#I figured out how to make a pseude so y'all are not going to be able to escape my little sad clown firefighter emoji

[911-on-abc]

I'm going to read every fic in this goddamn fandom and make it EVERYONE's problem

[shitpostingfromthebarricade]

@themandilorian tagged me to answer fic questions! Thank youuuuuuuuuu, I love doing these. <3

how many works do you have on AO3?

Christ, 84 plus the Witcher crackfic I wrote under my incredibly subtle pseud.

what’s your total AO3 word count?

388,267, though I have a fic that'll probably be hitting 70k before it's all said and done that'll be going up ... before November? So 450k soon.

how many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

Uh, depends how you count fandoms. Realistically, just one (Les Mis), but according to the fandoms view I also technically write for Untitled Goose Game and 19th Century CE France RPF. And Witcher.

what are your top 5 fics by kudos?

The View From Here (aka the balcony fic)

Define "Dating" (my second to oldest published fic ft Enjolras trying to take Grantaire out on dates and Grantaire in severe denial)

Early Mornings, Late Nights (the one where Grantaire wakes up early and Enjolras stays up late)

By the Glory of the Sun (amnesia AU ft horny Grantaire)

Rainy Days (kidfic ft calls from the principal and no kid)

do you respond to comments, why or why not?

I dooooooooo. <3 I spend so much time creating these fics and inventing details and backstories that never make it to the light of day, so I love having an excuse to talk more about the story and process. Also, I just love hearing from y'all? Of course I'll respond???

what’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

Ah, hm, several of those, angst was my specialty for a long while. It still sometimes is, but it was, too. Maybe The Lies We Tell Ourselves in the Dark? Prague is just sad the whole way through, same with Enjolras's Prayer and The Tempest. His Love Letter also starts more innocuous and gets sadder.

have you ever received hate on a fic?

Not including most responses to Empereur's Mercy (<3), not really?

I do know that one fic wasn't particularly well-received, but that's because it was a fic I wrote directly in response to someone being an asshole in a friend's comments and didn't include the context for privacy reasons. The fic was a very pointed response with lots of quotes from the other person, but without having seen the original conversation it can be easily interpretted as a general criticism, so I see why people weren't thrilled.

do you write smut? if so what kind?

Not really. There has been one glaring exception (What Greater Thing is There?), and another will be up soon-ish, but any smut I ever publish with either be exclusively to advance the plot or as pure crack.

have you ever had a fic stolen?

If you count those apps that were hosting peoples' fics without permission, yes, but otherwise no. I've been very lucky in that way.

have you ever had a fic translated?

HeavenlyGift translated Define "Dating" into Russian!!!

have you ever co-written a fic before?

It's not published yet, but thecandlesticksfromlesmis and I are about to hit three years (17 Sep, I think?) co-writing the fic that inspired All That's Left of Us!

what’s your all time favorite ship?

Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh ... I dunno. I'm not sure. Valjean & Cosette (ampersand is platonic)? Courfius? Whatever those two funky lesbians in Sailor Moon have going on? Anne and Gilbert? Fantine and A Fucking Break?

what’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

I recently decided that I'm going to revisit my Giant Fic and make an effort to finish it even though my HCs don't align anymore!! Otherwise, I have a ton of ideas and kinda WiPs that could be finished but probably won't be simply by merit of there being so many. The one that comes to mind as being one that my HCs grew beyond before I could do more than outline it is the bodyswap fic with Combeferre and Grantaire that would have needed to be written from 3 PoVs and would have come out to probably ... 40k? A lot of effort for something I only ever had about 16k worth of interest in.

what are your writing strengths?

I think banter, pacing, and (when I choose to) worldbuilding.

what are your writing weaknesses?

Anything involving physical affection. @thepiecesofcait is always the first to point out the absolute hoops I don't even realize I put myself through to avoid writing physical contact. I've been trying to expand my horizons, but also consider: I could not.

what are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

INCREDIBLY contextual. I think if it's the PoV character, you write what they understand: if they do understand the language, write it in the language of the rest of the fic. If they don't, don't put words that they can't understand, just say "[person] says wome words in a language [PoVC] doesn't understand." If the other person is throwing in slang or swearing or something alongside the common language, it makes sense to put it in the other language verbatim, but that's mostly because it's one of those things where even if the PoV character can't understand the exact word, they can probably figure out the meaning with context clues.

Also, of course, a good pun may require language swapping. Gotta have it.

If you do feel compelled to keep it in the original language, though, I would say to figure out linked footnotes so the reader can see the meaning immediately if it's important enough to include. This often breaks up the flow of the story/conversation, though, so use it wisely.

what was the first fandom you wrote for?

Definitely Les Mis, although 7yo Shitposting loved daydreaming about a slumber party with all of the Disney princesses talking about palace life and their husbands and such. (I still have not seen Wreck It Ralph 2, but the trailer fulfilled every single childhood dream of mine.)

what’s your favorite fic you’ve written?

This is like asking my to choose a favorite child??????

I'm still extremely proud of en l'Année 2014, but as I started listing the other fics that still spark joy for me, it's occurring to me that my favorite fics are ones where I got to explore new character dynamics and relationships eg Courfius, Fantine & Marguerite, Valjean & Cosette, Ep & Gav, Javert's backstory in the Web Series AU, etc.

Tagging @starkey, @serinesaccade, @thelibrarina, @annabrolena, @lesbianjolllly, and anyone else who wants to do this!

[mallowstep]

some windclan notes from “i’ll believe the wind is calling me”

hnng windclan has weird amounts of info for the time between tallstar's revenge and fire and ice.

so...here's what i've done. (subject to change as needed — a few spoiler-type things are not noted.)

this is also kind of very much just a huge dump of my thoughts.

ashkit and morningkit are born a few months before deadfoot's warrior ceremony. they become apprentices before he's had his first season of being a warrior.

i've massaged the timeline best i can to put them as close to deadfoot in age as i can. i could probably push it earlier, but we know wrenflight is a season younger than deadfoot, so my choices were age gap between ashfoot and deadfoot or making wrenflight have kits really young, and i don't like either option, but i'd prefer the age gap.

so ashpaw and deadfoot start spending time together when she's a second season apprentice.

tallstar becomes leader a bit earlier than in canon, and he makes mistmouse his first deputy. (she used to be a tunneler and he wants to heal the rift in the clan.)

deadfoot mentors mudpaw — we don't have a ton of choices for canon windclan cats and i'd rather not create ocs just to kill them off if i can avoid it.

mistmouse retires just before the events of into the wild, when deadfoot takes over.

this is a canon change, because deadfoot is supposed to be deputy in bluestar's prophecy, but...he's still an apprentice when that book starts. and i've stared at the canon timeline trying to figure out where heatherstar dies and it's technically possible to make it work given how much time bsp covers, but...yeah no. it's not working out.

i'm poaching some worldbuilding from solacefruit, whom i must insist you read. notably, the general concept of hymns and fasting.

the fasting thing does not come up in ibtwicm (at least so far), but i didn't want them to have the same call as thunderclan (for reasons i'm getting to), so i gave them the call "let all cats old enough to fast..."

hymns are also a thing, although they don't rhyme. they're all technically part of one hymn, but there are different parts, and at somewhat even intervals, they'll have a hymn singing day where they sing part or all of the great hymn

courtship often starts with two cats singing a hymn together (deadfoot sings "the gorse in the wind" with ashpaw about a moon before her warrior ceremony. this is a duet, but it's not strongly associated with courtship. they have another singing day after she's been a warrior for a few moons, and they sing "the heather and earth," which is explicitly a courtship hymn.)

some hymn fragments...

Should the thunder of paws grow loud, the hare — being wiser than the rabbit, Catches on and runs, and we watch its wake.

"the hare"

In what good company have I set down roots, That even through snow fall I flower.

"the gorse in the wind" (the gorse)

i've interpretted deadfoot's foot as a varient of clubfoot and it's called "dead paw" (although hawkheart lies to hopkit and says it's called "hawk paw.")

he can put weight on it, but it's painful, and it's shorter than his other leg. it twists in, so if you imagine holding your palm as close to your wrist as you can.

when he gets it cut, he loses basically all of his flexibility in it. this is a mixed bag: on one hand, he has a good amount of nerve damage, so he can put weight on it for longer (as long as he's careful about it, because otherwise he'll fuck up his whole leg), but he also loses any chance of being able to use it effectively.

he can't really use its claws, so he has to basically get them clipped/bitten/filed off every moon or so.

his whole front leg is actually slightly twisted. that part of it isn't noticable, not unless you're examining it really closely, but even if he could untwist his paw, his leg would still be slightly stiffer.

windclan's hunting stragies are based on african wild dogs (african hunting dogs, african painted dogs, etc). why? because i wanted to.

to catch rabbits effectively, they use three cat teams: a flusher, a runner, and a catcher.

the flusher startles the rabbits, the runner chases them down, and the catcher, well, makes the pounce. they can run all three positions, but they usually excel at one. in hunting patrols, this allows them to trade off. you take 1-2 flusher, 3-4 runners, and 2-3 catchers, and you're an effeticve team.

(yes, that is kind of a big hunting patrol, but unlike thunderclan, they don't need to send many patrols. they can send out maybe two a day and be effective. and you have multiple runs going at any given time.)

obviously cats can and do catch rabbits alone, but this is more efficient and less exhausting.

deadfoot and talltail are both chasers. mentors and apprentices aren't necessarily matched, they just happened that way. onewhisker is a flusher, mudclaw and ashfoot are catchers, and i haven't decided for any other windclan cats yet.

deadpaw and talltail have to adjust every fighting move for him. y'all don't give him enough credit, with only one paw, he has to be able to balance on two legs for every forepaw rake.

he's equally effective once he gets the hang off it, and in a battle, he can use his other leg kind of like a club or pin, but it's really not anything exciting.

it's his left leg that's twisted, but i will 100% forget that, so i avoid saying which one it is.