#and its stuff im constantly thinking about when i write my fics and backstory for it all

[doomednarrative]

one thing i rlly like about your plaga leon au is that you actually give a realistic and in character reason for it to happen. it makes sense and it’s compelling. a lot of those aus don’t have as much thought put into them besides “leon’s basically a verdugo now” which just leaves more annoying questions. like what happened to ashley? did the cult’s plan work? what about ada, or krauser? nobody thinks of that they just want leon to have mandibles and kiss luis. that’s fine in art but when constructing a world you need more than that lol anyway this is half a rant and half praise of you 🩵

One thing about me personally is even if I write au stuff, I Want and Need it to be possible within the realm of canon as far as "Does this logically work within the limitations of the story the canon is trying to tell/work within the lore" and "Does this actually work for a character and match up with their motivations and ideals?" I will never do something Solely for the sake of shipping, even if it might look fun.

The whole point of why I (and Claire and Ethan) went with the plaga au in the first place is because A. It's just fun to see what an impact that would have on the rest of Leon's story and what unique challenges it presents for him in the future, B. It does actually give an explanation as to how he manages to survive so much stuff in 4 because he's got something biological on his side and thus helps him to save Ashley with some more ease, and C. Leon has a track record history of letting himself get hurt or putting himself in more danger if it means keeping other people safe. So writing out the exact plaga we gave him and that motivation for actually taking it on for himself Makes Sense within the realm of sticking to his usual motives and such.

Ever with the au changes we made because of the remake, the biggest part of why Leon takes on the plaga is Because he's trying to save Ashley. It isn't about Him, it's about what will give her the best chance of survival, his own future consequences be damned. If this time can be different, if he can actually manage to save Ashley and get her home safe and remover her parasite in time, then whatever sacrifices he makes are worth it to him, and that's in line with everything we ever see him do. He takes those risks Very frequently, like a good example being the opening of 6 where he tells Helena they're making time to save that one guy's daughter even tho it's in vain in the end. He knows he wouldn't be able to live with more loss on his conscience if he refused to help.

I have seen a few au's that do take this kinda stuff into account, like @polarspaz's stuff has Leon take on a prototype of Luis's work because the stress of fighting has made his Plaga develop faster, and taking the prototype means he'll be mutated but regain control of himself without the hallucinations and the hivemind stuff, so that also increases his chances of getting Ashley home safe and allows him to save Luis later on as well. @alvivaarts also has an au fic, Simulation Swarm, that I've been reading on and off where Leon and Ashley both get their plagas removed but because it was so late stage in the game, they Both still end up with some permanent mutations that Luis is trying to research how to reverse for them, and it basically becomes a group effort kinda thing to look out for each other after the worlds turned on them.

So like, there IS ways to do this au that you can still have your fun while actually making it Work in universe y'know? And without throwing Ashley out with the trash because if there's anythng that infuriates me more is when people just make these au's and then don't include her in it at all. That shit makes me so mad when she's so central to the entire story and would absolutely be tied up in any decisions Leon makes during the course of 4. If it's not to the benefit of trying to get them both to safety then Why would he do it in the first place y'know?? She's important to him, he's not going to discard her like that.

Anyways that's more of a long winded answer than I meant to give but anytime you ask me about this au I will take it as a chance to go off on a tangent ~

[shoezuki]

I’m going insane I’m GOING INSANE

Egg you can’t keep DOING THIS TO ME every chapter is so so good and raghhhhhh I can’t deal

Lynx and Natasha are definitely catching onto Gepard by now… hehe if only they knew.. I’m loving Dr. Bissette like she’s one of my favorite character tropes and I’m. I’m falling in love with her characterization— she’s a minor character you can’t be doing this to me goddamnit

SAMPO’S AWAKE YEAAAAAAAA I loved that whole sequence of just “take your shirt off” “wgat” help that was so funny- I’m very excited to see what happens when he’s more lucid, but I gotta say I am really enjoying Delirious Sampo just for that extra comedy.

Gepard’s whole conflict with him missing the shack.. yeah. Yea that’s the good stuff. I like complicated stuff like this and it’s just?? So good???

(please give these two the happy ending they deserve oh my god)

Officially reaching the 100k mark! Huzzah!! Glad I could watch the progression in real time. I’ll always support your writing literally forever, I think. Even after this one is completed.

Seriously, give yourself some credit, 100k is not a very easy thing to achieve. You can do it o7

-💫

ps this probably makes no sense bc I just slapped a bunch of my thoughts together in one message, and it’s like not coherent whatsoever, but. Yea this is what you get now

GHH.H THANKYOU???? SO MUCH. holy fuck im gigglin n kickin my feet. ngl i still have ur ask in my inbox from the last ch and i would go n reread it constantly vsdmdvdh

nat and lynx Absolutely know. they r both like o fuck this guy is whipped. like its so blatant lbr. mfer is probably fantasizing bout rescuing sampo from a burning building. gepards all 'i want sampo safe and healthy im worried about him all the time i hope hes ok i wonder what hes doing now maybe i should go see him' and lynx is jus holding her head in her hands.

i like bissette a lot too tbhhh like. i was not gonna have her present at all beyond the ch of him wakin up in the hospital but i got attached vskdbddh. i am very tempted to make her more prevalent and give her more backstory n character n all that but... it feels weird to insert a minor character into a fic too much svdjdgd. maybe ill make her an oc outside of it

THE SHIRT THING. I have been thinkin bout it for SO LONG ngl i was like what would a drugged up sampo notice first. oh ya that gepard has a shirt on now cuz they spent nearly 2 months in the shack w a half naked gepard like seeing him w a shirt on now??? thats FUCKED UP. it should be a crime for him to hide all that perfection under stupid sweaters.

and ya.... ya. i think gep would have a lot of conflicted emotions bout the hideout n the time he spent there. like he feels confused bout missing any or it or remembering any of that experience fondly. it was inarguably one the worst experiences of his life. while his sisters were searching for him, his guards dead in the snow, he shouldntve been enjoying himself at all. n he feels bad that he misses the place n the sound of the wind pounding on the walls and sampo humming in the other room and the constant buzz of those beaten up heaters and the stiff uncomfortable sofa sampo slept on. its kinda that complicated thing of like... feeling 'wrong' for missing or thinking fondly of aspects from/around a traumatic experience. n gepard at some points gotta come to terms w it n realize he Can in fact miss it without it being like a betrayal to his fallen comrades or his sisters. but also he gotta realize half of what he misses from back then is just... sampo.

[asummersday]

🦋📗🤔 !

🦋 Which character is your favorite to write?

leo!! it's super easy and fun for me to write him because i relate to him a lot. I haven't written a lot for this fandom so I dont have a lot of other POVs to draw from, but Leo's is just the easiest one for me and I've settled very nicely into it lol.

Ive also dabbled a little with Mikey's POV and its been a lot of fun. I haven't posted that fic yet but it'll be one of my whumptober fills.

📗 Do you want to write something outside of fanfiction? If so, what about?

i do! i have two original stories in the works! one is a fantasy story i first came up with when i was 14 (it evolved A LOT since then. As in my main character now has a twin brother and is one out of five main characters). the story has ALSO changed so much. that story is on hold until i can figure out where i want the story to go and stuff. I've got 5 main characters for this one and instead of working on plot I've just been writing lore for the fantasy world and working on my ocs backstories.

ive also got another story that im much more focused on (its a lot more recent so I'm not constantly rewriting old stuff. This time I get to come up with it as I go along >:3). This one is also set in a fantasy world (tho I think I'd consider it like science fantasy?) but unlike the one above its not in a world parallel to ours etc etc. Fully its own independent world. This one is plagued with capitalism tho :(( unfortunately :(( but the world is cool!

This one is easier to tackle bc I've only got three main characters (Billie, Rosey, and Sasha) and I love them all dearly <33

My ocs for this one are more fleshed out than the world and the actual story plot ajdjfkfkf.

(I'm not at the level I'd like to be so I don't have any actual writing to show for it, just a LOT of lore lmao)

🤔 Would you ever want to write something canon if you got the opportunity?

Honestly not really? I'm very happy just writing my silly little fanfictions in my happy little corner of the fandom.

thank you for the ask!!!

Fanfic Writer Ask Game

[chesthighwater]

by thé way. wips roundup that absolutely no one asked for

first of all in the daudmartin brainrot corner we've got

sequel to bctbk, as promised. i have a major "plot" point planned, and then it might go one of two directions... we shall see :3c

the high overseer martin/assassin daud fic that i've posted a few excerpts from. essentially daud manifests himself into the abbey suggestively asking for ~spiritual guidance~ (lol) and things escalate from there. this has to get finished at some point because its like one of the first things i started writing for them. it deserve to see the light of day

a mildly humorous high overseer martin/spymaster daud fic. kind of a challenge for myself also- i find spymaster daud hard to imagine, and am not that used to writing daudmartin where they're not constantly trying to one-up/double cross each other/at each other's throats flirtatiously. presumably will not be nsfw (or at least, i'm not planning on it, but i make no promises. can't know where the ol inspiration will take me).

oh heres another high overseer martin thing! who wouldve thought! this time with Responsibility and Abbey Politics and Decisions. and working through issues. so many fucking issues. this one is actually actively in the works so ill leave it at that for now ;>

daudmartin pwp with genuinely 0 plot. like, negative plot. this thing defies plot. i can barely even tell you if it's an au or what, i might sprinkle a few nonsexual sentences in if i'm feeling generous but that's it. other than that it's literally just about martin being very quiet during sex and daud trying every trick he has in his book (which admittedly isn't many) to change that instead of like, communicating

augh speaking of plot-defying pwps. "what if overseers had (some appropriate equivalent to) confessions". there is some lore in here obviously but the entire point of it is confessional dirty talk. i dont KNOW

[REDACTED] pwp which im not even gonna advertise itll just appear one day and if you find it you found it

mostly unplanned ideas that i might flesh out: sokolov portrait thing. some dunwall noir stuff purely for martin in a cassock reasons (and sexualising religious guilt reasons. if i knew anything at all about priests i'd be working on this much faster). something involving the outsider appearing to martin (this might just get absorbed in a more well fleshed out idea at some point). martin Suffering More, because i want him in a situation where his wit fails completely (more desperation! more excuses! i am weak for this i really am.). something involving some more Action- fighting together against an acute threat? i think there should be more fighty martin out there. i am the change i want to see in the world

(not including the various snippets for the eternal serkonan vacation au which i already laid out there)

in the thief crossover brainrot corner (i bet you forgot i allude to thief crossovers in my description!)

also a sokolov portrait thing, but i have it way more planned out. corvo really, really wants garrett to sit in for a portrait (especially now when he's officially the empire's shadiest most mysterious spymaster ever). he reluctantly agrees, but Under One Condition.

a sort of relationship chronicle via heart lines. definitely starts with corvo's diplomatic mission and possibly ends with some happy dh2 era content. obviously i have the heart lines planned out.

possibly something involving more political intrigue/royal drama type stuff? i'm lucky enough to have access to someone who can give me some really good examples/plots if i fail to come up with anything myself.

(this is just a thief thing but i have had a viktoria/lt. mosley thing running around my brain for AGES. i want to explore how their relationship develops so bad. i know they have literally one interaction in canon but they are my blorbinas and i have mentally expanded their backstories so hard the story is basically begging to be written at this point)

anyway if you read this unreasonably unnecessarily long post i love you. i am sending you a kiss. wanna get married

[betawooper]

Hi, how are you?? If its not too much trouble, I have two questions 1. How do you get motivation to write your fic (which is amazing, btw!!) because I am trying to write a fic of my own but I can't seem to find the motivation to actually sit down and write it out, even though I am super interested in it. 2. If its not too much, do you have any tips on outlining a story?? I'm not very good at planning lol Hope you have a great day!! I love your art and your KNY Plot Rewrite!!

Hiiiiii thank you for the ask!

1.

Honestly dedicating a certain portion of my day just to write has been super helpful. I tend to feel most motivated in the morning so I just write then and just keep dabbling in it.

I do this weird technique where I write with white text on a white background so I don't focus too much on the mistakes. If you find yourself getting overwhelmed, just changing the font color so you can't see what you're typing breaks that anxiety. Drastic, but it works.

I also write on my phone when I'm feeling particularly unmotivated?

Here's a vod of me doing exactly that for Ch 53 (the video quality is very crunchy, forgive me):

I usually use a lot of ADHD strategies to get myself into the mood lol.

2.

It seriously depends on what kind of story you want to write, but I'm assuming you mean novel/longfic type of stuff with a fleshed out story and a whole cast of characters? That's the assumption I'm going under while writing out my next tips.

What is your main theme? Or genre rather. Is it humor? Romance? Tragedy? A combination? Knowing the overall tone that your story will be in helps a lot in the development of the characters, since each character should fit into that theme in some way. In KNY, the main theme of the story is tragedy, and this affects literally everything, from the backstories for all the characters to the literal worldbuilding in the form of Demons (victims of circumstance, cruelty of the world, that kind of thing).

Once that's down, start small. Just figure out your main character, their motivation, their character arc, and what you want them to realize by the end of the story. Can just be as simple as:

main character (Tanjirou)

wants to live a normal life and go back to the way it used to be

ideally, he should realize there is no going back and he has to move on so he doesnt get left behind? oh ye his sister could represent the constantly changing state of the world and his negative reaction to her changes expresses his inability to let go of his past

*note to self, develop sister character more

Don't think about other characters unless they will actually help the main character get closer to the ideal end you have for them, like I did with Nezuko in the above example. Don't want to overwhelm yourself, you know?

From here, you can start developing stuff. Thinking of concepts. If you're anything like me, you've probably already come up with something your story focuses on like "oh yeah there's magic and shit, and they have to take down the government with it" because I like magic and shit. What kind of setting do you want your story to be in? Post-apocalyptic utopia? Dystopia? Steampunk fantasy? 1920s Japan in the midst of rapid westernization? Is this based in a specific region of the real world or are you making up a whole new world for this?

Once you get the basics down, write down story beats. It can be a similar list as before like:

idk ig nezuko becomes a demon and loses her memory

the two meet a super strong swordsman to kinda show the reader the concept of demon slayers AND the highest ranking people from the get go (oh, think of a name for this rank, maybe pillars? bc pillars of hope and shit lol im a genius)

oh shit, you write hashira in 9 strokes? maybe we could have 9 pillars ooooh that would be pog

tanjirou and nezuko have an argument about tanjirou's Problems bc he refuses to talk about anything that bothers him

uhhhhh fight a demon

fight a Strong demon (what the hell am i gonna call these, just do that later)

oh hold on theres gotta be a training montage bc swordfighting takes time to develop

i should add an examination right? yeah like naruto ok put that into the consideration jar

broooo omg what if [insert plot twist here] happened? ive gotta put that in holy shit-

Doesn't even have to be in order. Just let your mind flow. If you have more characters at this point, think about how you want their arcs to end and all that like you did for the main character, then slap those beats into the massive list of story beats.

From here, you can sort stuff out. Then zero in on a specific arc/plot development and build around that. How much you should develop the story depends on how many characters you have and how long you want the story to be. KNY has a fairly large cast and is meant to be serialized, so Gotouge really needed to spend a lot of time thinking about this stuff (and you and I know that didn't end up working out too well lmao, they tried their best though).

Biggest tip is to take your time. You can't create a world in one day, especially if you want to be respectful to the other cultures and stuff you want to portray. Research stuff, look up writing inspiration blogs, all that, just take your time.

Also lemme know if you want to know how I specifically outline stuff in chapters to prepare for writing because its a little different from what people normally do? Idk what people normally do but its certainly not the way how I do it and this post is long enough already.

(Thank you for the compliments btw, good luck on your own story!)

[forauldlangsynee]

*inhales*

I really really want to talk about Gyro Gearloose in depth and I think I’m ready to face my fears of being called crazy. Well,, actually maybe I already am so scratch that. My head is FULL OF THOUGHTS OK.

Gyro had a lot of character growth and backstory which shocked me a lot, the episode ‘Astro BOYD’ is easily the saddest episode of the series.

Learning that gyro was repressing his past was so…sad he was blaming himself for everything going wrong even tho it wasn’t even his fault! It was Akita’s.

Like how at the beginning he was the Akita to Huey; because he kept telling him that BOYD was just a weapon, he was dangerous, he was keeping the lie even tho, he very well had to have known, he argued the same way Huey did. But he was obviously afraid to actually confront the truth; until he saw it for himself. Gyro was pretty well emotionally abused by Akita. Which is why he is the way he is. The poor man looked up him most likely because he wanted to be a Great scientist.

I feel like he had a lot of trust issues; which is why I think he accidentally kind of pushes ppl away from him, like Fenton. He’s constantly in a state of panic because he thinks he’s a failure even tho he isn’t. It isn’t until it’s right in front of his face; and I know that Huey had to have helped him realize because he saw himself in Huey, he was the kid that was telling Boyd he was “definitely a real boy” JUST like Huey was arguing in the episode. Making him realize he wasn’t a terrible person and he wasn’t responsible for the destruction.

And then he actually hired fenton; which was pretty big, from there on he really did treat him a lot better, even praising him for the gizmocloud instead of getting mad at him, which was a big step for Gyro. Honestly I was kinda rooting for them (I can’t lie in that fenro is looking like a pretty good ship rn…)

He was a really nicely written character and I genuinely felt like I got to know him, tho I can’t go without praising Jim Rash, seriously he’s just such a good actor. And gyro was brilliant.

Anyway after a long rant I think it would be crime if I didn’t include any headcanons about Gyro…SO ITS HEADCANON TIME!

-alright, alright hes…gay. Like he has very “AHEM MOVE. IM GAY” energy; like he just does his thing in his lab and if fenton gets in the way or he needs to head where he is, he just shouts that and pushes fenton outta the way outta like instinct he doesn’t think twice.

-he’s a crazy scientist he clearly gets no sleep, probably chugs whole pots of coffee just to make it thru a project. Which I feel like fenton would grow concerned about; obviously because he loves him and Gyro would clearly deny everything until he passes out

-he acts like he doesn’t have anxiety but I think he does; like signs of anxiety for him is probably talking very fast, maybe adjusting his glasses more than he normally would, stuff like that, that he’d obviously deny.

-definitely has OCD especially when it comes to his lab, everything needs to be exactly where he leaves it or he will loose his mind.

-he and fenton would probably argue about what organized is too; I think Gyros a little on the ‘organized mess’ side of the scale, his work space is messy, but he knows exactly where everything he needs is, whereas fenton would be more so files need to be organized in neat piles; Gyro just likes to be able to see all his work. So therefore when Fenton tries to stack his work; he goes mad and undos fentons doing.

-on that note he also definitely doesn’t like ppl touching his work; which is kind of already displayed when fenton messes with Gizmoduck even tho gyro comes around.

This is getting long so that’s all for now!

Definitely won’t be writing fenro fan fic waaaaaaatt

[bigskydreaming]

My favorite thing (cough bullshit cough cough) is when fics allude to all this stuff Jason holds against Dick but never go into any specifics. While at the same time having no trouble being detailed about other stuff in the fam's history or Bruce in UTRH, but the sec its Jason bitching at Dick it gets real vague. Jason's like oh you know what I'm talking about or don't think I've forgotten, you dick....but we're supposed to just imagine for ourselves what that is. Incheresting.

Me at all the fic writers who are like “Oh so you think Dick was never a fuckhead to Jason huh, well in this essay I will....”

Like here’s the thing, as I’m always saying:

Fanfic? Inherently transformative. You can do whatever you want with it.

So that means that yes, absolutely, if you want? For whatever reason? You CAN write Jason and Dick having this extensive history of Dick being a jerk to Jason and Jason resenting him because of it.

But.

But but but but but.

You have to like, actually WRITE that.

And that’s the part that people just.....don’t do. Instead they rely on just handwaving into existence a backstory that only exists on their say-so, and expect readers to just accept Dick’s characterization here as fact, even though its literally not based on canon OR based on anything they’ve actually provided in story......

Because even in a transformative medium, you have to actually TRANSFORM something to get from Point A to Point B!

You want Dick’s character to be this callous jerk full of regrets because he came to his epiphany of How Not To Be A Jerk too late in life and his siblings are all like well we don’t really have time for you now, you missed your shot bro?

Cool cool.

But you have to TRANSFORM Dick’s character from what he’s ACTUALLY like in canon TO that figure there, and there’s no actual transformation in any of these stories. They just start with it taken as a given that this is the way Dick already is, and expect everyone to just catch up and get on board, despite the fact that if we were to anthropomorphize their fic and ask “hey Siri-fic, show us how you got Dick from Point A to Point B,” the fic would say no because there’s no work to show. It doesn’t exist.

Instead, what we actually get is a characterization of Dick that to most of his fans honestly doesn’t make any sense, and we’re like, wait, why is Dick like this here, and in response we get fics being like *points to this part of canon, says everything you need to know is right in there* and we’re like no we’ve been to that part of canon, what you’re describing is literally just NOT THERE. So again, still, once more with feeling: wait, why is Dick like this here?

And not to be contentious on main, oh wait lol I don’t care, but like......tbh this is a very cheap and lazy form of storytelling. And I don’t actually feel bad for saying that, sorry not sorry, because I feel like writers in this fandom have long been perfectly happy to run with this sorta thing and then hide behind “cant criticize my story, Im doing this for free” to keep people from commenting on how this is an ummm not great approach to taking characters from canon and transforming them into something else. 

Even though its like.....I don’t really care about your singular story enough TO criticize it, I’m perfectly content to x out of it and move on to the next one, but when so damn many of these stories are relying on the same shortcut without a single one of them actually doing any of the transformative work to justify their take, and over and over we’re just expected to go along with this, its like.....umm yeah, I do actually feel that at a certain point its abundantly relevant to point out that this IS a ginormous fucking trend and the trend itself is absolutely deserving of criticism.

And quite frankly, when fics or headcanons RELY on the expectation that people just nod and smile and shh don’t question it every time they come across a depiction of Dick Grayson as just this total thorn in his family’s side......like, “no” is actually a perfectly valid response to that expectation, lmao. Nobody is owed fans of this character just sucking it up and being like nah, this is fine, as everyone continues to run with this ball all while justifying it with handwaving and vague pointing at an ever moving target whenever somebody’s just like....”I’m not even trying to criticize your fic, I’m just wondering what your take on Dick is based on, because I think we’re looking at two entirely different characters here.”

Because like....we are! Lmao. Yeah, different interpretations are a thing, but when the Dick Grayson in question is foundationally based on formative events that literally don’t exist anywhere BUT in the fic writer’s mind because the writer never actually wrote them into the fic and they don’t actually exist anywhere else.....we are effectively at that point talking about two entirely different characters. And its extremely irritating for those of us who want to talk about the one that’s based on actual canon events to be constantly told we’re doing it wrong and just being referred back to the general collective view of how ‘Dick is bad actually, cuz we say so,’ when pressed for specifics. Like, I’ve literally had people post or comment about ficlets I’ve written that show Dick and Jason getting along pre-ADITF, where people are like “aww this is so much better than canon, would’ve been nice if we could’ve had this instead of Dick being such a jerk to Jason.”

I mean....fahlkfhaklfhaklfhklafhklahfalhaf! Y’know?

But I mean. I digress. Probably. I don’t know. What was the question?

[sanchoyo]

Looks like you’re gonna have to gush some more cuz I meant in general uwu🌸

🌺😌🤟 Always happy to! Okay here’s just some General bnha Thoughts ™ Mostly Lov centric. You asked for them, and you said GUSH about them, so here’s. A Lot! :)

This isn’t a lov one but it’s really funny so I thought I’d put it out there:

-when bnha was first gaining traction on tumblr, it was all art of Tsuyu. I have no idea why. People were talking about the funky frog lesbian superhero anime. Maybe it was just the people I was following, maybe it was a general trend, but I LOVED her design!!! my fav color and frogs r super cute!!! And I already loved superhero media, so I was like. I’ll watch it. For Her. SO. FROPPY IS THE REASON I WATCHED/READ BNHA. I went in thinking she was the protag and I was sooo confused when Izuku was... tbh I still think it’d be more interesting if she was lmaooo aus where? ...seriously if anyone has good aus where this is the case send them LOL

-I don’t actually feel that bad abt what Shigaraki’s doing. I still feel bad for him. I’m this post. yes im an apologist. its not my fault hes sexy and has been running around shirtless. hes a lesbian icon like thor is. I want to touch his hair. hes never done anything wrong in his life. he could kill all might, deku, bakugo, whatever, I’d still be sayin this. I don’t feel bad for gt. like. was anyone genuinely attached to him? lmao

-well u know how spinner’s quirk is just sticking to things? We haven’t seen him use it in canon except like, (1) time iirc?? I think this is probably bc he’s embarrassed about it even in front of the league... I loooove the idea that he gets more comfortable with it around them :”) and also how shigaraki. um. does that falling asleep thing while standing up with his eyes open, canonly? (which I still love lmfao) Imagine someone in the league walking in a dark room, turning on the light n just seeing. Spinner upside down, stuck to the ceiling asleep bc heat rises and its Warmer Up There. (cold blooded thing like tsuyu?? come ON give him a big fuzzy coat and scarf...) and Shigaraki in the center of the room, slouched but still standing, eyes open and motionless. Theyre both sleeping. Whomever sees it just...slowly walks out. LMAO

-Toga roller derby au. No deep thoughts I just think she’d be good at it. 

-Toga 100% is a social butterfly and could befriend anyone if they didn’t just judge the fact she was trying to stab them smh :/ (ok but seriously anytime I see cute friendships with her n the other kids im like :) aw. I feel like her and Camie...would be good friends. Camie feels chill enough to be like ‘ok whatever thats totally fine I forgive you!!’ LMAO we love airheads here)

-HOW DID TOGA GET SO GOOD AT FIGHTING? We know she’s been on the run since middle school or so, but good enough to pin Deku down after he’s been formally trained at a ~hero school~ for a while? (she pinned him TWICE I think, once when his arms were messed up, but, the other time as Camie, so? AND THEN WAS ONE OF THE 100 PEOPLE TO GO THRU TO THE 2ND ROUND OF THAT? even tho she didn’t bc she had to leave) good enough to beat Aizawa in a fight and stab him? A professional hero and teacher for YEARS? Is that seriously just street training??? Can people acknowledge how amazing her combat skills and reflexes are??? More Toga appreciation when?? Also her backstory??? SO subversive and incredible, hate when people reduce her to just a ~typical anime yandere~ :/

-Tomura doing stuff with his hands/fingers to train his quirk!!! And to learn to be careful with it!! obv I’m a Big Fan of him playing piano to do this and video games are prob the canon answer, but like, guitar or any stringed instrument that requires Hands would work too. Or knitting/sewing? EMBROIDERING? ??? Please, let me give you the mental image of him knitting aggressively while mentally scheming, watching a twitch streamer or smth too while doing it. (Doing stuff with your hands is a great way to let your mind come up with creative stuff, that’s how I come up with writing/drawing ideas 70% of the time)

-Tomura actually PREFERS cutesty, relaxing games. I mean, he does fighting and bloody stuff irl, games are a way to relax...he’ll play shooters and gta type games with The Lads, but. on his own?? animal crossing. pokemon. kirby games. mario. zelda. BIG ZELDA FAN (not saying this bc I, personally, am biased, but,) slime rancher, stardew valley, funny simulator games... he really enjoys those :”) God forbid he has a kid bc they’re 100% getting named after a viddy game character unless someone can talk him out of it LOL. Toga and Tomura are that animal crossing /doom meme where she’d be asking for doom and him asking for animal crossing :”)

-Bits and pieces of Before are kinda stuck in Kurogiri’s brain, but like. mostly useless stuff the doctor didn’t care about removing. Like, types of clouds. So Tomura kinda picks up on stuff like that. He can just look at clouds and tell you what type they are because Kurogiri used to take him up to high places in the city and point them out to calm Tomura down from a panic attack when he was younger. He can tell you if the sky looks like it’ll rain with a 80% accuracy rate too. 

-Kurogiri left food out for kitties in the alley beside the bar. They weren’t allowed in for Health Reasons (it IS a bar with sanitation standards!!) And Tomura really wouldn’t stop it or encourage it either way so long as Kurogiri did his job, but occasionally would stand outside with Kurogiri and just watch the kitties from a distance. If any approached he’d go back in (lowkey afraid he’d hurt them by touching them :( ) They kinda kept that between them tho, bc they both Know AFO is a big bag of dicks and no fun

-people have pointed out how similar aizawa and tomura look. this was 100% the intention. tomura has a hatecrush on him. THIS IS SO FUNNY AND HORRIBLY AWKWARD FOR KUROGIRI LMAO

-Sako??? Mr. Dramatic?? Opera fan. Drama kid. Like, obviously, but. Really. He is. I feel like he can speak a dozen languages. I also feel like he used to be an overachiever but got too ambitious. He was def some kind of leader at one point of a diff Group or something that fell apart. I LOVE how creative he is with his quirk and the magician theme??? incredible. I don’t show him enough love but I Love Clowns :o)

-I don’t care what their canon heights are. Spinner and Dabi? short kings. My height hcs are (tallest to shortest) Kurogiri, Twice, Sako (who also has heels on his boots and a tall hat, keep in mind), Tomura, Magne (Tomura and Magne are about the same height imo) Toga, Spinner, Dabi. LISTEN. Dabi has short energy. Sorry. it’s true tho

-This is a semi-popular hc I think bc I KNOW I’ve seen it before, but Dabi having Terrible Vision and needing glasses is so so good. (seriously, with burns THAT close to his eyeballs, how could he not?) 

-he tries to be a tough loner coolguy. you’d think he’d smoke, but I hc his ‘weak constitution’ comes with weak lungs (esp from years of a flame quirk?? inhaling smoke over so much time is SO bad for you, most people who die in fires actually die of smoke inhalation...) so he’s got like, an inhaler, can’t smoke, actually gets carsick, needs glasses, overuses quirk to save friends constantly, likes napping, a little awkward and rude. Tomura put him in charge of the vanguard so he’s smart, and good with strategies too, like a nerd. this is the Dabi I wanna see, not the popular fandom version of him tbh also step on hawks one more time sir :”)

-I wish all the lov fics weren’t?? villain!deku like I said earlier, but also, chatfics? I have nothing against them but most of them are just a bombardment of Memes with NO PLOT!!! Listen. text/chatfics CAN have plot and be an interesting way to tell a story. I almost want to write one just to show what I mean...

I know I’ve said I like spinaraki and blackmagic, but I am a multishipper, so a few ships I don’t talk about that I like that involve the lov in some way:

-toga/any of the 1A girls??? or Camie??? super interesting. ALSO in the radio drama, bakugo’s voice actor said Toga was his favorite girl??? so?? bakugo/toga ?? I WANT TO SEE IT. but specifically my fav dynamic with her is when someone ELSE is the one to like her first, it’s what she deserves.

-Kurogiri/aizawa/mic?? any variety of that is also 👌🏻 I also kinda wanna see kurogiri/all might bc. Dads. COME ON. they bond over ‘well, I raised him, and you want to have a part in his life now?? ok. earn it. prove it. I’ll screen you first’ or something LMAO they’re both genuinely concerned for the boy, and SOOO biased. let them bond.

-WAIT WHERE IS THE MIC/COMPRESS CONTENT. THEYRE BOTH DRAMATIC. ENEMIES TO LOVERS?? HELLO??? SOMEONE?? ANYONE. rarepair hours

-giran/twice is cute. like he was hyping him up so much and so ready to go save him...

-dabi/magne where is the content. when. why not everywhere??? I’ve also seen magne/compress which was cute!! or twice/magne? they’re the big sibs of the lov...

-dabi/spinner?? come ON dabi could get over his learned biases and spend time with him and they could hold hands. I want them to.

-dabihawks. Obviously bc the Drama. yes even still, don’t @ me. (also, shigahawks, seen some REAL interesting fics with it tbh) or spinahawks?? adding hawks to a ship is like adding extra chili powder. makes it SPICY dramatic)

-nine/tomura don’t @ me once again. both kinda afo’s playthings, nine obviously was the test for tomura’s new upgrades...they both love their friends...That Scene in the Flower field </3 hmmm tragicships are fun.

-tomura/mirko. more enemies to lovers. big fan of her and bunnies. remember when he wore bunny ears in bnha smash. (ok its crack but. CUTE.) 

-I’ve also seen shiganatsu and shigafuyu and I’m like. these are cute, but also Dabi’s reaction always makes me cry laugh. so good.

-MOST EVERYONE IN THE LOV IS LGBTQA+!!! heres my personal headcanons:

Toga: pan or bi (CANON BASICALLY)

Magne: transwoman (CANON BABEY) bi, leans towards men. (her crush on dabi in bnha smash... uwu content where)

Shuichi: gets sooooo flustered canonly, I think he’d go for the first person Who Hit On Him (I can see him being the target of those mean pranks where someone says ‘my friend likes you!!’ and the friend is like ‘eww!!’ :(((( ) he’s super hesitant for romance, lots of repressed stuff. gay but takes sooo long to realize it bc he thinks most women are conventionally pretty Aesthethically, feels obligated to Like Them, but has bad self esteem so never goes after them, then only likes (1) guy so hes like?? is this allowed?? is this allowed???? (HES LIKE. IN LOVE WITH SHIGARAKI)

Dabi: bi but rly hasn’t ever gotten to date anyone, so he’s actually more reserved about it and while he’ll tease, he absolutely is absent and kinda oblivious (again, I KNOWWWW bnha smash isnt canon, but. my god. when magne is hitting on him and he Just Doesnt Understand.) also hes ace

Tomura: doesn’t care. (just prob says ‘its whatever’) trans/nonbinary (i’M NOT PROJECTING, BUT. :’/) probably goes with like, the label queer if any but doesn’t care much for labels

Kurogiri: bi??? kind of??? I say kind of bc well, I hc U Know Whom as bi, I feel like thatd carry over but he’d be really avoidant to date anyone bc hes gotta Watch His Kid u know? this is gonna sound surprising but I think he’d be the type to be like ‘ok we can have a one night stand/fling BUT it cant get personal bc I have a Job to Do for my Son so don’t get up in your feelings’ and act a little coldly at first or very ..not personable... depending on who it was he’d prob turn around eventually, esp if that person valued his feelings/job :”)

Sako: that mans Not Straight. I hc him as gay and also trans :3c

Twice: Bi and HAS dated prob more than anyone else in the league imo, super comfortable with his sexuality and supportive of everyone else’s :)

ok that’s about all I can think of atm, come back in 5 minutes and my brain will refill with lov headcanons :3 thank you for asking!!

[irkenheretic]

okay i promised id do it and im doing it: Explaining The Plot Of That AU I’m Vague About: The Post

(as i was preparing to write this i actually got my 250th follower, which slapped)

so i’m just gonna start with the simple version, which is this: it’s a rebel AU which primarily centers around the tallest, who are both defective. they give up on trying to make any meaningful changes as figureheads, and instead direct their attention to being involved with the “neo defect revolution,” or NDR. they do manage to make one change as tallest- there is a garbage dump planet turned into a sanctuary for defectives (who in this au are executed once discovered,) and eventually enough of the populace finds out about it that the tallest have to deal with it. they finesse their way into kicking it out of the empire, so now it’s its own planet with its own rules, governments, and most importantly, immigration policies and protections

a lot of stuff happens and it’s gonna be structured using arcs, and each arc has a separate protagonist/deuteragonist/tritagonist lineup (but that doesnt mean the same lineup won’t be used multiple times!) and yes the insane list of OCs are for this au alone: some arcs are very OC-centric, some have OCs as supporting characters, and a couple are all-OC or mostly-OC. 

its going to be very longform and it’ll span from the tallest’s elite training days to twenty years after zim arrives on earth. (the 20 year gap btwn zim arriving on earth and the story proper isnt as tightly plotted as later tho.) the point is to see how a revolution on the scale of the NDR works, who was fucked over by defact laws, who was fucked over by other laws, etc. theres a lot of lore and a lot of headcanons i made for this AU and even a conlang. i am a being of hubris. itll be a series of fics, some multichapter and some oneshots. 

the series as a whole is gonna be called Invader Zim: Annexed or just Annexed for short. its a pun on an irken word that sounds similar but means the exact opposite. i am not explaining more bc itll be explained in the fic itself. but thats why the tag for it is #anx lmao

i didnt mean for this to be as long as it got but under the cut im gonna breakdown some of the early arcs:

so it all starts with a fanfic called Love Is The H-Word (no the “h-word” isn’t “hell.) it centers around red and purple as elites-in-training, who do a little whoopsie and have an egg. purple doesnt wanna smuggle it into a smeetery, bc then he’ll never see it again, so they go to the defect sanctuary (still a part of the empire at this point.) purple knows he’s defective while red has a hard time accepting that he is as well, due to events from his past. but being around all these other defects are starting to wear down his denial, and the fic is all about that. it also sets up some plot stuff, like how defects adopted a self-identifier in the word “heretic,” hence the sanctuary being named, “heretirk.” (hey look my url!) (no, the “h-word” is not heretic, either.) 

i dont wanna say what happens in that fic bc spoilers, but stuff Happens. its also when we meet some ocs that end up being important, and the existence of others are foreshadowed. this is also where we meet the tallests’ future advisor, rarl kove, for the first time, as a local who decides to keep them company. purple bonds with kove due to their shared interest in politics, while red reluctantly bonds with titch, a young irken (a smeet in heretirken standards, an adult in imperial standards- did i mention he and red are roughly the same age? lol) who is interested in military stuff and thrill-seeking and general destruction. titch is pissed because he claims his father is stealthing on devastis as a military commander, but won’t let titch sneak in as a soldier, as titch is deaf. 

(fun facts: in the au, “titch” is regional slang for “a little bit.” ironically, titch the character is above-average in height.)

due to titch’s deafness, he developed “gesturespeak,” irken sign language, so he can communicate. this existing becomes important later

a oneshot called invade the system is right after h-word in publishing order. it details zim’s exploits in leaving foodcourtia, where he was assigned and infiltrating the invading academy he eventually graduates from (in this au, zim is too short to be an invader, which sucks because the hight minimums for the military are really short to begin with lmao)

the fic chronoligically after H-Word focuses on red and purple being back in their platoon on devastis, specifically red navigating his training and his relationships with two defective platoonmates, pon and zi (who are in h-word a little,) after the realization that he too is defective. it also focuses on how the irken military works, and how they train their soldiers. 

the first arc overall focuses on red and purple going thru training and such, and ends after they graduate and are on the field, working to get commander rank. (they planned to gain commander rank then leave and go back to heretirk to train an army there, as heretirk has.... no army.) in the middle of this, they’re pulled out and told they are to become the next tallest. they debate over staying and taking the job or just running to heretirk, and they ultimately decide to stay.

the next arc i call the “bridge,” tbh. its less tightly plotted than the other arcs; fics are spread apart from each other chronologically and all that. it spans the time after the tallest being appointed to a little after zim arrives on earth. it also has a couple of anthologies focusing on imperial defects- each chapter is a new character. these guys are all important and the easiest way for me to introduce their backstories without cluttering everything up is anthology style, lmao. other things that happen are a look into how the tallest work, eventually culminating with the resolution of the tallest having to Deal With Heretirk, tenn’s rescue from meekrob, and zim on earth obtaining a half-irken smeet named pip due to stealing an Unethical Science Experiment from dib (which is pip.) the bridge is basically just. “heres some stuff that happens between point A and point B so when we get to point B you’re not confused as all hell.” 

the next arc focuses on zim. in the first fic, pip is sick and zim is trying to get into his neighbor’s pants, to cope. this basically sets up that zim in this au has no idea how to find personal fulfillment in living- he’s only OK if he focuses on pleasing someone else, be it taking care of pip or doting on the neighbor, some rando human named piqu (pronounced, “peek.”) this is mainly a cute romance story with the underlying veneer of “a child is slowly and painfully dying” in the background. fun! 

without spoiling the circumstances, zim and pip end up on heretirk, which at this point is its own independent planet. pip is in the hospital for most of it so zim has to do his own thing. computer fans rejoice bc hes basically zims dad at this point, who tells him to go outside and get some fresh air and talk to the locals instead of schmooping or screaming in anxiety. im sneakily introducing more characters like ini, the “next-gen zim;” a short bio-engineer (she works on PAKs) who was constantly passed over by everyone because they dont trust someone that short or they dont trust someone that spazzy, even though shes actually brilliant. also her brother mo, who’s a pilot that NOBODY will teach military-class ships to (at this point, HTK has a population of ex-military that had their old ships, but still no formal army) because he doesnt talk and they think hes “slow” as a result. for the curious, he is physically able to talk most times, he just doesnt like it. zim ends up teaching him how to fly military-class which ends up being important laterrr

(haha ini and mo. wheres meenie and minie? ILL GET TO THEM)

no really, theyre quadruplets. named ini, myni, minie, and mo. these are real characters. 

minie isnt introduced till later. shes too cool to be the side character in someone elses arc. she is feel uncomfortable when we are not about her.

myni is busy palling around with pip and pip’s friend “elly” (real name elevenn, with two N’s.) elly is a half-meekrob War Crime Baby and tenn’s smeet. he has vision problems (he can “see” energy signatures of things, as opposed to conventional sight. everything is monochrome and he has to really focus to see like, words on a paper. also fuck tablets) but the trade-up is telekinetic powers (that he cant use too much or his brain will melt. fun!) this isnt relevant until the arc AFTER zim’s, where they end up poking around a historical site due to myni’s interest in that kind of thing, and they find logs of an old revolution (that was actually pretty successful in their goal, before they were caught and executed,) that lead them to a man named lefy. he helps with revolutions and helped these guys, and the trio go to seek him out; myni because he wants to impress his parents with helping them, pip because after they’ve recovered enough to walk around and do stuff, feel like they need to justify the choice to save their life and make their dad proud and all that, elly because he doesnt want pip to get hurt and die. And thats where the stuff REALLY starts happening and i cant tell u more sorry

this seemed kind of disjointed but thats bc i cant really be too detailed otherwise id like.... spoil it lmfao. but thats the summary of the first few arcs.

[pestopascal]

how do you go about commissioning someone? i want to but i hear a lot of bad stuff every so often and ive seen you mention certain artists being behind on contact so im not sure what to expect

quite frankly commissioning someone is absolutely terrifying and needs to have a high level of communication from both the person you are commissioning as well as yourself. the one major artist i have said something about and to, turns out, have had a long history of disappearing for months at a time or not being good and running off with money. found out that after i finally got something from one of them, but the other who i’ve been waiting since january on a response from... im emailing every second week and @ ing on twitter constantly by this point considering it was an upfront payment. and like i said about the first one... if commissions are your primary source of income... there is a level of expectation. i know from social media the second one has been involved in a lot of public work and whatnot, which i do support, but all i need is one email to be like “hey sorry im busy with other work”. some people don’t tell you that. or you find out through their tumblr their laptop is broken. it can be very frustrating. or they run donation and commission sale posts in between not doing your commission. so...

and as for you the person commissioning i think people vastly underestimate what you need to provide vs what ppl actually do provide. if you have some specific pose in mind provide photo refs/explain it. you dont need to do a characters backstory, 3 pages, no line breaks. summarise. clear cut on colours and clothing. and if you leave it up to interpretation then you’re gonna end up with something you may have to be like hey sorry lets correct this, which wastes time and effort and money on everyone’s behalf. like spend time going through god like pinterest or whatever to actually source what it is you are looking for. you’d be amazed that people rly to appreciate it, and also esp when artists run limited spots, the ones that are actually providing references and so on are the ones that do get picked because it makes it easier to then provide a higher quality product. its not about remembering urls and favouritism that some people like to claim, its so that they can spend more time on something for you.

that said, commissioning someone and seeing something you have in mind come to life is brilliant. personally i do have a preference for commissioning friends, because well 1) communication (sophia is so good for it), 2) its so funny dropping into the dms like kicking down their door and throwing money at them to draw something for you (something i do to hoiist and daisy regularly) and 3) idk love and support friends!!! (always all of them) also with friends too i do ask people if theyre trying something out like animations, new painting style, etc. if they wanna test on my comm i dont mind because in some instances it also helps them like work out if they wanna use it as an offer on a comm yknow?

when it comes to artists (or writers in some instances) that you dont personally know, if i cant exactly find the information on their tumblr (which happens quite rarely but does happen) i just ask. what do they need. what do they want. also turnaround time. there are people out there with art/writing styles that you do adore, or something specific theyve done in the past you want to almost have recreated for yourself. talk to them! ask if they’re okay redoing like idk a deconstructed helmet or a watercolour tarot card or a 3k word third pov fic revolving around reconnecting 5yrs later (plummmmm).  but like too ask about payments, if you can potentially do half and half (a lot of artists are honestly open to this but you just have to ask), what are their routines like with providing sketches and changes (most tend to have information available on their tumblr but... still), etc etc. and dont be surprised if you ask for some heavy tattooing and jewellery and flowers that the price goes up? ive seen people be genuinely shocked like youre asking for heavy detail... hello.... but communication is key and its also on you to ask and tell the things you want and need.

as for writing commissions, personally, kind of almost in the same boat? if theres a particular scene, a visual reference helps to be like a guiding key to get to that point, but also specific words, like talking about hands, the colour purple. personally too with writing comms i have done, i do sometimes go and search for like oc tags for more visual stuff and then translate it to text. some of my favourite pieces have been exchanges more than commissions, with crashed-down through the dragon age pieces we’ve done, and utilising the tags there. also like i ask if you want the pov to follow someone specific, do you want first, second or third, any particular time of day, etc etc etc. like this does affect tone and flow. also with mine i offer snippets as i move through to see if the phrasing is right, am i doing something appropriate to the character/s, as with art you have the. pose and emotion in one position as such yknow? with writing its a movement and kind of links through it all. if like one sentence is off, the tone could be wrong, and changes everything.

also, if something is out of your price range, i have seen an upswing in people asking that just let someone know. inquire, work it out, but if its too much just politely turn it down. yes, emails get lost and tumblr is notorious for not flagging messages so there can be unintentional ghosting but yeah i think thats a good habit to get into.

tldr; dont be afraid to commission people, seriously, its very rewarding for everyone around. be polite, ask questions, keep on top of the communication. dont be an asshole, be clear about what youre after, be kind, enjoy

[despiteherself]

somewhat spoiler-y thoughts under the cut. don’t keep reading if you don’t want to see stuff about httyd3

okay. so overall i actually enjoyed httyd3 (surprising; i know). i do have lots and lots of complaints but the stuff i liked was exciting and interesting enough that i sort of just blacked out the bad stuff. and i’m going to love picking that stuff apart bc boy was there some cringy shit. especially if you don’t like hiccstrid, their scenes with actual relationship talk were awkward and wooden and god. the ending was SO :/ 

actual spoilers from here on out. you’ve been warned. 

grimmel was a lot more compelling as a villain. they sort of gave him a backstory thing and it kind of ruined it a bit for me bc it was basically “i killed a night fury as a boy and my village loved me for it so i killed all of them” but idk something about it was lacking and i was like. oh. did you guys not care enough to flesh this one out. actually, writing it down it sounds way better motivation than when he actually said it even tho it’s basically the same thing.

the deathgrippers were being controlled! grimmel was using their venom to mind control them, so any “alpha talk” didn’t get through to them and they did exactly what grimmel wanted. 

and hiccup didn’t give a shit lol. these dragons were constantly being drugged via needles in their head/neck and being forced to hunt and attack and carry grimmel around and hiccup didn’t even feel a little bit sorry for them or express any pain. the whole movie was kinda “wow ppl don’t deserve dragons we need to save them” but he didn’t express any empathy for dragons being used? not many were shown in this movie to be used, and even less that hiccup saw, but idk the whole “let the things you love go!” didn’t congeal well. 

further more, he made several terrible decisions for the entirety of berk, including running away to find the hidden world, which they had no proof even existed and absolutely kept walking exactly into everything grimmel wanted, but when ruff did it (after she was “captured” and let go she flies straight back the place they’ve settled leading grimmel back to new berk) it felt like it was being played as a WAY worse thing. like she was an idiot for doing it, and it was just! hiccup. every decision you’ve made has been panicked and blind and made your position worse and worse. 

gobber, valka and eret all get a little screen time, and they all play the naysayer stoick part? like “hiccup this is dangerous” and hiccup completely ignores them. them: hiccup we have advice hiccup: ok cool im not listening and i don’t want to hear it. they don’t even get to really explain their points of view ??????? 

valka’s other stuff is “oh we might have been followed leaving berk” and then her being all “astrid do u still love and believe in my son?????” what “he’ll listen to u” uhm ??? and no one else i get? ?/ they literally do not talk except about hiccup

gobber’s scene where he tells hiccup to marry astrid is so weird and awkward and only tuffnut yelling “oh no not the m word!” had anything that made it better. noah fence but astrid was all “that’s weird and awkward of you” and tells hiccup she thinks they’re “not ready for marriage” and the idea is silly and it 100% sounds like she’s not interested in him at all. and he’s obviously super invested and he’s all “haha maybe you can have snotlout” she makes “jokes” about snotlout being into valka. it was.... 

also. he ONLY mentioned snotlout when saying there’s other guys and idk. it ..... idk now i think about it it maybe feels the “joke” is kinda who would want snotlout which :/ but i guess means tuff and fishlegs are valid suitors? i don’t know 

hiccup in the whole was pretty weak tbh. like he didn’t stand out for me and most of his plot felt like it had a bunch of good ideas but they struggled putting it together. it’s like when u see a fic and u love the general idea but the execution is not how u would, and they go on and it’s like. i really really wouldn’t have 

they weirdly anthropomorphise toothless and then also. have him act like a dog and i found it disconcerting 

the light fury is genuinely super blobby and ugly and i cna’t believe they made me watch SO much of “uwuw sexy seductress” content and toothless being a complete airhead who licks a rock to “practice” for it. was weird and i was uncomfortable. 

also astrid is all “wow toothless has a girlfriend its so cute !!!!!!!” and they watch him watch other dragons doing mating dances and hiccup is like ‘i never pegged you for a romantic, like never” like get a fuckign hint !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! she never kisses you on the cheek. astrid expressing sentiment cause she thinks something is romantic but never for your relationship is telling you A LOT about it 

honestly. they don’t do anything to make me convinced in ANY WAY that astrid is actually into him and wants to marry him for real. at their wedding she is SO wooden and when they kiss hiccup brings his hand up but astrid is just STANDING there,,, and they look so blank. it’s so. 

also. i was right astrid was mostly just a prop for hiccup’s story and she barely interacts with anyone that isn’t hiccup or valka, and when it’s valka it’s about hiccup. 

aside from toothless, and a little bit of stormfly, the gang’s dragons are mostly just. in the background and don’t really have anything to do with anything

behind everything there were this warlords, i didn’t pick up names and apparently they were the ones who were funding drago or whatever? and they call grimmel in bc he cares about killing night furies and are hoping that it’ll mean they get all the dragons. it was kinda. i sort of liked the idea but i felt it was shoved in, and they just mentioned drago to make it seem like it was planned when they came out of nowhere. and idk not planned at all. like an idea that was good but they didn’t edit everything to make sure it fit. a lot of stuff felt kind retcon-y like apparently stoick was “obsessed with finding the hidden world” and he even mentions in a flash back that it’s not the nest they’re looking for in httyd1 so it’s so weird like. and there was this ~journals~ stoick had about it and it’s just! they never ever mentioned this before gfhsdfjhdfgjdfgfdg guys. that’s so fucking messy and kinda annoying. in the grand scheme this retconning isn’t too much, but it’s enough that it’s like. none of this was planned and i can tell and instead of making it match up you just bluster through like “actually this always happened” as if u think i’m a dumbass who will just blindly believe whatever you tell me instead of a long time fan with a personal involvement.i know some of u read my blog,,, come on   

i didn’t cry at all like lol. i had fun but i wasn’t emotional. 

no characters die don’t worry

ruff was PERFECT and everything she did was wnoderful and i LOVE her so much! she got to speak A LOT and she’s all “it’s so tough being this hot” i love you girl, and she’s over eret and is like “wow he missed out” and talks about snotlout and fishlegs which was :///// but the guys don’t do the whole fighting over her thing so that’s! and she’s like “i guess fishlegs but he’s a nerd” and at the end he cries at the wedding and she’s like “wow i guess the sensitive guy wins” so a lot of her stuff was kinda about men ://// but herself was PERFECT and she boops grimmel’s face with the bobble ends of her hair pretending they’re a zippleback. she makes jokes about why is grimmel’s face so long, and her’s is long but WOW does that take the cake. and she says “astrid round face” it was so !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! she’s so good i love her 

rupple does a good job with tuff. the voice difference was noticeable and i kept thinking about it but i think he did well. tuff gets a bunch of speaking parts and he’s super involved with the whole wedding concept and he’s like “haha wow hiccy, a DOES NOT WANT to get married 2 u LOL. which is #tru cause like. she’s a viking warrior queen and you’re well you. you need to shape up. also. be more like me” which i will TAKE i cannot believe tuffstrid is REAL. also now im about 80% convinced hiccup and astrid took a break to see other ppl and tuffstrid fucked. tuff and astrid don’t really interact except for when they leave ruff behind but they KEEP on doing this whole, vibe thing that makes them seem like they’re good friends. like. tuff thinking he knows what astrids want or admires and he actually goes and all his advice/pep talk is like half leg jokes but it’s all good????? tuff has ear piercings, they’re SO on point they look so good, and he’s got rings all over his fingers i love this kid so much he’s so great. he calls his braid his beard and whenever anyone looks a little sad he like, shoves their face into his braid to comfort them.

also tuff says there’s no edge of the world cause actually it’s round like the sun and the moon and stars, even tho stars are dumb. 

i was right fishlegs’ first sentence is basically them all going “wow a nerd” akdshgfkdjghfg. he doesn’t get as much screen time as the others, and most of it is focused on fishmeat, who is ADORABLE and PERFECT. that big moose dragon meets fishmeat at the start and they become bffs and he defends his lil buddy

snotlout’s also not as much screen time, and most of it is him following valka around and being impressed with her and wanting her to say nice things about him. the rest is him getting caught on his cape. valka says nice stuff about eret cause he’s actually good at this planning stuff (except one bit thats played for jokes where snotlout is like “we should spilt up cause *good reasons*” and then eret is like “we should spilt up cause i feel like it” and valka’s all “i trust your instincts!!!!”. it was weird bc it was the only really good tactical decision snotlout made and it gets ignored) and he keeps getting his ego pumped up when he takes what valka says wrong - like she’s being polite, or there’s double meanings and he takes it like he’s good but all he did was get caught on a cage and hung there until hookfang picked him up - and at the end she says “eret maybe brawn, but you’re the brains” and snotlout feels validated again but he doesn’t really deserve it? like idk i wish she said something meaningful. it’s not kind to make someone feel like they’re good at something they’re not. you should encourage him when he’s doing well. 

eret is just kinda. around. doing things. and being like, snotlout’s “rival” for valka’s attention and eret is like. what are you on about lmao

also. i’ve seen some out of context spoilers and they mentioned something being gay but i don’t know where that’s from? snotlout kinda says some great things about eret but it’s a real squint and gobber says eret has the body of a norse god but then he says he does as well and then puts a crick in back when he’s stretching so it’s very clearly a joke and it’s definitely like ‘he’s fat and old and dirty its funny cause he thinks he’s attractive” rather than anything else

hmmMMmmMMMMM god ive forgotten what i’ve talked about and what i haven’t im sure i have more to say but this is already super long os. you can ask me questions if u like. send me an im or something 

[sillyandquiteawkward]

i feel like mostly women write fanfiction (mostly) and the female companions just arent as "fleshed" out as the male ones, not to mention they are fewer. like bethesda didn't exactly look twice at the female characters, instead putting more men in powerpositions. like both curie and cait are optional encounters and piper is more or less just a diamond city introduction then she's pushed aside. 1

meanwhile preston (bless his heart), danse, deacon and x6-88 are faction companions and valentine gets you through a third of the main quest. hancock and maccready are also optional but they have great backstories and development.  2

like im not gonna lie, i felt a little offended that people dont like all the het fics out there (tbh i wasnt even thinking about my f!sole/hancock fics as het, i just like hancock the best and im a woman) but like, im just writing what i want to write. im just writing to get better at it. 3

maybe commision a writer or something. (not you, specifically, but your followers) ask someone to do a prompt. i would love to get prompts for short stories but barely anyone comments or talks to you when you're writing things. maybe im just not There yet when it comes to writing things but like, yknow. what am i supposed to do? halfass a story because quantity > quality? 4

m sorry im talking through you but im very anxious about the stuff i put out there and anything that might make people hate it makes me antsy, half the time i see discourse im tempted to just pull everything off my ao3 because it's not worth the tension but that's also just me. it's my problem, i know that. 5 

i totally see where youre coming from, a lot of the female companions are uh, less built up and not as important story-wise and that leads many people to gravitate towards the other characters. it sucks, but game writers sometimes suck when it comes to making female characters, and they shoved so many characters in general into the game that they didnt treat all the companions equally.

but i dont think the sentiment is “we hate het fics, female soles Suck” its more of a “well im looking for some men loving each other and its hard to find that” which comes across similarly, but are very different concerns. you shouldnt have to change what you want to write about because some people are looking for other things. there are still people who will enjoy your writing. but if you want to appeal to the other group of people, that is always a decision you can make to write different content.

id love to encourage people to reblog, comment, request writers. yall arent given as much credit as other creators get, and really its not fair at all to yall since writing takes so much effort, so much free time, even more so than drawing imo.

personally, i think you should put out what you like, quantity or quality wise. some people write little drabbles and can put them out constantly, but if youre the type of writer than needs to do a 29 chapter story with plot and sub plot with overarching themes, i think that can be wonderful too. of course, having a more continuous flow of content always attracts people, as content consumers we are voracious things, but i sincerely hope that you dont quit your writing and that you keep at it, even when discourse flares up. it can be super scary to see people upset or feeling negatively towards things you find yourself doing, but as long as youre not doing harm, i think you can do what you want with your stories. if people dont like it, theyll skip over it far more often than trying to confront you

[adhd-ahamilton]

Joy To The World, 1, 4 and 5!

Hoo boy, so many questions!!! I hope you’re prepared for the deluge that’s gonna result...~ I’ll answer these tonight and finish the ones in the other messages tomorrow morning!

1. What inspired you to write the fic this way?

So. Over the last five or so years I’ve been writing fic, in all but the second year, I’ve written a special Christmas-related fic for Christmas. (And I did two the first year, so.) Christmas is a really important holiday to me and I really love Christmas-related stuff (the cheesier and sillier the better), so it became kind of a tradition. But this year, I was at a little bit of a loss. I knew I wanted to write Lams, because that’s my big thing right now. But how would I write Christmas Lams? Did they even properly ‘celebrate’ Christmas during that time period?? Or should I just go for an AU?

I researched it, and thankfully it turns out that the 18th century is around when people did start to celebrate Christmas in the modern sense (and it’s also when carols really started to come about, which is great because per tradition all my Christmas fic are titled after a carol), but that was just the beginning of the issue. When exactly would it be set? Valley Forge? But, uh... I highly doubted they would be really doing all that much at that point. But I couldn’t really think of any time outside of Lams AU that they’d be together. (And then I found out afterwards that Ham wasn’t even there for Christmas 1777, so, welp.) And I really couldn’t think of any kind of actual plot. I could have done a kind of meditation on their relationships to religion, but I didn’t know that much about which specific form of Christianity they belonged to, and I thought it was something that could be and HAD been done much better by other people. (Plus that’s not really my fave kind of fic to write to begin with.)

So, it wasn’t really working out that well. But still, I really kept trying. Through November, my working plan became almost set in stone: I’d do a combined historical and modern AU fic, switching back and forth between scenes, comparing themes (supply lists in VF compared with finding money for food over Christmas break in modern AU), sorta casually looking at the differences. When I gave it up, it was partly out of lack of interest in the themes, but my conscious reason was ‘I just don’t really care about modern AU Lams.’

...which came to the crux of the problem all along: I’m not really an AU person. Or rather, I’m very not an AU person. I’ve written very few AUs in my time, and almost all of them were historical AUs - certainly not modern day ones, and definitely not school AUs. I don’t have any, like, moral opposition - I can fully appreciate the transformative potential of full-setting AUs and find very interesting the interdependent communities that develop around AU-heavy fandoms as they essentially create their own accepted canons - but I just...don’t tend to like them. I’m very analytical!! The idea of just...MAKING UP not just one character or setting but basically a whole story just always seemed simultaneously too easy and too hard to me!!! Plus, I like to write really interesting and unusual things and try new styles, and one of the most basic points of interests for me in writing is asking what makes these characters and relationships unique, based on their precise personalities and backstories and combinations of traits. None of that lends well to full-setting AUs.

But. As I was mulling this terrible problem over, as usual, I was also running over in my head all kinds of various different characterisation ideas. This time, I was thinking about how it was interesting that Hamilton always seemed to be written in opposition to Henry Laurens, when IRL it seems they had a pretty decent acquaintanceship. And I was thinking about it, and I really started to think that, actually, someone in Hamilton’s point of view - who was constantly abandoned by his father, and desperate for his attention, and incredibly ambitious despite the circumstances of his birth - would be one of the WORST people to understand that an overly-controlling, overly-interested father who expects extremely highly of his son could be a negative influence. Which also added to another thought I’d been having. I always liked one quote from Chernow, that Laurens must have seen in Hamilton what a man who makes himself can do, and it always made me think that Hamilton must have been the same way - that he must have seen in Laurens the man he had always aimed to be. So, Laurens grew up in a good family, acknowledged and promoted by said family, with plenty of money and a great deal of opportunity. To Hamilton... yeah, it’d definitely be hard for him to see the problems with that. (And, you know, there IS a lot of privilege there!! It’s just, y’know, that mental illness doesn’t always listen to that.) But, those thoughts were kinda moot, because I really couldn’t think of any way to contrast these different experiences with fathers in historical verse.

And that’s when it came to me. What if I did a modern AU where Hamilton came down to visit the Laurens family for Christmas?

I didn’t have the time (or, really, the interest) to develop a full-on world for everyone, and a uni AU just seemed to be the most appropriate for this one, anyway. And it also did have a bit of appeal: it always kinda bugged me that in the AUs I read, Hamilton and Laurens never seemed to be studying law, even though that’s historically what they did do. As a law grad, I figured I might as well be the one to write it. (Though law in Australia is p different from in the US - there’s no separate law school, we just study it straight out of high school like anything else - but whatever.) And once I was doing THAT, it was hard for me to escape the fact that, in the real world, studying law hadn’t...exactly always been the best experience for me. Given that Laurens didn’t really want to study it either, it seemed appropriate to lean on those experiences a bit.

Aaand that’s where we really get to the meat of the inspiration behind it, heh. Which is to say: this is possibly the most autobiographical thing I’ve ever written...? I’ll say outright that a lot of it WAS entirely invented - my relationship with my family is nothing like John’s was in this, at all. But my anxieties over studying, and my worries about the future and what a career in law would lead to... yeah, that came from me haha. Because, to get kind of personal about it... well, I graduated July 2015. And in the time since then, I have been employed for about 2.5? months, total. The job scene here, in general and especially for law grads, is just that bad. (And, uh, there was a fair bit of personal fault in my lack of preparation for after I’d graduate? But, seriously, I was really anxious already...) And ever since then - particularly 2016 to the present - I’ve also had a lot of anxiety and depression and stuff going on. At the time I wrote the fic, it was in a position of leaning worse rather than better. So...I honestly don’t know if there was ever, like, a dispassionate fic in there safely cordoned off from my own projections, but if there was, it didn’t last long.

So, I got the idea, and wrote it all up pretty quickly in early December, just kinda ridin’ that catharsis of getting all that stuff out. (And it turned out to be even more relevant than I thought, as ‘trying to enjoy Christmas like you usually do when you’re really not happy’ also ended up a very autobiographical theme.) And that’s how it happened!

As for one or two other things:

I really really didn’t wanna get too into politics in the fic lmao. I don’t feel comfortable with more than the broadest strokes of Hamilton’s beliefs (I’m gonna GET THERE but Im still well rev-verse in Chernow) and I always feel uncomfortable about portraying historical figure in any better light than they deserve when it comes to specific matters. But I also wanted to have Laurens and Hamilton at least as POC because I also think it’s important to increase racial diversity in fanfic in the rare cases that we really get a clear choice. So, I tried to kinda portray that without really getting detailed about any activist stuff or whatever. Which is why in Ham’s argument with Henry he’s really not siding with anyone, he’s just an economics wonk who gets mad when people on both sides of the political aisle don’t make sure their numbers add up, lol. That was my best compromise. (And Philly kinda nudged me when I still got too far off-course;; haha!)

Hamilton has ADHD because: again, I wanted to actually officially write up neurodivergent characters into fic when I had the option of being specific (my Ham is always neurodivergent but obv I can’t explicitly write that into the text of historical verse), and it’s ADHD because......well, I could write a really long thing about that alone lmfao. And I feel like I kind of should in some ways because I know that a lot of people aren’t rly familiar with how ADHD tends to actually, like, feel, for real-life people, and if you aren’t then I KNOW this must sound like a really arbitrary or misguided HC. And I’d really love to write it up and expand education and all, but. It’s also something that hits really close and personal for me and, as someone who can be anxious for days straight over opening entirely innocuous tumblr messages... I just DK I could do it, atm;;;;; Someday I will though, I hope!!! (Tho I will say that I’m totally for all neurodivergent Ham HCs and that honestly my Classic Ham is also influenced by BD and BPD things so I’m p flexible about it.) (Actually I guess I CAN say that my HCs for Ham all involve disorders with extreme moods and mood swings and stuff and ADHD in its lesser known symptoms can absolutely include that, esp with Rejection-Sensitive Dysphoria, so yeah. That’s basically the large part of my reason for that headcanon right there lol.)

4. What's your favorite line of dialogue? 

HM OH MAN, I’m not sure!!! Lemme skim it again real quick.

In terms of sheer characterisation efficiency, I always liked the idea of Henry Laurens’ introductory sentence being to complain about John not calling often enough. It’s just such a perfect combination of a) genuinely cares about his son and wants to hear from him, and b) is an asshole who has no idea whatsoever of the pressure he’s putting on his son without offering any concurrent praise or reassurance. 

...so yeah I think I’ll leave it at that actually, since this thing is long enough already lol.

5. What part was hardest to write?

I was sitting here trying hard to remember if I really had trouble writing any part of the draft because there was one bit where I stalled briefly but it wasn’t really that bad and I couldn’t even really remember it and apart from that it was super smooth...until I remembered that editing counts as writing. And hoo fucking boy.

I was lucky enough to be able to have my fic beta-ed by Philly! Which I’m super grateful for and the fic is undoubtedly better for it! But it was a really difficult process for me because of my anxiety. And I needed to do it rather quickly, because of course I had to have it finished before Christmas, and my family actually was going away for Christmas where we wouldn’t have internet access.

So I get through almost all of the fic. It’s finally almost done. And then right at the end there’s a bit where Alex and John quickly exchange gifts on Christmas morning. Super short scene. And Philly pointed out that, actually, wouldn’t the rest of the family be taken-aback at them exchanging gifts without them?

And I kind of read that and sat back and. that was right. That was 100% correct. So like. What do I do??? Do I involve the other characters? But the original scene was like, three lines. and I don’t wanna have to write a whole new scene lmao. Do I take it out? But in a earlier scene, I’d had John express a worry that the present he’d gotten for Alex was awful and he really regretted it, and I kinda liked that in this final scene we see that actually he’d just forgotten WHY he’d bought it (he’d remembered Alex saying something about it), and I thought that was a nice thing about how anxiety can really fuck with even your memory and stuff bc in the end there genuinely was no reason to worry. It wasn’t necessary to the fic, but it only came about in the writing - I’m pretty sure the outline was just like ‘and then they exchange gifts or somethign??? IDK’ - and I didn’t want to get rid of it again. But then how do I justify them exchanging gifts alone??? 

And so that’s how I ended up just sitting there mournfully or pacing back and forth like p LEASE just SAVE ME, just GIVE ME AN OPTION, I have a HOLIDAY TO PACK FOR and THINGS TO DO and I just want this damn fic to be EDITED and DONE ALREADY. I came up with soo many possibilities, none of which satisfied me,lmao. and eventually after wayyyyyy too long of trying to figure it out I settled on something that seemed mostly plausible and then just. wrote it in and skimmed the rest of the fic and posted it lmao.

Which, honestly, is pretty typical proceedings. I tend to have the general ideas come pretty easily to me, and the actual writing is normally pretty smooth - it’s usually the editing where I start rocking back and forth and cursing myself for ever trying to write :’) (Luckily, at that point I’m close enough to the end that I can usually force it through...!!)

[bigskydreaming]

How did you come up w/ the worldbuilding of By Lost Ways? Cause going by chapter 1 and your posts on the deck, it's fascinating and super well thought out!

LOL thanks! And yes I will be getting back to that now that I can like....actually enjoy feedback/comments from stuff I post instead of just posting and two seconds later be in crisis mode and completely forgetting I even just did that lol.

But in answer to your question, you know how there are novels like Fifty Shades of Grey and City of Bones that are basically fanfic with the serial numbers filed off, as some people call that? This is basically just the exact opposite. It was an original novel that was part of a bigger shared fantasy universe of mine called the Citadel, that I ended up not doing anything with because it had too many (superficial) similarities to another novel of mine, even though the latter was a sci-fi project. They actually werent that similar, just used a lot of the same aesthetics and tropes, like both had airships, etc, it was one of those things where they just FELT too similar when writing them, and that was causing complications in doing anything further with them so I decided to just let one go, and it happened to be the fantasy one, since I had a bunch of other projects in that same universe that I could shepherd various characters and elements over into.

But one thing I couldn’t ever really relocate was the idea of the Regents’ Deck, which was always a fave concept of mine, and then awhile back it occurred to me that the Batfam was actually really really easy to structure into the already existing framework of the Regents’ Deck and the overall world I’d built around it, and so I was like hey, Im not doing anything else with it, why not just make it a Batfam fanfic. So the story that resulted was a new thing, its not like I just swapped the names around, the plot of Hypotheticals of Being just didn’t work for a Batfam fic, at least not in any way that really engaged me, but it kinda just.....it was almost more like writing a crossover fusion of two fandoms, just one of them happened to be wholly of my own making, lolol. But basically like, the actual fanfic was just sorta like me writing another story in this same setting/lore that I’d already written one novel in, just with the Batfam characters instead.

As for the worldbuilding itself, in the initial form, like, worldbuilding is literally my favorite thing in the world lol, and also I happen to view as probably my biggest strength as a writer, so if there’s interest, I’d be down to do a post walking through kinda my whole ‘process’ there or whatever. Since I do have a certain approach I apply to pretty much everything I write, from fanfic to original projects, its just so ingrained its hard to kinda break it down into clear steps. But give me three things to use as a start point, and I’d be happy to kinda like, do a post ‘showing my work’ as I worldbuild around them.

The three things thing is kinda key for me, as I dont know entirely where it comes from or why I started doing it, I just noticed somewhere along the line that every fully formed project or world I create that I’m actually happy with, like....can always be traced back to three initial ideas I threw together. I’m not exactly sure why three is the magic number for me, it just kinda is.

For example, the world and initial story for this one grew out of these three seeds: Mother Sky, a Tarot Deck, and airships. Those were the three elements that popped into my head as wanting to do something with, and that I combined to come up with this world. (Mother Sky being like.....so I was thinking about all the various takes we have on Mother Earth, and I was wondering what would a world look like that viewed the Sky in the same way, like potentially if it was a fantasy sky-set civilization instead of land-bound).

So the basics of the world all grew out of just those three ideas, and then it was easy enough to flesh out by leaning on a lot of already existing worldbuilding for my broader Citadel mythology, to create the exact specifics of the plot/conflict. Not really relevant to the fanfic version now, as the focus on that stuff is most of what was cut when adapting it to Batfam, since I still have lots of Citadel stuff not related to this one particular project.

Like the basic idea behind the Citadel is that in this fantasy universe, the universe itself has a kind of rudimentary sentience, that constantly seeks out a kind of partner or symbiosis with sentient beings to kinda...drive its power. Like, its aware enough to know that it wants to grow and change and evolve, but relies on the imagination and creativity of sentient beings to do that. So it centralizes its powers of creation in a form that appears to most sentient beings as a kind of fortress or citadel, a seat of power, and anyone who enters it and assumes control over it, in effect becomes god. Able to reshape the universe and create anew according to their whims. And sometimes there’s just one person who stumbles across the Citadel, sometimes a pair or a trio, sometimes a full pantheon, with various individuals assuming sovereignty over set Rooms within the Citadel, and the forces those Rooms command (like gaining the Armory makes one a god of war, the Library a god of knowledge, etc, etc). 

But for all their power, the various residents of the Citadel rarely ever glean on to the fact that the Citadel is kinda ‘alive’ in and of itself, and the true power behind all the power they wield. And the one thing the Citadel detests is stagnancy. So whenever a god or gods or pantheon becomes complacent, stops USING the power of the Citadel as a force for change, stop driving the engines of creation to beget something new and instead just become content to kinda enjoy what they’ve made or reshaped things INTO.....that’s when the Citadel basically takes back its power and reappears as a temptation on the horizon for new seekers to find and ascend to godhood.

Anyway, the point being there’s been an endless cycle of the Citadel changing hands and everything that comes with it, up until what’s basically the beginning of this broader universe.....the ‘last’ residents of the Citadel are a full-fledged pantheon who were so destructive in their attempts to seize more and more control of the Citadel for just themselves or their allies, that they were basically destroying their entire world without any single one of them having control of enough of the Citadel that they could prevent this. Until one of them, Seshan, finally gained control of the Throne Room, the heart of creation, and using its power she basically locked all the other gods in their respective Rooms and broke the entire Citadel into pieces, flinging the others away into the void of uncreation. So for the thousands upon thousands of years since then, the various other gods have been able to create using just the power of their own Rooms, and move between each others’ various worlds, but are denied access to the Throne Room or the world it rests on, the world of their own creation.....and without it, none of them can put the Citadel back together and assume full control of it.

Or, y’know, restart the cycle of creation and destruction. Something the Citadel itself, unbeknowst to any of them, is really not happy about.

So you’ve got some gods who are content with things the way they are and happy being the only god in town in their respective worlds, you have others who are trying to use their worlds to one by one conquer the others’ and thus gain control of their Rooms, trying to gather enough power to kinda just force their way back through the locked doors to the Throne Room, and then you’ve got others who basically have been using eternity to settle old scores and grudges.

The latter happened to be the backstory for the setting for what became By Lost Ways - hence why it wasn’t too hard to pull these particular elements out and shift them to other settings. The original Mother Sky, the creator of this world, is in the Citadel-verse named Eriu, and she’s the supreme nature goddess of earth, sea and sky, being one of the most powerful of the deities with control of three separate Rooms. She used the Aviary to make this particular world, hence its magic being connected to and stemming from feathers, etc. The Dark One, the original Joker of the Regents’ Deck, is Dian, who controls the Pit and the Locked Room, and as such is the God of Temptation and Emptiness, Hunger and Corruption.

(Dian’s machinations back during the Holy Wars basically shattered the mind of Eriu’s lover, Indech, as Dian tried to manipulate him into gaining control of one of the most dangerous Rooms in the Citadel and use him as a proxy without risking himself. It half worked, as Indech gained control of the Room that made him the new God of Chaos, but in the process turned from the somewhat naive, gullible scholar Dian had been counting on him being, to someone just completely detached from anything other than his own interests - which were now fueled by the primal powers of chaos and his new worldview/conviction that nothing he did mattered and thus he could do anything free of consequence. Indech’s as distant and unreachable to Eriu as anyone else, and she’s had a vendetta against Dian ever since....which often takes the form of a merciless nature goddess rampaging through the worlds of Dian’s creation, heedless of the damage she leaves in her wake, as the more millennia pass, the more disassociated the gods become from their own origins. Some have even bought into their own hype and forgotten that they aren’t the only gods out there or even the first).

But anyway, that’s the story of how the worldbuilding for By Lost Ways came to be, lol, though for specifics on like, the actual process as opposed to the big picture stuff, just send me three things and I’ll walk through things from the start to whatever results.

For the record, I want to make clear I’ve been writing stuff in my Citadel ‘verse since I was fifteen, so any similarities to Brandon Sanderson’s shared universe are not incidental, but they’re also not me ripping him off - rather, I’m fairly certain we were both influenced in our worldbuilding/big picture stuff by the same novels when we were growing up. Like, its not that I’m above ripping other people off, its just that I want credit to go where its due. I ripped off Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman and a little Michael Moorcock and some Zelazny. LOLOL.