#don't mind silly things like coherence or grammar

[siyurikspakvariisis]

Fanfic Writer Questions

Thank you for the tag, @optiwashere!

Tagging @seventhscorpio, @night-dark-woods, @linka-from-captain-planet and whoever wants to consider themselves tagged.

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

15 works at time of recording.

2. What's your total AO3 word count?

14,232 at time of recording. I'm a short story girlie.

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Currently, only BG3. Before this, I used to write for Destiny (and I can be tempted again if The Final Shape is any good/has some good Awoken food) and Overwatch (lol. lmao.) IDK why I gravitate to writing about videogames. I guess that video game writing is more "open-ended" and thus creates more nooks and crannies for me to get my fanfiction claws in?

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Unsurprisingly, they're Overwatch ones, given that it's the largest fandom I've written for. 1. Thaw (Mercy/Pharah, 159 words, Explicit) 2. Theobroma (Mercy/Pharah, 390 words, General Audiences) 3. Liebesträume (Mercy/Pharah, 1824 words, General Audiences) 4. Our Lady of Mercy (Mercy/Moira, 972 words, Explicit) 5. to pretend (Nocturne/DJ!Shadowheart, 225 words, Explicit) Kind of feels like exposing an old shame, to link this here, lol. But hey, stats are very silly -- they say more about the popularity of the pairing than about the quality of the work, in this case.

5. Do you respond to comments?

I try to! I am in the very awkward situation of someone posting comments on my destiny fics a long time after I published and I haven't responded but I think about responding a lot but the more time it passes the more awkward it is...

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

Deliverance, arguably? Petra Venj gets Taken. So yeah. (The Savathûn tag is there because the fic was written back when we thought Savathûn had acquired the power to Take)

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

Liebesträume is, as per the notes, 100% high fructose fluff syrup.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

At time of recording, I haven't.

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

I do! The kind that doubles as character exploration. (although I have written pure self indulgent shit that I had to get out of my head somehow, like i rejoice in my sufferings for your sake)

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

I don't, at time of recording. There's a BG3/Destiny crossover that lives in my mind but haven't written anything for it (yet?) It's very self-indulgent.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of!

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Nope.

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

No, unless you count brainstorming with friends and me translating that to fic (pretty much how burn our effigies was born, actually!)

14. What's your all time favorite ship?

I... don't think I have an all time OTP or anything? I have, like, a fave for each fandom, that's it. And I'm also a multishipper, so... For BG3, my current obsession is Shadowheart/Nocturne.

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

I've been kicking around a thing about Petra Venj's exile in the City, but I struggle to make it a coherent, cohesive thing, instead of a bunch of Situations. Same for loss.pdf, tbh

16. What are your writing strengths?

I want to believe it's characterization. But I'm obviously biased.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Plotting. Plotting. Plotting.

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

It's actually a huge pet peeve of mine lol at least when it comes to real-world languages. It's something that is often used to add some flavor to foreign characters ("No, mon cher, I expect you to die", said the Spy) in a way that doesn't match how multilingual people I know speak other languages! For example, when I'm talking in English I'm talking in English, when I'm talking in Spanish I'm talking in Spanish. I often forget how a word is said in one language but remember it in the other, or some grammar quirks from Spanish make their way into my English. I may be on a call with a friend and speaking in English while we play videogames, and I cuss in English in those cases -- unless we have been silent for a while, I have returned to thinking in Spanish, I'm startled when getting killed suddenly and I cuss in Spanish. Not to say it's 100% unheard of to hear examples like the Spy one above, it kind of makes me think of my Galician friends very intentionally dropping a carallo in a convo in Spanish to play the stereotype, lol

19. First fandom you wrote for?

I'm pretty sure I have some Final Fantasy X-2 and Doctor Who fics in some long-abandoned hard drive at my parents' house...

20. Favorite fic you've written?

have you read deliverance did you like deliverance will you read deliverance when will you read deliverance

#hala.txt

[king-maven-calore]

5,6 or 7. Angst. Mareven

ok ok, so I had to be in the right state of mind to write this, sorry for the delay. This fits as part of a fic/request that I started writing and may never finish bc damn it hurts so much.

This is uhm... marecal fam y'all should keep your distance🚫🚫

Some days were easier than others. Wasn’t that the way of life? Some days Mare’s figure was a mere shadow at the corner of his eye, disappearing whenever he tried to focus on her. Others, she would linger, muttering snide comments at the Cygnet’s handle of political affairs. Needless to say, she had a great deal of disdain for them. Being married to Iris, he had a right to attend the meetings where such matters were discussed. He wasn’t trusted enough to have an opinion though.

Maven was a prisoner in all but name, in a foreign nation, doomed to roam the halls of The Royelle, chased at every minute of every hour by the ghost of the woman he loved. The dead woman he loved... because he had killed her. Tricky how that worked, that her ghost had chased away the echo of his mother’s voice inside his head, and instead made it her task to torture him.

“You know that plan will only get silvers killed and red deserters for the Scarlet Guard,” Mare chirped with a bounce to her step.

‘Task’ wasn’t the right word, when she enjoyed torturing him so thoroughly. If this was his punishment, it was also her paradise.

“Acute observation,” he sneered, keeping his head down until he reached his chambers. “Thank you for stating the obvious.”

Word on the Lakelander court was that he was mad. A fallen king who often got caught talking to empty air and gazed at nothing, full of longing and loathing in equal measure.

“Obvious, and still you kept your mouth shut.” Her tone changed to scolding and she materialized right in front of him. “You could’ve stopped this.” Her eyes the color of trees in autumn, dead and cold, drilled holes in his.

He sidestepped her and kept walking at a brisk pace. Days such as these, when he could see her so clearly, he could also touch her. It was never a pleasant sensation. Today she looked the same way she had when he branded her in Harbor Bay; hair in a tight braid that fell over her shoulder the braid had come undone when she’d wriggled in pain on the floor when he used Cal’s torture device on her. She was wearing unassuming jeans and a shirt he’d moved out of the way so easily to burn the M on her skin. The spot was unscarred now. A pity. No matter how many times he re-branded the letter, she would just show up without it the next day.

Taunting him. Daring him to commit his sin all over again. Well, joke was on her. A tiny part of him would always sing at seeing her writhing on the ground beneath his hand, it was proof he could too, make her feel something.

“I couldn’t stop anything. They won’t listen to me.”

Maven closed the door of his chambers behind him and started yanking off the layers of heavy black clothes covering his frame until he was in his pants and shirt. It was getting hard to breathe.

“You can be pretty convincing when you want to be,” Mare spat in his face. “Do something, your highness.”

“Why should I?” He gripped her elbows with enough force to bruise. He hated how real, how warm she felt.

She’s not real. She isn’t here. Two sentences that held no weight by now. Not when his heart missed a beat and his skin prickled at the point of contact.

“I have no interest in my wife’s kingdom, or its citizens,” he gritted out pushing her until her back hit the wall, covered in scorch marks the palace staff didn’t bother to clean anymore. “Red or Silver. Their lives mean nothing to me.”

“Nothing ever mattered to you but your precious crown, right.” Mare laughed darkly; her eyes even darker as she glared at him. He loomed inches above her. “How miserable.”

She made it sound so small and simple. An existence reduced to a circle of iron... but it wasn’t true. Underneath the incomprehensible obsession with the power, there had been other things. Phantoms of things erased and squashed with surgical precision: curiosity for art and theatre, affection toward his father and brother, a taste for certain board games, love for two Reds.

The latter, rather than being squashed like the others, had morphed into this; staring into the fascinating, beautiful, horrible face of a phantom that felt more real than his own. He loved her so much he wanted to kill her all over again.

He didn’t realize his hands were burning until Mare’s shirt caught on fire. She remained unfazed, unharmed by his fire, still glowering.

“Not the only thing.” Maven’s voice was strained. “You mattered to me. I told you that.”

“And yet...” she added dryly, without feeling the need to complete the last part. The evident. The tragedy. His last, unforgivable crime. Ripping her away from the world and attaching her to him in return.

Forgive me, I beg of you. But some words could kill if spoken out loud, and he knew these ones would end him. And he was afraid of the darkness that followed, ironic as that may be for someone who had so comfortably inhabited darkness his entire life. One was a familiar comfort, while the other was the black dot at the end of a final paragraph. He refused to end it like this.

“I love you,” he gritted out through the noose tightening around his throat.

“No,” she whispered easily, without even pausing to consider his words. The flames were up to her collar now, licking at her neck. “You don’t. I believed you did, once, in your own way. But I was wrong because you don’t willingly murder the one you love, Maven.” Her eyes glinted with amusement, reflecting the orange light of the fire. “I loved you. I even chose you before you decided to throw it all away.”

Past tense. His gut recoiled like he’d been electrocuted, even though the ghost had no sparks. The room spun, the air scratched its way down to his lungs, his clothes asphyxiated him.

“Then leave me.” He pressed his face to her temple roughly, pushing her against the wall. “Go with him!” he growled like he was gurgling on venom. “Leave me! Leave me alone like all the rest!”

His screams would surely be heard across the palace but he did not care. Mare was all he had left... but not really. He’d made sure of it.

“LEAVE!” His throat hurt and the wallpaper behind Mare started raining down on them in hot embers that clung to their hair and clothes.

She shook him off and murmured in his ear, sweetly, as warmly as if she was pressing a knife to his neck and drawing out silver blood in rivers. “You thought you were the only one capable of hunting? I’ll haunt you even after your body is buried and left to rot.”

And then she was gone. He was left staring at the burning wall, carpet, and ceiling. Behind him, he heard the chandelier drop on the burning mattress. Maven fell to his knees grasping at the now empty air and screamed his throat raw for the first time, burning it all until the room was nothing but ashes, surrounding himself with fire to fight off the dark and the cold that permeated all things.

He let it all out because he did care, deep down he still cared. It was finally starting to push to the front of his consciousness and it was like a dam breaking, like birthing humanity, or himself, he did not know. The chaos and the pain were too great.

No one came to check on him.

When he woke up on the floor the next day, so tired not even 10 years of sleep could have helped, Mare was standing over him. Arms crossed and a quirked brow.

“Are you done?”

Leave it to the Little Lightning girl to shit on a perfectly good dramatic moment.

“Mare, dear,” he sighed, feeling slightly grateful for her presence. “I’m only getting started.”

#Mareven #my fics #red queen #RQ fanfic #don't mind silly things like coherence or grammar #this is pure vibes #fml #ask