#the dialogue syntax is so awful here

[zenkor123]

From October 4th, after Gale tells him Peeta knows what pains Katniss but Is lying to himself.

WIP undergoing rework(specifically Peeta's manner of speaking)

"The only time she ‘loved’ me was when either I or the crapitol were forcing me on her, he confessed his infatuation forcing her to love him for food, her heart was always yours Gale it's why he gave Katniss the locket as some pathetic  type of apology, I know the limitations of restraining orders but words cannot describe how much I hate what the runt did to her, I'm sorry” 

I notice a brief puase until Peeta takes a deep breath and begins spilling words out:

“Annie, I don't get it, I was unfairly jealous of her, 13 should be the peak of her life, she has Gale, her family is safe, most of the  people who she knew growing up are alive. She as Mockingjay can fight snow. Yeah I did horrible things to her, she had to do certain stuff after her father died, she survived 2 arenas, but there are people far worse off than her. Like me for example. After my return, only 13 really cared about a doomed mad mutt slowly clawing his way to something resembling sanity. But we all know that she isn't in the bathroom to pee, sighs there's a brokenness to her, she's numb and is as quiet as an avox.

Annie sighs: “The heart works in mysterious ways” 

Tong says to Peeta: “Finnick injured himself rather than be seperated, if she cared about you she never would have left you in that state, fuck her”

“But Tong, the time she did visit I called her a piece of work and said she was small and ugly”

Tong responds: “would that bother Finnick, if Leeg went through what you did I would never abandon her ever. shallow teenage relationships  and actual connections are not the same thing”

“Maybe your right,if I had a love for real and she was hijacked I don't think I could handle the hurt, I would need to be institutionalized. They showed me footage of how I was, it's pretty brutal, If she really was my lover I wouldn’t want to be near me” ” Peeta says. 

“No not real Peeta, do you think this is easy for Finnick, it would hurt but most would never cower. It's not you, I think she'll get over whatever is bothering her" Tong replies

"Have I told you I really love your morphling bottles" Leeg said to Peeta

"Thanks!" Peeta says smiling

"I must say, in your second games, the Mockingjay really had us fooled during the beach"

"I'm confused about that as well"

"My 2 credits: it's called the hunger Games, for a reason though only she knows"

"She's only 17 and she's already gone through hell and back she's just so young. And when she's back she has to be the Mockingjay, If I was her lover she would probably handle the pain of a mutt lover, like a 17 year old" Peeta says.

"In D13 she would constitute an adult, now your infantalizing her, in D12 as you know she hunted for food. But if she isn't mature enough to be by your side when you need her the most

But I don't need her! It's my recovery not hers!

Tong ignores the interruption

Then she was never mature enough to have a lover. Let's compare her to you,

Me?

"Yeah, you suffer from constant episodes, yet you still have the strength to fight through them, despite surviving the capitol you still haven't given up. If someone was hurt I have no doubt you would run to the persons aid. Delly said you were making progress you were no physical or emotional threat to her yet she discarded you no longer had any use to her.

"You think to highly of me are you flattering me, I don't think I could handle a hijacked Lover honestly. This sounds like one of my jackered rants. She was only practical becuase she had to survive, it's District 12, but she feels strongly, she did all this to feed her family and keep Gale alive. She's not naturally a cold manipulator as your portraying, Its something she was forced into just like everyone in District 12. "

Its hard for someone from D13 to imagine, the bater and competition for the daily meal, but do you have any hard proof that she ever had a lover?

"Maybe Gale but no"

Tong says "yeah when did you do anything normal together, without a gun to your head?"

Peeta just nods.

“None that I know for sure, in the arena we had to play up that star crossed lovers strategy and get those sponsors, am I right? Peeta says

“in my opinion yes, acting in love is not the same thing as real love unless your the capitol."

Leeg speaks up "you are perfectly in the right for being mad at Delly for pulling the rug from under you and at Katniss for not doing one thing to help, she could have answered all your questions and don't give me the emotions excuse that just means she wasn't willing to put any effort into you. But that bitch lost her chance, if she cared about you she would feel something when Coin challenged her but that bitch can't feel anything. Why the fuck does she deserve to be the Mockingjay?"

"She doesn't strike me as that much of an actor, but being fed lines by me, or Haymitch and having a gun to your head does wonders for your acting skills. And even before I imposed this, she had to let's just say um perform for supper. That's why I believe she fell for Gale, she didn't need him and their relationship was one of willing equals"

Hmm

"The one good thing about this sickening act is that she isn't as hurt by my mutation as she otherwise would be. I would be a full scale psychological torture device if it was real, as if kneeding her larynx isn't bad enough."

"There's lots of lies in the games, it must be so confusing for you" Tong says

Peeta responds

"That's becuase that's what Panem is, it's a giant twisted game. And even if I was able to ask Katniss which are lies and truth, she probably doesn't even know. When I was verbally assaulting her about if she loved me or not she said "That's what everyone says" now I gave her grief over this but I think that's her honest answer the full details are something she wouldn't want to discuss in public or she felt ashamed over her confusion."

Tong laughs : "from what your describing I don't want to know it makes me feel sick".

"I was hijacked to feel mad, then I felt a longing at times for it to be real, but now I just cringe when I rewatch the lovey dovey part of the games. So much fucking implications, lies and subtext. I'm glad I don't have to touch it anymore."

Leeg says "Never forget that your supposed lover and wife left you to fend for yourself. That's why children in 13 call her catpiss"

Tong laughs.

"I don't think I'm the same person, it's probably a good thing that I'm not, I don't see why she would want to help me. I'm talking about Katniss's Perspective if she was my lover, objectively she doesn't have to do anything"

Leeg "your compassion is why she never will deserve you,we're all talking about her moral backbone which she has none"

Peeta says "ugh, Im glad she can't hear us but even if I was her lover at one point, there's nothing I can do to help her. There are simply some things that I will never know. In all likelihood we weren't lovers but if Gale was mutated I don't think she would behave differently but who knows? So anyway, how's the military sector den going?"

[burningcheese-merchant]

You are very cool I like your writing style I inspire to write as good as you 🥹🥹

Aw come on, flattery won't get you anywhere lol. Seriously though, thank you. I'm touched you would take the time to say this to me (and when anyone does, really). I don't actually believe myself to be that good at writing tbh, there's plenty of superior talent online and off. I've even read stuff on here and AO3 that made me downright hate myself lol. I'm just a clown with clown ideas, I'm happy there are people out there who like them

With that said, if I may offer a bit of writing advice despite not being qualified to offer it

Read. That's the best advice anyone can give you, I think. Read lots of books (real ones, not just fanfiction lol). If reading isn't your strongsuit, start small. Read something short and sweet, then eventually go bigger. Read classics, they're classics for a reason. Try out different genres (but maybe delve more into ones you like the most and want to write for). Get a feel for characters and dialogue and settings and the like. Understand different writing tropes. Learn from great authors, see how they made their stories work and why, see what inspiration and lessons you can take from them and their success (there is no shame in standing on the shoulders of giants, we all do it. Even the giants themselves). I've always been a bookworm my whole life, it's why I know so many words lol

Always make multiple drafts. You can half-ass the first one all you want (mine often tend to be just a series of points haphazardly strung together lol), then iron them out in the second, then refine the story and its contents more in the third. Keep going for as many drafts as is necessary. I average about 3 or so before I feel content enough with what I have to post it. I've posted first drafts before, but that only really happens when I'm possessed by demons and they won't leave until the inspiration dies down. It's a matter of making sure the story makes sense, the characters and dialogue seem engaging, there are no spelling errors, etc.

Please learn to spell lol. Not calling you illiterate in any way, I do just mean this as general advice. Grammar and syntax are very important in writing, don't forsake them. I comb through my works multiple times even after I post them just to look for stray typos (I can feel a vein pop out of my forehead whenever I find one, I hate typos so damn much and I hate when I accidentally miss them the first time I look). I know I talk like a fucking bozo on here but that's really just because I feel more silly and relaxed lol. I write actual research papers irl, I can assure you that my grip on language is far stronger than what is presented here (really, I just read a lot. More reading = better vocabulary)

Probably not the most detailed advice, but it's what helps me personally. Writing is a skill that takes practice to perfect; do it enough, with enough passion and the willingness to improve, and you will. I was not born knowing how to write, I just enjoy doing it for some reason lol. Believe me when I say my writing used to be abysmal even just a few years ago. It's just a matter of keeping it up. Do that and you'll turn out great in time.

Work hard, always seek to improve, learn from the masters. Do that and one day you'll be a writer worth admiring, and you'll look back and see that Merchant really wasn't so great after all haha

[justforbooks]

The City Changes Its Face by Eimear McBride

The couple from The Lesser Bohemians return in this innovative tale of two lovers and of London, in all its sadness and grunginess and grandeur

Eimear McBride does extraordinary things with language. The subject matter of her fiction, from A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing onwards, is transgressive. In 2016’s The Lesser Bohemians and in this new novel, not so much a sequel as a variation, she writes about incestuous child abuse, self-harm, suicide, heroin addiction, a miscarriage deliberately induced by rough penetrative sex, and about lots and lots of other sex between a couple whose ages (she’s not yet 20, he’s nearly 40) are likely to give modern readers pause. But what is most startling about McBride’s work is not its dark material, but the way she breaks every rule in the grammar book and gleefully gets away with it.

The City Changes Its Face has a doubled and entwined time scheme. It is the 1990s, north London, an area dirtier and poorer than it is now; we begin two years after The Lesser Bohemians left off. The lovers of that novel, Eily, the teenage drama student, and Stephen, the established actor with a traumatic past, have been living together. Something awful has happened. In the sections headed Now they are having an agonised conversation about that event. They move from pleas and accusations to a row, then to a thrown jar of piccalilli and bloodshed, followed by penitence and confessions and, at last, a reconciliation. This book-long conversation is interspersed with retrospective sections – headed First Summer, Second Winter and so on – in which we are shown, in scattered episodes, how they arrived at this point. As the two narratives converge on the awful event, its nature is gradually revealed. The event is easily guessed, but there is more to it, the final twist having as much to do with McBride’s narrative form as it does with her story.

It’s a complex structure, skilfully controlled. About halfway through, it is interrupted by a movie. The book gives us access to Eily’s interior self; not so with Stephen. In The Lesser Bohemians, McBride got inside his mind with a long passage of reported speech. In the new novel, she manages more adroitly. Stephen has made an autobiographical film. He shows it to Eily and his adolescent daughter (whose return after years of estrangement is an important strand of the plot). Eily describes it shot by shot. While much of the novel reads like a script – lots of dialogue – this section, paradoxically, does not. Eily, putting what she sees on screen into words, merges colour with sound, light with pace, always alive to the shift of a camera angle, to the way music accentuates mood. It’s a bravura piece of descriptive writing.

An inventive framework, then, but McBride’s originality is most striking in the way she handles words. She uses verbs as nouns, nouns as adjectives. On a hot day “the boil outside makes sloth of in here”; on a cold one, a caress is “a skate of chill hands”. Stephen’s damaging history is “the past’s thwart of your now”. McBride coins new words: “blindling” for blindly stumbling. She gives familiar ones new cogency by misplacing them: “all his vaunt’s gone”. She is playful, planting puns and submerged quotations in the stream of Eily’s consciousness. And then she will spin a line in which grubby imagery is rendered lyrical by rhythm: “Down where the foxes eat KFC, and night drunks piss, and morning deliveries will bleep us headachely up from dreams.”

Eily’s sentences end abruptly with no regard for syntax. If a fragment is sufficient to convey a mood, then why plod on to completion? Punctuation is wayward. Word order is unorthodox enough to make some passages read like prose translated directly from the German. The tone shifts between Eily’s whirling inner thoughts and the banality of everyday chat. And there is yet another voice, printed in a smaller font, the still, small voice of that part of Eily that whisperingly tells her (and us) when she is deluding herself.

This novel, with the city in its title, is at its most lyrical not in love scenes but in cityscapes. McBride’s characters are often cold, often rain-soaked, just occasionally getting sunburned on Hampstead Heath. Weather is important, because to venture into public space is perilous but necessary. A dream sequence conjures up the sensation of flying, not by soaring high in the blue but by adopting the point of view of a camera strapped to the underside of a pickup truck swaying down the Holloway Road. Within this teeming urban setting, though, the characters are isolated. Sometimes this means happiness: “We were an atoll of our own.” Often it means confinement. A dark bedsit, where lovers squeeze themselves into a single bed. A shared flat whose uncurtained windows look on to an elevated walkway – nothing green in sight. McBride celebrates the city, its sadness and grunginess and grandeur. London, she writes, “serves itself”, indifferent to its inhabitants, “unceasing in its ever on”.

This is classic European modernism – McBride salutes Dostoevsky, Proust, Tarkovsky, Kundera – but it has been remade in the service of intimacy. Eily, lustful at an inappropriate moment, reflects “what a great thing it is that thinking is private”. McBride, ignoring linguistic convention to bring us up close to her character, allows us the illusion that that privacy can be breached.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[hyukascampfire]

the way i’ve been procrastinating answering this reblog because i was so giddy over it omg. i literally cannot put into words how fulfilling this was to read because 1. i love you (sorry that’s not nonchalant of me) and 2. UR THE BEST READER EVER? you just get it. like you just stay getting things omg. every detail, you picked up on IM SO GAGGED this is a dream. hehe now lemme get into it.

did i intend for this to be a few of my fav parts of the review for me to answer so that it didn’t end up half as long as the fic? yes, but who cares i had a good time >.<;

First of all, your writing is insane. Have i mentioned that?? are you aware of this ??? you have such a unique diction/syntax that i just find so alluring… you’ve managed to set the premise and the tone so well in just a paragraph, im floored ???

hey so actually do u want me dead because this is insane and i’ll be thinking of this for so long. i feel like a kid in a candy shop this is so ♡

it’s so crazy how something so simple as a description of tyun’s eyes and his emotions is able to convey so much, but also it’s so genius… i guess the eyes really are the window to the soul ! your writing is just so wonderfully vivid and in-scene, it’s capturing….

i love describing eyes that’s my achilles heel UGH I JUST FEEL LIKE THEY CAN SAY SO MUCH,,, especially with a character as in is own head like this taehyun. he won’t say everything and he’s good at a mask, but there WILL be signs. (also vivid and in-scene is literally all i’ve ever needed to hear yes i’m writing abt this in my diary)

it’s so immersive and im obsessed. the dialogue is just… yum… it’s so formal, surface level, and kinda awkward at times— you just encapsulated that feeling of small talk and that surprise of seeing an old classmate so well… 

YES EXACTLY i absolutely wanted to capture the awful aura of meeting someone from school that you haven’t spoken to in super long AND you were never really close with AND there’s this weird, charged energy in the air that you can’t explain. awkward asf but ofc you’d try to make small talk yk? so real. i definitely wanted readers to feel that and i’m giddy that it worked >.<!!

And holy shit. the way you describe taehyun is so…. ouuuu… i need to sit down. take a breather. all these little things like “strong brows”, his glasses (tyun + glasses… smths purring) to that paragraph where you talked abt how much he’s changed ??? jesus… you describe him so well it’s actually making me tweak having to put that image together, because its so accurate,,

i was horny for him whay can i say

It’s like every detail is incredibly important here, and that attention/deliberation is something i dont see often !!!

STOP IM CLAWING AT THE WALLS because i literally love you so much and yes, every word is meticulously put in place because i knew that i needed to create suspension AND suspension of belief for readers for it to hit the right way. ily omg you are just a noticer

“Something that makes you feel weird—one of those hair-rising feelings that you cannot explain, but feel innately to your core. A primal hunger being fed, a twitching of his lips, as though vindicated.” this part right here… i cant even begin to explain how much i love it. just that instinctive feeling of something’s wrong, but being unable to put your finger on it ???

THSSSS because in my head, taehyun’s the type of yandere that has a mask PERFECTED. in my head, he wasn’t so good at in highschool, awkward and off-putting, but now he’s polished himself up REAL good, and all you’d get is little moments of like?? that’s weird? or just like that feeling that women get that something is inherently wrong. but he also wouldn’t seem off, very charming and stuff, so there’s kinda a plausible doubt there where you’d think that it’s a you problem & brush it off 😭 i think that’s how he gets away with a lot that he did in this. because he doesn’t seem like the type (which, there is no type but i catch myself reasoning like that all the time with weird dudes)

i was cussing taehyun tf OUT in my head bc bro wtf !!! tires are so expensive… but also. great job ! however at a first read i did try to give him the benefit of the doubt bc idk,,, you never know !

I KNOW he could’ve left the tires out of his master plan </3 that hurt

the shift of perspective of the cabin is just delicoussss urgggghhh like omfg. The mc being so excited for this trip only for it to be flipped in the blink of an eye, and now the place feels haunting, the wind and snow is howling and whipping ?? god you’re so good. 

THIS IS WHAT I MEANNNN you just notice. a lot of time readers will be reading and feel the shift, but not necessarily be able to put their fingers on what it is. which is not a bad thing at all, it’s the intention of a writer, but THERES SMTH ABOUT SOMEONE BEINT ABLE TO NOTICE THE SMALL DIFFERENCES omfg i’m kicking my feetsies over this.

because in my mind i was kinda wondering is this it?! Just like that?!! But nooo… the tension and suspense here is pure art… along with the glasses in the snow. My jaw was on the floor i just can’t get enough of how well executed and smooth your writing is. lets make out pls (consensually ^^)

never that easy 🙂‍↔️ i like to drag it ouuuuut (yes and i’m already at the altar i fear, what kinda ring u want)

i love it. the way you casually write “Could you even drive away in this, if you needed to?” only to switch it over to cute christmas music and cooking ????!! like hello…. Lets go back to that!!! (i love that you don’t obv. the switch in tone is pure whiplash and really cements how helpless the mc is here.) but at this point, oh… im getting nervous…! 

NO CAUSE SHES SO ME like yes i’ll be thinking abt worst case scenario ALWAYS!

when taehyun texted the mc my first thought was what the hell. How the fuck does he have her number. bc if the lack of contact name is any sign, she did not give it to him !! and you know what… i love that you don’t explain this. it really says a lot about mc’s character, because hello!U%#%) you’re not freaked out or suspicious ?? then again, if tyun was knocking on my door, helpless and stranded…. #letsnotsay

because i would be freaked tf out i can’t even get texts from random numbers irl with my tummy doing a lil flip like SHE RLLY SAW HIS NAME IN THE MESSAGE AND DIDNT THINK TWICE? idc, if it’s an unknown number you are blocked 😭 U JUST NOTICE EVERY DETAIL i’m bringing you home with me. i absolutely did want to gloss over the fact that she did not give him her number, because she didn’t even consider that. poor girl LMAO

those physical descriptions of tyun are pure perfection. drooled a bit.  (plus the description of how he smells?? i love a good scent description, i think it can say a lot about a character— and you killed this. “haunting in the way that the wilder edges of a forest could be” ???  i gasped…) (also also, you describing his dimple as a “delicious contrast” against his face…. oh, you get it.)

i love a good smell description and i just know he smells so good n sexy and mm mm mm ! i absolutely use subliminal imagery in little details about characters like this, because it paints a picture in readers’ heads without even having to do heavy work, i just get to be horny over taehyun and say he smells good 🙄!! also YES MAAM oh i need him badly right now… ugh ily and this all is the best coming from u

you know,,, as i started analyzing this a bit more, i realized something; i think it’s so interesting seeing the different ways tyun/the mc perceive taehyun ??? does that make sense?? Reading it back and watching taehyun be like “you never paid attention to me… why did you never look at me?” vs the contrast of the mc being like “he’s no longer lanky… or shy and hesitant like back then. and also his face has changed and his dimple is still there and—” seeing that warped perception just really shows how demented taehyun is… the details here, oh em gee…

HAVE I TOLD YOU I LOVE YOU? have you taken a literary analysis class YOURE TOO GOOD AT THIS i just fell to my knees. i’m so happy i get to yap about all the intricate stuff i injected into this fic for the atmosphere and character development. i just swooned. i 1000% intentionally created a dissonance between taehyun’s perception of himself and MC’s view on him, and MC’s thoughts on him. he has a warped sense of everything, and MC literally does not have a clue. he projects his own obsession and insecurity regarding who he used to be on her when all shes thinking abt is how different one of her old classmates is and how silly it is that they ran into each other like this! he sees things through a cracked lens if you will 😋

the fact that taehyun glosses over his lack of glasses. i am so in love. Just the way he bulldozes past that question and turns it back to her, the way you describe his reaction !!(%97n how many times can i say that im in love with you before it starts to feel creepy….

(well i’ve already told u i love you a few times so i think it cancels out or smth….) and YES he was not going to be acknowledging that incriminating question so better off distracting 😭 he knows better

but mc. girl. I dont care how hot tyun is— i get it, i do— but. Never tell a man you’re alone !!>?????? IN THIS RANDOM ASS CABIN????!! but also, it’s just so telling of how aloof mc is, and how much she doesn’t see tyun as a threat. genius :3

THIS CAUSE SURVIVAL INSTINCT? thats rule number one? but yes genuinely that kinda stuff did not even cross her mind, she had no clue to what degree she was being circled at this point U_U;

also calling the sight of his back mouth-watering is genuinely the funniest thing ever LMFAO #real #NEED (oh and. the fact that the mc is like “at least it’s taehyun here, and not some creep” :D is just. tew good.)

back 🤤🤤🤤 taehyun’s back 🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤

i love that we get absolutely no look into his mind, even as the readers. the only revelations of how he feels/what he’s thinking only come from what he tells us. i’d kill to know what’s going on in his mind through these scenes… 

YES that man has a mask of steel. it’s definitely inspired by this certain face that taehyun does in real life, just like a stone cold one (um hot) that i’m not sure if he does on purpose but jt DOES things to me, and u imagined that a lot here. he’s the type that you will not know what is going on in there until he wants you to.

just to find out that it was from letters he’s written to her before?? holy shit, this is such a cool development to add, and i honestly enjoyed the vagueness of it— it’s fitting, considering the mc herself doesn’t remember either. and jesus… the awkwardness of tyun’s serious ass “lets cuddle or we’ll die” followed by mc basically going “hmm… i guess…?” is just too good. you’re so good at writing tension,, that little anticipation of what the fuck is tyun gonna do next ?

THE TRNSION YES and also i do wish i did clarify that it was because he wrote to her a LITTLE more, because i fear it seems it wasnt clear to anybody but me, but i do like this vague air that was throughout the fic, so maybe i’ll keep it that way and leave readers question and as lost as MC was hehe.

…. all for them to end up cuddled up in a few hours >__< god. i love this trope. I LOVE THIS TROPE !!! had me twirling my hair a bit hehehe… 

no me too i knew i had to do the community a service with thsi fanfic classic UGH ITS JUST TOO GOOD and with a yandere char? it’s smth else. i was giggling at the screen v much.

“Don’t move.” when i tell you i just. i screamed a little. listen to me…. i don’t know what kinda magic spell you put in this that made taehyun’s characterization so good. the way his words are so curt and simple… the descriptions you use for his voice, the “firm command” feel his voice has— he’s just so domineering that i’m genuinely giggling rn, blushing thinking abt it… he’s just so calculating and powerful and it drives me insane ???? and the fact that the mc apologizes, and all tyun says is “That didn’t take very long.” …. oh my god. meow . meowmeowmeowmeowmeow MEEEEOWWWW!!!!!

MEOWEWW REALLLL this is my all time favorite way to write taehyun. i always seem to slip into it because i just breathe jt like oxygen. in my head, he just has this capacity for cool calculatedness that is SO sexy and alluring, but also chilling on him. my perfect candidate for a yandere aside from soobin, but i think they’d be very different genres of yandere. i started this page off with a cold taehyun and i will die with cold taehyun clutched in my cold dead hands i just LOVE IT

holy shit this shift and reveal,,, im so in love. the continuous buildup and unease that comes in the beginning, just for it to all crash down as his true character is revealed,,, he’s so degrading, objectifying, jealous, possessive, straight up twisted.

HE IS SO WARPED the moment he lets MC see it, you realize how deep it goes and omfg do you feel it. i certainly felt it writing like I was writing at the edge of my seat he’s INSANE

“It’s how you like it, isn’t it?” the. the the the the the uhm uhm uhm. the IMPLICATIONS HERE !!!!!?????

MY GUILTY PLEASURE LINE SHUT UP

Man. i think i genuinely blacked out during the smut. This had to be the most intense, hottest, terrifying smut i’ve ever read. It felt like straight up predator/prey dynamics up in this bitch, i’m stunned.

i blacked out writing it and then i just did again reading this cause WTF I LOVE U i am going to pass out. YES. absolutely predator/prey dynamics between them and i LOVE TO HAVE ANOTHER P/P WNJOYER GIGGLE OVER THIS WITH ME ILYSM

saying the mc needs him???

AHHHHHHH

you’ve caused permanent psychological damage please take responsibility. 

I’m sorry i can’t even handle my own at the moment we’ll have to split the difference

the immediate sobering up and realization that the mc just let tyun do that afterwards is so,,, dreadful,, you captured it so well

i’m so her causw that woukd be me

and my god… that ending. i stood up, applauded, cheered, whistled, screamed for an encore. just pure perfection. having it all crash down on the mc at once, making both her and the readers realize the gravity of the situation, the fact that its so over, i loved it. it’s just pure defeat, especially when it’s said that there’s truly no escape— you were already in his web. Beautifully open-ended, you can’t help but just sit there and think,,, well, fuck. 

WNDINGN IS MY FAV PART i think about this ending all the time. i wanted it as open ended as possible so that we feel as lost and reeling as MC does, because as much as she doesn’t know what’s happening to her, we don’t. and just that last line is my absolute favorite ><!! UGGGGHH

oh, and don’t get me started on this playlist; first of all, the titled being a hozier song?? Specifically it will come back??? All of these songs are so fitting, the playlist could get a review of its own; i’m sorry, but i’m gonna have to steal some of these songs. 

THIS OART i stood up and clicked my heels in glee IT WILL COME BACK IS THE NASTIEST RAUNCHIEST HOZIER SONG in the most like primal way (if u can’t tell i’m such a freak about him bht also that song) and i knew it had to be that, because in my head it perfectly encapsulates that eeriness of taehyun. i’m so gagged and STEAL EM TAKE EM i love this playlist to bits

im so incredibly shocked with the fact that i just read this… for free. your writing is so charming and beautiful, you’re so talented and smart and i seriously am in so much awe at how amazing this fic is !! this characterization will be on my mind forever, as will this fic— i think it’s one of my favorites i’ve ever read on this silly app. simply unreal… 

i personally will be thinking about this perfect 10/10 beautiful and sweet review forever as well, i love you to bits and i jumped when i got this notification like i was in messages w my bbies serene rain and cam and we all geeked tf out cause WDYMMM. thank you so much for this, i know how much work it is, it’s the best thing to have someone go as in depth as you did with this and i will kiss you a thousand times on the lips to thank you and let you know i’ve read it six times over (consensually of course)

IT WIŁŁ COME BAC₭ ⠀,, k.th

it’s a small world. you knew this, but you came to really believe it when you ran into an old classmate at the grocery store on a snowy vacation. how strange is that? even more so when he shows up once more at the door of your cabin, frozen from the cold and needing your help. ִֶָ. ´-

⸺ listen to the playlist

ㅤㅤ៶ㅤ ( 🗝️ ) ･ 6.9k

𝖕airings ˒ yandere!taehyun 𝑥 reader

ℊ ; smut ˒ thriller ˒ yandere

𝖜arnings ˒ dubcon!!, baby trapping, dark & yandere themes, taehyun has a warped view of the world, doggy, rough sex, mentions of breeding, stalking, he’s slightly off putting, possessiveness & jealousy… duh!, hard dom!taehyun, nasty freaky stuff, corruption but like not conventionally?, unprotected sex, mentions of not taking birth control, creampie, biting and hickeys, obsession, DDNE please read these and decide for yourself if you’re comfortable reading! let me know if i’ve missed any tags.

✎୭ ashlynn's note this one is a delicious gift from 🍵 anon!!! i’ve never gone this dark. IM KINDA NERVOUS. i really hope you like it!! please let me know if i miss any tags!

﹙⋞ ﹚... back to the 𝓂asterlist

“Taehyun?”

The man turns around, brow pinched and eyes searching for who’d said his name. When those sharp, intelligent eyes land on you, familiarity passes over them. In the black, there’s a shine, and the shape of them softens into something else; something you’re more used to, on him.

“Hey,” he says. His arms are full of supplies and groceries. Knitting his strong brows together, he says, “What are you doing out here?”

You toss the chips you’d been grabbing before you noticed him into your cart. It falls with a crinkle down onto the mountain of other snacks just like it. You should probably pick up some real food, too. The others shouldn’t have made food your job. If it was up to you, the cabinets would be stuffed with an array of quick snacks. Cooking isn’t really your strong suit. 

“I’m gonna spend a few nights at a cabin here with some friends. We wanted to find some snow, since it never snows back home,” you say, and then you laugh at the absurdity of finding someone from your hometown all the way out here. What are the odds of that? Especially since everybody graduated and scattered out into their own moving lives. “What are you doing out here?”

He reaches up to push his glasses up his nose, an easy smile on his lips. The sight of it brings back memories.

Taehyun and you had not been the closest in high school. You were in different crowds, and he kept to his own anyway. But the few times you two did interact, by some assigned group project or an incidental brief exchanging of words, he was nice enough. 

He changed a lot, though. If someone were to ask you yesterday if you remember him from school, the image you would’ve imagined is at stark odds with the man standing  in front of you now. Where the long, lanky limbs and unsure demeanor of a boy once was, there is now all the confidence of a man. The angles of him are sharper, more defined and chiseled. And, his shoulders… He’s gotten broader, too. The butterflies in your belly are strange; It’s strange feeling like this over a man you might not have looked twice at years ago. He wasn’t ugly by any means, back then. You just… had an eye out for other things. Your palate was different.

He answers, “Touché.” Stepping back, he lets another customer push their cart through the gap between you. “It’s been so long since I’ve seen you. What have you been up to? Back home for break? It seems like everybody from school moved on. It’s nice seeing someone from our class.”

It’s not an answer to your question, but the snow gear and thick jackets in his arms tell you enough. He’s seeking snow, too. Snow birding is really the only way that you might see snow, here. Snow really only ever comes to the mountain peaks. Speaking up over some storewide announcement that makes the bustle around you impossibly louder, you say, “Oh my god, right? That’s what I was just thinking.” You make your tone light—the kind of saturated sweetness that comes with small talk, all manufactured and stilted. It’s not necessarily awkward; you just are clumsy with this kind of conversation. You just ramble to fill the space. “I… Just have been working. Never went to school. Did I tell you that you look good? What have you been up to?”

For a moment, you think you see a glimpse of something… strange pass over his eyes. Something that makes you feel weird—one of those hair-rising feelings that you cannot explain, but feel innately to your core. A primal hunger being fed, a twitching of his lips, as though vindicated. It’s gone in nothing more than a blink of an eye, and barely even was there in the first place. You’ve got a mushy brain from driving all day, anyway. What a strange thing for your mind to make up, though.

“Nothing much. Work for me, too,” he says, shrugging. “Finally got the chance to get away from it, and decided to come out here.”

Another shopper comes shoving themselves between you. Clearly, your catching up is an obstruction on their very important, very urgent shopping trip. Taking the hint, you tell Taehyun, “I get it, believe me. But…” You gesture at your groceries. “I’ve gotta finish up shopping before everybody gets here. It was nice seeing you! I wish I could linger, really.”

He offers you an easy smile, letting his crossed arms fall away from his chest and shaking his head. “No big deal. I’ve got some stuff to pick up, too. Have a nice one, yeah? Don’t get caught in the blizzard, or anything.”

Snorting, you dip your head  goodbye and say, “I’ll try not to.”

❅

The hardwood floors creak beneath your flustered pacing. “Are you serious? How long is it gonna be?”

“I’m sorry? I didn’t expect someone to slash our fucking tires?” Your friend’s voice cuts in and out through the speakers, one of the few hollow sounds in the cabin. Aside from you and the decor, it’s empty. “I’m sorry that you’re stuck out there, but there’s nothing we can do. You’re going to have to wait it out for a few days. At least until we can get there.”

Gritting your teeth, you give her a tactful Okay, bye, and thumb the big red button. The sound of the call ending echoes, too. Curling your arms around yourself, the whole place feels big and haunting. The howling of whipping wind and snow against the windows doesn’t help.

Someone had slashed their tires, and now you’re going to be here alone. For days. If being alone wasn’t already making knots of your belly, that was. It’s startling: going out of your way to slash someone's tires, but making no attempts at stealing the car or anything in it. Either it’s personal, or somebody just wanted to ruin somebody else’s day. Both leave a sour taste in your mouth.

Your every limb goes rigid at a thump, and in the corner of your eye, there’s movement. When you whip your head to look fully in that direction, all that moves in the window is snow like haze and the trees bending in the same violent wind. Nothing but night and the storm.

Beside yourself, you inch toward the window to look closer. Tugging a thick, willowy curtain to one side, you do a scan.

Sat in the snow, dusting over with heavy white flakes as you look, are a pair of glasses. You are not stupid enough to go out and get a closer look. 

❅

With the fireplace roaring, the place doesn’t feel so empty. 

You waited all day for the snow to stop coming down so hard. If you’re going to be alone here for days, you want to go out and spend the daylight away around other people.

Really, you just don’t want to be in this cabin all by yourself. You have a bad feeling. It;s unfounded, maybe. But you do.

The snow does not stop falling, and the wind does not stop blowing it into thick piles. It’s everywhere: the whole entire yard is coating thick with it, and so is your car. Could you even drive away in this, if you needed to? Maybe after thirty minutes of plowing snow. You’ve at least kicked enough of it away from the porch to open the door.

At some point, hope for doing anything but toiling around in here dwindled away. With what embers of excitement for vacation you have left, you tugged on some knitted socks and played Christmas classics off your phone.

You’re still playing them as you decide to cook something up. You’re not the best cook, but what do you have to lose? It’ll only be you eating it. If it goes awry, you’ve still got snacks to make into a meal. 

The kitchen comes alive while you work. You tug out all the pots and pans that the cabin owners provide, clicking the stove on while you dance and hum along to the songs that you’d seemingly come out of the womb knowing. Pulling the fridge open to the song of Silver Bells, you decide on something ambitious and set ingredients out over the counters. 

You don’t even get to slicing before there’s a knock at the door. Three very solid, very resounding knocks. The knife makes a clattering sound as you let it drop to the cutting board.

There shouldn’t be anybody out here. Maybe your friends got the car up and running, and forgot to let you know. Your heart thrums a wild, crashing beat, as you swipe your phone up to shoot a quick text.

At the top of a screen, a text comes in from an unknown number. Your belly does a frantic swoop, a thousand different thoughts swarming and shoving to be the one at the forefront of your mind. 

+1 [678-999-8212]

Hey, it’s Taehyun.

+1 [678-999-8212]

I’m sorry if this is weird, but I’m the one who just knocked at your door. I wanted to hike up to my cabin but I’m lost as hell right now, and recognized your car outside

+1 [678-999-8212]

Thought it would be better to ask you for help instead of a random.

You take a moment to blink at the glow of the screen. Taehyun was the one knocking on your door? That both settles you and kicks up more questions. What are the odds that you both rented out cabins from the same people? The world is small; you’re reminded that a lot, these days. 

Sliding your phone into your back pocket, you head for the door. He’s got to be freezing. It’s coming down hard out there.

The door swings open to Taehyun’s face just as frost-glazed as you expected. His jaw chatters and his nose and cheeks are a deep, winter-pink. Despite it, his mouth pulls into a friendly smile—the kind that illustrates in the humorous corners that he is aware of the absurdity of his situation, as well. He keeps his hands tucked into his pockets, a thick winter jacket zipped up to the top dusted at the shoulders with fat snowflakes just the same as on top of his coal-black hair.

“Oh my god,” you say. A laugh seeps through the cracks. “I’ve got the fireplace going hot. Do you wanna come in? How long have you been out there?” Stepping to one side, you offer him entry into your home. Temporary home, that is. 

He tries to rein in the shivers, you can see it in the smile he’s got plastered on his face and the way he buzzes and trembles around the edges like the bitter cold is trying to push against his skin and escape him. “If it doesn’t bother you,” he says, stepping in past you. When he passes, thick in the air, he smells like smoke and the dark woods—it’s musky and familiar, but also haunting in the way that the wilder edges of a forest could be. 

He smells nice. Really nice. The kind of blend of manly musk and cologne that makes a woman look twice. It makes you look twice as he passes, at least.

Him standing there now, eyes roving over the cabin’s wood walls and the knitted blankets and the fire whispering from the living room, you realize how strange it is to be here with an old classmate that you haven’t seen for at least three years. How awkward it is. 

“It doesn’t bother me at all. You did scare me a bit, though,” you say, shooing the wispy chill away with a close of the door. “I’d rather you not freeze to death out there. It’s, like, ten degrees.” You tuck your arms across your chest. “What made you go hiking in this? It’s been nasty today. I haven’t even been able to leave.”

His cheek twitches with a dimple. Even back in school, you noticed that. Then, it’d fit right into his face. Now, it’s a delicious contrast against his angled face. “Sorry I scared you. I knew it’d be weird, but… Yeah, I was freezing out there. I seriously thought I was going to die.” Hair brushes over his eyes, their cunning and sharpness something that draws you in. Like two swirling, black pools of swirling water, they beckon you in a way that you can’t quite digest. “It wasn’t too bad down by the car, and I didn’t know there was a whole damn trail up here, so I… yeah. It got bad.”

Snorting, you nod. “I bet.” You’re not sure what else to say; your mind freezes over in an impermeable frost. You tap around with a pick to try and find words, but there’s no getting through it. You hardly know him. What do you talk about? What are you going to talk about, considering the fact that he’s no doubt going to be here for some time? Until it stops blizzarding so hard outside, at least. 

Charging through the tense moment with a brassiness that you do not remember him carrying back then, Taehyun nods a gesture toward the kitchen and the dinner you’d been in the middle of making. “Making something?” he says. The low, warm light of the cabin washes over him and make his face something cozier than it’d been standing frozen at your front door. It also makes a show of the angles of his cheek as it turns, and the tall line of his nose. Something on him is missing. You can’t capture the notion or put your finger on it, but somewhere in the depths of memory, you feel like there was something there that isn’t here with him now. Maybe it’s a different styling of his hair from the last time you saw him, wind-swept as it is now. Or maybe you’re just stir-crazy. 

“Yeah.” You nod, watching in place as he ventures into the kitchen. Narrowing your eyes down, you try to pinpoint the thought. Is it something small? A pair of earrings? “I was gonna cook up something warm for dinner, but I’m not the best cook. I don’t burn anything, but… it’s never great, you know?”

Taehyun tugs his jacket off his arms, and you confirm that it’s not a certain jacket or something. “I’ll help,” he says, discarding the heavy thing. “Make myself useful.”

“Oh!” you say, bringing your hands together in realization. “Are you not wearing your glasses? Holy shit, I’ve been staring at you thinking something was wrong, but I couldn’t tell what it was.” 

He furrows his brows, corners of his mouth twitching. The look passes over his face in nothing more than a split-second, before something else plasters over it. He crinkles his nose and says, “Huh. I didn’t even notice…” The knife you’d left to let him in glints as he picks it up to assume where you’d left off. “Didn’t you say that you were here with some friends? Is everybody asleep already?”

You trace the lines of his face where those brown glasses had rested the last time you’d seen him. He must’ve forgotten them in his cabin this morning, or something, before he went out. You grab a pot and fill it over the sink for noodles. “Actually, they all got caught up back home. It’s literally just me here for days. I’ve been so bored.” Over your shoulder, you add, “I’m just making some fettuccine and chicken.”

“Caught up?” he says, voice casual and occupied. The sound of the knife against the cutting board as he slices follow his words.

“Yeah. Someone messed their car up bad… Like, knife to the tires and the windows were smashed in all over the seats. It was fucking terrifying.” Clicking the stove on, you set the pot to boil. 

Taehyun doesn’t answer for a few minutes. You look over your shoulder and find him working in the chicken still. He answers, his eyes dragging up to you for a quick moment before making sure he doesn’t cut a finger off, “Did they steal anything?”

Turning to him fully as you wait for the water to bubble and turn over, you say, “That’s the weird thing. They didn’t steal or anything, they just fucked it up and… left.”

“Huh,” he says, furrowing his strong brow down at his working hands. “Yeah, that’s weird. That’s some personal shit. Maybe someone had a shit day.” The end comes out around a breathy laugh.

“Yeah, maybe.” You crack open the cardboard flaps and pour the noodles into the pot. “Still… scary.”

Taehyun takes over the cooking, and you’re happy to entrust dinner to him. He works diligently, and the sight of his back as he stirs and chops and seasons—it’s mouth-watering. This way, you can fully admire him as he does. You’re not much help, anyway. Instead, you just start the gentle hum of Christmas music once more and stay out of his way.

It’s nice to have somebody here. The howling of the wind and the echoing of your own movements back to you has started to become haunting. Maybe having Taehyun here is a bit unconventional, and it really should be your friends here with you, but having him here is the better outcome than some creep being the one knocking at your door. It’s nice to have him here in case that does happen, too.

It’s not like he’s bad company, or anything, either.

When the entirety of the cabin is full with the smell of warm dinner and your conversation, you swoop back in to offer help with something you can manage. Stepping beside him, indulging in his rich scent once more, you plate the dinner he’d made for you. Steam dances up from it and beckons your tastebuds. “You’re, like, a Michelin chef. What the hell? Thank you.”

He doesn’t answer, and in the corner of your eye, you catch his knuckles going white around the counter’s edge where he leans his weight into the arm. Frowning, you go to look up at him.

It leaves his face when you catch it, but you find him looking down at you… different again. Darker, as though the pupils at the center have grown hungry and eaten up the chocolate there. You think you see his jaw tightening and a hard swallow bobbing in his throat, too. His face is so close like this, you can see the plush turn to his lips and the darkness beneath his eyes, and even the chap of his lips.

Flustering, you take a step back and do your work there. You’d stepped way too close to him. Does he think you’re weird? You’ve always been the type with a scarce personal bubble; you forget that others don’t work the same.

“It’s nothing much,” he finally says. It’s cool and collected once more. “I make this all the time. It’s one of my favorites.”

Handing him his plateful, the chicken glistening with glaze and the noodles a swirl of cream and garnish, you say, “You’ll have to write down the recipe for me, or something. I totally want to make it for myself.”

Accepting it with another easy grin, he says, “Yeah, sure.” He forks a bit of chicken off the plate.

The smile does not reach his eyes.

❅

The longer you look at it, the worse the feeling gets.  Black and scrawled in wobbling lines, jagged and dark in places where he’d gone over a line a few times, you just… feel like you’ve seen it all before. It’s a smokey, tainted memory, far-off and obscured no matter how you squint your eyes.

Why do you remember it? Why does the sight of it crawl like dread under your skin and wilt? Sure, you went to school with Taehyun, but you don’t really think recognizing his handwriting should feel like this. Who even pays attention to the handwriting of somebody you interacted with once or twice, anyway?

God. You are dramatic. You kick your legs out of the comforter, swelteringly thick and quilted with a gaudy winter pattern of reds and browns and whites, and fold up the paper to place it on the darkwood bedside table.

The click of you flicking the white switch on echoes off the bathroom’s tiled walls. You reach for your toothbrush on the counter, and then the world goes dark around you.

You freeze, eyes frantically blinking and straining against the blackness to adjust. The power had gone out. There’s a few beats of you stricken in place, toothbrush in hand, thrown for a loop.

Then, the whole cabin goes out as the power to the heater dies, too. You swear. 

Your journey down the hallway is a stumbling of legs and the grooves of the wood-paneled walls against your fingertips. It’s the pitch black of night out here, too. The only thing you can see is the static that fills up the gaps when it’s dark. “Taehyun?” you say. Is he asleep already? You don’t even know where the room he’d taken for the night is, relative to where you are now.

Nothing answers you for a few moments, and then from an opening door, light floods like a miracle. The shape of him, the light from his phone’s flashlight just enough to dimly illuminate his features, comforts you. His hair is ruffled, like he’d just drug himself from bed.

“Power went out,” he says. It’s awfully loud, now that you two are the only sounds in here. 

“Yeah, I think I just had a little heart attack. I was up brushing my teeth.” Why hadn’t you thought to use your phone’s light? “The heater… We’re gonna freeze to death. Do you think they have a generator, or something? The fireplace doesn’t really do much…”

He features glow in as he moves the phone. “Mine didn’t. It’s fine, my room’s got a fireplace in it. We can close the door and get it warm in there.”

“Better than nothing,” you say, shrugging and following him in.

You plop on his bed, the surface of it cold and plush, while he works on kindling a fire. “This is, like, nowhere near where I thought I’d be for vacation.”

He readjusts the logs, dry and perfect for burning, into a point. Poking and prodding, Taehyun says, “Not having fun?”

You snort at the dry and flat delivery. “Friends haven’t even gotten back to me, I’m snowed in, and I’m locked in here with a total stranger.” You draw out the last word as a joke, your smile painting the tone playful, but it’s the truth. You don’t know Taehyun one bit. It’s just as strange and unpredictable as the other things on the list of things that have gone awry. “I guess I had a good dinner, so I can’t be complaining too much.”

Curling up to his full height, he takes a knee and settles into the bed beside you. “Make some room for this stranger, won’t you? We should probably try to use our body heat.”

Laughing, you go to say something to rift off his joke. It dies in your throat when he doesn’t join you. In an awkward sort of panic, you wince and say, “Yeah, it’s cold as hell. We’re gonna freeze to death in our sleep.”

And, ridiculously, you crawl under the covers. You don’t know why you do it; maybe it’s because he’s completely serious and watching you, or maybe because it’s true that you might actually get so cold in your sleep that you die if you don’t. Either way, you do. You don’t know which way to settle: facing him or with your back turned to him. Both are strange, but which is stranger?

Facing him, you decide that turning your back to him just doesn’t settle in your soul right.

“Weird night,” he says, sliding himself under the blanket’s covering. The same blanket that you lay in. “But…” he says, eyes flickering over you laid there. He looks as though he’s going to say something else, but he decides against it. “Good night.”

He does you a favor and turns his back to you.

❅

Night still holds the world in its claws when your eyes flutter open.

You shift to try and find that perfect position that’ll lull you back into sleep, slipping your legs over the sheets and shifting your cheek against your arm and wiggling your hips against the solid pressure behind you.

The pressure behind you. Stilling, your eyes fly open.

The weight of Taehyun behind you, his chest rising and falling, and the warmth of him, pierce through sleep’s haze like a white-hot knife. You’re all the way on his side of the bed, pressing your bottom into him. Shame creeps its wicked way from your chest and then out through your skin, blazing the skin of your cheeks. You push up on an elbow to scoot back to your side of the bed as slow and covertly as you can manage.

Fingers like teeth, biting the skin of your waist, stop you. Your heart jumps.

“Don’t move.” Taehyun’s breath and words curl out over the juncture of your neck like a chill. He lets you sit in that for a moment, your heart thumping like a frightened bird in a cage, before he says, “It’s weird. Weird that when I suggested you sleep in my bed, you looked so nervous. But, look where you are now.”

Your voice comes out strangled. “I’m sorry.”

When his palm slides down from your waist to brush over your belly, you begin to think that it’s not an apology that he wants. Your stomach does untamed dips and rolls. It’d been the cold that you were afraid of, but now it’s the blistering heat that blooms where his touch goes that grips you. 

“That didn’t take very long.”  Like a trail of growing, raging fire, he takes that hand and brings it down the lengths of your body. Over your hip, and then down the supple curve of your ass, and then down the back of your thighs, where he toys with the notion of slipping it between the seam there. “It never did take much for you to give those men your body. Give them what was mine. Don’t worry, I’ll make it right. I’ll make you right.”

Your mind turns over itself, a thousand stray, blinding thoughts bursting at the seams and all asking for your attention. You don’t know which to start with; you don’t have the slightest clue what he means. Asking any of them out loud seems absurd, and the notion crumbles to dust when he brings his arm down your front to cup your heat.

“Face in the bed, ass up.” He commands it in your ear like ice: absolute and biting. “It’s how you like it, isn’t it?”

Doggy is how you like it. You don’t know how Taehyun would know that. What you do know, though, is the way the simple words kindle hungry fire in your cunt. Dragging yourself from the heat of the mattress in a bleary, glazed-over mess of limbs, you paint yourself into an obscene picture: your cheek presses into the mattress, blazing with disbelief, your eyes wide and gone and the mess of your hair obscuring them, and your back the delicate arch of sex and sinfulness as you display your ass high in the air for him.

When you look at him to see how he likes it, you don’t find the man that you saw in the grocery store, nor the man that you let into your cabin. The look you find, vacant and overflowing with an untamed hunger, raises the hair on your skin. It’s off. 

“Taehyun,” you say. It’s really just to speak—you don’t have words. 

He runs a hand down the curve of your back. His voice comes from behind you, now. “This should’ve been just mine. But you never did look my way, did you?” Your body jumps when his hands find your hips and the fabric in the way of your skin there. Hooking his thumbs under both the waistband of your bottoms and your panties, he drags them down your thighs in a slow crawl. Each inch of blazing skin bared to the air tingles against the cold and under his gaze as you feel his eyes eat it up. 

That’s what his eyes do: they eat and they eat, taking up the space around them like ever-hungry blackholes until there is nothing but their absence of light and their heaviness. That was the pull you remember in the store—a force like gravity beckoning a perverse finger at you and leaving you nowhere to go but toward him.

He pulls the fabric until it’s bunched at your knees. Prodding a finger, just the very end of it, at your hole. You flutter around it, belly turning. “Why didn’t you look my way?” he asks. The rustling of him working on his pants has you twitching and shifting hot against the covers. 

“I don’t know what you mean.” You’re only able to choke out the words, heart jumping up into your throat as he takes his hand up your back, pins and needles following his path and pushes your head into the mattress by the back of the neck.

Breath hot over your cheek, he says, “Is this what you want? To be fucked like an animal?” You know he means the position. Your mouth goes dry. “You’re better than that. But, if it’s what you like, I’ll fuck you like it.”

You have a thought. It’s fleeting and fuzzy like the rest of your mind, but you catch it just long enough to turn it over once. When you’d seen Taehyun, you were struck by how he looked more like the kind of guy you might go after than the lanky, off-putting one you remember. And, now he’s set on how you like to get fucked.

The tip of his cock at your entrance sends the thought to smoke and the aftermath clogs your cognitive function. Your mouth falls open as he presses some inches in, slow and enriching. But then he pulls the slight length out to collect some slick and tap his cockhead to your clit. You jolt against the sheets.

When he slides back in this time, he makes sure to brush your hair out of your face to watch every last inch of you taking him reflected in the furrowing of your brows and the glassiness of your eyes and the pink of your cheeks.

He stills when he reaches the hilt, his hips flush to your ass, his shadow falling over you as he leans to bring his ear to your mouth. “You should’ve looked my way. Things could’ve been so different. It’s okay—I’ll make you realize. I know who you really are. I’ll wash this all away and clean you up and make you good again.”

He doesn’t leave space for words or thought. Not enough for you to taste the rust like rot over his iron words. Planting his heels on the bed and shoving your face further into the bed, he starts his hips in a rhythm that has your breaths stuttering and achy wines clawing out from the prison of your chest. He does not move precisely, nor is the bucking of his hips pointed, but it’s a crashing sort of ruin. It doesn’t matter if he finds that spot inside of you. He’s going to consume your every sense: he steals the taste in your mouth and replaces it with himself, steals your hearing with his pants and grunts, steals your sight as his cock twists your insides up, and steals your ability to feel anything but him. He steals your breath, too. Just as a wicked little souvenir. 

“Hhh—fuck, Taehyun, holy shit,” you say. A procession of crude and mewled cries come tumbling out your mouth after your words. No matter now you filter your sounds to try and maintain your decency, he just drags them from you anyway. 

Bringing his hand up to splay his hand over the entirety of the back of your head rather than the delicate back of your neck, he grits out, “Filthy-fucking-mouth.” He punctuates the words with a hollow smack of his skin against your ass. It’s the sound of sex incarnate—your skin burns hearing it clashing against the rest of your debased sounds. “And it’s just for me, now. Isn’t that fucking great? None of those vile pigs are gonna touch what’s mine again. Not after this. You—” His voice tightens when a certain spot he nudges in your cunt sends it clinging to him and sucking him back in at every return. “You were really testing the limits to my patience. Do you know that?” He drags his hand over your face, smearing obscenity over you with just his tainted touch. “Of course you fucking don’t. You don’t notice shit. It’s why you let this world walk all over you. It’s why you need me.”

As hard and fast as he fucks you, he doesn’t exchange full strokes for it. He pulls completely out of you each time he snaps his hips back, and then meets your ass in burning collisions when he slips his cock right back into you. You struggle for breath, trying to feed your oxygen-starved brain to contend with his snarled preaching. Never once do you catch a full chest of air, though. It turns your thoughts liquid, stupid and simple. “Taehyun—Taehyun,” you say, throat tight. The sheets are stifling against your clammy skin, and the hair around your neck is damp. You take fistfuls of the bunches fabric and his other hand on your hip to ground yourself. 

You are beyond grounding. All that floats in your head, one bare thought, is the beginnings of terrifying tightness in your lower belly. Only the sharpest things shove through the shadow permeating your mind. Nip. Bite. He drags his teeth over the soft curves of your shoulders and the expanse of your back. Anywhere he can reach, really. His mouth paints you in aching splotches—the kind that will speak of him should anybody other see your body. The kind that speaks already of who they belong to. You eyes and throat burn.

Taehyun brings that hand he’d been molding into the fat of your hip and curls the muscle-corder forearm across both of your hip bones. A bar. A cage. His solid chest works similarly as he blankets himself over you, speaking into your wild tousle of hair. “Fuck–Gonna cum now.” The friction of his cock against your walls becomes something more unpredictable. The tightening of that knot, just on the verge of a snap that might reverberate through you and crush you into nothing more than bitten flesh and eroded virtue, sits on the horizon. It’s a terrifying thing to be rushing toward. “A—and then they’ll realize that you’re mine. They’ll never put their goddamn hands on you again. Not when your body will have me written all over it.” You can hear the tightness of his gritted jaw, the words seething like black, festering corruption. They fall over your skin and taint you, too. No longer do you shake and tremble against him with innocent little squeaks. Gilt with his words as he speaks them, your body stiffens and your cries go hoarse and pitiful. You try not to think about how you sound. “Isn’t it so good? We’re perfect together. You’re perfect underneath me. Do you know how many—how many times I fucked my fist thinking about you like this? All I ever wanted was for you to realize that we are so much better than the rest of them. It’s always meant to be us. Why did you let them touch you? Dirty your skin?”

All you manage is a heaved cry. He pins you to the mattress and begins fucking you into it. In the black of your eyelids, you watch purity go to dust.

“Take my load, baby. Stay still,” he says. His voice goes soft, like whispers. Like he’s gotten everything he’s wanted, now. 

You squirm beneath the weight of him, hips reining against the arm he holds you there by the hips with. Alarm bells ring, booming and thunderous, but in this state of mind, they sound like the music of climax. To the beat of the bells and his hips, blazing through your reddened bottom and your utter inability to breathe, you go tumbling toward that terrifying release. 

Taehyun’s steadfast pace stutters. “It’s okay,” he tells you, clearing your clammy face of hair once more. His face is right in yours, his eyes heavy and consumptive. “Just let it happen. I’m gonna breed you up, and then it’ll be forever. We’ll be forever. Can’t let you get away again. Not when I’ve got you now. I need you to take it. Can you do that for me?”

Managing one last mhm, all your sounds catch in your throat. You stop meeting halfway, muscles twisting and turning and raging against the profound, terrible wash of it. Eyes flying open, your cunt clings to him, insides fluttering and rippling in a way that begins delightfully, but toes the line of dreadful as his cock continues to tighten them further. Lightning strikes from your core, crawling and crackling from it. It moves your thighs, convulsing them in tandem with the same release wreaking havoc in your stomach.

Cursing low in your ear, he fucks you frantically, fingers planted on your hips. His cock twitches against you a few times, and then the arm he’s supporting himself on collapses down to the elbow and he’s pinning you and shooting white-hot cum right into you. Your shoulder takes the imprint of his cheek as he nips the shoulder he hangs over. His hips twitch, rolling to ride out his high with deep, chesty groans, and then jumping up to spurt a little bit more into you. His panted breaths fall against your skin like fire. 

You blink bleariness away from your eyes. For a few long minutes, that’s all you do. Your chest races so much so that you feel the pulse in your neck and the thumping of it where it rests. Your insides are liquid and intangible, blood slow just as slow as your thoughts.

When reality seeps back through your veins, though, Taehyun’s tugging his chest from your sweaty meeting of bodies. His fingers dig right into the reddened skin where his hips had abused your bottom to hold you open. To view you, and the slow oozing of his seed from your hole. The weight of his gaze sends you fluttering. With the movement of your hole, more of the hot and thickness comes seeping out, slow like molten passion down the shape of your slit and then over your clit and then dripping down onto the bed from you.

The feel of it has you swallowing hard. Holy shit, you are stupid. So painfully stupid. So, you’re just letting men cum inside while you’re not on birth control, now? Ones that you haven’t seen since school? Ones that talk like… that?

Tapping your thigh and pressing a hot kiss to your outer hip, Taehyun says, “I’m gonna go check the breakers. You take it easy here for a second.”

Whiplashed, you nod. There goes that pristine, normal mask again. You watch him go, heaving yourself up from the nasty bedding to be greeted by the musk of sex humid in the air. You think a thousand little thoughts, watching the wall as you go far away in your mind.

Everything that he said… That was not just a little weird, or a little kinky. It was bone-chilling. The taste in your mouth, still tainted by him, sours.

You pull out your phone. Pressing it to your ear, your blood runs sluggish still. 

The cabin owner’s voice comes staticky through the speakers, asking you what you need help with. You ask about the power outage and where the breaker might be, debriefing him on Taehyun ending up here because he wasn’t able to make it to his own cabin, and how you think that the storm outside might be why the power’s gone out.

The cabin owner’s answer makes you pale.

It’s not a crashing realization. Not a thundering storm reaching its climax, nor a firework plasma and explosive at its center but flashy as it sparkles, nor a searing knife to the gut. It’s a slow, dreadful feeling, sinking to the depths of the ocean with a weight around your ankle and the realization that there is no getting back to the surface. It is drowning with water in your lungs, knowing that you swallowed that water down. 

You know why you recognize that hand writing, and you know why Taehyun was missing his glasses, and you know why he had your number even though you have no connections, and you know why he was able to find your cabin by your car despite never having seen it, and you know why your friends never made it here. He, long and spindly legged, the spider, did not even panic when you grazed by the hints toward what he really was. You were all ready in his web, anyway. All he had to do was wait it out and watch you, caught, oblivious, squirm. And, squirm you did.

“What other cabin?” 

﹙⋞ ﹚... back to the 𝓂asterlist

✎୭ ashlynn's note AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! i’m sorry this one came out later, i had to make that ending tie up well.

﹙📋﹚ @hmusunoo , @izzyy-stuff , @beomiracles , @joycelyjjj , @sunoolver , @lvrs-street2mmorrow , @apeachty , @fandomtrashsblog , @bewitchless , @yezzns2 , @hhoneyhan , @ethystclove , @darkdayelixer , @calumcxke , @biteyoubiteme , @bamgeutsz , @soobabby , @little-shiny-starr , @bambammtori , @bunniebun-posted , @heeambi , @bunnisoobin , @hwanghyunjinismybae , @bakugosbottombitch , @304files , @cherricola-star , @lickingan0rchid , @ashistrashhhhhh , if your tag isn't working, check the mentions part of your settings!

[keikakudori]

What would you say is your favorite thing about writing your character? Is it their characterization, their development so far, or would it be something else entirely? Are you proud of how far they've come since you started your blog? Is there anything you'd do differently if given the chance?

so i had to take some time to think about my reply to this and, now, here we are -- so hopefully this is something that makes sense. what is my favorite thing about writing aizen? i honestly don't know because there's so many things i enjoy about writing him where he's concerned. legit, i can't really pick one thing but i suppose if i was forced to? it would be the fact that i continually uncover morsels of things that i never anticipated knowing about him; something will just fall into place into my head and i will realize that i've been working towards that for a while until it suddenly snaps into place and makes much more sense to me. i've been through it with many pieces of his dialogue thanks to how aizen's statements can be overlooked; his choice of syntax means that his phrasing can be rather shallow but there's a much more profound aspect to it that isn't readily obvious until you spend time picking things apart. and when it comes to aizen, you really have to work on picking things apart more than a little. another favorite thing i suppose that i could talk about is indeed his characterization. i struggled with writing aizen for years; cas/@godkilller can confirm on that front. i tried out and discarded several angles and interpretations over the years while i've been here on tumblr and i'm sure some of that rather awful characterization from my growing pains is out there somewhere, but honestly -- he's not an easy muse to interpret and understand. aizen is a fucking slippery character. it's easy to look at him and just go and say that he's a power-hungry narcissist that doesn't care about anyone or anything, but that's not the case. aizen is profoundly complex, but thanks to kubo's own writing, it really isn't something that i feel people tend to notice. but i can say for a solid fact that if it hadn't been for cas and the fact that he helped me return to aizen more than once when i nearly threw my hands up in figuring out his voice, then i probably wouldn't be writing him now. cas is someone i will always bring up when i talk about my struggles of writing aizen because he's absolutely helped me to figure out how to write this bastard. cas has asked me questions about aizen's character and made me think of why aizen would do something, what is his motivation for doing so, everything like that. and aizen's characterization has evolved over the years; i've begun seriously prying into him and why he does what he does and the evolution of how he is as a muse is something i look upon rather fondly. cas and his gin have absolutely helped to shape aizen in many ways, so i seriously cannot avoid speaking about cas and his gin and i have to give so much credit to him for putting up with me while i fought to figure aizen out. i'm still figuring aizen out, but not like i was years ago. he really has developed as a muse and i look at the different things i tried over the years and cringe just a little. the old takes were not horrible but they weren't great either. but i really did start to solidify things about his characterization around, oh --- i want to say starting in ... 2018 or 19? 2020? once things fell into place with him, it was just a matter of starting on that and the developing dissection that cas and i attempt with gin and aizen's relationship is also a massive catalyst for things. now if cas would just stop hurting me about gin that'd be FINE--- ( no i live for being hurt it DOES HURT IT HURTS A LOT--- ) but yes i am very proud of how far he's come since i started writing him over ten years ago. i've only really picked things up in the last few years in how i know his character and how i've been learning his character and while i still have moments of serious doubt of "am i veering too far out of the norm here?" in some moments, the other side of it is that i've adopted aizen, he belongs to me now, kubo signed his rights over to me ---

okay, jokes aside? yeah, i am absolutely proud of how he's changed from how i first started writing him. i don't like looking at the old attempts at grasping his character. they were bad. they were lazy. they were poorly thought out. i rather feel very comfortable with the recent way and interpretation i have had with his character over the last few years. it feels better. it feels more like HIM. it feels more like this is something that would fit well into the canon of bleach instead of what i tried out and discarded over the years. as for anything i'd do differently -- maybe if i went back and knew what i've figured out about aizen over these last few years, it'd give me much more of a chance to see where he'd be now in development. but in general, no, i don't really think there's anything i would do differently where he's concerned. maybe i'd have worked on being more active with him but in general, nah. growing pains come with all kinds of muses and yet there's a very strong sense of satisfaction when it comes to looking at how i've grown in writing aizen.

[mockinggold]

If you guys ever feel like your writing is bad, here’s the first chapter of my first ever fanfic

“"Tch- Like I would want to be around any of you extras," said Kacchan. He leaned farther in his chair and smirked.

"Aw c'mon Bakugou, we'll have a blast!" Kirishima smiled. "We'll go and get something good to eat and hang out like real bros. I'll get you dinner on me!"

Kacchan sat up straighter looking at Kirishima. He regained his composure and scoffed "Whatever. I'll go just to keep your sanity shitty hair, and so you all get off my ass about it." Kacchan glanced up at Kirishima. Kirishima nudged him on the shoulder and smiled.

"Yeah that's what I'm talking about!" Kirishima chuckled. "Hey Midoriya, who all else is coming?"

I look up at Kirishima and flipped up my fingers with each name I said. "Well," I started. "We've got you, me, Kacchan, Uraraka, Iida, Tsu, Sero, Tokoyami, Yaoyorozu, Kaminari, Ashido, Jirou... and I think that's it"

"What's with the listing of names?" I heard from behind. I turned around to see a tall, muscular, heterochromatic guy staring down at me. I was caught slightly off guard by this and I felt my checks get a little warm.

"Oh, uh, hey Todoroki-kun! I-um... we're just going to the mall after school today to hang out and uh, yeah. I mean it's nothing too exciting but you're welcome to come if you'd like to," I stammered, regaining my composure halfway through.

Todoroki smirked. "Add me to your count then," he said. "Class ends in 7 minutes. Seeing as Aizawa is asleep, I have some loose ends I need to tie up. I'll be outside the main entrance when you guys are ready. See you soon." Todoroki calmly walked towards the exit. As he passed me, he lightly brushed against my shoulder. I felt the ghost of his contact linger for a few seconds longer before I glance back to see the last of his red and white hair sweep out of the door.

I blushed a little wondering if his small touch was intentional or not. Todoroki has always been a huge mystery to me, and maybe that's what's drawn me to him for so long. After the sports festival, it's clear he's been trying to be more social with the class but that doesn't stop me from wanting to know more about him. Not only about his quirk, but about his character. What makes him laugh, cry, yell, smile. I want to know what keeps him awake, what makes him fall fast asleep. I want to know so badly-

"OI DEKU!" Kacchan shouted. I jumped from the yell. "Are you gonna stand there or are you coming with us?" I glance up at the clock. Did I really just think about Todoroki for 7 minutes? I shook my head and grabbed my notebook.

"I'm coming!" I shouted to no one in particular. I picked up my pace for a bit until I caught up to Uraraka. I walked next to her as she giggled a little. I cocked my head at looked at her waiting for an explanation.

"It's super obvious, yknow?" She giggled.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Your crush on Todoroki. You always stare off into space for a long time with a dumb smile whenever he is or has been around. It's adorable and you should definitely ask him on a date." She smiled.

I felt my face heat up a little. And then a lot. "What? Oh! I-I-I think you got it all wrong. I mean yeah I stare off and mutter sometimes but it's not because of Todoroki I mean yeah sometimes I think about Todoroki-I mean his quirks and how they work and stuff I do that for everyone I'm just saying that it's not like I think about him for hours on end I mean that would be ridiculous right?" I said painfully fast. Even I felt that that was over the top.

"I see," she smirked. "Well if that's how you'd like to treat it, then go ahead. Hang on I need to catch up with Iida." She started skipping ahead. She suddenly turned around and yelled back at me. "Keep in mind you never denied my statement!" She grinned and caught up to Iida.

I felt my face get red hot. I knew she knew she was right. But at the same time, it felt hopeless. It's obvious Yaoyorozu liked Todoroki and it was most likely that he liked her back. Who wouldn't like him. He's the sweetest, kindest, cutest, strongest, bravest-

My train of thought was cut off by running into a wall.

I managed to startle myself to the point of falling.

"That looked like it hurt." Todoroki chuckled. "You were almost out the door too." He reaches out his hand to me and smiled. He had the smile that you could look at and feel safe and warm for the rest of your days. A smile that could make a demon blush. His mismatched eyes stayed locked with mine, they twinkled like no other. Those blue and gray eyes could catch your attention from a mile away. I cut myself off from staring and smiled back. I reached out my hand to grab his. We grasped each other's wrists and he pulled me up in one swift motion.

"Thanks" I muttered trying to avoid eye contact. I felt like he could see straight through me and how flustered I was.

He glanced towards the exit and smirked. "Of course," he said. I smiled back at him, aware of the dust of light pink in my cheeks.”

This was the entire chapter

Honestly, this is embarrassing to post for me. I could go on for hours about how terrible this is.

- POV used terribly

- Just about every sentence beginning with a name or pronoun unless I was making a burst of conscious effort not to

- Capitalization of entire words

- starting the story in a time where it seemed as though the beginning half of the story hadn’t been explained

- recapping crucial information as background information from past

- unrealistic enter/exit of characters

- unrealistic dialogue

- emotionally 2-D characters and emotions

- set up for no growth

- appears rushed

- plot unclear

- mixing of tenses (I still do it on accident though I try not to)

- unnecessary filler (I do that still too but I’m working on it)

- unrealistic and choppy time passes

- no good plot information given aside from character love interest

That was only what I could come up with in three minutes without referencing the text. If I gave myself ten more minutes I could expand on that list a lot

Please don’t get discouraged when you feel as though you’re not improving !!! You are always improving and the best way to know that you’re improving is to NEVER delete anything you write. It’s good to look back on so you can see growth

The best way for you to improve is to read !!! Keep reading fan fictions or any novel that is well written because you will absorb that grammar and writing style and be able to use some of it for your own !!! Seeing well written things will expand your vocabulary, sentence structure, syntax, and diction. There are so many ways to write the same sentence and the more you read, the more you find. Reading does wonders for your writing

Also practice !!! Even if you don’t post it, do little warm ups for yourself where you write short 300-500 word scenes and try out different styles, descriptions, dialogue techniques, anything. You’ll get more comfortable with how you write and you’ll allow yourself to be able to try new things without getting discouraged easily !!!

If you see a certain writing style you like, try it out !!! There’s no shame in copying a writing style and messing with it to build your own with it. Unless you’re copying word for word, referencing writing styles is a great tool to find your own and to be able to help create your own. Do not try to turn yourself into another author, you may like someone’s writing style, but not like writing it and that’s okay

I’m not any New York bestseller, but if I can encourage at least one person to not give up and keep writing and keep improving, that’s enough. Even if you look at what I posted and think ‘that’s like my writing style’ that’s okay. That style is simply not for me but if that’s the style you like and the one you want to improve on, go for it !!! Writing is an amazing talent and I encourage everyone to keep doing it. Share your writing with me, I’d love to read it !!!

[jimlingss]

pt.2 of yesterday

I don’t want to flood people’s dashes, so hopefully answering your messages here will suffice!

anonymous asked: Hi! I wanted to tell you how much I love your work and how you make me enjoy every Monday thanks to your regular updates ! I saw a previous anon telling you how your writings lacks of emotion and I totally disagree with them... obviously everybody won’t like it but your stories just DON’T lack of love or emotion this is madness I want to thank you for publishing your amazing stories freely here for everyone to read. (Sorry if my English is weird I’m french ejfjekfjd)

“this is madness” LOL

You’re hilarious, anon. And your english is perfectly fine!!!

anonymous asked: Hello! Im the culinary student anon who sent you an ask a while ago and i saw you received an ask about the lack of emotion from your stories. I read kitchen romance and i actually really really like it and don’t quite understand how it lacks in emotions as I interpreted the stories more like the beginning of the oc and jin’s love story and they are only starting to open up to each other so i guess thats why anon might feel like it lacks romantic vibe from both of the characters. (1)

Anonymous said: Just want to tell you that you’re one of the best writer and ive been following you for 2/3 years now, you never failed to amaze me with your writings!! All your stories are so well written that i sometimes wonder how do you come up with such an amazing plot every single time and your stories are always nice to re-read and the effort you pour into creating your stories is also admirable (2)

while i was reading kitchen romance and ive only started s&c (currently on chapter 4) i can say that its pretty similar with how it is irl (and the part where we find out jk is an iu fans reminded me of my ex-crush whose also a culinary student, i would like to tell you a story about it but ill just waste your time lol) , just want to send you a few encouragement and love for you and your writings *sending virtual hugs* (3) -👩🏻‍🍳anon

You’re too kind, thank you (and also, welcome back!). I’ll be frank, there was a hot second I was considering taking down Kitchen Romance but I didn’t cause I don’t want my efforts of editing it to go to waste asdfghjkl. I can’t believe you’ve been sticking around me for so long :’) it’s always nice to know some folks stay. Anyway, I’m glad that Sugar and Coffee is pretty similar to how it works irl since I tried my best to do research. I definitely love a good storytime as well so don’t worry about wasting my time :>

Anonymous said: a good majority of your fics display an unfathomable amount of DEPTH. regarding character development. plot. even the shortest lines of dialogue reveal so much more to the character and unveil their true emotions. i personally think the more REALISTIC side of love may be perceived as 'bland.' ‘emotionless.’ whatever you want to call it. nothing’s wrong with portraying a relationship that isn’t overboard with a whole lot of tooth aching fluff or lowkey annoying pda. +1

Anonymous said: there’s nothing wrong with taking out a bit of emotion to fit the PERSONALITIES of the characters. some people out there don’t necessarily feel a lot of emotions. so it’s honestly not really a mistake if a story lacks it (unless it was unintentional). subtlety is an art that is hard to master, but you’ve done it! and to respond to the anon, sometimes, if you skim through a fic without reading every word the author intended for you to read, +2

Anonymous said: then it’s quite common to not feel the full extent of the emotions you were supposed to feel. just a thought but no hate. we’re all entitled to our opinions. but besides that, kina, you write on a vast scale ranging from hardcore angst to diabetes-inducing fluff. and you do it beautifully. sure there are some stories that are better than others, but i believe a LOT of it comes down to personal preference and taste. +3

Anonymous said: even if you are feeling creatively limited, you work hard to continue writing for your readers, and your determination and diligence wILL NOT GO UNNOTICED. i just want you to know that you write amazingly. your syntax is practically immaculate, your characters feel real… the endings of your stories always wrap something up and the strings are tied—even if it isn’t necessarily a happy ending. you can convey hundreds of different characters through WORDS. +4

Anonymous said: i’ll have you know that it’s hard to write. it’s even harder to write about people who aren’t YOU. so as someone who looks up to you a lot, i want to commend you for your writing. some of your fics that i read on a monthly basis: tears of a villain, a piece of the moonlight, head over heels to hell, ghost in the machine, a mark of betrayal, a kiss of poison, until yesterday, the truth between us and arcadia. +5

Anonymous said: to be fair, there were way more fics but i didn’t want to make this message any longer than it already is LOL. i find these pieces wonderful. heart wrenching. and SO DAMN EMOTIONAL IT PLAGUES MY MIND FOR DAYS. also you’re literally one of the few fucking people who can use the em dash correctly. thank you so much for sharing your talent with us! +6

Oh my goodness. I don’t even know what to say, anon. This is a whole damn thesis and it’s about my fics :’> You know, it’s easy to brush off fanfiction as a ‘whatever’ thing and indeed, it isn’t that big of a deal compared to some things in the world. But I really do take all my stories seriously and put forth a lot of effort - so to see it recognized and appreciated it makes me beyond happy. It’s good to know that my efforts haven’t gone to waste at all and that there are people out there who will support me no matter the endeavours I take. Thank you so much. You don’t know how much this means to me.

((Also, honestly I picked up the em dash usage after I wrote The Truth Between Us with gukyi who used it. I’m pretty sure I’m not using it right but to hear that I am, god damn that’s a breath of relief right there))

backtobleuside submitted: Are you kidding me!? Your stories don’t lack love at all. They’re the kind of fics that you read, soak it all in and then come back for more. I’ve cried so much when I read Beyond reach, Boo-lieve in me, A piece of the moonlight, His name, Tell me lies etc. etc, and also laughed and felt the emotions of not just the OC, but also the other characters. Kitchen Romance was also so fluffy and sweet and personally, I don’t think that anything needs to be added to it. Anyway, your fics do not lack emotion—you’re probably the first author I send a message to because your stories impacted me a lot and left a strong impression on me. I even imagine your characters as real people who have real lives that continue on even after the story is done.

asdfghjkl thank you :’) I see you every week and sometimes several times at that. I really appreciate your consistent feedback and following. You never fail to send me a message too which I appreciate a lot. I’m glad you’re enjoying everything I’m producing!!

youngfleurever said: Would just like to say that your fics do in fact make me violently sob to the boy where my eyes are so swollen I have trouble opening them the next day and I wake up feeling like there’s sawdust in my mouth because I’m dehydrated.

oh my god. please keep yourself hydrated hahahahhaha more importantly, how do you know what sawdust in your mouth is like. WHAT have you been doing LOL

Anonymous said: I’ve felt emotions that I’ve never felt before when I read your fics.... so as a person that has read your entire masterlist, I DO NOT think that your fics lack emotion.... I hope you don’t feel disheartened because you’re one of my favourite writers, not just on tumblr but like, evER 💓💓💓💓💓💓

Please, even if I was disheartened, the overwhelming amount of feedback and praise has completely overridden it :’)

joonie-mono said: when tumblr deletes the first part of your ask 🙄😌✌️

LOOOOOOOL

haylo4ever said: Sorry had to add my 10 cents. You're such a talented writer,,, I WISH I could write a smol smol 1/1000000000 that you write,,, like I remember when I followed you bc I was in awe of your writing.... I mean?? Sure maybe not every fic hits it with someone but it's just ridic to name drop (a friend nonetheless) when you're all extremely talented writers.

Trust me, writing comes with practice!! I should honestly just tattoo that on me. God knows my first fanfic was absolutely GARBAGE. I didn’t know pacing, didn’t know that I should separate chunks of paragraphs, how to write dialogue or describe scenes properly. I went in blind. Even my second, third and fourth fanfic was garbage. You could definitely get to “my level” or even far surpass it with enough dedication and practice. I mean I’ve been writing for four years, so thank GOD there’s been improvement. I wouldn’t be natural if there wasn’t. But clearly the more you practice, the better you improve! That applies to anything.

The me in ten years will certainly be better now.

Anonymous said: Hi kina! I’m here in support of kitchen romance! I actually didn’t feel like it was missing a ton of fluffy moments (and I say that as a huGE LOVER OF FLUFF) but the story was just as entertaining in the whole chase of them getting closer to each other! It’s honestly one of my favorite one shots I’ve read lately and I’m not saying that lightly! Also, that anon that said your work lacks emotion has probably not read like half of your masterlist bc oO MAN QUEEN OF MAKING ME CRY- black heart anon🖤

Thank you :’]

Anonymous said: Ok I’m very offended wow the audacity!Specially coming for my baby kitchen romance like that story made me feel so much and it’s only one of the many fics you have written kina like I’m literally baffled like dynasty has made me cry scream happy and hot all at the same time and I was literally just thinking about it that whole weekend and this anon has the nerve to say your stories lack emotions?When you are literally the queen of show casing all types of emotions in your stories!You did it all

Anonymous said: Also 😭😭😭😂😂😩hoooooooow and whereeee did they see any lack of love and emotions like have you read jungle park???? Inside my mind??? FREAKING SUGAR AND COFFEE (like this fic is made with love and I- ) Actually you know what , just read the whole masterlist😩😩💗💗💗

LOL tbh I didn’t expect Dynasty to receive the love it has. I was actually kind of wary when posting it cause it’s kind of Wild. 

bangtans-peaceful-piegon said: just gotta say u handled that whole anon thing so well which not only makes me admire u as a writer but even more as a person :] (i mean i knew u were gr8 before the whole deal but yeah love ya 💛)

tbh, I’m not sure how well I handled it cause I was flooded with over 30 messages afterwards (evidently) ;_; which I love and appreciate but I’m not really as hurt as some people think hahaha criticism should be received well but it’s still hard not to take personally tbh. It’s gonna have to be something I work on or perhaps it’ll be one of those things that I’ll take better with age.

[draw-you-coward]

how to improve your writing

tips by nae! from a multi-media perspective

as always please take any advice i give with a grain of salt! i may have bad habits and i may be wrong. for reference, here’s my ao3, and here’s my art, so you can judge for yourself how qualified i am to speak on this lol

ok so i’ll put this in a sort of step-by-step process so it’s easy to follow!

step 1: learn how many different skills lie in writing

one thing to understand is that grammar and spelling are definitely important... but on a surface level they’re very superficial. having good spelling, grammar, and syntax doesn't necessitate having good writing! it’s easy to fall into the “gilded turd” trap here; to have something that’s wrapped up in something superficial and pretty, but once you go any deeper, you realize that it’s kind of awful in quality. other skills i can think of off the top of my head:

structure! this is very important if you’re looking to write anything other than short, indulgence-driven fanfiction. and by short, i mean anything over a few hundred words. in fact, i’d encourage you to look at your paragraphs, and then even sentences, with a structural lens! does the entire thing work as a whole? does the beginning flow into the middle and then into the end? are there tangents that you can cut? is there some sort of running idea or theme to tie it all in together? is someone who isn’t you going to find it reads well, makes sense, and is interesting?

flow: this ties into structure! do your ideas hop around like bunny rabbits? like a fruit fly you keep losing track of only to see it reappear when you least expect? if so, then you may have flow problems. one thing i in particular struggle with is keeping dialogue relevant and on-topic. if you find yourself having to sort of loop the conversation back around to being relevant for more than a few sentences, cut stuff out. tangents can be funny or interesting if used for the proper effect, but usually they’re just unnecessary. if it’s not relevant, you don’t need it. on the other hand, a problem i’ve seen is that there’s not enough ideas--that dialogue, thoughts, and/or actions just jerk from one to another in a very bumpy fashion. if that’s an issue you’re having, try slowing things down a little. you’re not in a rush to write this (unless you literally are), and your writing and characters will thank you for giving them room to breathe.

characters: one important step for this is to realize that characters are people, not tools. (of course, there are varying degrees of people-ness, and you may throw in a throwaway plot npc now and again if you need to. this is generally pretty common and accepted in fanfiction, and even i do it maybe a little gratuitously). the more your characters react like real people, the more... real... they’ll feel! but also, this is where artistic liberty comes in. if you have a mood, tonal, or any sort of other goal in mind, you’re going to bend your characters to fit that. they may react more noticeably to something than a real person would, be less awkward, speak differently, etc. other than outward signs like that, another thing to consider is inward things. how is their mental health going to affect how they act/speak/think? their relationships? what if they just had a bad day? realistically, if they just had a terrible-no-good-really-bad day and their gf comes in and has beef about something or the other they haven’t had time to think about, are they going to always react in a way that caters to her? maybe eventually, but sometimes a little grit and selfishness adds a lil summin summin, you know? like spices.

okay that’s all i can think of right now. a good and simple way to develop these things and get a sense of them is just... read. read books, poems, stories, whatever. expand your literary library. a “visual library” is something you’ll hear from artists, so i’m coining this lol. and try to always keep an eye out for the shortcomings of whatever you’re reading, because...

step 2: learn how to critique

saying “try to see the flaws in other peoples writing” sounds mean, but it doesn’t have to be! think about how many people on tumblr give their unsolicited opinions about literally any form of storytelling media they consume. you can be like that, but less obnoxious!

the thing is this: you have to learn how to see the flaws in other people’s work in order to be able to see the flaws in your own. the reverse can also be true, and usually they go hand in hand! in visual art, learning how to give and take crit is invaluable to every artist. what’s important is to know that “my writing sucks :// i hate it” isn’t critique. what about it specifically do you not like? look at it, narrow it down. focus on one thing, or it’ll be overwhelming, and may seem impossible to improve. One thing.

“okay,” you may say, “i just thought it sounded dumb and juvenile and immature but now i think it’s something in my sentences. maybe they’re too short and janky?” and now you know to focus on syntax. try to vary sentence structure, etc. i can’t cover Every Single Mistake Ever Made While Writing, even among the ones i’m aware of, but the identification of a problem goes a long way for you. you can google, and you can ask friends who are honest enough not to lie about it to spare your feelings. an outside perspective can really help.

step 3: focus on one thing at a time

i already said this because i didn’t plan this post ahead of time very well, but it’s an important step for improvement. it’s easy to look at your work, go “oh god it’s all so bad where do i even start,” and lose motivation entirely. instead, try to let go of (or at least put on hold) whatever aims you have of making everything perfect. isolate a problem, work on it until you’re satisfied, and then move to the next. if i’m trying to get better at anatomy, am i going to do expression sheets and confuse myself? no, i’m going to do anatomy studies. maybe even just arm studies. one thing at a time.

it’s a lot easier to find guides and tips online for a specified thing, like syntax, than it is to try to get help from “how to get better at writing!’’ articles, especially if the majority of the advice offered is useless to you. as for the actual finding of these articles, even something as basic as a quick google search and practicing of the new methods you learn will get you used to using them. also, and this sound harsh, but if you’re not humble enough to break down bad habits, and too lazy to try to put effort into making good ones, you’re not going to get better. i can give you all the tips in the world, but a capped bottle will not let water flow.

that being said, my askbox and messages are always open if you ever do want to ask me anything specific! i’m always happy to talk too much. as always, please feel free to add onto or correct anything in this post! goodnight, everyone, and happy writing! <3

[kyliafanfiction]

Your blog is such a dumpster fire! It's just you ranting incessantly and incoherently while claiming you just "complain here and there." Many of your posts have literally zero likes, which says something about how your idiotic diatribes are perceived. And then there's the hilarious hypocrisy of you constantly whining about how fans shouldn't "police" other fans...while constantly criticizing other fans. You're arrogant (I have no idea why - your writing sucks), nasty and clearly insane.

Well, what else is my blog supposed to be? (Leaving aside the fact that you’re just factually incorrect as to what happens on here and what the nature of my blog’s content is, as I have discussed before, and can discuss again, if you’d like)

No, seriously? What else am I supposed to be doing on this blog? And I didn’t say I ‘complain here and there’, I spoke of a certain list of specific things that I complain about here and there, and the things on that list are things I only complain about - here and there.

But really - please, enlighten me. What else should I be doing with my blog?

First of all… I don’t care about likes. I don’t do this for the likes. and if you do, you and I have different priorities.

Second of all, likes and notes are not exactly a very reliable way to tell if people agree with a sentiment. If I make the same post describing say, a bunch of my ships or favorite characters in a single general statement (such as my Painshipping post on the old blog, or this post ), which characters/ships I tag it with is going to be hugely influential in terms of how many people notice and thus reblog it - and as it gets more notes, it shows up more and more in the search, etc, etc, etc. Most of my complaint posts are too general and tagged for blog organization rather than outreach. If I wanted notes on them, I could game the tagging to get more. It’s not hard.

And then there’s the hilarious hypocrisy of you constantly whining about how fans shouldn’t “police” other fans…while constantly criticizing other fans

Okay, first of all, you clearly don’t understand the meaning of the word ‘police’. I am - and so is everyone else - perfectly entitled, on my own blog, to complain about things I don’t like, be they characters, ships, tropes, plotlines, entire fictional works, et cetera. And that includes, the actions of other fans. I am allowed to not like it when fans don’t like a thing I like.

What I’m not allowed (and what I haven’t done) to do is to tell those fans they have to like the things I like, to not like the things I don’t like. I’m not allowed - you’re not allowed, no one is allowed - to decide for other fans what they’re allowed to read, write, ship and enjoy. You’re not allowed to attack and harrass fans for shipping your NOTP, or for not shipping your OTP. You’re not allowed to try and censor fandom as a whole to your idiosyncratic tastes (you are allowed to censor a specific archive or fandom space that you have administrative or moderative control over, but that’s a different discussion).

So there’s nothing hypocritical about what I do.

And yes, I do have a very high opinion of myself. I am arrogant. That’s not new. I’ve said it, many times. I’m petty, arrogant, fat, cynical, mean, dense… I’m very public about my flaws. I’m working on some of them, such as my denseness and my weight, but I’ve never tried to hide them.

However… in your many love letters over the years, you’ve always told me my writing sucks. But you’ve never elaborated. Never told me how, or why or in what ways my writing sucks. Is my plotting bad? My dialogue wooden? Are my descriptions insufficient? Is my syntax unreadable? You gotta tell me what sucks and ideally, with some examples or at least a bit more detail.

Because here’s the thing - if my writing is so awful, why do I ever get positive reviews? I mean, my fics are not getting dozens of reviews/kudos a day, no, but they a steadyish stream of kudos, comments/reviews, favorites/follows/etc, etc. They’re liked by people, and, in many cases, not a ‘tiny’ number. Not a huge number. My fics aren’t and will never be the kind of fandom-defining collossi that dominate a fandom or a shipdom, that help define a whole genre of fics for years to come, etc, etc. So what?

As for my insanity - well… forgive if I don’t take diagnoses from the obssessed stalker who clearly has a crush on me ( :P )… and who takes a month or more to assemble their response. 

But seriously, in your next love letter (which should be soon?) go ahead and pick one of my fics and… tell me about it. Tell me why it sucks, why it is awful, why it is proof that I’m such an awful writer. If it’s so true, you gotta argue your case. Please, tell me how and why I suck, in great detail. 

oh, and as for your rating, -10/10. It’s like you’re not even trying!

[thousandmovieproject]

I didn’t know what the hell was going on here for like the first twenty minutes because the only version of Midnight Song I could find was a grainy transfer on YouTube, which was cracklesome and nostalgic (pleasant in that sense) but it was also hard to see. Also, worse yet, the subtitles appear to be word-for-word translations from the original. English words formatted in Chinese grammar. So we get sentences like, “We allows the enemy’s account excels fierce beasts of that year,” which goes noplace near even making a little bit of sense, and, “It stops rain now, we can do not beat the umbrella.” So the prospect of following the story and writing an essay was daunting and seemed doomed, like I’d have to rely on Wikipedia for a plot summary again.

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It’s at least as funny as it is disorienting but ultimately a story does begin to take shape. The fractured syntax and nonsequitors pick up a strange rhythm, like a secret language between yourself and the movie, and eventually the dialogue starts to ebb just over the line of coherence.

The story is a spin on Phantom of the Opera. A troupe of actors settle into a dusty old theater to prepare for a major performance. Their perfectionist male lead, whose name I can’t find, struggles through rehearsals, starts working on the apparently-challenging role by himself late at night, whereupon, being overheard by a slouching shadowy figure who sings well and was allegedly once a performer of enormous repute, a tutor comes forth, and counsels the young man, until eventually he achieves perfection and the performance is a great success – and while that’s totally ow I remember the movie playing out, I also feel like I’m missing something. I probably am. But I figure the wonky subtitles gave me at least 70% of the story.

Lon Chaney’s unmasking in Phantom of the Opera

Anyway. Eventually the cloaked figure is unmasked (cued by a wonderfully cheesy crash of thunder and lightening) and we see that he’s disfigured. It’s not the demonic disfigurement of Lon Chaney in the source material. Our guy here is disfigured by acid and his face has the droopy, melted-wax quality that – though fleshier than the outcome of an actual acid attack – pretty well achieves the look. It’s shocking, and upsetting, but not horrifying. And now we get the flashback to how it all happened. This is how Midnight Song surpasses Phantom of the Opera. Because even with the ridiculous subtitles, and the awful picture quality, the scene in which the disfigured anti-hero, following the attack that deforms him (which I think he’s made target of on account of political subversion[?]), removes his bandages and sees his face for the first time is one of the most powerful scenes, some of the most remarkable acting, to grace the List so far. I can confidently recommend Midnight Song on the basis of those two minutes alone.

Is it a good movie aside from that? Yes. But I think it only barely pulls enough weight to warrant its place on the List (though there’s something to be said about the East being under-represented up to now – it also begs the question of whether a feature-length movie should be included on the List only because of a single outstanding scene). It makes for an informative contrast against Phantom of the Opera, which is a weaker movie ine very respect. For all of that earlier movie’s mood and powerful images, and its pleasant abundance of Lon Chaney, the iconography of Phantom resides in one or two images, not the whole movie. I’m strongly of the opinion that most people who say that they really like the movie aren’t actually fans of the film overall but, rather, of its camp, and a couple of well-accomplished scenes. Midnight Song is supplied, twice over, with the heart that was missing from Phantom. Maybe that’s not such a fair comparison to make, because one had the privilege of sound and the other didn’t (although that’s not always a default excuse, the use of sound does give a skilled director an extra tool), but Phantom of the Opera is pretty clearly meant to shock its audience more than move them. That’s the whole premise of its quality: it’s socking. But time has stripped it of shock value. So what’s left?

Also, Phantom of the Opera is just a clusterfuck of a movie. It’s got four directors and no momentum.

Midnight Song gets kinda weird in its second half. The phantom believes that his ex-girlfriend – to whom he long ago faked his death so that she would never have to see his deformity – will be able to finally cope with his passing if she’s visited, and consoled, by his ghost. So he goes to his young protégé and says, basically, “Dess like me, talk like me, and go console her, at midnight, as though you were my wandering spirit.” And it goes on from there.

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A personal weakness when it comes to evaluating a movie is that I’m a sucker for well-crafted mentor/protégé relationships. Whether it’s a father-son or master-pupil thing, there’s something about that dynamic that I find really compelling. We don’t get much of it here, with the phantom coaching the young actor, and even though they’re essentially peers, working in the same field and not so far apart in age, there’s an Old Master quality to the phantom. But eventually the old master proves needy. His air of authority crumbles under that neediness.

This is gonna prompt another tangent, forgive me: there’s an older guy I work with, his name’s Bill, and Bill’s a sweetheart, he’s always bending over backward to help people out and he’s been doing that kind of thing his whole life. What’s his is yours. That kinda guy. The thing is this, though: Bill doesn’t drive, on account of he’s 81 and can’t see so well (actually gets routine injections in his eyeballs), and as a result of this he’s constantly bumming rides from people. Students, mainly. But when a student isn’t around, he comes to me. There was a period where I was taking him home almost every night for several months. And the conversation was always pleasant, and stopping by his house didn’t call for much of a detour from my usual route, but it did mean that I’d get home at 9 p.m. instead of 8:30 – which is kind of a big deal when you’re waking up early (at the time I was both a high school substitute and a tutor at the college, so I’d wake up at 5 a.m. four days of the week). But he was so nice that it felt monstrous to refuse himt he service.

But then he started asking to stop at Walgreens on the way home. And at Starbucks. And at Don Pan (a chain of bakeries down here in Miami). If I told him I didn’t wanna stop, that I had to get home, he’d say, “Well then just drop me off and I’ll walk the rest of the way.”

OK, Bill. Sure. You’re fucking 81 tears old and I’m gonna have you walk two miles in the dark with your arms fulla shit you just bought.

Eventually I boiled the proposition down to a quick phrase. He’d ask for a ride and I’d say sure – “no stops, though.” He’d balk at this sometimes, get condescending; on more than one occasion he stormed outta the room. Eventually he stopped asking.

But Bill came in here this past Saturday, there was a little over an hour left in my shift, and he’d just finished with his classes fr the day and he was ready to go home. He starts drumming his fingers on the counter, making small talk with my colleague, glancing over at me. I’m editing an essay. I know he needs a ride. But I’m doing work so I just keep my eyes on the page. Speak when spoken to.

After a couple minutes he said bye and left. My colleague and I exchanged looks.

“Think he wanted a ride?”

I shrugged, and kept working.

There’s a part of me that self-flagellates whenever I turn Bill down, or dodge his questions or just keep away from him because I don’t even wanna be asked, but there’s another part of me, the busy part, that feels no shame at all. Feels with resolve that if he wants a ride from me he’s gonna choose one destination.

Not sure what the right course of action might be here. Or if there is one. But I’m definitely compelled to give him the ride just outta fondness for the guy, as it doesn’t cost me much more than my time, but I’m impaled on the fence of whether or not it makes me a rotten person to delineate what might be rudely strict parameters on that generosity. If I compare the degree of inconvenience these rides impose upon me to the convenience they provide for Bill, the answer should be obvious: give him the ride! Don’t make this dude take the bus again. Don’t put him in the situation of having to call everybody on his phone to see who’s willing to come by and give him a ride.

But at the same time: fuck. I don’t wanna make all these stops.

Anyway. Midnight Song is good, I can see myself watching it again, but I think I’ll go for the official translation next time.

#108. Midnight Song (1937) I didn’t know what the hell was going on here for like the first twenty minutes because the only version of…

[superlucky777boy]

So much this!! I saw a sentence once that was along the lines of, “I saw his smile slowly fade to a neutral line, and it haunted me for reasons I can’t express.” That one sentence tells me more about those two characters than saying he was clearly depressed because it hints at a profound sadness, but one the other character feels they must hide and definitely it’s a recurring pain because that’s the description of a fawning realization. The sentence also shows that the narrator can feel the other guy’s pain and while he doesn’t know what causes it, he understands that whatever it is must be awful and it chills him to recognize it in another human being. “I have depression,” or “You’ve seemed pretty depressed lately,” doesn’t communicate these ideas nearly as well, and that’s why it’s more effective as an expressive visual.

If you want to do it with dialogue, watch the chicken episode of Mash. You know the full events before Hawkeye ever tells it aloud because of how he tells it and who he’s telling it to. People’s statements and mannerisms while talking and even word choice tells more of a story than telling an event verbatim. For example, the following dialogue excerpt (which I’m making up as I go along and isn’t about any specific people) tells a story:

“Where have you been??!!”

“I stopped by the store on my way here.”

“For three hours? FOR THREE HOURS??!”

“It was out of my way, so yeah I suppose.”

“No, you don’t get to suppose right now! I’ve been scared sick that something had happened to you, like maybe you’d been taken or mugged or you’d... well you know.”

He toed the ground a bit while I caught my breath again.

“What store was so goddamned important that you scared me like this?”

He stopped toeing the ground abruptly.

“Well?”

He looked up.

“You know, The Store. The one on Ridgemont.”

The heat left me almost immediately and hitch caught my throat.

There was silence, then finally I couldn’t bear it.

“Let’s just get you inside, first.”

[end dialogue]

The first character is obviously angry without ever saying angry. The second is obviously sheepish or experiencing numbness without anyone saying so. Different punctuations and capitalization and syntax makes different feelings more clear than just saying “I’m so angry with you!” The inner commentary of the narrator makes things clear about how the other character feels in the situation by describing actions and giving the dialogue a different tone. Now you definitely don’t have to write the way I do to achieve this, but that’s a simple excerpt that shows the concept in practice a bit better.

Lastly, you can do this with happy things too! Positive things just feel like sugar on the table if you just state them: you can’t do much with it and if you try to it’s way too sweet. You can create very grounded and relateable happiness by using characters’ expressions and tones and also by using them in combination with tactile visuals. Or rather, painting an idea of something you can feel. Warmth and weightlessness are very common ones, but things like crispness, softness, how a breath feels, and so much more can be used. I like to use visuals that evoke the idea of a warm cuppa in a familiar place for comfort, or amusement park themed word choice for excitement, and so on.

Hope this helps someone better write the fanfic or wip they have in their head but we’re struggling to put the idea out

I feel like a better rule than “Show, don’t tell” is “Express, don’t state”

Because a lot of people interpret “show don’t tell” as “use visuals instead of dialog” or “play out scenes instead of referencing/describing them” which is an arbitrary rule that doesn’t communicate well what the issue is.

What I mean by “Express, don’t state” is that the facts of your story should be conveyed through the story’s elements instead of stated in the story.

If a character is depressed or guilt ridden, it should be expressed through their attitude, their actions, their decisions, their reactions, etc. instead of stating “this character is depressed”. Whether it’s done through dialog or a visual of a rainy cloud doesn’t matter, because it’s still conveyed directly to the audience instead of being evident in the text itself.

In fact, sometimes having a character describe a scene or a diagnosis or whatever using dialog can express a lot more than showing the scene itself.

[kindagingerbinger-blog]

My Top 5 Musical Numbers from Moulin Rouge!

Full disclosure: This is my all time favorite movie, and I love everything about it. This past summer, I had the amazing opportunity to travel to Paris and see the Moulin Rouge in person. It was one of the best moments of my life. Yes--I cried. Picture after my meltdown below:

I obsessed over it when it was released in 2001, and I was only 9 years old. Yes, I watched this movie at waaaaay too young of an age, but hey...that’s what happens when you are left unsupervised --with Dish 500-- at your grandmother’s house after elementary school. Luckily, my innocent 9 year old brain managed to glaze over a few of the more *mature* concepts of the film, which was perhaps good for me, but also led to some pretty hilarious long term misconceptions. More on this later. But now, here are my 5 favorite songs, in order of “love it”, to “SUPER-REALLY-LOVE-IT-AND-SING-IT-DAILY-TO-MY-(diamond)DOGS”. 

Remember, there are no loser songs in Moulin Rouge. Let’s start with some honorable mentions before we get to the top 5:

-Like a Virgin: The Duke & Zidler are hysterical together. Would ship a spin off, without hesitation.

-One Day I’ll Fly Away: Power ballad, y’all. Beautiful wardrobe, lighting, staging, everything. Eyebrows for days.

- Zidler's Rap Medley, including Lady Marmalade, Because We Can, Smells Like Teen Spirit: Standout moments include the supporting cast during Marmalade, Zidler’s over the top hilarious coreography during the can can, and the inspired Nirvana-powered “here we are now, entertain us”- a demand that the movie delivers.

If you don’t own the soundtrack- get it. You won’t regret it. Now, onto the top 5.

5) The Pitch/Spectacular Spectacular

This scene is ALWAYS fun. The choreography and vision that had to go into planning each moment is truly mind-blowing. I obtained my bachelors degree in music (percussion, specifically), and I wonder how much this scene influenced my love for sound effects. It is nearly impossible to watch without giggling... or at least smiling like an idiot. Ewan McGregor playing finger cymbals is one of my favorite images of all time.

4) Your Song

“Your Song” is when Moulin Rouge makes its first real statement about what kind of movie it is going to be. You get a good idea of it during the can can and “Diamonds are a Girls Best Friend”, but this dream-like sequence with the singing moon and at arm’s length Eiffel Tower really pushes it into the beautiful fantasy that it is. Unfortunately, we are back to that whole 9 year old watching a movie about a *courtesan*. The scene prior to “Your Song”, in which Satine begs Christian to continue his “naughty words” while she rolls all over the bed and ground flew right over my head. The good news is that when I rewatched the movie years later, it was like I was watching the movie all over again! I finally got the jokes! It was a very similar experience to watching old Disney movies or cartoons that you used to love as a kid, and realizing how many adult jokes were in the script. Just delightful.

This also solidified my lifelong obsession with Ewan McGregor. I was already pretty much on board after seeing The Phantom Menace, but this scene with the fog/smoke and blue lighting took me from Ewan McGregor Padawan to Apprentice (and Big Fish promoted me to Master). 

3) The Show Must Go On

Whenever I watch a new movie or TV show, I really obsess over the details. I consume every article, review, and discussion relating to it as soon as I commit to watching. Back in 2001, this was a bit trickier. When I want to go down the rabbit hole now, all I have to do is pull up IMDB or google on my iPhone and obsess from the comfort of my couch. or bed. or recliner. or at work. In 2001, my only options were to buy the DVD, soundtrack, and movie magazines. So, I got (or had my mom purchase for me, rather) the soundtrack. I listened to it on my walkman constantly.I mean constantly. I even used to drive around on my family’s golf cart and listen to it on loop, playing the movie along to the music in my mind. Side note: Walkman skip protection is a joke. 

Moulin Rouge gave me a gift that my 9 year old self could never have known would impact as it did--exposure to Sir Elton John & Queen. In my quest to know everything about the movie, I researched each artist’s songs that were in the film and learned everything about them as well. If it weren’t for Moulin Rouge, I may have not gone to music school. 

2) Come What May (all variations)

The “finale” of Spectacular Spectacular and of Moulin Rouge produced awe-inducing performances and vocals. Christian’s repeated “come what may”s as he walks down the center aisle will forever go down in my book as the most romantic declaration of love to ever be committed to screen. Satine’s wedding gown, hair, and accessories are something that I still dream about being able to pull off. I always identified with fellow redheads who knew how to accessorize. Satine & Ariel were (and still are) at the top of my icon list. You also get to see Zidler punch the Duke in the face, so that’s nice. Personally, this scene also began with some dialogue that led to a huge, long term syntax error that I did not correct until years later. Once again-- I was 9. The whole prostitution thing was not something that I understood. So, when Christian throws the cash at Satine and announces to the audience "I’ve paid my whore”, my 9-year-old brain autofilled its meaning. Whore must be another word for cash money. For the next several years, that is what I took the word to mean. Cash currency. Dinero. Buckaroos. Dough. An epiphany came on one of my later viewings, years later. I am not obliged to tell you how many years later. A woman’s heart is an ocean of secrets.

1) El Tango de Roxanne.

Flawless.This sequence never gets old, and does not feel dated, even 17 years later. The dancers and the tone throughout is, again, flawless. This movie does not do anything with subtlety, and thank goodness for that. It lets you feel the drama and the emotional weight of the events through its unique arrangements and stunning choreography. I was also at the pinnacle of my short lived ballet career when I was 9, and I wanted to be one of those dancers so badly. Of course, this is before I understood the full scope of the film and its characters... but truly, this is one of my favorite sequences in all of film. #yes #justyes

[speedybreadcollectorposts-blog]

Top 7 Tips To Crack Any Technical Interview For Software Engineers.

Cracking interviews is by no means a cake walk. Especially the technical ones. On top of it, if you are a

Software Engineer looking for a job, you had it. Therefore, it is better to be prepared, and for that best Java training institutes in Pune, can help you big time. Coming back to the article, let’s get on with it.

Guess what?

The greater part of the Interviews tail a particular pattern. In the event that you comprehend it and edge your response similarly you can clear any interview. On the off chance that you don’t know stuff this won’t not help you, but rather on the off chance that you are readied, this article will help you appear of your maximum potential.

1. Be prepared to write code:

In the event that you have been requested to write some code, be cautious and tail some fundamental standards. Many times individuals say “I forgot the syntax…” and this for the syntax of a for loop. Nobody anticipates that you will remember everything except for basics like loops, if conditions, main method, exceptions are never to be overlooked. On the off chance that you brushed, them up. Continuously compose the code with proper indentations. That may compensate for your awful handwriting!! A Java developer course in Pune, will help you with the coding part.

10 Steps To Become An Outstanding Java Developer

2. Transform arguments into a dialogue:

Regardless of the possibility that you realize that other individual isn’t right don’t argue and attempt to proceed with the discussion saying “alright, But I am not entirely certain if that is right, I will check that”. This keeps the individual in great terms. Be a good listener amid the interview use reference to your experience when you are replying.

3. Talk about your best achievement:

In your career, there may be something that you look at as your best accomplishment. It is critical to portray it in a way that interviewer feels that you have accomplished something unprecedented there. Along these lines, set up an authentic story on how your capacities helped you finish that task. It is imperative to set this up in light of the fact that investment is required to burrow your memory and discover circumstances.

4. Face the “why?”

Great interviews concentrate on the question “Why?”. It may begin with “What” however will end in “Why?”. For instance in Java normal question would be “What is the contrast amongst String and StringBuffer?”. A subsequent why question will resemble “Why is String has so-thus” or “How is it done..?”. Be prepared to give inside info. by replying “How?” and “Why” parts of the question. A

Java programming course in Pune, can help you answer the why.

5. Explain your project:

As engineers you need to comprehend the business before you begin coding it. So you ought to have the capacity to clarify what is being done in your venture. Jot down 3-4 lines that will clarify the task in high level. By listening to the lines somebody outside of your team ought to get a thought regarding it. Since we generally works inside on elements, more often than not it is difficult to highlight these. Look for your customer’s inner communications how they are showcasing and get some piece of information from it. Rehearse what your are going to say with companions ensure you are on to the point.

6. Honesty is the best policy:

Answer what you know, unhesitatingly. On the off chance that you have been posed a question that you are not at all aware about, Begin by saying “I am not certain, but rather I think It is …..”. Never tell a wrong answer certainly. That will make them question your right answers likewise or may feel that they were speculations. You can’t utilize this process for each question, yet 25% is a decent sum. Above all this demonstrates your capacity to think and a never run away attitude. Nobody is glad to work with individuals who say “I can’t do this”. Attempt to do something about every one of the questions.

7. Do you have any questions?

This inquiry gets rehashed in each and every interview. Here you don’t really think about the answers; yet you ought to make yourselves look great by asking “smart” questions.

Finally, we would like to wish you all the best for the interviews and recommend best Java classes in Pune.

[speedybreadcollectorposts-blog]

Top 7 Tips To Crack Any Technical Interview For Software Engineers.

Cracking interviews is by no means a cake walk. Especially the technical ones. On top of it, if you are a

Software Engineer looking for a job, you had it. Therefore, it is better to be prepared, and for that best Java training institutes in Pune, can help you big time. Coming back to the article, let’s get on with it.

Guess what?

The greater part of the Interviews tail a particular pattern. In the event that you comprehend it and edge your response similarly you can clear any interview. On the off chance that you don’t know stuff this won’t not help you, but rather on the off chance that you are readied, this article will help you appear of your maximum potential.

1. Be prepared to write code:

In the event that you have been requested to write some code, be cautious and tail some fundamental standards. Many times individuals say “I forgot the syntax…” and this for the syntax of a for loop. Nobody anticipates that you will remember everything except for basics like loops, if conditions, main method, exceptions are never to be overlooked. On the off chance that you brushed, them up. Continuously compose the code with proper indentations. That may compensate for your awful handwriting!! A Java developer course in Pune, will help you with the coding part.

10 Steps To Become An Outstanding Java Developer

2. Transform arguments into a dialogue:

Regardless of the possibility that you realize that other individual isn’t right don’t argue and attempt to proceed with the discussion saying “alright, But I am not entirely certain if that is right, I will check that”. This keeps the individual in great terms. Be a good listener amid the interview use reference to your experience when you are replying.

3. Talk about your best achievement:

In your career, there may be something that you look at as your best accomplishment. It is critical to portray it in a way that interviewer feels that you have accomplished something unprecedented there. Along these lines, set up an authentic story on how your capacities helped you finish that task. It is imperative to set this up in light of the fact that investment is required to burrow your memory and discover circumstances.

4. Face the “why?”

Great interviews concentrate on the question “Why?”. It may begin with “What” however will end in “Why?”. For instance in Java normal question would be “What is the contrast amongst String and StringBuffer?”. A subsequent why question will resemble “Why is String has so-thus” or “How is it done..?”. Be prepared to give inside info. by replying “How?” and “Why” parts of the question. A

Java programming course in Pune, can help you answer the why.

5. Explain your project:

As engineers you need to comprehend the business before you begin coding it. So you ought to have the capacity to clarify what is being done in your venture. Jot down 3-4 lines that will clarify the task in high level. By listening to the lines somebody outside of your team ought to get a thought regarding it. Since we generally works inside on elements, more often than not it is difficult to highlight these. Look for your customer’s inner communications how they are showcasing and get some piece of information from it. Rehearse what your are going to say with companions ensure you are on to the point.

6. Honesty is the best policy:

Answer what you know, unhesitatingly. On the off chance that you have been posed a question that you are not at all aware about, Begin by saying “I am not certain, but rather I think It is …..”. Never tell a wrong answer certainly. That will make them question your right answers likewise or may feel that they were speculations. You can’t utilize this process for each question, yet 25% is a decent sum. Above all this demonstrates your capacity to think and a never run away attitude. Nobody is glad to work with individuals who say “I can’t do this”. Attempt to do something about every one of the questions.

7. Do you have any questions?

This inquiry gets rehashed in each and every interview. Here you don’t really think about the answers; yet you ought to make yourselves look great by asking “smart” questions.

Finally, we would like to wish you all the best for the interviews and recommend best Java classes in Pune.

[speedybreadcollectorposts-blog]

Top 7 Tips To Crack Any Technical Interview For Software Engineers.

Cracking interviews is by no means a cake walk. Especially the technical ones. On top of it, if you are a

Software Engineer looking for a job, you had it. Therefore, it is better to be prepared, and for that best Java training institutes in Pune, can help you big time. Coming back to the article, let’s get on with it.

Guess what?

The greater part of the Interviews tail a particular pattern. In the event that you comprehend it and edge your response similarly you can clear any interview. On the off chance that you don’t know stuff this won’t not help you, but rather on the off chance that you are readied, this article will help you appear of your maximum potential.

1. Be prepared to write code:

In the event that you have been requested to write some code, be cautious and tail some fundamental standards. Many times individuals say “I forgot the syntax…” and this for the syntax of a for loop. Nobody anticipates that you will remember everything except for basics like loops, if conditions, main method, exceptions are never to be overlooked. On the off chance that you brushed, them up. Continuously compose the code with proper indentations. That may compensate for your awful handwriting!! A Java developer course in Pune, will help you with the coding part.

10 Steps To Become An Outstanding Java Developer

2. Transform arguments into a dialogue:

Regardless of the possibility that you realize that other individual isn’t right don’t argue and attempt to proceed with the discussion saying “alright, But I am not entirely certain if that is right, I will check that”. This keeps the individual in great terms. Be a good listener amid the interview use reference to your experience when you are replying.

3. Talk about your best achievement:

In your career, there may be something that you look at as your best accomplishment. It is critical to portray it in a way that interviewer feels that you have accomplished something unprecedented there. Along these lines, set up an authentic story on how your capacities helped you finish that task. It is imperative to set this up in light of the fact that investment is required to burrow your memory and discover circumstances.

4. Face the “why?”

Great interviews concentrate on the question “Why?”. It may begin with “What” however will end in “Why?”. For instance in Java normal question would be “What is the contrast amongst String and StringBuffer?”. A subsequent why question will resemble “Why is String has so-thus” or “How is it done..?”. Be prepared to give inside info. by replying “How?” and “Why” parts of the question. A

Java programming course in Pune, can help you answer the why.

5. Explain your project:

As engineers you need to comprehend the business before you begin coding it. So you ought to have the capacity to clarify what is being done in your venture. Jot down 3-4 lines that will clarify the task in high level. By listening to the lines somebody outside of your team ought to get a thought regarding it. Since we generally works inside on elements, more often than not it is difficult to highlight these. Look for your customer’s inner communications how they are showcasing and get some piece of information from it. Rehearse what your are going to say with companions ensure you are on to the point.

6. Honesty is the best policy:

Answer what you know, unhesitatingly. On the off chance that you have been posed a question that you are not at all aware about, Begin by saying “I am not certain, but rather I think It is …..”. Never tell a wrong answer certainly. That will make them question your right answers likewise or may feel that they were speculations. You can’t utilize this process for each question, yet 25% is a decent sum. Above all this demonstrates your capacity to think and a never run away attitude. Nobody is glad to work with individuals who say “I can’t do this”. Attempt to do something about every one of the questions.

7. Do you have any questions?

This inquiry gets rehashed in each and every interview. Here you don’t really think about the answers; yet you ought to make yourselves look great by asking “smart” questions.

Finally, we would like to wish you all the best for the interviews and recommend best Java classes in Pune.

[speedybreadcollectorposts-blog]

Top 7 Tips To Crack Any Technical Interview For Software Engineers

java training in pune,

Top 7 Tips To Crack Any Technical Interview For Software Engineers.

Cracking interviews is by no means a cake walk. Especially the technical ones. On top of it, if you are a

Software Engineer looking for a job, you had it. Therefore, it is better to be prepared, and for that best Java training institutes in Pune, can help you big time. Coming back to the article, let’s get on with it.

Guess what?

The greater part of the Interviews tail a particular pattern. In the event that you comprehend it and edge your response similarly you can clear any interview. On the off chance that you don’t know stuff this won’t not help you, but rather on the off chance that you are readied, this article will help you appear of your maximum potential.

1. Be prepared to write code:

In the event that you have been requested to write some code, be cautious and tail some fundamental standards. Many times individuals say “I forgot the syntax…” and this for the syntax of a for loop. Nobody anticipates that you will remember everything except for basics like loops, if conditions, main method, exceptions are never to be overlooked. On the off chance that you brushed, them up. Continuously compose the code with proper indentations. That may compensate for your awful handwriting!! A Java developer course in Pune, will help you with the coding part.

10 Steps To Become An Outstanding Java Developer

2. Transform arguments into a dialogue:

Regardless of the possibility that you realize that other individual isn’t right don’t argue and attempt to proceed with the discussion saying “alright, But I am not entirely certain if that is right, I will check that”. This keeps the individual in great terms. Be a good listener amid the interview use reference to your experience when you are replying.

3. Talk about your best achievement:

In your career, there may be something that you look at as your best accomplishment. It is critical to portray it in a way that interviewer feels that you have accomplished something unprecedented there. Along these lines, set up an authentic story on how your capacities helped you finish that task. It is imperative to set this up in light of the fact that investment is required to burrow your memory and discover circumstances.

4. Face the “why?”

Great interviews concentrate on the question “Why?”. It may begin with “What” however will end in “Why?”. For instance in Java normal question would be “What is the contrast amongst String and StringBuffer?”. A subsequent why question will resemble “Why is String has so-thus” or “How is it done..?”. Be prepared to give inside info. by replying “How?” and “Why” parts of the question. A

Java programming course in Pune, can help you answer the why.

5. Explain your project:

As engineers you need to comprehend the business before you begin coding it. So you ought to have the capacity to clarify what is being done in your venture. Jot down 3-4 lines that will clarify the task in high level. By listening to the lines somebody outside of your team ought to get a thought regarding it. Since we generally works inside on elements, more often than not it is difficult to highlight these. Look for your customer’s inner communications how they are showcasing and get some piece of information from it. Rehearse what your are going to say with companions ensure you are on to the point.

6. Honesty is the best policy:

Answer what you know, unhesitatingly. On the off chance that you have been posed a question that you are not at all aware about, Begin by saying “I am not certain, but rather I think It is …..”. Never tell a wrong answer certainly. That will make them question your right answers likewise or may feel that they were speculations. You can’t utilize this process for each question, yet 25% is a decent sum. Above all this demonstrates your capacity to think and a never run away attitude. Nobody is glad to work with individuals who say “I can’t do this”. Attempt to do something about every one of the questions.

7. Do you have any questions?

This inquiry gets rehashed in each and every interview. Here you don’t really think about the answers; yet you ought to make yourselves look great by asking “smart” questions.

Finally, we would like to wish you all the best for the interviews and recommend best Java classes in Pune.