Sea of Diamonds

(NOT A PR0MPT)

hello! you are the first (and only it seems) person that i’ve ever seen write hero x leader, and i actually really like it! i think it’s a cute dynamic, and would love to see more of it!

so if it’s okay, could you please write another snippet with this dynamic? thank you! :D i hope you have a lovely day <33

You know, I can’t say what possessed me to write it, but I’m glad everyone seemed to like it!! I hope you have a lovely day, too, nonny :)

******

“You know this is illegal, right?”

Hero squinted. “Mm, not sure about that.” Her feet touched the ground and she pushed off, sending her chair spinning in circles. “It’s probably not preferable- citizens might suspect you pressured me into it, but I doubt it.”

Leader huffed. “So the people might hate me, which means the agency would lose everything.”

“It’s marriage,” Hero said, planting her feet firmly on the carpeted floor. “It’s not like you’re spending the night with Villain. That would be a spectacle. It’s me. I’m a much better bride than Villain.”

“Still,” Leader ran a hand through his thick hair. “It’s a risk.” There had to be a balance, right? If Leader married Hero, he risked the agency falling apart, meaning Villain would be on the loose, along with any devious comrades.

“What makes you think anyone will even care?” Hero asked. “If anything, I think they would celebrate.” She shrugged and stood from her- well, Leader’s- chair before walking over to the wine fridge. “Buttery”- Hero pulled out a yellow-tinted wine- “or sweet?”- and she pulled out a red one. Biting her lip, she decided she might as well take both. “We would become this big power-duo in the city, and who knows, maybe the team would even respect me a little more.”

Missing the point, Leader sighed. “They do respect you. They just-”

“That’s not what we’re talking about right now- open this?” As Leader took the bottle, Hero strode across the room back to her desk, where she already had wine glasses placed. It was supposed to be a celebratory night; her and Leader were engaged (even if it were secret). Instead, Leader was riddled with worry. Surely, Hero thought, the wine would be necessary now. “My point is that we love each other, and no matter what happens, we’ll be there for each other. Whether that means your employees sneer at me in the hallways-”

“They wouldn’t.”

“-or the citizens think you’re as big of a bad guy as Villain, or nothing happens at all and we’re simply a happy couple…” Hero took a breath. “Whatever the outcome, we experience it together. I have your back.” She took the opened wine bottle out of Leader’s hands and began pouring the crimson liquid into his glass before handing it to him.

He took the glass and nodded. “And I have yours.”

Hero paused in pouring her own drink. “You still have more to say.”

Yes, he did. He was still just as worried as before, which was a shock considering all the risks he’d taken already. Every mission which Leader organized came with the thought that the team- that Hero- may never return. And now he was supposed to marry her with that in mind? “Is it selfish of me to be scared?”

“Of what?”

“This marriage,” he explained with a slow blink. “I’ve never been married. I’m not the type of person to be married. I count the heads of people who walk in the door and report to someone else if the expected number is below what it should be.” Leader was out of breath. And the glass in his hand was wet with sweat. “What if I lose you?”

Hero always meant something to Leader, but now she would mean more. As much as he loved her, he never let himself fully experience that feeling.  It was a dangerous thing.

“Would you feel better if you married Villain?” Hero joked, and maybe it wasn’t the time for it, but Leader’s lips curled up, and that was all she wanted. “Think about it. You don’t love her- let alone like her. She is quite literally the most wanted person, which means she’ll eventually be in custody, or even dead. With no emotional attachment and some financial benefits, she’s the perfect bride.”

Leader could almost laugh. Hero was good at pulling him out of his funks. She was the only one that saw through him- peered into his fears and insecurities- and she was the only one that could pull him out of them.

It was moments like these where he remembered that it didn’t matter what the rest of the world thought about him, or even the rest of the agency. If it meant having Hero at his side, he would take the brute of every hit.

To be known was all Leader ever wanted, even if he hadn’t realized it until Hero strode along. Before her, he thought he wanted the opposite- to be so well-masked that no one knew a thing about him: the things he’d been through, the memories he had, the scars he bore- both physically and mentally…

But here he was now…a girl in his room and two glasses of wine. Leader had never been a drinker; it made him too vulnerable, too unaware, too dependent on anyone besides himself.

With Hero in the room, though, twirling wine in her glass as if the liquid were a sea of diamonds she couldn’t wait to adorn, nothing else mattered to him.

“Villain could never give me the life you have.”

“Ah, breaking out the sappiness, are we?” Hero took a sip of her wine now, and Leader suddenly realized that he never saw Hero pour herself drink. Had he really been so distracted? “I think the sappiness deserves a place in time, especially when it sometimes leads to kisses. Does it lead to kisses now, Leader?”

He didn’t have to say a word back. Leader set his glass down before reaching to Hero, grabbing her glass, and setting it beside his own. He held his hands out and waited for Hero to take hold of them before hoisting her in. “I love you, you know that?”

Hero smiled against his chest. “I love you, too.”

******

Master tag list:

@whatwhumpcomments @faeruine

Hey so…if you read this far, that means you get a cool announcement that others might miss.

I got married! The OGs will remember a time where my followers were oddly obsessed with my boyfriend. Well, that boyfriend is now my husband and that’s like…kind of insane. (I love you, you stinky rat. 🐀 )

Anyway, love you all! I know I say it all the time, but I’ll write a story with some even more time.

Hi

It's been brought to my attention that there are people out there who are sadly plagiarising my work again.

1. This is not okay.

To clarify, while I'm very happy for people to take inspiration from my stories (in the same way you might any book you read from a bookshop), I don't want my work used or reposted without credit.

I'm not going to go into lengths on why it is wrong to plagiarise someone else's writing. I don't think my tumblr post is magically going to change anyone's mind, especially as if you've followed me long enough you know we've done this rodeo before.

So.

2. How to tell when writing is plagiarised

It can be very difficult to tell when something is plagiarised, especially if we have never come across the original work before and have no reason to recognise it.

I don't think it's realistic for everyone to vet everything they come across online for plagiarism, but it's also something I don't see talked about a lot for fiction.

These questions to ask yourself are not foolproof and not applicable to everything. But I think they can be a start.

If the writer has posted more than one story, is there a similarity across them? While writing style can change across an author's different pieces, there is still usually going to be a similar feel across stories if they came from the same person. Writers have voices and quirks and little things that are specific to them. If every piece feels wildly different then it might be coming from different places. This is probably going to come down to gut reaction and instinct in the first instance. But that's okay. Because that gut reaction is just there to make you think twice and maybe investigate more thoroughly.

How much are they posting? Can people churn an extraordinary amount of words out? Yes, sometimes. But...as a general ballpark, no. Writing takes time and effort. If someone is coming out with enormous amounts of writing every day or week or month or whatever, then this can be a hint to look a little closer.

Do you ever see hints of their writing process? Can the writer talk about their characters or what they want out of the story or anything like that? Do they ever post a story organically in response to a request or whatever? Not all writers know in-depth everything about their story or characters or plot, but the main point here is that the finished product is the tip of the iceberg. If someone is a writer than there is more going on beneath the surface of the posted stories.

I hope this helps!

Haunting

NOT A PR0MPT

******

Hero swore she recognized him. Thinking back on how he looked before was difficult as she looked to him now. Stared, rather. She shook her head, ducked it down, and moved along.

Leader would be expecting her any moment, so it was important for her to show up focused and prepared. Forget the familiar looking man; she had an idea for the agency.

Being only a door away, she thought it would be easy to slip away unseen. Alas, she was disappointed.

"Hero?"

She swore beneath her breath. It was exactly who she thought; it was Villain.

PSA CAN’T BELIEVE I’M POSTING THIS. STOP AI.

The first image is a prompt I posted on my prompt blog LAST YEAR.

The second image is from an application called c.ai. On MY post, a viewer commented, telling people that there’s a character with this very dialogue.

Mind you, NO ONE ASKED ME FOR PERMISSION. Though it wasn’t stolen word for word, this is very obviously taken from my prompt which I took the time to write and publish. This is MY writing, and though I share it publicly, that does not give anyone the right to make money off of it. I did NOT CONSENT TO MY PROMPT BEING USED IN AI.

I honestly am not even sure what action to take but please please please bring attention to this and reblog. We need to end AI and the act of stealing artists’ work. I can’t believe this.

Tagging some of my Mutuals in hopes this post can spread. If you’d like to be removed, please let me know and I will gladly oblige.

@save-the-villainous-cat @epiclamer @the-modern-typewriter @gingerly-writing @creweemmaeec11 @hufflepuffwritingstuff2 @snowshowerwriting

-edited-

Hi everyone! Thank you for the shares- this is the biggest response I’ve seen, personally, on my own social media.

For some added context, since I see there’s been some confusion, the second image is a screen shot of a character on character ai. The character was created by a human- NOT MYSELF- using MY words.

While it’s not AI that explicitly stole my words, it has been accepted by multiple people that my work was stolen and used to benefit this AI character.

I post my prompts on my Pinterest page, as well, and under the prompt (seen on left), someone commented, “There’s a c.ai bot that has this dialogue, if anyone wants the name, tell me” and people did. It became accepted that my work (which is dated) was explicitly being used elsewhere. The creator of this character also has a TikTok, where she requests her bots “not be stolen” which is crazy given she stole my, and who knows how many others’, work.

This is the character creator’s following on TikTok. The post she used to introduce her character using my words had an accumulative 33.3k likes, hundreds of comments, and several thousand saves. None of these people, I’m sure, were aware of the fact that some of the character’s introduction was stolen.

The “stop AI” campaign I’m getting at has to do with the idea that it is SO widespread and so many peoples’ art is being stolen without anyone knowing it. It’s so easy to take someone’s words and because it’s so popular, no one looks into it. They want something fun, entertaining, and easy. Why request a piece of writing from an author, or even wait for their next book, when they can go online and talk to an AI character who responds in seconds? The ease of copying someone’s words and using it in these applications needs to end.