A Guide To Hyp’s Writing

Ok hear me out.

In my experience, people usually only know a perfume or a cologne by name for 2 reasons. 1) they wear it, or 2) someone they love wears it.

Now. Santal 33.

Considering it’s a cologne and not a perfume, there’s only 4 men close enough to Henry that he’d know their exact cologne. Percy, Phillip, Shaan or his dad.

So, allow me to bring out my headcannon.

Santal 33 was Arthur’s cologne. It’s a newer cologne, yeah. 2011 debut, coming as a replacement to 2006’s Santal 26. So I get that. But sometimes your favorite cologne or perfume gets discontinued or reformulated to hell and you need to find a new one. Maybe that’s how Arthur stumbled onto it in 2011, and for the memory building years of 11 to 17, that’s what he smelt like.

So in Rio/Melbourne, when Alex is very close to a young, still freshly grieving Henry, the scent of his father is just too raw, too overpowering, too painful.

and that’s why he reacts how he does. But promptly forgets it, also.

And when when Henry stumbles into Alex in that closet, stressed, truthfully a bit scared too, suddenly he smells home. He smells safe and home and comfort and love and realizes it’s Alex he smells but it’s also dad. It’s dads cologne. It’s “Santal 33”.

And, it’s doesn’t take long for Alex to stop just smelling like home and safety but for Alex to become his home and safety. And he laments to Percy, that it’s weird, that he’s a freak that his fathers cologne does it for him.

And Percy asks, does Alex’s cologne arose you? And Henry stops in his tracks.

No, actually. The smell of Alex under it? That’s sexy sure but not as much as it’s comforting. Alex smells uniquely like alex. His own natural scent and his fucking cinnamon everything- coffee, gum. His detergent, his dryer sheets. He smells like alex and it’s not that the smell does it for him, smelling alex just smells safe. Alex’s scent just makes him feel calm. And the cologne? It’s part of it. Part because it smells like his dad, part because it smells like alex. Equal parts honestly. Henry isn’t aroused by Alex’s scent, he’s calmed by it. He feels loved when wrapped up in it. He wears Alex’s clothes and smells Alex all over him and he feels wrapped in a blanket of love.

That’s all. Thank you

Happy Valentine's Day from these soft boys

You mentioned the ao3 author curse in one of your asks and I’ve never heard of this before? I am now super curious if you could maybe elaborate?

Oh BOY anon! Welcome welcome, this is a fun one.

You ever see one of those posts floating around, either here or on other social media, that's just a compilation of the most unhinged AO3 author's notes you've ever seen? The ones that are like "sorry this chapter is a day later than normal! My house was flooded and my fish died and my grandfather was struck by lightning three times in a row so I had to finish editing this in the hospital overnight. Please forgive me, next week will be back to our regular schedule!"

That's the AO3 author curse. It's not an always thing. It's not even a most of the time thing. But sometimes life goes to absolute shit, and sometimes that happens when you're in the middle of posting a fic, and sometimes you end up being incredibly apologetic about schedule slippage on writing that you are doing in your spare time for free while you're having to deal with Actual Real World Stuff and explaining why the schedule slippage occurred in the author's notes that makes your life sound completely batshit.

A couple of examples:

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CRACK

sideblog for weird or unhinged ao3 screenshots and quotes >:D feel free to send/submit yr own

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Im the one who just egged your house

starting a collection

(Me: I haven't yet had anything happen while posting, but while co-writing a fic with @ships-to-sail that was literally set in the afterlife and all about grief and the impact we have on the people we leave behind I had multiple family members/family friends die, which was uhhhhhhhhh not conducive to writing that particular subject matter lmao)

rwrb fic: words, any words, your laughter

Amazing banner made by @midnightsfp

Relationships: Alex Claremont-Diaz/Henry Fox-Mountchristen-Windsor

Summary: AU. Alex is a somewhat disillusioned actor who finally lands the project of his dreams: a story that matters, directed by one of his idols, Rafael Luna. The only problem is that the screenwriter is Henry Fox, who can’t seem to stand Alex, and who Alex would love to shove into a cake—neither of them expect the way working together will change both of their lives forever. Or, five times Henry Fox, screenwriter with the hottest script in town, talked about Alexander Claremont-Diaz, up-and-coming actor, and one time Alex talked about him right back.

Read on Ao3 HERE

“Up to the challenge?” Alex says, and then says it again, just in case Zahra missed it. “Up to the challenge?” “It’s a perfectly normal quote, Alex, especially since you haven’t really met Henry Fox before,” Zahra says. “Uh, we’ve met, Z,” Alex shoots back. “Or, I tried to meet him and congratulate him on his script like two years ago at that amfAR benefit and he looked at me like I was some sort of unwanted sentient mud and walked away, remember?”

i’m going to say something that might make me seem ungrateful, but i think it’s true of many fic writers:

we want you to leave comments ON ao3.

we’re not angry or disappointed or anything like that when you leave qrts or lots of tags on our fic posts, not at all. we don’t NOT want you to message us to tell us how a fic touched you. but in addition to that, please consider just copying those words and posting them on ao3 as a comment.

why?

the reason is simple: leaving commentary in other places is ephemeral. story posts get pushed down. chats get pushed down in the list of chats, or worse, pushed up in lists of messages as the conversation continues. but comments on ao3 are easily accessible. and this is important because writers read and reread these comments regularly.

writing, especially writing longfics, is exhausting and drains your confidence over time. having a collection of people who enjoyed your past work at your fingertips is an excellent way to build yourself up when you’re feeling down. fic writers need this a lot.

i know over the past few years there’s this trend to be very descriptive with what is an “acceptable” comment. that’s all nonsense, as long as you’re not being an asshole, just say what’s on your heart.

but post it on ao3. please.

What do you have against color?

11K • Explicit • Firstprince • Urban Sketchers AU

Upon opening the hardcover of a found sketchbook to locate the owner's contact details, Alex discovers only this inscription: > In case of loss, please return to: Instagram @henryfox.usk He, of fucking course, knows who Henry Fox is. That striking yet humorless, rude, and self-righteous British prick he met on the first day of the symposium.

Or, an AU where Alex and Henry are urban sketchers. A short story of how they get to know each other, fall in love and in bed within one day.

Please note that the sketches in this work were all generated with ChatGPT and then manually edited by myself with Procreate. They were not entirely hand-drawn by me, although I do wish I had that level of skill. 😭

Huge thanks to @pragmatic-optimist for fixing commas, semicolons, vibes, and final sentences and always being there to both bounce ideas off of and listen to me vent.

Prompts from @creativepromptsforwriting

Love Letter- (M) (Word Count: 3,200) WW2 AU

Birds

Snowfall

Dinner Date

Mirror

Sky

Chocolates

Poem

Rainbow

Cards

Dream

Ring

Mountains

Kisses

Cashmere

Dance

Roses

Heart Candies

Gifts

Cupcakes

Diary

Carousel

Watercolor

Love Language

Rainday

Cabin

Envelope

Ribbons

Admirer

RWRB Movie Posters

I've seen so many online sellers trying to make money off of printed posters that are just the promo images released by amazon, so I found HQ versions and am posting them here, for anyone else who wants them.

Sources without tumblr compression: One, two

+ Bonus

for wip wednesday this week, i thought people might maybe be interested in the planning board i made for Arc 4! Censored scene titles to avoid too many spoilers~

kanban boards are great for outlines, cause you can drag and drop scenes around when you're planning to work things out better, and I like having a 'physical' visual like this, it helps my brain.

tags are plot threads, using the colourful tags plugin to colour-code them so I can see at a glance what's what, with main plots in brighter colours and subplots subdued to mark the distinction.

I have two markers to pull out scenes: major plot beats, and spicy scenes. I wanted each chapter to have at least one of each (though as you can see, I didn't always exactly succeed). doing that helped me make sure I was balancing my developments, and having the tags let me see if I was abandoning key threads halfway through (which in draft one...i definitely was!)

not in the screenshot is the final board, which is cut scenes, because i refuse to throw things away when i might need them later.

First firstprince from me! ❤️🤍💙

Shoot Your Shot, Alex/Henry. M, 4.2k

Jimmy raises his eyebrows in anticipation. “First celebrity crush?”

As usual, Alex’s mouth is moving before his mind can catch up.

“Oh,” he gestures, like this is both obvious and the easiest question he’s ever been asked. “Prince Henry.”