misery loves company

pav(love) / 25 / (l)gbt+ / they/them writing/fic sideblog

[pavloveed]

You like DnD, Audrey Hepburn, Harry Houdini, and croquet...

Writing sideblog by a consistently burned out mid-twenties individual living in New York. I have a degree. I am vaguely employed at any given moment. I may sound dry as hell but I promise I'm friendly, kind of like your average pit bull where I look scary as hell but you put me in a pink sweater and let me on the couch and I am just a marshmallow. Call me Pav!

#pavwrites < my writing, found on Ao3

#pavyaps < generally writing related yapping. occasional life updates.

#pavmemes < memes and funnies tangentially related to something i'm actively working on

#fence stuff < stuff relating to fence (comic)

#2old2guard < stuff relating to the old guard

Additional tags! Stuff that isn't necessarily mine but related to things I've done! Sorry I just think it's cool as hell that people make art based off my work!

#sacrificial art < related to the fic of sacrificial. which will one day be completed.

#dirty roses art < related to the fic of dirty roses.

Look at me making a real blog. Who would've thought? Not me. Anyway! Predominantly Fence (the comic) and The Old Guard to be found here, but there may be occasional F1 posting. General interests are probably music (boo, stereotypical), video games (nerd), languages (RIP the linguistics degree, you would've gone so hard), history (RIP the maritime history minor, curse you college for removing the history minor the year I graduated), a variation of sports, and whatever research rabbit hole I've gone down most recently.

Additionally, my StoryGraph and Letterboxd that I definitely remember I have consistently and definitely update regularly. Definitely. For those of you who would be intrigued lol

[anneemay]

Hmmm...

[catboycrimsonrain]

[pavloveed]

Note: Rebrand!

FINALLY I GOT A USERNAME THAT'S CLOSER TO MY AO3. AKA THE REAL REASON I HAVE THIS SIDEBLOG. GOD DECIDED TO GIVE ME ONE SINGLE WIN TODAY.

okay two wins i also FINALLY found a good height discrepancy reference. which you would think shouldn't be hard but it was so oddly specific and the answer was right in front of my nose the whole time. clearly jury duty did not go well.

one of these days i'll actually do an intro post or something i've been meaning to do that for years but i. keep forgetting.

[pavloveed]

Captain to Captain

Ao3 Link // Playlist Link // @fencesummernationals

This is a little early for me! I have. Jury duty. And will be conscious again sooner than I'd like to admit.

Rarepairs! I am honestly kind of surprised I had to make this tag (Harvard & Jesse), it feels like it would be such a Thing to explore and dive into and I was halfway tempted to make it longer, but I think they'd need a few more meetups before they actually committed to long conversations. Captain to captain. I think that if given the opportunity they could be really tight friends.

Harvard's always a fun one for me to get into. I love being in his head in particular. Stylistically I wanted to opt for a little more traditional narrative versus my usual style (which I think tends to blend tradlit with scripts, which makes sense since I have heavy backgrounds in both), and I think it actually worked out well. This has been such a fun event to take part in, I'm really glad I buckled down and committed to it. Will be continuing to read fics and reblog art and such with time, so if you see comments on these summer nationals fics in a week, it's because I'm painfully somewhat gainfully employed.

[pavloveed]

Portugal v Spain @ Dallas Stadium

Ao3 Link // Playlist Link // @fencesummernationals

For treasure/trouble I was admittedly stumped for a really long time. Kinda last minute, I settled on something really small but ultimately kind of sweet. With World Cup actively happening, it did make it a lot easier to get a little Dante in here. Especially looking at the schedule for the next couple of games, seeing Portugal actually playing pretty soon, it made sense to jump on that. So! Dante gets to have some fun wondering why his peace needs to be disrupted in the middle of the game he really cares about.

I haven't really written for Dante before, so it was definitely an interesting experience. He's quieter than I anticipated, internal monologue side of things anyway. Dialogue wise that was a given, but he's just a quiet guy. Just a dude. I dig it a lot actually.

[pavloveed]

update: portugal lost 0-1. while i'm halfway tempted to tack on a second chapter because it would be so funny i simply don't have the energy to. just know dante is trapped under the bed so he doesn't jump out a window.

[pavloveed]

Portugal v Spain @ Dallas Stadium

Ao3 Link // Playlist Link // @fencesummernationals

For treasure/trouble I was admittedly stumped for a really long time. Kinda last minute, I settled on something really small but ultimately kind of sweet. With World Cup actively happening, it did make it a lot easier to get a little Dante in here. Especially looking at the schedule for the next couple of games, seeing Portugal actually playing pretty soon, it made sense to jump on that. So! Dante gets to have some fun wondering why his peace needs to be disrupted in the middle of the game he really cares about.

I haven't really written for Dante before, so it was definitely an interesting experience. He's quieter than I anticipated, internal monologue side of things anyway. Dialogue wise that was a given, but he's just a quiet guy. Just a dude. I dig it a lot actually.

[scottishgremlin]

fence summer nationals 2026 | day 10: “don’t make the mistake of being too predictable” - common trope with a twist

seismic renovation (3864 words)

synopsis:

seiji and jesse are best friends who have been harbouring (unbeknownst to them) mutual crushes on each other. you know how the story goes from here— or do you?

title from jericho beach by tommy lefroy.

-

this is definitely my favourite work for this event, and possibly my favourite thing i’ve written ever. i knew i wanted to write about jesse and seiji’s relationship for this prompt, and @bluedalahorse and her wonderful young royals fic terrain, boundaries, territory inspired me to give the verse novel form a try! my background is in writing poetry and song lyrics, so i had a wonderful time aiming for somewhere between that and my prose fiction. being fourteen sucks, but fencing is the best thing ever, and i tried to capture those feelings as best as i could. writing this fic consumed about three weeks of my life, and i’m very proud of the end product.

also shoutout to @sometimeswritingsometimesdying for listening to many a rambling voice note oration of this fic while i was writing it, and to @andromachesimp for letting me consult them on their knowledge of cars and connecticut. any inaccuracies are mine and mine only.

-

@fencesummernationals

[pavloveed]

Seven Hours, Fifteen Days

Ao3 Link // Playlist Link // Song Reference // @fencesummernationals

woof.

I knew for a trope flipping I wanted to do a love confession scene. And I do get a little more into it in the notes of the fic itself. But! I usually give Harvard a lot of grace with how dedicated to being a leader he is, and here I didn't. He's taking that shit fully to the heart and to the chest. This was always going to be Aiden and Harvard, it really always was, and I'm glad it turned out the way it did.

It is a chunk of my thesis, a little reworked and a lot more fleshed out. The scene itself in the greater scheme of that work (which was something like three hundred pages of autofiction, kill me) was such a small blip with the intention to weigh it all down in part by being so short. So, in a weird way, I'm not thrilled that this is longer than a thousand words. But I think it's the right length to deliver what I needed it to.

Day 9 is still coming later. Maybe I'll get it out on day 13 if things work out well. I'm still melting btw it's finally below ninety and my electric bill might give me a stroke when that comes in.

[pavloveed]

fence summer nationals day nine gon be late. maybe post weekend. it is. so fucking hot and i am melting. no brain cells to write beyond a bulletpoint list in my work planner. whoever cursed nyc and the entire eastern seaboard with the wrath of a thousand suns is on my shitlist. let's be real the billionaires are already on my shitlist so it's not growing but if one of yall paid an etsy witch or something too as revenge for people making fun of the europe heatwave it's over.

[pavloveed]

Curated

Ao3 Link // Playlist Link // @fencesummernationals

I think you can tell I wanted to write this one more like a first chapter to a novel and gave up on it very quickly. I'm ultimately alright with that though lol

Nick and Harvard! I feel like if anyone is going to take Nick shopping, especially for a more expensive piece, Harvard's gotta be the one to do it. He's got the right energy to calm him down after seeing egregious price tags and you KNOW he's well practiced at making people feel good in their outfits, but honest when they're shit if he's asked about it. Maybe this was a wildcard pairing for this particular prompt, but something about it worked on the page. I'm but a man of the pen, and I listen to my pen. Or keyboard. You know what I mean.

[pavloveed]

Bruises and Bitemarks

Ao3 Link // Playlist Link // Song Reference // @fencesummernationals

Today's was fun! I mixed a bit of the literal and the figurative, which was a tad unexpected since I did fully intend for it to just be the literal. Things just come out sometimes though, you know? And who am I to stop someone from wiping the wrong shade of concealer off an emotional bruise. Also was not expecting Nick and Aiden to have such banter like they did, but this always tends to happen to me. I need to get these two nerds into settings more often where they can just riff off of each other. It's somewhat similar to the kind of banter Nick has with Seiji, but it winds up with wholly different undertones and allows Nick's emotional maturity to really shine that he is, in fact, on par with Aiden on that front even if it's a different font. If that at all makes sense.

Also they're in college for this. And they're at Ivies because I said so. And I did pay attention to color palettes for said ivies even if they don't particularly matter or really come up. But they're still fencing! Also because I said so. I did not do as much research as I should have.

I am for better or worse back to work. Ew. There's however two sides to this coin: one, it's slow enough that I'm deadass writing in a warehouse corner on the clock, whereas the other means i'm dead fucking tired and i need to be rolled out by one of those asphalt paver things. However. Money.

[pavloveed]

Dip Your Toes in the Sand (With Me)

Ao3 Link // Playlist Link // @fencesummernationals

This is one of those fics where it's just fluff. Slice of life type of shit. I took the prompt as literally as possible here, something kind of fun to me in a way, where it's literally just a beach day. Filler episode. Off day. Why are they in California? Couldn't tell you beyond better beaches, but they are admittedly there for fencing. Close enough. Why is the playlist exclusively French songs? Vibes.

I talk about this a bit more in the fic notes too, but it's a muscle I haven't stretched in a long time to just write something with no real plot, no ulterior motives, just for the vibes. It was harder than I expected, but I'm especially glad I went this route for that exact reason. Besides, what is a filler episode if not just vibe central where the gang may as well just hang out?

[pavloveed]

When You Hang Up, Don't Let Go

Ao3 Link // Playlist Link // Song Reference // @fencesummernationals

Weird one for me. Did have a hunch as to where I wanted to go with this one from day one too, didn't expect it to draw so heavily from personal experience though. Something something, lesbian discovery in a dorm room at a 75%+ women's college (or, in this case, boarding school). I did consider writing for Dafna at first, that was the main thing that changed here. Instead, it became Adrienne and Lia (who I named on a whim, I'll admit fully) a bit more last minute, but something about it flowed better.

Why does Adrienne live on Martha's Vineyard? Why does Lia have a landline phone? I don't know. Distance, vibes. That's the best I can get for answers.

Also take the all dialogue from yesterday and I raise you with next to no dialogue today. Harder for me than I thought it would be even if it was mostly internal monologue. I kept wanting to slip in random snippets of dialogue and had to keep smacking myself on the wrist.

[pavloveed]

1985, or The Summer Everything Changed

Ao3 Link // Playlist Link // @fencesummernationals

I actually wanted to keep it tame for the AU day, relatively speaking, and I did totally know I was going 1980s with it from the point it was announced. Maybe one day I'll turn it into a whole fic, but I'm not entirely there yet. Something about sticking the boys in a summer camp as counsellors is such a funny concept to me that I think would actually work really well, and it's also a chance for me to keep working the dynamics for the idea that I have about a story set in specifically the summer of 1985. Which will maybe just turn into a fic. Who's to say?

The concept was almost my thesis, actually! Was one of the three options and just never won out, got used in side workshops instead. Mostly the YA Lit class.

This one specifically I wanted to go in more on the dialogue focus, working that quite a bit and letting that be the real centerpiece. It's a nice exercise to come back to every now and again, to see how much you can get away with conveying solely through dialogue. Think it helps remind me on how to make lines especially punchy, or makes me consider just what the connotations of lines could be versus should be. Giving more weight to the words (literally lol), which I think after the last chapter chapter I wrote, I still feel really strong on. So this was kinda just a fun thing to do because I can't just ignore one of the staple exercises anyway.

[pavloveed]

I Ain't Too Proud to Beg (Coaches, Day Three)

Ao3 Link (Note: Explicit) // Playlist Link // Song Reference // @fencesummernationals

I don't have much of an explanation for this. Happy pride, lesbians be upon ye. If you squint it's during the '92 Olympics and there's some dynamics at play on what may have once been, I'll give it that much at least.

Oh, to know what really went down between Williams and Donati. Wouldn't that just be a dream?

[scottishgremlin]

fence summer nationals 2026 | day 2: music

silver spoons and butter knives (2394 words)

synopsis:

“Aiden is always turning his head back to the past, as if one more excavation of his memory will bring what he needs. Clarity? Closure? He isn’t sure.”

aiden has won (or lost, depending on how you look at it) enough silver medals for a lifetime.

title from silver spoon by erin lecount.

-

my approach to the prompt 'music' is a bit of a cop-out as a large proportion of my work is inspired to some degree by music, but i wrote a songfic based on erin lecount's breakout single silver spoon. it was my most listened to song of 2025, and one i connect deeply to the character of aiden kane. growing up in a dysfunctional family dynamic warps your perception of what love looks like and how to give and receive it, and silver spoon captures this experience so well: the longing for a sense of safety and unconditional love but at the same time not being able to quite stomach it; i can only try to replicate or create a work that parallels and branches off from lecount's artistry. admittedly, i've been trying to write this fic for over a year now but could never find the right words. this time, i've gathered the courage to try anyway, and i hope it resonates with someone who reads it (and i'm sorry if it does, too 🫂).

-

@fencesummernationals

[sugarcubesketches]

"Everyone says that"

"Whether they're jealous and hate him or they put him on a pedestal. His talent is isolating. It sets him apart"

"I'm going to stand across from you, and you're going to acknowledge me as your rival"