#just a silly little thing i wrote in record time in the bus

[cashmoneyyysstuff]

you’ve been katsuki’s for as long as you can remember.

sure, he had never outwardly called you his girlfriend, but when you were both seven years old, he came up to you. chest heaving slightly from running up and down the hill where he had gotten you a freshly plucked out bouquet of flowers. the roots were still clinging to them and he got dirt all over your hands from forcibly grabbing them and shoving the bouquet in them before you could even form a sentence.

“since you accepted the flowers, you’re mine now.” he mumbled, his little hands tightened into fists at his sides and chubby cheeks a cute shade of pink, staring at you as confidently as he could.

a grin grows on his face when you respond with a simple “okay !” and a bright smile. the grin on his face never disappears even as his mom scolds him for getting you both all dirty.

you were katsuki’s in middle school too, when the boys in class decided to play kiss, marry, kill and he had somehow gotten dragged into it. the girls in your class tried their best to seem uninterested, claiming the boys were being childish, but you noticed how hard some of them were straining their ears trying to hear what the guys were talking about in their own little corner of the room. you’d be lying if you said you weren’t a little curious as well.

katsuki was as ruthless as you’d known him to be, choosing to kill any girl that wasn’t to his liking, which ended up being all of them. much to the other boys’ chagrin, claiming he had no taste.

then your name was brought up.

at that, his eyes widened and he turned in his seat to see if you were watching. you had never turned your head away so fast in your life and you were pretty sure you heard something go “crack”.

he clicked his tongue. mumbling something about how stupid the game was before muttering out a “kiss yn, marry yn and kill that other bitch.” before getting up and stomping away, claiming he had to go to the bathroom followed closely by the whoops and hollers of his two friends behind him.

you both made eye contact when he walked out and you think you’ll never forget how red his cheeks were.

you were katsuki’s when he was the one to walk you to and from school everyday, claiming you would somehow get lost without him. you were katsuki’s when he had begrudgingly shoved homemade valentines day chocolates into your arms, mumbling something about how you had been upset nobody had gotten you anything last year, conveniently leaving out the fact he had scared off all the other guys trying to offer you anything.

you were katsuki’s when he grabbed your hand during the winter because he said you’d “end up dying of hypothermia with the way you’re chittering over there.” and you were his when you were the only person he laughed around. loud, genuine laughter that you and only you could squeeze out of him. you were katsuki’s when he randomly kissed you goodnight at your door one night and he’s been doing it ever since, and gets all pouty when you turn away from his kisses to tease him.

“are we dating ?” you had asked him. you’re both in high school now and you’re in his dorm room. your legs are on his lap and he’s got a comfortable grip on your leg, which tightens after he registers your questions “hah?” he looks utterly confused and a little insulted as he looks back at you, his entire face scrunched up in confusion. you pinch his nose and he swats at your hand.

“are we dating ? like—am i your girlfriend.” you say again and katsuki’s face scrunches up even harder. he huffs and looks back at his phone, landing a little smack on your leg still placed in his lap. “ ‘course yer my fuckin’ girlfriend.” he spits out, obviously irritated. then he looks back at you “I haven’t made it obvious ?” he says sarcastically. one of his eyebrows lifted as he pokes at your leg still very much in his lap.

you simply shrug “s’not that. it’s just because you’ve never actually asked me out before, so i was a little confused on where we stood.” you mumble. he stares at you while you speak and he stares a little longer before sighing. then he leans towards you and flicks your forehead.

“ow !”

“dumbass.” he murmurs. there’s a slight pout on his face and his cheeks are light shade of pink when he looks you in the eyes again. he grabs both your cheeks with one hand and smushes them together to push your lips out and presses multiple wet kisses onto them that have you squealing and squirming. his wet lips are pulled into a smirk when he pulls back and you try your best to at least look a little angry, you really do. but it’s useless when he looks at you like that.

“of course you’re my girlfriend” he reiterates. his smirk’s been replaced for something softer, something more sincere as he gazes at you with so much unadulterated affection it makes your head spin a little. “you’ve always been mine.” he says it in a teasing tone and his hand is still smushing your cheeks out and it hurts a little but his eyes are still the same. they’re warm and soft and so, so enamored with you and only you.

when he finally let’s go of your face and pulls you fully into his lap, you realize katsuki’s been yours for as long as you’ve been his.

you smile brightly at him but turn your nose up when he leans in to kiss you again. “i still haven’t heard what i wanna hear though, mr. bakugou.”

he rolls his eyes and pinches at your thigh as he mumbles out a “don’t call me that.” sighing, he looks at you intensely and you suddenly feel very shy.

“will you be my girlfriend, ya shitty girl ?” and he says it as a joke, you both know it is cus his lips are already forming into a smirk the second he finishes his sentence. and you’re pulling at his nose the moment you register it, but you’re both smiling hard. he laughs and you’re sure you’ll never get tired of the sound. “what’s your answer, pretty ?” he asks playfully and you pretend to really think it over just to mess with him, and giggling out a “yes!” when he suddenly pounces on you. flipping you both over and tickling you mercilessly, calling it revenge for you “taking too damn long to answer.”

you’d been katsuki’s for as long as you can remember, and you hope you can be forever.

[biancadjarin]

Miss Americana & the Heartbreak Prince

Chapter 3 : In the Romance Aisle

📚📚📚📚📚📚📚📚📚📚📚📚📚📚📚

previous part here

EM x Popular Cheerleader

self insert (Y/N) - 18+ !!! Slow burn, leading to smut but I’m kinda enjoying writing them getting to know each other🤭

The next morning, Eddie’s late to his first period, having overslept. The only thing that even got him out of bed was the promise of seeing you and the fact that it was Friday, Hellfire day. When he gets to school, everyone is already in class, the halls an empty wasteland. He uses this opportunity to slip the note he wrote you into the slat in your locker. He starts to walk towards his class but then thinks fuck it. I’m already late. Might as well skip and go smoke in the woods. So he spent the next 45 minutes at his usual picnic table surrounded by trees, the smoke from his joint floating up as he rehearses the campaign he has planned for this afternoon.

You on the other hand woke up extra early today, hardly able to sleep after yesterday. You spent a little extra time getting ready this morning, shaving your legs and making sure every inch of your body was smooth and smelling sweet. Just in case you think. Today was game day so you had to wear your uniform. You’d went to sleep with your hair in a few big rollers to give it some loose flowy curls. You carefully apply your mascara and lipgloss, making sure everything was just right. The rising sunlight through your window catches something metallic out of the corner of your eye. Eddie’s rings. You’d laid them in your tiny white porcelain tray on your nightstand that you keep your earrings in last night before you went to sleep, having washed the blood off them. You’d tried them on your own fingers but they were all too big, even for your thumb. You find a small iridescent tulle bag to drop them in, pulling the ribbon tight to close it, you slip it into the pocket of your monogrammed sweater that matches your uniform and grab your bag as you run out the door, heading for the bus stop.

Sitting on the bus, you remember most clubs meet on Fridays after school. Including Eddie’s club. You weren’t too sure what they do in Hellfire but some of the teachers seemed to think it had something to do with worshipping the devil. That’s silly. you think. Eddie wouldn’t hurt a fly. Unless that fly was a basketball player with a big mouth. So you weren’t sure when you’d see him today but you hoped you’d get an opportunity to talk.

The morning went by as it usually did. First period was full of nervous chatter about tonight’s game, the Tiger’s undefeated record hanging by a thread now that they were about to play the other best school in town. You don’t really care if the team won or lost, you just like cheering next to all your friends. The bell rang and you’re released into the hall with everyone, spilling out of the doors like a dam burst. You scan the crowd inconspicuously for the tall, long haired metal head but there’s no sign of him. You stop at your locker, letting out a disappointed sigh. Your pink manicured fingers spin your combination in, setting down the book from your first class. A folded piece of paper topples out. You catch it before it falls to the floor and unfold it:

meet me in the east library after first period.

my booboo needs another kiss.

-Eddie

You smile at the note as you reread the words. A wave of warmth washes over you, feeling a sudden burst of adrenaline and excitement. But something else too. You’re nervous. You hadn’t been sure yesterday if Eddie had been feeling anything during your hour together but now this proves that he did. The thought made those pesky butterflies reappear in your tummy, along with a tingly feeling in your palms. The bell rings and shakes you out of your trance. You look up from the note, peeking around your locker and see a near empty hallway, everyone racing to class. You’ll probably be late to second period but it should be ok, talking to teachers is a specialty of yours. Refolding the note and stuffing it into the pocket of your sweater, you walk toward the far side of the school, to the library that’s least visited.

Opening the heavy door to the library, you step in and feel the cold air prick at your bare legs. The East library is farther than the one in the main building so it’s usually empty. The tall wooden bookshelves line the walls of the large room, arranged in a U shape around a few rows of tables and chairs for studying. You scan the tables in the middle of the room and don’t see anyone. Just the elderly librarian at her desk in the corner, her nose glued to a thick book. You begin walking past the end of the aisles, eyes scanning down them for Eddie. You pass fiction, non-fiction, political, self-help. You don’t see him. You’re almost to the back of the room, nerves being replaced by worry that you had somehow misinterpreted the note.

You stop at the end of the last row of books, turning to face the open section of the room once again, eyebrows knit with confusion. You feel a hand wrap around your wrist and pull you back into the shadows. Your heart jumps to your throat when you see Eddie smiling at you. “You came.” He says, sounding genuinely surprised. You nod “I got your note.” He’s wearing his Hellfire shirt, black jeans and white reeboks, his hands stuffed into the pockets of his leather jacket. He can’t be any cuter. He laughs “sorry I made you walk all the way over here”, his eyes rolling and smile growing bigger as he emphasized the words. “I just wanted to talk somewhere…” his eyes darted up trying to find the word. “Quiet.” He smiles, nervously rubbing the back of his neck.

“S’okay Eddie” you say sweetly. He hums happily as he takes a step closer to you, the smell of his body wash and something skunky filling your nostrils. “You look extra pretty today princess” he says, looking down at your skirt and pinching the hem of it between two fingers. Your entire body feels like it’s filled with warm honey as your legs get covered in goosebumps. “Extra?” You ask hoping for clarification. He chuckles. “Well you’re gorgeous everyday.” His voice lowering to a whisper before he says “But especially today.” You’re sure your face is burning red so you change the subject to the first thing that pops in your head. “I hope you didn’t get in too much trouble yesterday.” You say with a worried look. His eyes soften, touched by your concern. He sucks his teeth, taking in a deep breath of air, his hellfire shirt stretching deliciously over his chest. “Nah, Higgins is a total butthead.” He says with an exhale.

You laugh, his puppy dog eyes watching your face until a distant “shhhh” causes him to whip his head to look toward the open end of your aisle, his hair uncovering the side of his eye revealing a bruise from yesterday. “Oh you poor baby” your hand reaching up to gently trace your fingers along the dark purple skin. “Ah I’m fine.” He says softly, leaning into your touch. He reaches up to your hand and brings it down, running his thumb over your knuckles and looking down, his hair falling into his eyes. His gaze travels down your entire frame and then back up, pausing to look at your lips. He smiles with a little exhale and softly takes both your wrists and pulls you closer to him, setting your hands on his leather covered chest.

He’s studying your face, eyes whispering a silent “is this ok?” and you begin to run your hands up and twirl some strands of his hair around your fingers. The butterflies in your stomach are on overdrive, your mind goes blank looking into his big chocolate eyes. He smiles “are you nervous princess?” he asks in a teasing tone. Such a bastard. He knows you are. You huff out an exhale and shake your head, determined to remain in control even though it feels like you’re standing in quicksand. Sinking further and further until you feel yourself falling. He brings a finger up to rest under your chin, every so lightly tilting it up, his thumb ghosting over your bottom lip. His eyes don’t leave your mouth as he leans close to you, seemingly in slow motion, to press his plush lips to yours.

You melt into his kiss, finally getting what you’ve been thinking about for so long, not realizing it would be this good. You never knew what you were missing and God had you been missing a lot. He brings his hands up to rest on either side of your jaw, his skilled tongue dipping into your mouth and massaging yours. He tastes like the herby weed you’ve heard he sells (not that you’ve ever smoked any) and juicy fruit gum. He begins to walk you backward into where the bookshelves become a corner. He places a hand behind your head as he pushes you into the wood and then trails it down your soft hair and lets his fingers run through and get lost in it. His other hand resting on your hip, fingers playing with the ruffles on your skirt, your arms outstretched over his shoulders, fingers lost in his frizzy curls. He lets out a breath that’s hiding a soft moan as he looks down at his hand dropping to the hem of your skirt. Your eyes flutter close as you pull him closer, wrists locking behind his neck, kissing him deeper. Both his hands slowly travel up the back of your thighs, stopping at the crease underneath your ass, letting his forefingers nuzzle there. His fingers begin to massage the bottom of your cheeks that are sticking out under your soffe shorts.

He moans louder this time, squeezing your ass as he leans into you, your back pressing against the old wooden shelves. His lips leave yours as they dip down to kiss behind your ear, you lift your neck to give him more room. He chuckles lowly against your skin, “you like when I kiss you there angel?” the breath from his whisper making a chill on the wet spot his kiss left behind. You nod once with a pout, staring into his eyes. His tongue darts out the side of his mouth as he leans back a bit, eyebrows raising as he leans his head the other way, picking a different spot to kiss next. “How about when I kiss here?” He asks as he gives a feather soft kiss on your neck. “Mhmm” you moan weakly as he begins to suck on that spot. If your brain wasn’t a bowl of marshmallow fluff you might stop him and tell him you can’t have a hickie especially before a big game but the signals from your brain to your mouth left the room a long time ago. His hands are fully exploring your ass now, your skirt flipped up and laying over the back of his hands. “Eddie” you whispered, not quite sure if it was the beginning of a statement or a question.

The sound of the half period bell vibrates above you and your eyes shoot open, wrist leaning back over Eddie’s shoulder to look at your watch. “Oh god, we’re so so late. If we leave now we might not get detention.” He snort laughs, “you’re not going anywhere y/n.” He says pulling you closer to nuzzle into where your neck meets your shoulder. The feeling of your name inside his voice making your head spin. “And hey maybe we can get detention together. Wouldn’t that be cool?” He says pulling away to look at you. Your eyes widen. You? Detention?? But looking at his puppy dog eyes growing sad at the possibility of you leaving made your heart ache. You shake your head and smile softly. “You’re going to be a bad influence on me aren’t you Eddie Munson?”

“Terrible.”

Hope you enjoyed! Please leave feedback 💕

eddie note image credit : @eddienbird

[chaoskiro]

Summer podfic wrap-up

We are now well into September and over this summer I have diverted some of my podfic attention away from my podfic of Vertical Limit to make some podfics for various fests and to try some different things out, and here is what I ended up making this summer (sorted by when I made them):

Beard Burn (12 minutes) a multivoice Check Please! podfic based on FightMeImSmall's amazing story. Featuring a very heated discussion on the SMH bus leading to Dex coming out to the team.

This is a project I have wanted to do for ages, but I really wanted to make it multivoice so I hesitated. I ended up just asking if anyone was interested in participating on a podficcing discord server and so many people joined!! I will be forever grateful to all the people who read lines for this and I was blown away by their performances every time I got a new person's lines sent to me. It was my second ever podfic after Vertical Limit and since this is a very different tone I actually ended up having to record the narration twice, because my first run sounded way too somber for this very fun and a little bit silly fic.

shall i compare thee to a summer's day? (22 minutes) another Check Please! podfic based on dairaliz' (@schitthappens) sweet story. Featuring a very pining Dex on a farmer's market with an equally pining Nursey to match.

This one was made for the Madisonandmore ficfest and it was my first try at adding intro and outro music to fic, something I will definitely do again, but also something I would like to get better at. It was also the first ficfest I participated in which led to me having a bunch of technical issues which were thankfully resolved along the way.

The Way My Heart Bleeds (54 minutes) a Batman podfic of egg_thief's (@thief-of-eggs) story, made for DevilWithABirdDress as part of Summer podfic swap. Featuring Damian as Robin who gets hurt on patrol and gets patched up by Dick.

I looked through a lot of Damian & Dick centered stories before I landed on making this one (I actually got permission to podfic another one as well, which I might just do someday), but this one just hit the spot: It is just the most perfect Hurt/Comfort and I really love reading Damian (Though he always ends up sounding vaguely British, which I can't really explain). It also features some very important headcanons on the batfam's opinions on the Barbie movies, which is always a bonus.

Pay Attention to Me (33 minutes) an A3! podfic of Dokuhan's story, made as part of pod_together. Featuring Chikage who ISN'T jealous when Sakuya and Tasuku start spending more time together (and definitely doesn't have a crush on Sakuya).

This one was a fun one as it was made for pod_together and I thus worked with Dokuhan on this one. It was very fun getting some sparring on my readings of things and thus get some insight on the thought behind different lines. I often, when podficcing, sit and argue with myself on how to read a certain line/what emotion to convey with it etc. and to be able to discuss that with the one who wrote it was very fun.

All in all I am very happy to have expanded my podficcing scope this summer and I currently have two projects I have recorded stuff for on my computer that aren't published (one of them I started in may or something, but am currently still a little scared of, and the other is what I'm focused on at the moment), aside from Vertical Limit of course which I am still steadily working on and will probably have another chapter out soon because I am literally only missing like 30 minutes of editing time which isn't that much compared to the time it takes to make these.

It has been so fun making these and I hope they brought some other people joy as well!!

[pooptoucher4000]

Oh okay!!! Well happy to hear it :') also I wanted to say the way you described colors in previously mentioned section was such a visual artist touch and was really beautiful. Good prose!!!

Omg bunk beds! I also love that it's carpeted, truly the shittiest tour bus. When they were sitting at the little dining table with the booth in the bus, all I could think about was them eating shitty tense meals at like 2 in the morning after a show and that's very funny to me :) that's what I imagine every time damare is like thinking about how being on the bus with him in particular is awful. Glad they have a little breathing room now tho haha.

Also I forgot to read for lyrics but I did have fun and love the chapter titles. I never noticed the first chapter is house of the rising sun very apt!!

I'm glad you enjoy the messages also ;___;

I think the way everything was carpeted in the 70s was so funny, i imagine every room smelled really bad. the carpet + really dark nasty looking hardwood combo is unbeatable and classy. i think the bus definitely had at least one wall that was also carpet. like moss green carpet on the wall for some reason or it's a rug we.youn put up on the wall i dont know just something insane and disgusting

incoming lyrics rant:

i cant even remember all the lyrics...theyre in there somewhere. these are a few off the top of my little shriveled head

i think there's def a somewhat mangled doors reference to "day destroys the night / night divides the day" but rewritten to be smashed together with "day breaks at dawn" which is a song by the backgrounds (i think its their ONLY song i cant find a single other song by them) i dont remember where i stuck it but i remember writing it (and cringing afterwards but leaving it in.)

continuously lean on my crutch of referencing "dedicated follower of fashion" by the kinks in any reference to w.eyoun (i think i wrote something referring to him as a 'dedicated member of the carnabetian army' or something equally tacky)

the phrase 'hazy cosmic jive' is from moonage daydream by b.owie, phrase 'sound into vision and vision into sound' references sound and vision also by bowieeyyy

i think i had a peace frog reference in there with something alluding to the "bloody red sun of fantastic LA" ?

i dont know anymore. Im also realizing ive been working on this fic for a year so i dont remember what i wrote into it and what i just daydreamed when i got bored at work

and of course i enjoy the messages !! idk its so touching da internet is so big and vast and i wrote a little silly story mostly about like. the most self indulgent silly crazy thing i could think of ; -; so the fact that someone else had fun reading it and let alone liked it enough to talk to me about it really makes my day. i know i sound like a broken record going back and forth saying thank you to you HAHA but i do really really appreciate it and it really makes me excited to keep trying my best to finish !!!

OMG edit: i know im gonna use orange county suite by the doors somewhere in the fic. Idk. Its just too perfect. too stupid and overdramatic and perfect. 

[herenortherenearnorfar]

Thanks @aipilosse for the tag! My AO3 account (this one at least) is a bit less curated than most. I’ve been using it since the age of 16 and have gone through the requisite teenage interests and then some so some of these answer will be a blast from the past.

How many works do you have on AO3? 

75

What’s your total AO3 word count?

Just over 500k

How many fandoms have you written for and what a they?

According to the drop down menu, 27! A lot of them are overlaps but I’ve still covered a lot of ground over the years. Niche YA, children’s movies, non-niche bestselling YA, Star Wars, anime. A few things I’m still interested in, a few I’m not. Sometimes I get a little embarrassed that there’s a paper trail of all my old fascinations but it is nice to have an archeological record of the last few years.

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

For It Shines Bright and Never Changes, a 90k Kubo and the Two Strings AU from 2016-2018. My longest and most popular story. I’m actually proud of the planning that went into it.

Aftermath of an Announcement, a frankly kind of shoddily written Steven Universe fic that I remember writing at midnight on the couch outside my bedroom in England. Inexplicably recommended on TvTropes, which might explain the ridiculously disproportionate attention it got?

Regina, a decent little SvTFoE story that got some very good abandoned artwork. Thoroughly disproven bu the rest of the show, I think? I never finished watching it.

The Most Valuable Resource. Probably what my Silm friends know me from! Sauron and baby Celebrimbor in Angband at the very beginning of the first age. I fell in love with writing Sauron in this, he’s a rather delightful awful.

Obsidian Sister, more cartoons, more sibling relationship drama, lots of hopeful worldbuilding for something that I kind of lost interest in. A good read on review though.

Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

Yes! I love comments and getting replies to them so I always try to respond. My only regret is that it can sometimes take me too long to get people their responses. @everyone I am sorry!

What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

Probably my most recent one? I do tend to lean towards canon compliant vignettes when I’m bored and those can be bittersweet at best but not outright tragic. In most stories there’s a seed of hope, however deeply buried it is.

Do you write crossovers? If so, what is the craziest one you’ve written?

No crossovers that I can recall. Keep in mind that I’ve forgotten a good portion of that 75 fic backlog.

Have you ever received hate on a fic?

A few times but it was mostly confusing? I simply didn’t know what to do with it. It’s like being handed a dead lizard by a cat, yes, you’re very proud of this but I’m not sure where it’s supposed to go.

I did once spend several paragraphs defending Elwing in the comments of a story I’d written about Elwing.

Do you write smut? if so what kind?

Not attached to this fake internet identity I don’t.

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Yes, one of them showed up on Wattpad once? I only found out because I was googling a nice fic rec someone wrote for the same story. In the end I didn’t do anything about it. Maybe my entire oeuvre is on Wattpad but I doubt it because I stopped writing Avengers fanfic a very long time ago.

Have you ever had a fic translated?

Several of my Silm fics have been translated into Russian. It’s a privilege every time and I love going and seeing the final result!

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

No. Used to do a bit of silly RP when I was younger but it’s not quite the same.

What’s your all time favorite ship?

Hmm, I like Silvergifting quite a lot but I have a weak spot for trios. They feel more harmonic. Eonwë/Elwing/Eärendil is probably my favorite Silm ship, for example, though I’ve only written the one story for them. If we’re talking favorite of all time then I suppose we’d have to go back to the basics. Nancy Drew/Bess/George.

What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

Often by the time I exert the energy to put something down on paper I’m already pretty committed to finishing it? A lot of my drafting goes on in my head so I only have a few WIPs in type from the past year and only one that I think I can discard as abandoned. It’s a Micheal and Sasha Magnus Archives Spirally self delusion and dreams story.

What are your writing strengths?

Decent worldbuilding and turn of phrase? I know I can make a sentence hit, which is good. And I am quite proud of some of my backstory work and research, including some hard scrabble conlang despite my absolute lack of a linguistics background

What are your writing weaknesses?

Too bogged down by melodrama, too many runon sentences, poor grammatical skills. Also I struggle a lot with giving characters distinct speaking voices; they all end up sounding like me which is no good. I’d like to be better at descriptions as well.

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

I swap my standards around depending on the feeling of the story and the concepts I’m trying to convey to the reader. Fëa might work for a short specialist one-shot about Gondorian scholars discussing elven concepts but then in a story from Celebrimbor’s perspective I’d use the more generic “soul”. Formality, familiarity, ease of access to lay Tolkien readers, the perspective of the characters and what their “native tongue” is keeping in mind that most of the Silm+ is designed as a translation. There are lots of factors. Same goes for a story with terms in Chinese or another extant language.

What was the first fandom you wrote for?

On this account? A book about teens and magic. Online? The 39 Clues, a co-written boook series for middle grade children. Ever as a human being? It depends on if you count when I was very small and would lead my sisters in games where I was Aragorn niece and we were fighting at the Battle of Pelennor Fields.

What’s your favorite fic you’ve written?

I’m fond of The Thousand Stories, for all that it’s experimental and indulgent. It was a chance to really explore stories about stories and what else is fan fiction for?

It looks like just about everyone else has been hit so @ameliarating and @feanorianethicsdepartment do feel welcome to take a swing if you’re so inclined.

[thoughts-on-bangtan]

I feel bad for JK. He's the jealous BF in every pairing. I say support who you want, but if JM came out tomorrow and said come out of your imagination about Vmin (The way V did about TK) or V went on camera saying his and JM's relationship was awkward (The way JK did about V), I would pack it up. Yet Tkrs continue to disrespect Tae and JK. Sometimes JKrs too cause they also cast JK as the jealous, insecure boyfriend. Too bad, neither group sees One half of their ships are in love with each other

This turned into a bit of a rant, I hope you don’t mind...

Leaving aside my opinions on T*ak*ok and J*k*ok as “romantic ships” and focusing just on the actual people, or more specifically on Jungkook (as well as those who use him for their ships in toxic manners), I very much agree. 

Jungkook is a good person, a kindhearted one at that, he works incredibly hard, he’s incredibly hard on himself, holds himself to a sky high standard, and is a perfectionist at that, he tries his best regardless of what it is he’s doing, his heart is so big, pure and filled with love not only for his hyungs but also for ARMY, even though some have done him incredibly dirty in the past, and others continue to do so to this day and chances are they likely won’t stop any time soon. Jungkook is also a romantic, someone who believes he will hear bells when he’ll meet/look at the person he’s destined to be with/his one true love, someone who wrote Still With You for ARMY and tried his best to convey his emotions just right, who even has the word tattooed on his hand, is someone who’s sensitive to smells, likes doing laundry and snuggles against his hyungs when he’s cold. He cried and was inconsolable when Hobi temporarily left Bangtan, recorded a song cover in 30 minutes simply because Namjoon said the song would fit his voice, and he painted a pretty painting for Hobi simply because he asked him for it.

Remember when Jungkook was a guest on Yoongi’s ‘radio’ in May 2020? How nervous he was and how he felt the need to explain himself and apologize to ARMY for potentially having upset us, even though, realistically, there was nothing really there for what he would have to apologize and with how some were quick to throw him under the bus (again), if anyone should’ve apologized, it would’ve been those people. To this day Jungkook continues to rarely be on social media, rarely posts a selca and goes on vlive even less, and honestly, I completely understand him. I would do the same, though I won’t pretend that I know his exact reasoning.

Like you said, there is a large portion of shippers (not all of them, of course, but I’m specifically talking about the bad ones here, and my opinions on these shippers have no connection whatsoever with my opinions on and love for the maknaes and their bonds, just so we’re clear) who have created this alternative reality version of him which shares no resemblance with who he actually is beyond the name and body. Somehow, they’ve created this jealous, possessive and toxic version of him that constantly feels the need to mark his territory, gets angry and has controlling tendencies toward either Jimin or Tae (oddly enough I haven’t seen that happen as much when he’s shipped with a member of the hyung line), depending on which camp you ask. How long did it take for “JK was so jealous” analysis videos to appear after RUN episode 128 and that moment of Tae kissing Seokjin’s cheek? An hour, two?

And if that’s not what they are doing, they overs*xualize him to the point where it just feels gross and so dehumanizing it crosses every imaginable line. Or they infantilize him as though he were still the teenage boy we got to know when they debuted 7.5 years ago, which is especially ironic and weird when the people who do this are younger than him.

Of course this isn’t just an issue with Jungkook, it’s something that happens with all three of the maknaes, but I feel like it happens a little differently (or manifests itself differently) for each one of them, and Jungkook, being involved in both of the main big ships, basically has it worst. He isn’t treated as someone they love or admire, not because he’s part of their ship but because of his talents and other qualities as idol and human being, but as basically a human Sim that shippers project their own fantasies onto. They lack respect and the bare minimum of human decency. They don’t care about him as person, barely care about his music if they can’t find a way to connect it to their ship, they just want him to look pretty and act accordingly so they can continue living their shipper lives and search for “proof”, even if sometimes that means twisting reality, ignoring context, and making someone out of Jungkook who he really is not.

And honestly, just like you, if Tae or Jimin would come online and say “get out of your imagination” about vmin, I would accept that immediately and move on. Sure, I’d be a little sad and surprised, but I wouldn’t look for ways to twist their words to create some kind of false deniability of their statement, wouldn’t try to find some kind of loophole that would allow me to ignore their words and continue doing what we do. But, unfortunately, many don’t think that way. Clearly.

At some point, I think, some have forgotten why we are here in the first place, as well as the fact that Jungkook, Jimin and Taehyung are actual living, breathing human beings, and not fictional characters. We are here, first and foremost, for their music, since that’s what got us interested in them in the first place, right? Or at least that’s how it should be, though I know visual stans are a thing, and apparently shipping stans also seem to be a thing that exists. And sure, shipping is fun, having a pair you particularly like together for one reason or another, because you think there might actually be something there, like we do as vminnies, or because you simply like their dynamic, but the moment your entire existence as ARMY is merely revolving around your ship and finding ways to prove, against all logic and contextual evidence, that they are real, even if it means disrespecting the people that are part of your ship, as well as the other five people in the group they love more than anyone, that’s when you’ve gone too far. Way too far.

We know how much Jungkook loves the members, how much he respects them, and we know he had a bit of an awkward rough patch (at least partially) with Tae, since they told us about that, and he enjoys spending time and being silly with Jimin, and yet ship camp one and two have no issue disrespecting, belittling, badmouthing and erasing his friendships with either of them, or basically flat out calling him a liar (or a BH controlled puppet with no free will or ability to speak out when he doesn’t like something) because what he said about his friendship with Tae doesn’t fit their agenda.

Jungkook is basically stripped of all agency, humanity, free will, and everything else that makes him a person, an idol, and just an extremely talented and kind individual. They even try to take away his name despite the well-known fact that Koreans don’t change last names. It’s upsetting, unsettling, and wrong on every possible level.

I couldn’t care less which BTS duo others ship, I’m not the kind of person who will go and try to convince others that I’m right and they are wrong because, for all we know, we could all be wrong, but I think the least anyone in the shipping world can do is have enough restraint and humanity in them to show a bare minimum of respect for the people they ship and treat them like human beings, not Sims or dolls. Especially since we know the members are aware of all of this to some degree because there is no way they didn’t notice all the comments during vlives across the years, didn’t notice the videos on YouTube (we know Jungkook looks up reaction videos etc), and didn’t notice the posts on Weverse, after all we had Tae tell off a shipper.

All I really wish for is for people to see and treat Jungkook as the good, kind, intelligent and talented person he is. Ship him with whoever you want, that’s none of my business, but please respect him and see him for who he is, not who you’d want him to be so there would be more drama to theorize about. It’s the least he deserves. It’s the least all of them do.

[ecfandom]

3. “It’s three in the morning.”

After the fifth skull-rattling pothole in as little as five minutes, Lexa sat up in the twin-sized tour bus bed and pressed her palms to her face. She was jet lagged, hungover and home sick, but they still had a month left of the band’s European tour. She should have been used to it by now, but being in a new city every other night, surrounded by crazed fans, foreign languages, and unfamiliar landscapes had proven impossible to adjust to. 

She pulled back the privacy curtain to her bunk and swung her legs over the side, thinking she might curl up on the couch with a book on her phone, but a soft light coming from the mini recording booth at the end of the bus stopped her. She looked across the small hall at the identical pair of bunks and found Clarke’s curtain drawn back and her bed empty. 

Both annoyed, worried, and frustratingly curious, Lexa slipped silently to the floor and shuffled to the back of the bus. Virtually sound proof, she had to press her ear directly to the door of the small studio to get an idea of what was going on inside. She held her breath, hoping to hear only one voice. 

Clarke’s husky alto drifted quietly over a lonely piano line. As Lexa listened, she recognized one of their songs with a slightly different harmony to the bridge and the telltale sign of Clarke’s growing frustration. 

Having a pretty good idea of what Clarke was doing, and why, Lexa felt the anger swell in her chest before she clamped it down and carefully shouldered the door open and peeked into the small space. 

Clarke looked up, her eyes almost unseeing as Lexa watched the melody disappear from mind. Clarke blinked and her entire body seemed to deflate in relief as she honed in on Lexa. She smiled tiredly and pushed a mess of blonde hair from her face. 

Lexa felt Clarke’s sleepy smile liquify in her chest and wash away the anger so effortlessly it was almost enough to make her angry again. “It’s three in the morning, Clarke.” 

Clarke leaned her elbows against the electronic keyboard and nodded as she massaged the pads of her fingers into her eyes. “I know,” she said on a long breath. “But Finn thinks the bridge on See You Again needs work.” 

Lexa rolled her eyes. “Clarke, we’ve been playing it the same way for eight months. The bridge is fine.” 

“He thinks it sounds hollow.” 

“Do you?” 

Clarke shook her head and shrugged. “I don’t know.” 

“Yes you do. You wrote it. What do you think?”

“I think it’s fine.” 

“Then why are you letting him push you around?”

Clarke blew out a breath and leaned back on the bench. When she looked up at Lexa, she had a knowing smile on her face that made Lexa’s insides want to eviscerate. “He’s just trying to make it as good as it can be.” 

No, he’s trying to take over, Lexa thought. And he’s doing it by getting in your pants and making you forget all logic every night. The image made her stomach curl so hard she had to clench her jaw shut to keep her stomach contents where they belonged. “Call me just the drummer, but I do know a little something about music, and I call bullshit,” she muttered. 

Clarke rolled her eyes and grabbed Lexa’s wrist, pulling her down onto the bench next to her. She rested her head on Lexa’s shoulder and pulled her hand into her lap, inspecting the calluses on the inside of Lexa’s palm. “You know you’re so much more than just the drummer. Right?”  

“Sure.” 

“You’re my best friend.” Clarke lifted the palm to her lips and kissed the rough skin gently. Lexa tried not to stiffen, but she couldn’t act quickly enough and Clarke knew her too well. “What’s wrong?” 

“Nothing.” Lexa pulled her hand from Clarke’s and flipped the keyboard back on. Slowly, carefully, she marked out the chord progression of the song’s bridge. She could still remember the first time Clarke played it for her. It was a painfully beautiful, sad song, a direct response to Clarke’s brutally public breakup with the band’s drummer Lexa had replaced last year. “Hear that?” She asked, building into the chorus. “It’s perfect. It’s you.” He’s trying to change you. Why are you letting him? 

Clarke studied her carefully, but when she said nothing, Lexa turned back to keys. She could feel Clarke’s eyes on her, warming the skin along her throat, but still, Clarke was quiet. Just as Lexa started to pull away, Clarke slipped her hand over Lexa’s. When Lexa looked at her, Clarke grinned and nodded towards the keys. “Keep playing,” she murmured. 

 Lexa played as Clarke’s hand rested atop hers. It was silly, awkward, but Lexa never wanted it to stop. Clarke’s hand was warm and soft, like her entire being. Despite the quick rise to fame, the cruel, unforgiving and sexist world of pop music, Clarke remained soft. Kind. She was too good for the garbage that surrounded her. Lexa wanted to wrap her in her arms and shield her from all of it. The tabloids, the shitty boyfriends who didn’t deserve her, the producers who stole her voice and held it hostage. 

Chills erupted along Lexa’s skin as she was pulled out of her thoughts by the gentle graze of Clarke’s fingertips up her forearm, then back down. “You play the piano so beautifully,” Clarke murmured. She threaded their fingers together and squeezed Lexa’s hand. “Why’d you choose to play the drums?” 

Lexa licked at her impossibly dry lips and all she could do was shrug. When Clarke laughed and raised her eyebrows, wanting a better answer, Lexa tried for a joke. “I like to hit on things, I guess.” 

Clarke grinned. “You can hit on me anytime.” 

Maybe it was the sleep deprivation, or the hangover, or the way the hot air crackled and popped with electricity around them, but suddenly, Lexa had her hand around the back of Clarke’s neck and she was kissing her.

Just as soon as she realized what she was doing, she jerked back, nearly stumbling over the bench as she stood. She backed up until she ran into the door and couldn’t go any further without taking her eyes off Clarke. And somehow, that felt impossible. “Clarke, shit. I’m so sorry,” she said, shaking her head, trying to make sense of what she’d just done. Trying to make sense of Clarke. Clarke, who was sitting there, silent, staring at the keyboard. “I’m sorry. Fuck, I should go,” she said, when Clarke didn’t move. 

“Don’t you dare,” Clarke said, just barely above a whisper. When Clarke turned to look up at her, Lexa was horrified to see tears in her eyes.

“God, Clarke,” Lexa breathed, caught between anger, guilt, worry, but never regret. She could never regret loving Clarke. Clarke stood slowly, her fingers lightly touching her lips as if Lexa had bruised her. Maybe she had. She’d lost her damn mind and now she couldn’t even remember how hard she’d pressed, and now Clarke was crying, or was about to, and she wasn’t looking her in the eyes, and God, she wasn’t saying anything. Why wasn’t she saying anything? “I’m sorry,” she whispered. 

Still not looking at her, Clarke shook her head as if suspended in a thought she couldn’t quite work out. She moved closer and Lexa held her breath. Agonizingly silent, Clarke pressed her palm to Lexa’s stomach. Finally, finally looking up at her, she met Lexa’s eyes. 

“I’m sorry,” Lexa said again, feeling at a complete loss for any other words.

“Don’t say that again,” Clarke whispered. As if testing, experimenting, she ran her hand up Lexa’s stomach, then her chest. She curled her palm around the back of Lexa’s neck and stroked the side of her throat with her thumb. “Do you have any idea how long I’ve been waiting for you to do that?” 

“I--what?” Lexa nearly choked on the breath that left her. 

“Do you remember when I wrote this song?” Clarke brought her other hand up to rest on Lexa’s neck as well. She blinked back the tears littering her expressive, blue eyes, and shook her head as if just as confused as Lexa.

Lexa swallowed, trying desperately to keep up. “After Josh…” 

Clarke chuckled wetly and shook her head again. “How can someone as incredible as you be so dull?” 

“I’m lost.” 

Clarke nodded. “I know. I didn’t write that song after Josh, Lex. I wrote it after Melanie.” 

“Melanie?” Melanie, the groupie she’d made the mistake of dating for six months before it was obvious Melanie was more into the band than Lexa. “Why?”

“Don’t you get it? The song isn’t about Josh. It’s about you.” Clarke laughed and brushed at her wet cheeks with her shoulder. “God, that’s the biggest secret I’ve ever kept in my life.” 

“Me?” Lexa whispered, her brain slowly starting to catch up. 

“Do you have any idea what it’s like playing that song in front of thousands of people who think it’s about some asshole I haven’t given a second thought to since January? Meanwhile, the person it’s about is sitting five feet behind me?” 

“Wait, wait,” Lexa said, desperately. She shook her head, trying to clear the noise. “That song...it’s about a break up.” 

“God, Lexa,” Clarke groaned. She tugged on her neck and pressed their lips together. She kissed her, six years worth of swallowing the urge, until they both broke apart for air. 

“Please. Put me out of my misery,” Lexa whined, “I’m so lost.” 

Clarke smiled and ran her thumb over Lexa’s bottom lip. “It’s about heartbreak, sweetheart. Not a break up. You broke my heart.”

“I did?” 

“God, every time Melanie stepped onto this bus I wanted to fucking wring her neck.” 

“I didn’t know,” Lexa whispered.

“I know. I should have told you.” 

“Um, yeah,” Lexa said with a laugh still tinged with disbelief. 

“Hey.” Clarke gave her a teasing shake. “You could have told me too.” 

“Oh sure, tell the pop star in a relationship that her drummer is lovesick over her? Great idea.” 

“You’re a dork,” Clarke said, then kissed her again, chaste and still a bit curious. 

“What about Finn?” 

“What about him?” 

“Well, you’re...I mean, you’re dating or something.” 

Clarke laughed. “We are not dating. He was...a distraction.” 

Lexa shook her head vigorously and held up her hand. “I do not want to hear about it.” 

Clarke grabbed her cheeks and pulled her into another kiss. “It’s over,” she breathed against her lips. “It was nothing.” 

“You’re sure about this?”

“I’ve been sure for six years, Lexa.”

“Jesus,” Lexa breathed just as Clarke kissed her again. When Clarke pulled away again, smiling, Lexa couldn’t help but laugh. “I fucking love jet lag.” 

Clarke laughed as well and pressed her forehead to Lexa’s chest. “Best three AM session I’ve ever had.” 

“Leave the song alone,” Lexa muttered. “It’s mine and Finn can go fuck himself.” 

Clarke nodded and said, “You’re right. It’s yours. And you’re mine.” 

“Always.” 

[hlupdate]

A bathroom figures significantly in the origin stories of at least two classic One Direction songs. The first will be familiar to any fan: Songwriter and producer Savan Kotecha was sitting on the toilet in a London hotel room, when he heard his wife say, “I feel so ugly today.” The words that popped into his head would shape the chorus of One Direction’s unforgettable 2011 debut, “What Makes You Beautiful.”

The second takes place a few years later: Another hotel room in England — this one in Manchester — where songwriters and producers Julian Bunetta and John Ryan were throwing back Cucumber Collins cocktails and tinkering with a beat. Liam Payne was there, too. At one point, Payne got up to use the bathroom, and when he re-emerged, he was singing a melody. They taped it immediately. Most of it was mumbled — a temporary placeholder — but there was one phrase: “Better than words …” A few hours later, on the bus to another city, another show — Bunetta and Ryan can’t remember where — Payne asked, maybe having a laugh, “What if the rest of the song was just lyrics from other songs?”

“Songs in general, you’re just sort of waiting for an idea to bonk you on the head,” Ryan says from a Los Angeles studio, with Bunetta. “And if you’re sort of winking at it, laughing at it — we were probably joking, ‘What if [the next line was] “More than a feeling”? Well, that would actually be tight!’”

“Better Than Words,” closed One Direction’s third album, Midnight Memories. It was never a single, but became a fan-favorite live-show staple. It’s a midtempo headbanger that captures the essence of what One Direction is, and always was: One of the great rock & roll bands of the 21st century.

July 23rd marks One Direction’s 10th anniversary, the day Simon Cowell told Harry Styles, Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Liam Payne, and Louis Tomlinson that they would progress on The X Factor as a group. Between that date and their last live performance (so far, one can hope) on December 31st, 2015, they released five albums, toured the world four times — twice playing stadiums — and left a trove of Top 10 hits for a devoted global fan base that came to life at the moment social media was redefining the contours of fandom. 

It’d been a decade since the heyday of ‘NSync and Backstreet Boys, and the churn of generations demanded a new boy band. One Direction’s songs were great and their charisma and chemistry undeniable, but what made them stick was a sound unlike anything else in pop — rooted in guitar rock at a time when that couldn’t have been more passé.

Kotecha, who met 1D on The X Factor and shepherded them through their first few years, is a devoted student of the history of boy bands. He first witnessed their power back in the Eighties, when New Kids on the Block helped his older sister through her teens. The common thread linking all great boy bands, from New Kids to BSB, he says, is, “When they’d break, they’d come out of nowhere, sounding like nothing that’s on the radio.”

In 2010, Kotecha remembers, “everybody was doing this sort of Rihanna dance pop.” But that just wasn’t a sound One Direction could pull off (the Wanted did it only once); and famously, they didn’t even dance. Instead, the reference points for 1D went all the way back to the source of contemporary boy bands.

“Me and Simon would talk about how [One Direction] was Beatlesque, Monkees-esque,” Kotecha continues. “They had such big personalities. I felt like a kid again when I was around them. And I felt like the only music you could really do that with is fun, poppy guitar songs. It would come out of left field and become something owned by the fans.”

To craft that sound on 1D’s first two albums, Up All Night and Take Me Home, Kotecha worked mostly with Swedish songwriters-producers Carl Falk and Rami Yacoub. They’d all studied at the Max Martin/Cheiron Studios school of pop craftsmanship, and Falk says they were confident they could crack the boy-band code once more with songs that recalled BSB and ‘NSync, but replaced the dated synths and pianos with guitars. 

The greatest thing popular music can do is make someone else think, “I can do that,” and One Direction’s music was designed with that intent. “The guitar riff had to be so simple that my friend’s 15-year-old daughter could play it and put a cover to YouTube,” Falk says. “If you listen to ‘What Makes You Beautiful’ or ‘One Thing,’ they have two-finger guitar riffs that everyone who can play a bit of guitar can learn. That was all on purpose.”

One Direction famously finished third on The X Factor, but Cowell immediately signed them to his label, Syco Music. They’d gone through one round of artist development boot camp on the show, and another followed on an X Factor live tour in spring 2011. They’d developed an onstage confidence, but the studio presented a new challenge. “We had to create who should do what in One Direction,” Falk says. To solve the puzzle the band’s five voices presented, they chose the kitchen sink method and everyone tried everything.

“They were searching for themselves,” Falk adds. “It was like, Harry, let’s just record him; he’s not afraid of anything. Liam’s the perfect song starter, and then you put Zayn on top with this high falsetto. Louis found his voice when we did ‘Change Your Mind.’ It was a long trial for everyone to find their strengths and weaknesses, but that was also the fun part.” Falk also gave Niall some of his first real guitar lessons; there’s video of them performing “One Thing” together, still blessedly up on YouTube.

“What Makes You Beautiful” was released September 11th, 2011 in the U.K. and debuted at Number One on the singles chart there — though the video had dropped a month prior. While One Direction’s immediate success in the U.K. and other parts of Europe wasn’t guaranteed, the home field odds were favorable. European markets have historically been kinder to boy bands than the U.S.; ‘N Sync and Backstreet Boys found huge success abroad before they conquered home. To that end, neither Kotecha nor Falk were sure 1D would break in the U.S. Falk even says of conceiving the band’s sound, “We didn’t want it to sound too American, because this was not meant — for us, at least — to work in America. This was gonna work in the U.K. and maybe outside the U.K.”

Stoking anticipation for “What Makes You Beautiful” by releasing the video on YouTube before the single dropped, preceded the strategy Columbia Records (the band’s U.S. label) adopted for Up All Night. Between its November 2011 arrival in the U.K. and its U.S. release in March 2012, Columbia eschewed traditional radio strategies and built hype on social media. One Direction had been extremely online since their X Factor days, engaging with fans and spending their downtime making silly videos to share. One goofy tune, made with Kotecha, called “Vas Happenin’ Boys?” was an early viral hit.

“They instinctively had this — and it might just be a generational thing — they just knew how to speak to their fans,” Kotecha says. “And they did that by being themselves. That was a unique thing about these boys: When the cameras turned on, they didn’t change who they were.”

Social media was flooded with One Direction contests and petitions to bring the band to fans’ towns. Radio stations were inundated with calls to play “What Makes You Beautiful” long before it was even available. When it did finally arrive, Kotecha (who was in Sweden at the time) remembers staying up all night to watch it climb the iTunes chart with each refresh.

Take Me Home, was recorded primarily in Stockholm and London during and after their first world tour. The success of Up All Night had attracted an array of top songwriting talent — Ed Sheeran even penned two hopeless romantic sad lad tunes, “Little Things” and “Over Again” — but Kotecha, Falk and Yacoub grabbed the reins, collaborating on six of the album’s 13 tracks. In charting their course, Kotecha returned to his boy band history: “My theory was, you give them a similar sound on album two, and album three is when you start moving on.”

Still, there was the inherent pressure of the second album to contend with. The label wanted a “What Makes You Beautiful, Part 2,” and evidence that the 1D phenomenon wasn’t slowing down appeared outside the window of the Stockholm studio: so many fans, the street had to be shut down. Kotecha even remembers seeing police officers with missing person photos, combing through the girls camped outside, looking for teens to return to their parents.

At this pivotal moment, One Direction made it clear that they wanted a greater say in their artistic future. Kotecha admits he was wary at first, but the band was determined. To help manage the workload, Kotecha had brought in two young songwriters, Kristoffer Fogelmark and Albin Nedler, who’d arrived with a handful of ideas, including a chorus for a booming power ballad called “Last First Kiss.”

“We thought, while we’re busy recording vocals, whoever’s not busy can go write songs with these two guys, and then we’ll help shape them as much as we can,” Kotecha says. “And to our pleasant surprise, the songs were pretty damn good.”

At this pivotal moment, too, songwriters Julian Bunetta and John Ryan also met the band. Friends from the Berklee College of Music, Bunetta and Ryan had moved out to L.A. and cut a few tracks, but still had no hits to their name. They entered the Syco orbit after scoring work on the U.S. version of The X Factor, and were asked if they wanted to try writing a song for Take Me Home. “I was like, yeah definitely,” Bunetta says. “They sold five million albums? Hell yeah, I want to make some money.”

Working with Jamie Scott, who’d written two songs on Up All Night (“More Than This” and “Stole My Heart”), Bunetta and Ryan wrote “C’mon, C’mon” — a blinding hit of young love that rips down a dance pop speedway through a comically oversized wall of Marshall stacks. It earned them a trip to London. Bunetta admits to thinking the whole 1D thing was “a quick little fad” ahead of their first meeting with the band, but their charms were overwhelming. Everyone hit it off immediately.

“Niall showed me his ass,” Bunetta remembers of the day they recorded, “They Don’t Know About Us,” one of five songs they produced for Take Me Home (two are on the deluxe edition). “The first vocal take, he went in to sing, did a take, I was looking down at the computer screen and was like, ‘On this line, can you sing it this way?’ And I looked over and he was mooning me. I was like, ‘I love this guy!’”

Take Me Home dropped November 9th, just nine days short of Up All Night’s first anniversary. With only seven weeks left in 2012, it became the fourth best-selling album of the year globally, moving 4.4 million copies, per the IFPI; it fell short of Adele’s 21, Taylor Swift’s Red and 1D’s own Up All Night, which had several extra months to sell 4.5 million copies.

Kotecha, Falk and Yacoub’s tracks anchored the album. Songs like “Kiss You,” “Heart Attack” and “Live While We’re Young” were pristine pop rock that One Direction delivered with full delirium, vulnerability and possibility — the essence of the teen — in voices increasingly capable of navigating all the little nuances of that spectrum. And the songs 1D helped write (“Last First Kiss,” “Back for You” and “Summer Love”) remain among the LP’s best.

“You saw that they caught the bug and were really good at it,” Kotecha says of their songwriting. “And moving forward, you got the impression that that was the way for them.”

Like clockwork, the wheels began to churn for album three right after Take Me Home dropped. But unlike those first two records, carving out dedicated studio time for LP3 was going to be difficult — on February 23rd, 2013, One Direction would launch a world tour in London, the first of 123 concerts they’d play that year. They’d have to write and record on the road, and for Kotecha and Falk — both of whom had just had kids — that just wasn’t possible. 

But it was also time for a creative shift. Even Kotecha knew that from his boy band history: album three is, after all, when you start moving on. One Direction was ready, too. Kotecha credits Louis, the oldest member of the group, for “shepherding them into adulthood, away from the very pop-y stuff of the first two albums. He was leading the charge to make sure that they had a more mature sound. And at the time, being in it, it was a little difficult for me, Rami and Carl to grasp — but hindsight, that was the right thing to do.” 

“For three years, this was our schedule,” Bunetta says. “We did X Factor October, November, December. Took off January. February, flew to London. We’d gather ideas with the band, come up with sounds, hang out. Then back to L.A. for March, produce some stuff, then go out on the road with them in April. Get vocals, write a song or two, come back for May, work on the vocals, and produce the songs we wrote on the road. Back to London in June-ish. Back here for July, produce it up. Go back on tour in August, get last bits of vocals, mix in September, back to X Factor in October, album out in November, January off, start it all over again.”

That cycle began in early 2013 when Bunetta and Ryan flew to London for a session that lasted just over a week, but yielded the bulk of Midnight Memories. With songwriters Jamie Scott, Wayne Hector and Ed Drewett they wrote “Best Song Ever” and “You and I,” and, with One Direction, “Diana” and “Midnight Memories.” Bunetta and Ryan’s initial rapport with the band strengthened — they were a few years older, but as Bunetta jokes, “We act like we’re 19 all the time anyway.” Years ago, Bunetta posted an audio clip documenting the creation of “Midnight Memories” — the place-holder chorus was a full-throated, perfectly harmonized, “I love KFC!”

For the most part, Bunetta, Ryan and 1D doubled down on the rock sound their predecessors had forged, but there was one outlier from that week. A stunning bit of post-Mumford festival folk buoyed by a new kind of lyrical and vocal maturity called “Story of My Life.”

“This was a make or break moment for them,” Bunetta says. “They needed to grow up, or they were gonna go away — and they wanted to grow up. To get to the level they got to, you need more than just your fan base. That song extended far beyond their fan base and made people really pay attention.”

Production on Midnight Memories continued on the road, where, like so many bands before them, One Direction unlocked a new dimension to their music. Tour engineer Alex Oriet made it possible, Ryan says, building makeshift vocal booths in hotel rooms by flipping beds up against the walls. Writing and recording was crammed in whenever — 20 minutes before a show, or right after another two-hour performance.

“It preserved the excitement of the moment,” Bunetta says. “We were just there, doing it, marinating in it at all times. You’re capturing moments instead of trying to recreate them. A lot of times we’d write a song, sing it in the hotel, produce it, then fly back out to have them re-sing it — and so many times the demo vocals were better. They hadn’t memorized it yet. They were still in the mood. There was a performance there that you couldn’t recreate.” 

Midnight Memories arrived, per usual, in November 2013. And, per usual, it was a smash. The following year, 1D brought their songs to the environment they always deserved — stadiums around the world — and amid the biggest shows of their career, they worked on their aptly-titled fourth album Four. The 123 concerts 1D had played the year before had strengthened their combined vocal prowess in a way that opened up an array of new possibilities.

“We could use their voices on Four to make something sound more exciting and bigger, rather than having to add too many guitars, synths or drums,” Ryan says.

“They were so much more dynamic and subtle, too,” Bunetta adds. “I don’t think they could’ve pulled off a song like ‘Night Changes’ two albums prior; or the nuance to sing soft and emotionally on ‘Fireproof.’ It takes a lot of experience to deliver a restrained vocal that way.”

Musically, Four was 1D’s most expansive album yet — from the sky-high piano rock of “Steal My Girl” to the tender, tasteful groove of “Fireproof” — and it had the emotional range to match. Now in their early twenties, songs like “Where Do Broken Hearts Go,” “No Control,” “Fool’s Gold” and “Clouds” redrew the dramas and euphorias of adolescence with the new weight, wit and wanton winks of impending adulthood. One Direction wasn’t growing up normally in any sense of the word, but they were becoming songwriters capable of drawing out the most relatable elements from their extraordinary circumstances — like on “Change Your Ticket,” where the turbulent love affairs of young jet-setters are distilled to the universal pang of a long goodbye. There were real relationships inspiring these stories, but now that One Direction was four years into being the biggest band on the planet, it was natural that the relationships within the band would make it into the music as well.

“I think that on Four,” Bunetta says with a slight pause, “there were some tensions going on. A lot of the songs were double — like somebody might be singing about their girlfriend, but there was another meaning that applied to the group as well.”

He continues: “It’s tough going through that age, having to spread your wings with so many eyeballs on you, so much money and no break. It was tough for them to carve out their individual manhood, space and point of view, while learning how to communicate with each other. Even more than relationship things that were going on, that was the bigger blanket that was in there every day, seeping into the songs.”

Bunetta remembers Zayn playing him “Pillowtalk” and a few other songs for the first time through a three a.m. fog of cigarette smoke in a hotel room in Japan.

“Fucking amazing,” he says. “They were fucking awesome. I know creatively he wasn’t getting what he needed from the way that the albums were being made on the road. He wanted to lock himself in the studio and take his time, be methodical. And that just wasn’t possible.”

A month or so later, and 16 shows into One Direction’s “On the Road Again” tour, Zayn left the band. Bunetta and Ryan agree it wasn’t out of the blue: “He was frustrated and wanted to do things outside of the band,” Bunetta says. “It’s a lot for a young kid, all those shows. We’d been with them for a bunch of years at this point — it was a matter of when. You just hoped that it would wait until the last album.”

Still, Bunetta compares the loss to having a finger lopped off, and he acknowledges that Harry, Niall, Liam and Louis struggled to find their bearings as One Direction continued with their stadium tour and next album, Made in the A.M. Just as band tensions bubbled beneath the songs on Four, Zayn’s departure left an imprint on Made in the A.M. Not with any overt malice, but a song like “Drag Me Down,” Bunetta says, reflects the effort to bounce back. Even Niall pushing his voice to the limits of his range on that song wouldn’t have been necessary if Zayn and his trusty falsetto were available.

But Made in the A.M. wasn’t beholden to this shake-up. Bunetta and Ryan cite “Olivia” as a defining track, one that captures just how far One Direction had come as songwriters: They’d written it in 45 minutes, after wasting a whole day trying to write something far worse.

“When you start as a songwriter, you write a bunch of shitty songs, you get better and you keep getting better,” Ryan says. “But then you can get finicky and you’re like, ‘Maybe I have to get smart with this lyric.’ By Made in the A.M. … they were coming into their own in the sense of picking up a guitar, messing around and feeling something, rather than being like, ‘How do I put this puzzle together?’”

After Zayn’s departure, Bunetta and Ryan said it became clear that Made in the A.M. would be One Direction’s last album before some break of indeterminate length. The album boasts the palpable tug of the end, but to One Direction’s credit, that finality is balanced by a strong sense of forever. It’s literally the last sentiment they leave their fans on album-closer “History,” singing, “Baby don’t you know, baby don’t you know/We can live forever.”

In a way, Made in the A.M. is about One Direction as an entity. Not one that belonged to the group, but to everyone they spent five years making music for. Four years since their hiatus and 10 years since their formation, the fans remain One Direction’s defining legacy. Even as all five members have settled into solo careers, Ryan notes that baseless rumors of any kind of reunion — even a meager Zoom call — can still set the internet on fire. The old songs remain potent, too: Carl Falk says his nine-year-old son has taken to making TikToks to 1D tracks.

There are plenty of metrics to quantify One Direction’s reach, success and influence. The hard numbers — album sales and concert stubs — are staggering on their own, but the ineffable is always more fun. One Direction was such a good band that a fan, half-jokingly, but then kinda seriously, started a GoFundMe to buy out their contract and grant them full artistic freedom. One Direction was such a good band that songwriters like Kotecha and Falk — who would go on to make hits with Ariana Grande, the Weeknd and Nicki Minaj — still think about the songs they could’ve made with them. One Direction was such a good band that Mitski covered “Fireproof.”

But maybe it all comes down to the most ineffable thing of all: Chance. Kotecha compares success on talent shows like The X Factor to waking up one morning and being super cut — but now, to keep that figure, you have to work out at a 10, without having done the gradual work to reach that level. That’s the downfall for so many acts, but One Direction was not only able, but willing, to put in the work.

“They’re one of the only acts from those types of shows that managed to do it for such a long time,” Kotecha says. “Five years is a long time for a massive pop star to go nonstop. I know it was tiring, but they were fantastic sports about it. They appreciated and understood the opportunity they had — and, as you can see, they haven’t really stopped since. Most of them weren’t necessarily musicians before this happened, but they loved music, and they found a love of creating, writing and playing. To have these boys — that had been sort of randomly picked — to also have that? It will never be repeated.”

[probably-writing-x]

Knocked off guard.

Arón Piper x Reader

Request by @isthatmaryanna : the other one is with aron where he is like super stressed on the filming of season 4 and he ends up bumping the female reader on the set, she apologizes and he got very mad and stuff like that just because he is stressed, and then he finds out she’s new to the cast and is chris new love interest and he starts to get a crush of her and gets jealous when she’s filming scenes with christian till one day he kisses her when they are recording (Wrote this with Samuel instead of Christian so that it matches season 4🤍)

Gif is not my own

Requests are closed🤍

You’d never known nerves like this until today, they’d been basically eating away at you since you’d first woken up and they hadn’t ceased yet. You were terrified of the impression you’d make on your first proper day of filming for Élite and even more terrified of all of the things that could go wrong. You’d made sure to wake up early enough and try to get onto set within enough time but already found yourself rushing to catch up with the hectic schedule.

“Shit,” You mutter to yourself as you try to find your way back to where they’d told you to meet for your first call to makeup and hair.

You’re so busy trying to make sense of the timetable they’d given you that you don’t notice anybody else around you. Only stopping when you knock into one of them abruptly.

“Fuck!” They exclaim as the drink in their hand spills all down their outfit.

You recognised the clothes instantly as the Las Encinas uniform and realise painfully that you’d just made a first impression on one of your cast mates by knocking into them.

“I’m so so sorry, I wasn’t looking where I was going-“

“Clearly!” The boy scoffs, trying to pat down the wet patch now covering the front of his crisp white shirt.

“I’m so sorry, I’m-“ You stop as you glance up and recognise him as Arón, who played Ander in the show.

“I’m going to be late,” He rolls his eyes, “Just please try and keep your eyes ahead of you next time.”

With that, he takes off in the opposite direction as you try to regain composure and continue in the direction you’d been previously heading towards.

You reach hair and makeup and it relaxes you when the team are genuinely nice to you for the whole time. They ask you about your new role as Samuels love interest and you chat to them about everything they felt you should know about working on the show.

“No I don’t think we need to-“ A new voice speaks as the door opens and two guys walk in to have their hair and makeup done, “Hey! I don’t think we’ve met before.”

You stand up and recognise the boy as Omar, who played his same name character on the show, “Yeah, no, I don’t think we have. I’m (Y/n), I’m playing Savannah.”

“Yes! I completely forgot you were starting today!” Omar exclaims, “Well, I’m Omar, and this is Arón.”

You glance to the boy that had entered with him and notice him instantly as the boy you’d knocked into earlier. His eyes fall to his feet to avoid eye contact as he instead turns to sit down in one of the chairs to get his hair done.

“Dont worry about him,” Omar rolls his eyes, squeezing the boy’s shoulder, “Someone’s being a little grumpy today. Anyway, tell me about yourself. Have you done much acting before?”

Just like that, the impression you’d made on the cast so far seems to clearly improve. You chat to Omar and get up to the stage where it feels as though you’ve known each other for a lot longer than a matter of minutes.

“When are your first scenes?” Omar asks you, “I’ll walk you down to set if you like.”

“I think I have to be there in ten minutes, that would be great thank you!”

He agrees and the two of you head out to start walking towards where you’d first be filming for the day.

- - - - - -

You’re introduced to Itzan who was going to be your main love interest in the show. It’s a relief when he’s genuinely lovely to you and makes it easy to feel natural around him.

“I wouldn’t worry, this place is full of second chances,” Itzan shakes his head as he speaks Samuels line, “All of us here, we’re on at least our fifth chance.”

“Maybe I won’t do so bad then,” You smile, “Thank you, by the way.”

He readjusts his grip on his bag strap and nods bashfully to you, “It was nice to meet you, (Y/n).”

The director yells cut and somehow you find yourself finishing your first full scene of the day. It had gone a lot more smoothly than you’d expected. Especially having started the day by spilling hot coffee over one of your cast mates.

“Omar and Miguel to set for next scene,” One of the crew calls, you think they introduced themselves earlier but it was already becoming overwhelming to remember all of these new people.

You take your seat on one of the black canvas chairs and prepare to watch the scene unfold in which Guzmán and Omar share a heart to heart about Nadia, where Guzmán confesses everything he regrets about what happened between them and what he would’ve done if he’d have had another chance with her before she left. You’re soon joined by someone beside you in the next seat and glance over to recognise Arón on your right hand side.

“So, you’re the new cast member,” He comments, twisting open his water bottle, “You didn’t introduce yourself earlier.”

“I didn’t really have the chance,” You return, shifting a little in the chair beneath you.

He scoffs, “I was too busy being late and covered in coffee.”

“I did apologise,” You defend, still slightly nervous despite your hope of appearing somewhat confident.

“And I was stressed.”

The conversation falls flat and you let the silence remain as you watch the scene unfold.

- - - - - -

Over the next couple of days, you’re starting to get settled into the motions of things. You’re starting to remember everyone’s names and the crew have been complimenting you on some of your scenes. Itzan was a good screen partner to have, always making you laugh and giving you tips whenever he felt like you were uncertain.

You’re walking through the different sets when you stumble upon Arón in one of the rooms. Nobody was filming at the moment so you found yourself slightly bemused as you watch him flop face down onto the bed beneath him that was normally used as a bedroom in the show.

“You know the cameras aren’t rolling?” You comment, unsure as to why you bother speaking anyway, “Or did you just need to practise that scene?”

He turns his head and looks in your direction. The two of you had spoken very minimally over the past days as he’d clearly continued that stressed attitude ever since you first met. You’d gotten to the point where you simply treated it as him being completely rude. Even if you didn’t want to accept that.

“I just needed some peace,” He mumbles, shuffling on the duvet of the bed as his arms fall at either of his sides.

“Sorry, I’ll leave you,” You comment bashfully, going to walk away.

“How have you been finding it so far?”

It surprises you. Of course it does. Up until now you’d assumed that he simply just didn’t like you. Perhaps not.

“It’s been good, everyone’s been really friendly,” You smile, “And I think my scenes have been going well.”

“Yeah, they won’t stop telling us how great you are,” He scoffs, “Seems like you’ve made a good first impression.”

“Well, on most people.”

He’s silent this time.

“I should go,” You say, not wanting to say anything more that might ruin the nicest moment you’ve shared with him.

“I’m sorry I’ve been so rude to you. I’ve just been a little stressed,” Arón admits, “I’m not really sure how to approach my storylines this season and I guess I’m just letting it get to me too much.”

“What do you mean?” You walk into the room and take a seat on the bed beside him as he shifts to sit up.

“I’ve always had such intense storylines, theres always something bad going on. But, this time, Anders actually happy - him and Omar are doing well for the first time in forever. I’m not really used to it,” He shakes his head, “Sorry, you don’t need to hear my acting problems.”

“Well, I guess I’m not the best person to give advice,” You start cautiously yet again, “But I would say that you should use exactly that. Anders not going to be used to it either, he’s never had that time where he’s simply been happy so he’d probably feel exactly the way that you do about having to act that story. Use that.”

He stays silent and you’re certain you’ve said the wrong thing.

“I’m sorry, I know that’s probably useless bu-“

“No, no, that makes sense,” He interjects, “Thank you.”

“Well, I should go, I asked Itzan if he’d run lines with me,” You explain, “See you later.”

“Yeah, bye (Y/n).”

- - - - - -

The next day, you’re filming your first kiss with Samuel. It sounded silly but you’d never been so nervous to film a scene - it would be the first time where you had to show that sort of affection on camera and it felt intimidating to say the least.

You’d been nervous all morning, for something so annoyingly simple.

You’re hurrying down towards your trailer when you knock into someone on the way.

“Fuck!” You exclaim as your water pours down you.

As irony would have it, it’s Arón stood in front of you.

“Looks like karma circled back round,” He smirks at the sight.

“Not now Arón,” You mutter, dashing off before he can say anything more.

It was harsh, you knew it was deep down. But you were so caught up in your own stress that you couldn’t really think of anything beyond that. You carried on towards your trailer and prayed they’d left you a spare uniform to change into if need be.

It’s ten minutes later when there’s a knock at your door and Arón is stood on the other side.

“Hey! Sorry about that, I should’ve been looking where I was going,” He comments, you’re too pressured to notice how he seemed slightly nervous.

“It’s fine, don’t worry about it,” You rush to say as you search for the right script amongst your stuff.

“Are you okay?” He frowns, “You seem a little-“

“Stressed?” You finish for him as you turn around, his appearance relaxing you a little, “I’m sorry, I’ve just got my first kiss scene with Itzan today and I’m really nervous about it.”

He laughs gently, “Why? Do you like him or something?”

“What?” You scoff, “Of course I don’t. I just don’t want to fuck it up.”

“Okay...” Arón starts, “Well, wouldnt your character be nervous too? Maybe you should take your own advice and use that.”

You smirk at his attempts at helping, “Well, this is a real role reversal!”

He steps inside from where he’d been waiting in the doorway and smirks, “Or... you could just practise.”

“Practise?” You cock a brow, “What? Ask Itzan to kiss me before the cameras roll?”

Without any further introduction, Arón takes a stride forward until he’s close enough for you to understand his real intention. He leans in only ninety percent of the way, waiting for your approval to seal the last ten percent. When you do, his eyes flutter shut and his lips curl into a smile against yours.

“Was that your plan all along?” You mumble against his lips as he pulls away.

“We all need ways of coping with stress,” He smirks a little, “Is that so bad?”

You laugh and try to fight against the bold blush on your cheeks.

“And you have nothing to worry about. You’re a much better kisser than Omar.”

“Well, I was coming to get (Y/n) to set but looks like I’ve seen and heard much more than I needed to,” Omar raises his brows from where he stood at your door, “I’ll tell them you’ll be a little late. Close your fucking door next time!” He laughs and walks off.

“Any less stressed?” Arón cocks a brow at you.

“Maybe let’s try that again.”

[senorarelojes]

Fic: Happiest Girl (Part 10)

Alan makes a bet that Dave would not be able to pass off as a woman in ladies’ clothing. Dave decides to prove him wrong. (This is set sometime during the Black Celebration era.)

Pairing: Dave/Alan Rating: Explicit Notes: Thank you @pinksyndication, @what-could-have-been and @im-knocking-on-deaths-door for generally being wonderful! Also, @what-could-have-been outdid themselves with this fantastic artwork of Alan shaving Dave’s legs from Part 4. It’s so hot, I can’t get over blushing Alan!

Part 1 is here. Part 2 is here. Part 3 is here. Part 4 is here. Part 5 is here. Part 6 is here. Part 7 is here. Part 8 is here. Part 9 is here.

By unspoken agreement, they’d gone back to Alan’s room. Everything was exactly where they’d left it, various tubes of lipstick and eyeshadow palettes strewn all over Alan’s dressing table, the shaving implements still left abandoned beside the tub. It was a testament to how distracted Alan must have been earlier; Dave knew he normally would have cleared everything away neatly before leaving.

Then again, Dave couldn’t quite blame him. It’d been a really strange but illuminating evening.

Alan helped him with the wig first, sliding out the hairpins before taking it off Dave’s head. Dave couldn’t help the sigh of relief. It had been fun, having long hair, but it was starting to get a bit hot and itchy as well. Alan also unzipped the dress for him, and they dropped it into the bag designated for hotel laundry. Once Dave was just in his briefs, he hooked an arm around Alan’s neck and dragged him closer, kissing him with a low sigh. Alan hummed in approval, a hand slipping into Dave’s underwear to squeeze his bum. Dave could probably get hard again in a while or so, but Alan obviously wasn’t having a problem with that now.

Dave broke off the kiss, much to Alan’s obvious displeasure which made him chuckle. “Lie down on the bed,” he told Alan. 

“Why?” 

“I’d like to get my mouth on you, if you don’t mind,” Dave said with a grin. He laughed outright when Alan immediately started shedding his clothes, leaving them in a neat pile before bouncing on top of the mattress, naked and smiling devilishly at Dave.

It was impossible to resist the siren call of a naked Alan in bed. Dave immediately climbed on top of Alan, kissing him deeply like he’d wanted to the whole night - and for a really long time now, if he were being honest with himself. Making out with Alan was completely unlike being with a woman; Alan’s body was firm and unmistakably masculine, from the scattering of hair on his chest down to the strong, muscled legs tangling with Dave’s own. And fuck, the way Alan kissed him, sure and possessive, like he was trying to shove that clever tongue right down Dave’s throat. 

And the biggest reminder that Alan was a man was pressing pointedly against Dave’s hip, leaving a sticky trail of pre-come all over his skin. Alan was already so wet, and he sighed when Dave reached down and brushed his thumb over the head of Alan’s cock, smearing the wetness gathered there. “Fuck, Dave.”

Dave held his gaze as he raised his hand to his mouth, licking Alan off his thumb and watching Alan’s pupils dilate. “You taste good,” Dave whispered, before leaning down and slipping his tongue into Alan’s slack mouth.

When they broke apart for breath, Alan was panting now, high spots of colour in his cheeks. Not so indifferent now, are you? Dave thought smugly, nipping at Alan’s lips. “I want to suck your cock,” Dave told him with a grin, as Alan’s nostrils flared. “But be nice, it’s my first go.”

“I’m always nice,” Alan deadpanned, before they shared a wry glance and dissolved into laughter together. Dave pretended to cuff him on the ear before licking the shell, making Alan shiver as Dave travelled down his body, taking in Alan’s scent of sweat and faded cologne.

However, he had no idea what to do or how to react now that he was finally face to face with Alan’s erection. Alan was slightly longer than him, although Dave was thicker, and the head of his cock had a nice shape. Dave experimentally licked off the fluid on the tip of it, which made Alan almost kick him off the bed. “What the fuck, Al?” Dave demanded, steadying himself on the mattress.

“Sorry, sorry.” Alan seemed torn between watching Dave and flinging his arm over his eyes. “Er, proceed.”

All right, it seemed that Alan was especially sensitive there. Dave made a mental note of it, kissing the tip of Alan’s penis before experimentally wrapping his lips around the head.

Alan was moaning like he’d been drugged, fingers clawed in the bedsheets. Dave was getting a huge thrill of seeing Alan - always so restrained, always so cool - lose his mind like this in bed. And Dave hadn’t even tried to take him in fully yet. Eyeing Alan’s length and gauging it with his hand, he didn’t think he’d be able to fit all of Alan in his mouth. But he could damn well try his best.

Trying to remember all the times he’d gotten blowjobs from various women, Dave loosened his jaw and slid his mouth down a few inches, praying Alan wouldn’t buck him off the bed. He had no idea what he was doing, but Alan was groaning with such approval, eyes shut in utter bliss. Encouraged by Alan’s extremely appreciative reactions, Dave tried to bob his head up and down a bit, supporting himself by planting a hand on Alan’s thigh while the other curled around the shaft a little uncertainly to cover where Dave’s mouth couldn’t quite reach.  

Alan was still leaking pre-come like crazy, enough that Dave had to wipe his mouth with the back of a hand. “Wow, Al.” Dave was a little in awe; he’d imagined all sorts of lurid fantasies with Alan, but no amount of fantasizing on the tour bus could have prepared him for the reality of having Alan laid out in front of him like this, his taste a little salty and bitter on Dave’s tongue.

“Come here,” Alan himself sounded wrecked. Dave quickly crawled up his body, their mouths meeting again in an urgent clash of lips and tongues. They were rutting together messily now, Dave’s almost fully hard erection rubbing against Alan’s stomach while Alan’s cock was bumping against Dave’s hip. Suddenly Alan came with a silent cry as Dave nipped at his jaw, and it took Dave just a few more thrusts in the slickness created by Alan’s semen before he buried his face in Alan’s neck, both of them panting as though they’d just run a race.

Dave was normally really relaxed and a little sleepy after a good orgasm. Fuck, he’d had two now, almost in a row. So he didn’t know why his mind was racing, his heart still hammering in his chest. He was trying to decide whether to risk a glance at Alan's face or not, afraid of what he would find there. What if Alan regretted this? What if this really was just a silly bet they’d taken too far because of alcohol and God knows what else?

“Ooof.” Alan sounded normal enough as he rolled over, nudging Dave in the ribs. “I don’t know about you, but-- I desperately need a shower.”

“Oh.” Dave didn’t know what to say. Was Alan trying to get rid of him? “Should I go back to my room, then?”

“What?” Alan gave him a look that could only be described as the non-verbal equivalent of ‘puh-lease’. “Don’t be silly, there’s plenty of hot water here.” His mouth crooked up in amusement again. “Unless you want the hotel staff to catch you sneaking back in your briefs? Or worse, Mart and Fletch?”

“God, no.” Dave happily got up and followed Alan to the bathroom, deciding not to mention that he had clothes stashed in Alan’s wardrobe. After all, there was no point looking a gift horse in the mouth.

***

Dave woke up before Alan did. They’d forgotten to draw the curtains before passing out in bed last night, and it was already starting to get light outside. Alan had his head buried under the pillow, his towel dried hair sticking up in spikes from underneath. His t-shirt was rucked up so his belly was exposed, and Dave watched the soft rise and fall of his stomach for a while.

The very real panic he’d felt in the alley outside the club came back with a vengeance. Alan was his friend, his male best friend, his bandmate and colleague. It was true, he’d been attracted to Alan for quite a while now, but he’d always resigned himself to letting it simmer below the surface, unwilling to recognise it and give it a name. Then this stupid bet had come along and blown everything out of the water, setting things in motion that Dave didn’t know how to handle. 

He rolled over in bed, adjusting his shorts thoughtfully. Even now, after the wig and the dress and the make-up were gone, he still wanted Alan with a longing that both thrilled and depressed him.

Sitting up, Dave quietly got out and wrote a quick note on the hotel writing pad, letting Alan know he’d gone back to his room first to pack since they were leaving Hamburg right after the gig tonight. It was a valid enough excuse. Whenever one of them had crashed in the other’s room after a drunken night of partying, it wasn’t abnormal to wake up and find the other one gone. Dave had done it to Alan plenty of times before, and vice versa. It was what mates did.

So he didn’t know why he still felt riddled with guilt as he snuck out of Alan’s room and back to his own.

***

Martin and Fletch were already at the hotel restaurant, helping themselves to the breakfast buffet and looking as hungover as Dave felt. Martin was peering at a German newspaper and nibbling on a pastry, while Fletch was diving into some combination of potatoes and sausages with gusto. They nodded when they saw Dave. “How was last night with the record people?” he asked them, taking a seat opposite Fletch.

“Brilliant,” Fletch told him with his mouth full, which made Martin wrinkle his nose. “You and Al missed out.”

“We saw him with some bird, though,” Martin said, failing to notice Dave’s blush as he nudged Fletch with a frown. “It was at-- um, what was that club again?”

“Something with a weird name. Ballsack or wotsit,” Fletch suggested, making Martin let out a sharp bark of laughter.

“Baalsaal, yeah.” An amused Martin turned back to Dave. “Where were you? We didn’t see you.”

Dave was thankful for the timely hotel staff who served him a double espresso, so that he could hide his face behind the cup. “Dunno, probably dancing.”

“Al’s date last night was pretty,” Fletch commented, shoving more food into his mouth. 

Martin flipped over to the next page of the newspaper. “Thought you said you couldn’t see her face.”

“Saw a bit. It was her arse that stole the show, though.” Fletch sighed, as Dave almost spat out his espresso. “How does Slick get all the pretty ones?”

“Speaking of whom--” Martin gestured with his chin, the three of them turning to watch Alan crossing the lobby, his video-camera bag hoisted on his shoulder. Dave took advantage of the diversion to clear his throat, downing a glass of water as Alan joined them at the table. He didn’t look at Dave.

“Got lucky last night, did you?” Fletch grinned at him with a wink. “You’re welcome, by the way, for us making ourselves scarce.”

Alan simply seemed amused. “Why are we talking about this?” 

“It’s better than Andy talking about your date’s beautiful arse,” a bored Martin said, flipping to the comics. 

Alan’s lips twitched up slyly. “She did have a fantastic bum.” Now Alan turned to Dave, evil pouring off him in waves. “What did you think, Dave? You met her.”

Dave felt like his face was on fire; he didn’t know whether he wanted to wipe the smirk off Alan’s face with a punch or a kiss. “I think you lot are all cracked,” he said, as the rest chuckled.

“You two had a great night too, then?” Alan said to Mart and Fletch, and Dave really had to admire the smooth way Alan gracefully changed the subject. The other two were now engrossed in telling them about their night out, Alan nodding along as he sipped his cup of tea while Dave poked at a piece of toast. The animated conversation died with the arrival of a cheery Daryl, armed with their hectic schedule for the day. Radio interviews, then a few telly appearances before a rushed soundcheck and a meet-and-greet with some VIPs. Then there was the big show, of course, after which they had to board the bus for West Berlin. Dave already felt tired.

Gobbling up the last of their breakfast and tea, Dave stopped to sign an autograph for the starry-eyed waiter as the rest made their way to the waiting tour bus. It was only when he looked up that he realised Alan was waiting for him at the doorway, a little smile playing about his lips. “Did you hear about my date last night with the great arse?” he said, as Dave caught up with him.

“Wait until you hear about my date, who is a great arse,” Dave muttered, although he admittedly felt relieved as Alan laughed. Maybe things would be normal between them again. (Note: I might stop posting Happiest Girl on Tumblr once it goes up on AO3.)

[gothamstreetcat]

Please share your thoughts based of the bingo cards below because I wanna know 👀

i am absolutely going to be talking about all things controversial below the cut: ᵖˡᵉᵃˢᵉ ᵈᵒⁿ'ᵗ ʳᵉᵃᵈ ᶦᶠ ʸᵒᵘ ᵃʳᵉ ᵃ ᶠᵃⁿ ᵒᶠ ᵇᵃʳᵇᵃʳᵃ ᵃⁿᵈ ᵗᵃᵇᶦᵗʰᵃ 

season one

there isn't much I think is super controversial in season one, but I will definitely be talking about selina, the batcat kiss, and the overall season itself

on selina i have to say i was a little nervous before the show aired. it’s silly but also understandable for me because i always find myself getting nervous whenever someone new takes on a character I love. but honestly, i think camren is the best selina kyle we could have asked for. there is just always something about each catwoman/selina kyle i didn’t like, but with camren i think we get the most true and genuine portrayal because gotham shows her childhood—a obviously important part to selina’s character. it’s a side of her we never get to see much of in the comics or in films, and i just find it a very important part to her character. 

sometimes I think people are too drawn into making selina something more (holy tim burton, batman! she’s got cat powers!). and I hate to throw tim  under the bus with this, but over time the whole cat powers thing really pissed me off because part of what I loved about selina was how she was a regular person. she didn’t need cat powers to be great or special. it also kinda makes me sad when people compare cam’s selina so much to pfeiffer’s because a. camren is her own selina and shouldn’t be put under that kind of pressure and b. I really can’t see someone as tough as camren’s selina becoming some old man’s assistant with “corndogs” as a (cat)chprase(?) 

i know it’s silly, but another thing about cam’s selina is how much i just love her. i just grew up wanting to be her and be like her. i wanted to be hardened by city streets and i know it’s dumb but i don’t think i have to explain why i feel such a strong way about her. we all have our favorite characters. **more of this hot mess in the tags

moving into the batcat kiss i was initially really uncomfortable and disappointed with it. david and cam were young at the time, therefore, so were bruce and selina, and i just honestly feel like it was too soon. however, i know in an interview they talked about it and were okay with it—cam saying how she was able to separate herself from the character—so I have grown to be more tolerant of it (is it dumb to say i was a little embarrassed for them because that’s how i would feel if it was me?) i am also not innocent because i did make a gifset of the kiss but it was also paired with selina asking for bruce’s consent, and i only made it because i liked the parallels (queue a young me making gifs on makeagif.com) Now, I will highly advocate for that gifset because to me it really shows how much selina went to get bruce’s ‘okay’ before she kissed him. i feel as though we are always advocating so much when it comes to a woman’s consent but never when it is a man’s and both are equally as important but we’ll get into that later in this post. 

another thing i want to add, is how i’d like to believe i have some idea as to why they did the kiss in the first place. i want to believe it had something to do with the trauma of the day, or the fact that bruce is a boy who showed selina genuine kindness when she is clearly someone who has gone without. god forbid it only to be seen as ‘cute’ but perhaps, because selina wanted to know what it felt like to be touched in that sort of way. by someone like Bruce (who was innocent and had never been kissed) maybe it was some sort of way to thank him or a parting gift, to which i’m sure people would say that’s wrong but i feel with selina’s background it makes sense. as if it was a way for bruce to remember her by. now, i personally wouldn’t know what any of that feels like so maybe that throws all my credibility out the window but these are just my ideas.

the season overall i hold onto dear, i know we all have our favorites and this isn’t controversial, but you can’t beat the first. sometimes, i do feel like shows lose their way and loose that little spark when they first got started. and to be honest, i did feel that a little with gotham. not only that (and i’ve said this before so i’m sorry if i’m a broken record) but with gotham it gaves us these characters we are so used to seeing a certain way. the show took these seeming monsters and turned them human and we as watchers related to them. edward nygma was a nerd working at the gcpd. oswald was a guy holding an umbrella, turned dishwasher who then became the king of gotham. poison ivy was just a kid. everything was so new and fresh and exciting. so yeah, i think that’s a wrap on season one

season two

the only thing i am really going to talk about from this season was ‘babitha.’ again, i am sorry for anyone who follows me, is reading this and is a fan of them but in all seriousness: their relationship was toxic as hell. first off, i really didn’t like barbara nor tabitha before hand. barbara always felt whiny and needy while tabitha was played like some ditzy woman for her brother. together they were highly annoying, and i almost hate say that because independently tabitha was a really strong character. i still didn’t like her but i see and appreciate her without her brother. 

going into that i really think there where times barbara dragged her down. times where barbara was unstable, power-hungry and it just seemed like tabitha was not enough unless she had more. barbara also didn’t seem to like the idea that butch had a special place in tabitha’s heart (and then later killed him). i mean this is a funny way, but barbara can come off like that kid who was never told ‘no’ in her life.

not to mention when tabitha died and barbara went and fucked jim for the sake it of, i guess. i know everyone grieves differently and holy batgirl, batman! but it doesn’t seem right.

i wish i had more to say on them with better examples, but i honestly have way more to say regarding the sirens so i’m gonna let you read that instead.

honorable mentions include: bridgit pike deserving better because that girl could never catch a break. and the true ending of herself and karen jennings meeting, falling in love, and leaving gotham together. it honestly makes me sad i made up this ship and it feels like i’m the only one keeping it afloat. 

season three

again, i have my issues regarding the siren’s team up, so i was unhappy when they decided to make tabitha galavan selina’s mentor. i personally would not want to pair someone as vulnerable as selina with someone who physically and mentally abused her, but okay gotham. so that is where my ted grant comment came in, i assume you’ve read the comics and know that ted was one of the few who originally trained selina before becoming catwoman. therefore, i was disappointed they didn’t use him as i find him a better canidate for a mentor but also such an important person in her story. he would have been a great addition to the show. 

of course my first honorable mention must go to the batman returns scene because you’re only hip if piggy-back off of tim burton. as i mentioned above i don’t like how much cam’s selina is compared to pfieffer’s. i don’t understand why they had to re-create something i already think is over hyped when gotham is already a great show on it’s own, it would have been redeeming if they had not done the ‘cat power’ thing in season five but thankfully they didn’t really use it.it really pisses me off how much they really tried to make that scene frame for frame. 

my second honorable mention is going to be given to selina not knowing five was bruce because of his scars & alfred and maria respectively. i could talk a lot about why i love maria and alfred--i understand why people don’t like her and they’re right to do so, however, i do think they are right for one another. they both have jaded pasts, and yeah, the show was teasing love-interests for alfred a here and there but how can you not be happy for him when he saw selina’s mom? i think people should be redeemed and i honestly think maria was at least changed by her time at wayne manor and if you want i wrote a fic about alfred and maria but it’s totally bad writing wise so don’t read it. also. i’m sorry it’s dirty and i couldn’t go through with it. it’s kinda bad

as for selina and five i think there is something imamate about selina knowing bruce’s scars (not gonna lie,i was honestly going to talk about this but i’m too tired and don’t think i have anything meaningful to have)

season four

this is probably going to be the hardest season for me to talk about. and the only two things i’m going to cover are the toxic manipulation and abuse between the sirens team-up, as well as the sexual abuse bruce endured.

on the sirens i just wanna say i hopefully plan in the future to make a master-post involving this trio. i want to be as clear as possible and include the episodes but in case i don’t i’m just going to try my best. keep in mind i made this post regarding this topic a long time ago if you want the quick version. if you do check it out it’s been a while since i read it so it is probably messy and ugly. i also want to point out i’m going to try and talk about how much of the adults in selina’s life failed her. barbara and tabitha hit this mark pretty hard since at least barbara was there in the beginning stages of her life, and the trio themselves were made to appear as some sort of strong power-house.

i get on a surface level why fans like the barabra/tabitha + selina team-up (because girl power i guess), but i honestly can’t get over the abuse selina endured to even get to the point of being in a group. much of their relationship seemed more about tabitha and barbara loving to have her rather then love her, period. there were times during their involvement that it was clear selina was not an equal, and times where being with them made selina weaker (speaking about when she called upon them for help in that one episode where she was trapped, yet you’re telling me this is the same girl who took out that guy’s eyes from season one?) several times, selina appeared to be talked down to and treated as though she couldn’t handle tasks, yet has been homeless her whole life and has broken in and out of prison. 

the interaction between barbara and selina from season one haunts me a great deal for the way barbara spoke to selina and was objectifying her. i made a long-post/ask about it here which i encourage you to look at. this is particularly hard for me to talk about for the simple fact of selina being a child of the streets and barbara speaking to her like she’s trying to pimp her out *for lack of a better way of saying it* i just don’t think this is something an adult should be saying to selina because the truth is that barabara is the adult and should do better. her and tabitha even dressed her up for that club commercial (in which selina was clearly unhappy) and had her running a club full of underage kids developing a drinking problem and one very small boy being taken advantage of. 

people hate it when alfred slapped selina but when tabitha punched selina unconscious and kidnaped her for barbara it’s no big deal

and the episode “to our deaths and beyond” hits deepest and is a clean sign of manipulation when they both tricked selina into bringing bruce so they could mutilate him for his blood. even when he was crying and panicking barbara help him down and tabitha held selina back from helping him. 

here is a gifset about the scene and *lex i’m sorry for using your set if you happen to see this (but please don’t see this because i don’t wanna make anyone feel bad and i just want to speak freely about what i believe) 

again, not treating selina with respect, and when she straight told them she would have not brought bruce BECAUSE HE IS HER FRIEND, tabitha got defense and questioned her loyalty. first off, you are an adult and should know how to act better. she knew selina wouldn’t have brought bruce otherwise because they knew what they were doing was wrong. they knew how much bruce meant to selina and for them to try to guilt her is awful in itself. tricking and manipulating bruce is awful. mutilating him is awful. and holding selina back from helping her friend after you lied to her is awful--this is honestly one of the most sickening things for me to watch *not to mention why you would not want selina to be friends with bruce when he’s clearly a great guy* (but the gifset is pretty no question. shout-out to lex for being so talented)

in addition to this, the entire selina getting shot storyline is right up there too. i understand the writer’s didn’t have enough time to flesh everything out but it wasn’t even mentioned once that barbara and tabitha went to visit her. i believe tabitha might have mentioned it but it was only to get revenge over jeremiah, but they never visited her or checked on her, and she tried to kill herself and still nothing. 

now, i’m not trying to be all biased for bruce wayne because he was there for her every singe day and never left her side. nor would i ever mention that idea of bruce physically helping selina care for her own body when she couldn’t. how he got her that medicine to heal her pain and held her while she screamed that she wanted to die. all the while doing everything he could to help her not feel that way again.

you can say a lot of things about bruce wayne. people love to talk shit about him. but at the end of the day you can never say he was a bad friend, because he was the best. and you can’t say that for barbara and tabitha (not only to add how all the abuse was never brought up nor apologized for)

now, onto something that i am a big advocate for and particularly boils my blood. bruce’s alcohol problem and constant physical abuse by the adults in the show. 

i am mainly speaking about ivy (peyton list) however, while reading a reddit thread someone said that grace’s actress as twenty-one years of age, also kissing david (who i believe was sixteen at the time). someone else, also said that it wasn’t really illegal but i honestly do not care. if the roles were reversed and it was a young girl vs an older man, people would be in outrage and i don’t think that should change be it david.

the scene with peyton particularly bothers me because she is substantially older, and while you could argue it might not be david based off how the scene was shot, i highly doubt it. it’s wrong no matter how you slice it and it particularly bothers me because the abuse surrounding men/boys is taken so lightly. i’m not trying to put presidency over female abuse, as i believe both are equal in how awful they are, but there is evidence behind males being mocked. something that is at a higher volume, and it makes me wonder the number of rapes that go unreported or those who can’t talk about it because they won’t be believed. i’ve already seen it but i would be lying if i said i wasn’t worried for david to be conditioned to think what happened to him was fun or cool.

on top of all the kissing in the club scene followed by waking up in bed with the two girls--i would not hesitate to think he was taken advantage of in some way. i also can’t even think of his drinking days and not think of all the people who potentially abused him.

i obviously can’t speak for david and perhaps i’m grasping at straws but this is something that bother me and no one talks about enough.

season five

nothing to add here except while i did miss cam in the final and it wasn’t complete without here, i very much respect her for her choice to walk away. i think it shows a high level of intelligence and integrity (something i wish i had). and i most admire her for passing on the torch when she felt she wasn’t ready, which i think speaks volumes of her and her character. again, selina one selina will always be my favorite so i love the idea of my favorite staying a young girl before she was ready. i don’t think the show was ready. and as much as i would have loved for her to have a cameo like david did, it isn’t here or there and she said she favorite scene was on the staircase. so as far as i’m concerned, that’s the best place to leave on (even though that wasn’t the last scene but we’re ignoring that)

i hope this wasn’t too wordy or long!

[basementsushi]

Nekyia

--^ from this prompt I wrote the short story below, entitled Nekyia. Enjoy!--

I did it! My EMT training is complete, I’m licensed and ready to go, and I officially start my new job on Monday, just over two weeks from now. I got this little notebook at the store today to write that down, to make it feel more real. I did it mom, I did it.

I feel like I should explain. I don’t know why, I can’t imagine anyone else will read this. Mom was an EMT too, a volunteer one in the rural town she grew up and lived in. That’s where she met dad too, after she saved his life after a gun accident. Dad always called her “Angel” after that, because at the hospital doctor’s were surprised he had survived, and he always credited mom’s care with his survival.

Mom passed away when I was really little. I don’t even remember her, aside from pictures and stories, I was only three at the time. From the time I was little I decided to become an EMT, just like her, to honor her memory I suppose, though over time I found myself just as passionate about it as she was (at least, according to my aunt). 

And now I’ve finally done it! I just wish mom and dad were still here with me to celebrate. Dad passed just a couple of years after mom, and I lived with my aunt Camille after that until I was 18. She took me out to dinner yesterday to celebrate, and gave me a necklace my mom apparently always wore, that my dad had wanted me to have one day. I don’t even know how to describe it, it’s a little metal charm almost, in an odd shape I’ve never seen before, strung on a dark, thin cord. I feel closer to her with it though, and have started keeping it in my wallet wherever I go.

Wow, that’s more than I’ve written in a journal than… well, I think ever. And chances are I won’t write here again. I’m going to try, but my track record with these things is pretty bad. I wanted to make sure I did at least something to remember finally reaching my goal.

-----

Well, I’m surprised to be picking this thing up again. It’s been over a month since I wrote in it last, and I’ve been at my job about three weeks so far. Nothing too weird has happened, though it has been a bit of an adjustment, until today, and I just had to write about it.

We were responding to a call today, for an older man who had collapsed in the middle of a grocery store, of a suspected heart attack. By the time we got there he was unresponsive, wasn’t breathing, and we couldn’t find a pulse. I really didn’t think he was going to make it, it took us too long to get there I thought.

I started CPR anyway, as well as rescue breathing, while the ambulance was prepared, hoping he would start breathing. I could hardly believe it when he did! We seemed to have him almost stabilized before we even had him on the ambulance. 

That wasn’t even the weirdest part for me. The weirdest part was the first thing he said when we were getting him onto the ambulance. I suspected he was hispanic before, but when I recognized he was speaking Spanish that confirmed it. I didn’t understand what he said to me at the time, but a coworker translated it for me later. He looked right at me and said “eres un ángel”, which means “you are an angel”. 

It’s so weird. The same thing dad called mom after she miraculously saved him. It almost feels like a message from mom, like she’s letting me know I did a good job. I pulled her necklace out of my wallet to look at some today. I still have no idea if it means anything, but it makes me feel better to have around.

-----

I guess I’m going to write in this little notebook a lot more than I thought. In the two weeks since I last wrote there was another case where the patient, from what we could tell, should have died, but after care (I administered some of it), miraculously survived. Especially after others heard about what the elderly hispanic gentleman said the nickname “Angel” has spread for me. 

I should feel glad, I’m helping people, just like mom. But instead I feel… uneasy. Especially this week, but starting around when I saved the hispanic man, I’ve been seeing this man around a lot. He’s the kind of person I don’t think I’d normally notice, a bit taller than average, brown eyes, dark hair. Nothing about him stands out. But the look in his eyes, the fact that I’ve seen him just looking at me, often when I’m arriving to help patients… I could swear he’s following me. And…

No, it’s too silly to write here. I think I just need more sleep, I’ve been so busy with my new job, studying on the side, and all the other things I’m doing. Maybe I need to drop a hobby or something so I can sleep more.

-----

I keep seeing it. Him. The man I wrote about. It’s only been a few days since I last wrote here, but I’ve seen him almost every day. Sometimes looking at me, sometimes just passing by. And I swear I’ve seen wings on him. I’d seen it before, but I thought it was just a lack of sleep. Stress. I don’t know what to think anymore. 

Even Nina (my dog, I realize I haven’t written about her before) is acting like something is off. She’s normally very calm, but every time I get home from work she gets super agitated, and takes ages to calm down and come near me again. Maybe she doesn’t like the smell of the disinfectant from work? I don’t feel like that’s it though, she didn’t start doing this until recently.

Work is still going well at least. I really feel like I’m making a difference. We’ve had less fatalities than usual, which is always good news. I just hope the rest of this weirdness goes away soon.

-----

I’m having Mark (my coworker) drive me home most days now, instead of taking the bus. He found it weird that I finally took him up on his offer, and I probably wouldn’t have, if not for yesterday.

The man, the strange one? I saw him on the bus yesterday on the way home. With nothing else to do on the trip I finally looked at him a bit more, especially all the random symbols on his jacket. I hadn’t looked directly at it before, I hadn’t realized…

On his right sleeve, on the arm, near the shoulder, is the symbol. The same one on mom’s necklace. I took it out of my wallet for the first time in a couple of weeks to hold, and I swear it felt cold. It freaked me out, I don’t want to run into him ever again, especially not alone.

-----

It’s been a week since the bus incident. I’m shaking right now, after what happened today, but I have to write it down, to make it feel more, real? To record it? I don’t even know.

It’s my day off. I’d normally sleep in later, but Nina woke me up around seven barking like mad at the front door. I groggily got up, went to the door, and through the peephole saw the man, the one who had been following me.

I think I was tired, or in shock, or just done with it all, but I opened the door, and he quietly stepped inside. Just a step, not even enough that I could close the door behind him. When he started to speak, he just sounded… odd. Something about his voice, I can’t figure out how to describe it. 

Everything he said, it made no sense. He talked about ceasing the ancient arts? He made it sound like I was messing something up, but I have no idea what he meant. He even mentioned mom, saying she had done this too, and I didn’t want to keep going down her path, that the “arts passed down in your family lead to delayed grief, they don’t eliminate it”. 

Then he just left. I don’t know what to do. I eventually found Nina hiding in my room, and am just sitting here on the floor with her now, writing down what happened. Do I call the police? What would I even tell them? 

-----

He’s giving me time to write, just before he takes me. I have to write quickly. He was able to show me memories - of my mother, of my family before her, our ancestors further back than I recognize. The necklace (rather, the talisman), it’s older than I thought, passed down for generations.

Angel. Ironic, isn’t it? My mom was no angel, neither was I. Just the latest in a long line of… I can’t even believe it. Necromancers. The miracles, the lives saved… they won’t even stay saved. We only delayed the inevitable, until this man could track them down again, to take them, just like he’s taking me now. 

Most have times they have to go. The hispanic man. My dad. It’s no wonder he died so shortly after mom, she wasn’t around to bring him back anymore. And because mom and I upset the balance of things, and didn’t stop when warned (I don’t think either of us understood the warning), we’re being taken too. And the people I saved, the miracles… soon they’ll be taken too.

He’s starting to nod at me, I know we’re going soon. He’s said he’ll make it quick, just like mom. He doesn’t want me to suffer, his job is just to guide us to where we go. He promises Nina’s time isn’t yet, apparently my aunt will find her very soon.

I almost can’t believe it. This all sounds so silly. I wouldn’t have even believed him, but… the wings I thought I saw. I see them clearly now. And I feel sleepy, I can’t write much longer. He said his brother’s blessing will make it not hurt, all I have to do is drift off to sleep. I tried mom, I hope I made you proud. It’s hard to hold my pen up, I think I’m coming to see you soo-

[hashire]

In October of 2010, I was trying to come up with an idea. I really, really wanted to do NaNoWriMo. When I first learned about NaNo, I wanted to do it. Problem was, I couldn’t ever do it. I tried the by the seat of your pants thing more than once. I tried planning earlier in the year. I’d get impatient and start working on the thing or just ditch it altogether by the time November rolled around.

Then - and I still remember this moment so clearly - I was driving home from grocery shopping and thinking. I thought about DGM, which was being published monthly at that point. I thought about my medieval romance class and how much I adored the material. The idea hit me hard. Medieval romance DGM. Of course!

Since it was about a week before NaNo started, it gave me enough time to put some ideas down and still be interested in the idea in time for the first of November. I did a writing exercise to figure out some parts of the story that I didn’t actually put in the story (it was allowed!). I don’t think I have it anymore. I looked. Kinda sad about it. Anyway. I waited until midnight, November 1, 2010. And off I went.

I spent the first half of the month writing and writing and writing. I neglected my schoolwork as much as I was able to get away with. I wrote on the bus to and from class. If I didn’t feel comfortable getting my laptop out (didn’t want people looking over my shoulder), I wrote in a notebook and typed it up when I got home. I ended up having to deal with a non-life-threatening medical issue, potentially caused by my intense focus on this story.

I hit 50k on the 12th and finished the story on the 14th. (The reason why I didn’t get much done on the 2nd was because I had been working at the polls, had to go to class, and was watching election results and despairing because Scott Walker won. This both is and isn’t important to know.) I told myself that I’d take a step away from it before I edited it. Catch up on my neglected schoolwork. You know, just give it some time. 

I didn’t. 

The first final count was 61662 words, notes I wrote included. The second recorded one (the one I submitted to NaNo for verification) was 70304, notes most likely included.

After this, I did another edit to each chapter before I posted them. Was all of this necessary? Maybe. Maybe not. It’s what happened. This is the final word count without notes.

I ended up posting only 5 of 10 chapters. There are things about me that haven’t changed since 2010. The desire to be noticed is one of them. I mean, it’s not that I want to be the center of attention or anything. I envy the large number of comments the bigger names get and have always always always wanted something similar. This was true back in 2010.

The feedback was up and down. For one chapter, I’d get 4 or 5 reviews. Another chapter, I’d get 1 review. I think there was a chapter that didn’t get any. 

In late 2010/early 2011, I was still trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. I was one semester away from graduating. I guess I was a little scared of what would happen. I wanted to be an editor. I thought it would be something I’d enjoy. I didn’t know how to go about doing any of that. No internships. No meeting people (I almost did once, but I couldn’t find his office and I didn’t have a phone then; it was 2010, yes, but I couldn’t afford it and didn’t have enough friends to warrant having a phone when I had a facebook).

I suppose what happened was that I took my frustration out on the story. I started to hate it and couldn’t stand the thought of having it up anymore. I deleted it in early 2011. I got yelled at for doing it by someone I had been messaging who was in the middle of reading it. I think the yelling had more to do with something I said about deleting it, but the conversation is long gone. FF deletes stuff like that. I didn’t get any other messages about it and took it to mean that people didn’t really care it was there, which may not have been true. I’ll never really know if anyone else was sad to see my silly little story go.

Honestly, when I thought back to this story recently, I only remembered the comment where someone said a part of one of the chapters was boring (while saying they liked the story, but who remembers that when someone calls your work boring?), and this one:

I know I always focus on the negative. I know that people enjoy reading my fics. I know that I have gotten amazing comments over the years. I know that I don’t write just to get those comments (if I was doing that, believe me, I would have pumped out so much mediocre content just for the serotonin I could get from one comment). I know that this is long and has zero overall point and people will unfollow me for the things I say it in (I’ve lost a few over the past few days or so, which is fine; it’s just a consequence of me doing this, which is being honest about how I feel. I’m not alone in feeling this way. I know I’m not). 

I guess I just wanted to talk about a great writing experience I had that was soured (which happened because of how I think and feel and react and didn’t need to happen at all) by me posting the story. I thought maybe it could be a breakout thing because fandom loves long chaptered fics. That’s not why I wrote it, but it would have been a great perk. 

Looking back, do I regret deleting it without posting all of it? I don’t know. Not long after this, Walker dropped the bomb and my attention shifted from writing to politics while I was still trying to get through my last semester of college. I did write a little, here and there, but not as much as I had been in 2010. I may not have finished posting it anyway.

[fand0mfancies]

Came across this on Tumblr a few days ago, it amused me for a couple of hours or more, filling it in, while watching QI.

 Fandom Questions

 1. What was the first fandom you got involved in?

Star Trek: Voyager, I suppose at least for reading. Started writing with Stargate SG-1.

 2. What is your latest fandom?

I dip in and out of lots of fandoms on and off, the most recent ‘pick up’ is Ballam from Eastenders, I don’t watch soaps, but Robron and Ballam both appear a good bit on my tumblr, so I eventually gave in to checking them out via fic and youtube – thank god for youtube, lol! I still don’t watch soaps, but I watch those storylines!

 3. What is the best fandom you’ve ever been involved in?

Gosh, that’s... actually no that’s really easy. Primeval. For anyone not familiar, it’s a ‘silly little dinosaur show’ produced in the UK. It had 4 short seasons, with a somewhat revolving main cast – although they managed to keep 3 of them through all 4 seasons – but the fandom was/is amazing. I made life long friends through the fandom and even though I don’t write much any more I still read some and still talk with those people.

 4. Do you regret getting involved in any fandoms?

I would say no. I can’t say every fandom has always been amazing – ship wars anyone! – but mostly fandom has been a very positive experience in my life.

 5. Which fandoms have your written fanfiction for?

How long have you got... in genuinely no particular order (basically as they came to me) Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis, Star Trek (TNG, DS9, Voy, Ent & Reboot Movies), Marvel, Kingsman, Person of Interest, Due South, Quantum Leap, Firefly, Buffy/Angel verse, Harry Potter, The Sentinel, Torchwood(/Doctor Who), Hawaii Five-0, Shadowhunters, Sherlock, Primeval, Emmerdale (Robron), NCIS, CSI (Vegas, NY & Miami), White Collar, Empire Records, Bull, Diagnosis Murder, MacGyver (the original), 1-800-Missing, CHAOS, Without a Trace, M*A*S*H, Charmed, Queer as Folk (US), Will & Grace, Bring it On, Nash Bridges, Magnificent 7 (TV series), House, Babylon 5 – I think I got them all... a few of those were one time only deals, but a lot of them have more (anywhere from 2-52 (or more still!) ranging from 100 word drabbles, to thousands of words – hey I’ve been writing fic for 21 years... you tend to amass a lot of fandoms...

 6. List your OTP from each fandom you’ve been involved in.

Oh geez, here we go, lol! Okay...

 Stargate SG-1: Jack O’Neill/Daniel Jackson

Stargate Atlantis: Rodney McKay/John Sheppard

Star Trek: Elim Garak/Julian Bashir, Chakotay/Tom Paris, Jonathan Archer/Malcolm Reed, James Kirk/Spock – I don’t particularly have an ‘otp’ in TNG, the couple I’ve written were Picard/Data, I’ve also dabbled reading Data/Gordi)

Marvel: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark

Kingsman: Harry Hart/Eggsy Unwin

Person of Interest: Harold Finch/John Reese

Due South: Benton Fraser/Ray K

Quantum Leap: Sam/Al

Firefly: Malcolm Reynolds/Simon Tam

Buffy/Angel Verse: Buffy/Giles, Angel/Spike, Xander/Spike, Willow/Tara

Harry Potter: Harry/Draco, Harry/Hermione, Harry/Hermione/Draco

The Sentinel: Jim/Blair

Torchwood: Jack/Ianto

Hawaii Five-O: Steve/Danno

Shadowhunters: Magnus/Alec

Sherlock: Sherlock/John, Mycroft/Lestrade

Primeval: Nick Cutter/Stephen Hart, James Lester/Hilary Becker Emmerdale: Robert Sugden/Aaron Dingle

NCIS: Gibbs/DiNozzo CSI: Nick Stokes/David Hodges, Mac/Danny, Horatio/Speed White Collar: Neal/Peter/Elizabeth

Empire Records: Joe/Lucas

Bull: Benny/Jason

Diagnosis Murder: Steve/Jesse

 I’ve left a few out where I don’t have particular OTPs

 7. List your NoTPs from each fandom you’ve been in.

Here we go again... lol!

 Stargate SG-1: Jack/Sam, I just... no. I’ve read a few where it’s a background or secondary pairing, but it always makes me wince a bit. I’ve read a few with Sam/Daniel as a secondary pairing that didn’t make me react that way and I’ve read Sam with other characters, but Jack/Sam just is a nope for me.

Stargate Atlantis: McKay/Keller – no, just no. that was horrible. She treated him like... awfully, trying to change him to suit her, just... no.

Marvel: Contentious, but Tony/Pepper, also Peter Parker/Tony Stark. Maybe because I saw the movies before I ever looked at the comics, but meh.

Due South: Benton Fraser/Ray V – again, contentious, but honestly I think Ray V was kind of a shit friend to Fraser.

Firefly: Anything with Jayne. No really, I just can not stand the character. I spent most of the series wanting to punch him in the face and sometimes you get characters you love to hate, but I just hated him.

Buffy/Angel Verse: Buffy/Spike, Willow/Kennedy

Harry Potter: Ron/Hermione, Ron/Harry, Harry/Ginny... basically, Ron and Ginny should just be loveless hermits who live by themselves. Ok, no, that isn’t fair... but as much as Ron was Harry’s first friend, he was selfish and bitter and Ginny/Harry just... never sat right with me. Ron literally says she spent ‘all summer talking about’ Harry, when she’d met him for all of three seconds. She didn’t know him. It always felt like she fell more in love with the *idea* of Harry Potter, than Harry Potter himself.

Sherlock: Sherlock/Molly, he’d eat her for breakfast. Serious, she’d never survive him.

Primeval: Oliver Leek and anyway. Arg. Creepy little dude is creepy and evil.

NCIS: Ziva/DiNozzo – ugh, just no.

 Again, I’ve left out ones where I don’t have particular NoTPs

 8. How did you get involved in your latest fandom?

Tumblr, god damned bitches posting gifs of pretty boys falling in love, roped me in!

 9. What are the best things about your current fandom?

I dabble in several fandoms at once... but if we go by ‘most recently picked up’ as ‘current’ we’re talking Ballum, which hey, it’s always fun to have an actual canon pairing be my OTP, that’s rare for me, lol.

 10.  Is there a fandom you read fic from but don’t write in?

Well (so far) I haven’t written any Ballum. (I say so far, because I’m a realist, lol). I rarely read in fandoms and not end up writing in them at some point. Although I have probably dabbled in a few I’ve not written for, but if I read it with any sort of consistency, I mostly end up writing it. I am weak!

  Ship Questions for your Current Fandom

 11. Who is your current OTP?

Okay, so that list above, just basically go with that. While I do drop in and hour of fandoms and some I certainly read in more than others, I do tend to go back to fandoms... If we were talking about what I’m mostly focused on writing atm... Steve/Tony, Mycroft/Lestrade, Harry/Draco and Robron are ones I’m currently working on most.

 12. Who is your current OT3?

I’m not currently writing anything that’s OT3 with any real focus. I have a couple of Neal/Peter/Elizabeth WiPs that I will at some point finish, but they aren’t a big focus just now. I did recently read a fabulous Neal/Peter/Elizabeth fic that’s been on my tbr list for ages.

 13. Any NoTPs?

Just... see above, lol!

 14. Go on, who are your BroTPs?

Harry Hart/Merlin, those two are Bro’s until the end and I will fight you on this. Also, Eggsy/Roxy! OMG they are such a BroTP! And Tony/Pepper/Rhodey – I may no like Tony/Pepper as a pairing, but I love them as best friends and of course, our Rhodes, because again, I will fight you on this, they are awesome and Tony needs his best friends!

 15. Is there an obscure ship which you love?

I’m not sure there is. I suppose I’ve read a few fics for some random pairings over the years, but nothing that’s made me really ship-ship them. I like Clint Barton/Bucky Barnes, after seeing it as a secondary pairing in a Steve/Tony fic, but I’ve seen that pop up a few times since, so maybe it won’t stay obscure for long!

 16. Are their any popular ships in your fandom which you dislike?

Jack/Sam, Tony/Pepper, Ron/Hermione, Harry/Ginny, Buffy/Spike – they all seem to be het pairings, oops. But I am mostly a slash fic reader/writer, so I suppose that’s not too surprising.

 17. Who was your first OTP and are they still your favourite?

Jack/Daniel from Stargate SG-1. I still love them. I still read them, although it has been a while since I’ve written them on their own (I have got some SG-1/SGA x-overs where they feature)

 18. What ship have you written the most about?

I’m genuinely not sure... without going and counting (and I’m not going any counting!) I’d guess Jack/Daniel, McKay/Sheppard, Jack/Ianto and Steve/Danno.

 19. Is there a ship which you wished you could get behind, but you just don’t feel them?

No, not that I can think off. I either like it or not. I do occasionally feel bad for not reading a fic if it’s an author I really like, but I don’t read that fandom or pairing, but nothing specific.

 20. Any ships which you surprised yourself by liking?

Robron and Ballum, lol. I do not do soaps!

  Author Questions

 21. What was the first fanfic you ever wrote?

 Stargate SG-1, Jack/Daniel, a story called The Dare, The Disaster, The Almost Happy Ending, And The Very Happy Ending – it was awful. Don’t go looking, lol!

 22. Is there anything you regret writing?

Don’t we all? No, I wouldn’t specifically say so. There are certainly fics, especially older ones, I wish I could have written better, but nothing I’d go, ugh I should never have done that.

 23. Name a fic you’ve written that you’re especially fond of & explain why you like it.

Uh... honestly that’s really hard. I... um... yeah, I don’t know, really. I wrote a nice little flower one in POI that I felt worked rather beautifully. The Language of Flowers. An I wrote an SGA fic for NaNo a few years ago, called A Different Life, but it’s not online, because I didn’t finish it yet and I knew I wasn’t going to finish it any time soon, so I didn’t feel it was fair to leave it up unfinished (there is a reason I don’t read WiP fics and I don’t post them either, because I know how much I hate unfinished WiPs) Edit: After writing this I reminded myself of a POI fic I wrote called Hours of Separation – It’s a Harold/John break up story that I always intended to write a sequel too where I ‘fixed’ them, but I just couldn’t do it. I broke them a little too well. But I really love it actually.

 24. What fic do you desperately need to rewrite or edit?

The afore mentioned A Different Life needs to be edited and finished, lol! Also a Primeval fic with the working title Crypt Keeper (don’t ask) that I worked myself into a bit of a corner on and I figure out how to fix it, but I haven’t done it yet, so it’s still needs fixing and finishing, lol!

 25. What’s your most popular fanfic?

I haven’t the foggiest.

 26. How do you come up with your fanfic titles?

Sometimes, really easily, a quote, a line from the fic, a song title... other times it’s like pulling teeth, hence working titles on things like ‘crypt keeper’ which is a reference to one scene near the very start and has no actual hint of the plot, lol!

 27. What do you hate more: Coming up with titles or writing summaries?

Oh the titles. Summaries you can just copy a few lines from the fic if you are desperate, if you had to post ‘untitled mcshep fic #67’ people would get cranky, lol, hell I’d get cranky!

 28. If someone were to draw a piece of fanart for your story, which story would it be and what would the picture be of?

Oh... I... huh. I mean who wouldn’t love fanart for their stories? Any of them honestly! But if I had to choose just one... I guess something in my Animal Instinct verse, which is Primeval (although I always intended to write other fandoms in the verse) where some people transform into animals, based on their ‘spirit animal’ and some art of the characters with their spirit animal form would be awesome.

 29. Do you have a beta reader? Why/Why not?

Sometimes, look if you’ve read this far, you know I write in a lot of fandoms, lol. In some fandoms it’s easier than others to find beta readers. Also, sometimes if it’s just something short, I won’t bother. But I do try for my longer fics.

 30. What inspires you to write?

That old adage, if you want to read it, sometimes you just have to write it? Spite? Boredom? Honestly sometimes I just have ideas I have to get out of my brain and it’s write or go mad(der)

 31. What’s the nicest thing someone has ever said about your writing?

That it inspired them to write something.

 32. Do you listen to music when you write or does music inspire you? If so, which band or genre of music does it for you?

Sometimes, sometimes I find it distracting when writing because I end up singing along and forgetting what I’m writing, lol! I do sometimes get inspiration from songs, I guess mostly from the lyrics, but no particular band or genre – although I listen to a lot of country music!

 33. Do you write oneshots, multi-chapter fics or huuuuuge epics?

Little from column a, little from column b... littler still from column c...

 34. What’s the word count on your longest fic?

Around 60k, I think.

 35. Do you write drabbles? If so, what do you normally write them about?

I have. Primeval had/has a week drabble challenge, mostly when I’ve written drabbles it’s been for a challenge, with a specific prompt.

 36. What’s your favourite genre to write?

Uh... I mean, my fandoms really span the genres, but I guess sci-fi or crime are probably my favourites.

 37. First person or third person - what do you write in and why?

Third mostly, I have occasionally written in first person, if it felt like the fic needed it.

 38. Do you use established canon characters or do you create OCs?

Little from column a, little from column b... it depends on the fandom and the story. Sometimes you just need more characters, mostly they are minor roles, I don’t tend to write much established character/oc fic

 39. What is your greatest strength as a writer?

Ability to convince myself people will want to read it, lol! No actually to be honest, I love to know people read and like my stuff, but I gave up a long time ago on trying to ‘please’ people with what I write. I write what I want to read.

 40. What do you struggle the most with in your writing?

Focus. The problem with 21 years of fandom history, is well... 21 years of fandom history. A lot of fandoms, a lot of pairings and as I say, I never really ‘leave’ a fandom, I just drop in and out and sometimes that means I’ll write on something consistently for weeks or months and then end up getting distracted by another fandom again and not touch it for weeks or months again. Hence, I don’t post WiP fics, because I know I’m easily distracted and don’t want anyone to suffer my lack of focus but me.

  Fanfiction Questions

 41. List and link to 5 fanfics you are currently reading:

I don’t read WiP fics, so yeah... but 5 I’ve recently read in different fandoms that I’ve really enjoyed

 Turns Out, I Have a Rose Garden by betheflame (Steve Rogers/Tony Stark)

Lucky by china_shop (Neal Caffery/Peter Burke/Elizabeth Burke)

Colors by Quesarasara (Sherlock/John)

Betrayal by Blackghost7 (Gibbs/DiNozzo)

Matchmaker (Part 1 of the Marmalade Series) by HastaLux, Mottlemoth (Mycroft Holmes/Greg Lestrade)

 42. List and link to 5 fanfiction authors who are amazing:

See now this is hard, because... ahh so many...

 FredBassett – Primeval author, her Stephen/Ryan series is epic and brilliant and endless

https://archiveofourown.org/users/fredbassett/pseuds/fredbassett

 Keira Marcos – I know other people will have said her, I don’t care. I love all her stuff, across all the fandoms she writes in

http://keiramarcos.com/

 theapplepielifestyle – her Steve/Tony is amazing. Hands down some of the best I’ve ever read. I will fight you on this.

https://archiveofourown.org/users/theappleppielifestyle/pseuds/theappleppielifestyle

 JillyJames – her Tony DiNozzo is a real life grown up... exactly as he should be considered given he’s a goddamn federal agent!

https://jillyjames.com/

 missbecky – I’ve read pretty much all her Steve/Tony and Harry/Eggsy and it’s awesome.

https://archiveofourown.org/users/missbecky

 Honestly, I could have listed so many more, but, I’m being good!

 43. Is there anyone in your fandom who really inspires you?

Everyone. The thing is, fandom at it’s best is like crack, the more you get, the more you want. The writing, the gifs, the art... it feeds you and makes you want to make more of it, because more of it needs to exist and if that means you need to do it yourself, so be it!

 44. What ship do you feel needs more attention?

ALL OF THEM!

 45. What is your all time favourite fanfic?

Oh hell no, not even, I can not. It took me an hour to narrow down 5 authors, I can not narrow down one fanfic!

 46. If someone was to read one of your fanfics, which fic would you recommend to them and why?

I mean, it depends on what they like... probably the Hour of Separation I mentioned above, if they like the fandom/pairing, or my Animal Instinct stuff.

 47. Archive Of Our Own, Fanfiction.net or Tumblr - where do you prefer to post and why?

Archive of our Own. I haven’t touched ff.net in *years* since they started getting super restrictive about what you could post. I do occasionally post stuff to tumblr, but mostly I now post to AO3. I did have my own site and I’ve yet to upload a lot of stuff to AO3 – one of these... months... that will be a project – but it’s amazing. Seriously, having been in fandom 20+ years, going from having to search all over a million different places and now it’s all in one place, where we’re honestly, spoiled and protected. The kids now have no idea how crazy impossible that once seemed.

 48. Do you leave reviews when you read fanfiction? Why/Why not?

Yes, but not as often as I should. I love AO3s kudos button, so I can sort of say ‘hey I enjoyed this’ without having to comment, because I sort of hate leaving comments just going ‘hey I enjoyed this’ because I always feel like I should say more, like, oh I enjoyed this specific thing, which yes is an unnecessary hang-up, but there ya go.

 49. Do you care if people comment/reblog your writing? Why/why not?

Of course it’s nice to get comments, kudos, reblogs etc. I’m not as attached to them now as I was when I was younger, because I learned along the way that it was more important that I like what I’m writing than that other people do, but it’s still nice to know that something I’ve created is enjoyed.

 50. How did you get into reading and/or writing fanfiction?

I went looking for Star Trek Voyager stuff online, pics etc, waaaaaaay back when! And I came across fanfiction entirely by accident... and I read some – het stuff mostly, then I started watching Stargate SG-1, went looking for fanfiction for that, but was not on board with Jack/Sam, found Jack/Daniel went ‘huh really? That’s weird’ read it... and yeah... 21 years later... lol!

 51. Rant or Gush about one thing you love or hate in the world of fanfiction! Go!

Ship Wars. No seriously, just don’t. Like, who the actual fuck cares. I like my ship, you like your ship. I don’t care if it’s canon or not. I don’t care if it’s popular or not. I don’t read my NoTPs, but I’d never dream of telling someone else not too. Yes I think they are terrible, bad, no good pairings, but that’s *my* opinion. Don’t try to change my mind and I won’t try to change yours. I avoid them like the actual plague. If someone starts that shit around me, I will shut it right down. You are a dick. Go to Jail. Do not pass Go. Do not collect £200.

[lurkingg-around]

Hey! If you are still taking the prompts, can you write something about jealous Michelle? Where they are in a relationship but mj has insecurities but then peter ends up assuring her, just some cute fluff (or smut, whatever you want)! I absolutely LOVE your writing! It's so great and the way you potray these two characters in amazing! ❤❤

It took me so long! But I finally wrote it! I hope it’s nice. (I made a little reference to this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KTVToH6ZQk which is Peter’s little film while in Germany.)

1448 words of fluff!

bad ol’ jealousy

MJ and Ned were watching videos from Peter’s laptop, since according to Ned, now that she was part of team Spidey, she needed to know everything, and that meant watching a lot of silly videos that bothof the boys had recorded.

Honestly, she was having a good time and a lot of laughs. Plus, getting to see Peter’s first reaction to his Stark Suit was beyond adorable and priceless. Also, it was nice to get confirmation about many of her suspicions, like what really happened in Germany a few years ago.

MJ was ready to play another video, but a suddenly nervous Ned stopped her, holding her hand before she could press anything on the keyboard.

“What?”

She confusedly asked.

“That one isn’t really that cool, we should just watch another one.”

“Ned, not one of these videos were cool, they were all extremely dorky. I mean, did you hear Peter’s narration voice?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Ned tried to shrug it off, but he came off as even more nervous. “That one is too lame, we shouldn’t even bother, let’s just skip-”

“Oh… I see!” MJ interrupted with a smirk on her face. “You are afraid!

Just what did you guys do?”

“Nothing, nothing, I swear-”

She didn’t let him finish, being too excited. “Just what kind of lame humiliating shit did you two do? I bet is blackmail material.”

“Wait, wait-” Ned tried for one last time, but it was too late as MJ clicked on the video, and the boy face-palmed himself.

The video started with Peter crashing a party in Germany while wearing his Spidey suit, a little shit, she thought, but nothing outside the usual was happening, since he does often gets himself in weird situations. Until, oh… oh.

They finished watching the video, and Ned looked at her with caution. “I, uh, I wasn’t really trying to hide anything… It wasn’t even nothing much, but, uh, just in case you might have a problem with it, I thought…”

She scoffed. “A problem? Why would I have a problem with it? This is ridiculous, we weren’t even a thing back then.”

Ned smiled, hopeful and relieved. “Really?”

MJ rolled her eyes and scoffed again. “Yeah! I totally don’t have a problem with that.”

But, MJ had a problem with that. She had a problem as she watched Peter hanging out with other girls and acting a bit flirty while wearing his Spider-Man suit, getting them to go on a swing with him, and even getting a kiss on the cheek from one of them.

Her problem was bad ol’ jealousy. Which MJ hid, as she quickly judged it immature. That was years ago, and that was just Peter being over-excited about his new incredible suit. And like she told Ned, they weren’t together back then. It didn’t make sense to get mad over that, but the irrational part of her mind, or was it her heart? Wasn’t aware of that.

Trying to analyze herself, MJ figured she was just being insecure, and that caught her off guard a little. She could be awkward, but that didn’t mean she also couldn't be pretty confident and sure of herself. MJ assumed that as the world is always trying to bring girls down, not even her could escape being a bit insecure every now and then.

MJ carried on pretty well, until a Spider-Man photo came out everywhere on the internet, and she was pretty much fuming. Not that she showed it, but inside her head she was asking herself, why couldn’t this damn red-headed girl ask if Spider-Man was taken before grabbing his face like that? Making it look like some poster from a lame romantic film.

At school, sitting on their regular lunch table, Peter and Ned were laughing at the silly headlines regarding the subject. And even though MJ was pretending not to pay attention to the nerd’s conversation, her sarcastic nature betrayed her.

“I guess red really is your favorite color, huh.”

Peter’s eyes widened comically, and Ned looked at him as if he wanted to say you’re screwed.

MJ took a bite of her apple, and the noise of her munching was the only sound around their table for a few seconds. “I’m just kidding, relax.”

Peter then released a big sigh out of relief, but nothing that stopped him from rambling. “Just, uh, she was scared cause of the mugging, y’know, uh, and then, I, I just went to see if she was okay, and, well, then, uh, she held on me, like, you know, for balance or something, cause she was scared, and the picture just looked weird, there was nothing-”

“I know, loser.” Before, she didn’t know the whole context, but she still did know that whatever had happened was something totally explainable. “That’s why I said relax. It was a joke.”

With the lack of overly emotional expressions, and an aloof voice, MJ had believed that she successfully made a good save. Except later at night, Peter made a stop at her apartment. At first, she assumed he was just coming to hang out with her after patrolling, but when Peter took off his mask, she saw a somewhat concerned look on his face.

He fidgeted with his mask on hands before softly asking, “Hey… is there something you wanna tell me? Uh, like… something upsetting you?” And with an even smaller voice, he finished, “Did I… did I do something wrong?”

She sighed, trying to form the words in her head to explain what she’s been feeling that she couldn’t even really appreciate the softness of his voice. “I think I need space.”

Peter’s world fell, and he felt a weird thing tugging at his heart. “Are you breaking up with me?” He asked, while his eyebrows made a really sad frown, and as he had an even sadder voice.

MJ couldn’t help but laugh. “No! Why would I-” She paused. “Oh wait. I see what I did there.” She still laughed, but apologetically, if that was possible. “I didn’t mean to make it sound like that. I’m sorry, I’m not breaking up with you.”

Peter groaned as he threw himself on her bed, burying his face on her pillow. It smelled like her shampoo so it was still kinda nice.

“Oh my God, MJ. You’re killing me here.” He whined, but then he also couldn’t help himself from laughing at their little misunderstanding.

MJ went to lay down by his side, and he turned to sheepishly look at her, his face red due to the embarrassment for quickly jumping to conclusions that made him clearly desperate in a second.

Knowing his reaction to the possibility of losing her, made her feel a little less insecure, even if testing and trapping him with ambiguous words weren’t her intentions. It also did make her feel like a jerk, since he was acting so genuinely heartbroken.

“I’m sorry.” She repeated. Facing him and his vulnerability that he so clearly showed to her just a minute ago, made MJ feel like being vulnerable too. At least a little bit, it was a beginning. “I just… I’ve been jealous.”

Peter opened his mouth to speak, but putting her finger on his lips, she stopped and shushed him. With her finger still on his lips, he nodded, letting her speak.

“I’m jealous because I’ve been a little insecure. And I figured it was something I had to deal with on my own since I know you were never doing anything wrong.” She rolled her eyes, entirely at herself. “But I guess I let some of it escape.”

Peter softly took her finger from his lips. “You’re so cool.”

She laughed. “What?”

“I mean, I’m totally a disaster when I’m jealous!” He exclaimed. “Like, I literally almost blew up a bus ‘cause I thought Brad was gonna ruin my chances with you.”

“Yeah, that was crazy.”

Peter laughed with her, and after they both calmed down, he started to gently touch her hair. She hugged him, bringing their bodies closer, and from that, Peter went to spread little kisses that traveled from her face to her neck.

“I know you said you wanted to deal with this jealousy thing on your own… but, can I tell you- can I show you how I think you’re really hot and I only have eyes for you?” Peter whispered to her, his breathing on her skin making her whole body shiver out of anticipation.

“Oh, so you want to help me?” She egged him on, flirty.

“Yeah, would that help?” He asked, eager to please.

“Let’s see.” MJ simply replied, pulling him for a deep kiss.

Thank you so much for reading! Feel free to send me more prompts, and I’ll try to fill everything as I can.

Visit my AO3 account, there’s more than 50 spideychelle works on there. The link is in my profile.

[heymeowmao]

[Full] Our Song _ E11 (Last in rankings today (fourth place) will leave. Last episode next week.)

4:17 - MC: Na-jie is back with the team, and XZ can finally breathe a breath of relief. He finally let Na-jie come back and has withstood the challenges without her, right? But right now we have a different situation, which is that they haven’t met for a while. Tonight is an important match. XZ, you won’t let Na-jie only come back this once and then not again, right?  XZ: Of course not! Na-jie and I have not felt the passing of time at all, we’re still as compatible as ever! NY: I have communicated through phone, and I always ask him how the song selections are going.  

5:30 - MC: In order to pick our order today, we all went shooting. The only person to shoot a 10 was... /one day earlier/ MC: When you (XZ) film, you should have practiced this, right? XZ: Yep. NY: Ge, let me tell you. You might not win over him (XZ). While filming he’s been learning how to shoot. FYQ: Oh, he has experience? NY: Yes, yes. Be careful! XZ: Playing blind~

6:44 - WOW, Fei Yuqing shoots a 10 AND made it look so easy. 7:15 - XZ: NA-JIEEEEEE!!!! /shoots a 4/ oTL [total 18 points] 7:26 - FYQ getting ready... /Na-jie starts singing/ He misses. FYQ: Who was singing??! ZHJ: You definitely influenced him. 7:51 - NY: Let me sing another song. FYQ: /misses again/ [total 10 points]

8:32 - MC: Because FYQ’s skill is very good, he can give the #1 spot to another team. FYQ: Ah, number 1.... Who was it that sang “The Evening Bell of Nanping”? NY: /oops/ FYQ: Who sang “One Plum Blossom”? NY: HAHAHA

--

9:14 - MC: Team Na-Zhan will be the first to sing tonight. They’ll be fulfilling two expectations. The first is that Na-jie is back! What sort of stage will their collaboration bring to us this time? The second is that they had prepared this song a while ago but didn’t get the chance to sing (bc they passed into the next round already), and at the time I had asked XZ to sing a few lines. Since that time, the audience has been asking non-stop when we would hear the song in its entirety. Everyone. That time is now.

9:54 - XZ: Na-jie!!!! NY: What is this? We’re matching again today, too. XZ: Come quick, come quick! XZ: I really missed you. NY: You missed me? How did it go? XZ: Pretty good. I need to report to you my results. NY: I thought it was a payroll. XZ: LOL. This is our record for the past weeks. We got third place twice, but last time we got second. Pretty good. NY: Very good!

Na Ying x Xiao Zhan -  被风吹过的夏天 (Bei Feng Chui Guo De Xia Tian)

16:07 - XZ: /confused baby takes the fish from Na-jie/ NY: I’m sorry. MC: Na-jie. I’m sure in all your years on stage and in your life, you’ve never been gifted a bag of fish before, have you? NY: /giggling/ XZ: /still confused/ NY: You didn’t see, did you? XZ: ? NY: I dropped the fish. XZ: /WHAT?/ A: If he had seen I bet he also would have laughed. XZ: If I had seen I wouldn’t have been able to sing the last verse either

16:45 - NY: When we were practicing, XZ would only be holding an ID card. Look at this thing- all wet, and REAL fish. With water. I didn’t hold it properly and when I was walking behind you I dropped it. At that time- my heart shattered. NY: And then when I was sitting here, I held up the fish and then I remembered how I dropped them and I COULD NOT sing anymore.

17:15 - XZ: I didn’t know what happened. I thought I sang wrong, Na-jie! NY: You were great. You kept on singing until the end. XZ: I didn’t have any other choice

17:26 - NY: I’m really glad you didn’t see that. I really need to tell you I’m sorry. XZ: No, no, no, no. It’s his fault (the fish). It’s you. /pokes the fish/ 17:38 - A: We were laughing ourselves silly down here. I saw Huajian-dage over there... ZHJ: I knew it could definitely influence them, but I get more screen-time.

17:51 - MC: Let me ask HJ, do you think it’s alright to make mistakes on a live stage? ZHJ: Of course! In this world, who can compare to me in terms of making mistakes on stage? JYQ: Big Bro “Forgetting the Lyrics”  ZHJ: Not only forgetting the lyrics. I’ve written a whole new song before.  ZHJ: This has to be said though, Xiao Zhan has improved a lot.

--

Hacken Lee x Zhou Shen -  大会堂演奏厅 (Da Hui Tang Yan Zou Ting)

30:06 - MC: Hacken wrote the lyrics for this song in 1988, when he was just 21 years old. A lot of people know his songs, but I must let everyone know that he’s written lyrics for more than 80 songs.

--

Fei Yuqing x Ayanga -  新鸳鸯·蝴蝶梦 (Xin Yuan Yang - Hu Die Meng) + Ayanga in a Pikachu sweater. Never thought I’d see it.

37:55 - MC: I need to say, from my standpoint, the one I could see the most clearly was Xiao Zhan. It looked like there was something shining from deep within his eyes. XZ: I feel very touched. I felt like I could hear in the song a hopeful feeling. It was divine, and made me see “hope” and the “future”. It’s very abstract, but I liked it a lot. NY: As soon as FYQ opened his mouth, I felt (indescribable). I realized that in the music industry, he’s too superior.  -- NY: I’ve been thinking to myself- how could FYQ not continue to sing anymore.[FYQ is retiring, after this show is over, he will not be singing professionally anymore.] At the very last moment, now here is Ayanga. When he stood there singing I came to realize that even when Xiao Ge doesn’t sing anymore, he could be relieved that Ayanga is there to sing in his place. 

--

Zhou Huajian x Jiang Yiqiao -  虎口脱险 (Hu Kou Tuo Xian)

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Na Ying x Xiao Zhan -  恼人的秋风 (Nao Ren De Qiu Feng)

1:00:20 - MC: Hold on! We need to confirm something first. Could the female singer please say a few words? (/confirm it is really Na Yin XD/) NY: He’ll talk first. Him first. MC: I really do not dare believe this is our Na-jie! Audience: Team Na-Zhan! x10000 NY: What about us? Audience: You’re great!!! NY: Do you think we can turn this around (win another round)? Audience: /cheering/ MC: XZ, tell me. Whose idea was this? XZ: Actutally, it was Na-jie. She said she wanted to pay tribute. MC: ??? NY: It’s because previously we heard Hacken and Zhou Shen sing the “Ye Lang Disco”. After I saw that I thought that we also should sing a song like that. I wanted to pay tribute to my 80′s. MC: XZ. When you heard about the song, did you not even hesitate for a second? NY: He ignored me for a whole day! XZ: No, Na-jie! I really was working! I wouldn’t dare (ignore you)! NY: I was thinking “Oh shoot. He probably doesn’t like it.” MC: Or maybe he got scared.  XZ: Honestly I did hesitate at first. I didn’t think I would be able to control it. But Na-jie said she wanted it retro, and she explained her vision to me, and I was convinced. I said if we’re going to do it, let’s [go big or go home]. So we tried a retro style.

1:02:05 - MC: You know, with Na-jie.. it’s very rare that we have the chance to see you sing AND dance on stage.  ZHJ: And she danced very well! NY: I really need to thank XZ for practicing the steps with me all the time. When we were sitting there, too, he was counting the beats for me. You all know that even when I walk normally I’m a little uncoordinated. So this (dance) was really hard for me. You may not have seen, but up there where the lyrics are, the choreographer was there, showing me the steps. 

1:02:53 - MC: Let me tell you, ever since we started battling in teams, this is the first time that FYQ forgot to hold his pen and paper.  1:03:44 - ZHJ: I know you are all very happy, but have you thought about how we feel? (ZHJ x JYQ, who have to sing next). You two... do you have to be so cruel? NY: In this music competition, you HAVE TO be this cruel.  ZHJ: If we could vote, I’d vote for you to win.  ZHJ: I’m really happy and thankful to have made it this far in the competition. It doesn’t even feel like one at this point. We’re all here to appreciate each other. I really want to thank the two of you for letting us open our eyes and ears. Especially Na-jie. NY: This is not easy for me. ZHJ: You’re obviously someone who can just rely on your face... why do you have to sing so well? And why do you have to have such a nice figure? NY: Do you know how much I’ve suffered off this stage? I can’t eat all the good foods! YOU can eat a bowl of noodles, but I can only eat three strands! XZ: !! NY: And then I have to work out. I think if you still want to stand on stage, you have to maintain a healthy mind/body.  ZHJ: We will still work hard! Watch out for us!

--

Zhou Huajian x Jiang Yiqiao -  其实不想走 (Qi Shi Bu Xiang Zou | Don’t Want to Go)

1:05:11 - NY: This title makes my heart hurt. ZHJ: We can only play the sympathy card now.

1:12:24 - MC: When I was conversing with HJ before, he had told me that there was a singer that he always wanted to sing with- that singer is Na-jie. NY: ?! Audience: /sing sth!/

1:13:13 - ZHJ: Work with me here, is there any of my songs that you’ve heard? NY: I can sing any/all of your songs. MC: Can I request one? Because the two of your teams.... only one will continue in the competition, and now you have to part ways. So the only thing I can think of is “ 让我欢喜让我忧” (Make Me Happy Make Me Worry)

多想說聲我真的愛妳 I want to say I really love you 多想說聲對不起妳 I want to say I’m sorry to you 妳哭著說情緣已盡 You cry and say the relationship is over 難再續 難再續 It’s too hard to continue, too hard to continue

就請妳給我多一點點時間 再多一點點問候 Just please give me just a little more time, just a little more greetings 不要一切都帶走 Don’t take everything and go 就請妳給我多一點點空間 再多一點點溫柔 Just please give me just a little more space, just a little more tenderness 不要讓我如此難受  Don’t make me so uncomfortable

ZHJ: Wait, there’s more I have to sing

妳這樣一個女人 讓我歡喜讓我(+們)憂 A woman like you, makes me happy and makes US worry (he changed the lyrics from “me” to “us”) 讓我甘心為了妳付出我(+們)所有 Let me be happy for you, give US everything

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1:16:39 - MC: I’ve been listening to a song recently that I really like, and I’ve written down a few of the lyrics to share with you. I think it suits this stage and everyone’s thinking. We say that this society runs too fast sometimes. So how fast is it? [Lyrics to Zhou Huajian’s most recent release “少年” Shao Nian (Youth)]

有时候来不及沉淀　岁月总是跑在灵魂的前面 Sometimes it’s too late to rush, years go by passing faster than the soul 好在还有一点信念　陪我们完成每一天 Fortunately I still have a little faith to accompany us to complete the day 别忘记心中的少年　狂奔的勇敢的 Don’t forget the youth still in your heart, hasty, brave 最初的少年 The youth you were at first

MC: We’ve been waiting six years for a new song from Huajian. Could you tell us about this song? ZHJ: Let me speak directly. For people my age, it’s hard to walk into a record shop... it’s highly likely that there aren’t many songs we can choose to listen to. That’s not to say that the current music of the youth isn’t good, it’s just that when you reach a certain age, there’s inevitably going to be that generational gap. I wanted to be able to give people in my generation a choice. For the past six years I’ve been thinking about this, and it’s only in the past year that I realized that after having written eight songs I was always talking about the past, when I was young. That’s how I thought of the theme, the title- “shao nian.” When I finished making the song I found it interesting. I used the word “youth” to look at the faces of everyone around me. The people I know now, the people I’ve known for years, the people I am getting to know. There’s a youth inside all of us. No matter what age you are now, whether 60 or 70, there’s a youth inside you. Don’t hide them. Let them out. 

Goodbye to Zhou Huajian and Jiang Yiqiao :’(