#[[ [ in character ] :: got a lot farther by working a lot harder ]]

[2demondogs]

With Chrismas around the corner (not really but basically), i would love an Arthur x GN!reader where Arthur proposes to reader for Chrismas and they obviously say yes because, well, it's Arthur, who wouldn't?

Anon did you read my mind. I was just thinking about proposal fics when you sent this ask because I have yet to stumble on one somehow... I'm sorry this took forever btw T-T

Shoutout to my platonic boyfriend for helping me with ideas because I got writer's block <3

Words: 3k oh my good lord Tags: canon divergence (it's just people leaving the gang a chapter early), Arthur does not have tuberculosis, INSTANT spoilers for character death, cheesy shit

It's been too long, you're realizing, since holidays like Christmas felt like special things. There is a double-edged feel to this one — it is the first since Hosea's death, since leaving the gang — but it is the first, in a very long time, that you've spent in the so-called right way: in a warm house with four solid walls and someone you love, how those fanciful books Mary-Beth used to talk your ear off about always wrote.

The house is warm enough, anyways.

There's work that needs done on the cabin. Some of the wood is rotting out and chipped at the corners, forming into sharp splinters that you've brushed against one too many times, but it is a house. You haven't had this pleasure since before joining the gang.

Sometimes, with how content Arthur seems at baseline, you wonder if he's had this pleasure since early childhood. On quieter evenings, ones less reserved for happiness than this one, there has been clipped discussion about how Arthur has never had domesticity like this. Silently, it was an admission of how good it is to share this freshness with you.

During a ride into town, he'd admitted that he had never picked up painting because it was the sort of thing only steady folks got to enjoy. You'd gotten him a set of oil paints when no one was looking — he's worth much more than a few measly dollars, but that means little if you haven't got them to begin with. Some habits die hard; he was happy you remembered what he'd said only a few hours before.

Come the new year, Arthur plans to find work that will pay. New things are a luxury neither of you care much to indulge in, but the repairs will take lumber and maybe a few extra hands. Ones with more expertise, at least, because Arthur's houses usually have not had foundations.

You could simply move now that time has passed, yes. You could find somewhere much farther away, maybe even New York, and pack yourselves in alongside the other sardines bustling about a city, undetectable in uniformity. Shave beards, got jobs, change clothes, cut hair and color it, too, if paranoia strikes— but keeping low to the ground has worked itself out so far, and there is no more of that deathlike stagnation in the air of this place.

Sentimentally, you think this Christmas will seal off whatever makes this cabin yours. Shadows linger, there's been a few odd creaks that've spooked the horses, and maybe it's going to shit a lot quicker than either of you want to admit, but it's your shit-house and the shared stubbornness between you has always brought you nothing but closer to one another.

Arthur is tired of running, and so are you. Last week, he talked about writing to Mary-Beth and Simon, maybe checking if Kieran — the utterance of the man's proper name was a confirmation of the last of that stockholmlike regret having worked out of his system — had broken and followed his little girlfriend. It wasn't said with malice, just some amusement.

"Why do you think he would?" You'd asked.

"Dutch only saves people who don't ask for it," he'd said, and that wistful look in his eyes vanished before you could ask what it meant.

Maybe it's the hard work that makes it feel like a real, true holiday. Pearson and Grimshaw stopped working everyone harder in the winter over the years, once the familial glamour faded with each new addition to the gang. It was no longer a tight-knit group, but a posse, more or less, of runaways and strays all against a big, evil thing like the rest of the world, or whatever it was that Dutch grew to fear.

Since November, Arthur has been saving the best catches to be salted and stored for Christmas dinner. Each addition is cleaner skinned and cut than the last, and the newfound worst of them ended up being ate upon his return from hunting. You've both been saving back herbs since summer, dried and ready to be crumbled into the heated up pot come time for a real feast. Cornbread was made by hand for the first time since you settled down here, drizzled with honey from the general store a ways out.

The latter was Arthur's only specific request for a fancy dinner. If you hadn't gotten him a single gift save for making it, he'd still be happy as a clam.

He's been putting that goddamned honey on everything. You're glad he seems to be enjoying things again, not as tightstrung as he was before you'd made off with him. That's how it feels, anyways, after the long and struggling conversations that were had before the decision was made. Family or life? It's a hard question for someone who has such little concept of either.

Now, the grey hair in his beard is catching the light from the fireplace where he's sat himself on a chair before it. They'd sprouted through the sun-bleached blond atop his head has been looking lighter and lighter in recent months, grey finally catching up to the discoloration and giving him some malcolored sort of tabby look. It's a good one on him, as much as he complains about looking old as dirt and that it's all formed by stress.

For all the lacking color, it adds a ruddy warmth to his face. Daydreams of growing old together find you when you focus on it, or on his wheezing laugh that's gotten worse with the cold weather. Despite the woolen vest he's been sporting, his fingers are as chilled as yours whenever they've brushed. Idly, you wonder if he's gotten whatever Hosea grew into, then remember they were never by blood.

Arthur hadn't wanted you to get him any gifts. When you asked if he would get you something, he'd flushed and changed his mind, apparently already having done it.

Whatever it is, it's good-sized, wrapped in one of the dustcloths you'd gotten him alongside the paints. He's been spending more time painting, lately, tucked in the treeline and looking over the cabin or deeper into the woods, studying something plein air the way those professionals do. He'd propped it against the wall this morning, and once you've settled on the floor before the fireplace — too cold outside not to crowd close to it — after dinner, he looks between you and the cloth like he isn't sure what to do.

"D'you wanna do the honors?" He asks, and grins although the twitch of his eye tells you he's covering timidity with faux cockiness.

"You go ahead," you say, half because he's closer. Tormenting him in small ways must be part of any good gift.

The painting is an image you recognize. A photo that one of the girls took for you months before things went down the hole, using the camera Arthur was loaned by some feller in town who wanted photos taken for a book. He never returned it, and it more or less became something he tucked beneath his cot and let the elements beat around. You can't remember, now, who it was or where he went to get it developed.

The little inkling of pride you felt knowing he kept putting off getting the negatives developed — not enough money, not enough time — yet was gone the next morning to have yours developed returns, now.

It's a much nicer rendition of it, your clothes not dirty and his arm around your waist, the other holding his hat to his chest. It's clear he preferred to give your portrait more detail, his own lagging somewhere behind in clarity and looking closer to the photo. You suppose it's easier to look at someone besides himself, but there's a clearer enjoyment in the lines of you, more care taken in the color mixes.

Ignoring the dense joy of the implications of that, of how obvious it is, proves difficult. Your cheeks twinge some from the wide smile before you realize you're even reacting.

"You'll be a big name someday," you say, and he may as well shrink in on himself beneath the praise, although he's heard it plenty of times before.

"Naw," he waves a hand. "Quit that."

"Really, Arthur." Scooting closer, laying your hands over his knee. He's moving his jaw when your eyes meet his, lays a hand over one of yours, heavy and warm. "It's beautiful. I love it."

"Good," he says. His jaw clicks. "I— uh, I love you."

The hunting knife you got for him seems small, though relatively equal. Arthur looks as pleased as ever studying it, half-mumbling appraisals of yeah, nice and sharp, sturdy to himself that likely would've stayed inside his head, if it weren't for wanting to show you he liked it.

A bone handle, which he feels over with his fingers before noticing it's engraved, fits easy in his palm. You were afraid you push your luck with maintaining its quality too far adding the tiny, vague bear shape next to the deeper cut of his name. Already impressive was the fact that you hadn't ruined it with the letters, being one of your first expeditions into anything of the sort.

"I would've gotten you one of those folding knives," you explain. "But they don't hold up as well, and I know you have one."

The army knife was Hosea's.

"Needed me a new huntin' knife," Arthur says. You know, because he's complained about his current one being close to snapping with all the skinning he does anymore. He squints at the handle, turns it over in the light from the fire. "Did you engrave the handle?"

"Yessir."

He smiles. "It's real nice," he says, pats his palm with the blade softly. It makes a dull noise, sturdy metal on skin. "Why a bear?"

"They remind me of you," you admit. Really, you'd spent a long time considering what else to add, because only his name seemed so plain; although he wouldn't be opposed to flowers or vines, they are a little more intricate than a simplified bear head. "Big and strong. Hairy, too. I'd like to hug one."

He snorts a laugh, but it seems thin. His eyes are fond enough on you that it couldn't be any rejection of your words, and so you brush it off. "You wanna hug a bear?" He asks.

"In a perfect world," you amend. "Don't they look warm?"

"You'd better stick to me," he says, smooths a palm over the thigh of his jeans. The nicest pair he owns, he promised you, because he feels ridiculous in slacks and seems to think you care what he wears.

Beyond thinking everything looks well on him, at least. You often find yourself concerned with that thought.

"I got you somethin' else," Arthur starts, running a finger over the bunched inseam at his own knee. "Well, uh— it's f'both of us, really."

Isn't that intriguing, you think, but your silent, undivided attention seems to make him outright nervous, so you say: "Oh?"

Some conflict happens over his face as he pulls his vest collar away and reaches into the inner pocket, takes out a stack of thin papers that he glances over before apparently relenting to something. Confusion finds you, until he takes a deep breath and holds them towards you.

"Read these," is all he says, and he sounds like it's almost painful.

He's written much, much more than that. Your stomach turns, once or twice, realizing they are pages from his journal. Uncertain why, until the first entries which are skittering on affectionate fade into ones much more flowery. They are all about you, days you'd spent together or times you hadn't, the things you've given him over the years and the things he wished he could've given you.

Each page makes your chest feel tight with a panicked joy, as if his hands were not fiddling with the new knife to occupy — distract? — himself but clenching hard at your heart.

One, near the beginning, says he thought of pickin' a pretty lil' flower, God bless it, I feel ridiculous; on the back of the next is pressed a variegated tulip, crumbling with age but holding firm to whatever adhesive glues it to the paper. Again, that creeping smile, like thyme. Another entry is entirely about your hair, because it had brushed his arm. Only a few sentences made up that page, below the cursive a choppy sketch of your horse.

Certainly, Arthur stays busy in his head. You've always known as much, but never figured any of it was about you. Not like this, anyways, though the dates spread from the week before Blackwater and you can only wonder what laid in that journal he lost before.

"Oh, Arthur," you start, looking up from a third-way through, feeling giddy but not wanting him to watch you so intently while you finish them. No wonder he was shy. It's his heart. "You're so sweet."

"Finish readin' 'em," Arthur says, doesn't meet your eyes at first. When he does, they're gentle. "They get sweeter, y'know, better finish 'em. 'Cause of that."

He is nervous. Hardly moving, besides the tongue running over his teeth beneath his lips, and the rambling every time he opens his mouth. You don't mind, never have. He's endearing like this.

Outings you'd went on infrequently, the dates of his favorites underlined, you're noticing, based on the tone of his words in them; his worries and fears about courting you, and some of what you mean to him though, with its succinctness, you have a feeling he wouldn't dare put all of his genuine love to findable paper; things he likes about you, and one page where he admits that he cannot keep himself from documenting you in every other entry, which tells you this small collection is hardly everything. The previous entries turn over in your mind again, and you are struck on a random page for a moment as their meanings take hold, realizing they were especially sliced from his journal to show you.

The entries leading to the last are what set your mind and pulse ablaze. From the first appearance of the word marriage, you swallowed your idea of what may be coming — Arthur's breathing changing beside you doesn't help any, and it certainly does not help that he leans down once you've reached the last page, plucking it from your hands. Before he does, you notice quite a few crossed out lines, scribbles as if he were frustrated with not being able to find the right words.

"Think I've got the balls on me to read this one aloud, at the very least," he says, voice laced with a chuckle. Breath comes uneasy, but you collect yourself enough to gather the pages back into a neat, ordered stack in your lap. "Unless you'd rather spare me," he adds, nudges your knee with the toe of his shoe.

"No." Your voice sounds strange, even to you. "Do me the honors."

Arthur bites his cheek, nods and lets it fall as he smiles. Still, his hand finds the back of his neck, the page held between two fingers that remain surprisingly steady. The knife lingers in his hand beneath it, and isn't it just like him to propose holding a weapon.

Propose. It takes its first toll on you, rolls over your back in shards of tingling.

"December twenty-fifth, eighteen ninety-nine," he starts, eyes flicking to your face every other word until the intensity of your gaze must make him too anxious. "It's a nice little life, livin' with the one I love," — rubbing his mouth, sighing some — "Jesus, I always gotta be sappy." You laugh, though it comes out more forceful than you intended, and relax some until he continues. "The thought of another day where anythin' could happen 'n' we ain't bound is somethin' I hate."

Arthur pauses, stands up and places the journal entry on his chair. You take his hands when he holds them out to where you sit, grunting when he hauls you off the ground with more force than you expected, feet shuffling into place to stick all-too-close to his. His hands are burning, skin feverish when you grab his wrists, as if you'd ever want to stop him as he eases onto a knee before you.

And his eyes throw you off balance, too, catching the light just enough that you can tell they are stinging. So are your own, now that you think about it, but intelligent thoughts go out the window once you sense him about to speak.

"I wanna be 'til death do us part," Arthur confesses, fumbles to catch both of your hands in his in an awkward, squeezing hug of a hold.

The way your bones catch on one another, well— it's not a sensation you'll forget, like the first time he kissed you and you felt it still a week later, warm pressure on your mouth if you got too lost in the memory. He looks as good, looks so nice, and you know your fingers would be shaking if he weren't crowding them together, steady.

When he says your name, the blood is rushing through your ears too loud to hear it clearly; you almost want to ask him to do it again. "Will you marry me?"

Nodding, face slack before it spreads in a grin. "Yes," you say. "Of course I will."

His is hidden by how he lets go of your hands, catching them before they fall in stupid, limp joy back to your sides. He lays kisses along the knuckles, all three rows of them. It's so awfully saccharine and yet you could never tell him to quit being sweet— not now, not as he stumbles to his feet after you pull him up and shake off his hold to grab his face, tugging him into a kiss.

Arms come around your waist, squeeze tight enough to hurt, or to hold in place. Arthur runs a hand over your back, breaks the kiss to slide a hand into your hair and press your face to his chest, caging you in his arms. He smells warm, like good cologne, and you know he's been planning this.

[ask-whitepearl-and-steven]

would you have any small writing tips to share with others who are attempting to write their own stories?

Sure.

Disclaimer: This is not a full on tutorial on how to write. These are just tiny, tiny little grains of wisdom of things I realized here and there. Do not eat this advice like a full course meal. It isn't one. It's just a dusting of some spices, and I am salt bae-ing them over you, but they are not calorically relevant without a story.

1. Help your readers read your story.

AKA: If you want your readers to build a house, you better take them to a Home Depot and teach them how to use a screwdriver first.

You want your readers to read your story easily? You gotta make your story easy to read. That means learning how to make sentences easier to understand. That means breaking up walls of text into smaller bites. That means - yes - spelling words consistently and using accessible (not Correct, necessarily, but ACCESSIBLE) grammar!

You want your readers to understand your world? You gotta give your readers tools to understand it with. That means explaining new concepts! That means describing stuff a lot! That means using visual language if you don't have actual visuals!

Your readers will not read your mind to know what you MEANT to say. You have to say what you mean. You have to mean what you write. Learn to write clearly. Learn to help your readers.

2. Something that takes you a month to make will take your audience ten minutes to read.

You want to spend an hour drawing one comic panel? Great. You wanna spend an hour writing a single paragraph? Fantastic. You wanna use up a week perfecting a script? Amazing!

Your readers will still glance at that panel for a second before moving on. Your readers will still eat that paragraph in a bite. Your readers will skim that script. If you're lucky.

You cannot control how much your work is appreciated. But you CAN control how much of your time you sacrifice to make it.

Balance the scales.

3. You are not talented.

Neither am I. Nor are any of us.

Listen to me. Listen.

Talent is a beautiful, useful word. But it often lies to us. It suggests that we are born better than others.

This is not often accurate. What talent hides within itself is not pre-ordained inherent skill. It is not something you are birthed being. It is not a statistical difference of physicality.

Talent starts with passion.

Maybe you have passion for stories - so you beg your grandfather to read to you before you can recognize words, and you write a lot in every school assignment, and you pay attention to EVERY story you watch in school plays, and you observe all the characters you see in movies, and you CARE. So. Much. And this moves you to try to write, and then to try again, and then to try harder.

Talent does not exist, because no amount of 'you were made for running' can make you run. No amount of 'you were the son of great authors' can make you write.

But inherent curiosity can push you forward. Inherent curiosity can make you watch, and observe, even before you understand you are observing. Inherent curiosity for your personal interests makes you a fan of writing, of drawing, of world-building. It makes you research how to be a great author before you even know what research is. It auto-tunes you to what you know is good about these things, and it gives you the necessary tools to know what will work and what won't.

So when you think you are talented, understand that this is not something that was done to you in the womb. It was something you raised, and watered like a seed, before you even knew what you were growing.

Don't rely on talent. Understand that you got this far because you CARE about this thing. And don't forget to care. Because that's what has carried you this far, and it is the only thing that can carry you even farther.

also, cringe is dead.

[xadenviolct]

Well...

I finished it.

And I mean, I took as long as I could, since I really didn't want to get to the end--mainly because, like with Iron Flame, we now know absolutely NOTHING about the fourth book and I'm in a perpetual waiting hell.

But at the same time, I couldn't hold off too long, because with every day, the potential for spoilers being seen increases, etc. And the very, VERY last thing I ever want is for any of these books to be spoiled for me.

With that said...

SPOILERS FOR ONYX STORM BELOW THE CUT!!!

I MEAN IT! BIG SPOILERS!

ALL-THE-WAY-TO-THE-END-OF-THE-BOOK TYPE SPOILERS!

Because I'm putting my thoughts, my reactions, etc. (which will probably all be kinda disjointed, and rather lengthy, so bear with me on that...)

So yeah--

YOU. HAVE. BEEN. WARNED!

Now that that is out of the way--

(and yes, I've had that gif saved here for this very purpose)

First, I'll say this--

I am so very glad we got other characters' views in a few chapters. I absolutely loved getting Imogen and Rhiannon, (and of course some Xaden POV) and I know--I know that Quinn's death hit a hell of a lot harder because it was in Imogen's view than if it had been anyone else's.

I absolutely sobbed with that one. Like, put-the-book-down-for-a-moment sobbed. Liam Mairi dying type sob.

It was just... oh my HEART. HURT.

And Andarna deserves the world, okay? No one -- dragon, human, ANYONE -- is allowed to be mean to her, to upset her.

I will literally fight those dragons for Andarna, okay?

(Yes, okay, ONE of them wasn't a complete ass, but the others? I wouldn't have minded Tairn roasting them all. Or taking a few eyes.)

I was also so damn sure Mira would be dead in this book. Which, yes, okay, she kinda did-- but not really. The big "this death really hurts" moment was with Quinn.

Which I'm still reeling about, okay. It hurts!

I will also say that I absolutely LOVED the way the title got worked in at the end.

I mean, my heart broke, and I hated it, but I loved it. I definitely figured he'd fall farther by the end of this book--I mean, it would have greatly decreased the impact of Xaden turning venin at the end of Iron Flame if we went and found a cure and he got better by the end of OS.

So while I was still expecting him to sink further into that darkness-- That doesn't mean I still didn't want to yell at Rebecca for doing it!

Although--I think I might be willing to grant a bit of "okay" on it, because that final push seemed to be Xaden being all, "NO ONE TOUCHES AND HURTS SGAEYL."

Which I am 10000% for.

Saving Violet was the catalyst in IF, saving Sgaeyl was the catalyst in OS.

And I am also THRILLED that she didn't break the bond! I know that was going around as a possibility, that Sgaeyl was so pissed, that Xaden would turn deeper into darkness and she'd break the bond, but I'm glad she didn't.

I NEED more Xaden and Sgaeyl. I just do.

(I am also firmly convinced that Naolin did similarly to Xaden--in that he pulled from the source to save Brennan, he turned but his motivations were sort of in the right place, etc.--and Tairn had to break the bond or Naolin did or something to that effect and that is just another reason Tairn is so anti-Xaden (especially) in OS. Because he went through it all with Naolin, and he knows (in that "I'm Tairn and I know everything" way) that there is no cure, no saving, etc. But he also trusts Sgaeyl, Violet, etc. at least enough to let them walk this and not just torch Xaden outright.)

AND XADEN'S MOM WAS IN THE ISLE KINGDOMS!

I mean, there is still more there, I know there is. There's more to the story of why she left, why she never said anything, etc. etc.

But that was definitely a complicated bit of emotion in those chapters.

There are also so many more questions I have about Violet in regards to Dunne, to the temples and the gods/goddesses in general. Like, I know I need to reread OS too, with note taking and close watch and all that, but I still have questions.

What does it all mean? Theophanie was also built up as a major player and then she... dies. So now I wanna know who is even bigger than Theophanie--or is it going to come down to a Xaden versus Violet moment?

That will definitely be a very. giant. painful. moment.

And was it Garrick at the end? Or Bodhi? I'm pretty sure it has to be one of them, right? Like I said, I'd have to reread the whole thing--and especially that chapter with Xaden--but those are the only two that would fit his inner thinking criteria:

Male (since it mentions as a "brother")

Someone who'd known what he was struggling with (a la turning venin) for months, so basically from the beginning.

Someone he never would have ever thought would do it

I feel like it's Garrick, over Bodhi. Because Garrick left Imogen in Draithus, we didn't hear/see him again, and he's "missing" in Violet's chapter at the very end. (I cannot remember if Bodhi is mentioned or not...)

But it has to be one of them, right?

And now I wanna know why--to both of them! Either of them! Whoever it is--TELL ME WHY!

Pancheck is dead now, too, right? I was so sure it was gonna be Daddy Aetos being the asshole traitor but at the same time, maybe I just wanted to really really hate him for every other reason.

Still don't quite know why it was Pancheck--I'm pretty sure I missed several clues, that's for sure--but at the same time, he did know everything. He was perfectly positioned to be the traitor and all that...

And why was that the ending?

I seriously turned the page, and saw the "acknowledgements" starting on the next one, and I was all--

You have GOT to be fucking kidding me! That's it?! That's where it stops?!

I need all the answers.

What happened to make Violet ask/tell Imogen to take her memories? What happened in those "missing moments" to bring us to that point?

At what point did Violet tell Imogen to take the memories? WHAT memories (specifically) that happened in that missing time?

I knew I'd be completely reeling by the end of this book, but I didn't realize I'd be reeling this much!

And VIOLET'S SECOND SIGNET = INNTINNSIC!

Type of, but yeah. We're still going with that.

There are way too many things about inntinnsics that we don't know because of them being killed the moment it manifests, so yeah-- still many more questions.

And that is one damn powerful signet!

Now, I wanna know if she hones it, works on it, will it only be in dreams? Like, she can apparently meddle in them, influence them (subtly, perhaps, right now, but yeah--) so if we call it a dream-walking inntinnsic (or whatever "official" name the signet gets, IDK), but that's right now, right at the beginning.

Is it possible that she could meddle in conscious thoughts?

Aaric having precognition was something I figured out rather quickly, though; especially by that point when he tells Violet to guard Dunne's temple, etc.

It's like "oh yeah, he knows future things, etc."

And finally--

MARRIAGE? Wow!

I mean, I was kinda getting the vibe that it would happen at some point, sure. And then especially with that chapter's heading being about lieutenants marrying right after graduation, etc.

I just need to know the details. I mean, we all do, I'm sure, but when did that happen? Like, officially happen?

How?

Tyrrendor is protected because it's Violet's, by marriage (I'm assuming) and Xaden knows she'll do right for the people... But again, WHERE IS BODHI?!

What the holy fucking hell happened?!

Everyone knows Xaden is venin now, of course, and apparently a powerful one too. Is it possible to skip over steps? Like, can you go from an initiate level straight to a Sage (bypassing the asim level) if you channel enough and/or are powerful enough?

Again, I need to reread certain parts especially, but I'm getting the vibe that Xaden didn't just up a level. Or if he did, he'd been asim longer than we initially realized, so he's Sage level now...

I. DO. NOT. KNOW!

And I have so many questions!!!!

[gilmorenights]

No because Alexander Hamilton (both the character and the song) are soooo Hugo coded. I was listening to it just now and the lyrics are literally him. “How does a bastard orphan son of a whore and a Scotsman dropped in the middle of a forgotten spot in Caribbean by providence, impoverished in squalor grow up to be a hero and a scholar?” DO I EVEN NEED TO EXPLAIN? Hugo grew up an orphan, someone of no importance or purpose and ended up completing the Seven Trials of Demanitus, finding the Eternal Library, and becoming a scholar of high rank in Corona. Like??? And then the lyrics “Got a lot farther by working a lot harder, by being a lot smarter, by being a self starter” literally just explains how hard he had to work his whole life to survive and be successful. “Left him with nothing but ruined pride, something new inside, a voice saying ‘Alex you gotta fend for yourself!’ He started retreating and reading every treatise on the shelf.” Perfectly encaptures how young Hugo felt after being betrayed by someone he thought was his friend (got left behind on a thieving job) and that was the turning point in his life where he realized everyone is selfish and only out for themselves, so he should be too. “Started working, clerking for his late mother’s landlord, trading sugarcane and rum and all the things he can’t afford” He starts working for Donella and stealing all these expensive things from the rich, snobby people who don’t deserve it. “When America sings for you will they know what you overcame? Will they know you rewrote the game?” In this case America would be Team Radical, when they trust and befriend Hugo, do they know his history? Do they know who he really is, how much he fought to get to where he is? “We fought with him” said by Team Radical. “Me? I died for him.” Nuru. “Me? I trusted him.” Yong. “Me? I loved him.” Varian. “And me? I’m the damn fool that shot him.” Donella, talking about how she’s the fool who sent him on this mission, who “killed” Hugo in the sense that she broke his spirit by projecting her whole “don’t trust anyone else” mentality. And then obviously there’s the repeated “there’s a million things I haven’t done, but just you wait” which is Hugo promising, swearing to himself that he is going to do something with his life, that people shouldn’t underestimate him as much as they do. Thanks for coming to my ted talk hehe

[the-mspfa-200-favourites-project]

HOMESKILLET

HOMESKILLET. Another MSPFA I’ve heard a lot about, but then again, besides a couple of the MSPFAs I’ve reviewed in 2024, I’ve basically heard of all these MSPFAs? Which makes sense; again, these are the cream of the crop of 2024, if you will, the MSPFAs that were the fastest growing out of all other MSPFAs I’ve looked at because they’ve had the least amount of time to “prove” themselves or attract an audience. Not to say other MSPFAs haven’t proven themselves to me that they should be at least 200 favourites of more (to me), but these are the ones that are making waves. And since HOMESKILLET comes from the dynamic mind behind one of the BIGGEST Fanadventure ever, KARKAT GOES TO A CONVENTION, and was even purposed once upon a time as the “Act 2” of that Fanadventure…yeah, I’d say that it made some waves.

And the intro seems to set-up once again that this won’t be your regular ordinary MSPFA SBURBventure, with it being like, “what if MSPA Reader, instead of reading the epilogues, read a random Fanadventure?” Which means that the actual “real” fanadventure starts on page 69, therefore proving to me, at least that this text knows how the slower moments can build up to a reveal, and is comfortable going the slower route. Apparently, according to people “in the know” (read: have read farther than me into Karkat Goes To A Convention), this is apparently somebody’s actual in-universe MSPFA? I’d be interested to see how this maps onto their character, then, and how their view of the world changes throughout Karkat Goes To A Convention. Although, splitting it off from the main text, KGTAC, means that that kind of analysis is a lot harder to get, since I could, theoretically (and in practice) not be coming into this Fanadventure with the idea of who that character is. Anyways, much to consider already.

Okay so far, this fanadventure has been…slow? Like, not like, in an uncompelling way, like there is that sense of dread that occupies every SBURBventure when you haven’t quite had the “SBURB Meteors/Threat Dejour” show up yet, (in a similar way to how dread builds in a Murder Mystery, come to think of it), but…idk. Nothing’s gripping me, so far. It’s been rather good and consistent and competent, and some of the jokes and phrasing of things are good, like refering to closing the door of a mini-fridge as causing “The COKE BOTTLES begin to go back to their original temperature,” which is like. Yeah that’s how a mini-fridge works. But it also mechanicalizes the process of opening up the fridge and closing the fridge in a very interesting way that I thought I should note down. Although, now that I think about it, that stuff is still present in Homestuck and other MSPFAs, just. Not as apparent, I guess?

I gotta say, I feel like the story wants to present itself as more…grounded, somehow. That’s probably a combination of both the vaguely slice-of-life presentation to Fred’s bumbling around the house (there’s not really *a* goal at this stage in the story, like how John basically got a goal pretty quickly of “retrieve the Sburb Beta and play it” in OG Homestuck), to the slower pace of the story and the less…extreme reactions to things from Fred. John is disgusted at his Dad’s Fanciful Harlequins, and Fred just wants cookies and Mac and Cheese and loves his Grandma. I think the story’s doing this, again, to set-up the tension and dread; we ALL KNOW, if we’ve come from reading KGTAC, what happens in these MSPFAs, and the destruction SBURB tends to set-up, so in these low-key moments of “normalcy” (for a lack of a better term), I feel a more heightened sense of dread about proceedings.

I will say, I like how there’s been a trend lately of like, emphasizing various other forms of communication besides just pesterlogs? Like, Homestuck has the characters interact with each other through the internet, and this feels like a logical extension of that. Sburb 1996, Ever After, and now Home Skillet (and also technically DEAD MEAT with its text messages) all fit into this, I think. I don’t have like, anything further to say about that, noting that it’s occurring and it’s an interesting trend.

Okay got to the windchime flash and this is exactly what I’m talking about with regards to the slower, more grounded pacing. Instead of a flash marked entirely by the absence of other people, we have noises of children and families playing in the background. Instead of having the cool wind blowing through the streets, creating a more haunting feeling, there’s birds chirping and there’s sunny lighting everywhere. Instead of a monologue about how something feels missing, there’s a monologue about responsibility and wondering what’s next, as if to say, Fred has never wanted or considered absence in this life. It’s…grounded. Slower. Anyways yeah if that sounds like up your alley you should probably check this out, I certainly liked it better than KGTAC’s opening stretch.

[rigelmejo]

I'm linking some of MoonIvy's reddit posts, in case you'd like to read about their language learning journey. They are awesome! They're one of the authors of the Heavenly Path Reading Guide! That guide is super helpful, and I followed a lot of it's advice (and Heavenly Path's recommendations) once I was starting to read more. Heavenly Path also has a ton of recommendations of things you can read that are different difficulty levels, so I suggest browsing their suggestions if you have no idea what to read.

Also, if you use Readibu app, the app can give you a rough estimate of the HSK level of the chapter you're reading (you'll just open the chapter you're reading, click the book icon in lower middle of screen, then click Stats. You'll see a Comprehension % by reader's HSK level). For beginners, I suggest you try to find novels that say 90% or more over the HSK 4 level, or at least 80% and up if you can't find anything easy at first. Once you've moved from graded readers to simpler kids novels like 秃秃大王, novels with a 90%+ comprehension at HSK 4 level above will be the next easiest for you to read. (Later on: if you're looking to extensively read and barely look words up, look for 95-98% comprehension at the HSK level you think you're roughly at). For example, I'm reading 盗墓笔记 and it's 93% comprehensible for HSK 5 level, 98% comprehensible at HSK 6 level, and my vocabulary range is between HSK 5-6 roughly so it makes sense I can read dmbj extensively if I want (without word lookups and still understand it), but still have several unknown words I could look up if desired.

From intermediate to native webnovels in 18 months (Some wonderful mentions of what MoonIvy read. I also read 秃秃大王, 大林和小林, and 笑猫日记 by 杨红樱 and felt they were really good novels to read after graded readers but before novels like 盗墓笔记 and 撒野).

21 months of reading native books, and breaking into native platforms

Learn Mandarin Chinese to read danmei — it will be challenging but worth it

I can read novels without a dictionary after 3 years of reading danmei (Chinese boy love)

I reached 3,000 unique character knowledge by reading children's books and danmei (Chinese boy love) 

Some little notes of my own experience, I guess in relating to the journey others took. So: for me, I read stuff WAY harder than graded readers, when I initially tried to read webnovels. It was hard, and it probably made me feel more exhausted than I needed to feel. But it was motivating. So if you really enjoy X difficult novel, you can try to read it whenever, and keep reading it as long as you feel the desire to.

There was one person who shared their reading experience on the chineselanguage subreddit (I'm trying to find the post again) who read 撒野 after like 3 months of initial study. That's way faster than I would've tried! That's a huge spike in difficulty from knowing nothing to reading a novel with thousands of unique words in a few months! But some people just will find that they enjoy doing that, and it works for them, so don't be afraid to just TRY doing what you want to do and see how it goes. It might go awesome. And if it's so hard it's demotivating, you can always go look for something easier for a while.

I tried to read 镇魂 from pretty much my first month, and never got farther than a couple paragraphs until over a year of study. I'd take a glance at it once in a while, and see if it was easier to read, until one day it was 'doable' to actually try reading (while looking unknown words up). I tried reading 默读 from like month 5 onward, usually using a parallel mtl text and only picking up a few words, it was not doable to read until maybe 1.5-2 years into learning. I was already reading the mtl of 默读 because the english translation only had like 20 chapters back then, so I just would try to read the chinese original in small sentence pieces at times. Around 8-10 months I started trying to read 天涯客, and it kind of was doable in Pleco app's Reader as long as I looked up a lot of words. It used to take me 1.5-2 hours to get through a chapter, then over the next 6 months things got better and it'd take 1 hour then 40 minutes then finally 20-30 minutes per chapter. At the same time as reading 天涯客, I also read 小王子 around month 12 extensively (looking no words up) because I had the print book and wanted to practice reading extensively, I read 笑猫日记 by 杨红樱 read in Pleco while looking up words (which was easier for me to read than 天涯客 and helped me build up reading stamina and basic vocabulary a bit), and I read a pingxie fanfic called 寒舍 by 夏灬安兰. I read around 60 chapters of that fanfic, and 30 chapters of 天涯客, over those 6 months. 寒舍 was harder to read than 笑猫日记, but easier than 天涯客, so I would switch between all 3 stories depending on how hard/easy I wanted my reading to be. Eventually 笑猫日记 felt readable without word lookups, so I used 寒舍 as my 'easier' read and 天涯客 (and added 镇魂) as my harder reads. Then 寒舍 became readable without word lookups if I wanted (still had unknown words but they no longer affected my ability to follow the plot and most important details), so 镇魂 became my harder novel to read.

And that's pretty much the strategy I continued to use: I would bounce between a 'easier' novel I could read extensively, a medium difficulty novel I could just look keywords up with (if I didn't feel like looking up a ton of words) to understand, and a 'harder' novel I had to look up words in order to read. Maybe 2 years in (I don't quite remember now), I picked some 'easier' novels from Heavenly Path's recommendations with only 1000-2000 unique words, and read some of them to fill in gaps in my basic vocabulary (so looking up unknown words) and practice extensive reading with some of them. I think that was a really helpful decision, and improved my reading comprehension and stamina a LOT. If I could go back, I would've read a lot more 'easier' 1000-2000 unique word novels before trying to push right into the novels I did. But then, on the other hand? I think pushing right into 'difficult' novels helped me learn vocabulary to read priest's writing in particular, much faster, which was rough going at the start but now pays off because I find that author's stories have more words/phrases/sentence structures I'm comfortable with, and also a decent murder mystery/investigative vocabulary base which is helpful since it's a genre I like reading. Without all the 镇魂 reading I did in the past, I think 破云 would be almost incomprehensible to me. But instead, since I did read those investigative words a lot early on, novels like 默读 and SCI are now 'medium' feeling novels to me, and 破云 is harder but readable if I look words up.

[getblackout503]

How does a bastard, orphan, son of a whore. And a peasant dropped in the middle of a forgotten spot in forsaken realm by providence impoverished and squalor. Grow up to be a hero and a scholar.

The ten dollar, founding father without a father got a lot farther by working a lot harder by being a lot smarter by being a self starter. By fourteen they placed in charge of a trading charter

And everyday while slaves were slaughtered and carted away across the waves, he struggled and kept his guard up inside, he was longing for something to be apart of, the brother was ready to beg, steal, borrow, or barter

Then a hurricane came and devastation reigned, our man saw his future drip, dripping down the drain. Put a pencil to his temple, connected to his brain. And he wrote his first refrain. A testament to his pain.

Well, the word got around, they said “this kid is insane, man” took up a collection to send him to the mainland. Get your education don’t forget from whence you came and the world is gonna know your name.

“What’s your name man?”

“Asta Staria” Said a young man with green eyes and ash blond hair. “My name is Asta Staria, and there is a million things I haven’t done, but just you wait, just you wait”

When he was ten, his father split, full of it, debt ridden. Two years later, see Asta and his mother bed ridden. Half dead, sittin’ in their own sick, the scent thick.

And Asta got better but his mother went quick.

Moved in with a cousin, the cousin committed suicide. Left him with nothing but ruined pride. Something new inside A voice saying.

“Asta, you gotta fend for yourself”

He started retreatin’ and readin’ every treatise on the shelf.

There would been nothin’ left to do for someone less astute. He would have been or destitute without a cent or restitution. Started working clerking for his late mother’s landlord. Trading sugar cane, rum, and all the things he can’t afford.

Scamming

For every book he can get his hands on

Planning for the future, see him now as he stand on the bow of a ship heading for a new land.

In Clover you can be a new man.

In Clover you can be a new man

“Just you wait” Staria told himself as he got on the boat.

In Clover you can be a new man.

“Just you wait” He told himself once again as he was standing on the bow of the ship.

In Clover you can be a new

In Clover

In Clover!

“Just you wait!” He screams to the heavens, this time telling his mother to just wait and watch me reach greatness.

Asta Staria.

We are waiting in the winds for you.

You could never back down.

You never learned to take your time.

Oh, Asta Staria, when America sings for you.

Will they know what you overcame?

Will they know you rewrote the game?

The world will never be the same.

“The ship is in the harbor now, see if you can spot him” A brunette male said, his one blue eye looking closely at the ships as he walked to town.

Just you wait

“Another immigrant coming up from the bottom” He will be the narrator of this story. But just you wait.

“His enemies destroyed his rep, America forgot him” He then reveals the rest of the characters.

“We fought with him!” Four men came into the light. Two wore more common clothes, while the two behind them wore clothes of higher quality.

“Me? I died for him” Two more men walked into the light. One with black hair and golden eyes, and another sharing Asta’s Ash blonde hair but had purple eyes.

“Me? I trusted him,” said a well built man who was smoking a cigarette.

Me? I loved him,” said four women, one with silver hair, one with brown, another with black hair and red eyes, and one with pink hair.

“And me?” Our narrator said, turning around to reveal himself. “I’m the damn fool that shot him”

Shot him

Shot him!

“There are a million things I haven’t done,” Staria told himself.

But just you wait

Asta Staria

[chrimsonfoxdon]

Would you be willing to rank the konoha 12 from worst to best?

Actually yes I would LMAO!! I assume you mean like… my own personal favorites between the konoha 12, rather than something like which I think are the strongest.

I do wanna also state that I don’t hate or dislike any of the konoha 12, in fact I kinda like them all?? So please don’t think that I don’t like the lower rated characters. But if I have to rank them, from least favorite to most favorite… (list under the cut!)

12. Shino Aburame

(Sorry tumblr limits me to only 10 images so the lower ranked ones aren’t getting pics I’m sorry)

I… I just don’t really feel that attached to him?? I’m sorry 🫠 his insect and bug abilities can be pretty neat tho.

11. Kiba Inuzuka

It’s kinda a similar thing as Shino. Just not that attached to him as I am to other characters. He does have a dog though, which is almost always a positive point for me not gonna lie.

10. Ino Yamanaka

She also just doesn’t leave much of an impression on me in general. I’m kinda sad that her jutsu is just… kinda lacking?? BUT she seems like she’d be a good friend and fun to hang out with. Also she’s pretty.

9. Sasuke Uchiha

Fun fact when I first started watching Naruto he was my favorite during the land of waves arc! But then we saw Team Gai and the way I threw him to the side SO FAST 😭😂 I do still kinda think he’s a jerk for abandoning all the people who care about him for power. Is it because I take the Sasuke retrieval arc personally?? Maybe. BUT he was right about the konoha elders. In general I just find him very fun to bully. But I GUESS he’s strong and such…

8. Naruto Uzumaki

He’s the main character so I feel like he just gets points with us just being exposed to him the most in the series. I do find it kinda harder to like… I don’t know, be attached to him the farther in Shippuden we get. I guess it’s cuz of the constant power creep, but that’s more of a shonen issue than anything to me. Rewatching the series as an adult, his backstory definitely breaks my heart 🥺 poor kid just wants to be loved and doesn’t understand why the village hates him. It’s hard not to root for him honestly. I cried when he became hokage even though I wasn’t watching the series at the time I can’t lie.

7. Sakura Haruno

I used to not like her much, but that’s cuz Kishi can’t write women let’s be honest. I’ll always be super impressed with her growth as a ninja herself, particularly as a medical ninja. The Kazekage Rescue Arc really shows how amazing she can be and what she’s capable of. I loved her fight with Sasori. I also relate to her constantly wanting to catch up to her teammates and just feeling like dead weight. Girlie I love you and you deserve happiness 💖

6. Hinata Hyuga

SHE’S A SWEET GIRL SHE’S DOING HER BEST SHE’S TRYING TO FIND HER PLACE IN THE WORLD AND I!!! SUPPORT THIS GIRL!!! She’s also super cute with one of the best designs in the series. Her fighting Pain is so emotional like. She’s risking her life for the guy she loves and admires most in the world. I gotta give her props for that. She’s not the strongest obviously, but I do enjoy her character a lot.

5. Shikamaru Nara

My brother’s favorite, so I feel a lot of secondhand happiness about Shikamaru!! His shadow jutsu is… well, basic, but very versatile (I kinda wish ino’s jutsu got a similar treatment). His strategies make him a really fun character to watch from start to finish. His arc with Hidan was so cool. Very good character in my opinion.

4. Choji Akamichi

Ok so not gonna lie he’d probably rank lower on my list when I was younger, but again, rewatching as an adult I just love the guy!! He’s such a kind soul and works to protect his friends. His backstory also just kinda speaks to me as a kid who was often excluded from activities with my peers (sometimes also cuz of my size). I’m so glad he found shikamaru and is best friends with him. He deserves so much love. He’s a good lad!

3. Rock Lee

GODDDDDDD HIS CHARACTER IS SO GOOOOOOOOOODDDDD!!! I remember liking him even as a kid, but now that I’m older, it’s just amplified. To see someone with uh… no natural talent whatsoever get so far as a shinobi is just so satisfying to see, especially since I can relate nowadays. If anything, seeing him struggle and still fight for what he believes in has made a bigger impact on me now than when I was younger. I REALLY wish he had more fights though. Fights where he won mainly on his own. Also his fight with Gaara in the chunin exams is ICONIC YOU CANNOT CHANGE MY MIND THE WEIGHT SCENE CHANGED MY 9-YEAR-OLD BRAIN CHEMISTRY!!!

2. Tenten

I!!! LOVE!!! THIS!!!! GIRL!!!! AAAAAAAAA!!!!! There’s just something about how her strategy is to overwhelm her opponents with so many powerful ninja weapons that just… speaks to me. Her design is cute, I find her personality fun, and she’s my favorite female Naruto character. I wanna be her friend so bad. Also her journey in letting go of a childhood dream just… HMMMMM SPEAKS TO MEEEEEE as a very depressed adult. She makes me smile and laugh and cry and I just want her to know how amazing and special she is. She’s… a 10/10 😎

1. Neji Hyuga

WOOOW OMG WHAT A SHOCK RIGHT??? Man what can I say about Neji that I haven’t already. He just really awakened something in me way back in the day, and he still occupies my mind to this day. I think there’s just something about seeing a character suffering quietly for so long and taking it out on others (and himself) grow into a person who tries to better himself and look more so on the bright side of life, despite what life has thrown at him. (Again that’s kinda something that means more to me as an adult than when I was a kid) he deserves so much love and happiness and I am so proud of him Neji Hyuga I love you so much

[r-rook-studio]

Return to the Bracknell Horror

Crossposted from R-Rook.studio.

I like to think of myself as someone who loves and writes scenarios that are inherently sandboxy. My ideal horror investigation scenarios—Goblin Archive's The Mall and Zzarchov Kowalski's Price of Evil—have a few hooks, a usefully detailed map, a well-thought-out escalation clock, and interesting, tersely described NPCs... but not much else. In adventure design, those are my ideals. Sometimes, at a one-shot are con, you need to make your frames slightly harder, but often when doing that, the goal is to preserve as much player agency and GM creativity as possible, especially when the scenario isn't only for demo or public play.

Over the past weekend, I had a writing breakthrough with "The Bracknell Horror," an adventure for the next Roseville Beach Book. This post isn't grand RPG theory; it's just a quick note that my two favorite parts of scenario design (setting and escalation clock) were ultimately what fixed the problem. It's odd that I've run this little adventure many times since I started working on Roseville Beach in 2019—it's fun and gives me room to bring in a lot of the PC's connections—but it was only last weekend that I was really happy with it how it all came together.

"The Bracknell Horror" has been my go-to con game or demo for Moonlight on Roseville Beach. Inspired by both a messy blend of the Migo and the Dreamlands with the actual Belvedere Guest House on Fire Island, I've been running it since 2019. Roseville Beach's Bracknell Lodge is a good place for a kidnapping mystery: the guest house is too expensive and exclusive for our PC sleuths to have been in before, even though it's local to the town where they do their monster-hunting. It also gives them the potential to deal with wealthy, WASPy, and mostly unsympathetic queer characters who are still being harmed by cishet magician Simon Mather and his cronies who've decided Roseville Beach is the perfect place to find some warm bodies for some nightmarish Dreamlands entities to possess.

Ultimately, I didn't put it into either the quickstart or the main book because we were out of space and because while it was always a sandbox when I got to the Bracknell, I was always too intimidated to create an escalating clock and always needed a scene structure and over-the-top clues to get them there.

In my original version, the PCs wake up Saturday morning to discover that during the night, people have gone missing. In some cases, they had missed connections with those folks and may have been looking for them before. I'd always excused that issue, rationalizing that missing a meet-up with friends in an era before cell phones often meant not reconnecting until everyone got back home the next day. But Roseville Beach isn't just a small town, it's a fairly tiny one, and the locals know each other well, so I was never happy with actively preventing the PCs from getting involved until the clock was farther advanced, but my brain was hyper-focused on that structure until I started preparing to run it for A Weekend with Good Friends hosted on Discord by The Good Friends of Jackson Elias. Finally, it occurred to me that the adventure really needed to begin the night the disappearances start instead of just including a few flashbacks the PCs remember the next day. In doing that, I had a chance to target not just the PC's connections and allies but also the PCs themselves, giving them a chance to interfere with Mather's plans as they were getting started or follow Macgregor and his cronies as they moved through the town finding people to target rather than waking up the next morning and converging on the Bracknell.

I'd been afraid that getting the PCs involved too soon might mean it moved from creepy horror scenario to a big fight in the middle of town, but it took PCs time to confirm what was happening and that the people who were running late or took longer than usual to use the bathroom, find a pay phone, or cash a check at the grocery were actually, really missing that the kidnappers always had a head start (a crow shifter spotted one of Mather's henchlings walking toward the Bracknell with one of the victims, but couldn't do much to interfere until he rendezvoused with everyone else). Once that happened, a PC who'd been invited back to the Bracknell by a stranger she was dancing with had a new motivation to accept the invitation. We still had a chance to explore all the less-known ways to get into the lodge—the gardener's entrance, sneaking in via the unused boathouse, climbing over the front gate (this time with the cover of night)—so I got to reference Dai's incredible map (that will also appear in the full version of Dim All the Lights).

This time, I'd also simplified Mather's plans so that they were way easier to plot out on a clock, and PCs interfering with them weren't filling pages of notes when they learned about them. Moving everything to the nighttime also meant that PCs' plans to get into the Lodge by subterfuge, stealth, and seduction felt more logical and logically likely to succeed.

[zaftikat]

20 Questions

This is the most 2010s tumblr thing I can recall doing on this site, and I have participated in the supernatural fandom. (Tagged by @toopunkrockforshul )

ALL OF THIS UNDER A CUT

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Five, but like you know, I'm workin on it.

2. How many words?

16,320. 11.4k comes from one fic tho

Nine Worlds Series by Victoria Goddard (specifically: Greenwing & Dart and Lays of the Hearthfire)

Star Wars by way of @dangersquaremedia's Chicks with Dice

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

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

well, i've only got the 5 so...

1. It's just Intermundial Tax Law, how hard could it be?

2. On Escaping from Orio Prison

3. The Tanà's Daughter, or How Pinyë Got Her Groove Back (Hiatus)

4. If the Lady Wills it, Ever Onward (Ongoing)

5. The Poola Blossom

No because I'm afraid it might come across as weird? I don't read a lot of fic, so I'm not sure what the etiquette is?

6. What’s the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Implying I finish my fics instead of losing steam and forgetting them.

That said, when its finished, How Pinye Got Her Groove Back is going to be pretty fuckin angsty

Again, implying that I finish my fics.

The one I've gotten the most "this made me so sad" comments on is actually my happiest in my opinion. I wrote Intermundial Tax Law right as I was gearing up to move countries, and the story ends with the main character feeling confident and determined in his choice to leave home. That's the happiest ending I could have imagined at the time, because emigrating somewhere new is not a simple prospect, emotionally.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

I write for very small fandoms full of predominantly very nice and supportive people. I would not change that.

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

I, a transfem on progesterone, have written smut, yes. The armpit licking kind. What other kinds are there?

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?

I love a good AU, but I'm not super into crossovers. Just not my bag.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

If I have, I apologize to the thief for the sort of mauve hue to my prose.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

no, but damn if I wouldn't love to have a yiddish fic

13. Have you ever cowritten a fic before?

I have ideas for a cowritten fic with @toopunkrockforshul ! its a wrestling AU

14. What’s your all-time favourite ship?

oh, maybe HMS Agamemnon. She was a 64 gun third rate who participated in the battle of Egypt and then shortly thereafter the Nore Mutiny. Laid up in 1802 in poor condition, and then brought out of ordinary in 1804 because napoleon was going to invade and they needed all the ships they could get. She took and demasted the Spanish 112 gun Santisima Trinidad at Trafalgar which is pretty cool.

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish, but doubt you ever will?

How Pinye Got Her Groove Back probably won't ever get finished because I've lost the mindset. Its a fic about dysphoria and coming out and as I get farther away from the direct experience its harder to set in my mind.

16. What are your writing strengths?

idk. it feels odd to talk about my strengths when I'm so very green at this. I think I'm pretty alright at knowing when to kill a darling.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

I tend to get lost in the middle between where I know I'm going and where I currently am. It slows me down a lot.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

Like, maybe I could do Jack Aubrey quality french.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Greenwing & Dart

20. Favourite fic you’ve ever written?

If the Lady Wills it, Ever Onward its just the most complex and well written thing I think i've ever done, and I can't wait for something else to replace it as my favourite.

I don't know enough people who write fic to tag them, so have fun if you want

[mystery-moose]

For the fabric author meme: 10, 14, 17

10.) Best/funniest comment you’ve ever gotten on a fic?

I think the funniest is probably one from ff.net on like, brokerreport939.omni, because boy that one's a real gut punch and people respond to that in a lot of amusing ways.

The best comment, though? That's harder. Because like, when I was posting Flight of the Flying V, there were a few people leaving long, thoughtful comments regularly, including someone following every chapter, and that might be the best feeling I've ever had posting anything? Like, that's SUCH profound validation, man, what an absolute joy. My whole TAZ writing period was full of comments like that, from talented writers and enthusiastic readers, totally out of proportion with any other fandom I've ever been a part of, and it completely owned, lemme tell you!

But, since I'm feeling sentimental tonight... maybe the first review I got on ff.net from noted bestie @orchidcactus. Our very first interaction! She's the reason I kept writing, the reason I started editing other people's work, the reason I joined tumblr, the reason I followed and fell into friendships with all the other writers who've become some of the most important people I've got in my life. If she hadn't commented so thoughtfully, or wanted to talk about craft after? My life would be so, so much worse.

So yeah. Gotta be that one.

14.) First fandom you ever wrote fanfiction for?

Ace Attorney, actually. And I don't remember what it was about, and I don't have the login for that ff.net account anymore, and it's a good thing I don't because when I wrote those I was extremely 18 and had no idea what I was doing. Fun times, though! Lot of trawling around Court Records.net (oh hey it's still up! Good for them!) and thinkin' bout angsty situations while listening to the Cowboy Bebop soundtrack. Sometimes I hear a song and it sends me right back to that point in my life. (I listened to a lot of the Gyakuten Saiban orchestra and jazz albums. Like, a lot.)

Also, Cadenza's Turnabout album? Still fuckin' slaps.

17.) Favorite AU to write?

Post-canon. Always. I love exploring what happens after everyone's arcs are "concluded," and seeing how much farther they still have to go and where they can develop further.

I don't tend to enjoy AUs that are radically different from the source material, like coffee shops or high schools or what have you. If you change the backgrounds of the characters too much, I just don't understand how they're the same characters anymore! But I do love AUs that are just "what if this person made a different choice here" or "what if this thing happened to someone else?" Exploring those what-ifs is pretty fun.

[gmariam19]

I posted the shouty fic! :) It's called A New Beginning.

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply Category: M/M Fandom: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy Relationship: Poe Dameron/Finn Characters: Poe Dameron, Finn (Star Wars) Additional Tags: Arguing, Anger, shouting, First Kiss, POV Poe Dameron, Poe Dameron Needs A Hug, Hopeful Ending Word Count: 3425

Longer excerpt below - now what to work on next?? Enjoy and thank you for reading! :)

The meeting ends, and everyone slowly files out of the new command center. Except Finn. Finn, who had missed the holo-call with the representative from Akiva. Finn, who looks both apologetic and apprehensive. Finn, who Poe misses so much but can’t bear to look at right now, because he is so close to the tipping point. He begins gathering his things, waiting for Finn to speak first, half hoping he doesn’t.

“Look, Poe, I’m sorry,” Finn starts. He’s said that a lot lately. He’s been working hard, Poe knows that. They all have. Finn is learning about the Force, he’s helping Jannah’s company settle former troopers still surrendering across the galaxy, and he’s trying to be the co-general he said he would be. Only he’s gone more than he’s not, and Poe is usually a general on his own. He misses those first heady days and weeks when they really did lead together, make decisions together. Celebrate every small victory together. He sighs, his earlier anger dissipating into the smothering disappointment he feels most of the time now.

“It’s fine.” Poe turns away, sensing that Finn wants to say more, but Poe would rather avoid the confrontation that’s been brewing for weeks. “But I’m tired, so I’m going to turn in. Big meeting coming up.” He didn’t want to go to Akiva to help set up a peacekeeping force, but perhaps it would be good to get away, and at least he could see Wedge and Nora.

“Wait,” Finn says, and Poe can hear the other man’s frustration, which only adds to his own. Finn is standing in the middle of the room, his shoulders tense, his eyes uncertain. “I want to talk. We need to talk.”

“We?” Poe echoes, turning around with an air of exasperation. He’s been having an even harder time than usual controlling his quick-trigger responses, at least when it comes to this. To Finn. “What do we need to talk about?”

“We need to talk about this trip to Akiva, for one,” Finn replies. “But mostly about us. Why this is happening.” He motions between them. “Why we barely talk, why you’re always so mad at me, why—”

“The trip was already discussed at the meeting you missed. And we don’t talk because you’re not around.” Poe is blunt. Maybe it’s not the whole truth, but it’s the biggest part of it. Finn is simply not there anymore. “That’s why. And I’m not mad, Finn. I’m tired. Literally and figuratively, in every sense of the word.” He’s more disappointed than angry, because this wasn’t how it was supposed to be, after the war.

Finn narrows his eyes, shakes his head. “Look, I’m know I’ve been busy, but you have too—”

“I’ve been doing my job,” Poe snaps. “The one I inherited three months ago when Leia died. The one I thought you were going to be a part of, that we were going to do together.” He wasn’t going to go there, but now that he has, maybe it will help him with the deep resentment that has been building for weeks as they drift farther and farther apart. Maybe he should have said something a long time ago.

“I am!” Finn exclaims. “I am a part of it.”

“Doesn’t feel like it. You’ve spent the last three months doing more Jedi training, more trooper support, than—you know, It’s fine.” Poe waves it away. He suddenly doesn’t want to get into it anymore, it’s too much. Easier to bottle it up, like he has been. “We’ve managed, so let’s just forget about it. I’ve got to get ready for Akiva.” The unspoken alone hangs in the air between them.

The look on Finn’s face is confusion crossed with hurt, which doesn’t do anything to lessen Poe’s frustration. What doesn’t the other man understand? Poe has been handling almost everything on his own while Finn trains and travels and occasionally checks in. Finn missed the entire meeting on the upcoming peacekeeping mission to Akiva, when Poe had expected him to be there. Of course Poe is upset. Then Finn opens his mouth and throws guilt into Poe’s mix of complicated and overwhelming emotions.

“You said you were happy for me,” he says quietly. “That you understood—why I wanted to learn about the Force, why I wanted to work with Jannah. You said you were proud.”

“I was,” Poe says, and Finn’s face falls. Misstep, and Poe feels bad, he does. No matter what he may be going through, Poe doesn’t want to lash out and hurt Finn. “I am—although sometimes it’s hard. Finn, I do understand, but understanding doesn’t make it any easier when half the galaxy is still putting out the fires of the First Order and the other half is riding my ass about what happens next! I’m tired!”

“You keep saying that,” Finn points out. “But I think you mean something else.”

“No, I mean it,” Poe replies, and he runs a hand across his eyes, through his hair. He is bone-deep tired, but Finn is also right. There are so many other things he means every time he says it that sometimes he’s not sure which one he’s referring too. So he sticks with the literal. “And Kalonia’s got the numbers to prove it.”

“What?” Finn asks sharply, with clear alarm, eyes piercing Poe’s face. “What do you mean, the numbers?”

“The number of times she’s been on me to eat more, drink more, take better care of myself.” Poe shrugs. “The number of times she’s told me to take a break, or had to—” He stops, not wanting to share everything, not anymore. It hurts, because there was a time when he would have told Finn how he couldn’t sleep, didn’t feel like eating, was tired and angry all the time. Kalonia hadn’t said it, but Poe knew part of it was the let-down from the fighting, his mind and body finally catching up to all that had happened over the last year. The rest is the reality of the present. He holds up a hand when Finn starts to speak. “I told you, I really am tired. And now I have this thing on Akiva. But more than that, I’m tired…of this.” He motions between them, around them.

“What the hell does that mean?” Finn demands. “You’re tired of me? Of us? Of what? I’m not trying to stick you with everything, Poe. I can go to Akiva with you. I’m trying to—”

“You’re trying to do everything you can, for the Resistance,” Poe replies bitterly. “I get it. I’ve done the exact same thing.” He leaves out the part about Leia calling him out on it; it seems he’s doomed to follow in her footsteps in more ways than one.

“But it’s not enough, that’s it? I bust my ass out there, run training courses in the dark, hitting six planets a week to help these troopers, and just because I wasn’t here for a holo-call, you’re pissed?”

“Kriff, Finn—it’s more than missing the damn holo-call!” Poe can’t help raising his voice.

“Then explain it to me!” Finn shouts at him. “Fine!” Poe yells right back, taking a step forward, his hands bunched into fists at his side. “I’m tired of this,” he starts, gesturing around him. “I’m tired of doing this all by myself when I thought you would be by my side so we could do it together. I’m tired of senators, of First Order remnants, of the Hutts, of the lack of funds and the lack of planning and the lack of progress.” He’s shouting now, pouring his anger into it. “I’m tired of feeling like I’m never good enough, like nothing I do matters because no one ever says it does, and hell if I can tell whether or not defeating the First Order made a damn bit of difference when the galaxy is still a kriffing mess!”

“You don’t mean that—” Finn starts, and Poe cuts him off again.

“I didn’t think it would be like this, Finn.” He shakes his head and lowers his voice. “And I’m tired of us—what we’ve become. Of never seeing you, of never knowing if you’ll be there or not. I’m tired of waiting, and watching, and wanting. I’m tired of being alone.”

Link to AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/55016890

[zorilleerrant]

look, it's all well and good to say 'you can do anything in writing if it serves the story' but someone who's on the internet soliciting advice from strangers doesn't mean "is it ever okay to do this" they mean "is this a good idea generally"

so for whoever wanted to know about switching POVs in a narrative, here's some general guidelines:

the more perspectives you add the harder it is to follow. two or three is pretty much always going to be fine, but more than that is going to depend on how much is happening from each perspective and how complex you want the narrative to be to read. many readers prefer a single perspective, but no one has strong preferences for two versus three points of view

if you're switching POV only a single time, that's going to stick out A Lot. if you want the reader to be brought out of the story and question specifically why you made that choice, great! otherwise you should avoid it. it can be especially noticeable if there's only one POV shift you really need, and the rest are clearly backfilled just to make it stand out less.

if you're using multiple first person narrators, make sure they're distinguishable by their narration patterns. simply putting the name of the character on each chapter isn't enough and readers might well ignore the header and get confused

if you're using multiple third person narrators and they're very similar, consider that you might actually be trying to write in third person omniscient. pull a little farther away from the characters, and talk more about the ones you haven't been following as closely. this is a good point to check whether you want to add additional points of view into the story

if you're switching POV just to give the audience clues or explain how a character knows something, it's going to come off clunky. find a way to rework the other character's perspective and integrate it into the normal flow of the story

if you just got bored of your narrator you should take a break from the project for a while

sometimes switching from first to third or vice versa is all you needed, not to add additional character voices

if one POV gets a lot more page time than the others, it's going to make a lot of the audience question why you bothered having the other POVs. see how much it impacts the story to remove them entirely, which may be very little. otherwise, see about adding more sections about the other characters

switching between first and third about the same person tends to be annoying and will make people question whether it's an editing error. however, having one character use first and using third about another character doesn't tend to even register to a reader and flows totally fine

switching to second person can be extremely evocative, but it's highly marked, so make sure you know what you're doing with it. writing entirely in second person isn't a great idea unless you're working in a genre that conventionally uses second person

especially pay attention to whose perspectives you're mostly writing from. even when people have diverse casts of characters, men typically get way more page time than women, both individually and collectively. white characters also tend to get a lot more attention than nonwhite characters. this is likely true for every marginalized group you've included. it's going to be a lot more noticeable to the reader once you start using multiple perspectives, so keep that in mind

the more perspectives you add the longer it will take to tell the same amount of story. keep that in mind depending on how long you want the finished product to be and how many things you want to include in the story

if you're working in a serial format (including fanfic, webcomics, and webnovels) any shift in the structure of the narrative is going to be noticeable to people following your work. they probably won't be happy about it because audiences don't like stories changing from what they thought they were midstream

you can make the narrator, even the omniscient narrator, a separate character if you want. how thoroughly characterized they are, how often they interject their opinions, what commentary they have on the story, all of that is up to you. it probably sounds weird because most writing classes don't bring it up, so you may not have practiced it, but once you start doing it you'll realize how many books you've read that did it that way too. nothing about it should strike a modern reader as strange.

[sirani-8927]

I just had the random thought of a different Bnha story. Like, what if the literal first week of school, 1A was told that Deku would be the active "hero" and the rest of the class were "sidekicks" and they have to break out of that mold. Idk that feels like an interesting dynamic that would push these characters to have harsh conditions to fight against.

Uraraka's entire motivation to get into UA was to earn money and rank high enough to provide for her parents. It's hard to get internships when one person in particular is already being pushed ahead of the rest of the class. On top of this, her quirk isn't flashy compared to the other students. Deku is in a whole other league already, but then students like Denki, Todoroki, and Bakugo all exist and have flashy, loud, attention-grabbing quirks, and she and the other students are all left in the background. Left in the dark. She has to fight harder and push farther just to make her goal something even foreseeable in a setup like this. I can envision a setup like this causing a lot of animosity between the whole class honestly. The classmates who have relatively "normal" quirks distancing themselves and becoming far more serious and working hard together to make themselves stand out more from Deku and the higher ranking students.

And the students with the more flashy quirks doing the exact opposite. Working against each other and trying to tear down Deku especially from his (unwanted) undeserved pedestal above the rest of them. Just so they could stand out and be the new "Hero". Uraraka's fight during the Sports Festival against Bakugo would hold more weight. She's doing this to prove herself, and now, her half of the class with more down to earth quirks. Proving how hard she and the class work to stand out as viable opponents.

Bakugo already has an image issue where he struggles to come to terms with him not being the strongest in the room for the first time in a decade. Imagine that version of him in a room like this. No allies, no overtly friendly faces that make jokes about him to start to humble him. He has the guilt of his kidnapping and subsequently causing All Might's early retirement. He has to face the fact that he's not as important as he assumed he is. He's in a room where people as strong as him are praying and trying to cause his downfall. Then, the scene where he fights Izuku would feel more deserved. (I personally feel that the story should've taken place over the course of 3 years. ) His whole rant was centered around his feelings of inferiority towards the class, moreover Izuku. This would feel more impactful, largely because it kind of feels like an undeserved feeling of contempt towards the other classmates as even with their varied and powerful quirks, he's accepted easily by the class and I feel that a character like him in he canon situation wouldn't feel so strongly about the other's being more powerful than him. Hes among the best students, they all passed and got into class 1A, so a character who makes calculated and rational thoughts should expect to work hard and be among like-minded peers and not be as butthurt about the class being this strong. I could see his feeling weaker to the other classmates if the class was more hostile, though. If he not only had to fight Deku to be in a higher place in class, but fight other competitors who wouldn't give up the title so easily.

And how would Deku react to this himself? No one in this class would be a true ally to him. The Lower ranked classmates wouldn't be happy to spend time with him, but they'd at least get the job done in missions or classwork. The Higher ranked classmates would be outright malicious, possibly sabotaging his half of the work and trying to make up for his "shortcomings" and making themselves look better. His relationship with the others would definitely start off harsh. Aside from Uraraka, who could possibly have a hand in helping unite 1A, by staying friends with Izuku and not letting her grievances influence her behavior (and I really wanted to see her fight Stain).

And this would be the perfect reflection of the inner workings and toxic work culture of hero work. Later on, in their final year, Class 1A becoming "the greatest heroes of Our Generation" would be a satisfying title, as they worked hard to unify their class and become close, learning the value of understanding the person you're conflicting with. They use their understanding to help villains (ex-convicts, people with a bad public record, etc) and create programs to help people come to terms with themselves, or teaching the public with the value of helping their community. Yknow, cheesy shit like that.

I also just like Found Family and the Enemies/Rivals to Friends/Lovers tropes and the thought of these two combined was partially why I came up with this.

[vitos-ordination-song]

I watched NGE and RGU back to back in junior year of high school. NGE was like a gut punch, it was mind expanding, introduced me to a lot of new ideas, and generally was exactly what I needed at the time. RGU, on the other hand, wasn’t something I could process—I shoved it to the back of my mind. I thought it was good, but I didn’t have the intellectual or emotional tools to really parse it.

I’m not sure exactly why there was a difference in my responses. Both works are challenging and untraditional. I guess it was that NGE operates on a very visceral level, while I’ve observed that Ikuhara works take multiple watches and quite a bit of time to incorporate into a narrative and emotional framework. Like, both throw a lot at you, but in NGE, that creates this battering ram against the psyche of the audience, whereas with RGU, you have to do a lot of mental work before the deeper emotional connections form.

It’s interesting because the works really are similar, and so this is mostly a matter of execution and aim. For instance, thinking back, it’s strange that I was fully able to connect to Misato’s narrative, while I pretty much zipped Nanami and Anthy’s stories away in some dark corner of my mind. I felt all the pain of having a deep childhood wound, but I just wanted that pain poked at. No one in NGE ever resolves anything, ultimately, though a couple breakthroughs and words of hope are given—mostly it’s just walking around in severe depression, self-hatred, trauma, abandonment issues, you name it. Misato dies with the exact same problems she started with. I was miserable and that’s what spoke to me. But RGU seems to have touched an even deeper place in me. In a weird way, maybe it’s because it was more restrained; so much isn’t said, so much more is implied than seen, and emotions build up quietly in the background. It felt like something getting under my skin. When I rewatched in 2020, I was surprised by how much of it I had avoided thinking about for years after watching it—specifically episodes 30-38. So many little moments unsettled me to the point where I didn’t want to think about them, like Nanami’s realizations about her relationship to Touga, Anthy handing over the “roses,” or Akio telling Utena that she’s just as bad as him for accepting his advances.

I’ll always love NGE for what it did for me. It helped me through times in my life when I felt horrible, suicidal, left out in the cold. NGE made me feel like I wasn’t alone. It was after i got over issues it helped me process that I was ready for RGU. RGU is a story which asks you to go farther, into adulthood, which NGE gestured at but never really reached (not a criticism, they’re just different stories). The final reason I think I had a harder time w RGU is that it’s about stripping away illusions. NGE was always kinda about depressed people psychoanalyzing themselves, but RGU starts on a more surface level and then goes deeper, demolishing the characters’ projected images. It showed me a vision of having what was most precious to me, what sustained me, ripped away. Ikuhara works are all about loss: loss of ideals, loss of relationships, loss of self-image. That was too much for me to take at age 16. But six years later, I was ready for it, and it blew me away. It gave me a vision of what comes after loss: what cannot be lost, a life of freedom and connection where one actively shapes one’s own future.

[aibari]

fic poetics: open up your door

for the bind of open up your door, I ended up making a little reference list with things I didn’t have the time or space to write into the author’s notes. I love liner notes! since the bind is only a physical copy, I wanted to put these up online somewhere.

references (alphabetical)

adrian. I think I gave Adrian the teenager the name because it starts with an A and I tend to start at the top of the alphabet and then not get farther when naming characters. I only remembered Adrian Mellon afterwards.

Teen Adrian is a trans guy – this was originally going to be more present in the story itself, but in the end I didn’t have enough words to really do it justice, so it’s just kind of a background thing about Adrian. I’m not sure if Richie realizes or not, beyond clocking him as lgbt in some way. In the future, they definitely have some sort of Conversation about it (and being queer in Derry). And then uhhh probably Richie and Eddie semi-adopt him, and any other queer kid in Derry they can find.

Anyway, I forgot about Adrian Mellon, and then suddenly I had a character who was not just a trans kid in Derry, a small town that has soaked in hate and small-mindedness since before its inception (up until ten years ago!), but also a kid who picked out his own name and he chose a name he shares with Adrian Mellon, a gay man who was killed a decade ago in the town where teen Adrian lives. And uh! That’s a lot! That is very very much of a something!

Initially, I thought about changing it.

But Derry (like a lot of places) is a town where, even ten years down the line, things aren’t always easy for queer kids. And somehow accidentally giving this kid the name Adrian became instrumental to his characterization for me – he’s taking this and making it his own, and fuck anyone who has a problem with it. (And if it’s sometimes harder to keep up that front than other times, well. He’s got some people to lean on. With Richie and Eddie, maybe soon he’ll have more.)

 brave as a noun. This is a title of an AJJ song – and like much of their work, the lyrics are violent and visceral. Their work generally circles around themes of mental illness, poverty, politics, and THE BODY OF IT ALL. Something about Brave as a Noun (like their later Body Terror Song) just reads very Eddie Kaspbrak to me:

I could go off the deep end I could kill all my best friends I could follow those stylish trends And God knows I could make amends But I've got an angry heart Filled with cancers and poppy tarts If this is how you folks make art it's fucking depressing And it's sad to know that we are not alone And it's sad to know that there's no honest way out I'm afraid to leave the house I'm as timid as a mouse I'm afraid if I go out I'll outwear my welcome I'm not a courageous man I don't have any big lasting plans I'm too cowardly to take a stand I want to keep my nose clean And it's sad to know that we're not alone in this And it's sad to know that there's no honest way out In this life we lead We could conquer everything If we could just get the brave to get out of bed in the morning

But also, that title is just too good to pass up.

 beaker’s dozen. This fake movie title was one of several suggested to me by @stravaganza on the Losers Club Bang server. Is it an Ocean’s Eleven rehash where all the players are anthropomorphized elements of the periodic table? Is it a comedy about a scientist who accidentally clones themself? You decide!

Other title suggestions include: Mind the Gap, Deer Me!, The Way There, Beeswax, and Baker’s Dozen.

 cups. This section title comes from a couple of different associations – Eddie is literally leaving cups around the place, but there’s also the Cups song (“you’re gonna miss me when I’m gone”). I was thinking a lot about the thing where you pour one out for the dead, too, but what actually happens here is a bit of an inversion of that – the dead pouring one in(to your cup). Anyway - what’s love if it isn’t making cups of something warm for someone you care about?

 derry air. So Londonderry Air is a really famous Irish piece of music that (among other things) has given the melody to songs like Danny Boy.

That’s not air as in oxygen, by the way – it’s air as in “songlike vocal or instrumental composition”. Also spelled ayre, or aria if you’re speaking Italian. (An aria in English is typically a vocal composition of the kind you’re most likely to find in an opera – La donna è mobile is a kind of clichéd example.)

Anyway, (London)derry Air and Danny Boy! I thought sneaking in the reference would be funny for wordplay reasons, and Danny Boy is overwrought and overdone to the point where it is a little bit hard for me to take it seriously. As it turns out, though, the lyrics work well with this idea of the interlinking of death and place:

Oh, Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling From glen to glen, and down the mountain side. The summer's gone, and all the roses falling, It's you, it's you must go and I must bide.

But come ye back when summer's in the meadow, Or when the valley's hushed and white with snow, It's I'll be here in sunshine or in shadow, Oh, Danny boy, oh Danny boy, I love you so!

But when ye come, and all the flowers are dying, If I am dead, as dead I well may be, You'll come and find the place where I am lying, And kneel and say an Ave there for me. And I shall hear, though soft you tread above me, And all my grave will warmer, sweeter be, For you will bend and tell me that you love me, And I shall sleep in peace until you come to me!

 don’t you (forget about me). So I wrote two reverse bangs this year and both of them have the title of this song in them! It was released by Simple Minds in 1985 and plays over the iconic ending of The Breakfast Club, which was released the same year. I’m not personally huge on The Breakfast Club, but I DO think it makes a good combo with IT – these are 1980s misfits who come together and become friends despite the odds (of their social roles in TBC, and of Derry and Pennywise in IT). IT was published in 1986, so they’re originally products of the same time, too.

 ghost. Depending on the story, a ghost can be a lot of different things. Grief given physical form, a memory walking; unfinished business; wrath and vengeance animating a walking curse; rot; love; love (rotting); a person held together by connections to their loved ones; time out of joint and in the wrong place.

Eddie’s path back to being is love and care and connection, obviously, but the occasional vagueness of being is also very much an accidental long covid/fatigue illness metaphor. I had long covid fatigue for what felt like forever in the spring of 2022, and it’s just a really ghostly existence – like you are periodically slipping in and out of time and space. I kept feeling like I didn’t all the way exist, and I (kind of unintentionally) put a lot of that into Eddie when I wrote this. Ultimately, I think it works.

 good bones. “Good Bones” is a poem by Maggie Smith that has done a couple of rounds on tumblr at this point:

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.

Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine

in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,

a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways

I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least

fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative

estimate, though I keep this from my children.

For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.

For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,

sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world

is at least half terrible, and for every kind

stranger, there is one who would break you,

though I keep this from my children. I am trying

to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,

walking you through a real shithole, chirps on

about good bones: This place could be beautiful,

right? You could make this place beautiful.

From Waxwing, 2016

 forget-me-not. Its scientific name, myosotis, comes from the Ancient Greek word for “mouse’s ear”. (This is the second time I have come across a scientific term that means “mouse” used for something that is definitely, absolutely not a mouse – the first is muscle, which comes from the Latin musculus, and means “little mouse”. Wild!) It’s a family! There are so many different types of forget-me-nots! For the sake of this story, though, it’s the emotional (and straightforward) theme of holding on to a loved one and not forgetting them that tied in too neatly with the idea of Richie being haunted by ghost Eddie for me not to make a big deal out of it. The vase of flowers in the picture really ended up unlocking the entire story for me a lot more than I had expected!

if you see something, say nothing (and drink to forget). A classic Welcome to Nightvale quote that is also, I think, a very in character sentiment for Richie.

inspirations, fanfic. This fic takes some inspiration from a Losers Club Big Bang fic from 2021, Nothing Dies in Derry (art by Cordlesshamilton, words by glorious_spoon), and the (as of now still unfinished) SMAU One Ring to Bind Us (@richiesring) – both stories about ghost Eddie (and Stan) trying to communicate with Richie (and Patty) through whatever means will work for them.

modern odyssey, the. Being gone for a very long time and coming back to the person you love (though Richie has less suitors in this one).

not exactly casper. He’s a bit too rude to be Casper, I think.

r+e. I just really wanted to get this in here somehow.

real/not real. So in Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games, this is a thing Katniss and Peeta do after Peeta’s (spoiler??) been thoroughly and relentlessly brainwashed, and struggles to keep hold of what’s real and what isn’t in the aftermath. This section title is a reference to that. For this fic, I guess what I want to pull in here is that there is something about a ghost that is also very malleable and ephemeral – a ghost is real and not real, in a sense, at the same time. Eddie’s occupying both positions at the same time, sometimes more on one side than the other.

section titles; capitalisation. I just love the idea of someone else’s point of view slowly breaking through, even if it doesn’t translate to the main parts of the text. The section titles in capital letters reflect Richie’s state of mind – often through referencing other things – and the ones that aren’t reflect Eddie’s. Well, mostly. I don’t think I’m a hundred percent consistent, but it’s fun to play around with.

there was a hole here. it’s gone now. A reference to a line that shows up in Silent Hill 2. The way it’s written out there is a bit more unsettling: “There was a HOLE here. It’s gone now.”