just like a spell that won’t break

Sometimes, you found yourself thinking back to your picturesque life in Soul Society before your Captain, Tosen, had defected.

He had left you and Shuhei to pick up the pieces of the Ninth Division, but you found yourself picking up pieces of Shuhei, too, as your relationship fell apart. So, you ran. You ran, and you took refuge in the comfort of the World of the Living.

Sometimes, you wished you could return to those halcyon days.

Pairing(s): Hitsugaya Toshiro x Reader Genre: Fluff, angst, friends-to-lovers, slow burn Warning(s): Eventual smut, character death, blood, violence A/N: I’ve been working on this fic on and off for just over three years now, and I’m slowly putting it all together. I hold it pretty close to my heart because I actually love some of the scenes that I’ve written for later chapters, and I’ve always wanted to write a slow burn Toshiro fic, hehe. I also worked super hard on making this banner bc I had to make it transparent myself and it took literally forever LOL. 

Sometimes, you found yourself thinking back to your picturesque life in Soul Society before your Captain, Tosen, had defected.

He had left you and Shuhei to pick up the pieces of the Ninth Division, but you found yourself picking up pieces of Shuhei, too, as your relationship fell apart. So, you ran. You ran, and you took refuge in the comfort of the World of the Living.

Sometimes, you wished you could return to those halcyon days.

Pairing(s): Hitsugaya Toshiro x Reader Genre: Fluff, angst, friends-to-lovers, slow burn Warning(s): Eventual smut, character death, blood, violence A/N: I’ve been working on this fic on and off for just over three years now, and I’m slowly putting it all together. I hold it pretty close to my heart because I actually love some of the scenes that I’ve written for later chapters, and I’ve always wanted to write a slow burn Toshiro fic, hehe. I also worked super hard on making this banner bc I had to make it transparent myself and it took literally forever LOL. 

You’ve known Bakugou your whole life. He’s your person, and you’ve always believed you were his.

So what happens when you realize that your person isn’t who you thought they were? 

Or— 

A story of how timing is everything.

Pairing(s): Bakugou Katsuki x Reader, Todoroki Shouto x Reader Genre: Fluff, angst, friends-to-lovers, childhood friends, slow burn Warning(s): N/A A/N: I’ve had this document sitting on my computer for years with just the lines, “Bakugo gets into UA with his childhood best friend and has to own up to who he’s been when she’s not around.”

Sometimes, you found yourself thinking back to your picturesque life in Soul Society before your Captain, Tosen, had defected.

He had left you and Shuhei to pick up the pieces of the Ninth Division, but you found yourself picking up pieces of Shuhei, too, as your relationship fell apart. So, you ran. You ran, and you took refuge in the comfort of the World of the Living.

Sometimes, you wished you could return to those halcyon days.

Pairing(s): Hitsugaya Toshiro x Reader Genre: Fluff, angst, friends-to-lovers, slow burn Warning(s): Eventual smut, character death, blood, violence A/N: I’ve been working on this fic on and off for just over three years now, and I’m slowly putting it all together. I hold it pretty close to my heart because I actually love some of the scenes that I’ve written for later chapters, and I’ve always wanted to write a slow burn Toshiro fic, hehe. I also worked super hard on making this banner bc I had to make it transparent myself and it took literally forever LOL. 

Sometimes, you found yourself thinking back to your picturesque life in Soul Society before your Captain, Tosen, had defected.

He had left you and Shuhei to pick up the pieces of the Ninth Division, but you found yourself picking up pieces of Shuhei, too, as your relationship fell apart. So, you ran. You ran, and you took refuge in the comfort of the World of the Living.

Sometimes, you wished you could return to those halcyon days.

Pairing(s): Hitsugaya Toshiro x Reader Genre: Fluff, angst, friends-to-lovers, slow burn Warning(s): Eventual smut, character death, blood, violence A/N: I’ve been working on this fic on and off for just over three years now, and I’m slowly putting it all together. I hold it pretty close to my heart because I actually love some of the scenes that I’ve written for later chapters, and I’ve always wanted to write a slow burn Toshiro fic, hehe. I also worked super hard on making this banner bc I had to make it transparent myself and it took literally forever LOL. 

so, let’s see if i can explain this the same way that i learned. read a sentence out loud. you come to a full stop when you hit the period, and you take a normal, breath. but, when you hit a comma, you take a slightly longer pause. and when you hit a dash - you take an even longer pause. 

this is a natural rhythm that we pick up when we’re first taught to read; we do it without even thinking. but when you start to think about it, you realize that it can become a tool.

think of your heartbeat. a period is badump. a comma is badump-dump. and a dash is thump badump. one breath. a longer breath. two breaths.

that means what you read automatically affects the rhythm of your breathing and your heartrate. which means that you can control the amount of physical tension your reader feels… by altering your punction and your sentence structure.

for fast paced scenes, you use short sentences. a lot of hard stops. mostly periods, with just a few comma’s thrown in for the full breath. your reader’s heartrate accelerates. their breathing is slightly and unintentionally, on their end, quicker. you hit the dramatic ending of the scene - and your reader’s body phsyically feels the gasp, the breath of fresh air, of these longer sentences.

now, read that paragraph again ant take note of your natural pauses, and how it subtly affects your breathing. 

the same thing can be said of comma’s and dashes. while they can be used as a breath of fresh air, they can also cause a new line of tension as they lead your reader to hold their breath. during this section, you should use longer sentences; breaking up the harshness of the pauses by using variations of punction. read this paragraph out loud from the start and take note of how long you go between pauses and full breaths. 

and then, comes the biggest trick.

the hard stop.

the paragraph.

because while the periods, commas, and dashes are variations on a short stop, the paragraph is a hard stop. you take a full breath. you pause for a moment, then move to the start of the next paragraph.

which means you can create an entirely new sort of dramatic tension. read the sentences that are in bold. see how you take a naturally longer pause at the end of each paragraph?

see how it makes you feel? 

how it makes you breath different? 

how doing it once, twice, or three times creates a different line of tension? 

this little magic trick can be used to cause a reader’s heartrate to speed up during a fight or chase scene. it can be used to cause their breathing to slow down during moments of dramatic tension, sorrow, or softness. and it can be used to create hard breaks that add a new level of physically felt emphasis to your written work.

AO3 has written about what they’re doing (and what they’re not able to do), and they recommend restricting your work to AO3 registered users only. [Instructions here]

You’ve known Bakugou your whole life. He’s your person, and you’ve always believed you were his.

So what happens when you realize that your person isn’t who you thought they were? 

Or— 

A story of how timing is everything.

Pairing(s): Bakugou Katsuki x Reader, Todoroki Shouto x Reader Genre: Fluff, angst, friends-to-lovers, childhood friends, slow burn Warning(s): N/A A/N: I’ve had this document sitting on my computer for years with just the lines, “Bakugo gets into UA with his childhood best friend and has to own up to who he’s been when she’s not around.”

Sometimes, you found yourself thinking back to your picturesque life in Soul Society before your Captain, Tosen, had defected.

He had left you and Shuhei to pick up the pieces of the Ninth Division, but you found yourself picking up pieces of Shuhei, too, as your relationship fell apart. So, you ran. You ran, and you took refuge in the comfort of the World of the Living.

Sometimes, you wished you could return to those halcyon days.

Pairing(s): Hitsugaya Toshiro x Reader Genre: Fluff, angst, friends-to-lovers, slow burn Warning(s): Eventual smut, character death, blood, violence A/N: I’ve been working on this fic on and off for just over three years now, and I’m slowly putting it all together. I hold it pretty close to my heart because I actually love some of the scenes that I’ve written for later chapters, and I’ve always wanted to write a slow burn Toshiro fic, hehe. I also worked super hard on making this banner bc I had to make it transparent myself and it took literally forever LOL. 

Sometimes, you found yourself thinking back to your picturesque life in Soul Society before your Captain, Tosen, had defected.

He had left you and Shuhei to pick up the pieces of the Ninth Division, but you found yourself picking up pieces of Shuhei, too, as your relationship fell apart. So, you ran. You ran, and you took refuge in the comfort of the World of the Living.

Sometimes, you wished you could return to those halcyon days.

Pairing(s): Hitsugaya Toshiro x Reader Genre: Fluff, angst, friends-to-lovers, slow burn Warning(s): Eventual smut, character death, blood, violence A/N: I’ve been working on this fic on and off for just over three years now, and I’m slowly putting it all together. I hold it pretty close to my heart because I actually love some of the scenes that I’ve written for later chapters, and I’ve always wanted to write a slow burn Toshiro fic, hehe. I also worked super hard on making this banner bc I had to make it transparent myself and it took literally forever LOL.