#asymphonyofstarlight

hi syrup @starlene @asymphonyofstarlight! ty for asking 😊

anyway this is also an anne of green gables fic! (spoiler: they were all aogg fics) (i i have a single personality trait) syrup, idk how familiar you are with aogg -- i know you've read the blue castle, so sorry if this is unnecessary 😅 the general plot of the fic is a character who is killed in World War I in canon, walter, surviving the war via being turned into a vampire. he meets his love interest, una, a few years later and pining + sexy(?) neck-biting ensues. i've mentioned this fic before just briefly but yeah, have been revisiting it! i'd like it to be a thematic halloween fic one day :D

the idea was admittedly inspired by BG3! basically i was playing and was like "hmm. astarion. vampires. you know who would make a good vampire?" and there you go. the document title comes from how astarion says ~*~the danse macabre~*~ when it's his turn in combat haha.

i do not usually go in much for supernatural AUs but i was feeling like if vampirism fit any aogg character, it would be walter. he's already v. dramatic and beautiful and haunted by death, so i felt like that was a Vibe to play around with there. i thought it would be interesting, too, to maybe get a leetle darker with him and una? in canon, they're both very kind, reserved, gentle people and i usually write (and like to read) their romance as something soft and healing for both of them. buuut i thought there might be something else there; una builds a lot of her life around taking care of other people and is canonically easy to impose on because she's so giving; i think there's potential for her love for walter/his memory to lead her into wanting to give walter things that aren't healthy for her to give (like her blood or, y'know, her humanity). later in the series, it's also suggested una doesn't have much to live for without the hope of walter returning her feelings, so maybe interesting to explore her having a bit of a death wish, too. also thought it would be interesting for walter, having not healed from the trauma of the war, to lean into his dramatic, brooding side as a vampire but, idk, haven't gotten that far into characterizing him lol.

snippets! have a few:

hi hi, ty for asking!

🥺 Is there a certain type of moment or common interaction between your characters that never fails to put you in your feels?

lmao idk how common these are, but particular moments i always like to write/read in other people's fics:

walter/una: i really like anything physical between them! touches, kissing, etc. partly because my girl una needs a hug 😭 but also i think because, as it is in canon, their relationship is largely symbolism and secondhand information, i like reading about direct contact between them; their personalities often trend towards writing them as being sort of reserved and proper (canonically they both die as virgins who can't drive RIP) so i like anything that explores how they would be physical with each other.

rilla/carl: extremely obsessed with the idea that they know each other well because of their old friendship, i really like writing them teasing each other/calling each other by their real names (the parallels!)/being comfortable, generally, with each other, in contrast to rilla always feeling out of her depth around ken. the implied trust in knowing someone so well always makes me legitimately emotional while the more playful, teasing stuff is giggling-and-kicking-feet type of feels!

👀 Tell me about an up and coming wip please!

most definitely fair game! and not just bc i want to babble about them both ty for asking :D ❤️

walteruna_idk is a short (so far) one-shot, where walter and una talk after he enlists! not too much thought went into it, it's just A Moment between them. i'm hoping to link it to the rest of the come back home stories and have the series cover the period before, during, and after he goes to the front.

snippet!

walteruna_idk2, electric boogaloo, is a one-shot about a younger walter (maybe 14-15?) reciting at a concert of some kind -- still working out the details there! i don't remember exactly where i got the idea -- if i was rereading the bit in anne of green gables where anne recites a piece, or if it came from somewhere else?

but anyway, i thought it would be interesting to write about walter being more of a performer, being confident with attention. i was thinking about how the relationship between walter and una often works in my head; how they contrast with and complement each other. one big thing is that they're quite similar in that they're both gentle and sensitive -- but for all that walter is less boisterous than, say, jem, he's not really shy. Rainbow Valley says pretty explicitly that he likes being dramatic, putting on a show and getting reactions from his siblings and friends (walter blythe is a theater kid, rip). he also asserts himself with other people, like the parkers when he stays with them ("My name is Walter," he said distinctly.) in that regard, he is very different from una, and i got interested in writing about that aspect of him.

aaand none of that will probably be deeply explored, but that is the inspiration! walter recites at a concert and una attends, and they have some kind of cute interaction (also haven't gotten that far yet, haha).

snippet!

hi! ❤️ ty ty for asking!

3. how you feel about your current WIP

for how certain the journey (sorry clocks are black i am still thinking about you!): happy to be revisiting it and a little challenged by it tbh! idk, it's daunting to write a sequel and not undo the first story for the sake of having conflict -- even though it's realistic for people not to have made peace with themselves perfectly forevermore, you don't want to write their conflict in quite the same way and i find myself going back to come back home and being like "did i do this already?! argh."

also n g l i've never written the '20s as a setting before, so that's a whole new thing to research! but overall really happy to be working on it and finally getting this thing done :D the research is fun and i just really love writing walter and una, missed them a lot <3

18. if you keep them, share a deleted sentence or paragraph from a published fic

Walter keeps staring. “You knew, and you thought you would help by…making me think she was in love with Shirley."

i thought it would be fun to go all the way back into my big messy draft doc for come back home for this one. vintage 2013!

this is a line of dialogue directed to rilla by walter, re: una. i think it was meant to go in chapter 20(? the one right before walter and una get together right before the end), wherein rilla is smug about walter writing a note to una, and walter picks up on the fact that rilla has known all along and has been needling him about shirley's friendship with una for her own amusement (or, as rilla would see it, trying to make walter realize his feelings via jealousy because it totally works in novels!).

hi there! thank you for asking 🫶

J: What’s your favorite fanfic trope? Have you written it?

already answered here but let's do it again! i'm trying to think of other tropes/story arcs i like…idk that it's a trope necessarily, but it's fairly common in fanfic, so: i like POV flips! i like them in romance (yes i will read a novel-length fic that is just retelling the story from the POV of the love interest) and i also like when they're used to humanize "bad" characters and are critical of a story's protagonist.

i mean, i don't love it if the villain actually does terrible things, but in slice-of-life stories (like AoGG) where the antagonist, as much as the story has one, is just someone who's kind of abrasive (josie pye) or is getting in the way of the protagonist's romance (christine stuart), i enjoy it. i like fic that plays with whether the antagonist is really as bad as they seem to be in the protagonist's eyes or why they might be that way!

somewhat weirdly, i don't think i've written this even though there are a lot of characters like this that i enjoy and i feel like it'd be pretty easy to find inspiration for a story? idk. haven't come up with anything, though!

P: Where did you find the most inspiration for your story < insert title >?

ooh okay let me pick a story…i'll talk about there's another, not a sister bc i feel like i don't talk about that one often!

so anyway the fic was solely inspired by its title, which u will notice is referenced in anne of green gables (Oh, Anne, how could you pretend not to listen to [Gilbert]? When he came to the line, 'There's Another, not a sister,' he looked right down at you."). everyone who is better at googling than me probably already knows that gilbert was reciting "bingen on the rhine" by caroline norton, which is about a soldier dying on a battlefield and thinking over his life back home, and his family, and specifically his sister and another girl who is very pointedly not his sister.

which, then, when rereading rilla of ingleside: "You and Ingleside seem strangely near me tonight. It's the first time I've felt this since I came…Tomorrow, when we go over the top—I'll think of you both—of your laughter, Rilla-my-Rilla, and the steadfastness in Una's blue eyes—somehow I see those eyes very plainly tonight, too."

so, walter: about to die in battle, thinking of his home and sister, and then a girl who is specifically not his sister. first book in the series: referencing a poem to which this is the plot. freyafrida:

not deranged at all!!! i am a hermit but always happy to hear from people :3

anyway, is the fic "but i don't know who you are" and it's in a book called children and childhoods in l.m. montgomery, or sth like that? if so, yes, because i occasionally google myself lmao. i've only ever read the bit that's free to read on google books, though.