@chaoticArbiter I thought that might have been the case, but i didn't want to assume! Thanks :33 Editing is hard, but i think it's going to go places. I'm trying to think of other cliches to subvert or play with. I've got a omnisexual god of love who is a depressed because he doesn't want to fight anymore, and is the only reliably rational god Allie can rely on. I've got a cowardly scholar who is hopelessly in love with a terrifying large soldier lady who's really mostly just awkward and is totally smitten with cowardly scholar but has no idea what to do because there is no instructions manual for this and the scholar is the most ditzy girl to ever walk the earth so she doesn't notice and then there's mutual pining. Also despite being overly and enthusiastically invested in other people's love lives, Allie never shows any interest in romance herself. Because I really like ace protags. side character romances I find more interesting typically anyway. The big bad is Allie's mother figure who slowly but surely falls apart as Allie strays farther from her ideals. I have seebs and this forum to thank for a lot of her characterization... though i'm not sure that's a good thing?
I came across a couple fic stubs in my writing folder today that I hadn't read in a while. Would love for someone to scan and say what they think. I'm trying to get back into writing now that I'm more or less done school for the summer, and I miss banging out stories. Plus there are a bunch of ideas that are eating at my brain, but I feel badly about not finishing some other ideas that I really liked (thanks depression). Wondering if actually talking to other writers/readers will help get the gears moving again. First is Beating Shakespeare. Prompt: I didn't get very far - I intend(ed) to write a formal sonnet (MShep/Ashley) and got stuck - but I'd also like to do some free verse with a Shep/Jack pairing, and maybe a cracky fic with some haikus for Kasumi. Second, and far more meaty, is Frost on the Window. This one came from the Frozen craze back when it came out. I was inspired by a gorgeous fanart of Warrior Elsa, as well as the theory that Hans had fire powers to match Elsa's (based on a handful of parallels, notably the fact that only they wear gloves all the time). I didn't get super far, but I would kind of like to go back to it. Also, it was a lot of fun to try my hand at formal royal address (I was also reading a lot of A Song of Ice and Fire at the time).
How do write. what is motivation. i've been trying to write something for weeks and keep coming up completely blank and it's really frustrating. I'm editing my novel, but i also want to do some new writing. fml
So I wrote this thing that is mostly fuckin contextless unless you're my boyfriend and know of our stupid rp shenanigans but here have at it. I probably won't edit or fix any mistakes cuz I don't plan on doing anything with it. But I like praise like a chump V:
I so want to write the thing I'm thinking about in Corsican, but a novel or short story mixing sci-fi and urban fantasy tropes with an autistic nonbinary protagonist written in a Mediterranean language with around 50,000 native speakers has a target audience of... Maybe one, and he's still just planning to learn the language. Oh well, I was going to translate it in English anyway.
So one of my favorite things is fictional anthropology. I wrote up a poem after finishing Dark Souls 3 a few days ago. Decided to write up a fake anthropological explanation to it. Whoo.
So, I remember reading about a tower a while back, some sorta massive skyscraper thing that had the funding fall through and was mostly but not totally completed. It ended up abandoned, and all sorts of homeless people started squatting there and little businesses rose up, like peeps who'd drive people up to higher floors cause the elevators didn't work and junk, and now I'm thinking of a ghibli-esque little thing about someone hiring one of those guys to take them all the way to the top. A little road trip movie, 'cept vertical. I was thinking the guy who hired the other one would be a displaced spirit or something that feel from some sorta sky kingdom thing that is maybe not literally in the sky, and they felt like if they somehow got up high enough they could manage to get back, even on damaged wings or with weakened powers or whatever. I dunno. And the guide would be a show-offy youngin, prolly a girl, the kind of kid who has no chill and constantly feels the need to prove herself capable and strong, and so does things she knows are unwise for the sake of proving to herself and others that she's totally not lost or in over her head with this whole "homeless orphan" thing. Annnnd, that's it. I dunno. Wanted to share. Sorry.
the spirit prolly fell cause their dad or something doesn't much like them, an they had a bit of a squabble that got out of hand. They tried roughing it, but got scared and lost and lonely, and now they want back and hope that by getting back under their own power they' ll earn daddy's love. trying v hard not to think of how easily dad could have fetched them back had he wanted to. (knows he doesn't love them dearly, has been told, but. you cqnnot just throw a child away, can you?) Kiddo pretends she's older than she is, but fools no one. Does fool many into thinking she's a boy, but she's not actually trying to do that. She's just a baby butch. Endlessly frustrayed with her lack of control over how people see her. Enough to throw away advantages that come her way cause they weren't aquired thru fhe avenues she'd expected. Running theme of garbage being reused and repurposed in clever and/or pretty ways. would have lots of establishing shots that include decorations made of broken things. I am not one for subtle metaphors.
Got past 1000 word count on a story for the first time in a long while and now I'm having 'this is lame and cheesy and terrible and I should delete it'-pangs. Ah, Imposter Syndrome my old friend. Shut the fuck up, and let me finish. I can do edits after I finish the prompt and post it on the Simple Prompts page on reddit. There's no shame in sucking when you start, and it doesn't even suck that bad. Edit: Finally finished it. It's been three hours of typing, but I'm happy I finally finished a prompt the day I started. Maybe I can go back to the collection of prompts (including the Kintsugi one) I've been saving. Posting under a cut, and I'll start on edits later in the week. It's kind of shitty and weirdly judgemental but I hope to expand on more on Roger and Martha and make the church parts creepier and more uncomfortable. Spoiler: Posted under spoiler-cut as it's 1500 words long I forced myself to my feet. Even as I struggled up, my body screamed. The tightness around my chests was enough proof that I broke a rib, while my left arm hung limply by the elbow. It didn't hurt as much, probably shock. Or maybe I screwed it up more than I realized with landing on it from the ceiling. I looked up, trying to see what caused me to fall through the window. The parapet had crumbled under my feet. Of course, I must have fallen back inside, instead of off the roof and down into the cement. Not only that, but the police must have missed me, or else I'd be waking up in a cell instead of a rank and moldy floor. Maybe I was lucky, after all? I smashed my rib and arm, but damn if running in here didn't get the cops off my ass. As I walked, I looked around. There was little sunlight coming through the stain-glass windows, almost all of them completely intact. It wasn't completely dark inside yet, but I had a hard time making out the face of the statue in front of the alter. It looked like a woman, maybe Mother Mary? Candles surrounded her feet, the wax long-since burnt to the wooden table in front, as crumbling pews sprawled around in various stages of broken and fallen. The pew closest to the statue remained intact and didn't look like it'd disintegrate under my ass, so at least I had a place to sit and consider my next move. It wasn't even adrenaline that kept me moving at this point. That meant things were happening, better and more exciting things than sitting around and feeling sorry for myself in a broken church. What kind of good luck is this? Get caught at the gambling hall by the cops, fall into a church and break my arm? Instead of contacting my old lady and giving her grief too? It wasn't like I was spending my entire paycheck on it. Money was tight, yeah, but we were getting by fine most days. And once in a while, I could treat her to more than just dollar steaks and buttered noodles. Of course, now she was probably wondering where I was, and was definitely going to pitch a fit when she saw my broken arm and rib. Or the hospital bill for both. The candles gave a warm glow, enough to chill my frustrated mind. No good worrying about it yet. First, I wanted to wait out the cops, make sure they just weren't lurking around and waiting for me to turn myself in. I could ask Benny from the hall if he knew a back-alley doctor, or try to find a clinic that wouldn't ask for my ID or at least a payment plan. Maybe it wasn't even a break, but just sore from where I landed on it? And the rib would heal itself, it just needed time. It hurt like hell, and I'm sure the old lady would be beside herself about it. "Roger, you need to see a doctor! What if you punctured a lung? We can tighten our belts some more, if you're worried about paying for it, but you need help!" She doesn't need to worry more. She deserves better, and I'm going to win that better for her. No more dollar steaks, but instead those shoes with the red soles and actual steaks, and all of the riches she deserves. Just need to get better luck together, and maybe this is already a sign of it? Especially with some kind soul lighting up some candles in front of the Mother Mary? But who lit up the candles? I snapped out of my daydream, looking back up at the statue. The candles were lit, despite no one being around but me. And despite being ancient, some melted into the wood of the table they were so low. I looked around, the windows completely dark, but the stained glass images visible by candlelight. Was it always this horrible? Was it always hellfire and brimstone, with screaming peasants cast into firey pits as smiling angels and saints brought them in closer? I tried to shrink into my seat, my breath growing tighter. Damn this broken rib, damn all of this. I forced myself out of my seat, even as my chest screamed at my and my arm twitched in pain. I couldn't even run at this rate, not that there was anywhere to run to. Who would build a church with no door out? How did I miss the lack of the door in the first place? The windows were too far high to reach from the ground. As nightmarish as they were, I couldn't simply smash one of them or exit from the panel I 'opened' before. But the Mother Mary statue... It was high enough where I could scramble out. Even if it'd be slow work with one useless hand and short breath, it's at least a way out, and a way out without screaming for the cops. I just wanted to see my old lady again, I just wanted to go home as I went to the statue. Everything about this seemed like a bad idea, approaching the table of impossible candles, but anything out had to be better than this, right? My luck has been holding out well enough, as skewed as it sounded. I meant to go to her back, but I looked up, finally getting a look at her face. She didn't have the sorrowful look of the holy virgin statues I remember from the churches of my childhood, but a happy, almost serene look. I almost wanted to apologize now for what I had to do, but maybe this was approval? Maybe this was what I was meant to do, to get back out. With a heave, I started upwards. The good arm was strong enough, and her dress had thick enough folds. I didn't want to think about the boot prints I was leaving on the sides of her dress, or the pain in my lungs. I just wanted to go home, I just wanted to get back out. Tonight I was just going to take the old lady out, and make her happy. Tonight she was getting something nice, even if I couldn't make it red-sole-shoe nice. That would be good, right? The arm shifted under my weight, I could feel the stone crumbling under my leg a second time. It would be ironic if I fell like this, into that pit of fire, like all of those stained-glass portraits around my head. I reached for the ledge as I heard the cracking of fake marble. It would be so damn ironic, falling into a table of hellfire and marble arms. My grip wasn't strong enough with one hand, I knew that. But I couldn't just fall here. What good was it, accepting I'm a scumbag and letting the fire take me? What good would that be for my old lady? She- Martha- deserved better from me, and I couldn't do better by dying from fire. "Sorry about your arm and window ma'am," I mumbled to the statue, as I reached up to the ledge with the bad arm. The pain had been manageable all this time, but now it howled. I had to bite my tongue not to screech back, but at least I had enough of a stable grip to push up onto the ledge. Maybe it wasn't as badly broken as I thought, maybe it was adrenaline again, like the kind that lets you push a car off a kid or climb up a church steeple by hand to avoid the cops, but I got enough of a push up. Something was snapping, maybe the marble arm, maybe the table beneath, maybe my own arm as I could feel it going limp the moment I pulled my body up the ledge. There wasn't time for thinking about that, as I could feel myself pushing upwards, through the open window pane in front of me, back outwards. Nothing tasted as good as the air outside, clean and fresh and free of must and old. I laughed, almost barking as I flopped back out onto the roof. I didn't dare look back in. Right now, I needed a moment, just enough to push down that pain before getting down. I'm going home to... To Martha. I was going to go home to her, and we'd go to the hospital for this goddamn arm. But after that, I was going to treat her to the nicest shoes we could get and dollar-steaks. They might not be those red-soles, and the steaks might have sucked, but it was better to be able to actually be able to give them to her instead. She deserved the best I could give her, and I hoped I deserved her. Maybe this escape was proof I did too.
So uh... I guess I just wrote over 2k words of AU fanfiction for the local Transformers AU, in which all of my OCs are a Carrier Model/Cassette Model symbiotic cluster, vaguely inspired by the fanfiction "These Games We Play" that sure is a thing. I haven't really edited it yet, buuuuut I am vaguely proud of it so Feel My Spark Beat, Feel You Die Spoiler: content warnings codependency, kidnapping, nonconsensual extensive bodymodding and brainwashing attempts, lots of character deaths
Spoiler: rwby thing, idk Cedar Monte has never considered himself a brave man. He keeps his head down. His nose clean. Doesn't draw attention to himself. It's a defense mechanism, he supposes. Faunus who make spectacles of themselves don't live happy lives. Truth be told, he doesn't know how he ended up wrapped up in all this. He's had so many chances to back out. They've been so careful to let them know that. It's been months of no shame, no pressure, tell me if it hurts, no more hurting if we can help it. Putting an end to that kinda stuff is what we're all about, the Doc had said. We're The Cure for cruelty, and we won't force you to do anything. He glances over to his left. He's sitting on the floor in corner of the warehouse cordoned off with a few sheets of plastic strung up between the skeletons of machinery long since picked clean by scavengers. The door is still there, right by his side. Still unlocked. He resists the urge to reach up and test it. Instead he pinches a stripe of curling paint on the door frame between his thumb and his forefinger and worries it gently. You can leave any time you want, up to the very last minute. The woman at his right coughs. Cedar jolts and tucks his wandering hands under his armpits, flinching into himself. His cheeks burn. He's never been a brave man. He peaks out from behind his bangs. The woman isn't staring. She knows him better than that now. From the very first day she's been there, by the door with him. He'd gotten there fifteen minutes early and sat on bare concrete after thirty minutes of twitching towards the ramshackle assortment of chairs and faunus clustered in the center of what they had already dubbed the "sick bay". She'd gotten there twenty minutes late and dragged a rusty folding chair towards the door, heedless of the eyes on her and the hideous screeching of metal on concrete. Cedar had felt like such an idiot. He still does, sitting here next to someone like her. Afraid like someone like her. Like someone like him needs an escape route. She's so small next to him. She'd grabbed his hand once after a particularly long meeting, joints popping and muscles creaking as she stood, and her fingers had barely managed to encircle his first two. Her whole hand could fit in his palm, he had thought, awed and ashamed. She's so small, but she stands so tall and so proud and when the meetings get into full swing he watches her bend forward towards the speakers like a flower towards the light, drinking in every word with something urgent and thirsty lurking just behind her gaze. Like she wants so deeply and so true that the world can't help but give it to her. Cedar has never felt anything so deeply in his life. Not even fear. She catches him staring at her out the corner of her eye. She turns towards him, and his gaze trails along the knotted mass of scars that twists her every expression into something out of a horror movie. She grins at him, conspiratorially. Her empty eye socket deforms with the movement. He finds himself smiling back. His teeth feel heavy and awkward in his mouth, and his heart shudders and jolts like it's trying to escape. "Today's the day," she croaks. The brilliant pink line slanting across her throat bobs. The shredded remains of her rabbit ears twitch with excitement and, dare he imagine, nerves. "Yeah." He whispers. He smiles again, making sure to cover his teeth with his lips. "No more hurting," she whispers, almost to herself. She wraps weak and unresponsive hands around her legs tucked up under her chin and shudders, helpless with joy. "Yeah." He says, wishing he had something more to offer. "Yeah," he says again, softly, like the repetition can convey all that he's feeling and all that he wishes he felt. The curtain on the western end of the sick bay parts. The Doc's personal assistants stride out. Seven of them, pristine in sterile white uniforms, pushing carts too sleek and well maintained for the surrounding environment. Cedar looks at his own hands, huge and clumsy, dirt ingrained in the crescents of his nails and the whorls of his palms. He picks at the frayed canvas of his work pants and bites his lip. He's not the one out of place here. The woman rocks forwards, making a soft pained noise in the back of her throat. Cedar shudders and balls his hands against his chest. The assistants break off, two pairs and one trio rolling over towards clusters of faunus. Wait for us to come to you. The Doc had said. We'll take care of everything. They've endured months of testing for this. Nearly a year of putting their lives in the Cure's hands. Month after month of agents monitoring their every move. Of needles pockmarking the insides of their arms, vomit oozing out the crevices of chattering teeth, cold sweats and shaking hands and long quarantines beneath the surface till the thought of sunlight seemed like a child's dream. It's a hard rule to follow when the end is so near. It'll all be worth it, just you wait and see. There're twenty-three of them left. There'd been a lot more than that when he first started. More than someone who kept his head down and his gaze averted could hope to count. But trials and testing and the constant strain of secrecy and the rigorous procedures meant to preserve it ground them down to a scant handful, even before the constant barrage of health crises had worn down all but the most devoted of zealots. It'll be more than enough to get it started. It'll be more than enough even without him, he thinks. He won't change anything by leaving, he thinks. The Cure'll have their way with or without him. A wave of miserable certainty rolls through him at that thought. He's not a brave man. He holds the course. Stays put. Moves along the path of least resistance. And it seems he'll even commit atrocities if you put enough eyes between him and the door. Genocide is such an ugly word. They reach the woman first. An assistant, broad shouldered and tall, approaches her by himself, a pale green tray of supplies resting jauntily against his hip. His face is hidden by his mask, but Cedar has been here long enough to recognize the sway of his hips and the bounce of his stride, a wealth of enthusiasm spilling out his every movement. If he curls up any tighter he'll disappear, Cedar thinks, thought sticking sickly sweet in the back of his throat. His breathing comes out in loud shallow gasps, and he all but shoves his fist in his mouth to muffle them. "Hey." The man says, airy soft, the voice of someone edging delicately around something fragile, unstable, sick. Cedar jolts, antlers clacking painfully against the wall behind him. The woman doesn't stare, and he thinks he might love her for that, but she does watch, subtly, delicately from the corner of her eye. One small hand is wrapped around a slender wrist, rubbing the soreness of a needle prick, and god he hadn't thought it'd go this fast. Somehow he'd thought something this big would take forever to come to pass, that one little injection would hover at the edge of eternity, that the world would stop spinning and time would cease to flow, weighted down with the enormity of their undertaking. God. God, he swears, he hadn't known it'd be like this. "Hey there, big guy. Feeling a bit of the last minute jitters, are we?" The man wraps one slender hand, small but strong and calloused in all the wrong places, around Cedar's, huge and filthy and rough. "It's gonna be okay. You'll be fine. We've gone over this, we've made sure of it." His thumb rubs soothing circles over Cedar's knuckles. Cedar feels his stomach coil tighter and tighter with each pass. He mumbles something through the painful knot in his throat. His eyes burn as the man, still making soothing noises, turns his hand over and brings the needle to the prominent vein on his inner arm. "Just relax, buddy." The needle dips, clean and nearly painless. "It'll be over before you know it." --- Weiss Schnee is not having a very good day. Flu season is in full swing, and with hundreds of adolescents with varying grasps on the concept of personal hygiene rubbing elbows on a day to day basis, she's had a hell of a time avoiding the various bodily secretions of her fellow students. shs The man, nearly twice her size and made even bigger by the towering three point antlers twisting out from the top of his head, turns to face her, cringing in on himself. He's crying, Weiss thinks, with a thrill of horror. He looks barely older than herself but a million times as shabby, clothing threadbare and hair shaggy, nose running and face flushed with fever, and he's crying. "Uh, look, it's not. I'm okay, I'm fine, everything's. Don't be. Don't be like that, it's fine, okay? Jeeze." He presses back against the brickwork, cowering like he thinks she'll hit him, like he's not seven feet and two hundred plus pounds of solid muscle. "I'm so sorry." He sobs, turning his head like he's expecting a slap or a gun under his chin, and Weiss doesn't want to be annoyed, but she wants to be sympathetic even less. "Don't be. I'm fine. Stop blubbering, you're embarrassing yourself." "No, you don't under-" His head snaps towards her, watery green eyes meeting her own grey. "You don't, you can't know, I didn't mean for it to be this way, I swear!" He staggers, hand curling over his mouth to muffle his sobs. "But it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter, I just. I'm so sorry." He turns and runs, barreling through the slow crowd of early morning shoppers. Weiss blinks. "The hell was that all about?" Absentmindedly, she reaches one hand up to dab at a suddenly runny nose.
so i hope this isn't a bad place to bring this up but i'm basically trying to talk myself into being able to write indulgent things, after over a decade of trying to write specifically to cater to other people. after all- if i'm not writing the things that i enjoy and i'm always trying to write what other people want to read then... well i'm not gonna end up writing much at all that said- i think i need some encouragement, and/or people picking at what ideas i put up. advice? suggestions? whatever you got to say i keep rewatching The Hobbit movies and basically wanting to write my own version of the story, but with the replacement of lots of the active characters with my own OCs. i'm not generally comfortable writing other people's characters, so fanfiction is difficult for me, but i enjoy the story of the Hobbit movies (it being very different from the books) and want to basically reengineer it to see how different OCs of mine would behave in similar situations. i don't know if the story would veer too much off the path and end up being its own original thing. it might do towards the end. but... idk. i'm struggling to get myself to just write, because the idea strikes me as so indulgent and silly??? even though it's not like i'm writing anything else. just sitting here wanting to write ideas and not doing anything with them halp? EDIT: ok wow i realised i'm approaching this from entirely the wrong direction. am rethinking this idea, still am open to suggestions and discussion but it is no longer a pressing 'wat do' issue
I like the idea and stuff like that is how a lot of successful books get written so! If you want to do "Like the Hobbit with my own characters!" that is an absolutely valid thing and not silly at all actually!
I'm trying to think of a cool and also hot way to do a succubus character. It seems like a great opportunity to do hella hot stuff but I don't really have any examples to draw from! Any suggestions? Any favorite succubus traits? Or recommendations of stories with cool+hot succubus characters?
