#rereading my own dragon age stuff

[queenofbaws]

uh oh. my fears were correct: the new varric design did it.

im shifting back into da mode...............

[chimaerakitten]

Malaria, Sickle-Cell, and Dragons in the Temeraire Universe

so I've been thinking about sickle cell all day because of the very cool real-life FDA crispr treatment approval news, and also I'm just about done rereading empire of ivory so thusly it is time to write the sickle cell/malaria/dragons/benefits of human-dragon mutualism breakdown I mentioned ages ago.

Standard disclaimer that I am not in fact anywhere near an expert on this, this is mostly recall from ANTH 102/215 classes I took five years ago, the info is very simplified and possibly somewhat out of date. I'm doing some quick checks and I write this but only enough to make this an appropriate fantasy novel fandom post, not enough to make it actually reliably informative. I do have a couple citations, but mostly for the parts I'm lifting straight out of a class assignment I wrote, and they're a short documentary hosted on YouTube and the textbook for the class. also none of my links are live because I want this fandom post to actually show up in the fandom tag lol.

second disclaimer is I'm starting at the basic obvious stuff because I genuinely have no idea how much most people know about this and better safe than confusing.

Intro and Background

So the first thing to know about any of this is that human genetics for the most part to not operate on mendelian inheritance. So the punnet squares in high school biology that did human hair or eye color as basic dominant/recessive one-gene traits were totally lying to you. Like they're a teaching tool for a very simple model that works well enough but they're not accurate. Most human phenotypes are way way more complicated genetically than that.

That said, there are exceptions. Mendelian traits (Characteristics that are influenced by alles at only one genetic locus) do exist in humans, a number of them being related to genetic diseases. The list in the ANTH 102 notes I just dug up was: Wet (dominant) or dry Earwax; Albinism; Brachydactyly (dominant); Blood type (ABO, not the positive/negative part); Hereditary breast-ovarian cancer syndrome (BRCA-1, BRCA-2, unknown genes); Huntington’s disease; Lactase persistence (dominant); and Sickle-cell disease (recessive).

So the sickle cell punnet square looks like this for two parents who both have one copy of the sickle cell gene:

Sickle cell is a very painful and life threatening disease, (That's why the FDA approving a crispr treatment for it allowing patients to be their own bone marrow donors is very exciting.) and from an evolutionary perspective, one that very often prevents people from reproducing. It's also not strictly dominant/recessive, in that people heterozygous for sickle cell can have some symptoms like the possibility a sickle-cell crisis triggered in low-oxygen situations (high altitudes, intense exercise, etc).

So one might think that Sickle cell would be a vanishingly rare disease, since having it can be deadly and even having the trait can in some cases cause problems. Only it's not rare by genetically inherited disease standards, not at all.

And to make a long story very short, the reason is malaria.

Malaria

People who are heterozygous (possessing one sickle cell gene and one normal gene) for sickle cell anemia are resistant to malaria. In areas of the world without a high incidence of malaria historically, there is a strong selection against the sickle cell gene, (Biointeractive Malaria and Sickle Cell Anemia, 9:33) but in areas with malaria, both having sickle cell disease (homozygous HbSS) and not having the trait at all (homozygous HbAA) are selected against. People with sickle cell were historically less likely to reproduce, and people who were not resistant to malaria were more likely to die of malaria and also not reproduce. Because being heterozygous with sickle cell is selected for, the gene persists in the population.

The implications of that are best summed up from this map that I just stole from Britannica.com:

I dunno if the percentages on that second one are accurate tbh, other infographic maps I'm looking at give different ranges. but sill, you get the gist about how common it is in equatorial Africa. In the modern United States Black children are much much more likely to be born with sickle cell than white children—the genes don't just go away when the threat of malaria is removed. (And yeah, that's a historical consequence of the slave trade.)

There's some other stuff wrapped up in here too about bio-cultural evolution: There's indications that malaria was not a “significant problem until humans abandoned food foraging for farming” (Haviland, W. A., Prins, H. E., Walrath, D., & McBride, B.). Humans cleared away the forest, which had kept the soil absorbent. Without the vegetation, more water built up on the surface, forming stagnant puddles which were a perfect environment for malaria-causing mosquitoes to thrive, thus creating the conditions for sickle cell anemia to be advantageous. Farming creates caloric surplus which is great for humans, but it also changes the environment in ways that can be detrimental. Malaria is one way, creating the conditions for other epidemic diseases to thrive is another, etc. etc.

But if you've read this far you're probably going "Chi, you promised this would be a fandom post but so far this has been a serious and kind of sad post about disease. when are you going to get to the dragons?"

The Dragons

So the first time malaria comes up in the Temeraire books is in Throne of Jade, when a bunch of the sailors on the Allegiance come down with "malarial Fevers."

Jane, I must ask you to forgive the long gap in this Letter, and the few hasty Words that are all by which I can amend the same now. I have not had Leisure to take up my pen these three weeks—since we passed out of Banka Strait we have been much afflicted by malarial Fevers. I have escaped sickness myself, and most of my men, for which Keynes opines we must be grateful to Temeraire, believing that the heat of his body in some wise dispels the Miasmas which cause the ague, and our close association thus affords some protection. But we have been spared only to increase of Labor: Captain Riley has been confined to his bed since almost the very first, and Lord Purbeck falling ill, I have stood watch in turn with the ship’s third and fourth lieutenants, Franks and Beckett. Both are willing young men, and Franks does his best, but is by no means yet prepared for the Duty of overseeing so vast a Ship as the Allegiance, nor to maintain discipline among her Crew—stammers, I am sorry to say, which explains his seeming Rudeness at table, which I had earlier remarked upon.

I do not know enough about what people thought about malaria in the 19th century to be 100% sure that this is actually malaria, but I think Novik wouldn't want to confuse her readers by calling something malarial that isn't you know..malaria. So I'm going to assume thats what it is. Google is not giving me figures on malaria survival rates before modern medicines for it which is driving me kind of nuts and means I can't say how lucky Riley and Purbeck were to survive with apparently no complications, but that's not the point here anyway. The point is the comment about the aviators not getting sick.

And not only (mostly) not getting sick, but not getting sick even though they aren't actually always near Temeraire. Laurence for example has been working watch shifts near constantly because he's the only one left on the ship who knows what he's doing. That means probably less read & cuddle time than is normal for him and Temeraire, and yet—no malaria.

We modern readers (and Novik) know that malaria is not caused by "miasmas" but by parasites carried by mosquitos. And lo and behold when we get to Empire of Ivory we get:

Mosquitoes sang happily as dusk drew on, though they did not come very close to Temeraire; the flies were less judicious. The shapes of the trees were growing vague when Temeraire woke with a start and said, “Laurence, there is someone coming, there,” and the grass rustled on the opposite bank.

So yeah, the dragons are keeping the mosquitos away. I know fuck all about why—it's probably not heat since you know, mosquitos like warm blooded organisms, but maybe it's an oil or a chemical or some artifact of the way some of them can breathe fire that's present in all dragons or something, they're described as smelling weird a few times, so who knows. If it's a substance like an oil in their skin that could explain why the aviators don't get sick even when they're not nearby, since they could have some on them from contact, but that's just speculation. The point is not the mechanism, just that it's happening.

The Point

This whole post grew out of a throwaway comment I made about the benefits of mutualistic symbiosis with dragons from the human perspective in that one post about how the series has some interesting stuff obviously going on psychologically/biologically. The point of going in-depth on malaria and sickle cell is to show how this is really impressively solid worldbuilding in relation to the Tswana.

See, Empire of Ivory describes locations that seem like they're in modern day Botswana, Zimbabwe, and Zambia, regions which will have had long-term problems with malaria-causing mosquitos. That's not the densest area for sickle cell, but still definitely in the region where malaria would have exerted selective pressure.

Selective pressure which, in a universe where just being around a dragon is going to drastically reduce malaria rates, is going to leave dragon-friendly populations a lot healthier than dragon-unfriendly ones. A community that has a dragon stay every night and work alongside humans during the day is going to have a lot less malaria even without the sickle cell resistance than a community which has no dragon. And considering that malaria is bad enough that sickle cell genes persist despite it also having a high chance to cause a deadly disease, whereas a dragon that's a fully prosocial member of the community is not going to cause more death and instead will probably help with defense and create more caloric surplus (at the cost of consuming most of that surplus) a dragon is just obviously the better option. From there, it's extremely easy to see how the Tswana in the series could develop such a dragon-centric culture and have it be so wildly successful. The dragons provide fertilizer, the dragons allow for fully domesticated elephants, and the dragons render malaria—one of the deadliest diseases in history—nearly a nonissue. Of course they're family.

Citations:

Biointeractive. (2014, August 26). Malaria and Sickle Cell Anemia - HHMI BioInteractive Video. Retrieved October 3, 2018, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zsbhvl2nVNE

Haviland, W. A., Prins, H. E., Walrath, D., & McBride, B. (2017). Anthropology: The Human Challenge (15th ed.). Boston: Cengage Learning.

[coquelicoq]

okay fine my own batshit natsume grampa theories. uhhh it's taki's grampa and taki and natsume are cousins. evidence: he is (was) an old guy of grampa-age. he would probably hang out with hakozaki. it seems like he probably lived in that town but maybe he only moved there after reiko died. maybe he moved there because he spent time there with reiko and knew there were hella ayakashi in yatsuhara, or maybe he even was friends with those specific ayakashi because reiko had acted as an intermediary for them. maybe the reason he wanted to talk to them so much was he wanted to ask them what happened to her. taki and her brother also have light-colored hair (natsume's mom's hair is dyed in that photograph obvi). also it's kinda weird that we only know about two specific techniques forbidden by exorcists and they were being used by reiko and this guy...

if time travel is on the table then why not shinobu? as frances treecakes recently pointed out we don't actually know why she was introduced. suspicious. if you're worried about how a woman can be a grandfather then don't be; mpreg is canon already (mini senseis), so why not this also? if you're worried about why reiko thinks she's a man, well first of all i just reread chapter 59 and i'm not convinced any of that stuff is even about reiko's sexual partner (it sounds more father-figure-y to me), but also, shinobu is masc and maybe reiko was rolling with it. if you're worried about why the dragon shiki thinks she's a man, idk why we're taking the dragon shiki's word as gospel on that point since ayakashi are notoriously bad at figuring out human gender. she's definitely exorcist-adjacent and she has both reason to go to that town (her family's nearby) and reason to spend lots of time away from that town (her family's nearby). caveat that i haven't read the latest arc about reiko's portrait or whatever so i'm probably missing tons of other supporting evidence.

my other theory is that none of the clues we have about natsume's grandfather are actually about natsume's grandfather. reiko talked about a guy one time? doesn't mean she had sex with him. the dragon shiki saw a guy that looked like natsume? maybe natsume is the time traveler. reiko's daughter was an immaculate conception. the natsuyuu version of the midichlorians made me do it (get pregnant).

[xxpeppermintxx109]

Can I ask something but it's not my intention to be rude or harsh (like I saw some commenters). I have only watched the show (Hotd) and started reading your big fic for aemond. I saw Qoren tag so I knew there was gonna be something between him and Shaera but..is Qoren character in the book (i suppose he is)? Does he appear in Dance on Rhaenyra's side or is that just in this fanfic? Because from what I know from reading wiki some time ago (so again might be wrong) Martells and Targaryens are enemies/ have a peace pact and don't interact much until marriage that comes later in history?

I like your Qoren, I just wish he wasn't so much older. What made you decide on him as third part of the triangle as oppossed to Jace/Cregan/Aegon(god forbid haha)/Daeron/any of the show established men?

I'm just curious, sorry! I love the way you write.

Hi anon!! This isn’t rude or anything at all, no worries! I love thèse kinds of questions!

So yes Qoren Martell and his daughter Aliandra Martell are pretty significant in the Dance of Dragons civil war. Qoren plays a role in the years leading up to it with the Battles of the Stepstones fighting against Corlys and Daemon, and helping the Triarchy. He actually was considered by Viserys as one of Rhaenyra’s suitors! During the Battle of the Gullet, in the book, Qoren sends ships to aid the Triarchy to break the blockade. Then at some point, he dies, and his daughter, Aliandra, succeeds him!

I always love House Martell, and when rereading the Dance chapters in F&B, I just thought that Qoren didn’t get enough of a spotlight in the way that could’ve been so so interesting! Because like you said, the Targs and Martells have always sort of been at each others throats until the unification. So I thought, well, there’s not really much of a character here, so I’ll make him his own. He still fights with the Triarchy in the Stepstones, but then he sided with Rhaenyra instead here, but only because of Shaera. Age wise, he’s about the same age he was in the book, same as Rhaenyra, and I thought that it would be an interesting dynamic!

At the time I published, there was already a dozen or so Aemond fics, i can’t remember. But what I remembered was seeing love triangles with Cregan Stark, and while I enjoy Cregan, I always thought him closer to Jace and later Baela in the book, so I just wasn’t so compelled for him as another option. Because I already planned so much for Qoren, I decided on him! I thought the dynamic would be interesting, especially when against a ship like Shaera and Aemond, and I just thought that yes Qoren is older and he is kind and thoughtful, but he definitely still has his own goals and motivations, like with the Stepstones, so when the Triarchy become involved again, y’all will see some stuff with Qoren for sure!!

Thank you so much for the question! And I hope this was a good answer!!

[midnightswaltz]

Fic authors self rec! When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you've written, then pass on to at least five other writers. Let’s spread the self-love ❤️

Oooh, hi! So, the thing is, I only have, like 6 fics posted anywhere and a couple of them need extensive rewrites (or I've kinda just written off because I'm not happy with it anymore & don't wanna rec, but haven't gotten around to deleting/orphaning). But here's what I've got.

1 - Recombined

Fandom: Mass Effect Andromeda. Relationship: Sis!Ryder/Jaal Ama Darav.

I'm very proud of this one, not least because it's one of the few things that actually got finished. It was unexpected because LJ was not a part of my "canon" Ryder's story (still isn't... well, not exactly) but I love her. I also find myself rereading this quite a bit especially when I need to remind myself that I can be a good writer.

2 - Vengeance and Saving the World

Fandom: Arrow (2012 TV show) + Pacific Rim. Relationship: Oliver Queen/Felicity Smoak

oof, this little guy is only like a week younger than my nephew. I'm not really even in the fandom anymore!

It's still weak in parts but, for a change, I don't actually care. I like the little jokes & nicknames. I'm proud of the bits of worldbuilding I got to add to the worlds I already smashed together. There was other stuff that I didn't eventually write like Tommy's dad was still alive with a kaiju egg and some nefarious plot or something. I do still get the odd kudos on this which I'm tickled by, but also, like, how the far in the weeds have you gone that you've found this almost 11 year old fella?

3 - Terra Incognita

Fandom: Mass Effect Andromeda Relationship: Sis!Ryder/Jaal Ama Darav

Major WIP.

I know I haven't updated this in... well, a while. I am working on it, because I really enjoy writing all the little ways in which my headcanon is different from the game story or how they can all play together. Like I'm currently obsessing on how the angara have the intelligence to know about what happened on Eos (this is briefly mentioned by Jaal during the first meeting with Evfra). Like, there's probably a very simple explanation, but I'm having more fun with *spoiler 😆* that one day I plan on letting other people read.

4 - In the Darkness You Will Reach

Fandom: Dragon Age Inquisition Relationship: F!Lavellen/Cullen Rutherford

Ravi Lavellan's story. Another major WIP.

132,828.

That's how many words I have written (& rewritten) on this fella without posting.

This is not actually posted anywhere, but I do have some bits n' pieces that I've shared over the years, which I linked the tag. In my scrivener file, it's mostly a whole bunch of almost finished scenes & half started side stories (like there's a couple assassination attempts in Skyhold, one of which has become it's own little story inside the larger story, but I'm not really sure how they work that one out yet...). I'm probably going to be sharing more on tumblr soon, because I'm not writing it in any particular order & am getting impatient about sharing the stuff I'm proud of.

This is another one of those things that I start rereading so I can start working on & then just get sucked back in until it's hours later & I'm like "wait...what was I doing again?"

Not 5, but honorable mention - Through the Dark Places

Fandom: Dragon Age Origins Relationship: Surana/Alistair

This is the beginning of my warden's story. I still want to finish this and was very proud of it when I started, but I really want to rewrite the beginning of this. I'm not unhappy with it, but I can make it better.

[crackinglamb]

Self Fic Rec, Fave Edition

Tagged by @pikapeppa to rec five of my favorite fics that I've written. Thank you! 🥰

Rules are to pass the self promotion on to five others, so tagging @ir0n-angel, @fasterpuddytat, @lilbittymonster, @maculategiraffe and @bogunicorn. No pressure!

In no particular order:

Hope Is a Fragile Thing - Dragon Age, Solas/OFC, rated T, ~13K words. A post-canon romance between a Fen'Harel who succeeded in taking the Veil down and an MGIT. It's softer and gentler than you think, as well as sadder. I love this one because it's just so...atmospheric. It's 'the love was there; it didn't change anything but it was there' taken to one of its possible conclusions.

Unexpected - Fallout 4, Kellogg/F!SoSu, rated E, ~30K words. My first truly canon divergent fic. A Sole Survivor who was a Chinese PoW meets a battered merc and together they both get redeemed. Still really proud of this one for a lot of reasons, and it's one of my FO fics that I've reread more than once.

With You - DA:I, Varric/F!Hawke, rated E, ~4800 words. Hawke and Varric finally get together. Finally. I love this one simply because I have a deep, abiding adoration for this pairing (as it was the first one I wrote for DA), and of all the Hawke's I've created for various fics, Elly is my favorite.

Into the Current - DA, Iron Bull/OFC, rated E, ~80K words. I love MGIT's. There is simply so much room to play. This one is a paramedic transported to Thedas before the events of the games and becomes a Charger, falling for Bull along the way. Takes place between 9: 28 - 9:40 Dragon.

Different Animals - Fallout TV, Lucy/Cooper Howard, rated E, ~9500 words. A long oneshot about Lucy becoming more than just a Vaultie and Cooper remembering that he used to be a halfway decent human being. (It's now turned into a whole series of these, and I'm still writing them currently.)

Honorable Mentions:

Junkyard Dogs - Fallout 4, Hancock/F!SoSu, rated E, ~107K words. My very first fic. Mostly a retelling of the game, with a happy ending and a whole series of related stuff. Without this fic, there would be no crackinglamb.

What a Wicked Game to Play - DA:I, Solas/OFC, rated E, ~412K words. My grand epic. No list of my own fics would be complete without mentioning it. I set out to write a huge, all encompassing story of an MGIT changing Solas's mind, and I did. It was over two years of blood, sweat and tears and while I exhausted myself writing it, Imogen will forever hold a special place in my heart.

*On a final note, these are all complete.*

[artistsfuneral]

How are you my friend? Love your Inktober Art ❤️

How is writing going for you? At the Moment mine is again in writers Block. But i think the reason is mostly because I don't feel really connected to any fandom right now so Writing is kinda meh 😅

Oh fandom wise I am all over the place!

I am rereading the Warrior Cats books (at least the first season). Playing Dragon Age Inquisition + inhaled all the new fics since my last phase. Rewatched all 7 seasons of Rick and Morty in like 3 days or so. Started watching Vox Machina yesterday. I am binge listening to the second season of the Dungeons and Daddies podcast, watching all sorts of Horror Game lets plays and probably some more stuff I forgot rn.

Throughout September I did a full time internship and had to write three term papers so um..... Zero brain capacity for any sort of writing 😅 but as you can see from the list up above I spent the last week on the couch, recharging. I will prooobably get back to writing more of my current Lambert fic soon. Just...gotta play a bit more Dragon Age first :) (romancing Cullen for the first time and he's awfully sweet)

So it's less of a writer's block and more of a "I need to inhale content to be able to create some" phase.

But also you're 100% correct, the witcher fandom is sloooowly losing it's grasp on me as well. I think once I'm done with my Lambert obsession I will be.... done. Huh.

Finally might have to write my own book, I guess.

[potatoesandsunshine]

TAG GAME

tagged by @jadeandquartzes ty jade!! this was super fun

Rules: Go to your (current/main) AO3 account and find the following:

What ratings do you write most of your fics under?

T is the winner by far! the breakdown is 102 fics rated T, 29 fics rated G, and 4 rated M. this makes a lot of sense, since i feel like i usually aim for fairly T subject matter and writing style. i don’t have the chops to write gore, and the ‘work my way up to writing smut’ road is a long one. but i’ll climb that mountain one of these days. i’m practicing. so far it’s pretty easy to write really really bad sex scenes and extremely hard to write ones that i think are halfway decent.

What are your top three fandoms?

Critical Role is the biggest by far (82 fics, wowza), followed by D20 at 27 and Fallout: New Vegas at a whopping 5. but when i tell you those 5 fics mean more to me than the preceding 109....... it is true. (i’m not counting tlovm as a separate fandom, because i tag all the tlovm stuff as CR as like the umbrella it’s under)

What is the top character you write about?

this is a really interesting question, because it shows how kind of... not concentrated on one character i am? Pike is my top character, but she’s not in all hundred CR works, just 18 of them. i like to write about lots of characters i guess. (weirdly i thought the answer would be beau since i was so obsessed with her in the C2 era, but she’s like... ninth highest)

What are your top three pairings?

the top 3 pairings are: Rose of Sharon Cassidy/Female Courier (NEW VEGAS BABEYYYYY), Scanlan Shorthalt/Pike Trickfoot, and Fjord/Caleb Widogast. fjord/caleb being that high is wild actually. i think it’s because i write a lot of friendship stuff? anyway there’s no excuse for only one of these pairings being f/f. i’m sorry women i will be better

What are the top three additional tags?

Angst, Light Angst, Fluff. and i promise you angst and light angst are distinct from each other. i know it when i write it. more indicative of my writing is probably the next 3: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Friendship, Post-Canon. i love going down the ‘what if this had happened?’ rabbit hole or the ‘what happens after the camera’s cut?’ winding lane.

Does any of this surprise you?

you know... yeah it does? i always forget how much D20 fic i’ve written, because i’m pretty out of the loop of it now and MUCH of it was like 2020-2021 which are years i have mostly forgotten because of All Of That. sometimes i forget that i wrote more than like... 2 fics for acoc and that’s it. i truly just remember inventing plumbeline/annabelle and then the absurd calroy/donetta/ciabatta threesome unless i really think about it.

going through my works is fun because i’m a big rereader of my own stuff, but it also reminds me just how many ideas i wanna write in the future :) also it’s crazy that i only have 4 dragon age fics spread across all three games when i think about how much of my brain is taken up by that franchise. there are 9 dragon age documents in the WIP folder and three more just paper outlines in various notebooks. i’m insane about it right now. and they need me in there.

ty again!!! this was a really fun one :) as always, anyone is welcome to do it and say i tagged them :P

[pearwaldorf]

20 questions for fic writers

sorta tagged by @antivanruffles

How many works do you have on ao3?

130 excluding the the podfics I'm listed as a co-author on

2. What's your total ao3 word count?

230,000. I'm a very succinct writer!

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Currently OFMD. I have written a lot of (in descending order) Star Wars sequel trilogy, Good Omens, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Critical Role, and MCU.

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

we wore the jacket for the longest time (Star Wars ST, Finn/Poe/Rey, 3200)

well you laughed baby it's okay (it's buzzcut season anyways) (nsfw; Good Omens, Aziraphale/Crowley, 1100)

human sacrifice and mass hysteria (nsfw, DA:I, Cullen/Dorian, 1080) This one has a weirdly long tail. I still get bursts of kudos on it every now and then.

balance theory (The Old Guard, Joe/Nicky foe yay, 660)

taste the stardust in my mouth (Star Wars ST, Finn/Poe/Rey, 560)

5. Do you respond to comments?

I do not. I don't have enough energy to write and respond to comments, so I'm sure people would rather I write. They are all appreciated though <3

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

a knife on the things that held us together for sure. It sets up the rift between Han and Leia after Ben's attack on the Praxeum and it's the last time Leia sees her brother. I was so emotionally wiped by it I couldn't even think about writing for two weeks hahaha

7. What is the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Most of my fics have happy endings, or at least hopeful ones.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

If I do nobody has ever told me.

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

I do! I'm not sure what "what kind" means.

10. Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written?

I've written exactly one, the Will Graham/Aziraphale one (I swear it makes sense in context). ngl it's pretty weird. Plenty of AUs set in different universes though!

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

I have. Somebody plagiarized "but you laughed baby" beat for beat. When I confronted them about it they said they must have subconsciously regurgitated it. Binch, I had to reread my own fic to compare, don't give me that shit. (They deleted their entire account afterwards. I'm not sad.)

12. What's the longest you've spent working on one fic? And the shortest?

Shortest is drabbles, and those take anywhere from 15-30 minutes. Longest? I still have a Mass Effect fic that I've been picking at on and off since 2012. I should just finish it up.

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

I have not.

14. What's your all-time favorite ship?

I refuse to pick.

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

The Good Omens While You Were Sleeping AU is my only actual posted WIP. There are Reasons I tend not to post unfinished stuff.

16. What are your writing strengths?

I'm really good at nailing character voices and dialogue. I think I'm decent at striking a balance between pretty language and making sure it still moves things along. I have been told I'm very good at intimate character interaction.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

What the fuck is a plot?

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

Unless you're going for the half-remembered vocabulary because diaspora kid vibe (which I did in my Shang-Chi fic), get somebody fluent to translate for you. The amount of horrific Spanish I've seen in OFMD fic is... not good.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

X2! I thought I was very clever making puns on "le petit mort" in a Rogue fic

20. Favorite fic you've written?

I have a series! I love the extremely weird ones I wrote just for myself that nobody else seems to like, although the Ed/Blackbeard/Stede one is an exception.

I am where memes go to die, so if you want to do this, consider yourself tagged.

[boltlightning]

20 questions for fic writers

tagged by the wonderful @starsuncounted; thank you muchly <3

1. how many total works do you have on ao3? 54!

2. what’s your total ao3 word count? 362,814. oy vey

3. what fandoms do you write for? these days, potc and final fantasy and assassin's creed now and then, though i generally write for whatever grabs my attention. remember when i wrote a fallout fic? wild

4. what are your top 5 fics by kudos? oh dear. let’s see:

a house, a hearth, a (s)holmes — the great ace attorney, 6k. a collection of missing scenes about iris watson and her silly little family.

good company — fullmetal alchemist, 9k. pre-canon, roy mustang recruits people for his team. (i wrote this when i was 19 and there's still a lot i like about it, but boy is it humbling to reread.)

benchfellows — final fantasy vii remake, >1k. a drabble about cloud and aerith fighting in the wall market colosseum.

heart & home — fullmetal alchemist, 5k. roy and riza visits roy's home both pre-ishval and post-canon.

sun hits the water — potc, 8k. james and elizabeth get married after the fact, and fall in love some. at the time of writing this post it's got these beautiful round numbers i am SO pleased

5. do you respond to comments? almost certainly. sometimes i won't on really old pieces or comments that don't really necessitate a reply, but i do my best :—)

6. what is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? i trend more bittersweet than angsty; o sleeper (ff7, cloud/aerith) is one of the only ones i'd classify as TRULY angsty, everything else ends much higher.

7. what's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? showing their versatility: slowly (ff7, also cloud/aerith) ends a little bittersweetly but the climax of this fic remains the sappiest, gushiest thing i've ever written

8. do you get hate on fics? i don't think i've gotten hate since the ff.net days and i'm grateful for it

9. do you write smut? a little, but nothing wild or worth posting. otherwise we're always fading to black or describing sex vaguely babey

10. do you write crossovers? what's the craziest one you've written? it's not my forte, per se, but the potc/temeraire universe is over 50k words and still will not let me go, so you could say i've dabbled.

11. have you had a fic stolen? / 12. have you had a fic translated? / 13. have you ever co-written a fic? no to all the above 🤪 (or...at least i hope, in the case of 11)

14. what's your all-time favorite ship? 8-year-old me was really onto something when she latched onto cloud/aerith with passion unrivaled to be honest. there is no use denying it

15. what's a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will? i have been working on a written version of the trespasser DLC for one of my dragon age characters for like.............three years now and it will never evolved past the five scenes i have scribbled down i'm afraid. the quarantine brainrot was real but it did not last

16. what are your writing strengths? i like to fancy myself good at description! and i'm very particular about flow and tone. there's nothing i won't do to maintain tone, even if it hurts to cut segments that don't fit

17. what are your writing weaknesses? alas, describing shit well means that i am terrible at stepping back and letting a scene breathe. i feel the need to explain stuff that doesn't need it, to my own detriment. and lately i just Cannot thread the needle with any transitions between scenes. someone come cure my yips it's extremely annoying balking at this

18. thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic? it CAN work but the only time i'm ever using it is if 1) i know someone who speaks the language, so i'm not making an ass of myself, or 2) it adds to the confusion of a scene in a meaningful way. rarely does it come up and rarely do i employ it

19. first fandom you wrote for? i'm sure it was kingdom hearts. the more things change, etc.

20. favorite fic you've written? the aforementioned potc/temeraire crossover aside...i could play coy here, but you KNOW it's steadfast & dependable (6k, potc, norribeth. but. it's complicated). she is my beautiful girlfriend and the concept continues to compel me on rereads

tagging @johnbly @thesumdancekid @graysongraysoff @antique-romantic if you're feelin it??? and also 🫵 you, the girl reading this

[iviarellereads]

Wheel of Time full series spoiler thoughts on EOTW 29-38

A probably semi-regular weekly bonus to my reread blog, since sometimes you realize things on reread that just make you need to yell in a full spoiler space.

It's really fun to look back at the stedding as, oh, this is literally a little piece of another dimension. It might've grown the local seeds and supported the local animals, but it is obviously disconnected from the local reality, to block the One Power and all.

So many references to Hawkwing sending armies across the sea, and yet nobody really believes it, or expects the Return.

The farmer gave Rand the dark, plain scarf… and then Rand wears it around his mouth… almost like a… black veil on this Aielman… OK that's a bit too much ellipsis for me to keep going but I had to squint and see if the words really meant what I thought they did.

In Play For Your Supper, one of the songs Rand names is "Coming Home From Tarwin's Gap", now how would a name like that have made it as far as the 2 Rivs?

Rand starts having little thoughts on the road that he can't quite track the source of. "Too late now." in Four Kings, for example. LTT starting to slip in. Or the taint madness, if you prefer that explanation for the hallucinations. Either way.

Ishy treating oblivion as a reward. Cute.

I feel kinda sneaky putting Mili Skane's name down in ch 33. It's kind of a spoiler, we're not told it, but I like tagging the characters that appear, for future searchability. If she ALSO appears later in the series, well, I wasn't lying about the Companion entry.

Almen Bunt reminded me that Elayne's kids could have a stronger claim to the throne than she did, because of the bloodliney shit Andoran nobles use to measure their kin-distance from the first queen, but only if everyone involved admitted Rand's lineage publicly. And, only because it was Rand's body that she conceived with.

Which gets me on to how weird and icky the Moridin body swap is, because besides everything else, we don't talk enough about how the Dark One resurrected Ishy as Moridin into somebody else's corpse, that body's original soul had his own family and life, and first the DO took it to punish Ishy with continued existence, and THEN Moridin and Rand swapped balefires and then bodies so Rand's in some completely random dude's face and genes.

(I only had about 5.5 hours of sleep last night as I write this, can you tell?)

At any rate, EOTW 34 cracks things wide open for any show-firstie who looks at the X-Ray feature or the episode credits. Episode 1x07 lists Tigraine Mantear instead of Shaiel, so when the first season was finished, seeing so many people go back and start reading the books and be like, well hold on now… That was precious and priceless to witness.

“The Queen is wed to the land,” Thom said as brightly colored balls danced in a circle, “but the Dragon . . . the Dragon is one with the land, and the land is one with the Dragon.” For this to appear here, with Almen Bunt, when his next appearance is just after Zen Rand emerges and the Dragon is one enough with the land to offer a bounty of apples from the orchard on Bunt's sister's farm… Same chapter, same day, still sleep deprived, and I need a moment to just sit in this feeling of beautiful symmetry.

No doubt I'll come back to it when the quote comes up, but: Thom was twice Morgase's age when they were together. Given the dates we have as long as the Fandom.wiki is properly sourced because I don't want to go doing extra digging in the Companion and stuff, that means that 14 years ago, Morgase was 27 and Thom somewhere in the 50-60 range, 55 being a solid guess, putting her at 41 and him at 68 around the start of the series. I'm still very, very glad the show agreed with me that there was no need of him being so old, especially when his love interests skew so young, Mo being the exception but she still looks young.

So much of chapter 36 is just "yep, setup." I daren't even start listing or we'll be here all day and this post will be much longer than I try to keep them, even for two-weekers when the first week's not quite long enough to justify a post. But the one that gets me is Rand finding it funny, the idea of him wanting to be a king, when he will end up the de facto ruler of a decent chunk of the Westlands.

37 and 38 do little in the way of setup but to continue setting up just how much Byar's gonna nurse that grudge for the next 12 books or two years. Well, that and finally showing Perrin's golden eyes. Mo asks if this was foretold, and well, we know it was… just not in a prophecy she'd have seen. Verin has, though.

I will say, I prefer how Egg and Perrin rescued themselves in the show, even if the wolf stuff maybe could have been moved forward into season 1 to make it make a little more sense to show-onlys.

And, do we think Mo was Warder-compelling Lan not to go after Nyn? Or just reminding him that it's out of character and out of keeping with his guiding principles? I'd like to think Mo treats Lan better, BUT she does hand off his bond to Myrelle without telling him later soooo…

[anonforlackofabettername]

10 11 12 for the bookish photo asks?

Sorry this took like a week. Last week was incredibly busy and I’ve been trying to figure out what books to use tbh. I went with what I have in my house which severely limits my options because half my books are in tubs in my basement and also the last time I bought novels regularly was circa 2015.

10. Two books you love from the opposite end of the spectrum (however you want to interpret that)

This one I probably spent the most time mulling over. What even is opposite ends of the spectrum? Is that fiction v nonfiction? Poetry vs prose? Kids vs adult? A lot of the stuff on my bookshelf right now is stuff that it would break my heart to get rid of but it’s not stuff I’ve read regularly. I almost went with a childhood fav vs the most recent book I read (System Collapse by Martha Wells - do recommend) but instead I went with this:

[img id: two books side by side. The left book has a light yellow cover. The book is LOVE THAT DOG by Sharon Creech. There is a line drawing of a dog underneath the title. The right book has a dark blue cover with a drawing of a young boy and a large dog with a pocket watch in the dogs side. The boy looks startled and is looking into the eyes of the dog which is as tall as he is. The book is The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster, Illustrated by Jules Feiffer.]

These are both books that I hold close to my heart. Love That Dog is poetry strung together into the shape of a story and The Phantom Tollbooth is prose fiction that is as close to poetry and metaphor as a story can get while taking itself absolutely literally. Love that dog is a book told in poems that take the form of a young boy’s english journal and his struggle to understand and write poetry for his class. The title is a homage to a poem by Walter Dean Myers. The Phantom Tollbooth is a portal fantasy story about a young boy, Milo, and his adventures in the lands beyond the tollbooth, the people that he meets there, and the lessons that he learns. Love that dog is realistic fiction despite its format. The metaphor is in the format. The lands beyond the Tollbooth are full of metaphor that is, at all times, true; the doldrums - where Milo ends up without thinking, the city of dictionopolis - where you literally eat your own words for dinner, the island of conclusions (you get there by jumping).

11. Book you’ve read the most times

Okay so the actual answer to this is almost certainly The Phantom Tollbooth. It would own this slot if it wasn’t in the previous category. I love that book. I try to reread it every couple of years. It’s got a piece of my heart in it. I’ve shown it already, so instead you get this:

[img id: A beat up book on a black background. The cover art is an illustration of a dragon reaching around a pillar while two kids hide on the other side. In the foreground is a young girl with red hair clutching a book, Nita. Behind her is a boy with a shocked expression on his face as he gazes at the dragon. Across the center of the cover is the title, So You Want To Be A Wizard. Near the bottom is the author’s name, Diane Duane. Beneath that are the words, “Young Wizards • Book One.”]

Clocking in right behind The Phantom Tollbooth on books I reread regularly is the Young Wizards series, book 1 featured here. I own all the books twice (thrice?) over but I haven’t actually read the physical copies in years since the ebooks are just better. DD went back and updated the timeline (every book was set in its publication year - book 1 was published in 1983, book 9 in 2010 - but the in-universe timeline was 5 to 6 years max) and fixed a couple characters who hadn’t aged well (book 6 introduces an autistic main character and understanding of autism is so much better than what was medically accurate in the early 00s).

The book, since I’ve been pitching the ebooks but not the series itself, is a science fiction/science fantasy series in which Nita and Kit both find a wizard’s manual, take the oath, and become wizards. Wizardy is a gift from the Powers that Be that takes the form of the Speech - the language that all things know and was spoken at the creation of the universe. Wizards use words and math and power to slow down entropy and fight the Lone Power, the Power that introduced death into the universe.

Book 1 is a portal fantasy that takes our two brand new wizards into an alternate New York City looking for the Book of Night with Moon, the book that was written to remind creation how it is supposed to be. Book 2 takes our wizards down to the bottom of the ocean trying to avert what could end up being an (un)natural disaster. Book 3 we stretch the science part of it and see how far into space and the wider galaxy our heroes can go. Book 4 features old Irish legends from DD’s literal backyard. Book 5 is a story about illness and fighting against the clock and being forced to grow up. Book 6 is about grief and loneliness and a reminder that we aren’t truly alone. Book 7 is a vacation story, except in a world where everything happens for a reason can you truly go on vacation without it turning into work? Book 8 is a direct follow up to 7, but I don’t know how to tease a book called Wizards at War without spoiling something. It’s the highest stakes and the culmination of a lot of stuff and the end of it makes me sob every time. Book 9 the gang goes to Mars (and if that feels like a step down in stakes, it is and it isn’t). Book 10 I really need to reread but it’s like 600 pages of our main characters mentoring kids for a wizard science fair and it fucking slaps.

12. Weirdest book you own

Look I’m not really sure what the standard of weird is. I’ve got the journal from Gravity Falls which isn’t that weird because somewhere in my basement is Dragonology and 3 or 4 other ology books on other topics. Dragonology was an intrinsic part of my childhood. They’re not that weird (right?). I thought about grabbing one of my ttrpg books but like how to choose. Is Wanderhome weirder than Thirsty Sword Lesbians or Gun&Slinger or If I Were A Lich Man? Also those are games as much as their books imo. So instead I went with this:

[img id: a hardcover book with a red spine. The cover image is drawing of a 19th century river with a steel cable bridge (the Brooklyn Bridge) crossing it. Reaching out of the water, wrapping around the bridge and interfering with the boats in the river is two tentacles. The title of the book is Alternate Histories of the World by Matthew Buchholz]

This book is mostly an art book with some writing. The artist recreates old-fashioned photos and maps and includes creatures, robots, monsters, aliens, and zombies in them. This book is a collection of prints loosely done in the style of a history book, chronicling altered histories where there were zombies at the court of Versailles in 1731, the great chicago fire was started by a Martian ufo, a robot ran for president in 1960, monsters live in the river Thames, Boston harbor, and basically everywhere else, or - my favorite - nothing weird or giant monster related has ever happened to Tokyo. It’s a fun book and I enjoy the artist a lot. I have another book by him which is in the style of a visit all 50 states tourist book called Flee America. The last couple of years he’s put out a calendar via kickstarter that I back.

[esta-elavaris]

Hello. I have come here to yell at you about Groves. He is one of my favourite characters. Well, more the Groves you specifically write because there's not a lot to go off of but. I love him. I must admit that I have reread the chapters with him more often than most others. I am normal about the guy, really, trust me (lie). I am so grateful you put him in there, so thank you!

Ahahaha thank you!! Honestly he's kind of the perfect gift for a writer in terms of how much you're given to work with, because you're given just enough to really be able to get a feasible idea of what he's like based on what he says and, more importantly, when he says it, but with a lot of room to put your own spin on it as needed. Like, you have to have a sense of humour and a decent disposition if you're willing to praise Jack's pirating skills to James fucking Norrington as he steals his ship. I couldn't get over that. It showed.

It's kinda funny, I've written fics of characters with technically more screentime, but who give way less to work with that way.

Plus, I think the fact that he shares a voice with Cullen from Dragon Age influenced things a bit. Just a shame the actor is such a wrong'un, but hey ho....or, uh, yo ho.

I'm excited to write more stuff that centres around him later in the year!! I hope you enjoy that, too, if you check it out 💜

[nebulousmistress]

The Anatomist's Lair

Think about it. If Healer Elena's plan had been that all along, why wouldn't Anders learn the Song the children sang? Why wouldn't he learn it while staring at Greagoir, glaring, a glint of vengeance in his eye as he raked the man up and down and dissected him in his mind?

Now Justice sings a variant of that song.

Darktown. 9:33 Dragon. I knew I had to while rereading my own stuff and found a report on Cullen's desk: an Anatomist's notes on lyrium's long term effects on a Templar's body. Sir you raided the Clinic after the Chantry explosion and have been keeping Anders' notes I need to know where and when they came from.

I found out. The book on Anders' hip through DA2 isn't a spellbook.

Same as the knife on Anders' hip isn't a dagger for utility.

This isn't the Anders that Varric wrote about, an angsty byronic antihero hanging from Hawke's arm. That was the Anders Varric wrote to control the Chantry's narrative. This... is an Anders who comes to enjoy his work. Who understands with a terrible practicality.

[turbles]

(I posted this on twitter back in early March but since that platform is going down the tubes rn I'm reposting here as well for archival purposes)

Some background here. 6 years ago I took up reading fanfic as a hobby. Very quickly I realized I'd need a way to mark which fics I'd already read or tried to read and dropped, so I wouldn't keep running across the same ones over and over and forgetting I'd already read them. So I started bookmarking EVERYTHING regardless of my actual opinion on it (I'll come back to this)

Anyway eventually I realized that, via the filtering options AO3 provides for your bookmarks, I had a pretty good way to collect pointless data about my reading habits and make some really pointless graphs. So when I reached exactly 2000 bookmarks I decided to do that. as a reward to myself.

data for the original 2000 was collected from whenever I started doing this, through March 6th 2023

Caveat: obviously the possibility of human error in this data is significant. I was never consistent on whether I should bookmark all individual fics in a series or just the series itself if I read the whole thing, for instance, and I've surely forgotten to bookmark plenty of things I did read over the years. this is just for fun though so I'm not sweating it.

thank god for how detailed ao3's tag system is tbh

Anyway here's a pie of all fandoms (with over 50 bookmarks):

For some temporal context of the above, I fucking counted every bookmark from the top 9 categories there and arrayed them by month-bookmarked so I could make this chart of growth rates:

Genshin impact will of course continue to grow because the game continually releases new stuff and characters. Numbers spiked in October coinciding with sumeru's release. we'll see if another spike happens once fontaine releases in a few weeks from now. interestingly to me, I started been playing genshin like 6 months before I started participating in the fandom because it took me that long to get accustomed to the uh.. genshin-ness of the characters and the story, enough to start making inroads towards actually caring about the characters.

looks like FE3H grew the fastest, but it will eventually plateau like yoi, dragon age, and ffxv before it. Still kinda going strong though,since there's just lots of people writing for this fandom, and helped by the fact that it has a really large cast.

This next chart will take a little background info. So to indicate to myself something about the quality of the fic, when bookmarking I would choose to "Rec" it or not. As I said previously, I am literally bookmarking everything I read whether I loved it or hated it or it caused me pain or whatever. My criteria for whether I Rec a fic or not has never been set in stone, but THE IDEA is that recced fics were ones I overall quite liked, felt were well written and would be willing to go back & reread or had something else that made them stand out from the crowd. A recced fic isn't necessarily one I would literally recommend to people to read, and non-recced could mean anything from it was good but had one part that bothered me, to I had just read a bunch of that author's other works and this one was weaker than their others, to it was horrendous and ruined my whole day, to it was just kinda boring.

HOWEVER I did add my own more curated tag, Greatest Hits, for the ones that I really loved, that stuck with me after reading it, that I regularly desire to go back and revisit. While I rarely ever adjust my recs, I have often added (even sometimes removed) the Greatest Hits tag from fics years after first reading them.

Anyway that means this chart could be said to express in a really general way my opinion on the general quality of the writing in a given fandom:

I found it interesting that AA has such a high proportion of recs. I think its overall lower number of total bookmarks works in its favor here, as I tend to dip toes into a new fandom by first looking at top-kudosed fics and then when I find authors I like, trawling their bookmarks for more and branching out that way. So I tend to find pretty good fics earlier in the process. the longer I'm looking through a more stagnated fandom, the less good fics I find, is I guess the logic here. So in the case of AA, I suppose I didn't get much deeper than skimming the cream of the crop before I moved on?

Comparing genshin and fe3h vs. dragon age and ffxv, which all have more similar total bookmarks, was interesting too, to explain why genshin/fe3h's ratio of recs is higher. Both genshin and fe3h have really large casts, and therefore lots of different characters and pairings to read about, so it's almost like each pairing is kind of its own pool of fics that I'm skimming the best ones out of. with DA and FFXV there's really only a couple ships I'm interested in, and their ratios are similar accordingly

because we all know. that the main draw for fanfic tends to be shipping. so here's the top 10 most bookmarked ships pie:

and because genshin and fe3h are sizable enough to warrant a further breakdown of ships for that fandom alone, here's some pies for that:

it makes me laugh that dimiclaude is statistically significant when really I was just trying it out and ultimately decided I really don't even care for that ship

And a growth rate chart for genshin impact ships specifically:

so funny story, as I was playing through the liyue story chapter I was NOT a fan of childe at all, in fact I passed up two of his reruns before reading on the wiki (almost immediately after his 2nd rerun ended) a key piece of his backstory that all of a sudden caused his whole characterization to fall perfectly into place in my mind and he shot up the list to being my top fav character in the game literally over the course of like ten minutes. and yeah that was november 2021 and as you can see that's when I started really reading genshin fics LOL

forecasts have haikaveh and cynonari continuing to trend up for a little while, though the next region and thus a whole new cast releases soon and could stymie those trends. zhongchi is a staple genshin ship and imo a bit more flexible content- and dynamic-wise than many of the other pairings here, so I predict it maintains a regular gentle incline even in the face of shinier newer pairings.

The less stacked roster fandoms don't have as interesting breakdowns, but here they are just for curiosity:

and yeah that's all I made at the time! I only thought of it after but I'll be recording data on Ratings from now on as well. I'd also considered looking at things like average word count on recs or greatest hits fics, but absent of even more highly specific filtering tools that would probably fall under diminishing returns. maybe someday.

This was dumb but very engrossing and fun to make and I learned how to use google sheets out of it so we'll see if that ever comes in useful in my life

[lemonhemlock]

The girl that was recently rumored to have joined the cast, looks like a child of Alicent and Rhaenyra, I wish she would be Daeron, but alas, it really wouldn't make sense now, but it would be cool if they had done it from the beginning. #letthegirlscommitwarcrimes

Anonymous asked: The fem!Daeron speculation is very funny. A fun AU idea like you both said, but it’s based off a random actress allegedly being cast in an unknown role, and she has brown eyes. So people think she looks like Olivia. You’re right to avoid a lot of leaks and speculation, it borders on goofy at times. I think people are desperate for content and instead of writing fic or rereading or even, god forbid, getting into a different media, they just scrounge for the smallest crumbs of info and build narratives out of that. It’s going to be a long two years!

Anonymous asked: Literally the only thing that sprouted the fem!Daeron thing is the lack of casting news so far and the resemblance a supposedly new actress has with Olivia, but the truth is that actress could very well play a character who wasn't in the book but was made up by the writers such as a random lady, some lord's daughter or even a handmaid. Some people just look similar to others, nothing more. Also, a lot of these new actors who keep being announced by leaks sites such as Redanian Intelligence will end up playing very minor roles, but I guess this doesn't stop fans from overreacting every single time lol... Like you've already pointed out, not everything leaks. For all we know, whoever plays Daeron may have already finished filming (or hasn't even started yet!!) but we can't and don't know this because his scenes were filmed in the studio and guess what, random people won't get paparazzi pictures of that unless they get very very lucky like last week when someone managed to fly a drone over a built-in set and spotted Aemond executing some people inside the Red Keep's courtyard, but even that was, at first, wildly misinterpreted by the Redanian and by the fandom at large who all believed that he was executing the Strongs at Harrenhal, only to later change their story and say the scene most likely took place at the Red Keep since they used the exact same set in S1 for the castle so of course it couldn't have been Harrenhal considering the different architecture…anyway people should just take a break I guess and stop going crazy over unconfirmed filming stuff and even worse, leaks made up by random trolls on Reddit.

don't get me wrong, i don't want to stamp on anyone's fun, so to each their own. i know that accounts that keep track of leaks and filming always pop-up in any fandom and they have followers certainly bc there is demand for this type of content. but sometimes these rumours are just not based on anything substantial, which is why i prefer to focus my energies elsewhere. personally i'd just end up feeling tired chasing fireflies like this

a female daeron would indeed have been a cool idea (seeing a dragon-riding warrior targaryen maid) but it needed to be introduced from the very beginning - now it would just look goofy. why isn't she betrothed to aemond? if aegon did not want to marry helaena, perhaps he would have been more amenable to waiting until daerea was of age? why is she even sent to oldtown? warding for girls is rare in westeros. off the top of my head i can only name rhaena (and she was sent to the eyrie only for her safety during wartime)