#foibles is crying about seeker again

[foibles-fables]

“Rise,” Kahlan commanded with a grin to match Cara’s, eyes twinkling.

Cara did as she was ordered.

Then, silence, as they stared at one another.

Cara felt the space between them crackling with unsublimated heat, like it had the previous night. Like it had since Aldermont, since Thorncairn. Since before she could even recognize it, maybe. It was undeniably there between them now, intensifying with every reverberation, filling Cara’s head until there was room for nothing else. Kahlan’s eyes were fixed on hers, darkened, heavy, an invitation. A reflection of this heady moment. Cara’s most indisputable weakness sitting just before her, waiting there, wanting, without even realizing what she might be waiting and wanting for. Hungry. Needing. Unarmed.

Shota’s words came rumbling back to her. Bonded to another, dark of hair and finest of face.

Cara stepped onto the dais to face Kahlan. The drunkenness brought on by their embrace coursed through her again with a vengeance. Time be damned, space be damned, just for this loaded moment. Too bold, she knew. Perilous. Dark like a storm, but bright like its companion lightning. And Kahlan was not shrinking or relenting, even as Cara leaned over her, placing one hand on each of the chair’s ornately-carved arms. Instead of reeling in hesitation, Cara felt Kahlan take hold of the leather strap connecting her corset to her neck guard.

A split second of potent impasse, then, with eyes locked and breathing shallow. A moment of each daring the other to act first. Cara’s pulsing heart was in a frenzy just under Kahlan’s tightfisted grip on her armor. She knew Kahlan’s was, too, because she could feel it somehow, and it staggered her.

Kahlan pulled her in. Cara needed to burn this into her memory. Kahlan’s eyes, Kahlan's eager hand drawing her close. Reaching her own fingers towards the roaring flame.

Incredibly excited to finally share this absolutely beautiful piece of artwork for The Weight of Us, gifted by a very dear and talented friend. I'm humbled and GLEEFUL and so, so, so very grateful.

[foibles-fables]

for my current primary longfics, whether completed or in-progress:

Because the Light Is Close: A buncha nuns and nun-adjacents go on a really fucking weird road trip, and the main characters are barely awake at the same time.

The Weight of Us: Two important questions: what do these prophecies mean, and will these two dumbasses ever stop yearning and just communicate?!

make treaty with the moon: I will deepen Talanah’s backstory and prod at her anxiety and crippling fear of abandonment in THEE MOST self-indulgent, parallel-robust way possible, and you simply cannot stop me

The worse the explanation, the better.

[foibles-fables]

Welp, tumblr took away your fan club chat 👿

Just wanted to say I've now read all your Seeker fics except for the long ones (they're next!), and I loved them all.

Maybe it's "Because the Light is Close" was my first exposure and having the "The Weight of Us" in my to-read list forever, but I had the mistaken impression that you mostly wrote long fic. Anyway, all the one-shots are great and I like them very much! 💖

Oh hey buddy!! First of all, my deepest thanks, seriously! [screamcat.gif] Seeker was and is such an important fandom for me--it really helped me work through A Lot about myself back in the day. Writing was a huge part of it, so I cherish a lot of those old fics as treasured memories in their raw form. Hard to believe that the majority of them are over eleven years old at this point?! I'm beyond pleased that they've managed to hold up at least somewhat. It was incredibly nifty to come back to fanfic writing after such a long hiatus and see how my style and voice have (and have not) changed over the years.

And--I'm flattered you consider me someone capable of handling longfics! Because time and again--including my fandoms now--I need to be on a leash. I adore my longfic ideas and pursue them...with enthusiasm?! Too much enthusiasm. To illustrate: a reminder that Because the Light Is Close was supposed to be two parts. The Weight of Us, hulking behemoth it is, was supposed to be THREE PARTS. Now, at ~130K, it's [checks notes] halfway done?! And HZD is not faring any better--various evil influences conversations with pals have added at least 10-20K onto the original projected word count for make treaty with the moon in various bits and pieces. girl help.

So like, one-shots (two-shots if things get SUPER out of hand) are where I should probably be imprisoned. I'm okay with it. Thrilled and grateful you feel the same. <3

[foibles-fables]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Legend of the Seeker (TV) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Kahlan Amnell/Cara Mason Characters: Kahlan Amnell, Cara Mason Additional Tags: Femslash, Unresolved Sexual Tension, the incredibly gay act of wound-patching, Ficlet, warm-up exercise, Tumblr Prompt, featuring Cara's ✨ungloved hands✨ Summary:

“For the last time, stop apologizing. It’s becoming aggravating, and I’m sure you’re aware that it’s best if I’m not aggravated right now." --

Kahlan is wounded in battle (again) and, later, faints on Cara (yes, again). A brief warm-up exercise/Tumblr prompt fill, brought to you with a little bit of spit shine.

[foibles-fables]

As though I don’t already have enough brain rot to keep me occupied for a century—just wanted to formally denote that I’m always open to receiving fic/writing prompts! Just hurtle ‘em into the old ask box.

Productivity is a fickle mistress for me so I can’t guarantee they’ll be filled in a timely fashion [or at all; I promise to TRY], but sometimes you gotta look beyond yourself to get the creativity glands all nice and stimulated.

[foibles-fables]

Hello foibles!! Question: what do you think about when you’re deciding what you want to do with Kahlan POV vs cara? is there any one that’s better for certain things

Hey hey!

For Weight, POV is mostly determined by plot necessity. There have definitely been a few instances in which it could have gone either way, though--for example, chapter 17 (aka the really super sad and mean melodramatic break-up conversation) was originally meant to be from Cara's POV. But it didn't sit right in my brain, and I'm glad I switched it up, because seeing Cara's reactions filtered through Kahlan's (much more emotionally-in-tune) perception worked a lot better.

In general, though, I like using the POV of the person who's less equipped to handle the content of a certain scene, i.e., Cara in more emotionally-fraught moments, Kahlan in more physically-fraught moments (primarily spicy moments). Poke at their weaknesses and watch them wince. It's delicious.

[foibles-fables]

@dresdensaber asked for "Confessor" for the WIP Ask Meme, and here it is!

Cara took care not to step in any of the slicks of [blood] as she approached the wall of the palace, raising her gaze and then narrowing her eyes as she attempted to read the silky wet red lettering slathered onto the space below the Mother Confessor’s balcony.

[foibles-fables]

fic writer interview

Name: Foibles

Fandoms (that I write for): Horizon Zero Dawn, Legend of the Seeker, Warrior Nun.

Two-shot: holy shit i actually had the restraint to produce one of these!!! rest like you belong here.

Most popular multi-chapter: Because the Light Is Close, aka The Weird Post-Crisis Nun Road Trip

Actual worst part of writing: When perfectionism and/or impostor syndrome take a sledgehammer to my kneecaps; when a word that sounds really gorgeous doesn't have the exact right meaning for the context

How you choose your titles: with much effort and wailing and gnashing of teeth. Usually I need to have a title in mind before I start writing something in earnest, and have been known to suffer a complete crisis if I can't find something that's just right. Usually it's song lyrics, but I've been known to branch out!

Do you outline: For longfic, yes! The outline for The Weight of Us is like, 25 pages of extensive bullet points at this point, and it's growing with every chapter. One shots and shorter multi-chapters, I usually don't. But for those, I'll keep a little note in my phone for snippets/random thoughts. Though if I don't get to them quickly enough, I end up dealing with incomprehensible fragments like [checks phone for current nonsense] "body is something to be perceived??? hey that's kinda whack" yeah cool thanks past Foibles I have no fucking idea either

Ideas I probably won’t get around to but wouldn’t it be nice: I've been really into the idea of some canon-compliant and 🌶️quite spicy🌶️ Cara/Kahlan dreamsharing--if the Seeker's merry band actually came across the Mud People and decided to flip on some frog. Though now that I'm thinking about it again...hmmmm

Callouts @ me: You need to COOL IT with the em dash love affair, Foibles. They're excessive and you're using them as a crutch. Beyond that, control your goddamn word count and don't be afraid to start in media res, you absolute coward.

Best writing traits: I enjoy my descriptions and rhythm and diction. I also feel like I can get the reader pretty emotionally close to the POV character.

Spicy tangential opinion: I'm not really one for AUs, personal-project-speaking! Just not my cup of tea. I have a hard time taking characters out of their established universes in any extensive way. Sometimes it's fun to think about, but it's never where my brain automatically wanders when I'm brainstorming a Thing to write.

No pressure tagging: I mean...full disclosure, I did this totally untagged. Just stole it off of the dash to avoid writing. So if you wanna do it, do it!!!

[foibles-fables]

hi idk if you're still doing director's commentary, but can you talk about the behind the scenes of your favorite yearning scene in The Weight of Us?

oh I can sure do that for you! There are [checks notes] a lot of them so far, so let me do a quick soul-search to decide which is my favorite moment. Hold please.

Okay we got it--and it's under the cut because it's a lil' long and uh, NSFW!

From the end of Chapter 12:

Kahlan’s cautious but hungry touches were making it so that Cara had to use her last shreds of self-control not to trap Kahlan’s thigh between hers and grind against it, relieving some of the overwhelming build-up. But that would be too far. That needed to come from Kahlan, first, if it ever would, as her hands inched up Cara’s back again, bringing her in for another searing kiss.

Cara’s mind began to wander through the compelling overload of contact. She wondered how Kahlan looked while she was coming, wondered if she had even ever let herself come before. It just made Cara need her more, if that was even possible. Knowing that Kahlan had never been filled, knowing that this Kahlan had no memory of that night with Richard. She wanted to be the first one Kahlan felt inside of her. Spirits, she wanted it so badly she could have shattered.

Kahlan’s hands had traveled to Cara’s ribs, just under her breasts. Before Cara could whisper for her to feel them, she dug her fingertips into the exertion-sore muscles at the blades of her shoulders, and Cara groaned out loud at the sensation. Kahlan moaned, too, loudly, reacting purely and instinctively to Cara’s pleasured sound. Cara needed to see the look in Kahlan’s eyes as she filled her, needed to hear her cry out as her orgasm crashed over her. Needed her quivering, wild, defenseless, bare-boned, at the mercy of her hands. She needed Kahlan’s heart and its capacity for everything Cara wasn’t. She needed that word she felt, never spoken but still thundering, she needed it back and magnified.

And it was another dose in a lifetime of torture, because she couldn’t.

Kahlan was not hers. The world was in flux. Nothing was known. Kahlan had the Midlands, Kahlan her duty, Kahlan had to conceive and bear a child, had to continue the line of Confessors. Cara could never be enough. But right now, Kahlan and her coiling body and begging hold were telling her that she was. So Cara just kissed her again, hoping against hope that Kahlan could feel her need and that word breaking through at least feebly, coming from her lips in one way instead of the other. And that it could be enough, that she could be enough, even just for whatever was happening in that bed. Kahlan’s hands grabbed at Cara’s hips and forced them closer, insistent, deliberate, pressing their bodies together where they both craved it, and Cara shuddered at the swell of pleasure pulsing from the perfect friction.

But it was all just another mixed signal. Cara felt it slipping away.

Kahlan was retreating, drawing her head back, creating too much distance for their mouths to meet again. Cara let out a crestfallen hiss and wanted to beg Kahlan to keep going, but she couldn’t. She opened her eyes to see Kahlan’s squeezed tight shut. Biting her lower lip so hard she could have drawn blood, she panted, obviously fighting fearfully to regain control of herself and her power. But her fingers were still digging into Cara’s hips with a vengeance, keeping her close, and Cara hoped they would bruise her. Hoped they would mark her.

“Cara,” Kahlan finally gasped, sounding like she hadn’t inhaled in a century.

“Kahlan.” Just a wretched, defeated, subdued muttering.

“I want to keep kissing you, and touching you.” While Kahlan’s eyes were wild, her voice was mostly controlled. But it was tinged with arousal and affection and anger and anguish and a thousand other things Cara couldn’t elucidate. “I want to kiss and touch you, more than this. But if I kiss you the way I want to kiss you-” and here she shuddered, hard, before reining herself in again, “-if I kiss you the way I want to kiss you, I know I’ll feel all of my good judgement slipping away.” There was a sharp crack at the end, one fraught with guilt and despair.

And Cara was reminded of the reality where nothing was simple, and nothing was easy.

This was one of those scenes that just kinda falls out of you, you know? Pretty sure I wrote it late-night on a family beach vacation, oops. But like, absolutely zero regrets. I was really, really happy with this one.

I knew that the Bad Thing that happens later, in Chapter 15 (I am still sorry), was going to be from Kahlan's POV. So I wanted to show something that edged at the limits of Cara's restraint here. Cara's all the fuck in at this point, folks. A Mord-Sith's got it bad. And here, she's finally starting to realize that, yeah, it's fuckin' affecting her. That this really is some shit that's gonna need to be sorted. But so much still lies in the way of it being sorted.

[foibles-fables]

if you're still up for some director's commentary I'd love some thoughts on I'll Carry You With Me (Just Please Hold On)

oooOOHh we are reaching back into the vaults for this one, and I absolutely adore it.

I'll Carry You With Me (Just Please Hold On) was kind of...the swan song for the previous iteration of my fandom self, I suppose? It was the last Big Thing I wrote before going on a very long hiatus--and to this day it's a ridiculously meaningful piece for me. Mostly because of the weird liminal situation I was in while it was being written: preparing to graduate from high school, experiencing my first CRAZY romantic feelings for another woman, getting ready to say goodbye to the first phase of my life, and just generally feeling like I was at some launching point to something totally unknown. Seeker really moored me throughout that time, and--god, it sounds cheesy--that fandom was instrumental in shaping me into the person I am today.

Does the fic hold up after eleven years, now? I'd like to think so. After all, it spawned a sequel that churned in my head until I finally started writing it last year (thanks to a horrible global pandemic, and Tab and B's instagram live). It's been fascinating to revisit it and see how my writing style has (and has not) changed in the decade between the two installments, during which I wrote nothing but research papers and tiny things for a one-off creative writing college course. I brushed it up minimally when I rescued it from Livejournal to post on AO3 in 2019, but most of what you're reading there is the raw product as presented by baby gay Foibles.

Specific passages I'd like to talk about? Lemme skim it...

Kahlan was starting to fidget in her sleep, legs twitching, hands grasping at the blanket. Tiny noises that might as well have set Cara's heart on fire came from her throat. Her eyes were still closed; her face was contorting in her dream and passing the wayward pine. Fear, happiness, sadness, anger – Cara couldn't tell. She also didn't care. She only knew she wanted to be closer to her.

She tossed a wary glance from side to side and then behind before she realized how idiotic the caution was. Who was going to see her?

So she lay behind Kahlan, drawing near to her, curling against her back. Her knees, bent, fit snugly into the space created by Kahlan's. Cara couldn't stand the way she noticed that the grooves of their bodies matched. Her face was buried in the Mother Confessor's silky hair, and her hand skirted down Kahlan's arm from her shoulder, always touching but never applying waking pressure, if only to prove to herself that she could be that gentle. Her fingers reached Kahlan's wrist, which she held in a loose grasp. Defenses lowered, she felt naked, but wasn't that how this was supposed to be done?

Kahlan responded to this new source of warmth with a contented sigh, dreaming through the contact. Simultaneous shame and jealousy slammed into her. She knew Kahlan wasn't feeling her arms in her dream. She felt empty, selfish, and she was too proud for this, but she also wanted to hold Kahlan too badly to move away. She felt her, breathed her, swore she could taste her.

If this was all she could ever have, she would take it.

But.

"Cara," Kahlan breathed, still existing in a world without any semblance of lucidity, speaking through her dream. Tenderness, gratitude, and affection seeped from the soft exhalation of the name, threatening to drown her. Too much, not enough, all at once.

After the initial wave of disbelief, Cara did not even bother trying to stop the smile from spreading across her face.

HAHAHA, oh okay yes, I wrote this part during my independent study AP Bio class and made myself cry

[foibles-fables]

📚💎 please

hiiiiiii :)

���favorite fandom to write for?

GOSH it's difficult to say. As someone who's not active in a ton of fandoms, I think I can cheat on this one and say: there are varied reasons why I could potentially name each as my favorite, so why make it a competition? If you're saying I play favorites, you're wrong. I love all my children equally. Seeker is an endless source of fulfillment and nostalgia and all-around contented vibes, and I'm a sucker for the classic(ish) fantasy setting/considerations that comes without the need to drown myself in lore (except when, like, I fixate and have to crack the books). Warrior Nun and Horizon are very different from Seeker, but similar to each other, in that there's upcoming content to look forward to...which automatically lends itself to creative works (and demand for creative works). With Warrior Nun, it feels like the whole damn fandom is assembled under one banner (spontaneous but infectious Avatrice meltdown hours on Twitter, anyone?) and the enthusiasm and breathtaking support for content is just as high as it was a year ago. Plus, speaking in technical terms, I love the modern-day setting and what that can mean for internal narration and dialogue. Finally, for Horizon, there's this gorgeous depth inherent in everything--worldbuilding, plot, "morals," characters both major and minor--and it feels almost impossible not to sink your teeth into. Also, I haven't been in a video game fandom since my FIRST fandom, like, fifteen years ago? And there's something so personal about actually being the one influencing and discovering via gameplay rather than engaging with a television show by watching. It's another whole level of intimacy and influence and meaning.

💎fave trope to write?

I'm wondering what an outsider's evaluation of this might look like! I think my favorite is hurt/comfort--mostly leaning towards emotional hurt/comfort, but with a side of (or as a result of) injury/illness hurt/comfort. What can I say, I see a character I like, I wanna make 'em vulnerable (but at the same time not break 'em too badly--I don't tend to or intend to truly whump). Beyond that, HUGE fan of scribbling friends to lovers and all of its associated sub-tropes. I also tend to gravitate towards characters who are touch-starved or could be reasonably conceived as touch-starved.

[foibles-fables]

🌹 please

How about some Weight, to prove I'm still alive?!

Only silent, avoidant awareness colored their few encounters--with Cara trying to ignore the way Kahlan was trying to ignore her.

[foibles-fables]

mhmm.... I'm gonna guess 'hand'

HOW ABOUT I--switch up the track a little?!

(you get multiple sentences because this one came in a fragment)

Only silent, avoidant awareness colored their few encounters, with Cara trying to ignore the way Kahlan was trying to ignore her. Gazes askance. Kahlan’s hands fumbling. Cara’s curling into shaking fists.