#but i need to read them so i can read tSatS when it comes our

[periwinkle-the-11th]

I JUST realized that I can listen to the Trials of Apollo audiobooks instead of reading them

[apollokids]

Thoughts about tsats, trauma, and the cocoa puffs

Nico’s personality in tsats feels most reminiscent of what he was like in The Titans Curse which (imo) is a sign that he is slowly healing and living with his trauma.

The Sun and the Star emphasizes that trauma and PTSD can make it feel like one’s past life events happened to a completely different person, and it mentions that Nico relates to this feeling. This distancing of oneself from past memories, experiences, and personality can result in feeling disconnected for a while, taking on new personality traits, feeling like a chameleon mimicking others, or just feeling empty.

For some people (maybe, depending on when trauma occurs), healing can be about reconnecting with our childhood selves. Depending on what someone was like before trauma, like maybe Nico for example, that can mean becoming more emotional, being more playful, indulging in your childhood interests (eg. mythomagic cards). And Nico’s progression practically mirrored mine exactly through the years, and the ways I changed in ED treatment.

It's hard to let go of a disorder when in some cases it feels like the only thing that’s stayed stable in our lives. Suffering is touted as the pinnacle of art-- we see its romanticization everywhere. It sounds weird to say that I miss being sick, or I miss my suffering, when I'm actively trying to make my life better, but those thoughts do come up. And when it comes to characters I project that misery on to? Well, if I’m suffering, then they have to suffer with me! (After all, they’re just characters, it’s not that deep, right?) Except I found that the more I made my characters suffer, and focused on the ‘beauty’ of suffering, the harder it was for me to heal from my own. Whenever my health was in decline, I characterized my favorite characters the same way. It was just as hard to allow those characters to heal as it was to allow myself to heal. (Other people might not feel the same, though.)

I think Nico choosing to accept the physical manifestations of his demons (while also setting them free, and allowing them to exist as they please) mirrors the suggestion I was given in treatment when I struggled with the idea of ‘giving up’ my eating disorder– because to me, it was always either defeat the disorder or be consumed by it, and defeating it sounded like killing a part of me or erasing a part of my past or my home. Approaching treatment from the standpoint of killing my eating disorder scared me too much. I knew my disorder had caused problems for me, but many of the habits and behaviors I’d developed had served as my coping mechanism and they helped me survive. 

So, my therapist told me: “You don’t have to shun your disorder, kill it, or say goodbye. Instead, you can acknowledge that it served a purpose during a point in your life in which you used it to survive, but you no longer need to hold on to it and that’s okay — you’re setting it free. Maybe even instead of saying goodbye, you can say ‘thank you, I’m alright now.’”

And that’s pretty much… exactly what Nico did with the demons. Bob, too, acknowledged that he was a titan, and that was part of his past, and that’s okay — but he’s allowed to change. And Nico is too.

I just found that really really wonderful because I related to it so heavily. He didn’t want to conquer his trauma in battle. He wanted it to just… be acknowledged, and set free. And it followed him, but he can have a better relationship with his past now. He’s not consumed by it. It’s just there, it’s a part of him, and he can continue to live his life. And I think reading this book (while trying to maintain and navigate post-treatment life) was exactly what I needed to remind myself why I’m doing this.

[robo-cryptid]

K, M, N, & Q for the fanfic asks!

I’m gonna answer K behind a cut since it’s got a couple spoilers for things I’ve written, so these are a teensy bit out of order. :)

M: Got any premises on the back burner that you’d care to share?

I do have one idea that was once going to be part of the original ending to TSatS. It is nothing like the fic is at this point, because it’s a lot more lighthearted than I thought really fit when I started taking certain parts of the fic more seriously, so I scrapped it entirely, but it could absolutely be its own story and I’ve held onto the parts I wrote to make them one day workable, hah. It involves a mission with just the two of them and possible Only One Bed shenanigans, antique stores, awkward drunk talks, and a bar shootout in a small town. Also bad diner food, but I cribbed from some of that for the roadtrip fic I wrote.

N: Is there a fic you wish someone else would write (or finish) for you?

Lmao, all of them. Honestly most of the things I write are out of some “why doesn’t this very specific thing I want, tailored to my very specific interests and needs, exist?!” impulse to some degree. So, you know, if other people could get on writing the stuff in my head, that would be great. ;) 

But here, some fic ideas I wish other people would write just, like, in general: that funny personal trainer AU full of UST; a “Point Break” (1991, I know nothing about the remake) inspired AU because a) LOL and b) that movie’s so fucking full of (almost definitely intentional) gay subtext already it would take only the tiniest adjustments to make it text; more comedic takes on should-be-angsty tropes like hanahaki or certain soulmate type fics, etc.; an AU where they meet at the farmers’ market and McCree’s there selling succulents.

Q: Do you have any discarded scenes/storylines/projects?

Oh, for sure. I mentioned one in my M-answer, but there are just a ton of deleted scenes for TSatS that I wrote earlier on that, by the time the story started catching up to them, felt really off or like the wrong direction entirely. I’ve mentioned before that Jesse in NTIC was supposed to have Even More Awkwardness by having had previous crushes on several of his superiors, but which was super distracting from the rest of the fic. I stand by it being too distracting, but it was pretty funny and would’ve possibly contextualized his not-giving-a-damn about Hanzo bossing him around in entertaining ways, lollllll. I also had to table a second Reverse Bang fic bc that one just wasn’t working for me or the artist at the time; I may go back to it eventually though, because it really was a cool idea!

Now for the one that gets longer and a little spoilery for Our Heads Are Just Houses and TSatS unless you’ve read them all the way.

K: What’s the angstiest idea you’ve ever come up with? [aka robo rambles a lot about those two times she hurt her own feelings while writing]

Okay, for Our Heads Are Just Houses: the original concept was @bluandorange​‘s, so the whole brainwashing plot, while already angsty in potential, wasn’t mine. However, I am absolutely the asshole who came up with the part where McCree was more or less himself with the serial numbers rubbed off, while Hanzo felt he was sort of “remolded” to be a very different person – the kind McCree might actually be able to love – and all the distressing feelings that came from Hanzo loving the real person but McCree loving the more palatable lie. Basically the whole scene where they talk on the flight to Gibraltar, ending with McCree’s “there’s no answer I can give that ain’t cruel in some way.” I have cried twice while writing a McHanzo fic, and that scene was one of them, heh.

The other thing I’ve written that made me cry, though it’s far less explicit in a lot of ways, is the scene in TSatS ch. 18 where Hanzo asks McCree if they’re friends and admits aloud that he’s never really had many friends and doesn’t know what he’s doing. I actually had to go back and edit to make it way more restrained because I Had A Lot Of Feelings. Anyway, then McCree tells Hanzo that he kept secrets for him even when he didn’t have to by refusing to be the one to tell Gabe about the Shimada dragons, because he didn’t want Hanzo to be used again? Even after everything that happened when they were younger, when Jesse had no “rational” reason to show him any loyalty? So the reason this whole thing kills me, and the reason Hanzo just straight up has to leave after he hears it, is because on some level Hanzo has to contend with the reality (and this’ll be explicit later in some fashion) that his entire life with his family was full of people who said one thing and did another, including Genji. Shit like “I love you” doesn’t really mean anything, if it’s always been accompanied by “so you owe these things to me and we’re going to use you how we see fit” or actions that demonstrate… not super loving things. 

So Jesse was someone who loved him in a way that was actionable. He did things even when he didn’t have to and when Hanzo couldn’t possibly know about it or reciprocate, for no conceivable end except not doing more harm (and a harm that Jesse saw way more clearly than Hanzo did even back in the day). And he might be the first/only person in Hanzo’s life to have ever done that, although Genji is a different person now and is doing it in small ways these days. And Hanzo banished him and has been kind of a dick to him (even if it’s getting better) and Jesse now can barely even say they’re friends. So Hanzo’s being presented with both what he had and the knowledge that he lost it, and he actually just can’t process it in that moment and has to remove himself from it entirely, heh. Anyway, the whole idea kills me, from the “are we friends?” moment to the as-yet-only-suggested part where Hanzo kind of realizes that love is not an abstract feeling but also a set of actions taken and he pushed away the only person who’s ever really shown him that.

I am sure I’ve had angsty head canons that didn’t make it into fics. I know I have. But writing those two things made me cry like a stupid sappy marshmallow and I still think about them sometimes and wonder what I’ve done to myself and to people reading, lol. (Also I had to edit the above 4am ramble about TSatS because I kept writing “Hanzo realizes,” but the truth is in the text so far, he doesn’t realize in any conscious meaningful way beyond it sitting uncomfortably in his gut.)