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genshingorlsrevengeance · 3 months

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(Genshin Impact/H:SR) Asking "What does PLAP PLAP PLAP mean?" to their S/O

Genshin: Arlecchino, Ayaka, Ei, Furina, Jean, Kokomi, Shenhe, Xianyun Star Rail: Asta, Firefly, Natasha, March 7th, Stelle

I don't know what possessed me to write this, other than imagining it'd be REALLY funny, and REALLY stupid.

NSF-W IMPLICATIONS BELOW THE CUT!

Arlecchino had overheard this term passing by a younger couple, and she had no earthly idea of what it meant.

It seemed like everyday, the vocabulary gap was growing wider and wider between her and the others.

And considering it was a couple saying it, and not children, there was really only one person to ask.

(Arlecchino) "S/O. I'd like to ask you about something I overheard."

S/O took the teacup into their hand and smiled at her.

(S/O) "What is it, Arle?"

(Arlecchino) "Do you know what, and apologies if I am mispronouncing this, plap plap plap is?"

S/O immediately spat out their drink all over the table, making Arlecchino blink twice in surprise.

Their fist hit their chest repeatedly as they engaged in a violent coughing fit, suddenly turning to her with a much more shocked expression.

(S/O) "WHAT?!"

(Arlecchino) "Judging by your reaction, you appear to."

Arlecchino noticed they immediately began blushing, trying to look everywhere except at her.

But S/O knew better than to lie to her, or god forbid she went to ask her kids what it meant.

(S/O) "It...It uh, refers to an action in bed."

Arlecchino didn't have to ask twice, noticing how they emphasized the last word.

(Arlecchino) "...I see. Is this what all couples are doing these days?"

S/O sighed, cleaning up their mess.

(S/O) "Apparently, if you overheard it in broad daylight..."

(Arlecchino) "Do you think we should join them as well?"

S/O could've sworn there was a small smirk at the end of her question, but she was stoic as ever. They, however, were reduced to another coughing and blushing mess.

(Ayaka) "S/O, does plap have a special meaning to it?"

Ayaka thinks it's some kind of sound effect, but she wasn't entirely sure. She had read it in a book from the Yae Publishing House, but the book didn't really go into detail what it meant.

Ayaka seemed genuinely puzzled at S/O's reaction, why were they so red?

(Ayaka) "S/O, are you alright? You're turning red very quickly!"

(S/O) "I-I'm fine! It's just-Uh...How do I explain this?"

She tilted her head slightly at S/O looking around the room, making sure Thoma or Ayato wasn't in earshot.

Then, S/O whispered into her ear, making Ayaka's eyes widen and join them in turning bright red.

(Ayaka) "...A-Ah...?!"

Ayaka immediately buries her hands into her face.

(Ayaka) "P-Please forget I asked that question, it was incredibly crude of me to say something like that out loud!"

(Ei) "S/O. There's a word in this book I do not recognize."

(S/O) "Here, let me see!"

S/O happily snuggled close to Ei, their eyes going line by line until they reached the word she was pointing at.

And Ei felt their heartrate suddenly spike up, but since she was behind their head, she couldn't see their expression.

(Ei) "...Do you know what it means?"

(S/O) "...Ei, what is this book?"

(Ei) "One that Miko recommended I read and show you, actually."

(S/O) "E-Ei...this book is um...how to phrase this, smut?"

(Ei) "I am aware."

(S/O) "...Wha-"

(Ei) "I know what I am reading heavily involves sex, S/O. I am no fool, but what does plap mean?"

S/O had to explain to her in detail, and why it became a thing, all the while Ei looked mildly intrigued and S/O wanted to die.

But first, they had to ask Miko why in the hell did they give Ei smut?!

(Furina) "...P-Plap?"

Furina's eyes frowned at the word she had just read.

She grabbed a bunch of books on sale while she was out in the city, not really caring their origin or genre.

But clearly, S/O did as they dropped their book completely when Furina spoke it aloud.

(S/O) "F-Furina...?!"

She turned to them with an eyebrow raised.

(Furina) "What is it?"

Noticing how flustered they had become, she grew even more confused as she quickly put the pieces together.

(Furina) "Does...plap mean something to you, S/O?"

(S/O) "Y-You know what that means, right Furina?"

(Furina) "...Psh, of course I do!"

She said without batting an eyelash, staring directly at S/O.

Of course she had no idea what on Gods' green Tevyat it meant, but maybe she could impress S/O by knowing such a word!

(Furina) "Plapping comes naturally to me-"

(S/O) "PLEASE STOP SAYING THAT WORD, FURINA."

Jean emits a quiet "huh" as she puts down her book.

Lisa had suggested this one to read, and admittedly it was a little...raunchier than what she usually reads for romance, but it was still cute.

Until it got to a certain part where it was only giving onomatopoeia for a scene.

Jean wanted to ask Lisa what it meant, until S/O came through the door to their bedroom.

(Jean) "Ah, perfect timing!"

(S/O) "Hello, love. What book are you reading?'

(Jean) "Funny you should mention it, there's a word in here I don't quite understand."

(S/O) "Really? That's surprising, coming from you. What is it?"

Jean opened the page before finding it again, and turning to S/O.

(Jean) "Plap plap plap?"

In an instant, S/O's words died at their throat.

(S/O) ...Nevermind, it makes a lot more sense now...

(Jean) "Um...are you alright dear? Your face looks like its heating up."

Kokomi knew this book Yae picked out for her would be strange.

On top of having the strangest plot for romance she's read, now there were all sorts of words she had no idea what they meant.

Kokomi hummed a cute grunt of annoyance, making S/O's head lift as they were cuddling in bed together.

(S/O) "Koko?"

(Kokomi) "Here, can you read this and tell me what it means?"

(S/O) "Sure."

S/O smiled and picked up the book and glanced at the page. Kokomi saw their expression change by the second, growing more and more concerned.

(S/O) "...W-Which passage are you asking about, Koko?"

(Kokomi) "The one that says plap in it. Is that a noise?"

(S/O) "...Y-Yes it is."

Kokomi grabbed her book back, not noticing how embarrassed S/O was becoming, putting one finger under her chin.

(Kokomi) sigh "This book continues to elude me in its writing. I'm half tempted to pick another book at this rate."

S/O was secretly praying she would, lest she get to some...spicier parts of that same page, and they did not want to have to explain that to their girlfriend.

Shenhe would usually ask all sorts of questions to S/O, ranging from food, what the usual mortal activity was, or even how they were.

This time, it was something that made them flustered, which those occassions weren't in short supply either.

(Shenhe) "S/O, what does it mean when something goes plap plap plap?"

Shenhe saw the telltale signs that this question made S/O embarrassed, the flush in their cheeks, the widening in their eyes, and body freezing up.

(Shenhe) "...Is this another situation where I shouldn't ask others about it?"

Shenhe saw their head nod yes, making her happy that she can at least tell a situation just by words alone.

And S/O knew that they had to be as direct as possible so she wouldn't be confused.

(S/O) "Y-Yes, it's um...r-related to sex, Shenhe."

After explaining it to her, she quickly understands the concept.

(Shenhe) "Is it possible for us-"

(S/O) T-THAT'S ENOUGH, SHENHE!"

Xianyun had to get familiar with a lot of terms when she came to Liyue, no doubt Zhongli and Shenhe had to do the same.

Thankfully, she had Ganyu and many other kind souls in the Harbor to teach her.

None more educating than her S/O. And like always, she had a question for her beloved.

(Xianyun) "One must ask you something, S/O. I overheard a young mortal couple saying something that flustered their friends. Is plap plap plap something taboo?"

S/O coughed on their food, eyes glancing over to Xianyun, making sure they heard the question correct.

Xianyun was sitting silently, awaiting an answer as she adjusted her glasses with a finger.

(S/O) "V-Very taboo, Xianyun..."

(Xianyun) "But what exactly does it mean?"

(S/O) "It...ugh, it has to do with intercourse..."

That was the best way they could've phrased that without exploding.

(Xianyun) "...Is that it? That seems fairly mundane for everyone to become so flustered about, yourself included-"

(S/O) "YOU SHOULDN'T GO AROUND FLAUNTING IT TO OTHERS!"

Asta saw some kind of weird ad on her phone while she was shopping.

No doubt it'd give her a virus, so she ignored it, but the word on there was quite strange.

(Asta) "The heck is a plap?"

The door to her bedroom slid open, with S/O laying down next to her while Asta kept scrolling.

(S/O) "Heya-...Something bothering you? Your face is doing that cute frown."

She giggled at that but shook her head.

(Asta) "Nah, nothing. Just a word I didn't know on some clickbait ad."

(S/O) "What was it?"

S/O got their answer when they leaned over to her phone.

(Asta) "That one riiiiight there. Know what that-"

And Asta got her answer when she saw their face.

(Asta) "Wow! You're burning up!"

(S/O) "Um...J-Just search it up."

Asta raised an eyebrow.

(Asta) "Why can't you just tell me?"

(S/O) "Just d-do it."

(Asta) "Oookay? ... ... ...O-Oh. Ooooh..."

Firefly was very confused when she heard those three words for the first time.

Silver Wolf had said it, regarding her and S/O. Kafka laughed while Blade rolled his eyes, yet Firefly had no idea what it actually meant.

And, to be expected, neither of the three would tell her what it meant.

Meaning there was one person who would!

Getting her phone out, she texted S/O.

[Firefly] S/O!~ [S/O] What's up, sweetie? [Firefly] What's 'plap plap plap'? ... [S/O] is typing... ...

(Firefly) "...Huh?"

Suddenly, S/O stopped typing, making her pout.

(Firefly) "Hmph! Why is no one telling me what that means?!"

She'd just have to ask them in person, then they couldn't avoid it!

ONE IN PERSON EXPLANATION LATER

Firefly had completely frozen in place, her eyes wide-eyed like a doe as her words stuttered and died before they fully formed.

(Firefly) "I-I...A-AH!"

She couldn't meet S/O's eyes anymore, and immediately encased herself in her armor, looking away.

March overheard a couple planetside say it, and it made her giggle.

It was kinda fun to say!

But...she didn't really knew what it meant. Dan Heng and Pom-Pom sure didn't.

Caelus and Stelle seemed to laugh at it, but never told her.

Welt and Himeko's eyes widened a bit upon hearing March say it, but would find an excuse when she asked what it meant.

She COULD look at the internet and find out, but instead:

March wrapped her arms playfully around S/O's shoulders, feeling them relax into her hug.

(March 7th) "S/O! Question!"

(S/O) "Hm? What's your question, March?"

(March 7th) "Does plap plap plap mean anything weird?"

March felt their body stiffen in response. She could tell they wanted to move out her arms, but she didn't let them with her ironclad grip.

(S/O) "Does...Does it relate to you holding onto me like that...?!"

(March 7th) "Iunno, you tell me! Everyone's acting super weird everytime I say it."

(S/O) "It...uh..."

They whispered it into her ear, making her back up and cover her mouth in shock.

(March 7th) "I...I'VE BEEN SAYING THAT ALL DAY!"

(S/O) "Oh my god..."

Natasha wasn't an idiot, of course she knew what it meant.

She had to tell many people off from saying it near her kids.

But...it was kind of funny to see people's reactions to it, and she was not above teasing S/O in the slightest.

With a little smirk after work one night, she cuddles close into S/O, sounding as innocent as possible.

(Natasha) "S/O?"

(S/O) "Yes, Nat?"

(Natasha) "Can you tell me what plap means? I thought I heard some of the kids saying it."

Watching S/O's face scrunch up into a mixture of horror and embarrassment was absolutely hilarious, so much so her facade immediately broke.

(S/O) "N-NAT! You can't just ask crap like that out of the blue!"

(Natasha) "Sorry, sorry, I couldn't resist! You're just so cute when you do that.~"

Stelle 100% knows what it means.

The question was, did S/O?

It was a good thing she was usually super stoic, at least in person, cause that meant she could bullshit S/O into thinking she didn't.

She walks into their room, with the best poker face she had.

(Stelle) "Hey, S/O."

(S/O) "What's up, Stelle?"

(Stelle) "What does plap plap plap mean?"

Watching their breath stop for a split second, their eyes suddenly darting back and forth.

Oh yeah, they knew what it meant.

S/O stared at her with a red face for a few moments before frowning.

(S/O) "...I know what you're doing, Stelle. You 100% know what it means!"

Damn it, she failed the deception check.

They knew her too well...

Oh well, watching them be flustered was always super cute/funny.

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donustellaron · 8 months

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All Grown up

Okay so this is my first published fic, this one's inspired by a Sukuna bot (shockingly), so no warnings honestly? Just pure fluff and love<33. This is a gojo x reader x geto, oh also male reader cuz I'm a guy and gay. Also this is kind of a sorcerer thingy but its not like explicitly mentioned.

When Sukuna's servants brought him a small child as food he decided to give the kid some time to grow before eating him, what he didn't expect was for him to get attached to the kid. Now the kid was 11 and practically his son.

Sukuna sighed, you were gonna be the death of him, you had just asked to go meet the Gojo clan's kid, Satoru Gojo. After a bit of thinking Sukuna replied, "Fine, go see this brat of theirs, maybe it'll amuse me." With Sukuna's permission, you ran off to go find the boy. Sukuna sighed again, he hoped you didn't get into any trouble, not because he cared for you...he just didn't want any inconveniences. So when you came back holding hands with the young Satoru Gojo he was pleasantly surprised, "Why do you have him with you?" he spoke in a confused and irritated tone. "Oh! Suku-nii this is Satoru Gojo, Satoru-chan this is my caretaker Sukuna," you exclaimed excitedly, "Suku-nii I wanted to play with Satoru-chan but his guards didn't let us leave the mansion so we snuck out!!" Sukuna's expression was a mix of curiosity, annoyance, and mild amusement. "So you snuck out just to play with this one?" You responded eagerly, "Satoru-chan is lonely so this'll be his first time playing!! We'll have tons of fun!!" It was clear to Sukuna that you were happy with having a playmate, "How adorable..." He muttered under his breath. "Well go ahead and play." Hearing that you grabbed Satoru's hand and ran off to play in Sukuna's palace.

Later that night the two kids were exhausted from all their shenanigans, Satoru especially had fun, he'd smiled more that evening than in his life. "By the way, I'm glad you brought me here." He grinned, thinking about how his parents were probably running wild. Suddenly you were hit with a great idea, you grabbed Satoru's hand again and ran to your Suku-nii.

Sukuna was having tea with Uraume when he sensed the cursed energy of the Gojo kid, he turned to the door, his face expressionless as you barged in. "SUKU-NI!!!!" You paused to take a breather, "Can Satoru-chan stay the night?? Please???" Sukuna pauses, considering your request.

Meanwhile, Uraume looks at all of you confused, soon enough Sukuna speaks, "Okay... fine. The brat can stay the night if he doesn't make a mess and behaves himself." He holds back laughter at Uraume's shocked face. You squeal in happiness and thank him. "Thank you thank you thank you!!!" And again, off you go with the Gojo kid.

Once it's time to sleep you and Satoru end up talking for hours until you both pass out in your pillow fort.

5 years later, you and Satoru are now 16, in terms of appearance you both have matured and are much taller and stronger than before, yet one thing remains unchanged: your unwavering bond and love for one another. You've spent these past 5 years together, enjoying a wide variety of activities and learning more about the world and each other with every passing day. Satoru's relationship with Sukuna is better now, he's still called a brat but in an affectionate way, when they return from school they always greet Sukuna and then head off to your room to hang out.

A year later they both meet another boy: Suguru Geto, you love him dearly and so does Satoru. A year later you, Satoru, and Suguru have formed an inseparable bond. The three of you are now 17, having grown closer to each other. At one point they end up losing their virginities to each other, it's clear to Sukuna that they are in love. Even so, he and Uraume are always ready to comfort you in your relationship woes.

Soon you're 28 and at your wedding, today's the day you get married to your amazing boyfriends. When Sukuna walks you down the aisle you can't help but cry, and so does he, his little kid grew up into a formidable man. After the ceremony you find him and Uraume talking to your husbands, you walk over and hug Sukuna, a faint smile on his face and a wide smile on yours, "Suku-nii..." His heart warms at the nickname you gave him all those years ago, he holds you tightly. He had witnessed your growth and development over the years, watching your love and devotion to your husbands. He calls your name and you look up at him, "Isn't this a lovely occasion? No need for tears kid, it warms my heart to see you and your beloveds bound in matrimony." You chuckle at his choice of words, "Suku-nii, thank you for taking care of me and letting me meet Satoru-chan and Suguru-chan all those years ago, thank you...Dad" Sukuna chokes up and feels tears welling in his eyes. He hugs you tightly, and you smile, you love your dad dearly. (and Uraume)

AHHH OMG. I'm ngl I almost cried during the wedding part....anyways I really love how this turned out !! And I hope you do too :))

#gojo x male reader #jjk x male reader #gojo satoru #geto x male reader #geto suguru #jjk x reader #sukuna #∞POSTSᯤ

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antimony-medusa · 11 months

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Is that— bells ringing? Keyboards clacking? The sound of two thousand stressed writers pancing furiously about the floor? Ah yes, Yuletide.

Hello. MCYTblr. I am back again.

You are looking fine today as we move towards the end of the year. Is that a new cologne you're trying? New shirt? New glasses? It's working for you. How have I been? Well.

Well.

*I smack the wall, curtains spring aside, revealing my flip chart presentation that I've had lying in wait*

It is time for me to talk to you about Yuletide again. I was here earlier during tag nominations, but it's sign-up time, and I want to make sure everybody has a change to participate in this if they want to.

What's Yuletide?

Yuletide is an annual mega-exchange for small and rare fandoms. It runs in the close of the year, with a 1000 word minimum for gifts, with gifts revealed anonymously on the 25th of December and de-anoned on the 1st of January. It is easily the biggest exchange in multi-fandom-exchange-world, and last year more than 1,350 people signed up.

Why does everyone sign up?

Well, it's tradition, for one. There are a lot of people that only do Yuletide as their big exchange every year. It's a big holiday spectacle, it's really fun to see it operate and see pinch hits come out and get nabbed in minutes, and people kind of put on their holiday outfits and turn out for it.

For another thing, if you are in a small fandom, it's the one exchange where you can actually have a shot of getting a gift for an obscure manga fandom, or an out-of-print book, or a tv show from the eighties. If your fandom has five people in it, the odds are higher than average that two of them are signing up for this exchange, and hey presto, suddenly you're matchable in your fandom for an obscure podcast.

For another, and this is the biggie, the fact that this is an exchange for small and rare fandoms has led to a certain tradition and vibe for the fandoms that people nominate. People bring their most obscure and fun ideas, going, "hehehehe wouldn't it be fun if someone wrote a story about this", and into the tag set it goes. There is SUCH a spectrum of fandoms in the tag set.

This year there are 4,263 fandoms and 16,735 characters in the tag set. Let me just skim through and look at some of them.

There are commercials, web sketches, art pieces, songs, music videos, board games, podcasts, a dizzying assortment of anthropomorphising different places, items, and ideas, and RPF from a marvelous variety of historical periods (so, y'know, historical fiction if it was published professionally). There are people who nominated tik tok sketches. Twitter threads. A bridge. Book binding techniques. You ever wanted to write a romance between Knitting and Crochet? That's in the tag set, and someone wants to prompt you to do that. Happy Yuletide.

So if you are at all the sort of person who likes a prompt challenge, BOY is this one just a MARVELOUS one. I know I personally am going to be signing up for Humans are Space Orcs (tumblr post) and Fandom Exchanges (Anthropomorphic) amid my more traditional fandoms.

And as for my more traditional fandoms, and the reason why this post has the tags it does (I would get to it eventually)— there is a lot of MCYT in the tag set! I put out a post saying GUYS, the smaller fandoms might apply for this, and BOY did people show up for it. I scanned through it, and the MCYT (and adjacent) that made it in is:

Karmaland SMP

Legacy SMP

Lifesteal SMP

Moonlight SMP

New Life SMP

Outsiders SMP

Rats SMP

SMPEarth

SMPLive

Witchcraft SMP

Pirates SMP

Mianite

Slimecicle Cinematic Universe

SBI Rust

Generation Loss

You could make an entire sign up, 3 minimum requests and 4 minimum requests, and only select MCYT fandoms. The wild thing is that you can only select a max of 10 fandoms to offer, so you actually couldn't offer all of the MCYT. ZombieCleo Witchraft SMP is in. Tommyinnit SMPEarth. Clownpierce Lifesteal. Tubbo SBI Rust. Oli Rats SMP. A wealth of options for the block folks.

So come, join me! What's that? You say this sounds excellent, you're in? You want to know how to sign up? Well this post is already long enough so I'm putting the rest below a cut.

You sign up on the collection here, using fandoms listed in the tagset here. Before you do so though, I'd recommend you check out the blog, especially their "how to sign up" post here, because even if you're used to exchanges, the way Yuletide works is a little bit different. Let me do a quick breakdown here.

Requests

# of Fandoms

You have to select a minimum of 3 fandoms that you are Requesting (a gift that you want made for you), up to a maximum of 6 fandoms. Each fandom has to be unique. For each fandom, you can request between 0 to 4 characters in that fandom, and 0 means "literally you can hit me with anybody", and the up-to-4 characters are the people you definately want to show up in the fic.

AND MATCHING

This is one of the things that Yuletide does differently, because most fandom exchanges do "or" matching, where they match you on either characer A OR character B, (maybe you only offered character B) and you can pick among any of the selected characters on the person's request to write for. Because Yuletide does AND matching, you will only be matched if you offered every single one of the characters the person has selected, and then you get to write for every single one they have listed in their fandom, unless they say differently in their letter. If they requested character A and Character B, you get to deliver a gift that includes them both, according to the rules.

Bu like, in practice, a lot of people are a bit more like "you can pick only one of these guys if you'd like", because that is how everyone is used to things running in most other exchanges, plus people don't want to be too picky, so you can specify in your letter if you definately 100% want characters A, B, and C, or if you're fine with just A, or just A and C, or whatever constellation of characters you're chill with.

This year they have added optional freeform tags you will click on, that will specify either A) use every single one of these guys I selected. B) I have specified in my letter which guys I need for sure and which ones you can swap, C) Dealer's Choice Of Guys Go Crazy.

DNW and Optional Details

Yuletide is an "Optional Details Are Optional" (ODAO) exchange, so technically you could request (or receive) an offer that just has the characters and then you get to go absolutely buckwild for the two month writing period. Most people, however, do not want to do that, so that is where you'll put in Do Not Wants (anything that would ruin the gift for you, from major archive warnings to kinks that you don't vibe with to headcanons you loathe), and some prompts and/or likes for your person to jump off of.

DNWs absolutely must be abided by, and breaking a person's DNW is grounds for getting turfed from the exchange. Following a person's prompts or lists of likes is technically optional, but definately best practice, and y'know, part of the whole spirit of the exchange. Most people are doing their best to adhere to both the DNW and the Optional Details when they do their gift.

You can just format your DNW and Optional Details on the Ao3 signup page (easy, fast), or you can link them offsite in a letter (fancy, you can do formatting, people do them in google docs or dreamwidth pages (the traditional and more accessible option)). There's a tradition of people posting their letter links here, so that people can get an idea for what sort of prompts and signups people are offering, and make sure they're matchable to people with especially fun ideas. Note: you do have to duplicate the data if you're doing a letter, cause if you put your DNW in your letter but NOT in your Ao3, the mods won't enforce it.

And while we're here, that last link is to a community blog that includes a place where you can promo your fandoms to lure people into signing up for your guys, or participate in mini-challenges within yuletide for people who specificially want poly relationships (Three Doves Challenge), or characters of colour (Chromatic Yuletide), or horror/darkfic (Crueltide), or smut (Yuleporn), or art (Wrapping Paper), or even more. There's even a poetry challenge!

Offers

# of Fandoms

You have to sign up with a minimum of 4 fandoms, to a maximum of 10, for fandoms you are Offering (a gift you are willing to make). You must offer at least 2 characters for each fandom, to a maximum of 20— but there's also an "any" tick box if you want to go full "hit me, I like a challenge" and you'll write anything (in the tag set) within a fandom. Each of your fandoms must be unique.

Writing Period:

Signups are open through the 21st, with assignments out by the 23rd, and then you have until the 18th of December to deliver your gift.

Important Notes

You must be 18 or over to participate in Yuletide (because you might be matched with someone who requests smut), and signups close on 9pm UTC on Saturday, 21 October.

There's a known issue where the safari browser isn't letting people sign up properly, (when you get an exchange this big sometimes things break), so they say to either sign up on mobile or use a different browser. So that will be fun for me.

And that's it! Yuletide! Just under a week left to sign up, and 351 people have signed up as I write this letter at 1:30am. I just refreshed it and now it's 352. You can sign up on the Ao3 page here!

JOIN ME EXCHANGES SUCH FUN LETS GO.

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genshinluvr · 2 years

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Eating for Two | Mixed Signals Alt. Ending

Pairings: Various Genshin Men x Isekai'd!Reader, slight Various Genshin Women x Isekai'd!Reader

Summary: You are officially eating for two people! Even though you didn't think you'd become a parent, it happened (in this alternate ending), and people around you are pretty excited about your pregnancy and the birth of your child.

Note: This is an alternate ending to "Mixed Signals," which was published on the first of October. Just to clarify, the gender and the father of the baby will not be clarified because I want readers (you guys) to interpret it however you want it to be. It will be a mystery (the gender of the baby), and the baby's father will not be announced in this story because it's whoever you want it to be. As previously stated in "Mixed Signals," this story does lean towards female!reader/AFAB!reader because pregnancy does happen in this story. Please keep in mind that I don't post anywhere else but on Tumblr (Genshinluvr) and on AO3 (Aaliah_exo)

Warnings: Pregnancy and pregnancy symptoms, nausea, and cravings

Word Count: 8.7k

Read the original here: Mixed Signals. Read the Spin-off here: The Men Who Worry a Lot.

You sit across from the women of Teyvat, sipping on your tea with a throw pillow lying on your lap. Since you’re sitting in the presence of beautiful and elegant women of Teyvat, you insist on wearing presentable clothing. Still, the men and women objected, suggesting that you should wear something comfortable because the women are the ones that are visiting the abode. So, there you are, wearing one of Zhongli’s button-up shirts with fleece shorts and fluffy slippers.

“So, how are you feeling?” Lumine asks, taking a sip of her cup of tea.

You press your lips into a thin line. “I’m feeling okay. Other than the pregnancy symptoms, I’m okay.”

“Have these men been taking good care of you?” Ningguang asks, stirring her cup of tea with the tea stir spoon, her right leg crossed over her left leg.

You nod your head. “Of course! They’ve been taking good care of me ever since I started experiencing pregnancy symptoms. Well, then again, they’ve always treated me well way before I got pregnant.”

“Who is the father of your offspring? Do you know who it is?” Raiden asks, sitting on the armrest of the couch while sipping on her drink.

You shake your head. “Unfortunately, I do not know who the father is. Not to mention, I’m only two weeks into this pregnancy,” You said.

Yae Miko giggles behind her hand. “I wouldn’t be able to imagine if the father of the child is Kunikuzushi.”

“Miko, don’t say that about Scaramouche. He’s a great guy, and whether he’s the father of my child or not, he is excellent with kids.” You huff, feeling anger slowly rising. Usually, you would brush off comments like that, but you’ve been experiencing mood swings ever since you found out you’re eating for two.

“Beidou, are you not going to drink your tea? It’ll get cold.” Ningguang comments, looking over to where the Captain is sitting.

Beidou shakes her head and waves Ningguang’s comment away. “Nah, I’m not a tea kind of gal. I prefer alcohol.” She lets out a burst of boisterous laughter.

You’re about to make a comment but pause when a wave of nausea hits you. You clutch your head and slowly place your teacup back down on the saucer. The women around you fall silent. Shenhe and Yelan place their hands on your shoulders, each of them massaging your shoulders lightly.

“Are you alright? Do you want me to grab Doctor Baizhu?” Shenhe asks, rubbing your back with her left hand while holding onto your trembling hand with her right hand.

You let out a shaky laugh. “I’m fine, Shenhe. I’m suddenly feeling nauseous, but it’s nothing new. It’s something I’ll be dealing with for quite a while until I’m no longer pregnant,” You answered.

“I can take your mind off your nausea by teaching you how to gamble.” Yelan offers, giving you a small smile.

“Absolutely not,” Diluc states as he walks into the living area where you and the women are hanging out.

“Oh, come on, Master Diluc. Lighten up! Gambling doesn’t always involve mora.” Lisa giggles at Diluc’s protectiveness over you.

Diluc gives Lisa a blank stare before walking over to where you sit. Yelan and Shenhe move over to an empty loveseat beside you. Diluc sits beside you and rubs your arms lightly without saying a word. You lean into Diluc’s touch and rest your head on his shoulders, running your fingers through the tassels of the throw pillow.

Thoma enters the room with a tray of snacks in his hands. “Here are the snacks if any of you are feeling a little peckish.” He sets the tray of snacks down on the wooden coffee table.

“Ooh! Some snacks!” Hu Tao’s eyes light up before picking up a tri-colored Dango and taking a big bite out of the Dango.

Yanfei smiles at Thoma. “Thank you, Thoma! The snacks look delicious,” Yanfei says, reaching for a sakura mochi.

You stare at the snacks intently, deep in your thoughts.

“[Y/N], a mora for your thoughts?” Candace asks, leaning back in her seat with her arms crossed over her chest.

You hum softly, lifting your head from Diluc’s shoulders. “I’m just wondering what I can and cannot eat while pregnant.” You answer, hugging the throw pillow against your chest.

Nilou’s eyes widen with a small gasp. “Oh, archons, you’re right! How could we forget about that?! There are limitations when it comes to pregnancies.”

“You should call in your lovers. I’m sure they’ll know what you can and cannot eat while you’re pregnant,” Kokomi instructs, placing her ceramic teacup down on the saucer.

“No need to call anyone. We’ve been here the entire time,” Xiao states, walking down the stairs with his arms over his chest and with the other men in tow.

Mona cocks her eyebrows. “Oh? Eavesdropping, are we? How juvenile of you men to spy on people and listen in on their conversation without them knowing.” Mona huffs, taking a piece of a Katsu sandwich before taking a bite out of it.

Scaramouche rolls his eyes. “Oh please, why would we listen in on your conversation when we’re all too busy worrying about our pregnant lover?” Scaramouche sits down beside you and wraps his arms around your waist, ignoring the looks he is getting from his mother and Yae Miko.

“Doctor Baizhu, what food is [Y/N] allowed and not allowed to eat?” Kuki Shinobu asks, turning to look at the green-haired male with a questioning gaze.

“There are many things that [Y/N] can and cannot eat. There’s a list that goes on, but luckily Tighnari, Albedo, Dottore, and I made lists of food and ingredients to buy to make meals.” Baizhu answers, propping both of his hands on his hips.

“Oh? Dottore contributed to the list? Can’t say that I’m not shocked because I am.” Arlecchino chortles, bringing the cup to her lips, and takes a sip of the teacup.

Dottore glares at Arlecchino, his nails digging into the palm of his hands while trying to hold back from saying anything rash. Dottore takes a deep breath and looks over at you. You look back at Dottore worriedly, then at Arlecchino. Zhongli lets out a slow sigh and rubs the bridge of his nose with his thumb and index finger.

“Let’s not bicker with one another. We do not want to stress [Y/N] out; it’s not good for them or the baby.” Zhongli states.

Childe squeezes himself between you and Scaramouche, throwing his arms over your shoulders and rubbing your stomach. You snort and rest your head on his shoulder, reaching behind Childe and giving Scaramouche’s hand a reassuring squeeze. Scaramouche grumbles and looks away, his cheeks tinting pink while his hand is itching to zap Childe for getting in between the both of you.

“Just to let you know, I’m sure you can eat mochi while pregnant. Though, just a reasonable amount, not an excessive amount.” Childe says, brushing his thumb over your flushed cheeks. You look over at the coffee table and slowly lean forward to grab a piece of pink mochi and take a bite out of it. The mochi tastes fantastic as always; it’s soft and chewy and has red bean paste at the center of the mochi itself. You had always loved mochi, especially when you were still in your universe. You remember your mother would buy a bag that contained sixty mini mochis, and you would eat them for a snack whenever you studied or played Genshin Impact on your desktop.

“So, is there any way you want to reveal the gender of the baby? I highly recommend fireworks!” Yoimiya shoots you a wink.

“A gender reveal?” Dainsleif murmurs, rubbing his chin with his hands while in deep thought.

“Should we do a gender reveal party, or do we leave it as it is and find out about the gender when I give birth?” You ask, turning to look at the other men around you.

“It’s all up to you on whether you want a gender reveal party or find out the baby’s gender after you’ve given birth to the little one,” Kazuha says, kissing the top of your head.

You shrug your shoulders. “It’s still early into my pregnancy. We can decide on that later.” You said, dusting your fingers off and reaching for your teacup on the saucer.

After your hangout with the women has ended, you stretch your arms in the air and yawn. You gathered the teacups and saucers onto the food tray before walking to the kitchen to clean them up. As you’re washing the dishes, someone taps you on your shoulder. You turn your head and see Kaeya and Xiao standing there with their arms crossed over their chests.

You give them a smile. “Is there something I can do for you two?” You ask, putting the cleaned teacups, mini plates, and saucers on the drying rack.

“You shouldn’t be doing housework while you’re pregnant,” Xiao stated.

“It’s fine, Xiao. I’m just washing the dishes, not moving furniture around or cooking food.” You said gently. You turn the faucet off and wipe your damp hands onto the rag.

Kaeya grabs you by your forearm and pulls you towards him and Xiao. “What Xiao meant to say is that in Liyue, those who are pregnant should be relaxing and not do any work,” Kaeya explains, walking you out of the kitchen with Xiao walking alongside you.

“Oh? Is that so? That’s funny because, in my world, it’s the same thing in certain cultures. Pregnant people weren’t allowed to leave the house even,” You said, rubbing your hands over your stomach. The bump has yet to form, but you’re anxious about it developing because that means you’ll have to be extra careful than you already are.

“Do you want me to carry you to your bedroom? You need to rest and get plenty of sleep.” Ayato says, wrapping his arms around your waist and lightly resting both of his hands on your belly.

You were about to protest but decided not to. You nod your head and let Ayato carry you bridal style up the stairs and to your bedroom. Even though you’re capable of taking care of yourself while pregnant, you might as well let the men spoil you, or else you’ll get puppy dog eyes from the men if you were to reject their offering to help.

Ayato lays you on your bed and Venti and Gorou pop by the entrance of your bedroom with a smile on their face as if they’re waiting for something. Ayato sighs softly and nods his head as if he is giving them permission to enter your bedroom.

“If you don’t mind, we will be giving you cuddles as you sleep!” Venti says, sitting at the edge of your bed while Gorou sits on the other side of your bed.

“We don’t want you to feel lonely, so both Venti and I have come up with the idea that we’ll be cuddling you to sleep.” Gorou proclaims happily. He lays down on your bed and pats the middle of the bed, telling you to lie down so the cuddling session can begin. You do need someone to cuddle with. Ever since your blood test came back, the men suggested that you didn’t sleep with a ton of plushies on your bed. So they got to work and built extra shelves for the plushies that once resided on your bed.

“Oh, and just a heads up! While you’re in the middle of napping, we will be switching out with the others too. Originally, Gorou and I planned on us being the only ones to cuddle with you as you nap, but the others want in on it as well.” Venti makes a face before laying down beside you, wrapping his arms around your waist.

“We should enjoy the moment while it lasts.” You giggled, nestling up between Venti and Gorou before closing your eyes and drifting off to sleep.

The first two months of your pregnancy are complicated; then again, the pregnancy is still complicated the more time goes by. Your stomach is starting to show, which is exciting and terrifying because you have to be extra cautious when you’re doing things and eating certain foods. You were planning on relaxing at the bathhouse to relieve the tension in your body, but the men quickly denied it and told you not to take hot baths or sit in a hot tub or the hot spring in the bathhouse at the abode.

“It can cause a miscarriage. I don’t recommend sitting in anything that can increase the body temperature. The same goes for cold baths,” Albedo says, jotting down notes in his laboratory.

You purse your lips and play with the hem of Ayato’s button-up shirt that you have stolen from his closet. “I wanted to be a human submarine.” You muttered.

“A what now?” Aether chuckles, raising his eyebrows at you with an amused smile on his face.

Heizou cuddles up against you. “I’m sure you can take baths still, but as long as it’s not hot. Only warm baths!” He strokes your hair and presses a kiss on the side of your head.

Before you can say anything else, Itto walks into the lab, looking around Albedo’s laboratory while trying to look inconspicuous. You, Aether, Heizou, and Albedo stare at Itto as he slowly approaches the four of you, rubbing the back of his neck.

“Itto! Is there anything we can do for you?” You ask, smiling up at the tall oni.

Itto’s eyes light up when the two of you make eye contact. Itto stops in front of you and gazes down at you nervously, the apples of his cheeks rosy pink. You couldn’t help but squeal softly at the shyness Itto was showing; he looked too precious! You reach up and squeeze Itto’s cheeks lightly with a big smile on your face.

“I, uh, I was wondering if it’s okay for me to feel my unborn child,” Itto says, clearing his throat shyly, the tips of his ears turning almost as red as his horns.

“Your unborn child? Please, Itto, we haven’t conducted a paternity test yet.” Tighnari exclaims from the doorway he is leaning up against. Tighnari looks at Itto with wide eyes, then over at you, Albedo, Heizou, and Aether in disbelief.

Tighnari walks further into Albedo’s laboratory and stops beside you, his arms over his chest as he turns to look at Itto with his eyebrows raised. Itto mumbles under his breath. Itto’s once rosy cheeks are now crimson red like his horns. You’re now three months pregnant, and your developing baby bump is beginning to show.

“I think we can take the paternity test later,” You said. “And to answer your question, Itto. Yes, you may feel the baby bump. It’s not much, but it’s there.” You said, reaching towards Itto’s large hands and placing them over your developing baby bump.

Itto’s eyes light up, and he is suddenly kneeling in front of you. Itto lifts up your shirt (that you have stolen from Ayato’s closet) and stares at the forming bump. A big smile stretches across Itto’s face as he gently rubs your belly. Suddenly his lips quiver and tears pool around his eyes, alarming you and the others in the lab. Before you could ask if he was okay, Itto wraps his arms around your waist and pulls you close to him.

You pout and run your fingers through his soft hair while Itto presses light kisses on your baby bump, running his thumb over the bump with his head resting at your side. You look over at the others and the room, only to see them staring at your exposed baby bump. Your body shakes with laughter before you point down at your stomach.

“Do you guys want to feel the baby bump too?” You ask softly, patting your stomach lightly.

As if in a trance, they all nod their heads without taking their eyes off your stomach. Itto grumbles, muttering under his breath about how the others are copying him for wanting to feel your developing baby bump. One by one, Heizou, Aether, Tighnari, and Albedo placed their hands on your stomach, marveling over the fact that there was a being forming inside of your womb right now— a being that could look like any one of them.

“Oh? What’s going on in here?” Al Haitham asks, stepping into the lab with the other men in tow.

You smile and pat Itto’s head, who continues to cling to your side with his arms around your waist. “Itto wanted to feel the baby bump, and I let him. The others joined in after I noticed they had this longing look on their faces, wanting to touch the baby bump,” You reply.

“How warm do you think the baby is in your belly?” Itto asks, nuzzling his cheek up against your belly while continuing to caress your bump.

“It’s probably womb temperature,” Cyno replies, crossing his arms over his chest with a straight face.

Tighnari raises his eyebrows at Cyno. “Was that supposed to be a pun joke?” The corners of Cyno’s lips quirk up before nodding his head slowly.

Al Haitham rolls his eyes. “How clever,” Al Haitham stated.

“Hey, if any of you want to feel the baby bump, feel free to! After all, making a baby isn’t a one-person job.” You said, rubbing the back of your neck awkwardly.

“You’re right because it’s a twenty-five-person job.” Aether nods his head.

Heizou leans to whisper into Aether’s ears. “I don’t think it’s possible for twenty-four men to impregnate one person.”

“I know, but since we don’t know who’s the father of the baby, I might as well be inclusive,” Aether replies.

You hold your hand up. “Before any of you feel my stomach, let me sit down on a chair somewhere because my back is starting to hurt,” You said. You rub your lower back and scan around Albedo’s lab, searching for a chair to sit on.

“No need to find a chair, snookums! I’ll be your chair,” Childe announces proudly. Childe sits at the edge of an empty table and pats his lap. You shrug your shoulders and walk over to where Childe sits before sitting on his lap.

Diluc turns to look at Zhongli. “Childe is a strange man,” Diluc stated.

Zhongli chuckles at Diluc’s comment, shaking his head. “Indeed he is.”

Childe gasps at Diluc and Zhongli, his mouth ajar. You snort at Childe’s reaction and tilt your head up to press a kiss beneath his jaws, smiling when you feel Childe tighten his grip around your waist before resting both of his hands on the swell of your baby bump. Childe’s gaze softens, and he rests his chin on your shoulders, pressing a gentle kiss on the side of your neck, his thumbs rubbing your bare stomach. You lean your head against him, a tiny smile forming on your face when you hear him breathe in a shaky sigh. You know that Childe is a family man and that he wants to be a father to many children. Childe has even told you to bear his many children multiple times, so seeing his reaction to you being pregnant and touching your pregnant belly was wholesome to see.

“You’ve had your turn now!” Scaramouche stated, lightly batting Childe’s hands away from your belly before pressing both of his hands on your tummy gently.

Childe grumbles and rolls his eyes, placing both of his hands around your hips. Scaramouche’s narrowed eyebrows soon disappear as he kneels in front of you, not taking his eyes away from your bump. You smile and smooth your hands over his soft hair. Scaramouche subconsciously leans into your touch before pressing a gentle kiss on your tummy.

“What’s on your mind?” You whisper.

Scaramouche shakes his head before standing back up. He pulls you into a hug, burying his face into your hair and pressing many kisses on the top of your head while ignoring the glare Childe was giving him. Childe huffs and crosses his arms over his chest, a pout forming on his face.

You let out a small giggle and wrap your arms around Scaramouche’s waist, rubbing his back lightly. Upon feeling your small baby bump press up against his lower stomach, Scaramouche feels himself melt in your grasp. As much as Scaramouche wanted to tighten his hug, he didn’t want to hurt you or the baby, so he refrained himself from doing it.

“Hey, no need to hog [Y/N] to yourself! Let us get a turn at hugging and feeling their baby bump.” Cyno says, tapping on Scaramouche’s shoulders.

Scaramouche sighs and slowly releases you from his arms. He gives you a small smile before pressing his lips on your forehead before moving away to let the others have their turn in feeling your baby bump. Thoma was the first one to step up; he kneels in front of you and marvels at the sight of your developing baby bump. Thoma presses his hand against your tummy and lightly rubs your tummy with a smile.

“How does it feel to have a life growing inside of you?” Thoma whispers, looking up at you, his eyes glittering with happiness.

You cracked a smile and ran your fingers through his soft blond hair. “It’s a bit strange because I never imagined myself to be a parent. I’m pretty nervous about being one,” You reply.

Baizhu approaches you and places his hand on your shoulders. “It’s okay to have some concerns. After all, Albedo, Tighnari, and I are here to help you if there are any medical emergencies.” He lightly squeezes your shoulders.

“We’ll make sure that you have a healthy routine throughout your pregnancy and after you’ve given birth to the baby,” Albedo says, pressing his hands against the baby bump.

“Oh, don’t leave me out of it too. You know I’m a doctor as well, right?” Dottore asks, lightly pushing Baizhu and Albedo away to be able to feel the baby bump. Albedo and Baizhu raise an eyebrow at Dottore’s comment before exchanging looks with one another. “I can contribute as much to [Y/N]’s healthy lifestyle while pregnant just as much as the three of you.” Dottore huffs, pressing his hand against your tummy.

Pantalone walks up with a smile on his face. “You needn’t worry about the clothes for the baby and furniture for the nursery. I got you covered,” said Pantalone. He presses the palm of his hand against your pregnant belly and smiles. “After all, I do want our children to be spoiled as much as possible, but we will teach them manners because acting like a spoiled brat will earn them a spanking,” Pantalone adds.

You sigh and lay your head on Childe’s shoulders. “The baby isn’t even born yet, and we’re already talking about discipline?” You ask, looking up at Pantalone with a small frown on your face.

You’re not against disciplining kids, but you believe that disciplining children without putting your hands on them is the way to go. Your parents spanked you and your siblings a lot when you were children, and that did more harm than good; it made you more scared of doing certain things rather than teaching you right from wrong.

“And what do you have in mind, exactly?” Pierro asks, “Children need to be disciplined for their wrongdoings.”

“While I agree with that, I don’t agree with putting our hands on children because they did something wrong. It’s better to teach it to them than spanking them over the little things,” You said. “Plus, spanking children does more harm than good,” You added.

Capitano sighs. “I believe that we should leave this kind of conversation whenever the baby is born.” Capitano crosses his arms over his chest. “Like [Y/N] said, it’s too early to talk about these things when the baby has barely formed in their womb.” Capitano rubs your belly gently with his gloved hand.

“I really hope the baby turns out to be healthy,” Gorou says, rubbing your stomach and pressing his cheek against your small baby bump. Gorou rests his head on your tummy, his ears pressing up against your stomach as if he’s trying to listen for something.

Kazuha smiles and rubs the top of your belly. “I’m sure the baby will be healthy, Gorou. We’ll make sure that [Y/N] follows a healthy routine and eating habits throughout the pregnancy.” Kazuha reaches for your hand and kisses your knuckles.

Once everyone was able to touch your still-developing baby bump, you informed the men that you’d be taking a nap in your bedroom. This time, it was Kaeya that would be taking you to your room and making sure that you were actually taking a nap instead of sneak-eating snacks (you were caught the first time, and now you’re under surveillance because of that). You sit down on your bed and lay down on your side, hugging your pregnancy pillow against your body while Kaeya spoons you from behind, combing his fingers through your hair.

“Remember to get plenty of rest, alright? Sleep is important for both you and the baby.” Kaeya murmurs into your ears, wrapping his arms around your waist before placing one hand on your belly.

You nod your head. “I will, Kaeya.” A smile slowly appears on your face. “Ever since I was pregnant, I’ve been feeling even more tired than I usually do. So, I will be taking lots of naps more often,” You said, cuddling against Kaeya’s chest.

Fast forward to you being six months pregnant; you’re not allowed to lift a single finger at all. Yes, you can do some things yourself, but it usually depends on what it is. You wanting to take a shower? Well, shit! There’s a possibility of you slipping and falling in the shower. Therefore, whenever you go and shower, one man will accompany you each time you go and take a shower. If you want to grab something from a tall shelf, one of the tall men will get them for you! No need to stand on the tips of your toes or on the kitchen counter to grab something from high up. There has been a time when you also gave one of the men a heart attack when they woke up in the middle of the night, only to see that you weren’t in bed at all. Ayato rushes down the stairs, wiping the sleep from his eyes as he tries to scan the dark estate for any sign of your presence. Ayato walks toward the kitchen, only to see you rummaging through the fridge at two in the morning, your hair sticking all over the place while mumbling something under your breath. Ayato can see your baby bump peeking out from underneath your sleep shirt; the mere sight made his heart flutter in his chest at the adorable sight.

“Honey, why are you up so late?” Ayato asks. His voice was heavy with sleep as he walked over to where you stood.

You turn to look at Ayato like a startled fox before clearing your throat awkwardly. “I woke up hungry. Now I’m searching for something to eat.” You reply, rubbing your growling stomach. “You know my appetite has grown ever since I got pregnant. I can’t help it; the baby wants something to eat.” You mumbled, rubbing your swollen stomach.

Dainsleif emerges from the shadows, leaning against the entrance of the kitchen, his hair disheveled from his slumber. “You could’ve woken Thoma up from his sleep and asked him to make you something to eat, you know?” Dainsleif has that soft look on his face that makes you weak to your knees.

“I know, but I didn’t want to disturb anyone with my hunger. Plus, I think a simple snack will do. It doesn’t have to be a meal.” You added, turning back to look into the refrigerator. “Pregnancy cravings are weird. I’ve been craving sunsettias dipped in cream cheese sprinkled with spice and sugar.” You muttered, tapping your fingers on your belly lightly.

Xiao appears out of thin air beside Ayato, his arms over his chest. “Since you’re hungry, we might as well get you something to eat and keep you company while we’re at it,” Xiao says.

One by one, the other men start to emerge from the darkness of the estate. Heizou flickers the light switch on, the lights flooding the kitchen and dining area. You shield your eyes for a brief moment before slowly putting your hands back down onto your stomach once your eyes have adjusted to the brightness.

“All of you don’t need to keep me company while I snack. I feel bad that you’re all losing sleep because of your pregnant significant other.” You muttered, subconsciously rubbing your pregnant belly.

Heizou sighs and walks over to you. He snakes his arms around your waist, pulls you close to his side by your hips, and presses a kiss on the apples of your cheeks. “My love, you’re not the one that’s forcing us to stay up with you. We all want to keep you company.” Heizou lightly squeezes your waist.

You sigh in defeat. “Alright, since you all want to keep me company, I can’t force you all to go back to sleep.” You give them a small smile.

Thoma walks over to the pantry and pulls out the ingredients. “I’m not entirely sure how hungry you are, but I’ll make enough for you and the baby.” Before Thoma walks by you, he stops in front of you and presses his lips on your forehead.

“Oh, I’m really hungry. Make as much food as you like, perhaps like a feast. Though I’m not sure if the others are hungry as well, but do make enough for everyone to eat just in case,” You said.

Zhongli chuckles. “Always so thoughtful of others.” Zhongli smiles at you.

“Come, let’s wait in the living room while Thoma cooks. In the meantime, we can discuss your late-night snacking.” Diluc says, holding his hand out for you to take. You make a face before grabbing Diluc’s hand, letting him pull you towards the living room. Ever since your baby bump started getting bigger, you began to waddle a little bit whenever you walked. Not only was it a funny sight, but it was so cute that the men just wanted to capture every moment of your cute waddles on some recording device. Speaking of recording devices, Itto has been documenting your pregnancy journey with pictures of you every month. Specifically, your forming baby bump with dates and short descriptions written on the back.

“What’s it like being pregnant?” Itto asks, pointing your pregnant belly lightly.

Venti nods his head. “It looks really complicated, especially when you’re not able to do certain things and eat certain things.”

You scratch your itching nose before sitting down on the couch beside Diluc. “Pregnancy is hard, especially when your clothes don’t fit you anymore because your body is constantly changing and growing to accommodate the baby.” You rub your swollen belly with your right hand. “It’s also really hard for me to pick things off the floor if I drop something because my belly gets in the way of me bending over.” You rest your head on Diluc’s shoulders and let out a long sigh.

“Whoever said that pregnancy is beautiful, they’re lying,” Kaeya concludes. You nod your head at Kaeya’s comment. Kaeya is correct; whoever says that pregnancy is beautiful, they’re lying because there’s nothing beautiful about pregnancy other than a baby developing and birthing that baby after nine months of carrying it.

Gorou laughs lightly. “If you don’t mind me asking, how heavy does your baby bump feel?” You stroke your chin and shrug your shoulders.

“I can’t give you the exact weight of my baby bump, but it’s heavy. Perhaps a watermelon is the best description I can give,” You reply. “Oh! Not only that, but I’m producing breast milk for the baby, and if my breasts are full of milk, I start leaking.” You cross your arms over your chest and wince when you lightly nudge your tender breasts with your hand.

Scaramouche’s eyebrows shot to his hairline at your comment. “Your breasts start to leak milk if there’s too much milk?” You nod.

Childe raises his hand. “I volunteer to suck the milk out of your breasts if it’ll help reduce the pain and constant leakage.”

Xiao and Scaramouche smack Childe upside of his head with scowls on their faces. You snort and shake your head at the trio while the others look at Childe with their mouths agape. You don’t know if Teyvat has the device, but you’re hoping that a breast pump exists in Teyvat so you can get rid of the excess amount of milk stored in your breasts.

“The milk is for the baby, not for you.” Xiao rolls his eyes, looking away from Childe with a huff.

Before you can open your mouth to say something, you feel your shirt become damp. You let out a sigh for the umpteenth time before getting up from your seat. Great, you’re leaking milk, and it’s getting onto your shirt.

“Can someone please grab me a new shirt? I’m leaking milk.” You muttered, waddling over to the dining table and grabbing a napkin to soak up the leaking breast milk.

“On it.” Kazuha rushes upstairs to your bedroom to fetch you a change of shirt, his footsteps echoing throughout the estate.

Al Haitham turns to look over at Albedo. “Is there a way for you to create a breast pump for [Y/N] to pump out the extra breast milk?”

Albedo nods his head. “Hmm…. It will take some time for me to make that device, but I believe I can get it done in a short amount of time. I’ll get onto it immediately.” Albedo starts to walk away when you grab hold of his wrist and shake your head.

“It’s in the middle of the night, Albedo. As much as I appreciate it, you should save that for the morning and get some rest first.” You give his hand a squeeze.

“How bad does it hurt?” Baizhu asks as he walks up to you while you press the napkins up against your breasts.

You wince and walk over to the trash bin to throw the soaked napkins away. “It hurts a lot; my breasts are very tender, and I can’t pump the milk out because, well, there’s no way for me to do it.”

“Well, since Albedo will be making the pump in the morning, something will need to suck the milk out temporarily to ease the pain and tenderness of your breasts,” Tighnari mutters, stroking his chin.

“My offer still stands.” Childe sings, waving his hand in the air to grab your and everyone else’s attention.

Cyno scoffs, “Absolutely not.”

“How generous of you,” Dainsleif says sarcastically, rolling his eyes.

“If we let you suck the milk from [Y/N]’s breasts, it’ll lead to you putting baby number two in them.” Ayato crosses his arms over his chest.

Thoma walks out of the kitchen with plates of food laid out on trays in his hand and stops in his tracks when he sees you standing next to the dining table with more paper towels pressing up against your breasts. He gives you a questioning look, and you shake your head as if you’re telling him that you’ll explain it to him later or someone will explain it to him later.

“If you’re still hungry, let me know, and I’ll make more for you, alright?” Thoma places the plate down on the table where you usually sit.

You nodded your head and thanked him before throwing the paper towels away. You sit down and begin eating the meals that Thoma had oh so graciously cooked for you and the baby. The smell and the look of the food look enticing and mouth-watering. While you’re eating the meal, Al Haitham catches Thoma up to speed on what happened while he was in the kitchen cooking food for you and the baby.

“Childe being Childe, he offered to suck the milk from their boobs,” Aether says, reaching over to steal a piece of your bread and munch on it.

Heizou shrugs his shoulders. “I mean, [Y/N] did say that their breasts being full of milk hurts, and their nipples would leak with milk. Since Albedo is making the breast pump in the morning, Childe is offering a somewhat better replacement,” said Heizou as he stroked his chin.

You shake your head and finish up your meal, rubbing your now full tummy happily. You lean back in your seat and let out a relieved sigh. That hit the spot. You’re hoping the baby is happy and content with the amount of food you’ve eaten just for them. Now you feel like you’re about to pop like an inflated anemo slime.

“Oh! Are you done eating?” Venti asks, gazing at you curiously.

You nod your head. “Yes, I’m done eating! The meals filled my tummy up, and I’m sure this little bean,” you gesture to your baby bump, “is happy and content that they’re able to get some delicious food.”

Itto makes a face. “Little bean? Onikabuto booboo bear, you know I’m allergic to beans. Can we call the baby something else?” Itto gives you puppy dog eyes.

Cyno cocks his eyebrows at Itto. “Onikabuto booboo bear? What kind of monstrosity of a pet name is that? Also, Scarabs are better than onikabutos.”

Itto gasps and glares at Cyno before a thought dawns on him. “Scarabs? Scaramouche…. Scarabmouche…” Itto slowly looks over at where Scaramouche stands. Scaramouche glares at Itto, a faint glow of purple emitting from his fingertips and the palm of his hands.

“Do you want me to electrocute some common sense into your head, you dumb oni?” Scaramouche growls, his eyes beginning to glow ominously.

Diluc rolls his eyes. “It’s too early to fight. Since [Y/N] has finished their meal, we should all head back to bed now.”

Xiao holds his hand out for you to take. You reach for his hand, letting Xiao pull you up from your seat. You almost offered to wash the dishes but then remembered that you weren’t allowed to do basic housekeeping while pregnant. So, you kept quiet and let Xiao guide you up the stairs.

Xiao squeezes your hand. “I’ll keep you company for the night if you’re okay with it.” He looks down at you with a soft gaze.

You smile and rest your cheek against his shoulders, squeezing his hand back. “I would love that.” You whisper, continuing to let Xiao walk you back to your bedroom.

The very next day, you find yourself sitting in between Dainsleif’s legs while he reads you a story from Khaenri’ah, your back pressing up against his chest while you hold the breast pump against your chest. Your head is resting on the crook of his neck, holding the breast pump in place.

“I think the baby will love the stories from Khaenri’ah.” You murmur, a shy smile appearing on your face when you feel Dainsleif press his lips against your temple.

Dainsleif sighs softly. “I hope they do.” He rubs the tip of his thumb against the apples of your cheeks, resting his chin on your shoulder.

You reach up and stroke his soft hair. “I’m sure they will. Children love all kinds of stories that are told to them. I’m sure they’ll want to hear more stories about Khaenri’ah.” You tilt your head back to face him, pressing your lips against his.

“Apologies for interrupting your and Dainsleif’s intimate moment, but we’re just stopping by to check and see how you’re doing.” Jean’s voice interrupts you and Dainsleif. Without a second thought, Dainsleif throws his cape over your torso and looks over to where Jean’s voice came from.

“Ladies! It’s great to see you all again after six months! How have you all been?” You ask, holding the pump close to your chest along with the cape that Dainsleif has draped over you.

Kujou Sara sighs. “You’re the one that’s pregnant; we should be the ones to ask you how you’re doing, not the other way around.” She gives you a soft smile.

You chuckle awkwardly. “Well, I’ve been doing well! The baby is healthy and is, as you can see, still growing! I’m currently, uh, pumping the milk out of my breasts.” You clear your throat. “Give me a moment, ladies. You all can wait in the living room while I go make myself look proper.” Your face heats up with embarrassment. Their visitation is so sudden; you and Dainsleif didn’t expect them to suddenly show up while you’re trying to drain the excessive amount of milk out of your swollen breasts.

“Do take your time. Apologies for not informing you of our visitation; it’s on us.” Ganyu says, bowing elegantly.

“No, no! No need to worry!” You laugh shyly; you turn to Dainsleif and motion for him to show the women where to go.

The ladies give you a smile before walking off with Dainsleif leading the way. You sigh and lean back in the hammock. At least you’re able to pump out a reasonable amount of milk from your breasts; now, you’re no longer in pain or leaking milk from your nipples.

You quickly changed into Childe’s shirt and placed the milk bottle in the refrigerator. You make a mental note to start labeling the milk bottles— actually, should you even keep the breast milk? The baby won’t arrive until a few months from now, and the milk will most likely be expired if it’s not ingested soon. Maybe you should’ve taken up on Childe’s offer.

After changing into Childe’s shirt, you slowly descend the stairs, waddling like a penguin with your right hand on your bump while your left-hand clutches the railing. You can’t do normal day-to-day things without having to worry about accidentally doing something that could potentially harm your unborn baby.

“[Y/N], if you don’t mind me asking, where are the fathers of your baby? They shouldn’t leave you alone by yourself while heavily pregnant.” Eula huffs, rushing over to where you’re walking and holding her arm out for you to take.

You wrap your arm around Eula’s and give her a thankful smile. “A few of them are currently building the nursery for the baby right now. The others are out in Teyvat buying furniture for the nursery.” You answered, letting out a deep exhale.

“And they decide to leave you all alone? How irresponsible of them.” Rosaria mutters, shaking her head with disapproval before getting up from her seat to help Eula with assisting you over to the living area where the other women, and Dainsleif, are sitting.

You slowly sit down on the loveseat with the help of Eula and Rosaria. You give them a smile and chuckle softly. “Please, I wasn’t alone. Dainsleif has been keeping me company this entire time. Baizhu, Tighnari, Albedo, and Dottore are in the medical bay right now.” You said, placing both of your hands on your belly. “Anyway! It’s been a while since I’ve seen all of you, ladies; how have you all been?” You ask, giving them a smile.

“Busy as usual, but we want to check up on you and the baby the most,” Yunjin says, crossing her right leg over her left.

You giggle. “Very pregnant; I’ve been getting up in the middle of the night frequently because the baby and I have late-night cravings now.” You sigh, rubbing your belly.

Keqing looks at you worriedly. “You have been getting plenty of rest, correct? You and the baby need plenty of sleep.”

You wave her comment off. “Don’t worry about the baby and me getting plenty of sleep, Keqing! The men have been making sure that I get plenty of sleep and take naps when I’m feeling fatigued.” You give Keqing a smile.

Signora hums and leans in her seat, crossing her arms over her chest. “We know the baby is quite heavy. Have the men do anything to ease the weight of the baby?” Signora asks. You gaze at her curiously and slowly shake your head. You open your mouth to question Signora about what she has implied when Singora motions for you to get up from your seat. You slowly stand up, and Beidou walks over to where you stand and pulls you to the middle of the living room. With your back facing towards Beidou’s direction, she approaches you, wraps her arms around you and gently places her hand beneath your baby bump, and lifts it up.

“That feels really nice.” You sigh in relief, resting your head on Beidou’s shoulders.

Columbina giggles. “While I see that these men care for you, we know more than they do as women. And I, for one, think that we could treat you better than they can.” Columbina says, ignoring the not-so-subtle glare that was given to her by Dainsleif.

“Anything on your mind, [Y/N]?” Sandrone giggles.

You shake your head. “It feels good to have the weight get taken off.” You let out a blissful sigh.

Arlecchino gets up from her seat and lightly nudges Beidou away from you. Beidou glares at Arlecchino for a moment; the two women exchange silent, heated glares with one another before Beidou reluctantly lowers your pregnant belly. You’re about to open your mouth to protest when Arlecchino takes Beidou’s spot, her chest pressing up against your back, and lifts your pregnant belly.

“Tch and Dottore said that they take great care of you.” Arlecchino rolls her eyes. She tilts your head up and rubs your chin lightly. “Ditch them; we’ll take better care of you.” Arlecchino coos.

Dainsleif strides over to you and Arlecchino and grabs her by her wrist, and glares down at her, shaking his head. Dainsleif pulls you from Arlecchino’s arms and walks back to the loveseat where you once sat earlier.

“I would keep my hands to myself if I were you. If you put your hands on something that belongs to us, I won’t hesitate to cut them off.” Dottore states, leaning up against the wall with his arms over his chest.

Collei laughs nervously. “A-Anyway!” Collei turns to look at you. “Has the baby kicked yet?”

You shake your head. “Not yet, but I do feel them move around in there.” You smile, rubbing your belly.

Ayaka stares at your pregnant belly intently. “If you don’t mind, would it be okay for me to feel your baby bump?” She asks softly.

You smile and nod your head. “Of course! Go ahead, Ayaka.” You gestured for the daughter of the Kamisato Clan to come closer.

Ayaka gets up from her seat before walking over to you excitedly, trying to refrain from smiling too big. Ayaka places both of her hands on your bump and lightly feels around your bump, gazing at your belly in awe. You smile and look up at Dainsleif, who is staring down at you with a look of concentration on his face. When the both of you make eye contact, he gives you a tiny smile, and you smile back at him.

You suddenly feel something strange in your tummy, making you wince, and Ayaka gasps. She takes her hand off your stomach and covers her mouth with both of her hands, gazing at you like a startled fox. Dainsleif and Dottore were immediately at your side.

“Did something happen?” Sucrose asks, rushing over to your side.

The door of the abode opens, footsteps rushing down the stairs at the sound of Ayaka’s gasp and Sucrose’s question. You’re immediately swarmed by the men and women around you in the living room of the abode.

“Oh, dear archons! You didn’t get hurt, did you?” Gorou whimpers, kneeling in front of you.

Before you can answer Gorou’s question, the same feeling hits you. You let out a gasp, and your hands fly to your stomach, eyes wide. What was this strange feeling in your belly? Surely it’s not the baby moving around; you’ve felt the baby move around inside your womb plenty of times, and this was not it.

“I think the baby’s kicking,” You whisper.

“What is it, dearest? Should we take you to the infirmary for a checkup?” Zhongli asks, kneeling beside you.

You grip Zhongli’s forearms and look at him with wide eyes. “I’m fine, but the baby is kicking.” You said softly.

Ayato’s eyes widen. “The baby’s kicking?”

You nod your head, tears pooling around your eyes. “The baby’s kicking; they’re okay. They’re just kicking around inside, letting me know they’re here.” You laugh, wiping the stray tear that made its way down your cheeks.

“Everyone, please back up and give [Y/N] some room to breathe. You’re all going to make them hyperventilate if you don’t give them space to breathe and collect their thoughts.” Tighnari says, ushering people to move and giving you the space you need.

“The baby isn’t hurting you, are they?” Al Haitham asks. He knelt in front of you and grabbed onto your hand, hesitantly placing his hand on your belly and rubbing it.

You shake your head. “It doesn’t hurt when the baby kicks me, but it does catch me off guard when the baby does it,” You answered.

“Before we get into the topic of the baby and what they’re doing in the womb, do you want to see what the nursery looks like?” Kazuha asks, holding his hand out for you to grab. You smile and nod your head, placing your hand into his grasp, and get up from the couch with the help of Kazuha, Al Haitham, and Dainsleif.

Upon arriving at the nursery, you gasp at the sight of the adorable nursery. Plushies from different regions of Teyvat, the nursery is painted in a porcelain white, subtle colors borderline the smallest parts of the bedroom. A rocking chair in the corner of the room, a diaper changing area that is stocked up on diapers and baby wipes.

“Wow, this baby isn’t even born yet, but is already spoiled by their fathers.” Xinyan chuckles, looking around the room in awe.

You laugh and lean on Kazuha and Al Haitham’s arms. “This baby will be getting nothing but endless love and affection from their parents.” You rub your belly. As if the baby was agreeing, you feel the baby kick your tummy. You winced and rubbed the area where the baby kicked you. “Glad to see that you agree with me.” You chuckle and pat your tummy gently.

While you’re admiring the nursery, the men can’t help but admire you from a distance. You’re going to be a fantastic parent to the unborn baby, and they just know that you’re going to be very attached and smitten with the child. You suddenly stop in your tracks when you stand in front of the crib, your hands clutching onto your stomach.

“[Y/N]? Is something wrong?” Baizhu asks, placing his hand on your shoulder while gazing at you worriedly.

You sigh and slowly turn towards the men and women, your face hot with embarrassment. “I’m feeling hungry, even though I ate about three hours ago.” You mutter, tapping your fingers on your belly.

Kaeya chuckles and shakes his head. “I mean, you are eating for two. You getting hungry all of a sudden is to be expected.”

Xiao holds his arm out for you to grab. “Let’s go downstairs. We shouldn’t be keeping you and the baby waiting any longer for food.” You waddled towards Xiao and latched yourself onto him, and let him escort you downstairs, with the men and women following behind. At first, you don’t think you’re prepared to be a parent of a child, but with the help from your beloved boyfriends and girl friends, you think you’ll be okay. Though what you definitely weren’t prepared for was eating for two because imagine eating four hours ago, and all of a sudden, you’re hungry again.

Note: Ah yes, finally, an alternate ending to "Mixed Signals," featuring the Genshin women! Obviously, I have to include most of the women in Genshin; I had this entire thing planned out. I couldn't get all of them to say something because there are over 30 female characters in Genshin (not counting the children), and it's hard to keep up with over 50-60 people talking in one fic 💀 Since it's midterms, I had a lot of assignments thrown at me, and it's been hell LMAO ;v; But I'm doing well, I think, I hope I am. I was planning on having a Halloween fic (individual character fic), but it would require a massive trigger warning. So I didn't make it and chose to type out the alternate ending instead! Anyway, for those who are new or have been here the entire time, I ONLY post on my Tumblr (Genshinluvr) and my AO3 (Aaliah_exo)! Nowhere else except Tumblr and AO3!

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meanscarletdeceiver · 8 months

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Wilbert's Worst

Right, so I really was open to having my mind changed on The Worst One but nobody’s argument has budged me.

I was going to write a complete, balanced essay on The Worst W. Awdry Book, but I’m a) mired in the research phase (hey if anyone knows someone with an encyclopedic knowledge of Tom and Jerry hit me up, for real) and b) right now I wanna talk about the characters and their Beloved Dynamics instead.

So I'm just gonna get this out of the way so I can post the poll and move on to answering fun asks and watching Tom and Jerry in peace. Behold: a salty and unbalanced review.

Wilbert’s biggest failure of a children’s storybook?

Henry the Green Engine

Ohhh… because of the, uh, ra —?

Because of the racism, yes!

Oh. You do know that since 1972 they’ve republished it without the n-slur?

Good for them. Two things:

1. I know it used to be there, I’m never able to read it without knowing it was there in the first edition.

2. I consistently try, when ranking the books, to consider them in the context in which they came out. Because of this, I don’t like using “things that happened later” (like a new character never being properly used again or whatever) against the book. This helps me evaluate the author’s successes and failures against what they were trying to achieve when they wrote it vs what I would most want (blorbo content). It helps me not bring to bear the whole weight of fanon and fandom on a text that should be able to stand or fall on its own. Tl;dr I try to read the books like a guy who picked it up in 1951, or whatever.

And yeah, if I’d bought this when it came out it would have had the slur. I’m going to judge it accordingly.

Look, racism is bad, no argument, but does that mean the book as a whole must be condemned?

Yeah, I think the slur and the “aaaand suddenly, blackface! heeheehee” bullshit fuck over the entire book, game over. Go directly to jail, do not collect $200.

The Railway Series is not a work of high art or deep thorny complex literature. The books are meant for children — small children, at that. Children small enough to get bedtime stories read to them. The main goal of each book (especially this early on — you do have to manage secondary priorities like “pleasing the long-time fanbase” the longer you go, but right now we’re only 6 books into the series) is to create a happy imaginary world to enhance childhoods and family lives… to impart to other parents and kids a similar cosy happiness to that the author and his own kids enjoyed when he was workshopping/drafting the stories for them. When we say “children’s book” we really do mean little’uns — these average 1.25 full-color illustrations per page!

And these books sold in large numbers. This means it’s a certainty that somewhere in 1951 there was a Black family who owned the whole series, who went out to the shops, whose kid was like “ooh! Henry gets a book, neat…,” who like everyone else enjoyed the wild ride of Henry’s inspection and coal and wreck and rebuild… only to get verbally spat on one page from the end.

Real mood-killer there. Epic fail, as the cool kids used to say in my youth.

All right, fine, cool kids never said that. Anyway, statistically speaking there was certainly even more than one family that got that experience. Not to mention the non-Black families who even in 1951 were like “... wtf? i’d smack my kid if they ever said a word like that around me, geez. no.” Just a lot of people who had the light the book was kindling in them snuffed out all at once.

You can actually be totally racist and your book not commit creative suicide on the penultimate page! Awdry flubbed his job of 'bestselling books-for-six-year-olds' here. Creative failure. Unforced error. Automatic zero.

But times were different then, you have to consider it in the context of the time.

1951 U.K. was not the nadir of multiracial equality or Black power, but jfc. I can assure you that over 99% of children’s books published that year in the Anglosphere managed to not use the n-slur.

All right, all right. That was bad. But this feels off-topic. If you had never known about what used to be “Henry’s Sneeze,” would you still rank the entire book as dead last in the Wilbert Awdry corpus?

Not dead last, but it is not a strong book. “Coal” and “The Flying Kipper” are super-interesting as material for Henry, but after that the book kind of falls off a cliff; the intrigue drops dramatically. The railway incidents chosen to make stories of are all solid choices, but it was not only “Sneeze” where Awdry’s handling of the material feels clumsy and weird. (And I’m not even talking here of the “heehee blackface — ain’t i a stinker?” gag in “Sneeze.”)

But… “The Flying Kipper”? C’mon. It’s a superb story and no book that contains it can be the absolute worst in the series.

“TFK” remains easily the best single TVS episode ever – but a lot of that is down to Britt and David’s artistry and judgment.

Don’t get me wrong, a full-on railway wreck makes interesting material. But I don’t think the book does nearly as much with it as it could (and I’m trying sooooo hard here to forget about the amazing TVS adaptation, as I think it REALLY shows Awdry up. Even so, the storytelling here is surprisingly tepid and low-stakes). I get that Awdry probably wanted to lean into the comic angle and not make Henry’s condition afterwards seem too grave, in order to ensure the material wasn’t too dark for his young audience? (*mutters* again, a level of tender consideration for his readers’ youth that went right out the window when it came to small Black kids, evidently coz he couldn’t imagine that they read) Understandable, laudable — but if he outright refuses* to make the wreck too dramatic or scary then, well, then the wreck isn’t real scary or dramatic. And it can’t save the rest of the book from its flaws.

*For all I know it could have been the publishers who insisted that the wreck be made preschooler-safe, that’s possible (although it’s also consistent with Awdry’s brand of humor and his overall low degree of emotionalism in his writing). Either way, though, the end result book is what it is and it will be judged accordingly.

In addition to not being as exciting as many remember... @trainsupessandhuntresses asked me once if I thought some of Awdry's stories were "mean-spirited." I had to assent vigorously. And a surprisingly high proportion of those "mean" moments are in Henry the Green Engine? For some reason? It’s not just the racism. Awdry was not in the game to give Henry a deserved happy ending, he’d wanted to kill him off (the fuck?) and when his publishers prevented him (I don’t say this often, especially since I love how salty the Awdrys get about their publishers, but this in case good job, publishers!!) he wrote “TFK” with the primary motivation of giving Henry a new engine basis. Any soft or hearty emotions we get out of the deal are a side-effect — the only emotion that was fueling Awdry as he wrote this was spite, spite and a weird resentment towards his poor, long-suffering, invaluable illustrator. (I don’t blame Awdry for being frustrated that the engine illustrations were continually inaccurate or confusing, but I do think it’s weird to read all this great Henry material knowing that it was written with such poor grace.)

So his ‘happy Henry’ stuff feels perfunctory; his Percy interlude is just brutal (why did you have to drag Percy into Henry’s book purely to give him a fuck-up, a scolding, and a messy dunce cap?); Gordon’s savaging of Henry for being too happy after recovering from a near-death experience is such an incredibly low point for Gordon that it’s hard for me to accept it as canon (there’s being proud, boastful, and self-absorbed, and then there’s being the straight-up raccoon dumpster fire Gordon is in that scene). Oh, and I think “call the police [local constabulary, doesn’t bear firearms]” woulda probably a less reckless way of dealing with the rock-throwing youths than the sneeze of hot locomotive ashes, which of course the Fat Controller doesn’t like, that shit coulda been real dangerous! Mind, there are small rays of kindness throughout that do get me (the interactions between Henry and his crew feeling to me the least perfunctory and most heartfelt), but this is overall such a mean-spirited book. God. It starts off with such a gentle story (almost a non-story, if you’re in it purely for the “railway incidents” game and not character drama), but in short order the vibes just sorta suck. At least in other RWS books, when the vibes are off, they’re usually off near the beginning and then improve by the end. This one gets worse as it goes on. Oof. Don’t like that.

Also, the last page is sooooo lame. I suspect the publisher strong-armed Awdry into writing most of it so that at least the slur wasn’t on the last page of the book... and if Awdry had any idea of how much he’d just empowered Henry and all his fans in this book he shouldn’t have found it hard to find 50 extra words to sum things up. As it was, he’s just filling space and running out the clock, lol. Lame wrap-up. Boring. As usual when it comes to every little thing about this book, Britt and David closed this up better (mind, their closer – “He had taught Gordon and silly boys a lesson, with a whistle and a sneeze” – also sucked. But at least it was blessedly short.)

Didn’t you once list HtGE on a list of your favorite Wilbert Awdry books?

I did list it as one of the books that “at one time or another” have been my favorite in the series. Unfortunately in the case of HtGE, that was back when I really couldn’t read a story that I knew from the TVS without mentally substituting the adaptation into my brain as I read… largely overriding the actual text. Plus, everything I knew from TVS as a kid kind of automatically got a halo effect. Plus, I was super into Henry’s arc.

The first time I read HtGE after calming down and actually reading all the books as books... massive disappointment. There is such a gap there between what I'd thought the book said (all our incredible fanon work overanalyzing and headcanoning Henry and building this beautiful fantasy arc about disability!) vs. what it actually said (limp and careless writing, mean vibes, airbrushed n-slur, bad aftertaste).

I do think there is some stuff about the development of Awdry’s storytelling technique here that is interesting (again, Tom and Jerry superfans reading this, please shoot me a message!) but it doesn’t counteract everything else.

At least we’re over the racism stuff?

Nah, I’m not over it, actually.

#showed his whole ass #an rws book shouldn’t leave a nasty taste in your mouth #but! here we are #okay this rant was not as short as i thought it'd be #but again. there will be a proper analysis in the fullness of time.#henry the green engine (rws)#rws discussion #racism tw #slur mention tw

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dilfiam-afton · 2 years

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“You´ll be fine”

Summary; William finds you out on their balcony, sobbing bc you got broken up with. William implies his attraction to you. GENDER NEUTRAL

READER IS OF AGE

tiny disclaimer; I wrote this when I truly was sick with bad neurological issues so if it's really really weird, I'm sorry I haven't proof-read it yet but I do want to publish it either way

This was supposed to be a fun day! You were going to hang out with Michael, his girlfriend aka your best friend and your (ex) boyfriend who, unfortunately for you, was Michaels best friend.

But now you found yourself sobbing on the Aftons balcony, tear glazed eyes intensely staring down the moon in hopes of her magically making you feel better. After about half an hour you steadied your breathing, wiping your runny nose on one of your sleeves and blinking away a few remaining tears. Why would he break up with you today? Why emberass you in front of Michael and your best friend? You huffed, if he were to be your forever one, your special one, or if he actually loved you, he would NOT have done that. Simple. Coming to think of it; why wasn't your best friend out here with you, comforting you?Oh well, couldn't care less. Finally, you feel at peace, even if just for the moment. The sound of an opening sliding door ripped you from your thoughts, quickly turning around to meet gazes with Michaels father; William. Though you would never dare call him by his first name, he was Mr.Afton to you. You studied him, mentally slapping yourself for coming out here.

Mr.Afton however just sighed as he swiftly reaches into the jacket of his usual purple suit, casually whipping out a cigar along with a purple zippo lighter. His steel grey orbs seemingly undressing you. Mr.Afton made you feel soft, weak and small. You would never dare to ever disrespect him. Not only out of fear, but he was also intimidatingly handsome. "This man indeed does age like fine wine" you thought to yourself, eyes scanning over the tall man. He cocked a brow staring at you, noticing your red, puffy eyes. "What's the matter?" he harshly asked. The lack of care in his voice startled you out your thoughts once again. Suddenly you felt emberassed to admit you just got broken up with. Emberassed to admit you were neither lovable, nor desirable for a man. You never felt so alone before. Now the familiar feeling of warm liquid rising from your eyes hit you again. Much to your dismay, you were now sobbing in front of William, who seemed very helpless and shocked- stunned, even. "Oh." He took another step towards you, considering laying a soothing hand on your shoulder yet deciding against it as to not invade your personal space. "There there. Would you like to tell ol' William what happened, my dear?".

You would, if you could but everytime you tried to explain, the words came out chocked and gargled. The older man in front of you sighed once again, putting out his cigar and opening his arms, inviting you in for a hug "Would a hug make you feel better? Come on, bring it in. Got nothing to lose" within a second you found yourself sobbing into the purple fabric of his shirt. Lucky you couldn't see the disgusted look on his face as your tears stained his suit. You stayed in his arms until you felt...better? He really did have a soothing aura. "Now, what's wrong? What did they do?" he asked once again, now sounding more empethatic and caring than before. You looked away as you begun explaining how your boyfriend broke up with you, how your best friend didn't even try to comfort you, and how you felt undesireble. William stayed silent, nodding every now and then while you spoke to show he was listening. "Know what? That's no matter to cry about. Other women also have nice sons. You wouldn't want to be with someone who doesn't love you, would you?" you shook your head "no.." he let out a chuckle. "Considering the situation I assume you don't want to return to your friends ?" again, you shook your head. "Well then. I do have another guest room. I suppose you may use it..." for a split second he raised his voice "BUT only if you promise to be quiet. The room is attached to my master bedroom and I do not wish to be disturbed." You nodded this time "Yes, Mr.Afton".

As the both of you made your way back inside, you cautiosly following after William, you notice he's walking downstairs. You were indeed confused, yet kept following. "Tell you what. I'll make you a cup of nice tea while you change into your pyjamas. It'll help you sleep. 'S that alright with you?" you managed to smile "Yes! Thank you, Mr.Afton" William clicked his tongue in response "Oh please. Drop the formalities, making me feel old." he grinned. Nodding, you quickly made your way upstairs into the bathroom, getting ready for bed. It seems you took a while because as soon you left the bathroom you noticed Williams bedroom door open, him standing in the frame yet still in his suit.

He stepped aside as to invite you in, pointing to a door across the room. "You'll be sleeping there today. Consult me if you need something. And hey" he took a step closer to you, letting one of his large hands rest on your left shoulder "tomorrows another day. As you get older, a lot of new doors will open while others may remain closed, or close over time. Yet there's no need to frat over what you can't or don't have. It's all okay." you smiled up at him once again. "Thanks Mr- err..William".

Much to your surprise you suddenly felt a strong tug from the hand on your shoulder, yanking you against his chest once again. "And not to mention, there are plenty other men who will take interest in you" for a brief moment you could've sworn he kissed your head. "Now, off to bed with you. Sleep well." he let go of you. "Good night, William!!". As you entered the room you found a cup of tea on your night stand. The room was cozy! You happily sunk into bed, a warm and fuzzy feeling lulling you to sleep.

#fnaf x reader #william afton #william afton x reader #fnaf #dilfiam afton

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kaittalkstoomuch · 1 year

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here we go: ‘86 is the title of my fic! this is the prologue i’m so so so excited yet nervous because it’s my first fic published but i hope you guys love it! 🖤

‘86 // The Prologue: THE FREAK AND THE BABE

*TRIGGER WARNING: swearing, mentions of abandonment, nsfw.

MARCH 23, 1985

I quickly gather my things as the bell dismissing us rings. “Thank god, I’m starving.” I think to myself. It was the last day of school before spring break and I couldn’t wait any longer. As well as school being absolutely draining, I have a week off from being harassed by Jason Carver.

Jason Carver is your average jock. Puts his feelings before others, doesn’t care about others. Just your good Ol’ average egotistical jackass. I never quite understood his obsession with me. I’m just a girl who hangs out with the band kids and I also write all the time. A coping skill I acquired dealing with the aftermath of my father leaving.

So, with that being said, I never understood the appeal I had on him. It’s like clockwork. I’ll attempt to sneak into the cafeteria so that I can avoid him, that’s not the case. He’ll always catch me. So, today would most likely not be an exception. A girl can certainly try. I sprint out of my classroom and hurry to the lunchroom, when I’m so rudely interrupted by an egotistical entity. I growl at his presence. “Hi Roxanne, how are you today? He cockily asks while fixing his obnoxious hair. I roll my eyes. “It was going good until you showed up.” I say under my breath.

I continue walking as he does as well, attempting to put his arm around me. I push it away. “No thank you. I don’t need a man to protect me from nothing.” He smirks then snickers. “Okay fine.” I start to grow very impatient and uncomfortable as the entity moves in front of me. I just want to eat something! “Are you at least going to be at the game later? You know, to cheer me on.” My anger grows and I scoff. “You seriously think I’m some bimbo with pom poms in love with you? Please.”

My skin begins to feel hot when suddenly the scent of old spice and weed overrides my senses. Realization hits as I see a leather covered arm wrap around me instantly calming me down. It’s Eddie “The Freak” Munson. Eddie is a senior who is repeating his senior year for a third time next year. I can’t help but to like him. Those eyes draw you in. I also sneak out with Robin to The Hideout to watch him and his band perform. He looks majestic when he shreds. I always find myself wondering if he notices me in the front row.

“Hey babe, is this guy bothering you?” I look at him astonished, blink a couple of times before it clicks. “Yeah. He’s… He’s harassing me about going to the game later and won’t stop.” I look up at Eddie, who gives me reassuring eyes before he sees red. “Carver thinks he can pull a fast one on my girl? Think I wouldn’t notice?” I put my hand on his chest continuing to play the part, only to notice how quickly his heart was beating.

I sneak a peek at Jason, who looks like he’s seen a ghost. “I’m just surprised a pretty thing would go out with a freak like you.” Eddie grows even more angry. “She is not a ‘thing’. She is a woman.” I rub on his chest even more. “A woman that chose the wrong guy.” Jason snaps. Eddie snaps harder. “At least i’m not a scumbag like y-“ I plant my lips on his as I drop my school books to caress his face. The cafeteria grows extremely silent.

His arms wrap around my waist and mine go into his curls as our kiss deepens. My eyes stay closed even though I’d like to see Jason’s face. Eddie stops the kiss and winks at me. I give him a smile. We stop our efforts and look at the pathetic thing. “Anything else Jason?” I ask, raising my eyebrows while still holding Eddie. Speechless, he walks away. I turn to my knight in shining armor. “Thank you so much. He wouldn’t leave me alone. How can I repay you?” Eddie chuckles. “That kiss was definitely something babe, show me what else you can do.” Now it’s me who’s speechless. Eddie kisses me once more and leads me somewhere.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Eddie leads me to his van, away from the school. My smile intensifies. Eddie notices me smiling and snickers. “You know, you have a really nice smile.” He leans against the van, making the butterflies in my stomach grow. “Really?” I try to hide from embarrassment. “No no darling, don’t hide. I love seeing you smile, especially in the front row.” His cockiness peaks. I start to get flustered. “Oh…” I speak quietly. “I never thought you’d notice.” “Oh no sweetheart. I see you dancing with Robin Buckley. It’s hot catching glances with you.” He opens the van and climbs in before offering his hand. “M’lady.”

I grab his hand, put my foot on the step and he pulls me in. The force of the pull makes me fall into his arms and he wraps his arms around me, catching me. “Wow, I never ever thought I’d be in your arms.” Eddie has. a shit eating grin. “Took us long enough huh?” I laugh with him. “Yeah… But especially you. What took you so long?” That’s when the overwhelming feeling comes as Eddie puts his lips back on mine. My eyes shut immediately as our hands roam all over each other.

The contrast of my warm skin with the chill ones of his rings hits quickly and I need more. His lips are soft and rough. His calloused hands explore beneath my shirt, causing me to shutter a bit. I laugh a bit. “I always see the way Carver approaches you everyday. The way it left you feeling.” Eddie begins to bite and suck on my jawline. Little moans come out of my mouth and into his ears. “I would constantly beat myself up for not coming to help, but today…… fuck. Today was it.” The way he breathes onto my neck and also him talking. Oh fuck.’”I couldn’t stand it any longer. That asshole doesn’t deserve you.”

My hand and fingers go into his locks that have been begging to be pulled. “God Eds.” I moan as his lips travel down to my collarbone. His moans fill his van as I tug and pull. He begins to bite, lick, and suck onto my breasts. His hands hook onto my breasts, gives them a squeeze. He moves them behind me and unclasps my bra. “Finally.” I gasp as his hands get back to my breasts. “I’ve always liked you Rox. I would protect you from anyone and anything, including that piece of shit.”

He continues to do wonders as his hands travel down to my shorts. “I could never work up the courage to talk to you. God you’re so fucking - fuck.” He switches by laying me on the floor and he’s on top. He smirks like a menace. “You get nervous around me?” His brown orbs glisten with lust and love. “Oh darling.” He takes my shorts and throws them. “You didn’t seem nervous pretending to be my girlfriend.” He teases as his fingers glide against my leg.

“That’s because - oh fuck.” His fingers go on the fabric of my panties and start rubbing gently. “That’s because what sweetheart? Use your words.” The pressure of his fingers increased. I moan and whimper. “That’s because… Because I normally get shy around you.” Eddie devilishly grins and chuckles spreading my legs and looks at me with a confused look. “You were scared to talk to me? Baby girl…” He comes up eye level with me and holds my face in his hands. “I don’t bite…” He looks down at my panties. “Not yet, but I’m not scary baby. I’ve been wanting to talk to you for so long.” He rubs my cheek with his thumb.

“I guess… No, it’s silly.” I chuckle. “What is it sweetheart?” I give him a yearning smile. “When I was ten, my parents split. My father left… I just always thought all men were like that. It’s silly.” His eyebrows furrow a bit. “I’m so sorry Rox… He seems like a real asshoel.” “He is. My brother Dustin misses him but I can’t stand the thought of him.” My father is in prison. I live with my Uncle Wayne. He’s really great.” “What happened to your dad? Your mom?”

“My father, I honestly don’t remember much. He’s committed several crimes. My mom left shortly before he went. Uncle Wayne took me in and he’s been in my life ever since.” I lightly smile. “Maybe I should meet him.” His eyes brighten. “You will darling. You will.” We both smile and chuckle. I moan when his thumb brushes against me.

“Did you want to keep going?” He raises his eyebrows. “Oh my god please.” I whine as he smirks going back down to my center. His slender fingers wrap around the hem of my panties and pull them down quickly. I twitch a bit at the cold air. Eddie is in awe at the sight in front of him. “God you’re so fucking beautiful• He says under his breath. I laugh wickedly. “You think so?” I tease. “Oh baby, you’re gorgeous.” He pants. “I just can’t wait to taste you.” He circles his right index finger and middle finger around my core slowly. It’s pure ecstasy. He stick them in and starts pumping in and out of me.

“Oh my god Eds.” I groan. “Please.” He lowers himself more and his tongue licks slowly as his fingers reach my clit. His fingers start circling around rapidly. His tongue darts in and out of me. “God you’re fucking divine.” He moans as he tastes more of me. I can already feel my high approach. But I don’t want him to stop. He’s just unreal. This is ecstasy. “Ed-Eddie. I’m gonna cum.” He laughs against my core, vibrating it. “Go for it sweetheart.” I groan as I release.

I can feel myself tremble as Eddie takes everything I gave him. He licks everything up. I start panting as he comes back up for air. He’s a panting mess as well. His hair is disheveled and unkempt. Added with sweat. “You, my darling, are magnificent.” I blush at the compliment. “I need you.” We pant some more. “Not now sweetheart. We’ll save that for later. For now, we have to go on with our school day.” I chuckle. “Wow Eddie Munson actually gives a shit about school.” He laughs and hands me my shorts “Come by after school. I’d love to, um, have you.” I grab my discarded bra and put it on. I then grab his face and kiss him.

“You already have me sweetheart.” I give him a daring smirk. I sit on his lap with his member poking me. We get into a steamy passionate kiss as if everything disappears. We don’t even hear the faint sound of the bell ringing. We pull away from each other. “Damn Rox, we only just got to know each other. But goddamit you’re already the death of me.” I giggle. “Well, I guess I have that effect on people.” He grabs my face again and our lips connect again. I grab onto his shirt and rip it off him. Eddie smirks at me. “Round two?” I climb on top of him. “Yes.” We take a very extended lunch break in his van while passersby walk past to class. Meanwhile, Eds and I were learning about each other.

#joseph quinn #eddie munson #maya hawke #robin buckley #stranger things

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tiikerikani · 3 months

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This is how you write when you're tired

Work is fine I guess. I'm still in a big muddle, tbh. Charging right out of the gate being asked to do the sort of thing that somebody with a lot more experience and a much higher pay grade did at Old Job is... a lot. I've tried out and presented on a couple of different tools and making those presentations was extremely stressful, not because I dislike public speaking, but because I dislike public speaking to persuade on topics that Have Consequences, such as which of those tools to invest in. Both have their pros and cons and I just would like the people to make a decision so I can get on with the actual writing.

Working with the content is the best way to familiarize yourself with it. At Old Job my first assignment was to proofread everything with a fresh set of eyes, and I'm finally getting to do a bit of that now.

Even though I don't need to be at the office every day, the 45-minute commute each way does eat up a lot of hobby time (or more specifically, the transition time that I need to switch between activities). So I'm still struggling to squeeze in the time I want to spend for each thing and end up with decision paralysis and then none of those activities are getting enough time because it's suddenly 4 AM.

4:39 AM Oh shit he's on the front cover of ilta-sanomat today 😳 I read everything else on the cover looking for weather stuff and only noticed after that 😅

[Friend: How were you awake at 4 am? 😳] [Me: Hadn't gone to bed yet]

(the tabloids publish the day's papers to the digital subscription—from which I grab screenshots from the cover thumbnails on the landing page—at around 3 AM.)

So today I am practically asleep standing up. I'd proof/edit like 2 paragraphs and then I'd want to lie down. I tried to at least keep myself at the table by slapping some paint onto models but even that was a struggle. I desperately wanted to just collapse into bed after work but no it just had to be the day I needed to drag myself outside long enough to buy the newspaper.

(I'd love to share the entire cover, but reasons. So this is all you get as proof.)

(Random aside: As of this week, fermented beverages up to 8% ABV can be sold at grocery stores and people are mostly just excited about wine. Wine culture from the continent has been displacing the traditional beer and spirits culture here. Anyway, I don't even drink wine.)

I'm too tired to read the article now (In fact I usually need to be a bit tipsy to read these articles, because the reasons), but I don't expect him to have shared anything new. One wonders if it's the media being fixated on his mental health recovery story (the media sure love a "celebrity breaks down and/or turns their life around" story) or if it's something that he wants.

New keyboard is alive! The coil cable is wholly extra but I sprang for it—pun intended—just because it's fun. The thing is built like a brick and is heavier than the old one. In less space! I even paid less for this than the old gamer keyboard! ("gamer" stuff is pretty overpriced and often overwrought anyway).

When gaming I keep hitting one key over because the old keyboard had a column of macro keys down the side (which I didn't really use anyway). I could rebind all the controls one key over but that would be silly. I'll get used to it. I guess really clicky keys are a gamer thing so I'm also getting used to the significantly lighter touch on these brown switches.

But also, designer keycaps are hecking expensive. And I'd like to get a different set of Swedish/Nordic numbers/letters; the legends on these aren't quite right (it's missing @ on AltGr+2, and * and ' are swapped, among other things).

#work #tired #i swear to god fangirling is such a dang rollercoaster #technical difficulties #mechanical keyboards #my typing is still a horrible mess but it's me and not the keyboard

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ladylooch · 1 year

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Thinking about our boy Woody and the story he published 🫥 what if he dated a girl from New Jersey who cheers for Devils and “refusas” to cheer for Avalanche, even when he is playing for the team? I thought of something funny, because I feel that Woody is the implicating type, but he can follow the path you prefer

Ahh! I was hoping someone would request Woody!! Thank you 😘

When the Devils and Avs first face off against each other, it’s in Denver in November. You showed up at the game, strutting your stuff in your Devils 44 jersey. You got a few looks from the Avs WAGS, but you smoothed it over by telling them it was all in good fun between you and Miles. They bought it for the most part.

After the game, you made sure to greet Nico and Jack and Dawson with big hugs while Miles watched. He said nothing, just rolled his eyes at your antics. He loves you. But he knows that even though you’re messing around, the trade has been hard for you. Leaving home so fast and suddenly, without a chance to say goodbye to everyone was tough.

Which is exactly why you choose to fly back to New Jersey for Miles’ return to the Prudential Center.

“You gonna cry tonight?” He had asked you during your FaceTime call earlier in the afternoon. You stuck your tongue out at him.

“Maybe. And nice try attempting to hide my jersey so I couldn’t pack it.” Before he left, he had stuffed it under his side of the bed. He intentionally left a little bit of the sleeve sticking out so you would catch on to his prank. You’re teasing him about it now, but he sighs a bit heavy at the end of his laugh. Your smile drops into a neutral expression. “Does it bother you?” He shakes his head no.

“I know you’re still my biggest fan. One day you’ll like the team I play for too.” He licks his lip, wincing at the cut he got last game. His bottom lip is fat and angry.

“Don’t go fighting anyone tonight.” You point a finger at him.

“You know I’m hitting Jack hard at least once. He’ll know why too.”

“For the last time, he did not mean to touch my ass that night. It really was an accident.”

“How does a graze, turn into bent fingers?” Miles holds his hands up like he is cupping air. “No. One hit. Then we'll be even.” There is no point in arguing with him. Best of luck to Jack.

Miles purchased tickets for all your friends and family. Some of his family came down from Massachusetts as well. The group is dressed in a blend of Avs and Devils apparel as you go down to ice level to watch him warm up. You’re wearing your Devils jersey, waiting for him to see you. He skates a few laps, looking as chaotic and amped as you’ve ever seen him. When he goes to lean against the bench for some water, he looks for you. His sexy grin melts you when it spreads at the sight of you. He’s so happy, but he shakes his head at your Devils jersey. You reach for the hem, pulling it off to reveal the Avalanche jersey you packed without him knowing. He startles then visibly softens. You walk to the bench so you can chat with him next to the rail, weaving your way by several “welcome back Woody” signs.

“Baby. You look so good.” He compliments you, puckering his lips between the posts. You kiss him, ignoring the metal pressing into your cheeks.

“Only you could make me give up the Devils red.”

“So we are going to pretend you don’t have a Hischier shirt on under there?” He traces the outline of the horns above your breast bleeding through the white jersey.

“Yeah.”

“Fine with me.” He chuckles, kissing you one more time.

“Good luck, babe. Skate your ass off.” You murmur to him, taking a chance to stroke a brown curl off his forehead.

“Fuck yeah, baby! Let’s go!” He shouts, then darts back onto the ice, leaving behind an electric giggle in his wake.

#M. Wood blurb #hockey writing #hockey fan fiction #NHL blurb

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mochalottie · 1 year

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Hi to start off I love your story- sorry for not commenting on it much I’m just lazy and just press the link as soon as I see it and forget to log into my account- so to sum up any possible comment I would’ve made: this is my favorite avatar fic (not one of them - it just is my favorite) and you write everything so well.

Questions:

1. Gotta start with the one everyone’s dying to know- is neteyam gonna die? Or will there be any major character deaths?

2. What inspired you to write this

3. Are you gonna write any more fics in the future? If so what are some ideas you have

4. What are some other fandoms you’re into and possibly wanna write for?

5. What are some hobbies you enjoy?

Hiya babes~ that is completely fine about commenting, I know I get the same way sometimes but I'm glad to know you're loving it. And it's your favourite?!?! Even over greats like Half-Alive???? I'm honoured and touched and sending a massive squdge (hug) to you thank you!!!! <333333

Questions are answered under the line~

Ooooooooooooooooooooooooo

I'm guessing a lot of people want to know about this. Em, I'm going to go ahead and say there will be major character deaths, but not the ones you expect. In my cranium, there's going to be two big bits of confrontation; the ship (which we all knew was going to happen) and the final big battle (debating whether to write this properly, or to pan over it and hit the aftermath). So there will be loads of intense things that will lead to some major character injury too but, fear not, I'm not cruel enough to axe off extremely important characters (looking at you Cameron) but I can't say any more because of spoilers!

2. Well that's an easy question because bestie and all around amazing idea creator @be-the-glenn-to-my-maggie came up with the idea of the humans leaving Pandora and never coming back, and then mentioned Eywa blessed Spider and my brain went 'huh good idea mine now'. And I was already looking for something more to write about Spider because the inspiration muse has had me by the throat since January and isn't letting go.

3. Good question!! I will always write fanfiction, even when I've published my original ideas because it's an amazing creative outlet and a great way to practice new ideas. Bestie @be-the-glenn-to-my-maggie came up with an ikran racing au because of an ask I believe (correct me if I'm wrong) and again my brain just went yes so that might be in the works after ftnadol. But at the moment there isn't anything concrete, but when something comes I'm sure it'll whack me upside the head XD

4. Oooooo other fandoms. Well Stranger Things is a big love of mine (I actually have a Steve x Male OC fic which has been gathering dust which incorporated Irish Mythology that I need to resurrect), as is Star Wars, and Umbrella Academy, and Marvel, gosh there's loads to count up. In terms of what I'd like to write for, maybe dipping my toes into Percy Jackson? Because of the TV show? OR! Spider verse because Miles is my boy. I'm not entirely sure though because I never quite know until an idea does suddenly pop into my brain. Haikyuu might be something to try, but who knows! Certainly not me~

5. Ooooo interesting well! If you didn't know I play two instruments; harp and violin, so music is a massive part of my life. I teach swimming some evenings, and absolutely love to do it recreationally. I game, and am very excited for Spider-Man 2. I'm also self teaching myself korean, which is very fun and interesting because I'll be able to understand half the music I listen to XD of course, this is also whilst writing up a storm every week!

Thank you bestie for your questions!! <333

#lottie writes fanfic #lottie answers asks #lottie does a q & a

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artificialqueens · 1 year

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Daddy's Boy, Chapter 6.5 (Biadore) - Imafuckinglibra

Ummmm. Hi. I don’t really know if anyone on here cares or if I’m shouting into a void. Obviously I’ve been gone a minute. I’m making this one 6.5 bc technically it’s supposed to be 7 but I don’t know if I’m publishing it yet or If it’s worth publishing it I should say. As an apology though I’m including a bonus at the end for whoever wants it. If there’s mistakes I’m sorry if there’s a part 7 it’ll be fixed.

This is just pure smut btw enjoy.

“Fashion is like eating, you shouldn’t stick to the same menu.” Kenzo Takada. If you we take his words to actually mean what they literally say, you could say he’s implying we should change our choices. Kind of like…"

“Who the fuck wrote this shit?” Roy grumbled out loud, trying to find the name of the culprit on the loosely stapled pages in front of him.

He tossed his glasses off onto the bed and tried rubbing the frustration out of his weary eyes with his thumb & index finger.

‘I’m too old for this’ He thought. ‘Go be a costume designer, no I want to TEACH. Be a LEADER.‘ sigh “Yeah right.”

He had to come to realization we all do that - inevitably - when we’re alone for too long we kind of go, batshit. You start thinking about your life choices and just where oh where did you go wrong. And man did he feel alone.

His apartment, although my no means small especially on a teacher salary, suddenly felt massive. Without his near constant companion running around in baggy jeans, ill fitting hoodies or singing about every day activities the apartment felt like he did. Vast & vacant. Tad dramatic perhaps.

The living room once just books, dog beds and a TV was now littered with photographs, guitar picks, knick knacks so many empty bottles of various sodas or beer.

The bathroom once so pristine now riddled with long hair everywhere, toothpaste splatter against the mirror, bottles of all sorts of hair and face lotions.

Food smeared and discarded left and right in the kitchen area, boxes and boxes of old take out. Empty bags of chips or half eaten cookies just scattered about without a care in the world.

Not to mention the bedroom.

“Just look at how he left these pillows!” He thought.

Well, to be honest none of it was that bad. Not even close. Everything was immaculately clean. It just been so long since he’d seen Danny he had to start making things up to be mad at him at. If he didn’t he’d start to think of the good and then he’d just miss him.

In true college student fashion the punk rocker had taken the opportunity summer vacation presents to travel with his friends. Him and his roommates packed their bags into Brian’s busted little car and decided to travel the US and hit at least one new bar every night. It may have only been 12 weeks but god it felt like 5 years.

Some times they’d just stay in one place, sobering up in some dodgy hotel before they head to the next place. Which Roy absolutely despised, causing many a fight between the two. At least 3 times. At least.

However. Some times, most times, fine. Pretty much every city to be honest, Danny and Brian would perform some of their music and they’d have gas, food and hotel money the next day. Which Roy had to admit, made him proud.

The fact that he could take responsibility and provide for himself like this with his craft was absolutely endearing. Roy envied him for it once in a while.

Granted. He didn’t do it all himself, he had 4 others with him. Jason included, the only one with a head on his shoulders who’d pre planned every last detail of their trip before they left.

Summer comes and goes every year though and so does financial independence and adolescent freedom. Danny and his friends had to finally return to school, and finally back to Roy. Not before making a stop at his mom’s house first though.

He’d been in Azusa for 2 weeks at this point, getting his school work in order, doing laundry, buying school supplies, being babied by his mother and bullied by his brothers as 20 somethings do.

“God I miss him though.” Roy said to Dede who’d been strolling through the empty hallway. Realizing the essay from hell was finally over and done with.

‘D!!’ he scribbled on it. ‘You at least managed to get your own name right, now try getting other people’s name right! Baloney!’

VRRRR VRRRR

His phone vibrated on the bedside table next to him. He carefully dropped the stack of papers onto the portable work bench he kept close by and picked up his phone.

Incoming Call

Danny

Danny put the heart next to his own name, don’t question it.

“Hey, you headin…” Roy asked before he realized what he was looking at and grabbed his bottom lip with his hand to keep from laughing.

“Shhh.” Danny gestured softly with his index finger over his lips, whispering the command. “Quiet.”

Danny had propped his phone against some shampoo bottles and a tub of conditioner at the bottom of his mother’s shower. The front camera pointed directly at center stage just for Roy.

His head was tilted in the corner of the tiled shower, his body contorted to fit into the small cubicle. Bent long legs either side of his chest to give his partner the best possible view of the skinny middle finger gliding slowly in and around both entrances.

His mouth agape in ecstasy at the hot water spraying down from the shower head against the wall onto his growth and down his inner thighs.

“Naughty boy.” Roy whispered to himself with a devilish grin. He knew Danny only ever teased or fingered himself in both holes when he was desperate. Something which he didn’t frequently do up until right before he left. During finals when he was too stressed to see each other.

“It must’ve been a minute since he’s been able to jerk off.” He thought but hey can’t blame him. He might have been a liiiitle pent up too.

Roy picked up on the hint and put the phone down on the bed against his headboard so Danny could enjoy his own show.

Sitting back on his ankles Roy undid his shorts zipper and pulled his semi erect cock out. Slowly tugging at it to match Danny’s rhythm. Eager to catch up with him but not eager enough to ruin the moment too fast.

Driving his young lover wild with his fist steadily opening and closing, squeezing the pre cum out of the tip. The same pre cum Danny spent hours teasing him with.

He reached for the drawer or toys they’d accumulated in their time together and pulled out a fleshlight Danny bought him before he left.

“No.” Danny mouthed shaking his head. “Pillow”

“Pillow?” Roy whispered.

“I want to see.” He gestured back with one now freed hand.

Roy realized what he meant and happily obliged.

With one hand still around his shaft and the other gripping under him he slowly lowered himself as he would if Danny had been there rather than his hand.

“Like that.” Danny smiled biting his lip. Watching carefully for when Roy’s cock would slide into his palm again. Sliding 2 fingers into his asshole at the same time.

He’d grown accustomed to pretending Roy was the one pleasuring him rather than himself, especially when they played together like this.

He still felt the same butterflies in his stomach he had the very first time they slept together, the same giddy high from watching Roy’s head twitch at every gentle touch. The veins wrapping around his thick tan cock.

‘Oh fuck he’s gorgeous.’ He thought, watching his body tense and relax with every thrust. His skin becoming shiny with sweat as he picked up his pace, probably without realizing.

Or maybe Danny was the one who picked up his pace first, who knows. He couldn’t tell anymore. All he wanted was Roy to fuck him hard right now, even if it was just pretend.

“Dan!” His mom yelled snapping them to reality.

“Yeah?” Danny yelled frowning at Roy to hush. His fingers slowing down significantly but not stopping. As if he’s been caught in the act before but knew he could get away with it.

“We’re heading to dinner soon, when you gonna be done?”

“Like 10 more minutes I’m just washing my hair.” He lied winking at his audience.

“Okay Hun, we’ll wait for you.”

“AirPods.” Roy whispered quickly gesturing with his hands while they were still unoccupied.

“But they’ll get wet?”

“I’ll buy you new ones.” Roy rolled his eyes. Danny had dropped these AirPods in everything from salsa, mountain dew to even the mud at the dog park but this was one step too far apparently. Really?

Without missing a beat Danny simply reached his long legs over to his pants that had the case still inside. He put just one in, being careful to keep his head out of the splash zone. Reassuming his position when he was ready with the water perfectly hitting its target again.

“Ready?” Roy growled into his ear.

“Yeah…” Danny melted into his voice. Thinking how close he could get to cumming right then and there just at hearing his rasp again.

“I can’t. Wait. To. Fuck….ugh, you.” Roy grunted emphasizing each word with a thrust into his palm. Watching as Danny nodded lost in his own desires, his fingers pounding into himself with him. Making his top lip quiver each time, distorting his face into a silent cry as he tried to control himself.

A year ago he’d be too embarrassed to act like this over a video call but dating someone long distance like this changes a person. Especially when that person begs so nicely for it each time.

“I know you want both holes filled, don’t you. I need to fuck you, I need to taste your cum running down my chin again.” He continued.

Danny whimpered a near silent “uh huh” at him drifting his eyes closed as his hands took over with a mind of their own. His left hand finding the same path as his right. A single lanky finger curling into himself, enough for now to apply just the perfect pressure for release.

“Fuck you’re gonna cum right, uhng…now.” Roy panted thrusting himself harder and harder despite his legs burning. His breath ragged. “Right now, aren’t you. Oh fuck.”

“Uh…huh.” Danny nodded again to the best of his ability as his hips bucked, his fingers and toes all curling in as his orgasm overtook him.

Roy watched him writhing around, the sight pushing him so close to the edge he didn’t think he could come back from it. But he didn’t want to look away yet, he didn’t want this moment to end so soon.

Watching Danny melt into the floor as his hips instinctively kept riding his own fingers were too delectable to let go just yet. His bottom lip clenched tight between perfect teeth as he fought back from making a sound. His chest puffed high as he fought for air.

“Hngh I can’t wait, fuck, to fill you with cum. Watch it drip out of your tight little ass”. He kept teasing. Knowing Danny hadn’t had enough yet, he could see it in the brief flash when their eyes finally met again.

Rhythm be dammed at this point he was uncontrollably humping his pillow chasing his own orgasmic high as he tried leading Danny to a second. Wether ready or not he couldn’t escape it now. “C’mon baby, I know you got one more. Keep that hand there.”

Danny took a deep gulp for air and moved his left hand towards his growth instead, jerking off furiously in unison with his hips’ gyrating.

“I…hm huh.” He squeaked softly. The coil inside his body near snapping again despite never going down.

“Aaah!! Fucking…Dan. Shit.” Roy cried, looking down at his cock pulsing violently. Cum shooting out from his hand onto the sheets beneath him. Splattering across the pillow, the bench next to him and nearly on his phone.

He kept his chin pressed against his own chest trying to catch his breath, his eyes shut in ecstasy as he heard a faint squeak between the shower splashes coming from his phone.

His eyes fighting open as he watched Danny completely drop into a mess with his legs uncontrollably shaking through his second orgasm. His face scrunched up, bright red and dripping in probably sweat if the water hadn’t gotten to it yet.

“Holy shit.” He sighed wiping his hair out of his face. “Fuck baby you made me cum a gallon.”

Danny softly chuckled under his breath as he straightened his legs up and out against the tiles. Ass still on the floor as he felt the water washing away his sins. “Shhh.” He joked again.

“See. What am I supposed to do with this?” Roy teased pretending to be mad as he turned the camera to give him a view.

Danny took his phone and started typing quickly.

You better save some for me then when I get back. You promised to fill me up remember.

“Yeah I remember.” Roy laughed. “Gonna make up for all the times you blue balled me this summer.”

Danny’s face went flat when he read it. Looking into the camera with fake distain.

Nevermind. I’ll just find some other professor to do it, fuck my way to an A this semester.

“Dirty bitch…” Roy growled. “We’ll talk about it later, go wash your hair and enjoy dinner. I have papers to grade.”

[Admin Note:

Continue scrolling for a mildly pornographic illustration.

If you are at work or in church or your parents are looking at your phone over your shoulder...

...then consider yourself warned.

Coming in 10...

9...

8...

7...

6...

5...

4...

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2...

1!]

#rpdr fanfiction #biadore #bianca del rio #adore delano #college au #student/teacher #trans character #m/m au #smut #daddys boy #imafuckinglibra #tw dysphoria

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jcmarchi · 8 months

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Using ChatGPT for sales - and why you need it in your sales enablement toolkit

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/using-chatgpt-for-sales-and-why-you-need-it-in-your-sales-enablement-toolkit/

Using ChatGPT for sales - and why you need it in your sales enablement toolkit

The rapid growth of artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots, like ChatGPT, has caused a ripple effect across every organization in the world. ChatGPT reached 100 million users two months after its launch.

Suddenly, the question on everyone’s mind was: “Is this going to replace my job?” – but with the AI’s limitations quickly making themselves known, the question changed.

Now, it’s: “Can I use ChatGPT to be more effective in my role?”

If you’re in sales enablement, the answer is a resounding yes. Using ChatGPT and conversational AI as part of your sales enablement strategy is a surefire way to increase your effectiveness and efficiency.

In this article, we’ll take a brief look at what ChatGPT is (and some disclaimers), before diving into how you can use it in sales, including:

Writing sales emails

Sales content

Competitive intelligence

Social selling and thought leadership

Coaching your sales team

Summarizing call recordings

A quick summary

If you want even more on ChatGPT for sales, SEC Ambassador Thomas Cheriyan spoke in-depth at our New York Summit about the applications in this article – not to mention, Thomas’ Cooking with ChatGPT smash-hit webinar was hosted on May 3 and you can catch the replay for free.

Let’s get started. 👇

What is ChatGPT?

💡

“ChatGPT is an advanced AI language model developed by OpenAI. It’s designed to understand and generate human-like text, enabling it to engage in conversation, provide information, or even write stories.

“Imagine ChatGPT as a highly intelligent digital assistant that can understand your questions or prompts and provide meaningful responses.

“It learns from a massive dataset containing various texts, like websites, books, and articles, and uses that knowledge to generate relevant and coherent answers.”

You might notice I’ve highlighted the previous lines of text – that’s because I asked ChatGPT to describe itself in understandable terms. Less than 10 seconds later, I received an answer and used it above.

It’s an incredibly useful AI tool, and its ability to generate text has been used as a starting point for blog posts like this, and even to write code for software developers.

It’s important to note that ChatGPT does have limitations – it has little understanding of events that happened after 2021, and can occasionally produce incorrect information, which is why it’s vital to fine tune and confirm anything it produces.

The more detailed you are with your prompt, the higher the quality of the answer you’ll receive.

However, the use of ChatGPT in sales has a lot of potential, so let’s get into some of the ways it can enhance aspects of your sales process.

Using ChatGPT for sales emails

Writing sales emails can be difficult. Whether it’s the subject line or the body copy, it can be difficult to create something that will resonate with your target audience or persona.

Not only that, but it’s time-consuming, especially for people who are more naturally inclined to be sellers, talking to prospects and closing deals rather than sitting at a desk drafting emails about a product or service.

How can ChatGPT help?

At the very least, it can give you a starting point, some inspiration to build from – saving you 30 minutes of staring at a blank screen trying to come up with the best way to phrase the email.

In a best case scenario, it can write an almost-perfect email in seconds.

The key is in the prompts you feed to ChatGPT’s machine learning language model. If you ask: “Help me write a sales email aimed at CFOs”, you’re unlikely to get anything worthwhile. The prompt is too vague.

Compare that with one of Thomas’ example prompts from his presentation in New York:

“I need help writing an email in 200 words or less. I’m an account executive at Salesforce. I’ll be sending this email to CFOs in the manufacturing sector in New York, who are not currently doing business with us. My goal is to have them respond back to me with the intent of scheduling a time for a discovery or demo call. Please also include a compelling subject line.”

The level of detail in that prompt will allow ChatGPT to generate a much more accurate, targeted email.

If you’re not happy with it, you can ask the AI to iterate:

“Can you shorten the email and make it more compelling?”

“Rewrite the email but make it more casual, conversational, and fun.”

By doing this, you’ll end up with four or five email templates, from which you can pick and choose the best parts. And the best part is it’ll probably take you half as long compared to writing them from scratch.

That means more time to generate leads, and more time to sell thanks to ChatGPT.

Thomas Cheriyan presenting at the Sales Enablement Summit in New York (2023)

Using ChatGPT for sales content

Sales enablement professionals are often responsible for the arduous task of creating content – our Sales Enablement Landscape Report found that close to half of respondents (38.7%) were involved in the creation process.

How can ChatGPT help here?

If you’ve ever suffered from writer’s block when trying to write a script for a training video, or a one-pager for sales reps on whatever piece of training you’ve been trying to reinforce, then ChatGPT is here to help.

Here’s a very basic example, just for the purpose of this article:

Prompt: “Write a script for a one minute sales training video, teaching sales development representatives the basics of the MEDDIC methodology.”

ChatGPT’s response:

Title: MEDDIC Methodology Basics for Sales Development Representatives

[INTRO: Exciting upbeat music and visuals of a team of sales representatives]

Narrator: “Welcome, future sales champions! Today, we’ll introduce you to the powerful MEDDIC methodology. In just one minute, you’ll learn the basics to help you qualify leads and close deals more effectively.”

[Scene 1: Animated visuals of the MEDDIC acronym, with each letter highlighted as it’s explained]

Narrator: “MEDDIC stands for Metrics, Economic Buyer, Decision Criteria, Decision Process, Identify Pain, and Champion. Let’s break it down.”

[Scene 2: Metrics]

Narrator: “Metrics – Understand the quantifiable results your solution can deliver. Show your prospects the potential return on investment.”

[Scene 3: Economic Buyer]

Narrator: “Economic Buyer – Identify the person with the purchasing authority. Ensure they recognize the value of your solution.”

[Scene 4: Decision Criteria]

Narrator: “Decision Criteria – Learn what factors your prospect uses to evaluate solutions. Align your offering with their priorities.”

[Scene 5: Decision Process]

Narrator: “Decision Process – Determine the steps your prospect takes to finalize a decision. Adapt your sales process accordingly.”

[Scene 6: Identify Pain]

Narrator: “Identify Pain – Uncover your prospect’s pain points. Highlight how your solution can address their challenges.”

[Scene 7: Champion]

Narrator: “Champion – Find a strong internal advocate within the prospect’s organization. They’ll help you navigate roadblocks and influence decision-makers.”

[OUTRO: Exciting music, with visuals of sales representatives celebrating a closed deal]

Narrator: “And there you have it! With the MEDDIC methodology, you’re ready to conquer the sales world. Apply these principles, and watch your success skyrocket!”

[End screen: Company logo and contact information]

It’s certainly not perfect (and neither was our example prompt), but immediately you can see the advantage of working from this script rather than a blank page – you have a springboard for your work.

You could refine this further, through the iterative prompts we explained earlier. Ask the AI to make the script more formal, more concise, more fun, longer, or shorter.

The possibilities are almost endless – and more importantly they’re much more time-efficient than writing four or five script versions yourself.

ChatGPT doesn’t have to have any influence on the end product, either. You can use it just to generate ideas.

Prompts such as: “Give me five creative ideas for sales training sessions that will be fun and keep reps engaged” will return five answers in a matter of seconds.

Even if you don’t use one of ChatGPT’s ideas, it might act as a spark of inspiration.

Using ChatGPT for competitive intelligence

Competitive intelligence is key – your sales reps need to know how you match up to your competitors.

More importantly, they need to put themselves in a prospect’s shoes, in order to truly understand why a prospect would (or wouldn’t) choose a competitor over your product or service.

This requires one of two things – experience in the role, and hearing from prospects why they’re choosing competitors. Or, it requires time spent researching across your own sales content, the competitor’s websites, and more.

However, as Thomas demonstrated in New York, you can expedite this process by using the correct prompts in ChatGPT.

Here’s his example, looking at two popular CRM tools:

“How would you convince a CFO that they should consider buying Salesforce versus Zoho, even though Salesforce is more expensive?”

Thomas notes that this prompt includes a specific persona, a specific tool pitted against another, and focuses on the specific element of price. This is all part of the fine-tuning process – the more detail you include, the better.

Here’s what ChatGPT answers with when we put in that prompt:

When presenting the case for Salesforce to a CFO, focus on the long-term value, scalability, and customization capabilities that can outweigh the initial cost difference compared to Zoho.

Consider these points to build a persuasive argument:

Comprehensive Feature Set: Highlight Salesforce’s extensive range of features and tools that cater to various business functions like sales, marketing, and customer support. Emphasize the platform’s ability to provide a unified solution for the entire organization, streamlining processes and improving efficiency.

Scalability: Explain that Salesforce is designed to grow alongside the company. As the organization expands and evolves, Salesforce can be easily scaled up to accommodate increasing demands, making it a long-term solution that can save resources in the future.

Customization and Integration: Point out that Salesforce offers extensive customization options and a vast ecosystem of third-party applications through the AppExchange. This allows the company to tailor the platform to their specific needs, creating a seamless experience that enhances productivity.

Advanced Analytics and Reporting: Stress the importance of Salesforce’s robust analytics and reporting capabilities, which can provide valuable insights into business performance, customer behavior, and sales trends. These insights can drive better decision-making and contribute to the company’s overall success.

Customer Success and Support: Mention Salesforce’s strong reputation for providing top-notch customer support and success resources, including a dedicated account manager, extensive documentation, and a large community of users. This ensures that the company will have access to the guidance and assistance needed to maximize their investment.

Proven Track Record: Share case studies and testimonials of other organizations that have successfully adopted Salesforce and experienced significant improvements in their sales processes, customer relationships, and overall business performance. These real-world examples can help the CFO visualize the potential benefits for their own company.

By emphasizing these points, you can make a compelling case for Salesforce as a strategic investment that delivers long-term value and supports the company’s growth, even if it comes with a higher initial price tag than Zoho.

That’s a great starting point for any new rep, and it becomes much quicker to supplement this initial overview with additional information, than provide it all from scratch.

As with all these prompts, ChatGPT isn’t perfect so don’t just put what it generates out into the world blindly. Use it as a tool to assist with and expedite these tasks.

Using ChatGPT for social selling and thought leadership

Social selling (ie. building relationships with prospects, usually through social media) is a growing part of a modern sales rep’s role. In addition to that, more and more sales reps are being encouraged to engage on LinkedIn, sharing insights and pieces of thought leadership.

This might not come naturally to some reps, or perhaps they’re keen to share on social media but aren’t quite sure where to start.

ChatGPT can help formulate a message to a prospect, a reply to a LinkedIn post shared by a prospect, or create the first draft of their own post.

As an example, here’s a prompt we used, along with ChatGPT’s reply:

Prompt: “Write a short, 50 word comment replying to a LinkedIn post about Thomas Cheryian’s webinar on using ChatGPT in sales. Be sure to express your eagerness to attend.”

ChatGPT’s response:

“Thomas Cheryian’s webinar on leveraging ChatGPT in sales sounds incredibly exciting! I’m eager to attend and discover innovative ways to enhance our sales process and drive results. Looking forward to gaining valuable insights from an industry expert. Count me in!”

Not bad, but it’s a little robotic. Our next prompt said: “Be more casual, and make the reply shorter.”

ChatGPT’s reply:

“Can’t wait for Thomas Cheryian’s ChatGPT in sales webinar! Super excited to learn new techniques and amp up our sales game. See you there! 🚀”

With just a few short sentences, the AI was able to create an organic reply to a hypothetical LinkedIn post.

For someone who isn’t fluent in social media jargon, or who’s nervous about putting their foot in their mouth – this is a great tool to help take that first step!

Using ChatGPT to coach your sales team

So far, these examples have largely involved ChatGPT creating text, to save you and your sales team time. But what about its conversational abilities? Can ChatGPT be used to help prepare reps for conversations with prospects?

As Thomas demonstrated in New York, the AI can be the perfect role-play buddy, helping a rep practice particularly tricky scenarios.

In his example, Thomas sets up an ‘unwinnable’ scenario, involving a CFO who will not budge or show interest in a discovery or demo call. We learn more from our failures than from our victories, so seeing how reps handle a conversation with a prospect who will never book another call can be enlightening.

Here’s the example prompt from Thomas:

“I am an enterprise sales rep at Salesforce trying to sell their core CRM platform. You are the CFO of Delta Airlines. You’re currently using a CRM solution from Oracle. I will cold call you and try to convince you why you should take a discovery or demo meeting with me. You should be as hot as possible and essentially be uninterested in learning more about Salesforce and try to give as many objections as possible. Are you ready to go?”

From there, you can observe your reps as they try to maneuver through this impossible scenario, as it’ll test their skill sets.

It’s not a replacement for traditional training, or even for live roleplays with peers, but it’s an excellent way to supplement a rep’s learning and practice.

Using ChatGPT to summarize call recordings

Not only can ChatGPT create text and have realistic conversation, it can also analyze the text you provide it with.

Nowadays, most sales calls are recorded. But it can be a hassle to go through them and find salient information, or to find action points from the conversation.

If you feed your transcript to ChatGPT, you can ask it to summarize the conversation into bullet points, list out the action points, or write a follow up email based on the contents of the transcript.

Or, as Thomas pointed out during his presentation, you can use the AI to apply a framework and analyze the conversation based on that.

He suggests using prompts like: “Can you recap what the action items were from the meeting and help me write up an email to send back to the prospect with next steps?” or “From this call transcript, what did we get from the MEDDIC framework, and what’s missing?”.

In reality, anything can be analyzed and summarized, even particularly long sales content that you’d like to shorten down into concise pieces.

This is another big time-saver if you’re using it right.

Wrapping up

As you can see, there are a multitude of ways to use ChatGPT for sales. Odds are that your teams are using it already – so make this fantastic technology an integral part of your sales enablement tech stack by formalizing how it’s used in your organization.

In short, here’s a brief rundown of use cases for ChatGPT in sales enablement:

Writing targeted sales emails

Eliminating writer’s block when creating sales content

Speeding up the competitive intelligence process

Helping reps engage in social selling and thought leadership

Creating specific role-play scenarios for your team

Summarizing call recordings and highlighting key moments within

Want to learn more about using ChatGPT in sales enablement?

SEC Ambassador Thomas Cheriyan hosted his Cooking with ChatGPT webinar on May 3 and dove into impactful ChatGPT prompts you can use in your organization – catch the free replay here!

Still not enough? Our 6,000+ strong Slack community has its own dedicated ChatGPT channel where you can chat with Thomas and other ChatGPT enthusiasts in the sales enablement space.

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ashbrat488 · 1 year

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State of Grace - Chapter 19

Ransom entered their hotel room, sitting in a chair in the corner. "Look, I know you guys don't like me. I know that has a lot to do with how I treated Gracie when we were teenagers. I know I hurt her, over and over again. But I love her so much. And I was a stupid kid. I've grown up a lot since then and we are in a good place. We work together. She's even helped me publish my first book. We just bought a new house. And we are getting married, whether you like it or not. But I know that Gracie would love it if you were on board. I know she wants you involved and cares about what you think. I just want us to get along. For her sake. Please."

Brian sighed, "we just want her to be happy. But we think it's kind of soon for her to go so quickly from Tyler to you."

Ransom shrugged, "it may seem soon to people on the outside. But Gracie and I have been leading to this moment our whole lives." He stood up, "I've been in love with your daughter since I was a teenager. We've both avoided each other for long enough." He walked to the table, grabbing a pen and notepad. He wrote their new address on it, "now I know you aren't going to suddenly change your mind overnight. But please, at least think about it. For Gracie's sake. I wrote our address on the paper. We still have boxes because we literally just moved in, but breakfast is at 8. I hope to see you then. Goodnight."

***

Grace woke up in the morning to an empty bed. She groaned, seeing it was just after 7. She stood up to see clothes hanging on the closet door for her. She hesitated, but grabbed them and went to the bathroom to get cleaned up and dressed. She followed noises into the kitchen to find Ransom making breakfast. She wrapped her arms around his torso from behind, "good morning."

Ransom chuckled, "morning love."

She pulled away, looking at the food, "how many people are you planning on feeding breakfast this morning? The whole neighborhood?"

Ransom laughed, looking at the time to see it was almost 8. "Maybe."

She looked into the dining room to see he had set the table for four people, "Ransom? Who did you invite for breakfast in our mess of a house we haven't even unpacked yet?"

He hesitated, thankful he didn't have to answer as there was a knock on the front door. He heard Grace huff and go to answer the door.

Grace opened the front door to find her parents standing in front of her, "what are you doing here?"

"I invited them for breakfast to talk."

She turned back to Ransom as he came into the foyer. She sighed, moving to let them in. She took their coats to hang on the coat rack as she motioned around, "I'm sorry it's all still a mess. We just moved in. We're still getting settled."

Karen nodded, "it's fine dear."

Grace sighed, leading them to the dining room, "I'll get the coffee." She followed Ransom into the kitchen, hitting him in the chest, "you could have warned me!"

He shrugged, "I wanted to surprise you. I thought we could hopefully work through our differences. I love you Gracie. I'm sorry."

She groaned, "yeah. I love you too." She heard him laugh as she took poured coffee, taking some to her parents before helping Ransom bring food into the dining room.

Karen smiled as they sat down, "thanks for making breakfast Grace."

She shrugged, "actually, Ransom made breakfast. He usually does. We split dinner usually." She saw her parents look at each other, "yeah. You guys just assumed you knew Ransom. And you don't. You knew him as a teenager. He isn't the same."

"Gracie, love. Calm down." Ransom placed his right hand on her hand but she shrugged it off.

"No! They think they can just show up here and intrude on my life as if they know anything about it! And then try to shove Tyler on me after I've already moved on. Tyler was a piece of shit and he didn't treat me well or make me happy. Ransom does both. And I love him."

Brian sighed, rolling his eyes. "You aren't a teenager anymore Grace. Don't you think it's time to move on from this teenage fantasy? Ransom isn't your knight in shining armor that will come and carry you away from your mundane existence like a damn princess in a child's story." He motioned his hands around him, "we can all see it's just about the money."

"What?!" She stared at her father, the shock washing over her as she finally saw how they saw her.

"Gracie."

Grace once more pulled her hand away from Ransom as she stood up from the table, "you don't know anything about it! Ransom and I bought this house 50/50. I run and am head editor of one of the most prominent publishing companies on the east coast! I have my own money. I don't need or want Ransom's money! It was never about that and it never will be."

Ransom sighed as he watched Grace storm from the room. He stood up, looking at her parents, "I'm sorry. I think you should leave. I thought we could work this out, but it seems you don't know your daughter at all. And frankly she's happier when you aren't around. And her happiness is my number one priority now." Once they were gone, he went upstairs to find Grace pacing in their room. "Gracie." He leaned against the doorframe. "Don't listen to them. I love you. That's all that matters."

Grace nodded, stopping to look at him as tears streaked her cheeks, "I love you Ransom." She heard him sigh as she wrapped her arms around him, burying her head in his chest.

Chapter 20 - Final

State of Grace

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totebagchiqbarista · 3 years

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𝐂𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐇𝐞𝐫𝐞

Pairing: Luka Couffaine x Fem!Reader

Summary: When on Juleka’s birthday party sleepover, heartbroken Luka and Y/N are paired to be alone in Luka’s cabin for the night. What if they find comfort in one another, just for tonight...?

PART 2

A/N: This is a sneak peak of the story I’m currently working on! I’m not sure if I will ever publish it but I’m currntly trying to get some ideas so If you could give me some feedback on this I would be really grateful :)

“And Y/N you can be in Luka’s cabin with him” said Juleka grinning, as everybody gathered around her for the sleepover. A couple of them will be placed in one cabin, few of them, including Adrien, Marinette, Nino and Alya will be sleeping in the living room of the inside of the boat and only her and Luka have a cabin for themselves.

She didn’t know what her friend Juleka was trying to do because the purple haired girl very much knew about Luka and Marinette. And her crush on Adrien. Placing them together just, wouldn’t work… A slight feeling of awkwardness travelled between Luka and Y/N as they looked at each other.

“I don’t know what Juleka is trying to do” she started as she put down her bag with clothes in the corner of his room. Luka’s blue eyes travelled from the corner of his bed to her. He was carelessly sitting down on the mattress, strumming his guitar lightly.

“You like Adrien?” he asked without thinking. There was no point in masking the truth, so she nodded slightly. “I’m not so sure anymore. But yes, he is kinda cool.”

There was no point in asking Luka about his love life as everybody knew about his crush on the clumsy girl from the bakery. And her desperate obsession over the young blond model.

As night came closer, the tension in the room rose and the two were practically unable to look at each other in the eye. Contradicting the warm day, chilly night took over the town like a dark baby’s blanket. Suddenly, it was significantly colder in the room. Shivering at the slight breeze coming from the open window, Y/N tensed as she walked around the room. Her steps were light and unnoticable, providing a feeling of a fairy in the world.

“You’re shivering. Here, take my jacket.”Luka rose from his seat and walked over to his closet, pulling out a black jacket that was obvious to be warm. In a split second he handed it over to her.

“So, sleeping arrangements...” he started, his usually confident posture was now somewhat...scared. “You can take the bed, I’ll be on the floor.” he finished his sentence. That was fine with her. As long as they aren’t required to share the bed, she is fine with it.

Luka had a mattress on the floor for him, covered with blankets and pillows, It was right next to the bed but she didn’t mind. She found it comforting. Having somebody close to her made her calm. Especially now...

“Luka? Are you awake?” she spoke quietly, careful to keep her voice as low as possible if the boy she was craving was in fact, asleep.

Muffled sound of shifting on his mattress indicated he wasn’t. It was at that moment that she thanked every powerful force out there. “Yeah” he answered with a low voice.

“What are you thinking about?” she asked, crawling to the edge of the bed to look at him.

He was lying on his back, his blue eyes were pointed towards the ceiling. His shoulders twitched for a split second at her question.

“Her” the voice that was saying this now wasn’t the same voice she knew Luka had. He usually sounded confident, flirty, and kind. Somehow mysterious, even. But now, when he spoke it was filled with tears. The melody it made was sad and slow, spreading melancholy. The words no longer flew from his lips to her ears, but they struggled to get through. He was broken.

As if he quickly realized something, his eyes shifted from the ceiling to her.”Why can’t you sleep, darling?”

Without thinking twice, his hand reached up to caress her cheek and she fell into his touch completely taken by the softness of his skin on hers.

“What are you thinking about?” he asked again

She wished she could tell him. She really does want to. Oh, how she just wants to tell him everything. From being Bonita, to everything with Chat Noir, to Adrien who she thought she liked but now was not so sure. She wanted to tell him everything and cry into his chest as he hums her to sleep. But she couldn’t say a word. She was stuck. She had to be the strong one here, now. Luka needed comfort, not her.

“Thoughts.” she answered as his worried expression looked deep into her eyes. “Just thoughts.”

“Adrien?” he asked carefully and when he saw her stiffen he quickly added “I’m sorry, you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to” his hand left her cheek as he felt he had crossed a line.

“It’s okay.” the feeling of sadness and disappointment hit her more when the warmth of his hand no longer rested on her cold cheek. She really was cold. Luka shifted his gaze to the ceiling again, unable to look at her again in the eyes. If only he knew he was the one she needed right now.

Maybe it was the juice she had earlier, maybe it was the feeling of lost love that wasn’t exactly a love, but she was confident in what she was saying. She spoke in a blink “Come here” earning a startled and blushed Luka’s face. He looked at her for answers and she just scooted to the back of his bed, removing the sheets so he could climb under them, next to her.

“Are you sure?” he asked, not wanting to make her uncomfortable.

“I’m sure. You need a hug, I need a hug. We both need comfort. If you want to.” she ended the sentence carefully as the confidence from just a moment before slowly faded away. Luka shook his head and carefully climbed to the bed next to her.

The warmth of her body felt comfortable to him. If he had to die now, he knew there was no other place he would rather be than here with her. She scooted over as the blue boy rested head on the pillow.Nobody spoke for a few seconds, nobody dared to move.

“I just want her to be happy.” he spoke, his voice breaking “But it hurts. I may not show it but it does hurt.” he said, turning his gaze to her as she pulled him in a tight hug.His head rested underneath her neck, as she pulled him close and tight. Her hands wrapped around him, afraid of letting him go. It was peaceful. It feels comfortable.

“It’s okay, baby” she twirled her fingers in his hair as he reassured him. “It’s okay”

Luka didn’t say anything, he just pulled closer to her, taking in her gentle perfume. “Can we stay like this for a bit?” he asked shyly as his mind travelled to other places- Marinette.

“Yeah, yeah we can.” her body shook in approval and her lips dared to travel to his head. giving him a reassuring kiss. Nobody said anything anymore. Silence took over the form of two bodies intertwined so tightly, afraid of losing each other. Suddenly, the room appeared colder and the only source of heat was the person who was with them.

When Y/N was sure the boy was asleep she placed another kiss upon his head speaking to herself. “Marinette’s a fool for letting you go. It’ll all be okay.” she finished as she herself drifted off to sleep still holding the body of the blue-eyed boy close.

#luka x reader miraculous #luka couffaine #luka couffaine x reader #miraculous luka #adrienette #adrien agreste #marinette #luka x reader #miraculous au #miraculous #chat noir

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duckprintspress · 3 years

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How to Edit an Over-Length Story Down to a Specific Word Count

One of the most wonderful things about writing as a hobby is that you never have to worry about the length of your story. You can be as self-indulgent as you want, make your prose the royalist of purples, include every single side story and extra thought that strikes your fancy. It’s your story, with no limits, and you can proceed with it as you wish.

When transitioning from casual writing to a more professional writing milieu, this changes. If you want to publish, odds are, you’ll need to write to a word count. If a flash fiction serial says, “1,000 words or less,” your story can’t be 1,025 and still qualify. If a website says, “we accept novellas ranging from 20,000 to 40,000 words,” your story will need to fall into that window. Even when you consider novel-length works, stories are expected to be a certain word count to fit neatly into specific genres - romance is usually around 80,000 words, young adult usually 50,000 to 80,000, debut novels usually have to be 100,000 words or less regardless of genre, etc. If you self-publish or work with a small press, you may be able to get away with breaking these “rules,” but it’s still worthwhile to learn to read your own writing critically with length in mind and learn to recognize what you do and do not need to make your story work - and then, if length isn’t an issue in your publishing setting, you can always decide after figuring out what’s non-essential to just keep everything anyway.

If you’re writing for fun? You literally never have to worry about your word count (well, except for sometimes in specific challenges that have minimum and/or maximum word counts), and as such, this post is probably not for you.

But, if you’re used to writing in the “throw in everything and the kitchen sink” way that’s common in fandom fanfiction circles, and you’re trying to transition only to be suddenly confronted with the reality that you’ve written 6,000 words for a short story project with a maximum word count of 5,000...well, we at Duck Prints Press have been there, we are in fact there right now, as we finish our stories for our upcoming anthology Add Magic to Taste and many of us wrote first drafts that were well over the maximum word count.

So, based on our experiences, here are our suggestions on approaches to help your story shorter...without losing the story you wanted to tell!

Cut weasel words (we wrote a whole post to help you learn how to do that!) such as unnecessary adverbs and adjectives, the “was ~ing” sentence structure, redundant time words such as “a moment later,” and many others.

When reviewing dialog, keep an eye out for “uh,” “er,” “I mean,” “well,” and other casual extra words. A small amount of that kind of language usage can make dialog more realistic, but a little goes a long way, and often a fair number of words can be removed by cutting these words, without negatively impacting your story at all.

Active voice almost always uses fewer words than passive voice, so try to use active voice more (but don’t forget that passive voice is important for varying up your sentence structures and keeping your story interesting, so don’t only write in active voice!).

Look for places where you can replace phrases with single words that mean the same thing. You can often save a lot of words by switching out phrases like “come back” for “return” and seeking out other places where one word can do the work of many.

Cut sentences that add atmosphere but don't forward the plot or grow your characters. (Obviously, use your judgement. Don't cut ALL the flavor, but start by going - I’ve got two sentences that are mostly flavor text - which adds more? And then delete the other, or combine them into one shorter sentence.)

Remove superfluous dialog tags. If it’s clear who’s talking, especially if it’s a conversation between only two people, you can cut all the he saids, she saids.

Look for places where you've written repetitively - at the most basic level, “ ‘hahaha,’ he laughed,” is an example, but repetition is often more subtle, like instances where you give information in once sentence, and then rephrase part or all of that sentence in the next one - it’s better to poke at the two sentences until you think of an effective, and more concise, way to make them into only one sentence. This also goes for scenes - if you’ve got two scenes that tend towards accomplishing the same plot-related goal, consider combining them into one scene.

Have a reason for every sentence, and even every sentence clause (as in, every comma insertion, every part of the sentence, every em dashed inclusion, that kind of thing). Ask yourself - what function does this serve? Have I met that function somewhere else? If it serves no function, or if it’s duplicative, consider cutting it. Or, the answer may be “none,” and you may choose to save it anyway - because it adds flavor, or is very in character for your PoV person, or any of a number of reasons. But if you’re saving it, make sure you’ve done so intentionally. It's important to be aware of what you're trying to do with your words, or else how can you recognize what to cut, and what not to cut?

Likewise, have a reason for every scene. They should all move the story along - whatever the story is, it doesn’t have to be “the end of the world,” your story can be simple and straightforward and sequential...but if you’re working to a word count, your scenes should still forward the story toward that end point. If the scene doesn’t contribute...you may not need them, or you may be able to fold it in with another scene, as suggested in item 6.

Review the worldbuilding you’ve included, and consider what you’re trying to accomplish with your story. A bit of worldbuilding outside of the bare essentials makes a story feel fleshed out, but again, a little can go a long way. If you’ve got lots of “fun” worldbuilding bits that don’t actually forward your plot and aren’t relevant to your characters, cut them. You can always put them as extras in your blog later, but they’ll just make your story clunky if you have a lot of them.

Beware of info-dumps. Often finding a more natural way to integrate that information - showing instead of telling in bits throughout the story - can help reduce word count.

Alternatively - if you over-show, and never tell, this will vastly increase your word count, so consider if there are any places in your story where you can gloss over the details in favor of a shorter more “tell-y” description. You don’t need to go into a minute description of every smile and laugh - sometimes it’s fine to just say, “she was happy” or “she frowned” without going into a long description of their reaction that makes the reader infer that they were happy. (Anyone who unconditionally says “show, don’t tell,” is giving you bad writing advice. It’s much more important to learn to recognize when showing is more appropriate, and when telling is more appropriate, because no story will function as a cohesive whole if it’s all one or all the other.)

If you’ve got long paragraphs, they’re often prime places to look for entire sentences to cut. Read them critically and consider what’s actually helping your story instead of just adding word count chonk.

Try reading some or all of the dialog out loud; if it gets boring, repetitive, or unnecessary, end your scene wherever you start to lose interest, and cut the dialog that came after. If necessary, add a sentence or two of description at the end to make sure the transition is abrupt, but honestly, you often won’t even need to do so - scenes that end at the final punchy point in a discussion often work very well.

Create a specific goal for a scene or chapter. Maybe it’s revealing a specific piece of information, or having a character discover a specific thing, or having a specific unexpected event occur, but, whatever it is, make sure you can say, “this scene/chapter is supposed to accomplish this.” Once you know what you’re trying to do, check if the scene met that goal, make any necessary changes to ensure it does, and cut things that don’t help the scene meet that goal.

Building on the previous one, you can do the same thing, but for your entire story. Starting from the beginning, re-outline the story scene-by-scene and/or chapter-by-chapter, picking out what the main “beats” and most important themes are, and then re-read your draft and make sure you’re hitting those clearly. Consider cutting out the pieces of your story that don’t contribute to those, and definitely cut the pieces that distract from those key moments (unless, of course, the distraction is the point.)

Re-read a section you think could be cut and see if any sentences snag your attention. Poke at that bit until you figure out why - often, it’s because the sentence is unnecessary, poorly worded, unclear, or otherwise superfluous. You can often rewrite the sentence to be clearer, or cut the sentence completely without negatively impacting your work.

Be prepared to cut your darlings; even if you love a sentence or dialog exchange or paragraph, if you are working to a strict word count and it doesn't add anything, it may have to go, and that's okay...even though yes, it will hurt, always, no matter how experienced a writer you are. (Tip? Save your original draft, and/or make a new word doc where you safely tuck your darlings in for the future. Second tip? If you really, really love it...find a way to save it, but understand that to do so, you’ll have to cut something else. It’s often wise to pick one or two favorites and sacrifice the rest to save the best ones. We are not saying “always cut your darlings.” That is terrible writing advice. Don’t always cut your darlings. Writing, and reading your own writing, should bring you joy, even when you’re doing it professionally.)

If you’re having trouble recognizing what in your own work CAN be cut, try implementing the above strategies in different places - cut things, and then re-read, and see how it works, and if it works at all. Sometimes, you’ll realize...you didn’t need any of what you cut. Other times, you’ll realize...it no longer feels like the story you were trying to tell. Fiddle with it until you figure out what you need for it to still feel like your story, and practice that kind of cutting until you get better at recognizing what can and can’t go without having to do as much tweaking.

Lastly...along the lines of the previous...understand that sometimes, cutting your story down to a certain word count will just be impossible. Some stories simply can’t be made very short, and others simply can’t be told at length. If you’re really struggling, it’s important to consider that your story just...isn’t going to work at that word count. And that’s okay. Go back to the drawing board, and try again - you’ll also get better at learning what stories you can tell, in your style, using your own writing voice, at different word counts. It’s not something you’ll just know how to do - that kind of estimating is a skill, just like all other writing abilities.

As with all our writing advice - there’s no one way to tackle cutting stories for length, and also, which of these strategies is most appropriate will depend on what kind of story you’re writing, how much over-length it is, what your target market is, your characters, and your personal writing style. Try different ones, and see which work for you - the most important aspect is to learn to read your own writing critically enough that you are able to recognize what you can cut, and then from that standpoint, use your expertise to decide what you should cut, which is definitely not always the same thing. Lots of details can be cut - but a story with all of the flavor and individuality removed should never be your goal.

Contributions to this post were made by @unforth, @jhoomwrites, @alecjmarsh, @shealynn88, @foxymoley, @willablythe, and @owlishintergalactic, and their input has been used with their knowledge and explicit permission. Thanks, everyone, for helping us consider different ways to shorten stories!

#writing advice #duck prints press #original content

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