#dragonauri

Out of the comments you’ve received on your fics, what are two or three of your favorites?

The one from @mikkeneko left on With Absolute Splendor before even getting into the fandom about how all the characters needed therapy is really up there.

Others include any comment where somebody says I got them to care about/have feelings for Xue Yang, because that is very personally important to me as a phenomenon.

More recently, the comment that included the phrase "Like wow, the abandonment issues right in front of Pete's devoted salad are just chef's kiss" mostly because "right in front of Pete's devoted salad" is now a phrase that just kind of lives in my head.

What sort of endings do you prefer to write: ambiguous, bad, happily ever after, etc.?

I feel like this one fluctuates, but I think in general I am most drawn toward ambiguous or bittersweet endings: endings where some things are better but other things are not, where steps have been taken toward repair but a lot remains broken, where there is happiness tempered by pain and loss. Or, conversely, where things are happy, but there's a looming shadow of oncoming and inevitable doom.

bold your favourites!!

honey and lemon or milk and sugar | musicals or plays | lemonade or iced tea | strawberries or raspberries | winter or summer | beaches or forests | diners or cafés | unicorns or dragons | gemstones or crystals | hummingbirds or owls | fireworks or sparklers | brunch or happy hour | sweet or sour | rome or amsterdam | classic or modern art | sushi or ramen | sun or moon | polka dots or stripes | macaroons or croissants | glitter or matte | degas or seurat | aquariums or planetariums | road trip or camping trip | colouring books or water color | fairy lights or candles

It mostly started because I was thinking about how Thor calls it ‘Loki’s scepter’ in Age of Ultron, despite it not really belonging to him, having come out of the Void. Why did he call it that? Where did he think it came from? How did it come to be truly Loki’s, in Thor’s mind?

I feel like it would have gotten tied up with all the things Loki hadn’t told him, and he hadn’t asked. And now it was too late - Loki was dead, and would never be able to tell him where he got it, where he had gone in that year, what had happened. So through the quest, finding the scepter becomes tied to getting answers about all those missing year questions. Maybe if Thor can find the scepter, he can find the answers to what happened to Loki before he arrived on Earth. What turned him into the furious, bloodthirsty villain that attacked New York.

So he couldn’t ask Loki, and he also, equally, couldn’t give Loki a funeral. They’d left the body on Svaralfheim and Loki Odin refused to let him hold a funeral. So finding the scepter becomes about finding what happened to Loki, the solution to the mystery - and also becomes about finding Loki and being able to bury him. To lay him, and the whole affair, to rest and maybe find some closure.

The tag I used in the fic I wrote was ‘Thor is sad and Loki is the scepter that’s what this is’ XD

I combined this concept with another - wondering whether or not the Avengers knew Loki was dead during Age of Ultron. They don’t talk about it and I wondered how they would have found out, how that would have made things a bit awkward for Thor. Because like, they’re all on the same hunt but also Thor has this side motivation going, to find his brother and give him a funeral and mourn him while also hiding his death from the rest of the Avengers.

I should have reread the fic before writing this answer, because I wrote it much more coherently back then:

Thor doesn’t know when he really starts thinking of the scepter as Loki’s. It’s a gradual process, starting with a few slips here and there. At first, he continues to make halfhearted denials that the scepter belonged to Loki - an attempt to redirect the focus to the mysterious forces who had given it to him. But the others have spent too long calling it ‘Loki’s scepter’ to call it anything else, and over time Thor finds himself thinking of it like that. Loki’s scepter.

So looking for the scepter, turns into looking for Loki’s scepter. Then turns into looking for Loki.

He finally admits to himself that he’s looking for his brother a few weeks into the quest. Somehow being useful to the Avengers had morphed into a private, personal quest to find Loki. Not find him alive - no, the near constant nightmares and agonizing grief and guilt mingled together have strangled that last hope. But he can perhaps find some trace of Loki in this scepter, find a way to understand what happened to him.

Even that has another layer, one that he doesn’t want to acknowledge. He’s looking for a way to give him a funeral, the one he hadn’t had the time or capacity for on Svartalfheim. He’s looking to bury his brother and eventually that desire becomes inextricably linked to finding the scepter.

If you want to read it, here it is!  Thor is sad and Loki is the scepter. That’s it. Have another related excerpt:

“They want to go after it,” He finishes. Jane leans against the counter, frowning. “Loki’s scepter. They’ve asked me to join, to officially reform the Avengers.”

“I thought you said it wasn’t his. Loki’s.”

I did!! Way back in 2012 I worked under him on an animated film called Tembo. The project was never finished unfortunately, but it was a great first post-college experience and he’s a really great director to work with! He has a great Youtube channel as well as some online courses on art and animation (he’s a good teacher too!)

This is the CUTEST AND HAPPIEST THING EVER CONGRATS!

attackfish replied to your photo “Miracle of miracles with @veliseraptor”

Mazel tov!!!!!

nonillions replied to your photo “Miracle of miracles with @veliseraptor”

AAAAAAAA CONGRATULATIONS YOU TWO!!!!

noizycat replied to your photo “Miracle of miracles with @veliseraptor”

Congratulations!

audible-smiles replied to your photo “Miracle of miracles with @veliseraptor”

EXCUSE YOU!?!?!?

noizycat replied to your photo “Miracle of miracles with @veliseraptor”

<3 !!!

Out of curiosity, do you write fics with a planned ending in mind or do they simply… happen?

my process for writing (such as it is, I feel like “process” is generous) is something like:

get idea or concept

start writing idea or concept

develop general sense of end goal of idea or concept

wing it as far as how I get there

so like. generally I know where I’m going in some sense - I’ll set out with an idea like “I want to get Loki to a place where he reconciles with himself” or “I’m going to make a terrible threesome happen,” and I might have some vague idea of how I’m going to get there, or maybe a few steps or scenes I know I want to write along the way, but then I just kind of.

go for it. and see where I need to go in order to reach that end point. 

and the problem with this is that sometimes I realize that there are a bunch of things I need to deal with in order to get there that I didn’t realize I was going to have to deal with, or I decide that there are other things I want to explore along the way, or I have to, like, develop a plot in order to get to where my concept wanted to go...

but yeah, there is a lot of winging it involved. 

sometimes there is more planning! like, I actually planned out we live until we die in a fair amount of detail before I started writing it, and while things came up along the way mostly I stuck to that outline. then there was Life in Reverse, which I started writing with almost no plan as far as how it was going to go other than a vague sense that I wanted to throw Loki into a new situation and see if I could get him to some kind of equilibrium - but no plot and no real direction of how I was going to get there until oh, say, probably chapter 15 or so. up to that point I was just kind of like. LET’S SEE WHERE THIS GOES.