Summary: 'The Speaker' is a BL manga that follows three boys who were all raised in an American orphanage together. Sam is the book smart and inquisitive one. Hal is brave and confident. Nobu is shy and quiet, but he has a good memory and he's more capable than he thinks he is.
The boys realize that something sinister is going on at their orphanage, and they decide to investigate. As a result, they get forcibly separated.
Themes include: explicit (18+) material, polygamy, mafia madness, human and child trafficking, sex work, sex assault, child sexual abuse, and substance abuse
Follow along for updates here! Chapters 1 - 12 are up!
I've written 8 works for this series - from post-canon what-if's, to canon divergence au, to character introspection with a whole lotta nsfw steam. All feature Sam/Hal/Nobu, because I have no self control about those three.
All are uploaded on my ao3, here!
But feel free to click below for an easy-reference list and links. o7
Onwards. -
Post-Canon (14k)
Summary: The discovery of two murder victims in a small town upsets an otherwise peaceful retirement.
Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/61484590
Transitory -
AU - Canon Divergence (18k)
Summary: What happens when a kidnapper forgets his chloroform? Three kids make a run for it.
Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/62533552
tag teaming -
NSFW/Explicit Fic (5.8k)
Summary: good things came in threes.
link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/60578683
this and the world -
Canon (2.3k)
Summary: success looks like a king-sized bed and only the most important future plans.
Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/60325654
whitewater -
AU set in canon (3.2k)
Summary: Sam is kidnapped, is rescued, and deals with the morning after.
Link: archiveofourown.org/works/60060364
the fifth sense -
Canon (1.9k)
Summary: for a man so often lost in thought, Sam certainly prized touch.
Link: archiveofourown.org/works/60009892
it won't be left behind -
Canon (1.6k)
Summary: sometimes, Hal was made of fire and Nobu craved being burned.
Link: archiveofourown.org/works/59983354
Summary: 'The Speaker' is a BL manga that follows three boys who were all raised in an American orphanage together. Sam is the book smart and inquisitive one. Hal is brave and confident. Nobu is shy and quiet, but he has a good memory and he's more capable than he thinks he is.
The boys realize that something sinister is going on at their orphanage, and they decide to investigate. As a result, they get forcibly separated.
Themes include: explicit (18+) material, polygamy, mafia madness, human and child trafficking, sex work, sex assault, child sexual abuse, and substance abuse
BG3 Fic // Dear Gods (Were You Even My Friend?) // Ch. 1 - Preview
Fandom: Baldur's Gate III - includes spoilers for game ending and most character endings
Pairings: (planning for) Astarion/Gale, Wyll/Karlach, Astarion/Wyll/Karlach, Lae'zel/Shadowheart
Summary: After the Netherbrain falls, the champions become even closer together than they had been. It turns out that sharing a body isn't as easy as sharing a few tadpole-inspired thoughts.
...
A/N: It has been a million bajillion years since I posted here, but I've really missed tumblr for posting drabbles.
Tl;dr: I've recently gotten extremely into Baldur's Gate III, and also - for the first time! - attempted and completed NaNoWriMo. The plot grew wings and took off, so it's still being written (anticipating ~75k or so), but I wanted to share a snippet to celebrate successfully completing NaNo. Please enjoy!
...
One dark and stormy night, the small village of Ruinspoke played host to a water-logged adventurer.
In fact, it played host to dozens of water-logged adventurers. It had played host to both water-logged and dust-dry adventurers by the hundreds in the months before, and by the thousands in the years before that. There were ruins of the elden and mysterious variety nearby, which was like catnip to the average curious-as-a-cat and decently-armed wanderer. More importantly to the Ruinspoke townfolk, when a recent infestation of kobolds discovered that the town guards were not as invested in defending the handful of neighboring farms as the kobolds were in raiding said poor farms, adventurers became the go-to defenders. Generally speaking, it made for a decent balance.
Because it was a dark and stormy night, the regulars grumbled when the old wooden door swung open to admit a gusting wind and pelting rain. From its howl, a tall, broad-shouldered dragonborn swayed in. His heavy, hooded cloak stuck close to his frame, and nearly tripped him on his way to the nearest, shadowiest corner-table. Though the stool he crashed into attempted an escape from its occupant, he caught himself on the table edge at the last moment. Thus secured from the rain by the tavern’s warmth, he slouched himself against the wall with an air of exhausted gratefulness and stalwart do not speak to me.
A regular rushed to close the door that had failed to shut against the storm. When he succeeded, he politely limited himself to merely a grouchy glare toward the newest adventurer before he returned to the bar at the front.
One of the tavern’s regulars had been an adventurer herself before she discovered she could make just as much coin with a much longer life expectancy if she kept a stool warm and played a decent song. That particular regular improvised a verse about bad omens, open doors, and the virtue of poor reputations for cozy taverns, which elicited a hearty chuckle from her ale-soaked audience. Temget, the dwarven owner of Ruinspoke’s best and second-most popular tavern, shook his head from the bar.
Time passed. The tavern-goers enjoyed homebrewed beer as well as far worse ale.
Resolute to not let one stool go without profit for an evening, Temget eventually approached the adventurer directly. He then sold, in rapid (and overpriced) succession, three mugs of the homebrewed beer and an entire loaf of wheat bread. He thereafter left the dragonborn alone.
Another regular, a slender dragonborn named Uadjit who always brought her own game to pass the time, eyed the newcomer.
When the hood was finally put down, and two mugs’ worth of beer and the bread were gone from his table and into his stomach, Uadjit gathered her cards and approached him.
“What brings you here, adventurer?” she asked.
“Just passing through,” he replied. “The storm caught me by surprise.”
“Caught the farmers by surprise, too,” she said. “It was supposed to be dry until the day after morrow, can you believe it?”
“I can’t, I suppose.”
“But really, what brought you here?” she pressed. “Was it not the ruins? What of coin or heroism?”
His nose twitched. His eyes went round. “Do you have a need for heroism? Is that why you ask?”
“I haven’t,” she said. “But Almer Hikath from up the street does. Well, not the heroism you’d imagine from a storybook, but the sort of heroism common to us small-folk. He’s also got coin for any who assist.”
“That’s the important part, certainly.”
“It sure is.” She smiled. She knew his type, and she was glad to have finally found an adventurer that didn’t travel in a herd. The more hands involved, the more expensive it became, and Almer didn’t really need that much help. “He runs the general store here. He has a milk cart that needs filling. Specifically for you, that would mean he needs help transporting it to a farm that’s not so far away. He’d do it himself if he had any chance with a sword; I’d do it for him if only I fared any better. I’m his friend, you see, and I’ve had to hear him belly-aching about that empty milk cart for nigh on tenday.”
The adventurer’s nose twitched again. He paused, for long enough that she feared he was thinking of a nice way to tell her to buzz off.
“He’ll pay you fairly,” she hastened to re-emphasize. “Half upfront, then half when you reach the farm.”
The adventurer asked, voice too-light, “Pray tell, what trouble is he expecting if he feels the need to be handy with a sword?”
“Nothing guaranteed!” She waved her hand as if to swat the notion away. “Just some rumors, you know, of kobolds and the like. Pesky rumors, probably nothing. Thing is, he’s the ‘better safe than sorry’ sort. Surely you’re handy with a sword, <I>thurirl?</i>”
He had one strapped to his side under his cloak. She only saw its red-gold hilt, but truthfully, she hadn’t even really needed to see it. Adventurers like him always had a sword, or a rapier, or a dagger, or anything else with a sharp end that could fit in a kobold’s eye.
Again, that hesitance. His mouth twitched up, then down. His head cocked to the side. He looked to his remaining mug, and frowned.
It wasn’t a no.
But the non-response did last a little too long. Just as she gathered her breath to break it, he looked back to her and smiled.
“Of course we’ll help.” He became so full of energy. His teeth gleamed and eyes, bright red, glittered. The rainwater had left his white scales shiny and bright in the tavern’s yellow light. “Honestly, if he can promise us a warm place to lay our heads for the next three days, that’s all we would ask for. It needn’t be anywhere or anything extravagant – a stable would do, truly.”
Something in her squirmed uncomfortably under the look, but she shook it off for the more pressing issue.
“Oh. <I>We?</i>” she tried to rally, though she couldn’t help glancing around his otherwise empty table. “Are you traveling with others…? Are they still out in the storm?”
That set him to coughing. He then shook his head, glanced away, and spoke with a soft, but self-deprecating chuckle. “Ah– no! I apologize, that was a force of habit. At the moment, I... travel alone.”
Aha. Ruinspoke had plenty of half- and quarter- and looking-for-new-parties, so that made sense. He must have been very handy with the sword, if he outlived his companions.
Since he’d agreed to help, she gave him a sympathetic wince. “I’m so sorry to hear that. What’s your name?”
“Wyll,” he said, then winced, himself. “... An odd name, I know. Or so I’ve been told.”
It was extremely odd, especially for who she had assumed was a fellow dragonborn that was local-ish to Tymanther, but she wouldn’t say that. She’d been raised in the middle of nowhere, not a barn.
“I think that’s a fine name. It’s nice to meet you, Wyll. I’m Uadjit. I’m afraid Almer’s likely asleep right now, so I can’t promise you a place for tonight, but if you go to his store first thing in the morning, I’m sure he’ll be happy to show you the cart and the route. He might have a few more questions for you, but let him know that I sent you.”
“Fantastic. Thank you, Uadjit.”
Small and kind, he smiled again. Unlike before, it was nothing but reassuring. Something in her settled, and she decided she wouldn’t mind learning a bit more about him before he went off to work her friend’s errand. Since she’d secured the help, she also needed to make sure he wasn’t absolutely <I>bonkers</i>.
Ruinspoke wasn’t picky, but her people could stand to be, sometimes.
“Before I have to leave for the night,” she slid into the stool opposite him, “would you want to play a game of cards?”
“I’d–” he coughed again, but recovered quickly with a, oh, don’t mind me, just recovering from the plague, at least I cover my mouth sheepish grin, “-- I’d love to. Your pick, as long as you don’t mind explaining the game to me.”
As his good cheer remained for the entirety of the game, and didn’t worsen even after he finished his third mug of beer, she didn’t mind at all.
You turn on your PC to keep working on your novel, but to your surprise, when you open the file, it is writing itself. You read some of what has already been written and it seems your characters have created free will, and the plot is progressing without you.
Y’know what I find absolutely fascinating about fanfiction? The trope trends that pertain to individual fandoms in each fanfic community.
I marvel at this every time I poke my head into a fanfiction archive somewhere, after finishing a series or a movie when I’m not quite ready to let it go but I’m not quite willing to dive in and participate. There’s always certain kinds of stories that are intensely popular in a self-contained fandom that are enormously rare in others.
There are, of course, some tropes that exist in virtually every fandom. You will never not find a Harry Potter AU or a coffee shop fic if a fandom has existed for longer than a couple months. The bigger the fandom, the more of them you’ll see. This is an Absolute Given. But others are less universal.
Some are self-contained types of AU’s that simply can’t work in another fandom, due to the nature of the original content’s story…but despite dozens of other potential tropes, one is just seized by the fandom as a fan favorite (literally). Take, for example, the plethora of chimera!fic in Fullmetal Alchemist (or at least, back for the 2003 anime there was a plethora of it. Maybe it’s changed since then, it’s been a while since I was in the fandom). It’s not really a concept that works in other fandoms, because the idea of chimeras is so strongly rooted in the source material’s lore, ‘magic’/science system, and concepts. But despite there also being dozens of other things you could run with in this universe too, this was a fandom-trope that was super popular.
But there are other things that I continue to be surprised at to this day. I watched a movie the other day and decided to poke my head into the fandom community and just scroll through AO3 without any filters. Every single page had at least one vampire AU, but that’s not something I see a lot in other fandoms. Why vampire AU’s? I don’t know, but something about it appeals for that fandom, clearly!
Sick!fics are super popular in several of the fandoms I’ve hung around in, but in others they’re all but impossible to find. In some fandoms whump or hurt/comfort is overwhelmingly the majority, and in others the bulk of what you can find is fluff so sticky sweet you’ll get a toothache. I’ve seen dozens of niche, oddballs sorts of premises or AU settings when browsing fanfic archives that seem to exist in only one fandom, but in that fandom they have an incredible amount of power.
It’s just fascinating to me, to see how trends fall based on what is presented in the source material, and the kinds of people that are drawn to that material. Things that are enormously popular to the point of being almost commonplace in one fandom might be a breath of fresh air in another. And clearly, no idea is every really ‘old’ or ‘done to death’ or ‘unoriginal.’ It’s all about the context of where you’re writing it, and about perspective.
it’s sunday night and i’m in a weird mood and worn out, and i keep thinking about that last post and “pursuing your art without internalized shame”
if you love creating, you simply have to get to a place where you can make something that’s true to you and not suffer shame for it. you’ve got to. you’ve got to. you’ve got to. i don’t care what your art or craft is, and it doesn’t matter to me what it takes for you to get to that point. therapy or medication if you need it, the support of family or friends, making a lot of private content that only you or a trusted few people will see. i don’t know what will work for you. everyone’s struggle is different. but if you’re in a place where you feel that everything you create is an embarrassment, you cannot live that way forever. you’ve got to kick the door down and get out.
being able to shut down the inner monologue of “my work sucks because my taste is embarrassing” is the only way i was ever able to get back to writing again. i love making OCs. i love writing love stories. and for years i couldn’t do it, because i was so hung up on “i shouldn’t like silly mary sue romance crap.” i’m sure i’ve made posts like this before, and i’m sure i’ll make them again. i just don’t know what else to say. you’ve got to fight your shame, dude. you’ve got to win.
bullet points: the only thing you write is bullet point fic. or short fic. it’s good writing, it’s just never as long as you want it to be. you envy those who can write 50k epics at the drop of a hat. and they, in turn, envy you.
WIP Central: you last completed a fic in 2009. your folders are full of nameless fics crying out for attention. you cannot open them without a surge of guilt. in spite of this, you open another document, and begin another fic.
word counter broke: this one, you tell yourself, will be a measly 2k. it is not. you watch in creeping horror as the counter climbs first to 5k, then to 11k. you still have six major plot points left to go. the fic is expected to clock at 23k but knowing you, will reach 50k. you have a sequel planned. there is no end in sight.
error 404: I’m writing, you tell people, and you are. you post snippets on your blog. yet your ao3 fic counter is a firm zero. you never post anything. you crave validation. your finger hovers over the new work button. you close the tab.
