Rise Up, Oh Heart, For There is Another Battle to Win

So… @wildehacked tagged me in this meme, add the first line of a WIP and tag as many people as there are words, and honestly I feel personally called out by this particular writing meme

Because, much like Wilde, I discovered that I write long-ass first sentences.  I found one that was a flat 50 words.  Most easily topped 30, with a handful in the mid 20′s.  This is the shortest opening sentence I found and it’s 16 and I’m sorry but I am definitely going to run out of people to tag before I hit 16, so please consider this an open invitation.

From what Tobias could tell, it got to be a habit after a while, looking up

To the shock of everyone, I am sure, it’s an Animorphs fic.

Right, okay, I’m so sorry, I don’t even know if all of you WRITE fic: @littlestartopaz, @slyrider, @chromatographic, @aethersea, @skymurdock, @sroloc–elbisivni, @flvffs, @c-foley, and…fuck, y’all, that’s eight, if you want to do the thing and feel mildly judged by a meme about opening sentences, go for it.

Anonymous asked: Crispin 14

I’m combining two anonymous asks for this thing that a bunch of people ended up doing against my expectations, because they are both about my poor murder boy.  Poor Crispin, he makes so many bad choices.

14: Are they prone to outbursts (of violence, extreme emotion… exc… )?

…shockingly, no.  Not even the White Wolf was really prone to losing control of himself.  Losing his temper, maybe, but Crispin was raised as a diplomat, with exceptional control over his emotions (this emotional repression may have been a contributor to his eventual snap).  He has always been prone to very cold anger–Crispin has always been the type where he can hold onto his temper until the most opportune moment to release it and then flay someone alive with a totally bland expression.  Like, is he an incredibly dangerous, violent, impassioned person? Yes, 100%.  But those things are always released with the sort of steel-eyed calculating precision to have the maximum impact.  Which is somehow more nervewracking when he’s on the ‘right’ side of things.

44: What’s one thing they wish they could do more often, but can’t?

Crispin genuinely really likes children.  He’s great with them.  He used to hang out at Brenneth’s smithy before everything went to hell and the kids who drifted through (Brenneth didn’t immediately kick them out and told good stories, so she was something of a hit) adored him.  The kids used to call the two of them pesaruld Crispin and pelali Brenneth (big brother and big sister).  Crispin would love to be able to spend more time with children.

Naturally, absolutely no one trusts him with their children.

Anonymous asked: Brenneth and Crispin 16 if you don't mind. Love your work. :)

Listen I just want you all to know that I expected to get zero (0) asks for this, MAYBE one from a close friend or my mother or something who was trying to humor me.  And now I have Many.  Like eight all told.  I have no idea if this is just one really curious anon or if this story got popular but welcome to my kingdom, you may call me my liege.

16: Is there anyone who makes them feel inferior?

I mean, each other, tbh.  And they have understandable reasons for this, which doesn’t help their respective buckets of Problems.

So, Crispin’s reasons for thinking Brenneth is better than him are pretty plain and simple.  Crispin knows that he was the villain of their story, and as much as he might hate himself for it, he knows that Brenneth did the right thing.  He knows that–regardless of whether he was necessarily compos mentis at the time–he killed a lot of people and attempted a takeover, and Brenneth was the hero who came in to stop him, no matter the cost.  Beyond that, Crispin genuinely believes that Brenneth is a hero, talented and clever and stubborn and strong, and even though he has a very accurate grasp of his own skills and abilities, he’s always thought that Brenneth was severely underappreciated by the people around her.  This translated into more than one extremely ill-advised attempt to get her to side with him during his stint as the White Wolf.

And like moreover Brenneth won.  Brenneth isn’t just the hero, in Crispin’s mind, she’s the victor.  Obviously she’s better than him.

Brenneth, on the other hand, has very similarly logical (if…debatable) reasons for her feeling that Crispin is better than her.  First of all, she was passed over for the prophecy when they first arrived in Alleirat as kids, and that has an impact–Crispin was fated to be the great hero, according to the people who took them in, and Brenneth still feels some of that imposter syndrome, like she stole his title or cheated him out of it, even though he very much surrendered that right when he started murdering folk.  Second of all, flat-out Crispin was better in combat for much of their time fighting each other.  Like, it was an objective reality, he had trained as a warrior and a diplomat exclusively while Brenneth was both a blacksmith and a warrior.  No level of natural talent (and Brenneth is very talented) can make up for that kind of time devoted to practice.  Don’t get me wrong, she did a good job–she poisoned him once or twice, fought to the best of her ability when they clashed, tried to blind him one time–but Crispin was just having more success, better luck.  There was even a time where he believed he had successfully managed to kill her (and in his defense, stabbing someone in the chest and burying them alive in an avalanche does seem pretty foolproof).  By the end of their four years, the two of them were well-matched, almost perfectly equal in skill, but that time of knowing that Crispin was more competent left its mark.  Brenneth believes–erroneously, perhaps, but no one can prove her right or wrong–that if she was as good as Crispin, she would have been able to save him from himself.

Anonymous asked: Krei 5

I have like four asks for this ask meme I expected no one to do?  So I’m grouping them by character, here is Krei, everyone’s favorite Tree Lesbian.

5: List 3 fears; one “surface level” fear, one “repressed” fear, and one “deep dark” fear.

Um….

Surface level is that, ironically, Krei is afraid of fire.  She’s a plant worker and briatan, tree-folk, meaning that she has a bit of a hereditary stress about fire.  She herself isn’t flammable, no more so than your average human, but her instincts are kind of…jumpy about it.  So was her mother, but given that Torei died in a fire, Krei has some serious nerves about the stuff.  Both of them keep it pretty well on lock (sort of necessary working with a firesmith like Brenneth) and let other people light the campfire.

Repressed is a hard one to answer, because honestly Krei is pretty comfortable with herself.  Her people live a long time–Torei was almost 600 at the time of her death (some 50 years prior to the start of the novel), and would have lived longer if she hadn’t died defending a village against a grief-stricken firesmith–and are often very powerful, which comes with a societal expectation that they get their shit together.  That being said…I don’t know if this is going to make sense, but Krei is afraid that one day she’ll turn around and decide that her mother wasn’t enough family for her.  Torei died when Krei was about 100, which is young to lose a parent for a briata (also Torei had Krei older than most briatan have children), but moreover most families are medium-to-large in Alleirat.  Even if you assume a monogamous couple, as opposed to a poly constellation or an open relationship, you might have two parents, some children who might be biological or adopted (abandoning children is strictly verboten and a willing family is usually findable), and the amiasa or amdri (or both) of either or both parents, as well as grandparents and aunts and uncles and close family friends.  The word ‘family’ is pretty lax in Alleirat.  Krei’s family for most of her life was herself and her mother, with occasional but rare visits to Torei’s clan in the north forests.  Torei meant the world to Krei, and this fear that Torei might not have been enough family kind of haunts her.  There’s a word in Alleirai for ‘the amiasa of your parent’ and it means ‘more-than-uncle/aunt,’ and in theory Krei could use it as an affectionate term with Brenneth.  It takes her a long time to come around to the idea that it’s not a betrayal of her two-person family to extend that to another individual.

Krei’s deep dark fear, as cliche as this is going to sound, is failing to keep people safe.  Torei was a good mother, mostly kept her daughter from hearing the worst stories of the White Wolf, but Krei worshiped her mother, and the idea that even Torei and her mighty amiasa, the Fireheart herself, couldn’t save the Wolf’s victims instilled a conviction that failure is inevitable very early on.  Krei’s about 150 now and she’s mostly gotten over her angsty teenage phase where she harped on it more obsessively (like…her 60′s to 70′s were rough), but it still drives her.  She’s a very accomplished warrior, the captain of the latha, the elite guard of her city, but it chews her up every time someone dies on her watch.

28: Is there a certain type of person that disgusts them?

Well, traitors, if I’m being completely honest, which goes great with Crispin.  Krei plays nice with Brenneth on the subject of Crispin because it’s clear that Brenneth is upset, and treats him humanely when he’s her prisoner because Krei has a moral backbone like solid oak, but she’s kind of fundamentally appalled by him.  Not so much because he’s a killer–Krei has killed people, Alleirat still uses hangings, death isn’t a stranger to her–or even because he tried to take over, but she thinks of him as having betrayed his own kind.  She is not wrong about this–Crispin readily admits that he turned on his teachers, his comrades, his countrymen, and his best friend when he became the White Wolf–but it’s more complicated than that.  The fact that that loyalty and betrayal aren’t always clearly delineated, and that someone can be forced from one to the other against their will, is kind of a major plot point.  Shiko is loyal…to a terrible person.  Crispin turned traitor against good people, but because he felt like it was the only way to fulfill a task that had been set before him since childhood.  Brenneth is loyal to Crispin past the point of reason.  The complexities of loyalty are sort of A Thing here, and Krei’s ride-or-die loyalty hangup (which she shares with her mother) is something of a wrench in the gears.

Anonymous asked: Shiko 36

Another ask for the ask meme I did not expect anyone to do!

For those of you Not Up To Date, Shiko is my poor necromancer who starts out as the villain of my Alleirat story.

36: Are they in control of their emotions, or are their emotions in control of them?

Ha ha, um?  Depends on the emotion.  Now, Shiko grew up as a trans girl in a Japanese family.  I have More Research lined up and if anyone was comfortable talking to me about life as a trans person in Japan, I’d be thrilled, but I’m making the radical leap that life as a trans person anywhere comes with a certain degree of learning emotional control to not shiv ignorant morons every other day (extrapolated from being a butch queer in a small town as well as various conversations with my trans friends).  More to the point, Shiko’s life on Earth often left her feeling very isolated for a number of reasons, which has led her to a good degree of control over her emotions as she doesn’t like to be seen to be upset or distressed.  So anger, sadness, etc, not so much–she’s very good at tactical thinking and resisting the immediate impulse to do something to ‘resolve’ the emotion unless she decides it’s a good idea objectively.

That being said, Shiko doesn’t respond well to fear, specifically fear of the unknown, and will immediately grasp at any option  that she feels will give her some control over an unknown situation–like for example winding up in a strange world where no one speaks English or Japanese and she can see ghosts.  Pretty much Shiko’s response to that sort of event is whatever she feels will give her some understanding and control…with absolutely no thought for what it might result in.

This is the source of like 95% of her problems.  The other 5% is caused by buff tree women.

Anonymous asked: Brennth 13

…I 274% did not expect anyone to actually do this ask meme.

But yes!  Let’s do the thing!

13.  Which of the 7 Deadly Sins best describes them?

It’s a strong tossup between Wrath and Greed tbh.  

Wrath because…Brenneth is angry and she has been for eighteen years, since Crispin showed up in her forge with blood on his hands and an offer to come with him.  Brenneth is angry A Lot, there are days where she wakes up and the taste of fury is already on her tongue, and when they turn her loose to go back to battle, she is so, so grateful.  Her chest burns hotter every moment, and the magic of the white fire thrives off her anger.

Greed because Brenneth wants her world and her home and her smithy and her people and her city and her Crispin and her sword.  Brenneth looks at the world as being ‘mine’ and ‘not mine’ and all of Alleirat is hers and she spends fourteen years on Earth where her first thought of every morning and her last thought of every night is a greedy craving to stand in the Alleirai sun and look over the Talein Mountains and see the twin moons rise.  She wants to go home to Alleirat and she wants Crispin to be there with her, free and clear, and she couldn’t give less of a damn about the word ‘impossible.’  Fire is a greedy master.

She would not have called herself particularly wrathful nor particularly avaricious, back before the White Wolf.  She thinks of that girl as very naive.

50 “Not so Nice” OC or FR Asks

wanderers-of-sornieth:

List your OCs in the tags or link your lair so that people can ask you!

1. What is one word to shut them up?

2. What is the thing they feel the most guilty about?

3. What is the worst pain they’ve ever experienced?

4. Describe their worst nightmare.

5. List 3 fears; one “surface level” fear, one “repressed” fear, and one “deep dark” fear.

6. What is something that never fails to make them feel sick?

7. What feature (physical or otherwise) do they hate most about themselves?

8. Do they have anything that triggers them?

9. What is their greatest physical weakness?

10. What is their greatest mental weakness?

11. Do they have any vices?

12. Have they ever done something illegal? What was it?

13. Which of the 7 Deadly Sins best describes them?

14. Are they prone to outbursts (of violence, extreme emotion… exc… )?

15. Who do they hate the most?

16. Is there anyone who makes them feel inferior?

17. What sound always gives them a headache?

18. Is there a certain flavor that disgusts them?

19. Do they consider themselves ugly?

20. Do they consider themselves unloveable?

21. What is something that causes them great anxiety?

22. Do they have any mental illnesses?

23. Have they ever been assaulted/abused/raped?

24. Do they fear the possibility of being assaulted/abused/raped?

25. Have they ever been betrayed by someone they thought they could trust?

26. Have they ever been seriously injured?

27. How many times have they been in the hospital?

28. Is there a certain type of person that disgusts them?

29. Does what they cannot see scare them?

30. Have they ever been bullied?

31. Do they have self-confidence or self-image issues?

32. Do they have a bad relationship with their parents?

33. Have they ever been in a relationship that didn’t work out so well?

34. Have they ever self harmed?

35. If they could change one thing about themselves, what would it be?

36. Are they in control of their emotions, or are their emotions in control of them?

37. Have they ever had their freedom taken away?

38. Have they ever been imprisoned?

39. Have they ever been accused of something they didn’t do?

40. Do they often blame themselves for other people’s problems?

41. Do they get sick often?

42. Are they comfortable with where they are in life?

43. Do they wish that they could change their pasts?

44. What’s one thing they wish they could do more often, but can’t?

45. What is the emotion they most commonly experience?

46. Have they ever contemplated suicide?

47. Have they ever gone so far as to attempt suicide?

48. Is there anyone that they would willingly kill?

49. If [name] was put into ______ situation, they’d rather die than live to see it through.

50. Create your own!

Send me a “♫” and a ship name and I will put my iPod on shuffle and write a drabble on them based on that song.

inboxideas:

submitted by anonymous.

(via wildehacked)

girlonstage asked: I have been feeling a desire for a happy Pepper and Tony fic, and if you wrote that, most certainly read and enjoy it. Also, hello! Hope your day had a thing that made you smile really wide :D

Mmmm well I got to get dinner on the dime of my summer program, all the students in it were there and the bill was pushing $400 and I spent the whole time talking with a few people including this dazzlingly gorgeous (although probably straight) girl in the program, so THAT was good, you are so sweet.  I’ll admit I’m pretty tired to toss off a ficlet right now (between work and socializing and starting editing on one of my Actual Real Completed Novels, I have exactly zero brain), BUT, I’ll tell you about one fic I kind of want for this pairing.

Okay, so if I wrote this thing I would call it “Twelve” and it would be literally just happy, there would be very little angst, which is…probably why I haven’t gotten around to writing it, let’s call a spade a spade.  But it would be all the times the number twelve has appeared in Tony and Pepper’s relationship, and I’m sure I’d come up with more while I wrote the thing, but here are a few that would definitely make the cut (with a total disregard for official timeline).

• THE FIRST TIME: Tony has fired…so many personal assistants, okay, and definitely a few quit on grounds of “HE IS IMPOSSIBLE” after finding him asleep half-under a car or after he took apart their coffee machine or something, so Peggy Carter (I’ll fight you for Peggy as Tony’s quirky British aunt) is like “I’m going to handle this, kid,” and gets ahold of the massive list of Stark Industries employees and starts sifting through them for potentials.  Once she has her list of possible candidates, she hacks into Tony’s work (actually she has his password because she knows him and he might be a genius but he’s also sentimental) and changes one value in a file he’s about to send out and makes sure it’s going to go to all of her selected candidates and ships it out.  The next day a woman in a pair of ruthless heels with a stubborn set to her jaw and orange hair marches into Tony’s office and announces that there’s a mistake in his math–it’s 0.12 off.
  
• ANOTHER TIME: So Pepper’s been considering quitting because her boss is…Tony Stark, and like even once he shapes up that’s got to be stressful, and she’s only been working for him for a few months at this point.  So she takes a few minutes to steel herself and goes down to the lab and finds him drinking, which is…normal, honestly, but he’s not doing anything and the bots are all quiet and he’s just sitting there getting drunk and he looks so pathetic that she can’t bring herself to just quit.  Pepper sits down next to him on the lab bench and he says hi, very quiet, and she asks what’s wrong, because Pepper’s like that, and he admits quietly that it’s the anniversary of his parents’ death.  She should have known this, in retrospect, because the death of Howard Stark was BIG NEWS, but still: kind of slipped her mind.  And he just sighs, this deep bone-shaking sigh, and leans to the side until he reaches her shoulder and says even quieter that it’s been twelve years now (he looks maybe twenty-ish in the flashback at the start of Civil War?), and Pepper decides she can put off quitting until tomorrow.
• ANOTHER TIME: Pepper turns in her resignation twelve times.  She also storms in to snatch the letter out of his hands and chew him out for his latest transgression and snarl “Of course I’m not quitting” when he reaches for the letter twelve times.  She stops somewhere around the two year mark.
• ANOTHER TIME: During Iron Man.  Tony’s been missing for twelve days.  Pepper has been handling media relations that whole time–she hasn’t cracked her perfectly smooth professional face once.  She locks herself into her office, orders JARVIS to keep everyone out, and cries for two hours that twelfth day.
• ANOTHER TIME: The twelve percent thing in Avengers?  Yeah, that’s a running joke, what percent of the Tower Pepper’s responsible for, there would be a bit dealing with that.
• ANOTHER TIME: I don’t fucking know, like, how much do you think the Chitauri damage is going to cost to fix?  It’s fairly localized damage, but it’s impressive.  So Tony and Pepper have a chat and they decide to donate twelve million dollars to the reconstruction effort, in addition to other stuff.
• THE LAST TIME: Tony takes Pepper out for dinner and reserves the whole restaurant because he DOES actually learn from his mistakes and Pepper doesn’t love being made a public spectacle, and after the meal when she’s looking down at the dessert menu he sets a black velvet box on the table with a ring in it.  The ring has a central sapphire–as blue as the dress ‘he’ got her for her birthday–surrounded by twelve minuscule diamonds.  She says yes.

Anonymous asked: I wish you would write a fic where you just fuck me up with the life-ruining kind of Anidala, I really just wish that.

Oh but friend, where would we start?

Canon?  BECAUSE CANON IS PRETTY BAD.

But no, we can do better.

The AU where Vader is the one to walk away from Mustafar and he goes to Padme and takes her in his arms and his Darkness and kisses her and says “anything, anything for you, my angel” and she is faced with a choice: use this weapon who’s come to her hand and trying to save the galaxy from him by conquering it, or take her children, soft fragile corruptible things that they are, and run as far as she can, hoping that the galaxy will be able to save itself while she saves them?

The AU where Anakin, small and alone and barely not-a-slave for more than a breath, has a vision on the ship traveling back from Tatooine, and wakes up screaming his throat raw for…something, and Padme comes and tries to take him in her arms and comfort him–a child-queen responding to the fear of a child-Jedi–and he flinches away like she’s lit him on fire?

The AU where they return to Coruscant and Anakin is turned away, and they go to Naboo and Qui-Gon dies and Anakin is turned away, and away, and away, until he’s lost and powerful and scared and angry, and Padme comes and takes his hand and stares at the Jedi and says “he is Naboo and I will buy out his contract and he will be free” and, surrounded by her handmaidens that night, realizes that she’s responsible for training him how to not drown in the Force and how to be kind and how to be gentle and how to be a free person?

The AU where they’re at war with the Separatists and some rageful clone from the 501st abandons his brothers and turns on his General and does what they had all agreed not to do, and goes to the Jedi Council and says “Skywalker has broken the Code,” and Anakin is cast out, disowned by the Jedi, disgraced in the army, distrusted by Obi-Wan, and Padme may be everything, but even Padme is not enough to replace all those people?

The AU where Padme is what breaks Vader in a whole other way, held like a threat over his head, like a promise just before his fingers, like spun crystal ready to be broken between Sidious’ fingers at any moment?

The AU where nothing changes except that Vader, burned and trapped in a torture-suit and broken to the will of his latest Master, feels a burst of power in the Force and he knows that power, he knows that mind, it’s Padme, Padme is alive and she will understand/forgive/hate/save/kill him, because Padme is stronger than he ever could have been, and Vader tears across the galaxy only to find…children, two children, a baby girl with Padme’s dark curls and his angry stare, a baby boy with his sandstorm-dust locks and her sweet smile, and they are his/hers/theirs/no one’s, but where is Padme?

Or.  Well.  There’s always the AU We Do Not Speak Of.  

Surely emotion is not wicked at its core, young Padme says, surely not, and she reaches out, learns to shape the Force with her passions and her loves and her rages and her laughs, and it is warm and rich and wild and vicious and everything she is (and surely this cannot be the Dark Side), and when she stands on the Tatooine sand and meets a boy who shines like a sun, some part of her mind (the part that’s seen people die because their vaunted politicians took too long to see them suffering, the part that’s seen wars start over petty arguments and diplomatic differences, the part that looks around Tatooine and thinks look at all these suffering people, if only I had the power to save them) says yesssss.  And she reaches out and she takes his hand and she stays in touch and she assures him that no, emotion is not wrong, love is not wrong, Attachment is not wrong, he is not wrong, and one day…oh, one day he comes to her, wild-eyed, with the words of another person on his tongue and talk about Sith, and she does her research and she thinks look at all these suffering people, if only I had the power, and…

Well.  Padme only wants to help.  Surely the ends justify the means.  Surely this cannot be Dark, if it’s to save starving children and wounded soldiers and slaves.

And the Empire rises under the command of its Empress and her iron fist, Darth Vader.