#i def had a lot more to say about regulus lmao

[florsial]

i must admit i am eating up the posts about the soldier and the violinist but i have to ask…how did this ship name come about? i assume regulus is the violinist and rabastan is the soldier, but i’m so curious as to why you chose these roles to ‘define’ them in terms of their relationship. is being a violinist so crucial to reg’s character that it actually plays a role in his relationship with rabastan, or is it simply so definitive of who he is in general? is it perhaps what sets him apart from rabastan, or is it what draws rabastan in? and vice versa, of course…i simply must know because they are starting to occupy my daily thoughts.

Embarrassingly, I've been waiting for a chance to talk about their ship name so when I saw this I had the biggest grin on my face lol.

I coined the ship name in the very beginning when I started shipping them and it's actually how I've built their characters throughout. And yes, Regulus is the violinist and Rabastan is the soldier :D

The basis of Regulus being the violinist is his role as a DE. He was more of a performer than a soldier. I don't think he played much of an active role in the war, being an heir (though I don't view it as that in my head) and having only been around for a year. But he still managed to get into this very selective group of wizards and witches who fought in Voldemort's name. So instead, I always imagined him being a really good performer, a violinist, specifically, who played so well that it caught Voldemort's attention, and paired with Regulus' family status and connection to Bellatrix, it didn't hurt to at least offer a position in the inner circle to Regulus.

(Important note: but this isn't meant to diminish Regulus' magical ability or skills. I think he is more of an "understanding in theory"/academic type of person I don't think of him as a person itching to fight. The knowledge part is also a bonus when he joins the DE. Compared to Sirius who understands better when he's able to act/experience and prefers to fight).

There is also an aspect of him that caters specifically to his family's ideals/duties/wishes all that jazz when he isn't even the slightest bit interested or he plays a specific role given to him by the high pureblood society which goes hand in hand with Regulus being a closeted transman whose feminine identity is twisted into something unsettling by pureblood society. But a lot of people already talk about something like that so I won't say much about it.

Then there is Rabastan who is a soldier. He fought for Voldemort. He was part of the inner circle, he bore the mark and all that. He fought in the books and he fought prior to the books. In contrast to Regulus, he got into the DE not because he was connected to Rodolphus nor because he was a part of the Lestranges but because he was a good fighter with or without a wand.

He fights for his brother and for his family's ideals because it's the only way he feels accepted. He is so different from his family that he has to utilize the few things that they have in common to feel like he a part of them: magic. I describe Rabastan as a "guard dog" for similar reasons why I call him "The Soldier": his ability to fight, notably for something else, sort of defines him in a way.

The ship name is their own respective identities so it doesn't really add to their relationship in any way, shape, or form. Unless you are willing to picture a scenario where they are both at a meeting and instead of paying attention to Voldemort, Rabastan is watching Regulus' fingers as he plays the violin or when Rabastan comes home from a mission and sees Regulus sitting in front of a clock where he had left the younger earlier that day before the mission, watching the hands tick and time pass without moving from his seat or when Regulus plays the violin for Rabastan who then teaches Regulus more spells for dueling that causes more damage than the ones he's read about in books because Rabastan creates them to do more damage.

[birlcholtz]

Fic Questions

tagged by @the-lincyclopedia thank you!! (fun game: watch my writing get progressively less formal as the post continues. by the end it’s like what is capitalization)

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

77!

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

434,378 as of this week but it does go up quite regularly

3. How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

Okay so in terms of what’s on my AO3, I have Check Please, All For the Game, Sharp Zero, HP, and Miraculous Ladybug. I also have The Forbidden LOTR and PJO Fanfiction (as in, I’ve written it, but it’s never seeing the light of day)

(technically there is a PJO fic out there that has seen the light of day but I orphaned it because I was tired of getting comments asking about when it would be updated)

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

and then i met you (and the whole world changed)

for the better

Knew It Was You

come home (to you, to us)

sin bin schematics

All of these are Check Please and all of them except Knew It Was You are part of my Zimbits Airport AU!

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I do! It’s actually a very recent thing that I’ve started not responding to literally every single comment. Mainly I respond because I love talking about my writing so I am going to seize that opportunity when it comes up

6. What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

Oh, DEFINITELY Happy Birthday (HP). Check out that MCD tag ahah. (I say HP but what I really mean is that I write fic about Regulus Black. The Regulus Black-centric tag is my home in the HP fandom)

fun fact: this is a very short fic that I wrote when I was 15 and basically forgot about until recently, and then I reread it recently and went holy shit?? I pulled NO punches????

7. Do you write crossovers? If so, what is the wildest one you’ve written?

Not a ton? I think a lot of the fandoms I write for don’t really mesh that well. That being said, the aforementioned orphaned PJO fic is actually a PJO/ML crossover, so there’s that

8. Have you ever received hate on a fic?

Nope! Sometimes I get comments that are just.... really confusing? And a more common thing is that in my AFTG fic I’ll get comments from people who are so focused on Andreil (or the most common ships in general) to the point that like. they miss the point of what I actually wrote. Those are annoying but they’re not hate, they’re very enthusiastic, they’re just... enthusiastic about a story I’m not writing? So it’s a bit frustrating.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

No sjflskgjhgf I struggle enough to write kissing, I think if I ever tried to write smut my brain would just shut down. I’ve managed some fade-to-blacks (which are mostly in WIPs that haven’t been posted) but they rely HEAVILY on the powers of implication

10. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of!

11. Have you ever had a fic translated?

No, although I have occasionally made a brief go of it, not to post, more as an exercise for myself in a language that I’m learning. Anyway I never finish them so I’m gonna say no

12. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Not really? I’ve definitely group brainstormed fics and then written them (the best example of this being Q&A (AFTG), which was the product of a truly off-the-walls group chat), but I tend to do all the actual writing myself. I think the way I write would drive a co-writer up the wall since it’s very disorganized and I don’t write stuff down because ~I know what’s gonna happen I don’t need notes~ and it would infuriate me if I was co-writing with me lmao, so I won’t inflict that on someone else

13. What’s your all-time favorite ship?

I regularly move through ships I’m SUPER focused on, like it’s kind of a rotation. I will forever and always ship Percabeth though.

14. What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

Okay so if you follow me at @birlwrites you may know this already, but i have this ‘warmups’ document that is just like, random ideas i get that i don’t necessarily want to finish but i just want to try out for a bit? and i have a rule that once a ‘warmup’ is more than 10 pages long (so 11+) then it has to be moved to its own document, just to make scrolling through the warmups doc easier. but usually, a warmup only passes 10 pages when i’m INTO it. so i have a bazillion wips i will probably never finish. i complain about this a lot. i have so many wips. i don’t need more.

here’s one: it’s titled ‘interrobang doesn’t know they’re dating’, it’s basically a full outline for a chowder/tango fic and it would be SO cool if i could ever like. get around to writing it. but i am constantly swamped with writing projects, so it’s probably not gonna happen. if anyone’s interested in adopting it though i’d be down for that!! i think it’s a fun idea i just almost def won’t write it myself

15. What are your writing strengths?

SNAPPY DIALOGUE AND SNARKY INTERNAL MONOLOGUE. my writing is COMEDIC, 90% of my ideas are based on a funny snippet that popped into my head, a lot of my worldbuilding is based on ‘hey you know what would be hilarious’ (whenever i explain how larai selects a chosen one in the rainfall universe i start laughing, which is a STARK contrast to how it plays out on the page), i love writing funny stuff!!

also i think my writing sounds nice, a lot of the time i pick words/syntax based on sound and flow so there’s that too. and i have lots of ideas! i don’t struggle much with writer’s block because a) i have a lot of strategies to deal with it and b) i have a lot of ideas to help get around it/work with it

16. What are your writing weaknesses?

PHYSICAL INTIMACY LMAO, sometimes in my end notes on shippy fics you can see me complaining ‘it took me literally 4 hours to write that very brief kiss’. also sometimes the humor in my writing gets in the way a bit, i have to very consciously put it away so characters can actually have serious, genuine emotions. also i don’t like outlining and i tend not to get betas for fanfiction so like..... i do my best continuity-wise but having really tightly plotted stories is just not my focus lol. (and i do put more effort into that for original stuff, it’s just fic where i kind of go wild)

17. What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

If the reader’s supposed to know what it means, then writing it in another language is iffy for me. (stuff like terms of endearment which come up a lot in fic are fine imo, you can just put a note in to translate them and your reader will prob remember)

If the pov character isn’t supposed to understand it, and it doesn’t matter if the reader understands it, then ig it’s fine? but unless you already speak the other language (and i am NOT confident in my ability to translate english into literally any other language), then i think it’s way easier to just note that a character’s speaking x language and provide tone indicators, body language cues, etc. so the reader understands as much as the pov character.

That being said there are def times when it’s used super effectively--the dialogue in spanish in cemetery boys comes to mind! that’s not fanfic but it’s still creative writing so w/e

so i guess it comes down to: does actually writing out the dialogue in the other language serve a purpose? if it doesn’t, then you’re filling up the screen with words your reader isn’t likely to understand, which i try to avoid doing

18. What was the first fandom you wrote for?

so the first fandom i actually *wrote* for was PJO, but i distinctly remember creating warrior cats OCs when i was little. i never actually did anything w them but i had them and my favorite was a riverclan warrior named shellstream i remember this VIVIDLY

19. What’s your favorite fic you’ve ever written?

oh boy. okay so this is hard because i feel like i’m continuously improving as a writer. like in the sense that my writing is getting closer and closer to really matching my own taste? my favorites tend to always be my current projects as a result. and i do really love set those ghosts alight (HP) but it feels a little like cheating to say a fic i haven’t even finished writing yet. even though it’s def not cheating, that’s just the direction my brain is taking it.

i’m gonna say and then what? (OMGCP) because i’m super proud of the prose (especially ch 2 aka the first actual prose chapter), survived by (HP) for SUCCESSFULLY WRITING AN EMOTION and making readers cry :), and Q&A (AFTG) because i’m literally the one who wrote it and yet it still makes me wheeze. those are all fics i reread occasionally, because i’m big enough to admit i enjoy rereading my old stuff! (just like. to a point. some of my old stuff i can’t look at anymore because all the mistakes stick out to me like they have spotlights shining directly on them)

this was fun!! i’m gonna do an open tag because i just started my fall semester and brain tired. i know sometimes people see open tags and assume the op didn’t really mean it but I MEAN IT, PLEASE DO THIS AND TAG ME!!!!! YES YOU READING THIS

[ahoeinplainsight]

james headcanons that are important to me

- has the WORST insomnia

- never sleeps at night but always sleeping during the day

- you will never catch this boy awake in history of magic

- used to chain smoke but when he started dating lily, he stopped because he knew she didn’t like the smell of it

- sirius stopped smoking as well because he didn’t want to tempt james into smoking again

- bisexual king

- until the day he died, he would’ve been completely fine marrying sirius and even in the afterlife

- literally has the BEST friendship with sirius it’s not even funny like everybody is so jealous

- mother hen :’) 

- since he never sleeps at night, he’s always awake at the crack of dawn and is always waking the boys up with him

- “if i don’t see feet on the ground in thirty seconds, i’m opening the curtains!’

- “don’t you make me count to three, mister!”

- “sirius get out of the bathroom, peter needs to pee and he can’t hold it anymore” “you didn’t have to tell him that james!” “we’re all men here, peter, grow up and learn how to tell people you need to pee”

- super smart 

- loves the library but refuses to admit that he does

- once quoted shakespeare at lily and later, she told him it was one of the reasons she fell in love with him

- actually has really good sportsmanship

- like of course he gets super butthurt when he loses anything but he makes sure to tell the other player or players that they did a good job 

- literally the nicest asshole you’ll ever meet

- like he’ll hit your books out of your hands and then help you pick them up

- resorts to physical violence because “it gets the job done faster moony don’t lecture me”

- has punched snape before but only because he called sirius privileged and james was not having it

- has a toad at home

- never told anybody about the toad (her name is cecilia and he loves her very much) so when sirius moved in and saw the toad vibing on his window sill, he flipped his shit

- cecilia pees on sirius every time he picks her up but it never stops him

- james is sure sirius loves cecilia more than he himself does

- when remus and peter find out about cecilia, they also flip their shit

- cecilia becomes the marauders mascot

- lily finds out halfway through seventh year that they have a mascot and it’s a toad named cecilia and teases them endlessly about it

- also has a cat at home

- his name is sandwich (james named him when he was four) and he’s best friends with cecilia

- the potter family owl is named odessa (james calls her dessy) and she hates james but james loves her

- he had a crush on regulus in his fifth year and never told a soul. remus knew but didn’t say anything

- his friendship with remus :’)

- it was his idea to become animagi (he read about it in a book) and it was also his idea for the map

- he did a lot of the charm work on the map

- there were a lot of ‘hypothetical’ questions for flitwick during this time period and flitwick was all too happy to answer them

- took ancient runes and arithmancy from third year to seventh and made an O in both

- took divination in third year with sirius, remus, and peter but he was the hermione in that group

- while remus, sirius, and peter were like ‘alright i can dig it’ with divination, james was getting SO heated about it 

- for the remainder of their school career, he made sure to tell them all the flaws in divination at any chance he could

- lily was super into divination, though, just because she thought it was really interesting and there were too many instances of it being real to be counted as coincidences, and james literally almost imploded when he found this out

- when they heard the prophecy for the first time, james literally stood up and left lmao

- “i’m not believing some bullshit prophecy that tells me my son has to die at the hands of voldemort, lily!” “what if it’s not bullshit” “are you fucking shitting me right now lily”

- only agreed to go into hiding for lily 

- also took care of magical creatures from third to seventh year and also made an O in that

- when they learned about unicorns, the unicorn looked at all the girls in the class and then trotted past and stood in front of james

- james never stopped gloating about this ever

- “sorry what was that? i couldn’t hear you over the sound of being trusted by a unicorn” “a unicorn trusted me minnie why would i ever break the rules like that”

- didn’t actually mind slytherins

- was almost one himself and def wouldn’t have made a huge deal about it because euphemia was a slytherin when she went to hogwarts and he knew they weren’t all bad

- the only reason he never styled his hair was because his dad invented sleekeazy’s. that’s it, that’s the only reason. he did it to spite his dad.

- momma’s boy !!!

- until the day euphemia died, james was not embarrassed to hold her hand as they crossed the street and tell her he loved her

- could not fathom a world without his mother so when she died, he shut down for a good month and a half

- used to actually be afraid to curse

- said his first swear word in fifth year and never looked back

- “what the fiddlesticks” “for the love of all that is holy, just say fuck”

- “f-f-” “yes, you can do it” “i’m nervous”

- fleamont found out that he smoked when he was in his sixth year and he ripped him an entirely new asshole before pulling out his own cigarette and lighting it

- cannot hold his alcohol

- was drunk by the third butterbeer

- was destined to be the chill dad because his dad wasn’t

- yes you heard that right. euphemia was the chill parent. fucking deal with it.

- was an amazing liar purely because of fleamont

- like this boy could lie straight out of his ass the second he learned how to talk

- “james fleamont potter did you break this vase” “didn’t I tell you, dad? the manor’s got a poltergeist!” “we do?!”

- the manor did have a poltergeist but he didn’t know that at the time

- humble rich kid

- his house is huge but so is his heart

- sirius found out his middle name was fleamont when he moved in because fleamont yelled his full name SO often

- james hates that sirius knows his middle name

- sirius loves that he knows james’ middle name

- sirius and sandwich the cat have a silent feud going on that james fuels by privately telling both of them that they’re his favorite

- his actual favorite is cecilia

this got super long but still, feel free to add your own weird james headcanons!