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"Where the fox resides"

Kitsune Redacted my beloved

fountain in italy

14 Days With You, but in Wonderland ft. my MC

This is based on @ruru-me au!!

A writer friend told me something that broke my heart a little bit today; they're going to quit publishing their fanfic.

My instant thought was that they had been trolled or attacked or that something terrible had happened in their life because this person is so passionate about their writing. It wasn't any of that. Engagement with their works has been going down, as it has for many of us. Comments are like gold dust a lot of the time, and just looking through the historical comment counts on old fics on ao3 demonstrates this trend very clearly. It was not simply the comments dropping off which caused them to decide to stop posting, however.

My friend came across a discord server for their fandom (I should point out here that their fandom interest and mine diverged a couple of years ago, we stay in touch but don't currently read each other's posts because I'm not into their fandom and they would rather gouge their eyes out with a wooden spoon than read anything Star Wars) and specifically to share fic in that fandom. They joined, because we all love a good fic rec, only to discover that their latest multichapter fic, which has almost no comments and very few kudos, is being hotly discussed in this server as one of the best stories ever. Not one of these people has bothered to say this to them on the fic. When they asked, none of participants could see the point in telling the author of the fic they apparently loved so much that they love it.

This discovery has absolutely destroyed my friend's love of sharing fic. They share because they love seeing other people's enjoyment, and fic writers do that through comments and kudos/reblogs/likes because we don't get paid. There is no literary critic writing a blog post/article about how amazing the story is for us to copy and keep/frame. There is no money from royalties. All we have are the words of the people reading our works.

Those people on that server could have taken five minutes of the time they spent gushing about how amazing my friend's story was to other people and used it to tell the one person guaranteed to want to hear that praise how much they loved it. They could have taken a moment to express their opinion to the person who spent hours upon hours plotting, writing, editing, and posting those chapters. Instead, they deprived my friend of thing that keeps them sharing their writing, and in the process have killed their love of it. My friend now feels used and unmotivated.

I won't be sharing a link to their fic, they said I could share their experience but not their identity. I know they plan to post one final chapter. I know they intend to express their hurt at being excluded from the praise for the thing they created, and I know they intend to announce that as a consequence they will not be posting for a long while, if at all.

So please, I beg you, don't hide your love of a story from the writer. It's just about the only thing we have.

The candles at the points of the pentagram flickered. A demon appeared.

"Do you do Black Friday deals?" the conjuror said.

"What?"

"Like, unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures, for less than my soul?"

"Actually, it was five souls, but today it's only one."

"Oh? That's cheap!"

Rendacted my beloved :))

Tall guy? Wearing a dark slasher hoodie? Probably into either alt fashion or bondage with the crazy amount of belts and loops wrapped around his leg??

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( i didn't draw his belts around his leg lol 😆 I can't draw clothes for the life o me. )

Unhinged Angel

Short inspired by a fanart in the 14dwy discord server :3

mdni !! / 14 days with you / cws in tags / Ren belongs to @14dayswithyou

Angel calmly leads the man into the alleyway. He had challenged them to a fight after all, and though Ren had done his best to de-escalate the situation, the man had just turned on him instead.

That’s what made Angel snap.

Day in, day out, they dealt with disgruntled customers yelling at them about something or another as though Angel had personally gone out of their way to ruin this person’s life. They were used to it by now. Not happy, but desensitized, numb.

But when that man turned on Ren and started calling him vile, filthy names, mocking him for standing up for Angel, something inside them broke. Their face changed from an empty stare to widened eyes and a tight smile.

And that brought the unlikely group here. A clearly nervous Ren, his hands clenched into shaking fists and a wide-eyed, concerned look on his face. An eerily calm Angel, leading a fuming man deeper into the alley, away from witnesses, though he was too angry to realize the danger. It isn’t until Angel turns around, a dead look in their eyes and their smile nowhere to be seen that he finally pauses. But it was already too late.

Angel makes eye contact with Ren, indicating for him to leave with a tilt of their head. He wants to do anything other than leave his Angel alone right now, but figures he would be more use as [Redacted], so he reluctantly leaves, mumbling something about calling for help. Angel carefully watches them leave before they refocus on the man. He was now pushing up his sleeves, posturing for a fight. Before he even gets a chance to advance, Angel reveals a pistol, aiming and pulling the trigger without even a flinch.

It takes the man a moment to react, staring for a split second before crumpling with a howl, grabbing at his leg in pain. Angel calmly cocks the gun, and aims once more, hitting his right arm this time. Rolling their eyes at the man’s screams, they unravel the scarf from around his neck and shove the end into his mouth, causing him to gag and choke on the fabric.

Without a change in expression, Angel cocks the gun one more time, regarding the man beneath them. He was openly sobbing now, though his cries were muffled by his own scarf. He writhed around, making sounds and gestures adjacent to pleas of mercy. Before he could crawl too far away, Angel pinned him with a shoe on his back.

They shake their head exasperatedly, “You know… I don’t care about you. I don’t care about much of anyone, including myself. But you know who I do care about?” They pause before answering their own question, clearly not expecting an answer from the sniveling man, “Ren. And you know what happens when you threaten the last fucking thing someone cares about when they have nothing left to lose?”

Angel chuckles, their tone devoid of humor, “Ah, but I suppose it’s too late for you to do anything with that information, isn’t it?”

They straighten, stepping off the man and watching as he futilely resumes his desperate crawl before ending it with a final smoking round from the gun into the back of his head. Blood splattered all across the alleyway and onto Angel’s skin, blemishing it with a dark shade of red.

“A- Angel?”

Angel’s head whips up, meeting a pair of baby blue eyes. There Ren stood, outlined in light like an angel, a hand obscuring the lower half of his face. His eyes were wide, shocked, horrified; no doubt at the scene that lay before him.

Angel’s impassive exterior melts into a look of panic, “W- Wait. No- Ren, it isn’t- It was self defense I swear!” They click the safety on before tossing the gun away and opening their hands in innocence, advancing on Ren as they did so.

Inexplicably, instead of drawing back away from them, he stumbles forward, eyes flicking between Angel and the man on the ground, motionless. Angel pauses maybe ten feet away, unsure of what to say and wary of the wide-eyed look Ren still carried.

Ren mumbles between his fingers, still treading towards them, “Angel… I never thought… I didn’t know you would do something like this…”

Angel’s eyes tear up at his words, “Ren please, I didn’t mean to, I really didn’t! Please just- just don’t… don’t leave me…” Their words trail off and they look down, unable to meet Ren’s eyes that were always filled with such innocence.

Or at least, that’s what they had thought. But as Ren’s hand slips from his own face to cup theirs, Angel sees something entirely unexpected. He was smiling. A deranged kind of smile that they would have been wary of before, but now, they lean into his open palm, accepting him fully and practically begging with their eyes for him to do the same.

Luckily, he needed no convincing as his breaths were shaky, catching in his throat as he looked at them with the most intense eyes they had ever seen. Love-struck through and through, as though Angel was the only thing that kept the sun rising and falling. His state of mind was clear as day when he tugged them in closer, his hands trembling with excitement and his hold reigned in just enough to not inflict pain.

Ren leans down, burying his face into Angel’s neck with a helpless laugh, “Oh, my Angel.”

His gaze locks on to the unmoving body behind his love, his smile growing hopeful in a sinister way as he murmurs, “I’m not going anywhere.”