#lewis mount

I feel like it's so much more fun when subs are adamantly in denial about their own submissiveness and have to be broken in by someone who knows what they're doing

So it sounds like Lewis is gonna get a tasty submissive wake up call at some point?

It might be more like Lewis might have had his submissive wake up call a long time ago but maybe that it was traumatic and caused this kneejerk reversal instead but before I give everything away...

Yes!

Lewis Mount and Mallory's story will actually be the new serial after the Fae Tales canon is over (i.e. it ideally will be the one getting official updates, will likely last at least 3-5 years, and will be my core focus.) I've been worldbuilding it for months now because it will have a different setting to the oneshot.

The whole serial will probably go under the collective name of Mallory & Mount, and will have multiple parts. And the first part will probably be called Woodsinger. There's a magical system. Playlists on Spotify. An ensemble of characters coming together and much more. :)

OH my god I'm in such a quandary anon because I want to like answer you and tell you everything but I also don't know how much I have to hold back yet for the sake of spoilers and character development and I'm like screaming into my hands.

I have also gone all over the place with Lewis. He's probably the most changeable character right now because our little disaster boy has like, been through the ringer, and his psychological state could be just several question marks in a trench coat.

He was definitely a dominant when I conceived of him in Three Choices, just a cruel one who genuinely doesn't really give a shit about most of the people he's with (so not a healthy dominant). Then I thought maybe he was a disaster!sub. And then I changed my mind again, and realised no actually he is a dominant, just again, with like four thousand question marks in a trench coat.

I think it's safe to say that what Lewis needs is actually a million years of therapy, but he lives in the current world he lives in, and so his therapy is torturing young men for his own pleasure, and if you can imagine Augus at his worst during the reign of the Nightingale, that's kind of where Lewis is at a little bit in his mind as well. Still a dominant, but not like, one you'd invite over for tea or anything. Except that unlike Augus, Lewis never had a starting point where he was ever a healthy dominant. Life just...life just...oof, it has not been kind to our bookshop owner.

You only need to listen to his playlist to realise that dude has some Stuff and that Stuff is maybe making him Not That Great At Life Decisions Or Basic Decent Humanity.

Selfishly, I hope you keep writing next year. But of course your health and happiness come first. Regardless you've created an incredible library of works. I hope you have each and every one of them printed and bound into physical books that you can arrange into a pile and then burrow underneath and feel the weight of all you've accomplished.

Are you excited for the new Stardew update????

I’ve been playing the new Stardew update! It is pretty buggy though, unfortunately. But it’s been fun so far. As I started a new farm, I haven’t encountered most of the new content yet.

Ahhh poor Lewis, yeah he’s going to be surprised to realise he’s a sub as well. But he’s the kind of person who has become a control freak in order to deal with a huge backlog of stuff he’s never actually dealt with (there’s a reason he’s a sodden alcoholic who drinks until he’s hungover when we meet him), who just maybe, sometimes, needs someone to give him a break from his own head.

But as he’s a control freak and this is one of my stories, it’s a) going to take him a long time to realise that and b) he’s definitely not giving up the illusion of him absolutely being a dominant without a fight.

But we’ve met Mallory, and he’s definitely the kind of person to eventually be like ‘welp, fuck you actually, and tough shit.’ Which is exactly the kind of person that Lewis needs.

Besides, how that story starts will be quite different to the oneshot (which is more like an AU, and isn’t even set in the same world as the official serial). But ah, we’ll see how it all goes!

I mean I hope so! I still have to figure out some fairly fundamental things re: the worldbuilding (i.e. is it contemporary, or period, or like, real-world period adjacent while still being its own thing, these are IMPORTANT and I don’t have solves for them yet lmao).

But, yes, in terms of original stories, it’s on the roster. I want ideally to have a first draft of Little Star completed by then. But ideally it’ll go:

1. The Ice Plague2. Mallory & Mount3. Fanfic project / oneshots / AUs etc.

The rolling third slot is a fairly quiet one. That’s where Spoils of the Spoiled used to sit and I often only managed a single chapter a month (if that). I’m still curious about the Raven Prince/Gwyn/Augus AU, but honestly, after 6 years of writing Augus/Gwyn nonstop in some form or another (like, AUs even if they aren’t in TIP), I just want a chance to take a break. It’s like having friends over for too long, sometimes you gotta kick em out for a while to remember why you love them again, lmao.

I’m trying to think of what I can compare Mallory & Mount to tonally. I’d say...Lewis Mount is most like Elliott from The Wind that Cuts the Night, but with far more life experience, and with a far darker back story. Mallory has elements of Alex from the same fic, but I would say he’s got elements of Connor’s belligerence and sexual (but not kink) experience. I mean I generally have character ‘types’ that I like to revisit over and over again, so it’s easy enough to make comparisons? Heh.

Honestly, the Alex/Elliott dynamic in The Wind that Cuts the Night was one of my favourites that I’ve written in a fic in a while, and I’ve been dying to revisit that in an original fic. And Mallory & Mount is pretty much where I’ve decided that’ll happen. Except it’s...a lot darker, and a lot more antagonistic, and it will take them longer to have anything like real affection for each other. This will 100% be an enemies-to-lovers-to-friends series.

It’ll be dual POV!

Usually with my original stories I tend to write both POV at some point. I actually think - tentatively - the very first chapter will actually be from Lewis’ POV and not Mallory’s, because I think I want people to get a slightly better understanding of where he’s coming from as a total fucking disaster. As, overall, he’s going to be a hard character to sympathise with for some time, I think.

One of the things I’m enjoying about the Mallory & Mount world is that so far there are only four kinds of magic-making, and they’re quite limited, and there’s quite a high cost in using it.

Fae Tales is generally a very overpowered universe, and while there are costs of using magic (it’s not a coincidence that often the most powerful active magic users possess the least amount of conscience, and they almost all lead very solitary lives with the exception of Fenwrel).

I like coming up with unique magical systems, though I think most of the ones I’ve written have gone into literary science fiction / steampunk fantasy. Mallory & Mount presents an opportunity to sort of do it in a serial on AO3. It was really hard not to add magical elements to the Three Choices oneshot, honestly? I’m glad I stuck with like a ‘human only’ world, but the system was crying out to be a part of it, even in just a subtle background way. I think it will integrate pretty effortlessly with both Lewis and Mallory when I start writing it.

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