#thank god for the shadowhunter chronicles or i wouldn’t have anything to be obsessed with and weird about all the time constantly

[livvyofthelake]

13 days until chain of thorns. it’s going to fix me i’m telling you. seeing cordelia is going to be so healing you don’t even understand

[terrainofheartfelt]

You're really good at writing imo. Are their any fanfic authors or any books you recommend that helped you improve your writing?

Thank you so much! That’s very kind!

And oh boy DO I

For years before I actually wrote anything I was a fanfic lurker and I read a lot. My last church choir job in the Before Times was during the final seasons of GoT and I read a lot of fic during the sermon. Which is just to say, that I think there are a lot of fic writers — both within and without the GG fandom that have influenced me and inspired me. I wouldn’t say anything has directly improved in an instructional sense, like “this is how you should write, yadidiyadda…” but reading a lot has let me learn by osmosis: what I like to see, what I don’t like to see, and a lot of it has inspired me, particular tropes and story premises and things like that, so! Let’s have some lists…

First, in the non-Gossip Girl category, there are writers in different fandoms whose works I think about a lot and really enjoy and kind of…look up to, if that makes sense. In the Shadowhunter Chronicles, the media that has had as much as an obsessive hold on my heart as GG, one might argue, I really admire @themimsyborogove and revisit her work often. And—we’re not mutuals so I’ll refrain from tagging bc I’m shy— ashesandhoney writes some awesome fic (and, if I may be so crass, they write very good smut—is it weird to cite a smut influence? Oh well, too late). TSC is a fandom that’s been racked with both a poor movie and poor TV adaptation, so finding fic that satisfies a books-truther just as myself is a tall order, but these two both are lovely (and Mimsy writes showfic too that I just know is wonderful bc she wrote it). And tsc & these writers opened me up to the magic of trying to write the ot3. I’ve used ashesandhoney’s herongraystairs fic as a frame of reference for writing d/b/n (not that the characters are the same, or the relationship dynamics between the three are the same, it’s more a…vibe thing? Like, how do you illustrate this love and how these three connect to each other?) 

And in GoT I will never forget ashleyfanfic and justwanderingneverlost they made this amazing au where the Starks are prohibition bootleggers and it reads like an hbo miniseries hatfields and mccoys kind of epic and I think about it alllllll the time. And it is one fo the first aus that left an impact for being so out there when held up against the source material, but so inventive and grounded in the characters and I just think about it at least once a week. Also ashley’s pop star au fic is god tier and lived rent free in my mind for a loooooong time. Also a smutspiration. 

In the same vein of aus I never could have imagined but took over my heart, welpthisishappening’s hockey au of OUAT. before these works I was pretty much a canon-compliant/canon-divergence only kind of fic reader, and these works and these writers got me to see outside of that view and gave me permission to imagine characters in worlds outside of their own, and how exciting that can be, and without that I definitely wouldn’t have written all that I have. And lastly, I have to give a shoutout to a writer of the other GG, MrsMess and their Gilmore Girls fic. Harvest Moon healed the wounds of the revival to me and is canon in my heart, and it’s so beautifully and thoughtfully written and how could I not be inspired by it?

And as for the dair fandom itself….god I mean pretty much everyone I’ve read has made me a better writer and made me want to write and keep writing. In the beginning of the dairaissance in mid 2020 the tag on ao3 was much smaller (I think we’ve grown it by like 50%??? Just looking at it roughly??? Good work team!!!) and of course I was inspired by the great revered fic standards written by audrina (she’s retired from gg but secondaudrina is the pseud where most of her fic lives on), and bookglue aka @windowsandfeelings (I only got into her gilmore girls works through gossip girl but damn she’s a hero), and nevertothethird aka @scabopolis — like seriously I wouldn’t have written anything at all probably if not for the existence of Wrapped in Ribbons, and @pseudowoodo as well, who wrote thee seminal role-swap au. 

And then of course there’s my heavyhitters, my ride-or-dies. I’ve told them multiple times, but I’ll tell em again, Nads @mysteriesofloves and Ivy @mrs-nate-humphrey were writing and posting and creating pretty regularly when I started poking my head in to the fandom, and their stories were so brilliant and well thought out and compassionate to the characters that it turned on something in my brain and made me want to write too, so I did. Then not long after I found S @strideofpride, my most beloved enabler and peer pressurer and reading what they make and talking to them about it has unquestionably made me a better writer. I have grown a lot in the year and however many months it’s been since I started doing this and I owe it to all of the above <333

As for not-fic writing I read….just everything. Everything I read informs me as a writer, directly and indirectly. Though I don’t write it, I find poetry very inspirational. Devotions, No Matter the Wreckage, Open Me Carefully, Leaves of Grass, have all informed me. Some prose writers I—not necessarily aspire to, bc how could I ever be as brilliant? But maybe…revere and internalize are: Jane Austen, Emily Dickinson, Isabel Allende, Vladimir Nabokov, Kevin Kwan, Emily Henry...

[normal-thoughts-official]

The Same Old Tale

Summary: One would think an asexual person wouldn't be very easily swayed by a siren.

They would be wrong.

Read it on Ao3

Relationships: Raphael Santiago & Rosa Santiago, Maia Roberts/Raphael Santiago, Meliorn/Raphael Santiago, Simon Lewis/Raphael Santiago, Luke Garroway & Maia Roberts

Additional Tags: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Family Feels, Raphael Santiago Has Feelings, Autistic Raphael Santiago, POV Raphael Santiago, Daylighter Raphael Santiago, Daylighter Simon Lewis, Hurt Raphael Santiago, Hurt Maia Roberts, polyamori - Freeform, Open Relationships, Nonbinary Meliorn (Shadowhunter Chronicles), Meliorn uses they/them pronouns

It looks just like her.

Not like she did the last time he’d seen her - she looks younger, her skin healthier, not pale and wrinkled from old age and too many years with only a few hours out in the sun. Her eyes are bigger, and shine bright with intelligence, her hair is long and black and she has that mischievous, private smile that she would give Raphael sometimes. She looks like the girl who would glare at anyone who looked at him funny when he started playing with his hands when they were kids, who got him books on astronomy when he was obsessed with the stars and everyone else thought it was weird. He can almost see her reaching out to steal his chicharrones when he pretended he wasn’t looking, the old familiarity of that same old routine soothing and thrilling all at once.

She was so bright. He’d never forget how bright she was, how deep she shone, not when her light never even dulled. Even as she was old and greying, she always looked like she was full of future, not past.

She’s perfect.

She’s perfect, and his whole body aches with emptiness, and longing, and the kind of hurt that burns through his lungs. He feels her loss everywhere; in his shaking, trembling hands that have unlearnt how to play and bring him comfort without her to glare at the people who’d hurt him for it; in the weakness in his legs, wobbling and hurting like they want to lunge towards her and can’t wait another moment; in his aching ribs, sharp and tight like they’re about to snap him from the inside out; in his eyes, which burn hot and prickling like they’re about to be crushed, trying to hold back tears.

“Raphael,” she says, and her voice is musical and sweet. Even when she was serious, it always sounded like it was singing with laughter.

“Rosita,” he chokes out, his tongue heavy and lost in emotion.

She looks just like she did the day he lost her, really lost her. Not when she died all those years ago, but right before he left home before being Turned. She even has the same dress, the orange one, with big, red flowers. It makes a weird combination with the sea under her feet.

“I’ve missed you, Raphael,” Rosa says, and he shakes.

It’s only the fact that he needs her to know that gives him enough strength to manage to say, “I’ve missed you, too. So much.” Then, when she looks at him curiously, as if assessing his words, “I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t apologize,” she says, “It’s okay.”

“It’s not,” he shakes his head, getting up, and she smiles. “It’s not, I- It’s not to me.”

She nods at him, like she’s listening, really listening, and he’s always loved that about her, too - how she always heard what he said, didn’t look for hidden meanings, didn’t ask him to shut up about the damn stars, and didn’t ever ask for him to speak. “It’ll be, then,” she decides, “just come with me.”

He’s already up, but something in him feels frozen in place, like his body is too overwhelmed to know what to do with itself. “Where?” he asks. Rosa rarely ever asked him to go anywhere. She ran to him, took his hand, and led him there.

“You don’t want to see me?” she counters, taking a step back, and he takes three forward just on instinct, almost tripping on the loose, burning sand.

Don’t go, he wants to tell her, desperately, with the kind of ardor he doesn’t think he would find for anything else. Please, don’t go.

“Don’t leave me,” she says, an echo of his own thoughts, as in tune with him as always, and God, she’s like a part of him, and he’s lacked it for so long it’s almost overwhelming to have it again.

He chokes out, “I won’t.”

Her eyes are glistening with unshed tears, and he wants to run, run, reach out to her and hug her, take her home and hold her tight, protect her from the bullies at school, show her the stars, make her pozole and tell her stories about their neighbors in Guadalajara until she feels okay again. His arms hurt with how empty they are, and he’s frozen in place, and his vision is foggy, foggy with tears, and she says, in a broken, hurt, almost rough voice, “but you already did.”

She looks like she’s fading, retreating into the sunset, so fast, too fast, faster than he could ever reach her, and she’s going to be gone and she doesn’t know, he hasn’t told her, that he never left her, he could never, he wouldn’t. That he took her with him wherever he went, that he wanted to protect her, that he looked out for her. That he knew about her husband and how she couldn’t have kids, of her work at the school, of the little restaurant they had kept until he died and she had to go to the asylum. He bursts out, screaming or crying or running, all at once, he doesn’t know, because she can’t leave, she can’t go without knowing, he needs her to know, and a hand grabs his arm with the kind of force that could hold an unhinged vampire, and screams, “Raphael!”

He hisses automatically, turning to the voice like he’s trying to tear it into pieces, and it’s Maia, beautiful and wide eyed and worried, and he stops for just a second, just enough to blink and think about how his sister is leaving, before trying to get rid of her grasp.

She feels like she’s holding him with her claw, her grip strong no matter how much he fights, unflinching at his hisses and screams and even his tears, because she knows he won’t hurt her, but he wants to get away, he needs to get-

“It’s a siren! Raphael, it’s a siren! It’s not her, Raphael, it’s not her, it’s not-”

She’s standing over water, and she’s too close now, looking at them with the kind of hatred Rosa never had, and Maia is holding him, still terrified and screaming, and he’s still fighting, because for a second, he doesn’t care.

A siren. A siren. It’s not Rosa. And God, it looks just like her, healthy and happy and like all of the future that he never had, all the future she held in her eyes and shine even as her years ran out, all of the life that he didn’t get to be a part of, because he was dead, and dead without her, and she still doesn’t know.

“It’s a siren!” Maia keeps screaming, and she’s strong, but not strong enough to hold him back, and he can’t see her, because of the tears, because he can’t tear his eyes away from Rosa, close and crying and missing him, like she did all those years when he would see her running over the few pictures they had at night, on the altar that she made for him every year without fail after the third year without news from him, the biggest, brightest one in the neighborhood.

“Won’t tell if you won’t,” the siren laughs at him, teasingly, with that kind of delighted mischief that she used to have, and God, he missed her so much. He still can’t break away from Maia, but werewolves are still not as strong as vampires, and he’s gaining ground, and she’s going to let him go eventually, she won’t go down with him. “I’m still just like Rosa. Don’t you want to talk to her? I promise it’ll feel just the same when I touch you,” she smiles, and he really doesn’t care, because he’d take a knockoff right then. He would.

“Simon!” Maia screams, still not letting him go, and there’s a few seconds of struggling and then a loud hiss in the air, and Simon’s grabbing his other arm. Simon wasn’t even at the beach, he had left for groceries, Maia was at the house, and he can’t fight the both of them off at the same time, but he screams and thrashes anyway, and Rosa frowns at Simon.

“They’re vampires,” another voice says, and Rosa turns, confused, and her hair is wavy, and that’s wrong.

“There’s daylight still,” she says, no trace of smile on her face, her eyes dull and annoyed, and Raphael wants to scream, should be screaming, because she’s disappearing all over again.

“Daylighters,” the voice answers, calmly, “still don’t make good prey for sirens. Besides, the Queen would be really unhappy if you took them.”

The siren frowns, and Raphael stills, so quickly the three of them almost fall back from the sudden change.

“You know it’s the truth, a Seelie is telling it to you,” Meliorn says, still calm as ever, even if Raphael can see it burning in their eyes, the unmoving rage that they’ve always had. “Besides, you’re close enough to smell it now. Let them go.”

The siren grimaces, ugly and deformed, and just like that, disappears.

*

“Thank you,” Simon says, his voice strained, “we’re sorry to- bother you.” Meliorn hadn’t come with them to their vacation, having had some business to solve in the seelie realm, and their visit was completely unscripted.

“You did not,” Meliorn answers, going right past him, holding Raphael’s face in their hands. “Are you alright?”

“She’s gone,” he croaks out, and it doesn’t answer Meliorn’s question, except they all know it does. He knows it’s a siren, he does, and he’s surrounded by almost all of the people he loves the most, and he still wishes he had gone with her. He still wishes he had gotten his chance to explain himself, no matter the consequences.

It should be terrifying, but it’s just humiliating. He hates crumbling in front of anyone, but particularly them. Meliorn and Maia are the strongest people he knows. Simon is so resilient, and resourceful, and bright.. And Raphael- Raphael was supposed to take care of them, and he didn’t.

But at his words, Meliorn just nods, their understanding tender and soothing and inescapable like the ocean. They bring their foreheads together, slow, calm, and Raphael feels shielded, with their hands in his face, their forehead against his, their eyes closed so Raphael’s tears aren’t for anyone to see, not even them.

“I wish-” he says, but doesn’t finish it, choking up on the words and emotion and his own fear of letting it go again when he was so close to- to losing everything, he realizes. Everything he’s built for himself, everyone who ever counted on him, gone in a smoky haze of past, lost in exchange for what he can’t recover.

“I know,” Meliorn says, and God, Raphael knows that they do, and it’s almost unbearable.

He feels a pressure against his back, and only realizes that it’s a hug, that it’s Simon, that it helps, when he says, “We’re here for you.”

He closes his eyes, suddenly unable to face them when he’s so overcome by his own emotion, and lets it wash over him, inescapable and slow.

*

“Sirens fall into the Seelie realm,” Meliorn says calmly once Raphael’s steady again on his feet, wiping the tears off Raphael’s face. “I’ll make sure to bring this forward to the Queen.”

Raphael shakes his head slightly. “It’s what sirens do,” he says, weakly, “it’s in her nature. It’s not like she can help it.”

“Perhaps,” Meliorn agrees, still wiping Raphael’s tears, and it’s the soothing movements of their thumb that make him realize he hasn’t quite stopped crying, “but it’s in mine to protect the people I love.”

Raphael nods weakly, and Meliorn leans forward to place a kiss on his forehead. It punches a laugh out of him, sharp and self deprecating. It’s the kind of comforting touch he’s supposed to give, not receive.

“I’ll make sure they know all of you are off-limits,” Meliorn completes. Raphael nods again, bringing them in for a hug, silently crying on their shoulder just like he didn’t want to. Meliorn doesn’t mind, though, they never do, just run their hands through his hair, slow and strong strokes that make him feel just a little safer.

*

Raphael is sitting down, hugging his knees. Not to protect himself, not to hide away, but to hold himself together, to feel in control. The air is easier to breathe, like this. Maia is by his side and so is Simon, who looks decidedly lost, and has Meliorn’s hand in his.

“I’m sorry,” Raphael says.

“No need to be sorry,” Maia answers, rubbing his shoulders, “I’m just glad that I saw what was happening.”

She was inside the house when Raphael decided to watch the sunset, waiting for Simon to come back so they could make dinner. She must have seen them through the window.

“How did you know?” he asks, face hidden in his knees.

“It looked like Luke,” Maia answers, shrugging, something that feels almost like an apology in her ever sympathetic eyes, “but I was just talking to him on the phone.”

Turns into the person you want to see the most in the moment. Of course.

No matter what happened, how long it had been, that would always be Rosa, for him. Always.

It’s inescapable, a story that keeps retelling itself, branded into the world like the legends that they embody.

There’s a moment of silence, and he doesn’t dare look at them, or even move at all. It’s Simon who speaks, tentative, soothing, like someone who approaches a small animal. “Who did you see?”

“Rosa,” he says, like he’s breaking.

“Oh.” Simon answers, and he knows, without looking at him, that his eyes are wide. “I’m s-”

“Please don’t,” Raphael interrupts, because he can’t hear it. “Not now,” he says, an echo of something said many years back, and this time, Simon listens.

No matter how much he loved Simon - and God, he did love Simon, and right now, painfully so - this would always be a stain. Rosa was always a sensitive topic, and usually, he was able to share that with him, but right now, he can’t.

“I’m sorry,” Raphael says.

“It’s okay,” Simon answers, unbearably understanding, as he always is, calm and storm all at once. “I’ll just, finish packing up the groceries,” he says, and then leaves in a blur, agitated.

There’s a beat of silence, then Meliorn sighs. “Is it alright if I go with him?”

Raphael nods. “It’d be- less overwhelming,” he admits. Rosa is too raw, the kind of wound that leaves his guts out, too ugly to share, too humiliating to show. It’s all of his insides, twisted, exposed, and he can’t breathe, not when there’s people looking at it.

“I understand,” Meliorn nods, and leaves a kiss on the top of Raphael’s head. Tentatively, he reaches out to touch their hand, their fingers intertwining slowly, even as Raphael refuses to move his head from where it rests against his knees. He feels so, so weak, but right then, he doesn’t care.

Meliorn goes, and he misses them even as it helps him breathe a little easier.

And Maia stays.

“You can go, if you want,” he says.

“I’m fine here,” she answers quietly. Her hand reaches out to touch his back, very slowly, just the tip of her fingers at first, then the spread of her palm. Raphael finds that it’s a little easier to breathe with the pressure grounding him.

“I’m sorry,” he says again, the words rolling off his tongue easily like they live there.

“What for?” she counters, and he knows, without looking, that she’s raising her eyebrows at him.

“All of this,” is all he answers. Then, as he stills, “oh God, did I hurt you?”

She scoffs. “Gonna need more than some thrashing to hurt me, big boy,” she says, smiling, just on the side of mirthful before turning soft and tender and real. “There you are.”

He didn’t even notice he was looking at her. Then again, he was terrified.

“I know you didn’t lash out on me on purpose,” she says.

“I wasn’t thinking,” he counters, something like stubbornness in the way he refuses to accept her words.

“And even then, you wouldn’t hurt me.”

He says nothing.

He was just expecting her to let him go eventually. He might have had to drag her, but eventually, she’d let him go. She wouldn’t let herself be taken down because of him, she’s too smart for that, too much of a survivor. But he doesn’t say that, just buries his head on his shoulders again, because that shame is better if he keeps it to himself, even if it eats at his insides and leaves him to rot.

“It’s all right, Raphael.”

“It’s not,” he answers, “The way I reacted, I- you were not like this.”

There’s a beat of silence. Then, “It wasn’t talking to me, Raphael,” she says, “I don’t know how I’d have reacted if I had been caught by surprise, like you were.” Another beat, then her voice comes out soft, like she’s telling a secret, the kind of secret you only tell someone with your head down and your eyes away, “For a second, I even thought he might have come to surprise me, before I noticed he was standing over water.”

“I’m sorry,” Raphael says, reaching out to rub her back, an imitation of what she had been doing moments ago. Unlike him, she melts into the touch, letting her head rest on his shoulder slowly. Her eyes still look far away, though, and holding immense sadness.

“It’s okay,” she says, but it’s a lie she puts no effort in. Even the little shake of her head is too subtle, too small, too meaningless. Raphael reaches for it, carefully petting her head, small movements over the curls of her hair. He’s always loved Maia’s hair. It feels perfect, even as he has to handle it carefully so it doesn’t get tangled up. “It’s just- I keep waiting for this big gesture, and I hate myself for it,” she confesses. “I know it’s not coming.”

Raphael thinks carefully of something to say, rolling her words over in his mind as if searching for an opening. She doesn’t seem to expect any particular response, but he wants to give her one. The perfect one, the one that will give her an answer and take away that emptiness that’s all over her movements.

“Maybe Luke just isn’t the grand gestures type,” is what he settles on, “that doesn’t mean he doesn’t care about you.”

She shakes her head, more vigorously this time, and he knows that this time she means it. It breaks his heart. “No. I mean, yes, but- not enough,” she sighs. “He’s like a father to me, but I’m not like a daughter to him. He cares, but… Not in the way that I want.”

She looks up at him, eyes shiny with tears, and that’s the only kind of gleam he doesn’t like seeing on them. He reaches out and wipes them carefully, like he’s afraid his touch will break her skin. Even if, right now, he feels way more breakable than her.

She might not be breakable, but she’s tarnishable, and he’s the monster that desecrates good things.

“I’m sorry,” he repeats, painfully lost of any other words. Family has always been a tricky thing for Maia; her parents renegated her, and Luke never stopped being a shadowhunter at heart. It’s not something he understands; he loved Rosita fiercely, deeply, but she always loved him right back. Sometimes, he feels like that made it worse - maybe if she loved him less, he wouldn’t feel like he betrayed her. If the pain was all his, maybe he could move on from this guilt, this debt he’d always have with her, with the life they’d promised each other in the quiet laughs when they were kids.

“No, I’m sorry,” Maia sighs, “you are the hurt one, we shouldn’t be talking about me.”

“We can both be hurt,” Raphael argues, reaching out for her hand when she leaves the spot on his shoulder, like she wants to stop being comforted, and he couldn’t let her if he tried. “Besides, it helps. To have someone I can take care of.”

She does something that’s between a scoff and a snort, and yet still doesn’t feel condescending, only genuine, “You can’t keep focusing on other people to forget about you,” she says, not unkindly.

“I know,” he shrugs, “It’s not that. Well,” he amends at her unimpressed stare, “not just that. I feel like I failed Rosa. I abandoned her. I feel- so powerless,” he hates the little pauses, hates the way he struggles to come up with words to express his feelings. He’s usually not bad at this, but sometimes they run from him, and it’s like he’s way too tired to truly chase them, “so to have people I love… Be there for them. It helps. It feels like I can be close to her as well”

“Okay,” Maia sighs. “But only if you let me be there for you, too.”

“I’m letting you,” he says, a trace of a smile scratching its way through his face.

“You better,” she says, even as it falls a little flat. She squeezes his hand, though, and that counts more; they might not be fully themselves right now, but they’re finding their way back together.

*

“Do you want to come inside?” She says after some time, the kind that can’t be counted in seconds or years, the kind that fits too much and too little, endless lifetimes and the span of a moment, “It’s getting cold pretty fast.”

He hadn’t noticed, but now that she mentions it, he realizes she’s right. Once the sun sets, the beach starts to freeze up, and it’s always a bitch for a vampire to get warm again. “Yeah,” he replies, stretching his legs and getting up slowly, feeling like his body is just coming back to him. Like it hadn’t been his for the last few minutes. “Maia?” he says, when she gets up as well.

“Yeah?” she answers.

“You were right before,” he says. “I wouldn’t hurt you. And I won’t leave you, either.” He looks down. He had been about to do just that, he knows, but- he was caught by surprise. This, here- it’s family, too, and he’d be a fool to let them go. “I promise.”

She smiles at him, and it finally looks genuine. “You better,” she answers, squeezing his hand, close to him as they head back inside.