Sometimes I flap with anxiety about my writing at my sibling and awesome beta listener, @greentrickster . It’s generally about the usual things - ‘what if everyone hates the new chapter? Am I actually characterizing anybody right? Oh god, what if no one reads it?!’ And once Trickster feels I have flapped sufficiently, they do this:
They throw AO3 statistics at me.
(For reference the ‘15/67855′ is #15 out of all AO3 Naruto fanfics when sorted in order of most to least bookmarked. I’m still shocked and not really sure how that happened.)
I just started reading 'What You Knead'and oh my god, I believe it is officially the best story I have read so far. Fuck. So wholesome and PERFECT and EXACTLY the way the story should have gone.
Thank you so much!!! I’m so glad you’re enjoying it! 🥰
Q stared reflectively at the new hole in his flat’s window and then took a moment to silence the intruder alarm on his phone that his home security system had set off. A damp draught gusted through the air. He glanced over at James. James had a bottle of champagne in one hand and looked like he was seriously considering planting his face in the other – or possibly taking a fortifying swig of alcohol straight from the bottle. Q couldn’t help himself.
“You seem to have gone off early,” he quipped. James closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. Q fancied that he heard a quiet groan. “Find something to cover that up with before any more rain gets in. I need to calm down my security system.”
By the time Q finished assuring his computers that he wasn’t being menaced in any way that wasn’t enthusiastically consensual, James had put a folded up bin liner and some gaffer tape to good use. He offered Q a glass of property-damaging champagne.
“Now, where were we?” James gave him that small, impish smile that really shouldn’t be so charming.
Q accepted the proffered champagne.
“I believe you were attempting to seduce me through very thinly veiled innuendoes disguised as negotiations for an exploding pen.” Q sat back down on the couch and took a sip of his wine.
James’ smile widened just a hair.
“Mmm, that does sound about right.”
Q reclined further into the couch cushions and raised an eyebrow with a small smile of his own,
For the drabble thing - security, Max and Furiosa!
In the Wastes, safety is an illusion, a heat mirage chased by delusional folk. A barely understood, Beforetime word with almost no meaning left. There is no safety in the Wasteland. Not in numbers, not in weapons. Not even in flight, though running is the closest thing to it you can get. You sleep with one eye open. You watch the horizon. You reach for a weapon at any unexplained sound.
Max has lived in the Wastes for thousands and thousands of days – each day grinding out such soft notions with grit and death and blood. He’d all but forgotten them.
Now he sits in almost confused silence. Around him green leaves rustle in a breeze like sighs. There is moisture in the air, and it feels strange against his skin. His back is pressed against Furiosa’s as they sit of the ground and share this strange, green silence. (When there is no wall or vehicle to protect your blind spot, a trusted back will do.) No one else is in the Hanging Garden at this moment. Not Dag nor any of her Greenthumbs. The silence here is different from the silence of the Wasteland. There’s no horizon to watch.
Max’s eyelids feel heavy, and he blinks to keep them open. Furiosa lets out an inaudible sigh. Max feels her shoulders rise and fall. This green silence is strange and confusing but also familiar. Max slowly, hesitantly slides his left hand back until it is just brushing against the flesh fingers of Furiosa’s right hand. He leaves it there. After a while Furiosa hooks two of her fingers through his.
The green silence continues to unroll. Max’s eyes drift shut.
Ha! Take that 2020/2021 - I FINALLY FINISHED A CREATIVE PROJECT! I finished a ~12.5k fic. BOO-YAH, BITCHES! I swear, it’s been feeling like the pandemic had sucked all on the creativy right out of me.
Though, on a side note, I don’t recommend spending six days feverishly writing from the POV of a character who swears a lot if you work a customer service job.
Dear author, I'm sorry to be nosy but I just saw your recent post about your wrists... I greatly appreciate you taking the time to write for us, despite this difficulty. Thank you again for What You Knead - I love this AU so much (even though it always makes me crave anpan in the worst way)!
Thank you so much and also you’re welcome! I’m glad you’re enjoying my story so much! Haha - writing this story makes me crave anpan, too. 😁 Sometimes I wish Kakashi would share some of his baked goods with me, because he has a lot more time to bake than I do.
Yay! I have been tagged for a thing! I love being tagged for a thing! Thanks, @ionfusionpunk!
Let’s shed light on some of your favourite lines you’ve ever written—you may pick one, two or a hundred, that’s up to you!
(Hmmm... these are probably going to be more “chunks” than lines.... Oh, well! 8D )
1) From my WIP A Gift, Freely Given (Mad Max: Fury Road, Max-isn’t-exactly-human-and-hasn’t-noticed!AU)
He remembers Before. Remembers so much farther back than he should and doesn’t understand why or how. Remembers warm soil beneath his feet teeming with life and great dirty gums overhead and her laughter crashing across the rocks in sprays of damp salt. Remembers her hair that swayed and twisted like kelp. It’s faint – muddled and hazy – but he remembers. More sharply he remembers the pain. The pain that fell from the sky and burned his skin as she withered and blew away leaving nothing but the salt of her tears crusting the ground. Remembers how the life teeming around him slowly faded with her until he was alone. And he remembers that he was never made to be alone. (Made? How could he have been made?) Every day he is dying, dying, dying, but he never dies. He doesn’t remember going mad with the loneliness and the anger and the unrelenting pain, but he must have. Because he is finally waking up. As if he’s becoming truly aware of himself for the first time in a long time.
He never quite runs out of water. Always seems to have just enough guzzoline to see him through even if only barely. His hand heals clean despite the rusty bolt that pierced clear through his palm. This does not seem strange to him (this is the way it’s always been), but it finally occurs that perhaps some would find it strange.
2) From What You Knead (Naruto, Butterfly Effect!AU and honestly I adore the hell out of the whole story)
“Hey, Kakashi-nii, is that your gennin team?”
Kakashi straightened up to find Naruto pointing at his old team photo.
“More or less, though we were all chuunin when that was taken.”
“You were so short!” Naruto laughed. “And-” He paused, squinted more closely at the picture, and then screeched at an ear-bleedingly loud volume, “OH MY GOSH, YOU WERE TAUGHT BY THE YONDAIME?!?”
Kakashi waited until the ringing in his ears had subsided before responding. It was okay – he probably hadn’t needed that eardrum anyway.
3) From For Innocence Lost (Bleach, featuring that time I really needed to write a cathartic death scene)
“Momo?” Aizen wheezed. He stared at her in horror. This couldn’t be happening! It just wasn’t possible! He’d spent decades forming this girl into his perfect subordinate. He’d made sure that her entire world revolved around him – that she couldn’t live without him!
“There is no place in Heaven for demons and false gods.” Her words were quiet and solemn and spoken with absolute conviction. Hinamori raised her zanpakuto and brought it down unerringly across Aizen’s neck in a killing blow.
4) From One Good Eye (Wakfu)
The most important things to a Cra were her hands, her eyes, and her bow. Cleophee had her bow and two good hands. She wished she could say the same for her eyes.
5) From my WIP Amabo Te (NCIS)
It was rather impressive that their captor was managing to look so thoroughly frustrated while standing stalk still wearing a balaclava. Tim couldn’t really blame him, though. (For the frustration, not the kidnapping. Tim was totally okay with blaming this guy for kidnapping them.) Really, giving Tony the truth serum concoction hadn’t been the best idea, Tim would probably been the much better candidate – and if McGee had been feeling inclined to, he probably would have informed their captor of this, but he was still miffed about the whole being kidnapped thing and it was general NCIS policy not to willingly give information to bad guys that could help them in the completion of their evil plots. Tim would have been frustrated, too, if he’d been the bad guy giving Tony truth serum. The instant the guy had stepped back, now-empty needle still in hand, and made it as far through his evil monologue as “truth serum,” Tony had looked up at him and grinned that manic grin that Tim had learned through long, hard experience meant trouble. Then the senior field agent had opened his mouth and proceeded to have an entirely one-sided conversation about movies, specifically Bond movies, never pausing long enough for their captor to get a word in edgewise to throw him off topic.
6) From my WIP One Lab Accident Away from Becoming a Marginally Decent Human Being (Mystery Science Theater 3000)
“Gimme that.” Kinga turned and grabbed the obnoxiously large key Max was still wearing around his neck. Max cowered but didn’t protest. He clearly realized that he was on very thin ice with her at the moment. “Stay here and get me a full refund or I’m feeding you to the space eels.”
“But-” Max hesitated. “We don’t have any-”
“I will BUY some just so I can feed you to them! And if Heston is dead, I’m buying space eels anyway!”
“Full refund! Absolutely! You got it!” Max squeaked as Kinga stomped away.
7) From From the Ashes (Justice League/Justice League Unlimited, Justice Lords!verse)
Helena was contemplating murder. It sounded like a very appealing idea and the best way of dealing with the chiming communicator on her bedside table. She finally managed to grab the blasted thing on her third flail.
“I hate you,” she told the person on the other end by way of greeting.
“Have you seen the latest addition of the Free Press, yet?” Barbara asked, ignoring Helena’s statement.
“It’s 6am, Babs. Some of us cannot subsist on caffeine alone. I went to bed less than two hours ago. NO, I have not seen the paper.”
“They ran an article on the Phoenix Corps.”
“WHAT?!?” Helena screeched, the sudden shot of adrenaline sending her bolt upright in bed. Next to her Vic groaned and stirred but didn’t wake. The man could sleep through a tornado if he put his mind to it. She started poking him in the side with one finger.
“I tried to call Q, but his communicator’s off,” Barbara was saying.
“Yeah, that’s because he remembered that he actually needs to sleep like the rest of us mere mortals,” Helena muttered, not really paying attention. Damn it, Vic was going to wake up and suffer through this bad news with her.
“Wha’z it?” Vic mumbled cracking open an eye. He hadn’t had enough sleep, yet, to erase the dark circles he got under his eyes from being up for thirty hours straight.
“Your boss published an article on the Phoenix Corps.”
“Oh…. ‘Kay.” He rolled over, apparently intent on going back to sleep.
“What?! This is bad, Vic!”
“Were gonna find out ‘bout us event’lly. Nobody’s dead. Nothin’s on fire. ‘Sall good.” He went back to sleep. Helena didn’t smother him with her pillow, but it was very close.
Well, I think that’s enough for now - I’ve rambled long enough. ^^ These are some of my favorites that are typed up (which make up about 10% of my writing - I like writing long hand)!
I tag: @greentrickster, @agirlnameded, and anybody else who wants to play! <3
