Mountains & Earth

https://imgur.com/a/7MKrIsC

a;lfaj;sldkf;alkjdf I LOVE THIS THANK YOU

Anyway, a question for you: what's one pet peeve that each of them has?

they are such ridiculous people but i love them so much! i wanted them to be super close while being very different people but also have major actual near-dealbreakers that they almost never talk about for the sake of what has become a very real and important friendship

pet peeves are so funny bc both of them are very cranky people so if you ask they'd be like WHERE DO I START but i also feel like mentoring has made them much, much more tolerant by necessity. like lyme hates messes (trauma response) but misha's living space is a hazmat zone so she has learned to deal with it, y'know?

that being said --

brutus: chewing noises, especially wet ones.

I wanted to ask you if you've ever written some sort of backstory for Blake and Rowan and their relationship. I only remember them from fissure so I was curious because it seems like a very interesting dynamic.

Rowan and Blake date all the way back to 2012, in an Avenger Games side AU lol where Alec was invented to be Rowan's dead ex (lol)

they grew from there and i've changed various details of their backstory over time as they featured in the background of various AUs, but i've never written them in canon until fissure

have some ancient backstory fic*:

Rowan & Blake in the Centre (by azelmaroark) Blake's first kill

proooooobably not, at least not in that situation

birthdays stop being a thing after residential (other than signalling a new wave of tests). while alec obviously remembers in the back of his mind (bc he's a bad two and doesn't forget things like surnames or birthdays or families & friends) he still wouldn't go visit the grave for it

it is an interesting question re: the grave though! in the victor selene & alec au, with alec in residential and on the fast track to be volunteer i don't think they pulled him on stage for rokia's victory tour like they did in canon, and he didn't go with calli to visit the grave then either.

so ... when does he! at some point after he's healed enough he'd go with emory to see the grave - i don't think calli would, she's said her goodbyes and it's not healthy to keep revisiting that (constantly seeing alec is enough). for the same reason i don't think that he'd make a habit of visiting annually, either at games time or birthday or what have you - creed made his sacrifice, and alec paid his respects, and to keep going is disrespectful to that sacrifice (hashtag NOT AN ENDORSEMENT).

obviously alec feels differently in private given that he thinks the whole thing is useless and tragic and pointless but at this point if he doesn't make a conscious effort to heal and move on he never will. he already knows he'll be carrying creed on his back the rest of his life, so he has to watch out for things that act as emotional self harm, in a way

yeah azelmaroark and i were talking about this wrt another fandom (banana fish au where ash survives) and how half the healing process really is having someone they can trust to be their absolute worst selves around.

🩵🩵🩵 thank you!

oh gosh i needed this today (our hot water heater burst at 3am lol rip)

i don't have much to say right now except thank you! right now in lieu of people manifesting in my house to fold my laundry (haha) it is genuinely wonderful to have emotional support 🩵

yeah that's the idea!

the animals are cute and innocent and did nothing to hurt you. it's meant to be upsetting! in the arena odds are you're going to be faced with some kid half your size who's crying and begging you to stop. you can't stop. this is the first step on that journey

(on a side note, it also serves red-flag any of the kids who are here just to hurt things for further attention. doesn't always work! but still)

the crucial part is getting over that first sick discomfort, working past it to the next couple animal kills and starting to feel less horrified -- then you get the humans, which sets off a new chain of horrors and a new train of conditioning and desensitization -- and at the end you have one more animal, to compare