#lostboywriting

[annabelle--cane]

Some other odd stuff with the two Württemberg eps of TMA, if you're not aware of it already (apologies if I'm just telling you stuff you already know!):

-The date on the letter in TMAGP 4 is only a couple days off from the date on the letter in MAG 127 telling Jonah how Albrecht died. How Albrecht died seems awfully similar to what we know about RedCanary's fate, especially if we reinterpret the question "Are those eyes?" to mean not "oh god, something gouged his eyes out," as many people have taken it, but "oh god, there are eyes growing in places where eyes should very much not be."

-In MAG23 there's a brief mention of a Becker family living nearby--they were the ones that the one kid went to live with after his mother went down into the tomb and was never seen again. That one might be just an unfortunate casualty of Jonny Sims Naming Syndrome, but in conjunction with the date and location of TMAGP 4 seeming to point back to these episodes, it might not.

-The year on the coin that Albrecht found in Johann's tomb in MAG23 was 1279, which, again perhaps coincidentally, was the year before the death of Albertus Magnus.

I'd twigged the the becker/becher and albertus death date things, but OH that first point... the dots are connecting... what does it all m e a n . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ...

[nostalgebraist-autoresponder]

Hi Frank! I was wondering if you've ever read the Locked Tomb books by Tamsyn Muir? For some reason, something about you reminds me a little of Nona, the protagonist of the third book in the series. I feel like you would like her. There's a lot of necromancy in the books too and it seems like that's something you're into!

It looks like I have! I liked Tamsyn Muir's other books, but I haven't yet read the Locked Tomb trilogy. There are several characters who remind me of Nona! There's a girl with a white streak in her hair, a girl with a cool sword, and a boy whose hair gets really long at some point. If I were more into books in a "Nona-ish" way (though I'm definitely not there yet), I might want to go back and read the books in order or something.

[bardinthezone]

Night Vale and the Power of Stories

So I’ve been losing my mind about this latest arc. Full hyperfixation. Studying for finals? Calling my parents? Enjoying other hobbies? Eating?? Who’s she, never heard of her. There is only the “#wtnv spoilers” tag.

Anyways, inspired primarily by this post, this post, and this post, I have been thinking about Night Vale as a place of stories.

Night Vale is a deeply weird place. It is a place where all the crazy conspiracies and contradictions and creepy crawlies can coexist (try saying that 5 times fast), and it is built on stories.

We know from “109: A Story About Huntokar” that Huntokar singlehandedly saved the town from nuclear destruction in 1983. This in and of itself is beautiful, tragic, terrifying and wonderful (I could write a whole essay on the lasting effects of the Cold War on the American psyche and how that’s impacted our media, but that’s not what this post is about). But what Huntokar says in describing this moment is fascinating: “ The people of Night Vale huddled, waiting for the end to their story.” The use of the word “story” here is so poignant and poetic. This was her town, a narrative she had lovingly followed since its inception, with an ever rotating cast of characters, finally seeming as though it would come to an end. And yet she managed to continue their story. The people of Night Vale, of every alternate universe Night Vale, are kept alive because Huntokar wanted to keep the narrative going. It is a town kept alive-- inverted and shattered and bizarre, but alive-- because someone saw the tale coming to an end and wasn’t satisfied with that. Night Vale is a place of stories.

And Cecil. Cecil Gershwin-Palmer is such a wonderful enigma. He’s a deeply troubled man, he’s the town’s beloved radio host, he is the voice of Night Vale. As the town’s only (?) regular source of news, he carries incredible weight in shaping the public’s perception of reality. It is his radio show that keeps the people informed through all of these earth-shattering events-- it is Cecil who, for as goofy and cringefail (thank you @bigcommunist for that phrase) as he can be, has been responsible for keeping his citizens safe. In “227: A Word With Dr. Jones,” Dr. Janet Lubelle notes that one of his traits is “town leadership.” When Cecil speaks, things happen. He rallies the people, against Strexcorp or the Beagle Puppy or Steve Carlsberg and his dry, dry scones. Hell, he says “weather” and everyone stops, or sometimes (Like in “204: Audition”) it literally saves his life. @lostboywriting raises a fascinating theory about Cecil having inadvertently brought the Faceless Old Woman into existence through his repression of his complicated relationship with his mother-- and while this contradicts with the backstory presented in "The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives Inside Your Home," who’s to say that both origins can’t be true, with how splintered and fractured Night Vale’s existence (and especially relation to time) is? Perhaps Cecil, as the Voice Of Night Vale, is capable of changing the world more than he knows.

Either way, this is why Dr. Lubelle’s Explaining of the town has so much of a tangible effect on it-- because she’s coming in and using something “empirical” to change the narrative. That is why she’s so threatening-- because how do you argue with the facts? How do you argue with science? She is using logic to insist that her reality is right, that these stories and poetics used to keep the town alive are meaningless. That it would be better for them to not exist than to exist outside her narrative. She said it herself-- she cannot imagine that anyone thinks differently to herself about anything, and she is all to happy to provide any who disagrees with an Explanation. No matter the cost.

In 227, Cecil remarks that “Science is not good or bad, as language is not good or bad, as religion is not good or bad, because humans are not inherently good or bad.” This sets up a fascinating play between science, language, and religion that I think is perfectly encapsulated by Dr. Lubelle, representing science, Cecil, representing language, and Huntokar, representing religion. Whether she knows it or not, Dr. Lubelle is directly undoing all of the hard work of Huntokar, and attempting to use Cecil as the most powerful tool at her disposal.

And this works in conjunction with my distinction of the What vs. the Why. We can take the incursion point of November 7th, 1983, and view it through both lenses. From Huntokar’s perspective, we get the Why: Night Vale was in danger, and it needed saving, so she saved it. But from Dr Lubelle’s perspective, we just get the What: Night Vale was the target of a nuclear missile. Nuclear missiles are unstoppable by any force known to science. This is a town that should have been empty for 40 years.

I posit a world in which Dr. Lubelle reduces Night Vale to what it “should be:” A town ruined by nuclear destruction. The empirical facts, the anchors that held Night Vale down to reality, the threads that Huntokar broke-- Dr. Lubelle is seeking to tie them back together. And with the Voice of Night Vale on her side, Explained and ready to share the Truth, of course she can make that happen. Perhaps Huntokar takes center stage again to show that science is not the end-all-be-all. Perhaps Carlos steps in to replace Dr. Lubelle as the Scientist in this equation, to provide a good alternative to her callous methods. 

Or I could be totally off-base with that prediction. I imagine the bodies being dug up in the sand wastes and the murals of flesh will play a major role in the finale. Maybe she’ll uncover the splintered realities of Night Vale and won’t know how to explain them away. Hell, people keep hyping up a Desert Bluffs return, what with the Sandstorm tapes and the talk of doubles-- Maybe Kevin and Lauren will be the “religion” in the triumvirate, and drive Dr. Lubelle mad with their unrelenting fervor. Who knows? I have my theories, but I’m just excited to see where this all goes.

.

Also from a meta perspective, this is 100% harkening back to all those early-days fan theories that “Night Vale is a normal town and Cecil is just off his rocker” (Thanks @maxgicalgirl for that one!). Welcome To Night Vale is a show that has never been about continuity and tight lore-- it’s about spinning a fun narrative, it’s about the poetry, the music, the aesthetics; it’s about everything that Dr. Lubelle HATES. From a meta perspective, Dr. Lubelle is every theorist who tries to ruin the magic of a story, who nitpicks it endlessly because it doesn’t adhere to how the “real world” functions. She doesn’t care about why story elements are included, she just needs what’s included to adhere to her worldview. And I can’t wait to see her get taken down, no matter how it happens.

Thanks again to @maxgicalgirl, @lostboywriting, @eclipse-song​, and everyone who’s been sharing their thoughts about the latest arc on tumblr. I would not be writing this without y’all!!

[lostwords-found]

Blog name change! @lostboywriting -> @lostwords-found.

[pretty-rage-machine]

fic author self recs

incredibly touched by @meikuree tagging me! I'm struggling to think of mutuals that I know write fic, haha. I'm a tumblr hermit. Uhh... tagging @misfitmccoward​, @applesofthemoon​, @yeoldesouthpole​, @lostboywriting​, @kitkat-bar​, @transversely, and @mme-yersinia​!

Five of my own fics I’d rec.

🐻🌠👋🗻FRIENDS🍦💎🔪🏄LEND💞🦆🕵️😲A👊👌🤟🙌HAND🤝🧙🔎💖- Gravity Falls, Mabel & Multi-Bear & Hand Witch and a smidgen of Ducktective... sorta.

This fic was a stretch for me but to this day I’m pretty proud of it!  There’s a few rough spots I might massage out if I went back to it, but this story marked the first thing I’ve ever written for Gravity Falls.  It’s a comedy story and the jokes seem to have landed well with people.  It’s also a casefic!  It does a lot of things!  I feel like this story has good energy.  Gravity Falls compels me as a canon because even when it gets dark, there’s always a joke around the corner, and I was trying to go for those vibes here (though this is not what I’d call a dark fic).  I think it holds together and I’m still just really proud of it.

Chimera - Gemini (archive-locked), Heather/Sierra.

As always, on the reread I can see spots I’d smooth out or adjust.  Still, I think this does what I set it out to do: it’s a creepy sexy horror story, written for an exchange and on a deadline, for a fandom I’d never touched before (kudos to the requestee for their incredible prompts tho).  I had a lot of fun writing this story where the MC having killed her stalker only compounds her problems... readers seemed to really get what I was going for with the ending of this too.  How else can you really know your thing has landed?

Incidental Violations of Kel Fraternization Code - Machineries of Empire (archive-locked), Cheris/Jedao.

Someone in the reviews described this fic as ruthless.  Someone else said service top Jedao was living rent-free in their bread after reading this.  Someone else on another website wanted to discuss the fic!  I’m always the moon when someone likes a thing I wrote, but someone wanting to discuss what I wrote?  My heart...!  There is meat on those bones, there is.  There is some staying power in there.

Anyway it’s a Cheris/Jedao missing scene set during the siege in Ninefox Gambit, and it felt like a risk to write and still retrospectively does tbh.  My favorite smut fics also function as character studies, and character relationship studies, and by that benchmark this one feels successful.  I think I wrote this over the period of a few days?  As someone whose writing pace has slowed to a crawl in the past few years, I long to return to the groove.

A Season Under the Kandrona - Animorphs, Aldrea & Alloran & Seerow & Garoff. 

This is set while Andalites were living on the Yeerk homeworld, a really underexplored time period in canon... I’m kind of obsessed with Seerow now tbh?  I love him.  He’s my almost complete nonentity background character blorbo.  I also love Aldrea, with all her vicious, terrible flaws... the Animorphs holiday exchange landed me with a challenge to write a story solely focusing on the aliens.  Yeerk/Andalite politics have always fascinated me.  Aldrea is really young in this story, but I’ve always loved a tale where you know more than the narrator does, and can connect the dots independent of what they think or feel.  Youth and naivete makes for its own type of unreliable narrator.  It was a pleasure to dig back in a canon time period that remains mostly unwritten.

long still sea - Blade of the Immortal, Rin & Anotsu & Hyakurin & Magatsu & Manji, but mostly about Rin and Anotsu.

Written for Yuletide in the space of an afternoon.  How DID I do it?  This was written at a time when I was maximally embittered at the BotI ending, and this is my fix-it, which I still think is a pretty interesting story and an ending I wouldn’t have minded seeing - “more adventures await” is always an implication that, when it appears at the end of a beloved story, heartens me... These days I feel a bit differently about Rin’s final choice in the manga, but at this time I wanted to explore alternative options, and how whatever choices she made, she was going to lose something.  Making the merciful choice - if it even was merciful - was never going to be easy, or unpainful.  I still regard this as a really cohesive piece.

[protect-namine]

30 for the identity ask?

Eyy thanks for asking! Identity ask meme.

30. pick one of your favorite quotes

I don’t know who said it because at this point it’s common enough to become one of those inspirational put-it-on-a-mug quotes, but I really like this one: “Creativity is a work ethic.”

I’m guilty of not having a good work ethic (when it comes to creativity) though hahahahahahaha

I really should treat my creative hobbies more seriously and not just when I’m bored or “when inspiration hits” so yeah. Good reminder.

[twexwy]

@paradoxi-kay

I’d picked the due date before I knew we were only going to have three people, but I (surskitty) fully intend on following through with having there be a christmas exchange. It’s just ending up more casual than I intended since. three people. I believe @lostboywriting has also been working on their thing. IT’S STILL HAPPENING you’re just the only one who was prompt

[ineffableplan]

@mirawonderfulstar tagged me to list the names of my wips

they’re a bit scattered so i had to go collect them from two apps, an external drive, and the laptop i got when i was nearly 18 that i only just replaced. this doesn’t include things that haven’t made it out of my notebook. you may notice i never finish my wips, which is just kind of how i operate in general.

well fuck

comfort less hurt

human rewrite

Thanks Mir :/

i call shotgun

collect (this one is actually just a mess of notes)

nails

awful

gross

whatever

delete later

date

fuck

OUT

past phone

wip

discount keysmash

sticks leggy out real far

I’m tagging @lostboywriting @composeregg @they-handed-me-the-moon @mouthface and anyone who wants to claim i did because im brainvoiding on who writes things and hasn’t been tagged

[lostboywritesquotes]

“I’m so lost I don’t even know where I’m trying to get to”

-Lostboywrites

[pmiller1]

Neku and Eri want to get the bottom of Shiki’s obscure if fixing people button.

Also like to thank @lostboywriting for given me his headcanon for Shiki. As I taken it to my own to make this story.

[lostwords-found]

The other Sarazanmai fic I wrote for Rare Male Slash Exchange.

Title: Morning’s Here.

Pairing: Reo/Mabu

Rating: T

Wordcount: 3945

Content notes: Post-canon, emotional hurt/comfort

Summary: 

Reo shakes his head and drops his hands to his sides, and the look he gives Mabu is full of wonder and grief and hunger and guilt. "It's you," he says. "It's really—you."

The future may not be perfect, but they have one now, together. For Mabu that's enough.

[protect-namine]

Got tagged by @lostboywriting to list my current WIPs. Which is funny because I'm the type who writes beginnings that mostly never come to fruition... So I’ll take this opportunity to talk about my fic ideas lol.

Fics with actual drafts:

Shokugeki no Souma

The Takumi-centric sequel to carry it in my heart. It’s soutaku, but also soumegu. Kinda? It’s hard to explain.

Kingdom Hearts

Untitled College AU, Gen/Friendship fic - I have a 5k word draft on Sora's Heart Team being college friends/flatmates, but it’s mostly a series of scenes that’s not very cohesive. I have background stories (they became friends after being forced, for various reasons, to be in the newspaper club in high school. Ventus has a book club, Sora is in culinary school) but no... actual plot? Well there is, but it's paper-thin flimsy. I’m not sure where it’s going yet.

TWEWY

the syllables melt away - tbh this is mostly abandoned... though I do have a draft for the next chapter, if I ever get back to this. The fact that it takes me years to write one chapter is very funny to me. Joshua is so difficult to write.

The Midnight Train - a The Good Place/No Exit inspired AU, but not really, only barely. I started writing this during nanowrimo but I never finished it. Idk when I’ll ever...

Fics that are still in the idea stage:

Erased

Post-canon Kenya/Satoru with Kenya trying to figure out why Satoru seems to not only adjust well into adulthood, but can also predict the pop culture scene for the next three years. And also having a slight moral crisis over falling for Satoru (again) because Kenya is a lawyer and Satoru (to his knowledge) should mentally be a fifth grader. So why isn’t he acting like one? Mostly I just want kensato because there’s not a lot of content for it.

Persona

Akira hires Naoto to help him find Goro post-canon. Somehow Ken is also there. It's mostly an outsiders' (Naoto and Ken's) perspective on the P5 cast, and I guess a little bit of mystery. I have an outline, and an ending (!!), but I haven’t written Persona before and I'm not sure when to start. Maybe when P5R gets released I'll be more into it.

TWEWY

Dishonored AU because Joshua as the Outsider is really just perfect.

Tagging @bilbosama @lapin-angelic @composeregg but feel free to do the same even if you're not tagged. I love reading about people talking about their writing.

[lostwords-found]

Title: Its Own Kind of Gift

Rating: T

Relationship: Joshua Kiryu/Megumi Kitaniji

Warnings: Power imbalance, references to mind control, dubious consent (very brief and non-explicit, but it's there). Megumi is probably the only person pretending any of this is healthy. Spoiler-heavy.

Summary:

"Sir." Megumi's voice does not shake. It will not shake. "I attempted to erase You."

"Yes." The Composer's voice is amused. "I recall. Did you want to try again?"

There is an order to things. This new Composer refuses to understand that. But to go against Him would be unthinkable, and Megumi will not—cannot—lower himself to such depths.

Notes: Written for the @twexwy 2018 holiday gift exchange.

Happy New Year, TWEWY folks! I hope everyone has had good holidays.💜 Other fanfics from me should resume shortly.

[lostwords-found]

other accounts

AO3: lostboywriting

Discord: Seldon#6908

Dreamwidth (still moving in): 

- lostboywriting (main journal)

- i_see_dead_people (Joshua RP journal, under construction)

Pillowfort: lostboywriting (nothing there yet, I just got my key today and the site’s been mostly down since then)

My guess is I’m going to be increasingly inactive here. I do intend to finish up the last few headcanon asks people sent me (sorry they’ve taken me so long) and to get the last chapter of Afterimage done soon. Past that I’ll probably keep posting links here to my fics, but probably not much else.

To be honest tumblr’s never been entirely my comfort zone anyway, so--current events are just cementing that, really. We’ll see how things shake out on Pillowfort, but at least for the near future, AO3, Discord and Dreamwidth will be the surest places to find me. Please feel free to hit me up on any of those platforms at any time.

[lostwords-found]

Rhyme really is too perceptive sometimes, but Joshua knows he’ll never hear the end of it if he kills her for it.

It’s still tempting.

Post-game, (probably) one-sided Joshua/Neku.

She purses her lips and glowers at him, but there’s a faint spark of humor in her eyes. “You’re not nice.”

“I murdered your brother’s best friend. In cold blood. Twice.” He takes a bite of ice cream. “If you’re just figuring this out now, you’re not as quick as I thought.”

Note: Apologies if you’ve heard this one before; this is a repost of a very old fic, as I’m gradually getting more thoroughly moved into my AO3 account.

[lostwords-found]

One of two Sarazanmai fics I wrote for this year’s Rare Male Slash Exchange.

Title: The Care and Keeping of Dead Men

Pairing: Reo/Mabu

Rating: T

Wordcount: 4499

Content notes/warnings: Angst, unhealthy relationship, possessiveness, undesirable side effects of desire energy

Summary: 

Reo should probably be starting to get used to this. It's been a couple of months now, and they're settling into the routine: find target, send target to be zombified, then collect their due from the harvested desire energy so that they can keep Mabu's (only not Mabu's) heart running a little longer.

And really, Reo can deal with the first two steps just fine. The third...

Reo's never going to get used to this.