#now i've written my essay and finished crying a little bit

[f1-birb]

a pat on the back for Jon and them giggling

captured here: a man just so fond of his boy

[ferindencadash]

twenty questions for fic writers!

Tagged by @samuelroukin 🙏❤️

1. how many works do you have on ao3?

14

2. what's your total ao3 word count?

78,977

3. what fandoms do you write for?

So far just Mass Effect, Dragon Age, and Baldur's Gate

4. top five fics by kudos

A Port in the Storm - Mass Effect - FShep/pre-embodied EDI

Blood and Flesh - BG3 - Durgetash

Stockholm - Mass Effect - FShep/Zaeed

The Crack in Everything - Mass Effect - FShep/Ashley

Stitched Together - Mass Effect - MShep/James

5. do you respond to comments?

Always. My favourite thing about fanfic is connecting with people. I've made some amazing friends through the comments section.

6. what is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Blood and Flesh for sure. It's Durgetash hate-fucking so... 😅I think all my other fics at least have a hopeful/bittersweet ending.

7. what's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

If you count the sort-of epilogue in the author notes, Stockholm. They fuckin earned it after the shit I put them through. 👀 If you don't count that, probably Cold Feet.

8. do you get hate on fics?

Not yet! Knock on wood, because I will cry. 🥲 I'm pretty careful with tagging, I think that helps.

9. do you write smut?

Almost exclusively. 😅 It's usually mixed with plot though.

10. craziest crossover:

I haven't written one yet, but I do have this incredibly stupid Mass Effect/Letterkenny fic somewhat plotted out. 😂 Target audience of one (me), right there.

11. have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of. Much like my identity, I can't imagine anyone wanting to claim that for themselves. 😂

12. have you ever had a fic translated?

Nope!

13. have you ever co-written a fic before?

I have! It was fun but also incredibly stressful, so I probably wouldn't do it again.

14. all time favorite ship?

Shepard(any gender)/Kaidan/James. I could write essays on them. Ironically I have yet to publish a fic with them (though I have one in the works right now!) mostly because the standard I've set for myself with them is entirely too high. I blame PossumBones for writing them so perfectly I could never compare.

15. what's a wip you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

I have an unhealthy amount of wips, but I don't want to give up on any of them permanently. The one that I most want to write, but is giving me the hardest time is my FShep/Aria piece, even though it's a short one-shot. I think because it has almost zero dialogue, and dialogue is the part I'm best at. 😅 But it's such a good little piece in my head. I just need to get better at writing before I can do it justice I think.

16. what are your writing strengths?

As above, dialogue. It always flows the easiest for me, and I'm usually quite happy with the end result. I've been told a lot that I'm good at nailing the character voices, which is very important to me. I spend HOURS listening to in-game dialogues before/while writing scenes, until I can hear them talking in my head.

17. what are your writing weaknesses?

Pacing, I think. I rush too much. (I have the same problem with my academic papers) I try to slow down and add more detail, but I get bored. 😅 I'm working on it...

18. thoughts on dialogue in another language?

I end up doing it quite a bit (if only in short bursts) because of James Vega. It's forced me to pick up Spanish again. I'm definitely not fluent, but I'm improving!

19. first fandom you wrote in?

Mass Effect. A Port in the Storm was my first piece I ever wrote. I published it just under a year ago. I actually just checked, and my first fic anniversary is exactly one week away! 🎂 I don't care if it's cheesy, I'm honestly really proud of myself for what I've accomplished in a year.

20. favorite fic you've written?

Stitched Together. I really, really love it. I wish more people would read it. 😅 It actually has started to pick up a little bit of attention in the last couple of weeks (just pushing it to my top five!), I'm not sure why, but every kudos that pops up on it makes me ridiculously happy.

I think my anxiety is officially too high to tag people today. 🥲 I always feel like I'm harassing people (even though I love getting tagged). So, please, seriously, if you want to play PLEASE DO and please please tag me (mutual or not) so I can read your answers! I honestly love reading these things.

[unreadpoppy]

i don't know about others, but i like your writing, we all have our moments of self doubt, but that doesn't mean we are bad at the things we do, we usually tend to be too severe with the things we ourselves do in ways we would never be with others, there is quite the chance, that if you had read what you had written, but didnt know it was you, you would have liked it (i am an awkward person and i am not good with words, so sorry for that XD

also, i hope that you feel better soon, and if you need to take a break from writing, then take it, please cherish your mental health!

Thansk anon I really appreciate it ❤️

I'm gonna rant here for a bit but basically I'm in this big group project for university and in this project we did a short film and there's written part, which is basically an academic essay that is required. We have had this big project before and the essay portion is always required and I've literally been part of the writing team (against my will) in ALL projects, and from early on I said i had not wanted to write this shit again but because we were working with an even smaller group and I got lowkey accused of "doing nothing" in the project, I ended up writing the damn paper.

The thing is, I was pretty much the ONLY person in the group writing the essay, which is about value afro-brazilian culture, and that is a hard topic for me to write about because I'm literally the whitest person in the whole group and i have very little contact to that aspect of brazilian culture due to my upbringing.

But i wrote it anyways, I researched, and every single time I asked for help from the other people in my group (and especially from the people who were black and had more contact with their culture) I got told "we're already doing too much, we can't help you" or "I don't know how to write this." And yes I got irritated because this part of the project is literally worth more points than the short filme but I let it go because yeah doing the film would be complicated and I had HOPED that once they were done with filming, the rest of the group, which now would be doing nothing, would help me with the writing.

And like... only 1 person helped after the filming was done and I still helped them a lot. And btw, everything that I'm saying here were things that I had communicated with the teacher, so he was aware of the struggle I had while writing that paper and he reassured me.

Well, tomorrow is the deadline and I woke today thinking well there's only two more thing to be written and then it'll be done but the teacher read the essay again and then sent a 3 minute voice message talking about all the parts of the essay that needed to be changed and that it still needed to be better and that if we were to turn it in right now, we would get a low grade. He also said like "you guys can't throw everything on Brenda's back, everyone needs to work on this" but still my heart fucking broke with what he said because since i'm the one who did 99% of thw writing, if we get a low grade it's on me because even when everyone KNEW we had to finish this by tomorrow, they prioritized things that were irrelevant to out grade and our project.

And I'm just so frustrated with this whole damn thing, I got blue screen after all the teacher said and began to cry because I have no idea what the fuck to do or how to fix this. At the very fucking least, the other people in the group finally decided to go write something and I already told them that I'm in no place of mind to be working on this shit right now.

Sorry this is too much anon but I haven't talked about this here before so this is the reason i've been so fucking stressed since september.

Once again, thank you anon

[knight-of-the-thorn]

Commander asks 12-15 ✨

Sorry this took so long turns out I had a lot of thoughts, then had to get ready to catch a plane before I could finish this. Thank you @i-mybrunettelady!

Answers under the cut

12. How does your commander feel about Braham?

Braham Eirsson, where do we begin with Braham Eirsson. I've written essays on the subject of Arceidai's feelings about Braham.

I've talked a little about this before. As I said last time I talked about Arceidai for an ask meme, they felt very alone as a result of their wyld hunt. The people who could understand what this task was like were Caithe and Trahearne, who were firstborn who had been doing this for longer than Arc could really imagine, and Theitia who hated it so much she joined a cult about it. So, they feel pressure to be as good and dignified and grown up and experienced as these people who are two decades older than them, because they think that's what's required of them. They have everything to prove.

Then they meet Braham. Braham is young and brash and he is also dealing with a lot of expectations. They both want the same thing, to not be alone. If not similar in personality, they're very similar in where they're coming at this from. Going into lws1 Arceidai was still grieving Sieran, they didn't feel like they were allowed to be anything but the commander. Braham was the first person who they let in after Sieran died. The exact moment they realised they would do anything for him was when he first called them Arc. It was a very simple thing, just the realization that he saw them as, not just an actual person, but his friend? It was enough that Arc is a nickname that they stuck with, it reminded them that they were a person, that people liked them for them and that they didn't always have to be the commander. It was a name that was theirs, given to them by someone who knew them.

And when they fought in lws3, it was so much worse than the canon fight, because Arc was at a point where they felt like they had lost everything. They had entirely given up on any pretense of presenting themself as a hero as part of their violent self destructive spiral. They were both grieving and the second he started lashing out Arceidai would have lashed out right the hell back because the alternative would be crying, and it escalated the situation. They both said a lot of things they really regretted. On Arc's end, once they calmed down there was a lot of "I just destroyed my relationship with my best friend, he hates me now, what have I done what the hell is wrong with me." That they covered up with "I don't need him, I don't need anyone, he can see what I actually am and that's fine I don't care." Spoiler they cared a lot. Braham covered up how upset he was by the whole thing a lot more thoroughly. He had something to throw himself into and when that was no longer possible it was way easier for him to stay mad at them. Arceidai felt like they lost everything, and they barely even knew who or what they were anymore. The fact that the first person who they thought saw them for who they were, after they lost Sieran and Theitia, seemed to hate them now, couldn't have helped that.

It was weird for a bit when he came back into their life, but when they finally apologized, the two of them didn't really talk about it, because niether of them are good at that, there was just a moment where they both just, let it go.

Braham is their best friend. He's brave, and hot headed, and kind, and they have gone through so much together. He's one of the few peoppe they consider family. If anything happened to Braham, Arceidai would tear apart the fabric of reality to save him and I need you to understand that is in absolutely no way shape or form hyperbole. I'm being very literal when I say that.

13. How does your commander feel about Caithe?

Boy howdy here's another loaded one!

Arc loved Caithe so much when they were sapling. In a way, before Theitia left they did kind of end up as more Trahearne's apprentice than Caithe's, but that's neither here not there, they trusted Caithe and valued her opinion. She was part of Arceidai's family and part of the reason they weren't intially scared was because they looked up to Caithe and believed that as long as they stuck together nothing could go wrong.

It took them a while to understand why Caithe did what she did, and longer to forgive her. Even when they didn't understand why Caithe did what she did, she was someone they thought they could always trust, because she was their family. They didn't understand what they had done wrong when they tried so hard to do everything right, or why she would lie to them their entire life, or anything that happened. In their mind everything was fine between them and Caithe and then it wasn't. Trahearne was dead and Arceidai was angry and they needed someone to be angry at.

But she reached out and tried to make things right. It took them a bit, and at the time they didn't really know if they'd ever be able to fully trust Caithe again, but they slowly started to understand exactly where Caithe was coming from, and they knew they wouldn't be able to give Aurene everything she needed. When she hatched Aurene very suddenly went from an egg that was just another responsibility to the absolute most important thing in their life. They didn't trust they wouldn't fuck that up, and they'd never done something like this on their own.

Ultimately, it came down that fact that they wanted to trust Caithe again. For them it was a huge leap of faith, and they're glad they took it.

14.How does your commander feel about the dragons?

Honestly Arceidai is endlessly fascinated by dragons. They could talk about dragons for days without getting sick of it. They want, with a desperate, burning passion to know everything there is to know about them, how they work, where they came from. There's, apprehension, maybe even bitterness or hatred towards them, Arceidai's had a lot of traumatic experiences with the elder dragons, but underneath everything, there's still this never ending curiosity.

Contrary to popular belief they love what they do as long as you get rid of every part of it that is not a dragon. Even after everything they've been through and every complicated feeling they have about being the Commander, they won't give up until this is over because they're stubborn and they need to know. They need to know everything. In this essay I will be exploring why Scarlet Briar is the best character to exist in anythi-

15. How has your commander changed overtime?

As a sapling Arceidai was very chipper and hopeful. They had energy, trust in the dream and the people around them, and everything to prove. It's taken a lot to get them to the half-feral, manic, twitchy disaster that they are now. The universe looked at Theitia and said I can fix her, but it looked at Arceidai and said I can make them so much worse.

They've gone from excitable and constantly asking questions, just a very kind, trusting, talkative person, who saw the best in everything and everyone, still pretty blunt but that's more a result of them lacking tact than them not caring, to a little more withdrawn and awkward after they became the commander. When they were young they very much tried to act like Trahearne and Caithe, especially after they became the Commander, so all of this was sort of hidden behind that mask of professionalism. They wanted everyone to like them, but didn't know how to do that without being a valiant, because that's really all they knew they were.

This lead to to a not short period of being incredibly bitter and angry after Trahearne died, which slowly turned into just the pepe silvia scene from it's always sunny. They're tired, but they've always been stubborn so fuck if they aren't seeing this through. They could have given up, but they have things worth fighting for. As it is, they don't trust anything, have no patience, and they've long since given up any pretenses of being professional or presentable, or even sociable. They've never been particularly good with people, they've always preferred animals, they just don't like dealing with people at all anymore, they outright hate dealing with polticians. 10% of the icebrood saga had to have been Theitia stopping them from calling Smodur and Bangar dipshits to their faces, and sure some of that you can attribute to beast mode, but not nearly enough of it. They're still excitable, but it takes more for them to show that. Its usually just when something really interests them.

If you did not know they were the same person you probably wouldn't be able to guess.