where’s the tweet thats like high value art heists should be legal and should be like a national pass time between countries like capture the flag. thats my platform
like i’d stay in museum security as a job just for that like to be on the defending team against some other country’s art heist team. could be like eurovision but more fun. no bloodshed allowed no weapons u gotta use ur hands only. we should also be allowed to trade players between nations
ninety-six countries immediately descend on the british museum to get their stuff back
Just because your hat is tilted aside jauntily does not prove your superiority. My wizard hat is set neatly atop my head so that it is secure against strong breezes and someone condescendingly flicking the brim
I can tell that people condescendingly flicking your brim is a recurring issue for you.
there’s so much pathologizing over why enemies to lovers is a popular trope (something something the normalization of abuse something something) when the simplest and less moronic answer is that narratives thrive on irony and reversals, and there’s no greater irony than characters going from hating each other’s guts to loving each other unconditionally. raw thesis-antithesis-synthesis.
seeking beta readers for damen/laurent wedding fic
hello, general internet void! i have written a ~26k ~37k post-canon damen/laurent fic that i like very much and am very proud of and have polished up as far as i can on my own, so now i need to get some new eyes on it
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preferably grammatically inclined ones that can help me solve its problems, but i will also accept help in just identifying them
the premise is as follows:
When Laurent set out to plan a royal wedding between two 1) men, who are 2) active ruling kings, of 3) tenuously peaceful lands, with 4) widely-known reasons to have killed, or possibly 5) still kill each other, he expected the process to come with some difficulties.
He did not expect getting his perpetually amorous new husband aroused on their wedding night to be the hardest of them.
(Or: ‘Not in front of the court,’ said Laurent, as if this were unspeakably foolish, ‘in front of the Council.’)
it’s a character study of laurent
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half political nuances, half explicit sex (often at the same time)
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with a lot of Worldbuilding and Emotions and also plenty of Absurdity
if that sounds like something you’d enjoy reading (and spotting issues with, otherwise just wait a week lol), shoot me a dm and i’ll link you to the google doc! also reblog or tell a writerly friend
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i want to post it to ao3 by july 19th, and ideally i’d like to get at least five people to weigh in on which adjective works better here, whether that sentence there needs to be broken up, and what hilarious mishap could have kept damen in ios for two days longer than he had planned on. (examples of prose and tone under the cut if you’re not sure)
EDIT: if you’re seeing this in october or later, i sliiiightly overestimated my abilities, but fear not, i am still working on the fic and it is actually very close to being done, and i am very excited about it, and i will have it out by the end of 2022 i promise
(EDIT in november 2023: HAHAHA lol) (no but this time i’m actually for sure close)
(and actually would still welcome some new betas that haven’t already participated in a twelve-comment thread debating the merits of a single word and could read the new and improved version with fresh eyes lol, hit me up if you wanna join the chaos, we had a lot of fun)
Also, while I’m still thinking about POV and I’m a little punchy:
NO POV IS “WRONG” OR “BAD.”
Every POV choice creates a different version of a story, and some POVs are more effective than others to tell particular stories, but it’s up to the author to decide what kind of story they want to tell. If Harry Potter had been omniscient 3rd person POV, we would’ve known every secret Harry wanted to uncover before he did. If it had been 1st person from Harry’s POV, maybe more attention would have been paid to Harry’s internal life than to the world around him (which I would’ve read, but I’m 100% in it for the characters). If it had been a close 1st person Ron POV, book 2 would’ve included at least 50 pages of unintelligible ranting about spiders. Same events, different lenses.
My very favorite POV is one that I have never seen in fic: multiple 1st person. Collective “We” voice. It’s like one person is speaking on behalf of a group they have intimate knowledge of or a weird little hive mind is telling the story, and it’s fucking beautiful. (It would be perfect for kaiju POV, I’M JUST SAYING, PACIFIC RIM FIC WRITERS.)
I will also defend 2nd person POV to the death. Like you wanna talk shit about 2nd person POV, I am non-confrontational as fuck but I will throw down over 2nd person POV. 2nd person POV is perfect for shoving the reader into the shoes of a person they might not otherwise identify with, it’s not supposed to be comfortable, it’s supposed to highlight alienation and make you think about your differences, and that makes it a powerful tool for writing about identity. If you don’t like it personally, read something else, but don’t try to tell me it’s unnecessary or inherently a bad choice.
(Fic rec for excellent use of 2nd person POV: Equivalence by Introductory.)
(And for that matter, if you don’t think 1st person can work in fic, let me introduce you to Clueless, or: How I Learned to Stop Being a Selfish Prick and Love a Capsicle by withthepilot. Yes, I know it’s an Avengers/Clueless AU. It’s absolutely perfect and one of the most brilliant uses of voice I’ve ever seen in fic.)
in the things you read, do you like FLIRTING? do you like BANTER? do you like OLD EXES reconnecting and exploring LINGERING FEELINGS, thus essentially becoming WILL-THEY-WON’T-THEY even though they already HAVE? do you like MIXED GENRES, say, a ROMCOM with CASUAL REFERENCES to past SUPERNATURAL HORROR that the characters have been through?
do you like COMPLICATED CHARACTERS who have done BAD THINGS while in that horror show and are STRUGGLING to LIVE NORMALLY now that it’s over? do you like GOOD WRITING that the author has poured MONTHS and MONTHS of LOVE
and
SWEAT
and
METAPHORICAL BLOOD INTO?
do you like ALL OF THESE THINGS but DON’T HAVE TIME to read a WHOLE BOOK that would explore them because of your VERY BUSY life?
then BOY, do i have the read for YOU! my new story NOWHERE ELSE TONIGHT WE SHOULD BE has ALL THAT and MORE, packaged neatly in a bite-sized 28k word NOVELLA that is guaranteed to make you SNICKER, feel WARM AND FUZZY, and briefly enter that EXISTENTIAL CRISIS that is ALWAYS just AROUND THE CORNER for ALL OF US.
now, i know what you’re thinking. is it technically fanfiction? sure, but you’ve never heard of the source material and it has very little to do with this anyway. and your next question: can you read this without any knowledge of said source material, Morning Glories by Nick Spencer and Joe Eisma? absolutely
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as fanfic goes, this is pretty much as stand-alone as it gets.
(are there still some references you won’t get but you don’t want to commit to reading a little-known 50-issue indie comic book just to read this random fic that sounds kinda weird and you only have the author’s word you’ll enjoy? no problemo, here is a jade/ike STARTER PACK that will tell you all you need to know)
am i making this post solely because this fic is extremely niche and its built-in audience is maybe three people? why yes, yes i am, because i happen to be one of them, and i spent NINE MONTHS on it, and it’s the BEST WRITING i’ve ever done, and i will be DAMNEDif i let it fade into obscurity without even trying to bring it to fresh eyes
anyway, thank you for reading. now ENJOY and TELL YOUR FRIENDS!
morning glories | T (swearing, sexual themes) | 28,000 words | romcom | future fic | basically nora roberts tribute
You would think Jade Ellsworth has it all.
She is attractive, headstrong — successful, even. A little unworldly, maybe — very single, definitely — but she wouldn’t be moving to NYC for an incredible job if she weren’t doing something right. And for the most part, that’s all true. But she also wouldn’t be uprooting a perfectly good life if she weren’t in need of a new beginning. Wouldn’t be so blasé about it if she hadn’t had to do it once before.
Truth is, she’d assumed that if she just somehow made it to her eighteenth birthday, then it would all be smooth sailing from there. But it’s been a decade now since she set fire to her prep school and all the nightmares inside it — and maybe it’s time to admit that being a veteran of Morning Glory Academy seems like a lifelong affliction. For better or worse, there’s no moving past the death, magic, and messy relationships of her youth — particularly not when the messiest of them all is about to crash back into her life without so much as a courtesy warning.
Enter Ike: wearer of scarves, player of women, destroyer of dimensions. Not the love of her life, but certainly something far more complicated.
