#postcanon worldbuilding

[leletha-jann]

Headcanon unrelated to current comic events (everyone has Dreen theories right now)

In the future, it becomes known that Agatha Heterodyne's Spark was, for the first part of her life, suppressed by a wearable Mechanism. We know that fact is in university textbooks, after all... And because Sparks Are Just Like That, people try to replicate it.

This is, to say the least, not a good idea. No one else is Barry Heterodyne. Most of the Sparks who try cause serious damage to the potentially Sparky children they try their devices on. You'd think people would get a clue, but...Sparks. Sparks think "oh, but that inferior hack who barely deserves to be my rival did it wrong, obviously, I can do better!"

It is one of the things that, in the post-canon, Triumvirate-ruled Wulfenbach Empire, gets you shot on sight.

(Outside the Empire, it gets you wrapped up in the local equivalent of a high-security bow and sold to the Empire to be shot on sight. Both Gil and Tarvek have been known to undersell valuable trade/security treaties because they really want to shoot that guy. It's a known if minor weakness in their diplomatic prowess, which their neighbors are happy to exploit when possible.)

(And it's still considered the merciful option, because if they don't shoot the guy, Agatha is going to get her hands on him.)

The Triumvirate takes such things personally. They have kids by this point. There was never any doubt that the kids would break through, but boy, were the three of them really paranoid about locket-type mechanisms for a while.

Triumvirate kids get warned about accepting jewelry from people with the fervency of razor-blades-in-Halloween-candy scares. Each of them has a secret pattern of imperfections on all their sigil pins and other wearable things, that only they know, so that no accessory they ever own is replaced or altered without their knowledge.

No more Spark-suppressing, brain-strangling mechanisms. Ever.

[leletha-jann]

Aw YES, I wondered if anyone else had the chimera kids headcanon.

Yes! This is one of my pet headcanons. This is not a silly thought, this is a great thought (says someone who's been thinking about it. A lot.)

Everyone's happy. SCIENCE has been done. The resulting children of a bonded triple have three biological parents. No further questions. No one's a half-sibling to be set against the others. (We have the Valois dynasty right here for comparison for when a bloodline gets divided. No thank you, Tarvek's not going back to that.) All children have equal inheritance rights (all of it).

And since there's definitely SCIENCE happening, it lets them plan for when (and how often) they're going to do this, instead of the randomness of biology or more planning of their sex lives than probably anyone is comfortable with.

Agatha doesn't have to put up with people asking her "so who's the father?" 9000 times a day. (In fact, probably at the same time she announces the first pregnancy, Agatha has Van ask what she'll henceforth call "the stupid question", answers "Both of them," very calmly...and she's holding a death ray. Hint taken. No one asks the stupid question again. Well, not twice again, anyway. Agatha's totally capable of building "I'm mad at you but I want you to survive to learn from it" ray guns too.)

Gil fields one (1) snarly comment from Klaus about "how can you even be sure that's your child" with "I have the lab notes. :D" and that's the end of that.

The wrath of absolute god comes down - from three directions, and that's before the Jagermonsters get involved - on any Valois cousins who think they should have access to these kids. Hell no.

"Chimera" actually does become the preferred term of art for the kids. They're made, but they're not constructs.

Not quite designer kids, but you look at them and you can see all three bloodlines in there. Like, you're going to get some kind of amazing red-gold hair color out of Agatha and Tarvek, but you can see Wulfenbach bone structure in the kid's face. They're Heterodynes until one of them wants to inherit something from one of their fathers, and if one of them particularly wants the Empire, someday in the future, it doesn't matter who their father was, because both.

Man, I've got more headcanons about this, including at least a couple of names. I'm just reeling from the knowledge that someone else has thought about it too.

...ask me about the bonus chimera kid headcanon that involves the timestopper, which is essentially fanfic by that point. Go on. Ask. Dare you.

I had a silly thought.

One day in the future, once everything has settled and been dealt with (or as settled and dealt with as it ever could be in Europa), Agatha will likely have children to continue the Heterodyne line.

But in order to ensure a sense of balance and equality between her paramours, she uses SCIENCE! to influence the child's genetics, so that it's a mix of hers, Gil's and Tarvek's, possibly in a distinct form of Chimerism or just some weird mix.

And then my thoughts got derailed on what the 'appropriate' mix of genetics would be - should it be equal? Should Agatha's take precedence and be a full 50% and the remainder split between Tarvek and Gil?

Also did any other Heterodynes ever do weird shit like that to their kids? It doesn't seem like it.

[openphrase123]

i just finished this fic! it's good!

and because it's all done i want to like... be a LITTLE self indulgent and talk under the cut about some miscellaneous things that i ran into while writing it. don't click the readmore if you're interested in the fic and haven't read it yet i'm about to spoil the Whole thing.

also there is an epilogue to this fic now - go read that before this post if you're getting to this before the update!!

so!! i haven't written fanfiction in like FIVE YEARS. it's been a while! part of that is because i was doing original stuff and part of it was i was in a creative slump. so isat kind of dug me out of that and i owe it my thanks. i've been able to do a crazy amount of original work since starting this fic, it's brought back my creative discipline. in like seven years when my video game comes out you can thank isat for that probably

i originally set out thinking this was the only fic for isat i was going to write. and then as i was writing this i fell deeper into it. i kind of got out of isat a little disappointed in how it ended?? but now that i'm here i'm like ah it's fine. just cause i would have done something different in dev's position doesn't mean it's bad. it does mean i can write a bunch of fanfiction exploring things i wish had been tackled more in the game though LOL

i said this in one of the chapter authors notes but i DID start out curtain call hating loop with every fiber of my being. (as in i liked them as a character UNTIL the act 6 reveal which i thought was lame) and then i played through the game a second time knowing the loop twist and went "oh nvm this makes sense" so a lot of the loop stuff in this fic was actually written twice. originally i was just gonna have them soulmerge with siffrin and not be present at all but then i was like. no. i do want to keep this lighthearted and that's too depressing of an end for loop. i do have a loop postcanon doc so i'll go repay them for their slapdashed involvement in curtain call someday

i'm in a weird position with curtain call in that i wrote the themes and major conflicts Directly After playing through isat the first time. before i could really marinate and analyze the characters fully. so there are a lot of scenes and points where i think i wouldn't characterize certain people like that if i were to rewrite this from scratch? however i don't disagree with what i've written either - it's just an interpretation that i don't necessarily think is my favorite anymore.

neither is any of the worldbuilding i did for any of this - it works for curtain call and i think it was nice but i don't necessarily think it's my current interpretation of what the culture and people were like? i like the wishes being permanent thing, i like the language stuff, but i'd probably go in a different direction if i went through this again

i do actually still think "the forgotten island was destroyed by a volcano" is my solid headcanon explanation of what happened to it. in my heart. i think like - with siffrin as a character especially it's very important that he's always missing something, that it's not idyllically happy for them at the end of everything. so even if he can remember more from their own past, it's - you know - there's no way to go back. only forward.

in the vein of this i probably could have killed siffrin/loop's entire childhood family but i did not. mostly because i did think it was fun for him to have to explain all of those cultural taboos they broke to survive. which, of course, was not a big deal - any good parent would rather their kid be alive than lawful - but what is isat other than a vehicle to make siffrin work through every moral compulsion and spiral they experience

i had a thought halfway through writing the fic that i was stepping on the very good and beautiful odile friendquest by making the island real and having a lot of siffrin's personality dictate how it went. but i ultimately decided on keeping siffrin very close to their country, more than odile is to vaugarde, because siffrin actually DID live on the island when he was a kid and that i think is a Different type of "longing for your country" trauma than odile's. i think they can still drink over the feelings together though

writing bonnie is very fun but very emotional for me. the bonnie&siffrin age gap (preteen to late-20s) is the exact age gap between me and my niece so every time i need to sit down and write something for them i think about her and how much she's a little baby growing up. this has nothing to do with bonnie it just makes writing bonnie really hard for me

if the entire history of my ao3 account was not an indicator, i'm a very big fan of writing romance, but i did not want it to take over curtain call at all. i also could have left out sloopis entirely and almost did, but thought "you know. with the way loop functions in this fic. i should at least let that be open ended" cause sharing a body with a version of you who is dating some other guy is gonna get messy no matter what. it's just not necessarily something i had time to or the urge to explore here. think of it as a fun spiritual nod to the fact that isafrin is technically open ended in isat (<- cop out answer)

i think i'm pretty vocal in how much i am absolutely insane for the flashback "happiest i can remember being" conversation. who let them do that. i think a lot of how i worked with mirabelle and siffrin's relationship in this fic kind of revolved around that. important to me that it ends with mira checking in on him and getting the answer she was looking for all along <3

overall i'm happy with curtain call. glad i am done with it though. there's so much that's running in with it at once. i'll probably wait a month and reread the whole thing to myself front to back before i start having fond memories of this. i mean it's always gonna be the fic my nephew was born during and i'll always remember having a panic attack in the airport right after posting chapter 7 but it's gonna be weird letting this one sail off into the ocean of the internet. however feel free to ask anything about the fic, i wrote this in a lil hurry on a bad day and probably didn't cover everything

goodbye, curtain call!! i love you!!!!! i'll miss you!!!!

[looks both ways, waiting for most people to leave]

also. if you've read this far. i hope it's not too gauche of me to link my personal project. if you've read over 100k words of this you might enjoy the game i'm developing? i've been working on it for almost a year but i just started the devlog last month. it's still in early baby stages as far as a full video game goes but if you liked this you'll like the game when it comes out (similar nickname culture, timeloop trauma, petty interpersonal drama, very stupid jokes, natural disaster angst)

also there isn't a lot on the devblog yet, i've mostly been doing programming on it, i JUST started visdev i'm sorry if it's uglyyyyy (FOR NOW)

anyway i'm trusting you with that link. i'm going to use my professional name on that project when it airs don't cross the wires pretty please just pretend that's a butch-y cis woman's game <3 guard the closet door babeyyyyy

[smileposting]

one of the Big Hurdles for me when it comes to thinking about the drain is trying to strike that balance between "engages meaningfully with GGG's Overarching Themes" and "could plausibly exist in a saturday morning cartoon setting, goofs and all." with that said here's some of my favorite ideas i've gathered from both me own brain and mutuals on discord/bluesky. unless stated otherwise none of these are Necessarily meant to overlap with one another. But They Can.

though the environment is harsh and resources are scarce, drain society itself is rather mundane. the twist is that both the grove and the drain are convinced that the other island is the worst possible fate that could befall anyone ("i hear nobody ever gets to leave the drain" vs "those who leave for the grove never come back...") and the bonkers fucking yonkers geography going on between them does not help. should they ever make proper contact postcanon there will be a lot of initial confusion. this one came about from spitballing with my lovely mutual momo who is Not on tumblr but has made some beautiful art/exploration of drain environments.

my other mutual cici's brought up the idea of there being a Drain-Specific Branch of the bizzyboys meant to look after those still in the drain + the org As A Whole reforming into a sort of mutual aid/outreach program thing (or at least such a group being set up in their place) which i also think is cool. something something embracing one's roots/place of origin albeit in a kind of roundabout way rather than shunning them entirely. i also like the idea of like, the drain branch getting news of the disbandment of the surface branch and coming up to have, ah, some strong words with hector about how if he's really gonna turn himself around then he's gotta help them get their shit sorted, too. after all, every good grove citizen knows you don't maintain a paradise through being complacent!

i know i talk about the idea that the drain is the idea of oblivion/irrelevance made manifest to be like an inverse of the grove being all about preservation and archival and recordkeeping and history In General. but i'm about to do it again: i think there's something kinda beautiful n bittersweet about the idea of there being genuine communities that have formed among people deemed Forgotten. our environment may quite literally be out to fucking kill us and any progeny we may have in here but i want you alive and hey that's gotta count for somethin'. i think this also presents a cool lil moral conundrum that could be explored in postcanon fanwork. like from the perspective of someone who's like. ok well what if i don't want to be forgotten but i also don't want to uproot my whole goddamn house just to be remembered. what if i just want to fix my house. after all, isn't that just as metal as a mass exodus?

i don't really have an end goal here i just think fan speculation meeting worldbuilding is sick as fuck lol. what are y'alls favorite ideas for the drain?

[twothpaste]

i wanna rave and ramble about my m3 postcanon worldbuilding but choosing where to begin is a herculean task all its own.

[little-smartass]

I was tagged by @justawanderingbabbit to self rec five fics that I've written!

All In (kirk/spock, 87k)

this fic is always going to be a special one for me - it was my first time collaborating with other authors ( @spicyshimmy-blog and @summerofspock), it was one I came back to after several years of it being abandoned, and at the time it was the longest thing I'd ever written. still super super proud of it!

2. The Slow Path (book!louis/lestat, 14k)

another oldie that I'm still very proud of - I spent a lot of time character analysing to try and get to the core of who these two would be without vampire trauma and immortality, and I'm pleased with how it turned out in the end. I definitely still comfort re-read it every now and then.

3. Where There’s A Will, There’s A Road (3zun, 37k)

This was the first mystery/casefic I ever wrote, the first time I think I ever put real work and effort into creating tension and plot suspense, and I am still so super happy with how it turned out! also some of my favourite fight scenes I've ever written. an incredible podfic was recorded for it and I have lost track of how many times I've listened to it on long journeys.

4. Where There Are Green Hills, There Will Be Wood To Burn series (317k, 3zun + xuanli + sangcheng)

this was a two + year labour of love by myself and @maura-labingi full of extensive research and worldbuilding and character exploration and I absolutely adore the result of it all, it was so worth it! will always be beloved to me.

5. The Waves Are Rising And Rising (131k, 3zun)

I think @eleanorfenyxwrites and I wrote this fic in something utterly bonkers like 3 or 4 months, it just completely took over our brains and I have had SUCH an incredibly fun time working on it, I love this AU so much!!

(honourable mentions to Best of My Love, the ace!Meng Yao fic that I sort of consulted on with @justkeeptrekkin, and Safety of Distance, another long term project about postcanon!3zun that was a really tough one that was well worth the work)

tagging @eleanorfenyxwrites @guqin-and-flute @maura-labingi if you fancy it

[problemstarchild]

The one and only thing about Dungeon Meshi that makes it insane for me trying to write for it is, like...

There's so much worldbuilding. There's so much world, so many locations -- you have northern and southern elves, dwarves have a firm heirarchy and an outcasting system, orcs have multiple marriages and pseudohorn growth to signify status, elven beauty standards, half-foot naming conventions and folklore, gnomish traditional dress...

We literally have so much. There are so many things that enrich the world in a way that I rarely get to sink my teeth into.

But dear god. Where is everything. Where???

There's Melini (postcanon), Utaya (RIP), Izganda, Dozahk, and Kahka Brud. These are the only named location entities, aside from the various other dungeons, which mostly seem to be supplementary.

What is the name of Laois and Falin's village? What is the name of the islands where the elves live? If there are so few continents that people basically just call them "West, North, South, East, Northeast" then does the Eastern archipelago at least have named islands?

There are no PLACE NAMES and for political writing involving anything other than dwarves, it's been driving me crazy. There's a panel where Kabru is just listing the names of important cities--

--but since I don't know the naming conventions for cities, because we only know of TWO tallman locations (Utaya and Melini) and three dwarven ones (Kahka Brud, Izganda, Dozahk), and because of that, I have no idea how to determine which of these cities are elven, which are dwarven (almost all of them sound like dwarf cities to me based on the other options, Brigan is the name of a dwarf character so I'd probably guess that's also the name of a city).

Sadena Dozal?

A place called Godhome (if that's what it's supposed to say) sounds very literal and spiritual so maybe gnomish (gnomes are culturally in touch with spirits and the only person who's actually religious in the entire story that I can recall is Holm, who is also a gnome), but who the hell knows.

We only know dwarf city names because it's part of their names. Which is frustrating. I wanna know the conventions...

[roguetelepaths]

sparrow roguetelepaths — ey/em or they/them - read my DS9 postcanon fic where Odo adopts a Vorta daughter

used to be enbygesserit, follows from helplessnessxblues

old enough to remember when neopets breakfast cereal was a thing

aroace to a terrifying degree. not the cool kind that writes smut and passes out water bottles at the orgy, either. sorry

intersex (nCAH) (diagnosed professionally at 15) and currently working through medical trauma and neglect related to that

no gender we die like [tv static]

psychospiritually nonhuman, but I don't talk about it here — DM me if you want to know where I do

vaguely anarchist & emphatically against all forms of punishment as foundations for interpersonal relationships

on bluesky! @justiceforlyta.bsky.social

I also have a more serious™ blog off of tumblr, you can find it here

psychiatric survivor and ex-patient. madpunk, psychpunk, neurodivergent in the original radical anti-pathologization meaning of the term. the social model isn't ableist you guys are just willfully misinterpreting it

on team "believe others about their subjective experiences". yes, this includes that subjective experience you're about to send me anon hate telling me is absolutely just kids roleplaying for attention. wishing medicalists of all kinds a very merry go fuck yourselves. yes this includes sysmeds, what part of believe others about their subjective experiences don't you understand

my stance on proship/anti discourse can be summed up as "fiction may not literally be reality but it also can't be separated from the context of reality and it's good to foster an environment where that context can be openly talked about" and "freedom of fiction doesn't really exist without freedom of response" and "dislike and disgust are not indicators of morality but they also shouldn't be ignored or repressed, especially since they can teach you useful things about yourself" and "criticize ideas and works, not people" — some people call this neutralship but I've been known to describe myself as a pro-disliker or a pro-critic. that being said if I see you shipping weyoun and odo in a romantic/sexual way I will block you so hard and fast that your ancestors will feel it. same goes with snowbaird. I am a tolerant person but I do not want those things in my space

other important stances: occupied peoples have the right to armed resistance. the pandemic never ended, we just all stopped talking about it. all trans people face unique oppression based on their identity and positionality within society, and all trans people have common struggles.

update to unreality tag policy: I will be tagging things that usually get tagged as unreality as #surrealism going forward. this is a compromise to respect both my personal belief in the multilayered nature of reality and the needs of vulnerable people to be protected from content that doesn't align with shared reality. please block #surrealism if you have #unreality blocked.

fandoms you can expect to see (I care about themes and analysis over shipping, and when I do ship, it's always an extension of the themes I want to explore, so be prepared for me to be a pretentious piece of shit about all of these):

DS9 (especially the Dominion) (I have a discord server for this)

Babylon 5 (mostly telepaths but not exclusively. NOT a psi corps apologist in any way, just a season 5 telepath commune arc liker, which is almost as bad to some)

Dune

Severance

The Hunger Games & related media

Cult of the Lamb

non-media interests (may or may not post about these, honestly, it's anyone's guess, but feel free to tag me in these):

fucked up unethical pseudoscientific social experiments, the more fucked up unethical and pseudoscientific the better

relationship anarchy

aroace, trans, and intersex issues

disability rights, psychiatry criticism, and cognitive liberty

community building

apartment solarpunk

Scouting and related youth organizations

worldbuilding and writing advice

Heathenry and Norse mythology (though that's more likely to go on @heathen-starspawn)

[hikennosabo]

homestuck is kind of weird to talk about nowadays... honestly i'm kind of tired of cringing at it, but also i just can't really fully kill the part that cringes, either.

it has its major major issues with racism, ableism, other -isms that i'm probably forgetting, the irony poisoning and hussie's mean-spirited sense of humor, the absolute mess of postcanon which i will never touch in my life, the entire kickstarter fiasco, the HATRED for the fandom on the part of some of the creators including hussie themself... it's very messy. and that's not even touching the fandom.

at the same time it is still an impressive and (new)groundbreaking work in terms of presentation and storytelling and worldbuilding and i don't appreciate that enough. the fandom was also very influential on my art at the time, although i don't think any of that is reflected in my art style now, lol.

looking at what i said about homestuck after my interest in it faded but before the comic ended, i was just very... melancholy, i guess, about how my passion for it disappeared, and it never came back. and that's kind of a bummer? like, we can't relive the golden age, you had to be there at that time, and if i tried to go back it just... wouldn't be the same. you'd think at this point it'd've been long enough that i could look back at it fondly, but i still can't fully do that yet.

i dunno man. i'm just tired of cringing.

[llycaons]

I have been reminded I have yet to do this - recs from my readings last week

small mercies by mellowflicker

wwx stays postcanon and takes care of lwj during his tenure as cc. the intimacy is mostly unspoken but nice and very physical. no big get-togethers or confessions are needed, because they simply know. the sex scenes are rough and a little undernegotiated but honestly really well done. a nice read overall I liked it

underneath a starless sky, the wind blows towards the future by ilip13

a dystopian modern urban fantasy take on the yiling laozu. lwj approaches wwx-as-yllz for aid as the gusu lan sect needs more and more help in fending off the tide of resentful energy. matters in the city progress, their relationship develops, and things come to a head. a bit corny, and a significant decision lwj makes at the end is quite ooc and thematically inappropriate, but I enjoyed the worldbuilding and the drama in the relationship development. a solid B+ *note that this author has written rape fantasy and cnc so be safe*

Forget Me Not by Vamillepudding

not a new fic, this was published ages ago. almost purely comedic, this one, which is good because amnesia when played for angst either stresses me out or annoys me. postcanon wwx and lwj lose their memories from different parts of their lives and are told by other characters they've gotten married when in fact they haven't actualy gotten together yet. but it's completely okay. some other characters have to babysit them and it's kind of charming to see how they interact also. when I first read this many months ago I thought it wasn't worth reccing but I've come around on it. it's sweet, they make out a lot. and pretty funny too

[dragondawdles]

uhh I know your current interests thingy says "man idk" but do u possibly have any bug fables headcanons ??

hihi I do indeed! I’ll stick my thoughts beneath a readmore for ease of skippability and also for spoilers:

leif ≠ leif. like is’s less “leif was resurrected and came back complicatedly different” and more “leif super dies in snakemouth and leif as we know him is the cordyceps”. I mean they aren’t as mutually exclusive as I may be presenting them as but idk! I like leaning into how weird leif’s whole deal is. let him wrestle with legacy let him wrestle with his borrowed yet vividly personal memories and feelings let him grieve leif and muse and elizant I and continue to live. let him be a weird not-quite moth

a bit along the same lines, leif having health issues as consequence of leif stuff. wounds that don’t quite heal right (thinking his injury in ch4 is a big one), some form of vision impairment, and poor dexterity are the main ones I’ve got in mind and that last one is maybe a little bit of projection as a treat

leif being a fantastic actor is already canon but I would like to extend that off stage. I think he’a scarily good at putting on fronts acting however he would like to present himself. I think his facades even fool himself sometimes

vi being raised as a potential successor to the queen when she was young before getting a bit older and being moved to the honey factory and ultimately striking out on her own is maybe not canon compliant but I think it’s potentially very interesting and funny. could’ve been a princess but she chose violence.

vi being wholly able to fly the entire game but not even bothering to until the end when she is directly ordered to do so by the queen is so funny I don’t think there’s some deep rooted psychological reason for that I think she’s just like that. maybe one day down the line she’ll appreciate the oddly elusive gift of flight for what it is but as of now she just walks everywhere since bugaria’s built to be accessible to flightless bugs so why not y’know! she just likes to walk! maybe she has really good lower body strength for a bee as consequence

kabbu’s a theatre enjoyer! he can be too enthusiastic sometimes (he’s not always great at volume control) and he’s seen enough plays that he knows what makes a play good and bad and he’s not a good liar if asked about it, but he’s a well-liked regular at his local theatres. he’s occasionally mistaken for an aspiring actor himself with his passion and his boisterously earnest nature but no, his heart lies elsewhere. he just really likes the theatre

kabbu gets shy about it but he’s a really good singer too. mothiva will never know

chompy’s favorite bug is leif (of course, likewise leif spends the most time with chompy and talks to/about her often, although he kinda spoils her and she usually goes to him for sympathy whether earned or otherwise). she considers vi a playmate/rival much to vi’s chagrin. she sees kabbu as a firmer authority she can’t weasel past, but finds his approval all the more special, and often accompanies him/comforts him on his worse days whatever the reason may be.

chompy thinks todd (leif’s turbo nephew) is another chomper.

postcanon neolith fluent in roach

zasp and mothiva childhood friends mayhaps

more of a worldbuilding headcanon (because bug fables’ worldbuilding is a little bit flimsy for my tastes cough cough) but I think the bugs that exist outside of the strict “species = kingdom” is fun to consider. like moths being more nomadic and individualized, and it’s families and their descendants that align themselves with the kingdoms rather than a whole flutter of them. maybe it’s more common to see lone unassociated beetles than bees, for example. idk if I were braver about bugs I’d be attributing those traits more I like it when creatures are creatures with creature traits :] bug enthusiasts who attribute those traits for me are my heroes

also I know it’s a common headcanon but bug fables and hollow knight existing in the same universe is really fun. I don’t think they’re all that close to each other spacially or tonally but thematically and for the antics!! idk. maybe quirrel shows up on his precanon travels and warns about the folly of eternity and the numerous bugs devoting their lives in some way or form to finding the everlasting sapling just kinda. politely nods along vehemently disagreeing

[horatiovonbecker]

Sect is about postcanon Taylor as a ghostly headmate, raising a girl who's been locked in a room her whole life and fed magic (qi) poisons so that her brother can claim their poison qi with less risk. Chapter 1 is them deciding they're out of time to prepare, and they need to kill (and eat) everyone else in the sect before they're fed a poison that will actually kill them.

It's also something like a backend fusionfic, where all of Worm is canon, but the fundamental cosmology and magic system is a xianxia setting. (Earths are generally too qi-poor to make Cultivators.) It's got some fascinating, delightfully well-researched worldbuilding - the author has done a lot of digging into Chinese myths and mysticism, geography, and history, into popular wuxia and xianxia novels, and also into theoretical physics - and the magic system is top-notch.

Notably, all cultivators of at least Immortal stage (and Shards count) have a Way; a magically-enforceable understanding of the entire world. Usually described in one word, but always more complicated under the surface - one of the author's notes describes Taylor circa early-middle Worm as having the (inactive) way of Duality, as in "the separation of things which are only perfect together", for example.

Given that you read Worm fanfic, and that Jagganoth, whose dungeon core story you introduced me to, is a big fan of Sect by Ryuugi (an excellent postcanon worm fanfic), I figured I'd ask if you are a fan of it also? The magic system in Are You Even Human reminds me quite a bit of it.

Never heard of it, actually. What's it about?

[thecarnivorousmuffinmeta]

Just shower thoughts... For a long time I've been confused about why Meyer wrote the Jacob/Renesmee imprint. Most of the weird shit that happens in Twilight I can justify as leaning into the monsterfucker/Phantom of the Opera angle or worldbuilding fails. But the baby soulmate thing?? But And Then There Were None kickstarted a wire in my head that transmigrated me into Stephenie Meyer's head during my shower.

I'm Meyer writing New Moon. I want to set the groundwork to break the love triangle in Edward's favor. I need Jacob out of the way, preferably dating someone else. But I don't want Jacob to seem like he loved Bella less, or like the kind of guy who would treat a woman like she's his second choice. Solution? I apply my weird concept of true love to the problem. Bang, imprinting. He loved Bella as much as he could but was destined for someone else! For now, Jacob is un-imprinted for now since I want the love triangle to be central to the Eclipse plot.

However, writing Eclipse I get stuck. Jacob is Bella's best friend. If he imprints on someone else, it means that he can't go with Bella on her immortal voyage of true love. She'll be sad. Unacceptable. Ok, I say. Jacob imprints on a vampire. Then he and Bella can stay friends, forever, as the new vampire (RenesmeeLite) will prove vampires can be good people.

BUT I still have a problem. What if some Jacob/Bella fans don't buy the new ship after all the drama in Eclipse? What if they (rightly) argue imprinting is thralldom and hate it? What if they (god forbid) make postcanon Jacob/Bella fanfic where the imprint breaks and the old ship re-sails? I need to make it clear that a) Edward/Bella are in unbreakable true love and b) Jacob/Bella's connection was sincere but ultimately platonic.

For a) marriage and sex are pretty big commitments. Escalate. The biggest commitment? A baby. Half-vampire baby can never die and thus never be forgotten. Renesmee will complete my Edward/Bella endgame. For b) ... I realize... I've written RenesmeeLite. Renesmee solves the Jacob/Bella friendship problem as now not only does Jacob have to like vampires, he has an excuse to join the Cullens and officially follow Bella around for the rest of her life! Also, Jacob's relationship with Bella is retconned to imply that his great love for her was only due to her similarity to his true soulmate/the call of fate. The Cullens and wolves complete the alliance arc begun in Eclipse, which they will no doubt use to someday take down the terrible Volturi and potentially become vampire royalty themselves. Ignoring the implications of that, it's a good day to be Bella. As for now, I edit Eclipse to add foreshadowing to Jacob's destiny... sorry Claire and Quil, you'll have to be sacrifices.

What do you think? Do you buy it?

And Then There Were None a Halloween Twilight special by myself and @therealvinelle that readers caught us out on while we were still anonymous.

It's a delightful theory the trouble is that's not really what we do here on this blog. This is a blog to divest ourselves of authorial intent or to try and peer into the mind of Meyer and ask "why?" For one thing, it keeps the blog consistent, for another I genuinely have no idea.

Meyer is utterly incomprehensible to me. Not only are we different people but... I mean, look at Edward. Look, there's your normal Phantom of the Opera bad boy tragic love interest type, and then there's Edward and the shit he says. And it's unironic, we're supposed to genuinely like him, she thinks he's a dream boat as he says, "I'll eat your babies."

How does one even comprehend such a person?

In this case though I'll go on a limb and say that given Meyer having doubled down on imprinting in the first place as well as Edward...

I think it was the plan to start with and perhaps even the reason imprinting in the series exists at all.

We see way too much foreshadowing in New Moon with imprinting immediately brought up with Sam and Emily, it is already a significant plot point and one Jacob finds himself concerned about when he realizes he doesn't imprint on Bella.

Already we had Chekov's Gun: Jacob hasn't imprinted which means that it will always be a loose end until he does. At some point in the series he will imprint and it will not be on Bella.

And given all that build up to Jacob wanting it to be Bella so badly, as well as the Claire/Quil subplot, and everyone else imprinting...

I think it was always going to be Renesmee. He was always doomed to be tied into the family and for Meyer this was always the ideal dream solution like where you're playing dolls and all the dolls marry all the other dolls and now they're a big happy family and everyone's related.

Adding to this, the love triangle was one of those hilarious love triangles where you know who the author's going to pick immediately. Twilight, Bella dates Edward. New Moon, Bella's very sad over Edward and considers Jacob for 0.02 seconds before dumping him because Edward's back. Eclipse, Jacob asks Bella to dump Edward and she says no the entire novel then marries Edward. Breaking Dawn, Bella marries Edward.

Jacob was never made a competitive option for Bella and it was always clear, the entire time, I'm sorry guys but it was hilariously clear she was going to pick Edward. Always.

Which meant that while Jacob needed a clean exit from the love triangle I... also don't think he was in the love triangle for Meyer. Sort of, yes, but I honestly think that's the weird set up that Jacob later quotes in canon of "Oh, Bella, I was totally into you because I was going to imprint on your vampire baby in the future. This makes so much sense."

... Does it Jacob? Does it?

I think Renesmee and Renesmee/Jacob was always the plan and everything else was just set up to get there.

(Worth noting, though I don't know too much about it, is Forever Dawn which was the book Meyer pitched after Twilight to her publishers which is essentially the plot of Breaking Dawn with a few tweaks.

It should be taken with a bit of a grain of salt as it was never published and I'm personally dubious of whatever copies people say they have floating about or what concepts were leaked, but nevertheless we seem to have a lot of the same stuff.

Bella still gets pregnant and marries Edward. Jacob still imprints on Renesmee. The Volturi still show up as the big bad. Victoria is still a major player (though this time takes on the role of Irina the nark).

This, of course, points to Renesmee/Jacob always being the endgame rather than the solution Meyer happened upon for the love triangle problem.)

But at the end of the day, I'm guessing too, and the best I can really do is shrug and say who knows with that one.

[dingodad]

something that I feel gets overlooked in the discussion around the hemospectrum and lifespans and whether that's bad worldbuilding is that within the world of homestuck death is not the end of a person? ghosts and the undead aren't just A Thing, they're a fundamental pillar of reality just as important as living people.

the argument is frequently made that the idea of discrete blood "castes" is sort of counter to the idea of a "spectrum" of blood colours and I absolutely agree that it makes more sense for the castes to be social constructs, but I disagree with the conclusion reached by many that this means all the "castes" should be biologically the same... I think a spectrum implies two extremes on either end with a gradient between them, and from the first time I read the comic it seemed to me that the extremes were that "lower blooded" trolls were more psychic while "higher blooded" trolls were more physical, both capable of more extreme physical feats and living in their physical bodies for longer.

meanwhile aradia and sollux' connections to the ghosts of the dead show a connection between the psychic and the spiritual; essentially, while coolbloods are physically strong, they are by and large spiritually weak, while warmbloods may be physically weaker they are far stronger spiritually. and homestuck's world is also deeply spiritually gnostic; physicality isn't actually a strength, it's a weakness! when coolbloods strive after the image of the muscular Lord English, they are modeling themselves on a demon who is trapped in a body that appears strong but is incapable of growing spiritually.

what Kankri says about coolbloods' long lifespans allowing them to monopolise cultural clout is absolutely true in the land of the living, but warmbloods get that much more influence in the spiritual world, demonstrated explicitly in Aradia's shepherding of the afterlife. warmbloods are at a disadvantage on Alternia not because their powers are inferior to the powers of coolbloods, but because the planet is ruled by a demiurge who promotes the physical and attacks the spiritual.

absolutely it's still worth questioning whether this was intentional or racist writing on andrew's part, and he totally fumbled it toward the end of act 6 and in the postcanon with stuff like goldbloods seemingly being more psychically powerful than trolls with warmer blood and bluebloods having psychic powers often, rather than sollux and vriska just being outlying mutant cases, but I still think the foundational worldbuild is worth examining through the lens of the specific themes of homestuck rather than just taken at the apparent face value of 'the lower classes are easily oppressed thanks to biological reality'

[ariadne-mouse]

Fic writing lightning round:

-What fandoms have you written fics for?

-Do you have any original stuff?

-What's your oldest fic?

-What story are you most proud of?

-What stories are in the works?

-Where can I read your stuff?

Oho, here we go!

In more recent years: Critical Role, The Flash, The Sandman, and technically Supernatural though that one was more to bogart the worldbuilding for a crossover/fusion. Reaching back into Ye Olden Times of Livejournal and ffn.net, the very first fandom I wrote for was Yu Yu Hakusho.

I have some original poetry from various points in my life.

My oldest fic was a wonderfully terrible self-insert OC genfic for Yu Yu Hakusho, as might be done by any self-respecting tweenage author. It has since been thoroughly lost to the sands of time. Bless it, may it rest in peace.

I am especially proud of the fire kept closest because it was very experimental and I think worked out well. Same with till human voices wake us. Both are also the first multi-chaptered stories I've finished, which was a new branch for me too. (mercaleb is finished, just not yet on Ao3!)

A couple stories are properly in the works: a sequel to multitudinous echoes, a 30k polymorph-themed postcanon shadowgast fic called a man by any other face that needs a heavy round of editing, and an as-of-yet unmentioned prompt-based serial fic about Shadowgast going to Aeor and something going dreadfully wrong. The WIP folder is lovely, dark, and deep, but these are the furthest along with the most momentum.

You can read my stuff on Ao3, and also here on tumblr under the tag #ariadne writes cr (which includes Ao3 links, ask meme prompts, tumblr-exclusive short fic, and WIP previews).

Thanks for the questions! :)

[informal ask meme]

[coldwind-shiningstars]

I have thirty AO3 Fics! 🎉🎉 I wanted to do a little celebration or just a post about the ones I'm particularly proud of, since altho some of my fics are very old I'm still happy to have thirty of them up. This is organized loosely by fandom

Boku no Hero Academia/My Hero Academia:

A Hand For Every Kind Of Touch, T, Aizawa & Tsuyu, Tsuyu/Uraraka. A Post-USJ exploration of Tsuyu and trauma, and also about Eldest Daughter Complexes. Some thoughts on quirks.

Such a Thing as "Day," M, qpp Aizawa/Yagi and qpp Aizawa/Mic. About Toshinori coming to terms with his body and relationships as a disabled queer man, and about the ways people can fit together in ways beyond "traditional" relationships. Trans Aizawa. Lots of discussion of chronic illness and chronic pain, especially as an aquired and traumatic experience.

Puella Magi Madoka Magica and Magia Record: PMMM Side story:

lord, what can the harvest hope for?: M, Homura/Madoka. Codependency, obsession, and love for someone who keeps forgetting you. Disability talk. Knowing your relationship is unhealthy but being unable to let it go.

The Coals Went So Wild: M, Momoko/Mitama. About king and lionheart dynamics, canon-typical Mitama Manipulation, also Buff Momoko Agenda. Sex, but not too explicit. "Momoko, you're going to have to protect me for the rest of your life."

The Adventure Zone: Balance

I Could Not See To See: M, reaper squad, the taakitz-blupjeans household, etc. This one is... Extremely My Brand. Disability/chronic illness, worldbuilding on how being dead but Present works, mad and unethical science, linguistic drift. What does it mean to continue to exist hundreds of years after your death?

Flame Imperishable: T, Angus & everyone. Technically this one is unfinished but I WILL be adding a third chapter Soon. Angus and his family, over candlenights. Signifcantly lighter option than most of these other fics.

Mo Dao Zu Shi:

The Shapes A Bright Container Can Contain: M, Wei Wuxian/Lan Wangji, Sizhui & Wen Ning. Now finished! A Casefic: Wei Wuxian and his family solve a haunting. Chronic illness, neurodivergence, coming back to life after losing over a decade.

Lan Jingyi and the Adventure of the Immortal Cultivator: T, Juniors Squad, Xie Lian. TGCF crossover!! Another pretty light hearted one, altho Xie Lian does get canon-typical Significant Injuries. Jingyi is very anxious about this new addition to his friend group...

Tian Guan Ci Fu:

No Mourners, No Funerals: M, He Xuan/Hua Cheng, but hualian and beefleaf play significant roles. The roles bodies play when you're trans and dead. Proxy sex, Demon Weirdness, canon typical violence. Illustrated!!

de viento y de sal: T, Shi Qingxuan/He Xuan. Postcanon. He Xuan visits Shi Qingxuan. They have a conversation that doesn't go very well.