#ringedplanetshirt

[pen-in-hand]

Your words are "pure," "light," and "change" please!

PURE

In the past, he was lying beside her pointing out funnyshapes in the clouds, covered in dirt and muck. The smile on his face warmedher soul like the sun warmed her skin. The twinkle in his eye brought the starsout in light of day. He was everything wholesome and pure.

LIGHT

Tessa was not stupid, and she refused to be that littlefish who was searching for some light within the crushing dark.

CHANGE

Nothing yet :)

-

Thanks for the words love!

Send me words to find in my WIP

[chayscribbles-archive]

Grats again on the 300!!! 🎊🎉🎈Could I maybe get an edit for Thriving if it's not too much trouble? Thanks so much!

here you go!

hope you enjoy it! thanks for following me! 💕

[howdywrites]

☕️⛸!

You’re a doll, thank you so much!! ❤️❤️❤️

[toboldlywrite]

(4) Of your WIPs, I’m excited to read The Insomnia Code in its entirety! It's a very unique concept and your aesthetics for it are very much in my wheelhouse!

:D Thank you so much!!!! I hope very much I can do it justice! 

[quilloftheclouds]

Spoiled please!

[Send me a “spoiler!” and I’ll give a vague spoiler from my wip!]

Large fins signify large reserves of magic in sirens. So why do they have so little?

[timetravelingpigeon]

14 & 22 for Col, and 7 for Morgan, please!

Thanks for this!

14. Would they agree with the term ‘guilty pleasure’? Do they have any?

In the sense of “this is something that I enjoy that I would be embarrassed if anyone found out?” Heck, yeah. They’re actually an avid Stephen King reader (but just does not want to deal with whatever judgement/stereotypes come with that.) On a weirder note, they’ve also invented something they call “California-Style Ramen.” Specifically, it’s an uncooked block of dry ramen (dry because of the drought, get it?) that’s been broken up into bite-sized chunks and dusted with whatever flavor packet it came with.…Morgan got horrifically sick off of it.

22. Do they like being called pet names? Do they call other people pet names? What’s their go-to?

Their relationship with pet names is… inconsistent. Their biggest pushback comes from the way that many of them are (at least perceived as) gendered, and they’re kinda defensive about that, especially if the name-giver managed to correctly guess the gender they were assigned at birth, and especially if the name-giver is doing it disingenuously as a power-move. (Captain actually got a punch sent his way for that one, the smarmy bastard.)

But Riley calling them “Pigeon” as a term of endearment? Yes, please.

(As for calling other people pet names, they just flat-out admit that they’re bad at coming up with and/or remembering them, so they don’t really bother.)

7. Describe them in three words. Now let them describe themself in three words.

Me: Impulsive, Driven, Introverted (yes, the guy who spends a solid chunk of his day punching out zombies is an introvert.)

Him: Loyal, Skilled, Adaptive

[spacetimewraithwrites-archive]

quiet

(content warning: suicide)

Quiet

The silhouette at the window had his chin tilted upward slightly, just enough to expose the clean line of his jaw. His face turned to the glass, a patch of condensation growing and shrinking as he exhaled, silent. His chest rose and fell steadily, no one would know he was breathing if it couldn’t be seen firsthand. Eyes sharp and focused, pinned to something in the distance, pinned to nothing but the trees that went on for miles into the mountains.

Fat flakes of snow curtained the dismal sky, peppering the porch and accumulating on yesterday’s layer of white ice. And on the offering from the day before that, and the day before that. No wind, not a single branch waving in an uninvited breeze or the flap of a bird’s wings to rebel against the outside stillness.

Warren watched this as he gave up his posture to the cushions of the couch and kept a tight grip on his own hair. He bored through Thrive’s darkened outline with his gaze, his mind a blank slate, dropped to the curve of his throat, stuck there for quite a while. What a cruel god it was that gave him that throat with a body that wasn’t even authentic. And who was Warren to claim it? What manner of fate gave him that right?

The false doors in the cabin promised freedom they hadn’t seen in days. At that point, probably weeks. Thrive told him to stop counting and he heeded him immediately. Shadows lurked in the corners of the house and they couldn’t be shaken away. Bulbs couldn’t scatter them and they swallowed the light, rippling into fine mist if agitated.

The times they couldn’t bring themselves to speak reeked of failure, of bone-chilling misery no amount of quality time could dissolve. Warren watched Thrive stand in silence by the window. Obhelian spine straight and rigid, bathrobe over the form suit in such a way that hinted at how much he was afraid that getting truly comfortable would cost them their native reality. Lumping the responsibility onto his own shoulders again, dragging himself through a swamp of guilt.

“What is it that we’ve supposedly failed?”

At the sound of Warren’s hoarse voice cutting through the hours-old ringing quiet, Thrive let his eyes fall shut. The condensation shrank and his chest rose.

Hours of quiet. A search of the doors and windows for cracks, daily and always futile. Blasts of force from Thrive’s hands unable to make any sort of crack or a dent, daily and always futile. Sheets wrapped around fists, human and otherwise, jabbing into the glass in an attempt to create a shred of respite from captivity, daily and always futile. Thrive’s knuckles reddened from trying without the sheet. Daily. Taking knives to the wood of the walls. Always futile.

Stop counting the days, Thrive had advised, but it had been months.

Warren did note with a heavy heart as he combed his fingers through his beard in the bathroom and fought through the post-traumatic bog of being locked up again that he wasn’t even sure taking Thrive to bed while in the cabin wasn’t a desperate necessity in order to cling to sanity anymore. He ripped himself to shreds for that notion, stuffed a hand towel in his mouth to muffle the anguished sobs he tried very hard to suppress, wouldn’t allow the tears to actually leave his face. It didn’t matter; Thrive’s superior hearing paired with the close quarters of the cabin practically guaranteed his cover being blown.

Thrive took up stroking his hair to lull him to sleep every night. Unspeaking, eyes glued to one another until Warren couldn’t stay awake. It stopped the nightmares, anyway.

The next time Thrive stood at the window in his form suit and bathrobe, Warren got up from the couch, removed the terry cloth garment and peeled the skin-tight black suit from his shoulders. Draped the articles over the desk chair and watched him stand, naked as all, still unmoving from his spot.

A few times Warren had to bathe Thrive himself. Then Thrive would get embarrassed, snap out of whatever made him borderline comatose and refuse to let him care for him further. He stomped out of the bathroom and pretended to brainstorm ways to outsmart the Emmuli, to get them out of that cabin once and for all. But they both knew he gave up a while ago.

Warren wished he was back in Alaska. The real Alaska, the genuine cabin, with bitterly cold air he longed to breathe again. He had glimpses of it in his dreams, walking through the tranquil forest, Thrive close behind, guarding, ever vigilant. Unintelligible whispers passing their ears. He wondered at times if those weren’t dreams. He couldn’t bring himself to ask.

This was supposed to be a dream, too. A nightmare. Anything but reality. But what did reality even mean?

“I have a theory.”

Warren would’ve jumped ten feet out of his skin if he cared anymore. He addressed Thrive at the window yet again, his inhale deep and audible. “Yeah.”

A long enough stretch of even more of the quiet passed before Thrive opened his mouth to speak again. He still wouldn’t meet his stare.

“…You’re not going to like this.”

“Get me the fuck out of here, Thrive,” Warren blurted. “Please. Please. Just…anything. Fucking save me. Get us out of here.”

Thrive swallowed, jaw clenched. He smoothed his robe over his form suit, bracing himself.

The tension was immense.

“I think we’re going to have to die.”

Warren smiled. Not a trace of humor within it, not an ounce of happiness or pleasure. Irony, of course, but no mirth. He shook his head as if it would do anything against his utter disbelief. “What?”

“It…may be our only choice.”

“A suicide pact? That is so dark. Even for me. Even for the fucking survivor of an actual suicide attempt, that is fucking dark.”

“I think….” Thrive’s eyes flashed with a poor attempt at disconnect. “…The Emmuli will remove us of this hellscape if we beat them at their own game. They know the worst thing for either of us is watching each other suffer as much as we already have. They’ve been doing it this whole time, Warren. Everything from here to all of the constructs they’d built for us before, all of their illusions and their trickery. It was all to mentally manipulate us. If we show them we’d rather die than live like this….”

“What if that’s exactly what they want?” Warren snapped. “Huh? What if throwing in the towel is exactly what they want us to do? Don’t they want us dead, anyway?”

“They want us to hurt,” Thrive said, more loudly than he possibly intended. “They need us to feel what they’re doing, that’s what keeps them in power. They’ll try to keep us alive for as long as they can. They’re not going to let us die. And it may weaken them.”

Warren rubbed his hands on his knees. “And then what? They just bring us right back here to start this bullshit all over again?”

Thrive didn’t reply. He did meet Warren’s worried stare eventually, and the seriousness was staggering.

It began to dawn on Warren that this lethargic behavior, Thrive’s despondency, could not have been incited by their imprisonment. It started before this. Before they even woke up in the cabin again. After the last constructs, after they were last separated.

“…What did you see?” Warren asked tentatively. He didn’t want to know but his mouth asked before his brain could catch up. “What was the last thing they showed you?”

Thrive sighed.

Warren leaned forward, voice hardening. “…Thrive, how did you come up with this theory?”

“I’m not telling you now,” Thrive muttered, facing the window again. “…It wouldn’t do you any good. I’ll tell you…another time. When we leave this place.”

The quiet outside bled into the inside yet again. Warren began to doubt his mind for the five hundredth time. Wondered if it was really Thrive standing in front of him, if it was really his hands on his head every night, cupping his face or smoothing his hair down. If this version of him existed, the one that couldn’t contain what happened on Zliyagi within his body and poured it out of himself in torrents. If his walls were really breaking down, crashing around him, dropping massive chunks of material into oceans of grim thought.

“I can’t do it for you.”

Thrive nodded carefully. “I know.” He gritted his teeth. “…I’ll do it for both of us.”

Warren swore, dialing back his visceral reaction just in time to avoid upending the coffee table completely. He did manage however to scrape it across the floor, overwhelming the room with the grating sound of metal on wood. He disappeared into the bedroom, slamming the door shut behind him as he searched and pleaded for ways to stave off the manifesting panic attack. He resorted to an old favorite—cloth in the mouth. No tears, just gasping.

Thrive caught him that time. The door swung open and he stared at him from the threshold, eyes wide as Warren sat on the edge of the bed with a pillowcase dangling from between his jaws, in the midst of hyperventilation.

In the quiet, Thrive marched over to him, gathered him tight against his chest, squeezed him. Fingers digging into his shoulder, the back of his neck. They clutched painfully at each other, both shaking, one more violently than the other. Wordlessly agreeing to spend one final night together before they did anything else.

But when Warren’s eyes opened in the dark room in the middle of the night to the sight of Thrive fast asleep for the first time in months, he smiled.

Maybe this would work. And maybe it wouldn’t. But he got to spend the sunrise watching the peace on Thrive’s face. A serenity he couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen. It possibly predated him.

And when he opened his eyes for the second time several hours later, half-collapsed on the floor of the Ganymede bridge once again as Thrive blasted the door off its hinges from the corridor, he caught his breath and regarded his frantic obhelian in stunned silence. His neck was fine. Thrive used the doorframe to keep himself upright at the sight of Warren unharmed by the window until he couldn’t anymore and sank down onto the plush maroon carpet. They were both alive and intact. Breathing, pulses racing, alive.

The ship sailed on in quiet space, oblivious.

[adventurebeneaththewords]

🐱 & 🦄!

I’m using characters from “The Moon and The Sea” to answer these~ :D

🐱- Do any of your OCs believe in any superstitions?

After thinking for a while, I believe that of all my OCs, Victoria would be the most likely to believe in superstitions! No opening umbrellas inside because that’ll bring her bad luck, she’s always careful never to break a mirror, and she must never ever step on a crack!

🦄 - Do you have an OC that is secretly hiding something powerful?

Emily! She’s been entrusted with a necklace that must never be allowed to fall into the wrong hands… It’s debatable if even the person who gave it to her could be considered “the wrong hands”! ;)

Thank you for the ask!

[sidhewrites]

Treasure, Mermaid, and Mysterious Ruins, please!

Fantasy Themed Writing Asks // Accepting

Treasure: What original story of yours do you love the most?

I have to pick one? I’m really bad at picking favorites honestly. Like I’ve had Glittering Queen in my head since high school, and Heir of Stars has all my favorite tropes. I won’t go through my entire project list, so can I just default to Coriander ? Just because I work on it the most, It’s light and fluffy and gay and it can get draining to write dark fantasy all the time.

Mermaid: What does your character consider beautiful?

Coriander likes bright colors and softness. She was raised on fairy tales in a village surrounded by flower fields, and her world views reflect that, including what she finds beautiful.

Tanith is my favorite since she has an almost indescribable sense of aesthetics. She finds almost any living thing beautiful, but she gravitates towards healthy creatures who are allowed to fill their niche in the environment -- eg she doesn’t like invasive species, but she unironically adores the blobfish and parasitic isopods just as much as she does kittens. The more unique and lively the creature is, the more she adores it.

Mysterious Ruins: Are there parts of your stories that you just leave blank and unplotted until you write them?

Yes and no. I do a lot of outlining, because I get uncomfortable and overwhelmed when I don’t have a vague pathway to follow for my story, though I don’t mind taking unexpected twists and turns in it. But the outline itself tends to be less points A B C D E F G.... and more A C D G H I M.. like it’s not entirely one step after the other, so long as I have a clear idea of where I’m gonna end up at the end of the next arc in the plot, I don’t mind improvising in between.

[drabbleitout]

Last Line Tag

I was tagged by @violet-galaxies in this hilarious post 

Hopping around Draft 3 of The Womb where Ira is reunited with Darts:

“Why would you ever come back here?” she hissed, knife still drawn.

“We ran out of ideas, so I threw a bolt at a map and it landed in a trash bin.” Ira’s growl had Myghal reaching for a hold in his cloak, knowing he was ready to pounce.

Tagging: @idreamonpaper @wrennytenten @abalonetea @caitwritesstuff @stetcomma and @ringedplanetshirt

[pen-in-hand]

do a cover for a horror story set in the 80s (a la Stranger Things mebbe) and one for a rom-com about vampires!!

So here’s your horror

Now this one’s more com than rom, leaning towards the horror just a bit

But here’s your rom

-

Thank you love so much for the prompts! I got a good amount of nothing done making these (which will be available for purchase as premade covers soon via my website and will be posted to my instagram soon

[chayscribbles-archive]

🖊 for Jack and 🖊🖊 for your choice, please! — donovyn--nox

THREE??? you SPOIL me 💖

i’m gonna gush about my three leading ladies from UnSuper Squad then!

🖊 Jack is, first and foremost, BABY. also i love how she’s so dang determined and optimistic, despite everything she’s been through and all her bad decisions, in the end she really just wants to do the right thing. she just needs to allow herself to feel a Serious Emotion every once in a while, though.

🖊 Maeve is such a babe. she’s hella smart and she knows it, and she takes crap from no one. her biggest issue though is letting herself be vulnerable and not trying to be all Tough and Strong all the time.

🖊 Kitty??? my sweet baby ???? my idiot genius child ?????? she just wants to LEARN about other people like her and feel like she BELONGS with them but she’s stuck in an environment where she just ?? can’t do that freely ???? and i just wanna HUG her 

send me a 🖊 and i’ll gush about one of my OCs!

[gourmetmilkshake]

ten songs i've been listening to

i was tagged by @im-grown! these are so fun thank you

1. juicy - doja cat

2. HYWI? - teyana taylor ft. king combs

3. viraal - frenna

4. miss shiney - kaiit

5. chanel slides - dreezy ft. kash doll

6. broke - samm henshaw

7. high horse - kacey musgraves

8. who's - jacquees

9. pony - dababy

10. ma lo - tiwa savage ft. wizkid

ok! i tag @herwhisperisthe-jyp @jbslacefront @silkseulgi @mandatorydjmeeting @frogprison @weenhand @ringedplanetshirt @gothlatino

[heresthatrayneydaye]

Ten Songs I’ve Been Listening To

Thanks for the tag @ringedplanetshirt!

1. Nina Cried Power - Hozier ft. Mavis Staples

2. Out of Touch - Hall & Oates

3. Left Hand Free - Alt-J

4. I’m Still Standing - Elton John

5. River - Bishop Briggs

6. Two-Time - Jack Stauber

7. Almost (Sweet Music) - Hozier

8. Turn the Lights Off - Tally Hall

9. Call on Me - Chicago

10. Walk on the Wild Side - Lou Reed

I’m tagging @angelxhoney @courierquill @hotforjustice @look-its-a-giraffe @bobasaur-universe if you guys want :)

[toboldlywrite]

🖊!

I’ve been thinking a lot about Dawn’s backstory-- specifically when she destroyed Lithuta. She had such a rough time. I mean she watched her mentor get murdered when she arrived just too late to do anything about it, and then went into full Destruction Mode. She had no idea she had the power to destroy a planet, but once it happened, there was no taking it back. She was in a really dark place for quite a while. But through it all Mygre was just there. She stopped Dawn from hurting herself too much, and was just a solid presence-- an anchor through it all. She never lost any respect for Dawn through any of it, or ever thought of her as a monster. She knew what it was like to be there, after all. She was able to help save her the way Dawn saved her when they first met, but it kills me because Mygre doesn’t realize that! She thinks she didn’t do enough! But of course she did! Anyway these two just got me emotional tonight 😭

[quilloftheclouds]

9, 13, and 18 for the character(s) of your choice please!

[From this ask game]

We’ll go with Celestine because why not~

9. How easily does your oc make friends? Do they have difficulty talking to new people? Why?

Pfffttttt.

Yeah no. Just. No. Negative. She doesn’t make friends. At all. Also talking to new people is only done if she really wants to insult someone, or she’s forced to. Why? Because Celestine is a rude brat who hates people.

Interesting that this answer would’ve been completely different if it was the Celestine before she lost her memory.

13. How dangerous is your oc? Are they completely innocent, or someone to be feared? Do others know?

Ah, a slightly spoilery question, now~

Definitely not innocent, I can tell you that. Of course, she mostly takes on the facade that she is, so many people she’s met in passing (or pickpocketing) think she’s a harmless little girl. Once you get to know her, though… you realize that she’s fully capable of killing someone, if she really needed to.

She doesn’t care enough to do that, though. Completely ruining you in career or by other means? That’s more likely.

18. How does your oc fare in an emergency situation? Do they panic, do they freeze, do they take charge?

If it doesn’t involve her, it won’t involve her. She’ll walk on and pretend she never witnessed a thing. If it does have something to do with her? Celestine finds it very difficult not to panic. She freezes when she panics, or runs away.

Sooo, not very well, is what I’m saying.

Thank you for the ask!