Somewhere on the other side of the universe

One day you might be mine, but until then I'm going to sing this song

Love is all a matter of perspective darling and one day you'll see mine

I want to be buried next to you when I die (but not in a creepy way)

A cow on the moon asked me to say hi

A healthy obsession (doesn't exist)

I tried to write a song with a title that was longer than a certain band's but I failed and this is the result.

Did I say I love you? (I meant I loathed you) - (specifically a rock/metal song)

I'm an English teacher with the way I'm reading your mind tonight

I might've quit my job to create a debut album and I didn't have enough songs to put in it so here's an extra one.

As a child, December only ever meant one thing to me - it was my favourite month, because it was my birthday and Christmas. It was a break from school and presents all in one, and the time of year when I could ask for anything I wanted, no matter how ridiculous. I didn't always get it of course, but that's how life goes.

During my GCSEs and A levels I hated December and Chistmas. It meant revision - or rather, the guilt of not revising for the upcoming tests in January, and having to put more work in than usual.

Now? I have mixed feelings about December. I love it as a month - I will never forget my childhood feelings of joy or elation - who ever could?

However the month will always be tainted by that fact that this is indeed my birthday - it marks another year older, another year further from my childhood, another year further into being an adult. It's also the end of the year - that's something I've never been very appreciative of, either. I hate how the new year comes afterwards, and everyone makes their new year's resolutions that they go on to forget.

But anyway. That's December in a nutshell for me - I love it and hate it, and it will always hold a special place in my heart.

I have never been so speechless before. I pride myself on my words - on my sarcastic quips, on my quick thinking (or at least I try to anyway, it doesn't always work out like that). Yet somehow you have this knack for just taking my breath away. I feel the tears well up behind my eyes and my heart feels like it couldn't beat any faster. The smile on my mouth feels fake - it doesn't capture nearly half of the emotion I want to show you.

My breath doesn't come - I laugh, what else is there to do? My heart beats faster and it doesn't stop and it sinks because I know there is no way I can express what this means to me. For a second you make me regret shutting off my emotions.

You take the world away from my feet as you show me things that I didn't think were possible. Things I didn't think I could feel.

Love is like an unlit match.

A thousand million billion possibilities -

Ok, that may be an exaggeration,

But that's what love does to you,

It's not supposed to make sense.

Love is like an unlit match,

So full of possible futures.

It could burn bright and tall,

And be allowed to flourish in everlasting oxygen,

Or it could be lit in a heartbeat,

Only to be exstinguished moments later by a caring adult,

Removing an errant match from their child's playful hands.

Love is like an unlit match,

In that the possibilities are endless.

It could be used to light a candle,

And then the love would be there for all to see,

Displayed to the world and making the world a better place.

It could be used to fuel a habit,

To light yet another cigarette that is slowly killing someone,

Destroying them from inside out,

Killing them before it's too late.

It could be lit during a blackout,

Providing comfort for those in need,

But them be lost as soon as the light goes on,

The comfort it provided forgotten as the striker

Leaves for mechanical light again.

Or it could be that someone holds the match,

Having stroked it, and just watch it burn itself out,

Before casting it away and picking another from the box.

Love is like an unlit match,

In the way that not all possibilities are good.

It could be the spark that sets off the gasoline

That burns down someone's life,

Spread maliciously by someone else,

To whom the match is only a tool.

Through the burning carbon dioxide is released into the air,

A deadly gas that is invisible but suffocating,

And can destroy the striker without anyone realising.

Love is like an unlit match,

In the way that though some possibilities are bad,

The good far outshines them.

The light can guide people,

It can save them,

Can bring love unto their world once more.

And let's not forget, lastly,

Why love is truly like an unlit match.

It's something you may never want to consider,

Something that every one of us, deep down,

Hopes will never happen to us.

But like an unlit match love is destined to burn -

And to end.

No living thing moves, in this grey winter wonderland.

Jagged rocks protrude from the ground as stalagmites, reaching towards a sky that’s always a different shade of grey. Today the wisps of clouds and stars are gone - it’s just grey swirls against a black background. It looks picturesque, like someone painted a forlorn painting of a misty morning.

Water runs across the ground - deep enough to make your feet wet every time you try to cross, but not fast enough to pull you down. That comes later.

Every so often hail will shatter itself against the ground - lumps of ice, some larger than a watermelon, some containing he frozen corpses of a once living creature.

Nature doesn’t care though, it’s all the same.

No living plant grows here, either. Even moss would be welcome - company in this desolate wasteland. A pack of starving wolves, a vulture against the horizon - these appear in brief shadows, but are then gone. Not much lasts here, in this winter wonderland.

Some way in, surrounded by broken thorns, sharpened rocks, and teeth from long forgotten nightmares, sits a girl.

She’s young, maybe seven or eight. There is the telltale red raw mark of chains that have only just been removed, stark against he dark grey nightmares that chain her to the ground.

The ground around her is littered with bones, the only colour in this broken world forming around her - specks of dried maroon that dot the rocks, blood from battles that were fought a long time ago. Blood from battles that are still being fought.

Dried tears cover her face, her eyes dead. Sometimes they have a glimmer of life, a spark of fire, but today it is all gone. Nothing lies in those brown eyes. Nothing human, nothing inhuman.

You could nod to her, you could smile at her, you could wave - but despite the internal reaction that occurs, none of these will get you any external recognition.

Maybe you don’t see it. Maybe you see a field of trees instead, bright and vibrant with colour, and she’s just sitting in the middle, looking despondently lost despite all that’s around her.

Sometimes she may join you, sometimes she may not. And in those moments you may look into her eyes and see a glimpse of that wasteland - of the girl that fights and loses within, and wonder how someone could ever survive like that. But it’s gone before you know it, and there’s a smile on her face that only reaches her eyes through years of training, and she’s off, running through the wind.

---

Definitely haven't done it justice, but that's a glimpse into the repressed bits of my mind.

3,661 miles.

That's how far away from you I moved that day.

I still remember the tears in your eyes.

I was blinded by the job prospects - I'd never had much money you see, growing up as a kid. It was always something everyone else had, and I was fine with it. For the most part anyway; you know what it's like being a kid in secondary school. You try not to let it get to you, but it does, and it never gets better when you get older. As the old song used to say - High school never ends and all that.

I wish I hadn't let that happen to me.

They gave me my dream job, money I'd never even thought of, prospects I could never even have hoped for - what was I supposed to do? Stay there, and envy you for working in a job you loved, hating mine and souring the love we shared. No, I thought, better for us to share a long distance relationship than for me to despise you for something you couldn't control.

Winter was hard that year, you know what it's like. You kept texting me regularly, and I kept ignoring you. You had it so easy, I though. You didn't have to move to a new country, obey new laws. I'd already had two transgressions with the law - once for the jaywalking (I had no idea that was even a thing), and once for asking a policeman for directions (I didn't realise how paranoid America was - I thought this was the land of the free).

Spring came, and work finally picked up. By that I mean they gave me a long case - you know how obsessed over those. How I would get lost in the work and forget the outside world ever existed. You had a knack for dragging me back. I guess that didn't work so well when there was an ocean between us.

By the time I came to my senses it was autumn - the summer long gone and the frost creeping in each morning. I tried to call you but you didn't pick up - I guess I deserved that. No one deserves to be ghosted for three quarters of a year than have to run back to their partner.

When we next talked you told me of a devastating loss that had struck you. I should have been there - I promised to come over right away. But they gave me case after case, and before I knew it I was working yet another Christmas day.

I don't think I exchanged a single word to you on either of the two Christmases I had spent in America.

There is so much I would change if I could go back and do it all again.

Spring came before I knew it and I threw myself back into my work - I spent all of my summer indoors working cases until every night when I closed my eyes I saw a new dead body and all the ways that I had slipped up.

It's my fault; I understand that now. I couldn't expect you to wait for me.

I didn't expect you to get married that quickly though, or the next time that I went 'home' you were pregnant with someone else's children.

You always said you never wanted children.

And you looked happier than I had ever made you; but I think that was just me.

We ended up alone somehow; I don't think we were actually alone that night, but the world always faded away around you. There was a time I had hoped it would never stop doing that - now it was a reminder of a bittersweet past hat I had thrown away.

"I'm sorry I couldn't stay." I said. I don't know what I was trying to do.

I don't know whether you understood the intent of my words or not, but you shrugged, and gave me a smile. Not one of the old ones you used to give me though, no, they were reserved for you husband, and the unborn baby that you two were about to have.

"People change." I don't know if that was your way of forgiving me or damning me; either way it was a blow to my stomach that I'll never forget.

Someone else came up to you at that moment, and real life spun away again.

We never did have one of those moments again.

I'm sorry I couldn't stay.

No - I'm sorry I didn't stay. I guess I always had a choice, and you finally realised that you weren't mine.

---

I have to admit I did not expect this to get that personalpersonal, bbut here we are.

1. Kill off your main character's romantic partner. Have them go through the pain, the grieving of the loss of a loved one, only to rise up and achieve the main aim of the novel (fantasy, action, sci-fi, whatever) on their own. They then find out that their partner didn't actually die, and [insert angst here]. They don't end up together.

2. Write a gothic novel focusing on modern day taboos. They can either be topical - coronavirus, Trump, murder hornets, australian wildfires, etcetera, or long term - advancements in technology, global warming. Write something that is truly thrilling - without resorting to the old techniques of physical monsters or the majority of gothic conventions.

3. Write a novel where there is a queer friends-to-lovers or eventual enemies-to-friends-to-lovers, without queerbaiting or killing off one character in the end.

4. Write a novel that's happened just after the dramatic overthowing of the government, and detail how the people who overthrew the government have to deal with the next people who come into power, who essentially are just recreating the government, except with their own people. They come from the minority group (I.e. the country has a split between two different devisions where there is approximately a 40/60 split, and it's the people in the 40 who are now in charge), and start making life hell for the 60, turning the rules that the 60% had on the 40%. Write about the chaos, the bloodshed, the terrorism, and how they eventually find peace (or don't, and the country just descends into an anarchist state).

Challenge: Don't make the divide male/female, or about colour.

5. Write a piece of metafiction, where the reader thinks that they are reading a book about global warming, or some dystopian advancement in technology, that describes how society went from better to worse (despite seeming to go better at the start), but they are actually reading an account (a diary of sorts, though not presented this way) written by the main character themselves, to dictate their side of the events and to clear away the rumours that have been sparked about them.

6. A person believes that they are talking to God, and that God is telling them to kill bad people all around the world, irregardless of their race/gender/sexuality/etcetera. Make them preach about the gospel and the 'good life', and believe that they can bless people with forgiveness. Then, 1 of 2 things happens.

1. They are caught by the police, the police find out that the person has schizophrenia.

Challenge: He doesn't have schizophrenia.

2. God (or another deity) appears and tells them what they (the deity) thinks about what the man is doing.

Challenge: The voice isn't actually from the God the person is preaching about, but someone/something else.

7. Your main character is the last student of a dying subject (for example, Latin). They start a campaign to reinstate the subject in more schools, and secretly come across a hushed up plot.

8. A spy thriller, except the spy can't actually perform any parkour level acrobatics, and is unintentionally part of a plot to triple cross their country, until they find out that they were actually a sleeper agent for another country, a fact that they themselves were not aware of.

9. Dragons are real. You know, because you've just found one sitting in your back garden that remarked indignantly stating so when you asked it what it was.

And then the dragon tells you it's the rightful heir to the throne, and you help it in its quest to get back the throne, and don't wonder why there is so much opposition until you are told that the dragon you're trying to help is an oppresive scheming ruler who killed most of his subjects for the fun of it.

10. Earth is an exotic destination that is part of a hit reality show (Or pick a better name). Each period of time several (criminal) aliens get placed on earth in various different locations in human skins (in the form of someone waking up from a coworker). They have to survive the equivalent of 1 month on earth without being captured. If they manage to do so, they can go back to their home planet and re-habilitate themselves. If they don't, then they are either caught by the human police and never seen again or killed by the alien race themselves.

Hope that's enough for now! :)

God have I ever.

It was literally how I used to practice my writing... damn does this bring back memories.

I do believe that Drarry must have been the first fanfic I wrote. Plus a bit of Dramione, but those ships I never published.

I've always had a bit of an obsession with the Harry Potter fandom, not as much as some people, but more than most. It's the only fandom I've consistently posted stuff in, all my other fandoms I've only ever written unpublished stuff or just read and silently lurked, occasionally offering up a comment to the creator.

Yeah... other HP ships I wrote were Wolfstar - honestly it's my OTP over everything else, I can't even begin to describe it. I've published the most under this ship, however I do not believe I have written the most about this ship. That title would have to go to either Drarry or one of my other rarepairs.

I've also written some fanfic about the founders - I had a miniseries where they were deciding how to build Hogwarts, and if you can imagine children in grown adult's bodies that would be relatively similar to how people describe my portrayal of them.

I've written a disastrous attempt at a fanfic of Heathers - a whatif where Veronica didn't reach the school in time, and I will admit the attempt I published wasn't the best, as I was writing it on the spur of the moment and on my phone, but my rewritten draft and second half were somewhat decent and less OOC (and so more believable from the characters), but I never got around to typing them up and posting them, and now I've lost the drafts which is kind of mournful.

Then let's move on to Throne of Glass - which I have so many rarepairs for. The annoying thing about smaller fandoms is that when you do come across an epic rarepair you have four fics in total across all platforms and three of those are smut. It sucks, but I ended up writing some more, and never posting them, which is also quite sad. It was mainly RowanxAedion, DorianxAedion, and LysandraxAelin, the latter of which I believe is slightly more popular anyway.

Aside from that, most of my other written fanfic comes from taking a plot of the book, and then putting my own characters in it and changing the situation slightly and seeing how they react. God I have so many of my old works which are exactly like that. The first (major) story I wrote, which I believe reached approximately 35,000 words - though it was on paper and I'm discounting the copious amounts of notes that I made on it, so beyond a few basic calculations I have no idea how many words it was - before I abandoned it, at least, was based off a story with a similar plot. The origin for my latest story - which coincidentally I finished, though I did skip out quite a few plot points so I could get the whole story written and not lose hope in the project, and I believe it is currently sitting at a similar word count to the aforementioned story, if you discount all the subtracted scenes and scenes which I am yet to write up - comes from a YA novel, though I will admit that, beyond a few themes which crop up in both books, is very different to how I started it. I mean for god's sake I was going to kill off a suicidal character who had just decided that she was going to overturn how dead set she was on killing herself and live instead, just to hurt her best friend/the reader. But I didn't, and I have plenty other characters which I am killing off instead, as well as several angsty sections where there is plenty of miscommunication.

Quick sidenote: I also made a plan of this Doctor Who fanfic I was going to write, which was basically going to replace 12, as when I first watched him I didn't like him. Didn't end up writing it, but I can't say as though my opinions of him have changed that greatly.

But yeah - that's a quick timeline into my journey in writing fanfiction. My journey into becoming obsessed with fandoms is much longer and had so much more variation, but that's a story for another day.

This all just reminds me of a thing one of my favourite authors - to read her opinions about writing, anyway, I'm pretty sure I haven't actually read any of her work yet - Mercedes Lackey, I believe it was, though I could be wrong about this - was talking about some time ago.

Everyone has about a million words of crap in them, that they're going to have to write before they can write decently.

My writing ability has progressed so much since I first started writing fanfiction, and I don't really write fanfiction much anymore - though I wish I did, because right now I am so deep in the Sander's sides fandom it's a joke and I wish I could contribute to the fandom but I believe I would need to actually watch the source content first, before contributing anything major, unlike Heathers, where I just dived straight in without any regard for what may or may not be OOC.

But yes - fanfiction will always have a special place in my heart, even though I don't write much anymore. I love it, especially the freedom we have today with it, because there have been times when authors have really cracked down on fanfiction, especially on the internet.

Goddamn that turned out long.

I've always hated mirrors. Hated looking at myself - the spots, the ugly cheekbones, the plain brown eyes and hair that won't behave itself.

But, I guess I've always been attracted to that fairytale side of mirrors.

That magical realism of your reflection talking to you - ever since I was a kid these mystical things were all I could dream about. All I could think about.

It took me a while, but one day I caught myself in the mirror.

Fixing my hair (why do I have a fringe which loves to cover literally half of my face? Like what is its purpose other than to be annoying and look horrendous?), when a question I hadn't thought about for a while popped into my head.

Foregoing the first part, I decided to play to the fairytale mysticism.

-Who's the most beautiful person in the world?

-You.

She replied without hesitation - for a second I almost believed her.

But then I laughed, and she laughed too.

-Duh!

-If only.

I smiled.

-Don't do that.

I grinned even wider.

-You might not be the most beautiful person, but you're not the worst, and you do have some good features about you. In a few years you might even be presentable!

I shrugged.

-Probably not. But it's always nice to dream.

Never really thought about one before, ngl.

I mean, I’m 16. I don’t need a bucket list. I’m aware that my parents sort of have a bucket list of things they’d like to do, but I never really thought about one. Oh well. Here’s my tuppence.

(in no particular order, or rather the order I think of them in)

1. I would like to go horseriding. Never really been properly riding before, and this is definitely something my mum wants to do that transferred to me.

2. I would like to go skiing again.

3. I would like to learn how to ice skate.

4. I would like to see the northern lights, at least once.

5. Lose control enough to get drunk in public (or bar, rather)

6. Publish a book.

7. Have sex. (Odd one, I know, but I’m asexual and it’s not really something I care about, but once, just to try it.)

8. Have a partner with whom we have the perfect Aziraphale-Crowley dynamic, just two idiots being QPRs and having the time of their life with each other.

9. Get a PhD (forensic psychology). This is something I plan on doing anyway, but it’s also a bucket list thing.

10. Visit each continent at least once (I’ve already ticked off Europe and north America), and experience at the minimum the local’s cuisine.

11. Finish Pratchett’s discworld series from start to finish.

12. Buy my own house.

13. Read a larger selection of Orwell, as well as some books on psychology.

14. Fall in love.

15. Move to a different country. And back again is fine, or not.

16. Go to university. Make more friends.

17. Not screw up a (romantic) relationship

18. Grow my hair out, wear a dress and an outfit that actually make me look like a girl.

18.1. And then find an outfit that makes me look like a butch lesbian/boy with long hair, and wear that.

19. Find an alternate name/pseudonym I’m actually happy with for an extended period of time. (Once I wanted to be called Star. Star.)

20. Get drunk with my friends and have the time of my life.

Some things, I of course can’t share, but that’s a decent selection of things I would like to do before I die (and, of course, things that I want to actually achieve).