#before remembering that the fic i was writing was some rarepair shit that person probably wasn't going to read anyway

[anneapocalypse]

Honestly, I think as a fic writer you should take other people's opinions on chapter lengths with a really big grain of salt because everyone has different opinions, preferences, and attention spans and you cannot please everyone and you will get hung up on it if you try. Make your chapters the length you think they should be for the story, break them where it feels right, and other people can do what they want.

[army-of-mai-lovers]

in which I get progressively angrier at the various tropes of atla fandom misogyny

tbh I think it would serve all of us to have a larger conversation about the specific ways misogyny manifests in this fandom, because I’ve seen a lot of people who characterize themselves as feminists, many of whom are women themselves, discuss the female characters of atla/lok in misogynistic ways, and people don’t talk about it enough. 

disclaimer before I start: I’m not a woman, I’m an afab nonbinary person who is semi-closeted and thus often read as a woman. I’m speaking to things that I’ve seen that have made me uncomfy, but if any women (esp women existing along other axes of oppression, e.g. trans women, women of color, disabled women, etc) want to add onto this post, please do!

“This female character is a total badass but I’m not even a little bit interested in exploring her as a human being.” 

I’ve seen a lot of people say of various female characters in atla/lok, “I love her! She’s such a badass!” now, this statement on its own isn’t misogynistic, but it represents a pretty pervasive form of misogyny that I’ve seen leveled in large part toward the canon female love interests of one or both of the members of a popular gay ship (*cough* zukka *cough*) I’m going to use Suki as an example of this because I see it with her most often, but it can honestly be applied to nearly every female character in atla/lok. Basically, people will say that they stan Suki, but when it comes time to engage with her as an actual character, they refuse to do it. I’ve seen meta after meta about Zuko’s redemption arc, but I so rarely see people engage with Suki on any level beyond “look at this cool fight scene!” and yeah, I love a cool Suki fight scene as much as anybody else, but I’m also interested in meta and headcanons and fics about who she is as a person, when she isn’t an accessory to Sokka’s development or doing something cool. of course, the material for this kind of engagement with Suki is scant considering she doesn’t have a canon backstory (yet) (don’t let me down Faith Erin Hicks counting on you girl) but with the way I’ve seen people in this fandom expand upon canon to flesh out male characters, I know y’all have it in you to do more with Suki, and with all the female characters, than you currently do. frankly, the most engagement I’ve seen with Suki in mainstream fandom is justifying either zukki (which again, is characterizing her in relation to male characters, one of whom she barely interacts with in canon) or one of the Suki wlw pairings. which brings me to--

“I conveniently ship this female character whose canon love interest is one of the members of my favorite non-canon ship with another female character! gay rights!” 

now, I will admit, two of my favorite atla ships are yueki and mailee, and so I totally understand being interested in these characters’ dynamics, even if, as is the case with yueki, they’ve never interacted canonically. however, it becomes a problem for me when these ships are always in the background of a zukka fic. at some point, it becomes obvious that you like this ship because it gets either Zuko or Sokka’s female love interests out of the way, not because you actually think the characters would mesh well together. It’s bad form to dislike a female character because she gets in the way of your gay ship, so instead, you find another girl to pair her off with and call it a day. to be clear, I’m not saying that everybody who ships either mailee or yueki (or tysuki or maisuki or yumai or whatever other wlw rarepair involving Zuko or Sokka’s canon love interests) is nefariously trying to sideline a female character while acting publicly as if she’s is one of their faves--far from it--but it is noteworthy to me how difficult it is to find content that centers wlw ships, while it’s incredibly easy to find content that centers zukka in which mailee and/or yueki plays a background role. 

also, notice how little traction wlw Katara ships gain in this fandom. when’s the last time you saw yuetara on your dash? there’s no reason for wlw Katara ships to gain traction in a fandom that is so focused on Zuko and Sokka getting together, bc she doesn’t present an immediate obstacle to that goal (at least, not an obstacle that can be overcome by pairing her up with a woman). if you are primarily interested in Zuko and Sokka’s relationship, and your queer readings of other female characters are motivated by a desire to get them out of the way for zukka, then Katara’s canon m/f relationship isn’t a threat to you, and thus, there’s no reason to read her as potentially queer. Or even, really, to think about her at all. 

“Katara’s here but she’s not actually going to do anything, because deep down, I’m not interested in her as a person.” 

the show has an enormous amount of textual evidence to support the claim that Sokka and Katara are integral parts of each other’s lives. so, she typically makes some kind of appearance in zukka content. sometimes, her presence in the story is as an actual character with layers and nuance, someone whom Sokka cares about and who cares about Sokka in return, but also has her own life and goals outside of her brother (or other male characters, for that matter.) sometimes, however, she’s just there because halfway through writing the author remembered that Sokka actually has a sister who’s a huge part of the show they’re writing fanfiction for, and then they proceed to show her having a meetcute with Aang or helping Sokka through an emotional problem, without expressing wants or desires outside of those characters. I’m honestly really surprised that I haven’t seen more people calling out the fact that so much of Katara’s personality in fanon revolves around her connections to men? she’s Aang’s girlfriend, she’s Sokka’s sister, she’s Zuko’s bestie. never mind that in canon she spends an enormous amount of time fighting against (anachronistic, Westernized) sexism to establish herself as a person in her own right, outside of these connections. and that in canon she has such interesting complex relationships with other female characters (e.g. Toph, Kanna, Hama, Korra if you want to write lok content) or that there are a plethora of characters with whom she could have interesting relationships with in fanon (Mai, Suki, Ty Lee, Yue, Smellerbee, and if you want to write lok content, Kya II, Lin, Asami, Senna, etc). to me, the lack of fandom material exploring Katara’s relationships with other women or with herself speak to a profound indifference to Katara as a character. I’m not saying you have to like Katara or include her in everything you write, but I am asking you to consider why you don’t find her interesting outside of her relationships with men.

“I hate Katara because she talks about her mother dying too often.” 

this is something I’ve seen addressed by people far more qualified than I to address it, but I want to mention it here in part because when I asked people which fandom tropes they wanted me to talk about, this came up often, but also because I find it really disgusting that this is a thing that needs to be addressed at all. Y’all see a little girl who watched her mother be killed by the forces of an imperialist nation and say that she talks about it too much??? That is a formational, foundational event in a child’s life. Of course she’s going to talk about it. I’ve seen people say that she doesn’t talk about it that often, or that she only talks about it to connect with other victims of fn imperialism e.g. Jet and Haru, but frankly, she could speak about it every episode for no plot-significant reason whatsoever and I would still be angry to see people say she talks about it too much. And before you even bring up the Sokka comparison, people deal with grief in different ways. Sokka  repressed a lot of his grief/channeled it into being the “man” of his village because he knew that they would come for Katara next if he gave them the opportunity. he probably would talk about his mother more if a) he didn’t feel massive guilt at not being able to remember what she looked like, and b) he was allowed to be a child processing the loss of his mother instead of having to become a tiny adult when Hakoda had to leave to help fight the fn. And this gets into an intersection with fandom racism, in that white fans (esp white American fans) are incapable of relating to the structural trauma that both Sokka and Katara experience and thus can’t see the ways in which structural trauma colors every single aspect of both of their characters, leading them to flatten nuance and to have some really bad takes. And you know what, speaking of bad fandom takes--   

“Shitting on Mai because she gets in the way of my favorite Zuko ship is actually totally okay because she’s ~abusive~” 

y’all WHAT. 

ok listen, I get not liking maiko. I didn’t like it when I first got into fandom, and later I realized that while bryke cannot write romance to save their lives, fans who like maiko sure can, so I changed my tune. but if you still don’t like it, that’s fine. no skin off my back. 

what IS skin off my back is taking instances in which Mai had justified anger toward Zuko, and turning it into “Mai abused Zuko.” do you not realize how ridiculous you sound? this is another thing where I get so angry about it that I don’t know how useful my analysis is actually going to be, but I’ll do my best. numerous people have noted how analysis of Mai and Zuko’s breakup in “The Beach” or Mai being justifiably angry with him at Boiling Rock or her asking for FUCKING FRUIT in “Nightmares and Daydreams” that says that all of these events were her trying to gain control over him is....ahhh...lacking in reading comprehension, but I’d like to go a step further and talk about why y’all are so intent on taking down a girl who doesn’t show emotion in normative ways. obviously, there’s a “Zuko can do no wrong” aspect to Mai criticism (which is super weird considering how his whole arc is about how he can do lots of wrong and he has to atone for the wrong that he’s done--but that’s a separate post.) But I also see slandering Mai for not expressing her emotions normatively and not putting up with Zuko’s shit and slandering Katara for “talking about her mother too often” as two sides of the same coin. In both cases, a female character expresses emotions that make you, the viewer, uncomfortable, and so instead of attempting to understand where those emotions may have come from and why they might be manifesting the way they are, y’all just throw the whole character away. this is another instance of people in the fandom being fundamentally disinterested in engaging with the female characters of atla in a real way, except instead of shallowly “stanning” Mai, y’all hate her. so we get to this point where female characters are flattened into one of two things: perfect queens who can do no wrong, or bitches. and that’s not who they are. that’s not who anyone is. but while we as a fandom are pretty good at understanding b1 Zuko’s actions as layered and multifaceted even though he’s essentially an asshole then, few are willing to lend the same grace to any female character, least of all Mai. 

and what’s funny is sometimes this trope will intersect with “I conveniently ship this female character whose canon love interest is one of the members of my favorite non-canon ship with another female character! gay rights!”, so you’ll have someone actively calling Mai toxic/problematic/abusive, and at the same time ship her with Ty Lee? make it make sense! but then again, maybe that’s happening because y’all are fundamentally disinterested in Ty Lee as a character too. 

“I love Ty Lee so much that I’m going to treat her like an infantilized hypersexual airhead!” 

there are so many things happening in y’alls characterization of Ty Lee that I struggled to synthesize it into one quippy section header. on one hand, you have the hypersexualization, and on the other hand, you have the infantilization, which just makes the hypersexualization that much worse. 

(of course, sexualizing or hypersexualizing ANY atla character is really not the move, considering that these are child characters in a children’s show, but then again, that’s a separate post.) 

now, I understand how, from a very, very surface reading of the text, you could come to the conclusion that Ty Lee is an uncomplicated bimbo. if you grew up on Western media the way I did, you’ll know that Ty Lee has a lot of the character traits we associate with bimbos: the form-fitting pink crop top, the general conventional attractiveness, the ditzy dialogue. but if you think about it for more than three seconds, you’ll understand that Ty Lee has spent her whole life walking a tightrope, trying to please Azula and the rest of the royal family while also staying true to herself. Ty Lee and Azula’s relationship is a really complex and interesting topic that I don’t really have time to explore at the moment given how long this post is, but I’d argue that Ty Lee’s constant, vocal  adulation is at least partially a product of learning to survive at court at an early age. Like Mai, she has been forced to regulate her emotions as a member of fn nobility, but unlike Mai, she also has six sisters who look exactly like her, so she has a motivation to be more peppy and more affectionate to stand out. 

fandom does not do the work to understand Ty Lee. as is a theme with this post, fandom is actively disinterested in investigating female characters beyond a very surface level reading of them. Thus, fandom takes Ty Lee’s surface level qualities--her love of the color pink, her revealing standard outfit, and the fact that once she found a boy attractive and also once a lot of boys found her attractive--and they stretch this into “Ty Lee is basically Karen Smith from Mean Girls.” thus, Ty Lee is painted as a bimbo, or more specifically, as not smart, uncritically adoring of Azula (did y’all forget all the non-zukka bits of Boiling Rock?), and attractive to the point of hypersexualization. I saw somebody make a post that was like “I wish mailee was more popular but I’m also glad it isn’t because otherwise people would write it as Mai having to put up with her dumb gf” and honestly I have to agree!! this is one instance in which I’m glad that fandom doesn’t discuss one of my favorite characters that often because I hate the fanon interpretation of Ty Lee, I think it’s rooted in misogyny (particularly misogyny against East Asian women, which often takes the form of fetishizing them and viewing them only through a Western white male gaze)  

(side note: here at army-of-mai-lovers, we stan bimbos. bimbos are fucking awesome. I personally don’t read Ty Lee as a bimbo, but if that’s you, that’s fucking awesome. keep doing what you’re doing, queen <3 or king or monarch, it’s 2021, anyone can be a bimbo, bitches <3)

“Toph can and will destroy everyone here with her bare hands because she’s a meathead who likes to murder people and that’s it!”  

Toph is, and always has been, one of my favorite ATLA characters. My very first fic in fandom was about her, and she appears prominently in a lot of my other work as well. One thing that I am always struck by with Toph is how big a heart she has. She’s independent, yes, snarky, yes, but she cares about people--even the family that forced her to make herself smaller because they didn’t believe that their blind daughter could be powerful and strong. Her storyline is powerful and emotionally resonant, her bending is cool precisely because it’s based in a “wait and listen” approach instead of just smashing things indiscriminately, she’s great disabled rep, and overall one of the best characters in the show. 

And in fandom, she gets flattened into “snarky murder child.” 

So where does this come from? Well, as we all know, Toph was originally conceived of as a male character, and retained a lot of androgyny (or as the kids call it, Gender) when she was rewritten as a female character. There are a lot of cultural ideas about androgynous/butch women being violent, and people in fandom seem to connect that larger cultural narrative with some of Toph’s more violent moments in the show to create the meathead murder child trope, erasing her canon emotionality, softness, heart, and femininity in the process. 

This is not to say that you shouldn’t write or characterize Toph as being violent or snarky at all ever, because yeah, Toph definitely did do Earth Rumbles a lot before joining the gaang, and yeah, Toph is definitely a sarcastic person who makes fun of her friends a lot. What I am saying is that people take these traits, sans the emotional logic, marry them to their conception of androgynous/butch women as violent/unemotional/uncaring, and thus create a caricature of Toph that is not at all up to snuff. When I see Toph as a side character in a fic (because yeah, Toph never gets to be a main character, because why would a fandom obsessed with one male character in particular ever make Toph a protagonist in her own right?) she’s making fun of people, killing people, pranking people, etc, etc. She’s never talking to people about her emotions, or palling around with her found family, or showing that she cares about her friends. Everything about her relationship with her parents, her disability, her relationship to Gender, and her love of her friends is shoved aside to focus on a version of Toph that is mean and uncaring because people have gotten it into their heads that androgynous/butch women are mean and uncaring. 

again, we see a female character who does not emote normatively or in a way that makes you, the viewer, comfortable, and so you warp her character until she’s completely unrecognizable and flat. and for what? 

Azula

no, I didn’t come up with a snappy name for this section, mainly because fanon interpretations of Azula and my own feelings toward the character are...complicated. I know there were some people who wanted me to write about Azula and the intersection of misogyny and ableism in fanon interpretations of her character, but I don’t think I can deliver on that because I personally am in a period of transition with how I see Azula. that is to say, while I still like her and believe that she can be redeemed, there is a lot of merit to disliking her. the whole point of this post is that the female characters of ATLA are complex people whom the fandom flattens into stereotypes that don’t hold up to scrutiny, or dislike for reasons that don’t make sense. Azula, however, is a different case. the rise of Azula defenders and Azula stans has led to this sentiment that Azula is a 14 y/o abuse victim who shouldn’t be held accountable for her actions. it seems to me that people are reacting to a long, horrible legacy of male ATLA fans armchair diagnosing Azula with various personality disorders (and suggesting that people with those personality disorders are inherently monstrous and unlovable which ahhhh....yikes) and then saying that those personality disorders make her unlovable, which is quite obviously bad. and hey, I get loving a character that everyone else hates and maybe getting so swept up in that love that you forget that your fave is complicated and has made some unsavory choices. it sucks that fanon takes these well-written, complex villains/antiheroes and turns them into monsters with no critical thought whatsoever. but the attitude among Azula stans that her redemption shouldn’t be hard, that her being a child excuses all of the bad things that she’s done, that she is owed redemption....all of that rubs me the wrong way. I might make another post about this in the future that discusses this in more depth, but as it stands now: while I understand that there is a legacy of misogynistic, ableist, unnuanced takes on Azula, the backlash to that does not take into account the people she hurt or the fact that in ATLA she does not make the choice to pursue redemption. and yes, Zuko had help in making that choice that Azula didn’t, and yes, Azula is a victim of abuse, but in a show about children who have gone through untold horrors and still work to better the lives of the people around them, that is not enough for me to uncritically stan her. 

Conclusion    

misogyny in this fandom runs rampant. while there are some tropes of fandom misogyny that are well-documented and have been debunked numerous times, there are other, subtler forms of misogyny that as far as I know have gone completely unchecked. 

what I find so interesting about misogyny in atla fandom is that it’s clear that it’s perpetrated by people who are aware of fandom misogyny who are actively trying not to be misogynistic. when I first joined atla fandom last summer, memes about how zukka fandom was better than every other fandom because they didn’t hate the female characters who got in the way of their gay ship were extremely prevalent, and there was this sense that *this* fandom was going to model respectful, fun, feminist online fandom. not all of the topes I’ve outlined are exclusive to or even largely utilized in zukka fandom, but a lot of them are. I’ve been in and out of fandom since I was eleven years old, and most of the fandom spaces I’ve been in have been majority-female, and all of them have been incredibly misogynistic. and I always want to know why. why, in these communities created in large part by women, in large part for women, does misogyny run wild? what I realize now is that there’s never going to be a one-size fits all answer to that question. what’s true for 1D fandom on Wattpad in 2012 is absolutely not true for atla fandom on tumblr in 2021. the answers that I’ve cobbled together for previous fandoms don’t work here. 

so, why is atla fandom like this? why did the dream of a feminist fandom almost entirely focused on the romantic relationship between two male characters fall apart? honestly, I think the notion that zukka fandom ever was this way was horrifically ignorant to begin with. from my very first moment in the fandom, I was seeing racism, widespread sexualization of minors, and yes, misogyny. these aspects of the fandom weren’t talked about as much as the crocverse or other, much more fun aspects. further, atla (specifically zukka) fandom misogyny often doesn’t look like the fandom misogyny we’ve become familiar with from like, Sherlock fandom or what have you. for the most part, people don’t actively hate Suki, they just “stan” without actually caring about her. they hate Mai because they believe in treating male victims of abuse equally. they’re not characterizing Toph poorly, they’re writing her as a “strong woman.” in short, people are misogynistic, and then invoke a shallow, incomplete interpretation of feminist theory to shield themselves from accusations of misogyny. it’s not unlike the way some people will invoke a shallow, incomplete interpretation of critical race theory to shield themselves from accusations of racism, or how they’ll talk about “freedom of speech” and “the suppression of women’s sexuality” to justify sexualizing minors. the performance of feminism and antiracism is what’s important, not the actual practice. 

if you’ve made it this far, first off, hi, thanks so much for reading, I know this was a lot. second, I would seriously encourage you to be aware of these fandom tropes and to call them out when you see them. elevate the voices of fans who do the work of bringing the female characters of atla to life. invest in the wlw ships in this fandom. drop a kudos and a comment on a rangshi fic (please, drop a kudos and a comment on a rangshi fic). read some yuetara. let’s all be honest about where we are now, and try to do better in the future. I believe in us. 

[illegiblewords]

Fic Writer Meme

Swiped this because it looked like fun!

Name

Fandoms

Most popular oneshot

Most popular multichapter

Actual worst part of writing

How you choose your titles

Do you outline

Ideas I probably won’t get around to, but wouldn’t it be nice?

Callouts @ Me

Best writing traits

Spicy Tangential Opinion

Tagging: @nilim, @azwoodbomb, @wouldyouliketoseemymask, @parvus-pica, @peregrineroad, @spiral-seeker, @frostmantle, @autumnslance, @strangefellows, @redbud-tree, @maccaroni-eh, @entropytea, @prettyparadoxes, @ivalane, @kunstpause, @fogfens

Name: Illegible or Illegiblewords lately. I’ve switched it in the past a few times.

Fandoms: I’ve been in Final Fantasy XIV for the past couple of years now. Passively I might be in Pathologic fandom and Dragon Age fandom? Maybe others too on and off. I was in comic fandoms for a long time but honestly that spiraled into a hot mess of epic proportions so I’ve mostly peaced out of there. Still love stories, characters, and buddies from there though.

Most Popular Oneshot: Ironically it’s Ideation for Bladerunner 2049 haha. I did exactly one fic there right after seeing the movie and didn’t go back, but I thought it was very good and I had a specific story I wanted to tell. It’s one of my most popular fics, and given it’s gen too I’m actually kind of happy about that.

Most Popular Multichapter: The Immortal Wound for FFXIV fandom! I had only just started writing for the fandom, and the series leading up to this fic was my first time writing NPC shipping in FFXIV. I was seriously, SERIOUSLY nervous at first! I wrote the first fic, Posturing, as a personal challenge to do an ambiguous protagonist/NPC since I saw other people doing that and wanted to see if I could pull it off. Posted it at around 4 in the morning then deleted within a few minutes out of anxiety lol. A week went by before I read it again, realized I still liked it, and put it back up for good. That being well-received helped encourage me to keep trying, and by The Immortal Wound it was getting solid attention. The experience really meant a lot to me!

Actual Worst Part of Writing: Probably chapter maps within the outlining process for me. It’s needed for how I approach things, but shit is anxiety-inducing and stressful af lol. I basically plan each event out in high detail before actually writing the fic, so when the time comes for me to legit write I’m more or less following a plan I can trust. Making that plan is the tough part.

How Do You Choose Your Titles: Often titles are the last things I figure out before starting the fic itself. I know I like punchy stuff if I can manage. Sometimes it’ll be one word, sometimes it’ll be a quote or song lyric, sometimes it’ll be a saying, sometimes it’ll be a phrase that feels fitting. I go fast and loose usually, and tbh I’ve tried to tell myself not to overthink it too hard. I do try title related works in ways that have some thematic link when I can.

Do You Outline: HahahahahaHAHAHAHAhaha yeah. Straight up my outlines are eldritch terrors for their detail, length, and complexity. I don’t mean that as a brag at all, seriously--I tend to get frozen a bit if I don’t have an outline by and large because it’s hard for me to keep track of what’s in my head and plan accordingly. Just end up with too many moving parts + revision and pacing get wonky otherwise.

Depending on the project I might have sections tied to setting, characters, magic systems, religions, etc. at the top. Fanfic this is less likely but does crop up sometimes.

To give an example of the first bullet of the first chapter of an ongoing fic:

Post-Shinryu, the Warrior of Light lingers in the Royal Menagerie alone at his own insistence to search for the Eye of Nidhogg. In the process he remembers the fight against Zenos and Shinryu. Note he was overcome by an almost feral rage at Zenos’ assumption that he was the target of anything resembling lust. Those attentions (“bite down upon my jugular”) belong to another, but note similarities of two pale-eyed, long-haired blondes. Seeing Shinryu, the Warrior had no idea whether Lahabrea survived within. The fusion was horrifying to see and as he fought he didn’t hold back because besides obvious dangers, he was also ready to mercy kill if needed. Also note Warrior wanted to intervene against Thordan for Lahabrea but wasn’t fast enough, questions a little privately how far he’d have gone against him. It might not have mattered even if he’d managed since he knows Lahabrea was going crazy and unable to listen. Locating and examining the Eye, he recognizes how drained it is. Certainly not enough to threaten him when dealing with post-battle exhaustion. So he reaches inside with his own aether, relentless in pushing aside every foreign element—Nidhogg, Thordan, the corrupted Rhalgr, the places Zenos caged them all under his own will. Zodiark’s tempering is what helps him ultimately find Lahabrea, who is barely alive. Zodiark’s tempering has preserved what it could but has a much more tenuous grip in consequence. When the Warrior finds him Lahabrea isn’t even aware, functionally unconscious. The tempering flares against him defensively and this time the Warrior focuses on it. This is all that has allowed Lahabrea to stay alive. He could force himself closer but there is no vessel. Besides, the process of separating a fragile soul so deficient in aether is too great a risk. So he keeps the Eye.

It’s not the only bullet of comparable size for that chapter. The overall piece has at least 40 total chapters, but probably more.

Ideas I Probably Won’t Get Around To, But Wouldn’t It Be Nice: Tbh probably some of the earlier WIPs I have that aren’t finished already. Not just FFXIV (Dead Language, With Good Intentions) but other fandoms. I could end up circling back in the future one day but who knows.

Callouts @ Me: “NO MORE WIPS HOLY SHIT YOU HAVE OVER 20″, “RELEARN HOW TO DO DRABBLES”, “GET UR PRESENTS DONE”, “REVIEW OTHERS MORE THE STAGE FRIGHT IS RIDICULOUS”.

Best Writing Traits: I try to write any character as the hero of their own story/with the capacity to be someone’s favorite. I do my research and prioritize telling a good story first and foremost. I can change my writing style according to need and am good at capturing the cadence and word choices of different characters.

Spicy Tangential Opinion: If no transaction has been made (esp. monetary), no one owes you shit online. Not reviews, not hits, not praise, not agreement, not content of any sort. It sucks to feel like you’re creating to a void. It sucks to be passionately in love with a rarepair when other ships are drowning in art and stories.

People still don’t owe you.

If you don’t like someone else’s content, create something exploring what you do like... or even why you don’t like that content. Tell a story. Create art. Make photosets and playlists and analyses. If it is not a literal crime (as opposed to portraying fictional crime), don’t discourage other creators no matter how awful you might find their stuff. Lend your own voice to an alternative as convincingly as you can. And if that doesn’t persuade others, you need to keep honing your own skills.

If you want more of something to exist, spread inspiration. Again this can be in storytelling, art, photosets, playlists, analysis, you name it. Give form to your passion. And if others disagree or don’t respond, keep working at it. This is a skill too, and it takes practice.

I’ve found it shows when work is created out of a sense of guilt, fear, or obligation. The quality is much lower and no one latches on to keep building in-turn. And IMO it is essential to build up rather than tearing down.

[theshinsun]

1. as far as im concerned Kagami never left at the end of last game, that was an extended dream sequence... 2. i also totally agree with you that Kagami is prolly vers, if anything, and it was also MY PET PEEVE when people pinholed him into being a forever bottom at the peak of knb hype. 3. you keep teasing your long list of ships for Aomine PLEASE do him for the character thing lol. So far all your opinions are sending me into a realm of GOOD VALID VIBES

Omg thank you!! (I agree end of Last Game is not canon… or if it is he came right back the next year or smth I refuse to accept he just left forever. And I’m really glad to see the problem of Uke™ Kagami seems to be in decline these days… fewer people are writing for knb in general, but those that are seem to have an idea what a real gay relationship is or at least make him a fucking person and not a walking stereotype, and that’s encouraging to see). 

Also thanks so much for sending Aomine! …Strap in for this character essay tho I’ve been known to never shut up about this boy once you get me started.

How I feel about this character

I honestly… can’t even explain it anymore or even try to justify it but Aomine has had a bigger impact on me than, I think, any other character I’ve seen to date. I don’t even know what it is, I do relate to him (and project on him *cough*) but like, there are other characters out there that I have more in common with, and I like his whole arc and aesthetic but it’s nothing revolutionary, so… your guess is as good as mine. 

Whatever it is, I’ve been obsessed with this guy for over half a decade, and lately even as the KNB fandom falls into decline, my feelings are not they’re just getting stronger. His development over the course of the series is one of the most satisfying things I’ve ever seen, (that one bit at the end of the Touou/Seirin game with “I want to practice” and his later conversation with Kuroko hit me in the fucking chest every time), and I love how even though he’s portrayed as cold, uncaring and rude, it’s still understood (at least by anyone with some nuance) that that’s not what he’s supposed to be like, and underneath the distant, kind of dickish front, he’s hurting a lot. I’ve talked about the degree to which he cares about people before too, but I still have to give a mention to the ferocious level of protectiveness this guy has for his friends. I could go on about him for ages, tbh, and maybe someday I will write a for-real structured essay to try to get it out there, but the bottom line is I love this character, I have for a long time, and likely will continue to do so long into the future.

All the people I ship romantically with this character

Okay here we go… I ship this guy extremely liberally, even with people he’s never interacted with (hell you could mention any random character and I could probably see my way clear to shipping them with him somehow, I’ll still try to explain my logic if I can). Prepare yourself.

Kagami (of course, AoKaga is the OTP and definitely the one I’ve devoted the most time to, they’re just the best together I’ll never get tired of seeing them figure their shit out over and over)

Kuroko (I may be AoKaga on main, but I’m still such a sucker for the tragic romance between these two, and sometimes it just hits me over the head like a sledgehammer how much I love their relationship. I’ve also got a lot of feelings for AoKagaKuro, they’re such a perfect trio and I need to invest more of my time in the OT3)

Kise (I was a bit late to the game on AoKise, but I definitely see it now. I love their dynamic and how imperfect their relationship would probably be, the complexity of it. sign me up)

Momoi (I don’t see a lot of AoMomo love anymore, but I’ve still got a soft spot for it, childhood friends are my weakness okay)

Midorima (they’re so different but that’s what makes it interesting, and I love the idea of neither of them knowing how to show/tell the other their feelings and being awkward stubborn shits together)

Murasakibara (they almost never interact but I just think they’d have such a soft cuddly relationship and be really chill together… lazy Sunday mornings sleeping in and hanging all over each other that kinda thing)

Akashi (kinda same as Akashi/Kagami, I think the difference between polished upper-class Akashi and scrappy city boy Aomine would be hella interesting… though I’ve also got some angst ideas for them as a couple, after how things went down at Teiko… abandonment and whatnot)

Imayoshi (I got pulled into this ship HARD by Lysapadin’s A Firm Hand series and now it’s no longer a guilty pleasure ship and is actually something I’ll talk about in the open, just… the power dynamic fuck me up)

Sakurai (I fuckin love the idea of an anxious Sakurai crushing hard on Aomine and not knowing how to tell him but when he finally plucks up the courage and prepares himself for imminent death Aomine’s actually pretty chill about it… plus they’d be adorable together tbh)

Wakamastu (you know it’s gotta be enemies to lovers. not just bc I’m intrigued by the love/hate relationship itself but if you look past the attitude issues these two would actually probably have a lot in common. also I’m really interested in how their dynamic might change with Wakamatsu being captain and all)

Susa (idk but there’s one throwaway line in season 3 where Imayoshi says about Aomine “actually maybe he likes you” and that’s enough for me. bring me the rarest rarepair my body is ready)

Kasamatsu (it wasn’t supposed to be SERIOUS but they got me. That moment in the Touou/Kaijo game where Aomine helps him up and “you’ve really done it now, senpai” is legit, plus these two would be such a good-looking couple, honestly.)

Mibuchi (give me the pretty boys. I have no excuse for this except maybe their interactions in my own damn fic again)

Nebuya (sometimes shipping can be as simple as hey I want them to bang right. also they’re both humongous dorks under their respective rough exteriors and I love them)

Moriyama (they bond over liking girls at first and then they’re simultaneously like wait a minute… more Touou/Kaijo ships pls)

Nijimura (I have this idea of them reuniting late into/after high school and Aomine still calls him captain out of habit and Nijimura’s like relieved and impressed to see how he’s developed since the mess at Teiko)

Himuro (they Never interact but they’d be so Petty and Snarky sign me up)

Haizaki (twisted, but I’m interested it’d be so unhealthy and awful bring it)

Hanamiya (even more twisted tbh but there is that moment where Aomine confronts him… and I’m here for hate sex just as much as your typical romance)

Inoue (who, you ask? I know he’s such a side character and no one remembers him, but he’s a big reason for Aomine’s downfall at Teiko and they seemed to be buddies before that, I’d be interested in some kind of reconciliation between them, or a romance, ya know whatever works)

And then we get into crossover territory… MOST of these are not my fault they’re just things I’ve seen and adopted for myself

Kuroo Tetsurou (someone made a moodboard for them, and now I can’t stop thinking about them in a relationship, like damn… it’d be such a beautiful mess I wanna see more of it)

Oikawa Tooru (I’ve seen art, and also the light. These two damaged angsty prodigies, one sharp as a whip the other dumb as bricks, but both of them sassy and nerdy as hell. I could see myself getting addicted to this ship if I took the time to write it out, and I just might)

Yamazaki Sousuke (can’t lie, they look good together. I’ve seen more than one art piece of them interacting and I have a Mighty Need.)

Matsuoka Rin (angry lonely talented boys finding solace in each other’s company? you know that’s my shit. also shark teeth and cop AUs hells yeah.) 

Tanaka Ryuunosuke (I don’t know where the fuck this idea came from but I thought of Tanaka trying to pick a fight with “shitty boi” Aomine while in Tokyo and then losing his shit and here we are)

Terushima Yuuji (this one is purely physical… they pretty, I have no other reason, but also this absolute fuckboy, these two would be such a train wreck and I’m here for it tbh)

Yachi Hitoka (okay picture this Giant Terrifying basketball player trying to be less giant and terrifying to tiny shy Yachi and tell me you don’t just want to see that happen. I get Legosi/Haru vibes.)

I’ll spare you the rest of the ideas I’ve tossed around, because past this point it becomes pure crack (if it hasn’t already) but you get the idea. Throw a character my way and I can probably talk myself into it that’s the power this guy has over me. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

My non-romantic OTP for this character

K considering the List… it shouldn’t be surprising that I also consider this person a romantic candidate, but you know when it comes to non-romantic OTP it’s gotta be Momoi. Platonic or romantic, the way she’s stuck with him all those years and his obvious protectiveness and love for her and how (even though he claims to like big tits) he never even once starts to objectify her in any way, it’s so important to me. Momoi is Aomine’s redeeming factor when he’s at his worst, and she goes to bat for him even while he’s actively trying to shake her off and still tries to protect and help him when he refuses to accept it, even when it means they fight. (Also Kuroko saying “Aomine’s probably looking for you” after their argument puts to mind Aomine running through the rain calling Momoi’s name and that is just… pure). These two have the kind of unshakable long-standing friendship that’ll probably last them the rest of their lives, and no matter what context or form it takes, I can’t get enough of it. 

My unpopular opinion about this character

I’ve harped on enough about the fandom’s portrayal of Aomine as a one-note asshole who doesn’t care before, so let’s see if I can change gears a little bit here. 

I honestly don’t agree with… the persistent idea people seem to have of Aomine being a narcissist or obsessed with himself? Like yeah, he’s self-absorbed and egotistical, no question, this is not to say he hasn’t got those flaws and others besides… but that’s not the same as being like, physically attracted to yourself. Part of me suspects it was a “the only one who can fuck me is me” joke taken too far, so that now the idea of Aomine being in love with himself is just ingrained into the fanon culture, but if you look at the show itself, personally I don’t see it. If anything, I would think he’d have some self-loathing issues to work through (and that’s part of the reason he gave for skipping practice, he doesn’t want to be the way he is, and specifically says he doesn’t want to increase the difference between him and everyone else). But hey, that’s just my opinion. I’ll get off my soapbox now.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.

I mean he says he and Kagami are postponing their match, after their brief one-on-one when he gives him the shoes, and then we never get to see it… Tbh just more street ball with this guy would be great, since it’s what his whole style is based around. Even if he’s just playing by himself… or hell, maybe since he thinks no one at the high school level can beat him, we could get a scene of him trying to go up against adults. Maybe he still beats them and his despair worsens after that, but then it’d have more meaning, and at least we’ll have seen that he’s tried and is not just giving up before he’s seen all of what he could be up against in the future. Plus, picturing Aomine going five-on-one like Haizaki did against grown-ups and still slaughtering them is something I’d pay money to see. 

[flydotnet]

The First Day of the Rest of Your Life

VRAINS Rarepair Weeks 2018-2019: Day 13: First Date/Wedding

Summary: He's getting married and yet he still doesn't know if the end result will be Mrs Zaizen or Mr Bessho. (also includes Shoichi as a wingman)

Fandom: Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS Ships: Hireshipping (Ema/Akira), backgroud Zinnia, mentioned Entrust

Wordcount: 3K words

Notes: To be honest this was the perfect excuse to shove all my ships in one fic and get away with it. In a parallel universe where card games in cyberspace aren't the focus of the show and where the Hanoi Incident hasn't happened (but the kids still met anyway), everyone is happy and I can write countless amounts of unneeded fluff. I'm a simple dude: when I can be sappy as balls, I'm sappy as balls. It's been a while since I felt this cliché, but y'know what they say, you can't always subvert tropes all the time. I also hope I got Ema not too OOC for this, woosh.

Event hosted by @vrainsrarepairweeks

AO3 version available here.

Knotting a tie properly isn’t that difficult, usually. It’s a part of his daily routine, of what he does every day before work. Tie the knot, untie it once the day is gone, tie it back again on the day after. It’s just something he’s too used to not to be unable to do it on a fateful day where he needs to be at his best.

But alas, his dry hands are sweaty and shaking too much to properly tie that stupid knot.

 “Brother,” he hears his sister’s voice call for him outside the room. “Are you ready yet? Ceremony’s starting soon!”

“Ah, huh,” he panics internally as he tries to compose a satisfying answer, “soon!”

“Psh, we all know that’s a lie,” a masculine voice makes itself heard. “Lemme see what’s wrong, go check up on the guests and the bride instead, Aoi.”

 Before he can properly react, he’s faced with the purple-haired Shoichi Kusanagi himself, “hotdog seller extraordinaire” as he calls himself. Everyone, including the groom himself, expected him to come to this wedding dressed in any context-inappropriate attire tailor-made for hotdog making and selling instead of any reception of any kind. Instead, Shoichi surprised everyone and here he is, standing before the groom, in a suit.

As said before, Akira himself didn’t think he’d go as far as dress in a suit for this wedding. Oh well, it hasn’t been the first time he was mistaken on someone and it clearly won’t be the last. He’s not a good person-reader.

 “Lemme guess,” Shoichi looks at him with a “shit-eating smirk” (Shoichi’s description, not his) as he moves his eyes up and down, “you can’t tie that damn tie properly and that’s why you’ve been taking ages.”

It’s kind of ashamed that he does admit that, yes, he cannot tie that tie properly.

“You’re a lucky dude, y’know? Contrary to popular belief, I can knot ties like a boss.”

“You do? That seems unlikely, coming from you.”

“Don’t sass me like that, Ema’s already enough for that.”

They both snicker at the remark. Accurate, but not mean-spirited. It’s all in a good war, Akira realized the last of their unlikely trio.

 Working for SOL would usually mean that an employee-of-the-month-tier guy like him wouldn’t meet with more lawless and underground hackers like Shoichi or the aforementioned Ema. Truth be told, they met in college: Shoichi happened to be the guy selling hotdogs on the campus on his free time, Ema was in a similar course to his, and he never really knew why he added business to his courses. They’d meet after classes in front of the hotdog truck, and that’s how they became friends.

At first, Akira didn’t really want to befriend other people during college. He didn’t have time for that: it was either lose time around the campus doing friend things or work to support Aoi and himself financially. If not for Aoi, he wouldn’t have spent so much time near the truck. And if not for Aoi getting lost on the campus when she once searched for him, neither Shoichi nor Ema would have guessed why he was never buying anything from the former. That day was the day where Aoi told him, frankly with her eight years of age, to make friends because he looked sad and lonely. That day was also the first time she ate a hotdog, courtesy of Shoichi and half-paid by Ema.

An unlikely friendship that explains why this hotdog-selling hacker is tying his tie’s knot right as he thinks so.

 “Here ya go buddy!” Shoichi proudly tells him as he sets a foot backwards. “All ready for the greatest day of your life yet!”

“Thank you,” Akira doesn’t find a better way to answer than this. The fault to his nervousness.

Shoichi rolls his eyes before giving him another smirk, this time sarcastic in tone. They know themselves too much for him not to guess.

“Akira, my dude, calm down, it’ll be fine. She won’t leave you at the altar y’know? All you gotta do is say “yes” at the right time to the right question. No big deal.”

He tries to breathe in, breathe out to prove he can, in fact, not be a bundle of nerves twenty-four-seven, but it doesn’t work to his advantage.

 Shoichi looks on the side before giving his friend a strong slap on the shoulder, shaking the latter almost out of his skin. A violent way to revitalize him for sure.

“Okay, look at it this way. You survived being in the streets after losing your parents and your inheritance while attending school and college. You made it big at SOL before leaving them for a company with better morals and for a better pay check. You reconnected with your sis. And now there’s even people here to see you get married, honestly, what could possinly wrong?”

Ignoring the fact “what could possibly go wrong?” has always been Shoichi’s catchphrase for whenever something would in fact go wrong, Akira shakes his head as a resolve.

“Plus, it’s not like she ever broke up with you, no? Considering the dating record she had before meeting you, that’s a good sign!”

He thanks Shoichi again.

“Okay, gotta leave you now, I’ve got a wedding to attend. See ya when you’ll be married!”

 With his tie all done, Akira can officially say he’s ready to go out there and, huh… get married. It sounds more epic and action-packed when someone else sums it for him, but he’s never been very imaginative with words, so it’ll suffice. A last look in the mirror to admire one last time Miyu’s great work with makeup and he’s finally on the go.

Technically, his wedding isn’t very traditional. His late parents, would they have been able to give their input on their son’s marriage, would have surely told him it was too “undistinguished”. However, a wedding is two people’s business (or more, but that’s not his case), and his spouse would have refused the overly outdated themes, the drawn-out and crudely inaccurate monologues from an old man dressed in a robe and other things he hasn’t even bothered researching. He let her do most of the planning: spouses need to fully trust in each other.

 Their guest list reflects their peculiar situation. He doesn’t have much a family left: Aoi, his younger sister, is all he has left, and he instantly refused searching for other relatives who stole their inheritance more than a decade ago, sending a six-year-old in the streets and forcing him to grow up too fast. Now twenty-eight, he realizes every time he thinks of his college classmates who are still partying out there. At least, her fiancée isn’t bothered by how old-fashioned he is: she has allowed him to regain some of his youth once they started frequenting each other.

On her side, the family has been reduced too: her father having died, her mother is bringing her to the altar (she still insisted on this to happen). Her half-brother has accepted coming, at first to his surprise, but after remembering how he was behind his cold façade, it was more obvious. Instead of the father, she invited her theoretical mother-in-law. Their own family business is tense and tough to follow, but at least, they’re all fine now.

 As he makes his way to the altar, to where everything will happen, he thinks of all their guests as a way to keep the crippling stress at bay.

The most important guest to him is, of course, Aoi. She’s his witness too, almost by default in a way: seeing her smile when he entrusted her with this task was more than worth the shot. He couldn’t see anyone else taking care of this too. As such, and considering how little family they had, he allowed her to invite a few friends of hers from high school. One of them, Yusaku as he’s called, turns out to be a close friend of Shoichi too. The world is such a small place.

With Aoi came her girlfriend, Miyu. They met during elementary school but lost each other’s tracks when he had to move places to afford for them to live. That was before they ended up in Den City. They reunited in middle school and dated shortly after beginning high school, much to his surprise but absolutely not to Shoichi and Ema’s. Even if he was surprised, she quickly grew on him with her cheerfulness, her kindness and her wish to ensure Aoi’s happiness. It’s what made them bond with each other over time, after all.

He doesn’t know much about Aoi’s other friends. There is Yusaku, Shoichi’s best friend, but he’s not the only one. There is this young man named Takeru too, a very nice boy as far as he knows, and the childhood-friend-turned-girlfriend of the latter, Kiku. They all met through each other and he has to admit: he felt honoured when he learnt that Takeru and Kiku were coming back from their hometown specifically for the wedding. It probably serves as a perfect occasion for them to gather around, though.

The last, but not least, from their friend group is Jin, Shoichi’s little brother. Akira has known him for longer than his sister’s friends, exception made for Miyu, for this reason. A joyful boy with a smile to give to most people and a passion for video games he openly shares with Yusaku who has this best friendship going with both of the Kusanagi siblings.

Well, time to stop overthinking. The door right in front of him is where it all begins.

 His anxiety hasn’t let go of him, but he tries to look presentable anyway. It’s almost like being on a stage: there is an audience sitting in front of you, albeit more to your ground level, presumably watching your every move or chatting with their neighbours and, even then, it could be about you. Shoichi, his best man, waves him a thumbs up and Aoi smiles to him. On the other hand, his future brother-in-law seems as impassable as ever, despite a slight smile drawing near. The chatting subdues more and more as a not-so-familiar music resonates through the building, a reception venue to be exact. They didn’t want anything too public and especially not retrograde.

“Oh, it’s starting,” Aoi makes a last little comment before they all look in the same direction.

 And there arrives the bride in a black dress reaching her knees with pink highlights, mostly present in the lace on the elbow-length sleeves and hem of the skirt part. They agreed on him wearing white and her wearing black, after all, based on personal preferences. Someone tried to make it poetic, Miyu if he’s not wrong, but Ema simply told her it was only because he looked better in white and she looked better in black. Her opinions, not his, even if she looks gorgeous in black.

Even if he has seen countless times, from the very first time they saw each other in college to this morning when he waited for her to wake up before getting up, he has seen her in countless outfits: casual class-attending attire, biker suit, winter coats they had bought together, and the most intimate kinds of little-dressed. And even then, even after all these years of dating and months of engagement, he’s still mesmerized by her pristine hairdo with flowers amongst her pink locks, her makeup, the dress she kept secret from him (with Aoi’s obvious involvement in said secret, but he didn’t actively try to ruin the surprise for their sake and his while he was at it), her everything.

And to think he gets to be the one who spends the rest of their days with her.

 Some of the things that he got told when announcing their engagement ring back inside his mind.

“You better take care of her, if you don’t want to be shot on sight,” from her older brother, Kengo, who is smiling now because his sister is here and she’s beautiful.

“I bet she’s the one who asked you to marry her,” from Shoichi, before he got proven wrong. “But, like, on the other hand, you’re the old-fashioned of the two.”

“Brother, I’m so glad for you! I’d be glad to help with the preparations,” from Aoi.

“And how did it go?! Where did you do so?! I’m sure it was romantic!” from Hayami, or should he say Kairi, who, after accepting they were never dating years ago, still gracefully accepted the invitation before slipping into gossip mode. He can see her sobbing in the audience, and he’s not sure if she’s crying of heartbreak or happiness.

“Took you long enough,” from another workmate.

 At least, Ema arrives to face him, and he’s not sure how he’s still keeping it together despite the acute taste of his heartbeats in his mouth. She has a bouquet, a little coquetry she allowed herself, of flowers she picked with Aoi and Miyu’s help for their meaning. His sister explained him what they all meant, yesterday, but he’s kind of forgotten because it’s a detail. He’ll be very glad to know all about these flowers when the main ceremony will be over.

She puts her hand in his, the one who doesn’t hold the bouquet, and an official they don’t know much about is reciting what seems to be a glorified protocol. The symbolic value of the event is more important than some words read aloud from a deeply impersonal text anyway. The fact that someone wanted him enough to spend their days with him and officially only with him romantically-speaking is still over his mind, blowing his imaginary every time he remembers that Ema, of all the women he has known, has accepted this. On her own terms, of course, so she’s not his prisoner. He has even insisted for it not to be the case.

 He manages to look directly into her eyes despite how nervous he is. His hand is trembling in hers, and yet hers is so stable and so assured, just she has always been: bold, daring, alluring and adventurous. Nothing scares her, everything stresses him out. They counterbalance each other perfectly: he needs someone to awaken a wilder part of himself, she perhaps needs someone to anchor back into reality would she get too deep into virtual worlds and treasure-hunting. Or maybe it’s just his reverie. It could very well be this cheesy romantic side of him who never got to fully express itself until he was financially stable.

“Don’t be so anxious, hubbie-to-be,” she whispers to him with a wink and this familiar flirtatious tone.

He didn’t think he could get redder than he already was until this moment.

 The monologue is a bit more personal when it starts speaking about Ema, from her infancy to her current years, to the end of her twenties, from fond childhood memories (her quirking eyebrows indicate she’s embarrassed by these) to how they met. They both entrusted Aoi and Miyu, aspiring writer, to write it for them instead of the officials, Kengo who would have certainly pointed out all of his flaws in great detail one by one as part of their brotherly feud or, well, each other. They wanted the surprise to be full for the both of them and slightly more objective judges.

He does remember some of these stories. Their meeting has been a bit romanced: they didn’t meet in a classroom and spoke about informatics. No, they met in front of a hotdog truck on the college campus because he got lost while trying to find the offices to regularize his administrative situation and had to ask her for directions. He can still remember her and Shoichi’s laugh. Good times.

 Akira’s heart almost skips a beat when the official stops his monotonous reading and asks the fateful question: “Would you take Ms Bessho Ema as your wife?”, with all that implies getting brushed under the rug. But for once, he doesn’t need to think seven times before speaking:

“I do.”

He’s not even sure if the man was actually finished speaking, but it doesn’t matter. His delivery wasn’t shaking either, that’s a plus.

 The official resumes his protocol, goes on a paragraph about him this time. It’s more or less the same record, but his life is far less interesting to him than hers: he remembers what he’s lived through, and he had to tell Aoi and Miyu about his first sixteen years or so, so he knows what to expect. His childhood and adolescence are glossed over, his homeless time with Aoi either romanticized (courtesy of Aoi who got scared and scarred by the time he caught a dangerous case of pneumonia) or skipped over, much to his relief. It’s fairly accurate for the parts he had no control over.

The man asks her if she wants to take him as her husband, spend the remainder of her days with him, and be there for him because he’ll be there for her.

“Of course I do,” she tells him while not breaking eye contact with her fiancé.

 In traditional Ema fashion, he doesn’t get to hear the command for them to kiss than she has already pressed her lips against his. He has learnt not to be a clumsy idiot at kissing and returns it just fine as everyone claps. He can almost hear Aoi retain herself from crying. It’s like he’s in a movie, but he’s too optimistic and delighted to think anything will go wrong in a subverting fashion.

This is real life, not some movie, and sometimes, life happens to be generous and fine with people.

 Once they break away from their kiss if not just to breathe, her hand still on the back of his head and his heart still beating too quickly, Shoichi drops the question they have never resolved beforehand.

“So, is it Mrs Zaizen or Mr Bessho now?”

He panics on the inside again for a couple moments, as he never wanted to force her into tradition, but as always, Ema is the active one of their relationship, their tandem, and responds for the both of them.

“Call me Mrs Zaizen.”

And she kisses him again before he can respond with something ridiculous.

End Notes

Shoichi is best VRAINS character and that's why the series had to nerf his screentime for us not to notice he was the perfect protagonist. I also don't like to antagonize Hayami despite her... recent character "development", and also I gave her a name because why not.

Some say Miyu got the bouquet tho

[owlinaminor]

writing is not retail; or, why I don’t feel so guilty about not replying to fanfic comments any more

a few months ago, I saw a story on tumblr.  I can’t remember the exact post so I can’t link it here, but I remember it was a story from a reader who commented on a fanfic that hadn’t been updated in years. the writer of this story got so excited that someone was still reading, they started updating again.

a wonderful story, of course.  good for the writer, who found motivation for an old work and validation in the reader who loved it.  and good for the reader, to have received this surprise gift.  but the story bothered me, like a nudge in the gut, when I read it, and has bothered me more in the months since.

here’s the thing: this story was being touted as a shining example.  “look, comment on fics!” the moral went.  “the writers are so starved for the validation, they’ll do literally anything for you!”  that attitude is one I see increasingly in text posts and tweet threads and the like, practically begging readers to throw all their support at us writers, saying, writers need notes, need kudos, need comments.  this validation is why we write, these arguments go.  we’d have no motivation without it.

this attitude is one that strikes me as increasingly dangerous.  not for fandom as a whole so much, but for writers themselves.  if writers, especially younger writers, writers most vulnerable to these types of “voice of god” diatribes, get this mentality that they are worthless if nobody reads them, it becomes so easy to lose hope. it becomes so easy to say, well, this one got no notes, no readers begging for more, so I should just stop trying.

and on the flipside, that attitude makes it easy to get tied into a work that isn’t actually interesting or creatively fulfilling or just plain making the writer happy.  just because it’s getting notes, views, comments, the logic says, it must continue.

but here’s the thing: fic writing is not retail.  you don’t need to sell a brand to get your work out there – ao3 and ffnet and any other site on which you might want to publish are all as open to you as they are to some big name fan.  that’s one of the beauties of fanfic, to start with.  your foot is already in the door; you don’t need to cater to anyone besides yourself to get published.  or: the reader is not the priority.  the writer is the priority.  (except for gifts and fic commissions, but those are subjects for other essays.)

to paraphrase rainer maria rilke: to truly become a writer, one must look deep into one’s soul and inquire of oneself: MUST I WRITE?  if I were unable to express my inner self in the written medium, would I perish?  (letters to a young poet, p. 16 in my norton 1954 edition.)

rilke is rather melodramatic about it.  my interpretation, and my lesson to young writers, is: ask yourself, DOES THIS MAKE ME HAPPY?

not will it get me attention, not will it please this fandom, but does it feel worthy of my time, my skills, the piece of my soul that will go into it?  your first audience, before you publish your work anywhere and get feedback from anyone, is yourself.  for most writers, in fact, your primary audience for at least half of your work is yourself – because, come on, none of us have good track records for finishing our wips.  thus, if you’re not pleasing yourself by exploring characters or worlds or literary themes that you enjoy (or by getting paid at the end of the word doc) whatever you’re writing is not worthy of your talents or your time.

and here’s the other thing: you’ll probably need to write for a couple of years before you’re actually good at it.  I don’t mean to discourage anyone here, just to be realistic; writing, like any other craft, takes practice.  very few people put up a very first fic on ao3 and immediately get 1,000 kudos, and those who do have probably been writing an original fantasy series since they were seven.  why do you think all the best porn is written by people over the age of thirty?  this shit takes experience.  and if you’re refreshing your ao3 page every ten minutes, agonizing over every single comment and every single tumblr note, calling yourself worthless every time you don’t hit some magic hits/kudos ratio, you’ll never want to actually do the work that will get you that experience.  a lack of validation is only reason to lose heart if the work meant nothing to your personal satisfaction in the first place.

I have been writing fic for almost eight years.  in that time, I’ve had widely popular fics and widely unpopular ones, in a whole host of fandoms.  and to be honest, much as my horrible lizard brain craves validation, some of my absolute favorite works are the ones that got no notes.  because I know that those fics are the ones I wrote truly for myself. they are the most creatively satisfying. they are the works that make me happy.

(and, a rarepair writer secret: those fics are also often the ones that get the absolute best comments. when you prioritize writing what you love, it shows.)

rilke, at one point, was so poor that he could not even buy his own books (letters to a young poet, p. 25).  and yet today, he is lauded as one of the best german-language writers of all time.  just because you are not getting validation right now doesn’t mean you are not learning and growing as a writer.  if you find what you’re passionate about and write from the heart, someday, you will find someone who shares your passions – it’s one of the beauties of the internet that you don’t need a publishing contract to find that other person.  all you need is the self-confidence to write your piece and the bravery to hit post.

I don’t want to speak for all writers.  not everyone is a literary theory-spouting weirdo like I am who sometimes wants to lock herself in a cabin in the woods and turn off wifi for a month just because she’d get so much done. some people write fic as a coping mechanism.  some do it to make money, or as a stepping stone into a professional writing career. some need validation to truly be happy. I only want to speak for myself, to voice my concerns, and to ask any writer (or any content creator reading this, really): does it make you happy?

you do not owe the commenter anything.  you owe yourself everything.

[adigeon]

wait also .. i KNOW this is a rarepair but please consider: Sam Chisolm/Joshua Faraday w the tropes 23 & 63 ?

23/63: performer AU & everyone knows/mistaken for couple; chisholm/faraday

(oh hell yea)

it starts, like so many things in joshua faraday's life, with a card game. texas hold 'em in nebraska, and faraday seeing everything doubled, raising when he shoudla folded. wakes up with his head pounding and a text message on his banged-up flip phone saying call is 3pm, don't be late

the hell, thinks joshua faraday. pounds a lukewarm miller high life in the shower, texts back "address again?" because no way in hell he remembers how he got himself goddamned hired last night. he's been stuck in omaha too long, though, paying 150 a week for a room, picking up whatever odd jobs he can. yard work, mostly, delivery some nights.

living like this isn’t much, but it's better than being stuck in his hometown (that's what he tells himself.) gets an address. shows up at a concert venue at quarter to 3 because faraday always starts out strong; he starts disappointing later, after he's fooled them into expecting something else, after all

it's a concert venue he's showed up. throws his beat-up car into park and stares at the marquee and realizes he's somehow working for sam motherfucking chisolm, oh *shit*.

faraday doesn't remember a moment of it, but apparently last night he managed to gamble his way into working for sam chisolm's road crew

even worse, a few hours later into helping run sound check, he apparently won that right from sam fucking chisolm himself?

chisolm being, of course, only one of the most righteous and underrated bluegrass guitarists working. the only guitarist faraday's ever liked better was goodnight robicheaux, who did two tours with chisolm before disappearing from the public eye entirely

(what happened, though faraday was too blacked out to remember: 100% bullshitted his way into convincing chisolm to raise with a job offer, to the wild amusement of every nearly-as-drunk onlooker)

to everyone's surprise -- most of all his own -- faraday is a fan-fucking-tastic roadie.

(shouldn't be that surprising. faraday was in a band for a year or two after all. he kinda forgets that about himself sometimes.)

chisolm is a good boss, treats his crew right. after a couple months one of the more senior roadies leaves for another opportunity, and faraday gets asked if he wants the spot. hell yes, says faraday. a couple more tours and faraday trying to control his drinking with various amounts of success and sam goddamned chisolm thinks he's trustworthy and internally faraday is thrilling to figure out how he fucks this up

midpoint of fic is goodnight robicheaux ambling into the scene, leaving poor faraday starstruck x2. robicheaux immediately "mistakes" faraday for a groupie (which chisolm nearly chokes laughing at). robicheaux's "bodyguard" (billy rocks) does not like faraday. faraday is not having a Good Time

(except how robicheaux mentions offhand to chisolm, when horne -- the stage manager -- and red -- chisolm's bassist -- and goody and billy and faraday are all chilling out post-show, that chisolm looks easier than he used to, happier.)

(sidenote: vasquez is sam's agent in this 'verse. not a dude you want to negotiate against.)

etc etc etc. faraday does his damndest to clean up his miserable wreck of a life (with help from The Ensemble bc let's face it he can't do that alone, bless his heart.) sometimes when he's not too hungover he goes for runs with red in the morning. goodnight may strongly insinuate that if faraday ever wants an AA sponsor, well.

faraday and chisolm get together after a weirdly intense post-show jam session where faraday can't rip his eyes off chisolm and his hands, goddamn. this is probably after chisolm makes a weirdly intense announcement he's taking a year off to Write and Record and faraday is like ?????????????????? i... will Miss This, me, a person whose life is constantly Random and Without Worth

faraday ends up doing backing vocals with goodnight goddamned robicheaux on chisolm's next album because what is his life. he and chisolm bitch at each other constantly on the next tour and horne threatens (affectionately) to quit if they don't stop flirting so much. robicheaux continues pretending to mistake faraday for a guitar groupie literally every time they run into each other and billy visibly finds more funny every time, but faraday decides he can put up with it. everything is disgustingly cute, holy fuck

[worthlesspride]

About Me As A Writer

Tagged by @foxyena. This is ridiculously long, so I’m tucking it away under the cut.

1. How did you come up with your username and what does it mean?

It’s pretty much obvious for anyone in the fandom. The Ushijima/Oikawa scene after the Seijoh match gives me feelings. Oikawa’s devotion to his team in general gives me feelings. My ao3 username (Deathbelle) is the name of a flower from Skyrim. At the time I thought it sounded edgy.

2. Which fanfic of yours has the most feedback? (bookmarks/subscriptions/hits/kudos).

Seijoh, Inc. has the most kudos and bookmarks. What You Came For has the most subscriptions, and Protect and Serve (an old SNK fic) ha the most hits.

 3. What is your AO3 profile icon, and why did you choose it?

It’s the cutest Iwaizumi, the same icon I use here. I chose it because I love him.

 4. Do you have any regular/favorite commentors?

I most certainly do. I made a post about it recently, but there are several fantastic individuals that leave comments on a lot of my stuff and I absolutely adore each of them.

 5. Is there a fanfic that you keep going back to read again and again?

I have read the Four’s a Party series by plumtrees more often that I’d care to admit. I also recently reread The Best I Ever Had by FindingSchmomo and it was still as lovely and painful as the first time. Also, I’ve read Red Feather by @chosenofkagami at least four times because it is one of my favorite things. 

 6. How many stories are you subscribed to? How many do you have bookmarked?

I have 108 bookmarks and 37 subscriptions.

 7. Which AU do you find yourself writing the most?

Police AU. Every single time I write one I say I’m done, and then I inevitably start on another one. I have a semishira one that will be posted soon. Even though I swore I wasn’t going to write it.

 8. How many people are subscribed and bookmarked to you in total? (you can view this on the stats page)

2196 bookmarks total. Uhh, I don’t know if it wants user subscriptions or total subscriptions? But those are 199 and 1117, respectively.

 9. Is there something you’d like to write about but are afraid of people judging you for it? (Feeing brave? If so, share it!)

Not particularly? I usually write what I want. Posting that tensemi yakuza thing with the blood kink made me a little anxious but it seemed to be okay. No one threw anything at me.

 10. Is there anything you would like to be better at? Writing certain scenes or genres, replying to comments, updating better, etc.

I’d like to be better at everything, please and thank you. In particular, expanding my imagery and metaphors. I feel like I recycle the same ones too often. Also I need to relearn how to write non-m|m relationships. 

 11. Do you write rarepairs or popular ships more often?

Most of my ships are popular ones. Some of them are semi-rarepairs, maybe? Does Tensemi count as a rarepair?

 12. How many stories have you posted on AO3 to this day (finished and unfinished)?

I’m up to 28.

 13. How many stories do you have saved in/with your writing program?

I don’t want to go count because I’m actively trying not to think about some of them, but probably about ten.

 14. Do you write down story ideas, or just keep them in your head?

I mostly keep them in my head until I have a fairly good idea of what I’m going to write. Then I might make notes here and there so I don’t forget anything important. I mostly just wing it as I go along.

 15. Have you ever co-authored a story?

Nope. Honestly I don’t know how that would even work, like… don’t the writing styles interfere with each other? Do the writers take turns writing sentences or paragraphs or something? I don’t really understand the concept.

 16. How did you discover AO3?

I don’t remember, but I’m sure it was a dark and gloomy night that doomed me for the rest of my life.

 17. Do you consider yourself to be a popular or famous author in your fandom(s) on AO3?

I’m definitely not famous. I don’t think I’m all that popular either? My fics get more attention than I ever thought they would, which I’m grateful for, but I don’t think that makes me popular.

 18. Do you have a nickname or fandom name for your readers?

Umm… no?

 19. Was there an author who inspired or encouraged you to write?

I only recently started talking to anyone in the fandom, so I don’t think anyone ever had to encourage me to write. It was just something I’ve always done.

 20. What writing advice would you give to a beginning author?

Keep writing. Even if you hate it and you think your stuff sucks, keep pushing through it. The more you write, the less you’re going to feel that way about it, and the better you’ll get. I went a solid year without writing anything at all because I hit a rough patch and hated everything I produced. If I hadn’t missed that year, I could’ve been so much better right now. Don’t give up on yourself.

 21. Do you plot out your stories, or do you just figure it out as you go?

I usually have a vague idea of where I’m going, and a few scenes mapped out really clearly in my head, but for the most part I just wing it and hope everything ends up fitting together.

 22. Have you ever gotten a bad comment on a story? If so, what did you do?

I had a few not-so-nice comments on some of my old SNK stuff (which I was upset about at the time, but looking back, I completely understand why those people said what they did, and I don’t disagree with them). I’ve never gotten a bad one from the Haikyuu fandom. It’s a good community.

 23. Is there a certain type of scene that you have a hard time writing? (action, smut, etc…)

I used to have the worst time writing smut, and though I feel I’ve improved, I still have a hard time with it on occasion. Especially when I have a clear mental image of how I want it to be and it just refuses to flow.

 24. What story(s) are you working on now?

Uhh. The iwaoi part of the Mall AU, a Bokuroo camboy AU that is 90% smut and taking forever, a Motorcyle Gang AU for Avery because he wants me to be miserable, and my Secret Santa fic that I’m not at liberty to discuss but will hopefully turn out okay.

 25. Do you plan your next project(s) before you finish your current ongoing story(s)?

I don’t really plan out anything. Sometimes ideas just happen and I run with them.

 26. Do you have a daily writing goal set for yourself?

Ha. No. I don’t get to write on days that I work. It basically comes down to cramming as much writing time into my weekends as I can manage.

 27. Do you think you’ve improved as a writer since you first started?

Exponentially. My early stuff is painful to read. I was so young, so unskilled, so embarrassing.

 28. What is your favorite story that you’ve written?

This is the worst question. I’m going to have to settle for a three-way tie with You Make It Sound So Easy To Be Alive, What You Came For, and The Loyalty of a Traitor.

 29. What is your least favorite story that you’ve written?

In regards to fandom, my old SNK stuff. And that YOI oneshot, I can’t even bring myself to read it. 

 30. Where do you see yourself (as a writer) in 5 years?

Hopefully with at least one original work published, if I can get my shit together and spend a little more time on my own stuff instead of stoking my undying devotion to Haikyuu.

 31. What is the easiest thing about writing?

...there’s supposed to be something easy about it?

 32. What is the hardest thing about writing?

Pouring your literal soul into something without the guarantee that it will ever be liked or appreciated by anyone other than yourself. Also the sense of vulnerability, because even if it’s unintentional, someone’s writing always says a great deal about them as a person. 

 33. Why do you write?

I almost gave a half-assed answer for this, but honestly, writing is the one thing that makes me feel somewhat accomplished. It’s been my coping mechanism through some of the harder times in my life, and it genuinely makes me happy.

I’m not sure who to tag, because it took me so long to do this that most of my writer friends have probably done it already. If you haven’t, please do so! I’d love to read your answers.

[skittidyne]

tagged by @lethesomething! thanks darling

1. How did you come up with your username and what does it mean?

hahaha. i’ve been stuck with “skitty” as a name since 05, but i went from “digital skitty” to “skittidyne” when i made the jump to tumblr. i wanted something that wasn’t my “professional” name, but could still be skitty-ish, and so i decided to throw some persona into the mix, because that’s how i be. 

“skitty” is a pokemon and the “-dyne” suffix is the highest tier of attack spell in the persona series. and it looked better with an i rather than a y. so i guess i’m the highest tier of skitty spell!

2. Which fanfic of yours has the most feedback? (bookmarks/subscriptions/hits/kudos).

pedestal hands down. (bbac isn’t even half as popular by any of those categories.) 

3. What is your AO3 profile icon, and why did you choose it?

it’s ryoji from persona 3! i chose it because... i love ryoji... even when i was drawing regularly, i rarely used my own art as my icons anywhere, except dA or actual art-hosting sites. 

4. Do you have any regular/favourite commenters?

oh god i know i’m going to leave people out, and I LOVE YOU ALL, but beechichi liveblogs shit to me on twitter, curiouslylazy leaves me comments longer than chapters, greatdanesandpandas leaves me amazing capslocked comments across several of my stories, haruhi02 and rd both leave AMAZING liveblog type comments on bbac, and unexpectedly but delightfully like every commenter on the kamafuta fake dating story is like, so kind and nice. (upside to writing a rarepair!) 

but i love all of my commenters and there are LOTS i’m missing here and trust me i do notice who comments regularly and across several stories ;; 

5. Is there a fanfic that you keep going back to read again and again?

ghost story, character development, sayuri, a heart swelled to bursting, settling down, the thirty-six stratagems of wáng jìngzé ... a lot of smut fics... (a lot of smut fics)

6. How many stories are you subscribed to? How many do you have bookmarked?

211 subscribed to, and 112 bookmarks on ao3! 88 bookmarks on ff.net.

7. Which AU do you find yourself writing the most?

i mean. bbac, i guess. i like things with a magical slant, but i don’t ever stick around the exact same universe for multiple stories? 

8. How many people are subscribed and bookmarked to you in total? (you can view this on the stats page)

285 subscriptions to me, idk how to check how many are bookmarked to me? can you bookmark authors on ao3? 727 subscribed & 1043 faved on ff.net though. 

9. Is there something you’d like to write about but are afraid of people judging you for it? (Feeling brave? If so, share it!)

hmm. i’d love to write a mafia/yakuza au one day, but i’m not sure i’m afraid of ppl judging me. i think i just don’t want to do that much research. i’d also love to write a sugaring au one day, if only out of PURE BITTERNESS, but that’s a lot of smut to write, and i’m afraid i’d probably start fights in the comments section. 

there’s not a lot i’m more scared of writing compared to other things, i guess. 

10. Is there anything you would like to be better at? Writing certain scenes or genres, replying to comments, updating better, etc.

commenting! leaving comments would be nice. truthfully, i’d like to work on my personal self-discipline when it comes to writing and getting things done, even though my output is pretty high imo. also, i guess romance writing. 

11. Do you write rarepairs or popular ships more often?

uhhhhhh. i never purposefully do either, and in naruto fandom i spent some time in rarepair hell, and apparently kamafuta is a fuckin rarepair so i’m again sitting in that lonely little boat, but i also tend toward more popular ships in hq fandom, at least. both? probably popular ships? 

12. How many stories have you posted on AO3 to this day (finished and unfinished)?

27 on ao3! 

13. How many stories do you have saved in/with your writing program?

uhhhhhhhhhhhhh. if we’re going to get technical about it... 

counting side story collections as 1 “story”, i got: 

61 on googledocs, 16 more on my harddrive. 

i don’t want to meet anyone’s eye right now

14. Do you write down story ideas, or just keep them in your head?

i ABSOLUTELY keep them in my head. if i start writing ANYTHING down, even if it’s notes or title ideas or character ideas, i know i’ve already lost the war, and i’m committed to writing something. 

15. Have you ever co-authored a story?

yep! oh it puts the heart in my chest on wings was with the amazing @h-lovely and where the wild things go was with the lovely @kaiyouchan!

also, technically @tarotdactyl is listed as a co-author on operation: poison tree frog, because it’s his fault, but i’m technically the one doing all of the writing for it. for some reason

16. How did you discover AO3?

i mean, i was on lj and ff.net. things migrated. i don’t remember specifically how it happened. 

17. Do you consider yourself to be a popular or famous author in your fandom(s) on AO3?

shrug emoji... i suppose i am? i think i still am in pokemon fandom, i know i’m not in naruto fandom, and i don’t even know anymore in hq fandom. (i guess only hq fandom matters on ao3)

18. Do you have a nickname or fandom name for your readers?

skittens!! 

19. Was there an author who inspired or encouraged you to write?

@avoidingavoidance and @silvercistern are #writing goals, and while she’s only just writing now herself, my mother has always been a devoted supporter of my writing. past that, it was just reader feedback that kept me goin’ onward. 

20. What writing advice would you give to a beginning author?

KEEP WITH IT. COMMIT TO YOUR IDEA. there is no such thing as a bad idea, and even “bad” ideas, if committed to, can turn into FANTASTIC stories/characters/arcs. absolutely keep going, no matter what. 

21. Do you plot out your stories, or do you just figure it out as you go?

both, haha. i’m trying to get outlines more and more these days, mostly because i guess i’m working with others and for some reason they can’t read my mind. hm. 

22. Have you ever gotten a bad comment on a story? If so, what did you do?

dude, i was in the pokemon fandom when farla was still around. 

yeah, i’ve gotten things that could be considered “flames”. i’ve accidentally started a ship war, and i’ve gotten nasty shipping-related comments on stories, too. hell, i’ve fought with readers over that sort of thing before. 

i’ve also had rude commenters, commenters who probably just didn’t know any better, and commenters who missed the point so badly i had to go scream into a pillow. it happens. 

for the most part, i try to respond to comments/reviews, because that’s how i was raised on the internet. i try to be polite and pleasant these days, but i’ll put my foot down. i try not to be rude or mean, though. 

23. Is there a certain type of scene that you have a hard time writing? (action, smut, etc..)

smut. it’s always goddamn smut. 

romance in general, though. i’m good with the emotional intimacy and casual physical intimacy, but half the time i end up with more of that between the best friend characters than the ships, so... i dunno. i’d like to be more comfortable writing romance, up to and DEFINITELY including smut. 

24. What story(s) are you working on now?

bbac, political intrigue, magical girl au, fake dating au, and a couple of random oneshots. 

25. Do you plan your next project(s) before you finish your current ongoing story(s)?

look, i ain’t happy if i’m not juggling projects. so i guess that’s a given. 

26. Do you have a daily writing goal set for yourself?

only during nanowrimo! some days, i don’t write a word, and other days, i’m easily in the thousands. i’m content with either, because i can only force it so often. 

27. Do you think you’ve improved as a writer since you first started?

absolutely. even when it feels like i’m stagnating with that dreaded 67-75% of the story completed zone, i know every word i write betters me as an author. 

28. What is your favorite story that you’ve written?

oh man, that’s so hard... mostly, that comes down less to emotion, and more to “what was easiest for me to write”... 

maybe pedestal. but maybe only because i’ve been feeling nostalgic lately, and it’s easy to love a story once it’s completed. 

29. What is your least favorite story that you’ve written?

haha i don’t want to say

30. Where do you see yourself (as a writer) in 5 years?

finishing bbac

completed trilogy & completed standalone original novels completed, probably in a new fandom, probably agonizing over yet another 500k novel fanfic

31. What is the easiest thing about writing?

momentum!! god, when you have it, EVERYTHING IS AWESOME

32. What is the hardest thing about writing?

trying to keep momentum... actually, probably, forcing yourself through a scene you KNOW has to get done and you even know what happens in it, but it’s just not happening. bleh. 

33. Why do you write?

for the attention and monetary gain (๑꒪▿꒪)* 

nah, it’s to share stories with people. i like ideas, i like turning ideas into bigger ideas, and i like people’s reactions to those ideas. it’s like friendship sharing except i don’t have to be social! <3 

i’m not tagging anyone directly but if you are an author type and like being tagged then grab this UP!

[sunnybimbo]

get to know the author

got tagged by mfin @grassepi like 10 days ago to do this!!!!!! /dab/

long ass post under the cut

1. How did you come up with your username and what does it mean?

i explain this so often man its a trip. ‘jam’ came from simlish in the sims 3 because of that one voice line that’s like ‘jambabedo?’. i had changed my name to that on skype but when i was VCing with @namerine she could only see ‘jam’ and it kinda just stuck. speaking of: the ‘dingus’ part also came from her so literally this name is all because of her and i love her *fingerguns*

2. Which fanfic of yours has the most feedback? (bookmarks/subscriptions/hits/kudos).

by FAR my most popular fic is my collection of sickfics: In Sickness and Health

the only thing that it got beat in was comments from Close to the Heart, but that’s mostly just because it had so many mfin chapters

3. What is your AO3 profile icon, and why did you choose it?

b a b y y o s h i

i literally cant remember how i found this picture or why i chose it as my icon but its my Brand now. yoshi jamthedingus is me

4. Do you have any regular/favourite commenters?

i literally have so many. there’s @space-peachx, @bears-again, @narwhalsarefalling, @ravenssama, and @miishiiwrites (for some reason it wasnt letting me tag ur main asldhasd) plus a SHIT ton of anon commentors who i love just as dearly!!! i have a lot more but these are the most common commenters and i love them sm i could literally die.

5. Is there a fanfic that you keep going back to read again and again?

there are like three fics like that and ofc im gonna list them all

hands down the fic i’ve reread the MOST in the shortest period of time is Sunset in Reverse by @demenior (who i cannot tag for some reason but i hope they know that i love their fic dearly)

there’s this i n c r e d i b l e sickfic by @bosstoaster that i just adore called Drown Out Your Mind that just breaks my heart all types of ways

and there’s this OTHER fic that also fucks me up called strength of the small by @nowweareunstoppable in which pidge is bad ass and also gets fucked up and i literally rec it to all my friends i love it so much

(also a special shoutout to been @velkynkarma‘s Whisper in the Dark. whenever i have the need for a good creepin’ out i LOVE to revisit this one because like... just the description of the Final Boss (tm) alone is enough to give me the willies)

6. How many stories are you subscribed to? How many do you have bookmarked?

oof

i have 449 bookmarks from like atleast 10 different fandoms, and about 411 fics i’m subscribed to, give or take a couple because Math. most of them are completed though, but i don’t go through and take them off because i’m a lazy hoe 

7. Which AU do you find yourself writing the most?

well i just looked up my ao3 and it says i have the most in ‘Alternate Universe - Video Game World’ asjdhsaldhsja aka my mmo au. but technically i think the au i write the most is Modern bc i’m but a simple farmer with a limited mindscape

8. How many people are subscribed and bookmarked to you in total? (you can view this on the stats page)

i have 22 user subscriptions vs 199 work subscriptions + 383 bookmarks in total. nice nice nice

9. Is there something you’d like to write about but are afraid of people judging you for it? (Feeling brave? If so, share it!)

probably something with a more serious tone (compared to the fluffy wuffy fics i write) like, for example, fatphobia, suicide, and literally just conflict in general. i always feel like im trivializing all of it no matter how hard i try so i just... Give Up because i dont want the backlash ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

10. Is there anything you would like to be better at? Writing certain scenes or genres, replying to comments, updating better, etc.

i really want to get better at writing conflicts, as stated above lajhdlsadhls. but also i want to be better at planning out stories because i usually give up near the 3/4ths point of literally every multi-chaptered thing i’ve written

11. Do you write rarepairs or popular ships more often?

definitely rarepairs. voltron is like the biggest fandom i’ve ever been in and my biggest ships are all hunk ships, and all of those are rarepairs OTL

12. How many stories have you posted on AO3 to this day (finished and unfinished)?

35!

13. How many stories do you have saved in/with your writing program?

ignoring the fics i’ve completed and posted on ao3, i have about 52. including the above equals 87!!! m a t h

14. Do you write down story ideas, or just keep them in your head?

i try to write them down but if i write down the thingy i really want to focus on in the fic then i won’t want to write it anymore because it’s out of my head. OTL its a complicated process.

15. Have you ever co-authored a story?

literally never in my life. 

16. How did you discover AO3?

definitely tumblr. i was in the dragon age fandom and there was this fic called The Little Kadan which had fem!inquisitor/iron bull + a baby so like i was all over that asap. i’m too shy to tag the author but u can find them on tumblr at sickly-writes ,,,,,,

17. Do you consider yourself to be a popular or famous author in your fandom(s) on AO3?

nah not at all. i’m pretty Niche

(i.e. if you love shunk and/or heith + cuddling, i’m your gal. but anything else is pretty rare OTL)

18. Do you have a nickname or fandom name for your readers?

not in the SLIGHTEST. i call them all babes in my head bc i love them tho

19. Was there an author who inspired or encouraged you to write?

i don’t know this @fenri personally but i love their writing so much. i admire their style a WHOLE TON and i think i may have sort of modeled my own after theirs? 

like i’m just thinking about it now but it’s definitely after i reread their fic (*ahem ahem* Like Crystal Guts) for about the fifth time that i started my whole ‘prose-y’ writing, which is very very recent aldjhsal

20. What writing advice would you give to a beginning author?

be confident in ur writing! if someone says they don’t like it, your work just isnt for them. just because one single person doesn’t like it doesn’t mean its bad!

r e r e a d what you wrote! i use fromtexttospeech.com to catch like... sentence structure/grammatical errors when my eyes are too tired and i find it helps a lot!

if you find a story you like, try figuring out w h y you like it so much. characterization? the way they describe things? because they use sentence structure you haven’t seen before? and then use that new knowledge to try to make your own writing style your favorite *fingerguns* 

21. Do you plot out your stories, or do you just figure it out as you go?

i only started plotting fics since last november, which was when i participated in my first nanowrimo. i don’t plot for every single story, but if i’m lost or i want to expand a little, i slap down a bunch of ideas in an empty google doc and go from there! 

generally by then i’ve already written atleast a little bit, though.

22. Have you ever gotten a bad comment on a story? If so, what did you do?

i can’t even remember what it says exactly now since i deleted the fic after, but someone said my characterization was bad in a super old inuyasha fic. little like... 12 year old me was so sad ;w; 

i don’t think i’ve ever gotten a bad comment after that, though? which is NICE

23. Is there a certain type of scene that you have a hard time writing? (action, smut, etc..)

DEFINITELY any action scene. i can’t make them long or drawn out or else i’ll just be struggling and sweating and generally craving death. i think i just need practice but o o o o f

24. What story(s) are you working on now?

i have a few hot n spicy prompts i need to finish that i probably won’t get to until next year salhdjsa

plus a few christmas presents! 

and also my pirate au, Wander, which only has maybe 2 chapters left before its complete!

25. Do you plan your next project(s) before you finish your current ongoing story(s)?

*sweats loudly*

26. Do you have a daily writing goal set for yourself?

not in the slightest. generally, if i’m in a writing sprint or something, i’ll try to get over a 1000 for whatever it is, but that’s for the total and not for the session. 

27. Do you think you’ve improved as a writer since you first started?

definitely! even though i’m still shy, im a lot more open to constructive criticism (if it doesn’t come after my soul ;w;). I’m also getting better at being more descriptive, which is something i’ve always wanted! 

28. What is your favorite story that you’ve written?

i have two. don’t make me choose

the first is technically cheating because it’s part of a series, and the series is my favorite BUT I DIGRESS. The Witch and the Mage (which is... one of my less imaginative names) is an MMO AU in which shiro and hunk are in love and also i have a vague plot outlined somewhere in my drive that’s pretty wild if i do say so myself. i may never write it but its there and its my favorite and i love the imagery i used in it.

the SECOND is a heith cuddle fic, because that’s basically my brand as a writer. it’s called home and i wrote it when i was very tired and couldn’t get to sleep. i may have been craving human contact? who knows in this economy. even though i see a number of things i wish i could fix about it, it’s just very self-indulgent in more than one way and its very dear to my heart. 

29. What is your least favorite story that you’ve written?

most of the fics i wrote earlier on are pretty bad imo, but i think the ones i hate the most are part of my You Are Beautiful series. it’s grossly out of character (mostly in keith’s case) but it was the first thing i’d written in about four years and i was so proud of it. so it has to stay up for posterity, tbh.

30. Where do you see yourself (as a writer) in 5 years?

i really hope to still be writing by then. maybe with my own personal book in its planning stages atleast???  ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) gotta be optimistic!!

31. What is the easiest thing about writing?

dialogue? also describing rooms. i love just... randomly popping out something that describes the placement of a couch in relation to a door. 

32. What is the hardest thing about writing?

i always always always get distracted when i’m trying to write. if i’m in the zone, someone in my family is definitely gonna try to get my attention. it’s sort of become habit for me to just interrupt myself first so that i won’t lose whatever train of thought i had LMAO

33. Why do you write?

i like the way my words sound when i string them together in the right (write... *badum ts*) way. it makes me Feel Good (tm). 

also i love giving characters (that mean something to me) attention, because it’s like i’m giving MYSELF attention. a two-for-one!

Tagging:

@sleepyhunk, @narwhalsarefalling, @space-peachx, @sammythemattressthief, @bears-again, @kurosakiami01, @maternalcube, @ace-pidge, @darlingmuses

+  if anyone i tagged earlier would like to, i would literally be honored if you would do this! but no pressure, ever <3

[trojanjean]

questions for ao3 writers

tagged by @meimagino, thank you dsgsfa !! <3 <3 

Tagging: @kumikirin and @rayraywrites ! i don’t actually know a lot of ao3 writers SO PLEASE DO THIS AND TAG ME? <3 i’ve LOVED reading other people doing this tag and it’s so exciting to know more abt your stuff so please please if u use ao3 and wanna do this, please let me know! <3

1. How did you come up with your username and what does it mean?

my username is seaworn. i didn’t want my ao3 username to be the same as my tumblr url because my tumblr url is pretty much always associated with a certain fandom and i didn’t want that because i had a feeling that i’m going to write something for different fandoms. seaworn is a word i came across in one of nightwish’s lyrics, “sea-worn driftwood”. i just thought that was nice, and everything sea-related is really close to my heart. 

2. Which fanfic of yours has the most feedback? (bookmarks/subscriptions/hits/kudos)

fingers crossed my obsession with you is tameable has most hits, kudos and bookmarks, but my heart’s a stereo (it beats for you so listen close) has most subscriptions (because it’s an ongoing series).

3. What is your AO3 profile icon, and why did you choose it?

it’s a picture of some random boy who i think looks a lot like my favourite trainwreck boy harry and i wanted it lmao 

4. Do you have any regular/favourite commenters?

 i get really warm and giddy if someone i know comments something on my fics because it means the world to me that my friends read my shit asdgdfs. but i also get warm and giddy and excited when i get any kinds of comments!! <3 i appreciate every single comment i get and i sometimes cry when i get an email notification about a comment someone left me asfsg <3 i notice a few “regulars” that always comment of my stories when i publish something new and i LOVE them and it means the world to me that someone has subscribed to me/checks out my page to see whether i’ve published smth new. but i ALSO love people who just leave kudos bc seeing that someone has actually read my stuff? amazing. i love every single one of you so much. i go through my comments and my kudos/hits whenever i’m feeling down/insecure and they give me so much confidence and make me feel better about everything

5. Is there a fanfic that you keep going back to read again and again?

oh yeah, i have plenty!! i mean, i have over 500 bookmarks and i go through them a lot to read many of my old favourites. i’m going to list a few i could remember without actually browsing through my bookmarks! :) they’re mostly drarry because i’m super into that again. also i really wanna scream about all of these but i’m just gonna link them and let them speak for themselves sdgdfsg 

Twingenuity by Caeseria. Viktuuri, explicit, 160k. summary: “Victor arrives in Hasetsu, completely unaware that Yuuri has an identical, overly affectionate, twin brother. The resulting temptation might actually kill him before he gets Yuuri to the GPF like he promised.”

Coffee, Cakes And Doorknob Snakes by Omi_Ohmy. drarry, explicit, 40k. summary: “Harry's house is trying to kill him, and only one person can help him: pity it's Draco Malfoy”

Eternally Consistent by kitsunealyc. drarry, explicit, 40k. summary: “Draco Malfoy and Harry Potter assumed they would never be anything but civil enemies, until Potter lands on Malfoy's doorstep, bleeding, covered in curses, and acting very strangely indeed.”

Reparations by Saras_Girl. drarry, explicit, 87k. summary: “Harry is about to discover that the steepest learning curve comes after Healer training, and that second chances can be found in unexpected places.”

Winter Song by proantagonist. viktuuri, explicit, 149k. summary: “The set of Yuuri’s mouth softened into a private smile as Victor squeezed his knee beneath the table. His hands were bare, free from the gloves he so often wore when they were together on the rink, and the heat of his palm burned straight through the denim of Yuuri’s jeans. He slipped his own hand beneath the table and found Victor’s. Hidden from sight, their fingers began to flirt and play. A secret conversation all their own that needed no words.

Yuuri was aware that at some point—a moment in time he couldn’t quite place—Victor had become his boyfriend.

There wasn’t a single instant when it happened. It was a slow awareness, as if Victor had silently been asking the question for months now, and Yuuri had been giving him the answer a little more with each passing day.”

i’d love to link everything i like but aSFASD!! just believe me when i say that with 500 bookmarks and having lots of writer friends in tumblr, i read a LOT of the same fics over and over and over again. the ones i mentioned just now are all longer stories i fell in love with because it took me days and maybe even weeks to read them and it’s like i’d found a whole new universe?? you can def ask me for fic recs because all i do is read fics but i found it really hard to just pick a few so i decided to pick just a few longer ones for this question!! but ask me for my favourite coffee shop aus? do it. favourit otayuri fics? ya please. fav modern au captive prince fics? you really should. 

6. How many stories are you subscribed to? How many do you have bookmarked?

i can’t see the number of my subscriptions anywhere? but i get maybe 3-10 email notifications every day about an updated work so i guess it’s a lot. i have a little over 500 bookmarks! :)) 

7. Which AU do you find yourself writing the most?

hmm, i maybe haven’t written enough to have, like, a special au i enjoy writing? but i DO think about coffee shop au’s and writing them a lot so i guess it’s that asfdsf. i just really really love coffee shops?? 

8. How many people are subscribed and bookmarked to you in total? (you can view this on the stats page)

274 subscriptions and 704 bookmarks holy sHIT hey i love every single one of you?? 

9. Is there something you’d like to write about but are afraid of people judging you for it? (Feeling brave? If so, share it!)

i have a bunch of really, really sad and depressing headcanons i would love to write but i’m probably never gonna? like, lots of things about eating disorders and cutting and someone getting injured or cheated on, someone losing an important person or having to give up on their dreams, etc. lots of sad characters trying to be brave on their own and slowly fading away :’’)) i don’t want to write then because i haven’t come up with any good endings for those and i DON’T want to write stuff with no happy ending, so. i just really think i need to get out all kinds of crap rn and writing them would make me feel better but i think i’m too involved to actually write something worth reading? i fear that if i wrote smth i’ve headcanoned, it would end up being super immature and illogical. idk. my point it that i’m afraid to write really self-indulgent, depressing angst sadgsghdf 

10. Is there anything you would like to be better at? Writing certain scenes or genres, replying to comments, updating better, etc.

i would love to be a little more consistent in writing. my concentration is bad and often i can’t get into the flow when i’m working on something. usually i add something to a wip every few days, then one day i write 1000 words and then continue editing sentences here and there, jumping from scene to scene, deleting smth and then adding 57 words. like...i often feel like i can’t get into the scene i’m writing and it feels like i’m watching it on the outside instead of being the writer? whenever i can focus properly i get solid, consistent, meaningful writing done, but honestly 80% of me doing anything is messing around and i have to do A LOT of damage control before everything is finished? 

this is related to what i just described but i’d also love to be able to write chronologically because i feel it makes the story and the journey more real when i’m actually working through what my characters are feeling/experiencing throughout the story? instead of writing an exciting plot thing A and an exciting plot thing number B and then later writing the boring parts inbetween. 

i have a lot of problems with plots in general - i feel it’s easier for me to write 2 k about, like, yuuri making tea in the morning, than writing 2k about someone walking to the store and buying milk. i’m better at describing moments and feelings than concrete plot points or someone dojng something? idk. 

11. Do you write rarepairs or popular ships more often?

popular ships. i mean, i might read rarepairs but i usually have one or two otp’s from each fandom i write about. i’d love to write about chrisabek one day though sgdfg. 

12. How many stories have you posted on AO3 to this day (finished and unfinished)?

18 ???? what how when has this happened?? .  13 of those are yoi and the rest either drarry or johnlock. 

13. How many stories do you have saved in/with your writing program?

18 published works and about....25-30 unfinished things? some over 10k words, some less than 500. also but i wrote A LOT of original shit when i was like 16-18 so if i count those in the number would be about 100 probably

14. Do you write down story ideas, or just keep them in your head?

i write them down potential ideas, but i have a lot of headcanons i don’t write down because i don’t think i have the ability to write them. but most of my ideas go to google docs/notes. 

15. Have you ever co-authored a story?

yeah, i actually have one wip going on with someone :) it’s unfinished but maybe we’ll finish it one day? it’s drarry and super sweet. 

16. How did you discover AO3?

i really can’t remember? i wish i could? but it probably in 2012 when i got into the sherlock fandom. 

17. Do you consider yourself to be a popular or famous author in your fandom(s) on AO3?

i don’t think so omg, but i’m really glad people read my stuff! but i’m definitely more known in the yoi fandom than the others i’m in bc my drarry/johnlock fics get like 5 comments, max, whereas i can get 20 comments to my yuri on ice stuff! :) it’s really nice that people read my stuff fhdh 

18. Do you have a nickname or fandom name for your readers?

omfg no but everyone who reads my stuff is an actual Angel  

19. Was there an author who inspired or encouraged you to write?

yeah, a lot! a lot of original fiction authors & a lot of fanfiction authors! whenever i read a good text i’m like “wow, this is awesome, i wish i could write this well” and that always gives me a huge boost. the support of my friends is really encouraging and inspiring, too. 

20. What writing advice would you give to a beginning author?

the “i will be a stronger writer after i finish this piece” is REALLY good advice, because...not everything you write will be the best you’ve done and you maybe feel like your writing has some flaws or something. but you know what? even if it’s not perfect, you’re a lot more experienced writer when you’ve done it. i do the “it’s gonna be shit anyway so i’m not gonna write it” thing quite often but then i have to remind myself that every single word i write gets me closer to being better, so i plunder through. and when i get finished with something, i usually think “well, this is not my strongest work but i’m glad i did it” and!!!! that’s really it!! i took part in otayuri reverse bang this spring and god i wanted to give up so so many times and i wrote lots of plots for it because i didn’t like ANYTHING i did. but i got through it, and while i think that the two stories i did for it are the worst i’ve written, it’s still 18 000 words more than i would have written if i hadn’t participated :) be your own biggest supporter & give yourself time to practise & be super proud and happy about what you’ve achieved so far!! <3 you wrote 10 words today? THAT’S 10 WORDS MORE THAN IT WAS BEFORE. you had a huge writer’s block so instead of writing you just wrote down some plot point you wanna write later? YOU PLANNED SOMETHING. you couldn’t even plan, you just opened your computer and gave up? YOU TRIED AND RESPECTED YOUR LIMITS TODAY AND THAT’S AMAZING. 

21. Do you plot out your stories, or do you just figure it out as you go?

i usually plan big plot points but figure everything else out as i go? planning in actually one of my weaknesses and instead of making a plan and sticking to it, i just wait for inspiration and get as much done as i can before it goes away, lol. 

22. Have you ever gotten a bad comment on a story? If so, what did you do?

not really :) everyone has been really sweet to me. 

23. Is there a certain type of scene that you have a hard time writing? (action, smut, etc..)

action scenes are pretty hard? i think i’m better at writing dialogue and feelings than action or something dramatic happening. i’m working on it and i would love to get more edge to my writing! 

24. What story(s) are you working on now?

i’m finishing the last part of my heart’s a radio (it beats for you so listen close). the chapter is what i intended to write in the first place (yuri and otabek seeing each other at world’s and getting it on in a hotel room) but then i just....needed to have 14 000 words of stuff before it, apparently. 

i’m also working on a drarry fic that has been in my drafts for a long time. it’s about 8k and i think it’s going to be 10-13k, and that’s fine. it’s all about margaritas and blowjobs and being hungover, basically. it’s really fun to write lol.

and then i have this captive prince smut one shot that’s also like half-done. it’s really fluffy and sappy but still just smut. 

aaaaalso i’m trying to finish the next chapter for my viktuuri dog sitter au fic now my heart stumbles on things i don’t know ! i’ve been procrastinating because i don’t really have a plot for it planned yet. 

25. Do you plan your next project(s) before you finish your current ongoing story(s)?

i have too many ideas in my head constantly and that makes it reaally hard to focus on finishing something before jumping onto something else. that’s why i have tons of wips and no finished works, lmao. 

26. Do you have a daily writing goal set for yourself?

not really. sometimes i try to push myself by setting goals, but in the end it really stresses me out because i’m usually away from home at least 9 hours every day and my work is really physical and tiring so asfsgas i really don’t have the strength to write every day. now my goal is to finish three fics before the year ends. they’re all oneshots that are maybe 80% done, so i should be able to do it. 

27. Do you think you’ve improved as a writer since you first started?

i hope so but i really don’t know?? 

28. What is your favorite story that you’ve written?

hmm. it’se been really fun writing i am to see to it that i do not lose you series because i’ve gotten a LOT of positive feedback along the way! and i’m not done with the series - i have a chrisviktuuri smut oneshot planned in this universe, happening at the same time when yuri’s figuring out how to date™. it was the first part of the series that made me think that maybe people actually enjoy my stuff & that encouraged me to write more!

I also really liked writing a oneshot i hust posted yesterday - listen how, under the breastbone, the rhythm changes . i wrote my first yuri on ice fic about a year ago and i just really wanted to return to that moment and write smth sweet about viktor and yuuri. the story has no plot or anything, but it felt REALLY good to write bc i sort of want and need a lot of soft things right now! 

also i’m having SO MUCH FUN with the drarry fic i haven’t posted yet, omg. 

29. What is your least favorite story that you’ve written?

hmm. probably cautiously peering, absorbing, translating hey eve stop with the pretentious fic names  because it was basically my first multichapter fic and i feel like it fell apart a little? i had to write it in less than a month bc it was part of otayuri reversebang. i felt like the idea was good and that it didn’t reach its full potential? i have very mixed feelings about this fic. i haven’t been able to read it even once after i published it bc i’m so afraid of what i’ll find lmao 

30. Where do you see yourself (as a writer) in 5 years?

hopefully my english is a lot better then, at least! i hope that i’ve started writing original fiction, really :) 

31. What is the easiest thing about writing?

coming up with ideas!!! i don’t even use most of the ideas hat get in my head and i get lots of new ideas especially when i’m at work, out doing shopping, basically doing anything active??  but writing everything down, especially ideas you know will get 20-30k long once you start...damn. 

32. What is the hardest thing about writing?

managing long stories? i haven’t written very many longer (like, over 10k?) stories and dgsgsg it’s just hard to make the plot interesting with lots of interesting cliffhangers, sad parts, etc? it’s hard to balance everything. 

and yeah writing just in general is hard because it’s at least 80% writer’s block but having ideas flood your head and making it hard to focus on real life sfsg

33. Why do you write?

to express myself, i think? i still haven’t learn how to process my more uglier emotions through writing (it would be really helpful if i could) but i’m definitely writing about the kind of things i miss and would like to have for myself - someone being really happy, having lots of quiet mornings, being loved, maybe being a trainwreck but having something to cope through it, having a special connection with someone. idk. all kinds of things.

writing is fun and actually writing down the fics you’d want to read is super duper cool. i don’t get very much done in my life otherwise, so writing gives me the feeling of accomplishment i’m not getting anywhere else. 

i’m not very good at expressing myself so writing definitely helps with that, too. 

[tottwritesfanfic]

I was tagged by @humandisasterbuckybarnes (I totally didn’t even notice at first because I’ve been away from Tumblr, sorrryyyy!)

1. How did you come up with your username and what does it mean?

OOH. Well. This actually goes back a long way! The ‘tott’ part of TottWriter is really an acronym for the title of a series of fantasy novels I started writing in my teens. (They’ve undergone a lot of revisions since then.) I picked TotTWriter as a username when I joined a forum in 2006 because it summed up how I saw myself at that time, and it just sorta...stuck. As for what the acronym actually is? Gotta wait and see. 

2. Which fanfic of yours has the most feedback? (bookmarks/subscriptions/hits/kudos).

Ohgosh. Well, I think that one’s gotta be my Digimon fic Hope’s Fire, on pretty much all fronts. It’s my oldest, longest fic, and it’s posted on both Ao3 and ff, so it’s had plenty of time to accrue attention. 

3. What is your AO3 profile icon, and why did you choose it?

My Ao3 icon is a picture of a pen and paper roleplaying character I rolled a few years ago. (And was drawn by @iddstar, not me, because I am Not An Artist and Vic very much is.)

After finishing this I’m dropping the rest of it beneath a readmore, because it got a teensy bit long, and I complain bitterly if these hog my own dash.)

4. Do you have any regular/favourite commenters?

You know, I feel bad talking about regular commenters, given how irregularly I actually manage to post anything these days. I feel like it’s more appropriate for me to grovel and thank those people who have stuck with me this long. (I’m particularly grateful to @ittybittymattycommittee​ because it has been A While. You’re wonderful.)

5. Is there a fanfic that you keep going back to read again and again?

I’m...I mean, there isn’t really a particular one? I have a few which I’ve read multiple times, but I tend to read the really long fics, which make regular re-reads a bit trickier. I absolutely want to go back over fics I’ve loved and enjoyed and experience that again, but it’s tricky when they take so long, and I have so little time. 

...Actually, probably my most re-read fic is a YoI one called Rumble In Detroit. It’s a goddamn masterpiece which appeals exactly to my sense of humour. (Also only 6.4k, so totally readable in one go if you’re me.)

6. How many stories are you subscribed to? How many do you have bookmarked?

I’m really bad at bookmarking. I’ll read a fic, think, “This was awesome!” and then just...forget to bookmark it and pull my hair out later wondering what the hell it was. I scroll through my history to find stuff entirely too often. I have 53 bookmarked fics, and it should be way more. 

Conversely, I am very prone to hitting that subscribe button. I have ten pages of the dratted things apparently, and okay, some of those are now completed fics, but...every now and then I get an update notification and can’t remember what the actual fic was. 

7. Which AU do you find yourself writing the most?

...I mean, angsty ones? I don’t really have a preferred setting tbh, although more often than not there is something fantastical about what I write. Generally with my fanfiction I try to mix things up a lot more than my original fic. I make a point of trying to do as many different types of story as I can. Statistically though, Apocalypse/Dystopia scenarios and (surprisingly!) Soulmate AUs work out as the most common though. 

8. How many people are subscribed and bookmarked to you in total? (you can view this on the stats page)

25 brave souls have signed up for my infrequent update notifications (bless all of you), and the stats page shows me as having 201 bookmarks. 

9. Is there something you’d like to write about but are afraid of people judging you for it? (Feeling brave? If so, share it!)

I mean, I’m pretty sure people judge me for what I already write. I’ve got fics tagged with MCD, after all, and I’m probably straying into shipping wars with at least one of my stories. I’m plenty nervous about the reaction people will have to the end of some of my fics, but I figure...ehh. I write these stories because I love them, and I share them because someone out there is bound to find them passable. 

The only thing I won’t write under this name is explicit NSFW stuff, which is because, hey, I’m hoping to get YA fiction published someday, you know? I don’t want an underage reader looking my name up (see question 1 for why they might know it) and finding something like that.

10. Is there anything you would like to be better at? Writing certain scenes or genres, replying to comments, updating better, etc.

It’s funny, because this is something I technically am better at than I used to be in years past, but the main thing is actually sitting down and writing more regularly. Despite appearances, I’ve actually written a lot of fanfic recently (Secret Santas mostly), but I could have done more than that if I’d been able to manage my time better. Also if Life hadn’t come along to mess up my day, but, hey. Go figure.

11. Do you write rarepairs or popular ships more often?

I guess it’s a bit of both? I never used to set out to write ships at all, because for me, relationships are secondary to plot when writing, but they do seem to happen more than they used to. I’m a big multishipper though so I like to mix it up.

12. How many stories have you posted on AO3 to this day (finished and unfinished)?

I have 33 works on Ao3 in total. Of those...some are oneshots, 12 are in-progress multichapter fics and...um...one is a complete multichapter fic. Whoops.

13. How many stories do you have saved in/with your writing program?

*coughs and moves on*

For real though, I posted about this recently and it’s...including original fiction, we’re talking more than thirty, possibly over 40 by now. I very deliberately don’t keep track.

14. Do you write down story ideas, or just keep them in your head?

It’s a bit of both really. Sometimes I get an idea, and it’s too fragmentary to really do anything with, so I just sorta leave it in my head to fester and ferment. If I forget it, it probably wasn’t worth saving, but if it gets to the mindworm stage I write it down in my nearest notebook at the time and expand on it a bit.

...If it’s a really fun idea, I then track down that notebook later on and copy it out onto the computer where I can actually find it again.

15. Have you ever co-authored a story?

Not for yeeeears! My sister and I started co-authoring a story back when we were teenagers, but we never actually finished the project. I really enjoyed collaborating though - it’s fun to combine forces and see what each person brings to the table!

16. How did you discover AO3?

I honestly cannot remember.

17. Do you consider yourself to be a popular or famous author in your fandom(s) on AO3?

Hahahahaha...no. It’s okay though, I’m not doing this for fame or attention. I just get these stories in my head and the only way to remove them is to write them out.

18. Do you have a nickname or fandom name for your readers?

I don’t! I...honestly can’t think of a name, tbh. Names are my nemesis, why would I add more to my life?

19. Was there an author who inspired or encouraged you to write?

WELL. 

I’ve been writing stories for as long as I can remember. Probably since I was 6 or 7 (I can remember stapling paper together at school to make a “book” to write in). Probably I was doomed from the start, but the works of Tamora Pierce, Brian Jacques, Tolkien, John Wyndham and Sir Terry Pratchett are what shaped me from my teens onward. Those are the books I read which make me want to write my own. 

20. What writing advice would you give to a beginning author?

Look, it’s really tempting I know, but don’t share online just yet. If you’re just starting out, you really are far better off keeping your work between you and trusted friends. I always look back and marvel at how damn lucky I am not to have had regular internet access until I was 18.  

You see, it meant that all my early stories - from when I was figuring out who I was as a writer, and how I wanted to write - are tucked safely away where no one can shit on them. And people do. Not everyone of course, but some, and those first few years as a writer are the most fragile.

Every author builds up a thick skin over time, because trolls are gonna troll. But it’s hard, when you work on something and do your best, and someone leaves a shitty comment about it. To my mind, the most important thing you can do as a beginner is to shield yourself from that nonsense until you’ve found your feet. There will be time yet to post your stories. Wait until you can leave it to one side for a week and come back and not despise it. (Some level of “ohgodno” is expected for your own work pretty much forever, but you should at least feel some level of pride in your work first)

...it’s hard and it’s pretty unrewarding at first, I won’t lie. But think about it like this: beginner violinists often sound awful. No one wants to hear that. But if a musician can stick it through; work past the squeaking and the cringe-worthy missed notes... What you end up with is something which can reach right into someone’s heartstrings and leave a permanent impression. 

And that is every bit worth the slog.

21. Do you plot out your stories, or do you just figure it out as you go?

A bit of both! I have at the least a rough outline (sometimes a lot more than that) for almost all my stories before starting, but I generally add to and amend it as I go. 

22. Have you ever gotten a bad comment on a story? If so, what did you do?

I think maybe once? It really wasn’t too bad though, so I just left it be. I’ve been stupidly lucky with my readers and love all of you.

23. Is there a certain type of scene that you have a hard time writing? (action, smut, etc..)

I was about to say NSFW stuff, and then I remembered confession scenes, which differ from NSFW in that I actually write those sometimes, and they take approximately five hundred times longer than literally anything else, including the smut which I hate writing so bad I practically never do it. Confession scenes are freaking hard.

24. What story(s) are you working on now?

TOO MANY. For real though, I have 3 secret santas, 3/4 active HQ fics, Hope’s Fire, and more which are sorta lurking in semi-activity beyond that. I have zero chill.

25. Do you plan your next project(s) before you finish your current ongoing story(s)?

...I mean it’d be great if I could finish an ongoing story, NGL.

26. Do you have a daily writing goal set for yourself?

Nope! I try to stick to one during NaNo, but outside that life just sorta gets in the way too often.

27. Do you think you’ve improved as a writer since you first started?

I mean, the answer is yes either way, but I tend to distinguish the various phases of my writing? age 6-12 was half-arsed writing. Just sorta jotting down stories and not really thinking too much about them. From 13-16 I was so preoccupied with writing and finishing my novel that I didn’t leave room for such trifles as quality control. 16-24/5 was slow but steady improvements. 

At 25 I realised hot damn, I have a lot to learn, and that is the point at which I consider that I started getting better for real.

28. What is your favorite story that you’ve written?

You know, it sorta depends? Assuming we’re talking fanfic only (or, sorry, but my novel beats them all), I actually...really like the Trinacrifom series? 

29. What is your least favorite story that you’ve written?

It was for a telephone prompt, it’s less than 600 words, nope, I’m not sharing it XD

30. Where do you see yourself (as a writer) in 5 years?

I mean I’d like to say something like “getting paid for it”, but we all know I’m still gonna be here writing fanfic instead of my original work.

31. What is the easiest thing about writing?

For me it’s actually the ideas! I keep getting them pop into my head.

32. What is the hardest thing about writing?

…Actually finishing things.

33. Why do you write?

At this point, writing is a little like breathing for me. It’s my identity. It’s who I am. I have so many ideas in my head and the only way to get them out is to write them, so I do. I hope that people enjoy them, certainly, and I want to think my words have an effect of some kind, but ultimately storytelling is hardwired into me and I don’t know how to stop.

Oh! Tagging. Right, after that textwall how about I pass the buck to someone else, hehe. @draculasstrawhat, @lethesomething, @iddstar and @quinnlocke as well as anyone else...if you wanna, you know? (No one’s obligated tho)

[bekasyura]

ALL NUMBERS BC GO BIG OR GO HOME

Alright time to procrastinate by answering all these fanfic questions. They’re all under the cut

1. What was your first fic and could you stand to reread it today?

Based on the first one that’s on my surviving ffnet, it was dramione and no I could not stand reading it today for certain reasons I don’t want to discuss.

2. What’s your most recent fic and how far do you think you’ve come?

My most recent is The Sn Sets deals with grief and mourning after a canonical character death which is not something I write often. I think the emotions in it could have been better but I’m still satisfied with how it turned out. I think I’m at a place in my writing where I can attempt fics with that kind of emotional level.

3. In your opinion, what’s your best fic?

I have no opinion on this but my best friend and brother say “Covered in my Art”

4. In your opinion and without looking at any numbers, what’s your most popular fic?

Well, I only have 2 actual popular fics so I easily remember them. My most popular is my victuuri post-episode 7 kiss fic. I posted it just a couple of days after that episode aired so naturally it shot up.

5. Is there any fic that makes you super happy to reread and remember you wrote that?

I hardly reread my fics. I just can’t bring myself to do it. But one that I’m happy I wrote is 

6. Is there any fic that makes you super embarrassed to reread and remember you wrote that?

I get embarrassed reading them all. 

7. What’s the fic you most want to continue (unfinished or no)?

I am looking forward to continuing my Living Legends series (YOI Tattoo Shop AU)

8. What’s the oldest (longest since last update) fic you most want to continue (unfinished or no)?

My Star Wars Mummy AU. It’s been almost a year now and I still have all my notes and outline for it. I just need motivation.....

9. Have you ever written for a fandom without watching/reading/playing the source material?

Nope. I’m picky about what I write about and it has to be something I’m really into in order for me to watch it. 

10. Have you ever written for a fandom without reading other fanfic for it?

I’m picky for what I read as well so if I’m writing for it, I’m most likely reading it as well. 

11. Have you ever written a fic for a concept you know someone else has done before? How did it impact your writing process or feelings after posting?

Well there’s always writing popular tropes that everyone does but what comes to mind first is my Mummy AU. It was my idea first but someone got inspired by my editset I made of it and before I could post my first chapter of the story, someone else did it. They finished the fic before I could get my done and so it made me lose interest in continuing mine even if there were enough differences between ours. 

12. Have you ever written a fic and decided never to publish it? Why?

I’ll have a bunch of ideas I start and never finish for various reasons. But I pretty much publish everything I write.

13. What’s the biggest change between your style when you started in fandom and today?

Besides the fact that I don’t suck as much as I did 13 years ago? I’m still working on it but I feel like I’m able to set a scene better with description and narration has gotten better. 

14. What’s the biggest change in your taste between when you started in fandom and today?

Don’t know if this answers the question but I guess sticking to what I like and not conforming to the popular ideas of how certain characters/ships should be written. 

15. Have you ever purposefully written one fandom/fic idea over another because you knew it’d be more popular?

*stares at victuuri post episode 7 kiss fic* 

16. Have you ever stopped writing a fic/for a fandom because it wasn’t receiving enough attention?

That might be one reason I stopped writing Marvel fics

17. In your opinion, what’s your most overrated fic?

Honestly, “Closer”. Don’t get me wrong, I really like the fic even if I haven’t read it since I posted it, but I don’t know if it’s good for all the kits and kudos it’s gotten.

18. What’s your most underrated fic?

Any femslash or polyship fic or rarepair fic

19. If you had to pick one fic/scene/chapter of your work to describe your entire portfolio to a stranger, which would you pick?

Oh shit um....

20. Have/Would you ever rewrite a fic? If yes, would you take the original down?

I have considered it for two Merlin fics and I would do it in a heartbeat if I could but since they’re part of big bangs I can’t.

21. If someone starts kudosing and commenting your fics in a spree and has a few works of their own, would you go look through theirs?

Yeah I sometimes do

22. Has there ever been anyone who’s made you freak out because they read your work and followed/favorited/reviewed?

People would actually have to read my works first. I just get excited to have anyone reading my stuff tbh

23. What’s the nicest review you’ve ever gotten?

Most are on my “Not ‘He’” fic with readers sharing their experiences with me in relation to my fic. It was an amazing feeling to see that my fic connected with people on such a personal level like that.

24. What’s the meanest review you’ve ever gotten? Do you think the reviewer intended it?

I’ve gotten some kind of rude ones that were too pushy for updates but one that sticks out was just someone going off on their own rant about gender identities on the above mentioned fic. I don’t think they intended to come off as bad as it sounded but it wasn’t fun to read nonetheless. 

25. What constructive criticism, however well-meaning, always makes you feel bad when you see it in a review?

Mostly dealing with simple grammar mistakes because that’s stuff I should know but still always forget.

26. What aspect of your writing do you most enjoy to see praised?

Characterization because no one wants to read a fic where the characters are so ooc it takes them out of it. So being able to capture the character, especially in an AU, is the best thing to hear.

27. If you could only ever write crossovers or single-fandom fics ever again, which would you pick?

Single fandom fics. I don’t really do crossovers.

28. If you could only ever write for a single crossover or a single fandom again, which would you pick? 

Yuri!!! on Ice. I honestly have plenty of ideas to keep me going. 

29. Does the division of your writing across fandoms line up with your reading? What’s the biggest discrepancy?

((skipping))

30. Do you continue to write for a fandom after you’ve moved on or do you focus solely on the new one?

If you looked at my AO3 chronologically, you will see where I stop and start a new fandom. But there are some fandoms I will write at the same time. But there will be a focus on the new one. 

31. Who’s the one character you’ve just never managed to get perfectly right?

I feel like it’s Clint Barton despite how much I love him. I think it’s because of that I feel like I can’t write him well.

32. Who’s the one character who shines without you even trying?

I feel like I have Yuri Plisetsky down pretty well.

33. Is there any particular character whose scenes always wind up being longer/more frequent than you expected? Does the quality hold up?

It really depends on the fic and what I’m writing. Some characters may steal the scene but it usually turns out well. 

34. Was there any fic that you wrote that really surprised you in the fandom reaction? Was it just by the numbers or did they take it an entirely different way?

I was surprised to see so many people interested in “Covered in my Art”. AUs can be hard to sell and while it’s not the most popular tattoo shop au, it still got a better response than expected. 

35. Have you ever written a ship into a fic without meaning to?

I accidentally wrote past Yuuri/Phichit in my recent Phichit/Leo/Guang-Hong fic. I guess that hc is so set in my mind I can’t help but write it lol

36. Have you ever sincerely written a ship you do not support into a fic?

Yes but it was a commission fic so I kinda had to

37. Have you ever purposefully bashed a character/ship in a fic?

Regrettably in the past when I was younger and didn’t know better. But I have learned from that.

38. Have you ever purposefully written something you know your readers would find uncomfortable/would not enjoy? If yes, why?

Besides like injuries, not really. 

39. Do you consider yourself to have a readership?

I know I can count on like 3 people to read my fics and they’re the best peeps ever.

40. Do you feel like you put out enough content?

I do now after going so many years hardly writing anything. I still feel like I could do more.

41. If you cross-post your fics on multiple sites, do you have a favorite? Are there certain fics you would only post on certain site?

I mostly post on AO3 but I’m slowly adding my fics back to ffnet just to have them hosted in two places. I definitely prefer AO3 because I love the tagging system. 

42. How many views has your most popular fic gotten?

7k and I know it’ll be the only one

43. Your least popular?

less than 50

44. Do you follow/favorite/kudos/comment/review more stories than you have received?

Yes because I try to kudos and comment on anything I read that I liked. 

45. If you had to call yourself an author of a single genre (besides fanfic) what label would you give yourself?

Fluff. It’s a genre now.

46. Do you consider yourself a diverse author?

I would like to be but probably not. 

47. If someone you know in real life who isn’t involved in fandoms asked to read your work, would you let them? If yes, what would you recommend they read first?

No. While I have no problem telling people I write fanfic now, I don’t want them reading my writing. 

48. Does anyone you know from outside of fandom know you write fanfic? Are they involved in the same fandom too?

Not really. I don’t just walk around telling everyone I write it. It still has to be brought up and I feel comfortable telling them. 

49. Has anyone in your life ever read your fanfic just because you wrote it?

Yes because I make my best friend read it.

50. Has writing fanfic had a significant impact on your life? Would you say it’s entirely positive?

I’ve literally been writing fanfic for half my life now so it’s definitely had a significant impact on me. For the most part it has been positive. It’s given me a way to express myself and make my voice be heard. There have been times it stresses me out and I feel anxious about it but I wouldn’t stop writing because of that.

[egregiousderp]

Ten first lines, published (AND NOT!)

This looked like fun, but that was before I realized the first line of Like the Universe was straight up white heat comedown moment.

Er. Ignore that one if you like?

Titles or works in brackets are things I’m still working on at the moment in my ongoing Bear files.

And Vision and Glow probably have a different style because they were made based on pieces of artwork by @naniiebim

— Luck Beyond the Pale

When he sees him the first time after the beach, Chirrut is grinning, beatific, pale blue fingers outstretched towards a colony of small, horned children with tattooed faces, offering to tell them their futures in exchange for valuables he cannot in fact collect, scattering koans about the Force like pennies into a bowl.

(I’d actually forgotten I wrote this and a reread of the piece still leaves me surprised it was a two-hour work resulting from my sister’s flight being delayed by a potential bomb threat. Not something you can just tap into whenever though.)

———

—Like the Universe

When the blind man comes it's with a stifled noise, small, like he's hurt him, torn some fragile thread between them irreparably, so all Baze can do is stand still, in silence, a spurt of hot liquid cooling on his knuckles, Chirrut's forehead shuddering against his, his robes hiked up around his waist and his legs hooked around Baze's middle, two fingers still buried deep in the hot, shivering, clenching heat of him.

(UHM.)

———

— Vision

They marry young.

(Boy do they.)

———

— Glow

Chirrut Îmwe is listening to the rain.

(I actually have a left hurricane mix of wind and rain noise and thunder I made just to write that fic, and if I remember correctly, it was written in the Irma aftermath.)

———

— [The Spaces where We Will Fit]

”Is that your gun or are you-?” Chirrut pauses with his grin frozen on his face, standing in their doorway. The smile drops almost instantly, joke falling flat with the realization. “That’s your gun.”

(Guardians of the Whills E-rated direct scene continuation that I’ve been working on for about a year. Also ironically started out as a public prompt, which instead led to crazy worldbuilding and my Hella anti-Jedi bias coming out. The first lines for this went up once for a “write three lines” meme. Spoilers: Baze is also happy to see him.)

———

— [The Little Time Between Wakings]

Baze Malbus can and will sleep anywhere.

( @rockcandyshrike wanted Chirrut POV. This one’s almost done. It’s in final edits. “Chirrut wakes Baze up in the middle of the night”.)

———

— [Guardians of the Whales]

“FULL SPEED!” Screamed the first mate, pointing at the blurred shape of the shore. “FULL SPEED AHEAD!”

(Mer!Baze and Mer!Chirrut fic that was supposed to be for Nan, which turned into a really weird flex of how much Marine Bio shit I randomly know, and also a sort of weird late-1700s thing where the rebels are all implied pirates, and these two are essentially lost sea monsters of shade different species, in Love.)

———

— {Modern Dreamers}

The client can smile as much as he wants as long as he pays is a personal rule.

(Modern AU meshed with reincarnation AU, but only people with the Force dream about their past lives. Set in 2015 San Fransisco, and brought back into my working folder when @briny literally shouted into the void for a mystery fic, and when I went to help them find it, it turned out it was mine.

I’m wary of putting ongoing fics up chapter by chapter but I might upload the first bit of this anyway because it was technically already here and because how often does someone look for Your Fic?

Spiritassassin on main, but with a mess of rarepairs and the full Rebels and Rogue One cast. Potential Murder subplot. Real Life Robotics. Baze thinking he’s straight. The Force is a cat. I have never written Modern AU before.)

———

— [Like Death Upon Your Skin]

“You ever think they must be doing something weird in there? The Comforters? You know...when they give the last reading?”

(Last Words soulmates AU for @sarkastically that got really really dark and heavy dealing with the ideas of what a world would be like if Soulmates were really normalized and brought into the Whills religious setting? Not sure if this one is ever going up because it started getting pretty hard into the idea of Child Abuse and Abuse survival. Also it’s just really SAD. This might be one to pass around under the table just because JEEZ SKUUN. I know depressing is kind of my brand but this one is...really.

Really.

Selectively Mute Baze, Grief counselor Chirrut who secretly doesn’t believe in soulmates. “What is love anyway?”)

———

— [?]

The point of fact is Li Shang, current General, and once-captain of the Emperor’s army, co-savior of all of China, has no idea how to talk to girls.

(My sister watched Mulan and I got so...stuck with this idea of this good, perfect, up-to-now-dutiful son Shang starting to get scared he’s ruined something because the Emperor told him to marry this girl but he can’t get it up. Because he’s still in love with Ping.

Meanwhile, Mulan is delighted because her husband made her a man she could look at in the mirror and see something worthwhile in, buuuuut now she’s expected to go back to being this nothing?

Hmmmmmmm I think we can eventually find a middle ground here.

Disaster wife and “Maybe I’ll pretend I have control and command over this situation” Husband: the roof-climbing, ill-advised, farming-included adventure.

Not sure I’ll ever post the happy genderqueer marriage adventure even if I do finish it because...I mean...Disney fandom...

*whispers IT’S SO YOUNG*

I don’t want to be that person, you know? Feels like it’s just asking for trouble. but the work itself has been really cathartic so. We’ll see maybe. For another thing it’s gotten me a surprising amount of historically accurate advice. XD)

———

I work pretty hard on my opening lines or concepts a lot of the time so I’m glad most of these seem engaging in their own ways.

Seems like a favor either opening dialogue or some sweeping statement. ^^;;;;;;

Hopefully the current projects sound like something to look forward to too! I’ve had to abandon a few, and I’m already not fast or particularly brave.

First Lines

RULES: List the first lines of the last ten stories you published. Look to see if there are any patterns that you notice yourself, and see if anyone else notices any! Then tag some friends.

Open-endedly tagged by @raven-brings-light​, but this is cool so I’m taking them up on it.

((So apparently all my first lines are pithy one liners or context-less dialogue. Also I have got to stop cheating and using song lyrics for all my titles.))

Only Human (After All): “Hello, Newton. How are you feeling today?”

Give In (Or Just Give Up): “Why are you even bothering with that thing? It’s not a kaiju.”

I’ll keep telling this lie (if you keep believing it): It’s only later that Hermann gets the whole story.

Five Times It Wasn’t A Date (+1 Time It Was): Kacchan had him cornered, trying to intimidated him again, or maybe just taking out his frustration on the easiest target.

Green Light: It’s not the first time Toshinori has been tied up.

Theia Mania: It had taken an extra week on a job that was already two weeks too long, but Baze was finally home.

Game, Set, Match-make: Holiday Edition: It was a week before Christmas, snow was reluctantly accumulating in the tired grass of the academy campus, and Nemuri and Hizashi had a plan.

Things I Always Meant to Say: “Chirrut? It’s me.”

Operation: Get Toshinori A Life: Aizawa had thought — and he’d thought about it more than he cared to admit — that things would change after Toshinori lost All Might.

Give me your tomorrows: The ship they flew out on was, if Baze was being generous, a clunker. 

Tagging @demyrie and anyone else who like to do it!

[flydotnet]

Tears of Venus

VRAINS Rarepair Weeks 2018-2019 - Day 10: Soulmate AU/Hanahaki

Summary: The first time she heard about the disease of unrequited love was when she was browsing the Internet for some stories to read while waiting for a pirated movie to download on her laptop. It seemed to just be a legend, a trope used by fanfiction writers and mangakas to have some tension, death stakes and angst for their characters’ relations. It was a way to add weight to a situation that, otherwise, may not have had it. This trope, because of its widespread character, was referred to “Hanahaki”. It was merely something to make people’s imaginations work and to break hearts in anticipation and suspense. It was all fiction even if, would she pay attention to probably false witness accounts, some said it was an actual thing, albeit very rare, and whose only cure really was reciprocated love. Ah, as if.

(Or: Ema doesn't believe in urban legends, and it bites her back)

Fandom: Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS Ships: Hireshipping (Ema/Akira), background platonic Ema & Aoi

Wordcount: 4.5K words

Notes: Realizing I'm writing these characters borderline OOC hurt more than it should have. (but hey at least it'll still be more accurate than most DSS-centric depictions of Yusaku and Ryoken amirite)

Y'all saw it coming, I saw it coming, everyone saw it coming, and I'm really proud of bring 4.5K words of Hire Hanahaki angst-H/C-whatever onto the table. This story is a weird mix but it was a blast to write, holy shit, I love angst and I love Hanahaki. But like I'm probably the one who proposed it in the first place for the event's prompt list so... Yeah. That has to be the longest oneshot I've ever written in one sitting.

Also, you'll quickly find out why this fic has a name that has nothing to do with flowers... at first glance.

Event hosted by @vrainsrarepairweeks

AO3 version available here.

The first time she heard about the disease of unrequited love was when she was browsing the Internet for some stories to read while waiting for a pirated movie to download on her laptop. It seemed to just be a legend, a trope used by fanfiction writers and mangakas to have some tension, death stakes and angst for their characters’ relations. It was a way to add weight to a situation that, otherwise, may not have had it.

This trope, because of its widespread character, was referred to “Hanahaki”. It was merely something to make people’s imaginations work and to break hearts in anticipation and suspense. It was all fiction even if, would she pay attention to probably false witness accounts, some said it was an actual thing, albeit very rare, and whose only cure really was reciprocated love.

Ah, as if.

 It’s when scrolling through the Internet again that Ema remembers about Hanahaki. She has heard rumours about someone in Den City being afflicted by the curse of flowers growing in their lungs because their beloved doesn’t love them back. It has this sensationalist character to it that makes people instantly intrigued: of course that’d reach her ears and that only sceptical and boring people would ignore it.

Thinking of overly-rational people who tend to see things the boring, practical and down-to-Earth way, she wonders what Akira would think about that. Aoi would be at least intrigued, considering her favourite Monsters are partially based on flowers (Lilybell, Holly Angel, Narkissus, Bella Madonna, Nightshade…), but her brother would most certainly dismiss it as yet another irrational legend. Oh well, it’s funnier to imagine his dismissive reactions to it rather than Aoi’s developing teenage curiosity.

 As such, she can’t help herself but mention these in a meeting they have for a new mission he’s giving her for, admittedly, a generous sum of money. If they were near her birthday, she’d see it as a gift: as it stands, it’s probably to be sure she doesn’t go to see if she can extort even more money from businessmen with little hacking knowledge (as it stands, Akira does have some and used to be better than her at it: his knowledge just caught all the dust around the place as soon as he could stop hacking to survive, or so she thinks at least). To be honest, when it comes to their personal relationship, she’s better off getting a bit less money but ensure she can tease her hirer about his awkward side.

“Have you heard about the person in the city who has flowers in their lungs?” she asks him as she thinks back to that story going across Link VRAINS and other social media outlets.

He doesn’t reply immediately, but when he does, it’s just as she expected him to do: “Hanahaki isn’t real, Ema. It’s just rumours going around.”

“I figured you’d respond that. You’re predictable, you know?”

He reddens at the insult before they part ways to go on their merry day and tasks.

 Still, it’s quite the heavy tip for what’s that job is worth. It’s simply making sure an AI chip doesn’t go rogue again in his boss’s back. It’s not risky, it’s not the worst he’s asked her to do, and yet he’s paying her extensively. Did he get a rise in his salary or something? Or is it Aoi’s way to thank her yet again for all her services? In both cases, it’s unnecessary and, for once, she doesn’t feel like accepting this big sum. Well, why does she find it so weird? Maybe Akira just overestimated what the job was worth because of all the “doing that in the back of the big boss of a gigantic company” gig.

When she gets paid for it, merely twenty-four hours later, the payment has even more of a tip joined to it, along with what seems to be a virtual present. Okay, that’s it, Akira is really overestimating his missions’ worth and wanting her to stay here. Fine. He better not make such a fuss about it anymore: that’s embarrassing to see him dig his grave even deeper all by himself. She accepts the tip anyway, thinks of what perfume or makeup set she could by herself with it because the ones she has already start to grow old, and settles on something glittery for once.

 The rumours precise themselves in the following days. The city now knows who the poor, poor sickie is: a man, presumably old enough to feel love but still young enough to worry himself over romance of all things. That’s all there is to it, but at least people have a precise noun or pronoun to use on that guy. Ema stays alert of it: it’s amusing to see all that speculation for something that has so many chances to turn out to be yet another urban legend spread through the streets and posts on social media. She never expected manga to have such an important cultural impact.

She starts to talk about it with Aoi over the net, the teenage girl being interested in what this is all about. Ema runs her through all she knows about it, from the little things she once read online to what is currently the consensus on today’s legends. A question then comes from Aoi who hesitates between believing in it for its Romanesque nature and doubting it because her brother taught her to be doubtful of everything she hears (even his opinions, but she has forgotten to do that for the most part), an interrogation that should have never interested Ema as much as it did: “Do we know what type of flowers it is? I’ve heard depending on the species that it can be a hint with flower symbolism”.

 Frankly, Ema doesn’t know anything about flower language or symbolism because she simply never buys flowers for anyone. The only times she does are when visiting her late father’s grave: she simply does like her mother does every time and put there a bouquet of forget-me-nots. Kengo has a slightly other idea of what to put on there, but she hasn’t taken the time to research it either. They have never discussed it yet: she gives him the time to recover from the idea that they are, indeed, brother and sister and should probably stick together even if he always wants to work alone.

The rumours come to her again when Aoi brings these up herself in their little conversation. According to a few, differing versions, this affected person has yellow carnation, anemones or daffodils growing inside their lungs. Quick searches on the Internet confirm Ema in her idea that this is all an urban legend spread among teenagers and people in need of sensationalism: really, flowers symbolizing unreciprocated love, deadly illness or rejection? Come on, this is too cliché to be real, too much like a poorly-written shojo manga to be happening in her plane of reality. She tells Aoi about that, how artificial it all sounds, how everything is way too much of a coincidence, but the girl still believes this may be happening near her while not giving much details aside from that.

 She takes another mission offer from Akira in a green-grassed parc in the city where cherry blossoms punctuate the floor and sky. He seems to not do so hot: if she isn’t mistaken, he’s usually not this pale and doesn’t have such dark rings under his eyes. Considering the recent crises at SOL Technologies which are, undeniably, partially caused by her doings, it wouldn’t be surprising for him to work overtime. He always manages to find a way to run himself to the ground anyway as if he was a fatigue addict. God, she’s glad she didn’t turn out to become a workaholic like him.

He coughs here and there, and that’s when he can’t keep it inside anymore, as he explains to her what it consists in this time. It’s eerily similar to last time, with too much money at the key again, and yet another element that shouldn’t be here: the way he slips in compliments on her capacity and resourcefulness, on how he’s grateful for her to always accept his mission offers. (That last part is wrong: she explicitly remembers turning down one or two offers in the past, and once of them recently on top of it). A sudden excess of gratitude coming from a man who never speaks about himself and his feelings simply gives off a wrong vibe on her? Does he want to seduce her or something? Because that won’t work. As it stands, Ghost Girl doesn’t do romance.

 The noise of the ever-going, omnipresent rumours soon inform her of even more details she isn’t asking for. The sick man is in his twenties, working for a company and, as they say, never revealed being infected with the disease to anyone. There is no clear evidence to support these claims, albeit she slowly starts to think about how this description fits Akira more and more. On the other hand, there are a ton of other men in their twenties working for big companies in this city who wouldn’t want anyone to know they’re coughing up flowers of everything a human being could cough out. That’s just unbelievable because of how ridiculous and impossible it sounds.  

There is still one picture that doesn’t live her mind. When she was leaving their meeting spot, she swore she could see him bent in half with a hand against a tree, coughing she guessed loudly. While this doesn’t exactly correlate to the rumour in its very details, the coincidence of this urban legend going around and a sudden striking coughing fit like that is still numbing at her mind from time to time during the day. Maybe she should wait for more information about the rumour’s sick man to confirm if this has any chance to be the case.

Well, she’s starting to believe it herself, and she finally understands for the first time was Aoi was willing to consider the possibility of the “Hanahaki Case of Den City” as it’s called to be real. The irony never stops.

 Soon enough, before she ever expected it to in fact, she learns of a new aspect of the rumour: the man affected by the case of Hanahaki works for SOL Technologies. Is linked to it a witness account by a secretary of the man who swore she had seen him cough more and more often, along with finding a tissue filled with wet and sometimes bloodied flower petals in his paper bin. That is one coincidence too much: that description would match Akira’s to the point she is certain he’s the basis for it. Maybe that secretary is the original source of the rumour’s more precise details. She has to be for such tiny precisions and descriptions anyway.

It starts to somewhat link inside her mind. He did look ill when they last saw each other, with how pale his skin was and how bad his coughing sounded at times. The more logical explanation – the one he’d take, in fact – is that he simply caught a bad chest infection somewhere, and it has around ninety percent chances to be the case. But then… He wouldn’t be afraid to not being able to thank her enough would it just be an infection like that, wouldn’t it? He sounded like he was going to go soon and never see her again. With how big her latest pay checks from him have been, she doubts it’s because he wants them to part ways.

 She gets a text message from “SOL Zaizen” on her phone right as she is about to ask Aoi if she has witnessed anything wrong with her brother. As soon as she opens it, she notices something has to be seriously wrong.

No matter what the offer is this time, she is going in-person to meet him and “discuss” the “matters”.

 When she arrives there, Ema gets her breathing stolen. Her footsteps are slow despite how much her mind is racing: he looks even worse than the last time, with a mask on the lower part of his face and deeper dark rings, a sickly red barely visible under the white of the mask, and her heart starts racing because he just seems to be doing terribly. She, however, cannot bring herself to run. How did he even get out of his house in that condition? The world may never know, after all.

“What the hell happened to you?!” is what manages to exit her throat as she walks up to him back against the wall.

“It’s complicated, really… I’ve also got a confession to make: I didn’t want to see you for an offer,” he replies with coughs interrupting his words every ten seconds or so, she isn’t sure, but it’s intense and almost frightening to see.

 Ema crosses her arms and waits in anxious anticipation for whatever he has to tell her.

“I’m… not sure of how I should go off about it,” he tells her in full honesty, hand in front of his mouth and the other arm around his chest, “so please excuse my abruptness.”

“You haven’t responded to my question, but go on, I guess.”

“I… I’m not sure how long I’ll last for, so… can you promise me to keep an eye on Aoi and Hayami for me?”

“Hayami is your secretary, right…? Wait, what the fuck are you going on about?!”

Akira gives her an excuse of a smile in return. There really is something wrong with this man.

“A… terminal illness of sorts, let’s put it that way… Which brings to something else I wanted to tell you…”

She cannot tell if his face actually is redder by the minute or if it’s just her noticing how ill he truly is.

“I… I may very well be in love with you, Ema…”

 Her world stops and shatters before her eyes. There isn’t a lot of people who truly matter to her in this little sphere of hers: her mother, her late father, her half-brother Kengo, Aoi, perhaps Playmaker for saving her life… and Akira. They have grown closer with the years and it’s only now that she realizes how much he does matter to her and how terribly she is receiving this. A terminal illness, so suddenly, for a man who isn’t even thirty yet? This is… this is awful.

And he’s revealing right here and now why he was being generous these past few days. He knew he was going to die and, perhaps, wanted to please her one last time. She can barely handle the first part of the news: the second is finishing her off. She wants to cry, to deny this as lies, but she knows better than this from Akira: he has never been as dramatic as her, down-to-Earth. For him to tell her all of this, it has to be true and urgent.

Her breathing gets caught in her throat and she cannot find the strength to answer.

 Ema externally freezes despite the storm taking place in her skull. Time has stopped and everyone else has disappeared from her consciousness as she helplessly stares, unable to move even a finger, at the man whose breathing suddenly gets worse and whose chest seems to squeeze before her widened eyes.

“I…” She attempts to respond. “I don’t know what to say…” She admits to him and herself all the same.

“It’s fine… I expected this to be sudden and shocking…”

Before he can finish speaking, another coughing fit takes a hold of him to the point of forcing him to uncover the bottom part of his face as to spit something.

 Everything shatters when Ema gets to see what’s coming out of his mouth or, to be exact, his lungs.

Flower petals.

Hanahaki is real.

An entire flower tainted in dark reds and smelling like spring and iron.

The Hanahaki Case of Den City isn’t just a legend, and he is the one they were speaking about.

 And it’s all because of her.

 She swallows a sob back as he puts back his mask and looks at her, eyes glassy and almost unfocused, tempted to look away in shame. This is tragically real, tragically close to home. Fuck this! Fuck this so much, from Hell and back!

“I… I’m sorry for this, very much so, Ema,” he tells her as he goes from supporting himself with an arm against the wall to doing so with his back leaning against it instead.

She timidly picks up the entire flower and tries to identify it.

“It’s an anemone,” he attempts to state very calmly, as if to ease her back into what she’s used to, but it’s all a failed façade.

Ema then remembers what she read online and what Aoi told her before: anemones are a symbol of death, illness and forsaken love depending on cultures. She can distinguish a faint blue hue to the one she has in her hand.

“I have to go,” he suddenly tells her in a faint and groggy voice, starting to lose his capacity to speak, “please take care, Ema…”

“I promise I’ll watch over Aoi for you, then,” she tries to look stoic when she just wants to cry. “Please… take care too, Akira,” she continues and ends her sentence as her legs finally move and take her away from the scene.

Another timid, sad smile.

 Her mind blanks during her trip back home on her bike, but as soon as she reaches her flat, all her tears fall from her eyes and trail on her cheeks. She pathetically lets her helmet go, takes off her shoes and lets herself fall onto her bed. She is causing another person’s death without ever meaning to, and one she cares about on top of it. Fuck. Akira deserved better than that kind of cruel and unusual death.

But there is nothing she can do about it, isn’t there? It’s uncurable and terminal unless feelings are returned, and there’s where it stings. She doesn’t love him the way he loves her: she has prevented herself from falling in love with anyone as to protect herself from heartbreak and ex-partner drama. She cannot respond back and that’s what is killing him.

This is all her fault, all her goddamn fault!

 She’s surprisingly dramatic and heartbroken about it, for someone who has already lost her father to an illness. She remembers being torn and extremely saddened for a few days following his demise, crying after him even, but she cannot for the life of her figure out why this is also such a tragedy with Akira. They’re friends, at best. Shady friends making unwritten contracts behind everyone’s backs, but friends and that’s it.

That’s surprisingly hurtful to hear herself think.

 She needs to calm down and think the situation through. Panicking and choking on her sobs isn’t going to make anything better. She gets up and paces in her flat, trying to piece together every fragment of her feelings she can decipher as to paint a global picture of her part of the situation. It’s a giant mess she’s facing with all the disdain she can have towards herself for never cleaning it up before today. Clean your room, they said.

There is no denial that she does care for Akira enough not to want to seem him go so early. Wait, early? That means she wants to spend more time with him, just like friends do. So, they’re friends, that’s for sure. Comparing to her other friends, she finds herself thinking more of what she felt towards now ex-partners… In a way, when she was surprised to hear him confess his love to her, a part of herself seemed to have rejoiced, or rather, to have been relived. That doesn’t make sense with all the sorrow she feels! Why would she be happy to be the reason why he’s dying young after spending so long trying to survive in the streets with a six-year-old under his wing?!

…Oh.

 Ema smashes her fist into a wall she finally, finally understands everything. Of course, of course that had to turn out to be denial all along! If she was so broken, so glitched out when learning of his upcoming death and how she was its cause, it was because she had, all along, wanted to be the cause of this. Well, not that way, but she was hiding her feelings to herself to avoid heartbreak again. If nobody could love her because she was shady and prone to backstabbing, when why should she allow herself to fall in love with others?

And then came in Akira, and everything fell apart because that illness, eventually, means nothing. It has no place to be because she has just learnt how things truly were: he’s in love with her, and she’s in love with him, and it’s all going to go down the sewer if she doesn’t do something soon. She has the power to change the tide, to prevent his early death. She needs to act, quickly.

She gets out her phone and gives him a last meeting time.

 The meeting happens the day right after, and she can guess by how he didn’t have any issue to respond “yes” to her pleas that he has been given an illness break by SOL Technologies (hah, surprising). To be fair, if Ema had made sure her motorcycle was all charged up, it was to ensure she could make it quickly to the hospital or the Zaizen flat in case everything would fall apart. As it turns out, she sees a familiar room and an even more familiar face come out of it.

Instead of waiting next to the tree where he asked her for the first time to do a mission for him and where he told her he loved her, she runs up to him in a worried hurry. Despite his bittersweet smile and his ever-so polite “Hello, Ema”, she feels how fragile he is in her arms, how she feels like she’s handling a crystal statue who matters so much to her, a statue she has fragilized by her own hands without meaning to. She has, after all, never truly wanted to destroy people, merely play with them and maybe be a bit mischievous. She wanted to be Aphrodite, to play with men and their desires and their capacity to spend money on her, not Death and her scythe reminding people of how feelings can suck.

But she’s no goddess.

Won over by the one naïve about love guy she’s met, that’s what she is.

 They sit down on a bench, his head on her shoulder because she’s afraid he won’t stand on his own in his spot of the bench if he doesn’t have some support, his unnatural body heat piercing through her clothes. That’s ironic to say the least. Despite how simplistic it seems to say three words to someone, she’s still hesitant and doesn’t know how Akira, the always-stiff man with zero skill in romance, has managed to pull this off. Her pride vanished the moment she knew she was killing him from the inside: she has nothing keeping her away from it, except maybe her guilt that doesn’t waver.

“How many days do you have left?” she asks instead, out of concern and morbid curiosity as to tell herself that, maybe, later, she’ll be able to be cocky about how narrow she saved someone from his death.

“They told me a week at most, probably less” he replies with his voice even weaker than yesterday’s, a petal exiting his lips. “I didn’t expect you to call me again so soon… My doctor will be mad to learn that I’ve come outside to meet up with you… Haha…”

Why does he everything he say or do break her heart, these days?

 Ema looks down, her sins facing her directly in the face.

“Akira, I’m not sure how I should tell you this knowing what’s going on with you,” she continues as earnest she could be. Her pride really ran away on her.

“It’s fine… I’m glad I didn’t scare you away yesterday… You seemed so shaken…”

“You’re not allowed to worry for me when you’re about to die, you… fool.”

Insulting the dying isn’t very cool either, Ema, you should know that.

“What I mean is that I have to tell you something too personal for it to be said on the network. It’d break its meaning.”

He sighs. She can just feel how weak his breathing has become over the past weeks through this single exhale and how barely audible it is. Declaring her love to a shadow hurts.

“It’s fine if you can’t do it anything about it… Just protect Aoi for me…”

“That’s where you’re wrong.”

 Despite his heavily weakened condition, she can still see how surprised he is to hear her say that. He should know better than anyone else that Ghost Girl can do anything. She excuses it for today, forever even, and holds her hand in his.

“I wish I could have been more dramatic than this, like I usually am, but this is an urgent matter and I won’t let you slip away from me so easily when it’d be easy to win against the illness,” she starts rambling almost as a way to shield herself from her own words.

Funny enough how curing his Hanahaki case seems so easy all of a sudden. She glances at him to see his eyes desperately trying to focus on her.

“I love you too, Akira.”

 There is a single, then a couple tears exiting his eyes as she finishes to tell that, and he somehow finds the strength to grip her hand as he coughs out what she guesses to be the last anemone to ever reside in his lungs without rotting away. She doesn’t know how the flowers in his lungs are going to fade away, but that’s not what matters for now.

She enlaces him from his side and pulls her against her own body, feeling the fever disappear in moments, breathing starting to sound normal again. He looks exhausted from fighting the illness, she is herself tired from crying and panicking, the smothering anxiety and fear of death soon to come taking their toll on them both.

“Could you… stay over for the night?” He asks her as he’s falling asleep. “The driver must still be here…”

“My pleasure,” she answers. “Let’s get there before I have to carry you like my bride to bed.”

 As she carries him on her shoulder again, they leave behind a trail of pale blue petals smelling like copper and iron. The last one people will ever see, she hopes. The last ones she’ll see for sure.

End Notes

Writing about Akira almost dying is my new specialty.

[reiverreturns]

Birna + Rollo for the character asks

First impression

Birna

High key loved her from the moment I met her. Something about Birna’s voice actor and that way her voice lilts just grabbed me and never let go (and here I am, still fawing over her +6 months after I finished the game)

Rollo

oh man WHAT A FIRST IMPRESSION. The way Eivor met Rollo was just iconic. His was probably one of the only character introductions that I know I’m going to remember for a long time.

Impression now

Birna

Birna is out and out one of my favourite characters in the whole game, maybe one of my favourites in the entire series.

The thing that I find most compelling about Birna is the way she approaches life. She’s chipper and upbeat and always sees the bright side, but it isn’t because that’s just the way she is. She’s had a hard life, sometimes lonely and painful. She’s also very clever (Soma calls her a brilliant strategist, and some of her longship stories describe how she uses people’s misconceptions of her to her advantage). A lot of people in her position with her faculties would turn to cynicism. But Birna rejects that. Instead she prioritises friendships, love, and fun above all else.

And it’s that conscious choice to pursue goodness that I find so interesting. It’s not easy – it sometimes requires sacrifice and making difficult decisions (like leaving Soma) but Birna ultimately knows that it’s worth it because only she can affect the happiness in her own life, you know? Basically, I think Birna already knows what Eivor takes an entire goddamn game to figure out at we love her for that.

Rollo

If I had to sum up Rollo in one word in the Valhalla universe it would be ‘potential’ (and, I gotta admit, potential slightly wasted in the context of the canon story.) I really love his character because he joins the crew at an oddly vulnerable moment, where he’s tasted the highs of power and leadership but kind of cocks it up by his own carelessness. And yet, you can still see those little flecks of the man he’s going to become when he tells his stories on the longship.

I particularly find the parallels between Eivor and Rollo interesting, even if they were never really expanded upon (both had family murdered by Kjotve, both were kind of removed from his threat but vowed to return and kill him to restore honour, so on.) Maybe Rollo acts as a little bit of a foil to Eivor? Like, had she given in to Odin’s influence more fully when she was younger, she might have ended up like him – hurting people and causing unnecessary deaths because of her own folly.

He’s such an interesting character, I just wish we had gotten a mission just more focussed on him (as we did with Birna in Soma’s arc.)

Favorite moment

Birna

Oh god there are so many. I adore every single one of Birna’s longship stories (I especially love when she doesn’t name names but calls out two of the crew for drunkenly pissing on the boat bc it’s just not a cool things to do) but if I had to choose a moment from the Grantebridge arc I’d probably go for when Galinn kills the Saxon prisoner claiming he was going to curse them and Birna replies “Christians don’t curse” in the most deadpan way possible. There’s something about the delivery that makes me laugh every time I see it. I’m also convinced that Birna realises Galinn is the traitor in that moment. If she wasn’t a suspect herself I swear that whole arc would have been finished in half the time.

Rollo

During the first meeting with Eivor at the brothel, when Eivor tells him she’s here to collect him and he just asks “can it wait?!” Like no shits given about what she could be here for, what Estrid wants, if there’s danger. Totally confident in his ability and only concerned with getting his dick wet in a reasonable timescale. Atta boy.

Idea for a story

I don’t actually have any specific story ideas for these two independently but I think it would be a lot of fun to write a bunch of ficlets about their life in Ravensthorpe and how their personal relationships develop.

I also pine for an angst fic with Birna coming to terms with Soma’s death but I am not the one who’s going to write it so I’m kind of at peace with the possibility of never reading it lol.

Unpopular opinion

I don’t think anyone in this fandom clowns about these two enough for me to validate if my opinions are unpopular lol. If I have to pick something, it would be that both of these characters would be underutilised just being raiders in the Raven Clan. I couldn’t see them staying with Eivor for very long unless they had greater roles in the Clan (I know Rollo eventually will go off to get a slice on Francia but y’know, still stands.)

Favorite relationship

Birna

In game – Birna x Soma. I’m a sucker for unrequited love at the best of times but Birna speaks with such affection about “my Soma” it melts my freaking heart.

Romantically – Birna x Randvi. I love the vibes, the idea, the concept, the chemistry. Forever hoping someone starts churning content for this rarepair because I’d inhale it faster than Kirby.

Platonically – Birna & Rollo. Ya’ll know this.

Rollo

In game – Rollo x Estrid. If you choose the wrong traitor in Rollo’s crew Estrid gets injured in the subsequent ambush and it’s v. cute to see Rollo helping her. Plus the way he speaks about what he’s learned about himself and his standards for women from being with her on the longship is just so good. Hell yeah Estrid you set those high standards for our boy.

Romantically – I don’t really ship Rollo with anyone romantically. I did joke about Swanburrow in a post ages ago but that could work – I feel he’d need a stern hand to tame him lol. But nah let Rollo go sow his wild oats in Francia, he deserves it.

Platonically – Rollo & Birna, because reasons.

Favorite headcanon

Birna

Oh I’ve posted this before but just that Birna is constantly playing small innocuous pranks all around Ravensthorpe and driving people half mad. I feel Hunwald would have gotten it bad when he was around. Rowan too. Basically any men who show a hint of uncertainty in Birna’s presence lol.

Rollo

Rollo was always kind a small as a child and into his early teenage years, he didn’t grow and catch up to his peers until quite a bit after. So because of that (and being teased about it), he has a liiiiiiittle bit of small man syndrome. Just a smidge.

ty for the ask! Send me a character