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canichangemyblogname · 25 days

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*grabs popcorn* why did you tag 'the writing did her so dirty' re: taylor kelly?

I finally found the words for this answer. For me, it has everything to do with the way she was written in 5A as if they were domesticating her, partially at the expense of what really made her an interesting character. I’d like to have seen her as that girl everyone loves to hate, but for the right reasons. “She’s a bitch.” Yes, and? “She hurt all these people.” Yes, and? Also… and this is just fan-canon, not something that I think the show would’ve (or could’ve) done, but pansexual Taylor in an established relationship with a woman is my absolute favorite 🫶.

Like… I hate to give buddie fans any points because most of them are committed to misrepresenting the point and a scene, but the whole “if Eddie were a girl, they’d have kissed already” held a bit of water during the Buck x Taylor era, but not because Buck and Eddie are queercoded, but because Buck x Taylor had the same vibe as “two people who met through work and only really have work in common, but dated anyway.” The two of them talked about their work lives more than any couple on the show. I feared that if either of them had a change of job, they’d cease to have anything to talk about, which *would* be the case for two people who are co-worker adjacent, but shouldn’t be the case for a couple. IMHO, Buck x Taylor wasn’t a result of Buck’s comp het, but societal comp het. They also—as I mentioned previously—seemed to stifle a bit of Taylor’s passionate, ambitious, career-above-everything characterization for a little bit there in 5A, and she kinda simply became Buck’s GF. There was a degree of domestication for her character there, and I hated that for her.

Also… 911 honest opinion? I think Buck and Ali should have had a longer arc. �� More on that below:

It really seemed like they had been narratively setting something up between Buck and Ali, given how the show paralleled Buck + Ali and Maddie + Chim with that one outro monologue about how sometimes the best things start with second chances. Because that monologue that introduced us to Buck x Ali had been all about “second chances,” I genuinely had assumed that she was coming back and that they’d work out their issues. Their relationship also felt narratively weighty because of *why* Buck chose to date her. He had a choice between old habits (re: Taylor Kelly) or making his happiness (re: the Buck Actually theme). They also chose an apartment together. Plus, their “break up” did not feel very final. Something about it felt unresolved.

Cast contracts permitting, if *I* had been on this project, I would have written Buck & Ali as tentatively working on their differences post-injury. When their relationship does end, I’d explore the concept that sometimes, genuinely liking one another—or love—is not enough (which I think would have been great to explore after the Daniel reveal, as love was not enough for a happy Buckley household). Ali & Buck may have progressed past health scares and job fears, but find themselves on two different paths in life (with her job and dreams taking her one way and his keeping him at the 118). Here we could also incorporate Buck’s Big Mistake™️ that we saw in his relationship with Taylor: keeping/hiding things from his partner and overcompensating for that out of guilt to keep the relationship. Maybe that something is family related (re: Daniel) or maybe job related (revisit old wounds that weren’t actually healed during the sniper arc, an emergency he expressly doesn’t tell Ali about for fear of her reaction). Hell, it could be Taylor-related (with Taylor, someone he has a previous dynamic with, “being Lucy” in this situation), if you really want, although I’m personally disinclined to taking this hypothetical story in that direction (mostly because I hate cheating arcs, but also because I think Buck and Taylor work better as friends).

I also think Buck could have still grown into the person he is now through this hypothetical of events instead of through shorter-term relationships. Reasons I think this turn of events could have also worked for Buck’s growth:

We would still get Buck 3.0 seeking out therapy after being crushed, being dumped, and being assigned desk duty. Maddie points out that he’s not handling it well, and he takes it upon himself to do something about that, just like in canon. Maybe later in that season or early next, we find out that Ali had reached out, and Buck reaches back out to her following his conversation with Abby and some therapy, not wanting to leave things unsaid and knowing he hides his true feelings from people. Maybe he tells Ali about him wanting to work on himself and start again. This means that, yes, he’d spend season 3 single before getting back together in early season 4 to “try again” and “see where it goes.”

However, Buck will still be lonely at this time, now essentially having bought into the comp-het idea that part of the reason for our loneliness is not being partnered (just like in canon, but he’d be partnered instead of single during this). If work or a difference in life pulls Buck and Ali apart, we’d still get Buck dealing with this gaping loneliness. It’d be less of a “He hasn’t put himself out there since Abby” and more a “He’s in a relationship and still feels alone.” Maddie and Chim invite Josh to poker night not because of Buck’s “tragic singleness,” but because Ali couldn’t come (which means we still get everyone’s favorite Buck x Josh joke). The scene will lay the ground for the relationship issues he’ll run into in late 4B. Something like, “Buck never gets out of the house” or “He has a girlfriend, but no one would know,” while Josh tells him to be glad he’s got someone because it’s “rough out there” (all while still foreshadowing Josh’s later gay bashing that episode). And this hints at an element of compulsory heterosexuality to this scenario: Buck doesn’t just feel the need to make the relationship work because he wants to be there for people, but because he feels a need to be partnered. His parents are visiting and they’re always disappointed in him, but they’ve met Ali and they’re happy Buck’s partnered. So, he stays. He reads the love languages book (absolutely quackery of a theory, imho) for some ideas on relationship growth and making it work and he stays. He expresses that he really wants this relationship to be successful and meaningful (and that’s why he’s trying the self-help book), and he stays. But maybe we get the Buck equivalent of “my relationship feels like a performance.” Maybe Buck expresses some discomfort with what are essentially traditional aspects/dynamics of het relationships (something the 5 love languages is centered around). Things like, “I want to provide, but I also want to be taken care of.” We’ll also get a few scenes that suggest he and Ali don’t know each other well (like not knowing what to get each other for special occasions, and some conversations between Buck and Bobby). But, otherwise, Buck & Ali’s interactions with one another are sweet and romantic. He goes on a successful date with Ali instead of Monica. He also goes on a successful double-date with Monica x Albert, with Ali as his gf. Ali’s genuine affection for Buck really shines when Buck runs into his season 4 family issues, and she gets along with everyone in Buck’s life, including Maddie, Chim and Albert, and even his parents. Their personal lives will seem to go strong because it’s the way their work lives interfere with their personal lives that will drive the wedge between them. Red’s warning about being too consumed by the job and how hard this is to compete with swirl around in Buck’s head the whole relationship. Buck fears that much like Red, he’ll never be able to make it work.

Eventually, however, we would get Buck figuring out that he doesn’t have to stay with someone just to stay with someone. (“I’m not happy. And if this isn’t a healthy relationship, then maybe the best thing for me to do is be the one who leaves.”) So, in early 4B when issues he thought they’d worked through rise again and maybe Ali discovers that Buck’s keeping something from her (I’m leaning toward him purposefully keeping aspects of his job from her, like not telling her about the sniper [among other things], once more revealing how Buck puts other’s comfort above his personal life and happiness and again reinforcing the idea that Buck’s career is too “consuming” and too “dangerous” for some partners, but also revealing that he doesn’t trust Ali not to run again -> but this leads Ali to not trust that Buck won’t keep important things from her and also leads her to realize that he will ice her out of important parts of his life), Buck decides, “I do like you, but I don’t think this is going to work out.” He then spends all of season 5 single, and it would be cool to see a “I’m working on myself, I want to be single” storyline, which would factor well into his further self-improvement arc during the interim-Captain storyline. He will then still meet Natalia in season 6 and they’ll be drawn together and apart for many of the same reasons as in canon.

But crucially, this means that I’d have kept Buck and Taylor friends in seasons 4 & 5 because 1.) I think the men of 911 do not have enough women in their life platonically outside blood relations, 2.) I found their dynamic *before* they started dating much more compelling, and 3.) them making Taylor Buck’s GF seemed to stifle her character a little, so she was less the ambitious, passionate reporter and more just… a sweet girl. In my hypothetical, she’s still there in seasons 4-5, and ever the go-getting reporter. Maybe she has less screen time, but she’s still there. Many of the work-related scenes between her and Buck would and could (and should) remain. Anything related to investigations and her reporting would absolutely stay. I think that Taylor could neatly fit into a similar role that Josh does with Maddie. She’s blunt, no holds barred. He tells her about his family, roommate, and relationship issues in S4, and she always gives him the tough answer. She confides in him when the pandemic becomes too much. They team up for the hit-n-run investigation and the treasure hunt (Ali also joins them). She is his friend—and maybe one of the only ones outside the 118 family— who is there when his best friend, Eddie, gets shot (but clearly—and crucially—not in the same way Maddie is there for Chim or Karen is there for Hen because she’s *not* Buck’s GF or a potential LI, and also not in the same way that Ali is *not* there for Buck, given Buck goes to lengths to hide this development from Ali, like putting on his vest in secret). She is still hard on him for his “neediness” and “impulsivity.”

IMHO—not too much changes between them. There’d be fewer scenes between them, sure. They wouldn’t kiss. Some of their more emotional conversations would be less couple-y, like the coffee date where he talks about his family. (And I personally love the idea that this whole time they’re friends, Taylor is dating a woman and Buck has met this woman or heard about her, but that is, again, just fan-canon.) Also, we’d miss that scene of Taylor in her black lingerie (sorry lesbians) and Buck in that grey A-line Tee (sorry to me), but not much is otherwise changing. Hell, even the way things eventually break down doesn’t need to change (minus the issue with Buck asking Taylor to move in after he and Lucy kissed). Buck will still learn that he can’t fix everything because Taylor will still prioritize her career over her friendship. Plus, a friendship crashing and burning is its own beast, and one that would teach Buck that it’s not just in his romantic relationships that he gives too much of himself. (Cough, cough, a lesson he could learn with Eddie.)

Also, with this breakdown coming so soon after breaking things off with his gf, his best friend damn near dying, and his sister running away, Buck will go to lengths to try and fix the issues in his friendship, lengths like going to Oklahoma to support her (a trip where he meets her GF in my fan-canon). He wasn’t enough to inspire Abby to stay. He couldn’t make it work with Ali. Eddie fucking got shot. Maddie’s run away. And now a difference in world views has put him and a friend at odds with each other (something that *seems* fixable). So, he’ll try his damndest to fix things, desperately wanting this to work out as everything else goes haywire. “I can’t lose a friend, too.” “You were there for me after Eddie got shot, I want to be here for you now.” “Everything else is a mess; I want to help where I’m needed.” No more losing people. Except, it doesn’t work. Meaning, Buck would still come to understand himself and his localized view of himself relative to others vs. Taylor’s more universal view of herself as their friendship falls apart.

This also all still leaves Tommy to be different compared to Buck’s past romantic relationships, most of which happened on his partner’s terms rather than his own. It also still leaves Taylor in the series and her impact on Buck remains without half-nuking her character. Buck also maintains much of his character growth, as I will always maintain that Taylor was very important to Buck’s character growth.

#Evan Buckley #Taylor Kelly #Ali Martin #911 ABC #Aromantic Taylor Kelly is also something that can be so special to me #And I love the idea of two people who used to hook up deciding upon being friends #That’s so cool and adult and normal #and the HC of Taylor being queer herself and she and Buck hitting it off as friends is also so special to me #like… it’d really support much of Buck’s existing queercoding #Like I said… misogyny stifled her character and misogyny is the driving force behind a lot of her fanon bashing #Honestly? Part of this is because I really dislike cheating storylines #unless it actually affects the two character’s dynamic in some way #it felt like there was so little consequence for Buck hiding the kiss from Taylor and overcompensating out of guilt #compare that to Hen— whose wife literally moved out to deal #and it took several seasons before those wounds between them were healed and trust had been restored #like— the issue is not that Lucy kissed Buck while he was inebriated #it’s that Buck kept that from Taylor and overcompensated out of guilt #and there are other ways to explore that which don’t involve perceived infidelity #like… hiding a large work emergency from your partner — including icing them out and lying to them to hide this #and then overcompensating for that out of guilt

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dontjudgemeimawriter · 8 months

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OC in 15

Tagged byy @thegreatobsesso (through my main)

Rules: Share 15 or fewer lines of dialogue from an OC, ideally lines that capture the character/personality/vibe of the OC. Bonus points for just using the dialogue without other details about the scene, but you're free to include those as well!

(to Raymond) “Your careful and my careful are different things.”

(to Mika, about Raymond) "He might end up hating me, but what keeps him safe and alive is none of what he’s told you getting out. To the police or the Syndicate.”

(to Raymond) "I know you don’t like the spell, but I don’t even know who [I am without the focus spell] okay? I’ve been focusing since I let you go. You don’t want the person from before that.”

Context: Raymond and Terran are talking about why Terran let Jesse live, and also why Terran had in the past let Raymond live/saved his life.

Raymond: “Everyone’s real.”

“Yeah, but you taught me that. Everyone who did feel real to me back then saw everyone else the same way I had. Maybe it was partially because you seemed to care, unlike anyone else did, but ultimately, I think that was it. You were real. So maybe all it took was talking to Jesse for him to be real to me. And I don’t know if that helps, because maybe you’re right that it should be everyone, or maybe it would be better if it’d come from something you said or did…”

(to Raymond) “Focusing isn’t why I worry about things. Do you just not like me telling you what to do?”

(I'm going to count this as dialogue. It's a thought passed from Terran to Raymond that, as thoughts are, is a little jumbled:)

Tried to (can’t move) found Jodi, tried to free her (stuck) caught— failed— (The Judge) Mika was here, gave them something— mistake— Judge using me to bargain (care about me?)— can’t move— don’t do what they want.

(to Mika) "You and Raymond were so good at knowing what the right thing to do is. I watch you do all this and see how much you hate it, because you know it’s wrong. But I’ve only known that based on you guys’s example.”

(The actual dialogue here is 100% not true. But him lying here imo is a big part of his character. Basically, Terran needs to convince Alex that he isn't a threat, and recently Zachary advised Terran that Alex would exploit him caring about people. His denial here, him lying, in a way, really is about how much he does care. Also, I think it says a lot about him that he can and will solidly deny things like this in order to protect those he cares about. He's basically claiming that he doesn't care if Raymond lives, it was more about rebelling against Zachary than anything else. He ha also stated recently, in his thoughts, that to him, "freedom" is just being with Raymond)

“I want to leave. I want to quit.” I said, turning back to [Alex]. “Disobeying Zachary by letting Raymond live wasn’t the best way to go about it, I admit. But now he’s gotten me what I wanted. And you get what you want out of him. That was the deal you guys had, right? I’m not a threat to you because once this transaction is finished, I have what I wanted. Freedom.”

(to Mika) “I already know enough [about my parents' death]. I appreciate learning about them in the journal, I’d be willing to learn more about who they were, but not this. I don’t want to know how they died. Zachary has taught me a million way to kill someone and he knows a million more. I don’t want to know which one it was.”

10.

(to Rayymond) “I’m constantly disappointing you. I’m always doing the wrong thing, the only difference is lately I’m finding excuses. I’m terrified of Alex paralyzing me again. But when I say you should leave without me, it’s what I owe not just you, but everyone— because I’ve always been sacrificing others for myself, haven’t I? Not even for my own life, just for…approval. The only difference lately is that you’ve become a part of who I’ll sacrifice others for, except you don’t want me to do that, and even if I try I don’t know how to do it. Even if I was ever able to leave, I can’t escape myself— everything I’ve done and everything I still want to do. And maybe we’ll all better off if you and Mika can escape and I’ll no longer be able to—“

I'll leave it there, since it said 15 of fewer, many of these are long, and I'm catching up to where I am. This was a lot of fun, and I definitely want to do this again for Raymond and Mika. I kinda wonder if I can even do it with Zachary. Please feel free to tag me again on this XD.

It's definitely difficult doing a POV character who's so often hiding things. I knew going in that this would most show up when he's talking to Raymond. But going through I saw some Very Raymond lines and Very Mika lines, and I think I talk more about Terran's character here, but I would like to pick out the lines that show the other characters whose only ways of showing their character is their dialogue (and actions).

Tagging @sleepy-night-child @squarebracket-trick @enbydragon02 (ik you might not be far enough in anything for this so you can just look XD) and @drippingmoon

#syndicate #terran #oc in 15 #oc in 15 tag

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miscelunaaa · 2 years

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shell-ter | knj

pairing: hermit crab!namjoon x marine biologist!reader (who is also soft-bodied because reasons)

genre: crack, humor, smut, strangers to lovers, hybrid au, really just unabashed nonsense

summary: While walking on the beach and avoiding your responsibilities, you stumble upon a line of hermit crabs waiting to exchange shells. It should be an exciting moment for you, but instead there’s this random naked guy yelling at you to leave his friends alone. Why can’t a stroll on the beach ever just be a stroll on the beach?

rating: 18+ for maximum crabby goodness

word count: 6.9k

warnings: Scientific inaccuracies around the nature of crabs, hermit crabs, and other adjacent decapod crustaceans (I tried my best, I promise). Implied early pandemic setting. Writer plays fast and loose with hybrid tropes. Swearing. Crabby Namjoon lmfao. Meet ugly. Awkward public nudity, which is also very likely illegal wherever this is set. Joon’s crab friends leave him to die. Probably inaccurate descriptions of hermit crab mating conventions. Namjoon being casually naked the entire fucking time. Instinctually protective Namjoon. Lots of hybrid nonsense. Bittersweet ending?? Kind of??? Look, Namjoon plays by nature’s laws, y’all. This is perhaps the least feelingsy thing I have ever written. sexual content in the form of: Breeding kink. Oral, female receiving. Face sitting. Body worship??? Size kink. Big Dick!Namjoon. Dirty talk. Strength kink. Unprotected sex with other birth control in place. Rough-ish sex. Squirting. Possessive Namjoon. Hybrid nonsense.

notes: this is all @thatlongspringnight’s fault, so everyone pls be sure to thank Julie. I ironically and unironically love hybrid fics, and this series is going to be my homage to the more ironic side. There will be more chaos!! I’ve got ideas for each member, some more than one! Please note that this is a significantly delayed crosspost from my AO3 pseud. I’m still trying to decide how to approach this space in a lot of ways and posting this is partially me feeling out how I personally feel about getting work out in this space anymore.

Please also note!! I am no longer doing any tag lists. If you want updates for as soon as I post a fic, please subscribe to me on AO3. Updates go straight to your inbox and AO3 is way more stable than this fucking dinosaur of a platform. And this is to say nothing about it actually giving a shit about writers.

my masterlist | my disclaimers | read on ao3

The sun has only been above the horizon for a short while and already it feels like the sand’s been baking underneath its gaze for hours. The tiny grains each feel like hot coals as they wend their way between your toes. You scowl and try to step more carefully. Seokjin’s already fucked up the shower drain once or twice after neglecting to shake the sand off his body; you’d hate to be the next call to your cranky landlord.

It’s not a glamorous life, being a marine biologist, but someone has to do it. Or at least, that’s what you and Seokjin keep telling yourselves every time the university threatens to cut your funding and bring both of you back home. Someone has to study the beach flora and fauna, right?

Right?

“But why crabs?” you mutter to yourself. “Why the fuck did I pick crabs …”

Hermit crabs aren’t even real crabs, you muse to yourself as you step lightly over the early morning beach. They’re still crustaceans, just not “true” crabs like their sisters in the infraorder. Every time the university threatens to cut funding, you have to explain it to some bureaucrat who doesn’t think it’s important to know the difference. To the average person and their piss-poor science literacy, taxonomy seems like a lie anyway.

All things become crabs in the end. You’re more than ready to carcinize and join your tiny decapod brethren. Seems easier than waking up at the asscrack of dawn just to put on pants and a bra and see if you can catch them moving shells all at once. At least the crabs are nicer than anyone in the finance department so … take me now, crab daddy or whatever.

Today doesn’t seem promising. You’ve been trying to observe a vacancy chain for a week, with no luck. It’s not even for your thesis; you’re just fucking bored. Like fine yeah whatever you could be working on your thesis right now but why do that when you can avoid it and watch hermit crabs line up and wait patiently for shell to free up? They even naturally orient themselves!! They line up by size! That’s way more fascinating and way less depressing than talking about brachyura behaviors in wild environments versus commercial ones.

Maybe you should have picked the fake crabs instead. Maybe your advisor would let you change your thesis … for the third time …

Better not. It’s just easier to procrastinate the inevitable at this time.

Hours pass, and nothing’s happening on the beach. You’ve walked it up and down, you’ve reapplied sunscreen, you’ve finished both water bottles, and you’ve seen nothing, not even a lone crab sighing. You go home for lunch with a sigh, taking care to knock the sand out of your sandals before going into the dinky apartment. And then you repeat it all again, leaving this time with a sun hat and stronger sunscreen for the intense afternoon light.

You’d think by this time that the sound of the waves beating the shore would drive you nuts and remind you of your failures, but no. It’s the only thing soothing your annoyance at the lack of hermit crabs and your lack of will to work on your thesis.

Every once in a while, as the sun makes its way across the cloudless sky, you sit for a moment in the hot sand, dropping your notebook to the side. During these moments, you allow yourself to stare out into the sea and let the quiet flow through you. It’s nice, really. No one’s been coming to the beach because of the pandemic, so it’s personal nature hours just for you, the lone soul brave enough to venture out.

It’s during one of these moments, late in the day, the sun just beginning to touch the horizon after a long day of making things unbearably hot, that you see it. Or, rather, you see them.

Hermit crabs, perhaps a half dozen or so, beginning to queue up in the sand. It’s adorable, really; they’ve arranged themselves biggest to smallest, and they’re holding onto each other with their claws to make sure the order is maintained. At the end of the line lays a shell, just a bit too big for the biggest crab to move into.

The wonders of nature never cease to amaze you.

You watch from a few feet away, trying not to make any sudden movements, as a few more crabs join the line and the rest shuffle to make sure they’re in the right order. You turn to reach for your notebook.

As you’re flipping through to the first available page, you hear a little pop.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

The angry voice makes you jump, your notes and pen flying somewhere as your hat falls off and you scramble to look dignified instead of very obsessed with crustaceans.

“N-NOTHING?? I-I waS—”

“Doesn’t look like nothing to me.” The voice is angry, accusatory. Your head spins around to find its source before you’ve even located your pen and you’re too startled to care about the undignified shriek you emit when your eyes find it. Or, actually—if you had to make an assumption—him.

A man, tall and lanky and naked as hell, is staring down at you. His hands are on his hips, his skin burnished gold in the mid-afternoon sunlight. Good lord, he’s so fucking naked! And angry!! But mOSTLY NAKED???

Why is an angry naked man yelling at you on the beach?

Why is it also kind of turning you on???

(Maybe Seokjin was right, maybe you do need to get laid.)

“Do you fucking mind?” He’s tall too, glowering down at you with handsomely hooded eyes, his full lips set into a hard line that makes no sense with how soft they look.

This is not the time to be thinking about this man’s mouth!! What are you doing? Has the sun addled you? Say something!

“D-do I mind? Mind what?”

“Do. You. Fucking. Mind?” the man spits at you. His eyebrows furrow.

Don’t look down. Fuck. Do not look down.

“Do I mind?” Something in your brain finally fires correctly. “Do you mind?? Naked asshole yelling at me?”

“This is my natural state and this is my turf—”

You scramble up to stand, almost falling over because your head swims from doing it too quickly.

“Your turf? This is a public beach, dickwad.”

Dick. Don’t look down don’t look—

Fuck. You looked down. Ohhhhhh boy did you look down. Oh wow. That’s a peen. That’s a big ole peen out in the sunlight in public on this here public beach. Holy shit. He’s gifted and he’s naked and he’s on the beach yelling at you and fuck why is this making you so horny???

“Lady, I don’t know who the fuck you are but you’re on my turf, you’re scaring my friends, and you need to fucking leave so we can do our business and get back to doing what we do.” The man’s chest is rising and falling rapidly as his jaw ticks with frustration. He’s got really nice pecs and his n—NO. FOCUS.

“I’m sorry, what friends? It’s just you and me here on the beach.” Thank god. This would be hard to explain to the local cops.

He steps to the side and points at the ground, to the little hermit crabs in their line. “My friends??? The crabs that you’re disturbing, including myself???”

The incredulity in his voice makes it click for you.

“Oh. Oh my god, are you a crab hybrid?”

He puts his face in his hands and shouts through his palms: “YES.”

“I … okay, are you all hybrids? I’m so sorry, I didn’t know, I—”

“Save it, I don’t care. Could you just leave us alone now? You’re scaring the littler ones and we all just want new shells.”

You bend over to pick up your notebook. “I’m a scientist, I promise I wasn’t trying to scare you and your friends.”

“Fine, whatever, just leave us alone please? You’ve been walking up and down this beach for days and you’re disturbing the peace.”

You’re suddenly very aware of the sand stuck between your sandals and the soles of your feet. Your heart sinks. “Ah, yeah. I can … do that. I guess.”

It’s better this way, probably. You need to start working on your thesis anyway. Your notebook feels heavy in your hand as you secure your hat back on your head.

“Great,” the man says. His shoulders relax as he sighs. “Great. Thanks for understanding. I have to get back to it but if I see you around again, I’m coming for you. Got it?”

Did he have to say “come for you” while ass-fucking-naked on the beach and looking like a hunky dreamboat??? You feel something in the pit of your stomach pulse with need.

“Yeah,” you say as you abruptly turn away. Is the sun hotter now or is it just you? “I got it. Bye then, I guess.” God, this is just fucking weird. Hybrid crabs in the wild and they’re kind of hot too. Ugh. Seokjin’s going to laugh his ass off.

“Bye.”

You only make it a few steps away before a loud, frantic “FUCK” makes you whip back around.

The man is on his hands and knees, still very naked and human shaped, scrutinizing something in the sand.

“Um, is everything alright?” You keep your voice low and soft in hopes that your question won’t aggravate him further.

He sits back on his heels, throwing his head back with a groan. His throat bobs, and you try not to think about what biting at his resplendent skin might be like.

“No. No it’s not. I lost my fucking shell because these assholes—” he gestures wildly at nothing in particular “—finished the shell queue without me. The only one that’s left is way too small.”

And now the handsome naked man is pouting. He’s a hermit crab hybrid without a shell and pouting and distraught and now even more naked in a way. Good lord, is this a test? Is there a dude with a camera hiding somewhere recording all of this for reality TV?

“I’m sorry.” What else can you say?

“This is what I get for helping these ungrateful fuckers. This fucking sucks.”

If he doesn’t have a shell, does that mean he’s homeless?

“How long do you think it’ll be until the next vacancy chain forms?”

“The what? The shell switch?” He looks up at you. You’re still standing a little ways away, but the anguish is clear on his face. “I don’t know, it could be days it could be …”

Weeks.

Shit. You can’t just leave him out here like this.

Without thinking, you walk over to him and squat down to look at him at his level. “I’ve got a roommate, he’s a scientist too. I’m sure if we explain what’s going on, he’d be okay with you crashing with us for a bit. If you want, that is. I just … I feel bad. You lost your shell because you were yelling at me.”

The man bites his lip as his eyes trail away, lost in thought. And then, after a moment, he nods his head.

“Okay. It’s the least you can do, I guess.”

He’s hot. He’s kind of rude, but at least he’s hot, you think.

“Great,” you reply, hiding your slight irritation. You shrug off your sun protective button-up and hand it to him. “Tie this around your front to cover up. It’s just a five minute walk from here. I’m Y/N, by the way.”

He looks at the shirt and takes it reluctantly.

“I’m Namjoon.”

The first thing you learn about your new hybrid acquaintance is that he has little regard for personal boundaries. The moment he steps into your apartment, he refuses to leave your side. You’d expected him to be skittish, maybe, but not clingy like this. You’d had to keep him out of your bedroom as you changed out of your beach clothes, and you’d actually locked the door to the bathroom for once because it took too much convincing to let him know that you weren’t going to suddenly disappear on him, leaving him alone in a strange place. You weren’t unconvinced that he wasn’t going to to break the door down. You could hear him pacing on the other side as you tried to pee in peace with mixed success.

If you hadn’t been convinced of his hybrid status before, watching him sniff at the air and scrutinize everything in your little apartment would have been enough to change your mind. And then there’s his proclivity for nudity, which just further proves his nature. His behavior is just that removed from what you’re used to from normative humans.

You’d also expected more questions from him, if you were being honest. Then again, just because Namjoon had been encountered in a wild environment didn’t mean he’d been born out there. He’d not been perturbed by the microwave or the stove or even the hot water kettle you’d started as soon as you got out to the kitchen. But fuck, he was weirdly clingy.

You frown as you wait for the water to boil. You don’t know much about hybrids, but if you had to guess, his clingy behavior likely has something to do with you being an available female and it being the mating season. August is primetime for horny hermit crabs; maybe his instincts are drawing him to you in some way because of it. If you’re being honest, you don’t completely hate it, though it feels a bit cringe to admit that to yourself. Even so, you try to shake the shame. So what if you enjoy the fact that he may or may not at this point in time consider you desirable in some way? Who doesn’t want to feel desired every once in a while?

As you reach up to open a cabinet above the counter and grab a box of tea, you hear something rustle behind you. Namjoon probably, still looking around while hovering.

“Namjoon, do you want some—”

Your voice catches in your throat as you feel a warm body press to your back. Large hands appear on either side of you, grasping the counter. You feel warm breath on your neck.

“—tea?”

A nose nuzzles into your skin, lips exhale a shaky breath.

“You smell really good, baby,” Namjoon says. “Smell good enough to eat, to …”

T-to what? You feel like you’re about to implode. To whAT??

“To what?”

Ugh, you sound pitiful with your voice all airy like that. You’re lucky anything managed to come out at all.

His hands don’t move to touch you, but his chest is scorching against your back. He’s close enough that you hear him swallow as his lips brush just barely against the shell of your ear.

“To breed.”

Namjoon’s voice is so low it brings goosebumps to your skin. A tremble passes through you, and you’re certain he can feel you shiver between his form and the counter.

“That exciting for you?” he asks. “The idea of getting your cunt fucked by a hybrid cock?”

“Yes,” you breathe.

His hands finally move, his weight settling against your back as he begins touching you, brushing his fingertips against your forearms and over your hips.

“Do you want me to mate with you, baby?”

“Yes.” God yes.

The scramble for your bedroom is a blur. All the way there, your hands are trailing over his skin while his are pushing your clothes up and off. You can feel how hard he’s gotten against you, but before you can get your hands on his erection, he’s falling back against your bed and pulling you on top of him.

Maybe you should be worried about how quickly things escalated. And maybe your conscience should shut the fuck up and let you be vaguely irresponsible with your feelings and body for the first time in months.

Namjoon groans as you straddle him, letting your hot flesh drag against his. His fingers sink into the softness of your thighs.

He murmurs a protest against your kisses. “Not yet, I want to—”

You realize he’s pulling you up his torso before can think to stop him. With stunning ease—damn that hybrid strength—he carefully positions your center over his face.

“This. I want this. I want your scent. I want you.” He looks up at you from between your thighs with those intense, dark eyes of his. Fuck. Fuck you want to die. This is fucking obscene. This is fucking—

The first suck against your folds makes your body pulse, and every movement after that brings you higher and higher into a stratosphere you didn’t even know existed. Namjoon is extremely skilled with his human mouth. It feels like you’re being devoured. It feels fucking amazing.

“Taste so ripe for me, baby. Breeding you’s going to be so easy,” he says against you. The vibration of his low, husky voice reverberates up your spine. Goosebumps spring up from your bare skin. Did your nipples just pucker?

Maybe you’ll leave out the fact that you’ve got an IUD. Maybe you’ll just let him have his fantasy about you. You’d hate to break his little paguroidean heart.

Namjoon licks wide stripes through your folds, each stroke culminating in a suck at your clit before he starts the motion anew. He groans into your flesh as if it’s the finest thing he’s ever consumed, as if he can’t help how this makes him feel. Each stroke, each tug, each movement and sound he makes pushes you closer to an edge you didn’t realize was there.

Your hands find their way to his scalp. You run your fingers through the dense hair as you breathlessly moan praises to him. It’s all you can do not to grind down onto his face; you’d hate to feel like you’re suffocating him. When his teeth graze your clit, however, you find yourself gripping his hair close to his scalp and grinding down anyway.

“Fuck, I’m so close, I’m gonna come,” you keen, your hips dragging along his lips.

“Come on my face, baby. Give it all to me,” Namjoon growls. His grip on you tightens and he starts helping you hump his face.

Suddenly, the wave hits you. It carries you past the edge and out into a realm of pleasure you haven’t felt in ages. You cry out, your body tensing as your cunt pulses with release. High as you feel, the emptiness makes it feel incomplete.

It’s like Namjoon senses this, because abruptly, he’s flipping you down onto your back. He towers above you as you whimper and reach for him.

“Please, I need your cock,” you say, fighting tears as your orgasm’s flood recedes.

“I’m going to fuck my spawn into you over and over, baby,” he purrs, his eyes trailing up and down your quivering body. “Gonna fill your soft, pretty body up with my seed. You’re not going to be able to walk for days when I’m done with you.”

You watch as his hand drifts down his torso to tug at his massive length. Will it even fit? You’re not sure. And will he actually wreck you the point of rendering you immobile? Who fucking cares?? You’re willing to see him try. For science. Yeah, for science or something.

You reach for him again, hands open and needy as you help him pump his length a few times before he finally lifts his eyes back to you. He looks hungry, perhaps as even as needy as you feel.

Namjoon finally leans over you, and you feel the tip of his cock start pressing into your cunt. You suck in a breath as slowly, so slowly, he pushes further inside. His size almost hurts; it toes the delicious line between pain and pleasure, and you can’t be bothered to differentiate between the two. Not now, not in this moment.

He groans once he’s finally fully sheathed within you, and the sound of his pleasure makes you clench. The squeeze makes his body tense.

“Cunt’s so tight, so fucking right around me.”

If you weren’t so breathless from being filled, you’d cry out praise in return. You don’t get the chance to catch your breath. Namjoon starts thrusting slowly, and the drag of his skin against your core makes you grip the sheets and press your hips into his.

For a moment, you wonder if this is it. This is hybrid sex. It’s normal sex but just a little bit better in all the right ways. Your hormones sigh in content, but your scientist brain is a little disappointed that it’s not something more.

After a few moments, during which you finally seemed to adjust to his girth, he stops and hooks your legs around his elbows. The stretch of your muscles is unexpected and before he starts to thrust again, you panic.

“Namjoon, I don’t think I can bend like tha—”

“Yes you can. I’ve got you,” he murmurs, his face dropping to kiss your knee as you adjust. He’s got your legs bent up at an intense angle, making his thrusts even deeper. Because of his strength, he’s able to help support your weight on his arms and thighs so that you don’t have to support it yourself. You’re completely at his mercy now, and fuck if it’s not the hottest thing that’s ever happened to you.

He picks up his pace as you relax into the position. Every thrust has his hips slapping against yours, the wet sound of his cock fucking your cunt echoing into your tiny bedroom. You realize through the haze that your bed is creaking and hitting the wall behind it as he fucks you hard and deep. You can’t be bothered to care if your neighbors will hear. They can probably hear you moaning and crying in his arms too. The hybrid above you seems to think the same thing.

“That’s right, baby, let them hear you. Let them hear me breed this wet fucking hole. Let them hear me fill you with my spawn.” Namjoon’s breaths are beginning to grow raged. When he’s not grunting obscene, filthy things at you, he’s biting his lip. Sweat’s dripping down his temples and neck and beading at his chest. “You’re mine. This is my cunt, no one else can fill you like this, can they?”

“No one can. I’m yours,” you whimper as your hands trail up to grip his arms. “Only yours.” What the hell has gotten into you? Pre-thesis trip you could never.

His thrusts grow rougher still and you realize that the string within you has wound itself tightly again. Fuck, it’s never snuck up on you like this. Namjoon’s cock is dragging against every sensitive spot it can and at such a quick pace that suddenly, just as soon as you noticed it, the string is snapping.

You scream. You’ve never screamed during sex before. This orgasm’s even stronger than the last; your ears ring, your heart pounds, your cunt tries to squeeze around his length so tightly that he almost can’t move. And you’re wet, so so suddenly wet. There’s a trickle down your ass and into the sheets and you realize that this fucking hybrid’s still fucking you through it as if it’s nothing.

He doesn’t make it much longer after you. As soon as your orgasm begins to ebb, his hips begin to stutter, hard and fast.

Namjoon swears one last time and with a last snap of his hips, he comes, emptying himself within you.

Your ears continue to ring with the sudden silence. The sound of heavy breathing is the only thing reminding you that right, yes, you’re still alive, this isn’t a weirdly real wet dream at all. This actually happened.

You wait for Namjoon to pull out, only to realize that he’s looking down at where you’re still joined. His brow is furrowed, even and his chest rises and falls with recovering breaths.

Finally, you break the silence.

“Everything okay, Namjoon?”

“Yeah, just ... I didn’t realize you could gush like that.” His fingers brush along the stretch marks at your inner thighs as he looks down at the sticky scene.

“Yeah, it’s a bit messy, I’m sorry. It means you did a good job though.”

Namjoon grabs a pillow and places it under your hips before carefully pulling out. You whimper at the sudden loss of his cock.

“Don’t apologize, I just—”

Is he ... is he pouting right now??

He sits back on his heels and surveys your wrecked, tired body, the pout still playing his lips.

“I just wish you could have done that on my face. It smells so good.”

Your feel your face heat instantly. Not even his obscene dirty talk had you feeling this embarrassed. Does he even know what he’s saying right now?? You’re so stunned you can’t even speak.

Namjoon shrugs to himself before finally settling next to you in the bed and pulling you towards him with care.

“It’s fine,” he says into your neck. “The night is still young, it just means I’ll have to try harder when we go again in an hour.”

Your stomach lurches at the thought. You’re not sure if it’s horror or anticipation. “Again? In an hour?”

Morning comes sooner than either you or Namjoon expect, and with it, your roommate, also arriving sooner than you expect.

He makes himself known in his customary way, which doesn’t have the customary result he expects. Barging into your room, already recounting the wonders he saw out at the reef, goes over poorly when you’ve got a hybrid still sleeping in your bed, clinging to you under the thin sheet covering your naked bodies.

Seokjin yelps. You scream. These are normal and expected reactions.

But poor Namjoon … he does neither of those things.

“I’ve never seen a grown man skitter.”

“Well, you scared him. I think he’s got a right to be spooked.”

You and Seokjin are standing outside of your bedroom door while Namjoon hides under your bed, refusing to come out until he thinks it’s safe. Your roommate’s not wrong; the man had absolutely skittered into his new hiding place. He’d actually tried to drag you with him, but you’d resisted long enough to shout at Seokjin to leave before you tore him a new asscrack.

“His dick is … well, it’s huge.”

“Nice subject change there, you jerk.”

“What? You expect me to see an endowment like that and not say something? How did you even fit it inside you?”

“Please don’t say the word endowment. We’re stressed enough about funding without you comparing his dick to the massive amount of money we’re missing out on.”

“Fine. Unlike the rich white assholes back home though, he seems … nice? I guess? The whole hiding under the bed thing notwithstanding. Did he at least know how to use that enormous—”

You hold up a hand. “Just stop. The sex was great. Amazing even. But um, the hiding thing—”

“You’re about to tell me something weird aren’t you. Hon, you’ve got to stop bringing home your weird hippie types, like, you can’t just bring hot homeless dudes home. Living in a van is not the same as having a house! I hope you used a condom.”

“Jin. Ugh. God, that was one fucking time. He’s not unhoused and even if he were, what business is that of ours?”

Suddenly a voice comes from inside your bedroom. It’s muffled, and perhaps a little salty in tone, but it’s now close enough to make you think that maybe Namjoon’s gone from hiding under the bed to hiding under the blankets. “Well, technically I am homeless and it’s all your fault!”

Seokjin raises an eyebrow and levels a hard stare at you. “Talk.”

Namjoon doesn’t seem to be in a hurry to get back to the beach after being coaxed out from your bedroom. In fact, he’s not in much of a hurry to do anything besides follow you around the little apartment, wrapping his arms around your waist whenever he’s got the chance. He’s also not in much of a hurry to put on any of the clothes that Seokjin picked out for him.

Namjoon just looks at the garments and instead walks over to you and pulls your body into his chest. His body is warm against your back. The gesture seems sweet, but it’s beginning to get annoying. Seokjin looks the two of you up and down, your stiff form enveloped by Namjoon’s lanky, muscular one.

He shrugs. “If I had thighs like that I’d eschew pants too, I guess.”

You purse your lips as you watch Jin leave the room, leaving you with the very naked and needy Namjoon.

“Hey, so um,” you start, your fingers finding his arms to loosen his hold on you. “You’re really cool, but I’m not much of a … cuddler? Like casual cuddling is cool but this is a bit much.”

Instead of letting you shake him off, the hybrid’s hold around you tightens.

“I’m not cuddling,” he scoffs. “I don’t cuddle. This is protection. I’m making sure you stay safe until you can release your eggs in the ocean.”

It’s very hard not to roll your eyes and scoff back. This is an instinctual behavior for a lot of brachyura species, and apparently it’s something he’s displaying too.

You pat his arm, perhaps with a little bit of condescension. “Yeah, but I don’t have any natural predators, big guy.”

“True. But you’re still all soft.” His hand trails up from your waist to fondle one of your breasts. Your breath hitches while he continues to speak. “You still need protection.”

“Namjoon, I’m not going to suddenly sprout an exoskeleton.”

“Don’t care. Still gonna do my job as your mate, at least until you can get back to the ocean.”

“Buddy, we had mammalian sex!”

As much as you protest, it’s no use. At any given moment as the day moves on, Namjoon’s got his naked body entwined with yours, to protect you from predators like email pings from your computer and Seokjin (but only when he suddenly stands up or steps too close to you). It’s all you can do to get him to release you from the confines of his embrace so that you can use the bathroom. For his part, Namjoon seems to be content to spoon you on the couch as you mindlessly sort through thesis research.

It could be worse, you guess. You’re getting your touch fix for the next few months of thesis hell.

Seokjin tolerates the interloper as well as can be expected, but softens when he sees the delighted look on Namjoon’s face as he has instant ramen for the first time. It’s a humble dinner, but it does the job. After that, Namjoon seems to soften on Jin too, and finally, you can move around the apartment without requiring Namjoon’s protection.

The next day, the hybrid seems more restless. He’s not ready to go back to the beach, but if you had to guess, he’s close. Now that he’s no longer preoccupied with your safety, he starts inspecting things in the apartment with care. He opens cabinets and sticks half his big body in them, probably just to see how it feels. He smells and sniffs things like spices and soap. He touches the carpet and the couch and the different utensils sitting in the kitchen’s tool crock. Nothing is not worth his inspection, it seems.

At one point, you walk into the living room to see him standing in the box that Seokjin’s extra computer monitor shipped in. He stands in it as if it’s exactly what he’s supposed to be doing at the moment, while still naked as ever, his hands at his sides with his back straight. His full lips are pursed into a thoughtful pout as he stares off into space.

“Everything okay, Namjoon?” you ask gently, hoping you don’t startle him.

He blinks and turns to look at you.

“Yeah. Uh …” He pauses, and looks down at his feet in the box, and then back to you. “Does this box make my butt look big?”

It’s now your turn to blink and not speak for a moment.

This must be an instinct thing too. And it’s one you’re frankly unequipped to handle. How do you tell a hermit crab hybrid that he doesn’t currently need a shell, not in this form at least?

“Um, no, it doesn’t,” you say carefully but casually. “Looks great.”

Namjoon tries to hold your gaze but you glance away and try to make yourself look less perturbed by pulling out your phone and pretending to check the time. When you look back at him, his pout is even more pronounced.

“I don’t believe you,” he grumbles.

The rest of the day passes much like this, with Namjoon trying to see how it feels to cram his big body in various spaces. At one point, you find him sitting in your empty suitcase. At another Seokjin enters the bathroom and comes out screaming moments later; Namjoon had laid down in the bathtub and decided not to make his presence known until Jin had already lowered his fly to pee.

Your favorite might be the hybrid’s discovery of the colander in the kitchen. After inspecting it closely, he sets it atop his head. He thinks for a moment, rolling his shoulders and shifting his weight between his feet, as if to feel out how the colander might protect him from danger. Whatever protection it offers must be enough because after a moment, he nods, and carries on doing whatever it is a hermit crab hybrid does after finding suitable protection. In this case, it’s sitting at the kitchen table, eating peanut butter straight out of the jar with his bare fingers while you and Seokjin chip away at your research.

Later that evening, after you’d all eaten dinner and had gone to bed, Namjoon wakes you up and says, “I think it’s time for you to go release your eggs into the ocean.”

And who are you to argue with his instincts as a hybrid?

As luck would have it, the beach is vacant still, and the weather is having one of its rare mild days. There are no errant visitors escaping their homes for some sun. There are no beach patrols or lifeguards, no kids playing hooky. It’s just you and Seokjin and the increasingly agitated crustacean hybrid who just wants to make sure you deposit your eggs in the ocean like a good girl.

No matter how many times you tell him you’ve got an IUD and a mammalian reproductive system, he still thinks that he needs to see you leave his spawn out in the sea. He’d tried to pull you out of bed to do it last night, but you’d pinched his nipple to get him off you and made him compromise: if he put a pair of Seokjin’s shorts on and left the colander at home to come with you, he could escort you to the ocean to “deposit your eggs.”

So now it’s mid morning. You’re about to wade out into the ocean to please Namjoon’s instincts.

Seokjin had shaken his head and said, “The things we do for science” when you’d woken him. He’s not wrong, you sigh to yourself as you kick off your sandals and shrug off your bag. You set them in the sand next to Seokjin and approach the water lapping the shore. You turn, and see that Namjoon’s close behind you, but instead of looking out at the ocean, he’s looking at the sand underfoot, his brow furrowed.

“Everything okay, Namjoon?”

“Yeah, go release your eggs, baby.”

You hate that his casual language still makes you preen, days after he’d fucked you. It’s even more infuriating that he can make something like releasing imaginary spawn out into the ocean sound remotely sexy. And yet … the things we do for science … and for the people we’d probably come to love if circumstances were different.

The water is warm and comfortable as you wade out into the shallows. It soaks through the running shorts you’d worn and wicks up your shirt as you move deeper, so that eventually it’s up to your waist. You turn and look at the beach, Seokjin standing where the sand is still dry, Namjoon closer, the waves brushing over his toes.

You squat a little, trying to make your imaginary spawning look convincing. After a few moments, you stand and start wading back. As you emerge from the ocean, Namjoon smiles. Ah, he has dimples, how had you never noticed?

Seokjin trots forward and tosses you a towel as you walk further ashore. You wrap it around your middle as Namjoon moves to wrap his arms around you.

“Thanks for having my spawn,” he murmurs, his voice sweet and heady as he kisses your forehead and holds you for a moment. Your eyes meet Seokjin’s over his shoulder, and the man looks like he’s about to burst out laughing. He keeps his cool and swallows it down as Namjoon releases you and clears his throat.

“So uh, just a second, I think—” The hybrid squints and looks out across the sand. “—Yeah, one moment.”

He runs off in the direction he squinted, and suddenly stops and squats down. You and Seokjin watch as he picks something up and looks at it closely. And then he puts it down and picks something else up. The objects are too small for you to see clearly.

“Is he … is that …” Seokjin trails off and starts walking toward him, and you follow.

“It’s another vacancy chain,” you say as the two of you draw closer to the hybrid, just enough to see the gathering at his feet. You watch Namjoon’s eyes trail up and down the line of hermit crabs, who’ve already ordered themselves by size. “Maybe one of them is about to give up a shell that’s the right size?”

Your roommate throws you a glance. “That’s the hope, right?”

You nod. Is he expecting this to bother you in some way? For a moment, you zone out, wondering what you’re supposed to feel about all this. But it’s only for a moment, because suddenly your attention’s being stolen away.

“You fuckers, I’ll fucking fight you!” Namjoon suddenly shouts.

With a little pop, he disappears. In his place is a little hermit crab without a shell, its little spiral abdomen, soft and vulnerable, curled up to the side. Seokjin’s shorts flutter to the ground a second later, now empty. You and Seokjin watch as this little crab, presumably Namjoon, scuttles up to another crab similar in size, and starts to hit it with his pinchers. All hell breaks loose in the vacancy chain, and you loose track of Namjoon as the hermit crabs all swarm and start … fighting, you guess? It’s weird and kind of hard to look at, but you also can’t get yourself to look away.

After a few moments, a lone crab wearing a shell emerges from the scuffle and creeps toward you and Seokjin.

“Is that … Namjoon? Is he looking at you?” Seokjin groans. “This is fucking weird.”

You squat down to look at the little crab. It, or maybe he, waves a claw at you, almost as if saluting, and then walks off quickly. You let your eyes follow him down the beach as he moves away from the fray. When you turn to look back at the vacancy chain scuffle, you see that it’s broken up. The crabs are dispersing and going off to do whatever it is that they do during these late summer days.

Namjoon’s gone. And you can’t help but smile to yourself and wonder what the fuck just happened.

“Is that it?” Jin’s beside himself with laughter. “He’s just fucking leaving? No dinners or dates, just a fuck and run after you’ve fulfilled your purpose? Is there no romance left in the world??”

You stand and dust off your knees, watching your fellow scientist send the hermit crabs scurrying away as he walks up and reaches for his discarded shorts.

You sigh wistfully. “With the way the guy ate me out, I was dinner.”

“That’s gross. That’s fucking disgusting. I don’t need to know that shit.”

“Look I’ve seen things now, don’t knock hybrid dick till you try it.”

“Quit bragging, it’s unbecoming.”

“Fine. Just know that jealousy is unbecoming as well.”

As you walk back down the beach to collect your things, Seokjin squints out to the horizon. He takes a deep breath and sighs. “Well it’s good he was a paguroidea and not brachyura I guess, right? You didn’t like compromise your data or anything?”

“Oh god no,” you shake your head. “I will do a lot of things for science, but that’s not one of them.”

“Then, uh, what was all this then with Namjoon? An experiment of sorts?” He’s got a smile on his face, and a light, teasing tone. He’s trying to make sure you’re okay, it seems, trying to gauge whether or not you caught feelings.

“No, not an experiment,” you say, letting yourself grow quiet with thought.

“Then what would you call it? Like are you okay?”

“I’m fine!” You really are, you mean it when you say it. “This was fun, I think. Just some fun and helping someone who needed it.”

“So is that code for schedule you a vacation for the next mating season around here or—”

Seokjin’s sentence is cut off by you throwing a sandal at him.

“You jerk! I can’t believe you’re supposed to be the uncle to my spawn and you’re treating me this way!”

Your roommate’s laughter peals through the air. “You’ll regret that when you need help coming up with names for your several hundred children.”

“Ugh, thank god for larval stages and precocious young.”

“They grow up so fast. Want noodles when we get home?”

“Please. Let’s head back.”

Thank you for reading! Drop me an ask and tell me what you think. Find me in various places at my carrd :)

©miscelunaaa 2022. My work is only found on this blog and under my ao3 pseud. Do not, under any circumstances, copy or repost my work. Thank you.

posted: originally to ao3 9.10.2022, to tumblr on 10.26.2022

#namjoon fic #kim namjoon fic #kim namjoon fanfic #bts fic #bts hybrid fic #hybrid namjoon #hybrid namjoon x reader #hybrid knj #knj x female reader #knj x reader #knj fic #lmao what is tagging anymore #it's been so fucking long since I last made a big post I think I've forgotten everything tbh

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roxannepolice · 10 months

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ok. so. i saw ur tags on my chameleon arch = self destruction breakdown and i literally cannot tell you how fucking ecstatic i was!!! i loved the parallel you drew to the master as well. like that one post that says something like “when the master became human he became basically good and the doctor became a bit of a dick”, you pointed out a connection i never would have made on my own!! i do think you’re right in saying that maybe the master has the potential to save people, and that made me readjust how i looked at the humanisation process meta-wise. i think that john smith is functionally a sort of warped version of the doctor rather than an opposite, because the opposite of the doctor is in many ways the master. in that same vein professor yana is also a sort of warped version of the master, because to me the master is dedicated to saving themself and the doctor (because they’re gay (joke) (not really)), whereas yana ended up saving everyone. yana is a much more radical change from the master and it might honestly be in part because he’s spent so long as human — he says he was a child when he was found — and john smith only really lived for about two months so he never got to develop in strict opposition to the doctor. we do get to see a small glimpse of that future, which you can argue is a direct opposite of at least one aspect of the doctor, i.e. inescapable never ending loneliness and the inability to have long term relationships like that, but ultimately there’s a bit more nuance than i originally saw. anyway THANK YOU FOR THE TAGS

For the context, here are the tags:

Thank you so much for writing! Yeah, I do think that maybe it's not as simple as Doctor automatically being a dick when human and the Master being a good person when human, but the warping (great choice of word!) is definitely there and the reversal struck me as very intentional. I think the chameleon arch very much fits into the whole nature vs. nurture dispute (which is why it reminds me of Blaine-Slitheen reversing into an egg; like, yes, it's still the same life being lived but is it really the same person getting a second chance?). John Smith is basically an AI generated higher middle class mid 30s edwardian Englishman. A very advanced AI, but essentially AI generated. He only has the necessary memories and accepts the premises of his circumstances as this is all his "programming" allows him. I've seen someone ranting if we are to understand the Doctor is subconsciously racist and I would answer no!, if John Smith was supposed to blend into 2000s society he would view Martha quite differently from how he does in the episode (and I can't not share my cracky Toddler!Smith AU).

On a deeper lever there's the question of whether the Doctor is essentially, regardless of circumstances, more conformist than the Master, more willing to accept the dumb prejudices of the society he lands in, and this is hard to answer as well! As you pointed out, the Yana we meet is more "organically formed" than John Smith, that is he was actually raised for a few decades instead of being a ready made 30-something man. And the society he was raised in is specifically the end-all, final form of all sentient existence. There are no more discoveries to be made, no new peoples, species and worlds to meet and explore, no paradigm shifts left and now I wonder if his genius stems partially from the fact that everything he would learn was somehow flowing into a subconscious "wait, I've already learned that and was good at it". And the best part is there is still some of the Master's pragmatic survival of the fittest attitude in Yana, for all his selflessness, as in the moment he waves off another lost soul in search of Utopia. Just as John Smith still has the pull towards rescuing that baby in a stroller.

Again, for me this is all about nature vs. nurture (fuck off with the Doctor has always been the Doctor and always never used guns idea). The Master audio kind of simplifies it in which one is Death's champion, but metaphorically it makes the point clear: under different cirumstances the Doctor would have been the Master and the Master the Doctor. And neither would be what they are if the other wasn't what they are.

#again thank you so much for sending this!#i always love to discuss these disasters #the master #jacobi!master #chameleon arch

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gifsbysimplysonia · 10 months

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Rating Hayden Christensen movies Part 1

Thank you to @quinnsstars for the original post. I actually reblogged and added thoughts/ratings to her post but I just wanna put it in the tag in case anyone else might appreciate the ridiculous ratings and reviews lmao

Me and @jillybean1217 as we have now watched the following Hayden Christensen movies (as I’ve read in HC’s tag here on Tumblr, it’s not a Hayden flick if there’s not Tears or Tits or Both so that’s one of the Rating Categories):

Outcast

Movie: 3 / 5

Hayden: 10 / 5

Tears or Tits: Both!

I’m always going to be partial to a long on top but shaved on the sides haircut on a handsome man. Hayden is a Crusader Knight named Jacob while Nicholas Cage is a Knight named Gallain.

Hayden is so amazing in fights: super graceful in both hand to hand combat and with any type of sword. Jacob does lean towards Legolas levels of skill in this which isn’t terribly believable as he’s human, on opium (which he sticks in his mouth like it’s chewing tobacco??), and more often than not just this side of mortally wounded 😄 Yet he persists and looks so good whilst doing it. Covered in blood is a look I didn’t know i was into either, ha. The only minus for me with him was his accent went from British to Irish to Scottish, with Canadian slipping through kind of consistently.

Tears or Tits: Tears cuz he goes through physical pain and tits out cuz he bathes / has to be patched up when hurt.

Nick Cage is being Nick Cage in this so if that’s entertaining for you, you’ll be entertained when Nick pops up. Unfortunately I just remained puzzled about Crusader Knights in ancient China. Don’t think it falls under white savior though cuz dude was just trying to be on opium lol

90 Minutes In Heaven

Hayden: 1 / 5

Movie: 2 / 5

Tears or Tits: Tears

I understand if this 1980s Tom Selleck mustachioed vibe is for someone, but it is not for me. Hayden also made a choice to make his character Don Piper - based on a real person - Colonel Sanders level Southern…which was WILD cuz we get a clip of the real pastor preaching at the end of the movie and he doesn’t have an accent, like, at all.

We have referred to this as a Jesus movie as it’s produced by a company specifically making religious movies, and Christianity might as well have top billing. I’m sure the message could be for someone, just not for me.

The dramatization of the story also was too illogical and wild for me. Tell me when State Police would tell a man to go ahead and pray for a victim and then allow this random person to walk into an accident scene, climb into a mangled car and then LAY HIS HAND ON THE CORPSE to pray for the person?!? Don was also portrayed as very selfish and almost childish cuz he couldn’t understand why God had let him into heaven only to bring him back to a lot of pain and suffering. His parents, his kids, and his wife provided no inspiration for him to get his attitude together and I found myself actively disliking him.

Tears or Tits: Tears, usually of pain, and some wild noises that out of context? I could appreciate 🤐

Little Italy

Movie: 3.5 / 5

Hayden: 4 / 5

Tears or Tits: Tits

I love (and miss) rom coms which is what this is so I was down. I am such a sucker and a sap, I’ll watch the same plot 72 different ways (i watch all the Hallmark autumn movies every year). This is in no way original which doesn’t have to be a bad thing but this could have been done better. Tropes include: childhood friends to enemies, fck boi/sleep with everyone, rival families, leaving small neighborhood and return, 1-on-1 competition with each other.

Leo Campoli (how he’s introduced at a local fest) / Leo Campo (how the character is credited at the end of the flick) is adorable. I’m just confused by his - and everyone’s - New York accents? Cuz the film takes place in Little Italy in TORONTO CANADA! I guess everyone thought “Italian accent” somehow was equivalent to New York accent which was disappointing.

Despite being the neighborhood bicycle, Leo is sweet, helpful and thoughtful. Super adorable. And i like his dark hair, makes his eyes pop. It’s just funny that they obviously did reshoots or shot at some point after the original shoot cuz his hair is distracting in its difference

And I just love this one of him "dancing"

Unfortunately Emma Roberts plays the other romantic lead and I don’t like her as a person (mean girl and transphobe). I also found her character unlikable in her “I’m better than my home” attitude, as well as just found her devoid of charisma or charm. If I’m not rooting for both leads in a rom com, it’s not a great movie for me.

Tears or tits: Tits! Gratuitous and wonderful

BONUS! He plays soccer in the rain.

I have plot bunnies for all of these characters (not proud about the phone sex PWP for the pastor lmaooooo) now lol

#hayden christensen #movie reviews #outcast #jacob #90 minutes in heaven #don piper #little italy #leo campo #leo campoli #animations #not mine #AND mine #hc with dark hair is very good

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novantinuum · 11 months

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20 Questions For Fic Writers

Tagged by @picnokinesis! Thank you, friend! <3 I love these sorts of things.

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

91 works, spread across five fandoms! (listed in #3)

2. What's your total AO3 word count?

368,544 words

3. What fandoms do you write for?

(In order of most to least recent)

Legend of Zelda (9 works)

Steven Universe (40 works)

Doctor Who (20 works)

Trollhunters: Tales of Arcadia (5 works)

Gravity Falls (17 works)

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

All Steven Universe fics here, which isn't surprising:

Hollowed Moon (2,953 kudos)

Crack the Paragon (1,711 kudos)

Shattering Atlas (733 kudos)

Contact (625 kudos)

Misalignment (472 kudos)

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I do my best to respond to comments when I can, although if I get hit with a strong influx of them I often fall behind on this and respond "late." I like my readers knowing that I do take time to read their thoughts, and that they're not just commenting into a void! Also, I've actually made some new fandom connections through engaging with the AO3 comments thread in the past, so they're something I like to encourage.

6. What's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

So this is a tie between Shattering Atlas and a one-shot I posted in my LoZ Whumptober collection.

Shattering Atlas because... well, it's my Steven Universe: Future Bad Ending corruption fic with zero comfort. However, I do IMPLY an eventual "good ending" in the author's notes, so this is up to audience interpretation whether it TRULY counts as "full out angst."

In my Legend of Zelda Whumptober collection, meanwhile, I have a one-shot that is basically an in-game Bad Ending but permanent, in which Mipha's spirit has to watch Link die horribly to the Blight Ganon in Divine Beast Vah Ruta. That one absolutely has no silver lining, but the angstiest descriptions of it ARE pretty swift and don't linger too long.

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

This question is a little hard to answer because most of my fics are either one-shots or unfinished, and basically ALL of my one-shots have some falling action or catharsis of some sort. I feel like this is more applicable for authors who focus on multi-chapters, so it's not one that meshes well with my fic catalogue.

That being said, if I have to choose ONE fic, then probably my recent post TotK Zelink fic, A Hymm as Sweet as Memory, which actually contains a very impromptu and rushed proposal, and emotional reunion smooches. I feel like that counts as "happy" ahahah.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Eh... no. I haven't really written anything super "controversial" that would garner flames yet.

Yet, though.

(See below.)

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

I do now. Haven't posted it yet, but I have a fic about 75% complete that in fact COULD gain me flame commenters. I don't feel like it will, because I feel like AO3 readers are a bit more chill than folks used to be on Fanfiction dot net, but like. It always Could. It is overtly non-con and is written as an experiment both to explore my own cerebral interest in sex from a very detached asexual perspective, and see how absolutely disgusting a piece of prose I can muster. (Think... slime. Monstrous nasties. Hot, brackish fluid rushing down one's throat. Exploding eyeballs. And... yes, this IS a Gloom Spawn porn fic, what of it?)

10. Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written?

I've written ONE crossover to date, and it was a fusion of Gravity Falls and Trollhunters, where all the characters existed in the same world and things played out quite differently for both plots as a result. A Tale of Two Trollhunters, it was called. Very niche, but I'm still quite fond of the idea. There's a SHIT ton of notes I have for the crossover that I never got around to writing... I only posted 14K of this work, but I have like... another whole 5K of work that's partially finished, just sitting around.

It's honestly one that I haven't entirely discontinued in my mind- I think it could be fun to return to one day should I ever get the inspiration or whim.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not to my knowledge.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Not to my knowledge.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Lol YES, and it's with the person who tagged me. We had like... a series of 13th Doctor one-shots about her first episode we were working on for a while, and then life got away with us. Honestly they're still pretty good IMO.

14. What's your all-time favorite ship?

Oh god. Uh... I don't think I can consciously choose a favorite ship, but I CAN choose a favorite ship from each fandom I've been in:

Doctor Who- The Doctor/Clara Oswald, with a particular emphasis on queerplatonic 12/Clara.

Gravity Falls- Stanford Pines/Fiddleford McGucket

Trollhunters: Tales of Arcadia- The Jim/Toby/Claire trifecta

Steven Universe- Steven/Connie

Legend of Zelda- Zelda/Link (in general, but especially their BotW/TotK incarnations)

My AO3 stats signal that my most posted ships are Connverse and Zelink (3 fics each), but I do feel like spending multiple years writing in-depth Ford/Fiddleford RP, and like easily over 300K words of it, does mean that this ship is especially dear to me even IF it's not represented in my AO3 stats.

15. What's a WIP you want to finish, but doubt you ever will?

Sigh... probably Crack the Paragon. I care about that fic very deeply, but I'm so damned blocked on it and so deep into another fandom right now that I certainly can't see myself returning to it within the next five years, unless there's a really epic Steven Universe interest renaissance coming for me and half the internet soon.

16. What are your writing strengths?

Uh... when I write a super crunchy metaphoric sentence, it sure can be a mean ass, crispy banger of a sentence.

I also feel like I'm decent at establishing unique voices for characters in my dialogue when I try at it. I've been told by some that they can easily hear characters speak the lines when they read, so... I will take those compliments to the bank, I guess.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Dialogue passages that feel oddly disjointed from the surrounding prose. I often end up sketching out bits of dialogue before I can think of good ways to link the segments together coherently, and as a result I feel like some of my dialogue-to-prose and back to dialogue segments come off as disjointed and awkward.

Also I abuse the em-dash. Em-dash my beloved. So sue me.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

I am only proficient in English, so for the meantime this isn't really something I'm interested in or think I could pull off successfully and respectfully.

The single exception here is that I am trying my best at describing a few signs and emphasis markers for the sign language Link uses in many of my fics. I am bending the rules a little because he is using Fantasy Sign Language and not ASL, but I think there'd naturally be a lot of visual overlap with super basic concept gestures, so I've done research for those and am having fun finding creative ways to describe his expressiveness through his hands and facial features instead of through a voice.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Doctor Who! I started posting Doctor Who fanfiction on FF.net in 2011, and never looked back. Although that original account I posted on is now inaccessible to me, sadly.

20. Favorite fic you've ever written?

I have two.

One is my first fic written for Legend of Zelda... a funky lil second person POV fic called so close, so far... (so familiar...)

I just really enjoyed the writing process of this one, and feel it's one of my most unique works in style. I also think it's probably my most slept on fic of all time lol, like I wish it got more attention than it did for how much I cherish it.

The other is A Memoir of the Marks Unseen, one of the last major projects I finished for Steven Universe. This fic took me about a year and a half to write, real talk. I often get the sense that I HAD to get this one out of my head before I could truly move on from SU as an active fixation. In many ways, it's the culmination of my emotions about my own mental health recovery, all partially projected onto Steven as he goes through a different but still metaphorically relatable experience. I also like... kinda think that my writing peaked here. Lol.

I am tagging only a few people. I am tired. Yeet. Off the top of my head:

@deiliamedlini, @citrusella-flugpucker, @bahbahhh, and uhhh... one more... @michpat6

#jen rambles #tag game

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unganseylike · 1 year

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ok so re: your tags on that post about the trc covers and adam / blue’s “books”

i went back and forth on the same thing (adam and blue and trb and bllb)

but i eventually decided that based on A) adam’s major character development in bllb (whereas in trb he remained somewhat static internally, even though externally he changed a lot) and B) the POV breakdowns, with adam having the most POV page time out of the four in bllb, that bllb is adam’s “book”

in the interest of cool discussion, can i ask why you consider trb his book?

oh i love this discussion thank u for sending ask! its been a sec since ive read books (ok actually just over a year so not really) so forgive me if I misremember details..

if i didnt have to choose just one character for the books and instead was considering most main characters for the book i think:

trb- gansey blue adam; tdt- ronan maybe adam; bllb- blue adam; trk- gansey blue

what do i define as most main character? Idek its kinda vibes and whose plotlines contribute most to the central plot. this is typically going to be blue and gansey to me because the overall plot of trc starts and ends with their evolving relationship to each other (true love and/or killing). but maybe thats bc im biased and love gansey and blue most; im sure fans who are really into pynch and also adam+ ronan separately would see them as most central.

anyways so i agree that adam is a centerpoint of both trb and bllb. thats an interesting point about the most pov time and he definitely gets lots of development in bllb.

but to me bllb is blues book- she even has her name in the title! the other titles kinda correspond to characters too, with dream thieves obviously referencing ronan and raven king referencing ganseys kingliness and quest. trb is ambiguous and to me is a reference to the story from blues pov and and introduction to her world. anyways, the main plot of bllb imo is the search for maura and kinda the overall exploration of cabeswater/related magical areas/caves as a result, which ultimately leads to the demon plot and thus ganseys foretold death which is of course the overarching plot. so its blues family and her drive to search for her mother that progresses the series plot forward. we also get to spend a lot time with blue alone and with different groups of people and see how she interacts with new people, all contributing to her character growth in this book. plus her relationship w gansey becomes definitively romantic love, which again is necessary for the series plot and its tagline. although adam grows as a character (what i recall- learning to use his connection w cabeswater, the lead up to the trial w his father, being able accept his friends help, pynch), i dont think it contributes as much to the main plot of bllb or the series overall.

Trb is the hardest to assign to me. I do think there are great arguments for blue or adam or gansey. of course thats partially because they are the pov characters. i think its more between blue and adam though, because they are really the ones introducing us to the trc world as theyre both outsiders. and of course they are kinda in a relationship— even though gansey is her ~true love~ adam is actually the one that leads blue to her involvement w the boys. i’d say blue is more of a “main character” than adam in this book simply because it opens with her monologue and her knowledge of ganseys death plus she probably gets more pov time. but main character doesnt equal their both to me necessarily. we see so much of adam through others eyes but he turns all of their beliefs of him on their head when he takes matters into his own hands and goes to cabeswater. i dont remember much about first reading the book (i cant believe it was like 10 years ago now!) but i remember being surprised when adam did that- i actually got a little nauseous. it was not what i expected for him and i realized that his actions were going to change what i had expected to be the clear cut plot of the series. it was no longer just this drawn out plot for blue to kiss and kill gansey, and adams bargain sets the stage for so much of the rest of the story! to me its really his defining moment. so overall i think trb is adams book solely because hes the star of its conclusion; we realize we dont know adam as well as we thought and neither do his friends, but we know his actions will have consequences that will affect everyone and everything.

but i think i could be persuaded in either direction for which book is whose, i can easily see the arguments in the other direction. and i actually love that its blue and adam’s plots that we are debating- i love their relationship and their parallels :)

Let me know what you think!

#asks #this is my first time posting analysis stuff in a while whew

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astriiformes · 1 year

Note

18, 22, and 29 for the fic asks, please!

18 - Do you title your fics before, during, or after the writing process? How do you come up with titles?

Oh this so, so depends on the fic, in part because every once and a while an excellent title descends upon me early in the process and also if I'm working on a fic for a while I have more time to think.

Usually my fics start out with placeholder titles that are whatever came to mind when I first saved the document; I'm yet to have one of those graduate to being a final title but that's partially because they're all things like this:

...and are often tonally different than what I'm actually going for.

As far as where my titles end up actually coming from, poems are a common culprit; I've got one or two song lyric ones, and some inspired by various other cultural references (ranging from like... pop cultural to Biblical). I tend to try to work in some wordplay, irony, or symbolism where I can, and love a title with layers.

Breaking down a couple recent ones:

Beharren ist eine Kunst -- German for "Persistence is an art," stemming from the longer proverb "Anfangen ist leicht, Beharren eine Kunst" (Beginning is easy, persistence an art), works particularly well for a story about an artist where "Kunst" doubles as a bit of a play on words.

Stemma Codicum -- A textual criticism term referring to the chart that can be drawn of different manuscripts relationship to each other (what was copied from what, where changes entered into the manuscript transmission process, and etc). Worked really well for a Pentiment fic about three "alternate timelines" all branching from a single change at a specific point in canon -- manuscript transmission as a metaphor for those critical points in people's lives that manage to change everything!

Long Upon the Land -- A tongue-in-cheek reference to Exodus 20:12, which reads ""Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee"," as a title for a fic in which a character with an overbearing abusive father contemplates art and things that can outlast us across generations. Really loved the irony with this one, it's one of my favorites I've come up with in a while.

Needless to say they draw from all over the places, but I feel like between them it's pretty easy to get a feel for what I like in titles.

22 - Are there certain types of writing you won’t do? (style, pov, genre, tropes, etc)

I don't want to say there's for sure something I won't do, just because it seems like there's exceptions to everything (Pentiment wrung a "Major Character Death" warning tag out of me which is a new one!), but in general I am pretty allergic to most romance tropes. I'll write romantic relationships -- although my fics rarely center on them, but that's one of those things I'd be willing to assume might have an exception one day -- but when I do, they tend not to be particularly trope-y. There's just a lot of amatonormativity steeped into ideas like soulmates, fake dating, etc, and I'm not interested enough in them to consider ways to rehabilitate them in my own writing. I am but a tired aro and while it means I'll never write the most popular fic in any fandom I'm in, I get by perfectly fine in my little gen niche.

I'm also not a big fan of writing in first person (reading can go either way! I'm less into it in fic unless the canon itself is in first person, but fine with it in original fiction), but even that one has an exception on the horizon! If and when I finally write my TOH Sherlock Holmes pastiche, it'll probably be in first person, to mimic the original source material. So really that's a great example of why I have a pretty solidly "never say never" stance on most non-romantic tropes and devices.

29 - What’s your revision or editing process like?

I have a horrible confession to make. I edit as I go. My terrible perfectionist brain struggles to make peace with messy first drafts, and while I'll often give things a final, editor's eye read-through once I've finished writing, the bulk of my editing happens on repeated re-readings of the material throughout the writing process.

This is not a good way of doing things and I would love to break the habit, particularly since I think it would result in me writing more and faster. Do as I say, not as I do, everyone.

#[hides my face behind my hands]#in theory i am a decent writer but i have some BAD HABITS #my writing #ask meme

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thee-morrigan · 1 year

Note

Could I hear a lil about High Fidelity? :D

um, absolutely you can :D

because I continue to choose violence against myself, high infidelity is about Petra attempting to brute-force her way past any/all non-professional (or at least non-platonic) feelings for Ava by dating other people.

partially because *gestures generally at b3* all of that, partially because she doesn't want their working together to be any weirder than, y'know, the job as a whole already is -- work!Petra is very different from off-duty!Petra, which has already made her whole current situation a definite adjustment from how she usually prefers to delineate those separate segments of her life! mostly, though, Petra is just not a girl who pines. (usually.)

so she's dating. and straight up not having a good time. she's frustrated with herself because she's having what are objectively Good Dates with women whose main flaws so far are that they aren't Ava. and she feels guilty for actively wanting someone else while on said dates because that's unfair to her date.

all of which she ends up spilling to Farah (who, again, deserves so much credit for being an Extremely Good Friend to both of these dummies).

this snippet is *mostly* dialogue as I haven't gone back through and replaced many of my notes-brackets/action tags with actual contents lmao.

“Sooo—good night?” “I don’t usually stay gone all night if it’s a bad one.” “So why don’t you look like you had a good night?” She sighed, resting her forearms on the counter and leaning forward as if she might compel the coffeemaker to percolate faster by staring intently at it. “It was good,” she said to the coffee pot. “But it was also…kind of incredibly sucky.” “Because of Ava?” Petra twisted the hair tie around her wrist, winding it around a finger and twisting it tight-tight-tight before sending it zinging back against her skin, a little snapping punctuation mark. She looked over at Farah, still perched on an adjacent countertop. “It’ll get better. Eventually. It’ll stop feeling weird and sucky and I’ll stop wanting to—” Touch her. Stop looking for her reaction to things before anyone else’s. Stop trying to coax smiles out of her. Stop hurting her. Stop hurting me.

wip title ask game

#again: i am choosing violence against myself here #sorrows prayers etc #but tysm for letting me ramble! <3 #kt wips #answered #evilbunnyking

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sequinsmile-x · 2 years

Text

I Know the End - Find a New Place to be From

She wishes they’d met earlier, that they’d had more time. Meeting him here, at the end, was cruel even by the universes standards.

A Hotchniss on the run AU, told in 3 4 parts

Series Master List

Words: 2.2k

Warnings: None for this chapter, but see master list for tags for previous chapters

-x-

Before you all yell at me, which I know I deserve, I would like to dedicate this chapter to Lina. Who, months ago, when I said "I don't know if I should give them a happy or a sad ending in this one" replied "...why not give them both."

(She also convinced me to make you wait a month for this just so you know.)

So, here we are. The actual ending to this fic, and the happy ending that was the plan all along.

-x-

Read over on Ao3, or below the cut

Somewhere in Germany

It was bitterly cold. The kind of weather that you felt in your bones, sinking deep into your very being, only seeping its way out hours after you find warmth.

Her mother hated the cold, and it showed in her assignments. They never stayed somewhere cold in the winter, always going to warmer climates just as the seasons changed. As she pulls her coat tighter around her, adjusting her hat on her head, she thinks her mother may have been on to something.

She’s almost made it home, the short walk from the local store to their small house seemingly longer in this weather, when she hears a noise, whining that she initially puts down to the wind whipping around her hair. Then she hears it again, and she stops, turning in the direction of it.

“Hello?” She calls out, the snow-covered street empty apart from her.

She’s immediately on edge. Even though the danger was long gone, more than a year since they’d found themselves moving here, she still felt like she was being followed. The familiarity of fear was almost too much of a comfort for her to fully let it go after so many years of it chasing her like a shadow. She walks in the direction of the sound, and she almost turns back but she hears it again, the noise clearer, the whining now a soft meow.

She sees the tiny cat, its black fur standing out against the snow, as soon as she registers what the sound is.

“Oh hi buddy,” she says, kneeling down to offer it her hand, surprised when the cat immediately approaches her, considering her to be less of a danger than the cold, “you must be freezing.” She picks him up and tucks him into her coat, something she knows a certain someone would raise an eyebrow at if he was around, “I’ll take you home.”

The cat burrows into her, seeking the warmth under her coat and it makes her laugh as she continues walking, now more keen than ever to get home.

“Where did you come from, eh?” She says, looking down at him, “You don’t have a collar so I don’t even know your name,” she makes it to her front door, and digs through her pocket for her keys, “Mine’s Emily.” She shakes her head at herself as she walks in through the door, partially to rid her head of the snowflakes that had fallen into her hair, partially at her own behaviour, “I can’t believe I’m talking to a cat.”

“Sweetheart, that didn’t take as long as I thought it would,” Aaron calls from inside the house, walking towards the front door to greet her.

“I was only going to get bread, honey,” she replies, unzipping her coat but keeping hold of the cat, who was purring against her.

She looks up at Aaron and sees the way he’s looking at her, amusement and disbelief in equal measure on his face as he raises an eyebrow at her.

He was different now, and it wasn’t just the beard she’d convinced him to grow out or the more casual clothes he wore these days. He was more relaxed here, something about him that she had never seen before they escaped. He smiled more, an edge of sadness to it that he would never fully shift, he’d lost too much for that, but he was happy. They both were.

“I didn’t realise they sold cats at the store, that must be a new range.” He quips as he walks towards her, taking her hat off for her before he leans in to stamp a kiss to her lips, eyeing the cat curiously.

She narrows her eyes at him, “He was out in the cold all by himself, was I supposed to leave him there?”

Aaron sighs jokingly, and shakes his head at her, reaching for his coat, “I guess I’m going back out to get supplies for the cat.”

Emily smiles at him, reaching up to kiss him, more insistent this time, “I love you.”

“Yeah,” he replies, smirking as he shrugs on his coat, “I love you too.”

___

They’d barely made it out with their lives, a gamble they took that almost hadn’t paid off.

Aaron got hurt during their escape, a burn on his arm that he refused to go to the hospital for, worried it would get them caught out after they’d only just escaped. She’d treated it, barely sleeping the first couple of nights as she kept an eye on him, fear that she might lose him anyway climbing up her throat.

The passports had been absurdly easy to get, the guy she’d bought them from keen to help once she’d told him how much she was willing to pay. They’d burnt them the second they could after they arrived in Germany, left in ashes just like their old lives. Leaving them with the chance to start again.

She taught English to the local children, and Aaron became a defacto handyman. Her family money paid for their home, the quiet life they now lead, dead to everyone who had ever known them, and their jobs gave them something to do.

It wasn’t the life either of them had expected, but it was something. A level of peace that had seemed impossible for so long.

It was quiet, almost boring sometimes, and they treasured every second.

___

Aaron sighs as he looks at the small cat curled up in front of their fire, already making himself quite at home.

He seeks Emily out, already knowing where he’d find her despite the cold, and he smiles when he’s proven right, the door of their bedroom that led out onto the balcony slightly open. He grabs a thick blanket off of the chair they keep in the corner and heads outside, unable to stop the deep breath he pulls in as the cold air surrounds him.

She turns to look at him, a soft smile on her face before she turns back to look at the view, the mountains they lived under illuminated as the sun sets behind them. She has a mug in her hands, steam from her drink rising from it, and no coat.

“It’s freezing, Em,” he says, walking over and wrapping the blanket around his shoulders before he puts his arms around her, pulling her back into the warmth of his embrace and the thick fleece around them both. “I know,” she replies, leaning back into him, “I just like the view.”

“I know you do,” he says, kissing the side of her head, “your cat is asleep by the fireplace.”

She chuckles, “Er ist unsere Katze”

Aaron sighs, pressing his forehead into her temple, “Sweetheart, I don’t speak German.”

“I do know that, but we live here,” she replies, tilting her head to look up at him, a sparkle in her eyes that had the same effect on him as it had the very first time he’d seen her. They were so young then, stupid too. The kiss they’d shared was something he’d thought back on over the years. He often wondered where life would have taken them if they’d got together then.

“Some of us don’t take to languages as easily as you do,” he replies, and she laughs at him.

“Wenn du nur mit jemandem zusammenleben würdest, der es dir beibringen könnte.”

“Em-”

“Sorry,” she says, switching back to English in a way he envied. It was one of the many things he loved about her, her intelligence, how adaptable she was. “You will have to learn eventually though.”

She shivers in his embrace, his never-ending warmth and the blanket no longer keeping the winter chill out.

“Come on, sweetheart,” he says, kissing her, “we should head inside.”

___

Emily walks out of the bathroom, quickly making it across the bedroom to sneak under the covers, seeking out the warmth. The cat is curled up and fast asleep on Aaron’s chest, and she scoffs as she settles against Aaron, her hand resting on the cat as she scratches at his head.

“Typical, I rescued him and you’re immediately the favourite.”

Aaron chuckles, wrapping his arm tighter around her as she gets closer. She throws a leg over his hips, her head on his shoulder, and she reaches for his hand, tangling their fingers together.

“I think it’s got everything to do with the fact I’m a walking furnace and it’s below zero outside.”

She hums, as if considering his comment, “True, it’s the only reason I keep you around.”

She shrieks, briefly disturbing the cat, as he digs his fingers into her ribs, tickling her in retribution. Once she’s settled back down she holds Aaron’s hand again, her fingers fiddling with the ring he wore on his left hand, the matching one on hers.

They weren’t married, not legally. They made the decision that they didn’t want to draw too much attention to themselves, to do anything that would have people asking questions. By the time they bought their home, choosing the town they now lived in to settle down, they had already bought the rings. They’d slipped them onto each other's fingers with little fanfare, knowing they were as committed to each other as two people could be, not needing a slip of paper or a signed document to prove it.

Everyone they now knew assumed they were married, and they never corrected them. Referring to each other as husband and wife naturally.

“We should name him,” she says idly, her eyes fixed on the cat.

“Do you have any ideas?”

“Sergio,” she says quickly, looking up at Aaron, noticing the amused smile on his face as she half-shrugs, “It suits him.”

Aaron looks at the cat before looking back at her, “I guess it does, Sergio it is,” he says, a smile on his face that looked almost remorseful.

“What is it?” She asks, untangling her hand from his to cup his face, her thumb tracing at his jaw, his beard rough against her skin.

He clears his throat, his eyes meeting hers, “I actually suggested Sergio to Haley as a name for Jack before he was born,” he chuckles humourlessly, the sound caught in his chest, “She said no immediately.”

It feels like a punch to the gut, just like it always did when he mentioned the son he had lost. If there was one thing she would change for him it would be to give him his son back, the young boy she would never get to meet but felt like she knew from everything she had heard.

“I’m sorry honey,” she says, her thumb briefly tracing his lower lip, “We don’t have to call him-”

“No, I think we should,” he replies, turning his head to kiss her palm, “It’s a good memory, not a bad one, and you’re right,” he flicks his eyes down to the cat, “it suits him.”

She keeps looking at him, her eyes desperately searching his to try and see if he was just trying to make her feel better, but she finds nothing other than what she usually sees. Love. Understanding.

Everything she’d spent her whole life looking for.

Something that felt worth faking her death, twice, to find.

“Ok,” she says eventually, pulling his head down to kiss her, “Sergio it is.”

She snuggles into his side, content to just lay with him in their bed, with their new cat. Aaron’s hand trails up and down her back, the silence around them comfortable.

“Sometimes, I can’t believe we got here,” he says, and she wonders if he even meant to speak out loud. She kisses his shoulder and holds him a little tighter.

“Me neither,” she replies, her smile pressed into his t-shirt, “Sometimes I wonder if I’m going to wake up,” she admits, shifting to look up at him again, “That this will all have been a dream, and I’ll be in a crappy motel in Texas the night after seeing you in that bar.”

He nods, understanding what she means, not a stranger to that feeling himself, “It’s not a dream, I promise,” he says, tucking some loose hair behind her ear, “If it was, we’d somewhere less cold.”

She laughs, bright and beautiful, and it’s enough to wake Sergio up, the cat immediately jumps up and leaves the room. She shakes her head as she watches him go, taking the opportunity to climb on top of Aaron. She ensures the covers are still over them both, and his hands land automatically at her waist. She leans forward and kisses him, her lips firm against his. She barely pulls back enough to speak, her breath skipping across his face.

“I have some ideas on how we can stay warm.”

Aaron already feels warmth spread through his body, his hands insistent as they move to her hips, pulling her closer. He looks over at the clock, lifting his eyebrow as he looks at the time.

“Em, it’s 1 am.”

“So?” She replies, kissing him again, “We have all the time in the world.”

He smiles up at her, and pulls her down to him, kissing her as he rolls them, his weight pressing her into the mattress.

“Who am I to argue with that?”

He kisses her, and everything else disappears.

-x-

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#hotchniss #hotchniss fanfiction #hotchniss fanfic #hotchniss au #aaron hotchner x emily prentiss #aaron x emily #hotch x prentiss #aaron hotchner fanfiction #emily prentiss fanfiction #hotchniss AU

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sweet-berry-sims · 1 year

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15 asks for 15 mutuals

Thank you for tagging me in the ask game @emmiesims!

1. are you named after anyone?

I am in my middle name. My name is made up of two of my great-grandmother’s names that are hyphenated. Though one of those names was heard wrong. My great-grandmother on my mom’s side often went by the nickname Baby so my mom never really knew her real name all that well so that part of my name is slightly different from my actual great-grandmother’s name.

2. when was the last time you cried?

Probably a few nights ago watching sad videos unless literally cutting onions counts then earlier today while cutting onions for breakfast/lunch.

3. do you have kids?

No but I definitely want them in the future.

4. do you use sarcasm a lot?

I can be rather sarcastic.

5. what sports do you play/have you played?

I am not coordinated in the slightest. Though I have been placed in sports during my obligatory mom signed me up to do sport things ages, lol. So I have done soccer, basketball, karate, gymnastics as a toddler, and table tennis. Nothing lasted more than a few weeks due to very vehement disapprovals from me and the fact that my parents can’t agree on anything.

6. what’s the first thing you notice about other people?

I can usually tell if I’m speaking with another autistic person something about the body language and language choices I guess. But other than that I think it just depends on what kind of interaction I’m having with a person that determines what I pay attention to.

7. scary movies or happy endings?

I don’t really watch movies but it really depends on my mood as to what kind I want to watch because I like scary movies and happy movies though I am more partial to scary movies. Not a fan of jump scares though, just no unless I really know what’s coming.

8. any special talents?

Not particularly.

9. where were you born?

Santa Clara, California.

10. what are your hobbies?

I feel that since this is a sims blog that should be obvious as one of my hobbies lol. I also enjoy cooking and baking. I recently got a pasta maker so I am a happy clam. I’ve also gotten into embroidery, cross-stitching and making little dolls from random unpartnered socks in my house. So socks beware I guess.

11. do you have any pets?

No but I am looking to get one ideally soon, just submitted the adoption application for kittens so here’s hoping I get approved. I love animals but am very allergic to doggos, I will still pet them even if my skin breaks out in hives.

12. how tall are you?

5′1″, I am definitely the shortest adult in my family that’s still alive, my grandpa’s mom was apparently 4′11″. My height isn’t that short until I’m next to my some of my younger cousins, who are now 6′4 and 6′8. I’m still savoring the fleeting joy of being taller than my baby sister who is still pretty young, she’s almost certainly going to be taller than me too but until then!

13. fave subject in school?

I really liked Chemistry and English. I enjoy reading though I haven’t done as much of it lately. Chemistry is fun I even have my AS in it though I don’t really see myself following a career in that.

14. dream job?

I love working with kids and my dream job would probably be to open my own daycare for little ones which is why I have changed my major to early childhood education. That said burnout from college is real so I’m okay with going slower and steady.

15. eye colour?

Brown

I don’t really know who to tag so I’ll leave this open for who ever wants to answer these questions!

#tag game #15 asks tag game #nonsims

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treesap-blogs · 2 years

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Happy Saturday! Here’s a review of “The Outlaws Scarlett And Browne” by Jonathan Shroud!

Hello, Tumblrians! Whilst we may not be nearing our 20th Tumblr Review yet (although the combined superpowers of my depression and my ADHD may get us alarmingly close to that goal in a short period of time if I don’t exercise restraint and stick with the 3 books per week thing), it is a special occasion nonetheless! This marks my 13th review! I don’t know if any of you guys know this, but 13 is my favorite number!!! (I like the supernatural/superstitious connotations with it. Mysterious!) (and partially out of spite, I like to think of it as lucky. Not that we’ll need that for this review, anyhow.)

Anyhow! Time for my personal favorite section, presumably your least favorite: 💫Book Backstory Time💫, the segment in which I explain how I encountered a book, a la Blob Of Text On A Recipe Before The Actual Recipe! I found out about it from Mellowkotto’s stories on Instagram, particularly when they talked about the bank robbery scene at the beginning. For some reason that was enough to sell it to me(which is so funny, because they just talked about liking Scarlett), and I ended up talking about the book to my mom because I’d put it on my notes app TBR. Didn’t catch onto why she asked at least twice or thrice for the title despite her only reading nonfiction books, but she messaged my mildly rich grandfather who gets my brother and I annual Christmas gifts, and swear I remember I opened up a December 2021 Christmas present to find it inside! (Goodreads lists a different release date for that?! Maybe it’s just the UK version or something, I live in the U.S. and it probably was put out at a different time. Plus, my copy has a different cover than the one I put under my “Read” folder/shelf.) I read the first fifty or so pages that night by the light of a Skittles-scented candle, and got to 100 or so by the end of winter before being a little burnt out and stopping. That was before I had a consistent reading schedule, though! Once I got one in 2022, I read a bit further until I forgot about it in my reading queue that was full of library books(literally the only reason I read fast haha), until I basically cleared that up this year and finished it! So it has technically taken me over a year to read this book. Lovely.

The Outlaws Scarlett And Browne is the first in a trilogy(only 2 books are out at the moment), following young adult crook Scarlett McCain. She’s on the run after committing a bank heist(which is slightly unusual for her because the stakes brought on by being chased by the law after just robbing a small bank are weirdly high?), and whilst doing so she encounters a boy around her age named Albert Browne. How did he end up the only remaining person in a bus that got completely totaled? Scarlett doesn’t know. But he tags along, and whilst they flee from the law through the woods, it seems like Albert’s hiding a lot of things from her. Is he a threat? Is he as he seems? What even is he hiding that makes officials so eager to catch him, and why is he wanted? Again, Scarlett doesn’t know. But she’s about to find out when they hesitantly form an alliance of sorts that develops into a friendship.

To be honest, I knew nothing about Jonathan Stroud until I picked up this book. Lockwood & Co., while not being his debut series, was by far his most popular (and no longer has a niche audience now that the Netflix series is out), and that’s kind of all I knew about? Ghost stuff and teens. And before that there was a different series that flipped magical realm morals on their head, and got him in the public eye(Barthemius, was it called? Some distinctly European fantasy name like that). So that set a lot of peoples’ expectations for this book very high, and many believed it didn’t deliver on that because it wasn’t as strong or original as some of his other works. I can’t comment on it that much, as I have no other works of his I can go off of, but I do think the overall world just doesn’t stick out for me.

Firstly! The plot, while interesting, didn’t really have anything I was all too surprised by. It felt like other things I’d find in other novels: a heavy reliance on “biological perfection” and the extreme lengths went to preserve that(albeit they were barely shown for this book, only mentioned frequently and remaining a looming threat), futuristic European setting (divided England was an interesting concept though, and London being split up into the islands for the refugees to inhabit), guy with secret dangerous powers that are probably enough for the FMC to worry about if their motives are unclear. (Here though, Maroon’s dynamic—the ship name for Albert and Scarlett, get it because scarlet and brown(e) make maroon—is left up to interpretation as to whether it’s strictly platonic, or a romantic thing, something worth nothing because that last bit is usually something an FMC is drawn to in a romantic subplot.) It was also simultaneously the first and not the first fantasy dystopia-ish novel I’ve read?! (I started it a year before The Belles, but finished it afterwards.)

With that said, though, there was one welcome change of pace I enjoyed: the lack of gender stereotypes with our main characters? While Scarlett faces some sexism during the book, her femininity isn’t used as a way to paint her out to be “less than”, nor is she automatically reduced to a “Not Like Other Girls” archetype by putting other women down for being “too girly”(something that might happen, with an action heroine written by a straight male author). Albert was also one of my favorites!! He’s unashamedly that person who posts about “haters being jealous of his childlike wonder”(please don’t take this literally it’s a meme reference, social media does not exist in TOSAB lmao), but then he..sometimes kills people too lmao?!?! Morally reprehensible ones, granted, but he’s still doing it with his volatile abilities and it does get suspicious the sheer number of foes trying to track him down(which is due to his abilities, he can make things go ka-bloom if he gets too scared, and he can also read minds without the tiring emotional outtake). I loved his duality as it was humorous at times, and that he was written to be more like a young adult than a stereotypically “guyish” or “manly” deuteragonist.

(Shoutout to Joe though, for trusting Albert with Ettie because he’s good with kids, even though he has abilities that could accidentally kill her, and not trusting Scarlett with her because she’s not good with kids even though she’s just some powerless person who’d have to put physical effort into harming Ettie lmao. Saw a reader point out the irony in that, though it was funny in hindsight.)

Him and Scarlett were solid protagonists, too! It took a bit for Scarlett to warm up to Albert, but by the end of the book they cared a lot about each other, and it was sweet to see that both in how glad they were the other person was still alive, and how Albert took a page out of Scarlett’s book and was inspired to stand up against Dr Calloway(the scientist who’d been abusing him for years). (Heck, the two even decided to briefly take care of their companion’s granddaughter together! The moment in that sketchy building where they’re trying to calm down Ettie and lead her back to the boat so she doesn’t get eaten by monsters is my favorite part.) They also had distinctive personalities, which contrasted in a way that made their dynamic interesting. Their banter was interesting! (I giggled a few times but Scarlett definitely went a bit too far in some of her insults before she warmed up to Albert, like..girlie was out of left field once in the book particularly, and I think people who’ve read it will know when💀)

Anyways. Conclusion is, I thought this book was okay. Had I not been brought here by a pre-established Shroudverse fan, I probably wouldn’t have enjoyed it as much! About 1/3rd through, I relied on the guidance of My Chemical Romance’s music in order to give me motivation to reach the halfway point. Perhaps Shroud’s other books are stronger in themes and plot, but at least the characters stuck. (I’ll give that to him, he can write MC dynamics well.)

Book rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️/5 stars. (This rating’s a versatile one, I’ve realized? Some 3 star books are mediocre, others are enjoyable but lack a few things to make them amazing.)

~Paz, signing off!

(Book content/trigger warnings: Some instances of physical/emotional abuse, frequent mentions of ableism and slavery(the latter is not racial and isn’t described on page), general violence like guns and a bit of blood, sexism/misogyny.)

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