i’m scrolling through ao3 trying to find a new fic to read and come across a fic that sounds a lot like my own. mine was published on 6/15/2025 and theirs was published 11/24/2025
- both FMC’s originally wanting to be healers
- both FMC’s parents dying in the rebellion and changing their path’s to the RQ
- both FMC’s being orphaned by the Sorrengails for six years after the rebellion
- both FMC’s having a past friendship with Xaden
okay so far not too crazy. there’s a so called thing as inspiration and that’s not too coincidental.
- both FMC’s wear a dead family member’s leather across the parapet…
and this is all from the summary.
so now i’m skimming the fic.
- my fic when the FMC tries on the dead family member’s leathers:
I press my face to the collar and breathe until my chest burns. “Come back,” I whisper into the leather. “Please. I don’t know how to do this without you. I don’t know how to be brave.” If I could crawl inside this jacket, wrap myself in what remains, maybe I could pretend she still braids my hair before bed, still kisses my forehead when nightmares wake me, still tells me I’m brave when my hands shake.
The jacket remembers Mother’s ribs where mine flare too narrow. She was built for speed, all sharp angles and lean muscle. I carry different weight. Father said so often enough, disapproval thick in his voice. Too soft for war, Astrea. Too gentle.
He might have been right. She’s dead and I’m here trying to wear her skin.
I kick the trunk back under my bed. The sound echoes off stone walls.
The shirt catches on my shoulders, pulls tight across places where I’ve grown bustier than she ever was. Mother moved in and out of fights with lethal precision. I stay to tend wounds instead of flying away to make them.
Her leather pants bite into my hips where five years filled me out past Mother’s frame. I zip the jacket. It molds wrong, pulls tight across my chest, but the weight feels familiar now.
These leathers belonged to her for years. Years of flying dragons while I played with dolls, years of coming home bloody while I learned to braid flower crowns, years of preparing for the war that would kill her while I thought her invincible.
Now they’re mine, and I don’t know how to be what she was. I don’t know how to be anything but soft in a world that eats soft things.
- their fic when the FMC tries on the dead family member’s leathers:
The leathers don’t fit me, flaring out in the bodice where they hugged Saoirse tightly, pulling around my waist and thighs when my sister was slimmer than I’ve ever been.
These leathers belonged to her for years. Maman commissioned them after Saoirse earned them by surviving Threshing and my sister kept them safe for the years that followed. Years of flying with Fara while I played with dolls, years of coming home bloody while I learned at Athair’s feet, years of preparing for the war that would kill her while I thought her invincible. My brother kept them safe for me, kept them waiting for six years until I would need them and I hope some of her spirit will merge with my own.
I don’t know how to be what she was. I don’t know how to be anything but soft in a world that praises strength.
the other author didn’t just the concept of inherited leathers, but they retained the sequence of:
4. fmc playing with dolls
5. the woman returning bloody
6. the fmc learning something gentler
7. the war that kills the woman
8. the heroine believing her invincible
9. inability to become her
10. softness in a hostile world
changing “mother” to “sister,” “flower crowns” to “athair’s feet,” and “eats soft things” to “praises strength” does not make it independently written
as per canon, violet gets her arm broken by imogen and is taken to the healer’s quadrant
- this is the first time both FMC’s are in the healer’s quadrant
The Healer Quadrant smells like home.
Tea tree and bergamot and the sharpness of antiseptic that means safety, comfort, the promise that broken things can be mended if you know how to touch them gently enough.
Walking through these corridors feels like stepping into a dream I used to have about my future—white walls lined with beds where I would tend to the wounded, where my hands would bring relief, where I could be soft without apology.
My chest aches with longing so sharp it takes my breath away. This is where I belong. This is what I was meant for—using my knowledge of the human body to save lives instead of learning new ways to end them.
But I'm not here as a healer. I'm here as a visitor, as someone who chose violence over mercy and has to live with the weight of that decision pressing down on my shoulders.
Stop, I tell myself, blinking back tears. You made your choice. You don't get to feel sorry for yourself now.
She leads us into the infirmary, and the moment I step inside, I feel like I can breathe for the first time since crossing the parapet. Lights, smells, and warmth attack me from all sides, but it doesn’t overwhelm me. In fact, I welcome it with the slightest hint of heartache. This — medicines and quiet and aiding all of the riders in these beds around us — could have been mine. It should have.
so different prose, but the same emotiknal engine and heartache in the same set up. this cannot be coincidence.
- both FMC’s then go off and tell dain to fuck off basically for not believing in violet.
- both FMC’s learn violet has been/wants to poison her opponents
But as I leave the barracks and head toward morning formation, I can't shake the feeling that we're losing pieces of ourselves with every choice we make. That the girls who walked onto the parapet three weeks ago are already gone, replaced by harder versions who know how to poison enemies and dream about kissing people who want them dead.
Something cold lodges in my chest as I speak. Because I know this is how it starts — how this place starts to break us. It starts with small compromises, tiny betrayals of who you used to be. First you poison someone's breakfast to even the odds. Then you learn to fight dirty because clean fighting gets you killed.
there is no way, based off all the other “coincidences” that this author writes the FMC having the exact moral reflection that my FMC does with violet’s canon poisoning.
in the same chapter, xaden is also ignoring the FMC… which makes sense in my fic because they naturally hate each other. there is no plot reason in theirs that i found.
- my FMC is sparring with Xaden and notices him:
Xaden strips off his flight jacket without looking at me. The sleeveless shirt underneath clings to shoulders broader than I remember, arms corded with muscle that used to be softer when I knew him. Scars I've never seen mark his forearms—thin white lines that speak of blade work, of violence learned in the years between us. And on his other arm, the relic that reminds me we’re divided.
He's beautiful, and I hate myself for noticing. Hate that even now, even knowing what he's about to do, my eye catalogues the way those scars healed clean, the perfect symmetry of his collarbones, the way his dark hair catches afternoon light.
- their FMC is watching Xaden spar Violet:
He strips off his flight jacket without looking at me. The sleeveless shirt underneath clings to shoulders broader than I remember and I can see some of the scars we share peek out of his back.
He's beautiful, and I hate myself for noticing. Hate that even now, even knowing what he's about to do, my eye catalogues the way those scars healed clean, the perfect symmetry of his collarbones, the way his dark hair catches the afternoon light.
ok so again, word for word…
also, if xaden is going to spar with violet, why would he be looking at their FMC? the line makes sense in MY fic because they’re fighting. it makes absolutely no spatial sense in theirs…
along with that, my FMC being orphaned by the Sorrengails MAKES SENSE. their FMC is a marked one. why would a SORRENGAIL orphan a marked one? my FMC’s father was the general before he died. lilith took over his position and the fmc’s family and the sorrengails knew each other.
they also have MANY themes:
someone soft raised to be a weapon.
losing their identity the longer they’re in basgiath.
translating healer knowledge fighting to win sparring matches.
both positioned as someone who thinks violet needs belief rather than dain’s dismissal. which at times feels jarring for the other person’s FMC because they internally make fun of or insult violet (like saying hair doesn’t have feelings or feel anything when violet refuses to cut her hair).
so both FMC’s are counterpoints for dain.
my FMC’s mother was the dead family member and healer. the other author divided her character into three different people, including a sister, but the foundational emotional elements surrounding the three vs the mother remain the same.
both fics emotional thesis is softness is strength and both FMC’s deal with what Basgiath is making them. which alone is normal in a fic, but combined with everything?
yes, there are major differences and yes, a healer joining the RQ is not something i came up with nor claim to have, but with exact prose, fundamental core themes, and transplanted emotional logic, i’m a little sus (or a lot).
the reason i chose healer to rider is because i myself am i nurse. i know the medical field. i know what it is like to have that core identity and wondered what it would feel like to lose that part of yourself when that’s all you wanted for yourself.
here are other small things i notice:
- my fmc crossing the parapet:
The wind tries to tear me off but I let it pass through me instead of fighting it.
- their fmc crossing the parapet:
I let the wind flow through me instead of fighting it, swaying instead of standing against it.
i wrote that particular line because my FMC was also a dancer when she was younger, using something unlikely she had learned to help cross the parapet.
This is for the girls who wanted to be soft, but circumstance stole that luxury from them.
You are allowed to be gentle in a world that demands you be hard. Your tenderness is not weakness—it’s survival.
She’s going to be soft. She’s going to be a representation that strength isn’t always physical and that it’s okay to be vulnerable.
while it’s not verbatim, it is thematic appropriation
ordinarily, i would never treat “softness is strength” as evidence. it is a widespread theme, but here it becomes significant because the other author simultaneously reproduces it many times in the exact same way i do.
- both FMC’s adapt the “healing knowledge works both ways”
so both FMC’s have previous knowledge and turned that knowledge into their advantage.
while this isn’t obviously something i came up with, and has been used before, it is one of astrea’s defining qualities used often in my fic and the other author reproduces it and shows it off in the almost exact way during sparring but with different nerve bundles.
- xaden recognizes that the softness both FMC’s have can be detrimental:
xaden’s pov throughout my fic:
She just proved she’d rather die than let someone she loves fall, and that makes her the most dangerous kind of person in a place like this.
Dangerous to enemies who think soft means weak.
Dangerous to herself, who doesn’t understand that saving people can get you killed.
Dangerous to me, because watching her choose love over safety makes me remember why I wanted to choose her over everything else.
People like that build loyalty. Not through fear, but through admiration. She’s not trying to control anyone—she’s making them want to follow her.
She’s building loyalty without trying to… Making people care about her through kindness instead of fear.
Which makes her dangerous.
the other author’s xaden’s POV:
He knows [FMC] is dangerous…
She was dangerous and not just on the mat. And she could very easily put everything he’s been working for in harms way.
She has to be able to focus on herself instead of her foster sister. She’ll end up dead if her focus is always split.
now, my fmc rallying others and being dangerous makes sense because of their divided loyalties at this time. the other fmc is a marked one, and i’m unclear how that could get in the way of what xaden is doing when their fmc attends the marked ones meetings (tho i don’t think she knows venin exist yet. but still. they’re on the same side loyalty wise).
- both FMC’s dead relative’s previous dragon were at threshing.
now, this is where it diverges. my fmc bonds that dragon. theirs does not. but, my fmc bonds tairn and the dead relative’s dragon. theirs bonds andarna and another dragon that is not their dead relative’s old dragon.
now, obviously i can’t be certain, but i believe this stylistic choice was done just because they wanted the fmc to bond andarna while i wanted them to bond tairn.
and having them bond three dragons might be overkill. again, i am not the author. i can’t say that for certain, that is just my opinion.
of course, at the end of the day, the two dragon bond isn’t unique. it directly mirrors canon.
- both FMC’s dwell on their hands and how they were supposed to heal, not break.
again, alone, not too crazy of a comparison. with everything altogether?
am i being too crazy? or too critical…
this is the thing that makes authors NOT want to post their work.
