#it just depends on the perspective you come at it with sdlkjfas

[not-poignant]

hi there! i just wanted to say i love your writing sooo much, i started out reading your fandom works a few months ago (palmarosa is absolutely delectable) but after dipping my toes into your original work via underline the blue i decided to delve into it more deeply. your universe was hella intimidating ngl (2.6 million words just for the core texts of spoils & fae tales is insane and also very impressive!) but i started with falling falling stars since it appealed to me the most and i’ve read almost the whole thing in the past 4 days. it’s just THAT GOOD.

anyways i suppose i don’t really have a proper question except… in falling falling stars, augus comes across as kinda horrible. i can’t possibly wrap my head around him and gwyn being the “original main couple” or main characters i’m supposed to root for in the rest of the series. is augus really that much of a dickhead in the spoils of the spoiled as well? it seems like that fic must present an entirely different perspective on the character for it to even make sense to root for him. (i hope it wasn’t silly of me to read falling falling stars before the spoils of the spoiled!)

reading underline the blue and then meeting nate in falling falling stars was also like… whiplash. the character seems so incredibly different. is this something i should take into account when it comes to your other verses? underline the rainbow versus spoils versus fae tales i mean. are the stories and plotlines and characters completely different and there’s only internal consistency within each individual universe so to speak?

anyways, reading your author’s notes about your health is so stereotypically ao3 and makes me incredibly grateful that you still take the time to write all this for FREE for us! i wish you the best n hope you don’t take offense to my questions, i really am just curious. you’re a fantastic writer and the way you tackle these difficult subjects is often very cathartic for me to read. i sincerely appreciate everything you do n hope you have a great day whenever you’re reading this :)

Hi anon!

So Falling Falling Stars is like a role reversal of Spoils of the Spoiled. Spoils of the Spoiled actually came many years before, and in that, Efnisien was such a villain that quite a lot of people have never been able to read Falling Falling Stars, or they had to wait a long time to see if it would be worth reading.

Both stories kind of function as 'the main character is the hero of his own story.' Or 'the person who is a villain to one person is a hero to another.'

Augus does do some pretty bad things in Spoils of the Spoiled, but he shows he's capable of growth, he saves Gwyn's life, he's molested by Efnisien (unprovoked), and he's a victim of a lot of circumstances. Much like Efnisien in Falling Falling Stars, he's complicated.

Characters aren't black and white, anon, they have nuance. Someone can do something bad to one person, but still be wonderful to another. Efnisien is actually a great example of this. We're rooting for him. The people who know the people who hurt, might want him dead. Both of those things are true and both of things can be valid. I find that a really interesting grey area to write within! But Augus is very much in that area as well.

Falling Falling Stars and Efnisien's journey would never exist if it wasn't for Augus saving Gwyn's life in Spoils of the Spoiled. In a way, Efnisien - though he'll never realise it - is indebted to Augus for his actions in helping and galvanising Gwyn into the emancipation case that got him away from his abusive family (which very much included Efnisien at the time). And Augus was hurt and threatened by Efnisien for it, more than once.

It's funny reading this though, and I think a few other readers might feel that way. Your feelings about Augus and Gwyn and not being able to 'wrap your head around' them as the good guys / protagonists in the rest of the series is actually how everyone felt about Efnisien.

Like, literally. You're just...on the other end of something everyone else has felt for the character you like.

So we know it's possible, because we all went through it re: learning to care for this version of Efnisien lol.

I will say canon Efnisien in the Fae Tales canon is literally an irredeemable monster, capable of no compassion, who glories in defilement, degradation and torture. He's really not comparable to his human counterpart.

is augus really that much of a dickhead in the spoils of the spoiled as well?

I mean no. Otherwise no one would read the story. He has his dickhead moments, especially in the beginning, just like Efnisien had his dickhead moments in the beginning when he was thinking of torturing Gary and animals and children and other people.

reading underline the blue and then meeting nate in falling falling stars was also like… whiplash. the character seems so incredibly different. is this something i should take into account when it comes to your other verses?

Yes, absolutely.

are the stories and plotlines and characters completely different and there’s only internal consistency within each individual universe so to speak?

It sounds like this might be the first time you've encountered the concept of an Alternative Universe! An Alternative Universe in fandom tends to keep the characters (generally) and changes everything or some other things around them as a way of exploring new scenarios, but also seeing how those scenarios impact the characters.

For example Falling Falling Stars and Spoils of the Spoiled both explored 'what if these characters were human' 'what if they didn't have magical healing' 'what if Gwyn managed to get away from his family.' The characters preserve some aspects of themselves, but not others, as a result.

It's logical that if you take a character that's one thing, and put them in a world where their job, their friends, even their partners change, then aspects of their personality will change! And then the challenge (and fun for us as readers and writers) is to see where they're the same, why they're the same, and where they're different, and why they're different.

What's cathartic about AUs (alternate universes) is we often still get to hit very meaningful moments over and over again in different ways - for example Augus and Gwyn falling in love, or Efnisien making a connection with Gary, or Efnisien starting out very abrasive and hostile and becoming softer and more caring over time etc. The themes are similar, but there's different reasons for these big moments to be happening, and so they happen in different ways, with different dialogue etc.

Meanwhile Nate, as an example, is someone in FFS who we only ever see as an outsider. We don't know how soft he is with Janusz at home. Or with his friends. We only see him in response to a trigger (PTSD), and see him in a very limited way. Of course he will be different when we see a story from his perspective! He's not going to see himself the way someone who hardly knows him and has never seen him vulnerable sees him. Even without him being an omega etc. in Underline the Blue, how Nate lives his life and sees himself has nothing to do with Efnisien. Efnisien has seen maybe 0.00000001% of his entire life and personality (I don't know how numbers work, but trust me, we can't get an accurate read through 'Efnisien the unreliable narrator'), Nate's the one who has to live it. In that sense, it's easier to trust Nate and his loved ones re: what he's really like, than Efnisien.

Likewise, it's easier to trust Augus and Gwyn over what Augus is really like, than Efnisien. And it's easier for us to trust Efnisien and Arden and Kadek over what Efnisien's really like, instead of Augus' perspective, or even Gwyn's.

Efnisien in the Fae Tales canon is only ever an outsider. In fact he's dead by like chapter 15 of Game Theory. Which is good, because he's awful and incapable of being redeemed in any way. He's a torturer in The Wildness Within. Obviously that's quite different to who we end up with, in Falling Falling Stars, and we only end up with him because of Augus and Gwyn's journey in Spoils of the Spoiled. (If you'd read Spoils first anon, trust me, you'd be asking yourself 'I don't know how I could ever want to read a story about Efnisien he seems so awful' instead lol - but I like...the journey, and the challenge, to see if I can guide a reader through someone's inner universe so they can trust a character's growth, even if they don't like them in the beginning).

Anyway, degrees of separation impact how we see the people around us. We as readers are extremely separate from Nate in FFS because Efnisien is. So...yeah, he feels different when we get a story from his perspective! The whiplash is real. Because he becomes a developed character, and not just a 'bad impression' in Efnisien's insecure, sensitive mind. That's the same with Spoils and Falling Falling Stars, we never see Augus' perspective in FFS, we never see Efnisien's in Spoils. That matters.

Sometimes seeing the character's perspective changes everything! I hope that helps :D