#mine and adjacent

[moipale]

if you like steven universe and think about fusion and all the complexity and beauty and strangeness of it every day of your fucking life. me too. i wrote three fics about it. details under cut

total seafloor eclipse - an exploration of malachite as malachite, and not as jasper or lapis taking the front

Body Scrapbook, Made With Love - steven is made of flesh. the gems are made of light. when they fuse, the flesh gets mixed up in there, and the gems are 3 kinds of wigged out about it

Independent/Together - garnet and opal have a conversation about the permanence, or temporary nature, of fusions

[moipale]

aaand i was partnered with the lovely five-rivers! the fic i wrote based off of this piece is entitled All Myths Where You Can't Go Back, and was a complete pleasure and privilege to write.

fic summary under the cut!

By now, it’s the last week of September. The leaves are turning. The weather’s changing. In a scant few days, the calendar will tick over into October, and the polite veil, waiting for its cue, will stretch sheer. The Realms will press its so-many faces to the divide. And death will seep through, as before. “Are you scared?” “Yes. No. Both, I—I made the decision already, you know? Fear doesn’t even factor into it now.” “Couldn’t you—” Sam starts, but catches herself. Couldn’t you change your mind? No. Not really—not without giving something else up. And Danny doesn’t really want to, besides.

There are just a few short days left before the first of October, when the veil runs thin. Danny is taking care to spend quality time with the people he loves. The people he loves are taking care to spend quality time with him. No one is talking about something, and everyone is tripping over it in their attempts to avoid.

There are just a few short days left. There is a choice that has already been made.

Something is about to end.

Read All Myths Where You Can't Go Back on Ao3!

My piece for Ecto-Implosion 2024! I was partnered with the lovely @faedemon! Please click for a better view of the details, which are many.

[nuclearanomaly]

Spite Loves...

[lilybug-02]

Magma.io art shenanigans. Thanks for those who were able to join :) it was very fun

[tortured-griffith]

Rule no.1 of Berserk: Casca is always right. If she tells you not to pick up a stray swordsman by the side of the road because he will ruin everything, you listen. No matter how big and brown and sad his eyes are. You. Listen.

[moipale]

hello to all viewers im faedemon, the writer of the None Forward in question

continuing the discussion of canon endings, alternate endings, and alternate ending epilogues:

As you mentioned, I said in the tags of None Forward that my fic was for those who felt "ISAT's ending was too sweet to quite be believed," and I stand by that! And I feel like you elaborate really well here on one of the reasons I felt that way.

For me, the primary things about the canonical act 5 I couldn't bear to accept were 1: as you said, that siffrin did not actually open his mouth, and 2: the... I don't know, purity, of it?

I meant it literally when I said that it was "sweet;" the majority of In Stars and Time up to that point had been a thin veneer of comedy over a deep, teeth-grit agony, and "Power of Love" starting, combined with the too-cheesy brightness of the battle portraits that popped up, felt fake. Tooth-rottingly sweet. I assumed this would be another hallucination, because Siffrin did not ask for help and this scene was too perfect to be real. As I've said in other places, it felt like a beautiful fantasy. But a fantasy, still.

So when it did turn out to be true... I just couldn't wrap my head around it. Where was the grit? If Siffrin was not going to cave and learn his lesson and open his mouth, where was his family literally reaching forward and prying it open? The Sif boss fight is, I think, ISAT's attempt at that—the "tell us!" sequence specifically—but as an audience member the tonal dissonance between the "Power of Love" scene and this just jarred me too much to ride along with it.

(Disclaimer: This is a legitimate criticism, and it is the reason I wrote None Forward, but I don't want to make it seem like I didn't still love ISAT's ending, because I did. I loved the "Power of Love" scene and I loved the Sif boss fight despite my other thoughts, because the beautiful fantasy is beautiful still, and because it is extremely emotionally significant to me to think that, as asterythm said above, even if I am incapable of opening my mouth and asking for help, my loved ones will some way, some how, break through all barriers otherwise and see that I need help and offer it. ISAT's ending left me reeling for two days because I loved it, and because I loved it, I wanted to dissect it. Anyways...)

So, that all said, None Forward was my attempt to feed the angst demons within me AND to settle my dissatisfaction in a productive way. To know that it also settled someone else's is unspeakably flattering. shakes your hand vigorously

-

On your note about the bad ending happening but the loops still breaking—yes!! Even thinking about a tragedy, even thinking about a bad ending in which what Siffrin hoped for can never come to pass, it was never, ever a consideration for me that the loops wouldn't break. Nor did I ever seriously consider Siffrin committing suicide as a reaction to the tragedy, because neither of those options would be satisfying.

As much as I like a story that hurts, a the-time-loop-never-ends alternative just... wouldn't hurt right. That sort of utter stagnancy doesn't answer the themes and questions presented by ISAT, just perpetuates the protagonist's original problem. Not to mention that canon tells us explicitly, one way or another, the situation WILL change! Loop is proof of that! Even for a Siffrin that could not break the loops themself, they will find a way to change their circumstances!

So, yes. Of course there is a future! There must be, for better or for ill! And I love, love, love what you've done with that future in dull ache.

It all wraps back to ISAT's theme of change, honestly. Something happened and Siffrin changed, and left for a different future than any of them had hoped for. And you've given the rest of the party the gift of understanding why that change took place, and nudging them forward into the future: of chewing through that unfairness, of accepting it, and moving forward despite how much they wish it could have been different. Even if something was disappointed, if an opportunity was missed—still, time goes on. Things change. A future is there waiting. dull ache presents this truth beautifully.

on the ending of in stars and time:

an essay from someone who couldn’t sit with it at first, & a love letter to the fic that brought me here anyway. (…spoiler warning for in stars and time, naturally, but you knew that!)

if siffrin isat has taught me one thing it's that vulnerability is cool, actually, and being forthcoming and generous with love when there is love to be shared is how the coolest kids do it.

so. hello isat nation of tumblr dot com. i'm here because even after cutting out several chunks to shorten this significantly, i busted through the ao3 comment section character limit and still had more to say, so i needed somewhere to put it all that would let me go longer.

i’m pretty sure this post is for, like, three people, one of whom is me. but look, it’s been moved here to the webbed site so if you wanna read it anyway i won’t stop you!

=====

i think what it is, ultimately, is this: the ISAT canon ending was beautiful. it was an objectively well-written ending with so much love and hope and thematic satisfaction.

it also left me, for a period, with a deep and unshakeable sense of dread.

:)!!!!

now enter @faedemon's "None Forward & Two, Two, Two Steps Back" (hiya, fancy seeing you here), a two-chapter alt act 5 in which siffrin finds a New, Worse way to break the loops.

despite being, as mentioned, a notably worse outcome for everyone involved, this alt end managed to cut straight to the heart of that dread and settle it — and not in the sense of "oh, i like this alt ending better", so much as "oh, thanks to this alt ending i am finally able to sit in a place where it no longer feels like the canon ending, as a beautiful outcome which felt impossibly lucky to get, is the only outcome in which life can go on — and therefore my appreciation and ability to accept it, and the game as a whole, is elevated for it."

which!! i mean!! i don’t know that that’s exactly what you set out to do; None Forward is explicitly a tragedy!! and one, as your tags say, written because the canon ending didn't ring true for you.

but I realized that the thing that was stopping me from enjoying ISAT’s canon ending was that ugly hard core that was still so, so scared after the canon ending of every way we (that is, siffrin + i as the player moving in that incredible ludonarrative lockstep with him, holy moly the harmony in this game) had not yet grown to earn it. 

=====

(I’ll take a sec here under the cut to say that when I played ISAT, and then for much of the month that followed, my main reason for engaging with it and its related content at all was that it was a piece of media that came fervently recommended by my incredibly dear friend @iconocat , who it had massively, violently impacted and whose media recommendations in general I trust more than anything.

so i played ISAT, and it was incredible. but even though it's a piece of media that just about hit on every point on my list of Things That Set My Brain On Fire, it failed somehow to. well. set me on fire — at least to the extent I was expecting it to. I still enjoyed myself in the few weeks afterwards of running through fan content and intentionally plunging myself into media analysis, but I was never convinced that I would be engaging with ISAT to the extent I was if it wasn't for the sake of trying to intentionally hack my brain to the point where I could share with my friend something so important to her at the same level of genuine investment. 

I’m telling you all this because, legitimately the same night I posted “nothing but a dull ache” (ie, if you're not charlie faedemon and are somehow caring to read this anyway, the epilogue oneshot I started feverishly writing the morning after reading None Forward), I realized through my rambling in my friend’s discord dms that reading None Forward was the moment the fire finally caught. I spent a month burying myself in ISAT content and asking myself “Is this natural yet?”. after None Forward, the answer to that question finally became a sure, wholehearted yes.)

=====

so anyway, back to the essay.

don't get me wrong. it's really, really nice, to read a story where the moral is less “you should have asked for help", and more “there are people who will unselfishly give the gift of a love that saves even when you cannot save yourself".

but that whole ending also was only able to happen because 1. they broke in a way no one should ever have to break, and 2. everyone involved got lucky.

which, in media, happens all the time!! it is not inherently dissatisfying for a narrative to wrap by saving you with luck and love in the nick of time!! in fact it should be incredibly satisfying, after the unambiguously-negative downward spiral into Director Siffrin who had begun to learn what to say and do to make his family behave exactly the way he needs them to, for a stroke of unpredictable luck brought about by factors entirely out of his control to finally be what sets him free.

but like... I think it's because the story is set in a situation where it's no longer true that luck and randomness is a factor by which anything can change.

we're hammered over the head with it: until and unless you do something to alter the course of events, they will not be altered. when you are the only dynamic element the world is reacting to in an otherwise looping course of events, you don't get to rely, anymore, on the idea that at any moment something could happen to save you. you have to assume that nothing will happen unless you make it.

and siffrin?? siffrin's literal motto was "stick to the script"!! they spend the loops with a mouth that kept closing tighter and tighter and tighter until i got to act 5 and watched them implode. and then I’m saved, and I know I haven't earned this. I get to the end and I'm still not telling them anything!! I wasn't supposed to get the good ending!! but I get away with it anyway with open arms and acceptance and unconditional love, and it's. kind of nauseating?

how am I ever supposed to learn and grow, if I didn't manage to change my behaviour even then under the threat of Eternal Looping Torment, and still got the good ending anyway? how can I prove there was an alternative way I could have broken free if things hadn't turned out so lucky in that one terrible act 5 loop?

I can't. and that's terrifying.

(aside: I’m speaking in the first person here to emphasize that the thing that got in my way is not because I don't believe siffrin is deserving of this love — quite the opposite, I think the driving force behind the good ending is that siffrin went scorched earth and saw he was loved anyway — but because this is a game designed to frequently encourage the player to deeply feel what siffrin is feeling throughout its course and. well. as a thing to happen to a fictional character it's beautiful. as a takeaway for the player, it's... harder.)

and that's where None Forward comes in. (i’ve already written thousands of words in comments and epilogue fic declaring my love by now, but i mean. im hoping you won’t mind just a liiiittle more.)

None Forward shows a devastatingly written, all-too-believable version of what might have happened if siffrin didn't get lucky, and the loops continued, and they kept clinging to the script and refusing to Look At It and successfully stagnating and stagnating and stagnating as they were so determined to do. and it's bad, it's worse, it's way way worse — but there's no reliance on outside factors. it comes completely from within siffrin and loop, the only dynamic pieces in the world, finally breaking out.

it was the terrible, nightmarish unfairness of the loops brought to their natural, just-south-of-inevitable conclusion.

and yes, it's a terrible, unfair conclusion, but the loop still breaks.

in a roundabout way, it... gives me so much hope. if the outside factors were different, if the stars did not align just right to allow siffrin's family to get there on time to save them, if siffrin never learned to open their mouth, which by all means seems like the likeliest course of events... they'd still get out. worse for wear, and separated by a gap unbridgeable, but out.

there is a future. there is freedom.

=====

to speak more specifically on dull ache, if you'll forgive the indulgence, just since this was originally meant to be in a reply to the author in my own comments section:

I think I so desperately needed to write it with a focus on the family siffrin left behind because I wanted to prove, if just for myself, that in that barely-dodged alternative there still could be a future for everyone. (isabeau's just happened to be the voice in which dull ache came to me, but the point was to create an epilogue for all four.)

for the rest of the family, who was not quite so deeply ravaged but was still left in a bad way at the end of None Forward, and for whom randomness is not pretty much unequivocally good just by virtue of being better than the alternative like it is for siffrin and loop (more on that in a sec), I could see it mattering more to set specific pieces up precisely, and I could actually imagine the pieces I could set up that could have a meaningful impact in the immediate future.

so. y’know. I set them, in the way I happened to want to. granted, with some extra... divine indulgence, but siffrin's departure from their family's perspective at the end of None Forward was definitely Wrong but not so obviously wrong that I could believe that without it they wouldn't otherwise either (a) go hunting him down to force out the truth, which felt Worse, or (b) just "accept" that it was as simple as Siffrin not actually caring about them/brushing them off and thus intentionally fade him into the distance in their minds to deal with it. which felt like the WORST POSSIBLE THING.

you'd think it might make more sense to have done this for siffrin and loop, instead. they're arguably the ones who need it most, after all, so why not build them up from rock bottom as a sweeping show of "things get better"?

but... i think it doesn't need to be written to have faith that it will happen: the very fact that Siffrin is about to set out on a new journey in a reality where everything is a dynamic player just. immediately gives me hope all by itself. random lucky things that save you are so much more believable and wonderful when random lucky things in general are happening all the time, and you have all the time in the world for them to happen.

and anyway, I don't think this is the kind of future you’d write satisfyingly as a sequence of events at all. to heal from this is something that will take an incredible amount of time and nonlinear progress. 

until one day, through a series of disconnected small quiet gloriously-random lived experiences, without knowing when it happened or being able to trace it back, you realize, oh —

somewhere along the way, you came to know how to live again.

[mail-me-a-snail]

Blu team toxic yuri

i don't want true blu to be ship centric, that's not what this story is about, but i do think often about how i wrote sniper and spy interacting. they sit together on the far end of the "most affected by being clones" scale, after all. spy has very little that keeps him rooted to this world except his son and his teammates; even then, the way they regard him and his memory issues maddens him.

it'd be nice, for once, to be reminded that he's more than what goes on in his head; that he's got a body that other people can touch and hold and love.

while this doesn't make it inherently toxic, i don't think he loves sniper. i don't think sniper loves him, either, but that's just another reason that they're more alike than they think.

if this were really ever to happen between them, they probably wouldn't speak of it again.

[teshiee]

i cant think of a funny caption. but Minecraft vs Roblox oppo what do we think

[moipale]

whoa thank you for reccing my fic!!! convergences is kind of both, actually. in its canon era segments it's two distinct bodies occasionally melding into one mind, and in its postcanon era segments it's one distinct body with one mind, carrying the lived experience of two. if that makes sense hehe. it's a bit of a slidey-goopy-mind-meldy sort of fic

Are there any au or fics where siffrin gets loops memories? Not like it's DID where siffrin and loop are two different identities in 1 body. But 1 body that has all of siffrin memories and all of loop memories like they live through it all, and no distinctions on what is loop and what is siffrin cause loop IS siffrin. Basically where loop's speculation about "I'll join you so we can be one" is true

This little fic isn't exactly what you're describing but you might find it interesting nonetheless - rather than two minds in one body, it's sort of one mind in two bodies, maybe?

That's the closest I know of! Anyone else know of any AU where loop and siffrin become just one person?

[written-in-knife]

hey so how do you think Lilia would deal with having a s/o where he pulls teasingly on her and she says stuff back. He does his usual, “cheeky one aren’t you? Be careful or I might have to bite”. And his s/o is quiet for a moment and then says, “Is that a promise?” Or he talks about how her voice entices him and his s/o’s just like “Yours is very attractive too”?

Sweet Words

Lilia Vanrouge x gn!reader, established relationship

Fluff, humor

I feel like Lilia could only ever be with someone who matches his freak. I hit a writing wall for a while, and you know how with anything you have to warm up before getting into what you actually wanna work on? I keep warming up on a throw away Ace fic and keep getting carried away on it. It's got 14k words on it now. So anyway.

Lilia adores the constant push and pull of your banter together. He's always been impressed by how quick you are to fire back at his quips

It started before the two of you had even gotten together, Lilia wasn't picky about who he teased and you seemed like the perfect target. And he was right, just not in the way he'd been expecting.

He'd popped up behind you after an assembly, startling you enough to get you tripping over your own feet. He caught you with a "Well I didn't expect you to be falling for me so soon!"

And you looked up at him without missing a beat and said "Only because I knew you'd be here to catch me."

"Oh? Cheeky~ Careful, I may bite." "Promise?"

And, just like that, he was done for

It was the start of a beautiful relationship, the banter only getting better with time. It's one of his favorite parts of the day

It always felt like a particularly good game of pong (do the kids still play pong?) how effortlessly you were able to knock lines back and forth, flirting as easily as breathing

You did actually manage to catch him off-guard fairly often, dropping lines that had him fanning the blush on his face like he was still in his early two hundreds

More often than not, your banter was said while barely glancing up from whatever either of you were doing, smirks on either of your faces, while onlookers gag from how overwhelmingly corny the two of you are

"I almost wonder if you're really a siren in disguise with how drawn I am to your voice, dearest." "If only it were half as sweet as yours, maybe then I could actually lure sailors to their doom."

"I can't believe I've finally found someone who could actually measure up to my cuteness." "Measure up, maybe, but never surpass. I'm fairly certain you're the epitome of cuteness." "Oh? And how would could you be so certain?" "You just said yourself that I'm the only one who can even measure up, and I always put full faith in your judgement."

Lilia wouldn't trade you or an ounce of your wit for the world

I DO NOT GIVE PERMISSION TO USE MY WORKS TO TRAIN AI

MASTERLIST

[moipale]

im framing this discord message

[islandlobster]

oldie but goodie . telink yuri through the ages

[chujiherojourney]

GO WATCH. GO LIKE. GO COMMENT.

(This is not my art, this video just has criminally low views for the love and quality poured into it.)

[teaweltzer]

For @raisingcain-onceagain <3

[thethiefandtheairbender]

Ready

2x03 / 3x06

[raayllum]

In that moment, some achieve the ultimate connection with the heavens and become enlightened ones, the Timeblind. The Timeblind transcend our perception of time. They experience the past, present, and future as one.

6x04 / 7x09 / 1x01