The Sharper Edge of Love: Romance, Sex, and Fanfic
Fanfic writer with a passion for exploring romantic relationships // Fandoms: Horizon Zero Dawn, Mass Effect, and Dragon Age // Fandom: Dragon Age, Horizon Zero Dawn, Mass Effect
Hey all!
I’ll be participating in the December 17 Tumblr protest. I found this post helpful for explaining the why and how of doing this.
I will be back on December 18. But if the Maker somehow smites us and some dumpster fire occurs:
See you guys back on December 18… I hope.
Bare your blade
And raise it high
Stand your ground
The dawn will come
As we are moving towards a period of more decentralized fandom, if you want to support the artists who are going to be hard-hit by this loss of platform/audience, here’s what you can do to help to help the art-side of fandom stay motivated enough to produce content:
- credit artists
- link to their current media/platforms to the best of your ability
with artist’s permission, share their credited work on whatever fandom platforms you end up moving to if it’s not a site that they have migrated to
- help others keep track of where their favorite artists are now
- if you’re using discord to look at art, remember to check out the actual link and maybe give feedback there, because telling your friend that you like the art they linked does nothing for keeping the artist arting
Erotic text is still currently allowed under tumblr’s new policy, but it might not be later, so keep these things in mind for fic authors too.
And just in general, it’s not just content creators that need support and security. Look around at the friends you’ve made here. Think about how you’ll keep in touch with them. Think about how you might reminisce and be sad if the “next tumblr” comes along and they felt too lost to have stayed in fandom long enough to meet you there. Be kind; show love. Everyone’s a little scared and sad now – creators, rebloggers, and lurkers. We’re all looking forward at December 17th with uncertainty and indecision, and that’s okay.
We’re not scared because we loved the blue background or the activity page design, we’re scared because of the people, friends, heroes, admirers, peers, validation, love, and happiness that we feel slipping away. And so long as we hold onto the bonds that matter most to us, this will all pass a lot less painfully than we fear.
If you’ve been meaning to get in touch with someone, but have been putting it off or feeling shy, now’s probably the time. If you wanted to make friends, note down someone’s accounts, form a discord or mailing-list with your buddies, now’s the time.
“Fandom’s not a place, it’s a people.”
—Thor, probably.
This is so so true! I have no plans to leave at the moment but please – if we are mutuals, let me know where I can find you again! I don’t want to lose my Dragon Age fandom family over this ❤
Agreed with the above! I will remain on Tumblr, but I’m also on Discord if anyone wants to connect there… and honestly, if the fandom goes, I will follow.
Yoooo I hit a follower milestone this week (bittersweet given the upcoming NSFW purge 😭) so I thought I’d share the weird thing I started doing this year for no good reason: imitating videogame makeup.
From top to bottom, we’ve got my lover’s Fenris’s lyrium tattoos, Merrill’s vallaslin, and then the vallaslin from Inquisition: Mythal, Dirthamen, Falon’din, June, Sylaise, Andruil, Ghilan’nain, and Elgar’nan.
It’s mostly liquid eyeliner; I went through like 6 brands trying to find the one(s) I liked best for this. THAT IS COMMITMENT OK
(Please don’t repost my face in other places. It’s MY face, ok? I grew it myself and everything.)
Awwwwww omg you are too sweet?? Thank you so much for this lovely message! I’m so flattered and honoured! Ma serannas, lethallan! xoxoxo
I was tagged by @thevikingwomanand @galadrieljones! Thanks friends! 🙂
answer 15 qs and then tag 15 mutuals 🙂
Are you named after someone? Yes. I am literally named after my mother. We also are both published in academic journals so we both use our middle initials out of habit like pretentious jerks. (I dislike my IRL name in case this wasn’t clear.)
When was the last time you cried? On Tuesday while watching season 3 of Daredevil. Someone died and I BAWLED LIKE A DAMN BABY.
Do you have kids? Nope.
Do you use sarcasm a lot? Ummm, not really? I don’t think? I use wit and cheek more than outright sarcasm.
What’s the first thing you notice about people? Height, eyes, and mouth I guess? Hey, fun fact, there was this research article I read once that used eye tracking and found that people from different ethnic backgrounds tend to focus on different facial features. That sounds vague, yes, but mainly because I can’t remember the details of the article and I don’t want to say something erroneous 😅
What’s your eye colour? Brown.
Scary Movies or Happy Endings? Both, depending on my mood! But I definitely watch more movies with happy endings than scary movies.
Any special talents? I feel like writing is a pretty decent talent of mine, as well as a joy. I’m also a good listener.
Where were you born? Toronto, Canada.
What are your hobbies? Writing, video games, TV and movies, and discussing video games/TV/movies in exhaustive and fervent detail with the fiancé.
Do you have any pets? Yes! A cat named Meeko. She is my furbaby.
How tall are you? Approx. 5′3″
What sports do you play/have you played? None. I don’t like competitive sports. I used to be on the volleyball team when I was 12, but I’m left-handed and I had a lot of trouble not serving into the wall, if that makes sense, and it was really humiliating so I quit. Clearly it scarred me for life. LMAO
Favourite subject at school? Uhh let’s go with favourite undergrad course. I took a class called Writing Systems, which was a linguistics course focusing on the different ways that language is represented in written form across the world and through history. That was my favourite and most interesting class of all time.
Dream job? If I stayed in healthcare, I would want to be a psychotherapist. If I worked in a different field, I would want to be a fiction/romance/fantasy editor.
Tagging forward to: @chillyrose @vgtravlr @sun-and-shadow-aloy @littlesnowarrow @hellarcanine @buttsonthebeach @oops-gingermoment @vythika96 @ladyofthelake91 @emileoutofit @rhythm-diary @lylypuceonarchive @novamm66 @mistressdreadwolf @iarollane @cutieink and anyone else who would like to play!
Reblogging for @alyssalenko and @ysuhbella, who tagged me recently for this! ❤️
Tagged by the darling @chillyrose! In no particular order:
This might be more of a wishful-thinking choice than one that really reflects me, but… man, Cole just wants to help people and heal the hurts, and I feel that. I wish I could do what spirit!Cole does. I’m envious of his ability to help people in the space of a second and then just melt away into the background without them ever knowing he was there. I wish that was me.
I recently finished watching this series and I am the Steve of the Crain family. Without going into too much detail, his ‘ghosts’/baggage are the exact same as mine and it’s all just a little tooooo close to home. Get out of my head, Netflix.
If Cole is who I wish I was, then Varric is a better reflection of who I am. He and I are both true neutrals alignment-wise. I kind of see Varric as the guy in Kirkwall/Skyhold who just stands back observing everyone’s shenanigans without judging, and I’d say that’s pretty close to me. I’m much happier to be a sidekick than the person in the spotlight. And as Varric put it best, “I am but a humble servant to my loyal readers!” 😂❤️
Tagging forward to: EVERYONE. Seriously, this is a neat meme. Expose your inner selves, my friends! @vgtravlr @littlesnowarrow @ocean-in-my-rebel-soul@galadrieljones @alyssalenko @thevikingwoman @oops-gingermoment @sun-and-shadow-aloy @fogsblue @cylonalyna @lylypuceonarchive @emileoutofit @cutieink @bluegreenketchup @hzd-tombraider-lore @happywife416 @mistressdreadwolf @empresstress13 @wardsarefunctioning and anyone else who would like to play!
I was tagged by @thevikingwomanand @galadrieljones! Thanks friends! 🙂
answer 15 qs and then tag 15 mutuals 🙂
Are you named after someone? Yes. I am literally named after my mother. We also are both published in academic journals so we both use our middle initials out of habit like pretentious jerks. (I dislike my IRL name in case this wasn’t clear.)
When was the last time you cried? On Tuesday while watching season 3 of Daredevil. Someone died and I BAWLED LIKE A DAMN BABY.
Do you have kids? Nope.
Do you use sarcasm a lot? Ummm, not really? I don’t think? I use wit and cheek more than outright sarcasm.
What’s the first thing you notice about people? Height, eyes, and mouth I guess? Hey, fun fact, there was this research article I read once that used eye tracking and found that people from different ethnic backgrounds tend to focus on different facial features. That sounds vague, yes, but mainly because I can’t remember the details of the article and I don’t want to say something erroneous 😅
What’s your eye colour? Brown.
Scary Movies or Happy Endings? Both, depending on my mood! But I definitely watch more movies with happy endings than scary movies.
Any special talents? I feel like writing is a pretty decent talent of mine, as well as a joy. I’m also a good listener.
Where were you born? Toronto, Canada.
What are your hobbies? Writing, video games, TV and movies, and discussing video games/TV/movies in exhaustive and fervent detail with the fiancé.
Do you have any pets? Yes! A cat named Meeko. She is my furbaby.
How tall are you? Approx. 5′3″
What sports do you play/have you played? None. I don’t like competitive sports. I used to be on the volleyball team when I was 12, but I’m left-handed and I had a lot of trouble not serving into the wall, if that makes sense, and it was really humiliating so I quit. Clearly it scarred me for life. LMAO
Favourite subject at school? Uhh let’s go with favourite undergrad course. I took a class called Writing Systems, which was a linguistics course focusing on the different ways that language is represented in written form across the world and through history. That was my favourite and most interesting class of all time.
Dream job? If I stayed in healthcare, I would want to be a psychotherapist. If I worked in a different field, I would want to be a fiction/romance/fantasy editor.
Tagging forward to: @chillyrose @vgtravlr @sun-and-shadow-aloy @littlesnowarrow @hellarcanine @buttsonthebeach @oops-gingermoment @vythika96 @ladyofthelake91 @emileoutofit @rhythm-diary @lylypuceonarchive @novamm66 @mistressdreadwolf @iarollane @cutieink and anyone else who would like to play!
Rules: Describe yourself using ONLY photos you have. You cannot download or search any new pictures. Thanks for the tag to @chillyrose and @alyssalenko!
Quick descriptions of this little photodump:
– First pic: the first Aloy/Nil fanart I was ever given, from the beautiful @ladyofthelake91. As any writer can attest, having someone do fanart or gift fics of something you wrote is the highest of praise. I printed this art and it hangs over my desk now. xo
– My dumbass face with vallaslin. I took up some very amateur “cosplay facepainting” this year and I LOVE doing it. I’m trying to go through all the DA:I vallaslin – I might post them when I’m done. If I feel brave.
– My cat, also known as The Writing Assistant. But really she’s my daemon à la Phillip Pullman’s Dark Materials – she’s the Pantalaimon to my Lyra.
– A sculpture by Henry Moore from our local art museum. This is meant to represent the fact that I love art and art galleries/museums.
– A definition of orthorexia, MY NEW FAVOURITE WORD. I fucking hate food fads and false beliefs about food, so I was delighted when I found this word.
– My fiancé’s hand with a sketch in progress. He is insanely talented. I also wouldn’t be the gamer that I am – or hence the fanfic writer that I am – if he hadn’t brought me into the world of modern gaming.
– The bottom row is some of my nature photography. I’m not a great photographer, but I take a lot of pride in the photos I do take. I don’t get outside as often as I should, but I do love the outdoors.
Tagging forward to @littlesnowarrow @vgtravlr @buttsonthebeach @larissafae @galadrieljones @apostatetabris @thevikingwoman @elfsplaining @ilikedetectives @happywife416 @kaijulover142 @hellarcanine @ladyofthelake91 @novamm66 @mistressdreadwolf @oops-gingermoment @sun-and-shadow-aloy @bluegreenketchup @hzd-tombraider-lore @vythika96 and anyone else who wants to play!
This little tag meme is an opportunity for writers to reflect on (and promote!) our own writing, but also to hear about the work of our fellow writers and to find something new to read!
Rules: answer the following questions about your own writing, whether fanfic or original. If you can’t/don’t want to answer a question, just put N/A. If you don’t have that many posted works, tell us about your WIPs or individual chapters/drabbles or even your ideas! Then tag as many writers as you like 🙂
AO3 name and link, if applicable: I am queenofkadara on AO3.
What’s your most popular fic, by whatever metric is most relevant to you (hits, kudos, comments, reblogs, some other trait)? My first and longest Aloy/Nil longfic, Stormbirds and Stalkers. It’s got the most hits/kudos/comments/bookmarks of everything I’ve written so far.
What’s your favourite fic that you’ve written? Stormbirds and Stalkers is also my favourite thing I’ve written. I’m nostalgic sometimes about the feeling I had while writing it – almost 100,000 words in a month of super-late nights while working full-time hours, frenetic writing while commuting/eating lunch/at 1am just because I couldn’t get that story out of my head. It was exhausting and exhilarating at the same time, and Aloy/Nil are still my OTP, even if I’ve kind of run out of juice for writing them.
What’s your best fic, and is it different from your favourite fic? Umm… (I came up with this question and I find it hard to answer! Lol!) I think maybe the best thing I’ve written to date is my Abelas/Lavellan fic, The One Who Lived On, along with the post-Trespasser sequel Don’t Wake Me Up. I’m pretty proud of the emotional tone of those pieces and how “tight” or concise they are given how relatively short both works are. As much as I love Stormbirds and Stalkers, it could definitely use some tightening up in the first few chapters especially.
Do you have a fic whose popularity surprised you? Within the Dragon Age fandom, I’m super happy with how well my little Cole/Lavellan fic (Become Human) was received. It’s actually my Dragon Age piece that’s received the most kudos on AO3!
Within the Horizon Zero Dawn fandom, I wrote a minific called Stealth Trials for Aloy and the Spurflints Hunting Grounds Keeper that was meant to just be a smutty oneshot, but it got so many positive comments and encouragement that it ended up mutating from a PWP into a three-part mini love story. (For anyone who doesn’t know who the Spurflints Hunting Grounds Keeper is, this is him – he’s hot af and that’s literally the reason I wrote this piece.)
Do you have a fic you wish more people would read? I wrote a couple of Blackwall/Arya Lavellan four-chapter fics that haven’t garnered much attention – people seem to prefer Blackwall oneshots? The Big Beardy One™ just deserves more love!! Why is he so underrated? Why???
I also wrote a very rare pair for Mass Effect (Reyes Vidal/Aria T’Loak) which hasn’t gotten much attention either, but it’s a total rare pair, so that’s understandable. But spirits, do I love those two. They’re terrible together and it’s so fun to write.
Is there a ship or fandom you haven’t written, but really want to? I’ve been meaning to write Frank Castle/Karen Page from Netflix’s The Punisher for some time – I LOVE JON BERNTHAL A LOT, and his depiction of the Punisher hits all my Fictional Husband™ buttons (broody, tragic backstory, hardened shell shielding a tender heart, and very violent as a bonus trait).
Tell us a random fact about your writing process: Uhhh. I often listen to the same song on loop while writing a chapter. And I always like to have tea while writing, but I often forget I’m making tea, so it sits and steeps for an hour and by the time I remember it, it’s gone cold…
Tagging as many writers as I can think of: @oops-gingermoment @sun-and-shadow-aloy @alyssalenko @ocean-in-my-rebel-soul @galadrieljones @buttsonthebeach @writewherever @himluv @vorchagirl @apostatetabris @jadefyre @thevikingwoman @kimpossibility @redinkofshame @contreparry (Tumblr never wants to tag you, so sorry!!), @summoningpits @aly-the-writer @bronzeagelove @ma-sulevin @thealexmachina @09tiff86 @hellarcanine @valaloy @larissafae @underthedreadwolfsgaze @elfsplaining @mistressdreadwolf @ellstersmash @fourletterepithet – and please, any writers who see this but aren’t tagged, please join in and tag me back so I can read your responses!
tumblr crushes challenge: where you post your own favourite blogs to spread positivity and get your amazing blogger-friends some more followers!
rules are simple – if you’re tagged, show off your post #mytumblrcrushes and of course, you don’t have to, but why pass up an opportunity to make someone’s day with this? 🙂
I am truly honoured to have been tagged by @buttsonthebeach, @oops-gingermoment, @mrscullensrutherford, and @mistressdreadwolf. Needless to say the four of you are ABSOLUTELY on my list!!! ❤️
In no particular order: @elfsplaining @ocean-in-my-rebel-soul @alyssalenko @liaragaming @fuckyeahmagesrights @galadrieljones @underthedreadwolfsgaze @hzd-tombraider-lore @vgtravlr @novamm66 @kauriart @nsfwfrosch @nipuni @ilikedetectives @bluegreenketchup @chillyrose @apostatehobolife @apostatetabris @wardsarefunctioning @ladyrainiertrevelyan @romancingblackwall @kallielef @inquisitor-commander @littlesnowarrow @hansaera @shalizeh7 @eva-soulu.
Ya’ll are either AMAZING writers, AMAZING artists, AMAZING friends, or all of the above. If I have forgotten to mention someone along the way here, it’s not because you aren’t amazing too – it’s because I am an idiot sandwich!!
Love you all! xoxo
The Sharper Edge of Love: Romance, Sex, and Fanfic 