#but fanfic very much would not exist if not for someone else's world building and character development

[anyroads]

Posts I've seen in just the last week:

AO3 is one of the most visited sites in the world

It's ok if your fanfic [that you're writing for free in your spare time] is unfinished! You do you!

How very dare these WGA writers not finish writing my stories for me [that they spend full work days every day working on] just because they don't get compensated fairly for their paid labor and decided to go on strike?

Respect unions! Unionize your workplace! Respect picket lines!

Posts I have not seen ever but maybe it's just me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :

AO3 would not exist without the paid writers who are currently striking. You would have no stories to write fanfic of. The entire world your fic exists in was created by someone else's labor.

[weepingtalecowboy]

“I will go fix my issues”,he lied truthfully

Fanfic prompt : Or legend using the harp of ages to go help his past self after his uncle just died

By pretending he is his mom or something… but a very self hating and salty one who traumatizes his past self more than anything else ever did.

"You ever notice how your ‘uncle’ doesn’t look a thing like you? Wonder why he’s been so… generous? That’s because he bought you. Yes, you, little one, came into his life for the very humble price of a single green rupee and a bag of seeds . Feel special? You should. Those were probably stale seeds at that.”

Cue the young boy’s confused, horrified expression.

“Oh, don't worry, he’s been a decent guardian. Way better than if I’d kept you. I wouldn’t have paid for you at all. Would’ve sold you for even less. But hey, be grateful! Fate did you a kindness.”

Legend is living the dream that everyone had shared at some point to terrorize his past self.

As they trek through the wilds,Legend gives his younger self the kind of guidance you'd expect from someone who didn’t take parenting classes but aced "being a jerk" 101 , so basically just Legend as a person. “Alright, you little whiner, stop crying. People are going to think you’re weak. I mean, you already are, but it’d be nice to pretend. You have to learn to just… deal with it.”

Baby self, who’s just learned to talk: “I hate you.”

Legend, without missing a beat, grins darkly: “Yeah, I figured. That’s what makes you so special. You’re already a natural.”

Legend gives many advice ,that he thought he was teaching important lessons with.

Because he is a good mother.

He ruined his child self's life before the little guy even got beaten up by a guard.

Seeing his baby self—this pathetic, sad, scared little creature—is like looking at a version of himself that he desperately wants to erase from his memory. The fact that the baby version is so utterly harmless, so completely incapable of being a threat, makes Legend reach levels of contempt for the world never encountered before What world worth saving would ever consider this—this tiny, weak, helpless thing—a target for execution. His own actions, his whole history, his entire existence as a hero... they pale in comparison to how much he despises the weakness of his own past.

When he eventually encountered one he had to watch the gruesome scene of Legend incinerating one , it was fucking personal , the sheer amount of blood was making him feel… not good to say the least.

He did not want the other to follow him but he was very much baby and pretty sure that he would rather stand behind the one who was brutally beating up people then in front of him.

Legend really tries to be nice … but he is Legend and saltier than the namesake salt itself.

“Oh, you’re hungry? Yeah, well, get used to it. You’ll figure out how to go without food soon enough. It builds character. Or you could cry about it like you always do. See how far that gets you.” He offers a piece of dry bread, throwing it on the ground in front of him, just out of reach.

He is too salty for child rearing, no wonder his baby self is continuously crying behind him , and very much wincing internally when Link flinches from him.

The dark world section was even worse.

[eahtheramblings]

A deeper dive into how the destiny system would work in a rewrite

Alright, little housekeeping before I get into it, I have finally created a tag for the hypothetical rewrite fanfic that I keep procrastinating due to college - so people can use the tag to either find the posts related to it or block it depending on if they like/dislike my ideas. You can now find it under #RamblesRevamp. Felt after posting the time loop au idea that I should probably start creating tags for these or else it’ll get confusing very quickly.

Moving on, I have come across the problem that every eah fan and fanfic writer has to face after thinking about the story for a while; just how in the world does the destiny system actually work? 

The books and show give us some threads to make sense of it, we know it’s generational in most cases, and we know that signing the book ensures the story plays out again, but beyond that most things are speculation. It was definitely written as a looser magic system to ensure that no matter who was writing a special or a book for eah they would be able to bend the rules to fit the plot, but for something so central to the story it really feels like it should be fleshed out more. Luckly, this is the world of fanfic, and I am not beholden to make a story that can adopt different writers quickly, so I can world build as much as I want!

Below is a list of changes/rules/expansions upon the original destiny set up we were given that the Revamp AU follows. These rules are what the average character in the revamp AU would know:

Rule 1: Destiny is understood to be a set of two cycles, one for fairy tales that need to be retold every generation (snow white, goldilocks, etc.), and one for the greater myths that covers universal creation to universal destruction and would happen over billions of years (Greek myths like cupid would be here). Here's a very quickly made visual example: 

Behold! the Destiny Cycle, or Narrative Cycle as it’s sometimes called. When we start the story with Apple and Raven, they are on fairytale cycle number 1,017. No one knows how many myths cycle’s the universe has gone through since that encompasses the creation and destruction of the universe, but scholars enjoy debating about it and saying a person “thinks they know how many cycles the universe has gone through” is akin to saying a person thinks they know everything.

Rule 2:

Oftentimes in fairy tales the characters have set ages that are much younger or older than what someone who just graduated high school would be referred to as, such as little red riding hood and Hansel and Gretel being referred to as children, or other characters being referred to as old kings or hags. However, having everyone complete their stories at the age they would be in our version of the fairytales would negate the whole point of a high school to prepare students for redoing those stories. In the revamp au the storybook of legends gets around this by comparing the character’s ages not to each other or to a timeline but rather to itself. 

You see, the book is magic, it somehow holds signatures from every generation with an individual page for each character and yet looks to be the same size as a standard textbook. In essence, it is a non-Euclidian object, not tied to rational laws of time or space. If the book wants, a character can seem like a young child to it, it’s been around since the start of the cycle! And if it needs to write a character as old, then that character can seem old in comparison to it, it’s a magic object that for all anyone knows popped into existence with a new cycle last Thursday! It isn’t bound to time the same way the characters are, so it can get away with fudging the ages a bit when writing each generation's version of the stories down. 

Rule 3:

In ever after, there are 2 kinds of people, the common folk and the destined. 

All destined regardless of birth order have a destiny, but what type is dependent on various factors. For Example, there are two types of destinies in the land of ever after, blood bonded and soul bonded. Blood bonded destinies are the most common, they’re what happens when a character's first child takes on the same exact destiny for the next fairytale cycle. Apple, Raven, and many others fall into this category. Then there are Soul bonded destinies, which are either destinies that have a role in the fairytale cycle but aren’t exactly the same as your parents, or in extremely rare cases destinies bestowed upon a person from a non-destiny family.

 The Charming's are a good example of the former. The original blood bonded destiny of Siegfried passed down to Grandpa Auspicious's eldest son, but he had no other destiny to pass down to the younger children. Because they are a part of the destined, however, all the children needed destinies, so the book bestowed soul destinies of being prince charming's and damsels in distress onto them. Their children in turn also got soul destinies, which is why the Charming’s know what their general role in stories will be but not the exact character (with the exception of daring, which I will explain in a bit). 

The latter, the case of a soul bonded destiny going to someone not already part of a destined bloodline is extremely rare, but does occur occasionally, especially when an old charming line dies out. You see, to keep the destined bloodlines from getting too interconnected, those with familial soul destinies like Charming's will often have fewer children as generations go by because fertility issues set in. Eventually, the blood line will either no longer be able to produce children or will produce merely 1 every 1-2 generations or so. When this happens, a new charming family might rise from the common folk in the form of a rags to riches prince story like the penniless owner of puss in boots. Again, this is really rare, but is also why the Charming's push for Daring, Dexter, and Darling to have prominent destinies. The sooner they marry into blood bonded destined families the less likely their bloodline is to disappear or thin out. 

You can have a family with both blood bonded and soul bonded destinies. Holly as the presumed oldest got the blood bonded destiny of Rapunzel, but Poppy as the younger one has an unknown soul bonded destiny, assumed to be a damsel due to her royal blood but no one’s really sure.

 And furthermore, while we're on the topic of pairs of siblings, a story that includes a set of siblings will have those siblings born to the oldest child of the last generation, not the weird cousin thing that happened with Helga and Gus. This means that if you're a part of the twelve dancing princesses for example, only the oldest princess’s twelve children would have the blood bonded destiny of being a dancing princess. The daughters of the other eleven princesses would get random soul destinies like the charming's. 

Finally, the first line of this rule is a little false. While unofficially there are two types of people, the destined and the common folk, Headmaster Grimm, and those who truly believe in the destiny system from both camps of people, would say that everyone is destined, as it is the destiny of the common folk to continue on their family trades and support their kingdoms. They even have symbolic legacy signings in some villages where a single page is signed by every child of age and then sent to Grimm to bind into the storybook of legends, and the one held in Book End village each year is attended by nearly every child of age within reasonable travel distance as they get to see Grimm bind the page into the book at the end of the ceremony. 

Rule 4: this brings me to the next point, Grimm isn’t just the headmaster of the school in the revamp au, he is also the Oracle of the Storybook. Grimm is thought to be immortal, here since the beginning of the cycles themselves, and he interprets the Storybooks will through visions and the like. This is why Daring knows what his destiny would be, Grimm saw a vision of a blonde prince in armor that had the Charming crest on it leaning over a glass coffin and told his family. He doesn’t control when these visions come, but despite this his position as Oracle makes him almost the head of all the leaders in ever after.

Rule 5:

And finally, number five, the storybook will make little changes each cycle to continue its and the universe's ensured existence. When the original tales happened, they were quite violent, with villains always dying at the end and even some hero’s dying as well. This however started to become a problem for the cycle, as destined who died without having a child first didn’t pass on the story by blood and thus their destiny got spat out randomly to a soul bonded destined. To keep this from happening, two things started to emerge. 

One, for stories where the deaths happened right before the end, the book started to look the other way so long as the character was dead until the last words were written. This is how Ginger's mother and previous ancestors survived. Yes, she was pushed into the oven and died, but one, fire resistance potions exist, and two, her oven had a door on the other side that could be opened, so after the storybook wrote “the end” the second door was opened by Grimm/someone else he trusts, and she was given a powerful healing potion. This is the equivalent to your heart stopping for a minute and then being revived by a doctor. You were dead, but like, it was temporary. 

Two, for other characters whose deaths happen too early on to be reversible (or that kept the story from being retold entirely), they slowly morphed into other fates. Cinderella’s mother doesn’t so much as die now as she becomes a tree. Somewhere in the middle of the cycle Odette stopped dying and just became stuck as a swan. The little mermaid is an extreme example of this, as Meeshell's ancestors went from dying, to turning to seafoam, to living happily ever after through a very long line of generations. Some say these softer endings have to be repeated a number of times before the book considers them the new versions, but no one's sure what that number is. Some also believe that you can convince the book to give you a softer ending, but this has no proof and is vehemently denied by Grimm who insist the book decides of its own merit what to keep or change each generation when it comes to large plot points based on what's needed to ensure the safety and continuation of ever after. 

That’s it for now folks, tune back in whenever I get free time next for some light Snow White and Apple angst. 

[jamethinks]

Spy x family prompts that are objectively more interesting than an identity reveal (based on the Richter scale)

What if Yor was ordered to kill Loid and Anya? Why would she be given such a mission?

What if Loid gets exposed as a spy (not twilight just a spy)?

What if Donovan already knows who Twilight was?

What if Yor finds out that Anya and Loid aren't biologically related? How does she find out? Play with her imagination.

Someone breaks into the Forger house, and Yor kills them in self-defense. How does Twilight react?

What if Yor finds out Yuri is lying about his job? Note I only said lying about his job, i.e., that he doesn't work at MOFA.

What if Twilight finds out Anya was experimented on? Bonus: Why was Anya involved in the experiments in the first place (cough human trafficking cough immigration cough)? Note: he only finds out she was a part of human experiments. The goal and results are unknown to him. Not all human experiments result in superpowers, so that won't be his initial assumption.

What if Anya doesn't become an imperial scholar?

What if Donovan was the wrong target?

Why is there conflict between the east and the west? (Hint: do research on actual conflicts between countries for inspo*)

What are some cultural and social differences between the East and West? What biases and stereotypes exist? How do they relate to the war? How do they affect the lives of migrants in the country?

How does Twilight's life as a homeless child affect his relationship with Anya?

What kind of conflicts would arise between Loid and Yor around Anya's parenting?

Kill someone outside of the main family (excluding Bond). Doesn't have to be murder btw.

What was Yor like as a child/teen?

What if Yuri gets a girlfriend? How much would Yor care? Make her care, don't be a bitch.

What if Twilight/Yor fell for someone else? How would the other feel? And don't say jealous because they're secretly in love with each other, come up with something else. (Eg. I had one where Yor straight murders the other woman because helloshws trying to hide from the cops nor get a big ole target on her back)

Make a random side character gay and have them come out to their designated forger

Give someone a chronic illness. Go crazy.

Veterans. Let's talk about them.

NSFW prompts

Address Bond. Yall always get rid of Anya so now you gotta address Bond

Pregnancy scare, but they're not actually in a relationship

What's their favorite positions? Little quirks? Favourite move? Slight kinks? Don't be boring and say Loid is a bottom or Yor is a top. Gimme something very niche and specific (eg, I think Twilight likes it when you play with his ears and Yor is very noisy, not loud, just noisy)

Body count

*I am not encouraging the romanticization of war or encouraging you to only reasefch for fanfic purposes. Just expand your understanding of war as a whole beyond the boring rich people proxy fight narrative. Lots of reasons wars happen (political, resources, borders, religion and culture, America being messy and causing problems), so use it as a time for some world building and hcing

[olderthannetfic]

I always get ticked off from people who keep trying to push for the monetization of AO3 because that's my favorite thing about the site, honestly. 1) No one here, i don't believe, said fanfic/fanart isn't real art. 2) Fan-made products are taken off of etsy all the time. Every single day this exact thing happens. Etsy shop owners get their shops taken off the site for this! exact! thing! 3) Japan has different copyright laws than in the USA, where AO3 is based. Doujinshi does get some creators in copyright trouble in Japan if they try to create new characters based on the pre-existing work. It happens fairly often. 4) Writers always improve the same way: they write often, read often, edit, repeat, over and over again. We expect writers to break into commercialization the same way the people before them have: you write a novel or a short story anthology, edit, rewrite (rinse repeat), send queries to agents, wait for agents to come back with good news from publishers, then market the hell out of your book along with the publisher (if the publisher has the money to do it). And if none of that is your thing, self-publish. You don't get to monetize your fellow fans' labor just because you're too lazy to figure out how to market your work to let people know it exists. It's easier than ever with the internet. And I wish entitled crybaby fans would get this through their heads: no👏🏽one👏🏽 has the right, or should have the right, to make money off of someone else's story, hard work, or imaginative work. If you're a writer, create something new and do the market research to figure out how to best market it. No one has the responsibility to fund your creative dreams but yourself. Why should anyone care to follow a writer of original works who's most known for writing derivatives of others' IP? Now that we're in the age of IP and copyright ownership of art, why does this need to constantly be repeated? AO3 is free and open for everyone to use. If you want to market yourself and your work, you'll have to do it somewhere else. The internet is vast. Stop being lazy and put in the work like other writers do. 🤷🏽‍♀️

--

Yeah. Fandom is where I honed my craft.

That's the great thing about fandom! People read so much kind of half-baked stuff and genuinely enjoy it. They wouldn't give that same leeway to commercial products. There's also more space for niche interests. That allows a writer to figure out what they actually like instead of just chasing the thing that someone else says sells best.

Lots of people who go pro, including me, write very fandomy stuff. You pick up almost any m/m self- or indie-pub book, and you know in five minutes this is a fic writer. But if we're any good, we can build enough scaffolding for our own worlds and characters. Change the names. Beef up your own setting. Write a complete plot that doesn't rely on being a missing scene from something else. It's not that complicated.

Frankly, if someone "needs" to sell fic, that makes me think they aren't confident in their writing being attractive to others without a major crutch.

[cecilysass]

False Front

Read on AO3 | Tagging @today-in-fic CW: suggestion of possible rape / sexual assault (from canon) written for the X-Files Flicked Switch Fanfic Exchange

He’s doing everything, every single thing he can think of, but Mulder’s getting nowhere and he knows it. He blusters around Skinner’s office, he fires off orders to the Gunmen, he drives back to her apartment and searches over every square inch. Of course he calls her cell countless times. You never know when she might be able to pick up.

It’s actually the cell phone that finally does it, that makes him give up on her apartment and go home.

He’s on the floor methodically sorting the contents of her wastepaper basket—tissues, an empty tube of makeup, two endearing chocolate wrappers—when Frohike calls and tells him that it appears that the signal never actually left her building.

He finds the phone in her desk drawer. Turned off. Silent. It’s devastating. All day it has been absorbing his diligent calls here in this drawer. Not anywhere near her.

Mulder closes the desk drawer slowly, observing absently that his hands are trembling. He locks up her apartment and walks out to his car. He’s been through this so many times now, a familiar refrain: she’s gone, maybe forever, he has to bring her back, he has no idea how. It only gets harder. Because one of these times they won’t figure it out. One of these times the worst is bound to come true.

It’s very important at this stage not to give in to his darkest anxieties, that fear and that dread. Keeping his face impassive helps; that’s an old trick, predating his partner. His mind can be an even more useful ally, and it’s straining to go into profiler mode, reaching out instinctively for every possible scrap of information he has.

On the drive to Alexandria he keeps mentally revisiting those emails, all that fabricated correspondence between the account of Dana Katherine Scully and this unknown Cobra. Those missives turned out to tell quite a tale.

I think about how much of a mark I could have left on the world, had I not ended up in the F.B.I., had I been free to pursue what I wanted.

I wish you and I could meet like normal people do, just have dinner, wine and challenging conversation. I want that so badly. I daydream about it.

You and I — we understand one another, don’t we? That’s so rare and beautiful. Often I feel like there’s no one in my life who really understands anything about me.

This isn’t Scully. These aren’t her words. It’s creative writing from someone else, likely C.G.B. Spender himself. The moment the Gunmen told him these emails existed, Mulder knew this.

Even so, the fabricated words get under his skin. They bother him deeply. At a fucking cellular level.

Maybe it’s that the smoking man doesn’t sound so far off? Maybe because little bits and pieces do sound eerily like something Scully could say—maybe, possibly, under the right circumstances. Mulder doesn’t like that. It makes her feel farther away somehow.

When the Gunmen said Scully had been writing to someone named Cobra, he’d so easily dismissed them. No. She would have told me, he’d said. That utter confidence haunts him now. Because even if he were right in this case, it turns out there’s quite a bit she hasn’t told him.

Mulder pictures Spender smiling to himself, typing away at home in a cloud of smoke, dreaming up this fictional romance between Scully and her Defense Department confidante.

He suspects the smoking man likes the idea of Mulder, his supposed son, uncovering this. He probably got some sick little thrill imagining Mulder discovering Scully’s tawdry secret online relationship. Look, Mulder, your loyal girl betrayed you. What an extra little zing that must give him. In addition to the heady exhilaration of murdering his son’s adored partner.

Mulder slams his palm down on the steering wheel angrily.

How could she go anywhere with him? How could she believe any word that came out of his mouth? Was she threatened? Blackmailed? What could possibly make it worth it?

He’s breathing much too fast. He takes a long, extended breath and releases it. No point in asking all these questions. There’s too much he still doesn’t know.

Something else keeps poking at his mind, though.

It’s the second time in just over a year that some would-be writer has presumed he knows Scully well enough to attempt to represent her inner life. That someone has been inspired to write the complex heart and mind of Dana Scully.

Such utter, arrogant bullshit. Why would anyone delude themselves that they could know Scully like this? What is it about Scully that makes men think they can read her? As far as Mulder knows, no one has ever understood her heart. Certainly not Phillip Padgett. Not C.G.B. Spender.

Not—all too clearly—Fox Mulder.

Mulder’s fingers tighten around the steering wheel, his knuckles going white as he tries to rein himself in. Thoughts, not feelings, he reminds himself. Mind, not heart.

*** At home he’s restless, because there is nothing productive for him to do there. No leads to follow up on. Nothing to do but wait.

He’s hungry—who even remembers when the fuck he last ate?—so he walks into his kitchen and bangs around impatiently looking for something to eat. There’s an unopened bag of bagels in his fridge along with a tub of sealed cream cheese. These items weren’t purchased with him in mind, which depresses him. But he’s got to eat something, and well, here they are. No point in passing out. He begins slathering cream cheese on a bagel.

The last time they had sex—the fifth time overall—was a little under a week ago. Here, his place.

She showed up at his door, that determined look in her eyes. No discussion, no words, exactly like the other times, a pattern Mulder finds both hot and disturbing. Sudden, fierce, take-no-prisoners kissing, the pulling open of clothing, the hitching up of her work skirt, a frantic fuck against his front door.

Afterwards she’d clung to his sweaty neck to catch her breath, and he’d buried his face in her rosemary-scented hair. He’d wept just a little—he couldn’t help it. The emotions involved are titanic, completely beyond his ability to cope with. It is amazing, everything, but something is off, too, and he doesn’t know what to do to correct the course.

He could tell by the way she tightened her hold that she noticed his tears, but she didn’t ask about them.

Much to his relief, she had changed into his tee-shirt, crawled into his bed and stayed the night—a first—leaving that rosemary scent behind on his pillowcase, plus several strands of copper hair.

The next morning they got up, dressed, had coffee, and discussed their case. Matter-of-factly. Like Mulder and Scully. Like nothing was different. Like she had dropped by for coffee before work. Like this incredible sex they kept having existed only in his imagination or in some alternate dimension. He didn’t ask any questions, and neither did she.

Now he’s got nothing but questions. He’s haunted by fucking questions. What if he never sees her again? What if she never eats any of these bagels he optimistically bought hoping she’d stay over again soon? What if he never has the chance to find out what she meant by any of it, what it could have meant if it had continued? What if it’s his fault she’s gone, what if it’s all because she’s been used as a tool somehow to get to him?

Not everything is about you, Mulder.

He sits on his couch and forces himself to focus on eating, polishing the bagel off in a few large ravenous bites. He licks every bit of cream cheese off his fingertips. He still feels hungry.

Brushing stray crumbs off his shirt, he remembers guiltily that he should update Mrs. Scully. When he called her the day before yesterday, to find out more about Scully’s nonexistent family emergency, she’d been worried—in her controlled, subdued way. Asking only basic questions—she’s been through this too many times, too. He’s only updated her once since, with pathetically little to go on. It’s probably time for another check-in.

When he looks at his phone on the desk, he practically jumps out of his skin.

There’s a flashing light. A fucking message. He leaps to his feet. How had he not seen it? Why didn’t he check his messages right away? What was he thinking?

He rushes to the button, presses it, waits.

“Mulder, it’s me.”

He stumbles back and falls into his desk chair in boneless relief.

“I’m on my way back. I’m coming straight to your place. I’m going to be about two hours. Will you ask the Gunmen to be there, too? I have something important to show you. Something I think could… change lives.”

She sounds all right, he marvels. Upbeat. Not like a recent victim. His shoulders droop in a release of tension, and he folds his hands over his forehead, taking a deep breath.

Not dead, not dead, not dead. The worst did not happen.

For a moment he lets himself just sit on the couch. Emotions pass over him like clear water through jagged rocks.

*** The thing is, he doesn’t know how to love Scully, and he assumes that’s probably the problem.

He knows how to feel. He has always been a proficient feeler of feelings. He feels all sorts of things when it comes to her in particular, a whole panoply of finely tuned emotions.

Love isn’t feeling. He knows that. He’s not the most experienced with love as a practical matter. He’s not been a big relationship guy in his life, and the love in his family, while present, hasn’t flowed as freely and easily as in other families. But he knows enough to know that love isn’t a question of emoting. He knows it’s a question of impact, of touch, of effect. Of every action having a reaction.

He knows it’s his actions that perpetually disappoint her. He’s painfully aware of that. She often needs him to be something, and he disappoints her. He can say all sorts of beautiful words to her. He can fuck her exquisitely, as he’s learned recently.

But he can’t seem to do what she needs. He can’t figure out how to love her. Not in the way that matters. Not in the way she can touch and discern and trust and rely upon.

Not in the way, he worries, that would allow her to really love him back.

*** He’s been carefully listening out for her, distracted even while the Gunmen are talking to him. So he knows she’s walking up his hallway before she gets to the door.

He swings the door open just as she raises her hand to knock.

“Mulder,” she says, her face pink, a trace of a smile. She looks uninjured and hopeful. She steps closer, and he knows she expects him to put his arms around her.

“The prodigal partner returns,” he says casually. He doesn’t step forward to greet her, and her eyes widen, betray a trace of worry.

Behind him, the Gunmen rise from the couch and stand in a tight trio in that way they always do, like they’re a chorus in a goddamned Greek tragedy.

“It’s good to see you alive, Agent Scully.”

“We thought you were toast.”

“Mulder was losing his shit,” Frohike adds.

“I’m sorry to make everyone worry,” Scully replies. Her eyes turn questioningly back on Mulder’s. He turns around brusquely to walk into the living room.

“Did you get the tapes, Mulder?” she says, following behind him. “I sent you tapes in the mail. Tapes I recorded of our conversations, from a wire I’d hidden on me. I’d expect them to be here by now.”

“I didn’t,” Mulder says, sinking onto the couch. He looks up and makes sullen eye contact with her. “I got a message on my machine about a family emergency. And a secondhand message from Skinner. That’s the extent of the communication I received.”

“I couldn’t communicate easily,” she says. “It was a singular opportunity. I was trying to get information out of him. I needed to get his trust, make him think I was accepting his story.”

Mulder slumps down further on the couch. It sounds somewhat understandable, like something he would do, but it doesn’t make him feel better. “And what was his story?”

Scully produces a plastic case. “It came down to this,” she says, holding it out to Mulder. Her voice is excited; her eyes light up. “I think this could actually be something significant. I got it from a man who went by the name Cobra.”

Mulder doesn’t miss Frohike and Langly exchanging knowing glances. He doesn’t take the case from her hand.

“Yeah,” he says. “We’re familiar with Cobra. A man working on a shadow project for the Department of Defense. Your email account has been having a somewhat flirtatious relationship with him for the past six months. You set up an in-person meet-up with him recently.”

Scully is taken aback. She eyes the Gunmen, and then gives him a significant look. “Mulder.” She drops her voice. “You know those emails weren’t really from me, don’t you?”

“Of course I do,” he replies. “There were a lot of feelings revealed in those emails. Didn’t really seem like you.”

Frohike clears his throat. She presses her lips together and holds out the small square case to Langly. “This disk,” she says to the Gunmen. “Please see what’s on it.”

Langly takes it from her hands, nodding, and the three Gunmen begin to huddle around their computers.

Scully hesitantly moves to sit next to Mulder on the couch, her eyes on him.

“If I’m right,” she says, “then everything that’s happened these past few days will be more than worth it, Mulder.”

“Your death wouldn’t have been worth it.”

“That’s familiar,” she replies back tightly. “Only usually it’s me who says it to you.”

He can’t answer her. Actually, he finds he can’t even look at her, even though he knows in his heart he’s being unfair.

“I had to take the risk.” Her voice has hardened.

He swallows and rises to his feet, pacing to release some pent-up energy before settling in the door, clinging to the door frame while the Gunmen work.

After a moment, the Gunmen look at one another awkwardly.

“There’s nothing on this,” Frohike mutters.

“It’s empty,” adds Langly.

“Completely.”

“No.” Scully springs from her seat. “It can’t be,” she insists. She bends over to look at the computer, as if somehow she will be able to conjure something the Gunmen can’t. “It can’t be. It’s got to be on there.”

Langly looks embarrassed for her, Byers openly sympathetic.

Mulder can’t help but make eye contact with her now. She’s looking back at him as if afraid of his reaction, and he knows that should bother him.

He can only stare at her in silent frustration, gripping the door above him.

*** They sit around his table and listen to her tell her story.

He can tell Scully’s rattled, but she makes a game attempt to hide it. She speaks in her very best authoritative agent voice, as though she is making a report to Skinner. She sticks to the facts, offering very little commentary, but she keeps repeatedly licking her lips, pushing her hair behind her ear, her most obvious nervous tics.

“I didn’t understand exactly what he wanted,” she says. “But I thought there was something to be gained by playing along. Seeing what I could find out.”

“Something for him to gain, maybe,” Mulder says. “Cobra’s trust.”

The Gunmen’s eyes bounce from her to him.

“I think there was more to it than that,” Scully says emphatically. “He seemed to sincerely want to convince me. It’s why I thought he… it’s why I believed the disk was real.”

There is a painful silence. Langly doesn’t seem to know where to look.

“It’s funny, it’s like he imagines himself to be a kind of silver-tongued Richard III,” Byers comments thoughtfully. “Convincing his own Lady Anne to bend to his will.”

Scully rotates to look at him. Frohike raises his eyebrows.

“What, you guys don’t know your Shakespeare?” Byers says. “The villain who uses charm as a weapon? Richard III? ‘Was ever woman in this humor wooed?’ It’s a famous—”

“I know it,” Scully cuts him off sharply. “Richard’s charm works on Anne, Byers. Spender’s did not on me.”

Mulder bites back what he wants to say: didn’t it, though? Didn’t you do everything he wanted you to? He must not be hiding his thoughts as well as he thinks, because Scully, glimpsing his face, flushes.

He suspects Byers is right, that Spender imagines himself a kingly mastermind, using Scully as a pawn to be easily moved about. Like she’s some early modern female character in a Shakespearean tragedy, passive and at the mercy of men.

“Mulder, I went to his office,” Scully says forcefully. “We can go there right now. You and me. There could be evidence there.”

Both of her fists are clenched. He can practically feel her desperation crossing over into anger, radiating off of her in waves. If there’s anything he knows about his partner, it’s that she never wants to have been anyone’s pawn—anyone’s passive placeholder—ever again.

“Yeah,” Mulder says softly, meeting her eyes. “Okay. Let’s go.”

***

She asks him to drive, and she calls out the instructions to him in a resolute, crisp voice. As she does, he steals glimpses at her in the passenger seat. She doesn’t notice, looking ahead, her posture stiff and straight.

He suspects his standoffishness is starting to seriously piss her off. He doesn’t himself quite understand why he’s still so intensely angry with her. He wishes he weren’t. It’s like he’s experiencing a powerful torrent of emotion, an opened fire hydrant, and he can’t stop.

“If someone offers you valuable information,” Scully says to him out of nowhere, pronouncing each syllable very clearly, “you have to pursue it. Even if you’re not sure it’s entirely reliable. You have to find out. You know that.”

Mulder is quiet.

“Is this the cold shoulder, Mulder?” Her voice sounds bitter. “You’re very fortunate that’s not how I chose to respond to every one of your in-the-moment miscalculations.”

“Why would you not tell your partner, Scully? Why keep it a secret from me?”

“I told you, he didn’t want me to,” she says tightly. “He told me the offer was only good if I didn’t.”

“Really raises some questions, doesn’t it?” Mulder asks. “Why would he want to separate you from your partner? What does offering you the cure for the world’s diseases have to do with me?”

“I sent you the tapes,” Scully says sharply. “I didn’t listen to him. You act like I had no agency.”

He laughs darkly. “You had exactly the amount of agency he wanted you to have.”

She sucks in air. More and more pissed off. Still, she has to be able to see, doesn’t she? He wonders if she really believes they will find evidence at Spender’s office, or if she’s only clinging to that idea to protect herself.

“He knew he didn’t entirely have me,” she comments decisively after a pause. “He tried everything to get in my head. He even attempted a little pop psychology, and he did it badly.”

“Oh yeah?” Mulder says, risking a look at her. “What kind of pop psychology?”

“Let’s see.” She tilts her head and recites facetiously. “I’m attracted to powerful men, but I fear their power. I keep walls up. I’m devoted to you on one level, yet I live alone. I’d die for you, but I won’t let myself love you.” She gives him a scathing look and turns to gaze out the window. “Cosmopolitan magazine level insight, really.”

“Sounds like it,” Mulder says gruffly. If she’s intentionally lobbing a grenade, it found its target. His mind is spinning trying not to read into these statements, trying not to parse what parts she’s insinuating are ridiculous.

“He’s like anyone else, Mulder. He has weaknesses.” She gazes straight out the front window. “Whatever else is true, I’m sure of that much.”

“We all have weaknesses,” he mutters tightly. “Which is why we have partners and we don’t just … go off on our own.”

She turns and fixes him with a slow, deadpan look of disbelief. She doesn’t even need to say it. They both know perfectly well what a patently absurd thing that is for him to say to her.

With an exasperated shake of her head, she turns back to the passenger window.

In the silence that follows, Mulder contemplates the impressive depths of his own hypocrisy.

If he’d been approached in the same way, with the promise of some information he’d wanted badly, he knows he would have gone, too. He knows he would have because he’s done exactly that sort of thing before.

He just has this tendency to hold her to a different, only-for-Scully standard. This isn’t the first time he’s done it. It’s actually an embarrassing pattern.

Sometimes, he expects her to be more rational than he would ever ask himself to be. He expects her to be more prudent than he ever is. He expects her to leave aside her personal biases when his are woven into the fabric of their entire work.

Why does he do it? Is it because of their respective genders? Does it come from his deep feelings for Scully, his overwhelming desire to keep her safe? This all might factor into it and affect his professionalism, but he thinks it comes down to something more.

He’s come to depend on Scully playing a certain role in their partnership. And when she veers off course—makes him guess—it both delights and unnerves him. She plays the same familiar theme in their shared duet, the perfect counterpoint to his, the well-matched half of their mutual composition. If she suddenly seems to go solo, to improvise, to take up the fucking sitar or the ukulele or something, he doesn’t always cope well.

He glances over in the car to look balefully at the back of her head, still intently focused out the window. He can’t keep her in a box. He’s probably held her back for too long.

Then he thinks about Spender’s fucking emails, his fucking pop psychology, getting Scully to board some goddamn boat to meet some man for him.

Come on. This road trip with the smoker isn’t her pushing her limits. It’s not her spreading her wings. It’s her possibly getting killed. It’s beneath her. It’s just … stupid.

He suppresses the urge to slam his hand down on the steering wheel again. Next to him, she sighs.

***

What was once set up to appear to be Spender’s offices is now a completely empty building. Mulder is faintly surprised. He thought maybe it would turn out to be a legitimate office building who’d unwittingly played landlord to a liar. He thought they’d find a bunch of bewildered receptionists and cubicle dwellers who responded in confusion to their questions.

Instead, the whole thing turns out to be a mirage. Empty room after empty room. Everything and everyone evaporated into thin air.

This is an elaborate ruse just for Scully, he ponders, staring at an abandoned pad of sticky notes on the floor. Spender spent some money on this sham. Why go to all this trouble and then leave the most important loose end alive? It sends a shiver down his spine.

Scully is upset, of course, and he’s trying to be more understanding. She’s making it hard. She sounds unacceptably, uncharacteristically credulous, like she’s never even heard the word “skepticism” before in her life. It’s grating on him.

“Mulder, I looked into his eyes. I swear what he told me was true,” she says stubbornly.

“He did it all for himself—to get the science on that disk,” Mulder’s voice is taut. “His sincerity was a mask, Scully. The man's motives never changed.”

“You think he used me to save himself—at the expense of the human race.”

“No, he knows what that science is worth, how powerful it is. He'd let nothing stand in his way.”

“You may be right... but for a moment, I saw something else in him. A longing for something more than power. Maybe for something he could never have.”

Mulder wants to yell at her that that’s complete horseshit. He wants to take her shoulders and shake her and ask her what the fuck is wrong with her. But he exercises some restraint.

“And what is that something he can’t have, Scully? Compassion? Redemption? You really think, after all this, he cares about any of that?”

She wraps her arms around herself in a protective gesture, looking up and down the walls of what had apparently once been his false office. Her back is to him.

“Aren’t you the same person who once told me ‘the truth is out there, but so are lies?’” Mulder pushes. “Where’s that Dana Scully?”

She walks to the window and stands in front of it, still hugging herself and looking out into the afternoon light. From Mulder’s vantage point she looks only like a silhouette, an outline of herself.

“I get it,” she says after a heavy beat. “I see what you’re saying.”

Now there’s a melancholy timbre in her voice, a sound of defeat. He hears it rarely, for all of their struggles, and he doesn’t like it.

She doesn’t turn away from the window. Her head tilts forward until her forehead rests lightly against the glass.

“I was duped, clearly,” she says, her voice expressionless. “Please. Can you just take me back to your apartment so I can get my car and go home?”

*** On the drive back, her face is as inaccessible as a marble statue’s. For a while she shuts her eyes, but he knows she isn’t asleep.

“Hey, are you hungry?”

“Not really,” she says, stretching her neck from side to side as though it is sore.

“You sure? When did you last eat?”

“I don’t feel like eating, Mulder.”

“You’re a little pale.” He refuses to sit in silence.

“I’m tired,” she says with a tone of finality. “I didn’t sleep very well last night, thinking about the sunrise meeting.”

Mulder nods in an attempt at sympathy, sending her repeated sideways looks. Something in what she just said nudges at his thoughts, bothers him.

“The meeting with Cobra was at sunrise?”

“Yes,” she says shortly.

“But you didn’t come back to my apartment until one,” Mulder says. “It’s not that long a drive.”

She shifts in her seat, apparently attempting to get comfortable. “No.”

“You didn’t come straight back?”

“I made another stop,” Scully says evasively.

“Another stop? For a few hours?”

“Yes.”

Her lack of communication is again making him angry.

“Where could you possibly go between here and Milford, Pennsylvania?” He knows his tone is too nasty. “Philadelphia?”

She exhales sharply. “Do I need to account for all of my time now, Mulder? And is that little rule going to apply to you, too?”

“I was looking for you,” he snaps. “I was worried sick about you. Where would you go before trying to call me?”

“To the hospital,” she replies hotly.

His head spins to look at her. “Why?”

“Just to get … something checked out.”

Every muscle in his body seizes up, alert. “To get what checked out?”

She pauses. “I had them do a rape kit.”

He swallows, aware that his heart is pounding loudly in his ears. The sides of his vision begin to narrow until he can only see a tiny fragment of the road ahead. He starts pulling the car over, guiding the car into a grocery store parking lot.

When he has safely maneuvered them into a spot at the back of the lot, he turns to face her.

“Why did you have them do a rape kit, Scully?” he asks quietly. His voice is shaking.

She’s meeting his eyes, but her face is difficult to read, a complete mask. “They didn’t … find any evidence of anything.” She extends her fingertips and meticulously picks a piece of fuzz off of his sweater. “We had been in the car, driving for many hours, and I fell asleep. When I woke up, I was in different clothes. Pajamas. In a bed. Obviously, it unsettled me, and I kept thinking about it, so … a rape kit.”

He’s ashamed at how badly he’s reacting, how frightened he is to the very core. He knows that it’s her who should be comforted. He tries to calm himself, reaches out and clasps her hand.

“Scully,” he whispers.

“It had been close to 36 hours at that point,” she continues in an even, formal voice. “So, as you know, that affects the quality of the forensic evidence. I did bring the underwear I was wearing, just in case.”

“Oh Jesus,” he says. He feels physically ill. “Scully.”

“I don’t think anything happened,” she adds. “I went just because I kept thinking about it, but I didn’t think his agenda was…” She drifts off, bites her lip. “I admit that I wonder a little more now.”

They’re both too familiar with the process of testing for forensic evidence of rape and sexual assault. A thousand possible scenarios pass through his mind. He knows they have passed through hers, too.

“They found nothing?” he whispers.

“A small fragment of latex in my clothes … concerned them,” she says softly. “But it’s latex from latex gloves, and you know… I have lots of latex gloves. It could have easily come from my car, from the autopsy I did earlier in the week.”

“Scully,” he says urgently. “You could have called me. In the hospital. I would have come.”

“It’s… okay, Mulder. It was very likely nothing.”

“You thought this was possible,” Mulder says, in a sudden explosion of feeling, “and you stayed? You stayed in that house with him? Anything could have happened, he could have…”

He stops himself, seeing her expression. “I’m so sorry,” he says, instantly penitent. “I’m so sorry.” He leans over and presses his cheek into the palm of her hand. “I know why you stayed. You needed to finish the job.”

“You would have done the same?” Her voice sounds unexpectedly small, like someone else’s.

It doesn’t happen to me in quite the same way, he thinks. Sometimes ex-girlfriends attempt seductions when I am down for the count. Sometimes my brain is violated with surgical knives. But it’s not like this. Not like this.

“I would have,” he promises. He scoots over as far as he can in the car seat and tentatively threads his arms around her, pulling her against his shoulder. “I imagine you know this,” he says roughly, “but I have to say it, especially because I’ve been such a dick to you since you came back. None of this is your fault. You were trying to find out all you could. So you could do the right thing, like you always do.”

“I know, Mulder,” she says, her voice a soft whimper against his shirt. “I know, but I should have known better.”

“We can’t always know better,” he replies into her hair. “We take risks, and sometimes they pay off, sometimes they don’t. We can’t second guess. It’s the job.”

She pulls her face back to look at him, and her lip is slightly trembling. “I think I wanted to believe him,” she says. “I wanted it to be real, because if it worked, it would mean everything we’ve gone through all these years would turn out to have an actual impact. Would turn out to have real meaning after all. I could make it all make sense.”

He thinks about that: his little Catholic, wanting so badly to turn her suffering into redemption.

“Listen, of all people, I understand that,” he says, swiping her tear away with his finger. “I know all about wanting to believe.”

“And it felt like he was approaching me seriously,” she says in a hushed voice, like it’s a dark secret. “As an adversary, an intelligent mind. The way he deals with you.” Practically in a whisper. “It–it probably flattered me more than it should have. I’m embarrassed about it.”

“Scully—”

“No,” she says quickly, her face flushing. “It’s true. He’s always seen me as …a test subject. A lever used to motivate you. A chess piece. And he was talking to me like I was … a player. Mulder, he must have known how I’d respond to that.”

She’s so ashamed of this tiny manifestation of pride, this smallest and most sympathetic of vanities. Mulder runs his thumbs lightly up and down her jaw bones.

Her voice is low and terse. “And this possible touching thing, thinking about it now. This dress he had me wear...” She peters out in disgust.

Mulder’s insides are churning. Holding firmly to each side of her face, he pulls it close to him, so he can stare closely into her pale eyes. “I’ll kill him, Scully,” he says hoarsely. “I’ll fucking kill him.”

He can so easily imagine doing it— the satisfaction of killing Spender. Extinguishing the life out of the man’s arrogant eyes, the surprise as he realizes he’s lost, that he can’t do whatever he wants after all.

Scully, eyes wide and glacial blue, shakes her head almost imperceptibly from within his hold on her cheeks. And he understands, from his experience of her in hundreds of different situations and hundreds of discrete moments, exactly what she’s trying to communicate. That doesn’t help, Mulder. That’s not what I need. This isn’t his story to write.

“Okay,” he says gently, lightly pushing her hair back from her face. “Okay, yep, I get it. I won’t do anything unpredictable right now.”

“Thank you.” She exhales, tilts her head down.

He tucks a lock behind her ear, his mind racing. “What if we left your car at my place?” he asks. “I could take you home. We could pick up some food on the way. You could get to your bed faster that way.”

She looks up to him, her expression guarded. “And what about you?”

He hesitates, wondering what she wants him to say. Every moment of physical intimacy they’ve ever had has been initiated without words; he doesn’t have a precedent of using language to approach it. He decides it’s safer not to assume.

“I could take a cab home,” he suggests politely. “Or call the Gunmen and ask them for a ride. You might want some peace and quiet.”

Her expression scarcely changes, but he can tell from the smallest twitch of her mouth that it was the wrong answer.

He opts for another approach. More direct.

“Or … I could stay with you,” he offers.

She lifts her lip just a fraction. It could be the beginning of a smile. “Hmm,” she says.

“I, uh, like that option best,” he adds. In for a penny, in for a pound, he supposes. “Because you’ve been gone, and I’ve been worried and what you’ve just told me worries me, too. So it would make me feel better to be around. That’s usually comforting to me, and, uh, I hope it is to you, too.”

Her eyebrows raise. He hopes that his unbearable awkwardness is at least coming across as sincere.

“I appreciate that, Mulder,” she replies.

“It’s up to you, obviously.”

She turns to face the front windshield, nodding slowly. “Why don’t you drive to my place?”

*** She doesn’t cry again. But that night, she tugs him into her bed with her and wraps her limbs tightly around him, pressing her cheek against his chest.

“I’m sorry you were so scared,” she mumbles into his shirt. “I would have been scared, too.”

“If I did something uncharacteristically rash like run off and get myself lost at sea, you mean?”

“It’s not outside of the realm of extreme possibility.”

“Hey, you said you saw something else in him,” Mulder says. Part of him doesn’t want to bring it up, but he worries Scully is still torturing herself with self-doubt. “You said he was wanting something he could never have.”

She’s quiet a beat. “I was probably deluding myself.”

“I don’t know,” he says. “I was just thinking—he’s always spinning webs of lies, always writing this bullshit involving the lives of other people, setting up false fronts. Sometimes it must occur to him that he doesn’t interact with anything real.”

“Yeah.”

“I wouldn’t want that,” Mulder says softly. “Maybe you perceived him having a moment of … clarity. That nothing in his world is genuine.”

“If he even cares about that,” she says dismissively. “Like you said. There’s no reason to think so.”

“You said you saw something in his eyes,” Mulder points out. “That’s a good enough reason. Your perception, your judgment. I don’t doubt that.”

She lifts her head and stares at him for a moment, her expression enigmatic. Then she kisses him gently on the lips, the fingers of one hand moving slowly through his hair. He tries not to tense up, but she’s never kissed him like this before. In this unhurried, tender way.

She then lays her head down right below his collarbone—where she can probably hear his heart thumping quickly—and he curls his arm around her.

“I would die for you, you know,” she says. “He was right about that much.”

He knows what she’s referring to, Spender’s claim into her psychology. If his heart wasn’t racing before, it is now.

“I know,” he murmurs. “I know you would. But I would never want you to.”

“He wasn’t right about all of it,” she adds.

I love you, too, he thinks. And to show her, he draws her in, ever closer.

[qqueenofhades]

what would you say are the best parts of fanfiction as a type of a written work? (if, theoretically speaking, someone has been writing&worldbuilding an AU so far from the original thing that with a few minor tweaks they could make it into a pretty much original text - not to publish for money, Ao3 has an original work fandom, it could go there - it's, uh, what would you say are good reasons to keep it a fanfic? what are good reasons to not?)

The main thing about fanfiction is that it relies upon re-contextualizing, reworking, or otherwise drawing directly on the readers' knowledge of a pre-existing work, using that work's characters, plot, and universe. As such, when you're writing fanfiction, you don't need to spend tons of time introducing the personalities, conflicts, settings, etc; that is already built in, your readers are expecting you to pick it up and go, and part of the narrative conceit or overall plot can rest on how it's similar to, diverging from, or totally separate from the canon universe (as in the case of AUs). Because you're writing in response to another text, you're performing a dialogue with something else, and that's why most fanfiction needs some amount of reworking in order to contain its own story without reference to another intellectual property, because you're using pre-built parts instead of making your own.

However, as someone who also tends to write long, plotty AUs with extensive worldbuilding beyond and quite separate from canon (and various original characters), I know that it's fairly easy to just change a few names and plot details and have a basically original work. Which at that point it is! You've done the work to develop your own angle of the story, there is a ton of published stuff out there that is either thinly reworked fanfic or inspired by fanfic or based on another very similar premise, and there's no reason you shouldn't throw your own hat into the ring and see what happens. What you have to do if converting it into original fiction, aside from changing the names, is checking to see if it holds up as its own narrative without reference to another text. That might mean filling out character backstory/motivations, plot points, events, major conflicts, romantic relationships, or anything else that is taken as assumed in a fic and will need to be strengthened in order to make the story work as its own entity. If you're writing an AU where Blorbo A and Blorbo B fall in love in a space opera, you have the readers' implicit knowledge of those characters and their dynamics already, and the fun comes from transposing that to a new setting/universe. You can obviously use that to develop the original characters, but you also have to be aware of where you need to draw something out, or rework something, so that a reader not familiar with the source material (i.e. whatever you based your fic on) can get it.

You can also take the premise of a fic and rewrite/rework it as an original novel. I'm doing that right now with The Key of Solomon, which has one of my favorite plots in my own fics, but rather than just changing the names in the existing work, I'm reworking a lot, setting it in a different world, adding new characters and plotlines, building out more lore and history, etc., and it will not go the way fic-TKOS currently goes, because the core of this story is about something different/involves a different set of thematic conflicts and character arcs. (And yes, I am excited about it.) This is the sort of stuff that I discovered by just poking around with the premise, throwing some outline + worldbuilding notes in a Word doc, and starting to write and see what happened. In other words, there are a lot of ways you can rework or redo your existing work, which published authors do all the time, and if you're wondering how to restructure your story on its own terms and not as a derivative of another story, a comprehensive dismantle and rebuild might be a good idea in any case. Take your AU setting, your renamed characters, your tweaked plot, etc, and start writing it from scratch, as that will give you the best sense of how it holds together and where there are the most useful opportunities to change and expand. Because of how writing works, you will usually then understand more about what you want to do with it and what makes it compellingly different from where it started.

Likewise, if you DO want to make money off it/self-publish it on Amazon or wherever/look for a traditional-publishing agent and deal, that is completely fine. Because the "You Cannot Monetize Fanworks" thing is drilled into us so deeply, it can sometimes be viewed as a bad thing if you, as an artist, want to actually make money off your art and creative labor. It's not a bad thing! So don't feel like you have to disclaim any intention to publish it for money or think that it's only a "good" work if you don't do that. You can indeed put it on AO3 as an original work if all you want is for people to read it and enjoy it, which is the main pleasure from fic; you're an amateur writing in your spare time for other amateurs/fans to enjoy out of the love of sharing the story and characters. But if you do want to make it into something that you intend on selling for real-people money (as hey, I will explore in some fashion when the above project is finished), it doesn't make you A Dirty Capitalist or Less of an Artist or whatever the latest nonsensical Tumblr groupthink wants you to think. So while what you do with it is up to you, you can 100% pursue publication for money if you want to. (After all, aren't we all big fans of Pay Artists/Writers Appropriately For Their Work? Yeah.)

Anyway, what this all boils down to is whether you want to keep it as a fic just because you like it that way, and how much work you feel like doing in transforming it into an original story. I have plenty of fics where I have done enough AU/world-building/extra characters that it would be very easy to change the names and call it a day, but I haven't, because I wrote them as fics and I like them that way. But then, as noted above, I have also started developing an original project out of something that I first wrote as an AU fic, because I liked the idea and wanted to explore it with a different twist/set of characters/universe. So yeah, it's a matter of personal preference and what you then want to do with the finished result (i.e. just post it on AO3 or pursue publication and financial return from it), and either way, it's up to you. If you have a feeling that you want to develop it as an original story in whatever way, hence why you're asking me this question, then I say you should do that. You can always put it aside or try something else if the conversion isn't working, but if it does, hey! More things to explore! So do it and have fun.

[monsterfloofs]

Kia Ora! I was just wanted to ask if we are gonna get any more content on Deimos, the eldest demon brother. Art or fanfics of him?

Ah! Hello, hello! Greetings from. . . New Zealand is that correct? (｡´◉ ꒳ ◉`｡) Heya!

Ahhhhh Dei-Dei my jolly intimidating boy!

You know I have not done anything recent but! I do have a work in progress lying around here somewhere! Let me go find it for you! I can't remember if I forgot it existed or didn't like it for some reason =//7//= ;;;; )

Since he lives in the middle of the other Brothers territory and is the scary big man who typically appears when you know you're screwed and you gotta pick a god and pray-- I was trying to write a different kind of story for him since he is the hardest to interact with.

One that was centering around the only hooman that was allowed to live in his territory.

I can send you what I have for that-- but since I have been working on this whole story and realm for a while now, the ideas or motivations behind the story may not be canon anymore. ^^; )

It's true that I also need. . . to make him a ref sheet orz

I remember being hesitant / a little nervous about drawing a proper ref of him, but I shall see what I can do (ง ​｡꒦ິ∇꒦ິ｡)ง

As for the story -> It's unedited, unfinished and it's pretty old. It has a female reader pov, this was even before I changed my writing pov to be more inclusive I think. x///O

I will send you as much as I have solidly written and who knows! Maybe I will try to tackle this again or finish it ^//-//^ )/

Enjoy!

Demon (Deimos) x Female Reader

You were the only human who lived in the large cathedral that sat in the middle of the Kingdom. It's dark spires stretch upwards, protruding into the clouds, as if attempting to spear the very heavens. It was quiet as you walked along one of it's vast empty hallways, with only the sounds of your steps echoing around you. Panels of golden light streaming across the floor. It was golden hour, almost night. 

 Your feet come to a halt as you turn to look at the high arched crystalline windows. Gaze drifting out to the world beyond the glass, beyond these walls. You could see the faded outlines of different cities in the distance. From your limited knowledge you recognized the tall ornate buildings of the business district, and the small rounded structures that composed the Mystic one. During the many rounds you have taken walking the grounds you had been slowly able to tell each place apart by their architecture. You wondered about what it would look like if you were able to be up in one of the spires, looking down at the cities. If being up so high, you wondered if you would be able to see them all, like a patchwork quilt spread over the land.

You knew very little about these places, so you let your imagination wander from possibilty to possibily. From time to time you would catch glimpses of the large beings who ran each district. They were very different from one another, though all of them would appear to be tense or nervous when they came inside.

You stayed out of the way when they would come, skirting behind banisters or corners to hide, but not going far enough away that you couldn't watch them. You wished to know what they were like, but the biggest question you had was about the one who saved you.

You don't remember the details, but for that you feel blessed. Something traumatic had happened that left gapping holes in your memory. You don't remember the people who had scared you so much, but you remember someone vividly. Anger that radiated like roaring waves from a dark figure that rose high above you, towering over the small group of people. 

And after that it all went black, the next thing you know is that you were here. Clean, safe, with wounds carefully bandaged and treated.

Terrified at first at the unfamiliar place, and there was a sickening dread that sank deep into your bones. You didn't have anywhere else to go, and the fear that sooner or later something bad was going to happen haunted your every waking hour. Your mind had been rampant with fear, the thoughts would tear you apart at night, and you would fall asleep with tears spilling down your face.

But each day was as quiet as the first, no one came after you, and you were taken care of with hot food outside your door, placed on a silver tray. The empty halls still and silent, your things tended to as carefully as they had been when you had first arrived. You were given clothes and other necessities, though whoever was truly caring for you. . . you did not know. There were only a few other creatures that would come and go. With orders to check on you and make sure that you were well.

Unless they came to visit you, you mostly had the place to yourself, it was all yours to explore. And once you had become braver, you did so with starry eyed wonder. Learning the vine covered windows and the cobble stoned path in the garden, memorizing the nooks and crannies, the quiet places that sunlight painted over with warmth. The places you could hide in, whisking away books to read, or places to have picnics in. Though you were very much alone, the single silhouette of your shadow trailing after. 

You were given solitude and sanctuary, a place to heal in peace, but you had been left with loneliness in its wake.

Your hand falters to your neck, alighting upon a small silver necklace with a black stone embedded in the middle. It was something that was given to you when you had first arrived, you had been too scared to take it, but now you wore it with a feeling of thankfulness.

All you knew was a name, Deimos.

Deimos was the person who lived here with you, the person who kept you safe. 

But you had never seen them, there was a place with large dark doors that sat in the middle of the cathedral. The place you had watched the other leaders go in and out, you had never been close enough to take a look inside. And the time that you had been quick on your feet, and were brave enough to take a peek. . . well. . . the room was disappointingly empty.

Once in a while, you could hear something, something that would make the very timbers underneath your bed creak. It sounded like footsteps, but you couldn’t have been sure. Your mind trailing back to the shadow that loomed up, blocking out the moon in the sky.

“There you are,” A voice makes you jump and turn, looking up to a little figure hunched up in the corner, their wings tucked around them as they hang upside down above you.

You smile up at them, "Hello Ivan. . . do you have a message for me?"

“Yeh-- It’s too bright out here,” The creature complains, scrunching up before they drop onto your shoulder, adjusting their leathery wings and rubbing their eyes. You laugh lightly, “I’m sorry, it will be dark soon,” You can feel their spaded tail lighting flicking back and forth, across your back. 

One of the few creatures that would come here was a messenger who traveled around to the other districts named Ivan. He was some kind creature who had a lot of bat-like features, large ears that thinned into high tapered points, and a snubbed triangular nose. He had large wings on his back, and had taken to crouching on your shoulder with long crooked fingers that ended in delicate claws. His entirety reminds you of a rather furry gargoyle. He was normally about the size of a child, but in the sunlight he would shrink back to the size of a big house cat.

His wings stretched overhead, shading both of your heads from the sunlight. He keeps his snubbed nose turned towards his shoulder until you are past the large gothic windows. Ivan was who told you the most about the outside world. The person you exhausted with questions. You peek back at them, once you are back into the darker corridors of the Cathedral, Ivan sighing and lowering his wings in relief. 

"When may I see him?" You ask patiently, and he’s blink, "Uh, who?"

"Deimos," You reply, then blink in surprise as 

Ivan just about falls off your shoulder. "Deimos--?!" They splutter, "Why-- who-- what has gotten you on about this all of a sudden?? Whatcha wanna see him for???"

Your lips quirks into a smile, "So his name is Deimos?" Ivan's mouth snaps shut but they look guilty. "How come I'm not supposed to know about him? This is his home right? He was the person who rescued me. . . right?"

He looked begrudging, "Nu-huh, I told yeh too much already!" They cross their wings and snub their nose up into the air.

"Please? What's he like? Can you just tell me that?"

Ivan glances at you dubiously, "I don't think you'll like the answer to those questions. It's safer if yeh don't know."

"What do you mean by that?" You feel a twinge of annoyance, "How come?" but Ivan shakes his head, shifting from foot to foot. "Jus' don't want yeh hurt that's all! You really shouldn't nose around! He isn't the easiest to get along with--" His eyes bulge and he pulls at his jowls with his clawed hangs. "GUUUUUHHHHH-- Didn't I tell yeh not to pry?" He jumps up, flapping around your head agitated, and you close yours eyes, "You're gonna get me in trouble!!" He squeaks at you indignantly.

"I'm sorry--" You start but Ivan cuts you off in a rush, "Dinner's gonna be done soon so I'll see you in the dining room!! Andbegood!!" And with that, he swirls down the corridor and out of sight.

You fix your windswept hair pouting, anytime you ask about your rescuer, Ivan gets like this. All fidgety and nervous, you love Ivan but he can be so secretive. This whole place is one big secret, but you live here too! You huff faintly before your fingers fiddle with the necklace. At least you were able to learn a little bit more, fully knowing Ivan can be a bit of an accidental blabbermouth, you like to use this against him. You giggle faintly at your poor batty friend. You are sure he was told to keep an eye on you, and you make his job difficult. You do feel bad for that, but this is the only way you can learn about the world around you.

It’s a dark place that Ivan settles into, a dark place with high walls, far away from the dinner table, and the sunny skylight. He sighs, and scratches his ear in annoyance. “You know she’s asking more and more questions, yer not going to be able to keep her in the dark for much longer.” Ivan gulps and shuffles awkwardly as two purple eyes open, to stare steely daggers at him. “It’s for her own good too!” Ivan squeaks nervously, “I’m just s-saying, what if she thinks she’s held captive or something?”

“She could leave at any time she wanted,” Came a deep rumble, the voice dark and sultry. “I’m not keeping her here.”

Ivan shuffles from foot to foot, “Well I- uh- I don’t think she knows that--” The blazing purple eyes narrow, “What?” Ivan flutters his wings, gawking, his jaw working up and down as he frantically tries to form words, “W-w-well I-- m-maybeee. . . didn’t-- s-say anything a-about that yet?” Ivan grins wide as he shrugs helplessly, The gaze boring down at him narrows to slits before they open wide and roll in annoyance. “Then I shall do it myself.” A dark hulking figure raises from his seat, Ivan flutters eyes wide. “W-wait n-now?” Ivan squeaks, “B-but I th-thought you wanted to wait and--”

The deep voice sighs, “Not if she feels as if she is trapped here, I would never want that for her. . . after what she went through. . .”

You were in the dining room, picking up your dishes and carrying your tray back towards the kitchen, your head turning just as the huge dark doors start to slowly open. Your eyelids fluttering open wide, as your tray tumbles from your hands, falling in slow motion until it crashes onto the floor. Your dirty dishes burst into a million pieces.

Blazing purple eyes and dark grey skin, almost as tall as the ceiling itself. Deimos arches his eyebrows, as you stand frozen in time. Your lips parted as your head raises to look at him fully. “It’s you,” You manage to breathe.

Deimos gives a snort, the big man reaches you in only a few steps,

“You broke your dishes sweetheart,” His deep voice makes your ears reverberate, his eyes trailing to the mess on the floor, you gasp and quickly become animated, reaching down to grab the pieces of broken china. “I’m s-sorry! I’m so sorry!” Deimos eyebrow twitches, stopping you as a dark clawed hand traces over the shattered pieces. The pieces shivering before reforming back into the whole objects once more. “Don’t be.” He murmurs softly, “It’s an easy fix.” 

You look up at him with wonder, “H-have you eaten?” You ask, keeping yourself from letting all the other questions in your mind run rampant.

“I haven’t, but I will get something later. I want to know about you right now,” Deimos smirks as you fluster, you heft the tray into your arms. “How have you been feeling?” Deimos purrs softly, “Happy?” Your eyes brighten and you nod. “You don’t have to stay here if you don’t want to sweetheart, I can get you a new home, would you like that? I unfortunately can’t take you back to where I found you.” His expression darkens as his lip curls in dark satisfaction, “That place doesn’t exist anymore.” When you visibly shrink back his pupils dilate and round out, “It wasn’t a good place for you anyway.” He growls quietly. “But I can get you a new home, a little bat has told me you spend a lot of time looking at the different cities, was there anywhere in particular that you would like to go?”

You think about this, about his proposal to leave the grounds. “Would I be able to come back. . .?” You ask slowly, “Would I be able to see you again?”

Deimos blinks, “Me?” He smirks in amusement, “. . . No. I don’t think so.” Your expression falls, “That’s very cute of you, but it’s much too dangerous to let you wander in and out of here.”

“Then may I stay?” Deimos expression is quick to turn sour as he scowls down at you, “. . . . . . . . .And tell me, why would you want that little girl? Aren’t you lonely here?”

“I’m s-safe,” You stammer, “I l-like. . .” You bite your tongue and meekly bow your head. “I like it here, I may be lonely. . . but I am safe. It h-has been my sanctuary.”

Deimos’ eyes widen, staring at you intensely before his eyelids droop. “If. . . that is what you wish.”

[sarcasticdolphin]

For the ask: 🩷💛🤎🤍

🩷 Pink: Do you find a certain character (or characters) easy to write? More difficult -- and if so, do you avoid writing that character (or those characters) when possible?

For the Elisabeth fandom, I find Rudolf and FJ to be the easiest to write while Sisi and Tod are harder.

Part of that is down to the fact that my philosophy with writing FJ is that he does love Rudolf, he's a rational person, and he is trying to be a good dad even if he isn't doing the best job.

Comparatively, I find it hard to write Sisi in a way that feels even-handed and makes it clear she is imperfect while not devolving into bashing, which is why I so often have her be distant and only show up when Rudolf is thinking of an idealized version of her.

Tod is by far the hardest (especially his POV - Tod POV is _so_ hard - that's part of why Ornithology updates are so irregular. I have to be in a very specific frame of mind to be able to write Tod's POV). Also because his characterization can go any one of half a hundred different ways, and keeping him consistent within a fic can be hard.

I would say that Smrt is generally easier for me to write than Tod, but a good chunk of that is down to how much world building we've done for Smrt. He was very hard too when I was first starting to write Smrtolf drabbles.

💛 Yellow: Do you ever alter, highlight, or de-emphasize certain canonical traits in a character? If so, why and describe how.

Oh yes. Rudolf changes tons, and becomes what I need him to be in the story that I am telling. I very much put the literary needs of the fic over even attempting to keep him historically accurate. (Some of that is down to the fact that I can't read German so I couldn't read the primary sources even if I tried).

Tod changes too, again depending on the fic and usually to meet the literary needs of the story that I am telling.

🤎 Brown: How did you decide to write (or why are you writing) a certain fanfic? (Asker, feel free to choose a specific story you're curious about. You can also let the answerer choose the story.

Hmmmm. So for "January" and the upcoming "February," I wanted to explore (and continue to explore) a slightly more angsty dimension to the usually incredibly soft and fluffy Smrtolf relationship.

Alas often times my reason for writing a certain fic nothing too special - just that I want to read it and it doesn't exist.

🤍 White: What's a fanfic scenario or idea you'd like someone else to write so that you can read it?

Hmmmmm.... I tend to think the Elisabeth fandom takes itself a bit too seriously at times, and that we don't have much crack fic in this fandom. I'd love it if someone wrote some more crack fic (maybe something where Taaffe is trying to catch Rudolf with his mystery 'mistress' (aka Tod/Smrt) and is just not being very successful).

Alternatively, I've had a few thoughts about something where Rudolf fully becomes a todesengel even when he is alive - like with the death kiss and everything - but I've never been able to come up with a good plot for it. Shades of the idea have shown up in other fics, but never the full idea.

[cat-denied]

🌿💞🕯️

🌿how does creating make you feel?

at its best? fuckin amazing buddy. like i am the architect and guide through a world and i'm showing you its most compelling parts, like i am engaged in the transcendent act of making art. idk im not a poet, usually. i absolutely adore creating and i think i always have?

at its worst (i.e. if i'm tired, burnt out, etc) it is a slog and nothing fun happens and i have to go do something else lol.

usually, it's somewhere in the middle, but decidedly on the positive side. i am making a Cool Thing To Show My Friends and my heart and soul does in fact always end up in all of my creations, at least a little bit. i'm a big "making art is and should be an Experience" kinda gal, even if that's only in a little way, so yeah. does that make sense?

💞what's the most important part of a story for you? the plot, the characters, the worldbuilding, the technical stuff (grammar etc), the figurative language

2 answers secretly - firstly, the CHARACTERS i love characters so much. i love to put characters in situations and throw them at each other (rarepairs yay!) and put them through the Machine Of The Story so that they come out fundamentally changed from when they went in. i eat that shit UP i love it. a story doesn't have to be character driven for me to love it but it being character driven is a strong point in its favor. that sweet sweet interpersonal relationships, babey.

secondly, a close second behind that, building out a scene - this is sort of technical but sort of figurative i guess? like, in prose specifically, building out an image in the reader's head in a way that feels almost poetic. i don't know if i'm that great at this, but sometimes it feels like i tap into a Something about descriptive prose and temporarily ascend to a higher plane of existence so yeah.

🕯️--uhh this seems to correspond to 2 different questions if i'm reading it right? so i'm answering both.

was there a fic that was really hard on you to write, or took you to a place you didn't think it would take you?

frankly every chapter of my fire emblem anime script continuation fic lol! i haven't written this sort of episodic style before really ever, and it's really testing me, because i want every chapter to have its own satisfying setup, arc, and resolution; focus on a few members of the ensemble cast; introduce new characters usually; and further the overarching plot of the story. it's a lot to squeeze in every time (and you can tell by the way the chapters get longer after the first one and i find my footing lol) but i am having a blast doing it. every single chapter i realize i have more arcs to resolve, more scenes to fit in, more downtime that's necessary between fights (in order to get that sweet sweet interpersonal relationships in eyyyy), and they always end up being longer than i anticipate them being and taking longer to write than i anticipate, but coming out the other side i always end up feeling like yes! i made a cool standalone episode of script, and i achieved my goals, even in ways i didn't anticipate!

outside of that, every single piece of writing i finish is an achievement because i have ADHD and it gets in the way of completing things all the time. shoutout to @gravitonbeamemitter for keeping me honest about the fire emblem anime script fic, because otherwise that thing would not have made it through one episode.

how do you think engaging with each other through tumblr, twitter, comments, kudos, creates healthy fandom experiences? How do you deal with that if you're not a social person/experience social anxiety?

that's a tough question! personally, i consume fanfic like it's water (or at least i have or had for a long while) and tend to leave comments and kudos all the time. so every time i see a comment or kudos from someone whose works i've read and enjoyed, i get a little ":0!!!" burst of shock and joy that someone i admire liked my stuff. for a while, only reading fics, it was very easy for me to build up a sort of hero-worship around the authors whose work i was a fan of? which looking back wasn't like, ideal. but uploading work of my own and interacting with other authors directly through comments and what have you (especially authors whose fics i've loved) really helped dispell that. we're all just people!

personally, i really love talking about my works! which is why i keep reblogging these ask games whenever i see them lol. so it's not a super hard thing for me to do as a comparatively social person? though responding to comments is like, Difficult, because i don't know how to take a compliment through text lmao, but i do manage.

thanks so much for asking!!

[toast-the-unknowing]

J and/or T! Talk to me about tropes, baby ✌️

J: What’s your favorite fanfic trope? Have you written it?

Favorite is tough! At one point I might have said that my favorite was crossovers, but I'm not nearly as into those as I used to be. I think it would have to be Alternate Universe? That's such a broad trope, it feels like cheating. More specifically, I really love fusions? A good fusion lets you play with one set of characters and a different set of world-building and expand on both of them. I also go nuts for a good canon divergence AU.

I have apparently written three fusions. the endless push and pull of tides (Raven Cycle in Avatar: The Last Airbender) was the first one to come to mind, that's the one where I really dug into the world-building. I also did a Community/Buffy fusion and a Psych/Stargate: SG-1 fusion, but those were just short goofy pieces.

I've written canon divergence a couple times for Star Trek: DS9, although to be honest I don't really feel like where my heart can go a-journeying super counts, I wasn't so much investigating what the change to the timeline would really mean as I was just bending the timeline to so that I could make two characters who never co-exist in canon smooch.

In terms of really exploring how canon could have been different and what that would have looked like and how it would have impacted the characters, I once did a remix of someone else's Dax-centric DS9 AU, which was very fun to expand on even though the (galaxy brain level) idea was someone else's.

I am still extremely happy with my Middleman canon divergence, The Quintuple Convergence Alternatives, or, five ways Wendy Watson didn't meet the Middleman.

T: Any fanfic tropes you can’t stand?

I don't think there's any tropes where I have a hard and fast "nope" policy. There's ones where it's a matter of "only if I really like the writer, or at least, if I'm really desperate for a fandom/ship/character that doesn't have a lot of other content," but even then I wouldn't say I can't stand them. Mpreg and fake dating come to mind, but I have ended up reading a fair number of both of those because of the aforementioned situations, so clearly I can stand them!

I think the thing I dislike the least when I see in fanfic is conflicts where the characters actually agree on everything and everyone is completely in the right and no one is behaving badly at all, but the writer is making them fight? Let your characters have an actual disagreement, let them behave badly and fuck things up, if you want to write conflicts and arguments and fights! I don't know if that really counts as a trope, though.

Fanfic Writer Ask Meme

[takaraphoenix]

One of the (many) problems born from today’s Fandom Purity Cult thinking is the... complete loss of understanding porn?

Yes, sometimes, the smut is part of a lengthy, relationship-building story where there is mutual love, understanding and very explicit consent.

But sometimes, it’s really just porn and it’s about getting railed in the kinkiest ways possible. Which, doesn’t always include consent, or sometimes even explicitly includes a lack of consent, because it’s kinky porn and not a depiction of a healthy, realistic relationship.

The whacky thing that brings me here right now is that I got a comment, on a fic where it is very enthusiastically consensual, that included the line “this wouldn’t be okay without consent”, I mean they really went “Since [chara] actually likes it I guess it's fine“ and I’m just baffled that the kinky porn fic got such reluctant approval on the hinges of it being consensual.

There is so much judgment toward kink and it is so weird to me. This sex act wouldn’t be okay without consent because it’s super kinky is a warped logic. No sex act would be okay without consent.

But here’s a fun little piece of trivia: This is actually all just fiction! So, quite frankly, consent isn’t required. As long as such a fic would be labeled properly for non-con or dub-con, it would also be very okay to have no consent at all, because these are fictional characters who, by default of not being real, can’t actually give consent anyway, like they are just a bunch of letters put into a document, published into the public for people’s enjoyment.

Everything has its place. That includes porn. Even kinky porn. Even porn about things you don’t approve of. But there is this twisted thinking nowadays that sex has to be something “pure” (if it’s allowed at all) and that’s so bewildering.

Sex isn’t pure. Sex doesn’t have to be pure. Fictional sex between fictional characters? Even less so!

You shouldn’t go into any fanfic with a real world moral compass, but even less so into a pure smut fic, because porn is pretty much the last place where you gotta hold your moral compass up to judge.

It’s okay if you judge your own porn consumption that way. But don’t pretend that every piece of porn in existence ought to meet your standard and earn your personal seal of approval. It’s okay if certain kinks and sex acts aren’t for you, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t exist because they’re just for someone else.

(Honestly, the whole Purity Cult movement boils down to “many not-you people exist! and have a different taste than you!” and it’s ridiculous.)

[artistgoudeau]

Black/fem reader x Everyone “The Do-Over”

Reader is a huge Blerd (black nerd) that gets transported to Attack on Titan universe in the year 843. She “luckily” was coming home from vacation. Fell asleep on the plane and woke up outside the walls (with her bags to make life easier for y/n) Now reader is curvy and has a fat ass (I DO make the rules). This, plus her darker skin and fluffy hair, drives everyone crazy. Erwin, Levi, Miche, and Hange are all very close. Rumors go around about them fucking all the time. But no one could prove it. You didn’t even know if they liked each other. You could only guess. But Erwin is always so interested in talking with you. Clumsy man seems to always drop something on the floor for you to bend over and reach. Hange squeals everytime she sees you and is NOT shy about flirting with you. You’re so pretty and she genuinely is curious about you. She ends up brushing her hands in weird places but that’s just her being extra excited. Levi is canonically a virgin so you wouldn’t want to make him uncomfortable with your cleavage and fat thighs when it was hot and you had to train. But it seemed okay because everytime you looked his way, his eyes would travel up from your ass to your eyes and stay there. Miche was the most obvious. He liked to flirt and joke about what your babies would look like. How those kind of hips are rare and he would love to help you with extra training. He would sniff you often. Commenting on how your hair smelled so soothing. You catch the other three vets staring daggers at him if they happen to catch his flirting.

One day you overhear a conversation happening in the commander's office. Eavesdropping isn’t very nice.

Miche: good GOD I can’t take much more of this..

Levi: Are you some teenage idiot who can’t keep it in his pants? Y/n has probably had enough of the fucking flirting! You’re her superior! Act. Like. It.

Hange: Now WAIT A MINUTE! I know for a fact you’ve been beating off to her in the showers!

Levi: And just how THE HELL would you know that?

Erwin: Okay. Okay. Let’s not beat around the bush, y/n is very…ahem… attractive. But we can’t just all gang up on her with our feelings.

Miche: Why not?

Hange/Levi/Erwin: WHAT THE FUCK?!/ Hah?!EXCUSE ME!

Miche: whoa whoa whoa! I didn’t mean FORCE HER! I meant what if we all approached her in our own way and try to actually build bonds with her. She will feel left out if only one of us showed interest and the rest of us just ignore her trying to be nice. Besides, I don’t really want anyone else to have a chance to steal her. If we can learn to share we might be able to make this work.

Erwin: That is incredibly-

Before your commander could even finish his sentence you dropped your papers you were holding close to your chest as you leaned your ear to the door to listen. Up until that moment you had very sinful thoughts about most of the scouts. Muscles + being in an unfamiliar place with no one to relate to or really even looks like you = sad(horny) and desperately seeking an excuse to act out. It was juvenile, you knew. But you had been transported to an ENTIRELY fictional world where you knew everything about everyone and you were the ONLY brown skinned person in the walls! You had been stuck out in the wilderness when you were caught by none other than the Commander himself.

~Flashback~

You both stared at each other for what felt like hours. Him: looking at a woman with features he’s NEVER seen before. A person that only exists in the past and in his fathers stories about the world. You: completely stunned by the fact that one second you were at the airport on your way home from vacation, and now you are staring at a man (that you have definitely read questionable fanfiction of) staring at you. That would just be too good of a cosplay to have a giant naked man also running behind him to catch up to you two. Then you snapped out of it and called him by his name.

Y/n: ERWIN MOVE OUT OF THE WAY!

You were running towards him before you even registered what was happening. You ran to his horse's backside and stood at a decent distance before you smacked its ass and it ran like hell. Erwin seemed to be in a trace as his eyes followed your frame but his hearing stopped working. When his horse suddenly lurched forward he was nearly thrown off but had enough sense to right himself before turning to look back at you trying to run the titan in a different direction. What the fuck are you doing?

Y/n: oh fuck! I’m gonna die! I can’t believe this! I hope Erwin is okay! God if you’re there I need some fucking help!

God answered your prayers that day.

As if on cue (like it’s a tv show or something) the titan suddenly is struck from it’s nape and falls a few fucking feet from you!!! You didn’t even have to look up to know that it was Levi who came to the rescue. Not that you could, you were currently hyperventilating, sweating, and swearing.

Levi: hey! HEY! Look at me! Can you tell me your name? How did you get out here? Are you alone?

You had enough sense (and therapy) to try and focus on his words.

Y/n: my name is y/n. I don’t know. And I don’t know. I just woke up here.

Levi: outside the walls?

Y//n: looks like it.

Erwin finally speaks up after watching Levi save you then listening to Levi question you.

Erwin: How is that possible? There’s no one living beyond the walls and someone as unique as you would’ve been hard to miss inside the walls.

You look at Erwin and you can’t control the deviated look on your face. Both of them catch it but they don’t know what it means. You are crashing now from the rush of life saving adrenaline. You need to be quick and concise here and get your point across.

Y/n: I am not from this world. But everything you know about the Titans and this world has been a lie. *you look to Erwin and stare into his eyes* Your father was right, Erwin. And because he was so close to the truth the MPs killed him. And he WAS very close. I know the truth the king is hiding from you all and I want to make this right.

Erwin and Levi are stunned. The truth of everything?! Dropped seemingly from the sky!? This must be a trap! But Erwin's father being mentioned was entirely too specific.

Erwin: How do you know my father if you aren’t from this world? How do we know you aren’t a mad woman dressed so strangely and speaking in a dialect I can’t quite grasp. Even if you aren’t mad, how could we possibly know you are telling the truth.

You think for a moment then look to Levi

Y/n: Your name is Levi Ackerman. You were born from Kuschel Ackerman, who was a prostitute, so your father is unknown. She died while you were still young and you were raised by a man named Kenny. He taught you how to fight with a knife and then left you when you could defend yourself. You and you friends, Isa-

Levi: ENOUGH!

You flinch away but you understand. You just told a lot of his personal business right next to Erwin and you’re almost sure he didn’t know all of that. But accuracy was key here. You couldn’t be lying or crazy to recount his life in such detail. He and Erwin were stunned.

Erwin: I think it’s best if you come with us.

Y/n: please. I promise I just want to help humanity.

Levi: tch by spilling everyone’s personal information?

Y/n: no. Because I know everything that happens concerning the titans, humanity, and survey corps for the next 2000 years. And in the next five years, if we don’t change the future, humanity and the earth itself will be 80% decimated. The ground will be uninhabitable for hundreds of years. And even when humanity somehow survives. The land you all currently occupy. Your cultures. Your literature. Your pasts, presents, and futures will be completely eradicated by the outside world in the next 2000 years. Please believe me. I DON'T want this to happen and I’m sure you don’t either. What’s more, I can prove it.

Erwin: Show me.

Chapter end

Please leave comments and criticisms. I am just starting out writing fanfics and I want to make sure I’m doing something right lmao.

[yesimwriting]

Searing Starlight (chapter 3)

A/n I CANNOT believe how many people have supported this story,, I’m so excited to continue it with you guys :)) 

Just a reminder that while this is based off the show i hope to blend in some book aspects/vibes and this is just a fanfic and it won’t be completely accurate/follow the show 100% and any changes I make/parts I chose not to focus on are for the sake of the story I’m trying to tell 

-- 

I can’t tell if I wish Kaz had let me go with Inej or not. She’s faster than I am, and considering that I have no real reason to be loyal to them, I’m a flight risk. That means I’m stuck here with only the Kaz Brekker and Jesper, who I tricked. I hadn’t exactly befriended Inej entirely in the few minutes I was alone with her, but she seemed more trustworthy than them. More susceptible to reason. And when she heard where I was from, who was responsible for raising me, something in the way she watched me changed. It was the oddest combination--a look of both tired sympathy and cautious admiration.

“What I don’t understand…” Jesper breaks the silence. “Is why you all go back there. He lets you leave, he gives you money--there’s no reason to return.” 

I try not to let the question anger me. I shift awkwardly, scratching at my palm. “We tried leaving.” My stomach knots. “Once.” How do I make them understand? “He caught us because we young and stupid, and then he…” I exhale slowly. They’re just words. They don’t change anything. Whether I speak them or not, the events of my history aren’t different. “He picked the youngest, a girl only six months younger than me, and he slit her throat from ear to ear and took a finger of anyone that flinched as her blood splattered onto them. He said her blood was our penance and to live with knowing what we did to her would be our punishment.” 

I don’t tell them that I was twelve. I don’t tell them Anya lied about my birthday on the records. I don’t tell them I’m missing the very tip of my pinky--a small punishment for the twitch of my lip. “When Kenya is truly angry, he never hurts you--he hurts those around you.” No one responds to that. They’re making me seem like such a bummer. “It’s not awful all the time...he borders on agreeable when you listen to him.” 

Most days we have peace, left to our own devices as long as we accomplish certain goals. Their silence does little to unnerve me. After speaking so freely of such a nightmare, the desire to be rid of the taste of those words from my mouth is almost overwhelming, but I hold to the silence. 

“Why has he never sold you to the grisha that are so desperate for you?”

Of course Kaz Brekker would ask a question like that. “He isn’t the business of money, he’s in the business of creating gods. He indentures people he thinks could one day become saints or something else entirely. He wants to be owed by the heavens.” 

I watch Kaz carefully, a part of me curious about how someone like him could react to a goal like that. I can see him understanding the ambition of it all, but I can’t imagine himself a person of faith. Perhaps he’ll think it a clever trick. Perhaps he’ll even agree with Kenya.

He nods once; something I get nothing from. 

Whatever. He can be coy and distant this entire time. They all can. I’ll be out of here soon enough, and I’ll find Anya. And if I can stop something bad from happening to Alina then that’s a bonus I’m willing to take risks for. 

“That man is awful.” 

Inej’s voice comes from right behind me. I snap my head around. “You’re in here.” 

She nods once, oblivious to how shocking her sudden appearance is. She hands me a knapsack casually, staring at Kaz. “What’s the plan? We have six hours.” 

I look around the room, only seeing one closed window and one closed door. “There’s one door in this room.” 

“We take the Inferni to the ship.” He doesn’t even bother looking in my direction. 

Okay, they can be mean to be all they want but they can’t ignore me. I don’t think I’ve ever been ignored in my entire life. Gods in the making get attention. It may be the cruel attention of fate, but it’s something. 

“Did she come in through the window?” 

Again, I am ignored. 

“And then what, boss?” Jesper casually crosses the room, sitting down next to me on the small couch. It’s like I’m not even here. “We’d need to break into the Little Palace to get Alina.” 

What? “You guys are going to--” No. No. I am not kidnapping Alina. And there’s no way she’d be in the Little Palace. “First off--if you want to kidnap Alina Starkov for whatever insane ploy you’re all playing at, you’d never find her at Little Palace. She’s not a Grisha and second--” I cut myself off, standing from my seat. “Why am I even telling you this? I shouldn’t be helping you kidnap her.” 

Kaz’s eyes dart to me boredly. At least it’s some kind of acknowledgement of my existence. “I thought you two weren’t close.” 

I seriously consider scorching him. Just a little. Not even enough to scar him, just enough to get him to shut up. “She’s still a person who has a right to her body and what happens to it.” 

“Not that it’s any of your concern, but if we pull this off we get one million kruge.” 

What does he think I’m going to say? ‘Okay, well as long as you’re doing it for a good reason.’ Is that the response he expects. “Okay, well that makes it fair.” 

His eyes narrow skeptically, but Jesper is the one to ask, “Really?” 

“No,” I scoff, slumping back into my seat, “I was being sarcastic.” 

I drop my head back, neck craning over the back of the small couch. It isn’t exactly comfortable, but at least it makes it easier to ignore them. I’ve kept worse company for less. There’s an odd silence for a long second. I look forward without moving, I see Kaz vaguely gesture in Inej’s direction.

“Y/n,” Inej’s voice is refreshingly measured, “I think after the kinds of things we’ve gone through we understand that there’s some relativity in morality.” 

I shift my head to the right so I can look at her. “...Yes, but you’re just forcing another girl into a similar situation.” Why is Alina even worth so much? “And why would anyone pay so much for Alina?” 

Inej hesitates, glancing at Kaz and then back at me. “She’s a Sun Summoner.” 

On instinct, I straighten entirely, my body rigid. They’re insane. “You all are cracked if you think Alina’s a Sun Summoner.” No. No. It couldn’t be her. “Bless your hearts, seriously, she’s--she was trained to be a map maker--she’s not…” None of them relax, none of them shift in any way. What good would lying about this bring them? They have no reason to lie about this. “Saints, I should have had more to drink while downstairs.” 

So what if she’s a Sun Summoner? She didn’t ask to be one. She doesn’t deserve this. I cross my arms. “It doesn’t make this okay.” 

“And would it make it okay if you were getting a cut of the profit?” What? 

Kaz is looking at me in that tactful way. It takes all of my focus to not let myself become unnerved. “What?” 

“If I offered you a cut, would you be able to push aside more protests in order to make working with you easier?” 

Could I do it? Could I betray Alina? I drop my gaze away from his, opting to focus on the forgotten lantern on the coffee table in front of me. It flickers to life with no conscious prompting on my part. The flame is low and blue. Still though, Kaz notices it. What doesn’t he notice? 

“I can help you do what I agreed to.” I swallow around a lump in my throat, “But I cannot help you kidnap Alina.” 

The corner of his mouth tugs downwards. “We’re just going to get her to work with us.” 

“Work with you?” 

“We never said anything about taking her, and if Alina is really your friend you should know that the entire world is after her. Better us who can get her out of an unwanted situation quickly than the brutal General Kirigan who will hold her hostage until she does what he wants.” 

...I guess he has a point. “Oh.” I’m not naive enough to think that their methods will revolve around making Alina comfortable, but perhaps it’s not as dark as I assumed. “Maybe I was a little quick to assume…” I trail off awkwardly, looking at Inej for some type of reassurance. She avoids my gaze. 

I scratch the back of my arm, feeling like a spiraling child. I pick up my knapsack and place it on my lap, fiddling with the strap. 

“Come on,” Kaz stands, adjusting his grip on his cane, “We only have until sunrise.” 

As I stand, I pull down the skirt of my dress, suddenly aware of how inappropriate my clothing is for this late in the night. “Can--can I change first?” 

It’s a sheepish question, leaving me feeling like a child. 

“Five minutes,” Kaz offers, stepping out of the room with the rest of them. 

Inej leaves last, feet more silent than a cat. She offers me the tiniest hint of a smile. Despite my reservations, I beam at her. Something about me finds her politeness endearing despite it all. I think she closes the door loudly on purpose, to assure me of privacy. 

Normally changing in a building so full of drunk men would leave me nervous, but knowing Inej is outside leaves me feeling safe. I may not trust her with my life but something about her being tells me she values personal autonomy enough to protect it. 

I sift through the belongings Inej brought me. Clean underwear I try not think of her searching for, a thin white dress, comfortable pants, shorts, a few casual shirts, my red hood, and a nightgown. When I get to the bottom of the bag, and I see the personal belongings Inej smuggled back for me, I’m moved so powerfully my hand flies to my mouth on instinct. She had brought the folded up piece of paper with the only information I’ve been able to find about Kamil, the book I left on my nightstand, the small candle holder Alina had given me the day before I was taken away, the blade Mal had given me the day I left, the deck of playing cards Anya had first taught me to play with, and my mother’s necklace. The silver north star on a long chain. 

Before I can become too emotional, I take off the Crow’s Club T-shirt Inej had given me when I looked cold. I change into black pants, tucking the small blade Mal had given me into the pocket. The shirt I put on is pale blue, breaking the dark theme of everything around me. I fasten my red hood over my shoulders, basking in the familiar fabric. Lastly, I pull the north star necklace over my head, watching the blue orb with a black dot at its center blink at me in the light. I always found the stone at the pendant’s center odd. I'm quick to walk towards the door, nervous about what wasting their time could mean. 

“Let’s do this,” I sigh, pushing open the door. 

They all pause. Or maybe they were never moving. I try to imagine them interacting normally, but it’s hard to picture them as anything but intense and unflinching. There’s something odd about them, though, Jesper practically sulking and Kaz dropping his head despite Inej’s harsh stare.

“What kind of stone is in your necklace?” 

I swear to the Saints that if Kaz Brekker tries to steal it I’ll melt those leather gloves into his hands. “Try to take it and--” 

“That’s what I get for trying to make ‘polite conversation.’” He throws a look at Inej as he speaks the last two words. 

Wait--did Inej tell him to try to make polite conversation? Wait--more importantly, did he just kind of, almost say something that borders on casual? 

Wrinkling my nose, I let out a slight sigh. “Sorry.” 

His eyebrows draw together quizzically. “Did you just apologize for assuming I’d steal from you?” 

Great. Now I’m fully embarrassed. “Can we just go?” 

“Not before meeting me, I hope.” The stranger’s voice means nothing to me, but the others tense at it immediately. What? The man continues to walk forward, his steps too casual and confident for me to trust. The stranger is quick to respond to the question on my face, “Pekka Rollins.” 

--

Taglist: @ambrosia-v-black @fandomstuffff @boxofteenageideas @losers-club6 @cityofstaars @stillreadingfantasy @slatersbrekker  @xoxo-aclown @alzawas-plug @nuwanda-greaser @swearingsolemnly @-thatgirloverthere-

General Taglist: @theincredibledeadlyviper @grishaverse7

[vexelier-suix-cipher]

"Could you do Teruteru, Hifumi, and Ryoma getting drugged by a love potion and falls (even harder) for the reader (who has already fallen for them)?"

100% I can!! :D

Warnings: Mentions of love drug/potion, slight obsession(?), and swearing.

===

Hifumi Yamada

•Proceeds to rant about how amazing Hifumi is

•Fanfic boy loves you very much!! (Though he did his best to hide it)

•It felt like when a cat loved it owner. Celeste went out the window. This man would get on his hands and knees for you. 🙇🏽‍♂️

•You also loved him very much!! (Literally Taka had to keep Mondo from lunging at you two and screaming "JUST DATE ALREADY!!")

•Oh but what's this? A drink on his desk after a hard day of drawing and writing manga?

•Well of course he drank it!! He chugged that drink and felt quite satisfied after.

•And back to work he goes :›

•He had some music on and his script for his next manga, scribbling out the sketches for his newest manga when he felt the sudden urge to go see you.

•It was nothing too new. Could've been he just wanted to show you the script for his manga!! A beta read!

•So Hifumi happily found you and sat you down, showing you the script for his manga!

•He felt a bit- different.

•He felt like he needed to have you in his arms.

•He needed you closer.

•He needed- you.

•The even more clingy behavior continued for a few days.

•Though you didn't mind, you did find it a bit strange.

•Why was he so clingy?

•You already read this script-

•And read that one too-

•Didnt he have things to do?

•He was going to fall behind in his schedule if he continued like this!!

•So when you saw him walking over to you once again, you pulled him to the side and questioned him.

"Hifumi, you've been acting kinda strange these past few days. Are you okay? Don't get me wrong, I love having you by my side but you're going to fall behind in your schedule."

"Well...I don't really know how to explain it. I feel like I've got to be with you all the time!! A-And I'm getting work done!!"

•He huffed and whined for a while longer as you continued asking him things before he got frustrated with himself and finally blurted it out

"Fine!! Fine. I like you, okay? I have for a while a-and I just didn't know how to tell you-...I found this drink on my desk one day and now that I think about it, it could've been one of those love potions that I've been hearing about...could've made my feelings stronger.."

•He started muttering towards the end but you could understand the gist of it.

•You reassured him it was fine and that you accepted his feelings.

•Which was returned with a loud,

"HUH?!? YOU DO?! WHEN- HOW-"

•*Once again has to calm fanfic boy down*

•After calming him down (again) you went over your own feelings.

•He had the brightest smile on his face I swear

•He just couldn't hold back!

•So he picked you up and held you close, hugging you sweetly

"Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!"

===

Teruteru Hanamura

•AGGRESSIVELY RANTS ABOUT HOW AMAZING HE IS

•Love Potion exists?

•He probably bought it.

•This boy is already so head over heels for you it's absolutely adorable.

•He 100% cooks for you.

•Breakfast? In bed.

•Lunch? Made your favorite food.

•Dinner? You can eat with him! :D

•And his food is just 😩 to die for

•He does his best to tone down the sexual comments a bit, though he can't help if one or two slip out!

•Compliments you every 5 minutes no lie.

•Though he does turn cherry red if you compliment him

•If you allow petnames, he WILL call you darlin' and sugar the most.

•Now for the fun part

•He was most likey cooking and was working with the oven.

•Ovens hot. His clothes are pretty hot.

•So he stripped got something to drink out the fridge

•He blindly took a glass out the fridge and drank it.

•Drank the damn love potion-

•He knew he accidentally drank it. He read the label he had put on the glass right after he drank it.

•Unlike Hifumi, he tried staying away from you

•Poor boy doesn't know how to show such strong feelings :(

•He still does cook for you though

•And leaves you little snacks

•Did yelp when you came into the kitchen once without him knowing (it's true I was the dust on the oven window)

•Alot more fiddly and nervous when he has to go ask you something

•His gaze is towards the floor and he's playing with the ends of his scarf as that adorable accent decorates his speech

•Hes so nervous oh poor baby

•You found him scurrying everywhere once trying to find his hat when you had to point out it was on his head-

•He was so embarrassed-

•He apologized and walked back towards the kitchen

•He cooks his feelings away

•That is alot of food-

•Once he disappeared into the kitchen you went after him

•You had been wondering why he ran away from you every time you saw him

•You were worried :(

•As he went back into the kitchen, he paused hearing someone else's footsteps.

•He turned around and jumped slightly when he saw you

•Begin the anxious southern rambling and questions.

"O-Oh! S/o! What brings you to the...the kitchen??"

"Teru, what's going on? You keep ignoring me."

"W-Well I don' mean to cher' I-Its just I' been kinda stressed lately a-an' I don' wanna bother you with tha'-"

•Oh sweet boy almost cried just talking to you

•He wanted to confess so badly!!

•He just wanted to hug you and bury his face into your neck!!

•But he was so scared :(

•After a good talk, the confession just slipped out of him mid-sentence

"I already apologized cher'..."

"C'mon Teru, what's been REALLY happening with you?"

"W-Well...the truth is I accidentally drank a love potion and since I love you so damn much it strengthened my feelings...I-I didn't wanna make you uncomfortable so I stayed away in case I-"

"Did you just say you love me?"

"I-I did..?"

•Oh certainly he did. And when he realized, he apologized 10x more.

•You had to shut him up by squishing his face

•After a good explanation about you loving him too, he clung onto you with a laugh.

•He sat in your lap (and after some consent) kissed your face all over, muttering a soft 'I love you' after each kiss

•You two sat together like that for quite a bit, just laying in each other's presence

"Thank you so much....you don't know how much that means to me...how much YOU mean to me..."

===

Ryoma Hoshi

•Ah yes. Tiny, edgy, ex-tennis, cat loving, deep voiced boy

•Where do I start?

•Lets start with

•He's absolute shit at feelings.

•Like really.

•He refused to believe he fell for you.

•His heart was racing? No it wasn't. It's probably because he was out of breath.

•He's flustered and blushing? Kinda hot in the room y'know.

•You get the point.

•He hates the fact he fell for you. He doesn't know what to do.

•He lost almost everyone he ever loved before. Why would this be any different? He didn't want to put you in danger.

•Ryoma hanged around with you though. He was a bit quiet but he went basically everywhere you went

•No one really messed with you when little man was with you.

•This was okay. He could hide his feelings. You wouldn't be in danger and he wouldn't ruin his relationship with you.

•Then the world announced a love potion was now available!!

•Ah shit.

•That damn Kokichi.

•All he wanted was some water and that little panta-loving gremlin switched it out with the new potion.

•He had already chugged around half the bottle before he realized it wasn't his juice.

•Ryoma would've just left it at 'Oh I just poured the wrong drink in' if it wasn't for Kokichi coming up to him about an hour later.

"Nishishishi....how's the love potion working Ryoma?"

"The what."

"Oops~"

"You little-"

•Kokichi went to the nurse with a bump on his head from Ryoma hitting him with a tennis ball.

•You thought Teruteru hiding away was bad?

•Ryoma refused to leave his dorm.

•He came out at around lunch time to get food, go to the bathroom, and then back to his dorm.

•No one was allowed in.

•He could feel the effects of the potion working.

•He wanted to get out and cling to you so badly. It almost physically hurt

•Fucking hell-

•Him. Ryoma Hoshi. The guy who basically gave up on life, wanted to run into your arms like a little kid.

•He almost cried.

•Of course you were worried!! He locked himself in his dorm without warning!!

•And he refused to talk to you!!

•You came to his dorm door almost daily, trying to pry open the damn door.

•With no avail.

•Goddammit.

•It wasn't until a few weeks later which he made a plan.

•He'd confess and leave right after.

•If you said no, that would be the end of it.

•If you said yes, ...well he didn't really plan that far.

=

•Ryoma met up with you at the back of the building, looking down at the ground as he heard your footsteps.

•It took a minute of small talk before he started speaking

"Listen, Kokichi switched my drink out a few weeks ago for that new love potion they're selling. I already had really strong feelings for you but with the potion they increased. I know you probably don't feel the same way but I wanted to tell you because it was starting to get too out of hand for me."

•He rambled on a little about how you would never like him and that he apologized for having such feelings and-

•You yanked his beanie down to his face, letting out a small huff.

"Ryoma Hoshi you have no idea how long I've been waiting for you to confess. You're an amazing guy Ryoma, and I really do wish you confessed sooner since I feel the same way. Now shut it with all the sad shit and come here."

•You told him, tugging him closer by the sleeve as you engulfed him in your arms

•Ryoma felt like his face was on fire. Butterflies in his stomach and a giddy, tingly feeling throughout his body

•He let out a low chuckle, hugging you back and sighing softly

•This was nice. He felt....loved.

•He liked this feeling quite a bit....he had missed this feeling quite a bit.

"Maybe I should've confessed sooner."

===

AHHHHHHHH I HOPE YOU LIKED IT-

I absolutely adore these three.

If you want me to add or fix anything just say the word!!

I had a great time writing this!!

Thanks for requesting!!!

-Vex ∆

[theoriginalcarnivorousmuffin]

One thing that has always bothered me about the magical system in HP is how much it... doesn’t exist? No one questions anything, there’s almost no theoretical exploration, and Hermione Granger (someone I’ve always found to be of average intelligence at best) is the brightest witch of her age.

Some characters seem to be inexplicably more powerful, but I wonder if it isn’t simply a matter of discipline and will-power.

What are your thoughts on magic? We never really see what light vs. dark entails, so fanfic authors tend to make it up as they go along, but do you have any head-canons about how magic works in HP?

I mean, to be fair, it wasn’t really the point of JKR’s series. She just wanted to write about a kid going to a magic boarding school in Scotland with this quirky witch aesthetic. 

No need for her to placate us uber nerds who demand a sensible explanation to the minutia of her magical system. 

Right, but yes, it clearly bothers me too. No one questions anything, there’s no understanding of why wands and spells even work, or why it has to be in this weird pseudo-Latin. No one even bothers to learn Latin, for that matter, and you think they would given the damn spells. 

Hermione Granger is the brightest witch of her age given that “her age” is either around 30 people (the amount of people in her year) or else around 300 (the population of Hogwarts at a given time) which is a pitiful amount. She also is an extremely hard worker and actually reads her textbooks, sadly I think this gets you ahead of 95% of the population.

Part of the reason I think the Wizarding World thinks like this is that they’re this incredibly tiny, cut off, insular society. Generally, when you have a small society cut off like that you tend to lose innovation or even understanding of technology you have.

But that’s not what you asked. Right.

Personally, I think there is no light and dark magic. Magic is just this part of the natural universe that muggles, for whatever reason, are not able to directly access. It’s neither good nor bad, it just is. For that matter, I don’t think spells themselves really exist, or rather, they’re not what magic really is in its purest form but instead a way that humans can easily access and control magic to perform a certain task. Kind of a glorified API if you will. 

So, dark magic and light magic are instead arbitrary labels that wizards apply to their own tool box based on the functions of that tool. If you have a tool that is only designed for/can be used for the murder and torture of sentient beings: well, that’s bad, we’ll call that dark. That said, do I think the spells themselves are inherently evil? No. It’s like if you open up your tool box, pick out a sledgehammer, and go, “This, my child, is an instrument of pure evil and you must never touch it.” Well, that’s a bad comparison, it’d be like taking a handgun out of your tool box and saying “this is a dark weapon”. Now, this gets into a debate I don’t want to get into, but to me dark spells are a lot like handguns (they’re designed for only one purpose and there’s no squirming your way out of what that purpose is).

Now, I think wizards have forgotten this (mostly because they don’t understand what spells or magic is), and so they get very hung up on the labels of spells or even just your odd genetic trait (i.e. parseltongue). So, we have these weird moments where someone uses, say, the severing charm to cut somebody open in the middle of the street. And it’s less bad than if they had used the killing curse to kill them painlessly and easily, because the severing charm’s not dark magic. 

It’s like... If someone were to walk out and bash someone over the head with a sledgehammer until it kills them it’s less evil than if they shot them in the head with a handgun.

Wizards seem to miss the point of this. 

As for what magic is, I believe it’s... direct energy that wizards are able to access in a way that muggles (thus far) cannot. What do I mean by thus far? Well, look at electricity. In ye olden days, I’m sure that if you asked a wizard they would say that making artificial light without flame is a property solely done by magic and muggles are not capable of it. Well, muggles then did it, and suddenly the definition and parameters of magic change. Wizards are kind of like chess grand masters who suddenly lose to your AI du jour, who say that it doesn’t count because the AI didn’t really do it like a human would. It’s not real intelligence.

I don’t believe people have magic in and of themselves, any more than anyone else does at any rate, because we see too little differences between powerful and mediocre wizards. You’re either a squib or you’re not, there doesn’t really seem to be a spectrum, and those who struggle with spells appear to do so for other reasons (Neville has severe confidence issues and is traumatized, Harry’s an idiot, etc.) 

I think what separates the great wizards from the rest is hard work, the ability to read books and learn from them, even an inkling of understanding of how spells really work and how to create them (and this makes you Voldemort level right here), and a good ear to be able to pronounce your ridiculous pseudo Latin.

The wand is a tool specifically designed so that, with repeatable easy to understand steps, you can perform a whole array of tasks and even use them as building blocks to develop a new spell (combine swishes, flicks, and various garbled sentences together in such a way and BAM new spell).

Your wand, in other words, is your API to direct and access untold amounts of energy from the universe.

But people have forgotten that so instead what you memorize are very specific function calls that will prove useful in your daily life.

As for the wand and spells themselves, well, here’s my hokey ridiculous theory on how that came about. A long time ago, a brilliant foreigner enters the Roman Empire with a revolutionary idea that puts him on the level of Einstein/Newton/Feynman Name Your Stupidly Brilliant Physicist. He says, hey, how about instead of doing these time consuming magical rituals we develop a tool that, in a matter of seconds, allows us to perform truly complicated and powerful magic any time we want. No more relying on having the right ingredients about, virgin sacrifices, the full moon, etc.

Everyone probably laughs at him, but then he goes off and designs a rudimentary wand, and through probably some uber ritual that was dangerous as hell implements this system by which by flicking your wand a certain way and saying basic commands like “levitate”, “repair”, etc. you can perform these tasks.

Only, the guy’s foreign and Good Will Hunting (no formal education in the empire), so he doesn’t actually speak Latin. So what you have instead is this weird half-Latin like, “Leviupwards Fly”, “Repair-o”, etc. 

It sounds dumb as hell, but goddammit it works, and more it gives Roman wizards an unheard of advantage against their enemy wizards who are all stuck doing these stupid rituals. They suddenly have a vast military might, so long as they use these wands and spells this guy came up with.

Everybody who’s anybody, who wants to win a fight, is now using wands. Wandcraft becomes a huge deal and people specialize in fine tuning these things exactly so as to get the maximum efficiency for a particular user.

And they probably go up to our guy and say, “Hey, buddy, can you make this in actual Latin? I can barely remember what it is I’m supposed to say to get this to work” and after the hours, and hours, and hours he spent making this thing that nobody helped him with he goes, “DO IT YOURSELF, BITCH”. And they never do because they’re too damn lazy/have no idea how he actually did it and any attempt to recreate it ends up with something that’s pitiful and doesn’t work. 

So, they’re all stuck with it, and thousands of years later they forget this guy even existed and while there’s a recognition that not all magic has to be performed by wands there’s just this feeling that the wand is the magic. And so no one will ever come up with an English/French/Whatever version where when you say “Up” the thing goes up. 

And that’s “The History of Magic” as brought to you by The Carnivorous Muffin.