#yannieday

[dreampaladin]

author spotlight: @yanniest

happy yannie day to everyone that celebrates! for those of you that don’t know, yannie periodically does author spotlights for writers in the kpdh fandom, primarily as a way of bullying them lovingly, but also as a way to shout out their work. so i’m doing my own little spin on it, featuring some of my favorite yannie fics!

currently on:

lonely lavender bones (M)

The thing about telling one very big lie is that it requires a foundation of hundreds of smaller lies to hold it up, lies such as "I'm fine," and "nothing's broken," and "it doesn't hurt." Rumi finds this out the hard way.

yannie keeps saying that she wants this one to end and selfishly i never want it to. it’s heartwrenching in the best ways possible and i have a whole other post admiring the way pain is described in it because it’s so incredibly visceral, so incredibly real that it almost made me barf at certain points (in the best way possible). and holy shit the loneliness in this fic hits you like a train, hollows out your heart, and asks you to keep moving on. and i’ve thanked yannie for it repeatedly and will continue to do so.

previously on:

okay now for some of my other favorites that aren’t (currently) ripping my heart to shreds!

learn to love around a gap (T)

Celine does love Rumi, she does, but there's not much room for love when she's filled with so much grief.

the way yannie writes this fic is so fascinating, because you don’t hear celine speak for most of it. she’s so deeply analytical and we also get to see where so much of rumi’s tendencies come from; because yannie explores them in such wonderful depth. celine is one of those incredibly complex characters that is hard to do well, and yannie does an EXCEPTIONAL job

cabin pressure (E)

Flight attendant Zoey is outrageously flirty and extremely bored, and she's going to make it the problem of two very attractive and surprisingly receptive passengers.

im gonna be upfront with you. this one is Just Smut. but it’s some of the Best Smut you’ll ever read so just. go for it. yannie typically does character studies through smut (and you can trust and believe that we’re getting there), but this one is just smut. it’s fun and flirty and so in character, so much so that it has inspired at least one person to go and get a flight attendant job. honestly, i’m not really doing this piece justice. go read it

the sky set to burst (the gold and the rust) (E)

Rumi losing her patterns doesn't mean she lost her shame.

this is such a fascinating look at a golden!au, one where rumi gets everything she’s ever wanted—and then it all bites her in the ass. because there is something lovely about yannie fics, where she often gives the characters what they think they want and then make them pay for it in very satisfying ways. yannie has also said that he wrote lonely lavender bones to try to get better at action scenes. and there’s one scene in this fic that always comes to mind when i’m thinking about writing my own because it’s so good! and so true to the movie’s particular brand of action

ouroborous (bite down or let go) (E)

Being angry and protective is all well and good, but it's not always what people need.

yannie, you didn’t think you’d escape without me mentioning the character studies designed as smut, did you? anyway. these fics where yannie explores the girls’ characters, often through sex and the things that surround it, are incredible and really show the depth to which yannie understands every character that they write for. the fact that they can take these characters, say “you wanna see them fuck?” and then do an indiana jones switch so that you’re forced to examine who they are as people, is masterful. every time i read one of these i come away with a better understanding of the characters as a whole and definitely how yannie writes them. this one in particular is really fascinating because it’s got two versions (ish)! the exploration of mira’s anger is so good in both fics (p.s. the other one is see me bare my teeth for you)

darling, are you ready for more? (E)

While Zoey's away Mira learns something new about Rumi.

this was my first yannie fic!! i don’t remember how it came across my dash, but it sounded so intriguing that i clicked into it right away. as always, it is a beautiful character study wrapped up in some of the hottest smut you’ll ever read. i love how yannie explores control (or the lack thereof) in his fics; it fits so wonderfully for these characters and is one of the many, many reasons i will always come back for more yannie fics.

in conclusion: go read yannie fics if you love crystal-clear characterization, amazing dialogue, and some of the best smut in the fandom. happy yannie day!

[dreampaladin]

@yanniest and pain in lonely lavender bones

in conjunction with this post about my favorite yannie fics, i wanted to talk about their descriptions of pain in their ongoing fic, lonely lavender bones, because they’re incredible in their variety, which is all the more impressive given the sheer amount of injuries that rumi endures over the course of the fic. obviously, spoilers for the first five chapters of lonely lavender bones, so scroll right on by if you don’t want that!

let’s dive right in!

chapter 1

and a wave of wet, sticky heat. Pain ricocheted between her shoulder blades, angry and wild.

i love how this description proceeds, because it takes awhile for the pain receptors to send the information to rumi’s brain. she’s like “aw shit i got hit and i can feel blood” and then the pain hits. and it’s described as bouncing, which is really fun because it’s like rumi can’t take it in all at once, she feels it in bursts

they did nothing at all for the sounds, the subtle grinding and crackling of new bone forming.

the internality of this one is really fascinating. ive broken my arms five times and i don’t think i’ve ever paid attention to the sound of new bones growing. but it makes sense that rumi would, which is why this is a great detail to include. and the onomatopoeia of the words used is so visceral, which really helps you hear it.

chapter 2

Pain flooded her mind like molasses, thick and heavy and trapping every other sense inside.

this is one of the first instances i noticed where the pain starts to become a mental thing for rumi as well, something that starts to become a theme. which i think is really fitting, because rumi is such an overthinker and it’s really something that the amount of pain that she experiences starts to cloud her judgement. which makes it all the more impressive (and all the more sad) that she manages to lie and gaslight her way through all of her injuries.

but they held her like she meant something

okay this is less physical pain, and is the other half of the anguish that rumi feels in this fic. she’s so fucking lonely and it breaks my heart every time i read more of it. because she learns to deal with the physical pain, but she’s never really able to assuage the grief that comes from not being able to have your soulmates, not in the way that she wants them. it’s agonizing, almost moreso (for me at least) than the physical injuries.

chapter 3

a background ache intercepted by pinpricks of sharp agony, pulsing in time with her rapid heartbeat.

yet another fascinating description of pain, one that we could interpret multiple ways. there’s the background ache of the pain, sure, but there’s also the constant background ache that rumi feels, from the weight of her lies and everything she’s had to do to conceal her secret. and the fact that it’s tied to her heartbeat, the thing that keeps her alive. her life is this background ache.

met with the agony surging from her leg, tripping over itself and getting tangled.

i particularly like the second clause of this sentence, because there’s something visceral about this, how the present pain of her leg being treated is mingling with the hidden pain of her arm, all tangling together for rumi, because she can’t really separate one from the other. and the fact that it uses the word “tripping” cause its about pain in the leg? genius

chapter 4

Rumi's ribs ached every time she moved, a pain so large it bubbled over and seeped into her shoulders and back. It formed a thick, tarry layer between her mind and body that trapped her thoughts like flies and suffocated them before she could pull them out.

i like that this one bridges the gap between the physical pain and the mental anguish that rumi is feeling. it calls back to the thick fog of hurt that we’ve been reading about this whole time, while also feeling so distinct and reminding us that this is how rumi’s brain feels when she’s injured

But then, she'd known something was fundamentally wrong with her for her entire life.

look, i don’t need to say much about this. yeowch. the fact that it’s presented on its own, as its own paragraph, speaks volumes about the truth of rumi in this piece

chapter 5

(i broke my own rules to only do two per chapter however. this chapter is 14k so i think i can be forgiven)

The only time she'd ever truly thought about her own life was when she was begging Celine to end it.

once again. what the actual fuck this one hurts real bad and speaks to her loneliness. because all three of the women around her care so much about her life, about her getting to live it the way she wants to (whatever that means to them). but rumi thinks that she can’t because she needs to be better, needs to be perfect

Every twitch sent little jolts of pain through her that forced their way out in the form of aborted gasps and hissed breaths as the raw and tender skin shifted.

this one is again, so visceral. you get the effect the pain is having on rumi’s entire body and the reactions that she’s being forced to have. throughout the entire fic, we know rumi is loathe to make pained noises, so it’s especially striking that she’s making so many in this moment, and that yannie mentions it here. i love that yannie is so good with their words that you can practically feel the pain in your own body. because you know what a burn like this feels like.

It was a want so powerful she was half way to curling her fingers when the pain cruelly snapped her back into reality.

the pain has been a detriment to rumi this whole fic, but its the first time it’s directly been in the way of her desire. she’s wanted them for this entire fic, but the pain has been her ‘punishment’ for lying, rather than the barrier between her and the desire she feels for them. this is yannie showing us that the pain is finally catching up to her as something that rumi maybe doesn’t want anymore.

go read lonely lavender bones for more EXCELLENT descriptors of pain and loneliness! you won’t regret it <3