#its the only reason why i tend to have so many tags

[squirmydonnie]

My brain is such a mixed bag. It doesnt understand anything

[005mins]

/  my man literally called out his own servant-

[derinwrites]

The Three Commandments

The thing about writing is this: you gotta start in medias res, to hook your readers with action immediately. But readers aren’t invested in people they know nothing about, so start with a framing scene that instead describes the characters and the stakes. But those scenes are boring, so cut straight to the action, after opening with a clever quip, but open in the style of the story, and try not to be too clever in the opener, it looks tacky. One shouldn’t use too many dialogue tags, it’s distracting; but you can use ‘said’ a lot, because ‘said’ is invisible, but don’t use ‘said’ too much because it’s boring and uninformative – make sure to vary your dialogue tags to be as descriptive as possible, except don’t do that because it’s distracting, and instead rely mostly on ‘said’ and only use others when you need them. But don’t use ‘said’ too often; you should avoid dialogue tags as much as you possibly can and indicate speakers through describing their reactions. But don’t do that, it’s distracting.

Having a viewpoint character describe themselves is amateurish, so avoid that. But also be sure to describe your viewpoint character so that the reader can picture them. And include a lot of introspection, so we can see their mindset, but don’t include too much introspection, because it’s boring and takes away from the action and really bogs down the story, but also remember to include plenty of introspection so your character doesn’t feel like a robot. And adverbs are great action descriptors; you should have a lot of them, but don’t use a lot of adverbs; they’re amateurish and bog down the story. And

The reason new writers are bombarded with so much outright contradictory writing advice is that these tips are conditional. It depends on your style, your genre, your audience, your level of skill, and what problems in your writing you’re trying to fix. Which is why, when I’m writing, I tend to focus on what I call my Three Commandments of Writing. These are the overall rules; before accepting any writing advice, I check whether it reinforces one of these rules or not. If not, I ditch it.

1: Thou Shalt Have Something To Say

What’s your book about?

I don’t mean, describe to me the plot. I mean, why should anybody read this? What’s its thesis? What’s its reason for existence, from the reader’s perspective? People write stories for all kinds of reasons, but things like ‘I just wanted to get it out of my head’ are meaningless from a reader perspective. The greatest piece of writing advice I ever received was you putting words on a page does not obligate anybody to read them. So why are the words there? What point are you trying to make?

The purpose of your story can vary wildly. Usually, you’ll be exploring some kind of thesis, especially if you write genre fiction. Curse Words, for example, is an exploration of self-perpetuating power structures and how aiming for short-term stability and safety can cause long-term problems, as well as the responsibilities of an agitator when seeking to do the necessary work of dismantling those power structures. Most of the things in Curse Words eventually fold back into exploring this question. Alternately, you might just have a really cool idea for a society or alien species or something and want to show it off (note: it can be VERY VERY HARD to carry a story on a ‘cool original concept’ by itself. You think your sky society where they fly above the clouds and have no rainfall and have to harvest water from the clouds below is a cool enough idea to carry a story: You’re almost certainly wrong. These cool concept stories work best when they are either very short, or working in conjunction with exploring a theme). You might be writing a mystery series where each story is a standalone mystery and the point is to present a puzzle and solve a fun mystery each book. Maybe you’re just here to make the reader laugh, and will throw in anything you can find that’ll act as framing for better jokes. In some genres, readers know exactly what they want and have gotten it a hundred times before and want that story again but with different character names – maybe you’re writing one of those. (These stories are popular in romance, pulp fantasy, some action genres, and rather a lot of types of fanfiction).

Whatever the main point of your story is, you should know it by the time you finish the first draft, because you simply cannot write the second draft if you don’t know what the point of the story is. (If you write web serials and are publishing the first draft, you’ll need to figure it out a lot faster.)

Once you know what the point of your story is, you can assess all writing decisions through this lens – does this help or hurt the point of my story?

2: Thou Shalt Respect Thy Reader’s Investment

Readers invest a lot in a story. Sometimes it’s money, if they bought your book, but even if your story is free, they invest time, attention, and emotional investment. The vast majority of your job is making that investment worth it. There are two factors to this – lowering the investment, and increasing the payoff. If you can lower your audience’s suspension of disbelief through consistent characterisation, realistic (for your genre – this may deviate from real realism) worldbuilding, and appropriately foreshadowing and forewarning any unexpected rules of your world. You can lower the amount of effort or attention your audience need to put into getting into your story by writing in a clear manner, using an entertaining tone, and relying on cultural touchpoints they understand already instead of pushing them in the deep end into a completely unfamiliar situation. The lower their initial investment, the easier it is to make the payoff worth it.

Two important notes here: one, not all audiences view investment in the same way. Your average reader views time as a major investment, but readers of long fiction (epic fantasies, web serials, et cetera) often view length as part of the payoff. Brandon Sanderson fans don’t grab his latest book and think “Uuuugh, why does it have to be so looong!” Similarly, some people like being thrown in the deep end and having to put a lot of work into figuring out what the fuck is going on with no onboarding. This is one of science fiction’s main tactics for forcibly immersing you in a future world. So the valuation of what counts as too much investment varies drastically between readers.

Two, it’s not always the best idea to minimise the necessary investment at all costs. Generally, engagement with art asks something of us, and that’s part of the appeal. Minimum-effort books do have their appeal and their place, in the same way that idle games or repetitive sitcoms have their appeal and their place, but the memorable stories, the ones that have staying power and provide real value, are the ones that ask something of the reader. If they’re not investing anything, they have no incentive to engage, and you’re just filling in time. This commandment does not exist to tell you to try to ask nothing of your audience – you should be asking something of your audience. It exists to tell you to respect that investment. Know what you’re asking of your audience, and make sure that the ask is less than the payoff.

The other way to respect the investment is of course to focus on a great payoff. Make those characters socially fascinating, make that sacrifice emotionally rending, make the answer to that mystery intellectually fulfilling. If you can make the investment worth it, they’ll enjoy your story. And if you consistently make their investment worth it, you build trust, and they’ll be willing to invest more next time, which means you can ask more of them and give them an even better payoff. Audience trust is a very precious currency and this is how you build it – be worth their time.

But how do you know what your audience does and doesn’t consider an onerous investment? And how do you know what kinds of payoff they’ll find rewarding? Easy – they self-sort. Part of your job is telling your audience what to expect from you as soon as you can, so that if it’s not for them, they’ll leave, and if it is, they’ll invest and appreciate the return. (“Oh but I want as many people reading my story as possible!” No, you don’t. If you want that, you can write paint-by-numbers common denominator mass appeal fic. What you want is the audience who will enjoy your story; everyone else is a waste of time, and is in fact, detrimental to your success, because if they don’t like your story then they’re likely to be bad marketing. You want these people to bounce off and leave before you disappoint them. Don’t try to trick them into staying around.) Your audience should know, very early on, what kind of an experience they’re in for, what the tone will be, the genre and character(s) they’re going to follow, that sort of thing. The first couple of chapters of Time to Orbit: Unknown, for example, are a micro-example of the sorts of mysteries that Aspen will be dealing with for most of the book, as well as a sample of their character voice, the way they approach problems, and enough of their background, world and behaviour for the reader to decide if this sort of story is for them. We also start the story with some mildly graphic medical stuff, enough physics for the reader to determine the ‘hardness’ of the scifi, and about the level of physical risk that Aspen will be putting themselves at for most of the book. This is all important information for a reader to have.

If you are mindful of the investment your readers are making, mindful of the value of the payoff, and honest with them about both from the start so that they can decide whether the story is for them, you can respect their investment and make sure they have a good time.

3: Thou Shalt Not Make Thy World Less Interesting

This one’s really about payoff, but it’s important enough to be its own commandment. It relates primarily to twists, reveals, worldbuilding, and killing off storylines or characters. One mistake that I see new writers make all the time is that they tank the engagement of their story by introducing a cool fun twist that seems so awesome in the moment and then… is a major letdown, because the implications make the world less interesting.

“It was all a dream” twists often fall into this trap. Contrary to popular opinion, I think these twists can be done extremely well. I’ve seen them done extremely well. The vast majority of the time, they’re very bad. They’re bad because they take an interesting world and make it boring. The same is true of poorly thought out, shocking character deaths – when you kill a character, you kill their potential, and if they’re a character worth killing in a high impact way then this is always a huge sacrifice on your part. Is it worth it? Will it make the story more interesting? Similarly, if your bad guy is going to get up and gloat ‘Aha, your quest was all planned by me, I was working in the shadows to get you to acquire the Mystery Object since I could not! You have fallen into my trap! Now give me the Mystery Object!’, is this a more interesting story than if the protagonist’s journey had actually been their own unmanipulated adventure? It makes your bad guy look clever and can be a cool twist, but does it mean that all those times your protagonist escaped the bad guy’s men by the skin of his teeth, he was being allowed to escape? Are they retroactively less interesting now?

Whether these twists work or not will depend on how you’ve constructed the rest of your story. Do they make your world more or less interesting?

If you have the audience’s trust, it’s permissible to make your world temporarily less interesting. You can kill off the cool guy with the awesome plan, or make it so that the Chosen One wasn’t actually the Chosen One, or even have the main character wake up and find out it was all a dream, and let the reader marinate in disappointment for a little while before you pick it up again and turn things around so that actually, that twist does lead to a more interesting story! But you have to pick it up again. Don’t leave them with the version that’s less interesting than the story you tanked for the twist. The general slop of interest must trend upward, and your sacrifices need to all lead into the more interesting world. Otherwise, your readers will be disappointed, and their experience will be tainted.

Whenever I’m looking at a new piece of writing advice, I view it through these three rules. Is this plot still delivering on the book’s purpose, or have I gone off the rails somewhere and just stared writing random stuff? Does making this character ‘more relateable’ help or hinder that goal? Does this argument with the protagonists’ mother tell the reader anything or lead to any useful payoff; is it respectful of their time? Will starting in medias res give the audience an accurate view of the story and help them decide whether to invest? Does this big twist that challenges all the assumptions we’ve made so far imply a world that is more or less interesting than the world previously implied?

Hopefully these can help you, too.

[painfullyprickedandticked]

a common debate within the fandom is the annual question of “is striker a supremacist?”

particularly, whenever one makes an analysis on striker, there’s always one comment mentioning “he is a supremacist.” however, there have been, recently, arguments that he is not a supremacist but rather just believes himself to be superior.

let’s look into both sides of this debate and draw our own conclusions.

the argument on why he isn’t:

BLITZØ is the one who refers to striker as a supremacist and blitzø isn’t particularly good at perceiving people. he tends to resort to insults instead (like when he called fizz a “peppy fuck doll” and verosika a “drunken whore”).

if someone’s views contrast with how blitzo sees the world, he immediately resorts to throwing an insult and that’s his perception of the person up until they shake the viewpoint. we’ve seen this with clown boy and we’ve seen him relent with verosika. basically, there’s some bias on blitzo’s end towards cowboy snake dude.

a supremacist is someone who believes a certain type of person is better than another. striker doesn’t believe imps are superior to other hell species, he thinks HE is superior to other hell species. therefore he’s not a supremacist, he has a superiority complex. those are two different things.

“what is a superiority complex?”

 examples of evidence proving striker does have a superiority complex include:

he wrote a song dedicated to his own victory in harvest moon festival, with lyrics literally declaring “i’m so much better than you.” he’s always been self-centered, having an overexaggerated self-worth. 

a lot of his anger towards moxxie can be taken as self projections, and same with fizz.

the reason striker mentions to blitzø that the two of them are superior to most of their kind was a manipulation tactic to throw blitzø off of his case when he was caught trying to shoot stolas

it amazes me how many people miss this context when its so clear as day. its also apparent that hybrid imps can sniff out other hybrids, akin to how in real life, if youre mixed race, you can often have a gut feeling that someone might also be mixed.

another point someone made: blitzø doesn’t know about striker’s past. we know striker implied it in western energy, but blitzø himself doesn’t know. if he understood what happened to him, then maybe he’d gain more of an understanding of striker as a person instead of this “evil supremacist” facade he sees.

“"Look. Not every ring is some fancy ass city, with some fancy ass mansion, that only fancy ass royals get to live in. Some of us have hard lives to live. And some of us have everything we care about taken away by fuckers like you."”

I’ll quote someone I discussed this topic with, though I won’t tag or name because I don’t want people to go after them. I’m not here to start discourse—I’m here to explore viewpoints. Here's their take:

“His anger and pain is so genuine and so real, you hear it in Ed’s performance, i don’t get how ppl look at the disgust in his voice and his face whenever things get personal (his speech to Stolas and his reaction to Fizz saying he’s no better than any royal) and take it as he’s putting on an act and lying about it.” […] “Extremist is a better word for him imo than supremacist and he def has some self-racism/hatred going on for sure hence how he put downs imps he feels are lower than him but upholds those he feels meets his standards, if that makes sense yk? It’s about what he sees as weak or embarrassing for his own kind. It’s not actually about wanting any class to be superior, it’s about him and what he thinks.”

it’s important to note, no matter how you view the angle of coding characters who aren’t human – giving them racial coding and all – there is an allegory within the series. imps are the lowest on the hierarchy, and the goetias are merely only a step below the deadly sins and lucifer (+ charlie and lilith). so if we put imps into the minority role, that implies imp hybrids are, well, mixed race.

we notice this in an example of how stella treats imps, even including striker himself.

[attempted script format here. didnt work, lol]

he doesn’t like working for her. he puts up with her because that’s his meal ticket. it’s payment. there isn’t a moral high ground he stands on, but there is a ground where he’s below her and he knows it – he’s exhausted. he’s tired. resorts to a slur because that’s how much she exasperates him. because she’s a privileged royal lady, and he’s at the bottom of the caste system. he cant pick or choose, unlike with IMP and their jobs.

it’s a lot more nuanced than a lot of people are willing to take on simply because some don’t like striker and dismiss everything surrounding his character that isn’t those specific lines talking about superiority or blitzo’s supremacist comment. 

as i finish writing up this section, i wanna make it clear i also like blitzo and stolas and i’m not justifying striker’s treatment of anyone. i’m not being an apologist, but i’m examining this particular case “he’s not a supremacist” because, yknow, you gotta look at the other side sometimes when it is presented in a calm manner and not just straight up character bashing or disrespect to the creator bc “omg my ship didn’t happen” or “whaaaat? the villain was always a villain and NOT a love interest? how dare that BITCH” [these takes exist and my brain melts each time…]

okay, i think im done with this side. ill make the rest pretty concise and cite someone else here who's detailed things for the other side of the argument. thanks to TVM for letting me quote you. im tired to write up the other side because my fucking google doc with these notes got erased. i hate it here!!!!!!!

why striker at least has some Certain Ideals (sigh)

"Blue Bloods"

"Disgusting, rich, pompous goetia"

"Some of us have everything we care about taken away by fuckers like you."

"You don't get to talk over me. . . all you ever do is try to talk over us."

"Once I split your neck open and let you choke on your own blue blood, you won't be worth any more than the tomb stone you'll be buried under."

So . . . first, he doesn't actually say a lot that's solely about royals, and ALL of the quotes above are about how royals look down on people like him, NOT about any inherent flaws that they have. They're about class, not race, unless you count "blue blood" as race. I don't. It's tied directly to money. "Disgusting" comes up in reference to Blitz's relationship with Stolas, but the words "rich" and "pompous" follow immediately. Striker hates royals because he hates that society places them above him.

Imps

"Pathetic."

"You little things aint worth the cleanup."

"Oh I remember how easy you are to choke the life out of, little one."

"Blitz, come on. You know the two of us are superior to most of our kind."

"I still think it's embarrassing. You're wasting a lot of potential relying on a weak little . . ."

"Vermin"

I think that this is where Striker's worldview comes into clearer focus. He thinks that Moxxie and Millie (and by extension MOST imps) are inferior to him. The word "vermin" is particularly telling. There's something visceral about his disgust for "lesser" imps.

I think Striker worries that they reflect who he really is. I think he truly believes that imps are inferior to higher class demons, and he fears that if he doesn't prove himself to be special (through violent dominance), he's vermin himself.

Notice how in the image below, his edge over Moxxie is all about size and physical strength- the things he implies throughout the episode make him the superior being. Look at that wide smile. He loves the feeling of being superior.

Relationships between imps and royals

"You are so above sucking on a disgusting rich pompous goetia . . ."

"kill the unkillable . . . starting with the one that treats you like a plaything."

"Blitzy"

"You two are both embarrassments to our kind for meddlin' with blue bloods to begin with. But at least loud mouth here has the sense to only fuck his rich bitch, instead of being a little purse dog."

"This worthless little pet reeks of his over bloated master. I'll at least enjoy getting rid of him."

Striker clearly sees these relationships as imps lowering themselves. It doesn't seem to occur to him even for a moment that these relationships might involve genuine care because he sees all interactions between social classes as being about power and "who wins."

all sourced from here.

conclusion?

I don’t know how to finish off this post. I was trying to give both sides a microphone and at this point, every time I make a post on Striker, I have to make it clear that I hate the woobification of him from a loud majority who only do so because they’ve got a weird hate boner for Stolas. Y’all might not have seen it, but I have on Twitter. I have seen it from here. I have seen it in fucking AO3 with straight up disrespectful cross tagging of character bashing and actual flanderization (see here on why striker is not canonically ruined), along with straight up kill-fics and thinly veiled disrespect to the creators.

But lately I’m also hating the boring, simplistic take of “he’s just a supremacist” and not analyzing him more than that. He’s such an interesting, complex character in a show of complex characters, and nobody bothers to examine him! They just either dismiss him as revolutionary or a supremacist! They never go into his grey areas or “hey, why is he like THAT?” - no, it’s just the boring same old takes.

This guy has so many layers. He’s a minority within a minority. He’s turned off by sex jokes yet has such rizz. He has an adrenaline rush from fighting. He is self centered yet also emotional. Yes, he’s a dick and a murderer. No, he’s not just a rat bastard and no he didn’t threaten to kill Octavia - he simply brought her up to throw Stolas off. It was more so "shame your kid won't see you again", not "oh im gonna kill your baby girl after i show her your decapitated head". Yes, his layers and tragic backstory yet unyielding thirst for killing when he sets eyes on a target make him interesting. It’s called being a villain enjoyer but no one seems to like a villain for being a villain anymore in his case. They either gotta justify him or they gotta woobify him, or they have to demonize him. I’ve seen people make the worst comparisons and it baffles me.

I just wanna enjoy this rat bastard in peace but then stupidity resurfaces in my head and it’s inescapable at times. Tiring. </3

This isn’t the conclusion you probably wanted if you read this far. Sorry. But I'm at a loss of what else to say atp. I wanna find more normal fans of Striker who aren’t just insane people who woobify him to bash Stolas. And I'm also tired of people who actively bash him trying to weigh in on my stuff. Like... is there any normal enjoyer of him besides @eldritchcreatureofwords ?

Anyway, live laugh love Edward Bosco, bye.

[glossdebut]

Take a Bite Ch. 3

✧ PAIRING: yoongi x fem!reader

✧ SUMMARY: Your fledgling career as a music journalist is finally going in some kind of direction that must be on the path to success. Your coworkers like you enough to invite you out on Fridays, your boss is starting to think you’re competent enough to let you score a few bylines, and you're finally getting the hang of InDesign. All of your hard work, late nights, and complete lack of a social life are starting to pay off... Even if it all came at the expense of the longest relationship of your life. Fine. You've accepted the fact that romance isn't for you, under any circumstances. You won't risk your career for anybody. Not even Min Yoongi.

✧ TAGS: slow burn, eventual smut, eventual romance, producer yoongi, music journalist reader, neighbors to friends to lovers? you'll see, reader is bad at feelings, reader is post-break up

✧ WARNINGS: yoongi being RICH. also... remember that eventual smut? well it's kind of here! if you wanna skip, stop reading at [Maybe you should fix that.] and then continue at [After another moment, you roll over onto your stomach...]

✧ WORDCOUNT: 3.5k

✧ STATUS: ongoing

✧ AUTHOR'S NOTE: hi i normally post on wednesdays but we're about to get a HURRICANE where i'm at so i'm posting early lmfao. rating goes up in this chapter whoops! not sure when chapter 4 will be posted but i'll keep you guys updated. thank you all so much for the engagement i've been receiving on this fic!!! it's my first one ever and i never expected to get so many readers so quickly <3 you guys are keeping me writing so please feel free to send me feedback if you like this chapter. i'd love to read it if i have power over the next few days LOL

Chapter 3: I Wanna Fold Clothes For You

So, you and Yoongi are friends.

Of course, seeing him three times within twenty four hours was a fluke, and over the next six days you don’t see him once, not even in passing in your shared hallway. You’re not privy to his work hours, but you know based on what little he’s told you that working as a producer demands more than the normal nine to five, as does your job.

Still, there’s something about coming home every night and knowing that you have a friend right down the hall, if you need one. You haven’t had that in a long time, and you feel so much lighter now that you do have it. 

There is, of course, an upside to not being able to see Yoongi often. Given that you’ve only just met him, you don’t have his appearance committed to memory quite yet, and mercifully, you’re beginning to forget why you were so viscerally attracted to him in the first place. 

You reason that it must’ve been the alcohol. You were getting drunk when you met him, stupidly drunk when you discovered that you’re neighbors, hungover when you shared a tangerine, and drinking from a bottomless glass of wine (courtesy of Seokjin) when you drooled over his hands for a solid ten minutes. You have yet to interact with Yoongi clear-headed and lucid. Not to mention you’re just a little bit… pent up, recently. Drunk and horny Y/N had the wheel. That has to be it. Nobody is that hot. You’re sure of that. Men ain’t special!

So you go through your week business as usual, but with a slight spring in your step, and it’s lovely. You even venture way further away from the office for your lunch hour on Friday than you normally would to go to a restaurant you’ve been dying to try. You’re usually so tied to the office that the furthest you tend to go is the convenience store down the street for the instant stuff.

And then, since the universe demands correction (or overcorrection where you’re concerned), all of the floaty goodness comes to a screeching halt when you get in your car to head back to the office. Your car which, in the past hour you’ve been blissfully stuffing your face with tteokbokki, has decided it has done its job and is ready to retire.

It just straight up won’t start.

Sitting in the parking lot of the restaurant, you go into crisis management mode.

You’re thankfully not completely clueless where cars are concerned. It comes with the territory of owning a beater. You keep up with your oil changes, you don’t leave the lights on when you get home late. You replaced your battery semi-recently, so that shouldn’t be it. Unfortunately, you don’t have much time to troubleshoot. You need to get back to work. Okay… Damage control, then.

The most obvious solution is to call one of your coworkers to come and rescue you, but your coworkers are just as notorious for being tethered within a one mile radius of the office as you are, so that would more than likely end up being a waste of time. You could find the nearest bus stop, but who knows how long public transportation could take right now? Too unpredictable. You could call your boss and tell him that you’re not going to be back to the office anytime soon (or at all today) and get your car towed and repaired. But then you would suddenly have a reputation of being unreliable, because god forbid you have a human moment. That’s straight up not an option. You’ve been doing so good this week.

You’re sure there are other options. But isn’t this what friends are for?

He answers on the fifth ring, but he answers.

“Y/N?” 

“Yoongi.” You feel your shoulders slump in relief. You try your best not to sound as panicked as you feel. “Are you busy?”

“Um. I’m at the studio,” he says, confusion in his voice. “But I have a minute. Is everything okay?” Confusion and concern? That’s nice.

“Everything’s fine!” you blurt out. “Okay, maybe not. My car won’t start! I don’t know why, but it won’t, and I need to get back to work, but you’re at work, too! I don’t even know where you work, but I doubt it’s anywhere near where I am, and even if it is, I don’t want to tear you away from anything important—”

“Y/N.”

“—I know you said you had a minute, but I really don’t want to fuck up your flow. That’s a term, right? You’re a producer, you… flow. Anyway, I just don’t really know anyone here and I didn’t know who to call, and if I don’t get back to work soon my boss is going to kill me—”

“Y/N,” he says, more firmly. Your mouth snaps shut. “Where are you?”

“In my car,” you say dumbly, frazzled.

Yoongi sighs. “Send me your location.”

“For what?”

“I’m gonna send a car to come get you and drive you to your office,” he says, and he sounds just the slightest bit exasperated about needing to explain that to you.

Send a car? What the fuck? You have so many questions, such as: how fucking loaded is the guy who lives two doors down from you in your very shitty apartment building? What label does he even work for? How famous of a producer is he to be able to send a car to you? But your immediate instinct to turn down his help wins out over asking any of them.

“What? Yoongi, no, that’s too much,” you complain. “Don’t do that. I just freaked out a little bit, I can–”

“Y/N,” he interrupts. If you’re not mistaken, it sounds a bit like he’s trying not to laugh at you. Fucker. “Location.”

So you send him your location. What other option do you have?

“You’re not far,” Yoongi says once he receives your text. A few moments pass, and then: “Car will be there in ten.”

“Thank you,” you say. You feel nauseous, like maybe you’re going to cry, but there’s also a good amount of relief there, too. “I’ll make it up to you.”

“No need,” he says. “I’d come get you myself, but I really can’t get away right now.”

“Still, there’s a comically large bottle of an alcohol of your choosing in your future. Seriously, thank you.”

His responding laugh is enough to settle your stomach just a little. “Seriously, you don’t need to pay me back…” A pause. “But for the record, I like whiskey.”

You wrinkle your nose even though he can’t see it. “Gross.”

“Don’t be a hater.”

“As long as you don’t make me drink it with you, I’ll keep my comments to myself,” you say, finding yourself smiling.

“Oh, you think I share?” Yoongi teases back. He sighs again. “I really have to go.”

“Go, go,” you say. “Thanks for saving me. Even if it’s by proxy.”

“You can always call me if you need shit like this,” he says. You can tell that he means it. “I’m glad you called me. Means I’m doing something right.”

“You are,” you say, your voice soft. Your cheeks feel warm. Probably because you’re sitting in a dead car. “Thanks.”

Yoongi hums in response. “Text me when you get back to the office safe, okay?”

“I will. Bye, Yoongi.”

And that’s that.

★ ★ ★

True to your word, you text Yoongi when the stupidly luxurious car he ordered for you drops you off at your office, only ten minutes later than you’re due back from your lunch break. You’re able to slip in without anyone noticing that you’re late at all, which is great. Crisis partially averted.

He sends back a thumbs up emoji, and then decides to drop the bomb that he intends to pay for your car to be towed.

[1:21] You: YOONGI NO

[1:21] You: you can’t do that!!!!

[1:24] Yoongi: 100% I can and will as soon as I get ten minutes to make a phone call to sort it out.

The audacity of this man.

[1:25] You: seriously i cannot ask you to do that

[1:25] You: i was just going to take the bus back to the restaurant after work and deal with it from there. i’m actively researching towing companies and repair places on company time as we speak

[1:30] Yoongi: You’re not asking me. You’ve got enough to worry about. Let me take care of it. I know the places.

[1:31] You: still, i can’t let you spend money like that on me. i don’t even wanna think about what that car cost you

[1:31] Yoongi: If it helps you sleep at night you can pay me back on your own time. You definitely don’t have to though.

[1:32] Yoongi: That reminds me. You can use that car until yours is taken care of if you need to. I’ll send you the driver’s contact. Don’t take the bus.

You feel like you’re going insane.

[1:33] You: do you have a grammy or something? what do you DO to be able to afford shit like this? why do you live in our building? are you a drug dealer?

[1:37] Yoongi: :]

Of course, he gives you no clues about what exactly he does, but after a bit more back-and-forth, you finally give in and let Yoongi handle everything under the condition that you’re going to pay him back. He doesn’t seem all that worried about it, which infuriates you just a little.

You go through the rest of your day like normal, if not a tad twitchy. Come quitting time, you take advantage of having a driver at your disposal and have him stop a liquor store on your way home.

As you take the elevator up to your floor, comically large whiskey bottle (as promised) in tow, you text Yoongi and ask if he’s home yet. At his responding ‘No, why?’ you cackle to yourself and pocket your phone. The elevator doors slide open. You were hoping that would be the case. 

You clocked out at a semi-normal time tonight, a gift to yourself to cope with the stress of the day, and so you take great pleasure in setting the bottle down on Yoongi’s very tasteful cat doormat, flipping it off right back on your way into your own apartment.

You silently pray to whatever god may be listening that the whiskey isn’t swiped by someone before Yoongi gets home. Your cat, Pepper, is blinking at you lazily on the kitchen counter, and you give her a triumphant little scratch on the head before padding to your bedroom to deal with your laundry.

Your move, Min Yoongi.

★ ★ ★

“Do I need to be jealous?”

You take advantage of getting off work early to call your best friend Rina for the first time in what feels like forever. She’s in Paris this month, debuting a play that she’s been working on tirelessly about aliens and drug addiction. You’ve read the script six times over. It’s both campy and gut wrenching all at once, and you’ve cried every time. You picture her with her very chic haircut, sipping from a flute of champagne. The thought of her being jealous of any part of your life is laughable. 

“What do you have to be jealous of, exactly?” you snort, holding your phone between your ear and shoulder as you toss your laundry basket upside down on your bed unceremoniously. Your clothes are covered in a perma-layer of Pepper hair, and you think it’s lucky that Pepper is a black cat and most of your clothes are black. Very enviable.

“Of Yoongi, dipshit,” she coos through the phone. “You’re replacing me.”

“Sure,” you say, like she’s making total sense. You’re lying on top of your laundry now instead of folding it. You put her on speakerphone and rest your phone on your chest. “I’m throwing away ten years of being your best friend for a guy that I met a week ago. I’m glad you figured it out, honestly, because I was dreading telling you. I was going to wait until your matinée, but you don’t seem too broken up about it.”

“Of course. You have to do what’s right for you, I’ve always told you that,” she deadpans back, and you groan. You don’t want to hear it. “No, I just mean… It’s good. That you’re meeting people.”

“We’re neighbors,” you say, flopping over onto your front to rub at your temples. Rina is resting on a pile of your underwear now. “We talk about work. My work, not his, because he thinks it’s funny to act like he’s too cool to tell me about his job. He’s helping me with my car. We’re… neighborly.”

“And you want to fuck him,” she says. Maybe calling Rina was a bad idea. Debriefing over text would have sufficed.

“I don’t want to fuck him,” you say, indignant. “We’re friends. He’s nice. I can have a guy friend.”

“Of course you can,” Rina says, like you’re dumb for even thinking she would imply otherwise. “And you can be friends with him all you want. But you also want to fuck him.”

You groan in protest but she speaks over it.

“Baby, you can pretend, but I know how you talk about people you want to have sex with, even if you don’t say it outright,” she continues. “He may just be feeding you and helping you and talking to you about the weather, but I know you, and I know the whole time he’s talking you’re just agonizing over how he might fuck you if you let him.”

“That’s not fair,” you mumble, letting your face drop into your laundry. It smells good. Small comforts.

“Are you going to let him?”

“No,” you whine, muffled by the cotton. “I don’t need that. There are always strings. I hate strings.”

“You said he’s a super straightforward, honest guy, right?” Rina asks.

“Brutally so,” you grumble.

“So. Maybe he’d be cool with a lack of strings. You won’t know unless you ask, baby.”

You want to tell her that’s easy for her to say, but you don’t want to fight with her when you know you won’t hear from her like this again for a while. 

Rina has never compromised for anything. She decided in both of your sophomore year of college, after flirting with both performance and directing, that she wanted to be a playwright, and that was that. 

She wrote and wrote and wrote, and after you graduated together, her career blossomed almost instantly because she worked goddamn hard for it. She got opportunities to travel and work with theatre companies around the world, and she took them without giving it a second thought because she knew it was what she wanted. And she’s had a consistent, loyal boyfriend nearly the whole time. He doesn’t always travel with her, but he supports her in everything she does. They’re excruciatingly healthy about it. 

When your long-term college boyfriend dumped you unceremoniously two months into your first reporter gig because he felt he came second to your career, Rina was there for you. But you resented her a little bit. There was no way she could understand any of it. 

Still, as much as you hate to admit it, she has a point. You could just ask Yoongi if he wants to fool around without it being a thing, and you know he’d give you a straight answer. You’re even pretty confident he wouldn’t make it weird if his answer was no. That’s not the problem. It never is.

“The problem isn’t whether or not I think he’d be cool with it,” you mumble. “The problem is if he is cool with it, and then the strings come anyway. The friendship is nice. I’m attracted to him, yeah, fine. But I can ignore it if it means I get to be his friend.”

Theres a long pause on the line, and then Rina sighs.

“Your life would be a lot easier if you could do one night stands,” she says.

Don’t you know it. 

“Yeah.”

“I’ve gotta go, okay? Text me. Keep me updated on life.” You read between the lines. On Yoongi, she means. “I love you.”

“Mmmhh,” you mumble back, still burying your face into your laundry. 

When the line disconnects, you feel considerably more twitchy and irritable than you did before talking to Rina.

So, you’re attracted to Yoongi. Or you were, when you were drunk and he was all… hot and considerate. That doesn’t mean you have to act on it! You’re not going to act on it. You’re just pent up, that’s all. It’s been a long time since you’ve had an orgasm, self-inflicted or otherwise, and you can’t think straight.

Maybe you should fix that.

It’s clear you’re giving up on laundry for the night, so you shove the mountain of clothes back into the basket on the floor, sighing as you lay back on your bed.

You feel only slightly ridiculous as you shimmy your sleep shorts down your thighs, your hands sliding up your shirt to cup your breasts, squeezing slightly. Warming yourself up.

You quickly decide to get to the point, though. You’re struggling to immerse yourself in the fantasy that usually does the trick, too wound up and embarrassed (as if it’s not you in here by yourself, as usual) at groping yourself.

Despite the embarrassment, it becomes abundantly clear that you didn’t really need to warm yourself up anyway. Your fingers slide through your folds with ease, drenched like you’ve been that way all fucking day, unbeknownst to you, and a surprised moan falls from your lips. Fuck.

Closing your eyes, you circle two fingers around your clit experimentally, making your hips jerk up under you, sensitive. You do it again, a little firmer, starting a slow rhythm that makes you squirm against your mattress, your bottom lip rolling between your teeth.

It feels good. It usually does—you’ve always been able to make quick work of an orgasm to rid yourself of any lingering jitters before bed. But it feels really good right now, your pussy extra sensitive tonight, and you can’t figure out why. There’s nothing new about what you’re doing.

Rina’s words worm their way into your brain uninvited—the whole time he’s talking you’re just agonizing over how he might fuck you if you let him—and you’re too turned on to stop that train of thought, flashes of capable hands and pink tongue (tonguetechnologytonguetechnologytonguetechnology) filling your mind, and you’re moaning softly despite yourself as you rub your clit a little faster.

You continue to make soft noises of pleasure, your tongue darting out to wet your lips, dry from panting as the barrage of Yoongi-related thoughts keep coming, bringing you closer and closer to your release. 

Dark, dark eyes looking down at you. A delicate chain dangling above your face. You whimper, your fingers sliding down from your clit to sink into your pussy, curling up to rub at your inner walls. A thick cock sliding into you, filling you so deliciously.

You pump your fingers fast and desperate as you get closer and closer to that sweet edge. You wonder what Yoongi would sound like if he was the one fucking into you right now. Would he moan in your ear in that gravelly voice of his? He’s a man of few words. Would he be like that in bed, too? Would he call you sweet names? Not so sweet? Which ones?

Your walls flutter around your fingers, your hips stuttering up off the mattress as your orgasm crashes over you and you gasp out a breath you hadn’t realized you’d been holding.

You stare up at the ceiling for a minute panting. The high of your release buzzes pleasantly through your body before it starts ebbing away, but the thoughts of Yoongi pervade. Well, fuck.

After another moment, you roll over onto your stomach to grab a towel from your laundry basket and wipe off your fingers, tossing it on the floor. You grab your phone, only to be greeted by a notification from the subject of your masturbation fantasy himself. He sent it about ten minutes ago.

When you tap it open, you’re greeted with a photo (!!!) of Yoongi holding your gift next to his head, the hand wrapped around the neck of the whiskey bottle almost dwarfed by its sheer size. A testament to the ridiculousness of it, because you’re well aware of how long Yoongi’s fingers are. There’s a lazy smirk on his face, and a mole that you’re just now noticing on his right cheek.

[8:23] Yoongi: Cute. 

Yep. Yep. Cool.

You swipe out, tapping on Rina’s contact.

[8:35] You: okay. i want to fuck him. 

[8:35] Rina: 🥂🥳🎉

Shit.

✧ shoot me a reply or an ask if you enjoyed this chapter! feedback is always appreciated <3 join my taglist if you want to be tagged in future chapters!

@dollfaceksj @jajabro

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[lurking-latinist]

How to Suck Less at Summaries

Probably almost anyone who's ever posted a fic to ao3 or a platform with a similar interface has been hit by that moment of panic, breaking in on the euphoria of having finished and polished a fic--"what do I put for the summary?!"

So much so, that "I suck at summaries" in the summary box has become something of a cliche. It's very understandable! You've already put all that work into writing the fic itself, and now you have to write ANOTHER thing with its own set of conventions and expectations? No way!

And I want to start by saying that that's absolutely fine. Fic writing is your hobby, your creative endeavor; you're not obligated to do anything in it that you don't want to. You can leave the summary box completely blank--ao3 will let you--and there's no reason you shouldn't, if that's what you want to do! If you're happy with your summaries, please don't change them. There's no wrong way to do summaries. This is your invitation to ignore the entire rest of this post!

However. My impression is that an awful lot of people aren't happy with their summaries. They would like to have summaries that catch a reader's attention, that fit common patterns, or that give a good representation of the fic; they're just not sure how to accomplish that, or what readers might be expecting. And the good news is that writing various styles of summaries, like other kinds of writing, is a skill you can improve--and that there are some tips and tricks that can help you write the kinds of summaries you may want to write more quickly.

How do I know? Well, on top of having read I don't know how many fics, I've published 200 of my own, with all different kinds of summaries. (In fact, writing this post is my treat to myself to celebrate publishing 200 fics!) So I have a lot of trial and error experience to draw on. I'll be using my own summaries as examples (plus some hypothetical examples), because I don't want to be nitpicking anyone else's!

I'm going to throw in a cut now because this is gonna get long.

What do you want to accomplish with your summary?

That's the first question you might want to ask yourself. And the answer really is up to you! The name "summary" suggests it's supposed to be a sort of short version of your story. That's one option. But summaries are often used to accomplish various other things, too: some of my favorite summaries don't really tell you anything about the plot of the fic, but instead give you a glimpse of the writer's style or lure you in with a question. It can also fill organizational purposes like commemorating the reason the fic was written (although author notes can also be effective for things like this).

Most fundamentally, I tend to think of the summary box as a place to manage your readers' expectations. I want them to have some sense of what the fic they're about to read might be like, and I want to present that in a way that highlights why it might be appealing to them. Of course, what I write won't be appealing to every reader--and an effective summary, plus accurate tags and ratings of course, allows a reader who won't enjoy what I have to offer to quickly keep scrolling and find something that fits their tastes better. But the way I think of them, summaries are really mainly for readers who will enjoy my fic if they decide to open it. A summary for a fic is like a pretty package for a gift: the gift is great in itself, and the nice gift-wrap makes it more eye-catching and more fun to open!

Sidebar: This "managing expectations" thing is, I think, the reason why authors sometimes add notes in the summary like "I'm sorry if this sucks" or "this is my first fic, it's probably terrible." I completely understand where this comes from--you don't want to make your readers expect some kind of genius literature and then only have something to give them that you yourself are still insecure about! But I really do think they're generally counterproductive. On the one hand, that kind of negative self-talk will tend to undermine your own confidence and make you more insecure about your writing, not less; on the other hand, they can subconsciously prime your readers to notice weaknesses and issues that they might otherwise not even have paid attention to! That doesn't mean you have to pretend you think your writing is perfect; very few of us do think what we post on fic archives is perfect. There's nothing wrong, even, with a note like "this is my first fic" or "this one is a bit experimental, I'm not sure how I feel about it" or "this wasn't written in my first language" or even "this is an old fic and I don't think it represents my best work anymore", although I tend to put that kind of commentary on craft in the author's notes rather than the summary, but that's just me; there's no rule. As an example, when I recently published my first fic in the Hornblower fandom, which has a historical setting I wasn't previously very familiar with, I thanked my beta for helping me avoid "historical howlers" and added "any remaining are my own responsibility." That made me feel better about potential mistakes in research by showing that I was aware I might have made some. I put this in an author's note at the end of the story. But, for the sake of you as a writer as well as me as a reader, I'm asking you--please don't start out our reader/writer relationship by telling me it's terrible! Give yourself a chance to shine. Even if there's a lot you're insecure about in your fic, there's something you love--maybe it's the premise, the ship, even one particular line--that makes you want to share it with the world. Use the summary to highlight that. As your reader, that's what I want to know about!

Anyway, now that you've decided what you want your summary to accomplish, there are a couple of very easy ways to fill the summary box that you might want to consider--if they make sense for your fic.

Just quote the prompt

When I write prompt-fic, often very short, I frequently just quote the prompt itself as the summary. An example would be my 3 Sentence Ficathon fic archived on ao3. Since the challenge in this event is to write a complete fic in only three sentences, a summary wouldn't be much shorter than the fic itself! So I just do summaries like

For reeby10's prompt: "Doctor Who, Clara/Twelve, unforgettable."

(Gaps)

This can work outside of prompt memes, too. If you're doing a monthly challenge, for instance, something like

Flufftember day 21, 'breakfast in bed'

might tell your readers all they need to know to be interested in your story and know what to expect.

Set the context

For some fic, the most important thing you want your readers to know going in is something about the fic's context. For instance, with drabbles I sometimes use the summary as a place to sneak in information about setting/what's supposed to be happening that I didn't have room for in the drabble itself. For Susan's Twist, a 100-word drabble, I set the scene in the summary:

Susan is grooving to the latest chart-topper of 1963. But for some reason, the song makes her grandfather uncomfortable.

which meant I didn't have to use any of my 100 words explaining "Susan was listening to the radio, when..." Since Susan's Twist was inspired by someone else's Tumblr post, I could also just have referenced that post in the summary. But in this case, I chose to phrase the premise in my own words in the summary, and cite the Tumblr post in the author's notes (I also tagged the OP when I shared the fic on Tumblr).

Flower Children is an example of a drabble with a not particularly effective summary where I could have used this strategy quite effectively. The summary is just

Neither of them wants to fight.

which is all right, but which doesn't do much to set up the (admittedly cracky) Eighth Doctor/Dalek Oswin pairing that motivates the fic. But then, I've always felt like I didn't have quite as much of an idea as I'd like about what the context for this fic is supposed to be. Maybe I'll write more about them sometime.

Setting the context can also be useful for summaries of AUs. Very often, what draws people into AUs is the AU concept itself.

For instance, the premise of my story te quaerens, Ariadna is that the events of the audio Zagreus go differently and the Doctor remains possessed by/transformed into Zagreus. So that's what I said in the summary:

The Doctor is still Zagreus, but he and Charley find ways to keep going.

In this case, the summary is accomplishing more than one thing; it explains the concept, but it also indicates a bit of the story's tone--it's fairly optimistic given its premise, and it's more about how their relationship evolves than any particular plotty event.

With setting change AUs--especially in familiar AU settings, like a coffeeshop, high school, or fantasy monarchy--often what readers will most want to know is what roles the characters are filling; in other words, how the translation from canon to AU has been made. For instance, my story Warmth is already tagged as a coffeeshop AU with the Fifth Doctor, Nyssa, Tegan, and Adric, so the summary indicates that it's told from the perspective of Tegan as a new employee:

Unexpectedly stranded in London and looking for work, Tegan finds a place where she just might fit in.

If she had been a longtime employee or a customer, that would have changed the story's dynamics, and I would have wanted the summary to reflect that instead. I could have also added that the Doctor is the shop's manager and Nyssa and Adric are the existing employees, but I decided to let the story itself reveal that in this case.

With someone's planted a bath bomb in the matrix, which is a retail AU inspired by an incorrect quotes tumblr post, I just stuck the whole tumblr post in the summary box:

Romana: When you work at lush and a customer comes in and bites the soap because they think it’s cheese… this happens way more frequently than you think. Leela: If you stopped literally presenting soap as deli food this wouldn't happen. Narvin: Who goes into a bath store and thinks something covered in glitter is cheese? Brax: Who goes to the store and just takes a bite from the cheese? ~incorrectgallifreyquotes.tumblr.com

I might do that a bit differently now--maybe more the way I handled Susan's Twist--maybe something like this in the summary:

An uptight employee and a too-suave customer are making Romana's job managing a bath store way too stressful. Thank goodness--probably--that her best friend works for mall security.

And then I'd have put the tumblr post that inspired it in author's notes.

Thing is, though, that reflects my taste and what I think is effective now, but it doesn't mean I did it wrong the first time. People read and enjoyed the story, and it was fine!

Also I just showed this post to Moki and she said she thinks the first one's more intriguing. So that just goes to show, it's really a matter of taste.

This strategy is also useful for missing scenes and things like that. Something as simple as

While waiting for Z to return from the rendezvous, X and Y have a conversation.

can draw in readers very effectively, especially if X and Y's conversation was kind of obviously a gap in the story that they might already be curious about.

Use a quote

A surprisingly effective and straightforward way to create a summary is just to use a quote from the fic. I've seen tons of great summaries like this that hook me in immediately. I struggle with using it myself, because I want the line I quote to be powerful/impactful/intriguing and give some sense of what the plot is like and make sense out of context, and I don't often seem to be able to find lines like that in my own work. But I did for The Moon by Night:

It could not have been more than a day that we clung to the hull of that station full of troopers.

Since this is a space AU for a historical fiction novel, this line gives some sense of how the events of the story have been translated into space, and also shows the voice I'm writing in (I tried to follow the style of the original, which is first-person, which is unusual for me). If you can find a line like that in your work, it can be a great summary. You can even just put the first couple of lines of the fic, especially if you've already worked to make them an effective hook!

You can also use a quote from another source. Was there a line or moment from canon that inspired the fic? A poem or song that fits its mood? You can use the summary as a sort of epigraph. (I often use author's notes for this as well.) If your readers vibe with the quote that inspired the story, they're likely to vibe with the story as well.

I did something like this with Absent thee from felicity awhile. The title is a quote from Shakespeare's Hamlet, and all I put in the summary box was another quote from a couple of lines later:

…to tell my story.

This is so short and contextless, though, that I'm not sure how effective it was. It maybe only works if you recognize the specific Hamlet scene that it's taken from and have thought about that scene in the context of a specific episode of Hornblower. (I promise that, if you do, it's heartbreakingly ironic!) This could have been a good opportunity for me to do a double summary (see below), especially since the story is epistolary and I could've established its context. Although I did kind of like revealing who was reading the letter and when slowly over the course of the story.

Okay, but I do want to explain the plot

Right, so we've established that effective summaries don't have to be in that "back of the book blurb" format. But sometimes you want them to be. Sometimes the thing you're most excited about is the story's plot or events, and you want to communicate that to the reader. But you already wrote the story in order to communicate the plot to the reader; how do you condense it into a sentence or two? Here are some tips that may help.

Are you using familiar tropes? If so, just mentioning them will likely tell your reader not only what the plot is, but that (if they like that trope) they're likely to enjoy it. For instance:

A and B are trapped in a snow cave/ice planet/walk-in freezer and must huddle for warmth.

That particular one will also explain a bit about the setting, if you want.

Relationship status/development is also something that many readers want to know, whether it's a romantic or a gen relationship (e.g. characters becoming friends or realizing they see each other as family). For instance, if A and B admit their romantic feelings for the first time in that huddling for warmth story, you might add:

They get a lot closer than either of them expects...

I rather like ellipses at the end of a summary; I think they imply, sort of, "read the fic to find out the rest." I sometimes use them to soften a summary that feels a bit abrupt. I feel like this might be just me, though? So if you don't like ellipses, nothing wrong with ending that same summary with a period.

If you have a fic where the entire content is some emotional development between characters, the entire summary can easily be that too!

I don't really write smut so I don't have good advice for summarizing it, but I get the feeling this might be a relevant strategy for it?

What changes in the story? This could be a change in characters' attitudes towards each other, in the information they have, in their physical situation, or anything else. A story doesn't have to be about one single major change, but there's almost always at least one. (Or a change fails to happen, but in an interesting way: "five times Lois Lane didn't realize Clark was Superman" would be a perfectly intriguing summary!)

What demands are made of the characters? Many stories involve a character overcoming some kind of challenge or meeting some kind of test. A summary can indicate what that challenge is--and you don't have to indicate whether or how the characters meet it! This can contribute to a feeling of suspense, so that the reader feels they need to read the story to find out how the characters react. For instance, I summarized my story Journey as:

The Doctor and Ace need to stop a dimensional leakage to put a life-sucking entity back where it belongs. But to do so, they'll each need to protect the other in their own way.

What are their own ways? Do they succeed? The reader can probably guess that they do--but how? Their attention is caught, and they'll have to read to find out!

Some notes on format and style

Summary style is as personal as the rest of your writing style, so this is only intended as a mention of a couple of trends I've noticed.

Sometimes summaries are 'in-universe'--i.e. they describe the characters and what they do, without reference to the existence of the fic itself as a textual entity--and sometimes, like the "five times" example I gave above, they refer to the fic's format, characteristics, relationship to canon, etc. in direct terms. (For instance, the example I gave for a missing scene was 'in-universe,' but I could just as well have said "While waiting for Z to return during Episode 3..."). Either of these approaches are fine, although I personally tend to incline more towards the in-universe style unless I have a particular reason to use the other, such as in Differences of Opinion, which took a lot of metatextual explaining:

When I read enough easily-crossed-over stories, such as for instance the Age of Sail books that I have been reading lately and also spaceship stories inspired thereby, what inevitably happens is I end up with a nebulous meta crossover setting where they can all hang out outside of their respective canons. Here's one conversation from that setting.

I keep wondering if something more terse might have been more effective, and I could have put all that in the author's notes. But I really think that for anyone who would enjoy this fic, the metatextual complication is a big part of the appeal. So I put it in the summary.

It's pretty standard to write in-universe-style summaries in the present tense, even if the fic is in the past tense. "The characters do this and that," not "the characters did this and that." You don't have to, but it's what your reader is most likely to be expecting.

It seems to be quite common to have a double summary: one that maybe reflects the style and tone of the fic, and another, more matter-of-fact one that explains the plot. They're frequently joined by "or." I don't typically use it--maybe because I rarely have the problem of having too much summary--but if you do, this could be a great solution.

Spellcheck and proofread your summary extra. Whatever strategies you normally use to make sure the words in your story are the words you actually meant to write, it's a good idea to turn those strategies on the summary with special intensity. After all, this is your first impression on your reader, so you probably want to look as polished as possible!

These are just a few things I've noticed that I tend to think about when staring at that blinking cursor in the summary box. I hope they may help you, too, to feel like you have something to say in that moment!

[shiroganeryo]

DGM 252: New perspectives and confirmations it has given us

⚠️First of all, I'll be tagging this under DGM spoilers so if you have somehow stumbled upon this even if you're avoiding spoilers for Chapter 252 (or the most recent DGM talks as a whole), this is your warning to turn back now!

And secondly, I'm under the effect of allergy meds so please pardon me if I'm talking gibberish 😂 But the latest chapter has given us some food for thought and I've been mulling it over.

There are two points I want to cover in this post; the first one being much extensive while the other is rather short.

1. Bookman Jr.

The reveal that the guy we had thought to be Past!A all along was actually the former Bookman Jr. in one of the best twists Hoshino has given us in a while - she sounded very proud of how we were all misled by her narrative and honestly I tip my hat at her for such genius - has also fueled questions about his identity.

I'll start by saying I do not believe he and Cross are the same person. That's not what I'll be talking about so I'm playing this card right off the bat. This theory, although popular, has always had way too many gaps for my liking and after the latest chapter, the chances are practically null that it's true.

If you want a discussion as to why, this post has put it into words better than I could and I agree 100% with OP's point, hence why I don't see the need to say anything on the matter.

But there's one thing that I'm yet to see people discussing and it's about the talk Lucia had with Joe back in The 222nd Night: Searching for A.W. - Hypokrisis.

(I'm showing what I believe to be the official translated English version by Viz and there's a reason why)

For a long time, people have debated about this small exchange between Lucia and Joe. There's no doubt the one they're talking about is old man Bookman, so we can confidently affirm he's the one waiting at the Campbell Mansion.

And what about Lavi? This is where the next dialogue from Lucia comes into play:

Since this is probably the version a lot of people have read, I must make it clear that the like "Junior, his successor, isn't here" was a mistranslation. Here's the original:

Lucia: Koukeisha to naru Jr. wa mou imasen. (The one who'd become his successor, Jr, is no more.)

I've double-checked with the Brazilian Portuguese translation because it tends to be as close to the original as possible, and surely enough, it's translated correctly:

(image courtesy of the volume I own by my so-so phone camera 😋)

"Junior, who was his heir, is no more."

The literal translation for what Lucia is saying is "isn't among us anymore", but that's an expression in Portuguese that means that someone has died/doesn't walk on Earth anymore.

While the mistranslated English version and the original Japanese/Brazilian version have similar meanings, the way it's worded gives the sentence a completely different meaning: in one we're led to believe Jr. isn't physically there at the Mansion, while the other two make it clear that Jr. has died.

And that's exactly why that, after Chapter 252 dropped, this scene is given a new perspective - because Lucia was referring to the former Bookman Jr, and not the current one.

We don't know the whereabouts of current Lavi - cue in the chair jokes, I unfortunately love them all - and while I might be wrong, I have my reasons to believe he's alive.

It just doesn't feel like Hoshino to kill an important character off-screen, plus she has said we'll see him again eventually and that the mystery of what's behind his eyepatch is still to be revealed (and will only happen once Bookman passes away, something that will possibly happen before the story reaches its end).

I have the feeling Lavi still has much to contribute to the story and he's actually one of the characters that, to me, seem to have the highest odds of making it alive until the end. It also isn't mere coincidence that Bookman picked the same alias for both Juniors, since Lavi has mentioned in a discussion room that the aliases refer to their record logs and the Holy War is being recorded under 'Lavi'. There's unfinished business to be taken care of.

Using the mistranslated version to illustrate was important because I've seen people wondering where Lavi is if not in the Mansion, while others were afraid he has died. He's very likely in a predicament, but dead? I don't think so.

So that only leaves us with one viable subject for that dialogue, that being the former Bookman Jr. (now affectionately dubbed Lavi Sr. by the fandom).

"But how come they didn't know Bookman already had a new apprentice back in Chapter 222 if the Zoogles mentioned it in Chapter 251?"

Yes, it's a little odd. What I can infer from this is that they either 1. Didn't know Bookman already had a new Jr. because he had been unconscious and only after they stabilized his situation they could talk, or 2. Did know about the current Lavi but believe him not to be ready to take on the mantle yet while Lavi Sr. was (but unfortunately deserted the clan).

Since only the Bookman and his appointed apprentice, who was born with the seal, can exchange information and records via their blood, it might be not that off the chart that the Zoogles weren't up-to-date on his affairs since they're not Bookmen themselves but rather a bloodline of people scattered across the globe who are supporters of Bookman's mission like Lucia has explained. Yet, even if they aren't all-knowing, it seems odd for them not to know something as vital as that about the person they're supporting.

And of course, there's also the possibility of option 3, something else that I completely failed to consider right now. Time will tell which one.

Note: By the way, the Lucia in 222 and the Lucia in 251/252 are indeed the same person; Hoshino seemed to hint there's a reason behind her sudden aging that we don't know yet. It's important to make this clear since what I've said is related to dialogues delivered by her.

2. Past!A = current Allen

(image courtesy of Kougeki Scans' Chapter 251's translation)

There were theories around and people still considering the possibility of our current Allen being a clone and all sorts of theories because of the unexplainable age gap between him and Past!A, but it seems the deaging theory has been fully confirmed by Chapter 252, as we saw it taking place before our very eyes.

There are still some mysteries surrounding it, but seeing how Apocryphos mentioned the "Helix", we can't help but be taken back to the explanation we've previously seen about the Helix of Life (The 221st Night - The Clown's Joke).

Since that's a topic that feels like there's more to it as of now, I won't be discussing the how and why Allen deaged, especially with the unseen variable in the mix that is Innocence; who knows if that might make the Helix energy behave differently.

I was on the "deaging theory" train because Nea was able to recognize Past!A all right when he looks in the mirror (The 214th Night: Searching for A.W. - Awakening) and also questioned the presence of Innocence on his body as well as how he hadn't aged but instead had gotten younger (The 215th Night: Searching for A.W. - By Your Side).

There are many mistranslations in the official English version of these two chapters (214 and 215) that have fueled countless misconceptions within the fandom but I won't be pointing those out in this post since I'm not here this time specifically to talk about it.

Note: Mangadex seems to have nicely translated versions of these chapters if you want to check them out for a recalling - I can't confirm fully but what I read of them looked consistent and faithful to the original.

Anyways, back on track; now that we've seen what took place 35 years ago in Chapter 252, Nea's bewilderment at the current situation of Allen back in Chapter 214/215 makes a lot more sense.

And even more interesting is that as soon as he noticed the Innocence lodged into Allen's left hand, we see the image of Apocryphos, as if Nea could feel its presence. Turned out that meant more than just Apocryphos being able to resonate with all Innocence, but rather, that the very reason why that Innocence had found home in Allen's body was by its intervention.

Just what the hell, dude. That was, once again, extremely well-played on Hoshino's part. I'm really looking forward to the next chapter!

[sluttyten]

You In My Arms

Chapter 8: All I Want

full masterlist || haechan masterlist || YIMA chapter index

summary: the first date with the girl who reigns in his dreams these days, and Haechan makes a big realization (and a few smaller ones)

length: 7,997 words

tags: exhibitionism, slowburn, friends to lovers, handjobs, blowjobs, public sex, fingering, general perversion, smut

previous chapter || next chapter  (Coming Soon)

“There’s no way you’re actually doing that!?” YangYang laughs loudly, staring at Haechan where he’s standing in the doorway of their shared bathroom. 

Haechan doesn’t look away from his reflection in the mirror as he readjusts his collar and checks his hair. 

“Why do you find it so hard to believe?”

YangYang appears in the reflection over Haechan’s shoulder, a shit-eating grin stretching his lips wide. “Dude, seriously? It’s because you’ve been friends for years. You fucked all of the other girls in our group of friends, but never once did you show an interest in her. And now, suddenly, you’re taking her out on a date?”

Haechan meets YangYang’s eyes in the mirror. “You know, sometimes we’re just blind and dumb when it comes to who is right in front of us. And sometimes it just takes a little extra time to make a move once you realize you have feelings for someone.”

And that brings a twisted look to YangYang’s face. “Gross. Don’t get mushy and emotional on me now, Haechannie.” He shakes his head and walks away, calling back over his shoulder, “So actual feelings are involved? This isn’t just you trying to, like, wine and dine her before finally marking another of our friends off your list?”

Haechan takes one last sweeping look at himself in the mirror before he shuts the light off and turns away. 

“First of all. I didn’t sleep with that many of the girls we were friends with in school. The girls in my dorm block, absolutely.” There was a reason he’d had to learn to avoid all of the girls that lived on the floor below him. “But Karina and one of Mark’s friends were the only ones we were actually close to. So, no, this isn’t me just trying to mark someone else off a non-existent list, dude. I like her.”

And if he doesn’t hurry up, he’s going to be late to their first date. 

Haechan doesn’t usually feel nervous about things. He tends to just bulldoze ahead and then feel regret later instead of nerves at the start. But he feels a little flutter of something as he returns to his room to apply some fragrance, to grab his phone and wallet and a scarf and his coat. 

When he turns around, YangYang is lurking in his doorway now. 

“Damn, what now, Yang?” He hisses, startled at YangYang’s silent appearance. Haechan starts to step around him, but YangYang moves too, blocking his path with a hand to Haechan’s chest. 

“Don’t break her heart, man.” His voice is low, a warning. This is the most serious Haechan has seen YangYang in a long time. “I like having her around too much. She’s a great friend, and if you fuck this up and suddenly she doesn’t want to be friends with any of us anymore….” He cuts himself off, shaking his head before he moves on, spitting, “Don’t scare her off with your pervy shit. She’s a good girl.”

Haechan just grins at that, heart leaping in his chest. Amused, he says, “YangYang, I know things about this woman that would make your hair curl. Don’t worry, I’m not scaring her off or breaking her heart.” 

He slaps YangYang’s arm, and with a laugh, he finally steps around him and heads for the door. 

Without his own car to drive, Haechan walks the several blocks from his apartment to hers. It’s a twenty minute brisk walk, and the cool air of the evening as the season takes its turn towards winter is calming. Twilight has fallen, giving the city a blue wash. Streetlights come on, the stars try to make an appearance. It’s chilly enough that Haechan thinks he can almost see his breath, and he tucks his hands into the pockets of his coat, hiding his nose and mouth beneath the curve of the scarf he has wrapped around his neck. 

She’s waiting for him outside her building. 

She’s bundled up against the cold too. A puffy coat and a hat with one of those fluffy baubles on top, which altogether makes her look absolutely adorable. 

Haechan laughs as he approaches her, lifting a hand up to play with the bauble. “You look cute,” he beams, unable to look away as she smiles back at him. Her hand reaches up for his, pulling it down from where he’d squeezed the fluffy ball at the top of her hat. 

“You look nice too, Donghyuckie. And you smell nice.” She doesn’t let go of his hand. 

Her palm is warm against his, though her fingers are cold, so he laces their fingers together and brings their folded hands into the warm pocket of his jacket. That seems to throw her off slightly, because when he looks over at her, she’s just blinking, staring quietly at the pocket their hands have disappeared into, a glow appearing to her face that wasn’t there before. But then she moves closer, her hand squeezing his inside the pocket of his jacket. 

“So where are we going?” She asks. 

“Dinner.” Haechan starts to walk away, and she follows, sticking right by his side. “And then afterwards, a friend of mine is having a free concert by the river. He’s really talented, so I thought that might be fun. Dessert after that, if you’re interested.”

She nods, her face bright as she holds Haechan’s gaze. “Are we walking everywhere, or do we wanna take my car?” 

Haechan drives, but they take her car. She chatters in the passenger seat, selecting music on her phone for them to listen to, and Haechan keeps one hand on the wheel while the other rests on his thigh. He keeps fighting the urge to reach over and take her hand. He likes the feel of her fingers between his, her palm warm on his. He likes the way that her perfume mingles with his at their wrists. 

He likes her. Plain and simple. 

She talks so much that Haechan wonders how nervous she really is. She looks calm on the outside, but then she’ll excitedly ramble to him about this story from her childhood for five minutes. It’s charming and cute, and Haechan listens intently to the story about her childhood stray cat that her parents wouldn’t let her keep, the one about her first trip to the beach that she could remember, the one about her memories of her first day at university and seeing Haechan then. 

He’s never heard her first impression of him before, so it’s fascinating to hear it now and to see the light smile on her lips as she talks about him, eyes distant with remembrance. 

“First day of orientation,” she giggles — his heart soars at the sound — and she looks ahead through the windshield. “I was so nervous because I didn’t know anyone in my orientation group, and my single acquaintance from high school that I knew there was in a completely different room, and I walk into the room they put us in. Everyone was either talking or sitting quietly by themselves and looking nervous, and I was one of the last ones to enter the room, and there were only a few seats left, so I just remember I booked it for the first one I saw. I remember looking around at everyone, at the student life volunteers who were orienting us.” Again, she laughs. “Do you remember that Xiaojun was actually one of them?”

Damn, Haechan had forgotten about that. He’d been a year ahead of them before he switched his major. 

“But then I was looking around the room, and I saw you just like two seats away from me.” And there is her smile, like she’s pleased but embarrassed, and he wonders if her cheeks are filling with warmth of her embarrassment, if so Haechan wants to feel beneath his fingertips, to cradle her face in his hands as he kisses that sweet smile. But he keeps his hands to himself and just listens. “Once we started the icebreakers, it became quickly obvious that you were pretty extroverted. You were chatty and funny. Back then your hair was like this light honey-brown and your face was still squishy and cute.”

“Are you saying my face isn’t cute now?”

She rolls her eyes. “I know you know that’s not true. Your face was just rounder then.”

Haechan remembers. At freshly eighteen, he’d still been a little round and soft. He’d come to school that autumn wearing the weight of his mother desperately trying to stuff her eldest son with as much love and food as she could before he left the nest. He’d been tanned from spending his last months of freedom on the beach. His hair was only that light because he’d been trying to impress someone who, as it turned out, had no interest in him at all. 

But Haechan remembers orientation too. He remembers when they were broken down into even smaller groups. Haechan, her, the person between them and one on either side of that trio were put together. She’d been a little quiet and withdrawn, and Haechan had tried to fill the silence (and talk over the only other guy in their group who’d thought he was in charge but who only came up with bad ideas),  but he remembered her. He’d noticed her looking at him with this soft look in her eyes, the way she’d laughed along with all of the things he said. 

“I remember you too.” Haechan nods as she quickly argues that there’s no way that he remembers her. “It’s true! I do remember you. You were quiet and cute, smart and you laughed so easily. You’re the one that came up with the idea that let our little group win the free snack vouchers, remember?”

She stares at him. 

“What? Am I wrong?” Haechan glances over at her, then back at the road. “They put our orientation group into smaller groups, we were together in ours, and we were told to problem-solve. There was one smarty-pants who kept throwing out shitty ideas, I kept making jokes, the other two didn’t contribute much at all, and in the end you came up with the solution. We won snack vouchers, and I kept complimenting you on your idea. Right?”

She nods. “Right.”

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Haechan laughs, noticing that she’s still just looking at him. “What?”

“I just…. Honestly, I didn’t think you noticed me at all until I started hanging out with the group months later.” She bites her lip and looks out the windshield again. “I remembered everything from that day because that’s when I first started crushing on you, but I never expected that you’d remember me from then.”

They arrive at the restaurant then, and Haechan pulls into a place to park. 

“You impressed me,” Haechan admits. “And then I kept seeing you around campus. We had a class or two together that first semester. When I wasn’t doing too great in the Psych class we had, I thought about approaching you to ask if you wanted to join my study group. Not that I had one, but I knew you were smart and nice, so I thought maybe I could at least study with you. But I always talked myself out of it, and then next thing I knew, I went to meet Renjun for lunch on campus one day, and there you were sitting and talking with him and Jeno.” Haechan shakes his head, a smile playing on his lips as the memory replays itself in his mind. 

He couldn’t believe two of his closest friends were apparently friends with this girl. He’d watched from a short distance for a moment or two, watching her laugh with Renjun, watching her excitedly turn to tell Jeno something. Her mannerisms were so cute, and when Haechan finally realized he was being creepy by just standing there watching, he approached the table. She’d looked up at him with wide eyes, her lips parted softly, and she’d let out a little “oh!” of surprise. 

After that, the rest was history. 

They’d become acquaintances who had friends in common, and then their overlapping friend group kept growing until it was common to hang out together. They’d gotten to know each other better, and Haechan had become preoccupied with other people to crush on and lust after, namely Shotaro’s girlfriend, and he’d completely forgotten to realize his feelings growing for her. Until a few months ago. 

Dinner is nice. 

They share dishes, drink some wine, laugh and talk and probably make lovey eyes at each other quite a bit. Haechan knows that he is. Every time she laughs, he feels like he smiles so dopey. Every time that her foot brushes against his beneath the table, his heart lurches. By the time the check comes, Haechan is fully enchanted with her. Of course, he already knew that he really, really liked her. He knew that he wanted to end this night with finally getting to be with her. But now he knows he definitely wants it more long term than that. He feels like a silly young girl in a fairytale, picturing an entire future just after a first date. 

The walk back to the car is the longest three minutes of his life. 

He’s holding her hand, but it’s not enough. 

He keeps looking at her flushed cheeks, at the shine in her eyes, and at her lips which are stained a slight shade darker by the wine. And he wants to kiss her, to hold her against him, to keep her warm tonight,  and taste her on his tongue in every way. 

When they reach the car, Haechan can’t hold back anymore. She reaches for the door handle of the passenger side, but Haechan puts a hand on the doorframe, and with his other hand he pulls on their intertwined hands. 

She faces him with a bright smile, with a giggle. And like she knows exactly what’s happening, her eyelashes flutter and she tilts her head, and when he leans in to kiss her, she moves to meet him. 

This kiss is better than the last. 

Haechan feels like he’s had to wait another eternity from that night to this one, though it’s only been somewhere around a week. But every hour felt like an eon, and now it’s all coming to a point right here in this moment when she presses her body against his, her hands sliding around beneath his coat to hold onto his hips, to draw him against her as she leans against the side of her car. His fingers dive into her hair, braiding through the strands as she opens her mouth to his kiss. 

He kisses her until he’s breathless, until she’s sighing his name against his lips, their breath clouding around their heads. 

“Are we still going to that concert?” She asks, brushing her lips along his jaw. “Or do we want to skip and go right back home?” 

The latter option sounds really good. 

But Haechan wants to do this date properly. 

“Concert first.” He suggests, leaving a too-short kiss on her tempting lips. “Then back to… to yours? To mine?”

“Mine,” she says with certainty. “My roommate’s gone for the weekend. And I’m sure YangYang is still at yours.”

Haechan nods and then laughs. “He threatened me when I told him I was taking you on a date tonight. He told me I’d better not scare you off with any of my pervy shit because you’re a good girl.” He kisses her again, laughing as she tries to slip him some tongue and keep him right there, but he pulls back. “I told him that you’re not as much of a good girl as you would’ve had all of us believing.”

“I’m a good girl,” she insists with a wide, mischievous grin that reaches her eyes. 

“Bullshit, baby.” Haechan kisses her one last time before he reaches around her to pull on the door handle. “Get in the car, and after the concert is over, I’ll get my evidence that you’re absolutely not the innocent good girl most of our friends think you are.”

She just smiles as she slides into the passenger seat. 

Again, Haechan is sorely tempted to drive back the way they came, to go back to her apartment instead of onward to the park beside the river. But he’s taking her to the concert specifically because he said he would, even if now she’s making that decision so hard to stick with. 

As soon as he’s settled in the driver’s seat with the car turned on, she slides her hand over to his thigh. 

“What are you doing?” He asks, trying to keep his tone casual. 

“Nothing.” She just smiles, trying to look innocent, but that mischievous gleam in her eye gives her away. “How far of a drive is it?”

He types it into his phone, his toes curling in his shoes as she starts moving her hand up and down on his thigh. His GPS presents the answer, the automated voice announcing that it’s about a twenty minute drive. 

“I can work with that,” she chimes, leaning her head against the headrest to look over at him. “What do you say, Haechan? You’ve been wined and dined, can I finally get a taste of you?”

Her hand slips higher, fingers brushing right along the center seam of his pants, over his balls, fondling as she finds his stiffening cock. He groans, dropping his head back. Is he meant to be able to say no to the offer? Not that he wants to say no. Sure, he’d wanted to do that whole proper date thing, but if she’s offering a handjob or road head right now, he can’t turn that down. 

“Let me get us out of this parking garage, and then you can do whatever you like, angel.” Haechan hears a little shiver in his voice, excitement and arousal as he grips the steering wheel and twists in the driver’s seat, putting the car in reverse. “Just wait a minute, and then you can….”

She palms his cock again. 

“You know,” she says, “I’ve been thinking of doing this since seeing you in Mr. Moon’s car. Specifically giving you a hand while you drive, I mean. Like I told you earlier, I’ve had a crush on you since orientation, so I’ve dreamed of jerking you off many, many more times before then. Among other things.”

It takes every ounce of his willpower to not look away from the car’s rear window as he backs up and tries checking his blind spots. He can’t look at her right now, no matter how much he’d like to. It’s too risky at the moment. There are too many fancy parked cars he could bump or back into, too high of a possibility that another car or a person walking could come along to hit. He focuses on backing out of their parking spot, and then passing along the curving path of the parking garage towards the exit below. But still her hand is kneading at his thigh or brushing the seam of his pants which is quickly growing strained as his swelling cock presses against it. 

The moment that they’re out of the parking garage, her hand flies to his belt. When they’re sitting at a stoplight two seconds later, she’s unfastening it, fumbling it. Haechan takes his hands off the wheel and his eyes off the red light in front of them to help her undo the belt and the button and zipper of his pants. Her hand slides inside, and he moans the moment that her fingers wrap around his cock and draw him out into the open. 

Her eyes gleam in the streetlights. 

“No road head,” she explains. “It seems a little too risky at the moment since I don’t know how you’ll react, or how quickly you’re gonna cum.” 

Haechan sneers. “What? You think I’m gonna last, like, five seconds or something? Baby, I think you already know better than that.”

She just smiles up at him. Her thumb slides in circles around his tip, and clear fluid is already gathering there, smeared around beneath her fingertip. 

The light changes to green and Haechan steps on the gas. 

And she starts moving her hand on him. 

“You’re gonna make such a mess, aren’t you, Haechan?” She’s teasing him, and the worst part is, that he knows she’s right. He does tend to make a bit of a mess, especially when he’s sitting in a car still fully dressed. He’s gonna get it all over his pants, but at least he’s got a coat that’ll cover the front of his pants when they get to the park. 

She strokes his cock slowly, but that doesn’t mean that every single motion doesn’t unfurl pleasure from the base of his spine, sending tendrils of arousal through his veins. 

Haechan does his best to focus on the road, to not just melt into the heat of her palm around his cock, to not dissolve when she leans over and drools spit down onto him to ease the glide a little more. 

“Fuck,” he curses, loosening one hand from the wheel to lay it against the back of her head. But she sits up instead of sinking her pretty lips around him. He doesn’t move his hand, just braids his fingers through her hair, tugging lightly when she squeezes her hand around him on the slow upstroke. 

Haechan blows down the streets of the city. 

He’s pretty sure he doesn’t run any red lights or stop signs. He doesn’t crash into any cars, curbs, or pedestrians. So he must be doing something right even as his focus starts to slip. 

A knot of pleasure is tightening between his navel and his cock. 

“If you haven’t cum by the time we get there,” she sighs, leaning closer to touch her lips to his neck — his cock twitches, a blurt of precum leaking from the tip — and she continues, “Then as soon as you put this car in park I really want to sit on your cock, Haechannie. It just looks so wonderful. Since you sent me that first video, I thought so. You’ll fill me so well, stretch me so nicely, and I bet you’d like to cum inside me like that wouldn’t you? With me riding you in the car? Like that video you stole from Renjun’s phone.”

Haechan’s hips jolt off the seat, driving his cock up into the tight fit of her fist. That video…. So hot. He’d thought about it and watched it quite a few times since he sent it to himself. The way the girl in the video’s ass had bounced, how her pussy had swallowed Renjun’s cock so nicely, and Haechan knew that his own cock was bigger than Renjun’s and it would’ve stretched that pussy even nicer. He’d fantasized too often about that, getting ridden in a hot, sweaty car, cumming inside her with his cum then dripping down her thighs. He’d wondered for a few weeks after Thailand, wondering who the girl had been, wondering if Haechan could track her down and get to experience that for himself. Of course, by that point, he’d already kind of started to realize he might have feelings for the beautiful woman who currently has his cock in her hand, so he’d given up on that brief fantasy. 

She kisses Haechan’s neck again, her hand massaging just right beneath his cock tip. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Like you told me, you’ve gotten off to that video so many times. It’s your favorite.” Her teeth skim his skin, and Haechan’s heart thunders, pleasure arcing through him. 

“Wouldn’t it just blow your mind, Haechan, if I told you that I’m the girl in that video?” 

His mind goes blank. The world whites out for a second as his orgasm pulses through him. Only a self-preservation instinct keeps him from crashing the car as Haechan cums in sticky white ropes all over her hand and her steering wheel and his lap. 

She’s the girl in that video?

She’s the girl riding Renjun in the car with the gorgeous ass and beautiful pussy, the one who’d ridden Renjun’s cock like a professional cockrider? The one with Renjun’s handprints on her ass, cum spilling down her perfect thighs beneath the sundress. 

It makes sense, now that he actually thinks about it. 

He knew that she’d fucked around with Renjun during that period of time, but for some reason, he’d never considered that she was the one in the video. Then that must mean that she was also the girl in the other pictures and videos. How many times had he watched her without knowing it was her? How many times had he cum, fantasizing about her body and her moans without realizing they were hers?

It’s the sound of the center console popping open that breaks Haechan out of his daze. She’s rummaging through the contents of her car’s center console until she comes up with a pack of wet wipes. 

“What are you doing?” Haechan asks. 

“Cleaning you up.” She pulls a wipe out, cleaning her hand off first, and her wrist, then she tries to wipe his cum off her steering wheel. 

He’s silent for a moment, but then he asks, “Is it really you in that video?”

She looks up, barely more than a cursory glance, then says, “Yes. It’s me. He told me he’d told Jaehyun about the night that he and I exchanged orgasms during the movie, and Jaehyun wanted to watch us together. I was horny, he was willing to show off, so we fucked right here in this seat.” She points to the spot she’s sitting. “In the back of a parking lot on campus. That was my one request when he asked me if we could fuck for Jaehyun to watch, to do it somewhere semi-public.”

“Who’s the pervert now?” Haechan teases, but his heart is pounding in his chest, just picturing the scene from an outside perspective: her and Renjun in this car on campus. It would’ve been so easy to catch them. But right now it’s more than that, he wants to be in Renjun’s spot more than ever — to have her riding him in the passenger seat of her car in broad daylight. 

“All of those pictures and videos in Renjun’s phone…. All of them with a girl, those were me,” she admits quietly, still wiping down little spots in the car. “We weren’t a thrupple, I never got physically involved with Jaehyun, never even got to watch the two of them together, but every time that Renjun and I were together there was either photo or video or audio evidence. Sometimes we called Jaehyun and he would listen in or tell us what to do. It was all really hot.”

When Haechan looks over, she’s squirming in her seat a little. 

He’s still driving, but according to the GPS they’re almost there. She takes a new wipe to dab gently at the cum on the front of his pants. 

She tosses the used wipes to the floor at her feet, and then she shifts in her seat. 

Haechan glances over at her, curious, watching as she rearranges herself until her chest is against the center console. His heart picks up a thunderous pace. “I thought you said no road head?” He asks, moving his hand to the back of her head again. 

“Hey, Lee Donghyuck. It’s not too late for me to change my mind again. Keep your mouth shut or else I won’t do it.” She threatens, but he can tell that she’s going to do it regardless of what he says right now. She’s licking her lips, eyes fixed on his softening cock still wet with his cum. “You just keep your eyes on the road. Focus on getting us to our destination in one piece because now that we’ve talked about that video, I really, really have my heart set on riding you when we get there.”

Haechan does exactly as she says. He looks ahead at the road, noticing that they have just one more light, just one more right turn after that, and they’ll be in the parking lot. 

Her tongue swipes along the side of his cock. 

She makes a soft hum, and then she licks again, and then, as they pass over a slight bump in the road, she sucks the soft head of his cock between her lips. 

“Fuck!” Haechan groans, risking a look down. 

It’s worth it. Even if he’d crashed the car right then, the glimpse he’d caught of her with her pretty lips spread around his cock, her eyes watching his face, it would’ve been worth it. 

She sucks his cock, bobbing her head, tongue working to clean the cum that had spilled down his length from his previous orgasm. And she keeps moaning, humming with these little sounds of delight. His fingers tighten in her hair, and he can feel the blood rushing to his cock once more, him growing hard on her tongue. 

As he turns the car into the parking lot, he tugs at her hair. “We’re here,” he says.

She sits up, letting his cock fall from her lips as she wipes at the corners of her mouth. 

The parking lot isn’t full, but there is a decently sized crowd. Haechan pulls into the first open spot he can find, which just happens to be in a perfectly private spot. There’s a streetlight nearby putting off a silvery glow, making this spot just public enough to satisfy the woman in the passenger seat’s exhibitionist nature. 

“Well, angel?” He asks as he puts the car in park and pulls the key out of the ignition. “Are you all talk or are you gonna come sit on my cock like a good girl?”

For a moment, he thinks she’s actually about to tell him no as she glances out the car windows. Which would be fine, of course. If she didn’t actually want to ride him right now and had just been saying that to rile him up, that’s fine. They’ll just go watch the concert. 

But then she’s moving, hiking up the long skirt she’s wearing tonight, stockings on beneath it, and she’s slipping over the center console into his lap. 

Haechan’s hands move to her hips. His breath catches in his throat as he looks at her, both of them face to face. There’s a glimmer of saliva at the corner of her lips, and he lifts a hand to wipe it away with his thumb. 

“You’re so beautiful.” The words come out without him meaning to actually say them. 

“Are you just saying that because I just had your cock in my mouth?” She smiles, mirroring his position by lifting a hand to his face as well. “Or because I’m offering to ride you?”

Haechan shakes his head. “Secret third option: I’m saying it because it’s just true.”

By the streetlight’s glow, Haechan watches her face take on a flustered expression. She shifts in his lap, her thighs and ass moving against his thighs, her knees bump against his hips. Her thumb slides along his cheek, drawing connecting lines between his moles. 

He likes holding her just like this. Having her close and warm in his arms, the gentle fragrance of her perfume lulling him into a calm state where he could just sit here and look at her forever. He forgets that he has his cock out still and that she’s in his lap because she wanted to ride his cock. Her eyes are sparkling, her expression bright, and her hand on his cheek is so light that he wants to just lean into it. Of course, he still wants to feel her around his cock, still wants to have her moaning his name while he makes her feel good, her breath gasping against his lips as they rock this car and draw attention to themselves. But he’s perfectly content like this too, and that thought kinda surprises him. 

Haechan is almost always horny, always thinking about sex. But right now, he’d be fine with just tucking his cock away again, taking her hand and going to enjoy the concert. 

“Can we do this later?” He asks quietly, afraid of breaking this fragile moment. Her thumb twitches on his cheek, her mouth twisting a little, so Haechan quickly explains, “I want to do it right the first time. When we have sex for the first time, I don’t want it to be cramped in the car when there’s a concert happening nearby. The general public is right there, any random stranger may walk by, but…” He lifts his hand up to cup her hand against his cheek, which he leans into. “I want to take my time with you, babe. Just us.”

She smiles. “That’s a romantic notion, Lee Donghyuck.”

“I told you not to call me that.” But he isn’t so sure that he means it. He likes the way his name sounds from her lips, the way that her pretty mouth forms those sounds, curling into almost a smile around the Lee, a circle around the Dong, and then with another smile as she finishes out with the Hyuck. He would like the sound of anything she called him, honestly. 

“Oh, sorry,” she teases, leaning closer until her lips brush his ear. “Daddy?”

Haechan laughs. 

He pinches her cheek. “That’s not quite right either, but I like the attempt. Let’s go enjoy the concert, angel, and then I’ll take you home for some proper romance.”

She opens the driver’s side door, sliding out onto her feet, and Haechan takes an extra moment to stuff his cock back inside his pants, to grab the car keys and his phone, and as he pulls himself from the car, he checks to make sure that his coat covers up any of the stains from where his cum dripped earlier. He grabs a folded blanket from her backseat, and tucks it under his arm. 

He takes her hand again, and this time she hides their hands in the warmth of her coat pocket as they walk towards the site of the show. Haechan leans into her, arms knocking together, and he starts talking, telling her about how this is his friend Doyoung, who he met through one of the music courses he took as electives during university. Doyoung is attempting to launch his career, and he’s been signed to a company, though he’s still working to make a big name for himself. 

It’s a small stage with a decently sized crowd. Haechan notices that plenty of other people brought chairs for the lawn in front of the stage or they’ve brought blankets to sit on or wrap up in. Someone got a food truck for Doyoung that sits nearby with words of encouragement on the signage. They’re selling hot coffee, hot chocolate, and some warm snacks. 

They find a good spot to sit, and Haechan wraps the blanket around both of them as they sit down on the grass. She snuggles up to his side, drops her head onto his shoulder. The bauble on the top of her hat tickles his chin, but he doesn’t complain. He just lets her get comfortable, and when she shivers a little more, Haechan unwraps his scarf from around his neck to bundle it around her instead. 

“No,” she protests, trying to untwist it, pushing it back into his hands. “You’ll catch a cold.”

Stubbornly, Haechan just places the scarf once more around her, winding it in loops around her neck. “I’ll be fine. You’re the one that keeps shivering.”

She frowns at him from above the pile of the scarf. “That’s because someone had the bright idea to have an outdoor concert in the middle of winter.” 

“Do you want me to grab you a hot chocolate or a hot coffee?” Haechan offers. 

She shakes her head no very quickly, dropping her head down onto his shoulder again, and clinging tightly to him beneath their blanket, her hand twisting in his sweater. “Nope, you can stay right here. You can keep me warm.”

He’s going to do exactly that. He wraps both of his arms around her, drawing her closer. 

The concert starts just a few minutes later. Doyoung emerges on the stage and sings his heart-aching ballads, his sweet love songs, brighter sounding covers of pop songs. Haechan is surprised to find that there is a group of girls going wild for Doyoung, singing and dancing along to his songs, which means that even though he’s not a big name yet, that’s the beginning of his fanbase. 

Beside him, snuggled against Haechan’s side, his date tonight hums along to the pop songs. 

As the concert begins to draw towards the end just an hour later, Doyoung takes a pause on the stage to scan the crowd. Haechan notices the way he squints against the lights, his hand flexing around the microphone set in the stand. The fangirls go wild, waving and calling for his attention, but Doyoung keeps looking around until finally his eyes meet Haechan’s. He grins brightly and leans into the mic. 

Haechan’s heart begins to race. 

He’d told Doyoung he was definitely coming tonight after the invitation went out. He’d mentioned he was bringing a girl out for their first date, and Haechan had only told him that to tease his hyung, to tell him that Doyoung really needed to give his best performance to impress Haechan’s date. But judging by the gleam in Doyoung’s smile where it reaches his eyes, Haechan is about to face the repercussions of telling Doyoung about this. 

“I have a friend here in the crowd tonight,” Doyoung says, his voice magnified in the winter night. “He’s here on a first date with a girl he’s known for years and only just gotten the nerve to ask out. In his honor, our last song of the night is going to be a sweet love song! If you know the words, sing along! And even if you don’t, it’s a great song to dance with your lover.”

She sits up, lifting her head from his shoulder, and she turns her head. Haechan can feel her eyes on him. He glances slyly at her, just looking at her from the corner of his eye as he faces Doyoung on the stage. The music starts, and all around them in the crowd, couples get to their feet. An elderly couple that had been sitting in the back on a bench starts slowly dancing together as Doyoung begins crooning into the mic. 

“Do you want to dance?” She asks quietly beside him.

Haechan doesn’t hesitate to push the blankets from his shoulders, rising to his feet, and reaching back down for her hand. She keeps the blanket draped around her shoulders, still bundled in her hat and his scarf too, but she lets Haechan pull her to her feet. He brings her hand up to his shoulder, holding her gaze, and she brings her other arm up to curl around the back of his neck. 

When he slides his arm around her waist, pulling her body against his, he relaxes. They don’t really dance. Not properly. They just sway back and forth with their arms around each other, a juvenile dance in comparison to the grander style that some other couples are dancing right now. Haechan lowers his head to rest his forehead against hers. 

This isn’t much really, but it’s the best first date he’s ever been on. 

“How would you say I’m doing?” He asks, his heart beating a little nervously in his throat. “On a scale of one to ten?”

She’s quiet for a couple seconds too long. “Well, right now I’d say a three.”

His heart drops down to his stomach. 

“For the dancing alone, Haechan. Don’t stress.” She smiles, tightening her arms around his neck in a way that presses their chests closer together, and he wonders if she can feel his heart pounding. Her words only slightly put him at ease, but when she laughs, it does help a little more. 

“Do you want some professional ballroom dancing from me?” Haechan asks. “You want me to twirl you and sweep you off your feet?” He bends her backwards, and she shrieks out a laugh that has him quickly pulling her back up securely against him as heads turn their way.

She moves her head to the side, her laugh warm now where her lips press against his cheek. 

“No need for that. Just hold me like this. And as for the rank on a scale for the overall date,” her voice is warm and bright, a lighthearted tease as she says, “Definitely a solid nine and a half.”

Haechan nods, suppressing a shiver of arousal as her lips skim along his jaw. “And the half a point deduction?”

“Because it’s too fucking cold. I’m having fun, I like this concert, but I’d so much rather be back at my place in my nice warm bed. With you.” And with those words, she kisses him, her fingers pressing into his hair and against the back of his neck.

He kisses her too. Hungrily, deeply, wanting nothing more than to tear that blanket from her shoulders, spread it out on the ground, and lay her down on top of it to get to feel her body warm and bare beneath him and around him. He wants her now. 

“Fuck me,” he mumbles, cursing himself for choosing not to go through with it in the car earlier, cursing himself for not just doing dinner and then taking her home. Haechan just wants her right now.

Specifically, he only wants her. 

No one else around but her. Fuck the whole exhibitionist and voyeur thing they’ve been doing. He doesn’t want to share her right now. He wants her all alone with just him in the privacy of a bedroom, tucked between soft sheets that tangle around their legs and wrinkle beneath their bodies as he drives himself into her again and again. He wants to feel her moans where their chests press together, to feel her body reacting to him in uncontrollable bursts — the hiccup of her breath when he strokes just right inside her, the twitch of her thighs against his hips, the way she’ll squirm and circle her hips as her orgasm approaches, her pussy squeezing around him trying to draw him deeper, deeper….

The whole rest of the world fades away. 

The singing, the music, the crowd, even the wintry chill. 

Everything is her. 

Her breath, her perfume. The heat of her mouth and her body. The feel of her hands in his hair, her body in his arms, the throbbing of their hearts. Her voice just a breathy sigh of his name, lips making the syllables of his name sound perfect. “Lee Donghyuck,” she sighs, “Can we go?”

As if he could deny her anything she asked right now. She could ask him for murder and he’d probably do it. The stars, the moon, the whole damn galaxy and beyond. 

Is this what it is to be in love?

Is he in love?

He lowers his mouth to her throat, lips moving along the column of her throat, tongue tracing along the rapid beat of her pulse. Her fingers tighten in his hair with a quiet gasp. 

A million moments flash in his mind. The past, the present, the possibilities of the future. Her. 

Damn it. He’s in love. 

He doesn’t spare another glance towards the stage. Doesn’t pay attention to anyone he passes by as he pulls her along to the car. Or maybe she’s pulling him. Either way, they’re racing quickly towards where they parked the car. 

Luckily it’s a shorter drive from here back to hers than it had been from the restaurant to here. 

“I want to fuck you in your bed. Properly.” Haechan gasps as she pins him up against the driver’s side door of the car. Her lips are on his again, her hands gripping the front of his coat. “Just wait ten minutes, babe, and—“

She kisses him quiet, and he lets her. For now. She can take anything she wants right now. But as soon as they’re in her apartment, he’s going to be in charge. He’ll have her gasping and sighing and being such a good girl for him. 

“I’m so tired of waiting,” she whines. She drops her forehead to his chest. “Do you know how long I’ve liked you, Haechan? How long I’ve wanted you like this? I feel like if we don’t fuck within the next thirty minutes I’m going to explode.”

Amusement and arousal swarm through Haechan’s mind, obscuring any other possible forms of thought. 

Here she is, whining for him to fuck her. 

“Get in the car.” He swats a hand down against her ass. “The sooner you do that, the sooner I’ll have you home. How was it that you phrased it? Back at your place in your nice warm bed. With me. Passenger seat, princess. Keep your hands to yourself, and we’ll get there much faster.”

Of course, she takes his instructions to heart, and no sooner has she buckled her seat belt and he’s backing out of the parking spot than she’s got her hands on herself. 

She makes it difficult to focus on driving when he can see her hand on her chest, her other hand lifting the long hem of her skirt revealing an utter lack of panties again. His hold on the steering wheel slips, the car swerving as he turns out onto the main road. 

She keeps her hands to herself certainly. Warming herself up, getting herself ready for him. 

The world tonight is painted in hues of lust. In vivid lusty reds smeared like lipstick over skin and smooth silky shades of black, shimmering yellows and golds of headlights, the amber and orange of streetlamps flashing over bared skin in the passenger seat. Green lights spark through Haechan’s consciousness, only noticing them long enough to keep speeding forward, his hand inching across the center console to her bare thigh. Electric blue blur of the letters on the radio display in the dashboard, spelling out the titles of songs that Haechan can’t even hear over the sound of his own pulse and the sound of her voice growing raspy with lust around each sigh and moan, the soft whimpers of his name as her fingers move. There’s the purple shadows in the indents where his fingers press in, spreading her legs, pulling her thigh toward him so when he next glances over he can see it. The pretty shade of her pussy around her fingers. 

Haechan could paint a whole new world with the colors he sees right now. And in that world it would be only him and her, this woman in the seat beside him right now. 

She cums on her fingers, his name on her lips. 

Haechan is no artist or poet, but in that moment, as he pulls up to park at her apartment building, as he looks over at her where she’s all but melted into the passenger seat with a satisfied smile on her lips, he thinks he could be. 

He could paint a portrait of her like she is right now and hang it in the Louvre. He could write poems for her, about how she looks right now, how she makes him feel, and he would happily hear them read across the world.

He wants them all to know. Every single person. 

He’s in love. 

previous chapter || next chapter  (Coming Soon)

a/n: I'm genuinely so excited for y'all to read this chapter and the next one! I know how long you've all been patiently waiting for this slow burn to reach the peak where you finally get the burn, and I swear to you that it's finally coming in the next chapter. This chapter gave you just that little taste. But what do you think! Please let me know all your thoughts because I'm loving the feedback (both the compliments and the critiques! Keep them all coming!) Thank you so much for reading, and I really can't wait for next Tuesday to come for y'all to get the next chapter 😉

[cavennmalore]

tagging @myfairkatiecat because it is only fair after you requested this word vomit lol

The thing about Keefe not being a good person is a little complicated. Full disclaimer, I don’t really believe in the whole good/bad person dichotomy, and definitely not for KIDS. Nevertheless, I don’t disagree with the people who say that Keefe isn’t the awesome person Sophie’s (biased) opinion makes him out to be. Not for the manipulative reasons -- which, Keefe is a teenage boy and I don't know about anyone else but that is like THE demographic for being a little messy in relationships lmao -- but for a lot of his planning. Joining the Neverseen without telling anyone what his plan was? Proposing himself as Mercadir without giving anyone a chance to refute him? Lying at the end of Legacy and showing up to the confrontation even though it was explicitly agreed he'd stay back? Basically, everything he did in Lodestar? Not great.

It's not Certified Good Guy Behavior. But that's his role. Keefe was literally designed to occupy this grey, questionable space, both in the narrative and outside of it. He's Sophie's character foil. Lady Gisela's plan revolves around pushing Keefe to become a worse and worse person; that involves raising him in a way that cultivates bad behavior and forcing him into increasingly extreme situations that are designed to make Keefe "ready" when the time comes. That is a huge part of the plots of Nightfall and Legacy.

Admittedly, I don't think Shannon has made him evil/grey enough, which I know isn't a popular take. There was real potential to make Keefe a wild card in Lodestar and make it so that the question isn't what stupid scheme is he planning? but to what extent have Lady Gisela's machinations worked? It's an interesting plotline to me. It's why I'm so excited for Unraveled; it's a chance to see this push-pull in action without Keefe's "north star" (AKA Sophie) guiding his decisions.

But a lot of people don't feel this way. A ton of the complaints I see around the book have to do with Keefe getting too much page time, the plotline taking up too much space in the story, etc. Which is fair! If you don't like Keefe, I'm sure a lot of this is grueling. However, a point I see connected to this line of thought is a wish for the books to return to a more ensemble vibe. That there should be more Dex, more Biana, more Stina, more Tam, etc. the way that it used to be.

That version of the books, though? It only really exists in the first book. Keefe is a prominent character in Exile and a huge driver of its plot. It's only in Book One where he only exists on the margins and isn't super involved. The ensemble cast has grown exponentially since then, to the point where there are frankly too many characters to keep track of in a scene without straight-up listing them all (which did happen but I'm forgetting which book). The decreased page time of supporting characters isn't solely because Keefe is eating the narrative, but because there are way too many characters for everyone to get a subplot; rather than have pre-existing characters solve issues, Shannon tends to just pull new ones in, and then leave them to hang out for the following books. If the series was for a more adult audience, I would say that it was time to start killing people off (like the popular critique of The Boys) but because this is a kids series, they're going to just hang around and not do much.

A lot of the nostalgia for this old version of KOTLC presents itself in fandom discussions of Dex. Full transparency: I didn't really like Dex that much in the early books when I did my reread. I found him unbearably rude to Fitz and Biana. His crush on Sophie felt invasive at times as if she was catering to a boy that was projecting his feelings and making her accommodate him. It's very similar stuff to the current criticism of Keefe! But I have yet to see any discussions around Dex that don't characterize him as kind, goofy, or sweet. Maybe there is some discussion of him being snarky or sarcastic. The most criticism I've seen of him is about how he treated Stina in his introduction, which was taken largely in isolation.

But that sweet, goofy version of Dex that people talk about missing? He doesn't exist. Sure, Dex mellowed out a ton in the later books, but he didn't become a whole new character. And I don't believe that he disappeared from the books in the way that some people claim. He just... doesn't have a subplot anymore. His crush on Sophie was resolved. It was a sticking point in his and Sophie's friendship which made him part of her character arc, and that arc is done. If that went on for any longer, it would be a drag on the pace of the series. Like I said before, the presence of so many side characters, each with their own needs and motivations, makes it difficult to introduce him into new stuff. It's why he gets so much more page time in Unlocked. With the presence of so many other characters, Shannon tends to handwave a lot of the background group dynamics. Dex ended up becoming close to Keefe and was able to shine there, away from Sophie's perspective and their finished arc.

All of this is to say, it's not wrong to dislike Keefe or like Dex. But I think a lot of the conversations surrounding these guys can get muddled in nostalgia and what people think the books should be rather than what they are. I'm (severely) guilty of it too. It's part of a broader trend in fandoms as "fandom" as a concept becomes more popular. That is a whole other post, though, and frankly, this one is long enough lol

[tildeathiwillwrite]

Tag Game: WIP Questionnaire

Thanks to @diabolical-blue and @paeliae-occasionally for the tags here and here!

Blank Questions:

1. What’s the first part of your WIP that you created? 2. If your story was a TV show, what would the theme song/intro be? 3. What are your favorite characters that you made? Why? 4. What other pieces of media do you think your fanbase would share? 5. What has been your biggest struggle with your WIP? 6. Are there any animals in your story? Talk about them! 7. How do your characters travel/get around? 8. What part of your WIP are you working on right now? 9. What aspects (tropes, maybe?) will you think draw your audience in? 10. What are your hopes for your WIP?

Gently tagging @faytelumos @thewritingautisticat @pluttskutt @illarian-rambling @somethingclevermahogony

@scaewolf @grimmdivinity @crwn-nrth and open tag! :D

Answering for The Legend of Orian Goldeneye under the cut:

1. What’s the first part of your WIP that you created?

I actually created Jas first. I fleshed out her design as a portal fantasy protagonist ages before I started thinking up the plot to TLoOG. It consisted of a character sheet with her name, appearance, and general sense of her personality, though that would get fleshed out later as I wrote the first draft.

2. If your story was a TV show, what would the theme song/intro be?

Oooooo I had to think long and hard about this, but I'd love for the song Ghosts That We Knew by Mumford & Sons to be the hypothetical intro. I think the lyrics reflect a lot of the characters' motivations, backstories and relationships.

3. What are your favorite characters that you made? Why?

Killian because I like to whump him, Jas because she's me but slightly to the left, Orian because he's precious baby, Diana because she's a bard, Henrik because he means well but needs improvement, Azura because she is multifaceted.

4. What other pieces of media do you think your fanbase would share?

I suppose other works in the portal fantasy genre such as The Chronicles of Narnia, Beyonders, The Owl House or the Cosmere (I guess?? Worldhoppers are portal fantasy protagonists???) would have overlap. I would say amnesia trope as well but it might be surprising to learn that I haven't read very many books with it. While there are some Wheel of Time elements I don't think there'll be very much overlap compared to the rest.

5. What has been your biggest struggle with your WIP?

This storming rewrite draft. I have a plan that I'm going for but I'm currently at a standstill because Diana didn't originally exist the way she does now and I'm trying to find a good way to introduce Azura that isn't just Orian talking about her. Seriously the first draft was very different than what I'm trying to do now and I'm having issues.

6. Are there any animals in your story? Talk about them!

Does Octavian count? Sure let's say his wolf form counts. Also Henrik's horse.

Octavian's wolf form doesn't come out very much, it tends to operate on instinct and its instincts usually are kill and maim and maul. But if Octavian's cornered he won't hesitate to call out to it and transform.

Henrik's horse's name is Swiftling, she's a powerful mare, former warhorse and as no-nonsense as a horse can possibly get. Asta's stallion learned early on that she won't tolerate anything she considers beneath her. A very fitting horse for Henrik.

7. How do your characters travel/get around?

Well Henrik obviously has his horse. Most of the story takes place in Saint's Shoal, so everyone just walks until they have to travel to Iron Hollow, a city some distance away. Then Diana hires a wagon and horse for the journey.

Some dreamshapers can warp space inside the dream, but only for themselves. Morpheus is one of these. Azura and Orian are not.

8. What part of your WIP are you working on right now?

I just got to Diana's introduction and am gearing up for Azura's. In the first draft Azura was introduced when kidnapping Jas, but I changed that because of reasons. I'm currently having a bad bought of writer's block in this scene though, and I'm considering trying to write it from a different POV instead. Orian's maybe? I'll have to decide soon.

9. What aspects (tropes, maybe?) will you think draw your audience in?

Portal fantasy

High Fantasy

Sarcastic female lead

Dreamcore magic system

Child of prophecy

Badass female villain

Lots and lots of whump

Minimal romance

Low/no spice or smut

10. What are your hopes for your WIP?

That I finish this rewrite draft hehe

[aldryrththerainbowheart]

Through the fire and brimstone

Fandom: Berserk

Tags: Guts x reader, hurt/comfort, sprinkle of soft smut, dash of romance

Note: As I was writing SFW alphabet for Guts an idea came up to me while filling in one letter. It got so long that it deserved its own fic. I'm honestly surprised by the quality. This is the last thing I'll write for Berserk because I have dozens of other writing projects, as well as life outside of Tumblr. Consider this Aldryth's swan song to Guts.

By the way, I listened to this while writing this, if anyone's into that.

The last rays of the sun fell over Midland as the Black Swordsman settles for another sleepless night. With a handful of loyal companions in tow, including their healer. Said medic was rather displeased with the swordsman, for the man had thrown himself carelessly towards death yet again. Proof of that was countless new wounds marring his body. When he could walk no more, the group settled at the place he collapsed for the night.

One of the apostles was dead. You watched Guts skillet them with your own eyes. He stood over their corpse as he breathed raggedly, trying to modulate the aftereffects of his berserker armor. You knew he was badly injured, even with the armor in the way of your sight. You didn’t need it, your years of experience taught you many secrets of the human body, healthy or injured. However, you didn’t press for answers, knowing that the swordsman would only push you away. It truly got on your nerves sometimes and made you wonder why you traveled with him if he’s gonna push you away all the time. Especially since it was he who insisted you’ll join them in the first place.

Only when he could not stand on his feet anymore, you were allowed to work on him in relative peace. Propped up against a tree hidden from others a few feet away, half-conscious, half-awake, Guts resembled an autopsy examination rather than a person. Under your skilled hands, gashes closed, tendons joined back together and cells regenerated at rapid speed. Truth be told, your abilities could not be as successful were you not dabbled in magicks.

As you tend to him in silence, you noticed that his hands, laying limply over his thighs, were shaking. You looked up to search his face, desperately trying to mask the fear that settled over your heart. When he noticed you staring Guts croaked “I…I can’t stop them.” At that point, the knot in your stomach was tighter than a clenched fist. You knew his usual reaction to acts of sympathy…and yet. You took his trembling hands in yours and firmly hold them in place, as you pressed your forehead to his and gently prompted him to follow your breaths. Once he stopped shaking, you leaned away only for Guts to cage you in his arms, squeezing you painfully. You choked on your breath, trying to let enough air into your lungs but not to startle him into letting you go. You didn’t know what to do, whether to hug him back and whisper some words of encouragement or simply remain in his arms without moving. Understanding Guts was…difficult. He didn’t react to intimacy and kinship the way other people did, and the last thing you wanted was to startle him. He was like a cornered animal at times. Still, you need to do something. You squeezed him back with all your strength, letting a few more strings of healing magick seep into his skin if nothing more than to just comfort him. As you propped your chin on his shoulder, you whispered reverently in his ear.

“I’ll follow you through fire and brimstone. Whatever it is, we’re gonna get through this together.”

And you would. Together, you’ll stop this madness, no matter what it takes. You followed Guts for this reason, that and a secret part of you wanted to stay close to him, even if it would just so he lives another day.

There was a beat of silence after you said that. The next thing you know is a feeling of impossibly soft plush lips pressing desperately against yours. The hands that were tightly wrapped around you roamed your body, clutching feverishly as if to assure themselves all of your body parts stayed in place. For a moment you were so startled by the kiss, the warmth, and the softness. You allowed yourself thoughtlessly to go limp in his embrace and delve into the kiss. Tongue tentatively peeking out to touch his. Guts groaned helplessly as he pressed you on the moss-covered forest floor. Your hands ran over the expanse of corded muscle until they settled on his stomach, where you felt something warm and sticky against your fingertips.

His wounds have opened.

The moment it dawns on you, you tear your mouth away from his and try to push him away. Guts, displeased by the interruption, only lifts himself on his arms, unwilling to go any further. With guilt laced voice, you urge him to stop, else he gets more injured. He looks down at the reddening bandages and lets out a silent curse as you heal them once more.

He moved his face towards you once more, aiming for a kiss. You stopped him with a finger on his lips. “No strenuous exercise, or you’ll get even more hurt. I you know I-Ah...” Guts stopped your chiding with a light nip on your fingertip. Peering at you with dark glint in his eyes.

“I want you.” He whispered with a deep timbre in his voice, tugging at the neckline of your top and bending to kiss your neck. “Here. Now. I need you.”

I love you.

The thought moved through his mind, and Guts fought the instinct to drive it away. He didn’t say it alound, but he didn’t chase it down and squashed it, either.

“Guts, I…” Despite your nagging tone, you let your head roll to the side, giving him more room to nibble at your earlobe.

He was pushed away from your warmth once more. “I’m responsible for this party’s health Guts, I threaten your health for romp in the woods.”

Heet his head fall back against the tree bark.

“So…” Your fingers ran over his bandaged chest until they reached his breastbone and your eyes met his, “…we’ll have to be very careful.”

He can be gentle, he can be very gentle. Just let him hold you, hide inside your body for a while. Guts reached for you.

You held that hand against his solar and pushed him, gently but firmly, back against the bed of moss. “I'm the one who's going to be careful.”

“You dinna have to.” Guts protested as you crawled over him and settled on his lap, with your thighs caging him.

You pinned him down with your arms, “I'm going to do everything. And you must lie there and take it.”

There was nothing in the world that came less naturally to Guts than reclining on a cloud-soft moss bed and allowing someone else to do everything. Much less someone he'd come to treasure and protect.

But part of him liked the idea.

Liked it very, very much.

[coff-in]

Coff-in?? Waiting for my response??? HHrrrk I'm blushing so hard rn holy shit Devious Anon is in love <3 Interestingly I think Reader killing Ashley is a possibility, but it's done under very specific conditions—like she has to be sure Andrew wants to kill Ashley before she takes on the job, ergo basically in the vision what I think would happen is Andrew is approaching Ashley with the knife and is visibly debating killing her and then reader kill-steals, kind of. Andrew asks reader why the fuck she would do that and reader replies almost innocuously, "She was causing you a lot of pain, and you would've cried if you killed Ashley, right? So I'll do it for you." She killed Ashley to keep Andrew for herself, yes, but also to spare Andrew the guilt of killing Ashley. I feel like it's harder for him to resent her under these conditions bc yk, he was about to do the exact same thing and she did it for him. NOW IF ASHLEY RETALIATES AND KILLS HER bro I don't think these siblings are ever going to come back together the same again bc now Ashley suspects Andrew and reader of being against her, Andrew has a looooot of mixed feelings (does he wanna kill Ash???) and reader is basically always a hair-trigger away from flipping out (she didn't think she wanted to kill Ash but now that it's in her head...)

Also also I realized I built up Devious Baby Sis reader a lot in my head but did not actually share most of it (she's basically a whole character now just without a name) so here it be! The reason why baby sis is the way she is comes from her observation of the family dynamic as the youngest—that is, she and Ash both rely on Andrew. Ashley is very openly needy about it, which reader notices tends to get on Andrew's nerves. They both baby her, but reader sometimes gets left out when her older siblings become too tangled with each others issues (ex. Nina's death is something i'm not sure reader would've been involved in). Reader is internally actually pretty insecure like Ashley, but instead of acting out (which she know annoys Andrew), she switches tactics so they act out for her—in jealousy. Basically reader is insecure and constantly tests their feelings because otherwise, she can't convince herself that she's loved.

CRYING AT THIS FEAST SO EARLY IN THE MORNING HRRRRGG It's not fair that Andrew's so fine it's actually illegal. He's in my head rent free (you can tell by the amount of asks I've thrown your way coff-in I need hELP) I feel like this is less an ask and me just building fanfic with you in your asks now :,D I just have so many brainworms lmao bUT IF YOU WANNA WRITE A WHOLE ASS ANGST FIC I ASSURE YOU I AM YOUR GAL << I WILL READ, I WILL DEVOUR

notes from coff-in: I WAS WAITING ALL EVENING FOR YOU BABES!!! AAAAHHHH ITS DEVIOUS ANON!!!! and don't worry about talking in my inbox, a fact you should all know is that i love to yap and talk (you also have a tag now! #devious anon visits the coffin)

[fem] reader-insert, [devious younger sister reader], incest

i don't know if i could elaborate more on the decay route because it's just too good man! the paths we've explored so far are all so fucking exciting! i am curious about how ashley would traverse her relationship with andrew and devious baby sis [reader] since ashley would be the only one seeing the vision.

i've also been building up this little devious [reader] in my head but it's all self-indulgent stuff. hearing you talk about why she is the way she is is pretty neat though! i have trouble keeping all to deep analysis stuff in my head and it causes me to lose track of character traits and motives and such :p i mostly saw [reader] is just being this little yandere manipulator, you know? she's genuinely happy with her siblings but she uses all these tricks and tactics to indulge in her incestuous feelings with her siblings while also not getting into trouble. she writes romantic poems for andrew but it's forged in julia's handwriting so he doesn't suspect it's [reader]. she gets naked while sharing a room with ashley and plays it off as okay since they're both sisters and siblings and only one year apart in age.

ah... imagine that she's in love with both of her siblings but thinks that andrew and ashley don't love her back or yet ARE IN LOVE WITH EACH OTHER. the conflict she feels about her romantic feelings to her siblings and her need to keep a secret to keep them with her. she fakes being an angel because she doesn't think that they'd love her back if they knew how apathetic she could be towards other people. even if she wasn't there when nina died (something she construes as something personal between andrew and ashley that she could never fit into), [reader] probably wouldn't have helped her out of that box. it made ashley happy, right? and andrew wouldn't have to get a girlfriend, right? all wins in her book.

she'd kill and maim and butcher and burn and lie and die for her siblings if she needed to (well, she probably wouldn't die without them ofc). they are her beginning and her end! her soulmates reincarnated as her siblings so that they'd be together forever (from the womb to the tomb, as i've seen said in passing). a lot of her personality revolves around andrew and ashley and while i want to work on that a little bit more in my silly little head, i think it could also be used as some sort of purposefully character flaw?

speaking of long fanfics, i have an ao3 account (that is empty for now) but maybe one day your devious idea could become a devious multi-chapter fanfic (with your permission of course. i want to make sure everyone gets their fair share of credit).

also, also, ALSO! imagine andrew and ashley celebrating [reader]'s birthday! :3 happy thought to make up for all the angst

----

coff-in

[many-but-one]

I didn’t want to derail your post, @the-alarm-system because I felt that your post is important and should stand on its own, but I also wanted to address that you screenshotted my tags here:

I want to explain what I meant by my tags, as I feel like you may have misunderstood what I was saying. l am supportive of endos existing. I've made that clear on more than one occasion on my blog! I meant I don’t like the phrase “the future is plural” because of the ambiguity of it and the fact that it’s been so misconstrued by so many. I feel like a better phrase that is less likely to be misunderstood would benefit the plural community but I’m not sure what that could be.

From the lens of endogenic plurality flourishing + plurality acceptance and education, I don't mind the phrase "the future is plural." I know plenty of endo systems and they are fine people who deserve to exist how they like! The only reason I don’t like that phrase is the ambiguity and how misunderstood it tends to be, and like I said, I think a phrase that is still concise but less likely to be misunderstood would be useful. I just, again, don’t know what that would be. I truthfully think it tends to be misunderstood because traumagenic systems are applying it to their own experiences (it’s what I did and why I was not liking the phrase at first, not realizing it was referring to endo plurals) and so of course we wouldn’t want the future to be plural because that means kids are being traumatized. However, from an endogenic system’s perspective and them applying it to their own experience with plurality, I can definitely see why they coined the phrase and mean it in the “I want more systems to exist” because a majority of endogenic plurals don’t see their systems as having come from trauma, which means endo plurality increasing =/= children being traumatized in order to exist as plural.

As an aside, I needed to update my “lean toward anti endos” verbiage anyway. I wrote that like…a year ago, maybe more, when I was still on the fence about the whole thing. At this point I’m pretty sure most anti endos aren’t a fan of my stance and so wouldn’t want me associating with them anyway. I say syscourse neutral because I don’t take sides in syscourse and typically don’t engage with it as much as possible for my own sake. Syscourse feels like a toxic minefield more often than not and I don’t like participating. I’m chronically terrible at updating my socials, so than a recent deletion of all of our alter info on our pinned post + an updated DNI, I don’t think we’ve updated that top portion in ages. So, thanks for pointing that out so I can change that as I didn’t realize that was still there.

Normally l'd ignore your reblog/tag screenshot but I just want it to be clear where I stand on the subject and don't want people who don't follow me to see my tags and see me as an endo-unsafe person. I am syscourse neutral in that I don't take sides, but I support endos existing. I used to be firmly anti-endo but l've changed my stance and am trying to be a better and less hateful person. I’ve said some hateful things about endos in the past and I want it to be made aware that I’m not the same person I was a few years ago (literally and figuratively, lol, I was very bitter, angry, and hateful toward MY OWN existence as a system, but with a lot of healing and acceptance of MYSELF I have also realized I needed to be more accepting of others too, even if I don’t fully understand them) so I wanted to nip your assumption in the bud and take a moment to explain my stance a bit more so my endo followers know I’m not against their existence. /gen /nm /just trying to explain myself more than tags would allow LOL

[storyofmychoices]

Flickers of Hope

[Levi Schuler x Laura Day Masterlist]

Characters: Levi Schuler, Lily Day (daughter) Book: Mother of the Year [Levi x F!MC] Rating/Warnings: General, no warnings but mentions of the war Word Count: >700 Tagging: Hannukah / Holiday for @choicesdecember2023; @choicesholidays ; @choicesficwriterscreations

Synopsis: Levi and Lily celebrate Hanukkah, despite some reluctance.

I can't thank the incredible ArtByAinna (IG) enough for this heartfelt and beautiful art.

A/N: Last year, I decided to get art of Levi for Hanukkah, but with everything happening, it felt disingenuous for Levi to celebrate cheerfully this year. I don't feel he is that kind of person. To me, he is someone who would despise what is going on and have deep empathy for all suffering. So I was grateful to Ainna for working with me to make a Hanukkah piece that while they're still celebrating, they're doing so with a heavy heart. I hope the fic shows this as well.

As she let herself in from school, Lily moved through the familiar rooms of their home with purpose. She glanced around the usual spot where the menorah stood proudly in anticipation of Hanukkah’s arrival, but it wasn’t there. Her brow furrowed in confusion. She had noticed its absences in the previous days leading up to today, but she reasoned that perhaps Levi had decided to keep it tucked away to keep the menorah safe from her younger brother Lucas, whose curious hands tended to explore anything within reach. But, today was the start of Hanukkah, and the menorah was still not on display. Sunset would be approaching soon. 

Lily carefully went through the closet, sifting through a few boxes before finding the right one. Her fingertips brushed over the cool metal menorah as she delicately pulled it from its container. With tender care, Lily placed the menorah on the table near a big window. This way, all could see its light.

With the menorah finally set, Lily gleefully sought out Levi, her steps brimming with excitement to showcase her efforts. "I found something you seemed to have forgotten!" She smiled, nudging his attention toward the menorah. "But don't worry, I know Lucas's terrible twos are keeping everyone busy, so I got you covered, Dad." 

Levi managed a half-hearted smile. "I didn't forget. I was thinking about skipping this year."

"Skipping it? Hanukkah?" Lily's voice raised with curious concern. "Why would you do that?"

"It's really only a minor religious holiday—" His hand rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. "Besides the latkes... it's not as important as some of the other days. And with Lucas... and Christmas..." 

His words trailed away. He knew none of the reasons he rambled off had anything to do with the true reason he was hesitant to celebrate this year. His heart broke for those caught in the ongoing fighting taking place. He felt guilty celebrating with all that was going on when so much had been lost, and so many lives had been taken. There were no victors in war, only losses. And the toll this war had already taken was too much. He mourned the unnecessary bloodshed and the lives that were forever changed. He didn't know how lighting a candle was going to help anyone.

Her small hand slipped into his, offering a gentle squeeze. She knew without needing to hear it. She had seen his pain over the past several weeks. The horrors the news showed. "Maybe now is exactly the time to celebrate Hanukkah," Lily offered softly, her eyes meeting his with bright compassion. "Didn't you once tell me Hanukkah was about light triumphing over darkness and about spreading hope? I think the world could use a little more hope, especially right now. Don't you?"

He wrapped his arm lovingly around his daughter. He knew she was the most brilliant child he had ever met, and yet she still surprised him. Her kindness, empathy, and, most of all, hope for a brighter tomorrow were something the world could do with a little more of.

He swallowed hard, holding back the tears that threatened to form in his eyes. "I think you might be right, Rocket."

"I usually am," she teased, hugging him back. "We can do it together."

"I wouldn't want it any other way."

Once the sun set beyond the horizon, Lily placed the first of the candles in its holder. Together, she and Levi recited the first two Hanukkah blessings. As Lily held the shamash candle, Levi carefully lit it. Together, they gently guided the helper candle to light the candle all the way to the right on the menorah and recited the third blessing. A somber tone filled their voices, knowing that while they were thanking God for keeping them alive and sustained, that sentiment couldn't be shared by all. They added their own fourth blessing: a prayer, a hope for peace for those living in turmoil.

Levi held his daughter lovingly in his arms as they watched the flickering flames of two small candles cast light around them. Even though they were only two, they still had the power to make a difference, and tonight they would focus on that. They would hope for better days and cherish what they had for as long as they could, vowing to carry the flame of hope with them through any darkness yet to come.

Thank you so much for reading! I hope you found this to be a good representation of Levi and what he might be experiencing and feeling at this time!

Happy Hanukkah to all those who are celebrating!

(oh, and I finally named Levi and Laura's son Lucas, keeping with the L theme!)

[epickiya722]

Haha right? It's so normalized while it's actually so inappropriate to go to a stranger and talk about their sexual preferences.

I hate how "x fans" is called "x fuckers" now. Yeah I like Sukuna. No I don't want to fuck him. But all there is in his tags.

I'd go as far as to say that people don't care about characters. They just want to put them into tropes box to imagine them as their vampire/alpha male/ceo lover.

And I find it ironic how the same will trash talk about fanboys while they do the exact same thing. '"let women be horny" they will say, because reducing a story to you being horny is ok.

I still want to publish my stories because some fandom gave me hope. But I don't hold my breath anymore.

It is very inappropriate. Like, damn, I can't just like the character? I can't be entertained by their antics?

There are just so many things that shouldn't be normalized across fandoms and going into someone's inbox to be like "*insert character* fucker" is one.

Don't get me wrong, I don't mind people having their fantasies about their faves, let alone am I gonna police anybody on or care to. Waste of my time, I got fics to write! Posts to post! 😭

But sometimes I do think "does this person actually care about the character's story"?

Because some of those same people will have so many takes on their faves that don't even be that character. That is a whole OC you created!!

I actually wasn't aware of this until only recently that people accepted for Sukuna to become some absolute horndog when Yorozu was up all over him. Maybe I missed something, but Sukuna only ever expressed being interested in fighting and killing people and personally, he never really came across as some sexual deviant to me.

I feel like sometimes if you have this fanon version of your fave, that is not your favorite. In no way, should you feel the need to like this whole other version of your "fave" in order to like him. Then why have them as your favorite in the first place?

I like Sukuna because he entertains me. He's this evil ass menace who wants all the smoke and the biggest beef he has is with a 15 year old (who is my all time favorite of JJK). Sukuna also this mysterious air about him because we still don't know much about his backstory, let alone everything he can do. (I had this recent thought about a technique that I should probably get to writing.) I have theories about his character, like how he may really be as a person, true. But at the same time, I'm not gonna believe my theories about him are canon because "I know him better than Gege". Anything I say isn't canon unless said so explicitly. I didn't create Sukuna. I am just another fan just vibing along with the story.

And it really is insane to me that people will do that. People were saying "female fans of JJK are ruining the fandom, they're all so horny" as if all us are horny, let alone engage in the anime for said reasons.

The same people *cough cough* misogynists *cough* who say that be the same people who will have a wallpaper of someone like Nami as their header and she'll have boobs bigger than what she has in canon.

Oooh, y'all don't like folks be objectifying the JJK men, huh? Even though for years female characters have gotten the treatment in Shonen. You cannot be dragging Gojo fans when you want to be Makima's dog. Stop that now.

Also, its not just the men! Uh, Yuki Tsukumo exists! She has a lot of fans who find her attractive. There's Shoko, Utahime, Takako, Mei Mei...

I'm waiting for the day 143 gets animated because I just know people are gonna go 👀.

Like, either way, if you're a person who gets constantly horny over your faves, why are you upset with someone doing the same?

I saw this meme post about how people tend to overlook the story and its details and only focus on the attractive cast and fights. And some people were like "but people are only focusing on the fights and attractive cast".

No, they're not. You're missing the point.

For one, you can find the characters attractive and enjoy the fights. That is fine. But at the same time, don't miss the story. Pay attention to it because it's just as important, if not more.

Second, not everyone is focused on just the fights and cast. If that was the cast, why do we have theories and meta posts? Why do we have people writing fics that study the character they're writing about? If no one is focusing on the story and only like the fights and attractiveness of the characters, then those kind of posts from fans wouldn't exist.

[zeeverseconfession]

hello. it's me. (no, this is not fantasy au stuff.. i wish it was 🙁)

its just about the serious topics in zeeverse from the top of my head.. some of my stuff here might be wrong

Death & Grief: Seen when Box had died — their death affecting Globe, sending her into a sense of grief. From what we saw (or what i remember), it was like she had lost a piece of herself, and found it difficult to do certain things

Alcoholism: Debit Card. Recently just introduced, but we can see that Debit Card is a heavy drinker, supposedly due to stress? To get away from any memories of her (purse). It's used as a coping mechanism.

Stalking & Obsession: As much as you may like Globe, she's a stalker. Yeah, hate to break it to you — she's got an unhealthy obsession with a married man, and has stalked him.. creepy.

Depression: I think multiple characters have this, but the one that comes to mind in specific is Box (also because it's on their wiki). Depression can lead to things like suicidal tendencies, and that's been seen once before in them (when Azriel had offered for them to sell their soul, they agreed in a heartbeat.)

Along with her backstory, which could be part of the reason why he's depressed. Box is probably one of the.. few? many? characters who have depression.

Anxiety & Panic Attacks: .. not sure, possibly Grenade? When stressed, they seem to feel like their losing control over the situation, along with a tremble (voice or body, can differ). These two examples can be linked as symptoms of a panic attack.

From what we see, they struggle to put their thoughts into words. Making it hard to express what exactly they're feelings at the moment.

Crime: Literally, almost everyone in New County has committed some sort of crime.. I think. Can't think of any from the top of my head, but the only person I can think of who went to jail was Mug.. (pot & globe, almost)

ill do the rest when i FEEL like it

what about dynamite for crime…. :(

i feel personally attacked by grenades, not because it happens to me all the time, but because it never happens to me ever. yeah contrary to popular bwlief i have never had a panic or anxiety attack i think. im just a really nervous guy lol. i tend to exaggerate grenades nervousness a lot, its something i did in the beginning before the roleplay got more serious, and then i realize i didnt exactly characterize grenade right at all. or atleast not to my liking. whatever. :(

i feel personally attacked by the last part tho again not because it doesnt happen to me at all but because it happens to me all the time. okay giys class dismissed /j also anxiety like ACTUAL anxiety rapier i think bcuz it was in his bio…though its kinda puzzling cuz rapiers shown to be very nervous at times and then also really nonchalant and calm at others???? man. idk.

stalking and obsession is obviously globe shes basically the mascot of it all. mollie too but tbh compared to globe you could call mollies just an interest, or something. augh globes just like me fr i hate it

ive said this before but i NEVER ever couldve seen DC as an alcoholic coming. out of every unhealthy coping mechanism ever…drinking? it just doesnt seem so debit card-y. infact DC striked me as the type to be against this kind of stuff. so it just baffles me a lot.

ill tag this later im @ the beach and used my phone too much for this