#author's commentary

[envysparkler]

Fic authors self rec! When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you've written, then pass on to at least five other writers. Let’s spread the self-love 💗

Fairy Godbrother

What are brothers for? (Or: some minor dimensional travel, pseudo-kidnapping, and a whole lot of meddling.)

I love that I could include all three of my favorite brotherly dynamics in this one and that I could add a new flavor to each chapter. Honestly I'm proud of all the multichapters I've finished, so this one goes on the list for sure.

Red Hood

Gotham doesn’t relinquish her soldiers, no matter how far they’ve fallen from the nest.

As the longest batfam fic I've finished, this obviously makes the cut. I wanted to write a Jason-centric story exploring the emotions behind his return and I like the way this turned out.

sick day

Tim isn’t sick. He isn’t. He just isn’t sure when a floating red bucket joined the Teen Titans.

A TT AU had to join the list, right? Honestly, this story never fails to crack me up and I love rereading it because sick!Tim is so funny and poor Jason is so very exasperated.

scapegoat

“The medkit’s been misfiled,” Bruce said, frowning at the cupboard in the medbay, “Do you know who did it?” “I don’t know,” Tim’s voice said. Great. Outright denial. Because Batman could be fooled that easily. “I saw Jason here last night.” Wait. Wait. Abort—“Does he remember the correct filing system?” (The first time was an accident. A momentary panic, brought on by coffee deprivation and exhaustion. After that…well.)

This is another that joins the list because it's hilarious. Writing batsib shenanigans is so much fun and Jason's well-deserved revenge at the end is one of my favorite parts.

robin's roast

There’s a new coffee shop in Crime Alley. It’s called the Red Hood.

I always wanted to write a coffee shop au that wasn't just a coffee shop au and this idea fit that perfectly. Also joins the list because I had fun writing Steph in this one.

#envy answers #author's commentary #of course with over 150 fics these aren't my only favorites #just the first five I picked

[indignantlemur]

The Directory!

Emigre: link

Pairing(s): Original Andorian Character/Original Human Character (Dagmar/Shral), Andorian/Andorian, Andorian/Human/Andorian/Andorian

Rating: Explicit (as of chapter 44)

Status: In-Progress, available via AO3

A tear in the fabric of space and time has consequences that echo across ages; an unexpected arrival from the twenty-first century challenges a nation's perceptions and sets a most unlikely precedent. An exploration of Andorian culture from a Human's POV.

The Stars Keep Watch: link

Pairing(s): Va'Al Trask/Original Human Character (Va'Al/Mira)

Rating: Explicit

Status: In-Progress, available via AO3

Mira Vos signed up for Starfleet only to find herself posted to hell. Undersupplied and overstressed, the fighting on J'Gal threatens to wear her down. The arrival of a special forces unit led by a handsome Andorian promises a break in the routine... A classic wartime romance - but In Space.

🎄🎁❄️Deck the Halls (and Not the Vulcans): link

Pairings: Dagmar/Shral (background)

Rating: Teen

Status: Complete, available on AO3

It's winter time in San Francisco, and the Andorian embassy has just been challenged to participate in a friendly competition between the Federation's founding species' embassies. The objective? To see who can best decorate a Terran Christmas tree. The prize? Nothing less than deeply coveted bragging rights for the coming year.

Dagmar Gunnarssen has never been so ready for anything in her entire life.

Hoarfrost: 🚧🛠️

Pairing(s): Dagmar Gunnarssen & Ambassador Thoris th'Kor, Background relationships from Emigre

Rating: Teen

Status: In-Progress, not yet available via AO3. (Pssst! Sneak peak available: link)

An unusually powerful ion storm forces Ambassador Thoris and his retinue to abandon ship over a largely uninhabited planet. Some of the last to make it to the escape pods, Thoris and Dagmar wind up separated from the others. Together, they must navigate a frozen, eerily barren landscape - and survive.

Emigre Art:

Shral: in-progress 1, in-progress 2, in-progress update 3, in-progress update 4, FINISHED

Thelen: in-progress, in-progress 2, in-progress 3, finished with detail shots

Miraal: in-progress, in-progress update

Ambassador Thoris: in-progress & finished (tentative)

Vrath: in-progress 1, finished

'An Eventful Meeting' : in-progress, in-progress 2, in-progress 3, in-progress 4, finished

IndignantLemur's Very Serious & Accurate Antennae Expression Guide: here!

Dagmar's courting ring: here

Kelenthor the Clanless: here

Fancy Drinks and Fancy Duds: in-progress

Andorian Chitin Map Reference: Thelen, Thoris, Shral: here

Winter Holiday Series:

Dagmar/Shral: In-progress 1, in-progress 2, finished

CANON Fan Art:

Shran: here

Commissions/Gifts:

Serrin of Romulus: in-progress & finished (@bigblissandlove1 commission)

S'Talon of Romulus: in-progress (silly) & finished (@bigblissandlove1 commission)

Gift commission: in-progress & finished (@the-lady-general commission)

Emperor Georgiou: in-progress & finished (@the-lady-general commission)

Lt Hemmer: finished (@nichestartrekkie0-0 gift)

Cmdr Ophelia Zubira: finished (@unknownfacelessfanfictions)

Andorian Headcanons:

Andorians and Food

Andorians and the Sea

Andorian Governing Bodies & The Role of Nepotism

Andorian Marriage Dynamics & Divorce

Andorian Proposals

Andorian Religion & Spirituality (And horror stories)

The Andorian Imperial Clan

Andorian Hair

Andorian Holidays

Andorian Courtship Ring Metallurgy

Andorian Medical Professionals

Andorian Awards and Commendations

Andorians and Figure Skating

Andorians and Dancing

Andorians and Currency

The Andorian Facepalm?

Andorian-Vulcan relations pre-ST:ENT

Andorian Language and Conlang

Andorian Weddings and Funerals

Andorian Attitudes on Interspecies Relationships

Andorian-Human Hybridization

The Am Tal and The Andorian Incident

Andorian Clan Identification and Chitin Patterns

Andorian Names

Andorians and Adoption

Clanless Andorians

Andorians and Rites of Passage into Adulthood

The Code of the Ushaan and the Holmgang

Andorian Fairy Tales

Kelenthor the Clanless and Watercolours

Human-Andorian First Contact headcanons

Andorian Fashion and Fabrics

Emigre General Discussions:

Healing and Grief in Emigre

The Bulreeng Taal Beatdown

Author's Commentary: Chapter 41 - Grace and Poise

Author's Commentary: Chapter 37 - Connection

What Do The Andorians (and Dagmar) of Emigre Smell Like?

Author's Commentary: Chapter 43: The Star Thief

What Language Is Dagmar Speaking?

Author's Commentary: Chapter 46 - Face the Facts

Director's Cut - ask for a writer's commentary on a chapter, section, line, or scene in their work, or send a ⭐for free-range rambles!

Writer Ask Game - send an emoji, get an answer!

OC Emoji Ask Game - send an emoji, specify the OC, and get an answer!

Emigre Playlists:

Dagmar - I Don't Belong In This Club

Dagmar - All I Can Do Is Try

Dagmar/Shral - I Will Melt With You

Dagmar/Thelen - Shut Up & Dance

Anlenthoris th'Kor - The Old Warhawk

Emigre Atmospheric Mixes:

Dagmar At The Office

Hovercar Ride With Shral

Hoarfrost Atmospheric Mixes:

Walking Through A Blizzard

Waiting Out A Snowstorm In A Cave

Alien Aurora While Camping In The Snow

OFFICIAL TAG LIST

(You can always request to be added to the list!)

#BEHOLD! My giant directory of stuff and things! #masterlist #tag list #pinned post #This will be constantly updated to reflect new posts and changes! #emigre by indignantlemur #hoarfrost by indignantlemur #the stars keep watch by indignantlemur #headcanons #fanmixes #atmospheric mixes #favourite ask memes #indignantlemur #Vilashral of Clan Hrisvalar #Thelen of Clan Sannev #Ambassador Thoris #Anlenthoris th'Kor #Dagmar Gunnarssen #Jhelvrath of Clan Tha'an #Va'al Trask #Mira Vos #andorians #andorian #star trek fanart #andorian/human #director's commentary #author's commentary #Emigre winter holiday series #An Eventful Meeting by IndignantLemur #thy’lek shran

[t1meslayer]

Busy with important family events over the next couple of days, and so I thought it would be good to get a day-and-date release for this Debrief on the latest entry in my Sapphic Valley series, "How You Get The Girl." Be sure to read the story before jumping in!

Did you do it? Did you read the story?

Alright, I'm trusting you. Go ahead and hit that 'Keep Reading' button you scamp.

It only seems appropriate to start this Debrief off by addressing the elephant in the room. I haven't posted anything in over a month, and "By Moonlight" came about a month after its predecessor, the conclusion to "Stone-Cold Lovers."

Work, naturally, has been a major factor.

You can see me talk about that almost two weeks ago in this Tumblr post I made about writing in a coffee shop, which came weeks after I actually started writing during a trip to a friend's house.

===

Side note:

Just wanted to take a moment and acknowledge my beautiful Haley and Emily keychains. My friend who's responsible for the affairs of one ghostly farmer named Jizzabelle (Gisabelle to the laymen) got them for me! Only appropriate after I commissioned some art of her and Abigail.

Emily was my first Stardew wife, and Haley currently holds the biggest place in my heart. They make a lovely duo!

And I'll avoid any sister-wife jokes

===

While I've had some other projects like Zine writing to take care of, work and life can't explain the full absence.

The best way I can think to explain things is that:

I had the general writer's block, and

Despite the best intentions and advice of my irl friends and online pals like @alchemicallymoon and @duelbraids, I couldn't force myself to "break" that block by just... Writing something else.

This is entirely the result of my own psychosis. I have a tendency to carefully plot things out and impose a timetable that really doesn't need to exist. When I feel the cause is righteous enough, it's hard to get around that. In this case, I knew I needed to get my poll-winning idea out after dawdling for holidays like Valentine's Day, and then I knew I only wanted to post one more story before jumping on a very special event for my upcoming 30th AO3 post.

Thus, here we are: arbitrarily forcing myself into a spiral of writer's block misery because of a silly promise on Tumblr and my own sense of ordered chaos.

At the very least, this meant it's coming out not long after my AO3 pal InsertACatchyPennameHere also emerged from the woodwork to tell me they're working on something INSPIRED by my four-person friend group farm adaptations.

Much love to them, wherever they may be.

I'll probably start writing more eclectically now that my shoulders are unweighed, but don't expect my next publication to hit until I'm finished working on teasing the big event. All you Pokemon fans better get hype!

And oh how sweet this publication feels. Between my great set of recent ceramics, the figure drawing class I've been attending, and creative writing, I've felt more fulfilled than ever.

You're here to talk about Stardew, though. So let us talk.

This idea began less with any one event as it did a desire to advance the Alexis/Haley relationship, and Haley's characterization in particular. It was always going to end with watercolor painting reference, but 2 Willow Lane was what I really wanted to dig into.

As I see it, a lot of what keeps people invested in Stardew when its comfy vibes becoming routine is the air of mystery in Eric Barone's worldbuilding. Haley and Emily's parents being some world-traveling duo who left their home in the siblings' care for who knows how long (and who knows how many times over their lifetime) really piqued my interest. So much so that the new writing challenge I set for myself in "How You Get The Girl" was crafting a particularly long set of descriptions that emphasize how overwhelming the parents' influence feels — without creating an impenetrable wall of text.

Hopefully I succeeded in that. Let me know!

I tried to include some vaguely real world-adjacent references into that description of the house, as happens with the magical-realism world of Stardew Valley. For example:

The computer sitting next to their bonsai tree is an iMac G3, the kind of old 'futuristic' tech that my dad loves!

A Speedwell refrigerator is based on even more vintage tech, the Mayflower fridge, but named after a different ship ridden by Pilgrims coming to America.

That city that the family visited in an old photograph with a "monument of arching, interlocking steel" is, of course, Paris — with the statue bookends referencing any number of statues in the Louvre.

Haley's FAD magazine could be referencing any number of publications, but Vogue is probably the closest analogue to what I imagine her reading.

Furthermore, I took some notes on describing the home's layout off of my sister's apartment building, and I asked my bestie @trybard for input on what kind of hanging plant should be used in the transitional hallway. Hanging pothos, philodendron, and spider plants were the three options provided, and my response was appropriate:

They know so much about plants.

Go bug them about it.

I drew on other friends' knowledge to help decorate the house. Specifically, I asked one of my witchiest friends what kinds of protective wards someone like Emily would leave around doorways and windows. She had... A lot of reference material.

I picked Hazel given it purportedly "protects against evil; encourages abundance and inspiration." I also picked Amethyst as one of Emily's loved gifts, one that purportedly "absorbs negative energy, promotes harmony."

My witchy friend is the same one who provided the TikTok that I referenced in my advertisement post:

Perhaps the most important thing about 2 Willow Lane was the recurring motif of Barbie's Dream House.

As a surface-level reference, I think the groundwork is clear. Blondie's love of fashion and general queen bee demeanor fits comparisons to Barbie well, and she lives in a big ol' house full of stuff. We all saw Greta Gerwig's Barbie movie last year. It's still in the cultural zeitgeist.

I'm hip with the kids.

Yet, early on I also tried to make it clear that if this is a "dream" house, it's neither Haley's nor Emily's dream. Haley is a Barbie in that stereotypical sense, but also there's much to be mined from the analogy of a sort of powerless doll in an immutable house, constrained by social obligation to her family rather than literal plastic and stickers.

The cold open of Jodi and Sam was meant to stand alone, but in execution I also think drawing Kent's absence into the conversation makes for a more thematically rich comparison to these sisters who appear to have themselves more put together.

My beta reader said this wound up being one of my stronger stories because of how all of that intertwined, which I appreciated given how down on myself I was following the whole writer's block thing.

But also.

Also.

Alexis gets to be horny. She's hitting on lonely MILFs and watching girls shake their asses to the tune of bad reality TV.

We love a buff dommy mommy farm girl in this house.

Haley is probably horny too, she just doesn't realize it yet. For now I think it's fun enough to play into her being coy about building excuses for Alexis to come over, and then getting incensed when Emily barges in on their private time meant to learn more about this farm girl she just can't get out of her head.

===

Fun fact:

Every story in this series is named after a Taylor Swift song, but I know next-to nothing about her discography. All of them are suggestions by my friend whose house I was at when starting this story — the same one who controls Gardenia on the farm.

While I went with "How You Get The Girl," her alternative suggestion was "The Man."

===

All that w|w talk aside, I also want to give Sam the loveable idiot a shoutout. Had to do a fair bit of research into how skateboards are constructed for his failed ollie, and I slipped in a reference to shitty old technology that's exclusively for my beta reader to enjoy.

I also tried doing some agricultural research to figure out how the folks at Kevin Farm could have grown cucumbers so there'd be a jar of legitimate pickles... But that was getting too in the weeds.

Insert laugh track here

Decided to just go with pickled artichoke hearts to save everyone a lot of trouble.

And where does "Kevin Farm" come from, you may be asking yourself. Or the fabulous "Kevin's Special" with its definitely not innuendo tagline.

That story will have to wait for another day, my friends.

#I really went in on this one #Moreso than I was expecting #But I guess that's what happens when you get very anxious about how people on the internet are judging your ability to do things well #And in a timely manner #Not that I think any of you are judging me #My fans are great <3 #Anyway thanks so much for reading! #I promise the Kevin Farm story isn't all that interesting but one day I'll make it relevant to a piece #Fanfiction Debrief #fanfiction #fanfic #companion piece #author's commentary #ao3 #stardew valley #stardew haley #writing #creative writing #struggle #macintosh #vintage technology #paris france #louvre #vogue #plants #tiktok #witchcraft #protection #barbie #metaphors

[mint-yooxgi]

hi hello!! hope ur doing well :] for ur ask game, i just started reading to tempt fate, and i would love to hear a 'dvd commentary' spiel abt the beginning! i screenshotted this part in particular, but i'd love to hear anything and everything abt the first chapter <3 :

Hello!! Omg, thank you for sending an ask in!! I'm doing well, a lot better recently, I feel like I actually have a bit of motivation to do things again lol.

Hmmm, first chapter of TTF.... what can I say about it...

I'll focus on this part in particular, but a general comment was I was trying to emulate a sort of survival horror game. One where you're thrown into an unknown situation and have to uncover the clues as you go. Really heavily inspired by Resident Evil and if you're familiar with it, Corpse Party.

So, for this part, if you've ever heard of a horror game called Simulacra, I sort of took a little bit of inspiration from that, too. I really wanted to play with the idea of mirages and seeing sometimes always doesn't mean believing. For instance, with the phone, I like the idea of it only working when needed. I followed typical horror movie plots with a phone call for this, so think Scream, cause I wanted to emulate that sort of 'the call is coming from inside the house' vibe.

I'm also the type to logic my way out of situations, so a lot of the time when I write genres like this, I have to think of a way that the 'me' in this instance would believe. I'm a firm believer in the idea that when writing, things don't necessarily have to be realistic, they just have to be believable. So, an unknown person being able to call a phone that supposedly has 'no service' when the OC wakes up in an unknown place. Unrealistic, but in this world, can be believable because not all the answers have been revealed.

I also just love the idea of OC answering to be like, "nope." then hanging up. Literally the definition of "Not today, Satan." lmaoo

Saw was also a bit of inspiration behind this - waking up in an unfamiliar location, being instructed to do a certain task and/or follow certain rules to survive. But, like I said, main reason I started this series was I wanted to see if I could write something akin to a survival horror game, but in a literary sense. I have so much planned, so I hope you look forward to it all!

#ask #ask game #author's commentary #hehehe #Related To: To Tempt Fate

[oceanera12]

Hi!!! I finally found your tumblr! I am absolutely obsessed with your built family fic. I think tangos is my favorite so far. Could I request a directors cut for that chapter? Thank you for all the work you've done!

First of all, hello! Welcome to my page of randomness. May you be able to navigate it to the best of your abilities (whoops).

Second, to anyone who wants to read the chapter before the author's commentary--

There you go.

Finally, I will be talking about fictional characters in slavery so there is your trigger warning.

On with the commentary!!!

As stated in the author's notes, Tango's chapter took a drastic turn from the original concept. Originally, I was going to have Tango come up to the surface, meet Impulse, the two have fun adventures together, and then both of them stumble across a Nether portal, fo through it, and somehow break the portal on the other side. Neither of them know how to get back so they team up to survive.

Obviously, that changed. That change mainly came from my sudden realization that this story had... phases, for lack of a better word. What started as a collection of semi-connected one-shots started becoming much more connected. As such, I had to start thinking about some character origins as a point on a graph.

This commentary will now feature visuals and my terrible handwriting and Minor spoilers for Impulse. And I mean really minor.

Jev was the introduction to EVERYTHING. The idea of Hunters, what Hunters did, how the hybrids reacted, the cultures that developed from all this (Scott's Place), the fall of Hunters over time, and even recovering from Hunters. Everyone else gets to dive more into specifics.

Tango, I knew was going to be challenging because Slavery is very much still an issue today. I did not want to shy away from the horribleness, but I also did not want to be very graphic. I left many things up to the imagination of the reader (for instance, I described the bar workers as bar workers. The reality of their job is probably a combination of servers of drinks and more... sensual things. And that's all I'm going to say about that).

Umbara was initially supposed to be only a friend that Tango bonded with. But then I realized that without Impulse, Tango... didn't really have a reason to escape. And he would need a reason. What better reason than wanting a better life for your wife? So Umbara became Mrs. Tango and Tango decided to take a chance.

You do not know how tempted I was to switch POV's and show the entire story of Tango's chapter. Seriously, how they found Tango's message is both hilarious and heartbreaking. Basically, Joe accidentally knocked the pick off the wall and it broke into pieces, and they found the note while picking it up. Jevin was confused and went to TFC who then took the three to the server.

As soon as they arrived, one of the enslaved hybrids made eye contact with Jev and warned him. Jevin, being the smart person he is, immediately turned to TFC and Joe and told them he was now their property and to treat him as such while they figured out what was going on.

I'm not going to explain every little thing, but a few highlights of what I wanted to add to the chapter through switching POV but then it wouldn't have been a Tango chapter:

False convincing everyone to let her be a double agent

Mumbo and Sam teaming up to figure out how to undo the particular restraints on the server in less than six hours

Doc and Etho's session with the admin that involved getting names, locations, and numbers

Hypno getting hybrids to trust him through actions, not words or passed messages

Xisuma relearning a lot of code manipulation through his people's books that Joe gave him because he's rusty/didn't learn everything.

TFC feeling guilty for not realizing what had happened to the old server and being comforted by Jev and Joe

Joe going on a literal rampage with Cleo and Jevin as back-up

Umbara getting exactly one note from a blonde stranger (False) that simply read, "I need your help. Blink twice for yes, leave for no." And Umbara, looking into this blonde stranger's eyes and deciding after only a second of eye contact that "yes, I will help you. What do you need?" And thus began the long con

Phil and Techno going to the Nether and tearing the slavers apart while Wil helped the slaves avoid the fight, calm them down, and go looking for anyone locked up in solitary (which may be where he finds a certain blonde-teenager whose first reaction to Wilbur was to try and bite him? Mhhh???) Hint hint, this will probably be written at some point just in a different story.

Honestly, Tango's entire chapter could have been an entire fic broken into several chapters.

The hardest part with Tango's chapter was the ending because I didn't want it to feel forced.

I feel like I failed on that because it feels really forced. At least to me. But I couldn't think of anything else that would be a solid reason to join the server. So... what we have is what we get.

That's all I can think of for Tango's chapter. We'll get to see more of Tango in the next chapter (Impulses) so I hope you enjoy that one too.

Thanks for the comment!

#built family #era talks #fanfic #fanfiction #hermitcraft #tangotek #impuslesv #author's commentary

[powerofmettatonneo]

What Measure is a Non-Human?: Commentary for Chapters 4+5

I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t primarily writing this to show off the work I did, but I’m posting this to hopefully serve as a bit of advice for other inspiring writers and as an explanation of some of the decisions I made. That being said, this will be completely nonsensical if you haven’t read the chapters in question.

I actually wrote chapter 5 before most of chapter 4. I got the general story of chapter 5 in my head while writing chapter 3 and chapter 4 was originally simply a bridge between the two. However, while writing it, I realized that there were some chronology issues (namely involving Jason’s mom) that I’d have to address but could not be bothered to at the moment, so I just stopped writing the bridge halfway through and wrote the rest of chapter 5 largely as-is. When I went back to finish the bridge, I realized that the tone was way off from the rest of the chapter and it was (barely) long enough to be split off.

Writing backwards like this allowed me to add a lot more set up than normal. The funny part of set up is how much of it can happen accidentally. I had it in my notes to write a scene of Jason and Hazel effectively communicating without the PokeCom so that Hazel referencing that later doesn’t come out of nowhere. I wrote out the banter scene without even considering that aspect until it was finished, and what do you know, it fit the job perfectly on complete accident. Similarly, I didn’t even have it written down to show Jason respecting Hazel’s boundaries (I mean, not committing harassment is pretty much the default so I didn’t see a pressing need) but the moment with the hug happened completely naturally and conveys that idea pretty well. Additionally, referring to his mom as “Mrs.” but having her only mention cooking food for three people when she has two children, together with his father not appearing in the scene, certainly paints a picture of what Jason's family is like. The only set up I had to “force” was the ability of Eeveelutions to say the word no; although I’d like to claim that this came from some big philosophical ideal regarding the nature of consent, it really just came from thinking about what words they’d be able to put together with only the sounds they’ve been given.

There are a few other unorganized notes on chapter 4. Jason’s mom is deliberately written to be the sort of loving but overbearing and slightly dysfunctional type; it’s the type I’ve personally seen the most irl but I rarely see it represented in stories, probably because there’s nothing romantic about it. There’s no wish-fulfillment of a perfect mother or character-building trauma from an abusive one.

Fortress starring Dathan Dillion is just a basic reskin of Castle starring Nathan Fillion, which is the crime drama I appreciate the most because it is so absurd and, just like Jason, I think Fillion is hot. Hazel enjoying crime dramas is one of the character traits she had before I started writing this story.

On to chapter 5. TW: the same discussion of manipulation/coercion in the original chapter, as well as additional minor references to sexual assault.

I was struggling with whether or not I should even write this chapter; addressing the power imbalance inherent to the concept was always going to happen, but to do so in such a raw, direct, and frankly personal way concerned me due to the potential impact. In the end I decided that this was my story and if I wanted to tell it this way, then I should (albeit with warnings and disclaimers to try and minimize any negative effects). This chapter is not meant to resolve the issue permanently; these things don’t just go away after one talk. The issues and the guilt and the doubt from a relationship with such a large power imbalance are always going to be there until and unless the power is properly balanced; the only question is how you handle them in the meantime.

This is the first chapter that had an idea for a title come to me, and, as is tradition for AO3, it’s a song title. I was listening to the album Dear Wormwood while writing this chapter, and the titular song is about confronting the negative parts of yourself, your fears and insecurities. Medea is Jason's Wormwood. Honestly though, the whole album also fits nicely with the flow of the chapter.

Starting off with some technical points, there were a lot of tricks put into the dream sequence. First, though, shout-out to Boundaries for inspiring me to do this in the first place. Switching tenses the moment it breaks from “reality” alongside the mention of this happening at night more or less explicitly tells the audience it was a dream without actually being explicit. Refusing to refer to Medea as Hazel and allowing her to use contractions should’ve established a sense of something being off with the scene. Furthermore, the whole “speaking without wanting to” part is based on something I often experience in my dreams that I don’t see discussed much where my body or mouth do things against my will, kind of like I’m being puppeted by something. I’ll admit, part of this was a cop out so as not to soil Jason’s idealized status by having him do the less sympathetic but more realistic thing of automatically defending himself against Medea’s accusations instead of taking them seriously. However, the fact that he’s saying it at all is meant to show that he’s experiencing internal conflict, where at least part of himself is reacting that way even if he feels disgusted with himself for doing so.

This chapter also had the first big payoff: Jason’s father. His father being absent was hinted at since chapter 1, the nature of his absence was hinted at in the previous chapter, and now it is all but confirmed. Notice how I never explicitly say that he died; this is not to leave open other possibilities, but because I didn’t see the need. Subtlety is often much more emotionally powerful than explicitly spelling things out.

There are multiple parallels between this chapter and chapter 3, with chapter 3 being Hazel’s emotional breakdown and chapter 5 being Jason’s. They both interrupt each other’s negative spiral by touching each other’s back, they both tell the other to take their time with the talk, and Hazel coming to the opinion that Jason would be happier if she tried to stop being his equal contrasts with Jason’s fear of having manipulated her due to the unavoidable inequality in their relationship. They’re both desperately afraid of hurting the other but before the twin discussions they come to conflicting conclusions on how to handle it.

On to the more philosophical stuff. Nearly all of Jason’s emotional reactions are based on similar ones I’ve experienced, although for multiple things over my lifetime instead of all in one night. When I was a child, I woke up from a nightmare and started crying. The family cat, a grumpy old man who did not like to be touched and who was actually pretty sick at the time, just so happened to be walking past my room. I had my door open and I saw him stop, look at me, jump on my bed, and shove himself between my arms and start purring. I held him to my chest until I stopped crying, and he stayed there for several more minutes, still purring. This is my favorite memory of him and I am not exaggerating when I say that it was downright life changing to have this animal, this supposedly lesser being that is said to only operate off of instinct, go out of his way to willingly do something he wasn't normally comfortable with just to comfort me. It permanently changed how I view animals. To make a long story short, this ultimately culminated in me studying ethology (animal behavior), and while I did end up pursuing a different field, what I learned about the languages of animals was a major driving force behind the creation of this story. This event, of course, was the inspiration for Hazel’s initial reaction once she woke up.

Back on track, the line about years of nightmares removing the instinct to scream is based on the fact that I haven't screamed from a nightmare in years. Granted, I don't have recurring trauma ones like Jason does, but I do have a lot of random ones.

Being autistic, I often find myself repeating certain phrases when I get too overwhelmed, both emotionally and informationally, and this is reflected by Jason’s chanting.

Jason’s laughing as he comes to the belief that he is a bad person is also based on something from my life. When I feel overwhelmed by guilt, I don’t cry or scream, I start laughing. This might not be the healthiest response, but it is genuine, not some poor imitation of a manic episode like I'm afraid some people might take it as.

“But you're right, there's no sense in stopping now; the damage is already done. Might as well make the best of a shitty situation.” The funny thing about believing that you’re a horrible person is that it quickly becomes an excuse to keep doing bad things; after all, you’ve already hurt people, so what’s the point in stopping now? If Hazel hadn't broken Jason out of that headspace, things would have quickly completely fallen apart as that idea gets enshrined. She and Medea would no longer be two different people.

Medea is named after the character from Greek mythology. To make a very long story short, she was the wife of Jason of Argonauts fame and they were famously horrifically abusive to each other, started by Jason; the fact that my Jason is willingly comparing himself and the dream version of Hazel to them shows how far he’s fallen into self loathing at the moment. Like Hazel, Medea far predates her role in the story; every time I had an idea that was too cruel for this story, I'd mentally recategorize it as involving an alter ego of Hazel instead of the original, who is far too precious to me to traumatize in such fucked up ways. Although I don't plan on releasing any of that from the confines of my brain, it still took up enough space in there for me to want to reference it at some point.

Alright, on to the real heavy stuff. You may have noticed that I didn’t explicitly mention sex a single time; this was deliberate. I’ve been trying to keep any mention of sex vague throughout the story because I know that it makes some people uncomfortable and I want the story and its themes to be as accessible as possible, and unlike the also alienating themes of manipulation and coercion that are discussed, it isn’t really vital to the story. Even in this chapter, where I am literally discussing coercion into affection, I feel like the specifics don’t matter as much as to whether or not it is happening in the first place. The scene would play out the exact same if they were talking about sex or making out in the grey areas, so I don't see the point in confirming one way or the other.

This leads into one sentence that I could not make up my mind on whether or not to include. In fact, as of writing this, I’m not certain if I did. “I was only half joking earlier; you would not physically be able to force me to do something I did not want to.” Jason looks like he wants to keep arguing, especially after that last point, but instead he simply sighs and shakes his head. I am well aware of the less than positive implications of Hazel’s line here. I wrote this to show her naivete and am hoping that the following sentence shows the reader that I’m not agreeing with her. Jason doesn’t argue with her because, in a discussion involving a particular individual, “physical strength isn’t the only factor” can be easily misconstrued as “I could totally force myself on you if I wanted to”, and he's had quite enough of placing doubts in his lover's head.

I may or may not do this again in the future. These two chapters gave me much more that I wanted to talk about than the previous ones did. I doubt I'll have much to say on the next chapter, and from there, who knows. I have a broad outline in place, but I'm only planning specific chapters one or two in advance.

#what measure is a non-human #author's commentary

[gidakata]

I Want To Change Too - Author's Commentary

the fic | the playlist | the document 

INTRODUCTION

I started writing this during the writing of the final chapter, and the editing and upload of what will now be the 5th chapter- people said they wanted a breakdown/one of my little author rants/commentaries, so they got one lol. I definitely won’t do this for EVERY fic I ever write, but I do think for the fics like this, that are a little more subdued, it might be fun to test this out.

I love overanalyzing things and adding dialogue/small moments in the hopes that others who also love to overanalyze will enjoy layers upon layers of content to go through, especially with this fic. I feel like I accidentally put so much thought into this fic- even though there are still probably plot holes somewhere I missed or didn’t account for, or there’s still probably something that bothers the FUCK out of one specific reader- I ended up adding a lot to this in a way that flowed with it really well. I’m proud of it, in a way. And Rhubarb should be proud of it too!!! They really helped me come up with and solidify a lot of what I ended up writing into the fic and what I ended up writing out (and contributed a lot to the angst!). This fic would not be finished if not for Rhubarb. Everybody say thank you Rhu! <3

Also, not to be gay or anything, it’s kinda lowkey like a coming-to-terms with my sexuality kinda fic. Except obviously I didn’t have to marry a man to figure out I’m kinda. gay. But, You Know. (A friend beta-read the drafts and said I “captured the wlw experience very well”... a lot of moments in beginning chapters were loosely based off of my experiences, or things that resonated with me in wlw film 💀💀).

Okay. So, there’s going to be a lot of me being annoying because I’m excited people are interested enough to hear me ramble about things in a semi-essay-like format about my OWN DAMN STORIES i write for a kpop group. I apologize in advance. 

If, somehow, for some odd, nonsensical reason, you just randomly happened to wander across this document and you have no idea what the fuck I’m talking about, go read this, and then listen to this playlist while you do it. 

(I need to add more songs to that playlist now that it’s a longer fic. I’ve been meaning to and I’ve been not doing it lol.)

Okay. Intro note over, let’s get into the fun stuff!

INSPIRATION

There were a series of songs I could not stop listening to.

It had gotten bad enough I made them their own playlist, despite the fact it was only three songs; Sorry by Heize, Help Me by Hako Yamazaki, and If You Come Into My Mind by Jo Deokbae.

Each song by itself is a sad one, and paints a story of a singular, sad story unfolding. Together- it feels like they combine to create a person who’s really struggling. A Relationship almost, because with that person, a ghost of the other referenced is created as well.

In If You Come Into My Mind, the story of a one sided love is painted. “You pass my side as if you brush by me- then turn around and try to pretend not to know.”  The lyrics read as this intense one sided yearning for someone which there’s already a close relationship with. They don’t want to ruin the good moments by addressing it, so the huge elephant in the room is blatantly ignored.

Then, in Heize’s Sorry. The lyrics that stood out to me the most were the very beginning ones; she starts the song off straightforwardly, suddenly, and sad, “Before anything, I’m sorry… It’s all my fault, It’s all me, I told you I shouldn’t have existed.”  The whole song is one long (almost satirical) apology, one which makes you feel more pity for the person apologizing than who they’re apologizing to.

After that, we have our last song. With Yamazaki’s Help Me, the lyrics talk about this person who really desperately wants help- yet all the help that’s offered is unhelpful to her, and she closes in on herself even more. There’s a part of the lyrics where she recites what someone tells her, and she confirms that to some level, she resonates with the advice, but cannot take it; The english translation of the lyrics reads, “‘Closing your heart, that seems nice. You can do whatever you want. Honestly, just be a child.’, said someone’s voice. A part of me always remains in this desire, but my heart is neither open nor closed.”

Yeah, the English translations could be off, but they do their jobs at getting the messages of the songs across. 

So, I listened to that playlist, and I sat down, and I wrote a few scenes between Hyunjin and Minho. Of course, I had picture inspiration for them too- I had film to draw from- the screencaps from A Bride For Rip Van Winkle (2016) circulating on twitter, two women in wedding dresses talking about killing men and staying together more than enough fuel to give me a few ideas- but really, those three songs solidified how I attempted to personify Minho through dialogue and actions, and how her relationship with Hyunjin worked in the fic. They worked for Hyunjin too, in different ways. Help Me is her theme song, in a way. If You Come Into My Mind is referenced in the third chapter, because Minho has had Hyunjin in her mind for years, and Hyunjin remembers small things like which track number is her favorite, yet seems to have trouble addressing things directly with her. In fact, when confronted, they blow up about it.

Music defines their relationship.

(Another honorable mention is Remember by Youra, a song which speaks to Hyunho’s relationship in this fic so perfectly I’d be a fool not to add it. But it definitely wasn’t inspiration- it was more of an oh, i’ve found the perfect song kind of moment, long after I had written and edited the fic.)

MINHO AND GENDER

“You’d think it’s odd, hearing of two different women with the same boy’s name. I guess it’s not a coincidence you’re marrying my Seungminnie, then.”

Minho is not like the other girls. It’s kinda funny… but it’s also an incredibly uncomfortable ordeal for her. Growing up she wore her father’s hand-me-downs, she got into traditionally more male-dominated hobbies- I kept her name Minho instead of switching it to something like Minha or Minhee because I felt it fit her more. 

Minho is so far removed from even really the assumption she’d want to be perceived as someone’s ‘ideal woman’ that she makes no effort to update her closet, job, or occupation until she’s basically forced to move on and ’go with the flow’. She waits years to buy herself something nice- a leather blazer, a comfort item to her- or to even slightly change her style. Even then, she really only does because she could confidently and securely afford the coat. She could’ve afforded many coats by that point, actually, and only bought one. Now, she has a large scar over her stomach- and needs to update her closet again. Then, she suddenly started dining with the rich and elite. 

(A lot of her more recent outfits are implied to be gifts from Seungmin. Which she appreciates, so she wears them. He keeps more up to date with trends than she does.) 

Minho is someone who is used to handling herself- and doing so pretty poorly. Almost dying twice, losing someone close to her and not allowing herself time to mourn, and not letting her community grow outside of a woman who left for university and her older friend who owns the boxing gym she frequents. Then, when things got too out of hand, she removed herself entirely from the situation, and started anew. She’s a chronic avoider with a slight impulsive tendency. 

She tried to hold down a job that was more traditional and slow in comparison to her racing background- but now she’s landed herself in an engagement and she’s very unqualified to be someone’s fiancé. She feels she’s grossly removed from anything that makes her a woman.

… Except for the things that violently remind her she’s a woman.

TW // MENTIONS OF SEXUAL ASSAULT, DISCUSSION OF CHAPTER FIVE

“You act like a man sometimes, you know that?”

Minho let out a short laugh at that, turning on her heel. She stopped a few feet from the car, thinking of what to say. “I don’t know what to tell you. I’ve got a boy’s name. Maybe that’s it.”

He doesn’t respond, and her anxiety starts to grow, so she continues, “Should I start calling you hyung? Oh, thank you Jisung- hyung for paying for my cigarettes-”

“No. No. People name girls with boys names all the time. You just…” Jisung is obviously frustrated. Annoyed. And… there’s something else, “You just don’t get it. Things like that, back there, are embarrassing.”

Jisung is so frustrating. I was frustrated writing him because I didn’t just want to make him a straight fan-fic douche, on some level, I had to make him believable. I do think I failed a bit at that but, oh well. More than my frustrations with writing him though, he’s just… a shit character. He treats the other characters like shit. 

The most asshole-ish quality about him (and maybe the most realistic) is how little he’s actually there. My friends reading sent me their reactions, and one of the most interesting was the bridge between chapters four and five. Everyone reading knew something was going to happen in Chapter 5, because all of a sudden he was there. He was engaging with the family after multiple times they had pointed out his absence. Changbin and Hyunjin, two people who live in the same house as him, have a couple of lines where they cement he’s never fucking home. And all of a sudden, there’s an entire chapter where his presence is one of the most notable? Something’s up. Surely. 

Minho and Seungmin’s relationship is almost like Jisung and Hyunjin’s has been reversed, in some way. Minho doesn’t work currently, and has never had a dream job like Hyunjin. Seungmin has his dream job and also is the one doing most of the housework at the moment. When Hyunjin comes over, Seungmin makes the tea, serves the snacks. Seungmin is the one who’s dreamed of having his perfect wedding day, and is all too excited to get married and have his family there. He adores Minho. He thinks Minho is the dream wife, and really for Minho, it’s overwhelming. Their roles in the stereotypical “nuclear family” are almost, in a way, switched. The biggest contrast is the phases of their life in which they got married. Minho and Seungmin both waited until later in their lives, for different reasons. Hyunjin got married a year after entering university. 

With Hyunjin, as well, Minho easily fills Jisung’s spot as a lover who gives a fuck, and as an okay parent figure. She and Hyunjin never even technically discuss their feelings for each other properly, but they know they’re there, and Minho definitely cares and worries for Hyunjin- who has changed so much since she last saw her. It doesn’t take long for her to talk to Changbin one on one by chance, and to get him a small something to cheer him up when the rest of the family gathers and pushes him to the side again. Jisung hasn’t been home, but he also hasn’t been a proper part of his family in a long time. It’s like Minho pasted a picture of herself over him in the Yangs’ family photo.

So, circling back to Jisung, Jisung is infuriating. He’s infuriating because he’s never there. He’s infuriating because Minho takes on his role as a father and husband when she shouldn’t need to, and his behavior towards her during the beer scene is upsetting and cruel. It’s a harsh reminder to her that he may not directly be there all the time, but he still has influence over that specific household. He, as an individual, is suffocating, and the spaces he controls becomes suffocating as a result. Minho doesn’t even want to wear her blazer after he’s spilt beer on it, she feels so uncomfortable from every single moment of the situation. Her prized blazer is no longer a comfort item, but instead, an unfamiliar blanket given to someone when they need warmth in the moment.

Minho’s struggle to conform with gender roles was a fun one to write with this fic, I’m not sure if I did it in the spectacularly great way I wanted to, but I do like how Minho’s character specifically ended up turning out as a result. I think it was approached a bit messily- which might’ve been the best way to approach it, because there’s no way I could’ve written this without understanding that gender in general, is a very messy topic. 

THE YANGS

There’s so much I could add about the intricacies of this family. I love grandma Yang so much. I love the concept of Family SKZ so much, and when I first saw their special skit, and then the following sequence, I was hooked. Jeongin unironically plays the role of the matriarch of the family so well, and there are so so many AUs I want to add specifically just grandma Yang to, but specifically this family dynamic in general. They built lore around this universe and made it expansive- going so far as to bring up the skit in other videos. So trust me when I say I put time and effort into finding every little clip I could about the Yangs. (Maybe this paragraph should’ve gone in the inspiration bit? lol).

I wish I had characterized Felix more in this fic. My one big “oof” is that I did not really think about him too much because he wasn’t involved in the main drama, and besides being a sweet grandfather to his grandkids and a helpful but mildly nonsensical father-in-law in the days leading up to the wedding, I just… didn’t have any idea of what to do with his character. Usually, most of SKZ serve as side characters, with just two being the main main pairing- but this is a situation where one could argue that because of how much the same characters were seen over and over again and mentioned over and over again, there’s more than just Minho and Hyunjin being a main couple, or Hyunjin and Jisung, vice versa.

The side characters are the other generations of the family, and because of this, if they’re not directly involved in the affairs of what goes on in the family, they get sidelined a bit. If I write another family SKZ fic (I will, inevitably, it’s one of my favorite little tropes for them, and there’s so many possibilities with it), I’d definitely try to make sure everyone got a little more scenes, rather than just the main plot at the moment. A little filler goes a long way.

WHAT FAMILY REALLY MEANS (AND HOW DEFINITIONS CREATE DRAMA)

Family values are a weird one in this fic. To Minho, Hyunjin, and Jisung, family is a necessary appearance to keep up with. Minho of course cares about family- but her definition of the word ‘family’ is very different from that of the Yangs, and that becomes apparent to her very quickly. Family for Minho is people like Jackson, who was there for her time and time again- when she and her mother struggled, when her mother passed, her wedding, after years of no contact. They’re not actually related, and yet, with Jackson, there’s no status or image for Minho to uphold. Jackson is someone she can trust, fully, and not have to worry about keeping up appearances.

To Hyunjin, ‘family’ becomes a job. It replaces her goals and original plans, and quickly becomes her only task. ‘An image to uphold’, and, in her case, people to take care of. A job in which she is the organizer, the manager, the office worker, and the people behind the scenes working to get everything done all at once- and god forbid she struggles with it. Even her breakdowns are quick, short moments in which she’s vulnerable either alone, or with one other person who isn’t her direct family (ex. Hyunjin cries briefly in front of Minho in the kitchen, because she felt like a bad mother), before she moves on and forces herself to bottle it back up. For her, family is about control- something which she doesn’t actually have much of. 

 “Tea?” Minho finally manages, Hyunjin tucking her hair behind her ear as she silently nods, humming a little ‘yes please’.

Hyunjin always tucks her hair when she’s anxious about something, or nervous- when she feels like she’s not in control of the situation. I added this deliberately. Maybe it’s a bit annoying, how many times she tucks her hair behind her ear, but I was unnecessarily meticulous when it came to her interactions with Minho vs the rest of the family. She feels ostracized still, after years of solidifying herself in the family. Family to her, is claustrophobic. No matter how hard she tries, she can’t seem to change that.

Family for people like Jeongin and Seungmin is much different. For Jeongin, it’s the start of a legacy. She loves her sons dearly, but regrets raising them so comfortably. She’s a bit harder on her grandsons as they grow with the hopes they’ll turn out a bit more hard headed. 

For Seungmin? It’s his dream. He’s everyone’s dream guy in the way he’s a family-man. He loves calling his mom, he loves helping out around the house and small actions to express his love. He likes the idea of domestic romance even if he won’t admit it. He dreams of a wedding, and while he doesn’t necessarily want his own kids, he tries hard at being an uncle (even if he misses the mark with gifts). It hurts when he learns this information about his brother because he thought they were close. He thought he knew Jisung well, and it felt like a slap to the face to learn that his brother is a piece of shit. Someone he grew up with.

To most of the people involved in the story, people like Minho, Hyunjin, Jisung, etc- The Yangs specifically is a tiresome job. One which they have to keep up with in their own different ways. Well, this is more specific to Minho and Hyunjin- and maybe even Hyunjin’s son, Changbin. Jisung definitely sees being a Yang as tiresome, but he doesn’t have to contribute nearly as much to be seen as a hardworking husband or father by the outside world, or even by other family members. He shows up to the dinners, he shows up to the events.

Speaking of Changbin, though, his character is shaped by his father’s failings as a… father, really. Jisung’s main character trait in this fic is his real lack of ability to stick to any specific role he would’ve needed to start contributing to years ago. Also, he’s a little… Well, let’s talk about it.

HOW LIFE CAN GO TERRIBLY, TERRIBLY WRONG.

So, for those who are like me, and need to write out a timeline of the events of things that happen as they receive the information, I’ll break down for you what exactly happened between Hyunjin and Jisung here. We start, actually, all the way in Chapter 1, with this line;

“Okay.” She left the other earrings on her desk, pausing in front of her mirror to put in the star earrings. “Sorry, today’s been messy. Met someone in research so I could find some sources for my paper.” 

“Eugh.” Minho slid off the bed, scrunching her nose. “Couldn’t pay me to go to a library and talk to people. Doesn’t that, like, ruin the whole point?” 

“Not the university library offices.” Hyunjin chuckled, “They’re separate from the actual library.”

Guess who that was about? 

This is the first time Jisung is mentioned, although not directly. Hyunjin had been going to the library building of her university to study. Instead, she found a man who was temporarily working there while his office closed down, who had offered to help out for one of her assignments. He did not help out. Minho assumes she went on to get her dream job for a bit or something until they reconnect, in which Hyunjin says this;

“Taking care of my boys is a full time job. I don’t really have time to work. Jisung works.”

She then goes on to explain that she had two sons while they moved on with their lives, one four year old, Chan, and Changbin, who’s Sixteen.

“He’s yours?” Minho asked, “Like, biologically?”

“What?” Hyunjin sputtered a bit over her cup of tea, laughing. “Yes, he’s mine.”

“That means you would’ve gotten pregnant your first year of university, Hyunjin.” Minho says, furrowing her eyebrows.

It’s awkward. A lot of this fic is just Minho doing mental math and becoming increasingly horrified at the revelations that a thirty-four year old Jisung impregnated a twenty-year-old Hyunjin. Then it’s her realizing he had married Hyunjin so their pregnancy would be legit,  and as a result, Hyunjin dropped out of her dream university and never achieved what she wanted to at the time. She got Changbin, who she loves, but she admits herself, wasn’t planned, and she didn’t handle the news of being pregnant entirely calmly- I mean, who would? 

And her situation now… isn’t the best. Jisung’s constantly ‘out late’, Changbin is aware his little brother, who was planned, and was prepared for, gets much more attention than he did at that age (and he does now), and is more generally beloved by the family. Hyunjin feels trapped in this impossible situation. She could technically go back to school, at her age now, with the money she has now, but it would raise more tension and questions than anything. Jisung would be more likely to ask if she’s thinking of leaving him than he would be a supportive husband. 

Minho tells Hyunjin to her face that she was ‘baby trapped’, and all Hyunjin can really say back is ‘haven’t you considered maybe I knew him? Maybe I wanted this?’ even though she knows herself that isn’t the case. She even tries to defend him to Minho, saying if she knew him more, she’d like him. He just has a hard time expressing himself, right?

Chapter 5 proves this wrong, obviously, but, well…

Hyunjin’s main issue is that she denies the situation she’s put herself in, because technically, she’s in a good-ish situation. Her husband is bad, yeah, but he’s never home. And when he is home, he’s like, okay-ish with her, right? Her kids are fine, and she gets along with her mother-in-law just fine (that could’ve been an AWFUL horror story waiting to happen, right?), and she has access to all this money, and sometimes gets to decorate the pretty little birdcage she’s basically in, right?

The most telling sentences in her scenes are always related to how lonely she is- and how intimately she remembers things. Hyunjin remembers the track number of Minho’s favorite song after all these years because of the sound of the clicks it took to get to it. She remembers simple things too- things that her husband doesn’t even bother to remember. Of course she’s going to remember the name of the church member that watched their kids when they went on a date. Sunmi is probably one of the few people Hyunjin’s talked to outside of the family in a while. She doesn’t have that big of a community or a network of people like Jisung almost definitely does with his co-workers; everyone she knows, she knows through him. It’s suffocating.

Without knowing everything Minho has been through, she’s almost jealous Minho waited so long to settle down now. Seungmin and Minho’s first priority aren’t even kids- they’re just getting married to get married! It’s the kind of thing that makes you break after years of being worn down.

END NOTES

To end this long long ramble, I’ll leave you with one of my favorite lines;

Guilt and confusion weighed heavy on Minho, a large stone that sat on her chest- getting heavier with every new thought about her predicament. 

This story was meant to feel unsatisfying. The only goal I really had for it was that at the very end, you felt unfulfilled. Seungmin’s excited, and happy, and this is the best day of his life; Minho’s wondering how the women in her life felt on their wedding days. If this is the right choice she should be making. She’s questioning it right up until the very last moment…

…and then the last moment comes.

And, ...oh. 

That’s it?

That’s how I wanted it to feel. I wanted people to feel confused and put off by the awkward way it ended, right with Minho and Seungmin saying their ‘I Dos’ but never kissing. Placing them in this limbo of permanent-incompletion.

Minho is constantly in a similar limbo throughout the fic, and so I felt the ending scene was a good way to reflect all of that. The unsure feeling. The empty feeling when the results happen. The unsatisfactory cut off. Permanent incompletion. She never got closure on her and Hyunjin’s relationship all those years ago, and everything now just feels… wrong. 

She’s been surviving up until now, and never really thriving, and now- she’s in a limbo between the two. Because while marrying Seungmin isn’t really essential to survival, she definitely wouldn’t thrive long term in the relationship.

I hope you enjoyed reading this fuckery of a fic and dissecting every little bit of dialogue and long-winded sentence you could- and if that isn’t your cup of tea, I hope you just enjoyed reading it and gasping at the bits that revealed information in dramatic ways (and I hope I delivered dramatically enough).

Thank you so much for reading, and let me know what you think especially of this breakdown of the fic as well. 

Sincerely, 

Yona❤️

#author's note #author's commentary #commentary/opinion #commentaries #ao3 #ao3 fic #writing #writeblr #writer #writers #read the fic first fr or NONE of this will make sense LOL #rambling #ramblings #essay #personal essay #skz #stray kids #skz fic #stray kids fanfic

[justpendule]

I was wondering, I always write about my writing process in the end notes of my fics and they sometimes get quite long, do readers really read the authors' end notes? Asking, and not for a friend.

#Fanfiction #author's note #author's commentary #fanfiction writer #writers #fanfic things

[neonghostcat]

Hundred Winters Grove: Author's Commentary

This is a post that acts as author's commentary for my LiuShen fanfic Hundred Winters Grove.

I'm about to move on to the next project officially and I wanted to write this all down before I forgot!

People who haven't read the story yet might want to do that first, though if you're one of those people who watch a movie for the first time with the Commentary track on, I salute you and support your choices. 🖖

Some of you who've read my work before and left comments that gave me a chance to ramble may already be aware that I enjoy slipping in a bit of ambiguity in my stories sometimes. I don't go for 'open endings' so much, but I do like a little bit of wiggle room for interpretations of a character's thoughts/actions; etc.

Hundred Winters Grove is just... full on, intentionally Open To Interpretation. And it starts with the tags: Not Canon Compliant & Schrödinger's Shěn Qīngqiū.

If you're not already familiar with the paradox of Schrödinger's Cat, you can read the Wikipedia article on it. Properly understanding the concept isn't necessary, though it is interesting!

The important part to understand is just simply, "Until the results of the experiment are observed, the different possibilities (theoretically) exist simultaneously."

Or, in other words -- when I say "Schrödinger's Shěn Qīngqiū" I am actually saying, "Who, precisely, Shen Qingqiu is in this story is open to your interpretation. What you observe is the truth."

---

There are four lenses you can read the fic through:

Shen Yuan transmigrates at the canonical time and all is as expected.

Shen Yuan transmigrates at the canonical time, but more of Shen Jiu lingers than normal.

Shen Yuan transmigrates earlier than canon... perhaps much earlier.

Shen Yuan is having a Second Chance Reincarnation/reset, not just a transmigration.

---

1 - All is as expected

Probably the lens most people were reading under -- which is obviously totally okay and not 'wrong'! Especially for those who were uncomfortable with the first kiss since that bit of crossing boundaries can be handed off to "the antagonist" figure and all is well.

---

2 - SQQ has more "Shen Jiu" than canon

I won't dwell on this possibility too much since it's pretty easy to read through this lens. All you have to assume is that he has more of SJ's memories and/or emotions lingering -- which is something I wanted because of the kisses I thought would be most fun to write naturally lead to a "sharper" interpretation of SQQ than the "soft" one I usually write.

Theoretically you could even read it as LiuJiu and switch it around. It's Shen Jiu, but when System tried to install the Shen Yuan patch, it didn't overwrite the base file.

---

3 - Early Transmigration

There are several suggestions in the story that SY may have arrived earlier and was forced by System to operate under "OOC" rules until roughly when he transmigrated in canon.

The further back you go the more of Shen Jiu's canonical experiences Shen Yuan likely would have been exposed to. This could easily lead to a sharper, more bitter personality and still be all Shen Yuan.

You can say the first hint of this possibility comes from their very first interaction -- when the quake happened and SQQ glanced over for reassurance from LQG. Obviously, it is possible that this is absolutely SJ and he at least trusts his sect-mate this far. But if you're trying to read through this lens, I'd definitely be looking for these smaller moments as supporting evidence.

It's circumstantial for sure, but there are more direct hints too, such as YQY's claims that he'd been noticing an improvement with SQQ "for years".

---

4 - Second-Chance Reincarnation

This is the one with the most (intentionally written) support. I'm not saying 'this is canon', because the whole point of writing/editing the way I did was to lean hard into the Schrödinger's Shěn Qīngqiū concept! But I am saying that I took full advantage of the "Not Canon Compliant" tag either way.

The biggest piece of evidence for this interpretation is in chapter 3 when they briefly mention the Skinner Demon.

The Skinner Demon plotline wasn't in PIDW -- only in SVSSS. But SQQ is aware of it and assigns himself to go and deal with it, leaving his disciples behind. (The wording is pretty vague intentionally, though.)

All of the canon events that are mentioned in HWG would have normally involved Binghe. But Binghe, though still loyal to SQQ, isn't as involved in this story as I might normally write. (I do, after all, adore the soft dynamic between them. I just prefer it as platonic if they're meeting when Binghe is a kid and SQQ is an adult.)

If SQQ is living his story the second time around, like, say... if the whole Back-Up Plan attempt went wrong and he reset instead of becoming plant-zun and he were more free from System's influence to do whatever he wanted, he could easily adjust how he behaved with Binghe to encourage a more... chill dynamic between them.

---

I was originally going to start pulling quotes to support lens 3 and 4, but you'll probably have more fun looking for them yourself. (Plus this is already quite long and I have run out of free time.)

Hope this was interesting for you to read. :)

#author's commentary #yes - I have headcanons of my own fics #story: hundred winters grove

[forever--darling]

writer's workshop

Can we normalize the fact that even though fandom writing is so popular, it as well as writing in general is not always an accepted career?

Writing I believe is hard to be successful in and I praise people that can do it. However, I also look down on myself for believing that I could never make a career out of it. That thought led me to choose other career paths where I felt like I could find the most success. Though I don't regret the major I have chosen, I still wonder why I thought I had to give up writing fanfiction considering many authors in the industry started out with writing about fandoms.

I gave up writing on Tumblr and writing fanfiction at all because I thought there'd be no point doing it when I went away to college. I wasn't majoring in anything English or writing-based, so I believed that it wasn't worth my time. So to focus on my science degree, I stopped writing and pushed this passion to the back of my mind after having been doing it for over five years. Mostly because of a preconceived idea that writing fanfiction and writing any sort of fiction at all could only be something that was accepted when I was a child and a teenager. (Which is not true, obviously)

Now two years after giving up this part of myself, I got more inspiration and decided to open a new tab again. Posting on here, was never for validation, but to share a part of me that I felt I couldn't share with the people in my life. I have realized that no matter how I choose to live my life, or what career path I take, I shouldn't feel that I have to give up things that make me happy -- neither should you.

I guess I am just wondering if other people experience this conflict the older they get while trying to balance it with a future lifestyle and/or that same preconceived idea that you have to give up writing fanfiction?

a/n: I encourage all writers or anyone who has thoughts to leave them below for a detailed discussion. If you would like to reach out personally through a direct message because it is more comfortable, that is totally fine too. I just would love to talk about this with anyone who might be interested or dealing with the same thing.

@forever--darling

#writer's community #writer's life #writer's workshop #my writing #discussion #author's note #author's commentary #tumblr commentary #tumblr thoughts

[jeffgoldblumsmulletinthe90s]

Author’s commentary: If you ever need a helping hand.

Some author’s commentary on my silly little a/b/o fic!! You can read it here on AO3.

---

 Being an alpha or an omega is actually pretty rare. If Steve actually believed the number of guys who claimed to be alpha males in the halls of Hawkins High, he’d think it was one in five instead of one in fifty. He knows a few alpha girls, sure, but he also knows a few redheads.

Redheads are about 1 or 2 percent of the US population. If Hawkins has a female population of about 20,000 people there’s still probably around 200 hundred alpha girls. Probably around 20 of them are in Steve’s age range and he HAS dated all of them.

 Plenty of girls claim to be omegas, too, even though it’s not actually a great thing and everyone knows it’s super rare. Apparently only one woman in five hundred is an omega. Omega males are one in a thousand.

If there’s also like 20,000 men in Hawkins, then there are only 20 omega men. Steve and Jonathan are the only ones in their age range. Math!

 It’s, like, linked to chromosomes. Nancy definitely explained it to him more than once. Of course, Steve studied it in health class. His pediatrician also explained it.

 But the thing is that no one has to know that Steve’s anything at all unless he tells them. His parents are both betas. Of course, John Harrington tells everyone he’s an alpha. So, Steve has always found it easy to tell people that he was too. It didn’t even feel like a lie. At first, it wasn’t. He just didn’t know.

 Girls usually figure it out, if he’s with them more than once. Plenty of them consider it a good thing. No need to worry about condoms.

 Well, as long as they’re not alphas.

 “As long as you’re not in heat, it’s not a risk, right?” Nancy had asked after she figured it out. Because, of course, Nancy Wheeler is one in a hundred.

 “Yeah,” Steve had said. “Besides, do you really want to do it like that?”

 He still remembers the sharp, considering look she’d given him. “Not really.”

 Steve started on his medication after the first heat. Now they come at controlled intervals every few months, when he’s taken 90 suppressant pills. He’s pretty sure they’re not, like, viable? Fertile? One of those words. They’re not real. He wants a family someday, but not when he’s 19 and working for minimum wage and monsters keep popping up out of holes in reality.

 Nancy knows. He’s pretty sure she told Jonathan, because she told him that Jonathan is an omega, too. That’s fine. There are like fifteen thousand people in Hawkins, apparently. There had to be others, right? Maybe she thought it would… do something? Turn Jonathan into Steve’s friend. It makes Steve feel for the guy, yeah, but they have plenty in common besides shooting blanks and having…

Nancy did tell Jonathan. She did not think it was a big deal. Steve is actually NOT fine with it, but he’s sort of like... What can he do about it?

 “Do you think it feels like a pussy?” Tommy had asked once. “Like, inside? Or does it feel like regular anal, just wetter?”

 He had been talking about female omegas, obviously, but male omegas have the same parts.

Teen boys are disgusting. (affectionate)

 Robin knows. Because of the Russians. “Tell me a secret, something nobody knows about Steeeeeeve Haaaaaarrington.”

 “Well, some people know,” he’d said. “Mostly girls.”

 He had smiled at her. She had wrinkled her cute little nose.

 That little wrinkle and the wide-eyed, open-mouth look that followed are in Steve’s head when he tells Eddie Munson. Eddie has only been awake for a day, but Steve swings by to visit as soon as he can.

 “They have you on the good drugs,” he says.

 Eddie makes a sound like a groan of agreement.

 “You too, though?” Eddie says. “Not the only one that got all gnawed on.”

 “No way,” Steve says. “Nothing stronger than aspirin.”

 Eddie’s face scrunches up. “What? Why?”

 Steve doesn’t want to say at first, but Eddie pushes.

 “I haven’t been out that long,” he slurs. “You’re not healed up. It must hurt. You just hate seeing the doctors? You didn’t get it checked out? I’ll call the nurse…”

 Steve reassures him that he got stitched up properly.

 “You allergic?” Eddie asks. “Come on, you can tell ol’ Ed, it’ll be good. I’ll know not to offer you any… any opiates. Not that you would. I mean… I’m not calling you a junkie. Not that there’s anything wrong with being a junkie. Some of my favorite people were junkies.”

 Steve huffs out a sigh. Eddie asks him why again. “You can tell me,” he insists.

 “They don’t give that stuff to people who… who can get pregnant,” Steve says.

This is real, but I may have exaggerated it. But I got to use pain killers in Japan that are banned by the FDA in the U.S. because they can cause birth defects. And the U.S. often doesn’t allow people who COULD become pregnant to use certain medications. This is because of the thalidomide tragedy in the 60s. I think this would extend to male omegas and it would also give Steve another reason to avoid going to the doctor when he gets his ass handed to him by canonical events. Also the pain killers that cause birth defects were fucking baller. Totally wish they had them in the U.S.

 Eddie’s face scrunches up even more. “You can’t…”

 Then his whole face relaxes at once, going wide and open. He looks at Steve.

 “You,” he says. “Really?” The R is all soft and mushy because Eddie is on a lot of pain killers and his cheek got all fucked up. It must hurt for him to talk this much. Or maybe he can’t even feel it.

 “Yeah,” Steve says.

 “We match,” Eddie says.

 Steve’s eyebrows climb up his forehead. There is no way every guy who gets caught up in this shit is an omega.

 “Yin and yang,” Eddie says. “Omega and alpha.”

 “Oh,” Steve says.

 Eddie smiles at him. “Thanks for… For trusting me.”

 “You kind of made me tell you,” Steve says. “Pretty pushy about it, actually.”

 The part of Eddie’s face not covered by a bandage shows off his smirk. “Well, what can I say, it’s in my nature.”

 Steve’s throat feels dry and tight. He swallows.

 Eddie gets out of the hospital before Max, because he didn’t break any bones. Plus some other things happen before Max wakes up, the kinds of things that make Steve think… This isn’t over. But Robin and Nancy still go off to college. Robin stays closer than she had planned to, though. Jonathan doesn’t follow Nancy. He stays. Because Joyce Byers stays. She says she’s been as far as California and Alaska and couldn’t escape.

 “Maybe we could move to Japan,” she jokes.

I almost made this “Maybe we could move to Guam.” But I cannot doxx myself that much in a fic.

 The trailer park moves nearly out of the town limits.

 The high school doesn’t hold classes again until September.

 Steve tells his new boss Kathy — a stern woman who told him Robin Buckley “wasn’t much of a reference” — that he won’t be available on Tuesday and Friday mornings. Retail pays him fucking dust, but at least he can make himself available to drive Eddie to his twice weekly appointments.

 Eddie doesn’t mention it again. There are no thinly veiled jokes, no sideways glances at Steve when someone mentions omegas, no puns or quips or even whispers. Eddie doesn’t even hold doors open for him.

 Instead, Steve opens the passenger door of the bimmer for Eddie to collapse into.

 “Thanks, man,” he says, if he’s got the energy.

 It’s often quiet, but when it’s not, it’s a great way to get to know Eddie. Tapes of Metallica, Judas Priest, and Iron Maiden start to pile up in his glove box and around the parking brake. They trade off. Eddie bitches about the music that Steve chooses, but Steve catches him moving his fingers along to “Separate Ways.” Almost like he’s trying to figure out how to play it? Steve doesn’t want to get hopeful.

Journey kind of slaps. Eddie will never admit this.

 At least Eddie likes Springsteen.

 “Yeah, Wayne’s super into him,” Eddie explains. “And a lot of blues. Like, uh, Muddy Waters?”

 “My mom listens to Muddy Waters,” Steve says. “Or, uh, she used to.”

 They fall into a friendly pattern. Before his appointments, Eddie wants a distraction. He wants to argue about the best sandwich fillings or why P.E. class is mandatory anyway. He wants to give Steve a hard time about how little he learned about movies in his few months before Family Video fell into a fissure in the earth.

 “Clothing retail suits you,” he says. “You’re basically a mannequin already. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you wear the same polo twice.”

 “I wore this last week,” Steve insists, plucking at his shirt.

 “Don’t recall,” Eddie insists, smirking.

Eddie absolutely recalls.

 At first, Steve joked that Eddie had to tell him when he was cleared to drive himself.

 “I want control of my stereo back.” As if Robin or Erica or Dustin ever let him pick his own music. Eddie’s been the most fair about things.

 Besides, he’s gotten really invested in hearing about the farm kids that Eddie has night classes with to finish his credits. There’s this girl who moved here from the Philippines to get married to some farmer and she’s been trying to get a high school diploma. Steve thought Eddie was making that up, actually, but Robin says the Philippines is a real country.

“A Nation At Risk” came out in 1983 and caused a lot of changes in the US public education system that are definitely clearly affecting students in Stranger Things. For example, Eddie needs to graduate in 1986 or he’s about to have to meet stricter requirements for graduation (and he can’t even meet the ones that are already there). But it was a really biased report. A lot of the issues with the drop-out rate were actually because of the increase in migrant farm workers’ kids in the school system. Since Hawkins is clearly an agricultural area, I wanted to represent the kids who in the 1980s were struggling to get credits for graduation: English language learners and farm workers. Anyway, night school is awesome. Credit recovery is good.

 The days and weeks drip past, measured in hours of retail and long drives with Eddie, or Dustin, or Max. He goes running with Lucas. He lets Max and El watch movies in his empty living room so that Will can have some time for himself and his brother.

 Steve uses a wall calendar to count against the pills in the clamshell case. The white ones will start on a Saturday, which means his heat will definitely still be happening on a Tuesday. He calls off of work, but calling Eddie is harder.

 “Do you remember, uh, when we talked about pain killers?” Steve asks, over the phone.

 “Yeah, I told you that I’ve been off the prescription stuff for a while,” Eddie says. “And I swear I’m not holding onto any to sell.”

 “No, no,” Steve says. “When you were in the hospital? Do you, uh, not remember that?”

 The line goes so quiet that Steve thinks maybe the call dropped.

 “Yeah, I remember,” Eddie says.

Man went on an entire emotional journey to answer this.

 “Well,” Steve says. “I’m going to hit the sugar pills in my suppressants at the end of this month.”

 More silence. “Alright, Harrington, don’t say shit to me about my academic record, alright, but I don’t know what that means.”

 Steve swallows. He can say it. He’s told girls before. Yes, they were girls he was sleeping with. They were girls who wanted to know why he was canceling a date. They were girls who would flirtatiously offer to lend him a hand.

 “I can’t drive you on Tuesday that week,” he says, instead.

 “Oh,” Eddie says. “That’s all? I’ll figure something out. Jeff could probably take me. Thanks for the head’s up!”

 After he hangs up, Steve puffs his cheeks up and huffs. It’s none of Eddie’s business anyway.

 It’s not anyone’s fucking business but his own.

 Steve never shares, has never shared his heat with anyone. It’s probably for the best. It makes a mess. He has to put down towels and trash bags. He even got a plastic drop cloth, like for painting. There are special plastic mattress protectors available, but they’re clearly branded for female omegas even in catalogs.

Steve Harrington: I didn’t choose the aesthetic for my bedroom, but I have committed myself to it. I’m not buying pink flowery plastic sheets.

 Also, he gets kind of weird. The hormones make it like being drunk or high (or drugged). He can’t control his thoughts. He thinks of all kinds of weird, gross stuff that he doesn’t really want. Before Nancy, he once spent a full day just touching his cock and thinking about being blindfolded and tied to the bench in the locker room. If he wasn’t willing to touch the wet, aching thing inside him then all the alphas and betas in Hawkins High would surely be happy to do it for him.

 After Nancy, he’d think about her touching him there, the way her whole small hand might fit in him, the way she got big during her rut and that might fit so nicely inside. It wouldn’t hurt at all.

I’ll get to it, but being around an omega in heat will trigger a sympathetic rut in an alpha. Even though Nancy didn’t spend Steve’s heats with him, she still went into rut because he went into heat. Only, Steve totally helped her out with her rut. I swear Nancy is not a bad person. She’s just kind of selfish with Steve and Steve pursued this relationship pretty hard even though she was not as into him.

 But Nancy didn’t want that. She really didn’t want that. He was dreading how it would feel, touching himself to thoughts of her, after she’d called the thought of having kids with him “a total nightmare.” He would definitely still think about it, while his brain turned into horny, hormonal soup.

OK! In Nancy’s defense here, she knew she wasn’t as into Steve and she knew Steve wanted a family and she drew that line, because she couldn’t commit to him and what IF??? She’s really trying not to hurt him or hurt him worse.

 Sometimes, Steve thought about Robin, too. But not like that. He thought about her holding him, looking him in the eye, and telling him it was fine. She’d tell him that he was safe, that it would all be fine while some faceless alpha male fucked him. That was… Weird. Definitely not the kind of thing to talk about.

 He still had the locker room fantasy, too. That didn’t go away. None of it really ever went away. He just didn’t think about it outside the heat.

Narrator: He is thinking about it right now outside of a heat.

 For the next few weeks, Steve drives Dustin to school and picks up the packet of work for Max Mayfield. He drives nearly out of town to deliver it before he has to go open the boutique, which is thankfully only another forty minutes in the same direction. If he’s not also closing, Steve usually picks Dustin up, too. Or he carts all the kids around somewhere.

 On Tuesdays and Fridays, after he drops off Max’s schoolwork and makes sure that she has something to eat for lunch, he holds the door of the bimmer open for Eddie, who hobbles down the steps from his uncle’s new doublewide. Sometimes he has to work when they get back to Hawkins, so he can’t always pick up Dustin on those days. Apparently, he usually gets a ride with Will and El? Steve doesn’t always find out until he picks up Dustin the next morning.

 On Fridays and Saturday evenings, he usually has a date. When he doesn’t, he does the more arduous chores like grocery shopping and laundry. Lately, with the fissures through the town and the way people keep moving away, he’s had a lot more time for laundry.

 At the end of each day, no matter what he does, Steve calls Robin on her dorm room phone and talks until the handset of the cordless phone beeps at him that its battery is dying.

 “How is Eddie holding up?” she always asks.

Narrator: Steve likes to talk about Eddie which is why Robin always asks about him. Neither of them know what’s going on here. Steve thinks Robin just cares about Eddie because he’s her friend too. Robin just likes to hear Steve recount whatever weird shit Eddie did this week.

 “Have you talked to Nancy lately? How are her classes?”

 Finally, she asks, “Hey, isn’t your, uh, thing coming up?”

Friendship is keeping track of your best friend’s hormone cycles because you care about him.

 “Yeah,” Steve says, pacing his parents’ cavernously large dining room. “And it means I can’t drive Eddie to his Tuesday appointment.”

 “That blows! Did he have to cancel?” Robin asks.

 “No, no, I think his friend is taking him,” Steve explains. “Jeff was in your class, right?”

 “Oh! Yeah, yeah, we had English together in junior year,” Robin offers.

 “What about you?” she asks. “Will you be OK? Got someone to bring you snacks?”

 “I’ll stock up,” Steve promises.

Robin would bike over and bring Steve snacks all through her senior year and the summer before she went to college.

 That weekend, Lucas and Mike want to take Will to the nerd shop that opened last year just outside Fort Wayne. Erica invites herself. Erica and Lucas get into a fight over riding shotgun. Mike tells him that his music sucks and “Can’t we listen to anything good? Eddie said you have good music.”

 Will rolls his eyes and spends most of the ride staring out the window at Indiana‘s drying corn stalks.

 In the front seat, Erica opens and closes the case for “Defenders of Faith.” She leans over and turns up the Madonna song on the radio.

Erica knows what’s up with all the metal albums in Steve’s car.

 When they get back, Dustin radios that he’s at Eddie’s and they’re both “so pissed that you guys went to Idyllwild without us!”

Idlewild/idylwyld/etc. is a name for a lot of stuff and it’s like an idea of a magical forest. I used it for this because there’s a crystals and nerdshit store named that where I live.

 “Call me if they need rides home,” Steve tells Eddie.

 Eddie leans heavily against the doorframe and taps his fingertips against the door.

 “You doing alright?” he asks.

 It’s the closest he’s ever come to acknowledging all of this since he was in the hospital. Steve rocks back on his heels. Keeps his hands in his jeans’ pockets.

 “Yeah,” he says, “of course.”

 Can Eddie smell him, he wonders.

 Steve figures that stuff — alphas being able to just smell when someone is horny or going to go into heat — is all urban legends and romance novels from the grocery store. Steve does feel like his nose is sharper, because he took the first sugar pill last night. Isn’t that the placebo effect?

 But Steve imagines he can smell the leather of Eddie’s jacket.

A heightened sense of smell is associated with the peak of fertility in the hormonal cycle. Steve really CAN smell the leather of Eddie’s jacket.

 “You look tired,” Eddie says.

 “Gee thanks,” Steve replies.

 “That’s not —“ Eddie’s lips peel back from his teeth. “I’ll call these shitheads’ moms to get them, or they can just sleep in a pile on the floor. Don’t worry about us, Harrington.”

 Steve peaks around the leaning tower of Eddie’s body to see Dustin swatting Lucas with a notebook emblazoned with a flaming skull.

 “Whatever you say,” Steve says. “You should worry about yourself, maybe.”

 “Go home and get some rest,” Eddie says, with finality.

 Steve forgets to buy snacks on the way.

 He wakes up already wet and sticky. He gets the sheets off the bed and replaces them with some that are already stained, plus the drop cloth. Towels go on top of that.

 Prickly heat skitters around under Steve’s skin in a way that sets his teeth on edge. Something inside him starts cramping.

 It aches.

 He curls up in a ball and tries to get some more sleep.

 When he wakes again, his mouth and throat feel like a desert. There’s a wet spot on the towel under his hips. He’s already come in his sleep.

 Steve peels himself off the bed and staggers downstairs to get a glass of water. Slick dribbles out of his asshole — or it’s not his asshole right now? — and rubs between his cheeks in a way that makes Steve gag. Some of it runs down his leg and drips on the kitchen floor while he gets ice water from the fridge dispenser.

No one ever talks about how gross it is to be actually dripping fluids from your genitalia. But I am very brave lol

 He drinks it down in big gulps and nearly comes again right there in the middle of the kitchen. The cool water makes him moan. Steve looks around to make sure no one is home. He gets another glass of water and puts his hand down his briefs. The fabric is more wet than damp still, but his cock is hard.

 Most of the time, Steve doesn’t think too hard about his body. It does what it’s supposed to (sort of) and it looks the way it’s supposed to (sort of). He never had the grades or the inclination to take human anatomy; everything he’s learned about it has been second hand. Apparently male omegas don’t have real testicles? Steve’s rolling his balls in one hand while he finishes his second glass of water and they sure feel real to him. But what does he know. He’s never touched any other balls.

 “Fuck,” he says, feeling like his skin shrank overnight. He can feel the roots of his teeth and hair. The thing inside him cramps up again. He’s dripping on the kitchen floor.

 Steve grabs some paper towels to shove into his briefs so that he can get upstairs again and won’t have to clean up too much mess out of the carpets.

 The fantasies, the thoughts, don’t hit Steve until he’s really jerking himself. Grabbing his balls in the kitchen doesn’t count. In the en suite bathroom, Steve shoves the paper towels into the wastebasket and washes his hands. The towels on his bed are damp, sticking to his already sweaty skin. He pushes his briefs down and kicks them to the bottom edge of the bed. One hand on his balls, Steve puts the other around his cock.

 While he jerks off, the cramping eases. There are no sudden spikes of pain. It just feels like he’s sick to his stomach, instead of like he’s going to shit his guts out immediately. Not that he can shit at all right now.

 “This is so gross,” Steve says to himself. His next groan is more frustration than anything.

 He tries to think about something sexy, something to take his mind off the aching, leaking mess that his body has become. As if being scarred over and broken wasn’t enough, he’s always got this hanging there in the back of his mind. Would he have been less bullshit if he was an alpha or a beta instead? Or if he’d been able to embrace being an omega, like Jonathan apparently has?

 Does Nancy touch Jonathan there? Does she put her small hands —

Steve wants to get fisted SO BAD

 “Jesus Christ,” Steve hisses out. “Just think about Phoebe Cates. Think about Phoebe Cates.”

 Dripping wet and smelling like chlorine. Clean. Steve tries to imagine the wet spandex of a bikini under his fingers or against his mouth.

 Instead, he thinks about Robin, because fuck him, right?

 Robin told him to get snacks and he didn’t, which means he’s going to feel like absolute dogshit by Wednesday morning. He imagines her hands on his face, reaches up and touches his own sweaty cheek with his too-warm hand. He can picture her face, open and sweet and blue eyes laughing at him a little.

 “Come on, dingus, you’re not that gross,” says fantasy Robin. “This is a normal bodily function. And not even one of the actually nasty ones!”

 The fantasy Robin in Steve’s head rambles just like the real Robin. It’s realistic, but not too realistic. First of all, the real Robin Buckley wouldn’t even want to be in the room with him if he was jerking off. Second of all, the real Robin Buckley had the grades to take Human Anatomy. He’s never asked her about it. He doesn’t want to know what’s going on inside of him right now.

If Robin knew that Steve doesn’t know jackshit about his own anatomy she would absolutely sit him down with a book full of pictures and talk his ears off about it. But she’s like, “It’s his body! I can’t lecture Steve about his own body! He knows himself best!” She is incorrect, but her heart is in the right place.

 The aching inside matches the way his other muscles flex as he gets close to orgasm. It would feel so good to have something inside him, wouldn’t it? He actually doesn’t know. He tries not to touch that.

 But it feels like it would feel good.

 “You’re not gross,” says Robin’s voice in his fantasy.

 “Don’t worry,” he imagines another voice saying.

 Steve can picture it perfectly, right here in this room. He’d love to have them both in this room. He’d love to not be alone in this stupid, enormous, ugly house with its double doors and plate glass windows.

 He could be on his knees at the foot of the bed, with a pillow under him. Robin would be laid out on the bed on her stomach with her feet up in the air, like she usually is, but holding Steve’s face in her hands instead of her own.

 Eddie would kneel behind him, pushing the head of his alpha cock against the mess between Steve’s legs until he slides into him.

 Steve groans so loud and low that it rattles. Wetness gushes out of him. His thighs go tight, squeezing shut like he can keep it inside of him.

 “Fuck,” Steve says, squeezing his eyes closed like he can stop seeing things in his imagination. “No, no, no.”

 This isn’t some faceless alpha or beta hard-on he’s imagining. Eddie Munson has a face that Steve can picture all too clearly after months of driving him to and from the VA therapist the feds assigned to him.

 “I can’t,” Steve says. “I can’t.”

 When he comes, it’s clear and abundant, the same watery consistency as the stuff leaking out his other hole.

 His dick stays painfully hard.

haha sucks to be Steve

 Eddie would have a big dick — all alphas do, right? Male omegas are supposed to have small dicks, so Steve really got lucky there. But alphas have, like, really big dicks. Which means that Eddie has a really big dick and a knot that would make it even bigger if he came hard enough.

I almost decided to give Eddie a very normal-sized dick in this fic. Because even a normal-sized dick would be big for someone who has never taken dick. But don’t worry, I decided Eddie can have a big dick if Steve wants him to have  a big dick. Why deny myself fun things to write?

 Steve could make him come hard enough.

 “No, fuck,” Steve says, out loud. His hand on his balls slips back, moving over his open hole. Steve rubs at it, which makes his guts cramp up.

 Fine, he maybe couldn’t make Eddie come hard enough the first time. Because first times usually suck. But maybe he’d get lucky.

 Eddie would certainly deserve it if Steve made him pop a knot.

 Steve thinks about Eddie pulling Robin out of danger, putting his body between her and vines or bats or whatever. He thinks about Eddie swinging an oar side by side with Nancy to save his sorry ass. He thinks about Eddie’s hand in Robin’s, pulling her to her feet with him.

Eddie canonically tries so hard. I wanted Steve to take notice! But the things that Eddie does to help Steve are just not going to be as memorable to Steve as the things Eddie does to help Robin or Nancy lol

 Eddie deserves to feel so good. Steve could do that for him. That’s what this fucking hole was made for, right? Like Eddie said: They match.

 “We match,” Steve mumbles to himself. He turns on his side and curls his knees toward his chest. He’s not even touching his dick anymore.

 “We match.”

 His finger slips inside. It doesn’t feel like pussy, all soft and textured inside, but it’s not tight like a beta girl’s asshole. Inside, Steve’s just loose and wet and aching.

 Two fingers fit easily and he knows that his fingers aren’t small. Eddie’s aren’t either.

 Steve imagines how it would feel to have the metal of Eddie’s rings press against the edges of this hole in him. His whole body jerks. His teeth grind together.

 Eddie nearly died — would have died — to keep Dustin safe and — and — Steve’s mind stutters over that. He can’t think about blood on his hands when there is so much wetness pouring out of him and into his palm. It’s body-hot like blood, but without the metal taste in the air.

 “Oh, fuck,” Steve says, as he thinks about Eddie tasting him.

 He’s done it himself, spent so long between a girl’s legs that he slipped his tongue into her there for some variety. In alphas (Nancy) and betas (Heidi), it’s usually kind of bitter. But in omegas there was a starchy sweetness to it. Something that he could even smell before he tasted it, like baking bread or freshly boiled pasta.

Steve Harrington eats ass.

 When the cramping has eased up, Steve staggers downstairs again with two pairs of briefs and some sweatpants on. He scrambles eggs and makes toast. Carrying it all upstairs, Steve eats in bed, because it doesn’t matter if he makes a mess.

 He has already made a mess.

 Eddie, he knows, doesn’t care about mess. Steve has seen the inside of his trailer — in the Upside Down, in its crime scene state, in the brand new double wide at the town limits. Eddie doesn’t give a fuck about mess. He laughs about spilled beers and bong water. He shrugs off flimsy paper plates that let slices of pizza drop cheese-side down onto the rug.

If it had fallen crust side down, he WOULD have still eaten it and so would Steve. That’s still good pizza. Also, anyway, this is all to say that Steve actually thinks it’s so sexy that Eddie is kind of a slob.

 “Waste of food,” he might say, “but you’re the one paying for it, right, Harrington?”

 Steve wants to see that same smirk between his thighs, framed by Eddie’s hands on his knees.

 By nightfall, after a dinner consisting of pre-packaged sliced ham and a piece of string cheese, Steve has gotten tired of fingering himself. His wrist fucking aches with the repetitive motion. The pads of his fingers wrinkled hours ago and haven’t returned to normal. He feels slimy from his lower back down to his ankles, all over.

Classic Depression Meal(tm): charcuterie

 His fingers are thick, but not long. At least, they’re not long enough for what he wants. It feels good, it turns out. The cramping eases if he’s got something in him.

 If he had Eddie’s huge alpha cock in him, he probably wouldn’t cramp at all.

 Steve goes to wash his hands in the en suite. He comes back with a condom and an old roller brush from freshman year, when he was first developing his look.

 He tries not to think about what he’s doing as he opens the condom and rolls it onto the handle of the hairbrush, but the bristles dig into this palm. There is no way this is going to feel good.

DO NOT DO THIS

 Steve lays back on the soiled towels and draws his knees up and back, toward his shoulders. His arms squeeze down between his thighs. He switches hands, because his right forearm still aches.

 The hard, blunt end — slippery with latex — pushes into him easily. Steve hates that it’s easy, wishes that it hurt or something. Maybe he really is made to be fucked.

 He draws in a deep breath as the muscles inside him, inside whatever hole this is, relax.

 “Oh, fuck me,” he tries saying.

 A little louder. “Fuck me!”

 “Come on, Eddie, fuck me like you mean it.”

 He holds the bristles of the brush so tight, moving the hairbrush fast and hard. It hurts his hand, but it feels so good inside him. There’s something hot about it. The sound is wet and syrupy — ketchup in a bottle, mashed potatoes with too much cream. The handle pushes a little air into him and it comes out in bubbles.

🎶 Macaroni in a pot, that’s some wet-ass pussy 🎶

 “Aw, gross, gross,” Steve says, before getting back to the fantasy.

 Eddie doesn’t mind mess and he doesn’t mind gross either. He showed Steve his skin grafts in the hospital because he thought Steve didn’t believe that his nipple could just be gone.

 “I don’t really care about the nipple,” Eddie had told him, “but the tattoo was expensive. I paid for that! The nipple was free.”

This is one of the earliest ideas I had for a headcanon where Eddie lives and I was so happy to use it.

 He had grinned when Steve laughed, despite himself.

 If Eddie were here, on top of him, thrusting into him and making the same loud, wet noises come out of his hole, he’d probably like it. He likes loud (music) and fast (driving) and messy (bedroom) and gross (skin grafts, scars, blood).

 “Fuck, don’t think about that,” Steve tells himself. “Stop it, stop it.”

 Think about Eddie now, Eddie healed and almost cleared to drive places. Approved for “light activity.”

 Was sex a light activity? It burns like two hundred calories an hour, Steve had heard that somewhere. Maybe from Carol, who heard it from a friend who had read it in a magazine.

 It probably counts as light activity if Eddie doesn’t have to do any of the work.

 Steve rolls onto his side, hand letting go of the hairbrush. Then he pushes up onto his knees. The headboard is too low to hold, so Steve leans an arm against the wall. He braces himself against his aching right forearm and wrist. His dick, almost entirely forgotten about, has started to flag. At least he can’t feel his pulse in the head of his cock anymore. But it’s still hard enough that he’s going to drip all over his pillow in this position.

 Steve holds the condom down around the handle, but takes a looser grip on the bristles. He pushes himself down on the handle of the hairbrush, angling it forward inside him so it points toward his dick. That nudges something good inside him. The cramping muscle eases up.

 The clear, sweet-smelling slick runs down over Steve’s hand and the bristles of the hairbrush.

 “Gross,” Steve says, again. It would get all over Eddie’s hips and thighs. It would drip down his knot, down his balls, and —

 “Fuck,” Steve hisses. It felt really good at this angle. Like nothing he’s felt before. Steve feels light-headed. Electricity runs up his spine and all the way into the roots of his hair. The breath shudders in his chest.

 He wants to make Eddie come inside him, plug him up with his knot, and keep it there. It would — it could — well, no, Steve takes the fucking pills for that. It wouldn’t. It couldn’t.

 But it’s his fucking fantasy and it isn’t like this is really about Eddie. This isn’t the real Eddie Munson. This is just a fantasy. It’s about Steve’s stupid fucking heat and his stupid fucking hormones.

There’s a breeding kink!!! It’s coming!!!

 Steve grinds his hips back against the hairbrush until he feels bristles at the edge of his hole and flinches back. His thighs ache. His toes curl.

 Eddie could just lay back and let Steve have everything he wants. Doesn’t Steve deserve that? He’s always driving him around like his personal fucking chauffeur. Steve always pays for the pizza and beer. The least that Eddie could do would be let Steve touch his throat on the unscarred side and use that huge alpha cock he must have to massage the aching muscles inside him. Wait, are they even muscles?

 “Fuck, I don’t,” Steve says to himself. “He doesn’t owe you shit, asshole. Just be happy he’s alive.”

Steve has a lot of complex emotions about Eddie that he just doesn’t think about! In the same way that he swallows up all his anger and resentment at Nancy and Jonathan, he also just chooses not to think about or feel anger/resentment/jealousy/entitlement toward Eddie. hehehe

 Steve is happy Eddie’s alive, because that means Eddie can pump him full of alpha jizz and then knot him. During heat, that’s a guaranteed pregnancy.

 Steve comes so hard that his vision whites out.

HEHEHEHE

 He scrambles to yank the hairbrush handle out of himself and falls off the bed. Once on his feet, Steve rushes to the bathroom and turns on the shower with shaking hands. Cold water blasts down on him.

 “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” His voice echoes off the bathroom walls.

 Clean and dried off, but still shaking, Steve lays down some fresh towels. He wipes the slick off the headboard and wallpaper with a damp cloth. The condom goes into the trash, but Steve sets the hairbrush on his bedside table beside the lamp. He always sleeps with the lights on, but that makes it even harder to fall asleep tonight.

 As best he can, Steve tries not to think. He touches the whorls and dips of the scar on his side and the fainter one on his throat. He can sort of feel his own touch. Maybe he just imagines it.

 Clearly, he has a pretty active imagination.

 Steve wakes up even more desperate. He has to jerk off three times just to get downstairs for some water. The thought of breakfast makes bile rise in his throat. He tries not to think about Eddie, just a warm body pressing against him and into him. Or no body at all, just a dick.

 But he knows what Eddie’s hands look like — the pink scars on the knuckles that he massages with lotion every day. “Can’t lose my moneymakers.” Steve could probably find all the scars on Eddie’s body blindfolded in the dark. He knows the dark circles under Eddie’s eyes and the way his top teeth show in his smile when he is really amused by something and not just smirking.

 Eddie is so good with the kids. Eddie likes kids. He tries hard to roughhouse with Dustin and Lucas even though he’s still getting the strength back in his core and his leg. The one side of him is so much worse, but Steve could… Steve would…

 Steve slips another condom over the handle of the hairbrush and fucks himself until both wrists are sore.

 He feels bruised inside, but it feels good to poke at that feeling. The wet sound of the hairbrush handle moving in and out of him still bothers him, but Steve isn’t alert enough today to care as much as he did yesterday.

 He presses his face into the towel over his pillow and reaches back over his hip to push the hairbrush into himself, slow and deep. His cock drips clear, slick fluid like a broken faucet.

 Eddie could frame his hips with his perfect hands — calluses from his guitar strings, metal rings, the scars of a hero — and Steve would push his hips back just like this. Steve bites down on his forearm.

 In this position, Eddie could just close his eyes and pretend it was someone he actually wanted. He could just pretend Steve’s weird omega hole was a girl’s tight pussy. Steve could be real, real quiet. Maybe Eddie would keep his jeans on — or Steve could shave his legs like he had for four years of swim team. He could make it feel a little more like a girl for Eddie. He’d do anything at all if Eddie would just come inside him. It would just take one heat, a quick hump and dump.

To be clear, this is a manifestation of Steve’s self-hatred/self-disgust. Eddie Munson would NEVER.

 Steve imagines his belly growing swollen and heavy with Eddie Munson’s baby, his pup, his little nugget. Sometimes omega males even lactate when pregnant. Would that happen to him? How much of a mess could Eddie make of him in one night?

 Or maybe it wouldn’t be one night.

 Steve’s hand is numb as he fucks himself. His spit runs down his arm into the towel. The wet sound of the hairbrush handle moving inside him drowns out Steve’s breathing and the thud of his heart in his ears.

 Once Eddie knows that Steve is an easy hole to fuck, he might come back for seconds. If they fuck while Steve is pregnant, it won’t be this hole. It would just be — it would just be sodomy, right? But Eddie seems like a guy who might like that, the kind of bad boy who likes girls with tattoos and piercings and lots of turns around the block.

AGAIN: Eddie Munson would absolutely fuck Steve, but he would never treat Steve as just an easy hole to fuck unless Steve explicitly asked him to do that!!!

 Steve can’t be most of those things, but he certainly has some notches in his imaginary bedposts. He could be that girl, at least he fantasizes that he could be. The fantasy is enough to make him shake and grunt.

 It’s just hormones, just the heat.

 Between fucking himself until it hurts, Steve tries to remember to drink enough water and eat some toast. He feels like a walking bruise and he can’t stop thinking about holding a baby with big dark eyes and curly hair.

 Which, actually, horrifyingly, isn’t new.

 What’s worse: fantasizing about getting knocked up by his ex who has moved on or his straight friend who relies on him to take him to doctor’s appointments? Because the fantasy baby looks about the same in his heat-boiled brain.

Steve has a type.

 “Eddie would be a good dad,” Steve says, clutching his glass of ice water.

 Who is going to hear him?

 Steve guesses that his heat is breaking because he’s standing in the kitchen and doesn’t feel a waterfall dripping down his leg. It’s uncomfortably wet between his cheeks still and he feels open in a way that he hopes will be over by tomorrow. He’s got work.

 The phone rings while Steve is in the kitchen, still, working on his third glass of water. He picks it up, thinking it’s Robin.

 “Harrington residence. This is Steve speaking.”

 Eddie’s giggle fills the shell of his ear. Oh, there’s the waterfall.

My friend tweeted, “We have to let tops giggle in fanfic“ and it was like over a week after I posted this chapter. Anyway, Eddie Munson is an alpha dom top (or so he thinks) and also a giggler. Steve is soooooo into it.

 “Holy shit, dude,” Eddie says. “You say that every time, but it’s never any less funny. Jonathan, hey, Johnny, have you heard the way Harrington answers the phone?”

 In the background, Steve hears Jonathan Byers telling Eddie not to call him that.

 “What do you want, Munson?” Steve says, like he’s not crossing his legs as tightly as he can.

 “Just calling to check in on you,” Eddie says. “Like, because of,” Eddie’s voice drops to a whisper. “Your thing today.”

 Steve feels all hot and wet again. He tries to clench harder; that makes the cramps come back.

 “It’s fine,” Steve says. “I’m fine.”

 “Good,” Eddie says, “good.”

 “Did you get a ride alright?” Steve asks.

 “Yeah!” Eddie says, bright and cheerful. “Session sucked today. Legs, you know.”

 Steve winces in sympathy. His thighs still hurt from trying to ride the hairbrush handle yesterday.

 “But, oh you’re going to love this, Harrington, you fucking jock, I did a thirty-second plank today.”

 “Holy shit, man.” That does not sound like light activity to Steve, but what does he know? He thinks about Eddie on his elbows laying out flat on top of him.

 “Yeah, watch out, I’m coming for your role in the party. Going to multiclass as a bard and a fighter.”

 Steve laughs even as he starts to say, “Hawkins High doesn’t have a class in—“

 “Don’t be cute,” Eddie says, and Steve’s mouth snaps shut. “Maybe you tune out Henderson when he’s talking about this shit, but I know you listen to me.”

 “Oh yeah?” Steve asks. “How can you be so sure of that?”

 “Because you ask questions,” Eddie says. “And I am ever so happy to elucidate you, my curious friend, no matter how many times you say —” Eddie’s voice drops into what Steve realizes is an imitation of him, “Elves? Like Keebler?”

Eddie fucking loves the things Steve says about DnD. He thinks Steve is so fun. He loves answering Steve’s questions.

 Steve feels something drip down his ankle onto the floor. He reaches for his glass of water.

 “Maybe I just like to hear the sound of your voice,” he says. Jesus Christ.

 Eddie giggles again and the phone drills the sound directly into Steve’s brain through his ear canal.

 “Anyway, Jonathan drove me today, so we’ve been studying,” Eddie explains. “I checked on Mad Max for you. She joined us for lunch, but not the studying.”

Jeff had work! He couldn’t call off on short notice. Like he could have if Eddie had actually asked him ahead of time, but Eddie did not do that. Jonathan requested he be paid in weed and that is why they hung out all day.

 Steve rolls his eyes. “Of course.”

 “Actually, after the studying, I smoked Jonathan out,” Eddie says, as if that explains everything. Maybe it does. “You know, as a thank you.”

 “He was just forcing me to listen to R.E.M and Dead Kennedys, because I made him play actually good music on the ride to and from the hospital,” Eddie explains. “You ever listen to the Dead Kennedys?”

 “No?” Steve asks.

 “Don’t,” Eddie says. “They’re shit.”

 In the background, Steve can hear Jonathan’s voice go, “Hey! That’s just your opinion.”

 “Your taste in music is already hard enough on me,” Eddie tells him. “Don’t go down this dark path.”

 “Wasn’t planning to,” Steve says.

 “OK, that’s settled then,” Eddie says. “But ol’ Jonathan here played me a song and said, ‘This reminds me of Steve.’ ‘Harrington?!’ I asked, like there’s some other Steve in our lives.”

 Steve just listens.

 “And it reminded me of you, too, so I just had to give you a call,” Eddie says. “Also, Jonathan put me up to it.”

As you can see in the other chapter: Eddie and Jonathan don’t want to cop to what song it was, but it was “Terminal Preppie” The conversation they had about Steve was actually really nice and they both like Steve a lot more than they ever could have imagined and they talked about, like, how Steve seems like he’s the kind of guy that song is about, but he’s really NOT and actually he may be the most metal and/or punk guy in Hawkins.

 “Did not!” Jonathan shouts, muffled.

 “So, Harrington,” Eddie says. “Steve Harrington. Do you need anything? Is there anything I can do for you?”

 Fuck me blind and mute, Steve thinks. Blind and mute and pregnant.

 “I’ve been kind of hungry,” he says, instead. “I forgot to buy snacks.”

 Eddie gasps. “What? No snacks? Not even cereal?”

 “Breakfast cereal is not a snack,” Steve says.

 “No time to debate this,” Eddie says. “Again. What kind of pizza do you want?”

 “Supreme,” Steve says.

 “Supreme for the supreme,” Eddie says. “You got it. Hey Jonathan—”

Eddie and Steve have been arguing about whether cereal can be a snack since March. No one is winning this argument. But I, the author, totally believe that you can and should eat breakfast cereal with your hands like popcorn and if you do then it is a snack and not a breakfast. Steve disagrees.

 The line clicks dead.

 Steve cleans up the kitchen with a towel that he presses between his legs afterward. He takes a shower and puts on two pairs of clean briefs. He pulls on a pair of long johns over that, to go under his sweatpants.

 The doorbell rings while he’s trying to dry his hair. Steve pulls on a robe to cover everything and keep him warm.

 He only opens one of the two doors. Eddie nearly falls into him, because he was leaning against that door. Instead of falling, Eddie grabs Jonathan by the shoulder and nearly knocks the pizza out of his hands.

 “We’re not staying,” Jonathan says.

 “Just delivering!” Eddie says.

 His eyes are red and watery. The end of his nose flushed.

 “Have you been crying?” Steve asks.

 Eddie’s smile starts small, tight-lipped, but breaks out like a rash. His dark, bloodshot eyes sparkle.

 “Not any more than usual,” Eddie says, giggling.

This is based on a real exchange that I had with a student of mine.

 Jonathan starts laughing too, which is when Steve notices that his eyes are red too.

 “Oh,” Steve says.

 “Oh!” Eddie repeats. “My mistake earlier, on the phone, telling you not to be cute. You just can’t help it.”

 Jonathan jostles Eddie’s shoulder. “Don’t be a weirdo!”

Jonathan has heard SO MUCH about Eddie’s big gay crush on Steve Harrington.

 “He can’t help it,” Steve says. Eddie starts giggling again.

 Steve hadn’t even noticed the smell, because Eddie usually smells like weed. It’s sort of soaked into him, his hair and his clothes and his bedroom. Shit, Steve cannot be thinking about this right now.

 “Can I have my pizza?”

 “Yeah, babe,” Eddie says, “but is there any chance I could get a tip?”

 “If anyone should get a tip, it’s me,” Jonathan says. “I drove — wait, shit, don’t get me involved in this, Munson.”

This joke WILL come back.

 Eddie throws his head back and cackles. The scar on his throat looks more pink than white, like Steve’s but far more… Metal.

 “Here’s your pizza, Steve,” Jonathan tells him.

 “Thanks,” Steve says.

 Steve takes the pizza box with one hand and shuts the door with the other.

 “Bye-bye!” Eddie shouts through the door.

 “Hope you feel better tomorrow!” Jonathan shouts.

 Steve takes the pizza upstairs and obsesses about whether Eddie could smell him. Obviously, Eddie knows he’s in heat. Steve basically told him so. “Your thing today.” Eddie knows. Eddie knows and probably Jonathan knows. And they brought him pizza because… what? They pity him? An omega male with no one to spend his heat with.

Eddie is the only one who has thought of this and he’s just worried. Also the conversation around this was very funny, because Eddie was trying to talk about it as though Steve was an alpha and Jonathan had to be like, “I know he’s not in a rut, man, you can say it...”

 Sullenly, Steve chews through green peppers and olives and sausage. The pizza’s good after days of toast. He’s sitting in a puddle of his own wetness and Eddie Munson probably knows what he smells like when he’s horny now.

 As long as he doesn’t somehow know through sense of smell that Steve is horny for him, then it’s fine. Steve goes downstairs for the phone.

 “Hey, Rob,” he says.

 “Steve! Holy shit, I thought you’d be dead to the world,” she says.

 “I have a weird question,” he starts, “but you took Human Anatomy, right?”

 “Yeah, it sucked, I had to memorize all the bones in the human hand. There are twenty-seven bones in your hand, Steve! Twenty-seven! And they all have different names. Distal, middle, proximal, metacarpal—”

 “How good is an alpha’s sense of smell?” Steve asks. “Like, is it like those dogs with the droopy eyes?”

 “Bloodhounds?” Robin asks. “I’unno, I guess, as close as a human being can get? But I think it changes with hormones. Like I bet your sense of smell is just as good right now.”

 “Yeah right,” Steve says. “I couldn’t even tell that Eddie and Jonathan had been smoking weed.”

 “Well, that’s on you, because if Eddie and Jonathan are together, they’re going to be smoking weed,” Robin says. “Ugh.”

It’s true. Steve is just inured to the smell of weed.

 After talking with Rob, Steve carries the low-battery phone and the cold pizza downstairs. Phone in the cradle. Pizza in the fridge. He showers one last time before going to sleep on fresh towels.

 Eddie would make a great dad, he thinks again, and a great husband. For some girl with tattoos and a tongue ring.

#author's commentary #my fic

[erza155-writes]

Author Commentary: Taste of forever

So, after a whole year of tormenting myself & the homies, I have finally published the NHS x JL fic that has been occupying prime brain real estate.

It would be better to read it before you subject yourself to this author commentary, but if you’ve read it already, commentary below!

I’ve been writing this story on and off for like a year now, and well…. Yeah. It’s been a thing. I’ve kinda had fun because I don’t know if anyone else has done this yet, but here we are!

This pairing has been living in my head rent free for a hot minute, but it was originally inspired by a scene in chapter 8 from A bit of ruthlessness by Jirluvien on ao3. It’s a xicheng fic, but this throwaway interaction between these 2 sparked something within me, I taunted my friend with it, wrote an initial concept that got way too long and unmanageable and then took the cowards way out by writing this. I haven’t linked it as inspired by A bit of ruthlessness on ao3 cause I still need to ask permission from Jirluvien because I’m not sure if they’d wanna be associated with all of this.

Anyway, after I initially thought of it, I was like ‘yo is there fic for this’ & surprise surprise, fucking nothing. So I tool it upon myself to craft the narrative I wanted to witness. But as I publish this, it is the 3rd fic in the tag, so maybe there is hope yet!

This is still only the first half after various edits. I had to split it in half because NHS pov is different from JL pov.

So the story starts at 9:46pm on January 19 2021 when I text my friend:

I just wrote the outline for a Nie Huaisang/Jin Ling fic and titled it after that one Icarus meme playlist; Pretty Fly for a white guy

I'm about to cry

There is so much that is ridiculous about this 

And no one was able to stop me, so everything kind of snowballed into what I have published. (Hilariously enough, this fic was supposed to be only 500 words long, yet here we are...)

The thing is that I really do unironically love this ship and thinking about it and writing about it. They’re both such fascinating characters with a lot of depth and I was kind of curious as to how a relationship between the 2 of them would develop considering the wealth of trauma and issues between them. But in this verse I chickened out and gave y’all the soft version. But I’m like 5 steps away from writing a ship manifesto for these 2.

I decided to post this commentary here rather than in the author’s note section on ao3 because I have too many feelings, too much to say, and it would probably constitute as cruel & unusual punishment if I subjected people to this without any warning whatsoever. (Can you imagine reading a fic and the author’s commentary is just as long as the fic itself? I’m obviously not going to blaze this trail, but if this becomes the norm, I would be so excited because I love seeing how different everyone’s writing process is!)

Anyway, enough of my infodump exposition, here are my actual comments on the content of the fic!

The title of the fic is from 12345sex by Upsahl because when I was initially writing this, I listened to a lot of her music. I am halfway certain I have a playlist for this fic/verse laying around somewhere, but I am not organized on the very best of days so idk where it is. If I do find it, I would be more than happy to publish it.

I could have titled this story after Moment for life by Nicki Minaj, to really fit the theme, but I didn’t. Because by the time the idea occurred to me, I was already attached to the current title. And also, Nicki’s whole thing.

This story/verse was initially titled: ‘pretty fly for 2 dope guys’ after the offspring song and because when I started planning it, it had a very differnt vibe. At one point, I seriously considered titling it “Kiss, Kiss, Stab” so make of that what you will. 

Anyway, here are the most memorable lines of this story for me.

Jin Ling is trying to be less dramatic than the adults who raised him, but given half the chance, he would push everyone on his list down the very long Koi Tower stairs.

Writing this line was kind of fun because immediately after I finished typing it, I kinda did a little villain cackle because I’m assuming that Jin Ling doesn’t know how cruelly ironic this statement is.

His name on Nie Huaisang’s lips becomes an achingly beautiful sound; the chirping of birds in spring lifting his mood, the rushing of lakes in summertime cooling him to bearability, the rustling of autumn leaves granting him a small moment of private reprieve, a winter hearth crackling and bringing warmth to his bones.

Ok so i actually had to google autumn sounds cause I don’t experience that, but everything else was courtesy of my reading experiences. Additionally, I’m 93% sure that ‘bearability’ isn’t an actual word, but fanfiction is meant to be transformative, so I am absolutely going to stretch my artistic license in this one instance.

Speaking of which, if anyone can recommend autumn themed texts (movies, tv shows, books, music, video game walkthroughs) I would be more than happy to experience them! I don’t think I’ve consumed enough autumn centric media. As long as there is either an English or French translation, I’ll be able to understand it.

Anyway, this is more like a mini journal for my own edification and archiving purposes, but if you actually made it this far, that’s kind of amazing! And thank you for your attention, I hope you have a nice day.

#nie huaisang #jin ling #mdzs fanfiction #mdzs #the untamed #sangling verse #author's commentary #i never change except in my affections

[indignantlemur]

🌟

OH MY GOODNESS, ANON, I AM SO SORRY! I didn't see a notification about your ask at all! I only found it by clicking on my inbox by mistake! You have my most profound apologies for neglecting you! For this one, I feel like rambing on a bit about Chapter 46!

Spoilers below the cut for folks that haven't caught up to the latest chapter!

Chapter 46 picks up shortly after the end of chapter 45, and is a much more introspective and static chapter than the previous two, which were full of vibrancy, colour, and activity.

For the most part, I wanted this chapter to be about Dagmar and Shral and how they've progressed from the early days - but more importantly, it was an excellent time to address some lingering questions that had been hanging over Dagmar's head for a while now. Dagmar has mentioned that she has a bunch of questions before, but she's never actually managed to find a moment to ask some of them that felt right until now. There is a lingering sense of strong attraction throughout the scene, of giddiness and excitement, but it's balanced with caution and reserve. As much as I had fun writing spicy content for Dagmar and Shral after so long, now wasn't the time for the scene to lean towards that again. This chapter was supposed to be about intimacy without sex.

There's a bizarre and terrifying intensity about letting a new partner undress you for the first time (chapter 45 doesn't quite count), and for some there is a horrible, profound anxiety and sense of vulnerability that comes with that as well. There's a lot of non-verbal checking in, which is just so important, but also there's the way that Shral reaches for her face first above all other options that speaks of a kind of regard that bodes very well for their future. It's very much a deliberate choice on his part.

As the chapter progresses, Dagmar finally asks a very important question, which leads to a much, much overdue conversation between our intrepid heroes. We also see more about the level of insight that Dagmar now has into Shral's character, where before he was still very much a mystery. She's able to puzzle out a lot of his behaviours now, with the help of the bond, but she's also aware that without the fledgling bond she may never have managed. Moreover, Shral is hyperaware of this as well, and was agitated enough about it to conveniently neglect to mention a few small details that provided him with a sense of affirmation without him having to actually ask for it.

“I should have explained at the time,” Shral murmured when she remained quiet, his eyes flicking down and away as his antennae lowered into a posture she hadn’t seen on him before; curled close to his brow in submission. She’d witnessed that positioning before, of course - usually when Thoris was bossing someone around - but never on Shral. Never towards her.  He was behaving as though he expected her to be a lot angrier than she was. The fact that she hadn’t reacted according to his expectations seemed to confuse him.  “I’m not angry. I could have asked then and I didn’t,” Dagmar began slowly, watching Shral carefully as his antennae perked up and he glanced up at her again. The bond seemed to swell with a feeling she struggled to name, but whatever it was it left the impression of disbelief mingled with several other very complicated feelings. It dimmed considerably when she continued, “but I would like to know why you didn’t say anything.”  “Foolishness, mostly,” Shral answered, brutally honest in the quiet of the room, as water dripped and steam curled. “And perhaps a little selfishness.”  That last bit caught Dagmar’s interest. “Selfishness?”  “I knew you didn’t realise what it meant…” A grimace stole over Shral’s features, but he held her gaze and spoke with that same blunt, upfront tone, trailing off abruptly as if he hadn’t figured out how to finish the sentence yet. That alone was unusual. 

For the record, this is not a good behaviour and even Shral recognises that. Dagmar is rightly dismayed by the whole thing. If it had been much more alarming issue being discussed, such as a binding arrangement versus what she flippantly describes as advertising big feelings, she probably would have been justifiably angry about it. The fact that Shral very clearly knows that he was in the wrong both helps his case and hurts it, here. Instead of getting angry, Dagmar takes the time to consider the matter - and her reaction - carefully. This is probably what I love most about Dagmar: she can be reactive under the right circumstances, but she vastly prefers to stop and think things through more often than not. Dagmar tends towards problem-solving over emotional outbursts more often than not, and this conversation is no different.

Instead of choosing the confrontational route, she bypasses it entirely by expressing a gentle, remarkably forgiving sort of disappointment in Shral's choices and proposes an alternate course of action in the future. It's very clear to them both that they need to make an effort to talk more openly at this point.

Not bad! Actually a pretty mature approach to the issue overall! You know, except for the bit where Dagmar conveniently neglects to mention that she's planning on harassing her poor doctor for a basic Andorian sex ed class in a few days, which would explain a lot of her weird behaviours to Shral at that moment.

This is also not ideal behaviour, and in fact rather hypocritical of her. Does Dagmar realise this? No, no she does not.

Shral’s eyes, vividly green and flecked with gold, narrowed shrewdly at her. “Perhaps you should lead by example and elaborate about your experiences with our security checkpoints.” 

Shral, of course, immediately turns the tables of Dagmar using her own words against her, and then we come to The Hair Thing.

Shral is understandably dismayed and displeased to learn that his girlfriend basically let the security officers paw at her hair, which is apparently vastly more important to her culturally than he'd previously been aware of, instead of just asking for him to come vouch for her. Worse, she demeans the value of her customs and culture like it doesn't matter - like she doesn't matter - which is blatantly insulting to both of them, really.

“I see.” Shral sighed, and the bond carried a strange kind of weight across the gap between them. It felt heavy, stifling. “I’d better ask if I’ve overstepped similarly, then.” 

Then there's the dawning horror of realising that he basically did the same thing not an hour ago. Actually, what he did was probably worse. After all, what would Shral know about it? She's as alien to him as he is to her, after all, and if Dagmar says her hair is supposed to be kept up and away from prying eyes for some sort of alien modesty thing, then he's very probably made some kind of horrendous faux pas by yanking on it during sex. Never mind that she pulled his hair, too (and we will discuss Shral's incredibly slutty hair cut some other time) - he's Andorian. It's not the same.

The scene progresses from there, and we learn a little more about the bond as well. By the end of the chapter we get an idea as to how their dynamic has shifted from this single conversation, just a little, to something just a tiny bit stronger than before.

“Are all Humans so adaptable?” Shral wondered with a narrow slash of a smile, shifting in his seat. Dagmar couldn’t imagine he was particularly comfortable on that footstool after so long - it wasn’t exactly designed for comfortable sitting. “Or are you simply determined to surprise me at every turn?”

By the end of the chapter we've learned that Shral is an uptight, emotionally constipated man who dislikes ambiguity in any form and yet also has a very low confidence level where his ability to predict Dagmar is concerned. He thought she'd be angry with him - she wasn't. He thought she'd uncomfortable with the bond and avoid using it - she wasn't and very clearly didn't. Earlier in Chapter 45, he'd most likely expected to be some kind of celibate for months according to some cursory research on her strange, alien customs - she threw that idea out the window immediately. Even in some of their earliest interactions, Shral's simple prediction that Dagmar would dislike vithi on principle, since Humans seemed somewhat averse to especially bitter things, was completely off. At every turn, Shral fails to entirely predict Dagmar. He can make accurate guesses most of the time, but every now and then shejust randomly jukes left when he anticipates her going right, and it's both utterly maddening and terribly interesting.

Whatever else he might feel at the time, Shral is never bored when Dagmar is around.

Alright, that's it! Ramble: completed! Thanks for the ask, anon! <3

#star trek #emigre by indignantlemur #ask box #andorian #andorians #chapter 46 of emigre by indignantlemur #author's commentary #Dagmar Gunnarssen #Vilashral of Clan Hrisvalar

[t1meslayer]

Going in for round 2!

I had a lot of fun with my Debrief for "Stone-Cold Lovers (Ch. 3)," and I think there's a bunch of interesting, insightful aspects to my writing here given Splatoon's setting offers plenty of aquatic-themed worldbuilding.

So, let's get into it! Check out my full author's commentary below the cut — but only after you've had the chance to read "By Moonlight," my latest Splatoon fanfic.

I've been playing Splatoon since the 2015 original on Wii U. But to be completely honest, the series never hit me until Splat3. I never bought Octo Expansion (though I did watch most of it), so "Return of the Mammalians" may have just become the first time I truly appreciated how insane the series' lore is. Playing through the final battle during a road trip back from San Francisco with a couple of buddies is something I'll remember forever.

I also fell in love with Shiver and Marie as a couple, spawning a whole host of fanfictions.

But that's neither here nor there. Because this story is about Pearlina.

(The featured image evolved over time)

Another consequence of my foolishness circa Splatoon 2 is I didn't realize how much I liked Off the Hook's music. In fact, the origins of this very fanfic came from a brief obsession with Marina's piano-playing prowess on songs like "Tentacle to the Metal" when Splatoon 3 released in 2022. A connection to the 1st Movement of "Moonlight Sonata" was baked into the premise by their similar set of three notes playing in succession.

Though, I should be clear: I am not a classical music nerd, nor any kind of music nerd. I have a pretty terrible ear for music, and as a result don't listen to much (video game soundtracks notwithstanding, most of my ambient noise is YouTube videos, TV, or podcasts).

If we want to get really deep into the weeds of how pathetic I am, my main attachment to "Moonlight Sonata" stems from Hamtaro: Ham-Ham Heartbreak (2002) on the GBA.

My rendition of Marina playing the song even ends at essentially the same point as this game's usage, since it's baked into my soul.

When's Hamtaro coming to Nintendo Switch Online, cowards?

That being said, I largely based the in-universe playing on this video by Rousseau, a YouTube channel that creates fancy visuals for piano covers of classical and pop music:

My original plan was to have Eight gift the Beethoven book to Pearl and Marina as an oddity acquired through raiding Grizzco facilities following "Return of the Mammalians." However, the idea came back in full-force with the release of Splatoon 3: Side Order. There was a brief period where I considered applying to the Pearlina zine "You and Me Against the Universe!" with something similar, but that was before I fell into my drive to write for zines.

Side Order definitely feels like a test run for more fleshed-out Roguelike modes in future Splatoon games, but I'm enjoying it all the same. And I just had to include tidbits of lore like Eight joining Off the Hook's world tour.

As one final note on "Moonlight Sonata," this is the first time I've written a musical performance as prose. My Mariver fic "Harmonic Frequencies" ends with a bit of choreography for Deep Cut's tribute to "Calamari Inkantation," but that's about as far as it goes. Luckily, my sister is studying Music Education and Music Performance in college (and she graduates soon!), so I was able to lean on her as a source of knowledge.

She just had to suffer through my insufferable gay seafood to get there.

Her main advice was to think of writing musical prose not as a literal translation of sheet music, but instead to really hone in on the emotions of listening to music. It took a bit to figure out the right balance between describing the performance itself and the more emotive images it conjures in Pearl's head, but I love the outcome!

My sister said, "Also the moonlight stuff is fire af." Clearly I've peaked.

===

Fun Fact: She told me I should look into the creepier aspects of "Moonlight Sonata" while writing. Did you know that the song is dedicated to then-16-year-old Countess Giulietta Guicciardi (per Brittanica), a student whom he fell in love with (per New York Times)?

Because I didn't.

===

My presentation of Pearl changed a fair bit over the course of this writing. Pearl's They/She pronouns were pretty spur of the moment, and the idea of They/She Napoleon has since become a running in-joke between me and my beta reader, the incredible artist Trybard (who was the source of my great screencap preview post that I blocked out for anonymity of personal socials).

Pearl with full tattoo sleeves was also a sudden decision that's entirely inspired by a Twitter post; I unfortunately cannot find that post anymore, it disappeared after I shifted pages. Likewise, Pearl learning Octarian is part-cute girlfriend stuff, part-excuse to use the joke about them reading Beethoven as "Beat-Havin'" that came to me in a flash of divine inspiration.

Marina doesn't get nearly as much love in the personal headcanon department, it was Trybard who suggested she might wear a citrus-y perfume smell. I added the motor oil.

I also added the fact that she's living it up in Pearl's downtown apartment, and lending out goofy manga-themed sleep shirts.

Off the Hook's apartment setting only includes the windowed hallway and main foyer (which I hope adds to the sense that Pearl is rich enough to afford the most ridiculously huge apartment of all time). However, there are two tidbits about the setting that I quite enjoy:

First, did you catch the bit about the charred piece of hull? I wanted to keep it subtle in writing, but my intent was referencing the NILS Statue! Did Pearl or Marina take the trophy? Who knows.

Second, Off the Hook's wall of records went through hefty trial-and-error. I settled on the idea of giving them Gold/Platinum/Diamond records (ala the real-world practice of Recording Industry Association of America certification) while listening to the collective works of Off the Hook. Given this is pre-Splat3, I imagined that the new recording of "Nasty Majesty" and their Splatfest theme "Color Pulse" would have among the most attention.

I also imagined that Splatoon wouldn't just use an exact 1-1 copy of our record certifications. Thus, the Recording Industry Association of Inkadia (RIAI) was born.

Rather than using precious metals to delineate sales, I decided to go with the more Splatoon-feeling marker of "neon records." I actually did a minor amount of research, predominately leaning on the website of Brigham Young University physics and astronomy professor Harold T. Stokes to figure out Neon's color spectrum.

Using this, I equated:

Violet = Gold (500,000 sales)

Green = Platinum (One Million sales)

Yellow = Double Platinum (Two Million sales)

Red = Diamond (Ten Million sales)

I even formatted the text to look like an actual RIAA plaque, just with the color's name rather than a literal record. AO3's HTML formatting can only go so far.

I used the "acronym" formatting to add extra context in the form of each song's to-date sales, which was all I originally planned to say. Learned all about that option in my horrific opening chapter to the Pokemon Scarlet and Violet fic "Paradiso," in which Arven has a nightmare that breaks the text "House of Leaves" style.

And that, my friends, is all she wrote.

I could go way deeper into the minutia Pearl's boisterous tone or Marina utilizing mechanical terms, but the broad strokes of where certain ideas originate seems like a better use of my "Debrief" time. Let me know what more you might want to see me discuss going forward, or what ideas for Splatoon fics you wanna see added to my eternal backlog! (The poll-winning Stardew Valley piece has to take priority now — no more game release distractions~)

Though, as one final note: Yes, the title is a Sailor Moon reference.

You're welcome.

#What are you still doing here? The show's over. #Unless you're reading this before going through the whole post #But I know you wouldn't do that #Only naughty people do that #Anyway hank you for indulging my ramble #Propane and propane accessories sold in the gift shop on your way out #Fanfiction Debrief #fanfiction #fanfic #companion piece #author's commentary #ao3 #nintendo #splatoon #splatoon 3 #side order #dlc #Pearlina #pearl houzuki #marina ida #YouTube #Sailor Moon #Hamtaro #Music History #Moonlight Sonata #Neon #Chemistry #RIAA #Record Certification #Opinion

[sofiadragon]

Hey fanfiction loving friend!

AO3 has the ability to turn off comments, moderate comments, restrict comments to logged in users only, or let anyone comment on your story. Most other fanfiction hosting websites do not allow comments to be turned off and in the case of some (wattpad) highly encourage comments even on individual paragraphs.

Over on reddit, someone said it is an unwritten rule of fanfiction that you should never leave a negative or critical comment on a story. This was countered most strongly by many arguments. Despite many people asserting that their stance was the one truth and that there was no debate on the topic - there was a lot of debate about what criticism even is and where the line should be for if giving concrit is alright.

So give this some thought:

If you have tea to spill, examples or an argument you want to make, please do. I have some that go both ways, but I'm going to wait for a few responses so I don't pre-empt the results. I'm not going to vote myself for a while, either, so I won't know which way the poll is leaning when I do pour my tea. I tried to cover all the flavors of debate I've seen in the many "definitive" posts I have read here and on reddit. Please reblog for a wider sample!

#fanfiction discourse #fan fiction #fanfiction #fan work #fan etiquette #commentary #fanfiction.net #ao3 author #ao3 reader #ao3feed #ao3 #wattpad comments #comments on fanfic #looking for constructive criticism #constructive criticism #concrit welcome #concrit not welcome #concrit

[lord-squiggletits]

It's hilarious to me that someone actually asked/JRO actually confirmed via word of god that Tarn tortured Pharma while he was at Delphi bc like. Fucking yeah??? How else do you think Pharma went from "for most of his life, he was a good doctor" to stark raving mad? What else did people think Tarn, fanatical Decepticon who leads a group of professional murderers, would do to Pharma, Autobot stationed on DJD territory, to make him comply with the deal?

I get that sometimes people just want confirmation from the author for them to go "no yeah your theories are right" but on the other hand I don't understand asking for word of god confirmation on things that are obviously canon if you just think about it for a little bit

#squiggposting #pharma apologism #tho truthfully i dont like word of god in general for anytging besides like. trivia #if it was important to the text it wouldve been included in the text #and im not gonna trawl interviews and supplementary materials to figure out what the author actually meant #if word of god agrees with the text then the facts are already present in the text with no confirmation needed #if word of god contradicts the text then word of god is wrong bc text > retroactive writer commentary #and also i think its more fun to make theories and speculate #than to ask the author what is actually correct