#and then I tend to sort of separate out fics that either don't fit that vibe or change part of canon

[ikemenomegas]

hey io! what does myy stand for? love your work!

hello dear!

myy stands for "my younger years" and loosely refers to the fic chain and sequence of events surrounding the oc I made up to pair with gojo and/or getou.

I started calling it that because I compiled the central, largely canon compliant with regard to events, fics together on ao3 under the same name: my younger years so that they could be read as a body, since I started getting a little self-referential with the pieces, and started fleshing out the oc backstory more. The title refers to the song 'wasting my young years' by london grammar

[normalbrothers]

1, 3, 5 generally, 13 (about polly) for the salty fandom asks >:)

What OTPs in your fandom(s) do you just not get?

i'd guess the main otps in this fandom are tommy/grace, tommy/lizzie and tommy/alfie - which i all understand. the former two are literally consummated relationships in the show and you can see how they got there and the latter is a good dynamic between two male characters (hdhdhd), and i'm interested in/fine with all of them as far as watching pb goes. there are couple of popular tropes/takes assigned to these relationships that i don't really agree with or find fitting for the characters, and they tend to bleed through in fic, so it's kind of a hit and miss often enough, but as far as canon goes, they are all fine to me (in the specific ways they exist, etc), so i do get them (to answer the question as directly as possible) though imho this is one of these questions where it also becomes obvious that pb fandom doesn't really have traditional fandom dynamics where there are several OTP corners/niches of either canon or non-canon relationships (that don't involve tommy, and there are a couple!) that you could argue about; everything is so oversaturated with oc or y/n fic that you don't really have this stuff naturally occur in greater measure. which is sad, honestly.

Have you ever unfollowed someone over a fandom opinion

sure have! i've grown a little more "lenient" or open-minded or patient about stuff, so it's not something i tend to do right away anymore, but i think there are probably still a couple of opinions i'd unfollow someone for.

Has fandom ever ruined a pairing for you?

"ruined" is a harsh word, but tommy/alfie isn't that interesting to me anymore: most fics are either Margate Fics(tm) or stuck in s2 or just complete aus that have little to do with the characters in the first place and often it's tommy being written as separate/isolated from the family which is always kind of boring to me: i need to know what's happening Over There ! i get why this happens, etc, but it's a shame, since the relationship actually went through a couple of canon developments that could be explored. (THOUGH i do have to say alfie has grown somewhat obnoxious to me in s5/s6, and i ended up not really liking his and tommy's scenes (they are *fine*, but i sort of think it was a mistake to have brought him back after s4 at all, and i think you can see that in these seasons, even if alfie's function is plausible). and that's not quite the fandom's fault, that's kind of on the show/writing to be fair)

Unpopular opinion about XXX character? (Polly)

she's either reduced to the girlboss matriarch who's badass and right about everything (boring) or diminished in her own arc (re: michael) or caricatively mischaracterized as a jealous harpy when it comes to tommy and gr/ace (yawn), and it's all so terrible and doesn't dignify the character at all there's a trend of her being deprived of the complexity she absolutely has in canon (literally thee female lead, and what for!!), when what makes her so good is that she's faulty and flawed and this compelling melting pot of conflicting and contradictory desires and wants and emotions and ambitions and trauma and hypocrisies; and it all plainly plays out for everyone to see! she's as multifaceted as tommy and arthur, and as good and bad, as sympathetic and as hard to like as either of them. obviously, her arc has been tragically cut short, but there's still plenty of it when revisting the show, and her impact is tangible: anyone who's watched s6 probably had that odd moment of going 'oh i know how polly would have felt about that/what polly would have done/said here', that's how good she was, a perfectly realized character potrayed by an extraordinary actress!

[theintentioncraft]

To continue supporting content makers, this tag game is meant to show the entire process of making creative content: this can be for any creation.

RULES - When your work is tagged, show the process of its creation from planning to posting, then tag up to 5 people with a specific link to one of their creative works you’d like to see the process of. Use the tag #showyourprocess so we can find yours.

I've been tagged by @lordbelacqua (thank you Dea! <3) to talk about Backlead aka: that one Masriel fic I wrote where I got massively carried away...

Rambling/essay under the cut - fair warning, it's a long one!

Okay so first of all just a little disclaimer that Backlead did not follow my usual writing process - the idea was 110% borne out of self-indulgence and it was also both my first foray into HDM fanfic and my return to fanfic as a whole after a long hiatus from writing, so for me this was really a chance to just get back into the swing of things. Everything from Heavenly Guard through to Swansong and all of my current WIPs follow a more structured process and I'm happy to discuss any of them in a separate post!

PLANNING: I tend to find with my fics that I either have a nice little timeline of events planned out pre-writing or I have a very specific event in my head and I just take that and see how things unravel from there and Backlead was 100% the latter.

All I had in my head initially was the ballroom dance scene and so a lot of my admittedly-minimal planning was around the technicalities of that particular section, as well as some of the more general details e.g Marisa's outfit, the setting of the ball, etc. Planning the dance was the most fun part because it was a chance for me to put a lot of my dance knowledge to good use and think up something that fits the back-and-forth way in which Marisa and Asriel frequently navigate their encounters. In a way though I'm actually very glad that a lot of this fic Just Happened instead of being planned out, sometimes it's nice to just run away with an idea!

MUSIC: This gets its own section because this is one of the most important things in my process. Every single fic I write is written to various pieces of music that just help me to put myself in the right headspace for whatever I'm writing at the time - sometimes its just a single piece of music (I wrote Swansong in one hour with just one track from the Unforgotten - a TV show in the UK for those of you not familiar with it - soundtrack on repeat) and sometimes its entire playlists. I do love geeking out about my music choices for fic writing so happy to talk more in a separate post about music for some of my other fics if anyone's curious!

For Backlead I found a couple of playlist-vids from the lovely raviolae on youtube that really worked wonders for my writing. This comes with a disclaimer that I did not necessarily attribute any of these specific songs to either dance scene and I wanted to leave that open for people's imagination - but it's still brilliant vibes for thinking about two once-lovers-now-enemies trying to one-up each other whilst ignoring how much they still find each other attractive.

The two playlist-vids in question are here: you're stuck on the dance floor with your rival and find out they're an annoyingly good dancer and you're dancing with your rival and both of you want to lead

WRITING: First step every time is to figure out who's POV I'm going to cover because that makes a major difference in the way I'm going to write. Characterisation is the big thing for me and there's nothing I love more than to really get inside a character's head and basically think like them, and figure out what makes them tick and how they'll react to the story I'm putting them in. With my initial idea for Backlead being basically about the subtle power dynamics of a ballroom dance, Marisa felt like the natural go-to for this one and I found it much easier in this instance to write in her headspace than in Asriel's.

I wrote this fic in a very out-of-order fashion. The first dance (the slower, waltz-style dance) was the first part I finished, then I did as hinted at above get very carried away and move onto the section in the hallway, then I went right to the start and covered the entire section leading up to that first dance. Then I revisited the hallway scene because I wanted to rework it (the initial version was planned to be more explicit and involved less dialogue - but I wasn't comfortable with writing out the former at that time and the latter got changed by way of me having a sudden burst of dialogue-themed inspiration). The second, more set piece style dance came last in terms of the 'major events' that I wrote purely because I spent a lot of time racking with my dance knowledge to try and make it work in a way that didn't feel forced.

My final major writing stage is to write the 'transitions' between each major part - small pieces where nothing particularly noteworthy happens but it helps the fic to flow from one conversation/event to the next and also sometimes allows me to sneak in a bit of characterisation that I couldn't fit in elsewhere.

Along the way I often leave sentences half-finished with a bracket indicator so I know to go back to it later or I make little notes if I've added something in that needs explaining earlier in the fic, and I make sure to sort those parts out before I jump to the self review/beta reader stage. A couple of examples are below:

Although sometimes this method does also annoy future me too 😂:

SELF REVIEW/BETA REVIEW: Whenever I finish a fic, it gets put away for a day or two and I stop thinking about it completely - if I'm using a beta reader (usually @thatlavanderbard but I sometimes enlist help from friends on discord), I'll send them a copy of my draft at this point so they can start going through and leaving comments for me to work on, but the idea is that when I go back to my work a few days later I'm looking at it with semi-fresh eyes and can properly sift through each sentence to make sure things make sense.

When I'm self-reviewing I generally tend to follow this order of operations: spelling/grammar check (via docs') -> flow check (making sure any deliberate time skips/POV changes/etc in my fic flow smoothly from one part to the next) -> address beta reader comments (because they almost always pick up on things I myself would've picked up on anyway) -> general detailed final read through to make sure I'm happy with every single line and it all makes sense.

Backlead didn't get a full beta read because I had hit a point with it where I just wanted it up ASAP and my impatience got the better of me, but the rest of the above self-review stages still happened and I still spent a fair few evenings going through it properly and also running the occasional sentence or two by some helpful discord friends if I didn't like the way it flowed but couldn't quite figure out how to remedy it!

POSTING: First step was to reset my AO3 password because I forgot it yet again whoops

On a more serious note this part is pretty straightforward - once I'm ready to post a new fic I generally just go on autopilot for this part of the process (other than when I get to 'additional tags' and immediately get brain freeze...). As soon as it's up on AO3 I swing by here to make a post about it, then swing by discord to drop the link to friends who may be interested in reading it and then I normally nervously scuttle away from my notifications for a while out of fear that people hate it lmao.

That last part was especially true for Backlead because of it being my first trip into HDM fanfic and I always get extra nervous when posting my first fanfic for a new show/game/etc. Thankfully I got quite a few nice comments both on here and on discord that provided good motivation to stick around and post a few more things!

I always panic when asked to tag people lmao but I'll tag @fortheloveofwii for any part of the Onward, Onward series, @lyracordelia for any chapter in Hiraeth or the fic as a whole, and @glassrunner for this absolutely gorgeous gifset of beautiful game soundtracks. Please don't feel like you have to do this if you don't want to though!

[shadowsong26fic]

So when you say you ship obianidala, do you mean, like, obi-wan and padme have feelings for each other and padme has a relationship with both obi-wan and anakin? I just really don't like obikin because the power dynamic is really messed up. Obi-wan raised Anakin. And sure, they started working together more as equals, but obi-wan is still an authority figure in anakin's life. He still calls him master in rots. Obi-wan called Anakin his brother, but he's still a much older brother who raised him.

Soooooo my answer turned out to be really, really long, talking about what works for me in the various subdynamics of the OT3 here XD.

Uh, short answer: when I say I ship something, I don’t necessarily mean all the time in every timeline it is the best of all possible worlds? There are definitely ships I can only ship in certain AU contexts (example: in ATLA, I can only ship Zutara in an AU that diverges from canon no later than Crossroads of Destiny). Also, I very, very rarely ship OT3s in general (example: I am one of the like two people in the Leverage fandom that doesn’t ship the OT3). But Obianidala is one of the few OT3s that works for me at all, whether as a full triad or as a vee of some kind.

Anyway, in terms of the three possible romantic sub-pairings (Anidala, Obikin, Obidala), the only one I ship by itself is Anidala. And, honestly, I actually ship them as a pair more than I ship Obianidala, for the most part (though, like, ideally Obi-Wan is always part of their life/dynamic/etc., just not necessarily as a romantic partner for either of them?). This has a lot to do with my personal history with these characters and their relationships and various broad shipping culture things. Especially in terms of the Obikin arm of the triad–I’ve gone back and forth on it a lot as a SW/prequels fan. In part for the power dynamic issues you mentioned, and in part because of personal Feelings I have about the way platonic love tends to be treated as something Lesser Than romantic love, and the two of them (or the way people shipped them, or something about this dynamic) used to hit that button for me really, really hard. But at this point, I like/can work with any of the potential OT3 variants where the Anidala arm is present (i.e., full triad, Anakin-centered vee, Padme-centered vee).

[This is all, of course, assuming canon/a near-canon AU—I don’t really write/am not super interested in Total AUs like modern day/coffee shop/whatever so I can’t really comment on those. And a canon-divergent AU with a significant/early enough breakpoint changes the potentially hinky dynamics and therefore at least some of my feelings/opinions on the subject. On a purely personality basis, though (i.e., in a not-necessarily-near-canon AU, or with the right post-ROTS AU setup), yes, I ship them in any of the three permutations mentioned above. As I mentioned before, they’re one of like two OT3s I ship at all.]

All right, this is already super long and I have like at least 1k words worth of more detail (about the triad as a whole, about Obikin, about Obidala). So we’re going behind a cut. For the purposes of this discussion, I’m classifying ‘near-canon AU’ [henceforth abbreviated as NCAU] as one where no significant plot changes up to AOTC have occurred (i.e., Anakin still grows up in the Temple as Obi-Wan’s apprentice and Padme’s life during those ten years follows much the same trajectory).

So, to start, for the Obidala arm—this one’s hard for me to make it actually work without being part of some form of triad in canon/NCAU, mostly because of the way Anakin fits in with each of the others individually (regardless of whether his dynamic with Obi-Wan is romantic or platonic). Also, we don’t really see the two of them interact much in canon without Anakin being either there or the conversation somehow being about Anakin (which is one of the things I wish we’d gotten more of in TCW…). That being said, I do find their (potential) dynamic very, very compelling? They both…hmmm, I’m trying to figure out how to word this. They have a lot in common, in terms of worldview, interests, how they approach complex problems (though Padme tends to be very “fight me” and Obi-Wan tends to be more “…well that escalated quickly time to jump off a building”)—and they both really, really love to argue/debate in a way that would make the parts where they do disagree a lot of fun for them. Or something? I’m not articulating this well (again, in part due to the lack of canon foundation, also I haven’t explored this arm as much as I feel like I should; certainly not to the point where I could explain why I like it), but…they just work together, you know?

Anyway, apart from their separate relationships with Anakin making it hard for them to be an exclusive romantic couple [at least in canon or an NCAU], the main problem with this pairing, for me, is getting the relationship started. Like, don’t get me wrong—Padme jumps off that cliff in AOTC just as hard as Anakin does; she’s just as attracted to him as he is to her; the only reason she doesn’t make the first move is because she has like 2% more impulse control (and 100% more mental stability) than he does and I will fight anyone who says otherwise/attempts to push that ‘he accidentally mind-controlled her into loving him’ headcanon in my face. …which is another discussion for another day, sorry). And, I mean, I am of the firm opinion that she had THE BIGGEST CRUSH on Obi-Wan for a while, and if they’d reconnected slightly differently somewhere along the way…but that would not be an NCAU. But even given her probable crush and her hopeless romanticism and her less-than-perfect impulse control, it would play out very differently with Obi-Wan than with Anakin.

For starters, he’s not the type to make the first move or any kind of declaration/confession the way Anakin does in canon (or so I assume based on the way things Satine play out). And he’s a lot more reserved and better/clearer about boundaries (as discussed elsewhere re: the full triad dynamic), so she wouldn’t necessarily do it either (even given the lack of impulse control) without major external forces pushing the issue. Basically, it would take a mutual near-death experience or something to make it happen [or, alternatively, a situation like with Satine only Padme actually would ask him to stay at the end of that year–but, again, that would probably not be an NCAU]. But once they get past that first stumbling block, they would be the power couple to end all power couples. Like IDK if I can articulate it, just. Damn. I mean, I don’t think they would actually conquer the galaxy, but only because neither of them really wants to. Because they absolutely could.

[Incidentally, I don’t actually feel a mutual near-death experience (like in canon with the arena) would have been necessary in the end for Anidala to happen, because they’re both extremely stubborn/passionate people, extremely into one another (fight me), they’ve at least acknowledged this/floated the idea of being together, and neither of them is good at impulse control; it would just be a different (and probably healthier) way/pace for their relationship to develop. Also, ALL OF THE MUTUAL PINING until something finally gave. Like, I can’t write it because courtship narratives aren’t really in my wheelhouse but I would read the HELL out of a fic like that.]

Anyway, clearly, a Padme-centered vee works for me ^_^. I think it would still take a mutual near-death experience, and I think Anakin would have to be there when it happened (because of his issues with jealousy etc.; I mean that subplot in ROTS was stupid and I’m very glad it got cut, but he is clingy and possessive and insecure, especially when it comes to these two. If he was there from the start, though, I think he would very much be Shipper On Deck. Possibly to the point of actively shoving them at one another with all the subtlety of a brick [b/c then he can keep them BOTH]. And this is a Happy Endings type post, so we’re gonna go with that).

Moving on; for the Obikin arm (and also sort of blending into the idea of an Anakin-centered vee or full triad)–basically, the way I view it is this: Anakin has two soulmates (and a parasite, but this particular discussion is not about Palpatine and how he fits into things). Whether these relationships are platonic (because I do absolutely believe in platonic soulmates) or romantic depends on a lot of different factors. Generally speaking, in a near-canon timeline, I tend to go with Anakin and Obi-Wan’s relationship is platonic, and his relationship with Padme is romantic; mostly because of the power dynamic issue you mentioned. And, because of that (as well as because Anidala was p. much my first OTP ever, to the point where before I really knew fanfic was a Thing I wrote a really, really terrible serial-numbers-filed-off story that was basically Padme turning up at Yavin), it is really, really difficult for me to be sold on Obikin by itself, so to speak. It’s not a hard no for me, the way shipping Obi-Wan with Qui-Gon is, but it’s not really my thing.

That being said, romantic Obikin can work for me, assuming they reach some kind of new equilibrium post-ROTS (either without Anakin becoming Vader, or potentially some form of Sith!Obi-Wan AU, though I’m less interested in that without it being an Empress Amidala AU as well and then we’re back to an OT3 of some form). I wouldn’t write it pre- or mid-ROTS, though I don’t necessarily mind reading it, at least from certain authors. But basically, either via an Epiphany Moment or (more likely) a slow maturation process, these two (especially Anakin) need to get to a point where the power dynamic issue is softened for it to work for me. I think they can get to that point, and their relationship can shift in that direction (which I think is part of why Qui-Gon/Obi-Wan is a hard no for me, because I don’t think the two of them ever could). Anyway, the only NCAU [that I’ve talked about here, at least] I’d really do even post-ROTS Obikin (whether as an Anakin-focal vee or full-triad Obianidala) is Distaff, and that depends a lot on which way Obi-Wan’s plotline goes after the shit hits the fan (and even the option that could very well lead there might not). So that’s not a 100% thing right now, just a maybe. It’s not going to be a thing in Precipice. (I ship Obi-Wan with someone else in that AU, anyway.)

In addition to all of that, for an Anakin-centered vee or a true triad—I’m not sure I can articulate it properly, but there was a meta post/thread I was following a few days ago that I’m not sure I can find again that went into details about this—anyway, the dynamics involved with the three of them actually work really well? If I can dig up the link I’ll add it, but this thread basically boiled down to: Anakin and Obi-Wan (leaving aside the potential power dynamic issue) have major issues with communication; and Anakin and Padme have major issues with boundaries. Putting the three of them together helps mitigate that to a significant degree. Plus, y’know, I adore Anakin, really I do, but he is a lot to handle for one person/a single primary relationship, even one who loves him as much as Padme and/or Obi-Wan, so having both of them involved (and everyone communicating properly/laying down appropriate boundaries) really helps take some of that pressure off the two of them (and Anakin, but in a different way). (Related note: part of why Anakin is (relatively) stable in Precipice is because he has an increasingly wide set of close relationships/support system.)

Also, whether both relationships are romantic or not, Anakin really needs both Padme and Obi-Wan in his life in some way. So, like, for me personally, the ideal pipe-dream post-ROTS happy ending involves the three of them running off into the sunset together (so to speak; I think they would all get hopelessly bored trying to retire and that part would last all of five minutes), and exactly who is romantically and/or sexually (as opposed to platonically) involved with who (beyond, as I said, romantic Anidala being very close to my heart/important to me) matters a little less at that point. (That aspect, I think, is probably related to this whole ‘romantic love is not greater than platonic love’ button I have.)

Buuuuuut that’s all in canon/NCAUs. Like I said before, once we set an earlier/more significant breakpoint, it’s a different story. I am specifically aiming for (probably) a true triad Obianidala (though it might end up being a vee) in Auxiliaries, (not sure if the notes on last night’s update may have sparked your question?) but that AU breaks off much earlier, as of TPM, and Anakin doesn’t actually end up in the Temple to be raised by Obi-Wan, so that issue isn’t there. At which point it’s…like, okay, I’ll be honest, I used to have issues with Obikin not necessarily because of the power dynamic, but because it hit my aforementioned ‘platonic love is JUST AS VALID/IMPORTANT/POWERFUL as romantic love’ button pretty hard. Right now, though, my view on the subject has sort of settled as–the two of them are so tangled up with each other (again, soulmates of some flavor) that I don’t particularly care about romantic vs. platonic where they’re concerned for that particular reason. Past a certain point of character/relationship development, anyway, as mentioned above.

So, in an AU like Auxiliaries (where Anakin grows up on Tatooine, meets Obi-Wan once briefly in his early teens, and then they reconnect early in the Clone Wars when they’re both adults), it would probably take a lot of effort to make their relationship not become romantic and/or sexual at some point. (Related note that I don’t think I’ve mentioned before: Anakin tends to read, to me, as very demi and biromantic; that probably contributes to some of my views here). And, you know, the OT3 in that AU might well start with Obi-Wan and Padme sort of dancing around one another in some way, whether they’ve had their requisite Mutual Near Death Experience yet or not, and then Anakin meshes with both of them and things just sort of go from there, though I haven’t made up my mind on that yet.

(Also, an AU where Anakin didn’t end up in the Temple but TPM otherwise went as in canon, he’d probably grow up on Naboo and, despite still being largely an Anidala shipper at heart, the romantic-vs-platonic dynamic between these two relationships would do a total 180 for me. I probably wouldn’t actually write an AU like that for a number of reasons, but…anyway. Figured it bore mentioning.)

…so that was a 2k+ ramble about PT OT3 dynamics, lol. Most of this will probably never actually make it to the foreground of anything I write, tbh. Because whatever I feel about these character dynamics aside…the fact is most of what I write tends to not be shipping fic, precisely. As in, (like I mentioned before) I don’t really like writing courtship narratives/stories where the romantic pairing and their relationship is The Plot. Distaff is really the closest I come to it. Which is not to say that these romantic and/or platonic relationships aren’t super important, just…it’s probably never going to be a real focus for me. Well, portions of Auxiliaries will, for spoilery reasons, and I might to a Valentine’s Day bonus fic or something, but other than that.

I have no idea if I actually answered your question XD Uh, feel free to follow up? Or give me your thoughts, or ask me something unrelated…