#decantae

This blog has existed in a sort of... half-life for a few years now. It never got a proper introduction, but thank you all for following me! It does feel like it’s time for a writeblr re-intro to have a chance at finding some more wonderful mutuals, so...

HELLO!

I’m Decantae! I’m 23 years old. I live in Scotland (yay!) but rather than explore all the “picturesque” scenery of my local council estate, I spend oodles of time writing online. The tag-line of my life so far would be ‘Professionally introverted and a bit fruity,’ so take that as you will.

MY INTERESTS

Romance (MxF)

Historical (Medieval, Regency, Victorian, 1940s - 1980s...)

Urban Fantasy

Fanfiction

I feel strongly irritated about how shitty and condescending folks can be about the romance genre, men and women alike, so I’ve developed a deep appreciation for all the problematic power dynamics you can think of.

I do not reblog NSFW content, but you might see some soft stuff or some spicy takes. A functioning tag system is in progress.

ABOUT MY WIPS

Haha, what are you talking about? I don’t have any WIPs. I’m here, aren’t I?

...

Usually I do a lot of stuff with @pens-swords-stuff​ who is my writing partner and shipping soulmate. We were super productive over the calamitous year known as 2020, writing around 300k words.

As for solo stuff... hm, we’ll see. I’m a hobbyist writer. If it stops being fun, why bother?

OTHER STUFF ON THIS BLOG

As of January, I currently write about 2000 – 3000 words a day for my work as a copywriter. I like to think I’m a pretty fast and consistent writer (at least when I’m being paid for it) so I’ll probably be focusing on productivity tips in the near future.

My degree was in linguistics, and one of my favourite parts of the course was onomastics, which is the study of names. I’ve got a bunch of work-in-progress guides and blog-style content that I haven’t quite pushed past the blank page/outline.

wait excuse you this is my wip too!!! I have shared custody

This is a wlw fantasy story about a knight and a queen. They’re around the same age, and actually were childhood friends back. With the knight being a commoner, and the queen being royalty, they never saw each other once they grew up, as the queen was whisked away to her castle to fulfill her duties. The knight however, never forgot her friend and has been in love with her all of this time. 

Eventually, this country endures various invasions from others because they want to conquer it, and the knight joins the fight to keep her beloved country and queen safe. After she works her ways up the ranks through years of fighting and accomplishments, she finally reunites with the queen after her superior introduces her. And well… Obviously there’s a super slow burn relationship that happens from here, yeah? With angst, because there’s a war and that status difference. 

PSA: Just kidding, this isn’t what For Queen and Country is about! If you’re interested in angsty urban fantasy stories about the public discovering that supernatural creatures exist for the very first time, come check out #fqac to learn more! It’s one of my all time favorite projects I’m working on, and I’d love for people to check it out.

Ooooh!  Man I’m still in love with Aurora Nobyl so…

1. are they street-smart?

In theory, yes.  In practice, not so much.  She’s very much a “punch first, ask questions later” sort of person which consistently gets her into hot water.  So while she knows what she should be doing her impulses get the better of her in the end.

2. would they give money to someone on the streets?

Yep!  If she ever has money on hand to spare she’ll give it away.

3. have they ever gotten in a fight on the streets?

She’s (un)fortunately gotten into a fist fight with a paparazzi once or twice. (The twice was a rumour).

4. has anything happened to them on the streets?

Ambushed by fans post world cup :’) she did not start crying nosiree

5. are they cautious when out?

She tries very, very hard to be but see answer 1.

The United States of America has a "magic problem" unlike anything ever seen before in the West. This fact is indisputable. It is one of the few instances in which I agree with the uneducated opinions of the masses, though just because it is true does not justify the many injustices of yesterday, nor those that are yet to come.

What is missed by the lawmakers is that America has always had this "magic problem": it is only now a point of contention not because it is getting worse as the result of some terrible moral decline, but because of the rising population of users over the last four centuries. Magic is more visible now than ever before. There are more practitioners, benign or dangerous, than ever before.

But why is it only rising here and not elsewhere? Germany reported stability in its magical population. The United Kingdom is declining in terms of innate aptitude, following the path of our magical forefathers in Egypt, Norway, Ireland and settling down into that steady 0.2% figure we are all intimately familiar with –– the tolerable level of invisibility.

In America, 6% of the population are carriers for the ability – marked as anything above zero on the Kelley Scale, whether they are able to produce so much as a spark themselves or not. Similar rates are recorded for Canada and some countries in South America. Their children may or may not be witches; they could simply be sensitive to the forces at play in this world that most are ignorant to. There is a greater range of outputs, from charlatan mediums working with the barest hint of truth to powerful sorcerers of limitless potential.

To further compound the issue, the well-known phenomena of witches born to entirely non-magical, Kelley 0 parents is recorded only in the United States. And it is consistent. This is a country where outliers are known to occur, and you can no longer trace magical aptitude along genetic lines. It appears random –– and governments, let alone individual families in this nation, do not deal well with random.

CARRINGTON, L. (1973). WITCH-BURNING TO WATERGATE: A HISTORY OF MAGIC IN AMERICA. NEW YORK: HEAVEN PUBLISHING. 

A letter-writing romance between two anonymous individuals who have never met. Written by Undine (@pens-swords-stuff) and McHaggis (@decantae)

As the Dark Rebellion occupies the Ministry of Magic, a political insider and a guerrilla journalist strike up a relationship through a series of compromising letters.

Meet B.S. As the editor-in-chief for The Third Eye, B.S. is best known for her hard-hitting, controversial articles that expose the corruption within the Ministry of Magic — or perhaps, for being one of the Ministry’s most wanted because she’s a traitor who publishes ‘lies and slander’ to disrupt the Ministry’s authority, depending on who you ask. Being such an outspoken critic on the losing side of the Wizarding War with very little information at her disposal comes with massive risk. With waning resources and a bounty on her head, how long can a simple pseudonym keep her safe?   

Enter Bishop. Information on the upper, elite echelons of the Ministry is hard to come by, but with honeyed promises and exquisite penmanship, this anonymous figure offers B.S. it all - seemingly without any strings attached. Where there are enemies, there are also allies, and their impressive collection of unlikely friends and like-minded acquaintances could prove useful in the war effort. But the life of a turncoat is nasty, brutish, and short. With supporters of the Dark Lord around every corner, Bishop’s first foray into espionage may meet its end sooner rather than later.

Check out the newly completed WIP page here!

Read it on AO3 here! Updates weekly on Wednesdays.

I finally did it, I actually finished a WIP page for once in my life! And @decantae made all of the beautiful graphics~

Do you like letter-writing? What about an entire romance depicted through letter-correspondence? Do you like angst? Do you like pining? Do you like relationship development? What about teasing banter? Lots of mystery? There’s lots of that to be found here!

Post-Script is set in the Harry Potter universe. Yes, it’s fanfiction but even if you’re not a huge HP fan please check it out!

If you would like to be on the tag list for this, please let me know!

@pens-swords-stuff and @decantae are both going to be posting about Post-Script because we’re writing partners, be sure to follow both of us to get all the good content!

I’d like to take a moment to thank @madammuffins @coffeeflavoredcookies @shewrites-sometimes @inkovert @ejmcmoon. I don’t know if you guys remember this at all, but once upon a time you guys were kind enough to tell me that you loved my OC, Blake, who is one of the main characters of this story (She’s B.S. if you didn’t know). Before that, Post-Script was kinda lying dormant, untouched and gathering dust for months. When you guys all said that you loved her, I went to McH and said “We have to write for Post-Script because people love Blake” and we started redrafting it. So this entire WIP may not have been resurrected if not for your guys’ love and support. Thank you so much for reminding me why I loved this story.

Here’s a post where I broke down how I write collaboratively with @decantae.

Our style of writing together has evolved a bit since I wrote that post. We’ve gone back to freely jumping POVs per character within a chapter (which is generally not ideal in writing) in our first draft. Then when we redraft it, the person who writes for the character with the dominant POV for that chapter rewrites it so that it’s purely from one perspective instead of multiple, by using the details that were written in the first draft and translating it into their character’s POV.

Does that make sense? I always have such a hard time articulating what we do.

And yes, I absolutely enjoy it! Writing collaboratively is my normal — I don’t understand how people can write solo, honestly. It’s so fun having a partner who is always as excited for the same WIPs as I am, and we can spend hours talking about them. It’s also really nice when you’re stuck, because you have someone to help you get unstuck.

Also I’m not shy about the fact that I don’t really get ideas — McH brings me most of their ideas, and I help develop it.

I wouldn’t be writing today if it wasn’t for them, I think