Tag: fic

An Incomplete List of Things A (Real) Small Kid Does And Says – A Reference

I’ve been reading some fics with lil kids in them recently, and it’s been a bit hit-and-miss, and dialogue especially can get a bit jarring. Writing kids’ dialogue/action is REALLY hard, and sometimes a little nudge can help. 🙂

How to help, though? I decided to take some notes and make a little reference sheet for folks out there who don’t often get to interact with small persons, but like to write kidfic!

So, for reference – my child is 2 years and 10 months old – very bright, happy, funny, loud and super-active. Loves books, singing, words, the alphabet, numbers, dinosaurs, music, ballerinas, and puzzles. She can count to thirty, and will point out the beginning letter of any word a million times (”DOUBYOU IS FOR WHALE! Is for Whale, Mummy!”).

  • Speaks in third person sometimes, ‘MUMMY, OH! OH! [HER NAME] FELL OVER! OW! [HER NAME] HURT MY KNEE!” (and yes, she will mix up ‘my’ and ‘her’ because fuck third person/first person rules when you are two and cute as a button and just banged your knee.)
  • Has never used ‘Me loves’ or ‘Me wants’. EVER. I have never, ever, EVER heard a real living child use this ‘me’ instead of ‘I’ thing, and it’s ubiquitous in fic. It’s inescapable! Seriously. They get the difference between ‘me’ and ‘I’ REALLY FAST. If anything, they mix up ‘I’ and ‘I’m’ more often.
  • Mixes up who she’s speaking to – a LOT. I have been called everything from ‘Daddy’ to the cat’s name to the name of her daycare provider’s husband.
  • “Vegables” (I will be sad when this one disappears!)
  • When she got the hang of ‘-s’ to mean a plural, she started saying ‘sick’ instead of ‘six’. One, two, three, four, five, sick, seven. Because an ‘-s’ sound on the end meant that there was more than one six, yeah? Perfectly logical!
  • “I done” (I did), “I taked” (I took), “I putted” (I put). Past tense is difficult.  
  • And mixing up which tense in a full sentence, yup, it happens. “Mummy! I want going for a WALK!” “Mummy, I’m swinged on a swing!”
  • “Lellow” instead of ‘Yellow’. She knows it begins with ‘Y’ – she just says ‘Lellow!’ Probably because it is more fun to say.
  • When she was learning to count to twenty, she would count EVERYTHING. And also make up the names of new numbers when she couldn’t think of them. So. Much. Counting.
  • Related – SO. MUCH. ALPHABET. ‘Lion is an L! Doubyou is for WATERMELON!’
  • “Wiv” actually happens. Who knew?
  • I spin like a ballelina! Look mummy! I’m a beeyootiful Ballellina!
  • for that matter, longer words like ‘beautiful’ don’t get shortened. They get ELONGATED. She sounds out every vowel and dipthong, quite stretched out. “Ohhh. Is so beeyootiful.” Hearing the word ‘hippopotamus’ is a lengthy experience.
  • ‘No’ is a favourite word. It follows words, it precedes words, it is a complete sentence in itself. Always always always. No fic I have ever read ever shows the epic, EPIC overuse of NO in a toddler’s lexicon. Also, “I don’t WANT to/it” vs “I want it!!”
  • Repetition, endless ENDLESS repetition. Toddlers love repeating the last thing you say, too. So watch that language 😉
  • The ‘fwee’ instead of ‘three’ thing isn’t every kid, jeez. She can say ‘three’ perfectly well, and has been able to for at least a year. She can say GARDENING and HEXAGON and RHINOCEROS and DINOSAUR, ferchrissakes.
  • Likewise, a lisp and the ‘fw’ thing are not interchangeable to show ‘toddler speak’. A kid might have one of these, but it’s insanely unlikely to have BOTH.
  • Mixing up sentence order happens quite a lot! “It’s dinner time! Mummy, the clock is on sick! Is dinner time!” (The hand of the clock is on six – time for dinner!)
  • Context will often be completely ?????. She had quite a tantrum the other night because Daddy was going to give her three ‘stories’ after bath. We were confused – she LOVES reading, and always gets three books after bath, before bed. She absolutely adores it. But no, she didn’t want three STORIES – she wanted three books. To us, that was the same thing, but to her she wasn’t equating ‘story’ with ‘storybook’.
  • Likewise, when I asked her to point to something she wanted, she pointed her foot and said ‘point!’ I had meant to point her finger… but she didn’t know that it was CALLED ‘pointing’ her finger… she only knew ‘point’ in the context of pointing her foot!
  • Oh yes, vocalising/narrating everything she does. “I’m patting the pussycat!” “I’m bouncing on the bed!” “I’m riding the scootah!” (she totally says SCOOTAH) “I’m eating the peeeeeeeas!” “I’m playing the tea party!” “I’m in the bath!” “I’m on the toylut!” All. The. Time.
  • Incomprehensible mumbles between intelligble words every now and then. Her mouth can’t keep up, you see 🙂 So you end up with ‘MUMMY, (mumbleumble) a biscuit!’ You get the general gist, but the interim of the sentence is totally lost.
  • ‘Is’ begins a lot of declarations, rather than ‘It Is.” So, “Is a butterfly!” “Is a pajamas!” “Is a dragonfruit!” “Is a tea party!”
  • Gets finicky about food, even food she usually LOVES. They love to test things at this age! Also, bedtime manipulation tactics, to delay lights-off. Sneaky af. Her current one is to yell ‘help help!!’ the minute we turn off the light and shut her bedroom door – god knows what the neighbours think!!
  • Alternatively clingy as hell/independent as hell. One day you might love to have a cuddle, but she won’t even look up at you. Ah well! The next day, you can’t pry her off you. HUH. One day, “I CAN DO [HER NAME] SHOES UP MYSELF!” and the next: “Mummyyyyyyyy, I want to putting on my dressing down” (she means dressing gown – and I have to do it for her – and I gotta put mine on too, or we don’t match and she will get the grizzles)
  • THE SULKS. Even the most chill, even-tempered toddler will get the sulks sometimes. Perhaps after being told, ‘you shouldn’t play with [dangerous thing] because you might hurt yourself’ for instance. That’s ok and normal – some feelings are very big for a very small person to manage! Tantrums happen too: don’t shy away from making your cute little kid a REAL cute little kid, with all the socially-inappropriate little-kid reactions, whining, sulking and screaming in public and all. It makes the cuddly little toddler-hugs even more special.
  • Demanding things, sometimes very rudely or imperiously, because manners are difficult to remember. They will NOT always say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ – you gotta prompt them to say it. (When they DO say it without prompting? *ANGELIC CHOIR*)
  • Ending a sentence before it is finished. For example, “Mummy, I put my gumboots!” The word ‘on’ SHOULD be at the end, of course, but the important word to her is GUMBOOTS, because they are new and she loves them. So. Much. So the sentence ends there!
  • Oh yes, there’s always the mispronounced word that, no matter how many times you gently correct it, no matter how many times she repeats it properly, stubbornly remains mispronounced. Ours are currently ‘dressing down’, ‘vegebles’ ‘ballellina’ and ‘airloplane.’ AND SIX. oh my god, lmao I love that one.

So, there we have it, a little assortment of things a real toddler says, complete with syntax and context. Use them wisely, and have fun writing those kid characters.

(any other parents/guardians/teachers/carers out there, feel free to add!)

courtugger:

“No, no, no, no,” Selga chanted, patting at her cousin’s faces in desperation.

The demon was vanquished, they should be celebrating. Instead she was crawling on her knees to put herself between the two of them. “Silas? Bard?” she reached down and shook Silas’ shoulder, frantically pushing the blonde hair that was sticky and caked with gunk out of her way-

Oh god.

She turned and heaved onto the ground, her gut clenching tightly as the realization of what she had touched.

Silas, impossibly tall, strong, and irritating Silas, had a hole in the side of her head. Her eldest cousin wasn’t moving, wasn’t breathing. She was just lying there…motionless, her heart had already stopped.

“Bard? Bard please!”

If Silas had been the arrogant, restless, always smiling one, Bard had been her opposite.

But even those grim lines on his face were smoothed out. He wasn’t glaring at Silas or rolling his eyes at her; he wasn’t moving.

Selga shook him by the shoulders to no avail, “Goddammit Bard, breathe!” he didn’t show any signs of answering her.

Smack!

Her hand stung from the force of slapping him, but still there was no response. She hung her head, her tears mingling with the blood that was oozing from the cut on her head. Her body ached, burned in several place and she knew some of her hair was singed from the vanquish.

But none of that mattered, nothing mattered anymore.

Her cousins were dead; they were dead like their parents before them.

Selga shook, from her hands to her chest, she was shaking and sobbing and distantly knew she needed to control herself. She needed to breathe, to bloody think and not feel.

But her body wouldn’t obey her commands.

And there was no one to help her. Silas would never again smack her on the back of the head and tell her to deal with it and Bard would never be the one to sit her down and sing her father’s lullaby to stop the panicking.

Breathe, slowly, head between your knees, he would have said.

Moments, or hours later-she couldn’t be sure, she finally stood. Selga ignored the painful throbbing in her skull and took the knife from her belt, slicing her palm in a swift, mindless motion. The slow trickle of blood was accompanied by a stinging pain, but she ignored it.

Meticulously, she drew the summoning circle on the dirty warehouse floor.

Somewhere in the back of her mind she could hear Silas bitching at her about infection and how utterly stupid this plan was, but ignored it.

The spell was a quick one, words in Latin that no demon could refuse.

Her tattoos glowed with power, the lace patterns that began at her shoulder and covered her left arm, had all taken on a golden glow. No doubt her eyes had too.

The ground shook, the building rumbled at its foundations as a black hole opened where the circle was drawn. And with a painful wailing sound, the demon appeared. It looked vaguely like it could have been human once. Maybe hundreds of years ago. All of its limbs had been stretched and nearly all of them looked like they had been pulled from their sockets and left that way. Its eyes were swollen, popping from the sockets, and belly distended as if it had swallowed a few body parts.

Selga swallowed and willed her body to stop trembling.

The more disfigured the Demon, the longer it’s been in hell, Bard’s voice reminded her distantly.

“You summoned me, wretch.”

It wasn’t a question and she forced herself not to tremble at the warped, gravelly tone of the demon.

The blonde scratched at her dirty hair, “Yes.”

The bloated, yellow eyes glanced at the two bodies, and then its mouth spilt into a sick, sadistic grin.

“My soul. Bring them back and you can have it,” luckily her voice didn’t waver. She dared not look at her cousins mangled, broken bodies.

“A-a-ah,” it waved a gnarled, twisted finger. “A life for a soul, witch, that’s the trade.”

“No. Both of them.”

“I don’t make the rules. One life for your soul or you’ll have to vanquish me.”

Selga clenched her jaw so hard she saw stars, bowing her head. “I won’t choose between them,” her voice was barely a whisper, but even she heard the brokenness in her tone.

“Choose, girl.”
Her hand twitched, barely a movement, and certainly not a decision.

It cackled maniacally as she screamed in disagreement.

She hadn’t chosen! She would never choose between her family-

“So be it.”

And it was gone, in a burst of flames and brimstone.

Bard sat up; he was gasping and clawing at where the holes in his chest had been.

Silas never woke.

@determamfidd

THIS IS YOUR DOING, YOU FED THE BUNNY, HAVE SOME ANGST ON HOW SELGA SOLD HER SOUL AND WHY SHE ENDED UP IN HELL.

Is there a scene where Merilin and Selga first met? Yup.

But I’m not writing in order it would seem. Hopefully Selga is in character, I tried to keep her as true as possible. Silas is completely mine, I needed another cousin to create a ‘Power of Three’ dynamic.

holy SHIT TUGGER

nnnnyaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrggggggggggggghhhhhh, oh my god, oh my crud, AUGH SELGA

this bunny is a HELLBUNNY *feeds it some more* THERE’S A GOOD HELLBUNNY

What happens in the weapons room. Sansukh fanfic. Jeri/OC

dain-mothafocka:

After
King Thorin Stonehelm’s coronation, two dwarves from the East arrive
in the fray of battle to Erebor. One of them grabs Jeri’s attention,
and the member of the King’s Elite Guard has quite possibly the most
awkward conversation of their life. Featuring dwarven gender feels,
and Jeri being a blushing bag of flails when faced with someone they
fancy.

Of course as you know, all Sansukh characters belong to determamfidd. Akhsan and Khalei belong to me. Khalei being, of course, a shameless self-insert. 

It
was with a rush of anticipation that the gathered crowd drew their
weapons behind the front gate of Erebor. At the behest of King
Stonehelm, a spear wall had been quickly formed: not five minutes
ago, a lookout had informed them that a charioteer was headed towards
the gates through the writhing mass of Orcs and dark beasts, bearing
the insignia of Khand and standing atop a huge, fast-moving wain.
Just one of them – a messenger.

Keep reading

HNNNNNGH OMFG

Jade, this is gorgeous – Ahhhhhh! Orocarni gender customs! Khalei! JERI BEING A STAMMERY BLUSHY MESS. AHKSAN THE BADASS – scuse me, too much awesome there, i am combusting internally – ORLA RECOGNISING HIM AND BASICALLY FANGIRLING ALL OVER THE PLACE AHHH

Jeri being a foot-in-mouth giant sprout and Khalei the smooth motherfucker, AUGH I LOVE THIS SO DAMN MUCH HOLY HELL

Thank you, thank you, HNNNGH, thank you so so so so much!!

Parenthood – LikeTotesSecret – The Hobbit – All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings – All Media Types [Archive of Our Own]

liketotessecret:

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works

For all of the Sansukh podfic cast, but also (and always) dedicated to the fantastic determamfidd, without whom we would not have the work of art which is Sansukh.

OH MY GOSH OH MY HEART THIS IS SO CUTE SO SO CUUUUTE

Parenthood – LikeTotesSecret – The Hobbit – All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings – All Media Types [Archive of Our Own]

If your still doing prompts maybe “we’ll be your new family” ps:i love you dearly and your superb!!! *smooches then runs away to hide*

notanightlight:

Legolas had known that he would face some opposition when he travelled with Gimli to the mountain. He had known that there would be dwarves who hated his very presence there, much less his upcoming wedding. That not even his status as one of the Nine Walkers would shield him from some. He thought he was prepared.

Now he just hoped that no one would notice the quickness of his breathing or the heat he could feel at the tips of his ears and recognize them for the tells they were.

He had thought that he would face any dissenters with Gimli at his side, but Gimli was in meetings with his king discussing the colony he wanted to set up in Aglarond. So Legolas was alone amongst a host of unfamiliar faces, trying to weather the scathing vitriol being thrown his way by the dwarrow he had approached about purchasing fabric for a new tunic from.

He tried to maintain a stoic expression as he had no hope of presenting the placid one he had worked so hard to learn from his father. He must not make a scene. He would not give any dwarf reason to say that Gimli had chosen some volatile wild elf to wed.

Legolas kept his fingers from twitching as the dwarrow cursed his family, his race, and his beardless face. He tried to imagine the words rolling off him like rain off a leaf as the dwarf called him a craftless, soulless, stretched­out, bat­eared bastard.

The mounting insults were almost too much to take, and Legolas was about ready to just throw the bolt of fabric in his hands at the dwarf and make a quick retreat when a gruff voice rose above the uneasy murmuring of the crowd.

“Firin son of Firus, what nonsense are you shouting about now!”

A familiar old dwarrow with a massive white beard and a sturdy walking stick planted himself between the two.

“It’s nothing to concern yourself about, Gloin,” the dwarf replied, straightening out his shoulders. “I’m just dealing with this t​hing​trying to purchase my wares.”

“Well I find myself concerned about it,” the old dwarrow said with a huff. He turned to Legolas.

“What possessed you to come to a stall like this?” Gloin asked, shaking his head. The younger dwarf spluttered from behind him.

Legolas clutched the fabric reflexively, feeling younger than he had in centuries. “The color caught my eye,” he tried not to mumble.

Gloin took the fabric, holding it up and looking back and forth between the bolt and Legolas with critical scrutiny.

“Well I cannot fault your eye for color, and you are going to need more blue in your wardrobe,” he conceded with a nod, “but you will find better quality fabrics sold by dwarves with much more business sense in that direction.”

“What are you saying, Gloin!” the dwarf bristled.

“I’m saying I have seen your finances, Son of Firus, and you could not hold onto a coin if someone nailed it to the palm of your hand!” Gloin said, shoving the bolt of fabric into the furious dwarf’s chest. “And no member of my family will do business with you as long as I still draw breath!”

Legolas saw where Gimli inherited his sharp tongue from. He let Gloin usher him away from the fuming merchant and towards the stalls he indicated earlier.

“Thank you,” Legolas said once they were away from the crowd.

Gloin snorted.

“I’m not going to let anyone talk about a member of my family that way.”

Legolas stopped.

“Master Gloin?” Legolas asked, confused.

Gloin paused, running a contemplative eye over the elf.

“Your the odd ore in the family vein, and no mistake about that,” he said, “but you should understand that we’ll be your new family.”

He started walking and Legolas followed, slightly dumbstruck.

“Now we really should find some fabric, you will be expected to wear our family’s blue on formal occasions, and we should look into some new beads and a few more adornments until Gimli has a chance to make you some himself,” Gloin said mostly to himself as he started perusing the goods on the nearest stall. “I don’t suppose you lot pierce those ears?”

Legolas couldn’t help but laugh.

“No we don’t, Master Gloin,” he confirmed.

Gloin gave him a flat look.

“Now what did I just say? We’re family, so drop the ‘Master’ business.”

“Alright, Gloin Adar,” Legolas replied with a smile, “can we look for carving tools as well. I left mine in Greenwood before the quest.”

Gloin nodded absentmindedly and began instructing Legolas on the fine art of haggling in a Dwarvish market.

On the next gift giving occasion, Legolas presented Gloin with an elaborately carved walking stick, that he carried with pride.

End. (Thanks for the prompt! And lots of hugs for you anon!)

gigolas fic: A Brief Respite

lacefedora:

Title: A Brief Respite
Rating: PG
Pairing: Legolas/Gimli
Word count: 546

A small little thing to go with THIS drawing that I did for determamfidd and for Sansukh.

Read More

asjkgflasjhfdalsjlasjhfdaljsgfLASJHDF

*WRITHES FROM THE SHEER GIGOLASY SWEETNESS*

oh my gnaaaaaaaaah this is gorgeous. SO GORGEOUS. Oh, these two. Ohhhh the head-press, the pet names. Ohhhhh. OOOOOOHHHHH.

Thank you so so so much, lacefedora! *tackleglomps*

If you’re still doing the five word prompts: “sorry, it can’t be helped”

notanightlight:

Gimli had heard rumors of elves glowing in the dark since he was a child. There was a long standing miners joke that they would make friends with an elf just to have a light that would never go out. As a child, he imagined elves flickering like candle flames, and was very disappointed the first time he saw that was not the case.

After months spent on the road with an elf, you would think he would have become familiar with it, but that was not so.

During the early nights there was always a fire or starlight to mask the elf’s glow. Even in the pits of Moria Legolas’s glow was indistinguishable from the light of Gandalf’s staff.

It was not as if the elf was hard to spot either way, what with his bright hair, fair skin, and tall stature. It took a long time for Gimli to realize that it was not only his outstanding features that made him seek out the elf before all others of their company, but when it did it led to the first time he truly note elf glow.

Gimli lay on his back in their bed, breathing deeply and letting exhaustion settle deeply in his bones, when he noticed a faint light through the cracks of his eyelids. He cracked one open and his breath caught.

There, in the pitch darkness of their room with the lights snuffed out and the windows shuttered Legolas sat on the edge of the bed giving off the faint hint of silvery light. Gimli first likened it to moonlight, but that seemed wrong. Starlight, he decided, was much more fitting. Yes, it was as if the starlight had clung to the elf’s naked skin to be carried around the way road dust sticks to travelers.

Legolas noticed his staring and gave him a rueful little smile.

“Has my glow disturbed your sleep?” he whispered, “Sorry, it can’t be helped, or I would dim it for you.”

Gimli reached out to brush his fingers over the luminous skin of Legolas’s thigh.

“How could it disturb me when there is no gem I could dream of to catch the light as beautifully as your skin?”

A light flush colored Legolas’s cheekbones and the tips of his ears, and Gimli marveled at the sight.

Legolas laid down facing Gimli, catching one of Gimli’s hands in his own gently gleaming grasp. The light of Legolas’s skin reflecting on his own work worn fingers was a sight he felt he could happily study for the rest of his life.

A thought occurred to him.

“You have no Dark Name to give me,” he began, “but I shall know the glow of your skin in any darkness. And when I have died—”

“Gimli,” Legolas interrupted, clutching his hand tighter.

“I am sorry, love, but it can’t be helped,” he apologized, running a comforting hand over the elf’s pale hair. “And when I have gone to that darkness, my soul shall find you again by the glow of your skin.”

End.

(Thank you so much for the prompt!)