#or maybe you have trouble writing certain kinds of characters because you don’t personally understand how they act

[snek-disappearedagain]

My views of jamikali (from someone who doesnt ship it but also doesn’t judge those who do)

im at the point where I don’t like or ship jamikali because i think its toxic (that is my opinion btw, if you don’t think it is then that’s alr because opinions are not facts ^^) but also I want them to be friends. Like. I want them to work on themselves for a bit and then begin working on their friendship again. At the same time though, I don’t think I can ever see them in a romantic relationship simply because of the trauma inflicted on both ends from both ends. Even if it was unintentional, it’s there.

i accidentally went crazy in the tags so if you want more feel free to read those 😭

[sukirichi]

i’m so sorry but i cannot support her choosing suna. i actually hate him for this (not that i’ve ever liked him or fallen for his bs attempts to keep her hooked on him) like it may be heartless but all she has ever done is chosen him over herself and her own wellbeing, that is not true love. i’m of the opinion if suna actually loved her, he would have never let her get caught up in his mess and sacrifice herself and her family for him. i know that this is just a story, but ladies i’m begging please don’t ever fall for this type of behavior in real life. she is not a therapist there to fix all of his problems and put up with his trauma.

i also hate that she just left kiyoomi with nothing, like she could’ve left him a letter or something😭. it just seems like she continued the same toxic cycle that iris used to manipulate suna, then that suna used to manipulate yn (gaining someone’s love only to use them for selfish reasons) i guess things have come full circle. i can’t imagine those two truly being happy knowing that they left behind such a mess and walked over so many people. this is also a genuine question and not an attack on anyone: but what has made so many people root for suna in this story? i cannot comprehend the rationale behind supporting him as a happy ending for yn

I get what you mean and what you feel is valid! Rin has done a lot of wrong and even if him being robbed of his life was a horrible part, it never excused anything he did. His mistakes and betrayal were all done very consciously. and no yeah I get you GAHJSKA we’re totally not his therapist and neither is it our responsibility to fix things for him, but I also just wanted to give a little reminder that we also did not have much choice but to leave 😭 even if rin wasn’t outed by Iris for being a fraud, we would’ve still been a target of the monarchy for being guilty at attacking them through written articles (plus manipulating others to get out the story we wanted to tell) and would have still been forced to leave the country. it just so happened rin was also in the same predicament and well… being in hiding with someone you already know and trusted was much better than being alone. you’re totally right that rin is awful and he didn’t deserve any of our kindness after everything but yeah, we didn’t have much of a choice either :< although I really do wish kiyoomi had gotten a proper explanation instead of being abandoned

oooh about that – again, leaving kiyoomi with no explanation would’ve been the best because if he had any idea what we’re going to do, and where we’re going to go, the officials would’ve hounded him to divulge that information so we could be caught. and we didn’t want him to be involved in more trouble. he didn’t need to be involved because he was innocent in all this. hmm for that question though, I think others root for Suna because they saw that he’d always loved us (in his own very messed up way) he just didn’t know that he did, and again, he was groomed to be greedy and entitled. he was an adult and should’ve known better, but that’s the thing. he didn’t know better. he was conditioned to think a certain way of things. he didn’t know who he was, he was a puppet of the queen, and when it finally came to the point where he was realizing that he was also being manipulated and that he was hurting us, he genuinely was trying to do what he thought was best for us (again, in his very messed up way.) Rintaro in DTD was a very complicated character, someone who’d done bad things but also wanted to change. I understand that he’s not easy to forgive, and maybe we would never forgive him at all, but yep I think that’s why others are rooting for him! he has a lot of room for growth, and deep down he wants to be a good person. a better person. I don’t want to state whether there is a right or wrong opinion when it comes to my story (and no worries, I don’t think asks like these are an attack to my writing hehe) because I want people to interpret it their own ways! if people despise him, that’s totally valid. if people want to root for him and want to see his growth, that’s valid too! I would, however, emphasize that this is a purely fictional story and that there are tags in the story warning us of its contents, mostly on emotional abuse and manipulation, so there’s that. I agree tho!! ladies if you meet a man who fucks with your head irl and constantly betray you, run for the hills!!

[leonscape]

"Writer's Block"

Pairing: Reader (2nd person) x Le Comte Warning! This fic contains suggestive/NSFW themes. Reader is a romance author. Established relationship with Comte. Note: This is my first time writing for Ikemen Vampire, my first time writing Comte, my first time writing in second person, and my first time writing something on the spicier side I am very scared to post this!

Word Count: 1342

Without realizing it, you let out your hundredth sigh of the day as you hung the sheets to dry. Sebastian suggested taking a break from writing to allow your mind to refresh itself, but you couldn’t just do nothing. Doing chores around the mansion was relaxing compared to sitting at your desk, hunched over, and having a mental breakdown because you can’t figure out the right words to describe a scene you’ve been stuck on. And it wasn’t like you can press backspace and everything would be erased like nothing happened. Piles of crumpled papers littered the desk and spilled onto the floor.

Another sigh escaped your lips as you hung the last sheet. Standing back to take a look at your work, you weren’t prepared for Arthur’s sudden appearance from behind. 

“What’s with that frown?” Arthur asked. 

“Arthur!?” you blurted. 

“I was on my way to get some coffee but I saw you standing out here,” Arthur said. 

“Oh, I see. Well, let me brew you a fresh pot of coffee.” Arthur followed you back inside and you prepared some coffee. 

“You still haven’t answered my question.” He crossed his arms and leaned against the counter. “Is there something bothering you? Is it Comte? You know you can always come to me if you ever need a shoulder.” 

“No thanks. And no, it’s not that. It’s writer’s block,” you told him. 

“Why didn’t you say so earlier? As a fellow writer, we should help each other through these things!” Arthur’s smile was bright and mischievous. “Do you want to know how I overcome writer’s block?” 

“Uh… sure,” you agree, hoping that it’s actual advice and nothing stupid. 

“I usually enjoy the company of a pretty lady,” Arthur said. And it was something stupid…

You sighed deeply once more, “This is why I didn’t ask in the first place.”

“Well, it's better than what Dazai does. He just goes in and out of the windows more frequently. But you missed my point. You should do something that you enjoy doing. Go out, have some fun, and have new experiences,” Arthur explained. 

“It’s not like I don’t have any inspiration. I’m having trouble describing a certain scene and I’m not sure why. Nothing I write on paper makes sense or feels right,” you told him. 

Arthur seemed to be in deep thought but as soon as an idea popped into his head, he snapped his fingers and his face lit up. “Have you tried reading your sentences out loud?”

“Of course, that’s why I feel like they’re a bit off.” You frowned and Arthur mirrored your expression as he wracked his brain for more solutions. 

“Hmm… Maybe you should act it out? If you can put yourself in your character’s situation, then maybe you can have a better understanding of what’s happening and you’ll be able to write it better,” Arthur suggested. “All right, I’ll be your scene partner. So tell me about the scene.” 

You panicked as you stuttered an excuse, “It’s a complex scene and you need lots of context to really understand and I can’t explain it all right now. And besides, you write mysteries so I don’t think that you’d be able to act it out.” 

“Nonsense! I’m not a complete stranger to romance… Unless it’s a scene you can’t act out because you’re too embarrassed.” You didn’t give any response, but the blooming red hue on your face answered Arthur anyway. “Ah, so that must be it. I wonder what kind of naughty scene you’re writing.” 

Again, you didn’t say anything but that gave him all the information he needed to discern the truth. You ignored him and continued to brew the coffee, even though there wasn’t much to do except awkwardly stand there and watch the water filter its way through the coffee grounds. “Then why don’t you just ask your lover? I’m sure he wouldn’t have a problem doing dirty things to you so that you can write them down,” Arthur chuckled. 

“I can’t just ask him to do that,” you mumbled. 

“Sure you can, in fact you can ask him right now!” 

You whipped around to see Comte standing in the doorway with a gentle smile on his face. “Is something wrong, ma chérie?” 

“Comte! How long have you been standing there?” 

“Not long. I smelled coffee and I thought I’d ask for some before everyone else does,” he answered nonchalantly. 

Theo strolled into the room too announcing his intentions, “I smell coffee.” 

“It’s not for you, it was brewed for me,” Arthur told Theo. 

“Does it have your name on it? No? Then it’s for everyone.” Theo took more coffee just because Arthur was being stingy. Then he disappeared like he was never there. Comte politely held out a mug and you filled it with a generous amount. 

“This coffee was supposed to be for me,” Arthur sulked. 

“Does it have your name on it? No? Then it’s for everyone,” you repeated Theo’s words. “Besides, you could always brew more.” 

Arthur refused to brew it himself claiming, “You make the best coffee.” 

He frowned and Comte chuckled, “You’re a skilled coffee brewer, mon amour.” Arthur took his coffee to go, grateful for what he could receive. Comte lingered a bit longer, sipping his coffee while gazing at you. “Did you want to ask me something earlier?”

“Arthur and I were just talking and he was just teasing,” you replied.

Comte was not satisfied with your answer and he slid closer to you. “That’s not what I asked,” his voice dipped down into a seductive whisper. “You can ask me anything.”

“Arthur and I were just talking about writer’s block and he suggested I act out my scene so I have a better idea of how to write it,” you explained. 

Comte hummed, “So, tell me about this scene.”

“Well, the male and female lead spend an intimate night together when they reunite for the first time in years,” you told him.

“I see.” Comte smiles. “Would you like to act out the scene with me?”

“Are you saying you want to help me?” 

“Why wouldn’t I want to help you?” Comte closed the space between you two. “I’m at your command. Direct me in any way you need me and I’ll do my best to follow your instructions.” 

“Well, how about pinning me against the wall?” you asked him. 

Without question or a second thought, he pushed you up against the nearest wall. “Like this?” He was gentle and graceful with his movements and with the way he held you.

While it was enjoyable, it didn’t really capture the emotion of the scene. “It was good, but shouldn’t it be more… rough?”

He took a few steps back and you took a few steps forward. This time, he was a bit more rough and assertive. You were sandwiched in between the wall and his body while his hand hit the wall with a dull thud. An unexpected kabedon was a pleasant surprise, but it just didn’t feel right? “ I’ll just take this scene out because I’m not good enough to write that kind of scene,” another sigh escaped your lips. “Thanks for trying to help.”

You walked away from Comte feeling defeated. But he wasn’t about to let you go just yet. He grasped your wrist and pulled you back toward him and suddenly you were back against the wall. His frame eclipsed your own as his forearm leaned against the wall and his leg blocked your path. “You shouldn’t say that about yourself,” he whispered in your ear, “you’re an excellent writer. Don’t limit yourself, believe in yourself. You are enough and your skills are enough.” 

His smile is encouraging and his golden irises are burning with love and passion. “Thank you.” You smile back at him. 

“Now say it. Say you’re good enough to write this scene.”

“I’m good enough to write this scene,” you repeat. 

“Good, because when I’m done with you, you’ll have no problem writing the scene, ma chérie.”

[heyclickadee]

Trying to catch up on these so: Thoughts on “Truth and Consequences,” I guess (I'm sick, and the theraflu kicked in about halfway through writing this, so I'm not sure how much of this makes sense):

1. I am going to crawl into the television like a reverse girl from the ring and throw Palpatine down a maintenance shaft myself.

2. I don’t think that this is the last we’re going to see of Rampart and his trash shenanigans, but watching him get arrested by the coruscant guard while protesting that he was, “Just following orders,” was extremely satisfying. For now.

3. Palpatine was just waiting under the floor for Chuchi to present her evidence against Rampart, wasn’t he? Is this a normal thing? He just…waits for some BS that he orchestrated behind the scenes to come out and then rises up out of the floor like an omen of doom to manipulate the drama to his advantage? None of this is surprising—Palpatine’s always been about the high drama—but seriously. This evil son of a bitch—

4. Omega following Senator Chuchi around the senate building was adorable, but what a way for an at-most thirteen-year-old to find out she’s not legally considered a person. That none of her brothers are, either. Which means, of course, that she never knew that growing up on Kamino, and that the batch didn’t tell her.

5. Which…makes sense. They’re not trying to wrap her in bubble wrap like they were last season. She goes on missions, she’s plenty capable in a fight, and they trust her to be able to find her way in and out of trouble. But Hunter (and the rest of them, really) are trying to give her whatever scraps of childhood they can, and part of that means they do, to one degree or another, try to keep certain bits of information from her if they think that information could hurt her. Not all the time, especially when they absolutely can’t, but they still do from time to time. It’s a little like that moment back in “Ruins of War” when Echo tells Omega to go keep an eye on Romar. I don’t think Echo was that worried about Romar doing something, but he maybe did want Omega out of earshot so he and Tech could have a grown up conversation about what losing all that treasure meant for them without Omega having to hear it. And there might be a bit of self protection in there, too. It’s one thing for the adult batchers to understand that they don’t have representation in the senate and that a lot of the galaxy doesn’t consider them people; it’s always been that way and they’re probably resigned to that being the way things are. Explaining that to Omega, though, means being forced to see how this awful thing that’s just a background part of their lives also applies to her, and would probably force them to see how monstrous that really is.

6. Senator Chuchi’s little guilty look back towards Omega when it turned out this all played out exactly how Palpatine wanted, I’m--

7. I kept thinking the moment where Wrecker got shocked climbing the ladder was going to come back. It…did not.

8. Seeing how well they were able to pull of this heist kind of makes me wonder how much of the batch’s tattered success rate is them missing Crosshair (both emotionally and just not having him around to do his job), how much having to adjust to making sure their collective adopted daughter isn’t in immediate mortal peril at all times, and how much is being in completely unfamiliar territory. It’s got to be a mix of all three.

9. Speaking of success rates…what are they on this season? 0 for 6? 1 for 6 because Tech won the riot race? Does that count? Did Echo and Hunter deliver those nerf nuggets okay? I know they pulled this mission off, but it turns out pulling it off was the worst thing that could have happened, so….

10. Yes, I’m stalling.

11. Halle Burtoni (oh, Star Wars names. I love you) was not a character I expected to see back. I was a little surprised at how blithe she was about the apparent, you know, genocide of her people, but that didn’t come across as entirely sincere.

12. Okay, one sort of detached thing about Echo’s goodbye before I get emotional about it: When he tells Omega to keep up her training while he’s gone, and she replies with a tiny little, “Yes, sir,” that made something I’ve been wondering about clone family structure finally click. We joke a lot about how Hunter’s the dad and how Echo’s the mom, because they do in many ways each fill those roles, and I think that totally works. But there’s also the way in which they batch’s family and maybe clone family structure in general more mirrors military structure than anything else. Like. Okay, on one level, in the batch, they’re all siblings, but all siblings with different roles towards one another; on another level, all the adult batchers (apart from Crosshair, at this point, since he hasn’t had much time with her) are parents of one or more varieties towards Omega. And on another level, you’ve got the actual chain of command structure, where Hunter is the sergeant, Echo’s the corporal, and therefore second in command, but within this group of people “sergeant” no longer and perhaps has never just meant “the person in charge of this little group,” and same with “corporal.” Both of those roles in the context of the clones have a different and more familial connotation that doesn’t directly translate to familial roles we might be more familiar with in our world. Does that make sense? At all? I might be rambling. I think I’m rambling at this point. (But also, yes, they’re also all dads and Echo is also the mom in addition to being a dad.)

13. Yeah okay, the goodbye

14. I didn’t cry the first time. Listen, I’m not that emotionally demonstrative unless I’m really annoyed or intentionally exaggerating to get a point across (which I do a lot), I don’t cry that often, and if I do it’s almost never about something that’s happening in real life. Crying about fiction is a lot safer, more cathartic, and just easier, so I sort of save it up for that. The first time around though, the goodbye didn’t get me. Don’t get me wrong, it hit me like a freight train through the crystal palace, but the episode was a lot, and I was kind of too overwhelmed to really feel my feelings about it. The second time around, though, when I was able to actually take it in and watch the emotions play out on the characters faces and see how gentle and tender the whole thing was? Oh boy, the waterworks. I will be suing for emotional damages. (I won’t be suing for emotional damages, but full credit to everyone on the T BB crew for making that scene what it was.)

15. The writers did something a little bit interesting here by NOT showing us the conversation that Hunter and Echo clearly had about this or the (I think) other conversations that Hunter, Echo, Tech, and Wrecker had about this later on. On the one hand, I would have liked to have seen these conversations, because I think they were probably quite a bit more emotionally heavy than the upbeat goodbyes we got from the boys. This seems to have been something Hunter and Echo have been planning for a long time, since probably the apparently life-changing nerf-nugget run at least. Not that Echo would definitely leave on this specific mission of course, but that Hunter and Echo agreed the next time there was an opportunity for Echo to go with Rex, he would, if he felt it was the right time.

Everything about the scene tells us that those conversations happened. Not showing us those conversations, however, put us into Omega’s shoes for that moment. We know these men talk when they know (or think—see episode one) Omega’s not listening. They didn’t tell her this was a possibility, for a whole bunch of reasons including keeping Omega from trying to convince Echo to stay to not wanting to hurt her and so on, and they didn’t have time to tell her it was going to happen right then until it was happening, because Echo probably didn’t decide that then was the right time until they were waiting for Omega to come back from the senate building. And the effect of not showing us those conversations or telling Omega this could happen is for Omega (and by extension, us) have the rug pulled out from under her. It puts us in her shoes. So even though we the audience have been expecting this for a while now, it feels like a surprise, it still hits, and hits hard.

16. I was so glad Echo left on good terms. This is so much better than the batch breaking up because of a fight. I love that he and Hunter are kind of on the same page, but on different paths, and how clear it was that Echo didn’t really want to leave. That moment when Rex tells him that, “Good help is hard to come by these days,” and Echo just collapses in on himself? He doesn’t want to go. The batch is his family, they’re his brothers, just as much as Rex is, Omega’s his daughter as much as she’s Hunter’s, and this is a group of people that took him in and helped him recover after the hardest period of his life. He loves them, and he doesn’t want to go. But he feels like he has to. He’s too good, he cares too deeply, and he’s been through too much not too. And Hunter, Tech, and Wrecker understand that. They’re not going to hold it against him; they support what he’s choosing to do, even though they can’t follow him into it right now, so they make sure he knows he still has a place with them, and always will.

17. Dear character animator/animators who animated the range of expressions on Echo’s face as he was trying to explain to Omega why he had to go, including and especially those couple of moments when he was obviously trying not to cry? You have my whole heart. Also, I’m in pain.

18. Dear storyboard/layout artists who decided that this goodbye scene needed to parallel Omega’s last goodbye to Crosshair on that Kaminoan platform…you also have my whole heart, but. Ow.

19. While I do understand why the batch didn’t tell Omega, I also feel like that’s something that’s going to bite them in the butt. I mean, in a “Omega internalizes what she sees as her family breaking apart as something that’s her fault and does something reckless to try to make up for it” kind of way. They're trying, but they have a lot to learn about raising kids.

20. I would like to see the apparently life changing nerf-nugget field trip, please.

21. What did Hunter tell Echo?? Is it just the, “If you ever feel like you don’t fit in with them, come find us,” thing? What waaas iiiittttt I need to knooooooowwwww

22. I did like that this was sort of underscored as a temporary goodbye. Between Echo telling Omega that he’d be back and Hunter telling Rex to call them if he ever needed anything, this is temporary. But it’s still heartbreaking, because these characters mean a lot to each other and we don’t know how long they’ll be separated.

23. Sidebar, kind of, but how much do you want to bet that the boys all agreed to keep those final goodbyes light so they wouldn’t upset Omega? And how much do you want to bet that they all agreed that backfired spectacularly afterwards?

24. Omega hugging Lula in that final shot looking so small and scared I can’t 🥺😭😭 someone help her she is not okay

25: Complete sidebar, but you know that moment when Echo took control of the venator cruiser and its guns and engines single handedly? And that other moment where he stood up and said he'd be Senator Chuchi's witness even though it would put him in incredible danger? He's so good (your hand in marriage, sir!)

26. Echo, please come back soon!!

[kinocomix]

Metal band story devlog 9: let’s write some characters

I think a good exercise worth doing is starting a story from every conceivable avenue. A musician I really like has gone on record as to prove themselves doing this. If you’re not familiar with the work of Andrew Huang, now’s your time to go to his youtube channel and start watching his stuff. literally, start anywhere. He even has a short sci-fi series where he makes music in space, I digress.

similarly, I think from my list of projects I’ve started stories from every corner imaginable: I’ve started with the world, with the characters, with a vague plot, a vibe, an iconic scene that I built around, prompts, doodles, the corpses of other stories, a format, dnd characters, so on and so forth I won’t go into details otherwise we’ll be here all day. What I’m getting at is that sometimes when you have your themes, world and other bullshit figured out it can be easy for characters to feel in service of the story. They kind of need to be but personally I find that when a character is just themselves, the situations that aren’t boring end up feeling much more interesting than if they were written around the world they inhabit. So today we’re going to try to extrapolate our themes into personality traits while making sure there’s a bunch of other stuff going on.

So let's get started. Here's our first theme from the last devlog: How much of the soul of art and music gets lost in translation? 

Let’s go back to when we discussed the sensibilities of metal and classical music. There are two things to note here: how does the unapologetic intense self expression of heavy metal react when met with the calm exterior of classical music? In my experience, while this is nowadays changing, classical musicians tend to be more calm and collected, borderline tactical in their approach to music. The desire for the divine aspect of music doesn’t seem to vibe that well with the intensity and fun of most metal music. The difference here is that even when classical music is having fun and poking at the music, it’s still a very choreographed thing. Sure, you see that in metal too but it doesn’t feel that way. No one is saying that metal is improv, but historically speaking classical musicians need to loosen up a little. What does all of this mean practically? here are some traits we can already associate with our musicians:

metal musicians in the story: loud, spontaneous, rude, unapologetic, escapist, funny, introspective

classical musicians in the story: applied, calm, tactical, silly in a fun way, social, restrained, professional, empathetic, anxious, perfectionist

to note: these traits are not universal and not exclusive. Part of writing people and not characters is understanding that no one can be summarized by a list of attributes, these are merely general guidelines. In reality every character with one trait will also display the opposing one.

How do our musicians bounce off each other? How confrontational are they? do they have other emotional aspects to them that override what’s going on in certain situations? for example: maybe someone has a problem with authority because they were mistreated in some way and that overshadows their empathy or ability to escape through the music? This is where I also consider the more personal attributes they have that are unrelated to the music. Keep in mind, when we write a character based on a hobby, we’re backtracking to that character. This hobby or interest of theirs says something about them and that thing is not always the same.

Who does art/music belong to?

This one is interesting because it asks a very vague question, the answer to which could say something about you. Maybe you think that art is deeply personal and perhaps you might have trouble engaging with the more emotional aspects of art because you don’t want to feel exposed. Or you maybe think art is for other people, which might say something about a need for validation or self worth or maybe neither of those things: maybe you’re just here to make the world a nicer place and it makes you happy when art helps with that. Maybe you’re torn! and that also says something: you’re struggling with the need to see art for others and whatever ramifications thereof, and making something for yourself. surely that’s bound to be an interesting conversation…

How much does inspiration really matter?

To me this is the most telling about discipline and control. And I think this journal entry from some time ago explains my thoughts well:

As adults, we’re expected to relentlessly pursue happiness and have everything figured out. This shows up the most in our music and fiction, in how we struggle to think of things or if we do, we struggle to see them as having value. This is why discipline is important in art. art wants to be made and doesn’t expect us to wait for permission from inspiration to make it. The control we have over how we choose to see things makes things harder or easier for us. 

I think the band should have 4 members. the drummer, the bassist and guitarist, the vocalist and the non sequitur- the classical musician. I think I'm going to expand the definition of classical to encompass more varied genres from around the world– that should give the music a more Igorrr-esque feel.  

I’m not sure about what their genders will be, but here are the initial overviews of the characters:

member A: the stranger, newcomer. Realistically this will be the classical musician and the newcomer position will be helpful to present things from a fresh point of view, so it would make sense to learn about pre-existing things that would not usually be spoken of. A comes from a scholar/professional training background and this shows in how initially they value the showmanship more than the music. they act as the glue that holds the band together and the inciting event that sets forward the motions of the story, the main essence of that reflecting how inspiration is fleeting. the tactical discipline of classical training, while doing them a disservice for being able to speak honestly through their work, does wonders when it comes to ideation and management. A is a little stream of water that carves through the mountain. they’re stubborn, but very shy when it comes to certain things. repressed, but effective.

member B: i’d like this to be the drummer, but we’ll see. It would be cool if B was the most introspective of the 4, breaking the stereotype of the dumb drummer. I’d like to also base the idea of them on the drummer of fall of eden, (see devlog 2) who is a med student. should be very interesting talking about how these two very large aspects of their life struggle for control of their time. B has a loud personality because how could they not? they’re a drummer. they’re studying a profession where they mainly talk to people and help them. they’re confident in themselves and that’s a very admirable trait– until you realize they’re a bit full of themselves. they're also a bit awkward around people, they haven’t quite figured out that part just yet. loud, but shy.

member C: the guitarist. soft spoken, very silly, morbid in the best and worst ways. C is perpetually going through some shit. they’re the type of person who will show up hours late to a gathering and say “sorry, I was microwaving my socks” and not be kidding or exaggerating in any way. ADHD to the bone, a shining example of “out of sight, out of mind” and how that applies to emotions. (will need to research that some more) C deals with their self worth all the time, and frequently feel like an impostor because they were never professionally trained to play the guitar. To them, music isn’t just about the audience or the product. It's about having a good time, escapism or not. passionate, but lost.

member D: by far the most exposed to the limelight, the lead singer of the band is also the lyricist. They are the most emotionally charged of the bunch, handling some anger issues that frequently put a wedge between them and the people they love. they’re also impressively fragile, and i’m thinking they would have some friction with A when they start suggesting changes to the musical style because that’s something the consistency of which brings them comfort. spontaneous, rude and unapologetic. they’re the kind of person to yell at you for an hour only to then apologize and make you pizza.

I think that’s pretty decent for the main cast. Obviously there are other characters at play but I’ll figure those out as I write the script. they’ll be given a similar treatment, but will only serve specific bits and scenes in the story. 

next week, we’ll hopefully be drafting up some designs.

devlog updates on tuesdays. 

[pebblysand]

Hi there, I’m extremely new to fic writing and I have trouble making the characters thoughts and speech feel natural, everything I write feels very mechanical.

I can’t describe actions in a way which feels realistic. I have no idea how to proceed with my fic right now because I don’t like how I write.

Do you know how to improve my writing?

hi anon! my apologies for the delay here! welcome to fanfiction writing!

your question is very broad. you're not only asking how to improve your dialogue, but also writing character thoughts and actions, which are all very different things. i will try to give you advice that applies to everything.

1. read things out loud

this is particularly applicable if you are writing in your first language, but i find it really helpful to read out sentences when i want to assess whether a line of dialogue sounds natural, or whether a line of narration is readable/sounds the way i want it to. ask yourself: would myself or someone i know say this? am i having trouble articulating certain words when I read this out? maybe then, you should rephrase. i know a lot of people feel self-conscious about reading their own writing out loud (and that sometimes, it's not possible) but i think it can really help get your writing flow better. i read everything i put out at least once before publishing.

2. study people you like and/or get a beta

if there's a writer you really like, either fanfic and original fiction, try and notice the way they do certain things. what kind of dialogue tags do they use? how do they create rhythm in their sentences? how do they do transitions? if there's anything, writing-wise, that is giving me grief, i always find looking at how other people do it.

and, if you want to take things further, you can of course try and get a beta. i personally think that when you're starting out, getting any extra set of eyes on your work can be helpful, even if it's from someone you don't know. that said, as you grow as a writer, you might find it helpful to get beta-ed by someone whose writing you vibe with, as they might be more likely to give you advice you find valuable. getting beta-ed by someone whose writing i truly admired and whose advice i, thus, really valued was essential to me growing as a writer in my late teens.

3. own your "filler" words

in order to improve your flow and sentences, you will find that a lot of writing advice tell you to cut down on "filler" words. these are words like "in fact," "well", "actually", "really", etc. that allegedly damage the rhythm of your sentences and weaken your prose.

i - personally - think this advice is terribly misguided and comes from people who don't understand that these "filler" words actually create rhythm in our sentences, and relay the personality of our narrators (assuming the narration is a restricted POV of some kind). everyone in the world has a favourite "filler" word they use all the time without realising, it's a very human trait, and everyone has a very specific way they formulate thoughts and sentences in their heads that may need all the "actually-s" and the "well-s" and the "really-s". i think you should definitely use "filler" words, especially if you're trying to give your narration personality, and want to make your writing less "mechanical". filler words, pauses, and hesitations make your narrator feel like a person, rather than a robot telling a story. chat gpt never uses filler words, and you can tell, you know? that's why the prose it writes is so dry.

that said, it doesn't mean that you should litter your work with filler words and never edit anything out. that's dumb and will make your reader roll their eyes. it means that you should use them intentionally. know what they are, where they are, and why they are there. what is your "really" or your "actually" accomplishing, there?

for example: if your narrator is a valley girl in the 00s, have her use all the "like"s she wants in narration, that's fantastic! if your narrator is a pompous lawyer? have him "thus" and "notwithstanding the fact" all the time. and, you can not only use filler words to add grit and personality to your narrator, but also a rhythm to your sentences. because, often, people will read over "filler" words without realising, but their brain will still pause to skim over them, in a way that almost mimics a comma or a pause to think. use that to your advantage.

4. cut (cut, cut, cut)

now, this is particularly true when it comes to dialogue (at least for me), but i find that i often tend to write dialogue that is too verbose. in my first drafts, my characters always explain things in long sentences where it takes them two paragraphs to get to the point, etc. this is a) boring for the reader and b) actually makes your dialogue more stilted and unnatural because most people don't actually usually speak in paragraphs. that's not how human conversation happens.

so, remember to cut. chances are, if you're like me, about 70% of the dialogue you write on first draft can be cut out without it changing the meaning of the scene. also, let your characters say the wrong thing. be imperfect, or unclear. that's how human conversation really occurs and that's how you make your characters sound less like robots who just need to say Everything All Of The Time.

5. tell it like it is

finally, with regard to you not being able to "describe actions in a way that feels realistic", remember that honesty is always the best policy. by which i mean, realism is mostly rooted in just letting things stand and exist the way they are. if your character is getting themselves a glass of water, just say "they got themselves a glass of water." write the way you would say it, and as simply as you would say it, if you were telling this story to a friend. you do not need to tell your reader that the "sun glittered in the flow of liquid as Amanda pulled the shiny piece of metal above the sink and a fountain erupted..." -that's the kind of trying-too-hard sentence that makes me say "fuck off!" and close the tab. if you want your actions to feel realistic, make them sound realistic by narrating as close as you can to the way your character would actually talk.

-

i hope this helps, anon, and sorry again for the delay in answering. let me know if you have any questions :)

[tcookies777]

So I just noticed something after re-reading some TAOL chapters and it’s that Kakashi always (literally always in every chapter) seemed to get turned on by Sakura no matter what she does. At this point, I am convinced that he would probably have a boner just by watching Sakura do nothing but stand and breathe. I am not complaining at all but I thought it was interesting and wonder if that was intentional in terms of having Kakashi just be horny for Sakura 24/7? I know this is a weird ask and I am sorry for asking it. I was also wondering if Kakashi being like this every time Sakura is near will change somehow after they do the “devil’s tango” or “shaking of the sheets.” I am not a man so I don’t know what it’s like to have a boner but I can’t imagine functioning well when you have a boner and horny for someone every day lmao. I don’t know if what I am saying makes any sense but I do feel insane for bringing this up to you so I am sorry about that.

No need to be sorry for asking an interesting question but thank you for asking politely. And thank you for asking such an interesting question - it's not weird at all, and I don't believe "weird" questions exist when it comes to fannish content. Interesting? Yes. Weird? No.

But to answer your 2 questions:

People can argue that this is canon or not - personally for me, I'm going to treat it as canon - but in the Rock Lee SD series, there was a scene in which Jiraiya categorized the male characters into what type of pervert they were.

This is his chart from that scene:

As you can see, Kakashi was categorized as a Closet Pervert lol.

Kakashi being a closet pervert was a huge inspiration for his horniness in this fic. Because... I mean it's kinda impossible to write a closet pervert character and NOT let him be horny about it. So yeah, you bet your ryo Kakashi's thinking perverted stuff behind that porn book of his. And you can bet I am going to write in explicit detail what those perverted thoughts are about. But that he's specifically horny for Sakura is because I wanted to approach the emotional side of his character as like a teenager. I'm not a man either but, having had some open discussions with male peers in my adult years... well, suffice to say teen boys get easily horny for the girl they like. Kakashi is not a teenager of course, but... he's not as mature as anyone might think just because of his adult age. And this applies to real life too where you'll meet teens who are wiser than their years, and you'll also meet adults who are childish for their age. It really depends on the individual's background, life experience, education, and the way they were raised.

Kakashi is, in many ways, immature- which maybe you noticed in the way he handles his emotions and has trouble with intimate communication. He wasn't raised like a normal child. He grew up without parents to guide him, he flew through his education, and was too busy with war/military to properly woo and date a girl let alone learn how to (not counting the romance books he uses for reference). So it's a complete first for him to develop really intimate feelings for a girl and he doesn't know what to do, especially when it's his underage student (double yikes). Nobody taught him. What he grew up learning instead was to rely on instincts. His biological instincts take over and his dick turns on at the sight of someone his body and heart recognize as his potential mate (even if he may not understand yet). Excuse my blunt language btw it's like 2am for me here lol. I probably shouldnt be answering this when I'm half awake but I hope it makes sense when I say: Closet Pervert Kakashi + emotionally immature Kakashi + biological instincts + experiencing first love + forbidden love = Kakashi horny for his crush like a teen boy.

Ooh wait, also - canonically, Kakashi has a heightened sense of smell, right? There is an actual scientific phenomenon where some people's olfactory senses are attuned to certain kinds of pheromones. So there are some men in real life who get turned on by the smell of certain women - often these are women they are attracted to such as their own wives. Some men claim they are even able to smell when their girl is about to have her period, is ovulating, and/or is pregnant - just by smelling the pheromones the girl exudes. So it's actually not unrealistic for Kakashi to pop a boner when he smells Sakura, especially when he smells her ovulating because her scent is actually triggering a surge of the sex hormone testosterone in him. This is a real biological response in men as part of their primal mating behavior. I briefly mentioned the science of this in the chapter with the naked run where he smells Sakura ovulating (on top of her dripping arousal) and gets turned on by it.

So with all the aforementioned reasons explained, when Kakashi smells Sakura, you can imagine it's easy for a pervert like him to pop a boner.

But realistically speaking, the average man experiences an erection 10-20 times a day. And just to be clear, not every boner happens necessarily because the guy is sexually aroused. Sometimes the guy has an erection for no real reason. It's why men may experience morning erections (or "morning wood") when they wake up despite nothing sexual happening - it's sometimes just because their testosterone levels are running high at that time and it produces an erection.

So with or without Sakura, guys like Kakashi will just be popping boners daily regardless of whatever reason or lack thereof. It just happens sometimes, and that's why none of us gals should be making fun of our male peers if we catch an awkward tent in their pants. Please y'all don't be mean like that.

2. For that question, you will have to wait and see!

Although... I must admit, this is the first time in my life I've heard of "shaking of the sheets" 😂 idk who coined that term but I can't say it's the most appealing. Got me all giggling with this image:

[icedmatchatae]

(yeah with poc i feel like i should’ve specified who but it was after i sent it off, my apologies)

but what i mean is black!reader friendly..

you use causal descriptions of hair being wavy

“You decided to straighten your natural waves for some kind of change.”

and cheeks/lips going pink/red..

“Your bottom lips were so red and plumped”

however it kinda ruins the ‘x reader’ aspect for darker skinned readers with kinker hair. most black authors write x black reader for those reasons specifically, the descriptions exclude everyone who doesn’t have flowy, thinner hair and those who don’t have visible blush due to it not appear on their skin.. it’s a definite turn off for black readers when they read descriptions that elude to a lighter skinned reader (see types of complaints below) i would look up alternatives to flustered behaviors that stay away from certain colours and leave hair textures alone.. maybe instead of saying what kind of hair style, you can describe how good it looks on the reader?? idk but i really hope you take this into consideration for future works

examples of complaints since they explain it better:

https://www.tumblr.com/eurydiceslove/700407195037204480/x-readers-cater-to-skinny-white-girls-most-of-the

https://www.tumblr.com/the-ravenist/709143383084580864/im-getting-kind-of-sick-of-seeing-this-stuff-how

https://www.tumblr.com/qveerfemmemusings/654272015099920384/okay-this-needs-to-be-said-and-it-needs-to-be-said

Hello again,

First of all, thank you for clarifying what you mean by POC-friendly. Initially, your comment upset me because I’m a POC and I felt I was being dismissed. I’m brown-skinned and dark-haired, and I was genuinely very confused and conflicted with the use of the term due to my background. I try to be vague in my character appearance so my readers can picture themselves. Still, I understand how I can do even better.

With that being said, I apologize for the trouble I have caused with the use of my words. Nothing was intentionally. I am now fully aware of my implicit bias to naturally write through my personal or own lived experience because it is what I’m used to and what I know, like I still flush with my skin. Not saying I will want to ignore other things because I try to be as conscious as possible, hence why I try to make physical descriptions pretty non-existent especially for skin or eyes. I had experiences where descriptions were so detailed with features, I don’t continue as well. Typically if I do point out features, it pertains to the story like the succubus being short in stature. But of course, there are little things that I miss.

If I’m being honest, it is difficult because editing, revising, and going over all my fics before posting is just me! No one unfortunately helps me through this process so I don’t have second eyes or a beta, so I miss things. I only see what I can see, so it wouldn’t be a concern until it was pointed out like this.

I appreciate you for telling me and I will do my best to be black-friendly! It’s honestly very needed to be aware of these things, especially for all writers. I want to continue to grow in my writing and this very much will help. I look at what I can write to make it as inclusive as possible. It won’t be a perfect path, but it will be a journey with tremendous experience and growth.

If by all means, it continues to not satisfy you even with the improvements, then I understand if you choose not to read my work. I cannot simply satisfy everyone. Thank you again for your time.

[navycat305]

Hello.

23, 13, 33, and 43.

Helloooooooo :D get ready for all the guys ever, in the world!

13. Do you have any troublemaker OCs?

Depends what you mean by trouble I suppose. Some guys are straight up evil, like Ray (guy from my Kingdoms story) who just killed all his own fictional but actually real people. Some of my earlier guys were a bit more mischievous, I had a couple orphans that escaped their children’s home leaving all sorts of trouble in their wake (their story was never that interesting so I got rid of them rip). I also had a wacky lesbian detective who got into a lot of trouble (some else I abandoned…oops). Honestly, I think most of them just make trouble by accident (back to the killing people/getting themselves killed thing) rather than it being in their nature. I should probably make some more mischievous little guys. I guess the Tedverse was full of troublemakers and Briarridge kind of is too?? Maybe I make more troublemakers when I’m collaborating, idk.

23. Introduce an OC that has changed from your first idea concerning what the character would be like

I know what to answer for this one because I’ve been thinking about it lately! So I have a story called Refuge where 10 kids with powers from across history are brought together to do…something, I never quite figured it out. One guy, Thomas, is the illegitimate son of Henry VIII and ends up strangling someone with the vines he can produce. I originally wanted to have him as a really terrible YA love interest kind of guy that’s aloof and brooding and not actually a very nice person despite the MC’s infatuation with him, but recently I’ve decided that I prefer the idea of him as an actual rounded person rather than a stereotype. He’s a lot more panicked about the whole killing someone thing than you’d think and the persona is just an attempt to distance himself from everyone. I think he eventually sorts out his shit (hopefully, either that or his girlfriend makes him). The thing that hasn’t changed is his general edgyness, but more the way it develops and his character as a whole. Thomas my guy Thomas he is so traumatised (all of them are please help them).

33. Your shyest OC?

Alright, time to talk about Refuge again! One of the other characters is Silence, a Puritan girl from Cardiff in 1655. She’s also not had a very good time with her family (who don’t like her speaking to ghosts) but I think even with her aversion to people in that sense, she’s just pretty shy in general. She doesn’t speak much (although even if she did her accent is so thick people would have trouble understanding her) and she’s only really fully comfortable around one specific person. Poor girl gets ghost-communication powers when she can’t stand people. Dan (guy from 1972 who can make shields from air!) is kind of shy too but I think that’s more from the fact that people regard him as weird so he’s learned to be cautious around people. All things considered, Dan and Si get along quite well for two people that don’t like people :)

43. Do you have any certain types when you create your OCs? Do you tend to favour some certain traits or looks? CONFESS!!!!

I think I do? I’m quite partial to a stupidly edgy guy (looking at some of my warrior cats OCs and like 2 of the Refuge guys- actually that’s not bad out of 10). I think the old saying of “write what you know” also applies because I usually go for nervous and/or academically smart people (see Amica - my DND character - and others including MORE warrior cats OCs, several of the Refuge gang and you know what basically anything I’ve ever written has at least one). I tend to go for the tragic too, so there’ll be some tragedy in everyone (my poor guys need help I subject them to too much). Usually they get a lot sillier when my friends are involved which is nice :) a lot of my motivations for doing things are “because it’s funny”. Which I think is a good way to go about things :)

Woowwww I wrote too much, thanks for indulging me in my rabid ramblings :)

[duckprintspress]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[mybrotherinkarkat]

The Overlooked Ableism of Jane Crocker

The relationship drama within the alpha kids’ group has been subject to a lot of speculation by the fandom. Even within the text you get conflicting reports about who the “bad guy” was in that situation, so it makes sense that the fandom would be divided on the issue. However, I always felt like there was a dimension that was lacking. No one seemed all that interested in pointing out Jane’s ableism

This might seem like an odd claim to make since none of the alpha kids are obviously canonically disabled, but I’m going to make the case that Jake is neurodivergent and that ableism is the root cause of Jane’s anger at him. If you like Jane as a character, that’s fine. If you disagree with my reading of the text, that’s also fine. I’m sleep deprived and probably a little manic and also the kind of person who writes sourced Homestuck meta in 2022, this is just for fun and catharsis 

This thing is long, so strap in and click the readmore

The first thing I need to prove is that Jake is neurodivergent. I read him as being autistic and ADHD, but the specifics are up to reader interpretation. My proof of this comes via Caliborn. Andrew Hussie (the character) explicitly states that he has a learning disability

[Image description: a screenshot of black text on a white background. The text reads: Think of all you've done in spite of your learning problems. You don't let your disability hold you back, do you? End ID]

Later, Caliborn says this to Jake.

[Image description: Lime green text on a grey background. Text reads: uu: WHILE TO CASUAL OBSERVERS YOU MIGHT APPEAR. TOO STUPID TO KNOW HOW FAR PANTS ARE SUPPOSED TO GO DOWN YOUR LEGS.

uu: I KNOW THAT IT'S QUITE POSSIBLE. YOU ARE JUST MISUNDERSTOOD.

uu: IT IS POSSIBLE THAT YOU JUST HAVE A SPECIAL MIND.

uu: LIKE ME. End ID]

So Caliborn is the one who points out that Jake is probably neurodivergent. Jake goes on to agree, and to say that he thinks he’s probably having trouble with his friends because there’s something about him they don’t understand

[Image description: Forest green text on a grey background. Text reads: GT: That maybe there is something special about me that nobody can understand. And maybe thats why i always seem to be botching things up the wazoo with my pals. End ID]

So Jake being some form of neurodivergent is canon, and he himself links it to his friend group drama. Why autism and ADHD, though? Well it’s partially because I relate to him, but I do think there's a canon basis. Jake has a tendency to ramble on without realizing the other person isn’t interested (ADHD), has difficulty picking up on social cues (autistic), doubts his own interpretations of those cues (autistic), has strong interests that his friends think are odd (special interests/hyperfixations), talks in a very particular way, and generally feels out of step with everyone around him. His arc from being happily goofy and fun-loving to being folded in on himself and blaming himself for not navigating a tricky social situation well is also the quintessential ND adolescence. We learn, like Jake did, that our ND traits are “bad” and we need to suppress them or earn the ire of those around us

But I digress. Let’s move on to the main event: dissecting the alpha kids’ relationship drama and addressing the ableism. Jane has a crush on Jake, but hasn’t worked up the nerve to confess yet. Jake has picked up on this, but isn’t sure if he’s reading the situation right, so he asks her outright

[Image description: Forest green text on a grey background. Text reads: GT: Maybe its just my imagination but ive picked up on certain lets say hints.

GT: So i have to just come out and ask. End ID]

So Jake isn’t actually as oblivious as his friends frequently joke about behind his back, but he’s not sure if he can trust that he’s picking up the social cues correctly. This is very much an autistic mood. He’s probably been getting signals from his friends for years making it clear that he’s missing something, so he now second-guesses himself

When Jake asks if Jane likes him, she explicitly says that she doesn’t. He’s a little confused, but takes her at her word and believes he misread her friendship as romantic feelings. He doesn’t realize that her replies are so stilted because she’s lying and overwhelmed, and when he points out that she’s being a little odd she brushes him off. She also repeatedly affirms that she wants to be there for him as a friend, and responds with what Jake interprets as genuine interest.

Now, this sets a precedent in Jake’s mind. Jane just told him, outright, that she isn’t interested in him and is okay with him talking to her about his (at the time potential) relationship with Dirk. In the future, when she responds with that same sort of stilted disinterest, he reads it as genuine interest because she told him to

And it’s not like Jane doesn’t know Jake struggles with social cues. As I stated above, the other alpha kids regularly talk about how “oblivious” Jake is behind his back. They all know he struggles to understand them, and they all chalk it up to Jake being weird instead of trying to communicate with him in a way he understands. So Jane knows Jake doesn’t understand that she’s only being polite, and lets him believe she’s okay with this kind of conversation in the future

Meanwhile, in the future, Jake starts up a conversation with Jane that ends in disaster. The first thing that goes wrong is that Jake has forgotten Jane’s birthday (ADHD brain, babey). When she tells him he apologizes profusely and offers to come over right away, but Jane brushes him off and asks why he wanted to talk. He shelves the Dirk angst and tries to just have a friendly conversation, but Jane isn’t interested in his long-winded ramblings and stories he’s told her before (the ADHD vibes are off the charts). When she asks him to get to the point, he then begins telling her about his relationship drama. Jane eventually gets fed up and yells at him to shut up, and this is his response

[Image description: Light blue and forest green text on a grey background. Text reads: GG: Shut up!!!

GT: Errr.

GT: Did i say something wrong? End ID]

Jake has clearly misread the situation, but it’s built on the same misunderstanding of social cues that Jane had previously reinforced. Jane continues to yell at him, and he repeatedly asks her what’s wrong and tries to get her to calm down so that they can talk about it. Instead of that, Jane berates him for talking a lot (ADHD trait), being “clueless” aka missing social cues (autistic trait), not realizing how long it’s been since they talked (ADHD trait), and talking about Dirk a lot (which she previously said she was okay with)

When she finally tries to drop the fact that she used to have feelings for him, she isn’t very clear, and Jake thinks she means she had feelings for Dirk. Remember, she explicitly said that she did not have feelings for Jake. Jake immediately blames himself for not realizing, and insults himself, then apologizes for not realizing their conversations were upsetting her. When she realizes he’s misunderstood again, she screams and flips a table, cancels her birthday party so that he won’t have a chance to talk to her about this in person, and destroys her headset

So let’s recap. Jake stays calm and tries to understand why Jane is upset, apologizes for screwing up, and makes multiple efforts to clear things up between them. Jane throws a tantrum because she got fed up with Jake’s neurodivergent traits, and the misunderstandings that she caused. Granted, she’s dealing with a lot of stress, but they all are

After this, Jane yells at Roxy for a bit and then leaves. Jake has the conversation with Caliborn mentioned above, and not too long after we start the trickster arc

Skipping over those shenanigans, we move to the post-trickster alpha kid conversations. Dirk and Jane talk about their mutual former feelings for Jake now that Dirk and Jake have broken up. Unlike Dirk, Jane doesn’t really acknowledge that her actions might have harmed Jake beyond just jeopardizing their friendship. Jake, for his part, blames himself entirely for everything

Crockertier bullshit aside, this is more or less where things are left with them. Jake’s self esteem ripped to shreds, and Jane relatively unscathed. Obviously this isn’t all Jane’s fault. All the alpha kids (and yes I include Lil’ Hal as an alpha kid) are ableist to Jake to some degree, as well as Vriska (because of course Vriska bullied the disabled kid with self esteem issues, that’s what she does)

So, is Jane being ableist to Jake. Well, she likely doesn’t know he’s neurodivergent, so she’s not doing it with any intentional malice. However, the things she yells at him for are all traits of neurodivergence. Traits that he displays shame and self-loathing for having. The fact is that it doesn’t matter whether or not Jane knew he was ND, or meant to be ableist. Her actions were ableist. She thinks Jake’s ND traits are character flaws, that they make him self-centered and rude, so she feels justified in chewing him out over it

From her perspective this isn’t really a big deal. Jake was obnoxious for a few months, she yelled at him out of frustration, and then she moved on. But from Jake’s perspective this is clearly devastating. He feels like he’s doing everything wrong, that he’s alienating his friends, that he’s a douchemuffin (his word), for… being autistic and ADHD? 

No like seriously, what did he actually do wrong? Jake is struggling to keep his head above water in a friend group that sees him struggling and laughs it off instead of helping him fit in. They don’t realize how much this is hurting Jake, or that he needs them to meet him in the middle. Even when they’re nice to him it tends to have an air of pity or amusement. Jane happens to have the most blatant ableist actions, but it’s not all on her

So why is this overlooked? Well, because it’s supposed to be. Jake struggling to communicate is played for laughs, and this is never given the gravity or seriousness that it deserves. While we do see John and Tavrossprite making an effort to help him feel welcome and accepted, there’s never really an examination of how Jake got to this point. Typical Homestuck, especially that late in the comic, but because the comic treats it like a joke the readers treat it like one too

Anyway this was a long and rambly way of saying that Jake English deserved better. Thanks for reading and I hope you have a wonderful day/night/timezone

[stxleslyds]

Also, the writers' failure to understand, every crime Jason committed had a motive. Attack other criminals? Holy warrior destined to purify the world of evil. Attack Bruce? Joker's still alive. (Oh, Jason, it's much worse than that.) Attack Tim? A parody of what he once was. He wasn't just a "bad boy". He was dangerously insane.

Hi, Anon! Yup, there seems to be a lot of things that writers have gotten confused about Jason Todd/Red Hood and the biggest one is his motivations to kill certain criminals.

Let’s be honest, Judd Winick set a golden path for the upcoming Red Hood writers. But each and every writer that used Red Hood in their stories completely missed the point of Jason’s character. All of them. It’s so incredibly wild to me that every other writer read UtRH and came up with whichever version of Jason they came up with.

Let’s list the writers that completely missed the point.

Geoff Johns in Teen Titans vol.3 #29.

Geoff Johns was one of the first to completely mischaracterize Jason, why on earth would Jason go to the Titans Tower to beat up Tim? This is not me saying that Jason would never do that because Jason thinks of Tim as his brother or a friend or the person that he can trust the most from the Bat-Clan (can you believe Lobdell tried to sell us that one?), this is me saying that Jason wouldn’t have done that because he couldn’t have given less of a fuck about Tim’s existence.

When Jason found out that Bruce had another Robin he wasn’t bothered by his “replacement” he was mad at Bruce for having another child playing hero after he lost his life as a fifteen-year-old. Jason didn’t even think of Tim as his replacement as fandom likes to make us believe, Jason called Tim “pretender”. And that was that, but to go from minimal recognition to go out of his way to beat him up at Titans Tower is a massive mischaracterization.

Paul Dini in Countdown (to Final Crisis).

Paul Dini in Countdown did absolutely nothing with Jason, I am sorry but that’s all he did. Him writing Jason was like watching a dog trying to catch their own tail. He started with a pretty basic take on UtRH Jason, then he added a bit of Jason being an annoying man with Donna, then we had the jealousy arc because apparently, Jason had the hots for Donna but she didn’t want anything to do with him and he was all angsty when she paid attention to Kyle instead of him, and then, later on, he had that whole Red Robin bullshit (I am sorry about this, but I absolutely hated that, it was so dumb, I am so glad it didn’t last long because it was just too bad), and after all that mix of just not interesting stuff he went right back to the Jason that he had at the very start. It was a waste of time, but I guess that he had to be there because he was an anomaly and all that. I just think that was DC’s first try at making Jason Todd/Red Hood something more than just a street-level vigilante and they failed miserably.

Tony S. Daniel in Batman: Battle for the Cowl.

Even though the first two did make mistakes with Jason’s characterizations, this man was the first to just throw UtRH out of the window and make up his very own version of Jason Todd. And his version was horrendous, that Jason had no problem with attempting to kill children and innocent people, he also really wanted to be Batman because Gotham needed a Batman and he wanted to be the person to wear the Cowl and he was looking for a Robin for himself.

I know, the whole concept is the perfect opposite of what Jason Todd and Red Hood were in UtRH. Every aspect of BftC Jason is based on nothing.

Jason wanting to be Batman because Gotham needed Batman is just the beginning of what’s wrong in this book. Jason became the Red Hood (in part) because he believed that Batman and his ways weren’t what Gotham needed so he made a better version of Batman with Red Hood (according to him) because Red Hood did what Batman refused to do. Another thing that is just wrong is Jason wanting, Damian, Tim or Dick to be his Robin, there is just so much wrong with this, first of all, Jason wanted Batman to stop having Robin because child soldiers ran the risk of dying at a very young age and that’s exactly how he saw the whole thing because that was what had happened to him. Second, if Jason was mad at Bruce for getting another Robin why would he now want one of his own to team up with his Batman? Damian was a child, Tim was someone that apparently Jason hated (because Jason beating Tim was mentioned in this event), and then Jason actually asked Dick Grayson, Nightwing, to be his Robin? Listen, there is no way that was Jason, nothing about him makes sense, even taking into account that Jason had beaten Tim already in this event Jason actually tried to kill both Tim and Damian (it might have been just one of them but yeah, it still doesn’t make sense).

I just don’t think that Tony S. Daniel knew who Jason Todd was, maybe he got confused but the thing is, his “villainous” and deranged version of Jason Todd allowed a villainous and deranged version of Red Hood to happen with the next writer that I will be talking about.

Grant Morrison in Batman and Robin vol.1 #3-6.

This was the birth of the villainous, deranged and bloodthirsty Red Hood. There is absolutely no trace of UtRH Jason here, not even if we are looking at the opposite of things like we could do with Daniel’s Jason. Grant Morrison wanted Dick and Damian to have a villain to match their Batman and Robin and they decided to give us a red-haired-pill-headed-red hood. Everything from Morrison’s characterization of Jason is crazy, from the red hair (hello pre-crisis) to the awful Joker’s Red Hood looking suit, everything was just weird.

I still don’t believe that was Jason, to be honest, I would rather think that version of Jason was actually a rouge Skrull that came all the way from the Marvel Universe and lost his way in Gotham City. Maybe when he made the jump between universes, he got too much information and got confused and took the form of the wonkiest Jason Todd he could come up with.

This Jason was absolutely deranged, he knew exactly what he was doing and he didn’t care if innocents died. This Jason was the one that got locked up in Arkham. This is the Jason that Dick put in Arkham for Jason and everybody else’s safety.

Dick putting that Jason in Arkham wasn’t a bad thing or something that anyone can use to shit on Dick Grayson (not on this house). This Arkham was reformed and that Jason knew that if he stayed in that new Arkham he would stay away from trouble, but here is the thing, that Jason loved trouble, so he took all the tests to prove he wasn’t insane and asked to be transferred to Blackgate (where all the Red Hood’s enemies were). That Jason didn’t ask to be sent to Blackgate because the Joker was a cell away from his in Arkham, he did it so he could go on a killing spree in Blackgate (which he did when he got there).

Skrull Jason was just bloodthirsty and nothing like UtRH Jason, he had no motive other than just killing for fun or whatever. He didn’t want to protect Gotham and he couldn’t have cared less about the drug trade in Gotham. In Batman and Robin vol.1. Jason Todd was unrecognizable. And luckily, we never saw him again.

Scott Lobdell in Everything that he ever wrote about Red Hood.

This one is pretty self-explanatory. Lobdell was the king of overpowering Jason, he was the one that drove Red Hood farther and farther away from his street-level vigilante status. He continuously added more to him, he was a big deal because he was meant to take down Ra’s al Ghul, he was a big deal because he was the only human to train in the All-Castle and learned to summon the All-Blades.

This Red Hood’s morals and ideals were kind of gone, there just wasn’t any kind of interest in Jason to get rid of drugs or try to control its trade in Gotham, he just had no interest in street-level threats, everything was extraordinary in both New 52 and Rebirth. If he wasn’t in space he was in some mystical land. His friends and allies became even more and more powerful, his level of power was completely off compared to the others. His personality was ever-changing and quite honestly you could barely see the Jason that he once was.

This Jason also was very inconsistent in the way that he felt towards people (obviously because Lobdell is a shitty writer), he wanted to follow Batman’s rules and was shown as someone that still had fond memories of his life with Bruce before he died but was also willing to let those memories go, to move on? Maybe? I don’t know. But he changed his mind about Bruce and following his rules or not for a very long time. Jason was also a little bitch about Dick, and he was a little bitch because he (Lobdell) never gave the reader or anyone a concrete reason as to why he hated him so much and then in Rebirth he decided that Dick wasn’t that bad. Also, Jason went from “Willis Todd, abusive husband and father that deserved to die” to “Willis Todd abusive husband and father but he sent me letters when he was in prison and Penguin had him killed so now, I really want to avenge him”. Yeah, I don’t really know why that happened and like most of Lobdell’s arcs and stuff it was never really completed or well thought out.

Lobdell’s Jason characterization was a mess for ten years and that’s the prime reason why Jason is a character with no solid background, story or future.

James Tynion IV in Red Hood and the Outlaws.

Tynion’s Jason Todd was a hero, he was like a mini Tom King Batman. Everything he did was right and there was just no way that you could bamboozle him. This Jason was able to hold to Blades that drained his soul as well as hosting the Untitled in his body (that were able to drain his soul too) and on top of all that he completed his journey of the Chosen One by making those ancient martial arts moves that he learned before he was Robin even though Talia hadn’t been able to master it yet.

Scott Snyder, Tim Seeley in Batman Eternal and Batman and Robin Eternal.

A mess, this was pure New 52 levels of bullshit and they all just wanted to push the “Batfamily” and while Dick was gone, they were trying to make Jason fill the void that Dick left in Batman events. It didn’t work at all and all they did was mess around with Jason’s characterization more.

Geoff Johns in Three Jokers.

I have talked enough about Johns’ takes on Jason Todd and Red Hood, but let me tell you something real quick, if a writer thinks that the best they can do with a character is make them give up their morals/ideals for an unrequited love interest, then they can keep that idea for themselves. Geoff Johns wrote a book that was absolutely not needed and then proceeded to butcher every characterization that he could, Three Jokers was three issues long and he managed to add more trauma to Jason’s torture, push the narrative of Jason being at fault for his own murder and make Jason’s motivations to be the Red Hood weak enough to make him want to give up his work for a woman that he barely knows (and doesn’t like him at all).

Joshua Williamson in Future State: Red Hood and Robin #5.

Now, with Williamson I have issues only when he writes Jason, not because his stories are bad, don’t get me wrong, I would have completely enjoyed FS: Red Hood if it weren’t for the completely unnecessary Rose/Jason side plot he had going on. Jason was clearly working undercover for some people that he hated working with. He had to arrest or kill “masks” (vigilantes, just like he “used” to be) for the Magistrate.

His ideas were pretty solid, Jason did the job but he never killed the masks and actively didn’t trust the Magistrate but he was working there to tear them apart from within, and that’s amazing if Williamson had given us Jason Todd/Red Hood working undercover to dismantle an organization I would have been really happy.

But that’s not all he gave us, even if I just forget about his failed attempt at giving Jason a relationship, I can still see that Williamson is the kind of writer that wants (or is just following DC) to make the “Batfamily” happen no matter how dumb and out of place it looks in comics’ canon. So, I am a little bit weary, any writer that leans too much towards making Jason and Bruce work together and become a family makes me want to scream, but I do understand that is just me, many people want those two to be buddy-buddy, I, personally, would love to see Jason kick Bruce in the balls and tell him to lose his number.

Chip Zdarsky in Urban Legends: Cheer.

Ah, yes, I remember the days in which I thought that this could have been something good. Well, I was utterly wrong and I suffered all the way through this mini. I feel like now I can safely say that Zdarsky only wanted to write a Batman book but DC told him, “Hey you can write Batman but it has to be within a Red Hood story, but don’t worry, you don’t have to know much about the Hood guy, just come up with something and write Batman around that”.

I know that’s what happened because I read that story and all we got from it was horrible characterizations for pre-Robin Jason, Robin Jason, Jason Todd and Red Hood. I don’t know how he did it but yes, he managed to mess it all up.

From Jason not really wanting to be Robin and acting recklessly every step of the way, to secret desires of a perfect family with Bruce and so many other people that he couldn’t care about, Urban Legends: Cheer is the perfect book to avoid at all costs if you believe that the concept of “Batfamily” is the biggest lie, DC is trying to profit off this time around.

Zdarsky also nerfed Jason in ways that I thought DC only wanted to nerf Dick Grayson. But I was able to see that I was wrong. Zdarsky’s run also pushed some of the most disastrous narratives that DC really wants readers to believe like: Robin Jason wasn’t good at his job, he was too reckless and ultimately his death was his own fault. Yay! I want to cry!

I will give Zdarsky two points for at the very least showing that Red Hood wants to protect children and that he has a huge issue with how the drug trade is controlled and abused in Gotham City, it had been a while since we had seen that aspect of Jason’s Red Hood make an appearance.

-

It’s just too many writers completely missing the point of Red Hood’s character or simply writers agreeing to destroy Jason’s uniqueness in the DC Universe so DC (as the publisher) can further push the abomination that is the “Batfamily” in comics’ canon.

I do agree with you Anon when you say that Jason isn’t just a “bad boy” but I also don’t think that we can call UtRH Jason “dangerously insane”. Personally, I will only use that last description for BftC and Batman and Robin Jason, those two were dangerously insane indeed.

UtRH Jason was very meticulous in who he wanted dead and who got to live. He entered Gotham’s most dangerous world and he had to make a big entrance, he invited the eight most prosperous street dealers to a meeting, showed up with the decapitated heads of each of their right-hand men and an AK-47 and said:

“I am offering you a deal. I will be running the drug trade from now on. You will go about your business as usual. You will kick up forty percent to me. That is a much better deal than the Black Mask will give you. In return, you will have total protection from both the Black Mask and Batman. The catch? You stay away from kids and schoolyards. No dealing to children, got it? If you do, you’re dead.”

This was Red Hood! Red Hood wanted to control the drug trade in Gotham because he knew that Gotham is far too corrupt and filled with drug lords for him to just want to eradicate drugs from Gotham. If he had tried that he would have been a dumbass, but he wasn’t. He didn’t want to start a gang war and get innocent people killed because of it, he wanted to set the rules of his new Empire and he had to start with the street-level drug dealers, from there he grew until he became a major pain in Black Mask’s ass.

We went from Jason wanting to control the drug trade and take over Gotham’s underworld so people like Black mask couldn’t have people work for him (or being dependent on him) when they were still in high school or were in a vulnerable position, to Jason fighting a war for a mystic land because he was their “Chosen One”. DC really wanted to do something grand (yet boring) with Jason instead of sticking to a street-level vigilante that could have become a Drug Lord to control the drug trade of a city that is so filled with crime and corruption that it can’t be saved by anyone.

Batman doesn’t eradicate crime, he “controls” it, puts a blank it over it, lets it nap up until it wakes up once more to make more mess.

Red Hood had other plans, certain criminals didn’t get to nap, or, better said, they would get to nap forever.

So, no. I wouldn’t call that “dangerously insane”, I will call that “vigilante that believes himself judge, jury and executioner” of a city that is drowning in crime and corruption.

Anyway, I hope you have a really nice week Anon and thank you so much for sending me this ask!

[goxjo]

I see you ⋮ oikawa tooru ♡

❥ hqhq server collab

Sugar arrangements usually catered to your tastes and you never had trouble with following your self-imposed set of rules. But now, you don’t want to go through with it anymore because you’re afraid this’ll never turn into anything more

♥︎ pairing ⋮ sugar daddy!oikawa tooru x f!reader

♥︎ genre ⋮ hurt/comfort, smut

♥︎ warnings ⋮ use of the pet name ‘princess,’ degradation, mentions of infidelity, daddy kink, safeword, rough sex to soft sex, sugar relationship to lovers, beta what beta

♥︎ word count ⋮ 1.6k

♥︎ author’s note ⋮ awoo I love this concept. writing this made me realize how much of a comfort character oikawa is to me !! oh, & the prompt for this fic was ‘I wonder what he’d do if he knew you were with me’. enjoy <3

This was supposed to be just transactional.

Although you never had to worry about it before, you told yourself you would never cross that line — that you would drop everything the minute you begin to feel… hopeful. You were always careful and everything was impersonal. So, how could you have let this happen?

Sure enough, it must have something to do with the fact that most of your daddies were bound to someone else. With them, having a code simply obliged you to show up as needed, act enthused, keep them company as they pleased, and always keep weekends off-limits. So long as you deny any involvement with them at whatever cost, they’ll keep you happy.

No strings attached. It was always that simple.

With Tooru, from the moment you first met, everything was different. ‘Dating’ him was a huge breather. He was funny, witty, and he can be pretty sweet too. Treating someone to dinner first before sleeping with them was a gesture you never thought much of — at least not before him.

He’s not the most understanding guy, nor does he have the most pristine reputation to his name. But you find yourself the most honest with him — because he always is, with you.

Above all, with him, you were never denied. He let you be seen with him. He would introduce you to his friends whenever you crossed paths and on some occasions, he even referred to you as his girlfriend. He never pretended he wasn’t with you, nor did he ever refer to you as ‘just some person,’ or the one that usually left a sting — ‘nobody.’

He would’ve made for the ideal companion and you want to believe that he’s genuinely interested in how your day was. Except, every first of the month, when he wires a good sum of money to your account, is a painful reminder to you that everything that goes with Oikawa Tooru — his friends, his attention, and his company — is part of your transaction.

Now, you’re almost certain you had just bitten off more than you can chew.

…

Wrapped in his warm, naked embrace after he made love to you, you gather up the courage to ask him what has been plaguing your mind for a good while.

“I was thinking,” you start and he hums to you back. “What if... you don’t pay me this time?”

“Are you offering free services now?” he chuckles, making you wonder if you shouldn’t have said anything.

“Nonsense, princess. You know how much I love to spoil you,” he adds.

“I just — maybe we ought to try something else,” you mutter, not missing how he blinked in confusion at your words.

Nuzzling his face in the crook of your neck, he says, “we can try anything you want, princess, just ask.”

“Really?” For a brief moment, your eyes gleam, enthralled with the possibility of you and him being more than this.

“Of course. What kind of sugar daddy would I be if I can’t give you what you want,” he hums.

“... right,” you say. Even when he doesn’t mean to, he reminds you of where you stand in his life, of who you likely are to him. After this, you decide it would probably be best never to bring it up again. You know he certainly wouldn’t.

…

For weeks, you keep telling yourself that this is for the best. He continues to provide for you and at least you get to be with him. He seems like he’s content the way things are, and you storming into his life, demanding something he never asked for would ruin everything you have.

Today, when he invited you over to his apartment, you expected things would go how they normally would. And they did. Except for the latter part of your night, when Oikawa felt particularly foul without warning.

...

“You really think I’d ever see you more than just another cunt?” he groans, pressing one hand against the small of your back as he takes you from behind.

“Shut up and be a good girl for me.”

You let out an incoherent response of what was supposed to be an apology. You attempt to cry out the usual ‘yes, daddy’ but, your mind keeps repeating the first thing he said to you.

He must think so little of you.

“You’re a good fuck, princess. You know that’s all you’re ever worth to me you slut,” he growls, grabbing a fistful of your hair, yanking it back.

You’re overwhelmed, torn between moaning from the pleasure of his cock and crying from how hurtful he’s being to you — not even from the sharp sting you feel on your scalp.

It’s a scene, you tell yourself. You’ve done a hundred others so you can’t even fathom why you’re tearing up now, of all times. Still, nothing stops the word that’s about to come out of your mouth.

“— RED!”

And at that, he stops. Both of you freeze.

“Tooru. I- I can’t do this anymore,” you sob.

Immediately, Oikawa pulls out, grabbing a blanket to cover you with it.

“Are you hurt, princess?” he asks you, wiping the tears that ran across your face.

You look away, prompting him to retreat his hands. “I can’t see you anymore,” you mutter.

“Why — all of a sudden?” he asks, with concern fairly evident in his voice, and you wish you would’ve picked another time for this but you know you can’t put yourself through this any longer.

“I- I’m seeing someone else,” you lie, supposing you could still save yourself from the embarrassment and hurt of hearing it directly from him that you can’t be together.

“Well, I wonder what he’d do if he knew you were with me right now,” he hums, still with a look of worry shrouding his eyes.

He continues, “is there really anything you could say that could make me hate you?” he says softly as he enwraps your hands in his. “You don’t need to lie to me. Please, tell me what this is really about, princess.”

“You won’t hate me?”

“I promise,” he tells you before planting a kiss on your finger tips.

“Tooru, am I — am I really just a good fuck to you?”

“Princess, you’re breaking my heart here. Did you really believe I’d think of you like that?”

“But a few weeks ago… about the payment and trying out new things, I thought… maybe you didn’t want to be with me like that —” you mumble.

“You treat me so well. You make me happy,” he cuts you off. Slowly, he reaches for your arms, wrapping them around him as he pulls you closer to his chest.

“Please don’t worry about that from now on. I don’t mean what I said, and I never will. I’m sorry I hurt you.”

Pretty soon, his lips are on yours. The taste of honeyed residues and salt linger on his tongue as he kisses you unlike any other time he’s done it. It’s different. It’s tender — raw, even.

Maybe this is love. Or maybe that’s too strong a word for what this is. Still, you question if this is what it’s like to be seen by Oikawa Tooru. If it is, you wish for nothing more.

Softly, he pulls away, and your lips try to recapture his own but his thumb fans across your lower lip.

“I wish you told me sooner. Maybe then, I could’ve asked you out on a proper date, and I could’ve gotten you flowers too,” he says, looking at you with the most endearing expression you’ve seen of him.

“I’ll make it up to you, I promise.”

As if the foreign sensation of his loving state wasn’t euphoric enough on your lips, you can’t begin to explain the high when he trails his lips down to your neck, his hand gently pushing you to lie on your back.

He aligns himself at your entrance. At the rate your heart is beating, you would’ve been fooled you’re doing this for the first time. Only, the sight of him bare and covered in sweat was already far too familiar to you. But the way he rolled his hips with newfound care — something you brought out of him tonight — shoots a bolt of heat down your core, making you moan out to him for more.

He presses a kiss down your jaw as he picks up his pace, ramming into you until all that can be heard across the room are your moans, his shaggy breaths and occasional grunts, and the wet slap of skin against skin.

“Cum for me, princess,” he says before bringing your legs up, hooking his arms behind your knees. Promptly, you whimper from the increased friction on your clit.

“T- Tooru!” you moan but as soon as his name leaves your lips, he latches his mouth on yours. Your walls flutter at every brush of his skin on your sensitive clit, forcing you to break contact with his lips as you moan in pleasure but his mouth recaptures yours almost immediately.

His cock enters you balls deep and instantly leaves your clenching hole. His pace soon becomes rough and uneven, and you feel yourself nearing your own climax. At his last few hard pumps, you mewl into his mouth in your frenzied, quivering state until he gets off from his own high.

Soon, he plops down the space beside you, weakly pulling you closer to him, and you all but nestle in his warmth as he wraps a hand around you. He brushes away the damp hairs away from your face, planting a kiss on your forehead after catching his breath.

“You’re important to me, okay?”

“You are to me, too, Tooru.”

[larnax]

Yes, yes, YES! AO3 is designed EXACTLY to protect people from “DISCOVERY!” Even the people you personally think are bad people! Even you! And if you think that a site that DOESN'T leave its users open to bashing, witch hunts, doxxing and harassment is a bad site, then it can only be assumed that YOU want to bash, witchhunt, doxx and harass people who don’t meet your moral standards. That is not a good thing! It is not!

And you are as free as the wind to criticize any fic you choose so long as a) you are not doing it in front of the author b) are not threatening the author and c) are not doxxing the author. Discord is a great place to do that! PRIVATELY. You are also free and encouraged to make any amount of helpful educational posts for the young and easily impressionable warning them of things that are not alright irl and what to do if you recognize yourself as a victim of one. How many such have you made lately?

And btw, anyone with any understanding of library studies will tell you that AO3's tagging system is a miracle and the envy of absolutely any such organization. There are plenty of such posts on tumblr! Look them up, maybe!

like i clearly and repeatedly explained in the post, "good archive" and "prevents users from discovering its contents" are mutually exclusive. this is the entire point of the post and ultimately irrelevant to whether or not i personally approve of the content. as i said repeatedly, assuming you could read and understand words, the problem is that a search system that CAN'T FIND WHAT YOU'RE LOOKING FOR or gives you almost entirely irrelevant results is a shitty search engine.

ao3 provides zero actual protection from doxxing or harrassment, it just has a shitty search engine. they didn't even let you block users until very recently. you might as well say my tumblr blog has incredible protection from witchhunts because the search bar can't filter tags.

a user who has trouble with a badly designed website isn't inherently Young and Stupid, you're just so up your own ass that you think memorizing 80 euphemisms for pedophilia makes you a supergenius. like i said explicitly in words, a library that incorrectly files or provides literally no relevant information on its contents is a bad library.

but yeah no "you can't criticize media publicly" is the kind of deranged take that would get you laughed out of town and pelted with tomatoes in any creative community except your social bubble. you being such a loser that people talking about how the romanticization of sexual assault can lead to its normalization in society, an extremely well documented phenomenon, makes your glass bones and paper skin shatter is firmly a "you" problem.

ultimately my post was making a utilitarian argument about whether or not ao3 is an effective archive. it's not. i have no problem with archives that store works by bad people that explicitly argue for awful things, and in fact i think they are vital to maintain for the reasons i stated. i just understand psychology and realize that if someone writes raceplay porn that the author should not be immune to criticism just because the archive itself is necessary.

but yes, i do think that some works should be restricted from, like, 6 year olds. some people, like elementary schoolers and you, don't have the mental capacity to understand cause and effect, so giving them propaganda for certain ideas when they don't yet have the ability to think critically can lead to them wholesale internalizing whatever they read.

and i do think that it is bad to write a book about how epic and good rape is. i think we should take that book and put it in a library so everyone can see that you think that and criticize you for it, and if that hurts your feelings you shouldn't have published it. i fully understand that authors can write books where characters espouse and even encourage ideas that the author does not hold, however it's thoroughly bad reading comprehension to assume that you can't ever read something and a) analyze what ideas the narrative itself supports while also b) when applicable, understanding that a book that endorses ideas and an author who endorses them irl are not correlation without causation.

also the 'if YOU think some people are bad that must mean YOU are the REAL bad person' is just such a stupid logical fallacy. some things are different from other things. lemonade is different from microplastics. gay sex is different from racism. the difference between me and you is that i know what i'm talking about and you're repeating bullshit slogans from people obsessed with a website that doesn't work very well.

in conclusion,

[andypantsx3]

subtle | 2 | Shouto Todoroki/Reader

pairing: Todoroki Shouto / Reader

status: complete

length: 2,265 words

summary: Someone leaves chocolates on your desk. You’re determined to track down the sender, certain it’s a mistake, and Shouto Todoroki makes himself as unhelpful as possible.

tags: romance, reader-insert, fluff, valentine’s day

warnings: aged up characters (no smut though!!)

notes: Hi all! Happy Valentine's Day! I'm posting a follow up chapter because so many people asked for it in my inbox. It's completely unedited because I just decided to write it today, and I wanted to get it up before the holiday was over! I promise I will come back and edit at some point in the next few weeks.

No one had come for the box.

You’d made a point to be out of your office as much as possible throughout the day, leaving plenty of opportunity for whoever the sender was to sneak back in and correct their mistake. But every time you reentered the room, there the box was, crowning a pile of your paperwork like a coronet of ineptitude.

You’d checked in with Shouto several times as well, anxious to learn whether or not he’d overheard anything as he changed out of his uniform from patrol, but he proved just as unhelpful as he’d been earlier this morning. He simply leaned towards you, looking almost conspiratorial--spiking both your heart rate and your hopes--only for him to murmur in his low voice, “No one is coming for it.”

Which was so fucking unhelpful.

So you’d set about the office yourself, lingering hopefully on the fringes of people’s conversations, peering about for clues on the agency staffer’s desks, but there was nothing to give the sender away, no whispered snippet of conversation or receipt laying amongst some expense sheets. You might have resorted to sifting through people’s garbage cans, if only Shouto hadn’t taken to suddenly appearing wherever you were investigating, watching you with a wry little smile pulling at the corner of his mouth.

You knew he hadn’t the slightest modicum of romantic interest in you, but that didn’t mean you wanted him to witness you digging through people’s garbage either. That would have to wait until you could get him out of the building.

Which was also proving to be an impossible endeavor. He usually had a habit of lingering after his shift, coming into your office to make queries about one thing or another that almost always devolved into conversations deeply unrelated to work. But today he was especially resistant to leaving, seeming content to lounge around in the chairs you’d set out for clients, draping one distractingly muscled arm across the backs and watching you intently with those heterochromatic eyes.

“Shouto, get out of my office,” you hissed, coming back in at the end of the day to find him still in one of the chairs, his phone clutched in those long fingers.

He glanced up at you, eyes fastening to your features in that attentive way he had. “I work here.”

“Is that what you’re doing?” you asked, trying to suppress a small spike of irritation with him. “Because it looks like you’re scaring off the box sender to me. How are they supposed to sneak in here and take it back if their boss is looming in here like their worst nightmare?”

Shouto looked unconcerned. “I’m not.”

“Not what?” you asked. Maybe he wasn’t their worst nightmare, but being caught by your boss in the middle of correcting a romantic mishap was probably at least a nightmare.

“Not scaring anyone off,” he said, putting his phone away into his pocket. “I know who the box belongs to.”

You stopped short, your attention snapping fully towards him. A thrill of excitement went down your spine, even as regret poured through you. A little part of you had maybe hoped you would end up getting to eat the chocolates, even if they weren’t yours. But this was good news.

“You do? Why didn’t you tell me?” you demanded.

Yor feet guided you to the chair where he sat, and you stood, looking down at him expectantly. He watched you through his long lashes, eyes glinting strangely.

“It’s mine,” he said finally, after a moment that stretched long and slow, like warm taffy.

Your breath caught in your chest, a swell of confusion rising within you. The box was his?

Was he being truthful or was this another attempt to make you take it? Why would he have tried to make you think it was from a secret admirer, then? Why have let you run around all day, attempting to find the sender, if the chocolates had been his all along? Unless...

Unless he was embarrassed. You didn’t know why he might have left them in your office, but you suspected maybe force of habit had drawn him here. Maybe he was operating on autopilot after his distracting shift this morning, since he usually spent so much time in your office, and then you’d come in to find them before he’d had a chance to realize it. And the rest had been history.

But then that begged the question of who he’d really meant them for--your heart sank as the thought occurred to you.

Obviously, you had known since you’d first met him that he wasn’t interested in you. You’d spent years with your thoughts all muddled around him, quelling every blush, never straying into his personal space or staring at him longer than was appropriate. You’d been so, so careful around him, but you’d never had any indication that Shouto was as careful around you. On the contrary, he was always calm and intent--he never looked away from you in a fit of bashfulness the way you had him, and he seemed to have no qualms about getting into your personal space, leaning over you as you looked through reports together, putting a hand on your back to guide you through publicity events.

So yeah, you had known he was basically immune to you. You had known it for a long time. But it still smarted to think of him giving that box to someone else.

God, how embarrassing for you. How mortifying, really, that Shouto had been thinking of someone else all those days that you had been nursing your crush on him.

But you were a professional, you could deal with this.

All you had to do was play it cool, give him back the box and laugh it off like it hardly affected you. And then you could head back to your apartment and binge ice cream and be all wistful and embarrassing for one evening. You could allow yourself that before you had to come back and be doubly professional, smile and congratulate whichever analyst or support staffer or fellow hero had caught his interest.

You could be happy for him. You’d miss the chocolates though.

Drawing yourself together, you looked down at him, pulling out a small but genuine smile. Shouto was your friend, and he was going to nail it with whoever the box was meant for--you could give him your support. But then Shouto was unfolding himself out of the chair, standing up so he could look down into your face, taking a step closer to you.

You tried to ignore the flutter in your stomach at his sudden proximity, the hint of his clean cologne and the lick of warmth coming off of his left side.

“They’re, uh, they’re yours?” you managed, forcing yourself to meet his eyes. “You are in such big trouble for coming in here and peddling conspiracy theories instead of owning up to it. You at least owe me a coffee for being such a brat.”

Shouto watched you quietly, saying nothing.

“But we can hash that out later,” you said, waving what you hoped was a casual hand at him. “You need to move quickly. You should try to catch whoever you meant these for before they leave--daytime shift is over in a couple minutes.”

Shouto’s brows knitted, a small frown pulling at his mouth. “You still think they’re not for you,” he said.

It took a minute for you to register the words he’d spoken. The comment struck you dumb when you did, a thrill of disbelief going through you. Was he trying to be tactful now? Now, of all times?

“Shouto, seriously, you can make it up to me later. This is not the time to fuck around, the day’s almost over,” you said.

His eyes narrowed and he stepped closer to you, close enough that you could feel him exhale. You took a step back in surprise, your hip bumping your desk.

“You promised me,” he said in his deep voice, “that if no one came looking for them by the end of the day, you would take them.”

You stared up at him, your mind churning wildly with all kinds of insane thoughts, wild insinuations that brought heat to your face. He absolutely could not mean what you thought he meant.

There was literally no way.

“I don’t understand what you’re trying to say,” you admitted. “But if you’re telling me I can take them just because you promised them, I don’t want them. I think you should give them to who you meant them for.”

That wry little smile played about his mouth again, and Shouto took another step closer. The back of your thighs dug into your desk and you wobbled, putting a hand down to keep your balance.

“To think I trust you with my career,” Shouto intoned, ducking his head to look into your face. You felt the heat of his left arm at your side as he placed it gently on your desk, caging you in. “Let me be plain, then. I did give them to who they were meant for.”

Your cheeks went hot, both with his proximity and the implied insult. But the rejoinder died on your tongue as the implication of his last few words sank in.

He had meant them for you? Shouto Todoroki, number four hero, your coworker of several years and your most patient, attentive, and mind-numbingly handsome friend, had gone to Grégoire Chardin, for Valentine’s Day chocolate, thinking--of all people--of you?

For a moment, it felt like the earth was sliding out from under your feet, but then you realized it was just you, tipping backwards on your desk. Your elbow banged into the side of the chocolate box, and you accidentally sent a small pile of papers fluttering over the side of your desk. You cringed, embarrassed, but then Shouto was over you, both arms braced on either side of your head.

“You don’t need to accept them if you don’t want,” he said quietly, watching your face. The intensity of his focus made your head swim, and you tried to focus on what he was saying, rather than the shape of his mouth as he spoke, the heat from his skin. “But I wanted you to know. I like you.”

You gaped at him, the words feeling like they were embedding themselves in your brain.

“You...like me?” you echoed in disbelief.

Shouto grinned, the expression so disarmingly charming that even your nose went hot. “Yes. Very much.”

A swell of emotions welled up inside you, like the unstoppable tide of a coastal flood, and you were gripped with the sudden desire to lean up and kiss him, to press your mouth to his and see if he meant it, if any of what he’d just said to you could possibly be real. Suddenly, that was the only thought in your entire brain.

“I’m gonna kiss you,” you heard yourself utter stupidly.

You hesitated for just a second, realizing that maybe you should pinch yourself first to see if this was actually happening, but then Shouto was already there, covering your mouth with his.

His kiss was hot and soft and utterly perfect, and very quickly there were no thoughts in your brain at all, nothing but the feel of him over you, one muscled thigh pressing insistently between yours, his long fingers tangling gently in the hair behind your ear. You clutched him to you tightly, an embarrassing little sound escaping you, and Shouto groaned, pressing more of his weight down on you, licking firmly into your mouth.

You were half-delirious with the feeling of him by the time he let you up for air, and you could feel yourself grinning like an absolute fool.

“I had a secret admirer,” you said. “You were being serious.”

Shouto smirked, leaning in to press a hot kiss to your throat. Your thighs clenched involuntarily. “Yes, I had been secretly admiring you for a while.”

For some reason, the words embarrassed you, and you tucked your face into his broad shoulder. “I...this is so embarrassing. I’ve been...admiring you, too.”

You heard Shouto huff a soft laugh, and then his calloused fingers were gripping your chin, angling your face back towards him so he could seize your mouth again. You went slack and pliant underneath him, enjoying the press of his mouth on yours, your toes curling when he did something particularly talented with his tongue.

“I did tell you,” Shouto said after a while, pulling back, one of his hands gripping your thigh.

“Tell me what?” you asked absently, wondering how you could get his mouth on yours again.

His eyes caught yours, the blue of his left glittering at you conspiratorially. “That I could be subtle.”

You laughed, feeling stupid--but more than that, flushed and completely pleased. You didn’t know if subtle was exactly the right word, but you weren’t going to argue specifics at the moment. “I guess you can be. Though you might have been a little bit more overt before now.”

“Then if you don’t mind,” Shouto said after a while, something like amusement in his voice, “I’d like to take you home and admire you quite overtly now.”

You were answering before he could even finish. “Yes, oh my god, yes.”

Shouto laughed again, smoothing a large palm down your side.

And then he did. And not even chocolates from Grégoire Chardin could compare.

[rheawritessometimes]

A Bad Deal

{ Childe x GN!Reader }

{ Summary } A continuation of "Childe gets an owie." Series Masterlist

{ Warnings } Mention of Injury, Physical Intimacy, Undefined Relationship, Questionable Behavior, Bad Writing, Please Let Me Know if Anything Needs to be Added.

{ Notes } I realized when I decided to write this that I didn't title the last fic, but the best works are always untitled. Not really I'm just forgetful. This time Childe can have mercy. I was so surprised with the response to the last fic, the amount of people who liked it was a huge surprise. Also, the comments on it were so kind. So obviously I needed to write a follow-up right away. I hope it's equally as enjoyable. Set up for a continuation if people like it. Masterlist

{ Word Count } 1,940

Getting Childe back to Liyue was a simple affair, he wasn't hindered by any pain he might have been in. The Snezhnayan wasn't one to complain about pain, even if he wasn't numbed up. He seemed to be in a cheerful mood, chattering animatedly as you walked. The fact he intentionally moved closer to you so that your shoulders occasionally brushed did not escape your notice. Neither of you said anything about it.

Luckily the Golden House wasn't very far from the harbor and the path was clear of any monsters, for which you were thankful. You were more than capable of handling most monsters on your own, but you were worried Childe would jump into combat and end up hurting himself more than he already had been. He was capable as a fighter but you thought him to be too reckless.

The visit to Bubu Pharmacy was entirely uneventful, it was confirmed that Childe had two broken ribs on his right side and he was given some medication for the pain. There wasn't much else to be done other than recommend regularly icing the area and no strenuous activities. That was expected, broken ribs were good at healing naturally, given rest. You wondered if it would even be possible for him to take it easy as a Harbinger, but it seemed the other Harbingers weren't as active as him so perhaps it was possible.

"I think I can just take it easy for two weeks and then go back to business as usual," Childe remarked as you began down the stairs. You looked at him with a frown, wondering if he was serious. This man had no regard for his long-term wellbeing.

"You need to rest for six weeks, at least. It's better for you to recover entirely before you get back to... whatever it is you do," you said with a stern tone. Sometimes it really did seem like Childe was a child. Haha.

"I'm a busy guy, I can't take that kind of time off," he argued, not seeming concerned by that in the slightest. It was true that broken ribs weren't the worst injury to work around, but it still wasn't wise to be so careless.

"Well, you're a valuable asset to Snezhnaya, surely you'd be allowed time off to recover. The Tsaritsa must be at least that understanding," you reasoned, now realizing you were walking along with him not sure where you were going. You didn't even know where he lived, it was clear he didn't spend his nights on the streets at least.

The Harbinger hummed thoughtfully, clearly scheming. You wondered what excuse he would come up with. Probably something about how he was 'very strong and can recover quickly'. You could almost scoff at the mere thought, it seemed entirely in character for him.

"Alright, I'll request time off to recover," he said, grinning cheekily, "if you help me while I recover."

You raised a questioning brow, that was something you hadn't predicted he was considering. Still, you cared enough for him to want him to fully recover, and helping him out wasn't beyond your abilities. Aside from one attempt to destroy Liyue, he had been pretty harmless.

"You'll rest for the whole six weeks?" you asked, still skeptical. You weren't sure it was possible for him to stay away from a fight for that long.

"Yep, I promise."

"Alright, deal."

Childe offered you his hand to shake, and you took it. Looking back on it, it was probably not the best idea to solidify your agreement in the land of contracts. Not when the terms hadn't been thoroughly discussed, at least.

"Great, you can stay at my apartment while I recover," he chirped, opening a door to what you assumed to be his apartment. You hadn't even realized you'd arrived in front of the building, too busy trying to convince Childe to take care of himself.

You opened your mouth to argue but quickly closed it when an ominous feeling washed over you. For some reason, it felt like it would be unwise to break your agreement. You silently cursed your past self, maybe you were the careless one.

Your displeasure must have been showing on your face because Childe laughed after seeing your expression. You clenched your jaw, but decided it would be better if you didn't say anything, he was certain to tease you if you rose to the bait.

"Second floor," he said as you walked down the hall, gesturing to a stairwell. He huffed once as you were going up the stairs, and you could only assume the numbness was beginning to fade. A wave of guilt washed over you at the thought. You broke his ribs and forced him to take off work for six weeks, so you were probably out of the running for friend of the year.

You could immediately tell which door led to Childe's apartment when you got to the second floor, there was a Fatui guard standing outside of it. He looked entirely out of place and you could imagine he was bored out of his mind just standing there. When he noticed your presence he eyed you suspiciously but said nothing, instead bowing his head to Childe.

The Harbinger completely ignored his subordinate, opening the door to his apartment and ushering you inside. Once the door was closed he ran a hand through his hair, letting out what sounded like a sigh of relief. It was probably nice to be home and finally able to relax after all that walking around with broken ribs.

"Your guard doesn't seem to like me," you remarked absently as you scanned his apartment. It was clean and surprisingly spacious, but a little bare. The floors were hardwood and there was a large carpet in the middle of the living room, with a sofa and some other furniture atop it. There were no houseplants to be seen.

"Yeah, I don't bring many people home," Childe laughed in response, plopping down on his couch which had no throw pillows or blankets. There was a wooden coffee table in front of it, but not much else around it.

"Oh, are you having relationship troubles?" you quipped in response, lips quirking up at the corners. He scoffed indignantly at your words.

"Have you seen this face? Of course not, I'm just waiting on the right person," he stated, lying sprawled across the couch. You shook your head at this, moving to the kitchen in hopes of finding some ice. Childe didn't say anything about you snooping around his kitchen, so you assumed there was nothing he felt he had to hide in there.

After gathering a dish towel and some ice, you came back with the make-shift icepack. He hadn't had a proper icepack in his freezer, which surprised you considering his line of work. Maybe later you would head back up to the pharmacy to get some.

"Ice your side for now. You should wash up and get changed soon," you told him after you handed him the icepack. While there had been no blood the fight was physically straining, so he probably needed to clean up. You realized after saying this that you had no change of clothes here, you'd need to go back to your place to get some things if he planned on having you stay here for six weeks.

"Okay, mom," he joked in response, you could only roll your eyes at this. He left the icepack laying on the right side of his chest, not bothering to hold it in place. You didn't bother to nag him about it, it was close enough.

"I'm going back to my place to get some stuff, I shouldn't be gone for long," you announced, turning to leave the apartment.

"Wait!" he shouted, sitting up suddenly, the icepack sliding down into his lap. "You owe me a kiss!"

You turned to look at him, a bit surprised by him shouting. You had forgotten about that entirely, but you did promise. So you walked over to the couch and leaned down to press your lips against his. You had intended for it to be a brief kiss, but his hand gently held your wrist and the other went up to brush against your jaw.

With a sigh you deepened the kiss, allowing yourself him to indulge for a little while. You were surprised by the slow pace he set, but certainly not displeased. He gently bit your bottom lip before pulling away, opening his eyes and giving you a smug look when he noticed your face had become a bit flushed.

"Get washed up and put clean clothes on while I'm gone," you said as you pulled away, trying to seem as unflustered as possible. It wasn't very effective, if his laughter as you fled the apartment was anything to go by.

Gathering everything you thought you would need from your apartment was entirely uneventful, you tried to pack everything you'd need for six weeks into a duffel bag but it was hopeless. You were bound to forget things and a duffel bag isn't much space, so you decided you could just come back whenever you needed something.

The Fatui guard stationed outside Childe's apartment was not shy about giving you a dirty look as you approached. It was safe to say the Harbinger probably didn't often have company. The guard seemed particularly suspicious of your bag, like that was the thing to worry about when it was commonplace to materialize weapons out of thin air.

"Stop," he ordered in a booming voice as you neared the door. You followed his order, halting outside the door. You proceeded to stare him dead in the eyes as you knocked three times on the door.

It swung open shortly after, Childe stepping out of the way to let you in. The way the guard clenched his jaw made you feel very smug.

"You don't have to knock, just come in," he said, and you were silently very thankful for those words. It was a little something extra to rub it in. Perhaps your loathing was a little misplaced, that man was likely not one who had attacked you in the past. But, he did still give you a dirty look and was none too polite, so there was something. Sometimes people are petty, and that's okay.

Once you were inside the apartment, you noticed Childe had showered and changed into a fresh set of clothes. The white t-shirt and grey sweatpants were rather different from his usual look, but it strangely suited him rather well. Maybe everything looks good on him because he's a pretty Fatui boy.

"How are you feeling?" you asked, shifting the weight of your bag as you followed him to the kitchen.

"Good, doesn't hurt much. What do you want for dinner?" he asked, opening the cupboards to survey their contents. How casual the atmosphere was made it feel awfully domestic.

"Um, I'm fine with whatever you make," you replied, banishing the thought from your mind. You weren't really sure about your feelings on the matter yet so you would push them all off to the side and sort through them some other time.

"Oh, right. There's a spare room down the hall across from the bedroom. You can put your stuff in there," he said, looking over at you standing in the doorway with your bag. You were already walking away when he added, "Or you're welcome to stay in my bedroom with me~"

"You wish."

Maybe six weeks with Childe wouldn't be too bad.