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I know you said I’d be going through some changes now that I’m a tween but I didn’t think you meant like this

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Excerpt from Mary Karr - The Paris Review (2009)

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break in the case

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are u ever going to write tdbk again? ive been reading/rereading your works religiously for the past five years haha. thank you for your service (i adore your longshots) and hope you're well

of course ! at least a couple. and witvok needs finishing.

i've got a long backlog of wips with me but i am a massive completionist so most of them just stay w me until theyre done - ive tried to break some up like witvok just so you guys have SOMETHING to read while im off suffering at work, but i find the lack of sharing works (todobaku and otherwise) equally frustrating on my end, trust and believe.

thanks v much for reading along for so long!! 5 years is crazy but ive been writing since i was a kid so i guess that just puts it in perspective :,) the pleasure has been all mine, i love chatting w you all!

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Is amajiki your favorite background character? He pops up a lot in your fics lol

haha i don't really have strong feelings on him albeit i like him fine, it's more that i have a roster of go-to 'other heroes' that i use to populate pro-hero stuff and he must be an easy pick. i think other 1-A adjacent students are too close to todobaku to not have more significant interactions when they pop up, and some of the other pros like hawks and mirko i also like too much to not have them take up screentime, so i go for people im more neutral on if i need quick cameos.

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I just finished reading your lovely new tsh fanfiction and I absolutely need to know what you mean by them being at the start of their honeymoon phase. I can barely imagine what that entails for the likes of them but I am extremely curious on your thoughts.

hahah honestly i think it's just that they've had enough time to settle into the weirdness of them being... in an actual relationship (???) and they kind of mutually have stopped waiting for the other shoe to drop. like richards kind of resigned re his sexuality crisis and francis is kind of resigned re his brokie lifestyle and they both also have come to the tentative realisation that they probably have already seen the worst of each other and still can't be bothered to separate now. so they're less on edge about it all.

it doesnt change their overall vibe of course but i think francis just gets more day-to-day affectionate/cute (francis is i think overall fun to date if you ignore his personality) and richard kind of matches his freak (at least privately) in terms of finally getting it through his head that they are in fact something adjacent to boyfriends.

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I want you to know that I will absolutely ration this chapter for the cold hard winter months.

and well into spring... SORRY

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valley of kings has a very unique tdbk dynamic among your stories in that this is the first time (also in I go for the door— but that can be attributed to time travel shenanigans) that katsuki has already gotten to his point of major character development before shouto has even started on his journey. of course, they'll always be equally immature in the emotional intelligence department, but katsuki gives more season 5 vibes while shouto is fresh on his first day of ua.

i've discovered i like this particular dynamic very much, which in hindsight should be much more obvious considering i've got a particular type of fics i like, that includes all your tdbk fics starting with i go for the door, my all time favourite (if you ever feel like expanding that universe, prequel or otherwise, please do so, i'd be eternally grateful).

regarding the recent valley of the kings chapter, you absolutely delivered on the fight scenes and it was delightful to read katsuki's (admittedly biased) perspective on what's going on in shouto's head. i'd love to know what shouto was thinking when she was patching up katsuki.

i always hesitate to read gender swap fics because they always manage to convey that the character is now somehow weaker or different in a way that goes completely against there actual canon self, i only read this one because its you who wrote it and i'm delighted to say you've surpassed my expectations again. I absolutely love you for making ser bakugou and prince shouto and can't wait to read the next chapter 💙🧡

you get it, anon.

the difference in chara dvp is a funny accident of the fic really. i wasn't intending on it when i set out to write the story, but the logistics of having the camps split up and the necessity of having bakudeku retain their origin story meant they necessarily had reached sort of current canon levels of mentality, give or take some added tension and less emotional healing due to the times they live in and their responsibilities/roles. on the other hand, poor shouto has been stuck in enji's shadow as literal heir to the throne, and although there are people around like inasa and momo + she has been operating quasi-independently and away from her father for some time, she's not been power-of-friendship-ed and she also doesn't have the space to come to the healthy place we know shouto gets to in canon.

anyways thank you very much, i'm glad the girlies are resonating and i'll see you on the other side of the next ch.

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if i were as dedicated to my studies as i am to reading your fics, i'd be getting better grades 🥲

ehhh you're good if anything i should be less dedicated to my job and more to my fic writing if we're being real

serious note though 1) thank you and 2) i don't actually think it's a bad thing to put a lot of your time into your interests, especially because it's often a way to detach from the stresses of study etc, but i do hope you get to engage with other forms of art than just fandom! i think a lot of the escapism of fic is that it's an easy read, but it's really rewarding to engage w slightly less digestible/familiar stuff too. and you'll feel less guilty for it.

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funniest thing about valley of kings will always be-> ofc katsuki thought shouto was a guy at first, she has a distinctly masculine(sounding) name! It'd be like meeting a girl named Prince Clarke or Ray or something

Whats actually funny about this is that, like, endeavor named her this? He set up that gender fuckery on purpose.

Ofc the doylist explanation is that you probably kept the names for recognition but I'm going to run with this lol

hahah yeah tbh i just hate name changes in genderbend fic/fanon bc they're always really awkward/forced to try and sound similar-ish to the OG character names (obviously this has nothing to do w real life name changes which are cool and awesome)

however i do think itd be in character for enji in the witvok universe to give shouto a 'masculine' or at least 'gender neutral' name specifically because he sees her as his 'true' heir and is sexist.

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hello. first, u r my ruler and witvok is my religion. fem tdbk !! i love them SO MUCH. i started out reading tdbk, fell HARD for ur writing, so i: read tsh, watched good omens, ready or not etc bc i rlly just wanted to read more of ur writing. i am now watching iwtv (first mention for me being ur blog). i just, i wanted u to know... ur SO GOOD AT THIS... ur readers are screaming cryin throwing up bc feels.

hello. thank you for the intense praise. i am always delighted by witvok stans and it IS still in progress fear not.

honestly when i see what people get into on my account it just puts into perspective the weird range of things i write for / talk about on here lmao. but thank you very much, and i hope you've enjoyed all the things you've discovered!

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Hii I was rereading ‘cruel to be kind’ and I noticed that there’s a line where Bakugo thinks “not that he’d ever trade his quirk away, but it’d be fun to have Todoroki’s for a day”, and then I remembered you DID write that 2 years later in TLAAO!! So I was wondering if there are any other tropes/ideas you’ve thought about before in a previous fic, that you then wrote out or ideas that you’ve always wanted to write out? 

i'm going to be honest i completely forgot i had that line in cruel to be kind so it definitely wasn't intentional foreshadowing! i think really it's just that when bakugou is thinking he'd have fun with todoroki's quirk that's because i've previously had that thought / believe they would mutually think that. so the same idea just comes to fruition in different ways, either as a bit of character work or as a full plot element. but there have been like 3 instances now of you guys clocking really clear parallels between fics so if nothing else im clearly consistent in my characterisation/worldbuilding LOL

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who do you think, in your canon, did Richard dedicate his first novel to? Would he pay respects to Henry? Do something morbid like dedicating it to Bunny? Acknowledge Francis’s role in it? ( the last one is funny to me because I feel like Francis would both hate it and feel secretly flattered). 

Does Francis enjoy Oscar Wilde? ( Does Richard? ) 

How do you think Richard feels about Darśan? Whenever I think about about how in Hindu tradition, what sanctified the worship is no prayer, chant, etc, but the simple act of seeing, I can’t help but think about Richard and his whole thing about being an “observer” and putting certain people on a pedestal. 

richard definitely is a dedicace guy, i think he probs would have gone for a henry shout-out but in an inside-reference way. like henry's favorite homeric phrase or something. don't think bunny is getting any such honors, nor julian post everything that went down. i think camilla maybe gets first entry in the acknowledgments, but again probably not named, something like 'to the girl who danced with me to berlioz in the early hours of the day' or some richard-ism. francis definitely does NOT get a credit in book 1 if we're going with my fic as canon, things are too weird/new with them then. but he probably peppers in stuff per francis' advice (and that opening quote he found for him) which francis would recognise immediately going through it anyway.

oscar wilde seems so obviously francis-coded i wonder if he counterintuitively finds him overrated or something. but he LOVES a quip, so maybe not. maybe he has a hot take like his witticisms were better than his literary output. i think richard enjoys wilde the same way he enjoys francis, slightly guiltily.

i don't think richard would have any idea of what darśan is unless maybe henry (who likes world religion / tradition as a point of interest) is aware of it. but i think that regard/observation as worship is certainly an aspect of his psyche. like him and francis talk about when francis reads his draft, the way you see things and the way you record that vision to yourself is in itself subjective/transformative/reflective of you.

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how many languages do you know 😭 from whats shown on your tumblr/fic credentials english+french are a given but apparently neither are your first language? but i also noticed you were reading a lot of spanish literature on goodreads? and im not sure if i made this up but i swear you’ve mentioned knowing afrikaans / finnish (????) before??? sorry if this is invasive(?) just pure curiosity(/wonder/admiration/etc) on my part lol

lol i plead the fifth

no so i speak my native lge, french and english fluently (3) and spanish to i'd say just under a C1 level (it used to be better but it's degraded over time). german used to be C1 too but it's worse than my spanish.

i can't really claim this as a massive achievement on my part i just happened to be raised by bilingual parents in a french-speaking country (#immigrant) and then when i was in middle/high school we were big on learning foreign languages (#europe) so that's how i did the other two at a high level.

i also did latin when i was like 12-14 but the ONLY thing i retained from that are the declensions of rosa / dominus / templum and the odd phrase i pepper into tsh fic for fun.

i really love languages and linguistics though + i wish i didnt only speak european or european-originated lges. i was learning rudimentary korean and zulu on duolingo for a bit but then it went the AI route so i stopped using it. if anyone has good basic lge learning resources that are easy to do on the daily i'd love the rec.

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just curious what's it like working at a law firm?

hard. NEXT

no im kidding. it really depends on the law firm and culture. while training i got experience working in M&A, medical negligence, legal aid criminal defence and private family law so very different areas. as of this year im an actual lawyer and it's a demanding job. long hours, high stress, client facing, detail oriented, spinning a lot of plates. it's engaging/interesting in that every matter you deal with is different and has different magnetic factors that the case will turn on. i also like the fact that you feel able to make a real change for clients, so they leave you in a different position than they came to you. but it is a very consuming job and the corporate environment can be toxic and paradoxically also dull. i think law is very vast though so there are ways to migrate towards what you have a real affinity for - that's what i'm hoping to achieve in the next few years now ive finished studies and training.

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hello! i'm interested in commissioning you via ko-fi but i wanted to be sure about content restrictions before i request and i couldn't find that info on your account. can you point me to those or let me know what they are? hoping to treat myself to a 25th birthday gift hehe

hi! don't take comms per se but would recommend you message me directly about things like this, might be i'm willing to run with a prompt regardless haha.

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i hope you're doing well :)

thanks anon. it's been a rough few months at work to be honest - i am really trying to get back into sharing more writing over the summer. i miss chatting about stuff on here with you all.