KingsHighway

All Fics will eventually be posted in an anthology collection! I will probably backlog a couple fics to post all at once, and then from there post as I write them.

**Please Note:** If I receive more than… 2 of these, I won’t be able to guarantee them all or do them in order. HOWEVER, I kinda want to set a goal for myself to complete one every week or two, so submit, and don’t come at me if I write it months later.

**Submissions should be received in the Ask box so that I may respond to them with the link to the fic, making it clickable! Please submit as many as you like!** - Anon or Non-Anon asks allowed, however if you are going to do it on Anon, please consider giving yourself a codename or signing off with an emoji unique to you or something, I will be unlikely to prioritize anon asks if I think there’s a chance I’m accidentally doing the same person back to back to back. (This also means, if you don’t have an identifier and only submit one, you’re likely to be passed over out of fear you’re the same person as the others…) - I am going to try and intentionally stagger ships, people I write for, etc. to not repeat myself back to back.

All submissions can be long, or short - be wordy, be precise, your call. Please note some things:

Titles are completely optional, but for me they’re often contributing factors into why I click a fic, so I wanted to give you the option of putting something you like in there.

Ships/Tags: You can include as many as you want, but don’t be a little shit and tag contradictory things or stuff you know won’t make sense for a <6k one shot. (Slowburn is out, unfortunately!)

Rating: M, T, G - this one is also optional, but I know it does influence whether a lot of people open a fic, so go ahead and specify!

Synopsis: must be written like you’re writing the description of a fic you’re about to click publish on. Non-optional formatting. You may not include any other details about the plot beyond the synopsis and what you’ve tagged.

Submission Format

Title: (Optional)

Rating: (Optional, M, T, G)

Ships:

Tags:

Synopsis:

I am willing to consider pretty much any submission, part of the game of this is to stretch out of my comfort zone a bit. However, please do not toss me rarepair ships just for the sake of “seeing how it goes,” my enjoyment out of this will come from being able to provide a fic for someone that they actually wanted to read. If you truly love a hyperspecific, obscure rarepair - go ahead! But please submit ships that you genuinely wish to read about.

In fact, in general, please submit things that you genuinely wish to read about. I will enjoy myself more that way.

Whitelisted subjects are not required, and in fact barely mean anything. It’s just a couple of points towards stuff that I’ve been wanting to write myself and maybe am more inclined towards. But I almost didn’t include it because it really won’t factor in so much as to what I choose to write. As for the blacklist, it’s just stuff I’m not comfortable with that I need to say just to cover my basis. And for the record, if any of the blacklisted ships come up within a polycule… I probably don’t like that polycule either. Or will write it without ever addressing that corner of the ‘cule :’)

Whitelisted Ships/Tags

DaiSuga, UshiTen, IwaOi, AranKita

Canon compliance concepts

Happy Ending, Fluff, Comedy

Blacklisted Ships/Tags

Crossover concepts with other media. (Unless you know it is something I have watched to completion and could manage.)

Dark Fiction Themes - yandere concepts where ships hurt/maim/kill each other, or otherwise fetishistic violence against the characters. Ideally you’ve read my work before and know I will do a lot of violence against a character, this is specifically blacklisting the torture-porn esq nature of some dark fiction themes.

KuroTsukki, KenHina, OiSuga, OiKage, TeruYama, AtsuHina, TenSemi

So few characters, in general, are allowed to wholesale suck and still be regarding generally well. And I’m not talking about morally grey uwu shadow daddies, I mean like just being a generally bad and unlikable person - to clarify, Atsumu’s “squealing pigs” comment at the cheering girls is an unforgivable sin in my eyes, and I do not think his cringe-ass pre-serve routine means he’s allowed to think of women that way. However, he is a teenage boy, and I do believe that most teenage boys think about women that way. And in that vein, I think the character he is, of someone who is unpleasant, and unlikable (which is canon, by the way, Osamu has a whole plot point about it, because their teams always like him better and he has to go out of his way to make sure Atsumu isn’t always discluded) is wholly necessary to the story and generally improves the narrative as a whole. 

Given he fact that Kageyama is likable, that they go all out on giving you the Tobio sob story, and you learn about his anxieties and how sweet he used to be and how it’s really not all his fault, Oikawa way over reacted! He wasn’t the tyrant king, he was a little boy :((((((((((( - having Atsumu be there as a person who sucks and generally is bad to be around but is just so fucking good at what he doesn’t you can’t get rid of him not only foils Kageyama’s storylines (and Oikawa’s, for that matter, and also Tsukki’s) to stop it from feeling like hack cliches (oh, of course the evil villain has a tragic backstory!) but it adds some balance to the character archetypes. Someone that you can point to and go “no, sometimes a naturally gifted, beautiful motherfucker, is just, in fact, a downright tool.” 

I do have a soft spot for characters who are bitterly unpleasant in some way. I mean, I have the same joy for Tendou for much the same reason. But I know a lot of people will be banging on their prison walls wanting to state the obvious, and for that reason, I will continue. 

Atsumu’s relationship to his brother makes him being a tool and a dick and a misogynist incredibly compelling. His deep respect and borderline adoration for Kita makes him being a tool and a fick and a misogynist incredibly compelling. His character having these moments of pure, wonderful connection to other characters makes those nasty character traits mean something. I don’t want all of haikyuu relationships to be soul-bonded found family, sometimes, it’s Kita whacking Atsumu as hard as he can on the back of the head because Atsumu said something awful and he won’t allow that in his household. And sometimes that’s just as profound as whatever fucking DNA-sharing romance Kageyama and Hinata had going on. The ability for Atsumu to then say or do something that makes Kita respond in awe and appreciation is the point of a character like him, and what makes him, to me, someone I find interesting or want to use in my stories. I wouldn’t call him a “complex character” in the way you’d typically see people throw around, but I would say he creates complex dynamics when he’s in the room. Kita finding him moronically simple-minded, and still standing on the sidelines monologuing about the privilege of being invited to be in his presence is fucking incredible.

Secondly, honestly, I REALLY struggled to come up with movies that have left a lasting impact on me. Truthfully, and perhaps shamefully, I am not really a “movie” person. So when I try to think of comfort movies or movies I return to, time and time again, I don’t really have an answer. In an unrelated post, I recently brought up Avengers Endgame, which does contain one of my all-time favourite movie moments, which is the scene of Captain America facing down the entire army along, but I would be incredibly insincere to try and claim that as my “favourite” movie. Related, I think the Winter Soldier in one of the movies I’ve rewatched the most out of any film (barring “Miss Congeniality”) but my love of the Winter Soldier movie has more to do with my obsession with Bucky and less to do with the movie. 

For context on that Miss Congeniality joke, when I was 12 I had the flu, and my mother let me stay home from school alone, so to entertain me she gave me a portable DVD player, and all the movies we had in the house, which, since we were not a movie family, amounted to about 4 options, one of which was Sandra Bullock’s “Miss Congeniality.” I then proceeded to watch said movie about 4 times over the course of the day between vomiting my stomach out. NOW, inexplicably, whenever I have the flu - and only the flu, I have to be actively throwing up - I experience a sense of intense desire and urgency to watch Miss Congeniality, and need to have it up on my computer screen to feel settled. For the record, I know that this isn’t my favourite movie because I have tried to watch it while healthy, and I find it entirely underwhelming and boring. But if I have a stomach flu, then this is my favourite movie. Fortunately (Unfortunately?) for me, I have a very strong immune system and haven’t had a stomach flu in probably half a decade at least. 

My favourite movies, as I could remember them, are probably “9” the movie about the little sackboy puppets, and “Howl’s Moving Castle,” because obviously. 

But where I lack in movie experience, the answer you’re looking for is found in television shows. I was a TV girlie growing up, my Dad often making a day of binging 2-3 episodes of whatever show of the season we were watching. And as a result, I think they have left a greater impact on me. Picking a “Favourite” TV show is probably just as hard as picking a favourite movie, but I do have a few answers. 

First, the one I always have to say, because it owns a piece of my heart I can never return: Doctor Who. Now I know, here on the great Tumblr.org, saying you “like” Doctor Who is unsurprisingly and perhaps commonplace. But I should have you know that I’m SPECIAL about it, because I liked Doctor Who without knowing what Tumblr was, my dad introduced me to the show, and I spent all of my elementary school years - read, literally 7, 8, 9 years old - running around telling people about the Weeping Angels and the Daleks and the sound of drums. So I was no fairweather fan of the show, I ride or DIE this shit, especially the earlier seasons of the revival. And I think, if you have season earlier seasons, Eccleston through Smith, you WILL see the impact it had on my writing. This impact is formulated deeper down, in the structure and themes of the show. A main character, who above all else refuses to give up on humanity? Character deaths that are not meaningless shock value, but deeply mourned, every civilian lost a heavy, emotional weight on the heroes? Goodness being a fundamental necessity of society? Kindness being your greatest strength? Perseverance, hope, above all else? Fucking hell, don’t ever let the internet convince you that a show has to be good to be good. Doctor Who is a MESS of shitty, insane early 2000s CGI, questionable dialogue and cringe reveals, but by god when you get Rory Williams willing to break time and space to save the doppelgangar of his wife after he had already saved the original because there is no version of her that he would not burn down Heaven for having to be held back screaming by the Doctor? No show comes close. 

If you haven’t watched Doctor Who, man, I’d say give it a shot but you really have to be willing to deal with some whack ass visual effects. 

What else has affected my writing? 

Maggie Stiefvater’s “The Raven Cycle” is probably the piece of media that has single handedly changed my writing the most. Is this book series “good?” I couldn’t tell you. I can remember almost nothing about the plot except a man becomes a forest and a corpse of a welsh king is in america for some reason and Gansey doesn’t stop eating mint leaves but THAT’S NOT THE POINT. Also, no, I haven’t read the dreamer sequels, I don’t have time for that shit, that’s not the point either. I’m going to try and give a more serious review of this series now to explain why it changed me so much. 

1. There is not a SINGLE character in this series that is not vital to the plot of the books. You might be inclined to go “Well there must be side characters or supporting characters or-” NO. You get introduced to 4 Raven boys, and all four of them have completely different and vitally important paths to play. No secondary love interest who conveniently stops coming around when it’s no longer necessary. Blue (the Main Character) has a ridiculously big family, and all of the named family members play a role in the story. You don’t think they will, but they do. There is NO set of characters that give you the “well, those probably could have just been one person” thing. And EVERY time I write, specifically original work, I think of the Raven Cycle, and really try and focus on making sure each character is truly important to the plot, and cut them if they’re not. I wanna write characters as razor sharp and perfectly balanced as these books. They’re also all so unique and distinct, and have such different ways of speaking, like… my god I could go on. 

2. Richard Campbell Gansey III is the main love interest and the singular best boy. Also, he’s a rich kid, like a stinking rich kid, who DOESN’T HATE BEING RICH. When I tell you this was mindblowing to teenage me. I am so used to the pauper narrative, of “oh, the poor may be in poverty, but they have TRUE happiness, each other” that seeing a character that was a good person, an interesting character, and also like “no yeah I think I’ll take advantage of my money and I want to be rich because this is way better” was so interesting and refreshing, and it really REALLY changed the way I write character “voices” in that sometimes “flaws” as we see them from our perspectives are actually benign character traits. Allowing a rich kid to just be a rich kid, and like it, is a MASSIVE way to differentiate him from, say, the rich kids who are hiding it and don’t like to talk about it (Ronan) or the kids who have nothing, and resent the rich for it (Blue, Adam), or whatever the fuck Noah had going on. In the same way, there is a scene with a girl in a hot orange bikini (iykyk) that absolutely stuns the fuck out of all the women-attracted people in that scene to the point of stupidity - and that scene also managed to single handedly change how I write. Because I found it relatively cringe, that the main love interest, the “good characters” would so obviously ogle a woman in a bikini, but immediately I realized that is part of what made point #1 so immersive, how these characters NEVER stop being themselves, even when that leads them to being inconvenient, or “bad” in a meta sense. Ie, sometimes your characters do things that aren’t “morally grey!” but “wow I thats embarrassing that they did that” and you HAVE TO LET THEM because that’s how they feel real. Characters won’t stop being themselves when it becomes cringe.

I also HAVE to mention what might be my modern favourite television show, which isn’t so much of something that’s “changed” how I write, but definitely represents the type of writing I strive for, and that’s “The Magicians.” - Technically, it’s based on a book series. But I don’t care, it deviates quite a bit from the book, though supposedly “the book is better” but truthfully I can’t say. The TV show, however, is 5 perfect seasons of some of the best character work and funniest shit ever. A lot of people will say the 5th season isn’t as good, and I can see why people would say that, but I simply disagree. This show has some of the funniest, wittiest, sharpest dialogue and editing I have ever seen in a show, and when I tell you, I would have and still would sell my soul for Quentin Coldwater to be happy, I mean it. That is my boy, that is my son, he has severe clinical depression, and I want to keep him wrapped in a blanket for all of time. Also, I can’t say it because it would literally spoil 4 seasons of build up and if you haven’t watched this show you NEED TO, but FUCK, the reveal of the name of the type of magic Quentin can do, combined with the whole narrative and the way the story is framed makes me SOB. 

If you DON’T KNOW, “The Magicians” is a fantasy drama satirizing stories like the Chronicles of Narnia (specifically that one) though there’s a little bit of Harry Potter in that they’re going to magical school - tho it’s technically a magical university so that’s fun. It follows Quentin discovering that magic is real, and using his hyper nerd knowledge from his favourite middle grade book series to save the world! HOWEVER, I am going to trigger warning this one because, not so much in the first season, but later on it deals HEAVILY with rape and sexual assault, suicide, even showing some of the assaults and the attempts, and there’s a lot of animal and human mutilation, and honestly I get that it might become too much for some people, but it’s not handled badly, I’ve literally never seen anyone complain about the way these topics are handled. It’s just graphic and I don’t want to trick someone into watching something that hurts them, just because I like it. It’s also just an incredibly horny show. Lots of sex jokes. But also all the characters are like 24 so what did you expect? But if you think it’s something you’ll like, this show is worth every single minute. 

And last but not least, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, the 2016 version, is some of the funniest shit I have ever seen, and I love with all my heart and soul, HOWEVER, this one got canceled early, so the second season ends on a cliff hanger, and because this show is a massive kaleidoscope of nonsense, literally it’s impossible to know what would have happened. Like most shows you can extrapolate, but this one was truly nothing. It’s also apparently “not a good adaptation of Dirk Gently” because they really changed a bit, but it’s got fucking Elijah Wood in it, and it’s so funny. Like tears in my eyes, so funny. 

I think that just about covers it… Doctor Who, the Raven Cycle, Magicians, Dirk Gently… Oh, a rapidfire session on other books I love: the Skulduggery Pleasant Series (also whip-sharp writing - I’m beginning to realize I’m a big fan of character work and dialogue specifically for my favs hehe) - the Artemis Fowl series, I ADORED Ender’s Game the book and think it’s the only book that NEEDS to be read before you watch the movie. The book’s ending is picture perfect, and if you’ve somehow escaped without knowing what the “twist” at the end is, you have a beautiful gift - go read Ender’s Game NOW. Classic High School read 1984 was something I greatly enjoyed as well - OH, and if you haven’t read “Iron Widow,” I think this is one of the only books tiktok has ever pushed that is 100% worth the hype. I’m worried a little bit for the author, because the depiction of a woman’s rage against society in this book is so raw and visceral and keeps you so entangled in the story that I hope she’s getting the therapy she needs. And it’s polyamory! She gets both boys and also her boys get each other. (this isn’t a spoiler, it’s like 90% of the marketing for the book.) Iron Widow was the last book I read that I really, really devoured. It’s sequel is sitting on my shelf, I haven’t read it yet 😅 AND ALSO, I’m going to include this book because it is a book that I fucking love, but you HAVE to give me the benefit of the doubt, because saying “I really liked one of Ayn Rand’s books” seems like an insane pivot on my politics, but “We The Living” was her FIRST book, and although it still has a lot of pro-capitalist messaging, it was from before she went cuckoo for coco puffs, and the pro-captialism is more about being anti-soviet-dictatorship, and it really is more bearable, I originally had to read it for a class but found it way more enjoyable than expected. If you can handle a bit of complicated politics in your reading, I do recommend this one. I do NOT, however, recommend Atlas Shrugged or the Fountainhead. Those were written AFTER she went crazy, and should be ignored. But goddamn, her prose is amazing, even if the contents are iffy. 

Now as a finale, I’ll give an honorary mention to a book that genuinely changed how I perceive the world, but it’s not a fiction book, so it’s probably not what you were looking for. But for any history lovers, or non-fiction readers, or anyone who wants to give it a shot, “Pox Americana” by Elizabeth A. Fenn is one of my favourite books. It details the role of Smallpox in the inception of America as a new country, and her main thesis of Smallpox being one of the most important players in America’s birth, as if not more important that the British, the Revolution, and the land itself, truly changed how I think about the way history is remembered, and what brings change, and how history is far, far more than just the actions of individuals. But, it is an upper level history dissertation, so like. I don’t expect anyone to read this one I just wanted to talk about it, because it’s texts like this that change how I write the most, because they influence my worldview, and deeply affect my worldbuilding, by helping internalize how multifaceted something like “a war for independence" can really be, and really strengthens the worlds I create and gives them more meaning and depth.