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lostinthewinterwood · 4 years ago

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AU Exchange 2020

Hey friend!

Looks like this letter’ll be going out on time, for once in my life. ��This one’s very long; there’ll be a list of fandoms after the general info so you can hop around and not get bogged down in the details that don’t matter for what you’re going to be writing.

Treats in any medium are welcome, my other exchange letters are here, and at the bottom there’ll be tags for each fandom I’ve requested, if you want to see whether I’ve requested them before and what I’ve said about them. Good luck, have fun, and thanks for writing for me!

General DNW non/dub-con; non-canonical major character death; heavy angst; hurt no comfort; graphic depictions of deliberate and methodical self-harm*; graphic depictions of suicide; smut; gore; grimdark; complete downer endings; character bashing; incest; cringe comedy; a/b/o; mpreg; graphic eye trauma; graphic and/or permanent hand trauma; issuefic; unrequested identity headcanons; a focus on unrequested romantic relationships**. *I don’t include things like, say, punching a wall in a fit of emotion under this. however, something like cutting would not be appreciated. **canonical levels of canonical ships are perfectly fine; background non-canon ships that I haven’t dnw’d are okay too (unless otherwise specified—see below for fandom-specific notes).

General Likes

– I really like plotty fics

– Secret identity and disguise shenanigans, the more layers to them and more absurdity the better.

– Crossdressing for whatever reason and gender disguises, also for whatever reason.

– A focus on family and/or friendship, especially characters realizing they’re not nearly as alone as they think they are, and just generally characters who like each other and enjoy spending time together

– Found family; families of choice

– Character studies

– Worldbuilding

- explorations of how whatever AU you pick to write affects the characters and/or plot, and the ways in which it doesn’t

Other General Notes:

If there’s an AU I’d especially like to see on its own, without any other AU in combination with it, I’ll mention it—outside of that, feel free to combine the AUs as you see fit.

All the times that the Dragon Rider au is one I asked for, I’ve framed it in my prompts as a sports story thing—while that would definitely be great, don’t feel pressured to make it be like that; it’s just where my prompting muse is at right now, so if you want to take it in another direction go right ahead.

Fandoms in Order of Appearance:

Hanging Out with a Gamer Girl

Harry Potter

Mother of Learning (x2)

Day Break Illusion (x2)

Hanging Out with a Gamer Girl (Manga)

· Fanfiction (Medium)

· Terazaki Kaoru (HOwaGG)

· Ousaka Nanami (HOwaGG)

· Group: Terazaki Kaoru & Ousaka Shouko (HOwaGG)

· Group: Terazaki Kaoru & Ousaka Nanami (HOwaGG)

Fandom-specific dnw: sexualization of Kaoru’s crossdressing, romance between Kaoru and Nanami beyond light shiptease à la canon (unless the AU chosen is a romantic fairytale, in which case go right ahead), full justification of Kaoru’s fears re: Nanami’s dad, heavy gender dysphoria.

Overall I love these kids and their friendship, and I also love how much Shouko feels like a mom to Kaoru even though he isn’t hers, even though he’s keeping secrets from her—he doesn’t seem to have that much parental support overall.

Whatever AU you pick, I’d appreciate that being preserved.

· ALL: Character was Stolen by Fairies as a Baby

· All: East of the Sun and West of the Moon Fusion

· All: Fairytale Fusion

· ALL: Fantasy/Magic Royalty and Palace Intrigue AU

· ALL: Magic is a part of everyday life

· ALL: Magical Girl Fusion

· ALL: Magical Realism

· ALL: Regency-Inspired Fantasy AU

For this set of tags, I’d love to see something that fuses the AU elements to canon, or replaces canon elements with them—maybe instead of gamers, the kids are magical girls! Or maybe there’s just magical elements wound seamlessly into their lives, or they instead live in a fairytale world, or…

Basically, this is my more generic magic!au set.

· ALL: Characters met as children

· ALL: Deaf Canon Characters

· ALL: Disabled Canon Characters

· ALL: Mute Canon Characters

· HOwaGG: trans girl Terazaki Kaoru

These are the generally mundane AUs—if one or both of the kids is disabled in some way, how does that affect them? If they’ve known each other longer than they have in canon, or used to know each other—how does that affect them? If Kaoru is a trans girl, is that something that she knows before their canon meeting, and maybe that’s a point at which she’s already begun transitioning? Or does the crossdressing give her a revelation?

· ALL: Daemon AU

· ALL: Daemons in Canon Divergent AU

I like daemon!aus a lot, though I’m not very good at writing them myself—if this world has daemons, what are the kids’? Are they fully settled yet, or not quite? Most people have daemons opposite to their sex—is it obvious that Kaoru’s daemon is female, and if so, does that pique Shouko’s interest? Does his daemon get him recognized by people who know Kaoru-the-boy even when he’s out looking like a girl?

· ALL: Dragon Rider AU

· All: Figure skating AU

Sports aus! One mundane, one distinctly less so… what’s it like, if they’re dragon riders? Is it a whole other world, or just our world +dragons? If it’s figure skating, what kind of skating do they do? Singles? Pairs? Ice dance? Are they just casual about it or competitive?

· ALL: Platonic Soulmate AU

· ALL: Soulmates - Soulmate Mark Appears At First Touch

· ALL: Soulmates Share Scars

These are probably my three favorite kinds of soulmate AUs—run with them! Tell me about the kids and their dynamic and the world they inhabit, with soulmates thrown into the mix!

Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling

· Fanfiction (Medium)

· Percy Weasley (HP - JKR)

Fandom-specific dnw: non-canon ships.

I’ve phrased this so broadly because it’s generally better safe than sorry on these things—essentially what I especially don’t want is non-canon ships between people on opposite sides of the war, e.g. drarry, harry/Voldemort, etc. If you want to toss in background, idk, Pansy/Daphne or something, or relationships between various Ministry people, that I don’t mind.

· ALL: Underground Resistance

· HP: Percy Weasley is a spy for the Order of the Phoenix during the war

· ALL: Character Is a Secretly a Spy for the Other Side

There’s really one thing I want here—spy!Percy! He spends so much of the war in the Ministry, surrounded by Death Eaters and their accomplices and enablers, to all appearances the black sheep of the Weasley family and not much of a threat. Now, this could be genuine… but it could also be him playing them; I want to see a world where he, at some point—maybe after he chooses to stay with the ministry instead of his family, maybe before—decides to be a spy for the Order et al.

What are the risks? What can he accomplish? Can he help people beyond simply passing out information, perhaps with seemingly-inconsequential little acts?

Mother of Learning - nobody103

· Fanfiction (Medium)

· Kirielle Kazinski (Mother of Learning)

request-specific dnw: physical parental abuse within the Kazinski family, significant exaggeration of canonical emotional neglect/abuse/general family dysfunction, romantic and/or sexual Zach/Zorian.

· All: Character has a secret identity

· All: Identity Porn

· ALL: Possessed by time travelling future self

· MoL: Kirielle as a Branded One

I’m fascinated by the idea of Kirielle somehow getting wrapped up in the time loop—what’s it like to live years and years of your life while your body stays nine? What does she do, what does she learn? Are Zach and Zorian still Branded Ones, or is she taking one or both of their places?

If you go with this, I’d rather not have her gate!soul erased—either let her escape, or don’t go far enough to need to address it, please.

The identity bits here are mostly leaning on the idea that, with her only being nine, Kiri would need some kind of identity obfuscation to do half of what Zach and Zorian do in canon, so…

· ALL: Daemon AU

· ALL: Daemons in Canon Divergent AU

Nothing particularly profound here—but! Daemons! How does this affect things? Is Kiri happier with someone to talk to who isn’t her siblings or parents or village children that her parents mightn’t approve of? I’d imagine her daemon hasn’t settled yet—what forms does it like?

· All: Changeling AU

· ALL: Fairy Tale AU

· All: Fairytale Fusion

· All: Historical Fantasy AU

· ALL: Magical Realism

· ALL: Nature Magic

The setting and/or mood change AUs—give me Kirielle-the-faerie child, or Kiri in a fairytale, or shift the setting more historical and into our world, or change the nature of the magic—the canonical magic system is fairly hard as magic systems go, which works well for the story as it is, but I also really like softer magics. What about a world where there’s simply small everyday magics present, or where Kiri has an affinity for green growing things quite beyond the natural?

· ALL: Deaf Canon Characters

How does Kiri’s life change, if she’s born deaf or becomes deaf? How does her role as Cikan Kazinski’s only daughter change? Does Eldemar have a Deaf community?

This could play into her desire to go to Cyoria, too—I wouldn’t expect Cirin to have much in the way of resources or community, but maybe Cyoria does; maybe that’s why she wants so badly to go.

· ALL: Finding Peace/An End to the War

· ALL: Legal Drama

· ALL: Magical environment/species conservation scientist au

· ALL: Magical horticulturists

This set is more likely future!fic than anything else—Kirielle’s growing up into a country on the brink of war; what’s she going to do when she gets older? Maybe she’ll be involved in that, or with the law—or maybe she goes to school and learns to be a mage, and then goes on to a career as a conservationist or horticulturist.

Mother of Learning - nobody103

· Fanfiction (Medium)

· Zorian Kazinski (Mother of Learning)

· Zach Noveda (Mother of Learning)

request-specific dnw: physical parental abuse within the Kazinski family, significant exaggeration of canonical emotional neglect/abuse/general family dysfunction, romantic and/or sexual Zach/Zorian (unless in a romantic fairytale au).

· All: Changeling AU

· All: Fairytale Fusion

· ALL: Fantasy/Magic Royalty and Palace Intrigue AU

· ALL: High Fantasy AU

· All: Historical Fantasy AU

· ALL: Magical Realism

· ALL: Nature Magic

Again, setting and/or mood changes—turn one or both of these two into a changeling child, or push them into a different setting, or change their world to feel a little more magical than it does in canon.

· All: Character has a secret identity

· ALL: Deaf Canon Characters

· ALL: Legal Drama

· ALL: Magical environment/species conservation scientist au

· ALL: Magical horticulturists

· ALL: Role Swap AU

This set is a combination of probably-post-canon things and things that could slide into the canon timeline—what if one or both of them went to more effort to construct a second identity, either in the loop or out of it, for anyone’s benefit? What if one or both of them was deaf—if you go here, it’d be interesting if you combined it with deaf!Kirielle too. A role swap—what if Zorian got there earlier and the angels didn’t think him unworthy, and Zach wound up his tagalong instead?

And the other three are basically what-ifs for the post-canon world—there’s Zach’s court case to be dealt with, and these two are both skilled enough to do basically whatever they want to, if it’s to do with magic. Why not become a conservationist or horticulturist?

· ALL: Daemons in Canon Divergent AU

· All: Figure skating AU

· ALL: Regency AU

· All: Robin Hood Fusion

· ALL: Spies & Secret Agents

· ALL: University AU

This is a whole grab bag of different AUs—they’re all fairly self-explanatory I think, though I will say that you shouldn’t feel pressured to keep the overtly mundane-seeming AUs mundane, if you don’t want too—I’d like the mundane versions of course! But there’s plenty of interesting things you could explore with, e.g., magic!figure skating, so. Go wild.

· All: Tam Lin Fusion

In a weird way, MoL already has its characters in the roles they need to be in for a Tam Lin fusion, though the structure is of course very different–what is Zach if not a sacrifice against Panaxeth’s release? What is Zorian if not the one who fights nigh-impossible odds to save him from that fate? I’d love to see a fic that goes into this.

幻影ヲ駆ケル太陽 il sole penetra le illusioni | Day Break Illusion

· Fanfiction (Medium)

· Tsukuyomi Luna (Day Break Illusion)

· Taiyou Akari (Day Break Illusion)

· Shirokane Ginka (Day Break Illusion)

· Hoshikawa Seira (Day Break Illusion)

· Group: Tsukuyomi Luna & Tsukuyomi Serena (Day Break Illusion)

· Group: Hoshikawa Seira & Shirokane Ginka & Taiyou Akari & Tsukuyomi Luna

fandom-specific dnw: heavy gender dysphoria.

· All: a character is transgender (binary)

· ALL: Alternate First Meetings

· All: Character has a secret identity

· ALL: Deaf Canon Characters

· ALL: Disabled Canon Characters

· ALL: Street Rats

This is basically the AUs of mundane level things; the broad strokes of canon are perfectly compliant with any of these, or at least they could be. What changes, if you go for any of the AUs listed above? What stays the same?

· All: Changeling AU

· ALL: Character was Stolen by Fairies as a Baby

· ALL: Daemon AU

· All: Fairytale Fusion

· ALL: Fantasy/Magic Royalty and Palace Intrigue AU

· ALL: Magical Realism

· ALL: Regency-Inspired Fantasy AU

· All: with the right postage you can send letters anywhere anywhen

Different flavors of fantasy—for the changelings, is the character we know from canon the stolen child, or their faerie replacement? Are their daemons affected by them fighting the daemonia; what happens to a daemon when the human is consumed by a daemonia? How do their powers and battles work in a world that’s more overtly magical? For the last—who/where/when would they send letters to? Would Akari send one back in time to Fuyuna, Luna to her sister, Seira to her friend? Forward to their future selves? How does this affect the timeline; do you have to be careful, lest you irrevocably change things, or are future-letters already set and immutable? Is this common or rare—what’s the price to send a letter through time?

· ALL: Character Journeys To The Underworld to Rescue Their Dead Friend

· All: Journey to the Underworld to Resurrect Loved One

Who are they rescuing? How are they going about the rescue? Are they bringing back Fuyuna? Seira’s friend? Luna’s sister, if it turns out she’s dead not just vanished some other way? Ginka herself, if we suppose that she died in the annihilation rather than going to battle elsewhere?

If a Daemonia’s victim is resurrected, does everyone remember them again? Either way, what are the consequences of bringing back a person who’d been erased?

· ALL: Dragon Rider AU

· ALL: Fencing AU

· All: Figure skating AU

Sports aus! Two mundane, one not. I’d love to see the kids in some kind of competitive something—are they teammates? Competitors? Is Sefiro Fiore a sports organization in this world, or are they both athletes and tarot users?

· DBI: Daemonia hosts aren't erased from the timeline when killed

So, one of the generally convenient things in this world—even if it’s not a particularly nice thing—is that none of the characters ever have to deal with the fallout of the deaths they cause; the daemonia’s victims are erased. Ret-gone, if you will. But what if they weren’t? What would the effect of that be; how would that change things?

幻影ヲ駆ケル太陽 il sole penetra le illusioni | Day Break Illusion

· Fanfiction (Medium)

· Group: Hanayume & Lymro & Mama Nagataki & Taiyou Akari (Day Break Illusion)

· Group: Hanayume & Lymro & Mama Nagataki (Day Break Illusion)

fandom-specific dnw: heavy gender dysphoria.

· All: a character is transgender (binary)

· ALL: Deaf Canon Characters

· ALL: Disabled Canon Characters

· ALL: Found Family

So, again, this is the more mundane aus—add these in!! tell me how they affect things, or how they don’t affect them!

Found family is… kinda canon? But there isn’t really much focus on that aspect in canon so I’d love some more here.

· All: Changeling AU

· ALL: Character was Stolen by Fairies as a Baby

· All: Fairytale Fusion

· ALL: Fantasy/Magic Royalty and Palace Intrigue AU

· All: Historical Fantasy AU

· ALL: Magic is a part of everyday life

· ALL: Magical Realism

· ALL: Regency AU (no homophobia)

· ALL: Regency-Inspired Fantasy AU

· All: with the right postage you can send letters anywhere anywhen

And these are the magic and/or setting AUs! How do these elements change their lives; what stays the same regardless?

See my previous set of Day Break Illusion requests for my thoughts on the letters tag.

· ALL: Daemon AU

· ALL: Daemons in Canon Divergent AU

Just—daemons! What are theirs? For Hanayume—what gender is her daemon? I’m sorry I’m running out of things to say at this point…

· ALL: Dragon Rider AU

· ALL: Fencing AU

· All: Figure skating AU

So, in canon, Hanayume, Lymro, and Mama Nagataki are kind of Akari’s fortune-teller aunts/mentors; if we change it so that Akari’s thing is fencing or figure skating or dragon-riding, why not bring her aunts along for the ride as her mentors in that sport, or, if we’re not including Akari—competitors themselves, perhaps, or maybe generally teachers?

If you made it all the way down here—first of all, wow, this letter was way too long so good on you for making it—second of all—thank you again for writing for me!! Good luck!!

#exchange letters #auex #au exchange #requested: harry potter #requested: hanging out with a gamer girl #requested: mother of learning #requested: day break illusion

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words-writ-in-starlight · 6 years ago

Note

Oh you read Indexing? I adore it, so so many good things, fun characters and original thoughts and so many perspectives on tales and cool powers, but my favourite is nature of Snow Whites, a sacrifice to retrieve Sun, and whiteout wood.

@thornhands asked:

Starlight, please elucidate to tumblr(me) your feeling about Indexing. (It rocks, I love it, I want a paper copy SO BADLY)

@figmentera asked:

ok i've only read the first one and my feelings about it are mostly actually about the self-indulgent AU revolving around my own OCs but: Hell yeah Indexing! A Very Solid concept! I am here to talk about it!

MMMM OKAY

First and foremost, let’s talk about how unbelievably CHOICE Indexing is as an AU setting. Daemon AUs are so 2016, in 2019 we’re all about placing characters on the ATI spectrum. Ask Me About Indexing AUs. I Have Many. (I have one that I came up with for Vox Machina of Critical Role and I have confirmed that this is the best of AU settings.)

Anyway, you wanted some Indexing feelings, and true to form these are not OVERWHELMINGLY coherent but damn I sure do feel them.

WE ARE ABOUT TO DO SPOILERS BECAUSE I AM VERY HYPE ABOUT THESE BOOKS

First of all, I love Henry so very overwhelmingly much. @seananmcguire always writes heroines who hit me right where I live and Henry, fierce angry Henry who has fought her entire life not to be what she is and then embraces it with open arms to save everyone she loves, is no exception. The grim hard gladness she feels when the whiteout wood calls Gerry her brother in the second book is everything to me--Henry’s not grateful to the wood, because that would imply that she needs to be grateful for such a basic requirement, but she’s glad, even though Gerry being her brother is what trapped her alone in this story. And that dichotomy. The dichotomy of “I am bitterly angry, sometimes, to be alone in this story, but I would never, ever change it,” the dichotomy of “Sloane tried to poison me today and I will hug her until we both believe she’s going to be all right”, the dichotomy of “I’ve embraced my inner Snow White and now I am going to use it to sing every animal in a mile radius into this house to die horribly for me and my friends,” that’s my SHIT. Henry is seven layers of Stubborn And Angry around a core of pure steel love for her people, and holy shit is it my favorite kind of character.

Second of all, I wouldn’t be surprised if I read Indexing now, but Indexing was the first Seanan book I ever read, and the frank and direct way that Gerry’s story is handled just. It’s so good, guys, it’s so good. It shocked and delighted me so much. It’s THE question I always think of when people do fairy tale mashups--what if the story says you’re one gender, and you’re another. Because, sure, maybe some roles don’t care about gender, but The Kind Sister And The Wicked Sister? Hansel And Gretel? Diamonds And Toads? Snow White And Rose Red? Those are gender locked! It matters that the people involved are sisters, or brother and sister, or whatever, and I always get wary when authors try to do trans people in that situation. And Gerry is just...I love it. He’s Henry’s brother, and therefore he cannot be her Rose Red, and even when she’s alone and scared in her own story, she fights tooth and nail to keep him from being drawn back into it, because goddamnit he deserves to be her brother.

Third of all, Sloane. Oh, Sloane, how I love thee. The Wicked Stepsister who wasn’t, the Wicked Stepsister who won’t, the Wicked Stepsister who ran her story into the ground and kept running for centuries and never, ever took the easy way out. She’s rude and snappish and probably shops at Hot Topic and she named her bird Lovecraft. I love how angry she is. I love how justified she is in her anger. I love that, if she twists hard enough on the narrative, she can wear the scraps of someone else’s story, like a stolen and tattered ballgown, or a bloodstained slipper. I love that she spends a week knocking poisoned coffee out of Henry’s hands and cries on Henry’s shoulder out of fear of her story and lets Henry drag her to a therapist, and I love the exchange she and Henry have every time she brings Henry an apple. Some variant on “Did you poison this?”//”Does it matter?” It’s so good.

Fourth of all, Demi and Andy and Jeff, Henry’s family, I love them. Her adopted baby sister and her big cheerful lug of a brother and her shoemaker-who-isn’t-a-prince. God. Fuck me up with that found family shit, Seanan, fuck me ALL the way up. I love that Jeff loves Henry, I love that Henry loves him, I love that we get to see their love go from “I like him, I think” to “oh no I think I love him” to “I am going to do this dumb shit because if I can’t wake up Jeff can just give me true love’s kiss and we’ll be golden.” I have talked before about how Seanan’s two crowning strengths, in my humble opinion, are her masterful grasp of how to write a romance that feels real and tender and joyful, and her liberal stance on how much found family is “enough.” (More. The answer is always More. Seanan is one of like eight authors I can think of who really sate my endless hunger for found family. They have fucking family breakfast with everyone plus Gerry, I’m melting. You melted me, Seanan.)

Finally, can we just pour one the FUCK out for one of very few authentically Good twisted fairy tale stories? “Twisted modern fairy tale” does not mean grimdark and honestly I’m just so spiritually exhausted by everyone who believes it does. THIS is what I’m fucking looking for. I’m looking for “skin white as snow is pretty upsetting, actually” and “being a shoemaker’s elf makes me weirdly good at paperwork but also incredibly insomniac” and “I get my paycheck first so I don’t go full Hamelin and pipe this whole office into the nearest river.” I want to talk about how Pied Pipers are all about temptation and that makes them susceptible to stories about temptation and they get in over their heads fast because of it! I want to talk about how being a Wicked Stepsister comes fully equipped with an encyclopedic knowledge of poisons! I want to talk about how Disney fucked with the narrative, and how bluebirds beat themselves to death on windows trying to wake up princesses, and how to rules-lawyer the narrative into doing what it wants you to! Fuck!

....writing this list of what I’m into, in Good And Well Executed Twisted Modern Fairy Tales, has suddenly clarified for me why I keep watching like one and a half seasons of Once Upon A Time and then going and rereading Indexing.

INDEXING IS A GREAT BOOK AND I WILL YELL UNTIL EVERYONE AGREES WITH ME. MS SEANAN MCGUIRE IF YOU’RE READING THIS YOU DID SUCH GOOD WORK ON THIS.

#indexing #indexing series #seanan mcguire #henry marchen #sloane winters #GOD IT'S #SO GOOD GUYS #if you don't know what i'm talking about just #shhhhhhhhhh #trust me #does this post smell like chloroform to you? no? me neither #that's why you should trust me and get indexing and read it immediately #with no other context #book rec #oh boy i'm sorry i'm pretty overtired right now but like #i NEEDED to get this off my chest #ask me about indexing aus for everyone and everything pleeeeeease and thank you #i just love these books so much #it took me literally over a year but i have badgered one of my partners into reading indexing #she's enthralled and wants to read 'more of this author you said she wrote more stuff? what of her stuff is good'#ALL OF IT NICOLE!!!! ALL OF IT IS GOOD!!!!!#LET ME FORCE A TEN BOOK FAERIE SERIES ON YOU NICOLE!!!!!!#queue deeper than the sea of stars #irleughlivelyatalanteangodfan #asked and answered

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shinneth · 5 years ago

Note

6, 1, 7, 5 and 10 for the fic writer meme!

OKAY. Finally got free from the distractions. Let’s see how well I can answer these.

6. Share one of your weaknesses

Oh, I have a good amount of those. I would say my tl;dr curse (I don’t think I’ve EVER written a fic below four-figures, and very rarely does it end up 5k or lower), but I know there’s many out there who’d tell me that’s definitely a strength and that they’d love to be able to churn out six-figure epics in their sleep like I do. So let’s go with a more objective weakness.

I have the redundancy curse. I have this really, really really really really really really really bad habit of somehow reiterating a statement twice within the same sentence. Or at the very least, my verbiage will get repeated more times than it should within the same sentence (enough to the point where the sentence sounds very awkward when you read it out loud). This almost always happens because I’ll establish something at the beginning of my sentence, somehow forget about it midway through, and think I need to add it to the end.

I can’t tell you how many times I fall into that trap. Only through rereading my progress to get back into the groove to continue a chapter is when I’ll really have an opportunity to catch these slip-ups. Since I’ve never used betas and I’m pretty much fine finishing everything in one draft and all that. It’s astounding how many of these errors I’ll catch, really. And despite that, a few will always end up slipping through in the final product anyway!

It’s a very annoying quirk that I’d love to fix, but again, it almost always happens right under my nose. No matter how conscious I try to be about this sort of thing, it’ll pop up when I least expect it. So really, all I can do is just try and catch as many as I can after I’ve written my stuff down, but before I finalize my piece.

1. Describe your comfort zone—a typical you-fic.

I think the name of the game here is Adaptation Expansion. I focus on a character (or a small group of characters) that I feel

A) Didn’t get as much canon development as they deserved

B) Might have gotten a decently good amount of focus, but I’m seeing many unsolved mysteries/curiosities around said character(s) and many possible routes to explore any headcanons that are raging inside of me.

Or the headcanon itself is just really nagging at me, so I make a whole story dedicated to it.

In your typical Shin fic, the more Shin likes you, the more you should be afraid. Outside of having a wildly creative sadistic streak, my best ideas are usually best suited to my favorite characters, and I happen to be very big on the Earn Your Happy Ending trope. Certain series I feel kind of gave their characters a good conclusion a little too easily, and so I’ve made it my life’s mission to erase any doubt in my readers’ minds about whether or not the characters truly paid their dues to get their reward at the end.

So of course, you add that with the sadism, and that means you’re very likely to get a fic that at least somewhat leans on the dramatic end. I think the vast majority of my Fanfiction.net stories are listed under “Drama”, now that I think about it. But really, drama’s what you go with when you wanna raise the stakes to crazy-high levels. It won’t be melodramatic 100% of the time, nor will it be grimdark or consummately edgy; I do make a point to add some witty humor and even fluff if it’s appropriate. But Shin fics are all about letting you see the kind of hell certain characters could be going through in canon and thankfully aren’t - yet you’re also seeing those same characters achieve a level of greatness canon would have never permitted because they put their all into reaching their goal.

That’s about the gist of it: trying to outdo canon at its own game, giving justice I feel my favorites are due, but only after I put them through the seven circles of hell.

7. Share a snippet from one of your favorite pieces of prose you’ve written and explain why you’re proud of it.

Hm, okay. When it comes to pride, I’m typically very reserved in that regard. However, I was very proud of how This is Who I Am Chapter 5 turned out. I had an idea well before writing it about how I wanted to do a twist on the Mirror Match trope with Steven and Peridot - basically, forcing their light sides to fight off the dark sides of each other, rather than themselves. The more accurate terminology for what I actually pulled off was an inversion of Opponent Switch.

I was very happy how I managed to execute this plot, since so much of it was rigged in the dark sides’ favor and almost insured that only Steven or Peridot would come out of this alive; not both. When it came to Light Steven meeting Dark Peridot, I finally had the opportunity to properly write for Pre-Series Peridot, who I established earlier was a bit of an opportunistic sociopath. I was eager for the chance to make my version of Socio-Peri a legit unsettling psychopath and boy did I revel in it. So, without further ado:

Steven desperately tried to find any trace of hope remaining in this situation. "E-Even if you and him are just the worst things about us made into people, like you said, you are still part of Peridot, 5XG! You're linked, me and the other Steven are linked… and you two shouldn't want to shatter your loved ones, either!"

5XG found herself legitimately enjoying this; savoring Steven's agony and dwindling optimism. It had been far too long since she was able to relish in the pain of another; especially when it resulted in her getting rewarded for it.

"If you're attempting to argue that we don't have a single iota of contempt for one another, I suggest you spare us any more of your unacceptable stupidity by jumping off this platform and descend into the abyss where you belong," she said in a sharp tone. "You'll recall I absolutely despised you for quite some time before my weaker self got the better of me. Past-tense or not, it is a fact you cannot deny. Therefore, it is part of me. Consider it as valid as the fact that, regardless of tense and however I changed over time, I am and always will be a murderer."

"NO!"

Steven was completely shaken up, now driven to tears and cowering away from the Peridot who was his adversary long before becoming his soulmate.

"Please, don't!" he urged. "I've forgiven her already! I-I never hated her for–"

"You hate murderers," 5XG stated in a calm, neutral, but very firm tone that was sharp enough to cut Steven off. "Anyone who takes the life of another, you hate on principle. The cause or circumstance is of no concern to you and never has been."

Steven swore his blood ran freezing cold for a moment after taking in those words. He was stunned to the point of being unable to rebuke any of this.

"The Bismuth told me how events played out when you first met her," 5XG added, readily rubbing salt into the wound. "After knowing by this point how the Diamond Authority were responsible for committing multiple acts of global genocide, how this very planet was on that list, and were prone to shattering members of their own court on a misdemeanor or even on a whim. You were aware of all of this."

Steven squinted his eyes, trying his best to shut away any more tears. He tried to turn away from 5XG; his entire body was shivering while his hands balled up into fists. "P-Please, stop…"

"Yet you admonished the Bismuth for daring to create weapons made for wiping out an enemy with lethal force; legitimate ways to justifiably defend yourself against an enemy you know would not hesitate to take your life if they had an opening. You stood there, and you actually labeled her as one who is completely indistinguishable from White, Blue, or Yellow Diamond," 5XG continued; of course she wouldn't honor his request. "A loyal ally of your maternal unit whose focus was always on doing her best to defend her friends and loved ones, who only fought when forced to by the Homeworld gems… to her face, you belittled her convictions and you said there was no difference between her and the maniacal, genocidal dictators that you yourself were defending against along with your loved ones – just as the Bismuth herself. I honestly don't blame her for trying to kill you that day. You should have died."

5. Share one of your strengths.

Phew... this one’s a little awkward for me. I know one thing I’m objectively good at is writing insanely long shit that is at least good enough to compel people to lose sleep or pull all-nighters as they strive to finish it. I can at least safely say that because nearly every goddamn reviewer I’ve ever had has gone out of their way to mention this. Even if they don’t review, if I ever have a chance to talk to them personally, they’re normally gonna let me know they sacrificed many hours of sleep because of me :P

But really, I’m consistently praised for expanding on characters or concepts that canon either could have touched on more or barely touched at all. Some people have gained newfound appreciation for characters they didn’t care about or even hated because of my portrayals, and that’s pretty damn empowering to hear. I’ll often get remarks along the lines of me taking a character and “really making them my own” - in a positive way. Sometimes I have plot twists that are complete and utter batshit on paper, but then I’ll get commended for making it completely believable to the point where readers tell me they wish it was actually canon.

So, that’s enough of a strength, I would say. I can reach really far and still make an AU story sound like it could have easily fit in canon even if my ideas are ones the staff won’t touch with a 10-mile pole.

10. Which fic has been the easiest to write?

rsilgjdgkljdgsjgahhahhhh, that’s not as easy a question as you might think! Every story has given me a hurdle or two.

I think by default, I’m gonna say it’s Peri-dise: The Capitalist Anarchy. Because while I put my own spin on it and added a lot of things to make a proper story out of it, Peridot’s little Citystate session was almost exactly to the letter like a certain one by GrayStillPlays. So a lot of the heavy lifting was already done for me in that regard. Still made sure to add plenty to it just to ensure it wasn’t SOLELY just a retelling of that video with some name changes.

And that takes care of my first big ask! Hopefully those were satisfactory answers. I’ll... TRY and get to another before I pass out. Really wasn’t fair of CN to drop this leak on the same day I’d have to contend with 3 hours of Monday Night RAW...

#answered asks #nobynaga #meme #fanfiction #writing

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ladyfl4me · 6 years ago

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A,E,F,G,I,J,K,L,M,N,O,P,Q,R,S,T,U,V,W,X,Y,Z ;o

Okay *cracks knuckles* let’s go! F, M, and S have already been taken from this list, so feel free to send in... B, C, D, or H, I guess. Yeehaw. This is really fucking long.

A: How did you come up with the title to [TMWCIFTC]? -- It started, as many things do, as a bad pun. The novel The Spy who Came In from the Cold was a cold-war spy thriller, about a British spy who goes over to East Germany as an apparent defect, except he’s actually there to spread misinformation and fuck shit up. He falls in love, becomes disillusioned with his superiors, and is shot dead over the corpse of his lover after climbing over to the east side of the wall. Needless to say, this is nowhere close to what happens in TMWCIFTC. I chose it early on because of the literal meaning: there’s a moth(man), he’s coming in from the cold WV weather, boom shaka laka, we have a title. Over time, though, it’s evolved into another meaning. Indrid himself is coming in from an isolated, lonely existence: he’s rejoining the family that cut ties with him, he’s in love, he’s warm and safe. The moth sure did come in from the cold, and hopefully he stays that way.

E: If you wrote a sequel to [TMWCIFTC], what would it be about? -- Hm. Considering my entire TAZ fic career is a tangled hairball of sequels and prequels, I kind of have this base covered. At the moment, TCOS - aka The Children of Sylvain, the sequel to TMWCIFTC - is about three things: a Pine Guard road trip race against time and the feds, the Spanish Sylvan Inquisition That Nobody Expected (least of all Jake and Hollis, who have to set aside their differences and past conflicts to save Kepler - and who knows, maybe they’ll fall in love along the way), and Alexandra the Interpreter getting woke to Sylvan politics and doing what she can from the inside to change them. In other words, it’s going to be a massive sequel that is the finale of the Amnesty alternate universe I’ve created. It’s this series’ Endgame. (That reminds me, I need an actual title for this collection of stories I’m writing. The “Tin Cinematic Universe” doesn’t quite have the ring to it that I’d like.)

G: Do you write your story from start to finish, or do you write the scenes out of order? -- eh, it kind of depends. It’s like a buffering bar on Youtube videos. I outline what I can until I run out of ideas, then start writing, then add outlines to the end, until the outline is complete and I just have to keep writing.

I: Do you have a guilty pleasure in fic (reading or writing)? -- I don’t have one for reading, but for writing, I fucking love structuring chapters around songs. Classical or otherwise, I love music. All my stories play in my head like a movie screen, and I just do my best to describe what I’m seeing in my head with an accompanying score. It’s not so much a guilty pleasure as it is a writing process. Frankly, I don’t think I actually have a guilty pleasure; the act of writing itself is all the happiness I need.

J: Write or describe an alternative ending to [insert fic]. -- An alternate ending for The Devil Went Down To Georgia would be... interesting. It ended with Boyd-as-Jersey-Devil scaring the pants off some poor broke college kid, who stole his worthless fiddle; then he changed back, and he and Ned went on their merry way to go break into Aubrey’s house and send everything down the drain. If there was one thing that I could change in there, it would be how fast Ned ran. If he ran a little faster, he would have seen the alley; he would have witnessed Boyd turning into the Jersey Devil, or at least turning back into himself; and he’d get a very rude awakening as to what Sylvans are and that his partner (in crime, and everything that mattered) was a fucking cryptid. God, that’d be a fun AU to write. Who knows, I might go do that someday.

K: What’s the angstiest idea you’ve ever come up with? -- At the moment, the only angsty idea that I’m actually conceptualizing is a Hollis/Jake angsty breakup for TSG. (Spoilers, I guess.) I once wrote a very grimdark ending to TMWCIFTC where everyone fell through the ice and drowned. It wasn’t fun. I’ve also mentally killed off each Amnesty protagonist and NPC in various ways, but I never felt comfortable writing them down. I only write angst with a happy ending because those are the kinds of stories I need to hear.

L: How many times do you usually revise your fic/chapter before posting? -- 9 times out of 10, I just throw it into the void. I write as much as I can in big chunks, and then kind of hope for the best. TMWCIFTC, for example, is a completely unedited, unbetaed vomit draft. I usually do a quick reread of my oneshots to catch grammar and spelling errors, but other than that I just trust myself that it’s fine.

N: Is there a fic you wish someone else would write (or finish) for you? -- Can I get some kind of resolution for To the Edge of Night? Can I please get some kind of resolution for To the Edge of Night??? I was 14 chapters into that bastard before I a) became a more casual MCU fan and b) discovered TAZ. It was such a niche fic with such a niche structure - LOTR as galactic Asgardian propaganda to cover up Odin’s mistakes - that at some point I lost interest in it. I just saw Endgame though, so now I might get some inspiration for stuff to bastardize.

O: How do you begin a story–with the plot, or the characters? -- Characters. When coming up with character backstories, I can usually find ways to slot their lives together that necessitate a plot. I love character-driven stories, where their actions actually do shit and their words actually mean something, in favor of getting dragged along behind the plot like tin cans behind a car.

P: Are you what George R. R. Martin would call an “architect” or a “gardener”? (How much do you plan in advance, versus letting the story unfold as you go?) -- I’m definitely an architect, but in a really messy way. My friends can attest that I do an insane amount of planning for each story - often in their DMs, sorry about that, Fae, Cro, Indy and Aline 😬 - and all that usually ends up in a stream-of-consciousness rant outline on Google Drive. Knowing where the story is going helps me a lot, but the planning I do is definitely just building flower beds in which to sow seeds. Or building a greenhouse. I plan the bare bones of a story, and things get really wild within it, but it does follow a logical plot structure.

Q: How do you feel about collaborations? -- I have a lot of respect for the people who can successfully pull it off, but idk if i’d ever want to do one myself. I get really possessive of my stories and ideas and like to be the one in charge of their execution. That being said, some collabs have produced amazing stories. I don’t mind reading collab fics, but actually being in a collab grates on me more than it should.

R: Are there any writers (fanfic or otherwise) you consider an influence? -- I’m definitely influenced heavily by Neil Gaiman. I read American Gods and Good Omens a lot while I was trying to write TMWCIFTC; not only was it a good brain break, but I was able to pick up a lot of tips on scene pacing, concise yet expressive language, and character interactions. My creative wriitng professors have always told us to read so we know what to steal - not in terms of content, but in execution.

On the fanfic side, @miamaroo is a huge inspiration for me. I’ve been reading Northern Migration a lot recently, and I love how its canon divergence is so worldshaking and so complex, but is still familiar in nostalgic yet terrifying ways. I read it back in October, went, “Huh, I wanna do something that wild. And if miamaroo can do it then I sure as fuck can too,” and I started planning TMWCIFTC during that one month dead zone the McElroys took last year. Northern Migration is one of the best, most coherent, most stunning, and most incredibly written TAZ Balance AUs I’ve ever read, and if I hadn’t read it, I wouldn’t have been inspired to take the fuckall huge plunge into TMWCIFTC.

S: Any fandom tropes you can’t resist? -- Bed sharing and cuddling, hand kissing, wrist kissing, whump, sympathetic villains. Canon divergent AUs are my absolute favorite things to both read and write. Anything that would turn me into Charlie Kelly slamming his finger on a bulletin board screaming, “CAROL,” is a fic I would give my life for.

T: Any fandom tropes you can’t stand? -- Not a fan of a) woobification and b) flat villain characterization, to the point where the story is riding on villain tropes instead of an actual person or plot. Character nuance is always something I look for when I read. I don’t usually get bitter about tropes, though; some stuff, when subverted, works really well. I fully subscribe to don’t like, don’t read, don’t write, which is why I don’t write anything that warrants AO3 content warning tags or an Explicit rating, in favor of focusing on plot. Every author has a reason for what they write and how - be it their level of experience, personal preference, or simply the joy of writing something and getting it out there - and I respect that. Within reason, of course.

U: Share three of your favorite fic writers and why you like them so much. --

@miamaroo, for reasons I’ve already discussed. My favorite TAZ Balance author hands down. Read Northern Migration and give it the love it deserves, or I’m replacing all the faucets in your house with silly straws.

@transagentstern. Fae has a bunch of absolutely incredible fics and an amazing grasp on characterization. We come from the same place with AUs, in that canon is but the bare planks on which we put the drywall of our plot an characterization. They structure AUs and character backstories from the ground up in believable and emotionally raw ways. Also they have great music taste. I especially like their interpretation of Indrid in Moth to the Flame; he, like all the other characters in the story, is far from perfect, and his character arc is explored in relatable ways that I love to read.

@keplersheetz. Aline - theneonpineapple on AO3 - researches like a motherfucker and has a wealth of knowledge/experience/viewpoints to draw on, making author-author interactions with her an absolute delight. She’s also doing the lord’s work with rarepairs. Spin a wheel, find a ship, and she’s probably written for it or at least conceptualized it. Reading her character studies and stories of the old Pine Guard - aka Mama’s original crew, before the current PCs joined - is always a delight. I’ve also hashed out a lot of details for The Children of Sylvain, especially for Mr. Boyd Mosche, guilt-wracked Jersey Devil extraordinaire, with her help.

V: If you could write the sequel (or prequel) to any fic out there not written by yourself, which would you choose? -- Not gonna lie, I’m fine with a lot of stuff that’s out there right now. It’s been a hot few months since I’ve actually stopped to read fic, but from what I recall, most of the fics I’ve read have done a good job of keeping things intact.

W: Do you like more general prompts, or more specific ones? -- The vaguer, the better. With really specific prompts, it usually feels as if the story’s been written for me already; with vague, general prompts, I have more agency to explore my own ideas. Some accompanying detail is usually nice, though. For example, the coffee shop/college/flower shop AUs that @transagentstern wrote are my ideal prompt for drabbles: premise, a little bit of open-ended detail, clear explanation of what’s going to happen while leaving the rest up to the imagination. Good stuff. If it’s for a long-form piece, though, I prefer full agency, or even just some time to lie facedown in the dirt and wait for an idea to strike me.

X: A character you enjoy making suffer. -- Yes.

Y: A character you want to protect. -- Tim.

Z: Major character death–do you ever write/read it? Is there a character whose death you can’t tolerate? -- I do read lots of major character death, yeah, though not always for TAZ. There’s something cathartic about seeing a character die, but sometimes it sits wrong with me in ways that I don’t like. As for writing, I’d rather kill a character for a reason rather than for shock value/for the Feels, though said Feels can accompany the reason.

#anon please dm me so i know who u are #please #i'm begging you #i'm in hell #asks #anon #ask game

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galaxyacerodoesart · 6 years ago

Photo

Me: Oh, I should go back at drawing some more “normal” stuff for the Sanders Sides fandom..i sure miss those guys just by themselves! No AUs, just them! c:

Also Me: I WILL throw my shitty cursed Sanderstuck AU at your guys faces and you all WILL ENJOY IT.

AKA. Homestuck Panel Edits are fun, and i won’t be letting go of my Sanderstuck AU too soon, so ya’ll better be ready for panel edits of this cursed AU in the future, because they certainly are fun to make asfsadjkasdklasj

All of my Sanderstuck sprites can be find HERE AND! Under Read more some background story for what is going on in this picture AND Virgil/Roman relationship in the AU in case anyone is interested in my train of thought during the making of this, BE WARNED THOUGH, it is long. I like to talk and give things details, don’t blame me >:’T

First, without getting too into the story itself of the AU, Virgil and Roman relationship in this AU is simple:

At the Start, they couldn’t stand each other, their opinions and views on things were pretty much opposites, with Roman always trying to see the bright side of things while Virgil would jump straight to the bad and pessimistic side of things, so basically no matter what Roman would bring up to the table, Virgil would point the bad side of every single one of his ideas, which would lead to their endless rants and fights. They would talk with each other to begin with,mainly because both were friends with Logan and Patton (so they basically were dragged into conversations together by them). When shit hit the fan and Sburb happens, and everyone is dragged to pretty much save the universe, Virgil is obviously TERRIFIED and ready to just die and be the reason the universe ceased to exist in the first place, while Roman is seeing it as all he ever dreamed of (Being the hero?! Saving not only the world, BUT THE UNIVERSE?! Count he in) so again, their views of things clashed against one another, Roman wanting to jump and fight to the “greater good” and Virgil not believing for one second they can pull this through, eventually going with Roman saying Virgil wouldn’t be needed to end the game at all, since everything he did was bring everyone’s spirits down anyway (Which is definitely a lie, as, ironically, both him AND Virgil are the most important players, being a Space and Time players respectively, but obviously Roman isn’t aware of that at the start) this leads to a pretty awful tension in the team, as after hearing that Virgil isn’t talking to anyone for what feels like ages, completely isolating himself until he finally seems to just dissapears. Plot related things happen, with Virgil ending up going Grimdark at some point, just in time for Roman to come to terms and realize (with a lot of explanation and help realizing some shit from Logan, Patton, Thomas and even Remy) HOW WRONG he was about Virgil’s part in their game, and about Virgil as a person in general. His negative view of things weren’t his way to try to bring Roman’s ideas down, but to actually improve them, since pretty much all the time, all the “criticism” he received from Virgil would have improved his ideas if he just stopped to listen. Virgil wasn’t hating on everything Roman did, he actually cared so much about it, that he would try to make sure they were perfect, so everything would go well and no one would get hurt. After realizing that, Roman sets off to try to find and apologize to Virgil, so they can start from zero and actually become friends.

Meanwhile, on Virgil’s side, he literally isolated himself in the void believing everyone would be better without him holding them back like that, that was part of the reason at least, what he would never tell a soul, is that the words Roman threw at him did hit him HARD, since as far as he could remember, Virgil always admired Roman’s way of seeing things, and honestly wished he could see things as positively and passionate as he did, and would be lying to himself if he said he may or may not had develop some sort of crush on the other, but being to scared to do any sort of move, he just kept that little detail to himself, so yeah, Roman words really did hurt him. When Roman and the others FINALLY find Virgil, they all try to reach for him but he was into the void and believing in Roman’s words for so long, that it seemed almost impossible to pull him back, ending with the last person they would think would help to actually solve the issue and bring Virgil out of the void and out of his Grimdark state: Dolian. Sure, he was a Void Player, but no one really imagined he would be willing to help out like that, but since everyone was too busy crying tears of happiness to have Virgil back, they let it slide. When he is able to finally talk with Virgil, Roman tells him all he realized while he was gone, and gives the most sincere apologize he can manage, to which Virgil accepts after understanding Roman’s side of things.

Time jump a few weeks, everyone is gathered around the same living-space at this point (Think the meteor in Homestuck where Kanaya, Rose, Karkat, Dave and Terezi stay, it’s pretty much the same thing) Roman does keep his word of trying to understand more Virgil way of thinking, and slow but surely, they get to the point where they can call each other “friends” which while is amazing (Patton is SO proud of his boys omg) things definitely aren’t easy on Virgil’s heart, as the silly crush he had on Roman before Sburb happened only gets stronger now that both are on actual good terms, Virgil only ever told Logan about said crush, as he know the others wouldn’t tell a soul about it, or make a big event of it, so at that point, Logan is Virgil’s “to go talk about this stupid crush” guy. At one point, already getting enough of all that, Logan just straight up suggests that Virgil just TELLS Roman how he feels, literally going on saying “Realistic, we literally don’t know if we will even survive the events of this game, so you really don’t have anything to lose by telling him how you feel” to which Virgil panics almost screaming how he “can’t just tell someone how much he loves them” which had Logan responding with “Then just write your feelings down. Not saying you will need to send him a letter saying how you feel, but it might make things easier for you to get all this pressure out of your shoulders” to which Virgil reluctantly agrees. Unknown to BOTH of them, Roman was hearing the whole conversation (Don’t blame him, the space they are isn’t exactly huge, and neither of them really were using indoor voices anyway) although he doesn’t really know WHO IS the person they are talking about as no name was dropped any time, all Roman knows, is that Virgil has a crush on someone and is struggling to tell them. Which, surprise surprise, low key hurts Roman, who was actually starting to develop a crush on Virgil as well, now that he knew who he really was. And no, of course at no point Roman stops to consider he might be the person Virgil is talking about, he hurt Virgil in the past right?! His words and stupid beliefs almost lead to Virgil being completely lost and left to die in the void, no way Virgil would have a crush on him after all that. Whoever, for the first time in what seems forever, Roman decides to push his own feelings and needs aside, and actually focus on Virgil’s instead. If Virgil needed help confessing to who he loved, he was going to help him! That’s what friends do, he owned him after all he did! He was a hopeless romantic anyway, if there was one thing he knew, was how to confess to someone, so even if it hurt, Roman would make Virgil and whoever he liked be together and happily ever after! It is what Virgil deserves, happiness, right?! Who cares about his own feelings, Roman would be fine. He probably didn’t deserve Virgil anyway, not after all he has done to him.

And unknown to both, Roman and Virgil, literally everyone in that place knows about their crushes on each other, they are obvious like that. But they all respect their own wishes and are willing to let them tell each other their feelings in their own time. Which sadly seems like it will take a while because, goddammit, those two are slow when they want to.

SOOO YEAH. That’s pretty much how Prinxiety works in this AU. Two idiots who clearly love each other, but one doesn’t know how to tell the other, and the other don’t believe he deserves to be with the other after all he did to him. The idea behind the panel I edited is pretty much a follow of the last details i explained, Virgil writing his feelings down on letters that (if depending on him) will never really be given to Roman, while Roman wants to help Virgil write his heart out, because “he owns him for everything he did in the past”, despite the fact he would want nothing more than be together in a relationship with Virgil at that point, and Virgil obviously trying to push him aside because “HELLO?! HOW CAN I WRITE DOWN ABOUT MY CRUSH FOR YOU IF YOU ARE LITERALLY NEXT TO ME?! NO, STOP! DON’T YOU DARE READ ANYTHING IN THAT PAPER!!!” but Roman isn’t giving up on helping him so he can finally be happy like he deserves to be.

#sanders sides #virgil sanders #roman sanders #sanderstuck #prinxiety #??? i guess...it's implied lmao #well it definitely happens in the future so...yeah. prinxiety.#my art #homestuck #hs #They are a mess. That's it that's their relationship.#Roman would eventually realize Virgil was crushing on him tho don't worry #he may or may not finally get the chance to read one of the letters Virgil make after a long time #and then they just become this awfully cute couple with Roman always showering Virgil with love because he wants to make him happy.#also not only double dates with Logicality happens #TRIPLE DATES with logicality + Dolian/Remy/Emile as well aw yis #Thomas does end up being the only single one until they end the game and remake the universe tho dajdkljaks #at least for now since I can't think of anyone to pair Thomas with PFFF :')#sorry Thomas :'v

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lacertae-dreamscape · 11 years ago

Text

Phantom Limb [4/?]

Here you go, the fourth chapter :3

mirrored on AO3.

Previous Chapter: 01, 02, 03

Pairing: future Karkat/Dave (red), moving slowly from friends to lovers. (some side pairings will be included as they appear) Past Karkat/Terezi (red). Mentioned Rose/Jade.

Characters: in this chapter Dave, Karkat, Terezi, Aradia, Rose, Jade, John.

Rating: overall Mature.

Warnings: AU - no SBURB/SGRUB, character death (previous to fic happenings), ghostrezi.

Summary: Karkat’s life had turned into an inward spiral of familiar routine, where nothing much existed outside of courses and solitary movie nights.

Until he happens to bump into a stranger on his way to college, and time starts ticking again.

Phantom Limb - 04

Karkat grunted, letting his head drop on his hands, and stared at the conversation with a mix of amusement and annoyance.

His parting line had been automatic, but the meaning behind it was a familiarity that even after years, was still there.

The words were enough to make his insides ache dully, words he had once used jokingly but that now simply hurt.

He shuffled a bit, then decided to let it rest. The fact that Dave still wanted to have him as a friend was almost reassuring. It had been a while since he’d met some new people, and it was… ok.

His stomach grumbled, which surprised him a bit –he never really felt like eating when he got into those low moods– but he decided to go for it, and moved to the small kitchen of his hive.

In the end, he simply made coffee and cut himself a slice of cake, but as a vast improvement from his usual overall lack of hunger, he decided to take it in stride.

Not having plans for the evening, he moved to his respiteblock to gather a few romcoms to watch, momentarily stopping by the computer on his way to the DVG player to glance at the screen, and noticed that there was a sea of red on his trollian window, indicating how Dave, instead of being a sensible person and letting him stay idle, actually wanted to talk more.

Trying to muster up some annoyance but utterly failing at it, Karkat scrolled up to read.

***

“So I heard that you’ve made a new friend”.

Dave groaned into the pillow, stretching lazily under the covers and wondering if Rose would get the point if he simply closed the call then and there and went back to sleep.

Knowing her, that was unfortunately not an option.

Rose was Dave’s twin sister; instead of moving with Dave and Dirk during college, she’d decided to spread her metaphorical tentacle grimdark wings and find herself a nice apartment in New York, which was far too many miles away from where he was, and a couple hours ahead of him.

She was specializing in a few subjects, and while they often spoke through the use of Pesterchum (nice useful thing, Internet), she had groomed the habit of calling him at least once during the week because she liked to ‘hear about her dear brother’.

The choice of calling him specifically every Saturday morning, though, was simply because she was a passive aggressive little shit, and only knew how to show her familial love by using underhanded machinations and small prods.

Sweet, sweet family.

At nine in the morning without fail, she would pick up her phone and make a call, and it didn’t matter that for Dave it was seven am on a Saturday –he was supposed to answer, or (as she had willingly demonstrated more than once) she would try calling on Sunday at an earlier time.

“Rose,” his reply was muffled by the pillow, but he didn’t care one bit. “Can you just… not?”

“I mean, you’d think that being your sister, I would be the first person to know about a new addition to your friends’ circle,” she sounded hurt, and while Dave rationally knew that Rose wasn’t really meaning it, her tone still did funny little guilty things to his insides. Stupid brother feelings. “Instead, I had to go and ask Aradia”.

“So you just forced my moirail into a third-grade interrogation just to satisfy your greedy curiosity,” he grumbled, wiping some drool from his chin and snuggling deeper into the pillow. “Go you”.

“I was merely worried about your wellbeing,” Rose replied smoothly.

There were many things Dave wanted to reply to that –half of which were in rap form, and explained in fine rhymes how being worried about his wellbeing had nothing to do with jutting her nose into his business, especially since there wasn’t much to say about Karkat to begin with.

At least, not to Rose.

But he really did not feel quite as awake as he would need to unleash his full word punishment on his sister.

“Well, his name’s Karkat,” he mumbled instead, yawning into the phone. “He yelled at me in the shop ‘cause I was staring at him”.

“Dave–”

“Not like that, sheesh Rose give a man some respect will you,” realising that he would get no respite, Dave shuffled out from his covers and stretched, cracking his neck a couple times. “If I had to ogle the man I would do it less blatantly”.

“So is there anything to ogle about him?”

“Rose, it’s seven in the morning, I’m not playing this game with you, seriously. The guy is as fine as one of the aged wines at Mom’s house, but I’m not interested. I just find him intriguing, ok? He’s loud but he’s funny to be around, so I invited him to see a movie with me n’ John, that’s all”.

“That’s not what Jane told me,” there was enough mirth in Rose’s voice that Dave flopped back down on the bed, almost nauseated. “She said you offer him pastries almost every day”.

“Oh Jesus I can’t believe you went and bothered Jane too,” he groaned, feeling hopeless. “Listen, we’re not doing this, not at this time. Karkat’s fine but he’s a friend, and one that can rant about movies with John so I don’t have to bother faking interest. That guy is precious, he n’ John fought for an hour on who was the best actor between John Cusack and Will Smith”.

There was a soft, amused chuckle from the other end of the phone –whether at him or at the fact that it was almost impossible to walk away once John started his rant about movies, Dave wasn’t sure– but Rose seemed to accept his words, at least for the moment.

“As long as you are happy, Dave,” she replied. “You haven’t been on pesterchum for a while, so it was only my duty to find another source of information”.

Dave sighed again, the wave of guilt intensifying. He’d been busy with college lectures and his job, so he had actually ignored pesterchum all week, excluding his first conversation with Karkat –which was only because Aradia had fessed up about slipping the man his chum handle.

“Jeez, you know I can take care of myself, Rosie,” he replied, smiling a bit. He shuffled on the bed, resting his head on one arm. “But tell me about you –how’re you doing over there in the Big Apple?”

“Splendidly, Dave,” and there was a softened tone in her voice that told Dave exactly why her mood was so chipper. And for once, it didn’t relate to poking his non-existent private life.

“Oh, so the chick you’re in lesbians with has arrived to visit despite her busy schedule… I’m so envious”. There was a giggle that didn’t belong to Rose, and Dave felt his lips twitch upwards.

“Dave…” Rose had known him for a long time, so he knew that her chiding tone was mostly for show.

Another voice in the background, “No, no, it’s fine!” with a small shuffle, the phone was handed to someone else with a soft giggle. “I like to be the chick in lesbians with you a lot, Rose”.

Dave snorted, but his lips settled on a warm smile. “Hey, Jade. How d’you find New York?”

“Busy!” Jade replied, tone still overly chipper. “There’s so many people around all the time, even at night! Did you know Rose lives two blocks away from a strip club? And they don’t even have a decent falafel place around Rose’s apartment, I had to walk around half an hour to get something vaguely tasty!”

“Yes, because you wouldn’t just wait for us to go to lunch together…” Rose interjected, her voice slightly muffled.

“But it would take you another hour, and I was hungry then! Besides, you don’t even like falafel!” Jade reasoned, almost whiny. “You would have insisted on going to some fancy restaurant where I had to dress well and behave!”

Dave grinned at the half heated commentary, deciding that it would be best to cut the conversation short while he still could. “Nice to hear from you sis, but I have more pressing matters to attend to, by which I mean food and maybe a shower later,” he commented. “Jade, you’re in charge. Smother my sister in tickles and hugs and lesbian kisses”.

“Yes sir! Shall do that pronto!” Jade’s giggle was the last thing he heard before the call was interrupted, but it did wonders to Dave’s mood.

Putting on his shades and finally standing up and wobbling out of his bedroom, Dave reached the sitting room to check on the damage.

Dave had been right, even with Karkat’s obnoxious and suspicious rants through pesterchum –the troll and John had hit it off splendidly, even though, in Karkat’s words ‘their movie taste was indeed as different as golf and ballet’. (Which, in Dave’s opinion, weren’t really different. They were both sports after all.)

The movie had been a huge success though, and after that they had hit the pizza place once more for refills, hungry for food that wasn’t sugary drinks and popcorn.

When their craving for greasy sustenance had been fulfilled and their bellies were sloshing with coke and cheesy goodness, they had crashed at Dave’s apartment.

John and Karkat were having a ‘serious’ discussion over which actress deserved an Oscar more –Dave had tuned them out pretty quickly, actually, not at all interested in the ups and downs of ‘famous’ people– and they had barely noticed, in their heated, friendly banter, that they had moved somewhere after the pizza.

Dave was sort of convinced that Karkat hadn’t even realised he’d been invited at someone else’s house. He had an inkling that in any other situation, the troll would have politely declined, but alas, Karkat had been busy discussing things with John and didn’t even take notice.

Spluttering curses at him, citing in detail why his taste in movies sucked ass, Karkat had been entirely blind to his surroundings, which was sort of amusing.

John had been the first to crash. He was usually the last man standing during all-nighters, but juggling between courses and his new job at the CD store had sucked him dry of all his energy, so Dave had expected it to happen.

When his main rival and opponent had started snoring on the couch, sprawled in a way that looked infinitely unpleasant (though Dave was used to John’s weird sleeping positions so it wasn’t a novelty anymore) Karkat had finally shaken himself out of his movie stupor, realising he was in an unfamiliar place.

Almost turning too quiet, Karkat had shifted inconspicuously towards the front door, wanting to get out and go home, but it was late enough already that Dave had felt worried about sending Karkat out on his own. Accompanying him would mean having to come back on his own, which was something he didn’t fancy either.

So, he’d offered the troll to stay for the night.

Karkat hadn’t looked convinced, especially since Dave couldn’t afford an actual recuperacoon, nor the physical space to have one in the apartment. Recuperacoons were rather expensive, and he wasn’t made of money. Having Aradia around though meant he had some alternate solutions for a troll. He’d put together an impromptu pile with blanket and other stuff he had around the house, and offered Karkat a couple sopor pills.

While high-priced on their own, having a small stash around for his moirail was overall less expensive than a recuperacoon –not to mention the costs of filling it with the slime and keeping it functional– and Karkat had gratefully accepted them, though still obviously uncertain about the whole situation.

Obviously sleeping over at a friend’s house wasn’t an everyday occurrence –not to mention they had just started getting friendly with each other– but Dave felt responsible, so this was the only solution other than calling a cab.

In an attempt to make the troll feel at ease, Dave had thus spent a couple hours discussing things with him –though not movies, as Karkat’s quota had been fortunately filled by John– until the pills had started taking effect. Karkat had thus passed out, curled inside his improvised coon, snoring softly.

Feeling satisfied, Dave had moved to his bedroom, crashing on his bed and falling asleep in record time.

So overall, a successful night.

Seeing his sitting room the next day, though, brought much less satisfaction. John was still snoring on the sofa, loud and unpleasant, and there were pillows and pieces of popcorn everywhere, not to mention the various cans of coke and beer scattered around.

Karkat’s pile seemed to be still in one piece though, and much to his surprise, he found Karkat awake and watching a movie on his small grubpad, his earplugs on.

With a quick glance at John, appraising his loud snoring and the way he kicked in his sleep, arms flailing around, Dave had to admit Karkat had every right to save his ears from that.

He squatted next to the pile and tapped one side, trying to get the troll’s attention without startling him.

“Yo,” he mouthed, smirking.

Karkat was startled at the soft tapping and turned around, blinking owlishly at Dave before his surprised face melted into a disgruntled one.

“Good morning,” he grunted as he removed one earphone, wincing when John snored again. “Didn’t pick you as an early riser at all, Dave –and holy god that guy, I can’t believe how loud he is, thanks fucking god for your sopor pills, or I would have been unable to sleep at all. What is he?”

“A motorboat,” Dave replied easily, shrugging and deciding to casually not mention how he was anything but an early bird. “You up for breakfast?”

“If it’s cereals, I’m going to pass,” Karkat wrinkled his nose. “Besides, his snoring already deafened me, I’d like to be away from that”.

“Let’s go get pancakes, there’s a place down the street that has the best apple pancakes you’ve ever tasted in your life, man. Let that be the start of me schooling you in the Way of the Apple”.

“Your unhealthy obsession with apples will be your downfall, I swear, they will rot your brain out until you’ll turn into one of them”.

“What, like a space alien pod, just with… apples?” at Karkat’s serious nod, Dave snorted. “Wouldn’t mind that”.

“You’re already far too gone, Dave, and here I was, trying to help,” with a small snort, Karkat extracted himself from the pile and stretched, wincing when his bones popped back in place. “Uh…”

“Bathroom’s down there, the door on the right,” Dave replied. “If you need to have a shower…”

“No, thanks,” Karkat hastily replied. “I can wait until I’m home for that. Oh, but hey, thank you for… letting me stay here”.

“No problem, wouldn’t have wanted you to get lost in the dark, bad things happen–”

“Oh, don’t you even start, I am one of the bad things that could happen to you,” Karkat stomped towards the bathroom, rolling his eyes when he noticed that not even their loud speaking had managed to rouse John from his deep sleep.

Dave returned to his bedroom, now awake enough to appreciate how Karkat seemed more at ease now, not as stiff and hesitant as he’d been the previous night. Maybe sleeping over at a friend’s house was the way to break the last icy barrier between them, and Dave would not look at a gifted horse in the mouth.*

He was still glad that Karkat and John had hit off so easily, though by their heated banter over movies he wondered if it was healthy for them to even talk to each other.

With a snort, he pulled on a clean shirt and a pair of jeans from a drawer and combed his hair with his fingers, moving to the sitting room again to wait for Karkat.

The troll left the bathroom a bit later, glancing at John in surprise.

“Isn’t he supposed to come with us?” he asked, hesitant.

“Nah, nothing would wake him up. I’ll just bring something home for him or he’ll raid my cupboards for cereals, whichever happens first”.

With a shrug, Karkat followed Dave out of his apartment and into the street.

“You’ve got yourself a nice place, Strider,” the troll commented once they were out, breathing the cold air of the morning. “But your movie selection sucks my bone bulge”.

Snickering, Dave punched him slightly on the shoulder, and whilst the first reaction he got was a startled gasp, Karkat soon retaliated with a punch of his own.

“It wasn’t just mine, but my ‘roommate’ moved out to live with his boyfriend, so the apartment was left to my own devices,” he explained. “I was living with my brother”.

“Oh?” Karkat didn’t quite seem all that interested, probably because for trolls words like ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’ had an entirely different meaning, that did not relate to close family members. “Is he a douchebag like you, Dave?”

“Nah, he’s actually worse,” he replied easily, not bothered by the casual insult. “Dirk’s a bit of an asshole but he’s neat. I’m still glad he left, though, he used up all the hot water”.

With a snort, Karkat looked ahead, trying to spot the pancake house while Dave got lost staring at him.

The troll didn’t seem one to smile so easily, but there was a certain kind of softness in the way the corners of his mouth curved upwards, showing a row of dangerous teeth, that was almost cute, in a way.

There was nothing ‘cute’ in Karkat as a person –he was rough, sharp and scathing, but Dave liked that, liked the on and off way they could banter about everything, and the offhanded insults that didn’t mean much.

Still, Dave had to admit that Karkat had an aura that spoke volumes of him. He walked like a fighter, relaxed instead of tense, something Dave could recognise, being one himself.

The edge of his face, the curve of his jaw –that wasn’t even cute, that was just downright–

Dave halted his thoughts right there, carefully considering where his mind was going. Yes, he could appreciate that Karkat was good looking, and yes, it was because Rose had made him think about that with her words, but that was all there was to it.

He wasn’t interested in that at all, he simply liked Karkat as a friend –a good looking one, but still a friend.

His eyes flickered to the side for a moment before he shook his head slightly, and grabbed the phone from his back pocket.

“Gotta make a quick call,” he warned the troll as they entered the pancake house. “Just order whatever for yourself and get me the usual, they’ll know what it means”.

“Are you an usual customer everywhere, Strider?”

“Are you going to forever shift between my name and my last name all the time depending on the mood?” he retorted, half focused on the troll and half on his phone ringing.

“I guess the answer to both is the same, then,” with a cheeky smirk, Karkat moved to a nearby stool and sat down heavily on it.

Dave snorted to himself and waited for Aradia to pick up.

***

Terezi idly hovered in front of the pancake shop, not paying attention to Dave and Karkat, who were still inside.

The two had ordered breakfast –something that smelled almost good to her, though as usual the strength of her senses was unbalanced and weak to the things that still belonged to the living– and were now having a heated debate over something.

She didn’t quite feel any sort of interest on the exact subject they were focused on, more interested instead on the complex mix of emotions swirling inside her. She’d often heard that ghosts ended up being unfeeling, but that wasn’t the case with her –she still had emotions, and at least that was vibrant, unlike the scents that permeated the air and were filtered by her senses until they were dim and absent.

She felt regret, and a deep bittersweet feeling at seeing Karkat smile, and most of all a slight tinge of jealousy curling inside her bloodpusher. She wanted to enter the pancake house and be part of Karkat’s life again, snicker and make fun of him like the old times.

Watch him slowly relax and enjoy himself again.

Terezi looked away from them to observe the sea of unknown people walking past; her senses stretched on, uncaring whether they had faces, simply concentrated on the crowd in itself, on the way they moved, letting the flow ease her mind; her fingers turned slightly more transparent, blurry and see-through, but she didn’t pay attention to that.

She heard footsteps coming close, until they stopped by the door of the building, and when she turned to gaze at whoever was standing there without entering, Terezi found herself staring right into the tea house’s waitress’ face, Aradia.

Blinking in surprise, her fingers sharply returning to their full visibility, Terezi floated closer to the ground, momentarily surprised.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, leaning forwards a bit.

“Dave…” she tilted her head slightly, motioning for the inside of the building, where Dave and Karkat were, their backs to the door, blind to what was going on outside. “He’s my moirail. He called me as I was about to leave because he needed something, so” she waved a small bag she was holding. “But he can wait some more! Do you want to walk with me a bit?”

Terezi glanced inside as well, tasting the air for a better view, then nodded.

“Sure you won’t look like a loon, talking to thin air?” she grinned teasingly, and Aradia pulled out a pair of earphones, shoving them in her auricular sponge clots.

“Phone call!” she replied with a broad smile.

Terezi snickered, and lowered herself until her feet were pressed on the concrete.

As a ghost, she had no weight, no need to keep balance with a body that did not need to hold itself up, but she enjoyed the pretence of being normal again; talking with a living, pretending to be able to walk instead of being an intangible spirit… it was all a ruse.

She wanted to maintain the impression of being alive, fool herself even if only for a short time.

“So you seem sad,” was the first thing the waitress said. “I’m sorry your afterlife isn’t as fun as it should be! Maybe you’d feel better pulling a prank on someone”.

Terezi shook her head. “I don’t quite work with the living realm, as they can’t see me, nor touch me, and it’s not fun when my tongue goes through something that looks interesting”.

The rustblood nodded, but there was still a smile on her face. “You haven’t been dead for too long then, have you? If you linger here enough, you might learn that you can interact with things and have fun!”

The news caught her by surprise, and Terezi glanced down at her fingers, lips parted in order to see their vague, unfocused outline, even more blurred by the fact that her eyes didn’t work, not even now that she was dead.

Still, despite the dimness of the world around her, the tastes and smells almost lost, she could still see, in a way. Being dead was weird.

“I could try to teach you, or you could meet with one of the other presences,” Aradia suggested, smiling widely. “Some like teaching more than others, like the writer who haunts the library down the street… if you want I can take you there!”

On one side, the thought was intriguing –if she could interact with the world… but no, Terezi shook her head forcibly, not trusting herself with words.

The other troll seemed to understand, noticing the way her fingers were twitching, and nodded, simply turning around the corner of the street and marching down; the ghost licked her lips and followed her, glancing past the heads of the living sea surrounding her and doing her best to avoid passing through a few of them.

The feeling of being walked through was intense –like a wave of heat, colour and sensations, a bit more vivid, a bit more real– but at the same time she disliked it, because it didn’t last long, and the only thing it did was remind her how she wasn’t living anymore.

If she didn’t concentrate, it was like not even feeling them, but Terezi felt the impulse to keep up with the pretence, and refused to make it waver. Just for a bit longer.

“You’re haunting Karkat,” her companion said slowly.

Terezi glanced to the side, but now the other troll simply looked sheepish, almost sad.

“You care for him a lot, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Terezi’s fingers moved to her chest, where her Scalemate was already materializing for her to hold, a small reassuring presence. “I… I just want to see him happy,” she confessed, words coming out choked, strained and metallic.

“Is he not?” Aradia looked momentarily perplexed, her lips still slightly curled upwards, but Terezi was sure she understood all the same.

“He…” Terezi wasn’t sure what to say.

These weren’t matters that everyone could understand, especially since they pertained Karkat; beside, Aradia already had a moirail, and a living one, and making private confessions wasn’t something one could do with just about anybody. Terezi bit her lower lip, hesitant about opening up to this troll. She could see her, for the first time since her death, and the lingering sense of disheartened solitude was enough for Terezi to nod to herself, latching on Aradia despite not knowing her at all.

“He doesn’t want to move on,” she muttered. “He’s an idiot”.

Aradia’s face blossomed in a bright smile, which Terezi found somewhat weird, given the subject at hand, but she didn’t comment on it.

“He lost you, and he’s been coped up all by himself, is it so?” at Terezi’s determined nod, Aradia snorted. “Typical! I swear, Dave’s exactly like that too. So you want to stick around until he learns, right?”

Again, another curt nod.

“Understandable, and if I could, I’d help!” Aradia’s smile softened, now looking almost regretful. “But these are matters that I cannot touch, and you are set enough on your conviction that you wouldn’t accept to let go and just find peace, right?”

Another nod, this time a bit more frantic. “You wouldn’t try to do that without asking,” she stated, a lingering trace of wariness in her voice.

“Of course not! It wouldn’t be fun, and overall it wouldn’t help either of us,” Aradia shrugged. “Though you shouldn’t want to stick around… it might take a while, or he might never want to really let go of you, or just…” her unspoken words lingered in the air, silent, but Terezi caught them nonetheless. ‘Or he could finally move on, and wouldn’t that sadden you?’

For a moment, Terezi thought about it.

Being dead was… different.

She couldn’t touch anything, nor be seen or talk with the living. She could fly, but her body was incorporeal, and it felt weird because it was still her consciousness moving around, even though the world around her felt twisted and remote and so distant from her.

The psychopomp had said that she could learn to do things if she lingered around long enough, which was at least a pleasing alternative to be ignored.

At the same time, though… Terezi was aware that she was dead, and had long since accepted it. It hurt to see that the only one who hadn’t done so was Karkat.

Karkat, who had retreated from his friends, who simply seemed to live without living.

Even in death, she still loved him enough to want him to be happy, even if it ended up being with someone who wasn’t her.

She nodded fiercely, her lips forming a smirk.

She wanted him to smile again, and be happy.

“Well, that’s great!”

Once again shaken out of her thoughts, Terezi stared at the rustblood with a baffled gaze, followed by a short barking laugh.

“You’re weird!” she cackled, moving forwards to prod her with a finger.

The finger, much to her surprise, found resistance in the living troll’s skin, and instead of passing through or being dissolved into the air, it felt something.

Terezi retreated, surprised.

She had felt the solidity of Aradia’s body. The first real thing that she could actually touch, and it made her feel at loss all of sudden.

She craved the sensation, but at the same time it made her wary.

“That’s another good side of being a Psychopomp!” Aradia grinned. “But I try not to let everybody know that!” and much to Terezi’s shock, she actually pointed at her with both hands, mimicking a couple of pistols as she winked.

“Unbelievable,” Terezi muttered, rolling her blind eyes behind her red shades.

She kept her desire to touch Aradia under control, refraining from moving too close to the other troll. In the sweeps following her death, Terezi had been unable to touch something that wasn’t a projection of her own ghostly self –like her cane, or Senator Lemonsnout, or her shades– and this new possibility was intoxicating, but also scary.

“So, did you FLARP while you were alive?”

“… is that even something you should be asking, miss I-can-see-Ghosts?” Terezi hesitantly extended her hand, and Aradia inched closer, poking the ghost in her ribs. Terezi snorted, rejoicing the small contact with the living even as she shied away slightly. “I thought you would ask me how I died, or something!”

Both shared an amused smile, a complicity born from not just necessity and circumstance, and then both started laughing loudly, uncaring whether the passers-by turned to look.

“Depends whether you’ll tell me the truth if I ask,” Aradia replied. “Some spirits enjoy convoluted stories more than the boring truth!”

“True that,” Terezi admitted, rubbing her fingers on her chin thoughtfully. “I never thought I could create something intriguing, but it’s just like FLARPing!”

“I knew you FLARPed!” there was enough delight in Aradia’s tone that it surprised Terezi.

“What, you aren’t going to want to FLARP with a dead soul now, do you?”

Her only answer was a cheeky smile, so Terezi laughed again, more amused now than ever.

“We should go back to our boys,” Aradia said after a moment, smiling brightly and turning back towards the main street. “Dave has the bad habit of eating a bit too many pancakes when he’s out, but I don’t think Karkat would enjoy being impressed like that”.

Terezi snorted and nodded, floating at her side.

She felt lighter than usual, with some sort of relief bubbling inside her chest, where that hollow feeling of loneliness had been, and the surge of warmth made her want to twirl around in the air.

Then, together, they moved back towards the pancake house.

#davekat #dave strider #karkat vantas #homestuck #terezi pyrope #aradia megido #john egbert #rose lalonde #jade harley #ghostrezi #ongoing #alternate universe #college #tea house and patisserie au #no sgrub/sburb #SOYdoesWRITING #Phantom Limb

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bellarkefanfiction · 7 years ago

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Lina got the chance to catch up with @ticogirls author of I Think You're Cute, Between the Lines, what a delicate heart, what a hard head and many more on ao3.

BFF: Tell us about yourself!

Mel: I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who starts sweating whenever they get this kinda question but here goes: I’m Mel and despite what my Twitter handle says, that’s not short for “Mellamy” lmao. I’ve been on Tumblr for close to eight years now (I just got a small stroke from saying that), I watch a fuckton of TV and movies (I mean. Who doesn’t, right?), and I’m also a proud BoC (Bisexual of Colour).

BFF: When did you start shipping Bellarke?

Mel: The first place I saw Bellarke was, I think like many of the fandom, on my Tumblr dashboard. During the post-S1 hiatus, one of my favourite gif-makers (she’s changed her URL and gone on several hiatuses so I genuinely don’t know where to find her anymore) was posting a bunch of gifsets of them. Again, like many of the fandom, from the gifs and screencaps of S1 alone, I basically assumed Bellarke was already a canon couple and decided “ooh, they cute. Lemme watch this show for that Good TV Romance™”. (Once more, like many of the fandom, I got a Rude Awakening when I started watching the show because it turned out to be So Much Worse… but also So Much Better.)

As for when I started really shipping Bellarke in the actual show, I think a lot of people fell in 1x02 (Bellamy saving Clarke from the grounder pit) or 1x03 (Clarke relieving him of the burden of mercy killing Atom). While those were both huge steps for me in terms of perceiving their relationship, I don’t think I really fell for this ship as a potential romance until 1x04, ‘Murphy’s Law’. The Charlotte/Murphy conflict peeled back the layers on both Bellamy and Clarke: his posturing and bravado was melted away in front of the delinquents, and all of her cool logic and reasoning was temporarily suspended. That, for me, was the first episode that really showed that despite all their oil/vinegar clashes throughout the show, at their very deepest core, Bellamy and Clarke were always going to be unified by the same goal — to protect their people.

BFF: How long have you been writing fanfiction?

Mel: I used to write (bad) fanfiction for some older fandoms, back when Wattpad and AO3 weren’t even conceived yet and all we had was FanFiction.Net and LiveJournal. Shit, I was really out here when ‘My Immortal’ was still being updated, lmaooo. I stopped for several years for a multitude of reasons — overstuffed schedule, physical exhaustion, a bunch of big life transitions, mental health issues etc. Bellarke was THE ship that restarted my fic-writing engine in 2015, and I think because of that, I’m always gonna have that Soft Spot for them.

BFF: Are you a part of any other fandoms?

Mel: Aside from The 100, I’m a huuuuuuge Star Wars hoe. Original trilogy, prequels, Rogue One, current series — I love them all. I’m genuinely nervous about Disney’s future plans for reviving this franchise but having quite literally grown up on this stuff, I just don’t think it’s ever going to be possible for me to walk away from this franchise, no matter how Messy it gets (and I’ve a feeling it will!).

I’m also really big on the MCU (currently obsessed with Thorkyrie) and From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series, which I have no shame admitting is the guiltiest of guilty pleasures.

BFF: Are there any writers that you’ve drawn inspiration from?

Mel: I’m going old-school here, but I’ve always been enamoured by Douglas Adams (author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series) and K. A. Applegate (Animorphs series). It’s not so much about their kickass creativity with plot or characters, but more of the rhythm and pacing of their writing. They’ve each got a great way of balancing story and characterisation, all underscored and punctuated with these unique comedic inflections and beats.

BFF: Do you have favourite side-pairings or characters you also enjoy including?

Mel: I love writing Minty and, I’m not gonna lie, it’s mostly as a fuck-you to the writers for refusing to acknowledge Monty Green’s Gayness™. Memori have got a really fun dynamic to write too, and I still include a lot of Jasper/Maya in my fics because they deserve to be happy and in love forever. As for solo characters, Raven is hands down my favourite to voice, mostly because I feel like I can 100% relate with whatever’s going through her head in any given situation.

BFF: What are your favourite tropes to write?

Mel: Oh LORDT, do you got a full hour???

Lmao okay but real talk, I absolutely love writing Enemies to Friends to Lovers. I prefer Modern AU’s, simply because I like the concept of breaking our fave characters out from the grimdark world of The 100, to see how their relationships and attitudes could possibly evolve if they were allowed to care about dumb stuff like TV shows and public transport instead of just whether they manage to live or die. I am also a die-hard fan of the Roommates trope, simply because it’s the most convenient fic-writing device for ensuring that your ship will always have some reason to share the same space alone together with some regularity.

BFF: What do you predict will happen in season 5? Especially for our favourite duo?

Mel: So this is basically just “do you think Bellarke will become canon in S5”, right? (lmaodskjfhks) Well I hate to sound like I’m pushing a fatalistic attitude towards S5, but honestly, I don’t see Bellarke becoming canon in S5. After all, they’ve got a lot of ground to cover once they reunite on the ground. Six years is a heck of a long time, especially when one of them fully thought the other was dead. (It’s hard for us as fandom to grasp because we have been shown that Clarke’s fully alive and well, but we gotta remember, death is a separation of utmost finality. It’s not just like thinking someone’s away or missing.)

I do, however, think it’s feasible to expect some kind of recognition/acknowledgement of explicitly romantic feelings on either one or both their parts.

BFF: Do you have any plans for other fics you’d like to write, if so could you spoil or tease us?

Mel: Oh boy, do I ever. Full disclosure, I’m currently working on about 6 or 7 fics for Bellarke alone, but they’re setting up to hit at least 8k in length each so they’re definitely not going to be ready for publication anytime soon.

I do have one that I’m planning to post as a multichap, which means I won’t have to wait until it’s fully completed. I don’t want to give away too much, but it’s based on a French romcom titled Blind Date (Un peu, beaucoup, aveuglément). It’s basically a neighbours / enemies to friends to lovers AU, and I’m really excited for y’all to read it!

BFF: What advice would you give novice writers?

Mel: I answered this question a good while ago in this post here with a few major points, but I think the most important one is this:

You are your best competition. I know it’s a lot easier said than done, but this is seriously the most important thing for me as a writer: DON’T COMPARE YOURSELF WITH OTHERS. It never makes anyone feel better (especially if you’re, say, writing fic for a big fandom with a lot of existing content). Honestly, it doesn’t even make sense when you think about how every writer is different and has their own unique style.

Be your own harshest critic, but also your biggest cheerleader. Write for you, to express yourself. That way, whatever you write/publish, at the end of the day, you feel good about it.

#ticogirls #bellarke fanfiction #features #author interview #by lina

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firedragonx · 7 years ago

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Halloween Fanfiction recommend

Time for another fanfiction recs list again. And what better way to do one about horror/dark fanfiction for the season. After looking through my favorite and fanfiction that scares me so much that I actually couldn't finish because I was so scared. Without any father delay let's get started. The Seven Hunters by The-Amazing-Rhombus I talk about this fanfiction before and you saw me draw fanart of it so I keep this short. Anyhow this focus on the Gang of Seven from the Land Before time tv show. Anyhow the story kicks when The Stone of Cold Fire (meteor) land in the Great Valley. They all decide to make a wish on the Stone of Cold Fire to have the power to defect Red Claw who was planning to destroy the Valley. At first, nothing happens but when they had a very weird dream they wake up to find out they're all fastbiter(raptors). As you can see this is where the horror show in because the characters are forced into a role of meat eaters and killers, that they have killed off some of their old kind in order to survive. And the fact that they are kids and there's a war going on makes this fanfic shine in the horror way. Give it a read a check it out. Link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9990125/1/The-Seven-Hunters Hard Reset by Eakin How to make time travel work is always a bit of challenge in most media, even fanfiction. But Hard Reset manages to make it work so well, in the actionly horror light. This fanfiction stars Twilight in another changeling attack while she was in Canterlot. But she fails and dies in the process. Only to wake up before the changeling attack. As you can see this is time loop fanfic but unlike a lot of them this deal PTSD and suicidal thoughts. Really plays these themes really well. Check it out if you have time. Link: https://www.fimfiction.net/story/67362/hard-reset Freddy Fazbearland by Bat13SJx This is an Au of the Five Nights at Freddy's games where instead of taking place in a restaurant the setting is an amusement park. And instead of night guards as the main characters, is a bunch of kids. Now you can see the horror here. As a kid alone with a bunch of killing robots in an amusement park? Horrible. And the writing really shows the fear because as running away in fear, you feel every emotion these kids are going through. And the fact that one of the kids have a history of the park is playing out really well. The ending was bad and the grammar and spelling are not the best. But it's a good read. Check it out if you dare. Link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11053050/1/Freddy-Fazbearland Truth Be Told by Obabscribbler This fanfic plays more to the mystery but there still some horror elements here and there. Yep, this is a story about fearing the unknown kind of horror as Pinkie wake up one day with these weird lumps on her back. From there, things take a turn for the worse but no one is written out of character. Plus you always on the edge of your sent on where this is all going. There are clues so you do need to pay attention to what the characters are saying. Check it out and think for yourself. Link: https://www.fimfiction.net/story/142509/truth-be-told Rainbow Factory by AuroraDawn Ok in case someone doesn't know about Rainbow Factory here's the short version. Here Scottaloo takes the flight exam with her classmates, where you because of a full member of the flock and becomes a true pegasus. If you fail this test then you are kicked out of the flack and have to move out of Equestria. Scootaloo and her friend Orion look like they're going to make it until a pegasus name Aurora fail her flight exam and everything went downhill. Now there are problems with this fanfic and I won't talk about them until I do a review on this fanfic. But it does one thing right and it's horror and fear of being hurt by a loved one. So that's a bouse. And it was one of the first grimdark stories that inspired grimdark we know and love today in the mlp fandom. So I say give a read and think for yourself. Link: https://www.fimfiction.net/story/5381/rainbow-factory Dreams and Reality by illunaria Illunaria gives us a Gravity Falls fanfic that is disturbing. Mabel is back in Gravity Falls and Dipper is in college. Bill is also back and he has a new plan as well as an interesting in Mabel. This took the whole if a villain loves you then hates kind of fear. No character is written out of character and it used the mature to its advance. Nothing graphic but it's disturbing to say the less. Check it out for yourselves. Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4742657 Cheerilee's Garden by Unahim Hey, kids what worse than murder? Children murder with Saw-like traps. That's Cheeilee's Garden in the nutshell. At less the first part. What makes different than all the other Saw-like fanfiction is that we see the mental breakdown of our main characters and the victims. It's a good read if can stomach it. Give a look and see for yourself. Link: https://www.fimfiction.net/story/1766/cheerilees-garden The Shrouded Path by Arcawolf This is a Silent Hill crossover with Kingdom Hearts. What more can be said? Ok, there is a lot more than be said. Like the fact blends both fandoms just right, that it doesn't feel too out of place. Or that fact the characters in this fanfic were used well and reactions to the horror of Silent Hill is really good. That there is a sequel that better and has more horror. Then why don't you check out for yourself? Link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/8508559/1/The-Shrouded-Path Fallout Equestria: Murky Number Seven by @murkynumberseven This fanfic plays the fear of being a slave and how abuse can affect one's mind. Murky the main character is not strong and a lot of times he finds himself in trouble but unlike lots of characters like this Murky does do stuff and helps out in his own way. The side characters and villains are really good and thought out characters. This story is a very long on and leaves off on really good cliffhangers. But I think you would find it very enjoyable. Give a look a see for yourself. Link: https://www.fimfiction.net/story/47300/fallout-equestria---murky-number-seven Out of the Shadows by DarkHououmon Hey kids! Want a fanfic about your dinosaur from the Land Before to go into a war with body horror and mental breakdown? Well, that's the Out of the Shadows fanfic and it gives us with good horrors and feels. It needs that mature rated but unlike other fanfics that just used it because of gore, or they used curse words, or there are sexy bits in there. It uses because of the subject matter and how characters would react in real life. Well as graphics violence. If it sounds good to you then give it a read. Link https://www.fanfiction.net/s/2550278/1/Out-of-the-Shadows

#fanfiction #horror #fanfiction recommendations #halloween #land before time #gravity falls #kingdom hearts #Mlp #fallout equestria #five nights at freddy's #video games #tv show #crossover

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clonerightsagenda · 7 years ago

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So the tuesjade folks announced that today’s theme is hairdye, and although I mostly play spectator for this stuff (esp. since the prompts are more suited for art) I figured that was a sign from the heavens telling me to dust this thing off, even if she only thinks about dying her hair and so I won’t bother dropping it in the tag.

I promise this is the last time you’re going to get whacked by any ‘kat writes fic’ monstrosities for a while (besides, you know, the inescapable AU comic). I’m just cleaning out a bunch of stuff that’s been sitting around for ages.

The concept for this came from wondering if grimdark/grimbark mode left behind physical traces, which I could have taken in an angst direction, but I didn’t. A personal first? Incredible.

Sharing a bathroom with a crowded household is never easy, especially when some people take their time. Dirk is the worst – he once spent over an hour fixing his hair until Roxy pounded on the door and yelled “I gotta PISS, Strider!!” so loudly Jaspers tried to squeeze himself under your bed. Jade’s usually in and out – a quick hairbrushing makes up the bulk of her regimen – so when she shuts herself up in the bathroom for a while, you check on her.

There’s no lock on the door – everyone decided that was for the best – so you knock and then walk in when she doesn’t tell you not to. (You would even if she did, except then you might have hurried.)

“Hi, Rose,” she says, not looking away from the mirror. You’re still getting used to the way she knows who’s entered a room by their scent or the feel of how space bends around them. It’s the kind of power you would use to annoy or unsettle people, but she’s matter-of-fact about it. “I’m trying to check something out, but I can’t see well. Will you look at my hair for me?”

Jade’s hair hasn’t grown back yet from the haircut Jack started and you finished. With the weight of its length gone, it has sprung into a looser version of the curls Jane no longer relaxes. You walk up behind her, wondering if she wants you to say she needs a trim. But when you’re closer, looking down on the top of her head as she leans against the counter, you see it.

“I think the color’s going-” she starts, and you finish.

“Gray.”

Jade blows a breath out from puffed cheeks, clouding the mirror. “Is that bad?”

“It happened to me.”

She straightens up, almost clipping you in the chin. “Really?”

“Not all over, just here and there. It wore off eventually, although I think I have a bit left.” You catch some of your hair and roll the strands between your fingers, looking for a gleam of silver. “It wasn’t as visible as it is for you.”

Jade gingerly touches the top of her head, where some of her roots are growing in pale. “Because of what happened to you with the horrorterrors?” You nod. “Channeling powers we weren’t prepared to on our own, I think, overstretching ourselves. It stayed even though I wasn’t in the same body anymore. I wouldn’t be surprised if Jane had some too.”

“Poor Jane.” Jade shakes her head. “At least I didn’t have a robot in my brain.”

“I wasn’t like either of you,” you say. “Nothing made me do anything wrong. But the power… they did give me that.” Everything seems so simple with power at your command. The distance between a problem and the solution is a straight line. You catch yourself that way still sometimes, your mind a straightedge, powering off in one direction as soon as you even think you’ve caught sight of your destination. When it had come time to rewrite the universe, you’d been tempted to make it your idea of perfect. The Light part of you wants to see reality labeled and pinned to a card, but it can’t live then. “You can get carried away.”

“Or get even.” Jade shrugs when you look at her. “That’s what it was for me. I’m not pretending it wasn’t.”

“The cliché is power corrupts. Do you think any of us would be able to resist the One Ring?”

Jade purses her lips. “In the story, the hobbits did best. Who’s shortest?”

“You think moral superiority lies within those closer to the ground?”

“Do you have a better theory?”

Someone knocks on the door, and both of you jump. “There’s more than one bathroom in the house, you know,” you call.

“This one’s closest,” John complains from the other side of the door. “Besides, I was checking to make sure everyone was still alive in there.”

Jade rolls her eyes. After six years, the two of them have finally learned to stop being so careful and talk to each other like normal siblings. Now, you think they enjoy their squabbles. “You’re too late. We’re dead.”

“Let me know if you need any help with that,” he says, and you hear him amble off.

“You could dye the gray parts,” you say, returning to the subject at hand – or at head. “Most of mine grew out in a few months. Or you could make it part of your “look”. Call it silver instead of gray – that sounds more Romantic, the kind with a capital R. Black and silver, night and starlight, that sort of thing.”

“Oh Rose,” she teases, “that’s almost poetic.”

“I try.”

“Have you ever thought about dying yours?” she asks. “It’s so light, it should take color well.”

“I thought about it a few times,” you admit, “but if I had my mother would’ve gotten me a junior beautician’s set before it dried. That’s what happened with the lipstick.” You’d worn black to shock her, but she’d taken it as an opportunity to try to bond and unloaded most of a Sephora counter on you, which you’d used to make a self-portrait entitled Masque of the Beauty Industry – Female Socialization into Self-Objectification. The juvenile games you played with your mother are embarrassing now. She’d been trying to make up for her excesses with more, and you responded to imagined slights by lashing out. You’d both acted like children, even if you thought you were so mature. “Do you think I’d look good with purple hair?”

Jade claps her hands together. “Let’s find out!”

A packet of Kool-Aid later, you’re dripping whorls of purple into the bathtub. Jade examines her fingers, where the dye has left her dark skin looking corpse gray. “Gross hands and zebra hair,” she says with a laugh. “I can be the bride of Frankenstein.”

“Frankenstein’s monster,” you correct, because it’s expected.

“All in all, I’d prefer to be the scientist.”

The dye has to sit overnight, so you seclude yourselves in Jade’s room. She guards the door from any unauthorized entry, shooing Kanaya away by telling her you’re preparing a surprise and whacking anyone who tries to phase through the wall with a pillow. Dave restrains himself to sending you 27 texts in a row before you turn your phone off. The two of you eat gummy worms by the fistful and look up silly animal videos. Jade has to drag you away from an argument in the Youtube comments section. She shows you pictures of dresses she likes, and you argue over which model is prettier. You feel like the child you could have been, if you’d ever dared to bring a friend home to spend the day or sleep over, if you’d ever let yourself relax into your youth instead of chasing your mother’s missing adulthood.

It’s nice.

The two of you fall asleep on the floor despite your sugar intake, and you wake up to see that you’ve left a purple stain on the carpet. “It’ll wash out,” Jade assures you. “We need to rinse your hair now.”

It looks terrible - a streaky mess of light and dark purple – but Jade guides you away from brooding in the mirror and shoves you into the shower. Then the color evens out. It’s a little darker than the lavender you would’ve preferred, but Kool-Aid dyes fade fast. You run your hands over it long enough that she asks, “Do you not like it?”

“What do you think everyone else will say?”

“That you look pretty.” That’s Jade, delivering all her assurances with conviction. Even though you know now some of them were feigned, she sounds sincere. “They’ll love it.”

“Have you decided what you’re going to do about yours?”

She touches her roots, where the gray is just starting to show. “I think I’ll leave it. I’ve covered up enough. Hopefully Jake won’t think I’m his grandma.”

“You’re a few wrinkles short.”

“Memory is funny sometimes. The littlest things throw me. He coughs just like my grandpa used to. I hear it and always have to turn around.” She tugs out one strand that’s gone completely gray, wraps it a few times around her finger, and ties it off. “A reminder,” she says. “Even if I don’t need them anymore.”

Jade has to coax you downstairs, but eventually you both walk down to the kitchen. Terezi, who against all prior behavior has chosen today to get up before noon, sniffs. “Does anyone smell anything different?” You make a slashing motion across your throat, (she sticks her tongue out), but the damage is done. Karkat nudges Dave, who looks up at you and chokes on his coffee. Kanaya’s eyebrows rise, and words line up on your tongue. It’s childish. A joke. It’ll wash right out.

“I think it suits you,” she says.

“Forget Rose,” Roxy says. “Who’ll turn my hair pink for me?”

“My hands are already ruined,” Jade says, holding them up.

Roxy high-fives her, to her surprise. “Perfect. But I want a turn at the exclusive sleepover times. Except with 100% more science. I’m talking bubbly rainbow shit in beakers, the whole shebang.”

“Am I on the ban list for this round?” you ask. If there’s one thing you can count on Roxy for, it’s lightening the mood. “I may not be part of the scientific community, but I can be present to scoff at mankind’s fumbling attempts to comprehend the mysteries of the universe.”

“That’s why you have to leave those kinds of probing questions into the fabric of reality to womankind. You can stay if…” Roxy pauses for dramatic effect. “You let me do your nails.”

“Roxy, do you know how to do anyone’s nails?” Jane demands from across the table.

“I’m a fast learner. Or… you could hold a workshop.” She waggles her unmanicured fingers at her. “Wanna volunteer?”

“I’d love to see how it’s done,” Calliope chimes in.

Kanaya raises her hand. “I’d like to be included in this, whatever it is.”

“Massive all-girls sleepover, that’s what it is. Or what it’s turning into. You can’t come,” Roxy adds to Dirk, who looks like he’s trying to decide whether to be disappointed or not.

The table dissolves into chatter, and you shake your head. “The last time I even heard the word sleepover, I must have been eleven. It always seemed like kid stuff.”

“I know,” Roxy says, and raises her hand to high-five you too. You meet her hand with a decisive clap. “Isn’t it great?”

#(roxy caves on the gender barrier and paints everyone's nails)#kat writes fic #tlcverse #my theme is not optimized for this lmao #this actually jives with their next convo which is...#in like four updates i think #re: trying to be an adult when you're a kid and stuff

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corellian-smuggler · 8 years ago

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Here’s the thing about the new canon.

Essentially they want us to watch the Original Trilogy, completely invested in the fact that our heroes will triumph, and then they want us to watch The Force Awakens and just be totally OK with the fact that everything we were just presented with over the course of three films is out the window.

They want Star Wars fans to spend several hours watching Han and Leia’s love story, watching them fight for each other, overcome personal obstacles to be together, make incredible sacrifices for each other--they want us to spend ESB and ROTJ rooting for them, want us to watch Han hold her close as they both smile at the end of the trilogy, want us to be happy and hopeful and thrilled that their true love has made it through--and then they want us to watch TFA and see that their marriage failed, and they want us to accept it.

They want us to get invested in our heroes--in Han and Luke and Leia--and desperately hope that they all make it through. They want us to be invested in their personal allegiances to one another to the point that we KNOW that Han will come back at the battle of Yavin for Luke and Leia, we KNOW that he’ll go out into freezing conditions to rescue Luke, we KNOW that he’ll run into Echo Base to rescue Leia on Hoth, we KNOW that Luke will ignore his Jedi Masters and abandon his training to go rescue Leia and Han on Bespin, we KNOW that Leia will risk her safety to go back for Luke at Cloud City, we KNOW that Luke and Leia will leave the rebellion and put themselves at risk to rescue Han, WE KNOW WE KNOW WE KNOW. The new canon wants us to sit there KNOWING ALL THESE THINGS, knowing that they are the most important damn things in the galaxy to one another, knowing that they’re family and that they love each other. They want us to know it and be invested in it and root for it--root for the strength of that bond and that loyalty and root for them all to make it through together--for all of them to triumph together. And they do!

And then TFA wants us to COMPLETELY CHANGE OUR MINDS and accept that all of that is destroyed. That bond is broken. Luke has abandoned his friends for some reason. Han has left Leia. Leia is all alone. And not only has that crucial bond just been cast aside, but their triumphs have all been undone. Empire defeated?? Welcome to Empire 2.0!!! Death Stars destroyed??? Welcome to Death Star 3.0!!!! Vader redeemed???? Welcome to Vader 2.0, and even worse, he’s your own damn son/nephew AND he kills Han!!!!!! It just takes their victory and deconstructs every single piece of it, and the only possible way that that maybe could have been tolerable would have been if AT LEAST they were still together, still true to the loyalty we knew, unstoppable and united no matter what new dangers they face, and they’re NOT. The Original Trio, the most beloved and iconic characters of all time, are just completely leveled to NOTHING. Fractured and broken up and reduced to these miserable un-versions of themselves. And the new canon wants you, as a Star Wars fan to accept this, because “Don’t worry!! We have these three shiny NEW heroes for you!!!! They’ll get a happy ending for sure!!!!” But??? What??? I don’t give a shit about their ending, what about the ending we were already supposed to have had???? The one you made me hope for for three damn movies??? The one I was lead to believe was true???? What about that ending??????

No, they decided that they were going to go back thirty years after the fact and change it.

But wait, you say, how did this happen??? How could these people at Lucasfilm who were claiming to “protect” Star Wars destroy Luke and Leia and Han like that?? How could they write a Han Solo who abandons Leia to do all the fighting all alone when there’s a fascist regime routinely trying to kill her and their son is a part of it and her brother has vanished without a trace??? How could they write a Luke who’s evidently turned his back on the galaxy--on the FAMILY--that needs him??? How could they have DESTROYED LEIA’S WHOLE LIFE????? ALL of their lives???? And for seemingly no reason!!!! They could have easily written a movie to introduce the new characters and create conflict without dismantling every single thing about our beloved trio and their dynamic. But they didn’t. They slaughtered them.

And then you listen to these people speak. And they start saying things like Leia clearly could never have been an attentive mother because she was too preoccupied with politics and her career. Han could never have been happy settling down and committing to something--not even his family--so OBVIOUSLY he left and he’s smuggling again. Han and Leia were too incompatible and could never have worked. Luke is off in EXILE because AREN’T ALL JEDI MASTERS SUPPOSED TO BE IN EXILE???????????

And you’re just. You’re floored. You’re blown away. It’s like those people didn’t even fucking WATCH Star Wars. Did they completely miss the fact that Leia’s character arc is about learning to care about things that aren’t the rebellion, and learning to rely on people--not just herself???? Did they not see how much she’s already lost--LITERALLY HER ENTIRE WORLD--and how much she had to suffer before she finally got something that was hers again? Did they not see the hell she had to go through to get it???? Did they really think she would throw that away after all that--did they think that LEIA of all people couldn’t have balanced a career and a family????

Were they just twiddling their thumbs when HAN SOLO’S ENTIRE FREAKING STORY IS ABOUT REALIZING THAT HE’S NOT A SMUGGLER, NOT SELFISH, NOT THAT MAN ANYMORE--MAYBE NEVER REALLY WAS THAT MAN. LEARNING TO COMMIT--TO STAY WITH LEIA AND LUKE AND THE REBELS AND SACRIFICE HIMSELF IF NEED BE????? HIS ENTIRE GROWTH AS A CHARACTER WAS AWAY FROM SELFISHNESS AND FLIGHTINESS. HE BECAME A STEADFAST, BRAVE, DEPENDABLE MAN COMMITTED TO HIS FRIENDS AND HIS LOVE AND THE CAUSE. HOW DID THEY WATCH THOSE FILMS AND SAY “WELL HAN COULD NEVER SETTLE DOWN.”!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Did they not notice that Luke’s DEFINING characteristic throughout the original trilogy is his loyalty to his loved ones??? His utter refusal to let harm come to them--to give up on them?? His refusal to abandon them???? And then they want us to believe that he... abandoned them?????

So essentially the thing about the new canon is that people who don’t understand Star Wars are suddenly in charge of Star Wars, and they go back and ignore the characterization of three entire films and present us with material that is entirely contradictory of the original trilogy, and then they don’t understand why people have reacted negatively.

And then of course you get fans screaming about how it’s REALISTIC this way.

When the fuck did you get the idea that Star Wars is supposed to be realistic??????? Star Wars is NOT about realism. It’s a Space Fairytale. An epic saga. It’s not supposed to be Game of Thrones grimdark jam in the tragedy. It was never like that for forty years. It was never presented that way. George Lucas was ADAMANT in making this point. And that’s why it resonated with so many people--that’s why it was such a success. Because it was uplifting. It was inspiring. It touched that part of our hearts where those fairytales live--where it’s possible for our heroes to go up against the forces of evil and WIN and have a happy ending. That’s why they gave Luke and Leia and Han the happy fucking ending!!!!

And the thing with the new canon is that they don’t care. They don’t care about “protecting Star Wars.” They don’t care about what Star Wars stands for. They don’t care about what George Lucas created. They care about money. They don’t want you to be invested in Han and Luke and Leia anymore. They want you to care about Finn and Rey and Poe, and apparently no one at Lucasfilm understood that they didn’t have to destroy the old characters to get people to like the new ones.

And for the record, just because the people delivering this truly appalling “new canon” horrorshow AU are Disney and Lucasfilm does NOT mean that I have to accept it all as true. They don’t understand Star Wars, they don’t care about it, they’re not its original creator, and I don’t have to accept a single thing they say.

That’s the thing about the new canon.

#YOU GUYS GOT ME RILED UP #why am I still doing this #I'm so bitter still #sw negativity #anti tfa

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captainsongstress-blog · 8 years ago

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Chocolate Box 2017

Hi! Welcome into my little world. I will love whatever you write or draw for me. :)

General pointers about my taste and some things that are bulletproof likes:

Pointers:

I am a fluff person, not a grimdark person. Homophobia, sexism, racism, etc., are not things I enjoy.

I like porn, and I like handholding and shy kisses, and I like friendly shenanigans and banter. Any and all ratings are great. PWP is not really my thing, though.

Casual, organic worldbuilding is really fun. For example, I’d love to know what date night options are available for couples on a Resistance base, or how Padmé deals with the bureaucracy of being a Senator, or the idiosyncrasies of the Millennium Falcon that Leia slowly learns to navigate.

Bulletproof likes:

Friendship, found family, leisurely kisses, secretly holding hands, sex in semi-public places (but not actually being caught or having someone watching, sorry, I’m finicky), very different personalities appreciating each other and becoming friends, flyboys and flygirls being hotshots, bridging upbringings/countries/planets/etc., sarcastic banter (if in character for that character), awesome hair and hairstyles, cross-generational bonding, stolen peaceful moments in the midst of war, relationships that are full of laughter.

General Note 1: I am not a fan of Kylo Ren, any ships involving Kylo Ren, any heavy angst involving Kylo Ren, or fics set during the period in which he turned. Obviously fic involving Leia or Han can totally mention him, but dwelling on him wouldn’t be great for me. (Baby/toddler/kid Ben Solo is fine.)

General Note 2 – feel free to mix and match ideas and pairings between sections, if they fit your story/artwork. If you want to write a fic in which Chewbacca holes up in the cockpit playing loud Wookie death metal to drown out the sounds of Han & Leia boning all over the rest of the Falcon, and then cut to twenty years later when he comforts Leia after the events on Starkiller Base, go for it. Or a sketch of Rey/Jessika and Poe/Finn on a double date. Etc.

Specifics after the cut.

Fandom sections:

i. Star Wars Prequel Trilogy

Breha Organa & Leia Organa Bail Organa & Leia Organa

Breha, Bail, or both, on the day Leia enters their lives.

Raising Leia and hiding her in plain sight.

What it means to raise Darth Vader’s daughter.

Teaching Leia the things she needs to know, both for now (to keep her safe) and for later (when she takes up her heritage).

The day that Leia demands to be part of the rebellion.

How much of Leia is nature (Padmé and Anakin) and how much is nurture (Breha & Bail)?

Breha Organa & Padmé Amidala Padmé Amidala & Obi-Wan Kenobi Padmé Amidala/Obi-Wan Kenobi

Bail was Padmé’s closest ally in the Senate, but Breha was her friend.

After Padmé is gone and Breha is raising Leia, Breha can sometimes see her departed friend so strongly in the way Leia holds her head, or the way Leia demands justice for small childhood wrongs.

Padmé and Obi-Wan have such chemistry in the movies. Whether you go with friendship or romance, tell me more!

During the clandestine marriage, Padmé struggles with the necessity of deceiving Obi-Wan.

It’s Obi-Wan and Padmé who fall in love, not Anakin and Padmé. How does this change the course of the galaxy?

Padmé survives, and she, Obi-Wan, and the twins go on the run together.

Padmé Amidala & Leia Organa & Luke Skywalker

Padmé survives and goes on the run with the twins.

Padmé survives and goes into hiding with one of the twins, separating the twins to keep them safer, and much later is reunited with the twin she gave up.

Obi-Wan shows up in the Force Afterlife and tells Padmé about Luke and his life on Tatooine. Later he brings her news as his Force ghost goes traipsing around during the Original Trilogy.

ii. Rogue One - A Star Wars Story

Bail Organa & Leia Organa

It’s time at last for Bail to bring Leia out of hiding. He’s not just sending Obi-Wan the plans - he’s sending Obi-Wan Leia.

Saying goodbye to Leia before going to Alderaan, knowing that the next time he sees her she’ll be on the way to becoming a Jedi, and she won’t ever be quite the same woman again.

Seeing Padmé in Leia more strongly with every passing year.

Bringing up a young firebrand and being so proud of her; sparing her what hardship and darkness he can, while knowing that he can’t spare her forever.

Jyn Erso/Leia Organa Jyn Erso & Leia Organa Jyn Erso/Luke Skywalker

The “Jyn meets the twins” ships! Setting it either before the events of Rogue One (a chance meeting while Jyn was on her own after leaving Saw, perhaps?), during the events of Rogue One (while Jyn’s on the rebel base), or afterwards (an AU in which Jyn lives) are all great.

Leia’s an 18-year-old Senator in a galaxy falling more to shreds with every passing year. She meets another young woman somewhere (Coruscant? A fact-finding mission on some planet? Whatever you like), and chats with her/flirts with her/falls into bed with her.

With the Rebellion starting up in earnest, it’s ‘live for today’. Leia kisses Jyn in the hours leading up to the departure of Rogue One, just to establish a human connection and ground all the sick adrenaline racing through her veins. K-2SO observes and does not approve.

After relaying the plans, Jyn is captured by the Empire and taken off-planet before it’s blown up. Later she’s thrown in the same prison block as Leia and rescued at the same time. Cue any of these three relationships while New Hope happenings are happenin’.

Cassian Andor & K-2SO Jyn Erso & K-2SO Jyn Erso/Bodhi Rook Chirrut Îmwe/Baze Malbus

a) I’m equally a fan of the real ending and of AUs where some or all of them live. b) I do not ship Bodhi/Galen, sorry, so please no implication of that. (I read Bodhi more along the lines of Galen’s surrogate son.)

I love Cassian and Jyn’s relationships with K-2SO and am very interested in fic or drawings involving either pair. (Or all three of them.)

Jyn and Bodhi are both exceptionally pretty and I am very shallow and would enjoy stress-relief ‘we’re gonna die’ kisses/sex.

Jyn and Bodhi become an item after the events of Rogue One (obviously a they-live!AU).

Chirrut and Baze are awesome and I would love any romance fic about them. What were their adventures like before the events of Rogue One?

iii. Star Wars Original Trilogy

Leia Organa/Han Solo

Interstitial adventures.

Alllll the banter.

Post-RotJ happiness and adventures and laughter.

Quiet moments when nothing needs to be said.

They have amazing sex, all the time and everywhere. They nearly get caught many times, but somehow they never quite do.

Luke Skywalker/Han Solo

AU in which Han and Luke are the ones to fall in love instead of Han & Leia. What changes?

Luke plays peacemaker between his boyfriend and his sister, because Han & Leia may not be together, but they still spar all the time.

Han coming back to save Luke’s ass in A New Hope because he can’t quite bear to have Luke blown to smithereens.

Han getting teased by old hardened smuggler buddies about his wide-eyed quiet boyfriend, only for Luke to surprise them a bit.

Lando Calrissian/Han Solo

Smugglers who keep running into each other on different worlds, and falling into bed on a kinda regular basis.

What is Chewie’s POV on this?

When the Milennium Falcon’s a-rockin’, don’t come a-knockin’.

Lando makes it up to Han for betraying him to Vader.

Han makes it up to Lando for stealing the Falcon.

I’m also interested in a threesome with Leia involved if you like! Or Luke, for that matter, but I think Lando was more interested in Leia. ;)

iv. Star Wars Episode VIII: The Force Awakens

Finn & Chewbacca Rey & Chewbacca

Chewbacca bonding with Finn or Rey (or both), either during the movie or afterwards. (Particularly Rey if ‘afterwards’.)

Chewbacca and Rey becoming best buddies in an alternate universe in which she does get to cruise around the galaxy as a Falcon crewmember. Han says they’re ganging up on him.

Chewbacca comforting Rey after Han’s death.

Leia Organa & Rey Finn & Leia Organa

Leia bonding with Finn or Rey (or both), either during the movie or afterwards.

Leia telling Rey what she can about the Force, answering questions about Rey’s powers, etc. (Without a Kylo Ren focus, please.)

Leia telling Rey about Luke and what she can expect from him. Humor is great.

Finn’s heard Imperial stories about Leia. She’s a legend to him. Getting to know a legend is daunting!

Finn & Rey

Finn and Rey, best friends for life.

Finn and Rey have adventures.

Finn gets to come with Chewie once to visit Rey during her training.

Rey and Luke arrive at the Resistance base and the first person she wants to go see is Finn. They share all the stories about what’s been happening to them.

Finn & Rey & Poe Dameron

More of the above! I am totally here for platonic bromances and found family and all the awesome space adventures.

Finn/Rey Jessika Pava/Rey Poe Dameron/Finn & Jessika Pava/Rey Poe Dameron/Finn/Rey

The ships! Tell me a story or draw me a picture of finding love during a time of war.

Having sex in a X-wing doesn’t sound like a good idea but you know Poe’s done it.

Porny threesome fic is always a great choice. Especially if it’s funny as well as hot.

One of them is a matchmaker.

Everybody sleeps with everybody on the Resistance base, because hey, it’s wartime and you’re only young once and you might die tomorrow.

Alternate additional option to the last prompt: and sometimes people catch feelings for each other. :)

Leia Organa/Han Solo Poe Dameron/Leia Organa Poe Dameron/Leia Organa/Han Solo

Please no dubcon power-dynamics with Poe; I love these pairings only when Poe is 100% on board (and not in Leia’s direct line of command).

Leia misses Han, whether during the AWOL years or after Starkiller Base.

Leia and Han meet during the AWOL years.

Please tell me there’s a missing ‘reunited’ scene in Force Awakens.

Han is gone for years at a time. Leia’s never been someone to pine away forlornly. And she’s always had a weak spot for flyboys...

After a long day fighting with the Republic for more funding and worrying over intelligence reports, it’s pretty great to come back to her quarters and lay it all aside. Poe gives great massages.

Poe sings in the shower, hums while he’s making breakfast, and traces poetry on her skin. Leia’s not sure if she likes it or not, but she’s coming around.

Han, Leia, and Poe all in bed together would definitely blow my mind a bit with the sheer hotness level. Anything would be fantastic; one particular image that sticks in my head is Han fucking Poe while Poe goes down on Leia.

v. Star Wars RPF

Carrie Fisher/Mark Hamill Carrie Fisher & Mark Hamill

I read The Princess Diarist, and during her difficult fling with Harrison (in which she was constantly insecure, he never talked to her or seemed to like her very much except one time that she did an impression of him, and she was so young and inexperienced), Carrie explicitly told her diary at one point something along the lines of “why couldn’t it have been Mark?!” So of course I thought - what if it HAD been Mark? I bet that relationship would have worked much better, because Mark seems like a total sweetheart.

Alternatively, Carrie & Mark’s friendship over the years.

Carrie Fisher & Daisy Ridley Harrison Ford/Oscar Isaac Mark Hamill & Daisy Ridley Mark Hamill/Oscar Isaac

Carrie giving Daisy advice about entering the Star Wars universe. Canonically the only advice I’ve heard is that she told her to fight for her haircut and her outfit more generally (e.g. no buns or metal bikinis).

Mark and Daisy bonding during filming and developing a father-daughter or older brother-younger sister type of relationship. (I love that picture of her carrying him on her back like he carried Yoda!)

Oscar and either of his older counterparts have a torrid one-night stand. This is a very shallow request, I admit it. It’d be super hot either way but especially hot if Oscar was topping, for some reason. IDK. (I am not good at giving porny prompts. I get all blushy, lmao.)

John Boyega & Oscar Isaac & Daisy Ridley John Boyega/Oscar Isaac John Boyega/Daisy Ridley

The new trio bonding! Becoming friends during filming and marketing and watching the whole world going apeshit over you.

John Boyega falling in love with either one of his costars. <3 Romance or porn are both great. (Or both.)

Felicity Jones/Daisy Ridley Oscar Isaac/Diego Luna Riz Ahmed/Oscar Isaac

Crossover pairings! Romance, porn, or a combo are all great.

Oscar Isaac is in a lot of these pairings, I’m noticing now. But he is really hot. Sob.

Also, this is of course totally totally optional but I just saw the Golden Globes and damn damn damn I’ve fallen in love with Oscar Isaac/Gael García Bernal, soooo if that appealed to you and you felt like writing them, be my guest.

Riz Ahmed/Diego Luna Riz Ahmed/Diego Luna/Alan Tudyk

And finally, the Rogue One pairings! Whether you go with just Riz & Diego or with the full threesome, I think it’d be really hot. :) You could also go Riz/Diego & Alan if that dynamic appeals to you than Riz/Diego/Alan.

#chocolate box

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