I've totally got my priorities straight.

Because what I need in my life is another timesink.

[sweeetestcurse]

Blasphemous 2 01/??

[brazenelk-deactivated20240227]

Alisaie isn't the only Red Mage that's jumped off the upper terrace in Revenant's Toll.

[iron-sparrow]

elftober 第一號 introduction

Please meet Yein. They are a paladin sworn to preserve and honor the sanctity of all life on Hydaelyn's blue-green star.

They died some months ago but came back thanks to *̥˚∘✧accidental necromancy✧∘*̥˚ and also friendship! Currently recovering somewhere in the Black Shroud, their whereabouts are known only to a select few.

⸺ I've made it to my second annual Elftober 哇〜! This will be my first year participating via tumblr, so that's neat. Some of my other elezen might make appearances this month and further introductions will be required, probably.

[starsworn]

Site Write Prompt #10: Chair

The fire in the hearth had burnt down to embers, but there was something about the cold that agreed with him. He minded it far less than those around him. Surely there was some poetic nonsense to be had about it reflecting his heart or his mind or something, but poetry had never been his strong suit. Fancy words belonged to another. His domain was more logical.

On his desk was a great stack of papers to be dealt with: invoices and missives and ledgers and so much damned work. At least the invitations had stopped coming. He sighed and dragged a stack of letters close. A report from a shepherd in the Highlands. A weekly invoice from a chirurgeon on retainer. A letter addressed directly to him.

What.

Letters to him had stopped long ago. Everything now was addressed to the lord of the house. Frowning, he picked up the letter opener from the desk and slit the letter open. He pulled out a short letter written in a well-practiced hand - the hand of a nobleman trained in his letters from a very young age. A hand he knew well, even after all these years.

It didn't take long to read it. It took longer for the words to absorb into his mind and when they did, he wasn't sure if the sound that came from him was rage or sadness. Although part of him - a large part - wanted to ball the letter up and throw it in the fire, more of him was logical and calculated and that was the part that set the letter back down on the desk. His mind whirled with emotion and he growled angrily at the disruption to his normally placid days. Anger was something he though he'd moved past, but here it was again, fresh and hot and so damned unwelcome. He didn't want to feel again. He didn't want that messiness that came with... with life. How dare he intrude upon his silent solitude with so much as a letter!

Halone's frozen teats, an actual letter. This time, the noise that came out was a sob. He pressed the back of his fist to his mouth to stop the sound. The last thing he needed right now was some blasted well-meaning person to come barging in because they'd heard him crying. He was years past crying. Yet he couldn't seem to stop the torrent inside his chest.

Flashes of that night came to him again, memories he'd crushed and buried. Earlier memories, too, of warmth and affection that had been just as ruthlessly murdered. It was too much. All from a short letter. How dare he?!

Onaerion slumped in his chair, hands falling to either side of it and resting on the wheels. So. Did he want to see his brother again after all?

[adeerinnara-blog]

*eyes*

[chocoblep]

#9: Scars

M’rath stretched out on top of the coverlet on his belly, his hands linked below his cheek. There was a familiar weight on the bed next to his waist; his chief of staff, gently seated on the bed’s edge.

“Did you ever think that it would turn out like this?” The half-hyur was tracing his bare fingertips over Rath’s exposed back, each delicate touch a reminder of the scar that lay beneath it. There were many of them; a network of mostly faded stripes that he’d had since his teenage years. Before Illian had discovered them, they had been much more visible, and even the twisting snake tattoo that ran up the length of his spine and curled along his back wasn’t enough to hide them from a casual glance.

But Illian, bless his big, beautiful heart, had developed a concoction that had, over the years, minimized the appearance of the scars so that they only glinted faintly in certain light conditions, and otherwise stayed mostly invisible but for the slightest difference in smoothness where scar met unmarred flesh. And he’d done it without provocation, on the premise that it wasn’t right that he had to bear those stripes for all these years for no other reason than that his master had decided he needed them when he was young.

He’d even told Illian what had happened to his old master, what he’d done to secure his own life. What he’d promised himself would never come to pass again, for him or for those he cared for. And the man had only gathered him into his arms in the privacy of his own quarters and told him in no uncertain terms that he was the strongest man he’d ever met.

Willful, perhaps. Cruel, at times. Angry, jaded, and weary, often. But strong? Please, he’d said. It’s unbecoming to lie to a man like that. But it wasn’t a lie. He’d known that when Illian had opened his mind to him. It had baffled him then, and it still baffled him now.

“My scars?” M’rath murmured, turning his head so that his other cheek rested on his hands and his particolored eyes regarded the man next to him. “No. I knew they would fade with age, but I never imagined that a smart man might try to make them disappear altogether.” A lazy smile pulled at his lips as Illian snorted and reached for the pot of cream on his bedside table.

“A smart man might have avoided you,” Illian said, blue eyes focused on Rath’s shoulders. “I am not a smart man. And that was not what I was referring to, anyway. I meant this. All of this.”

“All of this?” Rath echoed. “No. Everything that has happened up to this point has been a mixture of luck and circumstance.”

“Mmmn, I will respectfully agree to disagree.”

“How else do you explain a loyal staff? If anything, that is your doing, not mine.”

“Is it?” Illian asked, and Rath hissed briefly as he felt the cold cream make contact with his back. “If I were to ask any one of your staff why they are loyal to you, they would give me three answers: Good pay, good living conditions, and a good heart. You pulled most of them out of very bad situations. Why would they not adore you?”

“They don’t know what I can do, or what I do in the places they are not allowed to wander.”

“I do. I still don’t think you are the monster you make yourself out to be when you look in the mirror.” 

The feeling of Illian’s hands rubbing the cream into his skin has his eyes drifting closed and his tail settling finally against his thigh with naught but a lazy flick of the tip every now and again. When his voice sounded, it was tired. “Well, you’re welcome to think what you think. Not a smart man, indeed.”

Rath made a sound as Illian smacked him between the shoulderblades, and then laughed.

[tevruden]

Dire catgirl.

[adeerinnara-blog]

@canalstreetbaker Arli’s roots have never been more clear.

[dreaminginpencil]

I need to catch some shut eye and turn this off cause it’s 5am, but uh, I HAD to draw this

taliesin, your character designs kill me. I’m in love.

[arsenicinshell]

Celestial Ceilings

[adeerinnara-blog]

I chose the star chandelier because I imagine the ceiling of Eury’s house to be painted like a night sky, like many of these.

[lousolversons]

What We Do In The Shadows - S3E08 - The Wellness Center

[valdiis]

FFxivWrite2021 Master Post

So I’ve never really done a master post of my entries before. Never much saw the need. Figured I’d try it this time and see if it helps me collect my thoughts better. This is the fourth year I’ve participated, and I’ve been playing FFXIV nearly as long (I wrote my first FFxivWrite entry about two weeks after I began to play). I struggled this year with inspiration and I’m only really proud of a few pieces (I’ll star those). Writing has gotten a lot harder for me this last year. RP hasn’t, but freeform writing is really tough. I did like how the words chosen this year were a little easier and more relatable than prior years. I could work with these. Mostly. Looking at you, benthos. As I expected when I started, I wrote a lot about Daephrin this time around since I’ve been RPing him the most lately.

Prompt #1: Foster - Daephrin Astramente - In which Daephrin and his mecha-kitty search Allagan ruins.

Prompt #2: Aberrant - Aeluan Hoshinata - Aeluan muses about his beloved’s dysphoria. * Prompt #3: Scale - Daephrin Astramente - Airship! * Prompt #4: Baleful - Aeluan Hoshinata - In which Aeluan meets a thief. * Prompt #5: Extra Credit / Hair - Daephrin Astramente - A detailed examination of hair. Prompt #6: Avatar - Lhys Onhde - Lhys argues with her escort. Prompt #7: Speculate - Daephrin Astramente - What does this part do? Prompt #8: Adroit - Daephrin Astramente - Mmm, guns. Prompt #9: Friable - Vy’thanis Lusignon - It’s all an innuendo. Prompt #10: Heady - Mathaes Silverton - Daydreaming about his boyfriend. Prompt #11: Preaching to the Choir - Daephrin Astramente & Aeluan Hoshinata - A brief discussion of a phrase. * Prompt #12: Extra Credit / Barrister - Daephrin Astramente - A sunny day and goofing off. * Prompt #13: Oneirophrenia - Aeluan Hoshinata - Haunted by nightmares. Prompt #14: Commend - Daephrin Astramente - Watch where you’re going, Dae! Prompt #15: Thunderous - Daephrin Astramente - Boom. Prompt #16: Crane - Zheyn’a Lihuel - In which Zheyn’a plays a song. Prompt #17: Destruct - Daephrin Astramente - Content warning: mentions of self-harm, suicide. Prompt #18: Devil’s Advocate - Daephrin Astramente - A rejection of feelings. Prompt #19: Extra Credit / Rifle - Iovar Reynard - Rifling through ruins. * Prompt #20: Petrichor - Aeluan Hoshinata - A poem… Prompt #21: Feckless - Daephrin Astramente - A misspent youth. Prompt #22: Fluster - Daephrin Astramente - A very brief dialogue. Prompt #23: Soul - Daephrin Astramente - The soul of an airship. Prompt #24: Illustrious - Lhys Onhde - Lhys argues with her mentor. Prompt #25: Silver Lining - Daephrin Astramente - Daydreaming about his boyfriends. Prompt #26: Extra Credit / Limerick - Mathaes Silverton - A very bad limerick. Prompt #27: Benthos - Daephrin Astramente - In which I nearly responded with just a picture. Prompt #28: Bow - Aeluan Hoshinata - This one is suggestive. * Prompt #29: Debonair - Daephrin Astramente - A lady lounges in his room. Prompt #30: Abstracted - Aeluan Hoshinata - Daydreaming about proposing to his boyfriend, and why he’s too scared to.

[adeerinnara-blog]

Heck, I loved them all, but you know I’m weak for Dae, Vyth, and Iovar.

[valdiis]

Prompt #29: Debonair

Daephrin slouched into his room and shut the door behind him with a gentle kick, fingers already unknotting his cravat.

“Don’t you look a rather disheveled form of debonair,” drawled a soft voice from his bed.

Jerking upright, Dae yanked the fabric from his neck with a hiss, “Sophia! What the fuck? How did you get in here?” He turned back to the door and engaged the lock to ensure that no one would meander into his room unannounced (not that anyone made a habit of it).

The woman lounging on his bed blew out a slow stream of smoke and smiled like the cat that had caught the canary. “You left your window unlocked.”

“I’m on the second floor!”

“If you think I don’t know how to climb…”

“Oh, alright. But no one better have seen you come in.” Dae shook his head and dropped his cravat carelessly on the floor as he made his way to a small, delicate chair next to his dresser. He sat down and began untying his shoes.

“Tsk. Hiding your dirty little Brume secret?”

Daephrin rolled his eyes. “You know Lucarian already knows about you. He just would pop apoplectic knowing you’re in the house.” He shoved his socks off as if they offended him; they probably did.

“Pop pop!” Sophia giggled and took another draw from her pipe. She held the smoke a moment, then blew it out. “Then don’t let him know I’m here.”

Sighing heartily, Dae shrugged out of his jacket and let it fall against the back of his chair. “Why are you here, Sophia?”

The short-haired woman on his bed sat upright, only to flop back dramatically with a hand flung to her forehead. Somehow, she didn’t even disturb the pipe in her other hand. “I’m bored!”

Dae tsked and unbuttoned his shirt, letting that fall behind him as well to puddle in the chair. He stood up and unbuttoned his pants. “You being bored isn’t sufficient excuse for breaking into my rooms while everyone’s off at a gala.”

“It’s the perfect time to do it, though.”

“Your timing is impeccable, yes.”

“And I was bored. There’s nothing going on anywhere tonight because all eyes are on that stupid art gala. Why do you even go to those things?”

“Because I get hauled to them by the ear,” Dae drawled as he stepped out of his pants, leaving them bunched on the floor. His drawers shortly followed. Naked, he joined the similarly unclothed woman on his bed. “Share?” He held his hand out for the fogweed pipe.

Sophia grinned and passed it to him. “So what are you going to do about me being bored?”

“And naked in my bed?”

“That too.”

“I suppose you’d better make sure no one hears that you’re here…”

[concerningwolves]

some mini collections of tips for writers

(based on things that yours truly notices as an editor-in-training. This list is in no way complete, and will probably be added to as I continue to find repeated mistakes) 

Dialogue

Use beats in your dialogue to break it up. Even “said” can make a very effective beat between lines. 

(No beats: “It’s not lethal. Just highly dangerous with a good chance of being mutilated.” // Beats: “It’s not lethal,” he said. “Just highly dangerous with a good chance of being mutilated.”)

Note how the break allows a bit of a pause for ~dramatic effect 

thinking of dialogue, use punctuation and distinct speech patterns! “Life, uh, finds a way.” is an iconic line anyway, but Jeff Goldblum’s signature verbal tic gives it character. 

It’s okay if characters stutter. Don’t let the condemnation of stuttering characters as “cringey” in fanfic put you off. (and on that note, fuck cringe culture. Seriously. It saps all the fun out of creativity and fun is important.)

Start! A! New! Line! Whenever! Someone! New! Speaks!!

DO NOT FEAR THE WORD “SAID” 

Setting & Blocking

 Use the landscape and settings around your character, and always, always remember a scene’s blocking. Where is everything in relation to your characters? Have you left someone holding a coffee cup for the last three scenes? Did you lose a character somewhere along the way? 

using the contents of a scene is also great for fight sequences. 

Similarly, large character casts are hard to keep track of so don’t be afraid to break them up. Sending someone off somewhere else can create some nifty little subplots. 

Keep a personal note of how time passes. Trust me, it’s incredibly helpful to you as a writer and also for future readers. 

Characters

Character growth does not have to be positive. Sometimes characters fail or suffer or get their motivations twisted up, and they finish the book as a villain rather than a hero. 

All that matters is that a character changes throughout the plot in a way that readers can see; the sort of change they go through is entirely up to you. 

scrap the idea that someone has to deserve a redemption arc. They probably don’t deserve it, which is the whole point. So don’t be afraid to make your villains seem completely irredeemable. 

and you don’t need to redeem your antagonists in order to make them complex, sympathetic villains, anyway. Sometimes people get so stuck in their beliefs that they can’t see another way and it goes too far. Not everyone comes back from that. 

Also, motivations and goals can absolutely change. That’s okay. You just need to have something that drives your character so that your readers are rooting for them. 

Protagonists don’t need to be heroic. How you define the protagonists and antagonists in your story is based entirely on the morality in your story-world, NOT the moral ideas in the real world. What counts as a complex protagonist in a world torn apart by biological warfare will be very different than one living in our world. 

Prose & Grammar

simple prose is just fine and you don’t need to fluff it up for pretty quotes.

Remember to vary your sentence structures and length. Start smaller and build it up, drawing your reader’s attention. 

“And” and “But” are very valid sentence starters that are great for communicating the tone of internal narrative. You’re allowed to tweak grammar if that’s helpful for telling the story, it just needs to be accessible. Test out what you’ve written on other people. 

Check that your tenses are consistent!! 

[luckysparrowffxiv]

🎃 Set the mood with a spooky groove! 🦇        👻  Jitters and shivers, Lucky delivers. 🧹 💀 Mischief bubbles, surprises and trouble this 🍭        🕸 All Saints’ Wake! 🕷

Come join us!

-Sunday, October 24th (New Date for this holiday month!) -Doors open at 6:00pm EST, we’ll start rocking 6:30pm EST -Balmung Server, Lavender Beds, Ward 16, Plot 36 -Show us your costumes!

**For those with older computers, we suggest you seat yourselves in the front as to lower the chance of items despawning in the show space.**

((We do not require in-game gil for admission, it is simply roleplayed out at the ‘ticket’ counter. Your ‘ticket’ can be used during the show! Donations are much appreciated and put towards renovating our venue for future shows, but not obligated. We enjoy sharing a night of excitement and music with everyone in the community!))

We hope to see you there! 🍀Stay Lucky!🍀 Featured on this month’s poster is our very own Cia Lyule! 🍀 Lucky Sparrow Entertainment Troupe 🍀 general info | staff & recruitment | posters

💖 Other Balmung related events and roleplay can be found at: 🧛‍♀️

@balmungrpcalendar​​ @ffxiv-crystal-rp​​  

@mooglemeet​​ @balmungroleplayers-blog​​ @crystalxivrp

[adeerinnara-blog]

Prompt 23/31: Soul, or Into the Night

The night sounds of a forest are the first things Eurynine comes awake to, somewhere to the right of him and accompanied by the sounds of wind whistling past the mouth of… a cave? Yes, probably a cave. Then the numbness of his nose, cheeks, and ears. He shivers, chased from sleep by discomfort. Finally, awareness of the dancing light of a fire shines behind his eyelids. That’s when he opens his eyes to the first moment of full lucidity he’d experienced in… weeks? Months? The Duskwight pushes himself upward, too groggy to think of stealth or deception. His mind swam with dreams of a stretching shadow, of great clawed hands that held him as gently as if he were a child, of a singing sparrow peering down at him with bright black eyes. 

A blanket falls to his waist, revealing that he is still wearing the jumpsuit from the Garlean facility. A fire was burning low beside him, the red glower of the logs still emanating heat. Their meager light falls across a small, dark figure near the foot of his bedroll, but does not illuminate it -no, not it. Him. ”Hybris? How did… how did you find me? H-” All at once, the Duskwight comes aware of the places where the light shines through the man he knew to be made more of shadow and soul than of flesh. A soul Eury had inadvertently saved at the scene of a great battle between Hybris and his sister that had left him near death. The Ascian had looked much like this then, all torn and rent and bleeding darkness. Eury had offered him his body in what he thought would be an easy end -and instead found himself harbouring Hybris until he’d healed. In cold clarity, he realized that the man who’d spirited him from the detention centre was critically injured, perhaps even dying once again.

As if he might find help there, he turns to the mouth of the cave, where he saw an autumn landscape unlike any in Eorzea. In the distance was a great glow over the far edge of the evening sky, like that of a city greater than even Ul’dah. He could see beams of light scrape the clouds, and glimmers in the sky he recognized as Garlean aircraft. With a fearful exhale that puffs into mist, realization settles over Eurynine Dyvoire like the first killing frost of the season; he might have slipped the frying pan, but he was still very much in the fire.

[spending-life-pretending]

What is a rival? An equal. A reflection. An echo.

And when I face you on the battlefield, I will look for the only person who knows me.

This is How You Lose the Time War, Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone // Carry On, Rainbow Rowell // Gideon the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir // Good Omens, 1x04 // This is How You Lose the Time War, Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone // Kings Rising, C.S. Pacat // Fence: Disarmed, Sarah Rees Brennan // The Untamed, ep. 27 // Carry On, Rainbow Rowell // This is How You Lose the Time War, Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

[fuukonomiko]

REBLOG if you have amazing, talented WRITER friends.

Because I certainly do, and I love every single one of them and their work.

[adeerinnara-blog]

I DO. @canalstreetbaker @valdiis @chocoblep @tavard-ffxiv @astraut are just some of the amazing writers I’m lucky to know!

[monster-of-master]

“I choked / on such longing I couldn’t spit out. Yes, desire is so different / when God bore you hungry.”

— Yves Olade, from Belovéd; Slaughterhouse, 2020 (via facinaoris)