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我读了一篇很棒的康纳文，看到一半才后知后觉有共鸣，于是发现自己是aroace。感觉整个世界都重构了。

现在我只觉得这样的作品太少了！因为它们总不是故事的重点，所以没有打上标签或者直接被我忽视了..这篇文本来也没有提到任何aroace的事情。 重新回看我喜欢的作品，我发现很多对aroace的共鸣都隐藏在有性恋和有浪漫倾向的伪装里。我竟然轻易接受了很多故事开篇就有生理吸引的部分，因为一见钟情的故事太常见了，而且有些作者写得太好了😆所以我就觉得被别人的身材、动作、调情行为所吸引是很自然的事情，然而仔细想想才发现我自己并没有遇到过这种情况。我还以为互相治愈的结果就是两个人走到一起，cp们值得，然而我也没有这种感觉。

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hahahaha

Friend: Don't you want to have a romance?

Me: I'm good, I have romance at home.

Romance I have at home:

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I love when fanfic authors are freakishly unhinged. "Yes, hello, I am here to write a heart wrenching story about relationships and mortality. My medium is Ducktales (2017)"

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Here’s the ring footage of the troop of people who accompanied Dom bringing back my paramotor. I basically collapsed in the doorway at first. Please enjoy the fact that Deacon immediately takes advantage of the open door/chaos to find someone to pet him.😂

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哇塞太强了，你不会为了选出一个核心的点子去舍弃其他点子，而是把想尝试的东西都容纳进一个组合里，再回到一个小点子上慢慢展开故事，所以故事总是那么复杂精巧

Hallo! after your recent post (retrospective?) on the fics you are happiest with/are most revealing; I read basically all the fics you mentioned. What really stands out for all of them is how deftly you handle the escalation. You are really skilled at teaching the reader the rules (tony is de-aged, harry is de-aged, steve's in a time loop, future!draco is helping harry+friends, etc); and then you 'simply' extend those rules in a really unexpected way to raise the stakes and really force the reader and the characters to grapple with them more deeply. One of the most impressive (b/c it's so subtle, almost) is actually in The Pure and Simple Truth, where Neville and Greg meeting again is such a heightening of the basic premise of forgiveness and morality and hurt and healing that it feels unexpected but is in fact an extremely rational extension.

I'm wondering, when you're drafting a story, how you approach/think about these escalations. Are they the seed of the entire plot? Do you only get to them after thinking of the basic premise? After plotting them, how do you approach actually writing them? (Am I reading too much into this entirely?) And of coure, thanks for all of your writing!

Thank you so much for thinking I do this well! You're not reading too much into it, in that escalation is a part of story shape, and story shape is something I think about all the time. But I will say that I almost never think of escalation specifically as a thing I want to do, because your first guess is the correct one: usually the escalation is in the first idea I get about a story--or actually, it's a combination of the first several ideas, because I was unable to decide and combined them. Take the stories you mentioned:

Tony is de-aged: I wanted to do an MCU de-aging story and couldn't decide whether I wanted it to be Tony de-aged and Bruce taking care of him or Bruce de-aged and Natasha taking care of them or maybe a group of them de-aged. So I conceived the story in a way to write them all at once.

Harry is de-aged: I wanted to do an H/D de-aging story and couldn't decide whether to de-age Harry or de-age Draco, and if it was Draco I wanted to see him at a variety of ages. I didn't want to do Harry at a variety of ages because we already know how he is from 11-17, but I did also want to do both H/D de-aged at the same time with a second chance at being friends while kids. So I conceived the story in a way to write them all at once, except the arc where they're both kids couldn't be worked in.

Steve's in a timeloop: I wanted to do an MCU timeloop story and couldn't decide whether it was more interesting to put Bruce in the loop have Bruce outside the loop trying to help someone, or maybe Bruce would be in a timeloop with a few others. So I conceived the story in a way to write first Steve in a timeloop, then a small group, then the world, except I got tired of the story so skipped the small group in a loop.

Future!Draco helping Harry+friends: this one was a little different because I didn't start with a single trope, but two tropes I love that are somewhat connected--time travel (and paradoxes that result from it) and multiverses (which can be created by time travel). What I really wanted to do was write the multiverses, but then it would be a much longer story than I had the energy for, so that story is really just trying to write the bare minimum of the paradox I was interested in and squeeze in multiverses because I like them.

The Pure and Simple Truth: this is the simplest one because I didn't even start with a trope. It literally is just what if Harry and Draco go to the pub with ever combination of their friends that is possible to create? I literally made lists: 1) Harry,Draco,Hermione, 2) Harry,Draco, Pansy, 3) Harry,Draco,Hermione,Pansy, 4) Harry,Draco,Hermione,Ron, 4) Harry,Draco,Hermione,Ron,Pansy etc.

For that fic, as well as all the other fics above, I didn't "plot" anything; I didn't come up with an outline or rough list of things that would happen. What I did was come up with these ideas, then write the beginning, then continue to write in a way that allowed the rest of the story to be guided by a) who I think these characters are and what they'll do in certain situations, and b) what works in the canon universe, c) what works in the universe of the fic I set up in the opening scenes.

What I mean is that while I thought TPaST had to be about the themes you mention--morality, hurt, healing, forgiveness--because that's what a story about Slytherins and Gryffindors becoming friends should be about, I didn't plan at any point to have the Greg and Neville confrontation. What I did was think about Greg, the way he comes across in canon and how little remorse or understanding or compassion we see from him, but how he is someone with friends and feelings and fears and joys. And then I thought about Neville, about how of all the Gryffindors in the group I was writing, he was the one who was explicitly tortured by the Slytherins in the group I was writing, and about how that should mean something for Neville; he should see things differently and have different feelings. (I will say Luna was also probably tortured, but she's Luna and so sees everything differently always.) Anyway, once you think through who these two people are and put them in a room together it feels inevitable, what will happen. And that's honestly how almost all my stories come together.

I want to say that if you do admire the way my stories come together it's not actually a thoughtless, directionless project that just happens to work in a way that some people enjoy. I think all the time about the shape of stories, and shape includes escalation. But I'm rarely thinking about how to escalate, because it's baked into the premises I conceive. Instead I'm thinking about things like pacing, and laying character development next to plot pacing, and where to places all the necessary foreshadowing moments, and how to ensure I've kept all the promises made by foreshadowing, that sort of thing. When you've got a premise that escalates naturally, and you're carefully balancing the rest of those things, the escalation should happen in a way that feels interesting and propulsive.

Perhaps obviously the thing I'm terrible at and never think about is de-escalation, because by the time we get to the top of the escalator I'm where I want to be and uninterested in climbing down. Like the climax is fun but wow anything after it kinda bores me, and that ruins the shape utterly, oh well.

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OMG.O.M.G!!!!

MISSION FAILED

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cool

Embrace your divine feminine energy by taking part in traditional women's hobbies & interests like experimenting with radioactive materials, developing mathematics, programming computers, piloting aircraft and practicing marksmanship.

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that's cool

i think as people we aren’t ment to be one thing, one style, one description. i think the reason people perceive you different is because there are a million versions of who u are. you are everyone you’ve ever loved, every lyric you’ve ever felt moved by, every hobby you swore you’d pick up and u only tried it for a month. people are ment to be a sponge. every experience is a sliver of what it means to be alive. you can be sweet but feisty, sad but full of life, beautiful but scared of judgement. its so interesting how u never really know anyone because people are always changing. u aren’t the same person u were a month ago and i think thats good

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real

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hhhh

pov httyd1 astrid

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true

I assure you: somebody, somewhere, is on the exact same wavelength as you are.

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yk how harry immediately attaches himself to people who need him - ron who was poor and clueless, hermione who had no friends etc - and then you have draco who not only doesn’t need him but possesses so many things that harry doesn’t have - surety of self, a sense of belonging, parents lol - and i think that repels harry as much as draco being draco bc so much of harrys self worth is tied up in being useful

so one of the most compelling things about the ship is when harry realizes draco does need him, starting in 6th yr and then culminating in the room of req, and that changing how he views their relationship… and even MORE compelling is if draco rejects this premise 🙂 and insists he didn’t NEED harry(s friendship) actually, that was an act of charity and he didn’t NEED harry to save his life, the plan was to burn to a crisp all along, bc by then harry can see past the pride to the wobbly little boy in him too

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omg😭

for @gameofdrarry Exploding Snap Gryffindor Knockback Jinx card, an illustration for a fic featuring forced cooperation.

In the Great Hall, he slowly and cautiously loosened the chain between Harry’s wrists, one eye on the gears, until he thought he saw a faint flicker and yanked them five links tighter again with a jolt of panic. It wasn’t that much range of motion, but better than nothing. “Right,” Harry said. “Hermione said you’d better order me to do things.” His voice was still steady and even, as if he wasn’t afraid at all, standing three feet from a spell meant to slaughter him, in chains, in the house of his—well, his second-worst enemy. By a wide margin.

From Slithering, by Astolat @astolat

What’s Draco supposed to do when the war is over and no one is cleaning out the manor cellars? Why, do it himself of course. Which means that when he finds (what remains of) the prisoners, a nest of snake eggs, and a booby trap rigged to kill every muggle-born wizard in Brittain, he’s on his own. Oh, who am I kidding, of course Harry is going to help. This fic features ominously and perpetually turning gears, a loyal and interfering snake named Coil, Draco in 18th century regalia, and Harry Potter pretending very badly to be held against his will. And that’s just the beginning of the story.

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Lady Gaga took the time to take a picture with each of her 70 background dancers of her new Music Video ‘Abracadabra.’ She really is mother. 🥹 Stream now!

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😇😇😇so cute!!!

The Transfiguration

I LOVE DRAWING CAT DRACO

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每一天都是新的惊喜😭

A collab I did with @letteredlettered for Piecemeal, the 100-word per chapter drarry drabble series!! I'm in love with this series to begin with and was so excited to be able to work with lettered for the most recent chapter.

also being able to design a chocolate frog card for Harry and then DEFACE it was really fun! hehe WANKER!!!!

read it here

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oh Draco

The Prep

If you don’t have an existential crisis while doing your hair, it won’t turn out good