How did you get so good at writing??? Did you take classes? I feel like you should get paid all the money for this! (I subscribe to your website!)
after i dropped out of high school i found a torrent of like 5GB of OCRd romance novels and i read like 3 romance novels a day for a while
read enough romance novels and you will realize that they live or die entirely on technical skill. if you are new to romance novels then even bad ones can dazzle you with novelty but by the time you are on your 30th historical fake engagement between a bluestocking and a rakish duke you can grade them and you know when they've failed. when two books have what should be the same main characters hitting the same plot beats, but one of those books is delightful and the other fucking sucks, you learn some things. some books are bad and still delightful. other books are good but they just don't hit. you start to see the seams in the bad ones. 'oh, this is a weird out of character moment because she wanted to have the kabedon moment and didn't know how to get there'. 'she didn't want the ust to end but couldn't think of a better reason than this deus ex cockblock.' that kind of thing.
you could probably do this with other genres but i like romance because the plot is two people fall in love. that's it. everything else is set dressing. if you can figure out how to make that work you can carry it over into whatever other genre you feel like. mysteries would give you a different skillset around plotting that i don't have.
Woke up this morning to the second day of 2026 and spent the morning walking among families at the beach. The sun is shining. The air is clean. The universe is telling me it's time to post possibly the darkest fic I've even written.
Hello!I've seen that your requests are open ⨠Could I please request BSD boys reacting to a reader who can shift between realties? Characters: Dazai Osamu, Chuuya Nakahara, Nikolai Gogol. I think that Nikolai would be especially interested in shifting, since it can be so freeing to escape the current reality into a desired one. Thank you!
ââ YOU'RE FROM A WHOLE OTHER WORLD, A DIFFERENT DIMENSION â
âá°.á đđŽđđĄđ¨đŤ'đŹ đ§đ¨đđđŹ: HELL YEAH! ME BEING A SHIFTER THIS REQUEST MAKES ME SO EXCITED U HAVE NO IDEA.
(This is also based on how they reacted to me being a Shifter in my dr)
âá°.á đ°đđŤđ§đ˘đ§đ đŹ: Dazai (lowkey) flirting w reader, gn!reader
He freezes for two seconds, like when someone says something stupid⌠but then he understands that you were VERY sure.
â âOkay, say that again.â
And when you explain, he believes you faster than you think, because Chuuya lives surrounded by weirdness: curses, abilities⌠for him, shifting is just another crazy thing.
â âOkay, but⌠when you go to another reality, do they hurt you? Do you have a body there? Can you always come back?â
â He starts asking you things like he's your worried boyfriend, even though he isn't.
â Secretly, He's really intrigued and a little scared that there's a reality where he doesn't exist. He'll never admit it to you.
â âJust tell me youâre sure every time you do it. Iâm not going to lose you over some interdimensional shit.â
Pairing: Hucklerobby, others mentioned but not focus.
Summary: Robby makes a mistake when he agrees to spend the holidays with Dennis. Nebraska isnât for everyone, but it does have its surprises.
Trigger Warnings: references to previous gender identity via Dennisâs younger self.
Author's Note: Part 2 of many. Gay & Trans Whitaker, bisexual Robby, more TBA.
Dennis sighed, all the air rushing from his lungs as he set his phone down. He hated bothering Trinity like that, especially when she was out with her maybe girlfriend, as she liked to put it.
But he was freaking out. Usually, he handled it alone. He was good at handling it alone âheâd handled it alone all his life, so what was a little more isolation if not familiarity? It wasnât a problem for him to shove it down and worry about it later, but things were different now.
He often had to remind himself that he was free to express himself. Trinity had taught him that. He was free to not only be happy, but to worry, without comment. She saw him cry and didnât make him feel like his eleven year old self, whoâd learned the contradictory truth of being a little girl in a conservative family.
Sometimes he still got that hang up. The pressure would build behind his eyes, his throat tight like heâd swallowed something rough and gritty. Then, the voice of his mother would whisper, ever faintly, that crying was âunladylikeâ. Followed only then by his father, whoâd tut and chastise the notion, chiming in to claim that it was only in a ladyâs nature to be emotional.
He couldnât win, and more importantly, he couldnât believe he was going back to that. To those people. To a place that had abandoned him long before he abandoned it.
They were different, he supposed. Changed people, if people like that were capable of change, who had made some kind of effort for him. To meet him where he was. The first few Christmasâs after heâd left, no one asked for him back. Simon mightâve, once or twice, but not in any real way. They didnât want to be faced with their daughter and sister, (who had never really been their daughter or sister to begin with,) with short hair, dressed in ill fitting menâs clothes.
But his mom had reached out. For the first time in,â he didnât even know how long.
Maybe thatâs why he told them heâd come home for Christmas. They were making an effort, and as much as he hated Nebraska, he missed it too.
He missed when things werenât so complex. He missed when his father talked to him, and when his mother would hold him in her arms like someone she adored, and he missed his childhood even though it had been confusing and misguided. He missed Simon, and Thomas, and Luke. He missed the heifers, and the calves, and the newly born colts who ran on fresh legs. He missed it all. So much, sometimes.
Dennis still talked to his brothers, when he could muster the courage to. Simon still got weird about everything sometimes. He couldnât rag on Dennis anymore, at least not like he used to, or play the part of the overbearing brother whoâs purposed was to protect his only sisterâs innocence. Sometimes he slipped up, but Dennis didnât blame him. Not really, not anymore.
Thomas talked to him the most - respected him and his choices, but still thought he should go to church sometimes. Heâd gotten a little more progressive over the years, a little more understanding, which was big in the Whitaker household. It was perhaps the second most scandalous thing one could do, besides Dennisâs transition.
Luke, as he were, was a lost cause. He and Dennis had never been too close anyway.
And now Dr. Robby was in the midst of all that. Maybe this was a bad idea.
Flopping back onto his unmade bed with a flourish, Dennis sighed for the upteenth and considered his options.
He could go alone. That was the saying, wasnât it? Do it alone, do it scared? Or was that a post heâd seen and was misremembering?
Going alone meant a lot of things. It meant facing it alone, debriefing alone. Crying alone, as much as he preferred it.
But maybe he was getting ahead of himself. That was the other option. To go, and have it be done with. To see if they still cared. Maybe things would be different â maybe thereâd be no tears, or grief, or debriefing to do.
Wishful thinking.
He hadnât explained it to Robby yet. Hadnât explained all of why heâd left, or how bad itâd been before he did. Part of him argued that he didnât have to â he could leave the senior attending blissfully unaware. Keep his peace. Save himself from having to explain himself again, from having make himself so visible in the face of honesty. But that just felt mean, and wrong. Heâd have to explain, one way or another.
Trinity was probably right, though. Dennis could handle himself. If they were the same as they had been, if they really werenât making an effort to see him for the person he was, then he could leave. There was no shame in leaving â heâd done it once, he could do it again.
got a nice comment on ao3 and now i am contemplating writing again lmao. i'm so easy to persuade. you say one (1) nice thing and i'm like YEAH ALRIGHT I GUESS I CAN KEEP GOING
"You quit your job and drove all night across state lines for one song, and for some reason, that convinced you to stay."Â
"Not true," Josh says, "I didn't need any convincing, the moment you said you wanted me to play with you I was already planning on never leaving again." Tyler laughs, and Josh grins at him.Â
"God, sometimes I really can't believe it, that it all. . . Worked out."Â
"We sell out arenas now," Josh muses. "It's crazy."Â
not sure this fic concept will actually go anywhere but, this exchange lives in my head so rent-free that i need to share it.
Krahka goes to the grocery store and has to pretend that she knows what she's doing and has been in a grocery store many times in her life as a human woman.
this post by @yeah-ephi hit me over the head with inspiration so. there is this now.
please enjoy
summary:
There is blood under this Clancy's nails, blood in his teeth. His knuckles are split, almost perpetually, like his skin has given up on healing wounds that it knows will always come back.
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