#except i'm not bc i had to cut so many quotes from this

[byfulcrums]

been rewatching rtte

toothless is called T multiple times, but the letter T doesn't exist in the alphabet of this world

i think hiccup was also called H???

hiccup went to the wedding of the man who tried to kill him and his family multiple times. no wonder he thought he could change drago's mind

snotlout is canonically a theater kid

"you're so small and cuddly" "please never say that again"

the twins are really smart, but they're also just stupid

hiccup straight up disappears when he's working on something

heather had a super noticeable crush on astrid

fishlegs got a love interest!! a plus size main character actually has a cool, badass love interest!

it was super hetnormative but it was cute

there was an island full of flying women who were implied to regularly commit cannibalism

hiccup taught all the riders how to fly with toothless, that's so sweet

everyone is a flat earther except for the twins

hiccup almost directly killed a lot of people

and killed a LOT more when destroying their ships

“scalding– cal..ding--" "toothle, plama bla!" was pretty much the funniest part of the entire series

dagur was bullied as a kid by a guy 8 years older than him who literally tattooed an imagine of him beating up little dagur in his arm??? What was that all about

actually we need to talk about how messed up everything about dagur is and about how the things that could've/did happen(ed) to him may be the reasons why he's Like That

just why was he imprisoned by the outcasts??? he didn't do anything to them directly

oof my brain is spiraling. "he loved you" "ig now we'll never know" what do you mean he didn't know if his dad loved him

there's a technically musical episode

tuffnut became hiccup's defense attorney and immediately got him the death sentence

hiccup regularly jumps off cliffs

he also jumped off a boat, with his arms tied and without toothless. just where did he think he was going

snotlout's annoying attitude is actually because spitelout pressures him too much and he feels like he has to be perfect for his dad :((

THE 'HICCUP'S EVIL MIRROR' VILLAIN THEME DONE RIGHT YESS!!!

viggo is the best httyd villain change my mind (you can't, swords at sundown, you may bring backup but i will win on my own)

skrill comeback skrill comeback SKRILL COMEBACK!!!!

"COMEEE TO DADDY"

what is a boar pit???

oh my god i had missed this series so much. it has no right to be this funny

this was my childhood. it has forever shaped the way i am

berserker heather the unhinged >>>

actually good disability rep! yay

hiccup complains about his peg leg pinching him

he straight up cannot walk without it and it is shown many times

"well, there are the benefits of a metal leg" after it got caught in a bear trap

funny moments, like snotlout trying to steal it to use it as a weapon

the jokes!! toothless laughing at the jokes!!! hiccup being so fucking done with the twins, who are always making the jokes!

there's an episode where everyone is so sleep deprived they actually start spiraling

astrid becomes a happy go lucky girl, hugs snotlout and tells him he's handsome

the fucking mood swings snotlout got were insane

the twins were straight up just hallucinating

"i sent them to wash their dragons, how could they mess that up?" cut to heather falling on her face with a bucket full of water in her hands

fishlegs becomes so paranoid, he's yelling at everyone all the time

"don't you know the trapper's trap can trap the trapper?? ...oh gods, i must be losing it, i'm quoting dagur"

YOOOO VALKA!!!! it's so nice to see her

hiccup tried to murder dagur to stop him from getting to toothless, which is scary bc it shows just how far he's willing to go for his bff, but also funny because hiccup. that was not going to work

oh the hiccstrid slowburn, how i have missed you

the twins's made up language

there was a beach episode turned murder mystery and a musical episode held at gun point

hiccup has a whole little speech that he periodically gives astrid to remind her that the twins serve a purpose

[pitter-patt-art]

Ace Attorney AU August oops-august-has-been-over-for-a-week Update!!

Hiiiii well okay first and most importantly of all! Happy investigations collection day everyone!!!! My copy is supposed to arrive by 10pm although I'm not sure I'll be playing it right away, but, hey, once it arrives I'll have in my possession at least one physical copy of every game in the series (2 for aai1, woohoo)!!! *Coughs* uh except all of the OG Trilogy which instead I own like 2 times over digitally (3 in T&T's case, thanks Wii) lmao. Ah well.

NOW the actual post. Yeah it's not August anymore but I've been recuperating or w/e so shhh, better late than never!

Overall I wrote over 50k words (actually in August itself) and posted 5 fics (with many more in progress), which is honestly just, wild???? That is so cool. Apparently the way to overcome writer's block is just overcommit to a month-long prompt list, who knew!

Here is my post about the first 17 days/AUs! And over here's my Ao3 series for these! Below the cut I'll wrap up the last 14 days of AUs, some thoughts, etc!

I am setting the goal for myself to actually finish writing these before the end of the year even if they're not technically "AU-gust" qualified anymore by the time I get to them sooo ...wish me luck!! In the meantime I am proud of myself for (tbh completely unnecessarily and to my detriment lmao) coming up with actually a full 31 solid AUs based on the prompts that I feel inspired by.

This post is gonna be a bit more rambly than the last one because I definitely did more of my writing last month the first 2 weeks rather than the last 2, but nevertheless--

Onto the remaining AUs!

18 - Space Travel

So, I actually started a draft at the airport before my vacation where I got wayyyy too sidetracked getting detailed about this one and thus ended up not being able to finish the post before takeoff lmao. I'm not sure whether it's annoying or interesting to include all of that here, but it's my post so fuck it, here's August 21st patt to tell you aaall about it so I don't have to: The Martian AU (I've only seen the movie and not read the book but i *did* literally just re-watch it because this thought crossed my mind lol. (Hello! It's future me popping in to say: fun fact, rewatching this movie literally ended up being the reason I knew a bar trivia answer last week lmao. Huzzah for the powers of Ace Attorney refreshing my movie quote knowledge.) Be glad this one occurred to me because my first inclination was to lean into the dark past of my vld phase (I'm super joking I had a lot of fun with it before the last few seasons haha sorry idk what to tell you friends) and see how much I'd retained if i tried to make that work but the martian sounded more fun in the end). Apparently my Thing™ is a) poisoning Phoenix and b) putting Apollo in an insane situation in which he's completely on his own--which all things considered is probably far meaner lol. I think Phoenix is to blame for creating his own problem here for choosing to eat the stupid necklace but I fully blame Capcom for all the BS Apollo has gone through after AA4 (bc...the stuff IN that game is. coincidentally also Phoenix's blame to claim. lol). That said I'm part of the problem teehee. Apollo can be Some Guy from the real world who gets isekai'ed and he can also be Mark Watney :P (sorry bud I love you but you have just the Worst case of unavoidable main character syndrome). ((Which is QUITE funny actually because I'll never get over Capcom calling 4,5,6 the """"Apollo Justice Trilogy"""" (it's really not and it's frankly insulting they're trying to say it is.) Like he's. Y’know. The main character in exactly one of those games...... so.)) What was I talking about? Lmao oh yeah so Apollo is left on Mars (not sure he actually has much in the way of Botanist™ vibes but the indomitable, never-say-die, highly sarcastic vibes.... ye haha that's my boy right there). Omg wait sorry I'm writing this and realizing this whole thing actually fits the 18th AND yesterday's (the 20th) prompt as well. Whoops.

Clay as the captain (let him do something, says I)

Trucy as I think the pilot ONLY because I am literally constantly on the lookout to make a Wright Flying Brothers joke, sorry

Klavier aaaas. Uh. So the German astronaut in the film is the chemist and navigator and I know Klav's not necessarily supposed to be actually German canonically but there IS something funny about it

Athena as the flight surgeon and EVA specialist (for a couple reasons but mostly so she can be a doctor lol. I imagine she also can be there for psych stuff too, like, it's a long ass space voyage, that does shit to your brain)

Kay as the SysOp and reactor tech, tbh mostly because for some reason i really have a thing for hacker/programmer Kay, i guess?

Ema I want to be there also lol so that would be exceeding the actual number of OG astronauts but eh it's my AU. The rest of these I'm just directly comparing to a crew member from the martian but I think some of the titles and tasks could be redistributed a little to allow an extra person as a treat for me.

Originally i kind of wanted Sebastian (....SIGH. or...Eustace. (I fear even though it's AAIC release day today, I truly may die on this hill forever, falling on my sword of devotion and gratitude to the fan translation team... That said, while I think Eustace is, like, a Deeply Fine name, I have to say that Excelsius is a fucking knockout name lmfao, that one took me out. Anyway, ahem: "I wanted Seb/Eustace...")) to be there too but I think that's getting into too many cooks territory just specifically bc I'd have too many voices to play with lmfao. So instead I think he's the operator who works the satellite and realizes Apollo is alive, I think he'd fit that well. NOT THAT that needs to be. Included. In the AU. I have...so much self control.

Anyway I have too many thoughts about it, it's a problem, ironically I think I would prefer to focus on the crew and not Apollo himself, so that would at least make it more than just a rehashing of the movie/book. (Or, the movie at least. Does the book spend more time with them? I should read the book.) ...I did, Of Course, also came up with a funny, pseudo-future-science-y way to do a Sibling Reveal in this one, so there's that, too, haha. OKAY AND, SCENE. Snatching my mic back from myself. I'm actually so devoted to the Martian AU now hahaha, I really didn't think I'd let that happen to myself but here we are... You'll see in a bit, but I for-better-or-worse do truly have an extended universe going on for it now, eheh... (Help.)

19 - Spies

Franmaya?? Franziska POV??? Here's the deal: I cannot BELIEVE I got this many days into the month and STILL hadn't come up with a franmaya-centric AU, it's terrible. Also I need a Maya POV if I want to hit my self-set, self-indulgent goal of having POV of every "main" character I can (did I exactly accomplish this no but that's perfectly fine obviously haha it was just a side achievement I had my eye on). So to that end, I ended up with something here that I'm not COMPLETELY sure I won't end up changing when I sit down to actually work on it, but in short: semi The Princess Bride vibes but with spies instead of pirates! Or uh! So um okay full disclosure lol I got all excited about an AU of this kind and then like an hour into daydreaming it into existence I realized I was heavily relying on / leaning into ASSASSIN territory rather than SPY. Which are notably different things. (Wait lol should I blame Spy x Family?? Totally Endo-sensei's fault and not at all mine, boom, take that.) ...And not to go even harder into sxf territory, whoops, but my idea was something along the lines of like, since Kurain School Channeling changes spirit mediums' appearance entirely, I was going to have Maya be something of an expert in disguise, and Franziska I was almost more or less going to let retain her actual position of international prosecutor with Interpol, although perhaps I'd lean more into a James Bond-esque intelligence agency sort of thing than what we see them do in-game, I'm not sure. Maya gets "killed" for real in 2-4 except she actually just becomes an international assassin(?) apprentice. Does this make sense? Probably not lol. But is it a little funny and a little sad? Yes, yes it is, and that's always my sweet spot as a writer. The only problem with this premise is I can't stop myself from considering what Phoenix would do / be doing in the background, because the problem with Maya "dying"-only-being-secretly-alive leaves at least twofold problems in justifying why Nick hasn't gone full conspiracy theory board stop-at-nothing-to-find-her, in that a) If she's not dead, Pearl can't channel her, and knowing Pearl I have to imagine that would be her first move to try tbh, and b) even if that weren't an issue, if the police were never able to track down Maya's body at all, I fully believe Nick would still throw himself at the problem until he's able to find answers irregardless, so. This ain't about him though!! So we'll just all have to deal with knowing he's taking reaaally really bad care of himself while he single-mindedly tries to figure out what's going on ahaha...ha. He's most absolutely the drowning child in the facebook post meme. Don't worry about him.

20 - Crossover/Fusion

Soooo. Okay. First may I say, I'm not the most crossover-fic-y person in the world neither as a reader nor writer. HOWEVER. Unfortunately. My one undying weakness has proven to be Ace Attorney x Legally Blonde (and more specifically Legally Blonde the Musical, the best version, though I do love Reese Witherspoon's performance ofc it's iconic but the musical is just MWAH ugh. One of my all-time favorite musicals and definitely the one I've listened to the most esp the past couple years hahaha.) The problem is, I've joked about so many slight variations / one very Long Intensive specific AA/LBtM crossover AU ideas, that trying to limit myself to a one-shot I could conceivably finish within a day proved too much for my decision paralysis and I didn't end up writing any of them lmao. Alas. Mostly, I just think it would be funny to see the characters interact in something of a vacuum just for fun, the problem is just that I happen to be uniquely terrible at not thinking through a Crack AU until I can, ahem, "crack" it, so to speak, to make it actually justifiably function. So in theory all I want to write for this day is some combination of like, Elle and Phoenix interacting and Miles and Emmett interacting, or the four of them having a conversation that goes something like "omg wait me too!! i also went from a creative undergrad degree directly into law to chase after some guy!! what are the odds teehee" while Emmett and Miles watch in horror, and also alternatively Emmett and Phoenix mostly bemusedly watching Elle and Miles geek out over like, fancy ass high class (pink) clothing like "uh yeah i have no idea what any of those words mean. she bought me this suit and i honestly wouldn't even be able to find the store again. oh no way he bought you yours too?? man, wild." Etc. (If anyone's interested in really watching me suffer and spiral: my longer and more intensive idea for an AU with them is to have them be tackling parallel cases where either of them (Elle and Phoenix) has specific knowledge that is helpful to defending the others' client, and they get like place-swapped through dimensional shenanigans somehow also related to the cases. And Phoenix has to abide by, like, nominally-accurate US trial law (I know he wouldn't really be licensed shhhh) -- by which I mean Emmett is sitting as his co-council and exercising the most restraint possible to keep from bashing his head into the table every two seconds. And Elle has to abide by guilty-until-proven-innocent Japanifornia trial law ("wait WHAT omg what do you MEAN the prosecution can just, like, not submit their evidence before the trial???? wait what do you MEAN we should just TAKE THAT that is EVIDENCE AT A CRIME SCENE--"). On the bright side, Elle gets to experience being one of the most normally-dressed people in a courtroom and not at all being looked down upon for her general vibes and wardrobe (like tell me she wouldn't fit right in in the ace attorney universe and seem completely ordinary), and Phoenix gets to experience a real jury (take that jurist system trial that Capcom would like to never ever talk about again) and also the judge going "so, Prospective Juror No. 103, do you understand that the defense in this criminal trial does not need to say a single word in order to be doing their job? the burden of proof lies entirely on the prosecution the entire time and the defense and defendant could choose to remain silent every day of trial and that would be completely within their rights, do you understand that? are you okay with that?" etc etc, shout out to my jury service a couple month ago and the kinds of questions a real life California judge asks jurors that would seriously blow the minds of every single character in Ace Attorney lmfao can you imagine? Anyway.) So yeah idk. Also something something, spirit mediums and the whole Greek Chorus bit from the musical... "School Spirit"... much to think about in crack AU land hahaha.)

21 - Absurd Tragedy

To be honest with you, this is the entire series lmao, so much so that I had trouble even thinking of an AU to be "alternate" in any way here, hahaha. What I sort-of landed on and have vague outline notes about in my doc is (not to make another excellent-musical-adaptation-of-an-already-top-tier-movie-which-is-itself-a-highly-unfaithful-adaptation-of-a-fairly-obscure-book reference) a Shrek the Musical "I Think I Got You Beat"-style debate about whose canonical absurd tragic circumstances are the worst, lmfao. Granted, this then turned into a "wait what if I use said argument as an absurd way in which to make Apollo and Trucy have a siblings realization completely on their own, which both compounds the fact they've both already lived such tragedy to begin with but also could touch on Phoenix knowing about it and not telling them about it", and uhhhhh lmfao a debate specifically between them is OBVIOUSLY not the romantic flirting banter of the song between Shrek and Fiona lmfao but like still, the general premise, just in a sibling bickering coat of paint instead. Also was toying with it being an Athena POV just to sell home / for the additional absurdity of the experience of "you've gone over to your friend's house to hang out and suddenly they're obnoxiously arguing with their sibling and their parents are nowhere to be seen and you're not exactly sure what you're supposed to do with yourself except awkwardly wait for them to be done" lmfao. Which I've most absolutely experienced from both ends multiple times hahaha. The alternative option for this prompt is just for me to write an excessively long essay debating and attempting to personally rank the main cast's level of absurd tragedy compared to each other, lol.

22 - Orphan

I wrote 324 words (slash one physical lined page in my actual notebook) of this while I was on vacation, lol. AU where Miles invites Phoenix to go watch one of Gregory's trials (or Phoenix invites himself, or Gregory invites him while Miles tries to hold the landline phone away from him, lol) and I mean of course the trial he goes to is The Trial (like, Jeffre... AW CRAP wait I don't actually know what Jeff Master's or Kate Hall's official names are lmfao uhhh. Well you know what don't worry about that. Happy AAIC day once again..? Lol. Anyway, the concluding day of Gregory's last trial, obviously, ignore the defendant's name.) Like, basically, here's my thought. AU where Phoenix is also there, and not only does that mean he knows what happened to Miles and Gregory but also, like, it's Phoenix. Tell me even at 9 he wouldn't be insisting on taking care of the poor kid who just lost everything and has nowhere in the world to go. Tell me he's not like, begging his parents they need to help him, lol. I think really this is just sort of an AU to explore one of my several personal headcanons for what Phoenix's parents are like, because I've spent a lot of time on a different version of them (coughs for the last AU on this list...coughs) but I also have a version of them which I find fun / funny where they're like, kinda hippy-dippy and like very hands-off (tbh almost all of my hc's about the Greater Wrights is they're very hands off, just in different ways) but in more of a "we want our child to experience the beauty and wonder of the world on his own time and not influence him or set rigid standards to conform to" kind of philosophy. Anyway my point is they like adopt/foster Miles somehow before Manfred can actually get his hands on him (he's still too busy dealing with the fresh bullet wound I guess?) This is just a gen au of course, not only because they're 9 lol but also the logistics of being adoptive/foster siblings gets weird quick lmao, but mostly I just find it interesting to think about what might have happened if Miles was in an environment where people paid more attention and cared more (and weren't explicitly influencing and manipulating him to exasperate the problem on purpose), because I have to imagine examining his nightmares a little more closely a little more quickly might have led someone (say, Phoenix who was also there in this AU) to find something slightly off about it or like start putting pieces together quicker, idk. I, uh, I'm not gonna lie to you, I don't actually remember how I intended to end this one hahaha ;; I started it but I was on vacation and neglected to outline / summarize the rest of my ideas the day of, so I guess I'll just have to see where my mind takes me when I get back to it.

23 - Musician

So my FIRST thought for this day was to use it as an excuse to finish my First Ever Ace Attorney Fic, which has been in WIP stasis for...uh.... 6. Years. i--SIX????? Shit. lmfao. yeah uh. I guess I created the first version of the doc (on my OneNote, god) back in 2018. So. Yeah. Hm. Omfg. This fic has partially existed since before Phoenix Disbarment Day. That is so. Wow. Damn. Y'all we're so close to aa4 time (2026) what the hell??? Ahem. Pianist Phoenix. That's. My point lmao. I know the original thing that sparked me loving this concept was actually some tumblr post I saw apparently a LONG long time ago, hahaha, and I know there's no way I'll find it with tumblr's abysmal search function, but just know it was not a completely original idea of mine when I say i fucking LOVE the headcanon that, you know what actually Phoenix CAN play the piano, he just chooses to do it as shittily as possible because that's kind of what he's like post-disbarment and he'd absolutely get a kick out of fucking with people like that even if they have no way to know they're being fucked with. It's like, he's no virtuoso or anything, but he can passably play the piano! He's just being an ass on purpose! It kills me every time lol. I won't say I think that's necessarily true in canon so ofc it's not like an end-all-be-all hc for me or anything but it's just sooooo funny to me that I like to break it out any time I possibly can. Look me in the eyes and tell me he wouldn't. Honestly, look me in the eyes and tell me if he actually put his mind to it in any meaningful way he wouldn't be able to get decent quickly regardless, considering the fact he became an accomplished lawyer on more-or-less a total whim. This to say: that was my intention, to finish this fic I've had brewing that was about Phoenix actually being able to play the piano and hiding it for a really long time but eventually being found out by Miles by chance. Except then I sat down on the plane and started writing a Pearl POV instead? In which she finds out about more or less the same exact concept but from Iris--also by chance, but less actually catching him playing and more being asked, "Oh, does he still play? He was always good at that." And then bc it's Pearl (Pearl I love you), of COURSE she goes and confronts him about it. Pearl might be the single most confrontational character in these games tbh which is SO FUNNY to me. Like I'm kind of exaggerating obviously but also am I? I know she has psyche-locks you have to break through multiple times throughout the series but stiiiill. Everyone else is so repressed and weird about anything remotely vulnerable, I stg. Props to Maya for making sure Pearl turned out pretty okay I guess, lmao. Anyhow yeah that's sort of the AU I ended up with. Pearl POV where she and Iris know they're sisters (don't get me started on this I have so many thoughts about the amount of information I'm positive Maya and Pearl are NEVER given skjflj) and Pearl visits Iris in prison regularly and on one such visit maybe she mentions Nick's job at Borscht and Iris makes a totally innocuous comment to the effect that Pearl learns he actually knows how to play the piano and she goes to get mad at him about it because he's definitely been pretending he can't and Pearl's pretty sure he's told neither Maya nor Trucy the truth and that cannot be left to stand.

24 - Pretend Hate

Okay, this exists in a similar realm to the Orphan prompt, except instead of Phoenix being there for the trial or the Wrights taking Miles in before Manfred can, it's more just AU where Miles doesn't actually cut all contact and he and Phoenix successfully end up exchanging correspondence (in semi-secret) during the time they're separated (i.e. they remain friends and close during the 15 years they're separated in canon). "Semi-secret" because they--esp Miles--somehow hide who exactly it is they're talking / writing to all the time but don't necessarily hide the fact they are doing that. Like, a fake cultural / language exchange program or something? I feel like there could be a world where Manfred really doesn't give a shit what Miles is up to as long as he's being molded into "someone Gregory Edgeworth would hate" (I don't think he would lol but that's another AU) and becoming a model von Karma protege prosecutor and such. He obviously goes to lengths to cut Miles off from everything he's familiar with in that he takes him to Germany, but I've always thought it's way more on Miles feeling guilty and blaming himself and thinking he's unworthy / pushing people away being the reason why they never talked before aa1 despite Phoenix's "attempts to contact him," whatever those may be specifically. And, yeah, I've watched that one episode of the anime but tbh I don't really use anime canon for almost anything besides maybe some of the fun visuals, haha, so I'm kind of disregarding that anyway. ANYWAY. My point is. The "pretend hate" part is that--sometime over the course of exchanging correspondence, Phoenix starts thinking something's weird and gets it in his head to "investigate" himself, since he's still in LA / has access to the scene of the crime and stuff, and then as a combo of him just plugging away at it until he has enough (circumstantial) evidence to be like "Miles I think you're wrong about this" and also a younger, slightly less repressed, slightly less in Manfred's pocket Miles actually being somehow willing to consider alternatives a little--they're able to put their heads together and eventually come to the (correct) conclusion ahead of time, before the 15-year statute of limitations, that it was almost certainly Manfred who did it. And then they work together to figure out how they can possibly PROVE that but they haven't thought of anything foolproof by the time aa1 events start rolling around (or at the very least, the 5-years-ago sections of aa3? It might make more sense if it's as soon as Miles returns to Japanifornia, and also I think Phoenix has way less reason to fall for Dahlia/Iris so hard if Miles is around and *coughs* available lmfao. Anyhow). So, in the hopes it'll keep Manfred from getting suspicious of Miles, they publicly pretend to hate each other, putting on a show of more of the canon attitude Miles esp. has before 1-4, but behind the scenes they're actually working together trying to think of a way they can definitely get a conviction to stick that Manfred won't be able to worm out of. And that's the AU! Idk, in terms of additional thoughts, I couldn't decide what to do / what would happen to Mia in this AU either, which doesn't super matter but did give me pause. So she might live, idk, depends the exact timeline. I do also think a scene where--Dahlia still hits on Phoenix in the reading room/courthouse library but he's like, actively there waiting for one of Miles' trials to conclude for a covert meeting, so when Miles gets there and is like "What are you messing with over there?" Phoenix is like "Oh, hey, check out this weird bottle some girl just gave me because apparently she fell in love at first sight, haha, isn't that so funny--" and then Miles recognizes it from the Fawles trial and they catch Dahlia earlier or something, idk. Or alternatively Phoenix was AT that trial so HE recognizes it. Or maybe it's funniest if he was there but doesn't recognize it until Miles does lmao, this is not the point of this AU but I can't stop myself from considering this part of it.

25 - Scientists

So THIS is the day I sort of alluded to earlier, many many words of post ago, where I got so invested in my The Martian AU that I started accidentally worldbuilding about it. What I've started and have about 400 words of (slash one notebook page, again from the plane after my vacation), is like, AU where it's NASA instead of law and I can make Phoenix go "What, like it's hard?" only it's about literally rocket science this time hahaha. Basically for this fic I just thought, well what if Phoenix just shows up as a flight tech or engineer or something (idk I don't really know that much about real life astronautics) as Miles is preparing for some space mission or something and he's just like WHAT are YOU doing HERE. I know I know I made Apollo literally be the titular martian and yes he ALSO has a (or tbh probably has a WORSE) canonical debilitating fear of heights, so, shhh, but I do like the idea that Phoenix is like, oh, who, me? In the flying metal death trap? No fucking thank you, I will be down here watching and talking directly to you through a headset or something. You cannot escape me however i can at least escape the building I'm in. No interest in seeing the Earth from above, thanks. Actually iirc Miles also doesn't love heights but meh whatever I'm fairly certain Phoenix talks about it the earliest in the series so there you go. Anyway, this would all be a mission prior to whatever mission it is that Apollo & Co. go on to Mars for the first part of the AU, so I guess you could consider it a prequel? And probably a fairly shippy one. I have other reasons for which it's fun for me if wrightworth is at least together if not outright married before the events of the "The Martian" part of the AU, so this one would be, like, about how exactly that went down.

26 - Victorian Era

Okay, once again, this just. IS. Literally. Dai Gyakuten Saiban / The Great Ace Attorney. Lol. That said, I've always loved the fanart I've seen of like Ryuunosuke and Phoenix (and respective Co.'s) interacting, or like, one or the other ending up in the other time period somehow, so I thought it'd probably be fun to try my hat at that. I feel like I've neglected the tgaa characters anyway, considering I actually somehow managed to reference PLvPW already, which is obviously significantly more of a spinoff and also just largely non-canonical, lmao. Also tgaa is just SO GOOD, augh. I'd love to have the multi-witness cross examinations from both of those games back sometime again, and I had so much fun with the jury in tgaa too, excellent mechanic. What was I talking about? So, I never completely decided on a concrete direction to take this, but even before AU-gust had started I'd already been toying with the idea of an AU where maybe Maya or Pearl channels a character from tgaa specifically because some documentary or special or something comes out talking about the real-life Herlock Sholmes (as opposed to the Totally Fictional "Sherlock Holmes" who Phoenix references in that one trilogy line, because I really think that's the funniest possible explanation for the discrepancy) and they're arguing over how that cannot possibly be a real person and no one was named that and etc etc and then to prove once and for all one way or the other Hurley is channeled and also for bonus joke content "recognizes" Phoenix at first (idk pretend his eyesight got worse in his older age, I know Phoenix and Ryuunosuke look, tbh, less alike than Ryuu and Apollo do, lmao, but again that's another AU) and then I get to play with Phoenix's mom's maiden name is Naruhodou and his middle name is Ryuuichi or such to that effect, because that is also a favorite headcanon of mine (not in small part because I can project my own life onto him by making him half-Japanese from SoCal, lol). So that's an idea I'd had that was already decently fleshed out and the ONLY problem is that if I'm having characters actually be channeled then there's a very real limiting factor of how many spirit mediums exist, and also that means Maya and/or Pearl don't get to interact with them, which for the sake of not overwriting would be good but for the sake of my love of a chaotic group conversation would be bad. But, uh, hopefully I do manage to hold myself to a less broad cast of characters, ideally, instead of bringing a bunch of them over to the other time period to see how they'd deal with that and interact en masse. Ha. Haha.

27. Younger / De-Aged

So here's another AU I'd already had idle thoughts about before AU-gust had even started! I...will get into this later, TRUST I will, lmfao, but I do have an extremely involved AU already in which Time Travel of the "regression" type is involved, i.e., they have their memories of the "future" but are thrown back into the past including their own younger bodies however-many-years-ago. So I've got that type of thing covered, I promise I do, haha. And additionally, I've actually already written them "younger" for my colorless AU way back on day 2, so I did think perhaps I'd just continue that one and say it was for this prompt (a smart person thing to do. this is the objectively correct option). On the other hand. I find pre-DL6 Phoenix and Miles reacting to how their lives actually turned out in the end HILARIOUS. Tell me it's not funny. And tell me it's not, like, some sort of depressing-yet-ultimately-hopeful for the older/current them to look at their child selves and be like Kid, Oh, You're Going To Go Through Some Shit, but also reflect on how they did make it and things turned out okay and life goes on etc etc. My problem with this kind of thing is that it's hard to come up with a justification for and that's not a problem in itself but it is a problem in me not knowing how i'm going to end a fic, which often gets me decision-paralysis-ed into not being able to start it in the first place, which did in fact happen to me here, haha. I think ideally I'd just do a quick "wait, was that a dream?" kind of thing where they (Miles and Nick) have a short conversation with themselves, but... Uh-oh, what, did you think that was all I had? You clearly don't know me at all. OTHER au option where young Phoenix is in the future/present and rather than himself and Miles it's the Wright Anything Agency who like, idk, find him roaming the streets of LA (fun fact! I actually came up with this AU one day while I was quite literally roaming the streets of LA myself at like 3am-ish. Do with that what you will). He is of course wearing a hat or beanie or something at first because come on, that's way more fun, and no matter how much Trucy, Apollo, and Athena are like "hm idk something about this kid seems familiar" I just don't think my first thought upon seeing some vaguely familiar kid alone on the street would be, like, "Oh, that's obviously a child version of my father/coworker/boss!" So. I'm not really sure that one has an end point either, though, so the same problem still stands, haha. The bad, someone get a spray bottle to spritz me, option of this is, obviously, to combine the two, so it's like the WAA find him first and then are like UHHHHH we need an adult (never mind actual adult-age-ness between them) and somehow end up getting Miles there too, but idk. I... should not. Overcomplicate. I shouldn't. Even, even if...august is over...so theoretically there's no longer any sort of On-Time component since it's late either way........ definitely not.

28 - Caretaker

Here are my exact notes / entire doc for this day. Ahem. And I quote: i brought up the lighthouse keeper thing but i dont know where that would be going exactly maybe this is a thing i could do franmaya for??? since i still havent gotten there? actually lol that as a lighthouse thing is funny. ghost romance? my three tropes rattle End quote. Anyway, shout-out to my friend hailstorm for being the one there to brainstorm "lighthouse keeper" with at the self-same bar trivia that I mentioned previously, lmao. I actually think that was even the same exact day as the The Martian quote was a relevant answer to a question. So yeah, even though I already kind of have franmaya planned for the spies day, that's both kind of sort of a darker AU overall and--WELP well, okay, so, i do, you know, recognize maybe a ghost romance isn't, uh, necessarily the fluffiest kind of AU lmao. Don't mind that. My point is, I love the vibes of a lighthouse keeper AU, and I generally like ghost romance as a trope, so that does feel like a viable option. Honestly, I kind of separately wanted an excuse to practice writing miego also, so maybe the Feys are just all chillin' in this lighthouse for...Some Reason, and that's side-plot relevant somehow, idk. I know Franziska and Godot exist in the same place for a minute in 3-5, but I honestly can't really remember them interacting? I think she'd fucking HATE him though lmfao. He'd think she's funny but I actually think she'd be too reactive for his most preferred teasing/fucking-with-people dynamics, haha. Regardless, if he is there at all, it's a very minor B plot, I think, 'cause this ain't about him, lol.

29 - Forced into Hiding

Achtung, baby, 2566 words of this are written! Lol. So uh, yeah. In short, AU where Klavier gets hounded by fans on the street while he's also having just a bad personal day, and the closest and best place he can think to hide from them is at the WAA. I, um, actually hadn't realized I'd written quite this much of this, haha, it was supposed to be short and fairly silly but then it turned into Klavier having a little bit of a panic attack maybe and getting consoled by Apollo, sure, of course, but then also having to deal with and experience some amount of closure / reach some kind of understanding with the Wrights, also. It's kind of part Klav character study, kind of part complaint against freaking Capcom for neglecting him (boo, I love him, stop ignoring him, or, yknow, worse, whatever the heck turnabout academy was supposed to do for him, which honestly almost felt like a step back to be quite honest). Okay, also, taking a slightly closer look at what I've already written, the REASON I'd thought I'd written way less than this is definitely because he hasn't even GOTTEN to the Agency yet, never mind spoken with any of its members, lmao. That would do it. In any case, I like the idea of Klavier having a bit of a vulnerable moment, and I also like the idea of him and Phoenix actually, like, talking for real, instead of, once again, whatever Turnabout Academy and DD was meant to tell me, which seems to be less than nothing. I kind of like the fact that it gave him a law mentor? I mean, she was very dead, but I have a very meaningful Use for her in later-to-be-announced-AUs-I-keep-teasing, haha. I of course considered other people and times when people in AA might be forced into hiding, but this felt like a silly but also meaningful way to do that without it just being an exploration of Miles and his not-suicide note (which wasn't exactly "forced" anyhow, he did that all on his own) or like, Zak Gramarye (who also completely did that to himself but w/e). Making it about Klavier completely escapes the bounds of canon, because canon is a weenie about talking about any of his actual feelings EVER, so screw you Capcom, I'm doing it for you. Don't worry about it. Trucy commiserating with him about still Loving someone, perhaps the very closest person biologically related to you you've ever known and depended on in your life, who not only did you very big harm personally but explicitly used you in a very real and participatory way to perpetuate the harm elsewhere and all the complexities about Feelings For And About Them Therein, and Phoenix somehow having enough self-awareness to recognize that shutting down completely and isolating yourself away doesn't actually do you any good even when you're at your lowest, and recognizing that Klavier doesn't exactly have a "Trucy" to be a focal point to draw him out of that, and that therefore he needs to be a bit more open to his peers. (Insert joke about "Well, I'm really definitely not suggesting you go adopt an entire child, that's really probably, uh, not the way to go, actually, but, you know. Everyone needs people, that just makes us human." Etc.)

30 - The Beginning of the World

So, hm, as it turns out, I got extremely sidetracked this day thinking about the next day on the docket. Whoops! Unfortunately this ultimately means my ideas for this day as of now are relatively uninspired: I had the thought that I could explore the beginning of Troupe Gramarye, which is its own sort of world, or else, maybe something about the beginning of the series itself but from the somewhat unconventional POV of a one Mr. Larry Butz. Yes, that's a bit self-serving in that it lends toward trying to complete a list of "main, recurring characters' POVs" that I've had as a sidequest all month, but, still. That said, just exploring actual canon through Larry's POV isn't exactly what I'd classify as an "AU" necessarily, so I feel like something would need to be different here. Okay, wait--not to draw inspiration a dang week late to the party, BUT. Now that I'm typing this up, I'm thinking, okay, maybe, what if. The "Beginning" of the series, technically speaking, is basically the fact that Phoenix gets put on (class) trial for stealing Miles' lunch money--which notably only happened because Larry himself picked it up when it fell on the floor. So, perhaps, what about an AU where he doesn't do that? I mean, I guess it would just turn the entire world of AA into something of a terrible series of tragedies with no real closure about them, lol, rip, but it could possibly be interesting? I dunno! (And, yes, I know DL-6 itself is more or less the basis of the series, if we're being ticky-tacky, but Phoenix wouldn't have been involved without meeting Miles, and that somewhat necessitates the class trial, and without him none of canon would get resolved, so. I will say, I do love going back to the earliest points to see how and how much you can make canon deviate or stay the same--reasonably speaking--via minor tweaks and butterfly effect and all that, so this could be interesting, although I once again must say I think it really just means a bunch of innocent people, Miles included, are going to be put away and possibly executed over murders that weren't their faults, lol. Hm. Much to consider.)

31 - Two(+) of the Above:

Beginning of the World + Younger/De-Aged + Canon Divergence (+ Feat. Jokers: Guardian, Everybody Lives)

With all of this, the ONLY prompts I've actually missed on this list become Animagus which I swapped for the Wings joker, and the last joker of the four, Thriller, which was never exactly a priority of mine because I'm not sure I'd write that sort of thing particularly well, so! Wild! Completionists everywhere almost rejoice, haha. SOOOOO. For the eagle-eyed readers out there, I'll bet you're just dying to know what this one AU I've been teasing all post could Possibly be to warrant such a build-up, right? (...Right?) The answer is the at-ow! (Phonetically, lol. I've been calling it that instead of out loud saying all the letters in AATTAU out loud every time.) My friend Ben can attest to the fact that this behemoth AU (her word which I'm stealing) has been in the works for, uhhhh... months?

MONTHS. AHAHA. Ha. That. Sure says March! It sure does! And it is not lying. Lmfao. (Ignore the time, I was working overnight then--my beloved work schedule whomst I miss dearly--so that's a perfectly reasonable discord-ing hour for March-me.) Also, once again, I'm choosing to blame Ben for my extensive AU problems, she sent me a very cute time loop AA fic that utterly destroyed my entire mind because it got the mere idea of "Time-based AU" caught in my endless void-idea-hole. So. Here's the real rub. The literal reason I started doing this AU-gust challenge in the freaking first place was that I was absolutely Desperate to find a way to overcome my writer's block. And one of the (admittedly many) reasons I wanted to do this was because I have been ITCHING to write this stupid behemoth AU for real. I have a massive outline doc already, I have a whole slew of scenes planned, I have lots of character archage, I have sooo many things I want to say and explore about them all you have No Idea. It's extremely self-indulgent and absolutely my personal magnum opus for all my very specific favorite AA headcanons and ideas and thoughts. And obviously, it worked! I did indeed overcome my writer's block! And I had so much fun doing it!! And I'll admit, from the very beginning, I had been eyeing that "Everybody Lives" joker prompt, because...that's it! That's basically the point of the AATTAU (Ace Attorney Time Travel Alternate Universe, if that wasn't clear, haha). I don't want to let myself get TOO into it, because Oh Boy, I sure will! If you let me! Haha. But basically the premise is EXACTLY what I stated in that very first discord message I could find about it. Maybe not so much "time travel" technically speaking than it is "gaining memories of everything that happened in canon right as the DL-6 earthquake happens", so it's more regression than actual time travel since they're in their own younger bodies and everything, but still. It's basically my excuse to treat canon like it did happen and YET allow for everybody to survive and for the very fun cocktail of traumas and joys that come from remembering what happened but having the chance for something different (and all the effort that goes into making something different happen in the first place).

Now, as far as AU-gust goes. I was obviously not about to even pretend I could remotely start this during August itself or justify connecting any of it to the series and the prompts I'd already written for it, lol, but I also couldn't get the idea out of my head, so I got it in my head I really wanted to end the month with SOMETHING that somehow tied into my AATTAU, if only to motivate myself to actually get on it and start writing out instead of solely outlining everything that's been in the works all these months. So to that end, I saw the "Everybody Lives" and the "Beginning of the World" prompts, and an idea came to me. I'd been dancing around the justification aspect of this AU for most of the time I've had it because let's be honest, it's just a very self-indulgent idea and it does not NEED "justification" to serve the purpose I want it to serve and be what I want it to be. But the AU-gust prompts gave me some actual inspiration and an Idea as to a way to solidify my unnecessary "justification" but in a way that it doesn't need to be directly part of the final product of the AATTAU (like, I could make it a separate one-shot and either just link it to and from the AATTAU fic itself, or if it all ends up being a series, then I could just include it in the series but it wouldn't be necessary to read to understand what's going on. And so, I present! The Ami Fey one-shot special I came up with just to fit these prompts :3 ...And by "i present" i mean, uh, I wrote 4k words of it on the 31st and didn't even come close to what I wanted to cover, because I suck at being concise. Lmfao. (Shocker.) Basically, I used Ami Fey as a semi-self-insert kind of godlike figure to reason out a semi-plausible way to make the concept I want to explore happen, happen. And I had a lot of fun, but I do still have a bunch to finish, but either way, I'm very pleased to have a (somewhat silly but ultimately fun for me) reasoning as to the gears ticking behind the scenes of my idea! To be somewhat less vague, the whole AU is predicated on the idea that, Phoenix and/or Miles (who remember from the beginning / from December 28th, 2001) meeting the other characters at-or-after the time they originally met in canon are able to recall their memories of the "original" (i.e. canon) timeline. I've used some magatama shenanigans to have some fun with this, and I'm now using Ami Fey and magatama shenanigans to explain how and why this is A Thing, even if it isn't necessarily the objectively most logically sound argument I've ever made. It's still a good one, in my book, and more importantly I like it, so that's all that really matters.

To briefly explain the "two" (by which I mean 5?) of the "above" I'm using here:

Beginning of the World: This fic specifically would show the beginning of the "world" of this AU specifically! Woohoo! Go Ami Fey, creating a whole new set of problems for our beloved little Guys to go through, hahaha. I think I may have based her character a little too much on Maya mischievousness, but, oh well. Let's just say that's where she gets it from.

Younger/De-Aged: As I've already kind of expressed, the premise of this AU is mostly just them being their own younger selves except they also have the memories of all of canon (and maybe a year or two after the fact, I need to confirm a couple dates).

Canon Divergence: I feel like this is decently self-explanatory, but then again maybe it's a bit cheesy to include this here, since it basically diverges from nearly the first major event of canon (DL-6), but that's not the only time things go almost-canonically but diverge a bit in some way, so I think it really does fit here.

Guardian: This one is a bit multi-fold. It somewhat refers to the way I'm making Gregory Edgeworth the de facto guardian (as in, legal guardian) of mostly everyone I possibly can because I love him and he would be great at it. But also, guardian in that, Mr. Savior Complex Phoenix Wright himself has literally all of the information at his disposal to try to "save" the potential Happy Lives of literally every person he loves, and, well. He does a pretty good job about it; not without cost, haha, but I feel like I can definitely call him a "guardian" of others in this AU. And, as for specifically the one-shot Ami fic, she is essentially the guardian of the entire Fey lineage, in this AU at least, so that also totally fits and is most immediately relevant.

Everybody Lives: I think this one is pretty self-explanatory at this point, lol. But for the one-shot: Ami is essentially trying to secure an "everybody lives" scenario, even if it hasn't been achieved yet, so it's more an aspiration at that point, but ultimately it is indeed successful. Now, "living" does not mean, like, "totally healthy" (mentally or physically), so there's lots more to it, but in short, yes, they live.

And......that's basically a wrap on that!

I mean, it isn't actually at all, since I still have to finish 26/31 fics, lmfao, but as far as the idea generation stage goes, and the use of the AU-gust prompts, that's what's up in my world! Somewhere out there maybe there's an AU of my actual real life where i finished more of these on time, but i'm still pretty pumped by all the work that's already been made on making so many AA fics a reality for me. I've come a long way since starting that first AA fic in 2018...!!

I still have all the aforementioned 26 fics to finish obviously, and I also have AU continuations planned for at the very least, day 2's colorless prompt and day 3's dark academia prompt (let alone day 31's, lol, but that's its own monster entirely), but I'm optimistic!

Thankfully I actually finished using nano to word track for me before they, you know, doubled down on AI and called everyone "abelist" (???) for not supporting it, which, uh. Well. But for my own posterity and if anyone's curious, here's what my word counts looked like throughout the month of AU-gust--admittedly including some planning and outlining:

It ended up being 51,377 words total in August on these AU prompts alone!

I feel like I wanted to say something poignant and meaningful at the end here, but it's almost 9:30 and I work at 4am tomorrow, so I'm going to go ahead and wrap this post up here, haha. If you read all of this, thank you very much for joining me on my little journey!

Once again, here is the Ao3 series where I'll post anything more that gets done, so if you'd like to see how any of these AUs turn out, feel free to keep an eye on that!

And here is the previous post with the 1st half+ of the AUs if you missed it and are interested now!

My copy arrived literally as I was writing this up so I've spent the last several prompts of this post listening to the AAIC soundtrack in the music collection, and, oh man, it's seriously so surreal this exists??? I might be an old fogey who has and will for an indeterminate amount of time continue to have trouble letting go of the fan translation names I've lived with for the past decade or whatever, but it's seriously so awesome the entire series is finally available internationally!! Let's hope for my sake AA7 doesn't come out before I finish any of my AATTAU, because that would really throw a bit of a wrench in my decision-making process, lol.

Bye for now!

[sojirosteacup]

The (possible) origins of the Mori/Haruhi rumor

Or, I take a look at four different language versions of Mori's character profile to try to debunk this rumor.

You guys probably know the rumor that goes like "Tamaki wasn't supposed to end up with Haruhi, it was going to be Mori, but Tamaki became more popular and the mangaka changed her mind"

Like many others in this fandom, I'm tired of people blindly believing it so I was trying to write a post about how I think this rumor started. I was originally going to focus more on the "it changed because Tamaki became popular" part, because I felt that the "Mori was supposed to be endgame" part of the rumor had already been dissected by other people.

Except when I was I looking for Mori's character profile (the infamous quote that is believed to be the source of it) to use for my post, I found different versions of it depending on the translation. And maybe the "Mori was supposed to be endgame" part needs a bit more dissection, actually.

Especially since I couldn't understand at first why Mori of all hosts is the focus of this rumor, because MoriHaru was pretty much a rarepair before this.

Now I'm going to analyze both the "Mori was supposed to be endgame" part and the "it changed because Tamaki became popular" parts. And I think I may have a pretty good theory for how this rumor started.

Here is my analysis under the cut:

(Beware there are probably some spelling mistakes bc it's 2AM and english is not my native language)

The MoriHaru rumor is widely believed to have come from a quote from Hatori in a manga volume. More exactly, Mori's character profile.

So let's take a look at his character profile for a second.

The English translation that gets passed around goes like this:

"If I leave him alone, he winds up being a 'quiet, sober-faced fellow' so he makes Hatori groan a lot. But his love is vast (laugh), so there's at least an outside chance of Haruhi and Mori becoming a couple."

Here we have what might have confused some people. "Outside chance of Haruhi/Mori becoming a couple" doesn't mean they were supposed to be endgame, it means there is an unlikely chance of them being a couple.

Makes sense people would misread this. But I've always felt it was such a weak sentence to start this entire rumor… especially when there is literally shippy art of Haruhi with every host in the manga. Wouldn't any other character have started a similar rumor? Why would such a weak sentence start something so big?

But I was looking for a clear picture of the English profile to add to my original post idea when I stumbled over the Spanish version. And it got me confused because it was worded differently:

If you don't know Spanish, this is very similar to the English text, except the ending says:

"My (Hatori's) favorite couple is Mori + Haruhi, maybe."

Wait, we have an entirely different sentence here! This one implies Hatori likes MoriHaru more than the other couples, which could point to this being the source of the rumor. But I'm not satisfied. This is not enough. Let's dig deeper.

Spanish is not my native language, so I went to my actual native language, which is Brazilian Portuguese. Fortunately I have the entire collection with me, so I opened volume one to find this:

The first sentence is pretty much the same as the English and Spanish versions, but the rest says "He ends up worrying me, because he gives me the impression he will end up turning the story around. But I like him a lot (laughs). Maybe my favorite couple is Mori and Hani"

And that Hani bit is a fucking mistranslation from the Brazilian Portuguese print! It's supposed to be Haruhi, not Honey. This is the second time I find a mistranslation in this volume! This is why shoujo manga doesn't sell well here, publishers!

But the rest of the text is interesting. He could "turn the story around" (this is the closest translation I can give you for the word "reviravolta"). That means he has the potential to change the plot. Interesting. Seems in line with the rumor of Hatori's plans changing.

Now we have three different translations here, all of them pointing to different things. It's a bit confusing. Which one is the real translation?

But you don't know the depths to my obsession! I do have the first ouran volume in Japanese! And there is no better way to solve this mystery than to look at the original text!

I'm not fluent in Japanese but I have six semesters of beginner level Japanese under my belt + it's 1 AM 2AM and I should be asleep because I'm going to cosplay Tamaki at a con tomorrow + I drank an entire cup of green tea and I'm shaking AND THIS IS THE PERFECT TIME TO FALL IN A TRANSLATION RABBIT HOLE!

Here is a pic of the Japanese text taken straight from the manga:

In the Japanese text, Hatori says Mori/Haruhi (yes, HARUHI, not Honey) is a 大穴 couple. I searched 大穴 on a japanese dictionary app and this is what it means: "Long shot win (in horse racing), big winnings (on a Long shot), a killing (made from a bet)"

So THAT'S probably where it came from. She called MoriHaru an unlikely win and people thought it meant she was planning for him and Haruhi to be a surprise endgame in the long run. Looks similar to the english version, but I feel it has more "winning connotations" here, you know? Add this to the translation calling them Hatori's favorite couple and you have the likely source to the confusion: People thought it was her favorite couple and that it would win in the long run, surprising everyone.

From this to "they were supposed to be endgame but it got changed" it's not a big leap.

I should try translating the rest of the japanese text but let me do it another day when it's not 2AM, thanks

But that does not mean she was planning for them to be canon. If anything it's more likely she didn't know who to ship Haruhi with at first (there are other quotes from the manga that support this or the "Tamaki was always endgame" theory).

So another part of the mystery seems to be solved, but none of this explains the whole popularity part of the rumor. You know, when people say Tamaki became the male lead because he was more popular than Mori.

We know this is highly unlikely because Mori actually got second place at the first popularity pool, losing only to Haruhi. And Tamaki wasn't the only popular character in the group. You can see this in depth in this post by another person.

So where could people have taken that from?

You know which other shoujo fandom has a very similar rumor? Boys over flowers (a.k.a. Hana Yori Dango a.k.a. Meteor Garden).

If you are into that manga, you have probably heard that "Tsukasa wasn't supposed to be the male lead, Rui was. But Tsukasa won the first popularity pool and the mangaka changed her mind."

(Listen, I'm a huge boys over flowers fan but I'm not sure if this is true in this fandom either. I'm not a huge interview reader, so if anyone has a source where Kamio says this, please send it to me.)

But in boys over flowers case it at least makes a bit more sense! Tsukasa did win the first popularity contest (Rui got third place). And I've seen this rumor on bof fansites from the 90s/early 00s, so this one has a higher chance of being true compared to the ouran one.

Honestly, the first time I heard the Mori rumor my first reaction was "???? I've heard this before in another fandom????"

So my guess is that the rumor about Boys Over Flowers somehow jumped to Ouran. But how did people mix up completely unrelated series from different mangaka and magazines? It's not that hard to imagine. They are both popular reverse harem series with the same basic concept (poor girl in rich school with rich boys).

My guess is that someone saw the Mori thing and thought "oh, so it's like boys over flowers where the male lead changed because the other was more popular" and it snowballed from this.

Again, I could be wrong and maybe there is a Hatori quote somewhere on the internet proving the rumor. But for now, I'm going to believe it's a mix of mistranslations/misinterpretations and people jumping to conclusions.

(And this is not an attack on people who ship MoriHaru, btw. Ship whatever you want. This is just about the rumor)

[bisluthq]

This whole album has really made me think of this one interview Taylor did back in like 2011-2012 where she said something like "I'm usually very intelligent. Except when I'm in love" and good grief if that quote isn't this album summed up☠️😂 She really is very clever but yes she is irrational and reckless when she's overpowered by love, it's her Aquilles heel that makes her self-sabotage. I really genuinely did think it had been her who broke things of with Matty. I inevitably always give her the benefit of the doubt bc I've been a full on stan since 2008 so I really did think she was recklessly rebounding with someone who's been a long time friend and who she had a lot of love for but I was so sure that the reason it ended was because she snapped back into consciousness and realized that she was idealizing a manchild that watches degenerate racist misogynistic porn and that said a mean racist comment about her friend Ice Spice and oh also is a drug addict? So I thought she cut things off and realized she was out of her mind. Biggest plot twist ever bc turns out she did not and it was in fact Matty who left her stranded??? 💀💀💀 I have so many questions about how and why (I assume he could not deal with Swifties and everyone criticising the very criticizable things he does on main) but mostly I'm just glad bc this girl was straight up ready to marry and reproduce with him. I'm not in any way glad that she was hurt so viscerally yet again and in such short time, like I'm genuinely sorry and the album made me cry so much and I just wanted to give her a big hug. But oof I'm so relieved that she dodged that bullet though😅 stay safe

I don’t think we’re safe from Tatty 3.0 tho. There may be a Tatty kid yet.

[feekins]

wooooo, more Gung-Ho's! let's jump right into it! here are my thoughts and things and translation weirdness I stumble upon as I re-read ch 2 of Trigun Maximum vol 2!

(NOTE: I'm reading the Dark Horse [physical] and the Overhaul [online] translations side-by-side)

so, a few pages in, Dark Horse does that weird thing where they have a character spell out a word as they're talking? this time, it's Midvalley. in response to Hoppered being all like (paraphrasing here) "yo, don't mess with Legato! he's not like he was before Fifth Moon," the Overhaul has Midvalley saying (quoting word-for-word here) "That's exactly what I'm saying." it's the same wording in Dark Horse, except they spell out 'e-x-a-c-t-l-y'. I'm still not sure why 🤨

but ohhhhhh, trimax Midvalley is SO different from his '98 anime counterpart! iirc the anime painted him as like...kind of a ladies' man? which could've been due to the times. but anyway, trimax Midvalley is SO complex. I've always loved that about him. he's similar to Wolfwood in doing what he has to in the name of survival...but he's not stuck between a rock and a hard place the way Wolfwood seems to be. I mean, look at him - Midvalley doesn't hesitate to pull a gun on frickin' Legato.

oh, and here's a little translation discrepancy: while he's subjecting Midvalley to a little, uh...non-consensual yoga...

(Dark Horse on left, Overhaul on right)

...and now I regret saying the yoga thing. except...hang on. Legato's taking away Midvalley's agency here - the same way his tristamp counterpart does to Wolfwood. another SA allegory, perhaps...?

anyway. our next translation discrepancies come in Knives' instructions to Legato. Dark Horse has Knives saying (about Vash):

"We will cause him ultimate suffering...at the hands of you humans! He still doesn't get it. We'll show him the true human nature he so desperately protects. Fuse the futility of his purpose into his very bones."

meanwhile, the Overhaul has him saying:

"Make him feel eternal suffering...at the hands of you humans! He still doesn't understand. Show him the true nature of you humans that he so desperately protects. Engrave the futility of his cause into his every bone."

notice how, in the Overhaul, there is no "we" - just "you humans." that, I think, is an important distinction, Knives separating himself from what he's commanding the Gung-Ho's to do.

a second point in Dark Horse's corner here! the translations are p much the same (except, in the Overhaul, Wolfwood says "ya idiot" and Vash replies "Well, you see...), but that frickin "BeCaAaAuUsE" makes me laugh every. time. 🤣

after these antics, we learn of Tonim Town, another place where all the people just disappeared. it's interesting to note that, same as what happened with Carcasas in the last volume, 'KNIVES' was left, Wolfwood tells us in the Overhaul, "etched on the stone monument at the center of town." Dark Horse's translation only specifies "a stone in the town center." soooooo with the additional info the Overhaul gives us - plus similar visuals of the stone monument - that gives us a neat little worldbuilding detail. Carcasas and Tonim Town have those town-center monuments in common. I wonder how many others do, and how that commonality came about. perhaps an early town had that detail, and subsequent towns adopted similar spatial planning?

anyway. hi. I have 2 degrees in anthropology. I got excited;;;;;;

important difference - just the name VS this, that, and the other thing about this guy.

and I HAD to juxtapose these bits found one page after the next - before and after Rai-Dei introduces himself. serious...and then Vash ruins the mood. classic. 🤣

I never noticed the skull on the back of Rai-Dei's skates has a lower jaw

(Dark Horse on top, Overhaul on bottom)

a couple more translation discrepancies. Dark Horse cuts a whole sentence from Rai-Dei, 'say' VS 'do', and then Wolfwood's line is good either way but I had to show both bc either way, he's hilarious...also, 'terrorist priest' 🤣🤣🤣

'eternal' again in the Overhaul - same as we saw in Knives' instructions to Legato

finally...that's some weird wording you've got there, Dark Horse 😆

[aqpippin]

Please talk some more about Barracuda AU because I may or may not be also lowkey invested 👀

pls I've done nothing for it for like a YEAR but I'm still so obsessed with it -- it's an s12 jankie + crygi (minor halldoll like they're there but it's not a major moment) / rivals to friends/lovers / swimming au fic it's massive sjsjsj it's angsty and smutty (?maybe ?? not 100% sold on smut yet) with some cute fluffy moments but we've really gotta ride through the angst to get to it 🫠 jackie's new, jan's threatened, gigi hates everyone except crystal, crystal's injured, nicky's just having a great time -- everyone gets to interact with everyone, like if I ever finish this it's gonna be so long (well a lot longer than I've ever written as a oneshot girlie)

I'm gonna show what I have under a cut bc otherwise this is just gonna be long as fuck

I've put so much effort into worldbuilding and ironing out details and yet I have no fic to prove it 🥴🥲 I have a pinterest and a playlist, fake lil instagrams, a notion spreadsheet, and so many quotes and small segments but not a single completed chapter AHAHA this fic has been like nearly three years in the making and there's fuck all to show for it 😌 it's very rich kids with rich kid problems but also queer young person problems what a time honestly

jackie is the new kid, so good at her craft she's there on a sporting scholarship, so unbothered by the whole vibe of everyone else on the team. she's quick to make friends with crystal, who shows her the ropes to surviving college with the team. in turn, jackie teaches crystal some important lessons. she doesn't get along with gigi, she knows gigi hates her but she doesn't have the energy to give a fuck about it which pisses gigi off even more. she knows jan also doesn't like her, but in all honesty, she doesn't really care enough about that either. she's there for the degree and swimming keeps her entertained

jan is the overachieving, hard working team captain -- real take no shit, I'm going to the olympics even if it means I have to drown you. she's popular and well liked although she's known to be very overbearing, she works hard and her position has never been threatened until jackie's arrival - cue sexy tension. jan and gigi have been best friends since childhood, they know what the other is going to say and do before it even happens, they have no idea what they would do without each other

gigi is jan's best friend, she also works super hard but isn't has nice or over the top about it, she has a rep for being a bit of a blonde cunt. she doesn't have time for people who aren't worthy of her time. she hates jackie with an absolute passion, which is a problem considering they have most of the same classes. her soft spot is crystal, her sweet girlfriend who she would do anything for. gigi knows swimming isn't her forever, but she's gonna milk it while she lasts -- she's well perceived on social medias and always has a brand deal under her belt

crystal has just been dropped from the team post injury, she's just had shoulder surgery and knows that her swimming career is over. she watches and supports her team from the stands, even though it kills her to watch them go on without her. crystal and gigi have always done swimming together, and now that she's out, crystal isn't sure that they have that much in common. crystal and jackie quickly become friends as the two outsiders of the group, with crystal giving jackie litle tips and tricks on how to become 'part of the team'. crystal loves jackie's view of swimming as a hobby and not a lifestyle, and it's an ideology she has to adopt herself

nicky loves everyone -- she gets in and gets the job done and will always suggest smoothie bowl dates after training. she's good friends with jan and gigi but isn't as intense, but she's super close with crystal, they're the team idiots who have a real protective streak for the other. she's a bit standoffish towards jackie at first, but warms up to her in due time. she's often caught hitting her head on the wall because she's too busy staring at a certain diver

pinterest / playlist

[foxyreacts]

Idk how rel. this is, but

There's this huge push to "protect children" right? There have recently been commercials on streaming services that offer homeschooling so that, quote:

"Have your children learn from the safety of your home"

Like????? Safety? You mean from guns?? Or from trans ppl??

Cuz lemme tell u one of those is actually dangerous, and it's not the one that's getting all the attention.

Or even. You mean the dangerous environment crafted by society so those in charge can maintain control over the masses using fear?

Americans as a whole lack the ability to think critically, either due to brainwashing from the media, or from a religion that, in America, teaches BLIND FAITH.

There are so many things to focus on that are "Evil and Scary" out there it takes virtually no effort to turn anyone against anything Different. POC, the Gays, Liberals.

Pre WWII Germany, the churches were teaching the Evils of the Jews. During the period of chattel slavery, churches taught that POC were Inferior and that the slave owners were saving them from Satan's (aka African gods & religions) clutches by teaching them Christianity (except exodus. For some reason they didn't teach the slaves about Moses at All. So weird and random right?) Churches contribute SO MUCH to hate & ostracization.

Church storytime ex (and prob religious trauma tw) under the cut

Preacher wanted to test the faith of the children and had me (5yo?) walk down to the front of the church without stopping. Along the way, someone I know tries to get my attention, & when I get to the front he's like:

"See? You got distracted bc you took your eyes off of G-d. But we got your attention back." He then goes on to say, "There are many things that will lead you from the path of Jesus, even your family. You must keep your eyes upon Jesus no matter what."

And then we probably sang the hymn, "Keep your eyes upon Jesus" or some shit.

This one:

Something something g-ds plan for humanity and how he needs us to trust him and everything will work out.

The bulk of advice I got growing up (and still get now from my ext. family) was simply "G-d will take care of everything, so just pray and ask him to take [whatever] into his hands."

Like. The Southern Baptist Convention* is DISGUSTING & they have so much influence over the South. They're the bulk of those TV preachers who sound like they're yelling through their jowls "THE GLORY OF GODS KINGDOM OF HEAVEN HALLELUJAH."

*note: the SBC is NOT all Baptist churches. It split from the & I'm pretty sure it split bc it wanted to be racist. Additionally it does not include Black Baptist Churches

fountain in italy

[rollforjackass]

i'm gonna go ahead and answer all the questions from this fic writer ask game here, because. why not! i'm bored and i'm not used to talking about my own writing. gotta cut the cord on that shame game sometime.

(and if y'all wanna answer some yourself, the post is linked above! absolute guarantee i will send some if you do bc i'm nosy like that)

💘 - Is there any posted fic you want to rework/re-edit/re-write?

oh god yes, a lot of them. i've got chronic perfectionism.

if i were to be kind to myself and narrow it down to one, my poor little Person of Interest fic deadman's switch was my first venture into the fandom i would come to adore, and it could definitely do with some tuning up. with a few rare exceptions, i've never liked post-episode fics that just recap the events of the episode with a few extra sentences of meta thrown in the mix, and unfortunately, i think that's exactly what i did with this fic. i don't think it deserves a complete do-over, but a re-work with a new direction and a concrete destination would do it good.

💫 - what is your favorite kind of comment/feedback?

any and every, but the ones where people share their favorite quotes and tell me what it made them think of and expound on their personal theories and thoughts, AGH!!!! i adore those!!!! go off about all the things you love about the characters and your scenarios for missing scenes, i promise you i am enjoying it immensely!!!!!

🌈 - is there a fic that you worked *really fucking hard on* that no one would ever know? maybe a scene/theme you struggled with?

i mean, by default i feel like i'm a bit of a tryhard with my writing and i feel like that's fairly obvious a lot of the time (for better or for worse 😬). but i guess the one that's outwardly the most relaxed bit of writing and was actually really difficult was the burning question, because. how the hell am i supposed to translate a groupchat format into a fic and keep all the nuances of technology, i.e. nickname changes & people sending walls of text, that are meant to be funny??????

it took me Forever to settle on formatting that i felt maintained the spirit of the jokes, and there's so many folks that think groupchat fics are cringe that i don't think anyone would consider how much effort i had to put into it for a now quite outdated joke lmao. i love groupchat fics myself, though, so i am content with the cringe.

🦋 - what are you most insecure about when you post a fic?

always always ALWAYS characterization. i have the fandom attention span of a mayfly and the combination pizza hut/taco bell that is ADHD/autism to boot, so i pick up strong attachments to characters/media quickly and write my feelings almost as fast as i feel them. which means lots of one-offs that are barely two seasons into a series/one movie into a trilogy. i'm always worried that i'm missing the mark by a mile because i was too impatient to reach a Big Backstory Reveal, or that i've latched onto a single trait not indicative of the whole.

🌻 - what makes you want to give up on writing? what makes you keep going?

what makes me want to give up: the Mortifying Ordeal of Being Known. i used to be super confident in putting myself out there, but i haven't always had support for my special interests and i've rarely had anyone willing to read my writing when asked. makes it hard to enjoy what i'm doing when i've got that annoying little earworm asking me what people would think if they ever eventually read it, even when it's a self-indulgent little thing that i don't plan on posting.

what makes me keep going: i love writing, plain and simple. i love to borrow people's habits, their thoughts, their dreams and hopes and fears and nightmares; i love to see the world from new perspectives. and the idea that what i have to say might connect with people, that people might recognize parts of the characters and stories that they care for in my writing, is pretty damn intoxicating, too.

🌿 - how does creating make you feel?

there's a book series i loved as a kid called The Secrets of Droon, which is about three kids who discover a staircase to another world in their basement, and writing has always felt like that to me. i open the door, and i am somewhere else. these other worlds don't need me to be there for events to unfold, but i can still try to change the things that i don't like if i wanted to. and nobody needs to know that i've been to these worlds, but if i mentioned 'hey i've been to another world', someone somewhere might be interested in what i saw.

idk if that makes sense shdjk but i just!! i like writing. i like seeing what would happen if i changed something. and it feels amazing when something i care about deeply connects with people i don't even know, and who don't know me. it's scary to venture into other worlds, but there's always the chance of finding yourself - and finding new friends - down that magic staircase!!

🍉 - in what ways has writing helped you process trauma and/or navigate through your own life?

whoof, i mean. how hasn't it.

i had a very difficult upbringing that left me absurdly angry with the world and only able to conceive of living as fighting for survival. i wrote stories where i could escape and be free, and i wrote stories where the fight was all there was so i could feel less alone. hell, my first favorite character on tumblr was gabriel from supernatural, running away from his family and still loving them even when it hurt, and writing stories where he was happy or angry or sad felt like validating those feelings in myself. i could fix his problems, even if mine weren't that easy.

these days i struggle with a lot that's out of my control, like PTSD with a very hard-to-avoid trigger. but writing is something that i can curate, that i can tailor to a situation. it's completely in my hands. so when i'm going through something, i can always pick up a pen and scribble out the strong feelings in a way that makes sense to me, if not to anyone else, and then i can close that book or tear the page out or burn it, whatever i want to do with it. i can shuffle through the life of a fictional character and find the times when they felt the way i did, and wonder how they got through it, and sometimes in doing so, i find ways that i can, too.

it certainly helps that i've found myself a good number of favorite characters who go through a lot but still remain hopeful. ones who make a place for themselves in the world that is safe and good, who manage to find the best in people even when being shown their worse.

🎀 - give yourself a compliment about your own writing

i like that i'm willing to try my hand at pretty much anything and give it every ounce of passion i've got, no matter how short a time i may have been in a fandom or how different a character might be from the ones i'm used to writing. tech geek with conflicting superiority/inferiority complexes? sure thing. prim and proper angel who's secretly a bitch? give it a whirl. chain-smoking self-sabotaging magician who's a time capsule of the 80s? devoted dad with apeshit anxiety? codependent gay cannibals? fuck it, we ball.

🎈 - describe your style as a writer; is it fixed? does it change?

mmmm depends on how you define style. i want to say that it's generally all the same, but i do think i change tone A Lot, based on who i'm writing about. partially because i bounce between a lot of british and american shows and i tend to try to adopt the vernacular of the culture the media is based in to make the story more immersive, but also based on the tone and overall themes of the piece, i.e. who's hurt and who's comforting and what their relationship looks like, if one's more comedic or they both are or neither of them are.

i'm a bit of a metaphor & simile hound, for sure, that part's pretty fixed. i tend to like comparing simple things to grandiose ones, if only because i write 90% hurt/comfort and the things i always remember most about times when i've been hurting are the gestures that the comforter doesn't even remember making later on. i think i have consistent struggles in certain areas and consistent strengths in others. but i almost never want the version of me who wrote for, say, Good Omens, writing for Mission Impossible, because to me those are two wildly different atmospheres with wildly different stakes and baseline truths. if that makes sense? so i do try to switch up my style when i feel like it's appropriate.

🎉 - how often do you celebrate completing & posting a work? how often do you give yourself the credit/validation that you seek from others when you post? (if you don't, you should!)

i don't think i celebrate much at all, per se. it's always more of a relief that i've gotten all of the most pressing ideas out of my head for the moment than it is an accomplishment, i guess? i'll probably start trying to celebrate now, though.

as for credit/validation, i don't really know how to measure that. i'm able to acknowledge that i've sent something out into the world to bear scrutiny, and i'm usually able to like what i've written once it's out there, so i guess i give myself credit that way??

💞 - 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

characters. always the characters. sometimes to the detriment of the rest of the story.

idk, i tend to start stories because something about a character's reactions/choices grabbed my attention, and flesh out a scenario around how those reactions/choices would be seen by others vs how the character would see it themselves, so the character is always at the heart of my storytelling. i'm always thinking about the faces we put on for different people vs the ones we wear when we're alone. i usually find that as long as i follow a character's patterns of behavior, priorities, and methods of self-expression, the story writes itself.

💝 - what is a fic that got a different response than you were expecting?

i don't really have expectations when i post, but the outpouring of love i received for Red Witness was definitely a shocker!! i mean, i'd never even heard of The Mentalist while it was airing from 2008-2015, so i was definitely a latecomer to the fandom, but apparently a lot of folks either rewatched it when the pandemic started or remembered it fondly enough to be excited about me writing for it, so that was a lovely surprise!!

🤍 - what's one fic of yours you think people didn't "get"?

i mean, one of the things i love about writing for fandom is all the variation in opinions and the different takes on what parts of canon are rock-solid vs which should be different, so i don't think it's possible for people to not "get" a fic. it's just one lens through which a set of events and people can be viewed.

that said, i suppose waiting for the hammer to fall didn't land the way i'd hoped it would, as far as my investment in the ideas i was trying to convey vs audience engagement goes, but i can definitely see why it wasn't "gotten". i spent a lot more time trying to mimic the style and feel of Good Omens and relying on that style to convey my ideas for me than i did figuring out how to explain what, exactly, those ideas were.

my intention was to explore "how does someone as buttoned-up as aziraphale, who has lived millennia in peaceful denial, come to terms with an impending confrontation that he absolutely can't avoid or weasel out of?", and that's still something that is very enticing to me, but the fact that he had been in denial his whole existence wasn't something that aziraphale would have been able to recognize on his own. so the execution fell far short of the mark, and i ended up with a few snippets of passable wit and imitative texture that couldn't have connected with a reader even with an operator on the line.

so, as far as the message of the fic goes, i suppose people didn't "get" that one, but it takes reliable postage to deliver a message and i left off all the stamps. (do we think there's been enough methods-of-communication metaphors for one day? everyone's knees sufficiently slapped?)

🕯️ - 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?

come together (over me) was a BRUTAL undertaking for a number of reasons, which is also why it hasn't been updated in two fucking years, for all my vain intent to finish it.

not only was it my first ever attempt at a multi-chapter fic, but it was also a long and involved discussion of the many different ways that grief can affect people that i started writing less than a year after losing a friend of mine to a tragic accident (which was also the way the mighty nein lost mollymauk). i started writing it in the first place in an attempt to comfort my partner at the time, for whom molly was an all-time favorite, so i was pushing myself obsessively to meet the perfect balance of canon-accurate and partner-approved characterizations, and giving myself a lot of grief about it.

at the same time, the outpouring of shock and despair from the Critical Role fandom was like nothing i had ever experienced before. this was the first PC death of their 2nd campaign, under circumstances that meant it would be a permanent one, and on top of that, mollymauk was - at the time - the only openly queer character in the party. people had become understandably attached.

unfortunately, though, IMO, this meant a large portion of the fandom deified him to unrecognizable extremes. to a lot of new enthusiasts, he became a saintly sacrificial lamb unjustly slaughtered, or worse, "bury your gays" in action (it was a random encounter at a time when the party cleric was away giving birth. just saying). people who disagreed or people who didn't like him all that much were met with outrage. wars of righteous indignation were waged. lines in the sand were drawn. it was a mess.

all this to say, a fledgling fan trying to be as canon-accurate as possible in my characterizations of people who'd known mollymauk, and of mollymauk himself, for this fic centered around what was now the most controversial fandom event i'd ever seen firsthand, had a higher-than-usual chance of getting me absolutely obliterated on the internet. the horror.

so overall, while i did get a lovely response from what i did end up posting, the circumstances of writing it were unexpectedly exhausting. i had a lot of great ideas, still have a solid outline for the rest of it, and i like what i managed to get done, but just thinking about continuing it (especially so long after it was relevant and after so much has been revealed in canon since) is. haunting

💥 - find your least kudos'd fic - say something wonderful about it.

oh Time Doesn't Stop. (but it should), we're really in it now.

my dear, sweet, first ever foray into posting on ao3, i'm still quite proud of you. it's one of the few times i've felt like i could say more with absence than with explanation. it's a time capsule of confidence in myself and in my skills, and i think i did a pretty good job depicting the ways that constantine both self-destructs and lashes out when faced with a situation that he can't worm his way out of. i like the fact that i let each section in the 5+1 format have room to breathe, rather than trying to blend them together into a seamless narrative; it feels more authentic to me, like time has actually been passing.

🍭 - why did you start writing?

re: writing in general, i genuinely can't remember. i've been writing stories since i was old enough to read them. maybe i've always wanted to create something that thinks the same way i do?

re: fanfiction, because i was an insatiable bookworm as a kid and there were never enough stories about the characters and settings i loved to satisfy me, so i decided to start making them up myself. it ain't a party until obi-wan kenobi is helping a larvitar set up a picnic for every legendary pokemon plus dustfinger from Inkheart.

💎 - why is writing important to you?

i don't really have a good answer for this, because i can't think of a reason it wouldn't be, honestly. i guess the closest thing would be: it's important because i've never been good at speaking my thoughts and feelings out loud, but on paper i can say exactly what i mean and have a better chance of being understood. no need for facial expressions that might be misconstrued, no way for anyone to misread my tone of voice, just uncomplicated self-expression.

it also means that i get to share my passions with folks who are just as passionate as i am, and that i have a less awkward social avenue for expressing my appreciation of their candor. integrating and crediting headcanons you adored into your personal interpretation of canon, writing something inspired by a one-off post because it made you feel something...there can be such confounding social rules around complimenting people when you do it verbally or in person, it's nice to be able to say "thank you for caring as much as you do!" by just. applying your craft.

📡 - why is writing and sharing your writing important for fandom?

because of what i said for the last question, it's all a way of sharing how you feel!!! people write because they feel strongly about a subject, whether they love canon or despise it, whether they want to refute a popular characterization they disagree with or expand on an AU that's been making the rounds. not to quote spongebob, but there's love in every stitch, whether you love the way you think about a character/a story or you love the way somebody else does.

it's also a way of preserving fandom over time, as well as the present moment! fan fiction started because of Star Trek fans in the 70s and they're still making trek shows today, the critical receptions of which are strongly influenced by fan interpretations so time-honored as to become gospel!! (snw you know what you did.) writing fics and sharing them with each other is a tradition of story-telling that will outlast us by centuries, and it is damned wonderful to know that what we leave behind are affirmations of love and dedication.

🪄 - what is your post-writing/sharing aftercare? How do you take care of yourself or celebrate yourself when you've finished a fic?

my aftercare is closing out the tab and running away from my computer sdhjk. i'm always very anxious about posting my work, and that's before sharing links or putting it anywhere else, so i usually post any writing i've gotten done right before i go to bed, and then in the morning i can read it with fresh eyes and a calmer brain and pat myself on the back for getting it done. that's a celebration in its way. other than that, drinking water is probably what i do the most after completing something.

🎙️ - which one of your fics would you like someone to make a pod-fic of?

actually, somebody already MADE a podfic of my groupchat fic the burning question, which would have been my answer!!!! the wonderful frecklebomb absolutely made my life when they put that together with their friends, i've never felt anything less than absolute joy remembering it.

🤲 - what do YOU get out of writing?

catharsis, baby! i write a lot of hurt/comfort to fill in gaps that i find myself thinking about between episodes/movies/chapters, and it often ends up being very therapeutic. i get the double pleasure of comforting someone and imagining being comforted, with the cherry on top that is narrative completion (at least by my standards).

💋 - when you leave comments on a fic, do you want to hear back from the writer?

i wouldn't call it a priority when i'm leaving those comments, but it's always lovely when they do reply. i'm a collector of joy, knowing with certainty that i've "repaid" someone for their labor of love is never a bad thing, but i definitely don't expect or seek it. hoard all those compliments for a rainy day, y'all deserve them!!

☯️ - 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?

"healthy" really comes down to your point of view in fandom, but i do think that multi-platform engagement for fic authors lets you exercise a level of boundary-setting on social media relationships that the rise of tiktok has sort of blown out of the water.

i'm very tired so i'm not sure i could explain my thought process properly if i tried, but basically, going from an author's works on ao3 to their tumblr/twitter often feels like a delightful sneak peek into the mind behind the magic, while going from an author's tumblr/twitter to their works on ao3 can be like walking into a neighbor's studio and realizing they're michelangelo reincarnated. either way, multi-form engagement makes you value them as a person as much as you value the fruits of their labors.

on a less labyrinthine note, getting a message or comment from someone who read your stuff and loved it can be really comforting! someone who liked your work is among the followers who see your fandom theories and wildly thirsty tags. no matter how self-conscious you may get about Being Perceived, you now have at least one person who liked what they perceived.

that's what comforts me, anyway, as someone who is frequently anxious about making bad impressions and bothering people. it also encourages me to send off that complimentary message i've been thinking about sending for ages, even if i only do it anonymously. if i think i would appreciate getting a message like that, then it's worth doing.

🧿 - what steps do you take to not take things personally if a fic doesn't do well, or if your writing/posting/sharing experience isn't going how you'd like it to?

i really can't stress enough how much i write and post for myself more than for a potential audience. i tell the story that i want to read, not the one i've seen people wishing for. if the two end up being one and the same, that's the best feeling in the world, but it's not the motivating factor behind me writing/posting/sharing.

sometimes i do get less engagement on a fic than i thought i might and it makes me worry that i misread a character, or i write something that i find really funny that never gets commented on, but then i have to remind myself that i only post in the first place when i like it enough to post. if it's up, i've decided i liked it. i didn't decide it was perfect, and i didn't mind-read the fandom to figure out what they're looking for in a fic, and i don't need to as long as it's good enough for me. that's really the only step i take, i guess.

💌 - share something with us about an up-and-coming work (WIP) that has you excited!

rubbing my grubby little paws together because OH BOY, i have a Mission Impossible benji & ilsa hurt/comfort dawning-friendship fic coming down the pipes that is very soft and sweet to me, and involves benji braiding ilsa's hair because she's failed miserably at doing it on her own and she's never had anyone to do it for her. it's my sweet angel baby right now, at least until good omens comes out in 24 hours and my synapses misfire to permanently sear the word 'GAY' behind my eyes.

[bambambunny]

I made a squad of clone ocs

notes: I made their descriptions in like a day so it might be really simple. Under the cut cuz its long.

Ori’vod (CT - 149 - 2348 )

Chill eldest brother

Ain’t too worried about getting promoted

Just wants to take care of his little bros

The sweetest ori’vod

A transferee who is bringing all the wisdom 

The others like to joke that he’s more of a jedi than their general

He has the most disturbing knowledge anyone could come across

Stickler (CT - 354 - 2875)

Staff sergeant 

In charge of everyone but he stays with sarge, Toolkit and Extra

The most talented I think

Or at least the best at war

He’s a stickler for the rules lmao

Will not take care of himself no matter what anyone does

Sweetie (CT - 354 - 3153)

Sergeant 1

He’s kinda worried for Stickler honestly

Tries so hard to take the stress off him

Ori’vod keeps telling him that you can’t force someone to relax

that goes against the very essence of it.

If Toolkit is the one begrudgingly taking care of his brothers, Sweetie’s the one who does it with his full chest

The name was a joke but now it’s just a proper description

He kinda hates it lmao but there’s no backing down from this one

Bumper (CT - 354 - 4029)

Sergeant 2

In charge of Calix, Ritz, and Slinky

God bless his soul

Not like he’s any better

Angry little sht this one is

Everyone’s worried that he’s gonna pop a vein or something, well, everyone except Calix and Slinky 

They live for that sht

But even then he’s the one that makes the weirdest plans, it’s like he has a personal vendetta against the clankers like chill man

He’s called that bc he can and will ram his entire body into a crowd of droids

Honestly the name is an understatement 

He wouldve shot krell if he had the chance

Calix (CT - 354 - 4346)

He chose his name by himself which is a little try hard but ok

Will NOT let Ritz touch his armor

Get ur grubby aesthetic hands away from my pile of sht thanks

It’s purposefully awful

In fact he’s gotten quite good at making garish stuff

Fckin LOVES spacecrafts like you would not believe

Every time someone needs to go out and fly a starfighter he’s your guy

He’d be so good at Mario Kart

Ritz (CT - 354 - 4347)

Got his name cuz he’s fancy

Well, look

ever since he got out of the tube it’s like he’s been dreaming of customizing his armor

Calix gave him the name 

After a while everyone comes to consult him about what they should add to their armor

Every after deployment he touches up his armor so he looks as shiny as the day they shipped him off

Even on active duty, every chance he gets he’s cleaning his armor

Extra (CT - 354 - 4445)

It’s cuz his number was so close to being perfect

The team medic

So tired of everyone’s sht

He’s like Sweetie but he’s not nice

Actually the only one he’s nice too is Sweetie

Everyone else can go fck themselves

Slinky (CT - 354 - 4478)

Mischief personified

He knows every which way you can fck with the enemy

Great with stealth missions, he just takes way too long cuz he’s so busy being a terror

The only one who falls for his tricks now is Calix

He does try some practical jokes at Stickler but that didn’t go well

He kisses up to Toolkit so much it’s wild dude

Toolkit (CT - 354 - 5744)

The baby of the group

Cuz he knows damn well his vode are the worst and they cannot be trusted to take care of themselves

So he has a backpack filled with everything

Like he’s got them cheese crackers, anti-acidity pills, headache tonic, mints, 2 extra toothbrushes, and virtually every tool known to man

He goes wherever he’s needed most cuz he’s the utility man.

Either on the main ship or on the ground.

They're all part of the 338th naval legion which has like 0 info about which is perfect for me bc I get to do whatever I want.

It was originally just Ritz and Calix but then i researched how many soldiers count as what division. The US army says that a squad has 9 members so I had to buff it out.

I'm still working on their physical appearances and their armor. I also have some incorrect quotes if yall want, just lmk.

[halfelven]

All I know about Swedenborgianism is that it was Helen Keller’s religion… what IS it exactly

it's like there was this guy who was like ohhhhhhh i have ~visions~ from God and i Know things that you do Not @ the established church and he was kinda considered heretical but didn't really get punished too much for it and then he went on to inspire a lot of really influential people and i think i've read his entire works bc my f*ther was obsessed with him bc he thought he himself was a prophet of god like swedenborg had been and had all these visions and talked to angels and stuff

i guess where he differs from mainstream christianity is in certain beliefs such as: god is love and never angry so he doesn't send anyone to hell and people of other religions who did their best in life and then die will meet and accept the christian god after death (???)

the trinity is not three persons/beings. but one god only. (??? i personally don't know nor care what the importance of the trinity being one person or three persons is)

idk i'm not an expert. he just has a lot of really weird stuff in his books and i had to listen to it + the bible for 2 - 3 (or 4!) hours every morning before i had eaten and how they were tied to the end of the world that was coming before i was grown up (ha) and so i fuckign hate him but i wasn't really entirely swedenborgian bc my f*ther thought he was a more Important Prophet of God and was more focused on how much god fucking hated everyone (especially people like me) and wanted people to Suffer and be tortured forever in hell (don't get me started on how hell wouldn't work) also he was obsessed with predicting the end of the world based on which pope was going to be the anti-christ

oh and swedenborg thought aliens lived on all the planets in the solar system and had different traits and i refused to believe that

(also my f*ther was weirdly obsessed with fucking balzac's Séraphîta except that Séraphîta is supposed to be "perfect androgyne" and my f*ther was sooooooo insistent that Séraphîta was a woman. which was fun to fight about when i was 9

he was actually just Obsessed with weird european philosophers/theologians/philosophers/freaks from the 1700s and 1800s. and had all these old books from the 1800s that he got when a library in new hampshire was going to toss them. there were so many insane things in them.)

wikipedia quotes under cut:

"In 1745, aged 57, Swedenborg was dining in a private room at a tavern in London. By the end of the meal, a darkness fell upon his eyes, and the room shifted character. Suddenly, he saw a person sitting at a corner of the room, telling him: "Do not eat too much!". Swedenborg, scared, hurried home. Later that night, the same man appeared in his dreams. The man told Swedenborg that he was the Lord, that he had appointed Swedenborg to reveal the spiritual meaning of the Bible and that he would guide Swedenborg in what to write. The same night, the spiritual world was opened to Swedenborg." "According to The Heavenly Doctrine, the Lord had opened Swedenborg's spiritual eyes so that from then on, he could freely visit heaven and hell to converse with angels, demons and other spirits" "Swedenborg wrote about Heaven and Hell based on what he said was revelation from God. According to Swedenborg, God is love itself and intends everyone to go to heaven. That was His purpose for creation. Thus, God is never angry, Swedenborg says, and does not cast anyone into Hell. The appearance of Him being angry at evil-doers was permitted due to the primitive level of understanding of people in Biblical times. Specifically, holy fear was needed to keep the people of those times from sinking irretrievably into the consequences of their evils. The holy fear idea was in keeping with the fundamental truth that even they could understand, that everything comes from Jehovah. In the internal, spiritual sense of the Word, however, revealed in Swedenborg’s works, God can be clearly seen for the loving Person He actually is."

"Swedenborg argued that the Trinity was not three persons—the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—but one, "the Father being the originating divine being itself, the Son the human embodiment of that divine soul, and the Holy Spirit the outflowing activity of Jesus, or the 'Divine Human'"

[callixton]

noel fielding & julian barratt

wuthering heights, emily bronte // the face, 2000 // the guardian, 2007 // x // av club, 2009 // bbc, 2019 // emma, jane austen // o2 academy brixton, 2014 // danny baker & noel fielding, 2014

[ajaxeology]

okay so I'll probably do a prompt list for my 100 follower event. I'll most likely create and release the prompt list when my exams are over unless I'm content with all the random quotes I currently have and I find time to choose.

And here's some life update under the cut?

sike i actually have no life I'm just studying most of the time (except my grades are still shit and maybe I'm just backfiring on myself). I gotta admit I feel a lot of despair honestly but yeah guess I just gotta keep going.

point is have u all seen childe? I may be away from tumblr but my brainrot for him is mASSIVE (it's gotten to the point I think his boots are part of his charm)

I have taken too many photos of him ever since I’ve gotten him and I’ve taken too many screenshots in the event (my friend says I wouldn’t be pulling this shit if my phone had less storage)

LOOK AT HOW FINE HE IS (this isn't all the screenshots bc I reached the photo limit and this set of photos includes spoilers from the event if you haven't played it so just quickly scroll past that when u reach the last row which contains it) and I swear I love his smile sm

also here's a photo of my kita nendoroid that arrived not long ago. He's my favourite character from Haikyuu and he will always have a special place in my heart <3. I could go on a lot talking about him ahahahaha

If you've read to the end, ehe I guess here's some stuff I've been planning:

Ephemeral - Childe (series, probably 4 parts)

Night Lights - Childe, Kaeya, Thoma, Zhongli, Diluc (drabble, characters subject to change)

[yoursummerfrost]

Would you be willing to talk about your writing process? How many drafts you go through, how early on you run something by a beta, do you outline or not, etc.? I'm really curious to get a feel for how folks write!

Sure!! Not sure how coherent this will be but let's see lol. Also you'll notice that certain pieces vary a lot. Writing process under the cut! 

Getting an idea: Most of the time, I get my fic ideas from either songs or random conversations with friends, and they're typically a sort of precipitating event or premise that leads to a character exploration. (Examples: What if Geralt was a ghost haunting Jaskier's house? What if Dan actually stayed for that drink Lucifer offered him?) But sometimes I look for a plot on purpose (e.g., I had been DYING to write a time loop for literal years before I finally worked out how I wanted it to look by brainstorming ways to subvert the conventions w/in the trope). 

It's hard to like, delineate this tho because in reality it's sort of messy and mushed bc of how my brain works. Like, the truer to life approximation of deciding to write and yet so far from death was more like: receiving comfort as the reminder you are lacking it -> ooh ghost love story as ultimate yearning -> who would be more fun to write as a ghost? -> Jaskier as ghost = inversion of dynamic / Geralt as ghost = extension of dynamic -> Geralt as ghost sounds fun -> why would Jaskier be stuck in a house with a ghost? -> he's retiring from a life on the road -> what Jaskier is lacking is permanence/stability -> ghost story as paradox of permanence and impermanence -> okay but on the plot level what would happen if Geralt was haunting Jaskier's house?

Outlining: I usually start writing without formalizing an outline, just to get a feel for the story itself, but I tend to have an idea for the major beats/the thesis statement living amorphously in my brain. Then partway thru the fic I type out an actual outline tracking major occurrences and functions of scenes; occasionally I'll write a whole fic without an outline tho, especially if it's shorter (<16k).

Drafting/Editing: I do somewhere between 1.5 and 2 drafts, depending on how you define a distinct draft ig? I've never completely rewritten a whole story like some schools of writing suggest, but I will definitely go back and make edits. I usually self-edit as I go and then do a full re-read/edit at the end of draft completion. For the as-you-go stuff, I typically re-read everything I wrote the day before which helps both 1) get me into the mood for writing again and 2) make any small tweaks etc + catch typos. When I do the big edit at the end, I try to change something about how I physically read the draft (e.g. read on computer instead of phone, change the font) which helps shake up my brain I guess?

Betaing: I am deeply spoiled by my friends and endlessly grateful for them, lol. At minimum, I like having someone I can excitedly flail about my ideas with while I'm writing (usually multiple someones) and talk through stuff that might be stumping me (e.g. idk if it would be funnier if X or Y happened, hey do you think vampires can feel the cold), and then someone--often the same person but not always--do a full read-through after the fic is done. A lot of times, especially for longer stuff or when I'm feeling down on myself, I'll ask someone to beta and/or cheerread along with me while I write. And I bug them with lots of questions like "Is this landing for you? Do I need to slow down the dialogue here? Am I funny even a little bit?" and they offer feedback and/or encouragement. But also sometimes I get impatient and/or cannot tolerate concrit so I just fling it into the void without beta lol

Other stuff: it's also worth noting that I daydream about my projects constantly? Showering/laying in bed before or after sleep/driving places is all prime fic plotting time. If I'm listening to music, whatever song I'm listening to will probably become related to a fic. This isn't like, a conscious ~dedication~ thing: it's pure, unadulterated neurodivergent hyperfixation. Also, I rarely read other people's fic if I'm writing any of my own, bc for me the writing and reading circuits are quite different, but I re-read/re-watch the source material a lot.

I do also re-read my own fic a decent amount, partly because I genuinely enjoy my own writing and partly because I like noticing my own trends/recurring themes/etc which is easier to do if you take in your work later, at more of a distance. Reading people’s comments about what they enjoyed is also helpful, because it gives me a sense of what things land and what things don’t (or don’t get commented on as being a stand-out, at least). I don’t enjoy getting concrit outside of beta I’ve specifically asked for, but I very much enjoy hearing what people did like so I can do more of it.

Titling/Summaries: Usually I come up with a title partway through writing based on a song I've found to take inspiration from. I get really excited when I find a title, lol. I hate summaries very much except for when I love them? I semi-recently converted to the school of using a snappy quote from the fic to make the summary, which makes my job easier lol. I usually like picking quotes that are 1) relatively brief, 2) encapsulate the tone of the fic, and 3) not huge spoilers. Sometimes I'll write a line and go, "yup, that's gonna be the summary," which is fun.

[nerdylolo]

Hi, @a-thousand-black-white-cards !

So I'm not going to count the lack of representation because most books back then didn't have a lot of POC in them. But this is judging the representation she DID have! (This is mostly specifically in the Harry Potter franchise bc I didn't read her other books)

Tw for racism, islamophobia, and some transphobia under the cut.

Asian racism:

Her only East Asian character in Harry Potter was put in Ravenclaw, the Smart House, which is kind of iffy considering she had no other real personality traits, and defines her soley as the Smart Asian stereotype.

JK Rowling put a lot of work into her books, I guess, but didn't put any work into creating or even naming her East Asian character. Cho Chang (a supposedly Chinese character) was given a Korean surname for a first name, and a Chinese surname for a last name. Not to mention, it sounds like the "ching chang" thing racist people say to imitate chinese people. Here's some tweets by Freddie Wong about it:

I'd say this is a combination of racism and misogyny that has often affected Asian girl characters, but Cho Chang is basically only viewed in relation to her love interests, two white boys Harry Potter and Cedric Diggory. Besides being with Cedric or being torn between the two in books/movies 4-5, she has no real other personality or actions except for the one time she betrays them. She has no development outside of liking her white love interests.

Additionally, and maybe this isn't related to JKR directly, but the actress of Cho Chang, Katie Leung, said that while she played Cho Chang, she experienced a lot of racism for playing the character in HP4, but was told to keep deny it. I'm sure she was like fifteen at the time. To quote her, “I remember them saying to me ‘Oh, look, Katie, we haven’t seen these, there websites that people are talking about. And you know? If you get asked that, just say it’s not true, say it’s not happening.” (Link)

Her only other East Asian character, Nagini, is a snake-human animagus whose only job is to follow around more white boys and do their bidding. Why are all her Asian characters following white boys around?

Her South Asian characters, the Patil twins, were similarly treated as background diversity until (and only once during) HP4, when they went to the Yule Ball. In the film, they wore incredibly inauthenic, low quality costumes and accessories that were "from a dollar store". (Link) Maybe it wasn't intended to be hurtful, maybe production was just lazy. But even otherwise, the two sisters had basically no other personality or characteristics besides being their dates.

AntiBlack racism:

First of all, what are some harmful stereotypes of Black people? Only good at sports, so that's our only personality trait. Fatherless or from broken families.

Her only canon Black characters are as follows:

Dean Thomas, who was raised by a single mother and never knew his father. As JKR described his background as "extr stuff" that never made it into the books, she said "his father walked out on the family when Dean was very young." She claims he had a big story, but there was never a place to put it in the books (Link) which is incredibly disappointing considering how well we know many other background characters.

Angelina Johnson, whose only distinction as a character was that she was captain of the quidditch team.

We never see the Black characters as real, full, developed characters.

A lot of people also talk about how it's harmful that the only Irish kid, Seamus Finnegan's main habit is that he always blows up stuff in the films (unsure about the books), considering certain stereotypes and historical context about Irish people, IRA and such, though I can't find many sources and it was more of a thing in the books than movies. Still, I thought I'd mention it.

Yes, maybe Harry Potter and the blood caste system was an allegory for racism, and maybe she was trying to fight against racism with that. But in order to have a genuine antiracist story, she would have to examine her own prejudices and actions. In order to tell a story about antiracism, you have to have some characters of color be at the center of the story. You can't tell an antiracist story and have all of your characters of color be in the background, undeveloped and fitting harmful stereotypes.

Islamophobia (though I'm linking an article bc I didn't actually read this book)

In her book The Silkworm (written under her pseudonym Robert Galbraith), she wrote a scene where detectives suggested that a woman in a burqa murered the victim, saying "a burqa's a bloody good way of getting in and out without being recognized," and saying that wearing a burqa would be a good way to unquestionably hide one's face and body while committing crimes. Pretty good way to encourage islamophobia in England, which is already a pretty islamophobic place. They also imply it could have been a man pretending to be a woman in a burqa. (Link here and here)

(I am aware she has called out other people's islamophobia before. That doesn't mean she can't do islamophobic things or (intentionally or unintentionally) enforce islamophobic stigma and prejudice)

The one thing white LGBTQ+ people/Harry Potter fans forget is that JK Rowling (and Harry Potter by extension) isn't just transphobic and homophobic. She, in her books, was also racist toward Black, East Asian and South Asian people, xenophobic, fatphobic, ableist, massively antisemitic and misogynistic. And she has never apologized for any of those things.

Yes, I did read the book as a kid. Yes, I do know what I'm talking about.

You want to support that series and/or that woman? That's fine. Know that when people from those groups don't want to hang out with you, that's your own doing.