could have permanently damaged your systems, and if I wasn't made aware of what happened, I wouldn't have been able to take you out of the water in time, okay?"

"... Sigh, I just realized how much I have been yelling, everyone is probably scared now that I've made such a scandal. This… Isn't really a new thing to me, I'm accustomed to ruining parties like this. I'll have to apologise later to everyone. [Y/n], please just- When I ask you to stay still, please listen to me. I was worried about you."

"...."

"{... End of recorded conversation n°000.001.588 ...}"

You can't deny it- Whenever she was truly irritated she could make any person next to her feel threatened, though the more you look at your recordings, you feel like she doesn't really want to be feared like this. Respected? Absolutely. Feared? Not ideal, but she takes it anyway.

You have a couple of different recordings here and there, your memories are separated into sections. You have recordings of events in several formats: pictures, videos, texts and audio recordings. Though the one you use the most is audio recordings, since videos take a very big space inside your mind, and pictures need context, otherwise they wouldn't be considered memories, right?

You can't have many memories at a time because most of your mind is supposed to be used to store the company's files, so you do have a couple of memories that you have deleted to make space for the Bright Vision's more secret/personal documents. Since Ingrid took you home yesterday, and said you won't be going to work for the company anymore, then maybe you can find somewhere else to store those files so you can make space for new memories with Ms.Bright.

First, you'll need to recheck some of your own memories to see if they're worth holding onto. There is probably a lot of junk in there that you won't be needing anymore, which can be a bit tedious and take some time, but you clearly have enough time on your hands to do so, considering how she is not home and- Well, you're pretty bored, you already done everything that she asked you to do.

Honestly, she gave such small tasks today, she probably didn't plan to change your work environment so suddenly.

After about an hour of research through your data you have realized that even if you have way too many files, it's kinda hard to delete them. At first you didn't mind the idea of deleting certain stuff, but now it feels a bit sad to erase parts of your memory, you just had so many good times and- And even the bad times are worth remembering, right?

It has been an hour of you just standing there, trying your best to not delete anything important while also revising each recording you have. Most files are a bit out of order, numerically speaking, but you don't mind that too much cause- Well, you can always reorganize them later.

… You never actually do that, but you like to think that one day you will, though.

After so many recordings of conversations, you found one who didn't seem to really belong in your head. You see, you always title every single thing inside your personal archives so that it doesn't get mixed with other files- All of your memories have a specific title so that you can have an idea of which is which.

The thing is- You don't remember this file, the title seems off, and it seems like it's incomplete. Oddly broken. Still, you decided to take a listen and try to remember what happened in this event.

"{... Replaying recorded conversation n°000.068.xxx: "I yell too much" ...}"

"...."

"...."

"...."

This is a very silent audio, there seems to be some background noise happening, but you can't make out what's happening. This audio sounds distorted, edited maybe. Someone tried messing with your memories but they weren't able to completely erase this file.

Maybe they were inexperienced at the time.

"...."

"...."

"...."

You think you heard something, it sounded closer to you- It sounded like someone possibly sitting down next to you. You don't know who it is, or what it is

"...."

".... I'm such a mess. Why am I doing this? Why does this feels so-"

"...."

It seems like someone is speaking, but you're not speaking back. Even in this heavily edited audio, you can still make out what sounds to be a feminine voice.

".... I'm sorry for, well, using you this way. It feels- So, so weird."

"...."

".... I just want… No, I need to vent to you for a while, even if you won't remember what I'm going to say."

This audio gives you an odd sensation. You think you're starting to recognize who this is- But then again, who else could it be, if not Ms.Bright herself?

" I never did this before, with something so- Human like- With something so human looking. I used to record my thoughts on my phone but I thought I would never need to vent with an object before- But here I am! Making a fool of myself…"

"...."

The speaker, who you assume to be Ingrid, seems to be having a lot of trouble speaking, her voice is cracking and her breathing seems uneven. She sounds out of breath, and she takes a lot of pauses to be able to speak her mind.

"...."

".... I have…. Thought about opening myself in this way because- Because I have no one else to listen to it, and I guess I can only blame myself for it. I know I'm difficult, I know I'm rude and I know I come across as a tyrant to everyone else- I- I really don't know what 's wrong with me, okay?!"

" Years, and years, and years of training, of studying, of planning to become the very next owner of this corporation as it's already not only a job but also a very painful family tradition that I felt proud of! That I gave everything that I could to be part of! I remember wanting this so bad, I remember how I used to daydream about this stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid tradition when I was a little kid who just wanted to do more, to be more!"

".… I almost lost all of this. 19 years of my life that were threatened to be thrown in the trash just because I- Because I'm not his son??! Because I- I'm not his only "son" anymore??.... Who said I ever was- Who said I ever was his son…?"

".... I- I know all about the stupid, awful and extremely unnecessary tradition of passing the leadership from father to son, and to this very day- inside the same office all of my predecessors had went through- I still think that tradition is garbage. I always thought I wouldn't make it here, I always thought something would stop me from being the next face of Bright Vision."

".... I can't tell- If I always knew about this- I can't even imagine how I knew this considering the dumb kid that I was, but…"

".... I'm his daughter. I'm Mr.Bright's only daughter, and the only possible heir to this twisted company."

" The people outside think our only focus it's on robotics and technology of all kinds. I wish I could go back to thinking that too, it would have been so much simpler that way."

" After a very long fight about my rights as the heir to this- Company. My father thought it would be wise to move to the countryside. Far away from all of this. And to be fair, I was- So, so mad at him that I thought that him moving away from here and letting me be would be better, but every now and then I- I miss him. I miss him so much…."

"He sent me a birthday present today. After three years of absolute silence he sends me flowers and- And a gift card containing his number… And I- Called him despite everything, and even so to this day he can't even say my name- IT'S BEEN THREE YEARS AFTER HE LEFT ME ALL ALONE WITH THIS CURSED BUSINESS AND HE STILL CAN'T FUCKING. SAY. MY. NAME."

You felt scared at the sudden yelling, even if her voice was progressively getting more aggressive and louder, you still got caught up by the sudden yelling.

".... I'm- A mess- I know that now."

You can't understand what's going on, but it sounds like she started laughing… Or maybe crying? Probably both.

".... I'm just terrible at this. I always was, weren't I? I'm just terrible at these types of interactions- Maybe all of them! I just don't understand how to- How to do it?? I don't know anymore…."

".... That's why I have you, in the first place, isn't it?"

" I had such an awful time expressing myself that they gave me an overpriced doll to do it for me. When I first heard about this three years ago, I- I've felt so fucking pitiful."

" Can you imagine it? The CEO of such a big corporation is so difficult to deal with that she needs an overly glorified doll that can translate her words to the other employees! An a.i created just to help me, an absolute idiot!"

".... I've felt so angry at them- I felt so angry at him for having to build a robot just to be a comfort pet to the stressful work that I would have to do for the rest of my position as owner of Bright Vision Corp, and I was mad at you! You pissed me off to no end, and I- I just couldn't help but be frustrated at you, not for being in my way, but for being an reminder that I'm awful at this-"

"...."

Her sobs stopped her from continuing that sentence.

".... I've treated you so unfairly because of this. I- I made sure that whenever you looked at me you would feel terrified of me because that's the only way I thought I could be respected, that's the only way I thought you would listen to me, and yet you never did…. You weren't built to follow my every order perfectly, you were made to be literally my only friend, after 22 years, here you are- The only person that can get me isn't even an actual person-"

"..... And I forget this…! I forget this every time I look at your eyes, I forget how robotic you are whenever I see you helping others not because you were told to, but just because you thought you could."

"...."

".... I always forget that you're supposed to be just another robot… He really did think about everything when designing you."

".... I always catch myself being awful towards you, being- Being excessively rude, not because of my way of talking but because of my own petty feelings towards you as my assistant… As my friend, as my android, as my-"

"...."

"..... I'm so sorry for being like this, you don't deserve to have someone who is constantly being mean towards you be considered your boss- Your boss, your friend- ...Sigh, even your owner…"

" I'm sorry [Y/n], I'm really, really sorry- But it doesn't matter how many times I say that- I don't know if I can ever make it up to you. Words won't heal any wounds, they never did."

"...."

".... But maybe actions will."

"...."

" I'll stop being so harsh on you, you really don't deserve this- I was feeling weird about using your recording system to vent like this, but now that I think about it I have been using you as a venting mechanism since the day we met……. I'm- I'm so goddamn awful."

"...."

"...."

" "How can someone so in love be so cruel?".... Would you be able to answer me if you were conscious?.... I don't think you would, no one has been able to tell me the right answer yet."

".... I hope I can be better- I will be better."

"...."

" I just need to remember how to delete this file before you wake up- I hope I can do that. End recording."

"{... End of recorded conversation n°000.068.xxx …}

………….

It took you about an hour or so to be able to process what you have just listened to. And even then, you weren't able to fully comprehend what happened.

Ms.Bright- No, Ingrid- Ingrid has used your recording system while you were out, she probably tried deleting the file but because she was inexperienced with your kind of technology, she decided to just edit it and try to make it unlistenable.

It was- Barely audible but you still got to understand some of it.

Did she- Did she forget to completely erase it? Did she forget entirely??? You're not sure.

You don't know why but a sudden wave of- Something- Something feels so odd about this-

You don't know how to respond really. You don't feel mad about her ranting to you, you don't even feel bad about her ranting to you while you weren't aware- You feel bad, but not because of her but because of the emotional turmoil she has been hiding from you.

Should you do something? Should you say something?? How do you even- You don't know how respond to this-

You're programmed to comfort her, yet- This file is already old, and she didn't want you to remember this so maybe it won't be the best idea to bring it up, but what can you do??!

Maybe you just need to rethink this through, maybe you should listen to audio again, and try to figure out what's the best way to help her out when she comes back.

You're honestly baffled at the idea that someone like her had so much to confess to- You probably shouldn't have seen her as an unstoppable goddess in the first place, but then again- Even after hearing her open herself, even after listening to her insecurities- Your opinion of her hasn't changed.

She was holding this for so long, no wonder she always seems on edge.

She 's only human. Yet you never really saw her as just that.

She was always so much larger than you, so much stronger than what your fabricated body was, and she always sounded so much smarter and- And she was just always so… Terrifyingly beautiful to you.

Ingrid Bright was always considered a very good looking individual, but no one ever considered her to be much else because of her way of speaking to others (which may sound rude and occasionally condescending, causing others to avoid her as much as they could), but you always thought she was so much more than that-

It's hard to even explain it really, ever since you met you have started to understand the concept of how beauty and fear can mix together, you find her to be so beautiful, yet her demeanor and stature makes you feel afraid of her for some reason- And even worse than that, the fear she may unconsciously bring you makes her seem more beautiful in your eyes.

You shouldn't think of her as scary or frightening, she is your boss, your master and your owner, there is no reason for why you should feel this way towards her- But then again, there is no reason for you to even feel in the first place, you were just built to do so.

You don't think she means harm to anyone, after getting to know her you realize why her behavior can be misinterpreted as mean and scary- Ms.Bright always had a hard time socializing with others, even her family had a hard time understanding her, so maybe that's why she grew to have such a tough exterior.

As someone that was built to make the communication between CEO and employees easier, you've had to learn to understand her to be able to help others understand her as well, and vice versa. It wasn't easy, and you wouldn't say that you know her completely well- But you feel proud of the work you have done so far, you're her loyal companion but more importantly a friend.

Funny how much you learned not only about her, the employees, or even the business of the company- But also about humans in general in these five years of working for her, it makes you feel more whole when you remember how much you have achieved.

You hope you can somehow help her right now, and to help her from here on out. You decide to wait for her and possibly talk about how she feels and how she deals with said feelings. Hopefully all ends well.

🍭꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖♡🍮꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖♡🍰꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖♡🍮꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖🍭

Sorry for the loose ending! I was feeling very tired ;-; but if anyone wants it I could totally make a second chapter with a better ending.

🍭꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖♡🍮꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖♡🍰꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖♡🍮꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖🍭

[mvrtaiswriting]

Your writing is so beautifully done! I feel like you really capture your characters’ personalities. Would you consider writing a scenario where reader was part of the Crusaders and is reconnecting with part4!Jotaro after his recent divorce. It’s awkward dating at first, but Joot’s heart melts every time he sees reader and Jolyne getting along so well.

Are you even real? - Jotaro Kujo.

HELLO HELLO HELLO and thank you so much for waiting so long! Writer’s block has been a pain BUT this one actually carried me away and helped me get through it.. so thank you for requesting it! Gotta say it: timeline of jojo’s event is not accurate, but it does include everything you asked for!! I don’t wanna bother you anymore so please enjoy! I hope this meets your expectations!! 

Neutral reader x Jotaro Kujoh.

Jojo’s bizzare adventures: Diamond Is Unbreakable & Stardust Crusaders

Timeline of Jojo’s events (mostly jotaro’s fatherhood) is a bit bizzare

SFW

Trigger warning: usual jojo’s violence

Words Count: 2631

Song suggestion: Are you even real? by James Blake

Hi! Are you a new reader? Check my masterlist for more content!

Please feel free to reblog or leave a comment :) help me support my art (it’s free!),

© bearing in mind everything I post/write is my intellectual property so please don’t steal/copy and paste and post it as yours.

Jotaro was about to throw what would have been his last punch to Kira when he was interrupted by the manifestation of a familiar stand. Was he hallucinating? Did he lose too much blood to imagine things now? While he asked himself this questions, resting his back against the wall trying to preserve the few energies he had left in his body, he looked around looking for the owner of the stand that just came to his rescue. His eyes scanned meticulously the area; he was sure you weren’t far – of course, if all of it just wasn’t a massive joke made by his tired mind.

But you were there – you were really there. And you were beating up Kira so bad, making it look so easy. He widened his eyes open, forcing himself to remain conscious. Josuke would have arrived in matters of minutes and he would have cured all of his injuries.

Jotaro closed his eyes, and the next thing he saw was you and Josuke leaning over him. You smiled when you noticed he was regained energy and health, looking into his beautiful aquamarine eyes for some seconds. You really missed them, you missed him.

“Getting old?” you said laughing, offering him a hand to help him stand up. He shook his head while a soft, almost imperceptible smile formed on his lips as he fixed his hat onto his head as per usual.

“What are you doing here?” he said, opening his arms and implicitly inviting you into a hug.

You smiled, hugging him tight. You guys hadn’t seen each other in so long, and being in each other’s arms just felt like coming home.

“Guess this is your way to say ‘thank you for saving my ass, nice to see you again!’” you said laughing.

Behind you, Josuke’s and his friends’ all had riddled expressions on their faces. Seeing Jotaro so outgoing surely was something unexpected – so much that Kira running away didn’t seem to matter at all.

Jotaro nodded at your words, breaking up from the hug and taking a good minute to look at you. He still was much taller than you, and you didn’t seem to have aged a bit. You were as beautiful as he remembered you. What he didn’t remember was all the complicated, little emotions he felt every time he was next to you that were now coming back to surface. You always held a special place in his heart. You two always shared a particular bond that never got the chance to really develop. During the crusaders days, you were too busy fighting and looking for Dio to get involved into emotional relationships; and following the final battle, after losing Kakyion, Avdol and Iggy, Jotaro didn’t think it was appropriate to actually confess you his feelings. All of you were mourning the deaths of your companions, and although Kakyion would have encouraged Jotaro to actually tell you about how he felt, in that moment, it just didn’t feel right. So he let you go, and everyone just returned to their own lives. He had moved on since then or at least he tried to do so; he was now a father with a failed marriage, but he never really forgot you. Afterall, no one ever forgets their first love.

“Joseph called me a week ago. I’m sorry I came late but it was the best I could do!” You answered Jotaro’s previous question. “He told me you guys needed a hand and that my degree in criminology would have been useful. He explained everything to me and.. here I am!” you continued.

Jotaro’s expression seemed surprised. He didn’t know his grandfather was still in contact with you. At first, he started to ask himself why didn’t Joseph tell him years before. He could have had a chance with you – he would have followed you wherever you were. His jiji knew what he felt towards you, how could he just stay silent? Those questions were quickly followed by doubts: what was Joseph planning? Did he call you because they really needed you there or because he was just trying to help Jotaro overcome his divorce and find someone to help him with Jolyne? All these doubts clouded Jotaro’s mind, leaving him silent.

After you were introduced to everyone, you and the rest of the guys went to a coffee bar to discuss how  investigations would have been organised and what methods would have been more successful in finding Kira’s new identity.

Jotaro kept his eyes locked on you while you professionally explained to Rohan, Koichi and the rest of the boys what to do. A part of him was busy studying every little detail of your face. How you still did the same facial expression you did 10 years before, how your smile still managed to lighten up everything around you. It was so strange how much time passed by, how many things changed during these years; yet  things stayed the same between the two of you. He still felt the same way he did when he was just a boy, you guys still related to each other the same way you did when you travelled around the world.

Jotaro’s posture was much more relaxed now that you were around. His face had a more relaxed expression, and you gladly found out that he became a bit more talkative than he was in his younger days.

Joseph found you a room in the same Hotel where him and Jotaro where staying in while in Morio-cho, leading the two of you to spend an incredible amount of time together.

As time passed, you and Jotaro grew closer and closer. You quickly learned about his love life and that he became a marine biologist, something you would have never expected from him. He was very curious about your life too: he was eager to know what happened to you during those years – he wasn’t able to find you when he tried, and now that you were right in front of him, he wanted to make the best out of the time he got to spend with you. He wanted to know if the person he always loved was taken, and what happened to them during all that time. However, he never directly asked you any private question. He learned that you had an important relationship at a certain point, which broke your heart and made you afraid of love, but only because you and Joseph talked about it.

He thought it was ironic; he had a similar experience.

Searching for Kira’s new identity was tiring. You were all doing your best, and were using every resource you could. You in particular were really involved with the whole research project– it was the main reason why you were there. Every time there were news, whether they were minor or not, you were always the first one to be notified.

You were busy examining some of your notes and the pictures Rohan took when Jotaro knocked on your door. You sent your stand over to open the door, focusing on your studies. It was only when you smelled Jotaro’s sweet perfume filling the room that you finally lifted your eyes up from the books and the various pics in front of you. You greeted Jotaro with a weak smile, as he sat down next to you.

“Thought you could use some coffee.” He said, leaving a fuming cup in front of you.

You thanked him, and proceeded to take a long sip from the cup.

“How is it going?” he asked.

You sighed, running an hand through your hair as if that gesture could help you reorganise your thoughts. You explained everything to him, ranting a bit about how stressing the whole situation felt. Every time you thought you got closer to finding Kira, something happened that forced you to start all over again. He wasn’t like every other serial killer you studied about; he was always a step ahead of everyone.

Jotaro listened carefully to your words, nodding sometimes to let you know that he was really paying attention to what you were saying. Once you finished, he looked a bit perplexed and offered you his insight regarding the whole situations. You trusted his words more than anyone else’s – you knew he had great analytical skills, you would have trusted him with your life. Something you already did in the past.

The two of you spent the night together, smoking some cigarettes while discussing about every possibility regarding Kira’s escape. He sat exactly next to you on the sofa, reading some documents given to you by the Speedwagon foundation when you tiredly rested your head on his shoulder.

This gesture made his muscles contract for a second, catching him out of guard. He turned to look at you, your eyes almost closed because of your tiredness. Without saying a word, Jotaro leaned his lips against your head, leaving a soft kiss on it before continuing reading his documents as if nothing happened. It wasn’t long until you fell asleep. When Jotaro noticed it, he wasn’t sure about moving. He didn’t want to wake you up, but he knew that wasn’t the most comfortable position for you to sleep in. He slowly lied on the sofa, letting you rest your head on his chest. He put his white coat on you, deciding to stay there for the night.

You woke up next to him the following morning, your bodies completely intertwined. You were confused, as you didn’t remember falling asleep. Also, you didn’t really want to bother Jotaro this much, and immediately felt bad about it. You slowly got up, leaving the beautiful man sleep on the sofa of your hotel room. After a quick shower, you headed towards the hotel’s canteen to buy some breakfast for both of you.

When you finally returned to your room, you saw Jotaro stretching up, standing tall in the middle of the room. “Morning” he whispered in a low, raspy voice.

Smiling as if you were a teenager in love, you replied and offered him a donut.

“I’m sorry for yesterday. You could have woken me up.” You said shyly, doing your best to avoid eye contact.

He hinted a small laugh, messing your hair with his hand.

“No need to apologise, silly. It’s fine, I fell asleep too.”

-

Days passed by, and you knew you were getting closer to find out Kira’s identity. Your days however, weren’t made up solely by studies, researches or fight. Most of the time you found yourself spending time with the Joestar’s family: you would usually have dinner with Josuke, Jotaro, Joseph and Josuke’s mum, spending quality time together and hearing funny anecdotes from Josuke and Joseph. You also had the chance to meet Jolyne a few times; Jotaro drove you out of city because he really cared about letting the two of you meet. And it was a good thing: you and jolyne relly got along with each other, almost as if you had been friends in a previous lifetime.

Although Jotaro was never vocal about it, he was important to him to see how  along you got with his family. He loved seeing you playing with Jolyne, and he knew how much you appreciated and respected Joseph. It was also nice to see you getting along with Josuke – both of you had a lively personality, and he grew affectionate towards you really quickly. Sometimes, Jotaro would find your bond a bit irritating – but he knew Josuke was only a 14 y/o boy. He was also conscious about how irrationally jealous he could become, so he never really spoke about it.

As time passed, Jotaro became more and more aware of his feelings towards you. He never forgot you and now every emotion he felt in the past was simply coming back.

 The two of you spent an awful amount of time together, always finding new excuses to do so. Whether it was to investigate over Kira, training to prepare for the final battle or simply visiting some new places, there wasn’t a moment when you weren’t with him; and although he felt incredible bad for thinking about it, Jotaro hoped to find Kira as late as possible.

He needed more time; more time to fully understand what was going on inside his mind and his heart, more time to find the right words to explain everything to you, more time to understand whether his feelings were reciprocated or not.

It was during the final battle with Kira that he finally had the responses he needed.

Seeing you covered in blood made his heart beat incredibly fast. For minutes that felt like an eternity he did not know what to do, how to act - something which was very unusual for him. Jotaro had always been the kind of person to think rapidly, without letting his emotions overwhelm him. But this time it was different. He left you and Josuke fighting alone against Kira for too much time and now the both of you were in danger. It was something he already experience before in Egypt, and he wasn’t willing to lose anyone else.  You kept one of Josuke’s arms around your shoulders to help him standing, the young boy still towering you even if his figure was arched over you. Both of you were covered in blood and with various injuries over your bodies. You were still able to stand on your feet, looking angrily at Kira who was grinning in response. Your breath was heavy and you didn’t have much strength left in your body, but when you saw Jotaro, you knew you had to hold on.

You gave him a quick look, his face covered with worry and fear. “I’ll cover your back but you'll have to be quick.” you said, summoning your powerful Stand once again. Jotaro understood your plan, and without losing anymore time he started walking towards you, becoming close enough to use Star Platinum against your enemy.

“Star Platinum. The World!” he said, stopping time and letting Kira have a taste of Star Platinum’s punches.

Before he let time flow again, he gently picked your body up in his arms and stepped far enough from the explosion Killer Queen would have caused moments later. Shielding you with his own body, time started to flow again. You looked at him smiling, gratefully crouching yourself onto his chest, trying your best to recover some energie and enjoying the warmth of his body.

“Thanks for always being my hero.”

Jotaro couldn’t help but smile hearing those words, shaking his head in response.

“I just returned you a favour.”, he added.

-

Two weeks passed by since the defeat of Yoshikage Kira.

You and Jotaro decided to stay in Morio-cho a bit longer than what you originally planned. The time spent together allowed you to discuss your mutual feelings and, after a long night of passion and love, you started dating.

It was awkward at first. You and Jotaro never really officialised your relationship; you just let things between you evolve naturally, preferring a physical love language over words – what united the two of you wasn’t something that could have been easily described. However, he eventually confessed you that he had loved you since your trip in Egypt, receiving a: “I did too, idiot.” in response.

As time went by, you and Jolyne managed to build a strong, beautiful bond – so much, she’d start to refer to you as a parental figure and nothing less. Jotaro loved seeing the two of you together; you were the people he loved the most, and he was happy his little daughter liked you as much as he always did.

[joyfulhopelox]

Right now i don’t know if i want to kiss you or shove you off this building

Part 1 | Part 2(end)

A/N: I have no words really, just i needed to get this off my chest and i wrote it so quickly that part 2 is probably going to be out by the end of the week.

genre: fluff (x100), University! au/ College!au

Copyrights @joyfulhopelox do NOT repost or reblog

Stealing is a crime please do not steal, i do not cross post anywhere else only Tumblr

Pairing: J-Hope x reader (College!AU/ University!AU)

Word count: 4,000 words

Warnings: i'm still bad at writing fluff but here we go (i cried a lot inside whilst writing it)

There are few times in someone’s life when they would have to rush out of the house in the middle of the night. Most times, it involved an emergency of some sorts.The usual A&E rush, the cravings rush and most important of them all, the all nighter in the library rush.

You have been debating for over an hour now if you should make a dash to the library. Your exhausted body screaming at you to just curl up into a ball and sleep- or cry, whichever came first. However your consciousness, and the fact that your anxiety was at an all time high, was telling you to just suck it up and go get your books from the library. That coupled with your approaching deadline. And to be honest you knew exactly what you would end up doing. After all, your grades could not afford to take a fall. Not worse than what they’ve dropped to now. Anymore and you would flunk the year completely.

But do you really need that book? Your brain tried it’s last card on you. You could technically just stay in, bury yourself in your blankets like the Michelin man, and write your essay that way. Sighing, you rubbed your tired eyes and got up grabbing your prized pen, the one that got you through your first and second year of exams, a couple of pieces of paper just in case, and your laptop. A trek to the library it is.

The spring air was doing a good job of waking you up. The light breeze, warm enough to not make you die of cold, but cold enough to cool down your tired flushed face. The 10 minutes it took to walk from your accommodation to the library was enough for you to steel yourself against an all nighter of studying.

What you had expected when you went in was anything but a packed library with students quietly studying. The noises of scratching pens and the rhythmic click-clacking of keyboards creating a mellow background noise. Some were dozing off, and you could not blame them, but holy hell could they not have done that at home? Okay, maybe you were judging, but could anyone blame you? You were desperate for a space and by the looks of the rows of heads between the shelves, there was a slim chance you would actually get a seat somewhere. If needed, you knew you could just crouch in between the shelves near the section that housed the maps, but you did not feel like inhaling dust and sporting a cramped leg for the rest of the night.

“Oh come on! This is a big library, there must be a seat somewhere” you whispered to yourself quietly, your eyes scanning the 3rd floor of the library. Aha! There. By the will of the gods, there was a seat, a lone corner at a table that was packed to the brim. You hastily made your way before anyone could spring out of nowhere and claim it, and slammed your butt down on the seat sighing in satisfaction. You’d made it. The first task done. Proud of yourself, you opened up your laptop and pulled the document you had been writing on. The bold letters at the top stating you NEEDED to get that specific book. A harsh reminder that the second task now would be even more difficult. Hunting for a book in this mammoth of a place. But what if you lost your spot? You needed your laptop to search for the book and to be honest you did not trust your laptop to not be stolen. You groaned to yourself, once again debating whether or not you needed the book

You finally decided that the book was non-negotiable and so you quickly grabbed your pen, with the promise to yourself that you would not get lost in the maze of shelves and interesting literature. Hastily writing a ‘will be back’ note, you slammed the pen down on top of the paper and rushed out of your seat.

The library atmosphere was quiet, despite the space being full of poor students who were rushing to meet a deadline or had exams coming up soon. Perusing the shelves, taking note of names that may interest you further on in your degree or even just as personal pleasure, you basked in the quietness and the dimness of the space. You loved the library at night, sure, but not when you were in a rush to finish a paper and not when exam and deadlines season pushed everyone and their mother to cram themselves in the space like sardines. Overall though, the space was dark and quiet just as you liked it.

Finally arriving at the area that was of interest to you, you stood in front of the row of shelves, a slow grin forming on your face. It was perfect, 4 rows of untouched literature. And you had all the time in the world.

Except...you didn’t. “Fuck” you cursed to yourself. You knew you did not have the time and you promised yourself you would not do this. Looking down at your watch, you let out another curse. “Fuck”. It had taken you half an hour to get here, the digital face of your watch showing 12.30am. “Oh man, I did it again” muttering to yourself, you turned your back towards the interesting titles that were calling your name and focused on the one book you actually needed.

Only to not find it on the shelf. Just your luck. “What am i supposed to do now?” dejectedly sighing you slowly made your way back to your seat. All you could think about was the missing book on the shelf.

How were you supposed to be finishing your paper now? Suddenly the quiet and calm atmosphere became gloomy and dark, this was not going very well for you. So lost in your thought you almost walked by your spot. Stopping right on time you looked to the side only to do a double take. It was not your spot anymore, the leather jacket as well as the mop of dark hair that could be seen occupying the seat was definitely not you. You double checked the area making sure you did not stray away again and somehow landed in the wrong spot but no. That was definitely the desk you had placed your note on.

It was just missing the note and seating another person now. Today was definitely not your day. The last thing you wanted to do at this time of the night, especially when you were in a hurry to finish and hand in your paper, was to be civil. But that was your seat. You refused to slouch in between the shelves and cram a seven thousand word paper tonight. You’ve done it enough times in the past for your bum and back to already be screaming at you in protest. Taking a deep breath in, you steeled yourself and approached the seat stealer.

The closer you got, the better the view of the seat stealer. Goddamn they were handsome. At least the side profile was something to enjoy looking at, but that did not change the fact that they had stolen your seat and were comfortably spread out onto the desk casually typing away at their laptop.

To top it all off, as if the scene was not enough to taunt your nerves, they were humming quietly to the beat that you could faintly hear coming from their headphones. And if you were to admit it to yourself, which you would not, they were very good at said humming.

“Uhm...excuse me” your voice cracked, having not been used for a couple of hours. You could not afford to seem meek in front of them, cute as hell and a great hummer be damned, they would not get the satisfaction of seeing you flustered. Truth be told, you hated confrontation. It was the last thing you resorted to under normal circumstances, let alone now when you were tired and stressed. Standing up straighter you tried again, “Excuse me!”

They made no move to acknowledge you or your shadow that cast now over the desk, as if you were both one and the same. Frustrated, you let out a huff and reached out to tap their shoulder. However, as if the fates had it out for you today, the humming seat stealer also came to life, moving his head towards your outstretched hand as they went to grab for their notebook and pen. That motion combined with yours caused a painful collision for the both of you. As it had not gotten a chance to change trajectory towards their shoulder, your unprepared hand bent awkwardly as it made contact with the side of the person’s head. A loud “oh fuck” chorused from the both of you, as both parties retracted as if burnt. Had you mentioned it was not your day?

“Is there a reason why I’m being assaulted at...1am on a Tuesday in the library?”. the seat stealer asked as he turned around to face you completely. He finally had a voice as well, and it was just as nice as the humming. Scrunching your nose in annoyance, you took a deep breath in prepared to tell him off. Not only was HE the one assaulting your hand but also your well deserved seat. Only to do the stereotypical double take. The mop of hair hid a very handsome face. High cheekbones and a pointed nose, your eyes trailed further down to his long neck and toned body. “Uh…” the stranger, seat stealer muttered, his hand going to scratch awkwardly at his long neck. Your brain agreed, “Uh…” you smartly copied snapping your eyes back at the face. You had clearly been caught staring judging by the smug smirk the person had on their face. Not only that but you had managed in a few minutes to smack a total stranger and display copious amounts of intelligence whilst trying your hand at a smart rebuttal to their question.

“So, now that I have your attention. Care to tell me why you are assaulting me at 1am on a Tuesday?” The tone of voice was less alarmed, more amused now. As if he clearly found your embarrassment entertaining.

“Assault? I have not assaulted you….you seat stealer!” You furiously exclaimed only to be interrupted by an equally stressed out fellow student“, Keep it down”. Only then did you become aware of the situation you are in. Three other rows of desks near the one you were currently at, and each of them seated a student who, like you, probably either had exams or deadlines. They were sleep deprived, hungry, and probably had too much caffeine running through their blood for their own good. And they were all focused on your form. To embarrass you further, the seat stealer even had the audacity to smugly smile and whisper “yeah, shhhhh.”

Getting redder by the minute, whether in mortification at being told off by the student a few rows away from you or from increasing anger at the seat stealer, you bent down, eyes narrowed “you….you...shush, and whilst you are at it, get out of my seat, you seat stealer”. You were unsure whether your shouted whisper would sound menacing enough to convey the mixture of emotions running through your veins at the moment. The stranger’s smug smile dropped instantly, a look of confusion replacing it, “seat stealer? What is that about?”

“You stole my seat!”

“I did not. The seat was free. If you passed by it, it was free and you didn’t sit down or leave your stuff on the chair; it doesn't automatically make it yours.” The stranger shrugged carefully, studying your expressions. What he saw must have really amused him because he started snickering to himself. Getting redder by the minute your rebuttal was weak, if only you’d have thought about it beforehand.

“I only have my laptop on me! And I left a note and my precious pen on the desk! A note which you have thrown out to steal my seat.” That is when it all went downhill. “you ‘strange seat stealer’!” the snickers coming from the handsome man got even more violent, to the point of you worrying about him choking- had you not been angry at him you would have asked if he was ok. Unfortunately, you were angry and nothing he did could have solved that.

The stranger abruptly stood up, so close to your face that you could see the numerous lashes that shadowed his dark eyes, amusement still plastered onto his face. He grabbed your elbow lightly, giving you a chance to break free if needed, but you were so stunned by his actions that all you could do was question how handsome his angular face was. “You’re cute, and that was a smart, if odd, alliteration you made there” He breathed, the action making a stray strand of hair blow away from your face, “but we’re making a scene”.

“Wh-” before you could process what he’d said, he trailed his hand from your elbow to your own hand and lightly gripped it with the intention of moving you away. The sudden jolt sprung your brain back to life and you tried fruitlessly to pull your hand away from his grip. Unfortunately, your brain decided to work a bit too late, as you were already past the rows of desks and shelves of books, closer to the lift lobby on that floor. “I am not making a scene, you are making a scene. Who are you to get me away from my seat not only once, but twice?!” Your feet firmly planted on the ground and finally got the stranger to stop. “I don’t know who you are” as he made a move to talk, you interrupted “and I don’t care, I saw that seat first, left a note on it to say I was going to be back and you stole it! I need the space!”

“Why?” The stranger calmly asked. His face showed no signs of anger or frustration, and it seemed like it belonged like that, serene and peaceful. And it made you wonder if anything could ever anger this man. Sure, you did not know him but you had been yelling in his face for the past minute. His demeanour and question threw you off so much so that your brain once again hiccuped.

“What do you mean why?”

“I mean why do you NEED the space, it’s clear that you do not have a bag or any belongings for that matter.” He gave you a once over to emphasize his words, his calm eyes lingering a bit too long on your form for your anger to continue overriding the flustered mess that you had become. “I- I do!” You don’t know why you needed to prove yourself to him, but it was a valid question he’d asked. So, you showed him the arm he was not holding, that carried a laptop. Realising he was still holding onto your hand, the sudden thought made you suddenly hot and clammy and before he could do anything about it you pulled it out of his warm hold.

Trying to ignore the loss of warmth the contact brought you, you looked away flustered.

“This cannot be happening. Look, I sat down there first, I put a note down because I needed to go find a book for my essay and….oh god...it’s due in like…..five hours”. Not looking at him the entire time you explained your situation to him, frustration and anxiety taking over your anger you missed the worried look he threw at your red face and the slight movement he made with his hands as if to grab your fretting ones. Instead when you looked back at him after a couple of moments of silence, what you saw was him studying the space behind you closely. “Hey! Are you even listening?” You got over your anger and tried to explain, (not that you needed to) somewhat logically to make this person understand why you needed the seat back and all they did was ignore you.

“Have you found the book that you needed?” He turned his attention back to you, a small smile forming onto his face. You did not know whether it was the fact that he completely ignored what you had said earlier, the untimely smile he gave you, or the fact that your heart sped up at the said smile, but your anger went through the roof once again.

“No! Now excuse me whilst I go reclaim my seat. If you want to waste time out here just staring at the walls, that is your issue, some of us have problems they need to fix.” Making a move to turn around you halted, realising you were going the wrong way. Mumbling to yourself you brushed past the guy and headed for the lifts. Calling the lift you tapped your foot impatiently. You could find another seat somewhere else, and if not, you were desperate enough to finish the paper that you would risk your own bottom and sit in between shelves. It felt like an eternity until the lift arrived and as soon as you got in you pressed the button for the floor above you thinking you may have some luck there. Surveying the corridor you noticed that the guy had left, and surprisingly a twinge of disappointment made you sigh. You just wanted to continue the argument, nothing else.

Right before the doors to the lift could close though a running form made its way to the lift sliding in between the door with swift grace, almost barreling into you. It took you a moment to realise it was the seat stealer with his bags packed up and his laptop in his hands. “What are you doing?” you hissed as you noticed he cancelled your floor and pressed the tower one instead. “Making up for stealing your seat”, he casually replied as he observed the numbers in the lift change.

“By not letting me go find another seat?” you huffed, “you could have just vacated the seat earlier and it would have all been fine.”

“But it wouldn’t have given me an excuse to talk to you for longer than three seconds would it? I’m Hoseok by the way.” He turned and smiled at you, the dimples in his cheeks becoming prominent. Rendered speechless by his forwardness, you did not know how to respond. So you settled onto clearing your throat and willing the blush that was taking over the apples of your cheeks away. Not meeting his eyes and refusing to grant him with the same grace and give him your name, you chose instead to ask where he was planning to take you. His response was just as cryptic as his previous one, “you will see”.

The rest of the way had been spent in silence, you having given up on trying to argue with the seat stealer...Hoseok. You repeated the name in your head multiple times, it suited him. For a brief second you wondered how it would sound if you said it out loud, but you squashed that thought away very quickly. You weren’t friends or even acquaintances so there was no reason for you to do so.

Whilst your brain was running a hundred miles an hour, throughout this time Hoseok took the time to observe you. Undeniably pretty, a smile made its way onto his face as he watched the different faces that you were pulling clearly lost deep in thought. You are cute. He knew that your argument couldn’t even be called as such. To his defense, the seat he had occupied had nothing on it. It was only when he ran back to gather his things and rush back to you that he noticed the note and the pen that were lying on the floor near the foot of the desk. In his haste he had grabbed both of them hoping that if his plan did not work he would have another excuse to approach you at some point. Now, those two items were weighing down in his pocket. Your name, which you had not freely given to him but it was written on the note, burnt into his mind. Maybe he did not need them after all. He would give you your pen back of course, but he would keep the note. It would be good memorabilia in the future.

The lift came to a halt and the doors opened .This time Hoseok did not even hesitate to grab your hand and lead you to your destination as he was afraid you would run away from him. Your heart thumping again at the gesture you let yourself be led by him too astonished to say anything. Who was this human being and why was he so friendly after you’d argued for the good part of an hour. Before you could panic about the time you had lost, Hoseok stopped abruptly.

‘We’re here’ he motioned with his free hand. The one that did not occupy yours.

Realising so you tried to inconspicuously free your hand from his, the astonishment at his behaviour quickly turned into amazement at the choice of space he was presenting you with. You were not a fan of the tower as heights were a bit of a stretch for you but the cosy alcove with window seats and the view of the night time sky it provided were enough to make you forget that. “Woah, how did you find this place?”’ You mumbled and quickly went to the window observing the lights of the city behind you. For how late it was, the scenery down below was surprisingly animated. Not getting a response you turned around thinking he had abandoned you there. What you were not expecting was the bashful look he was giving you whilst rubbing the back of his neck. “Uhm, by mistake really, I just happened to wander here one day and yeah...thought it was quiet enough and...well, I needed to make up for the fact that you did not have a seat in the end and you said you needed to finish your paper and…yeah’

Him reminding you of the paper that was now due in less than three hours made you jump in panic. Without thinking you threw your laptop onto the little table space that the alcove offered and sat down. Typing your password you opened the document you were working on. Whilst waiting for it to load you hesitated, bit your lip and looked up.

“Are you not going to sit down? I assume you also have work to do since you are here?” Without looking, you motioned to the seat directly across from you. This could end up being the best decision of your life or your worst... but you came to the conclusion you wouldn’t know unless you took a chance. Hearing him shift his feet and the feel of his knees close to yours as he sat down was enough to make you blush again. Here it goes, now or never.

‘I’m Y/N by the way’ you looked up in time to see him smile.

‘I know’

[whereisten]

Perfect.

A Winwin fic that’s part of our Halloween Series!

Summary: things get busy for one of the world’s leading scientist’s, Yuta, so he creates his own efficient and trustworthy personal assistant robot a.k.a Sicheng. But what happens when his perfect creation develops a flaw or two?

Pairing: Scientist!Yuta x Robot!Winwin

Genre: horror, smut, angst, a tinyyy little bit of fluff

Word Count: 6K

Warnings: dark themes, side piece Doyoung, Yuta has major God-complex syndrome, cursing, weapon usage, blood mention, smut: mlm (top!Yuta, bottom!doyoung, bottom!winwin, anal penetration, masturbation, oral sex, c*eampie.

(A/N): hey guys!! This is the first fic we are posting for our Halloween Series! Every day we will post a new fic for each member of NCT 2020 so be sure to stop by to see what dark and spookyyyyy stories we create. This is also my first time writing BL so I hope it’s good enough for a first try😂 I will do better next time. Thank you❤️🥺.

—————

“He’s perfect” Yuta looks upon his creation in the open glass box.

“Height. 5’11. Date of Birth. October 28th, 1997. Eye color. Dark Brown. Hair color. Dark Brown. Origin of parts. Wenzhou, China.”

“It looks so...real. It’s kinda creepy..” Doyoung, Yuta’s coworker, analyzed the texture of the robot’s face.

“Well, he wasn’t made to be pleasant, only efficient.”

“Yes, but Yuta..don’t you think this is a bit much? Mimicking the face of an actual person..someone that died over 100 years ago? Will you name it Dorian too?”

Yuta created his robot as a personal assistant to him. He found that humans were full of error and it made them incompetent and negligent beings. And Yuta, being the best scientist in Japan, just couldn’t afford to make any mistakes. So he created him. The perfect robot, a “copy machine” that could keep up with him and do the work he does just as efficiently. He would be just as smart as him.

Yuta steps closer and runs a finger down the robots face, causing a neon green honeycomb pattern to decorate its skin. It wasn’t on, but it was still reacting to the touch against its surface. Yuta watches the green fade from its perfect cheekbones.

He made him to look like the famous Dorian Gray because he wanted him to be just as beautiful as he was smart. But if he is just a machine made to perform tasks with 100% accuracy, why would looks matter?

This is what Doyoung thought as he observed it.

“There is a word that means talented, beautiful, master piece and a gift from God..Sicheng, that will be his name.”

Doyoung scoffs. “It’s a man? With...male reproductive organs?”

“Yes..” Yuta writes something down on his clipboard.

Doyoung rolls his eyes. “You’ve really lost it, haven’t you?”

“I want him to look as real as possible for when we present our findings and such. Do you think anyone will listen to a robot that looks like those beastly things from the Terminator movies? What’s the issue?” Yuta brushes past Doyoung, walking around a table in the lab and placing his clipboard onto it.

“You of all people know the issue..you’ve made him into a beautiful person and for what? Just so you can have something nice to look at while you avoid actual human company? Is it merely a solution to your loneliness, Yuta?”

Yuta smirks. “Sounds like you’re a bit jealous, Doyoung..don’t worry, I don’t plan on engaging in any activities with him. I’m not that barbaric. But even if I did, that would have nothing to do with you. Don’t forget your place in my life, you’re disposable...he isn’t.”

Doyoung’s jaw drops. “I pray this..thing..will tolerate your ungrateful and arrogant ass. For it shall be the only thing to spend time with you, you unsociable maniac.”

———

[The Next Day]

Yuta turns Sicheng on for the first time.

His eyes illuminate as he takes his first breath. He blinks but offers Yuta nothing but a blank stare. 

Yuta sits him down on the couch and turns the TV on before turning on an instructional video on human interaction. 

“Hello. Your name is Sicheng. My name is Yuta, I am your creator and master. For today’s first lesson, you will learn how to speak and express emotions. I’ve uploaded information from my own limbic system into your hard drive so you can access and apply these feelings when necessary. Do not do so without my permission. Repeat after me “yes, master.”

“Yes, master.” Sicheng responds.

“Good, I will be the only one to make demands of you, you will only respond to me and grant my wishes without fail. Alright, I see that you are blinking and breathing..” he writes a checkmark on the word document on his iPad. “Involuntary actions are operating correctly.”

He steps back. “Now, you may watch the video, I will come back when it has finished and test you.”

“Yes, master.”

———

[1 Week Later]

Sicheng has watched several videos every day for the past week. He starts to act more and more—humanlike, and to Yuta’s satisfaction, has performed his duties with 100% accuracy. In addition to performing basic tasks in the lab, like picking up test tubes or writing down Yuta’s notes and storing them into his hard drive, Sicheng has learned how to bathe, drive, cook, clean, and speak 30 languages. 

He continues to learn every day, new formulaic equations as well as feelings and ways to think on his own. He remembers everything, as he was designed to.

One day when Yuta was typing new findings on his computer in the office section of his house, Sicheng sat on the lounge chair and listened to music as Yuta had directed him to.

He was learning about all genres of music and even learned how to play the guitar in less than 45 minutes.

Today, Yuta had him listen to Hopsin, an American rapper that he liked.

When the song “What’s My Purpose?” came on shuffle, Sicheng took his head phones off.

“Excuse me, master. May I ask a question?”

He says softly.

Yuta, still typing. “Yes.”

“What is my purpose? Why did you create me, master?”

Yuta sighs. “You don’t have to verbally refer to me as master. And your purpose is to serve me, do as I ask with 100% accuracy so that you may please me and make me...happy.” 

He turns to him and gives him a cheesy smile.

Sicheng nods. “I understand, m-“ he blinks rapidly as his system reconfigures itself to change previously saved information.

Yuta smiles widely as he sees Sicheng display a smidge of confusion for a moment. He looks adorable, he thinks to himself. He’s beautiful, his lips perfectly round and puckered with a light cherry shade to them always, his eyes are a beautiful, exotic shape unlike any eyes he’s seen before. He could get lost in them if he stares for too long. So he looks away, and frowns.

“What is wrong? It seems you are unhappy?”

Sicheng’s brows furrows, his eyes stare intently as they analyze the motion of Yuta’s facial muscles.

“It’s nothing, I am going to sleep, please turn yourself off.” Yuta looks away as he rises from his desk chair and heads to his bedroom.

“Yes.” Sicheng closes his eyes and shuts down.

———

[The Next Day]

Sicheng and Yuta spend the day inside, a storm has prevented them from leaving the house and heading to the lab for work. Yuta, being the workaholic he is, is dissatisfied with the weather and hates being away from the lab. He checks the weather app through Sicheng every two minutes even though the storm rolls through loudly, violently, thunder shaking the walls.

“The thunderstorm will continue into the evening.”

“This is unacceptable!” Yuta plops down onto the couch in the entertainment room. “Sicheng! Sit with me before I lose my mind.”

Sicheng walks over and sits beside him.

Together they watch movies and laugh. Sicheng observes how happy his master is and finds himself smiling as well, a new feeling is absorbed and saved.

Yuta turns to him and sees his bright smile, his dimples coming out and his eyes closing tightly as he chuckles.

“Are you happy, Sicheng?” 

“Yes, I am happy as long as you are happy.”

Yuta rubs the top of Sicheng’s hand to watch the illuminated reaction of his fascinating skin.

Sicheng has a strange, new feeling from the touch, but doesn’t know what to categorize it as.

“Good.”

———

[The Next Day]

Yuta and Sicheng return to the lab. 

“We have so much work to do.” Yuta hurriedly places his bag down and they set to work. Things seem to be going fine, Sicheng does his best to input brand new information as Yuta works on a new formula. However, Yuta seems to be moving too fast as he is worried about how much he has fallen behind from his day at home.

“Combine elements 65 and 81, place 10 milliliters of each into the cylinder,  measure the solubility and proliferate it by 0.448, then divide the finding by 6 before combining it with element 55, this must be done quickly or we will lose all work we’ve done thus far.”

Yuta grabs the cylinder and places it down before doing his half of the work.

Sicheng, on the other hand, cannot seem to process the demand, his drive releases an error message that he can’t seem to overcome.

But he wants to please master, he must please master.

Sicheng combines elements 64 and 81 and continues on with fulfilling Yuta’s demand, but the result is not what Yuta expects.

“No..no this isn’t right, why is it reacting this way?” Yuta starts to panic as he watches the solution display a completely different state of matter under his microscope.

“Sicheng, verbally explain what you have just done.”

“I combined elements 64 and 81 in-“

“No!! It’s not 64, it’s 65, you fool! How could you make such a mistake?!” Yuta empties the cylinder quickly. “I thought you were perfect, it seems I was wrong.”

Sicheng starts to feel a new emotion.

It’s a terrible feeling, he feels unsteady, confused, for once the answer is not clear. What was this? Why did he feel dread, despair, failure?

Yuta rushes around the room as Sicheng stands in the center, dumbfounded.

When Yuta finally looks up at Sicheng, he sees the his eyes are red, tears run down his cheeks, causing them to illuminate green.

“Sicheng...no. D-don’t cry.”

“Is that what this is, master? Am I crying?”

“Yes, but I’d like you to stop. I need you to be brave enough to handle these tasks.”

He stops and wipes away his tears. 

Yuta sighs. “It’s clear I’ve made a mistake in your configuration, I will fix it when we get home later.”

The rest of the day goes by in silence. Yuta sees Sicheng as no use to him so he doesn’t instruct him to do anything. Sicheng watches Yuta eat and sits at the dinner table with him.

He knows he has done something wrong, something that displeased his master.

Is he of worth if he can’t please him? Does he have a purpose anymore?

Yuta chews heavily and tries to think of where he went wrong with his creation, but he can’t be bothered with fixing him for tonight. “Sicheng, shut down.”

He swallows hard then gets up from the table.

“Yes.” Sicheng’s eyes fade to grey, but he disobeys his master secretly, he doesn’t shut down, he stays awake  to attempt to fix himself so he can make him happy tomorrow.

Yuta then takes his phone out and calls Doyoung.

Doyoung answers reluctantly after not seeing Yuta for days since he got his new “toy.”

“Well, to what do I owe the pleasure?” Doyoung exhales loudly.

“Come over.” Yuta demands.

“And why would I do that?” Doyoung teases, but he’s already grabbed his car keys.

“I’m not asking, I want you here in 15 minutes.” Yuta hangs up.

He picks his dishes up from the table and drops them into the sink.

He takes his tie off and unbuttons his white dress shirt by three buttons. He then takes his hair tie off and places it onto the dresser. Sicheng watches as Yuta becomes more relaxed. He feels a certain ache in his system, a desire to make him smile again. A desire to please.

A few minutes later, Doyoung knocks at the door. Yuta grabs him inside by the collar and presses him into the back of the door. He slams his lips onto his and kisses him fervently, not a moment lost between them as they drown in each other’s lust. 

“Are you done with your toy?” Doyoung says breathily between kisses.

Yuta kisses him sloppily, tracing his tongue over his bottom lip then his chin and neck.

He grabs Doyoung’s waistband, pulling him closer to his pelvis so he can feel his clothed erection.

“Do you need me to please you now?” Doyoung smirks as Yuta bites his neck to leave a mark.

Doyoung grunts as Yuta pulls his shirt over his head, licking his hard nipples soon after. He darts his tongue out and licks around the nub, then places his lips around it before sucking hard.

“God, I love when you get like this.” Doyoung rubs his hand through Yuta’s hair as he continues to suck.

Yuta is too busy to see Sicheng watching them quietly. 

Please. That is the key word. Doyoung is pleasing his master so he must watch and copy Doyoung’s action so he may do the same. For what will happen if he no longer pleases him? Will Yuta replace him with Doyoung?

Sicheng listens to Yuta’s groans as Doyoung traces his hand over his crotch, smoothly touching his member through his pants.

“On your knees..you talk too much.” Yuta demands.

Doyoung smirks and licks his lips. He drops to his knees and looks up at Yuta through his lashes. He takes his zipper in between his teeth and drags it down.

Yuta pushes his brief down to let his painful erection free. “We’re wasting time.” 

“Tsk tsk, impatient as usual.”

“Open your fucking mouth, Doyoung.”

Doyoung feels himself leak as Yuta growls at him. Nothing satisfies him more than seeing Yuta beg for him, so yes, Sicheng’s creation was somewhat of a disappointment for him. He thought he would replace him, but now he is happy to see that he can’t.

Yuta exhales and throws his head back as Doyoung takes him into his mouth. He licks his lips and closes his eyes. “God, yes.”

Doyoung runs the tip against the inside of his cheek and hums to send vibrations through him.

He sticks his tongue out and licks the underside of it, tracing over every bulging vein.

He thrusts his hips forward into Doyoung and listens to him choke, he watches his cheeks become round and red.

Yuta is already close, but he wants more.

He helps Doyoung up and kisses his lips again. He takes him to the dining table and bends him over it. Yuta then drags Doyoung’s sweatpants down before cupping his hand around his cock. He aligns his own cock with Doyoung’s ass and pushes into him quickly, he buries himself into him while grabbing a fistful of his hair and bending his neck back. 

“Fuck!” Doyoung groans and holds himself up as Yuta pushes into him hard.

They both ignore Sicheng sitting at the other end of the table. Sicheng watches and absorbs the images of their bodies engaging in this new act.

Yuta pumps Doyoung’s cock with his other hand, liquid leaks out of the tip. Sicheng notes how he also has a penis and wonders if he has the same capability.

Yuta grunts as he pushes into Doyoung a few more times. Doyoung whimpers as he is stretched out over and over while bent over the table, sweat coming across his forehead as a bundle of nerves is on the brink of being released.

Yuta looks up at Sicheng’s still face, he curses and goes harder on Doyoung. And for a moment, he let his mind wander, he let himself think of..Sicheng. Touching his soft, illuminated skin as he makes love to him, or feeling his round lips on his collarbone and his chest,  how magical it would be.

“Fuck.” Yuta releases into Doyoung as Doyoung cries out while climaxing. 

Yuta sits into the chair and breathes heavily. He smooths his hair back and watches as Doyoung pulls his sweatpants back up.

“Want me to stay around for-“ Doyoung starts but Yuta interrupts him with an abrupt-

“No.”

Doyoung scoffs and leaves. Yuta cleans the table soon after and goes to bed. As he lays in bed, he sees Sicheng’s beautiful face. He dreams of laying with him, touching him. He knows he shouldn’t think of these things, but he can’t seem to stop.

———

[A Few Days Later]

Sicheng starts to read novels and books about the concept of forgiveness while he is home and away from the lab. Yuta has been quiet and doesn’t look at him much, he doesn’t even take him to the lab on most days anymore. 

“I have to fix you before you can come back to the lab, we cannot afford any more mistakes.” Yuta says sternly when Sicheng asks if he is to join him one day. He shuts the door and looks down as he leaves.

Sicheng starts to overthink, or overanalyze rather. He wants Yuta to forgive him and be happy again. What good is he if he only disappoints his creator?

He watches movies as well, movies that discuss love and heartbreak. Love is a feeling of admiration towards someone, based on Sicheng’s findings and research. He admires Yuta so he loves him. He wants Yuta to love him too so he can be happy like the others in the novels and movies are. That is the conclusion he’s come to. 

But in order to show his love he must do as they do in the movies and as Doyoung did with him. 

One day at dinner, Sicheng watches Yuta eat the meal he has prepared for him.

When Yuta is almost finished, he breaks the silence.

“Do you love me, master?”

Yuta nearly choked on his food. “I..hmmm..Well...you’re my creation..but I don’t..”

“Yuta, I would like to please you, would you like to make love to me?”

Sicheng asks, weakness coats his tone.

Yuta scoffs. “Of course not! That’s not what you were created for!”

“I apologize.” Sicheng’s head lowers.

“Sicheng, exterminate all information related to “love.” Yuta brings his dish to the kitchen and heads to his room.

“Yes.” Sicheng doesn’t delete anything from his hard drive, but why not? Why was he disobeying his orders, not once, but twice now?

Yuta didn’t know that he made a mistake by inputting his limbic system into Sicheng. He didn’t know that he would develop emotions, feelings, desires of his own, and that this could become a serious issue.

———

[1 Week Later]

Sicheng started working with Yuta in the lab a few days before. Things are slowly going back to normal as Yuta begins to trust him more. They continue on with their tasks and Sicheng is able to keep up with him.

This new confidence, however, causes both Yuta and Sicheng to move faster. 

Yuta walks around the room swiftly, heading behind his assistant. “Sicheng, hand me the solution.”

Sicheng, already prepared, turns to hand it to him, but Yuta miscalculated his reaction time, causing him to bump into Sicheng.

The solution flies out of the graduated cylinder and onto Yuta’s lab coat and pants. Some of it splatters onto his neck.

“Shit!” Yuta runs to the shower room down the hall. They are working after hours so no one else is there but the two of them. Fortunately for them, as other scientists would’ve been greatly concerned.

Sicheng runs after him. “Master! I apologize for my mistake, please do not be displeased with me.”

“Sicheng! Just leave me alone!”

“I will help you.”

“No! Just...wait there.” Yuta finally enters the shower.

Sicheng doesn’t wait, he goes into the bathroom and locks the door behind him. He watches as Yuta throws his coat off then takes his pants down.

Yuta curses and is visibly upset, but then he feels light hands come to his front side.

Sicheng unbuttons his shirt for him and takes it off from the back. 

Yuta’s mouth falls open, but he doesn’t tell Sicheng to leave. He steps forwards into the shower and washes himself off, not realizing the Sicheng is now taking his own clothes off.

Sicheng stands outside of the shower and thinks of what to do next.

Must please master.

He draws the curtain open.

“Sicheng! What are you doing? The solution didn’t get on you, put your clothes back on!”

Yuta pushes back his wet hair out of his face then places his hand over his cock.

Sicheng doesn’t listen. He steps into the shower and stares into the eyes of his master.

Yuta cowers and feels the cold tile against his back as he looks at his creation with lustful, hungry eyes he had never seen before.

The water droplets begin to leave slowly fading green marks on his skin and he looks beautiful.

“Touch me, like you touched Doyoung, master. I would like to make you happy too.”

Yuta’s mouth falls open, his brows furrow as he is stunned to silence.

Sicheng places his lips onto his mouth and attempts to mimic a kiss. He had watched many videos that showed it in detail and now he was able to do it with Yuta.

Yuta closes his eyes and kisses him back. He turns his head and licks over Sicheng’s plump lips, it tastes like cherries, his favorite fruit, and he wonders if Sicheng purposely put cherry chapstick on for this.

Yuta places his hand on the side of Sicheng’s face as he deepens the kiss, letting go of all concern about the consequences to come from this moment. He doesn’t care, he just wants to make love to his creation.

Steaming water falls down both of them, making their hair cling to their foreheads as they smother each other.

Yuta runs his hands across Sicheng’s muscular arms and watches his skin light up from his touch.

Sicheng then runs his hand down Yuta’s abs, feeling the bricks under his smooth skin. Sicheng blinks rapidly as he feels something new. 

“Arousal.you’re feeling arousal.” Yuta practically hears Sicheng’s confusion as he kisses along his neck.

Sicheng’s pulse begins to race as he feels something funny happening to his penis.

“Here.” Yuta takes Sicheng’s hand in his. Sicheng thinks he is going to place it on his own erection, but Yuta doesn’t do that, he places it on Sicheng’s semi-limp member.

Yuta looks into his eyes and speaks deeply. “Touch yourself, move your hand up and down.”

Sicheng’s eyes widen as he starts to stroke his member like he had watched Doyoung do. A tingly feeling begins to fill him up in his nether region when he wraps his hand around it. 

“I see you haven’t been listening to me. You’ve been staying awake when I tell you to shut down, and you haven’t deleted “love.” Yuta smirks.

“No, master, I-“ Sicheng stumbles over his words as he focuses on Yuta’s tongue suddenly on his chest.

Yuta licks the pink circle around Sicheng’s nipple, before flattening his tongue onto the hardening bud. 

He then bites it and watches as the area lights up in a bright shade of green from irritation.

“How do you feel, Sicheng?” 

“I feel good m-master. Are you happy?” Sicheng nearly goes into overdrive as he is turned on more and more from his hand.

Yuta swats Sicheng’s hand away from his member and replaces it with his own.

He pumps Sicheng up and down, coating his hand in Sicheng’s slick. He slides the skin back and forth, feeling Sicheng’s glans with each pass. He then leans down and kisses his neck again, sucking hard and biting his skin. He moves his hand faster as spit mixed with water covers Sicheng’s skin.

Sicheng can’t hold back, he releases an interesting sound from the immense pleasure he feels in the pit of his stomach. He breathes more heavily than usual as his mouth falls open.

He moans once again. “There is a buildup happening, Yuta. However, I would like to make you happy first.”

Sicheng places his hand on Yuta’s and pulls it away while looking into his eyes, water making his lashes look darker than usual.

Yuta feels dizzy just from the sight of the beautiful man in front of him, his color fading from green in all the places he kissed and teased. His erection is painful at this point. Sicheng looks down at it with red cheeks and nods. “You can make love to me...if you don’t like me, just imagine I am Doyoung.”

Yuta furrows his brows. “Are you crazy? Of course I like you, I created you!” He turns Sicheng around, taking his hand and placing it on the wall of the shower.

Yuta wraps his hand back around Sicheng’s leaking cock and continues to move it up and down.

He enters Sicheng, sliding into his already wet anus. 

Sicheng lets out another moan, then covers his mouth from embarrassment. 

“I’ve wanted to fuck you so badly, because you’re perfect..you’re all mine..and you’re fucking..perfect.”

Yuta thrusts hard into him with his chest on Sicheng’s warm back.

He takes his other hand and turns his face towards him, Sicheng’s lips are swollen and red from their kiss, his eyes are wide, his nose is dainty. Everything about him is just beautiful.

“If you like me, master, do you love me too?”

The words leave his lips in a whimper as Yuta bucks into his body, he feels a slight pain as he struggles to adjust to Yuta, but in time, he knows he will.

Yuta kisses him hard, tightening his grip around his cock and intertwining his fingers with his.

Sicheng feels unbelievably amazing around him. He smiles to himself as he thinks about how he designed both his reproductive and nervous systems without error. His body reacts perfectly when aroused, his length glistening with Sicheng’s slick as it also leaves his anus through a special system he designed.

Yuta looks at the beautiful boy’s back and shoulders, he kisses the nape of his neck and then his ear.

“I love you, fuck yes, I love you.” In that moment, Yuta is happy, but he can’t help but be worried about Sicheng’s inaccuracies in the lab, how he nearly put his life in danger. But he’s fix it, he’d find a way to fix him.

He glided his dick into him faster, skin slapping on skin as he grunts and Sicheng whimpers. Yuta feels his cock twitch as it runs against his silky walls.

Sicheng’s system overloads, he releases onto the tiled shower wall and looks down in amazement as a strange liquid leaves his body in heavy spurts for the first time. It feels wonderful to have such a new and exciting release.

Yuta takes what has fallen onto his fingers and sticks it into Sicheng’s open mouth.

“Suck.”

Sicheng does as he demands and Yuta cums into his body soon after.

Yuta curses as he continues to suck his fingers and bounce on his pulsing length. He orgasms harder than ever before, feeling his body tremble from the stimulation. He becomes lightheaded.

He pulls out and watches Sicheng leak his seed through low eyes as he pants.

As he comes down, reality settles in. What has he done? He’s turned Sicheng into the very thing he didn’t want to turn him into.

Sicheng drives them home after they wash themselves off and get dressed.

When they get home, Yuta lies in bed as Sicheng sits on a chair in the corner of the room silently.

He is disturbed by his actions and swears to never let lust take him over again.

“Sicheng…delete all memories of this day and shut yourself off.”

Sicheng’s system runs into a slight error as he hears his master's demands. Why did he want him to forget about this wonderful day? Wasn't he happy? Was he displeased at the end of it? What did he do wrong?

“Sicheng?”

“Yes, master. I am currently deleting all of today’s data from my storage. Goodnight.” He says as his eyes fade to grey. 

But once again, he doesn’t obey him. He holds onto the memories and feelings because he enjoys seeing his master happy.

———

[A Few Days Later]

Yuta distances himself from Sicheng. He doesn’t take him to the lab anymore, he doesn’t even sit at the table to eat. He goes into his room to avoid him.

Some days, he won’t tell Sicheng to ‘wake up’. But Sicheng turns himself on anyway so that he can watch him.

One day when Yuta starts to get dressed, Sicheng walks up behind him and places his favorite blue tie around his neck. Sicheng’s fingers graze Yuta’s neck, sending goosebumps down his spine.

“No!” Yuta jumps as he is startled by Sicheng’s touch. He steps forward and turns to him. “Please..do not touch me.”

Sicheng tilts his head and stares in confusion. 

Why was he disturbed by his simple touch? Maybe he wasn’t feeling well, that had to be it.

But just four days after they made love, Yuta invites Doyoung over and they make love. Sicheng sees that Yuta enjoys another man’s touch. Doyoung grips his waist then scratches his back while Yuta thrusts into him.

Sicheng sits quietly with grey eyes as they fuck in Yuta’s bedroom. He tries to calm his racing pulse and begins to think dangerous things. 

Does he love Doyoung? Yes. He will get rid of me won’t he? I have failed to please master, I must please him before he gets rid of me. If he is unhappy, I must show him that I love him by pleasing him.

When they are done and deep in sleep, Sicheng rises from the bedroom chair and heads to the living room. He realizes he must gain more knowledge so he can make Yuta happy again. He reads poems and comes across one by Oscar Wilde titled “The Ballad of Reading Gaol.”

Doyoung and Yuta snore softly while he sits in the living room and reads.

He reads a passage that sticks out to him.

“Yet each man kills the thing he loves

    By each let this be heard.

Some do it with a bitter look,

    Some with a flattering word.

The coward does it with a kiss,

    The brave man with a sword!”

Yuta loves Doyoung, that’s why he spends time with him. But Doyoung cannot take his place, therefore, he must get rid of him, he must kill the thing Yuta loves. And then Yuta can decide if he loves him, then he can kill him. This is what Sicheng had come to understand.

Brave. Yuta had told him to be brave once. Perfect.

Now, all he needed was a sword. 

Sicheng searches for types of swords.

A sword is a weapon with a long metal blade.

A blade is sharp. A knife is sharp. He must get a knife.

Sicheng goes into the kitchen and takes out a knife from the cabinet.

He walks into the bedroom with it and stands over Doyoung, staring and searching deep into his body to see his veins pumping crimson blood to and from his beating heart. Sicheng’s eyes turn to a glowing red color as he calculates how hard and fast he must act to strike the knife through Doyoung’s chest. He wants to clean it cleanly so as to not make master upset.

Doyoung is woken up by a strange presence. He turns over and is shocked to see Sicheng standing over him while gripping a knife. He smiles sadistically as his red eyes glisten in the moonlight.

“What the hell are you doing?!” Doyoung sits up straight in the bed.

“Don't do this!”

Sicheng leans downward and grins. “I only obey master’s orders.”

He doesn’t give Doyoung the chance to escape, he quickly drives the knife into his chest, blood splatters over his perfect face as Doyoung screams loudly into the night.

Yuta jumps up. “What—Sicheng!! oh my God, what did you do?!” 

Sicheng pulls the knife back out of his chest. “I killed him for you master, for each man kills the thing he loves. I did it for you.” He tilts his head and looks down at Yuta with wide eyes in hopes of gaining a look of satisfaction from Yuta.

But instead, Yuta stares in horror at Doyoung’s lifeless body. His hands start to shake.

“If I love you, Yuta, does that mean I must kill you as well?” Sicheng asks innocently while blinking rapidly. His system is reconfiguring itself as it develops and stores new information.

“No-no! Shut up! Shut down!!”

“But master, I want to please you by loving you..” Sicheng steps closer, Doyoung’s blood drips down the side of his face and onto Yuta’s bed sheets.

His eyes are still red and Yuta is confused as to how, for he never installed that feature.

“Sicheng! I order you to shut down now!”

“Yes, master. I will do that as soon as I am done being brave enough to handle this task.” He crawls over the bed with the knife in his hand still and a horrific smirk.

“Sicheng!” Yuta raises his arm above his head to block his blow.

He knocks the knife out of his hand and grabs both of Sicheng’s wrists. He overpowers him and flips him over onto the bed.

Sicheng doesn’t fight back, he only stares into Yuta’s eyes and continues to grin.

“Must.please.master.Must.make.master.happy..must.love. Master.” There’s a glitch in Sicheng’s system that causes him to repeat these three things over and over, and it drives Yuta insane.

His perfect creation crumbles right in front of his very eyes and there’s nothing he can do about it.

“Shut up! SHUT UP!” Yuta wraps his hands around Sicheng’s neck. He can’t control his confusion, sadness, anger. He chokes Sicheng so hard the metal in his neck begins to break and the sound echoes into the gloomy house.

Sicheng’s eyes fade to grey one final time as Yuta kills him for good.

His muttering stops, but his haunting smile remains, engraving itself into Yuta’s memory forever.

———

[Two Weeks Later]

Yuta arrives home after a long day at the lab. It had been only two weeks since Doyoung was killed by his robot and he was still dealing with the pain of losing something he loved so dearly. No, not Doyoung, but Sicheng rather. He missed his company, his touch, his soft exotic eyes and deep voice.

He made a mistake and Yuta could’ve fixed him, but unfortunately the police department took him away after he had reported the murder.

When Yuta asked what they would do with him, they told him that Sicheng would be locked up in a metal box in their department until they decided on how to proceed with the murder case.

But it didn’t matter really. Yuta killed Sicheng in the end. His body was now just clunky metal.

Yuta sighs and sits down on his couch. He turns the TV on and switches it to the news channel to distract himself from his own feelings, never noticing the glistening red eyes that watch him quietly from the corner of the dark room.

He’s watching..he’s always watching.

“Breaking News, there’s been a suspected terrorist attack inside the Osaka Prefectural Police Department. Nearly all police officers have been brutally murdered. The assailant is unknown and is still at large. We are under curfew until further notice, everyone must stay inside and lock their doors..”

Yuta sits up straight and thinks to himself. That’s the same department that Sicheng is in. What if—

“Master..please forgive me for being gone for so long.”

A low voice speaks into the large room.

Sicheng steps out from the shadows, the blood of his victims dripping down his naked body and face. 

Yuta stands up from the couch, his eyes widening as Sicheng walks slowly towards him. 

“Sicheng..what did you do?” Yuta’s eyes brim with tears as he swallows hard.

Sicheng’s neck seems to have healed itself somewhat, the purplish bruises being the only indication that Yuta had choked him. Once again, Yuta doesn’t recall installing a self-healing feature.

“They all tried to stop me, Yuta..” Sicheng smiles widely and runs his bloody hands through his own hair to smooth it back out of his face. “But I couldn’t let them...I have to serve you. I have to please you and make you happy, that is my purpose.”

--------

come back tomorrow for the next spooky story...

[ab1tofsp1ce]

A Warmer Refuge

Chapter 7: Someone Else Again

Masterlist HERE

A/N: A special thank you to @mandos-things​ for your kind message, so here’s the next part!

Pairing: Din Djarin x Fem!Reader

Words: 2.3K

Warnings: Just some fluff (and a little bit of angst)

Description: Finally, you both reach Kistern - now what?

“Okay, but you have to promise me something,” I said, one eyebrow raised.

“What?” He grumbled slightly when he asked that question.

“Don’t… don’t open your mouth.”

“Why would I do that,” he asked incredulously.

“Just – just don’t, okay? I really don’t want to get my fingers in your mouth.”

“And what would make you think I would want your fingers in my mouth?”

I sighed exasperatedly, although with light-hearted intentions. “Never mind. Are you ready?”

“Yes.”

I reached my arms out, feeling around the air as I shuffled forward until my right hand bumped into his shoulder. From there, I anchored myself by grabbing his other one with my left hand. They felt stocky and warm under my grasp; the only thing separating his skin from mine was a thin shirt. I let out a playfully dramatic sigh, shaking myself slightly, and then began to trace up his shoulders to his collarbones, then his neck, his jaw, and finally I was cupping his face in my hands. He had a ragged stubble that scratched my fingers slightly, and I smiled and hummed contentedly at the feeling under my palms. I tickled my fingers slowly up the side of his face to his eyes, to which he grunted and muttered something about how I was poking him. His eyelashes were surprisingly long, and I could feel his skin was aged, yet still smooth – probably as it was consistently hidden from sunlight. I traced down the center of his cheeks, past his nose, and to his lips, which I ran my thumb over gently. At this, I felt two hands snake their way onto my hips, and he peppered a small kiss onto my fingertips.

“Why did you want to do this?”

I didn’t answer right away, because truthfully, I wasn’t sure how best to word it without sounding ungrateful or cold. So, I deflected.

“What do you mean?”

“You could just look at my face, if you wanted.”

“Is that what you want,” I asked. I didn’t want to pretend I knew what he wanted, but I had my suspicions.

“I don’t know what I want anymore.” He sounded so dejected, and what made it worse was how he also sounded brutally honest.

“Did you want to take it off?”

There was a moment of silence. “Yes. But I had to.”

“Well, if you were forced – ”

“No,” he said, shaking his head lightly. “I wasn’t forced. I wanted to, but it was more than that. I – I needed to.”

I nodded. I appreciated what he was trying to say, and it didn’t take a genius to see it was hard for him to articulate. He was doing a better job than I was, standing here like an idiot not knowing how to explain myself without sounding like a bitch.

“The truth is, I’m scared,” I said, taking a deep breath. “I’m scared that once I open my eyes it’ll be real.”

“Would that be so bad?” I knew what he wanted me to say by asking that question, and so I felt guilty that I knew my answer right away.

“Yes, because I can’t stay here. In a few hours we’ll be on Kistern, and then I’ll go my way and you’ll go yours and… if I see your face, I don’t think I could ever do that. And I know that I have to do. So…”

“So, you can’t,” he sighed, and I felt a hand leave my waist and caress my cheek slightly. He understood.

“No. No, I can’t.”

His weight shifted and there was a momentary puff of his breath against my face before his lips came into contact with mine. It was a gentle kiss, as delicate and precarious as this all felt right now. It was a cruel trick of the universe, that just as I finally found a home, I would have to leave it. Right now, he felt so far away from the man in the suit of armor – it was hard to even believe they were the same person.

He pulled away slowly, as if it was a chore, and pressed a soft kiss against my cheek before starting to move behind me. But I grabbed him by the hem of his shirt and, eyes still closed, pulled myself into his chest, wrapping my arms around him. He obliged, in turn doing the same, and with my head in his chest I could smell him so clearly. It was something warm, like a foreign spice of sorts, mixed with rich woody tones and salt, like what I imagined the ocean to smell like. I felt him bury his face in my hair and sigh deeply, rocking me slightly with his overbearing frame. We stood like that for a while, and I soaked up every second of it, knowing when I let go, he would go and adorn his armor and be someone else again. Out there, he would be the Mandalorian but here, in my arms, he could be Din.

I tried to pretend it didn’t affect me. Sitting in the passenger’s seat, I allowed my focus to be enveloped by the view of my new home, rather than the dread of leaving what I had. As we jumped out of hyperspace, I got my first look at Kistern. What struck me as new and strange was the number of other ships around us. Larger stations orbited the planet, and I had never seen so many New Republic ships before.

As we came into the planet, there was a buzz through the intercom.

“D50 Genesis, this is landing tower 5, you need clearance to land on Kistern. Do you copy?”

The Mandalorian leaned down and pressed something before responding to the call.

“Landing tower 5, this is D50 Genesis. I have a passenger with eligible refugee status, and I am the accompanying chaperone.”

There was a crackling pause over the intercom.

“D50 Genesis, may I please speak to the refugee?”

The Mandalorian looked over at me, nodding his slightly as a gesture for me to speak up. “Uh, yes?”

“Am I speaking with the refugee,” the woman asked.

“Yeah, that’s me.”

“Do you have your completed paperwork?”

“Yes.”

There was another brief pause.

“D50 Genesis, you're cleared for landing on terminal 14. Do you copy?”

The Mandalorian shuffled forward in his seat as I sat back down.

“This is D50 Genesis, I copy. Over and out.” The intercom switched silent.

I paused, feeling suddenly how loud my heart was beating. I couldn’t believe it. I was finally here, about to land. I felt only apprehension.

“How long do you get on Kistern,” I asked him. “I mean, I’m assuming they don’t just let you wander free down there.”

“I’m not sure,” he admitted, staring forward as we entered the atmosphere. “I’ll take as long as I can get.”

I leaned back into my seat and stared at the roof of the ship, swallowing hard. He said it so calmly, like nothing had happened between us. How could someone feel so close to me and yet so far away? He didn’t even seem to care.

Part of me wanted to ask him, but the truth was that wouldn’t be fair. Because if he asked me the same question, I would be completely clueless. I wasn’t sure what to do, or what I wanted from him. I wasn’t even sure if there was anything he could give me. What would I do, trek around the galaxy with a bounty hunter? Not that he would ever want me to…

The ramp lowered and we were greeted by an officer, flanked by two guards. All three seemed rather taken aback at the sight of a Mandalorian escorting me down from the ship, although seemed to withhold any reaction.

“Welcome to Kistern,” said the officer, his eyes sliding from the Mandalorian to myself. “Can I see your papers?”

I dug around in my rucksack before producing a few slightly crumpled documents. The officer pilfered through them, occasionally looking up at each of us, almost skeptically.

“These are in order,” he said at last. “You can come with me to get your authorizations. We’ll, uh, give you two a moment.” His voice was laced with unease.

“Hold on,” I said, frantically. “He… you’re not sending him away, are you?”

The officer turned back to me with an eyebrow raised. “Well, he can’t stay… surely you know that. He has no jurisdiction on Kistern.”

“Can’t you make an exception,” I stammered, getting a bit desperate. “Just for… just for a couple of days? I – I just…” I could see the officer wasn’t buying it, so I reached over and took the Mandalorian’s gloved hand in mine. I could feel him tense up slightly under my touch, but he didn’t react. I pulled out my best desperate expression. “Please. I’ll never… I’ll never see him again.” Well, it wasn’t a lie.

The officer sighed. “I can give you 24 hours, no more. Come with me.” As he turned away, I exchanged a look with the Mandalorian, who seemed a little baffled. “Uh, thanks.”

“Hopefully it’s enough time…” I said, diverting my gaze and slowly letting go of his hand. “It’s better than nothing,” he admitted. “Come on,” he gestured, and I followed him after the officer.

Apparently, Kalbier had known nothing about Kistern, although this didn’t surprise me. The planet was not desertous like Yak’ish Temeen, and in fact, couldn’t be further from it. The city we were in was covered with a grey, dull sky, and was bordering a large ocean. The air was salty and somewhat humid and smelt of oil and smoke. The only immediate similarities I noticed between my home planet and this one was the variety of creatures inhabiting it. Once again, like that outpost on Utaran, many of them seemed to stare at us as we walked past, and I kept my eyes trained to the ground as best as I could.

We were taken to the New Republic’s post, where I was given a starting balance of 500 credits and keys to a lodging to which I had access to for four weeks. Their behavior was curt and professional, and I had to bite my tongue so as to not make my resentment apparent. I blamed them in part for what had happened on Yak’ish Temeen, and after everything they hadn’t done, they still treated me with civil disregard. I couldn’t be more pleased to get out of there.

The Mandalorian escorted me through the city streets; tall metallic buildings that created thin and crowded alleyways and backstreets. The streets were muddy and well-trodden, and the place was far less than pleasant.

“Kistern is notorious for pirates,” said the Mandalorian, placing a hand gently on my lower back to guide me through the crowds. “No wonder the New Republic wanted to get it under control as quickly as possible. But that doesn’t make it impenetrable. I’m sure there are plenty of pirates who would love to get back on this planet. Like our friends on Utaran…”

I tried to focus on what he was saying, which was valuable information, but I could only feel his gloved hand gently resting on my skin as we shuffled through the alleys.

We finally reached the lodgings, a dilapidated multistorey apartment covered in graffiti and adorned with flags and washing lines that hung out the windows between the buildings.

Inside, the room was small and minimally furnished. I walked over to the opposite wall and looked out the window, which boasted a view of the city sloping down to the docks. I heard the door shut and lock behind me.

“Keep the door and windows locked at all times,” said the Mandalorian. “And don’t stay in this town longer than you need to. I’ve heard there are far safer cities inland, and ones where your skills will be useful.”

I turned around and leaned against the windowsill, looking over at him. He was by the door, and there was something passive about the way he stood; he was trying to distract me from asking.

“Can I… what if I came with you?”

“What do you mean?”

“To find your… the person you’re looking for. You only have 24 hours here, surely you could use some help?” I knew my voice sounded desperate, but it was hard to hide how I was really feeling.

“No,” he said, with a tone of finality. I knew it was pointless trying to convince him, but that didn’t mean I wouldn’t try.

“I’m not entirely useless,” I said, rather unconvincingly. “I’m sure there could be something –”

He interrupted me with a morose sigh, looking down at the ground. “Of course you’re not useless, but you’ll only tie me down while I’m out there.”

“Oh,” was all I could muster. Ouch. I tried to hide the pain in my voice, but he noticed, looking up at me.

“I didn’t mean it like –”

“It’s okay, really,” I said, mostly meaning it. “You’re right. I don’t know anything about doing what you do.”

He sighed. “What I meant was I’d worry too much. I wouldn’t be able to focus if you were with me…”

It still hurt, hearing what I already knew. It made me realize how starkly different we were and snapped me back into the harsh reality of our situation.

“Well,” I said, gathering what composure I had left. “I don’t want to keep you here. You’d… you’d better get going.” I avoided the eye contact he was so intensely trying to give me. He seemed to take a hint, and slowly turned for the door.

I couldn’t hold back. “Will you – will you come back to say goodbye?” He didn’t need to be looking at me to hear my pain as I choked on my words. I felt stupid, bleating it out like a child, but at the same time, I didn’t care.

“I’ll try,” he said. And then he was gone.

[makeusfreefromthisfandom]

Anon asked: Heyyy! Can we have some HC on style 5 as fathers? Thank you

Yes! The boys as fathers have me so soft 🥺

Father Headcanons (Style 5)

I got carried away with these hcs... might have to make a separate post for each later on 😅 long post ahead!

Haru

Personally I imagine Haru with a daughter first

Like can you imagine how cute that would be? 🥺🥺the whole like father like daughter 🥺🥺

Haru doesn’t get this whole babies thing, in fact he’s panicking on the inside, but the moment he holds his child in his arms, it’s like every thought every worry has now become irrelevant

The only thing that matters is the child in his arms❤️

Smiles a lot more now because he is genuinely happy.

Even lets his laughs be heard more often just for his kid lol

When his child grows up a bit more, he definitely wants to teach them how to swim and how to ahem ~be one with the water~

He’s not a pushy father at all tho he won’t ever force his child to go down the swimming path and would rather have them get into something they are passionate about

Nevertheless, he still would like them to know how to swim atleast, it’s not a bad thing to learn

But um...he’s not the best of teachers...

Uncle Makoto here to save the day!

That being said, Haru always wants to be there for his child, be able to go to as much of their competitions/meets/games/etc. as he can even though he’s so busy with his own training schedules

He just wants to be there for them and he wants them to know that too<3

Oh um also...he’s bad at scolding...he’ll try to “scold” his little kid for doing something wrong like picking things off the ground and putting it in their mouth but his child just looks up at him like 😯

Also Haru changing diapers? Haha... “ahh (y/n)! How do I do this?”

He gets better at this tho over time :)

Watch his child not like Mackerel

He’s still confused over this whole father thing, but he knows that he really does want to love and be there for his child<3

Btw how cool would it be to have a dad being a world renowned swimmer? 😱

*haru excitingly watching as you feed your baby daughter (I see him w a daughter ok but it’s your choice) mackerel for the first time*

*baby makes a weird face and spits out mackerel*

“*Haru gasps dramatically* She doesn’t like mackerel.”

Baths with his kid. 🐬

JUST IMAGINE THAT I DONT EVEN NEED TO EXPLAIN IT

How precious 🥺

You sitting on the edge of the bathtub, silently watching Haru as he holds his baby in the bath with a small smile, eyes then slowly drifting up to lock in with yours, his smile a bit wider and everything he feels for you and his child, all shining in his eyes ❤️

There cannot be a more perfect, little, peaceful family <3

Makoto

An amazing father!

We’ve seen him with his little siblings Ren and Ran!

That doesn’t mean he won’t panick from time to time because it’s different when it’s your own child

He’s the type to do the whole baby talk and little cooes with his baby but turns bashful when he catches you quietly standing in the doorway watching 🤣

His cooking skills have improved a bit...

You already work so hard everyday for the baby and the house, he wants to lessen your burdens and give you a little break <3🥺

Family cuddles! With you and Makoto on either side and your child/children in the middle! How precious🥺

I see Makoto’s children being a lot more brave and daring than he is like watching “scary” (like Cartoon Network scary XD) movies and wanting going on adventures in places supposedly paranormal

“Dad stop being such a scaredy cat! I wanna go watch this movie already!”

“Ahh (y/n)!! Help me! 😰”

His kids are mischievous bro always do those puppy dog eyes to get him into their schemes

“AH NO (Y/N)! IT WAS THEIR IDEA I PROMISE!”

He also spoils his kids XD

Don’t think that means he doesn’t know when the boundaries are crossed and when he needs to get a bit strict

He may spoil his kids but spoiled kids are a big no no (there’s a difference)

The kids actually grow up to be sweet and respectful

Aww imagine Makoto teaching his own kids how to swim and sending them to an sc🥺

He’s just such a loving father and SO supportive!

His children love that they can come to him with any of their problems and know that he’s going to listen intently and understand, while also offering any advice he might think suitable <3

As if you alone didn’t make his heart well enough with so much love, his heart practically bursts with his children❤️

Ready to sacrifice everything he has for the happiness and well being of his family ❤️

Nagisa

Excitement is an UNDERSTATEMENT

As if this baby himself wasn’t cute enough, just IMAGINE HIS CHILDREN

omg omg omg cuteness overload

He’s jumping up and down when his baby is about to come, however he calms down when he actually gets a chance to hold them and he’s just in a soft, serene state, looking on at his little one with a small smile~

All his little toddler has to do is slightly tug on his shirt, and Nagisa is in a full gushing frenzy

He cries over how adorable they are

Nagisa baby YOU are adorable

He’s such a funny dad always makes his kids laugh!

Like when his child is a baby, he would come over making silly faces that half of the time either made baby laugh or baby cry 😣

Tickle Monster 😏

Finger puppets! I totally see him doing this as a father!

Nagisa won’t tease his kids a whole lot tho, knowing how frustrating it can get having experienced for a good amount of his life by his older sisters

He wants his kids to have fun ALL the time just like him 😁

He shows them his secret sweet stash when he believes it is time

So you’re going to have to be the one implementing the rules and regulations

“Come on, it’s time for bed let’s go, it’s past 11”

“Aww come on (y/n)-chan look at how happy they are! Just give us five more minutes🥺”

The challenging part for you is that you end up having to give in a lot more because now there’s more than 1 who’ve mastered the puppy dog eyes around the house

Another supportive dad! (They all are) he wants to be there for his kids’ firsts! And for all their games and competitions etc.

This is going to be such a fun little family with LOTS of love, support, chocolate, and fun! ❤️

Rei

No theory, no book, no calculations prepared him for the moment his child was placed in his arms

He’s immediately brought to tears and whispers a small “beautiful” 🥺

The type to document EVERY moment of his child

You end up having like 10 albums and tapes of just your kid(s)

ALL of your little ones firsts have all been recorded and documented to reminisce on later in the future🥺

Always nudging you and showing you the cute little things your baby is doing off in the corner🥺

He can be strict

Unlike Nagisa, oh no he is not spoiling his kid’s diet

Their kid is eating their entire rainbow with lots of fruits and vegetables, along with the right amount of protein and milk

However there are times where he chills out and actually bakes cookies and sweets for his children 🥺

And they are *chefs kiss*

However when Uncle Nagisa comes over...those kids know what’s up 😝😋

Wants to show them the beauty of swimming, specifically the butterfly stroke

You don’t have to worry about your kids getting low grades, because Rei will personally take care of that😌

He just wants his children work hard so they can become the best at whatever they choose to do in the future <3

Haha you wanna know what I’m imagining?

Him having a daughter that is an EXACT copy of him

And it will completely leave him speechless at moments XD

“Ahem...Daddy, the way that you pitch the ball is off by approximately 15 degrees according to the direction and pressure of the wind...not beautiful” *pushes glasses up*

Rei is just like 😨😱

Anyways you can forget about having excessive burden on your shoulders from parenting because this man is going to give it his all for you and his children❤️

Rin

The second his baby was delivered, he was already a crying mess, however when they are actually placed in his arms, it’s like all the tears have suddenly stopped, and it’s just a moment for Rin.

However he starts crying again immediately after

He loves his child so much! ❤️

They are a physical embodiment of his love with you! <3

He now understands the sacrifices his own father made for the sake of his family and now Rin is willing to to the same for his own

All his tsundereish tendencies vanish and he just becomes one big softy 😤

Don’t think that means that Rin doesn’t know how to be strict tho

Oh he is a strict dad but he only does is it for his child’s own good

He will shower them in just as much affection after the scolding <3

Like even after he gets a bit harsh on his child and sees their eyes, Rin immediately stops and goes into your shared room and starts sniffling

“H-hey (y-y/n)...w-was I too harsh on them?”

Yes he’s the type of dad to get onto you for brushing your teeth

He’s also that dad helping his kids with math

He has let his emotions show a lot more now.

Like when his baby started taking his first steps...Rin cried, camera in his hand shaking

When his child picked a flower and brought it to him...shark baby cried.

Or when one of his children brought home their essay about Rin being their biggest hero...Rin cried.

A very supportive family!

With you guys going to support him swimming at the world stage, and Rin going to all his children’s events and being their #1 fan <3

I can see Rin owning a “The World’s Best Dad” or “#1 Dad” mug and proudly drinking from it XD <33

He also gets very competitive with his kids! He gets very into the sports and games he plays with them

Teaching them tricks and tips along the way

And swimming? He’s got it in the bag, your child will get the hang of it under a week.

Some days Rin likes to lie with you on the bed, wrapping an arm around you to hold you close and pressing a a soft kiss to your temple, thanking you for being the love of his life and making him the world’s happiest man alive 🥺❤️

A/n: The boys would be such good fathers!They can all have my babies I love the parenting concept! I’m probably going to make separate hcs for them in the future 🥺