#writing meta

[incorrectsmashbrosquotes]

It's actually funny, in a meta way, how people are salty about Miquella being a villain. Because, like, that's how it is in-game too.

The people of the Lands Between wanted Miquella to be the solution to their problems. To be the promised savior. The God who would get it all right and do what Marika tried to do and failed so resoundingly, bring an age of infinite prosperity.

But, no, it doesn't work like that. Gods can't solve their problems. The Gods want their own ends and then convince people that what they want is what's best for them. The fans are the same as the poor bastards in the Haligtree, waiting for their savior, only for it to turn out he's just another spoiled kid.

It's brilliant, from a writing perspective. They kept Miquella vague, letting the Soulsborne fandom do what it always does, theorize, investigate, and build up ideas. We built up an image of Miquella as a savior, a hero, one of the only truly heroic characters to understand and get it right.

But in the end, Miquella fooled us as well as he fooled his own people.

[dragonnarrative-writes]

Generative AI Is Bad For Your Creative Brain

In the wake of early announcing that their blog will no longer be posting fanfiction, I wanted to offer a different perspective than the ones I’ve been seeing in the argument against the use of AI in fandom spaces. Often, I’m seeing the arguments that the use of generative AI or Large Language Models (LLMs) make creative expression more accessible. Certainly, putting a prompt into a chat box and refining the output as desired is faster than writing a 5000 word fanfiction or learning to draw digitally or traditionally. But I would argue that the use of chat bots and generative AI actually limits - and ultimately reduces - one’s ability to enjoy creativity.

Creativity, defined by the Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary & Thesaurus, is the ability to produce or use original and unusual ideas. By definition, the use of generative AI discourages the brain from engaging with thoughts creatively. ChatGPT, character bots, and other generative AI products have to be trained on already existing text. In order to produce something “usable,” LLMs analyzes patterns within text to organize information into what the computer has been trained to identify as “desirable” outputs. These outputs are not always accurate due to the fact that computers don’t “think” the way that human brains do. They don’t create. They take the most common and refined data points and combine them according to predetermined templates to assemble a product. In the case of chat bots that are fed writing samples from authors, the product is not original - it’s a mishmash of the writings that were fed into the system.

Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) is a therapy modality developed by Marsha M. Linehan based on the understanding that growth comes when we accept that we are doing our best and we can work to better ourselves further. Within this modality, a few core concepts are explored, but for this argument I want to focus on Mindfulness and Emotion Regulation. Mindfulness, put simply, is awareness of the information our senses are telling us about the present moment. Emotion regulation is our ability to identify, understand, validate, and control our reaction to the emotions that result from changes in our environment. One of the skills taught within emotion regulation is Building Mastery - putting forth effort into an activity or skill in order to experience the pleasure that comes with seeing the fruits of your labor. These are by no means the only mechanisms of growth or skill development, however, I believe that mindfulness, emotion regulation, and building mastery are a large part of the core of creativity. When someone uses generative AI to imitate fanfiction, roleplay, fanart, etc., the core experience of creative expression is undermined.

Creating engages the body. As a writer who uses pen and paper as well as word processors while drafting, I had to learn how my body best engages with my process. The ideal pen and paper, the fact that I need glasses to work on my computer, the height of the table all factor into how I create. I don’t use audio recordings or transcriptions because that’s not a skill I’ve cultivated, but other authors use those tools as a way to assist their creative process. I can’t speak with any authority to the experience of visual artists, but my understanding is that the feedback and feel of their physical tools, the programs they use, and many other factors are not just part of how they learned their craft, they are essential to their art.

Generative AI invites users to bypass mindfully engaging with the physical act of creating. Part of becoming a person who creates from the vision in one’s head is the physical act of practicing. How did I learn to write? By sitting down and making myself write, over and over, word after word. I had to learn the rhythms of my body, and to listen when pain tells me to stop. I do not consider myself a visual artist - I have not put in the hours to learn to consistently combine line and color and form to show the world the idea in my head.

But I could.

Learning a new skill is possible. But one must be able to regulate one’s unpleasant emotions to be able to get there. The emotion that gets in the way of most people starting their creative journey is anxiety. Instead of a focus on “fear,” I like to define this emotion as “unpleasant anticipation.” In Atlas of the Heart, Brene Brown identifies anxiety as both a trait (a long term characteristic) and a state (a temporary condition). That is, we can be naturally predisposed to be impacted by anxiety, and experience unpleasant anticipation in response to an event. And the action drive associated with anxiety is to avoid the unpleasant stimulus.

Starting a new project, developing a new skill, and leaning into a creative endevor can inspire and cause people to react to anxiety. There is an unpleasant anticipation of things not turning out exactly correctly, of being judged negatively, of being unnoticed or even ignored. There is a lot less anxiety to be had in submitting a prompt to a machine than to look at a blank page and possibly make what could be a mistake. Unfortunately, the more something is avoided, the more anxiety is generated when it comes up again. Using generative AI doesn’t encourage starting a new project and learning a new skill - in fact, it makes the prospect more distressing to the mind, and encourages further avoidance of developing a personal creative process.

One of the best ways to reduce anxiety about a task, according to DBT, is for a person to do that task. Opposite action is a method of reducing the intensity of an emotion by going against its action urge. The action urge of anxiety is to avoid, and so opposite action encourages someone to approach the thing they are anxious about. This doesn’t mean that everyone who has anxiety about creating should make themselves write a 50k word fanfiction as their first project. But in order to reduce anxiety about dealing with a blank page, one must face and engage with a blank page. Even a single sentence fragment, two lines intersecting, an unintentional drop of ink means the page is no longer blank. If those are still difficult to approach a prompt, tutorial, or guided exercise can be used to reinforce the understanding that a blank page can be changed, slowly but surely by your own hand.

(As an aside, I would discourage the use of AI prompt generators - these often use prompts that were already created by a real person without credit. Prompt blogs and posts exist right here on tumblr, as well as imagines and headcannons that people often label “free to a good home.” These prompts can also often be specific to fandom, style, mood, etc., if you’re looking for something specific.)

In the current social media and content consumption culture, it’s easy to feel like the first attempt should be a perfect final product. But creating isn’t just about the final product. It’s about the process. Bo Burnam’s Inside is phenomenal, but I think the outtakes are just as important. We didn’t get That Funny Feeling and How the World Works and All Eyes on Me because Bo Burnham woke up and decided to write songs in the same day. We got them because he’s been been developing and honing his craft, as well as learning about himself as a person and artist, since he was a teenager. Building mastery in any skill takes time, and it’s often slow.

Slow is an important word, when it comes to creating. The fact that skill takes time to develop and a final piece of art takes time regardless of skill is it’s own source of anxiety. Compared to @sentientcave, who writes about 2k words per day, I’m very slow. And for all the time it takes me, my writing isn’t perfect - I find typos after posting and sometimes my phrasing is awkward. But my writing is better than it was, and my confidence is much higher. I can sit and write for longer and longer periods, my projects are more diverse, I’m sharing them with people, even before the final edits are done. And I only learned how to do this because I took the time to push through the discomfort of not being as fast or as skilled as I want to be in order to learn what works for me and what doesn’t.

Building mastery - getting better at a skill over time so that you can see your own progress - isn’t just about getting better. It’s about feeling better about your abilities. Confidence, excitement, and pride are important emotions to associate with our own actions. It teaches us that we are capable of making ourselves feel better by engaging with our creativity, a confidence that can be generalized to other activities.

Generative AI doesn’t encourage its users to try new things, to make mistakes, and to see what works. It doesn’t reward new accomplishments to encourage the building of new skills by connecting to old ones. The reward centers of the brain have nothing to respond to to associate with the action of the user. There is a short term input-reward pathway, but it’s only associated with using the AI prompter. It’s designed to encourage the user to come back over and over again, not develop the skill to think and create for themselves.

I don’t know that anyone will change their minds after reading this. It’s imperfect, and I’ve summarized concepts that can take months or years to learn. But I can say that I learned something from the process of writing it. I see some of the flaws, and I can see how my essay writing has changed over the years. This might have been faster to plug into AI as a prompt, but I can see how much more confidence I have in my own voice and opinions. And that’s not something chatGPT can ever replicate.

[blightbright]

Solas fandom and "genAI"

I recently came back to Tumblr 99.9% because life is stressful and I'm autistic and special interesting about Solas, but I never could keep my mouth shut so... re: so-called "genAI" in fandom spaces:

I say so-called because it is neither truly generative nor intelligent, and it is not really artificial: it is created with the real stolen efforts of living people and real environmental exploitation

I have little interest in blaming everyday individuals (except CEOs, political leaders, billionaires, etc) for the harms of the most popular "genAI" tech, because it's a systemic problem

"genAI" is intentionally confusing and it's ok if people are genuinely ignorant, at first, of how it works or the harm

I also have loved ones who disagree with me

THAT SAID, I urge people to learn more about and consider the harms to society, other people, and one's own process of self-expression, learning, and creativity from the use of "genAI"

I can't control your behavior but I can tell you that your messiest, most "OOC," error-ridden rough draft, or your most wonky-proportioned stick figure fan art is infinitely more precious, valuable, and emotionally, culturally, and spiritually significant than an unintelligent plagiarism algorithm doing it for you, even if it gets less hits/kudos at first. don't give up hope: your own art means something. I encourage you to make fandom a heartfelt space of resistance!

it is important for communities to define boundaries of unacceptable behavior (i.e. use of non-gen AI spellcheck, Google Translate, "genAI" rewrite functions, character "chats," plot/outline "generation," full-blown "generated" pieces... IMO, I'm fine with the first, uneasy but ok with the second, and the rest I actively oppose)

in the absence of clear boundaries, transparency is key! please publicly and clearly disclose ANY use of "genAI" at ANY stage of the process for fan works, because concealment of this is disrespectful and hurtful. if you didn't know before, such is life. now you know.

avoid all bad faith arguments about shipping wars and witch hunts. you have nothing to fear from posts uncovering AI if you do not use undisclosed "genAI": the two works in question did. you have many things to fear from unchecked "genAI" use if you are a writer, artist, or someone who needs our planet to stay alive

the work @durgeapologist, @fangbanger3000, and others have done to raise awareness about "genAI" use in popular fan works is extremely valuable, difficult work, and does not need to be perfectly worded to be earnest, meaningful, and ultimately beneficial for fan communities

bonus point, sponsored by autism: Solas as a character draws on figures from Norse lore including Loki, god of many things including callouts and criticism of powerful systems; Odin, god of words, wisdom, poets, and uncontrollable creative inspiration; and Fenrir, wolfpup god of surviving trauma, seeking praise and social approval from the powerful only for it to result in pain, raging against the system, and freedom. IMO, if I want any character to rally people together for the sake of resisting billionaire tech companies when possible and celebrating old-fashioned creativity, it's Solas. it's in his story's DNA. whoever we want him to smooch.

[alpaca-clouds]

On Writing Disabilities

When it comes to writing minorities we usually talk a lot about LGBTQ* and BI_PoC, but the topic that usually gets overlooked are disabilities. While at this point we might see some version of characters with autism, and ADHD. Usually in a way that the characters are a bit "oddballs", though, not in the way of characters being non-verbal and rarely only involving symptoms like meltdowns and such.

And in general... It annoys me. Especially in western media.

During the last two or three years Japanese media has incresingly started to include a lot more disability representation, even among main characters. This mostly happens in slice of life anime and manga, but it generally is a nice change of pace. But there is also stuff like Witch Hat Atelier, that goes stronger into disabilities in a fantasy world.

Now, there is some representation in western media. I mean, Dragon Prince comes to mind with aunt Amaya, and some of the background characters in Miraculous Ladybug have some disabilities. However, I cannot think of a single piece of visual media at the very least with a disabled main character. At least not within all the scifi/fantasy stuff I am consuming.

And even when it comes to side characters, it is not very common. Same with books. And maybe there is a good reason for this, because it really turns out that a lot of abled people suck at imagining disabilities, because when they think about a disability, they will usually think about what they would do if they became suddenly disabled in a very specific way.

The issues with that are somewhat multifold.

One part s, that a lot of abled people misunderstand disabilities in general. This basically boils down to binary thinking. Either something works 100% or it does not work at all. This is why abled people will act as if they have found you cheating when you stand up from your wheelchair. They do not realize that most people who sit in a wheelchair are not in fact paraplegic, but sit in the wheelchair for other reasons. When I need the wheelchair, I need it, because my blood oxygen levels are too low, and I am very, very dizzy on that day, so without the wheelchair I would not be able to move around without falling over. I can however stand up for a moment to fetch something, or I can get up and easily transfer into my bed or a toilet. Other people sit in a wheelchair because of chronic pain, or fits of weakness, or cramps or... the reasons are endless, really. Many people who sit in a wheelchair do not use the wheelchair every day. I am by now down to 2-3 days a month. But on those days I either stay in bed or need to use the wheelchair.

And the same goes with other disabilities. People hear "deaf" and think the people hear nothing. Most people who are labled deaf are in fact hard of hearing. They hear something, just not enough to function like a normal hearing person. Most legally blind people are able to see something. Some see in little flecks, some see just very blurry, some see on one eye and not the other... It goes on like this. But most times when abled people write about this, they do not depict it this way. Because they do not understand disability.

And again, they usually will look at it often from the perspective of suddenly loosing something that they have.

And mind you: Yes, most disabilities are not a thing you have at birth. You will gain this disability somehow during the course of your life. But here is the thing: No matter when you acquire your disability, you will get used to it. Sure, it might be a shock at first, and a lot of the depictions by abled people writing disabled people, might work if the character has recently acquired that disability. But it does usually not work for a character who has been disabled for 10+ years, or who has actually been disabled from birth.

Abled people can often not imagine that there are in fact disabled people - especially among those who have been disabled from birth - who do not want to be "healed". And cannot imagine that to some people "healing" is actually horrifying. We often hear tearjerker stories about blind and deaf people being cured and first seeing/hearing their loved ones. The stories we do not hear are the stories of those being "healed" and then finding, that actually they just mentally cannot properly deal with the visual or audio information and find it horrifying and/or painful.

And that is the other issue with writing disabled people: Often disabled people are written just to be healed. And that is just... not optimal.

So, what am I even trying to say?

Honestly, I don't know. Probably: Read actually stuff from the perspective of disabled people. And keep in mind that disabled people will always exist. Like, if you do not have disabled people existing in your fantasy/scifi works, I will always assume you are eugenicist.

[briannysey]

something I wish more folks noticed and understood is that worldbuilding in secondary-world fiction is a tool for storytelling, theme, and expresssion just like everything else. there’s a million ways a writer can make a world. It could be super materialist, with the plot closely bound by the logistical realities of the world. It could be soft and formless, scaffolding the story through suggestion and absence. It could be frighteningly similar to, or brain-blendingly different from our’d.

the key here is that writers make choices. Every aspect of a world is a choice made by the author. Once you get a handle on that you can start asking really important questions like “what does this particular piece of worldbuilding say about the story, its themes, its author, its workd, or our world?”

[deliciouskeys]

"Write for yourself, you can't depend on getting comments on your fics to feel good, don't look for validation from oth-..."

[quillver]

The Truth They Can’t Afford to See

For me, what a character believes is rarely the point. What fascinates me is what they can’t afford to know - the memory they wrap in soft cloth, the truth they circle like a wound. Not because they’re liars, but because seeing it clearly would undo something they need to survive.

Their blind spots aren’t flaws. They’re structural. Take one away, and the rest begins to shake.

Some call obedience devotion. Some call cruelty duty. Some name their silence humility - and pray no one asks what it cost.

It’s not villainy. It’s not clarity. It’s survival, rewritten as virtue.

And when they finally see it - truly see it - it’s not just the character who fractures. The story breaks with them.

I don’t write villains. I write people who survive by not knowing. Until truth ruins them - and the story has to find another shape.

[wetcatspellcaster]

Metapost: "The Ascendent"

**this is a meta for my fic, Pieces Still Stuck in Your Teeth, and NOT a discussion of the BG3 game canon in any way. If you try and make this into a disk-horse, I will BITE you**

(spoilers under the cut for Chapters 1-23 of Pieces Still Stuck in Your Teeth).

So... remember in the Chapter One endnote when I said I was a Spike/Buffy fan first, and a person second? x

･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ: ･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ

In more seriousness, there was a number of fictional seasonings/ingredients that went into creating what I felt was the villain of a Gothic horror, and what I felt could turn the Ascendent into something that was both 'fixable', and something I enjoyed writing.

Those ingredients were:

Spike and the idea of 'soulless' vampires in the BtVS canon - do I like this conceit of BtVS worldbuilding and how it's used in the show? No. I think it often underlines how bad Whedon is at writing romance. BUT I do think it gives Buffy this free pass for which vampires she can/can't like or adopt, and I needed some of that for my protagonist. I need a 'I can fix him' moment - BtVS has those in fucking SPADES.

Howl's Moving Castle (this one was accidental, I'm still mad at myself but I can't deny it's there) - man conducts magic ritual for power, removing an essential part of himself in the process that needs to be returned

Picture of Dorian Gray (the idea of an exterior staying pristine while something hidden suffers and decays)

Curse of Strahd (the soulless in Barovia, which I mentioned in Chapter 23)

The idea of default moral alignments in D&D. I have a whole chapter arguing against this in my thesis (mostly bc it's often applied to entire races) but I was fascinated by creating a set of circumstances where I feel like a default moral alignment is valid, actually. 7,000 deaths seems like a good set up. I wanted to imagine a being that was trapped within a default moral alignment, and the laws of its very being prevent it from being good no matter what it tries, and it knows that (this kind of creates a feedback loop with the Spike/Buffy stuff)

The parts of the BG3 canon I took and REMADE (I'm stressing this throughout, I was making a horror story and a horror monster your honour):

Astarion conducts the Rite of Profane Ascension with scars on his back, but has to scar Cazador's back personally, suggesting that um... the Rite REALLY SHOULDN'T BE CONDUCTED BY SOMEONE WHO'S GOT THOSE SCARS. Cazador wasn't going to do it that way, is all I'm saying!!

The idea that Ascended!Ending Astarion is a concentrated version of certain traits that have persisted throughout his story - his flirtiness, his understanding of sex as a mechanism and expression of power, his use of a fa��ade as a mask for trauma he refuses to acknowledge.

The lines alluding to dissociation in the brothel foursome, post-Ascension.

The idea that Astarion seduced Tav to survive or protect himself- in my case, because I made the Ascendent empty save for Astarion's survival instinct, the idea that he would gravitate towards Tav as one of his default modes to potentially survive made sense to me - this is why it becomes an obsession.

･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ: ･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ

For me, when writing, the Ascendent is a few things:

An intensification of vampirism in a different, fucked-up direction. Yeah, A!Astarion, you can walk in sunlight and you can eat and drink and don't need blood. But you are still a hungering maw of emptiness that feels like it will never be whole or close and connected to the living - just now in a wildly different, metaphysical/existential direction! Welcome to depression, alienation, and otherness!

A soulless being, that knows it is soulless - that initially was very happy with its life but then as the years passed, increasingly spends its every waking moment knowing there is something innately wrong with it that it can't seem to shake, no matter how much it engages with life and all the pleasures of life. (see the 'every meal without savour' speech)

A magically literal metaphor for Astarion's dissociation in moments of extreme trauma, up to and including the fight with Cazador - essentially, the moments when there is nothing but a performance or an exterior, because the self/soul are suffering and they cant' come to phone right now

Astarion's survival instinct. As I say in Chapter 23 - Mephistopheles thinks it is an empty body, who's performance is trying to deny the reality of it's own existence. Rosalie, who has a bit more understanding of Astarion, sees that the performance is not just a coping mechanism but one of Astarion's main modes of survival. The Ascendent is Astarion's survival instinct/techniques for endurance, without any soul or person behind them to protect. This is how I tried to tie in the flirty, hypersexual persona and wrap it with a bow.

I wanted a monster that was undeniably scary, and monstrous to me (oh? you can't fit in or be happy no matter what you do and no matter how hard you try, and you think there's something intrinsically off? how's that autism diagnosis going Emma) but that I also felt sympathy and true sorrow for. I needed to have motivations for him chasing after Tav that I could write meaningfully from and sympathise with.

Not only has Astarion used Tav as a life-raft once before, they've also proven to be the most secure thing he's ever clung to. Of course a rabid survival instinct Astarion would become obsessed, and see them as a potential solution to the problem (this was then intensified by Rosalie also being a walking, overbearing moral compass, and having bound him in a contract in the first week of living, accidentally - a lawful good immoveable objects meets a default moral alignment unstoppable force.)

...Because I also wanted that moral alignment spice!! Wizards of the Coast, default moral alignment is fucked up actually!!! Imagine something trying so desperately to be good - literally being bound in a pact and having been told to be good - but the laws of the universe and its very essence are like "nah mate, we kind of want to destroy and annihilate everything, we're neutral evil personified". That's scary!! that's fucked up!! that's what a birth from 7000 deaths gets you!!!

･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ: ･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ･ﾟ✧

So, now for the actual timeline, for people who aren't interested in my silly musings but mostly just want answers lmfao.

Rosalie makes the decision not to intervene in Cazador's mansion, making it seem like she'll support whatever decision Astarion will make there.

Rite of Profane Ascension happens. Astarion conducts the ritual, rips his own soul from his body, the Ascendent is born with literally zero context. Mephistopheles is fucked in Cania, because a bunch of stuff has just gone wrong.

(oh, by the way, the Ascendent knows Infernal as a default language. Bc it's born from an Infernal rite.)

The Ascendent is now default neutral evil, and feeling some kind of way. Rosalie and him break up. He's supposed to have everything, but the one thing he thought was a done deal - his most stalwart suppporter - just rejected him.

Netherbrain defeat (the Ascendent is not invited. Imagine being an all-powerful, hypersexual survival instinct vampire, and your ex-girlfriend neither wants you for sex, nor your power.)

Rosalie accidentally binds the Ascendent (a soulless devil) in a pact demanding that he never kill anyone, when that's literally what the Ascendent's new existence/new default moral alignment is driving him to do. Then, she fucks off and goes into hiding.

Well. The Ascendent can just get another wizard, to help him learn all of Cazador's secrets to cope [Hemlock is recruited].

The years go by! The Ascendent is doing sooooo well. Everything is great, guys! I'm rich, I'm beautiful, I have lavish parties and lots of sex - why do I feel nothing? I'm a vampire perfected - I have no hunger for blood, I can walk in the sun, I can enjoy all the freedoms of a living, breathing man - why do I feel like I'm starving? Why does everything turn to ashes in my mouth? I have friends - oops, I've sabotaged all those friendships with my innate neutral evil destruction. Why can't I feel anything? What's wrong with me? I'm doing everything right? Why doesn't it feel that way?

Also, I can't kill anything to feel better about it, because my hidden ex-girlfriend bound me in a pact.

In this time, to reflect the gradual degradation of the Ascendent's happiness and it's increasing awareness that it is something Other and innately wrong, the reflection starts going weird. Starts going strange. Starts getting a bit fucked up. Almost as if, when he looks in the mirror and sees a person, *nothing* should be what's there. Imagine being a spawn who couldn't see your reflection, and then a vampire who could see it's reflection, but knows that they're innately empty. Knows there's nothing there. I'd freak out a little bit about it as well tbh, I'd go a bit tooth and claw and elongated jaw about it.

The Ascendent finally admits that's there must be something kinda fucked about it. Life just ain't working out, lads. He starts looking for any and all impossible cures that will help with the malaise in his soul (and that innate essence problem, caused by default moral alignment). These include: more bad decisions, such as a house in Cania bc the Ascendent is hoping he'll feel more at home with devils than he does with mortals. All it does is make him feel more isolated and alone.

But eventually, he settles on two things! - Wish (Hemlock's idea), and Rosalie (the Ascendent's idea). Clearly, we just need Rosalie back! Her leaving is actually what fucked him up in the first place - none of this existential bullshit! She fixed us one, she can fix us again.

But looking for Rosalie hasn't worked out. In order to get a shot at her, the Ascendent goes and bargains for his own soul from Mephistopheles. Mephistopheles, adding a new sheet in excel titled 'what the fuck happens when i give this soulless monster a soul to play with?', agrees and starts tracking his new data.

Obviously, just putting the soul back in yourself will fix you. But the Ascendent, the nothingness living inside Astarion's body, will die. Taking the soul back would erase itself. The Ascendent - who is survival instinct personified - would never do this.

So instead, it starts interviewing and cannibalising the soul. Bc a soul is what it needs, this is the closest it's ever felt to being alive. Bc it's made this all about Rosalie, he thinks he's found his solution. The chase is making him feel alive again. It's true love, lads! not the soul.

Wish auction happens - the Ascendent is beaten to the punch by some unknown (hot) wizard.

This avenue cut off, the Ascendent makes the decision to try and win Rosalie back.

Astarion advises that to make her come back to the Gate, he should murder a bunch of people. Because this comes from the soul, not the soulless devil nothingness, it circumvents the pact.

...The events of Pieces begin!

･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ: ･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ･ﾟ✧

And finally - the Ascendent tries to destroy Jar!Starion for many reasons in Chapter 19:

The Ascendent knows that it dies, if the soul and the body get reunited (or is that constant high alert survival instinct just no longer needed, because the problem is fixed? you decide.)

The Ascendent values Tav above itself. Tav is going to fix them. Astarion believes he could never fix himself.

Dissociation - that soul isn't me. I'm here, looking at my soul. If I get too close, it'll kill me.

Self-hatred - that soul isn't me. That man made a mistake, and I've had to live with the consequences. He doesn't deserve to live, for what he's made me become.

The knowledge that Rosalie/Tav will only ever want that version of him, not the one that's living and breathing, that sees itself as the most wretched, fucked-up version of itself. So... give them no choice. They have to deal with me and love me at my worst.

And if the Rite didn't work - if the version of the Ascendent walking around isn't the best one, and the one people want... what was it all for? Why does the Ascendent feel like this? Why does it have to suffer?

･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ: ･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ･ﾟ✧

....And, that's my little meta post! If anyone has any questions about the timeline or any motivations at any points in the fic, I'm obviously more than happy to explain things via ask/comment, as always!

TLDR: I just wanted to make a Gothic horror. I wanted a dark romance, fucked up obsession vampire/mortal dynamic, but I also wanted a situation that was scary for both Astarion and my Tav. I personally think an Astarion who is so dissociated and separate from reality that he feels that in his bones daily, is scary. It's the lingering impact of the traumas the Rite and those 7,000 souls embodied.

I was literally just trying to make it a horror, for everyone involved.

[heartoflesh]

Who knew, the key to writing was to just write 😀

[wrenmkingsley]

What's the maximum percentage of your work that can contain a certain kink until people start noticing? - I ask myself as I debate whether to put a bathhouse/hot spring/bathing scene in the fourth out of four works.

[dragonnarrative-writes]

One of my kinktober stories that I'm struggling to write boils down to Simon from Transferrable Skills having a kink he's embarrassed to share with Bambi and her not being into it until she sees how into it he is. The problem is that 1) the kink can actually be an amalgamation of kinks and 2) I have to be in a very specific headspace to be into that kink, so I'm having a hard time getting past the talking stage of it all, and 3) ...how did that conversation even start???

[befuddled-calico-whump]

been really into betrayal lately

[peasantgirl13]

Me, an adult woman born with the spirit of a prudish victorian woman who has never felt the touch of a man: Alright *cracks knuckles* time to write some Romance

[beyoncesfiancee]

gasppp thanks for the tag @awildwickedslip!!! it didn't notify me of the mention ;( you are shadowbanned frrrrrr

1. How many works on AO3?

39 bebs

2. Total word count on AO3?

195,257. after 11 years... that's over 17,000 words a year!!! over half of which have been in the last 12 months!!!!

3. Top five fics by kudos?

bored (at a london music) - sherlock bbc fin de siècle au (2016)

down, girl - original work f/f pwp (2016)

miscellaneous tumblr ficlets by killmewithlesbians - that's my steven universe sideblog name lol (2016)

make thy life shudder in thee, and burn afresh - carmilla !!! (2015)

the loveliest vision in this dark world - sappho/anactoria, the very first fic i posted to ao3 (2014)

these all probably only have so many kudos because they have been published the longest. the youngest is eight years! you have to get all the way down to #12 ranked by kudos before you get to something i wrote in the last 12 months. I still stand by bored, down girl, and make thy life shudder in thee though lol

4. What fandoms do you primarily write for?

these days it's locked tomb, but im not picky luv... in my will-probably-actually-write-them-at-some-point wips (not just one-sentence jotted ideas) currently I have TLT, steven universe, xena, interview with the vampire, DS9 (😉), romy and michelle's high school reunion, and original fiction. im just writing so much locked tomb because 1) I can only write so many words in any one month and my backlog of wake/pyrrha/g1deon ideas still has items in it and 2) the fandom is so fun and active that it makes it easy to want to write things for people. I LOVE BEING IN A LIVING FANDOM AGAIN!!!!!

5. Do you respond to comments?

always, every single one. i dont have comment-responding social anxiety whatsoever and i want to encourage more comments lol so i always respond very nicely and with a comparable intensity to the level of effort/analysis the commenter gave ^_^ the only exception is if someone is going through a multi-chapter fic and commenting on every chapter, I won't respond to every chapter's comment so I don't inflate my stats (unless they are truly stupendous close reads like @amarocit's award-winning comments that give me brilliant unheard-of insights into my own text) but will leave them an enormously long gushing reply on the last chapter instead hahaha

6. Angstiest ending?

i guess it depends on how you define angsty... is it angstier to have a really juicy bloobloobloo comfort ending of a hurt/comfort or is ending with the hurt part of a hurt/no comfort angstier... actually wait the answer is obvious lol. #1 with a bullet is This great pleasure of ours is bursting in light (tlt)!!! ohhhhh it hurts lol

7. Fic with the happiest ending?

um im not really... into those? ^_^ the purest fluff happy ending is off the leash (tlt silly pwp), but the happiest "real" happy ending (i.e., one they had to work for) is probably many traces (janelle monáe's dirty computer fic) or maybe medice, cura te ipsum (johnlock).

8. Do you get hate?

not even a little bit. nobody gives enough of a fuck about my work lol. i was slightly apprehensive about this great pleasure because of how gnarly it is but maybe in TLT fandom everyone is good about reading tags and being grownups...

9. Do you write smut?

10. Do you write crossovers?

no i find them corny. i dont read em either (ditto). love a good fusion tho

11. Ever had a fic stolen?

see #8. no one gives a fuckkkkk lol

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

YESSSS IM OBSESSED!!!! MY SAPPHO/ANACTORIA FIC WAS TRANSLATED INTO RUSSIAN ����😍😍❤️‍🔥

13. Have you ever co-written a fic?

i used to cowrite a lot in my pre-ao3 life, primarily through rp lol. @coldestcaress gang gang. nothing in my current iteration tho

14. All time favorite ship?

i think i have to be real and say pearlrose (steven universe). my heart doesn't palpitate for it the way it used to but it will never not be the GOAT. honorable mentions: ship I will always click on a fic of, irene/mary (sherlock bbc). ship i like the highest percentage of ao3 fics of, harrow/ianthe (tlt). ship that has apparently made me insane, wake/pyrrha/g1deon (tlt) (i'm not listing it as all-time fave because the sleeper cell has only been activated 1 year so i cant speak to its psychic longevity).

15. WiPs you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

i dont want to curse myself by mentioning either steven universe roller derby AU or (sob) dalí/lacan but each of them was started 8-10 years ago and i set it as a specific goal to finish both of those by new year's eve 2024 and i didn't do it and now it's four months later so. sob. but i only have like 6-7k to write in each so maybe i just need to shackle myself to the fucking coalface and get to work

16. Writing strengths?

grime and slime and pussy juice and the way sex and desire are a little bit gross, erotic realism, characterizations (of preexisting characters, see below), emotional realities. idk what else

17. Writing weaknesses?

diversifying my prose style for different stories & contexts, pacing, earning the emotional beats (I do my outline and then want to bop from one point to the next without building enough connective tissue), conversely doing too MUCH connective tissue and slowing the pace because I lack confidence in the reader, relying on the same few physical actions/beats to telegraph internal states (seriously if you skim my whole oeuvre in one sitting it's embarrassing). the "earning the emotional beats"/pacing one is something really plaguing me atm so now im ruminating on it more. i used to only be able to write 2-4k stories but now that ive unlocked an ability to write longer stories, i feel like i cant re-access that 2-4k pacing brain that allows me to touch intense emotional beats (e.g. one of my best works zombie) without zooming too far in on one emotional moment, then too-lightly zooming out and skipping from it to the next one without spending an equivalent time on the connective tissue

weaknesses that are original work-specific: building characters from nothing, putting them in a setting and a world that makes sense for who they are, building out that world, describing their appearances & outfits

18. Thoughts on mixed language dialogue?

so chic and funnnnnn especially for a language i already speak so i dont have to machine translate it lol

19. First fandom you wrote for?

one piece 😳 shout out to my one piece yaoi 100 drabble-writing community on livejournal RIP

20. Favorite fic you’ve ever written?

for experimentalism/ambition, reinterpretation of canon, character voiceyness, humor, tragedy, dramatic irony, pacing, and icky sticky sex writing, the gold medal goes to You think love is stainless and pure (crazy ex-girlfriend). paula ftw (ughhh swim good [tlt] is really fucking good too though)

i taggue @jeejyboard @onlybynightandonlybysea @theriverbeyond @vulgarweed and my beloved @havingbeenbreathedout! tag 5 babes

[deliciouskeys]

How do you all have excerpts of WIPs to post in public? 😭 I think my writing process is very binary.

1. I start writing and it’s not terrible and I go fast and I don’t stand up from my desk until I post (and then I see a bunch of spelling and grammar errors and repeated words after I hit post).

2. I start writing and I can see it’s terrible (and it’s also slow and torturous) and even if I don’t delete it, it’s nothing postable

There is rarely much in between.

The exceptions I can think of were chapters of multichapters where one half was written fine and then I ran into a blood-from-stone segment modularly and I really wanted a chapter to cover x, y, and z. And usually I find out the chapter needs to cover x, y, and zeta and that’s why it wasn’t working earlier.

So yeah, in case you ever wonder if I make everything in one sitting… I do. Fics, videos, whiny tumblr posts.

ETA: clarifying that I’m not in real distress over this, just got tagged to participate in a WIP excerpt game and couldn’t locate a sentence I’d want to post 😅