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evanescentjasmine · 18 hours

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Day 2 in the Middle School Time Loop: you remember that last time, everyone ignored you at recess because they were talking about a TV show that you hadn’t watched. This time, you lie and say you’ve seen it. They ask you who your favorite character is, and you don’t know any of the characters, and so you’re tongue-tied. They think you’re weirder than ever, or maybe a liar, which is worse (and true).

Day 3 in the Middle School Time Loop: you tell your parents that you feel ill. They let you stay home while they’re at work. You spend the whole day watching past episodes of the TV Show.

Day 4 in the Middle School Time Loop: Recess again. The same person asks you who your favorite character is. This time, you're ready. You eagerly tell them, and supplement your reasons for liking them with solid evidence from all 4 seasons of the show. But! Tough luck: you’re now too invested. The atmosphere turns uncomfortable. They go back to ignoring you like they did on the Day 1 that you didn’t know was Day 1.

Day 5 in the Middle School Time Loop:

You decide to try a different approach and update your style. You've noticed that Ashleigh, who’s blonde and constantly surrounded by friends, always wears pink stripey sneakers. You try wearing a pink dress. Someone says it’s cute, but you know from how they say it that it isn’t the good cute.

“I thought that pink was cool,” you protest, more to the uncaring universe than to anyone in particular.

Your interlocutor shrugs. “Maybe on someone else.”

Day 6 in the Middle School Time Loop: You keep your head down, but still surprise the teachers by somehow knowing the correct answers to every spontaneous question they throw out to the class. You study the outfits of your classmates more closely. You realize that it wasn’t the color, so much as the brand that made the difference. It proves the shoes were expensive. You note down Ashleigh's sneaker brand in smudgy ink on the back of your hand, and then after school you take half a year's saved-up allowance and buy a matching pair at the mall. Your mom raises her eyebrows but doesn’t stop you.

Day 7 in the Middle School Time Loop: Today you make it to lunch before anything major goes wrong. You think that the sneakers have protected you, and stare down at them lovingly, watching the Barbie-pink plastic stripes reflect the tube lights on the ceiling as you turn your feet this way and that. But then at lunch, Ashleigh comes up, arm and arm with a friend. Her eyes are a little pink, but only a little.

“Ashleigh wanted me to tell you that she’s really hurt that you copied her sneakers,” the friend informs you, nobly, as if it would be too unpleasant for Ashleigh to have to say this herself. Her mouth is solemn but her eyes are gleeful.

“I didn’t…” You start to deny it automatically, even though it’s true. And yet, something won’t let you apologize. Doesn’t she see your imitation for what it is: the most sincere compliment you know how to bestow? This is your Hail Mary.

As you meet her eyes, you realize she does know, but this only makes her despise you more.

“I think a lot of people have these sneakers,” you stammer, in the end, and they just sniff and turn away. You go back to eating your lunch alone.

Day 8 of the Middle School Time Loop: even though you do well in every class, you must be so much more stupid than your classmates, to be missing whatever detail it is that they seem to have caught. How do they do it so quickly? Before recess, before the end of homeroom, even, they all just know. You’ve had endless chances to do this day over and yet you never seem to be able to catch up with them. Running to stand still, you’ve heard your mother say, when she’s busy at work. That’s you. Running to stand still.

Day 9 of the Middle School Time Loop: you pretend to be sick again, and you realize that if you want to, you can pretend to be sick every day. It's easy to convince your parents: you look tired and unhappy, your eyes small within their dark circles, like some underground creature. You stop watching that TV Show that you never really wanted to watch in the first place, and instead dream your way through all your favourite childhood movies. Disney, Pixar, Studio Ghibli. You retreat into jewel-colored landscapes, where everyone is magical or beautiful or at least funny, and the heroes always win in the end.

Day 10 of the Middle School Time Loop: You notice that most of the Pixar heroes, the Disney princesses look more like Ashleigh than you. Long hair. Pale eyes. Button noses. And all of them, so thin.

Day 11 of the Middle School Time Loop: you go to school, but you don’t talk to anyone. You don’t even answer your name at roll call. Your teacher asks you if anything is wrong at school, or at home perhaps. You shake your head, but that evening you hear your father taking a call. You shrug off his worry: it’ll be forgotten tomorrow anyway.

Day 12 of the Middle School Time Loop: an unexpected development: your apathy almost seems to make your classmates like you more. When you say, truthfully, that you don’t care much for the TV Show that eternally dominates the recess chatter, some people look impressed. They ask you what you think is better. But you’re wise and don’t admit to liking anything. "Mysterious," someone says appreciatively.

At the end of recess, the girl who told you off for copying Ashleigh nudges you. “Hey. Look, Robert has an Up shirt. Kind of cute, that he’s still into that stuff, right?”

You know that it’s not the good cute.

You stare at her coldly. “The shirt just has a dog on it. It doesn't say he's from Up. So you must have liked the movie enough to remember him.”

She flushes scarlet, and hurries to catch up with Ashleigh, throwing you a dirty look. Robert glances at you gratefully but you don’t return his smile. He won’t remember that you did this for him. Anyway, you didn't, really. Do it for him, that is.

Day 13 of the Middle School Time Loop: You tell your parents you’re sick again. Today, you watch the second tier of Studio Ghibli movies, the ones that your parents always say, self-consciously, that you’ll find dull. Only Yesterday, Princess Kaguya, When Marnie Was There. You’re only a few minutes into Marnie when there’s a line that pulls you up short:

“In this world, there’s an invisible magic circle. There’s inside and outside. These people are inside. And I’m outside.”

The relief that washes over you is so profound that you almost cry, and then, when the movie's over, you do cry. Ugly sobs that make you sound like a toddler throwing a tantrum at the mall, that make your head pound with a dehydration headache. But behind the tears, there's relief. There it is, the truth that you were searching for, through all these do-overs. There’s an invisible magic circle. Of course there is.

But here’s the thing about circles: the inside is small. The outside is scary, and lonely, but it’s huge: huger than you could ever have imagined before you turned around and looked.

When your dad gets home, he asks if you’re feeling better. “Much,” you say, and it’s true.

Day ?? of the Middle School Time Loop: Sometimes you go to school, but ditch class and go to the library or the playground and do your own thing even if teachers yell at you. Sometimes you wander around the neighborhood. Sometimes you ask your parents crazy things, like to take you to work with them, or to the beach, or to DisneyWorld. Sometimes they say no. A surprising amount of times, they say yes. You wonder if maybe they’re trapped in a time loop too.

Sometimes you sit quietly in other classrooms than the one you’re meant to be in, until they shoo you out or even send you to the principal. (He finds you baffling. You feel a deep, slightly mournful affection for him, like you would for an very old and tired dog). It’s surprising, the amount of different things that are getting taught in one school in one day. It takes you a long time to work your way through them all.

You watch a frog getting dissected a few times before you start to feel bad and don’t go back to that classroom again. Your favorite class to crash is art, because the teacher always clocks that you’re not meant to be there but smiles and lets you stay anyway. When you meet her eyes, it feels like you’re sharing a secret.

Day One-Hundred And Something of the Middle School ...Wait.

At some point, time started moving again, and you didn’t even realize it.

For so long, the reprimands you received about your future seemed so empty, so laughable. There was no future. Only a more- or less-bearable present. But now, your classmates remember the unhinged things that you do; now, your teachers’ and parents’ worries about the future have the full juggernaut weight of reality behind them.

You thought that you’d be more terrified. For so long, you’ve dreaded this forward momentum. No loading screen, no mini-games, just one single, awful, pulsating life. But things are different now. Time’s moving again, and here you are, so far outside the invisible magic circle that you’re not even sure that you'd be able to see it any more. You can still feel its power, but faintly, like the pull between two magnets when they're an arm's length apart. Easy to ignore.

“Are you ready?” Robert says, catching your eye over the kitchen table. He comes here first thing so you can get the bus together. At some point, during the time loop, you started to seek him out. He was outside the circle, too, you realized. But even more importantly, not once, on any of those grimly looping days, did you see him try and push someone else out to make a space for himself. In this crab bucket, that’s something that counts for a lot.

“Our final day of middle school,” he sighs, half to himself. “Never thought I’d see it.”

"Me either," you reply, getting up to put on your talismanic pink sneakers. They’re scuffed and dirty after years of wear, and certainly Ashley would never be caught dead in them these days. Maybe that’s what you should have told her, all those loops ago: that no imitation, let alone one as unskilled as yours, can ever be perfect, and that indeed the very imperfection renders it an original work in its own right. Time and thought and human care transforms even the most diligent copy into something else entirely.

But you’ve been through enough time loops to know that that sort of explanation wouldn’t go over very well.

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evanescentjasmine · 4 days

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20 questions for fic writers

Tagged by @shinyopals nearly half a year ago and promptly forgot about it oh my GOD, what is the passage of time, anyway I'm procrastinating on work and remembered it again so here we are

1. how many works do you have on Ao3?

ten

2. what’s your total Ao3 word count?

248,255

3. what fandoms do you write for?

Currently? Pathologic and probably soon Tian Guan Ci Fu/Heaven Official's Blessing. Mmmmmaybe Wushuang/Peerless, depending on how one plot bunny resolves itself in my brain. Previously? The Magnus Archives (which, who knows, I still have wips in the folder I might circle back 'round to one day), and in the olden days there was Code Geass and The Fandom That Must Not Be Named

4. what are your top five fics by kudos?

this, alone (TMA, gen, M for graphic depictions of Martin finding his alt universe self wormed by Prentiss and burying him in the Lonely)

runaway scars (TMA, gen, M) These two belong to a series that I have...tbh not finished, but I think can still stand together even without the conclusion. It's about Martin dimension-hopping from the apocalypse into another world to warn the Archives gang, only to discover his Jon had locked him here and so takes the role of the recently-wormed Martin of this dimension while he figures things out. Featuring: a very Beholding Sasha James, and fun times with our good friend Gerry Keay.

another turn of the page (TMA, gen, T) - this one baffles me, considering I wrote it in an evening and threw it up on ao3 with minimal edits. It's built on an existing tma statement though so I guess there's that? AU wherein Jon is a mysterious recurring figure in statements.

genius loci (pathologic, burakhovsky, M) - Patho daemon au, my beloved!

salvage (pathologic, background burakhovsky, M) - Wherein Daniil Dankovsky is aware of the game's time mechanics and savescumming to try and get a good ending. May or may not be inspired by my own perfectionistic tendencies when playing this game.

5. do you respond to comments?

I try to! Some I miss, and if someone comments on every chapter in a binge (which I love! please keep doing this!) I might not respond to every single one, but I try my best to respond to them all, and be sure I read them all either way.

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

So uh...hi, I'm jas and I'm an angst gremlin. It's...kind of my thing.

If I had to choose, I'd say there is no escape, my TMA with the trappings of Hades AU wherein Jon takes on powers from the various fears to try and escape the Archives, if only because...well, the title says it. But youth dipped in folly, my GerryOliver AU, might be a close contender. The number of pained, wailing comments I've seen on it delights me.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh maybe this, alone? If only because it ends on a hopeful "we're together and no one died this time! and maybe we'll beat the bad guy!" note.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Thankfully, no.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Nothing that I've shared publicly, no. Writing good smut is a skill I do not yet possess. Also I forget sex is a thing half the time so it genuinely often doesn't occur to me.

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?

OH BOY DO I.

I like to write crossovers where the characters from one media are in the world/plot/trappings of another, as opposed to the characters from two properties meeting, and pretty much whatever I read/play while in a hyperfixation will probably result in a crossover, at least in my brain.

Published, I only have a TMA Hades fic and TMA Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell fic, and of the two, the former is definitely weirder. In my drafts, I also have:

TMA Doctor Who AU (Gertrude regenerates into Jon while Tim and Martin are attempting to help the Archivist escape Elias' clutches)

Pathologic Dishonored AU (Artemy is gifted strange powers by the Outsider, who just looks like a capital dandy in a snakeskin coat, weird for a supposedly evil figure)

Pathologic Disco Elysium AU (ngl unlikely to finish this, because this is more a fun exercise than something that has a plot, for me, but the snakeskin coat instead of the ugly necktie is very fun)

Pathologic Fear & Hunger Termina AU (Artemy, Daniil, and the Utopians and Apple Basket Gang and Yulia arriving on the same train and forced into a battle royale. Fascinating and brutal. NEED to finish it one of these days)

Pathologic Thaumaturge AU (because I'm currently playing Thaumaturge and, look, they gave me a magical system that has implications on who a character is and fucks up everyone around them if misused and and expected me to not drag it into other fandoms? because good god Daniil needs the Audacity Flaw SO bad, SO BAD)

TGCF sort of Scum Villain AU (and I say sort of because it's more a transmigration au, but it takes many trappings and flavouings from SVSSS. There is also, technically, three of this, because I couldn't decide who should be the transmigrator between Xie Lian and Hua Cheng and promptly ended up with an AU where it's Xie Lian, an AU where it's Hua Cheng, and an AU where it's both of them. Save me from myself)

Wushuang/Peerless TGCF AU (because if anyone deserves to be a Ghost King it's Cui "Fuck you I'm not going" Buqu, and Feng Xiao NEEDS to be a martial god of the sort that beats up his followers if his statues aren't pretty enough)

Oh, and I guess daemon aus count as crossovers? Technically? Since they belong to the His Dark Materials universe. I tend to think of them as a separate fanfic trope at this point though, esp when I often disregard HDM worldbuilding entirely, but just in case: there's my Patho daemon AU and also a TGCF daemon AU in the works.

11. has any of your work been stolen?

Not fic, not to my knowledge.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

If it has, do tell me! But nope, not that I know of.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Not a completed one yet. There have been a few attempts with friends that fell through for various reasons of time, energy, spoons, losing interest in the fandom, etc, but it's always been a blast and I'd really love to do it again! I love co-writing and co-creating. I've spent many many years in forum roleplaying spaces and collaborative creation is a thing I actively miss. Writing's pretty solitary otherwise. Plus, it's fun to see your smart talented friends flex their smarts and talents and see how their brains work!

14. What’s your all time favorite ship?

I have to mirror shinyopals here and say, whatever my OTP is at the time. Burakhovsky from Pathologic certainly have me by the throat for the many myriad ways their relationship can go, from bitter rivals a la Changeling route to 'you're the only one who understands the depth of this trauma' as I tend to write. I also just love a narrative foil, god.

But there's also Hualian from TGCF! 800 years of devotion, holy shit! The sheer intensity of them!

And also the hilarity of FengCui from Wushuang/Peerless as a bitch4bitch, will never admit feelings on the pain of death pairing is hard to beat.

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

-stares into the abyss that is my wip folder- How long you got?

I am, due to work writing and also just brain nonsense, an unfortunately very slow writer, made even more unfortunate by the fact I tend towards big ideas and adore turning points in a narrative and what ifs. Realistically this means that unless it's one of the first fics I do in a fandom, and unless a fic contains itself to less than 10k words, a wip is very unlikely to be finished.

I'm trying to get ahead of this by not posting most of my wips until they're closer to done but, considering how much I will edit and fix and tinker, I'm tempted to just yeet things sometimes and hope the Pressure will get some writing out of me. Or maybe I'll learn how to write short again! Who knows!

But, uh, short answer: all of them.

16. What are your writing strengths?

I think I'm pretty good at character, at keeping them in-character and in line with their canon selves. I'm also told I'm apparently good at humor and my writing voice can be funny, which is, I suppose, how people can tolerate the angsty angsty shit that comes with it.

I also tend towards pretty clean first drafts!

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

d e s c r i p t o n s and, as a result, physical blocking!

I can't visualise very well? Usually characters exist in a formless void for me, so I have to figure out visual details by logicking it out or deciding what seems fitting for the scene. But things that require physicality, like fight scenes or sex scenes, god, just...hate them. Hate hate.

Also, first drafts. I may write clean, but it's a struggle every moment and often includes a lot of back-tracking as I'm writing or redoing altogether. This may or may not be why they're clean.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

I don't tend to do it myself. Like it's fine if a writer does, but I see no need to include entire lines of dialogue in another language personally. If the PoV character understands it, then inserting something the reader might not, or needs a footnote to understand, breaks the flow, imo. If the point is that the PoV character can't understand it, that's fair, but I'd still almost always rather just say "the other characters carried on with a conversation PoV Character couldn't understand," or something even if the other language is one I speak and am confident in myself.

This only goes for full lines of dialogue, though, as opposed to things like titles or place names or concepts that would be awkward or weird to translate.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

The Fandom That Must Not Be Named. I was ten years old and just came off bingeing Prisoner of Azkaban. Thinking back on it, even that first fic had a tragic, angsty end lmfao

20. Favorite fic you’ve written?

Do not make me choose between my babies this way, how dare.

...that said, I'm really proud of salvage. It's one of those fics where I could feel myself levellng up a bit as I wrote, description-wise and just atmosphere-wise. Unsurprisingly, it's also a very difficult fic to write, which why updates have been so slow.

I'm also proud of how youth dipped in folly came out, considering I needed to gut it and rebuild it entirely in the second draft. I like the urban fantasy magical worldbuilding it has a lot, what with Gerry Keay essentially being an urban fantasy protagonist in the background of a horror podcast.

and as for favourite for sheer vibes, I think my unnamed unposted Hong-er never fell au that I'm currently working on is filling that role, because I fucking love writing in second person, it's so fun.

phew okay I think that's everything. tagging @kneesntoess and @smallhorizons (two in one day I know I'm sorry) and also @inkpot-demigod (yes this is revenge, I am not sorry), and whoever would like to give this a go!

#tag game

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