#aphelion asks

[the-blind-assassin-12]

Good Day you fantastic spinner of words !!

Any hints for the next chapter of Aphelion ?? Is it in progress ?

Hi, hello, and happy weekend, you radiant opalescent unicorn!! I hope you’re having a great night!! (Or day, depending on when you see this)

I have had this sitting in my inbox for like a week now, Anon, and I’m so sorry that it took me until today to answer it!! I am thrilled to hear that you’re looking forward to more Aphelion!! @something-tofightfor and I both love that story (and Oberyn) so damn much, and whenever someone comments or asks either of us about it we make this face: 😊

And! Good news! The next part is very much in progress! Hints & a tiny peek below the cut ⬇️

Part 12 is going to pick up exactly where the previous part ended - with Reader, Toban, Tyene and Nora out on the town while Oberyn and Ellaria are… otherwise occupied.

Competition, adrenaline and comfort are keywords.

We’re getting closer and closer to Joffrey’s engagement party - the first step in The Plan.

A very small snippet:

Get ready for Girl’s Night + Toban! 🍻🍹🍷

[tuonelabound]

sundrop energy balls

uhhh thank you ?

[idyllic-affections]

i can't STANDDDD the abyss sibling. in my case, it's lumine. anyway i can't stand her. imagine your sibling chasing after you, pushing themselves to their limits JUST to find you--to find answers about you because they love and miss you more than anyone else--and when you finally decide you will see them again, what the fuck do you say? NOTHING OF VALUE?????? and you just go on your way, acting like you don't give a fuck????? when that's literally your only family, you walk away without reassuring that you do care for them and it's just that you have your hands tied or... fucking SOME explanation for why you won't talk??????? the abyss twin does not care about the other at all i swear. like imagine making your allegedly "beloved" sibling stretch themselves so impossibly thin just to find you instead of using your words and, idk, talking to them???? i would just stop looking for them at that point fuck that. anyway this is just a pet peeve about the genshin storyline. it's so annoying.

(i am not an only child btw. i do have an older sister.)

[galateagalvanized]

2 is my lucky number!

#2 - Aphelion, by Sleeping at Last

Loving Obi-Wan was supposed to be safe.

Not easy—though it was that too, sometimes, and terribly so—but safe.

Cody takes a breath like sharpening a blade, like racking a round, and tries to focus on the intel report that he's run his eyes over three times already. His brain stutters over the words. It keeps catching on grief.

“Sir?” Boil asks, parting the tent flap with a gauntleted hand and a single second of hesitation. Cody checks his chrono. It’s been exactly an hour since Waxer came by; Cody would admire the consistency of their check-ins if each interruption weren’t a reminder.

“Come in, Lieutenant,” Cody says, sighing, looking up. He doesn’t know what they expect to find each time they peer in. He doesn’t know what they want him to say, to do.

“Forward scouts have found two additional Separatist camps north of Shyrikaw,” Boil says. A week ago, that would’ve been a comm message. A week ago, it would have been an alert accompanying an automatic update of their battle map.

A week ago, Obi-Wan would have mentioned it to him in passing, their heads huddled over the holoprojection, their fingers trailing possible paths through the blue mountains of Kashyyyk.

Now, Cody nods. This is an answer easy enough to give. “Thank you, Lieutenant.”

Boil hesitates again, waiting. The song of cicadas rises to a crescendo, then fades, then rises again.

“If you need to take some time,” Boil says, “Wax and I can—”

“I don’t need time,” Cody snaps, then breathes, then calms. “We lose people every day. We lose people on my orders every single day. I can’t stop to grieve them. Why should this be different?”

Boil looks at him, uncertain, wary. Kashyyyk’s atmosphere has the approximate water content of Kamino’s oceans. Sweat beads on Cody’s forehead; he wipes it off. Dirt streaks the back of his hand, and he scrubs at his face irritably.

“Cody,” Boil starts. Stops. Cody wonders if Boil would need to take some time if Cody died, if Waxer died, if either of them were shot in the dark by a coward hiding behind a scope.

Grief claws at his throat, clogging it like the gritty Kashyyykian mud.

“Check the perimeter,” Cody chokes out, ducking his head back over the report.

A whisper of canvas, and Boil leaves.

His hands shake. His knees shake. His chest expands in pointless pursuit of oxygen that his blood can’t seem to process, and he drops the pad.

Loving his brothers was a given, written into his soul, in every whorl of his fingerprints. He loved them, all of them, but there were no promised tomorrows for clones. And, beyond that, Cody had to put those well-loved lives on the table himself, to personally up the ante of the war with their lives. 

It required a distance. No need to make it any harder to be the one who survives, he had thought, but—

He never thought he’d survive Obi-Wan. 

Wetness gathers on his lashes, threatening to spill into the tracks carved by his sweat. Loving Obi-Wan was supposed to be safe, simple. He could never have Obi-Wan, and he could never lose him. Always perfectly just out of arm’s reach. And the love Cody couldn’t afford to spend on the brothers he would lose, he spent there.

And lost there anyways.

The sour summer heat soaks his blacks through. They’ve lost a few datapads to the humidity, and they keep having to scoop water out of their fuel supplies. Mud has seeped into anything with more than a hairline crack. 

Misery breeds in his lungs thicker than the atmosphere, and Cody hates himself for it.

He collapses into a chair, surrendering the fight to gravity. What would Jango have said, to see Cody mourning an outsider more than he ever mourned a brother, more than he mourned Ponds, his batchmate, more than the thousands of names Cody still reads through every Remembrance Day? 

Guilt seeps through the cracks in him like mud.

Guilt, because he must have cared for this man more than his brothers. Guilt, because after two years of loss, it was not the loss of his brothers who brought him to his knees, gasping in mud that is as red and wet as love.

And he thinks that that isn’t how love should work—there should be no finite quantity of love, for which loving one person more means loving another less—but few things in his life ever work the way he thinks they should.

Cody is so awfully sorry that he does not work the way he should. 

He stands. Mud stains the sun streaks on his armor.

Beyond his tent, he hears a squelch, a throat cleared. A white and black and gold gauntlet appears in the slit between the tent flaps.

“Sir?” Crys says.

“Come in, Corporal,” Cody says, and his guilt drowns out the grief. 

Surprise! the numbers were related to my spotify top 20 hahaha. This probably isn’t a very new years eve-y story, oops! But thank you very much for the prompt 💖

[artemis-pendragon]

I was trying to figure out why your handle was so familiar (I searched your user on TikTok, thought I had you mixed up with Berklie icaruspendragon for a second) but I got an email notif a couple minutes ago and it hit me - are you the author of Aphelion? Hope this is not a stupid question, Tumblr isn’t letting me read your whole bio so if you mention your Ao3 handle in there I sincerely apologize.

YES I AM!!! And no apologizing I'm just so happy you recognized me!! 🥰 In fact I literally just finished editing the latest chapter of Aphelion five mins ago so the timing of me seeing this is craaaaazy!! Anyway I really hope you're enjoying the fic anon!! Wishing you all the best!! ♥️♥️♥️

[thefirstknife]

i wonder if Nezarec & the Aphelions are connected in anyway even if just thematically. They borh carry alot of themes of radiation. (Aphelions literally)

The whole relics and"its very proximity corrupts and damages you" the everything how the relics nead to be in lead and specialized containers. how they decay and can last centuries poisoning the land and exposure causes degeneration. TV talking about "diffusing" and such

in fact alot of the vibe for the tombs and Traitor's Vessel and Sin carries alot of old Nuclear Dump sites warning. especially the "This is Not a place of worship...."

Something about how radiation poisoning seems to be the few ways to perma kill a guardian and how theres lots of nightmares of dead guardians

the nightmares themselves a shadow of a life lost similar to the "shadows of Fukushima" and how radiation can cause cancerous growth ad how the lunar pyramid accelerated the growth of the eregore

YEAH! These are really cool parallels. I really wish that, even if they're not related, that radiation stuff gets explored more. Especially in relation to the aphelion, but outside of that as well.

And yeah, those were really cool references on Delicate Tomb.

The danger within is repulsive to us.

Long-term nuclear waste warning:

What is here was dangerous and repulsive to us.

Not sure if it's meant to signify anything else seriously, but it definitely is a direct reference. Darkness is also known to mess with the fundamental forces of nature and laws of physics, so anything radiation-wise could feasibly fall under its influence.

The parallel with the Nightmares is also interesting. It's "shadows of Hiroshima" and here's an article about it. Obviously warning for potentially disturbing content in regard to the atomic bombings. I can definitely see it as an inspiration.

[eoieopda]

I’m sorry aphelion flopped, Jade. I thought it was really good 😓

this genuinely made me cackle, though?? what on earth is thisssssss hahahahahah

tell namjoon i’m sorry, anon ☠️😭

[theocannibalistic]

some notable NPCs from the Iron Queen (my home campaign) in outfits my friends requested from rabdoidal’s outfit meme! (I’ll be posting their canon outfits in a lineup sometime soon with their respective PCs, just have to color them)

[the-blind-assassin-12]

helloo~ aphelion is my favorite oberyn martell fic, it just gets better and better with every chapter you two put out. i'm excited for the next chapters !!!

and about the ending of chapter 11 where the reader calls Nora.. i don't know but i have a feeling that something bad might happen.

Hello, Anon!! I hope you're having a great day (or night or whatever time it is when you see this!) Thank you for dropping by to brighten my day with this message!!

I'm sorry I didn't answer this right away. Honestly, I was keeping it in my inbox because every time I read it it made me smile. @something-tofightfor and I truly love that story. Writing it has been a blast, but it's also been something that we've worked very hard on for a long time, and to hear that you're enjoying it so much (that it's your favorite Oberyn story! In a sea of so many wonderful Oberyn stories!) is so incredible and encouraging and just makes me feel all warm inside. From both of us, thank you for giving this story a chance and for sticking with it. <3

Regarding the end of chapter 11 and Reader's upcoming plans with Nora... no comment ;)

I'm going to be working on chapter 12 to finish out the month, and *hopefully* there will be an update before Christmas, so *hopefully* you shouldn't have to wait too much longer to find out!

Thank you again for your support and for taking the time to send this message! It really does mean a ton!

[turbo-toast]

ONE MORE ONE MORE! Varrett Vild Vickers (I am so sorry)

Why are you sorry o.o

First impression

This is a guy living his best life with what he has. Everyday a dance macabre, but after a long time in the space zombie apocalypse I guess you don't notice as much.

Impression now

He's thoroughly impressed me with his willingness to immediately throw down and defend someone he barely knows just because she seems to be in distress, and then even when he learns she might be potentially super dangerous, he'll still exchange bullets with people going after her.

He's not perfect, far from it, but he's principled, hell-bent on being the good guy (and not disappointing his mom, and living up to the guy Gabriel thinks of him as), and if he's in for a penny, he's in for a pound. Uh, whether a pun was intended depends on reader discretion.

Favorite moment

Him dropping everything to rescue Fi from kidnappers. At his mom's birthday party. What a guy.

Idea for a story

Um. That's your job, Taff. But seriously, I think I'd first need to see him in a somewhat stable state before I could think of one. Y'know, like the state before the call of adventure.

Unpopular opinion

His one flaw that I don't really gel with is probably the slight dissonance between him being a pretty rebellious type I read as questioning what he's told basically all the time, and him believing scary stories about Pagans and Cad'his wholesale. It's a very human flaw, but it kinda makes me go ???

Favorite relationship

Him and SIN. He's usually so confident - until SIN strolls into the picture. I like the way she can just toy with him.

Favorite headcanon

I'm honestly struggling to come up with a facet of him that you haven't already covered in canon. But maybe my favorite thing about him... The level of care he not only puts into his relationships with his favorite people, but also his vehicles? They're kinda his lifeline, so it's kind of obvious, but to most I guess they'd just be tools. Not to V, though.

[idyllic-affections]

sometimes i forget enjou exists and then someone posts about him and i'm like. I miss you you silly little abyss man

[theswordofavalon-if]

Answer this? :D

[peepos-prose]

1 and 2 for that ask game!

Ooo, thank you for the ask!

What is the main lesson of your story (e.g. kindness, diversity, anti-war), and why did you choose it?

Illusory is very much a story about self-discovery, with a lot of the main characters undergoing some kind of change over the course of the series. The whole magic side of things is just one facet of discovery, and there's a giant chunk of the story that deals with gender identity and self-expression. It's really a lesson in finding people who appreciate you for you, and learning that it's okay to change as you understand more about yourself. It also has the typically Peepo elements of global warming, government dysfunction and corrupt human values, but those aren't the main take aways this time (shockingly! LOL)

Honestly, I decided to go this route because of personal experience and, most of all, to create a world where people feel like they belong, no matter their experiences and identity. Hopefully, seeing the MCs change and develop will let readers know it's okay to explore themselves!

What did you use as inspiration for your worldbuilding (like real-life cultures, animals, famous media, websites, etc.)?

This one's a bit tougher! For my version of Earth, I used a lot of different scientific resources, like meteorological records, NASA and even tried using simulators, to understand how a catastrophic asteroid shower would affect the planet (and also for ways of building the other new planet so that it wouldn't explode the solar system LOL). In terms of unicorn development, I used reptile and frog reproduction alongside sea creature anatomy to build their physiology, and different natural phenomena for their powers.

Thanks again for asking! :3

[strxnged]

LMAO i could definitely talk about baizhu's questionable interest in those mushrooms... trust me, junior herbalist!reader is 100% side eyeing him a little, like... "dr. baizhu i would love to go with you but my only question is why are we studying hallucinogenic mushroo-- dr. baizhu don't walk away please answer my question"

CONGRATS ON PULLING TIGHNARI THOUGH!! dw i will Give You the baizhu/tighnari and [name]/collei interactions, i will 100% tag you when i write about it <33

[name] and collei are definitely like cousins in my brain. do they see each other in person often? no, but they are best friends nonetheless!

anyway yes!! i will tag you 💕

GOSHDFKJHLKC baizhu's like "they're used mecinally, don't give me that look" UH-HUH... you wanna study them in detail, hm? what details are you studying?

ALSO i was thinking about how he says "next time i'm on vacation" as if studying herbs is a vacation.... DID TIGHNARI NOT SAY SOMETHING SIMILAR??? during the windbloom event? hello? they r so distant acquaintances who highly respect and are curious about each other's practices. how does tighnari like changsheng. does baizhu tell tighnari abt the contract/does tighnari figure it out.

also thinking abt the parallels you've got between tighnari taking in collei and baizhu taking in reader ... sort of training them in work but also looking out for their health... i'm so soft i'm so invested and excited about your ideas your brain is so wrinkly hello

[thefirstknife]

What exactly is Aphelion? I hear it mentioned, and there's that lost sector, but I don't actually know what it is

(also, thank you for all the work you do for this community! i have learned alot about lore I never even knew existed, so thanks!)

You're welcome!

I have Aphelion lore compiled at the end of this post. There really isn't much there which adds to the mystery. In short, Aphelion is some sort of a creature of unknown origin that is reportedly incredibly powerful, possibly has Light-suppressing powers and is known to terrorise the Awoken. Sjur Eido is the only person who survived an encounter with one. It's also strongly associated with radiation and the colour blue. According to Calus, it's the greatest predator in the universe.

[eoieopda]

Ask Game! Is Lacuna and/or Redamancy based on your relationship?

yes 🥴

momentarily breaking the rules to clarify that the series (including & especially aphelion (wip)) is partially based on a past relationship.

let’s play “yes” or “no.” you ask me questions on anonymous or not, and i can only answer YES or NO.