#tamarelliana

[bookwyrminspiration]

for news of the heart, ask the face (linked)

hello @soryasongsaa my beloved, I was your secret santa <3 (ty @song-tam). I have tried. very earnestly. to write a tamarelliana fic worthy of your prompt, so I hope you enjoy what I've come up with. because MAN did I not know what I was doing

summary: Tam, Biana, and Marella each have their own demons to face, but fortunately they have each other to lean on--or at least they would, if they stopped pushing each other away. And if they stopped listening to the dark and mysterious forces calling to them.

warnings: mild arguing and panic/breakdowns

word count: 18.4k

[a-lonely-tatertot]

also hate conflict. too difficult just gonna write a million fluff fics of the tamarelliana polycule and let them have naps and stuff i literally have PAGES on characterization and no plot that puts that characterization into use and i want 2 rewrite the whole thing but that would be so much work

dude really i love writing conflict so much like YES scream at each!! be angry!!! YEA H !!! now hug and be happy

also having plotless fluff is a Mood

[bookwyrminspiration]

OH ALSO, QUIL! heading off to class in a bit but i wanted to ask you real quick how was it to play around with tense with your tamarelliana fic and what was your intent with it? i LOVE a good technical writing question i would like to offer you this (<- person who tense-switches constantly when writing and has to fix it all the time so cannot tell when it happens with other people's writing 😭)

(the fic in question)

OKAY! Messing with tense is a relatively new thing I've been trying out, because we're always told stay in the same tense don't mix up your tenses--and for good reason! It can be very confusing if we don't follow the rules! BUT! another thing writers are told is that you learn a skill so you can skillfully break it at times for artistic effect. enter tense switches

The way I've been utilizing it is switching to present from past tense for highly emotional/intense moments. This intends to mirror how it feels to experience intense emotion, how visceral and rooted to the moment you are--e.g. a panic attack where all you can think of is right now and everything blurs around you like through a fog and you're so in the present and in yourself it's like your whole perception of the world briefly changes (based on my limited experience).

Most of the present tense scenes in your fic are the shadowflux dreams--which then become like waking dreams. The flux in being written in a different tense is then characterized as something distinctly other, powerful, overwhelming. It is so different from these characters that it cannot even be written in the same way--which then means we can also track how Tam fluctuates between being like the others and being other. The narrative itself treats him differently when he gives in, because now he and the shadowflux are in the same tense--he now has this power, this presence, this disconnect and fog separating him from everything. He's part of a different story and in doing it, losing part of the him that fits with Biana and Marella--until they bring him back to himself.

The intention was to add emphasis to that surrender. The very way he existed (as he only exists in writing), was altered by the tense switch and associated comparisons. And in a less symbolic way, it's intended to just highlight what's happening right then. In past tense everything has already happened, even though you're reading about it for the first time in the present; in present tense, it is happening as you are reading about it, which can shift perspective to heighten drama and intensity when directly juxtaposed against something distant in past tense before it. Tam wasn't lost to the flux, he is lost. Currently. Right now, as you're reading it, he is dreaming and reaching for more. Which is different in tone and immediacy compared to Marella and Biana, who were stealing each others clothes and kissing.

I don't know how much sense this makes, but this is the general thought process. Both to heighten emotion by making you more in the moment--which has more oomph when juxtaposed against past tense rather than writing the whole thing in present--and by creating a distinction between Them and Other that can be used to track Tam's fluctuation between the two. At least that was the intention/theory behind it--who knows if it actually landed/was interpreted that way :)