paradoxicalrenegade | Recent Entries

(in order for this to make ANY sense whatsoever, you have to listen to ftl arc 104, which is complete; and then go read august's fic(s) that are followups to that. this takes place almost directly after part two so, sorry, you gotta read 20k of fic. boohoo.

anyway annabel in the hotel is a concept i remain obsessed with so here she is again.)

Annabel preferred to stay above the eighteenth floor of the Hotel. It was nothing against Floors particularly, who was fun to hang out with in small doses; but ever since she'd touched souls with the living version of herself it was harder to come into contact with what had become of that House.

She did make an exception, however; between two and four in the morning (or whatever counted for morning in a timeless Hotel) she qualified as Staff, and had access to employee-only zones. Rarely did she take advantage of this loophole in her contract, as more often than not it meant losing what made Annabel to the wind.

However. There were extenuating circumstances.

( keep reading )

ok so last month i wrote two weeks of my ftl characters interacting with each other bc it was fun and i wanted to, and midway through the challenge i got Back Into my mal and ariel feelings and scribbled this down. haven't been able to publish it because it was endgame spoilers, but i can now. don't read this if you're not completely caught up on dumb kids playing hero, even though this actually takes place mid season 3.

Mal was awoken from a half-doze by tiny paws climbing onto his chest.

For a moment, disoriented, he wasn't sure where he was, or when he was, or when he got a cat— but then he remembered. Arizona. 2005. The cat was his little sister.

That was a strange thing to think: "my little sister is a cat.” But, well, stranger things had been happening. Aliens were real and could hurt him. Did, in fact, hurt him. His sister being able to morph into a cat whenever she pleased barely scratched the surface anymore.

( keep reading )

now playing: welly boots - the amazing devil

well, this one's been sitting in my prompt document for literal years. and i wasn't even going in looking for a prompt today, but i passed by it, remembered the conversation that sparked it, and went "huh. i know what to do here."

so this is an alternate twist on something that could have occurred prior to with all your heart, in bad ending luume. not calling this one canon at all. it's just a bonus thought.

It's hard to say that he wakes up when he's still not sure the dead can sleep, but Tseer opens his eyes when something tugs in the center of his chest.

There's been a gaping, snarling hole there since the moment they all came to in Elysium, choking on breaths they no longer needed to take, and Tseer realized there was one missing from their group. When he'd thrown himself against the gates, clawing at the edges to try and open them. When the soulbond in his chest snapped, against the distance between himself and Wyatt, leaving him hollowed out and alone for the first time since the Feywild.

That hole is still there, still empty; but the edges of it feel warm, and he can feel edges now, where they're beginning to scab over and heal.

( keep reading )

now playing: doomsday - murray gold

this is the seventeenth entry in a 31 day microfic "challenge" (self-imposed) i've been doing for oc-tober. most of the other microfics i'm writing are novel backstory, but i looked at this prompt-- that i wrote myself-- and thought "well, there's only one person this could be."

On the thirteenth floor of the hotel is a room locked by three different keys. The night manager has one. Concierge has the second. The third has been missing for an indeterminate amount of time, as the hotel itself is somewhen that Time cannot reach.

None of those locks matter a whit to Annabel Lee.

It isn't a secret that she spends most of her time here. No one tries to stop her. No one says she can't go in. She is unbound from the contract that trapped her with the anomaly on the ground floor and her name is held by a second anomaly she found chainsmoking on the roof. There was never a lock that could keep her out of a room when she was alive, and that certainly won't change now that she's dead and bound to the hotel.

From the hall it appears like any other room, the one four doors down from the elevator with a creaky floorboard just outside. Inside, she sits on a field of pale red grass (not pink, not quite) and folded paper flowers, and lays back to stare at the ceiling, where she can see every moment of her death across every world she has ever been in.

The living cannot comprehend something like this. There is a madness that comes from being contracted to the Queen of the Dead.

A phantom breeze ruffles her hair and the flowers that surround her. The moments of her death aren't exactly visions in the clouds, nor are they seen at all. It's the only word I can use to hope to describe the sensation. As I said, the living cannot comprehend something like this.

If you were to conceive of this as a spiderweb, or perhaps more like a window broken by a baseball or medium-sized rock, then her fall from the top of the lighthouse is the point of impact where everything broke. It doesn't prescribe her other deaths, but it does preclude her soul becoming stuck after every time she dies. Within the memory banks of Corvus. In the House, and the hallways of the Hotel. Woven into the summoning name on the back of the professor’s tongue, and burned into the heart of the Ceaseless Howl.

Here, surrounded by every death she's ever had, Annabel finds every missing, shattered piece of her soul to piece back together. It's the only place left in any world where she truly feels whole.

when i wrote the first half of the soulmate au i COMPLETELY forgot how arc 60 ended, which meant that i churned this out in about an hour and deep in my own feelings. i want them to be happy and in my heart of hearts, they are.

do NOT read this if you've not listened to arc 60. i'm serious. the moment that leads to this fic is best heard unspoiled. also DO read this fic before you read this one for context for the particular soulmate au involved here.

technically this is long enough for ao3 so maybe i'll crosspost it, lol

There's a lot of things Theo has been trying not to think about since the wizard shoved them out the doors of the hotel.

The fact that their colors have been fading, one by one, when they'd kept all of them their whole time in the hotel is one thing they can't avoid.
Neither is the fact that, by all rights, Theo Delaney does not exist in the reality they found themselves in. It isn't the same world as… the version of Andreyes they had been confronted with in their office— if it was, Theo is certain that they would have seen his crew follow after them.

But they are not here. And trying to build an identity when you have no money and no idea of the rules of reality and completely lost your sense of how time flows…

Okay, Theo has been thinking about a lot of things they shouldn't be thinking about.

( Read more... )

now playing: the lost song part 3 - anathema

me: hey this opening scene is really great set-up for a soulmate au where you don't see colors until you see your soulmate for the first time
jade: mk i will pay you to write this
me, with a doc open already: i mean

anyway i have a lot of notes for this one and this isn't going to be the end of this by a long shot but: figured i'd give you this for now. love me some davey/theo. sorry did i say davey? i meant andreyes. sidenote: hey mab, we should talk about the fact that andreyes' cousin is definitely a rumrunner and diamond thief.

set in the same universe as arc 59 (1920s prohibition era) just, yknow, for context.

It happens too quickly, and yet the moment stretches into molasses.

Andreyes is looking out over the crowd of his father’s constituents, fiddling with one of the rings on his fingers. In the early afternoon air, buoyed by Father’s words, the people standing there are swaying like flowers in a field, but that doesn’t mean Andreyes won’t notice any out of place movement. There’s something that catches his eye, and his gaze flicks to it.

A person, lingering at the edge of the crowd, newsboy cap tipped up on their face, one hand caught in their suspenders. There’s something familiar about the look in their eyes… but Andreyes doesn’t have the time to marvel at the softness of their face before a chance moment of eye contact makes him freeze.

( read on )

now playing: chasing cars - snow patrol

i really gotta stop writing shit that's too long for curiouscat.

this is actually pretty universe agnostic which is pretty neat, don't know how i managed it. someone asked for "tavi birthday cake" and i just got really emotional thinking about this kid. context: at some point blackjack gets followed home by a little homeless werepup and ends up going full papa wolf and they just don't leave and that's his kid now. tavi is i think seven in this but i'm not a hundred percent.

it wasn’t unusual to wake up in the apartment with the smell of something delicious baking, but usually it was after a nap, not at… tavi checked the little clock they kept buried in their nest. eight in the morning? dad— ezekiel, was usually at work at eight in the morning, and meridian’s baking was okay but it wasn’t ezekiel’s. he’d be the first to say it.

( keep reading )

now playing: everything - anathema

this week's old curiouscat prompt from last year is "what if we... kissed... in the backseat of your car... ha ha just kidding... unless..? (whatever characters)" and after listening to ftl 40 parts 1&2 and some enlightening discussions with jade, this happened. there's a lot of offscreen miscommunication in this one. reuben/morden, past marlowe/morden and reuben/marlowe.

yes, this is just yennefer and jaskier meeting up after the dragon hunt. what the fuck ever.

this town was too fucking small, reuben thought morosely to themself, as morden bought them another drink. how was it that in all the joints in this godsforsaken city they ran into the absolute last person they ever wanted to see?

"you look like shit, darling," morden noted, sliding the shotglass across the bar. reuben took it and drank the whole thing down in lieu of an answer. "oh, there's no need to rush on my account. if you're really in such a hurry to leave, you could just say."

"fuck off, ferrideh," reuben grumbled. "i'm really not in the mood."

( keep reading )

now playing: 505 - arctic monkeys

had a prompt for an indirect kiss on curiouscat which has been sitting around since last november and i just had an idea for it based on thoughts from this morning. firebrands 'verse, reuben/kari, kari/marlowe, probably future reuben/marlowe, and reuben being a disaster twink. too long for curiouscat so y'all get it instead.

when reuben stumbled down the stairs that morning, following coffee by only their nose, it was to find that no one had done the dishes again.

"shit fuck motherfucker," they muttered, nearly tripping over one of jo's shoes (again) and catching themself on the counter. "goddamnit jo, kari can't be the only competent adult in this relationship." or, you know, whatever. reuben kicked at the kitchen island and hissed as pain lanced up their ankle.

the cabinets yielded no mugs left and one very lonely bowl, which would have to do. not like this day was gonna be worth much anyway, if the pain lancing up reuben's leg was anything to go by; but the coffee would help it not be a wash. and besides, reuben knew kari had a little routine, and they would never admit it aloud, but they hated to interrupt it.

"let him sleep in," reuben muttered, trying to make their coffee machine work without making any noise. "give him a break, i say, and what do i get for it? a janked coffeemaker with no other alternative but to bang the pieces back into place."

"have you tried plugging it in?" asked a pleasant voice, and reuben whirled around.

( keep reading )

now playing: sleeping with a friend - neon trees

MAJOR WARNING: IF YOU HAVE NOT LISTENED TO DUMB KIDS EPISODE 39 AND DON'T WANT SPOILERS DO NOT CLICK THE READ MORE. this missing scene falls immediately after those events and was written prior to the recording of the next session, so no spoilers for unreleased content follow.

general content warning for trauma and implied graphic violence (veiled in the episode)

( last chance turn back now )

now playing: state of my head - shinedown

oh hey since the second set of ftl ttifom episodes came out i guess this tiny snippet that follows the final scene of 24.2 doesn't need to be a secret anymore.

if you haven't listened to arc 24 don't read this fic. you've been warned!

( Read more... )

now playing: diving bell - starset

i was listening to the most recent episode and i said something in the discord about corra and otto getting married a la will and elizabeth in pirates of the caribbean so here. have some end-of-the-world shenanigans (that i may expand on later to include the actual vows) that hopefully will be jossed to hell later (i'm looking at you, bryan)

don't read this if you're not caught up

They've just fought off the first wave of undead mooks when it occurs to Corra that... they might actually not make it out of this alive. She's constantly doing headcounts, making sure no one's down entirely (she's already had to drag Tseer back to his feet once) and she's running dangerously low on spell slots. They're not going to be able to handle much more of this.

Otto's at her back, the natural red of their hair bleeding through at the roots; it always makes her doubletake, afraid they have a head wound, before she remembers. If she's gonna die, she's glad she's dying with them at her side in the middle of trying valiantly to save the world. All that said... she's been trying to use her rage that they're not going to get a wedding to push through, to spur her to try and win, but her resolve is breaking down fast. She's going to be so mad if they die unmarried when they almost died before they got engaged but managed to make it out.

They'll make it out of this. They have to.

( Read more... )

oops only trwih fic hours rn i guess

have some tseer&seshmir in a sort of superhero-into the spiderverse mash-up cause fuck it the possible dynamic here is just way too fucking good to pass up

Tseer lands on top of the streetlamp a little harder than he would have liked, making the whole thing wobble. Holding his breath and his wings very still, he waits until it stops moving before he relaxes his perch, letting his wings droop.

Time to take stock of the carnage. There's a couple Alarms going off in the distance, and his own head is still ringing with the force of a Thunderwave he got caught in. A bunch of his feathers are out of place, and his shoulder feels a little misaligned.

Otherwise, no lasting damage.

He's about reaching up to tug off his mask when he hears footsteps and a soft voice below him say, "Blue Darter, huh?"

Oh no.

( Read more... )

hey guys hope y'all are ready for the feels. i have a bad habit of writing my endings before my beginnings and this is no different. apart from the fact that i'm actually posting this before i write the beginning.

whatever, man.

this is less tessa/ai but the sentiments are there. very tseer&tessa though. i love them. and how much they love each other. also hints of tseer/[redacted] (so don't read if you're not past firebird sweet) and seshmir&tseer because i'm PREDICTABLE.

Tessa wakes up to a banging on her door and the sounds of klaxons blaring. Her nerves instantly hit high alert and she bolts to the door, slamming directly into it before she remembers she has to open it first.

"Honey?" calls a groggy voice behind her, and she dimly remembers Ai falling asleep in her bed as she wrestles with the lock on her door.

"Tessa!" It's Corra on the other side. "Tessa, is Ai with you? We need Competence, there's major activity at the Breach and we need everyone we can get."

"She's here." Fear grips Tessa and her hand slips on the doorknob. "We haven't had major activity in a long time, I thought--,"

She finally gets the door open and stares at Corra. Her hair is wild, her eyes huge behind glasses, and she looks more freaked out than Tessa's seen her since Tseer disappeared, or even before.

"Come on," Corra says. "There isn't even time to suit up, we gotta get out there."

Heart in her throat, Tessa turns to look at Ai behind her. Ai's already thrown her jacket over her pajamas and tugging her boots on. Tessa doesn't want her to go. She can't stop her.

She understands how Corra feels now, watching Otto leave.

( Read more... )

i know this says day 16 i was supposed to write this last week and didn't so here y'all get it now whatever.

day 16: tessa/ai + the taste of blood on your tongue + pacific rim au

tw: descriptions of anxiety attacks, the aftermath of mortal combat with a giant eldritch abomination

Tessa doesn't really remember leaving medical. She must have, since she knows Orron and Corra kicked her out once Tseer woke up to run their tests, but she swore she was only waiting outside.

But-- no, here she is, on the floor outside her and Tseer's room, hands open and shaking in front of her. How did she get here?

( Read more... )

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

mood: distressed

remember when i said i'd post some more of that pacific rim au someday. well apparently that day is today.

what's going on here you might ask? well tseer and wyatt ended up drifting with each other because wyatt's usual partner got injured, and they have fallen through the breach and are missing, possibly dead. THAT will be something i'll write likely after february is over because it's less shippy and more plotty

femslash february day 4: tessa/ai + under the moon + pacific rim au

Tessa finds it difficult to sleep after nights in the Drift. It isn't an uncommon side effect-- she's pretty sure Wyatt deals with it too-- but it was terribly inconvenient when all she wanted to do after a long battle was sleep and she couldn't.

In the early days she'd go for wanders around the Dome, finding nooks and crannies and hidden spots to tuck herself into for a little while. Her favorite was the roof, where she could sit and watch the few stars she could see twinkle like the world outside wasn't paying attention to what was going on in Luume.

But after a particularly harrowing drop where they'd both chased the RABIT and then watched Eldritch Blast disappear under the waves, Tseer had been so shaky and upset that he'd asked Tessa to stay with him and they'd ended up shoved into her tiny bed together, his wings wrapped around her protectively as they shared nightmares of their friends dying.

That had become their post-drop ritual. And Tessa had found her insomnia slipped away as she curled up with her partner, able to sleep with the one person who completely, totally got it.

All that's useless with Tseer fucking gone, though.

( Read more... )

god this was ALMOST long enough to post to ao3. maybe someday it will be a whole thing, but not today.

femslash february day 1: sparks fly + tessa/ai + pacific rim au. (never ever say i'm not on my bullshit.)

Tessa tries to look stern as she stands over Ena and Jasmal, but judging by how Otto and Corra are snorting at her from their place on the bench she's not being very successful. "You need better focus," she tells them. "You'll only end up chasing the rabbit if you goof off like this. It's serious business, piloting a Jaeger."

Out of the corner of her eye she sees Otto balancing on the seat of the bench posing dramatically like they're on one of the Shatterdome's posters and she sighs, trying to hide a smile.

( Read more... )

okay so here's the thing... a couple years ago i started talking about some alien characters of mine on tumblr, and a couple of folks got pretty attached to them and then i got pretty attached to them. and then i got writer's block and graduated college and started playing games more often than not so i set that project aside.

and then dora decided to make a character that was basically an expy of an older noble character they'd been playing in an rp group we were both in and i was like hey... what if i made our favorite silly crack pairing canon by pairing your stuffy noble with my space pirate captain?

and the rest is history.

this is canon for that story but it's not going to be IN the story proper. it's just sort of a teaser for what's to come, since i'm going to write the main story... eventually. florence/jethro and the first conversation they get to have in private after florence comes onboard the altair.

Being on the Altair was... chaos, to say the least. Even in the days when Victoria had been in command of the fleet things were done in orderly fashions, with regiments and schedules and all sorts of other things. Jethro's crew was... nothing like orderly.

Florence found themself tripping over weapon parts nearly every other day, because she'd holed up in an airlock to clean her weapons. They passed the cockpit and found Elila in conversation with seemingly no one, laughing at jokes only she could hear. Winona always stared with her huge eyes, even once Florence had passed her by. And Percy... well. Percy was half human. That was only the tip of the iceberg of weirdness that was Percy.

Varira was nice enough. And besides, Florence wasn't here to take charge of this fleet. Nor were they here to be a part of this fleet. This was a favor. Just a ride to Leminn Prime. Nothing more.

Even if... if Jethro was here.

( Read more... )

i resurfaced from a frantic week of trying to finish my penumbra minibang fic (which i did, hooray) to remember that february is in like, a week and a half? which means FEMSLASH! FEBRUARY! IS COMING!

truth be told i do Not Have Many Femslash Pairings, which is just like, super fucking sad. but it does mean i'm gonna end up writing just a fuckload of jacqui/aria or, if nothing else, a couple merril/max pieces.

ANYWAY i decided to make myself a little prompt list so i'd have Something that would interest me for the month. i'm not gonna end up doing all of these because uhhhhhh one step at a time, self, but i figured i would dump the list here if anyone Else wants jumping off points for feb.

every day has three prompts related somewhat to each other. every other prompt is a janelle monae lyric because i'm just that person i guess. you dont gotta use all three prompts i just included them incase something in particular struck your fancy.

if you use my list send me a DM or @ me on twitter so i can see what you write!

( click here for prompts )

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
		1	2	3	4	5
6	7	8	9	10	11	12
13	14	15	16	17	18	19
20	21	22	23	24	25	26
27	28	29	30	31

still don't have a good title

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ftl february BONUS: mal and ariel - i love you, they said. i love you.

doomsday

(17) DOOMED TIMELINE

be still my heart, i'm only a moment away

can you see what i see?

in endless ways

not shy of a spark

this is trouble, yeah, this is trouble

reckless (ariel, in the aftermath)

to sleep, perchance to dream

if it's my last chance to say it

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