#i've HAD the eucatastrophe

[sometimes-love-is-enough]

Eucatastrophe: The Deleted Songs

A discussion about old theories for Deceit's name prompted me to go and find the original version of the Snake Name song from Eucatastrophe (which is essentially the same as the final version, just with 'Janus' in place of one of the other names). And while I was in the lyrics document, I stumbled across a few other interesting snippets that didn't make it into the final version. (I'm very forgetful, and this was like three years ago, so I honestly didn't remember any of this stuff.)

In vague chronological order, here we go:

The Snake Name Song (Sname Song) - I just would like to note that I apparently noted that it should be sung 'to a downright mischievous and jaunty tune, directed right at your most deceitful companion'. I think that's fun.

The DWIT Ballad - Close to the end of Chapter Five, Octavian starts to sing a ballad he's writing, loosely based on what the Sides have told him about their entire deal. You only get one verse in the actual fic, but the original intention was for it to be a full song, a ballad-ified version of the events of Dealing With Intrusive Thoughts. I got four verses in, realized that I couldn't make it interesting and I didn't like how it flowed, and gave up on it. Here's all I had.

Mr Sanders had six Sides who wouldn't let him sleep He'd been up to almost midnight, eyes shut tight and counting sheep At half past twelve he sat up - rubbed his eyes and shook his head "That's it! I'm done! - exhausted! What is wrong with you?!" -  he said -

"If there's a problem or dilemma keeping me from rest, Sharing and resolving it is really for the best! I've been lying here for hours, I've been tossing to and fro So tell me what you're stressed about -  speak one by one, let's go!"

Said one, "your late-night thoughts, my friend, they really are obscene! They're cruel. They're gruesome. They're intense. And more than that, they're - mean! I think there's something wrong with us - my morals are askew Thinking frightful thoughts like this just simply will not do!"

The next had agitation strong enough to last all night - "There's monsters in the dark and I can barely sleep from fright! Your friends obviously hate you; you forgot to lock your door, The only way that this can end is violent messy gore!"

I really liked the alliterative syncopation of the first line, which is why it ended up in the final version, despite it not really having a real reason to be there.

The Fae Banquet Duet - two major deleted bits from this. The first, a Remus verse beginning with 'my lover's dick is hard' - I didn't know where I was going with this, but it seemed Very Him. Secondly, Janus-as-Thomas was going to have an actual in-text verse instead of the narrative just mentioning him 'starting to mutter something of a melodic ostinato'. Two problem with that: one, it interrupts the narrative flow, two, it makes it really obvious it's actually Janus before the reveal.

You can still hear me singing it in the recorded version, though. It's in triplets, which I thought would be a nice counterpoint to Logan and the twins singing mostly straight quavers and semiquavers. Here's the lyrics.

Take my mask take my hand, all fade to memory I’m not a person and I am imagin’ry Smile and touch my cheek, hold my hand, now I see Every word that I speak turns into fallacy

I also had a whole chart set up for writing Logan's verse, because I wanted the rhythm and rhymes to be very precise. I mapped it all out syllable by syllable! I can still sing it perfectly to speed.

Janus's Riddle Song - original intention was for all the Sides to have or be featured in at least one musical number of their own. Jan's was going to be a riddle battle with the Two-Faced King, in the style of Riddles Wisely Expounded.

I'm pretty sure what I've got here is just straight-up stolen from a version of that ballad, and I was going to change it and make it more stylized later on (although I know the presence of 'falsehood' here means I at least changed it a bit) but I think this is all I have.

So what is greener than the grass? What is smoother than the glass? What is brighter than the light? What is darker than the night? What cuts deeper than an axe? What is softer than melting wax?

Envy’s greener than the grass Flattery’s smoother than the glass Truth is brighter than the light Falsehood darker than the night Regret cuts deeper than an axe But love is softer than melting wax.

The Tam Lin Filk - in the style of the original Tam Lin Ballad, this was going to be how Tomas Linus confessed his entire deal! Or part of it, anyway. Later, I considered shifting this bit to be in the epilogue, to be the Octavian^2's Epic World-Saving Ballad that everyone hears in the woods, but by then I was brushing up against the deadline and couldn't make my brain write the full thing. Three verses is all I got.

Be wary, Sides and Sources all With flowers in your lovely hair Who pass on through the woods this morn For I do wait and see you there

I watch you as you weave your crowns And watch your Thomas break the tree And watch him take the King’s bright fruit Without the leave of Him or me

A tithe to hell the King must pay He pays it every seventh year One human life - it’s only right That I, his friend, should volunteer.

Erlking's invocation - is the same rhythm and metre as Logan's verse in the ball song for, uh, obvious reasons. I had a chart for the rhythm and rhyme of it as well.

I also apparently wrote an actual invocation for it, in the style of the Mechanism's Red Signal. Why? Uh, I guess I really liked the Bifrost Incident at the time. (Still do. It's a banger album.)

Finally: at the very bottom of the lyrics document, there's a one-and-a-half verse filk of Macavity's song from Cats the musical. It does not fit anywhere within Eucatastrophe or anything else I've ever written, I can't remember writing it, I have NO IDEA WHAT IT IS DOING HERE. Here it is, verbatim!

Anxiety, Anxiety, there's no-one like Anxiety, There's never been a Side of such uneasy notoriety,  He always has a argument and hides behind his hair, Whenever things don't go to plan, Anxiety is there. 

Anxiety's the bane of us, we call him Genghis Khan For he's the master worrier that plans get wrecked upon . etc

I really should write another musical fic sometime.

[septembersghost]

I'm confused as to why ppl think things can't have a happy ending. brba did have a happy ending. walt dies but was going to die anyway. he died saving jesse and had it set up to give the money to his family. like how could there have been a happier ending?bob said a chance at a 2nd life and that teaser of after all this, a happy ending? I'm sorry, but why the hell not. if ppl are punished then why can't they have their one true love? pretty sure the lesson has been learned.

you're preaching to the choir tbh, i am always a proponent of an earned happy ending, and "happy" can have a lot of different definitions. i don't necessarily think we're owed that in any given story, but i do fiercely believe we deserve narratively satisfying endings. i've written about this many times, but when i've hated and been very hurt by endings, it's not because they're tragic, it's because they're not satisfying and don't feel right for the stories' and characters' conclusions. tragedy can be beautiful and affecting and important, but it has to mean something, not be a last minute sadistic swerve to shock and hurt your audience. i probably have tons of posts about this, but i'm going to link these: 1, 2, 3 because they all very much speak to this idea.

i was just talking to @kendalroys about the ending of breaking bad - i think it's almost underappreciated now how much humanity and even hope is in that ending, after the oppressive darkness of the rest of the story. (granite state is, to me, by far the bleakest episode of the whole show, and felina is the denouement rising out of it again.) there could've been FAR more upsetting endings, but they didn't do that. like you said, walt manages to get his money to the schwartzes, he sees skyler and is able to give her some measure of closure, along with the coordinates to find hank and gomez's burial site (which is very sad, but better than leaving them unknown out there), he sees holly one last time, and flynn from afar (say what you will about walt, i never doubt he does love his children), and then he heads off to the nazi compound with his m60 in the trunk. he realizes jesse - his partner, his victim, his surrogate family, the person to whom he's most closely connected throughout the narrative - is a captive, and rescues him as he takes all of the nazis out (and they are so evil that we are geared to root for their deaths). his plan works. he dies entirely on his own terms (he's dying already, but wasting away from the cancer in jail would definitely have been a worse ending from walt's point of view), shot by his own weapon, standing in the lab amongst the chemistry that he put above everything. even after all he did and the depths he sunk to, there's still a shred of the person he was in his final actions. it's an oddly triumphant ending for him. jesse speeds away screaming into the night, and the coda of el camino resolves that fully, lets us know he escapes quietly into the light, with a long road of recovery doubtless ahead of him, but a feeling that he is going to find that.

the reason it's hailed as one of the best endings of any show is because it's narratively satisfying. it doesn't have to be nihilistic. it doesn't have to be punishing. it's a moving conclusion for its characters.

as a student of tolkien, i personally love/cling to his concept of the eucatastrophe - that moment when all hope seems lost, and then there is a turn of catharsis and joy. he meant it in the context of fantasy (as a genre), but it can be applied to fiction more broadly.

What made a good [story] not just enjoyable or aesthetically stimulating, but deeply moving? What did all good stories have in common? Eucatastrophe “is a sudden and miraculous grace [...] It does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophe, of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance; it denies… universal final defeat...giving a fleeting glimpse of joy...poignant as grief.

joy sometimes is seen as...lesser, or childish, or not as profound and mature as grief, and i just don't believe that or think it's a fair assessment. like i said in my other post earlier, hope can't exist without grief, the meaning of both functions together.

i'm wary about how much i say because i've been harassed about this (by another fandom entirely lol), and logically i KNOW bcs is very rooted in noir, and noir tends to be enigmatic in its conclusions at best, but bcs is also (i know i am a broken record here, but it's true!) a love story! that distinguishes it, that's something special about it. and it's part of this same universe they've built hand-in-hand with breaking bad and el camino, and i simply refuse to think that they're going to end bcs on a sadder or more desolate note for jimmy and kim, after everything we've been through with them, after how carefully they've layered their characters and their relationship all these years, than what happened to walt and jesse. i also don't think these writers are into relative moralism and teaching the audience some "lesson" and punishing us for loving morally complicated characters (which is, like, one of my LEAST favorite approaches from storytelling. don't build a story where i'm meant to feel empathy for complex people and then tell me i was wrong to feel it!).

if ppl are punished then why can't they have their one true love? pretty sure the lesson has been learned. right. they have been punished, they have suffered repercussions for their bad actions. i'd let them have each other and their love back if i could decide. <3

[this-is-quite-homoerotic]

Hi Elle, this is Daniela (Beleriandings/ultraviolet-eucatastrophe). Sorry for the anon ask but tumblr terminated my account for no reason. I gather the same happened to you a while ago, and you got it back. How did you do this? And how long did it take for you? I've tried submitting the tumblr support ticket on the "account terminated" page, but that was nearly two days ago and I've had no response, and I wonder if this is normal/expected? And if not, what's the next step do you think? Thanks!

Oh, no!! Daniela, I'm so sorry this happened!! I hope they fix it soon.

They actually took quite long to answer me (much longer than the average from what I've seen), apparently they take a few days normally (1-4 days?) but I think this may vary according to how many tickets they have at any one time. Two days is normal, I wouldn't worry about it yet.

So yeah, the same thing happened to me and it sucked, but they reactivated all my blogs, including my sideblogs I don't even use and just have so I can save posts I want to be able to find later.

I don't think you should send any new tickets yet, I'd wait a few more days at least. Sending more tickets won't mean they get to it faster because they're still going through them in chronological order. Did you get an email saying they received your ticket to whatever email account you signed up to tumblr with? If not, then do send another one, they may not have received the first one.

When they do get to your complaint, they'll review your blog(s) and when they see you didn't violate the terms of service, they should restore it/them. You should get an email from tumblr support to your email letting you know they've done this.

I hope this helps, all I know about how this works comes directly from my own experience and from a couple of mutuals who went through the same thing. In all these cases, they restored the accounts, so I'd recommend trying to be patient and not stress too much about it if you can help it.

Sending you positive vibes and a virtual hug! 💖 Hope this gets resolved soon!

[bookwermthings]

Quotes from Mighty and Despair that I LOVE live reaction:

And thank you @ultraviolet-eucatastrophe for the introduction and warning for it! Much appreciated!

"I already told you, Captain Jack isn't here!"

:(

"On the other hand, I better not risk death! I'm not the man with a thousand lives!"

Yesss go with the sass

"Because you are Captain Jack, aren't you?"

I thought it would take longer for her to say this actually.

"is that why you're here, to lay to rest?"

"I thought at one point, but I'm far too restless for that."

Sad...

"I haven't spent a lifetime opening my mind without learning how to close it."

Yay!! Go Jack!

"This is what happens when you don't leave me alone."

"this is what happens when you sit on a frozen lake!"

"I told you I was meditating"

Oh Jack...

"Christmas is, was, who knows if it's still going, a festival on my homeworld"

He calls earth his homeworld!!!

"my father had three husbands, eight children with each!"

Wow!! Gay poly rep for the win?

"What about your family?"

"it's complicated. I'm pretty much alone now."

What's complicated about it? Either all of his family and kids are dead now, or they're not. Maybe we'll get more on this later?

"So? You might as well just give up!"

Oh, Jack... You can come to the planet but never leave? That hurts.

"How do you fight?"

"I. Just. Wait."

Jack is fun!

And... Now he's not.

Two immortals, crushing the heart of a mortal...

"why aren't we better? Why don't we try?"

"c'mon, Jack, the hero of the stars, man of a thousand lives. Who are you now?"

I just. Just want to hold them. Jack and Persus mainly, but the Queen I'll probably warm up to

"You're so special. As you are, not how you could be."

Gonna cry

"c'mon I'll teach you a carol or two!"

Damn I wish I could have heard them sing more than just king weseclas (is that how you spell it?)

"The tree is getting big now!"

Aaaw 🤗

"Are you okay, Persus?"

Oh god. She's going to die, isn't she. No, please. This is a rollercoaster of an audio. Agh.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck no she's screaming please this isn't fair

She'll explain away the lights in the ship?

What is it?

Oh...

"does Jack know?"

"but I'm going to die, and my family is dead, and we didn't fight! I don't know why"

Oh, it hurts.

"I can't let go"

Over and over and over

"I reckon Persus was one of life's successes."

"thousands and thousands of years, in the wind, in the snow, and then we have to walk back"

Oh, Jack.

"it's a big ask"

"Damn right it is"

"right then! Let's get this eternity started."

"this looks promising! The torch is lit."

Oh, the callbacks. Persus said that. This gives me the feels.

"we chop off that head and pickle it in a jar, those looks might last."

Laughing, sobbing,no, not a face of boe reference

"but captain Jack has taught me something. How. To. Wait."

AAAAAAAAH

"Carla, that's mass slaughter!"

"They're already dead. I'm teaching them how to die."

"This was your plan??? All those years together, and you lied to me!"

I feel it with him, the betrayal, the hurt, the sadness, the anger

"I've never carried this kind of hate!"

"I did."

Oh...

Or this kind of love as well?

"To see Persis once more."

"this has all been for her..."

"I have thought of her, ached for her, every moment of every day of every year of every eternity we spent here. I could have changed her. She could have been by my side for life."

Ugly sobbing

Ugly ugly sobbing

"I hope you find her"

"so do I. I love you both, Jack. So very much."

Oh god. Oh god. Fuck.

"I die and die again and I never see ANYTHING... this is all I get. And that's maybe the point. Got to leave this place and find the life, the man with a thousand lives. I will never forget you both."

[herenortherenearnorfar]

For the fanfic writer's director's cut, the last scene of Alive at the Wake, because I've talked about it with multiple people and gone back and forth on what could happen next.

Yeah! Alive was probably my favorite story this year just because it was such a big project.

The theme of this fic is No Good Choices so the ending scene is just a reiteration of that. Whether Celebrimbor chose to destroy the rings or keep them intact it wasn't going to end well for Celebrimbor; after the One Ring is made he and Sauron are hurtling towards destruction and only one of them is a demigod. No matter what happens next at the end of Alive it's bad.

From a Doylist perspective I had the idea of Gollum finger biting before most of the rest of the story came together, it was always going to be the plot climax. And then once it happens... all the resolutions felt anti-climatic. Celebrimbor dying is a bit of a letdown, that's what he's been trying to do since the start of the story. Sauron wrestling the ring off of him is also a bit boring. Dark Lord Celebrimbor would be interesting but also a very different kind of story, it wouldn't jive with the tone. There is a potential eucatastrophe there; maybe Celebrimbor counts enough as a creator to be able to destroy it, but that would mean killing the person he loves!

In a story about the inevitability of tragedy, about the equal hopelessness of both giving up and fighting back when you're just that classically doomed, it almost felt wrong to give the main characters the relief of an ending. In CoH at least everyone gets a canonical death. They did it, it's over! Narrative limbo is a torment that never ends and it can make for some really exquisite Lady and the Tiger endings.

Figs too need wasps, he remembers that much. Nargothrond kept fig trees on the mountain slopes above the city. Finrod had them at his table. Every season, a few weeks before they were ripe, he’d gather Finduilas and Celebrimbor around and cut open a green fig to reveal the dead black insect hidden inside, before telling an impenetrable parable about the cycles of nature.

I love when Finrod gets to be a bit much even in stories he's not a featured character in. He's such a camp counsellor. Also it brings back the parasite wasp theme from earlier; the parts of nature that are ugly or hard to understand, the complicated parts of the world that Sauron, in his quest for efficiency, would strip bare.

“I’m tired.” Simple honesty is better than complex lies. “So very tired.” The weight of existing still bears down on him. This is the fatigue that must have sent Great-grandmother Míriel to her wakeless sleep, a heaviness of limbs and heart. He feels like one of the wandering dead, those houseless spirits and unquiet wights that walked even in sunlight in the last days of Morgoth’s nibbling war. Like them he is driven by an aching purpose.

“Yes, you have done a number on yourself, precious.” Sauron’s reproach is fond, the roaring anger of the first days after Celebrimbor revealed the destruction of the Three has faded to a haze of disappointment. Maybe he too realizes that if Celebrimbor had successfully hidden the last rings he’d already be dead. As easily as Sauron is given to merriment he’s just as quick and wild in his anger. And he hates to be denied.

Death seeking behavior! Family trauma! War trauma! The inevitability of the canon plot! A lot of good things here. Also, it is always nice to sneak a gratutious precious in there. Is it twee? Yes, but I enjoy it.

They’re just two misericordes locked together now, spare metal with killing points.

There's the mutually assured destruction aspect here, but also the idea that evil and exhaustion both whittle you down. They make you a shard of what you are. Mostly spiritually but sometimes physically as well, there's a reason that the hobbits are associated with wealth and roundness and joy while Gollum is skeletal, withered by the ill health effects of the Ring. Very medieval aesthetic representations of wellness.

With just an exploratory nuzzle he finds the Ring and kisses it too, gratified by how red the sudden touch turns Sauron’s ears. He may have sheared himself to pieces but the chunks remain connected. Just as his veil is more a piece of himself than he likes to admit, so too is this ring.

It's the eternal question "Does Sauron feel whenever people gently caress and whisper to the One Ring?" Here I've taken the bold stance that the answer is yes, and he likes it. Mostly because it supports a broader idea of embodiment; the Ainur may not be native to their bodies but they are influenced by whatever they fling themselves into.

“What exactly,” Sauron says after what feels like an eternity of gasping, “Were you planning to do next?”

The central question! And honestly, I don't think Celebrimbor knew. He just needed to do something, even if it was pointless, even if it was destructive. Sometimes you can't stay still any longer.

If the little whispers filling Celebrimbor’s head since he first touched the cursed thing are proof then it is not loyal. It has been singing of glory, of Ost-in-Edhil built high again. All great deeds that a shambling revenant has no place in. Celebrimbor’s experience with great rings and the pale, pillowy haze of sorrow dulling his mind make these shining dreams feel false.

One interesting thing about the Ring is that it seems to feed on ambition, hunger, desire. Not always the desires Sauron would have, he wouldn't sit in a cave for years or make a garden, but it always prompts some secret need, some hidden want. One of the reasons it's so ineffective on hobbits is because they're so content, I assumed a similar logic would apply to deeply depressed people, people who have already lost everything and know they can't get it back. All Celebrimbor wants is his city and his boyfriend back and neither of those are possible, one is razed and one is unwilling.

If Frodo hadn't volunteered I can only assume the backup plan was Maglor. Saddest elf in a decently large radius.

I know you and it doesn’t change a thing.

For the first time in months he feels horribly, miserably alive.

Yeah. Yeah. It's about understanding Sauron completely and utterly even before he puts on the ring and still not being able to sway him. The first thing to break through his grief following the Three Rings is Sauron, the determination to stop him, the undissolvable love of him, and finally his Ring. Celebrimbor has lost everything and he loves someone with more acuteness than most people could ever love, he's wearing a part of his soul right now, and all he wants is to die at his hand. Yet at the same time he knows that he can't, not if he can do something to stop him, not if he can help people. Even at his worst moments Celebrimbor is so driven to help people, he can't even give in and let his ex murder him. But just being close to him, feeling that intensity even through violence, is enough to make him almost whole once more.

Because he ultimately does feel beholden to the people of Middle Earth AND he has ring experience, my personal vote for what happens after the ending is probably Dark Lord Celebrimbor followed by a very messy collapse. Possibly he brings down Moria a few centuries earlier than timelined. But I left it open to interpretation for a reason; I think it's stronger as a quantum state. Celebrimbor is both murdered and still a prisoner and evil and has just killed his lover and he's miserable in all those situations.

[francesderwent]

have really been struggling with fantasy lately, can only read murder mysteries. is it because reading the Mistborn trilogy broke something in me? or is it because I don't need fantasy anymore--because I'm not pining longingly for a moment of unexpected inbreaking. I'm in a situation, quite comfortably awaiting the expected ending of simple justice.

[sometimes-love-is-enough]

2, 4 (eucatastrophe), 7, 12, 15-16-17, 23, 24, 41, 47, 49 (melliferous) :>

2. Go to your AO3 “Works” page, to the sidebar with all the filters, and click the drop-down arrow for “Additional Tags.” What are your top 3-5 most used tags? Do you think they accurately represent your writing habits?

Body Horror (5)

Remix (4)

Friendship (3)

Suicidal Thoughts (3)

Time Loop (2)

I don't think they don't represent my writing habits, I'm just kind of surprised more common tags aren't in there.

4. What detail in [insert fic] are you really proud of?

It's very simple and very stupid, but I really love that Thomas's reaction to seeing Janus for the first time in Syzygy is 'so beautiful. so mysterious. i'm in love' and Janus's POV of the exact same moment is 'what the fuck is wrong with him. he needs a fucking nap'. It makes me laugh.

7. Any worldbuilding you’re particularly proud of?

most of my favorite worldbuilding I've done in Syzygy hasn't come up just yet, but I'm really fond of a lot of the stuff I did there that I've been explaining through epistolary. apart from that, the whole 'fae seven year sacrifice recontextualized as a eldritch lovecraftian ritual' is definitely up there.

12. Are there any tropes you used to dislike but have grown on you?

tragedy babyyyyy

15. What’s your favorite AU that you’ve written?

genuinely, it's still the Inception AU (not really an AU, I guess? I guess it's more like a flat crossover since it's actually plausibly canon in both universes. Okay. I'll pick another one) melliferous OBVIOUSLY

16. What’s an AU you would love to read (or have read and loved)?

hmmmm Fallen London AU. I just think it would be neat. Also, see answer to next question.

17. What highly specific AU do you want to read or write even though you might be the only person to appreciate it?

the one I occasionally rotate in my brain is the dungeons and daddies au. (NOT a bdsm AU) instead, it's the AU of six sides flung into the forgotten realms to rescue their missing centre, except they're all really bad at D&D. this week's side fact: patton is like 50/50 on the moon landing actually happening, to logan's intense anger. the other one i've been rotating i plan on writing next year so we'll see how that pans out

23. What’s a trope, AU, or concept you’ve never written, but would like to?

i want to do a soulmate AU to specifically deconstruct the idea of soulmate AUs. and/or hanahaki, same thing. i've had some ideas in the past but never got around to writing them.

24. Are there any easter eggs in [insert fic], and if so, what are they?

you didn't specify a fic so I'm going to go with Syzygy and I'm pleased to announce that quite a lot of the epistolary sections feature mini-cameos from either friends of mine or writing projects that i never ended up finishing. the play that thomas is in is vaguely based off a story i wrote in high school, everyone in the hollow-host.net chat room in chapter two is from one of my group chats (guess which one is me). oh, and in the review of AAHTDTL in chapter one, two of the plays listed are (obviously) Melliferous and Eucatastrophe.

41. Link a fic that made you think, “Wow, I want to write like that.”

In this fandom? Love and Other Fairy Tales kicked my brain with electric shoes and set me into writing overdrive with fairy emotions and a feeling's not a thing you own did the same with Thomas-Side feelings.

47. If [insert fic] was a pair of shoes, what kind would it be? Describe the shoes.

i assume this one's for melliferous. a good pair of walking boots that you loved dearly, but they're kind of squishy with all the honey you've been walking through and you know you're going to lose them eventually.

49. What are you currently working on? Share a few lines if you’re up for it!

Got the next chapter of Syzygy all drafted out, just need to polish it. It includes the phrase 'snex life' and a background weedmobile. Here's a bit:

Thomas isn’t sure if he should be shaking Janus’s hand or not. It seems like it would be a weird sort of thing to do. He actually kind of just wants to hug Janus as hard as he can, but that seems like an even weirder thing to do. He settles for a normal-person verbal introduction, instead. “Um, my name’s Thomas. Hi.”

For some reason, this gets a small frown out of Janus. “It is?”

“I... think so?” Thomas says, momentarily doubting it, before he shakes his head. “No, it is. Thomas. Thomas Sanders. Why are we being so weird about our names?”

the other thing i'm currently working on is a plan and research for (what will hopefully be) next year's big bang fic. nothing non-spoilery there to share, unfortunately. talk more about that later!

[sometimes-love-is-enough]

i have a lot here - feel free to only answer what you want!

💘💫💞💝💥🎙️💌

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

If I had the time and patience and inclination, I'd rework Eucatastrophe from the ground up. There's a lot of it that, in retrospect, I wish I could have done better. Mainly stuff to do with the mirror-people, and the pacing at the beginning.

💫what is your favorite kind of comment/feedback?

I love analysis and speculation the most, tbh. When people are throwing around theories and/or connecting thematic bits to other bits, I'm having the best time.

💞what's the most important part of a story for you? the plot, the characters, the worldbuilding, the technical stuff (grammar etc), the figurative language

Characters, probably - a good plot can often be ruined by bad characterisation, worldbuilding is okay but a million times better with characters to drive it. I can forgive bad grammar and spelling if the characterization makes me happy enough, figurative language isn't strictly necessary, but god i love characterization.

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

I expected like, two people max to be interested in Syzygy. Because it's a niche fic for a niche pairing with an extremely niche concept and a very high wordcount. Needless to say, the amount of people who've been enthusiastic about it - in the comments, tags, and/or my inbox - has just been delightful. Thank you all.

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

least kudos'd fic - the lavender for luck remix I did from Janus's POV! I really enjoyed taking the flip side of the limited perspective of that fic, and I think I nailed what I set out to do there - make a fic that would be satisfying to someone who read the original and wondered 'hey, what about Dee?'

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

The answer to that one is almost always 'the one I'm writing right now'. (Seriously. Mystery Longfic podfic would make me Yell.)

But actually, for real? I think Cassandra Fallacy would make a great podfic with a narrator who's willing to do a Janus impression and keep it up, relentlessly and to the point of being infuriating, for several hours.

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

uh, sword fights. through writing this i have discovered the EXTREME joy of writing sword fights (and gun fights) (janus brought a sword to a gunfight) (he's fine just full of hubris and one (1) hole in his skin) i don't know if you guys will enjoy reading them as much as i've enjoyed writing them, because it's notoriously difficult to write enjoyable fight scenes of any type, but........ i hope i'll get it right. because, as mentioned above, extreme joy.

[sometimes-love-is-enough]

Hello!

I asked you… sometime… ages ago, if I could podfic Eucatastrophe, and put it happily on my list.

Well today I’m even more happy to say that I’ve recorded the first chapter! :D

oh my god. what? oh my god. hell yeah! what? YOU'RE AMAZING

PLEASE link it to me whenever you post it, i've never had a podfic of my works done before and i am confused and delighted by this turn of events

[nyenyerle]

Excellent points, I've practically nothing to add except that "peredhel resilience: convenient for Arda" is a very cruel concept and I'm crying. Saying that yes, he was an elf, but he wished very strongly to be a man and the narrative just had to.....respect that... brings us to a question that I feel is particularly Earendil's own, namely, "what is doom and what is choice?" He was asked (in a ridiculously inconvenient moment!) to decide between two fates, two judgments, but still remained this eucatastrophic loophole-to-defeat-evil in the story (like his whole line from Lúthien to Arwen). It's good for everyone except the now psychologically damaged loophole. Sometimes things that don't kill you are worse?

Okay, next question: how did Earendil not die as a consequence of personally slaying Ancalagon? The text gives me an impression that the host of the valar could deal with the balrogs just fine, and was only forced back when the dragons came. But at that point it was practically tradition that a well-mannered elf shouldn't survive his own balrog-kill. There is even an example among the maiar for that, and if one argues that Gandalf's power was diminished in his istar form, then it's also true that Earendil wasn't a full elf himself. (Though whether that just made him sturdier is another point.)

Anyway, how does someone kill something stronger than a balrog and live? Was it Thorondor's help? Was it the Silmaril that made him uh... resilient? (Again, I'm not asking how has he won, (but Vingilótë was totally a war ship back then) I'm asking why did he live.)