☆❀☆

WELL THEN.


General braindump

Oh dear, they found the porn.

I actually found out about this much earlier in the week. At first, I kind of wanted to crawl under my bed and never come out, just 'cause, you know, it's a little embarrassing. But I feel pretty okay about it now. It helps that their position on it is basically "Ahaha well, we're glad you're having fun". So. I'll just go along with that (and Choose To Assume that while they are aware of its existence, they haven't actually read it). I'm really, really glad that they're both so chill about all this; it eases my mind a lot.

"Chill" is a pretty good description of the approach overall re: fanwork and shipping and so on... which I'm really glad for. Because it led to the situation where I was comfortable enough to request fluffy shippy art from Elli. [/coughs] In fact, she seemed really happy to do it for me, which is really great. (I mean, sure, it helps that I was paying for it, but... she was really enthusiastic about drawing some hugs. :D ) And as a result of that, I've been feeling all gooey and happy for a couple of days now.

It's such an unusual situation, though - very different from my typical fandom experience... I'm not used to authors/artists having such close contact with their fans. I remember very well back when, if an author discovered that you were writing fanfiction of their work, there was a good chance you'd receive a C&D notice, or get your work pulled from an archive without warning. And while I know that neither Elli nor Karo would do that, and in fact it's been over a decade since this was a real issue, there's a part of my brain that wants to pull a Madagascar and lock down all my ports, so to speak. (But I'm going to ignore it, because rationally, I realize there is no need to archive-lock anything.) And then there's an issue I've noticed in more recent years, where I've observed fandoms for small independent canons taking a bad turn because a high degree of author-fan interaction resulted in an eroding of a sense of boundaries (usually taking the form of fans behaving badly, but not exclusively). But... I tend to worry about things that I don't need to worry about, because anxiety is one hell of a drug, so. I'll just try to chill out about all this, and enjoy it, and appreciate that they're both so relaxed about everything.

When I think about it, I actually wouldn't mind sharing my g-rated fics with them, except for the fact that so little of it (so far) is to my satisfaction... I mean, generally I've been getting it to a point where it's like "Ehhh okay, it's done, that's fine" - good enough for me to post on my personal archive, maybe good enough to show it to Lorien too, but not good enough to go linking it everywhere or posting it to Ao3. Clearly this just means I need to put in some effort, though, instead of just slapping words down and calling it good. ;p

...Though I dunno about sharing the shippy stuff, because no matter what, I'm pretty embarrassed about it. xD

Anyway, that's enough of that.

Tistow

So! The greyscales for the first six pages are up on Patreon. It's exciting - even though it'll be a while before there will be more posted, and even though it will be a while before the ball really gets rolling here... The pages look good, and it's nice to have a taste of things, and I think there might be enough here for me to use as a base for a poem (though I'll have to think about that a bit). That's the nice thing about poetry, it's like doing fanart with words... All you need is an image/moment/impression.

Oh, and if any of you are interested in seeing those pages, poke me privately - ordinarily I wouldn't redistribute, but Elli said from the outset that it's all right, since it's just the beginning.

Aaaas I mentioned earlier in this post, shippy art happened this weekend and it is lovely. :D I couldn't decide which I wanted more, so I ended up asking for two - Jack/Anna, and... also one of him with Veeti. And my heart just feels all warm and melty now. <3 <3 <3 These are both so sweet, aaaaah....

It's kind of funny, you know, Jack/Jáhko/Jaakko/That Red-haired Wossname is the sort that ordinarily wouldn't be my type at all. (Tistow Veeti, on the other hand....) But there's just something very lovable about him. And every time I write from the point of view of someone who adores him, I end up loving him more. Funny how that works.


Year in Hereafter

AUGHHHH, CHAPTER BREAK. Upside: It's just a chapter break, not a hiatus. :D Starting again on the 15th, eh... well, that's not bad at all. I CAN WAIT (probably). (Somehow.) (I'll manage, I guess.)

Man, Siiri looks cool in the chapter-end illustration*. (HEY, laufeyknits, I seem to remember you going "Oh, cosplay vibes tingling"... JUST SAYING....)

Ahhh but the post-hiatus Ch05 material has been so good to me. So, so good to me. I just want to, like, roll around in these pages like a cat. Figuratively. I JUST... Jaakko and Veeti finally talking... alllll the (somewhat reluctant) comfort and caretaking.... that bit where Veeti almost falls over and Jaakko grabs him oh my god.

Like, I don't know, it's as if Karo plugged directly into my id or something.

(Sidenote, I only realized yesterday that I've been spelling Jaakko's name wrong for literal months. HOW. WTF self, it's six goddamn letters, how did you get it wrong... ah, well. I went through all the relevant fic and fixed everything, and re-tagged where necessary, but jesus was that ever an embarrassing realization.)

I'm kind of in a weird place right now, because I want to write shipfic at the current canon point, but realistically it wouldn't play out that way at this point, because they barely know each other, and even with ship goggles on there's only so far that I can stretch my disbelief. So, two options that I'm circling around right now - soulmate tropes (Iiiii know you, I walked with you once upon a dream~) orrrrr gen that reads like shipfic. Currently leaning toward the latter, because I'm a lot more confident that I can do it well, and I know that if I work with that, the result will probably be something I'm satisfied with. ...But I sure do want to shove them together and make them kiss, pfff. Or at least hold hands. (In fact, hand-holding might be even better, I fucking love hand-holding.)

Ah well. It's just a matter of... getting started on something, and seeing where it takes me. 8) (Will I finish before chapter break is over? Probably not. Will I make an attempt? ... SURE, WHY NOT.)