#look obviously ymmv

[iraprince]

50% of my drawing advice is always "ref ref ref studies studies studies figure drawing figure drawing figure drawing mental library mental library" and then the other 50% is "it doesn't have to BE right it just has to LOOK right." (these two things are not in conflict; the former helps you pull off the latter). then i think the natural extension of that one becomes "it doesn't even have to look RIGHT it just has to look GOOD"

[sevens-evan]

once again reiterating for the tboys who want to grow facial hair faster than the t can achieve it: try minoxidil. i’ve been on since mid july and i have gone from Literally Zero to my whole face feeling stubbly post-shave

[somecunttookmyurl]

extremely ymmv but i've had multiple psychotic episodes a year, every year, since 2006 that were entirely untreated until 2020 because literally nobody would believe it was happening. still entirely untreated bc frankly meds just made me feel like ass and i long ago employed One Simple Trick (Psychitrists Hate Her) for turning that from an always-distressing experience to "mildly annoying, only occasionally distressing and still less so"

gonna share it with you okay. you ready. again ymmv

the only hallucinations/delusions that it actually matters whether they are real for everyone or just real for you are ones that could put you in actual physical danger.

ex: i frequently experience the lights flashing in what i can only assume is morse code. does it matter if anybody else is seeing that? only in the sense that if they are i need to change the lightbulb i guess. at the start i never tried 'translating' or figuring that out in any way because i was too busy being extremely upset about it. i still haven't de-coded my lightbulbs because I Do Not Fucking Care and It Does Not Fucking Matter. this could have been an email. this should be an email, actually. it's a mildly annoying distraction but does it matter if it's "really" "happening"? Not in the fucking least.

Does it matter if the cool shop I was so VERY sure was there last week but which is now a coffee shop everyone insists has been there for 10 years actually did exist or not? Literally no! It's still Not There right now whether it was there last week or not so this changes absolutely nothing.

Listen. Look at me. For... most people I think, a lot of the distress from psychosis comes not from the direct content of any hallucinations or delusions (some very much are genuinely unpleasant in their own right, obviously) but from questioning reality and being unsure what's real and what isn't. Realising and internalising that unless something is going to actually directly impact your life in some way it doesn't matter drastically cuts this down

"is this real?" is the wrong question. "does it matter if it's real? like actually?" if the answer is no because "it" happens to be a cat that is in your kitchen when you do not own cat then like. whatever, dude. you got bonus cat company for the duration whether it was "objectively" "real" or not anyway.

(last one brought to you by an old friend who was hallucinating an entire cat but was freaking out because it was in the doorway and she did not know if something bad would happen if she touched it, and then i pointed out that it doesn't matter if the cat is there or not and doesn't matter if touching it would be a bad idea because it is cat sized and you can... step over it. that is not really a problem and even if it were it's a problem for the future version of you who does not have to pee unfortunately i have never hallucinated an entire extra cat)

[adaginy]

While I was looking at hopepunk/solarpunk stuff I found https://fallingfruit.org/ and I am SO excited because last year I found a "hey what's this and is it edible" and it turned out to be wild american plum and it TURNS OUT there are several on a university campus near me. I've lost the post I found it in or I'd just reblog that, but, here's this post at least. A lot of markings for things like "this tree is on private property but hangs onto public land" or "tree is on public property" or "this location uploaded by property owner," when things are ripe, notes about the fruit being really up high or whatever. (obviously ymmv, maybe your local fruit-sharers are not as helpful.) There are no markings in my immediate town, but I'll change that. "My" plum tree, black raspberries, mulberries... I know some goodies.

[silencedrowns]

hi I’m a very long time cosplayer (20+ years experience) who has chronic headache and migraine problems and this is a post about how to prevent your cosplay wigs from giving you painful headaches! Nobody likes wandering around the con in blinding pain and so hopefully this post will help you reduce the chances of this happening.

1. If your wig is way too tight, don’t use it. Get something with a bigger cap. tbh I often wear slightly too big wigs to reduce the pressure! Find out what brands and sellers sell wigs that are comfy on your head and prioritize buying wigs from them! I made a big master list of cosplay wig sellers a while back so here’s a few you might not have known about. Arda (and its Canadian and European sites) sells by far the biggest wigs, but I personally find Classe the most comfortable for my specific head. It’s all very YMMV and it’s totally possible for a wig to not actually be too small but fit your head in an uncomfortable way (Blue Beard on taobao does this to me every time), so just don’t buy from suppliers that do that. Also consider resizing wigs to be larger! For wig clients with extra large heads I like to nip the edge of the wig right behind the ear where your ear and hair from above will cover it and add in a little godet of elastic.

2. Reduce weight! A heavy wig will make head pain much more likely, so here’s a few tips on wig weight reduction!

A) if your wig doesn’t need a ton of volume and is already very dense, rip out some wefts in the bottom half. Anything on the part of your head from the ridge where your head starts going in towards your neck won’t really show unless your wig is very short and it’ll obviously reduce weight instantly! You can replace any missing volume with light crimping or light heat and tease, or leave the wig as is for a natural and silky look without the unnatural volume of a cosplay wig.

B) if you need more volume in your wig, instead of going straight to adding wefts for more volume, see first if combining crimping with heat and tease at the roots will give you the extra volume you need! Crimping or heat and tease adds volume and if you straight up destroy the fiber in the first two inches from the scalp by doing both repeatedly, it’ll add huge volume without you needing to add extra hair! When I do this I like to heat the fiber near the roots, tease it, let it cool, crimp the teased part, let THAT cool, and then brush it out. You can flat out double the perceived volume in the back of the wig this way!

C) if your character has a high ponytail or high pigtails, consider using clip on ponytails that you can easily remove if you need the weight off your head right the fuck now. here’s two tutorials I swear by for making a short wig + clip on combination look more natural! They’re in Japanese but easily comprehensible if you use machine translation thanks to the clear photography. They also help with spreading out the weight on the wig itself, and if your hair is long enough, using a clip on with a fishnet wig cap and clipping through the wig and into your real hair will also he lp make it more secure and distribute weight more evenly.

if your character has high pigtails

if your character has a high ponytail

D) when you need extra wefts, opt for sewing in wefts rather than gluing whenever possible. Glue doesn’t seem heavy but enough of it can make a wig get real heavy REAL fast.

E) redirecting the weight to your entire head and not just the front hairline will feel lighter and give you less forehead tension, which is one of the biggest causes of wig headache. Toupee clips sewn evenly around the edges and a Wig Fix https://therenatural.com (the name brand one, the knockoffs genuinely don’t work half as well) can help with doing this. A Wig Fix will also let you use fewer pins to keep your wig on, which is another cause of wig headache. Can’t suggest trying those enough. There are also some velvet wig grips out there but I find those don’t work quite as well, but they’re by far better than nothing.

3) make sure your wig is easy to remove. A lot of characters have horns or veils or other head things on top of the wig so make sure those can easily come off if you need a wig break! I’m a big proponent of using wig glue or double stick tape to glue strands (face framing layers etc) to your face for a more natural and more flattering look, but if you get headaches from wigs, keep that glue or tape in your bag so if you have to de-wig for a bit, you can get it back on!

4) take the ibuprofen or whatever BEFORE you put the wig on, and not when your wig is already making your head miserable! It’s like taking the ibuprofen before you wear the horrible shoes for a special event; it’s more effective in advance.

5) what are your normal headache triggers? Make sure you’re doing the work to EXTRA avoid them before wearing a cosplay wig. Stay hydrated. Keep up with your electrolytes. If you have any food triggers, make sure you’re managing them properly.

6) try multiple types of wig cap before deciding which ones to use! I’m a big fan of the fishnet kind because I’m in agony every time I try to use the stocking kind. Some people find relief in doing pin curls under their cap, and @/battleangelgif on twitter suggested doing this with damp hair the night before you wear the wig. There are tons of methods! Stretching out fishnet caps can be done more effectively when they’re slightly damp and that’ll make them pinch less. Experiment with what you like best to keep your irl hair in place and once you find a method you like, go for it! Make that your go-to!

7) always remember: wearing a short wig is less miserable than wearing a wig to your ankles. consider very carefully whether or not you can actually handle that wig that’s as long as you are tall. sometimes you just can’t and that’s okay! reduce the length of any super long haired character to hip length and it’ll be FINE. I swear. It’ll still read as super long and it won’t be as terrible.

8) always remember you can just. take the entire wig and cosplay off if you’re in agony. it’s not worth it. don’t do that to yourself. If the migraine hits anyway, just take it off.

Hope some of this might help you out! Focusing on reducing and redistributing weight is what helps me out the most 😌 feel free to reply or reblog or message with questions and I’ll try and get back to you ASAP!

[shepherds-of-haven]

Hi Lena! I remember Chase referring to MC as their 'guaranteed ace in the hole' or something along those lines before they headed out on the bog adventure (sorry, I've forgotten the exact name of the town they get to) - how would the RO's react to a MC who gets uncomfortable when referred to as a fail-safe / guaranteed win / trump card kind of thing, or if MC pulled them to one side and asked them not to say things like that because they weren't comfortable with it / feel they might jinx it? Thanks for all your hard work, the game is amazing!

Hi there, thanks for your question, it's an interesting one!

Blade: I think he would be disconcerted to hear this from MC, and while outwardly agreeing not to say anything like that in the future, he'd feel guilty and conscious of having made them feel the burden of responsibility and over-relying on them too much, so he's probably be a bit distant towards them afterwards (trying to be considerate by not relying too heavily on them/putting pressure on them, which could come off as coldness)

Trouble: "oh shit, sorry, I didn't think about that. But I don't think it'd jinx it, you're MC after all! But I get it, I'll try not to say anything like that again." I think if it were about MC's discomfort, he'd feel a bit guilty, but also like he wished they saw what he saw in them, this total confidence and faith, but he'd ultimately respect their wishes and try not to do anything like it again. If it was more of a superstitious thing, I think he'd challenge them a little bit on it, like "Nah, have more faith in yourself, look at what you did in ____ and _____, after all!" Like trying to hype them up a bit and give them more confidence in a good-intentioned way, which might result in a back-and-forth where he came off as a bit stubbornly asserting his faith in them and wanting them to feel the confidence he feels in them, which could also make MC feel frustrated, like he's not getting it. Ultimately he'd concede and drop the subject, but feel a bit troubled about it after, but not in a way that he'd really articulate unless MC brought it up again!

Tallys: I really don't think Tallys would say anything like this to begin with, because she's already conscious of how it might make MC feel and how she would feel if she were in their shoes, so she tends to avoid making statements like this right out of the gate!

Shery: she'd feel horrifically guilty, lol, and she'd apologize to MC profusely over and over and sort of torment herself about it afterwards, like, I'm just another of the people who depend too much on MC, I never even considered their feelings, I'm a selfish person... So she'd definitely feel a bit subdued by this!

Riel: he rarely makes statements like this unless it's a joke/sincere compliment, so he'd be a bit surprised to hear that MC felt that way. But ultimately he'd just accept it, briefly apologize, and then move on, as with any well-intentioned social gaffe. It makes sense to him why MC would feel that way; it would make sense to him why he would have said otherwise. Very straightforward! It would be pretty much business as usual after that--he's glad that they communicated it to him and then doesn't think too much about it afterward unless they seemed really upset!

Chase: I like to think that he's emotionally perceptive enough to avoid making comments like this to an MC who was obviously uncomfortable with it, but YMMV, obviously, since he says it in the game! If they asked him not to, he'd sort of say something like, "Aw, sunshine, I didn't mean anything like that, you know we all think you're the cat's pajamas, that's all, it's not like we expect you to do anything or be perfect" and would try to explore their feelings about it and why they felt that way. Basically he would just try to clear the air or walk things back to make sure they didn't feel that kind of pressure moving forward or understood that he wasn't implying anything by the statement, then encourage them to just live their life without feeling the burden of these expectations. Then he'd move on and try to be more delicate in the future! Ultimately, he'd get it, he can see how being "the Hero of Haven" would be a lot of pressure!

Red: I think he'd quickly apologize, but would want to know more about why MC was feeling that way, what caused that reaction, etc. So he'd be interested in talking about it with them in more depth. He'd feel bad, of course, that he said something that bothered them, but I think his priorities would be more about understanding their perspective and maybe helping them with their discomfort/complex feelings about the whole thing than dwelling on the specific interaction that kicked it all off, if that makes any sense!

Ayla: I think her initial reaction to this would be defensiveness: she'd be a bit annoyed, because praise and compliments already come so rarely from her, especially being vocalized in front of the subject/other people, so to be "corrected" on something that's already difficult for her would be like, "wtf, I was just trying to be nice, I have confidence in you/I'm telling the truth, it's a proven fact that you're remarkable, what's so bad about that?" Kind of like a, Seriously? I'd kill for people to admire me and have faith in me and actually say so, what kind of person is like, 'Hey, I don't like it when you do that.'? And also hurt because she's trying and doing things that are pretty foreign/unusual for her (being vulnerable and sincere, giving praise), so to be 'punished' for that would make her feel like withdrawing. So outwardly she'd be a bit put-off and shirty about it, like "Okay, sorry, I won't say it anymore." *obviously disgruntled, not gracious and understanding* But I think after calming down or hearing someone else advocate for MC (like Briony going, "Well, I get it... can you imagine if you felt this pressure to save the day every time? MC's just a person, after all..."), it would click for her, she'd feel a bit bad about it, but she wouldn't feel the need to pursue it or apologize further and would just comply with MC's wishes moving forward!

Briony: she'd pretty much be the same as Shery, writhing in guilt and feeling horrible that she didn't consider MC's feelings more, but after they talked about it and she profusely apologized the first time, she'd be able to move on so long as it didn't seem like MC held any hard feelings or awkwardness about it! Ultimately she'd be glad they said something and would be extra vigilant both about herself and about correcting others if they happen to say things like that around MC! Like she'd start feeling protective and maybe over-conscious of MC's feelings!

Lavinet: she would be similar to Riel: because she meant it as praise, she would be surprised to hear that they found it off-putting or intimidating, but she would simply apologize and then move on without doing it again; it wouldn't be something she really dwelled on unless it seemed like it was a really big deal to MC, in which case she might discuss it with them intermittently moving forward, wanting to understand the exact feelings and reasons behind their feelings and wanting to encourage them in resolving them!

Halek: he's pretty much in Tallys's camp: because of his position in life, he'd be more conscious of not saying stuff like this in the first place, because he understands the pressure those kinds of expectations come with, even if they're reverent and well-intentioned! If he slipped and said stuff like that as a joke, then was asked by MC not to say it, he'd apologize and commiserate with them, then keep it in mind moving forward, being careful not to do it again!

[codywanweek]

How to write aro/ace codywan for the non-aspec

Want to write something for the aro/ace codywan prompt but you're not sure how or you're afraid you'll offend someone? Here's a hopefully useful post to help you out.

Disclaimer:

I, Yellow, am only one aromantic* person and opinions may differ. This post is to be taken as suggestions for possible configurations of codywan being aro- and/or ace-spec. At the end I'll mention some pitfalls to avoid. *formerly used the label ace for 1+ year, so is fairly familiar with pitfalls for acespec characters as well, but again ymmv.

These suggestions are focused on aro/ace people in relationships. The reason for this is that this is still a ship week, but obviously there are also aro/ace people that are not interested in partnering at all.

Suggestions and pitfalls under the cut! If you, an aro/ace-spec person, have suggestions as well, feel free to reblog them on this post, or to DM/send an ask and I'll add them!

Suggestions:

Note: a QPR = queerplatonic relationship is a relationship type that "queers the platonic". There is no defined list of things that need to or shouldn't occur for a relationship to be queerplatonic. In general you could think of it as being platonic lifepartners, but it's not strange for a QPR to be sexual or even romantic as well.

These suggestions are formatted as: Codywan's specific identities and then a (fluffy) idea for their relationship. There are infinitely many options for how relationships work, and you can definitely mix and match between these "flavors". Angst is a bit more difficult to write, but you could look at the pitfalls and use those to go for a self-doubt/acceptance route.

Flavor: Any. You're more than welcome to write a platonic relationship as well!

Flavor: Codywan are both aromantic and asexual and have no interest in romance or sex: QPR Idea: They have such a close bond as commander and general that they feel like they are integral parts of each others lives and continue on like this after the war.

Flavor: They are not aromantic and one or both of them are asexual: romantic relationship/QPR Idea 1; they don't have sex: "basically" write a romantic relationship without sex. Maybe you can write the conversation they have about their expectations in the relationship. Idea 2; they do have sex: ace people can have sex if they want to, maybe they like the closeness of it or that it feels good, but they may not feel a need for having sex.

Flavor: They are not asexual and one or both of them are aromantic: sexual relationship/QPR Option 1; no romance: Maybe they are friends with benefits and do not consider themselves in a committed relationship. Or maybe they are in a QPR and also enjoy having sex together. Option 2; romance: Maybe they are in a romantic relationship and the aro character enjoys the "romantic" aspects just because they are pleasant to do/experience, but they may not feel a need to do these things with their partner. Here are some ideas from another aro person!

Flavor: One or both of them are demiro and/or demi-ace: anything Demi = you only feel romantic or sexual attraction to people you are already close to (does not mean you feel the attraction to everyone you're close to). Idea: Maybe codywan reaches a certain point in the war where they fully trust each other and have gotten close on a personal level and they get an "oh" moment where they suddenly realize they're attracted to the other.

Flavor: One or both of them are grayro and/or gray-ace: anything Gray- = you only feel romantic or sexual attraction very rarely or weakly (below the "average" for allo people to the point that you relate to aro/ace identities) Here you can have the fun "wait this is what you people have been talking about??" when someone has their first crush ever, but in general you can assume suddenly feeling attraction like that is very unexpected and maybe they find it very impractical to be happening right then.

Flavor: Anything! I am not a spokesperson for the whole aspec community and you're more than welcome to do your own research about identities and relationships.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Pitfalls:

CW for implied ace/arophobia.

Note that these things can be explored when dealing with self-doubt and self-acceptance, but please do not present the things stated below as facts.

When writing aro/ace codywan getting together: do not imply that something has been "fixed" about them.

Do not imply that being a virgin is bad.

When questioned about being aro-/ace-spec, do not make statements such as "but I can still love!!" as this throws people that don't love/are distanced from love under the bus. [see Lovelessness. Originally from the aro community, but valid to use when you're not aro as well]

In that same vein: "love is what makes us human" (or sentient in star wars I suppose) is a no.

Another in that same vein: "But I can still X" statements in general get icky very quickly, as it feels like you need to make up for a lack of something.

Don't portray an ace character as "innocent" or "childish" due to their aceness. Don't portray them as not knowing anything about sex by default unless you have good (relevant) in-story reasons for it. (e.g. Cody doesn't know anything about sex because the clones had no sex-ed and he wasn't interested in learning anyway, or Cody/Obi-Wan knows the anatomical basics but nothing further because they were Not interested.)

Addition by @data-plays-viola: Don't portray ace characters as sex negative by default, unless you have good (relevant) in-story reasons for it. Sex negative asexual people exist but the two are not connected (though some may use their asexuality as an excuse, unfortunately.)

If you write an ace character that has sex, do not imply that this is a redeeming quality. Same for an aromantic character that does romantic things.

Note that not all ace people are sex repulsed and not all aro people are romance repulsed, they may also be indifferent or favourable to the idea. (X repulsed is usually being repulsed by the idea of participating in X, though for some it means being repulsed by X in general.) Do not imply that being sex/romance repulsed is the standard for aspec people.

Note 2: some aspec people see a clear event in their past that had an effect on their sexual and romantic orientations (such as trauma), but for most people being aspec is just as random as e.g. being gay or being trans. Do not attach a reason to a character being aro and/or ace without doing your research into people that feel like that.

[minisugakoobies]

Ashes Falling | MYG

Pairing: Yoongi x Reader

Genre: smut, crack, DadYoongi!AU, BadCop!AU

Rating: M (18+)

Warnings: weapons - guns, switching POVs, angst!, allusions to murder, mentions of blood/wounds, fighting (hand-to-hand), shooting, Yoongi shows off that tongue technology (oral sex - f receiving), rough fucking (protected sex), Yoongi is not a good guy (ymmv)

Word Count: 5.3k (whoops)

Disclaimers: NSFW, obviously I don’t own BTS - they just inspire me

Summary: I see the ashes falling out your window There's someone in the mirror that you don't know And everything was all wrong So burn it till it's all gone

A/N: And we've reached the end! This series came out of absolutely nowhere thanks to @minttangerines's beautiful brain and it's been fun just writing with no plan and no expectations. Thank you for riding along! 💜

Chapter title and summary from Agust D's masterpiece Burn It 🔥

Unbeta’d as usual. I’d love to know what you think - my inbox is always open! 💕

Part 6 💵 Bad Cop Masterlist

Then

Yoongi sits across from you, one hand resting on the dining table, the other playing with a glass of whisky. Around and around, the caramel liquid swirls. If you didn’t know better, you’d swear he was trying to hypnotize you. 

And it might work, if you were anyone else. Of course, anyone else would already be under the handsome man’s thrall. Especially the way he looks tonight - in his tailored suit, bespoke undoubtedly, since money is apparently no object for him, and with his dark hair slicked back to reveal more of his gorgeous face.

When he’d asked you to dinner tonight, you’d felt a slight thrill of victory, knowing that your plan was working. You’d succeeded so far in inserting yourself into his life. All the secrets the Bureau wanted so desperately for you to discover were practically within your grasp. You just needed a sign from him to confirm that you’re in. 

“So are you thinking of extending your contact?” Yoongi asks, sipping at his drink. You’d told him when you’d first met that you were working for Da-som’s school for a year, with the option to extend if the school agreed. He speaks casually, almost disinterestedly, but you can hear the true question beneath - are you staying?

“I think so. I really like it here.” 

A hint of a smile crosses his face at your answer. Long fingers reach into the inside pocket of his jacket and produce a cigarette, which he lights with the click of a flashy silver lighter. There’s not supposed to be any smoking in this restaurant, but no one’s going to stop the chief detective of the city’s police force, and he knows it. It’s a power move. 

“Good,” is all he says, blowing a smoke ring towards the ceiling. 

Anyone other than you would be affected by his reaction. By the heated look he gives you, gaze slipping down your face, down to your waist, and back. Not you, though. You know better than to fall for any of this. 

This is what you remind yourself as you push your thighs together, trying to still the sudden throbbing there. 

Your waiter returns with the bill and Yoongi simply reaches into his pocket, dropping a stack of cash on the tray without looking. Another power move. 

“Thank you for dinner,” you smile shyly, setting down your dessert fork. “I’m - I’m glad you asked me. I’ve really enjoyed getting to know you better these last few weeks.” 

He leans forward, reaching his hand across the table to where yours is resting. When his fingers tap you, you flip your hand over and he slides his hand on top of yours. You immediately register something cool and hard between your palms. 

“Me too,” he says softly. “And I don’t want to stop.” 

He pulls his hand back a little, curling your fingers around what he’s left behind. Yoongi stands, taking your hand and pressing a kiss to the back of it as he bows. 

“I’ll be waiting,” he murmurs, lips humming against your skin, and then he walks away. You track him as he saunters confidently through the crowded room, until he reaches the entrance of the restaurant and vanishes. 

Opening your hand, you stare down at the piece of plastic lying there. A room key, to the hotel next door. There it is - your sign. 

The excitement that blazes through you is the ecstasy of knowing you’ve succeeded. Of realizing that you’re one step closer to the win, and nothing else.

This is what you tell yourself as you rise to your feet, and follow. 

Now

Your bag rests on the passenger seat as you hurtle down the highway. The car you’re driving is a piece of shit, but you were in no position to barter when you’d asked Seokjin if he had anything you could borrow to finish your mission. He’d called a friend of a friend and mere minutes later you were on your way. 

The police cruiser is still at Seokjin's, along with Jungkook. Your partner had been sleeping when you’d left, whispering a quick goodbye, telling him to stay put and rest while you finished the job. Seokjin promised he’d take care of him and you had no doubt that he would be safe there. 

The car’s shocks are fairly worn, meaning every little bump in the road sends your satchel bouncing. Instinctively, you reach out, searching until you find the little key tucked away in an inner pocket. The cold metal soothes you as you clutch at it anxiously. This is it, the final key to bringing Yoongi down. 

Your plan is, frankly, insane. But desperate times call for desperate measures. Thankfully, Seokjin gave you access to his personal arsenal, which is not small. But even if you’re strapped to the teeth, you’ll practically need a miracle. 

However, you’re not the praying type. Your faith resides solely in yourself. So you breathe deeply, and keep your eyes firmly on the road as you run through your plan again and again in your mind. 

As the bay comes into view, you pull over, parking the car near the entrance to the neighborhood where Yoongi’s second house resides. You’ll have to go on foot from here, to remain unseen by his men. Yoongi’s too careful to leave this place unmanned. 

You approach the fence bordering his mansion, peering between the iron bars. His vacation home is massive, a sprawling ode to excess, flaunting his new wealth. The layout of the place is fresh in your mind, thanks to floor plans stolen from the developer. Unfortunately, that’s not going to help you much if you’re outnumbered by Yoongi’s men. If only you could’ve waited for sundown, to give you more cover, or waited for backup, but right now you don’t have the luxury of time. 

A hand suddenly slips over your mouth and your eyes widen as someone presses their body against your back. Fuck! You grasp at their arm, readying yourself to attack, when a familiar voice hisses, “Don’t scream! It’s me.” 

“Jungkook! What the fuck!” 

Your partner releases you. He’s a little paler than usual, but otherwise looks like himself, even in Seokjin’s clothing, a black t-shirt tucked under a Kevlar vest, colorful sleeve of tattoos bright in the midday sun. 

“Did you really think I was gonna let you do this alone?” He grins, ignoring your scowl. “Now what’s the plan?” 

There’s no point in arguing with him. He’s here now, and even though you’re full of conflicting emotions - anger that he didn’t listen to you, guilt that you’re the reason he got injured - the feeling that overrides them all is pure, intense relief. Of course he’s by your side. You’re not alone.

It doesn’t take long to fill him in. You’re basically just going in there with guns blazing, hoping to fight your way to where you believe Yoongi’s safe sits, holding the box with the secrets that little key will unlock. 

Jungkook just nods when you’ve finished. “Got it.”

“We should probably call for backup.” 

“Already did, on the way here. They’ll be here as fast as they can, but something tells me that you don’t want to wait.” 

“I don’t.” You need this to be over, now. 

“Okay then. Ready when you are.” 

“Jungkook.” You pause, unsure how to say this. “I’m sorry. For everythi- ”

But he stops you with a shake of his head. “None of that. We’ve got a job to do.” He cups his hands, waiting to give you a boost over the fence. “Come on. You lead. I’ll follow. Like always.” 

With a nod of your own, you step onto his hands, and climb the fence.

Then

Yoongi glances at his watch. It’s only been five minutes since he left you sitting at the table, but it feels much, much longer. Too long. He loosens his tie a bit as he waits. His suit jacket is folded over the back of the chair beside the bed. The room is quiet. 

Is he rushing things? It’s very like him to do that. He could move more slowly with you. But, well, he doesn’t want to. He wants you now.

Which is why he’s here, perched on the edge of the bed, staring at the door. Waiting.

It’s not just about sex. If Yoongi only wanted to get his dick wet, he wouldn’t have to take anyone out on several dates first. That’s not arrogance - it’s a fact that he radiates power, and women are attracted to that. And he knows he looks good. He has mirrors. 

No, it’s more than that - although he’d be lying if he said he hasn’t been imagining this moment since the first time he saw you in Da-som’s classroom. He’d been so distracted by your beauty at the parent-teacher conference that he’d accidentally agreed to chaperone a class trip, just nodding along to whatever you were saying while picturing what you’d look like if he bent you over your desk right then and there. But beyond his baser needs, there’s something else. Something that draws him to you. He senses a kindred spirit. He needs to know how deep that connection goes.

There’s a loud click and the door suddenly opens. Yoongi stands as you enter. 

“I hope I didn’t keep you waiting too long,” you say, biting your lip before smiling sweetly. 

In just three steps he’s across the room, pulling you into his arms for a passionate kiss. 

He quietly orders you to lift your arms, and the gorgeous dress you’d worn to dinner crumples into a soft ball of fabric on the ground. With sure steps he maneuvers you towards the bed, helping you sit on the edge, kindly freeing your breasts from the confining corsetry of your bra as he goes. While you settle onto the soft sheets, he slides your panties down your legs, taking care to rake his fingers along the soft skin there, delighting in the way you shudder at his touch. 

The plush carpet gives way beneath his knees as he kneels, leaning over to kiss you, getting lost in the incredible softness of your lips for a moment, until your hands reach for the buttons on his shirt. His hands lightly push yours away as he shakes his head. 

“Not yet, baby.” 

“But I wanna see you,” you say, pretty mouth turning down in a lovely little pout. “It’s not fair that I’m naked and you’re not.”

He just chuckles. Smoothly, he undoes one cufflink, then the other, rolling his sleeves to his elbows. His forearms flex with the motion, drawing your attention, and he smirks. 

“Don’t worry,” he assures you, “I’ll still put on a good show for you.” 

He kneels again, gently pressing his fingers into the bare skin of your stomach, urging you to lie back. One of your thighs comes to rest on his shoulder, then the other. With one hand he spreads your folds, saliva flooding his mouth at the glistening sight in front of him. 

“Fuck, sweetheart, you look good enough to eat.” 

You mewl as he kisses your dripping cunt, over and over, getting his mouth all sticky with your desire. Yoongi always follows through on his promises, and this is no exception. You can’t tear your eyes away from the dark-haired man as he rubs his lips, his tongue, his nose all over you, maintaining eye contact the entire time. Occasionally your head drops back, your eyes closing as if overwhelmed by the sensations, but then they immediately open again, not wanting to miss a second. 

“Yoongi.” 

Panting moans fill Yoongi’s ears as he drowns in you. When he finds the right rhythm with his tongue on your clit, a rapid lapping that has your hips lifting off the bed, he slides a finger inside your slick warmth, then two, three, and your moans become cries. Pleas, broken and desperate, begging him for more. 

Impatience roars up inside him again and he lets your legs slide from his broad shoulders. His cock aches as he tears off his clothing, sheathing himself with the condom waiting in his pocket, and you’ve barely moved up on the bed to make room for him when he’s sliding inside you. Fuck. So warm, so tight. A space carved out just for him. 

The headboard smacks into the wall repeatedly as Yoongi thrusts into you, hips slapping your ass with every sharp snap. You’re babbling, an endless stream of words pouring from your mouth, but the only words Yoongi can make out are “Yoongi” and “more.” 

“You want more, baby? I’ll give you everything. Anything you could ever want.”  

He goes harder, faster, driving his cock deeper and deeper. His hands grope at your breasts, your ass, as you take everything he has to give. When he feels your walls start to constrict, it’s almost a relief, because he’s not going to last much longer. And sure enough, when your orgasm hits, your cunt grips his cock so tightly that he cums, head dropping onto your chest as he fills the condom with his hot release.  

He lies that way, cheek pressed into the curve of your breast, breathing heavily as you both come down. From here, he can feel your heart pounding. It’s not identical to the way his own drums, but instead compliments it, a wild syncopation beating along to the steady pulse of his own tempo. His fingers tap along your sternum. 

“Is that morse code?” Your voice is just barely above a whisper, as if you don’t want to shatter the peaceful stillness of the moment. 

He lifts his head, smiling. “That’s your heartbeat. I’m playing along.” 

“Playing what, my collarbones?” 

“My piano.” His fingers dance over imaginary keys, caressing your skin so, so gently. 

“I didn’t know you had a piano. Or that you could play.” 

There’s so much you don’t know about him. So much he wants to show you. But he knows that it will take time. He has to ease you into his world. 

“I’ll play for you sometime,” he says, crawling up your body until his face hovers over yours. “If you’d like.” 

“I would like that. Very much,” you reply, lips curling into a shy grin, and he kisses it away until you’re breathless. 

Eventually, he has to go. He needs to get home to Da-som. Yoongi can defeat any enemy - except a babysitter with a curfew. 

He sits on the edge of the bed, fixing his tie, as you watch him from beneath the sheets. “The room’s paid for until tomorrow, so you can stay all night if you want. Order some room service in the morning. Treat yourself, sweetheart.” 

The corner of your mouth twitches. “You keep calling me that.” 

“Is that okay?” 

In reply, you pull him in for another kiss, and he sighs, wishing he could stay. Or take you home with him. But he’s not ready to have that conversation with Da-som yet. Even though he’s rushing everything else. 

He taps his fingers on your chest. “Sleep well, sweetheart.” 

He starts to rise, but you grab his wrist, holding him in place. 

“Yoongi. I don’t…” 

He says nothing, waiting for you to find your words. 

“I don’t do this with every father I meet, you know,” you finish, flashing that beautiful bashful smile again.

“Just me?” 

“Just you.” Your hand reaches out to straighten his tie, but then you gently brush your fingertips over his chest, mimicking his actions from earlier. Tap-tap-tap. 

In that moment, Yoongi knows. He’ll do anything for you. Like he told you earlier, when he was wrapped in your arms - he’ll give you anything you want. 

All you have to do is ask. 

Now

Bodies. So many bodies, scattered around the grounds of his house. Yoongi blinks dispassionately at them all. He thought he’d hired the best. Clearly, he was wrong. 

Yoongi honestly hadn’t known what to expect when he and Jimin arrived at his house on the bay. One of his guards had called him while he was on his way here and alerted him that you’d been spotted near the fence bordering his property. He’d hoped that when he got here, he’d find you waiting for him, tied to a chair by one of his guards. But it appears that he’d underestimated your skills, if you managed to take out so many of his men at once. 

No one appears to be dead, but they’re all knocked out or wounded. Interesting. Are you afraid to use lethal force? Or are you just saving your best shots for him? 

Together, he and Jimin sweep the first floor, finding nothing but his more useless guards. With a few silent signals, Jimin indicates that he’s going to scout ahead, and begins to climb the stairs. Yoongi watches him disappear down the hallway with a growing sense of unease. He tightens his grip on his gun. 

Jimin reappears after a moment, shaking his head. There’s only the other end of the hallway to explore now. The master suite is down that way. Where, in one of the walk-in closets, nestled in the corner, sits Yoongi’s safe. 

Maybe you’re not here. Maybe you’re already gone, with the contents of the safe firmly in tow. Maybe it’s all over, and any second now, this place will be swarming with feds. For the briefest of moments, Yoongi feels the strangest sense of relief at the thought. 

And then the moment is broken as a very loud “God damn it!!” rings out. 

Jimin instinctively points his gun in the direction of the screaming. It’s coming from the master suite. Yoongi joins him at the top of the stairs. 

“It’s her,” he states in a hushed tone. “That’s her voice.” 

“Sounds like someone might be giving her a rough time?” 

There are no other sounds coming from the direction of the suite. No more curses, no scuffling, none of the sickening noises that a human body makes when someone else is beating the shit out of it.

“Nah. She’s working on the combination.” 

“At least it sounds like it’s not going well.” 

For the moment. You have the key to the safe, but it’s a dual lock system, requiring a combination as well. Yoongi has no doubt you’ll figure out the date he used. It’s just a matter of time. 

So he’d better not give you any more. 

Yoongi grimaces, the gun suddenly heavy in his hands. “You ready?” 

Jimin nods. 

Silently, they creep forward. The door to the master suite looms at the end of the hall, and Yoongi feels his already frantic pulse increasing with every step. 

And then a floorboard creaks under Yoongi’s foot. Loudly. 

Both men pause, staring at one another. Listening. Waiting. 

The door at the end of the hall starts to open. Jimin dives into an empty room to his left, while Yoongi dashes into the bathroom on his right

The mirror mounted on the wall faces towards the end of the hallway. As Yoongi hides, he stares at the reflection of the person emerging from the suite. Shit, it’s Jungkook, gun drawn as he carefully sweeps the other open rooms down the hall. So much for Jimin’s incredible marksman skills - the rookie cop slash undercover agent doesn’t look any worse for wear, let alone dead. 

The door at the end of the hall opens again. Yoongi’s breath catches. With a fiercely determined expression on your face and that gun in your hand, you look nothing like the sweet, shy teacher he met all those months ago. A mirthless chuckle bubbles up in his chest. He clenches his jaw to keep it down. Funny how he was right - you are a kindred spirit, after all. Just a funhouse version of one. Staring at him from the other side of the mirror.

“Jungkook,” he hears you whisper, tracing your partner’s footsteps. “Where are you?” 

“In here. Did you crack it?” Jungkook reappears, gun lowered, and - 

BANG!

A bullet slices through the air between you and Jungkook. The two of you immediately dive, raising your guns in the direction of the gunshot - which, of course, was just Jimin announcing his presence. 

“Drop your weapon and come out!” you shout. 

Jimin just laughs, shaking his head. “Does that shit ever work?”

“Goddamn it, it’s that maniac again,” you hiss, loud enough for Yoongi to hear. 

“Did you miss me, love?” Another wild cackle. Yoongi glares at the younger man, but says nothing, not wanting to give away his location. 

Faster than lightning, Jimin fires another shot towards the end of the hall. 

“Fuck!” Jungkook yells, placing himself between you and the line of sight to the room where Yoongi can see Jimin crouching just inside. “Get back in there and keep trying! I’ll handle this asshole.” 

As soon as the door closes behind you, Yoongi looks at Jimin. He points to himself and then the door at the end of the hall. Jimin nods. 

“Oh, you will, will you?” Jimin taunts Jungkook. He grins at Yoongi. “I think - HEY!” Jimin dives aside as a bullet pierces the doorway, embedding itself firmly in the open door that Jimin was just leaning against. “You son of a bitch, you almost clipped my hair!” 

“Next one’s going in your forehead!” 

“As if you could hit my forehead!” 

“How can I miss a target that big?” 

“THAT’S IT!” Jimin roars. “YOU WANT A PIECE OF ME?” He rolls up his sleeves, giant snake tattoo on his arm practically dancing as he clenches his fists. 

“Yeah! You already took one from me! It’s time for payback!” 

Jimin unbuckles his harness, letting the weapons hit the floor. “Then let’s do this! I’ll tear you apart with my bare hands!”

“LET’S GO, MOTHERFUCKER!” Jungkook screams, and suddenly there are two blurs flying down the hallway towards each other. They collide with a loud “whump!” and Yoongi quickly slips out of the bathroom and towards the master suite. 

He opens the door slowly, much slower than the adrenaline coursing through his body wants him to, but he doesn’t want you to hear him entering. The two men behind him pay no attention, lost in their frenzy, powerful blows landing left and right. Yoongi closes the door just as carefully, twisting the knob so the lock clicks quietly into place. 

Gun raised, he takes one step towards the closet. Then another. The door is wide open, but the closet is so big that he can’t see the safe in the corner. Or you. 

As soon as he crosses the threshold, there’s a loud shriek as you jump out from behind the door and tackle him. His gun goes flying. He lands on his side, the breath in his lungs whooshing out hurriedly as you roll on top of him, thighs straddling his chest. 

“Don’t. Fucking. Move.” You cock your gun, aiming it straight at his head. “I knew that maniac didn’t come alone.” 

Although your hands are steady, your chest rises with every panting breath you take, Yoongi notes. He feels his entire tensed body relax. You’re scared.

Good.

Yoongi smirks. “What are you gonna do, sweetheart? Shoot me?” He grabs the barrel of your gun as you gasp, but your finger doesn’t squeeze the trigger, even when he pulls it down until it presses into his forehead. “Go ahead.” 

“Stop it!” You try to yank your gun free, but he refuses to let go. You tug harder and harder, until he finally relinquishes his grip, and the force of your momentum throws you off balance. Yoongi scrambles to grab his gun as you’re knocked into a pile of hangers and clothing lying in a heap on the ground. When you rise, there’s a bright red line of blood seeping down your cheek, from where a hanger has cut you.

The two of you face off, guns drawn. Yoongi tuts. 

“Oh, sweetheart, your face. That looks nasty.” 

“Don’t call me that,” you snarl. 

“No? But I thought you liked it?” 

“I never did.” 

“Ah. Right. All part of the game, huh?” Yoongi laughs. “None of it was real, huh.” 

“It’s all over now.” Blood trickles down your cheek, dripping onto the pristine white carpet below. “Put the gun down, Yoongi. Think about Da-som. Think about -”

“No!” Yoongi takes a step forward. You hold your ground, but he swears he catches a flash of fear in your eyes. He should know, he’s seen it many times before. “Don’t you fucking tell me what to do! No one tells me what to do! I make the rules around here. I call the shots!” 

“Not anymore! We know everything. Everything. Your empire is burning down, Yoongi - don’t throw your life away trying to protect ashes!” 

“Oh, you know everything?” The mad laughter that’s been choking him finally slips past his lips. “Do you really? Fuck! You have no fucking idea!” Another step forward. He keeps his gun raised, but he’s cackling so wildly that his aim is all over the place. “Do you have any idea what I would’ve done for you? What I would’ve given you? Anything you wanted, anything you needed, it all would’ve been yours!”

“It wasn’t real, Yoongi!” 

“IT WAS REAL TO ME!” 

You freeze, eyes wide, as his shout echoes through the suite. Faintly, Yoongi can hear Jungkook and Jimin still fighting in the hallway. But it’s dead silent in the closet, where you’re still gazing at his face, as if searching for some sort of sign. 

Yoongi lowers his gun. He closes the gap between you, ignoring that your gun is now pointed directly at his heart, and reaches out with steady fingers.

Tap-tap-tap 

The silence in the closet is stifling, pressing in on him. But then you take in a shuddery breath. When Yoongi dares to look up, he sees tears in your eyes. 

But time, it seems, has run out. 

In the distance, but growing closer, he can hear the blaring wail of sirens. 

“YN!” Jungkook yells. The doorknob rattles. “Are you okay in there?” 

Yoongi’s fucked. He’s going down, and -

“Go,” you whisper. “You have to run.” 

There’s a loud thumping. Jungkook must be trying to break the door down with brute force. He’ll probably go grab his gun and try to shoot his way in next. Or any moment now, agents are going to come crashing through the windows. These are the panicked thoughts that race through Yoongi’s mind and prevent him from understanding what you’ve said. You drop your gun and grab his arms, shaking him. 

“Yoongi! Do you hear me? You have to run!” There’s a ferocity in your eyes that Yoongi’s never seen in anyone’s gaze but his own. “I know you have a back way out of here. You have to go now. Yoongi? Hey!” 

SMACK!

There’s a white-hot sting on his cheek. 

“Fuck, sweetheart!” He rubs away the pain left behind by your slap. 

A ghost of a smile crosses your face. The door has stopped shaking. “Listen, Jungkook will be in here any second. My team is likely already setting up a barricade and surrounding the place. You have to get to the water. Grab Da-som, start running, and never look back.” 

Da-som. Son of a bitch, he can’t lose her. The weight of everything he stands to lose finally comes crashing down. “Fuck, what have I done?” 

There’s a shout from the hallway, a berserker cry, and Yoongi realizes Jimin must have rallied for one last attack. Quickly, you take Yoongi’s hands, guiding him to stand again, and then lead him to the far corner of the master bedroom, where you push aside a bookshelf to reveal a darkened passageway, hidden from the outside. You really did know everything.

Or at least, now you do. 

The screaming sirens have stopped. Yoongi can hear voices out on the lawn. 

“I know you said you’re the one calling the shots, but you need to listen to me now. I’ll take care of everything else. But you - you can’t ever resurface, Yoongi. This is a one-time deal. Take Da-som and disappear. Please,” you whisper, clutching his hands. “Please, do this. If not for Da-som, if not for you - do it for me.” 

Even with his impending doom hovering just on the other side of the bedroom door, Yoongi can’t stop the way he feels. Of course he’ll run. 

Anything for you. 

Footsteps begin to echo throughout the house. Yoongi pulls you into his arms, embracing you one last time as his lips crash onto yours.

And then he runs.

Epilogue

You open the door to your apartment, kick off your shoes, and flop onto the couch. Another fucking long day. The planning for your latest mission is completely draining your energy. For not the first time in recent weeks, you wonder if you should listen to Jungkook’s advice and put in for that time off request. You could definitely use the break. 

Unconsciously, your fingers rub at the scar on your cheek. It hasn’t hurt for years, but in the last few weeks, it’s been itching like crazy. Jungkook always jokes that he can tell that it’s going to rain whenever his bullet wound aches. You wonder what the scar is trying to tell you. 

Eventually, you drag yourself off the couch and shuffle down the hallway towards the bathroom, dying for a shower. But then you hear a soft sound coming from the door behind you, like something’s sliding along the floor, and you freeze.

There’s an envelope laying in the entryway. Instinctively, you place a hand on the holster of your gun as you peer through the peephole. No one there. No one in the hallway, either, when you open your door. 

The envelope has your first name on it, nothing else. With careful fingers, you tear it open, and read the scrap of paper inside:

35.9285° N, 128.5774° E

Coordinates. To what location? 

You flip it over: 

I’ll be waiting.

You sink onto the couch, staring so intently at the words that you’re surprised the paper doesn’t burst into flames from the intensity of your gaze. 

It’s been five years with no word on Yoongi’s whereabouts. Once Jungkook finally knocked out Jimin and shot the door open, he’d found you lying on the floor, pretending to be unconscious. Yoongi had given up and fled the scene. The Bureau believed your story, likely helped by the fact that Yoongi had left behind his safe and all the secrets it contained. His empire crumbled.

Even though Yoongi’d evaded your capture, you were hailed as the hero of the day and moved on to the next case. And the next, and the next. Days turned into months turned into years. 

Once the mission was over, you never brought it up again. Occasionally, Jungkook or Seokjin would try to get you to talk. But you simply told them that you had nothing to say. The case was closed. 

(To say nothing of your heart.) 

And yet… it wasn’t entirely true. If you’d chosen to talk to your friends, you might have told them that you still found yourself thinking about it from time to time. About Yoongi. And where he was. That sometimes, when you couldn’t sleep, you’d scour countless resources, searching for him. Yet no matter how much you looked, you never found a single sign.

Until, maybe, now. You glance at the paper, and it dawns on you what it really is.

A key. 

…

You rise to your feet.

Masterlist 💜 Find me on AO3 💜 

© 2022-23 by sunshinerainbowsbts/minisugakoobies. Crossposted to AO3. Please do not copy or repost.

[sagurus]

Movie 27 spoiler under the cut

Tbh I am super excited that my Touichi and Yuusaku are brothers headcanon turned out to be right. I've always liked playing with the 'Kaito and Shinichi are secretly related' thing. Admittedly my favorite had always been 'Kaito and Shinichi are secretly twins' but that is obviously harder to pull off. I can 100% see the Kudos and Kurobas keeping separate just because of the way Yuusaku and Touichi are.

I do see how this would be a frustrating reveal for some though. Kaishin shippers should absolutely continue to enjoy their ship however they like regardless of the reveal, etc.

But I do appreciate that Gosho has finally stopped stringing us along with his 'there is a reason Kaito and Shinichi look exactly the same!' Especially since their sameness goes beyond his same face syndrome lmao. Since in canon specifically it is acknowledged they have the actual same face in terms of how other characters perceive them. (As opposed to how everyone else has the same face art-style wise but never gets identified as such)

Anyway I'm so excited to explore the implications of this. But I recognize YMMV

[copperbadge]

We recently got into a discussion of producing audiobooks for small press, indy, and/or selfpub authors on another post, but we had strayed pretty far from the original post, and @genedoucette very kindly gave permission for me to slice his comment off the end of that post and put it into a new one.

genedoucette

I have been very, very lucky when it comes to audiobooks, so I'm hesitant to offer advice without adding a huge YMMV caveat at the top. For most of my self-published novels, I used ACX and paid a narrator out-of-pocket (rather than 50-50 proceeds split), which just means I'm paying an agreed-upon X dollars per finished hour, prior to making any money off f the audio editon. Every book I did this with paid for itself, sometimes within the first two or three months, sometimes longer. (YMMV: I did a lot of this during what I would call the audiobook bubble, when demand was higher than supply.) I had another novel series--Tandemstar--that I brought to an audiobook company, who brought it to their distributor, who agreed to pay for the production costs of the book and to pay me a (small) advance. To date, the royalties from that series have not made up the cost of the advance, but the good news was that none of the production costs came from my pocket and the advance meant I did make something out of the deal. The rule-of-thumb I always heard was, don't expect books that haven't sold well to sell any better as audiobooks. But my experience, with ACX/Audible, is this: about 50% of my monthly earning come from audio sales. How long is the book in question (word count), and what is the genre? Because it is absolutely possible to get a not-terrible narrator at a not-terrible cost on ACX. If it's a low word count book with a decent sales record, I'd 100% do it. If it's a high word count book with few sales, maybe not.

Thanks so much for this! I am admittedly always suspicious of Amazon writ large, but it's not like I've never partnered with them before, and often for indy authors they're one of a very few games in town.

50% of sales via audio impresses me a lot -- I'm not really in the industry so my sense of scale may be off but my eyebrows went up at that. And looking at ACX, a split-profits model would be appealing. I'm more interested in providing the reader with more options than I am with making royalties, so I don't mind low payout, but I also don't want to exploit a narrator if I can avoid it.

I doubt I'm selling near the level you are, but it's pretty consistent, at least -- for the last literary novel I published in 2021, and for the four genre romances published in the past year-and-change, it's generally 200-250 copies (epub and paperback) in the first 6 months, and about 40 per year after that. None of them are over 100K words -- the first of the romance novels, the one I'd be most likely to have done as an audiobook to trial, is around 50K, and the other books are all between 60K and 90K or so.

There's some fine print I'm not nuts about -- exclusivity to Amazon/Audible/iTunes for example -- but I can see why it's a necessary business model for them. There's not a ton of clarity on cost per hour for a book, but it looks like for a flat fee it starts around $250 per finished hour? So I'd probably be looking at minimum $1K out of pocket, which is probably roughly (I haven't done the math) royalties per book for a full year. It could be fun to give it a swing regardless, although reading the ACX site made me realize I'd actually have to give notes and feedback to a reader which sounds nervewracking.

It looks like the readers for ACX are repped by SAG-AFTRA, which means that for now I have time to consider while the strike is going on. (Obviously not all of them are union but if it's an entertainment format where the union is involved, I don't want to cross the picket.) And the ACX site is pretty comprehensive in terms of figuring out how it all works, so if I did want to source a narrator elsewhere and perhaps not distribute exclusively through ACX, I now have a grounding from which to research other options too.

Sorry, a lot of this is just me thinking aloud, but I truly do appreciate the info and also something to bounce off of in terms of considering it. And I appreciate the opportunity to share it with my readership too, thank you!

[olderthannetfic]

Re: better porn, the best stuff I’ve read has usually been unrelated to ao3 fandoms, on forums and dodgy websites dedicated to a single kink/fetish. (YMMV, obviously. I don’t know how fanfic-centric the followers of this blog are.)

--

Very.

But yes, if you're looking for particular kinks, especially ones not popular in AO3 circles like mind control, that's the best place to look.

[shelaghdette]

theory: trixie franklin is a lesbian

alright, this one may prove slightly controversial, but please bear with me! i've always taken the view that trixie is bi, but thinking about it more, i've come to a different conclusion.

glossary -

wlw - woman loving women, a blanket term for any woman who is attracted to women.

sapphic - another blanket term for femmes who are attracted to femmes, arguably more inclusive than wlw - here used interchangeably with the above.

lesbian - a woman or femme who is exclusively attracted to other women or femmes.

bisexual - a person who is attracted to two or more genders.

a note on compulsory heterosexuality -

before you read this, if you don't already, it's probably best to understand the concept of compulsory heterosexuality, or comphet.

this is when societies (like most in the world, even in the modern day) enforce the normalisation of heterosexual love and relationships, to the point that lgbt people feel pushed towards straight-passing relationships when they may be happier in a queer relationship.

comphet applies to all genders and queer sexualities, but today i'm going to be discussing it specifically in the context that it impacts lesbian women.

relationships with women -

full disclosure - i am a trixadette shipper (i think i might've even invented the ship). i have analysed quite a number of scenes from the first two seasons where trixie and sister bernadette interact, and there doesn't appear to be much in the way of heterosexual explanation for their behaviour towards each other. that in itself deserves its own post, and will get one in due course.

my theory that trixie is attracted to women mostly stems from her interactions with sister bernadette, and later shelagh. there are a few longing looks, some flirtatious body language and just a general air of gals who are a bit more than pals.

however, aside from this, trixie never appears happier than when she interacts with other women. she seems to gain the most fulfilment from her relationships with her female friends, far more than she does with the men in her life. barbara and valerie are prime examples of this.

prior to realisation of being sapphic, it's very common for wlw to experience intense attachment and deep love for female friends. this can truly be just platonic, or it can be a crush that is so repressed that it presents as overwhelming platonic love.

"attraction" to men -

ever since the first season, trixie has been presented as the "boy crazy" girl. she often talks about men, but if you actually watch her behaviour, she rarely pursues any particular man. additionally, closeted queer people may often overcompensate for their insecure identities by putting forward a highly straight image.

it's extremely common for lesbians who are experiencing comphet to fantasise about an abstract concept of a relationship with a man, but not have much idea of WHO that man might be. in the early seasons, when she DOES pursue a man, it is with an ulterior motive (getting that actor to be a judge for the baby show) and it ends disastrously for her.

when she does eventually get into relationships with men, it is because they pursue her. it happened with all three of her relationships we've seen on the show - tom, christopher and matthew. i do not personally think trixie showed any interest in them prior to them showing interest in her, but YMMV.

image consciousness

it's very telling that, during her AA meetings, trixie speaks at length about her ability to put on a show to please others around her. obviously, she talks about this in the context of placating her mentally ill and alcoholic father, but this skill from childhood has been highly transferable to her adult life too.

trixie is extremely good at putting on a front and looking well put together, even during her worst moments. when she was relapsing, she hid it well until her secret was unwittingly revealed to phyllis by a patient. the girl can lie and lie, but it's all a defense mechanism.

trixie clearly struggles with a view that she must be seen as perfect at all times. it's easy to see how, if she was a lesbian, this would not fit into the image she tries to display to others. i believe that part of her striving for perfection includes wanting a relationship with a man. this leads me into my next point.

cultural context

it probably goes without saying, but the 1960s was not an easy time to be a sapphic woman, especially if you weren't attracted to men. we just need to look at the story of patsy and delia to see how the show acknowledges this. comphet is still a problem we face today, in the year of our lord 2024, but it was absolutely rampant in those days. female lgbt behaviour was never criminalised like male homosexual acts, but it was harshly viewed. wlw faced a lot of the same challenges as mlm, as well as their own unique struggles when homophobia is coupled with misogyny.

marriage to a man and child-bearing were still considered the most important things a woman could do in that era. and by the time trixie gets into a relationship with matthew, she is approaching her mid-30s. in that time, trixie would have already been considered "on the shelf." the show really implies this by her becoming a lot more focused on her search for a husband in later series, like when she joins the marriage bureau.

relationships with men

i won't say much about tom, but trixie makes no bones about it when she told him he and barbara are much better suited. there's a real notion that trixie feels out of place in her relationship with tom, and ultimately she breaks it off when she realises she couldn't be happy with him in the long term.

this continues into her relationship with christopher. i really like christopher, and i think trixie does too. by far, he is the person who treats her the nicest out of the three men she has had major relationships with. however, even then, she doesn't seem entirely comfortable, and breaks it off when she fears how intimate the relationship has become. i think the situation with alexandra is mostly an excuse for her fear of commitment to a man.

i also want to talk about sex (minors, cover your ears) when i mention christopher. he's the first man she is ever implied to have slept with, and she agonised over it for a very long time before she makes the decision to do it. some people read this as her being asexual (which she still could be, even as a lesbian!), or just "proper" for the era, but opinions vary. i view it as her having no sexual attraction to MEN.

finally, matthew. oh, matthew. he makes me so very angry.

matthew and trixie essentially traumabonded over the death of his first wife, and she is a good supportive presence to him raising his son in her capacity as a midwife. i think the convenience of him showing interest in her, coupled with her recent anxiety about find a partner, created the situation where they eventually married.

and she still isn't happy. when the new pupil midwives arrive and trixie hears them having fun with nancy, she looks really sad and lost, and my heart just breaks for her. it's a sign that she regrets leaving the lifestyle she loves for a life of domestic "bliss".

when they had their argument about trixie's work, it's very telling that her immediate response was to retreat back to her safe place of nonnatus house for half the week. trixie feels the most secure when she is among women, this is shown time and time again.

this was super long winded and possibly a ramble, but these are my thoughts on her. if you made it to the end, here's my favourite happy video edit of trixie and shelagh. i'll probably make a whole post about why i ship them next.

[weclassybouquetfun]

It's always fascinating to see how various fandoms relationship with what is perceived as acceptable has changed over the years. I was never in the HANNIBAL fandom but as a HANNIBAL viewer I obviously knew of the fandom and how heavily invested they were (and remain) about the relationship between Will Graham and Hannibal. So what that Hannibal stabbed Will. Who cares if he sawed open Will's head. Let those without sin cast the first stone, I say. If Will can love Hannibal after nearly being gutted by him, who am I to judge?

It's why it's hilarious that nearly eight years later there are fans who need a fainting couches over the passionate, yet toxic (passionately toxic?) relationship between Lestat de Lioncourt and Louis Du Pont Du Lac in AMC's INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE.

It's even funnier when people who are on the fence about the depiction of Lestat's cruelty decide they want to read the books and then being even more horrified by that.

Live look at AMC INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE watchers trying to read The Vampire Chronicles.

Lestat being awful and his obsessive love for Louis is a large part of his appeal. Even Louis rolls with it - when he's not being emotionally drained by it.

And then Louis promptly proceeds to fight and f*ck Lestat right then and there.

Not saying everyone has to have the same level of tolerance. Not at all. Just that characters doing despicable things didn't seem as much as a deal breaker less than a decade ago for many.

The latest entry in this is TEEN WOLF. Nearly six years after the MTV series' finale, there is a Paramount+ film and due to a particular plot device, has reawakened the sleeping dragon that stirred in the subsequent years of the show ending. There are people who are just now finding out that one of the show's biggest ships is Stiles and Derek (Sterek, if you will) and they are shaking, crying, throwing up, needing fainting couches and smelling salts that, then, teenage Stiles was/is being shipped with adult Derek.

Stephen A., take it home for me.

*Amended because I abhor the royal "we" so I don't care. YMMV.

[grapenehifics]

Making of Monday: Can't Stop the Suns Part 1

(I am thinking SO positively rn that I am calling this part 1, like I will remember to actually write more. YMMV; we'll see how I do.)

I'm hard at work on the concluding chapters of Pick Up the Pieces right now, and working on Pick Up the Pieces means I also need to do a fair bit of rereading An Uncivil War, so it's very much on the forefront of my brain, and also I have yet to participate in a single MoM, so: here's some backstory on An Uncivil War.

Okay I actually need to back up even farther than that, all the way to Solsbury Hill and February 2020. I started Solsbury Hill - it wasn't called that, then; it didn't have a name, just 'weird doc file/outline I'll probably never finish because I don't have a track record of finishing creative writing projects, ever' - and then the very next month I started working from home AND season 7 of Clone Wars premiered.

To get ready for season 7 - and because I was home a lot more during the day, now, and didn't have to commute to work - we decided to do a rewatch of Clone Wars season 1 through 6. And you know how we joke about plot bunnies, and why they're called that? That the hardest idea is your first one and once you have that the ideas just keep multiplying? So, I'm sitting on an outline for what would become Solsbury Hill, and we're watching Clone Wars, and we get to season 5, and the episode with Ahsoka's trial, and I think to myself, huh. That's weird. Why is Obi-Wan acting like that? Why is he not sticking up for our Padawan? If he had, I bet things would have turned out differently. Ahsoka might not have left the Order. Anakin might not have turned to the Dark Side. Clone Wars is full of all these little things that individually might not be enough to push Anakin over the edge, but they start stacking up, collectively...

From there, it was a pretty easy leap to, 'what if Obi-Wan left the Order instead of Ahsoka', and that created this whole domino effect because Anakin would obviously leave with him, right, and Ahsoka was getting kicked out anyway, and now I've got this scenario with three Jedi on the run in the middle of a war.

And that was fascinating to me. Once I started thinking about it I couldn't stop. But I was also getting really into Solsbury Hill, at that point, so this new story needed to take a backseat. I dumped a bunch of notes into a Word doc and went back to my AU.

It turns out, though - and this was the first time I'd learned this about myself - that I liked having both an AU and a canon project going at the same time. Solsbury Hill and An Uncivil War both used such different parts of my brain and required a different skillset and researching vastly different things, and if I got bogged down in one it was nice to be able to switch to the other one and hack away at that one for a while. So I ended up, from early 2020 until August 2022 when I posted the first chapter of Solsbury Hill on AO3, working on both projects nearly simultaneously, although obviously Solsbury Hill (despite being three times longer) got to the finish line first.

For a long time - almost three years - An Uncivil War was just called, An Uncivil War. And it had this expansive outline that I just kept cracking away at, and whenever I came across something cool in another piece of Star Wars media or another show premiered or I read another book I'd think 'Ooh, that's neat! That's going in the fic!' and I'd add it to my to-do list. And at some point I looked at my word count and realized I was pushing 100k and not anywhere close to the end of the story I wanted to tell.

So, I started thinking about sequels, and series. I had (still have) this outline, fortunately, and there was one pretty obvious stopping point at what was then the mid-point of the plot. (I say, 'then' because it has since, of course, expanded. It turns out I'm very bad at guessing word counts.) So I took half my outline, dumped into a brand-new doc, called that one Pick Up the Pieces, and wrote the 'ending' of An Uncivil War, as much as possible, as if it were the ending, just in case I for some reason never got around to writing Pick Up the Pieces.

Because it was important to me that An Uncivil War be able to stand on its own. It's got a beginning, a middle, and an end, and the end calls back to the beginning, and the main threat to the characters is resolved, and they talk about what they're going to do next but even if that was the only story you had, it should still be a satisfying conclusion (or, at least, I hope it is).

But it isn't the entirety of the story I wanted to tell. Because they originally were one big story, I actually had maybe half of Pick Up the Pieces already written by the time I started posting An Uncivil War, so while the first part took me three years to write, the second has technically only taken me a year, but I was definitely not starting from scratch.

I also - and this should shock absolutely no one - was once again wildly off in my word count estimate. Pick Up the Pieces is, right now, already as long as An Uncivil War (120k), and I've still got three chapters left to go...plus a bunch more things in my outline I haven't gotten to yet.

So, in true Star Wars tradition, I'm now plotting a part three! Pick Up the Pieces, like An Uncivil War before it, has a logical ending point, so it will wrap up there, but the plot will move merrily along to the next thing on my to-do list, which is in fact the same to-do list I've had since March 2020. (It's a good thing I love this story so much or I would have quit long ago.) Part Three, at the moment, is tentatively titled Sometimes Fate Steps In, and I'm really, really sorry to have to admit that that's where all the smut is going to be. (I know. It's Solsbury Hill all over again.)

(I do love it, though. I feel like I should...apologize, to my fics, somehow, for having a favorite? I do have a favorite, though. It's this series. I love it so damn much. This is the one thing I write where, if you told me right now that I would never get a single comment or kudos on it, I would still write it anyway, because I just get so much enjoyment out of researching and writing it and re-reading it.)

(Which is not to say you shouldn't comment on it. Please, please do! You will absolutely make my day, week, month, year! But I love it enough to do it anyway.)

[bestworstcase]

ymmv here, but it has long bothered me when the fndm uses having a body double as proof that Raven is a coward... like, the Ozluminati should have assigned body doubles to all Maidens??? With the stakes being what they are, having body doubles seems like a perfectly reasonable security measure to me? I would even take it a step further and have at least one Maiden hiding by cross-dressing as a guy.

honestly the key takeaway imo is not that raven put in the ridiculous amount of effort to set up a convincing decoy (she and vernal had to practice making it look like vernal was doing the magic! during RAIDS!) but that to judge by how the two of them positioned themselves in front of the lamp’s vault, the idea wasn’t “have a decoy to divert attacks away from the real maiden” so much as it was “have a decoy so that the real maiden can ambush possible threats.” hrgdh like raven was very clearly!! bracing to literally stab cinder in the back before cinder started talking. that’s a tactical gambit, not a cowardly one.

and raven also marshaled a huge group of loyal fighters around herself, which again is the strategic thing to do! safety in numbers!

meanwhile team oz had a young, relatively inexperienced maiden roaming around the countryside completely alone except for being tailed at a distance by qrow. which is of a piece with ozpin’s MO (discretion and secrecy at any cost, guardians quietly acting alone) but also suggests, like. zero actual effort to keep the maidens safe. forget a decoy, ozpin’s maidens don’t even get the buddy system!! the sole protection she had was not advertising that she had the magic, which a) didn’t work in the first place because team salem obviously clocked her, and b) would have gone out the window the minute she openly used the power, which she did in very dramatic fashion as soon as she ran into a threat she couldn’t handle.

the maidens are literally the narrative case study in why ozpin’s methods inevitably fail. hrgdhxbfb

i don’t know that i agree that decoys are necessary (this is a world where anyone with aura training has extra sensory perception and can stop bullets—that eliminates the primary defensive use case for a decoy, so if you’re not using a decoy to specifically try to get the drop on your enemies and velociraptor-in-the-bushes them, a la raven, there’s little to gain from having a decoy over a body guard) but the fact that amber EVER got put in a situation where she was fighting for her life 1v3 with her only ally so far away that he couldn’t get there until she’d already been beaten into the ground is… lmao??

[transmutationisms]

hi caden you’ve talked before about enjoying using stimulant drugs i am interested from the pov of someone who isn’t going to be like “they cured my symptoms <3” what they did for you. i’m considering getting an adhd diagnosis bc i think i could benefit from the meds even though i don’t think the classification itself is useful

finally, a medical advice question i can answer. i will cut to the chase here: i basically just like being mildly high on amphetamines. if you ever like, drank a shitload of caffeine all at once, that's kind of a shittier and weaker version of how it feels when an rx stimulant kicks in. they make you feel more energetic and awake (good for me because i am eepy), they can produce a mild sense of euphoria, they generally just sort of heighten your arousal / attention / alertness. for me, i pretty reliably experience this as being more confident / lively / interested in things (tho it's not uncommon for many people that this can also feel like heightened anxiety, so ymmv). i can use this boost to like, get work done, or just for recreational purposes lol. often both! i actually used to have short-release stims as my rx, and a lot of times i would snort them, again sometimes purely recreationally and sometimes more prupose-driven. if you're going to do that there are some additional health risks lol so i wouldn't necessarily recommend it casually, but ya know. (i have kinda soured on the short-release ones anyway because i tend to forget to keep re-upping them and then i get terrible crashes coming on and off them. the long-release are a little kinder in that respect, you just won't really be able to mess with the dose to the same degree.)

there's a lot of mystification around rx stimulants from psychiatric and pharmaceutical authorities who are trying really hard to differentiate their products from more stigmatised, illegal uppers. this really appealed to me when i first got dxed with adhd lol, but is basically horseshit, pharmacologically speaking; uppers are uppers and some people like them. for example, i also enjoy coke, but it's expensive, doesn't last that long, and comes with the risks of any black-market drug, where i'm not able to know for sure how much it's cut & with what, &c. so, i don't really think of rx uppers as being different categorically to black-market ones, but all drugs have different considerations and you might like one over another for any number of reasons.

anyway yeah: i like adhd drugs, and although i can and do use them to accomplish certain things (like, it is true they make it easier to sustain focus, eg on work or boring chores or whatever), i do also just like the feeling of using them. i don't feel like i need to justify either of those reasons for using stims lol, and also, separating the two is basically impossible in practice and imo is really just a fantasy of drug moralisers who don't want to admit that a it's, like, ok to enjoy substances. obviously, if you want to look into uppers, i would also strongly recommend keeping an eye on potential side effects and long-term risks, of which there definitely are some (particularly some cardiac things to keep in mind, and risks go up if you're using higher amounts, and/or mixing with other substances esp downers).