tophat-69

[tophat-69]

squish the viktor between the couch and the jayce for maximum brain reset

[tophat-69]

Me (knowing damn well that fic writers gift us enough of their precious time and life energy without ever deserving the whingeing of their anonymous fans, and that me asking this is very gauche and annoying) how many kidneys would you require in exchange to consider writing a trapped by a singualar fate prequel?????? I CAN'T STOP thinking about what Silco's life was pre-Vander!!!!!!!

First, I’m so glad my Silco’s caught your imagination like that! He’s such a damaged man, and it’s fun to imagine how exactly he became way he is. Seeing him in Arcane and wondering how he ended up THAT broken is what started TBSF after all.

Despite the generous offer of (obviously, humanely harvested) internal organs, I don’t think a prequel is likely. I think TBSF is already a stretch for people because of how far ahead of the story it is, and how OCs necessarily have to play a part (because children don’t spring out of mid-air, and revolutions require casualties!) so I think tbh that it wouldn’t get far.

Also… I’d end up writing an abused kid who doesn’t really catch a break until he’s 19, and that’s pretty bleak even for me.

[tophat-69]

It’s WIPWednesday, so join me as I psychoanalyze one of my faves, for the next chapter of trapped by a singular fate.

“So part of that ‘taking care of himself,’ is like..” Felicia’s brow creases as she tries to find an explanation that Vander will follow. “…just imagine there’s a scale in Silco’s head, right? What people do for him, and what he does for them. Most people, he does something for them so that they owe him and he can call that in.”

Felicia illustrates it, hands palm up in front of her as she weighs them. Silco creates leverage and holds it over people’s heads until they give what he wants in return to balance those scales. A whisper in an ear that they owe him. “He isn’t exactly sociable, so most people don't do anything for him without him doing something for them first. And if they do, he scrambles to pay them back so it can’t be used against him.”

The scales even out, palms up and steady in the space between the two of them.

“Silco and I are sort of an even partnership in his head because we’re propping each other up a lot, and because it’s a constant back and forth. But everything in your relationship is tipped to your side. And don’t—” Even as she’s tipping those scales, Felicia points a finger in Vander’s direction, interrupting him. “—don’t act like that’s entirely bullshit, okay?”

“How the hell aren’t we even?”

“Because you just outright handed him everything he’s never had? Vander, as far as he’s concerned you gave him a home, you gave him a family…”

Felicia gestures at the bar, at herself and at Vander, hand a little frantic like she’s trying to drill through Vander’s skull what weight he holds Silco aloft with. Her voice is speeding up with urgency, like he might interrupt her to argue. Or like Silco might show up at any moment.

“He is so used to being treated like shit that in his head it’s like you made him someone people don’t just scoff at or spit on. And he can’t figure out how to balance all of that, so he expects you to realize it’s not enough either. So he’ll keep doing stupid shit like going to jail for me, for you. Or trying to figure out who he needs to become to make things right, for you. Now he’s been gone for a year and what he could do for you wasn’t enough, because he wasn’t here when you actually needed him. And he’s so fucking scared you could take everything away if he doesn’t make sure he’s bringing enough into your relationship.”

Fist closing, she yanks Vander’s half of the scale away, and the other side comes crashing down, hand falling limply onto the bar. The moment Silco’s afraid of, what he keeps bracing himself for.

It’s silent for a moment as Vander stares at her hand limp and empty. Then Felicia sighs and lays her cheek back down on the bar like that entire tirade was more than she meant to reveal. Like she regrets breaking Silco’s trust by laying it out so clearly.

“He’s not trying to cut you out. He’s trying to catch up.” Frowning, Felicia is clearly considering her words. She’s spent over a year now reading Silco’s most guarded thoughts as if they were a two way dialogue, or like she’d never get to talk to him again. And now she knows more than she should. “Vander, he’d die for us. And I’m not… I’m not just saying that. We gave him something to live for, so that would balance the scales.”

[tophat-69]

Chapters: 16/? Fandom: Arcane: League of Legends (Cartoon 2021) Rating: Explicit Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Relationships: Silco (Arcane: League of Legends)/Vander (League of Legends) Characters: Silco (Arcane: League of Legends), Vander (League of Legends), Felicia (Arcane: League of Legends), Benzo (Arcane: League of Legends), Connol (Arcane: League of Legends) Additional Tags: Zaun (League of Legends), Zaun Revolution (League of Legends), Piltover and Zaun Bridge Battle (Arcane: League of Legends), Prequel, Young Vander (League of Legends), Young Silco (Arcane: League of Legends), Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Class Issues, Pre-Arcane: League of Legends, Pre-Canon, Minor Original Character(s), Rebellion, Minor Character Death, Flirting, Developing Relationship, Dramatic Irony, Felicia is Vander's Adoptive Younger Sister, Poverty, Found Family, Doomed Relationship, Protective Vander (League of Legends), Protective Silco (Arcane: League of Legends), Silco Needs a Hug (Arcane: League of Legends), Undercity politics, Zaun deserved better, This is going to hurt me as much as it may hurt you Summary:

It begins in a coal mine. It ends in a river.

They are Vander and Silco, two young revolutionaries tied together by love and ideals and family, destined to fall apart over a shared dream.

But there are so many years between.

[tophat-69]

The effort and obvious passion you put into accurately depicting a revolution is amazing and makes the story so rich. I really enjoyed reading about the historic events you took inspiration from (especially Silco using the funeral as a rally like Irish republicans, I'll always remember that when I read that scene now). I feel bad for asking a more character driven question now, but:

Do you think Silco has really comprehended that Vander and Felicia could be casualties? I was thinking about this and it seems like Vander is more cautious because he knows the people who are dying, and he's seeing it happen, while Silco has been in Stillwater until recently and even before that he just didn't care about anyone outside his two person family. He cares for the people as fellow Zaunites, but not really as individuals. I can imagine him thinking that the cause is greater than any one person's life and everybody has loved ones, that doesn't mean they shouldn't take the risk to change things for the whole just to protect their own people. Nothing will ever change if everyone is only concerned with their own household.

I just don't think he sees himself as part of that. He might die, sure, but he seems very confident that Vander can handle himself and the two of them can protect Felicia from anything. He's never shown any indication that he expects to sacrifice his own people for the cause, only himself or a bunch of strangers, and he's still like that in later life when he's surprised that Piltover want Jinx. I wonder what your take on it is.

No, don't feel bad at all! As much as I've enjoyed digging into the revolutionary facet of the Zaun Rebellion, it's these characters that drew me here and I love digging into what's going on in their heads during all of this.

Especially Silco, because this has been Vander's POV the entire time in large part because he's an unreliable narrator. He keeps inferring Silco's thoughts and feelings, but not necessarily always understanding them. Silco as we know is a very complex character, and Vander's been looking at him through a very simple lens. He's assuming they're on the same page, when they're not always. And the irony is, we know that Silco to some extent is doing the same thing. He feels incredibly betrayed by Vander after their parting, because he thought they were a united front until Vander turned on him.

I think that Silco very much looks at the people involved in the revolution and sees them as Zaunites that he's trying to elevate through his cause, but he hasn't really built connections with them as individuals. We've seen that he never really built relationships with even people he knew for over a decade, like Myra. He was angry at her death, but he didn't really mourn her. Similarly, Cam's funeral showed he would use a kid's death as a rallying point, not because he liked Cam but because he could see where it would draw people together. In anger.

Now, that said--he absolutely did fear Vander and Felicia's death and tear apart his own carefully laid plans to make sure they were safe. That part was true. Silco's connection to Jinx later in life was sincere--he wasn't just using her, and this is the seed of that. Silco connects very deeply, but only with a few people. And right now, in his youth, it's Vander and it's Felicia.

But after he loses Vander and Felicia both, he slams that door closed. It was a weakness. He trusts Vander with his life and genuinely does love him, but in his perspective Vander ripped that to shreds. Then he replaces Felicia with Vi and Powder and Claggor and Mylo and just... goes on with his life. As if he didn't destroy Silco, and turn his back on everything the three of them had been building together.

Jinx becomes the first real exception, after that. Silco doesn't connect easily, and he keeps everyone else at arm's length because getting attached means getting hurt. And once someone slips past those defenses, his own (pretty pronounced) sense of self-preservation goes right out the window if they're in danger.

This is the man who without a single hesitation offered himself up in place of Jinx, when Jayce demanded she be arrested in exchange for Zaun's freedom. He dwells on it after the fact when he's at Vander's statue, but in that moment he took the blame for everything that Jinx had done (claiming they were under his orders, even though we saw very clearly that she was doing things contrary to his plans) and surrendered himself instead in exchange for her freedom and for the freedom of Zaun.

If Jayce had taken that deal, Silco would have seen that as a win. Because Stillwater doesn't frighten him. But the threat of losing the few people he loves is the immediate override for any sense of self-preservation that he has.

I hope that answered your question! And honestly, if there's anything else you want to know to get into their brains, please ask! I love picking them apart.

[tophat-69]

Hey I really really love your fic Trapped By a Singular Fate. I log in daily to reread parts of it. It's rare to read a fic that has both rich, dynamic character development and a complex and meticulously crafted plot. I was wondering what revolutions / societies you've been studying to help formulate the plot?? It's clear you've put a ton of work into researching industrialization, colonization, and revolutionary tactics and honestly I'd love to go learn more myself.

Thank you so much, it means the world to hear that trapped by a singular fate is landing with you the way I hoped it might! I know it’s going to be niche at best because of how much focus I’m putting on the failed Zaun revolution, but with current events I really dove into what resistance actually looks like — how it builds, how it breaks, what it costs, and why people keep fighting anyway. Usually it’s grief, necessity, and a stubborn refusal to let the next generation suffer the same way. We know that’s what drove Zaun’s rebellion, based on Blisters and Bedrock.

(And since Arcane kind of glossed over all that in the second half, I wanted to dig deeper.)

This story is about love and loss, sure, but I also wanted Zaun’s rebellion to feel real. So, naturally, I fell down a few historical rabbit holes (no surprise there). None of it is a one-to-one match with any real-world movement, because history is messy and flashpoints are almost always controversial. Mostly, I just wanted to reflect how Vander and Silco act in canon, and the Zaun we see.

So I pulled from labor uprisings, anti-colonial resistance, and working-class mutual aid networks. I’m not trying to glorify or condemn any of those, just show how these movements work.

A lot of Silco’s actions come straight out of real-world tactics. I understand there are people who just want to say “evil man building personal power,” but that’s pretty reductive. Silco is so insistent that he never lost track of their dream. So I asked myself, how do the chem-barons fit in that? And that sort of launched the whole thing.

Silco’s about shadow economies, underground governance, and replacing Piltover’s control with their own as a way to survive and fight back. And he clearly sees that as him being the torch-bearer for their dream. It’s a bit like early Bolshevik underground organizing, where setting up their own systems was just as important as direct confrontation. That… actually is kind of a critical part of rebellion and resistance all through history. If you’re going to go after the government, then you need something in place that replaces the functions it serves, keeps people fed, handles medical needs, educates, etc. You see it over and over again through history, movements working to become that.

So we all know what the chem-barons end up as, but why does he start them in the first place? Because Silco’s creating a shadow economy to steal control of Zaun’s industries away from Piltover. Look at how Cait refers to him, when Vi brings him up as the culprit: “the industrialist?”

The Lanes were the prototype, and we know that Silco and Vander formed them together. They are a black market that grows into a self-policing community with its own laws, leadership, and logistics. Vander and Silco carved out a corner of Zaun that answers to no one but themselves. Silco saw it as planting the seeds of full independence, but by the start of the show, Vander’s stalled and quietly capitulated to the Enforcers’ control. That push and pull of Silco insisting on full autonomy and Vander hoping for peace mirrors real-life conflicts and failed revolutions. Also it’s what destroys them.

Other big moments borrow from history too.

The Coal Wars were major influences: Matewan, Ludlow, Blair Mountain. The industries in the story act like company towns, where owners control everything from wages to housing to food supply, and starve or evict strikers to break them. That’s not official government action from Piltover, but their wealthy elites basically own early Zaun. They get away with all kinds of abuses under the council’s nose (because, surprise, the rich often sit in or basically own government). The breaking of the cannery strike shows how employers cut off food lines to crush organizing.

Zaun’s early bombing campaign pulls from labor movements of the late 1800s and early 1900s in the U.S. and Europe. Groups like the Industrial Workers of the World used sabotage and underground systems as survival tools. And when it comes to bombing, those early attacks were usually about symbolism and property damage, not mass casualties, like how the Enforcer station was targeted.

Cam’s funeral was turned into political theater by Silco kind of how Irish republicans used public mourning as a way to rally people (there are other examples all throughout anti-colonial movements, but that’s the one that I knew offhand). It made Vander uncomfortable, but those eulogies fired up the movement and brought more people on board. Silco’s a strong orator with his speeches and rants (thanks, Jinx) and uses it.

Cray’s testimony taps into labor leaders like John L. Lewis of the United Mine Workers. He was seen as speaking from the trenches, but basically only won surface-level change from within the system, not really touching the underlying issues (which we know from Arcane has to be what happened—that sort of alludes to Heimerdinger’s willful ignorance while he thinks he’s being benevolent).

The docks seizure borrows from moments when resistance groups took control of infrastructure to make their rebellion real, like supply raids again used through history. The jailbreak drew from Maze Prison and Portlaoise Jail, because it boosted moral and was a black eye to Piltover.

The miners’ protest tactics like loading shale into coal carts, slowing production, giving public testimony, etc are pulled from real-world labor resistance. The coal miners were showing they knew the industry better than their owners did and were trying to bleed them dry until they made changes. So the massacre at the mines drew from Matewan. Whereas the later Bridge of Progress echoed Blair Mountain in a big way to me from episode one (which is probably why the Coal Wars became a major anchor for this).

I’m not trying to draw perfect parallels here. These are patterns that repeat throughout history, not direct blueprints, so it’s more just trying to ground myself in what these movements feel like, from inside of them. Especially since this is Vander’s POV exclusively.

(If you kind of the high-points of my historical nerd list, here’s what I fell deep into: The Coal Wars including Ludlow, Matewan, Blair Mountain. The Irish revolutionary period and Troubles. Early Bolshevik underground organizing and parallel governments. American labor unionizing, including Mother Jones and John L. Lewis.)

Again, thank you and I’m so glad you’re enjoying it! It’s a labor of love, and my brain is sort of stuck in this until I finish it.

[tophat-69]

Four graduations

[tophat-69]

Hey, we've never talked but I have been obsessed with "it's the good" story! I am still going through it but the depth! The characterization! The character study! The fluff! The emotions! The action!

anyway it's fantastic! Thank you for writing it ❤️

I am so glad you're enjoying it, and I'm so deeply sorry that I didn't reply to this right away! I hope the ending is as good for you as where you were when you sent this to me!

I loved getting to play with Jayce and Viktor, and give them the closure I think that they'd have needed before getting any 'happily ever after.' They're characters with such amazing voices and dynamic that I wanted to be as true to them as I could be, while poking at the state that Arcane would have left them in--and how they'd have wanted to fix things.

Thank YOU for reading, and for the kind words!

[tophat-69]

I finally read Us Perishable Creatures by @tophat-69 and it made my sub-hyperfixation rear back up so I edited and added a good thousand words to my fic six months after it was originally published lol

Anyways, check out my fic inspired by Its The Good Defining Itself (also written by tophat)

[tophat-69]

Chapters: 7/? Fandom: 文豪ストレイドッグス | Bungou Stray Dogs Rating: Explicit Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Relationships: Dazai Osamu/Nakahara Chuuya (Bungou Stray Dogs) Characters: Armed Detective Agency and Port Mafia Ensembles (Bungou Stray Dogs), Nakahara Chuuya (Bungou Stray Dogs), Dazai Osamu (Bungou Stray Dogs), Kunikida Doppo (Bungou Stray Dogs), Edogawa Ranpo (Bungou Stray Dogs) Additional Tags: Armed Detective Agency Member Nakahara Chuuya (Bungou Stray Dogs), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Soukoku | Double Black (Bungou Stray Dogs), Canon-Typical Violence, Dazai-Typical Suicide References (Bungou Stray Dogs), Developing Relationship, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Queer Platonic Soulmates to Not Platonic At All, Switching, Switch Dazai Osamu/Nakahara Chuuya (Bungou Stray Dogs), Dazai Osamu and Nakahara Chuuya Leave the Port Mafia (Bungou Stray Dogs) Summary:

On the night Dazai leaves the Port Mafia, Oda's blood still staining the edge of the bandages around his wrists, he makes an offer that will change everything:

"Come with me, Chuuya."

Did I just slam a chapter online the very moment that AO3 flickered back to life? Yes. Yes, I did. (And hopefully it will remain that way. Please, AO3, we need you.)

[tophat-69]

Thank you so much for answering. I love c/c so much (hands down one of the best fics I've ever read) and the day you decide to release some of those 20 pages I'm probably gonna explode from happiness. I just love how you write those idiots <3

I’m so glad you enjoyed centrifugal/centripetal…

And I know AO3 has been down for hours, and people could use a bit of entertainment. So have a little more of it to pass the time! We’ll consider this a Tumblr exclusive until/unless I finish it out.

“Are you an idiot?!” The sound of Kunikida’s voice through the communication unit tucked into Dazai’s ear is grating, more so with the squeal of electrical interference. The fact that the volume is turned low is probably the only thing keeping the thugs at the doorway in front of him from noticing the device behind the mop of Dazai’s blood-matted hair.

Scalp wounds are so inconvenient—they bleed a disproportionate amount, even if they’re not all that painful. Relatively speaking, of course; Dazai has something of an unholy pain tolerance as an occupational hazard.

The concussion he suspects that they gave him by clubbing him upside the head with a pipe is a little more inconvenient, but also not a first.

Still, his partner isn’t done. Dazai can hear the screech of tires in the background of the transmission that betrays that Kunikida—straight backed, stuck up, law abiding Kunikida—is actually speeding. Dazai is almost flattered by the concern.

“You were supposed to do reconnaissance, not waltz into the damn warehouse…”

Semantics. Technically, this is reconnaissance. And two hours on the inside beats multiple overnight shifts out in the cold with binoculars every single time. Stake outs are mind-numbingly boring and give him far too much time with the inside of his own head. He gets more intel this way just based on what they are insistent on trying to pry out of him. And look, they brought him to their little hideout, leading the detectives right to him. Efficiency at its finest.

However…

Lightning seems to arc through Dazai’s body again, jaw locking on the bit between his teeth that keeps him from responding verbally to Kunikida, his body arching involuntarily away from the back of the chair he is strapped into. The squeal of the communicator is coupled with an electric shock that seems to spark directly into his brain from his occupied ear, scattering even Dazai’s thoughts for that time-stopped moment before the charge shuts off again.

Even as Dazai slumps against the chair again, rage swells foreign and insistent in the back of his mind, a formless presence that is by no means aimless. Meanwhile, Kunikida has fallen silent on hearing Dazai’s hoarse involuntary reaction to the current.

“This would all be so much easier if you would just tell us who you’re working with.” The bored voice of his nearest captor wouldn’t impress Dazai even if he weren’t a far superior actor (and a much more deft hand at torture—the clamps for the electrical wires are in the entirely wrong spots).

Blood has dripped from his brow into his eye, salt sting and partially blinding, an obscuring haze that makes him for a moment remember the shadowed view from behind the concealment of a bandage. The moment is gone as he heaves in his next breath, forcefully shoving the thought away.

Soon. He’s got what he needs already, though. Dazai has them spooked, quite deliberately—he strolled right in and declared what he has already gleaned from their slapshod work and let them think he was a competitor on their mission. And now he has plenty of insight on their objectives.

Working his tongue against the bit, Dazai manages to spit it out again where it hangs loose around his neck by the strap before his captor can pull it out himself to continue questioning. “Ugh. That tastes horrible. And you’re terrible at this. Your placement is all wrong.”

He’s not even surprised to have his infuriating show of flexing his jaw interrupted by a backhanded slap. His head snaps to the side to soften the blow by moving with it, but the motion verifies that he does indeed have a concussion. The room spins until a filthy hand catches his jaw in tight grip, forcing him to look his captor in the eye.

“You talk a big game, I’ll give you that.” Dull red eyes stare into his, an attempt to out-Alpha Dazai that is met with an unimpressed quirk of his lips. He’d have to be dead to back down from a challenge. “But we have other ways of making you talk...”

Oh, they’re so cliche. He was never this cliche about torture, even back when he was fifteen and still reveled in the drama of it all.

“…You smell like you have a pretty little bitch waiting for you at home. What if I send my boys to bring her here. She can judge for herself how we do things.”

He can hear over the communicator as Kunikida’s breath hisses through his teeth, a warning that Dazai’s prey can’t hear about his usual reaction to any threats about his mate. Dazai’s grin grows, a cruel sort of glee to it.

“Oh, he’ll love meeting you. In fact…” the changing of the guard is already nearly two minutes late, and a faint scent of spoiled apples and an animal musk are apparent to him above the mingled scents of the thugs. Kunikida’s tires hit gravel, and the sound of a car door flinging open promises his partner is about to engage the guards around the more innocent of abductees on the floor below.

More importantly, though, the sound of waves on the shore had been running six to seven seconds apart the entire time he was here. That frequency has entirely stopped in the last fifteen seconds, water drawn back from the shore, pulled back towards something that in this moment has greater gravity than the moon itself.

“I’ll let him make the introductions.”

The entire wall of the warehouse is ripped outwards and flung back towards the swell of an unnatural tidal wave that batters the docks below as a tiny little meteor crashes past him through the chaos in a streak of black cloth and vibrant ginger hair.

Oh, Dazai loves this part.

They don’t have to speak to coordinate, falling into “the moon awaits her executioner” immediately as Dazai topples his chair and sweeps a long leg out to drop his captor, snatching his gun deftly with his now-freed hands as he goes down. Meanwhile, Chuuya absolutely flattens the goons behind Dazai with a growl of inarticulate protective rage, squarely between any other threat this building could hold and his Mate, leaving Dazai a newly made exit if needed.

It’s a very gratifying display. Even if Dazai’s part is more muted without squeezing the trigger on the stolen gun pressed to the temple of his downed captor. And the fact that turning that fast made him vaguely nauseous. But nothing could stop him from watching his Omega smashing the very men who’d just made threats against his mate.

“Hello, dear!” Dazai chirps, eyes now glued to Chuuya instead of the man pinned below his knee. Chuuya floats above a circle of crushed concrete, eight men flattened beneath him as he glowers down at them in judgment, their lives at the mercy of the scarlet-lit divine creature in their midst. “Fancy running into you here.”

He’ll never tire of this scene, the crow-wing spread of Chuuya’s coat, the bonfire lash of his hair, the way the light of his ability throws his features into sharp relief and bring out the fathomless ocean depths of a glower that threatens to capsize any man to challenge him. Chuuya’s beauty is a wild and dangerous thing, as feral as he himself is.

“You were fucking late.”

Dazai probably shouldn’t laugh at Chuuya’s bitchy accusation, knowing it’s a cover for something deeper, but he can’t help it--it sounds so petty considering the figure Chuuya cuts.

And that’s how Kunikida finds them, slamming open the door of the warehouse room with his gun drawn: Chuuya keeping every enemy combatant on this floor pinned down while Dazai chortles at his mate’s annoyance, even as he pistol-whips the man beneath him. It’s a mild retribution for the concussion, all things even.

“I was held up?”

Akutagawa and Atsushi burst into the room in perhaps the most dramatic way they could—a hole in ceiling crashing down with drywall and electric sparks, tiger and demon together side by side. They’re a rather striking pair, even after the tiger’s sharp eyes scan the room and fur melts away in favor of a poorly dressed orphan who seems faintly confused by the scene he’s found himself in.

Dazai doesnt think they’ve noticed it, but Akutagawa is inadvertently picking up Atsushi’s scent the way Chuuya did before he and Dazai ever considered becoming mates. Dazai will win this bet yet, and in other circumstances he’d rub that in. In these circumstances, he’d end up with an infuriated mate and he’s already halfway there and not going to push his luck.

Speaking of.

“‘You were held up.’” Chuuya mimics him with a glare, arms folding across his chest as he drops back down to the floor with a resounding thud at the center of the circle of goons. In the distance, sirens sound—the police have been called in from their loose perimeter by Kunikida, who hangs up his phone just in time to catch the tail end of Chuuya’s words. “Bullshit. This was amateur hour and you know it. We were doing better abduction and torture stings by the time we were fifteen.”

Atsushi shoots an alarmed look at Akutagawa, only to find that he--like the elder pair of Soukoku--simply took that as fact rather than anything alarming. Kunikida’s noise of objection is ignored, as it should be—Dazai’s past is what it is, there’s no undoing that and he wouldn’t even try. Not with whom that life of crime introduced him to.

So Dazai grins, entirely too smug for a man picking his way unsteadily through the groaning and immobilized gang who just spent two hours torturing him. As soon as he’s close enough, he reaches out and catches the curl of Chuuya’s hair that falls enticingly against the curve of his neck. With that single touch of Dazai’s hand, Chuuya’s coat settles back around him like the wings folding away. Chuuya’s expression is exasperated but his eyes are worried, so Dazai twirls that hair around his fingertip and brushes the pad of his thumb against the sharp line of his mate’s jaw. His croon invites Chuuya to humor him, to see the benefits of his stunt even if it left him just a little disoriented

“Amateur hour that nets me hazard pay and a mandated seventy-two hour rest period, as opposed to three more nights of pointless surveillance and no date-night money?”

The attempt to make Chuuya relax and play along backfires immediately. His mate huffs as he furiously rounds on Kunikida, who is already reaching for his notebook and pushing his glasses up with his spare hand.

“Yes. I know.” Every inch of the detective is radiating his frustration with Dazai. Good. It means he doesn’t have any bandwidth to spare for awkwardly checking out Dazai’s mate. “We will work on adjusting our employment contract again. For some reason it did not occur to the president that he would have to specify that hazard pay and recovery leave should be applied only in instances of involuntary capture and torture.”

“I was only doing the Agency a favor by pointing out the loophole,” Dazai pouts as Chuuya palms a gloved hand over his face to keep the Alpha from draping over him, keeping his mate at literal arm’s length so he can keep talking to Kunikida instead. Maybe his possessiveness is a bit unwarranted, but Chuuya is standing right there and isn’t giving Dazai his full attention. Rude. “…Once he realized he could cash in on losing limbs, Atsushi-kun would bankrupt us. Regeneration isn’t accounted for, either.”

“Dazai-san… I never volunteer to lose any limbs.”

“Your present company says otherwise. And now that Akutagawa-kun knows…” The gloved palm over his face is now pressed firmly over his mouth. Chuuya’s cheating to win the bet because he knows Dazai could finish them off with just a little push. Also, Dazai’s mouth may be getting away from him.

“Yeah that’s it, you’re done.” Ah, there’s that attention! Chuuya rolls his eyes as Dazai brightens immediately upon his mate turning towards him. “Unless any of you have an objection to it, I’m dragging this absolute menace to society home before he teaches the impressionable youth all of the ways to exploit your payment structure.”

He called it home, like a place they both live.

Chuuya doesn’t give Dazai enough time to gloat over that--he’s already prowling his way across the room, past Kunikida who’s kneeled down to begin handcuffing the few gangsters that are coming around from Chuuya’s attack.

“Make sure doc glasses knows who actually did the heavy lifting for this capture.” Truce or no, Chuuya is a competitive little thing. If given half a chance, he’ll bankrupt the agency one bounty snatched away from them at a time. The fact that he had an ulterior motive doesn’t negate that the Mafia is going to profit today. They’re getting paid based on who does the takedown, not who does the paperwork. And despite Dazai’s stunt, that means Chuuya will be taking the credit.

“You’re walking yourself out yourself, moron, there’s no way I’m carrying your lanky ass out of the mess that you put yourself in.”

[tophat-69]

I shall resume the ask game and get to your questions as soon as AO3 comes back up!

Well, as soon as AO3 comes back up and shortly after I finish posting the completed and beta-read next chapter of The Road Not Taken…

[tophat-69]

4, 18, 27 for c/c for the ask game :)

4. What detail in centrifugal/centripetal are you really proud of?

I may or may not have cackled my way through the responses to the entire sequence of Fyodor finding Chuuya in the forest at the end of what otherwise would have been the “Double Black” episode. I ran with the show continuity through that battle scene, building the expectation that I would continue to do so. So to throw everything back into an unpredictable AU really felt right, and the reactions to that moment made it worth it. The story was always an AU--we didn’t have any details for their pre-canon relationship when I started c/c--so playing with the expectation that I was going to pull it TO canon once those stories intersected I think injected a lot back into that fic.

18. If you wrote a sequel to centrifugal/centripetal, what would it involve?

…Is this the time to admit that I still have about 20 pages of c/c that I never polished up to publish? There were a few false-start chapters that would fit just as easily afterwards with a little modification and me going ahead and finishing them. The one I’d be most likely to do that with is the 3K words of Dazai (letting himself be) taken captive and enjoying the show of Chuuya crashing the rescue party. It showed that even though they’re still trying to right things after c/c, they’re very much protective, in love idiots (even if Chuuya won’t let Dazai say it again yet… or maybe he would, if I finished it).

27. How long did it take to write centrifugal/centripetal? Describe the process.

I started it in 2017, wrote pretty steadily and at times with the sort of ridiculous speed that I hit sometimes, ended up getting pointed at as an example about stereotyping because Chuuya was the Omega, and then in general fandom discourse as more of their backstory came out and people got angry at assumptions made before we had ANY history for them, had a pause or two there, continued writing, disappeared entirely to the point where some people worried I'd died because I had no real online presence otherwise, then came back three years later and finished it in 2024. 

It was a long Starbucks trip there. Or I went out to buy some milk and got lost. (But more honestly, I was hit with a pretty rough series of diagnoses and drifted for a bit there before coming to terms).

[tophat-69]

3 and 12 for the fic question meme!

I just answered 3 in another post, but I’ll do 12 for you!

12. Are there any tropes you used to dislike but have grown on you?

I really used to have issues with gender-swap fics. Which is funny, because… lesbian. I still don’t know if I’d write them, because there are still some things that if they’re changed when the gender is swapped make me raise my eyebrows (like, why does gender have anything to do with personality modifications?) but I get the appeal now as a reader.

[tophat-69]

https://www.tumblr.com/clumsyclifford/670262339138994176/questions-for-fic-writers?source=share

Hi Hattie! I'd love to hear your answers for 1, 3 and 34 from the writer ask game if you'd like to share <3

1. What fic of yours would you recommend to someone who had never read any of your work? (In other words, what do you think is the best introduction to your fics?)

I think just for ease of reading, “April’s Fool” might be the best introduction to my works! It’s long enough to really give you a feel for my style, but self-contained enough that I don’t fall into the sort of sprawling plots that I am prone to. It’s one of my plotted-out fics, so it’s got a tighter narrative than one of my “pantser” stories like c/c, good defining, etc, but it’s not a one-shot that’s dug into a specific area of the canon narrative like self. reflected or peculiar silence.

3. What are some tropes or details that you think are very characteristic of your fics?

I often joke that “angst with a happy ending” is my bread and butter, and honestly… it kind of is. I like to drag my characters through the mud and then afterwards put them back together. Transformed by their experiences, but getting better. I’m also VERY partial to the idea of soulmates. I play with it in different ways, but if you look at Jayvik (where it got VERY literal) or Soukoku (look, truemates is just soulmates with a kink added), Wangxian or ZaunDads… they are all very clearly the other half of each other and they all fall apart and come back together over it.

34. What aspects of your writing are inspired by/taken from your real life?

Okay. Going to tailor this a bit. First of all I don’t think it’s going to surprise anyone that reads any of my Arcane fics that I’m an activist. And not just outspoken online, I’ve spent years out there getting sunburned at marches, staging protests, advocating, working with migrants, preparing some pretty scathing missives, going to public hearings, and trying to put in the work.

I’ve also got a pretty sprawling work history. Jack of all trades, master of none style, because my degrees are very transferable, so I’m able to pull that in.

I’m also disabled, and it’s degenerative so I relate a LOT to Viktor and am able to put that experience in. It’s part of what got me into the Arcane fandom, because I went “oh, yeah, I get that man. Can I also have some robot parts?” (not really but also not NOT really).

[tophat-69]

questions for fic writers

a collection of questions i, as a writer, would love to be asked !!!

1. What fic of yours would you recommend to someone who had never read any of your work? (In other words, what do you think is the best introduction to your fics?)

2. Go to your AO3 “Works” page, to the sidebar with all the filters, and click the drop-down arrow for “Additional Tags.” What are your top 3-5 most used tags? Do you think they accurately represent your writing habits?

3. What are some tropes or details that you think are very characteristic of your fics?

4. What detail in [insert fic] are you really proud of?

5. What do you wish someone would ask you about [insert fic]? Answer it now!

6. What’s one fact about the universe of [insert fic] that you didn’t get a chance to mention in the fic itself?

7. Any worldbuilding you’re particularly proud of?

8. What song would make a great fic (to either write or read)?

9. How do you find new fic to read?

10. How do you decide what to write?

11. Are you partial to a certain character/pairing or are you more equal-opportunity? If you are partial to any character/pairing, why do you think that is?

12. Are there any tropes you used to dislike but have grown on you?

13. Are there any tropes you used to like but don’t anymore?

14. Are there any tropes you would only read if written by a trusted friend or writer?

15. What’s your favorite AU that you’ve written?

16. What’s an AU you would love to read (or have read and loved)?

17. What highly specific AU do you want to read or write even though you might be the only person to appreciate it?

18. If you wrote a sequel to [insert fic], what would it involve?

19. If you wrote a spin-off of [insert fic], what would it involve?

20. If you wrote a prequel to [insert fic], what would it involve?

21. If you wrote a “missing scene” in [insert fic], what would it be?

22. Who is your favorite character in [insert fic] and why?

23. What’s a trope, AU, or concept you’ve never written, but would like to?

24. Are there any easter eggs in [insert fic], and if so, what are they?

25. What other websites or resources do you use most often when you write?

26. Would you rather write a fic that had no dialogue or one that was only dialogue?

27. How long did it take to write [insert fic]? Describe the process.

28. Does anyone read your fics before you post them? If so, who?

29. What songs would be (or are) on a playlist for [insert fic]? Explain your choices if you want!

30. Have you ever written something that was out of your comfort zone? If so, what was it, and how did it affect your approach to writing fic thereafter?

31. What’s your ideal fic length to write?

32. What’s your ideal fic length to read?

33. If you write chaptered fics, what’s your ideal chapter length to write? Is it different from your ideal chapter length to read?

34. What aspects of your writing are inspired by/taken from your real life?

35. What aspects of your writing are completely unlike your real life?

36. Do you visualize what you read/write?

37. Promote one of your own “deep cut” fics (an underrated one, or one that never got as much traction as you think it deserves!). What do you like about it?

38. Did any of your fics get surprisingly popular (whatever that means to you)? Which ones? Why do you think they were so successful?

39. Is any aspect of your writing process inspired by other writers or people? If so, who?

40. Do you tend to reread fics or are you a one-and-done kind of person?

41. Link a fic that made you think, “Wow, I want to write like that.”

42. Have you ever received a comment that particularly stood out to you for whatever reason?

43. If you take/write prompts: what’s your favorite prompt fic that you’ve written?

44. If you take/write prompts: do you prefer dialogue or scenario/narrative prompts?

45. What’s something you’ve improved on since you started writing fic?

46. Do you prefer writing on your phone or on a computer (or something else)? Do you think where you write affects the way you write?

47. If [insert fic] was a pair of shoes, what kind would it be? Describe the shoes.

48. What’s the last fic you read? Do you recommend it?

49. What are you currently working on? Share a few lines if you’re up for it!

50. Answer any question of your choice, or talk about anything you want to talk about!

[tophat-69]

How long did it take Vander to pspspsps Silco back to rhe Drop in the five year time-skip of "it's the good, defining itself"? Considering how long it's taken Vander to get Silco to trust him in Singular Fate, I can't imagine it's been easy with a Silco who knows to be weary now (and hells, might still have some hideouts he won't tell Vander about just in case)

Less time than you'd think! But keeping him there for any length of time took some work. Fortunately, Vander had a secret weapon.

(And here we go, time for another overlong response!)

The big thing about "it's the good, defining itself" that I left unstated is that I imagined this as sort of "the one world where things ACTUALLY work out." It becomes the ideal set of circumstances. Not a clean happily ever after, because Viktor is not miraculously cured, because Jayce and Viktor carry the scars of their past with them, but the one true success story out of all of the realities that Viktor shuffled through like a deck of cards.

And part of that is that for Zaun to truly have freedom you need Vander and Silco on the same side. They're the unifying force of Zaun. Unless they reconcile, there's always the possibility of a later rupture. You see what they can do together in Ekko's AU, but it's still not perfect. Vi is dead. Ekko and Powder still have the crystal fragments, and Powder has cause to use them. There's still a possibility of Jayce's work bringing destruction in the future of that world.

But, in an ideal set of circumstances... Vander and Silco need to be aligned IDEOLOGICALLY again. We saw in both on-screen universes that Silco genuinely hoped that would happen. He cared about that even more than the genuine trauma of the man he loved effectively killing him.

In "good, defining" we get that. Not only that, we see it be prioritized by both men. As soon as they nearly kill his daughter, Vander's shifted out of inaction and complicity. Meanwhile, when forced to choose between revenge and revolution, Silco shifts as well. They meet in the middle, not by compromising their ideals but by clarifying them. It's not that Vander "wins," it's that they reunite.

That is a huge thing for Silco.

Then you throw in the other thing that motivated him. Silco loved, and Vander stole that from him. He blamed Silco for the deaths of the people they cared about, and even after he realized it wasn't entirely Silco's fault he still let the very community that Silco helped to build view him as sort of the monster lurking in the dark. He took away everything that Silco loved, himself included, and left him a pariah.

But in "good, defining" Vander is offering that back to him. Not just himself. Not just the spot he once held in their community. But family who he can love. And you can be certain that the pspspspsing came from them, too. Particularly Powder.

So, for timeline... He'd keep a separate place for at least two years, setting the where and when Vander can see him very strictly. Only staying over at the Last Drop on his own terms. Testing if Vander will respect his boundaries. Stubbornly refusing to let Viktor 'win' for being a meddling little shit.

Because Vander broke that man. Not just his face, not just his eye, he shattered his faith in things he wants.

But the entire time those sharp edges are being worn down because it's sort of being dropped off the deep end into family when you've got five kids around who are fascinated by this glimpse into Vander's youth. None of them really got the time to see Silco as THE big bad, because he was still mostly operating in the shadows, and Viktor's actions derailed the moments that would really cement him as "the villain" in Vi's eyes.

After the five year timelapse, ZaunDads being married is still a bit new (at least officially. I think Benzo et al have basically considered them married for years). There's a moment where Silco's still trying to pretend the kids are Vander's, not theirs together, and Viktor calls bullshit on that. It's still a work in progress, and it's two steps forward and one step back for a while there.

But Vander can be patient. And Silco wants that life he's offering so very much.

(...Plus, Powder is his daughter the second she gets her claws in him. The girl adopts fathers without their say-so left and right. He was doomed to be Dad from the start.)