#on that note I think it's very easy for writers to soulbond with their characters hence why this experience is so common

[trenchcoat-of-hats]

as a system who's been writing their whole life, I think some writers should consider that they're plural with the way they talk about their characters- because characters aren't actually supposed to take over the story, at least not in our experience, unless they're literally autonomous because they're a headmate/soulbond/whatever. if you're a good writer you keep your characters in-character so they would do whatever's in-character but the character shouldn't be deciding to do that, you're deciding that. there's a difference between knowing what a character will do because you know them well and having the character choose what to do themselves, you know?

#on that note I think it's very easy for writers to soulbond with their characters hence why this experience is so common #plural system #actuallyplural #endos welcome #pluralgang #plurality

[themagiciansreccenter]

Five @ Five @eidetictelekinetic

As a part of our author spotlight, we’ve asked each writer to highlight 5 fics and tell us a little about their experience writing (or reading) them.

Do I Even Dare (To Speak Out Your Name)

Quentin falls asleep on the couch again not long after Poppy leaves, and he dreams of life in the cottage in Fillory, he dreams that he could stay in the memories forever.

He wakes up to wrong-familiar eyes watching him in the filtered glow of city lights at night, too tired to protest when long fingers trail down his arm, card through Ariadne’s fur. Cythera is motionless in shadow, and Quentin stares at the Monster and doesn’t have enough left in him even to move.

Predawn spills grey light over the floor, and they keep staring at each other, some kind of stalemate in a game left unspoken.

So I've been writing daemon AU fic since 2014, and since 2017 I've been actively coming for all my fandoms with it, but I've mostly kept away from the creepier aspects of daemon AU. Not so with Quentin and the Monster - if you don't know, touching someone's daemon is a violation on par with sexual violence in most cases, though as with everything else, it's complicated by the fact that the Monster is in Eliot's body. While I was writing the interactions in this fic, it was really fascinating to me how easily I went darker than I'd ever gone before. The Quentin/Monster dynamic is both horrible and fascinating, and this bit sort of summarizes that arc in my fic - the game left unspoken.

Oh And I'm Still A Far Cry From Gone

Quentin blinks. “Do I want to hear this?”

Quentin 1 shrugs. “I don’t really care. If you stay, we’re kicking your ass.”

While Quentin tries to figure out how the hell he’s supposed to respond to that, he thinks he hears voices again. Julia and… and Margo, this time. He tries to listen, but the harder he tries, the more the whispers fade until there’s nothing to hear at all. “You’re kicking my ass,” he repeats, folding his arms and glowering at his other-self. “Can I ask why?”

“Because you get to live, asshole. Look, I know, our shoebox notes and our half-assed plans, I know we don’t always want to live but the thing is? You’re the only one of us who gets to . Your timeline won, and I know it was hell, but you really want to just throw that away?”

So this is my favorite scene from this entire fic, all 48,794 words of it. I love alternate reality hijinks, and characters talking to other versions of themselves. In this case, a comatose Quentin is in the Underworld choosing to live or die, and the strongest advocate for choosing to live is... himself, from the very first timeline. It's me using one of my favorite tropes to really illustrate a major theme in this story, which was Quentin choosing to live after a suicide attempt, and what that meant for him.

fall away to the sound (of my heart to your beat)

“What did you do?” Everett demands. “Just a Minor Mending,” Quentin says, with all the confidence Eliot or Margo would put in the words, and he flings the bottle with the Monster in it. He sees it clear the mirror frame and then he runs like hell, faster than he’s ever run in his life. In another life maybe he’d be too tired to run, he feels it even here. That dark voice that never leaves him, whispering how easy it would be to stop, to rest. But there’s Eliot flickering in the back of his mind, weak but alive, alive and himself again. There’s Alice, bright and sharp as ever and they promised to take care of each other. There’s the double echo of Margo through them, who will go to the Underworld just to kick his ass if he doesn’t make it back.

He can rest in one of the chairs in Eliot’s hospital room, Quentin tells that voice, with soulbonds echoing in his mind till they almost drown out the whispers. He can rest with Alice who’s almost as tired as he is, he can curl up with Margo or Julia until they crash out. Quentin dives through the door and slides across the ground on his stomach, only just managing to twist enough that he doesn’t crash headfirst into the opposite wall.

I won't lie, I wrote this scene as a pretty explicit rebuke to the canon version of events. The story itself is a soulmate AU for Queliot Week, and I wanted to use the soulbonds as that last reminder Quentin needed, that yes he has a reason to run, and he can run. I also wanted to reclaim the "Just a Minor Mending" line because in the moment I thought that was an utterly fantastic line, that it was Quentin owning his discipline and how in the right place he can do so much with it. I wanted to make it actually mean that. 

stay when it's hard (or when we're making mistakes) by @butterflydm

Tomorrow, when he wakes up, Margo and Eliot will- they won't be cruel about it, but- but they'll kindly let him know they aren't interested in a repeat performance. It'll be- they won't avoid him for weeks afterwards like Alice did after Brakebills South, because they are his friends, but he suspects the actual morning-after talk will go the same way. Not really us, not really our emotions. Just magic and hormones and he was an okay option at the time but not in the light of day. Not for real.

He should get up now, go to his own bed.

This is the first part of a Marqueliot series where Quentin and Alice don't get together after the fox thing, so Q is single when the threesome happens and the morning after leads to them becoming a triad. I love the entire series so much but this bit from Q's pov after the initial threesome just strikes me because - he's expecting to be shot down, essentially. He's certain that he'll be rejected, but even in that certainty he still trusts Eliot and Margo to hurt him as little as possible. It's heartbreaking in the moment but in the context of the larger series it becomes part of why they end up working - that trust. 

for the longest time by timelykey

Quentin bites his cheek and tries not to grin. The light that there is glints off of El’s crown, the one Q forgets he wears sometimes. It’s become such a part of him, the same way their crowns have become such a part of Q and Margo too.

Sometimes they sit just as heavy, and sometimes resting so lightly while they dance and lift their kid.

The thing is, Quentin’s stomach was twisting and turning the whole time they danced and went through the tunnel.

He wants to reach up and kiss El, knock his crown off to get his hands in his hair. But, with the swooping sensation of his stomach falling through the floor, he realised somewhere in the party that he wanted to do it for real. He wants to be married for real.

So this fic sees Quentin and Eliot getting married after the Beast is defeated (with no deaths, so Fillory has all four monarchs) for nebulous magic reasons, but really because Quentin hates Eliot seeming so damn lonely. Five years later they admit to being in love. They adopted a kid in there too. I picked this clip because it's a nice run down of the fic, this world where the characters get to be happy, if more than a little clueless. They make Fillory a home for all of them and it's just a lovely thing to read. 

#the magicians rec center #five@five #author spotlight #author: eidetictelekinetic

[whopooh]

When the soulmate trope meets Miss Fisher’s world of choice and freedom

Is there a bond between us, Jack, or are you just using your footy scarf?

I am super intrigued and happy by the way the January trope challenge about writing a soulmate AU for Miss Fisher has turned out! So many good fics (and a few writers even writing more than one, or stories with several chapters!) I have seen that more people than me have really enjoyed reading them.

The soulmate AU (more info here) is really a rather odd trope to begin with -- and one I have only known about for a while -- and this is what made us start the discussion that turned into the challenge. It is an alternate universe where soulmates are somehow bound together by fate. This is most often shown by some kind of sign or identifying mark on their skin – the connection between souls thus made carnal and readable, explicitly shown on the body. There is a strong longing for harmony, perfection and complete bonding underlying this idea.

I think the reason why this trope proved to work so well for the MFMM fic is twofold:

First, because it is a change to the world that is thorough enough to upend everything in the story, making us scrutinize it and try to make sense of how that idea would fit in, and then assemble the story again; creating a new world that still isn’t too far from the original.

Second, because this idea really goes against so many things in the Miss Fisher universe – and in a way that gives much energy to the stories. Miss Fisher is all about respect, choice and free will, about resisting ideas of there being only one correct way of being in the world, and also resisting ideas like a woman can only fulfill herself through love and family. Phryne Fisher is a basically anti-romantic character, who nevertheless falls in love – and when she falls in love, it is sneaking up on her, it is not following the standard routes about romance, and it will never be the sole focus of her life.

This antagonism between Miss Fisher and the soulmate concept is so productive. It makes the writer to think: How could this work? What would change and what would stay the same? How could it be tweaked to fit the basic ideas of Miss Fisher’s world? It would definitely not be very interesting if the story originally had this idea in it -- it is interesting precisely because it hasn’t got that at all, at the same time that there is such an undeniable resonance between the lady detective and the inspector.

It’s always complicated with you.

The soulmate trope can be seen as romantic, the idea that there is someone meant for you, someone you are simply drawn to -- but it can also be seen as rather horrible, that you are fated to one person and your free will is therefore taken away from you. And there is so much room for poking at the idea, questioning its logic, and allowing it to play out or subvert it in different ways.

I love this kind of pondering, and working things through in fiction, and using this impulse of ”what if”. What would happen if Phryne and Jack were soulmates? If Phryne didn’t have a soulmate? If Phryne had an unexpected soulmate? If Jack really had Rosie as a soulmate, but it still didn’t work out? What if the soulmate system turned out to be horrifying? Or ambiguous and difficult to understand? The trope proved to be a great fic generator (here is the link to the full collection).

Many different systems have been used or invented in the fics, and so many different attitudes to it. The mark being something you just have on your skin, a similar or compatible mark that show your affinity. The mark being etched in, by natural forces, and showing the first words your soulmate will say to you – something that of course influences how people live their lives. The mark as something you have on your skin, but that isn’t always so easy to pinpoint to just one person, leaving room for a lot of ambiguities. The mark being a tattoo of the other person’s name. The other person making you suddenly see the world in colour, or there being an outward sign of you belonging together when you meet. The fate being shown through a countdown of a clock, until you meet ’the one’. -- When explored they show different parts of the idea of fate, and how they affect people’s lives.

Above all, many stories explore Phryne’s defiance or complicated relationship to the idea of being fated. There are so many great discussions about how she would hate that, and this is one of the really interesting things -- how well the idea of choice, and of fate not at all always being good for you, is brought out in the meeting between Miss Fisher and the trope.

There are two main strands in the fics, I would say. First: the soulbond is there, and Phryne is reluctant or unknowing. She meets Jack without the knowledge that he is her match, and the revelation is a big turning point. Or, second, the soulbond is not there, and they fall in love in spite of this, the romantic part being that choice can overrules external ideas about fate.

Please note that under the cut there will be spoilers for the fics I talk about.

Just one gaudy soulmate?

In @firesign23′s “Not from the stars do I my judgement pluck” and @omgimsarahtoo's “Wide Open to the Sun”, Phryne is -- at least probably? -- without soulmate, a free person compared to most people that cannot choose their own lives. In @flashofthefuse’s “The Sole Requirement” (that turns the soulmate concept cleverly into a political idea used to take control over people) and @whopooh’s “Phryne Fisher’s Sense of Freedom”, Phryne has that fated or forced connection with René, but the connection is not allowed to decide over her -- she uses her free will anyway. In @firesign23′s mentioned fic and in @ollyjayonline’s “Another Chance”, Jack is a soulmate to Rosie, but with very different results, the one showing that such a designation doesn’t mean anything in the end compared to experiences and choice, the other bringing the trope all the way to its most uncanny extreme by making Jack not able to resist when his soulmate Rosie calls, even when it is actually against his will – it is a heart-breaking story. Heart-breaking and not-romantic is also @aljwritesphryne’s “The gloves are off...” about Rosie, that is being manipulated by Sidney Fletcher in a callous way, also bringing to the fore the ambiguity of the whole soulmate idea and of knowing who is the right one from a mark -- the more hopeful second part, “Is that supposed to be a compliment?” is set within the same AU and is further exploring the ambiguity. 

In many stories, Phryne does have the connection with Jack, but she is very reluctant to give this kind of power over to ‘fate’, or doesn’t even realise until they already know each other. @floating-in-the-blue/yeoyou’s “Illusion of freedom” and theeyeoftheoncomingstorm’s “They tell a story”, the soulmates on their own skin receive the scars from the other person’s injuries, and as they emerge, you realise things about what the other must be living through. In Redbrunja’s “Love is not love when it alterations finds” the world instead bursts into colour for a person when meeting their soulmate. Jack grumbles when he realises Phryne does this to him, but he also wonders if she doesn't do the same for everyone.

@ladyroxie’s “Fortune and Men’s Eyes” and @omgimsarahtoo's “The Breathings of Your Heart” give a real, deep connection between Phryne and Jack, but lets it be hidden from them. This means the two of them meet without this knowledge already being between them, and they can form an opinion about each other freely, before the revelation. In @omgimsarahtoo’s fic the connection is that they can communicate through writing on their own skin, and they do this without knowing who the other is, which means they have one official and one secret connection, without knowing it’s the same person. In @ladyroxie’s, the mark is not destinying a person to simply one person, but is a kind of anima that highlights some characteristics of the person. It is possible to combine with more than one other person, and first after Phryne and Jack have fallen completely in love are they allowed to see the other’s mark as a kind of confirmation.

In @phrynesboudoir/sassasam’s “Shall we Stick by Each Other as Long as we Live”, the system is unknown for most, but Phryne hears about it from a fortune teller. This means the whole society is not formed by this idea, and Phryne can privately dismiss the idea and resist it as long as possible, and when she finally realises she shares a mark with Jack, she still hesitates. 

In @scruggzi’s “Independent Souls” and @rithebard’s “The Glowing Light of Time”, there are primarily sincere discussions about fate and the soulmate idea -- I adore scruggzi’s tag “Tipsy philosophising”. @kidnthehall‘s “Positively charged” as well as @missingmissfisher‘s “A perpetual feeling” explore the bond or resonance between them poetically and not seen within a system -- I love that the fics in this challenge go all the way from these to @ollyjayonline’s and @flashofthefuse’s systemic criticiques. 

In @221aubrina’s “Skipping Stones on Still Water”, the soulbonding takes place throughout Phryne’s and Jack’s whole lives, all the way from a meeting in childhood, and in @loopyhoopyfrood‘s “Such Stuff As Dreams Are Made On” the bond is also in future lives, so they meet again in our time, and in @robinv-ellacott /comeaftermejackrobinson’s “Hieroglyphs” this is instead expanded backwards, into former lives and harking back all the way to Antony and Cleopatra. Here, the romantic part of the notion is explored – the resonance between these two characters, and that the resonance makes them irresistible for each other. @promisesarepiecrust’s “Night Train to Melbourne” instead creates a universe where soulmates per definition are not in a romantic relation, but friends that can help each other through their affinity, and the idea that a soulmate would also be romantically involved is taboo, rather like incest. Phryne’s soulmate is Mac, but her love interest is still Jack. And Jack’s soulmate is an old lady, which for some reason is incredibly adorable. 

Also in @olderbynow’s “The Place Where He Fell When He Saw The Stars”, the soulmate part is promising to be complicated by not being about romance, but in a completely different, and rather teasing, way. @thehonorablemrsmccarthy's “Like Ink, Unto my Skin” explores not Phryne and Jack, but Bert. It takes as its departure the idea that soulmates can be both friends and lovers, and that there is not only one in a life.

As this shows, this trope is most often very idea driven, sometimes even philosophical. There are also very much emotions at play, and thoughts about how this kind of bond impacts both relations and society as a whole. There are so many great details about the backstory and the story from the episodes, about defiance, youth, war, experience, life, friendship, and love. Details that I cannot bring up here -- you’ll just have to go and read the very different takes on the idea of ’being destined’ for someone.

And I would love to hear your thoughts, please feel free to comment!

#reading miss fisher #mfmm fanfic tidbits #mfmm fanfic #soulmate trope #tropes #AU