#it was cool :D I’ve been wanting to write a fic about this for months so it’s nice to finally sit down and Do It

[ghosts-and-blue-sweaters]

I could not write in my usual writing place tonight. Well alsgaksgakgs I could but I really didn’t want to. WHY YOU ASK? I will tell the tale in tags. It is truly dreadful.

I still managed to write though!! About EXCITING THINGS YES YES!!!

[the-apocrypha]

3, 22, 26?

3. How would you describe your writing style? 

Uh. Functional. Highly functional. Occasionally I strive toward the slightly poetic or prosaic, and I feel like my own tendency toward dry humor will come out from time to time, but otherwise I think it's pretty… basic. 

(The more literary answer is that my style is highly reflective of my history of pretty much only ever writing within the bounds of fanfiction. While there are obviously exceptions, there tends to be a lot of homogeneity amongst fanfiction writing style, for a lot of reasons, including (1) You tend to write what you read, and (2) People generally turn to fanfiction for literary comfort food. While a House of Leaves or an On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is nice on occasion, we are mostly here to straight torture or sexify or cuddle our blorbos and we don’t want to beat around the bush. It is in no way a bad thing! It’s actually kind of cool, from a literary perspective, because it's genuinely recognizable. Like the Scholomance trilogy! They are good, but you can tell by page two that this person absolutely cut their teeth on fanfiction. So, I am a product of my experiences.)

22. What is it about watching the same two idiots fall in love over and over again? 

See above: comfort food. 

Long answer: for me, I am a person who does not instantly attach to characters. I rarely enter fandoms that are based around a single book or movie, and greatly favor comics/television/series because it lets me spend a lot of time with characters and my affection for them can really take root and grow. Fanfic is just the next natural extension of that. I am very much a person who finds a Happy Button and then wants to mash the Happy Button ad nauseum until it breaks. I listen to the same album on repeat for three months. I just discovered Tim Tams and have bought a box a week for the last four months. And when I settle into a fandom, I want to see my blorbos having nice things over and over and over and over again. :D 

26. What would you describe as OOC?

Oof this is a tough one! I think characterization is such a personal thing that it’s impossible to define that. I definitely have opinions on things that I read, on whether they’re in/out of character, but the beautiful thing about fandom is that we are all casting prisms of the same characters and what is out of character for me may be in character for someone else! So, eh. 

I will say that I feel like any time I start writing for a new fandom, my first fic or two will always feel a little rocky in characterization. Once I’ve written more and developed a more nuanced and consistent concept of the characters, I usually look back on the early stuff and go woof. Sandman has been no exception to this. (Fond wave at fly me to the moon. You’re not completely terrible.)

(for the writers ask meme)

[huffle-dork]

Swapboys: Memory Block

Read More Swapboys Stories here! | More Swapboys | Read on AO3

(AN: hello guys! While working on the next villain arc story (I’m so close omg) I finally got the epiphany to make this Drabble work! I’ve had it mostly written for months!! Finally, backstory for Bro and Alt! Who their parents and aunts are- and if you read the multiverse stories, why Alt and Bro couldn’t seem to remember things about seeing SCLERA before the main story! Plus, a cameo to a new swap versions of a few huffleverse characters! >:3c if you read the multiverse series this reveal has already come out so it’s about time I expanded on it huh? Anyways enough rambling, enjoy! Oh also, just a warning this will be using Alt's deadname and female pronouns for him for a bit cuz he was itty bitty here! But its not for the whole fic! :3)

Chase Brody was sticking to his Father’s side as they walked through the lab he worked in. It was the weekend but Chase’s parents pretty much lived at the lab. In fact, their apartment was upstairs. They moved here after Anthea started getting really sick because there was a hospital attached to the building too. So, when Chase didn’t have anywhere to go for the weekend, he accompanied his mother and father around the cool clinical space. 

After a bit of check ins where his Father was writing down notes and refilling important looking medicine tubes- Chase eventually reached out and tugged on his coat. 

“Dad?” He asked quietly. “…Can I see Anti today?” 

Dr. Brody was quiet for a second, almost seeming to ignore his son. But, eventually he looks down and his face softens slightly. He gets down to Chase’s level and smiles. “…remember Chase, Anthea is very sick�� so we can’t stay for too long, okay?” 

Chase knew this. His parents told him over and over why Anti now was staying more often at the hospital. She had something called epilepsy… and it was making her really weak and she needed to be looked at by lots of doctors. But, dad recently had been saying she was starting to look a bit better! But… he’s said that before… and it would go back and forth… Chase just really really missed his little sister… 

“Okay,” Chase said sadly. “…I just… want to see her.” 

“We can see her. I’m sure she’ll be very happy to see us both.” Dr. Brody replied, patting Chase on the shoulder. He gently took his hand and headed down to the hospital part that was connected to the SCLERA headquarters. 

But, when they got there- Anthea wasn’t in her bed. Dr. Brody seemed distraught, grabbing the nearest nurse by the elbow. 

“Where is my daughter?!” He cried. 

The nurse flinched and looked at him with confusion. “D-Dr. Demerci said she was taking her to do some tests? Did she not tell you?” 

Dr. Brody shook his head and let the nurse go. “No uh… did Dr. Demerci say where she was taking her?” 

“Umm I think back towards SCLERA.” 

Dr. Brody pales and then quickly grabs Chase, hoisting him in his arms. Huh- Chase thought he was too big for that! They race back down to the SCLERA labs and rush to a part that dad says Chase isn’t allowed to go. 

They run through a couple sets of hallways, asking various workers where Dr. Demerci is and eventually end up in a cold room near the back of the section. 

Anthea is there, sitting on a hospital bed in her hospital gown, getting an injection from their mom, Dr. Demerci. Demerci blinks and then turns to look at Chase and Dr. Brody with a cold smile. 

“Oh Kieran and Chase! What a… surprise to see you here!” She says sweetly. 

Anthea blinks and tries to wave. Chase waves too, wanting to kick out of his dad’s arms to go see her. But, his dad holds onto him firmly. Almost like… he’s scared. 

“Jezebeth,” Dr. Brody says in a low voice, “Just what the hell are you doing?” 

Chase looks at his dad with confusion. Why does he… sound scared of Mum? 

Dr. Demerci makes an offended noise, holding a hand over her chest. “Kieran! I’m helping our daughter! Do you really think so little of me?” 

“She was getting help at the hospital! The VNS treatment was helping!” Dr. Brody shouts. 

Demerci laughs, “Maybe at first… the principle of that is sound. Make electric signals in the nerves to counteract the ones in the brain. But… I wanted to see if we could rely on more than just a machine!” She looks down at Anthea and pats her cheek before turning to look at Dr. Brody and Chase. 

“I’m sure you’re aware of this, my love. But your family has a bit of magic in its history, doesn’t it?” She smiles. “That’s easy enough to tap into! Anthea actually seemed to be developing something stronger… but her seizures were making her weak. So… I figured- why not kill two birds with one stone? Fuel the magic… stop the seizures.” 

Dr. Brody steps back, breathing heavily. “She’s a child, Jezebeth! She’s not even 4 yet! This is…. This is too much! Our daughter is not something you can treat like the other subjects! They... they consent to it! They’re not children!” 

Chase starts to feel tears in his eyes as he curls up against his Dad. Why is he yelling? Did Mum do something bad to Anti? 

“So you would have Anthea die then, Kieran?” Demerci says coldly. “She wasn’t getting better before I started to help.” 

“I-I don’t believe you- you’re insane! To do this to your own daughter- to our child!” Dr. Brody stammers. 

Demerci laughs and Chase can’t help but shake because… this woman wasn’t acting like his mum. She was scary right now… 

“Kieran, you’re so small minded! Not only have I cured Anthea- I’ve made her better than ever!” Demerci giggles with a mad look in her eyes. She looks down as Anthea and then gestures towards Dr.Brody and Chase, “Anthea, dear, why don’t you show Daddy and Chase your new trick?” 

Anthea blinks and then nods. “Okay mummy!” She jumps off the bed, already a miraculous feat for such a sick girl. Then she closes her eyes and holds out her palm. Green electricity starts to collect around her hand and then in a big ZIP it shoots across the space, hitting the wall with a loud bang. She smiles proudly at Chase and Dr. Brody. “Ta da!” There’s a slight ring of green that circled her pupils that quickly fades. 

Chase laughs, “Woah!! That’s so cool!” 

But, Dr. Brody looks absolutely horrified. 

Anthea deflates, stepping back, “..d..daddy?” 

“Jezebeth- what did you do?!” Kieran’s voice trembles out of his lips. 

“I made her better- in more ways than one.” Demerci says calmly. “And see? No more seizures.” 

“You’re sick- you’re fucking sick!” Kieran finally shouts, holding Chase closer to him. “I should have never left you alone with her- how could you?! I… I’m leaving! I’m taking Chase and Anthea and getting the hell away from you!” 

“What?” Chase gasps, tears in his eyes. 

Demerci’s eyes burn coldly and then she laughs. “You know you can’t do that, Kieran.” 

“I-I’ll find a way!” Dr. Brody emphasizes, “The head… they have to be against this!” 

“Oh no- I was approved ages ago.” Jezebeth says smugly. 

Dr. Brody’s stomach drops. He shakes his head, trying to take Chase out the doors but Chase throws a fit. “No no Dad! We’re not leaving!!” 

“I don’t think the head will be very happy to hear of your insubordination, Kieran…” Demerci coos tauntingly. “Didn't you hear what happens to the doctors that try to walk away from our projects?” 

“No…!” Dr. Brody chokes on a sob and crashes to his knees, hugging Chase close to him, even if his son wiggles in confusion. “No no! Why…? Why did you do this? To our family- did it all mean nothing to you?!” 

Demerci chuckles and goes to kneel down by Kieran, taking his chin in her fingers. She smiles lovingly, but they’re still that coldness behind her eyes. “…oh darling… you all mean so so much to me. Think of all we can learn… together!” 

Then she pulls something from her pocket and immediately jabs it into the side of Kieran’s neck. He gasps and then starts to sway, eventually falling bonelessly to the ground. Chase tries to get away and Jezebeth picks him up and then sets him down behind her. “Chase, love? Be a dear and go check on Anthea won’t you?” 

“O-Okay…” Chase says in a small voice. He runs over to his trembling sister in the corner and goes to scoop her up in a hug. “H-Hey Anti… are you okay?” 

Anthea is crying quietly, trying not to make a sound. “W-Why is daddy on the ground? Why didn’t he take us to leave??” 

“What?? Do you want to leave?” Chase whisper-shouts. 

Anthea is quiet for a second before she nods. “…mummy hurts me.” She whispers. “I-I can do that cool thing now but it hurted me… I dont wanna hurt anymore, Chase!” She sniffles. 

Chase looks at his mum’s back as she checks over their dad, half awake on the ground. 

“Why… didn’t you tell me or Dad, Anti?” Chase whispers. 

“…she told me not to tell. That I’d get daddy hurt.” She sobs. “I didn’t tell and he’s hurt! I don’t want t-this! I don’t want this anymore!!” Static electricity seems to build up in the air as Anthea clings to Chase and cries. “No more hospitals! No more needles! No more shocks! No more! No more! no more!!” 

“Anthea!” Demerci’s cold voice snaps out. 

Anthea immediately quiets, shutting her mouth and staring away from Demerci with wide eyes. She curls up more against Chase, trembling. 

Demerci has turned around, stepping towards the children as her heels click loudly on the tile. Chase used to love that sound- that sound meant his mum was home. That meant he’d get a hug and help with dinner and make her laugh. She hasn’t been the same since Anthea got sick- always away and working. And now… the noise that used to bring him so much joy only fills him with dread. 

“What did I say about making such a dreadful noise, dear?” Demerci hisses down at them. 

“I’m sorry-“ Anthea starts to say. 

Then, Chase pushes to be in front of her, pushing his little sister behind him. Even if his knees and arms are shaking. 

“Don’t-“ He breathes out, “Don’t hurt, Anti!” 

Demerci looks surprised. Then she chuckles. “oh... I do adore that nickname of yours, Chaser.” Then, her smile drops. “Step away from your sister, please.” 

“No!” Chase bites back. “No more! You’re not gonna hurt her anymore! I’m gonna protect her!” And as he says this- a bit of blue light seems to flicker in his eyes. 

Now, Demerci looks really surprised. She studies Chase and then kneels down to look at both of her children. Then, she grins. 

“Okay, Chase. If that’s the game you want to play… I don’t think I mind adding a new player~” 

Chase blinks, “A… game?” 

“Yes, a game! We’ve been playing a very fun game, haven't we, Anthea?” Demerci smiles, glancing at Anthea. 

The little girl flinches and then slowly nods. “Mhm…” 

“It’s a game that lets you win magic, Chase.” Demerci continues, smiling sweetly. A smile Chase deeply missed. “That’s what Anthea won! And if you play… you can get magic too. Magic to protect your sister and become big and strong! Would you like that, Chase? Don’t you wanna play with Mummy?” 

Chase hesitates, looking back at Kieran on the floor. “…will Dad get to play with us?” He asks quietly. 

“Oh yes, Darling. He’s just feeling a bit sleepy is all. But he’ll be back to play very soon!” 

“…o..okay.. I.. I wanna play. I want…!” Chase starts to sniffle and rubs at his eyes. “I-I want us to do t-things together again! I don’t want to leave! I don’t want Anti to be sick anymore! I wanna see Mummy more!! I wanna play games again!!” He cries. 

Demerci smiles and goes to pick up Chase and Anthea in her arms, shushing them softly. “Now now love… after today? We’ll be together all the time… we have so many new games to play. And me and Daddy will be right by you both!” 

“P-Promise?” Chase whimpers.

“Promise.” 

But… his mum had a very different meaning of the word ‘game’. Chase didn’t like this game… he didn’t like it one bit. 

——- 

Glowing hands get lifted away from Chase’s head as he lays on a small bed sleeping. Anti is curled up beside him, also fast asleep. 

They’re in a small but cozy witchy space. Bookshelves line one of the walls and two of the others are filled with hanging plants in various states of drying. Tables are filled with notes and open books, containing spells and spell circles. A small cot has been set up in the middle of the room for the boys to sleep on, and on chairs surrounding them sit four adults. Their dad, their aunt (who looks similar to their dad with slightly wavy, mousy brown hair) and her wife (a very pretty woman with fiery red hair) and the dark skinned woman with glowing hands, a magician. 

An image of what was just seen in Chase’s mind floats in a bubble of magic above his head- and the boys’ aunts stare at it with horrified expressions, while their dad, Kieran Brody, looks very numb. 

“…this is where you want to start the spell then, Keiran?” The magician asks. 

“Yes,” Kieran says immediately. 

The woman frowns, “That is… nearly a year of memory blocking-“ 

“I know,” Kieran says, his voice choked with emotion. “I just… I-I don’t know what else to do…! I-It’s a miracle I managed to escape with them… I don’t know how much longer it is until they find me… I can’t have them finding the boys… I-I don’t want them to live with the awful memories of what Jezebeth did to them!” 

“You’re not just hiding memories though,” One of the aunts says, the one with ginger hair. “You’re hiding that they’re magic!” 

“I-I know, Emmaline…” Kieran sighs, “But if word got out that they had powers…! It could lead Jezebeth straight to them!” 

“Withholding their magic could have dire consequences, Kieran,” The magician says darkly. “Magic must be used. It could overwhelm your children and make them very sick.” 

“I-I know that too, Kendra…” 

“And even if we hide such magic from them… they must be registered with the Circle,” Kendra continues. “The Magic Circle governs all magic users here. They are just like our government- and I refuse to make these two innocent children magic criminals by not having them registered.” 

This seems to give Kieran an idea. “… the Magic Circle. I… I’ve heard of them. They weren’t in America… If the boys are registered there… Can the Circle help keep them hidden from SCLERA?”

“…I suppose they could?” Kendra frowns, “but, Kieran-“

“I just… I want this memory spell sustained. I want their powers hidden… a-at least until they’re older.” He says quietly, “They wouldn’t be able to learn with the other magical kids- their magic is artificial! Eventually the teachers or the students will realize something is wrong and look into it and… I-I don’t want them being looked at like experiments or freaks!” Kieran cries, tears falling out his eyes. He hangs his head, hiccuping quietly. “I-I never wanted this for them…! I wanted them both to just live normal lives…! Or-or if my family’s magic got passed down… for them to learn the right way…!” 

The other three look at each other with worried eyes. 

Kieran’s sister goes to gently lay a hand on his shoulder. “Hey… they’ll be with us, Kier… we won’t let that happen.” 

Kieran looks up and gives her a small smile, squeezing her hand, “I know, Isla… you’re already doing amazing with them.. you’re going to take such good care of them…” 

Isla smiles sadly, hating hearing her brother talk about this like he’s already gone. But… she’s been told the risks…

If SCLERA finds him… he won’t see the boys again. 

Kendra sighs, “alright, I can see where your concerns are… but this is very tricky. Even if their magic is artificial, as far as I can tell, their bodies still react to it as if it was natural. So it might still overflow… what would you like me to do?” 

Kieran nods, “we found the same in our studies… I don’t think Chase is much at risk… he seems to be able to channel his magic into parts of his body and use it for bursts of strength and speed. Maybe… see if he can take up some sports?” He laughs, shaking his head. Then, he looks down at Anti and frowns, pushing hair out of his face. 

“It’s… Anti I’m most worried about… he was already so sickly… and he gained so much power so quickly… I-It’s so much in such a tiny body…” he says quietly, eyes filled with concern.

“…if you want to keep it hidden while they’re kids… maybe we can tell them when they’re older?” Emmaline suggests. 

“Mmm…that could work…” Kieran muses, “Kendra… is there any way for you to just… siphon off excess magic if Anti gets sick?” 

“Well… they will need to come see me here and there for me to check on the memory spell…” Kendra says. “So… I suppose it’s not out of the question.” 

“How long should we wait?” Isla asks. 

“…until it seems like Anti or Chase can’t hide it themselves anymore,” Kieran says. “Or… when Anti is 16. I think… they should be able to understand it then… e-even if I’m not there to…” he cuts himself off, tears brimming in his eyes again. 

Isla goes to rub his shoulder again, tears threatening to spill in her eyes too, “Don’t, kier… please.” 

Kieran nods. “I-If we do that… t-they should be safe. I’ve already moved them to another country… deleted what records I could… they won’t think that I will have gone here… Jezebeth thinks I’m still estranged from my family.” 

Isla snorts, crossing her arms. “And you were before all of this … for marrying that witch.” She mumbles. “I always knew there was something off about her…”  

Kieran sighs, “You were right, Isla… all of you were right. She… blinded me with her brilliance and… she was a f-fantastic mum for a while…” He shakes his head, “well… at least there’s two good things that came from marrying her.” He looks down at Chase and Anti smiling tightly. “I just wish… I-I protected them more…”

“You did all you could, Kieran,” Emmaline says quietly. “It’s not like that bitch made it easy for you… she tricked you and- t-that mind contr-“

“Let’s not talk about that… p-please,” Kieran interrupts, shuddering. 

“The Circle will keep their records safe from prying eyes,” Kendra assures him. “I will… talk to one of the Associates since this is a special case.” 

“Thank you, Magi Danan,” Isla nods. 

 “Isla, you don’t need to be so formal with me!” Kendra laughs, “I am… more than happy to help the family of my best friend.” 

“Ha! I only just married into this crazy family less than a year ago!” Emmaline giggles.

“You don’t regret it, do you, Emmy?” Isla turns to ask her wife. 

Emmy smiles and shakes her head. “Not at all. I promised to be by your side for anything! Even… adopting our nephews because their psycho mom experimented on them!” 

Isla covers up a laugh. “You don’t have to say it so bluntly!” 

Kieran smiles sadly and goes to pull Isla in to kiss her head. “…you picked a really good one, sister…” Isla blushes a bit and pushes him off. “You don’t need to tell me! I married her!” 

Kendra laughs. “Alright… I have a lot of work to do now to get these memories blocked… Kieran, is there any memory you don’t want erased?” 

Kieran blinks and then thinks for a minute. “Oh actually yes! Chase told me about… a conversation him and Anti had… when Anti asked to be called a boy…” 

“Hm… let me see…” Kendra goes to put her hands back on Chase’s temples and starts to flip through his memories once more….

———

After one long day of tests, Chase was led back into his lab room and he was exhausted. He climbed onto his bed and laid against the wall, letting the cool metal relax him. He missed his old room… all his clothes and blankets and toys. Mum said he and Anti would only get those if they were good. There were a few blankets on their beds that were soft and smelled like home. But that just made Chase sad… no toys yet either. Sometimes… they’d get a ball though. But not today, so he waited with his eyes closed until Anti came back. She quickly climbed onto the bed next to Chase and held his arm, curling up next to him. Chase just held her tight and they rested in silence. 

Until… “Chase can I ask you something?” Anti asks in a quiet voice. 

Chase blinks open his eyes and smiles down at his sister. “Yeah? What’s up?” 

Anti curls up more and clings to Chase’s arm. “Can you… can you treat me like a boy…?” 

Chase blinks, “what? What do you mean?” 

Tiny tears were filling up Anti’s eyes, “I don’t like being a girl. It feels wrong. I don’t think I am one…! I-I think I just got put in the wrong body…” 

“Well… how does it feel wrong…?” Chase asks curiously. 

“I don’t like when mummy calls me her little girl.” Anti whimpers out, “it makes me angry. And I don’t like my name… but you j-just call me Anti and…I-I like that…” Anti lifts up her face and looks at Chase with tearful eyes, “s-so can… can you help me feel like a boy..? C-Call me he and stuff- say I’m your brother, not your sister…?” 

Chase can see the desperation in Anti’s face and he doesn’t even hesitate, bringing Anti in close. “Of course! Whatever makes you happy, Anti…” Anti smiles and hugs Chase tight. 

Chase then pulls back and grins, tugging Anti to his side and tickling the younger sibling. “Besides- as much as I loved having a sister, I’ve always wanted a brother! And I’ll love you no matter what, Anti!” 

Anti has more tears in his eyes but he smiles and nods, looking happier than he has in a while. “Thank you, Chase…!”  

—————

Kendra pulls her hands back once again and the adults watching the memory bubble all have wet eyes, brimming with tears. 

Kieran wipes at his eyes. “…I-I’d like to keep that one please… maybe you can… m-modify it so they’re in Chase’s room?” 

“Yes… I’ll see what I can do.” Kendra nods.

“I remember being so confused when Chase was telling us Anti was a boy,” Isla shakes her head, “Because I only knew you had a baby girl named Anthea…” 

“It suits him better,” Kieran smiles down at his children. “…my two strong sons…” He leans over and kisses both of them on the forehead. The boys seem to smile in their sleep.

“If that is all, I think it is best you all leave for now,” Kendra says. “This will take the rest of the night at least… I will call you when I’m finished.” 

“Right… Thank you, Kendra… for everything.” Kieran says as the three other adults stand to leave. 

“Of course, I’m glad I can help. I will see you all in the morning.” Kendra smiles. 

The Brodys all walk out into the afternoon sun and get back in their car to drive to Isla’s and Emmy’s home, where Kieran was staying with the boys. The drive was quiet… until eventually Isla spoke up, looking at Kieran through the rear view window. 

“Kier… I know you said Jezebeth might not check where we live… but… what if someone else at SCLERA makes the connection and comes to check? …what will you do?”

Kieran’s expression drops to something withdrawn and sorrowful. “…I have a plan…” he says gravely, avoiding her gaze as he looks out the window at the passing Irish countryside, “…no matter what happens… they won’t find the boys. I’ll make sure of it.” 

[becauseplot]

hi hello :)

so i just reread ‘miss me?,’ which first of all, love it, it’s on my kindle so i don’t think i originally commented which is a shame. i love properly scary cell, but also this glimpse into the beginning of him trying to figure out how to actually live. the only tool he really knows is fear so that’s what he’s using on felps, but he just doesn’t have the same power in the outside world and if he just goes around threatening/murdering people he’ll just get tracked down. Cell’s scary, but felps has food and shelter and stability and isn’t a wanted criminal and probably /could/ get him arrested, even if he got killed in the process. interesting dynamic.

and poor felps, man doesn’t deserve this, but it’s rather hilarious to me that his worst nightmare shows up and… wants to crash on his couch. and according to the end notes, this keeps happening? i want to see how this evolves, because if cellbit has to keep coming back for handouts (which i imagine doesn’t gel well with his ingrained need to be self-sufficient against the world) he really can’t be great at figuring out Society. he needs felps, who has a foothold in regular life.

eventually the terror has to wear off and it’s just ‘you again? can’t you get a job or something?’ situation where Done With This felps teaches his roommate who grew up in the murderwoods How To Person. how to make a purchase at the grocery store without murdering (or threatening to murder) the cashier. what ‘hobbies’ are. cellbit discovers gravity falls and spends a week on the couch enraptured. felps is not delighted with this situation by any means but they’re kind of stuck together now.

i’ve been following your posts about the little dagger au and i’m excited you have ideas about how to fit it together! it’s really cool and makes me have thoughts (as you can see)

and the reason i started this ask, which got out of hand, was the interesting death mechanics in ‘miss me?’. i really like the Void and uncertain respawn mechanics, and wondered if you could elaborate some on how it works in your head? did the same mechanics apply in the hunger games (i think so, since cell said he’d ‘climbed his way out of the Void more times than you can imagine) and does this mean that players leave their bodies behind as well as get new ones on respawn? (again i think so, because cannibalism. really my questions aren’t very specific, but i think it’s cool and if you want to talk about it i’d like to hear it)

Aaaaaa Saga hello!! o/ I’m so glad you liked Miss Me? it was incredibly fun to write! Love writing a character who is just plain scary and evil heheheh >:)

But yeah!! The fic was based off the premise “hey what if Cell showed up at Felps’ apartment and instead of stabbing him just wanted to crash on his couch” because I thought it was really fucking funny and I ran w it. So it’s supposed to be a scary situation, yes, but also kind of hysterical? And ridiculous? Like, Felps gets into a petty shouting match about the meaning of the phrase “fuck off” with the same guy who gutted him a month ago and blackmailed him for ages. And then the guy—who is just an utter dick, by the way—basically mugs him at knifepoint and demands to crash on his couch. And he gets mud all over the fucking cushions.* Like what? The fuck??

*Fun detail! The reason Cell sleeps with his boots on is because he has to be ready to run at the drop of a hat! It's a habit he picked up on in The War, as you can see in Hunting Lessons, where it's mentioned that he (Dagger) still has his boots on when he wakes up! A signifier of Cell finally feeling genuinely comfortable, safe, and at-ease with Felps is the first time he takes his boots off when dropping in for one of his "visits" :D

"eventually the terror has to wear off and it’s just ‘you again? can’t you get a job or something?’ situation where Done With This felps teaches his roommate who grew up in the murderwoods How To Person." YEP BASICALLY LMAO. No but that's exactly it, that's basically the plot from that point onward.

Also the Gravity Falls thing,,, idk if we're just on the same wavelength or you saw me going batshit in the tags on that one post about cc!Cellbit's Bill Cypher tattoo but yeah. He basically gets personhood via multiple visits to Felps. See if he really had to, Cell could do this entirely on his own. But---and he'll never admit it---he got used to having Felps around in the prison. He got used to the company (even if it was under duress) and now he misses his "old friend."

And Felps? Yeah I didn't get to explore this in Miss Me? but in this AU, Felps was not very popular with the other guards. He was younger than most of them, they saw him as one of the more "spineless, naive" ones working there (and perhaps they were right?). Though he would talk to some people on his breaks, the person he ended up spending more time with, for better or worse (definitely worse), was Cell. And Cell knew/knows this. So Cell is like, "yeah we spend enough time with each other, that basically means we're friends right?"

And then in the years post-Fuga Cell actually starts to mellow out and put effort into trying to be kind (through Felps' guidance) because eventually he...doesn't actually want to see Felps hurting. And it's...been a long, long time since he's actually genuinely cared about someone (which is terrifying, btw). He almost forgot what it really means to have a friend. And Felps recognizes that there are just straight up gaps in Cell's understanding of the world and society and is...honestly kind of intrigued? And it's wild to see Cell be passionate about something so normal and in a non-murderous way. And hey, they're kind of stuck in this stalemate situation, and Felps COULD call the cops but he's really not a rock-the-boat kind of person, he's just trying to keep his head down, so might as well make the most of it.

(I actually kind of started poking at a Miss Me? continuation where Felps and Cell are juuuust about at that "you again? can't you get a job or something?" stage. It's also the first day Cell is introduced to Gravity Falls. There are more thoughts about how this continues but that's a whole other post and fdhjsk I'm getting distracted.)

Anyway onto the main event: RESPAWN MECHANICS!!!!!!!! You have NO fucking idea how overjoyed I was when you asked me about those. Alright here we fucking go.

So to be clear, these respawn mechanics apply to the Little Dagger AU and Miss Me? because, well, they're the same universe. I was trying to find a balance between a) honoring the respawn mechanics of Minecraft, b) lining up with what we've seen of respawn mechanics in qsmp, and c) making death meaningful/damning/dangerous enough to still make the time Cellbit/Dagger spent in The War terrifying.

So how it works is this: when you die, your soul gets sent to the Void. In the Void, you have to make a choice: respawn, or be consumed by the Void / wake up from the Long Dream / rejoin the Source Code / respawn in the next World / whatever you believe in. (The "choice" aspect is meant to reflect the "Respawn / Title Screen" options for the death screen in Minecraft.) You have to want to go back, to try again, and then you have to fight for it. It's a test of will.

So there's different ways of dying and being killed. You can never be 100% sure that someone you kill is going to perma-die (permanently die). There are ways to try to ensure it, like a) what Cell does (horrible, terrifying deaths that makes people afraid to come back, thus they fail the Void's will-check), or b) spawn-trapping / deaths in rapid succession, which wears down the individual's will until they eventually break. Thus, perma-killers are honestly more terrifying than your run-of-the-mill murderers, since they've developed techniques to not just kill people, but break people. (In this world, there is a difference between telling someone, "I'm gonna kill you," and "I'm gonna kill you dead." The latter implies you will break them.)

NOW. Sliiiight caveat: the strength of the Void's pull varies across the globe. In most regions/servers (like Brazil) the Void is "normal": a simple will check.

In other regions, however, it's different. The server where Dagger fights in The War has a VERY powerful Void, so much so that if you're killed, you're basically perma-dead without aid from an Admin. And even with Admin intervention, it's not 100% guaranteed you'll come back, as you still have to pass the will-check. Your chances are just exponentially higher.

(Btw I haven't mentioned this anywhere but The War in Little Dagger AU isn't an actual war, it's an unethical, war-themed, televised hunger-games-ish tournament that has an audience of people who place bets on the "soldiers" (players). Sponsored players (players with big-spenders officially supporting them) get perks and respawn privileges from the Admins. The perma-death nature of The War is part of its audience/hardcore-pvper appeal: a true survival-of-the-fittest challenge! Dagger is a...special case of a special case, let's say, but bottom line is that he's not sponsored and does not have respawn privileges. If he dies, he dies.)

The other end of the spectrum is 2b2t, where the Void is exceptionally weak. This might seem like a good thing but uh. That just means that spawn-trapping people is kinda a big deal. In a server with a "normal" Void, if someone spawn-traps you, you'll probably break and perma-die within an hour. In 2b2t, if someone spawn-traps you, it could be anywhere from a few hours to a few weeks before you finally perma-die and escape the torture of dying over, and over, and over. And trust me, the people in 2b2t have gotten good at finding ways to extend that threshold to months.

Also, death is traumatic! Even if you have to respawn, you can develop a host of mental health issues (the main one being PTSD), and respawning isn't a painless process that leaves you unscathed. Scars remain, and phantom pains are very common, especially in violent deaths. Some illnesses/injuries carry on through a respawn, too.

Anyway, yeah! Respawn mechanics!!! Summary is: when you die, to respawn, you have to want to come back. If anything is keeping you from wanting to come back, you may be consumed by the Void. Some servers have a stronger/weaker Void than others, thus making respawning harder/easier.

[wesslan]

20 questions for writers

thank you @adelfie for the tag<3

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

18! (and one hidden). i did not think it was that many??? thought it was 10 tops, lol

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

272,860

3. What fandoms do you write for?

batman, used to write some dsmp, but now im kinda eeh about it. i also (for some godforsaken reason) have a harry potter WIP thats been sitting in my docs for like two years that i kinda wanna finish, kinda not (jk r*wling suck my dick challenge)

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

cards on the table

when in gotham: don’t drink the water

robin radio

o bury me not on the lone prairie

and their dreams they dreamed awake

5. Do you respond to comments?

i try!!!! the number overwhelms me sometimes, but i try to answer when i have the energy! :,)

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

oh god, i mean… i pretty much only write happy/hopeful endings🤠 mayyyybe ‘you have (1) new message’? its not all the way angsty but it’s kind of?? angsty??

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

gee whizz buddy see above and take your pick, really

8. Do you get hate on fics?

i have gotten one (1) hate comment and i treasured it dearly until the person that posted it deleted it😭 other than that, nawt really. some people give unsolicited advice/critique, but thats about it

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

nope. not really my thing

10. Do you write crossovers?

again, not really my thing.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

not that i know of! sure hope it stays that way

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

yesss!!! so cool! they asked permission, and now my fic exists in a whole other language!!!

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

no, and i think i’d be really awful at it. i cant say no to stuff, i cant keep deadlines, and i dont enjoy people being in the kitchen when i cook, so to speak

14. What’s your all-time favourite ship?

BAYBEY!! you KNOW i was a klance shipper first and a human second when i was like? 14? now tho? i’m shipping myself with sixteen hours of sleep and financial freedom. but also, deep in my heart,,,, charlie and carlisle from twilight. you could have been so beautiful.

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you will?

man at this point, who knows what i’ll finish. maybe instant repeater ‘99. i LOVE the concept and the world building. but also i kinda left the fandom,,,

16. What are your writing strengths?

people (including my interactive storytelling teacher) have told me im good at writing distinct characters/realistic dialogue! so i guess that! :,D

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

CONSISTENCY. finishing things. ending up hating what i’ve written like 3 months after it’s done.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in a fic?

well,,, that’s what i always do. english is another language to me! cop out answer, lmao. but other than that, i guess i could be persuaded to write a few lines in spanish here and there. did study it for 7 years, after all.

overall, i thinks it pretty cool! as long as there is an ez translation somewhere, easy to understand without a translation, or if it’s not done in a way that bi/multilinguals absolutely would not speak B)

19. First fandom you wrote for?

oh god. percy jackson. it’s still out there somewhere. i forgot my username and password so i’ll prolly never find it (thank god) but yeah. it was solangelo bc i was closeted and emo.

20. Favourite fic you’ve written?

probably ‘mothman is real and he wants to kill me’. i had a lot of fun with it! i also really like ‘*cocks gun* manor’s haunted’ just because i based it off of the haunting of hill house which is like, one of the best books ever.

that was fun!!! thanks again for the tag! <3 i’m tagging whoever wants to do this, and also (no pressure) @quotidian-oblivion

puss å kram, skumbanan!!❤️

[tobysbliss]

going into the new year, i want to appreciate some of my mutuals/friends.

everyone on this list means so much to me even if i havent properly expressed it. i love you guys so much & im so grateful to go into the new year with you all. (Know that even if you’re not on this list, you’re still so incredibly important to me/gen. I love all of my mutuals & im so happy to go into 2024 with y’all<3)

@wilbyscoot - I don’t even know where to start with you/pos. You’re my brother, my best friend, you really do mean a lot to me. I’m so grateful to be your friend, honestly. You’re so fun to talk to, i love messing with you/aff and despite whatever protest i may say i love when you do it back, I find the banter really fun and I always laugh and have such a wide smile on my face. You’re so sweet & one of the nicest people I’ve ever known. I love you so much<3 /p

@totallynotbat Bat you honestly really do mean a lot to me. You’re one of my closest friends and I love talking with you. I love playing roblox with you, especially when I’m kicking your ass in flee the facility^^ /j You’re honestly just such a fun person to be around, you are very sweet and such a kind person. I love you :D /p

@sketchingtothemoon I know I don’t really express it a lot but I’m so grateful to be your friend. You’re so supportive, kind, and you’re always there to simply just listen. Talking with you is always fun, I’m always smiling during it even if it doesn’t really seem like it. You’re an amazing friend and you’re like a sister to me. I love you ^^ /p

@coolbananas143 AMANDA !! I really love talking with you!! You’re very funny and so cool, a little intimidating/hj but nonetheless i really love every moment that I have talking with you. You’re like an older sibling to me and you’re an absolutely amazing friend/gen. I love you!!/p

@mochamuff1n MOCHA!!!! You are such a SILLY GUY/POS i love talking to you!! You’re an amazing friend and i dont know why you are intimidated by me but its okay cause i am intimidated by you too /pos You’re so cool and im so happy that I’m friends with you and that I get to go into the new year with you. I love u silly man!!/p

@boardmanpanic I still find it so hilarious how we both suspected that we’re in the community (and that i was right about you after months of suspicion/hj.) You’re a really cool person and i love talking with you!! You are also very funny. How do you do that/j And of course, im really grateful to go into the new year with you !!!!/gen

@snake-anon By far my fav anon I’ve ever had. You are so silly and so supportive of my writings and I’m so thankful for that. I would honestly love to talk with you more, you’re genuinely really cool and definitely a great friend^^

@orphicrublee you are so SWEET HOLY FUCK/gen . You’re one of the kindest people I know i swear, and you’re always like the first to reblog & support my fics when I post them and thank u so much for that😭🫶 I’m really happy to know you & thank you for just being you !!

@radio-to-trenchcoat-demons AAAAH. You are seriously so fuckinf nice🥹/pos You’ve always been really supportive & nice about me being in the community and i was seriously so happy to answer your questions about it & introduce you to it. You’re really fun to talk to and i’m so glad to go into 2024 with you!!^^

@hyper-raccoon23 man what a silly guy you are/pos You’re very cool and i’m so happy to know u!! You’re very sweet and you seem like such a fun person, i’d love to talk with you more :D I’m very thankful for your support on my fics of course, thank you so much. I hope 2024 treats u well ^^

I hope 2024 treats all of you well. I love you all so much, thank you for being such amazing people. Happy New Year! 🫶❤️

[weywookitswestwood]

CW life update/animal d*ath

Hi guys, it’s been a hot second since I’ve posted. Sorry I haven’t been very active lately, I’ve been sorting out some personal things as life has been stressful.

As of June 10th, I had to put down my sweet chunky ginger boy, my cat Newton. He was sick for the past month and a half. He was a real trooper though, he had a prognosis of a few days and yet he surpassed that, but it was time to help him cross the rainbow bridge. That being said, he had a happy life and almost reached his 15th birthday to which I find solace in that. I still miss him a lot though, it’s weird that he isn’t around anymore. I had him since I was 10 and he was with me through my teens and early adulthood. He was my best friend. I love him and my other cat like they were my little brothers and as bad as it might sound, I love them more than half of my relatives. It’s sad to say that my cats have shown more compassion to me than the general public.

On the plus side, I have been able to switch to a new therapist. It’s only once every other week, but I don’t have to pay for anything because of my insurance and sessions are an hour instead of 45 minutes. So yay for that.

One more thing I wanna add. As much as don’t want to do this, I’ve decided to put SeF on an indefinite hiatus. For those who don’t know SeF is my La Squadra fic that I’ve been writing since 2021 and it was my whole passion for the longest time, but due to personal stress and burnout I’ve decided to swallow my pride and just move away from it for the time being. I would love to finish in the future, really I do, I pretty much have thought out the whole entire story through and through. But at this point, I want to go back to writing other things I’m passionate about, more original things. I’m so sorry for those who stayed tuned to reading SeF, please know you all have my utmost gratitude for taking the time to read it.

That’s really it for now. I hope to post more and interact with some of you cool cats again. I still love JJBA and would love to talk about my favorite characters from it, I’m just working on my mental health as of now and trying to stay positive as best to my ability. Anything I find remotely negative or would put me in a bad headspace will be promptly blocked.

Until next time, K.O. out.

[capitalisticveins]

There's this question that's been bugging me for a while. How would one go about writing Honey and Guy angst? I can't picture a angsty scenario with those two. The only thing close to angst i can imagine with them is hurt/comfort.

(definitely asking for no reason! It's not like I would want to write a fic about them. Absolutely not! You're crazy!!!)

I’ve been wanting to write angst for them for like a month now, but my laptop charger hasn’t come in so I can’t write at all, HOWEVER I do have a scenario in my head.

I’ve said this scenario before but incase no one saw it, I hc Honey as the type to go crazy in high school or college. Straight A student, never late to class, honor roll, varsity team, scholarship stuff. I hc Guy as the type to literally be okay with a D-. If it’s not a F hes cool. Best class was English, it was a miracle he graduated on time.

See where I’m going with this? With Honey studying for finals and taking so much shit seriously, Guy would be bored. They usually hang out before or after classes, or even text, but Honey brushed all that off for studying. SO Guy would do what Guy does best and distract them until they’re convinced to hang out with him. Great plan, right? Nothing going wrong? Yeah that’s what they said abt the submarine.

Plan backfires, Honey gets pissy with Guy not taking finals seriously. They get angry that he keeps insisting on “just winging it” with something so important. The stress mixed with annoyance becomes frustration and they say some things they didn’t mean and they wish they could take back to this day.

Guy is in shock and can’t find anything to say back so he silently leaves after their tangent and rant, with Honey realizing what they said to him and trying to apologize, key word: trying. They’re not used to saying sorry or having a long-term friend, so they don’t know how, and just leave him alone.

I’m not sure how I’d end it, I’d probably leave it on a cliffhanger for shits and giggles before releasing a comfort part 2 a week later.

Also this would be before Guy confessed to liking Honey, so probably them in High School if they knew each other then?

[anonymous-dentist]

happy new year! i only recently started following you this year due to the qsmp and spiderbit but i wanted to express my gratitude towards you :)

your fics and aus and your general posts are smth i look forward to daily! i love your takes on the lore and characters, i find them so insightful, and it’s cool to see someone who loves qroier and qcellbit as much as i do.

i hope 2024 brings you even more exciting and fun opportunities and possibilities. and that you continue to have fun doing what you’re doing, whether it be writing spiderbit, making theories, learning languages or dnd! you deserve only the best! thank you for being so cool :D

I’m surprised by how much I like qCellbit and qRoier considering I went into the series only recognizing Vegetta and Rubius and Luzu from the non-English content pov (Quackity too, but he’s special.) Like, I’d seen all of Karmaland V live, but I didn’t exactly go into this series expecting to be attached to anyone’s characters but Charlie’s and Foolish’s. But then I started watching Roier because I got him confused with Mariana, and then a month later I started watching Cellbit on the day of the chainsaw torture stream because I thought he was hot. That’s the literal reason why.

And now the only English pov I even semiregularly watch is Foolish because I’ve been watching him since 2021 (fun fact, I used to write my papers and even sometimes fall asleep watching his streams, and he was there in the background for a week straight while I had Covid last year and was stuck in bed before and after my first museum opening)

I didn’t expect this at all, but I’m super happy about it because these characters are SO COOL and it’s actually incredible to see a mature romantic stable queer relationship in Minecraft rp and stuff. I don’t watch a ton of Minecraft series, let alone rp, but it’s just so cool

Also? The ccs are hilarious. Love them

[franstastic-ideas]

Lmao, that was a joke!! Because I was vibing with you so much I called you a mutual, but then followed up with clarifying that I just found your blog. Interesting! I may need to look into this LA fic 👀

Also felt. Re: special bond for reasons, but it’ll get a bit wordy if I explained it. And FELT she should’ve been up there if you played as Lyra, or my personal ideal: you can’t see the figure on Mt Silver bc they’re covered by fog, and a text option pops up going “There’s a blurry figure. It looks like a girl/boy.” So that way you can choose!! Without needing to play the whole game as one gender, AND they had the animation quality to do it and make the fog clear up if they could animate the Legendary summoning. And these text options they’ve been doing since Gen 1 such a missed opportunity :( oh well, she’s canon in my heart and the insane AU fic series I’ve been building for years. If you want to talk my ear off about your own AU, I’d be willing to listen through posts on your blog or DMs (at a later date tho, headaches and exams kicking my butt rn)

HELLO??? VoloKari and no ship name. Wild, Wieldershipping sounds about right! Man, pairs so rare you gotta name them yourself, an age old fandom battle for sure. I accidentally stumbled upon a Leaf x Leon aroace soulmate fic on Ao3 and walked out of there going…huh. Leon’s about 20 in canon right. They say he held the title for a decade. Kids start at age 10. If I’m making 6 years pass since S1 of the anime, and Leaf’s older than Ash then technically…I have zero ideas for a ship name but man it sure is funny to think about in a Dad Lance context where he’s all “hey look, here’s someone like you who won the Championship young!” And Leaf just sees a weird goof with tacky fashion. Until she finds out he has “I’m too strong angst” in the way Red did. Who ran off to an ice mountain for three years. Then nothing is funny anymore. And everything with Rose. AND he has a little brother. That’s great because Lance is a father of two with Silver(? maybe in the non-anime centered fic) as well. Relatable. Younger siblings becoming the Chosen Ones all the time sure is wild huh? (Technically Ash unless if I bring in side-media) and it’s just plain funny to hear how annoyed Lance gets at her complimenting Leon’s cape as a joke but calling his an oversized bib on the wrong side and whatever else. Silly dragon man wannabe superhero Dracula looking- lmao. I noticed you have a love triangle with Leaf, Green, and Brock. Totally valid :D it’s cool co-existing with everyone and their different takes. I personally write Leaf and Brock’s relationship like the one between a law student and a med student.

“Jumping the Sharpedo, Packed like Wishiwashi, Bullying a Dragon-Type” lmaoo these are so good, and such good descriptions. But my favorite HAS to be the one about The Renegade. Oh that is incredible. It’s been fun talking with you :D

My LA fic is currently in progress, but I'll be posting it on my sideblog 'sweet-hearts-and-destiny-knots'.

'What Once We Were' or WOWW for brevity's sake, takes place post postgame about eight months following The Spear Pillar Incident. After telling Laventon that the two of them would likely never cross paths again, Volo suddenly appears before Akari, on his hands and knees, pleading for her forgiveness with a look in his eye that can only be described as reverence...

Things get weirder before they get better.

It's funny that you mention Leon x Leaf, because I was just telling a friend the other day how I think I'm the only person on the face of the earth who's thought about them as a pair. I envisioned the two of them meeting when Leaf and Green take a trip to Galar together sometime before the events of SwSh, and Leon is quickly smitten.

Leaf is just as silent as her brother, but she's an extrovert and makes friends with ease wherever she goes.

I have no idea what the shipping name for them would even be either. The closest I came was 'KanlarChampionshipping' (Kanto + Galar), but it's kind of misleading because neither of them are Champions later down the line - the current Champion of the Indigo League is probably still Kotone/Lyra or Hibiki/Ethan, not Leaf at the very least, and Leon loses his title by the end of SwSh.

So if anybody has any ideas for what their shipping name could be, I'm open to suggestions!

[mintywolf]

A Long Road Home Author Notes - Page 1

Hello! Going forward I’m going to be attaching author notes here on my personal blog for anyone interested in hearing me ramble about this. :)

For Page 1.

If you’ve been following me for a while you probably know me best from Guardian, my last big comic. (For those who don’t, it’s a graphic novel about Lulu from Final Fantasy X. You can read it here: @guardian-comic) Since finishing work on that in early 2020 I’ve been struggling to get a new project started. I’d had a number of other original and fan projects backburnered but found I had a hard time caring about them. (Or honestly, much of anything, after the plague malaise took over. A lot of things, on both a global and personal scale, happened in 2020 that made art just Hard in a way that it hadn’t been before, a feeling I’ve seen shared by a lot of creatives at the time.)

Then CR Campaign 3 started and I don’t know what it is exactly about Laudna and Imogen but these characters and their relationship have my entire heart. I have not hyperfixated this hard on something in years. As with Guardian the impulse to express all the heart emojis bursting out of the depths of my being in the form of an unwieldy graphic novel came out of nowhere, and the beginnings of it came in a dream. (Although as also with Guardian, the pages that I dreamt for it never actually made it into the comic, haha.) I woke up that morning feeling in my soul that it was Time. 

Fortunately I have the benefit of 10 years of experience this time so rather than just diving headlong into another opus I spent several months planning, outlining, writing the script, and working on character designs. I’ve thought before that if I’d known exactly how big Guardian was going to be at the outset I never would have been able to get started. This time I know. And friends . . . it is another behemoth. D: A few times, watching the script steadily balloon in size, I stopped to think what are you doing, this is insane, this could be a fic and take a fraction of the time, but I have no sense of artistic self-preservation. :D

I’m still scared! I know from having done it before that I can do it again, but it still feels very Big and I’m still working my way back up to the level of artistic productivity I had then. But I’m excited about it in a way I haven’t been about a creative project in a long, long time.

For a long time it didn’t have a title, it was just called “Southern Gothic Meet Cute Prequel Comic??” at the top of the script page. That got shortened to “Southern Gothic,” which fits it both as a ship and a genre, but I decided that was a little too cheeky since it is the ship name (one of them) and also not very indicative as a title. The meaning of the new one will I hope become evident as the story goes on. (I never did change the tumblr url though. It is what it is.)

Yeah so! Here we go. Here’s Imogen, with some curiously bare arms!

It’s implied that Flora is a white horse (when Imogen selects horses for the journey to the Heartmoor Chetney remarks that he thought she’d prefer a white horse, but she says she doesn’t want to replace Flora) and originally I intended to draw her that way but I ended up liking the palomino paint look. (Incidentally my first horse in Breath of the Wild looked like this so it’s kind of nostalgic for me. ;)) She’s still mostly white. She kind of disappears from the scene because it’s a dream. In the narration she always runs away before the storm hits.

I think I over-rendered the backgrounds, haha. But I just got all these cool grass and field brushes just for this! (Available here.) The quilt was also more intricate originally but I didn’t want to drive myself insane trying to keep the pattern the same every time we see it, so I simplified it a little. It’s still cute. Also a recurring staple of my art: cute jammies. :)

Her bedroom is in the attic, which we’ll get a more clear picture of later. I imagine she’d have moved up there to be as far away from the presence of other minds as possible.

[lucky-clover-gazette]

Shadow shakes his head. “You’re doing perfectly. I just don’t want this to be a bad memory for you.” Dreaming Vio startles at the comment. Is this a bad memory? He doesn’t think so, but his definition of ‘bad’ is far from conventional. That’s what months of corruption does to a person, he supposes. Shadow runs his hands down Vio’s waist and hips as the blonde pushes him against the headboard. Vio kisses him deep, almost as if sucking poison from a wound. Shadow’s eye widen as he watches strange patterns appear on his own skin. Dark purple veins run down his arms and neck, almost resembling the complex root system of a tree. They seem to almost be alive, the lines pulsing as Shadow kisses Vio harder. Vio whimpers, but doesn’t let go. The lines transfer from one body to another, tendrils of gloom creeping their way beneath the thin fabric of his blouse. It appears to weaken him further at first, and he loses the energy to kiss Shadow hard. He falls into the other man’s arms, his body jerking around every three seconds as if taking prolonged damage from the direct exposure.

— —

I think one of my favorite things about your writing is how you take so many concepts from other games in the Zelda series (like the gloom or the addition of the Hero’s Shade in this fic specifically) and use the elements given through canon but also add your own twist. I’m mostly curious what inspires you to use those things, and also how much more complex the systems might be than what we get from reading the character’s perspectives. I also just really like this scene and the concept of this fic as a whole; it’s definitely one of my most favorite things I’ve read :D (Also I’ve been meaning to ask if there’s any specific songs you’d tie to scenes in any of your fics or music you listen to while writing in general).

Anyways thank you! Hope you're having a good day!

thank you so much! i always appreciate your comments.

with other zelda things, it’s really kind of connected to my overall experience with the series. loz was an iceberg for me, like i started with botw, got really into it, started watching other people play the other games, read the twilight princess manga, got a wii u to play the oldies, and eventually just kinda randomly picked up the four swords manga almost a year ago. so i already had a lot of love for this series before writing four swords fic, and a lot of thoughts about the games. esp bc it’s not a nostalgia thing for me, i’ve approached zelda as an adult, i think my analysis of and connection to the media has been pretty “deep” or whatever. these stories mean a lot to me, and i’ve always been someone to take stories and their importance in my life seriously. botw in particular was a very healing experience for me at the time that i played it. that game holds a lot of philosophical and emotional meaning to me, and i get why others may not enjoy it, but as someone who has now played the other games, i still think it’s a master piece. my favorite game of all time, honestly, and totk was such a gift. it did so much right for me. it’s been delightful experiencing the series how i have.

i don’t love all of the choices made in terms of story and themes in loz, but there is a LOT to play with in fic. esp bc it’s a reincarnation type series, i don’t give a shit about the timeline, i just want to draw parallels and do clever interesting things. so a lot of the time i’ll have a vague idea of what i want to do with a story, and there will be a way to make connections, if only for my own enjoyment. i’m a strong believer that all art is derivative, but like, if you know the author loves it and is having fun, that only makes it better. it’s hard to pinpoint what i thought of and what was put in my mind by other things in the series, and honestly, i’m totally cool with that :)

i want to tread lightly talking about the gloom and corruption stuff in that specific fic because spoilers buuuuut the core concept of that part was just for it to be vaguely toxic and kinda … yknow… and i liked the idea of gloom/gloom hands being this confused force of harm and affection. honestly this whole fic is just me putting some very personal feelings and experiences on blast, and it’s been exhausting to write. i actually scrapped the final chapter and i’m rewriting it now, for the best!

hmmm i do connect my writing a lot to music but i think (?) you’ve seen my vidow playlist already! for the final chapter i’m doing a little bit of a tone shift and i’ve been listening a ton to the bottoms (movie) soundtrack. going for something more lively and active and cinematic, instead of two people being miserable. inserting a little dark humor too, closer to the og corruption but it’s chill au. while working on earlier chapters of corruption but it’s unchill i associated it with “eyes half open” by cinders, and (TOTK SPOILERS) i listened to the totk memory ost of rauru sealing ganon pretty much the entire time i wrote the chapter where vio kills green. been listening a lot to “pain” by king princess (also in bottoms, that movie is living rent free in my brain rn) while working on the final chapter.

hope this answers your questions! thanks so much for reading <3

[kinetic-elaboration]

April 20: Writing Projects

I went out today and took a walk, had a coffee and pastry, and did some notebook writing. It was pretty nice out, low 60s, warm while walking, cool while sitting when the breeze came up. I’m definitely up too late now, but, anyway. I want to go to sleep.

Here is sort of an overview of my writing projects. I realized today that a very reasonable goal/best realistic case scenario is that this weekend I finish the Jasper/Monty fic (finally) and also chapter 2 of the Daria fic. But I’m still sort of floundering with plans for after that. So I thought I’d go over everything in a very general way and uh see if that’s helpful.

Ficlets:

2 requests: one is a Daria one that I don’t know what to do with or if it even is a request; the other is a SGAU request from literally last year but I haven’t forgotten about it, and want to fill it when I get back to working on that story

July Break Bingo: I’m currently at 10/25 squares complete. It’s a pretty good source for free-write prompts

Current Main Projects:

Jasper/Monty Dual Timeline: I haven’t worked on this in over a month but it literally just has one more scene left; I am SO close.

Daria/Jane College AU: I don’t know how long this will end up being but I’ve planned a little ahead and I’m about halfway through the short chapter 2

WIP List Items on My Mind:

SGAU: I need to get back to working on this. I can’t be in denial about it. I need to return to planning it first, because it’s not in a place to write—maybe I could start making time for this after work?

Miller/Bellamy Road Trip: the pros of this project are that I’ve been thinking about it for a while and I do have a complete outline. I think it’s the closest to being ready to write of all of my WIP list ideas. But the cons are that I think even the first chapter is going to be quite long and I’m not sure I really want to commit to this level of project. I also go back and forth on whether I’m still intrigued or interested in the idea.

Kiss the Ring: this is a one-shot that I like to think will be pretty simple, and which I’m sort of lowkey excited about. I’ve been writing notes for it recently, including today. But I don’t have an outline yet. I’m feeling optimistic about it, and it’s not as big a task as the other two, but it’s not ready to write.

Editing:

talk about timing in times like these: I’ve done the first pass-through. I feel like I should probably do another but it’s hard to bring myself to do it. I still lean toward this being the next thing I post

Mist: I haven’t done any work on this but I think the edits it will get before going up on AO3 will be minimal. Just don’t want to forget

D/J College AU: I’m not going to wait to finish the whole thing to post, rip me. This is old-school fanfic—posted as it’s written. I haven’t done any editing but I do have chapter 1 ready for edits, and chapter 2, as I said, will be short and finished after maybe even only 1 more session.

Jasper/Monty Dual Timeline: the hubris of putting this here lol. But it will be moving into this category soon. I’m not in any hurry to edit or post it but it will enter into the queue.

And finally the drawer fic continues apace. It’s currently at 32,000 words.

[dokiyeom]

DWWW u will see that from now on I'll just pop on ur inbox with random pics or just . rants LMAOOO hihiih do u have maybe dc or twt?? i feel like that would be easier to interact on yk? + i have a little something i wanna show u 🤭 PLS SHARE THEM WITH ME YES!! im such a sucker of ranting about fics & fic ideas with friends istg..

ill try it when I can but i live in a small village so they don't have that here 😞 ill go to the city for uni though so ik ill explore more diff foods since im a big fan of that yk!

mmmm ok ok now ik when to send u an ask 😝 && that's so interesting?? do u still have family there or will u go alone if u move there! tbh france is only cool from a touristic pov 😭 like i could write an essay about how much i hate certain things here it's Awful BUT i do like the museums and more artistic side so yayay OHHH??? HELLO that's so cool i love how u remember only that 🙏🙏 i love tulips they are my fav flowers too 😞💔

TWT THEORIES SAID SO TOO !! that would be a very unique announcement actually ohh :O for my friends 18th bday party another friend lent me a black dress w a v line collar? it was very light and just overall v cute but simple so i might just go for something with the same vibe ngl bit im picky too and i haven't really been able to find clothes i like for a few years rn so it's a bit of a problem 👎

OMG WHAT ALBUMS?????? i want to have the carat bong so bad but ill buy it (for now) if they come here in concert yk & if i can still use v2 for concerts! i hope u soon can get ur carat bong 🙏 omg show me PLS PLS PLS i have one too and i love seeing other people's collections 😞

i have . a lot 😭 rn i have 18 albums with 2 more for my bday...... PREAPRE URSELF. i have aespa girls, astro switch on, atz treasure ep fin all to action, bts love urself answer & proof, enhypen dimension dilemma & manifesto day 1, lsrfm antifragile (I PULLED SAKURA YAYYY), nct dream glitch mode, svt director's cut (THE LUCK I HAD FOR THIS ONE got it WITH PCS for 20€) semicolon & face the sun, skz no easy & christmas evel, tbz maverick, txt minisode blue hour & tcc fight or escape and woodz only lovers left!! for my bday i alr bought enhypen border day carnival + bss second wind hehe 🫶🫶

THAT NEW THEME WOULD BE SO COOL!!! omg tell me when u did it i wanna see it first hihi 💥💥💥

omg i have both !! but tbh i don’t think i’ve logged into discord in months,, but i’ll send u my twt :D AND RIGHT !! i feel like just talking abt ur fic ideas helps a lot w the writing process

oo id rec just making it at home if it’s possible !! i feel like sukiyaki would b a bit pricey at restaurants,, but the ingredients may b a bit inaccessible :0 && agh dw abt timing for asks !! i have an extremely turbulent sleep sched so pls just send them whenever it’s convenient for u :D

&& yesyes i have family there !! but tbh id probably want to move there alone if i could,, && that makes a lot of sense !! is it like the short stay that makes france fun for tourists ? or like general novelty of things wear off over time :0 ALSO HELLO SVT DIRECTORS CUT ?? that’s so cool hello ??? whod u pull :000

and dori,, i’ve unfortunately been collecting¿ buying albums for a while now,,, like i quite literally cannot list them all fjdjshs but i have svt, lsfm, twice, stayc, aespa, nct, txt, enha, ive, nmixx, izone, red velvet, and itzy albums :D i got really lucky w where i live bc there’s an album store nearby,, so sometimes my friends n i go together :D AND YES DEF U WILL B THE FIRST TO SEE THE NEW DOKIYEOM CARRD !!!

[ghosts-and-blue-sweaters]

Restless Reveries for director's cut ask game? And feel free to ask me some- I'd love to ramble!! ~Pinestripe

Link!!

Gosh its been so long since I’ve written that I’ve gotta try to remember stuff now oh gosh-

I don’t actually remember how or why I came up with the idea for this. I started writing it in September, which was… about three months after I started writing DSMP fanfic. I think it was around the time I started getting curious about Tommy’s Exile (I didn’t know much about it then).

Gosh I’m really trying to remember but its been so long-

At the time of writing this, I hadn’t actually gotten to Exile in my DSMP watch-through, so it’s all based entirely on art/random posts/etc… which means that there are some continuity errors XD

For example, Michael and Friend are both mentioned in the story, but in reality, neither of them were even in Dream SMP at that point!! I just didn’t realize that at the time 🫠

It kinda bugs me, honestly. I try to make my stories as canon-compliant as possible, so… gah. Maybe I’ll go back and fix it someday.

Anyway! The rest of this will be incredibly random and scattered-

This was also the very first Ghostbur-centric story I wrote, and I had a lotta fun with that! He’s a very easy character to write :)

I tried to make Tommy as… un-Tommy-like as possible. To the point where it’s painfully obvious that he isn’t doing well; I really wanted to show how much Exile was affecting him.

Gosh I’m kinda wondering why I set this story in Exile because I literally had almost no clue how that arc went lol. I knew that Logstedshire was a thing but I didn’t really know what it was, so I just took a lucky guess and wrote this:

Ghostbur pulls his legs closer to himself, fighting off a shiver. "How has Dream been? Have you two gone on any more adventures together? He's quite the adventurous person, I think. Ooh, maybe you two have built more in Logstedshire? Perhaps a library? I love libraries!"

I sort of had the idea that Logstedshire was built by Tommy, but I wasn’t sure if Ghostbur had helped with that or if Dream had blown it up by this point. I think that I was tentatively leaning towards the idea that Dream had recently destroyed it, but I didn't explicitly say that because I wasn't completely sure if it was true.

SO MUCH OF THIS FIC WAS JUST ME GUESSING!!! LIKE TOMMY LIVING IN A TENT!!! AND HIS EYES LOSING THEIR BLUE COLOR!!! I DIDN’T REALLY KNOW ANY OF THAT I WAS JUST GOING OFF COOL ART I SAW!!!

I gave Ghostbur a satchel for no reason other than I find satchels cool and thought he should have one. Still headcanon that :)

Ghostbur giving Tommy Wilbur’s coat was based off of a bunch of art by a bunch of different artists. As far as I know, it has no canon… evidence I guess? But I think it’s a widely accepted headcanon and I thought it would fit the story nicely.

The title for this fic actually came pretty naturally to me—which is weird, because titles are usually the area I struggle with the most for writing.

At the time of writing this, I was really happy with it… but, as time passed, I found myself liking it less and less. I was seriously considering just not posting it at all.

I’m not sure why I lost interest, to be honest. Maybe it was the style I’d written it in?? I don’t know.

But, on a whim, I decided to just go ahead and post it… and you quickly read it and told me how much you loved it and that it was comforting and that you’d reread it over and over and SKDGSKSVAOGSOSBSIS

I WAS NOT EXPECTING THAT RESPONSE!!! PINESTRIPE IT ACTUALLY MEANT THE WORLD!!!

So because of you I started to stop not-liking it XD

Fast forward a couple months, and I’ve now got a bunch of ideas for a multi-chapter continuation—and it’s 100% because of you!!

So yeahhhh that was my extremely rambley ramble about Restless Reveries :D

For you, I’ll do A Protecter :)

[kii-nami]

PLEASE I WILL LITERALLY READ ANYTHING YOU WRITE, YOUR WORDS ARE ALWAYS SO DESCRIPTIVE I CAN SEE THEM CLEARLY ENOUGH TO DRAW

tho i have to be honest i haven’t started the blue lock fics, not bc i don’t know the characters or anime or manga, i mean i dont but i’ve actually added it to my list !! but the fic, its just the 29k,,,,ITS DAUNTING OKAY THATS SO MANY WORDS ;-; i barely read anymore and my reading comprehension sucks cries but i will read it and i will compliment your writing, that i promise 🫡

wait 100 page google doc ?? you put so much work into it !! like it must’ve been fun building this world up but like also props to you, that’s hard work it’s mindblowing !! but yeah, your word is law here, if you tell me the next chapter that albedo is actually a lizard alien from a moon colony that can shapeshift and spit fire, i WILL believe you. i’ll be like ‘yeah that makes sense what a cool character :D’

also your favorite person, naur don’t say that aaaaaaaa thanks for affirming that and allowing me to tag along behind you, i will now confidently clog your inbox :D

please i can't even tell you it's not that big, that thing is monstrous fr. the next fic in that universe is like already 30k words??? idk how that happened but i don't plan on finishing it bc i want to focus on imperium. so don't worry about reading it!! tho i can say i enjoyed writing it a lot hehe

omg yes 100 pages fr. we had being doing the lore for the universe for like 2 months straight and only now got to writing it. at this point it's not genshin it's gainshean made by me lmao. also don't worry albedo is just an artificial human made of chalk, no lizards were harmed during this. although you won't see him for a while again because we will be going back in time 500 years for the first chapter. if you read the voice lines or the character profile you will have a big of a better understanding of mc, plus the love interests are also there ao you can look them up too

also at first i call mc by an actual name because it's plot relevant, so dw it's still a reader insert