#elementsverse

Power and strength are earned, not taken.

I’ve come to the decision that I’ll just use this blog to share when I’ve posted a new fic. I’ve been minimizing the amount of time I spend on tumblr now because of how I feel about their new policies and such.

That said, I’ve posted two more fics in this series in the time that I was away.

Upstream Theory

~6k words. Terry-centric fic, two chapters. In which Terry travels out of Tsubakura City to find his fortune and his name.

Notes:

Trans boy Terry! This is something I’ve thought about for a long time and wanted to handle properly with this fic. Terry has a...particular history with the way his gender has been treated by the western fandom, and having grown up with that and coming to new opinions on it, I wanted to do right by his character.

Alan and Karen are from the GBA game. I love the characters in the game and I wanted to more directly involve them with characters that aren’t just Yamato.

Kit is a Cat person OC who I’ve had for a long time, though they were much older originally.

This is the first time where I let my more original world building slip into the story, as seen in the garden scene. Only one of the characters spoken about is an OC though. I think it’s fairly obvious who the other is.

I don’t think inserting prejudice into a fantasy setting that didn’t explicitly rely on it for a narrative is a good move, so there’s none of that here.

Armada is really fun to write when you remember he’s a huge memer in the anime.

amygdaloidal

~2k words. Bull-centric fic, oneshot. Bull and Gray’s original first meeting several months before Cobalt Blade’s debut, from Bull’s POV (all three of them).

Notes:

This was another WIP just sitting there for ages tbh

POV pronouns swapping is one of my favorite little tricks.

Not unlike most passes at Bull’s backstory, he’s had a hard life in this one, but I’ve tried to keep it fairly vague and it involves a sentient robot.

This is just a little snippet I wrote a while ago that currently doesn’t have a place in any fic since I’m planning to rewrite where I first put it in. It’s set the morning after Marda-B’s defeat and calls back to frostbite.

Here we go, folks! Enjyu’s first entry in the series at a whopping 19k+ words. This one’s a big fic with a lot going on, so here’s some notes:

Once again Gray takes a spotlight in someone’s else fic, but there’s a good reason this time, I swear!

Trans man Ababa

The brief scene with Armada at the start was mostly meant to be an introduction to this version of Enjyu in an environment readers should be familiar with—ruining Armada’s day.

Enjyu’s motorbike is from the manga

There are four OCs in this fic, and I hope they were enjoyable.

Similarly, there are several major plotlines going on, and a lot more minor ones interwoven into the “between” sections. 

Since the story takes place over three years, and then a fourth year passes, Enjyu is 17 in the final scene.

This also means puberty was happening throughout the fic, and Enjyu was the first to get a growth spurt that stuck. He’s quite proud of being the tallest kid around.

When I think about it, this fic kind of makes Gray a bad person, because wind at his back showed how little he thought of Wen after all the scenes they share together here happened...teen drama huzzah

Speaking of, because the events of this fic had not been fully planned yet when I wrote wind at his back and frostbite, I had to write around some of the things already there. Hopefully I managed to do this naturally without any glaring plot holes

That said, the structure of the story taking place over three years came about because frostbite said Gray only really left for Cobalt Blade three years after he arrived

Fics from this point on will have a more solid foundation and continuity

Arsen and Jupiter are meant to be opposites in the way their scenes play out and eventually conclude.

If this anime can get away with saying Castillo is from Luchatoon, I can get away with naming a town Heltoon and giving it the nickname Hell

#POV Edgelord

I may have wanted Arsen and Nara to be scary as Shadow Alliance elites, but Ababa will always pull through as top Cat

I know nothing about wine except what I learned from the game Last Word, so the Petro Jade is a reference to it!

Ababa fucks

This fic is where I’ve truly, truly solidified my personal worldbuilding, particularly when it comes to the Legend Stones and the Shadow Alliance.

The Legend Stones from the manga being involved has always been planned for this series, and I seeded some of the ideas for them in Upstream Theory, but this is the first time they’ve actually appeared. 

There are only six Legend Stones in the manga, but the final one was never named, so I can do whatever I want with it and make more Legend Stones!

Gray going full SA might seem out of nowhere, but remember in his final battle he mentioned being exactly that until Yamato changed him

See if you can spot the one (1) callback to amygdaloidal!

I wanted to do Liena justice, and there was no way I was going to have her sit around and do nothing for three whole years

I will be better prepared to write Goldo’s dialogue in the future

Arsen, Nara, and Amy (the girl in Jupiter’s shop) all began life as Battle B-daman OCs before going to their own original world. Now they’ve been imported back in, new and improved.

I actually had no idea Ludo existed when I came up with Jupiter.

Arsen’s B-daman is named Boreas

Jupiter’s B-daman is named Eminent Flare.

There’s a lot of loose ends in this fic actually...I plan to address them all in the future!

LIENA WILL RETURN

Finally...here’s the next fic in this series! It happens immediately after the wind at his back and is from Wen’s POV. Enjyu is awful in this one, so take note of the warnings before reading!

Some notes:

Wen and Li are of a fairly high rank in the Shadow Alliance and Ababa does treat them well and regards them as having potential to move up, but they are ultimately still rank and file grunts at the moment. The brothers are higher rank than characters like Battle Crow, but Enjyu and Gray are higher ranked than them.

Enjyu’s actions toward Wen in this fic are due to not knowing any other way to express his interest in Wen. This does not excuse or justify any of it all. His character is honestly one of the more complex ones and will be explored in a later fic.

Wen is, like Gray toward Liena, protective of Li. This blinds him to the fact that Li can take care of himself, and is very good at it too. Wen is a lot more dependent on Li than the other way around. This is kinda true in canon too (I think), but I wanted to emphasize that it was always there even as early as their Shadow Alliance days.

Gray only really shows up at the start of the fic but he’s also kinda everywhere in the fic.

I decided to make this blog so that I could have a sort of general home base for the series. I’m planning on posting any art I do, worldbuilding notes, headcanons--extra things you won’t find in the fics, basically. You can also send in questions for the characters as a whole or individually (though I won’t answer if something is spoilery, oho).

"Are you still angry towards me or has your new... person thing, put you in better moods?"

"Serenity darling, I am terribly bored. Amuse me."