#iirc i nearly finished the chapter

[codenamesazanka]

Eri, Awry: Chapters 1 to 5

Preview for Chapter 6.

(Hawks POV)

•

She’s alive.

The girl from the Shie Hassaikai mess. Kidnapped by the League. Missing for three months and counting.

Eri.

That’s good. It’s great, it’s fantastic. The child - whose photo had to be a facial composite, because there existed no images of her, hidden as she had been from the world, once, then again; whose abduction had Heroes from every part of Japan on alert to find even a hint of her location, so that Hawks kept an eye out even from Kyushu; and the failure to recover her (not even a body, and Shigaraki Tomura had a disintegration quirk) was such a demoralizing weight on everyone’s heart—

She’s alive.

…Celebrating her 7th birthday.

[...]

Hawks notes: the child is flanked by two of the League members, Toga Himiko and Bubaigawara Jin. They have one Liberation Army guard a few feet away, scanning the party participants.

(Sako Atsuhiro is here too, but he’s on the other side of the room performing magic for a small crowd of people Hawks suspect is only watching out of politeness and obligation for one of their new leaders. Where the rest of the League is, Hawks has no idea. Not even his feathers have picked up any clues so far today.)

Eri is opening gifts with help from Toga and Bubaigawara, both their enthusiasm exceeding the actual birthday girl’s own demeanor.

Eri’s appearance is clean and neat, dressed in a long-sleeved yellow dress that looks expensive. Silk chiffon and lace, probably. She is small and thin, but not skin-and-bones. Not counting the long-healed scars the Shie Hassaikai has given her that he can see when the sleeves of her dress rides up sometimes, she’s got no bruising or burns or cuts. None that are visible, anyways.

In short, Eri looks… okay.

What do you have planned, Shigaraki?

•

[krispdreemurr]

since you called for theory asks, conspiracy theory for you: in the earthbound halloween hack the game "ends" by forcing the player to finish the game (kill dr. andonuts) because the only action you can take when confronted with 'kill the monster?' is 'yes', and clicking the blank spot where 'no' should be only prompts the narrator to say it's not a choice. killing him ends the game prematurely, but if you spontaneously decide to press "B" here u go into his mind instead, accessing the true ending. not positing some matpat thing where the halloween hack is necessary to understand deltarune but it seemed to me that deltarune is sort of an introspective game in some ways for toby fox in the creative sense, with some references to the HH (ch 1 releasing on halloween, kris's falling sprite being based on the same of varik's per toby fox's own admission, etc) and i think that this concept may be refined into deltarune's ending, putting a bow on the 'choices dont matter' motif. like its less "somehow teen toby was a mastermind foreshadowing deltarune nearly 20 years in advance" and more "i think toby wants to do justice to a story thing he tried to do less skillfully as a kid" i therefore predict deltarune will "end" with the Roaring Knight successfully eradicating the world (or whatever) and killing all the protagonists (if i'm bold enough to go into specifics, the cutscene will be borderline identical to when you give up in the game over screen: the roaring happens, "darkness falls" plays, and the game crashes itself), but then an action similarly simple, meta, and difficult to think of in the heat of the moment as pressing "B" was in the halloween hack, will be the key to reverting or preventing this from happening, accessing the real ending of deltarune. maybe that thing will be copying the same save file 3 times over since thats the one that makes gaster say "PREPARATIONS ARE COMPLETE" iirc. what r ur thoughts wise krispdreemurr... i pick thine brain...

i can definitely see something like this, yeah. i think that most likely it won't be something immediately accessible without having done something previously; like, not to go back to device theory, but I think it's most likely going to be getting the shadow crystals, especially since those go between save files/are by far the easiest thing to "backtrack" for due to that and the chapter select (eggs could be it too but I believe it when they're said to be not that important). maybe it's as simple as using the purified crystal from the inventory in front of the boss instead of talking to them.

i do also wonder, parallel to this, if there will be at some point some option to let Kris make a choice; it doesnt have to be as major a moment as This, but I think a lot about the times where the cursor has a default lean or flickers briefly to one option. I can see some scenario where if you wait long enough on a choice or select the blank option in between Kris makes the decision.

[vinelark]

hello!! out of curiosity, do you have a favorite scene you’ve written so far in bbts? and any headcanons specific for this au?

hello hello! so far my favorite scene is 100% the one in chapter 2 where tim calls jason to pick him up from the marina and kon goes full snarlbite at jason while tim regrets every choice he's ever made. i had that scene zerodrafted before i'd even finished the beginning of chapter 1 and had way too much fun adding to it as i went. second place might be an upcoming scene in chapter 4 where dick gets another crack at the title of Most Annoying Big Brother Ever (honorific). 😌

some headcanons for buy back the secrets-verse:

bruce's romantic life is a thorny, tangled web but he does have a steady thing with clark that lois is also aware of/sometimes involved in. it works very well for them. tim is aware of this enough to use it against bruce if need be but otherwise Does Not See It

duke does not join the crew yet in the timeline of this au but right now in his pre-batfam era i imagine he's running a semi-viral tiktok account where he posts skits making fun of various gotham rogues. (he does have a cameo in chapter 4!)

idk if this counts as a headcanon or as canon at this point but bruce is jewish in this au! this also make a brief appearance in chapter 4. and it is alluded to earlier, iirc.

of all the teen vigilantes running around steph is the one who worries bruce the most. not because she has shown any particularly evil or destructive inclinations, but because she's had the gall to 1) be robin 2) be robin as like, an internship, and 3) date one of bruce's kids twice. there is nothing bruce can do to intimidate her. she's too powerful.

re: the above: stephcass real.

after tim learned about ghost-maker he started logging all of khoa's safehouses in his not-at-all-stalkery bats-and-bat-adjacents database and sometimes shows up at them unannounced 😎 khoa finds this hugely irritating. tim is also khoa's favorite batkid. the two facts are not unrelated.

in a slight au of this au (some minor shifting timelines re: identity reveal) i like to headcanon that bbts could take place in the same universe as Lipstick on the glass

i think clark is genuinely jealous of kon's TTK (in a, like, "that ability is objectively really cool" kind of way), and he lets it show because it makes kon feel good about it. (it also, early on, made kon more determined to train his TTK so he could do cool tricks with it, which in turn helped him strengthen his control/range of abilities.)

kon is relatively popular at school in smallville but doesn't have many close friends there, because kon already imprinted hard on young justice / teen titans crew by the time he started school. he likes people at school just fine but his mind is usually elsewhere.

meanwhile tim has some civilian friends he genuinely cares about but purposefully distances himself from emotionally. everyone else at school at this point either does not think about him, dislikes him, or is morbidly fascinated by him re: his parents + getting scooped up by bruce wayne.

jason does not know how to turn off autocorrect on his phone and is too annoyed to look it up. tim messed with the settings one time and nearly got titans tower 2'd because of it

[gabessquishytum]

hey so do you remember the hysterical literature video series that was all over tumblr back in the day. the ones where they had a porn star sitting at a table, reading from a book, while sitting on a vibrator? iirc they're on youtube if you don't know what i'm talking about (it was stoya's that was especially popular 'round these parts and if you're not familiar DEFINITELY check it out)

anyway. porn star!hob and author!dream. hob does a hysterical literature video and picks dream's book to read from. for extra orgasms fun, trans hob. he explains the premise at the beginning of the video and mentions that he's going to be reading a full chapter and he is going to finish reading it no matter how many times he comes -- and as soon as he starts, dream immediately realizes that he's picked the longest chapter in the book.

(by halfway through the recording, when hob's gasping for breath and letting out little whines between sentences, dream's already wondering if he could commission hob to read the entire book. dream wants to listen to nothing else for the rest of his life. and if he wants to share, he's pretty sure hob could record the most incredible audiobook)

-🐈‍⬛

First of all. Sjsjsjsjwjsjww. I’m kissing you. Second of all. It’s been maybe 10 years since I watched the Stoya video from that series?? And let me tell you, it STILL hits different. I can only recommend that everyone head over the YouTube, stat. Anyway.

Hob is a pretty popular porn star, he’s got a decent following. One of the things that people enjoy is his voice, so he thinks this could be fun thing to do! Dream is one over those fans, he’s followed Hob’s career with interest from afar and he’s pleasantly surprised to see this new content pop up.

Dream, meanwhile, is an author. He writes a range of stuff but he’s famous for his erotic novels. They’re extremely well reviewed by literary critics and he’s considered to be a bit of a genius. Hob is a huge fan, has all his books, so it’s probably no surprise that he chooses to read from Dream’s latest novel.

The video is a good 45 minutes long. Hob sits there, wearing a simple white t-shirt. He’s only visible above the waist, but he promises that it’s going to be fun anyway. He’s going to finish the chapter, even if he passes out half way through.

(Dream nearly has a heart attack, hearing his own written words coming out of Hob’s mouth. He has to take a moment before he can continue.)

The first five minutes goes easily enough. Hob smiles occasionally, momentarily bites his lip or flexes his fingers. He reads without any mistakes. But slowly, slowly he starts to unravel. He’s squirming, clenching his fists. He trips over a word or two. Then there are little sounds, half moans and whimpers. He tumbles through a sentence, unable to make his tongue work, so he repeats himself. He’s starting to gasp for breath. He cums on the vibrator for the first time after a few pages, and the floodgates are open. He can’t sit still. Every word is dripping with arousal. He’s rocking back and forth and grasping the book like a life line. But he doesn’t rush towards the end of the chapter, oh no. Dream’s work deserves better. He tearfully whimpers through the second and third orgasms but he annunciates each word perfectly. He’s practically sweated through his thin t-shirt so his gorgeous chest is more or less on display. But he doesn’t let go of the book to touch his nipples or adjust the vibrator. He’s busy enjoying what Dream has written, making sure that he conveys the emotional strength of the writing.

He cums five times, each one louder and more messy than the last, before he finally finishes the chapter and slumps over on the table, with a weak grin towards the camera. He tells everyone to go buy Dream’s books. And promises to record more, if people like it.

And Dream pulls his hand out of his sticky boxers, wipes it clean, and shakily fires off an email to the agency Hob is represented by. He’ll get Hob to record his entire collected works, if he can. He’s already wondering what Hob will sound like at the end of reading his 600 page magnum opus…

[voxofthevoid]

Wait I— WHAT— 500k+ words for JJK? Alone? Oh my god. I’m one of your new readers, and I’m blown away by not only your word count but the wRITING LOGS?? How?? Do you keep track of your WIPs?? Do you write consistently, period?? Do you have any advice for someone who can barely squeak out a paragraph to describe a vision in their brain?? Please bless me with your skills, Vox-sensei 😭🙏

Welcome to my madness 🤣❤️

Okay, in all fairness, I'm usually not this unhinged productive. Last year, for instance, my total word count was only around 250k (iirc). I'm sure I wrote more than that from 2018 to 2020, but my logs from those are divided by fics/chapters or weekly.

... I've, uh, tried a lot of shit over the years.

Which is an important point! I've been posting to ao3 for nearly a decade now (not consistently, but I don't think I was away for more than a year or two), and I've been writing in some capacity for around 15–17 years now. There's been a lot of trial and error over the years, plus changing life circumstances leading to varying energy levels and writing time. The main factor is inspiration; if it's there, I'll write a lot, but if not, I'll be a potato.

So with all that in mind!

Logs

I do keep track of both my word count and my WIPs. I've got color-coded docs and spreadsheets even because I'm a fucking nerd. I've got pictures of it floating somewhere on this blog, but my fic folders tend to be nested, numbered little monstrosities.

WIPs

I call them WIPs sometimes because they're extensively detailed outlines mostly, but the more accurate term is ideas/plot bunniesdemons. I don't work on more than one story at a time. Typically, I start something and write it in narrative order until it's done. There are exceptions—my current fic was started in a post-236 frenzy, and I set aside the PWP I was working on for it. But usually, I only actively write one story at a time while everything else gets developed/outlined as inspiration strikes.

Consistency

You could say I write consistently, yeah! I don't do it every day because I take breaks whenever I finish a chapter (and of course, life throws curve balls sometimes), but typically, I write around 22–25 days a month. I set aside a few hours for it. Average daily word count also varies, but these days, it's 1.5–3k. When I'm really in the zone, it can reach 5–6k.

I'm a hobbyist writer with no aspirations of writing professionally, so my approach to the whole thing has been to wing it and see where it takes me. So I haven't really done anything with the concrete goal of improving. The best (and only) advice I have is very boring and cliche though: read and write.

Read widely if you can and narrow in on the kind of style and genre you like. Note down passages or turns of phrase that struck you and figure out why. You'll absorb a lot automatically, but I've heard people recommend emulating styles on purpose as a writing exercise.

Mainly though, the best and easiest way to improve is to keep writing. Technical rules can be learned pretty easily, especially with how many resources are available online now. Field/subject-specific reference materials are also abundant. But developing your own style and improving the flow of your prose are things that need practice. And it never really stops, especially because your writing will continuously evolve in more ways than one.

This got way longer than I intended. Oops? Thanks for asking though, anon. I did have fun replying!

[yoificfinder]

Hello, can I ask for your help finding this fanfic? I saw your blog was active and I nearly cried after surfing through countless tags on AO3 😭 So I remembered this one beautiful fanfic about a non-skater Victuuri AU where Victor has this strict rule about dating people for exactly one month before breaking things off with them. I believe he was a famous figure of some sort, and he was perceived as this “cold, emotionless” person. Anyways, Yuuri, who worked on the same building, had a crush on Victor. So they had a party, and like the banquet, he spoke to Victor for the first time. This is where he confessed about him wanting to date Victor. And bla bla bla, they started dating, Victor follows this routine for every people he dated (like eating on this specific restaurant, calling someone to say good morning, etc.) but then Yuuri DEMOLISHED every routine he did, changing and startling Victor’s whole viewpoint, and Victor fell in love. So now they both dread about the deadline their relationship had as the 30-day mark came. I know this fanfic’s finished and also had multiple chapters, iirc. Idk that’s all I remember AHHH I hope you can help me I’m literally going ballistic over this. Thank you very much ily!!!!

I hope someone else can help!

----

Update: It's lie to make me like you by cityboys [M, 80K]

It’s become a game, of sorts, to anyone privy to the fact that the pattern exists in the first place: ask Victor out at the beginning of the month, date for however many days are in that month, and wait for the end to come and for Victor to say, always: I couldn’t fall in love with you. Let’s break up.

Tysm for the help, @tanouskawilonthouden! ❤️

[kcscribbler]

M: What’s the weirdest AU scenario you’ve ever come up with?  Did it turn into a story?

Full Ask List

At one point, I had a whole lengthy AU outline and the first chapter of a Star Trek TOS/Mission Impossible (the TV show, not the movie franchise) AU written out. This was many years ago, well before I started backing fic up in a cloud, and I lost the chapter and outline in a catastrophic laptop crash, along with several other WIPs. The shows started around the same time, IIRC, and Leonard Nimoy actually was a regular in a couple of the later seasons. 60s TV at its finest.

I stay away from AUs for the most part, and it's probably no surprise that the ones I have finished are almost all Generations fix-its.

This one I still have a soft spot for, because it was so much fun to write both TOS and AOS characters in the same story, and try to keep their voices correct to their respective universes.

Shades of Darkness No one is more surprised than the newly-resurrected James T. Kirk, when he opens his eyes on an unfamiliar Starfleet Medical bay and a crew nearly forty years his junior. Meanwhile, as the fabric of space and time begins to slowly unravel around what Should Not Be, young Jim finds himself trapped in the ghostly spirit-world of the Nexus, trying to find his way home as his crew desperately search for a way to reach him.

Thank you for the ask!

[randomnameless]

I've been wondering this for a while seeing a lot of your anti-Edelgard posts: what do you think of the events in the CF chapter Lady of Deceit? Edelgard continuing to lie to her friends about the Slitherers is the point of no return for me personally, after the chapter I had to nearly force myself to finish the route (well, from a story perspective. Field of Revenge and To the End of a Dream are great in terms of gameplay, and I admit I find the "stop fighting/no you" dialogue exchange between El and Dimitri so ridiculous it loops around to being good).

Are those posts really anti posts?

Anyways, I liked it, because it's fairly coherent with the character we've been presented.

IIRC in her version of Chapter 12 - when we attack GM - as soon as Emile pops up, Billy is shocked and she promises she'll tell them later on why Emile is on our side now...

But she never reveals a thing to Billy.

It's actually Hubert who does, in his paralogue, explaining why they had to side with Uncle and his pals, etc etc.

The Jpop song of the game explains it in better words, but Supreme Leader during her academy days was hiding with a mask and lying about her feelings, and even in Tru Piss, when we're not in Academy Days anymore, Supreme Leader is still hiding her feelings with lies. As you pointed it out, is it because she knows her "allies" didn't chose to side with her, but followed Billy? Or because she doesn't deem necessary to reveal the "truth" about her fight to her BESF comrades?

I ultimately think she knows her alliance with Uncle'n'pals sucks, just like Baldo and Waldi who are never ever mentionned in the War phase of the game, and most likely believes her "friends" of the BESF would ditch her the second they learn about it.

(and as we discover in the other routes, they actually don't! Ferdie doesn't mind fighting side by side with a "war asset" when he protects the bridge!)

Still, I must say the Jeritza thing irked me more when I played this route, because it was before the update where you could play with him! So it was just "hey it's that random we fought against who joins us as a green unit for this map", and then he is never re-used lol.

I loved Field of Revenge - it has the perfect amount of absurd double standard (see how the kingdom knights's transformation is portrayed and compare it to, again, Ferdie not minding fighting side by side with a "war asset"), Hubert dissing Dimitri for not fighting "fairly" and not saying them "hello" before the fight, the beheading scene, Dimitri and Dedue having a scene as they fight side by side when Dedue dies first, as opposed to any other vassal/lord relationship - and the plothax "Rhea and her forces were late because her sandals aren't water-proof and apparently rain prevents her from transforming in a dragon".

But yeah, even if some quotes are, uh, well, there lol, I really liked this map!

[night-dark-woods]

just finished the long way to a small angry planet! it was ...fine? its not going to become a favorite and i probably wont reread it but it was mostly enjoyable and cute and ill read the sequels but probably not monk&robot bc i dont love the authors style that much. ETA: changing this to 2/5 from 4 on further reflection tbh, it was overwhelmingly Fine but if i want fluff ill read fanfic with characters im already attached to, also will not be reading the sequels as the character i liked most will not be in at least one of them :(

concept: 4/5 gay found family on a ship that makes the wormholes that make rapid space travel possible, theres some cool alien biology stuff but the science for that and for the wormhole punching is not as explored as id like it to be :( also the nominal protag is a clerk and there is not NEARLY enough accounting etc (<statement said by freak who thought that was one of the best parts of baru cormorant).

execution: 2.5/5? good writing but nothing special, nothing that made me want to eat it, and the story was overwhelmingly paced like an episodic tv show? like each chapter break was also a time break iirc, and each substory wrapped pretty neatly up, and the POV shifts felt like new camera angles not true POV (except one shift to corbin at the end! i liked that one). theres also a LOT of exposition and entry-level information dumps about the science that IS explained or aspects of the worldbuilding that i think would be helpful for people new to the genre but isnt the kind of worldbuilding im looking for. i think its neat that the author used the ansible in this i love 80s scifi conventions and ursula le guin made that one up!

enjoyment: 5/5 read it on the bus plus one long sitting (bad for sleep schedule...), it was engaging and cute.

[literary-illuminati]

Hi hello I just very recently finished The World We Make and honestly I agree with so many of your comments. Like, the entire book just felt rushed and so many of the characters weren't properly explored, and it really fet like there were a bunch of budding plotlines that just.... never really happened.

A lot of it seems to be because covid hit right before the first book was published and Jemisin had a miserable time in lockdown, which meant that it was more her forcing herself to conclude the series than wanting to finish it. Also I absolutely agree that the political stuff was kinda awkward and didn't make that much sense plot-wise, though part of that is probably also because of Circumstances.

It's just that there's so much that was never fleshed out or given the attention it deserves. The part where Bel got city powers was one chapter and then never mentioned again. Veneza had one (1) POV chapter and then had some personal growth offscreen. Neek visited London but then nothing really happened. We were shown more cities but they were almost entirely unexplored. Hoboken or Yonkers (bonkers!) awakening was kinda touched upon but never fleshed out. The entire book was so frustrating because of this! Hell, it never even explored the consequences of an avatar of the city becoming mayor, except for a one-off line from some old grumpy city during the summit.

(I thought that Atlantis ressurecting itself due to Padmini's visits only to annihilate itself was really interesting. Wish we had gotten a bit more of it. And honestly a bit more of Padmini's character in general.)

So many conflicts were also resolved way too easily. You mentioned in a post the final battle, and like yeah Nemisin was absolutely taking shortcuts with it. But also Padmini getting fired and potentially deported was just.... resolved by her getting hired by Brooklyn's campaign. And then the issue of Brooklyn's campaign having to deal with the NYPD just never came to a head, and was just quietly swept under the rug.

Just, the book wasn't anywhere good as it could have been, especially when compared to the first book. I still tore through it, obviously, because it's N. K. Jemisin and I'm invested in these silly little cities, but the book still disappointed me. At least other people seem to agree. Perhaps I'll write fanfiction about it.

Also side note, but I absolutely believe Veneza to be trans. She and her love of those Brazilian pastries is so gender.

Oh so to defend the book - I'm like ~90% sure that Bel's thing was actually London looking out for him? The guidance to safety was specifically a woman's voice, and then the chapter ends with him running into her on a subway and then in the conversation with Neek she IIRC mentions checking in on one of her citizens?

But generally yeah - the book just was not nearly long enough to have so many POVs and so many plot threads - especially not with the repeated cutaways to the different world cities. So there's this urge to give everyone a subplot of their own, but then there's no time for any tension and you just kind of get the, like, synopsis of the personal struggle without any of the actual, like, storytelling. Or not even struggle - Bronca's whole subplot was just 'and then she went on a date! And got a girlfriend! And it was fine and basically irrelevant!" Which, I mean when you're stretching wordcount as much as the book was, kind of feel like those 2.5 scenes could have been put to better use. Veneza's thing with her racist asshole dad didn't even rise to that level - it was just, like, established as an issue in her only chapter and then resolved offscreen during the epilogue.

Which is probably the worst example but yeah, there was never really any tension, because no problem lasted long enough after it's introduction to actually feel threatening.

(Honestly on reflection I think the politics are kind of a structural problem with the book, in that it's relying on the Circumstances to provide all the tension and dramatic weight the book can't be bothered to, so it can be nothing but uninterrupted triumph and catharsis. Which is just, like, bad storytelling imo - if you're not already acutely aware of who the Proud Boys or Gavin McInnes or the 2022 Trucker Convoys or Trump or etc etc etc were, the book's basically unintelligible. As is, it feels like somewhere between cheap/unearned catharsis and the bit of the Inferno where Dante describes who all his political rivals end up in hell with worse meter)

I just don't think the sequel needed to exist at all, honestly. The City We Became had a great ending!

[96percentdone]

Fic Writer Interview.

thanks for the tag @juudaimes-true-form. the @ is. not working. sorry kjnbhvbhj

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

30.

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

245,076, apparently.

3. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Oumasai Oneshots: 1,297

A Fragile Bridge of Trust: 710

Lost Souls: 593

History Maker: 433

Game Over: 417

All of these are old and older. One of them isn't even finished. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA--

Please read my newer works o(╥﹏╥)o

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

Nearly always yeah. I like the people who read my work and overcome whatever anxiety they might feel to know that I appreciate anything they have to say, and I'm grateful.

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

I enjoy angst a fair bit but rarely do I ever write something that ends with angst. Obviously, Game Over was expressly written as a bad end to a v3 au i was working on, so it's the easy answer, but there are a few in the oumasai oneshots that I think count, namely Chapter 22, Chapter 24, Chapter 26, and in more ambiguous turf Chapter 19 and Chapter 15. I still like the ambiguous ones a fair bit even now, the first 2 not-ambiguous ones just do not hold up with my interpretation of the text anymore (and also i wrote worse), but 26 is fine. Game Over could have been better, but hey I was a different writer then.

That said I have a lot of stuff I consider heavy on angst, but since they have happy endings I don't think they count for this. But I enjoy that kind of fic the most.

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

the ones I haven't finished yet--/gets shot. Nah, probably Le Chasseur et le Démon (The Hunter and the Fiend), because it's a fairytale. It gets a fairytale ending. But I like happy endings so it's pretty hard for me to pick.

7. Do you write crossovers?

No because I tend not to like them and find them obtuse, UNLESS said crossover is between dangan ronpa and Higurashi. No I could not explain why these two things in specific inspired me this much. But also I'm SO right and one day I'll get back to those. But mostly crossover concepts exist in jokes in dms with my friend Cass.

8. Have you ever received hate on a fic?

Yep lmao. A couple times. It's been pretty lackluster though like solid 2/10 hate comment y'all can do better.

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

No? Okay so I did orphan a series of fics that had smut in them, but that smut was kind of poetic and deliberately vague, and it's probably the most I plan on committing to in the future for the fics I'm working on rn.

I think people who write pwp or other hard smut are very impressive and have a set of skills I lack, namely....the ability to express physical intimacy in any capacity, including through words! I honestly like. Still struggle with kiss scenes sometimes, but for me all this comes down to my visceral irl discomfort with people existing within 3 feet of me, nevermind touching me.

10. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

I sure the fuck hope not. 

11. Have you ever had a fic translated?

I don't remember if this happened with a fic, but iirc I think someone translated that long ass DR meta I wrote about Ouma and Komaeda into...Russian? I don't remember very well. Also that meta is being majorly overhauled spoilers I guess.

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

Not for fic no. All my fic belong solely to me, as do my original works, and its what I prefer. I've done volunteer writing on other people's original projects however, even right now. @clusterfuck-au is something I work on with my friend Wren, but I do all the writing, and they do art stuff, so its not the same lmao.

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

Idk how I'm supposed to have one of these when I can't really pick a fandom over a fandom. So I'll just name some fandoms I like, and the ship I currently like the most for it.

Ace Attorney: narumitsu (there are a couple close runner ups tho)

Dangan Ronpa: komahina

AITSF: ryudate

Higurashi: keimii

Spy x Family: Twiyor

There are other I fandoms, and other ships, but it'd take forever so take these.

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

I HAVE SO FUCKING MANY MY GUY, AND I REALLY WANT TO FINISH THEM, BUT I HAVE NO IDEA WHEN IF EVER I'LL GET TO EM. HERE WE GO. I will not be including the WIP I'm working on right now! That's happening! fuck you @ self

The Long Way 'Round: This is supposed to be an extremely long narumitsu Ace fanfic about their relationship through the years from their time together in childhood to after Apollo Justice. I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about their relationship, its ups and downs, and the character development they undergo together and seperately. The fic would not feature anything actually shown in canon, and doesn't include DD or SoJ because I hate them and think they're bad and disowned them from canon. This fic is next on my list of things to work on.

Exoneration AU and the LCC rewrite: aus that only makes sense to anyone who has ever read the visual novel Chaos;Child and is in fandom (maybe 100 people) and ALSO is gay enough to ship Takuru, the main character of a bishoujo game, with Shinji (his token best friend). Also has to be gay enough to ship the girls together. also has to be based enough to think Kawahara deserved better and are mad about the writer's gaslighting. I'm not going to explain the plot of these any further; y'all aint gonna get it.

The Cries of Hope's Peak Academy: AKA, clusterfuck AU. What if I took the higurashi cast and put them in a pre-despair dangan ronpa setting (also the v3 kids are here too). Also. What if I shipped. Mion with Keiichi, Hinata, and Ikusaba, Keiichi with Ouma, Kamukura and Saihara, Ouma with Kamukura and Saihara, Kamukura with Komaeda, Komaeda with Hinata, and Hinata with Saihara. This is the titular clusterfuck; they are a polycule in progress. Its not even the only ship. The plot though is inspired by all that I wished Dangan Ronpa 3: Despair Arc was, with Enoshima taking advantage of vulnerable people via manipulation and HPA's inherent powderkeg, but with higurashi's thematic core.

Higurashi: When They Cry - Uso (Lies) and what would be its answer arc counterpart I haven't named yet: The other crossover fic. This one is just. What if I yeeted Ouma into the Higurashi setting like it was where he belonged. What would happen. It's Higurashi, so it borrows a lot from its overarching story and arc ideas, but every arc would be a unique twist based on the existence of a new guy in there! I still like this a lot. I still think of every character in dangan ronpa, Ouma feels the most like the one who would belong in Higurashi, and stands the most to gain from it.

The Klav/Seb enemies to lovers fic: it's exactly what it sounds like. I just think they have a lot in common but their themis years would absolutely be filled with PETTY beef because seb is a nepotism baby which pisses Klav off, and seb doesn't know he's a nepotism baby so he doesn't understand what the fuck his problem is. Also Apollo is there later. Klavier has 2 hands.

Pewter in a timeloop for aitsf and he gets a buddy cop dynamic with Iris on his looping quest to save renju. yeah that. that's the jist. also includes REHABILITATING THE OKIURA HOUSEHOLD AAAAAAA

I have some oneshots I haven't written yet, but those don't count. If you're aware of a long fic/series I was working on that isn't listed here....sorry but I think I've grown past those ideas.

I have two WIPs that are original, but I still work on those. They're both visual novel concepts I came up with, and they both mean everything in the world to me.

15. What are your writing strengths?

Fanfic specific strengths, I'm great at being in character. Translated more broadly, strong dialogue and internal narration coupled with actions and behaviors that reflect their emotional core.

I think my narration is at its best when it's just sitting inside some messy bitch's head and living out their entire thought process, and I think my background in poetry really adds to that. I like using line breaks and font sizes/alignments/effects to express intensity or disarray, etc. I do that for dialogue too. Also I'm pretty fucking funny in both places when I want to be. I think it adds to the charm, and I think my authorial voice adds to that.

Also tbh I'm so good at structuring and pacing frankly I think I'm a natural at it. I think my scenes are as long as they need to be, my stories hit every necessary beat, every scene and story ends and begins on the correct note, and readers learn things when they need to. Pacing and structure is not really something people think a lot about when they get asked this question, but I think it's the most important element to any story. If your pacing, your narrative structure is broken, no amount of metaphor and poetic description can save you.

16. What are your writing weaknesses?

God forbid I have to describe a physical thing. Forget it. Not actions per se (although sometimes yeah those too, but more like clothes, settings, sounds, smells, tastes--that's a real struggle. I always think its the weakest thing I have to offer, and a lot of my writing process is desperately trying to put the image in my brain into words that make sense and sound good. Definitely the biggest weakness I have no fucking contest holy shit.

Other smaller struggles is a tendency to overuse words like just/maybe/really/still/etc; the problem with having a strong voice is that some of the quirks from my way of TALKING don't actually add anything to narration or the dialogue, so I've been training myself to cut back and cut things out. It can lead to things being repetitive.

Also, while I believe I have a lot of killer ideas that slap 10/10, and I'm a very creative person, the ADHD makes it hard to keep working on ideas even when I love them. The smallest thing stumping me, or boring me, or just kind of draining my sole, can get me not writing for weeks. I guess this is an ADHD problem, but it affects writing, my one true love, and in some ways that makes it the real biggest issue.

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

I think it's fine depending on how you do it. If you put a note at the end translating all the lines in other languages, or fit the translation smoothly within the narrative, I think that's completely legal.

With that said, I do kinda cringe when instead of writing Japanese someone types out just. romaji. I get that you want your audience to know how to read it, but they're likely not to know what it means anyway even IN romaji, so just commit. Go for authenticity. You can put the pronunciation in your footnotes too.

18. What was the first fandom you wrote for?

Pokemon in my spiral notebook in 5th grade. It's still pokemon online cause I made an illegal ffn account and moved it there at age 11. You can't read it; I literally don't even remember what the account was.

19. What’s a fandom/ship you haven’t written for yet but want to?

Mmm....I guess spy x family? I haven't written full fic for it yet, and it'd be nice to. The list of ships is longer, and I'm not going to bother with that, but needless to say I have a lot of passions lmao.

20. What’s your favorite fic you’ve written?

The ryudate fic I'm revising right the fuck now. No, okay, that's illegal, it doesn't exist in full yet, although you can read its revised first chapter here <3. That said, I find this decision kind of hard, so I'll give you a few that I've finished: Yours, Le Chasseur et le Démon (The Hunter and the Fiend), A Rational Man, The "Death" of Prosecutor Miles Edgeworth and a fic for a Pandora Hearts zine that hasn't come out yet!

Um. I will tag. @generalherasyndulla, @queenshroorn, and anyone else who reads this whole thing and considers themselves a writer.

[furryprovocateur]

and she's back in the game.

welcome to WK hell! this chapter is full of WKs that will eat your baby, and the longer spent in this chapter, the more that spawn. my goal for this chapter was to get to all the villages asap, steal oleg's hero crest, then fucking delete him the same turn. turns out that wasn't nearly as hard as i worried it would be, because it basically only took one or two resets (one because i fielded dart originally lol). honestly, the best way to do this chapter is to just strike while the iron's hot and do all your shit before the reinforcements plod in. doing the casual run, it was a nightmare because i was planning on killing all of them and so often did they get a coinflip away from killing eliwood (eliwood is such fucking deadweight here it's unreal). meanwhile, if you just rush with bartre + hector + raven (lancereaver preferred, but optional), you'll be fine for the most part.

so, with that in mind, i deployed bartre and raven (as mentioned), priscilla (now that i have physic staves, deploying at least one healer per chapter is non-negotiable), lowen (was able to get some very slight utility out of him in that he got the light rune + the wyrm slayer, all on top of getting a level), fiora (considering you have basically 5 turns to get the elysian whip, using one of florina/fiora is almost mandatory to get it + she ate up those monks for dinner), and obviously matthew (who, thanks to masterful strategy, i was able to send to the arena for an easy win against a fighter, lol).

thing to note: i burned the body ring you get from the transfer bonus on fiora. at this point, the body ring is only going to three places: florina, fiora, or the storage, and right now, fiora could use the boost. florina is basically perfect as is and while fiora's not doing poorly, the boost helps. i figured this was as good a time as any to use it because she had crested over the expected point of potentially being able to not need it.

other than that, the chapter's fairly straightforward. get to the villages, know the enemy spawns and reinforcements, be mindful of HP + use the buddy system, etc. etc. i would've liked to use the arena more than once, but it's not only unsafe, but impractical if i can finish the chapter this early. oh well. in spite of not using this arena, this was a great grinding chapter, as everyone got great level ups, even eliwood. bartre's just hit 10 speed, can you believe it? i wasn't even aware the dude could hit double digit speed. joke's aside, bartre's really coming into his own as a front liner, and he's going to make a good great value hector considering hector's about to hit 20 and suddenly become a "do not use under any circumstances" unit to me.

one last thing to mention: i went to the armory and bought a shitload of stuff with the silver card. to be specific, 2 of each: iron sword, iron lance, iron axe, javelin, and hand axe. it might be a bit much, but i could afford it + next chapter has a chest with like 50k gold in it iirc so that'll be how i can afford to buy a shitload of barrier staves. between having ninian + physics and barriers, i'll soon be able to really cushion the experience rank even moreso. we're nearing the part of the game where i'm going to consistently miss experience rank benchmarks and need to offset it with the 0 requirement chapters as much as possible, so every little bit will help.

[hms-no-fun]

The new interlude was pretty intense, and I wasn’t sure if I followed along with the sequence of events perfectly, especially in the second half. I’m mainly wondering what exactly happened, and also how things could have changed so drastically between them? I’m not sure how much time had passed in between then and their last meeting, but it seems like the way they do things has turned to be more of an exclusively violent thing rather than violence with emotional processing alongside it.

i’m not going to spell out what exactly happened, especially in the latter half. i suggest slowly rereading this fic with an eye towards physicality and symbolism, keeping in mind Dana’s classpect and how we’ve seen her use it in the past. consider, as well, the introductory note’s use of the phrase “aggressively canonical” and what that might imply. this isn’t a huge ask imo considering “stomach” is a measly 3,994 words long, compared to the nearly 40,000 words contained in just one of chapter 8’s many fingers. there are more answers present within the text than you might expect, but you’ve got to put the pieces together yourself. failing that, there’s always the godfeels fan server...

but now to the meat of your question, which i very much do want to talk about at excruciating length (after the break).

this interlude is a lot of things. one of them is an experiment.

other writers besides me have contributed to godfeels before (Taz with Dirk dialogue in ch8 acts 2 and 3, Julia with the Dana v Silverbark fight in act 4), but interlude 3 is the first entry in the series that was primarily written by someone else. not only that, but it’s also the first real glimpse we get into the narrative universe that is likely to become a major focus of our attention in the near future. as much as i talk big about throwing my ego in the trash for collaborations, i have to admit that this was a bit scary for me! and not just in the sense that godfeels is my baby or whatever. you don’t need to look very long to find examples of indie projects like this utterly destroyed when their overly-precious creators decide to throw their collaborators under the bus for the sake of their sacred vision (money).

i don’t want to be that guy. i’ve been personally fucked over by different versions of that guy multiple times in just the last few years, and it terrifies me that i was blindsided every time. i’m terrified that i’ll take every precaution and still wind up becoming that guy somehow. i hate creative dictators. i hate that our primary cultural definition of collaboration still paradoxically hinges on one or two people being the head of the dragon. i don’t want to be the head of anything, i just want to make cool shit with my friends.

HOWEVER. the fact remains that i’ve written nearly 400,000 words of this fucking thing largely on my lonesome. there’s a lot that only i am privy to, and not just in plot terms. so the big test for us was, how do i as ~the director~ ensure that the text is true to canon, in character, and just generally up to my arbitrary standards of aesthetic consistency, without compromising the primary author’s work? this was a big learning experience and involved several long conversations about... well, basically everything i just said.

thing is, everyone in the work server has their own little section of godfeels they tend to gravitate towards, and Julia's been laser focused on Dana and Lenore pretty much since the day i invited her on board. i can't remember the exact chain of events that got us here, but iirc Julia started writing this interlude on her own, i liked it enough to suggest we should work together to make it canon, and she agreed. she finished the first draft maybe a month and a half ago, and from there we talked very openly about how we wanted to collaborate, what we were willing to budge on, what we weren’t, that sort of thing. where we eventually landed was that she reserved the right to reject any of my suggestions on the prose while giving me a lot of latitude to influence dialogue. i added/modified a few lines in the first half, but for the most part it’s all Julia. my big contribution was the final sequence, which Julia improved in several key ways.

i won’t linger on this process talk for much longer, but i think the most fun part of writing this for me was seeing which of my suggestions Julia rejected. i would comment on a single line of narration with a paragraph of thoughts, and she’d reject them... but also find ways to incorporate bits and pieces of my thoughts elsewhere in the text? this was what ultimately eased my mind about this process, because it didn’t matter so much to me whether or not she fixed any given line as long as we both knew that the ambiguity was a choice she was making.

ANYWAY, it made sense for this specific interlude (which features two 29 year old characters we’ve only just met) to have a completely different authorial voice from prior interludes. it even comes down to the title: “penny in a bed of flowers” and “eyes like violet fire” have this poetic energy to them that’s utterly absent in interlude 3’s “stomach.” the dreamy naivety of the young twenty-something giving way to the base bodily functions of actual genuine adults who’ve lived, er, shall we say colorful lives.

(one similarity between all the interludes is that they are fundamentally fanfiction. it just so happens that interlude 3 is fanfic for a canon that doesn’t exist yet :)

the first two interludes were soft, warm, primarily positive sexual experiences. i wanted them to typify some of the beauty of transfeminine sexuality, as a refuge from the pressing danger and trauma of 2.3. interlude 3, by contrast, looks at two transfems who’ve been in an on-again off-again relationship for over a decade. on top of that, this is their first private reunion after Lenore sold Dana and the other upsilons up the river three years ago. there’s a lot going on between them, most of which goes unspoken. we’re eavesdroppers here, there’s no way they’re gonna take the time to contextualize what they’re doing when it’s just the two of them.

which gets us to what i’ve been building up to all along. i want to single out this specific bit from your question, anon:

“it seems like the way they do things has turned to be more of an exclusively violent thing rather than violence with emotional processing alongside it.”

i’ll start by observing that we’ve never seen Dana and Lenore alone together until this fic, and i don’t think i’ve ever met a couple that behaves the same in public as they do in private.

it’s true that their relationship involves a lot of physical violence, but is it exclusively violent? does it really seem like there’s no emotional processing going on in this scene? from where i’m sitting, this scene is nothing BUT emotional processing. the difference is that there’s no resolution. and why would there be? it’s not like Lenore called Dana a bitch on twitter dot com (although she definitely has done that). whatever the nature of her betrayal, it led to Edie and Alphi disappearing, and Dana being banished to starve and go mad all alone on a meteor for THREE YEARS. there’s no cathartic conversation that’s gonna paper over that, especially not on the first night they’re together again. you could draw a parallel here to Dare’s many epiphanies not actually curing their depression if you liked. one might even call it “a theme.”

before i say more, Julia has some things to add:

I am a fan of metanarrative fuckery–for example, I love how Terezi's narration in the latest chapters refuses to turn inwardly, and that refusal collapses as her stress mounts. That being said, I unfortunately just have the one narrative method: I like unreliable PoVs that deny the audience information the character in question wouldn't be thinking about. Dana won't stop doing things to think about the decade-long depths of the relationship Lenore betrayed. This is her life, these are her actions. You, as reader, can but take them as they come.

If I wanted to give myself more credit than's due, I would claim that this also reflects the nature of Dana (and co.) as an internal narrative. She's older, she's more resentful, she's just come out of a situation she spent 3 years coldly simmering about, and it went worse than she expected in some ways (she didn't get to ether Silverbark), but shockingly better in others (she got the Comet and Lenore back). Crucially, Dana is trained for violence, so she's not given to these Egbertian windbag breakdowns that give away the entirety of her thoughts as a response to sudden violence–she just stances up, and acts. She's been doing it for a long time, she's good at it and she likes it enough to be a weakness.

jumping off from that, the thing to understand is that Dana is a fighter. not just someone who likes to fight but a trained, highly skilled grappler who Silverbark at one point thought of as “her finest mentee.” just from the text of this interlude alone, it’s safe to assume that Dana and Lenore have fought each other many times in the past. there’s even this snippet of a memory in the last section where Dana seems to willingly, covertly lose to Lenore for sex reasons:

(idk why i censored the words “fucks” and “orgasm” in this screenshot)

Lenore is less technically skilled than Dana, but she makes up for it by being extremely strong and durable (those troll muscles, baby). if i were to make a Lenore kin onion, Jessica Jones would be pretty close to the center. so they have this back and forth where Dana can just fucking unload on Lenore without causing any real lasting damage. and it shouldn’t go unstated that fighting and sex are basically the same activity!

Lenore says of their relationship that “we like it this way.” they both trained together in the EWL, and despite their differences and the bumpy lives they’ve led they still always wind up back together somehow. i would not call this a healthy dynamic per se, but these are fucked up women who grew up in what seems to have been a deeply ideological paramilitary organization. “healthy” is a luxury for women like these. and whatever you might think of it from the outside, they clearly enjoy it- or, at least, there was a time when they enjoyed it.

this encounter feels to me like muscle memory. the children have been put to bed, medical emergencies are taken care of, now is the time to drink and catch up. what they want, the two of them, is to have what they had, i think. they both know they have to address the shadow hanging over them at some point, but not tonight. tonight is for them. and like, yeah, of course they’d think that was possible. Dana’s been an unwilling bachelor for ages now, and Lenore? i can’t imagine she’s had much free time with her job running support for a high-ranking ewl member. maybe a few one-night stands here and there? but nothing satisfying in the long-term. throughout chapter 8, before their reunion, we’ve seen both Lenore and Dana independently wishing the other were there, despite everything between them. they’re lonely and they want to fuck each other, because they are each other’s best fuck. the entire ritual is so rehearsed, so known, so comfortable start to finish.

but of course, that shadow is just too loomy not to infect that ritual. you think they’d say shit like “i’m fine” and “i’m not mad” if they really meant it? they’re spells to ward off the inevitable and possibly relationship-shattering tension between them. these two already seemed to have something of a kismesissitude going, though i hesitate to simplify their thing (or any pair’s “thing” in godfeels, for that matter) in such basic terms, because they genuinely love each other. we can debate what kind of love it is, but if nothing else it’s pretty clear that that love has endured a LOT. they value that endurance, i think.

Dana and Lenore have been through too much together to escape their mutual orbit. Lenore thought she could, and Dana wished she could, but here they are again, back at it same as always. is it healthy? is it too violent? is it bad? i honestly don’t know. what i like about them is that they can be mad at each other, hate each other even, but still know deep down that no one else gets it the way they do. they’re rivals to lovers to enemies and back again because they’re too stubborn to really, truly let go. they’d never want to. that’s what makes it hurt all the more, one of many reasons they can’t just paper over this betrayal with a cathartic bout of a hatesex, that Dana knows she can’t let Lenore out of her life again. she knew it the instant she saw her step out of the Comet. so it’s this contradiction that can’t be resolved, not when both parties are so proud, and it manifests in this passionate anger, this desire to love and devour, to punish and protect, until they tucker themselves out and wind up just feeling empty inside, because again, the core contradiction hasn’t been resolved. it's beautiful and terrible all at once and buddy if that ain't godfeels from toe to tip

[literaphobe]

🌻

so i write on like one notes app document like a crazy person right? and i had the first 4 chapters of my fic measured aka i know the cut off points for those chapters and vaguely know how long they are but i wanted to measure how much ive written so far so i measured ch5 and its like 8.2k and ch6 was like 8.5k iirc? and istg i suck at guesstimating how long a chapter will be bc i looked at what i had for ch7 and im like this is the perfect place to cut it off... but what if its not long enough :( anyway i spat what i had into the word counter and i sat there praying like pls be at least 6k 😔😔😔 and when the word count popped up i nearly started laughing bc it was 8.9k making it the longest chapter that currently exists and i haven't even like edited it yet during this edit cycle that im doing (im in the middle of editing ch5 now) so it could wind up even longer LMFAOOO anyway im excited to finish my editing even tho its been fun polishing everything n making things better bc i wanna continue ch8 ^_^ poggie woggie

[spookykittenwrites]

ramblings and speculations about motivation beneath the cut. happy thoughts and feel good but also personal so I don’t wanna bother people with it

I realized the other day that cql (which I’ve been writing for for 3 months) is already my 2nd most written for fandom ever and I’ve been participating in fandom for over a decade and creating for a little under that. I probably wrote my first fic when I was in grade 10 (iirc) and had been on and off writing fiction well before that, but anyway given that I’m coming up on my 24th birthday that would make it probably around 9 years I’ve been writing fic and.... you know what’s weird, folks? That after all this time, all this love that I’ve put in, I’ve only just started to do it for myself, entirely and completely. 

And I think that’s why this is my 2nd most written, maybe that and a small measure of skill as well, but real talk before I started writing for cql I wrote not so much to but for an audience, and as a result I didn’t get nearly as much done. Now, contrary to what other people might say, I write more and better than I used to, not because I have the pressure of updating to please other people and making sure people like my work, but for exactly the opposite reason. Without the guilt and fear and worry about updating the right fic or writing the right pairing, I’m creating purely for the joy of doing so, and I’m creating more as a result. 

I will admit that I’ve also become a far more disciplined writer, and far more skilled. I can sit and just put my ideas into words without massive amounts of effort and I don’t do a whole lot of drafting or fixing or shit like that after I finish something aside from looking for typing errors. But the big thing is how happy writing makes me, how expressed I feel. 

Back when I was writing for World of Warcraft I got that a little bit, but the fandom was so small and I knew so many people in it that even then there was a certain pressure to keep up projects and update them, though for the most part in a healthy and loving way (even if my own attitude wasn’t entirely healthy). But I think finally I’ve freed myself of any and all obligation to update for other people. I have no guilt about abandoning (or at least putting on hold) a fic I was working on because it was for me, not for anyone else, and I’m not having fun writing it. I allow myself to write what I want to write and it’s so much better. 

I guess I’m just proud of myself is all, and I just wanted to put that into words and also, maybe, tell other people that hey, it’s possible. I used to think I’d never be able to get through a fic if I didn’t have people commenting on every chapter to motivate me, but now, well, I just don’t care. I write as much of something as I want and if it’s post-able, great. If not, it’s just for me and that’s great too. 

[eria-404-fluff-not-found]

I believe I might finish the first version of Lost and Found, Book One in this month if I'm good ... Then, I just gotta rewrite Arc 1 (of 5 iirc) and edit the chapters in detail before I'll be able to upload B1 omg I'm so hyped! I thought it might still take around 3 months or so but! Camp NaNoWriMo really helps me write more (and spring break).

asdfgh I'm sooo excited! Here have an excerpt of B1 + the description (not beta'd or anything bc it's spontaneous)

Description

Prince Zuko has lost everything. It’s the year 195 after Sozin’s Comet was used to wipe out the Air Nomads. After all this time, few are left who believe the Avatar will return someday. The banished prince is one of them for he hopes to regain his honour by capturing them. His quest seems hopeless, though he works tirelessly to achieve his goal. The Blue Spirit though seems to have his own plans for him.

Katara of the Southern Water Colonies has lost everything. In 192, her mother was captured, in 193, killed. In the year 195, she herself is captured by the soldiers in her home colony at the young age of nine. A life in prison awaits her. But then, a new vigilante on the rise, the Blue Spirit, saves her. Astonished and inspired by his deeds, she decides to help him. But the Blue Spirit is not who he appears to be.

Prince Zuko and Katara have lost everything. Now, they have to find a new place in an unforgiving, war-ridden world.

OR:

Katara and Zuko travel around as the Blue Spirit and Painted Lady, helping people in need, until they find Aang, nearly two hundred years after the Air Nomad genocide.

Excerpt

While they were walking through the peaceful and quiet forest, Zuko said, “I’ve been thinking about what you asked me the other day.”

“Huh?” Katara looked at him.

“You asked why I saved you even though it put myself at risk. I wasn’t sure why but now I know.”

“Why?”

Zuko hesitated because what he was about to tell was nothing but a blatant lie. “Because when I heard they captured a child I got so furious I didn’t care that I might get hurt freeing you.” He swallowed. “The Fire Empire committed many crimes, but this is one of their greatest.” That was something a rebel would say, right? Zuko could barely bring out the words. But if he told her that he agreed with what the empire did and just saved her because an evil spirit forced him to, she would probably stop trusting him altogether and run away and ruin his only chance of getting into Omashu, into one of the rebel cities.