#tomorrow's post is practically an entire plot

[littlejuicebox]

Drunken nights.

Pairing: Astarion x GN!Reader/Tav Summary/Setting: You've just arrived in BG; this follows the standard romance plot for Astarion after the Shadowlands. Rating/Warnings: PG / all fluff / very mild in game spoilers Word Count: 1600+ Notes: Shadowheart gives me major bi panic. Tried to keep this GN but please let me know if you see something! I loved the ending to @leighsartworks216 post here and I uno-reversed it. :)

-----

You are dancing atop a table. Well, really, you are grinding atop a table. You hold a mug of beer in one hand and the curve of Shadowheart’s hip in the other as the two of you move your bodies in a drunken haze to some drum-heavy tune the band is playing. Everything is fuzzy — your vision, your tongue, the fur on the edges of your jacket as it brushes into the cleric while you two dance to the beat. The bar is in an inebriated riot; several members of your blurry audience are shouting in a cacophony you can barely understand over the music.

“Come on, kiss already!”

“Take your clothes off!”

For a moment you consider ripping your shirt over your head and exposing your chest to the feral crowd. But then Astarion is at the edge of the table, gently grasping the wrists of both you and your dance partner. He gives each of you a little tug, beckoning you both off the table, catalyzing an uproar of boos and jeering. An apple is thrown at the vampire’s head, which he deftly dodges before turning to glare daggers at the offender. Halsin stood from the bar and made his way towards the rogue after that, hoping to avoid further violence. The looming threat of the druid’s large frame caused the crowd’s rage to fizzle out; the tavern’s patrons quickly turned to look for other forms of entertainment.

“Well, would you just look at the time? I do believe the free show is over and you’re both thoroughly drunk. You two had better be off to bed.”

Shadowheart is a flurry of giggles as she steps off the table, practically crumpling to the floor. Halsin narrowly catches her by the back of her shirt, steadying her with one hand. “What, Astarion? You jealous? Didn’t want me to kiss your lover and steal them away from you for the night?”

Your face is tucked into his neck as you drunkenly cling to the rogue, the stability of his frame the only thing keeping you from nearly melting into a pile of bones like the cleric had moments ago. Your breath is tickling against the elf’s ear, causing the pink flush of the pointed pinna to rise.

Astarion chuckles good-naturedly, “Far be it from me to keep my lover from their appetites, Shadowheart. And I’m sure you’re more Tav’s type now, what with the new hair color you have going on, but I’m quite certain neither of you would actually be interested in putting on such a show for the entire tavern… if either of you could be trusted with your current judgment, that is. Let’s circle back tomorrow morning, when everyone is sober.”

Shadowheart takes a step toward Astarion, fully intending to goad him with another quip, but she loses her balance once more and slides to the ground. Halsin is forced to scoop her over his shoulder. A slew of garbled protests comes out of the cleric’s mouth, and the mountain man’s brow crinkles in confusion as he tries to interpret the gibberish. Finally, the druid shakes his head and sighs, turning to the silver-haired elf before gesturing with an open palm. “Lead the way, my friend.”

Astarion grabs you by the waist to guide your clumsy footing as all four of you head upstairs and to the rooms located above the tavern. The vampire rapidly knocks on the first door, which swings open to reveal an irritated Lae’zel.

“Here’s a present for you, darling.” Astarion greets in a sarcastic sing-song voice as Halsin enters the room and plops Shadowheart onto the bed. Lae’zel hisses a “tch” as she slams the door shut upon the druid’s exit. You see Karlach lounging on the floor and greet her with a drunken wave as the entryway shuts. All of you hear something clatter to the ground, followed by Karlach’s muffled laughter and Lae’zel’s complaints on the other side of the wall.

“You’re welcome!” Your lover calls through the closed door before Halsin bids you both a good night in the hallway with a small chuckle. The wild man looks like he wants to say something more while staring at the two of you, but he blinks the thought away before meandering down to the fair end of the hall towards the room he’s sharing with Gale.

Your room is next door to the three female fighters. You and Astarion made the decision to sleep in separate rooms for now, after your talk at Moonrise Towers. Everyone had been so happy to make it out of the Shadowlands and into the city that day; you’d even successfully charmed the inn owner into offering you a heavy discount on the only private room left available for the night.

Earlier, you’d taken a delicious soak in the well-appointed bedchamber’s clawfoot tub while Astarion read beside you. You’d invited him to join the luxurious bath — there was plenty of room for two — but he’d gently refused the offer, opting instead for a quick shower in the room he’d shared with Wyll while you dressed.

Now, Astarion looks through your pockets, patting you down to find anything you’ve stowed away on your person. All he discovers is a few gold coins and your trusty dagger. “Darling, where on earth is your room key?”

“I ‘unno. Had it downstairs… prolly lost it.” You murmur, now practically hugging the wall to keep yourself up. You can’t help but think how cute the vampire is when he’s flustered.

“You can’t be serious, Tav.” He deadpans, pinching the bridge of his nose. The rogue heaves a frustrated sigh as you stare at him with glassy eyes and nod.

“As a heart attack… hey, you can’t actually have one of those can you?”

“Sit.” He commands, ignoring your tangent and forcing you into the plush chaise bench pressed along the wall across from your bedroom door.

“Yes, sir.” You respond with an uncoordinated salute, half sitting, half laying on the chaise. Your fingers dance across the velvet, the texture of the fabric absolutely mesmerizing you.

Astarion pulls out his lockpicking tools and sets to work, opening the door with a few rattles of the lock and flicks of the wrist. He quickly hoists you out of the chaise and pulls you into the room, where he begins to strip off your clothing, careful to avoid grazing his hands against your skin. “If you’re potentially going to vomit, my sweet, best to make sure you don’t end up doing it on the nicest things you currently own.”

The vampire unceremoniously tosses your clothes into the armchair nestled in the corner of the room and then pulls back the covers of the queen bed, shoving your unbalanced frame onto the mattress. “Now get some rest.”

“Will you tuck me in?” You’re on your back, limbs starfished out. You think Astarion looks so pretty in the moonlight; you love the way it’s dappling the side of his face and shooting shiny streaks through his silver hair.

The elf stares at you; his white eyebrows furrow as he scrunches his nose. You can tell the rogue is annoyed, but you don’t care. All you can think about is how pretty he is, even when he’s annoyed. You adore the little crinkle between his eyebrows.

“Seriously, Tav?”

You nod slowly. A smile creeps across your face, and the dopey-eyed expression you can’t think to conceal in your drunken state wins him over.

“You’re lucky you’re cute, darling.” The rogue huffs, rolling his eyes in performed annoyance. But truthfully, he was just as enamored by you and the way your beautiful eyes glimmered in the moonlight as you stared at him with unabashed adoration. He’d almost kissed you right there, but he didn’t trust himself to perform such an act while in a potentially triggering situation. He’d spent far too many nights in far too many taverns with far too many drunks for him to feel truly at ease here. Instead, the vampire deftly tucks the blankets around you, wrapping you in a cocoon of warmth. “There. Happy?”

“Mhmm.” You agree with a nod, already feeling yourself drifting toward sleep as Astarion situates himself on the other side of you. You’d been wrapped in the large, fluffy comforter provided by the inn; the vampire covered himself in your lighter, personal blanket before rolling on his side to stare at you.

“You’re not going to your room?” You ask with a yawn, sneaking your hand out from the cocoon to find the elf’s fingers and coil yours around his.

“And leave you here alone, absolutely sloshed and unable to adequately defend yourself, in a private room, with a key that is probably lost somewhere in the same tavern full of patrons that were asking you to take your clothes off minutes ago? I think not.”

“Mm… my knight in shining armor.”

“More like… rogue with glinting dagger.”

“Mm… my rogue…”

You yawn again. Your eyelids are so heavy, but you want to keep them open to admire the vampire for just a while longer. You try to fight off the pull of sleep, but you’re too inebriated and so so tired. The journey to get here took all day on foot and everything felt unbelievably warm and cozy; the bed seemed like a cloud in comparison to the hard earth you’d been resting on for weeks. You are unable to finish the rest of the phrase as your lids flutter closed for the final time that night, stitched shut by the long curls of your interlaced lashes.

“Your rogue.” Astarion agrees in a soft murmur, lifting the hand that you’d snaked out of the blanket toward his lips, pressing a soft kiss against your callused knuckles. The elf watches you for a few minutes longer, a small, adoring smile crossing his face. He knew then, in the quiet of that random tavern, with your angelic face covered in the beautiful glow of moonlight, that he loved you. If only he had the courage to say it.

[katherinecrighton]

Nuts and Bolts: Thoughts on Plotting

(Reposting a 2013 post from the Anna Katherine co-tumblr)

Here, have some really straightforward, practical thoughts about plots and plotting. Of which I have way too many, btw.

(Previous nuts and bolts caveats apply, naturally. Assume I have so many thoughts about this stuff because I’ve fucked it up pretty often.)

::::

1. A short story is a single idea, examined or played out. (Movies are also short stories. This is why turning books into movies leads to tears.) Figure out what your “idea” is – or the goal of your story, or the point you’re trying to make, whichever terminology floats your boat – and aim toward that without wavering.

2. Your plot and your characters go hand in hand. They inform each other – if you have one, you have the other. It’s one of the ways that storytelling is the least like real life. The entire plot might as well be a metaphor for whatever issues are going on in the characters lives – but once you realize that, you can use that fact to reverse-engineer your characters or your plot if you’re stuck without one or the other.

3. Frequently problems with plots are just problems with structure. Go find your favorite book (or rather, your favorite book that is most like the kind of book that you’re trying to write) and break it down, section by section, until you’ve got something really basic like “meet-cute” and “things go bad” and shit like that. Then see if you can’t just drape your plot right on over that structure like a brand new Sunday suit.

4. It’s okay to borrow structures. It’s okay to borrow stories, for that matter. Plots can come from a lot of places. “Write what you know” clearly meant “steal every anecdote in England” to Chaucer, and he became the father of English literature, so. 

5. Middle sections of books are terrible. They just are. Everyone wants to give up. This is the number one reason to have an outline or at least a game plan, oh my god. You want to see some hope of a way out, because the middle of a book lasts twice as long as the end of infinity.

6. To that end, once I’ve got some characters and a vague idea of what I want to do with them, I like to put together a list of “adventures”. It’s just stuff I’d like them to do during the course of the story. Sex scenes, car chases, dress fittings, amusing adventures with food, anything like that. Just stuff that I think would be fun to write, and that I know I will need to fill the endless fucking wasteland of the middle of the book.

7. (Those adventures? Should reflect the issues of the characters. Because characters and plots are the same thing. See point 2.)

8. For short stories, have an end point to aim toward, along with a general emotional zone to wallow in. I had a short story whose working title was literally “and then somehow, making out,” which was indeed the end point I was aiming at. The emotional zone I wanted to stay in was fairly light with some emotional dips into heavy stuff for contrast. But mostly what it said on the tin.

9. For books, writing the last scene right at the start of your process is sometimes nice, because it gives you a sort of mark to aim for. (You can always rewrite it later.)

10. Try to capture some really vivid mental pictures of strong scenes. Add those to your “adventure” list, or, better, just write them down. It doesn’t have to be perfect – if you want, just bro it out like you’re describing your favorite badass robot move from Pacific Rim to someone who’s never seen it. At that point there are barely any characters, there’s just the broad sweeps of movement across the page.

+1. Remember: You are the god-king of the book. If worse comes to worst, have a plague of shrews suddenly appear and make your characters deal with it. You can do anything! If you don’t know what to do, do anything. It’s better than doing nothing, and frankly, if it doesn’t work, at least you’ll have written something. You can always delete it tomorrow.

+2. No, seriously, I was writing a book and I could tell there needed to be some kind of big turn in the narrative (because of structure!), and I couldn’t think of what, so I literally wrote down a list of random shit I could make happen to the characters. Just because I could. That list included:

set house on fire airplane explosion hunting accident heatstroke

I was willing to set a house on fire, possibly by having a plane explode on it, just to get my characters doing something for another twenty pages. And the best part was: All I had to do was write the consequences, and add some foreshadowing, and I’d get away scot-free. The perfect crime. GOD-KING, Y'ALL.

[unpredictable-probabilities]

20 Questions For Fic Writers

Tagged by @dandywonderous

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

19. I'm fairly new to fanfics, I only started reading and writing them in 2020.

2. What's your total AO3 word count?

356,543

3. What fandoms do you write for?

I'm currently writing for The Sandman, but most of my works and my WIPs are for Twisted Wonderland, and I had written one chapter of a fic for Love Never Dies.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

1. Granting Favors (Twisted Wonderland) 2. The Two Princes (Twisted Wonderland) 3. A Way In (Twisted Wonderland) 4. Tomorrows Over Centuries (The Sandman) 5. Post-Gala Celebration (Twisted Wonderland)

5. Do you respond to comments?

Yes! I love interacting with my readers in the comments section~ Sometimes it takes me days to respond sdkjfkdslfj but I do respond! And I'm trying to make a habit of replying sooner.

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Hmm, I always write happy endings, but currently The Repertoire Continues (Love Never Dies) and A Dragon's Soft Spot (Twisted Wonderland) have angsty endings, but only because so far I've only written their first chapters 😅

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

Probably Tomorrows Over Centuries (The Sandman). Mostly because almost the entire fic is the characters just having a fun time. (Also it's Explicit because of the third chapter, just a heads-up in case you wanna check it out.)

8. Do you get hate on fics?

So far no. I'm actually low-key scared of getting some, haha.

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

Yup. All smut I write have a lot of Feelings, even if there's no plot to the fic. It's always romantic smut. It's just fun to write.

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

So far no. Though I really wanna write a The Sandman and Good Omens crossover someday. The idea itself is a bit daunting for me, haha, but I've read a fic with that crossover, and I genuinely wanna attempt it myself.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not to my knowledge.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Nope, that would be super cool, though.

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

Yes, I've co-written a few fics with @patchyegg87~

14. What’s your all time favourite ship?

Dream of the Endless/Hob Gadling (The Sandman) Azul Ashengrotto/Jamil Viper (Twisted Wonderland) is a close second!

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

I would like to believe that I can finish all of my WIPs, haha. But the one that would probably take the longest to finish is The Repertoire Continues (Love Never Dies), which I realize is ironic given the title alskjdfsldf. I rarely see any other content from the fandom so my brainworms for it don't get activated. I would still like to finish it someday, though.

16. What are your writing strengths?

Dialogue and emotions. Character voice is one of my favorite things to write, discovering how different characters would have various reactions to the same situation. I've often had to modify outlines because I'd realize that the original flow of the scenes didn't make sense anymore because the characters' reactions wouldn't lead them to that outcome. And bringing emotions out of characters is fun too, especially the stoic and tsundere characters. It's why I like writing Hurt/Comfort, haha.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Writing descriptions for places, outfits, and food 😣 Especially places. I have a hard time imagining what a place might look like. That's usually what I ask @patchyegg87 for help with when we co-write fics. And she has recently taught me how to use Pinterest as a reference when writing descriptions for stuff, and I'd been practicing that. I really wanna get better at writing visual descriptions, it's always so cool when I read a fic that has such vivid imagery.

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

I have no problem with it. The very first fic I'd written, A Rival in Scarlet (Twisted Wonderland), has some French sentences in it that were translated into English when the POV switched to the French speaker's. Fanfics are for having fun, and sometimes part of that is incorporating another language you know or are trying to learn~

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Twisted Wonderland

20. Favourite fic you’ve written?

Ooh, I don't know, that's a hard one. Granting Favors (Twisted Wonderland) would always have a special place in my heart because it's my first multi-chapter fic and I honed much of my writing skills in that one. "I Do": The Long-Term Deal (Twisted Wonderland) is also very fun to write and that's the fic where I really learned to write character voice well because it's post-canon and the characters have aged a few years, and it was fun to figure out how they had changed in that time while retaining their core personalities. And of course Tomorrows Over Centuries (The Sandman). I'd read a lot of Dreamling fics before writing that one, and I was so happy to finish a Dreamling fic of my own. I love them, Your Honor.

Tagging:

@patchyegg87

@signiorbenedickofpadua

@cerealmonster15

@hardly-an-escape

@beatnikfreakiswriting

@takohebi

and anyone else who wants to do this!

[writingdotcoffee]

Deliberate Story Practice: Human vs Nature

Deliberate practice is a systematic approach to improvement. After conquering the initial learning curve, it's easy to plateau and stop developing. But when it comes to storytelling, there's always more to learn.

This week, I want to challenge you to spend at least an hour working on a short story based on the conflict between humans and nature.

Human vs Nature Explained

Conflict is the driving force of any story. It's the struggle your characters must overcome to reach the resolution. A typical story, even as short as a flash piece will contain several different types of conflict.

It comes in all sorts of shapes and sizes. From being embarrassed (human vs self), your phone dying at the wrong moment (human vs technology) to a full-on war (human vs human).

This week, we'll focus on another common type of conflict: human vs nature.

Nature is a powerful force in the world that affects us all every day. Our struggle against nature can range from inconvenience (rain on your way to work) to the extreme (a hurricane that wipes out an entire town).

Here are some examples of humans against nature:

a holiday ruined by bad weather

rabbits raiding the lettuce in your garden

an avalanche burying a snowboarder

a community struck by a terrible flood

a ship sailing through a massive storm

a post-apocalyptic scenario triggered by a meteorite impact

As you can see, you can write a novel based on human vs nature. Many successful stories use this type of conflict to drive the plot (Jaws, The Old Man and the Sea, Robinson Crusoe, The Day After Tomorrow).

The Challenge

For an hour or more this week, work on a story that includes humans struggling against nature. It doesn't have to be the only type of conflict in the story. For example, bad weather can lead to your characters fighting and breaking up during a holiday (human vs human).

When you start writing, you'll naturally layer various types of conflict. Your protagonist is struggling with something, and everything else around them seems to be going wrong. This is one way of adding progressive complications and building towards the crisis.

By writing this story, you'll be putting what you've learned into practice. You'll experiment with it and get a feel for how well it can work. You may even be inspired to include some human vs nature into your current or next WIP.

Practising is super important. All it takes is an hour.

Join this writing challenge

[princesscolumbia]

Pride Month 2024 - Day 9

I have had 10 hours of sleep in the last 48...welcome to parenthood.

And now, get ready for a good egg cracking AU!

Return to Recipient

Summary:

Ranma hasn't been feeling right for as long as he can remember, and he just figured that's normal. But after Jusenkyo, and especially after Jusendo, the feeling of "wrongness" has been getting more and more noticeable... ...because he doesn't feel it in his cursed form. He continues to just cope, keeping his struggle to himself, until he finds a letter tucked into his old travel pack addressed to him, written by him, from a 48 hour period that he doesn't remember and nobody will talk to him about.

Notes:

During the writing of 🔞 And at This Point I'm Afraid to Ask 🔞, [NOTE - Yeah, these two are being posted in "most recently updated" order, so the fic that came first is being posted tomorrow for this little calendar event -Helen] I realized I was speed-running Ranma's egg-to-hatched trans journey and made an author's note of that. In the comments for that work, I got a note bemoaning the fact that I didn't spend more time on Ranma's realization, coming out, and social transition as a woman while understanding my reasoning. I replied stating that I needed a good hook, something that hadn't been hammered to death by other authors, and at the time I didn't have anything. I really got it in my head that I should do something, so I posted to Tumblr and started putting it out to the universe that I was Poly Transwoman Author Seeking Story Inspiration and Motivation, in Open Relationship with current WIPs. I was scrolling through the "Ranma 1/2" tag this morning trying to find something I hadn't read when I bumped into Dear Diary by JaquiK. I've read it, of course, and it's short and, for what it sets out to do, good. "Feels like it needs more," says I, "Wish the author would continue it, make something more of it than they did." The little author that lives in my head rent free and looks remarkably like Ranma-chan ran up behind me and socked me in the back of my head, "Dummy! There's your plot hook!" Then she backed a dump truck up and dropped about 3/4 of a story's worth of ideas on me. [*le-gasp* It me! -Christy] With the 2023 holidays in full swing (it's Cyber Monday as I type this) I'm not sure how quickly I'll get to outlining this or getting chapters 2-5 out (my personal metric for whether the author is serious about a work is if they have 5 chapters out. This has been a solid rule of thumb for long-form fiction and hasn't failed me regardless of fandom), but I wanted to get at least chapter 1 out as quickly as possible. Tags will be added as I add more chapters, mostly because my writing process means I'm not sure what tags will apply until I'm writing something that necessitates them. 😋 I hope you enjoy it.

Obviously, at 6 chapters and 35.5k words, I've met my own personal metric for being serious about a work. 😉

This one is a particular pride and joy, and I hope that people reading it are getting the 'gag' of the title and the chapter titles. While not all the chapter titles are home runs, I have put a lot of thought into making them meaningful to the story as a whole. For example, the title itself, "Return to Recipient" is a play on the postal service standard, "Return to Sender" (and, yes, made a cultural signpost by that one song by Elvis). In the case of the "sender" of the letter that kicks the whole fic off in chapter 1 no longer exists. And, yes, I could have gone with the now-standard practice of making "that girl" an alt in the system known as Ranma, but that wasn't what this fic was about. This is about Ranma's transition as prompted by her own self demanding she be true unto. And that version was a result of a dissociative episode caused by injury and never properly treated, requiring Ranma's rapid healing (likely qi assisted) to repair the damage...and part of that damage was the entire mental state triggered by the injury. (And, again, the bigger questions of whether that was a separate entity that deserved a life to live are outside the scope of this fic...or is it? 😉) So if Ranma, theoretically, wanted to return the letter to the sender, she'd be returning it to...herself, the recipient. Therefor, "Return to Recipient."

In the spirit of things being spoilertastic without revealing too much in these posts, I present to you the chapter title list:

Note to Self

Doctor's Note

Passing Notes

A Noteable Occation

Akane One Note

A Note on Shampoo's File

Notes, Beats, and Measures

Back of the Napkin Notes

Notes from Abroad

Navigational Notation

Autographs on Notebook Paper

Veterinary Notes

Bank Notes

A Noteworthy Event

Self-Analysis Notes

Ending on a High Note

Epilogue - [REDACTED]

The blue are already published, enjoyable speculation on the rest is welcome in the notes. 😁

[chayscribbles]

chayscribbles’ monthly writing update ☆ february 2024

yes, i know, february has an extra day this year, but i'm posting this today bc i won't have time tomorrow lol

☆ STATISTICS.

projects worked on: The Gemini Heist

proudest accomplishment: i... wrote?... i guess??? *can't remember a single thing i did this month for some reason*

books read: Witch King by Martha Wells. i'm ngl, i was lost like 80% of the time, but that might just be a skill issue on my part (it's the kind of book that throws you into the thick of it without holding your hand and listening to the audiobook with the attention span that i have was... probably not the wisest idea lol)

(alhough funnily enough, it's while having this audiobook on in the background that i came up with a lot of my plot thoughts for gemini heist LMAO. either that or while playing zelda.)

☆ GENERAL COMMENTS.

although i did get writing done this month, this update's gonna be short. i don't really have much to say lol

more specific wip-related comments + featured excerpt below.

☆ COMMENTS: THE GEMINI HEIST (draft 0.5)

it's very weird to not be using word count to track my progress anymore. freeing, but weird. i have no concept of how much i've actually done for this wip this month.

i do know i've figured out a bit more stuff about the heist and the lore. i had a big plot brainstorming session and untangled a few scenes. while i know what direction i want the story to head, i still don't know how any of this gets resolved, tho.

and i wrote out a few important scenes. that's progress, right?

☆ FEATURED EXCERPT.

i've been writing so chaotically out of order based on whatever scene i feel most inspired for in the moment that i,,, honestly can't remember what i've written this month vs what i had already written before 🥲 here's a scene that i THINK i wrote in february. Leo and Illiana might be my new favourite dynamic. (for context, Illiana is posing as her identical twin at a party, and Leo is posing as a guest. they came in separately.)

With the bodyguards tailing her the entire way, Illiana slowly made her way towards [Leo]. She tolerated a few brief exchanges with other guests she crossed paths with to appear natural, then, once she was close enough, she slipped the extra comm out of the pocket concealed in her skirt. She made a show of bending down to pick up something, then strode towards Leo. “Excuse me,” she said as she approached. “I believe you dropped your earring.” Leo turned to her, smile strained underneath her veil. “Oh, thank you,” she said, holding out her hand. Illiana placed the comm into her palm, taking care to hide it from the guards. As Leo angled her head away to slip it into her ear, she added, “I must say, your Holiness, this is quite a lovely party.” “Why, thank you, Miss…” She faltered, realizing she didn’t know Leo’s alias. “I’m sorry, I don’t believe I’m familiar with you.” “I’m a business leader from Tharekkan,” Leo said, pressing her palms together and giving Illiana a slight bow with her head. “It’s an honour to be here.” Illiana was surprised that Leo, with all her meticulous planning, didn’t have a fake name ready, and now she was curious. “How may I address you?” Leo’s already tense smile tightened even more. “‘Miss’ is fine,” she replied, practically through clenched teeth.  “No, I meant, your na—” “I’ve been told much about how lovely Fiolsby is, right before the winter,” Leo cut off, an unnatural segue back to the script they had practiced. “But I haven’t had the time to properly see the city.” Now Illiana just had to pry Leo's fake name out of her. “Really? That’s a shame. You know, the gardens offer a wonderful view of the city. Would you like to see, Miss…?” She let her sentence trail off, watching Leo expectantly. “If it’s not too much trouble, I would love that,” Leo replied, to Illiana’s annoyance.

☆ TAGLISTS. let me know if you want to be added/removed to any of them.

general taglist:

@dgwriteblr @the-orangeauthor @onomatopiya @quilloftheclouds @ashen-crest @writeblrfantasy @celestepens @stardustspiral @pepperdee @extra-magichours @avi-why @lefttigerobservation @chazzawrites @bardolatrycore @innocentlymacabre @subtlefires

gemini heist taglist:

@florraisons @akindofmagictoo @cream-and-tea @memento-morri-writes @antique-symbolism @rose-bookblood @afoolandathief @pepperdee @avi-why @zonnemaagd @chazzawrites @analogued @enchanted-lightning-aes @innocentlymacabre @kahvilahuhut @celestepens @cilly-the-writer @extra-magichours @onomatopiya @outpost51 @planets-and-prose

[intrepidacious]

✩ upcoming wips

main masterlist | navigation

i haven't been posting a lot lately because i'm a slow writer and life has been kicking my butt but i've wanted to let you take a peek at what i've been cooking up in the background!!

what little attention i have at the moment has been going into time after time but there's a lot of ideas constantly swirling around in my head and i've wanted a place to put some of them. shockingly, these aren't even all of my wips. yeah, i know.

this is just a snapshot of the most prominent fic ideas i've been working on at the moment which means that plots and especially titles might still get changed. also i'm not committing to any sort of schedule with these so keep that in mind :')

please feel free to ask questions about any and all of these and i'll do my best to answer <3

✩ one shots

a smile that cold - ransom drysdale x f!reader - au inspired by daphne du maurier's rebecca - (well, mostly by its musical adaptation, which is great) - i'm going full gothic/seasonally spooky vibes in this one - tropes: widower remarries, mystery, dark-ish (well, there's murder), perhaps a hint of spice - status: mostly done, but still missing a chunk in the middle

to home afar - bucky barnes x freader - the guernsey literary and potato peel pie society au - (oh yes we're going there) - i love this book and this au so much but i just haven't had the time to focus on it - tropes: 40s!bucky, dad!bucky, writer!reader, one (1) broken engagement, fitzsimmons appearance, hints of epistolary storytelling, pen pals to friends to lovers - status: about halfway done, still missing some connective tissue

all that's been (and all that won't) - bucky barnes x f!reader - buffy the vampire slayer au - tropes: slayer!reader, vampire hunter!bucky, friends to lovers, inspired by me rereading all the vampire knight manga so if you know those you'll see the twist coming, canon-typical violence - status: conception phase, some scenes written

stay here forever - 40s!bucky barnes x f!reader - a continuation of first date, last night - this was a plan ever since i posted that story and yet - tropes: friends to lovers, mutual pining resolved, tfa!bucky, kinda angsty, will probably get another part … - status: mostly written, missing connective tissue

just for spite - bucky barnes x witch!reader - originally inspired by a moodboard by @treatbuckywkisses - this has been sitting in my drafts for an embarrassingly long time - might end up being a collection of loosely connected one shots - tropes: post tfatws!bucky, practical magic vibes, there's a cat, slow burn? maybe? - status: first part done, some more scenes written

death becomes him - steve rogers x grim reaper!reader - inspired by a mix of meet joe black, elisabeth (the musical, not the movie), the fairy tale godfather death, and the show dead like me - this is such a weird idea and i need to write it so bad - tropes: canon-compliant-ish, slow burn, artist!steve, will probably include time jumps, dark-ish for obvious reasons - status: random scenes written

tomorrow - steve rogers x reader - inspired by the river song storyline in doctor who - (yes you read that right) - i love using my most random au ideas for steve, i think this works so well and i'm so excited about it - tropes: opposing timelines, kind of slow burn kind of established relationship, goes through steve's entire mcu timeline - status: scenes written, writing time shenanigans is tiring if that's all you do though :')

ghost light - lighthouse keeper!steve rogers x reader - (yeah) - this one is so random but i cannot stop thinking about it - tropes: retired!steve, maybe a little angsty but it's fine really, either writer!reader or barista!reader - status: vibes and like two paragraphs

mirror's image - endings, beginnings!frank x reader - fic based on "why'd you only call me when you're high" by the arctic monkeys - tropes: fwb, drug consumption, angst and spice, idk if this will have a happy ending or not - status: about one third done

✩ series / AUs

dear heart, it's me - anthology based on the amazing devil's album "the horror and the wild" - listen for vibes 😌 - will probably posted for a milestone celebration - pairings include: stucky, bucky barnes x reader, natasha romanoff x reader, wanda maximoff x reader, jefferson x reader, steve harrington x reader (more tbd) - status: one fic stuck in revision, three more started, real excited for one additional one atm

nothing else will do - continuation/expansion of my rewritten drabble - think medieval-ish fantasy vibes, once upon a time with some princess bride thrown in there - pairings include: outlaw/pirate!steve rogers x reader, knight!bucky barnes x reader - status: lots of daydreaming and some random scenes put onto paper

occupy my brain - continuing these two drabbles - ransom drysdale x reader - there will be at least two more chapters but i am aiming to keep this one short and sweet - status: it’s more or less planned out, if only someone would finish writing it down that’d be great

come fly with me - introducing my pilot!bucky au!! - i’m not sure where it came from either but i’m having fun and it grew out of my control fast - series of connected one shots within the same universe - (i also have plans for sam and steve with this one!!) - status: not a priority rn, but i have a couple of ideas floating around my brain

read you like a book - library au!! - you’ve already been introduced to this universe’s bucky and steve and i love them dearly - status: again, not a priority at the moment but they’re coming

something bout you - beloved - ngl returning to this one is probably gonna hurt but i still want it to exist - college au steve rogers x reader - this is my childhood friends fake dating au that i made up for ren - status: hopefully i will return to this one day after tat is done

i feel awkward tagging people in this but do feel free to reblog this and do tell me about your favourites lmao okay have a nice weekend 🫶🏼

[pearl484-blog]

Well, That Went Suspiciously Well Adrien AUGreste Entry 2: Truth

After all the revelations from the Season 5 finale, Ladybug tells Adrien the truth. Adrien doesn't react as expected. Link to AO3 story. Link to Adrien AUGreste 2023 series.

Cards on the table, I originally made this as a joke, but my stupid writer brain can't resist adding character drama in there. Fire Opal says it detracts from the joke, but I say it adds to the plot so it's staying. After all, a joke MIGHT be funny one time if it lands well, but a sincere story can be enjoyed for awhile.

Like last time, this is an entry for Adrien AUGreste, but unlike last time, I can actually post this on time. Whoo! Considering my schedule, that's will probably going to be rare. As per usual, this was not Beta'd, so if you see errors or if anything is unclear, please let me know. ~*~ Ladybug took a deep breath as she tapped lightly on the window to Adrien’s bedroom. She had to do this. She needed to do this. It was the right thing to do, she told herself, even as her heart practically screamed at how wrong it was. She was going to have to tell Adrien the truth, even if it shattered him completely, and she had to do it tonight.   

Ladybug knew Adrien wouldn’t take it well. He’d just lost his Father, and things were…complicated after Monarch’s defeat, but after her fight with Monarch, the truth had begun eating Marinette alive. So, she’d done the only thing she could think of. She’d told Alya, and that had kicked off a massive argument that had lasted for weeks. 

Alya was insistent that this truth was way too big for Adrien not to know, that he had a right to know, even if it wasn’t a problem anymore since he had his amoks on him at all times. Alya had fought hard to get Ladybug to confess, and she’d pulled out all the stops. 

Alya had called Marinette a liar. She’d demanded to know what would happen if Adrien figured out the truth from someone else. She’d told Ladybug that she had crossed a line. She reminded Ladybug how all it took for evil to win was for good people to do nothing. She pointed out how Monarch had terrorized the city, and Marinette had just given him what he wanted, and as much as Ladybug hated to admit it, Alya had a point. 

But, Adrien was still at a fragile point in his life. He’d just lost his father. He’d just narrowly escaped being shipped off to London, and he’d been pushed to his limits again and again. Ladybug didn’t know that Adrien could even survive this, but Alya didn’t understand that. 

Instead, Alya had given a final ultimatum. Either Ladybug told Adrien the truth tonight or Alya would tomorrow. So, Ladybug had caved. It would be easier coming from her, especially if he had an entire night to process it before he went back to school, and she could stay with him throughout the whole night if she had to.   

It barely took a minute for Adrien to notice her tapping and rush over to let her in. It almost physically hurt to see the happy, innocent look he gave her as he invited her in. 

“Hey, Ladybug,” he said, smiling at her just a little starstruck -Adrien starstruck, with her!- as he helped her get down from the window gracefully. It felt like all the times that he’d helped her out of the car on those dates like a true gentleman, and Ladybug tried to stop her traitorous heart from beating too fast and hide her blush. 

This was serious, and Adrien didn’t know he was dating her. No matter how cute he was, she absolutely, positively could not flirt with her boyfriend now. It was time to get down to business. 

“It’s nice to see you, Ladybug,” Adrien said, with that infuriatingly adorable smile of his. “Do you want to take a seat?” He gestured to his couch like it was an offering to royalty, and Ladybug really had to fight back a blush. Dang it. Why was her boyfriend so friggin cute? 

Focus, Ladybug, she told herself as she took a seat. This is about to really hurt Adrien. You have to be sensitive. Scolding herself internally, she immediately gestured for Adrien to sit beside her. This was going to be a shock, and he’d want to sit. 

Thankfully, Ladybug was able to wait until Adrien was sitting before she started talking, but unfortunately, her mind was running too fast to wait much longer. 

“You're a senti-monster,” she blurted out before wincing at the tactlessness of her approach. Yeah, that was how to be sensitive to her boyfriend. Just throw it out in the open with absolutely no warning whatsoever. No build up, nothing to soften the blow, just go straight for the throat. God, Adrien must hate her.

Yet, instead of being shocked, Adrien kinda frowned, confused as he asked, “Me, a sentimonster? Are you sure?”

Mutely, Ladybug nodded her head, meekly averting her eyes as she waited for the truth to settle in.   

“That’s pretty cool,” Adrien said instead, and Ladybug opened her eyes to see that Adrien looked genuinely excited. “Am I super-strong? Invincible?” He gasped. “Do I have powers?”

“No, no no, you’re perfectly normal,” Ladybug said, before correcting herself, “I mean, you’re amazing, but you’re not, you know, superhuman. You should be completely perfectly human, or like a human, I guess, except you can be controlled by a ring.” 

“Oh, that’s it?” Adrien deflated before he straightened up in surprise. “Wait, did I hurt anyone? Did I do something without realizing it?” In a quiet voice, he whispered, “Did I hurt you?” 

“No, but your dad controlled you,” Ladybug admitted. “I don’t know what all he did, but from what I know about him,” Ladybug fidgeted anxiously, “it wasn’t nothing.”

“Oh,” Adrien nodded, taking a deep breath. “Okay, wow. That-that explains a lot, actually. I-”, Adrien laughed, a little self-consciously, “I thought I was going crazy, really. I thought I was just weak, you know? Everyone said I was a coward, but he had my amok.” 

Adrien sighed, looking… relieved? Ladybug marveled at her boyfriend’s resilience as he muttered, “All this time, I thought I was a coward. I couldn’t understand…but it wasn’t my fault. It was his.” 

Adrien laughed, and Ladybug wondered if this was it, this was the moment her boyfriend lost it before he relaxed completely into the sofa, running his fingers through his hair. He almost seemed satisfied, like Chat Noir did when one of his puns actually made Ladybug laugh.  

“Oh my God,” he said with a crooked half smile on his face that didn’t look happy, but it didn’t look sad either. “I want to say I can’t believe it, but he would, he totally would. All my life, he wanted to control me, and he found a way.” 

“You’re taking this really well,” Ladybug said, a little worried since she’d gotten this far, and Adrien had actually managed to take this a little too well. It shouldn’t have been possible. How was Adrien, the sweetheart of Paris, the one who had been made into a puppet by his own father, taking this better than Ladybug, an actual superhero?

Adrien shrugged, as if he’d heard news this life-altering all the time. "Well, yeah,” he said. “Mind-control akumas are a dime a dozen. It's not the first time I've been mind-controlled. Heck it’s not even the first time someone I cared about mind-controlled me. I've been through this like a bazillion times. It sucks, but,” Adrien shrugged in a ‘what can you do?’ way, “that’s life.” He paused for a second before he asked, “Do you happen to have my amok?”

Ladybug could’ve facepalmed. Of course Adrien would want his amok back. They were the things that could control his very existence. Who wouldn’t? Thankfully, that had already been taken care of. 

“It’s your parents’ wedding rings,” Ladybug said, grasping Adrien’s hands and holding them so they reflected the light. “The ones your father wanted you to have. Your amok’s in those.”

“Huh,” Adrien said, staring softly at the rings. “I guess my dad really did love me, in the end.”

“Of course he did,” Ladybug said. “Trust me, his last thoughts were of you.”

Adrien was quiet for a minute longer before he finally said, “Thanks, for giving these back to me.”

“Yeah, absolutely,” Ladybug said, “It was the right thing to do.”

“Are you sure though?” Adrien asked, still staring at the rings. “We don’t know if I still have to obey any of the commands people gave me before I had these, and I know Felix hurt you when he took the Miraculous last time. If you’d kept them, you would have had someone you would’ve known you could trust, who would never disobey you or hurt you. You would’ve felt safe with me.”

Ladybug shifted uncomfortably, not liking how the conversation was going. “It’s your free will, Adrien,” she said. “How could I have kept it and still been a hero? How could anyone have kept and still seen themself as a good person? This is yours, Adrien, and nobody else’s. There is no one else that I trust with this more than you.” 

Adrien still looked doubtful, and so Ladybug grabbed him by the hands, careful not to touch the amoks. “You’re a good person, Adrien,” she told him. “Yeah, Felix hurt me, but there was a reason I gave you the Dog and the Snake Miraculous in the first place. I trust you, Adrien. I know you’d never hurt me.”

Adrien fidgeted again, weighing something in his mind, before he said, “My father never approved of my relationship with Marinette, my girlfriend, and he didn’t exactly keep it a secret. Near the end,” Adrien frowned, “a lot of the weird things that were happening messed with my relationship with her. I couldn’t do the things she wanted me to do, be there when she needed me to be.”

Adrien sighed, staring towards Marinette’s house. “I really hurt her,” he said, his voice cracking under his sorrow, “And I never wanted to do that to her. I just wanted her to be comfortable with me, but if my Father was using my rings to make me do that stuff, what if I still do it? What if I can’t undo those commands? What if I hurt her even more?” He rubbed the amoks. “She’s scared of me, Ladybug. Scared that I’ll break her heart. Do you know how hard it was for her to tell me that she loved me? Maybe if I gave her the amoks…if she knew that it was okay…”

“NO!” Ladybug cried, before she realized how harsh that came out and corrected herself. “No, Adrien, you can’t do that. You shouldn’t do that. Listen, I know what it feels like, worrying that you’re going to hurt somebody, but it’ll be okay. Now that you have your amok, no one can make you do anything anymore. All those orders are in the past now.” 

Or at least, Ladybug hoped so. She hadn’t exactly had the chance to confirm it with Duusu before Felix left with him, but that had to be how it worked. It worked for Senti-bug. It had to work that way for Adrien. It just had to.  

“This is your choice,” she told Adrien. “It’s your future. You can’t let anyone, and I mean anyone else have those rings, no matter how much you trust them.” 

Seeing that Adrien was still hesitant, Ladybug stared him in the eyes. “Promise me you won’t let anyone else have your rings, Adrien. Promise me.”   

Adrien nodded, averting his eyes. “Yeah,” he said. “I promise.”

“Good,” Ladybug said, letting out a smile. “I hate to have to beat up your girlfriend just to get it back for you again. Can’t let just anyone wander around with that sort of thing, you know what I mean?” 

Adrien nodded, giving her one of his least sincere smiles. “Yeah, thanks, Ladybug.”

“Anytime,” Ladybug said, her smile only just a little forced. 

They sat together for a minute, staring at Paris’s skyline before Adrien looked at Ladybug. 

“Do you think,” he asked hesitantly, “that there’s another me around?

“Another you?” Ladybug repeated dumbly. “What do you mean?”

“You know,” Adrien shrugged, “did I replace anyone? Did something happen to the real me,” Adrien stopped and corrected himself, “the human me, and that’s why Dad suddenly started being so nice to me before he died? Because his real son-his human son- died?” 

Then Adrien frowned, shaking his head. “No, wait,” he said, “that doesn’t explain..” he trailed off, lost in thought. Ladybug wanted to ask what he meant, or why he thought that he wasn’t the real Adrien, but Adrien had already pulled himself out whatever reverie that he’d gotten stuck in and started pacing agitatedly.    

“Unless,” Adrien said slowly, “the other me left or something and then something happened to him, and Dad got scared.”

Ladybug grabbed him by the arm, holding him firm. “Adrien, you are the real deal, and you’re irreplaceable. I’m pretty sure that you were born a senti-monster.” Ladybug took a breath as she decided to strike the lethal blow. “I think your mom making you with a broken Miraculous is what made her sick.”

Adrien stopped pacing, thinking for a moment, before he simply said, “Huh. That explains so much.”

Ladybug blinked before asking, “It does?”

Adrien nodded. “I always wondered why Father avoided me all the time and why he was always so over-protective.” Adrien hummed thoughtfully. “He must’ve felt really bad because Mom died. I get why he’s upset, but in a way I guess that we were lucky.”

“Lucky?” Ladybug repeated in disbelief, unable to believe that Adrien -her sweet little drop of sunshine- could be so calm about this whole deal. His mom was dead because she’d made him, and now Adrien was saying that he was lucky? Did Adrien not understand what Ladybug was telling him? Was she doing this wrong?

Adrien suddenly realized that he was being a bit too insensitive and his face flushed as he avoided Ladybug’s eyes. “Yeah,” he said, suddenly sounding much less confident. “I mean, I guess. Look, all I’m saying is that if you’re saying having me is what killed her, then I got lucky to have 13 years with her. Not everybody gets that.” 

Adrien must’ve seen the skeptical look on Ladybug’s face because he continued, “I mean, look at Chloe. Her mom left her when she was really little, and she didn’t come back till the akumas drew her back. Plus, there’s Mylene’s mom, or Jagged Stone, or what about the people whose moms never even make it through childbirth. Some of them would’ve killed to have one day with their moms. I had 13 years.” 

For a minute, Ladybug stared at Adrien, looking for a sign that Adrien wasn’t really as calm about this as he seemed, that he was just putting on a strong front for his sake, but in the end, she had to admit defeat. 

“I don’t get it,” Ladybug said, shaking her head in disbelief. “How are you so calm about this?”

Adrien hummed, thinking about it for a moment before he finally said, “I guess it’s because I came to peace with Mom dying a long time ago. This doesn’t really change much. 

Then realizing how awful that sounded, Adrien backpedaled hastily, “I mean, I'm glad I finally know what happened. It's not GREAT news, but she was sick for awhile, and then when she disappeared, I mean, I wanted for her to be alive, but,” Adrien shrugged, “after awhile, I knew she was dead. There was no way that she would’ve been gone for so long and not be dead, you know?” 

Adrien shrugged helplessly, and Ladybug wanted nothing more than to hug him, but she didn’t know if that would be crossing a line. Adrien was Marinette’s boyfriend, not Ladybug’s, and they weren’t exactly friends, or were they? Ladybug didn’t really know, and she didn’t want to push it. 

In her hesitation though, the moment ended, and Adrien forced himself to relax as he sat back on the couch. 

“Besides, it’s not like I chose to be born,” Adrien said blithely. “Mom said she'd always wanted a kid, and she called me her little Miracle all the time. Mom wasn’t the sort of woman who let anyone make her do anything. I think she knew what she was getting into, but she still chose to have me anyway. She never regretted it, and I dunno,” Adrien hummed. “I guess I don’t either. I’ve had a good life, a good career. I’ve made some mistakes, but…I’m happy with who I am, I guess.”

Ladybug didn’t know what to say to that. She’d always known that Adrien was mature, but she’d never thought that this entire thing would go so smoothly. It was just such a relief. Honestly, it was silly that she’d be so worried about it. This was Adrien, probably the calmest person that Marinette knew.  

As if to prove that point, Adrien spoke up to say, “Thank you, Ladybug, for telling me this. I know this must’ve been really hard for you, but it means a lot, coming from you.”

With that, Ladybug’s mind was made. “Adrien,” she said, laying her hand over his, “About your dad,” she took a deep breath. “He was Hawk Moth.”

“WHAT?” 

Ah, there was the reaction Ladybug had been expecting.

[loneberry]

Interview on AI / Tech / Poetry / Labor

My writer friend Christopher Soto is interviewing me for a piece on poetry, AI, creative writing, and labor. Most of this is going to be cut, so why not post the first draft here?

*

CS: Recently we went on a hike and were talking about the intersection of literary production and artificial intelligence. You described us as part of “the last generation to experience raw human emotion,” can you elaborate on this idea?

JW: Let me clarify that remark. We’ve been cyborgs and pharmacological hybrids for a long time. I don’t think there’s something like an ideal state of authentic humanness, nor do I think that humanness is better than non-humanness. What I’m referring to is the saturation of distractions, which for me reached a crisis point during the pandemic, when my existence was almost entirely mediated by the internet. Just before the pandemic I had ditched my smartphone for almost a year, but got back on it during quarantine since I was always connected anyway. I became palpably aware of how the very rhythm of my being is regulated by technology designed—using behavioral science research—to be addictive by high-jacking the dopamine reward system. I think people dramatically overstate their “will” and “agency” in relation to technology. 

Being hyper-connected made me feel my emotional life was becoming increasingly shallow, that I was just being numbly-entertained-toward-death, and pharmacologically adjusted to serenely endure this horrific existential condition while the world literally burns. As a poet, I find it very disturbing. For me, being a poet is not necessarily about the production of poetry, but about the training of a certain kind of consciousness: the dilation of perception and emotional states, the sensitization of one’s antennae, the tuning of one’s soul for a greater awareness of the mystery of existence, its splendors and absurdities. 

CS: We have talked about literary production becoming a collaboration with artificial intelligence, so that the writers of tomorrow will essentially be prompt makers and editors, which input prompts into AI and then edit creative works based on the responses provided. What do you think this would mean for the future of literary culture and cultural production? 

JW: I think we could soon reach a point where certain types of writing (screenwriting, journalism, newsletters, web content production) and certain para-literary activities (editing, proofreading, researching) could be fully or partially automated. Some say that the new job that will be created as a result of generative AI and Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT will be “prompt writer.” There may come a day when plot-driven commercial fiction is written by AI with the help of prompt writers. 

A lot of writers economically support their literary practice through various forms of commercial writing and editing—some of those jobs might disappear. In recent decades, it’s already gotten so difficult to survive economically as a writer. At the same time, it’s gotten hard to survive in general, given how obscenely high rent is these days. You can’t just scrape by on almost nothing and hope it works out at the end of the month by frantically combing your couch cushions and the pockets of dirty jeans for loose change and cash. You need good credit to even rent a place! On a societal level, art suffers when subsistence costs are high—it becomes more commercially driven, and artists become more “professionalized.”  

CS: Do you think that AI will just stay as a mechanism that will help facilitate human writing of poetry but never become “the artist”? I anticipate there will be a shrinking in the distinctions between “the artist” and “the editor.”

JW: I’ve already heard of writers and students using AI to help edit and develop their work, or generate ideas. But I don’t really trust the aesthetic judgment of ChatGPT, ha! 

CS: I’m excited to see the mechanics of literary production transform. You are a bit more hesitant, why so? Are there any AI attempts at literature, which you’ve seen already, that feel particularly noteworthy?

JW: Maybe on some deep level I’m a basic bitch who has a sentimental attachment to the way “writing” has been done for nearly 5,500 years. From cuneiform clay tablets to computer keyboards, the writing process has actually changed very little for thousands of years. It was probably ripe for disruption. But I’m ultimately disturbed by the collective effect it will have on language use—the move toward a statistical norm and the treatment of language as purely informational. I had already started to fret about this when Gmail started autocompleting my emails. (ChatGPT is basically a sophisticated auto-complete that convincingly mimics understanding. This is why it “hallucinates” made-up citations and rattles off fake facts.)

Will the weird, jagged, irregular effusions of language gradually be purged as we drift toward the statistical average? I don’t know, maybe I think of it as something akin to language eugenics. Perhaps I’m hopelessly modernist in my view that language is not about transmitting information or even advancing a plot, but the wayward movement of a thought: the sentence as a technology of consciousness, with its serpentine twists and turns, perverse digressions, and rhythmic pulsations.

I’ve seen AI being used in the conceptual writing and art world for a while now. Some of it is cool and novel in a “party trick” kind of way (like the Twitter poetry bots I followed when I used to use Twitter), but I’ve yet to encounter AI work that I’ve been enamored with. I don’t doubt that AI will (very) soon be able to produce really impressive work,  and that’s partly because it’s parasitic on past human creativity insofar as it’s trained on vast reams of linguistic data generated by humans. 

CS: Can emotion or spontaneity ever be captured by an algorithm? Is there any way in which AI is like the subconscious (making connections between unrelated concepts, juxtaposing words in a way that pleases the ear and mind, using knowledge in unforeseen ways)?

JW: The AI can convincingly mimic emotion. Tell ChatGPT about your problems and you will feel like it really cares, like it’s really listening to you, just like you might feel when you are personally addressed—are interpolated—by the language of advertising written in a voice of concern or understanding.

For nearly a century, artists have used aleatory methods to make connections and generate juxtapositions that get us beyond the limits of human consciousness, whether it’s the surrealist exquisite corpse practice, William S. Burroughs’s cut-up method, or John Cage’s use of the I Ching and other chance methods in his music compositions. AI could certainly be deployed to such ends. Yet LLMs like ChatGPT are designed to be “predictable” in the same way that autocomplete uses probabilities to predict the next word. I think unlocking a weirder side of AI might involve finding ways to break or fuck with it so it doesn’t just generate the mediocrity of the average.

CS: Do you think collaborations between literary artists with artificial intelligence will create a new economy of poetry in the English speaking United States or will it fall into and transform one of the currently existing poetry economies (academia, spoken word, insta poetry)?

JW: How many poets do you know who can support themselves on their poetry alone? I think I know zero. (Maybe Lisa Robertson could count?) Mostly, I know poets who teach in the academy, poets who do astrology, poets who work as editors at publishing houses, poets who have office day jobs, etc. I don’t think AI will change that. Maybe generative AI will create a glut of language that will make poets even more superfluous, ha!

CS: At large, poetry isn’t very lucrative but this doesn’t mean that it doesn’t impact people’s livelihoods still. Why do you think it is important to think specifically about the intersection of poetry and AI?

JW: The thing I love about poetry is its uselessness, the way it is, with a few exceptions, superfluous to capital, difficult to commodify, gratuitous in its insistence on avowing that which has been marked valueless by our hyper-commercial culture. When I think of Sapphic lyrics or Homeric epics, I am reminded that poets once occupied a quite prominent social position, as keepers of history or ceremonial performers. In a culture oriented almost exclusively around lucre, there’s not really a place for poetry. At a dinner party recently I tried to explain “what I do” to entrepreneurs and realized I came across as “quaint,” that what I do will always register as doing nothing to those who use money as a metric to measure the value of a particular activity. Yet at the same time, the intense pressure to perform in our brutally competitive society has generated a hunger for poetry—poetry as a space to preserve the incalculable and restore the part of us that has been destroyed by the soul-crushing dictates of capital. 

On a conceptual level, it’s interesting that the things that make poetry so “difficult” and inaccessible to some people—it’s ambiguity, lack of clearness of meaning, context dependency, and attention to the non-semantic register of signification—is also what has made language such a tricky problem for AI developers. Language isn’t simply a system of rules, which is why the statistical approach beat the linguistic rules-based approach in the natural language processing wars.

CS: What would you consider the start of collaborations between artificial intelligence and poets? I’m thinking about Rupi Kaurs using instapoetry as a closed form that is responsive to algorithmic metrics. By responding to the algorithms that make her poetry go viral, she is in effect collaborating with AI, right? I’m also thinking of Kien Liam’s book “Extinction Theory” that was written with the help of search engine responses. Maybe this depends on our definition of artificial intelligence?

JW: I suppose we’re always collaborating with technology. Since I’ve written most of my works longhand (my first draft of Carceral Capitalism was written on index cards), I often think about how the technology of the computer actually changes the texture of my thinking. Technology can also shape the “form” of writing—think of the way that the character limit of Twitter encodes a particular form. We’ve certainly reached a point where writers are not simply “responding” to AI, but AI is directly shaping the written work.

CS: Do you think AI will influence some literary genres more than others and why? I’m thinking commercial genres like popular non-fiction might be the first to change.

JW: I think writing that is informational (popular non-fiction) or plot-driven is ripe for automation. I don’t know why, but whenever I ask ChatGPT to write poetry or imitate the style of a writer with an idiosyncratic style (Virginia Woolf, W. G. Sebald), the results are atrocious. I’m sure it will improve quickly, though. 

CS: The Writers Guild of America is currently about to strike, in part over how to renegotiate the use of AI in Hollywood. As a scholar of carceral studies, what do you think is an ethical approach to understanding intellectual property and the likeness of an artist, in the era of AI?

JW: Since I’m fundamentally against private property, I’m against intellectual property as well. Yet AI developers use the “fair use” paradigm to claim they are justified in training their systems on copyrighted works. In my ideal world, we would not need to commodify our works in order to eat, but since we live in a market society, we must pay attention to the question of how writers are going to be able to put food on the table. The fact that generative AI is parasitic on the entire archive of human creativity is fundamentally a labor problem. Should AI be allowed to imitate living writers and artists, and will the imitations be commercialized at the expense of living creators? The legal architecture undergirding generative AI hasn’t been worked out yet, but I’m ultimately in favor of enshrining strong labor protections for living creators.

CS: How is AI going to redefine certain concepts, like originality and plagiarism? I think we have already seen some examples of this in the music industry, such as the AI generated songs using the voice of musicians like Drake. In poetry might it look like someone asking AI to create poems in Shakespearean sonnets but with the vernacular of lets say, Maya Angelou?

JW: The voice imitation software trips me out. I started doing research on voice surveillance in early 2019 and tested out some voice mimicking technology then. It was terrible. Now, it can replicate someone’s voice with uncanny accuracy. The technology is evolving so rapidly. 

I don’t feel particularly attached to an idea of originality. Mixing, collaging, generating new things by constellating old things—it’s all part of the creative churn. I love it when art circulates and mixes in a way that is wild and free. But the question of how artists will support themselves when technology enables endless, free replicability is a question that needs to be addressed. 

CS: This opens up the conversation of racial appropriation (and digital Black face) via AI. The literary world has a history of racial imposters. What might this look like when intersecting with AI?

JW: Since AI is ultimately a mimicry-machine, I think this is certainly a risk. I can imagine an author asking ChatGPT to rewrite a chunk of dialogue in, say, Black Vernacular English. (Although as someone who is opposed to the ownership model of culture and in favor of hybridity, I have complicated views on the idea of cultural appropriation in general.)

CS: How do you think the literary community, specifically the awards part of the community, might react if they discover that a writer has been generating their books in collaboration with AI?

JW: I think if it’s done covertly they will treat it as plagiarism rather than collaboration. Done overtly, it becomes a way to market a book. (Though I think the “AI book” is old-hat at this point.)

CS: In closing, are there any parallels that you see between what is happening now and the industrial revolution? I am thinking about the automation of labor and whether AI can help lead us to universal basic income, a post-work economy, or at least a reduced work week?

JW: There are definitely parallels with the industrial revolution, which put our species on this path of ever-accelerating accumulation (well, some say it all began with the Agricultural Revolution, though David Wengrow and David Graeber critique the agricultural theory of social inequality in The Dawn of Everything). Without a doubt, LLMs and generative AI will profoundly reshape the economy, leading some industries to collapse completely (the education technology company Chegg was the first to crash) while others are transformed—that tendency toward creative destruction is an inherent feature of capitalism. Generative AI will make humans more “efficient” and “productive.” But what is all this efficiency for? Technology has been evolving at breakneck speed since the industrial revolution and we are still working just as long and hard. Efficiency has become our bondage. Once the logic of accumulation enters the bloodstream, it seems hard to stop, partly because accumulation is bottomless (until we hit a hard ecological limit) and feeds on itself. As the Austrian writer Robert Musil wrote in The Man Without Qualities, “We have gained reality and lost dream. No more lounging under a tree and peering at the sky between one’s big and second toes; there’s work to be done. To be efficient, one cannot be hungry and dreamy but must eat steak and keep moving. It is exactly as though the old, inefficient breed of humanity had fallen asleep on an anthill and found, when the new breed awoke, that the ants had crept into its bloodstream, making it move frantically ever since, unable to shake off that rotten feeling of antlike industry.” 

I wish writers could just sit around and be dreamy instead of having to eat steak and keep moving. I do hope we one day arrive at a post-work society. It makes me sad to think that we’ve tacitly accepted a system where we spend our lives toiling for the profit generation of the ownership class, squandering our short, precious life on this planet. 

[sickiebabytae]

If your requests are still open and if you have time, can I request a scenerio where a member eats something way too late at night (like ramen or something) and wakes up in the morning really nauseous? My brain is screaming either Jungkook or Namjoon but I’ll leave the sickie up to you! ❤️ thanks in advance!! I love your writing

thank you so much for the request, anon!! I'm so so sorry it's taken me literally forever to get to this, and that I kind of derailed a bit when it came to the original plot 😭😭 I hope this is still to your liking!

sickie: jungkook

caretaker: namjoon

word count: 2125

jungkook knows this will be a bad idea the moment he sets out the (six) ramen cups neatly on the table, but rational thinking isn't really in his ballpark right now. he's been feeling stressed out from their tour lately, and feels as if he hasn't been performing as well as he should be, so he thinks he needs a good stress-eating session to get his mind off of things. 

but as jungkook takes a step back and looks at the ramen cups laid out, he can't help but laugh to himself. "this is so stupid." he murmurs, pulling out his phone. this is something he thinks army might enjoy. plus, he's been trying to be more active on Twitter recently. he captions the photo with something funny and his hashtag before setting his phone down and beginning.

just as he finishes getting through the first cup and a half, lips already zinging with spice, he feels his phone vibrate against the table. he picks it up and sees it's a message from namjoon.

rapmon hyung: jungkook what the hell are you doing

rapmon hyung: I saw your post -_-

jungkook feels a sheepish smile spread across his face.

jungkook: … I'm eating my emotions

jungkook: :D

rapmon hyung: good god jungkook

rapmon hyung: this screams bad idea, you know

rapmon hyung: your stomach is going to hate you tomorrow :/

jungkook: ill be fine hyung dw

jungkook: we've got a off day tomorrow anyways, it'll be fine

rapmon hyung: you know jimin wants to go sightseeing tomorrow

jungkook: yeah, I know, I'll be okay for it :)

jungkook: please don't worry hyung, it cant turn out THAT bad

jungkook can practically hear namjoon sighing from his hotel room a few doors down

rapmon hyung: okay fine

rapmon hyung: I trust you

rapmon hyung: but don't say i didn't warn you

jungkook: ay ay captain

with that, jungkook returns to his food.

this was definitely a bad idea, jungkook thinks to himself when he's all done. well, mostly done. by the last two he couldn't bring himself to finish off the soup at the bottom. his stomach is already bloated and full beyond belief.

he decides to make light of the situation and posts an update to twitter with one photo of the (nearly) empty ramen cups and one selfie of him looking, very rightly, in pain. his lips feel swollen and his nose won't stop running and itching from the spice, eyes watery too. he throws all the cups away and shuffles into the bathroom, washing his face down and stifling a burp into his hand. he shudders and sighs. "you idiot, jungkook," the singer whispers to himself, voice thick. he pushes himself back out to his room and gets into bed. maybe lying down will help him digest, he thinks, all lessons he's ever learned in his entire life failing to come to him as his eyes start drooping closed. he feels like he's going to be sick already and he doesn't like it. maybe he'll just… rest his eyes for a moment. let the world fall silent around him. yeah, yeah that's what he'll do. 

against his will, jungkook begins to fall asleep, and he drifts off before he's even able to stop himself.

jungkook wakes up in the middle of the night, sweaty and stomach cramping. he winces and sits up instantly. "oh god- fuck-" he swings his legs over the side of the bed, but that alone forces stomach acid up that burns his throat as he burps. he places a hand over his mouth and cringes, swallowing. "shit-" he freezes in place with no idea what to do. how did this happen? he feels so much worse than when he did when he-

he fell asleep. a groan leaves his lips. he just had to have fallen asleep. his stomach is killing him, bubbling and churning. he thinks he's going to throw up. 

moving slowly, he shuffles to the table and grabs his phone. more stomach acid burns up his throat, swallowing again. he goes to text namjoon since he seemed to be the only one who was caught up with his shenanigans the night before and sees that he missed a message right before he fell asleep.

rapmon hyung: jungkook you look terrible-

rapmon hyung: did you really eat all of that??

jungkook sighs before reluctantly sending a text of his own, deciding to ignore namjoon's. he only hopes that namjoon is either still awake or won't wake up from the message notification. he just wants someone to know what's happening

jungkook: I feel sick

jungkook: really sick

jungkook: I'm really sorry :( 

jungkook shuffles back to bed and sits down, not wanting to lay back in case it makes whatever acid reflux is going on worse. he jolts with a hiccup and grimaces, untucking his shirt from the jeans he'd forgotten to change out of that keep digging into his stomach. he slips his hand in between the hemline and his abdomen to give it some leeway, sighing when it provides the slightest bit of relief. he knows he should get up and change, but he doesn't want to risk it. he feels like the tiniest movement will set his stomach off.

his phone vibrates in his other hand to jungkook's surprise and he lifts it to look at the screen to see namjoon having responded to his message.

rapmon hyung: god kid I told u

rapmon hyung: hold on

rapmon hyung: I'm coming over

jungkook's eyes widen, mortified already. namjoon cant come, he knows he looks a mess.

jungkook: no no no-

jungkook: hyung it's fine really

jungkook: I just felt like someone should know

jungkook: hyung-

as jungkook types out his next text, he hears knocking at the door followed by a hushed, "jungkook? are you in there?"

jungkook suppresses a groan and slowly pushes himself to stand, stifling a low whimper when his stomach churns in protest. he makes his way to the door, unable to straighten properly from just how full and in pain he is, and opens it with cheeks flushed with both shame and the beginnings of what might be a fever. jungkook doesn't know at this point. "hey, hyung." he murmurs. he can't bring himself to meet namjoon's eyes.

he hears the leader sigh and make his way in, warm hands coming to rest by jungkook's sides. "you idiot, come on. let's go back to bed. I'll grab you some clothes."

jungkook manages a few short nods, trudging his way back to bed and laying down in a curled up position, fighting back a grimace and laying his hand back over his stomach. he can vaguely make out namjoon shuffling around the room, grumbling under his breath. probably something to do with jungkook's clothing organization. or lack thereof; jungkook has always had a bit of an unorthodox way of storing his clothes while on tour. it's just how his brain works, okay?

still keeping his gaze averted, jungkook feels the bed dip next to him. he allows himself the smallest of glances and notices the clothes on namjoon's lap. jungkook can't help but smile; those are some of his favorite pyjamas to wear on hard days. he didn't know that namjoon had picked up on it.

"arms up." namjoon orders gently. jungkook reluctantly complies. he can't help but blush when namjoon pulls his soiled, sweaty shirt off, feeling embarrassed that namjoon has to deal with this. to top it off, jungkook shivers when the air conditioning hitting him, realizing belatedly that his bloated stomach is now on display and painfully obvious. jungkook finds himself wrapping his arms around it as quickly as possible and curling in on himself. 

namjoon sighs. "jungkook-ah, look at me please." 

jungkook shakes his head stubbornly. but before he knows it, namjoon's hand comes up to his cheek and tilts his head up, their eyes meeting. jungkook finally clocks just how welled up with tears his are, and he can see it when namjoon clocks it, too. "jungkook, are you crying??"

at that, jungkook feels his bottom lip quiver. a sob bubbles up out of him, unexpectedly. "fuck, I'm sorry-" he tries to look away again, but namjoon doesn't let up. 

"hey hey, no, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to make it sound like such a big deal I just-" namjoon sighs again. "you're feeling really sick, huh?"

jungkook manages a pathetic nod. another sob. 

namjoon gives a nod back. "okay, that's okay." he says; it sounds like he's talking more to himself than jungkook, but the maknae is too caught up in his self pity to notice it all that much. "we can get through this, not the first time one of us has gotten knocked down."

"but… the sightseeing… the others-"

"will understand if you can't make it tomorrow." namjoon promises with a gentle smile. "now let's finish getting you changed so you don't get more sick from the cold hitting you." 

it's been an hour and jungkook has yet to fall asleep. namjoon lays next to him, having already drifted off a while ago, snoring away without a care in the world. jungkook is extremely jealous. his stomach is still gurgling and churning and it doesn't seem to want to provide him with any relief any time soon.

slowly, carefully, jungkook pushes himself up into a sitting position, afraid that he might choke on the productive burps that keep crawling up his throat. he worries at his fingers. his breathing feels short and heavy and jungkook swears under his breath. he hates this. he hates being sick. arguably more than anything in the world. he hates feeling so gross and out of control and-

great, he's crying again. jungkook shoves his head into his hands and tries not to make too much sound. this is all his fault, and he knows it, and that makes the whole situation so much worse somehow; this disaster is a product of his own making.

jungkook's head continues to swim and swirl with thoughts, and before he knows it, something heavy rushes up his throat. his mouth waters dangerously, a sour feeling coating the back of his tongue and weighing it down. he's definitely going to throw up. he feels it coming on, and fast.

throwing the sheets off himself as quickly as he can, jungkook hurries to the bathroom and shuts the door behind him, hand clamped over his mouth. he crouches in front of the toilet with a few heavy pants, white-knuckling the sides of the bowl. the first wave of vomit comes out of him with a guttural gag before jungkook can even fully process that it's happened. and then another wave comes out. and then another. and then he's rolling; more specifically, his stomach is rolling. agonizingly so. 

jungkook tries his hardest to be quiet. he really, really does. but it's difficult to do so when each round of puke rips his breath from his chest and burns the way up his throat, eliciting involuntarily whimpers and groans and pants.

he feels a warm hand on his back before he registers the fact that someone has joined him in the bathroom; namjoon. jungkook can't help but give a choked sob. "i-i'm sorry, I didn't mean to wake you, I-"

"shh," namjoon hushes. "it's okay. just get everything up, it'll help you feel better."

namjoon's calm, deep voice helps some of the tension leave jungkook's muscles, but they quickly seize up again when he has to throw up once more.

after another five minutes or so go by, the last few filled with nothing but weak, unproductive gags and pants as jungkook tries to regain his breath, namjoon decides to make the executive decision that jungkook is done. the leader reaches over to flush the toilet and helps jungkook to his feet. "come on, let's wash out your mouth and go to bed."

jungkook gives a weak moan but lets himself be dragged to the sink, pliable. now that his stomach is left with nothing more than a dull ache, and waves of relief continually washing over him from the nausea finally being gone, jungkook is tired. so, so tired. he barely feels it as namjoon guides him through washing out his mouth and leading him back to bed, helping jungkook sit on the edge as namjoon shuffles off to grab a new shirt, jungkook having soiled the one he'd changed into from sweat. 

the boy is practically already out cold by the time he's been changed and tucked in. the last thing he registers is a gentle touch brushing back his hair and the familiar voice of his leader whispering for him to "sleep well, jungkookie."

[kingdomoftyto]

It's taken 15 years, but it was worth the wait...

All right, I've put it off long enough (and had a very busy/distracting couple of weeks) so it's finally time for my review of TAAAM Act 2

For those who missed it, the second half of Turnabout: an Ace Attorney Musical dropped at the end of last month [here's a link to Act 1 for good measure], and to say I've been listening to it a lot since then would be a gross understatement. My partner and I have literally been greeting each other after work each day with, "Today's biggest earworm was [insert TAAAM song], how about you?" Even if I listen to any other music on my morning commute, by lunchtime I'll inevitably still catch myself mouthing the words to "Lotta Things" or "Tomorrow at Last" or whatever else.

What I'm getting at is that this is not just a cool piece of collaborative fanart. This is a legitimately fantastic musical. Period.

The music is wildly catchy, but remains cohesive with every other song. There are repeated leitmotifs and about a dozen reprises and incredibly satisfying references to music from the games (I was waiting for "Cornered" the entire time and was NOT disappointed when it finally showed up late in Act 2). It feels well-structured, like a real Broadway production. All of the songs from Act 1 that I would have considered the weakest--they now stand fully redeemed by their absolutely phenomenal reprises and callbacks in the second half. Every song in this musical, every line, is there for a reason.

And this careful planning serves to accentuate the stated primary goal of the entire musical: maintaining the character-driven narrative of the games and emphasizing the pathos of the story. On both counts, this team absolutely delivered.

Because not only is this a really cool musical, it's also a fantastic piece of collaborative Ace Attorney fanart. (See what I did there?) I know I already said it in my Act 1 post, but these folks understand these characters and what makes the story so memorable even 20 years later. The emotional beats, the character growth, the relationships between them all, are impeccable. Every character gets their time to shine, and in particular I want to praise their handling of Maya and Gumshoe, who feel like fully realized people and each go through their own personal arcs throughout the course of the story that are just as satisfying and heartwarming as Phoenix's own.

And that's a good segue into the subject of what creative liberties the team DID take with the story, because there honestly aren't that many, but what they did change is so good. I replayed Turnabout Goodbyes a few nights ago and was surprised at how much dialogue in the musical is taken line-for-line, sometimes even verbatim, from the source material. But, aside from the changes you might expect from condensing an entire mystery game's worth of story into a few hours of runtime--such as simplifying the cases to require fewer clues to solve--they really only altered the plot in ways that gave more chances to develop the characters, and to create rewarding arcs for each and every one.

They added a whole damn scene of just Gumshoe and Maya having a heart-to-heart. It is easily one of my favorite scenes in the entire play. These writers drank their respecting-Dick-Gumshoe juice that morning, and that single scene gives a better emotional payoff to his loyalty to Miles than I think we ever got in canon, while remaining utterly in-character for everyone involved. Meanwhile, the scene doubles as one of many stepping stones* for Maya's own character arc (which is also much more focused and consistent than in canon, imo!), in which she struggles with her feelings of helplessness and inadequacy as she tries to live up to Mia's legacy.

(It goes without saying that this scene also serves the practical purpose of getting characters in place to further simplify the details of the case, as mentioned before, because the writing is unparalleled and I will keep emphasizing that as many times as it needs to be said.)

In truth, there are only two things I would qualify as "major" changes to the story (in that they're different from canon, not that they actually change the plot itself), and I'm hesitant to spoil them here because both of them are SO good and both of them hit me like a truck when they happened. One has to do with emotional depth getting added to a certain character's arc, and the other has to do with relationships between characters. (Maybe I'll add them as a self-reblog to this post because I still need to scream about them lol.)

In any case, I'm not kidding when I say that the musical's version of events, big changes and small, is so compelling to me that it has now superseded the canon version in my mind.** It manages to tell the exact same story while not only giving some of the "side" characters much more credit, but also tying the cases themselves together into a single narrative. The specter of Redd White and his chokehold on the justice system is present in the back half of the original game, but the musical tweaks things to really make you feel how all of these pieces fit together to direct the characters' actions and growth. It's just... ugh, so brilliant. [chef kiss]

I would be remiss if I didn't also take a moment to directly praise the performance of the actors. As obsessed as I am with the music itself, my single favorite moments in both Acts are actually short lines of spoken dialogue.*** The delivery just struck a chord in me and I still lose it a little every time I hear those parts. (And other parts, but. Shush.) Everyone did a great job, but the three leads (Ren, MJ, and Gavaroc, who played Phoenix, Maya, and Miles respectively) absolutely knocked it out of the park in both their sung and spoken performances. Is it weird to say I'm obsessed with how convincing the screams are in "600,000 Volts"? It is, a little? Okay, well. [cough] Regardless. The whole cast really knew what they were doing throughout this entire production; the emotion is extremely powerful when the moment calls for it**** and they elevate the dialogue--again, a lot of which is taken DIRECTLY from canon!--from something good to something amazing. The delivery of these lines has literally changed how I look at the first game, now. They're that good.

Quick shout-out to some of the other voices that have invaded my brain and instantly become my headcanon voices for the characters. Just off the top of my head: Larry, Payne, Sahwit, Redd, Grossberg, Lotta, Lana... seriously. This cast is absolutely star-studded. Even the ensemble freakin' killed it, absolutely transforming every song they were in. The soprano that hit that high note at the end of "Justice for All (Reprise)"????? MAGNIFICENT. GOOSEBUMPS EVERY TIME.

Good grief, this is already so long and I still have so much more I could say. This is why it's taken me so long to write all this out, by the way. This musical is transcendently good, both from a musical perspective and a fandom one, and I simply have not stopped rotating it around in my head since I first heard it.

It's NOT without flaws. Of course it's not. The sound quality on a handful of spoken lines is noticeably lower. The word choices in a few verses feel just slightly clumsy, or forced to fit the meter. The visuals for the Youtube release are a little goofy at times because of the limitations of the game assets used. The plot of the second act, even simplified, would probably be a little too dense to easily follow for someone unfamiliar with the source material.

But if there's anything to be learned from Ace Attorney, it's that perfection shouldn't be the most important goal. Sometimes a few rough edges are necessary to allow room for truth. And the truth is, in this case, a story. A story about a lawyer named Phoenix Wright, who loses a mentor, gains a best friend, and saves a man who'd lost himself.

It's a story worth hearing, and what better way than in song?

--

*- For the record, my favorite song in Act 1 was "I'll Be There", so among all the MANY times the end of Act 2 punched me directly in the heart, the moment that hits me the hardest is probably still the part of the finale that reprises it. That last stanza (I hope you know I'm glad we met...) makes me want to cry every single time. Maya Fey Protection Squad, indeed.....

**- Except for ONE thing at the very end, but that's a story for the self-reblog where I scream about the spoilery stuff LOL

***- My fav line in Act 1 is Miles' real-time epiphany that Redd White is a murderer. ("The only people in that office at that time were the victim and the- ...killer.") You can HEAR his eyes widen as he falters, and the choice to have that as his turning point in place of Turnabout Samurai is so brilliant in so many ways I can't even handle it. I love Miles Edgeworth so much. Anyway, THEN, my fav line in Act 2 is Phoenix's heartrendingly soft, "I've got you, Edgeworth. I've got you." It's so tender and yet so sure. It's Phoenix catching Miles as he falls, looking him directly in the eye, and telling him it's over, I won't let you suffer for one more day.

****- Another of my many favorite lines is Phoenix's "Did you DO it!?" underneath Miles' singing in "Alone". The desperation. The ANGUISH. During my replay of Turnabout Goodbyes I literally had to stop and take a second when the button prompt labeled "Did you do it?" popped up on my screen. That hurted.

[aesethewitch]

Now that I'm fully awake and have my brain scraped together after a Very Bad night's sleep.... to-do list time!!

First, the dishes; ideally clearing the sink entirely

Clean kitchen surfaces and sweep/vacuum the floor (full clean will be tomorrow)

Lemon cupcake recipe test -- this should be the final iteration!

Write recipes for the Spring Equinox (at least the chicken, asparagus/sauce, and salad dressing today)

Set up the free tarot post & prep for livestream & go live on time (8pm-ish?)

One plot point or basic scene description for The Coming Storm

Finalize must-haves for the map of Evermore Rest for Mother May I

And that's it. I'm really reaching for the stars here since I am... man, I'm tired. My head kinda hurts and everything feels very hard right now, but that may be a need for momentum. Hopefully making this list is the catalyst I need to actually... [gestures] do this shit. It's gotta get done!!

Breaks are not online; I have a couple books set aside to minimize eye strain since Brain Hurt. There are a couple things I'm okay with dropping for energy conservation purposes -- sweeping can wait until tomorrow, and so can the map thing. I don't have a deadline for the next session since it isn't planned yet, but I still want to get it rolling so I can take my ideas from theory to practice.

ALRIGHT. Time to move.

Yeehaw.

[jimblejamblewritings]

luck be a (leading) lady | part 10.

[Posted 2022.09.29]

Summary: Y/N has always been a background character. That’s just life for some folks isn’t it? But what if she’s determined to not just be another member in the ensemble? What if someone helps her step into the spotlight in her own special way?

Warnings for the Series: a teeny bit of angst but mainly fluff, slow burn 

Pairing: ricky bowen x black!reader

Word Count: 3.1k

A/N: I’m thinking 3 or 4 parts left after this. It won’t go much further in the story than when Ricky and the reader actually get together.

A/N II: My writing style in this isn’t my favorite but I never realized how hard it would be to do hsmtmts as a series fic. I still love the plot though so I’m going to see it through but serious thank you to all the readers that enjoy this story because I’m honestly not sure about my own writing here. 

Previous Part | (Series Masterlist)

“What’s this?” you asked in the morning when you left Honeycomb to see Ricky at the door with a cherry popsicle from the food hall. 

“They don’t have smoothies here and I’m pretty sure the nearest McDonald’s is twenty miles from here.” 

You sighed. “I’m guessing I’m not Anna or Elsa.” 

“Sorry.”

“What did you get?”

“Kristoff,” he said, not quite looking at you. 

“Really?!” 

Ricky stood at the door for a moment after you ran back inside. You came out with an instant camera around your neck. Taking Ricky’s hand, you practically pulled him towards the cast list. Yep, there you were as the ensemble. But Kristoff was a big deal. Ricky gladly let you move him to stand next to the cast list so you could take a picture. You turned after feeling a tap on your shoulder. 

“Morning, Val,” you said quietly.  

“I know casting directors don’t have to justify their choices but I feel like I should explain.”

“You don’t have to. I know I’m shy but I’ve been in the professional program since I was nine, I’m used to not getting parts. Just wasn’t for me. Or it was but someone was better. I can never remember how Bennet says that phrase.” 

“Well, I love the attitude. But, no, this one I do. You were honestly one of my considerations for Anna or Elsa but paired with Gina and your voice is too light to be Elsa. And you both are amazing dancers but you played Clara s—”

“Playing the lead cost me the lead?” You asked in confusion. 

“No. Well, yes. But I want to use your ballet in the show. So you couldn’t be Anna. You did bring your ballet stuff like all the years before right?” 

“I have a sneaking suspicion I’m playing a personified snowflake.”

Val clicked her teeth while giving you finger guns before walking away. You had to laugh. You turned back to Ricky to take another picture. Gina and Kourtney were dragged into your picture. They all smiled largely. You handed each of them a polaroid that they held like a porcelain doll. Ricky took your camera from you. 

“I heard Val. You need a picture too, Prima.” 

“What’s Y/N doing?” Ashlyn asked. “It says we’re both ensemble.”

“Is it playing a person?” Carlos asked, still salty he was Olaf after being Lumiere.

“A snowflake,” you answered. 

Ricky held up the camera. “A very special snowflake… That came out…”

“Just take the picture, Ricky.” 

You were fighting everything in you not to laugh. He handed you the picture and your camera back. You agreed to show him around the camp while waiting for the hours to pass until the campfire. He had seen the entire camp by lunch time. Instead of eating in the food hall, you and Ricky ate on the pier of the lake. 

“So why is it called Shallow Lake if this giant thing exists?” He asked as he took a bite of his sandwich. 

“It used to be a lot bigger than this way before it became a camp. It’s also not nearly as deep as it looks. Almost everyone can touch the bottom, you might need to be on your tippy toes but still… Hey, you don’t mind if Gina and Jett join our log, do you?” 

“No but wouldn’t Gina be with EJ?”

“He’s working on the script tonight cause of the read-through tomorrow. It’s kind of eating up all his time so I told Gina to just hang out with us and try to forget about it for a bit.” 

“Well, I’m totally fine with them joining.” 

You both started to head back to your cabins to get stuff for the campfire. It was supposed to be a night to sleep out in the woods so you advised Ricky to bring a sleeping bag or find a tent buddy. The two of you met back up at the actual site. You went to your favorite log right in front of the fire. The large brooding presence behind you was clearly Jett. Without looking, you handed him a blanket. 

“You could try to look a bit more enthusiastic… Hanns.” 

Jett just sighed. 

“That’s a big deal! Ricky, please tell Jett playing Hanns is a big deal.” 

Jett didn’t really seem to care if the message came from someone other than you. You decided to drop the matter for now. Ricky was pleasantly surprised when you sat in between him and Gina. He honestly thought you would sit by Jett. He didn’t know what was going on between you two but Ricky wasn’t sure if you even lit up that much with him and Gina. 

“This is Maddie’s favorite time,” you said as you dropped your head onto Ricky’s shoulder. 

Maddox gave you a smile before turning her attention to the other campers. You weren’t kidding about this being her favorite night. She loved scaring people with the story of the woman in the woods: Susan Fine of Shallow Lake. Despite hearing the song that started the story, you still tapped your foot as EJ and Maddox sang it. EJ disappeared back into his tent as soon as it finished. Maddox stood up to walk around while speaking, she felt it really enhanced the story. You listened intently so she would always have someone to look at in case she felt the others weren’t paying attention. 

“And what Susan Fine when she wandered out here by herself?” 

“Corbin Bleu’s helicopter?” Jett half asked, half stated. It earned a light round of laughter from the others. 

Maddox stumbled over her next lines. “N-no. She was out in the woods for so long that she never came home. And it was so long ago that she still roams to this day lost, hungry, and angry.” 

“You guys, am I Susan Fine?” 

“You are pretty angry dude,” Ricky joined in on the joking. “Like all the time.” 

The laughter died when Maddox got visibly upset. Her scary story time was turning more into campfire laughter than anything. She stormed off, making you and Jett look at each other. You tilted your head but Jett just looked away. With scary story time effectively over, everyone started to retreat to their tents. You stayed at the fire with Ricky while Gina and Jett both left the log. 

“We have all the stuff for s'mores. Gadget kind of stormed off before handing them out. You want some?” 

“Sure but first I promised Carlos I’d help him scare Kourtney.” 

“Well, I will be here, eating a s’more and acting like I know nothing.”

Ricky patted you on the shoulder before walking off. You weren’t sure how they were going to scare Kourtney but you were positive it was going to be elaborate. It must have worked according to the screaming you heard minutes later. Ricky came bounding back in a fit of laughter. He accepted a s’more and dropped back down on the log. 

“Wow, it’s quiet without everyone out here,” he said as he reached for a bottle of water. 

“Yeah, a little too quiet.”

“Don’t tell me you’re scared?” 

You rolled your eyes. “Oh, you wish, Ricky. I just meant usually you can hear the other campers doing stuff. I guess everyone called it in early tonight.”

“Or Susan Fine got them.”

“I’ve been hearing that story for seven years in a row. You can’t scare me with it.” 

“Are you sure you’re not scared? Because my heart is racing.” 

Ricky grabbed your hand and placed it flat against his chest. You felt his slightly fast heartbeat underneath your palm. After a few moments, you pulled away with a scoff. He wasn’t going to prank you like he and Carlos just pranked Kourtney. You refused to get scared. Ricky smiled as you bit into another s’more. This was the first proper alone time he had with you in a while. And while it wasn’t the park and milkshakes, this was definitely just as good as Midnight McDonald’s. 

“You’ve got some chocolate right… Here, I’ll get it.” Ricky’s thumb gently wiped at the corner of your mouth. 

“This is why I don’t eat these often. That and Jett refuses to even look at marshmallows. How do you hate marshmallows?” 

Ricky’s hand faltered. Right, Jett was a thing. Potentially? You looked up at the sky after finishing your last s’more. Ricky looked up for a little bit before looking back at you. 

“What if we slept out here? I think I’ve only slept under the stars twice in all my years of camp.”

“Why not?” 

The two of you grabbed sleeping bags from your tent and went back to the campfire area. Sleeping under the stars proved more peaceful than either of you thought because you didn’t wake up until you heard singing. 

“Is that Sharpay?” you asked a bit groggily. 

Ricky sat up straight. “Sharpay song… Carlos’ voice. I think we might have missed something important.” 

“Well as long as we aren’t late to rehearsal, I think we’ll live. Speaking of which, we don’t have much time to get ready.” 

You both jumped out of the sleeping bags and began the brief walk back to the main camp area. While you were changing into proper clothes after taking a shower, Maddox was lovely enough to tell you that Carlos’ singing was because they were trying to impress Corbin Bleu. Well, the plan was to impress Corbin Bleu. His helicopter hadn’t arrived at the time they thought it would. You couldn’t care less about that and were actually kind of glad that you slept in. 

The more you thought about the documentary, the more it sounded like a bad idea. If you had only looked closer at the release forms but you assumed it was the typical release forms for when Camp Shallow Lake wanted to film campers for promotional videos. Your goal with the documentary was to not bring much attention to yourself. If you were in it then you were in it. But you wouldn’t go out of your way to garner Corbin or his cameraman’s attention. There were enough stars at camp who could do that. 

“You clean up nicely, Mr. Bowen,” you said as you entered The Barn. 

“Back at ya.” 

“What is Val having us do?”

“Stretch and a compliment circle. I think we got the compliment part out of the way.” 

“We are such overachievers.” You started to stretch properly. 

The stretching circle could have been comforting if it wasn’t for the fact EJ was circling you all like a hawk while he read the script over and over again. You weren’t sure why he was so nervous. This might have been his first time directing but it wasn’t like the cast was full of newbies. If he thought this was hard, he should see a week of classes with the Guppy Troupe. Eventually— and hopefully soon— he would get over the perfectionist director persona he seemed to have randomly adopted. 

Corbin and his cameraman came marching through the doors. You weren’t sure how it was possible that they had more enthusiasm in the morning than the entire cast combined. He started walking past each of you one by one. You snickered when it looked like Ricky tried to get a hug that was rejected when Corbin didn’t even pay attention. He gently pushed you but that didn’t stop you from snickering again. As you all gathered in the friendship circle to give light back massages, you looked over to where Corbin and his camera guy were talking. The camera dude gave you weird vibes. You weren’t sure why he just seemed odd. Corbin was kind of weird too, though. Maybe that was Hollywood for you? 

He had some odd advice to try and pull emotions out of people. At one point he suggested that Kourtney and Gina use their real life to inspire. The idea itself made perfect sense except the example he gave was asking if they both liked the same guy. You and Ricky laughed off to the side. Gina and Kourtney had completely different tastes in men. Also how pretentious of Corbin to assume they both liked the same boy, what if it was a girl? Not with those two but he didn’t know them to know that. You laughed even harder when it was suggested that Carlos was the guy. His face deadpanned. 

“Yes, that’s me. The notorious womanizer of the group. Somehow pulling all the ladies I show no interest in.” 

The cameraman— Channing— turned the camera away from the two girls and focused on you and Ricky since you two had been laughing. He got an extra tight shot to really highlight that you were resting your head on Ricky’s shoulder. As an ensemble member, you didn’t need to look at the script for lines. If you guys weren’t singing then you weren’t speaking. So there wasn’t much else to do but just listen to everyone else. Ricky held up a hand slightly. 

“There’s no drama between any of us. We’re all just really good friends.” 

EJ agreed. “This is a pretty drama-free zone.” 

Corbin gave a forced smile. “Okay let’s just move on. You were at Kristoff’s part.” 

“Hey, my ice,” Ricky read. He poked your cheek. “That’s you.” 

“That’s me.” You did spirit fingers, making the others chuckle. Val had let everyone know the extra role you were taking to really make the show next level. 

“Kristoff picks up his bag of ice while Anna and Hans are oblivious,” Val read the stage directions. 

Gina picked up. “I’m sorry, so sorry… Jett’s line is next.” 

You lifted your head from Ricky’s shoulder. “He’s not here?” 

With a sigh you got up from your chair. Channing kept the camera on Ricky who just kept watching you. Maddox grabbed your arm before you left the doors. 

“Why do you still try with him?” 

“Maddie…”

“Go, fine, go find him.” 

You looked around the entire camp multiple times. Either he was actually lost or was oddly good at evading you every step of the way. But it wasn’t in Jett’s nature to avoid you. He might’ve ignored you but that was after you sat next to him. He never got up to leave and he never purposely tried to make you leave. So where the hell was he? You gave up looking but told Dewey who was going to call someone. Stomping your way down a small hill, you found Ricky and Gina practicing lines. Wow, you didn’t realize you had taken up that much time looking for Jett.

“Y/N!” Gina called out, holding up a piece of paper. 

Ricky tried to grab it from her but she stepped out of the way in time to hand you the paper. The words Ricky’s Bucket List were plastered at the top. The first idea that immediately caught your attention was hug a celebrity. 

“Is this why y—”

“Gina already laughed at me on your behalf.” 

“I wasn’t going to laugh… Say yes to something that scares you?” 

“Was agreeing to date Lily not scary enough?” Gina asked. 

“Will you two leave me alone?”

You linked arms with Gina. “Come on, G, let’s go find a space rock so Ricky can complete his dream of walking on the moon. 

She threw her head back in a fit of laughter as the two of you left Ricky to keep practicing his script. It was important to get ready for movie night anyway. You were glad to have missed the rest of rehearsal with Corbin and Channing. You tried to fill Gina in on all the details of how everything worked at camp including movie night and which popcorn flavor was worth it. The movie was supposed to be High School Musical 3 but apparently Gina had asked Val to change it. 

“I’m not trying to say anything to anyone but I think you could help Kourt,” Gina said as you kept walking. “I think it’s anxiety maybe.”

“I’ll keep an eye out for her but asking Val to put on her comfort movie was a great idea.” 

To make sure Kourtney felt comfortable, you and Gina left Ricky and EJ to share a blanket and shared with her instead. Of course, Gina still took the side that put her next to her boyfriend. Kourtney seemed to feel calmer as she ate popcorn and watched Camp Rock. Almost all your attention was on the movie. The rest of it was thinking about your individual rehearsal with Val tomorrow. It was necessary that she and EJ split responsibilities to get the show done in time. That meant you needed private time to figure out what she wanted from you as a snowflake/ice block. 

All you knew of Val’s plan so far was that you would be there for Kourtney’s Let It Go number to help with the magical effects and then you were doing a little bit of Carlos’ In Summer and then dancing with Ricky because Kristoff’s entire personality was that he loved his reindeer and ice. It wasn’t nearly as intense as ballets at the Saltwater, especially the upcoming one, but you were still nervous all the same.

Ricky left movie night a bit early, not feeling up for watching the mini talent show afterwards. He wanted to be up early to work on lines and enjoy more of the nature side of camp. The boy nearly jumped out of his skin when he opened the door to the cabin and saw Jett laying in bed while reading a book. 

“You’re back?” 

“Look, I already got a lecture from Val. I don’t need one from you.” 

“We were counting on you dude. Y/N spent the entire day looking for you.” 

“She always does that, it’s kind of our thing I guess.” 

Ricky scoffed. “That’s a bit messed up to do to someone who cares about you. I get it grumpy sunshine is like your thing but you could’ve even tried to tell her you weren’t gonna be there instead of wasting everyone’s time.” 

Jett closed his book and propped his head up on his hand. “Just a question. Are you actually upset because I took off or does this somehow have to do with Y/N?” 

“Whatever.”

“Great comeback.” Jett went back to his reading.

Ricky ignored him for the rest of the night. It continued into the morning, even when Jett reluctantly stood next to him as they walked to The Barn. You weren’t there yet, probably listening to the music and trying to figure out a dance to it. It wasn’t like you were really needed until lunch. This morning was supposed to be Kristoff and Anna work mainly. Ricky took a seat in one of the chairs set up in the middle of the room. Carlos, Val, and EJ were standing in front of everyone with creepy smiles and a posterboard presentation on a stand.

(part 11)

THIS FIC TAGLIST:

@mishtay​ @ifilwtmfc​​

PERMANENT TAGLIST:

@venomsvl @peaches-n-sunscreen @summerellaz @supernaturallover2002 @sambucky8 @9daykrisr @thebitchinleo @23victoria @scarlets-widow @pagetpagetpagetpaget @lovexnatasha @awesomebooklover17 @1234-angelika @imatrisk @blackreaderatrisk @princess-jules47 @alexloveskili @a-marie-a @siriuslysirius1107

[itwoodbeprefect]

ooh there's so many good questions in that writers list. ummmmm 10, 18, 22, 59, 74

10. Cltr+f “blinks” on your WIP & copy paste the first sentence/paragraph that comes up

with a previous answer i did this for the starsky & hutch wips, so i'll do it for h50 now, which brings options. the main document with more or less Everything in it has 12 blinks, a flip-flop state of mind has 4 (though those have all already been posted), and sweet like a chic-a-cherry cola (which is, despite appearances, not dead) has 7, one of which is this one, from the aftermath of my gratuitous surf buddies scene rewrite ("“That’s so cute,” Mary says, while she accepts the coffee. She’s smiling, and Steve looks happy and clueless and good enough to eat, and Danny is, quite frankly, insulted."):

When he crosses the doorway he’s indignant, but by the time he’s hopping up on the kitchen counter there’s a nasty doubt creeping in. “Hey, look, we are more than just surf buddies, right? I’m not reading this whole thing wrong?” Steve has his head in the fridge, but at this he closes it without taking anything out. He turns to Danny and blinks. “Of course we are. We’re-” He predictably gets stuck right there, because they haven’t said anything like that out loud before. “Partners,” is what he settles for.

also, oh my god, that's 23 mcdanno blinks. brb editing out these people's twitching eyelids.

-

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

answered this one here!

-

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

ooh, interesting! and i'm leaning towards no, because i have very few hard boundaries with fiction. there are definitely things i'd be very unlikely to ever write, but there's very little i feel sure about ruling out completely. i'm not responsible (yet) for what tomorrow me thinks would be a good idea, and i only very recently had the experience of watching a show (one of the thai ones, predictably) that got me SO annoyed i had to grab myself by the back of my own shirt and forcibly yank myself back from attempting to rewrite the entire plot of a lazy thing about which i liked practically nothing, not even the characters. so i guess that's one thing i AM trying to actively avoid, and hope for future me's sake she won't be doing either: writing some giant project purely out of spite for a media property i don't enjoy. (peace and love, girl.) beyond that, i don't know! chances are vanishingly slim, but maybe i'll suddenly decide i have a great take on mpreg omegaverse deathfic tomorrow.

-

59. Does anyone in your personal life know you write fic? if not, would you tell anyone?

oh, yes! all my friends i think, my sister, my parents - though my parents wouldn't know where to find it, probably, and i wouldn't mind keeping it that way. i don't mind telling people, it's just that i also don't necessarily enjoy explaining (and defending) the concept of fanfic to random non-fanfic people, so it depends on the situation.

-

74. You’ve posted a fic anonymously. How would someone be able to guess that you’d written it?

also already answered this one, here. clearly people agree you picked the best questions!

-

Get to know your fic writer! 🔎

[bluejay-writes]

Heaven is a Misnomer - Chapter 1

To protect him from his unsafe home life, Jake's mother sends him to the Celestial Realm for an exchange program. Jake faces a pile of Celestial Realm biases, a broken system of oppression, and unlikely friends. This year is going to be unpleasant at best, but he'll survive. Hopefully.

Fandom: Shall We Date?: Obey Me! Rating: Teen, for now. Might bump it up for violence but I don't think it'll get that bad. Chapter 1 Wordcount: 3136 Characters/Relationships: Jake (Exchange student OC) / Raphael (Eventually. This is a slow burn). Michael exists, mentions of all the demon brothers and extras exist, and they appear in some of the middle chapters. A bunch of new OC angels because we don't know enough about the celestial realm in canon. Notes:

Well fam, here we are, as promised. First week of 2024, Jake's story in the Celestial Realm. Bad Khakis. Michael being problematic.

I'm really excited for you all to get to meet the extended OC cast, given that we don't have a lot of named angels in canon! Also the exchange students that got introduced in DD get fleshed out so that you can meet them more as real people. (The more I write of this the more I love Bunny and Aya, honestly.)

I'll be posting a chapter every Tuesday, and given how long the chapters are turning out and how many chapters I've got plotted past what I've written, I hope you're down for another ~100k word ride.

This follows the canon timeline, and is happening simultaneously with "Devils in the Details" which chronicles Nia's first year of the exchange program in the Devildom. If you're here and sad that there aren't a ton more scenes with the demon brothers, well! There's a whole fic for that already! Knowledge of that fic is not necessary to read this one, but the tie ins make it fun!

You can also read this on AO3, if that's your jam!

|| Next Chapter >

Chapter 1: What do you mean, Exchange Program?

“Same time tomorrow, Mr. Costello?”

“Yes, Ma’am.” Jake said, a smile plastered onto his face as though it was the most important thing in his world, and that he hadn’t been fighting tears for the last twenty minutes.

He’d been having tutoring sessions over lunch time for his entire high school career.  It had been the cause of no end of strife in his school life, but it was better for him than not.  The tutoring sessions were a cover, of course, for counseling sessions. Therapy. It was something his mother had worked out with the school counselor the moment she knew what school he was going to.  Jake had always been a troubled kid, and his mother wanted to avoid that kind of thing following him to high school.

This of course, was the cause of a ton of rumors that made his life ridiculous, but Jake was the king of gossip and rumors, so he was entirely too happy to either play along or do something completely contrary to what they were spreading that made the rumormongers look like idiots.

On his way to his locker, Jake glanced down at his phone. He still had five minutes before passing time to wolf down his sandwich. He was leaving the bathroom after washing his hands when he practically ran into his bestie Nia making a beeline for the ladies’ room.  She didn’t seem to even notice him, and he pursed his lips.  Great. Something happened while she was reading under the bleachers again.  That was the only real downside to his lunchtime therapy sessions. He never got to have lunch with his bestie, and as much as she claimed to love the time for reading, he knew she was dealing with her own personal hell. People were assholes. Especially their fellow students.

“Jacob, can you see me at my desk, please?”

Jake sighed, stepping up to his Chemistry teacher’s desk.

“Care to explain why you didn’t turn in last week’s assignment? The late work deadline was Monday.” He said, lips pursed in a way that made Jake think of a cranky old woman librarian.

“I did, Mr. Cook.” Of course he did. Jake did all of his homework, it was the one reliable escape at home.

“I have no record of your lab report, nor the associated worksheets.”

Jake bit back his retort. Fighting with Mr. Cook about this never worked, and only got the Chemistry teacher more and more on his case.

“I have the slip you signed when I turned it in.” Jake said, pulling out his binder and getting out the slip in question. He refused to let go of the paper, simply showing it to the teacher. He just knew if he let go of the signed slip that it too would get “lost”.  He didn’t know if Mr. Cook did it on purpose, but his grades were suffering because this man was determined that he never did his work.  The signed turn-in slips were his mother’s idea, after the last parent-teacher conference where his academic reputation had been dragged in the mud. Mrs. Costello was having absolutely none of that, she knew full well how much focus her boy put on his academics.

“Ah. I see that you do.” the teacher said, and seemed to set his jaw. “I will have to look into what might have happened on my end.”

“Please.” Jake said. He was thinking ‘See that you do.’ but he just had this feeling if he said that out loud he’d never hear the end of it. “Is there anything else, Mr. Cook?”

“No, that is everything I need from you, Mr. Costello.”

“Great, can I have a pass to my next class? I still need to stop at my locker, and—“

“You’ll be fine if you hustle.” Mr. Cook said, and then promptly dismissed Jake from his attention.

Jake cursed internally, and walked out of the room as fast as he could - he couldn’t do with being yelled at for running, but he was going to need to pull off the power walk of his life if he didn’t want to be late to his last class of the day.

“Welcome home, Jakey.” his mom said from the kitchen, where she was busily cooking dinner.

“Hey Mom.” Jake said, setting his bag by the stairs and plopping down at the kitchen counter.

“And how was school?”

“I had to show Mr. Cook one of his signed assignment slips today.”

“Seriously? That man gets on my last nerve.” 

Jake watched as his mother chopped ingredients for dinner slightly more aggressively than she had been.

“It should be fine. If not, I can go to the AP’s office and complain directly.”

“Heaven help that man if I have to get involved again.”

“I still think he’s just homophobic and taking it out on me because I’m the one most publicly out at school.”

“It could be, as much as I hate to say it.” his mother said, sliding the chopped vegetables into the skillet. “But maybe we shouldn’t talk about that right now—“

“Talk about what?”

Jake froze at the sound of his father’s voice from behind him. Shit. He’s home early.

“I was thinking it was possible that Mr. Cook is intentionally ‘losing’ my assignments because I’m gay, is all.” Jake trailed off towards the end of his sentence. He knew how this was about to go down.

“Some teacher is losing your things.”

“Yes. I have pr—“

“And it’s because you’re supposedly gay.”

“It could be.”

“So tell him you’re not gay. Then it’s handled.”

“That would be a lie, dad.”

“You’re kidding, right Jacob? This whole thing is a joke, haha, joke’s on old dad.”

Jake looked up at his dad and winced.

“No, I’m not kidding, dad. I’m gay.”  It was probably the fifth time he’d accidentally outed himself to his father.  It wasn’t like his dad was old enough to have Alzheimer's or something, he was just usually too drunk to remember anything the next day.

“Oh Andy, leave the kid be. You know it’s just a phase.”  His mother said from the kitchen, and he winced. That was her way out of this argument every time.  Honestly, all he wanted was his dad to realize that being gay wasn’t the worst thing that a kid could be these days. It wasn’t even that rare for a kid to be gay, especially in the city.

It wouldn’t be that big of a deal, really, his dad not thinking the highest of him, but he knew that when his dad got upset like this… well… it went bad for his mom, real fast.

“Yeah sure, just a phase.”  his dad said, and threw his bottle against the wall.  From the way it splattered, it wasn’t quite empty, either.  Jake didn’t look forward to cleaning that up.

Here we fucking go. Jake thought. He started to say something, but his mother spoke before he could.

“Jake, go to your room.” His mother said, gaining all of his father’s attention.

“What, Marnie. You just going to take his side?” his father spat, and Jake all but sprinted up to his room, grabbing his bag on the way.  There was a reason he always left it against the stairs, much as he wished there wasn’t.

He got into his room and shut his door, practically collapsing into his desk chair. Perfect way to spend a Thursday night, he thought, pulling out his math homework and his phone.

Jake > Nia: Nia, they’re at it again. Nia > Jake: Oh shit. What this time? Jake > Nia: Same shit, different day. Dad found out I’m gay, I guess. Nia > Jake: You came out to your parents more than a year ago!!! Nia > Jake: How many times is this going to happen? Jake > Nia: I don’t know. What can I do? I can’t.. Anything. Nia > Jake: You know you’re always welcome here. Jake > Nia: I can’t leave my mom. Nia > Jake: I know. Hey look on the bright side, tomorrow’s Friday. Jake > Nia: Friday… gods bless Friday, I need my Ma hugs. Nia > Jake: Me too! Also it’s Pizza and Ice Cream Friday. Jake > Nia: Now there’s inspiration to get my math homework done.

Downstairs, more glass shattered, and Jake winced. He just hoped his mom was going to be okay, after this.  He knew he’d hear all about it tomorrow, how much he was a bad son, and did he have any idea what she went through for him…

I really do understand. Jake sighed, and put his headphones on.  The music was far too loud, but it served to drown out the mess that was his home life so that he had a chance to get his homework done.

Now… how was this supposed to work again? A squared plus B squared…

Jake woke suddenly to a hand on his shoulder, and jumped so hard he almost fell off of his bed.

“Sorry Jakey.” his mom said quietly. “Your dad’s out again. I brought you some dinner.” She set the bowl of vegetable-heavy macaroni and cheese on his desk.

“You don’t need to apologize, mom.” Jake said, reaching out to pull his mom into a hug. “It’s not your fault he’s like this.”

“I know, baby. But you deserve better.”  She ruffled his hair, and chuckled. “Looks like we need to trim your sides again.”

“Oh no, am I getting scruffy?”

“Just a little bit.”

Jake felt a strong need to put a hat on. Scruffy did not fit his aesthetic one bit.

Honestly, he wasn’t sure he fit his own aesthetic at all.

Circumstances made it so that he came out of the closet way earlier than he really felt comfortable, but he knew that if he was just himself, but gay, that it would backfire.  So instead, he was flamboyant, expressive Jake.

At least in the privacy of his own bedroom he could be himself. Quiet, melancholy Jake. Much less bright than anyone thought he was.  Anyone but Nia, at least. His bestie knew him inside and out, so at least he had that going for him.

Friday dawned like any other day ending in Y, and Jake hauled himself out of bed and to school. Early, of course, for track practice.  His mornings were utterly incomplete without a long run.  Something that helped him clear his mind and get his school mask settled into place.

Of course, by the time he was in the locker room showering off the sweat and changing out of his running gear, the rumors and gossip were already flying.  There were two new students today. Something about an exchange program.  Jake soaked in as much gossip as he could on his way to his first class. He absolutely had to share this with Nia. Hopefully she was already in class, and there hadn’t been some incident keeping her from her morning reading. It seemed like that kind of week.

Jake bounded into the classroom, glad to see Nia in her usual place.  He plopped down in his chair, facing backwards so that he could chatter at her before class started.

“Nia!!!”

“Morning Jake. Happy Friday.” Nia looked up from her book, casually putting her bookmark in to hold her place. 

“That’s your normal Friday Greeting. Today is not a normal Friday!”

“What?”

“There are new kids!”

“On a Friday?”

“Yep!”

“Their parents are the worst. Why would you start your kids on a Friday, at least wait until Monday.”

I think my dad takes the cake for the worst, but… sure, Nia.

“Okay, okay. I get your point, but like… they’re both seniors. Brothers, apparently. And smokin’ hot.”

“I’ll take your word for it?”

“No way. Between the two of us we have seven classes today. Surely we’ll catch sight of one of them, right?”

“Yeah. Hell of a story to tell ma later.”

“Miss Laney. Language.” Mr. Randall said, entering the room.

Jake rolled his eyes, grateful to be facing away from their teacher initially.

“English, Mr. Randall. Christian jargon, specifically.”

The teacher laughed. “Alright, alright. Good morning.”

At least he was dealing fine with Nia’s pedantic backtalk this morning. Maybe he was excited about new students to teach, as well.  Jake turned himself around in his chair, as the rest of their classmates started to file into the room. Jake was excited to meet the new kids, but he got the vibe from Nia that she could do without adding any new potential bullies to her watch list. He didn’t really blame her for it. She had the worst luck.

After lunch, Jake walked into Chemistry, expecting to have another discussion with Mr. Cook about his homework.  What he wasn’t expecting was for his usually vacant table to be populated… by the two new kids.  Oh, sweet! He’d get to meet them and could tell Nia what to expect in case either of them were choir kids.  The blonde looked… choir-possible. The other… seemed like he’d rather be skipping.  Did he just wink at me?

Jake settled into his usual chair, and engaged immediately with the new kids.

“Hi, I’m Jake, and apparently we’re table buddies now.”

Mr. Tall, Dark, and Handsome - the one who’d winked - grinned. “Hi there, Jake. I’m Diaval. And this,” He gestured to the blonde who looked like someone had taken him off of one of those 90s trashy romance book covers, “is my brother Mark.”

“Pleasure to meet you. Brothers, both seniors…” Jake said, thinking. “Don’t let me sound too stupid here, but you don’t look like twins.”

Mark scoffed. “Please. We’re barely brothers. My father is—“

“Someone entirely different than mine.” Diaval finished, rolling his eyes.

Oh. Jake thought. They don’t get along at all. This is going to be interesting.

He slipped his phone out and sent a few quick texts to Nia, before turning his focus on Mr. Cook, lest he get his phone confiscated.

Jake was looking forward to band.  His last period class, Band usually kept him sane and happy. He was surprised, after their conversations in Chemistry not to see Diaval here in band. He’d seemed like a musical sort. Maybe he was in choir with Nia.

Shaking his head to get the new kids out of it so that he could focus, Jake waved to his fellow percussionists before getting himself settled at the timpani.  He’d just picked up the mallets when the director beckoned him over. Setting the mallets down carefully, he practically flounced over to the director. The man never needed him for anything before, so this was a novel experience. He wasn’t even the percussion lead…

“I just got a call from the office, Jake. Your mother is here.”

Jake blinked. “Why is my mom here?”

“I certainly don’t know.” the director said, shrugging. “But apparently you’re going to be heading out straight from the office today, so grab your bag. I’ll see you Monday.”

Jake knew not to argue. If mom was here to pick him up, there was probably a good reason. Better her than dad, that was for sure.  He’d have to text Nia from the car, though. She’d worry, otherwise.

Of course, he didn’t have to do that, as he ran into Nia in the hallway.

“Oh hey! I have to go to the office—“

“—because my mom is here…”

“Weird.” They said in unison, and weird only began to cover the next few hours.

Their moms had come together. And had taken them out to get fancy coffee. Which was like ten red flashing lights right there. Something was very off.

Of course something crazy was happening. Of course.

“So, you’re saying you signed me up for an exchange program?” Nia said, and the look she was giving her mother over the top of her coffee-adjacent drink was telling.

To be fair, Jake was giving his own mother the same look.

“Isn’t it just supposed to be like, to another country though?” he said, concerned.

“Well…” Nia’s mom started, and his mom interrupted her.

“It was my idea. I didn’t know if you two would get in, but I suggested to Lynn, I mean Nia’s mom, that we could sign you both up so you’d be together.”

“Well, that backfired.” Nia said, bitterly.

“They said you can still text though! And video call, and regular call!” Nia’s mom said, trying to sound excited for them.

“But…” Jake said, not excited about being separated from Nia, and especially displeased about leaving his mom alone with how his dad was being.

“And there’ll be a big dance at the end of the program.” Jake’s mom said, her smile equally fake.

“So you’re saying the two hot guys who just transferred in today are our replacements?” Jake shared a look with Nia. That would explain some things about the supposed ‘brothers’ they’d met.

“Well…”

“In Nia’s case, yeah, literally.” Her mom said. “They’re staying at our place since we have the space…”

“And you’re going to trust them to take care of the girls?” Nia said, cautiously.

“Well, no. I had to take a few months of 8-5s to cover Janice’s maternity leave, so it works out.”

“That is suspiciously convenient.” Jake said with narrowed eyes.

“Jake… There’s a reason we did this. I’m divorcing your father. But It’s going to be messy… and I need to know that you’re safe, okay?”

“So you’re sending me off to Literal Actual Heaven where Angels are from to keep me safe.” Jake was angry. Nia just looked like she was numb. “And you’re sending Nia off to Literal Actual Hell.”

“Technically it’s the Celestial Realm and the Devildom.” His mother said, quietly.

Nia still hadn’t done so much as blink in the last five minutes.

“Adania. Please. Just try it. It’s a year. It’s Room & Board covered, and we have been promised you will both be entirely safe.”

Jake reached out and took Nia’s hand in his, at which point she basically melted, falling over into his shoulder.

“Ugh. Fiiiine. Can we still have pizza and ice cream night?” Nia asked, sighing.  Jake could feel the subtle trembling.

“Yes. But we’re going out for pizza.” her mother said, grinning. “And Marnie’s coming along.”

“What.” Nia said, so blankly it wasn’t even a question.

“Yeah, we’re gonna do the whole arcade thing.”

“Mom, we can’t afford that.”

“With the stipend they’re giving me to house a literal angel and a literal demon? We’re good.”

“Mo-om!”

“Hush. You’re leaving tomorrow. Let me spoil my baby girl.”

Nia rolled her eyes and Jake just laughed. 

A year in Heaven, huh? Wonder if it was going to be anything like Seven Minutes in Heaven. Maybe he’d kiss an angel. Ha. Gay angels. Unlikely. This year was going to suck.

[illogarithmil]

Rotes as Revision: Byzantine Kingship Rituals

So I am very TTRPG-brained and have a bad habit of letting it distract me from uni-work - as in "ah, the essay's due in tomorrow, I have time to make a 60x60 hexmap and populate it with encounters!" However, I'm also very 'tism-brained and so if I don't think about my beloved special interest I will simply Cease Being Productive Entirely.

A way I have recently been testing of getting around this is making TTRPG content based on whatever I'm studying at the time! One significant example, a mage game set in Northern Ireland about a plot by gnostic paramilitaries to create a new Celtic realm by utilizing the awakened spirit of a long-dead Pharoah, is a WIP at the moment, but whilst I put down my dissertation on Loyalist groups in the Troubles to focus on some essays about the Late Antique middle east for a bit, I thought I'd knock out something quick for that.

I therefore present: a Mage rote inspired by the artistic and cultural displays of dominion made use of by Eastern Roman and Sasanian emperors in their interactions with each other, though definitely applicable to circumstances outside of that! This is all heavily inspired by Matthew P. Canepa's The Two Eyes of the Earth: Art and Ritual Kingship between Rome and Sasanian Iran, an excellent book you should read if you're remotely interested in the pre-Islamic Middle East, early Iranian or early Byzantine history from either a political or cultural perspective. There are two more I have ideas for (Ritual Humiliation [Entropy 5, with optional Prime 4/Time 4] and Prestige-Garnering Warfare [Prime 3 with optional Mind 2]), but also this post has been sitting in my drafts for three weeks with only the first written so I may never get to them. Alas, the fickle butterfly of inspiration settles but briefly!

Paradigms:

Iconographic Authority (Mind 5 [crude form] or Prime 4/Mind 2+ and 10+ points of Quintessence [standard form])

The representation of the ruler, given as a gift, seems to take on the aspect and dignity of the ruler themself, carrying the sense of their presence far beyond them. Though this might conjure images of paranoia-wracked cults of personality to some, its effects can also be highly desirable - for example, the sense that a neighbouring ruler is literally present in one's court projects an image of one's power and of mutual respect without the expense or stress of continuous visits.

Common Practices: Art of Desire, Craftwork, Dominion*, Faith*, Reality Hacking Common Instruments: As part of the crafting process: Artwork*, Management and HR*; As the object itself: Artwork*, Books and Periodicals, Cups and Vessels*, Gems and Stones, Money and Wealth, Sacred Iconography, Symbols*, Weapons; As part of the gifting ceremony: Blessings and curses*, Dances and movement, Drugs and poisons, Eye contact, Fashion*, Food and drink*, Group rites*, Money and wealth*, Music*, Offerings and sacrifices, Prayers and invocations*, Sacred iconography, Social domination*, True names (titles)*, Voice and vocalizations* * appropriate for the inspiring period of Byzantine-Sasanian interactions

The mage themselves or, more likely, some of their servants craft an item representing them - usually but not necessarily a literal depiction (if it is more abstract then the difficulty should increase by +1 to +3 depending on how directly and specifically the symbols used refer to the Mage). It is then handed over in a special ceremony to another individual, as part of which they are likely showered with other gifts and luxuries. This ceremony will usually be protracted, allowing for ritual casting, though of course extremely long castings risk wearing the target's patience thin.

For the crude form, four+ successes are required, with additional successes being used to extend duration (which means that in reality, 8 are probably the minimum to make the rote useful - see the Duration chart in the M20 core book). For the duration, the target's subconscious mind is altered so that they constantly feel as though the giver of the gift is physically present with them and behave appropriately - for example, avoiding acting against them in any way that would be obvious to somebody stood in the room alongside them.

In the standard form, the item is instead a Wonder - see the rules for crafting wonders - with Arete 2 (or more if more Quintessence is invested during crafting), imbued with a Mind 2 effect which it uses on every creature that observes it, beginning with the creature gifted it. This effect projects the mental impression of the presence of the giver quite directly - it is, for targets, as if the item were literally the giver. It will first roll arete after a minute of observation, then ten minutes, then once per hour a target is in its presence, beginning by accumulating nine successes against the target (at which point its effect on them is indefinite and automatic, taking effect whenever they are in its presence until the Wonder is destroyed) and then targeting other creatures, giving one creature the impression for one scene per three successes. It does not suffer the penalty for juggling multiple effects, being very specifically designed to do so.

The effect (and the effect of the Wonder in the standard case) is only vulgar in regions without a tradition of representative artwork, or at least without one of ruler-representation as a means of projecting authority. Both forms are somewhat difficult to detect as being alien impositions rather than natural reactions, requiring at least Mind 2 or (in the standard case) a Prime-based examination of the object itself.