“If you were also an art piece, then whoever created you must have loved you dearly”

“If you were also an art piece, then whoever created you must have loved you dearly”

“If you were also an art piece, then whoever created you must have loved you dearly”

since mc has half sylus’s soul (and he does too) when he says this it hurts so good 😭

he is part of her - he is part of creating who she is today 😭

HE LOVES HER DEARLY

Watch out!!! SSS level threats are here!!! Run for your life! Arghhhh!

This sums up everything about Caleb myth for me 🙃

My vitamin D deficient man is out in the sun on his birthday ayyyy

THE AUDACITY OMG I WANT HIM SO BAD

ocean memories

synopsis. you and rafayel have lived countless lives, each one making a dent in your blessed bond, growing apart at the end of each life.

pairing. rafayel x fem! reader

warnings. angst, death, mentions of blood, LOTS of crying, betrayal (?), spoilers and/or theories surrounding rafayel's myth cards (abysswalker + god of tides) and overall lore, ooc raf (?), reader is NOT mc, mc will be in the fic and will be nameless

genres. angst, reincarnation (?), romance, SLOW BURN

status. updates twice a month on fridays ! but hopefully i can update once a week

start. 010225

end. ???

a/n. send an ask in my inbox or leave a comment to be added to the taglist ! also, ty @bakutual bc i remember your rbs from my two-shot raf x priestess!reader inspired this HAHAHAHAH ty 😜❤️‍🔥 also !! i've made a playlist that i'll sometimes update but here it is heh.

chapters.

act one. a god and his priestess

prelude's elegy. | (1) children of the sea, | (2) made to be a reflection of what each needs, | (3) and forever blessed by the sea. | (4) why, then, did thy fall?

I LOOK THROUGH YOUR EYES IN MY DREAMS.

act two. two lemurians

(5) the sea wishes your second life will be longer, | (6) that it will not end tragically like the last. | chapter three. | chapter four.

???

act three. the abysswalkers

chapter one. | chapter two. | chapter three. | chapter four.

???

act four. an art critic, and an artist

we must confess our sins | chapter one. | chapter two. | chapter three. | chapter four.

postlude's ode.

OCEAN MEMORIES, yuansie 2024

fate | rafayel

synopsis : Who are we to stand in the line of fate?

content : rafayel x non-mc!reader, cannon/non-cannon, Shaiya is an OC, angst

(Very very inspired by this here.)

yapping abt nonmc

Non-MC reader fanfics are always written by authors who know exactly how to hurt a person. The pain is so intense and so well-crafted that, dear God, sometimes I find myself rereading the same paragraph over and over again. And after a while, I start to see myself as that woman—waiting to be loved but never receiving it in return.

Imagine loving someone. Looking at them with the most fragile, the most human part of your heart. When you hear their voice, everything inside you comes to a halt, and your entire existence shifts toward them. But they… they don’t even notice you. Or if they do, their recognition is not with the powerful grasp of love, but with the light touch of mere acknowledgment.

To you, they are a star, the very center of the universe. But to them, you are just another speck of light in the sky. If you were to disappear, they wouldn’t feel your absence. You turn back, realizing your hands are empty, crushed under the weight of your love. And they? They continue revolving around another world, another sun.

You are a meteor, trying to rise and shine, but unable to enter their orbit—shattered by the gravity of a planet that was never meant to hold you. You dissolve into dust, fading into silence. And they move on, as if nothing ever happened.

This plays out differently for each character, but the ending remains the same.

In Zayne’s case, you are either his fiancée or his wife. He is always cold and distant. His words are measured, his presence heavy yet quiet. Even if storms rage behind his eyes, his face remains unreadable. He has always been this way, and you have accepted it.

But then, he smiles—at her.

That smile is like spring breaking through the ice, subtle, warm, and gentle. As if, for just a moment, the layers of frost within him have melted. And in that moment, you realize he was never truly like this—not for everyone. He is not just a distant man; he is only distant toward you.

And that’s when it sinks in. A weight settles inside you, stealing your breath for just a second. Because you have seen it now—he can be affectionate, he can be warm, he can smile. But that smile was never meant for you.

You are likely Sylus’s assistant, though in rare cases, you might be his wife. Sylus has always been indifferent—to everyone. To you. You walked in his shadow on the battlefield, threw yourself in front of bullets for him, but to him, it was merely necessity. A duty. Your presence was nothing more than part of the mission. Until she came along.

With her arrival, Sylus changed. His face softened when he looked at her, the sharpness in his voice faded. He made sacrifices for her, and when he spoke to her, the rigidness in his posture eased. Sylus was no longer the man you knew. Everyone questioned if he was still the same person, but you already knew the truth.

He hadn’t changed. He had simply never been yours.

With Xavier and Rafael, the pattern is almost identical. You are nothing more than a companion who has traveled through centuries with them, defying time itself.

As time weaves its path, they always take the lead—making decisions, guiding, fighting. And you? You are merely a shadow beside them. A witness. While they sacrificed their homelands for love, you were the one who heard the cries of the people they left behind. On one side was their passionate devotion, and on the other, your quiet grief.

For them, time had stopped. But for you, the world kept turning, though it no longer resembled the place you once knew.

And then there’s Caleb.

Caleb was always by MC’s side. He was her protector, her shield, her most trusted person. And you were there too. You grew up in the same house, sat at the same dinner table, shared the same stories. But his eyes always sought only MC.

Through the years, you watched how he looked at her. How he stepped forward at the slightest sign of danger, how every word he spoke to her carried an unshakable certainty. You bore witness to his protection, his sacrifices, his unwavering love—but never once was any of it directed at you.

You were there too. You lived those same moments. But you were never the center of his world.

Some see her as a mistress, a backup, an extra wedged between the main character and the LI. As if she were a mere footnote in someone else’s story, placed there by mistake. But she’s not.

She is not just someone trying to insert herself where she doesn’t belong. She was there from the very beginning. She walked the same path, fought the same battles, gazed at the same sky. She was never a stranger lingering on the edges of the story—she was a part of it.

The difference is that her name was never written into the main plot. Her words never echoed, her presence was never at the center. And yet, she was never just a replacement. Because love isn’t a competition, it isn’t a role to be filled, it isn’t about winners and losers.

She simply loved. With everything she had, without expecting anything in return. Her eyes were always on him, but his eyes were never on her.

This explains perfectly what i love about Non-MC plots. The juicy tragedy of loving but never being loved. Or being loved too late. 😭

So earlier in art class today, someone drew a characters hands in their pockets and mentioned that hands are really like the ultimate end boss of art, and most of us wholeheartedly agreed. So then, our teacher went ahead and free handed like a handful of hands on the board, earning a woah from a couple of students. So the one from earlier mentioned how it barely took the teacher ten seconds to do what I can’t do in three hours. And you know what he responded?

“It didn’t take me ten seconds, it took me forty years.”

And you know, that stuck with me somehow. Because yeah. Drawing a hand didn’t take him fourth years. But learning and practicing to draw a hand in ten seconds did. And I think there’s something to learn there but it’s so warm and my brain is fried so I can’t formulate the actual morale of the lesson.

Saying "I'm not going to draw this thing because I don't know how to draw this thing" is really shooting yourself in the foot, because you've now cut yourself off from an opportunity to grow.

I had a friend in college who was an absolutely amazing artist. I loved seeing his work! One time I said something to the effect of "I could never do that."

He told me something that, as an artist, I resonate with. He said art isn't about natural talent; it's a learned skill. When you tell an artist their level of skill is impossible for you to reach, you're assuming their level of skill is a natural gifting they have, and it discredits the hundreds to thousands of hours of hard work they've put into getting where they are today, and you're cutting yourself off from trying to reach that point yourself.

I don't remember where I heard this but I wish I could, because it stuck with me:

Talent is THE RATE at which you learn things, not whether or not you can learn certain skills at all.

And that suddenly clicked for me. I have been very talented with a lot of things in my life and once I realized that I had basically been getting XP multipliers on my normal life experiences, it suddenly felt so much less awful to realize that I did not have the same advantage with other skills I struggle with, and that's okay. I might even have some debuffs on those, and that's okay. It's still all gaining as long as I keep working on it!!

This also holds true for writing: the best way to never be good at writing something is to never write it.

I see people say that they don't write fight scenes, for example, because they're bad at writing them, but the reality is that the way you get good is to write them.

And maybe you write one badly, but then you look at it and figure out what makes it bad. And then you write another one, and it's a little better, or it's bad in a different way, and you repeat the cycle until a lot of "a little better"s get you to "good".

Caleb would 100% lean into your hand like a puppy when you would play with his hair and he would 100% close his eyes as a small smile crossed his face and he would 100% reach for your hand to do the thumb thing

Not an Editing “Tip.”

(Just a tool that might help clean up your writing and create a faster paced reading experience.)

Removing excess words. If you don’t need particular words, why keep them?

Showing instead of telling. Making the reader feel what the protagonist feels is almost always better than telling them the protagonist is undergoing something.

Removing passive voice. Active voice is more engaging and should be always be used unless you have a specific reason not to use it for that sentence.

Always remember though: you have to do what works best for that particular moment. Some scenes require different strokes than others. Use your best judgement, and take pride in your personal writing style.