#lethalneuroses

cherry wine: do you have a sweet tooth?

yeah, that’s probably why my teeth are in the state they are, lol

to be alone: do you prefer other people’s company or your own?

my own, generally, but i’ve become less introverted as i’ve gotten older and made closer friends

nobody: who in your life is important to you?

Hmm...As far as their friendship goes, it’s clearly strained at the moment, for reasons we currently have to infer, but there’s no reason to believe that they actively dislike each other. Tai appears to be Qrow’s only remaining friend, actually.

As a couple, I’ve seen a lot of cute Taiqrow art and fic, but I’m not sure that they would work. Tai’s had one lover up and ditch him and the other lover die in battle and it messed him up pretty badly, so I don’t think he’d be eager for a new relationship with anyone, honestly. And Qrow just has a lot of issues with being close to people in general (literally more than figuratively), and given Tai’s aforementioned relationship issues, such a flighty partner would not be for him at all. Stability and reliability, I think, would be a major need for him and Qrow just is not the kind of guy who can provide that at the right level. 

Qrow is also the twin brother of the lover who ditched Tai, left him with a baby to raise, and didn’t pay child support for nineteen years (think Ging Freecss but with better fashion sense), and while I don’t think that would be too big of an issue, it is also a thing that’s there.

Considering me, I’m surprised this doesn’t pop up more, but there’s lines from both The Bystander Syndrome -- 

“It occurs to him sometimes that he could hate her, for that. He has seen such a thing in other men, who, instead of a family, were left with dead wives, suddenly unwanted children, and their own festering anger and grief. But at such times, he reflects on his own emotions, and finds that he cannot.”

And the next chapter of Homecoming --

Cinder recognized the trembling in Emerald’s voice as one she had only heard once before, from another night in her arms, confessing what had been done to her that she’d wound up on the streets. That had involved copious amounts of sobbing and sizable tear stains on her dress, and she fervently hoped she wouldn’t have to endure a repeat now.

“I thought for sure you were dead...I thought I would never -- !”

I assume this was for the give me a character?  Well, either way, here goes:

How I feel about this character: I mean, he’s totes an edgelord, but I like him.  He’s essential to the plot and while i’m kinda shit for playing him you gotta love a good death aesthetic

All the people I ship romantically with this character: Obvs Soldier:76, I think they’d do a lot for each other.

Non-Romantic OTP for this character: In the most bro-TP way possible, I’ve gotta say Reaper&Sombra.  I feel like they have similar drives (though wildly different motives) and opposite styles.  I think Sombra drives Reaper crazy with how flagrantly she treats things, but it’d be good for him to be reminded that those who don’t act like him aren’t inherently weaker.

My Unpopular Opinion About this Character: Reyes isn’t salvageable.  Like, I know basically every Reaper:76 shipper tries to play that card (and AUs are great), but I honestly don’t think the person who used to be named Gabriel Reyes exists anymore.

Send me a number and I’ll tell you:

3. Which of your fics was most different from what you usually write?

Well, the most honest answer would be my as-of-yet unnamed and unpublished Aliens fic: it’s one of my few forays into second person perspective, and the perspective of something inhuman, and one of only two fanfics I ever wrote for a class :) 

(It was end of semester extra credit, so my science fiction professor didn’t give full feedback on it, but he said it "looks great” in his email back, so I should be able to make it nice after some editing)

8. Which fic this year was most fun to write?

The Lion and the Wolf, for Magi. Hands down, The Lion and the Wolf. 

I absolutely adore writing villains and family angst, and Arba and Real!Gyokuen provided plenty of opportunities for both and were just a ton of fun to write. (Writing the two of them being absolutely awful to Hakuryuu and reveling in it was a bonus.) In addition, this was a concept that I’d been wanting to explore for a while after certain plot revelations: we saw in the Haku siblings what happens when Arba’s kids oppose her ideals and try to fight her, but I wanted to explore what would happen if she managed to get one of them on her side, and I think I did that well. Though it’s clear that Arba’s just that little bit worse, they’re both terrible people, but for different reasons and in different ways. Writing about (basically) an evil spirit and her willing host sharing a mind and swapping control of the body was a little more awkward than I thought, but I think I made that work, too. 

And among everything else, writing that scene from chapter 250 from a terrified Gyokuen’s point of view was very much fun ;)

10. What, if anything, are you going to try to do differently in your writing in the new year?

WRITE MORE. In both my fic and my original stories. As far as making progress on things goes, my pacing is terrible; I write like a slug. If I’m going to get things published anywhere, my work ethic needs to improve. 

(Can I just pick Zuko for all of them? No? Okay)

Send three characters and i’ll tell you which i’d rather have

• get randomly assigned as your lab partner for a whole semester: Azula, because I get the sense that she’s the best student of the three. Wouldn’t slow down for my dumb ass at all, but the good grades at the end would be worth it.

• get trapped with on a broken elevator for ten hours: Zuko. He’d probably be flipping shit about it for a significant chunk of that time, but he’s far and away the nicest option and I’d rather be stuck in an elevator with someone who wouldn’t terrify me. 

I would like to be optimistic and hope that they had something cool planned out, but honestly I think the reveal of Dark Adepts and Dark Psynergy was just supposed to be an exciting twist. Unnecessary, in my opinion! Just exploring the fallout from the Golden Sun would have been interesting, or even the introduction of an ancient doomsday machine that utilized one of the other elements. How Lemuria dealt with the new age! The rebuilding of Prox! And in DD as is, there

            lethalneuroses

are a ton of other things that could be covered, like why the world has ruptured into a ton of different levels and what the heck is up with the Psynergy vortexes.

          sailortentacle

I've seen people talk about how the Apollo Lens, a weapon of concentrated light, could be potentially be dangerous if used for other purposes than shutting down Eclipse Tower, so if they go "Light is not inherently good", they could build off that.

Every element was dangerous and none were inherently good or evil in the original games, and it’d be an improvement if they framed light and dark that way, but they’d have to debunk ‘light is inherently holy, and in its absence, darkness is inherently evil’ after it was reinforced by Isaac, Kraden, Himi, and all kinds of little details like the NPC in Morgal who mentioned something along the lines of how they were a mean person and the eclipse monsters seemed to be avoiding them. #.#

The (implied?) massacre caused by the eclipse really disturbed me when I first played the game. And I agree with you that the light/dark dichotomy is weird and forced, especially after the first two games.

            lethalneuroses

Like, the introduction of dark Adepts (and presumably they have light counterparts) was never explained. What sort of powers even go with darkness? If it's related to cold, is Mercury more aligned with it? And, come on, dark Adepts might as well just be introduced as evil Adepts.

          sailortentacle

I mean I've seen speculation that part 4 would subvert our expectations of light and dark, which I could buy. Though, we may never know...

Gotta hope they make it less heavyhanded somehow, bc ‘dark is evil’ and ‘these are dark adepts’ is just... yeah. It’s hard to see how they could build anything fun off of that massacre without retconning something.