#and i know the characterisation was so very specific to this one fic i can't just pick a random johnlock/00q fic to read next

[moinsbienquekaworu]

The true pain of reading a good AU is you want more of these specific guys but that characterisation only exists in the one specific fic/series

[thissying]

Any max lore you wish fic writers knew about?

Hi! This turned out to be so much more and yet so much less than you probably wanted to know! If anyone feels like adding on or if you have specific questions, go ahead.

I'm not sure why you chose me for this but let me (finally) give it a go. I have to say though, that it's been ages since I've read fic (time issues and I've had my own one on my mind and I've deluded myself into thinking I will actually write it and I can't read fic because then I will lose the tiny bit of confidence and incentive I may have) so I'm not sure I know Max lore that is commonly missing from fic or that writers don't know about and should. So I'll just throw some things out there.

There are simple facts - favourite food, favourite music etc. - that can be found in most interviews (this one is 3 years old but covers that quite a bit). There's more in-depth Max lore in Whatever It Takes and Anatomy of a Champion (I don't know if you can find that subtitled anywhere though).

This is not so much lore but for young/early Max characterisation, I think if you're Dutch and you've managed to catch his early Peptalk interviews, it's obvious he's been outspoken but also has had a great sense of humour since very early on.

I don't know if it's interesting for writers but because sometimes people write Max as if he'd been a friendless loner until he met Daniel (or still is except for Daniel): he's been best friends with Stan Pex his entire life, the boy who he saw driving a kart when he was 4 years old which made him go: I want that, too. And then Jos and Stan's dad started working together and had 3 Pex kids and Max in their kart team. One of them, Jorrit, is now married to Max's aunt (Sophie's sister).

The one I found pretty shocking for a kid was that he was 11 years old when he saw a 19 year old fellow karter (Thomas Knopper) have an accident and pass away on the track.

On a brighter note. In the 'oh really, Max?' category. In the end of August 2017 episode of Peptalk, he was asked about hanging out with other drivers and Daniel in particular and he said that no, they don't hang out. He prefers hanging out with his oldest best friends. He sees him enough at the track already, you know? And then there's this picture from a few weeks before.

Max and Martin Garrix lore. In 2014 Max won the Young Talent Award that was supposed to be presented to him by Martijn but Max was in a taxi in England at the time and the live-feed kept disconnecting. They were in touch a bit after that and then they spontaneously ran into each other one time while on holiday at Ibiza and they hit it off right away ("he's also fairly normal, like me, no crazy stuff or situations.") - Formule1, 2023/2024 issue

And not just Max-specific lore but my pet peeve very important for all F1 fic writers to know: the FIA does doping testing, also during winter-break.

[spideypoolsupremacy]

hello do u have any good spideypool recs :DDD

I assume you mean fics and I have quite a list actually. If you want the whole of it you can go to my bookmarks but here's a few of my absolute favorites

● Paradise (spread out with a butter knife) by Sarah_Sandwich. This one is kind of soulmate au and I usually don't like those but believe me, this is a masterpiece. It has the whole roommates situation and them being idiots and completely oblivious. Anyways, love it.

● Petey and Wade discuss the proper way to go about vigilantism (and maybe they fall in love too) by isaDanCurtisproduction. I love Peter's characterisation in this. Also, identity porn. And it's revealed in such a creative way too! Honestly, as far as I remember this one doesn't have any angst or anything, just an amazing story of Peter and Wade bonding and falling in love.

● you grow up and you lose touch by scarlett_starlett. In this one Peter and Wade raise a baby Miles. I remember seeing it a few times and never reading but once I did I was amazed. The domestic fluff is gold. If you want to see Peter and Wade struggling to take care of a child while falling in love in the meantime, this is for you.

● I'm Not That Good at Breathing In by Celebrate_the_irony. Look, all I'm going to say is this. Fake dating. (And it's done so well! The humor is just like it needs to be)

● Half Your Age (Plus Seven) by fancastical. I can't explain it, I just love this one. The author is great at writing dialoge which sounds very natural and funny. Like I love the world they created and honestly would read so much more of specifically this Peter and Wade.

● mariposa by BucketofWater. Wade tries to seduce Peter while using a wiki-how article and it's the most amazing thing ever. It's so funny but at the same time has some great serious scenes and is overall a masterpiece. A must read in my humble opinion.

● The Only One by rupertgayes. In this one Wade is hired to spy on Peter and Peter, being the little shit he is, starts talking to him, knowing Wade's mission, just to mess with him. Of course it doesn't turn out like he would think. I have a lot of love for this one, the concept itself is amazing.

Okay I think I need to stop now before this turns into an essay

I hope you'll enjoy at least some of them!

[fezwearingjellybananas]

❤️💛💚💖 for the Flash 👀

❤: Which character do you think is the most egregiously mischaracterized by the fandom?

I feel like egregiously it has to be Iris. It might be a minority of people but it's 2024 and I still see anti Iris tags when looking for fic from people cross in canon Barry ended up with his wife. Arrow did do the s1 seems to be setting up the comic canon couple and then dropped it, but Westallen was always endgame for Flash, and Candice Patton was excellent in her role.

There's also this thing I have noticed which partly ties into the next question because I very rarely read Barry/Snart fics, but occasionally I do open one and oh Leonard's secretly been a good guy the whole time, this is a rob the rich to feed the poor situation, he's giving back to the community and like, I get it. They don't want to be writing the killed people on screen in his first appearance Snart but his redemption arc predominantly happens over on Legends and then he's not in Central to be dating Barry, but sometimes I do look at the Snart characterisation and wonder if they have ever looked up comics Hartley Rathaway, I think they would like him.

💛: What is a popular ship you just can't get behind, and why?

Barry/Snart I think there have been a few treated Iris badly fics that put me off, so I have to be in a specific mood and I'm very quick to back out if Iris is treated badly, but it won't completely put me off a fic like it used to, it's just not really something I'm super interested in.

Likewise Cisco/Harry. I don't really have a why, it's just not a ship I have any interest in

💚: What does everyone else get wrong about your favorite character?

I think canon is actually the thing to blame, to justify needing Team Flash Barry's own intelligence and maybe competance is sometimes forgotten about. S5 has a good example: "yes we definitely need this new Wells to investigate because the CSI, investigative reporter, detective, and PI we already have here can't do it for some reason"

💖: What is your biggest unpopular opinion about the series?

I don't know if this one is unpopular, but I'm bringing up the ableism in the Flash and the wider Arrowverse again. Compare DeVoe giving himself powers for evil reasons which leaves him needing a wheelchair versus Felicity gets a microchip to fix her paralysis. Breaking their own rules to give Savitar Barry a facial disfigurement versus now reformed Leonard Snart getting to fully regrow an amputated hand. DID is a convient excuse because we can't just bring Caitlin back for s4 with no consequences after what she did in s3. Ignore how we already did the split personalities but one is bad in s3 with Frankie/Magenta. Hartley's going to turn his hearing aids into bombs in s1 then we'll just forget about the tinnitus forever I guess. The mental health care system on Earth-2 is apparently like that and that's normal. I'm sure there's so many more examples.

Thank you!

[Asks]

[faksyan]

Do you have metal gear fanfic recommendations

I have so many ocelhira fics that I like, and I did write more down in my notes while answering this, but I think it's too much for one post, so feel free to ask for more if you ever want to! But here we go.

This is one of my favorites their dynamic in it is great, I love when people give them actual history and it's obvious they've known each other for years. And another from the same author if you don't mind Kaz getting killed. They have so much other mgs stuff as well.

Really like the characterisation and dialogs in this one, it's pretty short, but feels very on-point, especially for Ocelot. Definitely one of the best I've seen.

My really cool mutual has a bunch of ocelhira fics, very fond of the Parasite Kaz au and the one that I sort of indirectly caused (but they ran with it and did so much more)

Nine year gap fic that is part of a series, and all of them are great, but I think this was my favorite.

They get high in this one as they should. Also parasite Kaz, and the way it's written is really creative. Very much one of my favorites.

Great fic by vlasdygoth here on tumblr, who is also an amazing artist, definitely check them out if you haven't before (you probably have if you're ever in the mgs tag)

And at last, Master Miller's Guide to Surviving the 2000s. Can't recommend it enough. First of all, this author's fics are hilarious in general. Second, this specific series also and especially is. The first few are a lot of fun, and the last part is heavily ocelhira and surprisingly serious. Really encourage to look through their other fics too, there's a lot of great stuff in there that I liked a lot.

I tried picking ones where (most) of the plot outweighs the porn but hey, I can always make another list if you want, I have a bunch more. Hope this wasn't TOO much and that I linked everything right. Let me know if you like any of them if you feel like it, I'm always down to listen about ocelhira! Thank you so much for the ask :)

[sionisjaune]

As one of my favourite nico writers (seriously, your characterisation is so on point), what is the sico dynamic like, if it isn't too much trouble? I'm trying to write for them but i just can't seem to pin it down. It probably doesn't help that it's an au where nico doesn't get into f1. I've only got vibes and it's just something about the seb/nico narrative foils and a proxy silver war with seb and nico vs lewis. But seb and lewis are still friends. Maybe. They don't really know. There's a nico shaped hole somewhere.

Hi Anon! Under the cut because I want to give you a good, detailed answer:

You're completely right that Seb and Nico often function as narrative foils, but in a Seb/Nico world, you can't exactly use them that way because they need to stand alone enough that you can actually pair them together. So far, the sico that I've written has always been in the context of sebcedes (heist au, toxic threesome, problematic polyamory), but a good place to start might be describing how I formed the sico dynamics in each of these fics:

In heist au: Seb is immediately (physically) attracted to Nico, despite thinking that he and Nico are on opposite sides. In addition to being attractive, Nico is also annoying, entitled, insincere and enigmatic. Although he doesn't know ii, Seb wants to figure Nico out, crack through the layers of artifice and get to the sincere inside of him. In this universe, Nico is intelligent, obsessive and a little bit mean. He and Seb have common ground here. On the other hand, Nico is more affectionate and more able to access and express his emotions than Seb, although Nico more often weaponizes his emotions, while Seb will hurt people without intending to.

In toxic threesome fic: Girl!seb thinks that she can compete with Nico for Lewis's affection, when this is not the case because Lewis is gay. This is more of a Seb experiences brocedes from the inside fic, but there are sico moments nonetheless. Seb is often cracking jokes and Nico is shutting those jokes down--he is no fun from Seb's point of view and takes himself too seriously. Seb thinks he's a poor match for Lewis--he speaks to her in German to lock Lewis out of the dynamic and weaponizes her against Lewis*. Really, he'd rather have sex with Lewis alone, but he could probably be friends with Seb in this universe if he were able to get over Lewis's closetedness.

*A key seb/nico distinction for me is that Nico's intentions are deliberate where Seb's are abstract. Nico knows what he wants and what he is doing in order to get it, and Seb's wants are more felt than known and he follows intuitive, instinctual paths to get there. Nico is less able to feel what is right, so he plans specific goal-oriented courses of action, whereas Seb will just feel out the actions that seem to be leading him towards what he wants. So when Seb balks at the idea that Nico would be hurting Lewis, it's because he can't imagine ever intending to hurt someone--but he might very well do it without specifically meaning to.

In problematic polyamory ficlets: Seb and Nico are directly competing for Lewis's attention as his partners, and hate each other because of the characteristics that they each lack that the other can provide for Lewis. Nico is all about leisure and luxury and sensual feeling where Seb is about experience and earnest emotion and commitment. They both love Lewis enough to understand that he wouldn't pick horrible partners, and that there must be something redeeming about the other that they just don't understand.

I think the takeaway here is that sico often involves a kind of competition between the two of them and the shadow of Lewis. In a context where Nico never got into racing, I imagine the competition intensifies--Seb can be something for Lewis that Nico can't. Nico enjoys a closeness to Lewis that Seb never will as his competitor. Maybe they fall together while trying to get Lewis's attention. That's just my sebcedes angle though! In a pure sico situation, they might find common ground in terms of intelligence, obsession and passion. They would love talking to each other because both are very linguistically/conversationally intelligent, and both would enjoy the other's affection once they learned to be sincere about it.

Finally, if you haven't read Everybody Wants to Rule the World by sico scholar @kritischetheologie then you're missing a key sico source text.

Good luck with your fic Anon and thank you for the kind words!!!

[decepti-thots]

(I’ll preface by saying: huge JP fan who has no problem with people not liking it)

Anyways I’m actually super curious…

How are most JP fics “boring”? 🤔 I’ve always found their dynamic to be more entertaining than most, given the dichotomy of their characters.

So I’m curious as to how you’ve wound up at “boring” of all the possible reasons to dislike it. 🤣

I'm going to be a bit blunter here than I usually would be on the topic, as I was directly asked. So I'll cut the uh… negativity? I guess? For those who prefer not to see folks talk shit about a ship they like, lol.

First and foremost Jazz/Prowl is basically just… essentially made up and purely based on fanon inventions/additions, and made up fanon stuff is usually not of real interest to me without a very strong hook somewhere in the actual canon material. It is 99% fanon by volume that draws on little to no canon material of any kind but just... years of fanon, reproducing itself and mutating almost like a fanfic game of telephone, all developed in fandom echo chambers. Which renders the characters in the vast majority of fic a) largely unrelated to any canon material I like in a meaningful sense and b) tbqh, the kind of generic stuff found in a lot of typical, large dudeslash fandoms where the characters are… they're Dudeslash Fandom Archetypes with a gloss of paint on top, you know? People come in, look for which character in a fandom fits their favourite m/m trope the most, and then squish the character down to fit into that pre-existing archetype.

And the thing is, J/P has historically made a certain kind of sense for this, because the appeal was basically that… they didn't HAVE that much canon material? In the Marvel G1 comics, they have a little more specific characterisation and canon, but the G1 cartoon is not exactly a character exploration piece ANYWAY, and for Prowl especially he is a blank slate you can functionally project an OC onto. Which like, that's fine! That makes a lot of sense even if it's not what usually draws me into something.

My issue has become that if I read one more G1-fanon-soup fest mistagged "IDW" I'm gonna scream. I like IDW Prowl (and IDW Jazz too!) for the fact that these characters have specific, strongly delineated canon personalities, arcs and dynamics, and both of these characters- Prowl especially, but both of them!- have like. Things about them which are true, and which J/P fic not only tends to ignore but actively treats in a loooot of cases as somehow Inferior To Our Fanon and something to be "fixed" with idk, the power of Extremely Generic Dudeslash Tropes. I've been in many a fandom with Migratory Dudeslash Fandoms writing fic. J/P is extremely rote to me as a result, if nothing else.

It warrants mentioning that J/P fandom is where one does find a lot of examples of just undeniably racist treatment of Jazz in fic, both the truly inexcusable phonetic accent bullshit and also a lot of bad decisions around tropes. I don't think this is a function of the ship, per se, but that its specific persistence in J/P fandom (bc trust me: this has been a point of criticism for A Long Fucking Time) is in part due to it having this long entrenched fanon-to-fanon game of telephone going on? It would be better to talk about the fandom's issues there outside ship talk so I'll leave it at that, but I can't deny it has not… helped my feelings. TBH. And I know that's where a lot of the resentment you will find in the fandom obviously stems from.

IDK. It's just. It's usually fanfic of itself, you know? J/P largely feels to me, in most cases, like fanfic of fanfic of fanfic, and I come to TF fandom for fanfic of a canon. So. Yeah. Not a fan. At all.

[branmer]

💛💚💜🤍🖤💕🏳️‍🌈 for b5 >:DDD

I want all of them but I am being So Good and not asking for all of them ;_;

for this meme

ooooh excellent choices, and yes you are being so good <333 i am very proud of your restraint

💛<__< >__> i don't know if it's accurate to say i can't get behind them but i'm not really into londo/g'kar. years ago i probably would have been 'fuck yeah londo/g'kar!' but over time ive just come to prefer their relationship as a complicated frenemy situation, i'm not even sure i see g'kar liking londo so much as he understands and pities him and feels a loyalty to him because of their shared history. i'm also increasingly a bit hmmm re sheridelenn but mostly because jms really sucks at writing relationships and the further it went on the more delenn just got slotted into the wife role rip s1 delenn

💚treating neroon's deathbed conversion as legit and not just a political manouvre. that man doesn't have a priestly bone in his body >:( also special mention for chad neroon, a characterisation that has marred many a marcus/neroon fic. and generally any characterisation where neroon gets over his xenophobia too quickly!

💜i will die on the hill that branmer is sexy and evil idk if it's really unpopular in fandom to say neroon is hot but we do periodically get people going 'ew neroon????' so i'm just gonna throw down for my guy 😤😤😤

🤍shakiri i joke, i joke, but more seriously my answer for this is less one specific character and more broadly that i think the entire situation with the castes was probably more complicated than what we see on the show (or the books) and it's interesting that people tend to take unapolagetic villain shakiri as being representative of the caste generally, rather than neroon, who is more ambivalent (while still being a dick haha). i find the whole religious caste = good, warrior caste = bad stuff very reductive especially since we see many in show examples of the religious caste absolutely fucking unhinged. i also think it's v interesting that no one in the warrior caste really put up a fight when shakiri got backstabbed by neroon and defeated by delenn in the starfire wheel. i guess you could put that down to minbari having an intense respect for tradition and ritual but... this is also a caste that just broke a thousand year minbari do not kill minbari rule and idk... it just speaks to something interesting going on behind the scenes with this guys!

🖤delenn, haha. this is probably my most controversial opinion and it's one i've touched on before. i don't think delenn is evil (and disclaimer: she is one of my fave characters), but she is cunning and manipulative and she's prone to letting her own personal biases rule her understanding of a situation which leads to some, uh, interesting choices on her part. basically i don't think delenn is the trustworthy source on the minbari, on her own choices, or on broader issues in the b5 galaxy that she gets treated as by fandom lol. like, for example i don't entirely believe what delenn says about why they had to leave the narn to face the centauri/shadows alone, i think that's just what she told herself to justify the decision. im also, idk, iffy about the whole not ever telling sheridan about her role in the war. i saw a post on here where someone was saying this was her great 'gift' to him and it just... ew. ick. no. fuck no. i understand why she doesn't tell him, but it's not a gift

💕i feel like marcus/neroon gets a bad rap and a lot of people being sniffy about it, but also enough people appreciate it that i can't really call it unpopular exactly so um. hmm. i do, sigh, i do have a growing fondness for neroon/sheridan actually >__> which probably isn't so much unpopular as non-existant apart from your amazing neroon/delenn/sheridan fic. i have a feeling that neroon-as-the-bridge is gonna end up going down the sheridan/neroon route if i write more of it haha

🏳️‍🌈 oh this, this is a tough one haha... tbh... londo i guess? he just comes across very... straight male to me >__> like at most i can see him having a drunken fumble with a friend and thinking nothing of it, but that's it.

thank you for the ask! <33333

[raytorosaurus]

not to get into the philosophy of real person fandom over a random tweet but ngl the brian schechter thing is quite unsurprising to me considering how he has spoken about the music industry in the past and running bands as businesses - remember that 40 year old guys with money do not run in the same online circles as left-leaning teenagers/youth no matter how cool they are skdjfjd. it's probably a pretty logical jump for someone in that generation and wealth bracket to go from profiting off one kind of art to another in a new context, even if we know it's ethically unsound on multiple levels.

the part i don't get is the perhaps overblown emotional response to this news tbh. it's interesting how fandom will fixate so heavily on certain specific non-public figures in the mcr sphere to the point of including them in the band's "narrative" while entirely ignoring others who are presumably equally or more significant. it's based entirely on fandom characterisations i think - i don't just mean in fic but also in the general fandom consciousness, though these two things definitely influence each other. when most people talk or write about brian they're basing like 90% of their information on him off about 15 minutes of screentime in lotms and a vague knowledge of his career trajectory, or off what other fans have said and written about him first.

this isn't me saying "we should stop talking about brian until we know more about him" or "we should learn more about the other people close to the band, not just brian" - more the opposite. i honestly think this is a timely reminder that, although i'd say we can all pretty safely bet that the four guys in mcr are solid dudes worthy of our respect and support, we really truly do not know anything about their personal lives outside the band besides the very little they show us. even within the context of the band we see very little. as a quick and obvious example, can you name four people on mcr's current crew off the top of your head? no? cool, that's totally normal and you absolutely don't have to. just keep it in mind that you can't. no matter how many interviews they do, we see so little of their lives - and they very clearly want it that way. real people aren't fictional characters - like honestly imo if you really want fictional characters, go and read fanfiction about them and consciously create a solid boundary in your mind between those fictional constructs and the real people you don't know and aren't entitled to know. don't let it influence the way you think of the real people, but instead use it as a way to get the narrativising and over-familiarity out of your system if you must. just don't fall into the trap of thinking you really know or understand these guys - it's doing you and them a disservice and can only lead to disappointment. save the sense of connection with the real guys to the music and the live shows in the context of their art and the community they've inspired with it.

i guess my point is i totally understand that we're all emotionally invested in these guys and care about them and feel like we can trust them - i absolutely do too - but i think it's healthier all round to actively remind ourselves how little we know about them every now and then. things like Brian Schechter NFT Boss Reveal are good opportunities to do so. try to avoid that nasty pang of cognitive dissonance when these 40+yo people do something that doesn't match up with the simplified and idealised version of them in your head <3

[batsplat]

adsfdfgjk spuffy are kinda my eventual post s7 endgame and I mostly ship just them, even tho as a lesbian I obviously see the vision w faith/buffy. but I also don’t really read any spuffy fic at all bc I am mostly satisfied with what we got on the show and how it all concluded - clasped hands ingulfed in flames?? the “I love you” “no you don’t” WHO DID IT LIKE THEM. but many fics just want to flat out ignore s5-7, and specifically s6, and there are lots of like time travel aus or spuffy getting together earlier etc. and obviously I am not judging anyone you do you and have fun but that’s not my jam at all. like if there is a spuffy fanfic that mets my super specific expectations I would love to read it but overall I’m fine as is!

and in general this seems to be happening quite a lot when it comes to het pairings for me? like no matter how frustrating/painful some parts of it are, as a whole it makes sense that x and z can’t be together at this point in canon (but maybe they could in the future). maybe it’s bc i gravitate towards more unconventional het pairings and quite a few ppl’s ideas of a happy ending/happy relationship are too white picket fenc-y? perhaps but🤐

right righttttt yeahhhhhh I think a lot of fans like an idea of the relationship that didn't actually happen? to be clear I'm ON BOARD with the spuffy post s7 vision, I don't need to choose between that and buffy/faith in my mind, I'm just... hm, even as someone very anti the idea of redemption equals death, I'm also kinda okay with the idea they can't really find a happy ending with each other? like it's kinda the brevity of that relationship also provided it with meaning in canon, it's two people who did love each other in a weird way and found comfort in each other in a weird way and gravitated around each other and... can that work, can it not, could they ever have made it 'work' in a long-term sense, who knows!! but it's the canon specifically that I'm into rather than kinda... the hypothetical version of the relationship spike and buffy could have had. I wouldn't want any changes to canon!! I couldn't see them get together earlier with each other!! it's very. all power to you lot. do whatever. but to me there's one version of that relationship that works - and it's the one that's the mess it is in canon. spike is a vampire without a soul who falls in love! he has a chip that makes him impotent! he ends up getting a soul and a trigger! he's basically just one big experimental test tube used to explore what identity even means, what behaviour tells you about identity, what the conditions of morality are and so on... buffy dismissed him, then finds herself leaning on him, then eventually finds herself needing to confide in him as she is alienated from her own humanity... I don't know, one thing I've always really loved about buffy as a show is its flexibility, how playful it is with genre and what roles the characters fulfil in a way that still provides consistency in characterisation. I really like how that relationship has a completely different vibe in every single season!! I think spike is kinda uniquely well suited to that flexibility, that malleability of identity, and it's cool! I don't really want something that messes with that!

and yeah big agree on enjoying unconventional het lol. the thing is, right, I consume a fair bit of het (something that sounds a bit weird now I've typed it out but I'm keeping it). part of that is just how I, y'know, like women, which definitely doesn't mean I DON'T engage with plenty of m/m slash but I would quite like stuff to occasionally have women in it? and whichever you slice and dice it, the femslash pickings are just slimmer and often doesn't get produced about characters I'm particularly interested in... or just ends up falling into. weird. boring tropes when people are writing for it. but also het is fun!! I like playing with my het couples, I love doing a gender on them. I like spike and buffy doing a gender!! one of the big things with spike is constantly being emasculated, he's doing weird genders, I'm not saying the het relationship is Actually Not Het but idk I like the gender stuff!! like yes threaten him with those stakes!! straddle that evil vampire!! I'm enough of a romantic to occasionally want my doomed hets to have a happy ending, but like, yeah! don't white picket it!!

[boinin]

hullo, i found you through cassis orange on ao3 (which i absolutely devoured thank you for the food) and i don’t know if you’re willing to answer questions about fic-related things here but i was very curious about the isagi characterization in it. i was very surprised and intrigued to read that he seems to be quite oblivious to bachira’s whereabouts/ mental state, when i usually see the 2 portrayed as attached at the hip and i was wondering if there’s a reason for that and if it might be expanded on. the kunigiri brainrot takes precedence tho, stunning job 🙌

Hey anon! Thanks so much for the lovely comment, I'm glad you enjoyed Cassis Orange so far! I'm currently working on getting a draft of the final chapter done, so—promise—it'll have a conclusion in the near future.

Fic writers love these kind of questions ✨💕 I have so many thoughts rattling around my brain not only about CO Kunigiri, but also all their friends and loved ones. Specifically for Bachira and Isagi, I have plans for a fic within the same universe that would tell their story. I don't know when or if I'll get to it, but there's history there that I'd like to flesh out. For that reason, I'll hold back some detail, but I'll answer comprehensively where I can.

In short, the main reason Isagi has the appearance of being oblivious is 1) time and distance, and 2) he's super preoccupied.

To explain the first, Isagi and Bachira are like old school friends who aren't in contact 24/7 but still easily gel whenever they're together. In my 2034 AU, Isagi lives in Germany, and Bachira was living in Spain until recently—in the last year he returned to Japan after transferring to a local team. That's why he's constantly dropping by Kunigami's izakaya after training.

Before, while in Europe, they saw each other every few months or so. After Bachira moved, there was a lull in contact, then they reconnected again with the reunion and the national team's preparation for the World Cup. That's one factor for why Isagi isn't as attuned to Bachira in CO as he's usually characterised to be. They're still close, but they're not at the forefront of one another's minds like they once may have been. Particularly in Isagi's case.

Secondly, there's friction between Isagi and Bachira because of the way Isagi prioritises things. Now, both of them are on the national team and dream of winning a World Cup—but Isagi's single-minded dedication to his playing career has hurt Bachira in the past and continues to come between them. In essence, Isagi follows the Noel Noa philosophy of, everything you do must be a step to becoming the world's best. He's not as cold about it as Noa, but as the thirty-something year old captain of the national team, his thoughts are attuned to on he and his team's performance in the World Cup. It's likely his last chance, after all. He's still a considerate person, but he's directing most of his attention towards carrying the team to a win... in spite of varying levels of dysfunction across the players' personal lives.

Bachira is in a different headspace—he's thinking beyond the World Cup, which Isagi refuses to do. While I can't say more than that, that's why Bachira seems a little mopey in Kunigami's eyes. The same rift is also why he's so sharp-tongued towards Isagi in chapter 8. Bachira can't help but resent Isagi at that point in their story.

Soooo, basically, lots of stuff going on beyond the ballad of Chigiri and Kunigami. Hope that gives some insight into why I've characterised them that way!

[johaerys-writes]

Have you ever read a fic/headcanon post you liked so much that it influenced your characterization of Patrochilles?

Aah this is such a tough question!! Especially since I've been writing them for so long, and I'm constantly either thinking about them, reading about them, talking about them, looking at art/fic/meta, and like generally being inundated by Patrochilles LOL so it's really hard to know what specific things have influenced me and how much of those characterisations/headcanons are my own.

Even though I love reading fic and I enjoy the occasional meta/headcanon post I see, I can say with a degree of certainty that a lot of how I understand Patrochilles has come either from analysing canon or sort of reading analyses on the Iliad, as well as other ancient works he appears in. Like this is where I draw my inspiration from, mostly. There's a wealth of resources and there are many different works where Achilles appears in and it's fun to sort of pick and choose different elements. The fragments of ancient greek tragedies or the entire tragedies we have where he appears are sometimes brief but they are very interesting distillations of his character and offer unique insights into how he was perceived at the time, and that has really influenced the way I write him.

I am also really inspired by all the gorgeous art I see, this one for example lives rent free in my brain and I feel like it has played a role in how I write young Achilles in general (he's such a silly menace!!) Another one I really love is this one, I think it really cemented the tall and gangly teenage Pat look in my head 🥹

These are only a couple of examples I could think of, but there are many many more that might lurk in the recesses of my brain but I just can't remember them now 😅

[eliotquillon]

16, 17, 33, 36?

16: What is one of your favorite words or phrases to use in writing?

i really like the word 'prepossessing' as a way to describe beauty! Haven't used it in a while, but it used to be one of my most-used adjectives lmao. i also love a good well-timed 'fuck' for emphasis. Phrases is trickier, but i like to use a 'too (something), not (something enough)' structure when doing character studies - i've been writing a lot of witherward fic lately, and a lot of it feels very same-y bc I tend to fall back on it whenever i'm characterising cassia (my beautiful insecure princess....)

17: What trope is your favourite to write?

IDK if it counts as a trope but 'messy blurring the lines between friendship/romance' is UP THERE for me. i find a way to work it into most of what i write tbh. more concretely, i loooove writing fake dating and friends to lovers. I am a lover at heart!!

33: Which of your fic titles is your favorite?

HMM i take most of my fic titles from songs/poems i like already so this is tricky. 'push notifications on' is probably up there as one of my faves (even if the fic itself isn't) bc it fits nicely with the social media au and it's catchy. for comedy reasons i could also nominate 'for the rain it raineth every day' because i wrote and titled that fic years ago and it came back to haunt me recently when i was in a production of twelfth night + was also writing one of my coursework essays on it and i kept jumping out of my skin whenever i saw that line in the play because i associated it solely with my silly ouran high school host club fanfiction. my actual favourite probably is 'culled a new excuse' though. i love the franny choi poem it's taken from + i think it fits the contents of the fic so well + that fic is one of my favourite things i've ever written (which shouldn't give the title extra points, but, yk. It does!)

36: Have you ever written a fic because you were inspired by a song?

YEAH. see above for the fact i steal most of my fic titles from songs anyway. weirdly most of my 'inspired by song' fics happen to be alex rider ones (i say weirdly because i have multiple hive and witherward playlists) - 'the end's not near' takes its title from a song by the new year but the mood of that fic is specifically inspired by 'inside out' by duster, 'but it's your actions that speak louder' is basically a snippet from what was going to be a songfic (in the very class fanfiction.net sense of inserting lyrics to break up scenes) to i love you so by the walters, 'you know my heart (can't take the break)' takes its title and mood from loverboy by a-wall. outside of alex rider: 'apologies on the intercom' is semi-inspired by last words of a shooting star by mitski, although that's mostly because the snippet of aftg extra content that inspired it kinda lines up with that song in terms of vibe anyway; a lot of my ohshc fics are inspired by the show's score (most explicitly 'menuet of innocence', which is names after one of the show's instrumental pieces); much of my early 2017-18 aftg fic was inspired by whatever musical theatre i was into at the time. now that i look back on it i think the only fandom i write regularly for that hasn't had a fic explicitly influenced by music is HIVE, which is funny since it's my most written-for fandom. i think that's probably because i have enough permanent hive brainrot anyway that my brain tries to make space for other fandoms by saving songs Just For Them lmao.

tysm for the ask!

[thatdesklamp]

hihi!! i absolutely love ur writing and was wondering why you dislike using y/n ? i hope this doesn’t come forward as hateful !! much love 🤍🤍

omg no not at all! This is actually a very funny question, so absolutely.

Let's talk about x reader fics, hell yeah.

This is all to do with my personal preference: when I have read x readers in the past, I have literally never imagined 'myself' as the 'reader' character. I've always found it awkward to do--it's just not my thing--and so to combat this, I just imagine the reader character as this... separate character, more of an OC than anything, and I'm just reading a fictional story and oh wow maybe she doesn't actually have a name, there we go, cool.

This then evolves into me reading x readers where the characters are, actually, essentially OCs: in order for the fic, assuming it's multi-chaptered and pretty longform, to be interesting, the perspective character needs to have good and consistent characterisation, and they can't be a bland 'eh' type person that the reader (e.g. me) can just project onto. Give me a character with flaws and personality! That's the type of 'reader character' I prefer. This is even better when authors give them a name--I've often seen authors sidestep the 'absolute OC'-ification of the reader by having the MC's 'real name' never be mentioned and them only be referred to by a nickname, or something like that. I like this! It's more fun when the MC has a name and a personality: it gives strength to the romance and idk man, I just like it, especially since this 'OC-ification' is just what I was doing anyway.

However, I still don't like 'absolute OC-ificaton', just 'partial OC-ification', and prefer a good middle mix. And I know that some readers do like to project themselves onto the MC, so I've tried to go for the same middle mix too.

You can see it in IW, really. This is the type of balance I like: I've given our MC a name, but it's only her surname, so you can pretend that her first name is your name if you want to, or you can lean into the 'partial OC-ification' and chill with the fact that this is a character with a different name to you. I've definitely given Hebi a personality (or, hell, I've tried to), and she's got her own set of flaws that some people will or won't relate to. But IW's got a wordcount of over 150k now, and it would've been pretty tricky to write all that much without feeling like our perspective character was... well. A character, you know?

Despite this, I try really hard to avoid mentioning physical descriptions, because that can be pretty jarring, imo. Hence why Hebi doesn't have the wattpad-y 'long blonde hair and blue eyes and also she's 5'1 and so petite and little with F CUP TITS' etc. I try not to make overt references to hair (like, no-one will ever 'smoothly run their hands through your hair' because, like,,, not everyone has pinstraight smooth type 1 hair, yk? However, someone might 'brush some hair away' or 'curl their fingers in your hair' etc etc, since that's a bit more universal). I'm not infallible, and I've probably slipped up somewhere without noticing, but I try my best to make it as universal as I can, yk?

As for 'y/n' specifically, I just am not a fan, lmao. I find it disrupts the flow of the writing, and takes you out of the story; it reminds you that you're reading something, rather than letting you get sucked in, you know? It also reminds me of 12yo mafia alpha male harry styles wattpad fanfictions and oh lord, I would rather forget those days.

I like my little x readers where the characters have names etc, but I know some people find that to be jarring and off-putting instead of y/n! It's just what you're used to, you know? <3

[touchlikethesun]

i have been seeing jegulus not slander necessarily but dissenting opinions on my dash (i admit, my fault for following people that don't ship jegulus, but i will continue to follow them because i admire their reflections and welcome a plurality of opinions), and i wanted to offer my refutation (in the best faith possible,i promise) of a few of the common arguments i've seen against jegulus:

(below the cut because it's a tad long)

jegulus is a parallel to wolfstar: i'll admit, the first time i saw someone make this complaint i was a bit surprised because i don't think i've seen anyone parallel jegulus and wolfstar except for the fact that very often a fic will have both jegulus and wolfstar, but i think in the majority of fics the similarities stop there. the black brothers have family trauma, and that affects their relationships, but james and remus are very different themselves, and their relationships with their respective brother start at different points, follow different trajectories, have completely different dynamics.

jegulus replaces peter with regulus in the marauders group: okay, yes i will agree that that is often the case but my next question would be, what marauders fic period have you read where peter was really treated as part of the group and where his relationship with the others was developed at all? because i can't think of a single one, jegulus or no. so that's not a critique of jegulus that's a critique of the fandom as a whole.

jegulus deemphasises how important the marauders' friend group, and especially sirius, is to james: i think it's possible that in some fics that choose to focus specifically on jegulus' relationship (y'know... because they're jegulus fics??) the marauders take a back seat, or sometimes james' relationship with sirius is not as important as you think it should be, but this is not every fic, it's again not something inherent to jegulus but to how shipping and fandoms work generally. we can't do everything all the time, and people are going to focus of the things that interest them. there are also plenty of jegulus fics that really insist on the importance of sirius' relationship with james (and with reg but most people making this complaint seem not to care about that in my experience), it's just a question of asking for recs. also, as another point, this is not a complaint people make of any other ship. how many wolfstar fics are out there where james (and reg) are not mentioned once?? a fair few!!! it's just hypocritical to complain about this in jegulus but not in wolfstar

jegulus is misogynistic towards lily: (ohhhh my god i wish ppl would shut up about this one) i'm not saying there isn't misogyny in the fandom, there's misogyny every where, it is kinda unavoidable in our society. jegulus is not inherently misogynistic towards lily because there is nothing inherent in lily's character that says she needs to be with james. her character can exist fully fleshed out and separate from james, and frankly it's odd how insistent some people are that lily absolutely must be with james.

regulus is a deatheater and james would never: and did james potter tell you this himself? the thing is, these are fictional characters that we know next to nothing about. we literally do not know enough about any of the marauders characters (except the one's we see in canon like sirius, remus, etc., but even then, we're imagining their characters pre-war and pre-azkaban typically so...) to make any definitive statement that something is out of character. you can not like the characterisation of james in jegulus fic, but you can't speak as if you have any more authority on his character than anyone else. okay? okay.

jegulus neuters the worst aspects of regulus' character: instinctually, i want to agree with this, but the truth is that the same thing i said for james applies here. we know so little about regulus' canon character (and everything we do know is second hand from sirius and kreacher, so obvious bias), that this really isn't a critique you can even make. again, you cannot like how regulus is characterised in a jegulus fic (nvm that jegulus is quite vast and the charactersiation varies incredibly) but you can't critique jegulus as being the cause of the characterisation you didn't like

however, all that said, none of this really matters because at the end of the day the most important thing is ship and let ship. i understand that it is very annoying when you hate/don't understand a popular ship, but like... you are not going to change anyone's mind by complaining. i would hope if you're going to post hate, you might at least do the courtesy of censoring names so jegulus fans don't see it.

[thelordofgifs]

sorry ahead of time if this is A Lot but i'm obsessed with tfs and love your fics in general, so! 1, 6-9, 12, 16, 17, 22, 25, 28, 33!

also i definitely would send you some tfs asks as you requested but i'm not caught up so i'm afraid any inquiries i have would be terribly out of date.

(questions for fanfiction writers)

Answered 1 here.

Answered 6 here.

7. What element of writing do you struggle with most?

Worldbuilding, I think. Keeping sense and logistics consistent is a struggle at times: I have Cool Scenes in my head and I want to write them, goddammit, not think about geography or something!

Answered 8 here.

9. Which character(s) do you find most difficult to write?

Of characters I've recently been writing a lot, Morwen has been very tough to get to grips with! She's so fascinating and complex, and I put a lot of thought into trying not to mess her characterisation up in tfs. Hopefully I haven't!

12. Tell us about a WIP you’re excited about.

My "Maedhros doesn't swear the Oath" AU has been on the backburner for ages, but considering how much I've been thinking about Fëanor lately I'm starting to think I can do some very interesting things with the Fëanor-Maedhros relationship in that one, which is making me keen to pick it up again soon. Also - and I know this is kind of out-of-character from me - it will have m&m feels.

Answered 16 here.

Answered 17 here.

22. Do you listen to anything while you write?

Yes, most of the time, but I don't have any specific writing playlists - I tend to arrange the music I listen to around time of day more than what I'm doing at the time lol. Mostly Taylor Swift, tbh.

25. Have you ever daydreamed about side adventures/spin-offs from your fic? Tell us about them!

Unfortunately, I can't say I have! tfs is my only longfic and while I've written a couple of missing moment/alternate POV scenes, I couldn't say there are any full spin-offs going on in my head.

28. How well do you handle criticism when it comes to your writing?

It really depends. If I've asked for it and respect the person giving it, quite well; I've often chucked a draft or snippets of one at a friend and gone "this doesn't make any SENSE please tell me what's wrong with it". If it's some rando on AO3 who can't punctuate or spell properly but sees fit to let me know that my characters are "horrible and annoying"... well, I tend to be more irritated about that lol.

33. Is there anything you wish your audience knew about your writing or writing process?

Look writing is like sausage-making. You do NOT want to see the ugly process trust me. The unhinged notes stay in the scrivener project.