#elexuscal

Laurence/Tharkay: fight! is my angst answer to the joke that if Tharkay had been at that ball where Laurence and the Russian guy got into a fight he wouldn't have let Laurence do the duel, which is to say, what if Tharkay was at the party, and it changed nothing? What if Laurence's refusal to let go of his English, genteel notions of honor drove them apart? (Don't worry, there's a happy ending). I've been thinking about it for months and months but only have about 800 words written in bits and pieces. Here, have some snippets:

“I must,” Laurence replied woodenly. “I cannot very well allow my insult to go unanswered; the man will not apologize, and so I must allow him to make answer.” “You would grant him power over your mission; power to sever the ties to your allies in China and see you go to your grave before your time.” Laurence went to leave, but Tharkay caught him by the arm, holding him in place. He had the sudden, pressing sense that he must not allow Laurence to leave; the awakening of that particular instinct, the instant cataloguing of a hundred small details, which allowed him to excel in his field and keep him alive besides. Something was not right here.

and

for this ask game

First impression

Oh my god I can’t stand this fuckin guy. He is SO annoying. Minkowski is a far better woman than I am because if he treated ME like that I would have just left him to drown in space. Little bit disappointed that she didn’t.

Impression now

Favorite podcast protag Basically Ever. I love him and I want him to be happy and he’ not but I want him to be!!! The heart of the team, the social glue who holds everyone together. Character development leaves me in awe. He went through Some Shit and the way he is makes a lot of sense, in retrospect, but also, him getting hit over the head with You Need To Try To Do Better and him truly trying to do better was so well done and I am So impressed.

Favorite moment

Choosing one is hard but I looove “Mayday” when we see Eiffel cast off in space and he shows how clever he actually is to survive!

(Also: “GODDAMN IT RENÉE DON’T DO THIS”)

Idea for a story

It’s extremely spoilery postcanon stuff but I would love to write him developing a friendship with [REDACTED] that absolutely no one else is happy with. The Tension. They get each other now in a way no one else does.

Also SOMEDAY I will finish the Box 953 story where Eiffel comes in clutch to save the day by completely misunderstanding the assignment. A Hero

Unpopular opinion

Eiffel’s relationship with Hera is an extension of the theme of parenthood—the parallels between Eiffel’s relationship with his daughter Anne and Pryce’s relationship Hera are extremely strong in “Limbo” and “Memoria.” The parent who feels a sense of ownership over their child, and in the process gives them a traumatic brain injury because they can’t let go of that sense of control. Eiffel’s relationship with Hera is affirming and healing for both of them—Eiffel can’t undo what he did to Anne, but he can do better this time by treating Hera like a whole person and an equal who gets to have her own choices and have her opinions heard; and Hera getting to have a relationship with someone who has that respect for her. They've mutually adopted each other, but there are times—especially in “Bolero” at the funeral—where Eiffel is taking that parental role and trying to do it better than he previously did, or she previously got.

The father-daughter aspects of Eiffel and Hera’s relationship are pretty thematically relevant to both of their character arcs. And it doesn’t have to be infantilizing or childish because uh adults have parents too, and the relationship between Cutter and Pryce is a third parallel there for a man and his adult daughter when he can’t let go of that feeling of control over her either.

Favorite relationship

Minkowski and Eiffel’s incredibly slowburn friendship to becoming so incredibly important to each other… it’s everything to me

Favorite headcanon

This man is aromantic and I have textual support of this. He has never heard this word before in his life tho.

That’s an interesting question, one that I suspect we need more information to be able to answer meaningfully.  The short answer is that there’d probably be no war, no Earth invasion, no Animorphs.  

The longer answer... I think it depends on which yeerk powers were in charge at the time when the andalites came to their homeworld.  To give (sparse) credit where it’s due, there’s a possibility that the andalites didn’t even realize there was another species besides the gedd on the yeerk homeworld at the time when they landed and set up shop.  But assuming the andalites did actually ask the yeerks and/or gedd for permission to land, and received that permission, you run into some interesting dilemmas.

For instance, the iskoort represent one possible future for the yeerks.  So maybe the andalites would help them genetically engineer hosts that had no consciousness or desire to exert willpower, and then the yeerks could use those hosts.  Of course, both The Host and The House of the Scorpion do a pretty good job of exploring the reasons why deliberately creating creatures without willpower is potentially problematic.  So I wouldn’t call engineering an iskoort-like situation to be a moral solution, although it’s not necessarily the worst solution.

On another thought stream, you have the question of letting the yeerks morph in order to have access to senses and resources they wouldn’t otherwise have, the way happens eventually in canon.  That idea could work out, but the question would become what the yeerks would morph.  They could use gedd DNA, although the yeerks don’t particularly seem to like using gedd bodies when they can avoid it, so maybe not.  They could use andalite DNA... and whether or not that’s a possibility all depends on how much we’re willing to stretch andalite culture to be out of character in this AU.  The yeerks and andalites could bop around together until they found some other species whose DNA they could use, assuming they did become allies.

On the third hand, the yeerks could just stay (mostly) put, and the andalites could accommodate their embodiment.  We know from #54 that the andalites have some kind of lavender box that allows an unhosted yeerk to “speak” through thought-speech, and from Andalite Chronicles that unhosted yeerks can also download information through... smooshing their polyps against an input device?  Or something?  Anywhoo, all of that suggests that the andalites could probably come up with tech (if they felt like it) that would allow the yeerks to fly spaceships and use chee-like robot bodies and communicate through supercomputers.  All without a need for hosts.  Personally I like this idea best.  If I could come up with an absolutely rose-tinted best-case-scenario for the Animorphs universe, it’s one in which the yeerks remain yeerks but with robotic assistance which allows them to participate fully in andalite/human/etc. culture.

let me tell you a love story.

once upon a time, in one of the sunnier places of reddit, there was a fanfic rec/request thread.

it being 2015, i said, “i’d love a korrasami steven universe crossover fic”

and OP linked my own fanfiction to me. and turns out, i had been reading and loving a memory loss AU of theirs, that they were in fact one of my favorite fic authors in general.

we circled each other shyly - on reddit, ao3, tumblr - it was amazing the fandom overlap we had. tamora pierce, his dark materials, harry potter, of course su and atla/lok...

and then one day i asked for her hangouts. and we started talking. she still lived in canada at the time, but not for much longer, as she had just finished her undergrad degree. she moved back to hong kong, a full 12 hours difference for me. i started to tag her “my crepuscular friend,” and i still do, because we would catch each other around dawn and dusk. literally: i would roll out of bed and see what she had sent me while i slept. talking to laura was (is) one of the best parts of my day.

we started writing fanfiction together. a series of dual-POVs from the perspective of SU pairings, some romantic, some not. we really gelled - she can get words on the paper in quantities i could never dream of, great stuff all, character-driven and poetic and breathtaking. i have a keen eye for editing & dialogue, and i really loved what we created together.

and then it happened. 09/13/15, a sunday, 6:27 AM my time.

this character would become Martha Mendez. martha mendez would become the cornerstone of our young adult fantasy series, which we would write during NaNoWriMo 2015 and finish throughout the next year and a half.

we’re querying ORCHESTRATION (book 1 in SWORDS & SYMPHONIES) now. it’s terrifying and arduous and wonderful.

i can’t say enough about how much this friendship means to me. although we’ve met in the meatspace one time (and hugged The Corn), the great majority of our relationship has been through pixels, and never has it felt less than because of that. she is a rock, a treasure, and i love her so much.

@elexuscal said:

i wish you would write a fic where pearl and garnet and bismuth fuse and kick ass and flirt outrageously, not necessarily in that order   

You’ll be pleased to learn that Working Title: eeEEeeeeEE BISMUTHhas a bunch of all of this in it! But I’d absolutely be open to doing more Pearlnet-y stuff there, too - still hoping that relationship will get a bit more love in light of recent… events.

Here’s a silly little bit with Garnet and Bismuth, since I seem to love posting random excerpts of this fic:

A hand was laid on Bismuth’s forearm, and Garnet’s lips twitched, barely noticeably. “I do have a vision for you.”

“Oh yeah?”

“I see a dashing Gem in your future, sweeping you off your feet.”

“Really? A dashing Gem?” Bismuth put her free hand to her chin and did her best impression of being deep in thought. “Hm… many of those around these days. Let me guess. Pink hair, good hand with a sword, kind of has a thing for flags?”

“Mm… nope.”

“Well, there goes my best guess for who’d be after yours truly.”

[literal sweeping off of feet leaves them both lying in the grass]

The hand slipped down her arm, and Garnet’s fingers entangled with hers. Garnet was Garnet, of course - that was what they were fighting for, after all. She was both of her components together but someone else, as well; something more, new and emergent. Her left hand didn’t burn and her right hand didn’t freeze - but Bismuth could feel tiny shocks travel up her arm from where their hands were entwined in the grass.

It tickled, almost. “Woah, hey, that’s new!”

“Not really,” Garnet admitted, making no move to break the connection between them. “I’m just not very good at controlling it.”

“So you’re saying… Ruby and Sapphire met and… there was a spark between them?”

“Stop.”

The elbow in her ribs didn’t do anything to stifle her guffaws, but the attempt left Garnet in prime hugging range -  which is exactly what Bismuth did.

(The responses I’ve gotten so far have a very defined streak of “nice things happening to Bismuth/Pearl/Garnet AND NONE FOR ROSE, BYE”, and it’s as amusing as it is sad. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a character doghoused quite like this, hah.)

[ Pick a character I’ve written and I will explain the top ~three to five ideas/concepts/etc I keep in mind while writing that character that I believe are essential to accurately depicting them. ]

Honestly, I didn’t care much for Lapis’s character for the longest time... But I guess things changed and I somehow ended up writing her? xD

Lapis

She’s pretty neutral about most of anything. She doesn’t care much for ideologies ordistant figureheads or what-not. But when something does earn her interest or her loyalty (like the people she’s grown to care about), she can be super protective of them, sometimes almost territorial.

She’s ruthless, and she holds grudges for a long time. There’s no kill like overkill when it comes to Lapis, and she has the power of all of Earth’s oceans to do it. 

But despite being so powerful, she often feels powerless regarding her situation. She couldn’t let go of the things that have happened to her, and she refuses to let anyone really help her work that out because she keeps running away from her issues, both metaphorically and literally. 

1. Chidi

“I cannot BELIEVE you convinced me that WITTGENSTEIN was in the GOOD PLACE.”

“Are you sure that you and I agree on what is represented by the phrase ‘the Good Place’? What if your referent and my referent – ”

“YOU REALLY ARE A DEMON, MICHAEL.”

2. Jason

Jason lay on the couch and stared up at the ceiling.

“Jason?” Michael said, poking him. “Janet, did we break Jason?”

“There’s nothing left to do,” Jason said. “I’ve done it all already. There was a loop where I married Janet, and a loop where I got Chidi to robotrip with me, and even a loop where I was soulmates with the quarterback for the Jacksonville Jaguars! There’s nothing left for me in the afterlife! I might as well just lie here forever.”

“That wasn’t actually the quarterback for the Jacksonville Jaguars,” Michael said. “It was a demon pretending to be him.”

Jason sat bolt upright. “Oh shirt! There is something left for me to do! Thanks, Michael!”

3. Eleanor

“You know, I always thought I was kind of dumb, but it turns out I’m a forking genius. I figure out your stupid torture game every time!”

“Eleanor, I managed to convince you that one loop that they would have only white chocolate and neither of the kinds of chocolate that actually taste like anything. In the Good Place.”

“Ookay. Point taken.”

4. Tahani

“So, Eleanor. About that loop when we were... I mean, when we – ”

“When we totally banged and it was awesome? I agree, we should do that again.” And without any further ado, Eleanor started unbuttoning her shirt.