#who always wanted to know what happened with gwyn and efnisien

[not-poignant]

Can you tell us a little about Constellations? Is it just going to be one long chapter like the end of the Ice Plague? Or multi-chaptered like the Gwyn+Augus epilogue after The Ice Plague? I'm so excited to read it either way!!

I sure can!

Constellations is a Gwyn + Efnisien multi-chapter epilogue (or sequel) set almost 10 years after Falling Falling Stars.

The first four chapters (which are already written) are from Gwyn's perspective, and it follows him as he decides he wants to meet with Efnisien again, speak to him, and get to know him as a person vs. as the person he knew.

I'm calling it a Gwyn + Efnisien epilogue, because it's not going to be about Augus, it's not going to be about Arden, and we're not going to be seeing them much except as supports specifically in the theme of Gwyn and Efnisien kind of learning how to become family again. In that sense, it's more of an epilogue rather than a true sequel, imho. But I think it will be at least 10 chapters long.

The only other add-on I've thought about seriously writing is a Dr Gary + Efnisien 'talking about Henton' epilogue, and I'm not ruling that out either. But if I do that, it will be a separate story.

It commences on September 10th on Patreon (in the $10+ tiers) and then will go to AO3 around two months later so it'll be freely available then. I can only release one chapter a month, similar to The Nascent Diplomat, since I have so many other active stories right now, but I couldn't wait any longer.

Things I can probably safely share now are:

Gwyn finally has a good therapist. He's aware that he can be toxic and abusive.

Augus also has been to decent therapy and has maybe realised he's done some shitty things to Efnisien in the past too

We'll find out what Efnisien's doing at university these days.

We'll find out what Efnisien's mature fashion sense is like!

They're still not perfect, but they're trying

It will have an extremely hopeful (and happy) ending

It's possible some chapters will be from Efnisien's perspective too, but right now I felt it was important to show Gwyn's thinking and how much it's changed (and how it hasn't).

There will be no BDSM scenes between Efnisien and Arden

There will be no therapy sessions between Efnisien and Dr Gary (though Efnisien might be seeing a different therapist now!)

There will be no BDSM scenes between Augus and Gwyn

It's definitely not a story focused on BDSM or sex, and more focused on a family relationship, rather than a romance relationship.

I'm really excited about it too, anon :D

[not-poignant]

This might be a question out of left field, but I've been rereading Falling, Falling Stars and was wondering where the idea for the title come from and whether there is a special meaning behind it?

Hi anon!

The title was originally going to be 'Falling Stars.' Honestly I did not think very hard about it. I needed a title, I wanted something that gave me the 'feel' I was looking for, the title fell into my head, and I thought 'Falling Falling Stars' had a nicer feel to it, to say aloud (it was more poetic to me), and then I realised the acronym would be FFS and that Efnisien would love that.

I probably spent about two minutes from thinking 'I need a title' to coming up with that title. I just lucked into it.

In terms of its meaning, the most obvious meaning with 'Falling Star' is Lucifer, who is the 'Fallen Star.' I wanted that metaphor for Efnisien, who has fallen from his privilege, ironically not because he did terrible things, but because he dared to do something good (he exercised his free will, in direct opposition to Crielle's influence and brainwashing).

I then decided 'Falling Stars' as a plural (this was all happening very quickly) because I just thought it sounded better, slightly preserved the original metaphorical meaning, but also reminded me those people who seem bright but can't always lift themselves up, which also sort of reminded me of what I wanted the cast to be. I didn't know what Arden's exactly personality was going to be yet, but I knew he was going to be someone who was star-like (his last name is Mercury, the space reference is there for a reason), and who had 'fallen' in his life.

And then finally I liked 'Falling Falling Stars' as an evocative image of many stars all falling at once, the idea of the world imploding, or even an apocalypse of stars falling in a night sky. Something that would look beautiful, but would be devastating. Falling Falling Stars is ultimately a story about a character who is constantly detonating bombs into his own life so that his entire universe will collapse and he can begin again, and in almost every single chapter, we watch Efnisien shatter - by his own volition a lot of the time - to remake himself. His is a story of tiny apocalypses, and lots of comfort. A constant apocalypse to serve the premise of 'I don't want to be this person anymore, I must grow, and this is the only way I know how to do it.'

Even Crielle works as a character who has now fallen from grace in Efnisien's mind, as does Bridge, and even Gwyn.

But yeah I kind of got the loose feeling of that in like two minutes and thought 'that's it, that's the title, and I can work towards that' and I've been doing it ever since.

Plus the acronym makes my main character happy, y'know, that's important too, lmao.

It's probably one of my favourite titles that I've ever spontaneously thought of, honestly.

[not-poignant]

Hi Pia! FFS has got me wondering since you've said you've had these scenes in mind since 2020, what about a story comes to you first that makes you want to write it? Is it different with every story or do you see any patterns? Like is it usually a character with some sort of trauma that's your entrypoint into a story, or is it the potential for a certain relationship dynamic, or is it always something different every time? (BTW I don't know how you managed the wait but it was so worth it!)

what about a story comes to you first that makes you want to write it?

It's somewhat different for every story, but mostly I think it can be summed up as 'it's the whump' and 'it's the hurt/comfort.'

In many cases I'm often writing towards crucial or key scenes. So when I first came up with Falling Falling Stars I mostly wanted a story where Efnisien gets support and becomes a more ethical and caring person. When I actually sat down to start writing the story, I realised after that - within about 10 chapters I'd say, which is quickly for FFS - that I was driving towards particular scenes, like the situation at the kink club that happened recently.

Likewise with Game Theory I was just interested in writing whumpy hatefucking with two difficult characters who might discover some hurt/comfort together. I realised pretty quickly that I was driving towards a few key scenes (which I actually wrote in advance) such as Gwyn's alignment revelation, or his nightmare around Mafydd.

A character dynamic normally comes to me first, and then I'll think of key scenes later, and they end up becoming 'what I'm writing towards.' It keeps me focused, because the plot has to bend towards those things becoming an eventuality.

All my characters generally have trauma of some kind. And I'll often differentiate between whether that's past or 'during the story' trauma. Eran for example has acquired a lot of both, due to Stertes.

I will sometimes start with one character and build around them. But just as often I'll start with the pair and what kind of dynamic they have. I knew with Mallory & Mount for example I'd be starting with a pair. In The Gentle Wolf I was building around Aodhan, and he was my first character.

There's some really amorphous quality around 'what makes me want to write it.' I want to write most of my story ideas, but I have literally hundreds and I don't write most of them.

I think the thing that takes a story from 'in my head' to 'on the page' is usually a combination of...how much it niggles at me and bugs me, and how well I think I can write the big scenes. I actually didn't want to write Falling Falling Stars. I put off writing it for eight months.

But it niggled at me, and it wouldn't leave me alone, and I found myself thinking about Efnisien and his life and then being like 'no you can't do this, stop it.' I made a playlist to hopefully stop that part of my brain (I've done that with other stories I want to write in the future but haven't written yet, like my second Bull/Cullen story), but it didn't work.

Sometimes an idea just bugs you. And that's the one that gets written. The one that's rude enough to not leave you alone, lol, even if you don't know quite why, or something else seems more interesting on the surface. :D There were so many things I didn't know when I started writing Falling Falling Stars. I didn't know if Efnisien would have a boyfriend. Arden was maybe going to be a bad guy. I didn't know what Efnisien's therapist was like.

Efnisien just wouldn't leave me alone.

So yeah, sometimes it is different. :)

[not-poignant]

(this might be a bit personal, and by all means please don't feel pressured to answer) but considering how dark some of your stuff can get, have you ever been troubled by some of the characters/their actions in your stories (and semi-related) had to take some time to cope with writing a difficult scene?

This is a tough one so I’m going to put a lot of it under a read more (sorry phone browsers).

I’ve had the occasional moment of struggling with content because of being troubled by it.

But by contrast it’s funny because, I think some of the most difficult scenes for others, are actually some of the easiest for me to write. For example, the chapter where Connor is basically kidnapped by Gabriel and given the highball, was so easy to write it was like swimming (which is the only sports-like skill I’m good at). If everything could be like that, oh my goodness, I can’t even imagine. It was an intense, emotionally fraught, joyful experience of the likes I don’t know how to explain to other people who don’t experience that.

So there’s not always any rhyme or reason to it either. I struggled with significant chunks of Strange Sights. I couldn’t finish The Drawn Bead because it just felt like we were heading towards torture porn but I also knew I couldn’t do justice to the horror of Gwyn’s memory AND it has a tragic ending and I struggle to write those for longer pieces. I tend to struggle with characters being separated from each other. So the beginning of Into Shadows We Fall, when Jack and Pitch are completely separated from each other, that was so difficult for me personally, that I actually ended up massively shortening how long they were meant to be separated for. Even though Pitch and Jack have a really thorny relationship when Pitch is returned, I still preferred that to their being absent from each other.

But I didn’t have as much of a problem with it, when it was Gwyn and Augus.

It’s not predictable, sometimes I enjoy writing the troubling content on a very visceral level. Either because I feel like I’m in my element as a writer. Or I know it’s going to be so satisfying (for me) for the character to recover from it later. Or I know that it’s going to lead to something I’ve been craving writing. I mean I wouldn’t write so much of that kind of content if I didn’t get something really tangible out of it.

There are still things that surprise me, still scenes that become more difficult as I write them, not because of ‘technical writing reasons’ but because of the thematic content. Often, for me, it highlights things I probably won’t enjoy writing again. Strange Sights for me worked as a series of oneshots, but as a long-term abusive and rape-filled relationship, it didn’t actually become comfortable for me until Augus began to be allowed to have boundaries. So I probably won’t write a couple that toxic ever again outside of novellas and PWPs. With the beginning of Into Shadows We Fall, I learned I had to be really careful with character separation, and that three chapters was about my limit (from memory, I think I stuck to this - or just about - in COFT).

But...maybe it would make people feel better if I said I really struggled with writing Gavril taunting Jack. Or Jack being whipped by Bunnymund. Or Augus torturing him in chapter 4 of ISWF. Or Gwyn being tormented by his mother. Or Mosk having flashbacks of Davix and Olphix. I find them intense, sure, but I don’t dislike doing it. Even though I often really feel for the character who is experiencing the torment. Gwyn goes through a fairly graphic description an MRI the next chapter in SOTS, and though I myself actually had an MRI phobia for a few years (it was the reason I developed claustrophobia), I found the scene itself disturbing, but deeply satisfying enough that I wouldn’t call it something where I needed to take time out to cope.

As for me being troubled by how the characters are actually behaving... This is tricky. I mean of course a lot of them are doing stupid, terrible, harmful, cruel, illegal things. I don’t condone it in reality. But thinking of these things happening in fiction is different to thinking about them happening in reality. The fact is, ‘dubcon’ in reality is just rape, and if I applied real world standards to non-real scenarios filled with tropes and the Id, yeah sure, I would be troubled, but I’d also not be writing any of this content.

As an addendum to that, for me their behaviour always makes sense to me from their perspective. Whether it’s Mosk being emotionally abusive with no concept of it. Gwyn raping Augus. Augus killing Efnisien. Pitch in TGATNW being heartless and constantly pushing Jack away with very cruel behaviour. Even Davix and Olphix. Whatever their behaviour is, if I can understand their motives behind it, I tend to struggle with it a lot less.

I don’t like to squick myself with my own writing, as a general rule. So no, I’m not looking to write things where I need to take breaks from my own writing to cope. But I think to be blunt, my life is filled with things more challenging than what I put a lot of my characters through, and my emotional ability to handle disturbing behaviour is broader than I think it would be for some other people. It doesn’t mean I lack empathy or compassion, if anything I hope that through my writing, people can see that I have great compassion for the characters that often suffer the most, through my need to build up a chosen/found family around them, and pour love onto them, even if they don’t know what to do with it.

Those that are here in the pit of ‘enjoying Pia’s writing’ are probably here because the comfort when it comes is - I hope - tangible and visceral, the loneliness when it’s comforted away reaches past the screen and means something. And holding onto that thread myself is why I enjoy the hurt part of the hurt/comfort as much as the comfort part, but also why I don’t like to write one without the other.

And finally, most of my POV characters, by the time we get to them, have been through their darkest moments in their pasts. The only way we often access their worst moments is through flashbacks, memories, dialogue or their aversions. That might feel very extreme to some, but for me, it means by the time we get to them, they’re already starting to recover something for themselves. The worst has happened.

Even if they go through something during the story, say - Connor in Eversion with Gabriel - I just think ‘it’s okay, they’re already in the story, their support is there, they’re going to be okay.’ It’s...extremely rare for me to write stories where the character goes through their worst trauma within the story. Science of Fear is an exception to that, but as most people know if they’ve read it - Nathan blacks out early on, and then once more, we only find out the details of his worst trauma in the form of nightmares, flashbacks and dialogue.

That’s partly because I feel personally that I write trauma recovery stories, and not trauma stories (it doesn’t sound like a huge difference, but to me it’s a huge difference). And then secondly because there is a buffer through the trauma itself being in the form of a memory. That...makes it a lot easier for me to cope with. I’ve spent my entire life learning how to cope with flashbacks, after all. But also, even if the character is clearly destroyed by a flashback, the fact is, they survived it. The flashback is living proof they survived it.

But anyway, I’d say me taking breaks from my own writing because of disturbing content specifically doesn’t really happen anymore and I can’t remember the last time it did. I take breaks because I’m struggling with a chapter - i.e. how to write it mechanically, or because I feel like it doesn’t have the emotional strength I want it to have yet. I am actually very comfortable with many of the themes I write, I’d have a far squickier, grosser, harder time writing pregnancy, or a story filled with only fluff, which is y’know, why...I don’t really write those things, lol. I’m too much of a hedonist to want to write content that scared me away from my own content? Like, you do you, folks, but I’m going to be over here actually enjoying what I write, disturbing matter and all.

That doesn’t mean other people can’t have a hard time with it. It’s totally okay for people to take breaks from whatever they read, for whatever reason. And since a lot of the characters I write do engage in troubling behaviour, it wouldn’t be great if people said ‘that behaviour is okay to do in real life’ because it isn’t. But if someone said ‘god I love that villain because he’s awful’ then yeah, I’m right there with pom poms, because that’s my jam too. And if someone else said ‘I can’t stand that villain because he’s awful’ then yeah, that’s awesome as well.

And if people need to take breaks while reading what I’m writing because they’re engaging in self-care, then good! I’ve needed to do the same with other people’s writing. Because the journey of the reader is different to the journey of the writer (this is for me, truest when writing porn, lmao, I’m not turning myself on when I write those scenes, but I sure as hell hope I’m turning on at least some readers --> so if I’m not walking away from the disturbing content in my own writing, that doesn’t mean I’m not hoping people won’t be disturbed when reading it).

[not-poignant]

Pia could Ash drive a motorcycle? also i was re-reading the best of broken resolutions and the line with gwyn's scars , i was just wondering on augus and ash feelings towards self harm if it's upsetting to answer please don't especially if it's a lover or a close friend i know we see it a lot in gt and coft with gwyns eating and i can't praise you enough for it because you just write so sensitive and so well and it all feels real if that makes sense , i hope you have a brilliant day

(Self-harm mention/s in the answer).

Ash can absolutely ride a motorbike!

I think he’d be the kind of fae to like, get licensed in different countries and pay attention to the road rules except oh my god, things change in the human world so fast and eventually he just hand waves everything and uses his glamour illegally but is actually like good on the roads.

Re: The Best of Broken Resolutions, Gwyn’s scars in that were never from self harm, they were wounds inflicted by Efnisien. I don’t know if it was ever made explicit, because I know Gwyn never talked about them, but I knew that if Efnisien tortured him in the human world he would’ve absolutely used knives, and without ‘fae healing,’ Gwyn would absolutely have scars because of it.

As for how Augus and Ash view self-harm. Hmmm... I’d say they both don’t like it, but they also understand that it often serves a purpose as a coping mechanism. Augus is probably never really alarmed by it (I mean consider in the fae realm, you pretty much always heal from self-harm), so much as knows he can use that with clients to understand things better. And Ash does get alarmed by it, because he knows how fragile humans can be, but Ash also understands why people might be driven to all the different forms of self-harm out there (I mean, Ash’s alcoholism is a form of self-harm that goes above and beyond, it is literally poison to waterhorses. Like, the reason Ash’s scent has been described as ‘muddy’ and ‘silty’ in the past whereas Augus’ is ‘pure’ and ‘clean’ is because Ash drinks poison to almost kind of prove to himself that he can).

But it’d be different per universe as well, like, human Ash and Augus in The Best of Broken Resolutions? I’d say Augus would be disturbed if he knew it was happening, and then strongly refer whomever to a therapist. Ash would likely be more zen about it, given Ash is a mess in that universe anyway. But yeah they don’t hold exactly the same views across all universes, it would absolutely change.

Generally speaking, I don’t like to write characters who are like ‘ew yuck’ or like ‘that makes no sense’ or ‘that’s just attention seeking behaviour’ when it comes to things like that, because I think this world lacks understanding and empathy towards people who self-harm as it is, and I don’t have to waste my time writing main characters who are as callous or ignorant as many of the people I’ve encountered irl. Therefore, a lot of my MCs would be pretty understanding about it. (The exception-ish is Eran, who will witness Mosk self-harming and want it to stop, though even Eran has empathy, he just...first wants it to stop, before understanding what’s actually happening).