stuff and things. i write bakuten shoot beyblade fanfiction, mostly weird AUs that are way too detailed and are always about rei and max. photos used on this blog are royalty-free ones from pixabay or similar unless mentioned otherwise, any artwork is my own. my main tumblr is @misdre.
the Tale of Four Kingdoms — A story about Takao, Kai, Rei, and Max being the four kings of a fantasy universe divided into four different kingdoms, named after cardinal directions. Each young and troubled in his own way, the four get to know each other little by little, delve deep into the secrets of the four kingdoms and their relations as they do, and form some secrets of their own as well. (WIP)
the Tale of Four Kingdoms: Other Tales — Oneshots written as a warm-up for the Beyblade Week fandom event in May 2021, one prompt-based oneshot of each kingdom to complement the 4kingdoms story/universe.
Springtime is upon us (firsts / childhood / spring)
Fired up by the sun (friendship / beach / summer)
The pleasure of a bountiful harvest (fashion / flowers / autumn)
In the harsh breath of a horrid wind (fears / animals / winter)
✧ ✦ ✧ ✦ ✧ ✦ ✧ ✦ ✧ ✦ ✧ ✦ ✧ ✦ ✧ ✦ ✧
OTHER MULTICHAPTER STORIES
the Heart That I Love — A Max-centric story about him being a piano prodigy and the son of a world-famous pianist attending a competitive music school in New York - and the development of his relationship with Rei, a no-name violinist from China who turns out to have a surprising connection to Max's best friend, Mao. (WIP)
15 Fragments of Summer — One summer, Max and Rei decide to come up with a plan to get Kai and Takao together -- at any cost. However, it doesn't exactly work out the way they thought.
✧ ✦ ✧ ✦ ✧ ✦ ✧ ✦ ✧ ✦ ✧ ✦ ✧ ✦ ✧ ✦ ✧
ONESHOTS
✦ AU oneshots junkyard — A collective of my (mostly Rei/Max) AU oneshots.
Eine Waldmär — Takao lives in a hut surrounded by a scary forest. One day he decides to leave on an adventure to find a silver-haired boy he once saw. (Fairy tale + monster AU)
Missgeschick — Rei goes to Judy's coffee shop in order to hit on her, as prompted by his classmates, but falls for her son instead. (Coffee shop AU)
Denk An Mich — Max learns about the concept of soulmates from a book he borrows from Hiromi. (Soulmate AU)
Das Spiel — Rei, the junior world champion in chess, has a fateful encounter in a tournament final. (Chess player AU)
Die Rosen — Yuriy is a judgmental flower shop worker who gets a couple of very puzzling customers. (Flower shop + fake dating AU)
Der Junge und der Tod — After a chain of strange occurrences, Max accepts the possibility that he's being haunted. (Bakeneko ghost AU)
Loreley — Rei is a starved vampire who finds his way to a forest lake. (Vampire + merboy AU)
Zauber der Nacht — Magical mayhem follows Takao, Max, and Manabu on a school trip in Okinawa. (Magical boy AU)
Dunkle Stunde — The consequences of a showdown on one fateful night. (Mafia AU → see below)
✦ NSFW AU oneshots junkyard — A NSFW addition to the regular junkyard.
Haureutta, himoa ja valuuttaa — Max is a mafia boss, Rei is an assassin and Max's right-hand man, and they have a rather colorful history -- and a peculiar, steamy relationship. (Mafia AU)
Irstauden ilosanoma — Max, a chubby girl who’s lost her spark for blading, has very little motivation to participate in the world championships as part of the PPB All Starz until she finds out that Rei, a model that Max is a huge fan of, is also participating as a member of the Chinese team. (Genderbend AU)
✦ Miscellaneous oneshots set in canonverse
Mistletoe — A short, silly story about the BBA kids and a mistletoe.
Summer night ghost stories — Takao, Hiromi, Max, and Rei gather together one summer night to tell some scary stories - and Rei can't bring himself to admit how scared he actually is...
Double Date Dilemma — In desperation to improve her relations with Mao, Emily agrees to go on a PPB & Baihuzu double date.
By the ocean — Rei thinks he’s made a mistake.
Amaenbou — The BBA Team does a summer trip to a quiet seaside town in Kyoto.
Shut up, Mike. Just stop talking. Emily rubbed a temple and trained her eyes on candle flicker, she wished for it to burn a hole through her retinas while she had to sit through the heated exchange happening across her; a pair of scorching green-eyed stares darted above and beyond her as the twins craned their necks this and that way, a hydra trying to see the man spouting mad shit from her right-hand side.
“Excuse me? And who do you think you are?” said the female twin.
“Michael Summers, the MBL player, isn’t it?” said the male twin. “Never heard a single good thing about him, by the way.”
“It’s MLB,” Michael scoffed, arms crossed. “Good or not, at least you’ve heard something. Can’t say the same about y’all.”
Hi. i request you pls finish six snetence Ralfxmichael.
what happens next?
it's a little snippet of a oneshot i'm writing for halloween! trying to finish it in time. it's not just about ralf and michael though, sorry 🤣 this paragraph is michael's POV, then it moves to other characters.
i recently learned that this is a fandom activity thing, just posting six (or seven. or eight) sentences of any writing. in my case for no other reason than to make myself write or edit at least those six sentences a week and to hold myself like semi accountable by posting them here because wow this blog is dead
Of course it was Takao Kinomiya who opened his mouth first. Michael Summers was surprised that fool had managed to keep it shut for several consecutive minutes; must have been a record-breaking silence for him.
Michael leaned back in his chair and flicked the tuft of red hair off his other eye, observed how the rest of the somber bunch chose to react. It all had to be for show, right? The mysterious invitations and alleged dinner party, he’s convinced it was all some spectacle schemed by Ralf Jürgens, the guy had a real knack for theatrics. This whole place was such a joke: a conveniently gothic medieval castle in the darkest heart of the Schwarzwald woodlands; the imposing blood red walls of the dining room; the chandeliers and candles and that god-awful grandfather clock that stood at the end of the comically long table like a ticking demon butler from Hell. Bravo, Jürgens, Michael thought and wanted to applaud the German, bravo; the stage you’ve set is a fucking cliché but an entertaining one.
For you recent doodle request could you draw Rei and Kai trying to monopolize cuddling with Max
i know these are drawing requests but i llooooovve this one and it made me feral with random inspiration, so i ended up writing a fic for it! (sorry it's not a doodle. i'll be drawing these three again later anyway)
it's no masterclass in storytelling or characterisation, just all vibes(TM) and silliness and my self-indulgence of how i'd want the dynamic between these three to be like
title: Amaenbou
characters: BBA team but mostly max, kai & rei
pairing: kai/max, rei/max, and all three together
word count: 4,587
summary: The BBA Team does a summer trip to a quiet seaside town in Kyoto.
To celebrate the seventh anniversary of the founding of the BBA Team, they had decided to go on a trip.
Like I said before, I'm not gonna sit here and pretend that I can teach anyone how to write – that's a level of hubris even I'm not capable of –but in honor of my rapidly approaching ~quarter century of writing original fiction anniversary~, I did figure I would share the tips that I live by when it comes to the act of writing.
So without further ado:
Write it now, fix it later
2. It is always permissible – and usually enjoyable – to write the stupidest possible version
3. "Inspiration" is great for poets, but poison for people who write prose
3.1: if you want to write often, you need to write often, and then you will find that you don't need to be "inspired" because you will have made a habit of it and it will come naturally
3.2: even one sentence a day is still one sentence a day. And even one sentence a week is still one sentence a week. It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop
3.3: believing in the concept that you need to be inspired to write will trap you into believing in the concept of writer's block
3.4: if you are having difficulty getting out words that satisfy you, lower your standards and keep writing (see point one)
4. A few months down the line you will not remember which words came easily and which words did not
5. It is always permissible to set a project aside for now, or forever, if you need a break
6. Read widely and often, both in your favorite genres and outside of them
6.1: pay special attention to both things that you love and things that you hate - study them, engage with them, learn what makes yourself tick and your writing can only get stronger
7. Never write for the lowest common denominator, via wise words I once heard: "if you open the window and make love to the world, your story will get pneumonia", have an audience in mind and the people who like what you write will find it
8. Never write for the bad faith critic, those people will always exist and you will need to deal with them at some point if you put your writing in the world, but they don't matter and you cannot live in fear of them
9. It's fine and normal to want engagement and praise, however you must find a way to make the act of writing joyful in and of itself – make the praise the cherry on top, not the entire sunday
9.1: writing is hard work, and it's a lot of work, if you lose the ability to enjoy the journey and are proceeding only for external rewards from others, you will gradually write less and less if the ratio of work to rewards is unsatisfying
10. For anything other than final copy editing, always write a new draft into a new document, or else the words you have already written will trap you from being able to make large, sweeping changes
10.1: any change you make will invariably snowball, and you must give space for that snowball to roll
11. If someone tells you that something doesn't work for them, believe them, because people know what they like. But if people try to tell you what to do to fix it, take that with an entire serving of salt because you are the author, not them
12. It is always morally correct to look at a critique that you received, even if you asked for opinions via beta reading, and decide that it's bullshit and doesn't apply to you
13. "write what you know" means "write what you're interested in"
14. "Show don't tell" applies to screenwriting, not novels. This is the thing that drives me the most insane every time I see it. Novels are words on a page, not images on a screen. They require a lot of telling. Not all telling, but a lot of telling. Become comfortable with that.
15. It is always, ALWAYS acceptable to use "said", do not listen to the lies of others
16. Have fun, do it out of love and you will never go astray
17. Become comfortable with who you are. Your work is always going to be yours and it is always going to sound like you wrote it, and this is a good thing! No one else is ever going to write exactly like you, and you should be proud of that
17.1: the concept of "originality" is vastly overrated, every culture has some version of Cinderella and we still love it. Your writing is yours because you wrote it, and it will always be unique because of that
for the spooks day! i collected them all into one post. hopefully there will be more to add in the future!
🎃 Halloween 2022 Mini Fics — Four prompt-based Halloween drabbles.
👻 Der Junge und der Tod — After a chain of strange occurrences, Max accepts the possibility that he’s being haunted. (Bakeneko ghost AU)
🌲 Eine Waldmär — Takao lives in a hut surrounded by a scary forest. One day he decides to leave on an adventure to find a silver-haired boy he once saw. (Fairy tale + monster AU)
🧜 Loreley — Rei is a starved vampire who finds his way to a forest lake. (Vampire + merboy AU)
One day while looking for the oddly covert entry to the school kitchens during helper duty, Hiromi discovered a strange door in one of the basement floor corridors. It was fancy, a robust oak door with paneling and a golden handle, an elaborate carving in the middle in the shape of a knight, the chess piece. She tried the handle on a whim only to find the door locked.
“That’s the chess club,” Emily told her afterwards. “But they’re weird. I don’t recommend trying that one out.”
But, as usual, Hiromi’s curiosity had already been awakened. Besides, she had always enjoyed strategy games like chess, go, and mahjong and wasn’t about to pass the opportunity to check out something she actually was interested in, as opposed to all this other gunk she wasn’t, like tennis and circus.
So she headed over once classes were done with. Maybe she’d get lucky and find someone at the club room. Finding the strange door again took a while, but eventually she raised a hand to knock on the fanciful oak paneling.
To her surprise, it soon opened – an inch, anyway. Someone glanced at her through the slim crack of the door; it was an old man, peering down at her from above. Her eyes got stuck in the silvery moustache leering over her as she looked back at him.
“Entry is forbidden from non-members,” the man said and promptly slammed the door on her face.
Hiromi stood frozen in place, staring. Wait, what? What was this old man doing at the school? He’d appeared to have been wearing a suit, though she didn’t get a good look on such short notice.
She knocked again. This time the door remained shut. Not a peep from inside. A minute later, she backed away in resignation.
But someone was approaching the scene down the corridor. Hiromi turned to see – not Max this time, which would have been notably strange in this situation, but another chaotic blue-eyed, fair-haired blond she’d come across recently. It was the Casanova, strolling at a leisurely pace towards the door with his hands in his pockets.
Hiromi had no time to think. She stooped on a level any self-respecting girl never ought to and assumed the demeanor of a damsel in distress. She laced her fingers together and hoped to be making a decently Bambi-eyed impression as she turned to face Giancarlo. Good thing she’d chosen to wear a short skirt today.
As she batted her eyelashes at Giancarlo who’d only just noticed her, he gave her a face of slight alarm, perhaps due to the odd nature of their previous encounter.
“Heeey,” she chirped. “So glad to see you. I’m in a bit of trouble here…”
“Oh!” He lowered his shoulders, dropping the wary act at once. It took him approximately half a second to switch gears to his usual flirty self. “Yeah, I am. What are you looking for, little lamb?”
“I wanted to check out the chess club, but some horrible old man told me to get lost.” She brushed a subtle finger by the corner of her eye, lower lip twitching. “It was s-so rude. All I wanted was to see what the club is like because I like chess. I got scared…”
Giancarlo was exactly as simple a guy as he appeared to be: he was in chivalry mode immediately. “Oh, I’m so sorry – that must have been our butler, he can be such a jerk. Of course you can check out the club if you want to. Come on, let’s go together.”
Hiromi swallowed her urge to retch at Giancarlo placing a hand on her waist and guiding her back towards the dark and dramatic door. And why the fuck would a chess club have a butler?
Giancarlo had a key to the door and opened it with perfect ease. The first thing he did was scold the old man standing by the door in his tuxedo. “Johann, I heard you were rude to this young lady who only wished to come see how our honorable club operates! That was shameful of you. The lady is my guest and welcome here any time.”
Hiromi wasn’t listening to his cheesy mumbo jumbo. She eyed the strange room unlike anything she’d seen elsewhere at the school; it had the appearance of a classic Victorian study. Lots of dramatic dark wood, a fireplace, large paintings on the walls. A dark red carpet covered the entire floor. Several wooden tables were scattered here and there, equipped with expensive-looking chess sets, most sitting vacantly atop the round tables. Only two of the tables were occupied, both of which had two players sitting opposite each other on dark leather seats, and a third person observing on the side. The ones closer to the door, Hiromi recognized: one of the players was Johnny McGregor, the student council member, and the other a guy whom she knew to work in the school library often and, for all she could recall, now saw outside the library for the first time. The third wheel scrutinizing their game from a sofa with a hand raised to his chin was Olivier.
The other pair of players in the back of the room, Hiromi didn’t know. But the third person following their game, sitting with his back towards her, was none other than Brooklyn. This trio paid no attention to her and Giancarlo entering the room.
The other three, however, did. They all turned to stare at them with unmasked contempt.
“What the hell?” asked Johnny, scoffing. “What’s this random lass doing here?”
“I literally just said she’s my guest,” Giancarlo said, scoffing. “You wanker. What’s so bad about having more girls interested in our club?”
“Bollocks. More like more girls interested in you. Who's the wanker here?”
It wasn’t Johnny, though, who looked the iffiest man present. Hiromi was immediately aware of how Olivier was positively glaring daggers at her across the room.
Giancarlo was obviously unbothered by Johnny’s remarks. One filthy hand still on her, he waved the other around to show off the room. “Welcome to our private club! Only the most special people in this school get to ever see it, so consider yourself lucky, Miss… uh…”
“Tachibana,” she uttered.
“Yes.” Making no effort to repeat or learn her name, he then introduced the other members present. Apparently it was Ralf Jürgens, the librarian (who, after an initial foul look her way, remained focused on the game throughout this exchange), who had arranged this old storage room to be renovated for the club’s use. The two people she didn’t yet know, Giancarlo introduced as King and Queen from 2-A. She did wonder how and why they would be called like this, as they obviously weren’t their real names, but didn’t have enough interest to follow up by asking about it. Perhaps it was some kind of strange chess-themed live roleplay they had going on here.
After the introductions, what mild attention was paid to Hiromi evaporated completely. Giancarlo finally withdrew his hand and moved over to sit next to Olivier on the sofa, casually throwing that same hand over his shoulder instead. Olivier made a point to cast Hiromi a smug look while pulling the other guy’s hand tighter around himself, as if she in any shape or form gave a shit about this.
Everyone present seemed like a jerk, perhaps with the exception of Brooklyn. Not that she knew him much either. Why was he here, anyway? Hadn’t he just been at the circus club? And the wushu club as well. Had she seen him at the kendo club too...?
For whatever reason that she couldn’t justify to herself, Hiromi remained watching Ralf and Johnny’s chess match, which turned out to be more of a sitting match. Ralf had been pondering his next move ever since she entered the room and had yet to decide it at this point. Giancarlo and Olivier were nested on the sofa, apparently so engrossed in each other that Giancarlo no longer remembered the existence of his “guest”; whatever this weird dynamic between the two guys was, Hiromi couldn’t wrap her poor brain around it. And Johnny, who sat lazily back in his leather armchair, one leg crossed over the other, appeared perpetually distracted by the pair at the other end of the room and didn’t give a rat’s ass about Ralf taking his sweet time.
Hiromi glanced over at the table occupied by King, Queen, and Brooklyn. The regally named couple was the opposite of Ralf and Johnny: their game was fast-paced and timed with both slapping a clock set next to the checkered board in turns. They were dressed in identical white uniforms and bore some uncanny likeness to each other; if it weren’t for the fact that King was black and Queen white (on the board they played the opposite), they could have been twins. Playing this high-paced game of chess in complete silence and perfect sync, it was another strange duo to add to Hiromi's school findings.
About five minutes later, Ralf finally made his move on the board. He switched the positions of his black queen and rook. And Johnny didn’t even notice it, eyes still glued to the other table across the room.
Ralf, who sat back and folded his arms over his chest, turned to look at Hiromi. He frowned.
“Who are you?” he asked. “What are you doing here?”
She decided to take her leave.
Hiromi paced a strip of bright green, impeccably mowed grass of the Bey High sports grounds back and forth. Emily was taking longer than usual with tennis practice, and she was getting hungry. They had plans to go grab some early dinner together and maybe do a little card reading on the side, as it had been a while since their last session together. Besides, Hiromi was dying to complain about the chess club to Emily; she’d been waiting for so long by now, her thoughts were inevitably starting to circle around speculating what the bizarre relationship between Olivier Bohringer and Giancarlo Tornatore was, despite repeatedly telling herself she couldn’t have cared less about these rich boys and their odd relations and chocolate bar rituals.
“Come on, come on, come on,” she mumbled under her breath.
“Come on! Come on!” a voice echoed – one that, to her confusion, was not her own.
Hiromi stopped pacing and turned to look out into the stadium. There was a small group of people practicing sprinting. It must have been the track & field club, she thought first – but could have been other students training for the upcoming sports day, too. Hiromi didn’t have enough motivation to do so herself despite the fact that, with a bit of training, she might have done decently in a couple of sports. Knowing how many students were involved in the insanely competitive clubs, her “decent” wouldn’t carry far in the sports day qualifiers.
There was a band of five people repeatedly sprinting down a 100-meter strip of the track. After observing two iterations of this, she could already tell that two of them were far ahead of the pack speed-wise. Both had wild hair sticking up like a pair of demon horns, one a redhead, the other with a blend of blonde and brunette hair.
Then, while watching the other three make their way to the goal line, she realized that one of them was Brooklyn. Whom she’d not too long ago seen at the chess club. Hiromi knit her brows together, staring at his tracksuit-clad figure now slowing down to catch his breath at the end of the track. When had he ever had the time to get here? Hiromi hadn't seen him leave with her.
While Brooklyn and the redhead remained solitary after the performane, the other three quickly gathered together and moved over to the side of the track. Only then Hiromi noticed a sole spectator they now collectively approached, it was Mathilda holding out bottles of water for them. Perhaps she was there timing their runs, a team manager of sorts.
That was when Emily startled the life out of Hiromi by slamming a hand on her shoulder from behind. “Boo!”
“Oh, my fucking god. Don’t do that ever again or I’ll give you a right hook next time. And what took you so long? It’s almost half past already.”
“We had a, well, thing for the enhancement program. Didn’t I tell you?”
No, Emily had not mentioned anything such. “Do you know who those people flocking to Mathilda over there are?” Hiromi then asked, pointing at the track where said scene was still playing out.
After a brief observation pause, Emily told her they were Mathilda’s classmates. “Ah, the weirdo battalion. That’s Claude, Aaron, and Miguel. Totally insufferable. They worship the ground under her feet – they seem to think she’s their princess, or something equally dumb.”
“What, really? Three guys simultaneously?” Mathilda never seemed like the type wooing guys left and right.
“Yeah, I know. Some people are too popular for their own good. And that one,” Emily suddenly pointed at the redhead on the track, “is the Blitzkrieg Boys boss. Or I think he’s the boss.”
Hiromi turned to look at the boy who, rightfully so, was currently standing with his hands on his hips and evidently glaring at the three chivalrous knights still too busy pampering Mathilda to get on with the practice once more. The guy looked unassuming enough from far away. “He looks kind of normal.”
“But is another nutcase. I heard he got suspended on the first week of his first year for bringing a gun to class. Anyway, let’s get going – I need a burger or several.”
