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paintedscales · 8 months

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FFXIV Write 2023 :: Day 8

Prompt :: Shed Characters :: Nomin tal Kheeriin, Estinien Varlineau, Orn Khai Word Count :: 1,681

FFXIV Write 2023 Master List

“So…Faunehm is freed of her madness…” Nomin started to say, walking alongside Estinien and Orn Khai. The sun was beginning to dip down below the horizon. The reds and oranges were so much starker here than Eorzea as it cast its warm glow down upon the land.

“Indeed…” Estinien said in response.

Nomin paused in her step. Not long after, both Estinien and Orn Khai paused as well.

“And you?” Nomin asked, looking at Estinien with a curious gaze. “You leave Ishgard with not so much as a word to anyone else. I cannot say it particularly gladdens me to see you -- in my homeland, besides… You are truly shed of Nidhogg’s influence?”

“... Aye. I spoke true when I said my past experiences with Nidhogg made me eager to see Faunehm saved. Truer still that it was -- and is -- my intention to act as intermediary between man and dragon.” Estinien let out a low sigh, his arms coming to be folded across his chest. “I retain my sense of self, even now, Warrior of Light.”

“Nomin.”

“Aye, aye. Nomin.”

Orn Khai flitted between them as an awkward silence filled the air, his curiosity growing as he soon descended upon Nomin’s head and gently perched himself upon her shoulders. Tucking his wings back, he rested his hands upon the top of her head and gazed up at the darkening skies. He had opted to stick with them for a while longer while his parents had rejoiced in their reunion.

A more irritated sigh left Estinien after the silence seemed to have grated even him. He raised his gauntleted hand and pointed at Nomin.

“And you? Your eyes never betrayed oceans of strife and sorrow behind them -- nor did they betray the roiling hatred and lust for vengeance you craved. But never have I seen them more in the storm’s wake than now -- here in the Azim Steppe.” Estinien’s tone was firm, his brow furrowed. He knew that there was something else. “What is it that is here that made the Eye react to you those years ago?”

Nomin flinched, part of her recoiling from Estinien himself, another from his words. She had never been aware that he saw that much in her. She always thought him too blinded by his own rage and obsession to see hers.

It was perhaps in spite of the fact that he had those emotions that when they finally subsided, he saw hers.

Nomin grounded herself and did what she could to calm her emotions. For what right did he have to that part of her past? Two years, and here he was, asking questions she grew somewhat indignant over.

No…he deserved something. Something given their experience and being at the forefront of ending the Dragonsong War. He earned that much. And once Nomin rationalized it in her mind, she closed her eyes momentarily before looking around for somewhere to sit. Once a flat outcropping had been found, and Nomin was no longer on her feet, she reached up and motioned for Orn Khai to settle next to her.

“Were we still in Ishgard back then, I wouldn’t have entertained the very notion of telling you anything…” Nomin started. “But were Alphinaud here, he would likely be disappointed by whatever tension still remains between us. So you have him to thank as I keep him in my mind not to dismiss your question outright.”

Estinien gave a shrug, his frown creasing. “Answer. Or don’t. Everything within you is ultimately yours to deal with. I would rather not turn my lance against you in time, however. Know, however, that with mine own experience, I do not wish to see you fall victim to the same fate I had. You surely have much and more ahead of you, Warri--Nomin.”

His sentiment would have been touching if Nomin had not still felt some form of dislike for him. Despite, or perhaps because of, her expression of wanting to become friends for Alphinaud’s sake. She had been willing to do what she could to see their past stay in the past. Though his disappearance from Ishgard and with no word that had been given led her to believe that she would have never seen him again.

Would it have been better that way? Nomin had no idea.

However, she gathered herself and sighed. She had decided to humor him. To what extent, she supposed she would find out.

“If Nidhogg was looking for a vessel so threaded with the anguish that balled into the yarn of hatred and vengeance, I would have been the next best thing next to you. I would be lying if I said I did not wonder what would have happened if Nidhogg took control of me instead of you.”

She was stalling on answering the initial question. Estinien knew this as well as he folded his arms back over his chest and slightly narrowed his eyes at Nomin. Normally, he would not have bothered, but given their history with one another…he had clearly been equal parts annoyed and concerned.

“He would have preyed upon my obsession, certainly…” Nomin continued. She was working on getting her bearings -- her nerve -- to reveal what she could to someone she no longer despised. “I am not shed of my own past hurts, this I will admit. Being back here…it dredges up many memories. Some good…many bad. Then there are some that I would prefer to forget altogether, but I just…can’t.”

Nomin heard the metallic clinking of Estinien’s armor as he strode forward to meet with her and then take a spot upon the surface of the rock close by. He stayed ever silent, however, allowing for Nomin to eventually get to where she was going. Much as it exasperated a part of him.

“The biggest thing I can never forget, especially being here…” Nomin shook her head, keeping her gaze pointed away from both Estinien and Orn Khai both. “My brother…his last moments before he was struck down before my very eyes.”

Her heart thumped dully and painfully in her chest.

“His desperate attempt to get me to run.”

She could feel the arrow fletching between her fingers all over again. The taut feeling of the string being pulled back. The angry release of both arrow and scream.

“But…I didn’t. And…” Nomin paused, eyes darting from grass blade to grass blade as memories replayed in her mind. “And so I was taken and made to be a warrior for his killers. Stripped of my tribe of the time -- stolen from my sister who could only imagine what happened to me after.”

Nomin rested her hands at either side of her and curled her fingers tightly against the stone.

“Did you ever meet her again after?” Orn Khai’s voice spoke through and into their minds, curious and probing. He had raised his gaze up at Nomin as he adjusted himself to lay half of himself in her lap.

“... I…” Nomin started in response. She frowned and then sighed. “No. I tried. I saw her before I left the Steppe. But I just…I couldn’t.”

“Why not?” Orn Khai edged more into Nomin’s lap

“Shame. Uncertainty. Lingering sorrows…” Nomin said, offering simple responses that felt relevant at first. “The last time I had seen her, it was before our brother was stolen away from us by the tribe of Jhungid. I was scared to face her. Scared to know her words. Scared by the very notion that she would reject me -- blame me -- because of Esenaij’s death. I was scared of the potential of knowing that one person that loved me as family no longer did.”

She had long to think about why she never faced Bayarmaa. Why she left Turakina instead with a message for Bayarmaa.

Nomin scoffed, her gaze distant.

“It pains me all the time when I think about how I desperately wanted to see her again -- to think that I would be safe with her again when I was with the Jhungid. It pains me further that once I was free of them, I thought it best to simply…leave. Was I right? Was I wrong? I still find myself terrified of a solid answer.”

Silence washed over them again, and all that greeted them was a gentle breeze that flowed over the land. It was refreshing. Crisp. Rolling in from the Tail Mountains and bringing its gentle chill with it.

“I would suggest that before you face her, perhaps you should face yourself…” Estinien suggested, his eyes pointed in the direction of the ever towering Dawn Throne. He had started removing the clasps of his gauntlets.

“What do you mean?” Nomin asked.

“Far be it for me to inquire as to your reasons…” Estinien began in response. He had removed his gauntlets and placed them to the side of him. Reaching over, he rubbed a finger across Nomin’s horn, removing a loose layer of flaking paint from it.

However, Nomin herself had felt her neck and cheeks flush hot as a blush rushed up. She swatted his arm away and quickly got up, displacing Orn Khai back into flapping his wings and remaining airborne. Nomin could only look at Estinien with a look of disbelief as to his actions.

“Explain yourself!” Nomin demanded, her tail twitching and curling off to the right. The only grace she had at the moment was knowing as the sky darkened the land, so too did her blush remain hidden.

“Temper yourself,” Estinien replied, furrowing his brow. He then turned over his finger, now blackened by flaky paint. “‘Twas loose. I did not think it would elicit such a response.”

Nomin stared, her mouth falling slightly agape. She was in disbelief more than anything.

“Do…what do you think that is?” Nomin asked. In her mind, she believed that Estinien thought what coated his finger were flaking scales.

“Paint, clearly.”

Nomin huffed and folded her arms over her chest. So she had been wrong. Regardless, her frown deepened as she said: “I must ask you never ever, ever touch my horns or scales ever again.”

#ffxivwrite2023 #ffxiv #ffxiv writing #my writing #ffxiv oc #oc: nomin tal kheeriin #estinien wyrmblood #estinien varlineau #orn khai #stb spoilers #stb dragoon quest bits #update now that i'm more awake:#i must have been out of it toward the end #because how dare i not even resolve that question my character had #wheezes #that'll be fun to revisit when i'm getting to that point in my main writing though

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ennael · 1 year

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Road, Eve and the twins searching for chestnuts and mushrooms. A Fanart for chapter 25 of my DGM GEN fic. In English: Shading the black and the French one: Nuancer le Noir And Hi! Still struggling with color and shading :’) but, well, practice will help... right ?

#dgm #d gray man #art #Road Kamelot #Jasdevi #jasdero #devit #Eve Campbell #artist on tumblr #Fanart #NLN-fanfic #STB-fanfic #fanfic #original character

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tovaicas · 11 months

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@vexatious-knight sure, I can get into it! I know I make it seem like I utterly hated HW in those last few points but I actually don’t, it’s one of my fav expacs. it’s mostly just that I like to bitch abt the weaker parts of things I like bc constructive criticism is love and the finest form of flattery to me.

details under the cut. this is gonna be real long lol I’m sorry

ARR: full warning, I did ARR in a complete state of ‘near mental breakdown from uni stress’ kinda fugue, combined with me being more focused on Learning The Game than paying close attention to the writing (as it goes with the early stages of a new video game), so my initial memories of ARR are a lil’ hazy. regardless I’m in the camp that it Wasn’t That Bad, and knowing the backstory behind its existence makes it easier for me to forgive a lot of it’s flaws. it’s slow and a little poorly paced and very long (and the scions have little character, and the less that’s said abt their voice acting the better, tho I miss some ARR voices like ARR-ysayle, misgardsormr, and merlwyb), but it’s otherwise a fine introduction to the game. I disagree with the fandom optic of ‘skip ARR you don’t need it!’ and how people act like it’s the worst content in the game, bc ARR sets up at least some of the basics for what happens down the line, and again I don’t think it’s that bad. it’s definitely not winning any narrative awards, but it’s serviceable (esp. for smth cooked up quickly after the near-demise of a previous game version).

HW: so far competing w/ ShB for my fav expac. something to note is that I’m a writer, not a game designer, so some of my criticisms are petty just because I theoretically have the time and ability to expand as much as I want on the things I feel could’ve been done better, because I do. I understand that sometimes game design and MMO writing is just Like That bc of time and scope restraints. okay.

I generally really enjoyed HW - though I think it had a couple of missteps, it generally kept a tight narrative and kept sight of its themes. Ishgard is still my favourite setting (bc who doesn’t like rubbernecking a dumpster fire) and I like how it flipped a lot of character genres on their heads (estinien is the broody dark character but he explicitly isn’t an asshole, he’s just traumatized; aymeric is the cool collected golden boy but displays an impulsivity (that gets someone he respects killed) that you’d more expect out of someone like estinien; ysayle is almost sisterly in how much she cares for other people, and instead of being the violent cult leader you initially knew her as she’s literally the matron for a group of outcasts abandoned and harmed by the system). I like how uncertain it initially feels, I enjoy the couple of moments where the wol starts feeling less like a player avatar and more like a realized person by having character reactions and traumas (they’re utterly devastated by haurchefant’s death, and are shown to be explicitly traumatized and worn down), it does a good job of not sugarcoating how much of a hellhole ishgard is, and for the most part it does a fairly good job of having people like aymeric recognize they’re complicit in why their country is this way and making real meaningful steps to change it. I liked the revelations abt what was really going on w/ the dragonsong war.

also i’m native, so seeing a catholic church analogue get thoroughly dunked on, acknowledge, and make actual steps towards reparations (while acknowledging that an apology requires actual action and not just words) for a crime they committed is a little bit more personal to me than it might be for some others.

as for things I think were weaker....I’ve mentioned a few of them before. like I said a few times I think estinien was an exceptionally flat character and that the reveal could’ve been so much better had he been allowed to have a modicum of growth and agency and actually been made to grapple with the reality of the situation and what it means for him and his sense of self. HW has a weird fixation on humbling ysayle (ravana, focusing on how ‘wrong’ she was during its most important scene despite the fact her not knowing makes little sense bc vidofnir) and the reveal + her completely unnecessary death makes it harder to enjoy for me. speaking of, I find the fact that after she dies the heretics are completely forgotten abt to be a particularly big fumble, bc the entire reason they even exist is a huge portion of HW’s message (they’re not all evil fanatic dragonfuckers, many (if not most) of the heretics are otherwise normal people who have been harmed by the system often through no fault of their own, ex. heustienne as shown if you did HW DRG quests, and will be killed if they go back to Ishgard), so it’s a little strange to me that their voices and plights are quietly dropped as soon as they can when they really should be some of the loudest, as should brume residents. another sore spot for me personally (that I’ve mentioned) is that neither aymeric nor the game wants to acknowledge the awkward truth that aymeric, as leader of the temple knights, is directly complicit in their many (not secret at all) crimes and how his failure to control them reflects back on him as lord commander. that he can’t seem to reconcile with this and blames everything on his father is a fun character flaw, but I’d like to see it more acknowledged (both canon and fandomwise) that aymeric fails in some pretty important ways and makes some weird decisions (like restoration-era ishgard still has the inquisitors. aymeric. you kept the fucking heresy police?). I’d like to see his characterization of ‘perfect golden boy’ to be challenged more often, but I’m not gonna hold my breath lol.

StB: oh boy. as you probably know, stb is obviously (so far) the weakest expac in terms of writing - it fails in a lot of ways, sometimes to the point things actually get offensive. what I liked abt it was mostly mechanical. a lot of it’s fights were really fun, and stb is abt the point (other than fights like nidhogg) where the game starts upping the ante on mechanic difficulty across the board and starts taking the training wheels off (just a little), and I think a lot of its maps were nicely designed and are nice to look at. omega was a fun raid storyline, and I also liked little details, like how this expac’s ‘beast tribes’ are treated as equals in contrast to the uld’ahn assertion that eorzean ones are violent savages that need to be monitored and put down when they get too uppity (this is why I have very mixed feelings on the scions as an organization, but that’s for a separate post).

narrative-wise tho.....stb is a mess. it’s the classic case of biting off more than it could chew, bc it tries to do two storylines at once and fails at this hard; the ala mhigan sections are too short and underwritten across the board, and they spend too much time faffing abt just getting to Doma that that section feels too short as well. shinryu is a massive sore spot; a bahamut+ level primal is born, disappears, and just.....is never mentioned again except at the very end, where you had no buildup or way to predict this happening. I spent literally the entire expac wondering when people were gonna worry abt shinryu on the loose potentially causing another dalamud situation at any moment. things that are super interesting and have a lot of implications, like zenos’ (fake! manufactured!) echo, which is hydaelyn’s power, giving him the ability to body hop (which is in all previous appearances something only granted by or exclusive to ascians) is inherently interesting and a good segue into the shb revelations but it’s literally never brought up again.

I also didn’t really enjoy it character-wise; papalymo and lyse have absolutely no depth or development in ARR or HW so his death is utterly wasted and the reveal that yda is a fake persona has literally no punch (haha) to it bc yda had no character beyond comic relief in ARR anyway. lyse unfortunately never gets out from under the shadow of her comic relief designation, and due to pacing issues her arc is anemic as fuck (she never really grows and keeps asking the same questions over and over) and never actually materializes into what the devs wanted it to be; lyse as resistance leader was a point that was never going to work as-written, and that’s before the colourism issue comes into play. I don’t think she’s necessarily an awful character, but she was definitely mishandled.

I’m not going to talk abt hien or gosetsu here. know that I absolutely despise them, hien especially, for a lot of reasons. but if I get into these reasons I’ll write a 5k word essay on just that so I’ll spare you the pain and save it for a different post. but hien makes me angry as a character so. yugiri is the best character here by process of elimination, fight me.

yotsuyu’s arc is unsurprisingly a mess, and the post-patches fail to actually engage with it bc her main deal is that she’s been horrifically mistreated, especially by men, her entire life, and the entirety of the post-patches are hien treating her like an object to traded around and gosetsu making funney ‘jokes’ abt women. it’s awful. note that I’m not excusing her actions - yotsuyu is an awful person who’s done awful shit, and the inherent moral dilemma of how to handle her crimes as tsuyu is an interesting beat - but everything abt her is mishandled and so...egregious that at times it almost feels exploitative. it makes me wonder that as written if she’d been better off literally just being an awful person because she’s an awful person, and not awful bc she’s a sexual assault survivor (which, I want to stress, this is not the first time this game has made the implication that women who are sexually assaulted are just morally broken afterwards (the first was eline roaille) which is quite the stance to take). all in all I think stb is just across the board unsatisfying and is just a complete mess of an expac. fun fights, tho!

ShB: this is as far as I’ve gone and I’ve not started post-patches yet, so I’ll only be talking abt base ShB. like I think I mentioned right after finishing - I liked it! I think it did a good job of keeping to a tight narrative, and one of it’s bigger strengths is that none of its zones overstay their welcome (like. cough cough. ruby sea. cough cough). other than a couple areas I think it did a genuinely good job of telling what it wanted to tell, and it’s competing w/ HW for my favourite of the bunch.

it’s maps are super pretty (lakeland has some of my favourite bgm so far), it’s fights are fun as hell, and the lightwarden narrative is genuinely gripping. I really enjoyed the bleaker, more dark fantasy tone starting out, I enjoyed how it didn’t pull its punches regarding how ever-present and how...inevitable the sin eaters feel as a threat (it reminds me of ishgard somewhat, in that way). after an entire expac of feeling like a weapon and almost background character just here to solve problems through violence, shb’s narrative of the scions actually (finally) coming to care about your wellbeing as a person as you’re literally dying for the world and working as a team and the MMO player tendency to just follow quest objectives being somewhat used against you as it’s your ‘but thou must’ violence that ends up nearly killing you is a nice subtle meta thing. the worldbuilding for the first feels fairly grounded (by final fantasy standards) and I don’t really have any issues with it. I wasn’t expecting to like the emet-selch arc at the end but I actually really did, I feel they delivered on that front.

eulmore is my biggest sore spot for this expac, bc I think that while their viewpoint re: the end of the world is interesting I don’t think they’re used well. I get that their existence is to highlight the forces keeping norvrandt divided, but just...hm. I didn’t find them super compelling or dangerous as a threat. you really get the sense that without ran’jiit these guys are just hilariously incompetent. and though I’m not going to talk abt it, it’s not my place, eulmore is fatphobic as fuck.

speaking of ran’jiit, he’s obviously the weakest part of the whole show. I find him to be an utter waste of a character, especially once you consider his hook is kinda interesting in its own right; he’s the only eulmoran we see to be in it and loyal to vauthry for reasons that don’t appear to be selfish, but we never actually learn what these reasons are. nothing abt him is explained (he has a dragon? how are there dragons on the first when dragons in this universe are space aliens deposited on the source? he can fuse with it? how? the only other time we see draconic transformations is in ishgardians bc of ratatoskr’s latent aether. is this a real dragon or just smth shaped like one? what is it? we never see any other creature that looks even similar (the closest is alte roite in omega raids). how is he so strong?), and what little character he does have is often ignored if it’s in the wol’s favour (this is a man who kicks y’shtola and his own man off the side of a bottomless pit, but for some inexplicable reason fails to do the same to the wol, his greatest enemy, when they’re distracted by it). his unwinnable fight schtick is not only old at this point but it’s infuriating - I can forgive zeno’s scripted fights bc it’s reiterated over and over again that he’s not exactly normal when it comes to his combat prowess, and the first go around is shocking in its own right bc it’s the first time you’ve lost a fight soundly, not through any trickery or magic or anything. He’s legitimately just stronger than you. ran’jiit just shows up. wrecks your shit. the exarch gives a weak ‘oh no, ran’jiit!’ as explanation. nothing else is ever explained. he’s just this inexplicably strong dude following you around as an unnecessary motivator to kill lightwardens faster, that’s it. it’s a disappointment in an otherwise strong expac. ryne is however my baby.

I’m not entirely sure on how to feel abt the exarch/g’raha rn, that will probably depend on how the post-patches handle him. know that I intensely disliked him for much of shb, bc I read his actions as deeply horrifically manipulative and genuinely thought he was going the be the main villain he was so fuckin shady. no I don’t really care he was doing it for a good cause, he still forced the wol into a war he knew could kill them without giving them full information abt the consequences and held their friends as ransom and only told them the barest of information after they were already in the shits (holminster). so we’ll see how it goes.

my other quibbles are pettier, and are more the result of time/mmo constraints. like I said once, I’d have liked the lightwarden corruption to be more obviously present (as the game pointedly goes out of its way right at the start to show you exactly what being mid-change looks like) and for maybe at least one more containment failure scare in the tempest to really hammer home how little time you have left (was genuinely surprised there wasn’t one) but that’s easy as fuck to fix in writing when you have unlimited scope.

tl;dr: it’s not that I hate what happened in HW, it’s that I think that while it’s an overall good scene a lot of it’s potential was wasted by a failure to give certain people (estinien) agency or depth (despite the fact he has massive stakes in them), and focuses on the wrong aspect bc it wants to laugh at a woman being wrong instead of the big picture. I think that all of the expacs have their fumble points, and I think these deserve to be talked abt critically. I otherwise really enjoy and even love HW/ShB.

StB is however an entire trip into a minecraft canyon of an expac. I don’t think it’s irredeemably awful, but you can definitely feel the writing issues. the less I say abt hien the better.

#spoilers #major spoilers #long post #these are kinda just my general thoughts. if you have specific questions on what I thought abt specific areas or plot beats #or characters or whatever feel free to throw them at me #all in all I think each expac has it's ups and downs bc that's kinda just how it goes #I think shb/hw manage to deliver pretty well on their narratives while stb utterly biffs it.#like I said I know I make it seem like I utterly hate the content. that it's deeply flawed bc I just bitch a ton but I *really* don't #I'm just a writer who's love language re:media is ripping it the fuck apart bc I like seeing how it ticks.#when it comes to media made by huge companies at least.#saint.txt

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summercourtship · 5 months

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do you perhaps have adhd? im the same way with focus music. wasnt until recently that my friend informed me it wasn't usual to have aggressive edm and house music in your "work and focus" playlist.

HAHA I do!! It is definitely a thing I’ve heard about before in relation to ADHD and tbh it makes sense! I don’t know WHY it makes sense, but it does.

#no I do my best work when listening to hard rock/metal/industrial music #and yes also this means the reader character for STB is accidentally ADHD coded #just by virtue of being written by me and a lot of her experiences being inspired by me and my life #ask #anon

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zabiume · 6 months

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Not to be dramatic or anything, but I just caught up with Sailing to Byzantium and i think this is my fav Bleach fic ever. I love how the dads are both trash, but also really human, they make mistakes but never out of pure malice, they love their children but they're also insanely awkward with their feelings for eachother and expressing it to their kids, they clearly love their wives but doesn't mean they can't find something else in eachother also without lessening what they had for them, and just, your prose is rlly lovely to red, especially for two characters who are rlly complex and difficult to pin down. Isshin's chaotic good but also remarkably level headed and means well & Ryuken being too proud but also a softie beneath it all and they both deserve happy endings despite them not being the best with their kids, the NuANce of it all was gorgeous. + Family road trip & Ichigo&Uryu shinengans and found family my beloved <3 their friendship is very dear to me (&makes where they are currently in anime canon a little more bearable for the next couple of months lol) and them begrudgingly accepting their dads deserve happiness bcs what is life without people to love share it with ++ you managed to include Orihime, Chad and give real dignity to the relationships the dads had before w. Masaki and Katagiri without putting them in competition. This got super rambly, I'm so sorry, but just wanted to say this is by far one of my fave Bleach fics ever and your writing is gorgeous <3 (Also very much into your Karakura squad one shot series, because what is Bleach about if not the power of friendship? :))

wow, thank you so much💖 i'm so honored you enjoyed my prose and portrayal of one of my favorite bleach rarepairs😅 i think if you've been around my blog for a while, then you'll know i just LOVE the idea of building love back up again after heart break (i mean, You Can Show Me Your Heart also had a similar theme lol). big fan of the idea that love doesn't ever end, you can always find it again and it can be just as deep and meaningful—even if it's far from where you thought you would be when you were younger!

at the risk of oversharing, i think one of my biggest emotional journeys in my early 20s was the discovery that (for me at least), most parents fall into two categories: the ones you can forgive and the ones you can't. sometimes parenting mistakes are vile and awful and downright abusive, but sometimes parenting mistakes are just a result of people having kids before realizing what that means or actually entails. i think this is especially true for parents in ryuuken's generation—the well-meaning but awful at expressing it generation, who just want what's good for their kids but have very limited, society-driven views of what success and happiness looks like. you know those articles about how more dads know how to change their kids' diapers today than they did throughout the 50s-90s? i think that's kind of how i viewed isshin and ryuuken vs ichigo (who is about to be a father) in this fic too. there is no doubt in my head that ichigo will do better than isshin, but that doesn't mean i'm not at least a little sympathetic about the contexts isshin and ryuuken come from.

i think ryuuken and isshin are both characters who are very eager to run from their past, which puts them at odds with their kids, who are starving for a connection to their roots. of course, i'm not necessarily an apologist for either of them, but i did want to explore these conflicts, and the love that runs beneath all of it. i don't often get a chance to explore love between significantly older adults, so most of my writing is often in the realm of everything feeling Big and Explosive and Important (because when you're young, it really is!). getting to strip all that back and write about these two old geezers and their big family felt great :D of course, i love the karakura kids, so 99% of my fics are either about them entirely or have them in it in some shape or form. i wouldn't want it any other way and i'm glad people are enjoying it 💖💖💖 thanks a lot, i really appreciate it!

#don't apologize for rambling this was so nice :D #sailing to byzantium is just one of those fics where i was like no one is going to read this but i'm going to write it anyway #<- and then people actually read it! and liked it!#i think found family writers have to especially be careful about forcing trad/nuclear roles onto characters where XYZ relationship #can be neatly and easily labeled. i was careful to avoid that here #you don't have to define something to recognize that it's important to you and that to me is very bleachcore #now that this is done i guess my next goal is to subject you all to my sad and weepy soi fon character study #i'm joking i'm joking...am i though? because stb started as a joke too and look where that got us #asks #💌

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