#also watch exu good grief

[swashbucklery]

For those of you who didn’t get Real Intense About EXU last summer (what were you even doing), please enjoy this reminder of The Deni$e Lore.

[afaramir]

20 questions for writers!

tagged by @emyn-arnens literally over a month ago and im finally getting to it now lol much love thank you for continuing to tag me in things even though im the worst at doing them sometimes.

1. How many works do you have on AO3? 65 (15 of them are under my archive pseud though lol)

2. What’s your total AO3 word count? 265,381

3. What fandoms do you write for? actively writing for lotr, pacific rim, my secret little marvel rarepair

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos? these are so funny they're all my avatar work from before i remade on this blog. well throwback i guess. they're still dear to me.

open arms, atla sokka coming out to his dad

earth system history, atla sokka/zuko college au where zuko is an earth scientist

[redacted h*rry p*tter work from 2016]

love's not for show, atla bato/hakoda sokka creates a master plan to get his dad and bato to admit that theyre dating but they're NOT

knife loves heart, human loves human, james bond 007/q post-spectre fixit fic (my Only 00q and possibly also my only fixit fic?)

5. Do you respond to comments? i try so so so hard but the executive function that allows me to say anything coherent only comes around every so often lol

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? a couple contenders for this one but if we're talking strictly the ending probably i'm not leaving (til we make it home) (exu calamity patia & laerryn / patia & the ring of brass exploring her relationship with love and loneliness and finally being free to express how much she loves her friends only in the last hours of her life and dying happy for it).

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? also a couple contenders for this one but i feel like many of them are tinged with not a small amount of melancholy. so we are going with a big throwback to sun through open windows (atlok mako/wu plotless little morning routines fic that is about nothing in particular but also about realizing you have everything your younger self thought you would never have).

8. Do you get hate on fics? not in a long long time (like probably 7-8 years) thank god!

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind? yes although none of it is published (yet). what kind? idk man whatever im horny about this month. ok but for serious. really been into character developing smut. do u know what i mean. i’m telling you something about who each of these people are and how they view each other through the way they fuck. this probably says quite a lot about me

10. Do you write crossovers? i'm not much for the kind where characters from different franchises Interact, but i am partial to taking some guys and translating them to a different setting. ah to put characters in a situation and watch as the fundamental core of their being stays the same....

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen? hope not lol

12. Have you ever had a fic translated? not that i'm aware of!

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before? yes! we have not finished it but it's absolutely CORE thesis-level influential on my entire psyche. even if we never get back to it i'll think about it until the day i die and that is not an exaggeration.

14. What’s your all-time favorite ship? of ALL TIME? i straight up dont know if i can answer this one. ALL TIME???? my long-term emotional permanence is NOT good enough and my recency bias is too strong for this. ok i think the only way i can answer this is with the ship that has gotten the deepest into my psyche and my soul. which is yancytendo pacific rim. they. affect me. on a level i will probably never be able to fully explain. the 'giving a guy built only to be a thematic device a personality and a history and deep gut-wrenching grief' of it all. the 'you are in love with a guy who is doomed by the narrative and despite your best efforts it means that he is a personification of all the grief you carry inside of you' of it all. yancy becket you will live forever in my heart tendo choi you will ALWAYS be famous. augh. yeah i picked right

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

hmm probably something about the way you look tonight, my mallorytanner thesis statement fic, the genesis of which was genuinely a life-altering event to me. i was listening to the titular elton john song walking home from a general chemistry exam in the snow and i was struck so violently with An Image for truly the first time in my life. truly not ONCE before that moment had that happened to me. this was in my freshman year of college this fic has existed in various forms for going on FIVE YEARS. will it ever be done. GOD i fucking hope so. i actually do hold out hope for that one.

the one i am actually hopeless on ever finishing is orogenesis, the sprawling expanded stemverse pianjeong backstory au fic. the whole structure of it is quite clear in my head actually. i just didn't have the life experience to create the plot structure to go with the emotional beats when it generated itself in my mind in 2020-21 and now that i DO have it the problem is that the inciting event is incredibly clear to me and yet bears too close of a resemblance to. personal events and horrors. for me to ever finish it! i'll think about it forever though. creating and writing that au changed my life for real it was the longest thing i'd ever written and the best when i wrote it and it's still very close to my heart.

16. What are your writing strengths? characterization and character development baby. evocative use of metaphor in descriptions of both character and setting. lavish description.

17. What are your writing weaknesses? PLOT. cant create that from my brain and i rarely attempt it. i have plenty of stuff to write about that does not require it. relatedly not great at worldbuilding.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic? generally don't do it much except for a stray word or two. i don't mind reading it though! tolkien fic writers who translate full sentences you are god's strongest soldiers.

19. First fandom you wrote for? ough this one will be embarrassing. entering the archive pseud. wait is it also tolkien that's funny. life is a circle in some ways. this is first fandom on my ao3 account btw. the VERY first one i wrote for...i will take that knowledge to the grave.

20. Favorite fic you’ve written?

ah i feel like my answer for this one changes every time but i can't help it, i love many of my darlings equally. this time im giving the spotlight to life holds onto you, my chris pike & jim kirk post-star trek 2009 fic that is a few thousand words of 'what if your sort of son feared that you thought he was taking everything you ever wanted from you and he is right that you have thought that but you are learning how wrong you are.' i cried in the university library writing it and reread it recently and remembered it was good. recency bias baby

tagging the usual suspects @potatoesandsunshine @aaronstveit

[thevalleyisjolly]

I think it’s pretty certain by now that Orym was originally Liam’s backup character for C1, and I’d just like to invite you all to imagine for a moment if Vax had perma-died back in the kraken fight, or even if he hadn’t come back as a revenant during the Vecna arc.  Because there are a lot of elements to Orym that mirror Vax, not an exact copy but just similar enough that it scratches at the back of your brain, makes you pause for a moment. 

On the surface, there’s the nimble and focused fighter (a literal Fighter in Orym’s case), darting in and out of combat with agility, always mobile and on the move.  Then there’s the incredibly protective and caring part of them, that instinct to rush into dangerous situations to protect the people they care about, to physically put themselves between their loved ones and harm.  They both care so much, are constantly checking in with their friends and trying to watch out for them, and yet remaining pensive themselves, mulling things over quietly on their own until the right moment. 

And then of course, there’s the backstory.  An Air Ashari widower - in EXU and C3, Keyleth is more Orym’s mentor, but what I wouldn’t give to have watched an interaction between them in C1, when Keyleth’s grief was newer.  And the rest of Vox Machina, how would they react?  I remembering hearing somewhere that Matt originally nixed Molly as Taliesin’s backup PC for Percy because Molly’s personality wouldn’t really complement the tone of the party and the campaign after Percy’s death.  What about Orym, who’s a more sombre, restrained kind of character, whose presence would still be painful after Vax but perhaps not so jarring? 

Grief over Vax aside, how does Orym, whose “alignment” (since C1 still used formal alignments) is more Neutral, fit in with the chaos of Vox Machina?  Keyleth and Vex (sorry, I refuse to acknowledge the alignment change over the broom) were the only Neutral Good characters in a Chaotic party, and Keyleth especially had moments where she disagreed with the other PCs about what they should do next and how they should do it.  How do party dynamics change (or not) with Orym, whose philosophy and moral code are more akin to Keyleth’s?

Also, more serious meta aside, I personally think it’d be hilarious to have two (full) Fighters in the party, Percy and Orym, neither of whom have a Strength modifier that’s greater than +1.  Sure, they can deal hundreds of points of damage in a single attack or parkour around the walls like gravity isn’t a thing, but Scanlan could probably take them both in an arm wrestling contest.  DEX-based fighters, you love to see ‘em!

Oh, and also, Orym standing next to Grog.  That’s all.

[burr-ell]

heyy! hope it isn't weird or anything, but just wanted to say that i haven't been very active on tumblr these few days cause work and stuff and coming back now i'm just! really excited to see you posting about calamity? and that you also enjoyed it? i knew you had good taste cause of percahlia & cr1 but still :p And like, just in general, i'm really happy to see stuff about calamity on my dash again and from you specifically! :D honestly it has not really left my brain since it aired (nor did i stop writing unfinished wips for loquaerryn. oops) but it's not that prominent on my dash anymore so it's been really nice! and absolutely did not make me tear up [lying]. i'm just. it was so so good and poetic and doomed from the start but still hopeful in a way and just. so good. def takes second place for me as far as campaigns go [after cr1] so yeah sorry for the word vomit and the incoherency but i just. still think about calamity and laerryn/quay a lot and don't really have someone to talk to who watched it cause my friends didn't really go beyond ep1 yet if at all. so you watching it def got me excited. so. yeah. not sure where i'm going with this. i dunno. happy that you enjoyed it too i suppose? :D

ive been sitting on this bc im overwhelmed by how much ive missed u in my notes 😩😩😩

exu calamity is such a well-told tragedy, and i think part of what makes it really hit for me is that like any good tragedy, none of the characters involved are actually bad people. morally dubious, sure, but not evil. because when it's down to the wire and they have to choose between saving themselves and saving the world, they choose the world. like i love in particular the dynamic of laerryn catalyzing the doom of exandria...but also using the most reliable means at her disposal to save exandria. her work on the leywright was born out of hubris and yet its ultimate use was incredibly selfless and heroic.

and like, they all played a part in the flawed system of avalir! patia was a consummate ends-justify-the-means political-dynasty leader; nydas accrued wealth through unscrupulous means; loquatious used his position to cover up the truth; zerxus believed gods were comparable to mortals and that he could Fix Him™; laerryn put her work and achievements ahead of all else and let her own grief and anger consume her at the worst possible moment; and even cerrit, the least dubious of them all, never looked up at any of the things that mattered and nearly lost his family because of it.

they helped break the world, but their actions also helped fix it. and that's an absolutely brilliant dynamic and makes for such a fascinating, gripping story.

[lostsometime]

I posted 3,905 times in 2021

1062 posts created (27%)

2843 posts reblogged (73%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 2.7 posts.

I added 4,703 tags in 2021

#cr spoilers - 1329 posts

#critical role - 1191 posts

#critrole - 1090 posts

#exandria unlimited - 281 posts

#exu spoilers - 230 posts

#essek thelyss - 175 posts

#cr speculation - 117 posts

#cr meta - 116 posts

#caleb widogast - 96 posts

#my meta - 78 posts

Longest Tag: 137 characters

#god if essek finds a beacon?  and brings it home?  15 years later a bunch of krynn kids start remembering their lives as citizens of aeor

My Top Posts in 2021

#5

Other people are doing brilliant meta on this already, but I just need to process Essek’s grief over the initial failed resurrection.

Because the m9 have been doing the impossible from the moment he first saw them!  He’s seen them pull off miracles so many times.  from pulling out a beacon to save their friend’s husband to ending an international war, he has seen them succeed wildly, unexpectedly, unbelievably, far more than he has ever seen them fail.

and even when he has seen them fail?  when they begged him to help them get to where yasha was to try and get her home?  and they came back battered and beaten and grieving, without her?  they still didn’t give up!  they basically, to his point of view, vanished off the face of the earth for a few weeks, and then showed back up in the queen’s throne room, with yasha by their side, having killed an unkillable monstrosity to get her back!  he doesn’t know how they did it - he just knows that she was gone and now she’s here and they did it, somehow, and essek is not a man of faith but holy shit he has seen these people work miracles.

he helps them with veth’s spell, yeah - but then it fails!  and off they go again, disheartened but not defeated, and the next time he sees them - there she is!  she’s a halfling again!  again, he doesn’t know how, but here they are, apparently breaking the fundamental laws of reality for their friends, once again.

and just that day, maybe a few hours earlier?  he watched beauregard force this city to bend to her will to show them the way to another lost friend, and he watched caleb reach out into yussa’s corrupted astral form and bring him back to himself, to save him and send him home.

and so, even though essek is painfully aware of the unfairness of the world, and even though he is, in his own way, deeply practical and unsure if bringing molly back is even really a good idea -- he lets himself believe for a moment that he’s going to see one more mighty nein miracle.  He lets himself believe that the Mighty Nein’s love for each other has the power to change what should by all reasonable measures be impossible to change.  he finds himself, for the first time, experiencing faith, not in gods but in his friends.

and then it doesn’t work.

after everything, after all that they’ve gone through, it doesn’t work.  and at last, the mighty nein seem to have run out of hope.  out of ideas.  out of miracles.

of course the world isn’t fair.  of course it’s not.  he knows it’s not.  but he’d let himself believe, just for a moment, just this once, it might be.

2364 notes • Posted 2021-05-28 16:01:17 GMT

#4

I’m sorry, but I’m just thinking about how what Eodwulf’s experience of who Caduceus is is absolutely fucking wild.  Like, in the 3 times he has really interacted with this guy, can you imagine what Caduceus looks like to him? 

The first time you see him, he’s accompanying your ex-boyfriend to the Sanitarium, a location that is severely fraught for both of you.  You notice that he’s surrounded by new friends - very colorful, and apparently largely foreigners.  The big pink one openly wears the symbol of a forbidden goddess.  He either does not know or does not care that doing this could get him arrested.

Also, your ex is still hot and you don’t know what to do with this.

The next time you see him is when you are actually spending a significant amount of time with your ex for the first time in almost 20 years.  All his new friends are coming, and so is your mutual abuser, so you can’t really talk to him, but oh well.  His friends are needlessly petty about the seating arrangements.  The pink one, however, is polite.

For some reason you decide to react to this by making a snarky and somewhat racist comment about him, and he returns with so smooth and confident a burn you almost can’t be sure if he meant it as one or not.  Maybe he’s just genuinely guileless and good-natured?  You have literally not talked to someone guileless and good-natured since you were fifteen.

It is a deeply tense evening, and you spend most of it stuffing food in your mouth so you have an excuse not to talk or answer any questions.  At the end of it you realize that, no, the pink one was definitely throwing shade at you earlier.  You know this because he decides to openly insult Trent Ikithon, the person you fear and hate most in the world and potentially the most powerful man in the country.  He throws this shade very eloquently and politely and it is the closest to speechless you have ever seen Trent.

You decide to get drunk.

(You see him again, briefly, in Nicodranas while trying to circumvent your orders to arrest your ex.  You thought you were doing pretty well being subtle with your charm spells, but apparently he noticed anyway.  Is there anything he doesn’t notice?)

Finally, you are brought as backup when Trent actually goes to confront your ex.  This, it turns out, is happening at Pink One’s family home.  You can tell it’s his family home because his entire family is there, and they are also Large and Pink.  You set the house on fire.

The house is also a temple.

You are a fairly religious man, and you would probably feel bad about this, if you weren’t so good at thoroughly repressing all your bad feelings about everything you’ve been asked to do for the past twenty years.  It’s been very helpful to think of everything you’ve done as being in some way the will of your goddess.  It is very difficult to categorize “burning down a temple” under the heading of “things my goddess is cool with,” but hey, you’ve been ignoring your cognitive dissonance since you were 17 and you’ve gotten pretty damn good at it.

This is the first time you’ve really seen Pink One get angry.  You don’t see it for very long, because you get your ass kicked by some of Bren’s other friends very quickly and fall unconscious.

You later learn that Pink One stopped you from dying.

He lives in a graveyard, and you worship a death goddess, and he saved your life.  It feels like there’s something wrong with this but you don’t actually know enough about the gods to figure out what.  

...you help put out the fire.  

2449 notes • Posted 2021-06-09 22:21:02 GMT

#3

the best thing about the blessing of the dice gods on that tarot reading is that, when we saw Molly do it, he was explicitly bullshitting. Mechanically, he wasn’t rolling on the random system, he was rolling Insight and then Sleight-of-Hand.   And he came up with your standard fortune teller bullshit, “oh, you’re Pure and Virtuous, oh here you have a Destiny,” that kind of stuff.  but every time Jester has read for someone, she has one hundred percent believed in it.  When she has someone pick a card, she’s genuinely not skewing that choice.  It is, both in-universe and out, completely random.

And yet!!!

2602 notes • Posted 2021-01-15 19:53:02 GMT

#2

Incidentally, I definitely think Jester’s attempts to be friends with Lucien are totally manipulative - but I think they’re also totally genuine.  That’s the beauty of Jester - Matt asked out of character if there was any deception there.  There wasn’t!  She genuinely just wanted to make him a kitty and run around the tower with him.  

But also, she wanted him to let down his guard and she wants him to trust her, and she wants him to underestimate her and think of her as sweet and naive and maybe just slightly stupid, and it works.  And like with Isharnai, Jester’s goal here isn’t friendship for the sake of friendship - it’s because, as she said, she still feels like there’s something she can do to bring Molly out from the depths of Lucien’s subconscious and she’s hoping he’ll let himself be vulnerable enough around her, mentally and emotionally, to try it.

But, again - she’s not lying when she says she wants to be friends!  She’s not lying when she says “it’s harmless, i’m just going to show you something cool, i promise.”  and if it works?  or, really, if it works to make lucien be her friend somehow but doesn’t actually unlock mollymauk - then she’ll have another scary evil bff, who she will treat EXACTLY the way she treats her normal, not scary friends!

jester sends isharnai the cupcakes she promised her even after they’ve gotten what they wanted out of her!  jester knows 100% that she manipulated and bespelled this hag, but, ALSO: they are friends.  “and if it does work, and it does stick, then i’ve got a really cool, powerful friend!”  

friends, apparently, are friends, whether you got them by mind-whammying them with magic or not!  and you can continue to treat them as friends while also manipulating the hell out of them to get what you want!  

(She may being doing this, long-game-style, with the Gentleman - using her more overt pushiness abt him contacting Marion to cover the subtler manipulation she’s actually after.  If anyone could manage to parent-trap them, it would be her.)

when she blurts out random, weird, semi-personal information like “oh i’ll domesticate unicorns,” she’s setting herself up to be someone lucien thinks just says whatever’s on her mind.  so he’ll dismiss her and think oh, jester, she’s so open, she’ll say anything to anyone, there’s definitely no way she could be keeping a secret from me, the nonagon, with all my eyes that see everything, surely not! i have to worry about the nosy monk and the curious wizard - but this one?  this cute one that talks about unicorns and turns into a cat for fun?  surely there’s nothing to worry about there!

2935 notes • Posted 2021-01-22 21:30:53 GMT

#1

so, part of the Mighty Nein Origins today shows Luc’s perspective of some of the things that happened to him, filtered through the memory of a traumatized five-year-old, which is fantastic and fascinating. 

But MOSTLY I am just cracking up at this panel here:

ONE OF THE MENACING SHADOWS IS THE CHAIR

THE FUCKING CHAIR HAS EVIL EYES

3946 notes • Posted 2021-08-28 00:51:33 GMT

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