#issalam

[jade-of-mourning]

you know, it's absolutely wild to me that i first started publishing if she seems as lonely as me exactly three years ago. i was fourteen, the same age as the girl i was writing the perspective of, and nervous as all shit because i wanted it to be good so badly. i had literally never even been to high school at that point. i remember having exchanges with one of the few people i still talked to at the time, saying that i wasn't sure if i should even bother posting because i didn't think i had it in me to finish, because being alone all the time kind of wrought a weird tiredness upon me. and she encouraged me to just go ahead, because what the hell it's the internet, who cares — so i did! and i reread that four-month toil recently out of curiosity, and…

well, it held up better than i'd ever expected at the time haha. i genuinely thought that i would thoroughly hate it after less than a year, referring to it as teenage angst; but three years later, i find myself surprisingly fond. and yeah, in retrospect: there's a fair amount of cliche and coincidence and plot convenience in it that, if i were ever to rewrite it, i would probably shift to be more realistic. and after having actually been in high school for the past couple years, i know that high school life is not as empty and devoid of activity as i was portraying it to be. there's questionable word choices because i was absolutely the sort to write words based on their vibe alone, not on the actual definition, and sometimes the phrasing was clunky. but all in all, i'm actually kind of impressed with the emotional sincerity in my fourteen/fifteen year old self's complicated portrayal of bitterness and grief and healing, with not so many straightforward words.

and the most wild part to me is that there's a lot of people who enjoyed it and found meaning in it, back when i was still writing it and three years down the line. there are so many kind and heartfelt comments throughout its chapters that always make my heart flutter when i read them, and i still get them even now. it has 800 bookmarks in 2024 and that is genuinely insane to me every time i stop and try to visualize that as a room of people — 800 people who enjoyed it enough to mark it down and maybe return to one day.

despite its copious flaws, it's still probably the best thing i've created and completed as a whole in my relatively short time on this planet. and while i really do hope to surpass that soon as i slowly get back into writing and drawing, it'll always have a special place in my heart as the biggest 60k-accomplishment of my pandemic-ridden freshman self, who was trying very hard and didn't know shit. (i still don't know shit, which makes writing hard at times, but my current self puts somewhat more effort into learning during the process of writing.)

[puregenius950snap]

When they say the Warriors won game one i just simply reply....#FuckKD...yeah #datway👉👉👉 #issaLame #GoCavs #allin2017

[jade-of-mourning]

hi i just reread your fic ‘if she seems as lonely as me’ and im sobbing, do you think youll ever get back into writing fanfics again? i rlly love your work 🫶

HELLO um i'm sobbing??? i'm glad you enjoyed issalam aahjahjkbhsfbfh <3

i'd like to get back to writing one day! i haven't really had the inspiration to be able to crank out more than a couple hundred words per fic idea for a long while now, but it means So So Much to me that you really like my stuff <333 there might be some stuff on the horizon soon, but it probably won't be atla for a while unfortunately :(

ty for dropping by!

[jade-of-mourning]

hey it's morning for me and i just finished if she seems as lonely as me after not sleeping at all and you got me crying in the best way possible. idek how to articulate my thoughts but like!! shit happened!! and things aren't perfect but they get better!!! and oh lord i'm crying again and dhkfgj i'm really feeling it. the whole fic hit hard but the ending notes was what pushed me to tears oh my godd

anyways i love you so much for this (my heart was torn into shambles but you put it back together in the ways that matter)

:O hello it means the literal world to me that you developed bad sleeping habits on my behalf??? but fr you're so sweet and i'm so glad you enjoyed (despite Crying) haha <33 thank you for stopping by, i hope you're doing well and take care, also please don't make it a habit to lose sleep over fic can confirm it is Bad For You gjdjhshdhhsh

[jade-of-mourning]

if she seems as lonely as me by carthaginian_berries on ao3

from the start // final chapter

61k, complete, azula-centric modern au. succinctly, in which fifteen year old azula gradually learns how to be a functional human being. featuring: the forceful befriending of the gaang, slightly dickwad iroh, and the various unasked-for aftereffects of zuko’s calculated suicide.

go read it!!! the epilogue is now up and i am going to go consume an unholy amount of sugar in celebration <3

[jade-of-mourning]

How far would you go for truth and dare? Toph had once asked during a decidedly unsupervised sleepover at one a.m, before proceeding to dare him to down an entire flask of undiluted cactus juice in spite of Katara’s adamant objections. 

i started drafting chapter 9! 3.4k into this dumb shit, chapter 8 finished at 6.2k and i’m going to do a rerun that’ll probably make it a bit longer but aside from that. cool. probably give me another week after this monday, and i’ll start posting :)

[jade-of-mourning]

outlining and writing is going Exceptionally Well. as you can tell. i swear it’ll turn out as readable human words,,,, eventually.

(we’re actually 4k into some initial drafting, excluding the epilogue so that’s neat :>)

[jade-of-mourning]

what the fuck why do people read the oneshot that i cranked out with no plan over the course of less than a week

also thanks :) didn’t expect anyone to actually like my writing ahahha

anyway i spontaneously decided to write the first chapter of tkwrite so should i post it or should i wait until i have more considering that it’s less than 2k long lol

[jade-of-mourning]

i swear i’m writing i swear it’ll happen i swear i’m getting there

(i swear one day in the future that is very hopefully not the too-far future)

in the meantime since the last post in january, i’ve published two fics on anon and i’m not very subtle about either

[jade-of-mourning]

imagine me posting twice a day. i can’t

[jade-of-mourning]

every once in a while i think about the fact that two people i know In Real Life know my ao3 account and die a bit more on the inside

one of them is subscribed to me. i’ve been telling her about issalam and all the weird planning shit on my mind for months now and then one day i get a little too specific and she’s like “oh sounds like a fic i know?” and starts describing it and i Lose My Shit bc she doesn’t even read much atla ever??? and she’s read MY FIC??? and now she gets EMAILS every time i post my terrible fucking garbage and she could be looking at this post right now. she could go to school next year and expose me as a loser and i’d have no way of defending myself. i hate everything ahhahajkdshbkjbkhja

[jade-of-mourning]

current status of Existing, on this fine week:

- binging shitty children’s book at an unholy rate in the middle of the night and making critiques in my head about the terrible character decisions and lack of nuance and the fact that the protagonist’s name is emily. i hate the fact that this is basically the first Actual Book i’ve willingly read in over a year and that it’s for fourth graders (it shows, it really does), and i miss going to the library fuck

- continually fantasizing about this absurd idea for an Original Writing Idea i’ve acquired for the first time in over two years and half-wallowing in the fact that i’ll probably never get to it

- listening to painfully heterosexual girlbands from the early youtube ages on repeat. and christmas songs. instead of the format

- opening c# and trying to figure out How The Fuck To Use It bc wHy iSn’T tHeRe jUsT p r i n t (i already miss python. even html.)

- Virtual Math Classes. i am currently dead.

- slowly crawling my way through beethoven’s Pathetic Sonata and a long ass chopin song and an incredibly annoying bach Multiple Part Invention and decidedly ignoring the last piece

- crawling equally slowly through chapter 8, also having a solid two days where i’d considered dumping 3k of it before deciding not to. also i wrote a 2k fic in like four hours so that was cool too

- forcing myself to practice my rapidly degressing four-mallet abilities after a year before band camp rolls around. it was reading fanfiction that stopped my daily practice ngl and getting back into the swing is HARD

- thinking about the dumb Writing Idea again and all the terrible fun things i could do with it

- thinking about the fact that i should probably finish issalam before i get distracted by the potential of this very fucked up universe and the pair of also very fucked up protagonists that now live in my head

and i said, i’m going to post whatever SHIT i want to bc there’s no way my friends want to hear about this garbage!

[jade-of-mourning]

who the fuck was gonna tell me that band camp starts in *checks* three days?????

[anyway uhh i have a general schedule planned for the rest of issalam!!! hammering out the predrafted stuff into the final right now (interspersed with some good ol mallet practice), reworking some planned stuff tomorrow as well as possibly adding a couple segments, depending on how this shows. somewhere between there i’ll do the grammar check and shit. saturday or sunday i’ll be doing a run through excluding the prologue and whatever editing necessary, monday is when things will start to go up! i can def get the prologue done by the time it’s time to post ;)]

[jade-of-mourning]

so now that i’ve posted set the sails and school’s out, i want to lay out a List Of (Possibly) Feasible Fanfiction Goals for before the end of the summer — early august, that is, or Two Full Months —, considering that i probably won’t really get to write much at all afterwards. also from hereon out i plan to say Fuck Keeping A Nice Looking Blog so.

[- is higher, ~ is lower on the goal list]

atla

- finish chapters 8/9/10 of issalam. top priority, but few enough words that i’ll probably take my sweet time and let myself work on other things. has a general sense of direction so far and some parts outlined!

- the last two parts of assassin!zuko. i’ve got outlines, haven’t really worked on them since january, but now that i’m cutting back the other fic’s grind i want to work on them! not sure which will come first, though.

~ that one qpr maiko oneshot with a side servings of knives, ace!zuko and druk i chugged out a while back. i’m just a sucker for their post-canon emo kid dynamic and mai being druk’s favorite person okay

~ fun times with mako? specifically, with his new mom. sorry but he accidentally became my favorite from lok through nothing more than ao3 itself <3

~ i have more small things but they’re not really high on my list tbh. don’t think we’ll ever see learning life’s (un)lyrical lessons unfortunately :(

& definitely not atla

- vying for the broken crown (ranger’s apprentice), my first actual foray into fandom fanfiction. (it was terrible shh.) featuring deaf!caitlyn, halt and ferris having Not So Fun Times and lutes

~ the second part to 738 minutes (infinity train), i’d love to shake that out of my brain’s dumb word machine. it’s now about ryan’s perpetual case of Lacking In Familial Love <3

~ really want to write a short tdp/atla oneshot crossover if i’m being honest lol bc there is NO CONTENT even after the perfect setup of reincarnation. i finally rewatched tdp after almost two years!

i don’t have too many goals aside from that, but i’ll write as inspiration goes bam wham thwonk! okay now that i realize how short the summer actually is idk how many of these i’ll actually get to, but i’m going to fucking try until my corpse has burned down to the last ashes and i have no more words inside my dead, dead shriveled fruit body. link for any published progress <3