#sas-afras

the trans agenda is trans artists making trans fallout fancomics about trans characters, transly

Agnes Sands, Courier Six, from my comic It Keeps Right On a-Hurtin’

how do you make two sole survivors both canon????? they were NEIGHBORS

My custom charms from @sas-afras came in!!

hahaaaaa

[Fanfic Questions]

F: Share a snippet from one of your favorite dialogue scenes you’ve written and explain why you’re proud of it.

“Am I alright?”

“Yeah,” Agnes mumbled, “are you alright?”

Cass released a deep sigh. “The fuck is that supposed to mean, do you  think I’m alright?”

“No, I don’t, and that’s why I asked.” Cass’s brow furrowed and Agnes immediately turned away to dodge an incoming look, but she slowly leaned over to the courier, pursuing eye contact like a shark on a blood trail, bringing her face close to Agnes’ own again. She loomed in her periphery with the same acidic glare as before. Now, though, Agnes could see tears welling in the corner of her reddened eyes, and when Cass finally spoke again, it was close to whispered.

“Tell me why it matters to you.” It dripped from her whiskey-stained lips slowly, carefully. It sounded like a threat with an implied “or else.”

This is from my one-shot prose fic “Scar Tissue” on AO3, itself an extension of the vignette depicted in IKROAH #7. I love this exchange so much because Cass is someone drinking herself to death at the Mojave Outpost, and everybody knows it, even herself (“Got a lot of memories to drown. If I die while doing it, so be it. Got nowhere else to go.” is in-game dialogue). Everyone else at the Outpost, Major Knight and Lacey included, treat her slow and incidental suicide attempt as a black joke about some deadbeat alcoholic living at the bar. Agnes is the first and only person to really ask if she’s...alright. It’s mostly just a cordial gesture, something that slips out, hence why Agnes is a bit awkward about it and Cass is so suddenly defensive. Cass is staring death through the glass bottom of a bottle and Agnes is someone still reeling and shaking, literally, from the effects of having died once already. This confrontation between the two of them, and the way they humble each other and see themselves in each other from that, is what puts them at ease once they recognize it and forms the bedrock of their mutual respect and quick friendship.

U: Share three of your favorite fic writers and why you like them so much.

Admittedly I read far less fanfic than I write, and I’m usually friends with authors before I fall in love with their writing. I want to celebrate @yesjejunus for their incredible work that scrapes raw and deep; their two novels (yes, novels) about their courier, Joan, demonstrate their incredible talent for crafting intense, gripping stories with that have you screaming at the screen like it’s a horror movie, “don’t go in there,” and for shackling you into the headspace of these characters going through hell, horror, attraction, infatuation, hatred, fear, regret, safety, and so many contradictory feelings all at the same time in this horrible, alluring fireball (and they also have this very wry sense of humor that leaps out preciously often in asides and dialogue). They write their works as a survivor of assault, something they’ve been public about, and their perspective on the subject and the brutally real complexity of it as it manifests in their writing is so meaningful to me. Their work just hollowed me out, a powerful and deeply visceral emotional response that I love to receive from art, and for that reason I highly recommend Learnin’ the Blues and No Light (if you’re 18+ and not going to be upset by the very thorough and clear attached content warnings).

I also want to thank @sas-afras for helping me further the trans agenda but also for creating this really immediately interesting and unlikely protaganist in Penn, a character whose flaws and insecurities are so clear in the way they’re written and move around the world. I don’t think I would have been inspired to make IKROAH if I hadn’t seen them do such incredible storytelling on their own fancomic, and I can’t wait for more once they’re able to work on it again.

My other friends whose fics I love and adore most are still primarily in the WIP phase and haven’t posted much publicly yet, but they know who they are and know I cherish them.

K: What’s the angstiest idea you’ve ever come up with?