I have no punchline and no idea how you found my corner of the internet, but you're welcome to stay assuming you are not related to me or related to anyone I know in real life. That would be awkward. Just comment to be added. And maybe tell me enough about yourself/how you found this journal to reassure me that you are not actually my grandma. I would appreciate it.

So, here's the thing.

I fucking love Bakery AUs.

This is awkward for a number of reasons, one being that I don't eat, y'know, anything you could make in a bakery. I don't even like bread. Seriously, I buy that unnaturally thin stuff so when I make sandwiches there will be even less bread involved. I also can't actually remember the last time I walked into a bakery. It probably wasn't willingly. So I have like zero experience with bakeries and their general foodstuffs, and I don't, as a rule, like the things they produce. And, yet, I love Bakery AUs.

The real problem with this is that I want to write a Bakery AU. Specifically I want to write a Sherlock/John Bakery AU. But a) I know nothing about bakeries, including what happens in them day to day and b) I don't know how to bake shit, and I figure professional baking is not something you can just fake (I mean, I guess I could try, but that'd add another level of ignorance on top of an American writing in a British fandom, and, yeah, I'd rather not) and c) I have no fucking clue how either John or Sherlock would wind up owning a bakery. The closest I could work it towards making sense is Harry owning the bakery. An alcoholic baker. That bakery would clearly be a raging success. Plus John doesn't, y'know, willingly entangle himself with Harry. SO BASICALLY I CAN'T MAKE IT WORK EVEN THOUGH I WANT TO.

That is my sad story for the day. I am sorry for the like minute you lost reading that.

So I am pretty much writing purely fanfic these days. Generally I try not to cross the streams on here or whatever, but, uh, since I have nothing else to offer you, I'm probably going to start posting about that. Or possibly just about my TREMENDOUS WRITERS BLOCK you guys wouldn't believe it. Well, maybe you would. But I went from writing 20,000 words of fandom nonsense in three weeks to writing... nothing. Which is always frustrating. Especially since I just posted a story (this story if you are interested in ridiculous stories about Cupid and Aphrodite failing to matchmake people, specifically Sherlock and John, which maybe you are) that I swore would be updated and finished quickly. Hahaha, I should have known better than that.

Aside from that, though, I can't remember the last time I was in a fandom that made me produce like this. Actually, yes I do, it was HP back in 2005/2006. (Ironically, my arguably most well known Sherlock fics are the HP crossovers. /o\) If we are counting RP stuff along with it, I greatly outproduced myself back then. If we aren't then, holy shit, I have been possessed by some bizarre fandom spirit. I think this is because Sherlock is generally cooler than all other cool things at present. But that is just my opinion, maybe you think other thinks are cooler.

Also, I just bought OmniOutliner, and it may be the greatest thing to happen to me in the last month, which isn't hard, since the last month has been pretty shitty. But it is a generally awesome program that makes plotting long shit (the vast majority of what I write /o\) far less painful. Not painless. Nothing short of a personality transplant would make plotting painless. But it's a help.

So in addition to planning for NaNo this year, I have also apparently decided I am sick of trying to make the dual narrative of Under the Beautiful Star work and have instead, uh, started to write it as a novel told entirely in poems. I lay full blame for this on The Alphabet Conspiracy, which got me interesting in the idea of a novel told through poems in the first place. It is going... okay, it's strange, ngl. ( Some excerpts: )

IDEK how this is going to work out, I really don't. /o\

I FINISHED MY OBB FIC. THE FIRST BIG BANG I HAVE EVER WON. It is sitting at a little over 11,000 words, which makes it the first story over 10,000 words I have finished. And now I am working on a second story that is about the same length and... weird. Really weird. Like a bunch of people maybe just got turned into zombies - except without the mindless hunger for brains or whatever - but you don't know for certain, and the main character just hit and killed Death and his horse with her car. Which could happen to anyone really. That's why you don't cross dark, winding country roads at night. Because women who are possibly hallucinating you might hit you with their car, and then you'll die.

IDEK, guys. IDEK.

So I am mostly doing Camp NaNo right now, but when I start feeling burnt out on the super angsty, plot heavy beast that is my novel, I switch over to my "a land of stupid AUs" folder and work on something else. I was also recently bemoaning my inability to write anything between 500 words and epic and apparently felt the need to prove myself wrong. This is a silly fluffy story because that's what I wanted to write, and it is a space dragon au story because they are the only characters I have any desire to write, ever, so. Here you go, a silly fluffy space dragon au story with cotton candy and boy kissing. Beware for your teeth. Also, the title pretty much says it all.

title: this story has meaning and depth
prompt: character prompt #90, your character has a secret admirer, stayintheroom.
pairing: nicholas/peter
rating: pg, guys. so pg it hurts.
word count: 1311

( Peter and Nicholas were half-way down the boardwalk on a blustery Saturday afternoon, coat collars turned up against the wind, when Peter caught sight of a booth that boasted over-large stuffed animals for anyone who could knock down a pyramid of glass bottles - a game that was undoubtedly rigged, which did not seem to matter to Peter. )

So apparently now I am doing Camp NaNo! I am using my OBB story for it. Completely starting over because my plot decided to do a few backflips, turn three of my four main characters into goddesses or their descendant, and begin transforming the fourth into a Grim Reaper. Also now it is a horrible angst-fest, what do you know! The two MC's who were supposed to be "gotten together" in this story now have already dated and broken up, prior to the story beginning, after one character served as an Army doctor in Afghanistan and ended up being haunted by a comrade-in-arms he saw get mostly blown up (not, like, emotionally - literally) and wound up partially crippled with a shattered psyche. Apparently he decided that his younger boyfriend deserved someone more happy and whole (which is not the bad part) even though these two were like desperately fucking in love with each other (that is the bad part). He'd even bought a ring to propose with. But then I guess he decided breaking his boyfriend's heart would be the better way to go, idk. BASICALLY IT IS A RIDICULOUS ANGST-FEST and then there's a paranormal underworld and the MC discovered his friends are not what they appear to be~ (re: goddesses and their descendant) and then he is a psychopomp! It is good times. It is also the most convoluted thing I have ever written, which is saying something.

HAVE AN EXCERPT:

The flutter of wings. I opened my eyes to the stars stretching high over the sand. Zach was sitting beside me. He was facing away from me, legs crossed Indian-style, hands in his lap, head tilted back.

“Hell of a way to go, Doc, huh?” he said, “Blown to fucking hell. I guess I should have figured. Nice that they give you a choice though. Stay or go. Not that I was going to leave, but it’s nice that they offered.”

“What - “ I pushed myself up grabbing at my shoulder where the bullet had caught me. I felt no pain and when I looked down there was no blood, no wound, no tear in my uniform - if I did not know better I’d say that I had never been shot at all. “Zach, what are you talking about.”

“How I got blown up, mostly,” he said. “Not great conversation, but I’ve had some time to think. And I think that’s really shitty. The fact that I got blown up. I mean, my family is waiting for me back home. My parents don’t have other kids. Shit, they didn’t want me to go, but what did I say? ‘I’m doing it for my country!’ What a bunch of bullshit. Me getting blown up didn’t do anybody any good. I’m just one more asshole who died trying to kill other people. Not that you’d understand, Doc. You were just trying to save people. Probably why you caught the bullet, and I caught the grenade. Universal justice.”

“Zach - “ I said, but all my words died in my throat when he turned to look at me. His face was mangled gore, looking like nothing more than blistering ground beef.

“Don’t worry, Doc,” he said, mouth turned up on one side, as if nothing had changed, only this time his smile was crooked because half of it was burnt away. “I’m not going anywhere. Someone’s got to look after you, right?”

SUSPENSE.

Finally decided on my OBB fic! (I think. God, I've decided on it like four times now at least.) It is currently sitting round about 7000 words. I'm thinking it's going to be somewhere between 25-30,000 before it's finished because apparently I have no setting between 500 words and tl;dr. Granted that's only novella length. But I would just like, one time, for my fic to fall neatly around 10,000 words, when that's all I need.

The story is a space dragon 'verse au - the original au, in fact, before I abandoned it to write a number of increasing stupid other spage dragon au stories. It was just supposed to be rom com but then Nicholas started being haunted by a former comrade in arms he failed to save, and his role as a psychopomp (much like the actual space dragon story) came back into play, and he started having premonition-type dreams about Peter, and now it is like... I don't even know. Weird. But hopefully in a good way! I mean, I think it is in a good way. I'm just hoping other people will, too.

Also, I am 100% doing a director's cut of this story because I loved when people used to do those (it was a real trend for a while there - at least in the communities I frequented - and then people just dropped it) because I think one of those would actually benefit it. Plus I've just always wanted to do one. So there's that.

Although the fact that I actually am doing a fic for OBB probably means I won't finish the lesbian horror story in time for HBB. But I will be happy if I manage to finish just one of them on time. The OBB looks like it has a better chance, over all. So that is what I am doing.

tl;dr YAY BIG BANG.

So basically I have written the most annoyingly formatted scenes in the history of creation. And now I am giving them to you! This is the revamped first novel in the space dragon universe, and in revamping I apparently lost my mind and thought, hey! In the original novel it's half-told through footnotes, because the narrating character is psychic, and the story is two-leveled, I should do that here, but in, like, a style that suits Nikolao!

Ha ha ha ha, what have I created, etc. If it weren't for rich text formatting I would have wept profusely trying to format this. I am madly, deeply, truly in love with the rich text feature. (I should be proposing any day now.) I suddenly understand how people do awesome things with footnotes! Wow!

title: the ghost in my mouth
author: cridecoeur/dextrocardiac
prompt: prompt #173 for stayintheroom and lost colony for parthenon. i, uh, kind of twisted the prompts to my own nefarious ends.
rating: pg-13
pairings: um, this story will eventually be nikolao/pipra, but pipra's like ten in this one. so, basically, none.
warning: subscripts. lots of them. for real.

( There's... really no good quote to take for this. Read on, I guess! )

“The man who mistakes divinity for superstition
has made a fatal mistake."
Nikolao Luchjo

The drumbeats[1] _{(120 beats per minute, rapid, leading through the final stages of dying)} were audible even as we stepped from the drop ship. The night was humid and hot – even after dark there is little escape from the heat, during Amah’s summers – and as Dioscorus stepped from the ship beside me, he grunted in surprise.

“Still not used to it,” he said, when I slanted him a look. “Never been anywhere this hot.”

“You’ve had three years,” I said, “I’d suggest you adjust.”

Dioscorus grunted, again, and walked away without any further reply. I sighed and followed behind him _{(in the distance voices were raised to singing, adding another tone, higher frequency, stimulating the higher mind)} and behind me came Vespera and Venka, Vespera already suffused with white light, Venka shifting to long lean muscle[2], Jejohil Temol _{(54 stretches per hour, mottled, rippling green to hide among the brush).} We had not landed far from the camp, just far enough for the rest of the Tijojil not to be disturbed by our landing. Soon I could clearly make out their shapes, thrown by firelight.

“Vespera,” Dioscorus said, and she nodded and went ahead of us. As she broke from the scrublands, into the circle, cries were raised, before a sudden silence was thrown over them, as Vespera’s innate light soothed them to mind-blankness _{(veritable mass hypnosis, patently unbelievable until I met her) .}

We broke from the shadows and into the circle, passing blank-faced dancers and drummers, to where a man lay _{(breathing thready, weak – we had little time before he came up, soulless and mindless, trapped between worlds, undying).} in the center on a pallet woven of river reeds. Beside him sat a small child, neither obviously male nor female _{(womanly curves at their hips, flatness at chest, leanness in musculature, and delicacy in facial features)} with the soft haze of light about their head that signified one who traveled to Zejohus Mbuol, the Dying Lands, to heal fractured souls.

“Cefus Aru!” I said, shocked into indiscretion[3].

Dioscorus looked at me in a way that said, quite clearly, that I was lucky it was only he and Venka and Vespera who had heard me[4]. I was careful not to apologize, simply turning back to regard the child, taking a deep breath _{(trembling somewhere in my chest).} Their eyes were closed, seeing into another world, but their face was expressive, radiant. I took another, steadier breath.

“I’m going,” I said and hesitated only a moment before crossing the distance and crouching down to sit beside them. I looked at their face a final time _{(trying to memorize features that would, no doubt, change in Zehojus Mbuol, making the attempt rather futile)} before closing my eyes and reaching for my heartbeat and the world behind it.

#

I traveled down the roots of the brush land, through a tunnel of packed-dirt walls and emerged on a red-rock mesa, where above hung the planets and stars _{(overlarge, hanging close, an impossible gravitation had Zehojus Mbuol played by the otherwise unbendable laws of the universe).} Astoo was not immediately visible, and so I called for her, ending on a shrill whistle. A sudden flutter of wings and she was beside me _{(a bird, small in size, feathers riotously purple and red, wing span no more than two hands across)} twittering and dipping her head. She turned once in the air, then darted off, wings fluttering, and I was quick to shift _{(four-legged muzzled, 32 stretches in an hour, pure white, an unsuited predator for the mesa, had my intention been to hunt or hide)} following her.

“Hurry, hurry,” she said, “He’s going to wake up,” and I pressed my lean muscles for all they were worth, stretching long over the mesa, running hard.

We came upon him in the sudden way things happened, here, and I shifted to a halt, claws biting into the dust. He spirit was not old or decrepit like his body had been, but spry with youth, timeless. A child held on to one of his hands, clearly neither boy nor girl, the same Twice-Born who had sat beside him in life _{(features hardly shifted, as if they did not play by the usual rules of World-Walkers).} Beside them sat Jortur _{(four-legged, long-necked, ornately horned, coat the color of rich earth)} watching with an unnerving intensity.

The child blinked up at me, several times, before smiling and swinging the arm they were holding.

“It’s okay,” they said. “He’s better, now. You can take him.”

Astoo circled several times, twittering. “Be quick,” she said, and I shifted again, back to my common form, standing up from where I crouched among the rocks. I closed the distance between us in two strides, only stopping when bare inches separated the spirit and I, looking into his eyes. I set one hand on his cheek, his form cool to the touch, leaning closer so that my lips nearly touched his ear.

“E hepus gosen,” I whispered. “Fummus en, ‘A cefus hepur oc.’” and then I kissed him firmly on the mouth, sealing the words between his lips. He vanished, entirely _{(his spirit for the gates, his next life buried under his skin).} I stepped back, closing my eyes, tipping my head back and breathing out the smoke that filled my lungs.

When I looked down again, the Twice-Born child was watching me through big, blue eyes, smiling. He reached out with the hand that had held the spirit’s, only to take mine, turning it palm-up, and touching a curious finger to the blood-red crystal imbedded in my palm.

“U cefus temol,” they said and then bent down to kiss my palm, directly over the crystal. My body was suddenly filled with such heat, felt as if it had been split so wide open that I crumpled to the ground, one arm across my stomach as if trying to hold in my guts. I gasped, feeling my mind blossoming open, suddenly, thoughts visible, spiraling, written clearly across the air. The child reached out to touch them, smiling wider, then closed their eyes and thought, my name is Pipra, clearly, in my own mind.

The pain vanished, suddenly, leaving only the noise of a fresh link between us, thoughts spiraling around each other, intimate.

“Cefus Aru,” I said and was suddenly flying back, upwards, through a dirt-packed tunnel, along the roots of the brush-land, Pipra beside me, with me, to the Living World in which our bodies waited for us.

So my Dreamwidth anniversary is swiftly approaching. (I can't believe it's been almost two years since I started this journal, how did that even happen.) I am determined to finish something in time to post it on July 20th. So I am taking a poll. I bought paid time specifically so I could do this. So I would love you if you took, like, 5 seconds to check a box. Or multiple boxes. Whatever floats your boat, etc.



Wasn't that fun?

Also I tend to shy away from letting my fandom work and my original work mix, which mostly isn't a problem, seeing as I've written two fandom things in the last two years (I'm not even kidding, two.) But in case anyone wants to see it (I know some of you came here from my fandom journal, so who knows maybe you do), I now have an AO3 account to which I'm slowly moving my fandom work including the 1934857 HP fics I wrote back in the day (seriously, I didn't realize how many I'd written until I went to transfer it), which I never bothered to move to my second fandom journal. As such, most people haven't had the chance to see them before now. (God, what a golden opportunity for you, right?) So, you know. Now you can do that.