#specifically got me daydreaming scenarios i haven't written yet

[iguessyouregonnamissthepantyraid]

random little burst of activity on the ohtmb series got me in my feelings about ohtmb!loki again......

[12thhouse-sun]

Hi hi!! 🩷🤍🤎

I answered 🩷 and 🤍 here already but I gotchu with 🤎.

🤎 Brown: How did you decide to write (or why are you writing) a certain fanfic? (Asker, feel free to choose a specific story you're curious about. You can also let the answerer choose the story.)

As I only have one real long fic I've been writing, I will address You're At the Top of My Lungs.

Poppy is a very very old OC and she is frequently subjected to my hot boy of the month. But as a result of her being so old, I have a canon history with her. She "lives" in our timeline. I know her birthday. I know what she was doing in 2012. A lot of her background that I've shared in YATTOML is "canon" as it were lmao. I didn't have to develop it for my bg3 story with her, it's been sitting with me for years.

She dumped her last partner in 2018 when she found out they were cheating and all her other attempts at dating afterward fizzled out. So she's sort of been celibate by choice for a few years. This can be helpful because it gives me "room" to have her meet someone...whenever in that timeline (though COVID does throw a wrench into those things.) Given all of that, It was very easy to slip Gale into her story.

I sort of did the reverse that people have been doing with Gale x Tav. I pulled Gale into our world with Poppy instead of inserting her into BG3. It was already "canon" that Poppy's mother was born in England and moved to America for the boy she met at University. I had started thinking that Poppy would visit England in her summers as a child ages before I started playing BG3. It was easy to make Morena her mom's childhood and university friend, for their children to be close in age and to befriend each other.

In one version of this universe, Gale does NOT miss her mother's funeral but something else happens that breaks the relationship, but in a much more forgiving way. So when Poppy decides to move to England for Reasons in the fall of 2023 and happens to run into Gale, it's easier for her to forgive him in a low-stakes scenario such as that.

That being said, and to get back to the original question, I spent months thinking about Gale and Poppy in Our world before I sort of hit a wall (like...what does their future look like? idk what Poppy's future looks like because I haven't lived it yet )That's where the actual game comes in.

I play a self-insert Lore bard version of Poppy in my main bg3 playthrough. That is not canon. Instead, I started trying to figure out how I could actually fit Poppy into the story given what I already know about her background, character, etc. It's copied over fairly seamlessly. Having the friendship breaking moment be that Gale misses her mom's funeral is Insane (I am very aware, I apologize to anyone that's been turned off by my fic because of that lmao) but I couldn't use the "real" reason because...Mystra is a goddess and the reason isn't really possible in my mind because of that fact. Eventually the Gale brainrot turned into full-on PoppyxGale brainrot to the point where I needed to write it all down.

I have never written Poppy before for two reasons.

Her story in "current day" is nebulous and I want to keep it that way.

Her backstory (i.e. who she's friends with "IRL") is a little too self-indulgent for me to feel comfortable sharing. I feel pre-emptive embarrassment even considering writing that idk her bandmate used to be the drummer for My Chemical Romance (I'm going to go throw up now please don't look at me).

But the BG3 storyline is so Contained and far, far away from #2 that I was like...wait....I KNOW exactly what happens. This is a static storyline I'm creating...and I want to remember it. And share it.

Idk if I'll ever write what I consider Gale x Poppy's canon story in our timeline (I consider BG3 an AU as it were lol). Sharing that maladaptive daydream feels too personal.

tldr; brain got Too Full and I needed to write it down lmao

As for the Modern College AU I have in the works that I talk about in the linked ask/answer, I wanted to write that one because a) the lack of Modern AUs esp with a younger Gale and b) my love of college radio. I was a part of my university's college radio station for all 4 years and it was so important to me, my growth, and my life at that time. I want to write something that's sort of an ode to that and I feel like would be a bit different! I want to use the radio as a sort of Greek Chorus for the fic and that one idea has been singlehandedly fueling my writing and brainworm for that particular project. Now all I need is to figure out how Gale and Poppy actually get together in that universe 😭.

WELL THAT WAS LONG but ty for your ask 💜💜💜💜💜💜💜