tophat-69

[tophat-69]

Chapter 10 of the Zaun Rebellion prequel “trapped by a singular fate,” posting now!

Flesh tears under Vander’s fist at a glancing blow, blood arcing through the air to paint impressionistic violence across stained and gouged concrete, all to the roar of a faceless mob. Everyone is faceless here. His opponents. The pitmaster. The crowd.

Himself.

A war drum pounds in Vander’s chest, echoes into his head, his temples, his ears—seemingly faster with each blow, each move.

The Vastaya sailor facing him is dancing away on silent leonin paws, still trying to use greater agility to his advantage even as he’s taking blows that leave him dripping a trail of blood behind him. But Vander punches a rock for twelve hours a day, five days a week. Endurance is as much his forte as his size or his reach or his muscles, and the fact that Vander isn’t the one losing steam is becoming clear to his opponent. As he lunges into a last desperate attempt to end the fight with a win, claws swipe across Vander’s chest and rip fabric and flesh.

It was a stupid move.

Every Sump dweller who could scrape a few coins together roars. Any Entresol or Promenade regular stupid enough to bet against Vander is groaning. Even while the smugglers and travelers and pirates who were sold on the speed and agility of his opponent still hold false hope, the trenchers know what happens next.

A close-quarters frontal assault against the Hound of the Underground is a fight-ending mistake.

Continued in Chapter 10

[tophat-69]

This is GORGEOUS!

Your use of colors and the style and how you captured Vander’s lovesick face and Silco letting himself lighten up…

Thank you, genuinely, this is a GIFT.

"I fell in love with the work “trapped by a singular fate” by @tophat-69❤️🔥 Ch.6 inspired me to create this

This is the best story I've read with them!❤️ Read here 🔽

[tophat-69]

happy ever after somewhere far away

(another wip for an upcoming print✨)

[tophat-69]

Thank you so much for taking the time to answer all of my previous questions! I really appreciate it :) It was so interesting to read about your writing process, how you come up with your fics and your different approaches with it.

And I totally get how a new hyperfixation can throw you off the writing headspace for other fandoms, but I'm so glad that you still consider BSD your home fandom. I'd love to read more from you for skk once you feel like coming back to it, esp The Road Not Taken or more timestamps for c/c 😍  I should probably consider joining the Arcane fandom as well, so I can enjoy your other fics too (and codependent gay scientists sounds quite appealing).

Also I'm so glad for the trope spinner giving you the prompt for April's Fool, cause that's not only one of my all time favorite fics, but also my comfort fic which I love to come back to reread occasionally. Well, I could probably go on and ramble much more about the way your fics altered my brain chemistry, but I have another question if you don't mind :) From your answer I can imagine that writing takes up a lot of your time, so are you into other hobbies besides writing as well? Also, have you ever experienced writers block and if so, how did you manage to get back to enjoy writing again?

Thanks again for answering my questions in such detail :)

Are you kidding, thank you for asking questions! Honestly, Tumblr is at this point my most social of the social media accounts and it's nice to feel I'm not sort of floating in a void.

I genuinely would recommend Arcane! One of the things I really appreciate about it, as a BSD fan, is that the "villains" aren't one-note, even if they seem it at first glance. They're mostly richly developed characters and you understand their motives, and might even agree with them though not their execution of their plans. Meanwhile, the "heroes" aren't always right, or doing the right thing. So it can be a fun one (even if a lot of us were frustrated by some things in the final season). It's just two nine-episode seasons, so it's easy to get through in a weekend or two if you're up for a binge.

April's Fool was a lot of fun to write and I'm so glad you enjoy it and that it stands up in re-read! When the Spinner gave me "Time Loop" and I started with "what Japanese writer might have works that could relate" and once I fell on Kobo Abe it sort of all came together. I knew I wanted it short(er), because I was proving to myself that I still COULD write multi-chapter without it taking seven years to get through.

Which centrifugal/centripetal absolutely did. I crashed out HARD on that one for... three? years. But even then it was multiple false starts, it was writing and re-writing, it was questioning my ability TO write. I started and finished grad school and that fic was just sitting there. Waiting for me to figure out what I was doing with it.

I wrote other fics in the interim, some of which went up anonymously and some of which are still sitting unfinished in my drafts. So I writers block for SPECIFIC fics, more than "in general" because I always tell myself that if I can get myself into the rhythm of writing then it will come back to me. It never works, but I try anyway. I eventually ended up getting a comment about specific aspects of the story, wandered back to it, reread what they were talking about, then read from there and found some other way to attack whatever was throwing me off.

Turned out that it was "I was trying to fit in a sex scene to please the fans and apologize, but that chapter didn't need it."

As for other hobbies, I'm a big reader but ironically rarely of the pairings I'm writing for. I have this paranoia that if I read too much ship fic for what I ACTUALLY ship, I'm going to end up inadvertently plagiarizing something. So when I read fics I tend to go for tags that I never really write in. Like fluff. Because I cannot resist torturing all of my favorites.

I love novels and sort of bury myself in them, but for the most part writing seems to be where I end up.

Thank you again for the questions (or, rather, the chatting!)

[tophat-69]

happy pride!!!

[tophat-69]

Hey Hattie :) How do you usually come up with/write your stories? Like for example, do you get an idea and start to plan the whole fic around it until the end, or do you just start and go about it as you write? Do you listen to music while writing? And do you write for more than one fic simultaneously or focus on one fic at a time? Does it take you long to edit?

Hope those aren't silly questions, I'm just really curious cause I'm genuinely in love with your writing and to me, your writing style is so perfectly flowing, captivating and unique, I haven't come across many other fics that I enjoyed as much as yours (I read and loved all of your bsd fics and treasure them so much) <3

First, I’m so glad you’ve enjoyed my BSD fics! I know I’ve wandered a bit afield, but I still consider it my home fandom and plan to get back to it once my brain can latch back onto the manga. I nosedived into a new hyperfixation at the same time that I hit “I think I’d rather catch up to this all at once than try to figure out wtf is happening” with BSD, and it sort of threw me out of the writing headspace for them at an inopportune moment.

Now though I’m going to ramble and sound a bit chaotic because the truth is there is no rhyme or reason to how my brain works. And I really, really wish there was.

First, the easy part—I am always writing. I’ll have multiple stories going at once, but not all of them will ever see the light of day and some of the ones that will, I still post anonymously. It’s an old habit and probably a bad habit, but the idea of being Perceived still makes me nervous at times. And sometimes it’s just self-consciousness that I’ve been taken hostage by a fandom or story when I’m in the middle of something for another one. I often worry that it might frustrate or disappoint my friends who read my other works (see: what I tried to do with it’s the good, defining itself, my first Arcane fic, by starting it anonymously. I knew I was supposed to be writing my Detective!Chuuya AU but was kidnapped by codependent gay scientists).

Next easy part—I edit as I go, and then promptly open the chapter back up after posting to fix what I missed in the first place. Also to remove all the times that AO3 wants to add a space in front of punctuation. That part drives me nuts. …But then ANY time I read some part of something I’ve written, I inevitably go back in and tweak my wording for clarity. Or I fix my comma splices. Or to un-italicize words because I often write the way that I would read it aloud, but emphasis like that can be annoying. Or I rearrange a sentence within a paragraph to flow better. I genuinely cannot seem to open something I’ve written without doing that.

Which is why I don’t go back and reread my old works often and why when I get a comment on a previous fic it’s like falling down a rabbit hole in my own brain because “huh. I DID do that, didn’t I?”

Okay, now the harder answers! Sometimes an idea sort of thumps me upside the head and makes me do it. That one always includes when canon is going one way and I inevitably think “but what if it went THIS way instead!” Canon divergence and plot hole fillers are a staple for me. But then there are times where I know WHO I want to write for because they won’t shut up in my head, but I want to challenge myself. I’ve actually used trope spinners for that before, like Wheel of Fic. That’s actually how I ended up with April’s Fool and in its peculiar silence, actually! I had no plans whatsoever, I let it give me simple trope prompt, and then I stayed up all night writing something out of thin air.

…Which brings me to another answer. I veer wildly between being a “pantser” and a “plotter” as a writer. Some things it is entirely by the seat of my pants—and that’s not always just my short fics, either. I’ve got ideas, but pulling them together at the end is as surprising for me as it is for the reader. Sometimes I have things completely timelined, an outline, chapter quotes selected, twenty tabs of history and research open. And sometimes I go through all of that and still throw all of it out the window because something that would be more emotionally evocative came along.

For centrifugal/centripetal, for instance, I have several almost fully-written chapters sitting in a doc that never even made it in because I tossed them for something that hurt more.

Now, music! That… also depends. If I am nose to the grindstone just putting out chapter after chapter, chances are I don’t have music on because my brain is at capacity. But if I’m writing just to write, or as relaxation, I usually put something on. Usually nothing too booming, but I try to find an album or artist that fits the vibe and go with it.

Anyway, sorry for the long answers and thank you—genuinely—for the questions!

[tophat-69]

Hattie's Fic List

First, a quick introduction! Hi, I'm Hattie (she/they), and I am a multifandom writer under the username TopHat69 on AO3. I write for Bungo Stray Dogs (Soukoku), Arcane (Jayvik, Zaundads), and Mo Dao Zu Shi (Wangxian).

(Why the meme-ish username? It was a gift).

When even lightly prodded, I am likely to spew far more meta, lore, and general overthinking on any of my ships, interests, or stories--so please, message away for any reason.

My perpetually updating list of fics will be below the cut!

Bungo Stray Dogs

centrifugal/centripetal: (Rated E, SKK, Complete, 185K Words)

That one Alpha/Beta/Omega fanfic I threw onto the internet with barely any tags and no summary at all, that somehow thrived despite that.

Self. Reflected.: (Rated E, SKK, Complete, 8K Words)

Post-Meursault, Dazai learns of the deal and takes the choice away from the Agency—he will return to the Port Mafia, and to a partnership and relationship that never quite found closure.

April's Fool: (Rated E, SKK, Complete, 28K Words)

At nine o’clock on a random morning in April an alarm peals out on Dazai’s phone. And it will continue to, until he finds out why he is living this same unremarkable day again and again.

in its peculiar silence: (Rated T, SKK, Complete, 8.5K Words)

Following the battle between Chuuya and the dragon, Yokohama has become a postapocalyptic ghost town ripped apart at the hands of a man who would never have intended to harm the city he'd loved. In the aftermath, Dazai works to bring Chuuya back from the brink, to clear their names, and to carve out a place in the world for its two most hunted criminals.

The Road Not Taken: (Rated E, SKK, In Progress, 27K Words)

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."

Arcane

it's the good, defining itself: (Rated E, Jayvik, Complete, 99K)

Following the events of the series finale, Viktor once again saves Jayce and unwittingly revives himself as well. Viktor is determined to undo his past mistakes, even if that means leaving Jayce behind. That idea is complicated by their souls now being intertwined.

us perishable creatures: (Rated E, Zaundads, Complete, 12K Words)

Timestamp of "it's the good, defining itself." Following the successful revolution of Zaun, Vander and Silco are trapped somewhere between allies and rivals, partners and political counterparts, old friends and bitter enemies. Young lovers turned broken old men, a shared memory and a ghost keeping them at an eternal impasse.

the old star-eaten blanket of the sky: (Rated T, Jayvik, Complete, 4K Words)

Timestamp of "it's the good, defining itself." A meteor shower draws Viktor and Jayce out of bed to form a core memory for the adoptive children they've gathered around them in this second chance at life.

trapped by a singular fate: (Rated E, Zaundads, In-Progress, 84K Words)

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.

Mo Dao Zu Shi/Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation

They say the good live long: (Rated T, Wangxian, Complete-ish, 17K Words)

Lan Wangji arrives back in Gusu carrying the last surviving Wen and a heart full of grief. (NOTE: This is a series of timestamps that I will periodically add to, which fills the time after Wei Wuxian's death as Lan Wangji fights his grief to be a single father)

[tophat-69]

It’s one of those weeks where I’m questioning why I couldn’t take up a relaxing hobby, instead of making up people in my head and then expecting them to do what I want on paper when they’re just outright contrary.

[tophat-69]

Headcanon: that man’s hair does NOT want to stay slicked back. You saw those bangs. He has a cowlick.

He’s out there constantly pushing that hair back like “ffs I have an IMAGE to maintain let me Crime Lord for just like five minutes.”

the fuck are these poses. hes so cringe

[tophat-69]

Kinda crack/silly, but I jut realised how funny it is that Vander and Silco are lowkey Felicia's fathers', which in some small way, makes them Vi and Powder's emotional grandpas when you think about it

Yes! I've always taken the family structures of Zaun to be more of a suggestion than anything, because (like Silco says) everyone's down there in the Sumps calling each other siblings or kids are just straight up adopting the nearest parental figures. I play with it a lot in "it's the good, defining itself" but it carried over into this story too.

As she gets older (starting in the next chapter when she's 15), Felicia is going to look at her two Bozos and realize... Vander was seventeen when he took her in. He was still a kid himself, for the most part, and he just seemed so much older because she was seven at the time and recently orphaned. As she gets older and starts seeing herself more as an adult than the kid she was when we first meet her, she's absolutely going to lean more into younger sister than their daughter (whether or not Vander and Silco agree is another matter entirely--either way they raised her and are insufferably protective of her).

So that would make Vi and Powder sort-of grandkids and sort-of nieces and eventually daughters. And since Vander adopts Claggor who's technically his first cousin once removed, and Mylo who's technically the grandson of a member of his crew (spoilers but not really), everything is sort of wibbly-wobbly. They're no less his kids for the fact that he started adopting them when he was in his late 30s and they came into his care.

So yes--grandparents Vanco! Except not really. Except absolutely.

[tophat-69]

i really admire the way you place breadcrumbs of what essentially is going to make their relationship to explode (to be clear i am not blaming silco in any way for the river) you’ve done it in such a way where it doesn’t feel like in your face obvious but is still very present and makes me as a reader just feel like there’s a very nasty shark lurking just under the water i enjoy it very much

First, thank you! I've probably outlined "trapped by a singular fate" more than anything else I've ever written, sitting around with my serial killer-esque wall trying to work in references and rewatching scenes as they become relevant and skimming the art book and reading creator comments and keeping a timeline and a list of three generations worth of characters.

While I still think there are things that Arcane fumbled (which would be why everything Arcane I write seems to jump right back into the Zaun/Piltover conflict), one thing that I really appreciate is how much they implied about Vander and Silco's relationship without really pinning any of it down. While as a viewer it might have been more satisfying to see what we all inferred play out on the screen, as a writer it gives a pretty expansive playground for these two.

We know the key points and we can see that they've been intertwined with each other's lives for ages. And that leaves us a chance to play in the "fanfiction gap."

In most fandoms and ships--even other major ships of Arcane--that's just a relatively small time-skip or a few years if we're lucky (how much do we all love playing in the lab partner years of Jayvik?). But they've given us decades for Vander and Silco to come together, to start a rebellion, to lose a revolution, to fall apart, to work against each other, and to come so close to almost resolving their problems in a way that changed the world for everyone.

I don't want to hammer what happens over your heads as readers, but every fracture I can work in early plays into the idea that these two are star-crossed lovers in their way. They genuinely do love each other. But their rebellion is doomed to fail, and their relationship fractured from within. But both the cause and the relationship held merit, despite how they were doomed by the narrative.

So if I'm doing this right, you as a reader should still catch things that in the moment that the two of them miss. And that dramatic irony will keep on stabbing all of us!

[tophat-69]

ur fic is so good thank you for writing💞 love ur take on zaundads it is going to make the breakup hurt so bad

Thank you so much! I'm glad you're enjoying "trapped by a singular fate" so far, because I'm right there with you. Every happy moment is another step towards their falling apart being devastating.

I think we're all just a little bit suckers for punishment because we KNOW this isn't going to end well. Hopefully the journey will be worth it, even knowing where it ends!

[tophat-69]

trapped by a singular fate

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.

Chapter 1/?

Rating: Explicit (Eventual)

Relationships: Silco/Vander

Tags: Zaun Rebellion, Prequel, Canon-Typical Violence

Warnings: Canonical character deaths

Author's Note: Starts roughly a decade before Blisters and Bedrock, as two young miners meet for the first time, and will follow them through the years.

We know how this ends. But the benefit of Arcane's canonical alternate universes is you can read the sad stories and choose your own ending, from canon to fanfiction (I am choosing the one established in my "it's the good, defining itself") to official canon AU of Ekko's timeline. I support whatever gets us through this together.

We've read the back of the book, we know what's going to happen. The fields burned, the land destroyed,  the lovers left broken in the brown dirt. And then it's gone. … But there's a litany of dreams that happens somewhere in the middle.   - Richard Siken, “Snow and Dirty Rain”

To be honest, on first impression Vander’s not actually all that impressed. 

“Hey-hey, slim! How was lockup this time?”

It’s midday at the mine, not that anyone would be able to tell if it weren’t for the whistles that echo down into the depths. The only lights in the drift tunnels come from their headlamps, and there’s a sort of liminality to that—it could be dawn or it could be midnight, and in the tunnels they would never know. All they can see is directly ahead of them, and everything else is shadow and rock, like blinders for the beasts of burden that they are. 

As the forward line, their crew is down deep enough now that stopping for meals is almost as miserable an affair as chipping their way through rocks, the kind of heat that makes the heavy protective gear suffocating, the kind of humidity that has Vander’s hair plastered to his neck and forehead beneath the hard hat, and his shirt melting into his skin under the leathers. 

“Still dank, dark, with terrible food and worse company. So, roughly the same as being down here with you lot.” There are a handful of hearty laughs at the dry sarcasm coming from within the echoing cavern, the kind of shared bleak humor that comes with working in the shittiest conditions known to man and, apparently, spending time in prison too. The voice continues with a sly undertone that lends itself well to the affected accent of the Promenade. “Still, food on the table and a roof over my head and topside footing the bill. I’m considering the merits of making it my summer home. ‘Stillwater Manor’ sounds very refined, don’t you think?”

Read More on AO3

[tophat-69]

It’s WIP Wednesday, and I almost let the day go without celebrating(?) it. Today you do get minor/original character death though. Because you know that unfortunately, this extended cast doesn’t make it to the end. I’ve thrown in a little worldbuilding to ease the pain (ie allude to worse pain in the future). You can also start playing “who is this character a dead relative of,” because generations of trenchers suffered and died before the bridge battle stomped out the rebellion.

From “trapped by a singular fate,” my Zaun Rebellion prequel.

The Enforcers had been slamming people around as they made their way up from the Sumps to their homes in the Cliff at shift’s end, another random stop-and-search checkpoint placed near a lift without any cause and without any restraint. They’d pinned down one of the putters Myra had been mentoring, rough-handling the kid like their belt knife was illegal.

Myra shoved and the Enforcers shot.

They’d arrested the kid, another innocent slapped behind bars in Stillwater, not high profile enough to go in front of Piltover’s council. Just another stamp on a page.

Meanwhile, Myra bled out on the ground, handcuffed like she even could have fought back after they’d blasted a hole in her, cussing at them until her dying breath.

This morning when Piltover released Myra back to her son, Vander and Cray went topside with him to bring her home. To add insult to injury, the morgue even charged a fee before giving her to them. Since her kin wouldn’t agree to her being incinerated like coal or stuffed in a box and buried in an indigent graveyard on Pitovan soil, they also made her son sign some form saying that he’d dispose of ‘the body’ properly.

The body. Not a person, just a thing now. Inanimate.

The miners held a vigil for her this afternoon. Vander and Cray waded into the shallows with her son, the two of them carrying her body gently out to the drop-off of the Rift and releasing her down into the unfathomable depths. Vander watched her as she sank, memorizing her as another loss until she was too far in to see—her bushy eyebrows that seemed punctuation to each of her expressions, her rake thin body scarred and shaped by hard living and decades of hard work, her crooked mouth made for mockery, her dark hair silvered at its sharp peak, her eyes closed forever, and the hole clean through her gut.

The bar may call itself The Last Drop but the Rift is where it’s literal, the final destination for them all. The schism that split the earth and dropped the undercity continues down and down, until freshwater mixes with the depths of the sea in a dark mirror of the vibrant estuary topside; the cracked open subterranean karst creating a no-man’s-land that mixes the Guardian’s Sea, the Conqueror’s Sea, the River Pilt, and the toxic waste of two cities.

Vander is pallbearer for so many funerals. He is the last person to see each of their faces as he feeds them to their watery grave, trying in vain not to imagine what happens to their flesh and their bones once they leave his hands. He can’t even save them the indignities of death.

The pitmaster had been all too happy to add Vander to the fight roster for the night.

[tophat-69]

You are the Reason I went through It

[tophat-69]

I answered a question and then edited the answer and then Tumblr ate the entire post. If it was you, I’m sorry and I promise I did answer. And with an excerpt from next chapter.

Because Vander and Silco would be insufferable about vetting anyone to show an interest in Felicia.

[tophat-69]

I wanted to do a summary of stuff I've been reading, about how it's been a good week for cool AU concepts. HOWEVER it turns out the theme of this week is actually excellent smut.

Full House: The epic Viktor/Jayce/Vander/Silco foursome has dropped. I happen to think that it has a particularly well done "giving orders" Silco. And Vander using ... enhancements so he can be a particularly good stud.

Trapped By A Singular Fate: has the perfect mushroom cave smut I always wanted. And you know drama and feelings and angst. But !!! young zaundads mushroom mines smut. And the infamous gag gets used.

Grading On A Curve: It's Vanco's second time in this college AU and Vander admitting he hasn't done that particular thing with a guy before but bullshitting his way through it is so cute!

(there was also a really look modern AU Silco and Vander hooking up at a club, but the author took it down, breaking my heart :(

So I went and read Zkyfall's The Harrowing instead where Vander and Silco hook up during a Halloween style party at Babette's. Warning for dubcon)