#so I've been thinking about my own weird relationship to fiction writing and

[minus-plus-zer0]

"You Know You're Fictional, Right?"

♡ Genre: Fluff, crack ♡ Pairing: Bakugou x Fem!Reader ♡ Tags: Established relationships

You just wanted to fuck with his head, that's all.

"Katsuki," you said to your loving and ever-patient boyfriend, "you know you're fictional, right?"

"Hah?"

You leaned on his bedroom desk, giving him the utmost pitying and concerned look. Bakugou was not having it today.

"Don't you got anything better to do than to mess with me?!" Bakugou banged his fist on the desk. "Why the hell are you accusing me of being fictional?"

"I'm only warning you for you own sake," you said, voice wobbling from sadness. Bakugou just narrowed his eyes at you. "I've wanted to tell you for a while... but..." You sniffled. "I didn't know how to bring it up!"

"So now that we're dating, you wanna pull this shit?"

"...Yes? I-I just needed to earn your trust before I--ah!"

Bakugou tickled you and you giggled, wrenching yourself away from his evil fingers. You caught your breath a short distance away from him, while he grinned madly in his seat.

"Got you back," Bakugou said, satisfied at your state of disarray from the tickles. "Now don't go calling me fictional again! I'm your real boyfriend! Not a fake one. Who do you think you're calling 'fictional'?"

"But what if I have to go back to my home world someday? you asked. "You can't just avoid this conversation, Katsuki!"

"I can and I will. Now, are you gonna cuddle with me or not, babe?"

You sighed and curled up in his lap while he finished his homework. You continued to ramble on about your theories regarding your shared world, how superpowers weren't natural, and how even All Might didn't exist in the world you supposedly came from.

“Am I the most popular in your world?” he asked, barely trying to humor you. “Or do those idiots got bad taste?”

He was the most popular, but you wouldn’t tell him that. “No, it’s actually Midoriya.”

“What?! Him?! You’re lying! That world is messed up.”

“You still have plenty of fans though!”

“...Are they weird and creepy fans?”

“Um… define ‘weird and creepy’.”

“Uggggghhh." Bakugou held you tighter in his lap. "Just shoot me.”

“Don’t say that!" You stroked his head. "At least people still like you at all! They love seeing your adventures!”

Bakugou slammed his pencil on the desk. “That wasn’t for them to see! That was private! You hear me? Private!” Bakugou lowered his voice, his face close to yours. “What goes on between us is private too. Now don’t go telling your little imaginary friends what we do. That’s only for us to know.”

Bakugou kissed you and then turned back to his homework. You sighed and wrapped your arms around his neck.

“You still don’t believe you’re fictional,” you murmured. “Poor baby is in denial.”

"It’s ’cause your world sounds boring," Bakugou said, mindlessly writing out answers in his homework. Then, he turned back to you. "You should stick with this one. I want you staying here forever. You’re mine.”

"Katsuki, I was only trying to prank you. Of course I'm staying here!"

"Then why the fuck did you bring up all that sad shit about leaving to your own world! Don't say that kinda crap outta nowhere!"

"But that's my specialty."

Bakugou kiss-attacked your face, making you giggle as you swatted his terrifying kisses away.

"Specialty my ass," Bakugou said, beaming at you. "Go be special at something else then, how about that? Like tell me about your day or who's been bugging you. Don't go talking about how you're leaving me, it pisses me off."

"Katsuki, you know how my day was. We hang out all the time!"

"Well then fucking remind me!"

Nothing you did could convince Bakugou he was fictional, and maybe that was fine. The next day, you instead tried to make him believe that you were his fictional girlfriend, and he didn’t like that either.

“I didn’t get an imaginary girlfriend ‘cause I’m supposedly lonely, dammit!”

“I don’t know,” Kaminari said. “It sounds pretty plausible for you.”

The moment Bakugou’s hands started exploding, Kaminari ran away screaming. From then on, Bakugou had to prove to everyone that you and him were actually together and that no, dating him was not another one of your elaborate pranks. And from now on, Bakugou will side-eye you if you mention any other fictional crushes you have...

(This one has been sitting in my drafts for ages!)

[antimony-medusa]

hi saw your daddy kink post discussing the phenomenon of giving grown characters surrogate parental relationships, and I understand where you’re coming from, but i really feel like it’s just a matter of the circles you run in, and the assumptions that you might make because of that. you mention how platonic reads of these dynamics are more uncommon than kinky reads, which i just don’t think is the case, and I think that arguing that people don’t even realize that they’re writing a kink is a little bit bizarre, and sort of assumes that you know more abt them than they do by projecting your own experiences onto them.

it isn’t inherently sexual to crave protection or a parental relationship that you may have missed out on, and it is certainly not universal. in my own family, my “grandpa” isnt my biological grandfather (nor do I really consider him to be my grandfather), but he’s my mother’s surrogate father and has been since she was in her twenties. an adult. he sees her as a daughter. she sees him as a father. there’s absolutely nothing kinky about it. and anybody who automatically assumes that must have their mind deep, deep in the gutter and/or the stranger side of the Internet. really, i find it a bit of a strange argument to randomly post in the first place—as if it’s a problem that so many people enjoy non romantic and non sexual relationships, and that these people must, in fact, have a daddy kink that they are unaware of.

that said, i do absolutely agree that fans bringing any part of that into phil’s chat is weird and they should Not do that, and that infantilizing characters is also very weird, and personally i dont even see him as being father figure to anybody on that island except his eggs, wilbur, and MAYBE an argument could be made for tubbo (which other cc’s on the island have joked about), but to each their own and all that.

sorry this is so long. TLDR, i get where ur coming from in terms of “warning , some people might read your stuff differently than you want here” but really not everything is a kink and paternal dynamics can easily happen in regards to adult characters, particularly young adults, without there being any inappropriate connotations. i know nothing i said will change your mind, obviously it’s set, but ykno diff perspectives and all that. hope ur doing well

Thank you for the ask! I see you were on mobile, I believe. :D I am also going to push the character limit with this response, I fear.

I agree that it isn't inhernetly sexual to go after a parental relationship that you missed out on, and there are many such cases. I'll even go so far as to say that it's not inherently kinky to go after a parental relationship that you missed out on, because there is such a thing as non-sexual kink, and heaven knows that MCYT writing is full of non-sexual kink. Lots and lots of stuff that is platonic that is kinking on fear, or being drugged, or kidnapping, or hypnosis, or familial relationships, etc— there's lots of people who aren't doing that. There are tons of people out in the real world (and in fiction), who are simply just expanding their family as an adult, and that's awesome. When I was in college there was this older couple who kind of adopted me and invited me over for thursday dinner, and they were awesome. There was nothing untoward going on there.

But look. I am an emduo fan who likes to see my guys be murdery, and because of that, I've ended up reading a bunch of Dark SBI. I've ocassionally gone "this cannot be what everyone is doing" and I've read stuff tagged as "family fluff" that I find recommended. I am aware of where the genre is going, particularly with the rise of "dadbur" and "dadnoblade" interpretations.

And look, you have just got to trust me on this one. People are writing stuff that in any other fandom I would be recommending they put kink tags on the work so that people who liked that trope could find it and people who didn't like it would avoid it, but that comment in DSMP would just lead to people getting doxxed, so I just grit my teeth and go "i guess that's baked into Dark SBI or Tooth Rotting Fluff now, I sure hope that doesn't hit anybody's triggers".

Like I PROMISE you. The first draft of this response included excerpts of fics that I've read and I was like "can YOU pick the ship fic from the /p fics here"? But I have a horror of ever leading to someone getting cancelled on twitter, so nothing that could possibly be identifiable of these writers. But like—

Some of the ways that Tommy gets treated in the narrative are almost indistinguishable from a bodice-ripper romance. Some of the tropes being used— within DSMP we've all clasped hands and agreed to interpret it being platonic, but in any other fandom, you are going to start getting comments that you might not want to get. The tag is FULL of stuff that is DD/LB in everything but name. Maybe my mind is in the gutter here, but if you move out of this fandom, you are going to move into circles where a lot of people's minds are in the gutter, and you are going to get a very different response from your comments!

And I was talking about daddy kink here specifically, because I see that one come up a lot and it's gotten egregious lately, but this also applies to dehumanization, and fearplay, and predator/prey, and "instincts" (in every other fandom that's gonna get people in a mashup of A/B/O, Hypnosis, and sometimes Agere responding to it), and kidnapping/drugging, AND the way a bunch of "piglin instincts" stuff is just a BDSM au now where the Brute (dom) needs to be callmed down by their Runt (sub). The SBI tag is super kinky right now. And I don't have a problem with that idealogically, write your truth, but a) please don't bring that up in front of the streamers, b) if you move to another fandom you have got to be prepared that not everyone is doing their kink platonically.

Like I'm assuming that people don't know what tropes they're playing into, they're just building them from first principles, because the other alternative is that they are deliberately and knowingly writing kink and posting it in the & relationship tag with insufficient trigger tags, and I prefer to believe that people don't know.

I'm glad we agree about people bringing that into Phi's chat, or Pol's, or Luzu, or any of the other streamers that people have decided is So Old. A lot of people aren't comfortable even being assigned dad, as we saw with Felps, so bringing it even further is just— uh oh, no.

I do not have a problem with people liking non-romantic and non-sexual relationships. I find it a bit odd that much of the fandom can't concieve of a non-romantic and non-sexual relationship without making it familial and specifically lately father-son— don't you have close friends?— but I am fully in support of gen writing. I primarily write gen! I'm an avid commentor on gen fics!

But some of the tropes at play in the fandom are kinky, there is no way to avoid that. The fact that they are set in a familial relationship doesn't negate that. Some of the ways that the DSMP characters get treated would be distinctly non-familial if you ever brought it out of that context. And I am just warning people, if you bring it out of that context, be prepared for the response you get.

You cannot take DSMP tropes and apply them one-to-one in other fandoms, with other streamers swapped in, and expect them to be read the same way. Like i'm sorry, but that's just true. If you are posting the same sort of stuff that for Cellbit & Phil that you would post for Tommy & Phil, people will assume that you have a daddy kink, because usually when a relationship between a adults that are actually similar in age is refered to with paternal language it's a kink thing. That is how the broader internet works. (And anon, if I had a daddy kink, would I be complaining about the fact that I can open any SBI fic and have about a 40% chance of hitting it and I'm seeing signs of this appearing in QSMP? I assure you I'm not "projecting [my] own experiences onto them" here.)

[bloggingboutburgers]

Hi, kinda random, but I could really use some advice. I really wanna write a qpr but feel like I dunno much about it- uh- so yeah! Just wanting to ask how I should do it- like, how do I do it?? How do I represent this while being accurate and respectful?? I know the theory but like addhhbbkjt

Sorry if I am being weird I dont really know how to phrase this Q_Q

...OK so this is gonna sound funny (or not) but... I've been toying with the idea of developing a story involving a fictional QPR as well recently and... I have no idea how to go about it either. Despite being in one!! I actually have trouble explaining what a QPR means to most people honestly TwT

But I'll do my best to give a few pointers from my experience:

Needless to say, kinda, but a QPR is NOT a romantic relationship. It may LOOK like it on paper but I guess the way I see it, there's a lot less... Grandiosity and possessiveness than with romance. It's a lot more chill, I guess I could say. It's not like "this person is my whole life and I would die without them" or something, it's more like "this person is pretty great to experience life with and it'd be pretty cool if this lasted as long as we both vibe."

A QPR is NOT inferior to a romantic relationship NOR is it superior to a friendship, in my opinion. I see no scale of value of the sort. Each of these things are their own thing is all.

Considering it's quite the particular situation, no two QPRs will be the same, I think. So you can at least rest easy considering there can be quite a lot of variety in this type of relationship.

What I mean by that is, not everybody who's in a QPR will be comfortable will the same things. For example my partner and I may give each other lip pecks (never any tongue), but it took us years to be comfortable with the idea, and it doesn't necessarily mean everybody in a QPR will be at ease with that. And conversely other people in a QPR may be comfortable with a level of intimacy we may not be comfortable with.

What that implies is, in my experience at least, a QPR means a LOT of communication. My partner and I constantly have heart-to-hearts about what works or what doesn't for us, and are both aware some things may change over time.

As an aromantic, I value being in a QPR deeply because it responds to some issues that I think a lot of fellow aromantics probably face: the first is needing human connection, like any person, but having to struggle with the fact that you'll always come second after your friends' romantic partners and kids (if they have any), and the fear of abandonment that comes with that; the second is wanting human contact and affection, like any person, but having to worry that if you seek affection from or give affection to a person, they'll catch romantic or sexual feelings for you and it'll turn ugly for you, kinda. Being in a QPR responds to both those needs while negating these fears. If I ever wrote a fictional QPR personally, I think that last point would be what I would wanna emphasize the most, in my own voice. Because it's so key.

As usual I suck at being succinct and all, but I hope these were helpful! TwT And I hope nothing I said here misrepresented other people in QPRs out there

[unintentionalseductress]

https://www.tumblr.com/nanamiscocksleeve/773722545185865728/why-does-everyone-portray-caleb-to-be-dark?source=share

I agree with you!!

And my apologies Abt the zade thing, I made that reference because that's how I've seen many other writers (whom I won't name) portray him.

And I get that like you've said- he's got potential traits to be a yandere, but to write him wholly f*cking mc with a gun, with the explicit caption 'toxic Caleb' with dub-con?

Like I get it's fiction and ppl can write to their heart desires but when ppl r saying it's canon and it so quickly became the stereotype for that one character to the point that's the only thing you see online Abt him, it's tiring- especially when it doesn't fit him.

Like I kid you not, I actually didn't like Caleb for a while because of how everyone was initially characterizing him and the headcannons on how 'he's so dark romance coded' or 'hes giving zade vibes' and these were real comments, comments that made me avoid him until I was curious and decided to find out myself. Only to find out he's totally different??? Like I really wonder if we're actually experiencing the same thing bc I really don't see the 'extreme!! possessive! obsessive!' lover evb was speaking of 🤔

(URL change, no need to be scared. This blog used to be called nanamiscocksleeve. )

No need to apologize about the Zade thing, I know you were just saying what you saw from other blogs.

I've somehow missed a lot of the crazy toxic Caleb posts but omg, people are actually writing him f**king MC with a gun? I get it, it's fiction but geez that's dark and not on character for him. Infold has done a good job with keeping their LI's quite gentle when it comes to MC and I don't think Caleb is any different. He has no interest to hurt her or fuck her up emotionally, and it's evidenced so much in his memories so I just don't get it. People will see what they want to see I guess.

All the LI's have their own weird toxic traits around MC but I want to reiterate that they've only known her for a year and they have their other friends and colleagues whereas Caleb and she found each other as orphans in a shelter. Growing up they didn't have anyone except each other. I think this automatically puts Caleb in the right to feel like he's more entitled to her time and energy.

Even Zayne, who was a childhood friend isn't the same as Caleb. He might have been the boy next door but Zayne had a stable home and loving parents who were present for him as he grew up. That's very different compared to Caleb whose only perspective of stability comes from the relationship he has with MC.

I feel that way too, I feel like I saw something very different to what others are writing here. I see Caleb as someone who lost everything, found a family, even found love, then it was ripped away from him again. Now he and MC, essentially his anchor, don't know how to redefine their relationship. The MC he knew was probably clingy, and always wanted to be with him for everything. Now she's distanced herself and for two people who have never had that relationship of keeping secrets or maintaining distance, the amount of work it takes to adjust to that new dynamic can be crushing.

Caleb is possessive and obsessive but not to the point that it's dangerous. A little toxic perhaps since we know that he has mental health issues and refuses to get help but his end goal isn't to make MC fear or submit to him. He always looks so guilty whenever she looks scared and he's always asking her if he scared her. He even lets her remove parts of his uniform before they remove her chip if that's what it took to calm her down. He's aware how much he affects her and how much she wants their old relationship back and I think it really kills him inside to see her like this.

[ponponproblems]

You see, it's called Yakuza 4

because you can play four different yakuza.

I finished Yakuza 4.

I don't like being negative on tumblr because people come here to connect with others who enjoy the same things that they do, and that's kind of wonderful. When I've posted about finishing other games in the series I've tried emphasize something I liked that I feel is going to stay with me, like Majima and Makoto's relationship being especially memorable in Yakuza 0, the complex beginning of a father-daughter dynamic in Yakuza 1, or the wonderful use of the Okinawa setting in Yakuza 3 --

But to be honest, I really had a miserable time with all of Yakuza 4 and was desperate for it to be over. 🙇

[ SPOILER ]

I think, ultimately, that they put a lot of weight on the character of Yasuko Saejima but didn't provide her enough personality to carry such massive narrative importance.

Politely, when Yasuko was introduced, she is played so incredibly meek and timid that I actually thought the narrative was attempting to establish her as having a social-developmental disorder, which frankly, I think would've been vastly more interesting than what they actually did with her, which was essentially fuck all. She is too boring to be the tissue connecting these four sometimes too-divergent narratives.

Then there's Saejima. I started with Yakuza 0 so I had an expectation of Saejima (and Majima, for that matter) that doesn't really match the reality of either character (as I learned playing Yakuza Kiwami 1 and 2), but I was expecting Saejima's narrative to be that he did something horrible and impulsive when he was in his very early 20s and has since become a very different man, fundamentally forged by a combination of grief and the necessary stoicism, violence and hypervigilance of a life spent in prison. That his introductory storyline (before the addition of a prequel) is actually about how he's a big stupe who was pranked into thinking he killed a bunch of dudes is just less interesting to me.

I think one of the heroes of the franchise being this former mass murderer who needs to struggle with the fact that, twenty five years later, he is a different man who is still responsible for such incredible violence is just altogether more interesting than Boo Boo the Fool with muscles. RGG has this weird thing where they want to keep their protagonists more or less squeaky clean with only a little bit of edge, and I think that's really to its detriment. There's just a lot of tonal dissonance to where you wonder if they're interested in writing crime fiction, or using the aesthetic of crime fiction to write shonen anime. I think that comes most into focus with Saejima, and the answer is, to my personal frustration, shonen anime about men in suits.

Finally, I wish the game committed to keeping Kiryu more or less off to the side, instead of having him show up to solve everybody's problems in the end. I understand that's the theme that they were going for, but the advancement of the Tojo plot, the betrayal of Majima by Daigo and the dethroning of Daigo as King Tojo or whatever, all feels so... this should've been its own thing.

They should have, imo, either committed to this all being about Saejima and Majima reuniting and going through Saejima's reacclimation to Kamurocho, with Daigo acting as the villain who ultimately must be deposed, without Kiryu's involvement; or they should have committed to another Kiryu-based narrative more or less exploring the same. I think the former is the stronger and more compelling idea but in the 2000s abandoning your central mascot protagonist outright would've been scary, so I don't know.

Tanimura is a wasted opportunity. Although his arc is ultimately very interesting in a "this is every Hong Kong police action movie from the 70s and 80s" kind of way, that it essentially resolves in all of four hours is... bleh. No wonder he doesn't come back, what else is there left to say about him? Plus, I feel his section creates a real structural flow problem, in that there is far too much of a distance between the player's time with Akiyama, Saejima, and the end of the game. It's easy to lose the thread on a lot of what's going on because now in the back half we are shunted into the perspective of a new dude who is outside of the core drama in a way that takes more time and space to tether. I feel Tanimura was included because it's the fourth game so we gotta have four guys, just a weird marketing gimmick kind of deal.

Oh, and I know most people do not play these games for the mechanics, but I fucking h a t e d the combat in this one. Every character felt very restrictive to play and as if their moveset were somehow incomplete. The way the chapters are designed also keeps you from engaging with the equipment mechanic, and finding substories to level the characters up was frustrating, especially in Saejima's section, so I always felt underpowered or like there were too many core mechanics that I needed to unlock with XP. Then, every time I would get to a comfortable place with the character I was playing, it'd be time for a new level one protagonist. The difficulty ended up absolutely all over the place with no clear sense of progression as a result, ultimately making the game very easy but very tedious to play, with some truly arbitrary difficulty spikes.

Anyway I am very sorry for being a hater. 🙇🙇🙇 I love what I have seen of this franchise so far and am desperately looking forward to playing more, but needed to articulate this somewhere so I can at last move on with my life.

[chronotopes]

2024 creative/personal writing wrapped

and yes i'm proud enough of my escaprils that i'm going to list a lot of them individually. sorry.

(2023) (2022) (2021) (2020) (2019)

FICTION

Aivide the Prequel. You know her you love her I FINISHED HER THIS YEAR!!!!! It's my only completed public facing version all-OC story even if it's not 100% original fiction, and I'm still so proud and fond of it and excited to continue the story one day in whatever form that takes. This year I finished chapters 5 and 6 for a total of 73,000 words.

Vital Light. You know her, you don't know that much about her, Aivide the Prequel's more embarrassing and earnest younger/older sister. For those new: a revision of a novel from 2016 which is in itself a revision of a collaborative story from (shudders) 2012. Yes I'm insane for attempting it but also yes I feel like I've learned a lot and working on it tends to tangibly improve my life. The mess of excessively wordy first draft writing I did this year totals at just over 90,000 words.

NONFICTION

A lot of my essays this year were escapril prompts, which is a challenge meant for poetry that I cheerfully reinterpreted to be about creative nonfiction instead. Wild success!! Really excited to do it next year!! Ok let's list some essays, with the ones I think are strongest/most editable bolded. They are not going to have word counts because I Don't Feel Like It.

"Change of State," an essay about moving to Maryland.

"The Internet," a kind of underdeveloped use of paleontology as metaphor for growing up.

"Eye contact," an essay about my dynamics with my mother and my girlfriend as well as the concept of 'attention.'

"Trip," revisiting a formative camping adventure with my childhood best friends, who perhaps predictably emerged as a reocurring theme in this project.

"Spiral," an essay about my nichely significant great-grandfather and his war stories of dubious veracity.

"A childhood memory (catholic school gymnasiums)," which is the first essay of mine that mentions Jenny's siblings by name! About going to Easter Mass with her family and, relatedly, visiting your loved ones' childhood spaces.

"Portrait," about augustine and i being in gay love with each other in seventh grade art class.

"What's the truth?", about my own renegotiations of my senior year of college social fallouts.

"Bad Habit," about reading strangers' wedding websites.

"Fog," about New Year's Eve 2022 with Jenny.

"Posture," which is me in senior year of high school and the act of posturing, as I had already covered the Reprimands From My Mother in "eye contact" and had nothing to say about the concept of standing up straight.

"Oh, the light!", which I would never title an essay independently but is functionally just a longer expression of that one jesse pinkman image captioned 'how it feels to be in a transitional state'.

"Purr," about one of my friends' cats as metonym for grief.

"A recurring dream," honestly one of the weakest ones, but it's once again about my fall 2022-spring 2023 experience and the weirdness of it all.

"Beach," about visiting Esther in Florida for the first time and about my larger-scale relationship with the ocean.

"So embarrassing..., or (BEING NOTES TO MYSELF AS 2014 TURNED TO 2015)", or exactly what it sounds like.

"Truth," a sequel to "What's the truth?" that is also about Esther and Julia's wedding.

"Suspended in Air," about going to Harper's Ferry and loving my wife so much it's unreal.

"A reminder:", a total nothingburger of an essay. Essay that could have been a diary entry.

"Moth," a vivid little image of summer in Southeast Virginia as written by someone who's about to move out of there for good.

"The problem of death." Escapril prompts are really on the nose sometimes, huh? I like the central metaphor in this essay that is, in fact, about death, which involves Star Trek Two The Wrath of Khan of all things.

"Desire," about seeing myself in the end of Twelfth Night.

"Simulation," about roleplayed love confessions with Augustine.

"Unexpected Transmission," about the night I found out my boss died.

"Dark Secret," about my relationship to romantic love, especially the unrequited kind.

"Modernity," about fall 2020, taking Women and Modernism while developing my own writing fascinations with the contemporary literary micro-movements of beautiful women and theys on the internet

"The absolute limit," double essay about Reconciliation Dreams Involving The Ex-Bestie.

"Surgery," vaguely hermit-crab style set of annotated recent google searches. About budgeting and planning for the future jinxing and to a certain extent literal surgery. By far one of the strongest concepts here.

"How to exist," another Essay That Could Have Been A Diary Entry maybe but has some good prose. These last two are kind of a culmination of Personal Processes i was going through in this set of thirty essays, in which i took an artistic spin to things that had been too fucked up to write about artistically in years past.

"Tomorrow," about the month of May and my history of planning for it / of grand turnarounds occurring at the end of spring.

There were some non-escapril ones too (okay actually most of them were inspired by past escapril prompts but pretty loosely)

"Visions of the Future," about imagining my future self.

"Myopia in seventh-grade notebooks," which takes a classic trick in adapting a poem from the past into an essay.

"Eavesdropping," the product of my biannual process of rereading all of my past messages with my dead friend and wanting to kick my own ass about it all.

"Attention," about the complicated metaphysics of returning to your hometown.

POETRY

"Tampa," which engages with and somewhat ties up the Ancient Katia Tradition of writing poetry on planes titled after the destination.

An uninterestingly titled anniversary poem for jenny :)

"Pine Pollen," about how (elizabeth stokes voice) i can close the door on us but the room still exists and i know you're in it

FINAL THOUGHTS

I usually do goofy superlatives for these, but instead here are some coherent thoughts about what I think I accomplished as a writer this year and what I think I'd like to work on in the coming year. First, some strengths of this year:

I still have a lot of work to continue, but writing from prompts was wildly helpful in my efforts to formulate interesting and stylistically mature shortform creative nonfiction. Writing event-first is horrible for me and writing Spontaneous Connection-first is great when it can happen but can't be forced. Being forced to contemplate how 'so embarrassing' or whatever could most interestingly be applied to cnf kind of helped me break that barrier, which I am very grateful for. I covered a lot of new ground and revisited some old ground in an interesting way, and though the above essay list is a collection of first drafts and experiments, I'm very happy with what I gained from it.

It was wildly satisfying to finish revising Aivide and bring it to a satisfying conclusion. I still have to go back and do some smaller-scale line editing on it, and it would be a much better overall product if it was plotted and rewritten in 2023-2024 from start to finish, but Aivide the prequel also wouldn't exist without me-from-2021, so it would be very dumb to not give them significant credit. In 2024 I wrote some of the parts of this novel that are the most special to me and reflect the things I love about writing fiction most closely. It's not without its flaws, but I'm still wildly proud of it and think you (yes, you!) should read it if you like loosely-homestuck-connected science fiction or toxic homoerotic girl best friends.

It was also very rewarding to return to Vital Light, which was kind of my Shrek last year in the Prince of Egypt/Shrek analogy that I love applying to my own writing, and find that I was capable of writing Characters And Plots That Interest And Compel Me with stories other than Aivide. Vital Light is still categorized as 'the silly one' in my head, but there are at least invididual parts of it that register to me as meaningful and interesting and I think pursuing the whole project is Teaching Me New Things About Being A Writer, which is the key part.

I think for a lot of college I would make resolutions along the lines of 'this is the year I finally get published!' and would scrutinize all my non-fanfiction out-of-class writing as A Journey To Getting Published while doing nothing on the get published front because litmag submissions are the job applications of writing and we all know how much I hate doing either of those things until actively forced to. Both 'somewhat goofy prompts' and 'deep structural revision of The Novel That Owned My Soul In High School' are good exposure therapy for writing to learn, to tell myself a story, to try something and see if it works, rather than to publish.

In this coming year some of the main things I would really like to do are – 

To gather up the strength for confident and well-considered worldbuilding and get comfortable with reading lots of nonfiction to get a comfortable knowledge base in areas relevant to my subject

To write or conceptualize at least one story (it can be shortform, though shortform is its own uphill battle for me lol) starring a character or universe that did not exist before 2025,

To progress my shortform nonfiction into workable longform nonfiction,

To take at least one local writing class, not so much because I think Classes are really missing from my life but because meeting people who write and are local to you is an interesting and productive part of writing and living in a place, even if they are not interested in the same things you are and do not necessarily share an artistic ethos with you

I am not going to resolve to Submit To More Litmags because I know the kind of doomspiral that instills in me and it is also not terribly important to me right now. But I think I do want to critically examine Types Of Making Your Writing Public and explore the ones I'm comfortable with, as well as observing the mechanisms behind that comfort. Pivotally I also want to read more widely and consistently, including shortform stuff (collective BOO from the crowd!) (i'm the crowd.). First and foremost, I want to continue reading and writing from a place of pleasure and curiosity and exploration – with the obvious disclaimer that 'pleasure' does not mean Reading The Easiest Or Most Feel Good Thing, there is pleasure to be found in new and challenging things and good prose and meeting challenges – because I think that is the best way to do interesting things and never kill yourself.

[jisokai]

afterword: All these stars,

fic masterlist

woah. we're really here now.... it's so surreal to think that this fic is over and posted and i get to move on with my life LOL. i'm sure i won't actually move on and i'll think about these two losers forever but regardless it's crazy that i essentially finished my first novel-length piece of fiction. i've started several longfics in the past (as a child/teen, but still) and never finished them, so i'm giving myself a big pat on the back to myself for that!

i once again want to smooch my mutuals for encouraging me to write this. if it weren't for vonnie and lena chanting "do it do it do it" like demons when i first pitched the fic, idk if i would have felt confident enough to write it. and another kiss for cece because having someone double check my spanish was life saving.

now, for the specifics...

headcanons & unsaids:

when chiara calls reader "tucano" it is absolutely 100% in a whiney italian voice where the 'a' is drawn out LOL. also chiara asks about shigaraki all the time and reader is FED UP

davide is venetian originally and mixed (half black) hence why he has coiled hair (that i literally only mentioned in one sentence). i tried my hardest to come up with a drag name for him but i'm not witty like that so it remains a mystery. i wanted it to be a play on his name starting with a D but i couldn't get past that

sero and reader 100% visit the galapagos islands at some point and they snorkel together. also sero is definitely annoying as hell in the water and lays on his back on the surface or grabs reader's waist and just kind of floats behind them (i hate him) (i'm in love with him)

i like to imagine the next Hoshi no Sākasu show is about the stars and planets in some way :)

there's a lot of weird shipping pining happening in the background LMFAO. kendou and momo are obviously dating, but momo and reader have a weird romantic tension. shouto is 100% pining after sero, but kaminari is pining after shouto (platonically or romantically, idc). dabihawks clownery is occuring. background kiribaku as always. shigaraki and shinsou are friends.

kendou and aoyama become reader's little trio friend group and they absolutely terrorize the rest of the cast. i think reader and hatsume would also get along. and i bet reader could wriggle their way into being friends with touya <3 they will also befriend katsuki because reader always does in my fics. sorry.

inspiration:

as per usual, this fic owes a LOT to other media that i've consumed. The Night Circus is by in large the main inspiration. if you enjoyed the imagery (especially chapter 3) i HIGHLY recommend you read this book. the tent of memories and the orange tree are based off tents in that book. and the entire plot of "sero makes tents for reader to show how much he loves them" ... lol

i also want to give flowers to Howl's Moving Castle (the movie, i haven't read the book unforchies) for the images in my mind i had of falling stars through meadows, and Heartless for the tone i was aiming for at times.

this fic is an ode to my love for the circus and performance that has been nurtured since i was very small. namely, Cirque du Soleil was a huge part of my upbringing and has been a wistful dream of mine since i was a kid. it's a dream that is so out of reach that it will stay a dream forever, but i really loved the opportunity to fantasize about it for this fic :')

lastly, a giant & obvious inspiration is Latin America. i am not of latin descent, but i have visited both ecuador and costa rica multiple times, and hold them dearly to my heart. this fic was an opportunity for me to further explore the latino sero headcanon (& build off previous mentions of specifically an ecuadorian sero), and it was important to me that i only write for places/cultures that i have an explicit relationship to. this is for my own discipline as a writer who cares about accuracy and also a person who wants to be thoughtful and critical. (and because 99% of latino seros are mexican which is awesome for the rep but... sometimes it feels like it's because mexico is the only latin american country they know lol)

themes/symbolisms (speedrun):

birds -> i love birds. also because they connect to ideas of freedom and migration

grief -> i just can't seem to stop writing about people dying

weaving/fabrics/threads -> made sense for reader's profession

stars and the sky and shit -> i love astronomy

books/literature -> sero canonically is into manga and is an analytical guy so it was intuitive for me to write him and reader connected via some sort of book. also i love books

citrus/oranges -> this is part of a larger theme about how the two different land masses flanking the pacific are connected in general (bc pangea and the unfathomable connecting power of the ocean),, and therefore sero's two different homes are connected, but also to reader's home

sero's mixed race identity -> i'm mixed and needed to project lol

dichotomy of making decisions vs letting life just sort of carry you away -> me it's me i'm projecting

career crisis -> i'm... PROJECTINGGG

memory/the distortion of memory -> idk what to say dude

i can't remember the rest but i'm sure there's more

reflections:

god. i have a lot to think about with the conclusion of this piece. it's a bit of a curse to write a fic this long because its now difficult to imagine writing something shorter again (i'm lying i already wrote a stupid oneshot). everything has the potential to spiral the way this fic did! that being said, i feel like stylistically... this fic is kind of all over the place LMFAO. it was deliberate at times (i wanted the magical moments to get more metaphorical/surreal and the day to day to be more straightforward), but i think it's revealed a lot to me about my inconsistencies and insecurities about my voice as a writer. this is something i'm likely going to deal with forever—and it'll fluctuate! i'm sure—but i'm going to continuously try and investigate it through each fic.

it was important to me that i wrote the fic in it's entirety before i started posting chapters... primarily because i was undecided on what exactly the Big Bad thing reader did to isolate them from their family. my initial idea was the one i ended up using in the end, so that's important for me to remember in the future. i can trust my gut! it knows what it's doing!! i think i'd like to try posting a fic while it's still in the writing phase... for experimentation purposes...

this was also the first fic i gave a thorough and proper outline, and while it was helpful to have, ultimately it was only useful for remembering certain plot points. i'm definitely not someone who enjoys outlining, and i think part of the fun of writing for me is discovering what's going to happen next LOL. but i think an outline is crucial for something like this fic where all the parts are deeply intertwined... so it's likely something i'll be doing in the future regardless.

[redacted musings about engagement]; basically, i love writing for me and me only and letting readers deal with my mess if they decide to impose that on themselves.

bonus/random:

this was my initial dump in my WIP doc. it's interesting to see how much i stuck to that thread, even if it did sort of grow out of control lol:

i saved this in my drafts at one point but don't really want to post it so i'll leave it here:

and my stupid comments i left for myself, because i think i'm so funny:

smooches for you if you read all that lol. thanku <3 and bye bye!

[fallen-and-holy]

thinking about the host by stephanie meyer again because.... oughhhhhh. It could have been so good. It could have been so fucking good!@!!! Especially as a plural alterhuman!!! But she had to make it weird!!!!!! Fuuuuck

Okay more rational thoughts, spoilers for the book to come.

The Host is about a species of parasitic aliens who have to take host bodies to survive. They travel from planet to planet, carefully taking over the entire native populations- removing the original consciousness and replacing them. They install a kind of utopia- no more pain, hunger, money, violence, etc- but at the cost of the host species. They see themselves as doing a good thing- bringing civilization and taking away the struggles of those worlds. They call themselves souls. This in itself is one of the coolest premises I've ever read. The worldbuilding around this species is so cool and felt real to me in a way that's been hard to find again. The sensory imagery of their true bodies has permanently cemented itself in my brain, and they're beautiful. I would love to see this explored more upon, but... probably as fic and not by stephanie meyer for reasons I'm going to explain :/

The plot of the book is centered around a Soul, referred to as Wanderer or Wanda, who has taken a human host. This host, Melanie, was one of the last humans left that wasn't taken and made a host before she got caught. Usually, the consciousness of the host fades when a Soul takes the body, but Melanie sticks around and manages to get Wanda to one of the human bases. As the plot progresses, Wanda learns to love humanity, becomes friends with Melanie and other humans in the base, and gets involved in a strange love square with two guys. At the end, she decides to sacrifice herself to let Melanie live her life, but gets rescued at the last second and put in a new (with the original consciousness already removed by another Soul) body. Pretty standard 'nature of humanity' sci-fi plot, happy endings all around, right?

I read this for the first time when I was pretty young, and didn't really get the problematic elements. The Soul species resonated with me really strongly for reasons I didn't understand at the time (spoiler: I'm alterhuman and plural), and the final sacrifice scene never failed to make me cry. This book also introduced me to the body-sharing trope, something that is an Archetrope for us. But now that I'm looking back on it, there's a lot in it that was just. Strange. Weird bioessentalism, for one- the Soul concept of gender was completely separate from human, and yet there was a Weird enforcement of 'Girl aliens go in the Girl body and Boy aliens go in the Boy body'. There were also. Two (or more if you're counting weird body-sharing fuckery) completely unnecessary age gap relationships. Melanie, the host, started dating her romantic interest, Jared, when she was 17 and he was 26. This is portrayed as Completely Normal and Unproblematic. She's 21 when the main plot happens but. Hm. And when Wanda gets her own body, the one they pick out for her happens to be 17, while her love interest Ian is in his late twenties. There's a whole weird scene about Wanda lying to him about her bodies age so they can have sex and it's presented as normal, funny even. On one claw, write/read whatever you want because fiction is fiction and you're not hurting anyone with your weird kink staying in your writing. On the other claw, I don't think infamous writer Stephanie Meyer is approaching this with good faith 'fiction is fiction'. Same with her portrayal of relationships as a whole- if you're into that shit as a fantasy go nuts, but i don't think that she sees that those relationships would be Not Okay irl. It makes me uncomfortable now, so I probably won't be rereading. I also think there's way too much focus on the romance in this book- you have a fascinating and complex sci-fi premise and world, and you spend the majority of the book focusing on an age-gap love triangle.

I'm not really sure how to end this. This is the first book review I've ever done, and I didn't even mean to do it lmao. I have fond memories of this book, but I also think it could have been so much more. If you don't mind the bits I dislike, or simply want to skip past them, I would recommend this book to alterhumans and plurals who relate to the body-sharing/Symbiosis trope. The Souls are so cool, and I'm honestly questioning them as a conceptkintype like the Trill from Star Trek. They definitely tie into my Symbiosis Archetrope.

Any (kind) comments or corrections are appreciated, I wrote this in one go while stoned and did not Beta read it so there's probably mistakes.

[dg-outlaw]

Batfam Retail and Character Agency

So I've been thinking about how some people take issue with certain ships in the Batfam, especially in fanfic or general fanon. For example, JaySteph and how people will cry "ince$t" when these two or other characters are paired up in a ship.

One, I don't think these people know how biology/ancestry works because the only blood related members of the Batfam are Bruce, Damian, and Kate Kane despite them being called the BatFAM. Two, most of Bruce's adopted children were older or barely interacted in a sibling way as far as growing up together. Sure, they might have a sibling-coded relationship and are legally related, but the best example I can think of in how the Batfam works is not the Brady Bunch or Cheaper by the Dozen, but that they all are or have been co-workers at the same minimum wage retail store. Friendships, drama, dating, rivalries, and other such nonsense is sure to happen. It's called forced proximity and shared experience.

I'm thinking of writing up a humorous parallel of who's who in the retail realm when it comes to the Batfam, but including it here would make this post WAY too long

The other annoyance, that I sort of get IF looked at from the POV of DC editorial or writers (if that's their ill-conceived intention), is the idea that a character, more specifically a female character, is just getting "passed around". Instead, my only guess is that whoever is complaining about this is saying that the male character should be given a new, shiny, fresh off the showroom floor love interest and not some high-mileage used model. I use a car reference here because that's exactly how that female is seen when a person says this, whether they acknowledge it or not.

The female character, for example: Stephanie Brown, is no longer a person with her own autonomy and ability to choose or have agency. She's an object to be owned, possessed, or used for the sake of forwarding the male character's arc or to add drama (e.g. fridging or damsel in distress). To imply that Stephanie Brown (or any other character) is being "passed around" from Tim Drake to Jason Todd is to imply that Steph doesn't have nor did she ever have choice in the matter (again, JaySteph isn't even canon, but if it were to become canon, some people would still have a fit). And yes, these are fictional characters, but in writing them (whether officially by DC or in fanfics) they should be treated as real people with real choices and not some object or virginal "bride" for the male protagonist where you'd retcon past relationships.

Has Stephanie Brown always been treated fairly in comics? No. Has Jason? Also, no. Would pairing these two be some sort of "passing around" or "sloppy seconds" for Jason? If I have to answer that for you or you think 'Yes', then you probably don't see women as people. Canonically, I think Jason has had more love interests so if anything Steph would be the one getting someone else's "sloppy seconds", thirds, fourths, etc.

Again, see the above about retail co-workers. Steph once dated Tim. It was their first job and their first real, young love. It was good, it was bad, they made out in the break room, they broke up in the middle of Customer Service, etc. Former employee, Jason, comes by and picks up random shifts when Bruce is really desperate. Steph and Jason meet and hang-out over a few shifts, even though Bruce doesn't trust either of them and would rather they work somewhere else. Maybe they got stuck working Black Friday and the holidays together and boom, sparks happened. It's maybe weird or awkward for Tim, but Tim fell in love with the snack and soda machine vendor, Bernard, so it's really no big deal.

So if someone can date their co-worker, break-up, and then date another co-worker, it should be none of your damn business (assuming everything is legal, consenting, and above board) if none of those people are you.

Thank you for coming to my TEDTalk.

[24hrsoda]

So I've been trying to read more stuff on the al ghuls in comics and I already know so much can be.....counterintuitive depending on writing, but at one point I think in son of the demon ras says he fought the axis powers then death and the maidens he left Nyssa in a concentration camp 😭😭😭 how do u even parse thru everything tbhhhhh

Death and the Maidens is a run i read once and never want to touch again. Might be one of the worst comic runs i have ever read. I don’t hate many things but I hate that run so much I wish I could forget it.

It’s exactly what I mean when I say there’s moments of Ra’s being so unnecessarily evil, and it’s usually just to make another character look better/stronger/tougher. (Fanon does this too, especially with the other bat boys who afaik don’t have deep relationships with Ra’s like Bruce and Damian do.)

What reason does Ra’s (who is supposed to be a Brown Man and an extreme environmentalist) have to work with Hitler and let his own family suffer at the hand of Nazis??? Most of that was to build up Nyssa’s character as the “feisty bad girl oldest sister with daddy issues”. I think that wasn’t a great choice.

For many obvious reasons. In a world where anything can happen because it’s fiction, why use the suffering and tragedy of real people to portray a character being bad/evil? Why do you have to pair him off with some of the worst real life people? Also, how relevant is Nyssa’s entire character anyways? She doesn’t show up or do anything significant anymore. I would argue she wasn’t significant then either.

(There was also the weird pseudo incestuous thing with Nyssa and Talia where she took off all of Talia’s clothes and had her crawling around and clinging to her while naked that just…feels like it was written by A Man™️)

And it’s very much a product of its time. The 2000’s were…kind of bad for a lot of comics. It’s not a wild thing to believe that the villain who’s supposed to be Arab man in a post 9/11 world is compared to the likes of hitler for no reason other than to show readers he’s supposed to be a bad guy that we all need to hate.

Recently, in comics, Ra’s has had a redemption and has admitted his wrongdoings. Followed by him turning himself over to the authorities and wanting to share the science of the Lazarus Pit and his knowledge of Physiology with the rest of the world. Damian later came to understand that Ra’s did this because he was 100% serious about turning his life around and an “I’m sorry I was bad” wasn’t enough to prove to everyone that he wanted to be better.

Everyone can decide for themselves if they like this take on Ra’s or if they prefer him evil. At the end of the day it’s not my job to make sure everyone enjoys the character the way I do and learns what to ignore or look past. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

That being said…nobody has to like my art or my headcanons or my takes on characters. Especially the Al Ghul’s. The things I make are not canon and I really don’t want them to be canon. I just like to create things and I like drawing cute stuff ! So…can y’all please be mindful of some of the tags and comments you leave on some of my sketches 🥲

I guess I kind of waffled on….the short answer would be some comics are very much written poorly or with some kind of bias and it’s up to you to decide if you want to acknowledge it. (Canon doesn’t seem to be acknowledging these things anymore so there’s no harm in us being like “yeah that sucked” and moving on to something else)

And to remember that at the end of the day, Ra’s is not real and he has never hurt real people.

[navree]

ooh, pls expand on your dae/jae/aeg3 ideas! 😃😃😃

This is what happens when I wake up at 3am due to stubbornly persisting jetlag (pro tip, if you're gonna go to a country that's, like, sixteen hours ahead of your's, just block off a solid week of not doing anything when you get back because your sleep is gonna be FUCKED, my European jetlag has never been this longlasting or this bad), I create Ideas in my head and then use them to help me fall asleep. And it's honestly highly likely I'm actually gonna write something with this, it's quickly moved really high in my ASOIAF fics priorities list, just behind my Dance AU (I really should also write my version of Aegon's Conquest but it would just be so fucking looooooooooong and fall quarter is about to start for me at school anyway).

So, unlike most Greens, I actually quite like Daenaera, sue me, sometimes character are just Your Baby, and she's mine (I've enumerated why here for the curious). But I do understand the narrative issues some people have with killing off Jaehaera to make room for her, so I'm merging the best of both worlds here. A lot of the same things I talk about when it comes to why I like Daenaera's relationship with Aegon can also be applied to Jaehaera, she's also someone who likely would have felt lonely and isolated and deeply depressed after all she went through, and there likely wouldn't be many people she could try and connect with. There's Gaemon, her bastard half-brother, and there's Aegon. But can Jaehaera really bring herself to connect with him, or he with her? Aegon's father sent men to murder Jaehaera's twin and threaten to rape her; Jaehaera's father not only kept Aegon a prisoner but also made him watch his mother's execution via being eaten by a dragon. That's a huge emotional gulf for two children to overcome on their own, and that's where Daenaera comes in. Kids need socialization with other kids, we know this, and given that Daenaera becomes a ward of Aegon's half-sister Baela, her visits to King's Landing to see her brother often include bringing her young charge (I'm also reducing the age difference between Aegon/Jaehaera and Daenaera, because it is rightly weird as Hell that so much emphasis was put on six year old Daenaera being the hottest preschooler in Westeros). She socializes with both Aegon and Jaehaera, since she's on a similar social level, given not just the closeness between the Velaryons and the Targaryens, but her being kind of a member of Baela's family, and thus technically the royal family by extension. And Jaehaera is queen, so it's not unreasonable for someone to go "OK she needs some noble female companions" to allow her and Daenaera to hang out more.

In my head, the first closeness happens between Jaehaera and Daenaera, and not only as a meta-rebuttal to fandom weirdos who wanna pit two little girls against each other like it's One Tree Hill because you've all got big feelings over a fictional succession crisis. But I think Jaehaera would be more openly receptive to friends than Aegon. I mentioned it in my above linked post about Daenaera, but Aegon's one friend in his minority was Gaemon, and he had to be very careful about that friendship because of how Gaemon could be treated, so he was probably recalcitrant from getting close to anyone, along with his other issues. Jaehaera doesn't have that hangup, she's just a lonely girl without any friends, so having someone who's canonically sweet and charismatic enough that her sunny disposition uplifted the people around her would definitely help her out, and make her appreciate Daenaera as a person and want her around. It'd be almost something similar to what HOTD has between Rhaenyra and Alicent, close female companions bordering on homoeroticism and sapphic first loves.

On the Aegon front, a lot of what I talked about when talking about their canonical relationship can also apply here even before a marriage. Aegon's two main relationships to people his age are Gaemon, with the issues mentioned above, and Jaehaera, which does come with its own issues from the Dance. Daenaera would still be the first major guilt-free relationship in his life, someone he can interact with and be close to without feeling the burden of his own sins or the ones of those close to him on his shoulders. And again, along with that same temperament that endeared him to her in canon, and would endear her to Jaehaera in this AU, that's how they draw close and forge their own independent friendship. On all three sides though, it would likely be restrained to something like courtly love, where you can have concretely romantic feelings and even certain minor expressions of those feelings, but you can't ever really do anything, you just pine and have unspoken thoughts about everything. Aegon and Jaehaera are married, to each other, and they're also still growing, considering they get married when they're ten, so even if they grow closer and start communicating about shared desires more, it's still gonna take some time to parse out what it is they feel and what they want. Similarly, Daenaera would also need the time to grow and realize what she wants as well, and what her feelings even are, given that she's also young. And while I've talked about how Aegon and Jaehaera would grow closer to her, even beyond Daenaera being a naturally friendly person, there is something for her in those relationships as well. Companionship with people her age, for one, and a more calming presence from two people who do seem pretty even keeled, if melancholic, after the chaos of her own early life, and a measure of stability after going from two parents to just a father to orphaned to living with Baela.

One thing that would, in my view, firmly solidify the idea that Aegon and Jaehaera like having Daenaera in their lives and want to keep Daenaera in their lives is the secret siege. In canon, Daenaera nearly dies because of the poisoned fruit tarts, it's only because maesters give her something to make her throw up before the poison gets too much ingested into her system that it doesn't, unlike what happened to poor Gaemon. In my head, there's a period of time, probably a couple hours but still, where it's verrrrrrry touch and go for Daenaera and both Aegon and Jaehaera are really worried about her. Because they know death, they've seen death, not only have a lot of their family members died but they have personally witnessed someone not just die but be killed, be murdered. They know what it looks like and they both realize that they don't want that to happen to Daenaera, that she's important to them. After all, when I said "aegon and jaehaera and daenaera as the conquerors reborn", I wasn't just being facetious. I've mentioned in a lot of my Conquerors meta that Rhaenys appears to have been the glue that held her and her siblings together, and I can see Daenaera occupying a similar role. Like Aegon I and Visenya before them, Aegon III and Jaehaera are likely people who would be reticent in expressing emotion, though for different reasons (trauma vs just inherent personality), whereas Daenaera is not. And having kids socialize with someone like that, and learn to socialize with other people, including each other, like that, it's important, and it makes Daenaera important to them, along with the personal feelings that might become involved, especially with them all maturing emotionally and sexually at the same time. Post-secret siege is when I think things would take a concrete turn to the romantic, and given that the most successful Targaryens of all time were very famously in a polygamous marriage, that's when a plan can start forming about bringing Daenaera into the marriage, not unlike Rhaenys getting brought into Aegon and Visenya's marriage.

(though, unlike my headcanon where Aegon and Visenya never wanted each other romantically or sexually due in part to incompatibilities as Visenya was a lesbian, and they both wanted Rhaenys, all three participants in this poly couple would want each other. I think that Aegon and Jaehaera might like Daenaera individually more than they might like each other, cuz again there's a lot of baggage involved, but there's romantic attachment and sexual interest, though to varying degrees, from all parties to all parties)

A marriage including Daenaera also helps deal with the unseen faction of the Dance: the Velaryons. The Velaryons kinda got shafted by both sides in this war. The Blacks in general treated a lot of members of House Velaryon badly in the lead up (Daenaera's grandfather, again, is Vaemond Velaryon. That Vaemond Velaryon), along with Rhaenyra imprisoning and threatening the House head, Corlys, over her own neuroses. The Greens, meanwhile, not only kept a member of House Velaryon as a prisoner (Baela, who is also the current king's sister), but are responsible for the death of a member of House Velaryon through marriage, since Aegon and Aemond killed Rhaenys (fuck you HBO for ruining that team up, sorry I'm done now). The toll of the war on House Velaryon was pretty severe, with wrongs done by both sides, and there does need to be some element of House Targaryen going "my bad" and offering some kind of recompense, especially considering the ways House Velaryon helped both sides with the allegiance switch (also, if we're moving up Daenaera's age, you can have her father be a casualty of the Dance, rather than the Daughter's War). Having a Velaryon at the table, given a prominent seat at the table, can definitely be that, especially someone who is historically pureblood Velaryon, without major Targaryen ancestry who can clearly advocate for House Velaryon. So if the two Targaryen monarchs go "we want this Velaryon as our queen", that can work from a political perspective and allow the match to go forward.

And if we keep the dragons around, which I want to, because I like dragons, that's something that can also connect Daenaera and Jaehaera. Say Morghul never dies in the storming of the Dragonpit, now Jaehaera has a dragon, and we know Daenaera loves dragons, whereas Aegon can't stand them (reasonable, given what happened to Rhaenyra). So Jaehaera can't bond with Aegon about dragons, but she can bond with Daenaera, who'd be very interested in hearing everything about it. If Daenaera wanted to claim a dragon herself, and we know she expressed the desire to have one after seeing Rhaena and Morning in canon, Jaehaera could be the one to help and facilitate that. Not to mention, I put in a response to someone asking who might Sunfyre have allowed to be his rider if he survived Dragonstone (can't find it for the life of me tho, sorry!) that Daenaera was a likely candidate, given that they're both pretty sweethearts. So if I get to be self indulgent and have Sunfyre survive for a bit, Daenaera can connect with him and Jaehaera can have some link to her deceased father, Sunfyre's original rider.

So yeah, these are just a couple disjointed thoughts I had based on that idea, but in my head that's how it should be. I'm sure I'll think of more about them as actual proper adults and reigning monarchs, cuz right now a lot of this was childhood and teen years focused along with a spotlight more on how they got together than how the relationship unfolded into adulthood, but hope you enjoyed the expansion anon!

[appleblocks]

My good friend Fantom made me realize that like,,, yall probably have no idea what is going on in my au at all

And I apologize for that! I get so involved in my own mind that I forget to actually make informational posts

So below I'm writing some info about my au and the characters in them!! :D Focusing on the 'main cast' which are the protags of my fic Fresh Life!

and also I will touch upon the recent shiping ive been doing of the characters

As for my other au, it kinda stems from that first one, but it is a Next Generation AU. I'm currently writing a fic for it, and the premise of the au as a whole is quite simple: the (mostly) cannonical kids of the hermits and lifers grown up and having their own adventures! <3 I'm a sucker for Next Gen aus, and this adoration started back in my MLP days lmao The au follows Hermes (Empires 2), Tiny Tom (Empires 2), Grumbot (HC 7), Jrumbot (HC7), and Jeremy Jr. (SOS smp) in their lives as young adults, exploring their friendships and their familial relationships, and my fic Fresh Life (name derived from the term Fresh Meat) follows them experiencing their first Life Series together, with the return of the Boogeyman and a new Canary :3 I'm currently writing Chapter 1 and I'm writing it in 'Sessions', so each chapter will be the span of 1 mc session, roughly. I have multiple tags for this but the main ones are #next gen au and #project fresh life!

Description from a previous ask ^^^

This au and fic (and future Empires based fic) follows the many fictional kids of the lifers, hermits, and emperors of the MCYT sphere I watch and fin entertaining, but I've adapted them so much to what I wanted that they very much like ocs to me ;w; but it feels weird to make them fully ocs because of how connected to the original world and characters they are in my mind and it makes me really sad to let go of all that to make them ocs of some kind.

I didn't inicially intend to ship any of them, cause I thought people would think I'm weird, and some probably do think that. But I'm doing it in the sense of character exploration, and imagining how they would act and feel in deeper connections and relationships (non romantic term)

Hermes and Grumbot to me are genuinely good friends, even best friends. Of course Hermes and Tom also are best friends, but that stems from the fact that they're siblings through Joel.

Hermes and Grumbot, to me, have a lot more possibility for a deeper connection than Jrumbot and Tom, because honestly Jrumbot and Tom know each other more because their brothers are friends than anything else, and so I started gravitating towards Hermes and Grumbot's friendship and relationship a lot more.

They are all friends and hang out whenever, along with the other characters that I haven't posted much about yet like Hillary, Jonn, Mandy Mane, etc. (but I will post about those more eventually)

They all care very much about each other, but to me Grumbot and Hermes in this AU are a lot closer than others. Hermes doesn't expect anything from Grumbot in the way that others might, so Grumbot is able to feel a lot less stress and relax a lot more around him. ( <- this is derived from the fact he was made with a purpose and then stored away when his efforts failed ) And Grumbot is very protective, in his own way, even if he's mean and murdery in the Life Series context he could and would drop everything to protect Hermes and the people he cares about.

I'm mostly just defending my character exploration now but yeah TwT it's late and idk what to do but I wanted to maybe clear some things up and provide some more insight into things

Also, for those that remember me saying Grumbot is aroace, that still applies!!!! I'm very much putting my own experience of aroaceness onto him and his deeper connection with Hermes does not negate that! I'm in a relationship too rn and I still identify as aroace, it's a spectrum, so i hope thats okay ;w;

[foresight-studio]

Hi, I'm Ben! And I'm happy to be here.

I'm a neuroscientist by training and also by trade (though these days I care mostly about stem-cell epigenetics). When I'm not doing science, I'm probably thinking about stories, the ways we tell them, and how the act of storytelling structures our lives in ways both obvious and imperceptible.

You're probably here because I make games. I've been writing/designing/illustrating/laying out games and supplements for a little over a year now! Here's a few of them, in no particular order:

DO/OMED. Explore the disintegrating landscape outside of a utopian domed city, and discover the nature of the secretive Namesake Project. Inspired by Annihilation plus a pinch of Jewish tradition, written and designed by me, based on RP Deshaies Breathless system.

The Cross Stitch. In this self-contained folk horror adventure, you'll explore a missing town, meet its unusual denizens, and uncover the dark mystery at its heart. Written, illustrated, and designed by me, for MÖRK BORG (but adaptable to the system of your choice). It's also my only project currently available in print.

Hillbrook Glen: Manifest your Dreams. Attend an exclusive, luxurious wellness workshop in the Adirondack Mountains, and bring your dreams to life. No, literally, your dreams are alive. And they're hungry. Written and designed by me, as the first of a 4-part series currently in progress.

Public Access. In this game of nostalgia and analog horror from Jason Cordova & The Gauntlet, you'll investigate strange mysteries surrounding TV Odyssey, a notorious TV station from the '80s and '90s that disappeared without a trace. I contributed a very tiny bit of writing to this, but mostly I did the layout and graphic design.

Decomposer. Take on the role of a worm, a fungal spore, a seed, or some other tiny creature, and decompose the remains of a dead god into a new world. Written and designed by me. (And it's free!)

I also have a few upcoming projects to look forward to:

Hillbrook Glen: Follow your Bliss. Explore a shifting meditation garden and face the branching paths your life could have taken in this post-it crawl adventure. Just be careful not to lose yourself. Coming September 2023 (I hope).

The Silt Verses RPG. In this TTRPG adaptation of the popular horror/weird-fiction podcast The Silt Verses, you'll traverse the Peninsula, hunting down stray deities while exploring your own complicated relationship with unsanctioned faiths. It's written by Gabriel Robinson & Jason Cordova, and I'm doing graphic design & layout. Coming soon.

Triangle Agency. As an employee of the Triangle Agency, it's your job to make sure the world doesn't collapse into chaos. You'll go on missions to apprehend dangerous anomalies while wielding anomalous powers of your own, battling bureaucratic nightmares along the way. TA was a runaway success on Kickstarter earlier this year, and I'm writing a mission for The Vault collection and laying out the book(s)!

Ex Nihilo Ad Nihilum. People vanish every day in the City of Y. But this one - this one is different. Or so your contact claims. Search for a missing scientist and uncover a potentially world-ending conspiracy in this surreal noir horror adventure for CY_BORG. Coming in the fall.

While you wait for those projects, you can keep up with what I'm working on via my newsletter or the Foresight Studio discord server.

So, hello tumblr! I hope something I make resonates with you.

[albywritesfiction]

Aro anon here! Dw, I've never felt that you as the author was pushing us to hate Ædan for not loving MC back. I think you've done fairly well, sort of, holding court(?) and showcasing asks without pushing any particular viewpoints.

Important addendum to my thoughts: I personally don't mind being uncomfy! like, not in this instance. Some fiction should be uncomfortable, especially attempting to delve into certain topics. It might be the only way to do it with honestly. It's worth it to read about the raw reactions Ædan gets. I don't want to police people's feelings on the matter - I think that's weird when we're talking fiction. Or worse, for any anons to be less honest going forward! But i do want to encourage self-examination, and give my own honest, first-reaction perspective to consider

I appreciate that you aren't planning to glorify sentiments like that, but i do hope you won't shy away from it altogether. Like, romance is messy, it can cause a lot of "ugly" feelings, and u should get to write the messiest version possible in a romance game 😂 where else to explore this? It'd be different if i was giving advice to a friend about a guy, but this is a story. Pls dw about making MC have "correct" feelings. Indulging in being vengeful, petty, or utterly enamoured with Ædan in the complete opposite direction from before could be really fun! MC being angry at Ædan specifically for not loving MC back is normal, and I think it'd make sense as an option in-game. But it'd be best, I think, to have varied reaction to this in-game. I think it'd be an interesting bit of characterization too, seeing who'd support MC unilaterally in this and who'd give more push-back against an MC who thinks like this.

e.g i think people already want the option to shove their happy relationship with Ædrick/Cyffrin in Ædan's face. There could definitely be a "if you'd picked me, you could've been this happy too 😒" bend to it 😂 so many possible reactions from everyone involved to be had:

Is Ædan actually jealous? What if not? I feel like he already knows his life would've been exponentially easier if he was in love with MC, but he had a decade and still couldn't force it. He knows what he'd feel like in a relationship with MC - utterly miserable. Maybe he'd just be happy that MC has found the happiness he feels with Helene in Ædrick/Cyffrin and say so. Would a Vengeance!MC be incensed about that?? What if Ædan was jealous and regreful! Would MC be pleased with that? Just openly gleeful? How do Ædrick/Cyffrin feel about being used for this so transparently? Or about an MC that's still so focused on Ædan, has such strong reactions to Ædan's opinions, even in a relationship with them?

Messy messy messy 🤗

Hi aro Anon! I was really glad to receive this from you as soon as I had posted my response to your ask, and I'm sorry it's taken me quite a while to respond to this one 😓

It's quite a relief to hear that I don't seem to be biased towards any one version of things. I've been kind of worried about deciding what things should I put a reasonable limit on so that ATE doesn't become too overwhelming to work on while balancing it with the interactivity and branching narratives that I want to delve into, so I'm glad to hear that it doesn't sound like ATE's turning into more of a kinetic rather than interactive novel just yet 😅

I'm glad to hear that you're open-minded about reading, even for works that may go beyond your comfort zone. I especially like how you, in your own words, "want to encourage self-examination, and give my own honest, first-reaction perspective to consider."

I also greatly appreciate all the insights and thoughts you've shared, especially about romance in fiction, the variation in responses to the entire mess Ædan created, and the potential spaghetti of emotions that the cast may experience 🤭

I've reread your ask more times that I can count since I received it all the way back in November 2023 in my attempt to write a sufficient response, and each time I did, I've felt grateful that you took the time to write such a detailed, insightful, and reassuring ask, so I'd like to thank you for sending in this ask, aro Anon, and I hope you have a wonderful day/night!

[totally-not-here-for-the-smut]

How do you feel about Asrian? And Nadia x Lucio?

Well well, this blog was born for the main purpose of smut so it's not like I'll leave out some juicy juicy occasions for it. Asrian has a lot of drama potential (bc YES, their relationship is fucking mental, but hey, tragedy is the mother of all the good stories) and the Nadia x Lucio got me thinking about Vesuvian geopolitics because I couldn't wrap my head around their marriage. (Please mind that I didn't finish nadia and Lucio's route, I might change my mind about it).

Eventually, my HC is that Nadia herself arranged the marriage with Lucio for some political reasons. This is not weird, since Vesuvia seems to have a big economic power, and given how many people of different ethnicities are there it's probably in a strategic point, like in a geographic crossroads. Basically, it's vital to control it's place. Our countess realized that the ruler, Lucio, was an idiot so made her best to ensure that such an important point was under control. Yeah yeah, I know it's mentioned on the story that she was drunk when she accepted the proposal, but I feel like the whole thing was some kind of plot of hers to convince Lucio that it was his own idea. Or, at least, I like my version, and since this is my playgroud I'll believe it :D

About the Asrian, I think that wether it's liked or not it's important to recognise how harmful such a situation is. They're bot desperate and strained to their limit when they meet, and end up together in the crazy hope to soothe their pain. Julian is clearly looking for some real intimacy, or for a way to replace MC's love (it's implied that the two were close before MC's death) and Asra would do anything to run away from their pain (this is a common pattern for Asra), even though he clearly is torn by it and takes it out on Julian (why? Jealousy? Disruptive behaviour? Generic hate for the world?).

They get entangled in a messy hate/need situation they both use as a unhealthy coping mechanism. Eventually, it ruins their friendship, to the point that Asra doesn't move a finger to defend Julian when Nadia thinks he's a murderer.

I like the idea of them rebuilding a better relationship, maybe even a romantic one, after the good endings. I'm a sucker for redemption arcs and for seeing fictional people throw sweat and tears and blood into an apparent lost cause. I think that it has some symbolic beauty.

When all it's said and done, all this dynamics make for a wonderful tragic story... but for a shitty situation irl. Soooo yeah, it's all fun and games here, but I've been through stuff like that and it's boring and frustating. Precious years of my life and sanity of my mind I'll never get back. So Asrian is like horror movies, war novels, dark stories and greek tragedies. Lovely to read and write, but in reality they sucks and are to be avoided at all costs. Since there's lots of younger people here, I think it's worth to remember it sometimes.