Okay I got Many questions from that Ask Meme, and a lot of questions overlapped, so I will just put them all in one post. This covers, in order: a very good (bad) thing, Opening Night at the Wrecking Ballroom, dripping with alchemy, repertoire, This City of Flowers, and the Hunters Initiative.
a very good (bad) thing:
2. Favorite part of fic?
Honestly, probably the way Rhys and Jack meet. The broom closet blowjob with Rhys being way too candid and Jack being clearly charmed. I think it sets the tenor of their relationship well and it shows the sort of person Rhys is in that AU very well.
7. Were there any major decisions I made about the fic that could have made it go a wholly different way?
... Not really, actually. Even before I had the outline finished, I knew where the story started and where it was going to end. The plans have never been that much in flux.
8. Was there anything I only learned about the fic after I had finished it? (themes, motifs, symbolism, etc)
... I've not finished it at all, which is a point of guilt with me, so.
10. If I had to sum up this fic in a sentence, what would it be?
Fucking your way to the top sounds like a good idea until feelings get in the way.
Opening Night at the Wrecking Ballroom:
1. What was my inspiration for this fic, where did it come from?
About 50% Lego's domestic AU, 25% wishing Whip It didn't have that asinine heterosexual subplot, and 25% wanting to finally take a stab at writing a trans character.
2. Favorite part?
It's either Gaige's deep abiding lust for getting punched in the face by hot ladies, or the Jack/Rhys/Angel family unit in its glory days. The former is just a lot of fun to actually write, the latter fills me with warm nice feelings.
3. Most proud of?
The way the dual timeline is set up. The flashbacks are not told in chronological order, but they are set up in such a way that they compliment each step in the story, unfolding in such a way that you won't have the full picture until the very end, but you're never left confused.
6. Favorite character in the fic?
Angel, probably. Having the chance to flesh her out is deeply satisfying. She has her father's smarts and low-key emotional manipulation, but she's also a bit awkward, a bit overeager. The way she desperately wants things to be Her Way without always thinking about the consequences is very human and I like writing her that way.
9. Did anyone in the fic surprise me by doing anything? If so, what?
Nnnno... I am very rarely surprised by my stories, it's awful.
10. If I had to sum up this fic in a sentence, what would it be?
Young cute roller derby gays are a feint for the dramatic tragic old queers who are here to break your heart.
dripping with alchemy:
1. Fic inspiration? Where did it come from?
Fucking Lego's art along with Scootsaboot and Ledgem's exceptional a/b/o fics. The inspiration was subconsciously my own dealings with having romantic feelings after a lifetime of being aro. The sudden realization that you have things to learn about yourself, and wanting someone there to help you do it, is the core of the fic.
And, obviously, it also came from desperately needing a release from the panic and agony of being sick and in the hospital.
2. Fave part?
Rhys grabbing the bottle of wine as he leaves Vasquez' office after elbowing him in the face.
3. Part I'm most proud of?
The rapidfire plotting and worldbuilding. See, I haven't read my a/b/o fic and a lot of the tropes conventions are lost on me. So most of the fic came from me going, "well, what if?" and asking friends how a/b/o tropes work. The idea of a character having his sexual awakening late in his life is also very compelling to me, since I think life would be easier that way.
4. Hardest part to write?
None of it was hard. DWA was written extremely quickly and almost entirely without a beta. It was a destessor for me when I needed on. If anything was hard, maybe the chapter where Jack has a hero protecto moment in the R&D lab? But that was just logistical difficulty.
8. Was there anything I only learned about the fic after I had finished it? (themes, motifs, symbolism, etc)
After the sequel, that I'm a lot more into preg than I realized.
10. Sum it up in one sentence?
Rhys might be a calculating, clever Slytherin, but he's still a dipshit sometimes, considering he went 'lol I'll just stay on this medication for YEARS.'
repertoire:
2. Fave part?
Rhys talking to Elbie, without a doubt. Like, Elbie is probably the only person Rhys is completely straight with. Elbie's programmed to not reveal sensitive information about Rhys, so he's the only one Rhys can trust entirely. With everyone else in the story, from Jack to the press to his disciples/employees, Rhys wears a mask. Its only with Elbie that he doesn't.
3. Most proud of?
Balancing Rhys as he is in canon (a little too mouthy for his own good, on the surface good-natured, way too into robots) with his queen bee incarnation. Taking someone like Rhys and trying to convince the audience that he's a sex kitten bombshell babe and leader isn't easy. I can only hope it's working.
9. Anything surprising about the fic?
How if exploded out from a simple, kinda silly idea, into a huge mess. Like, going for the full sex cult of personality for Atlas was not the original idea, but the more I talked it over with Ledgem, the more it just needed to happen.
This City Of Flowers:
1. Inspiration for the fic?
Location, mostly. It's a thing I do, with my major stories. I set them in a specific place and then kind of figure out what story would fit that location. With TDF fic, it was extensive research of Chicago. With RTAH, it was Austin. For TCOF, it was Seattle, and I wanted to build a warm story about civic planning. To that end, I talked to.... four different Seattle residents to get their perspective on things, and from there, I built the story.
2. Favorite part of the fic?
Malik and Kerran's first date in the tea shop. It's based off a location I went to in Boston, the atmosphere of it, the closeness and warmth.
3. Most proud of?
The fucking MONTHS of editing that went into it. Summer aided me a lot, but it was for me personally a matter of dedicating a day or three of every week on refining and rewriting. I'm very proud of everything that was poured into it.
4. Hardest part to write?
THE SEX SCENE. Holy shit guys that sex scene literally went through about SEVEN iterations. It honestly could have gotten yet another rewrite, but at some point I just had to stop it. I could not keep fighting with it. It was agony. I would say out of the... four months of editing, a solid month of 'em went just into that fucking scene.
8. Was there anything I only learned about the fic after I had finished it?
I realized after the fact that it was a love letter to Jay. Oops.
14. If I were to write a sequel to this fic, what would it be about?
The sequel would take place in California and revolve around Taamira and Dima as the settle into their new lives away from Seattle. Taamira would have her stable job in the prosthetics field, but Dima would feel listless. His discontent would be partially soothed when he meets a friendly trans guy, someone Dima's very interested in. Story would revolve around Taamira and Dima navigating the banality of settling into being Adults, their exploration of polyamory, and frequent Skype check ins with Malik as he opines as snarkily as possibel on Taamira's life.
The Hunters Initiative:
1. Inspiration?
Twofold. Half of it was my fascination with the Ramsey-Free family unit and wanting to look into a way of writing a story in which Gavin genuinely was Geoff and Griffon's son, and all the baggage that would come with. The other half was my ardent disagreement that Michael would make a good Hulk. No, man. He's not the Hulk. He's Thor. He's always Thor.
6. Favorite character?
Michael Fucking Jones. Mr. "Miracle Mile," Mr. Tentacle Alien, Mr. Prince of Storms. Michael repeatedly and profoundly broke my heart. He was a character who had a dark past, but got to a point in his life where he said "I chose to remake myself, to be better," and he did it. His central theme is self-determination, and I still love it.
7. Were there any major decisions I made about the fic that could have made it go a whole different direction?
The decision to go back and rewrite to change Michael's anatomy to be non-human. It's almost weird to remember that in the original version, Michael had human anatomy. When I decided to go all in on the alien thing, to give him the tentacle dick, that snowballed into so much more. From that tentacle dick came Michael's people, the amaranthine, their culture, their biology, their history, their strange relationship with identity and names, and Oestret Roethe. All from one revision, all unfolding outward.
8. Was there anything I only learned about the fic after I had finished it? (themes, motifs, symbolism, etc)
That's hard to answer since I probably learned something from each step in the series. From 'notion', the central theme of self-determination. From 'rattle', how the plot of your story can be auxillary to what the story is *about*. From 'begin', how if you take a character and build and develop them for an extended period, they'll become another person entirely. Gavin in 'notion' and Gavin in 'begin' are so completely divergent, and yet you can trace the path from point A to point D. I love that.
9. What surprised me?
That people stuck with me through the babyegg. I had a few people Loudly inform me that they were bailing on the story, and I had a few assholes who felt obligated to tell me how Gross the idea was. but overwhelmingly, people were positive and invested and lovely. It was my moment of taking every single Audience Suspension of Disbelief token, and cashing them all in at once.
Worth it.
11. If I were to rewrite this fic, what would I change?
I WOULD HAVE WRITTEN "NOTION" IN THE CORRECT GODDAMN TENSE OH MY GOD WHY IS IT IN PRESENT, WHAT WAS I THINKING AT THE TIME?!
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So, just read all 200k words in two days, so kudos on that. I had a funny thought of where Michael leaves his hammer. I mean, he doesn't have it all the time, but just the thought of it sitting somewhere...lol
He often does! Unlike Thor, Michael's power was less rooted in the hammer. Like, hand Michael anything and he could wreck you with it. He could just as easily use his body to smash things up as a specialized tool.
Michael leaves the hammer in open air places. Like out on balconies and even drops it in the Ramsey's field. He knows no one can lift it and he can call it anytime, so as long as its not indoors, it doesn't matter where it is. 8)
Hey Lucy I was wondering how you came up with the ideas for your alien species in the rtvengers fics? I'm writing a story set in space and I want to create some interesting creatures and not end up just going "and they were humanoid but they had FOUR eyes!!!"
Well the amaranthine were built to spec, basically, with traits and culture and details added as I thought of them or the were suggested to me by amazing betas and really on-point anons. Like, the core of them is just like the Thor movies, with aliens that have futuristic metal-based tech with a mythological aesthetic. The amaranthines similarly have a glass/metal aesthetic mixed heavily with what someone's now coined as solarpunk.
What really made them flesh out into something that I hope is halfway interesting is-- well, two things.
1. The tentacle anatomy, which begged the question of how sex and gender and reproduction would actually work for a species that evolved that way.
2. The anon who suggested that Michael has perfect recall for music.
Both those things where the cornerstones of the amaranthine people. The tentacle anatomy was extrapolated to explain their views on childbearing, on raising kids, on education, on sex and gender, on the malleability of identity, etc. All of it, all from "hey wouldn't it be fun and cool if Michael had tentacles instead of a dick?"
The music thing built the rest of the pieces. The significance of music in the amaranthine culture, how that also feeds into education, the economic structure of Oestret Roethe, the reverence for the arts, the way music is used to record history, and from there into the singing Citadel and what the architecture and society of Oestret Roethe would be.
So my advice to you would be to find a pretty cliche jumping point. Use a really tired trope or two that isn't taken seriously in media (tentacle alien! sure!) and then play it as straight as possible. Don't turn it into a joke, instead explore what it means for that old trope to have occurred, what cultural differences does it imply, and just let that shit snowball until you have something you like.
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dexanari said:
BWOA!Ryan post-fic, getting used to his new life on Oestret Roethe. From humble beginnings, to modest ends.
Ryan relearns how to be a man when surrounded by aliens.
Somewhere, he can feel Michael Jones being smug. Or, maybe not. Ryan doesn't know if the man who was Mogar thinks about him. He doesn't know how he feels about being forgotten. It's perfectly justified, a poetic punishment, for the icon of Captain America to fade into history, first by the people he'd hurt the most.
On Oestret Roethe, he's not Captain America. He's Ryan, just another alien in the red glass melting pot that is the Amaranthine homeworld. He works in the orchards under the watchful eye of the amaranths, and otherwise is left alone.
It is far, far better than he deserves but Ryan would almost prefer the alternative. The execution or the imprisonment. Something less luxurious than the apartment he's given, the meals he gets, the laughter and music that swirls around him.
Michael could have killed him for the things Ryan did.
Instead, he lives in a singing citadel and slowly learns the name of the other people who tend the orchard, letting them invite him along to their trips to the mead district and ask him of home.
Home is such a strange concept. Was it Corpus Christi? Was it the battlefield, the war? Was it the little camps he pitched with his brothers and sisters in arms? Was it a deep, dreamless sleep that ended in a freezing wet chill? Was it the world that revered him from his title to his iconic visage?
None of those ring true. And Oestret Roethe doesn't either.
Sometimes, Ryan wishes he could speak to Michael, to ask him what his home is.
But that would be more than he deserved, wouldn't it?
gavin's refractory period seems nonexistant; is that another way his body has attuned to Michael's?
Yes, that was pretty necessary to egg him up, actually. /nods
In the outline but not in the final story, there was a moment when Gavin yells at Michael about the orgasms thing since they didn't take is seriously the first time it happened in Berlin. Michael yells back that oh my god that was two years ago, come on.
i've always wanted to know, is there any sort of religion on oestret roethe? if so is it ordained? are the royal family or anyone else expected to follow certain beliefs about divine or the world or even the bifrost? or is oestret roethe a more secular / atheistic society?
I said this in one of my audio posts, but I'll say it again here: Oestret Roethe... prooooobably has some sort of spirituality thing going on? But this is a huge blind area for me. I'm an atheist who doesn't really care about religion one way or another. What people believe and practice doesn't concern me until they make it concern me.
I do know that I don't think the Bifrost would be the center of any religion. It's less a spiritual entity and more of a functional one? The Bifrost, to me, is like living infrastructure for the amaranths.
But outside that, I have no ideas for amaranthine beliefs and anyone is free to headcanon what they'd like. I can tell you that amaranthine culture is built around civil service and the virtues thereof, so that might be part of it?
But yeah, nah, it's a huge blind area for me, my apologies.
