#chekhov writes

realizing it’s not finished and cuts off on the most interesting part

realizing you have to actively finish it if you want to read more

More and more recently, I’ve begun to get some people coming to me asking for some clarification on LGBTQ stuff. When I was younger, I had to discover many basic identities and labels by myself, through research of various sources, or pieced together from disconnected blog posts. 

In the year 2019 you’d think we’d have a kid-friendly website that describes all of this in simple terms but... I’ve yet to find one that isn’t primed for guardians/parents of LGBTQ parnets and prioratizes them instead of the LGBTQ kids themselves.... 

So I tried to make a quick graphic to organize everything!

Keep in mind - this is based on MY experience and the terminology I have grown up using. Everyone’s experiences may differ - and I tried to simplify in some places to make it easier to read. (For example... I didn’t really go into detail on non-binary identities... but I may make a seperate graphic for that someday because that’s its own box of pears.) 

This is shamelessly self-pluggy but I’ve been tormented with this fic for the past 3 weeks and I’ve been writing it quite regularly, so I wanted to have a proper header for it. Who knows, I might even finish this one.

Linked

Fandom: Good Omens

Pairings: Aziraphale/Crowley

Concept: Sometime between Crowley’s initial suggestion of starting the Arrangement in West Essex and their much later meeting at the Globe, Aziraphale had not only accepted the idea of working together, but also realized he didn’t even need to wrap Crowley around his finger - the Serpent of Eden would do that all on his own. 

(From that one fic I’m writing completely out of order, in disconnected snippets.)

Look, I know, I know, I know - it’s been done. It’s been done a thousand times - I don’t care. I’m doing it again. 

--

Soho, 1941

Aziraphale’s head is on his shoulder. They’re dancing - if you could call it dancing. Nothing resembling it, really, except in intent. They’re swaying, barely, arms clasped around each other in the gentle way vines curl around bricks - gentle, looping things that are clinging harder than you would ever give them credit for. 

Aziraphale’s head is on his shoulder. He’s breathing quietly into Crowley’s neck. His hair is glowing - for fuck’s sake, there’s not enough light in the room to reflect against those ridiculously white curls and yet somehow it’s as if every single photon has zeroed in on his blessed head and is bouncing off of it in reflective patterns of stained glass like he’s a goddamned disco ball.

Aziraphale’s head is on his shoulder. It’s not any closer than it has been in the past. There have been other times, sure. Once, when they were standing watching a play, that same head pressed up against his shoulder when the angel was craning to look at something between the two people in front of them. His head has rolled into his shoulder as he nearly lapsed into a rare instance of sleep once or twice. Aziraphale’s head has touched his shoulder multiple times, in fact, and it should be nothing significant except... except Aziraphale has put it there. Not on accident. Of his own accord. Pressed his cheek into Crowley’s suit collar. Like it belongs there.

Aziraphale’s head is on his shoulder and--despite how much it feels right, how full his chest suddenly is, the pressure is too much. He knows it won’t last. He knows the passing of time - he has felt the strings of it, pulled taut around space, edged and shaped by gravity wells, worn thin in wormholes. 

He knows things end. And this - this is something that will end very soon. 

And he doesn’t want it to.

-------

“Demon of the Month?” echoes Crowley, unsure whether to be offended or flattered. Either the angel has missed poking fun at him or he’s legitimately trying to make him feel better through less than conventional methods. Either option is rather endearing, warms the Hellfire burning low in Crowley’s chest. He finally manages a balance on the seesaw of indignation and preening. “You think I’m demon of the month?”

“Aren’t you?” Aziraphale feigns surprise - poorly. His eyebrows jump, threaten to do a pirouette. “But you seem to be an expert in all kinds of Tempting.”

“Flattery will get you nowhere,” says Crowley, now at a loss for appropriate replies. This is also a lie. Flattery from Aziraphale has significant potential for distance if previous instances are anything to go by, but the destination Aziraphale is taking them is nonetheless a mystery enough to make the map incomprehensible. Being praised for Tempting, of all things - by an angel! of all creatures - is not something he has spent a great deal of time preparing for. “Besides, I’m not-- I’m not particularly good at it. No better than your average demon.” He feels the threat of a blush coming on and hurriedly hides his face behind his cup again.

“I daresay you are,” insists the Enemy.

Crowley tilts the cup higher and upends the whole of it into his throat and then proceeds to cough dramatically. By the time he’s finished, his face is even more red, but now he has an excuse. “Wouldn’t expect you to know,” he says dismissively and wipes his mouth. “You’re an angel. Wouldn’t know a good Temptation from a bad one, now would you?”

“I daresay I would!” argues Aziraphale. His eyebrows pick their routine back up where they left off and dive down. “You might not recall, but I was sent to earth to thwart your wiles! Among others,” he adds, though it’s obvious that in this instance, he cares less about the latter. It’s ridiculously pleasant to be a priority, but Crowley doesn’t allow himself to dwell on this. “Besides...” the angel continues, briskly, “I’ve been on the receiving end of yours often enough.”

The demon tilts his head to the side and makes a face. “What?” he demands indignantly.

Aziraphale glances up at him in such an exasperated, holier-than-thou way that it makes Crowley’s face itch. “Temptations. Sins. The former to the latter. You’ve Tempted me to all the sins at least once, I think I know the drill.”

Crowley fumbles for a reply, struggling to grip the edges of his sanity as their conversation takes a sharp and unexpected turn. “Have not!” he protests. “I haven’t tempted you even once!”

The angel’s responding wiggle is a blatant substitute for an eye-roll. He picks up his goblet and measures Crowley with an unimpressed stare. “Do give yourself more credit. I’ve just told you you’re good at your job.”

“Wh-- The-- But--” sputters Crowley. It’s very unbecoming for a demon, all this sputtering, so he instead he curbs it and leans across the table and glares at Aziraphale over the edges of his spectacles. “Alright, give me an example.”

“The food, for a start,” replies Aziraphale immediately. “You were the one who gifted me that bread back--where was it again?”

“Dholavira,” supplies Crowley, but he’s still skeptical. “That doesn’t count! I was just-- returning the favor! Didn’t want to be indebted to you!.”

“Classic temptation to Gluttony, that was,” Aziraphale insists. He reaches for another oyster.

Crowley is too busy squinting at the table, trying to recall the encounter with more detail, to comment on the irony of the situation. “Fine,” he says eventually. “Fine, that might have been one. I don’t remember what I was thinking at the time, so, you know, autopilot. Demon and all. It’s possible. But--that’s only one!”

“Would you like me to go down the list?” asks Aziraphale nonchalantly.

“Yes!” Crowley says. “Greed - when did I ever do that one?”

The angel’s reply is a well-executed ricochet. “Egypt. Alexandria.”

Crowley holds up a finger he means to wave back and forth, but the argument dies on his lips before it’s even formed. “Now hold on a second,” he says instead. “I’m fairly certain that’s not fair. Envy! I’ve not--”

“That’s Egypt too.” Aziraphale is not even looking at him now. Instead he’s gazing into the middle distance, lips pursed thoughtfully, as if the scene is still clear in his mind and he’s watching some cinematic reenactment of it. “Different year. Egyptian beer. You were posing as a merchant, kept winking at me and hinting you were smuggling it all out - the best lot.”

“That’s not--that’s not why I was winking!” protests Crowley, but it falls on deaf ears. “Wrath, then! I’ve never tempted you to wrath!”

Aziraphale meets his eyes, and his gaze is solid. “Stonehenge.”

Read the rest on Ao3!

Hey, sorry for taking so long to answer!

I think much like art, there is no one best way to get rid of writer’s block. It just depends on what you need at the time. So I feel like you have to first analyze WHY you can’t seem to write anymore and kind of try to get yourself out of that funk with solutions that make sense.

For example -

Are you not writing because you have nothing to build off of?

If you’re writing collaboratively, you might have gotten used to the balance of your ideas having an echo from another person. That’s not a BAD thing, per se, but you have to now learn to run on your own instead of participating in a 3 legged race.  

Solution: Try doing prompts, or writing short stories with a specifically planned plot. You can even give yourself challenges like ‘rewrite the first chapter of Harry Potter in your own words’ or give yourself other very specific guidelines that will give you training wheels for writing on your own. Eventually you’ll learn to support your own writing.

Other tips: I don’t know about other authors, but I often end up skipping over parts when writing initial ideas down. I’ll write what I know, and when I get to the part where my brain goes “uhhhhhh” I just stop, leave that scene, press enter a few times and pick up where I DO know what happens. I can always go back and fill the spaces later or(!) I can snip the scenes and leave them as is, because sometimes, the parts you are inspired to write are the only important ones and don’t need other stuff!

Are you not writing because you lack motivation for world-building?

Sometimes when we write collaboratively, we end up borrowing a lot of background details from our writing partner who has more know-how about worldbuilding. If that partner is no longer there, you might feel lost and frustrated with how to fill up that space.

Solution: Read! Read read read. I know this is obvious, but I think people sometimes underestimate reading. And I don’t mean fanfiction (although obviously that’s also awesome, don’t STOP reading fanfiction) but I mean - read about new worlds! Read books that do their own worldbuilding - fantasy, sci-fi, etc. Get as many varied worlds into your head as you can and try to think about what makes them work. Try your hand at describing potential worlds you think up of. But in the beginning - just READ. You need a good base of knowledge to work with before you can hope to produce your own stuff.

Other tips: I said sci-fi and fantasy because that’s the obvious choice, but actually, reading about real-world stuff is also EXTREMELY important. Some of the best literature I read (and best fanfics) is the stuff where the author is knowledgeable in a field (history, wine, religion, etc) and is able to paint a full picture of the setting because they have a full artillery of details at their disposal. PLUS reading about new stuff in the real world (which, honestly, specific fields ARE mini-worlds with their own culture and history) will likely inspire you to write about something within that ecosystem.

Are you not writing because you don’t have good time-management skills?

When I was in high school, I wrote with friends - and one friend in particular (you know who you are, honey) absolutely used every method short of physical violence in order to get me to write on a daily basis. I hold no grudges because I developed a good habit of it (where has that gone now... oi.) but that’s actually the key, I believe - HABIT.

Solution: Building habits takes time and bribery. In fact, habit-building is 90% bribing yourself to do something. This is something I heard from gym-goers who would form gym-going habits by first frequenting a gym only to do fun things - sauna, shower, and just sit around and do minimal work.

Why? Because it builds the habit and association of positive things with that habit.

So what you need to do is this - block off writing time. Get yourself some tea. For 15 or 30 minutes every day, open a blank word doc and sit down with your tea and just... stare at that word doc and listen to soft jazz and drink your tea. Don’t pressure yourself about writing, don’t feel bad, just let that habit of drinking tea and staring at a blank page form a positive association.

Eventually, you’ll start writing. But you need to give yourself time to have that habit. And it has to happen naturally.

Other tips: Obviously, you need ideas as well. Write down any ideas you have! Write them on your phone, on post-its, in the margins of your reports. Whatever! Sometimes, ideas transform. Something that was once “THIS IS THE BEST THING EVER” turns into “holy shit this is shit” overnight, but then becomes “Hey, I can actually work with this.” by next weekend. This is change is natural and normal, but you need to keep the idea around for long enough for it to complete that metamorphosis.

Hope that makes sense! Sorry it got so long.  

I guess since I wanted to do WIP wednesday I’ll still do it. 

Recently my writing has been pissing me off because nothing I do seems to be going well - and we all knows how THAT is. But there’s still some snippets I’ve been editing less than others so we’ll throw that out there:

--

yes, it’s good omens again, who do you think I am?

--

“No!” says the angel, indignant. “That wouldn’t be funny at all!”

Crawley rips his gaze away like a bandaid. His eyebrows dance elaborately on his face to make up for what his tongue would rather do, the words it would form. He doesn’t let it. Best not push his luck. An angel, even an unarmed one, can still be dangerous. 

Above them, the sky does something reminiscent of an animal’s growl. It sounds like a threat to Crawley. Aziraphale considers it a polite word of warning. It’s a glass half full, glass half empty sort of deal, but glasses haven’t been invented yet, so an argument about it is hard to get off the ground. Coincidentally, the concept of benign quibbling is also in its fetal stages, but that’s about to be remedied by two very forward-thinking entities. 

“I think there’s a bit of rain coming on,” says the angel. His voice has returned to its more amicable tones, and Crawley finds himself surprisingly pleased. He doesn’t really think about the implications of being pleased about an angel’s tone of voice. It seems rather useless an emotion to have about his enemy, but it can be written off easily enough into a footnote about self-preservation. He is halfway through penning this footnote (“When in a good mood, Angel seems to forget that he is  meant to stab me. Not being stabbed works in favor of my evil-doing, would repeat this experience again.”) when the said angel knocks the metaphorical quill from his hand rather rudely: “Do you suppose it’s going to be holy water?”

Look, I get it, I know. You guys don’t expect fanfics from me. But let me live a little. I needed to get this off of my chest. I just hope it will be as hilarious as it was in my head.

Fandom: Good Omens

(Heavily hinted) Pairing: Aziraphale/Crowley

Content Rating: Mature (suggestions towards the sexual, but nothing actually happens.)

Genre: Humor (me.... (please humor me....))

-------------------------------------------------------

He arrived early. He got in line. He filled out paperwork.

Amount of requested holy water: 1 cup (imperial units)

Reason for acquisition: Anthony J. Crowley, the demon

(A tongue in cheek sentiment, but it was true enough to avoid feeling bad).

“Crowley, is it?” the angel at the counter asked upon being handed his application. “Haven’t heard of that one.”

“Oh, um,” Aziraphale scrunched up his eyebrows a little and leaned forward to confirm that he’d spelled it right, and then lit up in realization. “Oh! He changed his name. Used to go by Crawley.”

“Hm.” The entity was still scanning the page with feigned interest. “A name change seems a pointless endeavor for a demon.”

Gripping his tartan thermos nervously, Aziraphale gave a faint smile. “Yes, of course.”

“Demons, I tell you….” With a sympathetic sniff, the Secretary held out his hand for the container and then lazily leaned down for a spray hose, not unlike that of a beer line used in bars to fill up endless pints. “Pesky little things, aren’t they? Always know how to push your buttons.”

Aziraphale laughed awkwardly. “That’s an understatement,” he said, perhaps a bit too earnestly.

Not noticing anything, the entity nodded in agreement and stuck the hose into the thermos, pressing the lever to begin filling it up. “Think you can get rid of him once and for all with this?”

“Get rid of--” With a start, Aziraphale looked up, and then hurriedly schooled his expression into something a bit less horrified. “Oh, I- I don’t know, really. Might work. Might not. You never know.” He didn’t really feel it was worth it to mention that getting rid of Crowley had not been his goal for the past 4000… well, no, 5000… or really… 6000… years.

Never, it had never really been his goal.

He groaned inwardly at himself, only refocusing his attention again when the thermos, now decidedly heavier, was passed back into his hands.

“Of course, if this doesn’t pan out, there’s always the other option,” the secretary added, almost as an afterthought.

Aziraphale really should have nodded and left it at that. That would have been the wise decision, he would later consent, but unfortunately he was not one prone to wise decisions when his head was full Anthony J. Crowley. It was a testament to how good the damned creature was at his job – it had to be, otherwise it would be a testament to how bad Aziraphale was at his.

So, obviously, he turned around and gave the angel a polite and airy smile. “The other option?”

The secretary rolled their shoulders in what was supposed to be, Aziraphale thought, a suggestive shrug. “Oh, you know. The traditional way. The more… direct approach, as it were.”

The polite and airy smile had still not left Aziraphale’s expression, but it did grow more airy. “Direct approach…?” he asked, feigning interest out of habit.

“Well, with demons, you see…” The secretary leaned over the desk. “You need to be more… how do I say it… straightforward. They don’t do subtleties, you know?”

Aziraphale thought back to Crowley, and all the times when subtleties had been the only thing he’d gotten, like scraps from a dinner table he had a feeling he was meant to sit at. “Oh yes,” he lied enthusiastically, and ignored the consequent feeling of heartburn. “Definitely. Demons, they’re very… straight. Forward. Straightforward. Not straight, fortunately.” He scrunched his eyebrows together in a wince and then opened one eye to peek out and see if his slip up had been noticed.

It hadn’t. The secretary was gesturing into the air like a speaker to an audience. “It’s all about who’s the top dog with them. That’s why it’ll end in a great war. They don’t listen to reason. It’s about dominance and all that. You get my drift?”

Aziraphale nodded, in too deep now to be anything except encouraging. “Yes, certainly. Demons. You’ve got to be… tough with them.” He lifted his hand a bit and flexed his fingers into a fist, attempting something that was supposed to be a punching gesture. Instead it looked more like something Aziraphale was not supposed to know about, given his allegiance to purity. He hurriedly lowered his fist and cleared his throat.

The entity was still nodding, prompted forward despite minimal – or negative – effort on Aziraphale’s part. “See, that’s what I mean! THAT’s the angel that demon needs to see! None of this splashy-splash holy water. Of course, that’s all fine and good – IF you’re cleaning floors, and the like. Wipe some demon off the wall, get the stains out, I get that, I really do.” They sniffed royally, inspecting their nails, as if the very thought was below consideration. “But for a REAL job, you need to, you know, get in there. Get your hands dirty.”

Aziraphale blinked a bit, not sure he was following anymore. It was his own fault, really. He only wanted to leave peacefully, and that compromised his ability to follow the pep-talk. “Get my hands dirty?” he asked despite himself. “How’s that?”

“You need to just… get in the demon’s face and just give him the old… UMPH!” With a heavy grunt, the entity behind the desk gesticulated shoving something forward. “Take what the Almighty gave you and just—just THRUST it right in there! You know what I mean?”

Aziraphale, who had spent a significant amount of time on earth and among humans, immediately decided that he did know what it meant.