i remember the feeling

I DID IT!!!!! or kinda, i mean, i didn't write a novel in one go like you're supposed to, but i did write 51,834 words of fic this month!!!!!! plus i'd guess maybe a couple thousand more handwritten words across my various fic notebooks. i also wrote (WAIT FOR IT) 29,725 words of my dissertation draft. THAT'S A LOT OF WRITING!!!!!!

about 40k of the fic wordcount came from these projects:

• misfits au (20k)
• sequel to sexswap niall (~12k)
• sex demon narry (~8k)

and then the rest came from assorted other fics:

• small town divorce fic (didn't write nearly as much of this as i hoped RIP)
• sequel to 'what a sweet sound it makes'
• teen dads narry
• tree narry
• 50 shades lirry

OK AND PART THREE! (previous parts: barry POV/general plot outline is here, part 1 of the niall POV/outline is here, part 2 is here.) content warnings in this section for description of a panic attack.

Niall’s been living rough for a week since the storm. He doesn’t go to the police because he’s pretty sure the guy was telling the truth about having influence there, and he doesn’t want to be arrested or handed over to the guy. the money runs out fast, though, and he’s hungry and cold and scared. Maybe he sees a female prostitute on the street somewhere and he thinks, I could do that, maybe, because hasn’t he been doing it already, hasn’t he been whoring himself out to this rich old guy for nice clothes and presents and a roof over his head. So he starts hanging around places where he thinks maybe he could pick someone up, trying to look available.

Maybe the first night he doesn’t have much luck, loitering around. Or maybe he does pull, but he fucks it up somehow. He’s so nervous he feels sick to his stomach, and as soon as he gets into the guy’s car he starts feeling super claustrophobic, like the walls were closing in on him. He can’t stop thinking about how it could all go wrong—what if the guy just turns the car on and drives off with him, locks the doors so he can’t get out, what if he takes Niall somewhere and kills him and dumps his body in a ditch by the side of the road. He tries to keep a lid on his panic, but for some reason he can’t shove it down like he normally does—maybe it’s because now he knows that somebody could do that to him, and he keeps hearing the rich guy’s voice in his head, telling him that nobody would even miss him, nobody would even come looking for him. Then the john starts acting really fucking weird, like he’s drunk or on drugs or something—he’d seemed normal when Niall got into the car, but all of a sudden he’s breathing weird and his pupils are weirdly dilated, his skin all cold and clammy.

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I was thinking more about Niall’s character in the fic and where he comes from and what’s going on with him, and then meghan left this comment about a possible explanation for the guy following niall:

okay this is a rather dark option, but uh... perhaps niall did not have such a great home life and was targeted but an older man who seemed nice and handsome and bought niall nice things and treated him so kindly. and it was the best thing to happen to him! and he left his shitty family situation and was head over heels for this dude, but in reality the dude was an abuser grooming niall, and the second niall made noises about trying to reconcile things with his dad or whatever, dude turned violent.

and well that is RIGHT UP MY ALLEY in terms of dark fic backstories + niall suffering, and it also fits PERFECTLY with my idea for niall’s superpower. idk if anyone remembers the little empathy fic outline I did a while back for an angsty narry canon fic (https://saysthemagpie.tumblr.com/tagged/empathy-fic), but the basic premise of that fic was that niall has a condition that makes his feelings contagious, which means that if he’s feeling something very strongly anyone who’s physically close to him will ‘catch’ his mood. it’s not like he’s mind controlling them or anything, sometimes it’s very subtle, but niall’s learned to be very, very careful about controlling his emotions and not letting them seep out into the room, and he’s also become very watchful/observant/attuned to how other people feel, because he needs to know how they were feeling before or how they usually act so he can tell if his mood has been unconsciously influencing them in some way.

ANYWAY SO, as I said before, in Misfits people’s powers amplify some aspect of themselves, or are tied to a deep-rooted insecurity or past regret, so people’s powers are tied to their backstories and often tell you something about the person. and in this fic, the power niall gets is kind of a variation on that emotional contagion premise. when he gets struck by lightning, it’s like it reverses something inside of him, or recircuits something, and so now all of the feelings that he’s been internalizing and tamping down for his whole life are suddenly projected outwards into his environment, and other people feel what he feels, in ways that are often super amplified or unpredictable or out of control. (I was discussing this idea with Hannah last night and she said: “I just love the thought of two essential Irish personality traits being taken away from Niall, 1) not being a burden and 2) being emotionally controlled,” which, YES. YES EXACTLY!!!!!

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