starshifter

[starshifter]

The Still Waters of Change

Dan Heng accidentally turns himself into a dragon. He then has a no good, very bad day

Dan Heng/Blade, pre-slash

Word count: 18,371

Warnings: abduction with intent to traffic, NPC deaths, blood

Ao3 link

[starshifter]

The very first thing I must do in the notes here is point all of my curious readers towards the piece that inspired some of this: A Promethean Sin by Markition. I’m sure most of you have read it, but if you haven’t, please go read it and tell the author you loved it. For me. Because I love it so much.

Alright, cool. Now that you’ve done that, on to the notes.

-

Everyone say thank you to Eli. I was over here all “waaah waaah, I can’t think of a title, I can’t post.” And he just cracks knuckles, giga chad voice “Let me read over it.” And then comes back like a hour later with a list of typos and a title with like twelve layers of meaning. I owe him my life

I only gave this a single pass through of edits, so sorry if things are still confusing anywhere. I was possessed by the spirit of a new idea and had to go start working on that immediately. Alas. I will never know peace. ….or make it through my backlog of ideas. Don’t improve your mental health enough to start taking up your old hobbies again guys, you go from having nothing but time for video games to having no time for video games and being okay with this >:/

As a quick settings note, this is basically a ‘they voted to go somewhere other than amphoreus’ au. Cause Melustanin was one of the alternate options in the meeting

Weirdly, this piece has brought me to the realization that the Azure Dragon doesn’t have legs. Every single canon depiction of it I could find was legless. Dan Heng is a big fucking snake. You heard it here first folks. I decided to discard this detail for the fic, because he was having a difficult enough time navigating with dragon hands lol. Taking those away altogether felt like I was going out of my way to torture him. Which I am, but I can give him the occasional bit of mercy lol

I chose white scales for DH instead of teal because I found this one piece of art that did that and it was frankly so pretty. So this is a purely aesthetic choice. I know white snakes have their own meaning, but I wasn’t purposefully invoking it. He’s a dragon not a snake anyways. To be perfectly honest, I’m p sure that from a lore perspective, he would indeed look like a big dragon made of water if he ever turned into a dragon because it would be his Cloudhymn, not an actual transformation. Luckily, this is fanfic, and I can do whatever the fuck I want.

Yes, he has stubby little legs and a long body with a fluffy tail and mane. He makes an absolutely adorable dragon <3

The increased sense of smell is inspired by Lingsha. While she seems to have a much stronger sense of smell than other Vidyadhara, I can’t help but feel that just giving her super smelling would be a weird choice in and of itself. Going by the additional fact that she has more draconic features than most other Vidyadhara (at least openly, but that’s all I really have to go on), I can’t help but wonder if that sense of smell is draconic in origin. If that’s true, than it would make sense to give DH a similar sense of smell after turning him into a dragon. So that’s my reasoning there. Also, he snek

It’s also very interesting to me to see the different ways that DF manifests in DH. Like, we’re told that he knew how to use Cloud-Piercer as soon as he picked it up, which implies he kept the muscle memory of that. And then he was able to unlock his Cloudhymn mastery as well at Scalegorge. HOWEVER, we also have instances of him learning how to harness his Cloudhymn on the Express, showing that he didn’t actually get full mastery of it. So I’m leaning on that strange space he exists in between knowing everything DF knew and knowing none of what DF knew. So yes, he managed to transform, but didn’t remember how to go back. Much like he could part Scalegorge, but then flooded the Express while trying to mop lmao

The contrast between writing Blade POV and DH POV is really interesting imo. DH is over here all: logic, analysis, and try not to feel any emotions while his emotions batter at the locked door. Meanwhile, Blade is basically a slave to his emotions, it’s just that most of the time his one emotion is depression (yes, I’m including the anger episodes. That’s also a depression thing). Makes them a very fun duo to write interacting.

Don’t ask me about Yingxing’s comment about dragon scales. DH is babu dragon still and doesn’t have the titanium scales yet, okay? (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, that’s okay. It only shows up on one dialogue path during Clouds Leave No Trace, so if you selected the other option, you wouldn’t have heard it unless you looked up the other option like I did)

…No one call me out on stylizing Cloud-Piercer incorrectly in my first posted fic either. I didn’t realize the hyphen was there until months later :sob:

DH gets to be OP for a bit. As a treat. …And maybe an apology for what I do to him lol. Cause let’s face it, the ability to fuse water out of the raw elements (chemical, not elemental) on a whim is pretty fucking powerful.

I’ve always liked the idea of the High Elders being essentially Emanators of Permanence. Since no one has told me this isn’t the case, I’ve decided to go ahead and do it to justify my desire for tropey fic lol. So, yes. DH can turn into a dragon purely because of his stronger than average connection to the path of Permanence. Cloudhymn comes from Permanence for this fic, I guess

I also wanted to play around with just what “Dragon Delirium” is in this fic. It’s sort of implied to be the equivalent of mara in Vidyadhara, but what if it was actually a sort of “dragon brain” that can take over a Vidyadhara that takes on a physical dragon shape? What then? So Grand Celestial Being DH was born for the purpose of this fic. If he felt OOC at times, good. He was supposed to. (Yes, I do realize making my first DH POV fic feature him frequently in an altered state of mind was a dumb choice. I will write something else from his proper POV at….some point. Rip)

Do I keep physically injuring DH because I can’t do any meaningful damage to Blade? Maybe. But I can give him emotional damage by injuring DH, and I still get characters covered in blood and being tenderly cared for by the other. Yay! (Also, I really do think that seeing DH actually in danger would knock some sense into Blade lol. He’s trying so hard to tell himself he wants DH dead, but I am NOT convinced, boy)

So I’m doing some guesswork with Melustanin and its Stellaron. It is possible that it’s still there, but if it is, there is almost no chance that any life is left on that planet. And I needed people for plot reasons lol. Melustanin was supposed to have been one of the first recorded Stellaron incidents. We don’t actually know when Stellarons started appearing, but we do know that it was an abrupt phenomena with a known start point. They just haven’t told us what that is yet. I’m inclined to put it around the time Akivili fell (or Nanook ascended), but I don’t really have hard evidence for my theories about Akivili and the Stellarons. No matter when they appeared though, Stellarons cause incredible destruction, so if Melustanin had one on it for who the fuck knows how many Amber Eras, then it would be completely fucked. So I’m saying it got sealed and moved to somewhere else ages ago. Maybe it’s the one Herta had, idk (I desperately want to know if Stellarons only appear on planets that have a Silver Rail or not. I need to know. They can be moved, clearly, but where do they originally form? Am I completely off in the weeds with my Akivili theory and they really are related to Nanook? Because the Nanook theory makes sense too. Need more info.)

DH has his own mind on Blade (scary/dangerous), but I’m pretty sure his body has a completely separate one (hot). RIP to him dealing with that confusion.

Did I look up people holding anacondas as a reference for DH? Maybe. You can’t prove anything. I definitely did NOT draw a really shitty stick figure reference picture when that hypothetical image search didn’t quite give me what I was looking for.

I love the idea that Blade is just the designated driver of the Stellaron Hunters (despite being a, frankly, terrible choice for this. Tho like…he’s also a really good choice so??? Contains multitudes) so here he is piloting a ship. Because I’m never getting over car Blade. I live inside that scene. Fucking. He has a fucking license. Girl, help, I’m dying

While DH is usually a very polite boy, I get the feeling that Blade does not rate that kind of treatment in his books. There’s just too much there for him to put that kind of social distance between them. Bless his heart though, he does try once he determines that Blade isn’t actively looking to kill him. Fucking idiot. Just make out with him or something smh. Why you gotta be so emotionally stupid?

You know that Blade is concentrating entirely on piloting because the alternative is having a mental breakdown lol

For those curious, I was specifically picturing the chaparral biome for the style of scrubland this city is set in.

Also, really really really hoping other fics haven’t lied to me about the appropriate usage of the a-[name] affix. I know literally nothing about chinese, but it’s honestly a really cute way to do nicknames so?? If there’s another more appropriate affix I should have used there, maybe someone let me know? I would love to know more, but I don’t even know what term to look up.

I did debate having DH lose all his clothes when he transformed, but he would have just used his phone if I left it in existence back in his hotel room. Couldn’t have that, so it all had to go poof lol. RIP funny scene where he changes back completely nude because all his clothes are still in his hotel room. I guess he gets to keep some dignity… Tragic.

While we’re doing RIPs, pour one out for the scene I thought of where March and Stelle assumed that DH had been kidnapped by a dragon and confront dragon DH over kidnapping himself. It would have been so funny if I wrote it

Hopefully, the means to transform him back wasn’t too cliche…. Not that it isn’t cliche, but hopefully I wasn’t painfully trite about it lol. I swear it isn’t “true love’s kiss” tho. It was just about feeling positive, strong emotions. Anyone on the Express could have also gotten him to transform back with, like, a hug or something. Spending too long in a dragon body started twisting his thoughts into a dragon’s thoughts as well, esp. with that chemical interference when he got grabbed. He just needed to be yanked back down to earth with something more…human. Admittedly, the reason that worked for DF was very different from the reason that worked for DH, which fucking tracks tbh. For DF, it was more about being reminded that it’s worthwhile to go back to being human instead of staying a dragon, while for DH it just helped him finally get the memory of how to turn back. Blade has no idea why it works, or he probably wouldn’t have tried. He just remembers that it does, but DF never explained why.

Fight scenes are supposed to be horny, right? Everything I’ve read on tumblr suggests that this is the case, so I made sure I was doing my part. You’re welcome.

The identity crisis wasn’t exactly planned for, merely a happy accident. ✨Suffer, my lovely✨ Let’s be real though, there is no way DH hasn’t been asking himself this question since he found out about his botched rebirth. He would have clung to that rebirth as proof that he wasn’t DF, only to find out that he was clinging to a reed in a storm. Poor guy. How many of his choices are his own? How much of “himself” is leftover from a person he isn’t, but also is? Glad I only have to grapple with these questions for the sake of depicting fictional characters lol

“Once fertile ground” it’s funny because vidyadhara are infertile lol. I have….way too many jokes saved about that, actually. They absolutely kill me.

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For the graveyard today, we have this little bit that got completely reworked, but was honestly too funny for me to ruthlessly delete: “It was odd, to walk down the streets as a dragon. Nearly everyone they passed either stopped or slowed to stare at him. A handful approached Blade to ask if they could pet him or what he was—which had to have been one of the lowest points of his life. Blade’s unimpressed stare and terse, “he’s not a pet,” quickly sent them scurrying along with profuse apologies. Dan Heng did have to dodge a few wandering hands, but Blade made a surprisingly effective shield, despite Dan Heng’s considerable length. His intimidating aura remained intact even through his disguise.”

[starshifter]

I don’t typically use tumblr but I had to get over and just. Gush about face the blackened sky for a second. I read it for the first time like 3 months ago and I have not stopped thinking about it in the time since. I just reread it and am continued to be amazing by how well you write blade,,, he’s so amazing and in character and that fic goes over so many things about his character that I’m always wishing people would talk about!! just… you get it. You understand his character so well.

There are so many lines I could point out specifically that i am obsessed with but at that point I’d just be typing like half of the fic, but I do want to specifically shout out the line from chapter 2 when blade says “he was so tired. He didn’t want to stay a monster forever” and a bit after that with “Blade had followed Imbibitor Lunae into damnation once. He didn ’t think he’d learned anything in the centuries since” I just… I think about those lines constantly. It hit me like a truck the first time around and every time I’ve thought about it since makes me just as sad (positive).

The way you write about Baiheng in general is amazing. I love how you portrayed the guilt that blade has over everything and how much he just… feels like he has disgraced her memory. It’s so sad they mean the absolute most to me.

anyway sorry for ranting but I really needed to just compliment you on this fic!! Amazing work and thank you for posting it

aaaaaaaa you're so sweet i just

please, dont apologize for coming into my inbox to rant. it makes me so happy to hear from my readers, you have no idea. youve spent months thinking about the fic, i will spend months thinking about your kind words. equivalent exchange lol

but yeah, blade is very near and dear to my heart. he's just. so fucking painfully human in the face of all the terrible and wonderful things he's experienced. the depth of depression he's sunk into... god. but even more than that, it's about all the love he feels. about the way it transforms in the face of loss, but never disappears. he couldnt hate dan heng without loving him first. i cant not dig into that. it's like fucking catnip to me.

i've honestly spent an ungodly amount of time pouring over ever single scrap of information they've given us about him, and that's the whole reason i know all those details to write about them. rip me

but he's so complex, and so few people take the time to understand the depth of detail that hoyo put into creating him! like, the jokes about him are funny and all, but they just....completely miss the core of his character. i think a lot of casual players take him at face value. which is completely understandable, but it's just so sad to me.

so, as a writer, it is my duty to highlight all of that for people to appreciate. i'm doing my part🫡

....also maybe i just like babbling about things i like. maybe this isnt even a fic. maybe it's just me starting a blade encyclopedia lmao

tbh, im also p obsessed with baiheng. i have such a weakness for tragedy, and they fucking cooked up a heart wrenching one with her story. the sheer devastation left in her wake due to the depths of the love her friends held for her. i just 😭😭😭 how can i not love her too?

i wish we had the actual details though. there's so many questions i still have about the sedition, which I'm sure will come to light eventually, but god. i just want to knoooow. i'm sure it's even more painful and complex than we currently realize.

[starshifter]

hello my lovely readers! i am here with a little announcement. three-ish weeks ago, i went and gave myself a concussion!

this was terribly timed of me, because i'd just finished the first draft of a silly little trope fic (read: kind of angsty, 15k). i am now healed enough to look at screens for short periods of time and read small amounts of words, so i thought i'd put out an update here. i cannot do edits on the fic yet, but hopefully in the next two weeks, i'll be able to get that posted. hopefully. we'll see how i feel in a week or so

[starshifter]

wow. i cant believe you would slander me like this on my very own blog. is this how caeser felt? is this what it feels like to be stabbed with multiple knives? betrayal, oh betrayal cuts deeps!

@cosmic-v0id comfortable tables

[starshifter]

yeah, fuck it. who wants a random excerpt from super hero au prologue? just cause i feel bad taking so long to post anything 😅

(unedited; subject to changes)

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“And here we are,” Baiheng declared proudly as the longest elevator ride of his life came to an end. She’d been the one to meet him by the waterfront and escort him to what had to be a small shell company where they’d boarded the elevator in question.

The door slid open with the same weird hiss of depressurization that it had made in the shell company, only now, Yingxing understood why it was happening. He stepped out with wide eyes into a glass airlock, the bottom of the Luofu’s bay stretching out in front of him.

It was a breathtaking sight, but it was also a bewildering one. He turned back to Baiheng. “The base is out there? How do we get to it?”

Because the airlock they were in was absolutely barren. There were no dive suits, or attached submarines, or any kind of apparatus that would let them leave this tiny airlock and proceed onwards.

Was he being pranked somehow?

Baiheng grinned as she joined him in the airlock, the doors sealing with another little hiss behind her. “Watch this,” she said and pressed the button to open the airlock’s doors before Yingxing could stop her.

He lurched forward, his heart leaping into his throat as the threat of the entire bay flooding into their airlock hit him with a shock. Except, when the airlock hissed open, there was no water. No, instead of drowning, a hallway made of glass appeared in front of them.

Well, part of a hallway appeared.

He gaped at the weird cessation of the hall about five feet out. It looked wide open to the water, but there was only air around him. Fascinated, he stepped out of the airlock. His view of the hallway expanded slightly with his steps.

He paced forward a few steps and the bubble of hallway moved with him. When he glanced back, Baiheng following behind him, he realized that he couldn’t see the airlock anymore. He moved back towards it, bringing it back into that five foot or so range, and it reappeared. It reminded him a bit of fog mechanics in video games or a heat mirage in the distance. It gave the base the weirdest sense of being a single floating island that was building and disassembling itself around him as he walked.

Incredible. He’d never seen cloaking technology like this even theorized about before.

“How does this work?” he asked, his brain clamoring with theories that he discarded as fast as they appeared. None of them would work.

Baiheng shrugged. “No idea,” she said brightly and bounced past him down the glass hallway, her tail swishing from side to side in excitement. The blue light filtering down through the water—their secret base was underwater. That was incredible—painted her into something ethereal.

Outside, a school of fish flashed silver as they caught the light in just the right way. Yingxing watched them swim closer and then abruptly change direction before they got too close with interest.

This was nothing like the perfected metamaterial cloak that Arumaton used.

He slowed his pace, letting Baiheng get ahead of him, to examine the hall for clues. There was nothing resembling anchorage points for a projected cloak in the glass walls or the metal floor—though he couldn’t rule out something hidden beneath the metal sheeting—but even if there had been an obvious anchor, he didn’t know how they would accomplish the cloak extending to the insides of the base rather than merely creating a bubble around it. Was there some kind of suspended matrix in the air and water? How would they accomplish that?

No, more saliently, how would it clear the cloak only for the vision of the person walking through it, without clearing the cloak for outside observers as well? Yet that was clearly how it worked, because Baiheng was just in front of him, but he couldn’t see anything but the bottom of the Luofu’s bay and his little bubble of glass hallway. She’d completely vanished.

He’d known that the Vidyadhara had advanced technology remaining from the Apocalypse Era and their progenitor, but this was the first time he’d ever seen it. An arm and a leg would honestly be a bargain to study it in depth. The things he would be able to do with this… Studying a random curio here and there couldn’t even begin to compare to what he could learn here.

He came upon a pair of doors set into either side of the hall that seemed to lead to different hallways—were the doors there in case of flooding? The airlock would also be explained by that—and realized that he had no idea where Baiheng had gone. He paused for a moment, looking between the doors and the hallway in front of him, before he decided that Baiheng would have stopped if she’d changed directions.

Nonetheless, “Baiheng?” he called out as he slowly started walking forward again.

“This way!” her disembodied voice called from ahead.

Baiheng was waiting for him at the end of the hallway, not that far away from where the doors had been. Behind her was another glass door set in a metal frame. She tossed him a grin as she came into view. “It’s sure something, huh?”

He nodded wordlessly, his brain buzzing with so many questions and theories and observations that he didn’t even know where to begin. The Vidyadhara were notorious tight-lipped about their technology, but Yingxing absolutely had to know.

[starshifter]

redoing everything because i fucked up something major in the second scene 👍i love writing 🙃

[starshifter]

i realized i never put any sort of update here after posting. yes, im already 20k into another piece. no, there will be nothing posted any time soon. its a prologue to a main piece that needs to be posted first to avoid spoiling the main fic. its also shaping up to be another monster. worse than ftbs. so rip me

why am i writing it in this order then? because i have been craving the chance to write yingxing and proper hcq and im finally fulfilling my dream lol

so uhhh sorry? anyone willing to stick around for however long it takes me to next post anything, you're the real mvps

(feel free to come bug me anyways. i like answering questions, and i can probably be persuaded to share things with a little encouragement lol)

[starshifter]

Warmth at my Fingertips

Stelle and Firefly go on their glacier diving adventure.

Firefly/Stelle, pre-femslash

Word count: 21,259

Rating: T

No real warnings for this one, unless bad jokes need to be warned for

Ao3 link here

[starshifter]

Y’all probably are here for my notes on Stelle and the writing, but ha! I have fooled you! This contains notes on giant glacier worms!!! (the normal notes are after that lol. I just wanna nerd for a bit. Lemme dh kinnie or whatever the kids are now calling it lol)

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Welcome to the notes on my giant, fucked up, scientifically impossible, super worm 💖💖💖

First up, I have based it on these four real life worms:

Alitta virens (sand worm) Mesenchytraeus solifugus (ice worm) Eulagisca gigantea (my favorite fucked up antarctic worm. It’s so ugly <3) Eunice aphroditois (bobbit worm)

Follow the links to see images if you wish to. Esp the fucked up antarctic worm💖

I did attempt some science though, because this is who I am.

The worms have two life stages: larva and adult.

The larva are born in the water column below the ice. They float around feeding on whatever they can find (including each other) until they grow additional body segments to assist with their next life stage. Then they will swim up to the ice. Not a lot of them make it to this stage. The ones that do are able to safely burrow up into the ice and escape most potential predators.

The worms that successfully burrow into the ice have reached the adult phase. The larva don’t have the jaws for burrowing or the antifreeze secretions to help keep them from freezing in place and provide additional help with tunneling. By this point, they will also have started growing their bristles. Their bristles help them propel themselves through the slick ice or water and also contain various sensory nodes so they get a degree of sensation across their body.

They do not possess eyes and instead rely on vibrations (as a sort of mixed sound and touch sensation) and chemoreceptors (smell, basically) to help them sense their surroundings.

The adult worms will continue growing throughout their life, which is quite long if nothing else eats them. Sizes of over 200 feet (61 meters) have been recorded.

Once in the ice, their diet expands. While the larva are omnivourous and feed on plankton, the adults gain an additional source of food through their burrowing. The ice itself. …Okay, not quite. What they’re actually feeding on is the plentiful number of ice worms burrowed into the glacier. It’s kinda like filter feeding with baleen whales. Except it’s a giant bristle worm through ice.

But that’s not all! These worms are also fantastic ambush predators because of how fast they move and their ability to hide in the ice! (Don’t talk to me about how glaciers are on land, not water. Everyone in this fic is using the wrong term because they are unaware there’s more ocean underneath them than land during this stretch of their journey.)

“But Des!” I hear you yelling. “It doesn’t make sense to have these worms use two separate hunting methods that both employ different strategies! Surely it should specialize in whatever strategy got it the most food?” And you’re right. It should. But this is my made up space worm, so I’m saying it gets to do both. Mostly because I needed a reason for it to attack Firefly and Stelle and opportunistic predator that will eat literally anything worked best for that. Filter feeders tend to be gentle giants. (To be honest, predators tend to be pretty chill too, but this one is hungry, so chill mode is turned firmly off.) And anyways, it’s more of an opportunistic ambush predation thing. They have to dip down to the water to breathe, so if there’s something nearby, they can grab it. They mainly feed by tunneling through the ice. They just are not picky worms and won’t pass up anything that might be edible. So they’ve kept some adaptations that help them snatch the occasional additional meal up.

To be quite honest, I originally wanted to find a way to work chemosynthesis into the giant ice worm (did you know there are bristle worms in the deep sea that live off of methane clathrate deposits? so fucking cool), but I just couldn’t reconcile it with the ambush predation. Those both need different methods of digestion and different bacteria living in symbiosis in the worm’s gut. So I scraped it even though it made me sad. Then I had the filter feeding idea (which tracks with the giant size as all the largest organisms in the ocean are filter feeders!) and decided to combine that instead with opportunistic ambush predation when they go back down into the ocean in order to breath.

Oh yeah, did I mention that they don’t breathe air? Nope, they get their oxygen needs met in the water, where they can directly absorb the oxygen better. They do get some oxygen in their burrowing, as they melt and crunch the ice, but it’s not enough to sustain them. Think of them a bit like reverse seabirds, diving into the ice to hunt while living and breathing in the water. Or uh. Reverse whales. That would make more sense, huh?

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Congrats, you survived worm notes!! Now you can have the normal ones lmao

-

I feel like my writing style for Stelle POV is so different from Blade… The curse of trying to convey personality through prose… Hopefully, it isn’t too off putting to have all those sentence fragments in there…

The way I see it, the TB is pretty stiff and nonvocal while around strangers. Once they start feeling more comfortable though, they get really weird really fast. They have a lot of personality locked up under that blank face.

I think it’s accurate to compare the Trailblazer to a pet that’s always getting into things that it shouldn’t and then chewing on them.

Also they strike me as the type to be really stupid, right up until they pull something genius out of their hat. They’ll eat a bolt of fabric, completely fail to read a room before making a joke, and then turn around and win a logic debate. They’re a fascinating paradox to me. How does a brain like this even work? I doubt I’ve come close to accurately capturing it, but it was kinda fun to try. I don’t think I’ll do extended TB POV again tho. Once was enough of a struggle…

Also they’re like…weirdly detached in some ways? Like they don’t quite seem to realize that reality is reality. They can take things seriously, for sure, but they often don’t at the same time. Think of the time they fell into Penacony and were smiling as they fell until they realized they were going to crash land. It took them until just before the impact to even consider an impact was coming. Maybe it was just cause they were dreaming…but I dunno. Penacony seemed very similar to reality in a lot of ways. It’s odd, and I imagine it has to do with the Stellaron and its own reality bending ways. But it does make writing them a bit challenging…

Minor tweaks to Stelle’s characterization done after Amphoreus came out. I am still saying this is set before Amphoreus though. Mostly cause I don’t know what all is going to happen there lol. Good thing the Amphoreus mission happened and got me to go digging back through Stelle’s origins a bit. I was utterly blindsided about the complete memory loss over Blade straight up telling her that she used to run with the Stellaron Hunters. Turned out, I had completely forgotten that Kafka Spirit Whispered her to not think about her past. Whoops. Good thing I fixed that, huh? (damn you shitty memory…)

My friend’s comment on Stelle’s attempt at a pickup line was just “girl failure” and I laughed so hard y’all, so I’m sharing it lmao

Everyone realizes that Shingen Crash is just Genshin Impact, yeah? It’s always been a silly little headcanon of mine that that’s the gacha the TB plays on their phone. ….also it’s the only other gacha I know anything about lol Edit: so I have Silver Wolf now (I finally have all the Stellaron Hunters!!! Finally!!! Now I gotta e6 em somehow lmao rip), and they seem?? To be playing?? Star rail????? I can’t deal with the reality bending consequences of this, so I’m sticking with it being genshin. Fuck this

So I found myself faced with the question of what the fuck Firefly’s cape even was. I came to the conclusion that it was the burn off of a stable fusion reaction used to power her suit. I have no idea if that would work, but this is space opera, so maybe they have a way to do such things, idk.

Can everyone tell that I didn’t have Firefly when I wrote the first fic? I would have put her super special awesome battle mode into the Stellaron fight complete with her sick ass swords. All I had to go on was her boss fight and occasionally borrowing her from other people… Thank you Firefly for coming home this time around. Now I just have to get Silver Wolf and my collection will be complete… At least until they add Elio to the game (unless he’s actually that cat lol)

I’ve corrected Stelle’s texting habits. You’re welcome. Now she actually types like a person her age (I’m assuming young college age?) should ….would I get in legal trouble if I actually put the stickers into the fic? Like, I’m describing them and all, but what about just adding them? I can put their description into their display name for the screen readers

Is Stelle a robot fucker? Why are you even asking me this when the answer is obvious? Next question

More fantastic commentary from my friend: “she doesn’t even know the effervescence of snails” when Stelle was trying to think of something slow moving lmaoooo

Stelle strikes me as the “I take all of my emotions and bury them down deep and then deploy humor to cope” kind of person. As such, she has come to lean on her identity as the “funny one” to interact with the world and has crises if people don’t seem to find her funny, which in turn makes her try even harder to be funny. Also, it means she avoids dealing with the rougher emotions that she should be dealing with, like grief. She’s not ignoring Culseva’s death on purpose, this is just how she’s learned to function. I did touch on her form of grief a little bit, but as you saw, most of this fic she just avoids thinking about it, and when she does think about it, she shies away pretty quickly.

Honestly, I have so many hang ups about Stelle’s characterization. Writing this fic was somewhat of a nightmare. The first thing that really made me think that I’d gotten her character right was when she ate the wrapper. That’s a sign of a great character right there lmaooo. Like, look, I just assumed the non-food items, like toys, were something Stelle would just play with, not eat. Until we got the new area of the Express. And they let me dead ass eat that fabric experiment DH put in the fridge. Now I fully believe that the TB eats all the consumables. I don’t know how they aren’t dead. Clearly, being a Stellaron comes with some perks. Also! Stelle! You’re not allowed to judge people for what they eat when you are LITERALLY eating a WRAPPER!! WTF!!! (I also want it known that this was written before we had the option to make the TB literally eat soil. That just further supported my choices here)

Stelle is both the comedy device and full of so much untapped angst. Luckily, I—your local angst and humor connoisseur—am here to tap that ass. I mean it. Tap it. (is my ace ass even allowed to make this joke…?)

Someone asked me about bathroom usage on the main fic, so I have explicitly addressed this issue in this fic. You’re welcome, random commenter

Oh, I also want to call Stelle the fuck out for saying Firefly was cool for having “calculations” when I KNOW she would call DH a lame nerd for saying the exact same thing lmao

Okay, so I know I didn’t get into who the OCs in this fic were at all, but Sethre and Velthur were the other two OCs I came up with who were accompanying Himeko and March over to Suthi (the other planet) to negotiate for Huth’s sovereignty and also emergency aid in the face of their Stellaron Crisis. Sethre is the Rasna (mountain goat person) and Velthur is the Ziva (vampire bat person. Yes, you should just be picturing a katakan from witcher 3 or something similar. Once again, this planet system was originally designed for a witcher fic I never wrote lol). I did not give them personalities because I never actually did anything with them other than go, huh there’s probably people alongside March and Himeko. Wonder who they are?

DH blatantly lying about Blade because he’s making excuses for the murder attempts lol. Also getting called out for his crush on an old man lmao. Go Stelle go! Bully those idiots!

So there are two ways they let you interact with Kafka in game, either you hate her and want her to leave you alone, or you seem to miss her in some capacity and care about her. I tried to show that the Trailblazer was experiencing some degree of both of these emotions, but ultimately leaned in the direction of missing her. I just have a lot of thoughts and feeling and, most importantly, questions about these two and their relationship. I personally like to think that the SH operative who recruited Kafka was actually the Trailblazer and that’s who Elio was giving those orders to in Kafka’s final lore story. And from there they got really close as they went through a lot of life and death situations together before they recruited Firefly. The Trailblazer came to be a bit of a light to Kafka, who came to be a bit of guardian to them in turn. Which is why Kafka is willing to joke around with Stelle in a way she wouldn’t with anyone else :sob: And then something happened and the Trailblazer either died or chose to give up their life in pursuit of their wish. I could be completely wrong of course, but I like to think I’m not lol. But I’m not wrong that they have some sort of special bond! Kafka clearly cares about the Trailblazer!!!

Silver Wolf is only checking in on Firefly and Stelle rather than Blade because she does NOT want to know what going on with the boys. She just knows it’s either murder or sex and she wants no part in either. No, she’d rather chill with her old bestie, Stelle. Even if she’s third wheeling two people who aren’t dating again. She hadn’t missed that. She’s too ace for this (am I projecting on sw? Yes, and no one can stop me).

I like to believe that Stelle’s ‘reality is a game’ jokes are actually leftover from her friendship with Silver Wolf. SW was the one making those jokes and Stelle just absorbed them silently and started regurgitating them once she was reborn As such, firefly’s face that she couldn’t see was actually more along the lines of ‘god there’s two of them now,’ than anything else lol

Be honest with me, how obvious is it that I only had a plan for the first section of their glacier adventure and the worm fight and the rest was just me going ‘oh fuck I have so much empty space and nothing to fill it with because I’m hampered by the timeline I put out in the main fic for their relationship uhhh fuck ok time skip’

I feel like I sort of made Stelle a helpless princess for most of this fic…. It’s not what I was going for; Firefly is just OP. So I made sure to correct that in the worm fight. She’s a BAMF I swear

I was thinking of having them bring the ceiling down on the worm to defeat it, but honestly, predators aren’t likely to stay and fight if they get injured. That worm decided they were NOT worth the effort to eat and skedaddled. Good for it. I didn’t want to kill it anyways.

I like to think that Stelle finally figuring out what was going on with her emotions went a little something like this: Oh gee, I miss Firefly so much. She’s been gone for one hour and I think I’m moping about not seeing her pretty eyes anymore. I should talk to March. “Hey, March, scale of 1-10, how weird is it that I want to stare at Firefly’s eyes for forever?” “You have a crush on Firefly!?” “What? No, crushes are when you want to spend forever with a person and touch them lots and they give you butterflies and…. Fuck, I have a crush on Firefly. FUCK. What do I do now???” “Uhh, ask her out, duh. She’s totally into you.” And then Stelle asks her out over text after a few days of deliberation because Stelle remains a social disaster 🤦 Luckily, Firefly is also not great with normal, so she is perfectly fine with this lol

Also, since this didn’t really get covered in the main fic and Blade didn’t have all the facts, Firefly wasn’t always around in the Express because she needed to take the time to just sit in her armor to manage her condition. She didn’t want to wander around the Express as Sam though, so she stayed in her room for those times. Stelle and March would come hang out with her though, so she wasn’t completely alone there. I personally imagine that Sam holds Firefly in a sort of stasis condition, so her ELS doesn’t advance when she’s in it. But she can’t live in it constantly, and those bursts of being a normal person cut down on her lifespan. Of course, once ELS starts affecting you, being in the armor becomes extremely painful. So staying in there to prolong your life really sucks. It’s a shitty situation overall. Please cure Firefly faster Elio 😭😭 (Honestly, I did a lot of guesswork on how Firefly and her armor work… We really don’t have that many details. So I get to take creative liberties. Wahoo! My town now.)

I’m using the term AstralNet for their version of internet (I feel like maybe I heard this used before? But I can’t find evidence of it so??). It just sounds more appropriate for their universe. I’m sure it’s an IPC invention and just as shitty as our current version of the internet.

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Bonus content: have some cut scenes from the first draft I was really sad to lose

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In memoriam: one of my favorite scenes of the fic that did not survive edits after I looked up proper references of how Firefly flies (I thought it was the leg jets honestly rip me) 😭😭

“Piggyback ride!” Stelle immediately demanded, sticking her arms out like a child asking to be picked up.

“That is a good solution, yes[[ ….except her jets are actually on her back. She can’t fly if stelle is there. Damn it. My gay moment :singletear:]].” Firefly turned and crouched down in front of her.

Stelle gleefully hopped on her back and wrapped her legs around her middle. The section right above her waist was perfect for her bare legs—there were barely any of the more poky plates there. It was all smooth, black metal that burned pleasantly against her skin.

She hooked her chin over the top of Firefly’s helmet. She had to crunch up a little bit to fit, but it wasn’t too bad—she just draped herself forward a bit more. Firefly’s giant shoulder things made excellent hand grips too. It was like Firefly was made to give piggyback rides.

“Onward!” she called, raising one fist towards the sky. She considered summoning her lance for a second, just to really complete the picture. Maybe if March had been there to get a photo. Could she convince Firefly to do this again after they took care of the Stellaron? Maybe she could get Mr. Yang and Dan Heng to do the same and they could try jousting. That would be awesome.

Firefly stood up smoothly, giving no sign that she noticed Stelle’s weight on her back. That was hot. Not in a weird way. Just—strong people were hot. Yeah. March agreed with her. Dan Heng probably did too, he just was too cowardly to admit it.

Stelle drummed her fingers along Firefly’s shoulder things as they started down the crack in the ice, enjoying the little bursts of heat through her gloves She hoped Firefly was right about finding a way out. There weren’t any signs of an opening in the ceiling— annoyingly, since the split ran so far up—but maybe they would get lucky further in.

Another RIP to an immature joke that got cut once I realized that her leg was more of a vent with maybe some stabilizing secondary capabilities than her main source of flight

Firefly settled more comfortably on the ground. “The ice seems stable again. Perhaps this would be a good time to do a bit more work on my thruster.”

“Heh, thruster,” Stelle muttered under her breath.

“I didn’t catch that.”

“No, nothing! Let’s do some puzzles!”

[starshifter]

alrighty. i got a rough first draft together for worm fic. it's not great and will need lots of edits (some scenes aren't....quite finished yet). but thats about the same state ftbs' first draft was in lol. its currently 18k. lets see how long edits take 👍

[starshifter]

every single time i come across a typo that escaped edits on ftbs another piece of my soul dies

[starshifter]

further writing updates: worm fic is kicking my ass👍 why the fuck did I try to write a whole thing from Stelle's pov.... Her characterization is so inconsistent cause they give you choices and shit.... Now *I* have to make choices and shit and come to terms with the fact that I'll only match some people's play styles for the Trailblazer. Ugh

(It doesn't help that I keep coming up with ideas for the super hero au instead of focusing on writing this mini-project. oops)

[starshifter]

hold up, wait, stop the presses! I missed something! thank you .25 playback speed

that's dan heng with a cloudhymn construct of cloud piercer, yeah?

now, he clearly gets the full thing back at some point because we see him with cloud piercer in the boss fight, but it does seem like he's going to be using his cloudhymn to fight for a bit! good call!

i'm both devastated and proud lmao. good job getting better at your cool magic powers, boy! but clooooooud pierceeeeer 😭😭😭what did you do with in the meantime dan heng i need to know. please tell me youre still taking care of its pieces. this matters so much to me

Hi, it's me, the not-anymore-anon who asked about Amphoreus trailers. I, too, have been full of far too much glee about Blade's two second appearance lol, but what I wanted to ask about is actually poor Cloud-Piercer! Because you wrote about how it's so important to Dan Heng as something that enabled him to live his life in freedom (which, yeah), so when I saw Cloud-Piercer snapped in half I really cringed and instantly remembered that scene where Dan Heng thanks Blade.

So, my question, or I should say questions: Any particular opinions about it? Is the Dan Heng in your head low-key screaming about it lol? And what do you think that might mean in canon? Like, is Dan Heng going to use more cloudhymn for the rest of Amphoreus by necessity? Which I admittedly would like to see. The Home Decor event has proven that he's been getting more comfortable with coudhymn (which was my headcanon, so it was nice to have that confirmed). Also, Cloud-Piercer is pretty definitely getting fixed up sooner or later, I should think, but who'll do it? Is that how we're finally getting our renheng reunion, because Dan Heng aks Blade for help? And what will Blade think of that? (Side-note: Is it just me, or does the probably-red ribbon Dan Heng used to temporarily fix up Cloud-Piercer look like Blade's lol?)

As you can see, I have been extremely overthinking this lmao, but Hoyo probably didn't snap Dan Heng's emotional support weapon for no reason, so I can't help but wonder. And then I wondered if you had any thoughts about it you might want to share!

hello, hello! nice to see you again! and if you have been overthinking things, i do not even want to know what the word for whatever crack cocaine state my brain went on at the two seconds of my fixation being on screen...

i.....may have uhhh.... yelled some not so nice things at not!kevin when i saw cloud piercer. ahahah? (wait fuck whats his name again? uhhh... phainon! right! i knew that. ive definitely not been calling him kevin this whole time even though i dont know who kevin is)

I am REALLY hoping they do a little time rollback and fix Cloud Piercer right up again because if it is broken I might actually start crying. That's one of the few pieces of Yingxing left and he can't make anymore because he's fucked up his hands as Blade 😭😭😭 Time reversal does seem like the most likely outcome of them breaking it though. They'd have to redo his animations if they actually destroyed Cloud Piercer, and I can't see them doing that.

....also i'm not actually sure what red ribbon you're talking about? i have mostly been looping the stellaron hunters, to be perfectly honest (if that part of the video ends up with the most played thing, know that it's my fault lol). are you talking about this by any chance?

Cause cloud piercer has always had that wrap. (i have not looked up reference images of cloud piercer multiple times. why would i do that ahahaha....ha... i also hold zero head canons about yingxing putting that red wrap there to remind df of him. seeing as most of the other instances of red on df's design are also yingxing related. earings... bracer's rope...)

you can sort of see it here? it's in the texture on the haft he's still holding. (mostly you can see the sound of me sobbing hysterically about cloud piercer, actually)

I would imagine that Dan Heng is not happy about this, honestly. Cloud Piercer is one of the few things he's had since he left jail, and he built his life in freedom around his ability to use it so effectively. Like, we think of him like an archivist (or at least I do? does the rest of the fandom also do that?), but he's technically a guard. He was a guard on all the IPC ships he boarded too. That's basically his career path. Even if he has no memory of Yingxing tied to the spear, it's definitely something precious to him. We know that he spends a lot of time keeping it polished up and such, so having it broken like this... I'm sure he's internally screaming, yes. Even if he's too emotionally dead outside to externally scream lol (i should stop bullying him, he's grieving his emotional support weapon rip)

To be honest, I think they snapped Cloud Piercer for one very simple reason: they needed to establish that not!kevin is OP. So they fucked up both the boys. That's it. And that's also why I think they'll give us a simple (lol) solution like turning back time to fix it. I don't expect it to be broken for very long in the course of the story.

Dan Heng cleaning with cloudhymn honestly reduced me to tears I was laughing so hard. He tries SO hard to be the one with the brain cell, and then he goes and does shit like that. God, i love him. But no, I don't really think we'll be seeing much Cloudhymn from him. Not unless we can get him back to his full Vidyadhara state. He does seem to be working to improve his ability to use it while playing at human, but I doubt he'll be relying on it in combat. You don't want to use a weapon you can't trust. His control and power seems to be greatly enhanced when he has his horns out, but otherwise, nah. Cloud Piercer or bust.

God, I want Blade in the story again so so so so much, but I don't think we'll see him on Amphoreus. (They're likely saving the Renheng reunion for a future Xianzhou update as that's where their story is centered.) We MIGHT see the Stellaron Hunters outside of Amphoreus helping the others, but I highly doubt we'll see them on the planet itself. Largely, because I'm not sure they could even get to Amphoreus without the help of a memokeeper. Maybe Elio could get around that with his future knowledge, but I doubt.

I do hold some hope that we might get some flashbacks from the Trailblazer remembering their time with the Stellaron Hunters though. It's probably not gonna happen, but they were in the trailer in conjunction with the Trailblazer, and I live in hope, okay? I desperately want to know what Kafka and the Trailblazer were to each other. Is she actually the deadbeat mom? I must know.

[starshifter]

Hi, it's me, the not-anymore-anon who asked about Amphoreus trailers. I, too, have been full of far too much glee about Blade's two second appearance lol, but what I wanted to ask about is actually poor Cloud-Piercer! Because you wrote about how it's so important to Dan Heng as something that enabled him to live his life in freedom (which, yeah), so when I saw Cloud-Piercer snapped in half I really cringed and instantly remembered that scene where Dan Heng thanks Blade.

So, my question, or I should say questions: Any particular opinions about it? Is the Dan Heng in your head low-key screaming about it lol? And what do you think that might mean in canon? Like, is Dan Heng going to use more cloudhymn for the rest of Amphoreus by necessity? Which I admittedly would like to see. The Home Decor event has proven that he's been getting more comfortable with coudhymn (which was my headcanon, so it was nice to have that confirmed). Also, Cloud-Piercer is pretty definitely getting fixed up sooner or later, I should think, but who'll do it? Is that how we're finally getting our renheng reunion, because Dan Heng aks Blade for help? And what will Blade think of that? (Side-note: Is it just me, or does the probably-red ribbon Dan Heng used to temporarily fix up Cloud-Piercer look like Blade's lol?)

As you can see, I have been extremely overthinking this lmao, but Hoyo probably didn't snap Dan Heng's emotional support weapon for no reason, so I can't help but wonder. And then I wondered if you had any thoughts about it you might want to share!

hello, hello! nice to see you again! and if you have been overthinking things, i do not even want to know what the word for whatever crack cocaine state my brain went on at the two seconds of my fixation being on screen...

i.....may have uhhh.... yelled some not so nice things at not!kevin when i saw cloud piercer. ahahah? (wait fuck whats his name again? uhhh... phainon! right! i knew that. ive definitely not been calling him kevin this whole time even though i dont know who kevin is)

I am REALLY hoping they do a little time rollback and fix Cloud Piercer right up again because if it is broken I might actually start crying. That's one of the few pieces of Yingxing left and he can't make anymore because he's fucked up his hands as Blade 😭😭😭 Time reversal does seem like the most likely outcome of them breaking it though. They'd have to redo his animations if they actually destroyed Cloud Piercer, and I can't see them doing that.

....also i'm not actually sure what red ribbon you're talking about? i have mostly been looping the stellaron hunters, to be perfectly honest (if that part of the video ends up with the most played thing, know that it's my fault lol). are you talking about this by any chance?

Cause cloud piercer has always had that wrap. (i have not looked up reference images of cloud piercer multiple times. why would i do that ahahaha....ha... i also hold zero head canons about yingxing putting that red wrap there to remind df of him. seeing as most of the other instances of red on df's design are also yingxing related. earings... bracer's rope...)

you can sort of see it here? it's in the texture on the haft he's still holding. (mostly you can see the sound of me sobbing hysterically about cloud piercer, actually)

I would imagine that Dan Heng is not happy about this, honestly. Cloud Piercer is one of the few things he's had since he left jail, and he built his life in freedom around his ability to use it so effectively. Like, we think of him like an archivist (or at least I do? does the rest of the fandom also do that?), but he's technically a guard. He was a guard on all the IPC ships he boarded too. That's basically his career path. Even if he has no memory of Yingxing tied to the spear, it's definitely something precious to him. We know that he spends a lot of time keeping it polished up and such, so having it broken like this... I'm sure he's internally screaming, yes. Even if he's too emotionally dead outside to externally scream lol (i should stop bullying him, he's grieving his emotional support weapon rip)

To be honest, I think they snapped Cloud Piercer for one very simple reason: they needed to establish that not!kevin is OP. So they fucked up both the boys. That's it. And that's also why I think they'll give us a simple (lol) solution like turning back time to fix it. I don't expect it to be broken for very long in the course of the story.

Dan Heng cleaning with cloudhymn honestly reduced me to tears I was laughing so hard. He tries SO hard to be the one with the brain cell, and then he goes and does shit like that. God, i love him. But no, I don't really think we'll be seeing much Cloudhymn from him. Not unless we can get him back to his full Vidyadhara state. He does seem to be working to improve his ability to use it while playing at human, but I doubt he'll be relying on it in combat. You don't want to use a weapon you can't trust. His control and power seems to be greatly enhanced when he has his horns out, but otherwise, nah. Cloud Piercer or bust.

God, I want Blade in the story again so so so so much, but I don't think we'll see him on Amphoreus. (They're likely saving the Renheng reunion for a future Xianzhou update as that's where their story is centered.) We MIGHT see the Stellaron Hunters outside of Amphoreus helping the others, but I highly doubt we'll see them on the planet itself. Largely, because I'm not sure they could even get to Amphoreus without the help of a memokeeper. Maybe Elio could get around that with his future knowledge, but I doubt.

I do hold some hope that we might get some flashbacks from the Trailblazer remembering their time with the Stellaron Hunters though. It's probably not gonna happen, but they were in the trailer in conjunction with the Trailblazer, and I live in hope, okay? I desperately want to know what Kafka and the Trailblazer were to each other. Is she actually the deadbeat mom? I must know.

[starshifter]

wow i forgot that asks exist buuuuut do you perhaps have a fav renheng fic?? or, to make it easier, a top 5? or just any recommendations please im starving

also, what is it that i spy with my little eye?? a super hero au??? 👁️🫦👁️

Ah, I haven't read a ton in the fandom actually (the curse of wanting specific characterization and half the fics coming from before we had all the lore we now do *shakes fist at sky*), but I do really love markition's A Promethean Sin, though I don't know if it's ever updating again 😭I don't care if not all the lore is accurate anymore... please come back I love you you're so sexy .....maybe if I can convince enough additional people to send love to the fic it'll update again?

You could also look through my bookmarks, though I'll admit I haven't gone back over those in a while, and I know at least some of them were added before I even got to Blade in game lmao

.........now, ok, look, see, I AM working on worm fic, BUT I was also thinking about Firefly's whole Sam identity thing and how it could lead to some great identity porn and that, of course, made me immediately think of super hero AUs and then suddenly I had all these ideas for what a super villain Stellaron Hunters vs super heroes Astral Express world could look like and-- Look, it's on the list of things I want to work on. It's haunting my thoughts. I don't know what's going on there yet, but something is gonna get written, even if it's just a short thing.

[starshifter]

actually, i think i understated this. let me try again

Quick question, are you up to date on the Amphoreus trailers? Because something happened in the latest one that reminded me of something in FtBS (which is amazing!!) and I wanted to ask you about it, but didn't just want to drop a spoiler into your asks.

oh, i am! i am following along very eagerly and have maybe watched the most recent one a few too many times just for those two seconds of stellaron hunters lol