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macyqwrites · 1 year

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credit to @yvesdot for this template!

happy almost new year! 2022 was the first year in a very long time that i consistently wrote every month, so i'm excited to look back on it! my writing this year was dominated by my latest wip, next day after dawn, including both canonverse content and a lot of stupid au bullshit <3

details under the cut!

january

in january i was still very much in dearer than a friend mode after finishing the first draft in november, but with no progress to make on the book itself i ended up writing some speculative post-canon (and very non-canon) nonsense involving preston getting into a terrible terrible relationship with another man. this one was a collab with @inkgel for which we definitely wrote a sane and normal amount of content

It’s not that he intended for this to happen. But the truth has been bubbling up for so long now, and eroding him a little more each time it does, wearing away at whatever remains of his willpower, his sense of himself, his belief that he has anything left to lose. And he’s already damned. He knows that deep down. He could repent, he supposes. Maybe God would forgive him. But Val won’t. He doesn’t really see the point. And it’s because of that too. Because he’s alone now, in a way he never has been, never could have been for the past eleven years of his life, because he always had someone who was supposed to be his. He’s not sure how he’s supposed to forget it when it feels like a piece of him has been ripped out, leaving a gaping wound that throbs and bleeds and refuses even to begin to heal. So he has to find someone to fill it, even if they don’t fit quite right.

february

in february i was mostly focused on my classes, but that did involve reading paradise lost and briefly getting very fixated on eve. i wrote less than two pages of this, but i was having fun with some dialogue between eve and satan. it was interesting to try to figure out what the pov of someone so ignorant of the world might look like

“Are you an angel?” I ask. That creature that he is talking to as I am talking to you. I do not really know what an angel is. He would not let me listen with him so it could be explained to me. But I know that an angel is something greater than me, and you are greater than me, but you are not Him, so I think maybe that is right. “I was an angel,” you say. “Was?” “I don’t know if I can explain it to you.” I feel something when you say that, something that I have no name for, but I know it is something that is bad to feel. Frustration, I think. I am good at naming things. I am as good as him. Sometimes I wish that He had left some of the animals for me to name too, but that is something that is bad to wish.

march

in march i decided i needed to get out of endlessly spinning dtaf mode. i also read gtn and remembered how much i love ensemble casts. and lo and behold, next day after dawn was born. this was one of the very first scenes i wrote, between mona and her mother austra when mona is (spoilers) experiencing life threatening illness moments. their mother/daughter dynamic is everything to me

“Don’t lie,” she said, and tried not to think about the fact that she sounded more than a little like she was begging. “Don’t—Selene can’t lie for shit, and she told me everything was fine, but she probably just wanted to avoid a difficult conversation, probably thought it was for the best, because she’s an idiot, but if you lie—” The room felt suffocating, stuffy and overly hot. She was suddenly viscerally aware of the sticky dampness of sweat beneath her shirt, and that, somehow, was more overwhelming than the pain that spiderwebbed from her pounding head all the way down her back. Her mother was silent, her face still very nearly impassive, but there was something in the slight furrowing of her brows that Mona thought looked terribly sad. “Don’t you dare,” Mona said furiously. Her eyes were burning. She blinked hard to clear the definitely-not-tears forming there. “Don’t you dare act like I’m going to die.”

april

more ndad snippets! this was from the first full scene i finished, which ended up being prince cyrus' pov of the first night after the coup. he is so mentally ill

Cyrus thought that was a nice enough idea on paper, given the circumstances. But when it became clear that it involved putting on his least comfortable court clothes and shuffling into a musty, overly crowded hall where three scuffed tables and a dozen mismatched chairs had been pushed together in some imitation of a royal banquet, he very quickly began to have second thoughts. Cassandane tried to motion for him to sit at the head of the table when they came in. He sat just to the right of it instead, as he would have if he really had been at court. If the king had been here. But the fact that he wasn’t didn’t make it feel any more right to take his place. So Cyrus didn’t. No one else did either. The chair sat untouched at the front of the room, a ghost in an empty seat. Not a ghost, Cyrus tried to remind himself. Just not here. He would be back soon. They would all be back soon. He couldn’t handle thinking anything else.

may

ndad strikes again! this is going to be most of this. here we have the first darcy pov i wrote, featuring them being sent to woo princess cassandane for prince cyrus and falling head over heels in love with her themself. (take a shot every time someone in ndad has a line about being or not being their father's son)

“I am not a real princess,” she told them after a long moment. “But I am interested in becoming a queen.” She looked one already, Darcy thought. Her eyes were diamond hard, her jaw and cheekbones carved from marble. She could have knocked her father’s statue to the ground and stood on the pedestal in its place and put it to shame. She could have told them to do anything for her, and it wouldn’t have crossed their mind not to obey. She was all that a queen should be. And Darcy was what they should have been. They were not truly the King’s ambassador, nor the Prince’s surrogate. Their loyalty went only as far as their self-interest. They were not their father’s son. But they were, if nothing else, an excellent liar, which was why they could never fully explain the sudden urge they felt to tell her the truth.

june

in june i wrote a short story for a shakespeare-themed horror anthology! it did not get in, but this was my first shot at horror, so i had a ton of fun anyway. i'll probably post this one on ao3 soon -- it's fun little examination of the inherent freakiness of the ending of all's well that ends with, this time with 100% more black magic

Here’s my confession: I don’t love my wife. Confession’s probably the wrong word though. Cause it’s not like I can tell anyone. Everyone around here thinks we got our perfect miracle of a storybook ending, so maybe I’m the one who’s wrong for not wanting it. Maybe I deserve this. My happily ever after. I don’t know how they believe it. Well, they believe it because I said it, I said I love Helen, and the lie came out smoother than it should have, given the circumstances, because God knows I’ve had too much practice. Maybe I sounded like I meant it. What I actually said was that I’d love her forever. I never said I was smart.

july

we're back in ndad land, and oh boy, this was a month. july was the first time i've ever beaten nanowrimo, fully unintentionally, simply because @wren-is-writing and i went fucking insane with the au fanfiction. but the piece that started it all was renan's backstory, aka renan's spiral into destroying every part of himself over his love for a terrible little boyboss war criminal (hi king cyrus). this is the first time the two of them meet, when cyrus is still in his rakish misbehaving prince era. brainworms are found in the gay old men

The others are already drinking deep again, eager to accept another newcomer into their circle for the night, but your mouth has gone dry. It’s almost hard to look at him. It’s harder to look anywhere else. He notices you staring. When he catches your eye, it makes your heart jump into your throat. “What?” he asks. “Something in my teeth?” You’re barely breathing. “Your Highness,” you manage, and you can’t read the look that crosses his face. Hebes slaps his hand down on the table so hard it makes your glass rattle, and lets out an incredulous, booming laugh. “Stars above, Renan, is that Prince Cyrus?” The boy next to you winks and flashes another incandescent grin. “Just call me Cy.”

august

and here we come to just a small selection of the insane au fanfiction wren and i engaged in. not ALL of it was about cyrenan, just most of it. here's some darcy and cassandane in the criminally extensive college au. darcy's pining, what else is new

It would happen, though, they told themself. It would happen eventually. Because she loved them, they were sure, even if neither of them had phrased it that way exactly. They’d as good as told each other more times than they could count. They had always worked that way, reading between the lines but knowing they were on the same page. “You’re brilliant, you know,” they murmured, dropping their voice so low they were sure only she could hear it. Just one more way of telling her. They knew she’d understand. “At dancing or in general?” “Both.” “I do know,” Cass replied. Her slow, curving smile made them flush too much to hide. “I want to do this more often,” they whispered. They risked stroking their thumb lightly across her shoulder, a gesture they hoped was too small to catch. “I want to do this all the time.” Forever wasn’t a word they would pull out in public regardless of how softly they were speaking, but they were sure she got that too.

september

we're back to canonverse ndad, thank god. more backstories! this one chronicles austra's girlbossification, and this moment specifically is right after her daughter mona is born

She’s not going to make it. That’s the first thing the doctors tell you. It’s the first thing the Church proclaims on the matter too. You’re still confined to your hospital room. You can’t witness it pronounced in a chapel or read it in a star chart. You have to hear it from your husband’s mouth instead. His eyes are red. He’s been crying. You haven’t been. You’ll break down when there’s nothing left to fight for, not a moment sooner than that. Your daughter needs surgeries that haven’t been performed in a century. Your daughter has long brown eyelashes that flutter when you kiss her while she sleeps. Your husband tells you that her doom is written in the stars, and he says it like he thinks it’s true.

october

and i actually followed austra's backstory up with castor's, because apparently i spent some of this year being semi productive. castor's terrible little psyche revolves around the fact that his brother (everyone's favourite son) died when he was a teenager and he thinks it's his fault for not being a hardened soldier at 17. here he is trying to be a hardened soldier (it's not going well)

You’re not a natural. You’re not even a hard-won talent. Even when you’re not half sleepwalking, you’re slow, clumsy, unsure. Your sword arm grows sore after barely an hour. The straps of your armour chafe against the skin of your neck and leave it raw. You’ve tried your best, memorized a hundred manoeuvres in sparring sessions, but somehow you still freeze in the field. The first time an enemy makes a swipe for you, you run like a coward. By the fiftieth time, you’ve learned to stand your ground, but you don’t know if your allies feel the difference. At night, every comrade you couldn’t save has your brother’s face. He had scars when he—when you saw him the last time. A barely-there line through his eyebrow, another tiny one on his chin. Your father has the gouged-out pit in his left cheek, the mark that proves he is and isn’t invulnerable. Every time a blade flashes in your face, you wonder if you’ll end up with a matching one. It never happens, probably because you’re too quick to flinch back from the strikes that might get close enough. Your skin remains despicably pristine.

november

wow, a new wip? well maybe. this one is still in very early stages, but i got seized by brainworms consisting of "what if richard and bolingbroke from shakespeare's richard ii were lesbians (and not cousins) and fucking hated each other." also it's the 80s, i think. rielle is our larger than life femme richard who's never met an emotion she couldn't turn into a performance, and the narrator here is jack, butch bolingbroke, who has a lot of daddy issues and hates rielle so fucking much.

Don’t get me wrong. My dad was an asshole. He was a dyed-in-the-wool red-blooded homo-hating bigot and I didn’t shed a tear at his funeral. But he was the kind of asshole where if I called my hair a pixie cut and ditched the Doc Martens for mascara when I came around for dinner, he’d happily keep paying my tuition. He’d even hug me, sometimes. Mostly after Mom died. Both arms around my shoulders, like he meant it. So I had my reasons, basically, for not wanting to publicly tell him to go fuck himself. And even if I hadn’t, she was the last person I owed an explanation. Easy for her to say she’d cut off her parents in a heartbeat when she didn’t have any, just an inheritance ten times the size I was ever getting and a bunch of framed tabloids with pictures of a Rolls-Royce twisted around a lamp post and a cherub of a girl who knew, even at ten years old, how to cry pretty.

december

this past month i've been juggling grad school apps and finals and prepping for my thesis, so i haven't written a ton, but i went back to fun shakespeare fanfiction collabs with @inkgel for a bit! here's me attempting to write julius caesar pov `for our caesar/antony character study that we did after playing those characters on zoom (and playing them as in love, of course)

He could do the same with Antony. Antony wouldn’t make him ask twice for it—wouldn’t make him ask at all, probably, because he is always so delightfully quick to capitulate, all it would really take is a finger ghosted over those plush and slightly reddened lips. But Caesar doesn’t like him to be carved out of marble. He likes it when Antony stumbles, the laugh bubbling up from his throat loose and lazy, the perfect planes of his cheekbones marred with a ruddy flush. When Antony clings onto him, half for balance, half because he’s surely looking for any excuse to. When he hangs on several moments longer than he needs to, his pupils blown, his hair mussed not-quite-artfully, and kisses him with the heady scent of wine still on his breath. Perhaps sometimes he would deign to think he loved it, but it’s been years since that word has been his to offer. These days, it’s only for lesser men to give.

if you got this far, thank you so much for reading! see you all in 2023!!

#my writing #next day after dawn #dearer than a friend #preston young #mona lunares #austra lunares #prince cyrus #darcy mercurialis #princess cassandane #renan mercurialis #king cyrus #cyrenan #castor martis #rielle blanchette #jack livingstone #orphan heir

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macyqwrites · 1 year

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Sorry for the amount of these. Helios 1, Renan 4 just because I think it’s funny, Mona 5, Darcy 13, Preston 15, Sylvie 16

1. How does your OC feel about their full name?

his deadname? bad bad very bad. hated it. his first chosen name (perseus farrington)? he liked it quite a bit, and went by it for most of his teenage/adult life. wasn't a huge fan of having the farrington family name but he also never thought about it much because there wasn't another option. his current name (helios saturnini)? 1000/10, he got to pick a new name to match his cool new dad and he loves it, double points for ditching his mom's surname, triple points for making the church and the rest of the royals so mad.

4. How do they act around a crush?

DSGHSDGHSDHGSDGHSDG i mean we all know renan is the living embodiment of the 🥺 emoji but he at least used to be a LITTLE cool around cyrus early on. he was trying to keep his cool and kiiind of failing but that was when he was in his suave little rake era so it sort of worked. making out with the heir apparent on a dare is regrettably a bit swag.

5. Do they have a “tell” for when they’re lying?

hmm, sometimes. mostly when the lie is of the "i'm fine and not experiencing life-threatening health events shut UP mom" variety. in that case mona gets extra nasty and snappish with people and her family members can tell something's up. when she has her shit fully together she's very difficult to read, but austra can still almost always tell.

13. Do they make strong/frequent eye contact when they talk to someone?

yes but not to an unusual degree. darcy's just very polite and socially capable so they make. idk. the normal polite amount of eye contact. maybe less with prince cyrus cause they know he doesn't like it (but then again, maybe more with prince cyrus if they want to get him slightly off his game)

15. Are their greatest flaw and their greatest strength related and in what way? (ie very caring and helpful but a doormat, or very observant and shrewd but often paranoid)

oh for sure. preston's greatest strength (or one of them at least) is his whole golden boy persona. he comes off as very talented and respectable and charming and trustworthy and that makes people like him and also lets him get away with shit. but it also leads to his horrible horrible fixation on being perfect -- which is twofold, actually, because he oscillates between "i'm a perfect person so nothing i'm doing is wrong" and "i have to be a perfect person so if i make a tiny mistake or anything is my fault i'll explode." and it makes him soooooooooo much worse.

16. How has their childhood affected the way they view an aspect of their life (people, education, society, themselves, etc)?

so sylvie's parents were in. a pretty shitty marriage because her dad is pretty shitty. and when she was a kid her mom started having an affair with this other man who turned out to be Even Worse and ended up spiralling into addiction and eventually dying. and this in turn caused her dad to become insanely fucking overprotective and controlling and paranoid that she would go down a similarly bad path. so from a young age she's been VERY focused on having her shit together. around everyone but especially around her dad. and she has a fake relationship with a boring respectable guy her dad approves of so he won't lose his mind about her getting herself in trouble with other people. which is fine. this can only go well.

#asks #helios saturnini #renan mercurialis #mona lunares #darcy mercurialis #preston young #sylvie robinson #next day after dawn #dearer than a friend

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macyqwrites · 1 year

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3 for darcy 5 for rielle and 12 for little cyrus :3

3. How does their social personality differ from how they act when they’re alone?

in public (or with literally anyone except cassandane and mayyyybe sometimes their dad) darcy is fully unreadable. polite, capable, slightly wry and witty but mostly a blank slate. when they're alone with cassandane they go full simp hopeless romantic (although still holding back a little so she thinks they're a sexy aloof theyboss or something). and in private. yeah. they are so in love they care so much and also they are very much having Gender Feelings. and that's the one time they might Express Some Visible Emotions as a treat.

5. Do they have a “tell” for when they’re lying?

not really. which is not to say that rielle always comes off as sincere, it's actually the opposite. she always comes off as at least somewhat performative, and there's no clean line between her actual thoughts and feelings vs the image of it all. which is frustrating for people trying to expose her for crimes. to say the least.

12. How do they show affection to someone they love?

cyrus is very much an acts of service kind of person. he just wants to do nice things for the people he loves -- not so much grand gestures, just small favours to make their lives easier. and he also likes certain kinds of physical affection and just being able to simply hang out with someone without talking much. at one point in ndad he spends hours undoing cassandane's braids for her and she's like "aren't you incredibly bored" but it's fucking ideal for him because doing something nice for his wife + physical touch + quality time without having to Talk About Important Things + a 10/10 stim

#asks #my GUYS. thank you for asking varan ily #darcy mercurialis #rielle blanchette #prince cyrus #next day after dawn #orphan heir

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macyqwrites · 1 year

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✊for darcy and renan

✊ Would your OC win in a fight against an ostrich?

oh god i don't think either of them would. as you once commented, they come from a long line of twinks, they are NOT battling it out with an ostrich and winning. young renan could probably successfully hide from an ostrich and i feel like darcy could maybe get it to chill out just by being calm and walking away slowly or something but if it came to combat the mercurialises stand no chance

#asks #THIS IS SUCH A FUNNY QUESTION HELP ME #renan mercurialis #darcy mercurialis

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macyqwrites · 1 year

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13 and 73 and 79

#13 - cowboy like me by taylor swift

here's where you roast me for taylor swift listening but this one is on the cassandarcy playlist and i repeated that one SO much this year. when they first meet <3

You're a bandit like me Eyes full of stars Hustling for the good life Never thought I'd meet you here It could be love We could be the way forward And I know I'll pay for it

#73 - happier than ever by billie eilish

POST-CANON VAL SONG. PAIN AND AGONY

Give me a day or two To think of something clever To write myself a letter

I don't relate to you, no 'Cause I'd never treat me this shitty You make me hate this city

You ruined everything good Always said you were misunderstood Made all my moments your own Just fucking leave me alone

#79 - wap feat. megan thee stallion by cardi b

THIS IS THE FUNNIEST FUCKING POSSIBLE ANSWER IM CACKLING IN REAL LIFE. THIS ONE IS NOT A BLORBO SONG IT IS *NOT* ABOUT ANYONE AND ESPECIALLY NOT ABOUT THEM MY ROOMMATES AND I JUST HAD A PHASE OF PLAYING IT A LOT. BUT. DEAR GOD

#asks #NOT THESE NUMBERS. WREN WE ARE ENEMIES #darcy mercurialis #princess cassandane #val amato

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macyqwrites · 1 year

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hi macy!! 9 for the stuck on a writing project asks 👀

9. what do each of the relevant characters currently want?

answering this for next day after dawn! i'm not working on any specific scene right now so i'll just answer for the main guys generally:

prince cyrus wants to not disappoint the people relying on him but above that he just wants a break. let the man feel okay for two seconds please (i say, not doing this)

mona wants to help her mom's fun little coup succeed but ALSO wants insane revenge on everyone who has wronged her. and to be loved but we're not talking about that shhhh she's never felt an emotion in her life

kane wants revenge too, and to win back the territory he's been fighting for his entire life that got traded away after the coup happened. he also wants to keep his family safe. which of these priorities comes first? we'll find out :)

darcy wants cassandane to succeed because they're a grade-a simp but really this comes from the fact that they want to be with her. to have her love them. they would also love to not have to lie 24/7 but they're pushing that to the side

helios just wants to have a good time 😎✨ and to have his dad back oh god oh fuck he misses him so much

#asks #next day after dawn #prince cyrus #mona lunares #kane martis #darcy mercurialis #helios saturnini

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macyqwrites · 1 year

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makeup and darcy, texture and little cyrus, and formal for helios, selene, drea, and evaine <3

makeup: Does your OC wear makeup? How often? What kind? Why do they wear makeup, and do they like it?

pre-canon darcy doesn't because they're being So Cis And Respectable. but they would like to. maybe they have let cassandane do their makeup before for the gender euphoria of it all. in an ideal world they would want to go for some eyeliner and mascara on a regular basis and maybe some fancier eye makeup and contouring on occasion just for fun

texture: Does your OC favor any specific kinds of cloth or textures? Is there anything they can’t wear or don’t like? What sort of fabrics do they prefer?

prince cyrus has pretty intense sensory issues so he definitely has strong texture preferences. he prefers fabrics that are soft and stretchy - in an ideal world he'd wear sweaters (especially chunky knit ones, because it's satisfying to run his hands along it) and pajama pants all the time. but because he is the prince he has to spend a lot of time in suits which are Bad because he is not a fan of anything with tight seams or waistbands that dig into his skin. or ties, because they make him feel like he's choking. so any time he's dressed up he is suffering at least a little bit :(

formal: What’s your OC’s formal look? Do they like dressing up? Do they have different looks for different occasions?

helios LOVES dressing up, he's got top surgery and an unlimited wardrobe budget now and goddamn if he's not going to make the most of it. his go-to is a purple suit with his dress shirt sluttily (chastely) unbuttoned and lots of gold jewelry to accessorize. the gold rings on every finger are a house of saturnini thing but i think he can also have stupid earrings for fun. and stupid matching shoes. but i think he also wears a lot of different colours, he just defaults to purple for official appearances because that's his signature colour.

selene is so hot oh my god. she's like if a disney prince were the prettiest girl in the world. so i think she wears a lot of grey and white suits with low-cut and/or cropped button-up shirts, high waisted pants and fun little knee-high boots. and her silver hoop earrings <33

drea is not a big fan of dressing up but unlike kane she doesn't hate it on a sensory level, she just would rather be wearing her knife vest. or her military jacket at LEAST. but she'll go for a simple red dress on the rare occasion that she's at an Official Fancy Event with kane. something she can move in. there are at least five knives hidden on her person.

evaine goes for boxy suits pre-canon, probably mostly grey, nothing flashy. she's one of the most powerful people in parliament but she doesn't dress like it because she’s a woman of the people or something. after the coup though she's trying to suck up to the church so she undergoes femmeification (diversity loss) and starts wearing more like. Nice Feminine And Modest Blouses 😔

#asks #darcy mercurialis #prince cyrus #helios saturnini #selene lunares #drea martis #evaine whitby

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