#[ i have no idea what this is and i kinda wrote it in a disjointed manner so it's uh ]

[ylvaisawolf]

Messy thoughts on Fred (and Tubbo?)

This is really disjointed. This was just me typing everything that popped into my head down.

I have opinions on Fred (and everything around him atm)

Like everyone saying he is evil. Fred himself knows he did wrong things 

He knows he isn't a saint he just has a single person hae loves and cares about [Tubbo]

Fred told Tubbo he did wrong things and yes he did not specify what (From what I recall) but he told Tubbo and he said he didn't care (Tubbo said he would be a villain if Fred is sooo…)

Is it very cruel to tell someone you wish they would get tortured again? Yes! Hell yeah it is. 

Quackity has his reasons for hating the Feds no shit but he threatened Tubbo which is why Fred said that.

(Also I am biased towards Tubbo. I am Foolish/Jaiden in spirit aka I side with the characters I like more over my irl morals)

Like I do think he cares because he has to for the other workers but they are not friends, they are his underlings or bodyguards so you have to be nice there (Or you would hope. Even if manipulative)

Like I would be an idiot to not acknowledge him taking notes on Aypeirre’s torture or again his very cruel comment to Quackity

Fred acts different ways with different people. Like he is definitely more nice with Tubbo for example when he said he was a bad penpal for not responding much and “I genuinely felt like a stalker and that it wasn't morally correct what i was doing…”  (Day 195) of which Tubbo responded in his letter back with “ I don't think you should worry about the morality of trying to find them as kidnapping itself is very immoral.” 

Which is true but still.

Fred also said on the day of the movie date he has done bad stuff to Tubbo. (“You don’t understand, I’ve done bad stuff.” … or something similar as I am not watching the vods.)

So to me I am wondering where some people have been?

Fred is deny deny till he cant then bites back when out of options 

He is seemingly questioning himself and the Feds but atm he is following them along still

Back to Tubbo for a sec I have to mention that he said something along the lines of It seems everyone but the morning crew likes him so it wouldn't be hard for him to be a villain.

I keep bring that up whoops but like Tubbo is really protective of Fred warning him to stay away from Aypierre and that he will gladly listen to anything that worries Fred

Tubbo and Fred really love and trust one another.

ALSO!

Fred wrote on October 8th “I must admit… I don't know what my morals are or trust for the Federation is..” 

Man knows he is messed up <3 

(Also Tubbo just told him it is ok to question your morals)

Fred not trusting the Feds doesn't mean he doesnt follow what they want like torture btw. I am not ignoring that dont worry 

He still is doing his job. He acts like he doesn't like it but he is still doing it.

Also Fred at one point told Philza he loves snitching. Yes, kinda sassy but he did say that. (I think October 4th or 5th)

If it isn't obvious I Adore Fred even if he turns out evil. I find him to be a very interesting character.

Also I am not touching him leading Tubbo, Roier, & Slimecicle to the Maze. I have no idea what the deal is there.

Yeah this post is a mess but I don't normally post my own thoughts or do essays (this isn't even an essay). If I wanted to put more effort in I could but me typing my thoughts down and semi looking for direct quotes is all this post is getting haha.

I don't care if Fred gets better or worse as long as he is a fun and interesting character the whole time .

[charmac]

I really liked your answer to that last anon! I just got into this fandom (and macden) and it's the first one I've been in many years. I was still a teen when I was kinda obsessed with shows like spn and bbc sherlock, and after those I just can't help but think that I'm once again just reading too much into the choices of the writers etc :/ like I want to believe my own eyes but I'm afraid to lol

What you have to try to remember (and constantly remind yourself) is that Sunny isn't like any other show, it's not Supernatural relying solely on Network demos to stay alive, and thus constantly feeding into bait to draw views, it's not a writers room completely removed from the actors.

The heart and soul of the show is completely, from the ground up, Rob, Charlie, and Glenn, in almost complete control. So when you see things the actors do in the show and you think "ugh I'm reading into this just like Destiel, those looks mean nothing, this is just the actors playing it up for..." For what? They've been renewed through 18, they don't even really rely on bringing in a large audience, it's FXX. They make this show for themselves, the audience is just a bonus.

Shows like Supernatural have teams that are often separate, so when something is written it might not be acted as the writers intended, which might not be edited as the actors and writers intended, which is all overseen by the Creator(s) and Producer(s), who have different visions and intentions for their show, which is heavily guided by what The Network allows/approved and believes will bring in views. So what you see in Credits is like any 'normal' show: Created by X, Produced by Y, Written by Z, Top billed cast: A, B, C. What happens with long-running shows like Supernatural, is that all the players develop different ideas and attachments over time, so you'll end up seeing the actors play their characters (and thus relationships) in a way that's a little different from the writers writing it and what the creator(s) want and what ends up in post is some conglomeration of all of these ideas, then pushed out a certain way by The Network to hold their demo and draw views. So you "read into" what you're seeing, it's very much there in many forms, but it's being chopped at the throat and comes out disjointed. Because XYZ ABC all have different ideas and attachments and visions from each other and they have enough sway based on long-standing to (kinda) have their voice heard. You're not reading into something that doesn't exist, you're reading into something that exists but is being butchered and warped by conflicting visions and power. (Just Misha Collins opening his mouth post-SPN Finale is perfect proof of this, lol)

Now look at Sunny, it's not that. Episodes like Bowling are really great examples: you look at the credits and it's: Produced by Rob, Charlie, Glenn; Developed by Rob and Glenn; Created by Rob; Written by Rob, Charlie, Glenn; Top billed actors: Rob, Charlie, and Glenn. So what you're immediately affirmed is that there's very little disjoint even possible. And, not even credited, we know Charlie and Rob were heavily involved in editing and post production (per TASP, Glenn was in Hawaii when they did post on Bowling). So what you're seeing is ALL deliberate, as intended. They are acting out the script exactly as it was written because, they wrote it. And then it's edited exactly how they want it to be because, it's their show and they sat there in the editing room. The final product isn't some conglomeration of different teams with different intentions, it's RCG from breaking the idea in a writers room to approving the final cut of the episode. There's no conflict, your eyes are telling you exactly what the intention of every moment is.

(And per the Meg Ganz Argument: she was quite literally a fan of the show, hardcore Macdennis shipper when they brought her on in 12. Post filming Season 14, she was still tweeting about shipping them. You don't work as an EP, in the writers room, and as a director for a show for three full seasons (ONE BEING TWELVE) and walk away from S14 still hardcore pushing your ship if there wasn't way more going on behind the scenes than we even know.)

Welcome to Sunnyblr! Believe your eyes, trust the structure, appreciate the hints, knowing it's all very deliberate, and be certain RCG(M) know what they're doing, and definitely enjoy driving us mad with it all. We're in it for the long haul, there's just always so much preamble :)

[dashielldeveron]

Hi Dash! I hope you're doing well. I'm writing this ask literally 1 hour before I need to leave for one of my sem finals (which I'll be fine at hopefully, since I studied). But while I was anxiously awaiting purgatory, I read one of my favourite of your works again - Monoma's route in Soulmate Trope. Istg I am not exaggerating, no writing has made me laugh harder than that single scene where he just... wordlessly pulled down his pants. I laughed so hard that my roommate had to come check on me. And the word "cum gutter" had dealt irreversible psychic damage to my brain. Sometimes while doing some mundane stuff, I think back about that scene, or countless other scenes from the book and had to remind myself I'm in public. I've only watched MHA up till season 3 and a bit into 4 but I was kinda already spoiled about the ending, so I'm so in love with the world you build there. I've always kinda wanted to try writing my own work because I sometimes have a budding idea that had me go, 'oh I think that'd make an interesting story', but then I realised I suck at writing. Writing just 1000 words took me an hour or more, I don't know how you wrote 60k words for 1 chapter!! That's absolutely insane. Also also, because your writing is so hilarious, when you get emotional, it hits so hard. "and i've gotta crow" is absolutely one of my all time favourite fan work, though idk what the title means. My writing, just after the first few paragraphs, feels like sandpaper to read. But your work really inspired me to want to at least try, even if I don't post anything. Especially after my finals, I'm going to try shitting this one idea out of my head in the summer (oh I'm in Australia so my summer is almost here). So yeah thank you for making me laughed so hard and also fingerbanged my heart. If you have nothing better to do, would you mind sharing your general writing process with me? As in, is there a forbidden jutsu move that amazing authors use when writing? For me, I feel like I'm typing and deleting and retyping until it forms a coherent sentence, but after putting them together it's dryer than my chicken breast that I forgot for 30 minutes in the oven. If not it's okay too, I hope you have a wonderful day!

yes.......YES.........let the monoma adoration flow through you!!!! we need more people in our monoma coterie!!! it's now you, me, 📌 anon, and like, two other anons i believe???? we are officially a Club, i say!!!

writing discussion/advice/process under the cut

okay, who told you you suck at writing? and why do they think so??? odds are you don't. odds are, you're overthinking your own work too much. when i look at stuff i've written, i see the writing process in every sentence, and odds are, you might, too. seeing the process takes away parts of being able to immerse yourself in the writing. so, your stuff probably isn't bad; it's just that you know all about how it was made!!!

writing takes me a long time! mostly bc i have academic/work writing to do all the time, so writing fic as my breaks from work isn't always efficient and fun. and i'm pretty sure some people may get frustrated with me for taking so long to update, but that's just how my life is rn. it's ultimately perfectly fine if you take a long time, though, because this is a hobby. we're not getting paid for this. we're providing art for free.

anyway......my process.....hmm. well. step one is to be haunted by visions.

step one is actually to think about that first idea you have to spark the fic. doesn't matter if it's in the middle or end, or anything. and you want to consider what kind of people would get in this situation (helps define what kind of character reader will be) and what could possibly lead up to it. it's okay if it seems like a bunch of disjointed ideas at first.

i am a big outliner, but i always allow seredipity during the writing process. as in, if something starts happening that's cool that i didn't plan, i'm cool with it, so long as it makes sense for the characters.

so, if i start a fic, i will start with an outline that's just a list of things i want to happen in the fic. sometimes it's specific events, and sometimes, it's something like "and they get romantically closer here through some tragic accident." put those events in an order that makes sense for the emotional progression of your characters.

i also keep running lists of hot lines of dialogue that i come up with, sexy outfits to put people in, sexy gestures, domestic things that would ruin me, or other fic-specific lists--like for tenko's soulmate route, i kept a running list of weird facts that reader could bring up. not many ended up going in the fic, but still.

like, this is a screenshot of a working outline/list from aizawa's route:

not all of this happened!! and more scenes got way fleshed out!!! i plan for Large Events and Emotional Resonance, but i am open to strange directions that just happen while writing the scene itself, so long as i get to where i need to go eventually. like.....the only one bed stuff on the undercover mission never happened, because suddenly, the club scene got super detailed, and aizawa would probably be too exhausted to spend the proper time having the argument, let alone sex, with reader that night.

but basically, i always want to know where i'll end up, even if i don't know how i'm going to get there. because the process of the characters getting there is where fun, detailed, character work happens. bc if your characters are distinct enough, they'll drive the story more than whatever plot you have.

i'm not every writer ever (obviously), so i know that more thorough outlining or not planning at all works better for other people!!! maybe try experimenting with completely planning and completely pantsing some shorter stories to see what works better for you.

i don't have a daily routine for writing bc i am Busy All the Time, but i carry a notebook in my purse if i am struck with visions, and when i type on my computer, i usually turn on an ambient mix from ambient.mix.com to block out other stuff. usually, i can find an ambience to fit the mood of the scene i'm writing, too lol, which doesn't necessary help but makes things more fun.

i honestly think i spend more time daydreaming about the story than writing it?? i am a big advocate for daydreaming. it's important that you spend time thinking about everything that could go wrong, bc it often makes for a better story if it's fucked up, somehow. idk it may also be bc of work that i'm away from a computer so often. i like writing in the notebook by hand bc it's less pressure to make it "good," and so i can edit as i type it in a word doc later.

and editing is, of course a huge part of the writing process!!! i would say it'd be weirder to write a sentence just right the first time, as opposed to deleting and rephrasing repeatedly! you're doing just fine!

but i wouldn't say there's any secret besides doing it a lot!!!! i know i'm not a great writer, but i know i'm okay, and that's the result of working and practising it for about two decades now. i just have practise, read a lot, and spend a lot of time, academically, discussing written stories.

so!!! if you're feeling like your stuff isn't as good as you want it to be, you just need to start allowing yourself to suck!!! nothing is perfect the first time!!! and eventually, you can edit your sucky stuff into stuff that's compelling.

good luck with your semi finals and finals!!! and thaaaaaank you for 1) valuing my advice as an artist (gosh!!!!!) and for 2) saying such nice things about the silly little stories i write!!!! it means a lot to me!!! you're so kind!!!!! i hope any of this helped at all!!!! and i hope your day is peaceful!!!! xx.

[vivacissimx]

a murder of modern AUs: baelonviserra edition

as promised a while ago, I do have a list of modern AU prompts for BV! disclaimer that these are unlikely to ever be written (by me) but I do think about them, write miniature snippets, and so on. most of the time when I translate asoiaf relationships into a modern setting I get rid of any pesky incest because I do not think it's remotely the same in this Day And Age and in fact there are other variables which better recreate the tension of medieval incest. generally the tension/friction between two people is more interesting to me than the actual incest (which in the least harsh way possible—because many asoiaf writers do tackle this—in My opinion, is like completely unsolvable a dilemma for any modern au I could write. I do definitely use it thematically though. putting this tangent aside because others may feel otherwise on that point). would love to hear people's ideas, obviously!

under the cut because there are, frankly, A LOT:

-not really a 'baelonviserra' story but in the background of any mod au for rhaenyra (and specifically I am thinking of this gossip girl-inspired book!laenyra Thingie, story for another day) there is an unspoken enmeshment between viserra and baelon reflected in daemon/viserys's relationship to their one aunt who hung around them and who rhaenyra thinks of as her grandmother. viserra is like a catherine deneuve type in personality yknow mysterious glamorous elusive but before all that she was Gymnast who suffered a career-ending injury

-onesided baelonviserra Context In Any Viserra Story Ever: viserra using baelon as a measuring stick for every person she entertains, basically. they feel like it's impossible to measure up but viv is all [dramatic flourish] look at the material! the problem is YOU not my toxicity!

-disjointed tales of viserra's youthful attempts to get baelon to pay attention to her. I talked about this on xwitter the other day but imagine that viserra (14) wants baelon to see her as grown so when he sends her into the convenience store, she buys him a pack of cigarettes. he says ok thanks. do you see? these types of interactions where he's not completely unaware of her vying for his time or even her attraction to him, he just thinks it's a harmless thing and she's a lonely confused pretty girl figuring out how to Handle men using her much older brother as practice, because he is, conveniently, a man himself! (and in the bg of this is viserra feels neglected by her parents, baelon is almost too attentive to his sons with alyssa gone, viserra having transferred her desire for a loving caring family onto baelon has crossed wires between wanting to fill the space of wife or daughter. really she just wants to matter in her family)

-OK so getting into the Real Stuff: widower baelon, hasn't 'dated' since alyssa passed away, this modelactress whatever has been Gunning for him lately though and he's kinda... been entertaining her? they talk. he doesn't understand it himself. in this AU aemon and jocelyn have adopted him into their Unit so on a trip once he's telling them about viserra, jocelyn is jokingly insecure about it to which baelon is all what! joce you're beautiful! anyway they have a boat moment where aemon and jocelyn tell him to invite her, let's see what this is all about. viserra comes and is very fun and seductive about it, she plays it quite well. they start sleeping together and viserra meets rhaenys (who is an upcoming 21 year old child bride). she's invited to the wedding, rhaenys just adores her, but viserra & baelon 'break up' in the meanwhile. they fuck again at the wedding and now Baelon is the one trying to get serious. they go around town and what not together but they have a very 'private' relationship generally. if you have seen my other asks on this topic: this is the AU where viserra helps guide daemon thru his teenage arrest/his and mysaria's trashyfab public relationship. I wrote 1/8th of a snippet years ago, here's the relevant baelonviserra bits:

-you knew this was coming EMPLOYEE! VISERRA x CORPORATE! BAELON :) some hotshot executive viv + equally hotshot old money baelon. he's all haha oh her? Viserra? my workwife! just a little joke of course. it's all very appropriate and above board, i'm only mentoring her, what's an above-the-suit massage between Two People Who Like to Flirt, only words, bit of release, lord knows i've been stressed lately [meanwhile viserra is locked In]

-this is an AU where baelonviserra are together already but viserys&aemma have a teenage pregnancy neither of them are ready for so baelonviserra raise rhaenyra for the first few years until those two are ready

-I DO have a long-winded thing that involves desmond manderly but I don't wanna get into all that because while he's forgivable as a character in love doesn't live here, I use him like an OC outside of that and it's quite embarrassing 😅 all you need to know is viserra and baelon are both single parents in this here story

-I have not one but TWO messy baeserra + baelyssa brainrots:

-baelyssa DIVORCE AU! this is a no incest AU so only aemon & baelon are siblings. sitch being after losing a baby alyssa and baelon wind up divorced, it's complicated because they still love each other, things just Happened and alyssa actually is the one who pushed it through because she was emotionally drowning and couldn't open back up to baelon or even stand to be looked at by him. while perhaps knowing it wasn't The Solution she nonetheless needed distance from baelon STAT! he kinda fell into this relationship with viserra who is an up and coming Someone because a) he needs comfort too and b) he thinks it's what alyssa wants from him, that the idea of him as a romantic/sexual person is Oppressive to her rn so if he makes that side of him inert, to her, he can keep some access to her outside of that. so then it becomes this dynamic where yes She pushed him away and He still loves her, would take her back in a heartbeat and doesn't give a damn about his pride, but as a result of these happenings he is also a bit in love with someone else. and he has moments of real connection with viserra that muddy his 'big picture wife and I will get back together' planning. on alyssa's end she has several emotions: genuine relief at being able to take the time she needs and having space/fondness for baelon re-blooming now that he's not on her back all the time/empty space where she Misses him/jealousy that she feels guilty for having/the moment where she realizes it's no longer her and baelon the Life Partners Who Can Laugh About Everything Eventually. he just isn't responsive to her ribbing him about viserra. for the first time he has a relationship which isn't her Business, Oh.

-baelyssa INCEST AU (🤯) so baelyssa siblings but viserra not, she's like a ballerina or whatever the hell, point is only relevant because she meets supposed bachelor baelon thru an endowment/organization run by alysanne. they start up together she thinks he's just really close with his sister who's a single mother to daemon and viserys. eventually it gets serious and viserrabaelon are engaged, or maybe even they've just gotten married... when she finds out it's not Platonic and baelon is the father of those kids! at first she's freaked out and sickened but eventually viserra does go with him on their honeymoon. it surprises her a lot when baelon touches her, tries to seduce, yes they've been sexual but she thought she was basically a beard...? but no baelon does expect to have like intimate conversations and relations with his Wife. he simply Also has alyssa. they've always had each other, what's the problem?

probably there's more. I have a problem as you can see. doctors can't fix me sadly

[rivalsforlife]

Hey!! No pressure but I would love to hear about the takarazuka musical threequel!

I'm glad you asked about this one, because when I was skimming through my old wips I came across this line that completely knocked me out:

“Dude,” Larry whispered, reverently. “You’re telling me you scored a MILF?”

takarazuka musical threequel is currently a bunch of disjointed ideas I have about what would happen after the events of all the AA takarazuka musicals (which at the time I wrote this was only up to musical 3). Created June 2021 and last updated November 2021 but I think it's very funny so if my brain goes down that rabbithole again I want to keep working on it. It is also specifically based on my own interpretation of the musicals which is not at all how I was supposed to interpret the musicals. And since it's based on the musicals everyone is out of character compared to the games.

The story focused on Phoenix, Lucia (the almost-love interest from musical 2 for those who don't remember), and Edgeworth. Phoenix is refusing to move on from Leona and it's deeply damaging his personal relationships - since he has the attitude he has towards Maya in the musicals, Maya gets fed up with it and leaves and goes to live with Franziska, the only person who kinda gave a shit about her in musical 2, in New York running a fortune-telling business out of Franziska's apartment. She's out of most of the fic and is saved from the musical's characterizations.

Lucia's ex-fiancee Roland gets out of jail after a very short sentence (??? extenuating circumstances I don't think I fully figured that bit out) and, following Phoenix's advice, tries to get back together with him but she's struggling with it. I think she and Phoenix were supposed to hook up at some point? But eventually she realizes there's something Seriously Wrong With Him. And she runs away to another city or something to restart her life away from both Roland and Phoenix.

Edgeworth gets caught up by an international time-travel investigation organization (which Lang is an agent of because I felt like dragging him into this shitshow) which leads him to reunite with his love interest from musical 3, Emilia, who is muuuch older now because time travel and has kids (but for whatever reason is not currently in a relationship). They try to have a relationship but Emilia's kids are understandably weirded out by this. They eventually break up, Edgeworth questions his sexuality, tries to confess to Phoenix, but at some point realizes that he actually murdered his father and has a crisis about that. I don't think I decided if he actually did or if MvK just got away with it... oh well.

It ends with Phoenix having a breakdown at the ocean about Leona. Unfortunately I have not written very much. Under the cut (since it's a bit long for a tumblr post) is one of the scenes I did write where Maya leaves Phoenix:

“Oh, Nick! You’re back early…”

“Hi, Maya.” He took in all the bags again, and a feeling of dread rose through him. “It’s not another vacation, is it…? I swear I didn’t agree to anything --”

“No, Nick.” Maya dropped the bags to the floor and her face took on an unusually serious look. “I’m moving back to New York.”

“What?” Maya picked up the bags again and moved them to be with her other stuff. (Had she always had this much stuff?) “Why back to New York? I told you I wanted to stay in California…”

“I know.” Maya spun around, tears welling in her eyes. “I was talking to Franzy. I mean, Prosecutor von Karma. And I realized some stuff. And I want to go back to New York. She’s going to pick me up in fifteen minutes. I…” She wiped her tears on her sleeve and pulled a letter from the pocket of her weird robes. “I’m sorry. I just wrote it down here for you.”

Phoenix took the letter from her and opened it. It was weirdly long for something Maya wrote. He didn’t think she could keep her focus long enough to write something like this. “What’s this really about, Maya?”

“I-I wrote it all in the letter!”

“I know, I know, I’ll read it later.” He didn’t plan to. “When are you coming back?”

“I’m not coming back, Nick!” She pouted and stomped her foot. Oh no. He hoped she wouldn’t throw a fit. “This is why I’m leaving! You’re always like this! You never take me seriously!”

Phoenix sighed and gestured to her robes. With that getup, how could I? “What brought all this on, all of a sudden? You said you were talking to Prosecutor von Karma? She told you to do all this?”

“No, I decided that for myself.” Maya crossed her arms. “I didn’t want to move to California. I’ve been in New York all my life. But I came here because I wanted to continue to work for you, Nick. I mean, you remember how we met, right?”

… He couldn’t remember. “Yeah, for sure.”

“I didn’t know what to do with my life otherwise. I mean, I left the spirit medium trade for a reason. And -- see, you’re making that face again!”

“What face?”

“The ‘oh, Maya’s going on about spirit channeling again’ face!” More tears rolled down Maya’s cheeks. “You never take me seriously! And it’s not just about this. You never explain what’s going on in crime scenes or at the trials.”

“Because I don’t have the time to explain it to you, Maya…”

“Every time I suggest we do something fun like go to the beach, you go off doing something else…”

“Again, I’m too busy for that, Maya…”

“Every time I make you lunch or coffee you don’t care. Even when I was kidnapped! You totally forgot about me, didn’t you? Franzy was the one who had to come and save me! Even after she’d been shot!” 

“I didn’t forget,” Phoenix lied, because he hadn’t. Well, except for most of the trial. But a lot had been going on then, in his defense, like helping Lucia.

“I don’t want to spend the rest of my life as -- as a comic relief sidekick!” Maya shouted. “I had dreams and ambitions too, Nick! I gave them up to be your legal assistant! But ever since that trial back in New York, you’ve been so strange. And I started realizing that I’m really not helping you out, am I?”

“You help out lots, Maya,” Phoenix tried to assure her. These sorts of outbursts were quite unlike her. “Your smile has encouraged me many times.”

“That’s it? That’s all you can say?”

“Your quips in court can be entertaining, too.”

For some reason, this didn’t seem to make Maya feel better. “Well, I’m sure you’ll be fine without them,” she sniffed. “You’ll have to be. Because I -- I’m really leaving!”

Phoenix sighed. He could tell he wasn’t going to win this one. Women can be so stubborn. “Alright, Maya. Just let me know when you’re coming back.”

“You don’t believe me?”

“No. I do believe in you.” Phoenix smiled and spread his arms out. “After all, you’ve always been my legal assistant. Even if you stray from that path, I’m sure you’ll come back. I believe in the Maya I’ve known all this time. I’m sure she won’t change, I just know it.”

[dandunn]

Fic author interview tagged by @vampirenaomi

1 How many works do you have on AO3?

42

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

728,089

3. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Fic that annoys me so much I disabled comments (go find it yourself lmao), Marked for Death, Tiger by the Tail, What's coming through is Alive, The Sea is Getting Rough Again

my one piece fics all have way more kudos than my recent stuff basically

4. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

i do sometimes, im usually tired from writing and editing so sometimes ill just say thanks lol

5. What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

i wrote a fic anonymously which is horrendously dark and doesnt have a happy ending but I think most other fics i write at least have a bittersweet or happy ending hdfgb

6. What’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending?

uhhhhhh i dunno man I like the ending of the fic i wrote where goemon threatens to cut one of jigen's exes' dicks off and then they go hang out by the pool. that was fun :)

7. Do you write crossovers?

not really, I've had a few ideas for them but they're hard to write and wouldnt have worked out

8. Have you ever received hate on a fic?

not... really? i got a really weird backhanded compliment where someone talked at length about a ship i dont like (the fic wasnt about that couple) then said the first chapter was alright apart from being painfully slow (thanks) and then accused me of virtue signalling because of the difficult topics i handled in the fic.

It was really, really strange like I genuinely think they were trying to pay me a compliment but they were incredibly shit at it lol

And then in another fic I turned off comments because a minor started bitching at me about the porn I wrote not being sexy enough and when I told them to go away they harassed me for a little while. That was fun.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Yeas. I prefer it when smut is incorporated into the story because I kind of need the emotional stakes to be high enough otherwise I kind of lose interest. Smut without feelings is just kinda boring to me. Of course I have some exceptions but those are rare nowadays.

10. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I'm aware of.

11. Have you ever had a fic translated?

yes, though it's on wattpad apparently so I have no idea if the person doing it credited me because I dont use that site lol.

12. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

yeah and I dont recommend it. we only wrote like 2 chapters of it but i no longer speak to the co-author and the whole thing ended up feeling a bit disjointed and weird.

13. What’s your all-time favorite ship?

Uhh I have a couple, zoro/luffy, ace/sanji, jigen/lupin and jigen/goemon

zolu probably wins here because i have not so far written a 200k fic about anyone else lol

14. What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don���t think you ever will?

*gestures weakly at literally everything in my google docs*

I forgot how to write sorry

15. What are your writing strengths?

*tv static noise*

16. What are your writing weaknesses?

i cant speak english

17. What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

I don't know whether its bad or just handled badly by a lot of writers but I don't like it. Speaking as someone whos been learning japanese for the past 2+ years I hate it when I come across a word and have to either look it up myself or scroll to the bottom of the fic for any footnotes there are to explain it. Gonna use myself as an example for how I go about this kind of thing:

Fujiko tries to smile at his robotic, overly formal speech patterns, when really it's a little off-putting. She hasn't heard anyone use the word sessha, 'my humble self', for themselves outside of a period drama.

each to their own but i prefer putting in a small aside like this rather than shoving in foreign words and expecting for the reader to go and break the flow of the writing by looking it up for themselves.

18. What was the first fandom you wrote for?

id say pokemon mystery dungeon but the first fic i wrote i instantly deleted after getting one negative comment, i think one piece is more where i cut my teeth

19. What’s a fandom/ship you haven’t written for yet but want to?

i dont really know? ive gotten into a couple of new things recently but they havent triggered my "oh i gotta write something" reaction

20. What’s your favorite fic you’ve written?

i dunno man i dont like my work very much right now heres an image if u read all of this

[pink-strawberry-kissess]

DRUNK ANON! tryna not make mistakes here. THAT TOOK ME 20 Seconds to correct it because am drunk but BROOO. don’t call me baby. i catch feelings QUICK! hehehe. wink wink. when u say “ily” i feel a lil bit special (LMAAOO JKl

ANYWAY!! it’s SOOOO hard for me to write in Ada’s POV because we get so little of Ada’s back story or just in general, but then again it leaves room to explore Ada. Question, do you hear more of Ada’s voice or Leon’s? How do you stay motivated to write? What music evoke emotions out of you or have you think about Aeon? this is sooo messy 😭😭😭😭 i’m all over the place. SORRY.

OHH happy Holidays! OMG ANd ur layout for Leon’s apartment is how Totlaly how I imagined it. um. fuck. i lost track of my thoughts. it’s 1:22AM. Thank you for always having time for AEON NATION. you’re da best! 💕

YOU DIDN'T SAY IF YOU WERE GONNA DRINK WATER >:(

YOU BETTA DO THAT AFTER U DRUNK

sjkdbfsjkfnslkfsniofesidfh

u did a good job spelling hehe

yessss i do think that it's harder to write for ada. i think that we all subconsciously add our own ideas into how ada behaves and acts. and i think that's fine to some extent since she is "playing a role" isn't she? she's always this kinda cold person but we see her becoming softer for leon. so i think we have a bit of space to explore that and make a more "real version" of an ada. i do think that some people (even ada and aeon stans) still mischaracterize ada or her backstory, which is fine tbh since we have so little of her childhood, but like the egregious mischaracterizing (usually from anti ada and anti aeon people) is the kind of shit i hate- like her wanting to kill leon or something like that. or the flip side of her wanting to save the bunnies - although i do like the addition of her saving the chickens in re4r lol.

i like to think of them in both povs because i feel like it gives us a better way to move the plot along. if an entire fic is only from leon's pov it's a bit boring to me. i like the alternating povs and i usually write like that. the only ada only pov that i've ever written is this one.

even my other fics i add some of ada's pov.

i think it's important to explore both of their motivations and thoughts and ideas even if you don't end up writing one of their povs. it makes the writing disjointed sometimes if you don't think about the other characters and how they feel. even side or secondary characters i think it's important to flesh out just enough so that they're not just used as a plot device. (not to say only writing in characters for plot devices are bad, but keep them secondary characters or minor background characters.)

uhhhhhh honestly i write for fun so i just try to write a little bit when i feel like it T_T sjkdfbsjkfs i wrote a post on how to stay motivated but i don't remember what it was called. it might be tagged under like #heart writes or something like that

uhhhhh i have lots of songs that i like! i have a bunch tagged with #aeon coded song

THAT'S OKAY MY LOVE

ujjjhhhhhh

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!!! heheheheh im glad! i did try to explain it when i was writing but it's also okay if people had different ideas for apartment layouts. i wasn't like super specific about some aspects of it.

THAAANK YOOUUU 💕💕💕💕💕💕💕 DRINK SOME WATERR 💕💕💕

[sugawarassoulmate]

Hey i know this is kinda random but i just wanna know what you think the best way to get into writing would be? I’ve already been good at coming up with story’s and stuff in my head i just have a hard time actually writing it

ahhh for me, i get a lot of writer's block so what i like to do especially when i have an idea for a story that i can't get out of my head, i just like to write out the dialogue for a particular scene.

so for the bully!osamu love confession fic (which turned out to be 8k+ words lol) the first thing i knew i wanted to write was the love confession part but obviously that had to be near the end of the story

i actually wrote that part first and then wrote the rest of the story around it. so i tend to get the easy/more interesting parts of writing out of the way first and it actually makes it so i get a lot of the work done before i get into the other details.

writing is really fun but can also be a bit tedious and daunting especially when you have soooo many ideas for stories but the best thing i can say is just getting your ideas written down no matter how disjointed they sound at first bc it makes putting stories together so much easier

[triple--a--threat]

so about voltron

idk where this post is gonna go, but i have thoughts and feelings about this show and needed to get them out. so. rambley post it is.

i dont think it's new information for anyone that voltron and its fandom suck major ass, unless you've been living under a rock, and in that case, get back under that rock sweetie. this show sucks a fuckton and this rambling will be nothing more than critique and bashing. anyways

at the end of season 2 shiro was going to die in the original "plan" as far as we know. we were gonna get a heroic sacrifice and the team would go back to its 1984 setup with allura piloting the blue lion. except of course the machinations of the universe are beyond us so shiro did not in fact. die. he was the most popular character and his merch sold the most, so he couldn't possibly die this early on. who else would've made dreamworks their pure gold bars?

so as daddy dreamworks demanded, the writers delivered and un-unalived shiro, completely disregarding their original flimsy shambling excuse of a plan in exchange for among the worst plotlines i have ever seen anywhere. possibly the worst that exist in all of television ever. we got 4 seasons (well really 2) of completely directionless, contrieved, contradictory, and mind-numbing bullshit. stuff happens because someone wanted it to. 2 eps later something very contradictory happens because someone else wanted it to. i cannot stress this enough it feels like the writters were split into factions each of whom had very different ideas about literally everything in this fucking show. some of the dialogue actually feels like someone just wrote down the arguments and fighting going down in the writer's room. shit was made up along the way as the show went on for far longer than it had the right to, and for each and every fucking plotline the writers were divided and kept on shooting themselves (and the others too don't forget) in the foot for the sliver of chance that their story will be canon. just completely backstabbing each other for the sake of it and no regard for what is actually happening. it would be hilarious if it hadn't destroyed my sanity. and for a bit of a personal opinion, a liitle ymmv, none of the writers had any good ideas actually. even ignoring the nonsense opposite fuckery happening, none of the plotlines were good lmao. please end this and me oh god.

as a result we got a completely wish-washy, flip-flopping, self-contradictory, reductive mess of a show which never had any good original ideas or story much less a fucking plot or even a plan in some direction. the writers had no goal except to get their plot on the paper disjoint from everything else with jackshit regard to the overarching storyline. well if there was anything resembling an overarching storyline in the first place.

ig i'll talking specifically about the some of the worst offenders in the "the writers never thought of anything" situation - the allura racism arc, the clone shiro arc, and fucking lotor. oh my fucking god motherfucking lotor. holy shit they fucked him up.

i dunno where to begin with the allura racism arc except for the fact that it was DUMB. completely out of the blue and so fucking forced. for a princess of a diplomatic people she sure is fuckin racist for no fucking reason. even if she doesn't trust any and all galra (ig they didn't have unity in diversity activities in altea), she has no reason to not trust keith. like. my guy what. he proved himself as a paladin of voltron and has directly and indirectly saved her ass. why is she racist oh my god. and why doesn't coran hold any animosity towards the galra? he also lost his homeworld (and alfor)? and he lived on altea for far longer? ig women are emotional or smth. man. i also liked (absolutely despised) the the fact that it kinda took a #notallgalra turn and i was jesting about it and then they actually said that in the fucking show. hey allura not all galra are bad. hey allura stop being a bitch. and then the writers forgot about it btw and made allura racist again 2 seasons later. hmm. wut. also they never checked their own internalised racism or whatever as *points to zethrid's design*. lmao. WAIT also the conflation of racism with speciesism. yknow. using anti speciesism messages as anti racism messages. classic white person living in california moment.

alright the clone shiro arc. because its the keith and shiro show and we can't loose half of our money milking cow. and we shan't make them explicitly gay. only allude to it and sprinkle in family brother stuff so nobody actually thinks they're gay. that would be blasphemous. we shall continue with our pseudo-incest for the rest of the show and give shiro a last minute husband so they don't haul our ass for gaybaiting and burying our gays because we somehow managed to do both of them. anyways where was i. oh right shiro died but they had to bring him back blah blah but they made a clone of him for? reasons? while the real shiro is in the subconscious of the black lion or smth for unexplained reasons. i have absolutely no idea why they did that. they have a carbon copy of shiro in terms of everything - personality, fighting capabilities, homoerotic scenes with keith - for jackshit reasons while they could have the actual real shiro running around but i guess not. the clone is the exact same as the real guy until he isn't. because. we need more drama in this over extended bullshit show i guess??? clearly we don't have enough stuff going on we must make it more exhausting and confusing to watch. also clone shiro is as good and noble as normal shiro until he got a headache and now he's evil at the flick of a switch and retains none of his previous personality and is therefore irredeemably evil and nothing can be done to save him. he's bad and evil and must be forgotten. they never mention him again later on except for a throwaway comment on how evil he was except he wasn't evil guys you're not gonna fool anyone. oh and btw the real shiro's soul or whatever got supplanted in the clone's body because idk man where his original body went and he retained all the memories of his clone self because isn't that convenient. fuck everything. also this arc culminates in the best episode of this show despite everything wrong with the events leading up to it and the way they handle lotor in this episode. more on him later. it's literally among my favourites now 10/10 would watch again it was so fucking good. kill me. i.

again, i don't know where to begin with lotor - such an interesting character who got the short end of the stick. the worst victim of the writers' squabbles. i genuinely liked him a lot and then. such a shame. well there are other characters- oh no. there aren't any other even remotely interesting characters. not good, no no, no one is good in this show, but just fun to watch.

he starts off as an antagonist to team voltron but he's not actually a threat. he maybe wants to use them to further his goals but really he isn't the villain per se. which sucks because there aren't any villains in the show now cause the previous main villain is out of commission for who knows how long. and then whoops lotor has to kill one of his generals and then the other generals betray him and now i guess he's with voltron now. sure why not. interesting turn of events. at least it isn't boring. i'm having fun can't you see. then he kills the previous villain (who is his father did i mention that) in episode two of season five. yes s05e02. i dont know any more than you do. and now it sucks even more cause theres literally no fucking villain rn. then he and allura start working on quintessence or whatever because she learns that he is half altean and btw do you remember she is racist. now since he is not 100% galra (bad people) but half galra half altean (good people. her people) she smooches him and stuff and. also btw all this fuckery is happening alongside the climax of clone shiro arc. yeah this show may suck. whatever evil shiro who wasnt evil is defeated and lotors really helped team voltron and the galra empire is going to stop conquering worlds and the show is going to end on a mid note. well.

EXCEPT SIKE BITCH LOTOR IS PURE CRAZY EVIL FUCK YOU FOR EVER ROOTING FOR HIM. FUCK HIS WHOLE CHARACTER BEING ALL "IM NOT MY FATHER" AND THEN AT THE END 180ING MAKING HIM JUST LIKE HIS FATHER. FUCK EVERYTHING FUCK THIS SHOW YOU THOUGHT IT WAS SOMEWHAT GOOD. WELL FUCK YOU IT AINT EVEN SOMEWHAT GOOD.

i. im just so disappointed in his character and the plot twist for the sake of twist that i cant even express how disappointed i am except for shouting through the use of all caps. one final fuck this show

[flfverse]

CTL chapter 13 was crazy!!! I'm curious, what made you decide on the limited/unreliable narrator situation we have with Katsuki? Like were you considering other povs or switching povs, or was this what you always had planned? It was a really good way of writing, I'm just curious if the process to get there was complicated. Also, do you have plans to backtrack and show other povs in the next chapter, or forge ahead and let the questions be answered in the future. Also also, do you have any plans to show what the media is thinking directly, or just through the lenses of the main characters? Because either way could be very interesting. I'm inherently nosy and am very curious what people thought of Deku's less than coherent interview, but I also really like the ways you filter information like that through the experiences of our very traumatise characters. Seriously this chapter was so good! Exactly the high stakes action I was craving after all the tension and recovery!!

ahh thanks! the ending scene (from roughly izuku talking to the reporter on) is one of the first things i wrote actually bc i was so excited about it. i did not expect it to take this long to get there and i’m happy i finally did!!

i kinda made the decision about katsuki’s pov on the fly—i knew i wanted the villain to somehow frame him, but it was only once i was writing the opening that i had an epiphany. i wanted to dart him as kind of a mirror to the first chapter with deku to bring it even more full circle, and then it was pretty clear i had to make him go feral.

from there, i thought about how i wrote shouto back in, what, chapter 3 maybe? and i just kicked that up a notch. i really really love writing/reading that kind of disjointed, weird, unreliable narration, so whenever i see the opportunity i like to lean into it. and i just love the trope of a character being so distracted they dont realize they’ve been hurt until, whoops, that leg doesn’t work. it’s so fun.

also, i really hate writing fight scenes, so the more vague i can make a battle, the better!

small tangent, that kind of writing like i did with katsuki is actually something i mostly picked up from bnha fic—i have a headcanon about todoroki and dissociation that i’ve written about once or twice, and i read a lot of dissociation fics for research purposes (and bc it’s just a good brand of angst). so it’s just kind of a thing i have in my back pocket now.

about future plans—i’m not aiming to have any other povs besides katsuki and izuku, but i do want to show some more news reports and twitter posts like i did in the beginning! as well as have other characters explain what happened a bit. i am also toying with the idea of combining chapter 14 & 15, since rn i’m afraid they’re both going to be small, so rather than delaying both to scrape together enough material i may just do one longer ending? i’ll have to see what happens.

[crazedauthor]

😅 💞 ⛔

😅 What’s a story or scene you’ve created that you’re a smidge embarrassed exists?

Hmmm... I suppose some of the interactions in chapter 2 and chapter 3 in 404 kinda embarrasses me. Not a lot of it, but I had an idea for what I wanted Moon and Sun to be like, but that ended up either evolving in Sun's case or changing entirely in Moon's. Not like I went through my outlines and scrapped a bunch of characteristic. More like I just wrote in a different direction. If the level of dangerous Moon gives off ever feels disjointed when you read, this is why. How much he was a threat to Reader kept changing in my mind.

💞 Who’s your comfort character?

Definitely Sun and, to a lesser extent, Moon. I adore them both, but I find myself thinking of fluffy scenes where Sun comforts me or the Reader way more. I have several other comfort characters I rotate through as well (like Leo from TMNT and Sans from Undertale), but Sun is my boy right now.

⛔ Do you have a fic you started, but scrapped?

Dozens. Looking at my writing folder, I have 555 files and 98 folders altogether. At least about thirty of those folders are fics I started, but never finished. I don't delete my writing, though. No matter how bad. I let it be a lesson in how far I've come. And sometimes, rarely, I do come back to stories and start working on them again.

For a less vague answer, I used to post fics on fanfiction.net. My old account still has three fics up on it, but they will never be finished. XD

[sutekh94]

Vlog - The Lost World of the Proxima Realms

So… I broke 1,000 subscribers recently. Why not celebrate the occasion with a vlog about a time when this channel was inactive?

If all goes well, you should see a Q&A submissions post somewhere by this time next week. I haven't quite figured out how I want to handle it, be it a video post or something over on my Twitter or Patreon.

Some corrections and omissions: It's pretty obvious that I didn't cover absolutely everything related to The Proxima Realms/Nashronth here. By my count, there were at least 59 published written works related to The Proxima Realms between December 2017 and March 2021, not counting revisions and re-releases, and goodness knows how many stories and story ideas I had that wound up going unpublished. I completely forgot some of those stories existed, like a series called "The Yva-Kaiphronth Chronicles". Pretty sure that was the last TPR-related story series I ever published, in early 2021. Like I mentioned in the video, these stories are currently unavailable, but if there's enough interest, I might compile all of them, plus some unpublished material and ideas, as one massive download. Who knows? I might do that regardless.

I barely scratched the surface regarding the many, MANY main characters I made for TPR's various stories. Maybe that's a good thing, since most of them wound up being really samey in practice. Talking purely about their personalities here. Like, I can tell you what they were supposed to be, but only a few actually broke through the barrier of mediocrity and into the rarefied air of uniqueness. What set them apart was mainly their designs. For instance, the character Remivaqa (or Remi) has GIANT BAT WINGS growing out of her back that she can disappear whenever necessary, and yet, she's about as bland as a mattress. That Roger Alcorn kid I mentioned? Just as bland, and he was arguably THE main character throughout most of TPR's/Nashronth's existence. Aliya? She was one of those few who did stand out from the rest, with her cold, calm, collected, and intelligent nature. And she had some decent plots surrounding her, like her search for her missing grandma and her rivalry with this hotheaded elf guy named Olandri. I wish I'd made those early TPR stories more about her than Roger.

It turns out that I wasn't completely finished with The Proxima Realms by early 2021. Halfway through 2022, I wrote down some ideas for TPR-related stories, but they were just ideas. Those ideas were the very last TPR-related things I ever made, though to this day, I still A. wonder what could've been had I kept pushing forward with TPR, and B. have random TPR-related story ideas pop into my head from time to time.

Drawing Aliya for the thumbnail after a couple years of not making any art related to TPR was so surreal. It kinda shows how much I've improved since 2017. Now I'm wondering how some other TPR characters would look if I were to draw them today. I picked Tamaya to be with her because of all my current OCs, she's the one closest in personality to Aliya. Oh, and both of them have girlfriends.

Like I've said about a trillion times by now, there's much more TPR-related material I could cover down here in the description, but since I only have a limited amount of space to work with, I can't mention random anecdotes about TPR's development, talk even more about the MOTH PEOPLE, explain how Roger's grandma is actually a MOTH PERSON, and discuss a race of beings who look like the Lastree custom/mod race for Starbound. What I will say is that I really shouldn't record unscripted rambles when it's almost 1 in the morning, lol. Seriously though, if I sound kinda tired and disjointed at parts in this vlog, that's why. The last third or so was recorded the following morning, after I got maybe five hours of sleep at most.

[knightsdeath]

they're sitting side by side, watching the slowly setting sun in the distance. ashe scoots himself closer to felix, linking their arms before resting his head on his right shoulder sleepily. it's quiet for a while. he likes it. after a few minutes of silence he speaks, a sort of pensive curiosity in his voice. "do you think-- do you think if there hadn't been a war, would we still have become as close as we did? do you think we would've just forgotten each other after we graduated?" he hopes not

there is a certain level of unreality to it.

this place and this time and this man and the idea of peace that surrounds them in a strange and uncertain way, as if hesitant to even consider itself a concept. the paths that they have walked to reach this place and this comfort ( or the idea of it, that is ) that brings him closer and allows their bodies to : sigh into each other.

one of the two, at least.

the learning of comfort ( or the figment of ) is a steady process that he undergoes constantly in the presence of this man and it’s the wearing away of his paranoia, for now, for a time, for these seconds and moments wherein they are together and there is nothing else to contend with / nothing else to grapple with / nothing else to attend to and there is something UNNATURAL ABOUT IT. far more than he actively wishes to acknowledge. something unsettling. like a vase shifted out of place. a blade left to rust. blood caked beneath his finger nails after washing and washing and washing. as if ————

as if he isn’t meant to be here. as if he doesn’t belong in this picture. as if he’s put on armor meant for another, molded perfectly to their form. his skin crawls.

but there’s ashe’s warmth and their shared and mingled silence before / the question that is posed and drifts so quietly through the air and / dampens the stretching rays of the sun. a question understood and comprehended but one that doesn’t warrant a true answer because the consideration of WHAT IFS are so inherently dangerous that the concept sits strangely in his chest / sticky / a thick layer of sludge on his heart that dulls its continuous beat.

if there hadn’t been a war. if and if and if and if ———— he knows the answer well enough / knows it without even truly thinking about it / knows it the way that he knows the eyes that gaze back at him in a mirror and the fall of his hair and the freckles that dot ashe’s skin. this is not a what if to agonize over in the technical sense of this is where they are and to go back into time and change everything is such an impossibility that it’s laughable.

yet to say aloud : i would have forgotten you feels like a cruelty.

but he knows himself. far better than most would begin to assume / far better now than he had when their lives had first intersected and then diverged / the tangle of his mind and the compartmentalization of anything and everything so thorough and absolute that had life continued and war hadn’t begun and they had never arrived here once more : ashe would have been so thoroughly removed from his mind / it would be as if he never existed.

no need for disbelief. he’s done it before and before and before and while the entire expulsion of his memories of ashe would have been unlikely given that he had been a TECHNICAL NONENTITY IN HIS LIFE in spite of his trailing and enthusiasm and excitement and nerves / that he would have simply / faded into the background / half-forgotten.

❝ ———— we wouldn’t be like this, ❞ it’s the honest truth ; not quite as cutting as the first option. the distance between them would have been insurmountable, in both distance and their lives and the differences that laid between them, then.

or maybe that’s his personal brand of pessimistic realism speaking.

he can feel ashe shift next to him and can imagine, with vivid clarity, the disappointment and hurt and foolish understanding that clouds his expression that was once peaceful and almost serene. felix would mourn his passing if he were anyone else ( and isn’t that always the key? if he were anyone else. if he were anyone but himself. if he were anyone but ———— ) but he doesn’t remain unmoved by the mere thought, in spite of appearances. there is that horrible tenderness that throbs in his chest that is softened and made something kinder by ashe’s warmth / thawing his frost / and the closeness that they share / and the creation of : THIS. whatever this is. he knows what this is.

❝ it doesn’t matter. we’re here, aren’t we? ❞ through war and strife and battle and bloodshed and walking over the mass graves that have been so seamlessly erected over a land that has never TRULY KNOWN PEACE / and it’s a strange concept to think that they’ve found each other / or rather that ashe has found him / and the thought is so disgustingly saccharine that it turns his stomach. like something out of a damn fairy tale, in the end.

❝ it’s useless to dwell on what if. ❞

( but there’s this : the concept of that what if. the concept of that strange and unknowable place where there is no war and there is only a tense and false peace that reigns over this land and there he would be THE DUKE TO BE and a soldier, still / would he have abandoned his house? would he have stayed? would that winter stretch eternally? skipping and skipping and skipping until it reaches autumn in the form of a SQUIRE traveling alongside a faceless and nameless and pointless knight and their paths would meet again and what would happen? what would become of them?

they wouldn’t be here / but they would be there / and would their eyes have met beneath that yawning and fathomless sky? would he know the freckles that scatter across his face and the scars that crawling along his body and the beat of his heart beneath his ear and the fall of his hair into his eyes? would they have ————

well. the truth is : no. he’s right, about some things. )

@gasbardian​ // hm

[nokwisi]

Hey, I just saw what you wrote with the botanist idea and was wondering if you would want to try something similar with a songwriter S/O, obviously not like immediately or like at all if you don’t want to, I feel kinda bad just like making a request like this right after that one

hello, don't feel bad at all, anon! I really enjoyed writing the botanist drabble, and I enjoyed this just as much! and just like with the prior, this is written off the top of my head. admittedly, I may have veered a bit off track...🙈 I hope you like it! [fluff, light nsfw, like a teeny little sprinkle, because ✨seasoning✨]

You craft words with an elegance and ease that is surely something of magic, as though the arcane sits on the tip of your tongue; gracing each little hum, each softly spoken lyric with a flourish of otherworldly grace.

Viktor could listen to your fragments all day, little pieces of a whole, and sometimes, he catches himself trying to fit them together in his own head, murmuring them under his breath as he works. He looks at them in terms of variables and equations—which phrase best fits where, slotting them together by way of logical progression.

Admittedly, the finished product is far from melodic.

You are a songwriter; he never truly appreciated the art before you, and a part of him feels guilty for it. It is something of an innate talent, he has decided, because no matter which angle he looks at it, he can never seem to find the niche you so gracefully fall into. It's as though you were born to string words together; and you do so with all the fluidity of a silk ribbon slicing through the air.

"It's not a math equation." You giggle, and even your laugh is melodic, seeping through the cracks of his concentration, alluring like beauty in sound. "You just...feel it."

Viktor sits on the edge of your bed, his attention flicking between the papers he holds in either hand, before promptly dropping them to his lap. He's mindful not to crinkle the parchment, and scattered across your bed are pages upon pages of scrawled words. Flowery and poetic, sharp and poignant, disjointed and choppy. You haven't put them together yet, and Viktor had decided he wished to try.

How very arrogant of him, he thinks.

"Feel it?" He echoes, incredulously. You resist the urge to smooth out the pinch between his furrowed brows. "How does one feel writing?"

With a gentle sigh and a shake of your head, you pluck one of the papers from him. It's torn right from your journal; both sides littered with ink that radiates with feeling. Viktor leans in, as though seeing from your perspective would illuminate the answers he seeks.

"Don't think of it as writing then." You muse, a fond smile pulling at your lips as you skim over the lyrics. "Think of it as a song already, one you're familiar with. Like...tasting something you've had before."

Viktor quirks a brow, visibly amused, "would you demonstrate, for me?"

You indulge him, starting with a hum. That gentle noise catches in your throat, carrying into wistfully sung lyrics that you build as you go. Viktor can't help but search for the patterns in your cadence; the structure he knows is there, but can never seem to decipher. He slants his gaze from the paper in your hand, to your face.

He fixates on your mouth, and you're acutely aware of the way he's looking at you. A bit like a conundrum, as though you're an equation he is trying to unravel, but somewhere along the way his amber eyes soften; like he's been put under a siren-spell. It makes your stomach flip, a gentle blush blooming across your cheeks.

Your voice wanes down to a whisper, before the melody dissolves on your tongue entirely. You're left feeling bashful and shy under his unwavering look. "Like...that."

The faintest hint of a smile curves his lips, "you said to, hmm...taste the lyrics?"

Then, he reaches up to gently cradle your chin between his fingers. Paired with the mischievous glint in his eyes, it makes a wild, excited shiver stipple across your skin.

"Y-Yeah, but—"

His thumb sweeps across your lower lip; your brain stalls, and you exhale with a shudder, absently crinkling the page in your hand—ensnared within the cage of his attention like his own little songbird.

"Perhaps, if I make you sing a song I am familiar with, I will taste it, hm?"

Viktor resolves to the only feeling of lyrics he experiences being that of the papers on your bed, prickling against his bare skin; and the pitched litany of his name on your lips—a melody he knows quite well.

[mine-sara-sp]

Hey! I was rereading some old fics I’d saved and rediscovered The Memory Of The Observer and I just wanted to tell you how much that story means to me. I particularly loved chapter 4 and the way you wrote how Grian is trying to put his thoughts together through the book. I thought Mumbo’s idea to use building as a medium to try and remember what he’s familiar with was very clever too, I was really looking forward to seeing where you were gonna take the story. I wanted to ask, if you don’t plan on finishing the fic, is there a chance you could share the outline? I’d really love to know how the story was supposed to go, even if it’s just a summary

Hello! I'll admit I still haven't entirely given up on the story ^^ as much as I struggle to write in general I would still love to get back to it one day.

I had a lot of things planned, but working on that fic was a ton of work since I was constantly rewatching old Evo videos and rereading what I had already written (Since there were many disjointed thoughts coming from Grian I had to be careful not to repeat stuff when not meant to or forget to include something) also when I was writing that the area 77 arc was still going. I had a very clear image of where everyone was and what they were up to which I really liked, now I wouldn't have that, I would have to go back and rewatch a lot of videos, even if the events of the story move away from canon.

I actually wrote a scene for the story not too long ago (I woke up at like, 4 am, with the need to write Keralis and Grian interacting because BOI do I like what I had planned for Keralis's character in that story) in the scene Grian wakes up after Keralis bonked him on the head with a bottle because he was doing the thing again and then proceeded to offer him a sangria, they are wonderful and Grian has a headache.

I'm kinda scared of trying to get back to it fully, my old google doc is like pandora's box but with like 40+ pages of notes and unusable scenes and also reading my old writing sometimes irks me so I would have a hard time rereading the old chapters (maybe I could edit/rework them, I don't know). Welcome to my little personal Hell I go through whenever I get a kudos on The memory of the observer xD

[bookofmirth]

after rereading the series and finally finishing silver flames ( which i truly enjoyed, even when there were points which felt disappointing and a little incoherent ) i feel like i can finally pinpoint what is so jarring to me regarding this series. It just seems so disjointed, which becomes especially apparent after reading MaF and the immediately reading WaR.

We move from the first two novels of the series, which are coherent and clean, to WaR - which is hoenstly just a mess, something which was so blatant to me on the reread. during this time, it’s clear that sjm made several massive changes to link this book to the future spin offs, and also obviously changes her original plan to pair mor and azriel - which monumentally changes the way that the previous book is read, and the perception of their characters.

Even with FaS - setting up for cassian and nestas story, sjm completely changes direction between this release and silver flames. And all of that lead up with the Illyrian rebellions and cassians not being respected as a bastard, and his mission fighting for Illyrian female rights - amounts to absolutely nothing.

Don’t get me wrong, I really really enjoyed silver flames, and perhaps some of these ideas will crop up in azriels book and therefore won’t be wasted. But it just makes the series feel disjointed and leaves me at least, feeling unfulfilled.

Sjm is such a good author, in ToG the plot was expertly executed and when you reread the series, you can see hints and foreshadowing even back to book one. She knew exactly where she was going almost from the beginning, and each decision and plot point was used to create impact and build up to the ending. I don’t get that with acotar.

There is so so so much build, and almost no pay off - and I really got that sense in acosf, I loved it as a stand alone - but when we look at it through the perspective of the entire series, there were things which grated and a lot of things which I felt were built up to and nothing happened... Tomas, Cassians mother ( was so sure we would learn where she was buried at least ) the Illyrian rebellions and the Illyrians hatred and disrespect towards Cassian, Mor and Nestas relationship, CASSIAN AND MORS RELATIONSHIP ( I understand that the mor situation will be something which is focused upon primarily in azriels book, or hopefully her own, however their relationship involves Cassian as much as them both and I really wish Cassian had actually confronted the part he played in that whole situation - a part he played for 500 (!!!!) years. It’s a role which he was unable to relinquish in ACOWAR, and actively rejects Nesta to act as a buffer multiple times, seeing it as an obligation almost - and then in SF, pays it no attention at all. Feyre and Nestas relationship also isn’t really touched upon, as if that final act healed everything - what about that interrupted conversation in the library, when Nesta was cut off ? Why Nesta always favoured Elain, even Amren and Nesta - we still don’t really know what happened there... argh there’s just so much potential and so much set up, and it just seems forgotten about ? It makes the book seem disjointed and a bit of a let down.

Yesss I totally get what you mean here. ToG is honestly the superior series, and it’s because it has the cohesion that acotar doesn’t. Everything feels like it’s meant to be there, each character, each worldbuilding detail, their histories, everything just comes together in a wonderful way that just wrecked me when EoS came out and then was resolved perfectly in KoA.

Compared to that, acotar feels like sjm is figuring things out along the way and it is seriously driving me nuts. I’ve had multiple conversations with other people in Discords and they’ve said similar things. acotar at this point feels like sjm is just coming up with random ass ideas and throwing them in. No book in the series feels more like that than acowar. And it was that point where we knew that there would be more books, right? So combined with the fact that she pounded that book out and it got rather half-assed editing, you’re probably right that a lot of things were changed in order to set up the other books, even though it didn’t make sense with what she’d written before. 

I agree with you re: Mor and Az, and I feel like I’ve been seeing more people say that lately? That there is a feeling that they actually were supposed to be together and she changed her mind? I wrote a bunch of fics for them back in the day and they’ve gotten a bit more attention lately. But once acowar came out I was like, I’m gonna reread, and I’m gonna find all the clues, I’m gonna see where all this build-up was, and.... considering how often people say that sjm is so “good” at foreshadowing, I’m sorry, but not in this series. In ToG, yes, because she had a clear goal at the end! She knew where she was going and she stayed on that path. In acotar, idfk. Anyway my point is that I’ve reread the series a couple of times through since acowar came out and I’m still over here shrugging because up until that point, Mor and Az could be read in completely opposite ways. (Maybe it’s an Azriel thing, given the current discourse, idk.)

I will say, however, that we had clues that there was tension between them and I had noted that Az is quiet troubled and even pre-acomaf, I would not have been surprised by his extra in acosf. But all of that could have been addressed with Mor and Az still being together? We all had plenty of explanations at the time for the tension, and Mor being queer was like 1 of 100 of those explanations. 

If we look at Mor’s character through the books we have so far, I still see almost zero signs that she’s queer except for her literally saying “I like women and Rita’s has a lot of women and here’s my gay story”. Other than that, there is like..... nothing that feels organically queer about her!!! And I love her and I want her to be gay af!!!! But I wonder if my forgiveness of how acowar went down was more about my personal reaction than how well the story was actually done.

And the fact that, like you said, there is still no resolution to the fact that Cassian is supposedly a buffer between Mor and Azriel? Like???? We were all sitting here after acowar thinking “okay, well if she’s gay then someone knows. Someone has to know. She can’t just be gay and NO ONE WHO LOVES HER KNOWS.” 

Then in comes acosf with a big “fuck you, y’all thought” which just.... to me, it signals that her queerness was an afterthought. It’s still an afterthought because her queerness is limited to Mor and women blushing at her and Mor has her corner of the world in which she can be gay, but that gay never spills out into any other aspect of her life. It’s just conveniently isolated so that it doesn’t touch or affect other characters. 

In terms of continuity, acowar was such a huge shifting point in the series that people left in droves. It was a huge mess in the fandom. And then acofas was just fluff with no real point in pushing the story forward - even the Nesta stuff was a sneak peek, it had nothing to do with acofas itself. And now acosf comes in ignoring things she had set up previously, with almost zero nuanced discussion of the Cassian/Azriel/Mor thing, which means she still (?) doesn’t know what’s going on there. And I think that we did get some answers with Nesta’s reflection on her relationship with her mother, but the deal with the Illyrian rebellion was just in the way so let’s nix that, and then let’s focus on Eris (🤮) just because she feels like it even though she’s set up all these other characters whose stories need more. (Much like acowar, this paragraph is a MESS LOL)

And yes I KNOW that the series isn’t over, clearly, but she keeps setting things up and then letting them go nowhere, or making them seem important and then resolving them off-page, or changing character relationships (Mor and Az) but then having the characters involved act exactly the same, as if nothing had changed (by having the “buffer” situation still exist as a real thing).

I did enjoy the book, a lot, it was a fun read. But tbh we have so many arguments and disagreements within the fandom rn because things have been so left open to interpretation that we it’s not even a matter of “oh I saw this slightly differently”, it’s “WHAT book did these people even read???” That’s kinda weird, to me. There is reader response, and then there is what we have now, which is people having absolute opposite reactions to what they think happened in acosf.