catwings-writes-things

Writing sideblog of catwingsthespatula

[catwings-writes-things]

Current Main WIP

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

A World of His Own is a TMA canon divergence AU that started as an idea that I thought would be, at most, a cracky oneshot: what if, after the Archival assistants stage their “intervention” in season four to stop Jon from taking live statements, a group of other avatars—including Oliver Banks, Karolina Górka, Harriet Fairchild, and Mike Crew (who in this verse is also a Fairchild and still alive), and led by Helen—show up in Jon’s office to stage a different intervention directly contrary to the first, focused on getting Jon to stop letting these humans bully him into starving himself?

Well, roughly two years and 150,000 words later, the fic has lost the “Crack Treated Seriously” tag, and I have lost any illusions I may ever have had that I wouldn’t become obsessed.

I have twelve chapters posted and I’m working on the thirteenth (I am still working on it, I promise!), but the outline (fourteen chapters planned, although at this point it's very likely to end up at fifteen) is complete, although there will almost certainly still be surprises. Currently, I’ve completed the “first act,” which concerns Jon’s (complicated) escape from the Magnus Institute and (equally complicated) adjustment to avatar life and culture, the assembly of a found family, the queerplatonic slowburn of Jon and Helen, and the various (delightful) dynamics within the group I refer to as “the Jailbreak Squad.” The second act, which is currently being written, will involve more of the same stuff as act 1, Martin, and both the difficulties that arise from that combination and the ways those difficulties (among others) are navigated. It will also involve further Jailbreak Squad friendship development, character backstories, Jon and Helen hunting together (finally), avatar holiday celebrations, further exploration of avatar-human culture clashes, and more. Unexpectedly to all involved, including me, it also involves Jon accidentally sparking a revolution of non-lethal feeding methods and generally increased respect for human life in avatar society just by being himself. If any of that sounds good to you, or if you just want to find out how many TMA-related heartbreaks I can fix by letting Jon join a little pack of queer and neurodivergent fear vampires, give this one a go!

Tags:

#fic: a world of his own - for notes about that fic specifically

#the jailbreak squad - for thoughts, backstory tidbits, AUs of my AU, and anything else that concerns these specific characters with the specific backstory expansion and AU modifications I’ve given them

#the jailbreak verse - for writing and process-related stuff about future fics in the same continuity (which exist, and hopefully at some point I will post some of them)

#jailbreak [firstname] - for when I want to talk about something specific to my version of a character without putting it in the main tag (update: I pretty much use this any time I want to post about these characters on this blog now)

#jailbreak [name] and [name] - see above, but for relationships

[pillowspace]

Obsessed with vampires but specifically when they're really pathetic

[pillowspace]

Obsessed with a vampire's existence being symbolic of the terror in a lack of control. Of having needs that scare you. Of a non-violent heart having to enact violence for the sake of survival. Of hiding yourself and longing for the honesty of companionship that you may never hope to get. Of fearing fearful eyes. Of more hunger than you know how to fill. The vampire wants to be taken care of, the vampire is scared, the vampire feels small, the vampire wants to rest. I!!!!!! Like that a lot :) I like pathetic vampires. And I like the catharsis of when someone does offer that vampire the space to be loved and trusted. Of someone offering their blood as a symbol of the vampire being taken care of. I love you, I'm not scared of you, I trust you, I'll feed you. You're safe here. And I know that I am too

[pillowspace]

Now don't look too deeply into what this says about me

[catwings-writes-things]

@thethistlegirlwrites EMMETT

[theshitpostcalligrapher]

Request: "I am practicing informed stupidity"

Thank you!

everyday tbh

join the stream here, i'm writing live

[supreme-leader-stoat]

[sunshinepestilence]

a gift for a cat shaped friend! @catwingsthespatula

[vintageandroid]

fanfic writers will go "anyone gonna explore the kinda fucked up or emotionally impactful implications of this minor canon detail?" and then not wait for an answer.

[corneliaavenue-ao3]

Reblog to give prev the power to write their fanfiction

[sandmandaddy69]

[jamiesfootball]

Sending lots of love today to the writers who are struggling with their current projects. The ones who haven’t written in a while. The ones who haven’t written in a long while. The one who are afraid they’ve lost the words for good and they’re never coming back. The ones who muddled up the words, only to be met with tepid ripples in response. The ones who feel like they’ve plateaued. The ones who feel uninspired. The ones who would rather be writing but are going through some shit

Writing is hard

Anyways, I can’t fix any of that, but what I can do to make us feel better now that I have you all gathered here is play ‘Wonderwall’ *cues up Oasis*

[dear-ao3]

[almiarangers]

As much as I love ‘I would kill for you’, it kinda really loses its impact if the person saying it is a villain who already kills at the slightest provocation

’I would refrain from killing for you, I would spare them all if you asked me’ is a very sexy alternative, and a much more powerful declaration of love coming from a character prone to violence

[thewritingautisticat]

Every time I write Caldren and especially his interactions with Madreline I'm just like Boi what on earth is going on inside your head???

You know she loves you but you don't recognize her attempts at flirting. Every time you think of the future it's about being with her and deep down somewhere you've known since you were a kid that you were going to marry her, but the thought of your relationship with her being romantic somehow never crosses your mind. You almost kiss her but somehow don't actually realize that's what's happening.

You're aware that Madreline is hurting because of your anger so your solution is to just leave. You don't say goodbye because you know that if she asked you to stay, you would stay, but you still leave.

Caldren is such a mess of contradictions and obliviousness I can't even

[catwings-writes-things]

Oh buddy... he sounds like an absolute disaster and I love him already

Can you tell me more about him and Madreline? What does she think is going on in his head through all this?

[thewritingautisticat]

Alalslkslskslslskslslslsk okay Caldren and Madreline are my babies and they're so freaking cute even though Caldren's an absolute idiot and has some really weird dumb disconnect between his thoughts and feelings.

So Caldren and Madreline were born on adjoining farms about three months apart from each other, and ever since they were babies they've been best friends. They grew up playing in the meadows and creek between their farms, and hang out with each other whenever they could. They climbed trees. Their families assumed they would probably get married when they grew up.

Madreline is sweet and spunky, but she's also the level-headed. She's strong and stable. Caldren is confident and deeply loyal, but he doesn't always realize when he'shurting the people he cares about. He can also be more emotional, struggling to control his emotions at times. Except when he's with Madreline, because she's almost always able to ground him.

Madreline started falling in love with Caldren when they were young teens. Caldren is honestly in love with her too, but he just... isn't aware? The thought has never crossed his mind. But like, he knows (somewhere deep down where he's never consciously thought about it) that he's gonna marry her. He can't imagine marrying anyone else.

Problem is, he is dumb. And so, when he realizes that his quest for revenge on the guy who killed his parents is causing pain to Madreline, instead of doing the smart thing and giving it up, he decides to leave, burn down the town's military complex, and go kill Ricaurd (because disappearing without saying goodbye surely won't hurt Madreline even more, right? 🤦‍♀️). And he plans to go back, but the further down into the darkness he finds himself, the more he thinks that he can't go back. Because he can't bear for her to know the person he's become.

Madreline, for her part, doesn’t really know what to do with him. When it was just her crushing on him, without the complications of his parents dying, she was fine. She knew he wasn't thinking about romance yet, and she was okay with that, and willing to wait. There were times it could be frustrating, especially with him giving her mixed signals, but If he hadn't figured things out at some point, she probably would have given him a nudge. But when his parents are killed, everything changes. She gets that he's angry and hurt and falling apart. She wants to be there for him more than anything. It's hard for her as she figures out that she's not what he needs at that moment (or at least, not everything he needs, because he definitely needed her right then). She doesn't really understand what he's thinking, but she gets that he's more feeling than he is thinking. Once again, the only thing she can really do is wait it out. Wait for him to figure things out. Wait for him to finally come back

It's just SO angsty and it drives me crazy to write because I just wanna shake Caldren by the shoulders and yell at him to stop being an idiot but unfortunately that won't happen for seven in-story years. (He finally gets it figured out but he is a freaking slow learner 😅).

[catwings-writes-things]

AAAAAAAAUUGHH

I love it when characters are just fundamentally entangled with each other, in whatever way. And there's so much angst in the juxtaposition of "I can't let her see how messed up I am now" and *would absolutely love him anyway but can't do anything to convince him of that until he's actually ready to listen*

Thank you for the delightful ramble! Exactly what I ordered, thank you 💚

[crankyteapot]

my fav genre of fanfic is "ship i have not ever considered but the author is insane abt it in a way that intrigues me immensely"

[starlightshadowsworld]

Me waltzing in with my bucket of rare pairs

[catwings-writes-things]

Me waltzing in with queerplatonic JonHelen and infecting as many people as possible

[thewritingautisticat]

Every time I write Caldren and especially his interactions with Madreline I'm just like Boi what on earth is going on inside your head???

You know she loves you but you don't recognize her attempts at flirting. Every time you think of the future it's about being with her and deep down somewhere you've known since you were a kid that you were going to marry her, but the thought of your relationship with her being romantic somehow never crosses your mind. You almost kiss her but somehow don't actually realize that's what's happening.

You're aware that Madreline is hurting because of your anger so your solution is to just leave. You don't say goodbye because you know that if she asked you to stay, you would stay, but you still leave.

Caldren is such a mess of contradictions and obliviousness I can't even

[catwings-writes-things]

Oh buddy... he sounds like an absolute disaster and I love him already

Can you tell me more about him and Madreline? What does she think is going on in his head through all this?

[endlessnebula]

Finally got my main characters in the same spot, but one's unconscious and the other one doesn't want a potentially dead body on her ship.

Like come on I'm trying to write a story here I don't have time for you to become sentient, just bring him on board and slowly fall in love already

[heartwarminganimals]

Ploop ploop ploop

[creepymutelilbugger]

i know this is a predator. like a hardened killing machine. tempered by hundreds of years of evolutionary prowess to fine tune him into a living weapon. but ohhhh the little BABYYY look at the Little Bouncing Baby he is going Boing Boing Boing oh my gooddddd

[why-bless-your-heart]

Things that are okay to make up if you wanna play with Catholicism in your story:

- Religious orders (just because there wasn’t an order dedicated to fighting vampires doesn’t mean there can’t be)

- Saints (just because there wasn’t a St. Kxchylian, patron saint of transporters, doesn’t mean there can’t be)

- Popes (see previous. You can also make up bad popes! We’ve had our fair share)

Things that are not okay to make up:

- Doctrines and teachings

- Sacraments

- Secret societies that hide the Real Truth from the unwashed masses (you can actually get excommunicated for trying to do this in real life)

[jurakan]

I'm considering a story about a guy who stumbles on a monastery that's also a wandering ship

[apilgrimpassingby]

Question for OP (@why-bless-your-heart)

What about doctrinal developments as a result of things that don't exist in the real world - for example, thinking up a policy on giving the Sacraments to sapient aliens in a sci-fi setting?

(Although the Catholic Church probably already has a policy on that, knowing her.)

[catwings-writes-things]

I second this question, and I have a few specific subquestions!

For a totally (not) hypothetical example: say I wanted to write about a Catholic priest who was planting a particular church for a group of vampires (or vampire-adjacent people, at any rate).

I don’t think this will happen in the main story, but if I wrote about the existence of vampires becoming more generally known to the public, including to this universe’s Vatican), would it be disrespectful to depict or reference the Magisterium issuing an opinion on any related questions of doctrine? Would the answer to that question change depending on how much detail I gave about the result? Would it be different if framed as a clarification of existing doctrine in response to a new circumstance as opposed to a new teaching entirely?

If the teaching was on a dilemma that fully doesn’t exist in the real world—like, say, whether humans who died and came back to life different are still ontologically human, and the practical and ethical implications of the answer—what’s the best practice for writing about that? How about for writing about the process of a priest or group of priests in collaboration developing their opinions on those topics?

Either way, I assume that writing about a priest working through and even wrestling with questions of how established doctrine applies to dilemmas faced by his vampire parishioners doesn’t fall under that category, because his decisions won’t be official teachings of the Church as a whole even in universe even though he will be small-t teaching his parishioners in his role as their priest and pastor—is that correct?

Could it fall under the category of permissible/beneficial inculturation to have said priest (in conversation with other priests and bishops and in response to felt spiritual needs of his vampire parishioners) develop ceremonies to acknowledge events and life-state changes important to vampires, as long as there’s nothing in them that goes against existing doctrine and they are clearly not sacraments?

@apilgrimpassingby I don’t know if the Catholic Church has an official policy on the Sacraments and sapient nonhumans, but this might help: Pope Francis says he would baptize aliens (the article gives the context, and also some brief but delightful background on the question of whether the sacrament of baptism could in theory be licitly applied to sapient extraterrestrials)

(Tagging @tildeathiwillwrite and @ahopefulbromantic because this may be relevant to your interests— by ‘vampires’ in this context I do indeed mean TMA avatars, although I have the same questions about other sorts of vampires as well)

(For everyone who’s just reading this on my writing blog: the giant sprawling AU continues to sprawl, and Father Burroughs has entered the chat! I know I’ve said this many times, but y’all, I’m sorry it’s been so long since I updated AWOHO, and I am still actively working on it. Thank you for your patience.)