#she’s actually a lot more comfortable with fantasy styles and organics

[memryse]

been thinking this extra hard lately fanon gem characterisation is so different to how gem actually is. it is so obvious who watches her and who doesn’t

[friedgyozas]

looking for: attack on titan roleplay

。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・

•┈┈┈••✦♡✦••┈┈┈• ☁️ ༄ ‧₊˚ bloom's rp search! ๑ [ never expires ! ] ｡ﾟ･ about me ᵕ̈ ☆ ⇢ bloom ⇢ 21 ⇢ she/her ⇢ cst timezone ⋆｡‧˚ʚ🍓ɞ˚‧｡⋆ literacy

i write adv. lit/novella, third person, past tense. i can write anywhere from 500 to 1,300+ words, but i usually average at around 700 to 1,000 words. i'm only looking for people that write in the same style as me! :^)

availability

i'm a college student, so my schedule is very busy right now. at the moment, i'm able to get in weekly replies. sometimes i may be able to reply more frequently, sometimes more seldomly. replies would usually be on the weekends, occasionally throughout the week if i have time. sometime around october or november, my schedule is going to change drastically because i'll be doing clinicals working in a hospital! unfortunately, i don't know how that's going to affect my writing schedule. but i don't ghost so i'll always communicate how it may change. and i also won't want to end the rp!

pairings

canon x canon & mxm only. ships i will write for: eren x levi, eren x jean, eren x armin, levi x erwin, maybe some others not listed right now. i'm comfortable writing for levi, eren, jean, and armin in that order. i have fixed nsfw positions that i'm unwilling to change, though! more info on that in the post.

genres / themes

i love a lot of genres: horror, sci-fi, fantasy, supernatural, dystopian, post-apocalyptic, action/adventure, etc. a lot! i'm okay with very dark, psychological themes as well. right now, i'm itching to write either eren x levi or eren x jean in a zombie apocalypse au, either during the initial outbreak or just after it happened and the world has been living in shambles for while. cliche, but i love it.

fandoms

attack on titan is my main fandom (been in it since 2014!). right now i'm also writing for helluva boss and hazbin hotel (i write for lucifer, stolas, and blitzo). other fandoms i'm in are: the vampire diaries, the hunger games, twilight, house of the dragon, arcane, jujutsu kaisen, killing stalking, pretty little liars, my little pony:fim, monster high, and a few others i can't think of right now.

nsfw

so, i'm comfortable writing top and bottom characters & sub and dom. (i.e dominant bottoms, submissive tops, dominant tops, submissive bottoms, etc.) for levi, i will only write him as a bottom, dominant or submissive. for eren, i will only write him as a top. jean and armin are bottoms in my writing too. i'm alright with writing omegaverse, though i don't have much experience with writing it so please be patient with me (i read it a lot though :o) i'm okay with a lot of kinks and stuff, but please ask before incorporating something controversial, nsfw or other wise. there are a select few topics i'm actually not comfortable with!

roleplay

i roleplay on discord! we can make a private server & write there so it stays organized. i love chatting ooc too, and i'll be able to do that more often since it's less intensive than writing replies. i love heavily plot-focused roleplays, so fleshing it out just a bit before we get into writing is preferred. not every minute detail, but a pretty good idea. while i like for all of my roleplays to have smut, i also don't like for it to be the only focus, and i prefer a 25:75 or 40:60 smut to plot ratio. smut + a really good plot is what i'm looking for! (only writing with people 18+) i'm looking for a long-term partner or partners for this fandom that is so dear to my heart! someone that i can maybe even have multiple roleplays going for different pairings or plots, and someone that's comfortable talking OOC. i don't expect rapid replied 24/7 because we all have lives, so i expect the same courtesy :^) i'm going to be busier in the near future with school, but i love writing and it's a major stress reliever for me. i'm looking for a partner that is still willing to write together even if one of us has to take a hiatus from writing. my dm's are always open!! pls send a message if you're interested in writing together, and we can move to discord <3

。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・

[wasteitonserendipity]

The Best Years: Day 245



Pairing: Mingyu x female reader

Genre: fluff, lot of crack, gyu and OC pretty much share a braincell at this point

Warnings: none

“So, what time do you think you’ll be home dear?” you asked, opening one of the gorgeous oak cabinets, taking out a glass.

“Probably around five, as long as the traffic’s not too bad. Maybe I’ll pick up takeout on the way?” Mingyu smiled from across the marble island.

“Sounds great honey, maybe Chinese tonight? I’m feeling some pot stickers!” you laughed, leaning over the counter to give him a quick kiss.

The whole moment felt totally adorable and domestic, something you felt like you could truly get used to.

However, you were quickly interrupted by someone clearing their throat.

“Mommy, why are they kissing?” a small child asked his mom, tugging on her sleeve.

“I’m not sure, honey,” she said, sending you eye daggers, before shuffling him away, “let’s go look at the kids rooms!”

You and Mingyu looked at each other for a split second before you began laughing hysterically. He was always creative with dates, even if they seemed a little unorthodox. He showed up at your door at around three o'clock, declaring that he was going to take you on a date that you’d never been on before, and he kept his word. You could truly say that you’d never been on a date to IKEA, the giant home furnishings warehouse, before.

“Let’s move scenes before the staff catches up with us!” he laughed, coming around the island and slinging an arm over your shoulder.

You moved through the store at a fairly slow pace, due to the fact that you both kept getting distracted by things you found amusing. At one point he was running around with a white, fluffy, faux fur rug over his head, declaring that he was the abominable snowman.

After about an hour you came to the section where they kept the models of bedroom sets. you’d loved getting inspiration from whatever the designers had pieced together finding ways to incorporate things into your own home.

You came to a set with gray walls with white trim and beautiful soft lighting. There was a rustic looking headboard that looked like it was made out of an old glass door with a small shelf on it. Everything was accented with dark gray or black. On the bed, a gray fluffy comforter and a ton of huge pillows all different shades of gray and white. A small, simple chandelier hung in the center.

“This is seriously the perfect room.” You said in awe, plopping down on the bed, “like the colors, the style, everything.”

“I figured you would’ve liked the bright blue room over there.” he laughed, sitting down next to me.

“I do, don’t get me wrong,” you shook your head, “but when I get to a place with someone else, I’d like something a little more elegant but still a little rustic, like this. Plus, you can add different colored accent things if you feel like it!”

You came out of my fantasy world to find Mingyu looking at you with nothing but adoration in his eyes and a huge smile on his face.

“What?” you said, feeling a little self conscious that you’d gone into la la land about a freaking bedroom.

“Nothing,” he smiled, “you’re just adorable is all.”

He gave you a peck on the cheek before pulling you up.

“Let’s go look at some other stuff!” he giggled before running towards the kids section. You rolled your eyes at the fact that your boyfriend was five, but followed happily after him.

You finally came to the lower level of the store where they kept all of the individual items that were in the rooms upstairs. Somehow you managed to wreak even more havoc down there than up stairs, because now you could find even stranger things to play with.

You’d chased him around the kitchen utensils section with an odd looking egg beater at one point. You even played with the stuffed broccoli and carrots that were in the section labeled “toys”.

Surprisingly, you’d picked up a few things that you actually wanted to buy; a new set of wine glasses, a little desk chair and a few organizing things.

As Mingyu pushed the cart you hopped on to the opposite side. Suddenly you heard a very familiar guitar riff fill the air.

“Life’s a tangled web of cell phone calls and hashtag I don’t knowsss. And you,”

You hopped off of the cart, grabbed the nearest object to me and used it as a microphone as pointed at him dramatically and sang along.

“you’re so caught up in all the blinking lights and dial tones”

He crossed his arms and pinched the bridge of his nose, laughing as people stopped to stare at your little show.

“Come on, Gyu!” I giggled, handing him a wooden spoon, “this is on the playlist, you know the words!”

You flung your hands dramatically around in the air.

“Tune out the static sound of a city that never sleeps, here in the moment on the dark side of the screen.”

“Hit it!” You yelled, pointing at him again.

Instead of being thoroughly embarrassed like you thought he’d be, he took your hand and spun you around while pretending the spoon was a mic.

“I like the summer rain, I like the sounds you make.”

He pointed at you for the next line, a few people stopping to observe your adorable chaoticness.

“We put the world away!”

“We get so disconnected.”

You continued on with your little impromptu concert, dancing and laughing and singing together, until the closing “ohhh's” of the song. The small crowd that had formed erupted into applause and laughter as you hooked arms around each other and took a bow.

“Thank you, thank you! We’ll be here all week!” you joked, patting Mingyu’s chest as he looked down at me with a smile.

Your heart almost felt like it would burst at the fact that you'd seemed to have found your partner in idiocy.

[facetsofthecloset]

i think one of my biggest hurdles as a writer (especially original fiction, but it also affects my fanfiction) is that i have an incredibly American/British-centric idea of what Fiction Books are supposed to be like, even though my personal lived experience is tangential to those things at best.

(rambly weird personal essay under the cut lol)

when i was a kid, i mostly read Doctor Dolittle and Narnia books, and when i got older i read HP, Septimus Heap, Artemis Fowl, Fablehaven, Sherlock Holmes, etc.

pretty standard kid's fantasy/fiction (i mean not Holmes but y'know). it definitely informed what i thought Fiction was supposed to be, and all of it is incredibly Western.

i've wanted to be a fantasy author since i was really young, but i could never really get anywhere because i was trying to copy what i read. and the problem with that is...well, i'm Japanese American, but i grew up going back and forth between Hawaii and Japan.

i have no personal connection to the environments the books i loved grew out of, so copying it was impossible to do organically. i didn't have the background lived experience to seep naturally into my writing in order to recreate these atmospheres and cultures.

from the language, to the culture, to the ecosystems and climate, none of it was what i knew was right outside my window. i couldn't write what i knew, because as far as i knew, you just...weren't supposed to.

you weren't supposed to write about the tropics except as some distant hypothetical. you weren't supposed to mention jungles outside of metaphors. winter and snow was a given. you're not writing a fantasy book without winter, you fool. no one knows what a japan is. no one knows what a hawaii is either. no one knows you, you're not supposed to exist in these books.

i think part of that is what appealed to me, actually, in wanting escapism, but when it comes to writing, it's a big hurdle. i'm a lot more comfortable writing from my own experiences now, but i still find myself wanting to ape the style and aesthetics of what i loved growing up.

it really doesn't help that i hesitate to claim any singular cultural identity for myself because i don't feel like an authority on either. if you pressed me, i'd say i'm American, but i'm still so far removed from what 99% of America (as in, the mainland) is.

i don't think of deer or squirrels or redwoods or prairie dogs or blue jays when i think about the "America" i'm from. i think of centipedes and green sea turtles and peacocks and jackson chameleons and myna birds (most of those are nonnative to hawaii but they were what i saw commonly growing up)

so there's just a huge disconnect between What I Know and the stories i want to write. which is annoying, why don't i want to write more stories about the beautiful world i knew and grew up in? there's magic there. there's potential for fantasy and adventure there. of course there is.

but no. i keep trying to recreate Narnia, or draw on European folk and fae, because i feel like i have none of my own. nothing that's allowed to appear in print.

i once read half of Julie Kagawa's The Iron King. i only read half because i hated it, part of which is probably because i was just too old for it.

but the other part, when i think about it is...i picked that book initially because i read that the author grew up in Hawaii, and she's Japanese. not first gen like me, but i thought, hey, maybe she'll get it.

but The Iron King is like a weird Midsummer Night's Dream thing, it's very old-Europe-filtered-and-strained-through-centuries-of-American. it's very temperate zone. i saw no trace of home or kin in those words and i think that disappointment is what turned me off it so virulently.

i wonder if my writing is as empty when i use fairies and satyrs and other mainstays of Western fantasy. if it comes across as a string of hollow tropes; words and ideas copied without heart or belief or connection into a story simply because that's what you're supposed to use.

i wonder why i use those things.

(part of it is because i'm definitely not native hawaiian and would feel weird about just lifting stuff bc i don't know if it'd be disrespectful or not and would have to do research on it. at this point, fairies are public domain, but menehune...ehhh, i don't think so.)

i think it's because i have so many examples and blueprints to work off of if i take ideas from the mainstream. whatever i try to do using me and what i know, and what is real and home to me...i don't know how to do that. i've never been shown a way.

(part of that is definitely that i just need to read more but i have a hard time starting new media of any kind, especially books. and i'm super picky with books especially so it makes it worse, but urgh i'm trying)

anyway i'm only thinking about this because i realized that trying to design a character that is the embodiment of Deer in Summer Forest is really hard when i've only seen a deer irl a handful of times and all the colors and leaf shapes are wrong for deer when i think of a Summer Forest. i'm designing a god by peering through a cloudy stained glass window into a room that only exists through stories and words. i can make a heart but there's no blood in it.

[break-slash]

Puzzleship JP & KR Fancomic Recommendation List

UPDATE (19-12-2020): Added two more artists and two more titles on the Japanese lists!

I don’t consider myself as someone very tidy and organized, but I just like making lists of the things I love, somehow. Hence this post. I haven’t been in the fandom for long but I thought I’d share some of my favorites primarily from two sites: pixiv and postype. Most of the postype ones are behind paywall, and I will mark them differently.

Some of my favorites come from the same artists, so I’ll also link their pixiv profile on top of my favorite work of them.

(I actually bookmarked a lot and picking them isn’t an easy task, so I will update this step by step. If you see only a link of an artist, that’s the reason, but I can guarantee you will love their works! Feel free to recommend me yours through reblogs or DM as well!)

Japanese

Artist: CYHGM

She is a Chinese and is more active on Weibo (she posted tons of puzzleship there, but my Mandarin is beyond rusty so I could only cry in despair lmao), but she has two fancomics that I absolutely adore of. Those two mentioned fancomics are:

The Past and The Future. You can check my translation for this one here. It tells about Atem who gets transported to 3000 years later before his coronation, and that’s where he met post-canon!Yugi. Just... everything about this comic is so wonderful. I teared up at the last page, not gonna lie ;_;

The Pharaoh and The Fairy: An Ancient Egypt-slash-fantasy AU featuring the S0/TOEI casts. The fairy Yugi was saved by Atem, and it’s an obligatory for fairies to grant their savior’s wishes. However, Atem doesn’t exactly have something he wants of, and this confuses Yugi on how he should repay him back. Pure undiluted sugar, and fairy!Yugi is just so cute.

Artist: Fushitas

Arguably one of the most popular Puzzleship fanartists in the JP fandom (look at their number of followers on Twitter, man), but maybe it’s also due to the fact they were in AoT fandom too. They’re mostly active on Twitter, and if you also watch Zexal, they draw tons of Yuma-centric pairings too. They have released lots of books, and their prices on the reseller sites are... well, let’s just say, unbelievable. Just to show how famous they are. 

From everlasting to everlasting: Set after DSOD. A mysterious figure appears in front of Atem, claiming to be his queen. Everyone in the after life somehow acknowledges this person, which makes him even more confused because he’s the only one unaware of this. On the living realm, Yugi who is on the way to his home got hit by a truck (isekai much??) and when he woke up, he suddenly plays the role of Atem’s queen. I’ve always adored Fushitas’ drawing, and this is no exception. The story is pretty simple, but is still good! The ending of this comic is everything I’ve always wanted from the canon lol. 

The King’s Guest: Ancient Egypt AU. The councils are starting to get worried because Atem shows no interest in marrying someone, so Shimon opens up a “chance” sort of for civilians to become “someone for the Pharaoh to talk with”. The civilian Yugi takes this chance right off the bat, and stuff happens? This one is just so sweet and the misunderstanding later in the story kinda cracks me up. I really love the way they build the two’s chemistry in here.

Artist: usi 

They only draw two puzzleship fancomics, but both are so good and explores the themes I’ve loved from the pairing.

The Lotus’ Devil: Set post-canon with a flashback. It tells about Yugi’s regret in the past where he wanted to show Atem a small pool supposed to be full of lotus flower only to arrive seeing them not blooming. Fast forward to the post-canon, he found out that there’s actually a monster residing on that pool. I really, really loved the ending scene of this one.

Who’s The Detestable, Fortunate Guy Here: I think this is set sometime in the canon story, although the exact timing is unclear. It’s a short comic of Yugi asking Atem to pretend to be his date and go on a “dating practice”. A very pleasant hurt-and-comfort kind of story, and who doesn’t love a story of them dating anyways? :”D

Artist: Houzuki Anzu

She doesn’t draw much YGO, but she has some Arc-V and 5D’s fanarts too if you watch the series! 

Hourglass: Sets after the Memory World arc. Yugi keeps hearing a strange sound inside his mind, and he finds out there’s a huge hourglass standing there, guarded by the will of Millenium Puzzle. Apparently, the hourglass is linked to Atem’s remaining time in the living realm? Anyways, the ending of this comic might look like a cliffhanger, but I personally think it isn’t. I love the theme this comic picks to explore and the way it is presented.

Present: Same setting with Hourglass, but this one focuses more on Atem sorting out his feelings about the Ceremonial Duel and what he has learned from Yugi in general. It’s a very nice extra detail that the canon slightly lacks of, and I just love... bittersweet stuff in general haha.

Artist: Chiriko

Are you the type who wants puzzleship to be full of happiness and fluff and nothing else? Well, she has a number of comics to fill that need! I actually love all of her works, but if I have to pick, these two are my favorite:

...Don’t Ever Leave Me Again: A short story about Yugi having a nightmare of where he was stuck in the fire accident at Otogi’s store. Well... this isn’t a fluff sort of, but it’s... a happy ending still? /shot

[Untitled]: A dialogue-less comic, but this is the sort of post-canon what-if that I really, really like. Atem stroking Yugi’s face while sleeping is just... so soft man....

Artist: Komori Nea

Their art style was one of those that’s very noticeable and has a certain charm on it. They are pretty active on Twitter, and even draws puzzle comics once in a while that haven’t been uploaded to pixiv (which is why I recommend you to check their twitter gallery too haha)

The Soul Stays Awake: Post!DSOD. Atem comes back from afterlife in hoping that Yugi would be as happy as he is, but months after, Atem’s existence still hasn’t been registered on Yugi’s life just yet. Another post!DSOD take that I like which involves the fear of another farewell and uncertainty, but this is a good hurt-and-comfort. I swear, it’ll hurt you just... for a while. :”)

The Attack’s Aim: Set during the canon series. A short comic mostly portraying Yugi’s hidden strength but also the tenacity of duelist that is not only targeted toward the opponent, but also to Atem, without the person actually noticing it. The last page of this one is so... soft and gentle I had to put it into this list.

Artist: caf

Often draw with S0/TOEI style, characters and characterization in mind. Their coloring in illustrations is so soft, plus artists who specialize in S0/TOEI style can’t be found so easily. Their comic style is not a manga-like one and they write the dialogues with handwriting, but if you can read hiragana and write and understand how kanji works (so you can write it on translation machine), their comics are easy to understand!

magenta: S0/TOEI AU where Yugi and Atem are two separate person. A short comic of Yugi lying under the rain as Atem searches for his whereabouts. I really love the way they portray the rain and the atmosphere surrounding the scene. Or maybe I’m just biased with rains in general, ahahaha.

Yuugi and Mao’s Stay Home: Same AU as above. Our two boys has to face the same shit we do IRL in this comic, which is quarantine. Atem offers to cook something for Yugi since he can’t eat outside. You love seeing Yugi eating stuff? This is a perfect comic for y’all. 

Artist: Kkyut

Artist: Kayu(i)

Others:

Gemini: As Atem comes back to the living world, Yugi faces the dilemma of having being separated by “his other self” physically and mentally. A short comic, but the lines the artist used are so... beautiful. Like, the way they describe Yugi’s loneliness?? Just hits the park so much. 

Until The Hourglass Runs Out: Set after the Memory World Arc. As their farewell day goes closer, Yugi decides to give Atem a full control of his body at school so he could spend his time with Jounouchi and the gang more. However, things don’t go as smooth as Yugi had expected. If you like that little teeny weeny pain before the Ceremonial Duel, this comic perfectly suits the taste. 

see you sometime: Post-canon. Mahaad offers Atem a chance to meet Yugi in the living realm one more time, but with several conditions. Firstly, he could only stay for a day at maximum. Secondly, Yugi won’t be able to remember who he spent his time with after Atem hangs out with him. Thirdly, Yugi will not be able to “recognize” this Atem; he will only be registered in Yugi’s mind as a new classmate. A bittersweet comic in whole, but seeing the two having fun like a normal teenager would just makes me grin.

After The Rain: A dialogue-less comic, so everyone would be able to read this right away. A short comic of the two, but still very cute and wholesome!

The Tropics of Horus: Post!DSOD, Atem has to chase Kisara who lingers around Kaiba’s soul and he needs Yugi’s help to bring Kisara back to afterlife, but he has his own ulterior motive. This manga is so dialogue-heavy and might be hard to dissect especially if you don’t understand JP grammar and context, but the time spent trying to understand the meaning behind every words will be worth it. That much I guarantee. Just... everything about this comic, and how Atem’s “ulterior motive” connects to our boys’ adventure in canon series are so well planned. You can also purchase the R18 version in a form of the book here (toranoana)

Christmas Day: S0/TOEI puzzleship hint (dark puzzle???). There’s something in store for Yugi in Christmas, but this one might surprise Yugi a lot. It’s not that the prompt of “Atem gets separated from Yugi temporarily” is uncommon, but it is still a sweet one and makes you smile throughout the pages. 

Korean

All titles mentioned here are not free unless mentioned otherwise. Also I don’t understand Korean except being able to read Yugi and Atem’s name, so my story interpretation might be wrong. If you understand Korean, I’d really love for you input! ;_; 

You can check out on how to buy comics from postype here

Yugi’s 2020 Birthday Anthology: Rain and After End

This is an anthology consisting of four titles, but they share the same (or similar) setting where Atem is reincarnated, but he doesn’t remember his past (or has not yet, depending on how the story portrays it). Some are age-gap (adult!Yugi and high school student!Atem), so you might want to consider that if it’s not your cup of tea.

To Like Someone is to...: Age-gap setting. Mostly tells about how Yugi deals with his feeling as the reincarnated Atem in front of him turns out to have a feeling on him. I like how the story’s conclusion is that Yugi will sort it out slowly while also teasing Atem how he’s “too early” to date Yugi w.

In A Circle: A story about how the two met through an online chess game. Iirc Yugi works in a game company and Atem is sort of a famous e-sports player in this setting. There’s a lot of dialogue in this one and the app sometimes can’t process them very well, but I liked what I can understand from it! not very convincing is it haha i’m sorry i shouldn’t have done this

Familiarity: Age-gap setting, where Yugi becomes Atem’s caretaker. The comic mostly focuses on how Atem notices how kind (or too kind) Yugi is sometimes, but there are times where he feels distant. The plot where Atem gets into a fight with the other kid in his school because the kid mocks Yugi, and how Yugi just... accepts it even when Atem doesn’t want to say his reason of punching the kid is just.... god... I love this kind of age-gap setting like this I guess ;_;

Touchdown: Age-gap setting, but Atem is older in here (university student). The two goes to Atem’s university festival and they think about their own feeling when they got separated. On their way to drop Atem off, he confesses to Yugi, but Yugi is still unsure on his overlapping feeling between the reincarnated Atem and the Atem he knows. Make sure you play Motohiro Hata’s Rain and Aimer’s After Rain during the car scene to make the “rain” mood works even better :”)

Others:

Try For Point: A continuation of Touchdown, where Atem (like, the one from the past) visits Yugi in his dream and helps Yugi in sorting out is his feeling toward his reincarnated self. Atem’s advice is so sweet and there’s one certain line from this comic that I remember very deeply - there’s a part where he says, “If you don’t pull out the card, you won’t know what card it is, right?” to help Yugi clearing out his hesitancy ;w; at this point, I curse myself for not being able to understand Korean

[sammysdewysensitiveeyes]

Once again, I’ve done that thing where I get progressively more annoyed the more I think about a scene in a comic book (yes, this blog really deals with the important, hard-hitting issues), and that’s how I now feel about this scene.

Under a cut, because I have too many thoughts.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad that Pyro is getting some small taste of character development, and maybe the beginnings of a redemption arc.  I’m all for that!  I appreciate this line being in there.  But it’s clunky dialogue for both Iceman and Pyro, and for Pyro, especially, it comes out of nowhere.  Bobby has at least had some build in in earlier issues showing that he’s starting to become more vicious, especially the scene in Savage Avengers (during King in Black) and his revenge-for-Kate maiming of the soldier.

There has been no indication up until now that Pyro has any kind of regret over his past actions (at least not in Marauders, although he did show back regret when he was dying of Legacy), or that he’s starting to learn some kind of “better way” from the X-Men.  There have been no little suggestions of Pyro starting to embrace the Marauders’ mission, or to start to realize that you don’t have to kill people to win.  (He does say that in the Storm-centered issue, while relating a flashback of something that we didn’t actually see happen in the books originally). Pyro has just been bopping along with the group, merrily burning things and getting into fights and drinking, and he suddenly announces that he’s been rethinking his old ways.  It’s actually kind of odd that Marauders is the group that leads Pyro down this path, because they are generally more vicious than X-Men usually are – you’ve got Lockheed maiming people, and Kate solidifying a rifle through two soldier’s legs.  In fact, given the maimed soldiers coming after them as new Reavers, and Verendi continuing to cause trouble, I’d expect Pyro to be arguing that mercy doesn’t actually work – their enemies keep coming back strong than ever.  

So I don’t know where Pyro’s change of heart is actually coming from?  It’s like this character development has been happening in the background, and Duggan suddenly gave us a little glimpse of it, rather than actually showing the readers what’s been happening the entire time.  Like I half expect Pyro to also suddenly announced that he, Iceman and Bishop are now in a three-way poly relationship, and also they all helped Shinobi deal with his father issues while beating up Fenris, so that’s why Shinobi is so friendly and cooperative with the group.  You didn’t actually get to see it happen on panel, but trust me, it happened!      

And the idea of Pyro and Iceman on opposite character arcs, with Bobby becoming more aggressive and no longer holding back, while St. John learns restraint, is potentially very interesting!  But we’ve barely seen any of this in action.  As I’ve said before, Pyro’s supposed role as the loose cannon of the group is mostly an informed trait, he hasn’t really been shown getting out of control or crossing the line.  It would have been interesting to contrast Bobby and Pyro’s different fighting styles, to show how they are rubbing off on each other (yes, innuendo intended).  

Actually, I have a whole list of little ways that Duggan could have seeded Pyro’s “redemption arc” far in advance, so that he doesn’t just awkwardly blurt out things like “I think this group is bringing out the best in me.”:

-        Pyro actually getting out of control in battle and having to be reined in, not just being frequently reminded of the “no kill” rule.  Obviously he couldn’t step too far out of the line without being kicked off the team, but something like Pyro starting to indiscriminantly torch a building, only for Emma to stop him because she senses that there are civilians hiding inside.  Then Emma can mentally yell at him for being careless.  Pyro maybe reflects and feels a little bad, because he will happily kill the hell out of soldiers, but he doesn’t want to accidentally kill bystanders.

-        Storm (or even Callisto) having a “talk” with Pyro about restraint, and how he can work more effectively in battle by using his fire to carefully target enemies rather than just flame-throwing all over the place (although sometimes his “shock and awe” method works, too).

-        Someone like Emma or Bishop actually talking to Pyro about his tendency to jump straight to “kill” when he’s angry.  When Pyro wants to kill Yellowjacket and burn the Verendi kids, he just comically dismissed by both Magneto and Emma.  It would have been interesting to have someone actually talk to him about it.  I’m not looking for a therapy session, but something like Bishop pointing out that leaving Yellowjacket alive to “escape” will be more effective in the long run, etc. etc.  Instead Emma just leaves Pyro standing there, just to reiterate how unimportant he is in this book.      

-        More contrast between Bobby and Pyro’s fighting styles, especially near the start of the book, with Pyro obviously more vicious and aggressive, while Bobby is holding back.  Maybe have let the boys talk about the use of violence, and whether it is justified.  This doesn’t have to take up much room, it could be like one page of after-battle discussion, or even little comments during battle.  Then we could also see their styles gradually change as they come to like and respect each other.

-        Pyro actually having to face some of the horrifically burned victims that he has maimed (or family members of those that he has killed).  I know the Reaver confronting Bobby was part of Duggan’s “Bobby is turning into a badass” arc, but I think it would have been meaningful to have one of the Reavers be a soldier that Pyro has burned.  (In fact, none of the Reavers seemed to be soldiers that Pyro, specifically, had injured, which is odd given his status as the supposed “violent loose cannon” of the group.)  Duggan could have actually done both, and contrasted Bobby and Pyro’s reactions. Bobby is defiant at maiming a soldier that he thinks had a hand in killing Kate.  Pyro is confronted by a soldier that he burned (maybe while the soldier was even trying to surrender or run away), and reflects that he may have gone too far.  

-        Pyro giving some indication that he is starting to care about the Marauders’ mission beyond just a job, and a fun excuse to drink and fight.  You’d think Pyro might have some warm fuzzy feelings about delivering medicine to people, given his slow, painful death from illness.  And maybe feeling empathy for sick humans would show Pyro that he can feel some greater empathy for humans in general.  We do see Pyro put a comforting arm around Proteus when the Moira McTaggert hospital is unveiled in Madripoor, so I’ll give Duggan that (even if that gesture also feels like it came out of nowhere).  

-        Pyro receiving praise from people that he has rescued, and basking in the attention.  Pyro has in the past been written as a show-boating attention hog (and Duggan even reflects that in his “funny” fantasy of Pyro being greeted by an adoring crowd on Krakoa, not that I think Duggan actually put the research in).  During his Freedom Force days, Pyro seemed to get into the idea of being a “hero,” and is very cocky and cheerful when saving Longshot and some kids from a dinosaur.  I think Pyro likes being perceived as a hero, and getting attention, even if he isn’t really a very heroic person.  So show Pyro getting thanked by a mutant child or a little old lady that he’s saved.  Show Pyro feeling touched and gratified by that, since he spent so long as a bad guy.

-        Pyro talking about saving Senator Kelly.  Does he regret it?  Does he stand by his actions?  Is he completely disillusioned by Kelly’s death shortly afterwards?  Or is he happy that he at least managed to change Kelly’s mind.  Pyro probably wouldn’t bring it up himself, but I’m surprised that no X-Men have said anything to him about it.  

-        Pyro talking to his old Brotherhood pals about his experience on the Marauder, maybe showing how his way of thinking is changing, arguing that the X-Men aren’t so bad, and that their “non-violence” can actually get things done.

This sounds like a lot, but even a few little moments or bits of dialogue could have gotten slipped into fight scenes to build up to Pyro’s changing attitude, rather than just have him announce it out of nowhere.  

Of course, the series isn’t finished.  Duggan might have some really interesting development planned for Pyro in future issues!  But I hope that if he does, it’s actually seeded early on and develops organically, rather than coming out of nowhere.  21 issues in, I’m not optimistic.  The sad thing is, I like some of the “funny” things that Duggan has done with Pyro.  I like him gambling with Bishop, Shinobi and Bobby at the Gala.  I like his bet with Storm.  I even like him biting Batroc.  I just wish he would treat the character as something other than an afterthought, and I wish we saw more of Bobby and Pyro’s newfound friendship and development, because it could be genuinely interesting if they actually got some proper time in the spotlight!

In conclusion, I should change my URL to @constantlysaltyaboutmarauders, because that’s all I talk about these days.

[stylishanachronism]

Classic Aedyran and/or Dyrwoodan love story archetypes (and which gods they do and/or REALLY REALLY DO NOT invoke or involve)?

This went extremely sideways and also has no internally consistent organization, but that’s why it’s a series of bullet points and not an essay.

So Aedyrans are pretty obviously into three things: duty, tragedy, and Drama. Like on the surface it’s all austere dutiful piousness but go like, an inch below that and the dramatics just start pouring out.

-I’m not saying Aloth isn’t like, legit anxious about the very real trouble he’s about to be or currently in, I’m just saying a solid chunk of that is rooted in a culture that takes ancestor worship to really weird places, among other things, and literally none of it is as big a problem as literally anybody is making it out to be.

—the appearance of not even wrongdoing but just.... not enough virtue signaling is *just as bad* as actual wrongdoing. (They blackmail that one kid with his mom’s probably-fictional indiscretions? To the point where it kills him even.) Like ‘I saw Goody Proctor vent’ is actually the name of the game here.(1)

That being said, and given soap operas have not been invented, we’ve probably got three major schools of art:

-high brow morality plays in which either our poor ill fated couple, torn apart by (unscrupulous relatives? That hussy down the street? A wild misunderstanding involving a stolen baby who was swapped for another stolen baby? Somebody’s being tempted away from true love here, to whatever end) fate, dutifully come back to each other and are deliriously respectably happy together, or fall into despair and die over their bad choices. Think extra-overwrought Victorian ‘modernists’(which I heartily don’t recommend.), crossed with the soapiest tellanovellas you can imagine (which if you’re into that style of drama, I do)

-fantasy Shakespeare, where all the dick jokes are so old nobody recognizes them any more, possibly with a moral stapled to the end

-eyebrow raising, too much for today’s delicate stomachs, fucking wild shit presented as ‘educational’, with worse shit underground(2), because the veneer is more important than the reality of the thing.

But the major tropes you’re going to see like.... overall, not just in theater, are probably more community based? Like, you fall in love with your neighbor’s kid, she falls in love with you, so you both go to your mothers and they’ll determine whether it’s a good match or not, you technically don’t really get a say in the matter.(3) There’s also probably a lot of superstition involved? Like, if the omens are bad you’re not getting married, but if they’re just okay you may have to wait six months.

-also there’s a lot of hideously complex contract work over who’s marrying into what, among other things.

—divorce isn’t an option! Better hope your relatives pick wisely!

—- more accurately divorce is even more hideously complex and expensive, so unless your spouse is actively trying to kill you it’s probably not worth it, and even then you’d probably have serious second thoughts.

In terms of like, the Ideal Romantic Partner (not necessarily romantic partner, but given you’ve got to be married if you want to(socially acceptably) have sex or have kids, because Aedyrans are wild), you’re probably looking at someone dutiful, who will put their own comfort second to keeping their word, cultured but not smug about it, efficient but thorough, graceful and always perfectly composed no matter what happens, soft spoken without being servile, and the whole package should come across as effortless.

We’re attempting to ignore all the work I’ve done re: shitty Protestants, so we’ve canonically got nobody actually in charge of marriage anywhere, so probably you’re praying to Woedica (to keep your contract) and Hylea (if you need this marriage to be fruitful), and maybe even Ondra (to ensure everybody remains faithful, because Aedyrans are Dramatic, and the fucking moon bedroom is a thing)

As for the Dyrwodans:

Less repression + more inversion ceremonies mean they’re way less dramatic in general, but obviously that means they’re still Really Dramatic, given they’re into swearing eternal feuds over literally nothing every other day. They place a much stronger importance on soul lineages than blood lineages, but whether you take that into consideration re: romance probably depends on what current feuds your family and/or community is currently embroiled in, and how serious they are. And if you have the cash/local cipher to get said lineage traced.

-Theater tropes are going to tend towards the comedic (think 27 dresses, or some other friendshippy romcom) and bawdy, and also fantasy Shakespeare, now with added dick jokes, because the existing ones are still too old to be recognizable, and probably some of the less overwrought Aedyran and Vailian plays, maybe. Also the whole theater plot, because that is a thing, even if they’ve had to bury it both deeper and shallower than Aedyr.

As a general thing, marriage is still mostly a practical thing, and while your families are definitely involved, they’ve generally got much less of a say in it. Outside of high society weddings, which are obviously more alliances than anything else, there’s generally not a contract so to speak; because children belong to their mothers, and nobody much cares where she got them unless she’s already married, when and if she does get married, it’s socially expected that her new spouse will join her household, and splitting up a household is so socially unacceptable murder is a neater, less fraught solution than divorce(4).

Your Ideal Romantic Partner (who probably is romantic, unless you need an extra pair of hands all the time that badly) is clever without being supercilious, with an easy disposition and a good sense of humor, willing to take life as it comes, but also to defend what they’ve got to their last breath, generous and community minded, but still independent enough not to need looking after, forthright but not unkind, and you should be able to tell how hard they work for whatever it is they want.

As for gods: pre everything, you’re probably looking to Abydon, to build your disparate members into a household, and Eothas, to make that household into a home. Post everything, it’s just Abydon, maybe Magran to ask that whatever trials you face make you stronger together. I don’t know, there isn’t a really good option there re: canon.

1: the Readcerans somehow take this even further but in an even weirder direction, this shit is wild, babes, but we’re not talking about them today

2: I’ve got a specific horrible irl example in mind but we’ll go with the theater quest in PoE, turned up to 11, because that lot hasn’t had nearly as much time to get established as Aedyran equivalents have.

3: congrats this is why Aloth is so hard to romance I guess. Nobody has approached his mother about him/he hasn’t asked his mother to approach anyone. Also I have extensive thoughts on the vagaries of social class re: marriage, so like, who exactly does the approaching is probably equally complex!

4: look I didn’t put that quest in there, what the fuck else am I intended to think? ....I mean Obsidian definitely definitely didn’t expect me to come up with polyamory gone wrong but like I’m not reaching when I say that’s the conclusion I came to. Hooray for weddings?

[homosociallyyours]

Nosy meme: 2, 6, 12, 13, 19, 20, 22, 29, 33, 47, 50. 💜

OMG thank you Brynn!! So many questions to answer :) I’m putting it under a cut bc I know it’s gonna get long...AND YES IT DID. 

2) What are you obsessed with right now? Below Deck, this ridiculous Bravo show that follows a charter yacht through an 8 week season of trips. It’s dramatic and full of wealthy people like most Bravo shows, BUT it’s also following the people who staff the boat, not the guests, so it’s more relatable than Real Housewives. I just wrote a one shot ficlet about 2 of the women on one of the more recent seasons yesterday. Ridiculous. 

6) Describe your dream home. I feel like I always have a slightly different answer for this. Right now: my ideal home would be pretty small, maybe 700-800 sq ft, with a single bedroom, painted a vibrant pink and accented with green and white (think climbing vines with tiny, bright white blooms) and a small alcove done in a pale blue that housed a murphy bed for guests. The kitchen would be ultra organized to optimize space (I would NOT be the one to do this) and would be equipped with an air fryer, slow cooker, instant pot, and microwave in addition to standard brand new appliances. There’s a fold down table that can seat up to 4 in the kitchen, though it’s usually just set up for me. The bathroom has a shower done with celadon green tile with a bench seat built in and glass doors. The living room is small and simple, but there’s a big comfortable grey couch and a tv. The whole house has hardwood floors, and the windows each have a bit of stained glass in them up top so the light is sometimes colored as it filters in. There’s a covered carport with a doggie bath area and a chest freezer, and in the fenced back yard there’s a hot tub and comfortable lounging furniture among all the greenery. The house doesn’t have a lawn tho, fuck that. You can’t hear sounds from the street-- it’s a quiet house. I live alone unless i want a visitor. It sounds so nice.  

12) What’s one of your fantasies? Having my dream home as above, lol. But really my most typical fantasy is being able to afford a weekend away at a fancy airbnb by the ocean that allows dogs. It turns out the owner is fat butch dyke who loves dogs and we end up playing scrabble together sitting at a picnic table outside. She offers to cook me dinner; I put together a cheese plate while she grills steaks and broccoli, and we basically fall in love, turning my silly 2 day vacation into a lifetime of slow, sweet, happy love. ://////////

13) Do you have/would you get your nipples pierced? I would, maybe? But also idk bc they’re extremely sensitive already and I don’t want them to lose sensation BUT i also don’t want them to be more sensitive bc that could cause legit problems. 

19) If you could change your name, would you? What would you change it to? Nah, I like my name. Though if I were going to change it I think I would just go by a variation of my first name-- Dottie. 

20) What is something you’re obsessed with? Other than Below Deck? Yorkshire Gold tea. I bought it bc Louis Tomlinson drinks it and my whole life changed for the better. It’s SO FUCKING GOOD, ok? It rarely tastes bitter, even when you accidentally oversteep it, and the flavor and aroma are surprisingly complex for a simple black tea. I have been into teas since I was a teenager, and while I could never entirely give up some of my single origin black teas, Yorkshire Gold is my current (forever?) go to for a daily cuppa. 

22) Tag someone you think is hot. HELP I don’t experience attraction this way anymore :p Literally idk who to tag?? WAIT @mxaether!!! Kams is super hot in all the ways, I adore them so much. 

29) What’s the most overrated movie? In general anything directed or written by a white man who’s made lots of movies. I really try not to watch slogs like that anymore, but the last movie I watched that genuinely made me want to yell was The Dark Knight. Do I remember the plot? NO bc my ass was BORED BORED BORED and when I kinda thought it was about to be over NOPE! there was another hour of the movie left. Fuck that garbage. I haven’t seen it but I’m pretty sure I’d feel the same about that Snyder cut of Justice League. I read a long synopsis/breakdown of the movie (from someone who loved it!!!) and spent the whole time frowning with disgust bc it sounded like The Worst Thing I Could Ever Sit Through. 

33) If money was no object, what would your wardrobe be like? For the most part, not that different? I would have an endless supply of incredibly soft, comfy leggings with bright, eye-catching colors and patterns along with stretchy, form fitting dresses that were equally loud. Soft, loafer style slippers in a variety of colors. All my under things would be high end and custom made (also colorful! no white underpants! ever!) I would also have access to ultra fancy party clothes: stretchy, body con jumpsuits with plenty of sparkle (picture: a coppery jumpsuit that fits tight through the hips and ends with a high waist, the top slit in a deep V but draping softly with a bit of volume. The back has a light, diaphanous, cape of sorts), twirly dresses, etc. Everything is INCREDIBLY comfortable and easy to move in, but glam and fun and whimsically sexy?  

47) If you could marry any celebrity, who would you pick? None celebrity, left beef. :P Truthfully tho it’s Alex Guarnaschelli...she cooks for me, I serve her in any and every way she wants or needs. Would also say Lizzo but I worry that her partying days are still here and I know I wouldn’t be able to keep up. 

50) What’s your favorite kind of weather? Sunny but breezy, almost cool in the shade, for midday. In the evening the temperature drops enough that you’re grateful for a sweater but not so much that you’re ever actually chilled, and around 2am there’s a light but steady rain for an hour or two that’s barely noticeable by noon the next day. 

If anyone read all of these and for some reason wants to send me more, the asks are here

[aloera]

The ask prompt is too long to fit into an ask TT_TT but here's the doc for it docs(.)google(.)com/document/d/1yDI7iFRhOJ8ENv_IwZAo3rDSUqj80EiJROS10RzRbj4/edit

the lengths u are going for this,,, much appreciated you're very sweet!!!

prompts + answers under the cut!!

INTRODUCTION

Name: aloera

AO3 account: aloera

Fandoms you write for: bnha

How many stories have you written so far: 19

FANFICTION PROFILE

What's your favorite fandom to write for? hmm,,, used to do pjo and eah (ever after high) and eah was fun as fuck i will say!!! i think bnha is my fav mostly bc i made the most friends in this fandom :D

What's your favorite character/person to write for? bkg and kirishima!! cannot choose do not make me <3

Fic you'd want to improve? probably what we deserve? i rushed the beginning and the confession is a bit stilted imo

Hardest fic you've written? between lion and men -_- bc there is so much canon compliant stuff i've gotta write out before i get to the divergence and its HARD

Easiest fic you've written? come home to me!!! it happened so easily,,, no second guessing no writers block just vibes <33 was lovely i miss it

What would you say is the most "famous" fic you've ever written? also probably come home to me? its got the most interaction

first line of the first fic you've ever written and published. [not including my 2014 ffnet fics] "The bell rings, class starts, and Katsuki and Midoriya are inexplicably absent." from come home to me

Have you ever done a collab with another writer? yes!!!!! on two separate occasions and its so fucking fun i highly recommend trying it out its the best

Do you beta? if asked but honestly im a shit beta lmao

Do you like joining fic fests/exchanges? depends on what i have going on irl but in general yeah!!

FANFICTION PREFERENCES

Fluff or angst? definitely fluff

"OCs" or "Reader" inserts? reader inserts!! have been going ham on them recently

Blurbs or drabbles? blurbs!!

One thing you love about fanfiction i just. i really love slice of life romance?? and most media doesn't give you that bc its dedicated to plot and action and that's valid!! but fanfiction fills in the gap which is really nice

One thing you don't like about fanfiction most of the stuff i don't like is less about actual fanfiction and more about how people behave about it

What is/are your favorite fandom author/authors? IVE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS ONE!!! TURN IT UP!!!

bnha: hiuythn, rae_tnub, Moniix, Ata_Lanta, wrunic, chezka, PurplePersnickety, surveycorpsejean, mahadevi, arxaris, deviance, Oceanbreeze7, MikeWritesThings, bonnia, wonhaebunny, dinosuns

voltron: hiuythn, Oceanbreeze7, DeerstalkerDeathFrisbee, arahir, dinosuns,

and honorable mention to loveclouds im not even in the haikyuu fandom i just love their fics So Much

these are just the ones off the top of my head i have so many favourites idc if i'm only supposed 2 have one!! die mad about it!!!

What is your favorite trope? secret relationship + relationship reveal til the day i die babie <3 <3

Least favorite trope? hm,,, probably just like. angst lmao i cannot stand 90% of it

A fanfiction cliché that you can't help but love? coffeeshop aus,,,, so good

Do you have a type when it comes to pairings? the otp where its like. piece of shit + himbo = love. ex. krbk, catradora, jade/beck

Favorite setting/au? hm,,, truly i cannot pick one KGKSJNHKj but i really like college aus!! and modern aus!! and roommate aus!!

Explain the meaning of your favorite line of dialogue you've written as if someone hasn't read it in context. “He doesn’t know,” Katsuki says, softly. “My timer stopped and nothing happened. He’s not mine.”

the line is from what we deserve!! it's a soulmate au where your timer counts down to the moment that you meet your soulmate!! bakugou's timer ends at USJ when he and kirishima attack kurogiri at the same time (impulsive kings <33) but kirishima's timer doesn't end until kamino because that's when he accepts himself as bakugous soulmate!! unfortunately, when bakugous timer has reached 0, he turned to see that kirishima's was still ticking and therefore believes that kirishima isn't his soulmate.

this line just,, idk. it's really sad. bakugou is such an action-driven character? if something doesn't go his way he Makes it go his way. he's got this insanely volatile quirk and he's got impeccable control of it!! but his love for kirishima isn't something that he can change and he's not going to ruin kirishima's chance of finding his own soulmate because he loves him and wants him to be happy. i really wanted to focus on how resigned he is? and how unusual that is for a character like him.

Favorite trope/genre to write? again, secret relationship with relationship reveals <33 fluff in general is my wheelhouse!!!

A trope/genre you haven't written but think would be a fun challenge? idk if this counts?? have been working on some dead dove concepts!! its super different from what i normally write so its a cool challenge

The one trope/concept you'll never touch and why probably cheating/infidelity?? it just looks,,, super difficult to write well and i don't have enough of an interest in it to try it out

Which do you prefer to write: longer or shorter fics? shorter!! low attention span gang <3

Ideal length to read? 5-10k?

Ideal length to write? 4-8k!!

How long was the longest fic you've ever written? control fraek is around 28k i think?

Have you ever written an AU? yeah!! i've done restaurant au's, soulmate au's, pro hero aus, and fantasy aus (general, not the bnha fantasy ending)

What's your favorite AU trope? hm,, probably when two people in authority are in a secret relationship? ceo's/uni professors/etc etc

Have you ever written smut? yeah!! was. difficult tho

What's your comfort genre? (the one you fall on most in writing/reading) fluff,,, hurt/comfort,,, fix-it fics with happy endings <3

If you were to start writing in other fandoms, which would they be? maybe jjk?? the characters are really cool!!!! fr i might go back to my ever after high roots i love the characters and setting so Much its so fun!!! idec if no ones into it anymore!!!!!

Is there a trope you think you could be easily recognized by in your writing? i've had people say they saw the mention of buff hagakure and recognized it was me so. probably that skdjhnksjd

WRITING STYLE

How would you describe your style? i tend to use shorter sentences and pretty simple words i think? and i gravitate towards lighthearted concepts that allow for ensemble casts and humour!!

Describe your style in three words romcom but fanfic

Favorite words to use when writing? the word reverent!! fuckin love including it!!

Dialogue tags or no dialogue tags? (she said, he said, they said, etc) dialogue tags!!!

Favorite dialogue tag (other than said, if you use them) again idk if this counts but "they said softly" is unmatched

Long sentences vs short vs a mix short <33

What colors would you use to describe your writing? hm,,, depends on the fic i would say?? control fraek is dark green to me?? kinda like a forest at night yk?? scary but there's still life there. sugar cookies is yellow like early morning sunlight, when it rains is yellowy-orange like a caution sign. not gonna list all of them cause theres a lot its just. do u get it? the colours change based on the vibe of the fic.

What song or music genre would you use to describe your writing? think. i am constantly trying to emulate that moment at the end of wasteland baby when hozier goes "im in love/im in love with you."

What kind of metaphors do you rely on? religious metaphors my beloved <33 they're just so pretty!!! i also love comparing stuff to water for some reason?? like that ocean vuong quote thats like "what are you now?/water." it goes hard!!!

What's something you'd say is experimental in your writing at this time? definitely action!! i have,,, no idea how to write it so anything i do is really just me playing around and seeing what works and what doesn't

Do you prefer to write by hand or to type? i've tried both!! personally i prefer typing because it goes way faster but i will say that writing by hand lets me get words down when i'm going through writer's block

What is your preferred place to write (notebook, laptop, cellphone, etc.)? laptop!!

What app/apps do you use to write (word, notepad, etc.)? google docs skjdnkjh its fine on desktop but mobile is,,,,, disgusting

Do you keep a notebook or file/notes page in your phone/device for notes on your writing? ngl i just have everything organized in my drive?? one folder per fandom and then sub folders for ideas+hcs, unfinished wips, and finished fics. multichaps get sub sub folders so i can organize outlines and drafts

Do you listen to music to help you write? yeah!! playlists organized by fic vibe :D

Where do you usually go to write (bedroom, living room, etc.)? mostly in my bedroom??? but moving around to different stops helps too i think!!

How long does it usually take for you to write? again this depends on what i have going on irl, how attached i am to the idea, my mindset at the time, etc!! i am,, the least consistent person skjnhdkjh.

What's your favorite font to use when writing? times new roman my beloved

Other writing habits? sometimes i'll write in the dark?? bad for my eyes but for some reason it gets the words flowing

CONCEPTUALIZATION

How do you conceptualize your ideas? (See specific moments like they're a movie, writing specific lines in your head, don't know until you put the words on paper, etc.) i tend to get inspiration from movies, books, poems, or other fics!!! sometimes one line just makes me go oh,, i want to write something like that,,, and then it helps me create an idea that makes me feel the same way?? i did this with control fraek!!!! i wanted a scenario where bakugou was cold and calculating and i was like hm. to do that he’d have to be focusing on something important. and from there i was able to flesh out the rest of the idea.

Which comes first: the pairing or the plot? with krbk its always always the pairing,, i'll be sitting there like wow <33 i love them <33 what if one of them had amnesia <33 (which, yes, wip!!) otherwise it's usually the plot!! and i slot in characters that i feel make sense

Have you ever used a prompt? yeah!! used a prompt for wlw week 2020 and it was fun as hell

Do you write around the story around a specific scene you want to get to or do you start from a plot idea definitely the first!!!! i almost always write like,,, a super messy scene thats 90% dialogue, keep it in my head, and then write the entire fic around that one moment

Do you find that you include a projection of some part of yourself in the way you write a character? a lot of the time when i write love confessions or love in general i'll have one of the characters think or say that the other person makes their head quiet? and it's because that's what i feel whenever i'm in love?? a quiet mind. i project on characters yeah but i think most of the projection actually goes to the way that i write love

Do you research some of the things you write deeply, partially and kind of wing the rest, or play entirely by ear (in this case, go with whatever base knowledge of the subject you have)? most of the time if i do research it'll be about the setting (ex. the izakaya in to have and to hold) or if i'm having the characters interact with an object that they like. need to know how to use (me, in control fraek: google. hey google. does someone die if they get shot in the foot??? no???? awesome thank u <3)

Have you ever had an idea for a story and forgot about it? lmaoo yeah all the time i'll find like 500-2k words of concepts in my gdocs like i do. not remember this at all

Is there a trope you think you could be easily recognized by in your writing? probably krbk secret relationship lmao

Are there concepts you've tried that turned out better than expected? yeah!! i fully thought the action in control fraek would be awful but it turned out not bad??? which im happy with

Are there concepts you've tried that turned out worse than you expected? again, what we deserve, i personally think it would have worked out better if i'd paced it slower and drawn out the pining but i. do not feel like going back to fix it so its staying the way that it is. pining is so fucking hard to do AHHHH i get so tired with it!!! im like just date already!!!!

PROCESS

How do you come up with titles? in rare occasions (literally. all my multichaps for some reason) the title comes after writing like .5 words of the first chapter im like YES this is it!!!!! sometimes i write the whole thing and pick out one line that fits (what i did with come home to me) a lot of the time i just. steal from songs or poems that i like

What's your favorite emotion to cause on your readers? i like making people happy!!!! love when people comment saying they're cheered up

What's your favorite emotion to write? lovelovelovelovelovelove

Have you ever cried or felt any emotion while reading something you've written? never cried?? but sometimes i'll rereading my hurt/comfort fics 4. yk. comfort

Do you write in order or whatever comes to you? in order!! unless i have a scene that i Need to write and i'll quickly jot it down so that i don't forget

Usual way you procrastinate while writing? ...doing asks like this, making playlists, discord, watching netflix. what don't i do smh

Do you outline or free write? i am. so shit at outlines. i mostly free write and write lil notes for stuff that i wanna add later

Do you set word goals or scene goals (scenes you want to include)? yes!! like i said i'll write loose notes for scenes that i want to add later!! it gives me something to write towards :D

What do you consider when writing your scenes? what goes into making the atmosphere and mood you want? to set a scene i do two things? the first is like,, the five senses bc that always sets the scene really well and makes it feel Real. i'll visualize stuff in my head like its a movie and write out what i would want to tell the set designer?? if the lights are low, if the space is busy, if it's supposed to exude comfort or not.

for putting forward the character's mood one thing i've found that makes a difference is sentence length!! long sentences are good for making a character seem flustered and nervous or not really in control of their emotions? good for love confessions. short sentences are good for when the character is focused on something or short on time. good for fights!!

What's something you never considered to include in your writing that you can't leave out now? def buff hagakure,,,, once i thought of it i was like. if i don't include this at least once in every single fic how could i look at myself in the mirror!!!!!! how could i face anyone!!!!

How do you start a story? establishing a fact about the character or describing the setting! option a is one single thread of gold, option b is between lion and men

How do you end a story? either by tying it back to the beginning or doing like a funny kind of closing??? option a is sugar cookies, option b is a godless society

How do you get out of writer's block? change something!! move something!! i go from typing to handwriting, moving from my bedroom to my living room, switching wips to work on something else!! i do sprints as well?? give myself like fifteen minutes to write something and sometimes 200 words opens up the way for another 2k. sometimes i'll just delete like 500 words and start fresh

Do you edit? or do you toss your writing out there? i edit!!! i'll go over it myself then send it to one or two betas (bee my beloved <33)

How do you edit? do you use spellcheck, grammar checkers, etc? bee is my grammar checker bc he is So Good with grammar. i use grammarly as well for spellcheck stuff mostly?? sometimes my edit process is just like "am i tired of looking at this!! yes <3" and then i post it

PROGRESS

Do you usually like what you write? yeah!!! i post stuff that makes me happy and that i'm fine with rereading!!! i write stuff for self-indulgence reasons first and foremost and i think my writing reflects that sjhnksj

Have you ever written something you didn't like but posted anyways? nope!! even what we deserve i LIKED even if i see a lot of room 4 improvement!! if i don't like smth it's not getting posted

Do you find yourself rereading your writing often? yeah!! the reason i wrote so much krbk secret relationship is because i loved it but i'd read all that there was so i just,, wrote more,, ngl its kinda nice being in a place where i actually like my writing bc i can write stuff that i want to see and really enjoy it!!

Can you tell us anything about your current WIP? sure!! i'm currently working on when it rains which is a fic where bakugou gets hit by a crying quirk!! i'm gonna be using it to explore So Much of all might's character and his relationships with bakugou and aizawa (and i think some people from his past!!)

Can you give us a sneak peek on your current WIP? “You did something. What the hell did you do?” Kirishima sounds pissed off. It would amuse Katsuki if he wasn’t fighting just to stay standing.

“Nothing he didn’t ask for,” Shinsou replies.

“K’ri… shima,” Katsuki croaks out. “‘S fine. Not him.”

His chest collapses back into the familiar dry heaving after that but Kirishima shuts up. He doesn’t apologize to Shinsou.

Kirishima’s a good friend, stubborn and loyal. He stands by Katsuki’s side like an attack dog, blocking him from the view of anyone ogling at his tears.

The last line you've written Ochako knows more than she'd realized. She knows enough to keep her guard up.

It’s not enough.

Open a wip. what’s the first line?

Katsuki wakes up feeling like absolute fucking shit.

INSIGHT

What's your favorite thing about writing? touched on this before but it's mainly just being able to write the things that i want to see and actually enjoy them!!! actually reread them!!!! i thought "wouldn't it be cool if bkg and kirishima owned a restaurant together" and then i wrote it and i like it enough to reread it!!!! being able to create content for myself makes me. so happy

How do you keep yourself inspired? this is gonna sound narcissistic maybe but honestly i'm just really excited about my ideas and where i'm gonna take them and the idea of "i'm gonna get to That scene" keeps me going through the entire thing. also my friends!!!! i'll talk to them about fics and their reactions keep me hyped up enough to finish!!!!

What is your favorite thing to write? just,, slice of life romance,,, stuff thats silly and makes people laugh!!

What do you think your strengths are in writing? i'm good with dialogue!! i do lil voice acting sessions with myself to make sure everything sounds natural and like it's coming from that character skhjnskj

i'm comfortable with my portrayal of love as well??? i spend a lot of time thinking about what it is exactly that i'm trying to get across and i think it turns out well!!

What are things you wish you could practice more? on one hand i wanna get better at writing angst on the other hand i dislike writing angst. do you see my issue

One way you've improved your writing since you began? characterization!! i think i've gotten better at writing characters that are all Different and bring different things to the table!!! i used to project a lot more and it would compromise the characterization because the character was like 70% me and 30% them? not to say that projection is bad but if you do it too much it just,, doesn't read like the character and from a reader's standpoint the narrative can become less compelling

One aspect of writing you're still working on? writing action!!! i. literally hate writing it but i write for a fandom about superheroes so. Unfortunately i gotta learn.

A piece of writing advice you've learned while writing saw this on another tumblr post but they said sometimes if you're struggling with a scene, the problem is five lines back. i've found that to be true!!!! sometimes u gotta delete a chunk and start a little ways back!! i did this with too busy being yours because i was stuck for Weeks and i deleted like 25% of what i had but it helped me actually finish it :D

A bit of writing advice you can't stand when people shit on show don't tell for being overrated lmao bc when u read their writing you can Tell

Something you wish you knew when you first started writing? ,,,,honestly i kind of wish i could know some of the stuff that i used to when i first started writing?? technically i'm better now but creatively i was must better when i wasn't stressing about whether anyone would like what i was writing. so i guess i wish i knew that i should keep that confidence? i kinda wish that i wasn't as insecure about other people's writing styles because i never used to be!!

Something you've learned in life that you apply in writing there's no point in feeling inferior?? writing one genre isn't better than the other. being in one fandom isn't better than being in another. the kind of language you use or the length of your paragraphs- none of that stuff like. matters. what matters is that you're having fun and happy with what you're creating!!!! enjoy other peoples writing but don't let it make you feel worse about yours :D

[some-jw-things]

if you dont mind explaining, what did the organisation do that it gives you such reaction? im not jw/exjw myself, im just following this blog because i wanna keep myself educated on all sorts of issues, but if you dont want to its absolutely fine

I mean Jehovahs Witnesses are blatantly a cult. That’s been explained pretty thoroughly by a lot of people.

I guess “this organization is a cult” can be hard to understand what that actually means. On a personal level, it defined my entire life. When I introduced myself to new people, the first thing I said was that I was one of Jehovah’s Witnesses. It was my entire identity. I actually think of myself back when I still believed in it as a completely different person than who I am now. I consider my old self to be dead, and so does my family.

When I told them I wanted to leave the cult, they mourned me. They cried for months. They raged and got angry. My sister refused to even look at me for days. In the span of one sentence, I lost my whole family, all of my friends, and my entire community. I was shunned, and they blamed me for abandoning them.

And I knew that would happen. They had always made it perfectly clear that love was conditional. I was told flat out— multiple times— that I would get kicked out of the house if I got disfellowshipped. My dad told me as a child that he would stop supporting me if I ever went to college, because every Witness he knows who’s ever gone has left the Truth. He also told me that the day I turned eighteen he would make me pay rent to keep living in his house unless I was preaching full time. All of that later turned out to be empty threats and a doctor told me that last part was actually illegal, but my family made sure I grew up believing it.

I was only loved so long as I followed the rules. This is standard practice for Jehovah’s Witnesses. I am lucky I got off as light as I did and wasn’t kicked out on the street. Even that only happened due to a technicality and how obviously mentally ill I was at that point.

Jehovah’s Witnesses’ theology is the reason I started self-harming. I was afab and when I was fifteen I spent a month asking why God thought women were innately lesser than men. That culminated in a big family discussion where I got anxious enough to start scratching at my lip over and over until I had a massive gash. My family watched. My mother made a token protest that I listened to for about three seconds. I walked away from that conversation with the knowledge that I needed to keep my mouth shut because certain questions were actually not allowed and a brand new bad habit.

I created an entire system for myself based on rigid discipline and punishment and the idea that any mistake meant I didn’t deserve to feel un-miserable, which is exactly the sort of mentality that this all-or-nothing religious purism breeds.

I was institutionalized in hospital psychiatric wards four times in the year after I left, and one more time about a year after that. The high school attempted to put me in foster care then, out of concern for my safety if I continued living in that environment. My mother supported the idea

The first time I remember sincerely contemplating suicide was when I was thirteen. My thoughts then were just that I figured I would never be able to hold off killing myself long enough to live to be eighteen. I felt trapped. I was specifically thinking I would never have the guts to be able to pry myself out of the Org and so I would be stuck in it forever. The JW lifestyle is miserable in a way I can’t express

I have comforted my little sister while she’s had a break down crying in the bathroom during meeting because the talk was about Armageddon and she didn’t think our dad would make it into Paradise. She had to stop attending public school because of panic attacks. She was suicidal too at one point, but our mom thought she wasn’t as bad as me and therefore was making it up for attention

Jehovah’s Witnesses by and large treat mental illness with prayer and talking to the elders. The majority of teenage girls in my congregation had severe unaddressed issues. The Society has whole articles on how sometimes the answer IS demonic possession. Their version of Paradise is a eugenics fantasy

At one point an elder comforted my family by telling them that Jehovah likely didn’t view my choice to leave as legitimate due to my mental issues. They have official articles calling all apostates “mentally diseased,” and how am I supposed to argue why that’s wrong?

The majority of Jehovah’s Witnesses’ teachings are bigoted and hateful. They have a cute little kids cartoon that compares the evil gays to terrorists. I was taught the mark of Cain and curse of Esau were responsible for the existence of other races. JW women are required to submit to their husbands and fathers no matter what, and divorce is a sin that will get you shunned. Trans people are forced to live as their agab, gay people have to remain celibate and never date. The elders reserve the right to out you to whoever they want, whenever they want.

There have been so many talks that have sent me running off somewhere private to cry and panic

There’s this little girl in the hall who was friends with my sister. She had needed a blood transfusion when she was a baby. Her parents had been willing to let her die, but the courts stepped in and took her away for a few days. She was given the blood transfusion, lived, and at thirteen had a crying breakdown in the middle of the hall because the talk had just said she would never make it into Paradise now. Usually though, if you’re old enough to speak for yourself, they let you die

My parents have had three bankruptcies and they mock me for saving money. They live as if the world is going to end at any moment. There’s no such thing as a future

The world has been about to end since my grandma was little. That’s a running joke. She’s lived through more changes to the Org than I’ll ever know about. My family has been ruthlessly controlled by this organization for generations. My family aren’t allowed to accept me even if they wanted to. I’ve seen this Org ruin so many people’s lives in a whole variety of ways. Three other kids I grew up with have been disfellowshipped since becoming adults. There are others who I don’t think could leave unless they literally ran away in secret

JW ideology loans itself to a certain style of parenting and that has consequences. They control every aspect of members’ lives. Behavior, dress, speech, career, free time, friends, which family you’re allowed to see, what media you can consume. The thoughts you are allowed to have. I’ve been sent into a spiraling panic before over the idea that “I shouldn’t be thinking that”

The Org barred outside ideas and all criticism. They forcibly kept me in the dark. Members are intentionally isolated from not just all outsiders, but also all outside opinions. I was raised in a way intended to make me an outcast everywhere but within the Org. I was told never to read about Jehovah’s Witnesses from any writer other than the Society itself. I was told never to listen to its critics. I was told that reading forbidden books would get me possessed by demons

The Society controlled and defined my entire life and somehow still manages to do so even after I’ve left. Every member I know has been hurt by it. I’m just the one who won’t forgive

[missroserose]

Wednesday Reading Meme: Atmospheria Edition

Hello, tumblr!  I used to post these over on Dreamwidth, but for the past two and a half years, I’ve been reading almost exclusively fanfiction, with only occasional forays into book-land.  I’ve thought occasionally about writing about the fic I was reading, but frankly, most of it was short-ish works intended for easy gratification.  (Not that I'm knocking easy gratification!  But a 3500-word story about a captive Dean Winchester watching an evil version of himself and Castiel have sex is...entertaining, certainly, just maybe not in a way that lends itself to a lot of deeper analysis.) (Well, other than perhaps a judicious use of the "this better not awaken anything in me" meme.  Ahem.) That said! I've read a lot of fanfiction over the past few years, and plan to continue.  So I think I'm going to add a Fanfiction Spotlight slot to the Wednesday Reading Meme format.  Chances are there'll have been something I've read in any given week that feels like it deserves attention.  And in the meantime, I’ve been reading Actual Paper Books lately, largely as a way to wean myself of the doomscrolling habit...and since I’m low-key boycotting Goodreads these days, I figure I’ll try writing about them here.

So without further ado...

What I've recently finished reading The Starless Sea, by Erin Morgenstern.  I'd previously read The Night Circus on a long-ass plane flight, and it turned out to be almost the perfect book for it—pure escapism so heavily drenched in dreamy poetic atmosphere that I could sink into it like a hot bath, and forget for much of the six-hour flight time that I was crammed into a tiny coach seat.  Sea is definitely in that same vein, but this time around I found the thinness and uncertainty of the plot to be rather more frustrating, in a way that overpowered the richness of the atmosphere.   There was still plenty there to enjoy, including a portal fantasy to any bibliophile's world of pure wish-fulfillment, and some meditations on love and change, and one quote in particular on the nature of love that's stuck with me...but I don't think the whole thing hangs together as well as it promised, at the start.  And while (as a fellow author) I completely understand that things change as you write them, when you reach a point in a story where it feels like the author has as little idea as you do what happens next, I find it a little demoralizing. Morpho Eugenia, by A.S. Byatt.  Now that I think about it, this novella makes for an interesting comparison to Sea, because it's similarly atmospheric, albeit less in the dreamy-imaginative-lovers-and-poets vein than the neo-Victorian highly-organized-and-tightly-laced-household-full-of-dark-undercurrents style.  It also does absolutely nothing surprising, plot-wise; it's 180 pages long and I think I'd identified most of the major themes and guessed the major arcs/big plot reveal by page fifteen.  That's not necessarily a fault in and of itself—there's something comforting about a story that does exactly what you expect, and it does a good job threading the needle of ladling on the foreshadowing without (quite) hitting you over the head with what's going on.  But frankly, the narrative stumbles somewhat in its slavish devotion to form.   As an example:  our protagonist is an entolomologist and atheist, penniless in the wake of a shipwreck that robbed him of his specimens and research, who finds himself living on the largesse of a wealthy family whose patriarch has an interest in natural philosophy.  So there are, of course, extensive passages on the nature and habits of various insects (meant to be excerpts from his work), on the potential space for the existence of God in natural selection (meant to be arguments from the patriarch), and even an extensive semi-allegorical insectoid fairy tale (written by another character entirely), which...certainly is all in keeping with the Victorian style, but none of which really feels particularly necessary to the story, here in this age where encyclopedias are a thing and anyone reading a neo-Victorian novella probably has at least a passing familiarity with the Deist arguments being held in the wake of Darwin's publication of On the Origin of Species.  Some cynical part of me wonders if Byatt was trying to write a whole novel, only to discover that the main thrust of her story was nowhere near substantial enough to support one, and even with all the padding she only managed to reach novella length. What I'm currently reading Technically I haven't started it, but The Conjugial Angel is the other Byatt novella in the collection I picked up, so I'm probably going to power through that just so I won't feel guilty about tossing the book on the "to be donated" pile.  If it's anything like Morpho Eugenia, I expect to feel thoroughly "meh" about it, but hey!  Maybe I'll be surprised! What I plan to read next I have two specific recommended-by-friends books in my queue.  The first is Aleksander Solzhenitsyn's One Day In The Life of Ivan Denisovich, which I'm rather looking forward to despite my somewhat uneven relationship with Russian literature.  It was recommended to me by @coffeeandchemicals, and the bits and pieces of Solzhenitsyn I've encountered in the wild make me suspect I'll find his perspective interesting.  And even if I end up hating it, well...it's short. The second is Margo Lanagan's book Tender Morsels, which I know very little about other than it's a dark fairy tale.  But it was sent by @introvertia, who's become quite dear to me, and the theme of it (the jacket cover promises an Edenic tale of three women turned out of their personal Heaven and having to deal with the harsh realities of the outside world) certainly feels appropriate to 2020. Fanfiction Spotlight I was particularly taken with the premise of @zoemathemata's Supernatural/Supernatural RPF story "Folie a Deux".  Sam and Dean Winchester are held captive in Lofty Pines Mental Institution for unknown reasons, slowly being brainwashed into thinking that they're two run-of-the-mill dudes named Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki...or are Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki two men suffering from the delusion that they're supernatural-creature hunter brothers named Sam and Dean Winchester?  And if they're brothers, how do they square that with the fact that they can't seem to keep their hands off each other...? It's a clever idea, with the sort of meta-analytical flavor that's very in keeping with the show itself, and zoemathemata makes full use of the opportunity to break down the many inconsistencies and flaws that any long-running serialized story accumulates but that we, the audience, overlook for the sake of the Plot of the Week.  My one personal complaint about it is that it ends too soon—the most immediate plot threads are resolved but there's a distinct sense that this is the beginning rather than the ending.  The author says in the comments that they didn't continue it in part because they couldn't decide which was the reality—and I totally get not wanting to spend months or years writing a novel-length fic out of what's supposed to be a quick bit of fun—but there's just so much you could do with this idea.  Even without picking sides, it could be a Total Recall-style ambiguously-themed case fic, or a "Frame of Mind"-esque dark psychological thriller, or any number of other options...

What can I say?  I have a weakness for unreliable narrators.

[strxga]

Thoughts & Review on V7C12

This is my personal review for the latest chapter of RWBY. I tried to keep my points objective and organized, and to not take too much time discussing each, and I would sincerely appreciated if it could be given a read. Thank you if you do read it.

Well. It’s finally happened.

After a hazy but relatively positive start, I can say that Chapter 12 is yet another tipping point in a direction. The last chapters of Volume 6 were certainly… A lot, but compared to this one, Volume 6 pales in comparison. This one is… A doozy for several reasons. Let me preface by saying this: I love this show.

I sincerely adore it and the characters, and the reason I’m writing this think piece is precisely because of that. Because it could be so much better, it could be truly a love letter towards Fantasy, anime, and its fandom… But the writers specifically seem to not know how to balance that… But enough ranting. Off to the meatier sections, which I will progressively go from what I liked the most to what I liked the least.

Penny & Winter Scenes

This was, by far, the best written scenes in the episode, and coming from an unlikely pair of friends. Penny has always been emotional despite being a robot while Winter, despite being human, has always acted mechanical. This episode provides a nice contrast between the two, with Penny emphasizing with Winter and trying to get through to her only for Winter to refute her claims, but doing so with a sadness to her face because deep inside she knows James Ironwood’s plan is flawed. In a way, one acts as the other should, but doesn’t. Their awkward but working friendship makes that its mold and comfortably rests atop it.

It’s flawed, but realistically, it’s the best option to take over having to fight Salem with depleted and exhausted forces. The two play off one another marvelously, and this keeps up until Cinder’s entrance (which is another point I’ll discuss later) and the entire time they keep up this great dynamic. Penny asking if it’s going to hurt Fria to transfer her Aura directly to Winter, only for her to once more act as Penny’s foil and say that it doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is following orders and keeping the Relic and Maiden Powers safe.

Team ORNJ Scenes

Thankfully this time, it doesn’t take an entire episode to figure out where Oscar is. Frankly, there isn’t much to talk about here, but what little there is of it is good! A problem is established, and then it’s swiftly solved by Neopolitan’s confidence only for everything to fall apart when the real Oscar appears, confirming he wasn’t taken away but had been actually fighting solo against Neopolitan for the lamp.

It establishes he’s no longer the wimp he once was and is making full use of Ozpin’s cane, but I honestly do feel like it was mostly a cat-and-mouse game with Neopolitan stealing the lamp and him chasing after her, because I don’t think he could’ve beaten her on his own. Team ORNJ then sets up to fight Neopolitan, spicing up the fight between them that’s going to take place in the upcoming chapter.

(Upcoming) Neopolitan vs. Team ORNJ

There honestly isn’t much to talk about this regarding on what happened in the episode, but what it did amazingly is set up the fight. We know Neopolitan is an experienced fighter, and strong enough to go toe-to-toe with Cinder without her using her Fall Maiden powers. We also know that Jaune and Ren aren’t the strongest fighters, but they can still hold their own, and them accompanied by Oscar who is slightly below-average but still powerful enough to hold his own and Nora who is, now that Pyrrha’s gone, the strongest member of what remains of Team JNPR, I think the battle between them and our favorite ice cream girl is going to be a highlight of this season, especially with how it was set-up.

Cinder’s Entrance

This is when we start to get into the ‘meh’ section of this episode. Cinder is usually compelling in small doses, but extremely dull, boring and irritable in extended scenes due to how confident, smug and self-assured she is despite her multiple failures ever since the Fall of Beacon. But from a writing perspective, she was amazing. She showed how fearsome she is yet again and that her cleverness is part of her character and not just a plot device. She sent Ironwood into a paranoia and then tracked Winter knowing he’d send her after Fria.

Now, the only thing I don’t get, but this might be just me having forgotten, is if there was one point in which Cinder actually learned Winter was the next candidate to be the Winter Maiden… After all, prior to this point, Cinder had never met or encountered Winter or even less have known of her affiliation with Ironwood in the sense that she is her second-in-command. I have difficulty following that thread of logic… Unless Neopolitan told her at some point? I don’t know. Not knowing is what makes me ‘meh’ about this scene.

Clover, Qrow & Tyrian’s Fight

Taking away the connotations and context from the fight and looking at it purely from a choreography perspective, the fight was amazing and showed all of the fighter’s individual styles and strengths. As per usual, Tyrian was shown as crazed and psychopathic. There is no rhyme, reason or logic to his moves, and therefore there is no pattern or proper way to attack other than improvise. Qrow was versatile in using both his hand-to-hand skills and Harbinger to get the job done, but who stands up the most to me is Clover.

Clover really shows why he’s the leader of the AceOps. He was strategic in using Kingfisher to constantly tie-up Tyrian a few times (I cannot remember if he caught Qrow though) and managed to actually keep up with both of them for a long time! Had it not been for Tyrian’s interference while Clover and Qrow spoke, well… I’ll mention that later. But the point is, Clover was an absolute king in the battlefield and despite his weapon being a fishing rod, he was able to use it tremendously.

Furthermore, what surprised me the most is the fact Qrow and Tyrian worked so well together. They made-up for each other’s flaws whenever Clover had one of them against the ropes, and this surprises me even more considering the fact Tyrian was responsible for Qrow’s closest brush with death. It was… Surprisingly bittersweet.

(Upcoming) Cinder vs. Penny & Winter

Nothing much to talk about here given that this hasn’t yet happened, but as per usual Cinder is flaunting and showing off her power while severely underestimating her opponents. It has been approximately three years since she last saw Penny and since she was rebuilt stronger than before, not to mention the combat experience she’s accrued defending Mantle from the Creatures of Grimm and the occasional bandit and the like.

Winter has also presumably gotten stronger since then, but the scope of her abilities are still unknown since she only engaged in combat once and it was against Qrow all the way back in Volume 3. There’s so many ideas up in the air regarding this upcoming fight that nothing’s stopping me from theorizing Fria will wake up and use her Winter Maiden abilities to kick the snot out of Cinder.

But I am looking forward to what the fight has to offer. I don’t think any of them will die though. Cinder is still too important to the plot as are Penny and Winter for as long as the setting is Atlas.

Clover, Qrow, Robyn & Tyrian Scenes

Yeah. This whole encounter was… It wasn’t exactly ‘bad’ but I felt like the characters here acted completely out of character. Well, sans for Tyrian of course, given that at his core, he is simply a psychopath.

Clover has always been one who acted as one of the most morally-upstanding member of the AceOps as well as the one who was, arguably, given the most screen time. But for some reason, this episode had him betray everything he stood for and wanted to arrest Qrow even though Qrow… Well, what did Qrow even do for Ironwood to want him arrested? That’s another minor nitpick I have about the situation. But with how closely Clover and Qrow had bonded, you’d think he’d try and make sense of the situation instead of acting as a drone even though before he had never done so.

Robyn went from a pragmatic and understanding leader-like figure to, well… Whatever that was. I sincerely can’t understand her character because she isn’t cohesive at all. The only trait about her that remains is her loyalty to Mantle… But that’s it. One moment she’s against Ironwood, the next moment she’s siding with him… Then she sides against him and then once more sides with him. It’s honestly very boring and for someone who is supposed to be based on Robin Hood, she’s never done anything Robin Hood-esque. Even her aesthetic doesn’t match him. She feels like an incomplete character and the only side of her we see is a temperamental, indecisive leader. She couldn’t even tell it wasn’t Penny who attacked her at the election party even though almost every single part of her, weapons included, are bioluminescent. It’s frustrating, really. She should’ve known something was wrong from the get-go when Ironwood gave the order instead of immediately resorting to blind anger.

Qrow… There has never been an instance in the show when Qrow reacted with direct violence ever since Volume 3 while he was drunk. He saw Robyn attack Clover first and decided that he was going to attack Clover when he was the one being assaulted. Robyn and Qrow, as far as I know, never even had a single interaction together one-on-one, and even if he did, he’s always been one to stand against wrongdoings despite his shady demeanor. It honestly sucked seeing him being so out of character this entire chapter because he is a fan-favorite and for good reason. He has had a good amount of development. But he acted on violence instead of simply sitting down and having a talk with both Clover and Robyn. It simply didn’t make sense to me.

AceOps vs. Team RWBY

Just like before, I will focus entirely on an unbiased analysis of how this fight went and criticizing the things that particularly stood out for me whether bad or good. I’ll also be dividing this into subsections because it’s going to be a more direct and easier way for me to do so, and in case anyone’s reading this, that way they can skip ahead to their favorite fight. I watched this battle several times in an attempt to breakdown as best I could. So, let’s start with the main show and the one we saw the most of:

Ruby Rose vs. Harriet Bree

Arguably the most balanced fight out of the four short ones we saw. While I am apprehensive of aspects such as Ruby’s Semblance being able of breaking through iron barricades so easily despite never having alluded or shown her Semblance doing something like that before… I can give it a pass if anything because it made the environment more malleable. Despite that, however, I did like the fast paced match between the fastest members of their respective teams. It’s a very fast battle, but we can see it fully and what we see… Is a fight in which Ruby is on the defensive the entire time, and a battle she should’ve completely lost.

Ruby landed exactly zero hits on Harriet. Zero. Well… Not entirely. She does push Harriet down once but Ruby… Isn’t good at hand-to-hand combat and it’s been shown time over time that she’s not very physically strong so I’d hardly say that counts as a hit… But it does happen. Yet we’re supposed to believe that she was taken out by running into an ice wall created by Weiss at the last moment and that her Aura broke from that? Harriet landed exactly 5 very powerful attacks on Ruby and yet her Aura never even budged. I find that hard to believe. First Ruby got kicked on the face with enough strength to send her flying towards an elevator and break the doors off the wall.

Then he got double-kicked by Harriet on the gut and sent flying back. Then she got punched right on her back by Harriet’s weapon, Fast Knuckles, which are basically Yang’s gauntlets. An attack like that should’ve, at least, done significant damage to her Aura given it was strong enough to buckle her legs and crash her against the floor, which in and of itself should count as another impact given how hard she hit it. Then after that, Ruby got headbutted on the face by Harriet and then choked on the neck by Harriet with her legs and once again slammed with tremendous force on the floor. But her Aura is unscathed for some reason?

Then in comes Weiss, puts an ice wall in front of Harriet for her to crash into, and somehow that takes her down and breaks her Aura. Objectively, this battle was amazing, but Ruby never even once had the advantage. Ruby should’ve been knocked out by Harriet when her Aura broke, but for some reason… That didn’t happen. Good choreography, however.

Weiss Schnee vs. Marrow Armin

I frankly can say this one was expertly choreographed as well. We finally get to see a fight in which Weiss gets to use her Semblance at its full capacity, and this time she doesn’t abuse ice dust only. While it’s still in the vast majority of her attacks, she also relies on fire dust, which does add a degree of excitement and a fresh take to her battle style. Not to mention she now isn’t as reliant on the Arma Gigas only. It was a good balanced diet of everything Weiss can do! There still was very little of her in actual close-quarters combat, but that’s never been her specialty. She’s more of a mid-ranged fighter than anything else with lots of tricks and gimmicks. As for Marrow– well, Marrow… Could’ve made things so much easier if he had used his Semblance effectively.

When it comes to the battle itself though it was… Very lackluster on Marrow’s end, but then again it is heavily-implied by Harriet that he’s not fighting seriously at all and was purposefully holding back, so perhaps the fact he was defeated so easily really isn’t that hard to believe considering his heart wasn’t on the fight and even then he still put up a good fight. But like with Harriet… I find his Aura breaking so easily to be… Weird? He only got hit one time by Weiss’ homing fire dust… Flames? Bullets? Rays? I don’t know what to call it, but he got hit just once with Weiss’ dust and I don’t really count it as a hit but he got pushed to the wall once, but nowhere with near the same intensity as Ruby getting slammed and thrashed all over the environment by Harriet.

But ultimately while it is a nice fight… Again, I find Marrow going down to a single attack borderline offensive and humiliating for one of the members of the AceOps, but then again this was the only battle that felt like a member of Team RWBY deserved to win, and that’s saying something given Weiss’ battle track record isn’t exactly the cleanest and she’s lost the most fights out of any Team RWBY member when it comes to one-on-one encounters.

Blake Belladonna & Yang Xiao Long vs. Elm Ederne & Vine Zeki

Honestly, this is probably the best fight out of the ones regarding Team RWBY vs. the AceOps. It is nice to see this fight’s choreography because it was quite enjoyable. It was very dynamic and there was a lot of movement which made it flow just like a river of water, but there were also… Lots of inconsistencies regarding the character’s power levels and how they performed in this fight, especially regarding Elm and Vine who, from an objective standpoint if one sits down and analyzes the fight as I did, it’s also easy to tell that… Elm and Vine should’ve won.

While it’s disappointing that we didn’t get to see Vine’s weapon in this final bout, we did see Blake and Yang working together as well as Elm and Vine despite their personality conflicts. There really wasn’t a lot of team coordinating, but both sides performed admirably. Yang & Elm with their brawn and ferocity as well as Blake & Vine with their strategic minds and nimbleness. Now… While I can only praise the dynamics, the battle was, again, stacked against Blake and Yang. Like I did with the battle between Ruby and Harriet, I went through this one thoroughly and counted the amount of hits each character received.

Yang landed a total of three direct blows against Elm. A punch to the face that sent Elm staggering back a few steps, and then she didn’t land a single hit on Elm until she punched the ground with her Semblance, destroying it and sending her flying, but this doesn’t count as a hit because Elm wasn’t harmed when Yang did this. She was only sent flying in mid-air and then Yang and Blake both delivered a single attack on Elm before she fell to the floor, shattering her Aura. Now, we know Elm is basically the Yang of the group, except bigger, stockier and presumably stronger, so with how tough she’s been portrayed up until now, that she was defeated so swiftly surprises me… Especially when she herself beat Yang down to the point her Aura should’ve broken as well.

First she headbutted Yang, knocking her off-balance and later swinging her hammer with enough strength to send Yang, the strongest and bulkiest member of Team RWBY, flying a considerable distance with her massive hammer. This didn’t happen just once, twice or thrice though. Elm hit Yang on the chest with Timber, her hammer, four times, and every single time she was sent flying. We’ve seen the ridiculous feats of strength Nora Valkyrie’s performed with Magnhild. Well, Elm is at least twice stronger than Nora. The fact Yang’s Aura never even budged despite getting hammered on the chest with the heaviest and most powerful hammer we’ve seen in the show is beyond me. It doesn’t help that she got also hit directly by Vine with a rock the size of her entire body and pushed back. If anything, Elm and Yang’s fight is the most balanced one so Elm being defeated is not the issue. The issue is how despite receiving double the punishment, Yang’s Aura never broke while Elm’s broke with just three hits that didn’t pack the same punch and power all of Elm’s attacks which connected did.

Now regarding Blake’s encounter with Vine… Like Ruby with Harriet, Blake landed a total of zero hits against both Elm and Vine. Coincidentally, however, Blake also was also hit the most in this battle to the point her Aura actually did break. Why only her’s though is not something I can answer. I could describe how Blake got hit, but two of those times she got crushed by Vine’s Semblance and slammed against the wall twice, the second time enough to break the wall as well, and the one time she got hammered on the chest by Elm with enough strength to send her several feet on the air, which likely hurt a whole lot since every single one of Elm’s hits pack two massive punches. Now if any of you are curious about how many hits Vine took before his Aura broke…

It was one. He got sent flying to the ground by Yang and his Aura broke. I don’t count the explosives that detonated near him because he was using his Semblance to hold onto them, reducing the explosion’s power and size, but it still destabilized him and sent him careening to the air for Yang to grab. But Yang’s explosives aren’t exactly the strongest anyways so even if they did do some damage, it was still extremely minuscule damage for his Aura to break from a single hit like Marrow’s did. It was honestly disappointing, especially after we got to witness how strong they truly are by perfectly fighting against a Geist in the earliest episodes of the Volume.

My overall rating of the fight is that, objectively, it was amazingly choreographed… But the power level in RWBY is still awful and largely-irrelevant, since there is no instance in which Team RWBY will actually lose a fight even if throughout the encounter they are taking more hits than their opposition. This is an issue they still need to fix…

Team RWBY’s ‘Plan’

This one is… Upsetting. Even more so than the above because, at this point, Team RWBY is devoid of any and all potential consequences of their actions, and frankly I’m tired of it. Ever since Volume 6 their ‘plans’ if they can even be called that, have been compromising even more things for the sake of their so-called righteousness. In Volume 6 they endangered all of Argus and attacked an entire military base, and to this day they’ve suffered exactly zero consequences for their actions. If anything, they got rewarded for their criminal activity by getting a free pass to Atlas. Ironwood didn’t even look in their direction after they did that too. All for their selfish righteousness too, which in most occasions isn’t even right. They just do whatever they can even if it comes at the cost of other’s safety as long as it serves them

Now they even refuse to even see where Ironwood is coming from. They don’t offer him help, all they do is judge him and criticize him both to his back and in front of him and only side with him when it benefits them. They are, physically, mentally and emotionally incapable of sympathizing with others yet they want others to sympathize with them and their hypocrisy only continues to go rewarded. The narrative is very obviously in their favor and attempts to sway the viewers into thinking Ironwood is the villain for… Doing the only few remaining things he can do to try and keep not just Atlas and the Mantle survivors safe, but all of the world. They don’t even bother to see his point. At no moment during that confrontation do they go ‘we see your point and where you’re coming from, but that’s just playing into Salem’s hands and we can’t do that.’ No, all they do is yell at him and tell him he’s wrong, that he’s an awful person.

They don’t see the greater scheme. All they see are their own lofty ideals. They physically cannot save all the people of Mantle. They physically cannot keep the Lamp and the Staff, and they certainly, at this point in time, physically stop Salem if she is coming. They need ships to save the people of Mantle, they need to be on guard duty to protect the Staff and the Lamp. They need to keep Fria safe to keep the Winter Maiden powers from being robbed, but how are they physically going to do that? By ‘standing their ground?’ That is such a nonsensical, idyllic solution. They can’t do all of those things, but somehow, someway, they are ‘right’ because they want to do ‘the right thing.’ Except. There is no right thing thing to do. Not everything is as black and white as they want it to be. And every single time they do this and experience zero consequences while reaping many rewards for their hypocritical and catastrophic reckless decisions, the more faith I lose in the writers and the show.

Team RWBY defeating the AceOps

Like I said above, this was something I really didn’t enjoy… As I’ve mentioned above, it seems Team RWBY’s recklessness and inconsiderate behavior that endangers far more lives than they save will always go rewarded, and here is no different. I’ve gone through the battle several times and the only fight which deserved to be won by a member of Team RWBY was Weiss’ battle against Marrow, and this was largely because Marrow was holding back and implied he could push Weiss more against the ropes if he wanted to. Not to mention that it was due to Marrow’s hesitation Team RWBY even had a fighting chance. Had he used his Semblance at the very beginning he could’ve frozen all of Team RWBY where they were and have them apprehended immediately because they’d be unable to move.

Besides that one, the only other one who could’ve gone in Team RWBY’s favor is Yang’s fight against Elm, but even so it was… 75/25 in Elm’s favor. But the proof is in the animation, and it shows Elm landing far more attacks on Yang than Yang ever did on her, but since Team RWBY’s victory is required for the plot to progress, they were able to defeat the AceOps. Blake’s fight against Vine and Ruby’s fight against Harriet is not something I can even justify if I tried to do so because it was entirely one-sided on the AceOps’ favor. I try to give a lot of leverage to the show and its writing, but I cannot suspense my disbelief for such a one-sided fight, especially when the AceOps dished out punishment after punishment for Team RWBY and none of their Auras broke nor did they look even remotely tired while the AceOps all went down with two-to-three hits that I find hard to believe would take down the most elite Hunters in all of the Atlas continent.

We don’t know the AceOps’ members’ age, but what we do know is that they’ve been serving directly under James Ironwood for years now, and as the most elite, that makes them the strongest military platoon in all of Atlas with several years long specialized training years under their age while Team RWBY received not even a year of formal training at Beacon Academy and fought some Creatures of Grimm on the way to Mistral, had very limited and minor training under Ozma/Ozpin and then had small bouts against Salem and Raven’s forces in the Battle for Haven. Then after that they faced off against more Creatures of Grimm on the way to Atlas except for the one time they teamed-up to fight against Caroline Cordovin’s Colossus. Compared to the AceOps’ rigorous daily training and constantly having to carry out extremely difficult tasks under Ironwood’s leadership, Team RWBY’s training really pales in comparison.

There are many other ways that Team RWBY’s physical, mental or emotional strength without having them win fights they don’t deserve, because at this point it simply feels like no matter what happens, no matter how gray the situation the writing team behind RWBY attempts to portray, the narrative always tries to portray Team RWBY as being in the right even though for the past two Volumes they have been wrong in their methods without suffering any consequences. It’s exhausting and frankly, not good writing. I understand this is said a lot, but in this case, it can really be attributed to bad writing. Team RWBY doesn’t have to win every fight, they don’t have to always come out on top. They don’t always have to be right. And they most certainly don’t have to always be at the center of everything. That’s what side characters are for, side characters that they rarely use at all but keep around and keep increasing the amount of side characters for the plot. It’s overwhelming in all the wrong ways.

By the way, it was Team RWBY who attacked the AceOps, not the other way around. They could’ve stood down, they could’ve calmed down and realized they were in the wrong in this scenario, and Harriet herself said it first. They decide what happens next. Ruby draws out her weapon and escapes the room, forcing Harriet to chase her. They were the ones who forced the AceOps into acting, not the other way around. But the next moment Ruby is begging Harriet to team up with her to fight Salem even though a moment ago she was challenging Harriet to a fight because of her arrogance and unjustified massive ego. At this point, Ironwood might be paranoid and making bad decisions, but Team RWBY certainly poured gasoline all over his paranoia.

Qrow

I think most of the FNDM can agree that what they did with Qrow makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. There are a lot of things wrong with his character this chapter. For starters, at no point since he was introduced did Qrow try to solve the problems he faced with outright violence. He always preferred the diplomatic and peaceful approach because that’s what Ozpin taught him to do and what he genuinely believed was the right step today, because violence leads to panic, and the panic leads to Creatures of Grimm… Except in this case where he… Decided to rely on violence.

But the greatest offender was the fact he teamed up with Tyrian of all people– that’s right. Qrow willingly teams up with Tyrian, the same person who has tried to slaughter both Ruby and himself and has successfully murdered dozens of innocent civilians for his own amusement to attack Clover… What? Then he has the audacity to blame Clover for what happened and feels awful when, to no one’s surprise, Tyrian betrays him and stabs Clover with Harbinger when it was him who knocked out Clover’s Aura in the first place.

It’s awful, and I can understand why so many Qrow fans are enraged by this, because even I was and I don’t relate to Qrow that much. Just as the meme goes, ‘everything happens so much…’

Clover’s Death

Didn’t need to happen. Literally that’s my entire point on this section. It didn’t need to happen, it shouldn’t have happened, and this was RWBY’s writing team attempt at shock for the Volume. Because Qrow is just not allowed to have happy endings or friends. Qrow has no rights mourning Clover’s death when he himself was the direct catalyst for it to occur in the first place. But there is something else that is horrifyingly atrocious in the writing department going on with Clover in the last moments of his death. Seconds before getting stabbed with Harbinger, Clover states that he would trust Ironwood with his life… Then, all that changes right after he is nearing the end of his life.

The moment he realizes his life is fading away, once again, Clover goes against anything and everything he stands for by wishing Qrow good luck when the other claims he’s going to make sure Ironwood takes the fall for what happened, when Ironwood is doing nothing wrong. Ironwood keeps getting painted as the villain even by his most loyal soldier, the one who claimed he would trust the general with his life, but that ultimately doesn’t matter based on the show’s writing. Clover previously also talked about how Ironwood was doing the right thing by making the toughest decisions, the decisions that realistically could and would save thousands of lives unlike Team RWBY’s lofty goals.

Goals which by the end of the episode continue being unanswered. How are they going to accomplish all the naïve promises they want to fulfill? From a non-biased opinion and how they tend to solve the writing’s plot holes in past volumes, what most likely’s going to happen is yet another Deus Ex Machina. In Volume 4 it was the ‘random’ troops that just happened to arrive to Kuroyuri on time to escort the group all the way to Mistral and seek medical first aid for Qrow. In Volume 5 it was Blake showing up with an entire militia of the reformed White Fang as well as Vernal, somehow, still living to get that cheap shot in for Raven to have an opening to knock Cinder off the vault’s cliff. In Volume 6 it was Ruby’s empty speeches somehow convincing Cordovin to give them a free ship so they could travel to Atlas even though Team RWBY and company were responsible for everything bad that happened to Argus because of their selfishness.

[pandoraspocksao3]

What Are You Reading? 04/05/2020

Hi folks,

Well, as of this date most of the world is on lockdown from the coronavirus. I hope you are all well and taking it seriously and practicing social distancing, wearing masks, and STAYING HOME! It’s a stressful time for everyone, some more than others.

So, let’s find some good reads to keep our minds calm and distracted from all the chaos, shall we? 

A couple of Reylo authors have made the leap to published authors now! I’m so happy to see this and hope it continues to be a trend.  So my first two recommendations are not free fanfic, but actual books written by Reylo authors!

My first recommendation: 

HADES AND PERSEPHONE: Curse of the Golden Arrow by @heidihastings​ !

This beautiful story has 44 stunning illustrations by the so very talented Ms. Hastings! I am in awe of her artwork, and it’s a delight to get to read her novel! It isn’t Ben and Rey, but as with so many AUs in fanfic, it’s not difficult to imagine them in the roles, especially with the 44 breathtakingly romantic art. This is well worth your money! 

I’ve linked it to Amazon USA, but if you’re in another country you might have to look it up where you can buy it. I got the kindle version, but I’m thinking about getting the paperback also because the art is so amazing. 

The Plot:

An illustrated fantasy romance novel featuring 44 original drawings. A Cursed Love...

When Persephone is forced into the Underworld, she fears the Dark Lord who rules the shadowed kingdom. A curse has brought them together, and the Goddess of Spring wars against Hades, the King of the Dead. But as time passes, she begins to wonder if he is truly the monster she fears or if he may be the very answer her soul calls out for. 

Lies, jealousy and betrayal combine to keep them apart. Together, they battle against an unknown foe, but is there enough time to reveal the dark truths of the God before his kingdom falls?

My second recommendation is by an AO3 author we know as Elwyngirlie. On Tumblr, she is @hauscrashburn​ I’ve read a lot of her stories and love her style.  When a friend told me she had published a book, I had to check it out, and I’m happy to say it does not disappoint! 

I love a good thriller, and this is a very intense suspense novel with elements of the supernatural in a modern setting. It kept my attention until the very end, and although it isn’t Reylo, again my mind automatically cast Adam and Daisy in the lead roles! 

The Devil’s Bargain by Ellie Jones is totally worth your money (and it’s free if you have Kindle Unlimited).

The Plot:

Justine Thatcher had it all figured out: graduate school, Ph.D, moving to New York. Her life organized to the minute. That is, until the night she escaped with her life, the only witness to the brutal murders. That same night she is thrust into a dangerous world, where magic is real, and toward a sudden discovery that, as a Thatcher, she is wanted as a valuable ally. That as heir to a witch tradition, others will do anything to tempt her to their side. And David will do anything to make sure she chooses his. David: the man from the restaurant who helped create the horror she relived daily. With her family in danger, she has no choice but to take his bargain. He will help her save her sister, kidnapped and held hostage by others who want her power for more nefarious reasons. But nothing is for free and he extracts a terrible price. A novice witch with a scientific mind, she marries the two to find a solution in a race against time to save those she loves. Even as she sacrifices all for them.

My last recommendation for this installment is a fanfic on AO3 which is a fix-it fic for TROS (Lord knows we need them) and it’s a long one-shot that is a feel-good romantic fic that I really enjoyed. Check out Atonement  by @stargazer1116​ and enjoy Ben and Rey as they were meant to be!

*If you want a longer fanfic than a one-shot, then I recommend Force du Coeur by the same author, @stargazer1116​. Fluffy, heartfelt, and suitable for all ages. A great “comfort fic!” 

The Plot:

"Force du Coeur" is French for "strength of heart"...and that it includes "force" makes it THAT MUCH BETTER!

Kylo Ren is the CEO of a successful corporation in NYC. In a power play, his board, led by his uncle, demand that he marry to makeover his dismal public image. Rey is an art therapist working with foster kids in Harlem. When she contacts Kylo for possible support, he proposes a business deal that can benefit them both. He has no idea how much this woman with a fierce heart will turn his world upside down.

If you are looking for a fluffy, romantic, Reylo love story, I'm your girl. The rating will not change. I'm the PG-13 gal of the Reylo fic fandom!

ENJOY!!!! Please reblog to support these authors, and feel free to attach your own fic recommendations. Tell me what YOU are reading! I always love hearing about what people are working on, although there are more fics out there than I could ever read! 

Reading, writing, drawing, chatting, and supporting one another is how we’re going to make it through this.  And if things are getting to be too much, please, please REACH OUT.  I will listen, as I’m sure others will also. My PMs are always a safe place, and I care about my Reylo/Tumblr family. 

[coronashmorona]

COVID-19 Isolation:

Day 0

For a day & a half, my husband (hereinafter “Hubs”) & I pondered (read: lowkey argued about) the boundaries & limitations we should be imposing on our selves & our kids given the increased prevalence of coronavirus in our area. Was avoiding everyone all weekend really necessary? Can we eat takeout food? Should our kids go to school on Monday? What about after-school activities? What about the fantasy baseball draft we were supposed to host next weekend? Or the slew of small children’s birthday parties scheduled for the coming weeks?

Hubs was already planning on working from home, which he does often the last few years after his firm moved to a “hoteling” style office. My work is very flexible part-time & gets done whenever I can fit it in around everyone else’s schedules, i.e. can also take place from home if needed. 

Then, today, we got word that all local schools will be closed for 2 weeks. So at least that’s settled. 

Now, we’re confronting the challenge of how to go about our daily lives under these strange new circumstances. Namely:

The need for some kind of scheduled routine. We have a first-grader & a preschooler. They are absolutely wonderful, but go entirely bonkers if we’re home without any structure. They’re also in completely different places as far as personality, temperament, & educational needs. 

First-grader (hereinafter “6yo”) is kind of a high-strung, type-A, preintellectual. She needs a full briefing about what’s happening every hour of every day. If plans change, she has a million questions about what the alteration entails. (If she’s conscious, she has a million questions, period.) She enjoys so many great activities - artistic pursuits, imaginative play, dancing, & really anything else that involves running around like a banshee - but constantly asks for TV time and/or a snack anyway. Historically, it’s been nearly impossible to set her up with an activity & walk away for more than 10 minutes; she’s just the sort of kid who needs/expects an adult caregiver to provide companionship, guidance, & answers at all times. I’m hoping that having an agenda mapped out for each day will remind her of school & she’ll be more amenable to doing things independently for a relatively short, set amount of time. I can also meet her halfway & do my work at the dining room table while she embarks on a quiet activity. Finally, it sounds like the school district is hatching a contingency plan for remote student learning, complete with daily homework posted online, which is comforting to say the least. 

Preschooler (”4yo”) is a rambunctious ball of energy, but tends to be pretty easygoing overall. If left to his own devices, he’ll wander over to his trains or his blocks or even a book & play on his own. The problem, of course, is that when left to his own devices for too long, he’s probably up to no good. His favorite pastime of late has been playing in Hubs’s office, using some old printers & other computer accessories to “build Robot Marty” (a.k.a. the robot that roams the aisles at Stop & Shop). This activity will be mostly off-limits while Hubs works from home - a deprivation that I’m sure will be ill-received & spawn all sorts of disruptive discovery missions, i.e. let’s see what happens when we stick the end of Mama’s headphones into the electrical outlet. Oyyy. My hope is that if I break out some toys he hasn’t used in a while, & a few shiny new (read: held in abeyance since his birthday) ones, he’ll amuse him accordingly while 6yo & I do our thing. 

Getting fed. I am really, really nervous about consuming commercially prepared food right now. The chances of contracting COVID-19 from it are small, but it doesn’t seem worth the risk. As it is, I’m a bit of a DIY food purist, frequently eschewing restaurant food for my own creations. I have a whole separate blog detailing my experiences with Whole30, in which I take my appreciation for clean-eating to the max in order to improve my health. Tl;dr I cook a lot of fresh veggies & lean meats & try to minimize the amount of processed foods in my diet. Doing this is hard enough under ~ordinary stressful circumstances, let alone a global pandemic. I’ve already slid into some unhealthy reflexive stress-eating that needs to be curtailed ASAP. 

The biggest point with this, I feel, is establishing a meal+snack schedule. Else, the kids will constantly be asking for things to eat, interrupting any hope of sticking to a playtime/learning/physical activity schedule. On certain days spent mostly at home, I feel like all I do is stand in the kitchen cutting fruit, & we will not survive the next few weeks if that’s how it’s gonna be. Granted, this is sometimes exacerbated by my own penchant to use a free minute here or there to chop & roast some Brussels sprouts or eggplant. But there has to be a point at which “oh look, Mom’s in the kitchen” doesn’t automatically translate to “let’s give her something else to do”.

A possible strategy to alleviate this involves cutting a bunch of fruit in advance, portioning it out, & storing it on a fridge shelf the kids can reach, so they can get it themselves. I don’t want to deprive them of food; we just feel that they shouldn’t be eating a constant stream of processed garbage. This is a particular risk for 6yo, who has the metabolism & appetite of a hummingbird & openly fixates on the constant quest for treats.

Dealing with life’s other extenuating circumstances. As others with young children can likely attest, our life is constantly in several different states of flux, limbo, and/or disarray. Some other things we’ve been dealing with lately and/or will be dealing with shortly:

Hubs’s dad is having a hip replacement tomorrow. Several people tried to talk him out of it, but he’s been having terrible sciatic pain for a long time & as long as the surgeon/hospital will have him he feels he needs to go ahead with it. Who will take care of him afterward, & whether/when we can visit, remain uncertain. LATE-BREAKING UPDATE: surgery cancelled. A relief insofar as one variable eliminated.

Last week I definitely herniated/tore something in my abdominal area while pulling the kids in a wagon, & need to see a doctor for that. I’m not thrilled with the idea of being in a highly-trafficked public place, but I also don’t want to put off getting myself looked at & aggravate the injury in the meantime. As it is, I’m trying not to lift heavy things (e.g., our 4-year-old) or spend too much time on my feet, but that in itself is a struggle. Right now my appointment is scheduled for a time at which Hubs has a very important (virtual) work meeting, so I need to reschedule it and/or find someone else who can watch the kids. I’m praying for the former outcome because it begs the question “Who should we be letting in the house?!”

We’re in the early stages of renovating our kitchen. This means that we’ve met with a few designers/contractors about possible layouts & options, inching towards finalizing a plan & selecting one of them to carry it out. It sounds like Hubs wants to move ahead with this process as before, but suffice to say my mental bandwidth is now sufficiently occupied with other shit. 

I’m always in the middle of 187 different things, & it feels like they’re all now on hold: purging the house of outgrown clothes & toys, organizing the basement, learning German, catching up on continuing legal education credits,

Processing the fear + existential woe. None of us have ever lived through anything like this. It is fucked up. I try to take comfort in the fact that the isolation protocols are empowering: by staying away from others who might be carrying the disease, we’re taking control of an uncertain situation. 

But there’s still so. much. uncertainty. Right now, the kids are scheduled to go back to school March 30th. Then their spring break will start on April 8th, to coincide with the start of Passover (as well as Holy Week & Easter). Last year, we hosted a seder for 18 people. Can we do that this time? I have tickets to one concert (locally) in late April, & to another (abroad) in early June - will either one actually be happening?!

These are, decidedly, #firstworldproblems. But I think I join the rest of humanity in being utterly pissed off & daunted by the whole ordeal. Until another few weeks pass, all we can do is wait. And wash our hands a lot. 🧼 💦 🙏🏼

[twitchesandstitches]

Hunk OC ideas pt 2: the sexy thoughts

pretty much the whole point of this character is to have a sexy larger boy for the girls to feed milk to, breed with, and gobble up (generally in that order) so here’s a few of my ideas on that score!

He is probably the most sexually dominant of my male OCs, but that’s still not saying a lot; at most, he acts like the love interest of a romantic novel, sweeping a girl off her feet and attending to her every fantasies. (This is LITERALLY his mentality, too.)

Firstly, his bulge. This is by far the single largest part of his body, with a good chunk of his being focused into it. (It’s possibly even where his brain is centered. His head is LITERALLY empty.) Normally it is retracted into his body, either absorbed into him, retracted in an internal sheath, or literally inflating out of his body when he’s ready for mating. It’s way more flexible, power wise, than any part of his body; he can inflate it, compress or selectively enlarge it to many different size. He may even have several, each for a different purpose. Some are prehensile, others are ribbed/ridged, others are ovipositors.

His bulge is, at minimum, up to twice his height without him pumping mass into it. (So at least 16 feet long and wider than he is.) it can get as big as he requires, and while he needs the biomass to do it, his bulge is a LOT more flexible for this than the rest of him; a small amount can cause a massive size increase. He can make it as small as he requires, though, but he is able to fit it into pretty much whatever space he wants to without there being an issue about him being too large.

Unlike the rest of his body, it genuinely is elastic; things can be pushed into it and be stored without any difficulty, and he has no problem using them for recreational purposes

Note that whatever the form of his bulge, it probably doesn’t much resemble a human one; he likes to extensively customize himself and he has a flighty approach to bio-fashion. (Also he complains about the limitations of a human-style reproductive organ. He complains a LOT.)

More related things below!

He has testicles but they’re not really anything similar to a human’s. He has a LOT of them; more than two or even four, but they’re usually kept internal, only materializing out of his body if they grow too large for him to comfortably retain. Unlike human testicles, they are soft and squishy, wobbly to the touch and filled with his sexual fluids.

They constantly grow bigger, and are perpetually producing more and more fluid; he can produce at least a hundred gallons in an hour, and could theoretically fill a swimming pool without much effort. In a pinch, he can convert mass into this fluid.

Referring to it as ‘fluid’ is a bit of a necessity, since its a fairly unique substance; in its natural form it looks like a thick and glutinous substance resembling rainbow-colored milk, and he can alter its properties; making it sticky, oozy, more lubricated, turn it into a chocolate or honey-like substance, or even make it into a potent fuel for spaceships or other machines. (It’s extremely nutritious, which is a... benefit.)

Most importantly from his POV, he has unsurpassed virility; merely making contact with a single droplet is enough to make a woman pregnant with ten children, even without any modifications whatsover. His fluid is mutagenic and will make minor edits to allow a woman to bear them comfortable and give birth without any pain at all; contact with it creates an intense euphoria that is also extremely relaxing, even soporific; its more potent than the results of taking hallucinogenics. It can have other effects, as well!

It is absorbed into the body upon contact, and can impregnate at this point, but its effects are amplified if sex happens in a more traditional sense; a body full of his fluid instantly absorbs it and becomes pregnant with at least dozens of children, and far more if she is super-fertile in her own right. He has a limited ability to edit the bodies of others when this happens, and generally makes women bigger, bustier, and more in line with their desired self-image.

He is even able to push someone into his bulge and soak them in his fluid, allowing their bodies to absorb the fluid, though he generally prefers to only do this with extreme size differences.

His fluid is chimeric in nature, and the children he produces are generally nothing like him; their actual species is completely random and apart from the mother they have no genetic relation to one another, so that his proximity in an area will rapidly cause a constant population boom without concern about inbreeding.

(Note that he’s bisexual; while impregnating others is his main happiness in life, he’s happy to go with the more masculine-inclined. He might do some ovipositing, in this case.)

[xmagicxshopx]

Moon Monsters - Chapter 1

Genre: Fantasy Adventure, Romance (possible smut later), Comedy Rating: PG-13 Warnings: none at this time Pairing: Jungkook x reader, Jackson x reader Notes: werewolf!bts au. Not idol!bts. Same goes for GOT7. Single quote marks ‘ ‘ are for thoughts and double “ “ are for talking. Additional Notes: I take zero credit for any of the photos used in these chapters. They are just for visual enhancement for the both of us.

Tagging: @justbangtanandjams @och-ako @trcvias @lizardsocial

Summary: You’re the CEO’s new personal assistant. But there’s something strange about him and the company you work for.

SERIES MASTERLIST

Friday morning. The best morning of the entire workweek. Why? Because that meant the following morning, you could sleep in however long you wanted. Even if that meant sleeping the whole day away. Blindly fumbling for your phone, you blearily stared up at it above your head and actually managed to shut the alarm app off without dropping the dang thing flat on your face.

With a loud and overly dramatic groan, you flung the blankets off your body and flung your legs over the side of the bed. Finally standing on your own two feet, you took a moment to stretch and whined as some of your body cracked and snapped way more than it should have. You weren’t that old yet.

Starting your morning routine, your mind wandered to the life changing events that had taken place over the past few years. In the shower while you hummed to your favorite Korean pop group, you couldn’t help but think back to when you first discovered the company you work for now. The Seoul Wildlife Conservation organization. It was a really nice place to work for and the pay was pretty decent for just starting out. Plus you liked the cause you were working for.

Now squeaky clean, hair dried and styled, and dressed for the day, you found yourself sitting on one of your rickety bar stools at your makeshift kitchen island munching on a bagel while sipping a steaming cup of your favorite but cheap coffee. Rickety, makeshift, and cheap. That’s how you had been living for years. But now that things were happening in your life, you had greatly considered trying to find a better......more safer apartment.

This was your first full week of being the CEO’s personal assistant. To say you saw the change in your paycheck would be an understatement. However, you were smart enough to know that you had to earn your keep. If that check was going to stay as fat as it was, then you had to work to maintain it. And so far so good. Namjoon hadn’t given you any scary tasks that overwhelmed you.....yet.

Staring down at your phone, you happened to take notice of the group chat you were in with some of the younger employees of the company. Well at least the ones who work on the top floor of the building. Jimin, Taehyung, and Jungkook. Jimin and Taehyung had instantly taken a liking to you when you first applied and they were wonderful to you during your interview. They loosened you up and got you comfortable for when Namjoon and Jaebum would ask you questions that could normally be intimidating to anyone. But boy did those two know how to argue. Despite both having girlfriends, you would swear Jimin and Taehyung were an old married couple.

And then there was Jungkook. When you were just starting out three years ago, you had often heard stories about him. Some good and.....well.....some not so good. You didn’t know what to think about it or why you even cared. But ever since this past Monday when you literally bumped into him, you really had no idea what to think about him. He seemed nice enough but......what if some of the rumors were true?

Word in the building was, that Jungkook had slept with every female employee in the building. But from what she’d seen so far of the boy, he didn’t seem like a player at all. He had been nothing but sweet to her and even helped show her around and gave her a tour of the top floor of the building where she’d be working from now on. He was so pleasant and easy to talk to. So.....it just didn’t seem true. But what if it was? You just didn’t know what to think.

The three youngsters wanted to take you out tonight to celebrate your first full week of being Namjoon’s assistant. To celebrate your promotion and moving up in the organization. Taehyung called it something along the lines of finally joining the big kids club. You couldn’t help but roll your eyes as you started slipping your heels on and checking yourself one more time before heading out the door. Boys. Such dorks.

The drive to work was a quiet one compared to your usual mornings of blaring the music till your car thumped from the inside out. Your car. Eh. It was average. Not sparkly new but not rusty and ancient either. Sure you could probably use a new one but this one was paid off which meant one less expense hanging over your head. Especially if you were looking into finding a better apartment. The goal was to find one closer to the company building so that you could walk to work instead of using the gas to drive there.

“Hey there, gorgeous. Need help getting out?”

Oh lord. Jackson. Jackson Jackson Jackson. Ever since you started your new position, it seemed like this guy was everywhere you looked. Even now as you were opening the car door to get out, he was right there with a huge grin on his face. You really didn’t know what to think of him. Sure he seemed nice but was it genuine or all an act. Sometimes you wondered if the rumors about Jungkook were really meant for Jackson. But you didn’t have the balls to ask around.

“No thanks, Jackson. I’ve got it. But thanks for asking.”

“Sure. No problem. Say. Its a Friday and I was wondering if you’d want to hit up the town tonight. We could go out and have some street food and maybe just watch the stars at the park. You know. Cheesy stuff like that. You girls like cheesy stuff, right?”

Wow. Okay. You were really staring to believe Jackson was the real player here. However, not wanting to be rude and start making enemies within your first week, you politely smiled and shook your head while replying truthfully,

“Actually I have plans for tonight. Sorry, Jackson. But maybe some other time, yeah?”

Before the male could respond, another male’s voice started booming through the entire parking lot.

“Yo, Jackson! Get your butt in here before you’re late! I’m tired of covering for you!”

Just when Jackson looked up to fire back some kind of dumb insult, you decided to make your escape and slipped away before he could even notice you were gone. Whew. That was close. It was getting harder and harder to avoid Jackson and you didn’t know why but it unsettled you.

“There she is. Miss Korea herself.”

“Yah, Tae. Shut it.”

“Ah but it put a smile on your face, did it not? And you’re giggling. Isn’t she giggling guys? And look. Her face is getting red.”

“Aigoo aigoo. She’s so cute!”

Laughing and feeling the blush spreading from your cheeks to down your neck and the tips of your ears, you tried to playfully swat at Jimin and Taehyung both as they continued to tease you. However, you noticed out of the corner of your eye that Jungkook was kind of quiet. But the smile on his face was cute and....was he blushing too? Or perhaps he was just......nah that definitely looked like a dusting of pink on his cheeks.

“So you ready for tonight? I’ve got the location scouted out and everything. You’ll love this club. I promise!”

You smiled sheepishly as you listened to Jimin explaining the atmosphere of this club he stumbled upon the other day. When it was first brought up, you had tried to politely explain that clubs weren’t really your thing but the boys swore up and down that this club was different. That supposedly it wasn’t loud and obnoxious like most. It was supposed to be more classy but still fun. Yeah. Okay. We’ll see.

After assuring Jimin that you were excited, which you genuinely were despite also being nervous, it seemed to be enough to pacify him to where he bid you farewell and started to literally drag Taehyung away with him. It was kind of scary to think that Taehyung was in charge of everyone’s paychecks. Those two. However, you could feel someone lingering around and turned from the two goofballs to lay eyes on a sheepish and nervous looking Jungkook.

“Um......I was wondering......Would you like me to pick you up tonight?”

He quickly added in increased nervousness,

“I mean you don’t have to say yes. I thought it would just be easier on you if perhaps some of us carpooled. You know. To save on gas and stuff. I know you have to drive pretty far from where you live.”

As much as you would have loved to ask him how he knew where you lived, you quickly decided it didn’t matter right now and that you could ask him later. Right now the poor boy looked like he was going to faint if you didn’t give him an answer right away. So with a sheepish smile of your own and feeling that blush trying to come back to life, you nodded and replied in a small, timid voice,

“Yeah that works. So you have my address?”

This was where he had to scramble and cleared his throat before answering with a small stutter,

“W-Well, not exact address. I just heard you lived pretty far away from here. Just text me your address and I’ll be outside to pick you up. Feel free to text me when you’re ready. I don’t want to rush you or anything.”

Just as you were about to respond, you heard one of the other employees speak up and it was directed towards yourself and Jungkook both. Turning around, it turns out it was Jin, the Vice President of the company. Oh boy.

“Namjoon wants to see the two of you in his office once you get a minute. Nothing major. But I wouldn’t put him off either.”

“Thanks, Jin hyung. We’re on our way.”

Your heart hammered in your chest. Sure you had heard the phrase that Namjoon wanted to see you several times this week, but never before had he wanted to see you along with someone else at the same time. Trying to make a sneaky side glance, you could see where Jungkook looked perfectly cool and calm. At least on the surface. Trying to follow his example, you put on a brave face and the next thing you knew, the two of you were already there at his office door.

With a couple of knocks courtesy of Jungkook, you both heard the soft yet deep voice of the CEO telling you it was all good to come inside. Trying to ignore the faint flutter of your heart when Jungkook held the door open for you to walk in first, you felt your hands grow a bit clammy as you took one of the seats in front of Namjoon’s desk.

Why were you so nervous? This wasn’t the first time you had been in this office. In fact, over the span of the week, you had learned the CEO was quite friendly and warm. Even loving at times. He was like the father of the organization and all the employees were his children. Was that weird to think? Perhaps, but it made sense to you all the same.

“Thanks for coming you two. I’ve got a project for you.”

You watched as the beautifully tanned CEO pushed some documents to the side so that his desk was clear. However, the clearing didn’t last long as he pulled out a folder and set it down to open it and reveal the contents inside. You could feel Jungkook having sat down in the chair next to you and it was all you could do not to glance over at him. If only you could shake off this odd nervousness.

“So I have a statistics project for Kook here but it’s a pretty big project. And since he’s the only one in that department right now, I’m putting you in his capable hands. For awhile, you’ll be his assistant along with being mine. Don’t worry, I’m giving you plenty of time to work on this so that you can still help me with my tasks. This isn’t meant to be scary or overwhelm you.”

Were you that obvious? Was the nervousness written all over your face? Apparently so because Namjoon was making it a point to reassure you that everything was going to be okay. Or maybe that was just the loving father vibe he was always giving off? What caught your attention the most was when Jungkook shifted in his seat ever so slightly at the mention of being in good hands. And now that you thought about it, that made you instantly blush to where you could feel the heat radiating off your cheeks.

‘Being in Jungkook’s hands.....being in his arms......He looks really thick. I bet he works out all the time.....’

“So are you up for the challenge?”

‘His thighs are like tree trunks. I bet he’s super strong. How can such a sweet guy be so......thick?’

You heard someone call your name and a hand rested on top of your shoulder and that was enough to jerk you back to reality. Blinking and looking around, you realized it was Jungkook’s hand that was on your shoulder and Namjoon was asking if you were okay.

‘Wow.....he has big hands......his nails look better than mine.....And his fingers......’

“Jungkook, could you get us all a glass of ice water. I think it’s needed.”

Feeling the male’s hand leave your shoulder left a tingling sensation there. The poor girl. Namjoon had feared something like this would happen. Eventually all would have to be explained but for now.....it was best he waited. He watched you carefully as you slowly came back to the conversation now that Jungkook wasn’t so physically close to you. It was one thing to experience such a thing, but to watch it from the outside looking in was completely different.

After sipping on some of the ice water, you noticed how it helped cool you down. When had you gotten so warm under the collar anyhow? But it was true, you were even sweating a bit. It was probably just from the nerves and the blush earlier. Curse you for letting your mind wander like that. But the water definitely helped.

“So, are you both up for the task? I would really like to see this work out because there’s no better candidate to help Jungkook out. Everyone else is swamped with their own work at the moment and I’m in a position where I can have you helping more than just myself.”

“I’m okay with it if she is, hyung.”

“Ye-Yeah. I mean yes. Of course. I will do whatever you ask of me, sir.”

With a warm smile that you had grown familiar with, Namjoon shook his head in warm amusement before taking a sip of his own glass of ice water before replying casually,

“We’ve talked about this, you can call me Namjoon. Hell, even Joonie if you want. I may be CEO but that makes me no better than anyone else who works here. We are all equals, just with different titles. We are all working towards the same cause. To preserve the wildlife in beautiful South Korea.”

“Thank you, Namjoon ssi.”

“Eh, close enough. We’ll call it a work in progress. Now shoo you two. I’ve got lots of boring papers to sign. Pray for me that I don’t die of boredom or go brain dead. Whichever comes first.”

“Sure thing, hyung. Have fun.”

After an exchange of smiles and soft chuckles, you soon found yourself standing outside the CEO’s office and trying to take in what just happened. Looking over to your left and then your right, you noticed you were.....alone? Huh? Where did Jungkook go? It was like he just.....vanished. Blinking in severe confusion, you shook your head and decided it was time to head to your desk and get to working for the day. Wow. What a morning.

The rest of the day went pretty smoothly. Although you thought it was odd how you hadn’t seen or heard anything from Jungkook the entire time. You didn’t even see him in the building’s cafeteria. That is, till Jackson had shown up. You sat there trying to enjoy your cheaply made cafeteria food when the male yet again tried to convince you to spend time with him this evening.

“I’m sure your plans could be rescheduled. You know? Like take a rain check or something.”

As if saved by the bell, more like the food tray, you suddenly watched a very stony faced looking Jungkook sitting across from you at the table you and Jackson were sitting at with Jackson sitting beside you. You watched your coworker give the annoying male a small, curt nod while giving a monotone greeting.

“Jackson.”

“Jungcock.”

You had already been chewing nervously but when you heard that, you definitely weren’t expecting it and started genuinely choking on your food. While Jackson just looked confused, Jungkook looked worried and had started to get up but you motioned for him to stay put.

“I’m okay. Just----wrong pipe.”

Once he was absolutely sure you were okay, the doe eyed male finally looked away from you to give another stony look at the male sitting next to you. Clearing his throat, he spoke as civilly as he could as he said firmly,

“Jackson, her and I have a project that was handed to us by Namjoon himself. We really do need to get working on it. So if you could, I’d like this time to discuss things with her. Would you be so kind as to leave the table? Please.”

At first, you weren’t sure he was going to. But then Jackson surprised you and actually stood up from the table. You watched with said surprise but regretted making eye contact with the male when he said casually,

“Fine. That’s cool. But think about what I said, beautiful. I’ll see you later.”

After making sure Jackson was gone gone, you visibly relaxed and looked over to see Jungkook glaring daggers at the male’s back. You couldn’t help but notice the way he was gripping his plastic spork; his knuckles white as snow. Between the uncalled for name calling and the heavy tension, something was definitely going on between these two boys. But of course it was none of your business.

“So what should we focus on first for the project?”

“Oh that was just to get Jerk Face out of our hair. I actually wanted to talk to you about tonight.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. Jimin hyung told us to dress casual. But you know him, he goes all out and Taehyung is such a fashionista. Those two don’t know how to dress casual. I know they said this club is more sophisticated but a club is a club in my opinion and there’s nothing sophisticated about a club.”

Watching you sit there and giggle behind your hand warmed Jungkook’s heart. If only you knew what you were doing to him. What you had been doing to him all week long ever since the two of you had bumped into each other. It was like the doors opened and the sun came out from behind the clouds. It was like waking up from a coma after centuries had passed. He had never felt so.....alive.....happy. Hell, he was even giddy at times.

“I’m glad I’m not the only one who realizes this. So what are we gonna do as far as dress code?”

“Eh. I myself am gonna keep it pretty simple. Nothing too flashy. I’m definitely not like Jimin and Taehyung hyung. I’d just dress in whatever you’re comfortable with. Oh, and go ahead and text me your address so I’ll have it.”

“Oh! That’s right. I almost completely forgot about that part.”

The rest of the day dragged on. Dare you say, you were actually looking forward and perhaps even a little bit excited about this outing with the boys. You had eventually ran into Jimin and asked if he and Tae were going to be bringing their girlfriends but he swatted at you and said casually,

“This night is about you and us celebrating your promotion. Besides, my girl is gonna stay home at her place tonight. One of her birds isn’t feeling well so she’s keeping an eye on him. You knew she took care of birds, right?”

Indeed you knew that. When you had first started here and was getting to know everyone three years ago, you had quickly heard about how amazing Jimin’s girlfriend was. She was part of a huge aviation wildlife organization where they studied birds of both domestic and wild nature. It was pretty impressive really.

Meanwhile, Taehyung explained that his girlfriend was really shy and had opted for staying in tonight. He mentioned she was working on her latest novel and you found it adorable how Tae was her one true hype man. Always bragging about what an amazing author she was. And you had to admit, the novels were good. Way better than that overrated Lord of the Rings stuff people fawned over.

Soon enough, you were standing in front of your modest closet and realized how pitiful your social life really was. All you had was mostly work clothing. That was really all you did. You worked and when you weren’t working, you were lazying around in your sweats. And you weren’t about to go clubbing in sweats. No matter how comfortable they were.

After picking just about every color of clothing under the sun and about ten different styles, you settled for something dressy casual. After applying a bit of light makeup and touching up your hair a bit, you deemed yourself ready and went ahead and texted Jungkook that it was clear to pick you up. Was it weird that your heart fluttered at the idea he was going to be picking you up? You wondered what he would be wearing.

Grinning like an idiot, you waited outside in your somewhat uncomfortable fashion heels and kept looking for someone to pull up. Your work heels were far more comfortable because they were designed that way. However, these heels you had always reserved for special occasions and so were rarely worn and therefore not broken in just yet. Your feet were starting to take notice of it.

Before you could focus too much on the pain, a car pulled up and you were shocked to realize it belonged to Jungkook. Dang. You were suddenly nervous about stepping inside. What if you got dirt all over his floor mat? You didn’t have much time to think about it as the male was climbing out with the engine still running. Smiling his bright bunny smile that you had grown to enjoy so much, he said happily but casually,

“You look great. Nice choice.”

“You don’t look so bad yourself, Jeon.”

And boy did he look fine. Black jeans that outlined his thighs perfectly with black boots to match. White t-shirt and to top it all off, a leather jacket that showcased his upper body beautifully. He was like a demi god of some kind. Absolutely gorgeous.

The next thing you knew, he was opening the passenger side door for you and you timidly climbed in. Hearing him chuckle behind you, he said just as casually as before,

“Don’t be so nervous. Jimin and Tae are constantly trashing my baby. I clean her up every time, though. You’re not causing any damage those two haven’t already created.”

Hearing the sincerity and honesty in his voice, you instantly relaxed and nodded timidly with a smile that was just as timid. In no time, the two of you were on your way to the club and you couldn’t help but notice how soothing the silence was. Spending time with Jungkook seemed to be more and more enjoyable. But you could only hope it wouldn’t hinder your progress for this project Namjoon had you two working on.

“YOU GUYS LOOK GREAT!”

You winced as Jimin approached the two of you as you walked into the club. Of course you had been carded so just as you were trying to put your ID away in your purse, the overly dressed blonde came up to you and nearly plowed into you. Yep. He was definitely on his way to being drunk already. The music was so loud that he had to shout over it just so you could hear him.

Sophisticated your butt.

At first you were pretty awkward. Again, clubbing wasn’t your thing. But after a couple of drinks, you were loosening up a bit. Jimin was definitely drunk by now but it would appear Taehyung was the designated DD tonight. Which actually surprised you since you knew how wild he was when he was sober. Later on you learned that next time it would be Jimin’s turn and Tae could get trashed. Speaking of.....

You looked over to see Jungkook sitting next to you with a bottle of beer and a tall glass of water. Hmmm......looks like he was being responsible and being the DD tonight.

Your DD.....

Eventually Jimin had dragged you out on the dance floor and before you knew it, you were giggling and dancing along with him; definitely tipsy and well on your way to being drunk. You never really drank alcohol so to say you were a lightweight would be an understatement. This was actually really fun. You could now understand why the boys liked this place. It wasn’t so bad after all.

All of a sudden, you felt someone pressing their hot body to your backside. Of course it caught you off guard but the alcohol in your system was making your reflexes slower than usual. Hands fell onto your swaying hips and they stuttered a bit to the beat and the next thing you knew; you could feel something......yeah. Wow. Whoever was behind you was definitely male because you could feel his erection against your bum.

“Hands off her, Wang.”

Oh boy.