#I hadn’t realized the manga and the anime were different fandoms on ao3

[wow-an-unfunny-joke]

Half way through episode 12 of season 2, why do I ship Jeanne and Vanitas????? Why am I sobbing???? I told you the teacher was sinister!!!!!

[yoruthewardevil]

Almost

Flufftober Day Eight

Summary: Reira forgets her umbrella at home on a rainy day so Ren walks her home.

"Years later, they would look back at that moment and realize that had they kissed that day, their lives would’ve looked completely different."

*Set during their high school years*

Fandom: Nana (anime & manga)

Prompt: Rainy day

@flufftober

Ao3 link

Thunder boomed through the classroom and outside, the lightning lit up the sky. Reira preferred sunshine to rain but what made the weather particularly upsetting was that she hadn’t brought an umbrella to school and class was nearly over for the day.

It was only her second month at her new high school and most of the people in her class stayed late for extracurricular activities. It also didn’t help that most of her classmates lived in the other direction. She could always walk home with Takumi but lately, he’d been staying late at school to hang out with his girlfriend. Reira couldn’t remember the last time they’d walked home together and although it made her sad, he’d told her many times before that he had no interest in her outside of their friendship.

As the teacher dismissed the class, Reira gathered her things and made her way out into the hallway. Her classmates walked past her, in a rush to get wherever they were going. Instinctively, she walked to Takumi’s class but when she peered in, he was nowhere to be seen. The only person still in class was Takumi’s friend, Ren.

Reira had only spoken to Ren a handful of times but there was something comforting about being in his presence. For one thing, he’d never been mean to her or treated her any differently because she was younger. He was funny and always had a way of making her laugh. When she saw his umbrella, she immediately made her way to him.

“Hey Ren, you wouldn’t happen to be walking towards the north side of town, would you? I forgot my umbrella.” Walking in the rain with no umbrella wasn’t the worst thing in the world, but she still didn’t want to do it. Having some company while walking home would also be nice.

“I don’t live out that way but I don’t mind walking you home,” he said as he picked up the umbrella and led her out into the hallway.

“Really? You’d walk me home even though you don’t live in the area?”

“Yeah, why not? I don’t have anywhere to be.” Ren shrugged as they walked out of the building. They huddled up together underneath his umbrella. “Lead the way.”

“It’s nice of you to walk me home. Takumi used to walk home with me but he’s been busy doing other things lately.” As much as she tried to hide the sadness in her voice, it was obvious.

“Other things? Oh, you mean his girlfriend. Don’t let it get you down. She’s got nothing on you,” he said matter-of-factly.

Reira blushed. She already knew that she was beautiful but hearing it from an older guy was exciting.

“So… how are things going with your band? Takumi says you’re pretty good.”

“Things are good with the band. If you’re interested, maybe you could stop by and watch us practice sometime.” He smiled at her and she blushed again.

“I’d like that!” It came off more enthusiastic than she’d planned for it to but there was no helping it. Music was a big part of her life and she loved being around other people who enjoyed music as much as she did. The thought of getting to watch Ren’s band play excited her.

“It’s not that great,” he laughed. “You like to sing, right?”

Reira nodded.

“I’d like to hear you sing sometime. I bet you’re better at singing than I am at playing guitar.”

“I can sing now if you’d like!” Once again, she couldn’t hide her excitement. She wanted to do what she loved most and she wanted to impress Ren. “Do you like Stevie Nicks?”

Ren laughed, allowing her to hang onto the umbrella for a moment so he could light a cigarette. “Who doesn’t like Stevie Nicks?”

Reira smiled brightly and began to sing.

“How the faces of love changed, turning the pages

And I have changed, oh, but you, you remain ageless

I turned around and the water was closing all around

Like a glove, like the love that had finally, finally found me

And I knew in the crystalline knowledge of you”

By the time she finished singing, they’d both stopped walking. The sound of rain hitting the umbrella had acted as the music to her vocals. For a moment, they stood there, smiling at each other.

“That was good. Better than good, actually.” Ren looked as though he were in disbelief that such a powerful voice had come out of such a little thing.

“Thank you,” she blushed again. They continued walking and Ren’s hand brushed against hers as he shifted the umbrella in his hand. Reira felt nervous and excited all at once. This was the first time that an older guy had given her this much attention and it felt nice to be recognized for her musical talent. It helped that Ren was cute.

As they got closer to her house, she found herself growing curious about him. He wasn’t Takumi but she liked the way Ren treated her. Going out of his way to walk her home in the rain wasn’t something that most guys would do.

“Hey Ren, do you have a girlfriend?”

That got his attention. They stood outside of her house, looking at each other. “I don’t. Why? Do you know someone who likes me?” He smirked at her, clearly seeing through her question.

“Maybe,” she said softly. Their faces were inches away and she wondered how that had happened. It was as if she was somehow being pulled towards him. Before it could go any further, she heard her mother calling out for her. Their moment was broken and both were transported back to reality.

“I should probably get going,” she said with a frown, looking towards the front door where her mother stood waiting for her. “Thank you for walking me home.”

Their hands touched for a moment as she let go of the umbrella and squeezed his hand. He watched as she ran towards her house and walked in, looking back at him for only a moment before closing the door.

It wasn’t long after that Reira began dating Yasu. Ren knew he’d missed his chance to make her his.

Years later, they would look back at that moment and realize that had they kissed that day, their lives would’ve looked completely different.

[yaoipublicdomain]

What's Yours Is Mine

by Sephi

Fandom: Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga)

Pairing: (M/M) Yami Bakura/Marik Ishtar (Extremely Dubious Consent, Bakura Doesn't Realize His True Feelings Yet, Hand Jobs, BakuMali Day 2022, Partial Mind Control, Non-Consensual Masturbation, Bakura And Marik Share A Body, During Canon)

Summary: It's late at night and Marik can't sleep. He finds the perfect solution from inside Bakura's body. What else is he supposed to do?

Read on: AO3 | Tumblr (under the cut)

Happy Bakumali Day 2022~ 

“Just what do you think you’re doing?” Bakura snapped, jolting awake with a start. He was lucky that there were no onlookers, that he was given some much needed privacy during such late hours. However, this privacy was nothing more than an illusion. Bakura was offered very little room to himself within the four corners of his mind.

He’d been caught once or twice talking to himself in passing, but this time was much different. His hands, hands that felt unfamiliar and no longer like his own, were snaking down into his boxers, grazing against his own delicate flesh.

He shared the space in his mind with not just his own alter but another, a foreign entity who had his own body to call home. Unlike Bakura—the real Bakura—who was meek and submissive, easily susceptible and effortless to swallow down, this other, a certain Marik Ishtar, was a struggle to deal with at all. This new consciousness lurked within Bakura, spurring him to act in ways he had no interest in, making Bakura’s body his own whenever Bakura’s defenses dropped just enough.

“What, don’t I get a say?” The voice echoed in Bakura’s mind while Bakura tried to force his own hands to obey their rightful master. “I couldn’t sleep. It’s my body too, you know.”

“It’s not.” Bakura growled. It hadn’t occurred to him what Marik would do once he’d agreed on their contract, but torture like this was far from something he had considered, a possibility not even on his radar.

Maybe Bakura should have had the sense to see it coming from the way that Marik watched him leading up to this moment, the way that tension lingered through each interaction they had shared. Perhaps it should have been obvious to a thief like himself that Marik had much more in mind when he proposed his idea to share Bakura’s body—in particular something he’d wanted to steal . However, revenge was a fickle thing, the very notion all-consuming, clouding Bakura’s judgment completely until it was too late. Marik simply had to offer the one thing that all of Bakura’s actions screamed he wanted, the revenge that he so desperately needed—and Bakura was all his.

Bakura’s arms shook from the tremendous effort it took to halt them in their determined path, to regain control of the neural pathways that had been overtaken while he’d slept. He groaned from exertion. Marik giggled from this demonstration of power, enjoying the sensations from within Bakura’s own mind as they washed around him, relishing the feeling of total control over someone built so high and mighty.

“If it was entirely yours,” Marik purred, overjoyed with every small victory he received, “then surely you’d be able to steal your hands away from me, wouldn’t you?”

Bakura didn’t appreciate the salt thrown into his wounds. His pride wouldn’t allow him to hesitate or give up. He wouldn’t acknowledge Marik with any of his words; he kept his mouth firmly shut, meditating on the memory of how his arms used to feel when they were his own.

“I can feel how badly we want this.” It felt as if Marik were whispering it into Bakura’s ear, as though his breath were hot against the nape of his neck. “I can’t deal with feeling like this. I’m not used to it. Why don’t you let me help us relax?”

Bakura shuddered, throwing his face away from where he felt Marik’s ghost—as if it could defend him from the way Marik penetrated his very mind. Bakura never indulged in this sort of carnal behavior, so he lacked the strength to resist. He was horribly weak when it came to defending himself against such precise attacks. After all, he did feel incredibly tense. Bakura’s body had betrayed him—or maybe it was entirely Marik’s influence. He’d never know. The lines between their psyches grew thinner and thinner the longer that Marik’s soul remained fluttering within him.

“I know you want it.” Marik was strong in his assertion, sending Bakura’s hands soaring into the fold of Bakura’s boxers in a single motion, as though it were effortless. He wasn’t surprised by what he found there. “What I have in our hands right now is the proof.”

Bakura bit back a groan but the residue of his feelings could be felt all over the confines of his mind—the things he could never admit or say aloud running freely. Truly, Bakura’s hands felt like they really were Marik’s now—they felt as soft as Marik’s hands despite how scarred and worn Bakura’s hands actually were. They held a heat, the same heat that Marik’s tanned flesh always held, unlike the cold that normally bit into Bakura. The very memory of Marik’s slender arms, his delicate fingers rolled through Bakura’s mind, brought to his attention from Marik’s memory itself.

Marik dragged his hands along the base of Bakura’s cock, frustratingly slow. Bakura felt his body freeze as it was overtaken and consumed by Marik, muscles going rigid as Marik found  every crack inside his mind. The most aggravating part was that Bakura could feel every sensation in his cock; he could feel all the blood rushing down, heat coiling in his stomach as the pleasure he lacked any immunity to rose and rose, fanned by the flames of Marik’s undivided attention and ministrations.

“Stop it,” Bakura hissed, the sound coming out weak and strangled when Marik rolled the smooth palm of his hand against the head of Bakura’s pleading cock. He tried again, despising the pathetic way he’d sounded. “Stop this at once.”

Marik laughed, picking up the pace. “It’s almost over now. Just let me finish, then I promise I’ll go to sleep. There’s no way we can sleep like this…”

Bakura couldn’t even move his body anymore. He felt like a doll, forced to endure wave after wave of pleasure—mind-numbing, ego-shattering pleasure that unwound him and his pride like a red velvet bow.

Bakura moaned, his cock twitching, nearing the brink of something unfamiliar, unusual. The hands that were no longer his clenched around him, sucking him into their warmth, expertly seeking exactly where he’d craved sensation before Bakura could even realize he needed it.

“Marik…” Bakura protested—but it only added fuel to the fire. Marik enjoyed hearing his own name roll from Bakura’s lips, especially in a voice that sounded so small, so unusually pathetic. He was going to make Bakura cum.

“Good job,” Marik, pleased by Bakura’s well-earned submission. “That’s it.”

Bakura came all at once, thick and hot into the hands he and Marik shared. He visualized it pooling into Marik’s palms, rolling down his arms. His voice was heavy with aggression, anger that he released into Marik’s waiting fingers.

“See?” Marik smiled, happy with his stolen prize. “Don’t you feel so much better?”

[hilli98215]

I am confused. I am hurt. I don’t know what to think. This is a long post. A very long post that is personal but I’ve had it in my head for a while to write. You don’t have to read this. This post has no real meaning. It’s more of a rant of how I feel in the world of fandom, my experiences, and why this posts exists. 

Again, you do not have to read this. 

You have been warned.

DO NOT REBLOG THIS POST!!!! 

When I became an English major in college, I did so knowing several things. One of those is the fact I love literature and I love discovering why authors, creators, and artists wrote what became their most well known work.

Where am I going?

My first fandom was when I was in Junior High (about 13-14 years old) that I was a part of, meaning I read fan fiction and discovered fan art of, was either Naruto or Pokémon. To me these works were escapes of my real confusing life. Especially when I moved states and schools. I had no one. Through this, I discovered what I liked and didn’t like in the world of fiction and was introduced to fandom words/slang such as shipping, fan fiction, lemons (which I don’t think is used as often now), different types of writing, yaoi, yuri, and a few more I can’t remember. This also included the all important phrase Don’t like don’t read. This was when I was in my early teens. 

But I was in a phase where I could find what I found interesting and that was that. 

When I got to high school, I was still this awkward quiet kid with no friends. But I did have marching band so that was something. 

At this point was was interested in Ouran Highschool Host Club, Death Note, a series called Beauty Pop, Fullmetal Alchemist, and a few others. This was also around the time where I began writing fanfiction for OHSC and even began buying manga. Anyway, this was my introduction to fandom as a teenager. And this is before Tumblr.

All I had were my friends, videos on YouTube, and my own interests. No one really understood why I loved all these things. 

Then came the very first fandom I became fully obsessed in my sophomore year: a small series called Hetalia Axis Powers. I was completely invested in this fandom. So much so I wrote fan fiction, bought merch, and read a lot of fan fiction myself. I think it was because, at the time I thought it was because the art style was cute, the voice acting wasn’t half bad and it had to do with history. But this is where things got interesting for me and learning about fandom as a whole. 

As a teen, I hadn’t known about AUs and this series had a lot of them. From the usual school AUs to odd ones. I usually stayed in my bubble and kept up the mantra Don’t like Don’t read. 

But why talk about it?

Well, let’s just say a lot of the content later on became weird and new. I learned a lot about new terms like de-aging and ABO. But this leads to interest which once again let me know what genres of fan fiction I like. 

I continued on with this fandom for about 3 years. And what broke it was the drama and how people were finding a sudden moral compass for personified countries. I mean there are other problems with that show that I recognize now as an adult and didn't see as a kid but that’s for another time. But I quietly left because I was beginning to understand that the drama wasn’t worth a tv show.

I would say the next fandom I was invested in and loved and I think had the least amount of drama was Fairy Tail. Now I fell in love with this series because of the story, characters, and the welcoming fandom. Overall there was rarely any drama because I think we all knew that we had to be civil with each other and respect our ships. While I’m not part of that fandom anymore a lot of people on Tumblr and FFN were very welcoming. The main series kinda fizzled out but that was one of the few positive fandom experiences I had.

I was at that point in my life where I was in college, created my Tumblr and posted regularly to escape life. 

Coming off that fandom, I was part of the Yuri on Ice! fandom from beginning to the end. I mean it’s a sports anime that’s about men's figure skating and how it can affect athletes just to get a gist of it.

That’s when my experience with fandom became interesting because these characters were being paired in a way that made me feel like they can’t be paired with anyone else. Like, there was a pairing we were all cheering for to happen by the end. 

This is the first series I was highly interested in as an adult where the ages of the characters were defined. There were a few in their teens, some in their early to mid 20s, and a couple in their 30s. Now this was a historic anime for several reasons. The main being there being a gay relationship being shown in a positive light and mental illness being shown in a way that wasn’t patronizing and negative. I loved this show for those reasons. But I also quickly learned how people would take these characters (especially those with huge age differences) and pair them up. That was my first introduction to criticism of how ‘gross’ it would be for a 15 year old to be paired up with an 18 year old. But I saw a problem that made me second guess my thinking. When I was in high school, I knew someone who was a sophomore at 15 and dated someone who was 18. Why was there a problem? 

I knew if I voiced this that I would be shamed and told that I was disgusting. Eventually I had enough and left shortly after the series ended.

Then came the Voltron: Legendary Defender series. Oh boy.

Now that series came out while I was in college and I often viewed it in a critical perspective similar to one would a piece of literature because my major was in English and that was what I was taught. Like YOI I was part of this fandom day 1 because it was so different from the original Voltron series from the 80s. I loved how the fandom dissected everything in every episode. There were watch parties, analysis videos, and even skits at conventions. It was a fandom I knew I wanted to be a part of. But then there was fanfiction that I found odd and knew that I never wanted to read that. People were writing about topics that made me uncomfortable and I didn’t know how to deal with it. After a while, I questioned why I was forcing myself to read them in the first place. So, I stopped reading them. This was also around the time where I discovered AO3 and their amazing tagging system. Because if the tagging system was not there, I probably would have stopped reading fanfiction all together.

But then there was drama, shipping wars, morality wars, and I had enough. I was there until it ended and left quietly. Which is sad considering I loved the experience but it was ruined by what people thought was right for fictional characters. 

Now you may be asking “What was the point of this post?”

To answer your question, I don’t know.

I have loved reading since I was a kid. And when I got to high school, I had this AP teacher who told us something that has stayed with me to this day.

‘As a reader we are detectives. We want to know why the author wrote this book. We want to know what influenced them.’

I took that saying to heart and approach everything through a critical lens. Which is difficult in a fandom. It’s hard to have a critical approach to a series that everyone takes for a grain of salt.

I have been exposed to a lot of books and pieces of literature that have been considered controversial because of their content. When I left high school, I began to realize what genres of books I like in the YA genre and in literature. 

I experimented.

And when you think about it, that’s what you do with fan fiction and fandom. We are always experimenting. We are always finding what we like and don’t like. 

But recently I’ve noticed a new fandom term that makes me wonder where I fall in all of this craziness we call fandom. 

Pro-Fiction/Pro-Shipper

It wasn’t until last year I saw this word thrown around in a new fandom I am in. I tried to do some research but I couldn't find anything. Nothing. And then I learned it’s a new term in itself.

I won’t go into detail but it reminds of the ‘video games are violent so that makes so-and-so violent’ argument parents made when Mortal Kombat came out. 

Well you still didn’t answer the question.

And you’d be right. I saw a post from a follower that saddened me and honestly freaked me out. Why announce that you hate a specific group? It felt like a call out post without saying any names. A warning that states: Block me or out yourself. Or rather: Block me or else.

Do I identify as this? To tell you the truth, I don’t know. I think critically and see things differently. In fact everyone does. 

We are always going to be influenced by the media whether it be a movie, television, a book, or a video game. We will always love these storylines and characters. We will always take the messages to heart. We will always cheer for the hero and maybe the villain too. 

I do want you guys to remember this, make your own fandom experience. Block those who make you feel uncomfortable and make you feel like you don’t matter. You do.

You are your own person. No one can tell you otherwise. If you feel uncomfortable, then maybe you need to leave the fandom. Or find a space in the fandom that you can be yourself. Or don’t care what people think and do what you always do.

It’s all up to you.

[masked-disciple]

1, 4, 5, 6, 11, 15, 21, 22, 23 for the writers ask?

1. Tell us about your current project(s)  – what’s it about, how’s progress, what do you love most about it?

Currently, I’m working on a fic titled A Monstrous Manifesto, which is a fic entirely inspired by Cat Valente’s poem of the same name. Every line is a chapter, every noun is a part of that chapter, and every single beast named corresponds to a Spectre, allowing me to dig directly into their heads and demonstrate their full psychology. 

Progress stopped unfortunately back in July on part four - a fiend, which I picked Deadly Beetle Stand for, because I just couldn’t get into his head. Kiril played soundboard for it and I’ve been humming and hawing over him trying to figure it out, but let’s be real it’s gonna come to me in a dream.

Because see here, most folks who’ve read my works, if told to point to my best, it’ll either be a) my breakthrough with Armour Adventures (which tbh if I redid I’d do better on), b) In Kismet Marcescence (which I need to sit down and plot out properly before I continue), or c) rather unexpectedly to me, Green Grows The Asphodel. Guess everyone likes that soft MiAlba where Alba gets his bastardization arc, but also I let him speedrun it in Broken Shine The Stars and people seem to like that one too, so.

The thing is with AMM is that this would be my greatest work. Like AA, it’s gen, but here’s the one advantage I’ve realized I actually have over pretty much everyone else in this fandom: I am myself a monster, fictionkind and all. I’m a Devil and a feral little beast, which means when you offer me Spectres - warriors of the dark and death who are all based around animal motifs - I take one look and go “oh! You’re like me!” and proceed to write them as actual monsters while having some unspoken and long-winded conversation about what it means to be human, what it means to be shunned, and what it means to belong among the broken.

It means that I write Spectres wildly different than anyone who isn’t Kiril (who is on the same wavelength as me and we argue back and forth about the inner details of everyone’s monstrosity), which means when I do it, nobody’s seen this shit before and apparently people seem to think it’s cool. So AMM is the very epitome of that style, of that psychological and philosophical discussion. I don’t really have a background of research in either of those things, so any similarities to works or theories already out there is entirely coincidence. Cat Valente’s poem was the first stepping stone I ever took to accepting myself for who - and what - I am. I owe as much of my identity and confidence to her as I do Zamorakian philosophy, which built my personality and is a major part of how I survived the middle school era of my life. The least I can do in return is offer the best of me out into the world.

4. Share a sentence or paragraph from your writing that you’re really proud of (explain why, if you like)

“Somewhere deep below conscious thought, below his training and the life and this Lemurian body, buried under lifetimes of war, buried under the idea that a Spectre was a fighter, his blood remembered how to love the memory of the fallen.” - Beneath Blood Ties

BBT is one of my most unappreciated fics, which makes sense as it’s set almost two thousand years prior to Classic, starring a fourteen-year-old Lemurian Minos and the Saint who raised him, Aries Kirien, whose name is probably still spelled Kiriel at least once in the fic because no beta we die like Gold Saints.

The original inspiration comes from Seanan McGuire’s Once Broken Faith, and the line in question is Toby reading the Luidaeg’s blood memories after the latter told a young Karen that she couldn’t speak Faerie even in her dreams - she speaks it in her blood memories, and Toby notes that her blood remembers.

It stuck with me, though I’ve read OBF approximately a million times. It, along with A Killing Frost and An Artificial Night, are my three top Toby books. And it responded to me as someone who’s fictionkind: I couldn’t speak the language I spoke as a Devil in my dreams, or in the waking world, but I know some part of me remembers it. Would know how. The Chaorruption filters all of that into English because it thinks it’s helping, but if I were a magical creature right now, in this world, I’m pretty sure my blood would remember.

So I wrote about Minos, and the sorrow he carried. The premise of BBT is that a Pope realized some Spectres come back, went around before they became Spectres, and kidnapped the lot of them to train as Saints, leaving them all traumatized as fuck, unsure of who they were or who they followed, and messed up for lifetimes. I also wanted to show more that Spectres were more than what the Holy Wars made of them, and about digging through that exotrauma to remember that they could be kind.

Spectres, originally, would make sense as really just Hades’ servants and the ones who keep the Meikai running. Pretty sure that means they know every single death rite that’s existed in the past three millennia. Pretty sure they know how to be respectful of the dead. Pretty damn sure that below all that soldiering and war, they’re all really exhausted librarians who want to do their job and also dig graves.

But I like this sentence here best, because that’s pretty much the climax of the plot here: that there is, in fact, something underneath all his exotrauma, all the current trauma he’s been dealing with. That below all of that bitterness and war, he’s a better person than what Athena made of him.

Idk, I just think it’s neat and no I’m not projecting being ‘kin on him again. /j

5. What character that you’re writing do you most identify with?

Albafica, to nobody’s surprise. I mean, come on. A guy with a fuckton of traditionally-feminine beauty whose looks keep getting brought up, is very introverted, has seen some shit, just wants to kill people who hurt what he cares about while also not hurting the people he does care about, really wants you to keep your damn distance, is super touchstarved, and holding onto his humanity with his fingertips? Come on the only things he’s got that I don’t is an actual male reproductive system and naturally blue hair.

Once you realize that especially in TLC Athena’s actions are pretty damn horrific, especially to her Saints, Albafica has the perfect setup to become a Spectre. Seriously, if he’d been offered Luco’s deal but while holding a dying Lugonis, do you really think he wouldn’t have taken it? I explore that more in Broken Shine The Stars, but like. Albafica is the perfect fallen angel of a character. He has genuinely good intentions. He’s hurting so damn bad and only fucking once in his entire onscreen performance is that acknowledged (shoutout to Luco for that one), and if you take his sorrow and let him turn it into anger, he’s a glorious monster indeed. Albafica’s descend into monstrosity and Spectrehood is exactly what would happen if I got angry and also hadn’t been fucking nerfed physically.

I love him way too much.

6. What character do you have the most fun writing?

Surprisingly, Aiacos. Alba’s hard as fuck to write. Aiacos, though. You’ve heard me go off about Aiacos at length, but like. He’s the very embodiment of the worst person you can become while still loving, still surviving. Aiacos is the type of person we’re all capable of becoming, and we all should be terrified of becoming, because every single choice he’s ever made is completely understandable and that much more horrific for it.

It’s somewhat unsurprisingly easy to get into his head. He’s fun to write because he scares me. Because if I let him do all the dumb, selfish, sadistic-looking, survival-focused things, then I don’t have to worry about doing it myself. I let him look out for only himself when the pieces are down, so I can do better.

Also I haven’t seen anyone else write him that way (Kiril being the obvious exception here), so it’s double the fun because new territory.

11. What do you envy in other writers?

Hey. Hey you fuckers who can plot shit. Give me the number of the demon you sold your soul to. Let me PLOT SHIT.

15. Which is harder: titles or summaries (or tags)?

Summaries! Titles are easy, I steal them from songs and Toby books. They’re just fancy wordplay and I have literally a list on my fic spreadsheet of titles I want to use. Summaries, though, are very important. People don’t pick fics based on title and tags, they pick based on summary. They’re your hook into the work, so you’ve got to give the audience your premise short and sweet and actually sounding appealing.

Sometimes I can write them no problemo. Other times, they’re a fucking nightmare. I try to imply the tone of the ending in my summary, because I have absolutely been blindsided by the ending in a way I really didn’t like because I thought the summary was hiding the ending. (Example - there was this one fic that made it sound like my OTP was going enemies to lovers, and it wasn’t, it wasn’t, it needed the fucking dead dove do not eat tag, stopped just short of serious nonsexual noncon (which wasn’t tagged at all), and ended very unhappily and it messed me up for days, I did not like it.)

So for my summaries I set the scene, set the tone, and imply the tone of the ending so you have a vague idea of where it’s going. Easier said than done.

21. What other medium do you think your story would work well as? (film, webcomic, animated series?)

Anime, probably! Manga wouldn’t lend itself too well to my style, but I’d enjoy short anime episodes, I think. I honestly don’t know. Someone tell me what my stuff would work good as. I dunno.

22. Do you reread your old works? How do you feel about them?

For fic, all the time! I write what I want to read, and since six out of seven of the Dohko/Kagaho works on AO3 were my fault, I’d better get used to reading my own writing for pleasure. Fortunately, I like most of my writing recently, so that’s pretty all right!

Don’t ask about what I had up on ff.net. Don’t. It’s old and bad and I didn’t know how to write.

23. What’s the story idea you’ve had in your head for the longest?

Hmmm... I want to rephrase this better as ‘what fic exists only as a concept and has done so for the longest out of all the concepts of fics currently in my head’, and hmmmm. Honestly, it’s either Shion and Aiacos’ romance fic where they also get a daughter (which has a title actually, The Lost Sea Fantasia, but still hasn’t been written); or it’s Wyvern Rose and the Trials of Lightning, which is about 15th century Rhada’s two daughters, the elder of which is surprise-given his surplice and his job when he dies right before Hades does, and the younger of which is kidnapped by a spiteful goddess who doesn’t like the elder of the two.

ToL is a fic that I have somewhat plotted out, but really needs a lot of work. I’m not really sure how to go about writing it, because whenever I sit down to sketch it out, it never comes to me. It does, however, lend itself well as a bedtime / campfire story that Albafica tells Regulus while they’re out on a mission together, as part of Alba sneakily teaching Regu how to be a Spectre without anyone knowing. It’ll stay a concept for a long while until Rose crashes into my headspace and actually fucking tells me more about herself other than “oh yeah btw I’m fucking Julia” like thanks, already knew that from Julia herself, tell me more about you you awful little Judge of a dragon princess.

[ask game here!]