#reading books like this make me realize more and more how probably ace i am because wtf

[nectaric]

wowie , here's a little update for y'all since i've been mia for a while: i'm finally moved in and settled but there's a lot of little things to do that have been adding up and taking time, so i haven't spent much time writing.

i've also been focusing on other things for my health, like getting outside and eating real meals and spending time with friends and family. i've also been reading a lot more! i finished a whole book and i'm well into another, which hasn't happened in over six months at least, and years before that so!! not to mention a new book idea struck me like a train and i've been working really hard on fleshing that out so i've been busy.

i intend to write here soon, but otherwise, if you want to reach me you can add me on discord or get my insta since that where i spend most of my online time these days. <333

[sturniqlo]

Kiss in the Kitchen- M.S

summary: both Matt and Y/n find themselves in the kitchen at two in the morning alone. Blurb

cw: cursing, brothers best friend trope, suggestive material (no actual smut), almost getting caught

masterlist | join my taglist | part 2

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2:16 AM read the digital clock that was propped on Y/n's nightstand. She huffed and turned to the other side facing the wall. It was probably the tenth time she has turned to the opposite side trying to fall asleep. She shouldn't have drank that iced coffee before bed.

After turning around one more time, she sat up and swung her legs over the edge of the bed and her feet met the cold wooden floor. Y/n made her way, barefoot, to her door and opened it and a cold breeze made it way to her. "Holy fuck." She gasped, her brother must've moved the ac once more.

She felt her nipples harder up against her oversized tee. Making her way downstairs, the creaking of the stairs made her cringe, not wanting to wake anyone else up in the house. Through the dark, she made her way to the kitchen and opened up three fridge getting herself a water bottle, keeping the fridge open for a light source. "Hey." Someone said from behind her. "What the-" She yelped, spilling some water on her shirt. She turned around and sees Matt wearing a tank top and pajama pants hung low on his hips.

"Matt?" She whisper yelled. "Shit, my bad. Didn't mean to scare you." He chuckled, reaching in the fridge for a water of his own. "When did you get here?" Still at a whisper. "Around seven? Daniel texted if I wanted to spend the night." He opens his water bottle. Y/n got home at nine, probably why she didn't know he was here. "I didn't see your car when I got here."

"I had to park in the next block over, there was no parking and I didn't want to take your spot in the driveway." She hummed in response. "So, why are you awake at-" He looks at the stove. "Two twenty eight in the morning?"

"Cant sleep, I drank coffee earlier so I fucked up with that one." Y/n giggles. "You?" She takes another sip of her water. "Your brother snores like a middle aged man, I might crash on the couch." He walks between Y/n and the counter, putting his hand on her waist to get by.

She cant help but get goosebumps all over and clench between her thighs although it was a small gesture. Y/n leans against the counter and tries to shake all the dirty thoughts out of her head. "I just realized, we've never been alone together. Just us two." He walks back from throwing away his empty water bottle. "Really? I- I've never noticed." Y/n stutters.

"Really." He nods, walking up to stand in front of her, placing his hands on the counter, caging her in. "O- oh." Her heart starts beating fast. She's always found Matt attractive. Hot. Every name in the book. "Why're you nervous? Thought you always wanted this, I see how you look at me all the time." Matt grabs her jaw so she can look up at him. "Do you want me?" He says.

"Yes," She nods. "I want you." With that, Matt placing his lips on hers. They pull apart to see if they were okay with it. When nobody completely pulled away, Y/n kissed him again. The kiss was mix of tongue and teeth clashing. Messy, just how Y/n imagined it. "I've wanted this for so long." Matt pulls away to kiss down her jaw. "Fuck- me too." She gasps at Matt sucking on her neck.

She tugs on his hair and brings him back to her lips. If this was the only time she'd have Matt like this, she was going to make last. They could still taste the faintness of the minty toothpaste on each other. Matt brought his hands under her shirt and massaged his cold hands onto her warm waist while her arms came up around her neck, her hands slightly tugging on the hair on the nape of his neck.

His hands crept up her soft belly to underneath her breast. She gasped against his lips. Matt squeezed her tits and she whimpered when his thumb circled her nipples. Matt grew harder at the fact that she wasn't wearing a bra. Wanting her shirt off, he brought his hands to the bottom of her shirt. "Can I?" He whispered against her swollen wet lips. "Please." She nodded.

When the shirt came above her breast, Matt was awed at her bare chest. As it was going to come off above her head, they heard the stairs creek and Y/n pulled her shirt back down as Matt was frozen. "Hey guys. Why are you two up?" Her brother enters the kitchen and sees Matt looking into the fridge. "I- uh I couldn't sleep and came to get water." Y/n awkwardly held up her unfinished water as she was breathing heavily, but her brother didn't notice as he was still half asleep.

"And I- you were snoring so I came to crash on the couch and found her- uh here." Matt scratched his neck. "I'll- I'll see you two tomorrow." Y/n said and left the kitchen leaving the two boys in the kitchen.

Back in her room, she sat on her bed in disbelief. Did that actually happen? Something that she's been wanting for so long just happened? Y/n could still feel the softness of his lip on her, his hands all over her body. Yet, she still had the ache in between her legs.

Ten minutes later, her phone buzzed on her nightstand. Picking it up, she saw a instagram dm from Matt.

matthew.sturniolo

keep your door unlocked

i'm going once daniel is asleep

[onepiece-asl-lover]

Idk if your requests are open if not respond to the Privately but So idk if you actually feel comfortable writing for Luffy I am looki for one piece x reader writers who have the requests open and came across you anyway I request takes place after the time skip where reading I ask Luffy if next year they can celebrate Ace with Luffy aka next year on the day of his death instead of feeling sad they want me make sure Luffy is happy so they will spend the entire day doing things would love like eating us favorite foods and doing things he would love

I'm totally fine writing this! I'll try the best of my abilities to write what you requested. If you dont like it I can make another. Also I'll make it a Luffyxreader thing

First ever ask!!!!

"Changing a tragic into comfort" Luffy x Fm!reader

You knew this day exact day your lover Luffy brother died. It had traumatized him so much that on the next year he sat in his room and barely ate, concerning you and the straw hats.

This year was the day that Ace died and when you woke up to hopefully to find Luffy next to you, you find him at your desk his hat covering his face and when you realized it he was asleep as you brought a blanket and tucked him gently.

Your head was clouded as you went onto deck watching over the railing the ocean. How couldn't you helped your lover the time he needed it the most. Were you just a bad lover and spouse.

You didn't keep track of time that Sanji called for dinner and Nami had to call you over. You could tell everyone was quiet today aswell. The death of the Fire Fist Ace and the traumatic Luffy had effect them as you guys all ate silently.

You step slowly as an idea clicked into your mind. Why don't you guys make him a small party a supporting comfort party with his favourite food items. It was the best idea you ever thought of till now as you spoke up from the quiet dinner hall.

"Please excuse me but I have an idea on how we can help Luffy." You said as you wiped your hands with a towel.

"Help Luffy?" Chopper asked as his little hands ate a loli Robin gave him.

"How can we help Luffy, we can't just being Ace back" Zoro said as he kept eating he wasn't wrong so Nami didn't hit him.

"I've heard of these things for people who have went through a traumatic event and losing sombody, it's called a..-" you tried to remember the title of this party.

"An offer party, where people who have gone through grieving often remember that it is the person who offered reassuring hope, the certainty that things will get better, who helped them make the gradual passage from pain to a renewed sense of life." Robin offered as you nooded.

Everyone seemed to listen up as you continued talking of a party and probably it might be f everyone in the crew. You know everyone in the crew as lost a loved one from a trainer to a father figure ect.

"I hope we could make a kind of party self care I believe where we get our favorite food, items, games, drinks ect and get comfort from each other."

"..." it was silent in the room it made you sweat thinking of their opinion and thoughts about this party thing.

"Y/n your idea is....SUUUUUUUPERRR" Franky says as he does his iconic pose."also can we have cola and bugers there too" he adds as you all laugh.

"And cottoncandy!" Chopper says as he jumps off Robin laps.

"The great captain Usopp declares he will want a grilled fish!"

"Yohohohoho! I would be delightful to have some curry aswell too!"

"I can pick Mikans from my garden!"

"I would enjoy sandwhiches"

"Onigiris"

"Mozuku seaweed"

"Guess I should get onto cooking then if I'll have to make all this food" Sanji chuckles a he goes to start cooking.

The dining room was as loud as it usually was which is more comforting then that dead silence a few minutes ago.

Nami ordered around for decorations. Zoro messed up. Usopp getting some of his fairytails books. Brook being out his guitar and getting it ready to place with. Franky using his robot skills and Jinbei helping Nami with decor. Chopper grabs some small royes he holds in his bag to show. Robin using her devil fruit to help around.

You smiled as you saw everyone getting ready as it remind you, you had to get Luffy as you trolled into his room.

"Luffy?" You said as you peeked your head through the door.

You see him staring at the window as you went next to him.

"Everything's alright?" You asked as you rubbed his head.

"..."

You sighed as you kept looking at him and brushing away fallen tears of his and plopped his strawhat back on.

"You know Ace wouldn't want you crying over him, he called you a crybaby when we were younger remember? He wound want you to accomplish your dreams to be the pirate king not let an incident stop you" you say as you rubbed his head.

You hear him sniffle as he wobbly answers.

"You-?re ri-right I should keep going no m-mattered what. Fo-far Ace"

"Yes, yes for Ace" you said as he slowly hugged him.

".....now how about we head outside? I think everyone wants you back as a captain? A crew can not be a car without a captain."

"Okay." Luffy said as he stood up as you stood up aswell grabbing a handkerchief wiping his tears as you lead him outside.

When you lead him outside onto the deck you could see his face light up at the celebrations with tables of food decor and the crew "helping" eachother.

"Luffy!" Chopper squeaked as he ran towards Luffy.

"Hey your back!" Usopp ran towards Luffy as well.

More and more people in the crew went to Luffy talking to him, showing him items they hold dear or giving him food

You could see him smile wide as he went around talking with his crew.

Usopp had a crafting stand and some childhood fairytale books

Choper has some little toys that Robin joined playing with him.

Sanji showed some childhood snacks he would make for his mother.

Nami opened her garden to anyone who could pluck a tangerine which was rare.

Franky shad a show to show off his robot abilities and skill.

Brook played songs for the crew.

Jinbei played around like a father being dragged to every station.

Robin reached some of an old language she used to know.

Zoro slept.

And Luffy laughed as he sprung around and also ate half the food.

You let out a breath as you saw Luffy happy again and enjoying the time with the crew.Everyone seemed so happy and joyous even when something tragic happened that turned into something joyus, and comforting.

Luffy wrapped his rubber arms around you thanking you for helping him and also letting him have party that is for everyone on the crew.

You loved this crew so much you would shake the world for them to be happy.

You couldn't hope for a better crew than this.

Shoutout to petalpetal for being my first ask I hope I did this the way you wanted this I really enjoyed writing this very much!

[stesierra]

Writeblr ReIntro!

I'm posting a new intro because now that I've been on Writeblr a little while, I realize how much information I left out! Hi, I'm Stephanie, I live in the desert with my husband and baby and three cats, and I'm an ace, bipolar fantasy writer! When I was a kid, they said I had ADHD but then I got my Masters degree in biology, so they claim I can't have it. Online tests say I'm probably autistic.

I used to write sci fi twelve years ago but only low tech sci fi about weird aliens, which nobody likes. Now I write fantasy novels! Lots of fantasy novels! I am beginning to post them on my website so if you want to read them, please keep an eye on this post.

My books often but not always have some romance (either m/f or f/f because I prefer female protagonists.) Since I'm ace (and demiromantic), my interpretation of romance and attraction is not exactly what you'd expect from, say, a romance novel.

I am not going to tell you about all my books! I've written eighteen! Four of them are shelved forever! Here's some recent ones (written or revised since 2018) that I haven't given up on. Please ask me questions about them! I LOVE talking about my books! Also, if you want to be added to my taglist for writing samples let me know! Please also tell me if you're interested in alpha or beta reading and for which book! Mutuals only, please!

My books are beneath the cut! As I add WIP intros, I'll update this list with links.

Cast Out

YA fantasy! On her sixteenth birthday, Zisha is cast out of the Plenary Cities for the crime of being born deaf, like her grandmother before her. In the wastelands, she meets Thesil, a depressed and bitter young woman. Zisha wants nothing to do with her — until she sees Thesil's face in a vision. But before she can find out what the visions mean or reach her grandmother's holdings in the wastes, the plague returns to the Plenary Cities. If the disabled really caused the plague thirty years ago, and were cast out to stop the spread, how can it be back when all of them are outcast?

Status: Finished. Being serialized.

WIP intro here.

Now being serialized here. First five chapters up, one posted weekly.

The Bone Queen

This is my NA fantasy about the aftermath of freeing an undead queen and her skeleton army. They take over the kingdom, of course! The main character, Elise, is trapped in Bandrum palace by Aubrey, the ghost who tricked her into falling in love and freeing him (plus everyone else.) He's an animated skeleton now with plans to marry Elise and force her to carry his children. The bone queen has promised him she'll make it happen. Too bad no one cares what Elise wants. If only she had magic of her own...

Status: undergoing a rewrite after developmental edit. Was 109k before revisions. Not available for beta reading.

Draft number? Hahahaha. It has two complete sequels (The Spellbound King (106k) and The Matriarch's Daughter (96k)) I must also rewrite. This series is going to kill me but I love it. My mom, who loves everything I write, complained that it was weird. I'm very proud.

WIP intro here.

First chapter here.

School of Souls

This is my YA contemporary fantasy about a boarding school in the Bighorn Mountains! It's supposed to be a place parents can send "bad" teens to have their problems sorted out, but secretly the founder is using it to train the kids as sorcerers. Even more secretly, the school devours the souls of the students sent there, and the teenagers who graduate aren't the same as the ones who arrived... Warning: does include teenage addiction to sleeping pills and ghosts and and parental death. It's going to have sequels but I haven't written them yet.

Status: Complete first draft. 83k. Available for alpha reading.

WIP intro here.

First chapter here.

The Many-faced Princess

This is YA fantasy with a historical vibe but set in a made up world. Vaguely inspired by ancient Phoenicia. It's about Princess Ameryi, who was blessed by the genderless trickster god, Akihel, to be able to change her face. If her father the king ever found out, he'd have to execute her, of course. Akihel is just plain evil. All the other gods say so. A daughter who's their champion? Impossible. An abomination. So Ameryi will just have to make sure her father never finds out. That was easier to do before the Asirtinsa Empire threatened to invade and her father sent her to secure an alliance with a neighboring king. She's supposed to marry him. Not steal his face and frame him for murder. But sometimes plans just don't work out.

This book was supposed to be about two lesbian princesses who frame the king for murder so they can elope, but both princesses decided to be ace and there was nothing I could do.

Status: Complete first draft. 83k. It's going to have sequels but I haven't written them yet. Available for alpha reading.

First chapter here.

Map here.

Court Phoenix

This is my NA fantasy! Kerra is a blacksmith's apprentice. Not because she wants the job, but because her mother sold her future to him when she was still a toddler who crawled into live fires and giggled as the flames consumed her clothes. Now she's a woman, trapped by the expectations of her family and her village. Until one day, a phoenix crash-lands and dies in her arms. When it's reborn, it chooses Kerra as its keeper. Soon, her dreary future is swept away. A princess from Skyfire, the moving city, offers her a job in the royal court. How could Kerra refuse? Her family's claims that she'll die if she ever leaves the village are just manipulative lies. Aren't they?

Status: Complete third draft. 104k. Available for beta reading.

First chapter here.

The Revenant Trilogy

Adult fantasy. Solving a murder should bring good fortune, but all it brings Mindral Thideet is disaster. Her fame and peaceful life as head researcher at the city of knowledge end abruptly. In retaliation for her investigation into his crimes, Payar Cheref, the head of the powerful Cheref family, burns her beloved cousins alive and scars her face. The scar marks her as a revenant, a body possessed by a godkin, one of the gods' evil children. Her life as a researcher is over. All that's left is revenge.

No one believes her when she denies that godkins have any power over her. But godkins, real ones, are far closer than she realizes. Tearing down Payar Cheref could destroy Mindral, her family, and the nation itself.

-The Halfway Revenant (rewriting draft 4) 120k. Not available for beta reading.

-The Soul-Seer (draft 2) - 130k

-The Godkin's Gambit (draft 2) 121k

First chapter here.

As Immortality Fades

Adult fantasy. Five hundred years ago, one of the immortal and unpredictable Valteifur visited the kingdom of Kathild and granted the young queen Nelone immortality. But there was a catch. She'd live forever, youthful and strong, just so long as her subjects were happy. For centuries, she's met her part of the deal. But when the Valteifur returns to check on her progress, he grants her a new gift: the resurrection of every single person in Kathild who's died in the last two hundred years. Then he disappears.

There aren't enough houses for them all. There's not enough food. And winter is here.

Status: Complete first draft. 98k. Available for alpha reading.

Bi MC, enemies to lovers.

First chapter here.

Stitches and Memories

This one's adult fantasy. Antea's father ripped her mind apart, left her for dead, and vanished twelve years ago, and she's going to find out why. But when constables try to kill her and strange truth magic grows inside of her, hunting her father starts to look like suicide. Too bad going home isn't an option.

Status: I exchanged this with a critique partner and now it embarrasses me. Fourth draft. 122k. Available for beta reading.

Trigger warning: magic seizures

First chapter here.

WIP intro here.

Triangle Park

Contemporary Fantasy. I have no idea who it's for. An elf exiled to the middle of nowhere ends up stuck with an unexpected child. It's about reluctant parenting and protecting the needy. And elves and faeries slumming it in a mobile home.

Status: Complete first draft. 86k. Available for alpha reading.

First chapter here.

Mud-Child

Adult fantasy. Rebeka has always heard that a woman who goes through menopause loses her spark (the magic that lets her create children). If she's had children, it just makes the neighbors a little more fertile. But Rebeka never wanted a man, and she never wanted to raise a child. Not since her twin sister died and her beloved Suza left her for a man. The problem is, the spark leaves a childless woman differently, everyone says. A bitter hag? She'll curse her neighbors. A sweet dim biddie? She'll give her spark to inanimate objects and create a monster. Rebeka doesn't know which she is, but she believes it's a myth.

That was before the clay in her clay pit woke up and called her mother.

Status: Third draft. 109k. Needs a rewrite! Not available for beta reading.

First chapter here.

WIP intro here.

I GUESS I'M WRITING A NEW BOOK

The Giant's Gamble

First chapter here.

I started writing this on Friday the 13th, 2023. LET'S SEE HOW LONG IT TAKES TO WRITE WITH A BABY.

Short stories

The Unfamous Dead

VERY OLD CRAP

The Scribe and the Sphinx

Adult historical fantasy

Status: second draft. Shelved for good. 85k.

The Adrift series

The River's Drift. 100k.

The Waking Mountain. 106k.

Low-tech alien sci fi. Shelved for good.

My first book whose name I forget. About 50k. Exists only as a hard copy in my parents' house.

Taglist so far (tell me if you want to be added or removed)

Tag list for everything

@harleyacoincidence

@anonymousfoz

@moremysteriesthantragedies

@elizababie

@sm-writes-chaos

@bellascarousel

@the-dragon-chronicler

@teacupsandstarlight

@vorskra

@wrenofthewords

@amostdelectablescribbler

@mysticstarlightduck

@phantommill

@gracewritesbooks

@aziz-reads

@owlsandwich

@symbioticsimplicity

@squarebracket-trick

@koala2all

@rmgrey-author

@atomatowriter

@cheerfulmelancholies

@delusionisaplace

@janec23

@writing-is-a-martial-art

@authortango

Just chapters and snippets

@da-na-hae

For The Many-faced Princess

@deadlyessencewhispers

@serenanymph

The Halfway Revenant

@acertainmoshke

For Stitches and Memories

@space-writes

@acertainmoshke

The Bone Queen

@janec23

@holdmyteaplease

@digital-chance

@thecrookedwriterspath

@tea-and-mercury

@coven-archives

I love you all!

[pitter-patt-art]

Ace Attorney AU August oops-august-has-been-over-for-a-week Update!!

Hiiiii well okay first and most importantly of all! Happy investigations collection day everyone!!!! My copy is supposed to arrive by 10pm although I'm not sure I'll be playing it right away, but, hey, once it arrives I'll have in my possession at least one physical copy of every game in the series (2 for aai1, woohoo)!!! *Coughs* uh except all of the OG Trilogy which instead I own like 2 times over digitally (3 in T&T's case, thanks Wii) lmao. Ah well.

NOW the actual post. Yeah it's not August anymore but I've been recuperating or w/e so shhh, better late than never!

Overall I wrote over 50k words (actually in August itself) and posted 5 fics (with many more in progress), which is honestly just, wild???? That is so cool. Apparently the way to overcome writer's block is just overcommit to a month-long prompt list, who knew!

Here is my post about the first 17 days/AUs! And over here's my Ao3 series for these! Below the cut I'll wrap up the last 14 days of AUs, some thoughts, etc!

I am setting the goal for myself to actually finish writing these before the end of the year even if they're not technically "AU-gust" qualified anymore by the time I get to them sooo ...wish me luck!! In the meantime I am proud of myself for (tbh completely unnecessarily and to my detriment lmao) coming up with actually a full 31 solid AUs based on the prompts that I feel inspired by.

This post is gonna be a bit more rambly than the last one because I definitely did more of my writing last month the first 2 weeks rather than the last 2, but nevertheless--

Onto the remaining AUs!

18 - Space Travel

So, I actually started a draft at the airport before my vacation where I got wayyyy too sidetracked getting detailed about this one and thus ended up not being able to finish the post before takeoff lmao. I'm not sure whether it's annoying or interesting to include all of that here, but it's my post so fuck it, here's August 21st patt to tell you aaall about it so I don't have to: The Martian AU (I've only seen the movie and not read the book but i *did* literally just re-watch it because this thought crossed my mind lol. (Hello! It's future me popping in to say: fun fact, rewatching this movie literally ended up being the reason I knew a bar trivia answer last week lmao. Huzzah for the powers of Ace Attorney refreshing my movie quote knowledge.) Be glad this one occurred to me because my first inclination was to lean into the dark past of my vld phase (I'm super joking I had a lot of fun with it before the last few seasons haha sorry idk what to tell you friends) and see how much I'd retained if i tried to make that work but the martian sounded more fun in the end). Apparently my Thing™ is a) poisoning Phoenix and b) putting Apollo in an insane situation in which he's completely on his own--which all things considered is probably far meaner lol. I think Phoenix is to blame for creating his own problem here for choosing to eat the stupid necklace but I fully blame Capcom for all the BS Apollo has gone through after AA4 (bc...the stuff IN that game is. coincidentally also Phoenix's blame to claim. lol). That said I'm part of the problem teehee. Apollo can be Some Guy from the real world who gets isekai'ed and he can also be Mark Watney :P (sorry bud I love you but you have just the Worst case of unavoidable main character syndrome). ((Which is QUITE funny actually because I'll never get over Capcom calling 4,5,6 the """"Apollo Justice Trilogy"""" (it's really not and it's frankly insulting they're trying to say it is.) Like he's. Y’know. The main character in exactly one of those games...... so.)) What was I talking about? Lmao oh yeah so Apollo is left on Mars (not sure he actually has much in the way of Botanist™ vibes but the indomitable, never-say-die, highly sarcastic vibes.... ye haha that's my boy right there). Omg wait sorry I'm writing this and realizing this whole thing actually fits the 18th AND yesterday's (the 20th) prompt as well. Whoops.

Clay as the captain (let him do something, says I)

Trucy as I think the pilot ONLY because I am literally constantly on the lookout to make a Wright Flying Brothers joke, sorry

Klavier aaaas. Uh. So the German astronaut in the film is the chemist and navigator and I know Klav's not necessarily supposed to be actually German canonically but there IS something funny about it

Athena as the flight surgeon and EVA specialist (for a couple reasons but mostly so she can be a doctor lol. I imagine she also can be there for psych stuff too, like, it's a long ass space voyage, that does shit to your brain)

Kay as the SysOp and reactor tech, tbh mostly because for some reason i really have a thing for hacker/programmer Kay, i guess?

Ema I want to be there also lol so that would be exceeding the actual number of OG astronauts but eh it's my AU. The rest of these I'm just directly comparing to a crew member from the martian but I think some of the titles and tasks could be redistributed a little to allow an extra person as a treat for me.

Originally i kind of wanted Sebastian (....SIGH. or...Eustace. (I fear even though it's AAIC release day today, I truly may die on this hill forever, falling on my sword of devotion and gratitude to the fan translation team... That said, while I think Eustace is, like, a Deeply Fine name, I have to say that Excelsius is a fucking knockout name lmfao, that one took me out. Anyway, ahem: "I wanted Seb/Eustace...")) to be there too but I think that's getting into too many cooks territory just specifically bc I'd have too many voices to play with lmfao. So instead I think he's the operator who works the satellite and realizes Apollo is alive, I think he'd fit that well. NOT THAT that needs to be. Included. In the AU. I have...so much self control.

Anyway I have too many thoughts about it, it's a problem, ironically I think I would prefer to focus on the crew and not Apollo himself, so that would at least make it more than just a rehashing of the movie/book. (Or, the movie at least. Does the book spend more time with them? I should read the book.) ...I did, Of Course, also came up with a funny, pseudo-future-science-y way to do a Sibling Reveal in this one, so there's that, too, haha. OKAY AND, SCENE. Snatching my mic back from myself. I'm actually so devoted to the Martian AU now hahaha, I really didn't think I'd let that happen to myself but here we are... You'll see in a bit, but I for-better-or-worse do truly have an extended universe going on for it now, eheh... (Help.)

19 - Spies

Franmaya?? Franziska POV??? Here's the deal: I cannot BELIEVE I got this many days into the month and STILL hadn't come up with a franmaya-centric AU, it's terrible. Also I need a Maya POV if I want to hit my self-set, self-indulgent goal of having POV of every "main" character I can (did I exactly accomplish this no but that's perfectly fine obviously haha it was just a side achievement I had my eye on). So to that end, I ended up with something here that I'm not COMPLETELY sure I won't end up changing when I sit down to actually work on it, but in short: semi The Princess Bride vibes but with spies instead of pirates! Or uh! So um okay full disclosure lol I got all excited about an AU of this kind and then like an hour into daydreaming it into existence I realized I was heavily relying on / leaning into ASSASSIN territory rather than SPY. Which are notably different things. (Wait lol should I blame Spy x Family?? Totally Endo-sensei's fault and not at all mine, boom, take that.) ...And not to go even harder into sxf territory, whoops, but my idea was something along the lines of like, since Kurain School Channeling changes spirit mediums' appearance entirely, I was going to have Maya be something of an expert in disguise, and Franziska I was almost more or less going to let retain her actual position of international prosecutor with Interpol, although perhaps I'd lean more into a James Bond-esque intelligence agency sort of thing than what we see them do in-game, I'm not sure. Maya gets "killed" for real in 2-4 except she actually just becomes an international assassin(?) apprentice. Does this make sense? Probably not lol. But is it a little funny and a little sad? Yes, yes it is, and that's always my sweet spot as a writer. The only problem with this premise is I can't stop myself from considering what Phoenix would do / be doing in the background, because the problem with Maya "dying"-only-being-secretly-alive leaves at least twofold problems in justifying why Nick hasn't gone full conspiracy theory board stop-at-nothing-to-find-her, in that a) If she's not dead, Pearl can't channel her, and knowing Pearl I have to imagine that would be her first move to try tbh, and b) even if that weren't an issue, if the police were never able to track down Maya's body at all, I fully believe Nick would still throw himself at the problem until he's able to find answers irregardless, so. This ain't about him though!! So we'll just all have to deal with knowing he's taking reaaally really bad care of himself while he single-mindedly tries to figure out what's going on ahaha...ha. He's most absolutely the drowning child in the facebook post meme. Don't worry about him.

20 - Crossover/Fusion

Soooo. Okay. First may I say, I'm not the most crossover-fic-y person in the world neither as a reader nor writer. HOWEVER. Unfortunately. My one undying weakness has proven to be Ace Attorney x Legally Blonde (and more specifically Legally Blonde the Musical, the best version, though I do love Reese Witherspoon's performance ofc it's iconic but the musical is just MWAH ugh. One of my all-time favorite musicals and definitely the one I've listened to the most esp the past couple years hahaha.) The problem is, I've joked about so many slight variations / one very Long Intensive specific AA/LBtM crossover AU ideas, that trying to limit myself to a one-shot I could conceivably finish within a day proved too much for my decision paralysis and I didn't end up writing any of them lmao. Alas. Mostly, I just think it would be funny to see the characters interact in something of a vacuum just for fun, the problem is just that I happen to be uniquely terrible at not thinking through a Crack AU until I can, ahem, "crack" it, so to speak, to make it actually justifiably function. So in theory all I want to write for this day is some combination of like, Elle and Phoenix interacting and Miles and Emmett interacting, or the four of them having a conversation that goes something like "omg wait me too!! i also went from a creative undergrad degree directly into law to chase after some guy!! what are the odds teehee" while Emmett and Miles watch in horror, and also alternatively Emmett and Phoenix mostly bemusedly watching Elle and Miles geek out over like, fancy ass high class (pink) clothing like "uh yeah i have no idea what any of those words mean. she bought me this suit and i honestly wouldn't even be able to find the store again. oh no way he bought you yours too?? man, wild." Etc. (If anyone's interested in really watching me suffer and spiral: my longer and more intensive idea for an AU with them is to have them be tackling parallel cases where either of them (Elle and Phoenix) has specific knowledge that is helpful to defending the others' client, and they get like place-swapped through dimensional shenanigans somehow also related to the cases. And Phoenix has to abide by, like, nominally-accurate US trial law (I know he wouldn't really be licensed shhhh) -- by which I mean Emmett is sitting as his co-council and exercising the most restraint possible to keep from bashing his head into the table every two seconds. And Elle has to abide by guilty-until-proven-innocent Japanifornia trial law ("wait WHAT omg what do you MEAN the prosecution can just, like, not submit their evidence before the trial???? wait what do you MEAN we should just TAKE THAT that is EVIDENCE AT A CRIME SCENE--"). On the bright side, Elle gets to experience being one of the most normally-dressed people in a courtroom and not at all being looked down upon for her general vibes and wardrobe (like tell me she wouldn't fit right in in the ace attorney universe and seem completely ordinary), and Phoenix gets to experience a real jury (take that jurist system trial that Capcom would like to never ever talk about again) and also the judge going "so, Prospective Juror No. 103, do you understand that the defense in this criminal trial does not need to say a single word in order to be doing their job? the burden of proof lies entirely on the prosecution the entire time and the defense and defendant could choose to remain silent every day of trial and that would be completely within their rights, do you understand that? are you okay with that?" etc etc, shout out to my jury service a couple month ago and the kinds of questions a real life California judge asks jurors that would seriously blow the minds of every single character in Ace Attorney lmfao can you imagine? Anyway.) So yeah idk. Also something something, spirit mediums and the whole Greek Chorus bit from the musical... "School Spirit"... much to think about in crack AU land hahaha.)

21 - Absurd Tragedy

To be honest with you, this is the entire series lmao, so much so that I had trouble even thinking of an AU to be "alternate" in any way here, hahaha. What I sort-of landed on and have vague outline notes about in my doc is (not to make another excellent-musical-adaptation-of-an-already-top-tier-movie-which-is-itself-a-highly-unfaithful-adaptation-of-a-fairly-obscure-book reference) a Shrek the Musical "I Think I Got You Beat"-style debate about whose canonical absurd tragic circumstances are the worst, lmfao. Granted, this then turned into a "wait what if I use said argument as an absurd way in which to make Apollo and Trucy have a siblings realization completely on their own, which both compounds the fact they've both already lived such tragedy to begin with but also could touch on Phoenix knowing about it and not telling them about it", and uhhhhh lmfao a debate specifically between them is OBVIOUSLY not the romantic flirting banter of the song between Shrek and Fiona lmfao but like still, the general premise, just in a sibling bickering coat of paint instead. Also was toying with it being an Athena POV just to sell home / for the additional absurdity of the experience of "you've gone over to your friend's house to hang out and suddenly they're obnoxiously arguing with their sibling and their parents are nowhere to be seen and you're not exactly sure what you're supposed to do with yourself except awkwardly wait for them to be done" lmfao. Which I've most absolutely experienced from both ends multiple times hahaha. The alternative option for this prompt is just for me to write an excessively long essay debating and attempting to personally rank the main cast's level of absurd tragedy compared to each other, lol.

22 - Orphan

I wrote 324 words (slash one physical lined page in my actual notebook) of this while I was on vacation, lol. AU where Miles invites Phoenix to go watch one of Gregory's trials (or Phoenix invites himself, or Gregory invites him while Miles tries to hold the landline phone away from him, lol) and I mean of course the trial he goes to is The Trial (like, Jeffre... AW CRAP wait I don't actually know what Jeff Master's or Kate Hall's official names are lmfao uhhh. Well you know what don't worry about that. Happy AAIC day once again..? Lol. Anyway, the concluding day of Gregory's last trial, obviously, ignore the defendant's name.) Like, basically, here's my thought. AU where Phoenix is also there, and not only does that mean he knows what happened to Miles and Gregory but also, like, it's Phoenix. Tell me even at 9 he wouldn't be insisting on taking care of the poor kid who just lost everything and has nowhere in the world to go. Tell me he's not like, begging his parents they need to help him, lol. I think really this is just sort of an AU to explore one of my several personal headcanons for what Phoenix's parents are like, because I've spent a lot of time on a different version of them (coughs for the last AU on this list...coughs) but I also have a version of them which I find fun / funny where they're like, kinda hippy-dippy and like very hands-off (tbh almost all of my hc's about the Greater Wrights is they're very hands off, just in different ways) but in more of a "we want our child to experience the beauty and wonder of the world on his own time and not influence him or set rigid standards to conform to" kind of philosophy. Anyway my point is they like adopt/foster Miles somehow before Manfred can actually get his hands on him (he's still too busy dealing with the fresh bullet wound I guess?) This is just a gen au of course, not only because they're 9 lol but also the logistics of being adoptive/foster siblings gets weird quick lmao, but mostly I just find it interesting to think about what might have happened if Miles was in an environment where people paid more attention and cared more (and weren't explicitly influencing and manipulating him to exasperate the problem on purpose), because I have to imagine examining his nightmares a little more closely a little more quickly might have led someone (say, Phoenix who was also there in this AU) to find something slightly off about it or like start putting pieces together quicker, idk. I, uh, I'm not gonna lie to you, I don't actually remember how I intended to end this one hahaha ;; I started it but I was on vacation and neglected to outline / summarize the rest of my ideas the day of, so I guess I'll just have to see where my mind takes me when I get back to it.

23 - Musician

So my FIRST thought for this day was to use it as an excuse to finish my First Ever Ace Attorney Fic, which has been in WIP stasis for...uh.... 6. Years. i--SIX????? Shit. lmfao. yeah uh. I guess I created the first version of the doc (on my OneNote, god) back in 2018. So. Yeah. Hm. Omfg. This fic has partially existed since before Phoenix Disbarment Day. That is so. Wow. Damn. Y'all we're so close to aa4 time (2026) what the hell??? Ahem. Pianist Phoenix. That's. My point lmao. I know the original thing that sparked me loving this concept was actually some tumblr post I saw apparently a LONG long time ago, hahaha, and I know there's no way I'll find it with tumblr's abysmal search function, but just know it was not a completely original idea of mine when I say i fucking LOVE the headcanon that, you know what actually Phoenix CAN play the piano, he just chooses to do it as shittily as possible because that's kind of what he's like post-disbarment and he'd absolutely get a kick out of fucking with people like that even if they have no way to know they're being fucked with. It's like, he's no virtuoso or anything, but he can passably play the piano! He's just being an ass on purpose! It kills me every time lol. I won't say I think that's necessarily true in canon so ofc it's not like an end-all-be-all hc for me or anything but it's just sooooo funny to me that I like to break it out any time I possibly can. Look me in the eyes and tell me he wouldn't. Honestly, look me in the eyes and tell me if he actually put his mind to it in any meaningful way he wouldn't be able to get decent quickly regardless, considering the fact he became an accomplished lawyer on more-or-less a total whim. This to say: that was my intention, to finish this fic I've had brewing that was about Phoenix actually being able to play the piano and hiding it for a really long time but eventually being found out by Miles by chance. Except then I sat down on the plane and started writing a Pearl POV instead? In which she finds out about more or less the same exact concept but from Iris--also by chance, but less actually catching him playing and more being asked, "Oh, does he still play? He was always good at that." And then bc it's Pearl (Pearl I love you), of COURSE she goes and confronts him about it. Pearl might be the single most confrontational character in these games tbh which is SO FUNNY to me. Like I'm kind of exaggerating obviously but also am I? I know she has psyche-locks you have to break through multiple times throughout the series but stiiiill. Everyone else is so repressed and weird about anything remotely vulnerable, I stg. Props to Maya for making sure Pearl turned out pretty okay I guess, lmao. Anyhow yeah that's sort of the AU I ended up with. Pearl POV where she and Iris know they're sisters (don't get me started on this I have so many thoughts about the amount of information I'm positive Maya and Pearl are NEVER given skjflj) and Pearl visits Iris in prison regularly and on one such visit maybe she mentions Nick's job at Borscht and Iris makes a totally innocuous comment to the effect that Pearl learns he actually knows how to play the piano and she goes to get mad at him about it because he's definitely been pretending he can't and Pearl's pretty sure he's told neither Maya nor Trucy the truth and that cannot be left to stand.

24 - Pretend Hate

Okay, this exists in a similar realm to the Orphan prompt, except instead of Phoenix being there for the trial or the Wrights taking Miles in before Manfred can, it's more just AU where Miles doesn't actually cut all contact and he and Phoenix successfully end up exchanging correspondence (in semi-secret) during the time they're separated (i.e. they remain friends and close during the 15 years they're separated in canon). "Semi-secret" because they--esp Miles--somehow hide who exactly it is they're talking / writing to all the time but don't necessarily hide the fact they are doing that. Like, a fake cultural / language exchange program or something? I feel like there could be a world where Manfred really doesn't give a shit what Miles is up to as long as he's being molded into "someone Gregory Edgeworth would hate" (I don't think he would lol but that's another AU) and becoming a model von Karma protege prosecutor and such. He obviously goes to lengths to cut Miles off from everything he's familiar with in that he takes him to Germany, but I've always thought it's way more on Miles feeling guilty and blaming himself and thinking he's unworthy / pushing people away being the reason why they never talked before aa1 despite Phoenix's "attempts to contact him," whatever those may be specifically. And, yeah, I've watched that one episode of the anime but tbh I don't really use anime canon for almost anything besides maybe some of the fun visuals, haha, so I'm kind of disregarding that anyway. ANYWAY. My point is. The "pretend hate" part is that--sometime over the course of exchanging correspondence, Phoenix starts thinking something's weird and gets it in his head to "investigate" himself, since he's still in LA / has access to the scene of the crime and stuff, and then as a combo of him just plugging away at it until he has enough (circumstantial) evidence to be like "Miles I think you're wrong about this" and also a younger, slightly less repressed, slightly less in Manfred's pocket Miles actually being somehow willing to consider alternatives a little--they're able to put their heads together and eventually come to the (correct) conclusion ahead of time, before the 15-year statute of limitations, that it was almost certainly Manfred who did it. And then they work together to figure out how they can possibly PROVE that but they haven't thought of anything foolproof by the time aa1 events start rolling around (or at the very least, the 5-years-ago sections of aa3? It might make more sense if it's as soon as Miles returns to Japanifornia, and also I think Phoenix has way less reason to fall for Dahlia/Iris so hard if Miles is around and *coughs* available lmfao. Anyhow). So, in the hopes it'll keep Manfred from getting suspicious of Miles, they publicly pretend to hate each other, putting on a show of more of the canon attitude Miles esp. has before 1-4, but behind the scenes they're actually working together trying to think of a way they can definitely get a conviction to stick that Manfred won't be able to worm out of. And that's the AU! Idk, in terms of additional thoughts, I couldn't decide what to do / what would happen to Mia in this AU either, which doesn't super matter but did give me pause. So she might live, idk, depends the exact timeline. I do also think a scene where--Dahlia still hits on Phoenix in the reading room/courthouse library but he's like, actively there waiting for one of Miles' trials to conclude for a covert meeting, so when Miles gets there and is like "What are you messing with over there?" Phoenix is like "Oh, hey, check out this weird bottle some girl just gave me because apparently she fell in love at first sight, haha, isn't that so funny--" and then Miles recognizes it from the Fawles trial and they catch Dahlia earlier or something, idk. Or alternatively Phoenix was AT that trial so HE recognizes it. Or maybe it's funniest if he was there but doesn't recognize it until Miles does lmao, this is not the point of this AU but I can't stop myself from considering this part of it.

25 - Scientists

So THIS is the day I sort of alluded to earlier, many many words of post ago, where I got so invested in my The Martian AU that I started accidentally worldbuilding about it. What I've started and have about 400 words of (slash one notebook page, again from the plane after my vacation), is like, AU where it's NASA instead of law and I can make Phoenix go "What, like it's hard?" only it's about literally rocket science this time hahaha. Basically for this fic I just thought, well what if Phoenix just shows up as a flight tech or engineer or something (idk I don't really know that much about real life astronautics) as Miles is preparing for some space mission or something and he's just like WHAT are YOU doing HERE. I know I know I made Apollo literally be the titular martian and yes he ALSO has a (or tbh probably has a WORSE) canonical debilitating fear of heights, so, shhh, but I do like the idea that Phoenix is like, oh, who, me? In the flying metal death trap? No fucking thank you, I will be down here watching and talking directly to you through a headset or something. You cannot escape me however i can at least escape the building I'm in. No interest in seeing the Earth from above, thanks. Actually iirc Miles also doesn't love heights but meh whatever I'm fairly certain Phoenix talks about it the earliest in the series so there you go. Anyway, this would all be a mission prior to whatever mission it is that Apollo & Co. go on to Mars for the first part of the AU, so I guess you could consider it a prequel? And probably a fairly shippy one. I have other reasons for which it's fun for me if wrightworth is at least together if not outright married before the events of the "The Martian" part of the AU, so this one would be, like, about how exactly that went down.

26 - Victorian Era

Okay, once again, this just. IS. Literally. Dai Gyakuten Saiban / The Great Ace Attorney. Lol. That said, I've always loved the fanart I've seen of like Ryuunosuke and Phoenix (and respective Co.'s) interacting, or like, one or the other ending up in the other time period somehow, so I thought it'd probably be fun to try my hat at that. I feel like I've neglected the tgaa characters anyway, considering I actually somehow managed to reference PLvPW already, which is obviously significantly more of a spinoff and also just largely non-canonical, lmao. Also tgaa is just SO GOOD, augh. I'd love to have the multi-witness cross examinations from both of those games back sometime again, and I had so much fun with the jury in tgaa too, excellent mechanic. What was I talking about? So, I never completely decided on a concrete direction to take this, but even before AU-gust had started I'd already been toying with the idea of an AU where maybe Maya or Pearl channels a character from tgaa specifically because some documentary or special or something comes out talking about the real-life Herlock Sholmes (as opposed to the Totally Fictional "Sherlock Holmes" who Phoenix references in that one trilogy line, because I really think that's the funniest possible explanation for the discrepancy) and they're arguing over how that cannot possibly be a real person and no one was named that and etc etc and then to prove once and for all one way or the other Hurley is channeled and also for bonus joke content "recognizes" Phoenix at first (idk pretend his eyesight got worse in his older age, I know Phoenix and Ryuunosuke look, tbh, less alike than Ryuu and Apollo do, lmao, but again that's another AU) and then I get to play with Phoenix's mom's maiden name is Naruhodou and his middle name is Ryuuichi or such to that effect, because that is also a favorite headcanon of mine (not in small part because I can project my own life onto him by making him half-Japanese from SoCal, lol). So that's an idea I'd had that was already decently fleshed out and the ONLY problem is that if I'm having characters actually be channeled then there's a very real limiting factor of how many spirit mediums exist, and also that means Maya and/or Pearl don't get to interact with them, which for the sake of not overwriting would be good but for the sake of my love of a chaotic group conversation would be bad. But, uh, hopefully I do manage to hold myself to a less broad cast of characters, ideally, instead of bringing a bunch of them over to the other time period to see how they'd deal with that and interact en masse. Ha. Haha.

27. Younger / De-Aged

So here's another AU I'd already had idle thoughts about before AU-gust had even started! I...will get into this later, TRUST I will, lmfao, but I do have an extremely involved AU already in which Time Travel of the "regression" type is involved, i.e., they have their memories of the "future" but are thrown back into the past including their own younger bodies however-many-years-ago. So I've got that type of thing covered, I promise I do, haha. And additionally, I've actually already written them "younger" for my colorless AU way back on day 2, so I did think perhaps I'd just continue that one and say it was for this prompt (a smart person thing to do. this is the objectively correct option). On the other hand. I find pre-DL6 Phoenix and Miles reacting to how their lives actually turned out in the end HILARIOUS. Tell me it's not funny. And tell me it's not, like, some sort of depressing-yet-ultimately-hopeful for the older/current them to look at their child selves and be like Kid, Oh, You're Going To Go Through Some Shit, but also reflect on how they did make it and things turned out okay and life goes on etc etc. My problem with this kind of thing is that it's hard to come up with a justification for and that's not a problem in itself but it is a problem in me not knowing how i'm going to end a fic, which often gets me decision-paralysis-ed into not being able to start it in the first place, which did in fact happen to me here, haha. I think ideally I'd just do a quick "wait, was that a dream?" kind of thing where they (Miles and Nick) have a short conversation with themselves, but... Uh-oh, what, did you think that was all I had? You clearly don't know me at all. OTHER au option where young Phoenix is in the future/present and rather than himself and Miles it's the Wright Anything Agency who like, idk, find him roaming the streets of LA (fun fact! I actually came up with this AU one day while I was quite literally roaming the streets of LA myself at like 3am-ish. Do with that what you will). He is of course wearing a hat or beanie or something at first because come on, that's way more fun, and no matter how much Trucy, Apollo, and Athena are like "hm idk something about this kid seems familiar" I just don't think my first thought upon seeing some vaguely familiar kid alone on the street would be, like, "Oh, that's obviously a child version of my father/coworker/boss!" So. I'm not really sure that one has an end point either, though, so the same problem still stands, haha. The bad, someone get a spray bottle to spritz me, option of this is, obviously, to combine the two, so it's like the WAA find him first and then are like UHHHHH we need an adult (never mind actual adult-age-ness between them) and somehow end up getting Miles there too, but idk. I... should not. Overcomplicate. I shouldn't. Even, even if...august is over...so theoretically there's no longer any sort of On-Time component since it's late either way........ definitely not.

28 - Caretaker

Here are my exact notes / entire doc for this day. Ahem. And I quote: i brought up the lighthouse keeper thing but i dont know where that would be going exactly maybe this is a thing i could do franmaya for??? since i still havent gotten there? actually lol that as a lighthouse thing is funny. ghost romance? my three tropes rattle End quote. Anyway, shout-out to my friend hailstorm for being the one there to brainstorm "lighthouse keeper" with at the self-same bar trivia that I mentioned previously, lmao. I actually think that was even the same exact day as the The Martian quote was a relevant answer to a question. So yeah, even though I already kind of have franmaya planned for the spies day, that's both kind of sort of a darker AU overall and--WELP well, okay, so, i do, you know, recognize maybe a ghost romance isn't, uh, necessarily the fluffiest kind of AU lmao. Don't mind that. My point is, I love the vibes of a lighthouse keeper AU, and I generally like ghost romance as a trope, so that does feel like a viable option. Honestly, I kind of separately wanted an excuse to practice writing miego also, so maybe the Feys are just all chillin' in this lighthouse for...Some Reason, and that's side-plot relevant somehow, idk. I know Franziska and Godot exist in the same place for a minute in 3-5, but I honestly can't really remember them interacting? I think she'd fucking HATE him though lmfao. He'd think she's funny but I actually think she'd be too reactive for his most preferred teasing/fucking-with-people dynamics, haha. Regardless, if he is there at all, it's a very minor B plot, I think, 'cause this ain't about him, lol.

29 - Forced into Hiding

Achtung, baby, 2566 words of this are written! Lol. So uh, yeah. In short, AU where Klavier gets hounded by fans on the street while he's also having just a bad personal day, and the closest and best place he can think to hide from them is at the WAA. I, um, actually hadn't realized I'd written quite this much of this, haha, it was supposed to be short and fairly silly but then it turned into Klavier having a little bit of a panic attack maybe and getting consoled by Apollo, sure, of course, but then also having to deal with and experience some amount of closure / reach some kind of understanding with the Wrights, also. It's kind of part Klav character study, kind of part complaint against freaking Capcom for neglecting him (boo, I love him, stop ignoring him, or, yknow, worse, whatever the heck turnabout academy was supposed to do for him, which honestly almost felt like a step back to be quite honest). Okay, also, taking a slightly closer look at what I've already written, the REASON I'd thought I'd written way less than this is definitely because he hasn't even GOTTEN to the Agency yet, never mind spoken with any of its members, lmao. That would do it. In any case, I like the idea of Klavier having a bit of a vulnerable moment, and I also like the idea of him and Phoenix actually, like, talking for real, instead of, once again, whatever Turnabout Academy and DD was meant to tell me, which seems to be less than nothing. I kind of like the fact that it gave him a law mentor? I mean, she was very dead, but I have a very meaningful Use for her in later-to-be-announced-AUs-I-keep-teasing, haha. I of course considered other people and times when people in AA might be forced into hiding, but this felt like a silly but also meaningful way to do that without it just being an exploration of Miles and his not-suicide note (which wasn't exactly "forced" anyhow, he did that all on his own) or like, Zak Gramarye (who also completely did that to himself but w/e). Making it about Klavier completely escapes the bounds of canon, because canon is a weenie about talking about any of his actual feelings EVER, so screw you Capcom, I'm doing it for you. Don't worry about it. Trucy commiserating with him about still Loving someone, perhaps the very closest person biologically related to you you've ever known and depended on in your life, who not only did you very big harm personally but explicitly used you in a very real and participatory way to perpetuate the harm elsewhere and all the complexities about Feelings For And About Them Therein, and Phoenix somehow having enough self-awareness to recognize that shutting down completely and isolating yourself away doesn't actually do you any good even when you're at your lowest, and recognizing that Klavier doesn't exactly have a "Trucy" to be a focal point to draw him out of that, and that therefore he needs to be a bit more open to his peers. (Insert joke about "Well, I'm really definitely not suggesting you go adopt an entire child, that's really probably, uh, not the way to go, actually, but, you know. Everyone needs people, that just makes us human." Etc.)

30 - The Beginning of the World

So, hm, as it turns out, I got extremely sidetracked this day thinking about the next day on the docket. Whoops! Unfortunately this ultimately means my ideas for this day as of now are relatively uninspired: I had the thought that I could explore the beginning of Troupe Gramarye, which is its own sort of world, or else, maybe something about the beginning of the series itself but from the somewhat unconventional POV of a one Mr. Larry Butz. Yes, that's a bit self-serving in that it lends toward trying to complete a list of "main, recurring characters' POVs" that I've had as a sidequest all month, but, still. That said, just exploring actual canon through Larry's POV isn't exactly what I'd classify as an "AU" necessarily, so I feel like something would need to be different here. Okay, wait--not to draw inspiration a dang week late to the party, BUT. Now that I'm typing this up, I'm thinking, okay, maybe, what if. The "Beginning" of the series, technically speaking, is basically the fact that Phoenix gets put on (class) trial for stealing Miles' lunch money--which notably only happened because Larry himself picked it up when it fell on the floor. So, perhaps, what about an AU where he doesn't do that? I mean, I guess it would just turn the entire world of AA into something of a terrible series of tragedies with no real closure about them, lol, rip, but it could possibly be interesting? I dunno! (And, yes, I know DL-6 itself is more or less the basis of the series, if we're being ticky-tacky, but Phoenix wouldn't have been involved without meeting Miles, and that somewhat necessitates the class trial, and without him none of canon would get resolved, so. I will say, I do love going back to the earliest points to see how and how much you can make canon deviate or stay the same--reasonably speaking--via minor tweaks and butterfly effect and all that, so this could be interesting, although I once again must say I think it really just means a bunch of innocent people, Miles included, are going to be put away and possibly executed over murders that weren't their faults, lol. Hm. Much to consider.)

31 - Two(+) of the Above:

Beginning of the World + Younger/De-Aged + Canon Divergence (+ Feat. Jokers: Guardian, Everybody Lives)

With all of this, the ONLY prompts I've actually missed on this list become Animagus which I swapped for the Wings joker, and the last joker of the four, Thriller, which was never exactly a priority of mine because I'm not sure I'd write that sort of thing particularly well, so! Wild! Completionists everywhere almost rejoice, haha. SOOOOO. For the eagle-eyed readers out there, I'll bet you're just dying to know what this one AU I've been teasing all post could Possibly be to warrant such a build-up, right? (...Right?) The answer is the at-ow! (Phonetically, lol. I've been calling it that instead of out loud saying all the letters in AATTAU out loud every time.) My friend Ben can attest to the fact that this behemoth AU (her word which I'm stealing) has been in the works for, uhhhh... months?

MONTHS. AHAHA. Ha. That. Sure says March! It sure does! And it is not lying. Lmfao. (Ignore the time, I was working overnight then--my beloved work schedule whomst I miss dearly--so that's a perfectly reasonable discord-ing hour for March-me.) Also, once again, I'm choosing to blame Ben for my extensive AU problems, she sent me a very cute time loop AA fic that utterly destroyed my entire mind because it got the mere idea of "Time-based AU" caught in my endless void-idea-hole. So. Here's the real rub. The literal reason I started doing this AU-gust challenge in the freaking first place was that I was absolutely Desperate to find a way to overcome my writer's block. And one of the (admittedly many) reasons I wanted to do this was because I have been ITCHING to write this stupid behemoth AU for real. I have a massive outline doc already, I have a whole slew of scenes planned, I have lots of character archage, I have sooo many things I want to say and explore about them all you have No Idea. It's extremely self-indulgent and absolutely my personal magnum opus for all my very specific favorite AA headcanons and ideas and thoughts. And obviously, it worked! I did indeed overcome my writer's block! And I had so much fun doing it!! And I'll admit, from the very beginning, I had been eyeing that "Everybody Lives" joker prompt, because...that's it! That's basically the point of the AATTAU (Ace Attorney Time Travel Alternate Universe, if that wasn't clear, haha). I don't want to let myself get TOO into it, because Oh Boy, I sure will! If you let me! Haha. But basically the premise is EXACTLY what I stated in that very first discord message I could find about it. Maybe not so much "time travel" technically speaking than it is "gaining memories of everything that happened in canon right as the DL-6 earthquake happens", so it's more regression than actual time travel since they're in their own younger bodies and everything, but still. It's basically my excuse to treat canon like it did happen and YET allow for everybody to survive and for the very fun cocktail of traumas and joys that come from remembering what happened but having the chance for something different (and all the effort that goes into making something different happen in the first place).

Now, as far as AU-gust goes. I was obviously not about to even pretend I could remotely start this during August itself or justify connecting any of it to the series and the prompts I'd already written for it, lol, but I also couldn't get the idea out of my head, so I got it in my head I really wanted to end the month with SOMETHING that somehow tied into my AATTAU, if only to motivate myself to actually get on it and start writing out instead of solely outlining everything that's been in the works all these months. So to that end, I saw the "Everybody Lives" and the "Beginning of the World" prompts, and an idea came to me. I'd been dancing around the justification aspect of this AU for most of the time I've had it because let's be honest, it's just a very self-indulgent idea and it does not NEED "justification" to serve the purpose I want it to serve and be what I want it to be. But the AU-gust prompts gave me some actual inspiration and an Idea as to a way to solidify my unnecessary "justification" but in a way that it doesn't need to be directly part of the final product of the AATTAU (like, I could make it a separate one-shot and either just link it to and from the AATTAU fic itself, or if it all ends up being a series, then I could just include it in the series but it wouldn't be necessary to read to understand what's going on. And so, I present! The Ami Fey one-shot special I came up with just to fit these prompts :3 ...And by "i present" i mean, uh, I wrote 4k words of it on the 31st and didn't even come close to what I wanted to cover, because I suck at being concise. Lmfao. (Shocker.) Basically, I used Ami Fey as a semi-self-insert kind of godlike figure to reason out a semi-plausible way to make the concept I want to explore happen, happen. And I had a lot of fun, but I do still have a bunch to finish, but either way, I'm very pleased to have a (somewhat silly but ultimately fun for me) reasoning as to the gears ticking behind the scenes of my idea! To be somewhat less vague, the whole AU is predicated on the idea that, Phoenix and/or Miles (who remember from the beginning / from December 28th, 2001) meeting the other characters at-or-after the time they originally met in canon are able to recall their memories of the "original" (i.e. canon) timeline. I've used some magatama shenanigans to have some fun with this, and I'm now using Ami Fey and magatama shenanigans to explain how and why this is A Thing, even if it isn't necessarily the objectively most logically sound argument I've ever made. It's still a good one, in my book, and more importantly I like it, so that's all that really matters.

To briefly explain the "two" (by which I mean 5?) of the "above" I'm using here:

Beginning of the World: This fic specifically would show the beginning of the "world" of this AU specifically! Woohoo! Go Ami Fey, creating a whole new set of problems for our beloved little Guys to go through, hahaha. I think I may have based her character a little too much on Maya mischievousness, but, oh well. Let's just say that's where she gets it from.

Younger/De-Aged: As I've already kind of expressed, the premise of this AU is mostly just them being their own younger selves except they also have the memories of all of canon (and maybe a year or two after the fact, I need to confirm a couple dates).

Canon Divergence: I feel like this is decently self-explanatory, but then again maybe it's a bit cheesy to include this here, since it basically diverges from nearly the first major event of canon (DL-6), but that's not the only time things go almost-canonically but diverge a bit in some way, so I think it really does fit here.

Guardian: This one is a bit multi-fold. It somewhat refers to the way I'm making Gregory Edgeworth the de facto guardian (as in, legal guardian) of mostly everyone I possibly can because I love him and he would be great at it. But also, guardian in that, Mr. Savior Complex Phoenix Wright himself has literally all of the information at his disposal to try to "save" the potential Happy Lives of literally every person he loves, and, well. He does a pretty good job about it; not without cost, haha, but I feel like I can definitely call him a "guardian" of others in this AU. And, as for specifically the one-shot Ami fic, she is essentially the guardian of the entire Fey lineage, in this AU at least, so that also totally fits and is most immediately relevant.

Everybody Lives: I think this one is pretty self-explanatory at this point, lol. But for the one-shot: Ami is essentially trying to secure an "everybody lives" scenario, even if it hasn't been achieved yet, so it's more an aspiration at that point, but ultimately it is indeed successful. Now, "living" does not mean, like, "totally healthy" (mentally or physically), so there's lots more to it, but in short, yes, they live.

And......that's basically a wrap on that!

I mean, it isn't actually at all, since I still have to finish 26/31 fics, lmfao, but as far as the idea generation stage goes, and the use of the AU-gust prompts, that's what's up in my world! Somewhere out there maybe there's an AU of my actual real life where i finished more of these on time, but i'm still pretty pumped by all the work that's already been made on making so many AA fics a reality for me. I've come a long way since starting that first AA fic in 2018...!!

I still have all the aforementioned 26 fics to finish obviously, and I also have AU continuations planned for at the very least, day 2's colorless prompt and day 3's dark academia prompt (let alone day 31's, lol, but that's its own monster entirely), but I'm optimistic!

Thankfully I actually finished using nano to word track for me before they, you know, doubled down on AI and called everyone "abelist" (???) for not supporting it, which, uh. Well. But for my own posterity and if anyone's curious, here's what my word counts looked like throughout the month of AU-gust--admittedly including some planning and outlining:

It ended up being 51,377 words total in August on these AU prompts alone!

I feel like I wanted to say something poignant and meaningful at the end here, but it's almost 9:30 and I work at 4am tomorrow, so I'm going to go ahead and wrap this post up here, haha. If you read all of this, thank you very much for joining me on my little journey!

Once again, here is the Ao3 series where I'll post anything more that gets done, so if you'd like to see how any of these AUs turn out, feel free to keep an eye on that!

And here is the previous post with the 1st half+ of the AUs if you missed it and are interested now!

My copy arrived literally as I was writing this up so I've spent the last several prompts of this post listening to the AAIC soundtrack in the music collection, and, oh man, it's seriously so surreal this exists??? I might be an old fogey who has and will for an indeterminate amount of time continue to have trouble letting go of the fan translation names I've lived with for the past decade or whatever, but it's seriously so awesome the entire series is finally available internationally!! Let's hope for my sake AA7 doesn't come out before I finish any of my AATTAU, because that would really throw a bit of a wrench in my decision-making process, lol.

Bye for now!

[physalian]

I think being an ace writer lets me write sex and romance with less of my own biases/wants/what-I-think-is-sexy getting in the way, to better incorporate these scenes into the story as a method of plot and character development instead of just gratuitous, among other things. In the same way being atheist lets me write real and fantasy religions without my own beliefs interfering, because I can respect religion academically and objectively, as a tool, not a given.

I write my characters in tons of situations that I myself would never enjoy, anything from bathing together or having kinks or even making out. I know why people enjoy these things and I’ve read enough romances to know how to write the proper buildup and the right tone to strike and all that jazz and I do enjoy reading romance.

There’s absolutely other factors at play here and I can’t speak from experience for a lot of the situations I put my characters into (nor do I write smut, I’ve tried, I’m bad at it because I’m ace) but I’ll beta read sex scenes for original authors, especially cis/het authors, and while “writing to satisfy yourself or your readers” is different than straight up just writing a story that includes romance, I seem to keep finding myself stuck with a constant stream of author wish fulfilment, a lot of newbie original authors seem… narrow-minded when it comes to sex.

Like they can only imagine what they find kinky or romantic or sexy, like the subtext is saying “this is sexy because I think it’s sexy and if you don’t think it’s sexy something’s wrong with you”. Which isn’t at all a problem in fanfic for whatever reason (probably because these authors also tend to think sex=romance thus smut=character development).

So I have a character with a medical kink, for example. I haven’t had readers gushing over him or that scene (haven’t had that many readers period, mind you), but I haven’t had any complaints, either. Heck, my protagonist in ENNS is a frustrated virgin in a vampire romance who at one point realizes “hm yeah I definitely don’t hate teeth anymore pls do it again” meanwhile I’m sitting back with my metaphorical coffee going “you have fun now, enjoy”. Maybe because it’s not just an 111k word fantasy smutfest but his self-discovery is part of his arc.

But I think the difference is, either in just skill at my craft or being on the outside looking in, is that I think “what would he think is sexy? And how would I go about writing that?” vs “what do I think is sexy? And how do I go about contorting my characters to fit that?” I spend the time making sure he’s in character, it makes sense for his character, and that he’s acting authentically.

Or at the very least, I think aceness (and possibly aro-ness we are undecided in that department) gives you a baseline of 0, clean slate, not that aces can’t enjoy the idea of sex, the idea is that sexuality is self-contained. But when your whole life is sex-favorable/allonormative I think it puts blinders up.

Or, I just keep reading heterosexual romances that leave something to be desired. Not just beta-reading, the romances in like, Maas books, for example—no kinkier or more wish-fulfilling than a fanfic with the same tags, but there’s something so cheap and artificial about those sex scenes. The first time I read… I think it was book 3 or 4 of the TOG series and I realized just how much sex there was, I legit got bored and scanned ahead until I could get back to the story—and I have sat through fanfics that surpass 100k words with as much smut and I am fine and entertained. Is it because she’s not a great author, or because she’s a cis/het author with blinders up, or some mix between the two? I have enjoyed poorly written but sincerely written smut in fanfic, so it can’t be that, either. If this was a science experiment and I’m controlling for all other variables except the sexuality of the authors and/or characters, I’d have my answer.

That’s not at all to say allonormative authors cannot write beautiful romances and hot sex scenes. There is only one (1) romantic scene in Maas's books that I used to go back specifically to reread, and it was just two characters finally tossing decorum aside to make out. She lost me completely after that.

Just in my experience, inexeperienced allonormative authors vs queer of any kind tend to be worse at making it compelling and sincere and my theory is that they can’t escape their own ideas of what sexiness is, because they've never had to, and can't get in the minds of characters and readers who don’t all think like they do.

—

Interested in a queer vampire fantasy novel? Eternal Night of the Northern Sky is out now!

[share-the-skye]

Just finished Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wiswell and could not recommend it more. A wonderful, heartfelt book that made me feel seen and really captured the magic and pain of loving while traumatized without being triggering (at least for me.) Exceptionally and unapologetically queer, beautifully and energetically empathetic- I love it with my whole heart.

For those who haven’t heard of it (which I suspect is most of you), it is the story of a shapeshifting monster named Shesheshen who falls in love with a woman named Homily. The only trouble is, Shesheshen’s idea of love is implanting her eggs in a suitable host so her young can consume them from the inside out. Also, Homily has mistaken Shesheshen for a fellow human. As she and Homily grow closer, Homily reveals she’s hunting a shapeshifting monster that cursed her family and Shesheshen realizes she cannot consume the woman she loves. But how can she be honest about who and what she is? And how do they survive Homily’s monster hunting family?

Content warnings, because I never want to recommend something without those: There is violence and plenty of gore in it, but done in a way that I felt was graphic without being disturbing, if that makes sense? Very VERY visceral in an incredibly literal sense due to the nature of its main character, but never truly disgusting- which is honestly a feat. But fair warning for those who do pick it up.

There is physical and emotional abuse throughout the book but the physical is not enacted “on screen” so to speak. It’s a running theme but the writing is sensitive enough that I did not find it triggering and I am usually quite easy to trigger. It is also not sexual in nature at all, which at least for me probably helped. If you are concerned at all, though, it is a major theme. Anxiety attacks and flashback dreams are also present and very empathetically rendered.

I fucking love this book guys. Go read it, especially my ace friends. It is beautiful and I’m just sitting here hugging it like a stuffed animal as I type.

[alexanderlightweight]

I am IN LOVE with dragon Alec and snow leopard Magnus 🙈 They are so cuddly and so cute and adorable. I’d love to please see kinda jealous Alec when he meets Chairman….or maybe Alec realising his feelings for Magnus? (sexual or not, I think I saw he was demi somewhere?). Thank you! This mini fic is such a treat <3

i'm glad you love it so much! i also am loving writing it so i'm happy to write more! i love all my verses, mind you, but there is just something about character who can shift into animals that i just love. i also love predator/prey vibes as well so they tie in well together.

also i love exploring the difference in instincts etc.

(i write demi-alec into pretty much anything. it's actually the walls of adoration, claws of desperation. i mentioned he's 'super-demi' in that verse (kind of like i'm always ace but sometimes i'm super-ace - @saeths says this makes sense and agrees that this happens w/me frequently).

but yeah it's probably going to take Magnus to make a move because Alec is like just going to follow his lead and will probably wake up naked and curled up with Magnus at some point - and this will have been happening for weeks at this point - and realize he's incredibly sexually interested in Magnus. before that, he just wanted to have sex cause he enjoyed the intimacy of it and adores Magnus and thinks he's beautiful and likes being as close to him as possible and he also loves being able to help magnus feel good.

Magnus before Alec realizes he's sexually attracted to magnus: sleeping with alexander is amazing

magnus after alec realizes he's sexually attracted to magnus: sleeping with alexander is amazing but neither of us are going to be able to keep this pace

... yeah i started rambling again. oops. (saeth teases me because i wrote 'just one more sentence in one of my ask answers' and then proceeded to write paragraphs more)

but anyways, i hope you enjoy

<3 lumine

ps - ask your ace friends if they know if love game by lady gaga is a sex song. if they say no??? wdym??? they're super ace. -@saeths

-

It’s the screaming the alerts Magnus to a problem.

Well, the yowling really.

He looks up from his book and over to see if whatever cat fight on his balcony is happening has upset Alexander, except his boy is no longer there.

Magnus snaps the book shut with a scowl, because he’s Magnus Fucking Bane and yet he can’t even corral his own fucking dragon long enough to read a chapter.

If Alexander has once again slipped away to the roof, Magnus will be tempted to destroy the damn thing. Or, more likely, turn his entire loft into a garden so that Alexander won’t ever need to leave wherever Magnus is.

Before he can hunt down his dragon however, he has to deal with the still screaming cats.

Or at least, that is the plan until there is a sudden roar, the kind that makes even Magnus’ spine tingle with the promise of a powerful predator.

Magnus waits for a moment and then he sighs, pinching his nose before he walks around the balcony to the other side, where the cats are.

Or… where the cats should be.

Alexander is sitting, looking smug and caracal sized as he preens, watching the alley below.  Magnus steps close and looks over, staring at the ten or so cats fleeing his building.

“Was that really necessary?” Magnus asks, intending it to be a tease and he’s given an affronted, irritated scowl. It’s adorable on Alexander in such a small form but Magnus winces mentally, because apparently it was necessary.

Alexander doesn’t normally look at him so seriously.

“They were encroaching.” Alexander bites out, shifting to human form, his scowl looking even more like a pout as he crosses his arms over his chest and leans against the railing. “Trespassing.”

Magnus would love to point out that Alexander was also originally a trespasser, but since he’s still trying to slowly figure out how to keep Alexander close, he chooses not to.

“They’re stray cats, treasure.” Magnus murmurs, because he’s noticed that Alexander enjoys specific terms of endearment.

Things that reference power, riches, hoards… all the things’ dragons adore.

“They’re vermin.” Alexander sulks, giving Magnus a petulant look, “they’ve been shedding all over you.”

Magnus pauses as he suddenly has a better understanding of the problem and it sends a thrill through him, at the idea that Alexander is jealous of all things.

“You’re absolutely correct,” Magnus snaps his fingers as he speaks, ignoring Alexander’s suddenly skeptical glower. “Absolute vermin, pests.” And then, because he knows exactly how to distract him, he adds, “do you know, darling? I think they might not be here for the milk, perhaps they’re actually after the koi.”

Alexander — who is incredibly protective of the magical fish who provide him snacks — turns back, glaring at the now empty alley below and he’s hissing.

Magnus wasn’t aware the human body was capable of making noises like that and he reminds himself to brew some good tea with honey.

“At least you’d never harm my koi,” Magnus teases, because he adores his little trespassing dragon. Alexander barely hears him, too focused on the street below. Magnus watches him for a minute and then sighs, reaching out to rest a hand on his shoulder. “Come treasure, back inside.”

Alexander doesn’t turn, even though the soothing tone Magnus uses normally works to coax him. He shakes his head, still glaring with slightly glowing eyes at the street below.

“Alexander—” Magnus purrs as he presses a little closer, pressing the warmth of his body against his boy, “the fire is on. Come with me.”

“I’m staying here, to make sure whatever you did works.” Alexander looks stubbornly apologetic, and Magnus doesn’t even let the doubt bother him, too shocked to care.

“You are not staying out here all night, watching to make sure the cats don’t come back.”

“They’re after the koi, Magnus.” Alexander looks as if he’s ready to turn back into dragon form and go hunt them down and Magnus reminds himself — once again — to never underestimate a dragon’s devotion to their snacks.

“Alexander, they’re not going to come back. I fixed the tear that let them in.” Magnus doesn’t realize he’s said something wrong until Alexander turns, looking absolutely shocked.

“You were purposefully letting them in?” Alexander seems almost betrayed and a little horrified and he’s giving Magnus a look that Magnus isn’t sure he likes.

“You left a hole in your home, in your lairs defenses, on purpose?”

Magnus swallows because he’s very aware right now that Alexander is judging him and it’s not a feeling he finds he enjoys.  Normally, the judgment of others slides off of his back, but he finds he feels rather helpless in this moment. Magnus is powerful enough that he doesn’t have to worry about such a little thing, but Alexander is looking at him with something that borders on mistrust.

It’s with a sinking feeling that Magnus remembers how ardently and viciously dragons protect their hoards. To have such an opening, purposefully no less, in the heart of Magnus’ lair must seem like the worst kind of incompetence.

—

Alec is fuming and not only because the little vermin stealing into his hoard’s home have been leaving their disgusting scent about.

Magnus is clearly unaware of how amazing and valuable he is. 

If he had any idea, he wouldn’t leave any possible way into his lair, especially not purposefully.

It’s one thing for Alec to slip past Magnus’ amazing, beautiful and intricate wards — he’s traipsed through Idris enough times to bask in Lake Lynn to be assured that he’s never met a ward he can’t cross — but for vermin?

Magnus is leaving himself open to all sorts of danger and he doesn’t even seem to realize it.

You don’t leave treasures up to chance. You protect them, viciously, devotedly, obsessively.

You give your treasures all of yourself to hoard them and you leave nothing to fate.

Alec has seen how well guarded the things Magnus values are.

Out of all the treasures in his house, the one most in danger from such a flaw would be Magnus himself.  Which means that Magnus doesn’t value himself the way Alec knows he deserves and should be.

It’s almost heartbreaking and Alec can’t help the soft croon that leaves his throat.

How is he ever going to be able to let Magnus leave his side, when he can’t trust Magnus to protect himself above all else.

[n7punk]

Wait you have ADHD? It all makes so much sense now!! I have a theory that every person with ADHD has one creative outlet that they do consistently without fail when everything around them is falling apart. I make bead flowers/trees/plants. For the last 4 years I’ve been making 1 or two projects every week without fail. Everyone around me is like “how come you can’t keep up with basic executive function life tasks but you keep up with this?” And I’m like idk?? I NEED this? If I don’t do it I’ll go crazy? Like it’s not a task to me as much as it is something I really enjoy doing and really need to do.

I have a friend with ADHD who makes color coded Pinterest boards with every theme you can imagine. They have more than 200 boards with subsections and randomly specific themes like “pirate with pink hat” or “hardcover book with gold foiling”. They visit their boards every day and spend hours organizing them and adding things to them. When asked why they do that they say “idk? It’s fun?”

Anyway I’m guessing yours is writing?

Not only do I have adhd but the procture's eyebrows shot up her forehead when she was reading the results and she just went "yeah... wow... uh, yeah... you've got it... all. you did it all." like apparently that's the only test i've gotten 100% on lmao and that's not exactly the one you want to ace.

anyway idk about that theory as a whole but i would go insane without writing. very recently came to the realization ive had a maladaptive daydreaming problem my entire life because i just called it "writing in my head" but it is my huge outlet. recently ive picked up some other creative hobbies that i'm doing... decent at keeping up, but writing is always going to be my main shit and it is the only thing that kept me sane 2020-2023

i am also an organizer tho tbh. when they're finally done (i have not had time to work on them in weeks) i'll probably post some stuff about my she-ra folders because I started working on totally reworking them back in april and ohhhhhh it hits so good and i love "wasting" hours doing that it's so satisfying

[lucy-moderatz]

aceness and re-learning to read romance

this is long. just warning you.

For a good portion of this year, I thought I’d started to hate romance novels. They’ve never exactly been the focus of my reading, but since I’ve started reading regularly again, they’ve always been a feature. For the most part, I’ve enjoyed them. There are always duds, of course, but more and more over the last few months I just…haven’t been able to take them. 

Tropes I used to like suddenly annoyed me. Writers I once really enjoyed flopped time and time again. Was it them? Was it me? I severely downsized my romance collection. There were some hits, for sure. But they were fewer and farther between. I started to have much better luck when I focused primarily on queer romances, where I saw far more success. But that left me with another question. Why?

We should all be reading queer stories. Sci-fi, fantasy, non-fiction, horror, every genre, every month, every year. That goes without saying. My sudden fixation of queer romances could have just been a desire to see stories told in a different way, from a different point of view, old tropes reimagined. But what about my queerness: my aceness. Did that have something to do with it?

My aceness goes like this: I do not want to have sex. I probably never have. I probably never will. That’s the base from which I operate. However, that doesn’t mean I don’t want to read about sex. That doesn’t mean I don’t love reading about sex. I do. I love a well-constructed, hot, dirty love scene between any two consenting adults who want to be there. That’s fun. Sex is fun, as long as it’s not happening to me. 

However, a thought recently occurred to me that I haven’t been able to let go of: have I begun to gravitate away from, full disclosure, mostly heterosexual romances because they make me feel like sex is happening to me?

I know a common criticism that gets lobbed at the romance genre and romance readers by joyless morons is that it’s all wish-fulfillment and self-insert. That women imagine themselves in the place of the heroine and get off vicariously through that. That’s certainly not always true. And if it is true, so what? I read sci-fi novels to live vicariously through people who get to fly around in space. I read cozy fantasy to feel like I’m in a magical world where everything is safe and comfortable. Self-insert is a valid way to read, but since we apparently need to be policing women’s desires all the time, it’s something women have to defend themselves against all the time.

But this isn’t about how capital “W” women read. This is about how this lower case “w” woman reads, and how I come to a piece of work as an asexual/aromantic. I realize I may have been coming to the piece as if I am the woman in the piece. I’m now forced to be her. Which is difficult because more often than not, she wants to be there and I don’t. I don’t relate to her because I can’t relate to her. I wouldn’t give the male love interest a second chance because I don’t feel her feelings and I don’t know how. Therefore I get frustrated when she does because what’s the point? Living happily ever after? I’m happy now.

You see where this is a problem.

I am not the person in the book. But somehow, I have been reading romances, and I feel it is particular to romance, as if I am. With queer romances, particularly ones where there are no female love interests (and those are, for the most part, the ones I inevitably picked) there’s a built-in defense against that. Against the uncomfortable feeling of being unable to separate myself from the female protagonist, from her choices feeling like mine, and her desires being completely antithetical to mine. I find myself liking those books a much higher rate more because I feel inherently set apart in a way I suppose I no longer feel in most heterosexual romances. It's just a book again.

I don’t think we’re taught to read this way. Maybe subliminally, I don’t know. I know not everyone reads this way. I know that “this has nothing to do with me, these people are not real, let’s see all of the fun things they do” is the way, probably, most people come to a book. I just never realized, when it came to romance, maybe I wasn’t one of them. Maybe I didn’t know to have that barrier up. Maybe I didn’t know it would end up bothering me so much.

I told my Dad I was asexual because I was reading a book and two characters were having a conversation and suddenly, or at least suddenly it seemed to me, one character began thinking they were sexually attracted to the person they were talking to. In the middle of the conversation. I was just…annoyed. Baffled and annoyed. Because here we were again. This was not a romance book. This was a mermaid and a human talking about some heavy stuff and then there it was. I felt slammed into. By this feeling I don’t get, this thought I’ve never had, that every single person seemed to have but me. I’d been thinking about asexuality, reading about it, talking with friends, asking myself, “Is this me? Is that why I don’t feel these things? Should I tell him? What will he think? I can’t not tell him. I can’t not tell someone. He loves me. He’ll understand.”

He did, by the way. They all did. I was lucky.

So. I haven’t had long to test this theory. I just finished my first heterosexual romance in a long time, and though there were very few sex scenes, I went into it with the thought, “This has nothing to do with me. Let’s have some fun.” And I did. I can’t promise they’ll all be like that. I don’t know if it matters if they are. They’re just books. But I wanted to reflect on this part of myself, this journey into what being ace means for me, how being more aware of it and accepting it as part of my identity, part of how I intrinsically think and approach the world, may change, may expand, how I approach everything.

I’ll never stop reading queer romance. It’s not a shield, I’d never treat it that way. I just hope that I’ll now be able to approach all romance the way I have always approached queer romance, as it’s own piece of art to be judged and evaluated on its own merits, as a story about people completely separate from me who happen to want relationships and like sex and will live happily ever after.

After all, I’m already happy now.

[zhimaqiu]

Ok so a lecturer of the university but from a different field wanted to fucking kiss me 💀 And probably other things.

It's a long story short: after a lecture I attended, after 8pm I went to a bar to eat something because I havent eaten anything since breakfast. I ate a sandwich, read a book, drank a coffee and was halfway another one when I started playing with a set I've got from the lecture in the said bar. A group of three men seemed genuinely interested and they invited me to their table so I thought: Sure why not. I explained the stuff, got really autism happy I can talk about something that interests me. Then we talked and talked about different subjects, eventually two of the guy's friends, gay and a pair btw, left. Then the shit started.

Dude is almost 40, has children, CALLED ME "KID" and like. Dude. I told you I'm from ace spec. I am not interested in white men. Literally said "Somehow I only find Asian and Native American men attractive". I'VE ONLY BEEN WITH ASIANS. I told him to get his hand off me. He did. We were taking about some sexual shit, because I've got that stupid sexshop magazine, but got I was so... technical and sceptical about the things I've seen. He was making some jokes and I was like "Haha yeah" in a "not funny" way. Eventually I said that meh nothing interests me. I completely forgot that people may get aroused looking at such stuff and generally the topic of sex is rather taboo especially with a complete stranger. But oh well, my acespec ass forgor that only because my cunt doesn't care doesn't mean others' shit doesn't too.

When he was about to leave, because I kept rejecting him, he said:

"How about I kiss you and we call it a day."

"No, thank you. You have children and I do not support such behavior."

Hand on my goddamn thigh earlier. I thought he maybe was just doing a bit too touchy, but once it lingered in there for too long without looking at him from the magazine we were reading together I said "Don't touch me" in even colder tone that I anticipated. Completely different how we talked a moment earlier and moment after. Sure, he was drunk. And that's also why I pushed him away right away once I realized it wasn't just being touchy friendly.

I should have said something more about his children like "Do you really want Lila to have a father who wants to bang a girl 7 years older than her brother?". I should have said I pity him. Because really, I'm not even angry at him. I'm just sad that something pushed him to do that.

Once I got back home I felt so fucking sexrepulsive and despite the fact that nothing happened I had to very intensely wash my mouth and my intimate area, because I felt so fucking filthy. Demisexual experience yippie!! Not the first time. I did however made a remark that I feel like he added something to my coffee and he left feeling very down after he said he didn't add anything, but I think it hit him right.

Sigh. What a night. I'm safe, don't worry

[draculasfavoritewife]

Idle Hands

Summary: Whenever Tony forgets to go to bed, it's always been up to you to bring him back to your side.

Pairing: Tony Stark x fem!Reader

Warnings: Heavy on the softness compared to most of my other stuff; I was in a very sentimental (read: sad and touch-starved) mood back when I wrote this lol. Tony Stark is a TEASE both in word and deed -- I have said it is canon therefore it is now. The feral way he makes me feel should be illegal. Also you can read the...implications of my vague wordings towards the end as tame or as smutty as you wish ;)

I feel the need to mention here that Tony Stark has been my most favorite comic book character since I was but a mere 11 years old. He holds the distinction of being my longest-running fictional crush/object of my obsessions and I love him so deeply and for so many little reasons that I could write a PhD dissertation on him. So please enjoy my little love letter to the man that has held my heart for nearly a decade and a half <3

It's that point of the night where you really can't decide if it should be counted as ungodly late or ungodly early. 4:00 am does tend to scramble the thoughts.

You've been drifting in and out of an uneasy sleep for what feels like forever, and as you roll away from the digital clock display on the wall with an annoyed sigh, you suddenly see why.

The other side of the bed is utterly untouched.

He hasn't been here with you at all.

You sit up, trying to remember if he had plans tonight. The calendar app on your phone has no record of a gala, awards ceremony, board meeting, or anything else that might have taken up his time.

Which means he's probably down in the lab again.

Briefly, you contemplate trying to call him, but you know from experience that he probably isn't taking calls right now, even if FRIDAY tried to put one through for you. He's in that zone that only designing and building can put him in, the one mindset where his too-busy brain is crystal clear and the world at last makes sense to him.

So you pull yourself out of bed, throw one of his old sweatshirts on over your cami and pajama shorts (he keeps the AC cranked all the way whenever it's warm outside) and pad out of the bedroom and on your way downstairs.

His lab is awe-inspiring as always, no matter how many times you see it. The purring thrum of the generators and the comforting pulse of dimmed lights, the heavy, electric feeling of the air itself -- he's described his workspace to you as having a life of its own before, and you can understand so well why time escapes him down here.

You just hope he's not using it to escape from other things as well.

He's deeply absorbed in his work on something at a station opposite the door, and your heart skips a beat even as you smile fondly at the familiar sight. Clad in sweatpants and a black tank through which you can just barely see the blue glow of his arc reactor, he looks all at once more human than usual and like some being from another world entirely.

It's the Stark curse, he told you once, and you recall the wry slant of his lips as he said so. To know you're a god trapped in a mortal body, an infinite mind with a finite number of years to use it. It's the reason behind all his greatest triumphs -- and all his harshest falls from grace.

And somehow, you were lucky enough to be the one he fell in love with.

It still feels like a dream sometimes.

Realizing he isn't going to look up on his own anytime soon, you stifle a yawn and knock sharply on the doorframe.

"Tony?"

He stiffens as if he's been shocked (always a possibility, when he's rewiring) and shoves the safety glasses high up on his forehead. "That would be yours truly. Everything alright?"

With a laugh, you cross the room, warmth rising in your chest as he immediately sets down his tools and steps out from behind the table to meet you. And damn, he always looks good -- he is Tony Stark, after all -- but there's always something about him when his hair gets all unruly and he has THAT look of intense concentration on his face that really drives home to you all over again just how gorgeous he is.

You cuddle up to him, and he kisses the top of your head.

"Asked you a question, Honey."

"Do you know what time it is, Tony?"

There's a prolonged moment of answering silence as he glances up at one of his nearby monitors. "Crap. Well, why are you up?"

Pulling back slightly so you can tease the protective eyewear off his head, you give him a look. "Can't sleep."

An eyebrow tilts; he's playing dumb.

"And that's my problem why?"

"Jerk." You take your time playing with his glossy dark hair, neatening it back up before raking your fingers through it to mess it up again. "Maybe because you love me...?"

"Oh, so you're down here looking for sympathy, got it." He smirks at you, a well-practiced and infuriatingly handsome look. "In that case, sorry about your insomnia, Beautiful. There's melatonin in the drug cabinet upstairs." He snares the safety glasses from your fingers once more and makes as if to return to his work. "Sympathetic enough for you?"

You wrap your arms around his waist from behind, stopping him from going any further, though the smug son of a bitch starts tinkering with his new designs again even through your persistent clinging. It mesmerizes you for a couple seconds, always has, the way his hands work with such delicate precision and dexterity, and you can't help selfishly wishing he would turn them towards other, less...mechanical endeavors at this moment.

He probably would, in all honesty, but Tony Stark is the king of making you work for it. Philanthropic he may be, but some things even you have to earn from him when he's feeling particularly devilish.

"I don't want your pity," you hum, pressing a sleepy kiss to his shoulder. "I was lonely without you."

"Perfectly understandable. I've been told by many that I'm scintillating company. You can, by all means, stay and watch me work, you know. Feeds my humble ego."

You roll your eyes and impatiently reach up under his shirt, feeling his muscles tense at the unexpected coldness of your hands.

That finally gets his attention and makes him turn around. Before you can even fully comprehend it, he's swept his work out of the way and lifted you up onto the worktable instead, restless fingers drawing intricate patterns on your inner thighs, though his eyes never leave yours, crystalline blue pinning your attention to his amused face instead of his very distracting hands.

"That," he grins, "was adorable. Sleepy version of you is so much more demanding. Maybe I should stay down here too long more often."

You try to frown at him, though his sparkling gaze and mischievous touch make that impossible. "How dare you."

"I do a lot of dumb things to see where they get me. You know that." He nods at the thick gray sweatshirt still keeping you warm. "Why don't you take that off for me, Sweetness. You make me cold, I get to return the favor."

Unable to come up with something snarky to say in return with the way his hands are making you shiver now, you do as he suggests with little resistance, the exposed skin of your arms and chest prickling at the much cooler air.

He leans in to tenderly kiss your neck, and your breath leaves in a sigh at the way his facial hair scratches at your throat. He's always been a helluva kisser and the meticulously maintained goatee is just the icing on the cake. Making out on his worktable was not the original plan when you first came down here, but even by his own admission Tony's best plans are usually improvised.

And you're certainly not complaining.

"What did you want from me again?" he murmurs, close to your ear.

The absolute audacity of him.

"Mmmmmmm," seems to be about all you can manage at the moment, and you know very well what's coming next.

He pulls you closer to him, the movements of his fingers turning agonizingly slow and prompting a slight gasp from you.

The smile that gradually spreads its way across his mouth is absolutely wicked.

"What was that, Sweetheart? I didn't quite catch it."

You try to reclaim some semblance of coherence, but his firm hold on you prevents you from escaping his delightfully systematic torture, so instead you grab on to his well-defined shoulders, your forehead resting against his chest. The mechanically-stabilized beat of his heart echoing beneath his skin a brief reminder that he's alive, despite everything he's been through, and he is yours. There's no one else on his mind, no one else he's let this far into his messy and often painful world.

The world may know him as Iron Man, the one who has saved them more times than they could ever count, but how many people really know the Tony that you know?

That same Tony who now raises one hand to tip your head back, whose sharp eyes soften with affection for the slightest of seconds before the anticipated words fall from his tongue, the words he knows will always unravel you.

"You just have to tell me what you want. Come on, Princess. Use your words."

You shudder and lean in to beg for another kiss.

"You, Tony. Always you. Please."

He kisses you back with renewed intensity, leaving you completely breathless.

"There we go...was that so hard?"

[arowitharrows]

hello again, recent anon here! first of all, i wanted to thank you for your wonderful response. i did read the article you linked to, and i must say that i was certainly ignorant of the very serious ways, pertaining to medical/health care, that people are affected by hostility (and ignorance) towards asexuality. i would also like to put forth some context for my outlook on things, just in that i was raised in what i've been told was an unusual and very sheltered environment, so while as i've grown older there are some things i've realized on my own that i may see as the norm that many do not, and it's actually my own mistake. i am a bit surprised that i had never some across this information online before, but i suppose i may have overly cultivated my online experience to be rather narrow, so upon reading your response, i realized that this might be one of those things where i just hadn't come to the realization on my own, and I decided to discuss it with a much more worldly cousin of mine who i am close to, for a better perspective, and she told me that what you said is generally true, and that a majority of people really do just experience sexual and romantic attraction like, from the get go. it was a bit embarrassing to realize that, but it's probably for the better. while that certainly was not my main take away from reading what you said, i sort of feel like my bubble has been burst. like i was really naive about that sort of thing. since i'm hiding behind anon, i will say that i'm almost 24 and it's really surreal to learn, like what else do i not know? that's apparently common knowledge? at times like these i recall that my father always said, "a wise man knows that he knows not", and i feel a poignant sense of failure to keep that with me as he would have tried to impart. your point about the time and effort put into books/movies/etc with those sort of themes makes alot of sense that i never even considered. my thoughts on the matter only ever went as far as "well they do that to sell more things, but only certain types of people would buy that anyways". i see that my view on all this has been severely limited. I really appreciated your anecdotes about your own life experience, and the different perspective they contained. in my life, few people openly spoke of sexual matters, and certainly not at length, but i can definitely see how being in an environment of your peers that did could lead you to feel how you described. i've been a total dunce here, like this is a part of an overarching "different people have different lives" common sense sort of thing that's gone way over my head in a really messed up way. the only people i've spoken to at any great length in many years are my relatives, so my understanding of community in a general sense may be a bit warped there. besides, all that, i would also like to say that i had not even previously thought about the ways that considering any ace identity to be a reaction of any sort could overlap with rad fem politics, another great oversight on my part. it is obvious now that ignoring these issues and pushing them out of my mind when i hear about them is not a correct course of action. i wonder how much of this train-of-thought rant would be an issue if i had delved deeper into other people's lived experiences pertaining to these matters when i first learned they existed. i will 100% be taking your advice on listening to more people about this all, and plan to read more about it immediately. i'm sure, based off even just this one interaction, that i have much more to understand about these things than i ever could have guessed i didn't know. I may even seek out some videos on the subject online as well. (as a small note too, i would like to say to the singular commenter on the post that while i'm doubtful any such label could apply to myself, your suggestion is certainly something i will take under consideration.) So for now, i thank you again for your gracious and eloquent reply. I have found it to be quite enlightening, and I bid you a great new year!

Well I am glad I could help a bit! The context of your upbringing makes sense and I'm certain you aren't the first or only person to go through such a "bubble bursting" process, it's a part of life and of opening yourself up to new perspectives. Also don't worry too much about the radfem train of thought thing, it is not a well known or discussed topic and I would not expect many people to be aware of it. I did not believe that that's where you were coming from, it just felt important to mention in that context.

I also wish you all the best in the new year, and thanks for listening and reaching out to learn more about the topic!

[i-can-even-burn-salad]

Happy STS!

So I'm reading the second half of the Undeserved ebook, and I noticed it jumps forward in time to when Damien and Merridy are already together, which confused me a bit until I realized that the part skipped over is Glass Shards, which is a whole separate book (and which I understand you actually wrote first!)

So my question is with stories that jump around in time, how do you decide what to include where, especially when making ebooks?

Hello :D

Glass Shards I wrote in 2016, way before I knew about, or would have been brave enough to call it whump. I was just a frustrated lil baby ace, whose best plan to get two chars to talk to each other was obviously to cut someone's arm off.

When I started writing Undeserved for a monthly prompt challenge, I had no idea it would become this... big. I just looked at the prompts, found they matched what I had of Damien's backstory so far, and wanted to give it a try. And then I couldn't stop! Almost all chapters of Undeserved/Fancy Boots have been written for some kind of prompt challenge, from monthly ones to bthb.

It's not usually how I'd write a book. There's too many povs, with some being super rare (Valadan). There's chapters written twice, in different povs. There's all this unnecessary torture 😆 But eh, I decided to wrap it all up without removing anything. Like, now it existed, and someone might like it, right?

As ebook only, I would probably have kept it separate; Undeserved and "Fancy Boots" have both around 45k words, which is a nice novella length, and I do consider them the prequel and sequel to GS. But I also wanted to print them, and that means cover, back and front, fonts, blurb, chapter headers. And - no. Didn't wanna do that twice, so I put them together, and I couldn't be bothered to do the ebook differently, especially since I also offer a PDF.

Quite honestly, putting them up like that for free (it's not free for me! :) surprisingly internet things cost money!) is thankless already. In making it convenient to read, I do not have a platform to get likes, comments or even a fucking view counter, so all I can do is make it for myself.

For me it made the most sense, due to recurring characters, style and the red line of the rebels flashbacks, so I did what I wanted. Same reason I put the sunrise interlude in - because I wanted to :p Were this a published book, I'd mark it more clearly inside the book as prequel and sequel to another, but pretty much the only place to even find them is my blog.

Because it was already written (though in German), the Glass Shards outline was decided from the moment I started putting it up in English. Over the year of writing it, I did a bunch of prompt fills and stuff for additional short pieces, most of which sadly won't make it in. Again, there isn't much to decide there, they were never part of the outline, and while i might be stubborn enough to replace one of the unspecified nightmares with Heartless, I'm quite happy with the pacing of GS.

In that scope, it's unlikely it will ever happen again. Thorns and Jasmine and Twisted Thorns have some overlap, but I mostly consider the Tumblr stuff self-written fanfic 🤣 I would need a hell of a downtime to even think about putting it in epub format.

Everything else currently written or planned is self-sufficient. There's always a chance I'll write a bonus chapter or two that will remain Tumblr-only, but I am quite done with challenges for now.

[pentanguine]

Python's 2023 in review

Enjoy me rambling and oversharing in typical long-winded fashion

I am so glad I stumbled into public librarianship. When I graduated I was still so sure I was going to work in an academic library, and it took fate intervening for me to realize that still probably wasn’t right for me. I love the public library combination of working with popular collections (the books actually circulate!?) and helping people with practical problems. It makes me feel useful, and like I’m part of the wider world

Unfortunately I am beset by imposter syndrome. I only graduated three months before I started the position, and I feel underqualified for what I know was a very competitive search. I am definitely the youngest person on my team, and I am so scared of disappointing people. It will be fine

Also unfortunately my commute is still way too long, but my god, I’m in control of it. All I have to do is get on the bus and stay on the bus til my stop. There’s no mucking around with a local shuttle service that can have a wait time of over an hour and has to be precisely timed while you also try to make a train connection…I just get on one bus. Wow. When the weather’s nicer and it’s lighter out, I’m going to try walking home to see if it’s faster

I dated one of my friends for nine months, and that was fun and weird. I really enjoyed just getting to express those feelings for once, but I didn’t like how much space he took up in my life. I’d set aside a night for myself and then he’d say “hey, want to call?” and I’d go “😍YES let me drop everything to hear your voice!”, which was very annoying. I desperately wanted more time to myself, but I was so infatuated I wanted to spend time with him more. I think I’d like to avoid that in the future.

I definitely did not experience Dating and Romance the way most people do, but it’s hard to tell if that’s because I’m somewhere on the ace spectrum, or because that’s just how I am as a person. I do feel like a lot of stuff was unintuitive to me, sort of like I was a robotic anthropology student experimenting with intimacy in order to gain a better understanding of the humans it’s been studying, but I also feel like that about many of types of human interaction, and “being attracted to him” was not where the disconnect was. Over the course of the relationship I kept up a strategy document outlining my goals and took 27 pages of notes, and that’s probably the most relevant fact about how my sexuality functions

I have started eating my burgers with all the toppings! This seems small and meaningless from the outside, but I used to eat every component of my food separately, because I Had To, and it feels really nice to just do things instead of holding myself apart so I can carefully avoid Bad Things which Are Not Right. It feels like relaxing into life like a warm bubble bath.

27 feels distinctly different from 26. Feels a lot like My Late 20s, which feels like Almost 30, which feels like an entirely different stage of life. My knee clicks louder and louder when I go up stairs, and my knee and elbow hurt when the weather changes. I hear my spine making noises a lot.

AAAGHHHH! I am trying to get top surgery this year and I don’t want to talk about it! But also that’s dumb because I want my friends to know about it! Also, reading other people’s reflections about top surgery has been so, so fucking helpful to me over the years, and it would be nice to add to that informal pool of knowledge by periodically sharing stuff. Unfortunately I am deathly allergic to talking about myself on the internet, so I don’t know if I can do it. But it’s a thing that’s happening! I am going to get a referral letter from my therapist, and then I can schedule consultations!

I have no idea what I’m doing with gender. At some point I seem to have stopped identifying as nonbinary, and while I like being called a man but I don’t think I am a man, except for the part where sometimes I wonder if I’m a trans man who just doesn’t want to go on T, except for the part where I feel like a [redacted] who wants to disguise themself as a man. Look, I just live here. 

I have reached a point where she/her pronouns make me uncomfortable, instead of just feeling factually incorrect

I’ve realized that I have as much facial hair as my ex did when he was 3 months on T. I was wildly, desperately jealous of that facial hair at the time. That’s super weird.

I realized I’m thinking of this holiday as a trip to visit my parents, and I can’t wait to get home afterwards. But where is home? All my family still lives in the South, and there is stuff I miss here. All the little things, like the sound of Southern accents all around me and the way all the stores have ceiling fans turned on in the middle of December, and also the stars, and the horizon, and magnolia trees everywhere. But my life is in The City, and I feel at home when I cross the bridge at night and see all the lights against the water. Home is my shitty little apartment with my 12x6 room and sloping floors and my linden tree outside the window.

In general, it’s been a great year for Large Life Things: I graduated with my masters! And I started a great full time job! And I asked out the guy I’d had a crush on for almost four years! And it ended, but not in disaster, and we’re still friends! And I have kicked the ball that will eventually start knocking over dominoes on the way to having top surgery! Exciting cool stuff!

[wolfjackle]

Hi, I am writing a book about the history of asexuality through the lens of my and others personal experiences of being asexual and I saw your post about the time you spent on AVEN with regard to the terms for the community. I wondered if you would be willing to talk to me about your experience of being in the community and if you had an suggestions for historical moments or resources?

Thanks for your time!

I'm absolutely happy to talk to you, but I don't know how much help I'll be. I discovered Asexuality around 11 or 12 years ago (early 2010s) and have been in and out of online ace spaces since.

I didn't have any doubt about my identity. It went from reading the word in a fanfic and going "huh, that's a thing?" to "Oh, that's me" within a week. Literally, within hours of actively looking up the term, I accepted it for myself. It didn't distress me, it didn't bother me. It did make the rest of the world make a lot more sense, though.

IRL, I'm half out. As in most of my close friends know, but for my family, I've never bothered to use the word "asexual" or "aromantic". I just tell them I don't plan on dating/getting married and now that I'm in my 30s, they rather believe me.

I managed to miss the worst of the Discourse™ by simply not being on tumblr at the time. I was in school (18 credit semesters + part time work), then moving and starting a new career. I also dropped off online social spaces for a while with the death of forums. By the time I came back and got comfortable, the worst of the discourse had passed.

Now, though, I'm not really in ace circles very much. I think it's because I just can't get into how they're organized. Having to rely on reddit (which I stopped using in July due to API changes) or Tumblr is...very slap-dash. I prefer the organization of forums. Where you have one specific area for memes, one for serious discussion, one for jokes, one for people new to the idea and settling in, etc. When it's all mixed together, I find I have to sift through a lot of what I'm not in the mood for to find the stuff I want to engage with.

I feel like I probably know more than what I think I do. I'm always surprised when I come across aces who don't realize certain things. The amount of tags and comments on my addition to the allosexual post prove that. So many people hadn't heard the ace definition of "self contained sexuality" and found it resonated with them. I'm glad I could teach them that bit of history as the definition is the one I relate most to as well.

I've seen people who think that only the ace of spades is a valid ace symbol when really it was the entire suite. Ace of hearts = alloromantic ace, Ace of spades = aroace, ace of diamonds = demiace, ace of clubs = grayace.

Most people know about the black ring, at least.

Anyway, if you think I can be of help, please reach out! I'll answer what questions I can and tell my (admittedly rather boring) story.